Here I Stand

“Here I stand. 

I cannot do otherwise. 

God help me.                     Amen.”  

That was the summary statement delivered by Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms.  

Now, for those to whom a “diet of worms” sounds high in protein, but extremely unappetizing, rest assured that in this particular context a “diet” is the term for a church trial... 

and “Worms” is the city in which the trial was held, just South of Frankfurt, in Germany.   

At that trial, Luther stood behind his sermons, books, and writings.  

He stood by his principle of Sola Scriptura… that SCRIPTURE ALONE was the sole authority for the Christian Faith.  

He stood by the principle of Sola Fide… that we are made right with God by FAITH ALONE and not by any works, penance, or human achievement, but by the gift of... 

Sola Gratia… GRACE ALONE…  a completely free gift given to us by the Holy Spirit, independent of any human merit or cooperation.  

For those of you who were raised in the Lutheran Church… particularly those who endured “Old School” confirmation, memorizing all the things, sometimes in multiple languages!  I see you!  YOU know what Luther stood for!  You know!  

But today, rather than diving more deeply into WHAT Luther stood for, 

I want us to focus more on the WAY Luther stood.  

Luther was not one to hold up his moistened finger for 9 days or more to see how the winds were blowing before he spoke out.  

When his reformation partner, Philip Melanchthon, expressed a reluctance to be vocal, fearing he might be  “getting it wrong” Luther encouraged him to boldly preach what he believed the Holy Spirit had led him to preach.  

Luther told him to “Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly.” 

This, of course, was not meant to be a license to go out and commit crimes or act immorally.

It was encouragement to boldly and vocally follow the leading of the Holy Spirit, even while knowing that, as flawed human beings, there would always be things we unconsciously twist or get wrong along the way.  

Luther encouraged Melanchthon to speak boldly and with conviction, secure in the knowledge that where he inevitably got it wrong there would always be Divine Grace to make it right.  

There will always be Divine Grace to make it right… 

for all of us.  

Always.  

That assurance is not just meant to help us sleep at night.  

It’s also meant to free us… to embolden us.  

That assurance is meant to give us the courage to stand up, stand firm, and speak out, even in the hardest and most terrifying times… boldly saying what needs to be said and courageously doing what needs to be done, regardless of what doing that might cost.  

And as we all know, standing up, standing firm, and speaking out can cost… well… EVERYTHING.  

Luther knew that and experienced it.  

Niemöller knew that and experienced it.  

Certainly Bonhoeffer knew that and experienced it to the ultimate end!  

All of them knew that in spite of what we might face in this lifetime, Divine Grace will see us through all of it, up to, and including seeing us through death itself.  

None of us, I hope, will ever face the sorts of consequences that Luther faced for standing up and speaking out.  

None of us, I hope, will ever face what Martin Niemöller faced for standing up and speaking out, 

and I certainly hope that none of us will ever face the Cost of Discipleship as high as that which Bonhoeffer paid for standing up and speaking out.  

But Reformation Sunday is here to remind each of us today that no matter the Cost… standing up and speaking out is what our Faith demands!  

From Presiding Bishops to local bishops, from pastors to priests, from Sunday regulars to Holly/Lilly Christians… all of us know in our bones what is right and what is wrong… all of us know what is good and what is evil.  

And all of us understand that “Knowing it” isn’t the hard part!  

The hard part for all of us, from Presiding Bishops to local bishops, from priests to pastors, from Sunday regulars to Holly/Lilly Christians… 

the HARD PART is in making the choice to stand up.  

The hard part is in making the choice to speak boldly.  

The hard part is not waiting to see if someone else will lead the way, but to boldly speak without any other sort of net than Divine Grace.  

The hard part is choosing not to remain silent when all around us we hear only crickets.  

The hard part… and the part that each Reformation Sunday calls us to, is the part that calls us to stand up and boldly declare, 

“Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen.” 

Rock or Roll

 Amos 5:18-24

Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord!
    Why do you want the day of the Lord?
It is darkness, not light,
    as if someone fled from a lion
    and was met by a bear
or went into the house and rested a hand against the wall
    and was bitten by a snake.
Is not the day of the Lord darkness, not light,
    and gloom with no brightness in it?

I hate, I despise your festivals,
    and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,
    I will not accept them,
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
    I will not look upon.
Take away from me the noise of your songs;
    I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
But let justice roll down like water
    and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Amos didn’t want to be a prophet.  He wanted to be a farmer.  

His rants were not, however, those of a disconnected country bumpkin.  

It’s clear from what he wrote that he knew, with a high degree of geopolitical sophistication, EXACTLY what was happening in his country.  

Maybe he understood the situation TOO well… and THAT’S what drove him out to the farm? 

I mean, can you even begin to imagine how it would feel to be a smart, educated, well read individual whose been forced to helplessly watch the country that you love be taken over by opportunistic, hypocritical, halfwits who openly steal from the widow and the orphan to line their own pockets and who dress up their entire criminal enterprise with gold painted doo-dads, blasphemous God language and heretical rallies… and then… and THEN… have the nerve to say their wealth is proof of God’s approval?

  

I know… almost impossible to imagine.  I know. 

  

Whatever it was that drove Amos out into the country, 

it was God who pulled him back and set him down, 

right into downtown Bethel, the dark heart of both the political and religious life of Israel at that time.

  

It was there, right in the middle of it all, that God had Amos tell the obscenely wealthy ruling elites one word they were not used to hearing.  

“No”! 

You know, understanding Scripture is often difficult.

Thousands of years separate then from now.  

Enormous differences in culture and language.  

Understanding Scripture, is at times, very… VERY difficult.  

This, however, is not one of those times.  

What Amos faced and what we face today is only different in the way that West Side Story is different from Romeo and Juliet 

or The Lion King is different than Hamlet.  

Different names, different cultural and geographic settings, sure.  But the overarching plot of the Book of Amos is EXACTLY the same overarching plot in which we live NOW! 

Listen how few words need to change for this passage from Amos to hit us in our day and time, right between the eyes:

Are you really saying, “I look forward to the Lord’s return?”  

I don't think you’re going to like THAT day at all!  

Why are you looking forward to your own end?

That day will be darkness for you, not light.

That day will will feel like you’ve just outrun a lion

only to find you've run into the mouth of a tiger.  

It will be like hiding behind a wall thinking you're safe,

only to be bitten the snake who lives there.

  

You!!  The ones who scorn justice and righteousness, 

the day of the Lord will be the darkest day of your life!  

Darkness and gloom without even a pinprick of light.

I hate, I despise your Christian Nationalism, 

and I take no delight in your rallies.

You offer me commandments posted in schools, 

you offer me the trans community as scapegoats,

you offer me a ginned up fear of people from other faiths… 

I DON'T WANT ANY OF THAT!

I am revolted by those blasphemies.

Take away from me your bible-bro noise;

I am not listening to any of it! 

 

What do I want?  I'll tell you what I want...

It's the only thing I want… 

I want to see justice rolling down like water, 

and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Amos came to tell them that neither their twisting of religion in the Temple, nor their heartless exploitation of the poor in the market, nor their manipulation of the legal system was pleasing to God.

 

What Amos knew was needed way back then is exactly what is needed in our country and in our world right now.  And that… 

is Justice.  

Justice is different than charity.  Think of it like this:  The path into town has one spot where a rock sticks up maybe just half an inch above the path.  It’s the same color as the path and everyone who walks that path eventually trips on it and skins their knee.

  

Charity puts a first aid kit by the rock with antiseptic and bandages.  It is deeply kind and is just what people need when they trip on that rock.  Charity is necessary.  Charity is good.  

Justice on the other hand, goes at the problem from a different angle.  Justice digs up that rock, tosses it off the trail, fills in the hole, tamps down the earth and makes the path straight and level.  

Both are absolutely necessary.  

But doing justice in a place will eventually change the landscape so dramatically that charity will hardly ever be needed in that place again.

You and I have landed, in the later part of this week, in a place I could not have imagined when the week began.

  

But this landing spot comes with real questions for us, for our country, and for our world.

  

Will we return to addressing the darkness and gloom of our world with charity alone?

Or are we now ready to challenge the systems that make charity necessary…  with justice?

  

Will we return to only providing bandages for skinned knees or will we decide that THIS is the time to do Justice… 

real Justice… 

to dig out the ROCK 

and have Justice ROLL...  roll down like water?  

The choice is ours to make.  Amen.

The Prophet Heather

Isaiah 5:1-7

I will sing for my beloved
    my love song concerning his vineyard:
My beloved had a vineyard
    on a very fertile hill.
He dug it and cleared it of stones
    and planted it with choice vines;
he built a watchtower in the midst of it
    and hewed out a wine vat in it;
he expected it to yield grapes,
    but it yielded rotten grapes.

And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem
    and people of Judah,
judge between me
    and my vineyard.
What more was there to do for my vineyard
    that I have not done in it?
When I expected it to yield grapes,
    why did it yield rotten grapes?

And now I will tell you
    what I will do to my vineyard.
I will remove its hedge,
    and it shall be devoured;
I will break down its wall,
    and it shall be trampled down.
I will make it a wasteland;
    it shall not be pruned or hoed,
    and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns;
I will also command the clouds
    that they rain no rain upon it.

For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts
    is the house of Israel,
and the people of Judah
    are his cherished garden;
he expected justice
    but saw bloodshed;
righteousness
    but heard a cry!

Isaiah didn’t have a crystal ball.  He didn’t have a fortune cookie!  Why?  Because Biblical Prophets didn’t tell the future.  What Biblical Prophets did was much more powerful.  They opened their eyes and made connections.  Sometimes they thanked God for that gift.  Other times they yelled at God for it.  But what the Biblical Prophets did, was less like Miss. Cleo and more like Heather Cox Richardson.  

Dr. Richardson doesn’t tell the future either.  She opens her eyes, examines the past, and makes connections.  She has a gift to see the places in history where 2 + 2 have over and over again added up to 4 and then writes to us each day in her 21st century, academic style, telling us, “I see 2 and 2 being added together again in our time, and every time 2 has been added to 2 in history before… like it was here, here, and here… the result has always been 4.  It would be wise if we paid attention to the math happening around us right now!”  

That’s the way the Biblical Prophets worked too.  They didn’t use magic… they used memory.  They opened their eyes, examined the past, and made connections.  They saw where 2 was being added to 2 again and knew that had always added up to 4.  Then they wrote in their own theologically poetic style warning the people that, “it would be wise if we paid attention to the math happening around us right now.”  

Writing styles aside, the gift that Heather Cox Richardson shares with us now, is really not so different from the gift the Biblical Prophets shared with people in their time.  Nor are the themes on which they both write and the warnings both offer.  

Writing in his theologically poetic style, Isaiah told the people of Israel and Judah of the hard, back breaking work that God put into creating their nation.  It was like the work of a vineyard owner… clearing, tilling, planting, building, and carving a wine vat out of solid rock.  All by hand.  After putting in all that work, God had the not unreasonable expectation of getting some grapes.  

The vineyard we learn, is a poetic stand-in for the nation.  The grapes are a metaphor for justice and righteousness… two words that invoke the expansive notion that God expected the nation would build, grow, and develop that vineyard… a.k.a. their nation… into an interdependent people where everyone had enough (enough food, shelter, safety, dignity and purpose) and everyone would live free from abuse and exploitation. 

Writing in her Academic Historical style, Heather Cox Richardson tells us about the hard work that went into creating our nation.  She writes soberly about the arguments, fights, and wars.  She doesn’t sugar coat it.  It was a founding steeped in violence, genocide, and slavery, and she constantly forces us to look clear-eyed at our country’s still unrepentant history of racism, exploitation, and our ongoing mindless fear of the other.  

But the Prophet Heather also writes to us of the idealistic expectations that those admittedly flawed founders had for this nation.  She writes of the backbreaking and all too often deadly work others have done since the founding to move this nation toward the fulfillment of those ideals.  Work done by those who believed this nation could one day really become a nation of genuine equals.  It could, one day, become a nation where life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness would be available to all.  That we would eventually create, grow, and develop into a nation of interdependent people where everyone has enough… and we all would live in a community free from abuse and exploitation, with liberty and justice, not just for some… but for all.  

For the people to whom the Prophet Isaiah wrote, the failure of the nation to deliver justice and give only bloodshed… the failure of the nation to live in righteousness… the failure to live lives that cared for the widow and orphan, the stranger and the immigrant, the poor and the hungry… the least, the lost, and the last of the nation… that failure, Isaiah wrote, would add up, as the math always did across both time and geography, to the complete destruction of their nation.  

Isaiah wasn’t predicting that God would rain fire on them.  Isaiah was telling them they would be the victims of the natural consequences that had befallen EVERY nation in every time that became devoid of justice and righteousness.  2 + 2, Isaiah warned them, would once again come to equal 4.  

For the people to whom the Prophet Heather Cox Richardson writes, the failure of our nation to deliver justice and give only bloodshed… the failure of our nation to live in righteousness… the failure of our nation to genuinely provide liberty and justice for ALL, including the widow and orphan, the stranger and the immigrant, the sick and the dying, the hungry and huddled masses yearning to to be free… that failure, will, if not corrected, lead to the same natural consequences that has befallen EVERY nation, institution, and office that has ever abandoned living and working in justice and righteousness.  2 + 2, Heather warns us, will once again come to equal 4.  She reminds us herself that another Prophet, Abraham Lincoln, once told us clearly…  a house divided against itself, simply cannot stand.  

Biblical prophecy is not magic.  It is memory.  Biblical Prophecy doesn’t tell the future.  It does the math.  May we… as individuals, as a congregation, as the institutional church, and as a nation, hear the words of the Prophets, both old and new, and turn from our destructive ways of retribution and toward lives of genuine justice and honest righteousness, and walk the path which leads to liberty and justice for all, where “all” will one day, really and truly… mean ALL.  Amen.