A Sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on March 7, 2010 at the Convent Chapel of St. Mary's Medical Center, Huntington, WV , and based on Luke 13:1-9, 1 Cor. 10:1-13 and Psalm 103
Imagine for a moment that the United States of America had been invaded and overtaken by another Empire nation - such as China. Imagine that there was a Chinese governor over the Tri-State region and that there were Chinese soldiers everywhere looking over your shoulder, always ready to take advantage of you, to steal things from you - and even imprison you if you got out of line.
If you can imagine this, you can know a little of what it must have been like for the people of Israel to be ruled by the Romans. As Americans, we wouldn't want another nation to rule over us. There would probably be those among us who would mount insurrections. Charismatic leaders would rise up and try to lead movements against the oppressor - only to be cut own in their prime by ruthless local governors.
This is the kind of thing that happened with some regularity in the Jewish nation under the Romans. The story of the Maccabees is just such a story. And the illustration Jesus uses in Luke 13 is another. It's a story about a group of rebels who rose up and were ruthlessly killed, apparently as they worshiped in the Temple.
These rebels not only resented the occupying Roman force, they knew the Scriptures, which promised that one day God would raise up Messiah, and he would come to overthrow the oppressor and usher in a time of peace and prosperity. This was a promise they had from God - and the habitual thought pattern of the entire nation was to look for the ONE whom God had chosen to lead this uprising. As a result, there were many 'messianic' movements afoot at the time of Christ.
The thing they had in common was a desire to bring deliverance from Rome - in the power of their own strength! They wanted a Savior - but they wanted it on their own terms, in their own image.
The Hebrews at the time of Christ were just like the Hebrews in the time of the Exodus. No sooner had Moses gone up to Mt. Sinai - and stayed gone for 40 days - than the people rebelled and left the God who had revealed himself to Moses as 'I am that I am'.As Moses was on the mountain getting the Law, his people were down on the plain making an idol in the form of a Golden Calf, and engaging in gluttony, drunkenness and sexual immorality - arranging their lives on their own terms!
When God didn't act quickly enough for them, they took matters into their own hands and did whatever they wanted. And the result was disastrous.Paul reminds us that, "The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play' ... and that "twenty-three thousand fell in a single day." (I Cor. 10:8)
Uprising and rebellion were part and parcel of the Hebrew national experience. Unfortunately, the rebellion was against God, even though Israel had miraculous outpourings of God's power and presence! Even though they had the sacraments if you will - Baptism as they passed through the Red Sea, and Communion as they ate the manna and drank water from the Rock (Paul identifies this as the Rock of Christ) that Moses had struck for them. Even with the overt demonstrations of God's power, and his ongoing, daily provision of manna - it still wasn't enough to keep the people faithful.
And lest we think that we as Christians are immune from such behavior, Paul warns us: 'We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents, nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer'.(1 Cor. 10:9,10). He is referring to two other episodes in the life of the Hebrew people:
The fiery serpent story is in Numbers chapter 21. During the conquest of Canaan, the people 'became impatient' and complained that they had no food or water and the Lord sent fiery serpents among them, killing many.
The grumbling he refers to happened in Numbers 16, where Korah and his followers led the people to grumble and complain against Moses. The result was that the very earth opened up and swallowed the 250 rebel leaders.And then the next day 14,700 people died from plague because they had displeased the Lord through their grumbling about the 250 rebels dying!
It's sobering to think that even though we as Christians have been forgiven, that it's still possible to displease God. According to Paul, there are four key ways to displease Him - all drawn from the life experience of Israel and their various rebellions:
How to Displease God
1) Idolatry
2) Immorality
3) Testing God
4) Grumbling
Idolatry looks pretty simple on its face - worshiping an idol of our own making. We might want to pass over this one thinking that we're off the hook because we don't worship Golden Calves, but it's easy to fall into various kinds of idolatry.
What about worshiping an 'American Idol'? Hollywood seems to be very good at producing idols meant for mass consumption. Is that idolatry?Or if you don't actually idolize a pop star, what about idolizing another person? What about looking to someone else as your source of comfort, strength or inspiration in such a way that they become a sort of quasi-god in our lives?What about worshiping technology - or efficiency - or Education - or trees and mountains?Anything that we put in the place of God becomes an idol to us. And all of it displeases God.
Immorality can become an idol to people as well, because if you don't worship the living God, one option is to worship yourself and your own sexuality. The good gift of sex is elevated out of its proper place and asked to do something it was not intended to do - become the most important thing in our lives. The result is to cheapen and denigrate the gift.Our culture - our world - is rife with this kind of idolatry.
Testing God is a bit more 'subtle'. It only involves complaining that God is not doing things as we would like - and then insisting that we get what we want instead of what God provides for us. This one gets personal because I know from my own experience that I'm not that fond of Reality. There are a lot of things in life that I would rather be different. We could call this the 'Burger King' temptation - "Have it your way." Speak up for what you want. Complain to the management. Demand you rights! Sounds pretty American, doesn't it?
Grumbling is associated with another word, "murmuring". Both words have a sort of onomatopoeia quality - they sound like the thing they represent:grumblegrumblegrumble, murmurmurmurmur. This is a kind of malignant complaining that incites other people to rebellion. Not high-minded rebelling against an oppressive regime so much as rebellion by self-willed or self-impressed people against leaders they don't like.Again, Korah is the example - one who led others to revolt against God's chosen leaders. This displeases God because it destroys community and leads to infighting.
By contrast, Jesus and Psalm 103 tell us:
How to Please God
1) Repent
2) Bear Fruit
3) Keep God's Covenant
4) Bless the Lord.
Within the context of our Gospel reading, repentance meant something for Israel as a nation. If you remember back to the Galileans who died by the hand of Pilate and then realize that 'the fig tree' is often used as a symbol of the nation of Israel - what you get is the idea that God's people had become rebellious, self-willed, hard and unfruitful. They were demanding that the national destiny be ushered in by their own plans, in their own time.
Jesus was warning his people here that unless they allowed themselves to have their hardness broken up - to allow the nurturing rain of God's spirit to water their roots and and the fertilizer of God's word to fortify them, causing them to bear the fruit of righteousness - that they would be cut down!Unless Israel repented of its demand for national deliverance and accepted God's true Messiah, Yeshua, they would perish! Israel needed to repent of their self-will - and we do too! Repentance is prerequisite for pleasing God.
Bearing fruit means believing in the One God sent to redeem the world and allowing Him to redeem us, to change us, and to work through us. For Israel, that would have meant not only repentance, but accepting Christ as Savior and Lord.
For Christians, who have accepted Christ's Lordship, this also means allowing ourselves to be directed and controlled by the Holy Spirit so that we bear fruit. Paul lists the fruits of the spirit in Galatians chapter five: Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control.
If these fruits are evident in our lives, it means that we have been, and are being saved. If we don't bear fruit, it's a sign that the Life of God does not flow through us - and that we may be in danger of death - either creeping deadness through lack of spiritual interest, actual physical death through the impact of sin in our lives, or metaphorical death, through the loss of career or position due to wrong actions.
For an example of this you don't have to look much farther than the news. Last week, Governor Patterson of New York, and two of the state's Congressmen, Charlie Rangel and Eric Massa, were all in the news because of ethical problems. They are being forced to either resign their positions or forgo running for another term. They are being cut down because their fruit is rotten. They didn't learn anything from the slew of Republicans that got into similar trouble a number of years ago, and so they are repeating the same mistake - with the same result.
Keeping God's covenant, of course, is the antidote to bearing rotten fruit.Thy Word have I hid in my heart, that I may not sin against Thee, says the Psalmist (119). And Paul tells us that if we "walk by the Spirit, and [we] will not gratify the desires of the flesh' and so will please God. Walking with the Lord daily, pleases Him.
Finally, the thing that really pleases God is our worship. Psalm 103 exhorts us to 'Bless the Lord' and to 'forget not all his benefits." It kind of sounds like a Resume with bullet points. So, I've taken the Psalmist's words and rearranged them into a sort of modern business style resume, with the idea that Remembering God's Resume is a way of Pleasing Him. So here it is:
Resume 103
The Lord
Address:Throne in heaven, Dominion over all (v.19).
Career Goal:
To execute righteousness and judgment for the oppressed (v.6).
Character:The LORD is full of compassion and mercy, slow to anger and of great kindness. (v.8)Management Experience:Hosts of angels and ministering spirits do his will (vv.20,21).
Value Added:
*He forgives all your sins
*Heals all your infirmities (v.3)
*He redeems your life from the grave
*Crowns you with mercy and loving-kindness (v.4)
*He satisfies you with good things,
*Renews your youth like an eagle's (v.5)
References:
He made his ways known to Moses and his works to the children of Israel.(v.7).
We are to bless the Lord - to speak good things about Him. Give it a try right now. Using 'God's Resume' as an example, take some time to Bless the Lord, just as it says in Psalm 103.
It'll make you feel better - an I'm sure it will please God. AMEN.
