The laws that still matter: Love God, Love your neighbor

            Every week I have the sometimes challenging task of taking scripture that is from a long time ago and trying to help make it relevant to your lives today. Sometimes this is easy. Other times, like today, we are reading about a concept—the Sabbath—that isn’t practiced as seriously, between Jesus and the Pharisees, who are not around anymore, about an issue of contention in the law that Christians mostly believe has been made irrelevant because of Jesus anyway. So there’s that. I also read this week that only 8% of people want their pastor to speak about social issues… so there goes that angle.

            I mean, is it helpful to you if I just stand up and say, “The law is pointless because of Jesus” and sit down? I can do that. It feels tempting on annual meeting Sunday, actually. I can ignore this whole business of what our country is doing to refugees and aliens right now—it doesn’t really fit with the scripture and it’s in that territory where many of you want me to refrain from comment. So ignoring that is awfully tempting too.

Sometimes I hate preaching, because I’m forced to get up here and say something every week and the only thing that truly, really, ultimately matters is the cross and the empty tomb, but we get bored with that (as ridiculous as that is) and so we’re always looking for connections to our lives. Sometimes the connections are easy, sometimes they’re not, but the problem is I have to keep making them and most of the time they aren’t of huge significance, so that when something of truly enormous significance does happen it feels like just another thing—another little connection, take it or leave it. Why’s the pastor talking politics, anyway? If I say anything I’m preaching politics; if I don’t I’m ignoring the repeated call of the Gospels to love God and love our neighbor. So here I stand, and let’s get into the Sabbath and leave you hanging for now about how I’m going to handle this whole mess.

Fish the deep water

Luke 5:1-16

“Put out in the deep water, Simon,” Jesus says. “Try the deep water.”

            I don’t know how big Simon’s nets were, but I imagine fishing in deep water with hand nets is a lot more challenging than shallow water. There’s just more water to cover, it’s more work, and, frankly, the fish tend to congregate more in the shallows. “Try the deep water,” says Jesus. “Fish the deep water.”

            It’s easy to spend all our time focusing on the shallows with one another, barely scratching the surface of who other people are. Most of our conversations take place in the shallows. “How are you doing?” “Terrible weather out there, isn’t it?” Keep casting your nets in the shallows and you know what you’ll get: the same answers, the same general greetings. It will definitely be the same, but will it be enough?

                Jesus has a different idea. It requires more work and it calls us to venture further into a place we fear. Jesus calls us to deeper water; water that is more mysterious, water that is untested, water that can drown us as surely as it can save us. Jesus calls us to throw our nets that way, into the unknown. This calls to mind that famous Robert Frost poem, “The Road Not Taken”:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

But of course the most familiar part of the poem is the ending:

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Jesus didn't come for the hometown team

Luke 4:14-30

It’s hard to preach to people you know well: Friends, family, people who remember you as the snotty-nosed little kid who was getting into trouble or the pimply-faced, socially-awkward teenager. When people know your history it is very difficult to outlive it, and when prophets have a history in a place it changes the dynamic of what a preacher is expected to say. Prophets are temporary; they are always just passing through; but when it’s the hometown kid something changes—the temporary and the forever collide and our expectations change. This is what happens when Jesus returns home to Nazareth. You can hear the adults—you know, those of Mary and Joseph’s age—saying things like, “Hey, look, it’s the little J-man, all grown up and going to read the Bible to us! Wow, isn’t he smart?”

            To some extent—and this is probably even more true in small towns and rural areas like Nazareth or Hallock—people are always seen as kids, no matter how old they are. This can be endearing and it can be patronizing. It can mean that the message they bring is not heard when it is spoken or never spoken for fear of what the elders think. I tend to think it is far more challenging for a person (especially a young person) to speak up in this community than in a big city, for example, because whatever message they bring will get wrapped in their personal history. Being a prophet to the hometown team is hard. Preaching the Christian message to those who know how flawed you were—and are—is nearly impossible, because the Christian message is not one of preference for people who look like me or sound like me. Jesus brings a message that tears through the hometown advantage. He doesn’t preach what the people want to hear but what they need to hear. He tells them the hard truth, which is that you aren’t any more special than anyone else. Not surprisingly, the people tire of this message quickly.

            We want Jesus to be on our team—and what could be wrong with that? Why wouldn’t we want Jesus on our team? If we were drafting a team of the most important people in our lives wouldn’t it be a good thing to include Jesus? There’s just one problem: Jesus doesn’t do teams. Jesus has preferences but not teams. And his preferences tend to look the same, which is a preference for the one who is in the greatest need, for the lost and the lowly and the powerless.

            This home-town phenomenon is pretty much the same today. We talked about prophets in Confirmation last Wednesday with the 7^th and 8^th graders and their parents, and we made up a list of all the people who might be modern-day prophets. Whenever we do this I’m struck that it begins to sound a little like we’re listing the people on our podcast playlist. For example, I might say that Wendell Berry is a prophet, but that may be because I rather like what Wendell Berry says. You might like what Mike Rowe says. Or you might like what Pope Francis says. Or you might like what Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders say. I don’t know. Does that make them a prophet? If Jesus and if any of our examples from the Old Testament are any indication the best way to tell if you are listening to a prophet is to ask yourself A) is this person preaching for the visitors rather than the home team, and B) is this person about to get his or her self crucified for what they are saying? If you can answer “yes” to those questions then you may be dealing with a prophet. People don’t like what a prophet has to say. People didn’t much like what Jesus had to say. Because of this, we are forever domesticating Jesus to fit our already-held beliefs. We make Jesus into our image. We tone down the harshness of the prophetic voice at least as long as the prophecy is aimed at us—the hometown team. We follow Jesus to whatever extent it makes us feel good about ourselves, but the moment it makes us question things we turn away

Thanks be to God!

Good news. That’s what John the Baptist proclaims according to the Gospel of Luke. “I baptize you with water,” says John, “But one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” Then, Luke continues, “So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.”

            This Christian Gospel is a funny thing sometimes. We are people who will read something like this, or we’ll have a Gospel that ends with damnation for sinners to which we’ll respond, “The Word of the Lord! Thanks be to God!” We take a word of damnation and return it with thanks, which is very strange. It’s also strange that Luke’s proclamation about clearing the threshing floor and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire is, in fact, good news. It feels like news, for sure, but good news? Gospel? Is that what this is?

            One thing we do know is that good news looks different for us than it did for John the Baptist. After all, we have something that John didn’t—at least not yet. We have the promise not just of a Messiah who is coming but of one who was here—who is here—who came and died and rose again. We have Jesus. And that’s a pretty sweet thing to have. It’s the only reason we can respond as we do. Without Jesus, we could not read those words of judgment—those words of wheat and chaff—and respond, “Thanks be to God!” We couldn’t do it, because we would have no assurance that we weren’t the chaff, destined to damnation due to our imperfection. We know that we are both wheat and chaff, yet because we have one who threshes on our behalf, who separates us from the weight of sin and guilt we carry, even a word of judgment can be worthy of thanksgiving.

            Now, if you were listening closely to the reading you might be thinking, “Pastor, aren’t you ignoring John’s words that we are to be good people first, to give away our things and not to defraud? Isn’t that what this scripture is about?” Well, it is true, but what the scripture is about? Not really. Yes, you should be good people. Yes, you should give your coat to someone in need. Of course you should not defraud. You should definitely strive to be better. You should do your best to follow the laws given to Moses, those Ten Commandments. You should be good stewards of what you are given, period.

            But no, that’s not what it’s all about, because John’s advice—like the baptism he offers—is a this-world promise for a this-world solution. John commands that you be good because God has commanded it in order that we might live abundantly, but all of that stops in death. Moreover, our actions and our blessings are always going to be unfair; most will not get according to what they give. People who die don’t deserve it; many who suffer don’t deserve it. Some who seem like they probably do deserve it thrive all the same. John’s words are God’s command for us to have life; the obligation is for us as individuals but the reward is always plural. The promise is a promise for nations, but I don’t experience life as a nation; I experience it as Frank. You experience it the same, each through our own little point of view. And if we are suffering then it’s not that much consolation that the people around us are thriving. Our pain is not made much easier by the joy of others, even though that is precisely the promise that the law gives us.