Sermon Archive

In ancient Judah it was a time of drought—both physically and spiritually. Most people were farmers, and, as Jeremiah tells us, they were raising the cries (8:20, 19b):

“The harvest is past, the summer is ended,
and we are not saved.”
“Is the Lord not in Zion?
Is her Sovereign not in her?”

You see, physically, the summer’s poor harvest was being followed hard on—quite unlike yesterday!—by a failure of the autumn rains, and in the face of that the people could only stand by and cry as the next year’s crops turned into parched, dry stubble.

And spiritually, the hearts of the people were turning cold and hard, and in the face of that God could only stand by and cry as the yield expected from this people’s faith—mighty deeds of love toward God and neighbor—turned into parched, dry stubble.

You see, what people’s hearts were longing for was not the well-being of others but rather that of themselves alone—and their preoccupation with self was wreaking havoc not only on others’ well-being but on their own as well.

To illustrate the damage caused to all by a preoccupation with self, let me share this old Jewish story. (Recounted by R. Alan Culpepper, in The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. IX [Nashville: Abingdon, 1995], p. 298)

God appeared to a farmer and promised to grant him any three wishes, with just this one condition attached: whatever God did for the farmer, God would do double for his neighbor.

Well, the farmer, blessing the good fortune of having God grant him any three wishes, first asked God for a hundred more cattle, and immediately he received them! So the farmer was overjoyed, until he looked across the fence into his neighbor’s barnyard and saw standing there not one but two hundred more cattle.

Somewhat petulantly, the farmer called out to God his second wish, for a hundred more acres of land. And immediately he received them. And this filled the farmer with great joy as well, until he noticed his neighbor beginning to extend his fences in order to encompass an additional two hundred acres.

Well, the farmer was now seized by a fit of jealous rage over the fact that his good fortune had led to his neighbor’s even better fortune. So to get back at his neighbor he impulsively called out this third wish: “God, I want you to make one of my eyes blind.” And God wept.

God had wept as well over ancient Judah. God had wept in anticipation of the many deaths bound to befall that nation in consequence of its prideful hardness of heart and its blind allegiance to the sinful ways of its leaders—its priests, its false prophets, its kings. And in anticipation of that dread but all-too-inevitable outcome, God had cried out (Jer. 9:1; in Hebrew, 8:23):

“Oh, that my head were a spring of water,
and my eyes a fountain of tears!
I would then weep day and night
over those [to be] slain among my people!”

So God wept over the soon-coming destruction of Judah—to be brought about by the invading Babylonian army, having been brought on by the nation’s misguided allegiance to the sinful policies of its leaders.

Ah! The policies of leaders and rulers. What are we, the people, to do about these? Well, the author of this morning’s First Lesson counsels us to pray mightily for our leaders and rulers (I Timothy 2:1–2), to the end that the harvest of their policies may be neither the vengeful wounds that overtook the farmer and his neighbor nor the hardness of heart and devastation that overcame Judah, but rather that the harvest of their policies may be the kind of peaceableness and well-being that can provide for all of humankind a chance to lead their lives in godliness and dignity. And had this author of ours, who was subject to the rule of an emperor, been able to anticipate the much later advent of democracy, I believe he might also have counseled us to make sure that when we vote we choose our leaders prayerfully and wisely.

I believe a group of voters did choose prayerfully and wisely just last August, when the Stated Clerk of our denomination, the Reverend Clifton Kirkpatrick, was elected the leader, the President, of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, a body often referred to by its acronym, WARC. WARC represents more than 75 million Christians around the whole world, and this meeting of its General Council was held in Accra, Ghana.

The election of an American as WARC’s President came as something of a surprise, both because of the anger and resentment that’s been directed against peoples of the “northern” part of our globe by those of the impoverished “southern,” and also because of the blistering prophetic pronouncements against America’s economic and trade policies that have been made by most of WARC’s member churches. For as the world’s rich get ever richer and the world’s poor get ever poorer, there are fewer and fewer people around the globe who are at all able to lead "a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.”

Kirkpatrick interprets his election as a sign of the two-thirds world’s appreciation for our denomination’s having stood with and for the poor over many years’ time and for our denomination’s unflagging commitment to justice for poor persons everywhere.

And Kirkpatrick, unlike most of our nation’s political leaders, has gone on to offer these reflections, which are fully consistent with our own denomination’s policy statements. He reminds us that the global economic disparities between rich and poor are caused by the economic system that’s dominated by our nation and its corporations and that these disparities are not just “some problem somewhere” but are problems that are destroying the fabric of justice throughout our world and that are destroying churches’ ability to proclaim the good news of Christ throughout our world.

And Kirkpatrick also, unlike most of our nation’s political leaders, has called on his fellow Americans “to live more simply, to exercise better stewardship, to resist consumerism and to work together to change the world. Me[, he said]? I’[d] been thinking about trading in my 10-year-old Honda. Now I’m going to drive that thing until it flat dies.”

Yes, Kirkpatrick is, I believe, an example of one of the spiritually healthy American religious leaders who are not causing God to weep. But what about our American political leaders?

Well, I believe that the living words of God found in the two lessons that our lectionary has prescribed for today—I believe that these words have quite a direct and immediate application to the situation in which we here today find ourselves as we approach the time, just 44 days hence, when we will be asked to choose our political leaders prayerfully and wisely. I believe God wants to guide us to choose as our political leaders those who are most likely to make it possible for people everywhere in the world to lead “a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity,” to choose those who are most likely to help us in this nation avoid the kind of failure to live out God’s will for justice that’s lamented in Jeremiah.

Do you, too, believe that these lessons are speaking directly to us as, both now and over the next days, we prayerfully seek God’s wisdom for our choices in voting? I certainly pray so.

And of course, although we don’t yet know what choices the American people will make on November 2nd, I believe God already knows those outcomes. So I can’t help but wonder whether God, in anticipation of the choices we’ll make, is already rejoicing for America, or weeping.

Let us pray: