Years ago, a wise teacher of preachers advised us to prepare
our sermons with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the
other. His point was that sermons had to be relevant to the day-to-day lives of our people, and the best way to insure that would
be to focus on what is going on in our people's world. Good
advice, don't you think?
Because I knew I would be out of town for several days at
the beginning of this past week, I began thinking about this
morning's sermon LAST week. The big story in the news at the
time was the Don Imus debacle. I admit I found it a little
disconcerting that the foolish remarks of a rich, old white guy
that demeaned a young, predominantly African-American women's
college basketball team would end up as the lead story on the
national news - I mean, we DO have some things in the world that
are immeasurably more important. But the sad truth is that our
culture has experienced an almost psychotic outburst of Imus-isms
in the past year - Comedian Michael Richards "losing it" during a
night club performance and challenging his hecklers with the "N-word;" "Grey's Anatomy" star Isaiah Washington and his "faggot"
slur against one of his co-stars; Virginia Senator George Allen
and his "macaca" reference that cost him an election; Mel Gibson
and his drunken rant against Jews. Dealing with the kind of
bigotry that underlies that kind of talk, from Don Imus or anyone
else, is certainly worth a sermon.
Then there is the continuing soap opera in Washington with
the hearings about the operation of our Justice Department and
the firing of the US Attorneys. The image we are getting of a
department insuring "liberty and justice for all" if you happen
to be in the right political party is somewhat disquieting.
"Justice for all," regardless of political affiliation, is
certainly a biblical theme and lends itself to preaching.
That huge snow storm this part of the nation experienced
last weekend (and which Christie and I gratefully missed down in
the Carolinas) was probably exacerbated by the global warming
problem - hotter hots, colder colds, wetter wets, drier drys.
Today is being observed as Earth Day in this nation, and people
are being asked to pay attention to the things we can do to save
our planet for future generations - things we might not think
about enough...turn off your computer overnight, unplug cellphone
chargers when not in use, do FULL loads of laundry or dishes.
That Wal-Mart ad in yesterday's paper was intriguing. It
asked, "Can a funny looking light bulb change the world?" It
went on to say that if every Wal-Mart shopper bought (and used)
just one compact fluorescent light bulb, it would be the oil-burning equivalent of taking over a million cars off the road. (1)
Wow. Well, the Bible is surely clear that God has given us
management responsibility for this planet. This will certainly
preach.
So saying, we all know that all this news pales in
comparison to what happened at Virginia Tech on Monday. A sad,
mentally ill young man went on a rampage. By the time the
shooting stopped, he and 32 others were dead, the worst incident
of its kind in the history of the nation, a nation, by the way,
that is no stranger to horrors like this. And what is it about
the third week in April and murderous violence? It was 14 years
ago this week that we saw the Branch Davidian disaster in Waco,
Texas - 82 people dead; this week marked the 12th anniversary of
the Oklahoma City bombing of the Murrah Federal Building and 163
dead; this was the 8th anniversary of Columbine High School
shootings - two teenage students killed twelve students and a
teacher, as well as wounding twenty-four others, before
committing suicide. The third week in April.
It is intriguing the way the lectionary texts sometimes lend
themselves to current events even though they were selected years
in advance. For example, one of this week's lessons is about the
conversion of the Apostle Paul. It is a story you remember from
your Sunday School days. It seems that an upstart group had
begun preaching and teaching that Jesus of Nazareth, the young
rabbi who had made such an impact with his preaching and teaching
and healing but who had been crucified by the Roman Governor,
Pontius Pilate, had risen from the dead and was, in fact, the
long-awaited Messiah. The chief priests and leaders of the
Temple were not pleased. After all, of all the provinces of the
Roman world, only Israel had been allowed the freedom of their
own religion. True, this was not out of any respect that the
Caesars had for Judaism, rather this was simply less trouble than
forcing something else. So saying, the Roman rulers were not
about to accept a Judaism that might be seen as fomenting
political unrest. So the Jewish leaders wanted this stamped out
before Rome could step in to stamp THEM out. This was a Jewish
concern that should be handled "in house."
Here we meet young Saul of Tarsus. Our first introduction
is as he plays coat-room monitor while some of this colleagues
murder one of these so-called "Christians." Stephen, a leader of
this band of upstarts, was beaten to death with stones. In the
midst of his ordeal, Stephen looked toward heaven and prayed,
"Lord, do not hold this sin against them." If that prayer made
any impact on Saul, it was certainly not apparent. As scripture
has it, this angry young man, bent on stamping out this Christian
heresy and, in the process, maintaining the political status quo
that was so important to the Temple leaders, redoubled his
efforts and "began to destroy the church. Going from house to
house, he dragged off men and women and put them in prison." (2) So
says scripture.
The conversion story that we find in the lectionary lesson
finds Saul, in the language of the old King James Version,
"breathing out threatenings and slaughter" against the church
(sounds sadly like the video manifesto of Seung Hui Cho). Saul
is ready to take his act on the road, so he arranges with the
Jerusalem authorities to travel to Damascus to track down
Christians who had fled there to escape the danger in the Holy
City. Here we find the famous Damascus Road scene - Saul is
literally knocked off his high horse, blinded by the light, and
hears the voice from heaven, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute
me?" Saul is not sure about the question, so he begs who is
asking. "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting." Then follows
the instruction to go on into the city and wait for further word.
Wait a minute. Jesus? Jesus is dead. Oh my. They had
been saying that he had risen. Oh my. This changes everything.
Oh my. So he goes into Damascus and waits. The blindness
continues for three days.
Meanwhile, God comes to a faithful Christian by the name of
Ananias with instructions to go to Saul and lay hands on him to
restore his sight. Ananias objects: "Lord...I have heard many
reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your
saints in Jerusalem. And he has come here with authority from
the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name." But the
Lord tells him to do it anyway because Saul has been specially
chosen for ministry. Ananias does what he is told, Saul's sight
is restored, and suddenly the world is introduced to the man who
would become known as PAUL and nothing has been the same since.
There are lots of lessons that one could take from this
story, but the one that resonates most with me is that the Lord
uses some surprising individuals and events to accomplish divine
purposes. I mean, a religious fanatic like Saul, whose murderous
hatred for all things Christian was out there for all to see,
would be the one who would spread the gospel like no one else???
C'mon... But that is exactly what happened. Go figure.
As might be expected, many of the Virginia Tech family have
been looking to their faith in response to this week's tragedy.
There have been prayer services and vigils, one after another,
since the horror struck. There have been affirmations that God
will work good out of this, even though we might be at a loss at
the moment as to how that might be accomplished.
Of course, there have been questions as to WHY? and Where
was God in all this? Those questions always come when tragedy
strikes in any form. Those were the questions of Job so many
centuries ago. Those were the questions of Christians in the
early days of the church when a profession of faith could be an
issue of life or death.
Here again we find that the lectionary, prepared years ago,
has something as relevant as tomorrow. The lesson from
Revelation, indeed the whole BOOK of Revelation, has a word for
those confronting the horrors of life. Revelation was written by
someone named John, probably the early church's bishop of the
congregations in Asia Minor, the western coast of what is now
Turkey. It was probably written around the end of the first
century during the reign of Emperor Domitian who was notorious
for his terrible persecution of the church. Bishop John wants to
encourage his little flocks in the face of a hostile environment.
His message is that Caesar is not Lord, JESUS is Lord, and that
despite all the evidence to the contrary at the moment, evil does
not ultimately win, the Lord God Almighty does. It was a most
needed word of hope in the midst of a life of despair.
If you read through Revelation you will encounter any number
of strange images. The book is written in a "code" known as
Apocalyptic, which had its roots in earlier religious writing
such as Ezekiel and Daniel and Zechariah. It is designed to
convey a message to the faithful without endangering them anymore
than was already the case - thus, the "code." But you will also
note as you read that there are familiar phrases all over the
place - Revelation, of all the books of scripture, is quoted in
our liturgy and hymnody more than any other:
Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels,
numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand
times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the
living creatures and the elders. In a loud voice they
sang: "Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive
power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and
glory and praise!"
If you want to break into the Hallelujah Chorus, go right
ahead. That too is from Revelation.
Revelation is a book written to give hope to people
suffering in the midst of devastation, either the first century
or the 21st, whenever anyone reads or hears it. Yes, it was
written to give hope, but not a naive hope, not a hope that has
to pretend that there is no violence or suffering or horror. The
Bible is completely honest about the tragic realities out there.
For that matter, the Bible is completely honest about the tragic
realities in here. But the Bible insists, and the life and death
and resurrection of Jesus affirm, that the tragic realities are
not the end of the story.
As I have told you before, the imagery in Revelation is
poetic, not photographic, but that does not make it any less
true. In fact, sometimes the only way we can convey truth is
through poetry - prose is insufficient.
When Martin Luther King spoke before the Lincoln Memorial in
1963 and gave his immortal "I Have A Dream" speech, it was a
bleak time for the Civil Rights struggle in America. Things were
not going well. The March on Washington that August was meant to
infuse new life into the movement, to give new energy so that the
warriors might fight on, despite the obstacles. Dr. King gave
the assembled throng a vision:
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up
and live out the true meaning of its creed --- "We hold
these truths to be self evident, that all men are
created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia
the sons of former slaves and the sons of former
slaveowners will be able to sit down together at the
table of brotherhood...
I have a dream that my four little children will one
day live in a nation where they will not be judged by
the color of their skin but by the content of their
character -- I have a dream today. (3)
This was poetry, a vision of a world not yet arrived, but
one that was on the way. It was a song to keep people moving, a
song to sing in the present darkness, a song which spoke of the
coming light.
Will Willimon tells of a man in one of his
congregations who had been in a Japanese prisoner of war camp.
It was a place of unbearable torture and human degradation. The
prisoners were treated horribly and their lives seemed not worth
living. One of the prisoners, a wonderfully defiant chap from
Illinois, would sometimes hum songs to himself as the prisoners
were being led out to the fields to work each day. Walking along
in the sweltering heat, miserable, unfed, unwashed, he would
sing. He often hummed "America, the Beautiful." The Japanese
guards did not know the tune, so the song meant nothing to them.
But to the prisoners, the tune, evoking the "amber waves of
grain" and "purple mountain majesties," reminded them of home,
filled them with hope and courage. Soon, the whole camp was
humming the tune each day on the way out to work, with the guards
oblivious to the revolutionary significance of this defiant
gesture. (4)
In a way, that is precisely what the songs and symbols of
Revelation do for us. They remind us, as we go about our daily
lives, as we hear of 33 dead in Blacksburg or of 3300 young
Americans dead in Baghdad, that evil does not ultimately win, God
does. In the Virginia Tech memorial convocation Tuesday evening,
Professor and poet Nikki Giovanni said:
We are sad today, and we will be sad for quite a while.
We are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning...
We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did
nothing to deserve it, but neither does a child in
Africa dying of AIDS, neither do the invisible children
walking the night away to avoid being captured by the
rogue army, neither does the baby elephant watching his
community being devastated for ivory, neither does the
Mexican child looking for fresh water, neither does the
Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in
his crib in the home his father built with his own
hands being run over by a boulder because the land was
destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy.
How true. But tragedy is NOT the final word. Revelation
helps me hear that. I NEED to hear that. And THAT is why I need to have the
newspaper in one hand, and the Bible in the other! That is the only way I
can make sense of it all.
Amen!
1. ©Wal-Mart Stores in USA Weekend, April 20-22, 2007
2. Acts 8:3
3. Delivered on the steps at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. on August 28, 1963.
Source: Martin Luther King, Jr: The Peaceful Warrior, Pocket Books, NY 1968
4. "A Song to Shake the World," 4/26/1998,
http://www.chapel.duke.edu/worship/sunday/viewsermon.aspx?id=70
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