Does fear of the Lord still matter? (And other leading questions)

Scripture: Micah 5:2-4; 6:6-8

The book of Proverbs reminds us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Now, that doesn’t get much play these days. I suspect most people would say that the beginning of wisdom is found in college, or the beginning of wisdom is discovered in the process of aging, or the beginning of wisdom is starting a career, or having a family. Fear of the Lord may be biblical but we rarely consider fear of a thing to be good—not today—and certainly wisdom must start somewhere else. “Why should we be afraid of God?” we might ask in our best modern voices. We love God, or we have faith in God, but fearing God? No, no. That’s something for less civilized folk.

We’ve done our best to make God into the flavorless communion wafers that we serve as his body. He can be loving, and powerful, and good, but fearful? Nope, no good. We have become afraid to ascribe to God any attribute that we do not consider proper in our fellow human beings, and the end result has been a kind of arrogance in our understanding of who God is and what God does. We first decide what it is that a good God will look like, then we decide which parts of our God fit that description, and finally we only believe those things we have already decided befit the God of our choice. In this way we make God in our image. God has all the traits we like and likes the people we like.

Because this Old Testament God doesn’t act like the God we have created in our image we make this God out to be a different God that, because of Jesus, we can ignore. We do this even though Jesus seemed perfectly happy to pray to this God whom he called “Father” and even though our creeds confess this God to be one and the same with the Son and the Holy Spirit.

This is important when it comes to reading the prophets, like Micah, because our weakened images of God mean that we are tempted to take shortcuts and find in the prophets what we want to find. When Micah says, “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” we read that as if it is a moral-ethical imperative. Do these things and you’ll be right in the sight of God. Perfect. After all, that’s exactly what Jesus says when he’s asked what a person has to do to inherit eternal life: “Be perfect like your Father in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48).

Not politics as usual: Election Day and the story of Naaman

Scripture: 2 Kings 5:1-14

           So it’s election season, and, as such, we know to drown out the incessant political ads, the editorials and letters to the editor that read as if the person writing in is standing on a chair screaming, and the substance-less promises of people in far off places looking for our vote. Closer to home we have friends and neighbors seeking elected offices of one sort or another, which is a whole other thing that, while not nearly as obnoxious as campaigns in St. Paul or Washington D.C., still contributes to a good deal of local stress—even if we’re all too polite to acknowledge it. It’s that political time of the year, and all I can think is, “Thank God it’s not a presidential election year.”

            It’s also a confusing time for churches because we aren’t allowed to endorse candidates but we can, apparently, take stands on issues; hence the churches who put up banners saying “Vote Yes on measure such and such” or “Vote no on something else.” These are the kind of razor-thin ethical distinctions that only politicians could create. The church lives in the world, so we are political in the sense that all people making decisions about how to live are political, but we are also apolitical—in that we do not put our trust in elected leaders or legislation to tell the world about Jesus.

            This is a good time to read from 2 Kings for that reason. Naaman, who is introduced as a commander in the army of the king of Aram, has a skin problem. He has some really bad acne. The translation we just read suggests it is leprosy, but since leprosy was more or less unknown during this period it could be as serious as that or, more likely, it was something like psoriasis. Either way, Naaman has a skin issue and he needs some help. Hearing that there is a prophet in Israel—that lowly country that he has been raiding again and again—who can heal his disease, he sends word to the king and asks for an audience with the prophet.

Wisdom vs knowledge, or why Confirmation doesn't work

Scripture: 1 Kings 3:4-28

The last two years on Confirmation Sunday we’ve read about Solomon’s Temple, which is a nice bit of scripture for Confirmation because it provides an opportunity to talk about the difference between church buildings and being the church. But today we have something even better: this early story of Solomon as ruler over Israel is the perfect opportunity to talk about something that is sincerely lacking in our confirmation curriculum: the difference between knowledge and wisdom.

The truth is: we have a Confirmation problem. We have a system that does a wonderful job of keeping youth in the building for these few years and a terrible job of cultivating lifelong faith formation. If you look at the data, ELCA Lutherans have a higher percentage of Junior High kids in a church learning environment than any other major church body in the United States. 70% of our youth in grades 7-9 are involved in Christian Education; that’s more than any other denomination, period. Locally, we’re even higher than that. Right now, at Grace-Red River we have 100% involvement in Christian Education amongst our Junior High kids. We can pat ourselves on the back for that.

Oh, but there’s one little problem. As a church body on the whole, we’re first amongst Junior High participation, but last in High School participation. And we’re nearly last (ahead of only the UCC) in adult participation. This is astounding if you think about it. There’s a cliff at the end of Confirmation where we seem to say, “So long! Good luck! That’s all the education you’re getting until you die and go to heaven. Hope you’ve got your books of the Bible memorized for when you get there!” We’ve done such a good job of teaching our confirmands that they don’t have to do a thing to earn their salvation that they have said, “OK, thanks. Bye now.” And that’s it.

 Our practice has been to teach you things during your Junior High years when studies have shown that this is when you will absorb the absolute least amount of information of any point in your life; the time where your hormones are raging, your bodies are changing, and your brains are quite literally checked out. We’ve chosen that time to load you up with knowledge about the faith. Sure, we have good reasons for it. It seems like an appropriate time to respond to your baptism. You can finally begin to think for yourselves (as we know all 8^th and 9^th graders are models of individuality </sarcasm>). And what’s happened over time is that we have young people who not only do not know anything about the faith (because we’ve tried to pack knowledge into heads that can’t hold it), but they also have no wisdom because in our hurry to pack in that knowledge we’ve had no time to actually practice faith. Instead of faith we teach doctrine, but even the doctrine we teach is generally shallow, so information-based, and so little lived that we might as well have been teaching them how to cook communion bread.

Becoming Goliath: Underdogs and the career arc of King David

Scripture: 2 Samuel 12:1-25

            On Friday I had planned on spending the day putting together thoughts for today’s sermon when I had an unexpected cat-sickness-related detour to Grand Forks that took most of the day. Stranded in the “big city” with no computer, Bible, or anything with which to actually “work” on a sermon, I made my way to Target to pick up a notebook, a pen, and also a Bible. When it came time to find the Bible I meandered into the book section of the Target store, which feels like it shrinks every time I’m there, slowly being eaten away, as it is, by the electronics. Today you can practically buy more different versions of Grand Theft Auto than you can books of any title from a given Target store—I’m only slightly exaggerating.

            So, when I found myself in the two aisles of books at Target I was at least thankful that they did have Bibles—two of them; both King James versions, of course—but next to these a couple of other books caught my eye. First was a book called Jesus>Heaven that I was vaguely familiar with but thought it might be mildly appropriate for Sunday sermon material, and then there was another book by Malcolm Gladwell that had very little to do with religion but, I can only assume because Target doesn’t actually care where they shelve books, it was placed right next to these other religious titles with its own title of David and Goliath. The subtitle reads: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants. OK, I thought, I’ve got what I need. Which was a funny thought because I honestly didn’t even realize at first that this David of David-and-Goliath-fame is the same David from today’s reading. There is such a stark contrast between the David of youth and the adult David that you too can be largely excused if you don’t remember at first that this David who looked down on Bathsheba was the David who slew a giant. So when I left Target I did so with a notebook, a pen, a book that only vaguely had anything to do with religion, and no Bible, but I had this realization that the David story was maybe exactly what I needed.

            It was a reminder of who David was that I needed in order to get to the David we see in this reading today. I needed to remember that this King David who acts reprehensibly, without scruples or any kind of remorse, was once the underdog—was once the model of purity and devotion to God.

            I had to check myself and ask honestly, “What does this mean?” What do we do with this David. And that was a perfect launching pad for today’s sermon.

Inspired? Yes. Absolute and final... maybe not.

There's a billboard along I-29 that you can see driving north from Grand Forks toward the Canadian border. I see it about once a week or so when we make the trip down to the "big city," and it reads like this: "The Holy Bible: Inspired. Absolute. Final."

There's one thing I like about this sign--well, maybe two things. I like that somebody cares enough to put the Bible on a billboard; it sure beats other things that people are selling. And I like that they use the word: "Inspired" rather than "inerrant," though I'm a little worried that, to the people who put this up, they mean the same thing. But if I'm being honest I also must admit that putting this on a billboard opens us up to other billboards, like these (put up by atheist groups):

I mean... if the Bible is absolute and final those second category of billboards seem to have a point. The language we use to talk about God's word is so important, because if we use phrases like absolute and final we think we are suggesting that the Bible is above criticism, being God-inspired as it is, but it also means that we are bringing some massive assumptions to the reading of holy scripture, namely that one verse is as true as all others and interpreting one verse--or one story, or one idea--in the context of others is pointless. After all, that's what "final" means, isn't it? So we're left shouting one Bible verse, while others shout others. If we've already decided that the Bible is absolute and final, then why even think, why even read? Nobody is listening--why would they?--because they have the absolute and final authority.

That first billboard I see on a regular basis has Psalm 119:89 quoted in the lower right-hand corner, which I find mildly troubling.

Psalm 119:89 reads,
"The Lord exists for ever;
   your word is firmly fixed in heaven" (NRSV)

OK, that's fine. I get it. You're pointing out that scripture seems to say that the word is eternal, but let's stop for a second and consider why you are putting this verse on your billboard. It seems to me that you are more concerned with showing that your Bible is perfect and absolute than you are with telling people about God... or Jesus... or anything else. I'm sure that you feel like this will lead people to eventually discover that the Bible is a book about Jesus, but why not just come out and say that? Why do we feel the need to first establish the perfection of the biblical witness before actually confessing what the Bible leads us to believe? This feels like worshiping the Bible, which is just another form of idolatry.

Choose your gods wisely

Scripture: Joshua 24:1-15

            This reading from Joshua is a perfect example of what the Old Testament is like, which means it’s also a perfect example of why we don’t read the Old Testament. Seriously. It’s 20% laws that we don’t know how to (or if we should) apply to our lives, 5% stories that are mostly familiar to us, 120% recap of stories that have already happened and 1% wise, pithy sayings that we can put on t-shirts. And that’s only the first 146% of the Old Testament!

So, it’s sometimes hard to know what to do with the Old Testament. We tend to zero in on those few wise pithy things in the text and ignore the rest, which is pretty much what I am going to do today. We have fourteen verses in Joshua chapter 24 before we get to the payoff; fourteen verses that nobody is preaching on this weekend. It’s all about the wisdom; all about the nugget that reads: “…If you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

That last half-sentence is the snippet for your t-shirt; the Bible quote in your “About Me” on Facebook; the verse on your door; or for those 9^th graders who are starting to think about Bible verses for their faith statements, you could do worse than Joshua 24:15. Oh yeah, it’s also on our bulletin cover. Nothing about the Perizzites and the Girgashites; just this little bit of wisdom. Funny how that works.

            So I am going to talk a little about the preceding fourteen verses today, because, as much as we cite Bible verses like Joshua 24:15 in our daily lives as evidence that we are good Christians, the real payoff is in how we get there. It’s not the destination, right? It’s the journey. The Israelites need this long recitation of the history of their people because they are so, so stupid when it comes to worshiping other gods. Yeah, Yahweh, you sent plagues on Pharaoh and brought us out of Egypt, and parted the Red Sea, and you made Balaam into a donkey, and you fed us in the desert from absolutely nothing, and you gave us this land that we did nothing to earn, but, really, Yahweh, what have you done for us lately?

Law, love, power, and death; the commandments pretty much have it all

Scripture: Exodus 20:1-17

A transcript of today's sermon
I’m going to do something crazy… I think I can do this out here… I don’t know [stepping outside the pulpit].

I’m going to do a recap of what we did on Confirmation on Wednesday. This is going to be a sermon, but it’s going to be a recap of a lot of what we talked about on Wednesday, so if I happen to drop dead in the middle of the sermon any of our ninth-graders here could finish it for me. So, I’m expecting really good sermon notes.

We talked about power on Wednesday—and we especially talked about power in terms of law and gospel—and today we’re reading about the Ten Commandments, which are fundamentally about the law. So I thought this would be a good opportunity to talk about some of the same things we talked about with our ninth-graders. And they seemed to be able to wrap their heads around it a little bit, which was really kind of neat, so I hope that some of you can too.

When we talk about law and we talk about gospel we are really talking about two different kinds of power. The law is right-handed power. The gospel—Jesus dying on the cross—is left-handed power. 99% of our lives happen in the right-handed power world, so it’s actually really difficult for us to imagine any other kind of power. Right-handed power includes everything we do—studying for a test, playing sports, the work that we do. Anything that we do; anything that we are; anything that we work hard for—whether it’s a new job or a marriage, or whatever it is that you’re working at in your life—this is the right-handed kingdom. We live in that world 99—maybe 99.9—percent of our lives, and that’s what the Ten Commandments speak to.

The Ten Commandments are telling us how to live in that 99% of our lives. The insufficiency in the Ten Commandments is that they leave us there. They leave us in the right-handed kingdom, and they don’t themselves bring us across to the left-handed kingdom, which only happens when Jesus comes into the picture.