Isaiah 30:18-21
Scripture:
Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you;
therefore he will rise up to show mercy to you.
For the Lord is a God of justice;
blessed are all those who wait for him.
19 Truly, O people in Zion, inhabitants
of Jerusalem, you shall weep no more. He will surely be gracious to you
at the sound of your cry; when he hears it, he will answer you. 20 Though
the Lord may give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction,
yet your Teacher will not hide himself any more, but your eyes shall see your Teacher.
21 And when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left,
your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way;
walk in it.” therefore he will rise up to show mercy to you.
For the Lord is a God of justice;
blessed are all those who wait for him.
Sermon:
Introduction – As most of you
know, I tend to have a normative form or style that I fall into when I preach.
When I interviewed here with the search committee I even mentioned that I’m a
teaching pastor. Or to put it another way, that my sermons are often
educational in nature.
That’s
part of who I am and what my ministry is about. But I also know that the work
of a pastor is not limited to education. It’s not limited to the moment I get
up here to deliver a profoundly rich exegetical understanding of some obscure
biblical text and some hermeneutical extrapolation about how that’s relevant to
your life. I certainly I hope I do that sometimes!
But
I’m also concerned with making time and space for other kinds of moments in our
weekly time together. We are, after all, people and people are complicated and
sometimes we don’t need to hear rich theology from the book of Romans, although
that is certainly edifying and profitable. It’s a wonderful book.
Sometimes
though, we need to be spoken to on another level. Sometimes we need to hear a
voice from the scriptures that reaches out and gives us a hug and a word of
wisdom. That’s what I think this morning’s passage does for us.
The
passage I chose from Isaiah has a context and those things are important, but
it’s also intuitively simple. And sometime that’s the kind of message we need
to hear. Sometimes we just need to be told that we are loved and this morning
God is telling you that you are loved.
So
it is with this in mind that I want to switch things up and do things differently.
This morning we’re going to take time to hear four stories from the NPR show Story Corps. In between these stories
I’ll reflect a bit and maybe even ask you to turn to someone near to you and
discuss what you may have heard or what’s sitting on your heart.
Our
first story comes from my childhood and perhaps some special element of your
life as well. There’s a very special Presbyterian minister who we all probably
have some exposure to, even though he passed away in 2003. He was educated at Dartmouth College and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and
testified before the U.S. Senate on behalf of public funding for children’s
television. By now you may have guessed that I’m referring to Fred Rogers the
host of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.
When
I was growing up I didn’t have a lot of access to T.V. In the first grade, I
would sneak over to a neighbor’s house to watch Power Rangers both because my family didn’t have cable and because
I wasn’t allowed to watch it. But one show my family was always happy to see me
in front of was Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.
This
first story that we’re going to listen to is told by François Clemmons, the
actor and singer who played Officer Clemmons on the show. In fact, François was
the first African-American actor to have a recurring role on a kids TV series
in the United States. So it with that in mind that we might perhaps hear
something from his story:
Some
of the memories François just spoke of might bring back memories of our own. Of
difficult times perhaps, or maybe a time when we had to empathize with someone
else’s place. Or perhaps most miraculously, when we may have experienced that
kind of expression of love and acceptance.
Though
we may sometimes eat the bread of adversity and drink the waters of affliction,
the Lord answers our cries and longs to be gracious and merciful to us. We are,
and you are, loved.
This
second story takes place in the course of a conversation between Janet Lutz, a
hospital chaplain, and Lori Armstrong her friend.
I’d
like to ask you at this point to turn to someone near you and talk for a
moment. Think about these two questions and then share with your neighbor:
·
How
did those stories affect me?
·
How
might I grow to take more care of moments like those?
Our
third story might surprise you a little bit. It’s a conversation we’ll overhear
between an older man, who’s possibly full of life experience, and a very young
man who’s just now starting to turn his life around from some poor choices. I
think you might find it a bit moving.
I’m
sure that one may have surprised all of you a little bit. I know that I
chuckled when I heard it for the first time. But I never felt a sense of
inauthenticity to it. Perhaps it’s my own background and childhood, but it
spoke to me and some of the difficult times I went through as a kid.
Perhaps
it’s a story that can help us reflect a bit on the last verse we heard from
this morning’s scripture: “And when you turn to the right
or when you turn to the left, your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying,
‘This is the way; walk in it.’”
Finally, I want to conclude with a very
powerful story between two brothers who came into such a relationship through
unusual means. In my mind this next story illustrates the kind of love that
Jesus talks about, particularly in the Sermon on the Mount.
Perhaps
after hearing that story we can think about how we too might come to love those
who we might think of as different or even enemies. We won’t go too deep into
the idea today, but what does it mean when Christ calls us to love everyone,
even our enemies. This story wasn’t even about enemies. It was about two men
who overcame their prejudices and fears to become such close friends that
they’d call each other “brother.” War has a funny way of cementing tight bonds
between men. Perhaps it’s the horror and that drives our fundamentally social
natures to seek something human amidst all the pain. Or perhaps it’s something
else. I’m not in a position to speak to that, but I can say that this story
illustrated the kind of relationship that can grow when we embrace love.
Conclusion:
I
want to close this morning’s time of reflection with another reading of this
morning’s scripture passage. May we be blessed with this reading from the
prophet Isaiah.
Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you;
therefore he will rise up to show mercy to you.
For the Lord is a God of justice;
blessed are all those who wait for him.
19 Truly, O people in Zion, inhabitants
of Jerusalem, you shall weep no more. He will surely be gracious to you
at the sound of your cry; when he hears it, he will answer you. 20 Though
the Lord may give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction,
yet your Teacher will not hide himself any more, but your eyes shall see your Teacher.
21 And when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left,
your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way;
walk in it.” therefore he will rise up to show mercy to you.
For the Lord is a God of justice;
blessed are all those who wait for him.
Amen.
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