Sermon

Tell Me a Story

by The Rev. Canon Susan Sommer

Let’s see if any of you remember this scenario as though it were yesterday.  You go to the library with your pre-schooler and spend, I don't know, 45 minutes looking at books. You select 6 to take home with you, beautiful books about a princess or a dinosaur, or maybe even a princess dinosaur. And you get home and you say to your child, "Let's read one of your books." And your child goes to the bookcase and brings out the book that you have read aloud daily for the last 6 months, that both of you know by heart, and that you, for one, are getting just a teensy bit tired of. And you say, "We just brought home 6 new beautiful books. Don't you want to read one of them?" And your child says, "No," and hands you the familiar story. And so you sit down and read it together one more time because there is something about that story that your child connects with.

I found myself thinking about this dynamic as I re-read the passage from our Old Testament lesson today. Micah was one of the last of the so-called 8th century prophets. He prophesied to the people of Jerusalem, warning them that as disaster had befallen the northern kingdom at the hands of Assyria, their day for disaster was coming too. The leaders of Judah were putting tremendous energy into sacrificial worship in the temple at Jerusalem, but were ignoring some of the more inconvenient portions of the Torah – portions that had to do with justice and mercy toward their neighbor.

There’s no evidence that Jewish sacrificial theology ever taught that God had an appetite for blood, or that God’s wrath could only be appeased by the shedding of animal blood. Blood, to Jewish thinking, was the vehicle for the nephesh – the Self. Repentance meant turning one’s Self, one’s nephesh, back to God. The blood of an animal, given ritually to God in sacrifice, substituted for shedding one’s own blood. It was sacramental – the outward and visible sign of one’s inner recommitment to righteous living. Absent that re-commitment and the amendment of life such recommitment would engender, and the sacrifice became worse than useless. It became idolatrous. That’s Micah’s point. In the passage for today, the prophet speaks God’s words as though God were a district attorney bringing charges against Judah. And the evidence that God brings is the very familiar story of salvation history. This is the people's own story, the one they told again and again among themselves and to their children, how God brought them up from the land of Egypt, redeemed them from slavery, set before them faithful leaders, and gave them the Covenant – the framework for how they would be in relationship with God and God with them.

They should have known this story by heart. Heck, we should know this story by heart. Maybe not word for word the way some of us can still recite Green Eggs and Ham. But those of us who have several decades under our belts as Christians certainly should know the broad themes of salvation history. Sacred scripture, after all, is simply a long, complex story told in many voices of God's love affair with one particular people which becomes the model of God's relationship with all. The God whose story is told in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures is the God who defines justice and embodies kindness, and who wants nothing more from us than that we humbly do the same.

To live as Christians in our world is to be a people shaped by a story. This story begins with a God who for love and love alone created the universe; who for love and love alone kept calling his people back as often as they wandered; and who, for love and love alone became one of us and showed us the shape of love by laying down his life for us, his friends. As Christians, we believe that the kindness or compassion of God, (hesed is the Hebrew word) that permeates the pages of Scripture ultimately is incarnated in the person of Jesus.

That is what Jesus was getting at in his opening words from the Sermon on the Mount, which we heard in the gospel passage for today. Each of the beatitudes names a reality of life lived fully in relationship with God, calls that reality blessed, and then describes the future hope and promise of living a God-shaped life.
And therein lies the challenge. It's not enough for us simply to know the words, to know Salvation history in our heads. We are challenged to be shaped by it; to allow it to so permeate our consciousness that our day to day lives reflect and proclaim the story itself; to become, in a sense, a living gospel. As people shaped by the Sacred Story, we become part of it, and are called to tell it to others, to live it, to share it with a world hungry for Good News, and help shape new generations.

What does the Lord require of us? To do justice, to love mercy, and walk humbly with God. To turn our hearts to God. To be most fully the people God created us to be. And for we who are Christians, to be most fully Christ’s disciples in loving our neighbor as ourselves, in striving for justice and peace among all people. The words are familiar. We know the story. We are challenged daily, as individuals and most especially as a congregation, to live it. 

© Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral