Faith United Presbyterian Church

Annie Dillard - in her book Teaching a Stone to Talk - offers a poignant description of how - too often - Christians don't believe a word we say. We frequently find ourselves making professions about God we never expect to come true. Some of you may remember the story - although it's been over seven years since I last shared it with you. She writes:

On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it?

The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.

The eighteenth-century Hasidic Jews had more sense, and more belief. One Hasidic [butcher], whose work required invoking the Lord, bade a tearful farewell to his wife and children every morning before he set out for [work]. He felt, every morning, that he would never see any of them again. For every day, as he himself stood with his knife in his hand, the words of his prayer carried him into danger. After he called on God, God might notice and destroy him before he had time to utter the rest, "Have mercy."

Another Hasid, a rabbi, refused to promise a friend to visit him the next day: "How can you ask me to make such a promise? This evening I must pray and recite "Hear, O Israel." When I say these words, my soul goes out to the utmost rim of life� Perhaps I shall not die this time either, but how can I now promise to do something at a time after the prayer?"

The truth be told such a Living God is not one many of us are accustomed to meeting in Sunday School or Church - or evening in the daily living of our lives - but - nonetheless - this is the God who claims our lives - and whom we claim to worship!

This free-Spirited - free wielding - and dangerous God is the Living God - of which Karl Barth speaks - when he speaks of the perilous task of preaching.

William Willimon recounts:

In an early lecture on preaching, Karl Barth connected the preaching of grace with the persecution of the preacher - persecution by the world, and by the church. Persecution is the fate of each servant of the word. He or she must bear the reproach and resistance of the world - a world that always thinks of another god - and attempts to find that god, who only through grace and only as grace allows, is revealed.

But he or she must also suffer the reproach and resistance of the church which always wants grace not to be grace. That God is free, that God wants the world, that God remains free, is what the church doesn't want to hear. But that is just what the preacher must say, who must proclaim the kingdom of Christ. Thereby comes the reproach and the resistance. If the preacher has nothing to suffer, then the preacher is not a preacher of grace. The priests who serve idols and the preacher of the law have nothing to suffer.

While Dr. Barth is speaking primarily of the resistance which comes - from the church as well as the world - when the gospel is preached - both Ms. Dillard's and Dr. Barth's reflections serve as important reminders of the dangerous business we are called to be about - when it comes to preaching - and hearing, I might add - the Word of God.

By what authority? This is the question behind our reading from Deuteronomy this morning. Literally - the name Deuteronomy means - "the second law" or "a copy of the law". The Book of Deuteronomy is a retelling or - better - a writing down - of the Law - God gave to Moses - at Mt. Sinai.

After forty years of wandering in the wilderness - God's people are about to enter the Promised Land. Moses calls for the appointment of judges - who will aid in the administration of God's Law. Their role will be to assist - in interpreting God's Law to the people and settling disputes. It would seem this group of public officials probably had a hand in the authorship of Deuteronomy. While Deuteronomy carries the authority of Moses - these judges are continuing the work - of nation building - which Moses began.

According to the NRSV - the purpose of Deuteronomy is "to make plain the laws of God by which Israel can live as a community and through which its special covenant relationship to God will be shown by the quality of life it enjoys." In other words, Israel's faithfulness will be blessed. In this way - God's people can be one nation - living under one law - God's Law - as they make their home in the Promised Land. Here is where the question of authority becomes so important. Who will serve - as Moses did - in conveying God's Word and Will to God's people?
In our text this morning - we hear from Moses - that God will raise up prophets - like Moses - who will fulfill God's promise to be present with the people - through the faithful proclamation of God's Word. In this way - God's people will know God is with them - God's people will know what God expects from them - through the faithful proclamation of God's Word - by those who are called to serve as God's prophets.

This answer to the question of - "By what authority?" - is in contrast to the Canaanites - who had sought divine guidance - through practicing child-sacrifice, soothsaying, divination and sorcery. Such pagan practices - which place the power of discernment in human efforts rather than the grace of God - were contrary to God's Will. Only God can choose - who will speak for God. Here we begin to see - the dangerous business we are called to be about.

God's people knew well that if they ever had to encounter God - face to face - they would die. Only by God's grace was Moses able to stand in God's presence - even then - Moses' face shown like the sun - when he came down from Mt. Sinai. So God honors their request and provides a prophet - like Moses - who - is one of their own - and will speak to them the very Word of God. Nevertheless - though they don't have to encounter God face to face - God's people are not off the hook.

Our reading from Deuteronomy ends with a clear and chilling warning - "Anyone who does not heed the words that the prophet shall speak in my name, I myself will hold accountable. But any prophet who speaks in the name of other gods - or who presumes to speak in my name a word that I have not commanded the prophet to speak - that prophet shall die."

Hearing this warning - it is hard not to imagine the proverbial lightening bolt - coming down from heaven - to strike down a false prophet - or wayward parishioner. But to get caught up in such a literal interpretation of this passage - may lead us to miss the point. Though I miss the mark from time to time in my preaching - and you sometimes stumble in your hearing - of God's Word - we probably don't need to install a lightening rod on the pulpit. Nevertheless - we would do well to hear - what I believe is God's Word to us this day: "The preaching and hearing of God's Word is a matter of life and death."

Whether the death - of which our scriptures warn us this day - is as quick and decisive as a bolt of lightening - or whether it is the slow, shriveling of our heart and soul - as we grow further and further from God's Word - the source of all life - our death is no less real. For - in the preaching and hearing of God's Word - it is dangerous business - we are called to be about.

This morning - I want to leave you with a story of the life - that comes - when we are faithful to our calling. In speaking of the power of preaching - particularly narrative preaching - story telling - to transform our lives - Tom Long tells a story about Grace.

Grace was the daughter of a Birmingham, Alabama, streetcar conductor and his wife. When she married in the late 1930's, she moved to Atlanta and took a clerking job in one of the state government offices. Through her work, she developed an interest in law and politics, and she enrolled in a local law school that offered night classes.

After years of study - Grace received her law degree and entered the 1954 election for the governor of Georgia. She was one of nine candidates - the only one who supported the Supreme court's decision in Brown v. the Board of Education earlier that year. The court had determined that racially segregated schools were unconstitutional. Grace finished ninth in that race.

Eight years later, in 1962, she ran for governor again. By then, the civil rights movement was gaining momentum, and her message of racial harmony was hotly controversial. She received death threats, and her family traveled with her as she campaigned, in order to provide protection and moral support.

One day Grace made a campaign appearance in the small town of Louisville, Georgia. In those days, the centerpiece of the town square in Louisville was not a courthouse or a war memorial but an old slave market, a tragic and evil place where human beings had once been bought and sold. Grace chose the slave market as the site for her campaign speech, and as she stood on the very spot where slaves had been auctioned, a hostile crowd of storekeepers and farmers gathered to hear what she would say. 'The old has passed away,' she began, 'and the new has come. This place,' she said, gesturing to the market, 'represents all about our past over which we must repent. A new day is here, a day when Georgians white and black can join hands to work together.'

This was provocative talk in the Georgia of 1962, and the crowd stirred. 'Are you a communist?' someone shouted at her. Grace paused midsentence. 'No,' she said softly. 'I am not.' 'Well, then,' continued the heckler, 'where'd you get those(expletive) ideas?' Grace thought for a minute, and then she pointed to the steeple of a nearby church. 'I got them over there,' she said, 'in Sunday school.'

People of faith - this is the business we are about - preaching and hearing God's Word. It is a dangerous business - because it is a matter of life and death. For - in the faithful preaching and hearing of God's Word - we have the opportunity to lead people in becoming God's people - people of faith - and this makes all the difference in the world.