The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for March 8, 2009

Texts: Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16/Mark 8:31-38

Title: “No Better Way?”

              The economy has reached such a state that renowned investor, Warren Buffett, was recently compelled to apologize to the shareholders for the poor performance of his company, Berkshire-Hathaway. A move without precedent for this investor who has earned billions for himself and his investors, Buffett acknowledged what lead economists have been telling us for the past several months.  The economy is facing stress of unprecedented dimensions.  Yet Buffett, though chastened by his recent inability to better anticipate economic trends, remains upbeat about the economy’s ability to right itself.

              Several months ago, a collection of Linda and my more recent financial statements in hand, I made an appointment to see our financial advisor. I went to him seeking assurance that our investment strategy was still valid. Perhaps some of you have done the same thing. Anticipating the issues I might be raising with him, our adviser produced a document that showed how the stock market had rebounded after the Great Depression, World War II, the Cuban missile crisis, 911, and other key events in our nation’s history. The information he produced demonstrated the resiliency of the economy and the profitability of a stock portfolio over the long term.

              So what is the source of confidence to which Buffett and our advisor lay claim?  Basically they subscribe to the belief that the fundamentals of the economy can be trusted.  They trust the capacity of people like us to work hard and innovate.  They believe the rewards our capitalist system so often has conferred on the risk takers and innovators will continue to inspire people to create markets for new products and services.

              What holds in economics holds in other areas of life as well.  There are fundamental beliefs to which you and I subscribe that go largely unchallenged. Despite the divisiveness we witness between our two political parties, we believe, along with Churchill for instance, that “democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”  We believe that people should be allowed to freely state their personal beliefs without fear of recrimination.  We believe that war should be the last resort when faced with potential adversaries.  We believe that all people should be given an opportunity to freely develop the particular gifts with which they have been endowed.                 

              To the list of fundamental beliefs to which we as citizens of this nation subscribe, there are other beliefs our religious commitments have fostered. Most basic of all is the belief that the world has its origins in God who, motivated by love, brought into existence all that is. We believe that God’s investment in the world and in us was so great that he voluntarily bound himself to us in a series of covenants, pledging himself to eternally fulfill all that he promised under the terms of those covenants.

            Though we humans proved repeatedly incapable of upholding our end of the covenants, God did not walk away; instead he did the extraordinary thing of providing a very special blessing for us.  God sent his Son, Jesus Christ, into the world to liberate us from the chains by which we were bound as a result of our sinfulness. 

              Today we find ourselves manacled by additional realities.  But in these anxious days as we watch the economy falter, there is one hope to which we can cleave. We can carry on knowing that despite a succession of bad earnings reports, widening joblessness, and bankruptcies, there are certain fundamentals that remain uncompromised.  People will continue to work hard, innovate, and most importantly believe in themselves and the institutions that oversee our common life.

           In times of stress it is to the fundamentals we look for reassurance. Throughout a tempestuous history that saw her tally many gains and many losses, in both good times and bad, Israel never surrendered the belief that she was the chosen of God. That she was chosen, heir of the covenants datable all the way back to Abraham, was fundamental.

          God’s covenant with Abraham to which we were introduced in our first lesson effectively gave birth to a nation.  The covenant was that decisive. But decisive, not only in creating a nation, it was also decisive in demonstrating that God through his covenant with Abraham was willing to be bound in a fundamental way to people of his creating.  God was willing to be bound by a series of rights and obligations under the covenant.  He was willing to hold himself accountable to a quid pro quo, “if you do this, I pledge to do this.”

               Though Israel made many bad choices, repeatedly turning her back on the series of covenants God established with the nation, Israel’s ability to assert her free will was never compromised. Even as Israel repeatedly abused the freedom she enjoyed under the covenants, God respected the choices she made, even the bad ones.  God would not force compliance with his will, but instead provided opportunity after opportunity for Israel to use her freedom in constructive rather than destructive ways. To help her along God sent a series of prophets, think of them as coaches, to guide her in the path she should walk. 

                 Even when the people ignored, abused, and even killed the prophets, God did not take revenge, instead, out of his love for the people, and his steadfast commitment to the covenants, he sent Israel more prophets. 

              There is something here, friends, we must take into account.  Either God was utterly foolish to carry on so, or he was utterly committed to us. The record, of course, speaks for itself; God is utterly committed to us, even to the extent that he is willing to be judged foolish to rescue his lost and wayward children.

               Foolish is as foolish does, and you might well judge God’s decision to send his Son into the world as a foolish act. Yet God went ahead anyway, demonstrating how committed he was to covenants, those fundamental understandings upon which his relationship with his people was structured.

               In Jesus, God reasserted the fundamentals upon which his relationship with Israel, and through Israel, the world, was established. In the decisive act of sending his only Son into our world he declared that nothing would ever negate or undermine his holy purposes for his creation. It was given to the evangelist John to summarize God’s intentions, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

                  In Jesus, God was making the boldest claim of all time. To those who have across the generations lived in fear that the world would somehow fall apart under the weight of wars and upheaval, or who have believed that the rogues and villains of a particular age would have the last say, or who have believed that the world would simple outgrow its religious commitments, [to all those God declares] the fundamentals are sound. The covenants God made with us remain in force.  Evil has been defeated. Jesus reigns.                        

                The disciples of Jesus believed in the fundamentals.  Reared under the covenants, they were nurtured in the belief that their race was chosen to announce God’s reign on earth. Accepting Jesus’ invitation to follow him, the conviction formed in their hearts, a conviction expressed by Peter immediately before he was chastised by Jesus in the lesson I read this morning, [the conviction formed in them] that Jesus was the Messiah sent by God to redeem his people.  

                 Their ordered world where the fundamentals applied would soon be shaken, radically shaken, however.  Jesus spoke of things that undermined their fundamentals, insofar, anyway, as their notion of the messiah was concerned. The disciples subscribed to the notion popularized in the traditions of the Jews that the messiah would appear as a great commanding figure who would secure Israel’s position as the first among the nations. The messiah they got, of course, was not the messiah they were expecting.

                And so “Jesus began to teach them [his disciples] that the Son of Man [referring to himself] must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”  He would be rejected by the very people who oversaw Israel’s religious life and traditions.  How can we be unsympathetic to Peter’s dismay in listening to Jesus?

                Minds do not easily accommodate the leap Jesus was asking his disciples to take. A suffering messiah was an oxymoron.

Jesus was out to teach some new fundamentals, and that would begin with his own role in fulfilling God’s will. The new fundamentals called for an uncompromising radical obedience that placed personal ends in complete subservience to God’s ends.

                The new fundamentals that Jesus taught in introducing himself to the world as the son of God recognizes the persistence of sin and guilt in our lives.  It recognizes that we maintain filters in our minds that filter out all that might undermine what we conceive to be in our best interests. We do all that we can to protect the self, convincing ourselves that its agendas and designs should be sovereign.

                Fully consistent with what God taught the generations preceding his coming, Jesus taught that all projects and aspirations that place God on the margin undermine our ability to live in the full freedom God in Christ is prepared to confer.

                “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for the sake of the gospel will save it.”  Disturbed at the notion of losing something we greatly value, who can blame us for holding back?  We hold back for our imaginations are too limited to envision what it might mean to so thoroughly lose ourselves in our love for God that we willingly surrender ourselves to his holy purposes.

                In seeking to have God and self simultaneously, neither God nor self are well served.  Both are deprived.  God is deprived because he is forced to witness our vain struggles to find fulfillment on our terms.  We are deprived because we struggle to find fulfillment on our terms.

                God’s grace is an elective that can either be accepted or rejected. To accept God’s grace is to accept the terms of the covenant he established with us in his son, Jesus Christ.  It is to yield ourselves in faith to the one who gave us life. To reject God’s grace is to reject the possibility that life can be more than it is right now.  

              As our economy continues its nosedive there is a conviction born of decades of experience that it will bounce back.  We remain optimistic in large part because the fundamentals of the economy are solid.

               Our faith in God is built on certain fundamentals that have been reinforced by a series of covenants God established with us over centuries. The last decisive covenant was established in the life, death, and resurrection of God’s own son.  In that act God surrendered what he cherished, that we might live into the freedom he cherished for us, a freedom sin and death can never ever compromise.

                The question naturally forms in the mind, “Was there no better way for God to secure our freedom than the death of his Son?” God alone can answer that question, but on this side of eternity we know that God’s ultimate sacrifice for us, demands more than a provisional response from us.  To quote the great hymn of the church, “love so amazing, so divine, demands, my life, my soul, my all.”

               PRAYER

              As you stood with Abraham, O God, stand with us.  Be for us the strength and shield you were for that chosen race in whose lineage we stand. Subject to the same foibles and failures that so consistently marked the lives of your children Israel, we pray your mercy upon us. By your grace we are led, let us not in our stubbornness, insist upon following our own designs. Heal those brokenness places in our lives, O God, and repair the divisions that keep us alienated one from another.               

              Lord of this house, abide with all who worship here today that in these few minutes we will pass together we make experience the renewing power of your Spirit.  For the distracted grant peace.  For the tempted grant strength. For the forlorn grant consolation. For the fearful grant courage.  For the disaffected and discouraged grant hope.  For the angry grant renewal.  For the confused grant clarity. 

                 Lord of this house, may those who worship in this house discover new ways to share the truth upon which this house is founded with those outside our doors.  May the ministries we undertake in your name faithfully and intelligently represent you to the world, and may those who participate in those ministries derive personal fulfillment from what they do. It is in labor that your word, O God, is spread. Forgive our idleness, our selfish ease, in the face of the great needs that exist in our world.

             Uphold all who seek justice for the marginalized and persecuted. Be with activists in Amnesty International, the Southern Poverty Resource Center, Doctors Without Borders, and other agencies who tirelessly strive to insure that all women and men may live free. Abide with those who maintain the international tribunals that prosecute those indicted for crimes against humanity, and other offenses to human dignity.

               O Christ, you came into the world without fanfare.  A child of humble birth, you shared our common lot, experiencing the joys and sorrows we ourselves experience.  Yet you did not sin, you did not strike back to avenge yourself against those who declared themselves your enemies. You bore the sins of the world uncomplaining. And you have called us to follow you, to take up our cross and follow you.

               Though you present us with a stern challenge, O Lord, you do not leave us to our devices. You are prepared to arm us with spiritual power to withstand all trials we may face. If we but trust in you, you in turn will supply our need. In the confidence of faith, the faith in which so many have stood before us, you equip us to do more than we can imagine.

                Fear is rampant, O God, as our nation, and world’s, financial crisis continues to deepen. In your mercy, hear our prayers for relief. Brace the most vulnerable, those who are most exposed and vulnerable; the unemployed, the underemployed, retirees whose savings are stretched to the limit, the ill who are forced to do without needed medications in order to buy food and pay rent. Sustain those who in this hour contemplate desperate measures, those who feel overwhelmed and unable to cope.

                 We pray for our city and those we have elected to lead us.  May they fulfill the responsibilities of their offices with integrity and wisdom.  Even as we pray for our city, we thank you for those who have come to our city on missions of relief and restoration.  Once again we acknowledge the many significant contributions our friends from New Jersey have made in the rehabilitation of our community. May your blessings enfold them.

               O God, author of grace, abide with those whom we now name, friends and family members who have special needs.