-1- A sermon delivered by The Rev. Timothy C. Ahrens, Senior Minister of the First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, Columbus, Ohio, Chaplain s Hour, Lakeside, the Chautauqua on Lake Erie, Tuesday, August 5, 2008, dedicated to the men and women of We Believe Ohio who work every day to make this a better place to live, and always to the glory of God! Blessed Are You When You Are Meek And Have A Deep Desire For What Is Right Luke 18,1-8; Acts 5, 38-39; Matthew 5, 5-7 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of each one of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our salvation. Amen. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Having started on the pathway to peace, we continue today. We learned that Step #1 is the poor in spirit (not the proud in spirit) will receive the Kingdom of Heaven. Step #2
-2- is that those who are mighty mourners will be strengthened. Meekness and hungering for righteousness are steps 3 and 4. Let us keep moving on the pathway to peace. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. (Matthew 5:5) In English, meek has come to mean weak, harmless, spiritless, a timid person who lives in constant fear of offending his fellow human beings. We have images of spineless people who melt when you look at them. I have yet to hear a parent say, One day I hope my son (my daughter) grows up to be meek. It is a shame that our English language does an injustice to this great Hebrew and Greek word. If we knew the true meaning of the word, we would all wish for our sons and our daughters to grow into meekness. The word best interprets into English as humble. Even as humble, humility is still the greatest hidden virtue of life lived in Christ. It means one who surrenders his or her will to God so fully, that God s will becomes his or her will. Moses was meek. Numbers 12:3 says of Moses, Now Moses was very meek, (read humble ) more so than any other man on earth. Jesus was meek. In Matthew 11:29, Jesus says, Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and meek (read humble) in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Meek Moses and meek Jesus. One of them defied the might of Egypt and led an entire nation out of slavery into freedom. The other one could not be cowed by the power of the Roman Empire and his followers ultimately
-3- turned the Roman world upside down. Neither one of them showed the slightest sign of being weak or harmless or spiritless. Both of them were fearless in the face of men and empires because each of them completely surrendered their will to God. Should we call them meek? Absolutely! (Drawn from C. Jordan s Sermon on the Mount, p. 24) Again, the blessed meek are those who surrender their will to God s will. When human beings tell them to cower or retreat, they only retreat and bow down to God, in prayer. They do not cower to the force of men. They listen to the still small voice of God saying what to do in difficult times. Peter was meek, too. When faced with questions and persecution in the Book of Acts 5:29, Peter says, It is our duty to obey God rather than men. Shortly after this declaration, Gameliel, the leader of the Sanhedrin says, Stay away from these fellows and leave them alone. Because if what they are doing is man s will it will fail. But, if it is God s will we won t be able to stop them. In fact, we will be fighting against God. (Acts 5:38-39) From Acts we learn: The meek cannot be stopped. They are the mighty meek. To fight the meek is to fight God. Since they are God s humble workhorses on earth, they inherit the earth. When I think of the mighty meek in our time, my mind goes to Mother Teresa of Calcutta. There is a story that plays itself out in Richard Attenborough s film on Mother Teresa. It happened in Beirut, Lebanon, during the war there in the 1980s.
-4- Mother Teresa arrived in Beirut seeking to save the children caught in the crossfire. She announced she was taking a caravan of trucks into the war zone in East Beirut the next day. Everyone said, No. She was insistent. The film shows not only the cease-fire that allowed her to go into the orphanages and hospitals to get the children out. It shows warriors on both sides helping her in her efforts. Mother Teresa was meek and mighty! When Jesus says, Blessed are the meek, he declares that those who live fully in the spirit of God will possess the land. In God s view, the earth ultimately belongs to the meek, not to the mighty. Truthfully, my friends, we will need mighty meek people to save this Earth! It is good that God is giving it to them! Because the mighty powerful people of the planet are not going to care for it they have not and they will not! You and I would be wise to teach our children to become meek, as we become meek as well. After all, we quote the mighty meek often enough: Moses, Jesus, Peter, St. Francis, Mother Teresa, Gandhi, Martin King, Einstein. Let us follow in their footsteps, gently placed in the sand of time. Meekness is deeply rooted in our Judeo-Christian faith. Growing out of the richness of Judaism, these two examples speak of those who surrender to God s will completely. The Talmud proclaims: When you humble yourself, God exalts you. When you pursue greatness, greatness flies away. When you fly from greatness, greatness seeks you out.
-5- When you force the moment, the moment drives you back. When you give way, the moment is yours. In Hasidic writings, we read of the dialogue between Rabbi Hurwitz and the Seer of Lublin. Rabbi Hurwitz, an opponent of the Seer of Lublin, once asked the Seer: How is it that so many flock to you? I am much more learned than you, yet they do not throng to me. The Tzaddik answered: I too am astounded that so many should come to one as insignificant as I, to hear God s word, instead of looking for it to you whose learning moves mountains. Perhaps this is one reason: they come to me because I am astonished that they come, and they do not come to you, because you are astonished that they do not come. (Found in Rabbi Chaim Stern s Day by Day, pp. 359-360). Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. The next step on the pathway to peace is so significant that Jesus brings us to it twice in the Sermon on the Mount here in Matthew 5:6 and again in Matthew 6:1-18. Blessed are they that hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled. (Matthew 5:6) Although most texts interpret this as hunger and thirsting for righteousness, the actual Greek word is justice. Take note: half way through the beatitudes, justice appears. Jesus calls people to recognize this: to live a just life in this
-6- world is to have lived life as one who identifies with those who are poor in spirit, those who mourn, and those who are meek. Having done this, we need to feel the unsettling depth of emptiness until the world is set right. These beatitudes, especially this beatitude, are both spiritual and social. Jesus message is clear: make sure you are not satisfied with yourself or the conditions of the world around you until the world is in balance. In prayer and in action, listen to the voice of God calling when God speaks to you of dis-ease, of dis-satisfaction. Let me give you a real life example. Upon visiting a friend recently, I commented upon how beautiful his home was. He responded, those to whom much has been given, much is expected in return. He used his beautiful home to serve the poor. He lived his blessings with Holy Dissatisfaction! Jesus is not saying be unhappy. Neither am I. Instead, what is being said is, as long as you have the poor with you, you must be hungry and thirst in your soul to set the world right. In Judaism, this is called Tikkun Olam a desire to heal a broken world. A psychologist once asked me what happiness would look like to me. I paused for a long time and answered, I will be happy when every child of God in this world is fed, when they are adequately clothed, when they have health care, when they have equal educational opportunities, when adults are paid a fair wage for the labor they offer their employers, when people go to sleep at night in a shelter they call my home then I will smile and say, Now I am happy. Do not believe, because the world suffers so, that I am
-7- miserable. I am not. I simply hunger and thirst for justice and righteousness such as this. As St. Augustine said, My heart is restless until it finds rest in thee, O Lord. Almost three years ago, God planted the seeds for We Believe Ohio in my restless soul. I awoke on an October Saturday morning in 2005 to read in the paper that Rod Parsley of World Harvest Church in Canal Winchester had stood on our statehouse steps and declared to a crowd of 1,000 people that he and they were locking, loading and firing on Ohio. He was ready to lead the charge to defeat the hordes of Hell (meaning you and me and everyone who didn t think like him). This upset me deeply. I asked my colleagues if they felt that reflected the faith and values they held in Christ. The answer was No. What has happened since then has grown out of a hungering and thirsting for justice that is deep within the souls of more than 400 pastors, priests, rabbis, imams and religious leaders across Ohio. It is a simple movement growing from a deep hunger and thirst for justice. These men and women, and thousands of others in their congregations, believe that God has called us to heal the world, not destroy everything in our path in the name of Jesus, Yahweh or Allah. We feel God s spirit calling us in this time and in this place to say No to a constant and growing perversion of our faith and our social values and to say Yes to shaping a just society in which education, housing, health care, and jobs are the central focus of faith communities and governments. Poverty is not, nor will it ever be, a family value. We hunger and thirst to be God s special agents of healing this world.
-8- Our very simple mission statement is this: We Believe Mission Statement We (believe we) are called as people of faith and loyal Americans to be united in dialogue and action to say: YES to justice for all; NO to prosperity for only a few; YES to diverse religious expression; NO to self-righteous certainty;yes to the common good; NO to discrimination against any of God s people; YES to the voice of religious traditions informing public policy; NO to crossing the lines that separate the institutions of Religion and Government. Our We Believe Values Statement As people of faith we believe that all people are created in the image of God. All people are both equal and equally deserving of justice As Americans we believe that our governments exist for the common good of a populace that is rich with religious and cultural diversity; Every citizen has a responsibility to participate in the political process of democracy; every citizen has the right to make political decisions freely, without coercion or threat from any individual, group, or institution. As American religious leaders we believe that God calls us to raise a prophetic voice that directly engages the powerful. Our prophetic voice must sound with the greatest conviction for the sake of people who are vulnerable or threatened. We Believe Ohio has now spread (with no money and only these core beliefs) to Colorado and, soon, I hope, to Kentucky. In Ohio, we have supported state issues on the ballot, lobbied in the legislature and most recently have been
-9- calling candidates and politicians in our Sleaze Free Ohio campaign to interact with one another around issues and not simply sling mud at one another. I ask you to join us if you are able and pray for us no matter what. In Luke 18:1-8, we meet another one of God s saints who comes from the place in which justice and righteousness meet. The pesky widow comes to the judge crying, Give me justice. Protect me! Although we don t know what the widow needs, it is not hard to guess. Since she is a widow, her case probably concerns her dead husband s estate. She could not inherit it, so the estate goes straight to her sons or her brother-in-law. She is allowed to live off it unless someone is trying to cheat her out of it. One can only imagine this is the case. This judge is not a respectable judge. By his own admission, he does not fear God or respect any person. He doesn t suffer as one who struggles to separate faith and politics! Maybe he thinks his disrespect for God and all people makes him a better judge more impartial, or something like that. Whatever the case, God doesn t get to him. People do not get to him. But, this widow gets to him, at least partially because she throws a mean right punch. Although the English does not show the humor, in the Greek, the judge uses a boxing term for the widow. He says, Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out with continued blows under the eye. He acts out of self-interest. His self-interest for
-10- responding to the widow is not equity or justice, but conceit. This judge does not want to walk around town with a black eye. He also doesn t want to make up stories about how he got it. Anyone seeing how the widow has been tearing into him day and night will know where he got it. Since he cannot stand that idea, the judge grants the widow justice simply to save his face. (Barbara Brown Taylor, Home By Another Way, Cowley Publications, Boston, Mass., 1999, p. 200) In telling this parable, Jesus was aware that this is the way justice is all too often granted. It is granted by judges, elected leaders, and others with power and money and the law on their side who feel bothered by widows, orphans, immigrants, children and the disenfranchised poor when they become organized. Such leaders will grant justice to save their faces. We would like to believe they do it for the right reasons and some do. But, when such leaders have no respect for God, for the law of Moses, or for people, it takes the organized and bothersome cry of those for whom persistence is their only path to break through injustice. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. put it this way: Justice delayed is justice denied. The pesky widow must have stopped by the King household, too! He knew her face and her voice. The difference is, he responded to her cries for the right reasons. Give me justice, the widow yelled at the judge. Do your job! Answer me now or answer me later, but I will be coming back every day and every night forever until you deal with me. So he dealt with her. But the passage doesn t end
-11- where justice is granted. At the end of the story, Jesus asks, And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth? You get the feeling that Jesus didn t know many persistent widows, or at least not enough of them! The prophets who hunger and stand up for justice and righteousness come to us as those who are widowed, those who are poor and those who speak from their heart and the pain of their existential life experience. The prophets speak to us as those who are worn out by rhetoric that produce little or no action, rhetoric which protects the rich and keeps a black eye from the rich. They meet us in unexpected places and awaken within us the voice of God. In his classic book, The Prophets, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel writes of the biblical prophets: What manner of man is the prophet? A student of philosophy who turns from the discourses of the great metaphysicians to the orations of the prophets may feel as if he were going from the realm of the sublime to the area of trivialities. Instead of dealing with timeless issues of being and becoming, of matter and form, of definitions and demonstrations, he is thrown into orations about widows, orphans, and the corruption of judges and affairs of the marketplace. Instead of showing us the way through the elegant mansions of the mind, the prophets take us to the slums... The things that horrified the prophets are even now daily occurrences all over the world... To us a single act of injustice cheating in business,
-12- exploitation of the poor is slight; to the prophets, a disaster. To us injustice is injurious to the welfare of people; to the prophets, it is deathblow to existence. Prophecy is the voice that God has lent to the silent agony, a voice to the plundered poor... it is a form of living, a crossing point of God and humanity. God is raging in the prophet s words. (Abraham J. Heschel, The Prophets, Harper and Row, New York, N.Y., 1962, pp.3-5). The passion of God is raging when the prophet speaks. Our God cannot be still when even one of God s beloved children is suffering. Why is it then that we are so amenable to stillness in the face of injustice? In each of our lives, there has been some prophet who has struck a nerve within us. As I look out at you, I know someone in your life has pushed you, prodded you and forced you to look at the world around you with new eyes. Some prophetic voice has bothered you and you haven t liked the prospect of having a black eye. I am sure the prophets of your life have believed in God and a democratic and just society. They know the truth of which Justice Louis Brandeis once spoke: We can have democracy or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few. We cannot have both. Knowing this, the prophets prick our consciences and push us to be engaged in the battle for democracy. In eulogizing William Sloane Coffin two years ago, Bill Moyers told a story he had heard first from Joseph Campbell. In the story, a man turns a corner and sees a brawl in the middle of
-13- the block. He runs right up to the fight and asks, Is this a private fight or can anyone get in? Democracy is everybody s fight. To quote Bill Coffin, Sign up, jump in, and fight on. Everyone feels a hungering and thirsting for what is right - at some time in their lives. For what do you hunger and thirst? Think about this. Feel the depth of this question. In the words of the Shaker Hymn, if the world was to Come round right what would it look like and feel like? Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness (and justice) for they shall be satisfied. Amen.