Chasm of Silence

September 30, 2004
Luke 16:19-22
a sermon by Stephanie Swinnea

The rich man feasted sumptuously every day! Feasting, now that’s a subject that I’m familiar with. Since I began this journey toward ordination I’ve added a hefty 30 pounds to this otherwise svelte physique, most of it in the past two years. But it is a mistake to assume that these passages condemn feasting.

Jesus was accused of being a glutton and a drunkard, after all. He feasted often - and often with the wrong people. His last meal with his disciples was a feast. No, it is not feasting that is condemned here; not feasting but famine.

LET US PRAY
Holy Trinity, Holy One;
Open our ears to hear what the Spirit is speaking;
Open our eyes to see what we will not see;
Open our lips to bridge the chasm of silence;
Open our hearts to feast as one with Thee.
Amen.

The Chasm of Silence - Episcopalians like silence. Silence can distract us from the busy world. But the problem is, silence can distract us from the busy world.

Did you hear the silence in our Gospel lesson? Two men, a rich man feasting sumptuously every day and a poor man, starving, too weak to stand, lying beside the rich man’s gate only a few feet away. They never speak. They never speak! The rich man never acknowledges that the poor man is present. He seems invisible. A chasm of silence exists between them.

I’ve experienced that chasm of silence. At any intersection where a man or woman, bearing a cardboard sign that says, “Anything Will Help,” slowly walks from car to car hoping for a handout. I can feel within me the shield of invisibility glazing over the car window, the chasm of silence widening with every moment.

I’ve felt it in church, too. For a time I attended a beautiful little church. Every member participated generously in one way or another. We were all above average; above average intellectually, educationally, socially, and economically. One Sunday a man dropped in who was not above average, not intellectually, not educationally, not socially, not economically. In fact he was needy. The man participated in the feast of bread and wine, but the feast of the fellowship of the body of Christ was denied him. The beautiful people were beautifully polite, but the silence could be heard behind the thin smiles. The chasm of silence would not be bridged. He was left outside the gate hoping for a crumb. After the third Sunday, he never returned, and honestly, the congregation sighed with relief. Perhaps he found refuge in another church where he could feel embraced in the bosom of Abraham.

The 1995 Noble Prize winning author and survivor of Auschwitz, Elie Wiesel (Veesel), said, “to remain silent and indifferent is the greatest sin of all.”

The rich man never speaks to Lazarus, never seems to see Lazarus. Only the dogs have any mercy, licking the poor man’s sores. Wayne Menking suggested earlier this semester that dogs in a bible story always herald a death. And, sure enough Lazarus dies and is carried to heaven where he feasts with Abraham. The rich man dies, too, and is buried. Tormented by the flames of hell, he looks into heaven and suddenly sees what he had never allowed himself to see. He sees Lazarus, but even now his vision is faulty. He still does not speak to Lazarus, nor acknowledge him as a human of equal worth. He never repents. He doesn’t ask Lazarus for forgiveness. Instead he asks Father Abraham to send Lazarus down with some cool water. But that chasm of silence could not be bridged.For the first time in our story the rich man thinks of someone else.
“Send Lazarus to warn my brothers.” But Abraham reminds him, “They have Moses and the prophets.”
“They won’t pay any attention to Moses and the prophets, but if someone were to come to them from the dead...”
“No,” Abraham countered, “If they won’t heed Moses and the prophets, they won’t believe even if someone were to come back from the dead.”

This tale of God’s ultimate justice, is so strikingly clear that no sermon is necessary. On the other hand there may be a message less obvious than first appears.

The rich man wears purple. Only the royal families and government officials were licensed to wear purple in ancient Rome. The rich man, then, is a symbol of empire, Lazarus, a symbol of the subjects of empire, exploited, impoverished, invisible and shut outside of all the wealth and excess that empire generates. A chasm of silence is maintained between them, because they are insignificant.

Recalling his first night in Auschwitz, Elie Wiesel records,
“Never shall I forget the faces.. turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky... Never shall I forget that silence... which murdered my God and my soul.”
In the silence Lazarus dies, like Wiesel’s companions who died at Auschwitz. But Wiesel insists, “They fought alone, they suffered alone... but they did not die alone, for something in each one of us died with them.”

For Jesus to suggest that, like the rich man, the empire would crash and burn, and all the suppressed peoples be raised to a great feast, was seditious. It took courage for Jesus to challenge the Roman Empire. We are reminded of his mother’s words, “He has lifted up the lowly and cast down the mighty from their thrones.”

My son, Kyle, was watching Star Wars this week. The little Ewoks and the Rebel Alliance seemed insignificant to the evil emperor until a carefully aimed charge penetrated the Death Star and the black of space exploded with flames and light. “Hey,” I protested, “Lucas stole that from Luke!”

What of today? of other empires and systems of oppression? Can the powers of this world be shaken, transformed? Abraham told the rich man,
“They have Moses and the prophets. A plan for a just society exists. They won’t listen even if one were to come to them from the dead.

But the good news is this: Jesus has more faith in humanity than Abraham could muster in this story. Jesus took the risk that nations might just listen if one were to come back from the dead.

And he did. Now the resurrected Lord is going to the people, to the nations, to the empires born again within each one of us. So the challenge is ours. With resurrection faith and the wisdom of the prophets:

We are challenged to resist self-imposed blindness;
to be willing to see the down trodden and oppressed.
We are challenged to bridge the chasm of silence;
to speak to, for, and with those who have no voice.
We are challenged to encourage the victims of empire to hope for the justice that will come.
We are challenged to establish just societies where every man, woman and child is seen, heard, and valued.

In short, we are challenged to establish God’s kingdom in the earth. And God has faith in us, that we, through the power of the Holy Spirit, can do just that.

The Spirit of the Law

October 31, 2004
Isaiah 1:10-20
a sermon by Stephanie Swinnea

Halloween - tis the season to be scary. And Isaiah is mighty scary.
“Ah sinful nation! ...people laden with iniquity... Hear the word of the Lord. What is the multitude of your sacrifices to me?. Bring no more vain offerings. ...Your appointed feasts my soul hates; they have become a burden to me. When you spread forth your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; though you make many prayers, I will not listen.”

This is a hard word - but lets not shrink from it.
Isaiah may have been writing 700 years before the birth of Christ, but he still has something to say to us now, today.

We see the Good News - an emphasis on forgiveness and restoration. “Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean. Come let us reason together. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow. ...If you are willing and obedient.”

Forgiveness and restoration - but from what? Sin? That word “SIN” conjures up the image of God as a fat Santa checking to see who is naughty or nice against a list of arbitrary behaviors - behaviors demanded for the sole purpose of testing us to see who will obey and who will not. Laws designed to eliminate the unworthy. This, my friends, is superstition /// not faith. We need to demythologize our concept of sin and the law.

We like the movie image of Moses on Mt. Sinai, barefoot and awestruck, receiving from God the Ten Commandments and slavishly taking down the rest of the law by dictation. Suppose instead that Moses or a later historian received inspiration in the same manner that we do today; God building upon what we have already learned and experiencedand adding revelation?

That mountaintop conversation might have gone something like this:

Moses: Lord, how am I to make a nation out of this rabble of uprooted slaves?

God: What have you learned, Moses? In all these years, in the courts of Pharaoh, in the tents of Midian - What have you learned?

Moses: That nations rise and nations fall. Some scarcely endure a generation - others last for centuries.

God: And those that endure, Moses, what do they have in common?

Moses: Religious faith that values righteousness and life and promises ultimate justice with mercy.

God: Not bad. What else did you learn?

Moses: That civilizations need laws like the code of Hamurabi;
Laws that protect the people from injustice, especially children, aliens, women and the oppressed.
Laws that guard against the spread of disease.
Laws that limit the freedom and excesses of the individual just enough to insure the welfare of the community as a whole.
Laws that require us to never forget who we are, where we have come from, and to whom we belong.

God: Well done, Moses. I’ve a few things to add, so stick around for a month or so. We have work to do.

The laws that formed the slaves of Egypt into a nation with purpose were laws that made good sense.

When I was a teenager I presumed to suggest to God that the Bible should have used the word “stupid” instead of “sin” and folks might have been more willing to obey. God only requires of us what is best for us as a people of God. Jesus told the scribes and Pharisees,
“The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath.”

The law was not some vain superstitious ritual given to prove or test humanity.
It was intended to save humanity from our own dark bent to destruction.

For instance,
We are enslaved today - by debt, encouraged daily to increase our indebtedness
until fathers and mothers both work 60 hours a week and still feel impoverished.
We have little to give the orphans, widows, homeless; no time for hospitality, even within our own families. No time to study the issues and vote responsibility. No time to pray.
We are not our own.

Old Testament Law required that every seven years the slaves be freed and debts forgiven, a law of justice, mercy, and freedom from oppression.

We are a nation of widows, orphans, and homeless living in poverty because building a career is the measure of our worth, and exploiting our individuality the measure of our rights. Building families and communities compromises our careers and demands the sacrifice of presumed rights as individuals. Old Testament Law so valued the family that when a man got married he was expected to take a full year off from his work in order to stay home and be a comfort to his wife. How about that one!:)

Should we adopt Torah Laws as our practice today? We can see how well that experiment is working in Africa and the middle east! We would have to stone to death every adulterer, quarantine every person with a running sore, and never eat another shrimp or mushroom.

Michael Floyd has noted that the laws recorded in the Torah are not even a complete body of law, but only some examples of the kinds of laws necessary to the life and health of a nation. Many more laws are necessary.

Jesus clearly indicated that a slavish obedience to the letter of the law in order to win brownie points with God will not secure everlasting life. Even so, Jesus stressed the importance of the law. Consider this, running red lights every day may not effect my eternal salvation, but what will happen? Someone will smash into my car. My life, or at the least my quality of life, will be greatly diminished and so will someone else's.

Law, then and now, is meant to save, not to condemn. This is not a mystery. To dismiss the law entirely as archaic superstition is arrogant, short-sighted and foolhardy. But to impose that incomplete body of laws into a modern context fails to address many modern threats to our well-being which require unforseen legislation. There were reasons for the old laws, some may be valid today and some not. We need to ask:

What experiences might have generated them?
What natural consequences were observed?
Are those consequences still a force today?
Were justice and mercy at the heart of the law?
Are they at the heart of our laws today?
Was the welfare of the community as a whole put above the convenience, preference and profit of the individual? - especially the welfare of the children and the oppressed?
Does the reality of our religious and moral code direct us to be God centered first and community centered second, rather than centered on the individual?

In forming our own laws, civil, criminal, religious, and moral it is wise at least to examine the old. What was the spirit of the law?

According to Webster sin is “Whatever is against the will of God.”

The Apostle Paul said, “God is not willing that any should perish.” Jesus turned that around, saying, “[God wills] that we have life and have it more abundantly.” That’s in the here and now and as well as the hereafter. So God wills life. The law was given to preserve and secure life.

We are free from the law only when Jesus Christ, through the Holy Spirit, so transforms our inner beings, that our love for God and all that God has made becomes a new law, which can never violate the spirit of the old. Submitting to Christ, submitting to one another, modifying our individual freedoms for the well-being of the whole and especially for the least among us, the children and the oppressed, This is the pathway to abundant life. This is keeping the law, the covenant, one jot or one tittle of which will never pass away.

The book of Isaiah summarizes the spirit of the law in this way:

Cease to do evil, learn to do good,
Seek justice, correct oppression
Defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.

If you are willing and obedient you shall eat the good of the land.

Come, let us reason together, says the Lord.

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