I found myself this week floundering in a maze of possible things to preach. Jeremiah’s promise of restoration… “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah”. (Jer 31:31) The Psalmist gratitude for God’s covenant.. “Oh, how I love your law! * all the day long it is in my mind.” Ps 119:37. The Widows persistent call for justice and in inevitability of God’s justice for the poor “And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night?” (Luke 18:7) But I could not get past the connection that the 2 Timothy reading has with the work we are doing on Wednesday nights as we take a deep dive into the Hebrew prophets. Bear with me for just a minute as I catch you up on our Wednesday night study.
Back
when the children of Israel first entered the Promised Land, Joshua allocated
land to each tribe and family by lot. The land had to stay in each family. Even
if someone sold his land, it would automatically be returned to the family
during the year of jubilee which occurred once every fifty years. Everybody in Israel
and Judah in the 9th C BCE knew this, including King Ahab and his
wife Jezebel. So when Naboth wouldn’t sell his vineyard to Ahab, there was
nothing Ahab could do about it. It was a family thing. Jezebel, on the other hand, was a Philistine
princess, and she figured she could do something about it!
Namely, kill Naboth!
So Jezebel conspires with some nefarious folks to assassinate Naboth. Once he was dead she advised Ahab to seize the land – and he did! Ahab did not personally kill Naboth, and neither did Jezebel; however, she gave the orders, and he was the one whose greed led her to give the orders. Because they were in a position of power, God held them even more responsible than the murderers themselves. Elijah brings them the bad news that the LORD is very angry not only because they sinned, but also because they caused others to sin.
Naboth
and Ahab have very different ideas about the ability to buy and sell land. Naboth believed that land cannot be traded it
can only be treasured and cared for.
Here the covenantal roots of land ownership goes up against commercial
use of land. But truth out it is a theological
issue. Like so many of the stories in
the Hebrew scripture it is a question of faith…
Should the God of Israel be Yahweh or Baal? Amos, Jeremiah, Micah all warned against
worshipping false idols. Even a
millenium later Jesus tells us “You cannot serve two masters You cannot serve
God and wealth.” (Mt 6:24)
Since
the beginning of time there have been some who believed that wealth is a sign
of God’s blessing and that health and well-being are earned – a quid pro quo
faith. But at the very core of this
story and all of the others from Jeremiah to Jesus in our lessons today is the core
belief that the creator of the universe will not tolerate injustice. There is nothing wrong with being successful,
having the comforts of life – what is wrong is to gain prosperity on the backs
of others. Whether in 9th C
BCE Palestine or in Long Beach MS in 2025.
Walter
Brueggemann notes: “we ourselves live in
an economy where the gap between haves and have-nots grows daily. The gap is
everywhere among us, supported by (1) the idolatry of wealth and property, (2)
institutional violence of policing, tax codes, and rigged financial
arrangements, (3) food from agribusiness designed for export and profit, (4)
privatization of public land to the exclusion of the landless, and (5) a
throw-away culture of extravagance that is ready to dispose of unneeded folk as
well as other commodities to the great detriment of the environment.” If you don’t believe it just check your
facebook feed. Brueggemann continues.. “Given
this evident economic reality now as then, it is urgent that the church learn
to reread its text in more knowing, compelling, and courageous ways that are
appropriate to the urgency of the moment that God has entrusted to us.” And that brings us home to the Epistle of
Second Timothy.
Second
Timothy is thought to have been written in the 2C CE – long after Paul’s
death. Paul had a reputation as a model of faithful endurance. The letter encourages its addressee, Timothy,
to nurture those same qualities in his ministry. It assumes a setting in which
Timothy confronts challenges created by rival teachers. It worries about their
teachings’ potential to hamper and discredit the teachings of Jesus. Our passage today calls for the early
Christians and us - in the spreading of
the gospel - to be persistent – whether the government is liable to file suit or
bring false charges against you or not. To
convince, rebuke, and encourage others to be faithful to God, because the world
is full of false teachers who will say whatever suits the desires of the
powerful and that there will always be people with “itching ears” who will
believe them and spread hate.
Second Timothy and Brueggemann
are inviting us to reread God’s word within the context of the world in which
we live. Jesus did not come into the
world just to save us from our sins.
Jesus – just like the Prophets before him … came into the world to teach
us how live, how to love, how to show mercy, compassion, and gratitude. Second Timothy says that all scripture is
inspired by God. Some try to cherry pick
a package to suit their own greed or hate.
But if we read scripture from the long view, then like the author of
Timothy, we will discover that all scripture is a means by which God can breathe life and
faith and hope and love and forgiveness and resurrection, into people. The study of scripture and of the prophetic
writings of other faiths and cultures – when understood within the context of the
time and place and culture in which it was written can help congregations
understand how their individual daily lives are awash with opportunities for
authentic ministry.
In my homily last week I suggested
that faith was not something we have but rather faith is something we do. That notion comes home for us today. Each of these readings tells us that true
faith looks a whole lot more like “being bold” than like “Being pious” Faith requires us to reframe our days and
nights with humility and gratitude for the abundance of God’s blessings in our
lives and to resist the notion that we earned those blessings.
For weeks now we have heard about widows, lepers, Lazarus at the gate, .. all of these tales are intended to remind us – not that we are low belly sinful folks, but to proclaim to us that we are the beloved children of God. We are called to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest scripture because God has made a new covenant with us … saying “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”
As Christians we are commanded by
scripture, tradition and reason to shape our actions and our decisions, our public
statements, and yes our votes, to shape them by our understanding of our place
in God’s Kingdom and by God’s persistent call to us. Whether it is on a soapbox, in a pulpit or at
the voting booth, God expects us to speak out against greed and oppression against
hate and prejudice, and to defend the civil rights – the human rights of those
who are unable to defend themselves. To
not only love God, but to also love our neighbors as ourselves. To that I say…
