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Sermon for 15th Sunday after Pentecost

First Reading: Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9

 1{Moses said,} “Now, O Israel, listen to the statutes and the rules that I am teaching you, and do them, that you may live, and go in and take possession of the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers, is giving you. 2You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you.

6Keep them and do them, for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’ 7For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is to us, whenever we call upon him? 8And what great nation is there, that has statutes and rules so righteous as all this law that I set before you today? 9Only take care, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. Make them known to your children and your children’s children …”.

 

Psalm 119:129-136

 129Your decrees are wonderful; therefore I obey them with all my heart. 130When your word goes forth it gives light; it gives understanding to the simple. 131I open my mouth and pant; I long for your commandments. 132Turn to me in mercy, as you always do to those who love your name. 133Steady my footsteps in your word; let no iniquity have dominion over me. 134Rescue me from those who oppress me, and I will keep your commandments. 135Let your countenance shine upon your servant and teach me your statutes. 136My eyes shed streams of tears, because people do not keep your law.

  

Second Reading: Ephesians 6:10-20

 10Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. 11Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. 12For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. 13Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. 14Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, 15and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. 16In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; 17and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, 18praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, 19and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, 20for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak.

 

Gospel: Mark 7:14-23

 14{Jesus} called the people to him again and said to them, “Hear me, all of you, and understand: 15There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.” 17And when he had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable. 18And he said to them, “Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, 19since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) 20And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. 21For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, 22coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. 23All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

 

We Must Tell Them Why

Labor Day Weekend is upon us.  And for the Army and Air Force, it signals the last day of the 101 days of summer, an annual campaign to stress the need for summer activity safety.  Generally speaking, Labor Day weekend is also seen as the last opportunity for a quick vacation before summer’s end.  It’s our unique American end-of-summer holiday that celebrates work, by not working.

Interestingly, most of the world observes May 1st as Labor Day, but not us.  The September date was chosen way back when, because it was halfway between the 4th of July and Thanksgiving.  September 5, 1882, saw the first American Labor Day parade.  It was held in New York City with 20,000 participants carrying banners calling for 8 hours for work, 8 hours for rest, 8 hours for recreation.

Samuel Gompers, the founder and longtime president of the American Federation of Labor said of Labor Day, it “…differs in every essential [way] from the other holidays of the year in any country.  All other holidays are, in a more or less degree, connected with conflicts and battles of man’s prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another.  Labor Day…is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race, or nation.”  Now to be fair, and contrary to Mr. Gompers assertion, our national Labor Day observance did grow out of a conflict.  Let me share a true story with you.

For some of our older folks, the name George Pullman may sound familiar.  His company made sleeping cars for the railroads, the “Pullman Car.”  In 1880, George designed and built a town near Chicago – Pullman, Illinois – to provide a community for his workers that would be protected from the seductions of the big city.  The town was strictly organized: row houses for the assembly and craft workers; modest Victorians for the managers; and a luxurious hotel where Pullman himself lived, and where visiting customers, suppliers, and salesman would stay while they were in town.  The residents all worked for the Pullman company, their paychecks were drawn from Pullman bank, with their rent, set by Pullman, deducted automatically from their weekly wages.  The town, and the company, operated smoothly and successfully for more than a decade.

However, this success was interrupted in 1893 when the Pullman company was caught in the economic depression that gripped the entire nation.  Orders for railroad sleeping cars declined, and George Pullman was forced to lay off hundreds of employees.  Those who remained had to take pay cuts, even while their rents in Pullman-owned homes stayed at previous rates.  So, the employees walked out, demanding lower rents and higher wages.

The American Railway Union, led by a fiery young socialist named Eugene V. Debs, came to the cause of the strikers; railroad workers across the nation boycotted trains carrying Pullman cars.  Rioting, looting, and burning of railroad cars soon ensued; mobs of non-union workers joined in.  The strike instantly became a national issue. President Grover Cleveland, faced with nervous railroad executives and interrupted mail trains, declared the work stoppage a federal crime and deployed 12,000 troops to break the strike.  Violence erupted, and two men were killed when US deputy marshals fired on protesters near Chicago.

Finally, on August 3, 1894, the strike was declared over.  Debs went to prison, his union was disbanded, and Pullman employees signed a pledge that they would never again unionize.  As you can imagine, Labor was not happy.  Protests against President Cleveland’s harsh methods made the appeasement of the nation’s workers a top political priority; after all, 1894 was an election year.

In the immediate wake of the strike, legislation was rushed through both houses of Congress, and the bill arrived on President Cleveland’s desk just six days after his troops had broken the Pullman strike.  The President seized the chance for conciliation, and Labor Day was born.  The ploy didn’t work – he wasn’t reelected.  In a final irony, ever since then, Labor Day was seen as the unofficial start of the campaign season.  My how things have changed in political campaigning, haven’t they!

More than a century and a quarter has now passed.  The American Labor movement isn’t what it once was.  These days just over 10% of American workers belong to unions, down from a high of nearly 50% in the 1950’s.  Now Labor Day is seen by most folks as the last long weekend of summer, the day to celebrate work by not working.  Today, it’s merely a tradition, the actual meaning and origin has largely been lost.

Speaking of lost meanings, you have, of course, heard the story of why grandma used to cut off the ends of the ham.  The point is, if we don’t share the whys of why we do things, the meaning of any tradition or ritual can be forgotten.  For example, why do we follow the pattern of worship that we do?  Is it because that’s the way it was done in the green book, and perhaps the red book before the green book?  The reason we follow the order of service that we do, is based on what has been handed down from the church all the way back to the 1st century.

All the way back to the time of the Apostles, the pattern of Gathering, Word, Meal and Sending has been observed.  Of course, documentation from that time is all but non-existent, so we rely on the voices of the Church Fathers and other witnesses from the 1st-4th centuries.  Take for example, the Apostles Creed, it’s credited to the Apostles.  The Nicene Creed is credited to the council of Nicaea, and both are true witnesses to the Bible.  The Lord’s Prayer and the Words of Institution used during Communion come directly from the Bible.  Even our hymns have been carefully selected as genuine witnesses to God’s word and what we teach.  It’s important that we understand and teach each other the whys of why we do things.  If we don’t, things simply become an action done by rote.  The problem is, when we forget the why, we will, by nature, simply fill in the blanks with whatever suits us.

In our Old Testament lesson for this Sunday, Moses is addressing the Hebrew people who will soon enter the Promised Land.  For 40 years, the nation has wandered in the desert for the sins the previous generation committed and because of their lack of faith.  Only two people from the previous generation were allowed to enter the Promised Land, Caleb and Joshua.  Not even Moses was allowed to enter because he didn’t follow God’s instructions.  To read why Joshua and Caleb were the only two from the previous generation to enter the promised Land, you need to go back to the book of Numbers.  There you’ll find the story of the 12 spies sent into Caanan and of how Joshua and Caleb were the only two who brought back a report that God would be with them, and they should trust God and move forward as God instructed.

It was Joshua and Caleb who remembered the promise and the why, and they trusted God to be with them.  Because of the general lack of faith on the part of the people, the first generation of Hebrews, that God brought out of Egypt, spent 40 years wandering the desert and died.  Now a new generation is standing at the border awaiting God to fulfill His promise.  But before they enter, Moses knows that this new generation must know the whys, so Moses takes the time to retell the history of the people, of their exodus, of all God’s mighty works and then reminds them of the most important thing God expects.  Moses begins this retelling with “So now, Israel, give heed to the statutes and ordinances that I am teaching you to observe.”  And the why, “so that you may live to enter and occupy the land that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving you” (vs. 1).

God, through Moses, was reminding the people that He has a reason for each command and statute that He handed down.  Primarily, God does this for two reasons: first it’s for our own best interest, and second, it’s to remind us of the past.  I ran across an interesting illustration while preparing for today that helps to remind us that the why is important for us to hand down from generation to generation.  Most of you are familiar with the reason our standard gauge railway rails are spaced the way they are.  The reason for this pre-dates the railroads.

First, why did the wagons have that particularly odd wheel spacing?  If you were to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long-distance roads in England, because that’s the spacing of the wheel ruts.  So, who built those old, rutted roads?  Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe and England for their legions.  The roads have been used ever since.  And the ruts in the roads?

Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels.  Since the chariots were made for (or by) Imperial Rome, they all had the same wheel spacing.  The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches, is derived from the original specification for an Imperial Roman war chariot.  And as you know, specifications and bureaucracies live forever.

So, the next time you’re handed a specification and wonder what mule’s rump came up with that, you may be exactly right.  This is because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war-horses.  So how does this fact affect our advanced technology of the past 50 years?  There’s an interesting extension to the story about railroad gauges and horses’ behinds.  If you were to look at pictures of the original Space Shuttles sitting on its launch pad, you will see the two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main tank.  These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs.

“Thiokol” makes the SRBs at their factory in Utah.  Initially the engineers who designed the SRBs wanted to make them fatter, but they were told they had to be the size they were.  And the why was simple, the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site.  The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains.  The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel.  The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track is about as wide as two horses’ behinds.  So, a major design feature, of what was arguably the world’s most advanced transportation system of its time, was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of two horses’ behinds.  What would have happened if the first SRB’s were built without the knowledge of the tunnel they needed to be shipped through?  The why is just as important as the rite or ritual.  This is why Moses retells the history of the Exodus, of all God’s actions to preserve, protect, provide, and yes, punish the people.

Moses recalls all of God’s miraculous works and of how God has protected and provided for His chosen people.  The previous generation failed, numerous times, to trust in God and failed to remind themselves, and their children, of why they were once again standing at the border of the Promised Land.  The first generation was now gone, and the next generation is standing at the threshold of the promise.  Moses knew that it was important that all the stories, the commands and statutes, the whys of the past, were once again shared.  This new generation had to not only know the what, they needed to know the why.  I’m concerned that we don’t always tell our children the whys of why we do what we do.

Look around at who is seated around you.  More importantly, look around and recall who is no longer seated around you.  In many cases, the missing faces have to do with the passing of our saints.  When I first took this call, there were certain matriarchs who were still with us.  Each Sunday I would look out and see them sitting there, and so was the family.  Some of these saints have passed and the family now no longer come.  The reasons vary, but I wonder if our faith traditions are not being shared, the whys are not being explained and now the subsequent generations no longer see the need to come.  We need to constantly share the whys of why coming to worship is important.  This reinforces the importance of the who.

Who will explain the whys if the next generation doesn’t come to learn?  And if that generation forgets the why, what will the next generation do?  And how long will it take before that next generation begins to fill in the reason with, because we’ve always done it that way?  And once it becomes simply we’ve always done it that way, then the need to learn is replace with other reasons.  It’s an old saying that is as true today as it was the first time it was uttered, “if we don’t learn from the past, we’ll be doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past.”  Or think of it another way, if we don’t share the whys of the past, it’ll be forgotten and become unimportant.

God gave us His commands and statutes for our own good and to remind us of all God has done for us.  If we stop sharing the whys, how long will it be before the next generation begins to make up their own reasons.  And if we, the parents and grandparents, don’t accept the responsibility for teaching, who will they learn from?  We must remind ourselves of the whys and take responsibility for being the who.  The why is important, and we need to constantly remind ourselves of the why we do what we do.

This is why we developed the 3-year Lectionary.  This is why we, even today, follow the same basic pattern of worship that was handed down to us from the beginning.  This is why the Creeds, the Lord’s Prayer, the Words of Institution, and our teachings of the Bible are read and recited week in and week out.  It isn’t so we can recite them without thinking, it’s so we can recite them and remember!

But more importantly, we recite them to remind ourselves of the why God has given us His commands and statutes, of why we do what we do each week.  And just as important, when asked, we can share the whys with the next generation.  We tell the whys so we can recall the reasons God gave us His commands and statues; they remind us that they were handed down for our best interest and to remind us of all that God has done for us.  And Moses reminds us of the why, “so that you may live.”

Amen!

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