Spokane Friends Meeting

John 8: 31-36

³¹Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; ³²and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” ³³They answered him, “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, ‘You will be made free’?” ³⁴Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. ³⁵The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. ³⁶So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.

One line of this passage has become the most abused and misunderstood line of all of scripture. It is the line that goes: “…and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” The way it is used it is never a complete sentence. It has been ripped unceremoniously from its rightful place in John’s Gospel. James Garfield once said “the truth will make you free,

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Quakers have created for ourselves a difficult standard – we are expected to see ‘…that of God’ in others.  Sometimes it almost pushes us to the wall.  ….this week Spokane had some visitors from Topeka, Kansas.   The history of the Phelps family, law firm and the Westboro Baptist Church, founded by Fred Phelps, is an interesting story. At one time Fred was a courageous civil rights attorney.  Fred Phelps should be expected in our culture as the iconic prophet wearing a sandwich board saying the End of the World is Near! He looks at America and declares what most of us know in our hearts – America is an immoral place. His strong contention is that God hates. God hates unrighteousness!   And he has the Bible verses to back that up. It helped me to see Fred in terms of the pre-exilic Old Testament Prophets who warned the two Jewish kingdoms of Judah and Israel of impending destruction at the hands of pagan nations permitted by God for their failure to live up to the requirements of the Covenant with regard to how people were treated.

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Due to the sharing of our lives with each other in Meeting for Worship Sunday it seemed appropriate to only share a portion of the message I had prepared.  So for the adventuresome here is the whole thing…

A couple of years ago Susan and I drove up north to a community that had at one time been blessed with a productive mining operation. We were told how much ore had to be excavated to extract a very little gold.   That’s what my sermon preparation has been like this week. At one point I felt more like the Chilean miners but without the drilling team.

It seemed like two scripture texts, Luke 18:1-8 and II Timothy 3:15 were competing for my attention.

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 What would you write to the one person who you sincerely think should pick up the work you had begun so faithfully carried out if you were expecting that quite soon you would be, as Paul delicately put it, “poured out as a libation” in martyrdom? Does that help us understand why Paul uses such emotionally charged language? Where there things that Paul knew, or feared, about Timothy?

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According to the Gospel of Matthew the first word of Jesus public ministry was: “Repent”; “Repent for the kingdom of Heaven is upon you.”   The fourteenth verse of Mark’s Gospel is similar. “After John had been arrested, Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the Gospel of God: ‘The time has come; the kingdom of God is upon you; repent, and believe the Gospel.’”The author of II Peter declares that God is “not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). It seems the options are repent or perish. That’s pretty blunt. Do you think that the contemporary church makes enough of this clear call to repentance?

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Monasticism has always been on the periphery, out of the mainstream, of society. With that Quakers can certainly identify, not only in our worship practices, our understanding of spiritual authority, even our history of intervention, often in unpopular ways, with issues of injustice. The few who are drawn to a monastic life evidence little interest in recruiting others. They rely upon the Holy Spirit to draw others to this pursuit. So they go about their calling to give honest expression to their wholehearted dedication and to the deepest human desire of finding oneness with their creator.

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In the 15^th chapter of Luke Jesus tells three parables two of which appear nowhere else in the Gospels. Of course the chapter is best is known for the Prodigal Son story. The other two parables while shorter are quite similar. One is the story we’ve called the lost coin, the other is the story of the lost lamb. In each case the token, the animal and the person were once securely held and considered precious to a wife, a shepherd and a father. In the first instance an unwitting lamb wandered away from the flock In the second what became lost may have been due to simple carelessness. In the third, and most dramatic, the son intentionally left. We’ve all heard messages built around each of these stories.   I actually think it would be so much better if we remembered these three parables as the Recovered Coin, the Recovered Lamb and the Recovered Son which is the joyful outcome rather than focusing on their respective lostness. It seems we miss a great opportunity for a celebration. For those who have had the experience, recovery from addiction is a difficult process. Recovery, even in the matter of health issues calls for celebration. It’s the time when we might want to sing “The Joy of the Lord is My Strength” because the joy that is experienced by the shepherd, wife, and father respectively which, as scripture tells us is known among the angels should also be known among humanity.

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Norm Pasche put into my hands the book In the Spirit of Happiness written by the Monks of New Skete. What I’ve read of it so far it has been wonderful and has opened me to some fresh questions – and in the book I was delighted to find the Monks to say, ‘as Father Laurence said to Brother James in the kitchen, “We have to be sure to mention that what characterizes a monk’s life are the questions that consume him, the same questions that all human beings have to face to truly know themselves.”’ In reading again the story of ‘doubting’ Thomas (John 20:24-29) I’ve found it necessary to begin to explore what for me is a new question: “How is it that the wound of another can become for us a means of grace?”

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The story of the good Samaritan seems reckless and scary in its demands on the human heart; especially when we think about the recent uproar in New York regarding the building of a mosque.   It seems clear that there will always be some in this world who want their holy wars, who will discriminate, vilify, and even kill in the name of God.  They have narrowed down the concept of neighbor to include only those like themselves in terms of creed, caste, race, sex, or sexual orientation. 

But there is also evidence that there are many people of good will who have recognized the need for interfaith dialogue. 

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Today, throughout the Roman Catholic Church, The Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is celebrated. The idea of Mary being taken up, body and soul, to heaven is based on a book written by an unknown fifth century author who relates the story that the Apostles witnessed Mary’s death and entombment. Later, on a request by the ever-doubting Saint Thomas, the tomb was opened and found to be empty. The Apostles concluded that she had been taken up into heaven. The story has persisted to this day. The Catholic Encyclopedia says of the “day, year or manner of Mary’s death, we know nothing certain.” Because of my father’s Catholic family I still remember the discussion that followed when in 1950 Pope Pious XII declared as a dogma of the Catholic Church that, free from original sin, Mary was assumed into heaven. Vatican II affirmed that and declared that in heavenly glory she is “exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things”.

As you might imagine, the Protestant view has been quite different.

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