“What Comes Around”

Amos 8:1-12; Psalm 52; Col. 1:15-28[1]

If I ask you to name one person you consider to be the quintessential villain, whom would you name? In our day, I think we would be hard-pressed to get everyone to agree. Of course, there are many who would choose Osama Bin Laden. Others would probably name Ken Lay, former CEO of Enron.

It probably comes as no surprise that I would choose a movie character to represent the classic villain. The reason for that is I think a fictional character has the power to represent a larger problem. When you’re dealing with one person, it’s too easy to write off their wrongdoing. But when you consider a fictional character, we can see the wrongdoing in us all.

So my villain is Rankin Fitch, one of the main characters in the Film “Runaway Jury.” He’s the heart of modern corruption and injustice: a smooth jury consultant who uses ruthless tactics to empanel a jury favorable to his client. The case involves a widow who is suing a gun manufacturer because her husband was killed in an office massacre. What makes Fitch so evil is that he will stop at nothing to get the outcome he’s been handsomely paid to secure. He and his team illegally monitor every aspect of the trial, from beginning to end, via secret cameras and dishonest methods. During the jury selection, Fitch stands in front of an array of computer and television monitors, able to summon at will all the dirty little secrets of the prospective jurors to guarantee he will find people he can use to swing the vote his way.

What makes this villain so despicable is not only that he will stop at nothing to get what he wants, but that he has seemingly unlimited power and money to do so. Add to that the colossal arrogance of someone who has been flouting the law for years and getting away with it scot-free, and you’ve got yourself a quintessential villain. He represents all the people out there who have the power and the money to use people to get whatever they want, and will stop at nothing to get it.

But this villain of all villains runs into a dead end in this particular case. What he doesn’t count on is ever encountering someone who has the power to stop him from spreading his poison. That happens because two people, Nick and Marlee, have been stalking him for years. They successfully convince Fitch to pay them 15 million dollars to swing the jury his way, and then present him with the proof of wire transfer along with the promise that if he ever twists another jury they will see that the justice department gets a copy!

In the days of ancient Israel, the quintessential villain probably would have been someone named Doeg the Edomite. Doeg was the man who told Saul that David consulted with and received help from a priest named Ahimelech. But worse than that, when Saul’s own troops refused to kill Ahimelech because he was a priest, Doeg not only killed him, but also all the priests who were with him—in all 85 priests!

Part of the problem with this story is that we never learn what happens to him. We never get to see him “get what’s coming to him.” There’s no resolution to the tension that’s left when Doeg the Edomite seemingly gets away with a vicious crime. That’s why the title of Psalm 52 designates it as a response to his treachery. The Psalm addresses the problem of the wicked who abuse their power and wealth to get what they want—no matter what it takes. In the words of the prophet Amos, they are the ones who “trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land” (Amos 8:4). Psalm 52, like many others, promises those who “boast of mischief done against the godly,” who practice this kind of blatant injustice, that “what goes around comes around.”

What this Psalm reinforces is the conviction that a man like Doeg the Edomite will not get away with such blatant injustice without facing the consequences. It makes the same point as the film “Runaway Jury”: even the worst of villains who is apparently above the law will one day come face to face with his actions. It’s a truth that Martin Luther King, Jr. was fond of stating: “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

But as I’ve said before, the message of the gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ puts a different spin on the truth that “what goes around comes around.” The Apostle Paul tells us that Jesus, the image of the invisible God, the one in whom all the fullness of God dwells, the Lord of all thrones and dominions and rulers and powers, does not resolve the problem of injustice by “breaking down forever” the villains in this world, as the Psalmist promises. Jesus, the one who “holds all creation together” and is “supreme over all creation” (Col. 1:15, 17, NLT) will resolve the problem of injustice by reconciling all things to God. He undoes the evil of those who arrogantly presume themselves to be above the law by “making peace” through his death on the cross. “And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him” (Col. 1:21-22).

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[1] A sermon preached by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 7/22/07 at First Presbyterian Church, Dickinson, TX.

“Do This and Live”

Psalm 82; Luke 10:24-37[1]

I think that most people in our society are obsessed with the pursuit of happiness. It’s almost as if the Founding Fathers have convinced us that we have a fundamental right to pursue happiness. And if we’re not happy, we are relentless and even ruthless in seeking happiness—whether by changing our bodies or by changing our jobs or by changing our spouses.

But the consistent witness of the Scriptures is that the only way to find happiness in this life is to live in an authentic relationship with God. So far so good—we seem obsessed with that too, at times. But I think we have missed a vital aspect of what it means to live in friendship with God. We find it spelled out pretty clearly in our Psalm text for today—throughout the biblical witness, the one characteristic of what it means to be truly related to God is to practice justice.[2] Although that word sounds strange as a definition of what it means to be a Christian, it shouldn’t. From Deuteronomy to Amos to Jesus, it is the defining quality of those who want to know God!

For some reason, we just cannot get past the notion that “justice” equals “judgment,” which equals condemnation. God’s “justice” really has little to do with condemnation. God’s justice enhances the quality of life. God’s justice sets out to rescue the helpless and the hurting.[3] Even when it comes to those who may be guilty of wrong-doing, God’s justice comes to them as grace and mercy rather than condemnation![4]

Rather than setting up some sort of means of sorting out the good from the bad and assigning guilt and punishment, God’s justice is about living the life we were meant to live. It’s about the peace and mercy and love and kindness that make for “life abundant.”[5] In the Psalms, God’s justice means that the hungry are fed, the prisoners are set free, the blind receive their sight, those who are bowed down are lifted up, the “strangers” or resident immigrants have someone to watch over them, and the widows and orphans are supported.

That’s what Jesus was talking about when he preached about the kingdom of God. One contemporary preacher puts it this way: “There are only two ways you can enter the kingdom and experience its joy. One is to be among the poor, oppressed, bruised, blind, and brokenhearted; those to whom God comes as healing, comfort, justice, and freedom. The other way is to be among God’s people who are going to the poor, oppressed, bruised, blind, and brokenhearted and bringing God’s healing, comfort, justice, and freedom.”[6]

Jesus doesn’t let us off the hook when it comes to our pursuit of happiness. In our Gospel lesson a Jewish scribe, who was an expert in God’s torah, correctly answers Jesus’ question about what scripture teaches is the way to find life—to love God and to love another. But then I think Jesus shocked him and everybody else by saying, “Do this and you will live.” Can you believe it—Jesus says that if we want to find life, then we should actually do what God’s truth teaches us! Jesus doesn’t make our quest for happiness easier, he makes it harder!

Think about it: what’s easier—to check of a list of rules, or to truly love God and truly love your neighbor? But according to Jesus, that’s what it means to “find life”![7] Living the life that is truly life is living in relationship with God, and that means “to commit oneself wholly to God and to God’s way.”[8]

One of the best definitions of justice is to recognize “the intrinsic claim of every person to be considered a person.”[9] As the parable of the Good Samaritan shows us, we can only do that when we see ourselves in others, and see them in us.[10] We have to understand that there was no such thing as a “good” Samaritan for the Jewish people of Jesus’ day. Talking about a “good” Samaritan would be about like an “honest” liar. It’s an oxymoron: Samaritans were the “despised” Samaritans.

The “religious” people might have expected Jesus to tell them that they should love their neighbors, including the “hated” Samaritans. But Jesus turned the tables on them. The parable of the Good Samaritan doesn’t teach us to go out and help the outcasts! The hated Samaritan in Jesus’ parable is not the one in need of help. The despised one truly practices the justice that has always defined what it means to be rightly related to God!

Putting the justice of God’s kingdom into practice means more than just feeling sorry for the disenfranchised or giving money to causes that support the marginalized. It means becoming a fellowship that goes out to seek the Kingdom of God where Jesus said it would be—among the hungry and the homeless, among the aliens and the convicts. It means that we welcome and embrace the Christ who dwells among the outcasts.[11]

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[1] A sermon preached by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 7/15/07 at First Presbyterian Church, Dickinson, TX.

[2] J. Clinton McCann, Jr., A Theological Introduction to the Book of Psalms, 122-124.

[3] Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity, 139: “God cares about justice because the God of the Bible cares about suffering.”

[4] Borg, 127: “The opposite of God’s justice is not God’s mercy, but human injustice.”

[5] J. Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ, 121; Nicholas Wolferstorff, “Justice as a Condition of Authentic Liturgy,” Theology Today 48 (April, 1991) 16.

[6] Stephen Shoemaker, GodStories, 217–18; cf. Isaiah 1:16-17; James 1:27-28.

[7] Perry Yoder, “Liberated by Law,” Sojourners Magazine, September-October 1999 (Vol. 28, No. 5), 46.

[8] Patrick Miller, Deuteronomy, 213.

[9] Paul Tillich, Love, Power and Justice, 25, 36, 60.

[10] Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Healer, reprinted in Ministry and Spirituality, 134.

[11] Moltmann, Church in the Power of the Spirit, 355; J. David Pleins, The Psalms: Songs of Tragedy, Hope and Justice, 180.

“Mourning Into Dancing”

Psalm 30; Luke 10:1-11, 16-20[1]

When you look around at our world, there is much to be troubled about. As John Calvin put it, “we are harassed by such a variety of afflictions, that scarcely a day passes without some trouble or grief”![2] My favorite reformed theologian, Jürgen Moltmann, puts it in a more humorous, if more personal way. In the face of the promise that all things are new because of Jesus Christ, he says that all we have to do to confirm that “the old is still there and becoming always older” is look into the mirror![3] I think the pun about “becoming older” is intended!

And when we look around us, we find even more reasons to despair. Places like Iraq, Liberia, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Somalia, Afghanistan, are wracked with the violence of war and have been for years—in some places, for decades! In Darfur, where civil war has been going on for much of the last 50 years, rebel groups are being systematically exterminated by government-armed terrorists, just as the Tutsis were in Rwanda in the 90’s.

Those whose lives are not directly threatened by the violence of war are in many cases still threatened—either by the consequences of war, or by government corruption, or simply by crises in nature. Aid organizations estimate that 1/2 of the world’s population—roughly 3 billion people—live at the level of subsistence, and are only one drought or flood away from extinction. And in this country, thousands are just a paycheck from being destitute and homeless. And thousands more are homeless.

When you look around our world at the tragic suffering that is so widespread, at the injustice that is so prevalent, it may seem obscene to even talk about “dancing” with joy.[4] How can anyone in good conscience feel happy while so many are suffering so desperately? Sometimes we might get that feeling from Psalms of praise like our text for today. When you look at the tragedy around you—and you probably don’t have to look far—it seems almost delusional to say something like, “Sing praises to the Lord”!

But the praises of the psalms don’t stem from naïve delusions about life.[5] They come right out of the depth of pain and suffering. But they look at that pain and suffering from a different perspective. The Psalms of praise reflect the joy of redemption —or at least the joy of the hope of redemption. The Psalms of praise to God reflect the faith and the hope that “wonders have not ceased, that possibilities not yet dreamt of will happen, and that hope is an authentic stance.”[6]

The praises of the Psalms reflect a joy that is inspired by God—the confidence that God will never fail us or forsake us, but will be with us as a “very present help” no matter what our circumstances.[7] The praises of the Psalms reflect the joy that comes from the assurance that God will keep his promises and make all things right and restore everyone and everything to life.[8] The Psalms praise God because the hope and faith that assurance brings transforms our very lives. In a real sense, the hope and faith we learn from the Psalms is a major element in what in means to be “restored to life.” From that perspective, the praise of the Psalms reflects a joy over being restored to life; [9] it is the “laughter of the redeemed, the dance of the liberated”;[10] it is “rejoicing with the God who Himself has eternal joy and is eternal joy;”[11] it is “the deep confidence that God is good and that God’s goodness somehow prevails.”[12]

If you’re thinking that this sounds like the disciples’ joy over the presence of the kingdom of God in our Gospel lesson for today, I think you’re right. Jesus continually bore witness to the joy of the Kingdom—in his parables, in his proclamation of the Gospel, and in his life. Much of what the Gospel of Jesus the Christ represents is joy from the faith that God’s kingdom of grace and new life is already transforming this world. And that conviction frees us so that we can live joyfully now![13]

Think of the joy that Jesus must have felt when he said, “Blessed are the poor.” Some might wonder who in their right mind would say that! Or “blessed are you who mourn.” What’s so “blessed” about grief and sorrow? But Jesus wasn’t looking at life through rose-colored glasses. He was looking ahead with joy to God’s future, where the sorrowing would be comforted, the poor would be supplied with all their needs, and the oppressed would be set free to live the lives they were meant to live. He was looking for the day when God would turn all the mourning in the world into dancing with joy over the new life he has given us all. And he was filled with joy because he knew that God’s kingdom of grace and new life are already at work making all things new![14]

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[1] A sermon preached by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 7/8/07 at First Presbyterian Church, Dickinson, TX.

[2] John Calvin, Commentary on the Psalms, on Ps. 30:5, quoted in H.-J. Krauss, Psalms 1-50, 355.

[3] J. Moltmann, “Look, Everything Has Become New,” in The Gospel of Liberation, 35.

[4] J. Moltmann, “Joy in the Revolution of God,” in The Gospel of Liberation, 114.

[5] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics II:1, 654.

[6] Patrick D. Miller, “In Praise and Thanksgiving” Theology Today 45 (July 1988): 186; he calls this “joy in anticipation.”

[7] Krauss, Psalms 1-50, 357.

[8] J. L. Mays, Psalms, 140-41; cf. Henri Nouwen, Turn My Mourning Into Dancing, 31, where he says that only God can be the true source of our joy. Cf. also ibid., 18, 48.

[9] Walter J. Burghardt, S. J. “Gospel Joy,” The Living Pulpit (Oct-Dec 1996): 38-39.

[10] J. Moltmann, The Passion for Life: A Messianic Lifestyle, 72, 73, 74.

[11] Barth, Church Dogmatics II:1, 649.

[12] Nouwen, Mourning Into Dancing, 51.

[13] Moltmann, Church in the Power of the Spirit, 78, 80, 190-91; cf. also J. Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ, 97-98.

[14] Paul Tillich, “The Meaning of Joy,” in The New Being, 150; cf. J. Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 152-53.

“The Path of Life”

Psalm 16; Gal.5:13-25[1]

I can think of a no more fitting way to commemorate the values that led to the formation of the United States of America than by designating this day as “Immigration Sunday.” There are two reasons for this. First, we are a nation of immigrants, and that is part of what makes us great. My grandfather’s grandfather came here in 1852 looking for freedom after the democratic revolution in Germany failed. The man who runs our local bakery was one of the “boat people” who escaped from Vietnam after the fall of Saigon. Our housekeeper, who has been a part of Kristi’s family longer than me, is a newly naturalized citizen from Mexico. The man who runs our favorite local burger joint is a Presbyterian layman from Seoul, Korea. The physician who prescribed the machine that is making it possible for me to sleep for the first time in 15 years is from India. And our beautiful new niece was born in China. We are a nation of immigrants, and that is part of what makes us great!

Second, the Bible makes it clear that God is a God of wanderers—from Abram to David to Jesus himself, God has wandered with and in his people, who migrated out of desire or necessity. It should come as no surprise that hospitality is one of the prime expressions of faith in the Bible. God’s people were to practice hospitality and kindness because we all share the same Father in heaven.[2] The same is true for us today because in the stranger who is hungry and naked we encounter Christ.

Our Psalm text for the day is a song of trust in the Lord. What we have to understand, however, is that in the Psalms trust is more than just a feeling or a “spiritual” experience.[3] “Trust” is a commitment to way of life and a kind of conduct that is shaped by the commands of God. In Psalm 16, the psalmist alludes to the first commandment: “you shall have no other gods before me”! Here, genuine faith in God is expressed in a life that is committed wholly to God and that avoids the idolatry of anything that would claim one’s ultimate allegiance.[4]

The Psalmist expresses confidence that God will show him “the path of life” by rescuing him and protecting him from danger. There is, however, another sense in which God has shown him the path of life. The Psalmist alludes to fact that God has directed him to “the path of life” through God’s word (Ps. 16:7). From the perspective of biblical ethics, this extended sense of “the path of life” is defined by God’s truth and God’s justice : “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8). Throughout the Bible, a chief mark of the commitment to this “path of life” is compassion and kindness toward the most vulnerable: the orphan, the widow, and the alien.[5]

This is “the path of life”—it is the path of justice, of goodness, of love that makes life thrive. The kingdom of God represents a completely different set of values from those that we typically cherish: renouncing one’s rights instead of demanding them; instead of grasping for as much as we can get, giving all we have away for the benefit of others.[6]

I think Paul has this in mind when he speaks of being led by the Spirit of God to bear the “Fruit of the Spirit”: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. This is what a life that is under the guidance of the Spirit looks like. And the motto of such a life is: “you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but serve one another through love” (Galatians 5:13).

When I listen to what is being said about immigrants—whether documented or undocumented, it doesn’t look much like the fruit of the Spirit or the path of life. Much of what I hear is angry and bitter and selfish. But scripture, our confessions and our consciences remind us is that we as Christians cannot fail to consider immigrants—regardless of their legal situation—as fellow human beings created in the image of God, and as brothers and sisters in Christ.

One of our men will be leading us in “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” later in the service. Although the title and some of the words are a bit militaristic, don’t let that fool you. The hymn was written in 1861 by Julia Ward Howe, who was active in the anti-slavery cause.[7] It was used during the Civil War to inspire young men to fight for the cause of abolition. Granted, many of the soldiers who fought in the Union armies were not there because of any conscious commitment to freeing the slaves. But many were. And they sang that song because they believed that they were fighting for the cause of God’s justice. And what specifically were they fighting for? For the rights of people who had been brought here against their will and forced into slavery—people who were resident aliens far from their homelands.

I hope we can join in with him in singing this song as a way of committing ourselves afresh to God’s truth, which is the truth of love; and to God’s justice, which is the justice of compassion; and to God’s kingdom, which is a kingdom defined not by building fences but by giving oneself away in service to others.

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[1] A sermon preached by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 7/1/07 at First Presbyterian Church, Dickinson, TX.

[2] Book of Confessions, “The Confession of 1967”: “God has created the peoples of the earth to be one universal family.” (9.41)

[3] J. L. Mays, Psalms, 86.

[4] J. David Pleins, Psalms—Songs of Tragedy, Hope, and Justice, 51; H.-J. Krauss, Psalms 1-50, 236.

[5] See Exodus 22:21; 23:9; Leviticus 19:10, 33; 23:22; 24:22; Numbers 15:29; Deuteronomy 1:16; 24:17, 19, 21; 27:19; Jeremiah 7:6; 22:3; Ezekiel 22:7, 29; Zechariah 7:10; Malachi 3:5.

[6]J. Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 163-96; Hans Küng, The Christian Challenge: A Shortened Version of On Being A Christian, 293-312.

[7] See the article, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Battle_Hymn_of_the_Republic .