A Blink of An Eye

Trinity Presbyterian Church of Bethesda; United Korean Presbyterian Church
08.26.07; Rev. David Williams; Rev. John An

(Preached Concurrently in English and Korean)

Scripture Lesson: Jeremiah 1: 4-10

It’s good to live in the modern world.

We human beings have changed dramatically in the last 100 years.

Our world is full of machines that would dazzle our ancestors

We have magical chariots that run without horses

We have pictures that talk and move

We have machines that think.

At least, it seems like my computer has a mind of it’s own.

But of all of the things that would startle our ancestors

One of the most striking is our age.

How long did the average human being in the Roman Empire at the time of Christ live?

Twenty-eight years.

We live, on average, three times as long today.

For them, saying you expect to live into your seventies

Would be us saying we expect to live to be 200.

Increasingly, human beings are among the most long-lived of God’s creatures.

We’re rapidly gaining on the current long life champion:

The giant tortoise.

Those slow moving giants live well over 100 years.

As just walking over to the lunch buffet

Takes them three hours

A long lifespan seems only fair.

We’ve left the loser in the long-life battle well behind.

That’s a tiny little freshwater animal called the gastrotrich.

Haven’t heard of that one?

It’s pretty much just a little living stomach.

I know a few people like that myself.

The gastrotrich lives only three days.

This means they don’t really get much enjoyment out of their retirement

But at least their teen years only last forty five minutes.

As exciting as our newly found human lifespans are

I’m not sure how much those extra years matter

in the eyes of God.

In our reading today from Jeremiah

The prophet finds out that age means very little to God.

The passage we’ve just heard read

describes the call story of the prophet.

Like many of the other prophets and leaders of the Bible,

Jeremiah does not feel worthy of the call God gives him.

The prophet Isaiah said his lips were unclean.

Moses said that he couldn’t speak well enough.

Jeremiah has his own excuse, too.

“I’m too young.”

“I haven’t learned what to say.”

But that doesn’t matter at all to God.

He hears that excuse for what it is.

An excuse.

God has a purpose for Jeremiah

And he’s not about to let the one he has chosen weasel out of it.

Jeremiah may not feel that he is prepared

But the truth of the matter is

That God has already prepared him.

Jeremiah may not understand his purpose

but in Jeremiah 1:5, God says:

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you

And before you were born I consecrated you.”

God has had a purpose for him from the moment creation was made.

As we Presbyterians like to say,

He was “predestined” to be a prophet.

It didn’t matter that he was young

What do differences in the little flicker we call life

Matter to the Eternal God?

God had a purpose for him

And God would give him the strength to fulfill it.

It is that call that Jeremiah needed to hear

And it’s the call we need to hear in our lives.

All of us need to find our purpose

Whether we’re students

Or in a career

Whether we’re raising children

Or in our retirement

All of us need to know our purpose

As we struggle to find a sense of mission in life

And wrestle with our sense of direction

We need to hear what Jeremiah heard:

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you

Before you were born I consecrated you.”

God knows who you are

Not just who you are today

But who you are tomorrow

And who you are next year.

Though our lives may be getting longer

There’s not a moment of them

Not a moment hidden from God.

God knows that self you will become

And God will give you the strength to get there.

All we have to do

Is to let go of our fear

Let go of our reluctance

Let go of our excuses

And let ourselves listen to God.

If we give ourselves space to hear,

We can turn ourselves over

to the purpose he has consecrated for us.

You can make that change

Because God will help you make it.

You can face those challenges

Because God will be with you to deliver you.

We have to let ourselves find His presence

And know His purpose

Because God’s purpose for us

Is not just long life

But a life worthy of eternity.

The Divider

Trinity Presbyterian Church of Bethesda
08.19.07; Rev David Williams

Scripture Lesson: Luke 12:49-56

What? What was that I just read? Was that Jesus talking?

We’ve got a pretty good picture of Jesus in our heads, one that for many of us was formed by Sunday after Sunday of Sunday School, in which we were surrounded by the typical stock posters of Jesus. You know the ones. There’s Jesus sitting on a mossy rock, his perfect white robes miraculously unstained by the dust and muck of first century Judea. His unthreateningly not-quite shoulder-length hair seems to have benefited from the use of conditioner and extensive styling by the same guy who does John Edwards. He’s smiling softly at a small crowd of carefully selected multiethnic children, who are all smiling back and showing him the kind of attention that nowadays kids reserve for videogames or movies their parents have forbidden them to see. Around them are an assortment of baby lambs and baby goats and small fuzzy chicks, and the air above his head is filled with light and the wings of fluttering butterflies.

This mental picture of Jesus is emblazoned across our minds, and has found it’s way onto countless paintings and collector’s plates by Thomas Kinkaide, Bible Scholar of Light. Jesus, meek and mild. Jesus, gentle and kind; Jesus, Lamb of God; Jesus, Prince of Peace.

That’s only part of the reason that today’s scripture lesson is so hard for us. It isn’t just troubling from that simplistic, childish perspective. As our faith matures, we trust that in Christ lies a path of peace. We yearn for the fulfillment of His Kingdom, in which the needs of the poor and the downtrodden will be fulfilled, and God will wipe the tears from every eye. We hope for the One in whom there is no Jew or Greek, man or woman, slave or free.

From that hope, it’s very difficult to even hear today’s passage. “I came to bring fire to the earth?” What was that? You came to what? What are you talking about? “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!” Division? Do we really need more division? If there’s one thing we human beings seem to be good enough at on our own, it’s factions and strife and conflict. Um, Jesus, we don’t really need God’s help for that, but…ahh…thanks for offering? How are we supposed to grasp this? What does this passage mean?

Division is already everywhere. There are the divisions that shatter and break our personal lives, as relationships and marriages and families crumble and fall apart. There are the divisions that tear apart our nation, as partisans from either side of the political spectrum charge about on their high horses trampling honest conversation underfoot, while bridges crumble and fall. Churches tear themselves apart, as factions shout out curses at one another as they storm away certain of their own rightness and righteousness. Do we really need more division?

It gets harder as we look out into the world, where the fires of conflict and hatred burn with even greater ferocity. How can we hear this passage as Good News in the face of the reality of our world?

This last week, as my family took it’s annual jaunt to Bethany, I did something new, something I hadn’t yet done. Every single year, it’s a time for relaxation, a time for kicking back, sure. It’s a time for eating colossal buckets of french fries as large as my head, with a triple scoop ice cream chaser, and hoping that the additional mass we bring back isn’t going to destroy the suspension of our van. But every year, it’s also a way of checking off the milestones that have come in the prior year. We’ve been going there since my oldest son was just a stirring in my wife’s belly, and every year, the kids are different. This year, unlike last year, six year old Elijah could go out into the surf and dive the waves himself. And this year, unlike last year, nine year old Sam got to sit and watch the news with his grandfather. It was always a family ritual when I was a kid, but I’ve scrupulously avoided exposing the boys to too much of the news of the world. I’ve maybe been too protective about it. OK, I have been too protective, but I can’t stand for his eyes to see what goes on in this world, for his ears to hear what we human beings do to each other. But he’s not a little boy any more, and at some point, you have to know.

So he sat nestled between his grandparents, and we all watched as this last weeks news from northern Iraq came in. We watched the aftermath of the series of bombings that tore through the Yazidi communities, with hundreds dead and several more hundreds injured. Familiar pictures, all. The women weeping and ritually striking themselves. The ruined homes, shattered and broken, their crumbling brown remains mingling with the omnipresent dust. The men wearing bandannas as they dig through rubble to shield them from the dust and the stench of death. Familiar to us...but a first for my son. It was particularly hard for me to watch him watching those other staple images, of children, bloodstained and either screaming or glazed-eyed in shock. All of this horror...for what? Because one sect hates another, declares they are The Other, and kills them because of that difference. In a world that knows such hatred, where stories like that happen every day in Iraq and Darfur and Afghanistan, how can we hear this passage in Luke as the Good News? Do we really need more division?

The answer lies in understanding the kind of separation that Jesus brings. It’s not the same as the self centeredness that tears at the heart of our society. It’s not the same as the divisions wrought by the demons of sectarian violence. We can’t read this passage without having heard the whole context of Luke’s Gospel. This can’t be taken as a soundbite. We have to see the whole picture. Zechariah proclaims in Luke 1:79 that Jesus is coming “..to guide our feet into the way of peace.” In Luke 2:14 the angels proclaim that Jesus brings peace on earth and goodwill to all peoples. Jesus commands his disciples to declare peace as a greeting in every house they enter (Luke 10:5). He’s the one who weeps over doomed Jerusalem, crying “If only you had recognized on this day the things that make for peace.” And after Jesus returns to his disciples, after the cross and the empty tomb, the first words he speaks are “Peace be with you.” Peace and the desire for peace are a vital part of who Christ is. Creating peace is the point and purpose of the Gospel.

But though peace is at the heart of the Gospel, proclaiming and living out that peace doesn’t always result in an absence of conflict. Even if you live your life according to the teachings of Christ, even if you are one of the peacemakers upon whom he declared God’s blessing, there will still be conflict.

It's not that Jesus is proclaiming himself to be yet another source of dissension, yet another firebrand eager to add his message to the throngs of competing worldviews that tear and snap at one another. The world, our world, already has plenty of powers and principalities that claw at each other for control.

Because of this, those who follow him...actually follow him, not just mouthing the words...do stand separate from the rest of the world. Where the world cries out for us to take what is rightfully ours, those who follow him instead give. Where the world insists that we should shove our way to the head of the table, those who follow him take on the form of a servant. Where the world declares that the other is the enemy, to be hated, to be despised, to be destroyed, those who truly follow Christ understand that Christ teaches that the other...be they the stranger or our enemy...is to be loved, to be respected, to be built up. There is a real distinction there, a division, a rift that runs through nations and churches and families.

Christ does bring that division, but it is the division that comes between those who have chosen to live according to God’s reconciling love and those who live according to the hatred that tears apart this world. So we hear this passage, and we cry: What? What was that I just read? Was that Jesus talking? Yes, it was. And he was saying that we should be separated from hatred, separated from bitterness and factions and those dark walls of the soul that try to strangle God’s love from our lives.

We do need more of that kind of division.

Protestant Work Ethic

Trinity Presbyterian Church of Bethesda
08.05.07; Rev. David Williams

Scripture Lessons: Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23; Luke 12:13-21

Americans just can’t seem to stop working.

Every few years, there’s another spasm of interest in this characteristic of the American economy. Unlike pretty much every other nation in the world, the American work week just keeps getting longer and longer. In major metropolitan areas like this one, the number of hours you put in each week is almost a badge of pride, yet another way in which you can prove yourself superior to those around you.

Downtown, little clusters of young associates regale each other with tales of epic hours worked, 50 hours, 70 hours, 80 hours, 100 hours in a week. Among some junior executives at area contracting firms, where racking up billable hours is next to Godliness, there’s a rumor going around that if you pound back 25 triple espressos in a row it actually rips a hole in the space-time continuum…allowing you to put in that perfect 200 hour week. Either that or your head implodes, and honestly, after 25 espressos it’s a little hard to tell the difference.

Americans work more than most of the rest of the industrialized world, with the average worker in the United States putting in 1,804 hours a year. That’s now almost a full workweek more per year than the average Japanese worker, three hundred and fifty hours a year more than the average Dutch worker, and 1,800 hours more than the average Frenchman. For all of our seeming busyness, we’re still nowhere near matching the country that holds the record for the most hours spent working, which,…surprise surprise…is Korea, at 2,400 hours annually. Amazingly, though, that’s after the average Korean work year dropped by nearly two hundred and fifty hours--six week a year--- in the last decade, the single largest reduction in hours worked in any nation. Most economists who’ve studied the dynamics of the Korean workforce ascribe this immense drop to either an increase in leisure time that’s the inevitable result of a maturing world economy. Others suggest it might be a result of what is known as the “World of Warcraft Effect.”

What’s strange about this whole phenomenon is that it’s exactly the opposite of what people used to think 2007 would look like. Back in America in the 1950s, everyone was absolutely convinced that fifty five years in the future, we’d all be working 15 hours a week. They also thought we’d be commuting via jet pack, and I don’t know which one is more disappointing. Strangely, though, studies have shown that when you take into account all the increases in technology and productivity, it should only take a modern worker 11 hours to do the work that took 40 hours to do in 1950. If we were willing to accept the same standard of living as 1950s Americans, an 11 hour workweek might even be possible.

But we don’t want to live in little 1950s houses. We want to live in huge houses. We don’t want to own just one car. We want three cars, which we’ll put in a garage that’s bigger than that little 1950s house. We don’t want just one nine inch television. We want a 108” LCD HDTV…and oh yes, they do make one…so we can see the oil glistening in the pores on Jack Bauer’s nose. We want our cable and we want our TiVo and we want our high speed internet and we want our cell phones. We NEED these things if we’re going to be happy. Because we are so much more happy now than we were half a century ago. Aren’t we?

Both Ecclesiastes and the Gospel of Luke aren’t so sure. Of all of the books of the Bible, Ecclesiastes isn’t exactly the kind of book that you flip to when you’re needing a few words of gentle comfort. It’s a striking book, an unforgiving book, one that is on the one hand part of the great tradition of Hebrew Wisdom and on the other hand opposes one of the core teachings of that tradition.

That core teaching of Hebrew Wisdom, to be found throughout the Book of Proverbs, is called retributive justice. You may ask, what the Helen of Troy is retributive justice? Retributive justice is the idea that acting wisely will cause you to prosper, and acting like Kevin Federline is your life coach will cause you to fail. If you are prudent and hardworking and invest your time and your energy carefully, then you will be rewarded with worldly riches and goodness.

The author of Ecclesiastes has issue with that whole idea. It’s not that he’s resentful because he hasn’t done well. He’s done just fine. He’s gathered in great wealth and power, but none of it satisfies him, because he’s wise enough to see that all of his work and all of his material gain ultimately means absolutely nothing.

For as hard as he will have labored for them, they will ultimately fail him. He’s worked impossibly hard, and has watched others as they’ve lost sleep, letting their successful striving for wealth consume them. But that wealth will be completely meaningless to him..and to them.. when they’re gone.

That’s the same point that Jesus is making in the Gospel of Luke. The passage from chapter 12 of that book comes to us from one of the long teachings that Luke records. Jesus is standing before a crowd that has gathered to hear him share stories and riddles about the nature of the Kingdom of God. He’s showing them what’s important and telling them what they should value in their lives. He’s just told them to trust the Holy Spirit to guide them in what they have to say when someone from the audience pipes up.

“Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” What he was hoping was to get Jesus to act as most rabbis would have acted, which is to go into a long discussion of the laws of inheritance and to come up with a legal ruling for him... for a small percentage of the inheritance, of course. Perhaps he should have waited on the Spirit just a little longer. Jesus turns him down with surprising gentleness, and instead uses his question to launch into a story about a man who had so much stuff that he was having to think about building a new five car garage with a finished attic for storage. This is someone who has succeeded by every single standard of classical wisdom. He has invested wisely, he’s planted the right crops, and he is doing absolutely everything right. The wealthy man smiles to himself, sure that he’s going to have a chance to kick back and enjoy the bounty he’s gotten. I’m going to Disney World, baby!
But as Christ tells the story, that’s not what happens. It’s at that moment that God appears to the man and berates him. “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you.” In an echo of Ecclesiastes, we hear: “And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?”

This is the point in countless sermons where your friendly neighborhood preacher man would start talking about not storing up treasures for yourself but being rich towards God...something you should definitely keep in mind when you see the offering plate that’ll be coming ‘round later. But that totally misses the point of what Jesus is talking about.

Within the story, what is being demanded of the rich man isn’t his barns or his crops or his goods. What’s being claimed is his life...all of his days, all of his actions, all of the choices he has made. God couldn’t care less about possessions. It is life that God demands.

That’s the primary challenge facing us in our modern culture of work. A deep personal commitment to excellence in all that you do in the working world was viewed by the Protestant reformers as a sign of spiritual maturity. God has given us all certain gifts, and called each of us to a particular task in life, and our willingness to embrace that task and pursue it joyously is a sign of blessing. But we’re not called on to pursue work for the sake of profit alone. We’re called to work because what work is a joyous and honorable thing. We’re each given a vocation as a part of contributing to the broader good of God’s creation.

What work should not be, though, is all consuming. If it devours time for friendships and fellowship, and takes away those moments that should be given over to prayer and worship, then it has grown beyond its rightful bounds.

It is our lives that will be demanded of us. When the time comes to settle that account, what will we have to offer?