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February 13, 2005
Our Hospitable God
Our Hospitable God
Psalm 8 / Isaiah 56: 3-8
Matthew 21: 12-17
February 13th, 2005
There is a line in the 8th Psalm that resonates with anyone who ponders the idea of the Creator of everything being interested in us. “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained, what is man that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that Thou visitest him?” I quote it in the old King James Version because those archaic words give added dignity to this amazing idea. It requires all the dignity I can muster.
It expresses the wonder I feel every morning when I go out to get the paper and look up at the sky before dawn, “How odd to be a preacher! How awkward that I should presume to speak for the One who created all that!” It is far from a false modesty that I should think this. It is a reasonable modesty that we should be amazed that the Creator of all that should take notice of us, weak, self-preoccupied bits of animated dust.
David is amazed, but there is no hint that it is condescension on God’s part.
It is one of the central themes in the Bible. Not only is God mindful of us, which means, aware that we’re here, but far from being condescension on God’s part, He delights to stoop to us. Furthermore, God loves the ones we’d consider the least valuable. I get this not from the 8th Psalm but from the passage in Isaiah we just heard.
In the prophet Isaiah we read the Lord’s encouragement to people to whom Israelites would barely condescend. Israel was a nation of relatives. It was one great family unit, an in-group of in-groups. To be an alien in Israel felt like what many people feel who come to America and hear about the “problem of illegal aliens.” Our Statue of Liberty proclaims, “Give me your tired, your poor,” but we’re clamping down on driver’s licenses being granted to the wretched refuse of other teeming shores. Illegal means, “You don’t belong here. It’s against the law that you are on our turf. Go home.” Thank God, my grandfather William didn’t hear that when he came here in 1924. Neither did some relative of yours, who made it possible for you to live as an American.
Isaiah reported to Israel’s in-groups that the Lord said, “Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord say, ‘The Lord will surely separate me from his people’.” Notice that we did not read, “the foreigner who has joined himself to Israel,” but “the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord.”
Here was fulfilled the blessing that God promised through Abraham, “In your seed all the nations of the earth will be blessed.” How? What blessing? By being welcome to the God who created heaven and earth. But Israel had forgotten their role in the grand scheme of making other peoples know they were welcome to God. It’s not hard to tell when you’re really welcome.
Actually, the laws God gave Israel regarding the treatment of aliens were very strict. Treat them even better than you would your own people. Why? Because remember when you were an alien in Egypt how they treated you!
The prophet doesn’t stop with welcoming foreigners. “Let not the eunuch say, ‘Behold, I am a dry tree’.” Eunuches were slaves who had been mutilated for the benefit of their masters. They were not sexually dangerous to women.
There was a particularly harsh but subtle prejudice against eunuchs in Israel because they could have no children. They had nobody to carry on their names. To be a “dry tree,” was a curse, an insult, and if you happened to of the priestly tribe, it meant you couldn’t go into the Temple.
This was a religiously enforced prejudice that was worse than the kind of segregation African Americans suffered in our land before Civil Rights became our rightful passion. It was worse because in our country segregated bus stations and restaurants and schools were offensive to many whites. But in Israel, everyone agreed to prejudice against the mutilated.
The Law of God given in the Book of Leviticus laid down the rules that forbad people mutilated in any way to come to the Temple. “He shall not come near the veil or approach the altar, because he has a blemish, that he may not profane my sanctuaries; for I am the Lord who sanctify them.”
But the prophet opened a new day for those who suffered segregation in any way in Israel. “Let NOT the eunuch say, ‘I am a dry tree’. For thus says the Lord: “To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name which shall not be cut off.”
But there was one hitch in this blessing. The alien and the mutilated had to accept a further blessing from God. They had to keep His Sabbaths. The prophet said Sabbaths rather than Sabbath because there was more than one kind of Sabbath. There was the Sabbath of the week, which insured one day of rest every seventh day. And there was the kind of Sabbath that relieved poverty in Israel and kept the fertility of the fields.
So this was the catch in God’s promise to people in Israel who were segregated and apt to be treated badly by home-grown Israelites: you’ve got to keep my Sabbaths. You’ve got to rest. Living healthfully is central to living faithfully before God.
The one thing God insisted was “You must rest on the Sabbath.” What a kind God we worship!
When Jesus came into the Temple the week before He would be tried there and crucified, He made a point of welcoming the blind and the lame where they were forbidden before. Strangely we don’t read of any protest at their being there. Then Jesus healed them, which meant they were no longer blind, no longer lame—no longer unwelcome.
Jesus was not practicing random acts of kindness. He was fulfilling prophecy intentionally. He had in mind the section of the Prophet Isaiah we listened to this morning. It is in this section that the Lord says, “With everlasting love I will have compassion on you.” And, “”Ho, every one who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat.” And, “For you shall go out in joy, and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.” And, “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”
Jesus brought to a focus in the Temple God’s purpose with humanity. The Apostle Paul spelled this out so clearly. Jesus Christ has broken down all the barriers, not only between us and God, but also between people. Instead of the old situation where foreigners and people with bodily defects were not welcome in Israel’s place of worship, there is now no distinction between slave and free, male and female, Jew and non-Jew. Indeed, Paul said we don’t even have to worry technically about Sabbaths. They were only a shadow of things to come. We have come out from the shadow and into the sunlight of God’s intentions.
The question I lay before us all then, is, what kind of life fulfills the sunlight of God’s intentions for us? The Apostle Paul presented the Christian manifesto of life in Romans 12. “I beseech you therefore brethren, in light of the mercy of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God. It’s the only reasonable kind of worship.”
When he said “bodies,” he made sure we don’t get caught up in some foggy notion of God claiming our minds and hearts, unseen parts of us. Our bodies are US. Present everything you see in the mirror to God. And the sum of all these bodies offered to God in gratitude is a living sacrifice—with amazing effects.
Tomorrow is Valentine Day, a day when we remember the wonderful chemistry of the heart between man and woman. It is natural, this instinct that makes us guys woozy over you girls. But love is not just giving vent to this wooziness. In fact, an awful lot of people mistake the chemistry for love. Chemistry soon fades, but love only gets more expressive with time. When you and I love someone, the greatest effort is offered with delight—and we don’t keep track of what we’ve given or done.
I began this morning showing how our gracious God welcomed the alien and the deformed people into the ranks of those He loved, but insisted that they respond by keeping the Sabbaths. Keeping the Sabbaths was essential to the identity of God’s people in ancient times.
Essential to our identity is responding to the love of God in Christ with a devotion that takes in our entire bodies. This is not a bondage. It frees us from the bondage of our wills—that don’t know what they want to do, but they crave, “Let me be me.” “I did it my way.” What a pathetic boast! As Christians, we claim a different outlook.
“Take my life and let it be consecrated Lord to Thee,” we sing. And this is a good song. We sing another good song often at Communion, “Love so amazing so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.” Such wonderful, motivating songs.
But what can we offer to demonstrate we have responded in fact to the kindness of God with our bodies?
Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world. It is a religion that requires a lot of Muslims. They must pray five times a day. Their women must dress in a certain way, no matter what the popular styles are. The most fanatical Muslims lose perspective and do awful things in their devotion. They respond to an idea of God that is demanding. Despite the outrageous terrorism Islam is growing. It stands for something.
The Mormons too are growing rapidly in numbers. The majority of their young people spend two years of their youth in mission work. They go, two by two, into our neighborhoods and spread their message. Mormons all tithe their incomes. Mormons attract a lot of Christians who find it a listless life with the grace of God requires nothing of them.
We say we believe in the grace of God. So there are no obligations put on us by our religion. As a consequence, we offer our optional service to God. We call the church a “volunteer-driven organization. And we keep track of what we do, and call ourselves good Christians if we reach some standard we think is higher than the average.
We politely refrain from speaking about Jesus. We participate as little or as much as we care to. And for some reason we fail to persuade people hungry for meaning in life that we have much to offer. And our numbers dwindle because optional Christianity ought to die.
But what if we responded differently, in fact, in keeping with how we sing and pray. What if out of sheer gratitude we sang quietly and lived out fervently, “Take my life and let it be consecrated Lord to Thee.” And you followed up those words with all the imagination and drive you have, so that in the church, as one after another of us brings our best to God, we become a seething center of loving, imaginative self-giving! When love motivates you, you can’t give enough. When gratitude moves you, you can’t do enough. The Christian faith is driven in its response to God by gratitude, by love. It should overwhelm the world. “What is the victory that overcomes the world, it is our faith,” John writes in his first little letter to Christians.
But we’re not overwhelming the world with our optional Christianity. And so I ask you, how might this change for you, and for us, so that we enjoy the blessings of God, and bring to our world the healing our gracious God delights to offer?
If I spelled out how I think this should look, it would only limit you. But I have put before the Session some ideas—as some of them have too. I hope we will rise as a congregation to the challenge as one by one-we offer our bodies to God. So I ask you, as I ask myself, how can we say “Thank you” to our hospitable God, our gracious God, our loving God? Ask that question, and start to answer it from body to body, from mind to mind, and from heart to heart. Then our possibilities are limitless. What good we might offer this troubled world, and find peace in our own hearts!
At times I’m overwhelmed to think of the possibilities before us. I pray that God, by His Holy Spirit will give us the energy to say thank you with all our bodies. And that this congregation will explode with the effects. Let us pray:
O Lord, Thank you for your welcome and for your hospitality. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson, Pastor
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at February 13, 2005 09:30 AM