PROPER 19C - Exodus 32:1, 7-14; Psalm 51:1-11; 1 Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-10 -

16 September 2007 - A sermon preached by The Rev. Peter A. Munson for St. Ambrose Episcopal Church, Boulder, Colorado

 

The Cost of Jumping to Conclusions

 

INTRODUCTION - Fenway Park

 

Zach and I went to a baseball game Friday night. It was not just any baseball game, though. It was a 50^th birthday present from Julia, and it was at Fenway Park, in Boston. And not just any baseball game at Fenway, either. The hated Yankees were in town. If you know anything about sports rivalries, you know that there is no rivalry greater than this one. Was it sold out? Do you really need to ask? Were the fans into it? Are you kidding? When Alex Rodriguez, the star third-baseman for the Yankees, came up to bat for the first time, the boos came raining down. When a Red Sox player got a single to right field early in the game, the volume of cheering that erupted was hard to believe. For a single! I haven’t heard noise like that at a Rockies game in years, and that was for a single!

 

A man, perhaps 55 or 60, was sitting to my immediate right, wearing his red Boston shirt. There was a younger group of fans, probably in their twenties, sitting one row down and to our left. They would leave periodically, mostly to go get another beer. We were sitting in the old grandstand section - wooden seats, not much leg room. Every time this group of young people came back, the fans in the row right in front of us would have to stand up to let them pass by. There were no ushers to tell them not to go back to their seats during the middle of the action. My immediate neighbor was there to watch the ball game. On a number of occasions, whenever these other folks would return to their seats, I thought he was going to have a coronary right on the spot. The first time, the complaining was relatively mild. By the third or fourth time, it was “Jesus Christ” this and “Jesus Christ” that. “They are not hear to watch to ball game!” They were there to watch the game, it seemed to me. They were also there to drink beer.

 

I assumed that this fan next to me was just a crotchety old Boston native I found out toward the end of the game that he wasn’t from the Boston area. He was from Florida. (In fact, when asking a question to those around me about the local subway system, it turned out that the first five or six people I asked couldn’t answer, because they weren’t from Boston, either.)

 

JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS - Where did Moses go?

 

Do you ever jump to conclusions? And when you do, what does it cost you?

 

Moses went up on Mt. Sinai to be in the nearer presence of God, and get some instructions. We know now that he was up there for 40 days and nights. The people of Israel didn’t know how long it was going to be. When the day turned into days, they started getting restless. More than that, when it appeared he wasn’t coming back, they started to refer to him with contempt. “This man Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” Yeah, he’d led them out of bondage in Egypt.

 

You’d think maybe he had earned the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he’s getting some really good info from God! But no. They said to Aaron, “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us...” Maybe some god we fashion will lead us the rest of the way to the Promised Land.

 

They assumed Moses was never coming back. They assumed God wouldn’t care if they made some sort of god in their own image. Their assumptions got them into trouble.

 

SAUL

 

Have you ever met or heard about a person that you thought was downright despicable? The early followers of Jesus knew such a person. His name was Saul, and he was a zealous Jew who was persecuting new Christians right and left, having them arrested and dragged off to prison (Acts 8:3) and “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord”. (Acts 9:1) What would you think if you met this man? Be on the lookout for him and stay away from him? You bet. Beyond redemption? You know it. God must surely have some severe punishment reserved for him. And if you suddenly heard that he had converted, and become a follower of Christ?

 

We hear about such people today, don’t we? Some fairly high profile person goes to prison and they come out saying, “I found God. I am now a Christian. I want to devote my life to Christ.” And what do we say? Aren’t we a tad bit skeptical? We react sort of like the disciple Ananias did, who heard in a vision that God was calling him to go meet this new convert named Saul. “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem; and here [in Damascus] he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name.” And the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is my instrument whom I have chosen to being my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel...” (Acts 9:13-15)

 

Ananias didn’t say, according to Luke, “Saul is your instrument to bring your name before all these people? Saul? Are you sure, Lord, that you have the right guy?” It says a lot about Ananias, and his trust in the Lord, for he went and did as the Lord asked. Would you and I have gone to meet Saul?

 

We tend to assume that a violent person is beyond redemption, don’t we? Rehabilitation for criminals? Ha! Lock ‘em up and let ‘em rot! God looked on this violent man and saw possibilities. God looked on this man who would become Paul... whose influence would not stop with the people of his own day, but carry across the centuries, and touch people who lived thousands of years after he did.

 

If Ananias would have used the knowledge he had obtained from his vision with God and said to his friends, “I know where Saul is. Let’s go kill him!” - how might the course of history been different? If Ananias would have followed his instincts, and assumed the very worst about Saul, it would have cost him the chance to be part of one of the most dramatic turn-around stories of all time.

 

JESUS

 

The Pharisees and scribes couldn’t figure Jesus out. This guy was supposed to be a rabbi? He seemed to have a gift for healing people, but look who he hangs out with! Lepers, the most notorious sinners in the neighborhood, and tax collectors! These people are unclean... liars and cheaters... we know God is just going to throw these folks into hell. Why does he hang out with them, of all people? They can’t be worth a rabbi’s time!

 

What did their assumptions cost the Pharisees and scribes? Well, for some of them it cost them their hearing and sight. There assumptions kept them at a distance from Jesus, and kept them from hearing and understanding his amazing words about a new kind of kingdom - a kingdom where all were invited to eat at the same table, a kingdom where the common denominator was grace and love, freely extended to all. The assumptions of the scribes and Pharisees also kept them from seeing that they were just as lost as the tax collectors and other well-known sinners of the day, and that God and his angels would rejoice over their repentance in the same way that they would rejoice over the conversion of one of those tax collectors.

 

SUMMARY

 

We jump to conclusions about others. We think we know their motivations, often before we ever build any kind of relationship with them.

 

They’re not really here to watch the baseball game, like I am.

People who talk too much are not worth my time.

The kids are playing and studying too much, and aren’t learning anything.

All Americans are materialistic and self-absorbed and amoral.

All Muslims are violent and look down on women.

All New Yorkers are surly.

All people who graduate from Harvard are arrogant.

All kids who go to CU are just there for the partying.

Moses hasn’t returned. We need to look for someone else to take us the rest of the way home.

Saul needs to be avoided at all costs. If we get a chance to put him in prison, let’s do it.

Jesus can’t be a man of God. Why would I decide to learn from him? Look who he hangs with!

 

In some ways, it doesn’t matter what conclusion we jump to. When we jump to conclusions, the result is usually the same. Our assumptions and conclusions lead us away from what could be transforming experiences with God. God is not calling us to be other-focused in the way that we tend to be other-focused. God is calling us to love and serve others, and we are getting bogged down with being judgmental and doing things that tend to separate us from others. Not only that, our actions separate us from God, who is actively seeking us out, and trying to bring us - his lost sheep - back home. Our actions separate us from knowing - as Paul came to know - the overflowing nature of God’s grace and love.

 

CONCLUSION

 

King David knew that grace and love, too.

 

Maybe we should pray with him.

 

“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” (From Psalm 51)