Color Us Purple
Luke 1:46-53; Luke 4:14-19; Luke 6:22-26
Ken Whitt August 18, 2007
Color us purple. Those signs saying, “Color Us Purple,” have been around the church for the last week or so and I was thinking that some of you might have figured out the meaning of the sermon title, “Color Us Purple”. Quite a few of us showed wearing purple today. Thank you very much, Dorothy. Ruth. Nice shirt, Paull. Violet. Lavender. Many shades will do. But what does it mean? “Color us purple.” Does anybody have an idea what I’m going to talk about? Because if you get it right that’s the end of it. We can go home.
Actually, Warren had a pretty good idea when he walked in the door today. “Color us purple.” Here are two hints. One’s a very simple one and then I’m going to read three scriptures and I think they contain a very good hint, but it still not may be clear, so let’s see how it goes.
Hint 1--Ah, these are food colorings from my kitchen and all I have to do is…Oops. I intended one drop I but got about four. This is red. I was going to do this with the children but we ended up talking about El Salvador instead, so you get to see my little experiment and all of you already know what’s going to happen. This is not complex. This is not rocket science. Now we have some blue water and some red water and we put them together, hold them up to the light and you get purple. Red and blue make purple.
Another way to make purple, if you’re living back in Bible times, and you want some purple cloth…no, no, no department stores. Instead, you would have to go to the Mediterranean Sea, as I understand it, and you would collect thousands and thousands of these little shell creatures and somehow you would process them and from those thousands of shell creatures you would get a tiny bit of purple dye and if you got enough purple you could dye clothing, but it was incredibly expensive, so kings wore it.
Yes, kings and lords and very rich folk wore purple, which probably means that Lydia in Macedonia--Paul met her when he crossed over into Asia--was a merchant in purple cloth and was probably a very wealthy woman. Purple is the color of royalty. And it became one of the primary colors worn by clergy and bishops in the Christian church in the first few centuries. And there was a reason for that and we’re going to get to that in a minute and that has something to do with the meaning of the sermon, “Color Us Purple”.
But lets look at Hint 2 first, three bible passages.. They’re listed in your bulletin and the first one comes from Luke. In fact, all of them come from Luke. In fact, all of them come from the first six chapters of Luke. They’re very close together. In fact, they’re all about the same subject. They’re all about God turning everything inside out and upside down. They’re about Jesus coming into our world to turn everything inside out and upside down. A great reversal of fortunes.
The first text is Mary’s announcement prior to the birth of Jesus, her announcement of who this child that she is carrying will be. And Mary sang this song:
Mary’s Song of Praise
46 And Mary said,
“My soul magnifies the Lord,
47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
48 for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
50 His mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
51 He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
52 He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
53 he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
God turns everything upside down and inside out. Jesus comes to turn everything upside down and inside out; fills the hungry with good things, sends the rich empty away.
In medieval Europe in the Roman cathedrals, the rich would gather in the nave on the floor near the front of the sanctuary and they would worship God from this position of status and authority and power. The poor folk and the peasants would gather in the balcony surrounding the cathedral and during advent Mary’s Magnificat, the text we’ve just read, would be shared with the congregation, and when the priest read the words, “He has sent the rich empty away”, all the people would start cheering, celebrating, giving thanks to the God who turns everything upside down and inside out, and sends the rich empty away.
Well, we don’t know when it’s going to happen, but it’s coming and the poor celebrate it, the victory of God over the powerful.. Well, you know, this got kind of uncomfortable for the wealthy and the powerful in the nave of the church during all of that shouting and excitement at the announcement that the rich were going to get sent empty away, so the church established a rule that when the Magnificat was read in the services in medieval Europe the poor gathered in the balcony were allowed to say, “hip hip hooray, hip hip hooray, hip hip hooray”, a dignified celebration wouldn’t you say. Not so uncomfortable for the wealthy, who were being told that they would be sent empty away, and, of course, we know now the origin of the idea of three cheers. Give them three cheers, hip hip hooray, hip hip hooray, hip hip hooray. And no I did not make up that story.
The celebration of the coming triumph of God had to be moderated a little to soften the impact of the Word of God on the rich and the powerful, who, after all, built the cathedrals. .
Well, we turn to the second text, Luke 4: 14-19. And again I say it’s the same theme. Mary in the first text announces the purpose of the ministry of Jesus, to turn everything upside down and inside out. The rich will be sent empty away, and then Jesus, called by the Jewish leaders of the synagogue to read scripture, is handed at the beginning of his ministry the scroll of the Prophet Isaiah. This is what Jesus found there:
The Beginning of the Galilean Ministry & The Rejection of Jesus at Nazareth
14 Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. 15 He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.
16 When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Why is Jesus sent? To turn everything upside down and inside out, to announce the year of the Lord’s favor, the year of Jubilee, when everything will be turned upside down and inside out, when land that has been stolen from the poor will be returned to them, when debts will be forgiven, when everyone gets a new start.
The world turned inside out and upside down.
And then, Jesus, in what in Luke is called the Sermon on the Plane, Luke, Chapter 6, versus 23-26, Jesus proclaims Luke’s version of the beatitudes, but concludes them with the addition of some woes, not just blessings but consequences.
22 “Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. 23 Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.
24 “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.
25 “Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.
“Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.
26 “Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.
Jesus comes and turns everything upside down and inside out. He proclaims a new day. The privileged and of powerful will loose. Those who have been stomped upon and deprived and betrayed will be lifted up in the kingdom of God. And so the church began to have its clergy, on certain appropriate Sundays of the church year, wear purple because purple now is no longer the color of the kings and princes of the earth. It is now the color of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords who comes to turn everything inside out and upside down and so purple becomes the color of repentance in advent, the color of surrender, the color of giving it all to God, putting God first having Jesus be first. Then, no matter what you do next, with Jesus first, whether it be social, economic or political decisions, everything we do is guided by the counsel and teachings of Jesus. Jesus first, everything else is second, third, fourth or doesn’t count at all.
Our political parties, our nations, our personal preferences, everything else is second and Jesus is first and so that it doesn’t matter in a church family if there are conservatives and liberals or Democrats or Republicans. They are all taking Jesus seriously, putting Jesus first, Jesus is Lord, not the kings of the world, Jesus is king and so collectively we strive with all might and main to find out what it is that Jesus requires of us--no matter the situation in our lives, what Jesus requires. That’s the source of our unity in Christ Jesus our Lord.
 The truth looks more like the above “purple” America. |
This is how the politicians want us to see
our country, divided, so one of them can win.
|
So, color us purple. Well, there’s folks in the world that want to color us red and blue and to tell us that our politics, not our faith, is our primary identity. Politics is important to me. I take the political process seriously and I examine the candidates and the issues before I vote, but I am definitely not red or blue. It makes more sense to me to see myself as purple because with Christ as lead and guide I approach every issue from his point of view. Jesus first, not a nation or political party or any collection of people or social entity. I think that if we closely examined our church we might collectively say, “Color us purple.” This conclusion would be very similar to what Robert Vanderbay at Princeton University says is really true about America as a social, political and economic entity. We are really a purple America. We have all kinds of people with all kinds of good ideas trying to find out how to put their core values into practice in terms of social, economic and political decisions, and those people that are striving with all their heart with the love of Christ in their hearts to do that, a whole bunch of purple people with different shades, yes. But there are no absolutes, there are absolute reds and blues. If we take the teaching of Christ seriously and let him be Lord, I think it’s about impossible to identify ourselves as red or blue. We are all purple, one shade or another.
Now, I think I’m going to bring things to a close this morning by just setting out for you a challenge that I’ve been experiencing myself recently. I have a collection, and I couldn’t find them all. I have a collection of DVD’s that are documentaries on various challenges that Christians need to care about in our culture and our world today. And, they all provide information. But what’s amazing in these videos is although they may challenge you in certain directions, the answers are illusive. The solutions are not simple. They’re not red and they’re not blue solutions. They’re purple solutions, various shades of purple. Christians can take these issues in our society, like poverty, and they can read the Gospel of Luke and gain a deep understanding of what Christ requires of us and then strive together to find a way to live what Jesus teaches us in our lives, in our politics and our social lives and in the various economic decisions we each make.
The first DVD is called “Theologians under Hitler”, and the importance of this DVD to me is that it showed what happens to Christians when they make nation first instead of Jesus and how they sell the soul of Christ to the demands someone’s political agenda.
I really enjoyed this second DVD and was stunned to realize that just a few years ago, General Motors built a serviceable electric car that had enormous advantages and then that vehicle was recalled, the cars were scrapped all in the service of what and why?
Probably one of the greatest sins of American culture today is the sin of greed, and this DVD called “Enron, The Smartest Guys in the Room”, gives you a pretty good portrayal of the worst of the worst of the worst, but unfortunately it represents a lot of other deep sin and greed that happens in our lives and causes you to consider what you put first or better who you put first when you’re making economic choices.
This one’s called “Iraq for Sale; The War Profiteers”. I’m afraid the title speaks for itself.
This DVD is based on General Dwight David Eisenhower’s speech at the end of his presidency about the military industrial complex, entitled “Why We Fight”. The two go together like peas in a pod.
This one’s called “Wal-Mart, The High Cost of a Low Price”. One of the things I liked about this DVD is that it pointed out a wide variety of ways that our everyday economic choices impact the world. I began to understand not only what is happening at Wal-Mart, but also what’s happening in retail marketing across the United States, at almost every store where we spend our money.
And, if you watch this DVD and the one about greed it almost forces you as a Christian to start to ask yourself some hard questions about the decisions you make that cause oppression to the poor here in this country and around the world.
I don’t have a solution, except the few ideas that I’m beginning to practice in my own life, but if we are followers of Jesus, then we need to take into account the impact our economic decisions have on other people. Or would we rather take our place among the callous rich and powerful—who one day will be sent empty away?
And this one’s called “A Crude Awakening, The Oil Crash.” It chronicles the danger that we face because of choices we make relating to oil production and how that oil production affects warfare and what’s going to happen if oil runs out, when oil runs out, and what kinds of decisions Christians should be making today.
These decisions are not going to be made by people who think blue or think red. Purple is the color of the day. Color us purple. Purple is the color of day. Purple is the color that celebrates Christians who take Jesus seriously and place him first in every decision of their lives.
When that happens three or four of us might come up with different insights, but in a Baptist church we are used to that. We know that you have to listen to each person if you want to come up with the best idea. The question that matters is do we have the same Lord and is Jesus first and can we strive together to find out what it means to be a Christian in a age of hunger, in a age of such deep poverty, in a age that is threatened by global warming, what does it mean to be Christians in this time? Metaphorically speaking, I think that one of the answers is, “Color Us Purple.” Purple Christians examine everything from the point of view of Jesus who is Lord of Lords and King of Kings. May it be so. Amen.
