@EUCC Sermons

In the early centuries of the Common Era, Israel was under foreign occupation. The Emperor of Rome, Caesar Augustus, ruled the known world. Caesar appointed Quirinius as governor of Syria, and gave him authority to rule over Israel. Quirinius’ main job was to keep the peace and maintain order, so that Rome’s international business affairs ran smoothly.

Under Quirinius, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. The wealthy one percent lived in urban areas and leased out their farmland and pastureland to tenant farmers who raised cash crops that largely benefited the land owners.

The tenant farmers who raised the rich people’s crops and livestock barely had anything to eat. Slaves sometimes fared better than tenant farmers, because their owners fed and housed them. Tenant farmers, by contrast, were on their own. If their crops failed and their livestock died, they starved unless others took pity and shared resources with them.

In addition to the harsh economic oppression that most peasants endured, the vast majority were also considered spiritually difficient compared with the Sadducees and Pharisees.

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This past week was a rough one for those whom the 6th Century BCE Prophet Jeremiah would have called “Bad Shepherds.” The national headlines are resplendent with bad actors--Bad Shepherds--this past week. Consider the following:

• The so-called “red wave” did not, as it turns out, materialize in the midterm elections. NPR’s political analysts attribute this November surprise to the fact that voters are angry about the Supreme Court's reversal of Roe v. Wade and they “remembered in November,” and turned out Pennsylvania and Arizona to elect moderate rather than extreme candidates. Meanwhile, voters in highly contested races such as Pennsylvania, Arizona, New Hampshire, Nevada, and Michigan rejected election-denying candidates up and down the ballot.

• As a result of these red losses in purple places, he-who-will-not-be-named did not get the whole-hearted support of his party, or the momentum that he and most pollsters and political parties had anticipated when he announced the launch of his 2024 campaign for President of the United States of America.

• Interestingly, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the the leading contender for the Republican nominee for President, watched a federal judge partially block a law that he had championed which was designed to limit the discussion of critical race theory in Florida schools and workplace training. (Critical race theory describes the evidence and effects of racism and privilege in our culture.)

• In addition, Elizabeth Holmes, founder of Theranos, a Silicon Valley startup, was sentenced, on Friday, to more than 11 years in prison for felony fraud. According to an article in Friday’s “Mercury News,” Holmes was found guilty in January of defrauding investors out of more than $144M—with total losses estimated at more than $800M.

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So much emphasis is placed on Matthew’s version of the Beatitudes that the uninitiated may not realize that there are two versions of the Beatitudes in the gospels. The other is found in Luke. And, though most New Testament scholars agree that they were developed from the same literary source commonly referred to as “Q,” the two renderings are somewhat different.

Matthew’s version of the Beatitudes, for example, lists eight blessings, while Luke’s version only lists four; and, Luke’s version couples each blessing with a curse. Note that Matthew 5:4 and Luke 6:25 both use the term “mourning” and describe circumstances that are juxtaposed. In Matthew, Jesus says: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted,” while in Luke, Jesus says that those who are laughing now will be mourning tomorrow.

Do you hear the contrast between the emotions in each gospel? In Matthew, Jesus juxtaposes mourning and comfort, while in Luke, he juxtaposes mourning and laughing.

Those who have never suffered a major loss, or the death of a loved one, might miss the irony that Jesus presents in the Beatitudes. But those of us who are familiar with suffering get it, because we have had our moments when it was very hard to imagine that there would ever be a day when we would experience comfort again, laugh again, or even just stop hurting so much as we were then, or even right now.

Similarly, if we, like Jesus’ first disciples who he addressed in Luke 6, have ever experienced the true cost of living our convictions, we may find it difficult to believe that God’s going to flip the script that’s unfolding in our lives, much less turn the world upside down, and right the wrongs like Mary sang about in Luke’s magnificat. Amen?

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This story about Zacchaeus is one of my favorites. It’s one of the first Bible stories that I remember hearing and studying. Perhaps you, like I, learned the children’s song and hand gestures that go with the song about this unlikely disciple.

Zaccheus was a wee, little man,

And a wee, little man was he.

He climbed up in a sycamore tree,

For the Lord he wanted to see.

And as the Savior past that way,

He looked up in the tree,

Spoken: And he said,"Zaccheus, you come down from there,"

Sung: for I’m going to your house today!

The call of Zacchaeus is among my favorite Bible stories because it is so scandalous that card carrying Christians--true believers--struggle with it. They--we--struggle because we have a hard time accepting God’s grace, especially when we deem it undeserved.

Ironically, in today’s passage and several others in the gospels, those who--on the surface--seem to need God’s grace and mercy the most are more able to readily embrace it than those who have always walked the so-called “straight and narrow.”

Notice, for example, how Luke explains in chapter 19 verse 7 that everyone in “the peanut gallery” heard Jesus tell Zacchaeus to come down from the sycamore tree, because he was going to his house that day. Rather than celebrating Jesus’ decision to visit with Zacchaeus, Jesus’ followers grumble and criticize him saying, "Jesus has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner."

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The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector addresses the question of personal righteousness. Since the term “righteousness” scares most of us and it’s not one that many use in daily conversation, I’ll explain that when people talk about righteousness in church, we are usually talking about the degree to which a person is right with God. And, whether we are right with God depends on what standard is applied.

Three different standards for righteousness are applied in today’s parable. The first is illustrated by the Pharisee. The second is exemplified by the Tax Collector. And the third is expressed in Jesus’ instructions to the disciples. I’ll explain each, and then suggest what these various approaches may imply for us.

The Pharisee was a good Jew. The benchmark for righteousness for Jews was the Hebrew Law, and the degree to which one adhered to the Law. According to Luke, the Pharisee in today’s parable exceeded the Law’s requirements, and he knew it. Consequently the Pharisee believed that he was morally superior to his peers, which inspired him to recite the rabbinic prayer, “I thank thee, O God, that I am not like the others...”

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Recently I had the opportunity to join a carpool with a group of women who were only fleetingly acquainted with each other. We began our trip with introductions. As sometimes happens, I turned out to be quite a novelty for one of the travelers. This was on account of my being a real live “lady” pastor.

That traveler’s name was Carolyn. She was also our carpool driver, a retired parochial teacher, and a member of a Roman Catholic Church in the East Bay. She spent most of our one-hour trip drilling me on every question that she had about Protestants.

Like me, she was raised by people who didn’t mix. Catholics and Protestants that is. Consequently, we grew up with a lot of misinformation about each other’s tradition. I was fortunate to be able to sort out fact from fiction during my college and seminary years. Carolyn, by contrast, used our carpool time to sort things out for herself.

One question that she asked me had to do with Protestant beliefs about grace. She seemed surprised to learn that very few of us subscribed to a belief in “cheap grace,” and most of us believe that confession is appropriate and necessary for reconciliation with God and neighbor.

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For the unfamiliar, I’ll explain that “bought the farm” is a phrase used by country people to describe a situation in which a person or pet has faced a mortal danger. For example, a farmer might say, “My dog just about ‘bought the farm today’” when a trucker drove by and the dog got close to the wheels, trying to run him off the place.

The reason this metaphor--”bought the farm”--is used by my people is that they know that it takes most farmers and ranchers their entire lives to pay off a mortgage on a piece of land large enough to raise a family, and some aren’t able to do it, on account of droughts, floods, tornadoes, blights, and swings in the price of land, insecticides, fertilizers, equipment, and the commodities market.

For city slickers in the Bay Area, buying a single family home is probably the closest approximation to buying a farm in the Midwest. Even though the housing market has slowed a smidge since its all-time high a year ago, the selling price of a single family home or condo in the Bay Area is still quite high. According to Zillow, the average selling price of a single family home in Hayward last month was $900,000.

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Passages like Jeremiah 4 are grim. It is the fear of hearing these types of texts — and sermons preached on them — that keeps some people away from churches. So thanks for showing up today, and for not bolting for the door just now.

If you stay with me, I’ll provide some biographical information about Jeremiah and some historical context for this passage, and then show you that neither the book of Jeremiah, this sermon, nor the world, ends in doom and gloom.

Jeremiah was the son of Hilkiah, a priest from Anathoth (Jer. 1:1), which was a village located in the hill country about a day’s walk north of the City of Jerusalem.

Jeremiah was a member of the tribe of Benjamin, the smallest of the twelve tribes of Israel, and he was the descendent of a priest whom King Solomon had banished from the royal city on account of his support for the king's rival.

For 25 years prior to the fall of Judah (the Southern Kingdom of Israel), Jeremiah repeatedly called the nation to repent of their reliance on military might, their worship of foreign gods and hollow rituals, and to renew their covenant with Yahweh, and to practice social justice so that there would be justice and peace in their land.

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If you’re a frequent flier here at Eden Church, you know that today’s message is the third in a series of four sermons based on the book of Jeremiah. For the benefit of our visitors, I’ll summarize the context in which today’s passage is set, and then dive into an exploration of the imagery and application of Jeremiah’s text for our lives.

Jeremiah was an Ancient Israelite prophet from a priestly lineage who lived and served in the early 6th century BCE. Jeremiah was born and raised in the Northern Kingdom of Israel, but was sent by God to the capital of Judea (which was Jerusalem) during the final years when King Josiah ruled.

The prophet had the unenviable job of telling the king things that he did not want to hear. Specifically, Jeremiah told King Josiah and his subjects to repent from their reliance on military might, their worship of foreign gods, and their inattention to the Law of Moses.

King Josiah and his minions were unmoved. They failed to change their ways, and as a result, they suffered God’s judgment. The Southern Kingdom was defeated by the Babylonians, the City of Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed, and most of the survivors were marched to Babylon, where they were forced into indentured servanthood by their captors for the next forty years.

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My grandparents were remarkably resourceful people. If they weren’t born with this quality, they clearly learned it from their parents and grandparents. All of my ancestors were farmers. Most were prompted by a farming crisis of one sort or another to leave Europe and emigrate to the US in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

According to family lore, my ancestors sold everything they had in order to pay their passage to the US. The entered the US at the port of Ellis Island, took trains to Chicago, laid over in Illinois for a time to raise money, and then headed west to rent and buy farmland in Iowa. There, they raised corn, cattle, hogs, chickens, and children, who were all above average.

Although my ancestors routinely worked with other relatives and neighbors to build barns, put up hay, and harvest crops, each family knew that they had to be relatively self-sufficient in order to survive the harsh weather of the rural Midwest.

My dad spent a lot of time in the late fall “winterizing our farm” which included stacking straw bales around the wells that provided water for the livestock and the house. He also piled bales around the house to insulate the foundation and keep the pipes in the basement from freezing up.

In the late summer we butchered a steer or a barrow and stored the meat in a giant freezer. We raised a kitchen garden and canned and froze the produce and kept those commodities, along with potatoes and other vegetables, in the root cellar under the house.

Like our neighbors, we had to be prepared to fend for ourselves and care for our livestock if we got snowed in, or suffered a major power outage in any season of the year. In times like these, we often leaned back on the old ways of our pioneer ancestors.

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Jeremiah is one of the best known and most important prophets in the Judeo-Chritsian faith; and yet the facts that he was called to this role, and that he embraced it were never gauranteed.

In today’s reading, Jeremiah explains that he was the son of Hilkiah, a priest from Anathoth, a village in the hill country located a day’s walk north of Jerusalem. He also explained that he was a prophet from the tribe of Benjamin, the smallest of the twelve tribes of Israel, and that he was a descendent of a priest whom King Solomon had banished from Jerusalem for supporting his rival.

In sum, Jeremiah was a country bumpkin with weak credentials, who was called to go down to the big city and tell the rich and powerful what his forebears had already said, and that they did not want to hear.

Specifically, young Jeremiah was called to scold King Solomon for worshiping foreign gods, and to insist that the king follow the first commandment: “I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other Gods before me.”

Jeremiah was also called to criticize the High Priests for all of their “chancel prancing,” rather than promoting social justice, and to warn King Solomon that unless he and the High Priests repented and changed their ways, the nation was doomed. (Jer. 7 & 8)

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The New Testament letter to the Hebrews was written during the later half of the first century AD. The author was an early apostle, who was writing to a fledgling Christian community living under Roman persecution. We don’t know the author’s name, and we’re not sure of where the recipients were living, though some say that they resided in Italy.

Some of the recipients of this epistle had their property confiscated and they had been thrown in jail and tortured on account of their affiliation with this fledgling Christian congregation. As a consequence, the faith of this congregation’s members had been profoundly shaken.

The apostle wrote to offer the members encouragement and support. Specifically, he encouraged them to draw strength from the example of the saints (i.e., their ancestors in the faith) and to embrace the vision of the New Jerusalem and to bring it into fruition through just and righteous actions.

Easy-peasy, right?

Wrong.

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The late, great Maria Harris, Professor of Religious Education, at one of my alma maters typically began each lecture by walking into the classroom, setting down her shoulder bag, and stating her thesis for the day. She never had to ask the class to quiet down. The second we students saw her walk in the door, we shut our mouths and pulled out our pens and pencils. No one wanted to miss a word that she said. For example, one day she walked into class, set down her belongings, and said; “Those who own the words own the world.” Then she went on to provide numerous examples, of the “haves” and the “have-nots.”

Living as we do in a multicultural community, it does not take much imagination to appreciate the truth of Maria’s thesis. Those who “own English” in the U.S. own the world. Every street sign, public service announcement, job application, medical form, and travel advisory in the U.S. is written in English.

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