Is God Always Good?: September 11, 2022

 Year C, Pentecost 14                                   Exodus 32:7-14 & Luke 15:1-10                                                        

           We are going to try something right now that we don’t usually do in the Episcopal Church.  It’s called “call and response.”  I am going to say, “God is good” and you will respond “all the time.”  Let’s give it a try.  “God is good.” “All the time.”   I have been in faith communities when they have done this—never in an Episcopal Church of course… And when I hear it, I feel a couple of things.  For a moment, I get swept up in the optimism, the sheer joy.  But then a moment later, I think, “But is he?”  Many of us can think of times in our lives when things seemed so unfair, so desperately sad, we wondered, why is God doing this to me?  Why isn’t God showering me with the goodness I deserve?

            And if you have thought this, that’s ok. The Psalms are full of questions like this.  In the Old Testament, we see a number of examples of when God seems a lot more like an irritable human than a good and loving God.  For instance, was God good when he told Moses to leave him alone so his wrath could burn hot against the people and he could consume them?  He even offered to start a new nation with Moses as the father (rather than Abraham).  That means he was going to destroy the whole group, even though he promised after the flood he would never do that again.   

I will admit that God had some good reasons to be angry.  He was probably expecting that the people would be a little more grateful.  After all, God had brought the people out of Egypt, where they had been slaves.  He had shown them miraculous displays of power and mercy.  God had then given them 10 commandments to follow.  The first commandment was to not to create any idols.  Yet when Moses was delayed coming down from the mountain—where he was talking to God, the people began to panic and asked Aaron (Moses’ brother) to make gods for them.  Aaron complied. 

Now, in defense of the people, being lost in the desert is no small thing.  People die when they are lost in the desert. When your fearless leader disappears on a mountain, that would be fairly anxiety provoking.  So they turned to what they had known for so long…worshipping the most convenient and most accessible gods.  Unfortunately for them, there is nothing that makes God angrier in the Old Testament, than worshipping other gods.   

            God’s reaction is completely understandable to us humans.  We have all lost our temper at times.  But shouldn’t God be above such hair trigger anger?  Fortunately Moses is able to reason with God and this is where things get even more interesting.  Despite the fact that God is determined to punish his people, he is swayed by Moses’ arguments.  Moses reminds him of the promise he made to Abraham.  He basically says, “Remember Abraham? Do you remember how you told him that his descendants would be like the stars of the heaven?  Remember Abraham God?  He was a good guy.  Those are his descendants you are about to destroy.”  God changed his mind.

            This part of the story disturbs some people and I admit that it always makes me a little uncomfortable.  Most of us assume that God doesn’t change.  If God is all knowing and all powerful, he should not change.   Why would he? But when we talk about an unchanging God, we are really talking about God’s character that doesn’t change.  In the end, God is always good.  God is always merciful.  The fact that God was able to change his mind is further proof of his wisdom and goodness.

            If you look at our Gospel reading, you will see God’s character on full display, without any anger to cloud the true nature of his character.  Both parables tell a story of reckless love, compassion and devotion. In the first, Jesus tells the story of a shepherd who searches for the one lost sheep, leaving the other 99 to wander in the wilderness.  The other story is of a woman searching her entire house for a lost coin.  In both stories, the searcher rejoices upon finding the lost item.  The shepherd and woman don’t simply rejoice on their own, no they call their friends and family to rejoice with them.  Jesus then tells those who are listening that there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than 99 righteous.  In these stories, we see God as patient, determined and merciful.  We see a God who is good, all the time.

            One of the reasons I have a hard time with that phrase, is that I think about how I would feel if someone said that to me at a difficult time in my life.  I imagine someone walking into the ICU and saying, “God is good” and expecting me to respond, “All the time!”  I consider all the times I have counseled someone going through a difficult time and imagine myself saying that—saying “God is good” and expecting the weeping person to respond: “All the time.” It would not go over well.

Yet what I realized is that those aren’t examples of God not being good, those are times when life wasn’t good.  There is a big difference.  It’s tempting to blame God in times when life is difficult or unfair, but it’s important that we remember just because our circumstances have changed, doesn’t mean God’s character has changed.  It doesn’t mean God’s love for us has changed. God is bigger than what is happening in our world right now.  God is definitely bigger than what is happening in our individual lives right now.

 But here is what is astonishing about out God.  Just because God is bigger than our problems doesn’t mean that God is too big or too important to care.  In both our Old Testament reading and our Gospel, we hear of a God who cares deeply for his people, and not just the group, but every single person.  There is a moment in all our lives, perhaps many moments, when we are lost, even the most righteous of us.  God will not give up until each one of his people is found.  God will not give up on any of us until we are found, perhaps found many times. Not only that, but God will rejoice in those moments as well.  God will gather his angels in heaven and throw a party. That’s not just a good God. That is a great God.

Who are you calling a hypocrite? 8/21/2016

Year C, Pentecost 14                                                          
Luke 13:10-17                                                            

            If you were here last week and recall the Gospel reading, you will know that this is our 2^nd week in a row of Jesus calling the religious leaders hypocrites.  It is easy to villainize the Jewish religious leaders---the Pharisees.  That has been done for millennia and unfortunately has led to considerable anti-Jewish sentiment.  I am not sure that it is fair to beat up on the Pharisees.  I will admit that as a religious leader, I take it a tad personally.  I cringe a little every time I hear Jesus call someone out for being a hypocrite.  That is what he is doing…he is calling them out—in front of everyone. 

            This was the Jewish Sabbath at the local synagogue.  Everyone in the town was present.  While Jesus had no official standing in the community that we know of, he must have been fairly well respected as he was allowed to teach in the synagogue on the Sabbath.  While he had a certain amount of authority, he was still expected to follow the laws of the Jewish faith. These laws were essential to the faith. No matter how great a teacher, preacher or healer he was…he still had to follow the laws.  One of the really important laws was that you did not work on the Sabbath.  That wasn’t just any rule or law--that was a commandment.

            When we hear the word Sabbath, we think of going to church, relaxing a little, maybe having a lazy day at home. That does not mean that we do any of those things, but we assume that is the goal.  When God told us to rest on the 7^th day, surely that is what he had in mind…binge watching Netflix all day.  Not quite.

One of the reasons that the fourth commandment mandated that people keep the Sabbath was to recognize that the Hebrew people were no longer slaves and thus no longer forced to work every day.  Moses delivered the 10 Commandments after the exodus.  The Hebrew people were released from bondage and free to rest.  God was demanding not only that the people who were listening rest from their labor, but that they make sure that their servants don’t work.  It’s a justice issue.  The nice thing about the Blue laws (where businesses were closed on Sundays) was not just that church attendance was higher but that these forced closures allowed everyone to have a day off…everyone.  

That might explain why the Pharisee was a little upset.  He was not against someone being healed.  There were 6 other days that Jesus could have healed this woman.  Why did Jesus have to do it on the one day he was not supposed to?  Now you might think there should be some wiggle room in the commandments, especially given this particular situation. 

There was. That was why Jesus called the leader a hypocrite.  He was reminding the Pharisee that they already did work on the Sabbath when they untied their oxen and led them to the manger for water.  You would not deny your animal water just because that would cause some work.  Why then would you withhold healing from someone who so desperately needed it? The Pharisee was a hypocrite because he was making an exception for a purpose that made his life easier, but refusing to make an exception for another person whose life was exceptionally hard.

The Pharisee seems unreasonable, but I bet we all have little rules in our life that we don’t break.  Some of them are really important rules that have important reasons.  Some of them were important once, but are no longer relevant.  Yet we follow them because it is habit.  Think about your rules.  It might be that you always make your bed, or you always wear a jacket and a tie to church, or you always wash your face at night.  You could skip a day and it would not kill you.  But what I always worry about is the slippery slope.  Once you break the rule once, there is a good chance you will break it again.  Then it is no longer a rule, it’s a recommendation and recommendations are very easy to ignore.

I believe this is what the Pharisee was worried about.  He was worried that we would start making so many exceptions that the commandment would no longer be relevant.  People would forget what the purpose of it was---that it was not just about rest, it was about justice.  That is exactly what happened. The Sabbath is now a quaint memory. 

That’s why I feel for the Pharisee.  I can see that slippery slope all over the place and it scares me.  I see Jesus’ point as well.  We have tons of rules in the church.  Most of them have really good reasons behind them. Some of them were originally based on practical needs but those needs changed and we kept the rules because they became tradition.  Do you know why some churches have rails around the altar?  Hundreds of years ago, there would be dogs that would wander through the church.  The rail kept out the dogs.  Now the rail gives us a place to kneel so that we can be in community around the altar. Having this rail has become a rule for us.  People would be in an uproar if we took it out.  The rail is one of our unwritten rules.

But we also have lots of written rules in the church.  We call them canon law.  We have rules in the Book of Common Prayer.  They are called rubrics.  Do you know why we finish the wine at the end of the service instead of pouring the dregs in the bushes? Page 409 of the prayer book tells us that the sacrament must be reverently consumed by the clergy and communicants.  That makes sense to me because it’s a sacrament.  It’s the body and blood of Christ. Yet there are some rules that do not make sense to me and sometimes I wonder why we keep doing them…why it all matters.  On the one hand I see that slippery slope that the Pharisee was worried about.  On the other I hear Jesus calling me a hypocrite.

Why does all this matter? Often times, rules (whether they are written or not) cause us to exclude people and things.  They give us excuses not to change, not to take risks.  They keep us isolated.  There was once a church rule that African Americans could not sit in the same pews as a white person.  That’s not in the Bible.  It was a rule created by people.  You might think, ok, well that seems like a good way to judge, we’ll follow the rules in the Bible.  There was a long standing church law that women could not be ordained.  That rule came from a Bible passage.  It’s tricky isn’t it?

However, I do believe that there are guides to help us interpret the laws of our church.  Holy Scripture provides an awesome guide.  If we read it literally, we will find a lot of rules.  If we read it in community with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we will find the same rules but we will discover ways to determine what is and what is not truly critical to our faith. 

The most important guide is Jesus.  Some people like to portray Jesus as this big rule breaker who thumbed his nose at authority.  He didn’t break the rules; he reinterpreted them.  Thankfully he provided some divine guidance while he was still on earth.  When someone asked him what the most important commandment was, he responded, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’  This is the greatest and first commandment.  And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” He interpreted everything through a lens of love.  He healed the woman because he had compassion for her.  He could not let her go one more day in agony…not one more day.  That was what the Pharisee failed to see.  For him, the laws became more important than the people they were created for.

It is vital that we as a church look at our written and unwritten rules and traditions.  We look at them through a lens of love for God and our neighbor.  If we open ourselves up to that exercise of seeing things through a lens of love,  our church will become more open, loving, and authentic.  Because when Jesus calls out the hypocrites.  I don’t want to be the one he is looking at.