Installation Sermon + September 11, 2022 + Trumansburg, NY
Proverbs 3:1-10
I.
This passage from Proverbs asks the Creator to make our paths straight. A gathering of Jesus' followers needs to consider this, especially when stepping out together in mission with a new Pastor. What does the straight path look like in these unstable, uneven, and treacherous times?
The Israelite community that composed and gathered around these Proverbs holds that the straight path has to do with keeping the Creator's commandments. They even promise that things will go very well for us in this life, if we do! Each of these verses has two movements: the first part encourages the community to keep the faith, and the second part indicates the resulting benefit. The people are first encouraged to obey the commandments, stay loyal and faithful, turn away from evil, and give generous offerings to the Temple, in return for which they could expect to receive long life and "abundant welfare," a good reputation, "healing" and "refreshment" for their bodies, and even material prosperity, complete with vats overflowing with wine! In other words, the deal is: do what the Creator says and the Creator will make you healthy, wealthy, and wise. What's not to like? Sign me up!
The writers of Proverbs are not idiots; they don't give us mindless platitudes and aspirational but empty promises. They know far better than comfortable American white people how the world really works. I mean, their tradition starts with a band of slaves and continues through a history mostly featuring defeat, exile, and conquest. Proverbs is written by sober, hard-nosed realists, who understand what it means to be continually blown off course and have their GPS constantly "recalculating."
Yet they stubbornly affirm that we really do emerge into the Promised Land of the Creator's blessed shalom, which Jesus calls the Creator's "kingdom" -- a beloved community of equity, justice, health, and, yes, prosperity -- when we stay on the straight path and keep the Creator's commandments, which, as we see in Jesus, are all about love.
The aspect of the straight path that is most difficult for us to swallow, I suspect, has to do with what it means for us to keep the commandments. Not only are we Americans, who don't like being told what to do, but we are Presbyterians, who constitutionally mistrust authority of any kind.
When we hear some religious leader start going on about keeping the commandments, our defenses and suspicions understandably go up. We immediately assume he (and it is always a he) is nagging us about one or both of two things. On the one hand, he wants us to maintain very strictly a list of trivial pietistical rules, like some of the Torah practices that Jesus complained about and often broke, or the medieval Roman penitentials that Luther rejected. For Presbyterians it could include enforcing some arcane and even obsolete detail from the Book of Order. On the other hand, people who rail about keeping the commandments too often just want to impose repressive personal sexual regulations on people, usually other people. And that's about it.
When we selectively reduce keeping the commandments to things like this, they become just a way of getting what we want, keeping things the way we like them, maintaining the practices and rules that make us comfortable. Proverbs calls this "doing whatever is wise in our own eyes," or in the eyes of the ones in charge, which usually means us. And it's not good.
II.
Keeping the Creator's commandments actually happens when we actively come to live together according to Jesus' Way of kindness, compassion, inclusion, gratitude, generosity, thanksgiving, humility, and joy. Following Jesus inevitably means living in solidarity with, and advocating for, the marginalized and the suffering, the oppressed and the excluded, the poor and the weak, the sick and the imprisoned, and to learn to see things, like the Bible itself does, from their perspective and with their best interests at heart.
Living according to Jesus' Way of love involves more creativity and discernment than simply reading a rule from a book and enforcing it literally in every situation. It requires us to be present and conscious of what is happening around us, to "read the room," as we say.
Maybe it's kind of like sailing. What little I know about sailing I got from the very few times I have been on sailboats, and from Patrick O'Brian novels. But I have learned that the most direct line to the destination, the effectual "straight path," is almost never a literal straight line. It requires continual awareness and response to changing conditions with some skill. The actual "straight path," in the sense of the path that will get you where you want to go, is an erratic zig-zag of tacking, especially if the wind is against you. Otherwise you don't attain the goal at all; you simply drift where the wind and current take you.
One motto of our tradition says that the church is "always being reformed according to the Word of God." We need such constant reformation because the conditions and circumstances of mission are always in flux, requiring a change of tactics, even though the goal on the horizon stays constant. It could be a good thing to remember for a church with a newly restored, giant weathervane on the steeple. We don't simply go wherever the wind blows us; but we do need to take the wind into account when setting our course.
For instance, we have to say "Black lives matter" today because Black lives haven't mattered very much at all in our history; so in order to maintain the straight path of equity we have to adjust course so that these lives are lifted up now.
In his ministry, Jesus seeks out the broken, excluded, and hurting, and makes restoring them his primary work. Therefore, a gathering of Jesus' followers has to be continually making this same calculation, sensing and adjusting to the cultural winds and waves, feeling for the places of greatest need and pain, to keep on course to its ultimate destination: the Creator's beloved community.
Jesus embodies the straight path that Proverbs talks about, emptying himself to fill the emptiness of others. The Creator challenges, empowers, leads, and sends out every gathering of Jesus' followers to act in the world according to these values. Discipleship is something we do with, in, and for physical bodies in specific circumstances, times, and places. That is our mission. The Creator calls on us to cling to this path, this Way of active love, even in the turbulence and headwinds we face today.
III.
What about the reward? What about all those blessings and benefits promised in the reading from Proverbs? If we live like Jesus, how do we then become healthy, wealthy, and wise in this life? More importantly, when do we get the overflowing vats of wine?
In our reading from his first letter to Timothy, the "Apostle Paul" says to shun all the craven behavior he lists earlier in the chapter, culminating in the love of money, which he famously says is the "root of all evil." He then goes on to echo Jesus' teaching about justice, gentleness, and keeping the commandments. And he reminds his own disciple that always at the center is the crucified Jesus Christ, "who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords," bringing us to the goal, that destination on the horizon, the Creator's Kingdom: "eternal life."
In other words, the quality of life we share together in the gathering that lives by these commandments, is itself the reward. Because if we live together in shalom, in balance and harmony with each other and the Earth, in an economy of sharing and mutual care, in a deep democracy in which all voices are heard, then everybody benefits: we come to participate in the life, and the abundance, of the whole creation.
So the blessings described in Proverbs, right up to the full barns and wine barrels, these are for all. We have to act together as disciples in the world in a way that embraces the "all" of Jesus' good news. The benefits of commandment-keeping are shared among everyone, like everything else on this planet and in this life.
In the Orthodox Divine Liturgy the celebrant chants a prayer over the eucharistic gifts, offering them "on behalf of all and for all." I love that. We benefit when and because everyone benefits. The Creator has provided more than enough for all! What we do we do for all. Not just all people either. Or even all living beings. All creation! The Creator invites everybody to participate in and enjoy the blessings of creation. We do receive those benefits of commandment-keeping... we receive them provisionally together in the gathered community, looking ahead to the day when we all receive them.
Therefore we answer the Creator's call by gathering together with intention to hear, discern, interpret, and respond to the Word, assessing the conditions, sharing experiences, and implementing strategies for living according to Jesus' Way in our time and place. We inviting others to share in this life. We live more simply, we do restorative justice, we include, respect, celebrate, and learn from our differences, we give voice to the silenced and voiceless; we act with non-violence, humility, and forgiveness, exhibiting open-hearted generosity. We become examples and even evangelists (gasp!), telling the good news by walking together much more lightly and with deep respect, thanksgiving, and wonder upon this holy Earth.
Here is a little roadmap for moving forward in a new ministry together: look to Jesus, listen for his voice, and follow him. I conclude with words that I know your new Pastor will agree with: Let's get busy!
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