SERMON FOR PENTECOST 11B
Almighty God, you have given your only Son to be
for us a sacrifice for sin, and also an example of godly life: Give us grace to
receive thankfully the fruits of his redeeming work, and to follow daily in the
blessed steps of his most holy life; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for
ever. Amen.
Proverbs 9:1-6
Wisdom has built her
house,
she has hewn her seven pillars.
She has slaughtered her
animals, she has mixed her wine,
she
has also set her table.
She has sent out her
servant girls, she calls
from the highest places in the town,
“You that are simple,
turn in here!”
To those without sense she says,
“Come, eat of my bread
and drink of the wine I have mixed.
Lay aside immaturity,
and live,
and walk in the way of insight.”
Ephesians 5:15-20
Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people
but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil (full
of trouble, pain, difficulty). So
do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. Do not get drunk with wine, for that is
debauchery; but be filled with the Spirit, as you sing psalms and hymns and
spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your
hearts, giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in
the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
John 6:53-59
Jesus said, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you
eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in
you. Those who eat my flesh and drink
my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my
flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.
Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I
live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from
heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live
forever.” He said these things while he
was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum.
The days are evil but give thanks to God the
Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
A little surprised that no one got up and walked
out of the church during these readings – no one seemed to squirm in their
seats. Perhaps we didn’t hear what they
are saying – it is truly radical stuff!
But then ours is a radical religion.
Because Edie plans to finish her series on the
Eucharist and will deal with this startling command from Jesus to eat his flesh
and drink his blood next week, today I am going to focus on Paul’s statement to
the church in Ephesus.
Evil days we can understand – or do we? But giving thanks in ALL things, at ALL
times – in evil days?
EVIL – the very word itself conveys a depth of
dark feeling and a sense of foreboding – EVIL.
What is evil?
How do we give thanks for all things when the days
are evil?
How do we experience life in evil days?
How do we live above the evil?
Do we see evil as external or internal.
That of course in part determines how we react to
it. If evil is something external, we
can objectify it and push it away – as in getting drunk with wine – or set out
to destroy it.
We hear that word used often in the news -- one of
President Bush’s speechwriters chose to use the term “evil” rather than
“terrorists” in the speech where the President identifies an “Axis of
Evil.” There was an intent to marry
images of the Axis of WWII and the religious image of evil in referring to
those seen as enemies of a peaceful, well-ordered, prosperous world
community. A regular following of
current events around the world would bear out that we seem to be living in
days that are evil – as perhaps have all generations.
If we perceive of evil as something internal, we cannot avoid nor destroy it –
we must find a better way. I suggest
that Paul has that better way – giving thanks for all things, at all times in
our Lord Jesus Christ. The image that
comes to mind is that of the father embracing the Prodigal Son – restoring him
to the family, in spite of his failure, in spite of his evil deeds. Overcoming evil with love.
The words – “live” and “evil” – stand in close
relationship, one an anagram for the other.
In the New Testament, evil is used as a term for something we do but it
is also, as in the case of Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus, used to
describe a quality, a condition. When
Paul wrote that the days are evil, he was recognizing that life was difficult
in Ephesus – indeed, throughout the Roman Empire. While the Pax Romana brought a measure of prosperity and
advanced civilization in some spheres, it degraded humanitarian values in
others. It seems that when coercive
force is used as the means of achieving a peaceful, well ordered, prosperous
community, life will always suffer.
But rather than submit to discouragement, rather
than let death rule over our lives, rather than withdrawing from the world, we
are told to overcome evil with thanksgiving, to overcome death with the bread
of life. Is that possible?
The four hundred year history of slavery and Jim
Crow laws in this country represent evil days.
In my own lifetime, the horrors of the Holocaust, the genocide in
Rwanda, the disgrace of apartheid all reverberate as examples of evil days and
yet, from them come many hopeful stories.
The Holocaust, like slavery and colonialism, represents a period that
revealed the good and evil residing within each one of us. Simple rules of right and wrong cannot begin
to address the horrors of life faced by men and women and children
everywhere. And yet there is ample and
consistent testimony of those who suffer at the hands of evil men that we can
give thanks.
The days are evil but give thanks to God the
Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Corrie Ten Boom was the daughter of a respected
watchmaker, Casper, in Haarlem, Holland in the 1930s. She was the
first woman in Holland licensed as a watchmaker. Corrie
held classes for children with Down's Syndrome and other mental and
physical challenges - until the Nazis came and put away such children.
Corrie and her sister, Betsie, lived with their
father above watch shop.
It became a refuge for Jews and resistance workers. For
nearly two years the Ten Booms provided a " hiding place" -- a secret room built
in Corrie's room, on the top floor of the house, up several flights of steep,
winding stairs. Estimates are that Corrie
and her family saved approximately 800 Jews and an untold number of Dutch
Underground workers.
But in February 1944, a man whose wife had been
arrested by the Gestapo betrayed the Ten Boom family. As they were loaded into a truck outside their home, an SS
officer told Corrie's father that if he would give him his word that he
wouldn't cause any more trouble, he'd let the old man go. Father Ten Boom replied, "If I go home
today, tomorrow I will open my door again to any man in need who
knocks." When they reached the
prison, he was asked if he knew he could die for helping Jews, his answer was,
"It would be an honor to give my life for God's ancient people." Ten days later, Casper Ten Boom died in
prison. In mid-1944 Corrie and Betsie were sent to
Ravensbruck concentration camp in Germany.
For months they endured hard labor, the whip of SS officers,
flea-infested barracks, bitter cold, and near starvation.
In The Hiding Place, Corrie wrote about how
Betsie never stopped giving thanks to God for everything – even the fleas. Corrie struggled with this, thinking not
even God would expect her to give thanks for the fleas. Then one day they discovered why, unlike the
women in some of the other barracks, the women in Building 28 had relative
freedom from the guards, once they crossed the threshold -- so much so that
Corrie and Betsie were able to hold Bible studies with the tiny Bible they
smuggled through the prisons and into the camp. Asked to come inside to see an ill prisoner, guard after guard
refused to enter the building, saying, "That place is crawling with
fleas!"
Toward the end of 1944, Betsie became very ill.
As Corrie held her, Betsie began to describe what they would do when
they were free. They would find a big
house for those damaged in concentration camps, a place for them to
get used to normal life again before going out on their own. Corrie asked when and
Betsie told her they would be free by the New Year.
Betsie died in December 1944 – free
before the New Year just as she had seen. Only a couple of days
later, during a roll call, Corrie was called out and released. On
New Year's Day
1945, Corrie found herself on a train, heading home. Free.
She returned to her family's watch shop but realized she had more to
do. In the spring of 1945, she began to tell what she and Betsie
had
learned in the camps. In 1959, she
returned to Ravensbruck with other survivors to honor the ninety-six
thousand women who died there. It was
then she learned her release had been "a clerical error," and two
days later, all women her age had been taken to the gas chambers.
The rest of her life was spent teaching the
power of thanksgiving and forgiveness around the world.
I vividly recall watching her walk into the
church, an aura of the Holy Spirit about her.
As hymns were sung, scriptures read, prayers offered, she sat, quietly
doing a bit of needlework. When she
came to speak, she held up that needlework, showing the “backside” – the one
with the loose hanging threads and knots, the one where a pattern is hardly
discernable and the work is anything but attractive. She would say that our lives are like that – fractured, a
mess. But then she would turn the piece
over and show the beautiful “up side” and tell of how that was the side from
God viewed each of us – in a completed state.
So it is that we as disciples of the Christ
recognize there is another way.
Violence and force, coercion and cunning, are mighty tools indeed. But a piece of bread and a cup of wine are
mighty tools as well. Thus, Peter can
write, “Do not repay evil for evil or abuse for abuse; but, on the contrary,
repay with a blessing.”
The days are evil but give thanks to God the
Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
These poetical words of Martin Luther King from a
sermon delivered at Mount Pisgah Missionary Baptist Church, Chicago, Illinois,
on 27 August 1967 speak to giving thanks in evil days:
As
the days become dark
and the nights become dreary, realize that there is a God who rules
above. And so I’m not worried about tomorrow. I get weary
every now and then. The future looks difficult and dim, but I’m
not
worried about it ultimately because I have faith in God.
Centuries ago Jeremiah raised a question,
"Is there no balm in Gilead? Is
there no physician there?" He
raised it because he saw the good people suffering so often and the
evil people
prospering.
Centuries later our
slave foreparents came along. And they
too saw the injustices of life, and had nothing to look forward to morning
after morning but the rawhide whip of the overseer, long rows of cotton in the
sizzling heat. But they did an amazing
thing. They looked back across the
centuries and they took Jeremiah’s question mark and straightened it into an
exclamation point. And they could sing,
"There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole. There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick
soul." And there is another stanza
that I like so well: "Sometimes I feel discouraged."
And I don’t mind telling
you this morning that sometimes I feel discouraged. I feel discouraged in Chicago.
As I move through Mississippi and Georgia and Alabama, I feel
discouraged. Living every day under the
threat of death, I feel discouraged sometimes.
Living every day under extensive criticisms, even from Negroes, I feel
discouraged sometimes. Yes, sometimes I
feel discouraged and feel my work’s in vain.
But then the Holy Spirit revives my soul again." There is a balm in Gilead to make the
wounded whole. There is a balm in
Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul."
God bless you.