Sermons from the Pulpit

Preached to the Congregational Church in Exeter, U. C. C., on the third Sunday after Epiphany, January 21, 2001, by Michael L. C. Henderson, pastor.

Nehemiah 8:1-10; I Corinthians 12:12-31; Luke 4:14-21

Do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.
   -Nehemiah 8:10

     Let me tell you about those amazing people, the Hasidic Jews. Maybe you already know about them. Maybe you don't. Maybe you think you know more about them than you really do. Hasid is a Hebrew word. The plural is Hasidim. It means "pious", but these people are not just pious. Some other Jews think they are all crazy as bedbugs.

     The Hasidim are Orthodox: They are intensely strict keepers of the Torah, the Law of God, in the first five books of the Bible. But they take their orthodoxy with a twist. They say rabbinical study and strict observance of the Law are necessary, of course, but not enough. They also practice a kind of mystical enthusiasm; they experience a direct communion with God which fills them with an immediate sense of God's love, and flowing from that an attitude of joy and hope permeating not just worship but all of life. They're intoxicated with God. As my daughter would say, they are nuts, but in a good way. This is the legacy of their founding rabbi, a magnetic and spirit-filled man who was born in eastern Europe in the year 1700, only three hundred years ago, a very short time in the history of the Jews.

     You see them on subway platforms in New York, especially on lines that begin or end in Brooklyn. The men in particular are dressed hat to shoes in old-fashioned, oddly formal-looking baggy heavy black clothes, and in obedience to the Torah they never cut certain parts of their hair. They look weird and wild to modern sensibilities, and they absolutely do not care about that.

     Would you care how you looked to strangers on the subway if your life was overflowing with holy joy? Of course you wouldn't. You would be too busy dancing and laughing and making a happy fool of yourself.

     Now like all Orthodox Jews, these Hasidim require every young boy, but I'm sorry to say not every young girl, to study the Torah as part of becoming a man. But as I said, with a twist: When a young boy undertakes his first lesson in Torah study, Hasidic tradition calls for a golden drop of honey to be dripped onto the first page of Torah, to teach the student the essential sweetness of God's words. In which they are only taking to heart what it says in the Psalm:

The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul;
The decrees of the Lord are sure, making wise the simple;
The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart;
The commandment of the Lord is clear, enlightening the eyes.
The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever;
The ordinances of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.
More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold;
Sweeter also than honey, and drippings of the honeycomb.

     That 19th Psalm makes a perfect Call to Worship, because it is a love song - and its beloved is, of all things, the Law and Word of God.

     In the days when the people of Israel were set free at last from captivity in Babylon, and the new empire of the Persians allowed them to go home to the Promised Land and take up their life and their faith again, the first thing they did, under their governor Nehemiah's direction, was to rebuild the fortified walls of Jerusalem for their own protection. Then, safely walled in, they assembled in one place, and Nehemiah, and Ezra the priests and scribe, and all the leaders and the Levites read and explained the Torah to them. They had not heard it read for many years, they had forgotten most of what was in it, and all of a sudden they realized how far they had lapsed from living by it, and what a great loss that was, and they wept for grief and guilt.

     Now you would think that this is exactly what their religious leaders would want, and would exploit to the fullest! If I could convince you that you have drifted tragically away from the Word of God of which I am the appointed custodian and interpreter, and which I happen to be holding in my hand, then you would be putty in my hands. But Ezra and Nehemiah and all the unpronounceable Levites told them to stop their weeping. This is a holy day, they said. You must not mourn or weep on a holy day. You must go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine, send portions of them to those who have none, for this day is holy to the Lord; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.

     But there's a problem, isn't there? God's law is a whole bunch of commandments, is it not? It is precepts, it is ordinances, it is regulations, it is proscriptions and prescriptions, it is The Law. And of that Law we are all, inevitably, lawbreakers. Violators. Sinners. In the wrong. We are under judgment, and rightly so! Why should we not weep and feel bad?

     This is the point at which Jewish and Christian understandings would appear to be at odds with each other. We Christians like to think that the Law has been replaced by the Gospel. The saving love of Jesus sets us free from the nasty old Law, the Law of sin and death. Christ turns the hearts of all believers so thoroughly to God that we do not need a Law anymore, we are naturally and essentially and entirely righteous and good and loving. Paradise regained. And if we fail to behave accordingly, it's only because of our doubts and unbelief - we just need to put our complete trust in Jesus as our personal savior. Whereas those Jews don't know Jesus; they are confined and constrained and trapped under the Law which we have outgrown.

     And this is horse feathers, folks. I don't know how to put it delicately. It denies and ignores the undeniable and incontrovertible witness of the Hasidim and all their ilk, and there is plenty of their ilk both Jewish and Christian: people who just know that God loves them and is with them and wishes them well and takes huge delight in them, even before they get up in the morning, before they've had a chance to succeed or fail, to be saints or sinners, angels or devils - loves them and delights in them even when they betray and disappoint their Maker and themselves and each other.

     The love of God is the primary, abiding reality of the whole Bible, Hebrew and Greek, Jewish and Christian. It's before the Law and Commandments, it's behind the Law and Commandments, it's at the center of everything, including divine judgment. Why is it so hard for us to keep that one truth in our minds?

     Jesus didn't invent a religion with himself at the middle of it. From the get-go of his career he was quoting the Jewish Scriptures to proclaim good news, release to the captives, freedom to the oppressed, the year of the Lord's favor. Favor not for Gentiles as against Jews, not for the faithful or the righteous as against the faithless or the unrighteous, but indiscriminately for the whole shootin' match, including Republicans and Texans. This is the word of the Lord, and it is fulfilled right now in your presence. No wonder they wanted to kill him.

     Pity the poor preacher, who must choose the hymns for the bulletin before he knows where his sermon is going to end up. Pity me, who failed to choose this hymn today:

My life flows on in endless song;
above earth's lamentation,
I heard the sweet, though far-off hymn
that hails a new creation.
Through all the tumult and the strife,
I heard the music ringing,
It finds an echo in my soul -
How can I keep from singing?

     Amen