Jubilee

Leviticus 25: 8-12

Romans 5 6-11

 Matthew 26: 26-28

Jubilee

What would you get if you crossed Civil War Generals Jubal Early and Robert E. Lee? "Jubilee", of course.  This weekend England—the British Empire—is celebrating the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.  She has been monarch for 60 years.  Now traditionally, a Golden Jubilee celebrates 50 years of something, like a wedding anniversary, and a Diamond Jubilee celebrates 75 years of something, but for kings and queens an exception is made, so 60 years is the diamond celebration. That became official in 1897, the 60^th year of Queen Victoria’s reign, when it was decided by the powers that be in England that they needed a celebration. Things had not been going well for awhile there, so to bring about unity they celebrated her 60^th anniversary as Queen as the Diamond Jubilee.

Jubilee has since become a time of celebration, and we are tempted to think that Jubilee is a trip down memory lane; that Jubilee means looking backward and patting ourselves on our back for what we have done. For example, it is wonderful to celebrate 50 years of marriage.

But what is Jubilee all about anyway?  Well, it has biblical roots. We go back to the reading in Leviticus, chapter 25:

"Count off seven Sabbaths of years. Seven times seven years. So that the seven Sabbaths of years amount to a period of 49 years. Then have the trumpet sounded everywhere on the tenth day of the seventh month. On the day of Atonement sound the trumpet throughout your land. Consecrate the 50th year and proclaim liberty throughout the land and to all its inhabitants. It shall be a Jubilee for you. Each one of you is to return to his family property and each to his own clan. The fiftieth year shall be a Jubilee for you. Do not sow and do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the untended vines. For it is a Jubilee and it is to be holy for you. Eat only what is taken directly from the fields."

The Biblical concept of Jubilee has nothing to do with looking back, it has everything to do with looking forward to where God is leading.  Biblically, Jubilee was about starting over.

We, as a church, and as Christians, are trying to be biblical. God told the Israelites to mark off fifty years and to declare a Jubilee. He told them, when the 50th year rolls around, blow the trumpet, the ram’s horn called the Shofar, and do it on the Day of Atonement. Fifty years from then, hopefully, the temple would be built, and on the Day of Atonement, the great high priest on that one day out of the year would go into the Holy of Holies in the Temple and make sacrifice for the people, bringing them together once again with their Lord and Maker.  Jubilee would be a celebration of starting all over, with no baggage from the past.

Atonement means reconciliation, becoming one with God, being made whole with him. Jubilee and atonement or reconciliation mean starting over again. For us as Christians, every day is a day of atonement where through the once, for all, sufficient, perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ, you and I can come into the holy of holies and be restored, start all over whole once again in our relationship with God. For us as Christians, Communion Sundays are an extra special day of atonement, for it is on Sunday that we gather together as the body of Christ and confess our sin (as we will do here) and be assured of God's pardon and forgiveness and gracious love. Through Holy Communion we are made at one with Christ again.

There is no evidence in scripture or anywhere else, that the children of Israel ever kept the year of Jubilee! Why?

Jubilee was to consist of basically 3 things. Three things were to happen on that 50th year that would make year 51 radically different from year 49. The first thing was this:  Release-- release of all of the slaves and bond servants.  The second was Reversion. The land was to revert back to its original owners.  The third thing was that the land was to lay Fallow for a year. They were not to cultivate. They were only to eat what grew wild in the field.

Now do you understand why the Israelites balked at ever celebrating the year of Jubilee? Release all the slaves and servants?  How on earth would they be able to get the work done, and live as they had been living for 50 years?  Turn all your land back over to the families from whom you had purchased it with hard earned money? How stupid an idea. And then, not plant, not cultivate for a whole year?  Even more stupid.  After 50 years of living with slaves and servants on land you purchased, depending upon what you grew for your food and income, how could you possibly give it all up and trust God for a whole year to provide while knowing you have to start all over with nothing? 

When you have built your whole way of life on a system of your own doing, when you think you know who you are and what you are doing, especially when you think you are comfortable, secure, it is difficult—almost impossible—to think of the kind of commitment that Jubilee requires.  But it is exactly what Christ calls us to do—be willing to give up everything if needed to serve God. Commit to starting all over, trusting that God will provide all we need.

So this is a special day. It is Holy Communion Sunday, and Christ is calling us forward into a new life, into an exciting new future. God is calling us to Jubilee. To step out and do some radical things for Jesus Christ. And the big question before us this day is "Will we balk?" By God's grace, we will not balk, but we will move forward into Jubilee, to make a difference in this world for Jesus Christ.

This table is the table of Jubilee. This morning, as we come forward for communion, I want you to make that your radical act of Jubilee if you are a Christian - you are coming forward because you are giving your life to Christ, you are reverting your life back over to Him, you are releasing your life into His care, you are seeking renewal, but also I want you to come with these words in your heart, "Lord I come here to trust you with everything I am and everything I have. I come turning the deed of my life over to you as my radical act of Jubilee." And Christ has amazing plans in store for those who do.

Amen

Memories & Reconciliation

Joshua 4: 4-9

2 Timothy 1: 3-7

Matthew 26: 6-13

Memories and Reconciliation

"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."  (1863, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, Abraham Lincoln)

Over 620,000 American men, and some women, lost their lives in military service during the Civil War. More than 400,000 more were wounded and survived, many left with permanent disabling injuries.  At Gettysburg alone over 7000 were killed in the three days of battle, and another 27,000 wounded, many of whom would later die of their wounds.

Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, is a day of remembrance for those who have died in our nation's service. Memorial Day was officially proclaimed on 5 May 1868 by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, in his General Order No. 11, and was first observed on 30 May 1868, when flowers were placed on the graves of both Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery. There is also evidence that organized women's groups in the South were decorating graves before the end of the Civil War: a hymn published in 1867, "Kneel Where Our Loves are Sleeping" by Nella L. Sweet carried the dedication "To The Ladies of the South who are Decorating the Graves of the Confederate Dead.”

Although Waterloo N.Y. was officially declared the birthplace of Memorial Day by President Lyndon Johnson in May 1966, it's difficult to prove conclusively the origins of the day. It is more likely that it had many separate beginnings; each of those towns and every planned or spontaneous gathering of people to honor the war dead in the 1860's tapped into the general human need to honor our dead, each contributed honorably to the growing movement that culminated in Gen Logan giving his official proclamation in 1868.

There are many stories as to its actual beginnings, with over two dozen cities and towns laying claim to being the birthplace of Memorial Day. It is not important who was the very first, what is important is that Memorial Day was established. Memorial Day is not about division. It is about reconciliation; it is about coming together to honor those who gave their all.

At the end of the Civil War, when Robert E. Lee and his Army of Virginia tried to escape from Richmond and head south, ragged, starving, exhausted, and finally cut off by Grant and forced to surrender, there were many Confederate soldiers and officers who wanted to disperse into the forests and fight a guerrilla war. Had Robert E. Lee given the word they would have done so, and we might be a continent of many nation states, still fighting among each other. Certainly the war would have gone on for many years longer. But Lee would not hear of it. Instead he told his men to lay down their arms, go home, and become good citizens of the United States.

Had Ulysses S. Grant been a General seeking vengeance and the spoils of war, had Abraham Lincoln been a President that wanted to punish the defeated states, we would be a nation totally divided to this day. Guerrilla warfare surely would have gone on. Instead Grant with the approval of Lincoln, allowed the Confederate soldiers to go home with their horses, and with food rations, to be full citizens of the United States.   Lee, Lincoln, and Grant knew the only way to peace and healing, and future prosperity was through reconciliation.

After the war was over, and Lee was home, post-war southerners still viewed him as an idol and a hero. Because of his status, Lee had the ability to influence the actions and beliefs of many southerners. On one Sunday morning in Richmond, Lee exercised this power to show his acceptance of the Union victory and the need for the country to unify.

On this particular Sunday morning, Lee attended St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, V.A. The church service progressed as usual until it was time for communion. When the call to communion was made, an unknown black man rose from his pew in the back of the church and made the long walk down the aisle to the front of the church where he proceeded to kneel at the communion rail.

The members of the church were shocked by this act and remained seated, unsure of what to do. Then, Robert E. Lee rose from his pew. He strode down the center aisle and knelt down next to black man, and the two received communion together. After this act, the rest of the congregation followed suit and took communion.  Reconciliation.

General Sherman’s march to the sea through Georgia took only a month. His 100,000 man army devastated everything in its path, ruining towns and farms alike. But when the war ended. Sherman raised money and went back to Georgia where he worked to help rebuild the towns he had destroyed.  Reconciliation.

If ever there were a time since the Civil War that this nation of ours needs to remember that all men and women are created equal it is now. If ever there were a time since the Civil War that we need to remember the sacrifices men and women have made for the sake of unity for this nation, it is now. If ever there were a time since the Civil War that this nation, and we its people, need reconciliation, it is now. None of the soldiers we honor this Memorial Day for the sacrifice of their lives in the service of this country would want the divisiveness and hatred and violence that has become too much of a norm—divisiveness for the sake of just being divisive, and too often over petty issues when we need unity of purpose, and vision far beyond the next election, and beyond the next generation.

We owe the best of ourselves to a time we will never know, but will unalterably shape.  Our founding fathers disagreed about many things, often greatly and heatedly, but they were civil and they shared a vision, and around that vision they reached accord and then each man pledged his life and fortune to do all he could to see that vision become reality. They gave the best of themselves to us. Since then men and women have died to keep that vision alive and growing. It too often seems our memories are short, and instead of civility we have meanness of spirit.

Jesus in the upper room on that last night with his followers broke the bread and lifted the cup and said, “Do this in remembrance of me”.  He was not just speaking of the act of Communion. He was saying, remember all that I have taught you, all that I have shown you. Communion is to refresh our memories of why he lived, and why he died on the cross, so we might be reconciled with God.   Memorial Day is to refresh our memories as well, and gives us a chance to reconcile with our past, with each other, and with God.  

Lest we forget.

Trusting

2 Kings 2: 11-12

1 Corinthians 15: 1-8

John 17:6-19 and Luke 24:49-53

Trusting

Today is the end of Easter. Actually, Thursday was—40 days after Easter. Today we celebrate the Ascension of Jesus, when in the presence of  500 or more followers he gives them, and us, his command to go and make new followers, teaching them all that he taught, continuing his work to bring God’ kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. But we are told in Matthew’s Gospel that even though so many saw the risen Jesus on that day, some still did not believe. They could not place their trust in Christ.

I suspect that what makes ultimate trust possible is all the little entrustments that we learn to make all along the way. We hope wisdom is cumulative, and the more we learn to trust in matters small, the more graceful we become in our ultimate entrustments.

Arguably trust (or faith, if you prefer) is the most important resource we can develop. Without it, we would all hole up somewhere, with our only excursions beyond being those of absolute necessity. The obverse dimension of this is, of course, the cultivation of trust-worthiness. It is as our entrustment is vindicated that we develop the capacity for more of it. I don't know who taught you to swim, if ever you learned, but I do know that you would not have learned to survive in the water if there weren't a teacher present whom you trusted to make the learning environment a wholly safe one for you.

I don't know who taught you to ride your first two-wheel bicycle, but I do know that in all likelihood you would not have learned were it not for that trustworthy other who ran alongside of you, as you wobbled from side to side, on that day when the training wheels were first removed.

A child would not be able to take the first step onto a school bus and leave Mom and Dad behind were it not for the fact that, preceding the first school bus ride, there were firmly in place a series of successfully completed developmental tasks, reflective of the child's experience that others in her life have proved themselves trustworthy.

I don’t know who taught you how to drive, but there certainly had to be trust there too. In fact, the person teaching you probably placed a lot of trust in heaven above while doing it.

This reliance on the trustworthiness of others can eventually lead to the ability to trust ourselves -- our little inside voices, senses, and intuition—if we learn from others to place our trust beyond people. We can go off to unfamiliar territory, establish ourselves, and be successful.  Louise Kaplan has written beautifully about this process: "... we manage to hold together when the world lets us down. Although we feel temporarily abandoned and vulnerable, constancy prevails. We retain enough of a sense of our personal worth and the worth of others eventually to convert disenchantment and disappointment into challenge. Constancy enables us to bend with the shifting winds and still remain rooted to the earth that nourishes us."

Where does this constancy, this trust that we can face uncertainty and hard times, and hold together come from?  It comes from believing in God. God is the only real constant in the universe. If we allow God to be the source of our little inside voices and our intuition, we are able to go through life with a certainty that pushes aside the uncertainty of the future.

Just as we learn so many other things in life, we learn to believe in and trust God from the actions of others who believe in and trust God. It is the love of God extended to us by those who live their faith that bring us to Christ, especially at moments in our life when we need something beyond ourselves to hang on to.  It is because they show us they are holding on to something more than themselves that we want to know Christ.

There is a story by Hugh Price Hughes titled, "The City of Everywhere." In this story a man  arrives in a city one cold morning. As he gets off the train, he sees that the station is like any other station except for one thing everyone is barefoot. No one wears shoes.  He notices a barefoot cab driver. "Pardon me," he asks the driver, "I was just wondering why you don't wear shoes. Don't you believe in shoes?" "Sure we do," says the driver. "Why don't you wear them?" asks the man. "Ah, that's the question," the driver replies. "Why don't we wear shoes? Why don't we?"

At the hotel it is the same. The clerk, bell boys, everybody is barefoot. In the coffee shop he notices a nice looking gentleman at a table opposite him. He says, "I notice you aren't wearing any shoes. I wonder why? Don't you know about shoes? Don’t you believe in them?" The man replies, "Of course I know about shoes.""Then why don't you wear them?" asks the stranger. "Ah, that's the question," says the man. "Why don't we? Why don't we?"

After breakfast he walks out on the street in the snow but every person he sees is barefoot. He asks another man about it, and points out how shoes protect the feet from cold. The man says, "We know about shoes. See that building yonder? That is a shoe manufacturing plant. We are proud of that plant and every week we gather there to hear the man in charge tell about shoes and how wonderful they are.""Then why don't you wear shoes?" asks the stranger.

"Ah, that's the question," says the man.

So many people are like that. They know about God. They may even believe in God. They may even pray to God. They may even gather with others to hear about God. Then, why don't they trust in God? Ah, that's the question. Why don't they trust in God? . . . Why don't we?

Mothers

Proverbs 31

Romans 16: 1-4 and 13

John 19: 25-27

Mothers

This Sunday, the second Sunday in May, has been officially designated as “Mother’s Day” since May 9, 1914. But in England as far back as the 1600’s there has been a tradition of a “Mothering Sunday.” Originally born out of the Catholic celebrations of Mary, the Mother of Christ, the English “Mothering Sunday” allowed poor women who worked and lived as servants in wealthy households a day off to return home and be with their own families.

There is no way I can ever give a Mother’s Day sermon, or any other sermon, from the perspective of a mother.

In an old Peanuts strip, Peppermint Patty and Violet are reflecting on being a grandmother. After Patty declares that she would like to be a grandmother, Violet agrees and says it would be nice because all they have to do is “sit and rock” (not quite the case, is it?) The girls then decide that the trouble with being a grandmother is that first you have to be a wife and then a mother…and Violet sighs, “I know it…it’s all those preliminaries that get me!”

Author, speaker and sports enthusiast Pat Williams, in his book A Lifetime of Success, gives one of the best examples I know of a mother’s love. He tells of attending a very special Atlanta Braves’ baseball home opener on April 8, 1974. It was a night game against the Dodgers and it was a complete sellout. Up at the plate: the immortal Henry Aaron. On the line: Babe Ruth’s record of 714 career home runs. Aaron had tied the record and tonight he was aiming to break it.

Understand that this was nearly 40 years ago. An African‑American player was about to topple the great Babe Ruth--and a lot of people in the country didn’t like it. Aaron got a lot of mail that year--more than 930,000 letters in all, far more than any other person in the country. Most were fan letters--but about 100,000 of them were hate letters, some containing death threats.

Williams says he was on the edge of his seat when Dodgers pitcher Al Downing hurled the ball toward the plate. Aaron swung and connected. The crack of his bat echoed through the stands. The ball was gone. Home run. Babe Ruth’s record was shattered. The ballpark went nuts.

“As Aaron rounded second base,” says Williams, “a couple of teenagers--both white--jumped over the retaining wall and ran onto the field, chasing Aaron. For a moment, no one knew what they had in mind, but then it became clear: they were celebrating and cheering Aaron on. As Aaron crossed the plate, the dugout emptied as the Braves streamed onto the field to surround him, cheering and whooping it up. But amid all those ballplayers around Aaron was a short, sixty-eight‑year‑old black woman. She latched onto Aaron and wouldn’t let go of him. Henry Aaron turned and said to her, ‘Mom! What are you doing here?’”

“‘Baby,’ said the mother of the new home‑run king, ‘if they’re gonna get you,’ (thinking of the death threats Aaron had received) ‘they’ve gotta get me first!’”

That is the kind of  love a good mother has for her child. “If they’re gonna get you, they’ve gotta get me first!”

Most of the 16th chapter of Paul's letter to the Romans doesn’t do much for me. Read it and I think you will find it boring nothing more than a long presentation of people’s names, most of whom I can’t pronounce.  Over the year, however, I have discovered that there is more to it than I had first imagined. For example, it is interesting to note that of the twenty-six people who Paul singles out for his personal greeting, six were women.

 Now that strikes me as being rather interesting, since Paul has frequently gotten a bum rap for being a male chauvinist. I think it also shows us the tremendous influence that women had in the early church. Women at the time of Jesus and Paul, and for many centuries before and after, were of low status, seldom owning property, and always supposed to be under the domination of men. Even today, even here in the United States, there are institutions and some churches that believe women should have limited roles. In the male oriented first century Palestine, it is telling that Paul could not describe the church without mentioning the significant role of women.

Verse 13 of Romans chapter 16 is particularly interesting and it is one that scholars have struggled with over the centuries. Paul writes: "Give my greetings to Rufus, chosen in the Lord, and his mother and mine." Now this statement could be taken two ways. It could mean that Paul had two distinct women in mind--the mother of Rufus and his own personal mother. Or, he could be saying: "I salute Rufus and his mother, who is like a mother to me."

If that is what he meant, and most Biblical scholars agree that that is indeed what he meant, then it raises some interesting speculation. When and where did Paul meet Rufus’ mother? Did she nurse him through some serious illness? Did she receive him into her home for an extended stay during his missionary journeys? How did this woman and Paul form such a close bond that he refers to her fondly as being like his mother?  Whatever she did it had to be very important, and more than a one-time thing. She was not his biological mother, but she certainly helped nurture him, and cared for him in a very special way.

Mark tells us that Simon of Cyrene, the man who carried Jesus cross, had two sons: Alexander and Rufus. Was this the same Rufus to whom Paul was speaking? If that is true, his mother would be Simon of Syrene’s wife. No one knows for sure who this remarkable woman was who served as a mother figure for the great Paul, but it could have been. Tradition holds that it was.

I cannot imagine the emotions that ran through Mary’s mind as she watched her son on the cross. She had every reason to hate, to wish for revenge. Yet, hanging there, Jesus prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  I can only believe that his gentleness, his compassion, his willingness to forgive, were at least in part fostered by his mother’s love and values as she raised him.

True enough, there are some women in the Bible, such as Jezebel and the vindictive Herodias, who had John the Baptist beheaded, who tarnish the institution of motherhood. There are women today who abandon, abuse, and corrupt their children and who create a poor model, but I like to think that these are the exceptions. Most mothers do the right thing and deserve recognition and admiration. So this morning I would like to join Paul and salute all of the mothers who are with us. Mothers, please stand.

Amen