Sermon delivered by Gordon Pullan at the North Hadley Congregational, United Church of Christ, December 9, 2018
Sermon text: 1 Thessalonians 3:1-6
There once was a wise and merciful ruler, a President. Yes, I know that it is hard to believe, but rest assured that there once was, in that long ago-time that some can still remember. And the President, through The National Endowment for the Arts offered a prize to the artist who would paint the best picture of peace. This President wished to inspire the many partners we had, who did not know peace—The Northern Irish and the British, The Pakistanis and the Indians, the Israelis and the Saudi’s.
Many artists tried and submitted their work. There were works that represented neo-expressionism, new realism, the Leipzig school, funism and thinkism, but at the end of the day, the committee, which included a range of accomplished women and men—including the president, narrowed it down to two paintings that were much more pastoral than Avant Gard.
One picture was of a calm lake filled to the brim like a bathtub and perfectly mirroring the peaceful, rolling hills all around it. Overhead was blue sky with fluffy, white clouds. It was the favorite of most of the committee. Truly, they thought, it was the perfect picture of peace. A prominent minister on the committee said that she felt as though it were the quintessential artistic rendition of the 23rd Psalm—something about green pastures and cups over flowing.
The other picture had a waterfall running--raging white over a cliff and cutting into one of many rugged mountains. The artist had rendered this as if there were no peaks and no valleys, only the steep rugged terrain. Above was an angry sky from which rain fell and in which lightening played. The mountains were bare, save for one tiny bush growing in a crack in the rock. In the bush a mother bird had built her nest. There, amid the rush of angry water, a mother bird sat on her nest in perfect peace. The bird was so small that one nearly needed a magnifying glass to make it out.
If left to a simple vote of the committee, the first picture would have been chosen. But the president took his prerogative and gave an impassioned speak before the vote.
“Peace does not mean,” the president said, “to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work. Peace means to be amid all these things and still be calm in your heart. This is the real meaning of peace.”
In this case I think I agree with the president.
~~~
Luke paints us a picture today similar to the picture of the rugged mountain, rather than the bucolic scene of the 23rd Psalm. He writes:
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene.
These words create the landscape into which John the Baptist enters his ministry telling us that our story today takes place when Tiberius, renowned as the “gloomiest of men,” ruled over the Roman empire. Tiberius required all Jews living in Rome to enlist in the military and then banished all families whose men did not. Tiberius also threatened to enslave all Jews should they try any to rebel.
Two of the other names on this list, we already know. The mere mention of them strikes an emotional cord with us. Pontius Pilate. Herod. These are men who call for the separation of children from their families and the death of all two-year-old boys. These are men who will behead John the Baptist, who will try to wash their hands of the blood of the crucified Jesus. This is a barren mountain-scape with little hope and even less peace.
Into this landscape comes the word of God to John, a bush, if you will— a bush in a barren landscape--a burning one if we connect it to the voice of God. And the word of God that comes to John instructs him to go about the countryside espousing a ritual washing, not unlike those ritual washings performed by the Jews and the Essenes. But this ritual washing would go further than a physical cleanliness. This would be a washing—a baptism—for the repentance and forgiveness of sins. A nest in the bush that prepares for the one yet to come.
I feel a need to offer a warning at this point in the sermon because I am about to engage in Exegesis –that dissecting of a biblical text by airbag ministers who like telling you the original Greek works and what they mean. So here it goes.
In the original Greek text, the word for repentance is metanoeo, which literally means turning—turning from sin and returning to God. This word is like the Hebrew word teshuva— which also means to return and is emphasized by Jews at Yom Kippur—the days of atonement-- as a time for repentance. As an interesting point, earlier in Luke, in the first chapter we are told that it is John’s task to turn the people of Israel to God.
The words that follow repentance, forgiveness of sin have a much broader meaning in the Greek and could also be translated as release of sins.
So, we have John proclaiming a ritual washing to return to God and symbolically release our sins.
Ok—for those of you who tuned out during the exegesis part of the sermon, I am back to the heart of the matter.
And it is this—that our own personal actions will make the crooked straight, and the rough smooth. It is us, in a treacherous barren terrain, next to a raging waterfall, inside a scrawny bush that hardly offers cover, hunkered into a nest of twigs for which we have labored mightily and which is fleeting and transitory—it is us—we are the bird in this picture. We are the dove of peace.