Serving Above the Call of Duty
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Text: Isaiah 42:1-9
This morning I have good news for you: God is reaching out to us. God is reaching out to us in the most profound ways and there is not one of us that he is not addressing by name. He is not reaching out to us as he did 2,000 years ago when they celebrated the first Palm Sunday and he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. He has already done that. He has been there. He has gone to the Cross that followed. He is reaching out today to us in a meal: a meal that celebrates all that happened that week after he rode into Jerusalem, a meal for the ages!
It was a meal that took hundreds of years in its preparation before the day that he actually met with his disciples, broke bread and shared wine with them and celebrated the Passover. It was a meal that was to have an indelible impression on the minds of all its followers and it was to affect them for the rest of their days. It was a meal which for 2,000 years has sustained and nurtured and supported people of faith. In fact along with baptism it is the one thing universally that we do as Christians to remember Jesus Christ and his death his resurrection.
It is a meal that has been celebrated, not only over the ages, but in almost every tongue and language on earth. The bread has been broken and the wine has been poured in the Arctic and the Antarctic and from as far away as Beijing to as far west as Los Angeles. It has been broken and shared by kings and princes and queens and paupers. It has been celebrated in cathedrals, in shacks, and in places that we can barely think of. It has been offered beside the dying in hospitals. It has been given to little children at a moment of great praise and joy. It is a meal for the ages! It is a meal for everyone!
It is a meal of the new covenant that was a covenant for the forgiveness of sins. It was a meal that was for the unity of humanity in recognizing the presence of God amongst all people. It is a meal of justice and of truth. It is a meal of hope and of peace. It reaches out to us and it is offered to you this morning. Christ offers it to you. He is reaching out to us and he is saying “Here I am, broken, poured out, for you.” For those who from the old covenant understood its power, they knew exactly what it meant. It was a powerful image of the past as well as the present and the future. It is rooted in a covenant that is hundreds and thousands of years old, even before Jesus was born. It has survived time as we remember it in 2012.
I couldn't help but think about how the power of this image came upon me just recently when I was lining up outside a bank in one of the little anterooms to go to an instant teller. The bank was closed but the little anteroom was open. I stood there along with two other people waiting to use one machine, the only one that was working. There was a lady in front, God Bless her, who had absolutely no idea how to use the machine. We've all stood behind someone like that in our lives, haven't we? In fact, every time she hit a number her card popped out again. It seemed she had more cheques to put in than I have Canadian Tire money in my car dashboard. She needed to make many transactions and she took her time in doing it.
You never know whether you should say something at a moment like that. Do you reach over her shoulder and give instructions as to how it is done? Then you think, no there is a camera on you and maybe that is not a good idea. So you look awkwardly down at the floor, or you look at the people who are next to you, and there were two others with me. We all felt as awkward.
The man who was immediately in front, the next one to receive the gift of this great machine, after having looked at the floor for about ten minutes, decided to make eye contact - an awkward moment like being in an elevator when it stops. We stared at each other and realized he was huge. He had leathers on, and multiple tattoos celebrating various names. I looked at him and then I looked down at my bank card and I looked up at him again. Finally, not knowing what else to do, I entered into a conversation with him.
I didn't know what else to talk about except two chains that he had around his neck. They were very large chains. One of them had on it the Star of David, and superimposed upon that was a lovely gold cross. Finally, I thought I should ask him where he came from and I said they were very nice. He looked down and began to speak. To my astonishment, he had an extremely cultured British accent. He was a man, clearly of some learning, just from his vocabulary. He explained to me that the Star of David had come to him when he had been in Masada in Israel, and he had purchased it there. The cross he bought in Jerusalem, somewhere on the Via Dolorosa. He wore these with pride. He liked them. They had meaning for him.
Then the discussion went to what he actually did for a living. He was now retired, but he had been a ship's captain who had sailed in the Gulf of Aqaba, the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal. For 20 years, he had captained a British ship, and formerly been in the Royal Navy, an amazing man. Finally the Instant Teller became free some half hour later, and I didn't want to continue the conversation by telling him what I did for a living - it seemed so dull in comparison and I feared the consequences - but I thought about that for a moment, for clearly these two symbols had meant a lot to him.
They were powerful. In many ways they explain to us this meal today. The meal goes back hundreds and thousands of years to a covenant with Abraham and with Moses, a covenant that as I suggested last week that says, “I will be your God and you will be my people.” But as we found out last week from the Book of Jeremiah that covenant was broken with idolatry, with sin, with lawlessness, with resting on military power, and turning away.
Yet, the prophets kept saying that there will be a new covenant. The covenant that God has with you is a covenant that God always keeps from God's side even though you break it, but there will be a new covenant. Our passage this morning is another one of those passages near the end of the exile as the people of Israel are about to return home where the writer, the great Isaiah, talks about a return. He talks about a new covenant: “See the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare before they spring forth I tell you of them.”
He speaks of someone who is blessed in the eyes of God, someone who will come along who will be a servant, a servant who will bring the people back home, a servant of the new covenant, who will not be full of words, who will have to find strength even when he is weak, a servant who will bring the exiles home.
While some have felt that the way this was fulfilled was through a man called Cyrus, a Persian, who eventually made it possible for Israel to return to Jerusalem and for the people to come back to their land, there seemed to be more to this than just a political leader. This is someone who is filled with the Spirit, who is blessed and righteous. The early Christians, when they first met Jesus of Nazareth, realized that this is the person of whom Isaiah spoke. This is the one who is the new covenant. This is the “servant.” This is the one who restores what is broken. This is “the light to the Gentiles” to quote Isaiah. This is Mitzvah and Torah coming together in one person: the blessing and the law.
This is the fulfilment that they saw in Jesus, not just a continuation of an existing covenant, but a new covenant. Jesus is doing something radically new. Jesus is turning on its head the ideas that people had about God and about covenants and about a relationship. This is not a covenant of violence; this is a covenant brought about through peace. This is not a covenant of victory; it is a covenant of sacrifice. It is a not a covenant for the glory of one nation; it is a covenant for all the nations: “The light to the Gentiles.” It is a covenant that is universal. It is a covenant that is for all time.
In the Upper Room, when Jesus broke the bread at Passover, the symbol of the covenant of God said, “This cup is the New Covenant in my blood.” Those early Christians, those first disciples, those Upper Room residents, they knew. They knew exactly what Jesus was saying, and they knew it would cost him his life. They knew that the sacrifice for this meal was absolute and that once that it had been broken and the wine had been poured there was no turning back.
It is because of that meal, Jesus of Nazareth, for 2,000 years has reached out to the world. It is not a meal that is just for us, although it is the Church's meal. It is the Church that offers it, but it is not for us, we are not the ones offering it: Jesus is. It is not for those who are worthy to receive it, but it is for those who understand that forgiveness is found in it. It is not in time; it is for all time. It is the meal for eternity!
What does this mean? How then should we, having received this meal, live with this great gift? If God has reached out to us in this incredible sacrifice, in this wonderful sacrament, what are we to do and to be? Well, we are first of all to declare it. This isn't a meal that we keep to ourselves. We do not go around flashing our invitations and saying, “Look, I've been invited to this meal, and you? Isn't it amazing that my name is on here and I am allowed to go to this meal, but you, you are not invited. It is my meal.” No, it isn't! It is our meal only insofar as our faith will accept it. It is only our meal insofar as we will declare it. It is Christ's meal, and it is for us, and it is for others.
The great Swiss theologian, Karl Barth, who I have mentioned a number of times, put this so marvellously when describing the dangers of trying to keep this meal to yourself, as if somehow we own it. He wrote the following, and I love the analogy. He said:
The Church runs like a herald to deliver the message of Christ. It is not a snail that carries its little house on its back, and is so well- off in it that only now and then it sticks out its feelers and then thinks that the claim of publicity has been satisfied. No! The Church lives by its commission as a herald of the Good News. It is la compagnie de Dieu.
The Church then is the one who declares what the meal offers, and it offers the meal and declares it to the world. It does so not as an incestuous group in a little frame or in a little shell that every now and again puts out, as Barth says, “feelers” but as someone who ultimately declares it to the world and announces the New Covenant of God's love in Jesus of Nazareth. It invites people to the meal.
In many ways, it also forces us to enact the meal. It is no good just saying, “This is the meal. Here I am. Here it is.” Or, “This is what I declare.” If we, ourselves, don't put ourselves in the place of that meal, if we do not live in the way of Christ, if we do not follow Christ, it is never us that is Christ, but it is us that follow Christ and then declares it.
One of the theologians that I have loved the most over the last twenty or so years, is Henri Nouwen. He has worked with the handicapped and the disabled, the physically and the mentally challenged, and has lived in community with people in L'Arche, with people most in need, and who is himself a great intellectual and a great, great scholar. He once told a story about his good friend Bob. Bob died at an early age, leaving two young children. Bob's widow came to visit him before the funeral and asked what she should do and whether she should take the children to the funeral or not.
Nouwen did not get an opportunity to answer her. He was in another country, so she made up her own mind that the children would not be able to stand the death and see their father being lowered into the ground, so they didn't come to the funeral. Sometime later, she phoned Nouwen again, and she said, “Look, my children are refusing now to talk about their father. They don't seem to know what has happened, and they are very upset. What should I do?” Henri said, “Why don't they come with you and me, and we will go and visit the place where he is buried. We will go to the cemetery and sit there, and we will talk about it. It is a nice, sunny day.”
One of the children agreed. The other one was too frightened. They went and they sat in the green grass next to a headstone that said, “A good and a kind man.” For the first time since Bob had died, the little child, Henri and the mother of the child reminisced and talked about what a wonderful man Bob was. But Henri realized there was still a child at home who wouldn't come and do this. So he devised another plan. He said, “I know what we are going to do. We are going to come back again, but this time we are going to have a picnic, and we are going to bring a basket and food.” When the second child heard there was food, the child was there!
They went as a family: a mother, two children, and their friend Henri. They got out the basket, and they brought out the wine and the cakes and the cheeses, and they sat next to the grave where Bob was buried. There, they celebrated his life! They had a meal, and for the first time in that second child's life, she began to talk about her father, and they reminisced and they laughed and they cried, and every year subsequently, they have held a picnic on the day of his death to remember him and vowed never to forget him.
Nouwen says that is what we do with Communion. It is like we are there with the crucified Christ. We recognize the sacrifice that he has made, but we have a picnic: we break bread, we talk about him, and we remember him. We know that he is the most important thing in our lives, greater than any other thing. No matter who we are, we can come to him. Nouwen says that there is one difference between Bob and Jesus, and that is it is Jesus who has prepared the meal before we go there, and it is Jesus who sits down with us as the Risen Christ as we talk about him.
It is the meal that invites us to come and remember him, to talk about him, to love as he loves us, to share as he graciously shares with us, to open as he was open with us, to forgive us as we forgive our enemies, to live in peace, to be a light to the world, to understand the sacrifice he made once and for all. Amen.