CALVARY
BAPTIST CHURCH
Rev. Fred Weimert January 13, 2008
Don’t Be Cruel
As I considered a
title for this sermon
I had several thoughts
the first was:
The work of establishing Justice
Which sounded like
I was writing about the Supreme Court
or something about the Constitution…
or
Declaration of
“The
work of establishing justice”
rather
dry sounding.
Then I thought about
those words from Ephesians 4:32
In King
James English
“Be ye kind one to another”
Which
I just recently heard was the source
of
the name for our local
Senior
Citizen center…
BYKOTA
“Be ye kind one to another”
I
feel pretty certain Sarah Burton’s parents,
Fred
and Ruth Jones,
had
something to do with that name.
It
could have worked as a title,
but…
I also heard last
Tuesday
that it was
the King’s birthday…
Imagine
that 2 days after Orthodox Christmas…
2
days after the 3 kings came…
to
find the one born King of the Jews…
The
King…
Elvis
was born
73 years ago.
Imagine
Elvis at 73,
maybe
it’s best he died young.
Any way we
ended up with the title “Don’t Be Cruel”
And
I was thinking about doing a Sister Act III thing
Drew
Wright or Kenny Geelhaar
getting
a guitar
and putting on little sneer on…
The
women in the choir
doing
the bops, do-ops… and ou-ou-ou’s
It
could have worked
but the song would have needed re-working.
I
don’t know that
“Baby
it’s still you I’m thinking of”…
really
works
for the Creator of the universe.
But the
title “Don’t be cruel” does work.
Our
world is filled with enough cruelty
just
the essential inequity of birth
and
giftedness…
talent or lack of it…
Wealth
or lack of it.
Life
is cruel enough
without
our adding to it…
especially
we who know better…
we
who have been baptized
into
Christ…
into
his life…
into
his death…
we
should behave better.
On Wednesday night
I was talking to the Hillman girls
about Baptism & Communion
and I mentioned it to the prayer group later
and Ellen Gniazdowski
told
us about her daughter Toni.
How
Toni wanted to get baptized
when
she was quite young.
but
after watching a friend get baptized
and
not change…
Toni
decided to put it off
for a while.
While our baptism might
not mean
or have
meant much to us
at the time when it occurred.
It does make a
difference to the world
which is
watching us…
for creation
which is waiting
as
Paul said in Romans 8…
In
the Phillips Version
“The whole creation
is on tiptoe to see
the
wonderful sight
of the children of God
coming
into their own.”
The
world is waiting to see people
behaving
as if they really are
the
children of God.
So on this day as
we are remembering the Baptism of Jesus
it might be worth our reading again
one of those “Servant of
God” songs
from the
later writer who called himself Isaiah.
There are four of these
songs
and the
first is assigned to be read today.
This
song may have been chosen
because
it early on says…
“I have put my spirit upon him;”
Just
as the spirit,
in
the form of a dove,
descended
on Jesus…
so
the spirit is on the Servant of God.
And
certainly Jesus was the epitome of
theServant of God,
But
in the second servant song we read
“And
he said to me,
‘You are my servant,
in whom I will be glorified.’"
(49:3)
So
and it is something
to which we, Christians, should aspire as
well.
Isaiah 42: 1-9
Here is my
servant,
whom I
uphold,
my chosen,
in whom my
soul delights;
I have put
my spirit upon him;
he will
bring forth justice to the nations.
He will
not cry or lift up his voice,
or make it
heard in the street;
a bruised
reed he will not break,
and a
dimly burning wick he will not quench;
he will faithfully bring forth justice.
He will
not grow faint or be crushed
until he
has established justice in the earth;
and the
coastlands wait for his teaching.
Thus says
God, the LORD,
who
created the heavens and stretched them out,
who spread
out the earth and what comes from it,
who gives
breath to the people upon it
and spirit to those who walk in it:
I am the
LORD,
I have
called you in righteousness,
I have
taken you by the hand and kept you;
I have
given you as a covenant to the people,
a light to the nations,
to open
the eyes that are blind,
to bring
out the prisoners from the dungeon,
from the prison those who sit in
darkness.
I am the
LORD,
that is my
name;
my glory I
give to no other,
nor my praise to idols.
See, the
former things have come to pass,
and new
things I now declare;
before
they spring forth,
I tell you
of them.
Here ends the reading.
I love all four of
the “Servant of God” songs…
each one of them has special words…
this one has echoes of
other parts of later Isaiah.
It sounds
like Isaiah 61
which
Jesus used to define his ministry
in
“The
spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,
because the LORD has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to
the oppressed,
to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and release to the prisoners;
to proclaim the year of the Lord's
favor, “ (Isaiah 61: 1-2a)
But the part of
this song
I
like best are the words:
“a
bruised reed he will not break,
and a dimly burning wick he will not
quench;
he will faithfully bring forth
justice.”
Those words speak of a gentleness
and care
that are so necessary in
living together
in community.
Reeds
are hollow and fragile.
Sometimes
I come across them on a golf course
and
I can hack them down with my wedge
I
have no problems snapping reeds,
but
I can’t imagine walking through them
without
bruising or breaking some.
And
when I bring the wick out
to
light these candles…
quite
frequently it blows out
when
I just open that door…
When
we were almost out of matches
back
there…
I
have to walk so slowly
to
make sure the wick
doesn’t
blow out.
So often in each day…
I say things
to people
without
really thinking.
about
how those words will affect someone.
I do it to
be cute,
as
my mother use to say.
I do it
because I am insecure.
I do it
because I am not thinking of them at a person…
a
vulnerable human being.
Can you remember hearing
words that hurt you.
My senior
year in high school
as
I was applying to colleges…
I
had an 80 average,
but
because of my learning problems…
I
had had real ups and downs in school
I
had an aunt who asked where I had applied.
when
I said
she
said “Oh Hiram,
that’s
a good school you won’t get in.
I
did get in there,
but
forty five years later
I
still remember her words
and
how they hurt.
Human beings are so fragile…
We may not appear that
way on the surface,
but we are…
all
of us.
and we need to be
careful in relating our thoughts to each other.
we
need to do that in Church…
in our
family…
with our
friends…
we even need to do it
with our enemies…
they too are
human.
We need to walk carefully,
we need to be
politically correct,
civil,
kind and
compassionate.
but we also need to walk
with purpose.
The text tells us what our purpose
is and that is:
She / he will faithfully bring forth
justice.
You might
ask “How can we bring forth justice
without
putting a few people in their place?”
And we need
to ask ourselves
“What
do we mean by their place?”
In his book, God in Search of Man, Rabbi Abraham Heschel
wrote of justice:
“For although it is true that
we ought to do justice for its own sake,
justice
itself is for the sake of man.”… humanity,
pg. 294
As Heschel indicated
doing
justice
isn’t
mechanically following laws or a cause…
without
considering its human cost.
Doing
justice
is doing what is right and good for people.
It
is opening the eyes of the blind…
even
the eyes
of
those who have closed them,
because
they don’t want to look.
Doing
justice
is
bringing the prisoners out of the dungeon
it
may be a prison with bars…
it
may be a prison of dependency…
it
may be a prison of poverty…
or
a prison of wealth.
We
are to call people
from
the darkness into the light.
and
we are to do it with gentleness.
so
people understand that it is God
who has breathed life into them,
and
all things now living.
And
the breath of God
that
was in Christ
is
also to be in us.
So
may we walk and speak
with
care to each other
and
everyone…
always. Amen.