Romans 3:21-26

          But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and it is attested to by the law and the prophets, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.  For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith.  He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he has passed over sins previously committed; it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Christ.

 

This the Word of the Lord.

         THANKS BE TO GOD, AMEN!    

 

If this sermon was set in a theatre, it would be said to have three acts.  Act 1 is set in Nicaragua.  Act 2 is a brief Biblical overview of sacrifice.  The third act is a story recently told in book and movie form.  Then comes the grand finale. 

 

In February, I made a quick trip, in the company of Mark Roberts and Dean Hollis, to Nicaragua, checking on the status of our ministry down there.   St. Andrew’s is in the second year of a three-year covenant relationship with our namesake community of San Andres.  

 

 

San Andres is a long way from West Omaha—and I’m not just talking just miles.  Nicaragua vies with Haiti for the distinction of poorest nation in the Western hemisphere.  San Andres is a very rural community, a hard ride removed from anything resembling civilization as you and I know it.  The people of San Andres are among the poorest of the world’s poor.

 

I first got involved with Nicaragua through an organization called The Rainbow Network, based out of Springfield, Missouri.  The founder of the ministry, Keith Jaspers, was a member of the congregation Nancy and I served before moving to Omaha.   Keith had been on the national board of Habitat for Humanity, famous for building homes.  (St. Andrew’s is involved with Habitat here in Omaha.)  Keith had a vision of expanding the Habitat model, retaining the housing component, but adding medical care, nutrition, education, community organization, micro-loans and such—a holistic approach to community empowerment.  

The model was and is heavy on entrepreneurialism and self-help, teaching the Nicaraguans what I think of as Capitalism 101, putting money into the community, encouraging investment, on the theory that a rising economic tide lifts all ships.    On the screen is a little store a lady has started in her home with money loaned by Rainbow; she’ll pay back the loan, keep the profit, perhaps apply for another loan.   Others invest in livestock, such as these little porkers. 

 

Funded largely out of Jasper’s back pocket, Rainbow started in a single village, learning from both successes and failures, enduring hurricanes and other setbacks, moving relentlessly forward on faith.  

I was a founding board member.   Over the past decade, I’ve watched the ministry grow exponentially.   At last count, Rainbow was in 124 villages, feeding over 12,000 children daily.  It’s an amazing model.

 

 

Upon moving to Omaha, Nancy and I did a lot of listening to needs and concerns of the Saints of Andrew.  Something that popped up consistently was the conviction that St. Andrew’s ought to be doing more for others, directing our congregational focus outward instead of inward.  I shared my Rainbow experience, found some folks who were intrigued by the possibilities; a few of these went to Nicaragua at their own expense to take look for themselves—and I have never known anyone who went to the Rainbow projects and didn’t come back deeply moved.

         

The Nicaraguans are a deeply spiritual people.  Inside the concrete-block Rainbow homes (about the size of a modest North American garage), you’ll often find little shrines such as this one, attesting to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. 

There’s an old hymn I like to quote regarding the church in our time and place:  We are “rich in things, but poor in soul.”  In rural Nicaragua, the equation seems to be reversed, as we meet people who are poor in things, but rich in soul.   Faith is all they have, you see, and the North American who has any soul at all can’t fail to compare their simple but profound trust in the Lord to the anxiety that afflicts so many in our culture driven by moremoremore.

 

          That’s how St. Andrew’s got into this three-year covenant that has us raising twenty thousand dollars a year to cover the approximate cost of the Rainbow ministries in San Andres.

          You may look at some of these pictures and say, “Those people don’t look so bad off.”  Exactly!  

 

 

One of the most dramatic contrasts you’ll ever see is between a community such as San Andres, where Rainbow has been a presence for several years, and a neighboring village where Rainbow is just getting started.   (On the screen is the kind of home most of these people were living in before Rainbow came to town.)  The difference in the general health and well-being of the populace, particularly among the most vulnerable—the children, the elderly--is dramatic!   I’ve seem both circumstances with my own eyes—communities before Rainbow, communities after Rainbow--and can personally attest to these things.

 

And this is way-cool:  In April, Rainbow is bringing a group of Nicaraguans to the USA for what they’re calling The Celebration Of Miracles Tour; St. Andrew’s will be among the tour stops.  We’ll turn our April 19 Saturday evening worship service into a Fiesta, with a reception afterward.   It should be a memorable evening. 

 

          This was my fourth trip to Nicaragua, my second since coming to Omaha.  In addition to touring the Rainbow villages,

I always try to work in a side-trip, to see something I haven’t seen before.  

When Adrian Alvarez, John Allbery, and the Marks Van Kekerix and Roberts were with me in ’07, I talked our guide into an excursion to the Pacific Ocean.  On the map, it looked to be a short jaunt, just a few miles, but the road was atrocious, a 45-minute ride that approximated what clothes might feel like bouncing around inside a commercial dryer, not to mention being slowed even more by a Nicaraguan traffic jam. 

Finally, we reached the water, but instead of bright sand, the beach was black with volcanic ash--whereupon we had to travel the same atrocious road back the way we came, another 45 minutes on high tumble setting.  Another set of travelers might have wanted to drown me at the ocean, but the guys of Andrew were saints indeed.

 

          On this most recent trip, I suggested we go up Mount Masaya.   Nicaragua counts over forty active volcanoes, Masaya being one of them.  I had been told we could drive to the rim of Masaya and actually look down into the volcano.  

Mark Roberts was driving the van.  After the ocean fiasco the year before, I couldn’t blame him for being skeptical, but our translator assured Mark and Dean that this was do-able, so up, up, up we went, through a landscape covered with black lava rock, the remnants of earlier explosions.  

         

Reaching the summit, signs direct the traveler to park your vehicle away from the mouth of the volcano.  I guess the idea is that if the mountain starts shaking, the sightseer can vamoose without taking time to turn around.

 

I’d never been to the mouth of a volcano before and didn’t know what to expect--but the experience was just awesome. 

The mouth of the volcano may have been a half-mile in diameter.   Looking down into a bottomless pit, belching fire and brimstone, I found an image surfacing in my head, from a film I saw a long, long time ago and haven’t seen since, but clearly made a lasting impression      

 

When I was a kid, there were no movie channels as such, but there was Saturday Night At The Movies—on NBC, I think.   

I particularly remember a black-and-white telling of TITANIC; a tear-jerker called I WANT TO LIVE, starring Susan Hayward as an innocent woman on death row; and most bathetic of all, perhaps, THE BIRD OF PARADISE, starring the lovely Debra Paget and very suave Louis Jordan.

 

 

          In THE BIRD OF PARADISE, Debra Paget is some kind of island princess.  I forget what brought Louis Jordan to the island in the first place; suffice to say he and Debra Paget fall in love.  Then the island’s volcano erupts.   To the astonishment and horror of Louis Jordan, part of the job description of island princess calls for his sweetheart to jump into the volcano, sacrificing her life, in order to appease the volcano and keep it from destroying the island.  

Having been raised on happy endings and the conviction that goodness and reason shall prevail, Saturday Night At The Movies shook the very foundation of my being.  TITANIC, of course, sinks, most of the people dying.   Susan Hayward in fact perishes in the gas chamber, the title of the film coming from her last plaintive cry, I WANT TO LIVE.   And, yes, Debra Paget jumps into the volcano, whereupon the volcano calms down,

fulfilling the scripture, John 11:50, “It is better for one man (in this case, woman) to die for the people than for the whole nation to be destroyed.”

 

Of course, that scripture references not an island princess, but Jesus of Nazareth.  

            

          We move the second act now and a Biblical overview of sacrifice, starting with Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter 5, verses 6-9:

 

For while were yet helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.  Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteousness person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die.   But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.  Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God.

 

 

Those last four words arrest my attention:  THE WRATH

OF GOD.  Remember, when God’s wrath went off in the generation of Noah:  virtually everything that walked, talked, crawled and breathed was destroyed; only Noah and his family were spared.   I thought about that at the volcano. 

One could be excused, I think, for imaging Jesus in the Debra Paget role, God’s wrath about to go off again, Jesus jumping into the metaphorical volcano, in the form of the cross, sacrificing himself to appease the angry god, taking the wrath upon himself.    Truth be told, I’m not entirely sure how I feel about that.

         

          Sacrifice plays a major role in both the Old & New Testaments.   After the flood, first thing Noah does upon exiting the boat is to build an altar for sacrifice, selecting animals and birds from those who had survived the flood to be burnt as an offering to the Almighty.  We’re told the odor of the sacrifice was pleasing to the Lord, who set the first rainbow in sky as the sign of a new beginning in the relationship between God and human kind. 

 

In the generation of Moses, an elaborate system of sacrifice is put in place.   Particularly appropriate to this morning’s discussion is Exodus 29:36, where the Lord says to Moses, “Every day you shall offer a bull as a sin offering for atonement.”

 

As it’s the title of this sermon, let’s study on the word Atonement.   Reading from THE INTERPRETER’S DICTIONARY OF THE BIBLE:  “The English word ‘atone’ is derived from the phrase ‘at one.’  To be ‘at one’ with someone is to be in harmonious personal relationship…  Similarly, ‘atonement’ originally meant ‘at-one-ment,’ or ‘reconciliation.’

‘To atone’ for a wrong is to take some action which cancels out the ill effects it has had.”

 

The daily slaughter of bulls, therefore, seems to have been intended as a ritualistic act to cover that day’s-worth of sin and wrong-doing among the Hebrew people.  

Other cultures, we might note, including Israel’s neighbors, engaged in human sacrifice, including the sacrifice of children.   Back in the days of Abraham and Isaac, the Lord had specifically banned human sacrifice.  I like to think one of the reasons the Lord told the Hebrews to sacrifice bulls and such was to thwart the impulse to sacrifice their children.     

 

Though, this too surely figures in.  Then and now, the Lord was and is pleased by our offerings.  The old Hebrew currency was bulls and other livestock; ours is money.  In giving our tithes and offerings, we are acknowledging that all that we have ultimately comes from the Lord.   The scripture says the Lord is pleased by the acknowledgement, particularly when it represents some kind of sacrifice on the part of the giver.

 

Turning then to the Old Testament Book of Leviticus, we read of what was called The Day of Atonement (known to our generations as Yom Kippur).  On Atonement Day, the priest is to bathe in water, then put on a holy linen tunic.  A bull is to be offered as atonement for the priest’s sins and the sins of the priest’s own household.   As a professional religious guy, I find it instructive that the ritual began with a reminder of the priest’s own sin. 

Two goats were then selected:  one will live, the other die, their fate chosen by lots.  The goat fated for slaughter will be sacrificed as a sin offering, its blood sprinkled inside the sanctuary, “thus he shall make atonement for the sanctuary, because of the uncleanness of the people of Israel, and because of their transgressions, all their sins.” 

I find this instructive:  The priest, who started the day reminded of his own sin, is then called to wash away the sins of the sanctuary—which I read as the sins of the church.   The church of any generation, including our own, does well to remember our own need for forgiveness. 

 

 

As to the second goat, we read:

 

 “(The priest) shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat, and sending it away into the wilderness by means of someone designated for the task.   The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to a barren region; and the goat shall be set free in the wilderness.” 

 

This where we get the term “scapegoat”:  the goat who

ritually bears the sins of the people into the wilderness.  

 

Such passages inform the New Testament understanding of what Jesus is all about.  The Book of Hebrews, for instance, images Jesus himself as the ultimate High Priest, offering sacrifice, not by the blood of bulls or goats, but his own blood. 

In chapter 9, verse 26, we read, “But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself.” A few verses later, we are told, he is “offered…to bear the sins of many.”    

 

I’ve known Christian people, including Christian leaders, who were downright repulsed by these passages, arguing that atonement has no place in modern Christian thinking.  The idea  that the Father God requires the bloody, painful sacrifice of his son smacks of the same kind of superstition that required Debra Paget to jump into the volcano, so they say.  

 

While I’m not generally one to quarrel with scripture and Christian doctrine dating back the apostolic church, I have wondered myself.   If God wanted to be known to the world in Jesus, I might have thought it would be enough that God’s Son would go from place to place, performing some miracles, feeding the poor, handing out little happy face buttons for people to wear on their robes, saying, “I’m okay and you’re okay—now pass it on.”  

 

Instead, the story is one of a cross.  At least it’s over quick for Debra Paget.  In contrast, it’s not enough that the Son of God is sacrificed; he has to be tortured first, beaten to a bloody pulp, nails driven into his hands and feet, a crown of thorns pressed into his scalp, his side pierced by a sword.   Not even bulls on the altars of Abraham and Moses had to go through anything so gruesome.

 

Bringing this sermon to Act 3.  When it was first published, several years ago now, Nancy purchased a copy of the Ian McEwan best-selling novel, ATONEMENT.   The reviews were glowing.   I read it myself and, frankly, did not find it particularly memorable—kind of slow, to tell you the truth.  

Then the movie came out, and it must have been Nancy’s turn to choose the film we were going to see, because she drug me to see ATONEMENT, and while it was still kind of slow, the ending had me thinking I had missed something in the initial reading, and I ought to go back and read the book again—and this time, it was still kind of slow, but vastly more powerful in its impact.   

 

This time through, I noticed, from the opening pages on, a pervasive theme of brokenness.  The young lovers, as doomed as Debra Paget and Louis Jordan, get into a tug-of-war over a vase.  The vase is a family heirloom, the only thing left of their Uncle Clem who had died a hero in World War 1.  Uncle Clem had been given the vase by grateful people whose lives he had saved.   The petulant lovers drop the vase now, breaking it—a sign of things to come. 

 

The pages that follow are a chronicle of brokenness.  The story is set in an huge English home described as an architectural monstrosity.  All who live there may be fairly described in terms used earlier: “rich in things but poor in soul.”

 

The father of the house is living a “separate life” in the city--not sleeping there by himself, either.  His wife knows it, and he knows she knows it.   At age 47, mother has retreated from life, spending most of her time in bed, worrying and fighting off migranes.  

Mother’s sister, having run off with a man who is not her husband, has sent her three children—a teenage girl and two small boys---to live at the manor.  The little boys in particular are trying to cope with the reality that they don’t have a home to go back to anymore.  One of them wets the bed and is punished for it.  The reader wishes he could reach through the pages and hug this sad, homesick little guy.  It’s not his fault.  

 

The teller of the story is a thirteen-year old girl named Briony, who features herself as a writer and has an active fantasy life.  Briony is an infuriating child, but she, is, after all a child, trying to sort through issues that perplex me at age 57, concerning the nature of reality and the mystery of other human beings.

Briony’s older sister, Cecilia, and Cecilia’s lover, Robbie,

carelessly, but inadvertently put words and images in front of Briony that the 13-year-old can’t understand.  Then comes the breakage of Humpty Dumpty proportions:  Brinoy making a false charge against Robbie, resulting in his imprisonment, lasting alienation from her sister, and the fracturing of a family that not all the king’s horses and all the king’s men will be able to put back together again.

 

The tableau of brokenness then takes on global proportions in the form of World War.  With the winds of war blowing at gale force, we see one of our lovers resolutely trying to make his way back to the other.   And whether we’re reading the book or watching the film we want these lovers to be reunited.

 

 

No one wants that more than Briony herself.  At this point in the story, she is 18 years old.  Briony has surprised her family by forgoing school and signing up as a nurse in a unit that will be tending wounded soldiers.  She has long-since realized the injustice done to Robbie, and her work in the hospital itself can be seen as an atonement of sorts. 

Remember, we said, “to atone for a wrong is to take some action which cancels out the ill effects it has had.”  You get the sense that Briony is trying to atone by caring for the broken men coming back from France, as if in doing unto them, she is doing unto Robbie.

 

          We see her taking leave of the hospital for a day, dropping in unannounced on her sister, who she hasn’t seen in years. 

The viewer’s heart leaps to see that Robbie is there, in the sister’s apartment!  Yea! 

The reunion of the lovers and Briony isn’t exactly happy.  Neither Cecilia or Robbie are in any frame of mind to forgive just yet--though if Briony will tell the truth, to her family and the authorities, reconciliation is not out of the question.  

 

But then the reader/viewer comes to understand, that’s not the way the story ended at all.  We meet Briony again, nearing the end of her life now, a very successful author, who has been trying to tell this story for years.  She finally decided to give it a happy ending of sorts, the lovers reunited, when in fact there was no reunion.  I won’t say more than that, but Briony, whose own health is breaking, tells the interviewer she wanted to give Robbie and Ceclia, not the ending they got, but the ending they should have had….  

 

Big finish:

 

At the very top of this message, we read from the New Testament letter to the Romans, chapter 3, verses 21-26, the New Revised Standard Version.  I want to look at it again, reading this time from The Message translation:

 

Since we’ve compiled this long and sorry record as sinners…and proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, God did it for us. Out of sheer generosity he put us in right standing with himself.  A pure gift.  He got us out of the mess we’re in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be.  And he did it by means of Jesus Christ.  God sacrificed Jesus on the altar of the world to clear that world of sin.  Having faith in him sets us in the clear. God decided on this course of action in full view of the public—to set the world in the clear with himself through the sacrifice of Jesus, finally taking care of the sins he had so patiently endured.  This is not only clear, but it’s now—this is current history!  God sets things right.  He also makes it possible for us to live in his rightness.

 

Here’s how I see it:  Jesus jumps into the volcano, NOT when he submits to the cross, but when he comes into the world in the first place—born as the Word of God become flesh--jumping into this cauldron of brokenness and sin. 

Remember, we broke the word atonement down this way:  at-one-ment.   When Jesus is born, the angels sing “Emmanuel,” which means “God with us.”  God with us in the mess of the human experience.  God at-one-with-us in the brokenness.  At-one-with-us in our long and sorry story of doing terrible things to one other.  At-one-with-us in our most crushing disappointments 

The cross, far from cosmic sadism, is the ultimate message of at-one-nes: God at-one-with-us in the most pitiable of endings.

 

I looked down into that volcano and saw a parable of the human situation, a bottomless pit of sorrow and suffering.  But then I lifted my eyes to the hill above and saw this towering cross.  And my soul heard the triumphant passage from John’s gospel:  “For God so gave the world that He gave His only Son, that whosoever believeth in him might not perish but have eternal life.”

 

  

I’ve got this notion, you see, that Jesus jumped into the pit of the human experience so that those who have faith in him and his resurrection might be raised with him.  So that in the life of the world to come, we might ultimately receive NOT the ending many of us will get in this sad world, but the ending we should have had. 

 

I exchanged e-mails this week with a clergy friend in another state, who was telling me about his Easter sermon; how he talked about his son, who died an untimely, sorrowful death, years ago.  Reading from my friend’s correspondence:

 

Scripture was Mary hearing the resurrected Jesus call her name.  She recognized his inflection of affection. I told the folks that I could always recognize my son Ron's voice when he called on the telephone and called me by name: "Dad." I told them I believed in Mary's story and I believe in the resurrection. It is the only hope I have for hearing my son call my name again.

 

Those words drill to the core of my hope:  I believe God wants this good man and his son to have a happy ending, rather than the sad one they received in this life, and that heaven is all about glorious reunion and the way things ought to be.  That’s what I believe.

 

And in the meantime, we are to live in at-one-ment with

each other--with those near and those far away.  Taking us back where we started.  

I’ve wondered if there’s not a sense of atonement in my affection for the people of Nicaragua.  Before Rainbow came to town, many of these people lost children to diseases that could have been cured by an antibiotic, but there was no antibiotic--not before Rainbow--and they saw their babies die. 

 

 

I didn’t know there was such poverty in the world before

I saw it myself, and my life hasn’t been quite the same since.  There’s something very wrong with a world where people like me have so much and people like them have so little.  I take Jesus seriously when he makes at-one-ment with us in the resurrection, and I take Jesus seriously when he says we should at-one with each other, and I don’t see how we can be at-one with each other if we don’t reach out and care for each other, I really don’t.       

 

We’ll, that’s all I’ve got for today….

 

BRD 3/29&30/08