Irvine United Congregational Church                                                         Rev. Paul Tellström

Epiphany 6C “The Sacred Box of Irvine”                                                   February 11, 2007

Hebrew Reading: Psalm 1, Jeremiah 17:5-10   (Additional Reading)              word count 1,926

Gospel: Luke 6:17-26

            Imagine that on this altar stood a box.  The box is rich and beautifully carved with symbols of our faith.  Jesus, whether giving the Sermon on the Mount that we heard a few weeks ago, or the Sermon on the Plain, is depicted on the front.  Symbols of love and sacrifice and forgiveness, are carved above the heads of Abraham and Sarah, of Moses, of Mary and Joseph, and all the saints of our tradition.  On the lid is carved the Golden Rule.

            Imagine that our beautifully carved box became famous for the depictions of truth as we understand them, and people came from miles around to see the Sacred Box of Irvine.  In the success and fame that has been brought to us, we too have become enamored of our sacred box, and believe that not only do we own it, but we believe that we alone possess the truth inside.

            I have a similar box with me today.  This is an antique container, and the tole-painting was done by my mother.  Bits and pieces of family life were placed inside, and I acquired it pretty much intact.  Family jewelry, notes, baptismal records, the small recorder that symbolized my mother’s attempt to be musical, my father’s childhood coin-collection in a small wicker basket, my grandmother’s music box, the wooden letter opener carved by great-uncle Gustaf, and so much more—the symbols of a family.  I keep it close to me, and although I don’t look inside it very often, it sits in the center of a long table at home.  It has become a metaphor that points to what being a part of a healthy and loving family means to me.  Because I own this physical metaphor, I do not believe that I possess the truth about “family” with a capital, “T”, but I certainly have a blueprint that guides me through experience, reason, and the metaphors that I have been given to align myself with these beliefs.

            I’ll come back to the Sacred Box of Irvine in a moment, but as you may be able to tell, I am working through today’s sermon in a different way.  I am doing this for two unrelated reasons:  First, I am enjoying being a part of a Bible study here at the church on Tuesday nights.  We had a dozen people here last week, and touched on some things that are very important in understanding the Bible that I want to talk about.

            Cursed and Blessed.  The good and the wicked.  These are some polar and absolute terms that come up in today’s lectionary readings, including a reading from Jeremiah. 

            Cursed and Blessed.  On the surface, it would seem that these are simple terms to understand, but I want to go a little further.

            From the time that this psalm was first heard, through the days when Jeremiah prophesied, to be blessed or cursed meant something different from what Jesus is talking about today in Luke.

            The world was a three layer cake, and God sat on a throne in the clouds looking down on a world that was the center of everything—a known world that was some three hundred square miles, sitting on pillars, under which Sheol existed and held the shades of the dead.  Everything came from God—all blessings were given to those whom he favored, and curses as well.  Was it fair?  It was not a question to ask—it was simply what was. 

The god of the family of Abraham was a tribal god.  Our faith ancestors were not monotheists, but monists.  They believed that Yahweh was their god, but they knew that other gods guided other peoples.

The prophet Jeremiah warned his people of the coming destruction of Jerusalem—they had turned from the ways of God, and they would pay the price.  Cursed and Blessed—he says—cursed are those who only trust in each other and not in God.  And drawing a reference from the first psalm,

“Blessed are those who trust in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD.  They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream.” 

And in the passage, God speaks, and we hear the ancient understanding of where all blessings and curses come from:

“I the LORD test the mind and search the heart, to give to all according to their ways, according to the fruit of their doings.”

History Lesson:  Jeremiah was right.  Jerusalem fell in 586 BC, and its people were taken as slaves to Babylon, whose people worshiped the god Baal.  In 539, Cyrus the Great of Persia defeated Babylon, and in a very gracious gesture, allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem to rebuild and repopulate.  It would also be very handy for Cyrus to have a grateful people nearby when he needed a safe trade route.

Cyrus the Great was a Zoroastrian—a follower of Zarathustra.  This would be the beginning of monotheism.  And, in this religion there existed a celestial battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil.  This is called dualism, and in a form of syncretism, which means the fusion of differing systems of belief, how the Jews would perceive God when they returned to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple would be very different.  This is when our faith tradition started to embrace monotheism.  This is where the three-layer cake started to change.  Now, only that which is good comes from God.  Heaven was above, and Hell was below (which is another understanding that is changing again, and in our lifetimes). God’s people would side with that which was good—the struggle for justice.

            Six-hundred years after the beginnings of that major shift in how our faith ancestors understood God, Jesus is standing on the plain speaking to his disciples.  Blessed and cursed—the same theme we hear in the other readings.  But, as one of our bible-study people pointed out, the whole notion is turned on its head.  Blessings are not given to those who have already found favor, instead: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.  “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.  “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.

And curses are not given to those who appear to be at the bottom of society, instead: “Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.”

In the Gospel of Matthew, written at about the same time as Luke, Jesus teaches and heals, and delivers these words to the masses in the Sermon on the Mount.  Both stories contain similar information and are distilled for the audience that will hear them.  The stories represent a viewpoint of the realm of God that has changed within the pages of the Bible.  The stories are understood differently by communities that are separated by the lens they use to see and understand them because of their economy, history, geography (such as Jesus’ sermon being placed on a hill or plain), political system, ideology, education, technology, or whatever it is that places us more than a few steps away from hearing, “Blessed are those…”

            The second reason I am working through these passages like this today has to do with having attended an event at Temple Bat Yahm on Thursday night, sponsored by Planned Parenthood, where pro-choice clergy were going to speak.  I wanted to hear what they had to say. 

            This is not a discussion on being pro-choice or pro-life.  But outside the event were loud and very angry protesters, armed with misinformation and graphic anti-abortion posters.  When the temple’s school had let out before the event, the protestors told the schoolchildren that anyone who went to their temple were just like the Nazis bent on exterminating the innocent, and that pig blood would be flowing that night in their temple.  Their behavior was uncivil.

            Inside the meeting, people struggled to express the various shades of gray that emerge around this very troubling moral issue from a faith perspective.  Questions were written down for the panelists (one of whom was Sarah Halverson) and the last question was brought in from the protestors outside.  The question was, “How can you be pro-choice and say you believe in God?”

            My response to that question would be, “You do not get to frame the argument.  You may disagree on grounds that I can respect and understand, but you do not to get to presume that your particular understanding is the Truth enshrined and all others fall short.”

            This brings me back to the Sacred Box of Irvine. 

            We come together as followers of the way called “Christian”.  We need some structure in order to do that.  And, we need to understand our symbols are all beautifully carved upon that structure.  Placed within that structure are the things, the ideas and the precepts that indicate what is inherent in our faith that makes us better people—people inclined to understand how Jesus could turn an idea on its head; making us servants instead of masters, and reminding us in doing so of whom it is that are truly blessed among us.

There is a subtle difference in how we come to our understanding of faith.  We don’t come to worship the box—which is just a container after all, that gives structure.  Sometimes we forget that even our ancestor’s understanding of faith has shifted as we evolve in how we grasp the Divine, and we try to make an absolute of the structure, because we can’t fully grasp the mystery that lies beyond.   

So, it is not the container, but the thing that it points to as a symbol that is important.  In the end, this is simply a box my family put family things into.  It is not my family.  But it is something that helps me to remember what they mean to me.

The rage of these protestors and their sense of smugness and self-righteousness undercut the moral force of their argument, and I respect the moral issue.

If your religion makes you judgmental and narrow, what does that say about how you come to know a God we define by the word love?  Would a carpenter and devout Jew named Jesus who stood on the plain with disciples, or on the mount in front of thousands preaching a gospel of the radically inclusive love of God recognize it as being created in his name and bearing his message?

If your faith makes you more open and more loving, then what are the fruits of that particular interpretation of faith?

Buddhists often speak of the teaching of the Buddha as “a finger pointing to the moon.” The metaphor helps guard against the mistake of thinking that being a Buddhist means believing in Buddhist teaching – that is, believing in the finger. As the metaphor implies, one is to see (and pay attention to) that to which the finger points.

To apply the metaphor to the Bible, the Bible is like a finger pointing to the moon. Christians sometimes make the mistake of thinking that being religious is about believing in the finger rather than seeing the religious life as a relationship to that to which the finger points.

The lesson I was reminded of this week is just that.  There was no face of Christian love in the shouts and the taunts.  The face of Christ was not there, but in the struggle to serve those for whom Jesus said, “Blessed are…”

Scripture Reading for Sunday, February 11, 2007 

Epiphany 6C

Psalm 1

Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers; but their delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law they meditate day and night.  They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither.  In all that they do, they prosper.  The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away.  Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; for the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.

Luke 6:17-26

He came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon.  They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured.  And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them.  Then he looked up at his disciples and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.  “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.  “Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man.  Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.  “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.  “Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. “Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.  “Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.

Jeremiah 17:5-10   (Additional Reading)

5 Thus says the LORD: Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from the LORD.  6 They shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when relief comes. They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.  7 Blessed are those who trust in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD.  8 They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.  9 The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse-- who can understand it?  10 I the LORD test the mind and search the heart, to give to all according to their ways, according to the fruit of their doings.