Why we go to church

One of the masterpieces of modern movies from 1997 is an intense R-rated thriller. It stars Michael Douglas and Sean Penn and is called simply “The Game”. It is a complex story about a multi-millionaire who is so intensely focused upon his money making that he has forgotten to treat people as people. He is sucked into a game where he eventually looses his home, his company, and his money and ends up poor, waking up in Mexico in a cemetery with no wallet. The R-rating is for language and a couple of love scenes, but mostly for the violence and intensity. Despite the R-rating issues, there is a lot to be learned from this movie about what is important in life. Or, you can learn by reading Proverbs…

Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23; Psalm 125; James 2:1-17; Mark 7:24-37

Our first reading today is from the 22nd chapter of Proverbs, which is part of the collection labeled “Solomon’s Proverbs”. You remember Solomon, don’t you? He was King David’s son, known for being the wisest king of Israel, or even the wisest man who ever lived. He gives us a series of proverbs, short, easy to remember verses that give us wise advice.

A good name is to be chosen over great wealth;
favor is better than silver and gold.

The rich and the poor have this in common:
the Lord made them both.

The one who sows injustice will reap disaster,
and the rod of his fury will be destroyed.

A generous person will be blessed,
for he shares his food with the poor.

Don’t rob a poor man because he is poor,
and don’t crush the oppressed at the gate,
for the Lord will take up their case
and will plunder those who plunder them.
These proverbs talk about the trade off between wealth and a good reputation, about how to treat people who have less goods and money than we do, about the inherent commonality between all people.

You know, as children and teenagers, we all had a tendency to look for status. We looked for the approval of others – our parents, our teachers, our friends. Unfortunately, we often sought a higher status by finding ways to push down other people, those children and teenagers around us.

Certain things are so common in our culture that we take them for granted. As children, we or our friends made fun of the boy who had a speech defect, we laughed behind the back of the girl whose choice of clothes showed she shopped at Gabe’s rather than a fashionable department store, we giggled at the child who wore clothes too long or too short, we had special words for the child that was fat or skinny, who was short or tall, who had skin that was too dark, a haircut that was strange or new, an accent that was different, a response that was just a bit too slow or had trouble reading aloud in class or knew all the answers. Differences were weaknesses, a way to step on top of someone else. Above all, children and teenagers instinctively knew when another child’s parents had a different amount of money from them – if the other child had less money, that was a reason to pick on them, to laugh at them, to push them around. If the other child had more money, that was a reason to hate them.

Even as adults, our culture asks us to focus upon our status. Our teeth must be white, our hair must have bounce, our bodies must be buff, our cars must be cool, and our clothes be clean and fashionable. Our nails must be neat, our beards trimmed, our tats must be just right, and our shoes must shine. We have to live in the right neighborhoods, our children go to the right schools, and we have to hold the right opinions of our politicians. Our homes must be decorated and our cars must be polished while our back porch’s must have all the right accessories from The Home Depot. And we all play the game to some extent – but I often wonder – when is our nest feathered enough? When do we cross the line from having a comfortable house to becoming greedy, stingy, and selfish? When is our nest feathered enough? After all, Solomon tells us “the generous person will be blessed, for he shares his food with the poor.”

Solomon also reminds us of two things. First, “The rich and the poor have this in common: the LORD made them both.”

You’ve undoubtedly heard of Pablo Picasso, the Spanish painter that created so many works of art that are difficult to understand. Do any of you have a genuine Picasso painting on your wall? If you do, I’ll give you a $100 for it today. I might even give you $200 if it looks good. That’s because a genuine Picasso sold at auction in 2015 for $179 million.

But imagine that you could have an actual photograph of God? What would that photograph be worth? Would its value be dropped just because someone else had a photograph of God in a different time, at a different place, at a different angle? No, both would be of immense value. And that is what we are, for Genesis 1:27 tells us we are all created "in the image of God". For we are all images of God, special three-dimensional photographs of our four-dimensional God, the God that exists throughout all space and all time. We are all images of God, just made from different angles at different times, in different places. And thus, we are all worthy of the respect due a fellow image of God, for when you harm the soul of another, you are marking, cutting, or tearing that beautiful image of God.

Remember that $179 million Picasso painting? Of course, that’s nothing compared to the Leonardo Da Vinci painting that sold last November for $450 million. It is appropriately, a painting by Da Vinci of Jesus, called Salvator Mundi – the Savior of the World. How very appropriate! $450 million for an image of an imagining of an image of God. How much more valuable would an original image of God be? Billions?

The second thing that Solomon reminds us is that we are not to harm the poor or downtrodden, “for the Lord will take up their case and will plunder those who plunder them.” I’ll put it in the language of children. If you are mean to defenseless people, God will revenge them. A sobering thought, isn’t it, that the homeless man or addicted woman we feel uncomfortable around is protected by God.

But respect for the poor and downtrodden isn’t limited in the Bible to King Solomon and what he knew of God’s character. Our Gospel reading today tells of a time when Jesus needed a vacation. He'd been trying to take a couple days off for a couple of weeks. After the episode of feeding the 5000, and the Pharisees hassling him and his disciples about the way they ate their bread, Jesus left the region around Galilee and walked up to Tyre and Sidon, modern day Lebanon.

When he go there, he tried to simply take a few days off at a house, but people noticed Him, like Brad Paisley trying to walk through a county fair. A woman whose daughter was possessed by an evil spirit came to him and fell at his feet, asking Jesus to drive out the demon. And then, apparently because the woman was a Greek-speaking local, descended from Phoenician sailors, Jesus tells her, referring to the people of Israel: “Allow the children to be satisfied first, because it isn’t right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs”.

Imagine Jesus refusing to heal a woman’s child because she was not Jewish! And he called her a dog, which was definitely NOT a complement in those days. But it should be remembered that the people of Tyre and Sidon, of Phoenicia were the people who had worshiped Baal during the time of David. The Jews of the day despised these people, for they worshiped other gods and did not follow the law of Moses. Just as the Christians of today despise many of our neighbors who worship chemicals or haven’t followed the rules of our society. Jesus chose to challenge her, to see if she really had faith in Him or not. Was her pride stronger than her love for her daughter?

But this woman had spunk. She said, “Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” She was willing to take the insult if her daughter was healed – and she was sure that Jesus could heal her daughter! She had faith that Jesus could do just that!

And Jesus showed her his essential nature, helping all who had faith in Him. He told her, “Because of this reply, you may go. The demon has gone out of your daughter.” And when she got back home, the demon was gone. Her faith in Jesus had been answered.

Jesus then took a long walk around the far side of the Sea of Galilee to the region of the Decapolis, which means the region of the Ten cities on the southeast side of the Sea of Galilee. A group of people brought a deaf man to Him for healing.

Now at the time, the Deaf were considered sub-human, considered stupid because they could not talk plainly, and picked on by people sneaking up behind them. But Jesus treated this man as a man, healing him as any other person, which astonished the people. The man wanted healing and that was good enough for Jesus.

You see, disabilities in this day were considered to be God’s punishment for the sins of an person or the sins of his parents – which is a view our culture still holds today, although it is buried a bit under the guise of science.

After all, don’t most of us consider that the difficulty in breathing that a man or woman has after smoking for twenty years is the natural punishment for smoking? Don’t we consider the yellow skin from cirrhosis of the liver to be the natural punishment for a lifetime drinking too much alcohol? Don’t we even consider behavior difficulties, and the bad eyesight and deafness of a child from what we call fetal alcohol syndrome as a misguided punishment to the child because of his mother’s sin of drinking too much while pregnant? Don’t we blame all sorts of inabilities to get along in society on the moral failings of the parents, and all sorts of addictions on the moral failings of the person? Don’t we often blame being poor on the moral failings of the person – if they’d work harder, avoid drugs, avoid alcohol, stop spending money on cigarettes, on gambling, they wouldn’t be poor?

And so, for many people, if a person is sick because of a moral failing, an addiction, a bad habit, a foolish decision, then aren’t we still saying that this is God’s punishment for sin and therefore, they aren’t deserving of help?

Isn’t this just what we are saying when we say, “let the druggies die?”

Aren’t we glad that Jesus didn’t decide to let us die because of our moral failings, for we have all failed to live up to God's standards - even our own standards of right and wrong. Aren’t we glad that He chose to give His life for us, to reconcile us with our Heavenly Father, to give us life?

You see, both Solomon and Jesus told us to help the poor, the downtrodden, the oppressed, the disabled. For one simple reason – they are images of God, created by God just as we were. Each of us are worth billions of dollars or...we are priceless.

And God loves everyone of us. Enough that His Son died for us. If Christ would sacrifice His life for us, miserable people that we are…can we give up some time, some treasure, some kind words and deeds for the people we see around us every day?

I’d like to tell you a story that shows just how much God loves each of us.

Last Friday afternoon, Saundra and I went up to the Pittsburgh VA hospital because one of her people was having open heart surgery, and his wife was there all alone. We left about 12:30, hit major traffic just above Morgantown and again at the merge with I-70. Eventually, we made it onto I-376, down to the Fort Pitt tunnels, across the bridge and up the Mon River to Oakland, found the VA, but were on the wrong side. We called in, talked to a pleasant lady at the information desk, and were told how to get into the parking garage, which we did, driving the wrong way in a one-way inside the garage.

When we entered the building – a huge entrance – we must have looked lost, because no one was at the information desk, but someone pointed us to the back-up person. She directed us and we found where the OR waiting room was, but our woman wasn’t there. About this time, we both hit the restroom – 3 hours in the car is a long time! Saundra called her, and found out she was in another waiting room just down the hall. We found her – her husband was still in recovery, and remained there for the next hour as we talked about hearts and kids, dogs and homes, church and Christ.

Eventually, we were able to see her husband in ICU. He made it through the surgery just fine and she felt much better after she had seen him. We said our prayers and left, stopping at restrooms on the way out. Eventually, around 4:30, we moved out into rush hour Pittsburgh. Unfortunately, I made the wrong decision at a turn, and we found that we could not get back on I-376, but had to take the Birmingham bridge to the South Side, having to move out of the way of a turning bus because we had stopped too far forward at a corner.

Once again, crossing the bridge, we were in the wrong lane, so we had to double-back to head south along the Mon River. It was about this point, just as we had got back into the right way out of town, led by our trusty Google Maps telephone app on my phone, that Saundra realized she didn’t have HER phone. We called it. No answer, so it wasn’t in the car. So I pulled off, swung around, and we headed back to the hospital to find the phone.

I dropped Saundra off at the front entrance and went to the now-familiar parking garage. Meanwhile, Saundra went to the information desk and asked if anyone had turned in her phone. No luck. She went back up to the waiting room. One man – no phone. She check the restroom. No phone. She even went to the ICU – thankfully the woman was gone and the man was asleep. But no phone.

By this time, I’ve come in and talked with the woman at the information desk, and the backup information person at another desk, finding out what the plan was if Saundra did NOT find the phone. All the time, I’m calling her phone every couple of minutes. I settled in to wait for Saundra, because I knew she would have to come out this way. Sure enough, she came down the hallway from the elevators and then she checked the restroom. I called her phone again. Very shortly, Saundra came out, holding the phone high in victory as she walked past the backup lady and up to me at the information desk. Both of the VA women were clapping their hands.

Saundra came up, saying “Praise God, it was in the bathroom stall! God is good.” The information desk lady agreed, “God IS good!’ And then, her tone changed, and she said, “I’ve been dealing with a rough patch today.” “Yes?”, we said. “My 23-year old son died in a car crash six months ago and I keep wondering, ‘was he alone? Did he cry for his momma?’”

Saundra reassured her that Jesus was with him, that he wasn’t alone, and that Jesus would have said, “I’m here now – Momma will be along soon.” The woman took up that thought and ran with it. Her whole attitude changed from sadness to joy as she realized that it really wasn’t going to be all that long before she would see her son – and her son would not be waiting alone. She apologized for bothering us. I said, “We’re both pastors. It’s what we do.” The woman look up in amazement as God's amazing coincidence hit her.

Saundra said, “And God knew that you needed to know you’re not alone, too. Now we know why I had to lose my phone today.” And there was much joy, praising of God, and tears. After a few minutes, we took our leave and headed out of Pittsburgh, this time making it to I-376, fighting traffic at Washington, having supper while we waited for the traffic to clear, and finally getting home around 9:30.

We had gone to Pittsburgh to be with a lonely, scared woman whose husband was undergoing major surgery. But God knew that we were needed elsewhere. We ended up helping another lonely, scared woman we had never met before, a woman whose Friday afternoon was fast becoming a lonely Friday evening and weekend with many hours to go before any hope of comfort. She needed to see Jesus in the flesh – and late Friday afternoon, Jesus came to see her in our skins.

Folks, this is the reason we have church! It is so we can learn how to be Jesus in the flesh to other people. Jesus in the flesh to ALL people. It is so all people can learn just how much God loves us, not because of the good things we do, but in spite of all the bad things we have done and said. It is so we can change the terrible world around us into a world where compassion and love for others is common, normal, and expected because everyone knows that if they follow Jesus they will live forever, reuniting with loved ones some day, living in a society that is fair, finding joy in lost phones.

Saundra and I are just two people. Out here in this room there are dozens of people. On the Internet, this sermon will be read by hundreds of people. Imagine if each of us was ready to step up to praise God in the small things like finding a misplaced phone. Imagine if each of us were ready to respond to people who talked about rough places in their lives, in the hospitals, in the Wal-marts, in the Circle K’s, the 7/11's, the Starbucks, in the McDonald’s, in the workplaces of our lives. Imagine if we were all doing this every week, every day even. What would happen to the world around us?

The women at the VA did not look like us on the outside, they did not have our accents, they did not dress like us. We could have just treated them as human-looking robots, as dogs, like people so often treat people at information desks and checkout counters and McDonald’s order counters. But on the inside, they were children of God, images of God just as we are, special portraits of God taken from a different angle than we are, but infinitely valuable, just as we are. We try to approach people with this idea in mind - that all people are images of God. And this is the point of our readings today.

Our proverbs reading has this point – we are to treat all people well, because the LORD is the maker of them all.

Take this reading from Proverbs 22 and learn it.

A good name is to be chosen over great wealth;
favor is better than silver and gold.

The rich and the poor have this in common:
the Lord made them both.

The one who sows injustice will reap disaster,
and the rod of his fury will be destroyed.

A generous person will be blessed,
for he shares his food with the poor.

Don’t rob a poor man because he is poor,
and don’t crush the oppressed at the gate,
for the Lord will take up their case
and will plunder those who plunder them.

For like Michael Douglas in “The Game”, you may be poor the day after tomorrow. Will you have shown the world – and God - who you really are?