Our Gospel reading of the morning is not one I would have ever chosen.  It is the lectionary reading for the day.

Saint Luke tells us that Jesus continues to provoke the anger of religious leaders as he challenges them in the seat of their power, Jerusalem.  Jesus tells them that the temple “adorned with beautiful stones” will be destroyed.  He says with words what he has been saying with his actions during his entire ministry: God’s home is not among jewels but in the love of our hearts and the generosity of our deeds.

The disciples, preoccupied with rumors of the apocalypse, are slow to understand.  Jesus assures them that though natural catastrophes will happen, what is more important are the personal catastrophes that will occur when we take God’s word out of places of worship and into the streets.  In a world where love, justice and mercy count for little, the Gospel can bring grave consequences, not alone from the power structure, but sometimes from those we love and trust the most.

Jesus brought the wrath of the powerful upon himself by challenging all that was considered sacred.  He calls us as disciples to do the same and says if and when we do, we, too, will suffer.  Jesus assures us, however, “If we are faithful,” “not a hair of your head will perish, for by your endurance you will gain your souls.”

Let us pray:
Eternal One, you have created the world and everything in it and called it good, so help us to know and trust the goodness of your creation, and give us the courage and steadfastness of faith to hold to the good in all we do and to live as your stewards in the world each week.  In the spirit of Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Barry Schwarts, Professor of Psychology and Social Theory at Swarthmore College, walked into the local GAP to purchase a pair of jeans.  Barry is middle-aged, so he was probably already feeling a little out of place.  His discomfort increased when the clerk asked him if he wanted slim fit, easy fit, or relaxed fit, regular or faded, stone washed or acid washed, button fly or regular.  All he wanted was a pair of jeans.

Standing at the counter at the GAP, Barry concluded that he was spending much longer in the store than he had planned, investing, as he says, “Time, energy and no small amount of self doubt, anxiety, and dread.”  He finally chose easy fit.  Being an academic, he started to process and evaluate his experience.  His next stop was the supermarket and now energized, he made a loose inventory:  “85 varieties of crackers, 285 of cookies, 230 different soups, 120 pasta sauces and 175 kinds of salad dressing.”  He said he began to suspect that at some point “choice no longer liberates; it might even be said to tyrannize.”

His book, The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less, has received a lot of attention, with its conclusion that “There are a lot of people walking around, really, really dissatisfied with their lives and unable to put their finger on what it is that’s so troublesome.”

Is it any wonder, with this multiplicity of choices, that so many have so much difficulty in knowing and doing what is good?  Living in a complex world, it is no wonder we find it so difficult to see the good, let alone hold fast to the good.  The problemis that it has always been difficult to know what is good and to do the good in the real world.  It is messy and complicated out there, full of ambiguity. What is the good in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Israel?

What is the good when it comes to the [stem cell research] rights of women to make their own decisions about pregnancy and child bearing? What is the good when it comes to the rights for same sex couples to marry?  It is complicated out there in the world, and so it has always been tempting to Christians to turn our back on the world, to concede that holding fast to the good is not all that easy, may not even be possible, out there in the ambiguity of the world, so we will stick to an environment over which we have at least some minimum control and stay safely within the church.

Moreover, the world does not seem much interested in the good.  Huge American corporations lie to the government, to their own employees and stockholders.  Once respected corporate names disappear in disgrace.  Mutual fund managers, major insurance companies – each day a new revelation of the misuse of public trust.

And have you been to a movie lately and sat through the previews? American popular culture is obsessed with the violent and the ugly.  It has been observed that the most profitable motion pictures by a wide margin are those with extreme violence; a close second are the ones which combine sex and violence, often at the expense of women.

So you see, the temptation is to shut it all out and to stay safely in here, in the comfort and security of this sanctuary, this faith community, to wash our hands of the world, to turn away from the world, to give up on witnessing to our faith and working in the world for the common good.

This temptation to turn away from the world has been almost irresistible from the very first days of the Christian church.  There have been, from the very beginning and continue to be, those who seek a cloistered monastery or convent.  Within the first Christians were tiny monitories.  Ridiculed, persecuted by the culture around them, it was understandable that they might withdraw, retreat from the world to the security and safety of their own faith community.  But they would not do it; they would not retreat from the world.  Their faith would not allow it.  Their discipleship as followers of Jesus Christ would not permit it. Those first Christians, tiny minority though they were, went out to turn the world upside down.

Listen to the words of faith and challenge they have left for us:
 The Letter to the Hebrews:  “Hold fast. . .provoke one another to love and good deeds.”
 I Thessalonians: “Always seek to do good to one another and to all.”
 First Corinthians: “Be courageous, be strong, let all that you do be done in love.”

The words from Paul’s letter to the Galatians which is our text of the morning: “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow. . so let us not grow weary in doing what is right.”  Then the promise of Jesus from the Gospel of Saint Luke: “If we are faithful, not a hair of your head will perish, for by your endurance you will gain your souls.”

The national election is over – did I hear someone say, “Thank God.”  What a long, tedious, divisive, outrageously expensive process. There must be a better way!  Special interest groups alone spent a million dollars a day.  At last it is over. The work of the church continues. We hear those voices calling to us from those early Christians, from those who have come before us in this place: “Hold fast to the good.”  Hold fast to the good.

In the words of that magnificent Easter proclamation: “The victory has been won, the mopping up operation has begun.”  As the work of the church continues we must not, we will not surrender the moral high ground to our sisters and brothers of the religious right.  Our moral position is based on the biblical mandate to seek justice for all God’s children.

Nevertheless, there is something called the fatigue of the faithful.  I feel something of that: do any of you feel it also?  There are days I weary of the long, long struggle.  Then I hear those voices from the great cloud of witnesses in the listening skies calling: “Don’t quit.  Don’t give up.”

Saying to us, as we saw last week on All Saints’ Sunday, since you are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, run with perseverance the race which is set before you, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of your faith.  Scripture urges us not alone to hold fast to the good, it points us to the good.  As in the words of the prophet: “God has showed you what is good and what does God require of you but to do justice and love mercy and kindness and to walk humbly with your God?”

Or again, in words which have become so familiar to us: “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”  Justice is a bi-partisan issue!  The Bible has a great deal to say about economics and economic justice and public policy and personal behavior.  It is hard to miss.

It may cause us to be uncomfortable to hear it, but deep in the Biblical tradition is an absolute moral imperative to treat the poor with decency, respect and generosity, not only in acts of personal compassion, but in the way society itself is structured.  It is the last part which causes the greatest discomfort: This Biblical mandate to work for a more just society, where all God’s children have health insurance, where no child is left behind, where no one goes to bed hungry in the most affluent nation in the world.
No one articulates this cause of justice for the poor more clearly than some of the prophets, who often made their contemporaries so uncomfortable they were sent into exile.  Speaking truth to power is never popular.  Yet an important part of the history of Judaism and of the early Christian church is the story of faith colliding with issues of economic justice.

Listen to another voice speaking of the greater good.  Here is what Gandhi had to say when he described the seven social sins which can not only destroy nations but are also capable of destroying persons.  To struggle against these social sins is to fight for their opposites.  Here are what Gandhi says are the seven social sins:

Politics without principle.
Wealth without work.
Commerce without morality.
Pleasure without conscience.
Education without character
Science without humanity
Worship without sacrifice.

 Exactly what Jesus is saying in our Gospel reading of the morning.

These may all be civil, corporate, public values, but they begin with our faith as Christians:  values which we embrace when we risk taking our faith out from the safety of the sanctuary into the world.

The election is over: the work of the church continues, empowered by the Biblical imperative for social justice in the name of the God who lifts up the poor.  What about health care and education, the two things the poor must simply have if there is any hope of rising out of poverty? We don’t need a constitutional marriage amendment—we need social justice for the poor and for each of God’s children.

This all has a way of coming into even sharper focus on this Christian Enlistment Stewardship Sunday when we bring our pledges of financial support and our gifts of our talents and time to undergird the ministry of this church for the year which lies ahead.  Whenever we are reminded that we are called to live in the world as the stewards of God, then we know again that how we decide to handle our weaknesses and dedicate our strengths, it matters.  It makes a difference—to God, to our church, to our gamily and friends, and no less it matters to our own self.  Stewardship reminds us that the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness therein. We are a pilgrim people passing through here with a heavenly destination.  While here, God calls us to live faithfully and give generously from our abundance.

A reporter interviewing a 104-year-old woman asked: “What is the best thing about being 104?”  She replied, “No peer pressure.”

One of the wonderful things about being a member of the covenant community called the church is we can encourage each other.  You encourage one another with your presence here this morning. The church is not just for you: it is for those around you who are encouraged by your presence. Think how lonely this place would be if it was filled with only you.

A Sunday such as this serves as a wake-up call, a ringing reminder that we are all in the business of ministry together here at the Old South Church in Boston.  We need one another – red state people and blue state people – we need to encourage and support one another and our first task in living in the faith is to support one another in our mutual efforts to hold fast to the good and to live that faith out in the world in our continued passion and commitment to hasten the day when justice will roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.

I wonder about this. Can it be that at the end of the day inner strength is not simply the capacity to endure, to hold fast to what is good, it is the capacity to give and to serve?  When you are out there in the turmoil of the world this week, surrounded by far too many choices and you seek the deeper faith and the inner strength not only to be sustained and to hold fast to what is good, but to overcome, do not look only for what you can get; rather look for what you have been given and for what you can give and share in return.

In this most church-going country in the world, one of the reasons some churches are so filled with people is that they do not hear a compelling demanding Gospel that challenges the conventional wisdom of the world and says that the things worth fighting and struggling for are justice and peace, equality and fairness. Those who did remain in church after hearing such a Gospel would go out and turn the world upside down, as did those first disciples.

Make no mistake. We have a morality which is Biblically based and theologically sound, summed up in Jesus’ words: “You shall love God with all your heart and all your mind and all your souls and all your strength, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Do this,” Jesus said, “and you will live.”

The fatigue of the faithful.

Let us never tire of doing good, for if we do not slacken our efforts we shall in due time reap our harvest.  We go forward together strong in the promise of Jesus;  By your endurance you will save your souls.”

In His strong spirit, Amen.

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