“40 years – 40 days:  Toward a reborn faith … How?”
3 Lent old lectionary
Jeremiah 26:1-15 / Luke 11:14-28
7 March 2010


We have had to wait three weeks … three weeks into the Lenten season … but finally, the day is here.
Though the texts we have been using each Sunday thus far in Lent are from the old lectionary … the old cycle of Scripture readings … that were used for the majority of the years of the existence of the Christian church … including, 40 years ago, when Nativity congregation was founded here in Fairwood … the reason for our revisiting these texts … though the configuration of the readings each Sunday has been un-heard, if you will, for the past 40 years … for the most part the Scripture readings we have heard the past three weeks, we have heard before, here, in worship, maybe even recently, because they are still part of our lectionary reading cycle.  Just in a different order, configuration, than this.
But today … today … we have three readings before us which we, guaranteed, NEVER hear in worship any more. They have been removed from our Sunday rotation of readings … expunged from our midst … cut with such surgical precision that, for the Gospel reading, we get to hear the stories ON EITHER SIDE of these words … but the “what’s between them” is a vacuum … a great black hole of unknown.
Now why do you think that is?
Could it be, because it’s about … SATAN???????
Well, certainly Jesus in the Gospel reading spends plenty of time talking about Beelzebub … literally translated as “Lord of the Flies,” but we know what he means … he even utters the name, Satan.
But the larger context of the Gospel reading has to do with casting out demons, and unclean spirits … words from a world view, so totally foreign to us, that it will take us some time to work ourselves up to this one.
Strangely enough, it’s the situation from the Old Testament reading … coming, as it does, about 600 years before Jesus, that is much more approachable for us.
Though it’s not any more pleasant.  
Jeremiah has been charged with the unpleasant task of bringing words of reprimand and a call to repentance to the king of Judah.  Jehoiakim’s father, Josiah, was a good king … so good, in fact, that when he set about getting Judah back ‘on track’ with their worship life, cleaning things up, wiping out the worship of foreign, false gods … getting Judah back to their spiritual roots and heritage, the worship of God alone … well, in the midst of all that, some of his administration literally found the book of Deuteronomy … the scroll, actually … which had been missing for hundreds of years, forgotten, along with the proper worship of God to which all Israel was called, through the covenant God had made with them.  
So when this scroll was found, Josiah set about getting Judah back to right worship, right practice, right belief in God.
But now Josiah was dead.  And his son, Jehoiakim, reigned in his place … and he was, as 2 Kings calls him, an evil king.  He had reverted to all the syncretistic faith practices of the kings who had preceded his father … bringing back worship and sacrifice to other, foreign gods … and not following the one true God.
Thus the Word of the Lord came to Jeremiah … to go to the court of the Temple, and preach against … everyone. The political leaders of his day.  The religious leaders of his day, who were tied with the political leaders.  When they heard “This house shall be like Shiloh” they knew what it meant … the Temple would be destroyed.  
One wonders … if you read history at all … one wonders how, why, those religious and political leaders reacted against Jeremiah the way they did.  For the handwriting was on the wall for Judah and Jerusalem.  Jehoiakim was a lackey king … his father, Josiah, had been killed in battle at Megiddo (the place from whence Revelation borrows the memory and the phrase, and makes it “Harmageddon” … what we commonly refer to as “Armageddon.”)  Josiah’s loss there to Pharaoh meant that Judah was a vassal kingdom … in servitude to Egypt once more … and Egypt was about ready to collapse before the huge oncoming army of Nebuchadnezzar, coming from the East, from Babylon, ready to overrun the entire Middle East.
Even without Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper, these leaders, these people, they would have known the truth of what was about to befall them.
And yet … and yet … they wanted to kill Jeremiah, for his words against them.  Which, of course, weren’t his words at all, but those put into his mouth by the one true God.
Even then, even then, the temptation to demonize one’s opponent was the one that “the people” gave in to.  “If he’s not saying what I want to hear, if he’s making me feel uncomfortable, if he’s preaching a word that implies that I might be in the wrong … well, then, ‘this man deserves the sentence of death because he has prophesied against this city, as you have heard with your own ears.’”
For Jeremiah’s opponents … turning his good words, his words which were God’s words, intended, given, to call his people into repentance, back into right relationship with him … Jeremiah’s opponents turned his good words into bad, and made him, the man of God, into one who they said came from the exact opposite of God.
Now, we shouldn’t be too surprised at their words or actions against Jeremiah … though what I am surprised at is how this text … and our Gospel, which follows right on this theme … are now missing from our lectionary series.
Because demonizing one’s opponents … whether that’s in the religious … economic … or political realm … has never been worse, in my lifetime, and probably in yours, too.
As someone said to me last week, “when did we become so un-civil?”  
That comment came after we went through the chapter of the book of Revelation, having to do with the AntiChrist.  John of Revelation authorship doesn’t use that name at all, but John of the epistles does … to represent anyone, any spirit, which opposes Christ.  His word.  His worship.  His sacraments.
For John of Revelation, that spirit resided in Rome, with the Caesars, those who actively opposed Christianity, and put believers to death who wouldn’t worship Caesar as God.
At other times in history, the term “antichrist” has been used in the same spirit to oppose other church or political leaders who have stood in the way of Christ’s word, its proclamation, and his followers.  
The Church of Reformation times was called “antichrist” by Luther.  Hitler and the ReichsChurch would also have made an appropriate target for that name.
But, as I pointed out to the adult class, beware the use of that name “antichrist.”  Don’t fall into the current temptation, to use it to knock down your political opponents, just because they are saying something that you don’t like.
I went on line and did a simple Google image search with “antichrist” as my search criteria.  Up came pictures of Presidents Reagan, Clinton, George W Bush, and a huge poster of President Obama in a devil’s costume.  
We demonize our opponents … at our own peril ... the end of civility being the least of it … the greatest error, missing God’s call, through them, to us, calling us to repentance … to stop making it selfishly be all about us, and to consider the plight, the condition, of others.
Now, Jeremiah did not die that day … though we don’t get the rest of the story as part of our Sunday reading, it follows immediately after these words … the people heard Jeremiah speaking the truth to them and, remarkably, it sunk in.  Maybe it was the forcefulness of his preaching, or maybe it was the reality of their political situation … but Jeremiah wasn’t put to death.  Though he was demonized by his opponents … eventually, at least that day … the overwhelming proof of the truth of the message he proclaimed – and one would have had to have been delusional to have missed the signs! – the overwhelming truth of his word convinced his hearers that God was indeed, behind Jeremiah’s words … that was HOW Jeremiah could speak as he did … and that saved him from his hearers.
Now, in our Gospel story, there is no such thing happening with Jesus.  He’s simply out on a usual day’s business, casting out demons and unclean spirits.
That may sound like I’m making light of what’s happening in our story from Luke … not really … but I would point out how far Luke’s world … Jesus’ world … is from ours.  We don’t think this way or talk this way or write this way anymore.  We have different names for demons … mental illness … autism … developmental disabilities … and we have medications and treatments and therapies which bring the touch of healing to those who suffer from them … some of the time, maybe, even, much of the time.  
But in Jesus’ day what wasn’t understood, what didn’t make sense, was attributed to the realm of chaos … disorder … and darkness.  Demons, devils, evil and unclean spirits … people back then wouldn’t look at you twice if you mentioned that your son or daughter had a demon.  They might stay away from you, in fear … much as we do today, with someone who is mentally ill or developmentally disabled, I might add …
but they would understand this reference to the demonic.
So when Jesus entered this scene, this realm of the unknown … coming virtually out of nowhere as he did, no pedigree of learning, no years of rabbinical training, no crown of political royalty on his head … well, knowing that, knowing that worldview, we can better understand why some of the people that saw him there wondered if Jesus was just in cahoots with the demons, the evil spirits, the devil.  They didn’t understand where the “demonic” had come from … so, less could they understand how anyone could “cast it out.”  
“He casts out demons by Beelzebul, the ruler of the demons.”
“Others, to test him, kept demanding from him a sign from heaven.”
But Jesus … for his part … Jesus returned to the sign of Jeremiah.
Look around you, he said.  Check out your reality.  
“Every kingdom divided against itself becomes a desert, and house falls upon house.  If Satan also is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand?”
People in that time may not have understood how illnesses and diseases “worked,” as we do, but they sure understood politics as we do.  They saw chaos in the political division of kingdoms around them … at the time Luke wrote down these words of Jesus, the Roman empire was in the midst of a civil war that brought four Caesars in the span of a year … Galba, Otho, Vitellius … ending, finally, with the reign of Vespasian who brought the empire back together once again.
It’s the chaos … the disorder … the confusion … in the world that was, and is, evil.  Demonic.  Of Satan, if you will.  Then, and now.
Jesus’ message, in contrast, brought, brings, wholeness, healing, peace, grace, comfort and hope.  
No wonder Jesus’ words here are so firm.  In other places in Scripture he seems to say that there may well be other ways that are part of his Way of faith, of hope, of love.
But here Jesus is clear … confusion, disorder, and chaos … bringing hopelessness, illness, destruction, and death … these are not, and are never, “his Way.”  
“Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.”
And so it’s not enough to just “clean house” spiritually … to believe that, on your own, person, family, corporation, nation, or church … you’ve done all the right things, lived a good life, been a good and upstanding member of society, put it all in order, etc. etc.
“Whoever does not gather with me scatters.”
The swept-empty house is an image of such a life … looking like it’s all together on the outside … but on the inside, antiseptically clean, assiduously avoiding the “dirt” of living life with others, sharing in their pain and difficulties, their struggles and hardships … such a “clean house” is just begging to be made truly dirty with the filth of the world.  Since there’s no thing and no one to keep the disorder and chaos away … in it comes, full force.  AntiLove.  AntiHope.  
And AntiChrist, to be sure.
And maybe that, there, brings us back full circle to where we started exploring these two readings.  Bemoaning the evil spirit of dissension, party spirit, “up or down” demonizing one’s opponents, where we seem hopelessly stuck today.  
Whether it’s the health care debate … a new bridge across Lake Washington … discussions about terrorism … or the current state of the church … the polarization, the demonizing of opponents … sometimes, coming from fear or a lack of understanding of what we do not know … at other times, it’s just a simple stopping of our ears, and not wanting to hear the truth in the words that are being spoken, calling us all back to repentance, repentance from our selfishness, our prejudice, our sins …
Calling us back to Christ.  To his Word, and our hearing and obeying it.
The real meaning of this season of Lent.  
Lent, which means “spring.”  A time of new birth and new life.
And so may it be for us, hearing Jesus’ word to us, calling us back, back to repent, to turn around, to amendment and change in our lives.  
Calling us to feed on his word in bread and wine, and time spent in prayer, with our thoughts, our demons which keep us up at night.  With them … so that Christ’s Word can wrestle with them, and cast them out of our lives, too.  
And fill the space where they were, with hope.  Peace.  Love.  Gentleness.  Caring.  Sharing.  And Joy.
So that we will go and bring that Word to others.
So, “Have A Good Lent” takes on a new meaning for us.  
Not a word all glum and dour.
But one of new life … springing forth … in us … and in the divided world into which we are sent to bring wholeness and healing.
In Jesus’ name.
Amen.