Mercy and Love Beyond All Understanding (6/19/16)

Isaiah 65:1-9; Luke 8:26-39

James Tissot, Jesus, the Gerasene, and the Unclean Spirits

In the wake of national tragedies, we often feel isolated, angry, and scared. And when we feel like this, we are tempted to lash out at folks who disagree with us or who don't believe as we do. When we cast our judgment on those who offend us, we forget that God alone has the power to judge.

Mercy and Love Beyond All Understanding (6/19/16)

Isaiah 65:1-9; Luke 8:26-39

Sermon

          Good morning! First of all, thank you for allowing me some time away from the pulpit last week. I was at a conference at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary last and I am always grateful that this congregation has provided me with study leave to attend these sorts of events. I learned a great deal about gracious leadership at this conference—I have a certificate for that if you want to see it—I also did a lot of networking, and I feel energized as I return to this pulpit. You have enriched me greatly and I will be better equipped to serve other congregations in the future because of your generosity.

          I was watching the Pirates the other night—I don’t remember which night, because they were losing and they’ve been doing a lot of that lately. In my frustration over yet another awful game, I started flipping channels. I found an episode of Seinfeld. The episode is called “The Strike,” and it’s one of my favorite episodes. Perhaps you’ve seen it. This is the episode that introduced the world to a new holiday, Festivus!

          For those of you who aren’t familiar with the world of Seinfeld, Festivus is a fictitious holiday; it’s celebrated on December 23^rd and it’s supposed to be an antidote to the commercialism of the secular Christmas season. Of course, this being Seinfeld, it’s an absurd response to the situation. For instance, the Festivus celebration includes a section called “the airing of grievances,” in which the participants lay into one another, telling everyone else how they’ve been wronged. It goes something like this: “Dan Coppola, I’ve got a bone to pick with you!” No, not really. And I would never, ever call you out in front of the congregation, Dan. Well, unless it’s for a laugh.

          So I watched some of that episode in the hope that it would take my mind of the Pirates, among other things. It turns out, what’s funny in Seinfeld isn’t always funny in real life. A lot of the time, when I’m watching TV, I’m also sitting at my computer, looking at Facebook, or reading an article, or something. I should add that the shootings that happened last Sunday in Orlando have also been very much on my mind. I’m not ready to talk about the event itself, not in a sermon, but I do want to talk about the response.

          You see, as I was sitting at my computer, hoping to get a laugh or two from Seinfeld, I was reading all of the Facebook postings about Orlando. I have lots of friends from both ends of the political spectrum on Facebook. So I saw responses from each side and there was an awful lot of blame being cast back and forth. In that light, Seinfeld and “I’ve got a bone to pick with you!” wasn’t quite so funny. The constant blaming was more than I could handle, so I shut my computer off.

          Now it would be easy to say that this is the problem with social media in general and Facebook in particular, but you find this kind of blaming in traditional media, too. Just turn on talk radio, or Fox News, or MSNBC. It seems to me that we have a pathological need to sit in judgment of others.

          Our Old Testament lesson this morning certainly offers a great deal of judgment. In this passage, God is speaking directly to the people of Israel through the prophet Isaiah. This story has three parts: God’s patient suffering at the hands of a willful and stubborn people (Isaiah 65:1-5), God’s decision to judge those people (Isaiah 65:6-7), and the merciful promise to save a remnant (Isaiah 65:8-9), “Or, seen from the perspective of God, the speaker, the text moves from grief to judgment to mercy.”[1] God is railing against those people who are unrighteous and worship falsely; they have turned their back on the Lord:

I held out my hands all day long to a rebellious people, who walk in a way that is not good, following their own devices; a people who provoke me to my face continually, sacrificing in gardens and offering incense on bricks; who sit inside tombs, and spend the night in secret places; who eat swine's flesh, with broth of abominable things in their vessels; who say, "Keep to yourself, do not come near me, for I am too holy for you." (Isaiah 65:2-5)

God promises to visit his judgment upon these faithless people, while sparing the faithful remnant. We hear this language of judgment in many places in the Old Testament. As always, it’s important to remember the context of Isaiah.

          The first part of the Book of Isaiah was composed in the eighth century BCE, while the second part was composed during the Babylonian captivity, when a large number of the people of the ruling class of Jerusalem had been abducted and sent into exile in Babylon. This morning’s reading is from the third part of the Book of Isaiah and it was most likely written after a large number of those exiles had returned from Babylon.

          When those exiles returned, they found that Jerusalem had been abandoned and the temple had been destroyed. Many of the people who were not kidnapped and taken to Babylon had intermarried with the Babylonian conquerors who had occupied Israel. Without a temple in Jerusalem, worship became impure. The exiles who had returned believed themselves to be the faithful remnant, the only ones who still worshiped God in the proper way.

          I think many of us feel like those Jerusalem exiles. We think we’re living in a land where nobody believes in the same way that we do. We feel like we’re the only righteous ones. We think we’re strangers in our own country. We live in a broken world and we want to see God’s judgment visited upon those who do not believe as we do.

          We see this so clearly on social media and talk radio. All the nastiness comes out. It’s not just that we feel the need to be heard, it’s much worse than that. We feel the need to be vindicated and to see the utter humiliation of those who disagree with us. We look for God’s judgment in everything bad that happens to those who disagree with us, or those who we think are unrighteous. We need to see their downfall as evidence of their unrighteousness. This is true for all too many of us, no matter what our individual politics may be. And when we are at our worst, we often use Scripture to bolster our own political arguments. This is a temptation we must avoid at all costs. And I know it’s tempting.

          This passage from Isaiah seems like a really clear indictment of those we disagree with, but remember, this is God’s judgment, not ours. Only God may judge. I also think that it’s worth mentioning that one of the sins—one of the abominations—that is mentioned a lot in these last two chapters of Isaiah is the handling and eating of pigs. This may seem like a trivial thing, but I take it as a caution against trying to label any other person as unclean or unrighteous. To understand this, I think we need to take a look at this morning’s gospel lesson.

          In this story from the Gospel of Luke, Jesus has just crossed into the country of the Gerasenes. This is important. The Gerasenes are NOT Jews, they are Gentiles. In fact, we know that they are gentiles because some of the people who are mentioned in this story are swine herders. That is, they owned and tended herds of pigs, which are unclean by Jewish law; they were abhorrent, an abomination. Thus the Gerasenes are not righteous by any measure according to Jewish traditions. Yet Jesus has come into their country. What’s more, he heals a man who’s possessed by demons.

          Everything about this man is unclean and impure. He wears no clothes. He lives in a graveyard. “Tombs were a source of uncleanness, and in Jewish areas they were whitewashed so that one might not come in contact with a tomb accidently.”[2] And pigs were roaming nearby. A faithful Jew ought to have nothing to do with this place. A faithful Jew would quickly become contaminated by all the unclean things in this place. A faithful Jew would be corrupted by the sin of this place. A faithful Jew would quickly become unrighteous for entering this place.

          These rules about ritual purity were very strict and very important in the religious life of ancient Israel. The books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy describe many different ways in which a person could become unclean. A woman’s menstrual cycle, for instance, could make her unclean according to Jewish custom. These books of the Old Testament also describe the steps a person must take to become clean. A man who was unclean could not enter the temple or participate in worship until he cleansed himself. Thus, people were expected to cleanse themselves of their own impurities. And if they could not cleanse themselves, then they could not remain in covenant faithfulness with the Lord. Being tainted by uncleanliness or by the sins of another could have serious consequences for a righteous Jew. It meant isolation and alienation from the community of the faithful.

          Yet Jesus enters the broken places, the places that are impure, and he is not corrupted by the sins of the unrighteous. Instead, he heals people of their sin and restores them to righteousness. He even heals people who are not faithful Jews. According to Jewish law, this man did not deserve to be healed in any way, shape, or form. No righteous, faithful Jew should ever have touched someone such as this; the man’s affliction was a sign of his sinfulness and his isolation. Jesus restored the man to health and he restored the man to his own community. The man became a visible sign of God’s grace and mercy for all of humanity.

          But Jesus is more than this man’s sinfulness—he’s more than any of our sinfulness. Jesus is God’s love and mercy in the flesh; Jesus is God’s grace in the world. That mercy is not reserved for those who are deemed righteous by the Pharisees, or even you and me; that mercy is available to everyone.

          Now none of us can take away the sins of another person. Only Christ can do that. However, we can help to remove the isolation that comes in the wake of a tragedy such as the shooting in Orlando. We can and must step into the messiness that accompanies an act of terror, even if the victims make some of us uncomfortable. We must silence our tongues and the voices of judgment in our heads. At the same time we must open our eyes and our ears and our arms and our hearts to all of those who have been touched by this tragedy in Orlando, and also to those whose lives might seem sinful or unclean. We know that righteousness only comes through Jesus. For none of us is without sin, yet all of us may participate in Christ’s reconciling love for all of humanity. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Benediction

          Now, beloved, as you depart from this place, remember that we are an Easter people. We are called to be Christ’s church in the world, the world today. We are called to love one another as Jesus loved us. So go forth and be instruments of God’s peace and reconciliation. Do not return evil for evil to any person, but know that we are all loved by God, and that we are called to reflect that love to everyone we meet. In the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, let all God’s children say, Amen!

---

[1] Michael J. Chan, “Commentary on Isaiah 65:1-9,” retrieved from: http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2908

[2] R. Alan Culpepper, “The Gospel of Luke: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. IX, (1995, Nashville: Abingdon Press), p. 186.