“Seeking A Homeland”
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16 Luke 12:32-40
Dr. Thomas E. Sagendorf, First Congregational UCC
Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost August 8, 2010
There are some very compelling scriptures in the Bible. I’m sure you’d agree. Some of them are familiar—so familiar, in fact, that we’ve committed them to memory. The Good Samaritan. The Prodigal Son. The Woman at the Well. Jesus and Nicodemus (“God so loved the world…”). Others are not so familiar—like our passages today—but just as important.
The question with all these passages is context. Context. What is the context in which these words were written? This is very important when we consider what we are reading and hearing. Let me give you an example.
The Sermon on the Mount, as many of you know, is found in the Gospel of Matthew. Chapters 5-7. We may not be able to recite it word-for-word, but most of us recognize it when we hear it.
However!
The Sermon on the Mount is found only in Matthew. There are some similar sayings in the Gospel of Luke, but the reference is much shorter, and more pointed, and spoken, not on a mountain, but in a flat place.
And the Sermon on the Mount doesn’t appear anywhere, in any form, in any of the other Gospels.
So what’s going on here? Something as compelling as the Sermon on the Mount, and it shows up only in Matthew?
It’s all a matter of context. Context. Matthew was writing to Hebrew people. The people of Israel. Mark, Luke and John were not. Luke, for example, was writing to Greek speaking Christians in Antioch of ancient Syria. The emphasis was entirely different. The same Gospel message but written in a different time for a different audience.
Some scholars believe that Matthew was attempting to parallel the Hebrew Bible. Just as Moses went up to Mt. Sinai to receive the law—what we call the Ten Commandments—so Jesus went up on a mountain to offer lessons for living. Three chapters worth. And this very early in Matthew’s Gospel even as Moses delivered the law very early in the Hebrew Bible.
The importance of this parallel would have been completely lost on Greek-speaking Christians.
It’s all about context whether we’re talking about the Sermon on the Mount or our less familiar passages from Hebrews and Luke today. What is the context in which these words were written?
The answer is change (extreme change), insecurity, uncertainty, and heading into an unknown and dangerous future.
In our Gospel Lesson in Luke 12 Jesus is addressing his disciples. Maybe an even larger following. They’re traveling. On the road to Jerusalem where trouble awaited them. Big trouble. Jesus has already warned them of what’s coming. “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and scribes (the religious/political establishment) and be killed.” But he didn’t stop here. “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”
I seriously wonder how many of us here this morning—including me—would have turned around and walked away at such a grim prospect. “We knew, Lord, that it wasn’t going to be a bed of roses, but this is too much!”
So Jesus speaks to reassure them. “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Then he goes on. Be dressed for action. Be alert. Be like those who are waiting for the master of the house to return from a wedding banquet—even in the middle of the night—so you can be ready to open the door the moment he arrives.
What’s at the other end of this long, perilous journey, filled with suffering, rejection, and even death? God’s gift of the kingdom. THE KINGDOM. A time. A place. A realm. A world. A reality that’s totally different from what you know now. A realm that’s shaped according to the will and purpose of God.
But the context contains more than this. For we have these words from the Book of Hebrews.
Hebrews was written by some unknown preacher whose congregation had decided to abandon the Christian faith. En masse. There’s a lot in Hebrews that we find confusing, but there’s no denying that this unknown preacher was making one last, final appeal to his congregation. They’d said, “We’ve had it with this Christianity business, with all its persecution. We’re leaving. Gone. We’re out’a here.”
Dr. Fred Craddock, the preacher’s preacher whom you’ve heard Deb and me quote so often, pictures it this way. The congregation is already out in the parking lot getting into their cars. So the preacher stands on the hood of his own car and makes one final appeal. “Remember when we did this and did that? How we loved, and helped, and supported each other even under persecution because we knew God was on our side?”
When you consider it in this context, it’s truly heart-wrenching.
But I invite you to listen to what this preacher has to say.
“Faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen.”
THE ASSURANCE OF THINGS HOPED FOR AND THE CONVICTION OF THINGS NOT SEEN.
Here we go again with traveling the road of change, uncertainty, insecurity, trouble, suffering and possibly even death as disciples of Jesus Christ.
But consider this, says the preacher. Abraham, the father of the Hebrew people, lived in this faith as a sojourner. “Not knowing where he was going, he looked forward to a city whose architect and builder was God.” Abraham’s progeny, says the preacher, “confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, desiring a better country.” A “heavenly” country.
How different is this from Jesus’ promise to his followers that it was God’s good pleasure to give them the kingdom?
We live, at least some of us, as sojourners, strangers on the earth, seeking a homeland. I CERTAINLY DO. A homeland that looks and tastes and smells and feels like the kingdom of God.
A place where the machinery of war is shut down. For good!
A place where no child will be abused.
A place where greed no longer runs rampant, where big business no longer runs roughshod over voiceless people who are just scratching out a meager existence.
A place where all divisions are abolished never to return again—racial, cultural, religious, age, sexual preference, economic, national—all abandoned for true human equality where there is no more hunger, homelessness, tyranny, inadequate medical care, or violence of any sort.
A “homeland” that is shaped by the will and purpose of God.
Can you imagine it?
Some of us, maybe just a few, are sojourners looking for this kind of homeland.
BUT IF YOU ARE ONE OF US, YOU NEED TO LIVE IT. OR SHOULD I SAY LIVE “INTO” IT.
· By acknowledging that everything we have, including the earth itself, is given to us on loan.
· By taking risks, knowing that our very lifestyle will be subversive to the values of the culture.
· By being alert and ready for signs that the Christ is in our midst.
· By standing up for truth and justice even when it may be costly.
“Faith,” says the unknown preacher, “is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen.” Not the kind of meat and potatoes that we can sink our teeth into. But this is all we have, my friends, as we travel to a homeland the shape of which is yet unknown. “God, says this unknown preacher, spoke the universe into being, and GOD IS STILL SPEAKING.
The pressing question of this moment—and every other moment—is this. If God is still speaking, are we still listening?
