Are You a King?

Scripture Lessons: Revelation 1: 4-8 and John 18: 33-38a Sermon Title: Are You a King? Preached on November 25, 2018 Sara and I celebrated our 16th wedding anniversary last week and were able to get away for a couple days to North Georgia, up near Helen. Helen is a funny place. But the names of roads up there will make you laugh too – we passed by Scorpion Hollow and Booger Hollow. I wonder if the people who live there are ever self-conscious about reporting their address at the DMV. I knew a lady back in Tennessee who lived on a road called Sheep’s Neck, and when she told someone her address, she answered two questions before they even had a chance to ask: 1. Yes, I am serious. 2. And yes, that is out in the country. The best street name we passed up in North Georgia last week was Nonchalant Lane. Now that was a place that I’d like to live. I can just imagine what life is like up there. I bet on Nonchalant Lane on Thanksgiving, everyone shows up to dinner wearing pants with an elastic waist band and no one feels self-conscious about falling asleep on the couch watching football after dinner, and anyone, who would dare interrupt Thanksgiving by trying to force their family into matching outfits for a Christmas Card Photo gets exiled over to Cares Too Much What Other People think Avenue. That might be where my grandmother would have lived. It’s hard to go through life worried all the time about what other people think, but some people are proud. Conscious of appearances. We all are, but some are more than others. Maybe I’ve told you about my grandmother before. She was a proud woman. Wore hose with her bathing suit kind of proud. And one of the stories that got told about her childhood, was that she’d get off the school bus home from elementary school two stops early, so people would think that she lived in the nicer part of town. She’d get off with all those middle-class kids and would walk the rest of the way, just because she didn’t want anyone to know that she lived on the poor side of town. That her brother stayed on the bus and rode the whole way blowing her cover notwithstanding. Now, my grandmother had some very Christ like attributes, but this was not one of them. Christ was more secure in his identity than most of us would dare be. More willing to take stands than most of us are. From the Scripture Lessons we’ve just read it’s easy to gain a sense that our Lord was so secure in his identity, that he would not deny who he was or back away from what he came to do, even when his life hung in the balance. Reading from the Gospel of John, we remembered when Pilate asked him: “Are you the king of the Jews?” You can tell from this interchange that Pilate didn’t really want to trap Jesus. He wasn’t cross examining him or trying to trick him into incriminating himself. In fact, it’s as though Pilate was trying to do everything he could to set Jesus free. All Pilate needed Jesus to do was get off the bus a couple blocks early – just deny who he was a tiny little bit. Jesus wouldn’t do it, though. He was determined not to hide or deny. That’s a superhuman quality then, for if there’s anything we humans are good at its hiding who we really are. Whether it’s getting off the school bus a few stops early or pretending to be the perfect family for the Christmas card, putting on a toupee or too much makeup, telling white lies or keeping our real opinions to ourselves, for mere mortals it takes a profound level of trust before most of us are willing to just come right out and be who we really are – warts and all, because none of us really live on Nonchalant Lane when you get right down to it. There’s a wonderful story I once heard about a wise old Rabbi giving a sermon based on the story of Adam and Eve. Genesis chapter 3 tells of the first sin and its punishment, the story of the serpent who tempted the man and the woman to eat the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. After they ate this forbidden fruit their eyes were opened, but soon after their eyes were opened “they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.” “Where are you?” the Lord asked, which is a funny question for the Lord to ask the old Rabbi noted, considering how God already knows everything. “But you see,” the Rabbi said, “the Lord God knew. He always knew where Adam was. But did Adam know? Adam was not lost to the Lord, but in hiding, was Adam lost to himself?” In what is considered by some to be one of the most important philosophical works of the last quarter of a century, The Sources of the Self it’s called, Dr. Charles Taylor claims that we are always in search of ourselves, always wrestling with the question of identity. “Who am I?” we ask, “but this can’t necessarily be answered by giving name and genealogy. What does answer this question for us,” according to Dr. Taylor, “is an understanding of what is of crucial importance to us.” What was of crucial importance to Adam and Eve – well, the story of Genesis tells us that this shifted under the shade of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil – for while in the beginning all that mattered to the first man and the first woman was enjoying God’s creation within the limits God ordained, when tempted by the serpent something shifted, then as the Lord God walked through the garden calling out to the man, “Where are you?” that same shift happened again, for while once they had the kind of relationship where Adam and Eve walked through the garden together with God, in that moment of falling from grace, Adam and Eve thought it more important to hide. That’s human enough, but there’s something in Christ that wouldn’t let him. In his refusal never to deny his true identity we see not only his integrity, but what is of crucial importance to him – namely, to be who God created him to be, and to do what God created him to do. We mere humans on the other hand, are always tempted to hide. When at the DMV, if we live on Booger Hollow there’s a temptation to hide. When riding home on the school bus, if our home is on the poor side of town, we’re tempted to get off the bus early. When sending out Christmas Cards we want to project a certain image of functionality, as though we always dressed in color coordinated outfits, and our lives were but one long family vacation to Europe. When going on a first date there’s the temptation, not to be who we are, but who we think our love interest wants us to be, but I know a guy who always drives a dirty old pick up truck when he takes a girl on a date. “If she’ll take me like this,” he says. When Pilate summoned Jesus he asked him: “Are you the King of the Jews?” We know how Jesus answered, but what you me? What about you? Who am I? That’s no easy question to answer. It’s not set in stone or fixed in history. Identity is more like a ship pushed by the wind of peer pressure and circumstance – and to maintain a sense of who we are we must stand firm, holding close the commitments that matter most. For some people this is easier than others I’m sure. The country music legend Johnny Cash sings a song about a boy named Sue who had to fight every day of his life for his identity “Some gal would giggle and I’d get red And some guy’d laugh and I’d bust his head, I tell ya, life ain’t easy for a boy named Sue.” The same must have been true for a woman remembered by the 1880 census of Maury County, Tennessee. The county historian there once called me over to show me that among all the citizens of that great county, was a 35-year-old widow woman – last name Mcville, first name – Parrollee. Now a boy named Sue and a girl named Parrollee learn the same lesson – you want people to really know who you are, you have to learn to stand up for yourself, for the world asks us day and night, “Who are you?” and we answer through our commitments, our promises, the stands we are willing to take. Not just what we are willing to say – but the character we are willing to embody. Not just the words printed on the wall, but the words that guide our decisions. Not just the sermons we listen to or preach, but the sermons that we live. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these the homeless, the tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.” These are the words engraved on our Statue of Liberty, stating one of the ideals that we hold close – but are these ideals that we are willing to stand for? “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” For all the years since these words were first written our nation has been working to embody them. Then there’s the greatest commandment: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.” That one’s easy to say but it’s hard to do so remember it’s not what we say that matters, it’s the stands we are willing to take, and unfortunately, when it comes to embodying the ideals of our nation or the ideals of our Christian faith, too many of us get off the bus two stops too early. Our Lord is different isn’t he. He stood trial before Pilate, the governor – the man who held our Lord’s fate in his hands. In our Second Scripture Lesson – an event that ironically occurs just after Peter denied Jesus three times – as our Lord stood trial he refused to deny the truth of his identity. The Lord embodied the truth in his every breath. He lived it in his every action. For he is Jesus Christ, the one that Revelation calls “the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.” And it is by his love for us and his determination not to deny us but to face death on the cross, that we are freed from our sins and made us citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven. That’s the Good News – that while Peter denied him three times, and while we are guiltily of the same, the Lord refused to deny us. “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” And while we sometimes hide in the woods, relying on the most convenient truths rather than the real truth, rejoice in this: Christ won’t hide from us nor will he deny us, and we don’t need to hide from him when he comes again. Amen.

Hannah's Song

Scripture Lessons: 1 Samuel 1: 4-20 and 1 Samuel 2: 1-10 Sermon Title: Hannah’s Song Preached on November 18, 2018 Both of these passages that I’ve just read are about Samuel. Samuel is the prophet who made David and others King over Israel, and Samuel is one of my favorite people in the Bible. The Bible tells us a lot about him. We just read about the circumstances surrounding his birth, so now we know so much of his backstory that we even know what his mother was thinking before he was born. And if Samuel knew what we do now, that kind of insight surely gave Samuel a clear advantage over many children, because knowing that you’re loved and wanted by your parents can shape your self-understanding for your entire life. The child whose mother was disappointed about her pregnancy, who’s been told that she ruined her mother’s life of independence turns out differently from the other who always knew that she was the apple of her daddy’s eye. Knowing what your parents felt about you changes how you see yourself – and knowing that you were loved changes everything. Sara and I are hoping we’ve communicated something of our love to our daughters – something like what Hannah shares with us in Scripture. When she was pregnant, Sara and I got conned into a photography session at her cousin’s house. We love this cousin of hers and her husband, and we still do even after what they did to us. What happened is they got free family photos if they could conn enough of their friends to come over to their house to pay to have their picture taken, and we were among the suckers. So, we went over there, and I already hate this kind of thing. We got dressed up and I had to force a smile, which is hard because I know how weird I look when forced to smile for a picture, but then the photographer wanted us to stage all these poses – and the worst was this – the photographer, she asked me to touch my wife’s pregnant belly with my nose. That’s right. I couldn’t believe the photographer asked me to do it, and Sara couldn’t believe that I actually would. But I did – and doing so made Sara laugh so hard that joy erupted on her face, and right then the photographer took our picture. Today, that picture hangs right over our bed. It’s there for our girls to see. We want them to see it because when we had it framed Sara said, “now they’ll know how happy we were thinking about their birth. Every time they see this picture, they’ll see that we couldn’t wait to meet them. Now they’ll know that before they were even born, we loved them.” Samuel – if Samuel also knew what we just read, these Scripture lessons must have done the same thing for him. If he could remember what his mother Hannah was thinking before he was born, then when he was tempted to believe the voices of self-doubt that he heard inside his head, all he had to do was think back on this account of his mother who cherished him as a gift from God. If he couldn’t sleep for all his frustration with this crazy world of ours, maybe all he had to do was hum to himself the song that she sang him which made up our Second Scripture Lesson, and suddenly reality was reframed. If he started to believe what the bullies said, and if he ever wondered whether the dark cloud would ever lift, or the sadness would ever end, if there was the promise in his mind of a mother’s love and her conviction in the Lord’s provision, then these stories from before he was born was surely like a warm blanket on a cold dark night, holding him tight until the sun rose again. I hope Samuel knew all that backstory that our two Scripture lessons offer because Samuel was up against so much. He was a virtual orphan living in the Temple; the priest’s sons mistreated him, and he only got to see his family once a year. If you read the Harry Potter books you have an idea of what it must have been like to be Samuel. If you didn’t read those books it’s OK – they’re just about an orphan who has no real idea how loved he is. All the time was beaten down because he’s born in a house where his aunt and uncle mistreat him. He’s basically their live-in maid, but then one day he discovers that by his mother he was loved and knowing that changes everything, because love always changes everything. However, the world would have us forget it or would rather us not ever hear about it. That’s why it’s easy for me to imagine Hannah’s fear as she left her son at the Temple. You leave a boy at the Temple and how is he supposed to feel but hurt and abandoned. It’s worse than forgetting your child at the funeral home. Even though he was hardly abandoned it would have been hard to convince him otherwise, for not knowing the whole story that’s exactly what it looks like, and the world would gladly have Samuel or any of us believe the worst explanation that our imaginations might cook up. I’ve heard Rev. Joan Gray say that we must always be upfront and transparent, because what people make up is always worse than the truth – so imagine how important it was for Hannah to do anything she could to make sure that her son knew the whole story of her love for him. The whole story is just as we read it in our first scripture lesson – Hannah longed for a child but pregnancy, which can seem like it comes so easy to everyone else, remained out of her grasp. Unable to conceive she did what many of us do in times of extreme desperation – she made a deal with God. “Oh Lord of hosts,” she pleaded, “if only you will look on the misery of your servant, and remember me, and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a male child, then I will set him before you as a nazerite until the day of his death.” Surprisingly – or un-surprisingly – the Lord accepted this bargain and that meant Hannah had to honor her end of the deal – which would be hard if not practically impossible. Think of her happy times with that child – the first time she felt the baby Samuel kick still in the womb, the time some artist tried to make her husband put his nose on her pregnant belly, the first time she held him in her arms, the first time this mother Hannah heard baby Samuel coo or saw him smile – but all the while, in the back of her mind, shrouding all these good things surely was the promise that she had made. She knew that once he was weaned, she would take him to the Temple and would return home without him, leaving him to wonder as he grew up a servant in the household of God – who am I am I and what does this mean? She wouldn’t be there to answer and to help him understand if he asked, “What did I do to deserve being left at the Temple without a family?” She wouldn’t be there to tell him about her deal with God and should Samuel would grow up wondering, “how could a mother be so cruel as to turn and walk away from her own flesh and blood.” The mind of a young boy is fertile ground for misunderstanding – the mind of anyone is fertile ground for misunderstanding – so Hannah, knowing that she would not be there to wipe away all his tears sings a song that she hopes will speak for her to tell her son that he was loved. She wanted him to know the truth. And by this song which makes up our second scripture lesson we know that she was not being selfish – she was being faithful. He had done nothing wrong – in fact, his mother knew that he would be about the work of setting the world right. And she hadn’t left him alone, for we are never alone; even when we feel the most abandoned our Lord is by our side if we only have the eyes to see. But we don’t always see as we struggle to understand and most of the time in this crazy world we are left to despair. No mother is always there to take us in her lap and to tell us that there might be another way to look at our situation – so being a teenager is hard – being anyone at any age is hard. Every time we read the paper – the reality of our world and our place in it is hard to grasp because we’re always having to wonder what all this means. Like Samul growing up in the Temple, we’re always tempted to ask: Is the world falling apart, or being put back together? Is the President about to be impeached or is he about to make America Great Again? Is that caravan walking north through Mexico a band of women and children who need our help or are they a horde that we must defend ourselves against? In each circumstance we’re all looking at the same data but we’re all seeing different things, because misunderstanding runs rampant in our minds, just as it does in the mind of every child, just as it did with Samuel, and to make any sense out of our world we can’t just turn to Fox or CNN, to one side of the aisle or the other, for it’s love that reframes everything – and it’s the love of God that so truly offers us the only way to truly understand what’s really going on. Just as young Samuel, to understand, needed to remember his mother’s song, so today I call you to listen to Hannah’s song as well. For what everyone is saying today is doom and gloom. Either way you look at it, no matter which side of the aisle you’re on, they’ll tell you that chaos is on the horizon and if you don’t give them the reigns then the foundations of civilization are going to shake – but is there not more in heaven and earth than human philosophy? Is there not more at work in our world than the will of partisan men and women? Is there not something else going on all around us? These days that we find ourselves living in – are not nearly so pivotal as the self-important wish you to believe, for as it was true ages ago, so it is true today – the future rests, not in the hands of mortals who manipulate us or bullies who push us around, but in the hands of our God who is full of love for His children. We have to reframe the world around us, by hearing Hannah’s song. For: The Holy One of Israel – he is a Rock and there is none like him. And the proud – let them not talk so very proudly, and let arrogance not come from their mouth, for the Lord is a God of knowledge and by him actions are weighed. The bows of the mighty are broken – but the feeble girt on strength. The Lord makes poor and make rich; he brings low, he also exalts. He raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy from the ash heap – and we had better stop our hand wringing and our worrying, for the future is not so uncertain, because the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s and on them he has set the world. We must be bold enough to think again, trusting in the love of God that changes everything that we might sing: “My heart exults in the Lord; My strength is exalted in my God. My mouth derides my enemies, Because I rejoice in my victory.” Amen.