Nuggets, Shoulder Taps, and Wings   March 11, 2007

 

Isaiah 55:1-9

I Cor 10:1-13

Luke 13:1-9

 

            There was a pastor who got into the pulpit to preach his first sermon to his new congregation. He delivered a powerful, moving, stem-winder of a message, and the congregation seemed to appreciate it a great deal.

            The next Sunday, he got up and the congregation leaned forward in anticipation of what he had to say this time. To their confusion, he preached the very same sermon as week before, almost word for word. The congregation thought this was odd. Didn’t quite know what to make of it, but said nothing.

            The third Sunday, the pastor delivered the very same sermon. This time something had to be said, and a group of them approached him after the service. “What do you think you’re doing, pastor? You’ve given the same sermon three weeks in a row.”

            “Yes,” the pastor said, “and you’re going to keep hearing that sermon until you start listening and do what it says.”

 

            When you get into the middle of Lent and you’re trying to write two and three sermons a week, there is something very appealing about that pastor’s strategy. You begin to wonder if there is anything to say that you haven’t already said before.

            You fall into a panic wondering where the insight is going to come from. You ponder the readings, and pore over commentaries, and brainstorm, searching for something that will enlighten, inspire, comfort, challenge, or inform in an entirely fresh way. You search for some angle that will trigger in every person within range of your voice an AHA moment that inspires a passionate zeal for the work of the Lord. You search for something that has never been said before that will change lives.

 

            If you’re not careful, this can become an obsession that could make you go stark, raving crazy after awhile. Sometimes, for sanity’s sake, it’s awfully tempting to step back and just preach the same sermon for a few weeks until you see results.

 

            There were actually some professors at seminary who basically advocated that approach. Just preach the gospel, they said. The preacher’s job is simply to tell people that Jesus loves them. What if they don’t listen? Tell them again.

            Well, yeah, that solves my problem I guess, but I think it would make the congregation go stark, raving crazy after a few Sundays.

 

            Fortunately, right when I find myself in these dilemmas, the Bible shines a little light that shows a way out. God has a way of speaking through the Bible, in fact, that’s what it’s there for.

 

            And just as I’m tying myself in knots in this “can’t find anything new to say, can’t just say the same old thing” brain teaser, we have three Scripture readings that do something very interesting. They show us that God speaks to us in many ways, and that discovery, dogged repetition, and inspiration each have their place in proclaiming the word.

 

            First, we have the passage from 1 Corinthians, where Paul goes into a long and complicated argument relating to the issue of putting Christ to the test, with an analogy taken from the wilderness days of the Hebrew people. It’s not readily clear what he means that our ancestors were all under a cloud and were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. Or that they drank from a spiritual rock in the wilderness and that rock was Christ. We could go into a long and probably many-sided discussion of if and how God tests people, related to verse 13.

 

            Along with that, this first part of the Gospel takes us into some challenging ground. We could have a long and many-sided discussion of who deserves what in this world, and who gets what they deserve and what God has to do with it.

 

            And in fact, when these readings roll around the lectionary in 3 years, I’ll give it a go. These are readings that require digging.

            There are many verses and stories and metaphors in the Bible where the word of God is a deep vein of rich ore. There are entire sections of the Bible, such as the Sermon on the Mount, and even entire books, such as Joshua and Revelation, where the search for meaning takes you deep beneath the everyday world into the caverns of wisdom.

            We don’t get anything out of them by going on a quick jog through the passage or by scratching around on the surface. We do that and we’re likely to walk away with fool’s gold that shows a little glitter but in fact has little value.

 

            In readings like these, we have to probe, and dig, and clear away rocks and debris, and wrestle with the earth, and pull things out and subject them to fire and see what emerges. There is great wisdom to be found in these passages, tremendous insight to be gained but you really have to struggle in deep conversation with God, with full concentration, and a sharp eye out for connections.

 

            I often quote Joseph Sittler’s remark that when you dig into the Word, you never hit bottom. In some readings, the lode is so deep and so rich that never get to the bottom of them. The bread of life, the sufferings of Job, God’s never-ending struggle to reconcile the twin necessities of love and justice, Paul’s attempts to construct a coherent understanding of how God works, the dynamics of prayer, the theology of the cross.

            There are great riches to be found in these Bible passages. We’ll never mine all there is to be mined out these; we’ll never be able to say, “This is what this reading teaches us, nothing more, nothing less.” But we will find wisdom and understanding from these readings and it is always worth the effort of going after them. 

 

            Some times the job of a sermon is to mine nuggets.

 

            Then we have the second part of today’s Gospel reading: the parable of the Barren Fig Tree. These readings are not like the deep lodes of gold, and attempts to treat them the same is likely to be as messy as trying to eat jello with a knife.

            The Fig Tree parable is not rocket science. It is as simple and clear an illustration as you can find. A man had a fig tree planted in his garden. He has been waiting for it to produce fruit; it has not. You can give a tree so much time, so much attention, but there comes a time when it either produces what it is supposed to produce, or you get rid of it.

 

            The meaning is obvious. We’re not here on earth just to take up space. We’re not here just to soak up nutrients, to take whatever we can get from the world and not give anything back. We’re put on this earth for a reason—to do something.

 

            You’re not going to find great insights there. The story doesn’t tell us anything that we don’t already know; that we haven’t heard many times. There are all kinds of simple, straightforward concepts that the Bible teaches. Love God and your neighbor as yourself. Repent when you do wrong and ask for forgiveness. Forgive others as you have been forgiven. Take care of each other, especially the sick and the suffering. Work for justice. Care for creation. Be faithful to others. Beware the corrupting power of money and material comforts and short term pleasure. Pass the faith on to others. God so loved the world that he sent Jesus to die for us to show us what love is.

 

            There’s nothing new there for most of us. We’re not going to find great insights. We’ve heard these things many times before. We know they’re true. So why bother telling them?

 

            Because of human nature. For even though we know all these things and heartily agree with them and will even declare them to be at the heart of what we believe--at the center of our very existence--we lose sight of them in the heat of the moment, in the every day grind. These things are not hard-wired into the human brain. They are not the default settings that we’re issued at birth. We get distracted. We get caught up in our selves and our wants and our emotions and impulses.

 

            Simple as they are, these concepts have to be learned. And anything that can be learned can be forgotten through neglect. Many people in this country grew up speaking a language other than English, it was a part of who they were. Now after decades of neglect, they can no longer speak a word of it. The ability that was once such an important part of who they were has disappeared. They have gone too long without being reminded of that which they knew.

 

            This time of year everyone knows how to drive on snowy roads. Come next December, the very first snow storm will cause all kinds of misery for those who forgot in a few short months of decent road conditions how you have to drive in that kind of weather. It’s not that they will need to learn something knew, gain wonderful new insights in the art of driving. That first skid through the stop sign will jog the memory, remind them of what they already knew.

 

            Deep love between two people can fade if taken for granted. No matter how strong it has been, no matter how much a part of our being that love has been, it can be lost through neglect. Because even the strongest love is not a default setting. If I never offer evidence that I love another person, eventually that person forgets I love her. It’s not insight or some profound new level of love that needs to be demonstrated—just the reminder that what was is still there.

 

            That’s what these Bible passages are about. It isn’t news that God loves me. It isn’t news that money isn’t everything. It isn’t news that we are called here as Salem Lutheran church to be a fountain of healing for all who gather, overflowing into a river of compassion for the world. It isn’t news that I’m on this earth for a reason. It isn’t news that the key to peace and happiness is loving God with all my heart and soul and strength, and my neighbor as myself.

 

            But I need to hear that from time to time, because its not a default setting, and I can slip out it. Lent is a season of reminders. You are far more likely to hear sermons in Lent that tell you what you already know very well. Although we try to make them as fresh and compelling as possible, they may not be all that interesting or enlightening or insightful. Their purpose is to remind us of what we already know, and that’s an important thing.

           

            Sometimes the job of a sermon is nothing a tap on the shoulder.

 

            Unfortunately, many people outside the church, and too many who have grown up in the church think that tapping on the shoulder is all that the church does. That the pastor’s main function is to nag.

 

            Actually, digging for nuggets of insight and tapping people on the shoulder are the lesser of the three tasks of that come with exploring scripture. The most important is the one illustrated by the passage from Isaiah.

 

            This is a passage that lifts us up, that puts wings under us and carries us to a world that we cannot reach on our own—can barely imagine on our own. These are verses that fly us out of our shadowed lives of anxiety and stress, tension and violence, selfishness and greed, pain and sorrow, into a place where the air is clear and the sun is warm and the gentle breeze is clean and fresh. Where the peace of God passes all understanding, where we can run and not be weary, where the power of God’s love overwhelms us to the point of tears.

 

            Come to the waters, everyone who thirsts, and you that have no money, come and eat. Feast on wine and milk without money and without price. Eat what is good. Come to the cross all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest. Let the light of Christ make your darkness bright. Mount up on wings as eagles. I come that you may have life and have it more abundantly.

 

            The end of the passage explains exactly what the first part is doing.

 

            “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

            Nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.

            For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

           

            These verses are not telling us that the heavens are inaccessible, that God is unknowable, or that the thoughts of God are so far beyond our reach that we cannot begin to understand them.

            They are telling us that there a place far higher than any world we can fashion on our own, there are thoughts far higher than those that are most comfortable to human nature, there are joys far greater than any we can buy or seek out for ourselves. These passages lift us to the mysteries that are beyond us—the mysteries of the wine and bread, the mystery of baptismal water, the mystery of the spirit.

           

            It is the job of every sermon, at some point, to stand aside and let the wind of the hope blow through, to let God carry us up from sorrow or fear or anger or weariness to a higher place on the wings of the promise.

 

            Sometimes scripture is a journey of discovery. It invites us to be miners of the word, seeking and sifting the nuggets of wisdom that enrich our lives and the lives of all creation.

            Sometimes Scripture is journey to the past--the finger of reminder, tapping us on the shoulder--often gently, occasionally not so much--calling to mind what we have already learned, resetting our functions when we slip into the default human condition.

            Sometimes Scripture is journey to the sky. It blows us away on the wings of promise, raising us to a higher level of existence, where we can draw closer to the awesome love of God.

 

            As you encounter the word, experience it in all its forms, let Scripture take you where it will. Listen to the many ways in which God speaks, and in so doing experience the full range of the peace that passes all understanding in Christ Jesus.