New Beginnings: Continuing the Journey

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NEW BEGINNINGS: CONTINUING THE JOURNEY

4. “Making the Vision Plain”

Sermon by Robert D. Thomas

October 18, 2015 • Pasadena Presbyterian Church

Scriptures: Habakkuk 1: 1-4; 2: 1-5 • Mark 10: 35-45

Have you ever been hungry in your life? Not, “Mommy I’m hungry; can you make me a sandwich?” Not “Oops, sorry guys. We just ran out of buffalo wings.” I mean really hungry — a time when you didn’t know when you would get your next meal.

Hard as it is to believe by looking at me now, I’ve been there and done that. I was living in Montreal and won’t bore you with the details of why my family and I had fallen on very hard times, but there we were. We made sure our three-year-old daughter had something to eat but that doesn’t mean my wife (my first wife, not Nikki) and I got fed regularly. We survived on Kraft Macaroni and Cheese — luxury was occasionally slicing in a hot dog. We were grateful that our church had weekly potluck dinners, even if we couldn’t always bring anything to the table. This situation didn’t last long but you never forget — never! In the back of your mind, you always wonder whether those times will reappear. The words, “There but for the grace of God,” hover just outside our consciousness.

Friends, we see this kind of hunger every week here at PPC. We have people who come on Sunday morning and evening and eat as if they don’t know when their next meal is going to appear. In the morning, a hundred men and women show up. Some come to worship and others come just to eat. In the evening more than a dozen show up to worship and eat and a few others come just for the meal. A handful help us prepare food before worship and clean up afterward and we’re grateful that they’ve become part of our team. Some people come to the office during the week and we give them a bag of food prepared by our Sunday food team, headed by Lily Valdivia.

A few people share their stories. Most don’t. I can relate to that latter group. When I was in Montreal, I didn’t want anyone to know my plight, either. I was ashamed that I couldn’t feed my family.

The hardest sights, of course, are the kids. Adults at least haveresources — albeit fewer each year — and have some understanding of what’s happening, although mental illness makes even that statement problematic. Kids don’t understand much of this. They just want to be like all other kids. They only know that there isn’t enough to eat.

As often happens in our worship, we have two themes today, which happen to conjoin. As part of our Adult Education series on the outgrowth of our recently completed “New Beginnings” process, today we’re focusing on our hunger task force. But on the Presbyterian Church (USA) calendar this is also Children’s Sabbath and much of our liturgy today comes from the Children’s Defense Fund, whose founder and president, Marian Wright Edelman, has been a passionate advocate for Children’s Sabbath Worship.

Hunger is a huge and growing issue, my friends. In this, the richest country in the world, last year 46.7 million people of Americans (15 percent) were living in poverty, according to Feeding America,and another 48.1 million live in what’s called “food insecure households.” These aren’t made-up statistics; they come from U.S. government surveys. The numbers for children are even grimmer: 15.5 million (21 percent) children under the age of 18 live in poverty and another 15 million children live in “food-insecure households.” 1

The consequences are sobering. “Children in poverty face hunger, inadequate housing, and deficits in early childhood development,” says Marian Wright Edelman. “Children are sick and injured and millions lack access to health care; children are pushed along a pipelineto prison by poverty, lack of health and mental health care, abuse and neglect, failing schools, and too fewpositive role models — finding themselves in despairing acceptance of a seemingly limited future.” 2

These numbers should not be happening, but they are reality. As the disparity between the rich and everyone else — middle class and poor — grows larger in this country each year and as government programs don’t keep pace, more and more people turn to churches like ours just to get a simple meal or a food bag once or twice a week. I believe that God is calling us today both to feed the hungry and to change the underlying issues!

Our two scripture lessons today challenge us to the core of our being about this issue. Our Old Testament lesson is from the prophet Habakkuk, one of the so-called “minor prophets,” a description that relates to the length of their writings, not their stature. Habakkuk is so obscure that I have to stop to think about how to spell his name. Our liturgical team has had quite a discussion on how to pronounce and nameHabakkuk. I had to look in the Bible index to find where the book was (when I was a child I memorized the books of the Bible but by now I can never remember the order of the minor prophets, e.g., does Habakkuk come before or after Haggai?)

The New Interpreter’s Bible describes the first portion of the book as “The Debate between Habakkuk and God.” 3Habakkuk addresses God and he is clearly not happy. So let us listen to the word of God using Eugene H. Peterson’s translation The Message:

“God, how long do I have to cry out for helpbefore you listen?How many times do I have to yell, “Help! Murder! Police!”before you come to the rescue?Why do you force me to look at evil,stare trouble in the face day after day?Anarchy and violence break out,quarrels and fights all over the place.Law and order fall to pieces.Justice is a joke.The wicked have the righteous hamstrungand stand justice on its head.” Well! Doesn’t this sound like it was written in 2015, instead of about 2,700 years earlier!

Chapter 2, verses 1-5 is God’s reply to Habakkuk’s lament. Listen to it, again in the words of The Message:

“What is God going to say to my questions? I’m braced for the worst. I’ll climb to the lookout tower and scan the horizon.I’ll wait to see what God says,how he’ll answer my complaint.

“And then God answered: “Write this.Write what you see. Make the vision plain.Write it out in big block lettersso that it can be read on the run.This vision-message is a witnesspointing to what’s coming.It aches for the coming—it can hardly wait!And it doesn’t lie.If it seems slow in coming, wait.It’s on its way. It will come right on time.

“Look at that man, bloated by self-importance—full of himself but soul-empty.But the person in right standing before Godthrough loyal and steady believingis fully alive, really alive.” (This is the famous verse quoted by the Apostle Paul that, in the words of the New Revised Standard Version, says, “The righteous shall live by faith.”)

Returning to Habbakuk via Petersen:

“Note well: Money deceives. The arrogant rich don’t last. They are more hungry for wealth than the grave is for cadavers. Like death, they always want more, but the ‘more’ they get is dead bodies. They are cemeteries filled with dead nations, graveyards filled with corpses.”4

“Write this.Write what you see. Make the vision plain. Write it out in big block lettersso that it can be read on the run.”

I believe that God is calling us out today, as he answered Habakkuk nearly three millennia ago. In a nation where CNBC and Credit Suissesay there are about 13.2 million millionairesin the United States6 and the Wall St. Journal reportsthat 1 in every 20 households in the U.S. has more than $1 million in investable assets — figures that don’t include the value of real estate7 — it is unacceptable that 94.1 million people — including 30.5 million children under age 18 —live in poverty or in “food-insecure households.” That doesn’t count the rest of the world — that’s just the U.S. This is not what God intended for her children!

Closing the income gap isn’t enough, said Pope Francis, in an address to the Food and Agricultural Organization two years ago. “A way has to be found to enable everyone to benefit from the fruits of the earth, and not simply to close the gap between the affluent and those who must be satisfied with the crumbs falling from the table, but above all to satisfy the demands of justice, fairness and respect for every human being.”8 That, to me, is making the vision — God’s vision — plain!

Our second lesson today is equally challenging. It comes from the Gospel of Mark, chapter 10, verses 35-45. Let us listen again to the word of God, using the translation The Message:

“James and John, Zebedee’s sons, came up to him. “Teacher, we have something we want you to do for us.”

“What is it? I’ll see what I can do.”

“Arrange it,” they said, “so that we will be awarded the highest places of honor in your glory—one of us at your right, the other at your left.”

Jesus said, “You have no idea what you’re asking. Are you capable of drinking the cup I drink, of being baptized in the baptism I’m about to be plunged into?”

“Sure,” they said. “Why not?”

Jesus said, “Come to think of it, you will drink the cup I drink, and be baptized in my baptism. But as to awarding places of honor, that’s not my business. There are other arrangements for that.”

When the other ten heard this conversation, they lost their tempers with James and John. Jesus got them together to settle things down. “You’ve observed how godless rulers throw their weight around,” he said, “and when people get a little power how quickly it goes to their heads. It’s not going to be that way with you. Whoever wants to be great must become a servant. Whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave. That is what the Son of Man has done: He came to serve, not to be served—and then to give away his life in exchange for many who are held hostage.”9

So who are we? Are we godless people or people with a little power? Or are we Christ-like servants? Are we thosebloated by self-importance—full of ourselves but soul-empty, people who are more hungry for wealth than the grave is for cadavers? Or are we loyal and steady believers fully alive, carrying out Christ’s command to servant living? Or are we a mixture of all of that?

What are we as a church — and what are we as individuals— doing to alleviate hunger, not just to feed the hungry but to decrease the number of people living in poverty? Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” Are we challenging our elected representatives to make the issue of hunger a priority? Are we working for and voting for representatives for whom this will be a primary issue?Are we walking the talk?

I’m well aware of the challenges of ministering to the hungry and homeless. It’s not as simple as opening our doors. Issues such as security can’t be ignored. There are organizations and people beyond our walls that decry our policy of being welcoming to everyone. Not everyone is excited about this challenge.

It takes work by lots of people to make this effort work successfully. Have you worked at or even attended lunch after morning worship or our evening worship and meal? Once a month a team of PPC members serve a meal at Union Station. Have you ever joined that team?

In a few moments we will take our monthly Hunger Ministry offering. This growing ministry at PPC needs a lot of financial support from all of us. When people come to these meals they become members of our community of faith. Here’s my envelope — where is yours?

An old gospel hymn begins, “Are ye able, says the Master, to be crucified with me?” That is the challenge Jesus posed in our Gospel lesson today: to be a servant of all, just as Jesus was. Nearly his entirelife was largely spent among the poor, the oppressed, the dispossessed, and he called us to do very basic things, such as feeding the poor and working for justice. This is our Hunger Ministry.

Making the vision plain? The final chapter of Matthew’s gospel says that at judgment day, at the end of time,Jesus will say to those who didn’t listen to him, “I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink. Depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”10

So let us sing this hymn with a powerful text by Eric Routley: “All Who Love and Serve your City.” 11Let us pray. Let us give. Most of all, let us recommit our lives to the servant work of Jesus in alleviating hunger and working for justice for all. There’s work to be done. Let’s get at it!Thanks be to God. Amen.

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1ww.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/impact-of-hunger/hunger-and-poverty/

2Children Worship Resources for Children’s Sabbath.

childrenssabbaths

5Hbakkuk 2: 1-5.The Message. Op Cit.

8 Op. Cit. No. 2

9Mark 10: 35-45. The Message. Op Cit.

10 Matthew 25: 42, 41. NRSV

10All Who Love and Serve Your City. No. 413 in The Presbyterian Hymnal. Text by Eric Routley, 1966. © Copyright, 1969 by Galliard, Ltd.