Sermon: De-Creation

Grace Presbyterian Church

September 11, 2016, Pentecost 17C

Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28; Psalm 14; 1 Timothy 1:12-17

De-Creation

If you pick up a newspaper today, or turn on your television or radio, you will most likely be reminded that today is the fifteenth anniversary of one of the most incomprehensible acts of human cruelty any of us has witnessed in our lifetimes. It’s hard to avoid on a day like today.

Of course, there are several in this sanctuary today whose lives extend far enough back to encompass a different evil, one of monstrous scope and one whose effects also continue to reverberate through history, the indescribable horror known as the Holocaust.

Aside from the horrors of such acts themselves (which are awful enough), the trouble is that, despite the clear biblical warnings of verses like Romans 12:21 (“do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good”) or 1 Peter 3:9 (“do not repay evil for evil, … but, on the contrary, repay with a blessing”), humanity is altogether too practiced at the repaying of evil with evil. We multiply it. The effect of the evil snowballs and multiplies seemingly – seemingly – beyond our control. War refuses to be confined to one neat and tidy space on the globe, but slips out and spreads into locations we don’t understand. “Justice” becomes a code word for “vengeance.” Violence becomes a default mode of responding to perceived slights, taking up arms against “the forces of evil” becomes a first option rather than a last resort, and such responses are met with … even more evil. It is, in the most explicit sense of the phrase, a death spiral.

And this is the world into which the prophet Jeremiah invites us – no, demands us – to look in today’s reading.

Jeremiah was a dark prophet for a dark time in the history of God’s covenant people. His prophetic term extended from a period in which Judah was under threat from hostile neighbors, with Jerusalem under siege, to a period of exile and displacement, with Jerusalem also being destroyed. In other words, there was plenty to be lamented, and Jeremiah didn’t miss an opportunity.

Today’s reading comes from the earlier part of Jeremiah’s prophetic career, with Jerusalem under a long and grinding siege. And Jeremiah was hardly the only prophet in town; plenty of more “official” prophets, sometimes directly connected to the royal court establishment, were quite happy to “prophesy” outcomes that were far more appealing to the people and The Powers That Be: how Jerusalem could not possibly fall, or how their God would not betray them – somehow not taking into account how the people and the king had horribly betrayed God. Jeremiah, on the other hand, had no interest in sugar-coated prophecies, and was more than willing to remind the people of their sin.

Even taking all that into account, this is one dark prophecy, and particularly unflinching in its assessment of the people, particularly in verse 22. The word “foolish” or its root “fool” is not so uncommon in scripture; you might have noticed it at the very front of today’s responsive reading of Psalm 14, in which it is the fool whose heart denies God. You don’t, however, see too many scriptures in which the people are called “stupid,” but there it is right there in the same verse; “stupid children” with “no understanding.”

If the language is particularly harsh, the offense is not new; once again, the people of God’s covenant had forsaken that covenant and turned to the worship of idols. It is a recurring theme in Hebrew Scripture, whether one is reading the histories like the books of Samuel, Kings, or Chronicles, or the prophetic books that constitute the final chunk of our Old Testament. The people turn to idols and away from God; God’s judgment comes upon them and they are conquered or taken into exile. Repent, and repeat.

In this case, the prophetic response Jeremiah issues at God’s prompting is unrelenting, both in the bleakness of its vision and in the promise, so to speak, of its fulfillment. In fact, it is so bleak that it does, very specifically in its language, promise nothing less than the undoing of creation.

Note the language of verse 23, in which the prophet looks and – see! behold! – the earth is “waste and void.” That is very specific language; in fact the Hebrew words, tovu vavohu, are found in that combination only one other time in scripture, at the beginning of Genesis, when the earth is described as being “a formless void.” This is such a rare and specific phrasing that it’s hard to believe it’s accidental; Jeremiah is specifically evoking the “formless void” of pre-creation chaos to describe the earth in the wake of the people’s faithlessness and God's judgment.

The echo of the creation account continues; the prophet looks to the heavens and they have no light, undoing "let there be light". The mountains and hills are quaking and shaking, no longer stable and solid; the earth is devoid of life, human or animal, and all vegetation and plant life is turned into desert, before the “fierce anger" of the Lord. So says the Lord, “the whole land will be a desolation,” and even if the Lord also promises not to “make a full end,” the Lord also promises not to relent or turn back.

Now one thing to keep in mind about these prophetic writings taken from Hebrew Scripture is that the worst interpretive thing we can do with them is forget that they were written, first and foremost, for their immediate readers – in this case the people of Judah, having strayed from the worship of Yahweh and turned to idols, now seeing their capital city under siege. Fro them such a vision as described by Jeremiah didn’t have to be read literally to have the desired effect. They understood desolation when they saw it, or heard it described in prophetic oracle. Jerusalem destroyed, all life driven out of it, the land laid waste – all was clear enough.

This, though, is a prophecy that works for modern readers or listeners as well, and almost requires less of a metaphorical ear that it might have in Jeremiah’s day. Two news items that came out this week point to the degree to which Jeremiah’s vision could sound chillingly literal. In one, new research indicates that the planet has undergone “catastrophic” loss of wilderness in the past two decades, to the point that only about twenty percent of the earth can still be considered “wilderness” – a catastrophic development indeed for the planet’s biodiversity in both animal and plant life.[i] Ongoing human degradation both of earth and climate was, not surprisingly, the major factor in such loss.

The other story, which might have gotten more attention generally, was of another nuclear test conducted by North Korea. If we were tempted to forget about our capacity to destroy the planet and ourselves many times over with nuclear weapons, such events serve as a chilling reminder. Between such stories and others, Jeremiah’s prophecy sounds more literal than it should – the very de-creation of our world.

Now how in the world does one preach hope in the face of such bleakness?

On one level, you don’t.

There are times when it would be a sin on my part to varnish over the harshness of scripture. There are times when the only decent response is to be challenged to look without flinching at the world, and what we have done with, and to, it.

For one, we have not been good stewards of our planet, a conclusion that is more inescapable daily. Whether one looks at the thousand-year flood events that happen on a yearly basis now, or the aforementioned degradation of the planet’s unspoiled places, or simply the latest news from our new earthquake capital of Oklahoma, we have done harm to God’s creation. And yet so many – even in the church – somehow see such degradation as God’s will for us, a damnable statement if anything.

Stepping further back, perhaps we also need to examine our fidelity to our God more broadly. The surface answer suggests that we, unlike the people of Judah in Jeremiah’s time, obviously don’t worship idols, and if you’re being extremely technical and literal, you are correct, I guess. Still, we only deceive ourselves if we pretend that we as a people, and even as the church, doesn’t have its own particular kinds of idols. The church, or some corners of it, seems awfully power-hungry these days, and has for a long time (many centuries) had a preoccupation with wealth. We get obsessed with regaining the status we once had. To be blunt, we can – and often do – make idols out of virtually anything. We can – and often do – make idols out of these flags, or this building, or even this Bible, when we insist on using it for anything but seeking God’s will for us as the body of Christ.

It is not that we will or choose to do evil, not most of the time. We are, however, quite complicit in choosing the comfortable, the easy, the popular over what is right or good or just. Our consumption choices, for example, may well lock in poverty conditions or environmental degradation for others (and frequently both, and in the same places), whether on the other side of the world or the other side of town, but we’re o.k. with that as long as we don’t have to look too close. Ill will or not, we’re still contributing to that de-creation that Jeremiah demands we look at.

On the other hand, there is one hope, even if we find it elsewhere in scripture. As Paul reminds us in the epistle reading for the day, we follow a Christ of grace. We follow a Christ who ministers forgiveness to us, no matter how bleak our sin, as Paul (a man all too familiar with making an idol of his religion) was highly aware.  

Living in grace and knowing forgiveness, though, cannot be an excuse to shy away from confronting the harm that we do. Whether it be the continued degradation of God’s creation, the human penchant for acts of cruelty, our unwillingness to face up to the injustices that are too much a part of everyday life for too many in the world and in this country, our continued pursuit of things other than the things of Christ, or any other sin (and that is the right word), we make a mockery of the grace that saves us if we do not face the wrong that we do – the harm we cause, intentional or not – and  its consequences for the world and for each other.

We must, with Jeremiah, look without flinching at the “void and waste” which which we threaten the world and each other. We must face the consequences of our idolatries, our selfishness, and our failure to live up to the grace God bestows upon us. And we must act to change; to lay aside those idols and selfishness and follow only Christ, the one who saves, the one who redeems, the one who shows us grace, even in the face of God’s judgment. For indeed, God will judge, but God will not abandon.

And for a God who does not abandon, even in judgment, Thanks be to God. Amen.

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal):

#17              Sing Praise to God, You Heavens!

#435            There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy

#713            Touch the Earth Lightly

#739            O For a Closer Walk With God

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[1] “The Planet Is Going Through a ‘Catastrophic’ Wilderness Loss, Study Says,” https://thinkprogress.org/most-wilderness-is-gone-thanks-to-humans-ad828409f4b6#.ry0yr5z73 (accessed 9/9/16).

There are times I wish Google Images would just admit "nope, I got nothin'" when I enter a scripture reference; but for images of desolation, sadly, World War I is always a good place to look...

Sermon: Doing What's Right No Matter What's Wrong

Grace Presbyterian Church

September 4, 2016, Pentecost 16C

Philemon

Doing What’s Right No Matter What’s Wrong

You can now go and complain to your friends who attend other churches that you have an extremely long-winded preacher, and you can tell them that he read an entire book of the Bible during the service as proof of that fact.

In all seriousness, though, this slender letter should not be overlooked, as the book has had an influence seemingly out of proportion to its size across the history of both the church universal and the church particular in this country, and even more particular in this part of this country. That influence was not good, largely because those who interpreted it did so more for their own convenience than for any genuine desire to learn from it.

You see, this little letter became, in such empires or nations as sanctioned the practice, a primary scriptural justification for the institution of slavery. That list of such nations, of course, includes the United States for about the first two hundred years of its colonial and national history. To be blunt, back then the only reason you’d have ever heard a sermon on Philemon was in order to support or prop up slavery as “biblical,” frequently (although not exclusively) in the southern part of the country, in churches that separated from their northern fellow churches over slavery – including, yes, Presbyterians.

The tragedy of it is that this could only be done by emphasizing something that is not in the letter. For all that Paul says in the letter, there is one thing he does not say: “Slavery is wrong.” Neither does he explicitly order Philemon to free the slave Onesimus (although in verse 8 Paul does claim the spiritual authority to do so). And hey, if Paul doesn’t say slavery is wrong, then it must be OK, right?

To be sure this was not the only such passage of scripture that preachers of the past would have used to justify slavery, but it was damaging nonetheless all out of proportion to its size, and completely contrary to the spirit of the burden that Paul laid upon his “dear friend and coworker” Philemon.

Now I could have left off some of the preliminary and concluding verses of this chapter in the interest of shortening the reading and focusing on the “important stuff” in this little letter. In the case of this letter, though, the preliminary and concluding verses of the chapter are really part of the “important stuff.” The salutation of this letter names other members of the “church that meets in your house,” specifically “Apphia our sister” and “Archippus our fellow soldier”. This wasn’t a real ‘private’ letter; the whole community is being invoked and included here, and what Paul asks of Philemon is in effect being asked of the entire community, not just the one who actually owns the slave in question.

Ah, that brings us to the central character, or object, of the letter. Onesimus was a slave, this much is clear. Even if there were no other clues about his identity his name itself would be a giveaway; the name ‘Onesimus,’ which translates as ‘useful,’ was not a name given to a free-born person in the Roman Empire. Would you name your child ‘Useful’? (And yes, this does give a little extra weight to Paul’s words in v. 10 about Onesimus being formerly “useless” but now “useful”.)

Onesimus’s situation is a little less clear. Most interpreters of this letter seem to believe that Onesimus had run away from his master. Others suggest that possibly Onesimus was guilty of some other wrong against Philemon, possibly involving some kind of theft, or that he had made some mistake that had cost Philemon in some way. Whatever the reason, there is some reason for Onesimus to fear returning to Philemon and Paul is interceding on his behalf, via letter (he can’t do so in person because he’s in prison, remember).

As is often the case when you only hear one half of a conversation, there’s a lot about which we can’t be sure. But one thing is inescapable; how Paul envisions Onesimus being received by Philemon (and Apphia, Archippus, and the church in his house) is dramatically different than the way Onesimus had functioned in Philemon’s household before. Dramatically, life-alteringly different. Possibly-threaten-your-place-in-Rome different. Paul gets that Philemon has to choose, himself, to take this radical step.

Don’t let’s kid ourselves; Paul is not asking Philemon to readmit Onesimus to his former slave status, not calling for a return to status quo. A reset, a return to status quo would not require requests like these:

·      Paul calling Onesimus “my child” “whose father I have become during my imprisonment” (v. 10);

·      Paul telling Philemon “I am sending him, my own heart, back to you” (v. 11);

·      Paul saying that Philemon could receive Onesimus back “no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother … both in the flesh and in the Lord” (v. 16);

·      Paul charging Philemon to “welcome him as you would welcome me” (v. 17).

This isn’t “take him back and I’ll make up your loss and nothing changes,” not by a long shot. This is “change everything.” This is “totally turn things upside down.” And it certainly is not how any self-respecting Roman citizen treats a slave. If you can figure out how to treat a piece of property with no legal or cultural or even human status as a “beloved brother” or sister, the way you would treat the man who brought the gospel of Jesus Christ to you, well, you’re evidently cleverer than me.

What Paul asks is not without consequence for Philemon; you didn’t just free your slaves all willy-nilly and get away with it. Besides the social stigma and cultural backlash such an act likely to face, Philemon could face even legal consequences for such treatment of Onesimus, even if he did not technically “free” Onesimus. Anything that had even the potential of setting off unrest among slaves or upsetting the social order could be clamped down by the heavy hand of Roman authority; and seeing Onesimus gaining status and acceptance in Philemon’s household beyond their own could very well upset the order of society in his community. Paul does not care, evidently, and engages in monumental arm-twisting to persuade Philemon to take this step, while in every technical respect leaving the choice in Philemon’s hands (albeit, as noted earlier, placed in the context of the community of faith in which Philemon lived and moved; Apphia and Archippus and the church.).

While I doubt there are too many today who would seek to restore the discredited practice of using this letter to justify slavery, there are plenty of forms of oppression that fall under the ban if we take this letter seriously. Racism simply cannot stand in the face of a call to love others as beloved sisters or brothers. Any kind of bigotry at all, any claim that the world would be just fine if they would just “stay in their place” or “not rock the boat” or simply stay quiet and out of the way, has no place in the mind of a follower of Christ, no matter how entrenched or enmeshed in our culture such an attitude may be. “That’s just the way it is” might have made a great song for Bruce Hornsby back in the 80s or 90s or whenever, but it can never be the response of a follower of Christ in the face of any injustice or oppression. (And if you remember the song, even Hornsby wraps that chorus with the imperative “but don’t you believe it”. Neither should we believe or accept it.)

If it is a coincidence that this scripture happened to fall on a Sunday when the Lord’s Supper is being observed, it is a happy one indeed. The table of the Lord is decidedly non-selective about who is welcomed. Anyone – anyone – who calls upon the name of the Lord is welcomed as beloved brother or sister. In those great miraculous feedings out in the countryside, Jesus didn’t send his disciples to weed out the undesirables from the crowd; all were fed. And if that fact produces anything other than an “amen” from us, it might be well for us to remember that this openness might just be to our benefit.

We don’t actually know what Philemon did in response to Paul’s letter. There are some hints that his response was somehow affirmative; after all, it seems unlikely that such a personal and particular letter would have come into the canon of scripture, even under the Holy Spirit, if Philemon had responded to Onesimus’s return with thirty lashes and an order to “get back to work, Useless.” Also, we know that later in the century, there was a bishop in the church, seated in the city of Ephesus to succeed Timothy, with the name Onesimus. Even if it isn’t the same Onesimus, it does suggest that somebody’s slave became a “beloved brother” along the way. In my head, to be sure, I want to see Philemon and Onesimus (and Archippus and Apphia and the whole church in their house) side by side coming to the table to receive the bread and cup. But we don’t know, not for sure.

But in a way, not knowing the outcome places the burden of answer on us. How do we respond to that one who, like Onesimus, has never been of any status or place or even humanity to us, but who is now set before us with God’s command to love him or her as a beloved brother or sister, one of God’s own children, no matter how vexing it might be to us?

For the call to answer that question, Thanks be to God. Amen.

Hymns: (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal)

#744            Arise, Your Light Is Come!

#457            How Happy Are the Saints of God

#754            Help Us Accept Each Other

#695            Change My Heart, O God

Credit: agnusday.org. Everybody wishes that, but that's not the way it is...

Sermon: Faith: A Matter of Love

Grace Presbyterian Church

August 28, 2016, Pentecost 15C

Hebrews 13:1-8, 14-16

Faith: A Matter of Love

I don’t know how much any of you remember about your education. I mean your education going back to elementary school or even high school. I only remember small bits and pieces here and there. Now I’m not talking about extracurricular things that happened in school, but the educational substance, the things you were actually supposed to learn in class. I’m not saying I have forgotten all that I learned, only that I don’t have much memory of the specific moment of learning it; it’s just part of the general wash of information burbling about in my brain.

There is one part of my education that, for whatever reason, I very specifically remember being instructed on: the construction of a paragraph, in particular the function of a topic sentence.

The memory is strong. Very clearly I can hear the instruction to start a paragraph with a topic sentence, and to follow that sentence with evidence to support the claim made in that sentence, or possibly further instruction or information following from that sentence. I also have pretty strong recollection of being taught that the topic sentence should ideally be strong and concise, as direct a statement as you can possibly make.

Coming to the thirteenth and final chapter of the book of Hebrews makes me wonder if its author was in those writing classes with me, or somehow received the same instruction.

In the past few weeks of sermons from this sometimes-perplexing book, we have observed that at times the book reads as much like a sermon as like a letter. This is not only because of its serious theological content and rhetorical style, but also because it is missing some of the typical structures and components of the letters we typically find in scripture. If you go back to the first chapter of the book, for example, you’ll see that there is no greeting, something that is found in every other epistle in the New Testament – whether from Paul, as most of these letters are headed, or in a couple of cases from Peter. The epistles attributed to John are structured a little differently, but aside from 1 John they also contain some kind of formally addressed greeting. But not Hebrews.

However, this final chapter of Hebrews is the place where the book is at its most letter-like. For one thing, the end of the chapter does contain some of the formal final salutation structures we see in other biblical letters. For another, the chapter follows a rhetorical pattern common to other epistles, in which the letter concludes with some final instructions and exhortations to the epistle’s recipients. Something very much like that happens here.

In this case, these final instructions are structured in a way that demonstrates something of that paragraph-writing structure I experienced back in high school. The instructions our preacher/author leaves in this final section can, when read clearly, be seen to derive from the principal instruction, or “topic sentence,” found in the very first verse of this chapter:

“Let mutual love continue.”

 It’s hard to get more direct than that. You love one another? Good. Keep doing it. Keep showing love to one another. Keep doing love to one another. You have loved one another: “let mutual love continue.” After all that the Hebrews preacher has said and taught in the letter-cum-sermon, the final instruction comes down to this.

Indeed, you could argue that the rest of the chapter hangs upon this command. “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers,” as verse 2 says? Certainly a way to show love. Verse 3: “Remember those in prison”? Again showing love. Empathy and compassion for those suffering torturing; respecting and honoring marriage; don’t let your desires be consumed by money; these are all things that can be traced back to that basic command.

There is another really good topic sentence later, in verse 8. It might look as though the preacher has moved on to a different topic (or perhaps a different paragraph), but we can also see it in light of verse 1’s command, in this case as a truth that enables us to continue in mutual love towards one another. We can continue in love because “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”

Because we have a savior whose love for us, whose grace towards us, whose intercession for us never ceases; we can love one another, we can love those around us, we can love as that unchanging Jesus Christ has loved us. The love we know from Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. The redemption we have from Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever – it isn’t yanked out from under us, it isn’t dependent on our “earning” it in any way, it doesn’t go away in the hard times. The forgiveness we have through Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. There will never come a Sunday when the Assurance of Pardon is excluded from the service, or is somehow altered to say “nope, sorry, you blew it too badly this time” – the forgiveness we have through Christ is constant, undying, unquenchable; the same yesterday, today, and forever. The hope we have through Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, not to be quenched by floods or suffering or fires or cancer or anything the world can throw at us.

The preacher has a few other things to say as well. Returning to a theme already expressed earlier in the sermon, he reminds his hearers or readers that the home we look forward to is not an earthly one, but that is to come, a lasting city, a heavenly city, one in the unending presence of the Holy One. Taken with what has come before in this passage – the command to love, the undying constancy of God – there’s really only one response: harking back to the previous chapter’s message on worship with reverence and awe, in verse fifteen we are reminded to praise God. Even there, though, we can’t rest on that – that’s not all; we get one more reminder not to “neglect to do good and to share what you have”; in essence, one more reminder to “let mutual love continue.”

With a few last words, the sermon/letter concludes, including a note in verse 22 that “I have written to you briefly”; I’m not sure how his readers or listeners would have felt about that claim. But in this letter, brief or not, our preacher has sought to encourage his readers to persevere in faith, pointing to their ancestors in the faith for encouragement, and reminded them of the awe and reverence due to the God they – and we – worship. And at the last the preacher brings forth the most basic and yet most significant instruction, to “let mutual love continue.”

Don’t miss the significance of that last word; continue. This wasn’t a case in which the preacher had to upbraid his audience for their failure to live into the love with which Christ loved us (as Paul often had to do in his letters). “Let mutual love continue” – keep doing what you are already doing, and go beyond.

I don’t think the Hebrews preacher would have to change his instruction much were he (or she) writing this letter/sermon to the saints of Grace Presbyterian Church, circa 2016. Having been to evenings at St. Francis House and Family Promise, fellowship time after Sunday services, a Christmas and a couple of Easters, and days like yesterday’s Service of Witness to the Resurrection and the fellowship after, I dare the Hebrews preacher to claim that love doesn’t live here, and I have no doubt that the Hebrews preacher could absolutely write to our congregation, “Let mutual love continue.” Keep on doing what you’re doing, and go beyond.

Really, that could be our charge every Sunday. Let mutual love continue. Keep doing what we’re doing, and go beyond. Living as we are in the undying, unshakable, unquenchable love of Christ, how can we do any other?

For mutual love; for Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever, Thanks be to God. Amen.

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal):

#645                  Sing Praise to God Who Reigns Above

#667                  When Morning Gilds the Skies

#267                  Come, Christians, Join to Sing

#306                  Blest Be the Tie That Binds

"Do not neglect to show hospitality..."

Sermon: Faith: A Matter of Awe

Grace Presbyterian Church

August 21, 2016, Pentecost 14C

Hebrews 12:18-29

Faith: A Matter of Awe

There are moments in scripture that are so beautiful we can never forget them. Psalm 23 retains popularity across generations at least in part because its poetry and imagery are so utterly beautiful, and many of the psalms are of similar poetic beauty. The first verses of John 14 – “I am the way, the truth, and the life…” are similarly poetic and memorable. You probably can recall examples that stand out to you.

And then there are passages that are … less poetic, less beautiful, generally less appealing. Between the books of Joshua, Judges, the Samuels, Kings, and Chronicles, there are enough bloody and horrifying battles to keep Hollywood working overtime for years. The crucifixion accounts in the gospels are, aside from the theological significance of the event and the resurrection that follows, gruesome to read. And I’m just going to let you go look up Psalm 137:8-9 for yourselves.

Today’s reading from Hebrews sits in an uneasy place between those two extremes. From a scene of terror and fear, the preacher pivots to one of great hope and beauty, and the result can be a bit of whiplash for the reader or hearer. Part of the challenge is that the Hebrews preacher is trying to draw a contrast in order to make his (or her?) point, and we may need to drop back and do a little bit of context to understand what is going on here.

Our Hebrews preacher paints a picture of two mountains, one of which is Sinai, the mountain up which Moses ascended to commune with God and receive the Law back in Exodus. In this case the preacher is choosing to remind those hearing or reading of the particular terror of the scene, though not by name, in the opening verses of today’s reading. Blazing fire, tempest, darkness, gloom, and the thunderings of the voice of God so terrible that the Hebrew people begged in great fear not to have to hear it again, and which even Moses found terrifying. By contrast, the preacher paints a portrait of Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, “the city of the living God” with a lot less terrifying scene than the one painted above – angels in “festal gathering,” the “assembly of the firstborn” – those claimed in redemption by Christ – the spirits of the righteous and none other than Jesus. The image is beautiful, inviting, welcoming – anything but the terrifying scene painted at Sinai.

Now as a pastor in the United States of the 21^st century, there is no good reason for me to try to promote the Christian faith, to advocate on behalf of Christian scripture, to support the Christian church by denigrating or running down any other religion. Christianity has had close to two thousand years to establish itself just fine, and it remains as much an “establishment” religion in the United States as ever, despite what certain unscrupulous politicians or preachers might tell you. If the only way I can speak for the Christian faith is by slandering or denigrating another religion, I’m in the wrong business and should probably go back to teaching music history.

The situation was quite different, however, at the end of the first century, the time at which this epistle-cum-sermon was written. Some years after the death of the apostle Paul, the fledgling movement of “followers of The Way,” as they were sometimes called, was facing difficulties both within the Roman Empire and within the Jewish synagogues of which many Christian communities were still a part. While Christians were not yet facing the worst persecution the Romans could offer, they were facing greater ostracism and criticism than in the past, due to their unwillingness to go along with the civic rituals of emperor-adoration expected of residents of the empire.

In the meantime, while in some parts of the empire the Christ-followers were organizing themselves into separate communities and churches, this wasn’t the case everywhere. And in those cases where Christians remained in the synagogue, the conflict between those who claimed Jesus as Messiah and those who did not was by now becoming intolerable and irreparable.

In that situation, a word of encouragement to the fledgling group of Christ-followers just starting to face real difficulty was needed, and if it took the form of a contrast between their old world and their new, the Hebrews preacher decided, so be it.

Even so, though, even in the midst of a word of encouragement, this preacher can’t resist a word (or two) of warning.

What does it mean, though, to “refuse the one who is speaking”? And what’s this about things shaking?

Note how verse 25 continues after that initial statement. The Hebrew people back in Exodus eventually rebelled against God and the leadership of Moses, thereby “rejecting” or refusing “the one who warned them on earth” – that is, from Mount Sinai. For that rejection, that generation of the Hebrew people were condemned to wander in the wilderness for those forty years. If that was the fate of those Hebrew people, what then the fate if this latter group of Christ-followers should refuse the God who “warns from heaven.”  To refuse the grace of God extended from Zion, the “city of the living God,” the Christ-followers would place themselves in a far more precarious position.

But still, what would it be to “refuse grace”? We might find some help in Jesus’s parable of the wedding banquet in Matthew 22. The meat of the story is familiar; the invited guests do not come, so the king charges his servants to go out and bring in everybody from the streets, and the banquet was full. But towards the end of the story, the king comes upon a guest with no wedding robe, and when the man refuses to answer, he is thrown “into the outer darkness” bringing the parable to a strange close.

Sounds harsh, admittedly. But it helps to understand one thing about wedding customs of Jesus’s time. For those who were invited to the wedding, the host of the wedding was obligated to provide a special robe to wear for the event. So there was no reason for the man to have no wedding robe, other than refusing the gift given by the wedding host.

For us, “refusing grace” might be something like, for example, deciding you don’t really have any sins that need forgiving. Deciding that the grace of Christian community, like the church, is not something you really need. Those kinds of direct refusal of the gifts of grace given by God through Christ are what the Hebrews preacher warns against.

Finally, in wrapping up this thought, the Hebrews preacher provides counsel on how to respond to God, the one who gives those graces, who welcomes us to the heavenly Jerusalem, who shakes away the impermanent so that only the unshakeable remains. As we learn what it means to receive that unshakeable kingdom, the preacher reminds us, we return our gratitude by “an acceptable worship, with reverence and awe.” Here it’s useful to be reminded of the difference between fear and awe. Fear, as this passage associates with the rather terrifying scene on Sinai, is not how we are meant to approach God in Christ, really. But laying aside fear does not equal rash “buddying up” to God, it doesn’t mean Jesus is your boyfriend, and it doesn’t mean slacking off in the living out of our lives in Christ’s church in God’s world. God is still God, and we still aren’t, and we’d do well to remember that.

God is still, after all, a “consuming fire,” as the preacher lastly reminds us. Think of the “refiner’s fire” from the Old Testament, as set by Handel in the oratorio Messiah. Even as we are redeemed by God in Christ, we “aren’t there yet”; there is still sanctification to be accomplished, “being made holy” to be done in our lives. None of us who is even paying a little bit of attention in faith thinks we have got it down pat, do we? We are not perfected, and we know that. That work is ongoing in us, the burning away of those elements that drag us down into sin. And that is work that is only accomplished by the direct encounter with the refining, purifying, consuming fire that is God, a God worthy of awe.

The Hebrews preacher is packing a lot into this sermon climax, and it can be difficult to untangle. But our place is not to live in fear and terror of God. Instead, we come before God in a worship that offers praise, responds to God’s word, and does not forget that God is majestic and powerful and worthy of our reverence, as well as our trust and our obedience.

For a God worthy of reverence and awe, Thanks be to God. Amen.

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal):

#35            Praise Ye the Lord, the Almighty

#813            God, My Help and Hiding Place

#405            Praise God for This Holy Ground

#442            Just As I Am, Without One Plea

Credit: agnusday.org. Awe, yes, but not fear.

Sermon: Faith: A Matter of Action

Grace Presbyterian Church

August 14, 2016, Pentecost 13C

Hebrews 11:29-12:2

Faith: A Matter of Action

Something major happened in the world of Major League Baseball last week. Ichiro Suzuki, now playing for the Miami Marlins, got his 3000^th major-league hit last week by stinging a triple into the right-field gap against the Colorado Rockies, becoming only the 30^th player to achieve that milestone in the 140-year history of the sport.

Ichiro’s case (and yes, he’s called by his first name) is a bit different than most, though. Until age 27, he played in the professional leagues in his native Japan, achieving well over a thousand hits and renown as one Japan’s best players. He was also a certifiable celebrity in his baseball-mad native country. By most definitions, he had everything an athlete could need. But instead of continuing to play in Japan and enjoying his fame and success, he maneuvered his Japanese team into posting him as available to sign with teams in Major League Baseball, where he finally signed with the Seattle Mariners. While a number of pitchers had come to the US and had success, no position player (Ichiro is an outfielder) had ever done so. Suffice to say that Ichiro broke that trend.

But why?

To say the least, Ichiro had faith in his baseball abilities. He had faith (or, in deference to last week’s sermon, he trusted) that he had the talent and intelligence to succeed in Major League Baseball whether any other Japanese hitter had or not. But he didn’t just have that faith or trust, or even belief in himself if you want to call it that; he was willing to back up that faith or trust or belief with action, putting himself on the line to prove he was as good as he believed he was. This wasn’t what most observers expected; many in MLB believed he might do o.k., but certainly most weren’t expecting him to be the major star that he has become.

Ichiro’s confidence in his abilities and willingness to back it up with action isn’t exactly like the members of the “roll call” of the “heroes of faith” we resume in Hebrews today, but it’s not a bad metaphor. Unlike Ichiro, these biblical examples of trust did not merely have to trust in their own abilities; instead, their trust was in God alone, a far more secure locus of our trust than anything we ourselves can accomplish.

The roll call resumes in today’s reading after a little more elaboration about Abraham, including that horrible moment when he was about to sacrifice his son Isaac at God’s seeming command. It’s hard to know exactly what Abraham was about in this case; was he trusting that God would indeed pull back from his command to sacrifice his son, his one heir through whom God’s promise of a great nation of descendents was to be fulfilled? Was he trusting that God would find another way to fulfill that promise, and willingly giving up his seemingly innocent son? It’s a hard story, a kind of “text of terror” that, if we’re reading scripture with any integrity at all, should make us stop short and frankly be offended by it.

Continuing, the roll call comes to Moses and his leadership of the Hebrew people out of Egypt, where we pick up a bit in the middle of the sequence. To begin anything with “By faith the (Hebrew) people … “ is actually a bit ironic, since back in chapter three of this very same sermon those same people are reprimanded for their lack of faith for their rebelliousness in the wilderness, an event that happened after the crossing of the Red Sea that is referenced in today’s reading.

There’s a warning for us here. This faith, this trust to which Hebrews encourages us isn’t a one-time thing. Since we’re in the midst of the Olympics right now I’ll borrow a track-and-field metaphor; a hurdler doesn’t get to pull up and celebrate after successfully surmounting the first hurdle. There are more hurdles on the track, and the race isn’t over until the hurdler successfully jumps all of them and crosses the finish line. Similarly, one act of trust isn’t the end of our journey of faith; the journey continues, and we have to follow it to its end, trusting God all the way and acting on that trust as God calls us forward.  

This warning is countered by the good news inherent in the inclusion in this roll call of Rahab. Do you remember Rahab, from Joshua 2? When Joshua sent spies to scope out the city of Jericho and its defenses, it was Rahab who sheltered those spies in her home and hid them from the king of Jericho’s officers. After sending them on a wild goose chase, Rahab sends the spies on with a rather remarkable confession of Jericho’s fear before the Israelites and swears the spies to safeguard her and her family (which they do in chapter 6). It’s a pretty remarkable sub-story within the greater story, and her trust in this God she would hardly have had reason to know, and her action upon it, is apparently enough to win her a place in this roll call of honor.

Still, though, you can imagine some reader sidling up to the author of this Hebrews sermon and saying, “But Rahab was … you know … she was a … a … a prostitute.” And our nervous nelly would not be wrong; Rahab was indeed a prostitute in Jericho. From this take with you this good news; as long as you still walk on this earth, it is not too late to trust in God – to place your faith in God – and to act upon that trust. And we “good Christian folk” had better realize that trust will not always be confined to our ranks. We are in no position to judge the trust of another, or to place restrictions on where that trust will show itself.

The good news in turn is followed by another word of warning. Our preacher starts to wind up the roll call by adding several more names without elaboration of their deeds, trusting the readers to recall them. Some of the names are familiar to us, or at least can be found in the Old Testament if you want to go looking, but some of what our preacher describes isn’t that familiar. Beginning at about the midpoint of verse 35, the fates of these heroes of faith take a rather darker turn, don’t they? Up to then it’s all winning wars and conquering and shutting the mouths of lions (sounds like Daniel there), but all of a sudden these fates turn a lot darker. Mocking, flogging, chains, prison; stoning, being sawn in two (!!!), being killed by sword; living in destitution, persecution, homelessness; again these are the “heroes of faith” we’re talking about here!

Real faith – genuine unalloyed trust in God and the willingness to act on it regardless of care or consequence – does not always win us any popularity medals. Anyone who tries to tell you that a life of faith is a “get out of trouble free” card is not speaking truth to you, and if that’s what you’re looking for this isn’t the place to find it. Nor does a life lived in trust in God seek to avoid them, but to endure them, to surmount them like our hurdler from earlier, and to continue to run the race. Again with the athletic metaphor! But now that metaphor is about to break down.

We are about a week into the Olympics now, and several “heroes” of the competition  have emerged. There’s the amazing gymnast Simone Biles, flying in ways humans shouldn’t be able to do. Or the swimmer Katie Ledecky, winning races by margins that television cameras can’t measure – they can either show her, or the swimmers behind her, but not both. Or the men’s swimmer Michael Phelps, who by winning his thirteenth individual gold medal across multiple years of Olympic competitions broke a record that has stood since literally before the birth of Christ. There have been amazing and unbelievable individual performances and team performances all over Rio de Janeiro.

Our Hebrews preacher, in 12:1, invites us to imagine a scene not unlike one you might see in Rio. A “great cloud of witnesses” in the culture of the time might have been a reference to the crowds gathered to watch one of the athletic spectacles of the time, whether those ancient Olympics in Athens or other competitions in other major cities of the Roman Empire. In this case, that “great cloud of witnesses” is gathered to watch … us. We are running “with perseverance the race that is set before us,” in the presence of those saints who have already run the race set before them.

But here’s where our Olympic images break down. We don’t compete with each other. We run together, so to speak, and I don’t “lose” and you don’t “lose” and if there are any medals they’re all the same color. We run, only fixing our eyes on  “the pioneer and perfecter of our faith,” Jesus Christ. The only glory we run for is the glory of Christ, the one whose run was one with its own humiliations, dying a death of crucifixion that was about as opposite to the glory of the stadium as it is possible to be.

All those saints who have come before us, Enoch and Abraham and Moses and Rahab and all of them, ran their race. Some of them didn’t even get to see the prize in their lifetimes. Yet as our Hebrews preacher said in last week’s reading, they saw the promises and greeted them from afar, looking forward to a “better country, a heavenly one,” a “heavenly city” God has prepared for them, prepared for us. They ran, we run, others will run the race after us. We each have our own race set before us, but we run together, all towards the same pioneer of our faith.

Let us run with perseverance. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal):

#385            All People That on Earth Do Dwell

#438            Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me

#730            I Sing a Song of the Saints of God

#543            God, Be the Love to Search and Keep Me

Credit: agnusday.org. But we are surrounded by that cloud of witnesses...

Sermon: Faith: A Matter of Trust

Grace Presbyterian Church

August 7, 2016, Pentecost 12C

Hebrews 11:1-16

                                 

Faith: A Matter of Trust

What is faith?

That might seem a strange question to ask in this case, since in the very first verse of today’s reading from Hebrews we get what has become one of the more familiar verses of scripture as a seeming definition of faith – “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” or “substance of things hoped for, evidence of things not seen” if all your memorized scripture is still in the King James Version. (I hate to break it to you, but  "assurance" and “conviction” is actually a better word to correspond to the Greek here.)

It’s a beautiful verse, true. Maybe too beautiful. We hear it and get lost in the mellifluous poetry of it all and maybe we don’t always bore down into it to understand just what’s really going on.

Fortunately, the author of Hebrews (which really is in effect a sermon rather than a letter) doesn’t stop with the lovely poetry, but pushes forward to flesh out the picture of faith with a couple of further elaborations and then a whole bunch of examples.

This isn’t a bad thing, and maybe at this point it’s a particularly beneficial thing for us modern Christians, who have a habit of using the word “faith” in some strange ways.

If you go to Dictionary.com and look up the word “faith” you get seven different definitions, some of which are clearly not quite what our preacher is talking about here and some of which might just be part of the story. The sixth and seventh definitions have to do with “the obligaion of loyalty or fidelity to a person, promise, engagement, etc.” and “the observance of this obligation,” which do sound a bit like the Hebrews preacher in some parts of this chapter. The fifth definition, “a system of religious belief,” is acceptable I suppose, but we have better words for that – “theology” or “doctrine” or even “religion” itself seem closer to the mark there. And the second definition, “belief that is not based on proof,” sounds very much like our preacher here in verses 1-3.

But the sticking point comes in comparing the third and first definitions. The third definition, “belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion,” seems to be the definition we are most likely to use these days. We speak of “faith” rather often in reference to a mere assertion of belief in God. “I have faith” ends up meaning little more than “I believe in God,” or “I believe x about God.” We assert a particular set of propositions or statements about God and call that faith.

At the risk of offending, if our Hebrews preacher were to hear us use the word “faith” today, he (or she) might be tempted to borrow a line from the character Inigo Montoya in the movie The Princess Bride: “You use that word a lot. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

What our preacher is telling us in this passage, what our preacher wants us to see in the examples of Abel and his faithful sacrifice; Enoch who “walked with God” and was taken up by God without suffering death; Noah who built an ark well before any rain fell; and yes, Abraham who set out from the only home he knew and followed God to a strange new land; what Hebrews wants us to see in all of these examples (and more to come later in the chapter) has basically nothing to do with fealty to a set of doctrines or teachings. That’s not the faith that moved these ancient ancestors.

The synonym for “faith” that Hebrews wants us to hear is not “belief”; the synonym Hebrews wants us to hear is “trust.”

Abraham didn’t set out from Ur and journey into that strange land because he had memorized the Apostles’ Creed or the “Roman Road” to salvation. Abraham made that journey, followed after God with his wife and his household and his complete lack of children, because somehow in that moment of call, somehow in that moment of being called out by God to take on this strange and terrible journey, Abraham trusted God. Noah certainly didn’t build an ark in the midst of a dry season in a dry land because somebody handed him a gospel tract and told him to believe it. Noah, crazily and unbelievably, trusted God.

And this might be why the Hebrews preacher might go all Inigo Montoya on us and question how we use the word. We’re very good at asserting beliefs, we moderns, and very good at beating up on those who don’t assert the same beliefs that we do and even declaring them to be “outside the faith.” I have no doubt you can find that kind of “faith” at dozens of churches in this town. But the kind of faith that shows real trust in God? The kind of faith that steps out with zero visual evidence ready to follow the crazy and unexpected path that God sets before us? Yeah, not so much.

But that’s the faith that Hebrews urges upon us. Faith that trusts God, convicted of things not seen, not worrying about what’s behind us but set on what God points to ahead of us, faith that actually dares to encounter God instead of merely talking about God? That’s the faith of Hebrews 11. Trust is not the end point of that faith (that’s next week’s sermon), but it is its start. And that’s the faith that will matter in a faithless world.

For trust in God, Thanks be to God. Amen.

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal):

#838   Standing on the Promises

#817   We Walk By Faith and Not By Sight

#538   Hallelujah! We Sing Your Praises

#321   The Church’s One Foundation

Credit: agnusday.org. It's not a contest...

Sermon: Lifestyles of the Rich and Faithless?

Grace Presbyterian Church

July 31, 2016, Pentecost 11C

Luke 12:13-21

Lifestyles of the Rich and Faithless?

I am curious to know: how many of you remember Robin Leach?

If you don’t remember his name, maybe you remember the name of the show he hosted for many years on television:

(with accent) THIS is…Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous!

It was a show back in the 80s and 90s devoted to … well, it’s hard to make it any clearer than the title itself. Insanely opulent mansions, ridiculous limousines and luxury cars, and yachts the size of Navy ships – but far more luxurious than any military vessel ever, populated by Hollywood stars, Saudi Arabian princes, minor European royalty, the occasional athlete, and even a casino and hotel developer who, coincidentally, is seeking a new job this year. You may have heard of him.

Anyway, the show itself (to its credit, I suppose) didn’t really pretend to be about anything other than ogling all the stuff. I never could decide if the makers of the show really wanted their audiences to feel sick and depressed about their own mundane lives, or if social consequences of any sort were even contemplated in any way. It was just out there, relentlessly displaying luxury after luxury for the … entertainment (I guess?) of its viewing audience. If your brain didn’t shut down due to the sheer sensory overload, you might have found yourself wondering … why do these people have this stuff? What’s the point? Outside of the occasional “I saw it and I just had to have it” (which of course is not really an answer), that question seems never to have been asked or answered, at least not on the occasions I saw the show (which were admittedly blessedly few).

Maybe the lead character of the parable Jesus tells in today’s reading from Luke isn’t quite on the level of a featured rich person on that show, but he is rich, and we are told this by Jesus before we even know that he got such a super-abundant harvest. And in Luke, to be honest, “rich” isn’t always a good thing.

For example: even at the very beginning of this gospel, in the Song of Mary upon her meeting with Elizabeth, we hear that God “has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty” (1:53). In chapter 6, Jesus proclaims a “woe” on the rich, “for they have received their consolation” (6:24).

The hits don’t stop coming with this reference in chapter 12. The parable of the rich man and Lazarus, in chapter 16, is particularly harsh. In that story, the rich man ends up in the torments of Hades, while Lazarus, the poor beggar who lay at his gate daily, was in eternal rest in Abraham’s bosom. It doesn’t go well for the rich man when he (still not getting his situation) asks Abraham to send Lazarus to dab some cold water on his tongue, because hey, it’s really hot down here. The denouement of that parable is perhaps the coldest cut of all, when Abraham declares that such persons would not be convinced of the errors of their ways “even if someone rises from the dead” (16:31).

And then there’s the rich young ruler of chapter 18 who, when challenged by Jesus to give it all away and follow, “became sad, for he was very rich” (18:23), an event that prompts Jesus to exclaim “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” (18:24), comparing the feat to getting a camel through the eye of a needle, but finally offering the hope that “what is impossible for mortals is possible for God” (18:27). Frankly the only rich person that really comes off well in this gospel is Zacchaeus, the tax collector, who pledges to give away for the poor and pay back any who have been defrauded.

So it’s not a surprise that this rich man here in Luke 12 is not going to turn out to be a good guy, but he does seem particularly tone-deaf, with his resolve to tear down perfectly good barns and build bigger and better, showier barns. Seriously, simply adding another barn would be a lot easier and quicker, and that’s before the moral calculus about a person’s responsibility with wealth.

Note that Jesus tells this parable in response to a man from the crowd calling out to Jesus to settle a dispute with his brother over the family inheritance. After an initial “who do you think I am?” rebuff, Jesus turns quickly to warning the crowd against greed, saying “life does not consist in the abundance of possessions” (12:15). Immediately after the parable Jesus launches into teaching that is very specific in its extension of this warning, inviting his hearers and us to look at the ravens who don’t plant or harvest, the lilies that “neither toil nor spin” (12:27) and yet are more glorious than Solomon at his most glorious. Finally Jesus gets to the point: “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (12:34).

Now by this point, you may have already begun to draw a conclusion about where this sermon is going to end up. Ugh, another sermon bashing rich people. And there is definitely a moral peril expressed in this parable. The more wealth and possessions one has, it seems, the greater the danger of becoming attached to that wealth and those possessions in a way that clouds one’s spiritual judgment. It may be a cliché to say that “money can’t buy happiness,” but clichés often become clichés because they are true enough to get repeated over and over again, which seems the case here.

Perhaps more significant than simply the insufficiency of money to procure happiness is the utter inadequacy of money as a substitute for a relationship with God, which seems to be where the man who decides to build bigger barns goes off the rails. As Presbyterian minister Meda Stamper puts it, “The parable of the rich fool … illustrates simply and memorably the futility of choices made in isolation from the love of God and neighbor.” Stamper continues to describe what is a central theme, not just in this parable but in the whole gospel of Luke: “the problem of wealth in the context of the holy kingdom where closeness to God is life and attachment to things reflects soul-stifling anxiety and fear.”*

The particularly damning part of the choice the “barn man” makes in this parable is that only one person seems to factor into it: himself. There’s no notion that he even has a clue there might be others in his town in need. There isn’t even the notion that his workers (which he would have had to have if the harvest was that plentiful) might benefit from some portion of that harvest. He sure looks like a man who never learned the basic lesson we tend to expect our kids to learn by kindergarten: the lesson of how to share. To modify a quote that has become a popular social media meme recently, it never occurs to this man that, having more than he needs, he might choose to build a longer table instead of bigger barns.

But of course, this being a parable of Jesus, the simple answer is not quite the whole answer. The dirty little secret about us modern folk, even us modern Christians, is that we don’t have to be “rich” by the standards of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous or other such popular measures to become attached to our stuff in a way that hinders closeness to God. Heck, you can even be homeless and be powerfully attached to your stuff. If we look deeply enough, we can all find some element of that unhealthy attachment in ourselves.

For myself, it would probably be books or music. For you it might be some other possession – not necessarily a pricey thing, but some thing or things to which the attachment might be so strong that it has the power to cloud one’s spiritual discernment. Whatever might be the case, attachment to the things of the earth is a moral peril to the degree that it precludes or hinders attachment to the things of God, to the “treasures in heaven” we are encouraged to store up, to the neighbors around us whom God calls us to serve.

You see in your bulletins today a survey from the Finance and Stewardship Committee, one that begins the process of discerning how we will steward our resources for the forthcoming year. The word “stewardship” tends to feel loaded and burdensome to us in such a context, but at its most basic it speaks to this question of how we participate in the kingdom of God, as a church and as individuals, and how we make use of the resources we have been given – the harvest we have gathered, so to speak – to participate in that kingdom and its work. In that process the challenge before us, this year and every year, is to do so without becoming attached to those possessions or resources themselves, but to see them as gifts from God to be given in service to God and neighbor, something that “barn man” never seems to have grasped.

We don’t need to have crazy luxury around us, or Robin Leach ogling our stuff on behalf of millions of TV viewers, to fall into the trap of attachment to things that cannot give life. None of us are beyond that trap. Only when we see what we have through the eyes of the kingdom, fully recognizing God and neighbor in our decision-making, do we begin to get free of that trap. Only then do we see that building bigger barns is not the answer.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

*http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2923

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal):

#307            God of Grace and God of Glory

#417            Lord Jesus, Think on Me

#822            When We Are Living

#716            God, Whose Giving Knows No Ending

Credit: agnusday.org. Enough is never enough...