"Bearing Lenten Fruit"

"Bearing Lenten Fruit"

A sermon by Rev. Douglas Olds (all rights reserved)

Redwoods Presbyterian Church, Larkspur (CA)

February 28, 2016

3rd Sunday of Lent

Reading: Luke 13: 1-9

I want to begin this morning with a news item. The last of the “Angola 3,” former Black Panther Albert Woodfox was released last week after 43 years in solitary confinement in Louisiana’s Angola State Prison.  His original murder trial has been overturned, and whether he is guilty, it is necessary that no one spend 43 years in solitary confinement.  Thanks be to God for this glimmer of humanity in our prisons.  May there be more such glimmers until the sun shines through all our dungeons to transform our punitive society into something more rehabilitative and loving.

In this morning’s New Testament scripture reading, from the Gospel of Luke chapter 13, Jesus speaks of a fig tree that takes up space in a man’s garden and does not bear fruit.  The man is angry and about to pull up the fig tree when his gardener prevails upon him to fertilize one more year and look for one last harvest of figs next year.  This is a parable, so the people who hear Jesus struggle to understand about whom or what he is speaking.  Jesus tells this parable in the context of the death of Galileans and Judeans in Jerusalem who have failed to repent.  In this context, we can discern that the fig tree is the people or nation of Israel, and the fruit follows a repentance.

Thinking of oneself and one’s productive growth as an arboreal fruit—a fig—may be a lost metaphor in today’s technological age.  As fewer of us live off of nature and are consumers of produce at the grocery store, it seems easier to identify ourselves with metaphors of technology.  Of Robotics or cybernetics.  Some robots look anthropic to us, feeding our identification.  More and more we read that technology is replacing body parts, including silicon chips to enhance memory or aid in visual recognition in our future.

Technological metaphors increasing replace agricultural metaphors in our age.  Jesus speaks variously of being a vinedresser and a planter as he speaks to his followers.  We are meant to understand that Jesus through God the Holy Spirit prunes and dresses, and that parts of our personality may be painfully removed to promote further growth.

Yet nowadays, the pain that we feel as our personality undergoes alteration might feel like we are “ghosts in a machine,” a technological metaphor.  We may feel sensory deprived, like a robot, when we are numbed by failure or grief.  Jesus in his parables would keep ourselves rooted in biological metaphors as opposed to inert, nihilistic technological metaphors. 

Jesus speaks of

 [Luke 13.6] “A man [who] had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. 7 So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ 8 He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. 9 If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’ ”

So anthropologically, Jesus sees people not as static or unmodifiable by robotic inserts, but as plants which are fertilized by nature and bear fruit in season.

Or don’t, which is serious. 

I invite you to think about this metaphor during this season of Lent, when we may go through the static rituals of giving something up, as in giving up a vice for Lent.  In our arboreal metaphor, that’s a self-pruning, a negative act.  An act of repentance.  But there is more involved in Jesus’ parable than just going without a favorite pleasure.  A new crop of fruit is expected.  It’s not only what we give up for Lent, but by what we replace it.  By what new virtue you replace that vice that brings us closer to God, that takes hold of the space in our lives previously given over to something that takes us far away from God.

As I say, bearing Lenten fruit is the flourishing of new virtues, the habits of mind and body that bring us closer to God.  Romano Guardini writes of the classical virtues in which both the Roman Catholic and the Protestant tradition used to speak in volumes.[1]  Truthfulness.  Do our words speak authentically?  Acceptance and the associated virtue of patience.  Do we wait on God and accept things that come from Him?  Reverence.  Have we cultivated a sense of awe at the miracles in nature and in life, rather than have a cynical attitude borne of too much time in front of the internet?  I confess, that’s my Lenten project this year.

The virtue of Loyalty.  Do we have friends to whom you are loyal, or is all our society expedient and careerist?  The virtue of disinterestedness asks one to develop a counterbalanced virtue to loyalty, so that we may be a fair judge, but with loyalty and truthfulness as associated virtues we are there to explain to our friends how you came to judge with fairness and disinterest.  Asceticism is a virtue, the one we often think about in Lent when we give up a pleasure, but it means more that we develop a habit and make of virtue of moving slowly toward pleasures that we share with our neighbors, so they may take their fill first.  

Gratitude is another virtue I’ve been working on, and I can tell you when I get depressed about the state of our world and society, stepping back and counting my blessings in gratitude works to give me hope, and to see God’s work within the messiness.  The virtue of unselfishness is like the virtue of asceticism, but involves a more sustained habit of heart. Asceticism we feel located in the body, in our members, while the virtue of unselfishness is an attitude and fruit of the heart. 

Guardini speaks of four other virtues: silence, the ability and habit that recognizes that our own small perspective may be unnecessary or conflicts with a holy moment.  The virtue of recollection, whereby God’s actions in our lives is recalled in a spirit of silence and gratitude, blending two other virtues.

There are two final virtues that I believe are more communitarian and social: the virtues of understanding and of justice.  For if we really understood what other’s go through, our hearts should be moved to act justly.  I think of people at the lowest income scale of our economy.  They are often maligned as “unskilled,” yet there are few if any jobs anymore that don’t require some technological interface: the wearing of back vacuum that requires troubleshooting when it jams, or the entry and troubleshooting of modern cash registers. And yet the minimum wage pays $7.25/ hour.  The studies I’ve seen now report that a living wage for a single parent with two children is between $20 and $22/hour, and yet the chances of a welfare recipient moving into such a living wage is on the order of 1 chance in 97.[2]

Our understanding of these facts I believe should move us to seek wage justice for all in society, seeking to change the debate from one of “deserving” and “skilled.”  Every employed worker demonstrates virtues deemed essential to job readiness: punctuality, cleanliness, cheerfulness, and obedience.  If we believe in the virtues for ourselves we should reward them in others, even if they are economic virtues. If our understanding is that work is a virtue, the virtue of justice we cultivate would have us reward it with a living wage.

A second arena where justice and understanding might go together in our search for Christian virtues is where we started off this morning’s sermon.  In our prisons.

There are nearly 1.6 million Americans in state or federal prison, their absence is not accounted for in the figures that politicians and policymakers use to make decisions. As a result, we operate under a distorted picture of the nation's economic health. For prime-age black men, though, the unemployment rate would jump from 11 percent to 19 percent. That's because a far higher fraction of black men — 7.7 percent, or 580,000 people — are institutionalized. “Imprisonment makes the disadvantaged literally invisible,” writes Harvard sociologist Bruce Western in his book, "Punishment and Inequality in America."[3]  These black men are not “recollected.”  They are outside our memory and our loyalty.

Society needs a virtue of justice to rectify these skewed statistics, and to allow for the imprisoned to develop their own communitarian virtues.  Prisoners need economic rehabilitation to reenter the workplace upon release, quicker release and easier parole for non-violent offenders, and the ability to exercise political virtues and political rights of voting upon release.[4]  Work and voting are political virtues, and if we understand the barriers put up to convicted criminals to reassert these rights and virtues, I believe justice would have us act to restore these political virtues so that the paroled and released can take up responsible roles in society. The virtues of understanding aligned with justice, I assert, asks this of society.  We need to recollect, restore, and assist people like Albert Woodfox whose development of political virtues have been stunted by prolonged imprisonment.  Stunted like a fig tree without fertilizer or water.

We are the figs.  At Lent, we repent—we self-prune—by giving something up that takes from God--and replace it with an attitude, a habit, or a virtue which brings us closer.  The classical Christian virtues are not only self-reflective, but exhibit understanding at the injustice and sufferings of others.  In my own life, I’ve identified patience, gratitude, and understanding as virtues needing immediate attention. You may find other virtues of justice, recollection, reverence, unselfishness, asceticism, loyalty, indifference, silence, or recollection are necessary fruits of Lenten repentance. But what I can be sure of is that need for all of the virtues cycle through my life at different stages, and that is why God has given us Lent to cycle through our church years.  So that we can take stock of what brings us closer and what takes us farther from God’s Holy Spirit of active love—for God and for others.  May it be that we prune our habits at Lent by replacing them with the virtues that act, restore, and recollect the integrity of others. May it be so for you and me.  AMEN.

---

[1] Guardini, Romano. Learning the Virtues that Lead You to God.  Sophia Institute Press, 1987.

[2] The Economic Policy Institute [in 2000] reviewed dozens of studies of what constitutes a “living wage” and came up with an average figure of $30,000 a year for a family of one adult and two children, which amounts to a wage of $14 an hour. --Ehrenreich, Barbara. Nickle and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. Metropolitan, 2001 (2011).p. 234; 241, n. 1.

Per http://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpid1601.pdf adjusting for inflation =$19.91/hour (2016). The Preamble Center for Public Policy was estimating that the odds against a typical welfare recipient’s landing a job at such a “living wage” were about 97 to 1. –Ehrenreich (2001).

[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/26/america-has-locked-up-so-many-black-people-it-has-warped-our-sense-of-reality/?postshare=3931456505744930&tid=ss_fb-bottom accessed on 26 February 2016.

[4] In Virginia, an estimated 400,000 people cannot vote because of their criminal history. http://bit.ly/1OU55j8 

"Nothing Left for Him"

"Nothing Left for Him"

Sermon by Rev. Douglas Olds (all rights reserved)

Redwoods Presbyterian Church

January 10, 2016

2^nd Sunday after Epiphany: Baptism of the Lord

HYMN after Sermon 834. Precious Lord, Take My Hand   

GOSPEL READING Luke 3:15–22

15 As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, 16 John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17 His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” 

18 So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people. 19 But Herod the ruler, who had been rebuked by him because of Herodias, his brother’s wife, and because of all the evil things that Herod had done, 20 added to them all by shutting up John in prison. 

21 Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, 22 and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

Let me tell you about a remarkable prophecy in the Bible. Not everyone knows about it, and I have spent a lot of time trying to figure it out and apply.  I’ll just outline the prophecy this morning, and if you’d like to see the details of my analysis of this prophecy, go to a link to my writing it all out.

The prophecy is known as the “70 weeks” prophecy in the Book of Daniel, chapter 9.  Daniel is being given a prophecy about a figure discussed earlier as the Son of Man by the Angel Gabriel.  Here are the angel’s words to Daniel about the Son of Man, whom he calls the “anointed prince”—anointed being Messiah in Hebrew-- and the duration left to the people of Israel to finish with sin:

Dan 9. 24 Seventy weeks are decreed for your people and your holy city: to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place.

25 Know therefore and understand: from the time that the word went out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the time of an anointed prince[,] there shall be seven weeks[; ] and ["for" not in Hebrew] sixty-two weeks[.] [I]t shall be built again with streets and moat, but in a troubled time. 26 After the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing, and the troops of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary.

Now the word “weeks” in the English translation refers to a heptad or group of seven in the Hebrew, so that people of ancient times pored over this prophecy recognizing the weeks as groups of 7 years.  If the English translation’s punctuation is disregarded—there were no punctuation marks in the earliest scriptures in the original languages, the Angel is speaking of an historical event coming upon the people of Israel in 69 times 7 years (483) from the going out of a decree to rebuild Jerusalem “street and moat.”  This decree I am confident—and check my internet link to follow my reasoning—can be dated to the second of the three imperial decrees in the Books of Nehemiah and Ezra.  This is the decree of the Persian emperor Artaxerxes, in his 7^th year of reign (Ezra 7.4), to rebuild Jerusalem as a municipal center—street and moat. The other two imperial decrees concerned rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem only.  That’s why so many people find this arithmetic difficult. The other two imperial decrees do not concern Jerusalem’s street and moat. 

From dating outside the Bible, in Thucydides and on imperial inscriptions, Artaxerxes’ 7^th year was 458 B.C.  Add 483 years to that and add an additional year for a non-existent “year zero” between B.C. and A.D., and we find this prophecy for the anointed prince—the Messiah—as coming due in 26 A.D.  At whence time the Messiah is to “be cut off,” according to Gabriel’s prophecy.  Many have taken this “cutting off” to be the crucifixion, which leaves some problem for what happens for the 70^th heptad, the final 7 years of the prophecy.

Once I discovered that the Hebrew word for “cutting off” does not necessarily mean the English word for “kill,” I discovered another messianic prophecy in Ezekiel that uses a Hebrew synonym for “cutting,” where the community of Israel is likened to a graft or cutting from a cedar and a new community or new creation set into the land by actions of God. 

Now, I believe my interpretation of these scriptures is meaningfully suggestive, and that ancient Judeans and other ancient peoples who were more invested in meditating over the scriptures waiting for their deliverance by a messiah were also considering.  I believe around 26A.D. the people of Judea were at a fervor awaiting for this time frame to be fulfilled in their lifetimes.

Let’s step back for a moment.  The first presentation in the New Testament of the birth of Jesus takes place in the writings of Paul, specifically in the Book of Galatians.  Paul’s writings predate the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  Paul in Galatians 4.4 writes:

4 But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children.

“When in the fullness of time, God sent his Son.” Paul is referring to a historical fulfillment of which the Judeans of his time likely were awaiting.  Luke also at the beginning of his Gospel makes it noteworthy the date of Jesus in the time of the census of Quirinius. Luke finds it important to date the birth of Jesus for those of his readers and listeners who were aware of the 70 heptad prophecy.  Matthew’s gospel doesn’t give so much a date as a rundown of generations from the Babylonian captivity, during which Daniel is reputed to receive the prophecy from Gabriel.  So Paul, Luke, and Matthew, at a minimum, likely find it very important that this historical time-frame for the arrival of the messiah be noted.

So let’s step back into the age of 26 A.D. and the messianic fervor gripping Judea.  Many thought that John the Baptist was the messiah. He was drawing large crowds, including priests from the temple, and including Jesus himself.  In our reading this morning, John takes care to claim that he is not the anointed Messiah, but that the messiah is coming in his lifetime, soon after him.  Luke makes it a point in this story to say that Jesus is about 30 years old when he accepts baptism by John, so that puts his birth in the 4-6 B.C. range that many scholars accept, and overlaps with the final years of Herod the Great who plays a role in the visit of the Magi which we just celebrated at Epiphany.  The wise men from the East likely had access to the Hebrew scriptures as sages in their society and could expect that a birth to a man who would take responsible adulthood around 30 years of age could happen during this time of Herod the Great. Matthew’s gospel has these magi looking for an astronomical event in the heavens therefore around 4-6 B.C.  All this supports the fact that interested parties in the divine council of Heaven, which is to say most religious middle easterners, were expecting some sort of an appearance of a great deliverer during this generation of 6 B.C. to 26 A.D.

Jesus himself likely was aware, and around or before age 30 began to wander within the ascetic communities around the Dead Sea and following John the Baptist.  In or around 26 A.D. he accepted the baptism of John and according to our reading from Luke this morning heard the words from heaven that he was indeed God’s son, the beloved.

From the Gospel of Mark especially, we learn that Jesus may have been a bit reticent--even uncomfortable--at the beginning with the knowledge that he was the anointed deliverer, the messiah.  Instead, he begins to publicize himself as the Son of Man, a mysterious judge of the people noted by Daniel who was to open the covenant of God with Israel to all peoples, including the Gentiles.  Only later in his career (the final heptad or 70^th week) does Jesus during his ministry followed by Paul in his ministry begin to adopt the universal title Son of God and begin the outreach to gentiles.  Jesus begins what I believe is a 3-1/2 year ministry to the people of Israel, is crucified, and then the final 3-1/2 years is an age of Pentecost where the apostles, especially Paul, work out the messianic incorporation of gentiles into the new covenant with God.

I have found my calendrical work on this prophecy to give me a powerful way to work out the mysterious prophecy, the use of Jesus of his various titles of messiah, Son of God, and Son of Man, and the historical concerns of the New Testament in ways that shed light on God’s purposes to bring in a new creation under-girded by a new covenant with all people, Israel and Gentile alike.  Jesus’s baptism, which we celebrate in the church on today’s Sunday, is the opening of the blessings to the new creation.

But to bring in this new creation, the messianic prince is to but cut off for a time, with  וְאֵ֣ין ל֑וֹ—“nothing for him,” as Gabriel announces (Da 9.26).  Nothing for him.  The baptism Jesus undertakes cuts him off from the old creation, for which nothing is left for him.  He has no role in the old creation—

and yet Jesus devotes the remainder of his life trying to save the people of Israel’s covenant. He himself has nothing left but the people who he tries to bring forward with him into the new.  Thanks be to God for those who listened to him and repented.

וְאֵ֣ין ל֑וֹ “Nothing left for him.” His work in the life left to him was bringing something new that we could inherit: the New Kingdom.  The baptism he undertook with John—like the baptism we undertake when born again—leaves us nothing in the old creation with which we are familiar and we are, like Jesus, to work for something new and unexpected. We are to take nothing of our old lives—our old possessions, our old world views, and our old wisdoms about how the world system of sin operates—and instead work for God’s justice outlined in Jesus’s ministry and teaching about the Kingdom of God.

יוְאֵ֣ין ל֑וֹ “Nothing left for him.”  How are we to apply this message today?  Who leaves everything behind at a ritual’s notice to work on a completely new life?  I know that my growth in faith and baptism have worked with structures of both my old life and my incorporation into the New Covenant. Perhaps these texts are calling me and us to rededicate ourselves away from all that we know about how sinful systems  get us ahead in this world operate and work instead wholly according to the justice and fairness outlined in Jesus’s ministry. I can think of little better to bring as an application to these readings. Let us continue to read the Gospels as ways and means of justice for all people, announcing that God is at work in our lives when we treat people with charity and fairness.

יוְאֵ֣ין ל֑וֹ “But nothing left for him” also puts into my mind those whom have lost everything in their previous world: the refugees and especially the prisoners. There is no population which has left behind wholeness and the comfortable than the 80,000 U.S. prison population undergoing solitary confinement on any given day.  These prisoners undergoing solitary confinement are cut off with nothing left to them—even human contact, left with only their memories and struggles with their sanity—for 23 hours per day.  Even their sleep is cut off and interrupted, with prisoners on the Segregated Housing Unit at Pelican Bay State Prison awoken every 30 minutes.  Sleep may be our most prized possession—and it certainly is in solitary confinement. But even there the prison officials cut off and leave nothing of a coveted bliss of restorative deep sleep for the segregated prisoner undergoing the torture of solitary confinement.  Solitary confinement is torture, and sleep deprivation[1] is one of the most insidious of torture techniques, designed to cut off the prisoner from sanity and a wholeness of being.

Nothing left for them. In the words of one of the men in Pelican Bay State Prison,  “The SHU (Segregated Housing Unit) is the thief that steals our souls … we measure our lives, in the ability to withstand insanity, and endure torture through days, nights, and endless years …”

Let us think of the 80,0000 U. S. prisoners undergoing solitary confinement as torture and resolve to act in a way that brings this inhuman torture to an end.  I lead an Anti-Torture team at First Presbyterian Church of San Anselmo and we have adopted pen pals in solitary confinement to bring something life affirming to the dead and frightful hours of nothing they have to them.  We participate in the Lifelines to Solitary program to cultivate pen pals and give prisoners a voice and a lifeline to another breathing soul.  To counter what one prisoner in solitary noted, “If no one hears my voice when I speak, do I make a sound? If no one thinks of me, do I exist?”  This is someone for whom nothing is left for him.  Let us like Jesus who has been cut off make it our portion to lead others who have been cut off and been left nothing, making us a lifeline to the new world—a world of compassion and companionship, community and service.

Lifelines to Solitary is only one way we can act to meet and greet those for whom nothing is left. I have chosen to highlight solitary confinement as an application of today’s readings regarding Jesus’s baptism.  There are others. Let us resolve to be aware of and ready to take the hands of those who have nothing in this world, for whom nothing is left, and bring them the precious message that their nothing is not the final word.  We are examples for whom something comes after nothing is left, and they are urged and welcome to join with us.

May it be so for you and me.  Amen.


[1] National Religious Campaign Against Torture "urges you to call the California Department of Correction today to urge them to stop the torture of sleep deprivation"



Copyright: Douglas B. Olds 2016