| Note: No sermon is quite the same when you read it. You miss the inflections, the expression that you gain in the hearing. The words below are only a close approximation of the sermon, taken from handwritten notes. Nevertheless, the words (as best as can be deciphered!) are shared with you here. The Webmeister |
Sixth Sunday after Pentecost When I am in a meeting listening I always scribble or draw or write on the margins of the agenda. One of my favorite things to mindlessly scribble is either the Hebrew or Greek alphabet both of which I learned in Seminary. So you would always be able to recognize my notes after a meeting. One day I was in a church staff meeting and I looked over at our Parish Administrator's note pad and saw that she also was scribbling some type of foreign alphabet that looked vaguely like Arabic. I asked her what she was writing and she laughed and told me she was taking notes in "shorthand." Shorthand is a way of writing that allows someone who is good at it to take down the words of someone speaking rapidly. The man generally given credit for developing the first type of "shorthand" was a Greek slave named Tiro. He lived in Rome in the first century BC and he belonged to the famous lawyer and author Cicero who was a contemporary of Julius Caesar. Cicero, even though considered one of the world's greatest writers, seldom ever wrote anything. He dictated to Tiro who developed his own method of shorthand to accurately record all the words of his master and then later rewrite them in a full text to send off as a letter or an address to the Roman Senate or an opening argument in a law trial. This method of writing, by dictation to a professional scribe was almost universal throughout the Roman Empire. You could hire a scribe to take dictation and write a letter for you in any market place or near any town square or temple. This is exactly how St. Paul wrote his letters. I often think of Paul pacing up and down in his room full of passionate ideas and saying them loudly, perhaps waving his arms for emphasis. Like in the third chapter of his letter to the Galatians when he is disgusted by the denseness of the Christians of that city and says: "You stupid Galatians!" (Jerusalem Bible translation.) And just as I can picture St. Paul full of outrage at the Galatians, I can also imagine the scribe who is trying to keep up with Paul and faithfully transfer his living words echoing around the room to a wax dictation tablet or maybe a piece of Egyptian papyrus. There are even glimpses of these faceless scribes in Paul's letters. At the end of his longest letter to the Romans, Paul is adding greetings to the Christians in Rome from people he knows and in the 22nd verse of the 16th chapter we come across this insert: "I Tertius, who took this letter down, add my Christian greeting." No doubt Tertius slipped this into the final copy sent off to Rome and on all the subsequent copies that have come down to us the name of this otherwise unknown scribe has been immortalized in every Bible printed for 2000 years. But also Paul every once in awhile inserts himself into the work of the scribe. At the end of the first letter to the Corinthians, he obviously takes the pen away from the scribe and writes his own signature. "This greeting is in my own name: PAUL." And especially today in this reading which is from the end of his letter to the Galatians. Evidently at some point in this letter he begins to write with his own hand. He says: "See what large letters I make when I am writing with my own hand!" I can suddenly seem to see Paul as an old man who was trained to be a tentmaker, a man who sewed animal hides together with a heavy needle, with hands gnarled by his work as he supported himself while he also shared the story of Christ Jesus. His hands were not trained like those of the professional scribble who took dictation for a living. Why do I begin my sermon today this way? Because I think it is absolutely critical that we stay close to the actual men and women whose lives were turned upside down by their relationship with the Lord. They were real people full of real issues and real problems. They lived real lives and wrestled with real adversity. They were no more or less than we are, human beings struggling with life. It is to us across a gulf of 2000 years, but as if it were only yesterday that this old man snatching away the pen from the professional scribe writes painfully with his swollen work worn hands in large letters these words: "May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything!" One of the struggles Paul had with the church in Galatia was with Hebrew born Christians who believed that one must be a Jew first and only then become a follower of Jesus. This meant that gentiles who would be Christians had to first accept Jewish ways of life including circumcision before being called to a new life in Christ. Paul in his impetuous passion grabs the scribe's pen and says, in effect "No!" To be called by Jesus you do not have to be anything but called. Two weeks ago the reading from Galatians had that most powerful sentence in which Paul speaks about what happens to us when we respond to Christ's call. He wrote, "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus." And God himself know better than we that the world still judges on the basis of race and culture, one the basis of status and wealth and on the basis of gender. God knows Christian churches still judge on the basis of race and culture, on the basis of status and wealth, and on the basis of gender. But from our very beginnings, whenever we have judged this way we have been condemned by the very life and death of Jesus and by the amazing words of Paul whose life was broken open and whose prejudices were destroyed when he became a new creation. Is this really possible? Can we really change? Can we rise above our upbringing, the limits imposed on us by our human experiences? Is it possible to, honest to God, begin again? Become a new creation? Or are we all doomed to endlessly echo the pride and prejudice handed down from one human generation to another? We had all better hope not because if so, then we are all in deep trouble and as Paul says "Christ died for nothing." But Paul himself, our spiritual ancestor, who took the pen away from the scribe and wrote in his own handwriting these words to us today was a violent bigot, a man who persecuted others on the basis of race and culture and religion. And Paul became a new creation. If God could change Paul, why not you or me? How does anyone really change? Change inwardly, not just outwardly? For me, it has to begin with a sense of being loved. If we are called to our faith by a sense of anger or self righteousness or defense of our way of life we do not become a new creation. We remain the same old creation limited to the bigotry and prejudice of our experience. We might blow people to bits for Allah or condemn them to hell for Jesus or build a concrete wall to keep them out for Yahweh. I have often said that when I did prison ministry I only found 2 basic things to tell inmates. The first was that they were loved by God. The second was that they could change. I said it to prisoners in the Texas Department of Corrections and I have to believe it myself. The Christian author Madeline L'Engle once wrote: "We do not love each other without changing each other." If God truly loves us then God can truly change us. Jesus in the reading given to us in today's gospel called 70 people from among his followers and sent them out two by two. He told them, "Go on your way. Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there and say to them, 'The kingdom of God has come near to you.'" Today the Kingdom of God has come near to us, to me who are sitting in the Church of the Epiphany. The Kingdom is right next to you and you are on the very verge of becoming a new creation. Why don't you take the pen away from the scribe and write the letter of your life with your own hand as Paul did? A new creation is everything! Amen. The Reverend James T. Tucker July 8, 2007 *Past sermons may be found here. |
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