Sermons

God and Nat King Cole

Rod Frohman                                 Third Presbyterian Church  August 29, 2004                     Hosea 2:14-20, Romans 3:21-26, Matthew 19:16-26

This summer we have been diving into the sea of humanity in an effort to explore our human condition and the roots of an ethically responsible and balanced life, a life that the New Testament calls an “abundant” life.

We began by reflecting on the baptism of the Ossont twins. Baptism is the first step toward that abundant life which begins, as traditional Christian theology suggests, with the washing away of original sin. But there is a disconnect for us. We noted the difficulty of believing that the twin babies could be sinners. Babies are blessings, we reason, not sinners So instead of thinking of ourselves as inheritors of original sin, we might think of ourselves as originally blessed. As a matter of fact, the idea of original blessing is central to the archetypal creation stories on the first pages of the Bible. God created the earth, including humanity, blessed it, and called it good.

However, we adult humans have a puzzling tendency to ruin the good, which is blessed by God. We, for example misuse the natural environment as well as our bodies. This tendency led the Hebrew people to add another legend to their primeval literature, the story of "The Fall" into sin. In other words, the Hebrew story tellers are saying we were originally blessed, but somehow we couldn't handle it and, with a large dose of hubris, we attempted to over reach or control the Source of our blessing. This was our downfall, our slide in to a condition called sin.

So we asked, "Which is true, are we originally blessed or originally cursed?" Answer: both. This is our human condition.

How then do we live with ourselves? How can we have an abundant, ethically responsible life? Then we remembered that we have an internal moral yardstick or conscience, to measure the distance between our blessing and our curse, between our possibilities and our limitations. But unfortunately we find that there are measurements, which this moral yardstick cannot make. The internal moral yardstick , the conscience, cannot work like an abstract and universal standard of measurement for all situations because the conscience is conditioned by our society. We noted that Jesus developed a new yardstick, that of responsible love, or situation ethics. The Christian situationalist is prepared to compromise moral yardsticks, even the 10 commandments, when the situation of love [of God and neighbor] seems better served by doing so. For example, the situation of WW II led German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer to unsuccessfully attempt to assassinate Hitler, a violation of the sixth commandment.

Today we are confronted with the question, "Will we always make the right choice using Jesus' ethic of responsible love?" The answer, honestly, is, “No”. So this matter of the struggle between original sin and original blessing is not just an idea, it is the human condition, it is our daily experience. In the words of St. Paul, “We do not do what we want to do, and we do what we do not want to do”.

So what are we supposed to do? Are we, like King Oedipus, supposed to poke out our eyes to pay for our human condition by some sort of self -imposed suffering? Or do we just ignore our limitations and shortcomings and go blithely on as if it didn't matter, in a nostalgic re-visiting my hippie ethic of the 1960's which said, "I'll be myself, and you be yourself and if we get together, hey, that's groovy." Either solution; I will ignore my blessing and pay for my sins, or ignore my sin and focus on my blessing, has disastrous consequences.

Caught in the human condition of moral schizophrenia we think that we can pay for our own sin. We conclude that there are certain things that we can do to extract ourselves from this human dilemma.

This is precisely the dilemma of the rich young ruler of our Gospel lesson this morning. Remember who he is. He is an upper class, well-educated, religiously sensitive male, who, because of his social standing needed only to worry only about keeping the 10 Commandments, not about putting food on the table. He came to Jesus and asked, "What good deed must I do to inherit eternal life?" That is, "What is the price of living an ethically responsible and balanced life now and being assured of a life hereafter?" He is an honest seeker. And he has time on his hands.

Jesus tells him to keep the 10 Commandments. Amazingly enough he responds that he has done exactly that. Well then, Jesus says, If you want to meet the ultimate standard of and ethically responsible life, then, "Sell all that you have, give the proceeds to the poor and come and follow me”. The gospel editor tells us that the young man went away grieving because he had a great many possessions”, that is, the price was not right!!

There are some things that cannot be purchased either with money or deeds. Somehow we often think that by living according to the rules, doing all kinds of good things like serving on community boards and agencies, working in the church, giving to the United Way, being responsible, that we can find a satisfying and abundant life. The difficult thing about living an ethically responsible, balanced, in short, “abundant life”, either now or in the hereafter is that it can not be paid for. We can't buy it with any type of currency be it time, talent, treasure, even our own blood. As the Associate Pastor for Church and Society this kind of statement sounds like I am shooting myself in the foot. Indeed tomorrow morning when I call someone to volunteer for the food cupboard I might hear my words being quoted back to me, “ Rod, if volunteering doesn’t get me anything, why do it.?

But all this goes beyond volunteering. We’re stuck aren’t we? We are stuck between a rock and a hard place—the rock of our own hubris and the hard place of our failure—the rock of our own self-delusion that somehow, our intelligence, our technology, our superior management skills, our commitment, our love, will somehow bring in the peaceable kingdom --- and the hard place of our failure to make it happen. We are stuck –we are captive to our human condition, we often grow weary in our well-doing and so the easiest reaction is to just blow off the initial commitment to an ethically responsible life. Because we cannot do it or because responsible living requires strength to live beyond rules and in the zone of love of neighbor and God, we may reject it. Since this following of Jesus seems like selling all that we have we are tempted to just go away sad. The price was not right. We had a great love for Christ and his kingdom. We who love justice just ramble sadly off unable to pay the high price of fidelity as a disciple of Jesus Christ.

Do you remember that Nat King Cole song "Ramblin’ Rose"?

Who CAN cling to a ramblin’ rose? Keep in mind that “ramblin”, that is, infidelity in love, is something done by both men and women. Anyone who has ever been the victim of infidelity knows the destruction of such behavior. Anyone who has experienced the restoration of a relationship after infidelity, and after forgiveness has been accepted, knows the strength of the faithfulness of the partner who did not give up but lovingly called the rambling rose back to fidelity.

In the Old Testament text of today this restored relationship is illustrated by the reunification of Hosea and his wife, Gomer after she stopped being a prostitute. It is also a visceral metaphor, but it illustrates the steadfast love and mercy, the faithfulness (HESEDH) with which God seeks us out.

This faithfulness is what St. Paul is suggesting in our Epistle text:

Redemption, recognize that word? It is not a word we use very often any more. We used to redeem S & H Green stamps for home products. I like to redeem my Red Wings ticket stub for a $ .99 discount at the Wendys. In the New Testament "redemption" (apolutrosis) is a frequently used word meaning, "'setting free by a ransom' and is used in conjunction with a ransom paid for prisoners of war, slaves and criminals condemned to death.” (Kittel, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Vol. 4. p. 353) It is a visceral metaphor, this redemption. The redemption of a slave or a criminal in the public square of Corinth, Athens, or Thessalonikia was a sight common in the New Testament world.

To be caught between our original blessing and original sin is slavery to the human condition of moral schizophrenia. And there is no method by which we ourselves can work our way or pay our way out of it. This is where salvation in Christ is applied. We have been bought by Another and have been given our freedom papers. The ransomed slave metaphor is the way Paul explains what God has done for us in Jesus Christ in Christ's death on the Cross.

The big question is. "Do we believe this?" Do we have faith that this is true? By faith I do not mean some creed or some doctrine. I do not mean orthodox belief. I do not mean church membership. Faith is trusting this announcement of ransom and accepting a rebuilt relationship with God. Faith is something relational. It isn't something God has or I have, [and listen carefully here] but something between the two of us. It is a relationship re-knit. In Christ God gives, not just a benefit, but God gives God's self to us. And in trust we give ourselves back to God.

Ultimately only God can love like this. Provisionally we can say it to each other, but sooner or later we will take it back. There are limits to human love and commitment. Operating in the form of our original blessing we will eventually run out of patience and love and cross over into impatience, infidelity, apathy or even hate. It happens all too often. Ultimately only God can love us permanently and unconditionally and viscerally. God has gone out into the street, paid the pimp and welcomes us back despite our unfaithfulness. We no longer have to justify our lives. God wants to give us true partnership, true selfhood. This is the relationship for which we were originally made. God stands with arms outstretched in welcome. And God's outstretched arms have the shape of a Cross.