CELEBRATING:
SERMONS
17 - Jan 2010
A sermon delivered by Rev. Gordon How
Did You Ask a Good Question Today? or Loving People
and Using Things
So, as we have been singing, I wonder, "Will We
seek other seas?" Will we be moved to challenge
our human assumptions and strive to reflect God's will
in all we are and do? Jesus came to the Lakeshore to
call us to do just that!
Isidor Issac Rabi, a Nobel laureate in physics, was
once asked, "Why did you become a scientist rather
than a doctor or lawyer or businessman like the other
immigrant kids in your neighborhood?" He answered,
"My mother made me a scientist without ever intending
it. Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask
her child after school: 'What did you learn in school
today?' But not my mother. She always asked me a different
question. 'Izzy,' she would say, 'Did you ask a good
question today?' That difference - asking good questions
- made me become a scientist." Now, from the same
vein of wisdom - is the principle of liberal faith:
asking enquiring, seeking, challenging, tough questions
is more important than memorizing easy answers.
Several years ago, there was a movie, "The Motorcycle
Diaries", which powerfully describes the pre-revolutionary
life of Ernesto Guevara, later known as Che Guevara.
It depicts 8 months in the life of Guevara and his best
friend as they leave their home in Buenos Aires on a
motorcycle - to tour South America. He is about to finish
medical school. His friend is about to turn 30. They
intend having a rite-of-passage adventure - but instead,
they have a transformational journey which brings deep
insight. They leave their comfort zone, become exposed
for the first time to economic injustice, to bigotry,
and to dehumanization. Their journey riased questions
which activate their moral conscience. They are forced
to deal with matters they find difficult, with which
they disagree. As a result, their complacency and indifference
are destroyed forever.
Guevara's later life of violence is not what I am
holding up as an example. Rather, I am lifting for our
consideration his journey outside his comfort zone,
and his exposure to the real lives of those outside
the privileged socio-economic class and race he lived
in. I am lifting for our consideration the fact that
he had a fire of commitment within him born of a question
about justice. This question shattered his complacency
and indifference. His life was transformed because he
was forced to ask challenging questions instead of offering
easy answers.
The 20th Century American Jewish theologian Rabbi
Abraham Heschel is often quoted. Here are four gems:
¢ Racism is humanity's gravest threat to humankind
- the maximum hatred for a minimum reason.
¢ The higher goal of spiritual living is not to
amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred moments.
¢ When I was young, I admired clever people. Now
that I am old, I admire kind people.
But, more to the point for today, he said "the
opposite of good is not evil; the opposite of good is
indifference." Heschel, of course, learned this
from the 8th century prophets, as in Amos: "Woe
to you who are complacent in Zion and to you who feel
secure". Jesus learned the same lesson about the
sin of indifference from the same prophets - because
he told that story about complacency and indifference
in the gospel lesson read this morning.
(Do you know who else learned that truth of God's
way? Tomorrow at 1:30 many will be here to worship and
thank God for the life and witness of Ward Allen. One
of the stories I learned about Ward is that he took
on organizations he belonged to that excluded Jews!
And changes were made because of Ward. This kind and
spiritual man was firm in confronting evil.)
As a church dedicated to standing in the prophetic tradition,
we are called to learn the same lesson. We need to learn
to ask questions - questions, for example, about why
there is such disparity between rich and poor. Why do
20% of the world's population receive 83% of the world's
income? Why do the poorest 20% of the world's population
live on less than 2% of the world's income? And when
those annual statistics are publicized about the world's
wealthiest people, you can do a little arithmatic and
find that three or four of the richest people in the
world have fortunes equal to the collective national
incomes of the poorest 30 or 40 countries! Whats more:
It would take no more than 10 percent of the overall
annual sales of arms in the world to feed all the starving
children, to protect them from dying of preventable
diseases, and to make basic education accessible to
them all. Think of what that expenditure would do for
Haiti.
The late William Sloane Coffin wrote: "There
are people and things in this world and people are to
be loved and things are to be used. It is increasingly
important that we love people and use things, for there
is so much in our gadget-minded, consumer-oriented society
that is encouraging us to love things and use people."
In this morning's gospel lesson a rich man clothed
in purple and fine linen feasts sumptuously every day
while at his gate lives a sore-ridden beggar named Lazarus
who longed to eat just the scraps that fell from the
rich person's table. The dogs came every day and licked
Lazarus' sores. As the story goes, when these two died,
the rich man, referred to in our tradition as Dives,
went to hell and Lazarus - the poor man - went to heaven.
If you want a startling interpretation of that story
of the beggar named Lazarus - try this. Martin Luther
King, Jr. preached, "Dives did not go to hell because
he was rich; Dives didn't realize that his wealth was
his opportunity. It was his opportunity to bridge the
gulf that separated him from his brother, Lazarus. Dives
went to hell because he passed by Lazarus every day
and he never really saw him. He went to hell because
he allowed his brother to become invisible. Dives went
to hell because he maximized the minimum and minimized
the maximum. Indeed, Dives went to hell because he sought
to be a conscientious objector in the war against poverty."
Do you know where King preached that sermon? He preached
it in the great National Cathedral, Washington, D.C.
on the last Sunday of his life. - Just as today is the
last Sunday before tomorrow's Martin Luther King Jr.
Day in the USA.
Eleven years earlier, Martin Luther King challenged
people to ask the kinds of questions today's gospel
lesson thrusts in our faces. In his words, he challenged
people to becomes "creatively maladjusted".
Dr. King said, "We all should seek to live a well-adjusted
life in order to avoid neurotic and schizophrenic personalities.
But there are some things within our social order to
which I am proud to be maladjusted and to which I call
upon you to be maladjusted. I never intend to adjust
myself to segregation and discrimination. I never intend
to adjust myself to mob rule. I never intend to adjust
myself to the tragic effects of the methods of physical
violence and to tragic militarism. I call upon you to
be maladjusted to such things. I call upon you to be
as maladjusted as Amos who, in the midst of the injustices
of his day, cried out in words that echo across the
generation, `Let justice run down like waters and righteousness
like a mighty stream.' To be as maladjusted as Jesus
of Nazareth, who dreamed a dream of the gracious blessing
of God and the community of humankind. God grant that
we will be so maladjusted that we will be able to go
out and change our world and our civilization.... Human
Salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.
...Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power.
We have guided missiles and misguided people."
It was not until Dives took a transformational journey
to hell that he woke up, became aware, and began to
have some questions about economic injustice. The purpose
of Christianity is to wake us up to have questions,
to make us uncomfortable, to make us creatively maladjusted.
To help us see that "indifference to evil is as
bad as evil itself." This doesn't mean to be eaten
up with guilt. It means to enter the freedom of responsibility.
Rabbi Heschel said about his rising up to protest
the war in Vietnam: "some are guilty, while all
are responsible. I did not feel guilty as an individual
for the bloodshed in Vietnam, but I felt deeply responsible.
`Thou shalt not stand idly by the blood of thy neighbor'
(Leviticus 19:15)." So, the core question of living
an ethical life is responsibility. Although we are not
guilty for how things are - in our life, our history,
our time - we need to take some responsibility for the
chasms that exist between us and our siblings in the
human family. To be an ethical human being is to say,
I am going to do everything possible to love people
and use things rather than use people and love things.
Is it no wonder that I think of Ward Allen when I say
that?
The most moving moment in that movie about Che Guevara
takes place in the San Pablo leper colony, in the Amazon.
Guevara is profoundly disturbed over the segregation
between the lepers and their care givers. He takes personal
responsibility to break down the chasm by refusing to
wear surgical gloves, knowing as a medical student that
one cannot contract leprosy through human touch. On
his 24th birthday the care givers - doctors, nurses,
and nuns - give him a festive birthday bash. He makes
a moving speech about the interdependence and essential
unity of the human family. Then he looks across the
Amazon River where the lepers are forced to live apart
from the healthy. Compelled by the friendships he has
made with the lepers every day when the boat has carried
him across the river, he personally commits to complete
the celebration of his birthday by visiting them. Even
though he struggles with asthma he jumps into the swiftly
flowing Amazon, swims against the currents in an arduous
journey, and reaches out to reconcile the two communities
in his own life.
Isn't that what Jesus calls us to do? Isn't that the
central reason to come to Shaughnessy Heights United
Church and to give to its budget so that you and I can
be awakened to and engage the needs of the world - to
work together not so much to try to get to heaven, but
to bring heaven to earth? I think so. Amen.
Sermon Resources:
Luke 16: 19-31; Leviticus 19:13-18;
Quotations from J.E.Bacon, Abraham Heschel, M.L.King
and W.S.Coffin.
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Shaughnessy Heights United Church
congregation is a Christian faith community respecting
each other in our diversity and reaching out to all
who seek God’s love.
1550
West 33rd Avenue,
Vancouver, BC V6M 1A7
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Tel:
604-261-6377
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