March 3, 2013 "Red Heifer & Fig Tree"

Isaiah 55 Luke 13: 1-9 The question before us this morning is not: How are you? Not: What will it take to satisfy? But rather: Can we, is it possible given our never ending desires, our insatiable appetite to be satisfied? Given the competitive nature of the Marketplace, our constant desire to possess the latest, to have what we perceive others have, the answer is NO. We can never be satisfied, but of course it is not our fault. There is always someone or something driving us. Our expectations. Our parents, our coaches, our kids, keeping up with the neighbors, competitors, mortgage payments, insurance, the Market. When we graduated from High School and College, we thought we were ready to take on the world. All we needed was someone to give us a chance, to trust and believe in us, and we could solve every problem. There was the nagging reminder, that life had been easier, when living in our childhood bedroom. Without our awareness, bills were paid, meals were prepared. The biggest problems in the world were getting her home before curfew and passing the Exam next Friday. We got married and went to Grad school. Parents wanted grandchildren. We started our professional careers. We had a car, a dog, then children. Suddenly there was the realization that all our goals had already been met. Everything we hoped to be, to accomplish was fulfilled, but there were new desires, new goals, new expectations, a career path. Satisfaction could not be met. Then, at age fifty, our metabolisms changed. We could no longer eat whatever we desired. We could no longer get by on a few hours of sleep. The face in the mirror increasingly looked like our parent's and grandparent's, and knowing their histories with weight, with anxiety, blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease, the future no longer looked bright, we would have to work at what we ate and what we do in order to keep pace with losing. Instead of life being eternal, we came to the realization that we are mortal and while under the most common circumstances we do not want to live forever, we do not want to be with God too soon. Life is a struggle, just to survive. Part of our changing circumstance, is shifting priorities and expectations for what we need and what we desire and what will satisfy. Over a period of 3000 years, the story of Israel had gone from Abram and Sarai leaving home and family in Ur of the Chaldeans, to living as a minority people in Egypt, to being great in number, being enslaved and oppressed, and set free only to wander in the wilderness, hunting and gathering, coming into the Promised Land and competing for survival, to times of prosperity and expansion, and cultural decay, to being carried off as exiles, dispersed in the world. This word of Prophecy through Isaiah, came to the people in exile, a people who in retrospect had had it all and lost it. The word of the Prophet Isaiah is not “I told You so!” and not only “Comfort, Comfort My People says your God.” This is a transformational text. A text of empowerment, to realize that quite possibly our lives are not for our benefit, but as an example calling others to believe. But A Life of Faith is not about our being satisfied, or safe or secure. What if, Moses and the 10 Commandments, the Monarchies of King David and King Solomon, were not only for the benefit of the people and cultures of their times, but also for the rest of the Gentile world to witness, to hear and take to heart, and be changed. There are two ways to approach the resources of life, that everything is limited and being exhausted, or that creation is interdependent and adaptive, everything with the seeds of renewal within it, and therefore unlimited. What if we were no longer concerned with having enough food and water? If survival and debt, and the concerns of this life were satisfied, what would you do? Every three of four generations, there was to have been a year of Jubilee, cancellation of all debt, restitution of all that is owed, a time of starting over. Having experienced all we have experienced, if you were to begin with a clean slate today, knowing this may be the last year of your life, what would you do? Even more, if a year from now, others were to examine your life, how would they describe this year where you were not concerned with being satisfied, from all that came before? Would it make a difference to not be concerned with satisfaction, with survival, security, with being satisfied, or would we still live as if life were limited and exhausted? According to Luke, people came to Jesus naming those who had put their trust in differing securities. Some Galileans, just like us, had been hiding beneath a guard's tower. There could be no place of greater security or safety. Guards are posted in the towers to watch the horizon, to announce of anything on the horizon to cause fear. Guards were also high up in the tower to kill and destroy what approaches before danger ever got close. Standing beneath this security, beneath their armaments and fortifications, and walls to keep others out, who would have imagined that that very tower would fall upon them! Like the city prior to hurricane Sandy, which had intentionally created a sanddune as a barrier to protect them from storm, who afterward had sand in their streets and yards and houses, as the very thing created as a security had come down on their own heads. Others came to Jesus describing an atrocity. Believers, even more than worshipping God, were in the midst of offering their sacrifices to God, when Pilate's soldiers not only desecrated the Temple, not only murdered these believers, but of all sacrilege the Roman Legion made certain to mix the blood of those killed with the blood of their lambs, profaned their offerings with the believer's own blood. Jesus' response is that there is not a Cause and Effect to Life. There is not Karma, that Bad things are kept from Good People, and Good things will be secured from the Bad. This is not about acts of God, or having greater security by having bigger weapons. Life happens. Life knocks you down. There are no securities, no safeguards, being satisfied or satiated is irrelevant. That life is short and fragile should be a motivator, that everything in life is rebalanced and re-prioritized as eternal, inexhaustible and belonging to God is enough to change us, and if not us, then those who witness our lives. What will we do? Jesus then tells the Parable of the Fig Tree. A withered scarred tree, that has never put for even a single fig. The Fig Tree has eaten the resources of the soil, and drunk the water of the rain, but has never given back, never produced what the Fig Tree was intended to produce. Shall it be dug up? Or shall the Fig Tree be given one more year, with every opportunity? Yesterday, before the Game, we took the Confirmation Class to Jewish Synagogue. The Rabbi described this as The Day of Red Heifer as described in the Book of Numbers. This is an obscure Commandment. My family were farmers, and had a beautiful tawny, doe eyed Jersey Cow. They had Holsteins. My brother is the dean of an Agricultural School, so we have gone to a lot of State Fairs and farms. Until going to Sudan, I had never seen a Red Heifer. But according to this Commandment, the community is to take an Unblemished Red Heifer, and bring it to the Priest. The Priest is to sacrifice the Unblemished Red Heifer, and everything, the blood and the meat and bones and dung are all to be burnt to ash. Then the ash is to be taken by another in the community to anyone among them who is unclean, who is impure. The ill, the unclean, the impure are to marked with the ashes. Now, the one who gave the Heifer to be an offering, and the Priest, and the one who washes the priest's robes, and the one who gathers the ashes, and the one who takes them to the unclean, all are named as impure and unclean for 7 days for having helped to heal others. Would you do it? There is nothing about this, that is satisfaction of our needs or desires, our hungers or thirsts, or benefit. Doing this will make you impure and unclean, isolated and shunned for doing an act of God... Will you? This Sacrament is not enough food to fill your belly, not enough moisture to wet your whistle. But what truly satisfies, what makes a difference for us and all with whom we share, is naming the brokenness, revealing where we are unclean and impure, and together hoping that by sharing we will forgive and be forgiven.