ST. Philips Cathedral Requiem Mass Sermon, November 1, 2013
November 14, 2013
(The following sermon was delivered by Jim Beaty on All Saints Day) 2013
For 24 years I have asked to be the preacher at this requiem that honors our homeless dead. At last, on this 25th year I AM the PREACHER. It’s a miracle. These are miracle days. Days when the IMPOSSIBLE becomes possible. Days when WHAT CANNOT HAPPEN is happening before our eyes. Days when WHAT CANNOT BE will be. Days when David with one smooth stone levels Goliath.
For 24 years I’ve heard great preachers from this very pulpit where I stand. Now, I AM the preacher. That frightens me, Sam. And the fear that I’m experiencing reminds me of the 8 year old boy who graduated from Vacation Bible School. His one responsibility was to quote Jesus saying, “Fear not it is I.” On the Sunday night of the graduation ceremony, the church is packed. The lights are low as they are tonight. His time comes. He walks out to center stage. His little bony knees are knocking together. His hands are shaking like leaves on the trees. The spotlight is on him; he sees his parents and his big sister. He cannot remember the verse, “FEAR NOT, IT IS I.” . . . Then he remembers and he shouts, “IT’S JUST ME AND I’M SCARED TO DEATH.” I join that little fellow, “It’s just me, and I’m scared to death.”
Dean Candler, on behalf of the Task Force Board of Directors, the staff and the residents at Peachtree Pine, I thank you, your staff and your congregation for the hospitality and grace you have shown in hosting this worship service. For 25 years the Cathedral has done this. And for the members of this parish who come faithfully, lovingly each month to minister to us at Peachtree Pine, we are most grateful. We thank you; we bless you all.
Anita Beaty, ironic, irenic, recusant), who never once bowed the knee to BAAL, who never yielded to the Empire, who never obeyed the principalities and powers but always dressed the wounds of the wounded and always applied balm to the broken. I thank you, sweetheart, love of my life.
AND NOW MAY THE WORDS OF MY MOUTH AND THE MEDITATIONS OF ALL OUR HEARTS BE ACCEPTABLE UNTO THEE, O LORD, OUR STRENGTH AND OUR REDEEMER.
Several years ago I taught English and Greek at a place called Beulah Heights University here in Atlanta. Mandatory Chapel services are held every Tuesday and Thursday morning. One Wednesday around NOON a fellow faculty member came to my office and asked if I would preach next day’s chapel. I said, “You must have had a cancellation.” He said, “We did.” I said, “I would.” Thirty minutes later a spokesperson for the president of the university invited me to her office. She thanked me for speaking on such short notice and gingerly asked would I please not say anything, “anything,” about the City of Atlanta. I said I had not planned to, but now that you mention it. I assured the messenger that I would be preaching from the 9th chapter of Jeremiah and that she and the president could relax.
Many years before that speaking engagement, the late Dan Sweat and I shared the podium at THE ATLANTA JUNIOR LEAGUE. Mr. Sweat, then president of Central Atlanta Progress, spoke first. After being introduced, he stepped to the podium and said that he was there to tell what the City of Atlanta was doing for homeless people. Following a long pause, Mr. Sweat took his seat beside me on the platform. The audience applauded his accuracy.
I am not here to talk about the City of Atlanta or about lawsuits. I am here to talk about Jerusalem, Jeremiah’s Jerusalem, 5th century b. c. Jerusalem. The Jerusalem that was carried away into Babylonian Captivity that lasted 70 years. The exile that followed Jerusalem’s and Judah’s treatment of its most fragile citizens, its poor, its frail, its widows, its children, its oppressed. Anything that I might say about the City of Atlanta or about current lawsuits would pale into nothingness compared to Jeremiah’s indictment of Jerusalem.
Of Jerusalem, Benjamin Disraeli said, “The view of Jerusalem is the history of the world; it is more; it is the history of heaven and earth.”
Of Jerusalem Amos Oz said, “The city has been destroyed, rebuilt, destroyed and rebuilt, again. Jerusalem is an old nymphomaniac who squeezes lover after lover to death, before shrugging him off her with a yawn, a black widow who devours her mates while they are still penetrating her.”
Of Jerusalem Muqaddasi in his DESCRIPTION OF SYRIA, INCLUDING PALESTINE, writes, “Jerusalem is the most illustrious of cities. Still Jerusalem has some disadvantages. Thus it is reported, ‘Jerusalem is a golden goblet full of scorpions.’”
It is IN Jerusalem that Jeremiah, age 18, is called to be a prophet. “The word of the Lord came to me saying, Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart. I appointed you as a prophet to the nations. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you. Then the Lord reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, Now I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant. (Jer. 1:4-10)
FOR 40 YEARS JEREMIAH PREACHED, “IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE THIS WAY!”
It is TO Jerusalem that Jeremiah announces the city’s shame, “As a thief is disgraced when he is caught, so the house of Israel is disgraced – – they, their kings and their officials, their priests and their prophets (Jer. 2:26)
FOR 40 YEARS JEREMIAH PREACHED, “IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.”
It is TO the streets of downtown Jerusalem that Jeremiah goes, like the Greek Diogenes with his lantern, looking for one honest person. “Go up and down the streets of Jerusalem, look around and consider, search through her squares. If you can find one person who deals honestly and seeks the truth, I will forgive this city. Although they say, As surely as the Lord lives, still they are swearing falsely.” Jer. 5:1-2
FOR 40 YEARS JEREMIAH PREACHED, “IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.”
It is IN Jerusalem that Jeremiah exerts MAXIMUM PRESSURE on specific wrongdoing downtown: “Among my people are wicked men (NRSV translates “wicked men” as SCROUNDRELS) wicked men who lie in wait like men who snare birds and like those who set traps to catch men. Like cages full of birds, their houses are full of deceit; they have become rich and powerful and have grown fat and sleek. Their evil deeds have no limit; they do not plead the case of the fatherless to win it, they do not defend the rights of the poor. . . .The prophets prophesy lies, the priests rule by their own authority, and my people love it that way. Jer. 5:26-28
FOR 40 YEARS JEREMIAH PREACHED, “IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.”
Just SOUTH of Jerusalem, King Manasseh ordered that children to be sacrificed to BAAL: “They have built the high places of Topheth in the Valley of Ben Hinnom to burn their sons and daughters in the fire – – something I did not command, nor did it enter my mind. . . . The day will come when this place will be called The Valley of Death where there will be no more room to bury the dead. (Jer.7:30-31)
For 40 YEARS JEREMIAH PREACHED, “IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.”
It is IN Jerusalem that Jeremiah comes loaded for bear against King Jehoiakim. He’s the King who in chapter 36 shreads Jeremiah’s manuscript and tosses it piece by piece into the fireplace. The prophet faces the king; TRUTH speaks to power: “Does it make you a king to have more and more cedar? Did not your father, Josiah, have food and drink? He did what was right and just, so all went well with him. He defended the cause of the poor and the needy, and so all went well. Is not that what it means to know me?” declares the Lord. “But your eyes and your heart are set only on dishonest gain, on shedding innocent blood, and on oppression and extortion.” (Jer. 22:15-17)
FOR 40 YEARS JEREMIAH PREACHED, “IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.”
Two of the gospels quote Jesus, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, You who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.” In the middle of Babylonian troop occupation of Jerusalem, the Lord commands Jeremiah to buy a field in nearby Anathoth, Jeremiah’s home. Why purchase a useless piece of real estate? Because a verse in the Book of Comfort, Chapter 32, promises, “Houses, fields and vineyards will again be bought in this place.” The IMPOSSIBLE will become possible. What cannot be will be.
In Act III of Shakespeare’s KING LEAR, the king is caught at night in a deadly snow storm. Lear and two companions, his Fool and the demented Tom ‘o Bedlam are at the point of freezing to death. Out on an English countryside they come upon a hovel that will shelter them. Tom ‘o Bedlam says to King Lear, you go in ahead of me. Lear responds: “I pray you go in yourself. Seek thine own ease. This tempest will not give me leave to ponder on things that would hurt me more. But I’ll go in. In boy, you go first. You homeless poverty. Nay, get you in. I’ll pray and then I’ll sleep. (Then Lear prays the greatest prayer in all of Shakespeare.) Poor naked wretches wherever you are, that endure the pelting of this pitiless storm, how shall your homeless heads and unfed sides, holey and torn raggedness, defend you from seasons such as these? O, I have taken too little care of this. Cure yourself, you who are powerful. Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel that you may SHARE the EXCESS YOU HAVE with them and show the heavens more just.”
KING LEAR JOINS JEREMIAH IN PROCLAIMING, “IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE THIS WAY!”
Sam Cooke in 1963 thrilled us with his ballad, “Change Gon Come.” He sang, I was born by the river in a little tent. And like the river I’ve been running every since. It’s been a long time, long time coming, but I know change gon come, O yes it will. I go to a movie and I go downtown, and somebody keep sayin don’t hang around. It’s been a long, long time comin but I know change gon’ come, o yes it will.
And may God bless you and you and you! And amen and amen and amen.
JWB
November 1, 2013
Dr. Jim Beaty 