Sunday, June 9, 2013

Your Life: Priceless!

This sermon was preached Sunday June 9, 2013 at St. John's, Henderson NC on the lessons below.  You can read the scriptures by clicking on the quick link to the right.

 
             Yesterday, I talked to a longtime friend at the Cary Y.  This person was my neighbor before I got married.  His working career has been in computer sales.  He told me how he had been let go twice during his career.  Today, he said, there is no such thing as a permanent job.  We’re all contract workers.   Years ago I talked to a man who said that a company executive told a meeting of employees that each worker had to look out for him or herself because the company was looking out for itself.  This is the reality in corporate America.  The days in which people worked for one company their entire working life, with rare exceptions, are long gone.  In today’s world, people are little more than disposable parts.

Today’s lessons reveal that there are no throwaways in the Kingdom of Heaven.  Each person is invaluable regardless of his or her status in the world.  God cherishes each of us.

               Today’s Gospel lesson is similar to the Old Testament lesson.  Elijah and Jesus each resuscitate a young child.  Occasionally people say that the god of the Old Testament is different from the god of the New Testament.  The Old Testament god, they say, is wrathful and the New Testament god loving.  Today’s lessons reveal that the god of the Old and New Testaments are one and the same.  In both Testaments, God is a god of love and compassion.  God is also a god of justice in both.  We tend to focus on one more than the other in each Testament, but it is easy to find examples of God’s justice and God’s compassion in both the Old and New Testaments.

A key point in understanding God’s compassion in the lesson from 1 Kings and Luke is that the woman who has lost her only son is a widow.  Widows in the Ancient World were a vulnerable and marginal group.  In ancient agrarian society, a woman had few options outside of her home and family.  She depended upon her husband to farm for food and her children to care for her in her old age.   The social safety net did not exist.  The desperation of a woman without a husband and children can be seen in the story of Tamar in the book of Genesis.  Tamar disguises herself as a prostitute to conceive a son by her father-in-law Judah.  Society in the Ancient World and today privileges the powerful and the wealthy.  God, however, values each person regardless of whether he or she is rich or poor, young or old, married or single, able or disabled.  God values each of us equally regardless of our status in the world.

The radical nature of God’s love is seen even more dramatically in Paul’s letter to the Galatians.  Paul confesses that he “violently” persecuted the church of God and tried to “destroy it.”  If someone tried to destroy us, how would we react?  As we know from the news, our response would be to send out a killer drone to take out that person.  God, though, responds differently.  Instead of retaliating, the risen Jesus appears to Saul, converting him to faith.  This former persecutor becomes the greatest of all the apostles, the one who takes the Good News of Jesus Christ to the Gentile world.  Many scholars argue that it is because of this persecutor that Christianity is the worldwide religion it is today instead of a small Jewish sect.

God’s economy dramatically differs from the world’s economy.  We value people because of their position in society - their wealth, their looks or their popularity -, but God values each person regardless of her or his worldly status.

I recently started working part-time at the YMCA in Cary.  I am currently between churches and wanted a way to get out of the house, earn a little money and be with people.  I have been a member of the Cary Y since 1994.  I like the culture - the values, the staff and the members.  My job as a Wellness Coach is to assist people in the workout areas and to give wellness orientations.  The Y is very people oriented.  An important part of my job is meeting people.  The Y pays me to walk around and talk to them.  As far as I’m concerned, you can’t beat that!  In the course of only a few shifts, I have met many amazing women and men.  One man that I talked to Thursday is an investigator for Blue Cross and Blue Shield.  He investigates fraudulent billing.  You will be reassured to know that these are only a very small fraction of all Blue Cross and Blue Shield’s insurance claims.  When I asked him how he had gotten into this line of work, he said that he had studied criminal justice in college.  Afterwards, he had worked as a sheriff’s deputy, welfare and Department of Defense investigator – more than a fulltime job!  Intrigued I asked him to tell me about his most interesting case, he replied, “It sounds corny, but I can’t tell you.  It’s classified.”  I told him to say no more as I didn’t want him to have to kill me.  As is true for most of us, he takes his life story for granted.  He didn’t think it was particularly special, but I thought it was fascinating.  I knew nothing about that world.  And his story is one of many that I have heard in the last few days - the retired mathematician from India who moved from Virginia to Cary a month ago to be near his daughter and grandchildren; the Campbell law school graduate, who works from home on family law cases and hopes one day to have children with her lawyer husband; the eleven year old girl who likes to play the video game World of Warcraft and who misses her friends in Colorado from where she just moved; the Spanish speaking Y maintenance man who grew up in a Puerto Rican family in New York City.  Each of us has a fascinating story.  Each of us is priceless in the eyes of our loving God.

Today’s lessons call us to look at each person whether rich or poor, young or old, abled or disabled, black, brown or white with God’s eyes, with eyes that cherish and love each person regardless of his or her position in society.  The lessons call us perhaps more challengingly to look at ourselves with those same eyes, to realize that you and I are precious, irreplaceable in the eyes of our loving God.  When we look at others and ourselves with God’s eyes of love, we can begin to fulfill Jesus’ command to love our neighbors as ourselves.
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