Fulfilled in Your Hearing

Waiting can become a way of life. We get stuck on something, and don’t want to change. We want to wait until it gets better. The book Who Moved My Cheese?[1] tells a modern parable of this. The story of two mice and two little people. They live in a maze and run around finding cheese. The two mice are simple. Their names are Sniff and Scurry, and that’s what they do. Every day, they lace up their running shoes and hit the maze. The two little people do the same. Their names are Hem and Haw.

One day, all four find a big pile of cheese. And they live there for a nice long time. Hem and Haw hang up their shoes and move to be near the pile. Until one day, the cheese runs out. Hem and Haw are shocked. They stand there wondering what to do. How did this happen?! They start checking the minutes from their board meetings, and looking for something or someone to blame. Meanwhile, Sniff and Scurry head back out in the maze to look for the next pile of cheese.

Waiting had become a way of life for Hem and Haw, and they aren’t about to give it up. They know their neighborhood. It is comforting to be there. Maybe the cheese will come back. But each day, it doesn’t. Hem decides to leave and look for cheese. Haw decides to stay.

Hem eventually finds another, bigger, fresher pile of cheese. Sniff and Scurry greet him—they’ve been there quite some time.

We can often be Hem and Haw. We have good reasons not to want to move or change. There used to be cheese here, and we might not like the cheese somewhere else. It is good to put down roots and to settle. Waiting can become a way of life, so it’s hard to adjust and move when the cheese runs out. We lament where we find ourselves and talk about the good old days instead of seeing how things are and seeking adventure out in the maze.

Jesus was on the move, he was away from his hometown. He had been baptized in the Jordan. He prayed and saw the dove descending. He was led further away into the desert and was tempted by the lures of money, fame, and control. He resisted each one. He goes on a minor preaching tour and word spreads about this young man. He comes to his hometown synagogue. Jesus was on fire for God. He spoke with authority and conviction. He told some great stories. He was a changed man.

He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, “The Spirit of the lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

His next words were, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Now waiting can become a way of life. This congregation, this synagogue, they were comfortable. Had a nice endowment. Their budgets were in the black, and their small groups were full. And it was so nice to have a hometown boy back to preach. What a great reading he did, oh and to find it on the scroll, that was just great. It’s so wonderful he can read when only 10% of us can.

Then the “remember-when’s” spoke up. Remember-whens are resistant to change. They wondered what he meant. Surely the Prophet Isaiah didn’t mean for us to actually DO anything about those words? I remember when we once tried to help the poor, and they were a mess. Couldn’t budget. Didn’t make good decisions about nutrition. Always in need.

Yeah, oh and remember when we tried to help those oppressed by addiction go free, but they wanted a bigger room? And a few of them relapsed and you just can’t trust addicts. That was a waste of time.

And hey… wait… Isn’t this Joseph’s son? Remember when they went down to Bethlehem, and came back with a child. I don’t remember a wedding do you? And his cousin, that John the Baptist. What a rabble rouser. Who is this guy to say when scripture is fulfilled or not?

Jesus knew he wouldn’t be able to prove it to them. They were too set in their ways. Too comfortable. Waiting had become a way of life. They wouldn’t understand what happened to him, the things he has seen, the mission he was on. Others would. So he would go after the people who would be able to change, those who would sniff it out and scurry toward it vs. those who would hem and haw. Maybe a Hem would come, but a haw never would.

Jesus thought about his sacred stories and remembered the Prophet Nehemiah. Nehemiah was a wine bearer of the Persian King Artaxerxes. The Nation of Israel was in exile. The Babylonians had sacked the city, killed the king and his family of Israel, and brought the people to Babylon. The Persians conquered the Babylonians and King Artaxerxes was the big cheese now.

Yet Nehemiah was sick of waiting. He had heard the stories of Jerusalem, sang the hymns about Zion, longed to return to the ancestral home which God had promised him. He sent a letter to the king, and the word came that the long-awaited day was to happen.

I’ve heard Nehemiah mentioned a lot recently because Nehemiah decided to build a wall around the city. Some say this is justification to build one today in this country, but that’s a weak reading of scripture. Nehemiah was the leader of a people who were used to being oppressed. They were used to doing whatever someone told them to. Used to being slaves. They were used to being afraid and timid and small. They were used to waiting to be out of exile, Nehemiah needed them to see that they could live differently. They could change how they lived. They could sniff and scurry after new opportunities.

Nehemiah spends three days walking around the wall. He inspects and thinks and sees an opportunity. A way to show the people that they are empowered and free. Sure, they are back in Zion, but their minds are still in Babylon and Persia. He decides to rebuild the city walls. So the work was organized by the people and for the people and they did it. They restored the city! Morale was high! They accomplished the first task and people were feeling good.

Then the second, and harder task came. All the people were gathered by the Water Gate and the scribe Ezra brought out the law of Moses. They read the Torah, and the people wept when they heard it. Many heard it read for the first time. They had only heard their parents or grandparent’s dim memories of what their grandparents told them. They had never heard it read before.

Nehemiah knew that the Torah could have been shocking. Such a different way to live. Much different than what they were accustomed to in Persia. So they read their holy scriptures, and they wept. Then they partied! They ate fat and drank sweet wine and sent portions to the poor. The found God again and celebrated, and God was their strength.

But in Jesus’ day… He looked around at the fine synagogue and the content people there. He saw that it was the same old people in the congregation despite a new housing development going in just a few blocks away. He knew that some folk would rather be in control of 20-30 people than be part of 2-3,000 people. That type of thinking is only possible if you think the synagogue is YOURS and not God’s. Control was one of the things Satan tried to tempt him with and he rejected it.

That temptation hasn’t gone away. When most of the churches were started, they had the relationship; they were on fire. They knew all too well it wasn’t their church but God’s. They passed it onto children who may or may not have a relationship. Then grandchildren which to them felt like a responsibility and routine and duty. Further away from the founders, it’s easy to forget why we come together. No longer God’s church, but MY church. Don’t want to hear what God has to say.

We welcome, love, and serve because the Spirit of the Lord is upon us to bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, to let the oppressed go free and proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. That’s the original mission. Jesus shortened it when he said, “Love God and your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus reads this and says it’s fulfilled in our hearing and he sets out to do those very things he has just read about

But that synagogue didn’t come with him. They ended up driving Jesus out of town and trying to throw him off a cliff, but we will talk more on that next Sunday.

Waiting can become a way of life and we can miss so much. There is a lot that prevents us from travelling out in the maze to follow Jesus and we have a lot of excuses. I can’t right now because I have these responsibilities. I have to pay off my student loans, maybe after we have kids, or once they’re in school, or once they’re out of school, or once the grandkids come along… well soon enough we’ve waited our whole life away. What is true though is that once the Spirit descends, you are gone. You’re on the move. You are out where there are no maps.  You can’t stay and it can be scary out in the maze. But there’s the lure of new and fresh cheese. There’s the thrill of the unknown.

And as we are running this race that has been set before us, we can find a community of running partners. Those who can help us embrace the risk together.

The biggest changes in church life involves great risk. Church can’t go back to what it was prior to the Reformation. There have been some big breaks with tradition. And in those breaks, you’ll find courage, love and risk.

We cannot go back to the time where just building a wall around a city made us safe. There aren’t really any cities in American that have a wall around them. The danger isn’t really going to get in that way, anyway. It will get in through social media, phones, talk radio, cable news,  spreading divisiveness on there.

Yet if we can mentor our youth to be responsible in their use of screens… and if the youth can mentor we the aged in how to embrace change… well. We’d have ourselves something that truly makes us safe: we’d have a community. When we realize that we belong to God who is in control and not us, well, we’d have ourselves a faith. And when we open our sacred stories, we would cry because we’d see our own faces looking back out from those pages. Our stories are reflected in our ancient, sacred stories. Then we would know that God is still with us, still speaking, still saying, “Keep going! You are writing holy stories with your very lives! And my will is fulfilled in your hearing, seeing, and doing.” Amen.

Works Cited

[1] Spenser Johnson, Who Moved My Cheese? G.P. Putnam and Sons, New York. 1998.

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