Lent 2A; February 17, 2008

Revised Common Lectionary

The Rev. Marion E. Kanour

“What are we to say was gained by Abraham, our ancestor according to the flesh?  ….For what does scripture say?”  --an excerpt from Romans 4:1-5, 13-17

 Last Sunday the epistle appointed for the day focused on the idea of Original Sin.  It follows, then, that this week’s epistle focuses on the idea of justification by faith.  If, as Paul believes, we’re innately evil, without hope of salvation except through the grace of God, then it’s reasonable also to believe there’s nothing we can do to improve our lot, except to have faith in God’s mercy.  That is, we can’t work harder to make God love us more.  This may seem an academic point to you, with little bearing on how you live your life.  The theologian Martin Luther would vehemently disagree with you.  On October 31, 1517 he nailed 95 discussion points to his church door in Wittenberg to challenge the status quo within the Christian Church of his day.  He was infuriated by the selling of indulgences to the poor.  He believed it was false teaching to suppose you could buy or earn your way to heaven.  He took as his inspiration the epistle we read today.  Not surprisingly, the Pope censored Luther and in 1520 sent him a papal decree to tell him so.  Luther publically burned the letter, formally launching what we now know as the Protestant Reformation and creating the Lutheran denomination.  Lutherans organized all of their theological beliefs in 1530 in a document known as the Augsburg Confession. The Roman Catholics responded to those beliefs in documents from the Councils of Trent, which met from 1545-1563 in Trent, Italy.  Our own Anglican Articles of Faith were written in 1563 in response to Trent.  The major debate centered around this disagreement about justification by faith or justification by works.  The Protestants chose the former; the Catholics, the latter.  The distinction remains until today.  So what?  How does that impact our lives?  What if all this theological bickering so many centuries ago focuses us wrongly?  Who says we have to be justified at all?  Why choose between justification by faith or works?  Unless, of course, you’re worried about going to heaven or hell as your primary concern in life.   Why do we suppose God requires us to justify ourselves at all?  And how, exactly, is it that we know what God wants?   The resounding answer through the ages has been:  through scripture.  But scripture is a record of what human beings believe about God, not a record of what God believes about human beings.  What we gain from scripture is a picture of our human hopes and fears about God.  It’s more than a leap of faith to say scripture is also a picture of God’s hopes and fears about us.  But, through the ages, that’s just what we’ve done.  We’ve based our doctrines of Original Sin and justification by faith or works on what scripture says God might think about these things.  What if God doesn’t think about these things?  What if only we do?  What if we’ve spent centuries teaching precepts that maintain order and power for those in control, but do little to edify the human soul?  What if we miss the blessings of God because we’re so focused on our fear of God’s curses?  What if we miss the grandeur and possibilities of free will because we’re so focused on our sinfulness.  What if the joy we could have had in this life is replaced by fear of divine reprisal in the next?  What if we just need to get right with Jesus? 

Jessie Blanchard thought that was the case.  He was a fellow student at Yale Divinity School, completing his Master of Divinity in the same year he graduated from Yale’s School of Medicine.  Jessie’s goal was to become a family practice doctor in rural Alabama, where he was born.  He wanted to give back to the people who had given him everything, as he put it.  I shared several classes with Jessie, including a practicum on inner city outreach.  Jessie and I were paired for an assignment in New Haven.  We were supposed to go to the targeted neighborhood and, through interviews of its residents, to discern what the people thought their greatest needs were.  The class as a whole was covering all of the poorest neighborhoods in New Haven with the hope of creating an overview of needs.  The City of New Haven was offering grant money to programs addressing inner city issues.  Our assignment was the first step in assessing the issues.  We had a list of questions we were supposed to ask the people:  “What are your greatest struggles?  What’s your greatest fear?” Questions along those lines.  We’d been told not to deviate from the questions, otherwise our data would be useless for the study.  The day Jessie and I went into the neighborhood was the day I learned something about perspective.  Jessie said, “Let me handle this first interview and see what you think.”  Fine with me.  But instead of the proscribed questions, I heard Jessie ask, “What gives you hope in your life?  What gives you joy?  If you had to pick two things that mattered most to you in life, what would they be?  If there’s one thing you’d like the next generation to know, what would you tell them?”  Hope-filled questions got hope-filled answers.  Back in class, as we compared our findings with our classmates, we discovered fear-based questions got fear-based answers.  Not rocket science.  Jessie and I had lunch together after class.  I said, “So, back in Alabama, what gives you joy and hope?”  Jessie smiled in acknowledgement and said, “I’ll tell you a story.”  Which is how I came to hear how Jessie Blanchard—a black boy from poor, rural Alabama—learned he mattered in this world and learned the world mattered to him.  He learned it while playing hooky from church one Sunday.  His mama was sick and he was supposed to go to church without her.  Instead the 16 year old went fishing.  While sitting along the bank of the river, hoping to catch something to take home to his mama for dinner, an older black man he’d never met before joined him at the riverbank, saying, “Mind if I put in here, too?”  Jessie did mind, but not wanting a fight, especially on Sunday, he nodded his assent to the stranger.  “Where you from?” Jessie asked after some time had passed.  “New Haven, Connecticut” came the reply.  That was like some foreign country to Jessie.  “How come you’re here then?” Jessie asked.  “I’m looking for someone,” the man answered.  “Well, maybe I can help you.  I know most folks around here.  Who you looking for?  Then the stranger looked Jessie full in the face and said, “I’m looking for a poor black boy who wants to get right with Jesus.”  Suddenly Jessie wanted to run from the riverbank as fast as his legs would carry him; but instead, he felt a kind of paralysis take hold of him as fear gripped his body and mind.  What did the stranger mean—get right with Jesus?  Was he some kind of church truant officer?  Who was this man?  The stranger laughed a deep belly laugh and said, “Allow me to introduce myself.  I’m Dr. Dabney Lewis.  I’m here because I heard from your mama I might find you here.  I’d stopped by your home earlier because your teacher told me you were the brightest student she’d ever had.  I wanted to meet you and to make you and offer.”   Now Jessie was wide-eyed.  “By ‘get right with Jesus’, I mean I want to know if you think you’re worthy of being loved by God right this very minute.”  Jessie said, “Why does that matter?”  Dr Lewis looked serious when he said, “Because you are worthy, but if you don’t believe it, God doesn’t stand a chance and neither do you.”   Jessie didn’t know what to say.  Dr. Lewis’ words were hard to take in all at once.  Dr. Lewis continued, “I’m at the end of my life, Jessie. You’re at the beginning of yours. I’m from two counties over as a boy.  I know what it’s like to leave here and make it in the world.  It’s a hard, hard world full of hate and cruelty, if you see it that way.  But if you’re right with Jesus, you’ll see hope where others see despair; you’ll see love where there’s hate.  You get my meaning here, Jessie?”  And Jessie wept and got right with Jesus, right there on the riverbank in rural Alabama.  He did get the meaning and embraced it with his life.

 Dr. Dabney Lewis lived to see Dr. Jessie Blanchard graduate from medical school.  Dr. Blanchard graduated debt-free, thanks to his mentor and benefactor.  That was a wonderful gift to a poor boy from rural Alabama.  But to Jessie, the greatest gift was learning how to get right with Jesus.  It was a gift he was determined to pass along to others.

Did these two men justify themselves in God’s eyes by their works or by their faith?  Both men would tell you God doesn’t require us to justify ourselves at all.  We are already justified.  Hoping where others despair and loving where others hate will change the world one person at a time.   We’re all worthy of God’s love.  May we have the grace to believe and the courage to act as if that’s all that matters.

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