"I Love to Tell the Story" September 01, 2013

Jeremiah 2:4-13 Luke 14: 1-23 We were at a Wedding reception yesterday, and several different people introduced themselves saying “I used to go to church, but all they ever talked about was Attendance and Money, then there was a fight about music and we stopped going.” Let us challenge the most basic precepts of Christianity today: The purpose of faith is not Attendance, not Money, not Music, not even the perpetuation of Religion. The purpose of Faith is to love God, and loving God to change the world! As a pastor, a part of my job is simply to act as Cheerleader, not to judge whether we can give more or attend more, but to say “Well done, good and faithful servants of God!” This is Labor Day Weekend. Opportunity for us all to have one last day of summer before school begins and we return to routine. This is an opportunity for us to stop in sabbath to recall who we are and what we do, to remember our context. We have made the American Dream marrying, raising children to get a good education so as to get good jobs, so as to marry and raise their children until eventually at 65 or 70 we can retire and enjoy life as a permanent vacation. BUT WHEN did a vacation from reality become life's goal? When did our children change from aspiring to be Engineers, or Teachers, Captains of Industry, to dreaming of one day being retired? As the Old Testament Nation of Israel, the people were to remember that your most basic identity is “You were slaves and God rescued you.” God gave you the Covenant of the 10 Commandments, and your purpose your identity is to follow the Law, to live the Commandments, to love God with all your heart and soul and strength. As Christians, we are to remember that left to our own devices we get into trouble, we sin, so once, for all time, God became incarnate, took on human flesh and lived and died to make a difference in our lives. God did not become human, did not suffer and die on the cross just so we would have a religion to worship on Sundays! God changed reality, God took on human flesh and the immortal became vulnerable, became human, mortal and died for us, in order to rescue those who were in misery, the child prostitutes, the drug addicts, the untouchables in every society. When we forget that salvation, that rescue of the Lost, we make the Church into a Fraternity a club instead of the means to change the world. Advancement, Progress, is a wonderful thing, and more than any generation before us, we have witnessed in our lifetimes the radical advancement of technology. But often, too often, we become so entranced with our accomplishments, our ability to make ourselves safe and secure that we are blinded to the reality of the way things are, blinded to Creation, blind to the needs of others, the vulnerable, those who live in misery. The last couple years for vacation we have gone out to Cape Cod, to step away from our routine, lie on the beach and read and listen to the rhythm of the ocean, to sea whales and seals and sharks, to build castles and rest. We discovered marvelous beaches, National Parks, virtually deserted, with pristine endless sand. One of the beaches, has a natural inlet caused by the rising of the tide, to create a channel and sand bar just across on the other side. Families seem to prefer this beach because they can spread out their blankets and wade in the channel which is a little warmer than the ocean, there are virtually no waves, and you can enjoy the salt water, enjoy the sand, without getting knocked over and turned upside down by waves, getting sand in your suit and salt in your throat. But as the tide recesses, the water in the channel disappears and the shoals are revealed, the stinky, smelly silt at the bottom of this basin. This was the indictment of God through Jeremiah. Because the people wanted to settle in a place without worry, wanted to live in cities, without concern whether there was enough pure clean water, they built for themselves cisterns to catch and hold rains, brooks and streams. Generations later, much like we and our children, the children of Israel had come to know only that water came out of a faucet, from a pump, from the reservoir. Their minds could not fathom that the rains and snows through every year provide the water to replenish the reservoir we drink. But for the last many decades the Nation has been at war. Concentrating all efforts on war and survival, the infrastructure of the cisterns had cracked. Their technology had let them down, and being dependent for survival upon a broken infrastructure, their faith in themselves rather than God, like their water, had gone down the drain. Incredulous, the Lord indicts the Nation, “God saved you from the Pharaohs, those who called themselves gods of Egypt and had made you slaves. The Lord God saved you from the Canaanites, Jebusites, Perizzites, and all those who worshiped and were led by false gods and idols. God gave the Nation a land of freedom, with blessings. YET, not only have you forgotten God, you wasted and destroyed the blessings that were here! Never before in the history of humanity, never in the history of the world has there been a people who rejected God to worship themselves as their own gods. There have been people who had no faith, no God, who found God. There have been people who worshipped idols who found God. But this is a people who have thrown away and polluted the blessings they were given, the freedom and identity they had been given by God Almighty, in order to have cisterns to control water when they wanted, and then allowed the cisterns to fall into disrepair. The problem was that they failed to tell their stories of faith, to pass these to a new generation. Let's try something this morning. In Harry Potter, what are the names of Harry's Best Friends. And of he who shall not be named? But what is it that was written on the wall in the book of Daniel? We know our culture's stories, we know about vampires and werewolves, but are unfamiliar with the symbols of faith. But such is the complaint of God before all Creation. Reading the Gospels, we can look for the standard set-ups. Whenever someone is wronged, or oppressed, we know Jesus is going to try to help them, that is who Jesus is. When there is a Wedding we know that the real Bridegroom is Jesus. Whenever there is a Feast, we know this is going to be related back to Communion. When my brothers and I were little, we watched reruns on television. We got to the point that we knew every time Lassie and Timmy found a well, Timmy would fall in; when The Lone Ranger came on, we knew every time Tonto went to town he was going to get beat up. We would chant at the television, “Don't Go to Town Tonto!” SO when on the Sabbath Day, Jesus goes to a Feast at the home of a Most Respected Leader among the Pharisees, we know there is going to trouble. Even more, Luke tells us, they were watching him! CS Lewis was a great Theologian and story-teller of a generation ago. Lewis claimed to believe that God was not a terrible Judge of who goes to Heaven and who goes to hell, but rather that each of us, in choosing to act I faith, choosing to participate decide for ourselves if we want to be with God in heaven or not. “Dropsy” was a medical term of the day, today we would describe this as “edema”. The man's heart and kidneys are retaining fluid, making it hard to breathe, giving him high blood pressure and he needs a diuretic. In those days, anyone who was in any way lesser, was put down as having sinned and therefore shunned as a lower caste. Rather than rejecting this man, or belittling him as sinful, Jesus does asks the crowd what we expect Jesus to do? And there is silence! Jesus asks whether you would have concern for your business or your pet when they are in danger on the Sabbath, and again when there was silence, Jesus heals the man. According to Luke, never again was Jesus invited to the home of a Pharisee on the Sabbath,... indeed the next time Jesus shares a meal it is with a Tax Collector, and then at the Last Supper. Like at our own parties, when there is a pregnant pause, a total lull in the conversation, someone can be counted on to say : “Hey, How about those Cubs!” In this case, a man fills the void by saying “Blessed is he who shall eat Bread in the Kingdom of God!” Which Jesus takes as a cue to share a Parable about a Wedding Feast, where the Save the Date Cards had been mailed out and received. But come the time of the wedding, all of those with something else that they could be doing, were doing it. So the Wedding Banquet, the Feast in the Kingdom of God is for the poor and the homeless and all who are in need. As a pastor who officiates at a lot of wedding, there are a great many Wedding stories, one of my favorites comes from about a decade ago. A family were celebrating their daughter's wedding with all the usual and customary anxiety. When two days before the wedding the Mother of the Bride's best friend experienced the death of her husband. You might imagine, both their families going into chaos. Should we postpone the wedding? Should the best friend of the Bride's Mother who is in mourning, not attend or wear black? As the Church, do we refuse having a Funeral on a Saturday, because we are scheduled to celebrate a Wedding that afternoon? As it turned out, the two each recognized the needs of the other. At 10am we had a Memorial, and seated beside the grieving widow was her best friend also in tears. At 3pm that same day, we had a Wedding, and as the father escorted his daughter up the aisle, the Bride's Mom stood in the front pew accompanied by her best friend beaming with pride. In the ancient world, much like our own, HONOR and GLORY, ACCOMPLISHMENTS & PRIDE were among the highest of people's goals. This morning's Scriptures invite us to consider that if we are loved by God, everything else will take care of itself, and we can humbly enjoy our role in life.