Pillars of Faith, Part 3: Faith Facing Opposition

Luke 13:10-17   

Alice Hoffman wrote a story called Seventh Heaven. It’s about a suburban community in Long Island, near Levittown. It’s the kind of community that popped up all over America after World War II, like Levittown. Tract homes, affordable for first-time homeowners. Streets that never go straight, but change directions, winding around in loops to make sure you won’t drive too fast, but also ensuring you will get lost. Sidewalks everywhere for strollers and tricycles, to keep the kids safe. All the houses look alike, so newcomers driving into the neighborhood get confused about where they are. Neighbors can walk into each other’s homes and know just where everything is, because it is exactly the same as their own house.

The story takes place at the end of 1959 and the beginning of 1960, a time when the world is on the verge of change. And the people in this community are a little confused.

They are confused because they have always followed the rules. They have done what they are supposed to do. They got married, had two or three kids. The men work hard at their jobs and the women work hard at home. The children watch TV, but not too much TV. The men drink an occasional beer together, but not too much beer. The women chat together during the day – about the kids, about the PTA, about recipes. And they don’t bother each other once their husbands get home from work. Everyone does their part.

But problems start to come to the neighborhood, and they can’t figure out why, because they have always followed the rules. You’re supposed to be rewarded for following the rules, not punished. What could they have done wrong?

There is a woman named Donna. She has a husband and three kids. She does everything she is supposed to do, just as she has for the eight years of her marriage. Her family always has clean and mended clothes, nutritious and tasty meals. Everything has a place in her house, and she makes sure everything is in its place. She goes about her work quietly, so quietly that no one really sees her anymore. Her kids, her husband, even her friends. They don’t see her, which is interesting. Because for a number of years now Donna has been eating for comfort. Emotional eating is what it’s called now. And she has grown quite large. But she keeps her head down and she tends to her work.

One day the washing machine breaks down and she calls a repairman. Something extraordinary happens. This stranger, the repairman, he sees her. He has no untoward intentions, but he looks at Donna and says, “I can tell you work hard. You’re somebody who really cares.” And Donna cannot remain the same after this, because she knows she has been seen. And because now, for the first time, she realizes that no one else sees her.

And so slowly, quietly, Donna begins to break the rules. She can no longer live within the confines of these rules because she sees now that it is slowly killing her spirit.

It was Donna I thought of when I read the story about the crippled woman in the synagogue. Because I wonder what that woman had been thinking for 18 long years. Had she always assumed, without question, that being bent over, unable to stand up straight, was just her place in the world? had she learned through experience that her bent posture was the role she was born to play? Did everyone in her community expect this of her?

For 18 years she had been bent low by this spirit. 18 years, during which 6 out of 7 days are not the sabbath. But no one offered has her release on any of those days. No one really saw this woman. For 18 years she has been invisible.

She has, perhaps, filled some role, just like Donna filled the role she had been given, keeping groceries in the Frigidaire, meals on the table, clean laundry in the dresser drawers. Perhaps there were certain expectations of this woman in the synagogue, and as long as she met them, she remained virtually invisible.

No one saw her. until Jesus saw her.

When he called her over to him, I wonder how she felt. She might have felt afraid; after all, the religious authorities were all around, watching everything. It was already abundantly clear that they disapproved of Jesus. What would it mean to them if she walked over to him? She might have felt fear when he called her over to his side.

She might be risking the community’s scorn, if she walks across the room, forcing everyone to see her ailment.

But sometimes breaking the rules is about making the world look at something they don’t want to look at. And sometimes faith means being willing to break the rules.

Jesus breaks the rules now, as he has done before, and calls her over, bringing attention to this woman’s pain. He places his hands on her and says, “Woman, you are set free.” Or in the familiar words of the King James, woman thou art loosed. And at that moment she stands up straight, giving thanks and praise to God.

And we know that, once again, Jesus has done something dangerous.

The act of freeing this woman is a dangerous act, and we need to understand that it doesn’t really matter what you call this affliction she suffered. It doesn’t matter if it is a physical disease of the bones or if it is a kind of spiritual or psychological affliction. It doesn’t matter, because we need to understand that when the scriptures speak of Jesus’ healing, it is speaking of every kind of healing. We need to know that in Jesus, by the power of God, we may be made well. Period.

But it’s a dangerous thing. Jesus frees this woman of her affliction and in the same instant he lets loose the forces of opposition. The leader of the synagogue shouts to the crowds that it is not the day for healing. It is the sabbath day. He cries out to them, “If you came here for healing, then leave now. Come back another day, for today is not the day for healing.”

But if this day, the sabbath day, is not the day for healing then no day is the day for healing. That does appear to be the unspoken message. The authorities of this place do not approve of healing, of freeing people from the afflictions that bind them.

We have spoken in the past few weeks about what faith is like – how faith acts on its convictions, how faith sees things that cannot otherwise be seen. And once faith has seen what has not been seen by others, faith stands firm in the face of opposition.

When faith sees people suffering, faith must stand with the suffering, no matter what it means. As people of faith, let us affirm that, as the church, we will stand where the Lord stands. The church must stand where God stands, and that is with the afflicted, the downtrodden, the vulnerable stranger in our midst. The church must stand with the suffering, with the weak, the lonely, the hurting.

Which is all of us.

When Jesus called that woman to him, he showed us where the church is meant to stand. Right there in that spot where he was standing. And the woman, when she walked over and stood before him, showed us the courage each of us is called to have. To stand with Jesus, to offer up our wounds to be healed, our chains to be loosed, our spirits to be freed.

Photo: Levittown, NY

Pillars of Faith, Part 2: Faith Sees

Hebrews 11:29-12:2  

Luke 12:49-56   

In the well-known story by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince falls from his far away planet in the sky down to earth. He wanders the earth in search of meaning, and in his wanderings, he encounters a fox. There’s something charismatic about this fox that draws the prince in. He wants to play with him. But the fox tells the prince to be careful, to not get too close. “I’m not tame,” he says.

We could say the same thing about Jesus in this passage from Luke. Don’t play with him. He’s not tame. He wants to bring a fire to the earth. He will divide households, three against two, and two against three; father against son, and son against father. He speaks with anger and impatience as though he wants to get out of this place and go back to the planet from which he came. This little prince, right now at this moment, is so done with the planet earth and all its inhabitants.

It's very disturbing for readers. But, in fairness, there has been a lot going on. Go back a couple of chapters and see the increasing intensity, the mounting sense of urgency surrounding Jesus. The Pharisees are ramping up their surveillance, anxiously waiting for him to slip up. The crowds who have been following him are growing in numbers, to the point now where they are trampling one another to get nearer to him. It is all too close, it is all too menacing, and now Jesus speaks with an intensity we haven’t seen before.

There is no longer time for subtlety. And the things he says are puzzling, hurtful to us; hard for us to hear. Dividing households against one another? How could that be true? It isn’t nice. 

This is not “nice” Jesus now. And if you asked me why, I could tell you that it’s because he was under so much pressure at the time. And that he otherwise wouldn’t have said such unkind things. And that we should forgive him.

Indeed, we should forgive. But should we dismiss these words because they were said under pressure? because they sound angry?

Sometimes, when the pressure is on, the truth is released.

And sometimes the truth is hard to hear. or see.

So we rest today on the pillar of seeing. Faith sees in a very special way, and it is essential that we learn to see in faith if we are to make any progress on our journey.

Returning to the 11^th chapter of Hebrews, we look again at the people of faith, and the actions that made them so memorable. Somehow, each one of them had the vision to move forward toward the “something better” that God had promised; the better country that God had shown them.

How does faith see? Not by ordinary means.

Something we should know about these heroes in the Hebrews roll call of faith is that they were all a little odd. They saw things others didn't see, heard things others didn't hear. By the grace of God, they were all open to seeing and hearing and sensing in new and different ways.

The same is true still today. We might think we got it all figured out. But the life of faith still demands that we remain open to seeing and hearing and sensing in new and different ways. In other words, we, too, need to be a little odd.

Don’t be disturbed by this. the oddness. It's just the willingness to dip a toe in the mystery that is always in this world but we often don't see. The  willingness to engage in the act of wonder a little more often, something we tend to leave behind with childhood. To engage with a passage of scripture, saying, “I wonder…” Like, I wonder why Jesus told the people that he came to bring not peace, but division. 

To just wonder. Resist the rush to judgment. Rest in that unknowing.

To wonder about the world and all who live in it. This is important on the journey of faith.  

It is what we do with people we love. We wonder about them – their habits, their likes and dislikes, their special gifts and their particular weaknesses. We are always open to learning something new about the people we love. Always – because they are worth it.

Think about the individuals who are closest to you. You get to know them. You see them, warts and all. It’s not always beautiful. But you say, “She may be a weirdo but she’s my weirdo.” We can do that with people we love because we see them with the heart.

With those we love it begins with wonder. And that leads to loving, caring, and learning to see them with the eyes of the heart. 

You wonder, you resist judging, you want to know more. and the next thing you know, the one you wondered about has become special to you. all through the eyes of the heart.

That fox, the one who was not tame, said something like this to the Little Prince. “One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.” The prince memorized his words, and carried this bit of wisdom with him. Gradually, he began to notice the truth of it. There are hidden treasures everywhere, seen through the eyes of the heart.

And here is the gift hidden in the fox’s secret: once you have had that special relationship with some person, you have the ability to see every person through those eyes. It is possible to love all of humanity if you have had the gift of loving one particular person. And seeing them as God sees them – seeing with the heart – this is what it is to see in faith.

It takes a little bit of imagination. And love.

In our Presbyterian ordination vows for ministers, elders, and deacons, we are asked to lead the church with energy, intelligence, imagination, and love. Sometimes we behave as though we have only promised to lead with energy, or maybe just energy and intelligence. But there are important things you cannot accomplish just by applying more energy to it, or more intellect to it. Imagination opens our minds to see new and different things. Love is what then lets it in.

And so, let us wonder about this passage from Luke. And these impatient and angry words of Jesus, calling on us to interpret the signs. The signs of the time are all around us, Friends. We see division – not peace; division in our civic life that causes us to blame and fear and even hate other people with an irrational exuberance. We must see this. Jesus will not let us pretend it isn’t there.

How shall we respond to the signs? Through the eyes of the heart. Wondering. Resisting the urge to judge.  Sometimes resting in the unknowing. This is how faith sees, and leads us to that better land.

Photo: Illustration from The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery 

Pillars of Faith, Part 1: Faith Acts

Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16

I don’t usually go in to the church on Fridays, but last Friday I was there to meet a couple named Billy and Liz McCullough. Billy and Liz are from Northern Ireland and they are visiting the area indulging Billy’s special interest: Francis Makemie.

That’s a name that is very familiar in our region of the world. Francis Makemie is known as the founder of several churches on the Delmarva Peninsula, including ours. We all claim our founding date in 1683, because that is the year Francis Makemie arrived on our shores. He was invited to come here by Colonel William Stevens, who was an Episcopalian living in Somerset County.

Makemie was apparently a good organizer, because he traveled among the Scots-Irish communities, who were all Presbyterian, and helped them organize into congregations. Later, he helped organize the first presbytery in America in Philadelphia.

He was also, I’m guessing, quite the diplomat. The Scots-Irish, I’ve been told, were rather belligerent by nature. It was an ethnic group born in conflict, and never seeming to escape it. As a result, they were fairly suspicious of others, including other Scots-Irish communities. I am sure they were not easy to organize. But Makemie managed to do it.

So as I sat down to think about this well-known passage on the meaning of faith from the letter to the Hebrews, Francis Makemie was on my mind. He was clearly a man well-grounded in faith. And being well-grounded, he was constantly on the move.

Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not see. These words from Hebrews 11 are just about as familiar as any words of scripture. They tell us, very succinctly, two things: Faith is assurance and conviction. Faith assures us we are on solid ground and gives us the conviction needed to take action. Faith is both comfort and passion, solace and purpose.

Because of this, faith is not passive. Faith acts.

And the letter to the Hebrews takes us backward to show us this. We go on a stroll through our history to remember those individuals who were so instrumental in building the structures of our faith. Abraham and Sarah set out from their home, the land of their ancestors, because they were called by the voice of God to do so. They traveled toward a place they did not know – not only was this all uncharted territory for them, they literally did not know what the game plan was. They simply journeyed on by stages, trusting in God to show them the way forward, every step of the way.

Abraham and Sarah followed the call of God through barren wildernesses and lands in which they were the aliens, the strangers. Places where their lives were at risk.

Abraham and Sarah followed a promise. A hope. They did not see God, nor did they see the land God promised them. They did not see the promised generations that would be as many as the stars in the sky, as many as the grains of sand on the shore. But they, and all those who followed them – Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Rahab, Samuel, David, and many others – acted by faith born out of hope.

This chapter of the letter is a recitation of the faith hall of fame. I can picture all these men and women walking into a packed stadium like olympians, doing a slow victory lap around the track while we cheer and express our appreciation for the part they played. We are thankful for them all – not just the giants of scripture, but all the church fathers and mothers, all the way through our history, including Francis Makemie, who organized Wicomico Presbyterian Church, which has stood as a place of worship for well over 300 years now.

There is something really cool about having such a long history. It means we have a special story. It is an important part of who we are. Yet, there is a danger of letting this special story overshadow everything else. There is a real risk that we will let this special story become the end of our story – instead of the pattern for our story.

The narrative in Hebrews shows us how each of these amazing individuals – Abraham, Sarah, and all the others – lived in faith, acted courageously for the sake of the promise of God. And it shows us how they died in faith, never having received the promises, but only seeing them from a distance. Each one of these heroes of the faith played a small part in the story.

We are a part of this story of faith – the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. And if we look to these men and women we read about in the scriptures, what do we see? If we look to these men and women we see in the history books, what do we learn?

How do the faithful actions of Abraham and Sarah and Francis Makemie create a pattern for us to follow? In venturing out for new places, not knowing what they would encounter nor what would be expected of them, how do they guide us?

Francis Makemie had a religious conversion as a young man. While at Glasgow University as a student, he experienced the call to become a minister. He was ordained in West Ulster, Ireland in 1681 and almost immediately was called as a missionary to America. Like Abraham, he was sent out to a place he did not know.

Unlike Abraham, I suppose, he did know something about his mission, and he went at it with zeal. He learned the territory, he adapted to the local customs,  and he left his mark here. The Makemie name lives on here on the Eastern Shore.

After his work here, he traveled up and down the Atlantic coast from New York to North Carolina. In New York he was arrested for preaching without a license. Presbyterians were not especially welcome there. Makemie spent two months in jail and endured a trial – which he won, but at great expense. His case would later become known as a landmark case in the fight for religious freedom in America, something written into our constitution that most Americans are fiercely proud of.

Now, more than 300 years later, the Makemie Churches remain. They have moved from one building to another to another, but are still serving the communities in which they were established. This vast continent has been covered from shore to shore with transplants like Makemie, who have planted churches of all kinds.

Now in this place, more than 300 years later, religious freedom is something we have come to take for granted. It’s hard for us to imagine a time when Baptists and Congregationalists and Episcopalians and Catholics fought with each other. We don’t need to fight anymore. And we don’t need to set out for new unknown places anymore.

Does this mean the journey of faith is over? As the Apostle Paul would say, by no means!

We may not have to journey across physical distances now, but the church is traveling through uncharted territory, nonetheless. We are journeying through wilderness every day, where the things we always did before somehow make less sense now. Maybe we’re sad about that. Maybe we miss those old days when things made more sense, when the world made more sense to us.

But we owe it to the ancestors of our faith to keep moving forward. We need to follow the pattern they created for us: move forward through the wilderness, courageously, decisively, boldly. We must be willing to make mistakes just as Abraham did and Makemie did. We must be willing to do this all for the sake of the gospel.

The letter to the Hebrews says that these ancestors of the faith were foreigners on earth, seeking a better land, a heavenly land. We too are seeking this better land –

A land where all of God’s people will be at home, where children will not be separated from their parents.

A land where weapons are no longer useful but, as Isaiah says, swords are beaten into plowshares, spears into pruning hooks.

A land where there is bread enough for all, and all receive their daily bread.

This is the land the scriptures tell us about. This is the promise of God, that all our heroes of the faith have journeyed toward. None of them got there; they only saw it from a distance. We, too, may only see it from a distance. But we journey on

Through uncharted territory.

The church always has something to move toward, something to fight for in this world.

Photo: Francis Makemie Statue at Presbyterian Historical Society. By Smallbones - Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32095000

What the Lord Requires, Part 4: To Look Beyond Ourselves

Luke 12:13-21    

I have to wonder what Kenneth Copeland does with this particular passage of scripture. 

If you don’t know who Kenneth Copeland is, he is a televangelist. He was interviewed recently by a journalist who wanted him to explain why he needs a Gulfstream Jet. This jet he was able to purchase recently thanks to the generous donations of his followers. He needed it, apparently, because two airplanes was not sufficient. It might seem like enough to you and me, but God wanted him to have this third one, this Gulfstream, he told his congregation and he stressed to all his followers on television and online. God wanted him to have it and God wanted them to give him money so he could have it. 

This reporter asked him to explain why this was so important. 

He told her he needs it because he simply couldn’t do the work he does if he had to fly commercial with all the demonic activity happening on board those planes.

This seemed to be consistent with comments he has made earlier, in conversations with his fellow televangelist prosperity gospel preachers, who also find themselves sometimes having to defend the fact that they have private jets. He said that you just can’t manage today, in this dope-filled world, to get in a long tube with a bunch of demons. It’s deadly, in his words.

Yes, flying commercial is just too much for Kenneth’s sensitive soul. Bless his heart.

It seems like these televangelists have jet-envy. There is a little competition going on as to who owns the most jets. If you’re going to keep up, you need more planes. And then, of course, you’re going to need bigger hangars.

In our Tuesday Bible study last week, we talked about greed. You know what greed is? It is the power that makes you believe that you don’t have quite enough. It makes you feel that you need just a little bit more, no matter how much you already have. It constantly pokes at the fear inside you. And so, in fear of not having enough you go striving, at all cost to your neighbors and even your own soul, for more. Hoping to have enough.

It is like an addiction. Because with greed, the shutoff valve is broken. There is never enough.

Kenneth Copeland and his comrades are easy targets, because of the absurd lengths they go to, the bizarre rationalizations they make, to acquire wealth. 

But in this scripture, Jesus addresses his comments to a man who just wants his brother to share his father’s inheritance with him. It might have been very little. Maybe their father had a small farm that was being divided between the sons. He was just a man in the crowd who came seeking Jesus’ help. 

He could have been any one of us.

And Jesus tells him to beware of greed. Beware of how greed will distort your values if you’re not careful. Then comes the story:

There was a rich man, blessed with abundance. His farm was so fertile, his harvests so abundant. He had more than he needed. But that’s not the way he saw it. What he saw was that he had inadequate storage space.

What to do?

Luckily, he came up with a brilliant idea. He would tear down the old barns, which were too small, and build some new ones, bigger ones, that would hold all his abundance. Then he would rest easy, knowing he had enough.

But that’s not how greed works. The next year, he might find himself building even bigger barns because he needed yet more space to store his crops. Then he would probably need a security system to guard his barns against thieves. Motion-sensitive floodlights, an alarm system, and the service of security guards to patrol the perimeter. 

It would end up taking a lot of his time and resources to protect his stuff, leaving him little time to relax, eat, drink, and be merry.

In that moment of self-satisfaction, when he comes up with this wonderful idea, God interrupts his thoughts to tell him, “You’re a fool. This very night your life is being demanded of you.”

“This very night your life is being demanded of you.” I take that to mean just this:

God is holding you to account now this very night. Today– not at some hypothetical point in the future. God has blessed you richly. What are you doing with what you have today to bless God?

Does it bless God for this man to store up more and more grain for some fantasy future, while there are people around him who don’t have bread to eat? 

Does it bless God for the televangelists like Copeland to have a private fuel-guzzling jet so that they don’t have to rub shoulders with the common folk who fly commercial? To take money from the hands of the poor, whom they have convinced that in giving to them they will find blessing?

Does it bless God for the pharmaceutical manufacturers to push their oxycodone and hydrocodone pills to break all previous sales records, even though they know they are delivering customers into the hell of addiction?

Perhaps none of us need worry about being convicted of any of these particular sins, so just consider this:

Does it bless God when we lose all sense of what is enough in our continuing quest for more? When we let our decisions be driven by the fear of not having enough for ourselves? and then the fear of losing what we have acquired? and then the fear that those people with whom you are not sharing your abundance, they might become your predators and steal your property from you?

I think Copeland is right about one thing. There are, indeed, powers of darkness at work in this world. They are the powers that cause us to lose sight of what is enough. They are the powers that strangle any sense of gratitude with the fear that somehow we are lacking something – and that this lack is, in fact, an injustice. 

In this world where God’s gifts are so plentiful, there will always be something we lack – if that’s the way we insist on seeing it. But Jesus’ teachings ask us to keep a clear eye on what is truly important. To keep clear the distinction between what we possess and what we treasure – these are not the same things. 

We may value our possessions because they enable us to enjoy our lives, enjoy freedom, enjoy time with people we love. But when the importance of the possession itself becomes too great, exerting too much power over us, then we are at risk of losing those things we treasure – freedom, love, even life.

Greed has the effect of turning us inward and it becomes us against the world. But staying focused on the things we really treasure can enable us to see it all as God’s gift freely given.

To be grateful. To measure your wealth by what you are able to share, instead of by the size of your barns.

Photo: Erich von Stroheim, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons