Sermons from Park Hill Congregational UCC Denver, Colorado Rev. Dr. David Bahr [email protected] August 4, 2019 “Knowing God in an Era of Domestic Terrorism” Luke 12: 13-31 I’m going to read our gospel text today by combining three translations – the New Revised Standard Version, the Common English Bible, and The Message – along with a little interpretation of my own. Listen for the Word of God. Someone cried out from the crowd to Jesus, “Teacher, order my brother to give me my fair share of the family inheritance.” Jesus had a good comeback, “Friend, what makes you think it’s any of my business to be a judge or mediator for you? Then turning to the crowd, Jesus said, “Watch out! Guard yourself against all kinds of greed, because the quality of your life is not determined by your possessions.” (Or said another way,) “Life is not defined by what you have, even when you have a lot.” (Or, said another way,) “The good life does not consist in the abundance of stuff.” He then illustrated his point by telling them a parable: “The fields of a certain rich man produced an overly abundant crop. He said to himself, ‘What should I do? My barn is not big enough for this harvest.’ Then he said to himself, ‘This is what I’ll do: I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones. Then I’ll gather in all my grain and goods, enough for many years, and I’ll say to myself, ‘Self, you’ve done well. Take it easy! Eat, drink, and enjoy yourself.” Just then, God showed up and said, “Fool!” (All three translations use the word ‘fool!’) “Fool! Tonight, you will die.” (Not a judgement that he will die tonight because he’s a fool but rather a way to pose these questions:) Tonight you will die. And that barnful of grain? What good will that be to you then? Who will get all of that? (Then, in his concluding statement, Jesus said:) “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.” Or, “This is the way it will be for those who hoard things for themselves and aren’t rich toward God.” (The image of hoarding in this translation is powerful.) (But my favorite conclusion of the three,) “That’s what happens when you fill your barn with Self, and not with God.” “When you fill your barn with Self.” Note that in this parable, the rich man speaks of himself or to himself 13 times: He said to himself: What should I do. My barn is not big enough. Here’s what I will do: I’ll tear down my barns. I’ll gather in all my grain, and I’ll say to myself, “Self, “you’ve done well. You’ve got it made. Take it easy and have the time of your life.” So, Jesus just talked about greed and possessions and this rich guy’s self-centeredness: “Then he said to his disciples, ‘Therefore, I say to you, don’t worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. There is more to life than food and more to the body than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither plant nor harvest, they have no silo or barn, yet God feeds them. And you are worth so much more than birds! Who among you can add a single moment to your life by worrying?” (Or as some translations of the original text say, “Has anyone standing before the mirror ever gotten taller by so much as one inch by fussing about it?” which really gets to his point about the absurdity of worrying!) Jesus continues: “If you can’t do such a small thing, why worry about the rest? Notice how the lilies grow. They don’t wear themselves out with work, and they don’t spin cloth. But I say to you that even King Solomon in all his splendor wasn’t dressed as beautifully as one of these. If God dresses grass in the field so beautifully, even though it’s alive today and dead tomorrow, how much more will God do for you, you people of weak faith! Don’t chase after what you will eat and what you will drink. Stop worrying. All the nations of the world long for these things. God knows you need them. Instead, desire God’s kingdom and these things will be given to you as well.” Stop worrying. Dose Jesus knows us well, or what?! Fretting and fussing and stewing and agonizing about all kinds of things… Although I get what Jesus is saying here, I wish he would have clarified that we still need a job. Don’t we? We can easily miss that he is talking about greed. He asks: What do we spend our time chasing after? Or maybe I’m missing the point completely. Listen to Eugene Peterson’s translation of this last section: “What I’m trying to do here is get you to relax, not be so preoccupied with getting so you can respond to God’s giving. People who don’t know God and the way God works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how God works. Steep yourself in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met. Don’t be afraid of missing out. You’re my dearest friends. God wants to give you the very kingdom itself.” Quote: “People who don’t know God fuss over these things.” I’m not sure that’s a fair statement about people who do not believe in God. Don’t we all worry? I get plenty stressed out too. Yet I can identify. And so did Dr. King. Martin Luther King, Jr. told the story about how he grew up in the church.[1] The son of a preacher. The great-grandson of a preacher. The great-great-grandson of a preacher. His only brother and his uncle were preachers. Dr. King laughed that he didn’t have much of a choice but to go into the family business. But, he said, though the church was something very real to me, “it was kind of an inherited religion and I had never felt an experience with God” of my own. That changed when he moved to Montgomery to be the pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. Things were going well, but one day a year later, Rosa Parks decided she wasn’t going to give up her seat on the bus any more. The famous Montgomery Bus Boycott began, and Martin was asked to serve as its leader. We can’t forget that he was a young pastor in his 20s. Things went smoothly for the first few days. But then white people in Montgomery realized this boycott was not going to end any time soon. Among other things, “they started making nasty telephone calls,” and, he said, “it came to the point that some days more than 40 calls would come in, threatening my life, the life of my family, the life of my children.” He remained strong willed. But he said he would never forget coming home from a meeting one night very late, around midnight. His wife was sleeping. He had another early morning meeting, so he quietly got into bed next to her. But the phone rang. Who do you suppose it was? Who would it be today? It would be one of those ‘send her back’ chanting, MAGA-hat-wearing, ‘very fine people on both sides’ folks. That late night caller was their hooded granddaddy declaring: “We are tired of you and your mess. And if you aren’t out of this town in three days, we’re going to blow your brains out and blow up your house.” Particularly chilling words this morning after El Paso. But coming from the same domestic terrorism of white nationalists. Dr. King said, “I’d heard these things many times before, but for some reason, that night it really got to me.” He made some coffee and sat at the kitchen table thinking about his beautiful daughter, born just a month before. He thought about his dedicated, devoted, and loyal wife sleeping in the other room. And how both could be taken from him. How he could be taken from them. And at that moment, he said, “I got to the point that I couldn’t take it any longer.” That night, he said, all the theology and philosophy he had studied, all the theological and philosophical reasons for existence and the reality of sin and evil in the world had no meaning. Aristotle described God as the “Unmoved Mover.” Alfred North Whitehead described the “Principle of Concretion.” Spinoza defined God as the “Absolute Whole…” But, that night, such a God didn’t matter. Instead he discovered that religion had to become real to him. “I had to know God for myself. And so, I bowed over my cup of coffee and prayed, ‘Lord, I’m down here trying to do right. I think the cause we represent is right. But I am weak. I’m faltering. I’m losing my courage. And if people see me weak, they will begin to get weak.’” At that moment an inner voice said, Martin, “’Stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And lo, I will be with you even until the end of the world.’ And I knew in an instant that I would never be alone. God would never leave me. Never leave me alone.” In that moment of surrender, God became more than something to believe in. “I knew God as a rock in a weary land, shelter in a time of storms, water when I’m thirsty, bread in a starving land.” Sometimes we mainline Protestants do just as Dr. King had done. We talk about God, like Paul Tillich’s “Ground of Being” or C.S. Lewis’s “Inconsolable Longing, The Signature of Every Soul.” They’re all beautiful ideas, but detached. We may try to convince people that there is a God – that all we need to do is look at a galaxy of stars or stare at the mountains to believe there is a God. And it does takes faith to affirm that God exists. But does any of that matter if God remains a distant idea instead of a present reality? When Trump-inspired white nationalism manifests itself by yet another act of domestic terrorism, we don’t need explanations about the existence of God. We desperately need to know God. When justice is denied the Eric Garners of our world, the modern day victims of the lynching tree, we don’t need more clever ideas about God. Our hearts ache to know God. When watching the news no longer informs us but rather frightens us and depresses us and causes us to worry, fret, stew, and agonize… When fears for our future keep surging and our hopes keep disappearing, I need to know God “as our rock in this weary land, shelter during this time of storms, water because I’m thirsty and bread because we are starving.” That’s what I need. Perhaps you feel that way too. But not because we are looking for a way to escape. Some interpretations of Christianity, as we know, teach us to leave this dark and depressing world behind and claim what is ours at the pearly gates of a heaven with streets lined with gold. However, we are not looking for discharge from this world but rather for courage in the struggle for justice and peace. We are looking for meaning in the joy and cost of discipleship. Knowing God during this era of lies and deceptions and payoffs to porn stars means that we have the courage to stand up for truth and righteousness. To know God means we have the power to speak during a time of deafening silence. For if we desire the kingdom of God, all these things shall be added unto you. When we feel weak, when we’re faltering, when we’re losing courage, if we know God, the God who stands with the downtrodden and depressed, the hopeless and the oppressed, the vulnerable and the frightened, then we need not worry. The rich man in the parable was declared a fool because he failed to realize he was part of a community. That, like us all, we depend on each other. Who harvested those crops in the hot sun? Surely not him. Who built his barns? Certainly not him alone. Who sent the rain and the sun for his grain to grow? It’s hard to know God if we define success by what we have. Or if we are so full of self-assurance, certain that what we have is because we made it happen. That makes it really difficult to know God. But it’s not hard to know God:
God is personal. And, like Dr. King, in all those moments, God becomes especially real when, in personal and national despair, we pray: (Repeat after me)
[1] “Why Jesus Called a Man a Fool,” Sermon delivered at Mount Pisgah Missionary Baptist Church, August 27, 1967
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