Year A, Proper 22, Isaiah 5.1-7, I’m tired, Boss.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ.  Amen

“The Green Mile” is a movie about death row, and in particular, about one John Coffey, a black man who was a miracle worker, who could save lives, but who was wrongly charged and convicted of murder.

In the end, as he accepts his fate to be executed, he makes the following statement to the sympathetic guard he’s come to know who offered to help him escape:

“I want it to be over and done with. I do.

I'm tired, boss. Tired of being on the road, lonely as a sparrow in the rain. I'm tired of never having me a buddy to be with... to tell me where we's going to, coming from, or why.

Mostly, I'm tired of people being ugly to each other. I'm tired of all the pain I feel and hear in the world... every day. There's too much of it. It's like pieces of glass in my head... all the time. Can you understand?”

Sometimes I feel like John Coffey.

I’m tired of all the pain I feel and hear in the world.

Just tired.

Sometimes the only thing I can do is turn off the news.

Not read the paper.

Nothing.

Just live each day, eating, working, sleeping, all the while trying to ignore what is going on in the world.

The struggle is it happens whether I pay attention or not.  It happens.

Life is hard enough to deal with as it is.

There is a certain amount of suffering that cannot be avoided.  There are natural disasters like hurricanes that will happen.  This has been a horrible year for that.

In other parts of the world there are different risks.

Earthquakes.

Tornadoes.

Volcanoes.

Drought.

Forest fires.

When you think about it there are risks and suffering that go with living just about anywhere.

And then there is the whole matter of disease.

Little children fighting for life.

People struck down in the prime of life.

And elderly people, battling long term chronic conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease that robs them of every last ounce of dignity that they had.

All this is unavoidable.

It will happen.

There is no choice about it.

What is so difficult to deal with is the suffering we inflict on each other.

“I’m tired of people being ugly to each other.”  Coffey says.  Just tired of people being ugly to each other.

Gun shots rain down from on high on the crowds in Las Vegas as a lone man, for no apparent reason, takes fifteen minutes to terrorize the world.

Dozens of people killed.

Hundreds wounded.

One event like that is hard enough to deal with.

But they just keep on happening.  One after another.  Senseless violence that deprives the innocent of life itself.  School children.  Church people.  People enjoying an evening of entertainment.

We’ve become numb to the pain and suffering.

11,000 people die each year by gunfire in our country.

‘Mostly, I'm tired of people being ugly to each other. I'm tired of all the pain I feel and hear in the world... every day.”

There is another statistic that disheartens me.

In 2013, 664,435 legal induced abortions were reported to Center for Disease Control from 49 reporting areas. The abortion rate for 2013 was 12.5 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44 years, and the abortion ratio was 200 abortions per 1,000 live births. 

1 in six babies conceived, is aborted.

I find that hard to believe.  But those are the statistics gathered not by anti-abortion activists, but by the Center for Disease Control of our government.

The most likely cause of death for each and every human being conceived in this country is not gun violence, or disease, but abortion.  Let that sink in for a moment.

One of the things that distresses me about our country is this:

We recognize, as constitutional rights, both the right to bear arms and the right to have an abortion.

That shooter in Los Vegas had a ‘right’ to purchase as many guns as he wanted to equip himself to carry out the mass murder he committed.

And we recognize as a right a woman’s ability to choose an abortion.

What we do not recognize as a right is the safety of people from gun violence.

What we do not recognize as a right is access to health care.

To put it bluntly, we are more committed as a nation to preserve the right to kill, than we are to preserve the right to live.

 “Mostly, I'm tired of people being ugly to each other. I'm tired of all the pain I feel and hear in the world... every day.”

I wonder how often God has thought that.

“Let me sing for my beloved
my love-song concerning his vineyard:

he expected it to yield grapes,
but it yielded wild grapes.”

“For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts
is the house of Israel,

and the people of Judah
are his pleasant planting;

he expected justice,
but saw bloodshed;

righteousness,
but heard a cry!”

Israel came under the judgment of God for their sins.

The judgment was that their nation would be defeated and the people would be carried into captivity.

Isaiah foretold of the judgment that was to come.

No doubt, he was not popular for doing so.

Most of the people in Israel during Isaiah’s time would have much preferred that he sing a song about God blessing Israel, not the song of the vineyard in which God judges Israel, and condemns it for their sins.

And are we any different?

We love to sing “God bless America” but when people talk about what is not right about our country we are upset.

“How dare someone say that God will judge America for its sins!”

I don’t know what the future holds.

I don’t know how much suffering our nation, and the nations of the world will endure.

Mostly I’m just tired of people being ugly with one another.

And I hope God is too.

Isaiah’s word to the people of Israel was not just a word of condemnation and judgment.

It was also a word of hope.

When God judges us, he does so for the sake of making us right.

Later on in Isaiah, the prophet writes:

6 The wolf shall live with the lamb,

the leopard shall lie down with the kid,

the calf and the lion and the fatling together,

and a little child shall lead them.

7 The cow and the bear shall graze,

their young shall lie down together;

and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

8 The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,

and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den.

9 They will not hurt or destroy

on all my holy mountain;

for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord

as the waters cover the sea.

Imagine that world.

Imagine a world in which every life that is conceived is welcomed as sacred, a gift from God.

Imagine a world in which no one would even consider picking up a weapon to harm another human being.

Imagine a world that devoted itself to enhancing and protecting all life as holy.

Imagine a world in which all children are loved and adored, and all elderly are respected and honored.

Imagine a world in which they do not hurt or destroy.

Imagine a world in which people are no longer ugly with one another.

Imagine a world in which each nation devotes as much effort to preserving and enhancing life as they now do on the military.

That’s the world God imagines when he says in Isaiah 2:4 “they shall beat their swords into plowshares,

and their spears into pruning hooks;

nation shall not lift up sword against nation,

neither shall they learn war any more.”

That’s the world God wants us to enjoy.

“Mostly, I'm tired of people being ugly to each other. I'm tired of all the pain I feel and hear in the world... every day. There's too much of it.”

I think that one of the most important questions of faith is whether or not we believe that the world can be any different than it is.

Do we believe that it is possible for people to give up killing, and devote themselves to living?

God does.

Amen

Year C, Proper 16, Isaiah 58:9b-14, Luke 13:10-17, Compassion, Healing, and the Kingdom of God.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  Amen

In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus’ first words were:

"The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news."

At the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, as recorded in the Gospel of Luke, he stood up in the synagogue in Nazareth and read from the prophet Isaiah:

18 "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

and recovery of sight to the blind,

to let the oppressed go free,

19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

What follows then is Jesus’ ministry in which the primary focus centers on the theme of the Kingdom of God, and doing Kingdom Work.

It was a different sort of campaign, compared to the political campaigns of today.  But make no mistake; it was a campaign, with powerful political ramifications.  In the end he would die, executed by the Roman governor, and the charge for which he was killed and which was written above him on the cross was simply this:

Jesus of Nazareth

King of the Jews

Back in 1976, an evangelical named Jim Wallis wrote a book titled “Agenda for a Biblical People” in which he explored the political and social ramifications of Christianity.  I am not prepared to go into the specifics of his work here, but the title alone makes a significant point, namely, that if we are to follow the Jesus of the Bible, there is an agenda that we must deal with, an agenda that has social and political implications.

As contemporary Christians, living in America, we are most comfortable with a reading of the Gospel that is not political, but rather focuses on the personal faith of the believer. 

We talk about wanting Jesus to be our “personal Lord and Savior” and ironically, fail to recognize that both “Lord” and “Savior” are political titles.  Likewise, the term “Messiah” speaks of God’s anointed, the King, and is a political statement about who Jesus is. . .

Alright, before I go any further, it’s time for a disclaimer.

I have used the “P” word, seven times so far.

The problem for many of us with using the “P” word from the pulpit is that we cannot separate the politics of the Kingdom of God, from the specific political ideologies of today. 

Now, just a reminder, I have not mentioned “THE HIM” of today’s politics, nor have I mentioned “THE HER”.

This is about Jesus’, his ministry and his mission.

It is not about THEM.

So bear with me.

When we look at the politics of today, there is a great divide.  On the one hand you have a group of people who believe that for us to succeed, we must return to the values and status of an earlier age, a time that is looked back upon with nostalgia and, yes, rose colored glasses.  For example, some remember fondly the America of their youth, the America of the ‘50s and ‘60s.  That was the golden age of American life, and the hope is that somehow we might recapture it.

The problem is that we tend to forget a number of things.  There were two wars:  Korea and Vietnam.  There was the Civil Rights movement.  Presidents were being assassinated, riots were tearing apart our cities, and in short, there were simply a lot of things going on that we would not want to return to. 

The other side of the political divide believes in an ideal future toward which we are moving, and we must continue to progress forward toward that end.  The solutions to today’s problems are not found somewhere in the past, but in a bold new vision of the future.

In contrast with both these views, when Jesus proclaims that the Kingdom of God is at hand he is talking about something that is both “now and not yet”.  The Kingdom of God is at one and the same time “at hand”, but also the future toward which God is leading us.

It is at hand, whenever we believe in the Good News and live lives worthy of the Gospel.

It is yet to come in the sense that it will not be fulfilled completely until that day when all the forces of evil are destroyed, including the final enemy, death.

This is the Kingdom of God.

And just as our political candidates of today have an agenda, a platform of proposals about which they are campaigning,

So also, there is an agenda for a Biblical people. Jesus actually had something to say about this world, and what it meant to live under the reign of God.

He had something to say.

And what he had to say is a comfort to the afflicted, and an affliction to the comfortable.

What is this agenda?

What shape does the Kingdom of God take?

What was Jesus about?

Obviously, we could spend a lot of time talking and debating about these questions, much more time than we have here.

But our lessons for today lift up two major themes that dominate Jesus ministry, his life and his teachings.

The first comes from our reading from the prophet Isaiah.

This passage from Isaiah is written at a time when the Israelites had just returned from their exile in Babylon.  The Kingdom was in a shambles.

The temple had been destroyed.

It was a time of rebuilding.

More than anything else, they longed for the glory days of Israel to return.  That time when David was King, when Solomon ruled with wisdom, and when Israel’s enemies had been defeated.

The message that Isaiah brought, however, was not about the glory of military conquest, or the grandeur of the palace and temple.  It was about the poor.

If Israel was to be great again, they would need to tend to the poor.

“If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,

if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,

then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.”

God has a special place in his heart for the poor and the outcast.

Jesus speaks about this in Matthew 25, where he talks about the final judgment of the nations.

'Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; 35 for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me. '

And when did we do that?

'Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me. '

There is a piece circulating around on Facebook these days in which the author declares that THE HIM and THE HER of today’s political campaigns are both making much ado about the plight of the middle class.

Jesus, on the other hand, makes much ado about the poor.

The Kingdom of God will be great, not because King David will be on the throne once again, but because the poor and the powerless will be lifted up, the outcast welcomed, the widow and the orphan cared for. 

The first will be last, and the last first.

This is the kingdom of God.

And secondly, from our Gospel lesson today, we hear the story of one of the many times that Jesus heals the sick.

Think about the life of Jesus and what he chose to do among us, during those years he was with us. 

He healed the sick.  Time and time again, he healed the sick. 

He taught about the kingdom of God, and he healed the sick.

"Woman, you are set free from your ailment."

And with those simple words, life triumphs over death, health over sickness, and the powers of evil, the demons that bind us, are defeated.  "The last enemy to be destroyed is death."  (1 Cor 15:24)

It is a cosmic war God is engaged in, this battle between life and death.  From that first moment that the Word was spoken, and life emerged from the dust of the earth, God has championed the cause of life over death.  It is not only a battle that God has chosen to fight, it is in the end, the only battle.  

And so you have this woman, bent over in pain, suffering for eighteen long years, "bound by Satan", a slave to this disease -- and Jesus takes notice.  That was the battle he chose to fight on that Sabbath.  One of many battles he would fight during his time on earth.  

We are not comfortable with the language of demons with respect to the illnesses that plague us.  Am I, a person who has numerous chronic conditions, possessed by demons?  Is someone, such as this woman, who likewise has a chronic health condition bound by Satan?  Would we classify cancer as an evil spirit?  Surely, we can approach such conditions with a much more scientifically sound explanation.  Our world view is changed.  

But something is lost when we dismiss the demonic in the disease.  We fail to recognize that the struggle we are engaged in is part of the larger cosmic battle between good and evil, life and death, which has been central to God's interaction with the world since the beginning.  

It is not a sideshow, that when Jesus walked this earth one of his primary activities was to cure the sick.  He wasn't just biding his time until that moment that his real work was to be done on the cross.  Such events as this one were not just minor skirmishes.  They were and remain central to the plan of salvation and the cosmic battle which will in the end see life triumph over death.  It's what God does.  It is Jesus mission.

In today’s political arena there is much debate about health care.  What role should government play?  What role should business play?  Is health care a right of every citizen of this country that should be provided by the government?  Is health care a commodity to be sold by businesses to those who can afford it?

In contrast to these questions, is another alternative.  Healing is a gift of the Spirit, and central to Jesus ministry and the ministry we all share in Christ Jesus.

Imagine a world in which neither government nor business was involved in health care because it is provided as a ministry by the Church of Christ. 

Actually, healing ministries have been a part of the Church’s ministry for a long time.

Sacred Heart and Deaconess Hospital are healing ministries of the Church.  Right? 

We sometimes lose sight of that.

It’s not that radical of a new idea that healing ministries be offered by the Church, and for all in need. 

But at the same time, it’s been a long time since the Church established hospitals to extend this ministry of healing, this ministry of Jesus, to all. 

Perhaps that is the Call that we have before us.

Perhaps that is the agenda that Jesus puts before the Church.

I don’t know if it’s realistic.

What I do know is that Jesus cares about the sick.

Enough so that he dedicated his ministry to this healing.

Jesus’ compassion for the poor and outcast,

Jesus’ commitment to heal all those in need,

These are two facets of the Kingdom of God.

And as such they are both our Holy Calling as the people of God, and they are a promise of God given to us.

As a Holy Calling, they are a challenge for us to go where Jesus went, to care for those whom Jesus cared for, and to be the hands of Jesus in our world, working the works that he worked.

As a promise, they are the assurance that no one, not us, not others, will be forgotten in the midst of the struggles of this life.  God cares and will continue to care, for you.

Amen

Year C, Proper 16, Luke 13:10-17, Healing: A cosmic battle

"Woman, you are set free from your ailment."

And with those simple words, life triumphs over death, health over sickness, and the powers of evil, the demons that bind us, are defeated.  "The last enemy to be destroyed is death."  (1 Cor 15:24)

It is a cosmic war God is engaged in.  This battle between life and death.  From that first moment that the Word was spoken, and life emerged from the dust of the earth, God has championed the cause of life over death.  It is not only a battle that God has chosen to fight, it is in the end, the only battle.  

And so you have this woman, bent over in pain, suffering for eighteen long years, "bound by Satan", a slave to this disease -- and Jesus takes notice.  That was the battle he chose to fight on that Sabbath.  One of many battles he would fight during his time on earth.  

We are not comfortable with the language of demons with respect to the illnesses that plague us.  Am I, a person who is bipolar, possessed by a demon?  Is someone, such as this woman, who likewise has a chronic health condition bound by Satan?  Would we classify cancer as an evil spirit?  Surely, we can approach such conditions with a much more scientifically sound explanation.  Our world view is changed.  

But something is lost when we dismiss the demonic in the disease.  We fail to recognize that the struggle we are engaged in is part of the larger cosmic battle between good and evil, life and death, that has been central to God's interaction with the world since the beginning.  

It is not a sideshow, that when Jesus walked this earth one of his primary activities was to cure the sick.  He wasn't just biding his time until that moment that his real work was to be done on the cross.  Such events as this one, were not just minor skirmishes.  They were and remain central to the plan of salvation and the cosmic battle which will in the end see life triumph over death.  It's what God does.  It is Jesus mission.  And the priority given to such healings trumps all religious niceties such as Sabbath laws.

That being said, what is the Christian's calling with respect to health and healing in our world?  Would it make a difference in our priorities if we all recognized this struggle as a central battlefront in God's redemptive work?  And how would that affect our contribution to the issues of healthcare in our country, and globally?

We can get lost in the political rhetoric of the day, and often as a church remain silent in the discourse, lest we cross the lines and become political, not religious.  A major political question of our day concerns the appropriate role of government in health care.  Related to that is whether providing health care should be a for profit enterprise.  Which of course, means that healing is available to those who can afford it.  But to allow these two questions to shape the debate over healthcare in our country is to defer to others what ought to be a central mission of the disciples of Christ.

One cannot follow Jesus, without encountering the Jesus who took the time to cure the sick and heal the lame.  Healing ministries are not a side show.  Healing is central to the redemptive work that is our calling as disciples of Jesus Christ.  

Imagine a world in which neither business nor government had any role in healthcare.  A situation made possible because the Church was fully engaged in this act of Christian charity.  Imagine a world in which healing ministries were central to the work of every parish.  A world in which we as the followers of Jesus gave the same priority to healing that he did.  

Healing is a spiritual gift that is central to the redemptive activity of God.

"Come, follow me."