It may be helpful to acknowledge that I come to this worship service and this sermon with my head swimming. I am probably having some kind of reaction to all the references to God in the New York Times recently. If you have heard me preach, you know I am a New York Times junkie. It's a carry-over from my seminary days when I learned that Karl Bart, the leading theologian of the time, encouraged all responsible preachers to have the Bible in one hand and a good newspaper in the other—metaphorically speaking, of course.
A week ago the cover article in the Magazine was about political theology. Written by Mark Lilla of Columbia University, the article is an interesting read. A couple of sentences:
"Among modern thinkers, Rousseau was the first to declare
that there is no shame in saying that faith in God is humanly
necessary. Religion has its roots in needs that are rational
and moral, even noble; once we see that, we can start
satisfying them rationally, morally and nobly.
Rousseau was on to something: we seem to be theotropic,
yearning to connect our mundane lives, in some way,
to the beyond.(Theotropic=turning in response to)"
Today's Times Magazine contains an article on "Universal Faith" making the case that "Religion can have a place in public schools. It just can't be for believers alone." And today's Book Review section showcases Mary Gordon's latest book, Circling My Mother. The reviewer refers to "Christopher Hitchens's atheist manifesto, "God is Not Great" (which I am trying to get through), observing that "Hitchens's definition of religion is childlike and reductive; he completely discounts the longing many of us feel for divinity."
So it's okay for us to be here in church this morning, while more people pass by outside our doors in an hour than are gathered inside for some kind of encounter with God, or a Higher Power, or a transcendent reality. I know my hunger for God is as powerful and valid as all the other drives that make me who I am. I bring that hunger to the experience of worship and to the act of preaching.
Once again we have two readings from the Bible that we hear and explore for a connection with our life in 2007. The first reading comes from a document in the New Testament called in most versions "The Letter to the Hebrews." Clearly it was written for Jews who had become Christians in the first and second generations after the death and resurrection of Jesus. The second reading comes from the third of the four Gospels, the Gospel According to Luke, written by a gentile and intended for a gentile audience.
The verses from the Letter to the Hebrews we heard a few minutes ago come toward the end of the document. They follow a complex discourse on Christology, which has to do with the nature of Jesus as the Christ, the messiah, and they lead up to an exhortation to do better and be better as Christian disciples. The main point of the paragraph we heard is the contrast between the older covenant or agreement God made at Mount Sinai in the giving of the ten Commands and the newer covenant or agreement God made on Mount Zion, a name for Jerusalem, in the person and work of Jesus. The writer of Hebrews calls Jesus "the mediator of a new covenant" or agreement.
The verses from Luke's Gospel help us understand the difference between the two covenants or agreements. The first agreement began with Abraham and Sarah, who lived roughly four thousand years ago in what is now parts of Iraq and Turkey. The Bible tells us that God self-disclosed to Abraham and Sarah, promising to be their God and the God of their descendants. Centuries later, according to the Bible, God self-disclosed again, this time to Moses on Mount Sinai, clarifying how the descendants of Abraham and Sarah were to fulfill their part of the covenant or agreement: they were to keep the Ten Commandments, which eventually grew into more than five hundred laws and regulations.
As the years went by, special teachers called prophets told the descendants of Abraham and Sarah that God was more interested in their having loving hearts than in their obeying a complex set of laws and rules. But a group of people had become expert in knowing and interpreting the religious laws, and they didn't want to give up their power. By the time of Jesus, two thousand years after Abraham and Sarah, the original covenant initiated by God as an expression of love had become a rather rigid system of rules and regulations so complex that they were an intolerable burden to most people. They drained life of most of its joy—and of all its juiciness.
The verses from Luke's Gospel show us how Jesus dealt with the religious climate of his time and place. As a good practicing Jew he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath or Saturday, where he sometimes taught. On one such occasion a woman was present who had lived for eighteen years with a crippling disability. She was bent over and couldn't stand up straight. The cause or origin of her condition is not part of the record.
Luke tells us that Jesus addressed the woman and told her to stand up straight. He placed his hands on her in the manner of those who practiced healing arts in his day. The woman stood up and shouted her thanks to God. We would hope that the religious leaders of that time and place would have added their shouts of joy to those of the woman. But they didn't. The president of the synagogue rebuked Jesus for violating one of the rules about what a person should or shouldn't do on the Sabbath, the day set aside in the Ten Commandments as a balance to work, as a day for rest and renewal.
Jesus rejected the rebuke, reminding the religious leaders that they regularly untied their oxen or donkeys on the Sabbath and led them to a watering trough. Shouldn't the woman in the synagogue, a descendant of Abraham and Sarah, receive at least the same consideration given to the oxen and donkeys? In other words, religious rules and regulations should never take priority over human need, whether the need be medical, nutritional, psychological, or spiritual. Jesus' critics were silenced, and the synagogue congregation exhilarated.
Luke in other parts of his Gospel shows us Jesus going out of his way to defy the laws and conventions of his time, laws and conventions that were used to exclude, demean, or de-humanize people. Jesus was not an anarchist. He said all laws should be in harmony with love of God, love of other people, and healthy love of self.
Many religious leaders still don't get it, do they. In my travels I meet lots of people who are like the woman in this morning's Gospel reading—bent over and unable to stand up straight—not literally, but metaphorically. They are often beaten down by feelings of guilt or shame, the source of which is religion based on rules and regulations that have no usefulness or legitimacy within the agreement God offered humanity in the life and work of Jesus of Nazareth. Too much of the modern Christian Church resembles the synagogue president in our story, giving holiness laws priority over human need for dignity and validation.
In a church like this one, Rutgers Presbyterian Church, you and I need to sharpen our skills in telling how God's love has set us free from brokenness, shame, guilt, fear, and whatever else crippled us and bent us over. If we focus on our good news about a loving God, we will be free of the negativity that drives people away from so many faith communities. The shape of God's agreement with the world is outlined in mercy, understanding, respect, and compassion. May our response be characterized by gratitude.
Thanks be to God.