Sermon Together for All Time

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February 5, 2017 Together for All Time Pastor Carol P. Taylor

Jeremiah 31

“The days are coming,” declares the  Lord,
        “when I will make a new covenant
with the people of Israel
        and with the people of Judah.
32  It will not be like the covenant
        I made with their ancestors
when I took them by the hand
        to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
        though I was a husband  to them,”
declares the  Lord.
33  “This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel
        after that time,” declares the  Lord.
“I will put my law in their minds
        and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
        and they will be my people.
34  No longer will they teach  their neighbor,
        or say to one another, ‘Know the  Lord,’
because they will all know  me,
        from the least of them to the greatest,”
declares the  Lord.
“For I will forgive  their wickedness
        and will remember their sins  no more.”

Jeremiah, known as the weeping prophet, was quite young when called, prophesied at the beginning of the Babylonian Exile. He foretold and then witnessed the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple.. remember the people believed that God actually lived in the Temple...so when it was destroyed, God had no home. God was no longer with them, or so they believed. Jeremiah was called to remind them that God was indeed with them even though the temple was gone and the people were in doubt and fear and so falling away from their beliefs and worship.

God's promise so important, it was given to Jeremiah AND to the prophet Ezekiel several years later! I will be their God, and they will be my people.

This prophecy was for the people living in exile, yet it is also a prophecy of a future time, when these promises would be fulfilled once and for all!

He uses imagery of marriage, the people being the bride! The covenant is a marriage of God and God's people-but not a legal contract. It is a a contract of the heart!

But, as happens so often when times are hard, the people fell away, fearing that they had been deserted by God.

There is a lot of use of marriage and wedding imagery in the Bible. The symbolism of marriage and of the wedding, is something that people across generations can identify with! The 'marriage' the covenant of God and God's people is an ideal, that is often not realized. Just as any relationship between two people has it ups and downs and challenges, the covenant between us and God has it's ups and down. WE have ups and downs. As Jeremiah promised- God is always here for us.

In the Bible in Revelation, the vision of heaven is of the New Jerusalem, the city...(the home of THE PEOPLE OF GOD!) as a 'bride adorned for her husband!”

in the Gospels, several time Jesus refers to himself as the bridegroom. ..and he spoke of heaven being a wedding banquet! When we are all finally united with God, through Jesus, it will be a huge celebration!

And since his disciples and followers didn't quite get it... finally on the evening before he was arrested. He told them 'This is my body given for you” “this is the blood of the new covenant!” This story is told in the 3 synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke. John, written many years later, told other parts of that story. He told of Jesus washing the feet of the disciples, at the last supper, and then telling them I am the vine you are the branches, abide in me and I will abide in you. The story was also told by the Apostle Paul in his letter to the church in Corinth... from 1 Corinthians, chapter 11, (part of this will sound very familiar!)

1 Corinthians 1123 For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.27 So then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. 28 Everyone ought to examine themselves before they eat of the bread and drink from the cup. 29 For those who eat and drink without discerning the body of Christ eat and drink judgment on themselves. (may God add a blessing to this reading of His holy word. Amen)  

We read the bible, we pray, we come to worship, we take communion, regularly, over and over, because we fail over and over. Once we have prayed and taken communion, it's not a one and done... because we will mess up again. As our lesson reminds us, we may even mess up DURING the communion, if we are not sincere about it!

Because WE, limited, finite, imperfect human beings can not fathom the unlimited, infinite, perfection that is God. Even though we have Jesus to show us―The Son of God, who gave up heaven to be with us, to be like us, we still can not quite imagine the perfection of God.  We can only see partially... as though we are looking at one facet of a beautiful diamond! We were created in the image in God...but we are not God. We are individual children of God, one facet of God. I think God just loves diversity. On our travels, Martin and I remark on the variety of nature, how many different kinds of trees, birds, in creation! God must just love diversity, he made so much of it! We are God's children, each of us an image, one facet of God. Each of us, every human is one of God's children and God loves every single one! 

So why does Jesus call this a new covenant? Does it replace the old covenant? Does it throw out “They will be my people and I will be their God!?” no not at all. This is not new in the sense of wiping out the old, it's a fulfillment of the original! It's bringing the covenant to its completion! All the stories of Abraham, Moses, and Jeremiah were steps along the road, part of the process! Now it is finished! “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”

Let me give you an example... I know someone who is doing some remodeling. When the work is completely done, they won't be living in a NEW house. They didn't bulldoze part of the house and start over! But they will have some rooms that are new..rooms that are better than ever, done to their specifications, fulfilling the promise that those rooms had before, but only now are just as they hoped!!

So too is the New covenant with Jesus. Jesus over and over in the Gospels used metaphors that people could understand, I am the bread of Life, I am the Good shepherd, I am the Light of the World! Jesus came to be with everyone, even regular people..not kings and governors, but ordinary folks living ordinary lives! And on the last night of his life as a human, he said “This is my Body given for you...” We are to take in Jesus..in communion... to be part of ourselves... to internalize that love.

Since Jesus was known to dine with 'tax collectors and sinners' (as we heard this past Sunday) and welcomed all to the table, not just at the Last Supper, but all thru the Gospels, we who profess to be His followers, must do the same. Just as our church has open table for Communion, our doors must be open to one and all. and so too must all kinds of 'doors' of our homes, places of worship, and our nation. Most of all, the doors of our HEARTS!

Speaker at a Presbyterian mission event...Rev. Jon Brown, pastor of  Old Bergen Church  in Jersey City, New Jersey―a union church of the Reformed Church in America and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) ―at Thursday’s worship service of the  Association of Presbyterian Church Educators  (APCE) annual event meeting Jan. 25-28 in Denver, Colorado, this week.

Using the example of his daughter’s kindergarten assessment, he relayed the story of one of the questions asked of her, “What do you do when you want to go into a room that is dark?” His daughter replied, to the amazement of the instructor, “You hold someone’s hand.”

“The teacher looked at the booklet, flipped to the back, back up to the front, then she looked across the room and said to me, ‘It’s not in the book but it’s the best answer I’ve heard all day,’” Brown said.

“What do you do when you want to go into someplace that is dark? You hold someone’s hand,” he said. “That is what we do as the people of God. That is what we do as people of faith. Some people call it covenant. Some people call it community. Some people call it relationship or trust. It is how the church demonstrates to the world that God is with us in the chaos. We hold someone’s hand.”

After a mosque in the small town of Victoria, Texas,  burned to the ground  last weekend, the local Jewish and Christian communities there have come together to help those affected.

Members of the B’Nai Israel temple gave the keys to their synagogue to the Muslim community so they would have a place to worship,  USA Today  reports, and four churches in the town also offered space for the mosque's Muslim congregation to hold services, according to  NPR.

Children from the local Catholic school in Victoria also visited the mosque on Wednesday, forming what the Islamic Center called a "human chain of love and peace,"The students also presented the Muslim community with a tree.

"The tree will be planted in the grounds of our new mosque & prominently displayed to remind us of this beautiful moment," the post reads. "This is the spirit of love where the cross hugs the crescent."

Some call it covenant. Some call it community. Some call it relationship or trust

God says I Love You. “I will be their God and they will be my people!” “I am with you always, even to the end of time”!

This is why we worship together. Why we do mission and outreach together, helping the organizations that help our neighbors in need... we do it together. As individuals, as a church, with other churches and other organizations. Jesus said where 2 or 3 are gathered together in my name, I am there with them. When we hold someone's hand...Jesus is with us. God's son, God's own self, came to earth to be with us in every way possible! And then after his death and resurrection, gave us the Holy Spirit to empower us to truly be together with God and all of God's children for all time!

May it be so today, tomorrow and always. Amen.

Sermon Jan. 19, 2014 "Who is My Neighbor?"

Deuteronomy 6: 4-12
4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
10 “And when the Lord your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—with great and good cities that you did not build, 11 and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant—and when you eat and are full, 12 then take care lest you forget the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

Luke 10:25-37

The Parable of the Good Samaritan

25 And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him{Jesus} to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” 26 He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” 27 And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” 28 And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”
29 But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” 30 Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. 31 Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. 32 So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. 34 He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35 And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’36 Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” 37 He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.”

Our favorite verses:

Opening joke....A young lawyer died and was escorted to the pearly gates. Upon arriving the lawyer started protesting for he was only 32 years old, and there must be some mistake. The listening angel agreed that perhaps it was a mistake and agreed to look into it. After a few minutes the angel came back and said “I’m sorry sir but I am afraid there is no mistake, we calculated your age by how many hours you billed your clients, and you are at least 96.

Deuteronomy 6, very familiar words, we read this for a baptism! “hear oh Israel, the lord is One...One God”. Not a god of sun and a god of the harvest and a goddess of moon and gods of fertility and whatever..but One God. YHWH. The creator, God who made a covenant with Abraham, saying your descendents will be like the stars in the sky...the Lord who freed the Israelites when they were slaves in Egypt.

The Lord who is not to be forgotten, when we have homes and enough to eat....this was told to the Israelites after their 40 years in the desert, when they were about to enter the land that had been promised to them. Remember Who brought you to this...who was WITH you thru the 40 years, God was with them..as a cloud during the day...a cloud is protection from the sun when you are in the desert...and as a pillar of fire all night...a source of light and heat and protection from animals. Even tho the israelites had to wander, taking 40 days for a 2 week trip...God was with them thru it all. And in deuteronomy, Moses is reminding them of all of that.

this is the beginning of the Great prayer, the Shema, prayed daily by Jewish people every day-for 5000 years! When Jesus said this, his listeners would have known immediately what he was referring to.

Jesus did refer to this prayer...our passage from Luke is one of the times that Jesus said we are to Love God and Love one another. And he told a famous story to illustrate it.

Imagine you are in the crowd around Jesus. Listen to what He has to say...

READ GOSPEL LESSON

now this is a story Jesus told, it didn't actually happen, but it could have. The setting was a road that was well known and known to be dangerous. But Jesus' telling of this story would have challenged his listeners. A priest went by! A holy man, the person perhaps most trusted in the whole community! Remember in these times, one went to temple every day, prayed several times a day. The priests and levites were the most influential, important people in the Jewish community. And Jesus says this man crossed to the other side of the road, from the poor victim. A Levite, was another religious leader who assisted in the operations of the temple... and did the same thing. Not only ignoring the man, but crossing over to avoid him. Jesus -and there may well have been some of these people IN the crowd, was saying that someone could be hurt or dying and the community leaders just might ignore you and continue on their way. Now there were strict rules about cleanliness. If either of these 2 men were on their way to temple, helping the dying man would cause them to become 'unclean' and they would not be able to perform their tasks in a timely manner. But it seems from Jesus telling of this story that there is something else going on here...

now in our times, we speak of “Good Samaritan laws' and so on. We don't truly get how the Samaritan in this story would have challenged Jesus' listeners. You see the Jewish people and the Samaritans hated each other. There had been centuries of bad blood between them. They feuded over worship, over many traditions and by this time in their history, they completely avoided each other. There was hate, mistrust. So for Jesus to say a Samaritan helped the injured Jewish man, well this was radical stuff. I'm not even sure how we can envision today how radical this is.

And Jesus said, which one of these is the neighbor?! And told the lawyer, go and do likewise. Go and put aside all your differences with anyone! Treat others as you would want to be treated, as you would want your nearest and dearest to be treated!

Tomorrow is Martin Luther King day. He spoke on this very passage the last night of his life. I want to share a bit of what he said....

Dr King:

But I'm going to tell you what my imagination tells me. It's possible that those men {the Priest and the Levite} were afraid. You see, the Jericho road is a dangerous road. I remember when Mrs. King and I were first in Jerusalem. We rented a car and drove from Jerusalem down to Jericho. And as soon as we got on that road, I said to my wife, "I can see why Jesus used this as the setting for his parable." It's a winding, meandering road. It's really conducive for ambushing. You start out in Jerusalem, which is about 1200 feet above sea level. And by the time you get down to Jericho, fifteen or twenty minutes later, you're about 2200 feet below sea level. {did you get that? You descend 3400 feet in a 20 min drive) {Dr King continued} That's a dangerous road. In the days of Jesus it came to be known as the "Bloody Pass." And you know, it's possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. Or it's possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking. And he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt, in order to seize them over there, lure them there for quick and easy seizure. And so the first question that the priest asked -- the first question that the Levite asked was, "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?" But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"

This is what King said...he said we are to reverse the question. We are to ask what will happen to that person if I do not help. What will happen to my neighbor, if I don't help? What will happen, not to me, but to that child—if I do not help. What will happen..., to this community, to this church? If I do not help?

This is what we need to be asking. Every day. What will happen...

Whether they be young or old, spry and fit --or tired & weak of body and soul, whether they be married or single, straight or gay, even male or female. Whether a person has addictions, is recovering from disease or injury, whether they live in a grand home or in a shelter. Whether they just came to this country or have been here since the Mayflower, or are Native to this land, which so few of us are. What will happen if we do not help?

We just read our covenant..in the Reformed Protestant tradition, we 'covenant together' we mutually agree to be together as a gathered body. In that covenant we say “we seek to affirm”. That means we uphold even defend others, no matter their age, marital status, gender, ethnicity, sexual identity, health....we choose to AFFIRM, not condemn. We choose to think, what will happen to them....that is at the core of the values of this church, of the 2 churches that came together. Let us think and pray today and every day about how how WE can be better neighbors to each other and to our community and beyond.

What do we need? We need love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice. We need to remember who is our neighbor, and what will happen to that person if I do not act. If I do not give, if I do not care.

Let us pray...

Let's sing together hymn Red 637 Instruments of Your Peace.