"Whom Shall We Bless?"
Scripture Reading: Galatians 3:6-8
Sermon Transcript for July 31, 2005
By Rev. Dan Sinkhorn
The Apostle Paul wrote those words as a part of a larger text that was, well frankly, it was a reprimand. He was writing to the church composed of Galatians who had somehow gotten confused about how to live out their faith. They’d become overconfident in their ability to uphold the law. And Paul was quite disturbed about it. And so this letter is, as I said, a reprimanding excitation. He’s letting them know that they need to get a couple of things straight. The obvious message that you can hear is Paul saying to the people, “Don’t forget that it is faith in Christ’s works that has made the way of salvation. Don’t forget that it is not your works, but the works of Jesus Christ and your faith in what He has done that has saved you.”
But there is a little bit more subtle message there that I want us to share together. That message is that in order to be a blessing, it isn’t necessary to uphold the letter of the law. It is better to live the law or the spirit of the law. The Galatians had become very good at going through the motions of the law and doing their regular bit for God. But they had missed the spirit of the law! And this was the reason that the Apostle Paul brought up Abraham. He mentioned Abraham because he wanted people to go all the way back to what many consider the very beginnings of the three world religions that get the most attention. Abraham was counted as father of Christianity, father of Judaism, and father of Islam. He is considered a pillar or a rock to all of these people and all of us have learned to interpret his sending forth in different ways. But the Apostle Paul brings it down to this: Abraham was called out of idolatry; he was called out of a life as ordinary and typical as any other person from Ur. (That’s the letter U followed by the letter r. I don’t know what you call somebody from Ur. An Urrite?) Abraham was pulled out of this common existence that was so typical of his community in his day. And it wasn’t because of anything Abraham did. It was because of God’s grace. Abraham was sent forth into a foreign land to become the father of what God would later tell him would be a people as countless as the stars.
We are tempted to think that Abraham was just a cut above the rest. That he must have lived a more exemplarily life and that’s why God chose Abraham. But there is absolutely nothing in the scriptures that indicates that. In fact, as we train ourselves to read God’s Word, one of the things we’ve got to remember is that we are left to assume certain things with the guiding of the Holy Spirit. And here is an assumption for you about Abraham. It could be that God called several people from Ur but only Abraham answered. Only Abraham listened to the small voice of God speaking to his heart saying, “I have a gift of grace for you. And when you accept this gift of blessing, you will then become a source of blessing for countless billions down through the ages.” And apparently Abraham, though like all of his fellows, was the only one who got it, was the only one who heard the message and took God up on his word.
Abraham was like us. Called out of an empty life and having been given the gift of blessing. Not because we deserve it, but because God chose to do it and we chose, by faith, to accept it! We can say, like Abraham, that we are here because we heard the call and we listened. But, how did we receive that blessing? --Because God chose to do it, because it was God’s choice. And our lesson, then, as we are sent forth by our heavenly Father to be a blessing, is “Whom shall we bless? How do we know? Whom shall we bless?”
As I prepared for today’s message, I thought about that a lot. And I remembered my first Christmas as a pastor. Now when I was a pastor for the first time, it was serving a couple of little country churches down in southern Indiana. They were combined probably a total of about 60 people. And I remember that these little towns where just your typical Hoosier towns. The one town, in particular, the church was one of three. There was a post office, there was a hardware store, and there was a feed mill. Oh yes, and then there was Hog’s Tavern. I remember that near the beginning of Advent that first Christmas the ladies of the United Methodist Women, all five of them, came to me and said, “We have a tradition of preparing food baskets for a few needy families if we are able to get it together. And we were just wondering if you know of anybody that we can send these baskets to because it is always so hard to find people who are truly needy.” And I said, “Yeah, that is a dilemma.” And having worked at Old Capital United Methodist with Rev. Mike I had some connections. I called around and, you know, it is hard to find people who really desire and want a gift like that and need a gift like that. And as I listened to them, I wondered, you know, exactly what do you mean when you say, “How do we find people who are really needy?”
Well, as it turned out we did find a few families to bless. And then I learned another one of their traditions, which is that at least one of those food baskets goes to the pastor and his family. And we needed it. We really did. And I have to tell you the truth; it was a great blessing to receive that basket. But it was also an eye opening experience. And I’m sure these folks would be okay with my telling you now because of the lessons we’ve learned together that I remembered receiving the basket and thinking how easy it is to bless a family like mine. The young, enthusiastic pastor who has turned from one career choice to another and made these hard decisions, his family, his beautiful wife sacrificing her own home to live in a parsonage that belongs to somebody else, and those five cute kids and gosh that adorable little one. How easy it is to bless them. How easy to bless them.
Well, the next year came along and near Thanksgiving time we started talking about finding families in need and putting together these baskets. And I made a radical proposal. Now if you know me very well at all that shouldn’t surprise you. And I do have a tendency to be blunt and well, this was one of those cases. I said, “Ladies, rather than try and find a few worthy families to give these baskets to what do you say if we do this. Why don’t we make one great big basket full of all sorts of goodies and let’s take it down to Hog’s Tavern.” Yeah, they reacted the same way! There was a stunned silence. They didn’t quite know what I was getting at. I’m not sure that at the time I knew for sure what I was getting at. But it seemed to me that the spirit of the gift was being missed if we were so concerned about whether the receiver deserved it or not. As a spirit of Christmas is all about the Lord coming to a whole lot of undeserving people because the Lord wanted to give the gift.
So I explained that to them; told them my rational. They said that it was logical, but strangely enough within a few weeks they came up with a list of three or four people that needed baskets and baskets were delivered to those people, including the pastor and his family. And so I talked a lot about it whenever I got the chance over the year and it would turn out that on the last Christmas that I spent with the folks there at that church, I brought it up again. I said, “Why don’t we make a big basket full of all sorts of goodies and take it down there and put it in Hog’s Tavern? Let’s face it, not one church person in that little town would want to be caught dead in front of or around or, God forbid, in Hog’s Tavern! You may have figured it out by now, Hog’s Tavern was a popular place with people who like to wear leather, grow long hair, and have exotic tattoos and ride motorcycles. And it just didn’t seem that their lifestyle was compatible with the church. But I was committed to this idea, and I kept pressing for it. And you know, I had one good thing going for me at that little church, and that is that they hadn’t had a pastor with this much zeal and enthusiasm in a long time and so they didn’t want to discourage me. So they were patient with me. And they finally said, “Okay, in addition to helping a few needy families, we’ll let you—let you—take a basket down there to Hog’s Tavern.” Well, as it turned out we didn’t have all the resources we needed and some families connected with the church were especially needy and so once again the idea got postponed.
And it was a strange twist of fate because it was about two months latter that I was called and asked if I would come here to Grace Church to serve as the Associate Pastor. Even harder about that choice was the fact that I was given a choice. Now you retired clergy know that a lot of times when you get that call it’s not optional. It was in that case and it was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made in my life. And I’ll tell you why, because like so many decisions things happen latter that make you wonder if you did the right thing. Do you know what happened the next Christmas? I was sure they would take a basket to Hog’s Tavern. I was sure that several people had gotten the taste of the idea; that they had begun to realize that blessing people that you didn’t really want to bless was, well, that was really a Christian thing to do especially at Christmas time. And I was sure that they would do it. But the pastor that came to replace me, well, he’d grown up in a different tradition and actually transferred his credentials from that tradition into the United Methodist Church. And his tradition taught that we are to be above and apart from activities and places and things that we would consider incompatible with Christian living and that we are actually to lead people away from those places. So the last thing in the world he would have done was take a basket down to Hog’s Tavern. But do you know that a couple of months after that next Christmas, Laura’s grandmother gave me a clipping from the local paper where he had written the editor and accused patrons of Hog’s Tavern of defacing the front of the church and littering in the church parking lot, etc? I’ve wondered if I had done the right thing.
It’s been a blessing to be here with you, but I really wondered if I had done the right thing because they were starting to get it. And I was beginning to get it and things were starting to make sense and we were going to be a blessing to our community. We were right downtown and, you know, the kids would trick or treat at Halloween right around the church there. And I said one day, “Why don’t we just turn on all the lights, set up a table, and give them candy. Heck, we don’t have to dress up like ghouls and demons and try to endorse evil. But at the same time we have children in our community walking through our lot and we are turning the lights off and telling them to stay away?” They said, “Your right!”. And they got it and we began to bless the community. Every little way we could think of. And now a year after I left, they are being told to be apart from the community. And since then, the church has pretty well died.
It breaks my heart. It makes me wonder. Because I read words from Jesus that say things to me about the people in our world that we are not sure how to live with. And I hear one thing. But apparently some folks hear another. For example, in Matthew, Chapter 13, I hear Jesus tell this parable and it means something to me that I’ll share with you. Jesus tells this parable by saying, “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field but while everyone was sleeping his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. And when the wheat sprouted up and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared. The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field?’ Where did these weeds come from? He replied, ‘The enemy did this.’ The servants asked, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’ ‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weds you may root out the wheat with them.’ Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters first collect the weeds and tie them into bundles to be burned, then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.”
You know, experienced wheat farmers will tell you that there is a period there in the growth of wheat when you really can’t tell where the weeds are. When it is very difficult to tell them apart. And there is great danger if you try to sort out the weeds and the wheat by pulling up the weeds. And as I hear this parable, I hear the Lord saying, “I am the Lord of the harvest; you just nurture and grow it all, I’ll sort it out at harvest time.” And you know, a lot of people hear that story and they hear Jesus saying, “Don’t worry, we’ll get those weeds in the end.” Do you know what I hear? I hear Jesus say, “Be careful right now, you look a lot like a weed!” And I know, at least for my part, that that’s true. I know that right now it’s really hard for us to tell the difference between wheat and weeds. Maybe we shouldn’t bother. Maybe we should, to borrow a phrase from the sixties, “love them all” and let God sort them out. That’s now what that phrase was, but I’ve changed it to suit me. Love them all; let God sort it out.
When we are called, from Abraham’s blessing right on up to our generation to obey the Lord and to be a blessing to the nations, I think that Jesus means something plain, and simple, and hard. He means be a blessing to all! Whom shall we bless? Well, Jesus answers that with a story you’ve heard a hundred times. Do you know how last week we were talking about you go to the Father’s house and you hear certain things that you hear every time you go. Because it is such a familiar story, there’s a temptation to miss the meaning. Well, here we go again. So let’s pretend that we’ve never heard this before. Jesus tells a story in Luke, Chapter 10, about a certain man who was traveling alone, apparently, on the road to Jericho. And he was beaten within an inch of his life by robbers and left for dead. And along that same road came a priest, saw this man’s pathetic condition, and yet chose to go past and leave him be. And not so long after that along came a Levite, a very orthodox, religious person came along and also saw his pathetic state and ignored him. But then comes a Samaritan who says, “Boy, look at this guys situation. Somebody needs to do something.” And so he does. Now the people hearing this story, they hear a lot of things. And first of all they recognize that they are being criticized because so many of his hearers were like the Levites, very serious and orthodox religious people. Many of them were like the priest, or at least they revered the priests as the ones who proclaimed the word of God. And most of them were Jews who despised Samaritans simply because of a nationality issue. And so here was this person they despised who is the only one who acted with charity.
And Jesus knows that as he is telling this story there are certain assumptions. One of the assumptions is that this fellow who got robbed must not have been too bright. Because it’s kind of like if you heard that somebody got mugged or severely hurt in a criminal act because they were walking alone in a dark alley at night. You’d be tempted to say, “Well, you dummy, you brought it on yourself. What kind of foolish judgment was that?” And there is a temptation then for some of us to walk by this fellow who was attacked by robbers and say, “Well, that’s what happens when you don’t use good sense.” As if to say that he should suffer these consequences because he wasn’t as smart as me! There is another assumption and that is that the religious people who passed him by were justified in passing him by because they had a specific mission, a purpose, that they knew by helping this person they would make themselves ritually unclean and then would no longer be, at least for a time, able to stand for and represent the religious activities that they chose. Jesus knew all of this as He told the story.
There is another assumption that’s a little harder for us to understand but believe me when I tell you, this really hit people hard too. Here was this Samaritan that none of the Jews liked because he was a Samaritan who apparently was also a man of some means. You know, some people get a little offended when folks they consider to be lesser, lower class, seem to be successful. This is another part of that story that you don’t want to miss. This Samaritan man was apparently well to do. Imagine, a well-to-do Samaritan. The very thought of it must have been offensive to people. But, Jesus would make a very clear point. Those who have been blessed should be a blessing. And the Samaritan, despite being disliked by the people in the area he lived in, despite being abused and mistreated simply because of his nationality, and nothing more, had been blessed. And he knew enough about having been blessed to be a blessing. So that he cared for the man who was the victim, and then even saw to his needs until his full recovery.
So the question is again, “Whom shall we bless?” I say for starters, whomever we would find the most difficult to bless.
· Those whose mistakes are better known than ours.
· Those whose hygiene isn’t quite up to our standards
· Those whose values don’t seem like ours.
· Those whose use of language isn’t as sophisticated as ours.
· Those who can’t or won’t give anything back.
· Those whose religious perspective seems entirely incompatible with our own.
· Those whose lifestyle seems entirely incompatible with our own.
Who shall we bless? If you want to live the spirit of the gospel, then you bless the ones that you don’t feel comfortable blessing. And I’ll tell you why. Because it is not about us; because it is about being what Peter called partakers in the divine nature. And the divine nature is that of God who chose us despite our unworthiness, who blesses us despite the fact that we are like everybody else around us until we accept the Gospel. Now, I am not suggesting that we endorse things that we know are sin. I’m not suggesting that we allow everything to be acceptable. No, not that at all! I’m proud of our United Methodist heritage because we take a stand and we say what we believe the gospel truth is about certain things. But, the thing that I love most about our stance is that it is packaged in love and acceptance. We are to be a blessing.
I’m going to say something reckless now which is okay because it is me. We can either try and change people’s mind about things in our own will and with our own ability. And some of us have great powers of persuasion so we may be better at it than others, but you know, I prefer a simpler way. Love them all and let God sort it out. Bring them to the gospel and let the gospel do the convicting and the transforming and the changing. And if we will preach the truth of the Gospel, I believe with all my heart, it will change people and it will make them like us better than we ever dreamed we could be. And when we join with Christ in that Kingdom-thinking and we become a part of the divine nature seeking the Kingdom of God through deeds of love and blessing, I believe that we will hear our Father say to us one day, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” But as Jesus says in Matthew, Chapter 25, we will also hear the Father of the harvest say this to some, “Depart from me, you who are cursed into the eternal fire prepared by the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink. I was a stranger and you didn’t invite me in. I needed clothes and you didn’t clothe me. I was sick and in prison and you did not look for me.” And they will answer, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison and did not help you?” And He will reply, “I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.”
Jesus said, “The Father and I are one,” meaning that He was there the day Abraham was called to go forth, receive a blessing, and be a blessing to all the nations. Jesus was there on the cross purchasing our salvation. Not because we deserved it, but because He chose to do so for our sake. And it is this same Jesus that says, “Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers and sisters, that you do unto me.” So whom shall we bless?
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