Welcome to Life

based on Psalm 71, Luke 13



From an orthodox Jewish point of view, Jesus really is a scoff-law. He neglected the traditions and laws of the tribe. He was a non-conformist. An iconoclast. The priests of his day would go further and say he was a heretic. We, who have been taught to follow Jesus rather than Moses, tend to forget this. We see Jesus as the norm. He was not the Jewish norm. But what was he?



Our Psalm this morning may shed a little light on Jesus’ ministry. It is one of the hopeful psalms, one that sings of God’s dependability. We may return to God again and again knowing that God will be there and he will be on our side. The psalmist says to God, “you brought me safely through birth”, a reminder that God was there at the very beginning of our lives. Jesus represents a new “birthing”.



Of all the moments that will comprise our days, there is scarcely one more fraught with fear and danger than that moment of birth. We are expelled from the safety of the womb. We are sent where we have never been before into an existence about which we have no knowledge, and have only the vaguest sense of selfhood. We simply don’t know what’s happened to us and we have no expectation of what could or should happen next. Our very newness is all we really know.



I recall from somewhere that the noted psychologist Karl Menninger, in reflecting on this moment says of the newborn infant, “That first cry sounds very much like anger more than anything else.”



How reassuring then, to hear the psalmist say to God, “ I have relied on you from the day I was born. You brought me safely through birth,.”



I would propose that this incident in Jesus’ ministry is a similar kind of birthing. What had once been certain is suddenly overturned. What the Jews had always depended upon, the solid rock of the Mosaic law, was not only challenged, it was overthrown.



I remember Kenneth. Not quite ten years old, Kenny was already on his way to becoming a politician. He had a winning smile, a quick intelligence, an eager handshake that met no strangers, and a certain indefinable quality of personality that won instant trust. He wasn’t just a “nice kid”. He was special. When my wife commented on this quality in him, he grinned and confirmed her assessment of him. “Of course, I’m going to be president” he said. “Too bad I won’t be able to vote for you, though” Marilyn remarked. “Why not?” he asked, “You’re a Republican, aren’t you?” “Sorry,” she replied, “I’m a Democrat.” The look of dismay on Kenneth’s face told it all. She could not have shocked him any more deeply had she announced she was a drug-runner, or a serial murderer.



A silly analogy you say? Perhaps, but useful all the same. Kenneth was still at that age where the world was all one color, where right was right and no deviation was even thinkable. Had you met his family, you would have understood him even better, for he had been taught his truth from his earliest days. His truth was the truth because there was no other to even consider.



Now consider the shocked Pharisee watching in disbelief the miracle Jesus has just performed. He is the confident Jew, raised in a culture that had followed the teaching of Moses with faithfulness and total confidence. There was no other god. There was no other truth. There was no other way. One did not have to ponder about a decision, the proper way was already before them. Place Kenneth in that crowd around Jesus and he would have been as shocked as they were. What Jesus had done simply was not done.



But Jesus did it, and we have since commended his choice. Of course you heal. Any idiot would have, had they been able to. The Sabbath? No work on the Sabbath? Don’t be ridiculous. Of course you work on the Sabbath. You rescue an ox or an ass,. You know perfectly well you do. It would be stupid not to. So what’s the difference here?



There’s a whole way of life that’s different. There’s the loss of a certainty that is at stake. You just don’t start making up your own rules as you go along.



A play - and later a movie - I really liked asked this same question. It concerned the British statesman Thomas More and his battle with King Henry VIII. The issue seemed simple enough. Henry wanted to divorce his first wife and marry Ann Boleyn. The Catholic Church did not permit it. So Henry set up his own church and divorced his wife any way. When statesmen and church leaders objected, he demanded they sign a decree, under oath, stating he’d done the right thing. Thomas refused. Friends urged him to do it anyway. Just lie a little. More refused. Why? Because it meant making a statement under an oath, a promise before God. To swear such an oath would endanger his immortal soul. He goes to his death for it. Was Thomas right, or just pigheaded? Was he doing God’s will, or being a fool? The play leaves no doubt - Thomas is the hero, and he will eventually be granted sainthood for his faithfulness. But what about his friends, or Henry himself? Were they so wrong? Or were they simply stuck with a world view they could not see beyond?



The Jews who were shocked by Jesus’ breaking of the Sabbath Law were people who could not see beyond the sacredness of the Mosaic Law. Just as Kenneth could not imagine having a friend he liked turn out to be a Democrat. Such things simply don’t happen. They were impossible.



On a more personal level, I remember Larry. So hurt, so frightened, so defensive against criticism he could not even hear a compliment from his wife without finding a way to turn it into a complaint. When she tried to tell him how angry she was with his boss for treating him badly, Larry thought she was angry with him. I said, “Wait a minute, I don’t think you understood what Mary was saying. Will you say that again?” She did, and once more Larry bristled. “You see? She’s still doing it.” At that point I said, “Will you let me tell Larry what I heard you say?” “Please do” she replied. I then repeated the exact same words she’d used. I didn’t change a single one. Larry looked at me in surprise and said, “Oh, is that what she meant?” What made the difference? Not my words, they were the same: it was me. He had not already made up his mind what I would say, as he had about her.



The Jews had already made up their minds. They could not hear what Jesus was saying because he did not fit their expectations. He was an alien from outer space. He threatened their security, their sanity, their very lives. They worshiped a God who permitted no deviations. They worshiped a God who could get angry, and when that God got angry, the consequences were horrendous. Do you remember that TV commercial of many years ago? For margarine if I remember correctly. An angry woman dressed in flowing robes, wearing a crown, and swinging a wand around threateningly, producing thunder and lightning, shouts, “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature!” Change the gender, and you have an angry God, one you do well not to upset.



I grow repetitious. My point is simple. Jesus was showing us something new, something we were not able to grasp, something that simply did not make sense, and it frightened us. The Jews were in much the same position as that frightened newborn babe. We’re in a new environment. We have a new kind of freedom we didn’t know was possible. We don’t have the experience, the vocabulary, the mental equipment to know what to do with this new reality Jesus is showing us.



But Jesus is really nothing more than the midwife assisting us at our new birth. He is the embodiment of God, attending at our entrance into a new world. He understood what we could not yet comprehend. Life is birth. Each day is our birthday. Each hour is a whole new world. Each minute the entrance into a new reality we had not considered before.



Do you remember the moment it dawned on you you had “fallen in love”? How feeble even the words sound in trying to describe that moment. Everything changed. There was a different color in the sky. To feel love, is to feel a new kind of connectedness, to know what once was loneliness will never be that way again.



Of course, that newness brings many other sensations. I can still hear the sobs my wife cried, the first time she let me see I had hurt her. That was a new world too. Another birthing. Another beginning. But Jesus was showing us that we are not alone. We will see more, we will feel more, we will be more. That’s what life is really all about.

The psalmist was confident God was there at his birth. Jesus showed us God is there for all our birthings, if we will rely on him, trust him, dare to believe the impossible. He did not say such birthings would be pleasant, easy, natural. Neither did the psalmist. But both were confident we would never have to go through them alone. Even when we thought we were abandoned - remember Jesus on the cross cried out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” - even then, his God was there and Jesus could say, “Into your hands, I place my spirit.”



Welcome to life - God’s here and so glad to see you! Amen.