The sermon at Brookwood this morning was about Ebed-Melech, whose tale is recounted in Jeremiah 38:1-13. Take a minute to read Ebed-Melech’s story before continuing…

The three lessons we can learn from Ebed-Melech, according to the sermon, are:
“1. No servant is too small a person for God to use.
2. Stand up and do what is right when the need arises. Be bold and full of courage.
3. Be a faithful friend.”
from the sermon notes

If my memory serves me correctly, the primary example from “be bold and full of courage” was being bold in sharing our faith, and the primary example from “be a faithful friend” was being a faithful friend of others at Brookwood.

And it seems to me like that completely misses the point of Ebed-Melech’s story. He wasn’t bold and courageous to further his agenda or try to convince someone to make a religious/spiritual/philosophical decision, but because Jeremiah was going to die. The object of the story, the thing that’s acted upon, is a person in need, Jeremiah, not an idea or a faith or a social cause.

And I can’t find any confirmation (from the text or from secondary sources) that Ebed-Melech actually knew Jeremiah personally, and we know he wasn’t Jewish. Given that Ebed-Melech was an Ethiopian servant of unknown station and he is called by his station rather than his name (”Ebed-Melech, a Cushite” literally means “The servant of the king, a Cushite”….he’d been stripped of his African name and in that way dehumanized…he’s not a person; he’s a job function), it seems unlikely he would have been chums with Jeremiah. So “faithful friend” seems to miss the point and may rob the story of much of its power. “Risks life for strangers, especially the downtrodden” seems more accurate.

“Risks life for strangers, especially the downtrodden” also seems to jive with what Jesus is all about:

“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even ’sinners’ love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even ’sinners’ do that…But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:32-36)

And that whole aspect of loving our enemies and really battling on behalf of the downtrodden is exactly what Baptists (and other evangelicals/fundies) so often miss. We gather in our holy huddle and try to be “faithful friends” to each other. Even sinners do that! (Mainliners and Orthodox aren’t better than evangelicals/fundies, by the way…they just have different blind spots than we do).

Am I misreading this story? Or am I right that the sermon may have missed the point?