August 12, 2007 - The Exception - Tony De La Rosa

Isaiah 1:1, 10-20; Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16

Synchronize your watches. (Looking at watch.) The time is now 11: 38 am, and this sermon should last seventeen and one-half minutes. Not because I have timed it, though. It is because this is a Presbyterian sermon, and when I was in seminary, I was taught that the usual Presbyterian sermon’s duration was somewhere between fifteen and twenty minutes. Anything less than fifteen would make the average Presbyterian feel cheated, and anything more than a twenty minute sermon would leave the average Presbyterian anxious about making their tee-off time at the country club. As I look around the sanctuary this morning, I don’t see a lot of “average” Presbyterians, but I don’t want to risk it, and so I have aimed for the optimal seventeen and one-half minutes just to be safe.

Seminary taught me that other Christian traditions have widely varying timeframes for the exposition of the Word of God in their Sunday worship. Roman Catholic homilies keep it short and sweet at eight to ten minutes. Episcopalian sermons average about twelve to fifteen minutes, while most Baptists could easily sit still for forty-five minutes plus of inspired oratory from their pulpits. I am not a Baptist. And some would say “Amen!” to that.

But my church history class provided me with the most startling revelation, the winner of the marathon worship experience. It turns out that the Puritans of New England, our spiritual forebears, would begin church early on a Sunday morning, and would continue in worship for up to eight hours, most of it occupied by preaching, with only a brief break for lunch and other necessaries. What amazed me most, however, was that the sermon was not continuous during that long day. Pastors of Puritan congregations would offer their sermons, with up to two or three hours of exposition on Scripture, and then members of their congregations would respond. The respondents would comment on the sermon, and often they would correct the pastor’s perceived errors and provide their own views on the passages of Scripture being preached upon. The conversation would continue back and forth in this way for the better part of the day before all would head home for dinner as the sun began to set.

Now Frank, our Pastor, and Samuel, our Director of Relational Ministries were not expecting this – in fact, neither one of them is here this morning – but this is one congregant’s response to or further exposition on the themes of their recent sermons. Frank preached three weeks ago on the nature of power and its discontents. In his commentary on the nature of divine and human power, he offered up uncomfortable parallels between the United States of the 21st century and Imperial Rome of the 5th century. Last week, Samuel continued this theme, and addressed the broader issue of security, and drew a frightening picture of a post-9/11 mother teaching her young child that America was at war “to kill the bad man before he kills us.”

Lest any of you suspect that these themes are merely political and not grounded in Scripture, the lectionary passages from which both Frank and Samuel have been preaching have been singularly focused – some might say obsessed -- on the issue of how people living in a particular political construct rank in God’s sight. God’s “choice” of an exceptional people and their presumption of inherent holiness is called into question over and over. The prophets we have heard these last few weeks keep rebuking the fallen people of God. Amos, Hosea and now today Isaiah sound the same note, that something’s rotten in state of Israel-Judah, and that God is not pleased with this sorry state of affairs. The people of Israel and Judah cannot continue to fool themselves into believing that God ignores their defects.

Few nation-states escape the self-aggrandizing heresy that they are God’s chosen nation, the exception above all. The United States of America is no different. Conveniently overlooking the establishment of St. Augustine or the settlement of Jamestown – and completely ignoring the presence of longstanding nations of native peoples -- America’s historically-skewed civil religion holds that our founding begins with religious refugees offering prayers of thanksgiving upon landing on a rocky shore on Cape Cod. These refugees completed an arduous trek across a treacherous sea that recalls the journey of the Ark and the Great Flood. From thence, Washington – our Moses – leads the people to liberation and the Promised Land of democracy. Our messianic martyr, Lincoln, redeems the gospel of freedom and saves the country from destroying itself. And lest you think I overstate the case, just ask any young school child their understanding of American history, and you get these same themes of liberation and redemption – themes that might sound familiar to Christian ears.

But we cannot continue to fool ourselves into thinking that those wordy divines of four hundred years ago succeeded in establishing a new Jerusalem somewhere in Massachusetts, for all their sermonizing back and forth. It is neither heresy nor treason to say so. The God of Isaiah won’t let us get away with suggesting otherwise. “New moon and Sabbath and calling of convocation – I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity. Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden to me.”

Some argue that America needs to restore the Puritan’s level of personal piety back into the American experience. “What’s missing in America is God,” they say. “We are the chosen nation; God’s new Israel. Everyone back to church for eight hours worth of sermonizing; and no congregational feedback necessary, thank you very much! Just convert the heathen multitudes and make good Christians of them all.” Or, “Deport them all back to wherever they came from.” Or even, “Kill them before they kill us.” This new Jerusalem is the Ozzie and Harriet vision of the American dream, the one with the lovely Hollywood clapboard house with the white picket fence which the Nelsons owned -- and which really exists, by the way. It’s located on a street ironically bearing a Spanish name, “Camino Palmero.” If we only we could hearken back to those good old days of American homogeneity and faithful, Protestant Christian consensus. God would love us once again! Right?

God begs to differ, for thus says Isaiah: “When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood.” And truly, our hands are full of blood. In time of war, against all that we fear, we address our xenophobic insecurities with brute strength and military power, convinced that God is on our side. No matter how many times we invoke the name of our Sovereign, however, no matter how long our sermonizing or elaborate our worship, we cannot escape the reality that lies just outside the doors of the sanctuary: a world of violence and injustice, largely of our own making. To put it simply, God is not pleased with this state of affairs and turns a deaf ear to such hollow worship.

What then are a godly people to do? How do we re-gain the favor of this displeased God to whom we owe all that is living and all that is good? The author of Hebrews suggests just that, namely, that we owe God all that is living and all that is good. Hebrews offers us the vision of a nation of immigrants, the heirs of Abraham, who journey from their homeland in far away Mesopotamia -- or modern-day Iraq -- to a foreign land where they get to live in tents and engage in subsistence farming. This is the Promised Land, the place that God had promised Abraham and his descendents that would be theirs until the end of their days. The Promised Land was not an easy place. It was not a place apparently flowing with the milk and honey of their dreams and prayers. It was a dry, dusty plain, and it was already inhabited. They were to be strangers in a strange land.

Despite this less-than-favorable situation, the descendants of Abraham did not doubt that they were in fact God’s Chosen People. And their certainty was not a result of presumed military superiority, or ostentatious wealth, or aggressive diplomatic moves. No, their certainty was purely a matter of faith. They trusted God and not their own resources in securing for themselves a blessed future in a new land not their own. Hebrews puts the matter bluntly: “They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.”

In the nation of immigrants and their descendants that is America today, these words carry special resonance. People who are the guests of God do not sojourn in the Promised Land with blood on their hands. Instead, God instructs the new arrivals in the holy house rules in Isaiah: “Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings before my eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” In God’s house, all are welcome, and all are charged with the responsibility of communicating that sense of welcome and hospitality to others.

Indeed, what makes a people exceptional in God’s sight is their willingness to undercut the very definition of their own uniqueness. Since the hospitality of God is universal and open to all, then the people of God must reflect that hospitality, at the risk of changing their self-perception of community. Put succinctly, there is no “us” and “them” in the community of faith and the heavenly country. Blood is not spilled maintaining false boundaries; faith and love and unwavering welcome dissolve those boundaries. The house belongs to God, and the front door of the house of God is never closed. From the moment when Christianity accepted Gentiles into the community of faith, all bets were off. No longer were the people of God marked by the ritual adherence to circumcision and kosher laws. Rather it was marked by the appearance of a deep, abiding, universal and transcendent faith, and faith alone.

No doubt, some are put off by this challenging concept of community. After all, how can a community – or a country, for that matter – protect or preserve itself if anyone is allowed in, and not only allowed but welcomed in, as well? Who knows who or what may walk through the front door. Isn’t that dangerous, particularly in this day and age? Wouldn’t it be safer to draw boundaries or borders or standards around which we can stand guard and keep out those wanting to come in and of whom we disapprove? Perhaps we should ask ourselves first whether our communities are safer, stronger, or more secure because some – maybe many – are kept out. Do the residents of gated communities experience no crime or mishaps within their lines of demarcation? Does the country feel more secure and more admired because it rejects immigrants with startling indifference as to their plight? Does the Church sense its greater blessedness before God Almighty when it excludes gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender persons from ordained office? Did the ministry of Jesus know such bounds or follow such distinctions? Who is drawing these lines, after all?

I posit to you this morning that the exceptional nature of a community is not the Ozzie and Harriett vision of a homogeneous neighborhood, whether speaking of the church or the country. We are blessed and we are great when the front doors never close and all are welcomed in our midst. The Church inches closer to the true Kin-dom of God when all who are a part of God’s creation are welcomed into the sanctuary, and all are accorded the rights and privileges of membership in the faith community. The life, ministry and witness of the Church are that much poorer without the participation of all those whom God has made and called “blessed.” To argue otherwise, I submit, is drawing false lines of demarcation, trying to define community in a way that excludes those who some deem “undesirable.” That is the error of the Pharisees, and Jesus called it blasphemy. The Church needs to do so, as well.

Likewise, the greatness of a country is not the impermeability of its borders or the size of its armaments or the extent of its surveillance. No, the greatness of a country is the length to which it honors and protects the ethnic and multi-cultural richness found within its borders and extends the hand of welcome to those seeking to add to it. The Kin-dom of God manifests the very same richness by virtue of the imagination of the Creator, so the truly godly nation should do no less.

Rather than laying claim to our status as God’s Chosen People, the Book of Hebrews calls on us to acknowledge our shared status as strangers in a strange land. When we are prepared to acknowledge our universal status as immigrants, a different kind of national exceptionalism – the sense that our nation is unique and blessed -- becomes possible. I would assert that because our national identity is not predisposed toward a specific racial, ethnic or cultural makeup, we can inch ever closer to the true “City on a Hill” that those wordy religious refugees in Massachusetts preached and preached and preached about so long ago.

In a world rife with claims that God blesses a particular race, ethnicity or cultural identity uniquely, our country should sound a dissenting note. We must claim that the hope of the world can be found in the ability of humankind to reason, struggle and conceive together a community where the commands of God are followed: good is done, justice sought, the oppressed rescued, the orphan defended and widow protected. Furthermore, we can work to claim that our uniqueness lies not in our sameness, but in our acceptance and celebration of the full richness of humankind. We seek to reflect the diversity of God’s creation in our midst. Our vision of exceptionalism, therefore, is in our ability to reflect the diverse expressions of humankind in a peaceful and just community. In a word, what makes us great as a nation is in our ability to show the world that the diverse expressions of humanity can get along.

In a world grown weary with sectarian conflict, in the godly nation we strive to be, Christian, Jew, Buddhist, Hindu and Moslem can – and do – work together to achieve shared goals. The earth knows no shortage of conflicts between persons making competing claims of entitlement or right to resources based on race or culture. Our land can demonstrate that conflict not be the order of the day when addressing needs that arise from greed or artifice. The godly nation can remind the world that God’s Creation is blessed with abundance, but only if it is wisely maintained and justly distributed.

While we may be exceptional in some regards, we should be careful to declare our exceptionalism with humility. Maintaining a diverse community marked by peace and justice takes major investments of time and effort, and like any earthly construct, we fall short of the standards we hold up for ourselves. Nevertheless, God’s mandate is clear, and the nation that calls itself “godly” cannot ignore that mandate.

One final note: If my vision of the godly nation seems oddly familiar to you, just look around. If you think I have attempted to argue that our country should reflect the reality that Immanuel reflects, I plead guilty. Lord knows, Immanuel is far from perfect, and we have a long way to go before we can say we have achieved a model community marked by an abiding peace and commitment to justice for the full spectrum of humankind. But the sheer enormity of what God has charged us to do should not render us reluctant to pursue the task. After all, Abraham entered the wilderness with little more than a hope and a prayer. We – his descendants –must continue the journey toward the Promised Land.

(Looking at watch.) Three…two…one. Amen.