Who Gave Himself a Ransom for All

Scripture Lessons: Jeremiah 8: 18 – 9: 1 and 1 Timothy 2: 1-7 Sermon Title: Who Gave Himself a Ransom for All Preached on September 22, 2019 Just before the Prayers of the People we sang “There is a Balm in Gilead.” This great hymn is based on our First Scripture Lesson from the book of Jeremiah, where in desperation the Prophet mourns on behalf of God for the people saying: My joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of my poor people not been restored? We emphasize such themes this Sunday morning on behalf of our brothers and sisters who are still cheering for the University of Tennessee. Not really. This is Scripture. It’s not about College football, but I have been struck this season by the Vols. We don’t watch much college football in our house, however, back when we lived in Tennessee, we were all UT fans. When you live in Tennessee you have to be. Since moving here, we haven’t been overt about it, for obvious reasons. This has been a difficult season. The first game this season was a loss against Georgia State, who’s only even had a football team since 2010. You might have heard, that on the day of that game a boat outside the stadium caught fire and sank in the Tennessee River. It’s been said that UT’s game plan for the game was on that boat. Then the Vols were defeated by Bingham Young University, a historically Mormon school, not considered a football powerhouse, from Salt Lake City. After that game a friend of mine sent me a picture of a Mormon missionary in white shirt and dark pants, narrowly outrunning a Tennessee defenseman, which was a good illustration for the second defeat of the season. Then last week, even though Tennessee was victorious against Chattanooga, still a friend sent me a picture of a man at the Georgia game dressed in a Vols jersey with a bag over his head, embarrassed to show his face. You can imagine that after yesterday’s loss to Florida, there were many in Knoxville, not singing “Rocky Top,” but asking, “Is there no balm in Gilead?” Will we ever win again? When will we be out of our misery? Those are all good and important questions, and I’m sure that these are the questions the players on the Marietta High School football team who have been recruited by the University of Tennessee are asking, but such questions bring me to a point that I believe Scripture makes, a lesson so counter cultural as to be radically surprising, namely, that winning isn’t everything. I’m sure you’ve heard that before. Certainly, I have, because I’ve lost at a lot of things, and my Mother especially, tried to comfort me by telling me that it’s not whether you win or lose but how you play the game. I never believed her. Sometimes I still don’t. However, I hope you’ll hear me out, especially giving the state of youth sports today. For as sports become a more and more important part of the lives of our children and grandchildren and as more and more parents sacrifice their free time, driving hours in the car for travel baseball, travel soccer, or travel volleyball, it becomes important to consider what our kids are learning about the importance of victory. When some parents take their kids out of school for competitions, what are we teaching them? When their schedules are so packed, what are they learning from us about the importance of rest? As Sunday becomes a day for tournaments, what place has religion in the hierarchy of importance? While I know that the lessons of teamwork, practice, physical fitness, and hard work are lessons that all parents need to teach their kids, I’m worried that we are also teaching them that winning is all that truly matters, when we serve a Lord who taught that the path to salvation is not through victory, but surrender. We read in 1st Timothy: There is one God; There is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, Who gave himself a ransom for all. This section of 1st Timothy, our Second Scripture Lesson goes a long way, using just a few phrases, to describe who this Christ whom we follow is and what he has done for us. Scripture testifies to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, who sat not on a throne, but died on a Cross to save us from our sins. Rather than rubbing shoulders with princes, he ate with sinners and still welcomes, even the likes of us. While he could have avoided suffering, he embraced it, and he teaches that the only way to conquer all is to give everything you have to those whom you love. According to the Apostle Paul, in the eyes of Christ, all our earthly winning is losing. He was bold to say, “Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.” We protestants know, by emphasizing such words, that you can’t earn God’s love or God’s salvation, you just must accept God’s grace. Why then do we spend so much time helping our kids become winners? I worry that we are saying one thing, while doing another, when the truth is so much better than the lie that they may be picking up, because I don’t love our children because of what they’ve won. I love them because they’re mine. I might like it, but I don’t need them to win. I just want them to be fully who God created them to be, however in our world of constant competition, that’s easier said than done. I was enjoying some Palmetto Cheese the other day, and I remembered the story of the people who started making it. Maybe you’ve had Palmetto Cheese. It’s the best store-bought pimento cheese you can buy, made by a small business out of Pawley’s Island started by a couple who runs a small inn on the beach. When they bought the inn, they focused on the dining room right away. I read all this in an interview, that they bought the inn and noticed that the dining room was stuck in some strange patterns. Once a week they had Thai night. Maybe like me, you like Thai food, but I don’t think anyone goes to Pawley’s Island looking for it. The women who cooked in the dining room certainly hadn’t been trained in Thai cooking, and so this couple who bought the inn encouraged the cooks in the kitchen to prepare the food they knew. Soon enough, good low country fare was coming out of the kitchen, including the best pimento cheese money can buy, but first this couple had to accept the reality that an inn on Pawley’s Island is just fine being who they were meant to be. That’s a hard lesson to learn, because we live our lives in a competition where we’re judged according to someone else’s rules. There are competitions on TV where they decide who’s the best chef but remember: you don’t have to win one on one of those shows to make food worth eating. There are people who make the cover of the magazine, but you don’t have to look like one of them to be beautiful. There are all kinds of different churches in this world, but we don’t have to be like any of them, we can just be us. As a church we get caught in the same cycle of winning; thinking we have to compete with great big churches in Atlanta who have guitars and drums and lights and sound, but does anyone really drive up to our antebellum sanctuary expecting us to be like one of them? No! God created us and God loves us, and we don’t have to win every competition to be a great church or to gain God’s love. All we have to do is accept God’s grace. This is such a difficult truth to accept, however, because we’ve been taught to believe that second place is the first looser. Now that might be true in sports, but sports are different than real life, and the Kingdom of God has plenty of room on the medal platform. 1st Timothy urges us to pray for everyone. “Everyone” might sound like too many to us, in this culture of winning. If everyone gets a trophy then what does a trophy really even mean? I get it. But Scripture calls on us to pray “For kings and all who are in high positions,” not only pray for the politicians we voted for because they’re all God’s children, too. According to 1st Timothy, God our Savior, “desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” “Everyone” sounds like a lot of people, but maybe that’s only because we’ve gotten so used to this idea that only a small number of people are worthy of acceptance and praise, only a set number of people ever get to make the team or get in the game, when in the Kingdom of God everyone is somebody and all have a seat at the table with the King. Back to the University of Tennessee Volunteers: did you see the shirts that the marching band wore last Saturday? It was college colors day at Altamonte Elementary School in Altamonte Springs, Florida. One 4th grade student didn’t have a college shirt to wear, so he wore an orange shirt, drew UT on a piece of paper and safety pinned it to his shirt. Some kids in the cafeteria noticed and made fun of him, of course. That’s what kids do. It’s wrong, but they do it. If you don’t have the right shirt or the right shoes you take your place on the outside the bounds of popularity. Having been rejected, this child was devastated of course. When his teacher saw the look on his face, she tried to affirm him and lift him up, and gradually, word got out about the child and this shirt he’d made. Somehow or another, eventually, word made it all the way to the University of Tennessee and their Pride of the Southland Marching Band, who took his design and mass produced it. Every one of them wearing an orange shirt just like the one that this kid made for himself. Our kids need to hear that story too. They need to hear about the balm our God provides in the moment of rejection. And of the Shepherd who walks beside us even when we walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Of the arms of the Almighty who is the wind beneath the wings of eagles. Because so often it is when we have surely been defeated that we finally reach out to the One who has gained the victory, by giving himself as a ransom for all. Let’s stop teaching our children to go after glory, that they might give the glory to God. Amen.

Onesimus

Scripture Lesson: Jeremiah 18: 1-11 and Philemon Sermon Title: Onesimus Preached on September 8, 2019 Truthfully, this is just an incredible day. I look forward to this day all year. I love hearing the bagpipes and the drums. I even love wearing this kilt and especially I love seeing the tartans come in. The Tartans are the centerpiece of this annual worship service. By all these tartans you can see that this service is a symbol that names matter and that all families are blessed by God. This Kirkin or “Blessing” of the Tartans tradition emerged at a time when only those families who had pledged themselves to British rule had the right to wear their plaid publicly. Only those who had kneeled to the crown were allowed to wear their kilts or to hear their clan’s name acknowledged. So, when the Church invites every family to come and be recognized in a worship service, it’s a radically defiant thing to do, for the tartans, publicly displayed, loudly proclaim that we all matter, we all stand as equals, and even if the Buchanan’s haven’t paid their taxes to the crown or the Macintoshes have been organizing a rebellion, they still matter to God. Even if some have been rendered invisible to the Monarchy, God sees them. God calls them by name. They are his. The statement made by this service, all the tartans that processed in and the clans they represent, proclaim the truth that all families matter, all people matter to God. And that word “all” applies even those who don’t have a tartan to hold up. There’s no Evans tartan. Not an official one anyway. That’s OK. I’m not upset about it. I don’t feel ignored. As the Senior Pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Marietta, GA, I don’t feel ignored basically ever. I was at dinner with two leaders of our church. We ordered drinks, and I ordered something fancy from the bar. I didn’t know how fancy it was, until the waiter brought it out on a tray, with a glass dome over it filled with hickory smoke. As the waiter made his way over to our table, grandly removing the dome, everyone in the restaurant was looking at me, and that’s when Jessi Allers, our youth ministry consultant says to Tom Clarke, “Like he doesn’t get enough attention already!” That’s true. Last Thursday I walked our daughter Lily across the street to drop her off at school. On my way back to the car there was a fair amount of traffic. A lot of parents were dropping off their kids, then rushing to work or to run errands. I was just standing there waiting when one woman stopped her car and waved her hand toward me and bowed her head like I was the King. I smiled and waved, but what came to me in this moment was a memory from my commute to the church last Monday morning. I was crossing the Harris Hines Bridge and I heard a whistle blow. The woman in the cross walk, right over there on Kennesaw Avenue is so used to cars ignoring her as she crosses the road that she’s taken to wearing a whistle around her neck that she blows at people who don’t stop for her. This is something that she has to do for her own safety, even in the cross walk. Indeed, I heard her blow it and saw a car narrowly pass her by. This morning, while so many families have been named and recognized by their tartans, we can’t forget that in this world, some are still fighting to be seen. Take Onesimus for example. Our Second Scripture Lesson for today was an entire book of the Bible. It’s just one chapter, a short letter written by Paul the Apostle to Philemon, a slave owner who hosted a church in his home, regarding his slave Onesimus, who, according to the law of the land was Philemon’s property, but Paul calls Philemon to remember that by the new order established by Jesus Christ, Onesimus is also his brother. Paul names Onesimus and defends him in this letter but consider the ways of the world. Imagine those many dinner parties when the guests treated him like a fixture of the dining room. How many people walked by him without greeting him as a fellow human being? To what extent did his owner treat him like a piece of his property, and when he ran away, was Philemon more concerned with the wellbeing of his brother or the investment he’d just lost? By calling him brother Paul calls all of us to a level of equality still needed in this world, but by simply naming him in this letter, the Apostle Paul has already done something radical, for how many names have been forgotten? Last Sunday I read an article by the great Judy Elliott who remembered a man named Antoine who discovered and propagated what became known as the “Centennial” pecan. Celebrated at the Centennial Exposition of 1876, held in Philadelphia. This new variety was praised for size and sweetness, yet horticultural tomes never mention the one who discovered it by name. Why? Because racism has rendered some invisible. The same story is retold when it comes to the greatest of hymns, “Amazing Grace,” which we’ll sing to end this worship service. We know John Newton wrote the words, but today historians speculate that the tune was one he heard slaves sing for comfort in the belly of the slave ships which he captained. We’ve forgotten their names and so many others. Our nation’s history is not always unlike the section of the cemetery where generations of men and women are only represented by one marker, not granted a stone bearing their name. Meanwhile, Paul remembers the name Onesimus. “Formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful both to you and to me” he wrote to Philemon and urges that he might welcome him “back forever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother.” Here we are, so close to the 400th anniversary of the date when the first slaves were brought to this country, and yet some figures are still hidden. Nearly 300 years after the words were written, “All men are created equal” in the Declaration of Independence, we have yet to live up to our ideals. And we must continue to rise to them, that like clay in the potter’s hand, rooted in who we have been, we might be continually “reworked into another vessel;” a more perfect vessel. Today, as we celebrate tradition, history, heritage, roots, looking back on the past let us celebrate what is good: the tartans, the bag pipes, the kilts, but can we leave the haggis behind? Considering history, we don’t need to be confined to all of what once was, for reshaped by the Gospel we can become who Christ intends us to be. We must leave behind blindness to our brother, for still in our world, some are called doctor and others patient. A good friend of mine, Dr. Jim Goodlet, told me that “patient” is the perfect word, because that’s what’s required, profound patience as you wait in the waiting room, wait for test results, wait to hear if the cancer’s really gone. Maybe you saw the comic strip last Thursday. The doctor asked, “How are you sleeping?” Crankshaft responded, “I’m sleeping great Doc. I just dozed off for about two hours in your waiting room.” That may just be the way that it is, but have you ever had a doctor who saw you as a person? Isn’t that just as healing as whatever medicine she prescribed? See your brother then. That’s what Paul writes to Philemon. He’s calling on him to see Onesimus as his brother, and he’s calling on us to see each other with that same clarity of vision. This past week a Marietta man faced felony charges after police say he purposely struck the driver of a garbage truck with his car after spitting in his face. Are we not all worth stopping for? Are we not all deserving of respect? That’s what this worship service I all about. These Tartans are not unlike those great placards carried by the striking Memphis sanitation workers. They said so simply: “I am a man.” That’s what this worship service is about. Yes, you are. All of you are. And God sees you, we see you. In this place you can hold your head up high with your humanity intact. You matter here, and that’s regardless of what you do for a living or the color of your skin. That’s regardless of the amount of money in your pocket book and the birthdate on your driver’s license. That’s regardless of who you love. That’s regardless of how you sing. That’s regardless of the test results or the labels the world puts on you. Raise your head up high as we’ve raised up the Tartans, because you matter. You matter to God. The road to a better future may be potholed with the indifference of the past but it can be repaved by our empathy. Like clay in the hands of the potter, be reshaped by the Gospel today. Recognize your worthy and the worth of your brother, your sister, your own flesh, there before you. And let us all look forward to the moment when we will arise at the sound of God calling our name. He knows it too, for we all matter to Him. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Let Mutual Love Continue

Scripture Lessons: Jeremiah 2: 4-13 and Hebrews 13: 1-8 Sermon Title: Let mutual love continue Preached on September 1, 2019 This Scripture Lesson that I’ve just read is a good reminder of what we, as Christians, ought to be all about. And the Scripture Lesson that Linley just read is a good reminder that we, as Christians, have a tendency to stray away from what we ought to be all about. Of course, we’re not alone in straying. We all stray. Consider Kentucky Fried Chicken. Consider just the name: Kentucky Fried Chicken, and yet last week they started serving something called “beyond fried chicken.” Now I don’t know what “beyond fried chicken” is exactly, but while it’s fried it’s not chicken, and you can just about be certain that it didn’t come from Kentucky. What’s next, right? But this kind of thing happens a lot. We come loose from our roots. We go off the rails. We stray from the very essence of who we are and what we’re supposed to be doing. And while considering expanding American waist-lines, it could be that un-chicken is where we should be going, however, most of the time, straying too far from the point is bad. So, from time to time we have to be reminded of the point. That’s why various human institutions ritualize the simple and crucial act of stating who they are and what they’re all about so as not to forget the main thing. Our youngest daughter Cece took taekwondo lessons for a while. She loved it, and in addition to seeing her master various punches and kicks, I loved that every lesson ended the same way. The Senior Student, the one who has achieved the most advanced rank in the group, would lead the class in reciting the six tenants of taekwondo, the six defining attributes that every student of taekwondo should embody in their daily life: courtesy, integrity, perseverance, self-control, indomitable spirit, and victory. At the end of the class all the kids lined up, and our Cece was in the back standing there in her resting stance, and the senior student faced the rest of the class and yelled out: “courtesy,” and all the kids repeated, “courtesy.” Then “integrity” she says, and all the other kids say, “integrity.” Then “perseverance” – “perseverance.” “Self-control” – “self-control” “Indomitable spirit” – and the little ones in the back would say “indom -mmm - ble spirit.” It was great. It was all just great, because what could be better than closing the lesson with the core, the essence, the epitome of what every taekwondo student should be and should be doing? The Cub Scouts do the same: “I promise, to do my best, to do my duty, to God and my country, to help other people, and to obey the law of the pack.” The Boy Scouts of course begin their meetings with the Scout Oath and Law, and I’ll bet everyone here who’s been involved in scouts could stand and say it. This is why the school day starts with the Pledge to the Flag and the baseball game with the National Anthem. We use these rituals to summarize; to clarify. It’s by these kinds of statements that we hope to make our expectations clear and stay on the right path. And that’s important, because every group strays. Every group forgets. It’s easy to get distracted from the main thing. Cece signed up for taekwondo and the first thing I wanted to know is when she was going to karate chop a board in half, but that’s not why they’re there. It’s about integrity, perseverance, self-control, and the indom – mmm - ble spirit. In the same way, Boy Scouts isn’t about merit badges and getting into a good college once you have your eagle. Being a doctor is about first, “do no harm,” life as a lawyer is centered around defending the Constitution and living by a code of fidelity and truth, only how many are like those preachers who stray from such ideals to make a little more money. How do you keep a group rooted in its true purpose? You make the true purpose plain and clear again and again: “A scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.” That’s Scouts. But what about Christians? You go out into the world and ask around a little bit and you may hear the opposite of what we intend. You may hear that “A Christian is judgmental, closed minded, self-righteous, fearful, so heavenly minded that he’s no earthly good.” Like every group in human history we need to keep coming back to the real purpose, the true essence, of who we are and what we should be doing. To put it in the language of our 1st Scripture Lesson from the book of Jeremiah, we go to broken cisterns that cannot hold water again and again, and so, must be led back to the fountain of living water again and again. We need this passage in the book of Hebrews to stay rooted in what we should be doing. How we should be living. We must stay rooted in the qualities that Christ embodied, so the author of Hebrews writes: “Let mutual love continue.” “Let mutual love continue.” Don’t let it stop. It’s as though the author of Hebrews were saying to us, “You’ve been loved by God, saved by his grace; you’ve memorized the verse, “for God so loved the world that he gave his only son” so don’t you accept this love and fail to pass it to your neighbor.” Don’t put a fence around it so that you love the members of your family who you like, the members of your church who you know, and the people who voted for the same people you did. That’s not letting mutual love continue, that’s showing the world that Christian love is for some and not for others. If you think it’s bad that some people think taekwondo is about breaking legs or that physicians stray from the Hippocratic Oath than be disgusted that the Church has lived in such a way that many in our world are convinced that God’s love is for some and not for others. Hebrew’s demands that we “let mutual love continue,” though we’ve left people out according to race, fenced in love according to standards of sexuality, and built up an idol that makes God’s love look like something that not everyone deserves, when nothing could be further from the truth. “Let mutual love continue, and do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” Don’t you know that’s true? I was reading in Atlanta Magazine last week about a man named Marshall Rancifer who spends his nights helping homeless people. He gives them food, takes them to find medical care, and if needed, when they’re ready, into recovery for addiction. According to the article he’s helped over 2,000 people get off the streets, but his story started when he himself was homeless, and found help and comfort in the shelter at Central Presbyterian Church downtown. We don’t often know what’s going on in the life of the strangers we meet, but too often our assumption is that they’re probably up to no good and should be avoided, when the book of Hebrews urges us to entertain the possibility that the ones we call stranger might be an angel poised to change the world or even Christ himself. “Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. (And) Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured” even though it is so easy to forget every last one of them. They put jails and prisons where they do, way out from the road, near the landfill and under the cover of a hillside so that we won’t have to trouble ourselves with the thought of them. However, I saw a picture this week that brought their struggle right into my living room. It was a picture of all the rosaries collected back in 2007 from men and women detained for illegally crossing the border. Of course, it’s true that this issue has seen greater press coverage recently, but the problem goes back longer and the root cause is universal: that men and women filled with hope move north from South and Central America to try and find a better life. When I saw the rosaries their faith became clear, and so did their humanity. “Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured [for are they not God’s children too?] (And) let marriage be held in honor by all, and let the marriage bed be kept undefiled; for God will judge fornicators and adulterers. Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have.” Some reflections of scholar and Episcopal Priest, Gray Temple helped me to understand this part better: “You come to resemble what you admire. People who admire money get green and crinkly. People who admire computers grow user-unfriendly. People who admire youth get juvenile.” And I would add that people who can’t stop looking will never know satisfaction. On the other hand, “People who actively and deliberately admire Jesus Christ come to resemble him” and Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Isn’t that the point of this whole lesson in Hebrews? And maybe that’s the point of our entire religion: that Jesus’ life is to be mirrored in you and me. So, as you consider this table today, be mindful of the life of the one who has prepared it. The one who, though he was the King of Kings, set the table and waits on us as a servant. This food he has prepared is his body, and this wine, it is his blood; both he offers that we might know our worth and the worth of our neighbor whom he has prepared it for. The bill will come, but he has already paid it with his life. All he asks is that the light that shines in him, shine also in you and me. May it be so. Amen.