This sermon, by the Rev. Andy Jones, was offered at St Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Madison, Wisconsin, on August 11, 2019 at the 9:30 service.  It is based on the readings assigned for Proper 14 in Year C of the Revised Common Lectionary.

You can find those readings here.

 

Here is a recording of the sermon

 

And a transcript of the recording

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts, be always acceptable in your sight, O Lord our strength and our Redeemer.

Please be seated.

Every week, when the preacher stands in this spot, or stands there in the pulpit, it’s their job to interpret the Scriptures and to interpret the world around us, through the lens of those texts that we call authoritative.  It’s the preacher’s job to break open the text; to give some sense of what was happening where and when they were written; and then to relate those texts to our lives today; and look for God’s word speaking to us through those words of our Bible.  Now sometimes it’s really hard to make those connections. People living 2000, 3000 years ago had a different understanding of the world around them and how the world worked. Their context was very different from ours.  And so sometimes it’s really difficult to relate the things that they were saying and doing to what we say and do today.  Other times those connections are so blatant and so clear that they’re just unmistakable.  Now you would think those would be the easy moments to preach, but that’s not always the case, and it’s definitely not the case today.  The connection between our lives today and our Scripture is so clear that we’re forced to address them, even though we spend an awful lot of time trying to avoid them.  I’ve been up since 2:30 this morning trying to think of a clever way into this, a clever way to bring the Scriptures around to us, and to start the Scriptures, but I just can’t do it.  The only place to start is with us here and now.

It’s been a really difficult couple of weeks. The pain and to which we’ve been exposed; the pain that we’ve seen in El Paso and in Dayton, and in those chicken processing plants and in the communities where they are planted…  that pain is real and deep; part of an ongoing malaise that affects us… that affects us deeply; that affects us at parts of our being that are so deep and fundamental that they keep us awake at night.  They hurt us deeply, and we don’t know what to do.  We don’t know how to make a difference.  We know that those things are happening.  We know that they are there. And then we walk into church this morning and we hear the words of Isaiah, a prophet, the son of Amoz, speaking for God he says to us,

“Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
remove the evil of your doings
from before my eyes;

cease to do evil,
learn to do good;

seek justice,
rescue the oppressed,

defend the orphan,
plead for the widow.”

(Isaiah 1:16,17)

the connection between Isaiah’s world, there in the middle of the fifth century BC, and our world today is so clear that we can’t avoid it.  God says to the people of Judah as he makes these statements to them,

“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.”

(Isaiah 1:15)

It’s like God is saying, “Enough of your thoughts and prayers, do something!”

God is calling us this morning to do something!

the problem is it so hard to know what to do.  The problems are so deep, and so entrenched; they seem to be built into the very DNA of this country.  They drive us to despair and they drive us to ruin.

At the end of the prophecy God says,

“…if you refuse and rebel,
you shall be devoured by the sword;”

(Isaiah 1: 20)

If you think about it for a minute, think about those children along our southern border, think about those children who live in the towns where their families have been called to work in chicken processing plants, think about the people whose lives have been deeply scarred; and you’ll know where the next violent acts will come from.

The more we contribute to this destructive cycle, the more we participate in it, the more we turn our backs and let it go, the deeper the spiral goes, and the more entrenched in violence our society will become.  God doesn’t need to threaten to punish us God’s self. we are sowing the seeds of our own destruction by our complacency and our failure to act.

Isaiah does hold out hope for us.  God says, “Come let us reason this out.  Let us argue it out.”  Even though our sins are scarlet and red, they can become clean like wool.  There is the opportunity for us to remedy things and to reconcile with our neighbor, and with those on our borders, and on the margins; with one another, and with God.

“Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
remove the evil of your doings
from before my eyes;

cease to do evil,
learn to do good;

seek justice,
rescue the oppressed,

defend the orphan,
plead for the widow.”

(Isaiah 1:6,7)

Those are the values that need to drive our political and our social life.  Those are the values that pervade all of our Scripture; love the Lord your God with all your heart soul mind and strength, and your neighbor as yourself.  Defend the widow and the orphan.   Feed the hungry.  Clothe the naked.  Visit those who are in prison and the sick.  God calls us to love one another.

So what are we to do in the face of these problems that seem so insurmountable and so intractable.  The place to start is right here at home; to love our neighbors, to hold out our hand, to clothe the naked, and to feed the poor, right here in Madison. But that’s not enough. God is speaking to the whole nation of Judah, not to individuals but to a whole nation whose identity and life is at stake.  And here in this moment God is speaking to us as a people, and as a nation.  So we need to talk to the people who we have elected to represent us.  If our Christian values are not being upheld and supported by the people who have the power to change the policies and to write the laws that defend the poor, the widow and the orphan; to unite families to make them stronger; to lift people out of poverty and out of the darkness; if they’re not doing those things and we need to let them know that we are not happy with the job that they are doing.  And if they won’t represent our values, then we need to make sure that we carry those values into the voting booth with us.

This isn’t a matter of politics.  This is a matter of ethics.  This is a matter of love.  This is a matter of theology.  It is our Christian vocation and calling to support the least among us, and the way that we do that in a system like the one that we have is to elect people who will do those very things on our behalf.

This morning the connections are easy to see.  Isaiah the son of Amoz, speaking in the middle of the fifth century, is speaking to us in a way that we can avoid or ignore.  So we have to speak of these things that are difficult.  We need to speak of them perhaps in places where we ordinarily would not.  But we need to speak.  All over this country bishops in the Episcopal Church and leaders of other traditions are standing up.  Bishop Marianne Edgar Budde, of the diocese of Washington DC, was part of a group at the national Cathedral that wrote a letter in response to some language that was uttered about the place that I was born, Baltimore Maryland.  And in an interview after that letter she said that she believes, that if the church would stand united with one voice, things could change.  If the church would stand united with one voice things would change.  We are the body that is called to speak with this moral imperative, and we need to stand, and we need to speak; to our neighbors, to our siblings, and our children, and our parents; to the people with whom we work, to the people whom we send to the state capital and to Washington DC to represent us.  We need to stand as the church and speak God’s word the same way that Isaiah son of Amoz is speaking it to us this morning.

Amen.