This morning I find myself remembering something attributed to the Swiss theologian Karl Barth, who was a major force in Christian thinking during much of the twentieth century. Barth is supposed to have said that Christians should hold the Bible in one hand while they read it and a good newspaper in the other hand, keeping the two in a healthy tension.
This past week's newspapers told us that the CEO's of the big three automakers flew to the nation's capital in private luxury jets to make their case to Washington that the auto industry is running out of cash and needs $25 billion in taxpayer money to avoid bankruptcy. Rather than fly first class on a commercial airliner, the three flew from Detroit to Washington and back on three separate private luxury jets. One of the three actually lives in Seattle, not Detroit, and a company jet takes him home and back on weekends. The saddest part of the story for me is that not one of the three CEO's had a plan for using the taxpayer money for re-positioning his company. In effect, they wanted blank checks.
The newspapers also told us that J. P. Hayes, a professional golfer, turned himself in for unintentionally using a non-regulation golf ball on two strokes on one hole of the qualifying tournament he was playing in. His confession cost him a full-time spot on the lucrative PGA tour in 2009. No one saw his mistake, and he was asked why he admitted his error when no one else could have known what he had done. He said, "I knew, and I believe there were people watching me from above, and that's important to me." It's nice to read about that kind of ethic in comparison with the lack of ethics in so many other stories. Actually I'd like to know more about the forty-three year old Hayes.
So much for the newspapers. As for the Bible, during the time I have been with you, I have emphasized the importance of how we read the Bible. I have spoken of my conviction that we need to take a long view of Scripture. That is to say we are on shaky ground when we take small parts of the Bible, or small parts of books within the Bible and absolutize what they say without regard for their context or the general sweep of the Biblical message. For me, the long view of Scripture works best. What the long view shows me at this point in my life and ministry is that Biblical truth brings us both comfort and challenge.
Those two basic elements of Biblical truth are clearly present in the lectionary readings for this Sunday, which is the last Sunday in the Christian year or the liturgical year. Today is, in the new revised wording, The Reign of Christ Sunday. Next week we enter the season of Advent, which marks the beginning of a new cycle in the seasons of the Church liturgical year.
There are only a couple of readings from the Book of Ezekiel in the entire three-year course of the lectionary, and we heard one of them this morning. Ezekiel, who had predicted doom and punishment for an unfaithful nation, tells the exiles of Jerusalem that God will be a shepherd to them. God will lead them back to a good place, and they will know the assuring, comforting presence of God in all things. God self-discloses as a God who seeks out the lost and the scattered, as a God who binds up the wounds of the injured, as a God who strengthens the weak.
Ezekiel lived and worked during the first part of the sixth century BC or BCE. In 597 the king of Babylon took most of the people of Jerusalem away from their homes and forced them to go to Babylon as exiles, there to perform slave labor. Only the lowest stratum of society was left behind in Jerusalem, which was utterly destroyed twelve years later.
Ezekiel was among the women and men forced into exile—away from home and everything familiar. It's helpful to remember that God's loving comfort as expressed by Ezekiel is directed especially to people away from home, literally or emotionally, or spiritually.
There is a lot of comfort in Ezekiel's words. They bring to mind the great solace of the Twenty-third Psalm: The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want—or lack. The words of Ezekiel to the captured and exiled people of Jerusalem twenty-five hundred years ago speak powerfully to us of a God who cares, a God who loves, a God who is with us in all the circumstances of life—the good and the bad, the pleasant and the painful. The Bible brings us Good News—good news about God as a loving God who leads, guides, and loves all people. Comfort is a major component of Biblical truth.
The second major component of Biblical truth is what I call challenge. It can also be called demand or obedience. The word of comfort has to do primarily with what God is like. It is God who loves us—and that is the basis of our spiritual comfort. The word of challenge has to do with us, with our response to God's love.
It is my practice to watch one of the morning television programs daily. Some time ago I was watching the 7:30 a.m. segment of Good Morning America. Diane Sawyer, who I think does well as co-host of that program, was interviewing a minister from a self-described evangelical Christian group that was publicizing the catch-phrase "What would Jesus drive?" The point the group was making, according to the spokesman on Good Morning America, was that the fuel efficiency of the cars we drive and the degree to which they pollute the environment is a moral issue.
Diane Sawyer expressed what could be called skeptical amazement at the group's position. She asked, "Are you saying that faith has something to do with the car you choose to drive?" She quoted another conservative minister who has said that the question "What would Jesus drive?" is close to blasphemy. That minister went on to say Jesus is concerned with people's souls, not with what cars they drive.
If you accept that minister's, and maybe Sawyer's, view of faith, you can do anything you like so long as your soul is okay. You can be a racist or a sexist. You can bash gay and lesbian people; you can ignore starving children; you can exploit cheap labor in under-developed countries—so long as your soul is okay.
As I was watching Good Morning America, I wanted to say, "Yes, Diane, faith is connected to the choices we make about everything in life as we live it." That's where the component of challenge addresses us in the Bible. The comforting words from Ezekiel go on to speak of judgment between the fat sheep and the lean sheep, in other words between the have's and the have-not's.
The Gospel reading from Matthew chapter twenty-five makes it very clear that God is concerned with how we live our lives—and with how nations set their priorities. Matthew quotes Jesus as saying the basis for God's final judgment will be the way people and nations treat the hungry, the thirsty, the marginalized, the impoverished people of the earth. It's not hard to make the connection between that basis for judgment and the way a nation, a church, or an individual makes decisions about human rights, the just treatment of all human beings, and the process of settling disagreements.
Obviously the way we allocates resources, the decisions we make about spending money and time are part of what we examine as our response to the God of unconditional love. Such things matter to God, the Bible tells us from beginning to end. We need to remember in the light of this morning's reading that one real test of our faith is what we do in the name of justice for the poor, the powerless, and the oppressed people of the earth. Most of us are the "fat" sheep in Ezekiel's prophecy. We are the "have's" of the world.
The good news that draws us together as a church is the truth of God's love, the love so well described in our reading from Ezekiel. We celebrate that love and explore its meaning for our sense of worth. As a Presbyterian congregation we are called by our Book of Order to respond to God's love in several ways: by sharing the good news of God's love in a variety of ways, by caring for one another and nurturing our children and youth, by providing inspiring and relevant worship services, by working for justice on behalf of the rejected and marginalized, and by living by the principles we talk about.
In Matthew's imagery people and nations who have their priorities in order are invited to gather at the right hand of God and receive words of praise and affirmation. Those who dismiss justice for the poor and oppressed and focus only on their own comfort and an other-worldly spirituality are invited to gather at the left hand of God and miss the joy and satisfaction of living well.
In most aspects of my life, I'm inclined to go move toward the left. In Matthew's scheme of things, I hope I'm headed toward the right. I hope in the next four or eight years our government will move in the direction of greater care for the hungry and neglected. What about you?