Sunday, July 8, 2012

July 8, 2012, "Violence and Grace"

2 Samuel 5.1-4


The news is all around us.

The evening news, a mid-day report on our favorite radio station, the LA Times, the internet … journals and magazines …
No end to the stories, and most of them sad:
  • Giant corporations manipulate stock prices.
  • Famous movie star gets a divorce.
  • Unrest all around the world.
  • Muslims blow up a church.
  • Christians burn down a mosque.
We shake our heads.
Shed our tears.
Offer up a prayer:
Have mercy on our troubled world, O God.
Bear with us, we pray.
Keep loved ones safe.
Bless our leaders with patience and vision.
Deliver us from evil.

An excellent book about Los Angeles in the 20th Century … L.A. Noir … by John Buntin … weaves a tale of violence and grace around two characters: Chief of Police, William Parker and Mobster, Mickey Cohen (some of you remember their names and the headlines they generated).
My daughter gave me the book because she knows how much I’m interested in the places where I live … I’ve always made an effort to understand how and why a town looks and feels and lives like it does … and every place is different … and every place has its story!
Yet there’s a common thread to every story; certain themes emerge all the time: violence and grace … the dark side of life, and the bright light of hope … things going to hell in a handbasket and folks joining hands to make things better.

Violence and grace.

Mobster, Mickey Cohen, would kill without a second thought - it was a part of doing business.
He said in an interview years later, I killed no men that in the first place didn’t deserve killing.
Cohen’s nemesis was Chief of Police, William Parker. If you drive downtown, you may well pass the Parker Center, named after Chief Parker.
Cohen and Parker battled for the soul of the city.
As I read Buntin’s book, I kept saying to my wife, What a sad story.
At every turn of the page, graft, corruption, greed, people playing for power.
Movie studios and actors, mobsters, reporters, politicians, attorneys and bankers, and the police - everyone in someone’s pocket … everyone buying or selling influence … no one clean.
Mickey Cohen was kind to friends, generous with folks who worked for him, and he loved dogs. 
Chief William Parker was often mean-spirited, bigoted, and given to heavy drinking.
Even the worst are not always bad … and even the best are not always good.

But here we are.

I love Los Angeles … I ride the trains and take the bus … an amazing city of many cultures and languages, hopes and dreams.
From the ferris wheel on the Santa Monica Pier to the tall pines in Big Bear - we live in an amazing city.
I suppose we could say It’s a miracle that Los Angeles survived as it did.
What with all the violence, grace abounds!
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound.

In 1853, seven years before the Civil War, the Rev. Dr. Theodore Parker, an abolitionist working to free this nation from the evils of slavery, wrote: I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.
These words were likely the inspiration for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who said: The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.

The Bible is honest … 
And always hopeful.
Images of hope abound:
  • Let my people go.
  • The Promised Land.
  • The lion and the lamb lay down together.
  • A child leads them.
  • Justice rolls down like water.
  • The new heaven and the new earth.
  • Perfect light and no more tears.
Paul the Apostle writes to the Christians in Rome: where sin increased, grace abounded all the more [Romans 5.20].
God is not going to be defeated!
God’s purpose prevails.
The arc of history bends toward justice … to what is good and true and right … that which sets us free and gives us life … out of the house of bondage, out of the land of Egypt … through the wilderness, mana in the morning, water from a rock … until we find our way home!

That’s the story Samuel tells - grace, like a golden thread, woven into the dark tapestry of history … grace, like a cold beer on a hot day … grace, like a loved one’s smile at the end of a tough week … grace, like the love of our LORD Jesus born into dangerous times.

The opening chapters of 2 Samuel are neck-deep in blood.
The death of Saul.
The young mercenary killed by David’s servant.
War between Israel and Judah.
Abner murdered by Joab.
Saul’s son, Israel’s king, murdered by his own men.
They bring his head to David, and meet the same fate.
2 Samuel 3 says: The war between Saul’s house and David’s house was long and drawn out. 
Is there is any hope in any of this?
Any light?
Any grace?

2 Samuel 3 … a grace note: David kept getting stronger, while Saul’s house kept getting weaker.
It has to be David.
He’s not perfect … far from it … David sins with the best of them.
But he’s a man after God’s own heart.
David remains a man of deep loyalty.

If ANYTHING can be said about God, God is loyal.
Loyal to the creation God loves so dearly.
Loyal to the creature that bears God’s image.
Loyal to the dream that one day this creature will get it right.
So loyal, that God will do anything to make it work … even die on a Roman Cross, despised by his enemies, abandoned by his friends.
In the long and terrible drama of redemption, the loyalty of God … 
God doesn’t give up, no matter the cost.
God’s loyalty on every page of the Bible.
We call that loyalty Grace.
Amazing Grace … the purest grace of all.

When the Son of David is born in David’s little town … angels sing to shepherds in the hills; wise men from the east follow a star … the Anointed One is born.
The Anointed One renders unto the Father a great loyalty … the loyalty of love … a love rich and pure, a love big enough to fill every dark hole in the universe with light.
A love I can never give to the Father, so Jesus gives this love to the Father on my behalf.
For all of humanity … every last one of us - and even more: for all creatures, great and small … 
The Leviathan of the Deep, and the creepy-crawly critters of the night … 
The hawk flying high in the morning sky, and the zebra dancing across the plain … 
For all of creation - the Son of David is born.

Yes, there is violence, and plenty of it.
And there is grace, even more.
Grace, mercy and peace.
Glory to God.
And to the Son of David, eternal praise.
Amen and Amen!

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