CHRISTIANITY 101 February 2, 2014, The Fourth Sunday after Epiphany Micah 6: 1-3, 6-8; Matthew 5: 1-12 Michael L. Lindvall, The Brick Presbyterian Church in the City of New York Theme: The core of Christianity is the ethics of relationship. Let us pray: May your word in scripture burn in our hearts, O God. May it warm hearts grown cold, may it soften hearts grown hard, may it comfort troubled hearts, may it discomfort hearts fallen into too easy comfort. And now may the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. Amen. I don t often tell jokes in sermons, but I ve got one today. Once upon a time, a Chinese emperor gathered the greatest scholars in his kingdom and asked them to collect all the wisdom of the world and write it down so he could read it and be himself wise. They came back 10 years later with a library of 10 volumes all the wisdom of the world. The Emperor was aghast at the prospect of reading so many books; he told his experts to condense it to something more manageable. They came back five years later with a single volume. Still too long, the Emperor objected, Condense it. So the scholars disappeared for a few months and came back with a single page the wisdom of the world in 500 words. The testy Emperor was still not satisfied and sent them back to whittle it down yet more. They came back with one sentence. Now, when you tell this joke you can insert whatever single sentence you want at this point. But for it to work, that single sentence has to be unexpected, maybe ironic or even cynical. The version of the joke I heard had the scholars bring back this single sentence for the Emperor: the wisdom of the world reduced to eight words. There s no such thing as a free lunch. That may or may not be true on Wall Street, but I have to tell you that, at a spiritual level, it s precisely NOT true. With all my being, I trust that God loves me, God - 1 -
loves you, God loves this ragged old world simply because God loves, indeed God IS love. We don t earn it; we can t deserve it; it s a gift, it is free. This business of condensing things, summing wisdom up in a few words, radical digesting of truth, is both important and dangerous at the same time. It s important because people really do want and need the short of it. People ache for the bottom line; they want to know the core truth, the sum of it. On the other hand, condensation is dangerous because as soon as you condense, you run the risk of reductionism. You re in danger of oversimplifying that which is inherently complex. When you squeeze the truth down too small, it can become just that too small. Now that I have offered that caveat, I can tell you that the Bible often does condense truth down to manageable size. In fact, in today s service of worship there at least seven places where the core of the Christian faith is effectively condensed to a few sentences. You might want to look at your programs as I walk you through these instances of condensation in today s service. First, in words from the 15 th Psalm that are today s Call to Worship, the Psalmist asks a bottom line question, Oh Lord, who may abide in your tent? Condensed answer, Those who walk blamelessly and do what is right. Next, at the bottom of the left column of today s bulletin, there s The Reading of the Law. As a part of that rubric, Kira read two passages from the Bible, the Ten Commandments and Jesus Summary of the Law. You might say that the Ten Commandments are the short version of the 613 commandments traditionally counted in the Old Testament. That second passage Kira read is Jesus answer to a condensation question that he was asked one day, Teacher, he was asked, What is the greatest commandment in the Law? Jesus answers by reducing the entire Torah to two core commandments: Love God, Love others. Next, both of today s lectionary Bible readings, the first read by Isabella and the second read by her and sung by our Junior and Youth Choirs, are also essentially condensations. Each one slims truth down to a lean core. First, the Prophet Micah answers his own rhetorical keep-it-simple question, With what shall I come - 2 -
before the Lord? His ten-word answer? Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God. The second Bible passage we heard read and sung is the first part of Jesus Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount is Jesus description of how things ought to be in the world, that is to say the Kingdom of Heaven would look like. In the part of the Sermon on the Mount we heard today, Jesus blesses what he s fundamentally calling people to become. His list includes humility of sprit, mercy, purity of heart, zeal for peace and hunger for righteousness, that is, to do what is right. Finally, at the very end of this service, I m going to send you out into the world with the charge and blessing I use many if not most Sundays. It also is essentially a condensation of Christian faith. It s gleaned from several passages in the writings of the Apostle Paul: Hold fast to that which is good; return no one evil for evil; strengthen the faint-hearted, support the weak; help suffering; honor all people So. in just one Sunday morning service, there are no fewer than seven Christianity 101 summaries of the faith. Each one is shaped differently. Each employs distinct language. Each makes use of unique rhetoric, but here comes a condensation of this sermon they all have one thing in common. One thread runs through them all. Every one of them is about how you treat other human beings. Each of these condensations of Christian faith insists that at the hot core of our faith is the ethics of relationships. Mercy is not an add-on. Justice is not incidental. Compassion is not an option. Love is the hot core of the faith. Oh, what we believe matters; how we worship matters, the loveliness of the building matters, Bible studies matter, Sunday School matters. But nothing matters like how we actually treat other people. As the old camp song has it, They ll know we are Christians by our love. Hopefully. In the first sermon I ever preached at Brick, eleven-and-a-half years ago now, I felt that I owed it to you to let you know what your new minister thought was most important. So on the 8 th of September of 2002, I preached a sermon rather like this - 3 -
one. It was called The Bottom Line. I ended that sermon with a story that I m going to tell you again today. It s a story about what matters most. Ryan White was a teenager from Indiana who was infected with HIV from a blood transfusion. He developed AIDS and died in the 1990s. He co-wrote an autobiography in the years after his illness began and called it Ryan White: My Own Story. In one chapter, Ryan talks about going to his church. Then came Easter Sunday. Normally, at our church, the whole congregation says, Happy Easter! to each other in this way: Our minister steps forward to the front pew, shakes a few parishioners hands, and says, Peace be with you. Then those people turn to their neighbors and shake their hands, and so on, all the way to the back of the church, where we were sitting. The family in the pew in front of me turned around. I held out my hand to empty air. Other people s hands were moving every which way, in all directions away from me. No one in the whole church wanted to shake my hand and wish me peace on Easter. My family and I filed out of the church in silence... Grandpa said grimly, I m never going back. And he didn t. It wasn t over yet. As Mom, Andrea, and I turned out of the church parking lot, our transmission died in the middle of the traffic lane. Grandpa and Grandma had already gone, so Mom tried to flag down some other cars leaving church. But no one would stop. A half hour or so went by, and then finally a man in a truck pulled away from the auto parts store across the street, nosed up behind us, and pushed our car over to the side of the road. Our rescuer climbed out of his truck and asked Mom, Need a lift home? - 4 -
Mom took a deep breath and said, First, I better tell you who we are, and she did. The truck driver shrugged. Well, it doesn t matter, he said. He drove us home. A couple of months later he stopped by and invited me hang-gliding. A lot of things mattered in that church in Kokomo that Sunday 25 years ago. The flower arrangements mattered. The integrity of the liturgy mattered. How good the sermon was mattered. But nothing mattered nearly as much as how people acted toward that vulnerable child of God that day. Christianity 101: The physical condition of the church building is important. It matters that the church s budget is more-or-less balanced. Fine liturgy matters very much. Good music is so important. Faithful theology is critical... But nothing nothing but nothing matters like simply doing the right thing to other human beings: love, justice, mercy, kindness, compassion. Christianity 101. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. - 5 -