Sermon for December 29th, 2024

Matthew 13:51-53

51 “Have you understood all this?” They answered, “Yes.” 52 And he said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has become a disciple in the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.” 53 When Jesus had finished these parables, he left that place.

Treasures Old and New

Since it's almost a new year, and many of you (like me) are contemplating what your New Year's resolutions will be, I'd like to read you a letter from a faithful church member to his pastor:

"Dear Pastor: You often stress the importance of attending church every Sunday, but I think a person has a right to miss every now and then. What follows is a list of acceptable reasons our family may miss worship in the coming year:

• The Sunday after New Year's Eve--it takes awhile to recover from the party.
• The Sunday after Easter--hey, at least we made it Easter Sunday!
• July 4th weekend--it's a national holiday, after all.
• Labor Day Weekend--also a national holiday.
• Memorial Day Weekend--see above reason.
• The weekend right after school gets out--the kids need a break.
• The weekend right before school starts--we like to have one last fling.
• The weekends before and after fall break--it's our chance to get out of town.
• The weekend of our annual family reunion--both mine and my wife's.
• The weekend of our Anniversary.
• The weekends before and after spring break--see fall break above.
• Whenever someone in our family is sick--approximately five Sundays each year.
• Whenever there's a death in the family--approximately three Sundays each year. We have a lot of relatives.
• Whenever we have unexpected company--approximately two Sundays. We have to be good hosts!
• Whenever one of us has to go on a Business trip--two Sundays. It's mandatory!
• The Sunday of our annual charity golf tournament/10k run/wine festival--it's for a good cause!
• During our annual summer vacation--two Sundays each year.
• During Bad Weather Days--ice, snow, rain, or clouds. Five Sundays. Yes, we realize we live in El Paso.
• Super Bowl Sunday--we have to get ready for the big party.
• Daylight Savings Time Change--both Sundays. It really throws off our timing.
• Sundays when the kids are being difficult--approximately five Sundays each year.
• Sundays when there's a guest preacher--Five Sundays. We mostly come to hear you--you should be flattered!
• The Sunday after Christmas--we're usually still recovering from the holidays.

Pastor, that leaves two Sundays per year. So, you can count on us to be in church on Easter Sunday and the third Sunday in October... unless we are providentially hindered. Sincerely, A Faithful Member."

Of course, if you're here today, the Sunday after Christmas, perhaps at least a few of these don't apply to you--still, I hope you find room in your resolutions to make church a priority in this new year!

Our scripture today is one of the shortest parables of Jesus. It's also my favorite. This passage has been somewhat of a personal life-verse for me, one that has guided me throughout my 13 years as your pastor.

It's a relatively simple parable: First, Jesus compares his followers to scribes (Gr. γραμματεύς), basically those who are educated in the ways of the Kingdom of Heaven, which is shorthand for the teachings of Jesus. Those who have received this education in parables, he says, are like householders (the head of a household) who bring forth from their treasures, or use in their teaching, things that are both new and old. And then Jesus drops the mic, ending his parables, and leaves.

In all the parables of Jesus, I like to ask the question, "Who are we" in this story? Fortunately, with this parable there's really only one option, since there's only one character in the parable: We are the ones who have heard the teachings of Jesus; we are the scribes, the educated ones. As we share and spread those teachings, we are the householders who make use of both what is new AND what is old among our treasures.

This is a great time of year to reflect on old things, new things, and the things we treasure most in our households. So what exactly are those things? I can't answer the question for you, but I can share a few stories from my own life and experience.

When I was a child--I think from around the time I was about eight years old until I was about fifteen, I carried with me everywhere I went a little treasure: It was a photocopied picture that I had taped with scotch tape into a little metal frame about the size of my pocket. It was a picture of a castle in Scotland--Huntingtower castle--that I had been told was the castle of my ancestors, the Ruthven clan. For the benefit of those who don't already know this about me, the name on my birth certificate is not "Neal Locke." It's actually "Ira Cornelius Ruthven." Neal is short for Cornelius, and I changed my last name to Locke when my step-father adopted me as a teenager. More on that later.

I carried around this picture of a castle, because, well...it was a castle. It was somehow MY castle, and to a young boy who loved to read about King Arthur and the knights of the round table, that was pretty awesome. My ancestors were earls of Scotland! And they had a castle! As I grew older, I researched and read about that castle, and the Ruthven clan in Scottish history.

Imagine my surprise to find out they were notorious rabble rousers--the bad guys in most of the stories about them. When King James the IVth of Scotland (who later became the King James connected to the King James Bible) was a young boy, the Ruthvens kidnapped him and held him for ransom in their castle. In the year 1600, after repeated plots against King James, the Ruthven Lords were caught, hung, then beheaded, drawn and quartered, stripped of all their titles, their lands confiscated (including the castle) and they were banished from Scotland forever.

So, I stopped carrying the picture. To be honest, I was a little bit ashamed of that "old treasure" and what it represented.

Meanwhile, my step-father (who was a kind and thoughtful man, if ever there was one, and had been playing the role of father to me since I was two years old) offered to adopt me. I eagerly accepted, and took on a new name, a new identity, which I treasured (and still do). I have proudly carried that NEW name with me for years, just as I carried that OLD picture of the Ruthven castle, and my new name has served me well. I have passed that new treasure on to my children.

About 15 years ago, I was in graduate school studying to become a pastor. One day I was immersed deep within the bowels of Firestone library at Princeton University, doing some research for a class in Presbyterian history. I came across an old, dusty, six-volume collection of the writings of John Knox, the founder of the Presbyterian Church in Scotland. I don't know why I felt compelled to flip to the index of the set and look up the name "Ruthven." I found several entries, and I braced myself for the worst--more stories of nefarious deeds and scheming plots.

What I read surprised me, and actually brought me to tears, there alone in the stacks of one of the world's largest libraries. I read about my ancestor William Ruthven, who John Knox referred to as "a stout and discreet man in the cause of God." I read about another ancestor, Patrick Ruthven, who was faithfully at Knox's bedside, praying with and for him in his dying moments. Over the course of several hours (which seemed like minutes) I pieced together a new story--a story of a deeply devout, faithful family, among the very first to adopt the new reformed religion that would become Presbyterianism. I read of their struggle against a Queen (Mary, Queen of Scots) who tried to suppress that religion, despite its popularity among her people. Her son, King James, grew to be resentful of the Presbyterian movement, and he was especially jealous of the Ruthven family and their strong connections to John Knox and the church that was spreading like wildfire across his lands.

History is often written by the victorious, and through a sequence of near-random events, James went on to become not only the king of Scotland, but the successor to Queen Elizabeth and King of England, too. He later commissioned the famous King James Bible in order to replace the highly popular Bible of the Presbyterians--the Geneva Bible--and he banned the Geneva Bible from circulation, just as he had banished the members of the Ruthven family: both threats to his authority and rule.

What does any of this have to do with our parable today?

Every scribe trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a householder, who brings forth from his treasure what is old, and what is new.

When Jesus spoke those words to his followers in the first century he, too, was part of a proud religious heritage--Judaism, and the people of ancient Israel who were among the first to embrace monotheism, and a God who intervened in the lives of his people for good, for justice, and for freedom. And yet, in time, that old story had become distorted, used by the powerful to burden and oppress people, to distance them from their God. Jesus, much like John Knox, began a new movement, a new understanding of God as a force for love, mercy, and grace. Like my ancestors in Scotland, Jesus ultimately paid the price of his life for daring to go against the rulers of his day.

It would have been easy, I think, for Jesus to simply discard the old ways, the old traditions that he inherited, and start fresh. But he did not. Elsewhere in Matthew, Jesus said that he came not to abolish the old law and the prophets, but to fulfill them (Gr. πληρόω) to complete or bring balance to them again. To bring the old into the new. To reinterpret, and re-understand the old in a new context, a new era.

Today, in the 21st century, the church faces a similar challenge: Increasingly, people look at the church and they think, "That's an old story. Christians are hateful, bigoted, closed-minded people who use their rules and their dogma to judge and condemn--to oppress and burden the people, to separate them from what is truly divine."

Because of this, many walk away from the faith, pursuing new things, new systems of belief that are disconnected from God, disconnected from their heritage, and the faith of their parents and grandparents. Others (usually long-time church goers) resist this, clinging to the old stories, but refusing to acknowledge the new context, the new realities we find ourselves within. Both groups are wrong--or perhaps more accurately, both are incomplete. And the chasm between them grows wider and deeper, harder to cross.

But Jesus says to them--to us--"Every scribe trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings from his treasure what is new AND what is old. Balance. Moderation. Understanding.

To bridge that divide--to appreciate the old while embracing the new--takes patience. It takes courage and creativity. It takes a community of people committed to each other, committed to an ancient faith, and committed to the world they live in--to the hard work of truly understanding (and re-imagining) the stories they have inherited.

Two summers ago, I traveled with my eldest son, Grady, to Scotland. We roamed the ruined halls of the old family castle, and I was able to share one of my oldest treasures with one of my newest ones.

Today I am proud of my Scottish ancestors and their legacy of faith renewed, faith reformed. I am proud to share their story with new people (like you), under a new name, here in a new world with new challenges and new technologies and new ways of understanding what it means to be a person of faith. Through it all, the ancient scriptures teach us that Jesus Christ is the one who binds us together, who bridges all our divides, calls us all to himself, and is the same, yesterday and today and forever.

Happy New Year, people of First Presbyterian Church. May your treasures--both new and old--be a blessing to you in the year to come, and an inspiration to everyone you share them with.