Children's time
There was a man named Dan who was a Christian. He was born in a country called Hungary in 1934, so he's 73 years old now. When he grew up, he tried to be a pastor. The government leaders didn't like that, so Daniel worked at a hotel instead. But he still managed to tell people about Jesus. Even though bringing Bibles to other countries was illegal, Daniel brought Bibles to Christians in Slovakia, Ukraine, and Rumania.
Whenever he was stopped and searched by the police, they always told him to raise his hands. They would search him, but they never found the bibles. Guess where he hid them?
He tied them to his arms, because he got really flexible Bibles. His name is Daniel Szabo. His country's government has changed, and he gets to be a pastor now, and doesn't have to hide Bibles anymore.
Sometimes I hear Christians complaining about the vengeful God in the old testament. Those mean verses make it hard for us to read the Bible. Today's reading from the prophets and the psalm are both full of the vengeful God. As we read these texts, look at what God is being vengeful about. Why is the Lord upset with the chosen beloved people?
In Isaiah's time, Assyria conquered Israel, the northern kingdom. Judah in the southern kingdom, lived uneasily, threatened by Assyria. Israel and Judah have not always listened to God or God's prophets. In the past, its leaders had found it politically expedient to worship the gods of the Egyptians or the Canaanites.
In our reading from Isaiah, the people are compared to Sodom and Gomorrah. The residents of these cities were guilty of not welcoming strangers; they were going to assault and rape them. That violence was their sin.
Listen for the word of God as it is found in Isaiah 1:1, 10-20
1 The vision of Isaiah son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. 10 Hear the word of the LORD, you rulers of Sodom! Listen to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah!
11 What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the LORD; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats.
12 When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more; 13 bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and sabbath and calling of convocation— I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity.
14 Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them.
15 When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood.
16 Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; yes; cease to do evil, 17 learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.
18 Come now, let us argue it out, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.
19 If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; 20 but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword; for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.
This ends our reading from Isaiah.
Did you notice the problem? The Lord complains that despite all the assemblies, the worship, the convocation, the burnt offerings and sacrifices, the people's hands were full of blood. The solution to all this violence is in verse 17: learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.
I know the bulletin says that we'll just read a part of Psalm 50, but instead we're going to read the whole thing. Psalm 50 describes a God who accepts worship from the faithful ones. God accepts their sacrifices and their offerings because they are faithful. Faithfulness doesn't mean just showing up to worship; it is about doing good.
The psalm lets us know what being faithful is by describing its opposite: it describes the wicked: they hate discipline, and don't pay attention to God's words; they lie and bear false witness against their own brothers and sisters.
Listen for the word of God as we read it together in Psalm 50.
1 A Psalm of Asaph. The mighty one, God the LORD, speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting.
2 Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth.
3 Our God comes and does not keep silence, before him is a devouring fire, and a mighty tempest all around him.
4 He calls to the heavens above and to the earth, that he may judge his people:
5 "Gather to me my faithful ones, who made a covenant with me by sacrifice!"
6 The heavens declare his righteousness, for God himself is judge. Selah
7 "Hear, O my people, and I will speak, O Israel, I will testify against you. I am God, your God.
8 Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you; your burnt offerings are continually before me.
(9 I will not accept a bull from your house, or goats from your folds.
10 For every wild animal of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills.
11 I know all the birds of the air, and all that moves in the field is mine.
12 "If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and all that is in it is mine.
13 Do I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?
14 Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and pay your vows to the Most High.
15 Call on me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me."
16 But to the wicked God says: "What right have you to recite my statutes, or take my covenant on your lips?
17 For you hate discipline, and you cast my words behind you.
18 You make friends with a thief when you see one, and you keep company with adulterers.
19 "You give your mouth free rein for evil, and your tongue frames deceit.
20 You sit and speak against your kin; you slander your own mother's child.
21 These things you have done and I have been silent; you thought that I was one just like yourself. But now I rebuke you, and lay the charge before you.)
22 "Mark this, then, you who forget God, or I will tear you apart, and there will be no one to deliver.
23 Those who bring thanksgiving as their sacrifice honor me; to those who go the right way I will show the salvation of God.
This ends our reading from the Psalms.
Again we hear that it is not enough to read the law or share a holy meal; we have to go the right way. Our Isaiah and Psalm readings may seem far from our experience of the world. I believe they are still important; the world needs to hear them. We need to hear them. Jesus lived during a violent time in Israel's history. But because Rome was in power, most of the violence then was Roman. Despite this, Jesus' words are reassuring.
In our gospel reading, Jesus tells the disciples how to go the right way. We are still reading from chapter 12 of Luke. Last week we heard the story which Jesus told the crowd of the rich man who had an abundant crop and many possessions. The man thought his problem was he needed bigger barns.
Jesus then turned to his disciples. His disciples had food to eat, clothes to wear, and at least some of them had houses and families. He told them not worry about what they will eat or wear – he told them not to worry at all.
In our reading, Jesus continues to teach the disciples. We'll be reading from my translation, although you can follow along on page 75 of your pew Bibles. Listen for the word of God as it is found in Luke 12:32-40.
32 "Don't be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the realm, the kingdom. 33 Sell what is at your disposal, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not become obsolete, an inexhaustible treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. 34 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
35 "Hitch up your robes and have your lamps lit; 36 be like the people who are waiting for their master so that when he returns from the wedding, they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks.
37 Blessed are those servant whom the master finds keeping alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will hitch up his robes and have them sit down, and he will come and serve them. 38 If he comes during the middle of the night , or near dawn , and finds them so, blessed are those slaves.
39 "But know this: if the householder had known what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. 40 You also must be ready, for the hour when the Son of Man comes is unimaginable.”
This ends our reading from God's word.
I think of those servants, expected to be watchful for the master. But no one can be on high alert for more than a day, surely. Then hope turns into anxiety. But being ready was not about sitting and looking out the window; it was about beginning to go the right way now, rather than planning on starting later.
We do not need to be afraid as long as we are on the right way. We can hear those terrifying words in Isaiah and Psalm 50 as a sign that God is vengeful and mean, or we can hear those scary words and learn that God condemns corruption, destruction and violence. God cares about the oppressed, the orphan and the widow, and expects us to learn, seek, rescue, defend, and plead for them. That is the right way.
I spoke to the children about Daniel Szabo. He tried to go the right way, even though it was difficult when Hungary was under Communist rule. When he was in high school, “he would slip into a labor camp to bring some comfort to the prisoners. The principal of the school leaned what he was doing, and called him into the office. ‘Why are you doing this?' the principal asked. ‘If you are found out it will be very bad for you, and think what trouble it will bring to the school. What will people think of us?' Young Daniel looked at the principal and answered, ‘In the future, if people know that we were here and did nothing, what will they think of us?'”
For the next 25 years,” Daniel was often in difficulty with the police. After writing a paper on the dangers communism posed to the church and after defending some persecuted pastors, he was stripped of his diploma and his ordination by his bishop.
A pastor wrote, “He is reticent about those years, but has spoken of being interrogated by five men from 7:30 in the morning until midnight, and of the torture he endured. He regularly crossed the borders illegally to comfort congregations in Slovakia, Ukraine, and Rumania.” That's where he was bringing those bibles on his forearms.
Daniel took risks because he was a Christian. He knew the power of the gospel, and he knew the importance of sharing it. He let God continue to transform him, and despite his many hardships, was able to hold on to faith in God.
Daniel Szabo stayed ready. The church became much freer in Hungary. Daniel's diploma and ordination were restored and he is a pastor now. After freedom came, Daniel sought out the five men who interrogated him so brutally from 7:30 in the morning until midnight, and invited them to share Christmas dinner with him. One man replied that he appreciated the invitation, but they could not come. Daniel was insistent, and the man said, “Since the time we were a team interrogating you, some have been promoted, while others have lost their jobs. We cannot come because we hate one another. “Daniel muses how sad it is that, while God has enabled him to forgive, those who brutalized him cannot forgive one another.”
Ten years ago, Daniel received an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from Montreat College. His granddaughter is now a pastor also.
I'm guessing he had some anxious moments, but he didn't let his anxiety frighten him into doing nothing.
Chris Rice is on staff at Duke Divinity School. He traveled to Uganda last November to spend three days with African Christian leaders. “They represented many Christian denominations and traditions – Baptist, Anglican, Catholic, Presbyterian, Pentecostal and Mennonite.” He writes, “I worried that these diverse Christians would not find a common connection. What a surprise in the opening session to learn that they all knew …the praise song ‘Shine, Jesus, Shine.' If they agreed on anything across ecclesial and regional borders, it was that worshiping Father, Son and Holy Spirit was at the heart of faith. And what a shock to learn that these African Christians had another common connection, a dramatic and loaded issue that jarred and silenced us Americans. For the second language they spoke was the language of trauma. …. In hour after hour of conversation, I was struck by the casualness with which they spoke of people they knew being killed or dying early deaths, as if these were daily facts of life.”
“Anglican leader Daniel Deng Bul of Sudan has done pastoral ministry at a Bible college, directed food and water initiatives, and promoted grassroots peacemaking. But he wasn't in a hurry to get to all that. Instead, he told the story if how seven of his wife's family members were killed. Josephine Munyeli of World Vision Rwanda shared details of the murder of her parents during the 1994 genocide. A group of killers hunted from house to house for Josephine. ‘My Christian neighbor was among them.' she said.
Pie Ntukamazinea of Burundi told of confirming 100 parishioners in the morning, walking home and being ambushed by rebels in the afternoon, finding refuge in a mango tree that night, seeing snakes climb up beside him, and then remembering the text of his confirmation sermon, “For you died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”
Macleod Ochol of Uganda told how his wife had been killed by a landmine and his daughter raped by a member of the Lord's Resistance Army. A few days later his daughter killed herself. As he spoke he wept, then decried the widespread killing in the north and the divided politics of Uganda.”
As I read these stories, I realized that this is what Isaiah spoke of; this is what Psalm 50 is about. This is what God hates. As a leader from Uganda put it, “When you ask the question, how do we deal with the deaths—the killing by the Christians—these are very profound experiences, beyond human imagination, and the church does not have the witness to give the world, because we are a part of the brokenness around us.”
These church leaders asked if the church is a sign of hope or part of the problem. Emmanuel Kolini, a church leader from Rwanda, commented, “The church was there when all this was happening. Where is the church to which God entrusted the ministry of reconciliation?… How do we form Christians who say no to killing?”
One way, I think, is to read these scary texts and see what is in there and why they are scary. They are filled with judgment of those who claim to worship God, yet participate in horrible acts of violence and cruelty.
Bishop Daniel from Sudan said, “When something horrible happens, it's how you react that is crucial. …Leave vengeance to God; give your enemy water and food. We have to forgive to gain the life of our country back. Christians must become a cooling system for all this pain. “
Chris Rice writes. “On our final evening together, we Americans realized the incredible courage it had taken for these leaders to come to Uganda. Congolese United Methodist bishop ….Ntanda of Zimbabwe told how he was haunted by the history of Idi Amin, of Uganda's war with the Congo. He said he had never been to Uganda and was terrified when he arrived at the airport.
But then ‘Emmanuel, a Ugandan, embraced me when I walked in. I had never worshiped with someone from Sudan, and here there is a Sudanese,” he said. Here there have been Anglicans, Methodists, Baptists, Catholics, and Pentecostals, all worshipping.' With a laugh, he declared that he was extending his stay in Uganda for two days. ‘If reconciliation happens, they will say it started here. I am going back to the Congo with a new story to tell.”
These Christians are working toward peace. That's how they are ready. We can't have just Jesus' reassuring words without knowing the history of God's chosen people. We need to have the scary words of judgment, too. Because without the scary words, we won't stay ready. In our complacency, opportunities to serve and bring about God's realm will pass us by without our ever realizing that they were before us.
King James Version has “gird your loins;” literally it is “prepare your waist.” Maybe “roll up your sleeves” conveys the sense to us better.
literally, second watch of the night
literally, third watch of the night
Culverhouse, Cecil, “Into the Lion's Den and out Again: Keeping the Hungarian Reformed Church Alive Under Communism,” Presbyterian Outlook, August 18, 1997, p. 6-7.
Rice, Christ, “Posttraumatic Christians,” Christian Century, May 1, 2007, p. 10. |
First Presbyterian Church