Sermon, The Rev. Dr. Won-Jae Hur, Oct. 19, 2025

The 19th Sunday after Pentecost

Jer 31:27-34 / Ps 119:97-104 / 2 Tim 3:14-4:5 / Lk 18:1-8

We are starting off our Stewardship Campaign this week. For our newcomers who are not familiar with the term “Stewardship Campaign,” it’s a time in our program year when we ask people to pledge their gifts of ministry and money so that St. Paul’s church can live out its mission of loving God and loving our neighbors. I know what you are thinking. Of all the days to come to a church on Sunday morning, why did I have to come today? Unlike the fundraising appeals on public radio, you can’t turn me off. And if you leave now, everyone will know why. I understand. But give me 10 minutes to explain. Why give time and money to St. Paul’s church? What are we building here that makes it worth our energy and financial giving?

In the Jeremiah reading, he delivers an oracle that promises the restoration and renewal of the people. The words are as tender as the previous judgments were harsh: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” What’s surprising about this prophecy is that Jeremiah gives it before the Babylonians have taken over Jerusalem. In fact, it is given as the Babylonians are laying siege to the city. Why is he offering a vision of hope when the walls of one’s city are literally collapsing under an invading force?

It is part of the prophetic rhythm. Prophets alternate between judgment and promise. A national crisis will come, not because God is vengeful, but because the nation has betrayed its founding commitments. Driving Jeremiah’s anger and tears was the memory of the first covenant.

If you recall, the first covenant with Israel takes place on Mt. Sinai where Moses receives God’s commandments. That moment is the high point of the story of the Hebrew people gaining their freedom from slavery in Egypt, an empire run by military rule and a slavery-based economy. When God enters into this committed relationship with Israel, God promises the people an abundant life where they will have food, security, and community. But there are essential conditions for that promise. One of these conditions is to respect the sacredness and limits of the created world. Another essential condition is to share with others, especially those in need, what God provides through nature and human work. These two conditions find expression in the sabbath principles, which we find in the first five books of the Bible, called the Pentateuch. You are probably familiar with the one about resting on the seventh day. God also teaches the people to rest from economic activity every seven years. Exodus 23 says, “For six years you shall sow your land and gather in its yield, but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow.”

Two reasons are given for this: to let the land rest, and to let the poor and wild animals eat what naturally grows in the fields. Human work is wholly dependent on the natural rhythm of growth and rest that govern creation. If our work exceeds the limits set by nature, we will disrupt the fragile balance of the created world, which depends on us – as tillers and keepers of God’s world – for its survival and health.

Human labor also does not exist solely for an individual’s or one group’s prosperity. It finds its purpose and meaning in creating a community of abundance through sharing and distribution of goods. This is based on the vision of creation in the Pentateuch. Creation is not a storehouse of resources made only for our extraction and use without regard for its limits. It is a living organism that God pronounces as very good, and over which God has appointed human beings as protectors and stewards, so that human beings and all living beings can find the sustenance it needs and flourish. That is the meaning of God’s cosmic cry in Genesis 1, “All of it is very very good!” We are God’s partners in protecting and nurturing this created world that is so beautiful and precious in God’s eyes. That is why material resources that we take from nature – food, water, and other goods – have as their final purpose not individual consumption but the making of a thriving commonwealth of creation, bonded by mutual care and giving.

The first sabbath law of people resting on the seventh day and remembering our essential connection to God and creation is meant to limit human economic activity for the sake of the whole creation. The sabbath principle finds larger expression in the practice of releasing people from debt every seven years, preventing people from becoming destitute and overloading the social system with an unsustainable debt burden. The rhythm of seven continues in the Jubilee commandment, which requires Israel to set free all slaves and reset debt payments.

You may think, these sabbath principles are crazy. How, for instance, will people eat if no one grows food for a whole year? In Leviticus, God answers this question by saying, in the sixth year, “I will order my blessing for you so that it will yield a crop for three years.” The logic is not blind faith in God’s provision, even if that means ignoring economic necessities. It is rather that if we resist greed and share to meet everyone’s needs, the God’s grace operating in nature will provide enough for all. As Gandhi put it, the earth has enough for human need, but not human greed. The biblical vision asks us to find our source of fulfilment and joy not in endless accumulation and consumption, but in reverencing the splendor of God’s creation and enjoying our connectedness to each other and all forms of life by sharing God’s provision.

The sabbath vision of creation and human life is based not on principles of scarcity where we pit limited resources against unlimited human wants; instead it is based on understanding creation as sheer gift and ourselves as God’s partners in creating a sacred economy where all can flourish.

Through the voice of Jesus, we are heirs to that vision. As church, we are not just a bunch of fun-loving, welcoming people. We are given the noble vocation of creating a Sacred Economy that reflects divine grace – the infinite and unconditional love that God pours out on all creation every moment. So many of us long for a different way to live spiritually and economically, a way of living that renews our spirit and brings wholeness to our relationships with each other and the natural world. It is our task as heirs of Christ to incarnate God’s vision of human persons fully alive and the created world flourishing, to live in sustainable ways that respect the sacredness and limits of the created world while meeting the needs of all, especially for vulnerable people like the poor and marginalized persons. This is what we are building at St. Paul’s. We are doing this through worship which is about returning to what truly matters: things like love, connection, compassion; through the many ministries that share our resources to communities in need; through our work of seeking justice and peace in the wider community through Climate action, GBIO, and ECM.

You may think my talk of building a Sacred Economy sounds rather grandiose, and its potential impact questionable. Like the audience Jesus is addressing, you may wonder, the country seems to be falling apart; will God do anything? What impact can a small church like ours make when the problems are so big? I don’t know if our best efforts will change anything in the big scheme of things. But what if our actions as church, as small as they seem, against the odds stacked against us, actually can make a difference? When we look at the civil rights history, 1955 marks the watershed moment when the Montgomery Bus Boycott sparked a national movement. But black people had been working in obscurity for many decades before that year, laying the seeds and foundations for the movement to emerge. Did you know that the Alabama chapter of the NAACP was founded in 1913 at Talladega College by a second year black student named William Pickens? From that small start, 30 branches would form in Alabama by the 1940s. Rosa Parks became the secretary of the Montgomery chapter in 1943, 12 years before the 1955. 9 months before her storied refusal to give up her seat, a 15-year old black girl named Claudette Colvin refused to move to the back of the bus for a white person. Lucille Times staged a one-person bus boycott six months before Parks and drove other black neighbors in her car, supported by donations from her community. These little known acts by black women whose names barely get mentioned when we commemorate the Civil Rights Movement laid the foundation for the Montgomery Bus Boycott in December of 1955. And that one boycott started off a chain of events that literally broke the apartheid system in America.

The results of our actions are not up to us; that’s God’s business. We do what we do because of who we are: people inspired by the love of God in Jesus Christ. We do not know the impact of our actions, but history shows us again and again that small faithful actions by a group of good people bring about large-scale transformation - – in America, South Africa, Northern Ireland. And when that transformation happens, it often looks surprisingly sudden; but behind it lies decades and decades of unknown people working and making sacrifices. We are in troubling times, but that’s no reason for despair or resignation. It is exactly in such times that we are called to take faithful action. That is what we are about at St. Paul’s. Help us realize God’s vision of a Sacred Economy of compassion and generosity.