All Means All--First Baptist Church Asheville, NC, July 12, 2015

Video Excerpts. (Please note that the audio and video are not in sync.)

Amos 7:7-15; Mark 6:14-29

 

This morning’s gospel lesson from Mark 6 reads as though it was lifted from the pages of a steamy novel. The bedroom politics of the marriage of Herod Antipas to his brother’s divorced wife Herodias, the suggestive overtones of his stepdaughter’s dance at his birthday party, and Herodias’s calculatingly lethal exploitation of her daughter to manipulate her husband that ended with the head of John the Baptizer on a platter make this entirely tangential episode in the gospel of Mark look like the stuff of tabloids and pulp fiction. There’s not another passage in the four gospels that makes it any harder for good church-goin’ folk—and their preacher—to stay focused on Jesus.

I once paid a pastoral visit on a widow in her seventies who had just returned from her first-ever trip to New Orleans. “So, what did you think of the Big Easy?” I asked. I was left speechless when she answered with a wry smile on her face and a sparkle in her eye: “Oooh, I didn’t know there WAS so much sin in the world.” “I see,” I said, while I tried to figure out whether I should tell her I was glad she enjoyed her trip or I should offer to hear her confession. Once the music and the dancing start, it’s hard to stay focused on Jesus.

We have to be reminded that the point of this morning’s gospel lesson is who Jesus is and what Jesus is doing. Mark 6—the chapter in which this episode is recounted—begins with Jesus teaching in the synagogue and his wisdom and his mighty works. That is what Herod Antipas had heard about when our passage begins in verse 14: “King Herod heard of it; for Jesus’ name had become known.” The point is who Jesus is and what Jesus is doing. In the flashback to the court of Herod Antipas and the execution of John the Baptizer, this morning’s gospel lesson makes it clear that Jesus’ teaching and wisdom and mighty works played out from the beginning in a world replete with tensions and conflicts and anxieties and animosities. Then as now, claims and counter-claims of religious and political authorities compete for our attention and our loyalty. And once the claims and counter-claims begin, it’s hard to stay focused on Jesus.

That dynamic of claim and counter-claim is also present in this morning’s Old Testament lesson. Instead of John the Baptizer there is the prophet Amos, and instead of Herod Antipas there is King Jeroboam II of Israel, and instead of Herodias there is Amaziah the priest of Bethel. Amaziah claims to Jeroboam that Amos has committed treason. According to Amos 7:10-11, “Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent to King Jeroboam of Israel, saying, ‘Amos has conspired against you in the very center of the house of Israel. . . . For thus Amos has said, ‘Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel must go into exile away from his land.’”

Amos is a textbook example of a doom-and-gloom prophet. Amos warned of God’s coming judgment on God’s own people. Years ago, back when I was a young and ambitious Old Testament professor, I agreed to teach three simultaneous January Bible Studies on Amos. There was a Wednesday-evening series at one church, a Sunday-evening series at another church, and a Friday evening, Saturday morning, Sunday morning series at a third church. I began that January so excited at the prospect of unpacking the message of Amos in his time and relating it to the church and to the world in our time. But I have to tell you: By the end of the month, the doom and gloom of Amos times three had so beaten me up and beaten me down that I was demoralized and discouraged for the church and for the world. “Thus says the Lord: ‘For three transgressions, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment; because they sell the righteous for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals—they who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth, and push the afflicted out of the way. . . . I will press you down in your place. . . . Flight shall perish from the swift, and the strong shall not retain their strength, nor shall the mighty save their lives.” That’s in Amos 2 (vv. 6-7, 13-14). “Therefore thus says the Lord, the God of hosts, the Lord: In all the squares there shall be wailing. . . . I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your . . . offerings, I will not accept them. . . . Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps.” That’s in Amos 5 (vv. 16, 21-23). “Hear this, you that trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land, The Lord has spoken. . . . Surely I will never forget any of their deeds. On that day, says the Lord God, I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation.” That’s in Amos 8 (vv. 4,8,10). Would you like me to stop now? Before the month was out, I was seriously considering not going to Bible Study, and I was the one leading it. Not every word of Scripture, you see, is a word of comfort and peace. Two centuries after Amos, the prophet Jeremiah took up his predecessor’s mantle when he said, “From the least to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for unjust gain; and from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely. They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace” (6:13-14).

I for one am convinced that we have gathered here this morning as a wounded people whose wounds are being treated carelessly. We are wounded by our own excesses and by the excesses of others. We are wounded by the apathy of others and by our own apathy toward others. We are wounded by tensions and conflicts and anxieties and animosities, by claims and counter-claims. For example, two weeks ago today I saw for the first time a now widespread internet meme: There are side-by-side photographs of a Confederate flag and a Rainbow Coalition flag; and the caption reads, “My Facebook feed looks like a battle broke out between the confederates and a skittles factory.” Travis Garner, a staff minister at Brentwood United Methodist Church in Brentwood, TN, reflected recently on carrying out ministry in a culture and a church divided 5 against 4, an allusion to last month’s Supreme Court ruling on marriage. Garner wrote, “The fact of the matter is that we are a divided nation, a divided people. In today’s culture, every possible division between people is exaggerated and exploited. Everything is turned into an either/or scenario. Either you agree with me, or you are a bigot. Either you agree with me, or you are completely immoral. . .  . The reality,” he wrote, “is that there are not ‘two sides.’. . . Each of us has a different story, unique experiences, particular struggles, and when we make anything a simple ‘either/or,’ we greatly miss the mark. What I’m feeling this morning as I prepare to head to worship,” he wrote, “is a deep sense of gratefulness that I believe in a God who loves all people. I’m thankful to be part of a church that has an open table: all people are invited to sit at God’s table. Which means, by the way, that people with whom I strongly disagree are loved by God and invited to sit at God’s table. People who are and have been hurtful to me are loved by God and invited to sit at God’s table. After all,” he wrote, “Jesus died for bigots. Jesus died for the immoral. Jesus died for us all.” Travis Garner nailed it. When charges and counter-charges of bigotry and immorality start flying, it’s hard to stay focused on Jesus.

In recent weeks, we have seen considerable publicity given to churches who welcome and affirm the 5s to the exclusion and marginalization of the 4s whom they call bigots, and considerable publicity has been given to churches who welcome and affirm the 4s to the exclusion and marginalization of the 5s whom they call immoral. But instead of churches of 5s and churches of 4s defined by our differences and divisions, I’d like to lift up this morning a church of 3s. A church of 3s instead of 4s or 5s is a church whose vision and mission and identity are grounded in three great equalizers in the Bible. These three great equalizers are biblical common denominators that stand over against the exaggerated divisions and the exploited of differences that are so widespread in our world and in the church.

The first great equalizer in the Bible is found in Genesis 1:27: All human beings are created in the image of God. Behind our various divisions and differences there is a first biblical common denominator: All human beings are created in the image of God, and “all” means “all”; not just us; not just some; all. The second great equalizer in the Bible is found in Romans 3:22-23 where Paul wrote, “There is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Behind our various divisions and differences there is a second biblical common denominator: “There is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”; and “all” means “all,” not just them, not just some, all. The third great equalizer in the Bible is found in 2 Corinthians 5:15: Jesus “died for all.” Behind our various divisions and differences there is a third biblical common denominator: Jesus “died for all,” and “all” means “all,” not just some, all. All are created in the image of God; all sin and fall short of the glory of God; and Jesus died for all.

A church that grounds its vision and mission and identity in the biblical 3—instead of the cultural 5 or 4—is a church that refuses to participate in the exaggeration of divisions and the exploitation of differences. It’s a church that lives by the reality that there are many more than “two sides” because “Each of us has a different story, unique experiences, particular struggles” in our respective and mutual woundedness that our culture and even our churches so often treat so carelessly.

It’s not an easy or comfortable thing to live by the 3s instead of the 5s or the 4s. For example, most of us here know that on Wednesday evening June 17, the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, the pastor of the storied Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, welcomed into a Bible Study a young man who an hour later would murder him and eight of his parishioners because that young man’s understanding of the world and of other human beings had been distorted by a culture that exaggerates divisions and exploits differences. Something most of us here might not know is that two years ago, standing in the sanctuary of the congregation he pastored and addressing a group of doctoral students about the history of Mother Emanuel Church and its historic activist role in Charleston and in SC working to ensure that “all” means “all,” as in all human beings are created in the image of God and as in “All [persons, not just some] are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights,” Rev. Pinckney told the group, “You may have to die  . . . to do that.” “You may have to die . . . to do that,” he said. And he did.

And that brings us back to Jesus. In a world that is—and until kingdom come will always be—replete with tensions and conflicts and anxieties and animosities and torn by claims and counterclaims, Mark 6 reminds us that whatever else happens in the world around us and among us and within us, the focus of the church’s worship and the church’s work, the focus of the church’s vision and mission and identity, what brings us together in our differences that are real and our divisions that are powerful is the teaching and wisdom and mighty works of Jesus who died for the bigots, who died for the immoral, who died for all.

And all means all.

Hymn 437 in Celebrating Grace Hymnal: How Wide the Love of Christ: It knows not class or race but holds our one humanity within its broad embrace. (Herman G. Stuempfle, Jr., 1996) 

Copyrighted © 2015 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at 02tlsjeff@gmail.com.