God of Mercy and Justice- (Rev Robyn Plocher) 12/13 sermon

Sunday December 13, 2009

3^rd Sunday in Advent

Genesis 21:14-20A  Hagar’s Story

Matthew 23:23-24  Woe to Pharisees

God of Mercy and Justice

I was in my first appointment as a campus minister at Ball State University, Muncie, IN. Christy was one of our students at the Wesley Foundation.  During her freshman year, Christy began to experience unusual and frightening symptoms.  To make a very long story short, Christy traveled literally all over the world seeing specialists before she received the devastating diagnosis.  Christy had two extremely rare brain tumors.

 I was also nearing the end of my seminary years and writing my comprehensive theology.  In this paper I was expected to write in a comprehensive way all my beliefes about God.  I would be  graded on  how complete my theology was and how well my various beliefs about God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, God's relationship with the church, how God works in history etc etc. –how well all of that hung together in a consistent and complimentary way.  I decided the foundation upon which I built my entire paper would be the premise that God is a God of love and justice.  In the final days of writing that paper, during lent of 1986, Christy and her parents flew to Argentina where she would have a still experimental surgical procedure.  This surgery had been done on only 11 people in the world.  6 had died on the table and five survived with permanent brain damage.  Whatever happened, Christy would set the odds.

We were thrilled to get the call from Christy’s grandmother that her surgery was over and she was awake and alert and doing wonderfully.  We rejoiced and praised God.  Then less than 24 hours later the second call came.  Christy threw a blood clot and died-at the age of 21.

Maybe I could still argue that God was love.  The testimony and integrity of Christy’s faith would allow for nothing less.  But if I were going to build by theology on the premise that God is just—God and I had some serious work to do, and a looming due date just days away. 

It may seem strange to talk of God’s mercy and justice in the same message, but it actually makes a great deal of sense.  Both mercy and justice are essential aspects of God’s character.  It is impossible really to consider one without consideration of the other.  It may seem as though they should be mutually exclusive – perhaps in this life they are.  But in God they cannot be. 

Let’s begin with Hagar’s story:  Hagar was a slave belonging to Abraham and his wife Sarah.  Abraham and Sara had been promised by Yahweh-God that Sarah would give birth to a son and through that son Abraham would become the father of many decendants-greater than the number of stars in the sky or grains of sand on the beach.

But Sarah’s biological clock was ticking as they say.  She was already past child-bearing years and still no baby had been born to Abraham.  That’s when Sarah got the idea that she would give Hagar to Abraham and Hagar would carry and deliver Abrahams son.  It might seem a plan obviously fraught with difficulty if not immoral, but this was before God gave the ten commandments to Moses.  The Code of Hammurabi allowed for this type of arrangement between a man and a servant.  The man was obligated after the birth of the child not to sell this servant for money but to retain her as a maidservant. 

Hagar had no options.  She was a woman and a slave--powerless.  So the deal was done. Abraham slept with Hagar.  Hagar became pregnant.  And surprise, Sarah became jealous.  Hagar was not discreet about her joy over carrying Abraham’s son.  What followed had to be the longest 14 years in human history.  At one point things got so bad between Sarah and Hagar that Hagar ran away--and this was even before the child was born.  In the wilderness God came to Hagar and spoke to her.  God told her to return to Sarah and Abraham and take whatever was doled out to her.  But God also gave her a promise that her son, Ishmael, would be the father of a great nation.  After 14 years -When Abraham was 100 years old- Sarah finally became pregnant.  She gave birth to a son and named him Isaac.  Sarah can no longer abide the presence of Hagar and Ishmael in her home.  She asks Abraham to send them away into the wilderness.  He is deeply reluctant to do so, but God affirms this is the action he is to take.  Perhaps this was the only way to establish peace and marital harmony to Abraham’s household.  In any case, Hagar and Ishmael are sent away.  Days later, with no food and no water, Ishmael is near death.  Unable to watch her son die, Hagar lays him under a bush and moves away from that spot.  In despair she cries out to the God who once was audacious enough to speak to a slave woman…and God in mercy again hears her plea.  This is the scene you see depicted in the art on the screen.  Hagar in the Wilderness, unaware as yet that her plea has been heard and even now an angel descends to bring the message of God’s mercy.

The Hebrew word for mercy comes from the same root as the Hebrew word “womb”.  Mercy conjures images of brotherly love -love shared by those who have shared the same womb and motherly love. But mercy is more.   Mercy is God’s faithfulness, God’s steadfast love, God’s righteousness and God’s judgment. Mercy is all the loving deeds of Yahweh-God by which he faithfully keeps his covenant relationship with his people  & always these deeds are made known in a particular moment in history.

In the Hagar story we see God’s mercy in action when he makes the promise to her about her son’s descendants becoming a great nation.  We see it again when God saves Hagar and Ishmael after they have been banished from Abrahams home and tribe. In other  OT accounts we see God’s mercy in forgiveness that leads to reconciliation; deliverance from enemies; fulfillment of promises; return from exile and restoration of the land and cities; provision in the wilderness…and always God’s fulfillment of  the Mosaic covenant not out of obligation  or a sense of duty but out of love. 

This thought leads us rather nicely to our Gospel lesson.  Matthew 23: 13-26 begins what I like to call “The woes”.  Jesus is angry and he is calling to account the scribes and Pharisees for their hypocrisy.   Al Robertson calls this passage “The rolling thunder of Christ’s wrath.”  Woe is a word that means both wrath and sorrow.  Jesus repeatedly pronounces “Woe to you, Pharisees…blind guides and hypocrites”. Jesus’s anger is real, but remember what I said last week about anger and love (cross fingers).  Jesus anger stems from a heart broken by the stubborn blindness of the men he addresses. 

Everything the Pharisees did they did out of obligation and duty, not because they had a heart of love for God or mercy for their brothers and sisters.

In this particular ‘woe” Jesus holds them accountable for that part of the law (Deut. 14:22) that says you shall give a 10^th of yield of seed from your crops as a tithe to God.  Well, the Pharisees gave a tithe of dill, cumin and mint-garden herbs used in the cooking and for medicinal purposes.  A 10^th of these herbs was next to nothing.  As in most everything else the Pharisees did the very least they could get away with and still technically meet the demands of the law.  Yet Jesus points out they are ignoring the greater demands of the law-justice, mercy and fidelity or faithfulness.   Jesus embodies the fulfillment of the Law of Moses which is the blue print for how to live in love with God and others.

In God’s justice there is no such thing as good guys and bad guys--all have sinned and stand in need of God’s grace.  The Pharisees were no better than those they looked down on and we are no better than those we look down on or are so quick to criticize.  In God’s justice there are no “degrees” of sin. If you tend to be self critical or feel like a failure hear this:   there is nothing you can do no wrong deed or action that can make God love you less.  If you tend to be proud, quick to judge or criticize others heart this:  There is also no deed, nothing you can do to make God love you more.  There is great grace and freedom in twin truths.   That this divine equity or justice exists does not mean that sin is meaningless or of no consequence. Sarah’s   choice millennia ago gave birth to the most bitter rivalry in history -the battle between Arabs and Jews-  the consequences of which still tear our world apart today.  God's justice which is often incomprehensible to us, this equity between those who live their entire lives as “good and faithful servants” and those who repent and confess their sin on their death bed- this justice exists  because God’s mercy means so much more  and is so much greater than our sin. 

Sheila Walsh in her book “Let Go” which inspired this series of sermons, writes:

The ground at the foot of the cross is even.  There are no podiums for those who feel most worthy.  There are no pits for those who feel they don’t belong.  The only way to break free from dead, stale religion is with the glorious gift of fresh-baked grace every morning for the rest of our lives!” 

God’s is, God was , God always will be our God of mercy and justice.  This assurance  sustains us when all the world spins out of control -  When a 21 year old good and faithful servants dies.  Be still and know these truths as we sing “He is”