Isaiah 59:9-20
Psalm 13
Hebrews 5:11-6:12
Mark 10:46-52

The Old Testament reading and the epistle reading this morning seem made to order to make both the preacher and the congregation uncomfortable. In the Old Testament passage, the prophet focuses on the problem of injustice and puts the blame squarely on his hearers: “For our transgressions are multiplied before you, and our sins testify against us; for our transgressions are with us, and we know our iniquities” (Is. 59:12).

The Hebrews passage threatens about the dangers of apostasy. The apostle warns that in the case of those who have fallen away “it is impossible to restore them to repentance . . . since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt” (Heb. 6:4, 6). Should I preach a sermon to a chapel full of seminarians in which I accuse you of injustice whose “transgressions are multiplied” before God? Or rather should I go down the path of suggesting that you might be apostates who are guilty of crucifying the Son of God to your own harm? Best to stick to the Gospel story of Jesus giving sight to Blind Bartimaeus.

However, I think that both the Old Testament passage and the epistle are on target for where we find ourselves in contemporary culture. The problem of injustice is a concern that plagues not only the culture but the church. We approach a political election in a matter of days in the midst of what feels like the most politically divided period in my lifetime. And the rabid disagreements between both political parties are primarily moral. The resentment of both sides of the electorate against one another stems out of a kind of moral outrage that is rooted in mutual accusations of injustice.

And of course, the church itself has had to deal with issues of injustice in the past couple of decades, particularly connected to issues of clerical abuse, primarily sexual abuse but also leadership abuse that has led to the scandals of clergy being defrocked, but also disagreement about the nature of Christian morality that has led to denominational splits among the mainline churches.

Concerning apostasy, we are living in the midst of an abandonment of Christian faith in the last several decades that seems unprecedented. The brief religious revival of the Jesus Movement and the charismatic renewal of the 1970s was followed almost immediately by the rise of the New Age phenomena in the following decades, of the cultural popularity of the New Atheists in the early twenty-first century, and the recent phenomenon of Christian Deconstruction in the last decade.

If you are hoping that I will resolve any of these problems this morning, you are expecting far more than a seminary professor can offer in a chapel sermon. I am not going to tell you how to vote next week, how to resolve the disagreements that have divided the mainline churches in the last two decades, or how we can reverse the numbers of people who are leaving the church.

I do think however that the lectionary passages from Isaiah and Hebrews can tell us something about what the Bible has to offer concerning the issues of injustice and apostasy. (more…)