Loading...This sermon is about running to obtain the promises God makes as mentioned in the collect. The desires that everyone gets a chance to live with God forever in heaven. God’s promise that everyone gets this chance is established by the death of God’s Son Jesus on the Cross where the blood of God’s son is the sacrificial offering forgiving the sins of the whole world and Jesus’ resurrection into new life.
But first I’m gonna’ talk about my storage closet some more. If you are new or if you haven’t been paying attention, I keep talking about my storage closet and the odyssey of deciding what to clean out and what to keep. In an act of faith I have now cleaned out all the empty boxes.
You may recall that every square inch of this storage closet is so full that to remove one item, I must remove 25 items. One reason I had so many items is that when I moved into my apartment, I had saved the empty boxes of every household item I had purchased: one enormous box for the air filter machine; one tall box for the tower fan; several bread box size boxes for things like the security camera and the security light.
I don’t why you save the empty boxes your purchases come in. I saved mine because for a season I was living in a world kind of like Jeremiah’s world. No, there wasn’t a foreign army camping at my door. What I mean is that the people that were supposed to be the most reliable had proved unreliable. The places that were expected to be home and safe were neither home nor safe.
So the day I signed the lease on the Prospect Park Apartment Community, I knew two things for sure: 1) I could not afford the next month’s rent. And 2) I had no guarantee I would have a job in a month. So I would save all my boxes in case I needed to move out next week. Obviously there is more to tell, but you will have to read the memoir I have not written to understand why all these contradictory truths all made sense.
Four years later, I still live at the Prospect Park Apartment Community. I was able to pay the rent and keep the job. However, I could not let go of those boxes. In my heart I deeply believed the world was about to disintegrate around me again like it did in the summer of 2014. When it did, I would be prepared to meet the disaster with... well, empty boxes. Anyone here who has ever hurriedly and secretly packed their valuables in the trunk of their car to flee at midnight understands what I am talking about.
That feeling of dread is the feeling all around Israel in the time that Jeremiah gets this weird message from God about making a real estate transaction with his cousin Hanamel. Jerusalem is under siege by foreign powers and Jeremiah is under house arrest in the palace of a puppet king.
So far, God has told Jeremiah to do many strange things as prophecies (see hide your underpants under a rock in chapter 13, Don’t get married in chapter 16, Go to the potter’s house and break his jug, chapter 19) but buy property in a land about to be lost may be the strangest prophecy of all. It’s hopeless. King Nebuchadrezzar owns the economy now. Why bother Baruch, the title company agent, to file your transaction. What difference does it make for Hanamel or any other Jew to buy or sell property because in a few chapters every Jew is going to be dead or exiled. Jeremiah gets exiled.
The rich man in the story Jesus tells in the gospel of Luke gets exiled too. Only the rich man’s prospects are even more grim than Jeremiah’s. The rich man is given neither a cold drop of water nor is he given hope that the chasm which separates his agony from any comfort can be crossed. His last shred of hope is that his brothers do not join him in torment. Alas, their inclusion in the bosom of Abraham is in their hands to choose: either listen to Moses and the prophets, or not.
Jesus uses the phrase listen to Moses and the prophets as tantamount to resurrection. Where we get defiant hope from God in Jeremiah, we get defiant accountability for God from Luke. If you like applying Holy Scripture to your life and you want to stay unseparated from Abraham on the side of the chasm where there is some cool water, listen to Moses and the prophets. Period.
Many of my friends think that merely reading Moses and the prophets is agony let alone listening or applying, or heaven help me, obeying what is written in their commandments. Let me make this easy for you by quoting something you already know: you can sum up Moses and the prophets with “Love God and love others.” Yes, you are allowed to sum up Moses and the prophets with what you learned in first grade Sunday School.
But most of us in this room are way past first grade Sunday School, and we need the reassurance that heavenly mercy will cross the chasm of the sins we dug ourselves into. We are, as far as I can see, the kind of people for whom dressing in purple and fine linen and who feasting sumptuously every day is familiar. AND, as far as I can see, we are the kind of people who pay attention to what falls from our tables and the to the poor who live lives of soreness. How will Abraham weigh our behavior in the balance?
As theologian NT Wright puts it: what if earthly behaviors have heavenly consequences? Let’s look at the story again.
Jesus doesn’t condemn the rich man for disregarding Lazarus, although Jesus mentions it. The way I read it, the rich man creates the separation that cannot be crossed by his disregard for Lazarus. Who can bridge the separation with mercy? The one whose cross crosses from sin to death and from death to resurrection life with the mercy of forgiveness, the Son who listens to Moses and the prophets.
No one wants to live in Jerusalem in the time of Jeremiah, but Jeremiah did and provided a pathway to hope for an entire nation. No one wants to live in a land of agony across a chasm, separated from the family they hope to save, but the rich man’s prayer is still heard across the divide in the ears of the Abraham. Everyone I know wants to live in a safe home, although most of the world does not. So what do we do with our hands full of the commandments “Love God and love others?” Run!
About the time I was rushing to heap my valuables into a tangled mound in the driveway and feeling a little like Jeremiah about to go into exile, my friend Dan was starting cancer treatments. His first one was the day I ran my first 10k race and I brought that medal to him as a tribute to his healing. The 38-year-old father of four and husband of my friend Claire, included me in this prayer: Everyday for three years we prayed Proverbs 18:10
The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous run into it and are safe.
Whether you are in a season shadowed by dread or sitting fat and happy at a feast-laden table you are eligible for the promises and responsibilities offered through the God who’s number one priority is mercy. Run! Amen.
