As you may have read in the January 2014 edition of the Broadcaster, we are inviting members and friends of Westy Pres to join us in reading the entire Bible in 2014.
As Julie Andrews sings in the Sound of Music, "Let's start from the very beginning." For the first week in 2014, let's read the following texts on Creation:
Genesis 1:1-2:4a
Genesis 2:4b-3
Job 38-41
Psalm 8
Psalm 104
Proverbs 8:22-31
For each text, ask yourself the following four questions:
1) What does this text say about God the creator?
2) What does this text say about the creation itself?
3) What does this text say about humanity?
4) What does this text say about humanity's response to God the creator?
Note that we've included six different texts on creation and not just the usual Genesis, chapter one. Each of these texts will help us answer the four questions in slightly different ways.
One advantage of committing to read through the entire Bible in a year is that it can give us a new appreciation for the witness of the entirety of scripture, and not just the favored passages that we go to again and again.
Please feel free to use the comments section of the blog to post questions or thoughts about each passage.
Sunday, December 29, 2013
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Standin' In the Need of Prayer
Text:
Luke 18:9-14
A Sermon by Jack Cabaness
Twenty-third
Sunday after Pentecost October
27, 2013
There’s
a story about a Sunday School teacher who taught the Parable of the Pharisee
and the Tax collector to her class, and then, without any apparent
self-awareness or sense of irony, ended the class by saying, “All right,
children. Let’s say a prayer, and
thank God that we’re not like that Pharisee.”[i]
It
is easier to hear this parable if we pretend that the Pharisee is not like
us. I must confess that I have my
own tendency to sugarcoat this parable.
It’s much easier for me to listen to this parable if I imagine that the
Pharisee is a real smug, holier-than-thou type,
who is always putting other
people down and that the tax collector is basically a good and humble person
who only got into the tax collecting business to pay for his wife’s medical
bills and to send their oldest child to college.
But
if we want to experience the full impact of this story that Jesus told,
we need to take it straight
up, without any sugar. The truth is
that the Pharisee really is a good man.
It’s the Pharisee who pays for his wife’s medical bills and the oldest
child’s college tuition and who still faithfully tithes. It’s the Pharisee who works two jobs to
get all the bills paid, and who still fasts during the lunch breaks.
And
it is the tax collector who drives up to the Temple Mount in his stretch
limousine, the floor of which is littered with mini bar bottles and other
evidence of the previous night’s excessive carousing--all of it, of course, at
tax payer expense.[ii]
What
makes this parable difficult to accept, what makes it truly shocking for Jesus
to say that the tax collector went home justified but the Pharisee did not, is
that the Pharisee really is every bit as good as he claims to be, and that the
tax collector really is every bit as bad as he claims to be.
We
sometimes imagine that the Pharisees were exceedingly legalistic, that for them
justification was mostly a matter of good works. We assume that there wasn’t much room for grace in their
theology. But biblical scholars
like E. P. Sanders and others have helped us to understand that those
stereotypes weren’t entirely accurate.[iii]
The
Pharisees were careful students of the scriptures. They could quote chapter and verse out of Deuteronomy, when
God is granting Israel the land of Canaan, particularly the part where the Lord
says, “Do not say to yourselves, it is because of our righteousness that God is
giving us the land to possess.”
(Deuteronomy 9:5ff) The
Pharisees understood themselves to be the chosen people, not because of any
inherent goodness on their part, but because of God’s grace. God had graced their lives so that they
might be a blessing to the whole world.
They knew that. They
understood that.
And
so when this Pharisee goes up to the temple to pray, he goes there in a spirit
of gratitude. But at that precise
moment, the stretch limousine pulls up to the Temple Mount and out stumbles the
tax collector. The tax collector
was the ultimate traitor, someone of Jewish birth who collaborated with Rome to
extort money from God’s people.
And the tax collector lived off the excess.
The
Pharisee’s mood darkens. But then
he remembers where he is. He is
standing in the Temple Mount, a powerful symbol of God’s enduring presence.
He may have even recalled a
passage of scripture from the prophet Joel:
You
will know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I am the Lord your
God—no other exists; never again will my people be put to shame. (Joel
2:27)
The Pharisee takes
heart. That tax collector standing
over there, that collaborator with Rome, does not have the ultimate power to
put God’s people to shame. Even
though the Pharisee has to work hard for everything he has, while the tax
collector lives a life of leisure and ease, there is coming a day when there
will be abundant rain and the threshing floor will be full and God’s people
will never be put to shame by the likes of that tax collector. (Joel 2:23-24, 27)
And
so the Pharisee prays, and in his prayer he gives thanks to God. I imagine the Pharisee casting a
sidelong glance at the tax collector and saying essentially, “There but for the
grace of God go I.” The Pharisee
is thankful that he has not betrayed those closest to him, and he is especially
thankful that, unlike the tax collector, he has not betrayed his entire people.
I
could be wrong in my portrayal of the Pharisee. After all, the Gospel writer Luke introduced this parable by
saying that “Jesus told this parable to certain people who had convinced
themselves that they were righteous and who looked on everyone else with
disgust.” (Luke 18:9) And when the Pharisee prays, he does
only pray about himself. Perhaps
he really is smug, arrogant, and self-congratulatory, vainly trying to conceal
his self-righteousness by addressing his prayer to God. Maybe sometimes even when we say,
“There but for the grace of God go I,” what we really mean is “Dear God, I
thank you that I am not like other people.”
But
if I listen only to the parable that Jesus told without the benefit of Luke’s
introduction, I hear the prayer of a faithful and frustrated man who resents
the way that his people have been treated. I hear the prayer of a man who did almost everything right. Almost. What he did wrong was that he presumed to know the limits of
God’s grace. He presumed that he
was more entitled, somehow more deserving of God’s grace, than the tax
collector. When the Pharisee casts
a sidelong glance at the tax collector and says essentially, “There but for the
grace of God go I,” he is saying more than he can possibly know.
Many
people attribute the saying “There but for the grace of God go I”
to the English Puritan John
Bradford. He was imprisoned in the
Tower of London during the reign of Mary Tudor, a.k.a. “Bloody Mary.” It was a time when many Protestants
were being put to death. John
would watch as other prisoners were taken to their death, and he would exclaim,
“There but for the grace of God goes John Bradford.”
But
for John Bradford, it was only a matter of timing. When he said, “There but for the grace of God goes John
Bradford,” he was not trying to imply that somehow his life was more graced
than someone else’s. He was simply
saying that by the grace of God, he, John Bradford, had another day to live. But eventually came that morning when
John Bradford himself was taken out of his cell in the Tower of London to the
place of public execution where he would be burned at the stake.[iv]
If
we say, “There but for the grace of God go I,” because we are pondering the
mysteries of life, that’s one thing.
When I was in college I had a friend who flew on Pam Am Flight #103 the
day before the tragic crash over Lockerbie, Scotland. “There but for the grace of God go I.” Even then, I don’t think we want to
take that famous saying too literally.
Do we really mean to imply that those who lost their lives in a plane
crash were outside the reach of God’s grace, or would we rather affirm with the
Apostle Paul that in life and in death we belong to God? (Romans
14:8)
And
if we are ever tempted to say “There but for the grace of God go I” because
somehow we think that we are better than someone else or somehow more deserving
of God’s grace than someone else, then we especially need to be careful. In that case, we haven’t understood
what grace means. Because the
moment that we think that we are entitled to grace, then it is no longer grace!
Our
chancel choir sang as their anthem last week the old gospel hymn “Standin’ in
the Need of Prayer.”
It’s
me, it’s me, it’s me, O Lord, standin’ in the need of prayer.
Not
my brother, not my sister, but it’s me, O Lord,
standin’
in the need of prayer.
Notice
that there is no comparison with the brother or the sister. The singer does not sing out, “Dear
God, I might mess up sometimes, but I’m so thankful that I’m not like my
brother.” That’s not the spirit of
the song!!
The
second verse is much like the first:
It’s
me, it’s me, it’s me, O Lord, standin’ in the need of prayer.
Not
the preacher, not the deacon, but it’s me, O Lord,
standin’
in the need of prayer.
Now, this particular preacher, I’ll tell you, is
standing in the need of prayer.
But please don’t presume that I am somehow more in need of prayer than
you are, and I won’t presume that about you, either.
The
proper prayer, the proper song, is simply:
It’s
Me, it’s Me, it’s Me, O Lord, standin’ in the need of prayer.
All
glory and praise be to our God.
Amen.
The Rev. Dr. Jack Cabaness, Pastor
Westminster Presbyterian Church
Westminster, Colorado
[i] Fred Craddock, Luke in the Interpretation Commentary Series (Louisville:
John Knox Press, 1990), 211.
[ii] I’m in debt to the late Robert Farrar Capon for the
creative anachronisms. See Robert
Farrar Capon, The Parables of Grace (Grand Rapids: Wm. B.
Eerdmans, 1988, 1996), 179.
[iii] E. P. Sanders makes this argument in his books such
as Jesus and Judaism and Paul
and Palestinian Judaism.
[iv] Bartlett’s Book of Quotations credits John Bradford with the saying “There but for
the grace of God go I.” I’ve
gleaned other facts about Bradford’s life slowly over the years, but I must
confess that I also relied on Wikipedia to check my memory. “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.”
Monday, September 30, 2013
With Eyes to See and Ears to Hear
Text:
Luke 16:19-31
A Sermon by Jack Cabaness
Nineteenth
Sunday after Pentecost
September
29, 2013
In the Gospels of Matthew,
Mark, and Luke, Jesus is quoted as saying that it’s easier for a camel to go
through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich person to enter the Kingdom
of God. Through the years that
saying has made many of Jesus’ followers squirm. Since at least the 15th century and possibly as
early as the 9th century, there was a popular story about the “Eye
of the Needle” gate in Jerusalem, which opened after the main gate had been
closed. A camel could only pass
through this smaller gate if it was stooped and had its baggage removed. There’s no evidence that such a gate
ever existed, but perhaps the story was invented because it sounds a lot less
daunting than trying to get a camel to pass through the eye of a sewing needle.
My
favorite take on the camel passing through the eye of the needle comes from a
National Lampoon cartoon from a few years ago. The cartoon was a spoof of an old
Medici rose window from the
cathedral in Florence. It depicts
a laughing camel leaping with ease through the eye of a needle. The caption beneath the cartoon reads,
“A recurring motif in works
commissioned by the wealthier patrons of Renaissance religious art.” The Latin inscription on the window itself reads, “Dives
vincet,” which is translated, “Wealth wins!”[i]
That
Latin word “Dives” is sometimes assumed to have been the Rich Man’s name, but
it wasn’t. It is simply a word
that means riches or wealth.
Nevertheless, through the years the fate of the Rich Man “Dives” has
captivated the imagination of Christian preachers.
The
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther, King, Jr. once offered his own spiritual diagnosis of
Dives at a gathering of Presbyterians in Montreat, North Carolina in August 1965. He began with an apology. He was supposed to have spoken the
night before, but he had been delayed because he was in Watts, Los Angeles,
meeting with government officials, trying to quell the riots there. In his speech, Dr. King challenged the
Presbyterians to take a clear, consistent stand against segregation. And then he turned to the issue of
poverty. He pointed the assembly
to the gospel text we just read this morning.
“There
is nothing in that parable,” King said, “that states that Dives went to hell
because he was rich. Jesus never
made a universal indictment against all wealth.” King named the story of the rich young ruler, but said that
in that story,when Jesus tells the man to go, sell all that he has,and give his
money to the poor, Jesus was “prescribing individual surgery, not setting forth
a universal diagnosis.”
King
returned to the Parable of Lazarus and Dives. King said, “Dives went to hell not because he was rich, but
because he passed by Lazarus every day and never really saw him. Dives went to hell because he allowed
Lazarus to become invisible, because he failed to use his wealth to bridge the
gulf that separated him from his brother Lazarus. In fact, he never realized that Lazarus was his brother.”
In
essence, King challenged the assembly to see the humanity in each other, even
if it seemed that they were viewing each other across a great chasm. There he was, an African-American
preacher, and a leader of the Civil Rights Movement, and there they were,a
gathering of nearly all white Presbyterians at Montreat.
King
went on to say, “I submit this is the challenge facing the church, to be as
concerned as our Christ about the least of these, our brothers and
sisters. And we must do it because
in the final analysis we are all to live together, rich and poor, lettered
and unlettered, tutored and
untutored. Somehow we are tied in
a single garmet of destiny,
caught in an inescapable
network of mutuality.”
King
concluded, “I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to
be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to
be. This is the way God made the
world … we must all learn to live together as brothers [and sisters] or we will
all perish as fools.”[ii]
If
Dr. King was right, and I believe that he was, today’s parable is about vision.
We have eyes to see, but do
we take the time to look and really notice the person in our line of sight?
Twenty-two-year-old
photographer Michael Pharaoh recently exhibited a series of photographs of the
homeless in Hollywood, California.
The photos were also shown in an online article for the Huffington Post.[iii] What struck me immediately about the
photographs were the subjects’ eyes.
In the comments one reader even criticized the photographer for “romanticizing
the homeless” in the way that he emphasized the eyes, as if the subjects were
models for glamour shots, but that was not my impression. I was immediately drawn in, and I
wanted to know each person’s story.
When
you encounter a homeless person in downtown Denver or even here in Westminster,
how often do you notice the eyes?
Do we take the time to make eye contact, or would we rather avoid eye
contact and maintain that chasm between us and them?
Years
ago I took a youth group from Kansas City to Chicago. We learned about homelessness in Chicago from a group called
the “Night Ministry.” We heard
about groups of homeless teenagers who would congregate at a Dunkin Donuts just
a few blocks from Wrigley Field.
The teens in our own youth group were encouraged to walk into business
establishments and ask permission to use the restroom just to see what kind of
reception they would get, and then try to imagine what it would be like if that
were the only way you could find access to a bathroom.
In
the debriefing that followed, the youth in our group asked honest, probing
questions about whether it was ever appropriate to give money. The advice that followed was whether
you choose to give money or not, look the person asking you in the eye, and say,
“yes” or “no.” Do not ignore. Do not pretend that the homeless person
asking you for money does not exist.
We
sometimes have homeless guests at our Third Thursday Community Dinners,
and I believe that we are
friendly and welcoming. But being
friendly and welcoming might not be enough to bridge the chasm. If we fall into the trap of relishing
the role of being a provider to someone else in need, we are not doing enough
to bridge the chasm. We risk
thinking that the other person is in debt to us, and we render ourselves
incapable of receiving the gifts that they have to offer us. But if we acknowledge each other’s
neediness, then we are able to receive the gifts that others are willing to
share and the chasm begins to close.
We
have eyes to see, but do we take the time to notice the person in our line of
sight? We also have ears to hear.
In
the parable the Rich Man begs Abraham to send Lazarus to warn the Rich Man’s
five brothers before it is too late.
But Abraham says, “No. They
have Moses and the Prophets. Let
them listen to them.” The
reference to Moses and the Prophets is a reference to Scripture. Moses refers to the five books of
Moses, the Torah: Genesis, Exodus,
Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
The Prophets refers to the prophetic books, such as Isaiah, Jeremiah,
and Amos.
It’s
possible that the Rich Man believed that he had listened to Moses and the
Prophets. After all, there are
verses in Deuteronomy that state that blessings result from obeying God and
curses result from disobeying God.
Most of the original hearers of Jesus’ parable would have assumed that
the Rich Man was blessed because of his faithfulness, and Lazarus was cursed
because of his disobedience.[iv]
But
the command to listen to Moses and the Prophets means listening to the entirety
of Moses and the Prophets. For
example, in Deuteronomy 15, there is this admonition:
"You
shall open wide your hand to your brothers and sisters, to the needy and
to the poor..." (Deut. 15:
7-11)
And
from the Prophet Isaiah there is this:
"What
does true fasting mean?" Is
it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked,
to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh? (Isaiah
58:6a, 7)
We
have ears to hear, but are we listening?
Genesis
15 makes mention of a servant of Abraham named Eliezer. Some rabbinic legends feature Eliezer
walking around the earth in disguise, reporting back to Abraham about how his
children are doing with the Torah’s prescriptions for taking care of the
widows, the orphans, and the poor.
Translate the Hebrew name Eliezer into Greek, and you end up with the
name Lazarus.
At
our monthly Community Dinners, each person walking through the door is given a
nametag. Look closely. One of these days one of those nametags
might say
“Eliezer” or “Lazarus.”
I’d
like to conclude with a prayer written by the late Ernest Campbell, who was a
Presbyterian pastor.
Let us pray.
We
pray today for those among us, and in the world around us, who are burdened not
by too little but by too much:
those
who have so much power that they have grown indifferent to the rights and claims
of others, and are fast becoming what they do not wish to be;
those
who have so much health that they cannot understand the sick or reckon adequately
with their own mortality;
those
who have so much wealth that they prize possessions more than people, and worry
into the night about losing what they have;
those
who have so much leisure that they move like driftwood on the surface of existence,
lacking any cause larger than themselves.
O
Thou who art able to save us from abundance or poverty, meet the strong in
their strength. Posses them in the
fullness of their powers, that what they have and what they are may be
conscripted for Thy service, wherein is peace.[v]
All
glory and praise be to our God.
Amen.
The Rev. Dr. Jack Cabaness, Pastor
Westminster Presbyterian Church
Westminster, Colorado
[i] From a sermon by Bob Dunham, preached at the
University Presbyterian Church, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, September 30,
2007.
[ii] From a sermon preached by Chris Tuttle on the Day 1
Network on September 29, 2013.
Chris Tuttle’s father found the August 1965 King speech in archives at
the Montreat Conference Center.
[iii] “Seven Gripping Photos of Homeless Los Angelenos Will
Change the Way You Look at a Stranger” in Huffpost Arts & Culture, www.HuffingtonPost.com,
September 23, 2013.
[iv] See especially Deuteronomy 28. See also an excellent sermon by
Lutheran pastor and preaching professor Barbara Lundblad, “Closing the Chasm,”
preached on the Day 1 Network, June 20, 2010.
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