Sermons

On November 7, 2004, the Rev. Dr. Hugh Nevin provided us with a biblical perspective on the election just past.

Last night I received a phone call from a long-time church member. "With the election last Tuesday, you won't believe what I just found!" she said. "My husband and I were looking through an old scrap book, and there was an article about the 1940 election campaign. Wendell Wilkie was the Republican candidate. He had a private railroad car and was touring the country.

It was a weekend and his car was put on a siding at Feurabush, south of Albany. On Sunday morning, he and his wife and his brother took a taxi into Albany. At five minutes to eleven they appeared at First Pres and were ushered down to a front pew. No one noticed at first, but as the service went on more and more people did.

According to the newspaper article, he was greeted after the service by a small group of church people, including the sexton, while the Sunday School children watched.

Our pastor then, Eugene Carson Blake, was out of town, so he heard a sermon by Dr. Blake's predecessor, Dr. Hopkins.

Several weeks ago, my wife and I had dinner with long-time friends at their home in Glens Falls. We chatted about our families and about important recent events in our lives: the trip to Ireland from which the Nevins had recently returned; last spring's retirement of one friend and the anticipated retirement of the other.

Soon, however, the talk turned to politics. With these friends that topic has a particular history, defined in large part by the fact that the husband has been an active politician for most of his adult life, serving for many years as an elected official in upstate New York and now, as retirement has neared, at the pleasure of the governor in a state level position. Over the years, our conversations have included their share of good-natured political sparring.

Given the heightened feelings related to this year's presidential race, I anticipated we would do well if we could keep the sparring good-natured this time. The professional politician among us never let a shot be fired, saying immediately, "I don't think either candidate the parties have put forward provides the leadership we need right now."

In sharing this comment - take the Wilkie story as you will, my intention is not to engage us in a post mortem of the election day just past, but to direct our attention to what it means to look to God for leadership in a situation where there has been not a little focus on the shortcomings, real and perceived, of our national and local leaders.

The Bible itself contributes to our problem, for it is, among other things, an unmistakably political book, not lacking in negative judgments on nations and leaders. Some two hundred and ten years ago in Ireland, when tensions with England were approaching a breaking point (that point having been reached in our own country less than twenty years earlier), Presbyterian pastor William Steel Dickson said in a sermon, "The great body of the Bible is almost entirely political. Of this, the prophetic writings, from beginning to end, are one continued testimony." (Three Sermons on Scripture Politics, 1793) We know, too, that the lives of Jesus and Paul intersected with the political institutions of their day in fundamental ways.

God, it would seem, is not above it all. The Bible depicts God's engagement in our political activity. Do our Scripture lections help us in understanding what God is about with this divine meddling? And not just generally, but for us today?

I. Haggai, a minor Old Testament prophet, is not exactly a household name for many church-goers. His role, however, is not without importance. Israel's loss of her land, and exile for many, was transformed when Cyrus and the Persians defeated Babylon. In the year 538 B.C./B.C.E. Cyrus issued a decree allowing those exiled to return to Palestine and encouraging them to rebuild the Temple at Jerusalem. Yet eighteen years later, little progress had been made in the rebuilding effort. Enter Haggai, whose prophetic words seem to have provided the necessary encouragement, as the rebuilding of the Temple was completed five years later.

In today's lection from that critical year, 520, Haggai reminds the governor, the high priest and the remnant of the people that they need not fear: God's spirit is with them still, even as God had promised centuries before when they came out of Egypt. Now God will act anew, shaking the nations so that silver and gold plundered earlier will return to the Temple. "The latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts; and in this place I will give prosperity...." (Haggai 2:9)

At one level, Haggai's words can be interpreted to mean: stick to the task, don't be discouraged, God is with you and will provide. That the Temple was successfully rebuilt and became central to the nation's life, bears out this reading.

At another level, things are a bit more problematic. Haggai's prophecy ends with statements that scholars interpret to mean that he anticipated the immanent beginning of the messianic age in which the aforementioned governor, Zerubbabel, would sit in glory on the throne of David. (D. Winton Thomas, Interpreter's Bible, p. 1039) Not only did this not happen, some 600 years later, not long after the time of Jesus, the Temple was again destroyed--and remains unreconstructed to this day.

II. The Sadducees in our Gospel lesson present a clarification issue of a more personal nature. Since they don't believe in the resurrection, their query for Jesus falls in the category of trick questions, designed to show that no answer is possible. A woman is married sequentially, and legitimately, to seven husbands. Now, all having died, to which one of them is she married?

Legitimacy, for the Sadducees, is limited to the realm of their own experience (a point of view with which we all grapple to one degree or another). They can't imagine life after death, so they assume that if you're going to talk about it, you have to do so in the same terms as you talk about life here and now.

Jesus, it turns out, doesn't see it that way. The institution of marriage has its place in human life, he says; beyond the grave, things are different. Here Jesus prefigures Paul's distinction between a natural and a spiritual body. Rather than being children of earthly parents as they once were, those who are beyond death are, like angels, children of God, Jesus says; persons resurrected from a natural to a spiritual body, Paul might say. Jesus is asking us to consider looking at ourselves from a perspective with which we have, essentially, no experience.

There is a passage in Matthew's gospel - chapter 19, verses 3 to 12 - in which the Pharisees and then the disciples engage Jesus in questions about marriage and divorce. It has the same feeling of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Part of Jesus' answer is to commend those who become eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of God! Now, in such a discussion, why bring up persons who are either castrated or abstain voluntarily and therefore cannot participate in marriage according to Mosaic law? Much as with his answer regarding resurrection life, here Jesus seems to be suggesting that, typical experience aside, someone who doesn't fit the norm may still have a role in God's kingdom: a way of looking at life that doesn't conform to the ordinary view may, among living children of the resurrection, be valid in God's view.

If Haggai was addressing the community as a whole about community-wide concerns - the place of the Temple and the role of the king, Jesus is responding to questions about individual behavior, affirming the place of accepted institutions such as marriage and divorce, but adding the unfamiliar perspective of life in God's kingdom, with examples beyond the grave and now, allowing alternatives. Where does this lead us?

III. Let's begin again. "The latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former." We might say that's the kind of vision statement that energizes people. In any case, Haggai used it successfully to spur the rebuilding of the Temple. To what extent it led to behavior that fulfilled the Lord's second promise, "and in this place I will give prosperity," is less clear, but even more important. Biblical prosperity involves more than meets the modern eye. For ancient Israel, prosperity included shalom, or peace; and peace involved the well-being of all of the people--the "have-nots" as well as the "haves." (New Interpreter's Bible, on Haggai) To seek gold for the Temple without also seeking food for hungry stomachs is to engage in idolatrous behavior.

This balancing act of providing for the hungry, the widow and the stranger within the gates at the same time that the Temple is being rebuilt has its counterpart in Jesus' responses to Sadducees, Pharisees and disciples. Yes, the institutions of marriage and divorce have their place, but life in the heavenly kingdom proceeds in a different way. Even now, there are roles for people committed to God's kingdom who do not fit most people's gender comfort level.

Confessing Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior requires that we grapple with the tension between the kingdom that Jesus proclaims, anticipated and already in-breaking, and those present institutions which he also endorses. In the first, the magnitude of God's grace presents possibilities our minds and feelings hardly know how to grasp. In the second, we often struggle, too, just to do what we know God deems to be right.

The Biblical witness embedded in today's lections urges us to be faithful in worship and attentive to the forms of behavior that make our lives together sustainable. At the same time, this witness calls for both social justice and an enlarged vision of inter-personal morality, each including possibilities that stretch our earthbound tolerance.

An example bringing this all together: In a poem written while imprisoned by the Nazis during World War II, having implicated himself in the plot to end Hitler's life, theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wondered, "Who am I? They tell me I would bear the days of misfortune equably, smilingly, proudly, like one accustomed to win. Am I really all other men tell of, or am I only what I know of myself, restless and longing and sick. Am I [a] hypocrite before others and before myself a contemptibly woebe-gone weakling? Or is something within me still , like a beaten army, fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved? Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am thine."

IV. A disciple is not a super man or woman. A disciple is one whose commitment to God as made known in Christ Jesus is clear. For Dietrich Bonhoeffer this entailed political ramifications that cost him his life, as it did Jesus his.

These days, the web page www.sojo.org of Sojourners, the Washington, D.C.-based evangelical community, includes an article by Jim Wallis, editor-in-chief of the Sojourners magazine. It is titled, "High Stakes for Church and State." Here, as I read it, is the heart of what Wallis has to say about our situation today.

In A Brief Statement of Faith--Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), one of our confessional standards, there is this sentence: "In a broken and fearful world the Spirit gives us courage to pray without ceasing, to witness among all peoples to Christ as Lord and Savior, to unmask idolatries in Church and culture, to hear the voices of peoples long silenced, and to work with others for justice, freedom, and peace."

We can only do that as a by-product of a strong affirmation. And, indeed, the Brief Statement begins, "In life and in death we belong to God. Through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, we trust in the one triune God, the Holy One of Israel, whom alone we worship and serve."

For that to be true for the church (religious institutions) in America today, you and I cannot keep silent.