Sermon for the 9 th Sunday after Trinity, August 1, 2010
“ All our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; and were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea; and did all eat the same spiritual meat; and did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ. ”
IT'S the most highly rewarded type of social expression these days to complain. A man looks back at his life and sites the problem. He was discriminated against because of his ethnic or national heritage. His parents were divorced and he grew up dispossessed. He had a learning disability. He was made fun of by the other kids. The psychologists' couches have sagged under the millions of dissatisfied customers of American life. And you know: the more varied and imaginative the complaints about what a person missed from the people who should have done better by him or her, the more it all begins to sound the same.
Nobody but American blacks can know what it's been to grow up black in a predominantly white society, where being black always draws extra suspicion and lowered expectations. Any African American who breaks free of the powerful stereotypes that from white and black society have pressed down on him or her is a special kind of hero in my book, and I celebrate every one. But then there's nobody who understands Hispanics like their own folk do, and the struggle for survival in a land that expects them to pick the crops but not really belong. Those Japanese who endured the WWII interment have reason to resent this society, and the Chinese may still be regarded with suspicion as their ancient homeland is today the fortress of Communism, a potentially fatal enemy to our land. And now the Southeast Asians come and are they accepted? Middle Easterners throng Michigan cities and are felt to threaten the Christian society there. Youth gangs react to the pressures of our culture. And then there's being white in a land filling up with foreign-born people with unfamiliar names and accents, the Spanish or Farsi or Laotian signs lining major boulevards in Los Angeles create an alarming sense of encroachment.
All this to say that our differences point to a common experience. Certainly every member of any race or culture can feel the pinch of injustice and by rights rail against it. But were we to go to the ‘privileged' neighborhood and observe what we assume a paradise of elegant homes and well patrolled streets, we might see one child emerge from a grand doorway and for a moment hear the screaming of her mother's voice at her new husband. We might find another where no one comes home from work to feed the kids. And another where mental darkness haunts the halls. Why does anybody think that their very real problems are the only problems people have? And that their group is the only group that suffers? Why can't I get on Oprah and cry out my angst? The race I speak of is the human race, and it's all defective, whatever color its member comes in . The more our differences express our pain, the more we might find out we are in many ways alike.
Biblical history was written from the perspective of one small race, the Hebrews, but through the prism of that singular witness we may see the entirety of humankind. Their special experience of God was meant to be shared, and the pages of the Scriptures are a stereoscope of lives like our own, a movie given to all for a lesson in living. The Jews were slaves in the most powerful nation on earth. The injustice of their overlords strained God's patience and demanded an eventual break that came through the person of Moses. Ten plagues changed even Pharaoh's mind and the parting of the Red Sea gave Egypt's former slaves an escape that was permanent and effective. They all passed through the sea in a likeness of our own passage through the waters of Baptism. From many different cultures and national origins, we pass through the humbling experience of a slave cutting his chains with water.
On the desert, the Hebrews faced a real challenge: to follow this God and His prophet over wastelands, or to strike out on their own, build a nation of former slaves in their own wisdom. That contest waged battles against poor old Moses for 40 years, and even lost him the chance to cross Jordan himself. But on the way, all of them had to eat manna, the strange miracle bread God cast in their path each morning, and drink water from a rock spring that came by the word of the prophet. We too eat and drink spiritually, all the same, at this rail. It doesn't matter rich or poor, white or black or brown, we all kneel and hold out needy hands and press our teeth to the wafer and sip from the same cup. Privileged to receive the Lord's Body and Blood, nobody gets it by privilege, but by grace. All may qualify, but no one gets anything by rights.
The best parable Jesus probably ever told is that of a family of men, two sons and an aged father. They all grew up together, shared a bloodline, kept the farm and livestock, heard the same stories and missed mom. They had the same exact chance at happiness and shared the same inheritance, passed down from generations of fathers and sons. But the same privileges, the same moral truths, the same water and food and shelter and clothing did not automatically create three identical men. An attitude grew in each of them, and that attitude shaped who they were, and how they reacted when conflict rose between the three.
As for some of the Hebrews on the desert, the ancestral legacy wasn't going to be sufficient. The scent of foreign lands and cultures, cities where women and dance halls, strong drink and parties smelled and sounded better than all this suffering, so some of struck out and had their fun. Others thought a more familiar religion was needed, and cast a golden calf from the earrings of a thousand slaves to worship and fall before. More parties, more fun. Believing they were a law unto themselves, the Hebrews rebelled against God and His prophet, and God required judgment. The sword felled thousands of these brothers gone bad, snakes bit and poisoned others, while a disease took yet another part of the faulty, and the very earth opened up to swallow a rebel faction. God is jealous over His children. They must be saved from forces within and without that would betray them away from Him.
Likewise the younger son in the parable demands his money and leaves, with an angry tale of a family that didn't care about him , using his lame tale to catapult him toward the fleshpots of pagan girls and drunken parties, where he spent all his cash until no one wanted to know him anymore. Selling himself into slavery to his father was the only way he could imagine surviving, so low had he fallen. He set off to humiliate himself before the family he had so betrayed.
The elder son had grown to hate the young upstart, for leaving him with the chores and for taking away so much of the family treasure, only to waste it on shameful pleasures. Good riddance , he felt now about the brother who had left. He'd better not show his face here again. And secretly he envied his brother's freedom.
The father, on the other hand, like God our Father, only loves his sons. His heart, injured by the boy's rejection, strongly yearned to see him safe again, out of harm's way, because the land to which he'd fled swallowed up young lives, never to be heard of again . All he wanted was to see the young man safe, for he loved his boys. Love was the difference in this old man that kept his eyes scanning the horizon for any sign of his return.
The example of the Hebrews on the desert is not for some other generation of bearded men in robes and sandals, women bent over cooking fires, who might apply these lessons. They are about us. Nothing has changed . People are just the same. Like paper dolls, just take off one garment and put on another: Bedouin to Chinese sage to Crusader to Robin Hood to King to Priest to computer tech to businessman. Shepherdess changes easily to Queen of Sheba to Medieval maid to Nordic warrior princess to Pocahontas to businesswoman to soccer mom. It's just dress up: when we look inside our differences, we've all had hardship, all endured sorrow, felt the sting of betrayal, the knife in the back by a false friend, and a society saying ‘ no .' The Hebrew stories give us a picture of our selves, as examples for us to live by, to learn from, to draw conclusions about, to take warnings from. “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it,” reads our Epistle today. Common to man : high or low, we all walk on this earth, subject to the same gravity, the same aging process, the same temptations, the same . But different , surely , we object. Different only in the details , and different only in our attitude toward it all.
The younger son's silhouette is spotted vaguely on the crest of the slope, on the dirt path beaten under ages of feet and hoofs of oxen and cart wheels, countless generations on this ancestral land making it home. And to his home finally staggers the fallen youth. The father spies him out and does he strike the pose of an angry authority, the law violated but remaining aloof? No, he runs. This old man runs, ungainly, despite the pain in his back and legs, running to meet the other half of his heart, and be united again with the bone of his bones, blood of his blood . He can't help himself, dignity be danged . Around the boy's neck and waist his arms powerfully hug, while the kid actually goes through most of his speech about sinning and coming only as a slave. That was the right speech to make, but it is swiftly interrupted by love and joy and celebration. He's done the right thing, at last , and the turning point in the young man's career must be rewarded. Kill the fatted calf, and don't let it become an idol. Get other clothes, change the image of these dirty foreign rags that cling, to my son, my son . The real party begins.
Then the other brother gets home. What's all this? And so the father must come out from the celebration and show the son his own heart, contrasted to the heart of a father. The attitudes of the three men, the young brash kid who risks it all on one vain throw and loses, the dutiful workman with resentment and sore muscles his only pleasure in life, and the loving father who wants both his sons to enjoy their lives and receive his goods and his blessing. The same family, the same experience , and very different lives.
Why should we complain? There are a thousand reasons every man, woman and child could site for the pain that resides in his or her breast. And surely God knows all that. Would we remain on this Egyptian shore shouting our complaints against the oppressors of our families, or turn and see the deep groove cut in a wind-tossed sea, with a dry path leading to our freedom?
PFH+