So Shall My Word Be

Isaiah 55:1-13

Rev. Rich Gelson, Fairmount Presbyterian Church

My daughters have been hooked for weeks on two current television talent shows – America’s Got Talent and So You Think You Can Dance. I wouldn’t call myself hooked on them too, but I enjoy watching when I can, especially when it’s in their cute company. We’ve seen some amazing dancing in several genres as well some wild, wacky and tremendously gifted performances. However, both the truly talented as well as the embarrassing fifteen minutes of fame grabbing contestants can only go so far in making for a good show. I find it’s the personalities of the judges that further energize and anchor these entertaining contests.

What they have to say about each contestant does have an impact on which performances television viewers choose when they call in or go online to vote. But what we most love to watch is when the characteristically cranky judge voices blunt criticism and when the Pollyanna personality judge puffs the air with praise. Viewers in the studio audience and at home do their own bit of judging, so the television producers wisely provide show judges that both qualify and exaggerate our assessments. The judging amuses us while also helping the contestant pool get reduced to a truly worthy remnant.

If you had to choose, would you rather be the judge or the contestant in a talent show? Would you be more comfortable shaping someone’s future by offering your opinion of them, or being subjected to criticism that can be either constructive or harshly dismissive?

Well, we don’t live our lives as contestants on a talent show. It would be a nicer world if judgments only happened in that entertaining context. We know, though, that judging and being judged is part of the everyday world we live in. There are plenty of cultural forces throughout every stage of our lives that push us to feel as though our talents and personalities are in competition with other people. We are judged on how smart we are, how attractive we are, how much money we have, how “good” we are as parents, how patriotic we are as citizens, and so forth and so on. We are judged for being a Phillies fan instead of Yankees fan. Just sayin’! We cope with it, and we also contribute to it. I have yet to meet a human being that does not do a fair share of rendering judgment toward other people – sometimes wisely and fairly, other times out of jealousy or spite.

I find it’s important to check in with your thoughts and feelings about judging others and being judged. What purpose does it all serve? Is it for breaking down or building up? Eradicating or creating a remnant? Checking in with yourself can help you prepare to answer a bigger question I have for you about life with God. What are your thoughts and feelings about the faithful fact that God is judging you?

According to our Scriptures, our Creator -- the Creator of all life -- holds every one of us accountable for our thoughts, words and deeds. Since God is omnipresent and the Holy Spirit is stirring upon, within and through us, we are under constant monitoring. Does this concern you? Trigger feelings of insecurity and unworthiness? Or do you understand that divine judgment is to be expected and is a necessary part of our walk with the Lord?

When considering why God judges us and how we should respond to this, there is perhaps no better part of Scripture to consult than the Book of Isaiah. Isaiah is clear about the fact that God judges the sin manifest in human hearts, minds and social systems. He speaks specifically of God’s judgment upon the ancient Israelites at a particular point in their history, a point when they were living in an epic mess. Their holy city, the city of David, Jerusalem, had been conquered several times over by foreign empires. This happened, in part, because Jerusalem was a much coveted urban center of the ancient world. It also happened, according to the earliest chapters of Isaiah, because the Israelites had disobeyed God’s good instruction and intention for their covenant community. Isaiah 1:4 addresses them as “offspring who do evil, children who deal corruptly” who had “forsaken the Lord … despised the Holy One of Israel.” The rebellious behavior – from hands bathed in blood to empty religious ritual and insincere prayer – had rightly been held accountable by God.

Cast out of Jerusalem and forced into exile, every Israelite had a critical choice to make. They could adapt to the pagan culture of their overlords, or they could accept God’s judgment of their rebelliousness and freshly hold fast to the belief that God would honor the long-held promise of renewal and restoration. They could choose to keep paying the high price of pagan life, or grasp the gracious free gift of God’s promise to return them to their homeland. They could choose to believe God judged their sins and then abandoned them, or that God judged, loved, had mercy and had a plan to save them.

This faithful dilemma isn’t just an ancient narrative. We have this choice to make as well, don’t we? Every day, we have the opportunity to prayerfully confess our sin and then freshly, faithfully trust in God’s promise to redeem us. Or we can be rebellious in heart, mind and action, opting instead to serve that which is foreign to God’s good instruction and intention for our lives and this world.

We can ignore God’s Word by not regularly reading the Bible, not having prayerful conversations with our Creator, not gathering with others for worship, fellowship and service. Or we can abide by God’s Word, which, as Isaiah beautifully preaches, is higher than all of our thoughts and which God promises does not produce an empty yield each time is it is sown into the very fields of our heart, mind and soul.

We can choose to feel as though we are in despairing exile from God, cast out because of our sin … or we can choose to believe that judgment is meant to lead us to repentance and back to being led to a lovely homecoming in the Lord.

Put in terms that shine the light of Christ, we can choose to stay with the suffering and death of condemnation and crucifixion, or live as God’s redeemed, resurrection people always faithfully on the move into God’s promised future.

Friends, always choose to hold fast to God’s Word! Cling to the powerful promise found in Isaiah 55, verses 11 and 12, where God, speaking through Isaiah, declares to every age, “So shall my word be … you shall go out in joy and be led back in peace.” When we trust in the promise of God to never abandon or destroy us, no matter how great our sin, our most appropriate daily response is joy! This very hour, are you suffering any thoughts and feelings of desolation and exile? From God? From family? From friends? If so, go out from it by grace and with faith, joyfully companioned by God’s holy promise of renewal!

This epic, holy Word of promise, completely fulfilled and embodied in the Good News of Jesus Christ, is right here, right now. Cherish the faithful fact that God prevails over all sin and continuously calls us to participate individually and corporately in the further fulfillment of holy and redeeming plans. As one prominent Bible scholar reminds us, “Isaiah focuses on the sovereign capacity of God to make all things new. That future, however, is not simply a divine gift. It is at the same time a human task given to people like us.”[i] This is the glorious, promised future where there will no longer be evil and exile, but only the full reign of the peace of Christ.

Isaiah 55 reminds us that honoring this faithful task means being active with two particular daily spiritual disciplines. By the grace and power of the Holy Spirit, we are to incline our ears to God so that we may receive God’s everlasting covenant of steadfast, sure love – the same love offered to King David and guaranteed forever through Jesus. We are also to seek and call upon the Lord. So, as you depart this sanctuary today, I invite you to reflect on these two practices. In what ways do you listen for the powerful promise of God’s love? Do you regularly hear it through Bible reading, faithful devotionals and blogs, music by Christian artists, frequent attendance in worship? What priority do you give to seeking and calling upon Lord in the midst of everything that makes demands upon your life? Do you go about doing this by praying daily? By discerning God’s presence in your life with faithful friends and family, with your pastor? Judge yourself, hold yourself accountable … but do so assured by the grace of God that is with you, always leading and welcoming you home. Amen.

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[i] Walter Brueggeman, from the preface to Isaiah in Renovare’s With God Life Bible.

Our Debts and Daily Bread

Matthew 6:9-13

I imagine many people covet being the talk of the town around Los Angeles, California. So when I wanted to read some tips for how to create speech that is persuasive, it made total sense that I happened upon an online article by a College of Business professor from an L.A. based university. Steve Iman, of Cal Poly Pomona, doesn’t describe himself as a “professor” but rather as a “manager of highly engaged learning communities.”[i] I knew as soon as I read this creative self-identification, I was in the presence of someone who walks the walk when it comes to talk! I want to share a few of his comments about persuasive speech in order to set the table for our consideration this morning on the Lord’s Prayer.

This form of speech leads and evokes an audience to commitment. This can be commitment to personal action (such as going on a mission trip) or to passive agreement (such as accepting the value of the mission trip). Mr. Manager of Highly Engaged Learning Communities suggests starting with a quote, some humor, a question … whatever it takes to get people’s direct attention. You’ll often hear this in preaching, too. Then he stresses the need for the speaker to promptly establish personal credibility before carrying on with a preview of main points. We won’t listen to someone who we consider clearly unqualified and lacking authority. Once the overview is made, the speaker should create cognitive dissonance – that is, he or she should get the audience to feel involved in a problem they can help solve. Thought provoking questions, great enthusiasm, logical presentation, and a memorable summary all follow in turn.[ii]

Anyone who has ever had to make a sales pitch or teach a lesson on any subject knows all of this. If one person wants to get another person’s firm attention in order to get them to buy a product or buy into facts and philosophies, they need to use persuasive speech. Now let’s consider form of communication in the context of our faith. Do our prayers to God need to be full of persuasive speech? When going to God in prayer, do we need to quickly grab God’s attention, establish our credibility, set forth some logic, and sum up our request in memorable fashion?

Long ago, pagan prayers had to be persuasive like this. By “pagan prayers” I mean petitions to a god or set of gods other than the singular Jewish and Christian God of our biblical faith. Pagan prayers supposed that a person “must impress or gain the attention of the deity or use a correct formula to ensure the effectiveness of the prayer.” This prayer was intended to be manipulative and self-serving. The “heaped up empty phrases” and “many words” that Matthew’s Gospel speaks of in chapter six is referring to this sort of praying.[iii]

When going to God in prayer, do you feel the need to be impressive? To use a certain correct formula? When I attend a committee meeting, Bible study, or special time of fellowship, it’s commonly expected that I’ll be the one offering up a prayer. And so it’s always curious to me when I opt out and suggest it be offered by someone else in the room. Quite often, an awkward silence follows. Heads furtively scan the space, stealthily willing someone else to speak. This tells me there is a considerable amount of discomfort in praying – at least publically. I do believe, though, that beyond fearing embarrassing oneself in front of others by speaking awkwardly or irreverently, it most likely rises from an unconfident internal space. It can indeed feel like quite an awesome invitation to approach Almighty God with our finite human speech!

Matthew’s Gospel teaches us that Jesus – solid Jewish Rabbi that he was – offered a different approach to speaking to God than using persuasive pagan prayer speech. It is a model for prayer, but not to be confused with some correct formula intended to persuade our God into acting on our behalf. It is found in our lesson, Matthew 6:9-13, and I rather agree that it should be referred to as the “Disciples’ Prayer” instead of the “Lord’s Prayer” as I once upon a time heard it called. Jesus intended for it to teach us disciples how to pray, and specifically how to do so over and against prayer as persuasive speech. We always have God’s attention and our petitions are not persuasions. We pray instead to align ourselves in trust with what God already knows we need.

The words found in Matthew have been amended in translation and expanded through the centuries to meet specific needs of the Church. In one form or another, believe just about all of us knows the Lord’s Prayer by heart. I also believe we land in a spiritual bunker when we recite it more or less mechanically. So revisiting what Jesus intended it to be should help keep it on the green and feeling relevant and fresh for us every time if falls or flies out of our mouths. I speak about this today because the Lord’s Prayer is what we’ll be teaching all this week during our Vacation Bible School. Appreciating the biblical meaning of is helping to energize me for the week ahead, and I hope it will for all our teachers and for all of you too! So let’s look at it more closely.

Jesus taught that every time we approach God in prayer it should be deeply personal. We are not to address God as some high and remote supernatural being whose attention we need to get. No fancy, majestic sounding address is required. We are encouraged to approach God in the very same manner Jesus did – as family. So we can begin by addressing God as “Father.” This is traditional, but we are also free to use other biblical, metaphoric wording such as when Jesus referred to himself, and thus also to God, as a “mother hen” (Matt. 23:27; Luke 13:34). What’s most important is to make it as personal as when addressing your parent. Prayer is not a portal to another dimension where God exists – it’s a personal port with the heart of the One who created and unconditionally loves you!

While personal, notice that Jesus also taught that prayer is at the same time communal. Do not pray to God as if you are an only child. Every human being living on the surface of this precious planet – a number that can only be estimated in the billions – is a unique offspring made in the image of our Creator. So your prayers are received personally for sure, but at the same time they also commune with the chorus of all humanity.

This personal-universal dynamic should be kept in mind when praying two key petitions of the Lord’s – or Disciple’s -- Prayer. We petition to be forgiven of our debts and for our daily bread. Understanding these two petitions as the foundation for our everyday prayers is worth addressing the rest of my blessed time in the pulpit this morning.

Trespasses. I learned the word “trespasses” before ever hearing “debts.” I became most familiar with this wording of the Lord’s Prayer when I attended support group meetings for teenage children of alcoholics back in tenth grade. It’s how we closed every Alateen meeting, which, it’s worth mentioning, were held at my hometown Presbyterian church. All these years later, I still hear quite a good many people use “trespasses” instead of “debts” or “sins.” So let me state for the record, the Aramaic word (the dialect Jesus spoke in) we find in our lesson from Matthew is best translated as “debts.” More on this in a moment, but want to know when it became “trespasses” and why it can also be “sins”?

Regarding “trespasses,” this was the word of choice way back in 1380 by an English Bible translator named John Wycliffe. It then carried over as the standard for both the Tyndale translation in 1526 and the Coverdale translation in 1535. It remains the common word of choice today in the Roman Catholic tradition. Focusing in on and honoring the biblical root word best translated as “debts” became the primary Protestant choice following publication of the King James version in 1611. As usual, historical footnotes help us better understand our present practices!

As for why we can also say “sins” … this is super quick to answer. It’s the correct translation of an ancient Greek word used by Luke in his Gospel record of the prayer Jesus taught us to be found praying. That can be found in Luke 11:4.

What exactly does forgive us our debts mean? To give you a thumbnail answer it means every human being owes our Creator a life of love, trust, and righteousness. We are in debt to God for bringing and blessing us into being. It also affirms the faithful fact that every human being sins. We are not capable, therefore, of fully living as we ought to in the presence of our loving God. How then do break free from this massive indebtedness? We do so only through our faith in the forgiveness offered through Jesus Christ, who paid our debt personally and in full. When we truly believe this with all our heart, mind and spirit, we can then know what it means to forgive others who have offended us and who “owe” us mutual love and respect.

The second key petition for daily prayer is for bread. The central ingredient of this bread is academically identified as “eschatological hope.” Eschatology is a formal word for the study of all things concerning the end of time. You may be more familiar with the variant word, “eschaton.” Speaking less academically, this is to say that the central ingredient of our daily bread is what you and I hope will happen when Jesus comes again in glory.

We name this future hope by reviewing the Gospels to see what hope Jesus gave while on earth. His mission in ministry was to give tangible hope to all who were outcast – all living in sin against God and especially all who were poor, oppressed, struggling for survival every single day. He gave them daily hope by offering food, healing, unconditional and loving acceptance. We, through the Holy Spirit, continue this hopeful work as His Body on earth, as the Church. And we will do so until the day He returns in glory and there will no longer be such realities as hunger, poverty, social oppression, injustice, and enmity with our Creator. This ultimate hope is partaken of and shared in daily morsels; it is our daily bread.

I know we covered a good deal of study rather succinctly and quickly. For such a short prayer, the Lord’s Prayer is quite comprehensive! Please remember that these sermons are always available to you for review – online or by asking me for a copy. And, always, I am happy to have more conversation with you.

For the moment, I can hope you all have been further persuaded in that last fifteen minutes to even more greatly appreciate and abide by the prayer Jesus taught us to be found praying every day. It’s so personal, so universal, so powerful! When we live by it, we faithfully work against all manipulation and self-serving habits. By it, we glorify God and grow to more deeply trust that God, our Creator, our Heavenly Host, truly does know us, love us, forgive us, greet us, and meet our needs 24-7, forever and ever, Amen.

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[i] http://www.csupomona.edu/~sciman/

[ii] http://www.csupomona.edu/~sciman/classes/324/organizer/persuaSpeech.html

[iii] New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary on Matthew, Chapter Six

Our Debts and Daily Bread

Matthew 6:9-13

I imagine many people covet being the talk of the town around Los Angeles, California. So when I wanted to read some tips for how to create speech that is persuasive, it made total sense that I happened upon an online article by a College of Business professor from an L.A. based university. Steve Iman, of Cal Poly Pomona, doesn’t describe himself as a “professor” but rather as a “manager of highly engaged learning communities.”[i] I knew as soon as I read this creative self-identification, I was in the presence of someone who walks the walk when it comes to talk! I want to share a few of his comments about persuasive speech in order to set the table for our consideration this morning on the Lord’s Prayer.

This form of speech leads and evokes an audience to commitment. This can be commitment to personal action (such as going on a mission trip) or to passive agreement (such as accepting the value of the mission trip). Mr. Manager of Highly Engaged Learning Communities suggests starting with a quote, some humor, a question … whatever it takes to get people’s direct attention. You’ll often hear this in preaching, too. Then he stresses the need for the speaker to promptly establish personal credibility before carrying on with a preview of main points. We won’t listen to someone who we consider clearly unqualified and lacking authority. Once the overview is made, the speaker should create cognitive dissonance – that is, he or she should get the audience to feel involved in a problem they can help solve. Thought provoking questions, great enthusiasm, logical presentation, and a memorable summary all follow in turn.[ii]

Anyone who has ever had to make a sales pitch or teach a lesson on any subject knows all of this. If one person wants to get another person’s firm attention in order to get them to buy a product or buy into facts and philosophies, they need to use persuasive speech. Now let’s consider form of communication in the context of our faith. Do our prayers to God need to be full of persuasive speech? When going to God in prayer, do we need to quickly grab God’s attention, establish our credibility, set forth some logic, and sum up our request in memorable fashion?

Long ago, pagan prayers had to be persuasive like this. By “pagan prayers” I mean petitions to a god or set of gods other than the singular Jewish and Christian God of our biblical faith. Pagan prayers supposed that a person “must impress or gain the attention of the deity or use a correct formula to ensure the effectiveness of the prayer.” This prayer was intended to be manipulative and self-serving. The “heaped up empty phrases” and “many words” that Matthew’s Gospel speaks of in chapter six is referring to this sort of praying.[iii]

When going to God in prayer, do you feel the need to be impressive? To use a certain correct formula? When I attend a committee meeting, Bible study, or special time of fellowship, it’s commonly expected that I’ll be the one offering up a prayer. And so it’s always curious to me when I opt out and suggest it be offered by someone else in the room. Quite often, an awkward silence follows. Heads furtively scan the space, stealthily willing someone else to speak. This tells me there is a considerable amount of discomfort in praying – at least publically. I do believe, though, that beyond fearing embarrassing oneself in front of others by speaking awkwardly or irreverently, it most likely rises from an unconfident internal space. It can indeed feel like quite an awesome invitation to approach Almighty God with our finite human speech!

Matthew’s Gospel teaches us that Jesus – solid Jewish Rabbi that he was – offered a different approach to speaking to God than using persuasive pagan prayer speech. It is a model for prayer, but not to be confused with some correct formula intended to persuade our God into acting on our behalf. It is found in our lesson, Matthew 6:9-13, and I rather agree that it should be referred to as the “Disciples’ Prayer” instead of the “Lord’s Prayer” as I once upon a time heard it called. Jesus intended for it to teach us disciples how to pray, and specifically how to do so over and against prayer as persuasive speech. We always have God’s attention and our petitions are not persuasions. We pray instead to align ourselves in trust with what God already knows we need.

The words found in Matthew have been amended in translation and expanded through the centuries to meet specific needs of the Church. In one form or another, believe just about all of us knows the Lord’s Prayer by heart. I also believe we land in a spiritual bunker when we recite it more or less mechanically. So revisiting what Jesus intended it to be should help keep it on the green and feeling relevant and fresh for us every time if falls or flies out of our mouths. I speak about this today because the Lord’s Prayer is what we’ll be teaching all this week during our Vacation Bible School. Appreciating the biblical meaning of is helping to energize me for the week ahead, and I hope it will for all our teachers and for all of you too! So let’s look at it more closely.

Jesus taught that every time we approach God in prayer it should be deeply personal. We are not to address God as some high and remote supernatural being whose attention we need to get. No fancy, majestic sounding address is required. We are encouraged to approach God in the very same manner Jesus did – as family. So we can begin by addressing God as “Father.” This is traditional, but we are also free to use other biblical, metaphoric wording such as when Jesus referred to himself, and thus also to God, as a “mother hen” (Matt. 23:27; Luke 13:34). What’s most important is to make it as personal as when addressing your parent. Prayer is not a portal to another dimension where God exists – it’s a personal port with the heart of the One who created and unconditionally loves you!

While personal, notice that Jesus also taught that prayer is at the same time communal. Do not pray to God as if you are an only child. Every human being living on the surface of this precious planet – a number that can only be estimated in the billions – is a unique offspring made in the image of our Creator. So your prayers are received personally for sure, but at the same time they also commune with the chorus of all humanity.

This personal-universal dynamic should be kept in mind when praying two key petitions of the Lord’s – or Disciple’s -- Prayer. We petition to be forgiven of our debts and for our daily bread. Understanding these two petitions as the foundation for our everyday prayers is worth addressing the rest of my blessed time in the pulpit this morning.

Trespasses. I learned the word “trespasses” before ever hearing “debts.” I became most familiar with this wording of the Lord’s Prayer when I attended support group meetings for teenage children of alcoholics back in tenth grade. It’s how we closed every Alateen meeting, which, it’s worth mentioning, were held at my hometown Presbyterian church. All these years later, I still hear quite a good many people use “trespasses” instead of “debts” or “sins.” So let me state for the record, the Aramaic word (the dialect Jesus spoke in) we find in our lesson from Matthew is best translated as “debts.” More on this in a moment, but want to know when it became “trespasses” and why it can also be “sins”?

Regarding “trespasses,” this was the word of choice way back in 1380 by an English Bible translator named John Wycliffe. It then carried over as the standard for both the Tyndale translation in 1526 and the Coverdale translation in 1535. It remains the common word of choice today in the Roman Catholic tradition. Focusing in on and honoring the biblical root word best translated as “debts” became the primary Protestant choice following publication of the King James version in 1611. As usual, historical footnotes help us better understand our present practices!

As for why we can also say “sins” … this is super quick to answer. It’s the correct translation of an ancient Greek word used by Luke in his Gospel record of the prayer Jesus taught us to be found praying. That can be found in Luke 11:4.

What exactly does forgive us our debts mean? To give you a thumbnail answer it means every human being owes our Creator a life of love, trust, and righteousness. We are in debt to God for bringing and blessing us into being. It also affirms the faithful fact that every human being sins. We are not capable, therefore, of fully living as we ought to in the presence of our loving God. How then do break free from this massive indebtedness? We do so only through our faith in the forgiveness offered through Jesus Christ, who paid our debt personally and in full. When we truly believe this with all our heart, mind and spirit, we can then know what it means to forgive others who have offended us and who “owe” us mutual love and respect.

The second key petition for daily prayer is for bread. The central ingredient of this bread is academically identified as “eschatological hope.” Eschatology is a formal word for the study of all things concerning the end of time. You may be more familiar with the variant word, “eschaton.” Speaking less academically, this is to say that the central ingredient of our daily bread is what you and I hope will happen when Jesus comes again in glory.

We name this future hope by reviewing the Gospels to see what hope Jesus gave while on earth. His mission in ministry was to give tangible hope to all who were outcast – all living in sin against God and especially all who were poor, oppressed, struggling for survival every single day. He gave them daily hope by offering food, healing, unconditional and loving acceptance. We, through the Holy Spirit, continue this hopeful work as His Body on earth, as the Church. And we will do so until the day He returns in glory and there will no longer be such realities as hunger, poverty, social oppression, injustice, and enmity with our Creator. This ultimate hope is partaken of and shared in daily morsels; it is our daily bread.

I know we covered a good deal of study rather succinctly and quickly. For such a short prayer, the Lord’s Prayer is quite comprehensive! Please remember that these sermons are always available to you for review – online or by asking me for a copy. And, always, I am happy to have more conversation with you.

For the moment, I can hope you all have been further persuaded in that last fifteen minutes to even more greatly appreciate and abide by the prayer Jesus taught us to be found praying every day. It’s so personal, so universal, so powerful! When we live by it, we faithfully work against all manipulation and self-serving habits. By it, we glorify God and grow to more deeply trust that God, our Creator, our Heavenly Host, truly does know us, love us, forgive us, greet us, and meet our needs 24-7, forever and ever, Amen.

---

[i] http://www.csupomona.edu/~sciman/

[ii] http://www.csupomona.edu/~sciman/classes/324/organizer/persuaSpeech.html

[iii] New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary on Matthew, Chapter Six

A Liberating Holy Zinger

John 8:1-11

Did you know Jesus was something of a mirthlologist?

I can see your brains scanning for some understanding of what a mirthologist or what mirthology is. If coming up blank, no worries. You probably haven’t read the article I read several years ago, the one authored by a Ph.D clinical psychologist who identified himself in this way. His medical practice specialized on the impact of mirth – that is, of humor -- on the human condition. More specifically, on how humor can help make a crisis more manageable and help lead to a positive outcome.

I suspect many of you have experienced the tension-diffusing power of humor, especially if I happened to be with you at a tense time. And wouldn’t you say comedians are most successful when their routines are all about life’s messy relationships and realities?

Timing is everything in comedy and for anytime a bit of humor is offered up. Doctor Mirth made this very clear in that article I read, stating that “the timing of humor for those who are immersed in the crisis must be chosen carefully” because it can be “a welcome diversion and stress reliever or it can alienate, antagonize and hurt.”[i]

Good timing in particular context is quite important when venturing to label Jesus as some sort of mirthologist. It helps us to consider whether we can read any degree of humor into his caregiving, his radical teaching, or, dare I say, whether there was anything hysterical about his preaching.[ii]

I find this morning’s lesson from John’s Gospel a rather good case study for this consideration. This striking and well known scene from Scripture is more than just a harsh, narrow lesson about what happens when a long-standing moral code gets broken. It is ultimately about liberty and justice for all in Jesus Christ. It is a declaration of independence from old laws that fail to hold lawgivers accountable for socially oppressive ways and for their own moral failings.

In the rather frightening scene, we see a woman who had been found guilty of a moral and social crime punishable by the death penalty. Stoning was the means of execution. We also find an epic clash between Jesus and the Jewish authorities that rendered this verdict and were ready to deliver it. The clash came not in the form of high powered holy rhetoric, or in a physical coming to blows, but in what can be interpreted as Jesus delivering one supremely well timed and heavenly zinger.[iii]

Let’s use our Holy Spirit infused imagination to enter the scene. Let’s zoom our sight in on the stones scrunched in the hands of the would-be executioners, held there with self-righteous rage and a desire to debunk any authority belonging to Jesus. Even more then following through with the punishment they intended to deliver that day long ago, the Pharisees had also set out to entrap Jesus. Their duty that day was to defend the old law, the old ways at all costs, especially the punishment prescribed in Leviticus 20:10. Would he dare speak against this supremely authoritative Law of Moses that summoned the deadly punishment for the woman’s alleged crime? Would he dare defend the woman by standing in her place and radically receiving the stones as his own? If yes to either question, they knew the problem of Jesus stirring up rebellion against them would be quickly resolved.

What did Jesus, our Rock, the one who later could not be entombed in death by any stone, do? How did he deliver his verdict of divine judgment? With supernatural sensitivity to the entire scope of the crisis, he first refused to speak on the matter. He bent down instead and started scribbling something in the sand that no biblical scholar has ever figured out. I get a chuckle when I picture Him hunched down like a child innocently, happily drawing lines while his adversaries practically dance with anticipation of nailing him. Not what they expected whatsoever. So they kept demanding he speak to the situation they assumed they had in hand. Eventually, Jesus stood straight up and instead of debating, he delivered his holy zinger – “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Zing! We can imagine comically stunned looks on the faces of the Pharisees while a small curl of smile was on Jesus’ face (and perhaps the woman’s face too!) Then Jesus physically punctuated the zinger by hunching back down and returning to his scribbling.

The Pharisees, of course, had immediately realized they were just as guilty as the one they had shown up to condemn. So they went home one by one, humbled by the all-encompassing justice of Jesus – the new law that insisted all matters of sin would be interpreted through his word and his punishment alone.

As for the previously condemned woman, she no doubt was filled with eternal relief to see her executioners depart. And in this relief, Jesus literally stood by her, confirming that He had pardoned her through His holy intercession. The scene ends with her having been liberated in order to humbly and happily start life over rightly loving the Lord her God.

We can wonder if she realized the all-encompassing judgment and justice of Jesus had also given the Pharisees an opportunity to start over. Earl Palmer, author of the book, The Humor of Jesus, makes the good point that Jesus’ zinger also protected them from doing more harm to their souls than they already had.[iv]

The just judgment and justice of Jesus levels the playing field. Everyone is guilty of sin in the sight of God. And absolutely everyone has the opportunity to experience liberty and justice and the pursuit of happiness through Jesus’ interceding grace and mercy. In our lesson, great moral sin stands even with narrowly interpreting the Scriptures in order to self-righteously entrap someone. Sin is sin, and everyone is offered the liberty of living more righteously through an honest relationship with Christ our Lord. To quote Earl Palmer again, Jesus made use of humor to teach justice in order to “clear the air and to encourage us to see into ourselves and our motives and to look closely at our freedoms and at our captivities.”[v]

We should not forget to examine our freedoms and captivities as we enjoy our 4^th of July celebrations. When Richard Henry Lee of Virginia brought a resolution to the Continental Congress on June 7, 1776, it was a resolution to declare the United States free from old, oppressive British law. Three days later, Thomas Jefferson was appointed to write an appropriate document for this occasion, the document adopted weeks later on July 4^th as our Declaration of Independence.

We are both citizens of the United States and citizens of the kingdom of God. As such we cherish liberty, freedom, happiness for all. So we honor Jesus for leading the revolution to set all humanity in solidarity with God and one another. He did so without the use of cannon balls and bayonets. He instead used such radical means as humorous timing to diffuse and redirect crisis in the life of one individual as well as in an entire historic community of faith. And we honor our founding fathers, with a special nod to John Witherspoon, the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence, and a Presbyterian one at that.

So if you have a chance to gaze upon fireworks tonight, tomorrow, or sometime soon, or even to reflect on ones you viewed in the past, I also call on you to see faithworks. See how faith in Jesus leads to radically inclusive liberty and justice for all! Amen.

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[i] Visit http://www.mirthmatters.com/

[ii] On Father’s Day, I had shared with the congregation how one of my daughters considered me “hysterical” at preaching to people.

[iii] This interpretation is offered in depth in the book The Humor of Jesus by Earl Palmer.

[iv] Ibid.

[v] Ibid.