A Bent Reed

A Bent Reed

© copyright 2004 Robert J. Elder, Pastor

Sunday, August 22, 1010

Isaiah 42:1-3

Luke 13:10-17

Ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham

whom Satan bound for eighteen long years,

be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?

One all-American – perhaps even “all-human” – principle found in almost every culture holds that our possessions are ours, and that other people ought to keep their hands off them unless invited to do otherwise. This is an almost universal principle. But could there ever be a time when an alternative principle could set aside our attachment to our exclusive rights to our possessions to make way for expression of another principle?

Consider, for instance, something we take more or less for granted, the principle of exclusive ownership of our automobiles. Second to our homes, probably no place is more personal to us than our cars. If you have ever had your car broken into or stolen, then you know the sense of violation commonly felt in regard to that particular possession. A thief who smashes a window on his way into our car has transgressed something very basic, has presumed against our personal place and space. Yet for another perspective on the issue, consider the plight of urban dwellers in New York City, who endure almost legendary difficulties protecting their automobiles from theft and burglary. Oddly enough, one way that some New Yorkers have come to prevent excess damage to their cars from attempted break-ins has been simply to leave them unlocked. This works on the premise that anyone who wants to get into a locked car can do so with little difficulty, so a person might as well hold damages to a minimum by making sure they won’t need to break a window or lock to get in.

Now consider the story of David Black, a New York novelist and television producer. In order to realize an even fuller personal value from leaving a car unlocked for security purposes on a New York City street, he had to have his mind changed about his right to the exclusive use of his car. After a period of leaving the car unlocked he discovered that somebody had begun living in it. The car was always empty when he or his wife arrived to use it in the morning, but they knew they had a “tenant” because they found cigarette butts in the ashtrays, and the radio – one of those that work without the ignition key – was tuned to a salsa station that neither of them ever listened to. At first Mr. and Mrs. Black felt outraged and violated – as any of us would – until they realized that their tenant was doing no damage and was, in effect, serving as their car’s night watchman. Creatively altering their principles on the issue of ownership and use of possessions, they began leaving a pillow and a blanket in the back seat for their “tenant.” Every morning they returned to the car to find it in the condition they had left it, with the blanket neatly folded.1 They had to think a new way, see their principles from a new perspective to make this little symbiotic relationship work.

One of the unexpected gifts that Jesus granted people was in forcing them to imagine their principles on a larger scale than they had become accustomed to doing. I think he is still doing this for us. When our lives, our thinking, our praying fall into predictable ruts, Jesus’ ministry reminds us that the work of God is capable of a bigger truth than we had imagined, of continuous surprise, of taking us off in unexpected directions if only we would be attentive.

There’s an old story about a church that was rather nice, a respectable church, but one that was a little stuffy, one often caricatured by folks in other churches in town as “The Frozen Chosen.” One Sunday the people of that congregation had gathered for worship, all dressed out in their Sunday finest, when a man walked into the sanctuary who just didn’t seem to belong. There was a whiff of alcohol about him, and his clothes had that slept-in appearance.

The usher did give the man a bulletin, and motioned him toward an out-of-the-way pew, but the visitor staggered down the center aisle to the front pew, and planted himself there. So far, so good, the ushers hoped. Then the pastor began his sermon.

“Hallelujah!” shouted the newcomer, almost immediately.

The minister gave him a stern, quieting look, but pressed on. A moment later, the visitor interrupted him again. “Praise the Lord!” he proclaimed.

One of the ushers came over and whispered to him, as nicely as he could, “Sir, we don’t do that here!”

“But I’ve got religion!” the man objected.

“Yes, sir,” said the usher. “I’m sure you do. But you didn’t get it here!”

Jesus grants a new perspective to us if we will only be attentive. Street people in the city, wobbly “morning-after” visitors to church, these and others appear with regularity to keep us off-guard, to remind us that no matter how neatly we’ve drawn our religious circle, Jesus wants it drawn bigger. There is a world of stooped-over people out there waiting to hear his word, and he wants us to tell them.

Bible editors choose a variety of headings to set today’s scripture passage apart from those around it. Our pew Bibles entitle the story, “Jesus Heals a Crippled Woman.” The New International Version extends the idea calling the story “A Crippled Woman Healed on the sabbath.” Commentaries’ reference to the passage vary from “Jesus Heals a Stooped Woman,” to “Jesus and the Bent-over Woman.”

I remember seeing bent-over women on a trip in Eastern Europe. On the bridges of the city, in the marketplaces, along the narrow streets, travelers and citizens encountered these beshawled, bent-over women, with their hands extended in a mostly silent plea for alms. It is as close to a depiction of the meaning behind the word grovel as I care to see.

What is it that bends a person? What takes the proud stature out of us, pushes us down, demeans us, and sets us aside as if to say – as Jesus observed contemporary sabbath practice saying in his own day – we are of less value than ordinary farm animals, easier to ignore than livestock?

Time and again in his ministry, Jesus found himself in conflict with the status quo, the lifelong members, the upholders of tradition – the ones who remark in patronizing tones, “We don’t do that here.”

Jesus encountered high levels of controversy in his ministry in many settings because of his view of the sabbath. Of course, the sabbath of his day was the final day of the seven day week, Saturday, not the Christian Sunday sabbath. Many modern languages carry the memory of Saturday as sabbath day. The Spanish word for Saturday, for instance, is “sábado,” a form of the word “sabbath.” But early on, Christians remembered that Jesus died on a Friday, and was dead all day Saturday – the sabbath – being resurrected to new life on Sunday, the first day of the new week. So they thought of Saturday as a day of death. It was time for Christians to think a new thought and they moved their worship to resurrection day, Sunday, a day of life.

Now, rightly or wrongly, all this conversation about the sabbath is just not an earth-shattering issue for modern Americans. Most have made their peace with whatever is left of the Old Testament command to “Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy,”2 sometimes in traditional ways, sometimes in self-justifying ones. Some claim to worship God in nature on the weekends, many churches offer Saturday or even weekday services to meet the needs of busy modern people. So the sabbath – if it is attended to at all – winds up being a matter of personal choice, a sort of randomly chosen day among seven for worship or recreation, or a day when there ought to be some thought of God.

In Jesus’ day, the regulation among the Ten Commandments to remember the sabbath day and keep it holy was taken with utmost seriousness by the religious leaders. It was what defined the people as the chosen people. To relax standards of sabbath observance would be to threaten the very essence of what called them together as a people of God.

Yet the fact is, the enforced observance of even a good thing can sometimes come to be oppressive. Jesus healed the stooped woman, even though there were sabbath traditions and Old Testament interpretations which defined such healing as work and therefor something forbidden on the sabbath. But Jesus reasoned, if in adhering to the letter of the law we violate some greater principle of our faith, shouldn’t the letter of the law be set aside? Isn’t God at least as interested in human beings as in livestock? Yet the law allowed the watering of livestock on the sabbath, why not the healing of a sick, bent-over, isolated woman?

One thing to remember is that if we are going to have principles – and I certainly think we should – we have continually to struggle to make certain they are big enough, far-reaching enough to be worthy of our faith so that they don’t ever seek to limit the unbinding, freeing, liberating work of God.

When Jesus said, “Come and follow me,” he didn’t say to leave our brains – or especially our compassion – behind. This is the way he transformed a bent-over woman from someone who was called, simply, “Woman,” into a person with the proud and honorific title which he gave her, “Daughter of Abraham.” No wonder she stood up straight for the first time in eighteen years!

We are sons and daughters of the King, we are people who have principles. Yet if any of us is finding ourselves bent over, stooped by the crush of life, beaten down by the withering crossfire of the judgment of others on us, Jesus calls out to us as he did that woman one day in the synagogue, saying “You are set free.” Free. And to do the work of God, we must get about the business of finding the bent-over people all around us, and setting them free. For they, too, are children of the King.

Copyright © 2004 Robert J. Elder, all rights reserved

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1 Edward Zucherman, "No Radio," Atlantic Magazine, January 1992, p. 42.

2 Exodus 20:8

All in All

All in All

Copyright © 2010 Robert J. Elder

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Luke 12: 13-21

Colossians 3:1-11

There is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised,

barbarian, Scythian, slave and free;

but Christ is all and in all!

“One size fits all.” Don’t you hate it when you run across clothing items that make that claim? How can it be so? From an NFL linebacker to the Munchkins of the old Wizard of Oz movie, how can one size possibly fit all the varying shapes and sizes of humanity? Invariably such items are shaped like small backpacking tents. “One size fits all” seems to me really to be destined to fit none.

What other things don’t fit under the rubric of one size for all? Automobiles? Would it be a good thing if the only car everyone could buy was a Hummer? Or how about a Mini or a Volkswagen Beetle? Over the years I’ve heard some people declare from time to time that they think their church is too large when they can’t get acquainted with everyone. Then I turn around and someone is back from a trip where they visited a 5,000 member church in California or Florida and they wonder why their church can’t grow to that size. I remember a restaurant on Interstate 40 in Amarillo, Texas where you could get a 72 oz. steak for free if you could eat it all in one hour. Large sounds good sometimes, but what if super-size was the only choice on the menu?

In his letter to the folks in Colossae, Paul didn’t say one size church or faith or spirit fits all of us. What he said was Christ is all and in all. Each of us fits into the body of Christ, no matter our size or our degree of spiritual maturity or our past lives or our nationality. We can be Greek, Jew, faithful to every ounce of the ritual law of Israel or not, barbarian outsider or citizen, working for wages or president of a major corporation, no matter, we all are created in the right way to fit into the body of Christ.

The word Paul uses for “all” when he writes “Christ is all and in all,” is panta. The Greek prefix pan is all over our English language and most often guides the words it’s attached to in the same direction: toward universality. It is connected to words such as: pan-acea, a word for a universal cure-all; pan-American for things affecting all nations of North and South America; pan-demic for diseases that become very widespread; pan-demonium literally suggesting a release of all demons at one time, a totally chaotic situation; pan-orama suggesting a complete view in all directions; pan-theon, which most of us think of as a former pagan temple in Rome converted into a church, but which literally means a temple for all gods.

Probably we get the word picture: Paul wanted us to see and know that Christ was not only in all the world, but that all the world’s people could be infected with the Christo-pan-virus, the Christ who lives within each and all believers. It’s a big picture, we have to admit. Hard to take it in. But then, as my former theology professor, Jim Loder used to say, we worship a very big God!

There is a story about a man on a spiritual quest who once went to see a religious hermit who lived a simple and holy life high on the mountaintop. After a long journey, the man entered the monk’s simple quarters, and was greeted by the smell of incense, which heightened his expectation that he might soon learn of lofty spiritual matters. Then he noticed a pervading quiet in the room, which made him even more expectant that soon he would hear deep truths of God. Then he saw the aged old saint, and quickly asked him how he might attain the spiritual life. When he emerged from the holy man’s humble quarters, he was in a rage. Someone asked him what had gone wrong. He responded, “I wanted to know how I might attain a spiritual life, I wanted to hear of heavenly things – he asked to see my check stubs!”

“Set your mind on things that are above,” said Saint Paul. It may sound at first as though it is an invitation to heavenly visions, a move away from the world. As though the way to avoid the temptation of riches, against which Jesus warned, is to set aside the world altogether. But then what did Paul give us as preparation for setting our minds on the realm of the spirit? “Get rid of anger, passion, hateful feelings.” A lesson in practical ethics. In the search for spiritual truth, Paul turned our attention directly back to the world of relationships – as though this is what is meant by the spiritual life hid in God.

Many people are all too ready to tell us that spiritual reality denies our earthly existence. How different was the perspective of Jesus, who ate and drank with sinners, mingled with outcastes. Rather than avoiding the seamy, the earthy, the downright common, Jesus seemed to deliberately seek it out.

That is what draws us here on a summer Sunday morning. To be with Jesus; to find Christ living within us, his community. We come, especially, not so much to get something out of our faith in Christ, as to be part of Christ, to experience the promise that we may be in Christ as Christ promises to be in us. Which is, after all, the direction that the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper takes us when we come together on Sundays to celebrate it.

I’ve been asked from time to time in the churches I’ve served, “How many members does our church have?” And while we do count members here, as we do in all churches, I often reflect on the fact that while Costco, and the athletic club, and Amazon.com, and the country club have members, people who expect to get something from their membership, what Christ calls is disciples, people who find Christ within them, who offer themselves in his ministry without worrying first about the return benefits.

In Jesus’ time, as in our own, people were concerned with their material well-being. We know what Jesus said on the subject, he said ten times as much about the spiritual dangers of money and possessions as he did about, for instance, prayer. In today’s gospel, he said something that most of us overlook, living in the most prosperous society the world has known: Jesus said, “one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”

“Well, of course,” we say, “we know that spiritual values are the most important thing, that being in the presence of Christ, who is our “all in all,” as Paul put it, claims our ultimate allegiance.

Even so, churches and those of us who populate them, can often be found spending more time and energy discussing church carpet colors than we do planning and praying to find and bring others to the One who is our “all in all.” We fret more about whether we will have enough resources for retirement than we do over whether our children and the children of our community will have faith. But there is good news just in our being here today.

A friend of mine once wrote that maybe the good news is that some of us have already gotten Jesus’ point. We didn’t come here this morning seeking advice on financial matters, as the man in Luke’s story about Jesus seems to have done. We didn’t come here today hoping to receive a program on how to make ourselves healthy, wealthy and wise. We have come here to be with Christ. We have come here not primarily to get something out of him, but because we love him. Lots of folks might be in their yards or on the golf course or tennis courts this morning, sunning themselves like lizards on a rock, but we are here. We are the sort of people who risk hearing what Jesus has to say even when the words may be tough, because we have been willing to listen to him for words of life, to examine our lives, and bend ourselves from our willfulness to his will.[1]

Paul’s word to us today in the letter to the Colossians brings us back to essentials if we will only hear them, calling us to set aside a laundry list of ills which can stand between us and our Savior, including, as Jesus did in his teaching about money, the idolatry of greed. Once the self-serving lenses are taken from our eyes, and the other-serving nature of our faith emerges, it is then that we can begin to see the world as Christ himself saw it, through a renewal in which “there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!"

Copyright © 2010 Robert J. Elder, all rights reserved

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[1]William Willimon, Pulpit Resource, Vol. 32, Number 3, July, August, September 2004, p. 23

When You Haven’t When You Haven’t Got a Prayer

When You Haven’t Got a Prayer

copyright © 2010 Robert J. Elder

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time: July 25, 2010

Luke 11:1-13

In Luke’s gospel we discover this piece of Jesus’ marvelous teaching on prayer, which might have become the paramount teaching of the church on the subject were it not for the fact that Matthew 6 includes a longer version of the prayer Jesus gives here, the one we have become accustomed to calling “The Lord’s Prayer,” and which we pray every Sunday.

Yet there is something important to see about prayer and its place in the life of believers from this compact version in Luke’s gospel, and Jesus’ teaching, which followed it.

I

Just after having visited the house of Mary and Martha – where Martha had busily ministered to the hunger of Jesus and his disciples, while Mary had sat at the Master’s tired feet – Jesus went out to pray, and one of Jesus’ disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray...” Failing to look closely at the passage, we might make the mistake of thinking that the request was, “Lord, teach us how to pray.” I know this request well. You probably know it too. In its contemporary manifestation, the question might go something like this: “Pastor, can you help me learn some beneficial prayer techniques...” or, “What is the appropriate body position for prayer?” or, “Where is the best place to go to pray, and how long should it take?”

Useful, if unanticipated, responses to these questions might be, “Where do you go to speak to members of your family, what techniques do you use, what body position do you use, how long should it take?”

There are plenty of prayer gurus and formulae for meditation floating through the cultural religious marketplace these days, no shortage of books, techniques, and spiritual guides ready to respond to a request like the one we might have anticipated from the disciples: “Lord, teach us how to pray.” But, as it turns out, that was not the request that was made. It was more straightforward, more needy, less presumptuous. To ask to be taught how to pray would have come from an assumption that it was already a recognized skill – like golf, say, or gourmet cooking – and that maybe a few lessons from a pro could sharpen up the game or the meal. But the request was more needy, more abject, hungrier and more helpless: “Lord, teach us to pray...” as if the subject were coming up for the very first time in that disciple’s life. Let’s take those actual words seriously, and perhaps we will be prepared to learn more from Jesus’ response than we had anticipated. This would make our lesson a great one for anyone whose prayer life is stuck at the starting line, anyone who thinks they ought to be praying, but have just not gotten around to getting started, and don’t know where to begin.

Jesus begins and ends his whole example prayer with our need. That is all. How are you, what is on your mind today? He encourages us just to lay those anxieties and needs out before God in all their un-fancy, unfinished human clumsiness. Jesus’ short example prayer gives permission for us to pray the sorts of petitions that most readily rise to our lips: He said,

When you pray, say: Father, holy be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial.

A contemporary expansion on this prayer could be rendered: “God, where are you? If you are there I need you now. It seems as though every time I bring home my paycheck, I’m looking over my shoulder, hoping that I won’t be the next one to be downsized. Forgive me for being such a busybody and know-it-all today; I am trying to learn to forgive other people for the very same thing. And Lord, give me strength to make it through the times when I’m tempted to believe you aren’t there and I really am on my own. That’s about it, Lord. Amen.”

Want to be taught to pray? Just start with what is on your mind, the way you would in a conversation with a good friend who asks, “How are you today?”

Still, about the time we reach the point in a prayer that is made up entirely of our needs, of “honey-do’s” for God, we may be tempted to wonder whether anyone is listening, whether the God of the entire universe really cares at all about our little worry over a performance review tomorrow with the boss. It is for this reluctance to open up our heartfelt needs before God that Jesus added the teaching of his little parable.

II

“Suppose one of you has a friend,” Jesus said, “and you go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.’ And he answers from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.”

It seems to me that we are meant to see that our really good human friends might be disinclined to respond to our needs if the process of responding would involve a great deal of trouble or inconvenience for them. But I know what you may be thinking. You may be thinking that you might have a really good friend or two whom you know you could go to even at a very inconvenient time, and if you really needed their help, they would still be willing to drop what they were doing – inconvenience or not – and help you out. And you would do the same for them. Jesus makes room for this thought in his parable, when he says “at least because of his persistence, he will get up and give him whatever he needs.” This might be true a time or two, but if you called even your most dependable neighbor constantly, night after night in the middle of the night asking for yet another loaf of bread or cup of milk, I can imagine that eventually a realtor would be called, and soon your former close friend would provide you with a new, possibly less well-disposed neighbor for your to pester.

The fact is, only so much need-response is possible from any human being. Eventually – and for most of us weak and selfish creatures, this does not take an exceptionally long time – “response-ability” can be exhausted, and we would have to turn away even our best friends.

This sets us up to learn something important about the nature of God.

III

God is seen in contrast with that crotchety neighbor who only reluctantly gets up and goes to the bread box to provide for his neighbor’s need. If friends come through for each other, even if only to get their neighbor to quit leaning on the doorbell, how much more can we rely on God to listen to our petitions, the God who stands to gain nothing by listening to us, yet who provides for us in our world in ways beyond our imagining?

This is no guarantee that those who pray for a red wagon will get one. Jesus offers confident assurance that all heartfelt prayers are heard. Someone is listening. And isn’t this, at heart, our deepest need? Aren’t we longing to know that whether or not we get that new red wagon we are hoping for, someone cares, someone listens, someone has the best interests of our hearts and spirits in mind? Jesus makes talking to God sound like intimate and satisfying dinner conversation where we may express ourselves unselfconsciously with the confidence that we will be heard and understood. Prayer is not a means of getting something, certainly not primarily; it is a way of being in relationship to God. C.S. Lewis once said that he prayed because he couldn’t help himself from praying, and that he didn’t hope to change God in the process, but that in praying he discovered he was the one changed.

“Teach us to pray” is itself a petition that is met by a responsive and caring listener. Want to pray? Then just say what is on your mind. God wants to hear it. “Successful prayer” does not depend on posture, formal words, or even receiving the particular answer we had in mind, any more than relationship with someone we love depends on always looking perfect, never ending a sentence with a preposition, or constantly getting what we want from them. Relationship rests its heart in communication, in saying what lies in the depths of the heart.

Someone once said, prayer is not so much a way to receive things we don’t have as it is the way of coming to the realization of what we have been given.

“So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who seeks finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”

copyright © 2010 Robert J. Elder

Penmanship of Faith

Penmanship of Faith

Robert J. Elder, Pastor
Sunday, July 4, 2010

Luke 10:1-11
Galatians 6:1-16

See what large letters I make when I am writing in my own hand!...
May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,
by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.

In a preaching journal that is popular among pastors, my friend Tom Long, professor of homiletics at Emory University, once published a sermon for Independence day when, as is the case today, it came on a Sunday. In his sermon, Tom repeatedly declares what we all k now to be true especially of this day: Today is both the Fourth of July, and the Lord’s Day. I found his sermon so compelling, I decided that what I would share with you today would be, in no small measure, owing Tom’s words.1

Every few years we have to face a Christmas Eve that lands on a Sunday, and the necessity of a “normal” service in the morning stacks up next to special services that night. But it’s only every few years. Something similar is true of the times when our primary national holiday arrives on a Sunday and flag waving is interlaced with the contemplation of the cross of Christ, the singing of hymns and praying of prayers comes amid anticipation of picnics and fireworks on the river, by the lake, or in the backyard.

For many, there is no disconnect between these two events at all, wearing red white and blue and singing My Country, ‘Tis of Thee seem to go comfortably hand-in-hand. Yet for some, the day is less comfortable, as both cross and flag are demanding symbols competing for loyalty from the deepest levels of our being. I am reminded of the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s biographer, Eberhard Bethge, who, upon being ushered into his first worship experience in an American church in Lynchburg, Virginia, saw a huge American flag displayed at the front of the church and was struck that the only other times he had seen a national flag displayed in sanctuaries in his native Germany were when the Nazis had taken over the churches and stationed their flag in them. It was a startling thought to me when I heard him tell the story. In some ways, the symbols of faith and of nationalism coming togethe r on the Lord’s Day and the Nation’s Day makes visible on the calendar the decision facing Christian believers every day, as highlighted in Joshua 24:15: “Choose this day whom you will serve...”

We all recognize that there is plenty to be proud of in being part of this nation, and it is a very human thing to want to celebrate the truly stunning liberties that we enjoy and remember the sacrifices that made our enjoyment of them possible. A few years ago I visited Civil War battlefields outside of Richmond, Virginia, and I became more aware than ever of sacrifices, historic and contemporary, that have been made to keep our country free. Most of the time in our nation, the choice between love of God and love of country is not an either/or decision. But in a day when our country is undeniably a world superpower, and, whether we like it or not, much of the world sees us in ways that we would not find flattering, it is good to consider the choices that lie in our lives between discipleship under the Prince of Peace and citizenship in what has become an admittedly American empire.

Today is the Fourth of July, and today is the Lord’s Day.

Of course, the standard lectionary of scripture readings is oblivious to the collision of calendars. As far as the lectionary of readings for worship is concerned, today is the “14th Sunday in Ordinary Time.” Even so, as so often happens when we follow the lectionary, we have before us passages of surprising relevance, and today that relevance is for Christians who live in the tension between the Lord’s Day and the Nation’s Day. Our national leaders tell us we have a global mission and they have announced orders to bring it to pass in the cause of freedom.

Our readings from the letter to the Galatians and the gospel of Luke remind us that our true freedom finds its source not in armies on the march but in the cross of Christ, and that same Christ also has a worldwide mission which places be lievers under orders.

Today is the Fourth of July, and today is the Lord’s Day.

Senator John Kerry, when he was running for president, once said, “the highest responsibility of our government is to provide for the common defense and to keep the American people safe.” Defense and safety. Those are the highest responsibilities. For his part, George W. Bush said during that same campaign, “Defending our nation against its enemies is the first and fundamental commitment of the federal government.” Establishing and maintaining the wall between us and the enemy is certainly a clear and fundamental commitment of our elected leadership.

But Jesus, who also desires to lead us, has another word. Jesus said, “Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves...” (Luke 10:3). Jesus also said, “Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house’” (10:5). In other words, if today we are mainly celebra¬ting the Fourth of July, we are concerned with safety, defense, guarding against our enemies, and homeland security, and our national leaders appropriately speak of these things. If, however, we are observing the Lord’s Day, we hear another command. We are called by our Lord to fear nothing and to head right into the midst of those who we would have thought of once as enemies, and to speak a word of peace. Two different days. Two different missions.

Today is the Fourth of July, and today is the Lord’s Day.

James Billington, the Librarian of Congress and a student of Russian history, happened to be in Moscow in August of 1991, the tumultuous time when the old Soviet regime was giving way to a new social order. These were tense and dangerous days, and power was balanced on a razor’s edge. Boris Yeltzin and a small group of defenders occupied the Russian White House and successfully managed to face off an enormous number of tanks and troops poised to attack, to put down the rebellion, and to restore the old guard in the Soviet Union.

It turns out, a central role in this successful resistance was played by the babushkas, the “old women in the church” and their courageous public Christian witness. These bandana wearing old women, who had kept the Orthodox Christian church alive during the entire Soviet period, were the butt of many jokes over the years by both Russians and Westerners alike. Nothing could have seemed more pathetic or irrelevant than they, and they were widely regarded as evidence of the eventual death of religion in the Soviet Union.

And yet on the critical night of August 20, 1991, when ma rtial law was proclaimed, and people were told to go to their homes, many of these women disobeyed and went immediately to the place of confrontation. Some of them fed the resisters in a public display of support. Others staffed medical stations, others prayed for a miracle, while still others, astoundingly, climbed up onto the tanks, peered through the slits at the crew-cut men inside and told them there were new orders, these from God: Thou shalt not kill. The young men stopped the tanks. “The attack never came, and by dawn of the third day [it was clear] that the tide had turned.”2

Today is the Fourth of July, and today is the Lord’s Day.
Choose this day whom you will serve.

When the disciples came back from their journeys to report to Jesus what had happened, they returned with surprising joy, bringing with them astounding tal es of healing, peace, and victory. “Yes,” replied Jesus, “while you were doing the work of the gospel, I saw Satan fall like lightning” (Luke 10:18). In other words, the disciples thought they were out doing small deeds of ministry, unnoticed acts of compassion. They were simply obeying the commands of Jesus, traveling to forgotten places, touching neglected lives, working in obscure corners of the world and speaking peace and proclaiming the kingdom. But Jesus told them their deeds of mercy and grace were bringing evil to its knees. “The world saw a ragtag army of workers for peace,” said Jesus, “but what I saw was Satan plummeting from his throne.”

So if you are interested in a midsummer’s break, a relaxing day spent waving the flag, grilling steaks, and catching a few rays as you tune in the last innings of the ball game, then today is July the Fourth. Enjoy.

But if you want your life to count, really count, then know something more. Know that you are baptized and you have orders from another commander. Somewhere along the way, you will be called to leave your wallet, your luggage, and your spare wardrobe in the closet; you will be called to take a deep breath and to head out into places you never imagined you’d go in the name of Christ. Maybe you will be sent to comfort a friend in the hospital, maybe to speak a word of reconciliation in a neighbor’s living room, maybe to be a healer in a distant land, maybe to take a courageous stand in the pu blic square. You will carry with you only one thing: Jesus’ gospel of peace. The way will be hard and the path uncertain, but by the grace of God your work will become a part of God’s work and will help to knock the powers of evil off the throne. Satan will fall from the sky like a flash of lightning, and your name will be written in heaven.

It all depends on what day you think this is.

Today is the Fourth of July, and today is the Lord’s Day.

Copyright © 2010 Robert J. Elder, all rights reserved
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1. I am much indebted to Tom Long's sermon "Today Is...," Journal for Preachers, Pentecost 2004, pp. 40-46 for material in this sermon, which I have only lightly edited for length and to which have added stories of my own.
2. James H. Billington, "The Religious Dimensions of Post-Modern Change," American Theological Library Association, Summary of Proceedings, 52/1998, 154-155. The account of the babushkas is taken from this essay and from comments made in various addresses by Billington. Additional details of this story can be found in Thomas G. Long, Testimony: Talking Ourselves into Being Christian (San Francisco: Jossey Bass).