17 Proper C

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Episcopal Church
September 1, 2013

17 Proper C

When I was in seminary, one of the requirements for graduation was passing the dreaded Bible Content Exam. The exam consisted of 100 verses or passages of Scripture and we had to identify the book in which the verse or passage was found. The test was multiple choice and there were four options given for the answer, but, of course, only one of the options was correct. On the one hand, this exam seemed overly picky and designed to distinguish those who were raised, say, Southern Baptist, and found the exam to be a piece of cake, from those of us who were raised as Episcopalians and anticipated the test with great foreboding. On the other hand, however, I think there was something more at stake than simply being able to identify Luke as the book which contains the words "My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my savior" or Isaiah as the source of "Comfort, comfort my people." The test was really designed to discover whether or not we knew the sacred story. The truth is that, with a few 7^th grade English skills, and a good knowledge of the Sacred story, you could pass the test without having memorized the whole Bible. Is the verse or passage prose or poetry? Does the passage offer doom or hope? Does Jesus sound like an urgent prophet or a wise philosopher? Is the passage part of a narrative or a list of instructions? Put those English skills together with a good knowledge of the story, and figuring out from 4 choices in which book the passage is found is not rocket science. But without a good knowledge of the Sacred story, all the 7^th grade English skills in the world were not going to help. The point was that we had to really know and understand the story of God and God’s people. Only then could we help other people find God in their own stories.

When Jeremiah lights into the people this morning, what is their sin? Their sin is that they do not know their story. They have forgotten the story of the God who brought them up from the land of Egypt, led them in the wilderness, and brought them into a plentiful land. Instead, the people have gone after worthless things and have become worthless themselves. When times are tough, and they were in the late 6^th and early 5^th centuries BC, the first port in a storm will have to do if the boat is flimsy. The people of Judah were facing conquest and destruction by the Babylonians. The threat was grave and the people of God were scared. Because the people had forgotten their story, forgotten the miraculous and faithful actions of God on their behalf in the past, their spiritual boat was flimsy and they turned to the easily available gods that did not even exist and had no power to save the people from destruction. They forgot their story and had only water from leaky cisterns to quench their thirst rather the abundant and available living water. The psalmist echoes the same cry when God says "I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. Open your mouth and I will fill it. But my people did not listen to my voice, so I gave them over to their stubborn hearts." The people had forgotten their story, made bad decisions, and God let them suffer the consequences.

The book of Hebrews was written to encourage weary but faithful Christians. Our passage this morning appeals to the story of Scripture when the author writes "Let mutual love continue-do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers." The reader is reminded that, in the sacred story, Abraham and Sarah show hospitality to three strangers who turn out to be messengers, or angels, of God. And Jesus does not just make up his instructions about table etiquette at a dinner party. Those instructions are grounded in the larger story of Scripture. The book of Proverbs has similar instruction about being humble and avoiding arrogance, or eating at the table of a ruler. Proverbs 26 says "Do not put yourself forward in the king’s presence or stand in the place of the great; for it is better to be told, ‘Come up here,’ than to be put lower in the presence of a noble. All of our readings this morning point us to the larger story of God and God’s people.

Jeremiah reminds us that when we try to rely only on our experience of God in the current moment to get us through whatever predicament we face, we may find the well dry and we will turn to whatever god is convenient even if that god has no power to help us. When we know the story of God and God’s people, we know that our God is the God who more often sustains us for the journey than offers a quick fix, who often uses the least likely people to work in our lives rather than the most likely, and who, in hind sight is as often found in the places where God seemed most absent as in the places where God was so obviously present. Above all, the sacred story tells us that our God is the God who loves us unconditionally and that the valley of the shadow of death never has the final word. When we know the sacred story, we can be nourished from fountains of living water even our thirst is too deep for words. But, as Jeremiah reminds us, we have to know the story.

Amen.