The Church as the Bosom of Abraham
Luke 16:19-31
April 22, 2007
First Baptist Church of Springfield Ken Whitt
“Love is but a song we sing and tears the way we die.” What does that mean? “Love is but a song we sing” is a metaphor. If love is but a song we sing, then what does that tell us about love?
“Climb every mountain, ford every stream, follow every by-way, till you find your dream.” Those are metaphors, intended to communicate something to us about living fulfilling lives. Life is a mountain and a stream and a by-way. If that is true, what does that tell us about life?
Metaphors are intended to communicate with colorful language--poetic imagery--truth that cannot just be simply spoken in ordinary language.
The Bible is full to overflowing with metaphors that reveal what the church is to be. These creative descriptions of the church unveil for our eyes deep striking images of God’s hope for us. When we are seeking to revitalize the church, recreate and reinvent and reestablish the church, the Bible is a treasure chest (that is a metaphor too) of images to help think and dream the new world into existence. The church is the body of Christ, the people of God, a holy nation. The church is light, salt, a lighthouse, a rock. The church is the bosom of Abraham. What does that mean?
The following story tells us something about what the church, as the bosom of Abraham, is all about.
The Rich Man and Lazarus
19 “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. 20 And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, 21 who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. 22 The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. 23 In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. 24 He called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.’ 25 But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. 26 Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.’ 27 He said, ‘Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father’s house— 28 for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.’ 29 Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.’ 30 He said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ 31 He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’
The church as the bosom of Abraham is a rich and multi-layered metaphor. I will just unfold two of those layers.
1) The church as the bosom of Abraham embraces the poor and sends a message to the rich. The church as the bosom of Abraham is a safe place of welcome and comfort and protection for people in need and this church speaks a prophetic word to the oppressors that there are inevitable and irreversible consequences to their crimes against God and God’s children.
2) The church as the bosom of Abraham understands the Biblical story of Abraham, who is the father of the Jewish, the Christian and the Moslem faiths. Abraham was called of God to be the father of a great nation that would receive God’s blessing. And, Abraham was to be the father of a great nation that would be a blessing to all the other nations of the world. The church that is the bosom of Abraham is both blessed by God and is a blessing to the whole world. This church sees what God sees and cares about what God cares about—the entire world.
How does the church become the bosom of Abraham? How does this all inclusive vision of God become our vision? This is how the Bible says it is done—we read a very familiar part of the writings of the Old Testament prophet, Micah, scripture that is integrated into our church’s mission statement:
What God Requires
(Cp Am 5.24)
6 “With what shall I come before the LORD,
and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before God with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
7 Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”
8 God has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the LORD require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?
The Hebrew word for justice is “mishpat.” Mishpat represents God’s standard of right conduct, what God would do about what God sees. Mishpat, justice, is thus what God expects from those who draw close to God. Mishpat follows intimacy with God like spring follows winter—we hope.
With what shall I come before the Lord? What shall be in my hands as I come to pray? In other words, the question here is, “How do I worship God?”
Burnt offerings—no way
Calves for a sacrifice—you have to do better than that
Thousands of rams—what a waste
Ten thousands of rivers of oil—I want righteousness in those rivers
Well then, how about if we worship God in such a way that when we leave the place of worship we have grown to be, you and I are, incarnationally, the doers of justice? How about worship that transforms our vision so that we see the world as God sees?
What is our primary tool for seeing as God sees and doing as God does? What is the implement without which it is impossible for us to do justice?
I do not garden much but I did have these very large pots from plants that died last year and I wanted to plant flowers in them this year. But I have no tools. I have a big garden shovel, but one thrust with that that would break my pot. So I decided to use a spoon—it was the best I had. The fact that is was a beautiful spoon willed to me by my grandmother Whitt only illuminates further how harmful it is to have the wrong tools. My flowers are growing…but it would have been a lot easier if I had the right tools.
What is the right tool for doing justice? What is the indispensable tool for seeing as God sees and doing as God does?
The answer is not any one of or all of the justice organizations we know about. JAM and all other community organizations that seek and build and spread justice are second in line.
What is the right tool for doing justice? What is the indispensable tool? It is not the political process here in Springfield or Ohio or the United States. At their best, political processes are second in line.
What is the right tool for doing justice? The answer is worship. Without worship drawing us close to God, without worship as the primary tool of Justice, the secondary tools of politics and organization will always be stymied and lack power. The idea that issues of worship and issues of justice are separate or sequential or easily distinguished is an affront to everything God requires of us. Worship without justice is an automobile going the wrong way on a one way street. Justice without worship is an automobile without gasoline.
I read the story of a worship leader in a very large church who moved back and forth on the stage in front of the choir. He led the praise singing and he lifted his arms in jubilation and sometimes he almost seemed to be so deep into worship that he was in a spiritual trance. The problem was…he kept stepping on the feet of his neighbors. He literally, with spiritual enthusiasm, stomped on the feet of choir members. He took no notice. The neighbors grimaced but did not complain.
Can worship stomp on the feet of our neighbors? Yes it can. Can hymn singing or praise singing take our people so deeply into themselves and into their private relationship with God that the music becomes a medium of injustice? Yes it can. Can people leave a sanctuary and enter the world without seeing anything the way God sees it? Absolutely. It happens all the time. The Old Testament Prophets repeatedly cried out God’s disdain for such worship. Can worship be just a religious fix? Sadly, yes it can? Can our worship, as in the days of Amos and Micah and Isaiah, just make God weary? Is our love for God just a song we sing or is it the way we live?
Worship in spirit and in truth draws us so close to God that we become utterly certain that justice and mercy are intrinsic to the character of God. Those who draw near to God are compelled to do justice. You don’t have to plead with them. You don’t even have to ask. Water flows over Niagara Falls and you cannot stop it. So it is with worship and justice.
The International Justice Mission is a Christian humanitarian organization seeking justice in the midst of all kinds of oppression all over the world. At one of their annual banquets their featured speaker was Elisabeth, a 17year old woman who as a young teenager was kidnapped in a large Asian city and sold into prostitution. She came from a strong Christian family and had studied the Bible and memorized scripture. As Elisabeth spoke she projected a slide on the screen that showed the back wall of the room where she had been held captive. On that wall she had written:
“The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life, of whom shall I be afraid?”
Even as she was being assaulted, she looked up and saw those words, until finally, after years of suffering, she was liberated by the Lord of her salvation.
When we are reading such verses in our worship, when we are praising the Lord who is our stronghold, when we are praying to the God who heard Elisabeth’s prayers, she, Elisabeth, and all the other victim’s of ungodly oppressions must be in our purview. Worship that does not take Elisabeth into account is a sacrilege. God long ago became exhausted by such praise. Our worship must not isolate us from the victims of war in Iraq and murder in Virginia and the AIDS/HIV catastrophe in Africa, and mayhem in Pakistan and intractable poverty in the richest nation on earth. Worship, drawing close to God, has to be the source of our solidarity with the poor and the oppressed, in this neighborhood and around the world. God’s loving gaze is upon the whole…and if we are not enabled by our worship to also see this way, justice will be but a trickle, the spare change of our otherwise busy lives, and God will reject our worship.
Being that I was in the midst of writing about such things this week, I was astounded to hear the reflections of an English professor at Virginia Tech. She transformed with her reflections the private grief of that university community into solidarity with all the grieving and suffering people around the world—and in so doing brought deep consolation to the Virginia Tech family. Listen:
“We are Virginia Tech. We are sad today and we will be sad for quite awhile. We are not moving on yet. We are embracing our mourning. We are Virginia Tech. We are strong enough to stand tall fearlessly. We are brave enough to bend to cry and sad enough to know we must laugh again. We are Virginia Tech. We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did nothing to deserve it. But neither does the child in Africa dying of AIDS, neither do the invisible children walking the night away to avoid being captured by a rogue army, neither does the baby elephant watching his community being devastated for ivory, neither does the Mexican child looking for fresh water, neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands, buried by a boulder on land destabilized by strip mining. No one deserves such a tragedy. We are Virginia Tech. We are strong and brave and innocent and unafraid. We are better than we think and not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imagination and the possibilities. We have the will to continue to invent the future through our blood and tears, through all the sadness. We are the Hokies. We will prevail. We will prevail. We will prevail. We are Virginia Tech.”
This teacher of the soul comforted her people by establishing the bond between them and all the rest of suffering humanity. Worship is an abomination to God if it does not make this connection. Every time we come together for Godly Worship we remember and rebuild our place in the circle of life—all of life, all of creation.
But what if we do not want to be connected to the circle of life, all of suffering humanity, all the children of God? What if we do not want to see what God sees? The Virginia Tech Community was willing to see the connection because of the forced and shared suffering that blew them away with hurricane force winds. They and us would always avoid such trauma if we could. Only the greatest love for God can compel us to see and to remember and to love suffering humanity. But, without this love, worship is a sham.
You know how we often say, “I resent that remark.” More often I find myself saying, “I resemble that remark.”
I resemble these remarks, and you will have to decide if you resemble these remarks. . I believe that unless the God of our salvation has rescued us, we are all captives to our self-indulgent culture. Across the entire American religious scene already prosperous people come to church to feel even better, to consume religious services. How can we, as we worship, make sure we are learning to exit the sad materialistic culture that threatens to devour us? I have been looking, praying, for a good idea and now I think I have one. One idea, one at a time. I don’t have to do something about everything. I just have to do something about something while being as aware as possible of the whole vision of God. My one idea goes something like this…
The coffee I am drinking from this mug is extraordinary coffee. It is excellent, strong, robust, flavorful coffee but it is also much more than these. This is Fair Trade Coffee. That means that it is planted and grown and harvested by coffee farmers who are able to make a decent living from the “fruit of their labors.” It is also grown using technologies that are sustainable and ecological. Coffee cooperatives and the assistance of missionaries in marketing their products have given these growers a way to by pass the economic oppression that usually dominates agricultural production in third world countries. I propose that we learn more about Fair Trade Coffee and how it is a tool for promoting economic justice. I suggest that every time we gather on Sunday Morning for fellowship and every time we have dinner together as a church—which is a lot—that we drink Fair Trade Coffee. It might even be possible for our youth group, when we are raising money for a mission trip, to marked Fair Trade products as a fund raiser. Information on this justice ministry could be made available to the church. Photos of families from all over the world who benefit from this justice ministry could be included in our worship bulletin. And this is just a beginning. One out of many possibilities to do justice.
You probably know about the worship wars in our American Christian culture. Churches extend enormous energy fighting about versions of the Bible, interpretations of the Bible, and the projection of the Bible on to a screen. Christians assault each other regarding sound systems and lighting and, worst of all, music. Christians mutilate the Body of Christ because of their personal preferences regarding style. What a waste. But there is a worship war worth fighting—it is the war for the soul of each and every believer and for the soul of the church. It is the war to expel the infection of the consumerist culture from the church—I want what I want and if I don’t get what I want I am taking my ball and going home. It’s the war against every prejudice that separates us from our neighbors and causes worship to be the most segregated hour of the week in America. If we are compelled to fight about worship then I call upon this army of the Lord to battle on God’s side for justice and against self-indulgence. Our weapon will be self-sacrifice.
I have a prediction to make. If it comes true maybe someone will call me a prophet. But I am just a dreamer. One day I am going to be attending a church meeting that is discussing worship and someone is going to say, “I have preferences just like everybody else. But it doesn’t matter what I want. What matters is what my neighbor needs in order to know, to love and to serve God.” And another Christian will echo these words. (Repeat these words in italics.) I will listen to such words with tears in my eyes. God does not want the sacrifice of ten thousands of rivers of oil. God does not even want the sacrifice of praise, unless it is woven together with justice.
God wants the sacrifice of self.
So be it.
Amen.
