The SWAT Team Across the Street

Preached Sept. 9, 2001

Scripture can be very pointed. Very direct. Very clear.

That's the way it is in today's reading from the Hebrew scriptures.

Choose, it says. Choose this day who you will serve.

The Israelites chose. They chose to serve the One God they knew as Yahweh-God, the God who had brought them through the water and into the freedom of the promised land.

And we have chosen, too. We have chosen to serve the One Lord we know as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the God who has brought us through the waters of baptism into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

But there's something else a little less pointed, a little less direct, a little less clear hidden inside this simple scripture about choosing. And that is this.

When we choose which God we will serve -- when we say OK, God, my life is in you and through you and about you..and about no one else…when we say that everything we are and everything we have belongs to YOU, God…not just our Sunday mornings, but our Tuesday afternoons and Friday evenings too…when we say Yes, Lord, we will serve you, and you alone, with all that we are and with all that we have…when we choose to serve this God of ours with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind…

We are also choosing which people we are going to serve.

We can choose to serve the rich and the powerful, the people who can help us get the job we want, or tear up our traffic tickets, or move our paperwork to the top of the pile, or make sure our IRS return doesn't get audited. Or we can choose to serve the people we decide are "the good guys" -- people we respect, people like us, people we understand. We might even stretch a little bit more, and choose to serve people we decide deserve our help. When we choose which people we will serve, we like to be smart…prudent…careful…wise, with an eye to long-range plans and successful outcomes, whatever those might be.

That's what the letter of Paul to Philemon is all about. Paul is writing to the Advisory Board of Philemon's house church. He's asking them..he is in fact begging them…to welcome into their congregation a certain young man named Onesimus. Most people who study the Bible say that Onesimus was a slave in Philemon's household who had stolen something, and then run away to Paul for protection. While he was with Paul, Onesimus became a Christian. So Paul is writing to a Christian congregation begging them to welcome this former thief as an equal at the Lord's table. Even better than an equal. They are to welcome him as they would welcome Paul. You can almost hear them clearing their throats and see them looking down at their feet and looking for loopholes. Onesimus is a slave. He is meant to serve them. As far as they are concerned, they are not meant to serve him. The cost is too high.

But the thing is, the God we have chosen to serve won't let us get away with that.

Every time we renew our baptismal covenant, we promise to seek and serve Christ in all persons. ALL PERSONS. Whether they can do anything for us or not. Whether they're one of the good guys….or not. Whether we think they deserve our love and care and concern…or not.

Nobody said this Christian life was going to be easy.

I was reminded of this a week ago Thursday, when I wandered outside my office, blinked like an owl, and saw five police cars blocking Linwood Avenue, and four more police cars doing the same thing on Pulaski highway. Word on the street was that there had been a bank robbery. Someone had dropped a bag of money. An alarm in the bag had gone off. Now, while I'd like to believe that the police are usually the good guys, I decided that this was a situation worth keeping an eye on, especially when I noticed that some young white officers were patting down an older African-American gentleman sitting on the steps of a Pulaski Highway rowhouse, next to the one being rehabbed on the corner. So when a very polite police officer suggested that those of us who were standing outside should "just go away for a few minutes", I found a way to "go away" inside the church, open the windows on the Pulaski Highway side, and watch. 20 or 30 police officers milled around and got their orders. Police officers checked their guns and then checked out a few alleys. A SWAT team got its equipment together, and went inside the house at the corner of Pulaski highway, with a rifle at the ready. I sat inside and thought, and prayed. I thought about how this sort of thing happens almost every day in this city. I thought about how it was just barely possible that somebody could be dead in the next five minutes

It was easy enough to pray for the police officers. They had been doing routine patrols all morning and then all of a sudden they were putting their lives on the line. It was easy to pray for the men rehabbing the house, who had found the bag of money and were caught up in a dangerous mess. It was not so easy to pray, in sorrow and in anger, for the person who had robbed the bank in the first place. It was easy to think about seeking and serving Christ in the people who were putting their lives on the line to keep me safe. It was easy to think about seeking and serving Christ in the innocent bystanders who were trying to do the right thing, to think about making sure there was justice for them, or for the innocent victims at the bank, whose lives were not going to be the same again for a long time. But seeking and serving Christ in the person whose sin and greed and self-deception had brought all this about…that would not be so easy. I had no idea how I might do that, and it was clear that anything I might think of doing would come with a cost.

Not long after the SWAT team went into the Pulaski Avenue rowhouse they came back out again. Nothing had happened. No one had been inside. The search moved on, farther north on Curley Street. I didn't have to figure out how to seek and serve Christ in this one particular person who happened to have robbed a bank. I didn't have to discover what seeking and serving Christ in him might cost. But I was left to remember… as we all are called to remember…that the cost of faithful Christian witness in this world is likely to be high. And I was left to remember, as we are all left to remember, that whatever the cost might be, God has already counted that cost, and paid it,

Now and forever,

Amen.