Community Church Sermons
Year C
March 10, 2013
The Fourth
Sunday in Lent
D’var Torah
2
Corinthians 5:16-21
Rev. Martin C. Singley, III
Senior
Pastor
There is in Jewish religious practice something called “d’var torah.” The term literally means “a word of Torah” – a sermon or lesson based upon on the Torah text of the day. A d’var torah can be delivered by anyone – a rabbi or a layperson – because d’var torah reflects a fundamental Jewish belief that the Bible has infinite interpretative possibilities. This is based upon the belief that when Moses came down from Mt. Sinai with the tablets of law each person standing there saw a different face of Torah. In other words, those who stood over there saw one facet of the tablets, those over there saw another, and so on. So there are a myriad of viewpoints and countless ways a verse of the Bible can be seen and interpreted. And it is a joyful exercise in the synagogues when people meet together and share each other’s discoveries. Each person sees the text from a different angle, and each time you study a verse you may see it differently than the time before. Jewish people – through d’var torah - truly begin to appreciate how deep and rich the Bible really is.
We don’t have anything like d’var torah in modern Christianity. The first Christians had it at the beginning, but pretty much lost it as Christianity became an institutionalized state religion. You know what happens then: the hierarchy strips people of the right to their own beliefs. The Pope, the bishop, the priest, the minister, the denomination, the church, the bible study leader tells you what the Bible says and means. And in some of our Christian traditions, if you dare question the “TRUTH” that others have established, you are labeled a heretic and sometimes told you’re going straight to hell.
Well, you’re not.
I think the places where Christian faith is really flourishing, and where people are truly following Jesus and reflecting his way, truth and life in authentic ways, are those places where people are encouraged to think freely, to ask questions, to swim against the prevailing current, and dare to ask the Holy Spirit to guide them more deeply into the Bible. These are settings where people are not afraid to listen to a different point of view, and understand that God reveals himself to those outside our own frame of reference. Wherever something like d’var torah is practiced, our faith – and our Bible – come alive!
Today’s parable is a good example.
Most of us grew up knowing this story in Luke 15 as the parable of the Prodigal Son. We know it so well, we can almost recite the plot – a son asks his father for the inheritance he will one day receive. The boy takes the money and goes into a far country where he lives recklessly and loses everything. Just to survive he takes a job on a farm feeding pigs. You know how Jewish people love pork, right? So you can see how far this boy has fallen.
After a time, the boy comes to his senses. Realizing that even his father’s servants are better off than he is, he decides to go home. When they meet – the father and this prodigal son – the father surprises him by not requiring confession and remorse. He’s just glad the kid is home! So he throws him a party complete with a fatted calf and a great big sign that says, “Welcome home!”
Meanwhile, the older son is out working in the fields. He hears the party music coming from the farmhouse and goes to investigate. When he sees this is a welcome home party for his no-good younger brother he gets upset. He complains to his father, reminding him that he’s always obeyed the rules, worked hard, and lived responsibly. “But you never threw a party for me!” he says to his father. The father says, “Son, you’re always with me and everything I have is yours. But we had to be glad and celebrate because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost, but now is found.”
So let’s “d’var torah” this parable.
We all see it from different angles. And when we back up from it a little bit, we see that this is not a parable about just a prodigal son…but it’s about a father, and an older brother, too.
I wonder, when you look at the characters do you see yourself in one of them?
How many of you identify with the rebellious, younger brother who throws his life away in profligate living?
How about the forgiving father who welcomes the boy back with no consequences?
Well, what about the loyal, obedient, responsible older brother who never causes anybody any trouble but never gets a party thrown for him??
You know, it may just be that we all have some of that younger brother in us. Lou Gehrig, the famous New York Yankee baseball player came up to bat in the 9th inning of a tie game with 2 outs and runners on 2nd and 3rd. A base hit would drive in the winning run. Gehrig worked the count to 3 and 2 and Yankee fans were beside themselves with excitement. The pitcher took the sign, wound up, and hurled a fastball.
Gehrig just stood there.
Strike 3. Game over.
The fans couldn’t believe it. Gehrig never took a called third strike. And they started yelling at the umpire when Gehrig turned to him and said something. He almost never complained about a call, and the fans knew that call must’ve been a bad one.
Later, a sportswriter found the umpire and Gehrig together. He asked the ump about the call and what Gehrig had complained about. The umpire turned to Gehrig and said, “You tell him what you said.”
Gehrig - a bit embarrassed - answered. “I said, ‘Mr. Ump…I’d give ten dollars to have that one back again!”
The story goes that the sportswriter
added these words to his next day’s column: “There are people all over the world who would give ten
dollars or ten thousand dollars to get just one minute back and for the
privilege of changing something they said or did in that minute.”
Is that
you too? Are there minutes, or words, or actions you wish you could have back?
You see,
the story of the prodigal son is not just about a reckless, rebellious kid running
away from home. It’s also about people who mourn what they’ve lost and wish
they could get back again. Like youthfulness. Or a lost
relationship. There are some of those things in my life. How about
yours?
D’var torah.
There’s a
little of the younger brother in most of us.
And a lot of the older brother.
I find it
interesting that whenever I ask people which of the
three characters they identify with, most seem to pick the older brother. Like
him, we were good kids growing up, and have always lived pretty responsible
lives. For the most part, we’ve followed the rules, and worked hard to succeed
and take care of our responsibilities. And those are good traits to have.
But
there’s another side to the older brother.
Rhonda,
do you have any money with you today? Say a twenty dollar bill? Can I borrow
it?
Anybody
want this twenty-dollar bill? (go into congregation
and play it up)
(Crumple
it) Still want it? (Throw it down) Still want it? (Stomp on it) Still want it?
Why?
Because –
no matter how crumpled it is, no matter how many times thrown on floor, no
matter how hard I stomp on it - it’s still worth twenty-dollars!
The older
brother lost sight of this. He saw how crumpled his brother was, how fallen,
how stomped on by his own irresponsible choices and by the world.
And in
the process, he forgot the boy was HIS BROTHER – and that he was WORTH
SOMETHING.
Despite
all the crumpling and stomping this twenty dollar bill never lost its value.
And neither have you – or the men in prison the Kairos
Team will reach out to – or that fallen friend of yours.
D’var torah!
I
sometimes forget that too. I lose sight of the ultimate worth of others and see
only how crumpled up, fallen and stomped on they are. The older brother is me.
Is it you?
And then
there’s the dad.
I’m not
sure I’d be so welcoming of my prodigal son. Instead of a party, I might give
him a spanking – or ground him for the rest of his life. But no, this father
welcomes the boy home and celebrates his arrival. And what especially strikes
me is something I missed in the story for many, many years. The Bible never
tells us that the boy finally came home. No, it tells us that “when he was still
a long ways away, his father saw him, and was filled with compassion, and ran
to greet him, and threw his arms around him and kissed him.”
You see,
the dad wasn’t waiting for his son to come home. The dad was searching for his
boy. His whole life had become focused on finding and welcoming his lost
twenty-dollar bill – his son.
Don’t get
so hung up on the family dynamics here that you miss the point.
The
father was practicing the Gospel of Jesus.
Listen to
these words of 2 Corinthians 5:
16 So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in
this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come:[a] The old
has gone, the new is here! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave
us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in
Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he
has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore
Christ’s ambassadors, as though
God were making his appeal through us.
The
Gospel of Jesus Christ is about bringing people home to God.
This is
the job of Christ’s followers – you and me and all of us together as the
Church.
Though we
may not have identified with the father in the story, we’d better get to know
him because the father represents who and what we are to be.
We are
God’s ambassadors – actively seeking to find and welcome home those who are
wandering through the world lost. So our Kairos team
will go INTO Morgan State Prison and invite inmates to come home. Our
Friendship Kitchen will cook meals and deliver them OUT to frail elderly
persons out in the counties to embrace them with friendship and the love of
God. And you and I…well, what WILL we do when we leave here today?
There are
countless prodigal sons and daughters all around us – in our families – among
our neighbors and friends.
And they
need someone like you!
D’var torah!
(Lou Gehrig story adapted from Ray Angell, Baskets of Silver, pp. 35-36)