This past week I spent three days with over 100 clergy in our region at a 3-day conference with our General Minister and President, Sharon Watkins, as well as her husband and seminary professor, Rick Lowery. The warm California sun was shining brightly as we studied the Bible, took part in conversations with Sharon Watkins, and worshipped together in three different languages. Before the retreat, Sharon spoke at First Christian Church in Orange, and it was good to see Hattie there along with many others from our regional church.
I also spent two days at Founders Day, an event at which the covenant between Chapman University and the church is most visibly manifested.
For me, this has been an amazing week of spiritual growth, as well as an opportunity to knit more strongly the ties that bind us all together as one church.
In the midst of all this, I did, in fact, find time to write a sermon. Fortunately, I started putting thoughts together long before this past week began. Two months ago, when the idea came to me to do a sermon series on spiritual practices, I wasn’t sure about including a sermon on the practice of service. For one thing, the series of books on ancient practices that I’ve been reading doesn’t include a book on the practice of service, which meant that my search for resources in preparation for preaching would be just that much more complicated. But a more significant reason I hesitated to preach on service is that I didn’t really know what I could say about service that you all didn’t already know.
After all, doesn’t everyone believe that it is good to serve others? Even non-Christians, even people of no faith at all, understand that it is good to serve others. The value of service is impressed upon every one of our children, who must perform community service in order to graduate from high school.
Even the Walt Disney company knows the value of service. It planned a year-long program of getting one million people to serve their communities by rewarding them with a ticket to Disneyland or Disneyworld. That year-long program ended after just two months, when the goal of one million people was reached much sooner than expected. People wanted their free tickets, yes, but they also wanted to be able to do something they felt good about doing.
This week, there was a wonderful article in the Uptown Gazette about the work of Christian Outreach in Action, an agency here in Long Beach that serves people who are hungry and homeless, an agency that we here at BKCC support through donations and by preparing meals.
And so, the people of BKCC, I thought, know about service. The people of our community and our nation, I thought, know about service. We know that service is about helping others. We know that Jesus commands us to serve one another, and we ourselves feel within us a desire to do just that: to serve others, to help the “least of these,” those who, for whatever reason, are economically or socially disadvantaged: the poor and the oppressed; to restore wholeness to a fragmented world; to restore justice, in ways big and small, to those who have been denied justice.
I didn’t think I had anything else to say about something that I thought everyone agreed upon, that serving others and working for justice is a core value of the Christian way of life.
Then someone told me what Glenn Beck said on his show a week and a half ago. He said that justice does not belong in church. He said that justice, that social justice and economic justice are code words for Nazism and communism. He held up images of a swastika and a hammer & sickle to emphasize his point, to show that he really meant what he was saying.
Then he said that if your church’s website mentions justice, that if it has words like social justice or economic justice, that you need to leave that church and run away from it as fast as you can; and he also said that if your pastor talks about justice, social justice and economic justice, then you need to report him to the church authorities.
Well, just so you know, our church website does mention justice. In fact, justice is the first thing mentioned in our congregation’s mission statement, which is based on Micah 6:8: to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God. And, just so you know: as far as reporting pastors who talk about justice, who teach and preach about the need for social justice and economic justice: I’ve already reported myself. I am a preacher of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and Jesus calls his followers to justice, to removing the yoke of the poor, and the burden of injustice, to providing food to the hungry and water to the thirsty; to restoring fairness and integrity to property and economic policies.
This is certainly not the first time that those who work for justice have been accused of being communists. Hélder Câmara, a Roman Catholic archbishop from Brazil, once said: "When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a Communist.”
We talked about Sabbath last week, that spiritual practice that is the fourth of the ten commandments. Justice is at the very heart of the practice of Sabbath, because on the Sabbath, rich and poor, the powerful and the weak, all people are given a day of rest. Scripture also talks about Sabbath years – every seventh year – in which fields would lie fallow as a rest for the land.
And then there’s the year of Jubilee, which takes place after seven sets of seven years: in that fiftieth year, all debts are to be forgiven, all slaves are to be set free, and all landowners who had had their property taken from them would have their property restored to them. That’s radical social and economic justice. It’s also biblical.
Here at BKCC, I’ve already mentioned our support for Christian Outreach in Action. We also support Centro Shalom and other agencies; we prepare food for the hungry; we collect canned food and gently-used clothing; we support the work of our larger church, the Disciples of Christ, which does a lot of work for justice throughout the world, through Global Ministries, through Homeland Ministries, through the office of the General Minister and President, and in so many other ways. We actively serve others by working for racial reconciliation and immigration reform. Disciples are traveling to the Gulf Coast, to Haiti, and to many other places, in order to serve people in need.
Which brings to mind our upcoming Pacific Southwest regional trip to Hawaii. A lot of people go to Hawaii to vacation, to lay on the beach, swim in the ocean, and see the volcanoes, but we are going to Hawaii to work.
Hawaii is part of the Pacific Southwest region, and there are a couple of churches there doing ministry, but they need a little help. They have property needs that need attention, but they do not have the resources to adequately address those needs.
And even though they are a part of our region, a part of our Pacific Southwest family, they often feel excluded from regional life. Now I spent two years at First Christian Church in Morro Bay. I groaned over having to drive six hours from Morro Bay to Loch Leven, and six hours from Morro Bay to the regional assembly which, while I was in Morro Bay, just happened to take place in San Diego. So I know what it’s like to feel detached, alone, in a remote part of the region, away from the life of the larger church which is designed, in part, to help sustain and support congregational life.
But Morro Bay, I suspect, is nothing compared to Honolulu, or Wahiawa, or Kailua. The work that our region is preparing to do, the service that we have committed ourselves to, is not just to address some important property and building issues, but is also to foster a greater sense of community with the farthest congregations in our region.
Our trip to Hawaii is called “Miracle Week.” I’ve mentioned it before. It takes place the third week of August. It is my hope that we can get a group of us to go and be a part of this exciting opportunity; and it is my hope that we will be able to raise some money to help them go, since flying over to Hawaii and renovating churches is not cheap.
If you are interested in going, now is the time to start making plans. I invite and encourage you to read the insert in your bulletin, to check out the information about Miracle Week that’s posted on the bulletin board in the fellowship hall, and watch the video that I’ll have playing in the fellowship during our Baked Potato lunch.
In a Bible study at last week’s regional clergy conference, Rick Lowery reminded us that, throughout much of human history, inviting someone to eat with you was a highly symbolic act. Think of how often meals are depicted in scripture: starting with the time Abraham prepared a feast for the strangers he encountered, those angels in disguise, and continuing all the way to Jesus’ Last Supper with his disciples, not to mention the meal in Emmaus, the breakfast by the lakeshore, the feeding of the 5,000, or the many other meals mentioned in scripture.
The symbolism is such that one who dines with you is no longer a stranger. In eating together, your table companion becomes your brother, your sister, someone who, no matter what happens, will never be your enemy; someone with whom you will live the rest of your life in mutual love and loyalty. The bond of love and friendship established as a result of table fellowship can never be broken.
Several of the 8th century prophets describe feasts that God’s people prepared, to which they invited God as the honored guest. The sacrifices were carefully prepared: the finest bulls, rams, calves, and lambs. The table was meticulously set with the finest table linens and dinnerware available. The invitation was sent out to God: there is a place prepared for God at the table, the place of honor.
But God refused the invitation. God broke with accepted protocol, and refused to come. God dared to insult the hospitality shown. In Isaiah, God says: “I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats….[Your feasts and festivals] have become a burden to me.”
In Amos, God likewise refuses the invitation: “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.”
Why does God refuse the invitation? Why does God dare insult those who have offered up such hospitality to him?
God refuses the invitation because at these feasts, justice is not on the menu. Service to others is not one of the entrees listed. The people have prepared these meals to serve only themselves.
In Isaiah, when God refuses the invitation, God says: “Remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” And in Amos, God explains his refusal to come by saying, “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.”
The spiritual disciplines are practices that are meant to draw us closer to God. Well, you cannot get close to God without justice. God will not respond to your invitation if you are not serving others.
But in serving others, and in practicing justice, God will come near, and you will dwell in the light of God’s love. In serving others and practicing justice, God will say to you, “Come, you that are blessed; inherit the kingdom prepared for you. For I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you gave me clothing. I was sick and you took care of me. I was in prison and you visited me… Whenever you do these things to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you do it to me.”
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