Day 308 - It's Not Too Late, Brothers and Sisters

This is my sermon preached at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Fairhope, Alabama, Feb. 1 at their two services.

The lectionary readings are:

Deuteronomy 18:15-20
Mark 1:21-28


I am humbled by the invitation to speak at your worship hour about our mission activity in The Gulf related to Katrina and Rita recovery and I hope I do you justice. I always tell people at my church who ask me to speak that they should know I am neither a minister of word and sacrament nor a particularly qualified man to talk about virtue, being a flawed person myself – and certainly not a prophet. However, I do have a story to tell you.

“It’s not too late, Brother!”

I took these words from an old movie named “On the Beach.” The genre of the movie is what we call post-apocalyptic, occurring in 1968 after a nuclear war set off world-wide destruction by radiation sickness. They are from an abandoned street preacher’s sign.

A US nuclear sub sitting on the bottom of the ocean during the short war was spared and on a quest searching for any life in the northern hemisphere. It surfaced in the bay at San Francisco and the exploration party found this sign tumbling along with litter on a wind-blown street.

As the director of that movie knew, “It’s not too late, Brother,” rings familiar and carries an underlying sense of immediacy or urgency.

Context is everything. Were these words shouted by a street preacher in Mobile, or in Chattanooga, or in San Francisco, we would probably dismiss the preacher as deranged. But the words might also hearken to the voices of the prophets that Moses and The Lord discussed that day that we read about in Deuteronomy; that is, the words of prophets that admonished the people to turn from their foolish ways before The Lord brings ruin to them.

We hear those words of God in the opening chapter of Isaiah spoken to the Israelites in their temples, “Why do you trample my courts, I am sick of your burnt offerings, your sacrifices and your holidays. I cannot endue your inequities. When you ask for help I will hide my eyes. Make yourselves clean, cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, correct oppression, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.”

We hear them in graphic allusions in Jeremiah, quoting The Lord; “I remember the devotion of your youth… What wrong did your fathers find in me that they went so far from me?... I still will contend with you… Return faithless Israel, I am merciful! If you swear “as The Lord Lives” in truth, in justice and in uprighteousness… then the nations will bless themselves in him…Circumcise your heart to the Lord lest my wrath go out like fire and burn with none to quench it.” God demands absolute fealty.

And so we have this chorus of prophets ringing in our ears, in our subconscious much like the Hebrews must have had in the synagogue in Capernaum during that first sermon of Jesus, the greatest prophet that Mark describes. These religious Hebrews would have been acutely aware of Isaiah and Jeramiah as these prophets were deeply ingrained in their common experience and suppression by Rome.

Did you notice anything unusual about Mark’s recounting of Jesus’ sermon? Mark simply says, “...Immediately on the Sabbath, Jesus entered the synagogue and taught. “

What sermon? Mark didn’t even write it down! Mark simply says, “The people were astonished at his teaching because he taught as one with authority.”

Mark seems far less interested in telling us exactly what Jesus preached than ensuring we get the message with urgency that Jesus’ authority rests on the prophets. One could conclude Mark is saying if you want to know what Jesus preached in Capernaum, go read Matthew, Luke or John, but be sure you heed his word immediately for he is the great prophet.

Now there may be a clue about the mood of the listeners in the word “astonished.” Some commentators feel this word carries a sense of outrage. The listeners were outraged at what Jesus said. It wouldn’t be the first time; the Israelites in anger had killed prophets for their prophesies.

I wonder what sermon Jesus preached. Did Jesus preach to them “Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord shall enter heaven, but (only) he who does the will of my Father who is in Heaven?” Did he talk about separating the sheep, those who helped the poor and widow and by extension him; from the goats, those who did not help the poor and widow and by extension not him?
Or did he quote Isaiah to them as he often did in Matthew, “You shall indeed hear but not understand, you shall indeed see but never perceive... for this people’s heart has grown dull. Many prophets longed to see what you see and did not see it, and hear what you hear and did not here it.”

The only thing we knowis what Mark tells us: “ immediately (there is that word again), a man with an unclean spirit appears and cries out “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? I know you are ‘The holy One of God.’”

I an inclined to think that whatever Jesus preached, this prophesy of Isaiah - that we will see and hear but not immediately understand - weighed heavy in the air; because the crowd does not appear to have understood that the possessed man called Jesus, “The Holy One of God.” Even after Jesus casts out the demons and the congregants hear the demons’ words, do they understand or does the crowd only sees Jesus casting out the unclean spirits?

I think some did understand because Mark says the people were amazed and at once (or immediately) his fame spread everywhere. While “astounded” may carry a sense of outrage, “amazed” carries a sense of positive impression. Note that Mark says Jesus’ fame spread at once, so surely there was some positive understanding by the people.

We ought to note that Mark uses the word “immediately” very often, 31 times in 15 chapters, more than ‘faith,” “hope” and “love.” Can’t we conclude that Mark’s Gospel carries a message of Jesus’ authority that demands immediate action? It is almost as if Mark is telegraphing the significance of the end of Jesus’ ministry from the first words of his Gospel.

And so what we have from Mark is a message that (1) Jesus’ preaching is prophetic, (2) his prophetic message is authoritative, even as a new teaching, and (3) his prophetic message is a call for urgent, immediate action. I think Mark is describing an epiphany among the listeners in the synagogue.

These prophetic words of Isaiah all came home to me as an epiphany a year after Katrina struck the Gulf so hard. It was a year after my pastor had traveled the Gulf in the week after the storm and returned telling stories of bravery and disaster. It was a year that I watched the disaster played out on TV but did not perceive its damage, a year after listening to stories from people who came back but not understanding their plight. Then, for reasons unknown to me, I went down to Pearlington, Mississippi and perceived and understood these things first hand.

I saw people with devastated lives and with unbroken spirits, I saw poor people living, if one can call it that in tiny FEMA trailers.

I saw an elderly man with that characteristic yellow skin of one suffering from terminal cancer laying in a hospital bed situated crosswise in one of those tiny trailers with hardly room to maneuver for the medical supplies, hospital bed and respirator, hoping to see the foundation built for the new home for his diabetic wife and mentally challenged adult children before he died. We wheeled his bed out onto the wooden porch built beside the RV so he could see the raised walls of the house that a church in Chattanooga provided through their Christmas Eve offering. He died a couple days afterwards.

I saw people with partially destroyed houses and no money to repair them because dishonest contractors took the money and did no work, the young divorced mother of three children who perhaps had never had more than a few dollars and had no idea how to manage a FEMA check for $20,000 use it on rent and a car to get to work.

I saw the smile on a woman’s face as we walked out of her house having finished all the drywall and only the painting remained to move in, hearing her words, “God bless you.” I hear those words so many days in my work.

I heard it Friday, from woman who left a message for help on the office answering machine whom I called back. I missed her the first time, got her husband the second time. I missed her call back the third time, but finally reached her on the fourth call. I told her I didn’t know how much we could help her but I’d try to get her to someone who could or our case manager liaison who could. She said, sobbing through tears, “I know you can’t help me but just that you called me back means so much. God Bless you.”

On that my first trip in 2006, upon driving into the parking lot of the camp where I stayed, I understood virtually immediately how high on the hog I lived, I was a Vice President for Research & Development, had helped buy and sell companies, had many friends, had worked with some of the greater people in my field, had professional adulation and pretty much a life with no material want. It was an exquisitely painful awareness to understand how removed these people were from my active compassion and how poorly I had seen it before. I have not been the same since. I see the same reaction in so many volunteers who come to our villages.

It isn’t all happy stories. Late last fall, I got a call from an agency whose clients we help. I went out to visit a woman towards Bay Saint Louis who is ill and has some serious problems with depression. I came to a dilapidated mobile home sitting in her yard. It is in such bad shape I wasn’t sure which side to try for the door. Finally I knocked on a side and she appeared in a window and motioned me to the right door. I find out she has COPD (chronic pulmonary obstructive disease) and has a ventilator on the coffee table.

In a raspy voice she asks me, “Please Mr. Paris, please fix my floor. She shows me a mushy spot in her kitchen floor. And then she tells me she has no heat, and yes, when I look at the heating ducts in the floor throughout the home I can see directly to the ground. All she has are three electric space heaters, one of the major causes of fires in mobile homes.

She tells me she bought this mobile home for $7,000 after the original home washed away and paid some contractor $4,000 to half-way fix the kitchen. I’m thinking why did she do it, this home isn’t work more than a few hundred dollars at best? I asked, “Why haven’t you applied for one of the FEMA grants? “

“Oh I have, they gave me $36,000 to replace my home.”

I tell her that’s great, but then she continues, “I bought a mobile home for $20,000 and the guy has never delivered it.”

I asked, “Have you tried to get your money back, or the mobile home delivered?” “Yes.”

“Do you have a receipt so we could go to the police?” “No, I paid cash. I cashed the FEMA check and put all the money in a shoe box. I went down to that man’s business and paid him the twenty thousand for the mobile home out of the box.”

I was grasping at straws by then and doing the math in my head. “You still have about $5,000, Mrs. Jones, and we have to get you in some housing where you have heat and protection. Can’t we sell the property and build or buy elsewhere?”

She begins weeping. “No, I don’t have any left. I gave my son who moved to Baton Rouge about $4,000 for his children and my daughter here in town who has a drug problem. I gave her about $2,000. And besides that before my husband died just a few months before Katrina he changed his will to protect me from some of my relatives selling the property out from under me. He changed the will so the property can’t be sold while I’m alive.”

So here I have a case where I don’t have any answers. She has no money, she lives in a mobile home that should be condemned, she can’t sell the property to use the money to move into assisted living, she is dying of COPD and she is quite mentally troubled and is so objectionable sometimes that few people, even her case manager, want to help her.

I have similar stories of families; some with better prospects for help some with less. Over three years after Katrina, many people still wait and hope. They live from Pascagoula to Pearlington, Mississippi. They live from New Orleans to Houma, Louisiana. And now after Ike, the live in cities like Port Arthur and Texas City, Texas. They are widows, single mothers, people with jobs who are trying to rebuild with their own money but have no time or energy after 12 or 16 hour shifts. These are the people Jesus would say are the downtrodden, the needy, and the alien, right in our backyards.

Now more than ever they need our help because the funding agencies are running out of money. The Presbyterian Church has told us we are closing all but one of our villages in Mississippi this May.

Your help is needed for us to get as many of these families into their homes as we can. Perhaps you could “adopt” one family and work with them to see them from now until they get into their home? Perhaps you could come over on one trip before May, just help one family. Perhaps by the grace of God we can do a miracle and help them all.

It’s not too late to open our eyes and perceive, to listen and understand, to circumcise our hearts to The Lord lest His wrath go out like fire and burn with none to quench it.”

It’s not too late, brothers and sisters to acknowledge by action what we are given by grace. Jesus is calling us to the narrow gate.

Amen

Benediction

As you go out into the World today, go with the assurance that we are forgiven and redeemed solely by God’s Grace through a love that is often unrequited. As we go out to Fairhope, to Mobile, to Mississippi and to anywhere else in the world, let the World know we are Christians by our Love.