C Proper 14 19 Ord OL BFC 2016
Luke 12:27-34
August 7, 2016
I am departing from
the Revised Common Lectionary today because the Revised Common Lectionary skips
right over this passage in the twelfth chapter in Luke and this just happens to
be my favorite passage of Scripture. “Look
at the wildflowers in the field. They
don’t wear themselves out with work.
They don’t spin cloth. Yet
Solomon in all of his glory was not dressed like one of these.”
It is the passage where Jesus says
that to know the love of God, the way God works in the world, we must turn away
from the halls of power and wealth and military victory, to turn toward God’s
work in the subtle beauty of creation.
But it is an unusual comparison.
Jesus does not set wildflowers opposite the power of Caesar or
Pharaoh.
It is an unusual invocation of a
name. Jesus invokes the time when Jewish
power was at its zenith. Under the reign
of King Solomon, the world’s wealth, power, and insider information came to the
doorstep of Israel. Jesus critiques what
it means to be empire not by talking about some alien or foreign
domination. He talks about it within the
context of his own Jewish people and their choices.
Hebrew Scripture scholar, Walter
Brueggeman, goes even further back than Solomon[1]. He takes us back to the time when King David
lies on his deathbed, just before his son Solomon is to ascend to the
throne. He calls him to his side and
tells Solomon to eliminate, to kill all his political rivals. Solomon does so but for one priest who
appears to have too much moral cache to eliminate, the priest Abiathar. So Solomon exiles Abiathar away from the
religious, political, and economic center of Israel in Jerusalem, to Abiathar’s
rural hometown of Anatoth.
There, for 400 years, the priests of
Anatoth, watch as Jerusalem falls into ever greater self-deception by aspiring
to the values of material prosperity and military security. Solomon, the master economist, through trade
and arms deals brought gold flowing into the city of Jerusalem. And with that gold, he built a ceremonial
center for a God who had lived in a tent, always humble, always on the move,
when the Children of Israel were delivered from the Egyptian Empire. The same word used for slave labor, missim, under King Solomon was used to
tell the story of the slave labor under Pharaoh in Egypt.[2]
So while there is a tradition within
Judaism that celebrates Solomon, there is also a tradition that criticizes
him. The book of Jeremiah begins with
the words, “These are the words of Jeremiah, Hilkiah’s son, who was one of the
priests from Anathoth in the land of Benjamin.” Jeremiah, the prophet, who is imprisoned for his
lack of patriotism, thrown down a well because he is unwilling to agree with the
“good news” brought to the king by the corporate media, comes from the village
of Anatoth, the place of priestly exile to say that the unsustainable imperial
values of wealth, power, and insider information must give way to God’s long
time, community values of chesed, tzedekah,
and mishpat--steadfast love,
righteousness, and justice. And the
power that Jeremiah critiqued was just not military in nature, it was of a
patriarchal power and violence run amok that allowed King David to have
hundreds of wives and concubines and still find it necessary to rape the
foreigner, Bathsheba and kill her husband, Uriah.
Behold the wild flowers of the field .
. . Solomon in all his glory was not dressed like one of these. God’s love is known over and against imperial
power through the beauty of creation.
This past week I was alarmed by an
article[3]
written by environmental activist, Bill McKibben. McKibben talked about the photos being taken
of him by monied interests to try embarrass him and paint him as a
hypocrite. And so, there are pictures of
Bill McKibben forgetting his cloth bag at the supermarket and going home with
his groceries in plastic bags. There are
even photos of him, gasp, getting out of a car to show his use and dependence
of fossil fuels. It goes even further. As a way of robbing McKibben of his courage,
these stalkers even show up at the airport to take pictures of his daughter.
As Christians like Bill McKibben, we
are all caught up in an economy that is overwhelmingly destructive. We are all hypocrites. The argument used against Bill McKibben is the
same one Adolf Hitler used against the Christians who were critical of his
ascent to power and his policies. Hitler
pointed out the hypocrisy of the Christian Church itself and stilled voices who
were afraid of being revealed for not practicing what they preached. It was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who helped
develop opposition to Hitler and died in a concentration camp himself . . . it
was Bonhoeffer who counseled “grace.”
Yes, you could be a hypocrite.
Yes, you could fall so very short of living out an authentic life. But God had enough grace to hold you so that
you might speak and act with the steadfast love, righteousness, and justice you
could muster.
We are all caught sucking on the
tailpipe of empire. We are all
hypocrites. So? To live undestructively in an economy that is
overwhelmingly destructive would be virtually impossible. We are just now beginning to build the groups,
families, and coalitions that might begin the hard work required. In the struggle to preserve and protect the
evidence of God’s love found in creation, we are not easily divided into
environmental saints and sinners.[4]
As Bill McKibben wrote, “Changing the
system, not perfecting our own lives, is the point. ‘Hypocrisy’ is the price of admission in this
battle.”[5]
What we are called to do first is to
just take our mouths off the tailpipe of empire for a moment to notice the
beauty, joy, and love God intends for us. It is, as in that great book by Alice Walker, The Color Purple, that Shug teaches
Celie that the first movement from getting “The Man” out of your head is to
notice the trees, the wildflowers, the beauty around you. Shug tells Celie straight out that she
believes God gets ticked off when we walk passed the color purple and don’t
notice it.[6] The first act away is to be aware, pay
attention to, the love and joy God intends for you. Look at the wildflowers of the field. They don’t even have to work at it.
God wants us to know we are
loved. And it matters not that we are
hypocrites. Go. As Martin Luther counseled, “Sin boldly!” Risk.
Make mistakes. Be
hypocrites. What matters now, so that
the wildflowers, and the rivers, and earth may be seen as a sign of God’s love
in all of its beauty, is that we change the system. Be hypocrites. Change the system. For we are loved, as evidenced by the wildflowers
and the ravens. We are loved. Amen.
[1]
Walter Brueggeman, The Collected Sermons
of Walter Brueggeman, Vol. 1 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011).
[2]
John J. Collins, Introduction to the
Hebrew Bible, Ed. 2 (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2014), p. 269.
[3]
Bill McKibben, “Embarrassing Photos Taken of Me By My Right-Wing Stalkers,” New York Times, August 5, 2016 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/07/opinion/sunday/embarrassing-photos-of-me-thanks-to-my-right-wing-stalkers.html?_r=0.
[4]
Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of
America: Culture and Agriculture (Berkley: Counterpoint, 1977).
[5]
McKibben, “Embarrassing Photos.”
[6]
Alice Walker, The Color Purple (New York:
Open Road Media, 1977).
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