Genesis 29:1-28
Matthew 13:44-52
Reading this morning's parables, it is difficult for a preacher to avoid PREDESTINATION. There is a GREAT DRAGNET let down, with one ended weighted to the bottom, while the other floats, and as the net is dragged, everything is brought up, good and bad together. Here the good is saved, and the bad is burned. Predestination did not begin with John Calvin and the Presbyterian Church, though PREDESTINATION is what many remember us for. The difficulty with Predestination is that we imagine the Lake as pristine as our own Skaneateles, the unfiltered drinking water of Central New York State, and we always see ourselves questioning, Why is that one Bad? I know her. Why is that one good? Let me tell you about what he once did.
The point of PREDESTINATION is that ETERNITY and SALVATION are not according to our perspective, not what we think, not whom we like, but rather all is up to God. Predestination in purest form, does not begin as Humanists do of “I'M OKAY, YOU'RE OKAY”, but rather I AM A SINNER in Thought, Word & Deed, that net actually dredges a Reality as polluted as Onondaga Lake, in order to throw away everything as corrupt and poisoned, for we have destroyed, polluted and made it so. But in amongst all the bad, God finds good also. Predestination tells us less about humanity, less about our anthropomorphizing of created Order revolving around us, and more about Who God is, that God searches for GOOD even in the most corrupt, contaminated and polluted lives.
PRE-DETERMINATION is about the individual choices we each make. This is what the world mistakenly thinks PEDESTINATION represents. Wrongly Believing God already determined every decision of our lives, and our reality is simply going through the motions, playing out the dialogue that God has scripted, as if Life were a Shakespearean Drama or Episode of Saturday Night Live. Instead, we know there are rare occasions in life in which we choose, ACTS OF FAITH, when as individuals we humbly recognize our LIVES HAVE PURPOSE, because we can Act. ACTS OF FAITH are what we call ETHICS.
The DAY LABORER plowing in someone else's field finds a buried chest of jewels. Does he steal it? He found what had been buried treasure can he keep it for his own, or must he turn it over to the owner of the land who neither knew of its existence, nor worked, nor found it? You go to an Auction and find a dresser, inside the drawer is a box of money, are you responsible for turning over the money, or keeping it as coming with the chest? A PROBLEM with ETHICS, with ACTS OF FAITH, is that what one generation accepts as Normal, another may not.
PEDESTINATION is about Eternity and Salvation, God is the decision maker, because we already made our decisions in the daily acts and relationships of life together.
PRE-DETERMINATION is belief that there is NO FATE, no Accident, no Opportunity, we are only pawns, actors in life's melodrama. To Which, JESUS' PARABLES offer the Challenge of individuals who acted MORALLY and RESPONSIBLY, One who devoted their life to finding the MOST RARE & PRECIOUS PEARL; another who stumbled on an opportunity in daily labor. Both of whom ACTED ETHICALLY according to their time, and yet the point is they VALUED that which they found, according to the Parable, THE KINGDOM of HEAVEN, as being worth more than everything else in their lives.
Having gotten just this far, the phone rang, and it was my 85 year old father.
Being a retired minister, his first question was “What are you preaching on?” I told him the Parables of Treasure and also the story of Jacob his two wives and children. To which he became very animated, “O what a juicy story, you have the SCHEEMER Jacob, who is the younger brother, who has always been able to trick his family out of what had been promised by God before birth; Jacob who falls in love with Rachel the younger sister. You have UNCLE LABAN, Jacob's Mother's Brother, who is just as much a schemer and conniver as Jacob, always concerned with, “What is it gonna cost, let's barter, dicker and trade”, who manipulates Jacob into working for him for 7 years, then instead of letting Rachel marry Jacob, LABAN forces LEAH the first born daughter onto him when he does not love her. As if making a TWO-FOR-ONE DEAL, he tosses in RACHEL the one Jacob really loves, but you need to work for me for another seven years. As if the Father's abuse were not enough, there is also the sibling rivalry between the sisters. LEAH knows she is not wanted or loved, and hopes getting pregnant will make her husband love her. So in rapid succession she has four children and all of them boys. But while Jacob is willing to use her, he does not love LEAH. And RACHEL whom Jacob does love is barren, unable to conceive, just as Rebecca and Sarah before her. With the family curse of being Barren, RACHEL does what Sarah did before her and sends her handmaid Bilhah in her place, and because Bilhah belongs to Rachel, her child will be Rachel's child and BILHAH had two sons. Leah recognizing what Rachel done, and not wanting her sister to get ahead of her, used her Handmaid ZILPAH to bear two sons. Then Leah ate mandrakes which were supposedly an aphrodisiac, not a fertility supplement, and bore two more sons and a daughter. When suddenly, just as with Sarah and Rebecca, God remembered RACHEL and gave her a child JOSEPH. THEN, while Jacob was successful at breeding sheep and having children, he never seemed to be able to get the better of LABAN, on the morning the family is set to leave, his daughter RACHEL whom he had used to get Jacob to work for 14 years, whom Laban had used to marry off her sister to her husband, steals Laban's golden statues, placing them in her saddle, and sits upon them. All of which my father related in one breath!
Given all the twists and turns of this SOAP-OPERA, how can any imagine that life is PREDETERMINED and we only go through the motions? Our ACTIONS do MATTER. Also, How can any imagine that there is no God? For as soon as we humans have worked everything out, truly conniving, scheming, corrupting life, Leah has given birth to 6 sons and a daughter of her own, and 2 more by Zilpah, while Rachel's Maid Bilhah has given Jacob 2, God has the last laugh, by giving the wife whom Jacob truly loved a first born child, JOSEPH. Then in the birth of yet another child, BENJAMIN, Rachel died.
There are times when our families seem pretty mixed up. Families have abused one another, stolen from each other, divorced and remarried, and cheated each other. Yet, we can see evidence of all of this in the Bible as well, it is HUMAN WILL balanced by ACTS OF FAITH.
Recently, I have been working with others to try to revise a description of what constitutes abuse, and the difficulty is that there are generational differences. Today, clergy need to understand that we never take off the identity of being clergy. Trying to stay current on technology and communication, I recently subscribed to FACEBOOK, and was told by colleagues, “But there are three basic rules to think through... Anything that gets posted on the internet can be seen by others. You have no business in CHATROOMS, If a Child contacts you, you can respond, but you cannot contact a child. Likewise, a Doctor chooses to not operate on their own family, just as a pastor chooses not provide counseling to their spouse and children. The ethical difficulty is that today this means a single pastor cannot date within the Church, because how do you go on as clergy and members when at one time you may have had expectations of love. And yet, a generation ago in the late 1950s, when my mother died in childbirth, there was a seeming expectation that the minister would remarry from within the Church, someone with similar values and expectations.
PREDESTINATION is the understanding that God and only God, can ever straighten out all the good and evil, and God will. BUT ALSO, that when we find that which we have been truly searching for in all of life, which is not a pearl, or buried treasure, not the perfect house, or third car, or ideal job, or any other GOLDEN THING, but is THANKFULNESS to GOD, the Thanks of these parents for their child being Baptized this day, for their new church, and for their elder daughter as well, that everything else seems meaningless.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Sunday, July 20, 2008
PRMSE TO EXILES July 20, 2008
Genesis 28:10-19
Matthew 13:24-34
Why is life so hard? Why is there evil in the world?
Surely, if God is all powerful and all knowing, God could have made the world a little easier for us. Humanity has split the atom, put computers in all our lives, but rather than making life better, simpler, more convenient, it appears there is that much more to do.
In the Early Church, the Donatists of North Africa believed they could/should separate the good from the bad in human life, and only the good, only the pure, only the righteous would have access to the Church, to God, to the best things in life. Over against these Donatists, were those who followed St. Augustine, who looked to this parable from Jesus, claiming all this life, including faith and the Church, belong to God. As God's field, we cannot root up the evil, the wrong, the perverse or corrupt, without also doing harm to one another, which would be far worse than allowing evil to grow.
The Physician's Code is to “DO NO HARM”, meaning to offer treatment to reduce or eliminate suffering without creating greater problems, then the Christians' Code is like this, for the problem with acting against evil is that we often cannot tell whether one's actions and motivations are good or evil until they are fulfilled.
In one parable, Jesus describes A SOWER WENT OUT TO SOW SEED. When sowing seed, God did not get down on hands and knees to make a hole and carefully plant every single seed. Nor, did the sower dig and furrow the soil efficiently planting in nice neat rows. God's blessings are SO over-abundant that the seed is cast far and wide on all the earth, like the torrent of rains that fell yesterday, not only falling upon the earth, but blanketing the ground, even standing in puddles for the earth to gradually take it all in.
In this next, Jesus describes that, after the good seed had been planted, covering the field, an enemy came. It would have been immediately destructive and hurtful to destroy to poison what had been planted in abundance, but the enemy was far more insidious. This enemy came at night, and among the seed of good wheat, also sowed TARES, seeds of weeds that sprout and grow up looking just like blades of wheat, until the grain appears, a grain which is poisonous and foul. Worse than falling upon rock, or eaten by birds, or choked by weeds, mixed in among the Wheat, the grain of Tares would waste the time of the whole season's planting. Not only crowding out the good grain, and poisoning the harvest, but making others suspect everything until you were uncertain whom or what you could trust. So the landowner, determines to wait, to be patient, NEVER GIVING UP upon the harvest. For the landowner knows two things, others had not counted upon. First, that the good seed can persevere, the wheat itself will not be poisoned or harmed by being surrounded in a field of TARES or TERRORS. And ALSO, that harvesting the wicked ROOT and PLANT and SEED of the WEEDs, will create a resource to be burned as fuel for the harvest of what is good.
The parable of the LEAVEN is difficult for us, because it is double-edged. If ever you have baked bread, you know that it only takes a tiny amount, 1/12th as much yeast as the measure of flour, cured and kneaded throughout the mixture to make the batter rise double even triple in size. Our difficulty is that like the wheat and tares, good and evil, right and wrong permeate us all. Despite what our Mothers have said about us, as far as any know, there has only ever been one in all human life who truly has been without sin, and him we made to suffer and die for us all. While faith, like yeast is planted in us beginning at an early age, and grows to permeate the whole of life, so also do our fears. And afterward, the only evidence is that this is what filled the voids and holes in us.
JACOB is an odd sort of Hero. He robs and cheats his brother, deceives his dying father, so that Jacob can Possess Everything. If the Goal of Life is to Have it All; to POSSESS Everything: Jacob WINS! He not only receives the promise of The Land, and Prosperity, Love and Children, Isaac's Blessing of his son gives Jacob the PROMISE of PROMISE, the Blessing of being Blessed. Isaac's excesses are so great, that when he ultimately discovers he has been duped, he cannot even give ESSAU “Nothingness”, what he has left to give his less than that, only CURSES and Suffering can he wish for the Elder Son.
Having Gotten Away with everything, Jacob runs away, BANISHED to a SELF-EXILE.
Our Call to Worship and Confession this day, is hard for some of us to hear. We strive to live integrated lives, to be one with our community and accepting of others. The pain is that there are parts of life, experiences and relationships that cost us, that break our spirit and kill, our soul, violate even our humanity.
IF we are to become the Future, at what cost?
Must we (as a people of faith) be as EXILES in A FOREIGN LAND? Among Biblical Archaeologists, there is a growing idea that after Solomon Israel was destroyed, but rather than the people being carried off to a Babylonian Exile, their own culture and society became so enmeshed with the Babylonian, the Israelites became EXILES WITHIN THE PROMISED LAND.
To be an EXILE, to be BANISHED, was to have been sentenced to a fate worse than death. To remain biologically alive, yet never able to go Home, never again to see family, to Feel Needed, Wanted, Known, Loved. The TARES that have been planted in our lives, are that we so value our isolation, our avoidance of pain and suffering and people, that we adopt lives of EXILE, like JACOB Living self-imposed banishment so as to guard and protect what we possess from having to be shared with others, from having to share ourselves, having to feel, because feeling we may be wounded, violated, killed.
Finally having run so far, for so long, he lays down to sleep. Here in his Dreams, Jacob encounters what Shakespeare described in Romeo and Juliet's soliloquy “To BE or NOT To Be”, “To sleep, perchance to dream...” We can fairly well control our thoughts and actions in the day, but asleep we are more vulnerable to everything around us. JACOB'S Dream is not a Psychosis, of working out in the unconscious. Not a Nightmare wrestling with Demons... Not this one. This is a revelation from God, as real as a Vision, a Theophany, as had appeared to Noah, to Abraham and Isaac. This PROMISE to the EXILED is a connection of HEAVEN and EARTH. Not a means of climbing the Beanstalk into a Castle in the clouds, not means of accessing Heaven by avoiding death. JACOB'S LADDER is a statement of Commitment, that God can always find us. We may EXILE ourselves, we may banish every one who cares about us, we may try to surround ourselves and fill ourselves with our possessions and promises, only our hopes and dreams, YET STILL there is God, who can always get to us.
Even more, Jacob witnesses that Heaven is very busy providing blessings to Earth. No Matter how many possessions, no matter how much Jacob had gotten from his family, cheating his brother and WINNING the Game, still there was always far more available from God, mare than we could ever even know in ten thousand lifetimes.
Wy is life so hard, at least in part because we are not supoosed to be exiled. God is always looking for connections with us, no matter what we have done, or whom we are.
Matthew 13:24-34
Why is life so hard? Why is there evil in the world?
Surely, if God is all powerful and all knowing, God could have made the world a little easier for us. Humanity has split the atom, put computers in all our lives, but rather than making life better, simpler, more convenient, it appears there is that much more to do.
In the Early Church, the Donatists of North Africa believed they could/should separate the good from the bad in human life, and only the good, only the pure, only the righteous would have access to the Church, to God, to the best things in life. Over against these Donatists, were those who followed St. Augustine, who looked to this parable from Jesus, claiming all this life, including faith and the Church, belong to God. As God's field, we cannot root up the evil, the wrong, the perverse or corrupt, without also doing harm to one another, which would be far worse than allowing evil to grow.
The Physician's Code is to “DO NO HARM”, meaning to offer treatment to reduce or eliminate suffering without creating greater problems, then the Christians' Code is like this, for the problem with acting against evil is that we often cannot tell whether one's actions and motivations are good or evil until they are fulfilled.
In one parable, Jesus describes A SOWER WENT OUT TO SOW SEED. When sowing seed, God did not get down on hands and knees to make a hole and carefully plant every single seed. Nor, did the sower dig and furrow the soil efficiently planting in nice neat rows. God's blessings are SO over-abundant that the seed is cast far and wide on all the earth, like the torrent of rains that fell yesterday, not only falling upon the earth, but blanketing the ground, even standing in puddles for the earth to gradually take it all in.
In this next, Jesus describes that, after the good seed had been planted, covering the field, an enemy came. It would have been immediately destructive and hurtful to destroy to poison what had been planted in abundance, but the enemy was far more insidious. This enemy came at night, and among the seed of good wheat, also sowed TARES, seeds of weeds that sprout and grow up looking just like blades of wheat, until the grain appears, a grain which is poisonous and foul. Worse than falling upon rock, or eaten by birds, or choked by weeds, mixed in among the Wheat, the grain of Tares would waste the time of the whole season's planting. Not only crowding out the good grain, and poisoning the harvest, but making others suspect everything until you were uncertain whom or what you could trust. So the landowner, determines to wait, to be patient, NEVER GIVING UP upon the harvest. For the landowner knows two things, others had not counted upon. First, that the good seed can persevere, the wheat itself will not be poisoned or harmed by being surrounded in a field of TARES or TERRORS. And ALSO, that harvesting the wicked ROOT and PLANT and SEED of the WEEDs, will create a resource to be burned as fuel for the harvest of what is good.
The parable of the LEAVEN is difficult for us, because it is double-edged. If ever you have baked bread, you know that it only takes a tiny amount, 1/12th as much yeast as the measure of flour, cured and kneaded throughout the mixture to make the batter rise double even triple in size. Our difficulty is that like the wheat and tares, good and evil, right and wrong permeate us all. Despite what our Mothers have said about us, as far as any know, there has only ever been one in all human life who truly has been without sin, and him we made to suffer and die for us all. While faith, like yeast is planted in us beginning at an early age, and grows to permeate the whole of life, so also do our fears. And afterward, the only evidence is that this is what filled the voids and holes in us.
JACOB is an odd sort of Hero. He robs and cheats his brother, deceives his dying father, so that Jacob can Possess Everything. If the Goal of Life is to Have it All; to POSSESS Everything: Jacob WINS! He not only receives the promise of The Land, and Prosperity, Love and Children, Isaac's Blessing of his son gives Jacob the PROMISE of PROMISE, the Blessing of being Blessed. Isaac's excesses are so great, that when he ultimately discovers he has been duped, he cannot even give ESSAU “Nothingness”, what he has left to give his less than that, only CURSES and Suffering can he wish for the Elder Son.
Having Gotten Away with everything, Jacob runs away, BANISHED to a SELF-EXILE.
Our Call to Worship and Confession this day, is hard for some of us to hear. We strive to live integrated lives, to be one with our community and accepting of others. The pain is that there are parts of life, experiences and relationships that cost us, that break our spirit and kill, our soul, violate even our humanity.
IF we are to become the Future, at what cost?
Must we (as a people of faith) be as EXILES in A FOREIGN LAND? Among Biblical Archaeologists, there is a growing idea that after Solomon Israel was destroyed, but rather than the people being carried off to a Babylonian Exile, their own culture and society became so enmeshed with the Babylonian, the Israelites became EXILES WITHIN THE PROMISED LAND.
To be an EXILE, to be BANISHED, was to have been sentenced to a fate worse than death. To remain biologically alive, yet never able to go Home, never again to see family, to Feel Needed, Wanted, Known, Loved. The TARES that have been planted in our lives, are that we so value our isolation, our avoidance of pain and suffering and people, that we adopt lives of EXILE, like JACOB Living self-imposed banishment so as to guard and protect what we possess from having to be shared with others, from having to share ourselves, having to feel, because feeling we may be wounded, violated, killed.
Finally having run so far, for so long, he lays down to sleep. Here in his Dreams, Jacob encounters what Shakespeare described in Romeo and Juliet's soliloquy “To BE or NOT To Be”, “To sleep, perchance to dream...” We can fairly well control our thoughts and actions in the day, but asleep we are more vulnerable to everything around us. JACOB'S Dream is not a Psychosis, of working out in the unconscious. Not a Nightmare wrestling with Demons... Not this one. This is a revelation from God, as real as a Vision, a Theophany, as had appeared to Noah, to Abraham and Isaac. This PROMISE to the EXILED is a connection of HEAVEN and EARTH. Not a means of climbing the Beanstalk into a Castle in the clouds, not means of accessing Heaven by avoiding death. JACOB'S LADDER is a statement of Commitment, that God can always find us. We may EXILE ourselves, we may banish every one who cares about us, we may try to surround ourselves and fill ourselves with our possessions and promises, only our hopes and dreams, YET STILL there is God, who can always get to us.
Even more, Jacob witnesses that Heaven is very busy providing blessings to Earth. No Matter how many possessions, no matter how much Jacob had gotten from his family, cheating his brother and WINNING the Game, still there was always far more available from God, mare than we could ever even know in ten thousand lifetimes.
Wy is life so hard, at least in part because we are not supoosed to be exiled. God is always looking for connections with us, no matter what we have done, or whom we are.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Searching or Being Accompanied, July 6, 2008
Genesis 24
Matthew 1116-19, 25-30
We are, all of us, SEARCHING... Searching for someone to share life with, searching for wisdom... searching for understanding, searching for meaning... This morning's readings suggest that what we need to do, is not so much search, as open our eyes to see that we are being accompanied on life's journey.
The people of faith during the Roman Empire of the Caesars, sought a prophet who would bless them and tell them everything is going to be all right; instead, they had John the Baptist, who challenged them as sinners, a brood of vipers, needing to repent and be washed clean. After John, they sought another like him, going further to critique their times, who would wring his hands and mourn loss, instead God provided the Christ, who celebrated with outcasts, who forgave those who had been rejected by the world. We search for what we know, what we think is familiar, as if what comforts is what we need, as if satiating our desires, filling our gas tanks, paying our debts, makes our problems disappear. That would be a cheap grace, a false faith that only substantiates what we want to hear. The word of faith is DO NOT SETTLE, do not GO BACK, do not accept a lowest common denominator, search one WHO WILL JOURNEY WITH YOU.
The story of Genesis led us with Abraham to leave home, kinsmen, everything familiar, to wander with God; searching for the Promised Land, searching for what is promised to future generations, searching for future generations from a barren lifeless couple 75 and 100 years of age who had hope, trusted and believed, BELIEVED GOD would be STEADFAST & LOYAL. As much as the Call of Abraham, the Visitation and Laughter of Sarah, the Birth of Isaac and Abraham's test of Sacrificing Isaac, this morning's Genesis story of the WOOING of Rebekah is essential to God's Promise. For without a mate for Abraham's son, how are there to be future generations to inherit the land.
Which sets up the question of this passage.
SHOULD ISAAC GO BACK, back to where Abram and Sara came from?
SHOULD ISAAC intermarry and dissolve into the culture of the Canaanites?
Instead, Abraham sends his servant searching for a partner for the Promise. In many ways the partner for Isaac is more like Father Abraham than like Isaac. How often in life, rather than finding our own mirror in a partner, we find one who is like the best qualities of our parent. Rebekah like Abraham must be one willing to leave home and family, everything she has ever known to wander where God leads, for the hope of promise to future generations you will not see.
There is a subtle reality here, we need to name. CHOICE is a matter of prosperity. Had Abraham been poor, they could not have afforded to search for Rebekah. In impoverished places, there is not a choice between beef and fish for the third meal of the day, but rather whether you have rice to make one meal of?
In another congregation, we had a couple who had had an arranged marriage, who had never met until their wedding. After 35 years of marriage, she used to say that “No matter whom you marry, they are not perfect, but you can grow to love anyone, someone who is your partner throughout life, who is loyal and steadfast and kind.
Abraham does not send just any servant, this unnamed servant has been with him longer than any other. The unnamed servant is loyal and steadfast. Much like any of us, the servant takes what he has been given and goes where he was told, hundreds of miles, with a loaded caravan of camels.
Then comes the question that distinguishes this as a story of faith, from a simple genealogy of HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER.
How does a servant find a Partner for The Promise of Abraham?
Do you go on the Internet to MATCH DOT COM?
SERVANTS SEEKING WOMEN SEEKING MEN: Nice Jewish boy, must enjoy travel.
Do you go to SINGLES BARS? A Matchmaker?
Do you go to CHURCH?
All these have been known to work, but many of us try to hard, we control our searching, rather than trusting God will provide/God will fulfill the Promise.
The servant does something completely unexpected, a simple act of faith.
NOT CIRCUMCISION, NOT TAKING OFF SHOES, or even MAKING A SACRIFICE.
The servant prays for God's guidance, for loyalty and steadfast trust.
Now understand, that if you go to take a Chemistry Midterm, and do not study and prepare, and you pray, “LORD, Give me the right answers.” Probably not going to work. But in the face of what appear to be monumental decisions, we can over-think and control and plan until there is no room for God. The prayer which the servant prays, is not seeking a miracle: LORD TAKE MY CANCER AWAY! Neither is the Prayer seeming to change the world, LORD BRING PEACE TO THE MIDDLE EAST! But rather, the prayer recounts that God has been steadfast and loyal and kind, the servant has done everything they possible could, so now it is up to God.
But how can the servant be confident the choice is right? To demonstrate KINDNESS he asks for a cup of water, and the one who responds offering for his camels as well is kind. Then he observes and reflects for surely it would take a long time to provide water to a caravan of camels with a watering can. The servant goes with her to her family, and negotiates the dowry, proving that his master can provide for her and that he is devoted. The servant describes his faith and prayer that led him to her, and no one laughs or scoffs, or doubts. Then he asks that she leave home and family to travel with him, demonstrating her commitment and loyalty to the promise. Finally they go. This passage is often used in weddings, to name love at first sight, Rebekah and the servant stop to rest atop a hill overlooking the valley. As she looks down over the land, she sees a man working, just then the man looks up, and across the distance, their eyes meet, and they fall in love.
While the servant is given a voice in this passage, we never learn their name. While traveling a far distance, on an impossible search, he knows he is being led by a spirit. I share with you that this has been a hard six weeks for many reasons, and in the midst of it someone helped celebrate a birthday, someone brought sherbet made from a family recipe, someone brought a nosegay of flowers from their garden, someone brought a quart of strawberries, someone invited us to take part in the Lightning Regatta. I am convinced these were acts of the Holy Spirit in our midst. And I am very thankful and humbled.
The words from Matthew are among the best loved. “All who are weary and overburdened take my yoke upon you.” What we need to remember, is that a YOKE always fit upon the shoulders of TWO OXEN. You cannot have a YOKE OF OX, it would be like a PAIR OF SOCK, or ONE PANT. What Jesus describes is that he/the Holy Spirit has already accepted the yoke and simply awaits our joining to walk along beside.
This is a fellowship, you cannot do alone. You cannot celebrate BAPTIZE yourself, or CELEBRATE COMMUNION in private, because we share together. this is part of the nature of a Sacrament, part of being the body of Christ.
Matthew 1116-19, 25-30
We are, all of us, SEARCHING... Searching for someone to share life with, searching for wisdom... searching for understanding, searching for meaning... This morning's readings suggest that what we need to do, is not so much search, as open our eyes to see that we are being accompanied on life's journey.
The people of faith during the Roman Empire of the Caesars, sought a prophet who would bless them and tell them everything is going to be all right; instead, they had John the Baptist, who challenged them as sinners, a brood of vipers, needing to repent and be washed clean. After John, they sought another like him, going further to critique their times, who would wring his hands and mourn loss, instead God provided the Christ, who celebrated with outcasts, who forgave those who had been rejected by the world. We search for what we know, what we think is familiar, as if what comforts is what we need, as if satiating our desires, filling our gas tanks, paying our debts, makes our problems disappear. That would be a cheap grace, a false faith that only substantiates what we want to hear. The word of faith is DO NOT SETTLE, do not GO BACK, do not accept a lowest common denominator, search one WHO WILL JOURNEY WITH YOU.
The story of Genesis led us with Abraham to leave home, kinsmen, everything familiar, to wander with God; searching for the Promised Land, searching for what is promised to future generations, searching for future generations from a barren lifeless couple 75 and 100 years of age who had hope, trusted and believed, BELIEVED GOD would be STEADFAST & LOYAL. As much as the Call of Abraham, the Visitation and Laughter of Sarah, the Birth of Isaac and Abraham's test of Sacrificing Isaac, this morning's Genesis story of the WOOING of Rebekah is essential to God's Promise. For without a mate for Abraham's son, how are there to be future generations to inherit the land.
Which sets up the question of this passage.
SHOULD ISAAC GO BACK, back to where Abram and Sara came from?
SHOULD ISAAC intermarry and dissolve into the culture of the Canaanites?
Instead, Abraham sends his servant searching for a partner for the Promise. In many ways the partner for Isaac is more like Father Abraham than like Isaac. How often in life, rather than finding our own mirror in a partner, we find one who is like the best qualities of our parent. Rebekah like Abraham must be one willing to leave home and family, everything she has ever known to wander where God leads, for the hope of promise to future generations you will not see.
There is a subtle reality here, we need to name. CHOICE is a matter of prosperity. Had Abraham been poor, they could not have afforded to search for Rebekah. In impoverished places, there is not a choice between beef and fish for the third meal of the day, but rather whether you have rice to make one meal of?
In another congregation, we had a couple who had had an arranged marriage, who had never met until their wedding. After 35 years of marriage, she used to say that “No matter whom you marry, they are not perfect, but you can grow to love anyone, someone who is your partner throughout life, who is loyal and steadfast and kind.
Abraham does not send just any servant, this unnamed servant has been with him longer than any other. The unnamed servant is loyal and steadfast. Much like any of us, the servant takes what he has been given and goes where he was told, hundreds of miles, with a loaded caravan of camels.
Then comes the question that distinguishes this as a story of faith, from a simple genealogy of HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER.
How does a servant find a Partner for The Promise of Abraham?
Do you go on the Internet to MATCH DOT COM?
SERVANTS SEEKING WOMEN SEEKING MEN: Nice Jewish boy, must enjoy travel.
Do you go to SINGLES BARS? A Matchmaker?
Do you go to CHURCH?
All these have been known to work, but many of us try to hard, we control our searching, rather than trusting God will provide/God will fulfill the Promise.
The servant does something completely unexpected, a simple act of faith.
NOT CIRCUMCISION, NOT TAKING OFF SHOES, or even MAKING A SACRIFICE.
The servant prays for God's guidance, for loyalty and steadfast trust.
Now understand, that if you go to take a Chemistry Midterm, and do not study and prepare, and you pray, “LORD, Give me the right answers.” Probably not going to work. But in the face of what appear to be monumental decisions, we can over-think and control and plan until there is no room for God. The prayer which the servant prays, is not seeking a miracle: LORD TAKE MY CANCER AWAY! Neither is the Prayer seeming to change the world, LORD BRING PEACE TO THE MIDDLE EAST! But rather, the prayer recounts that God has been steadfast and loyal and kind, the servant has done everything they possible could, so now it is up to God.
But how can the servant be confident the choice is right? To demonstrate KINDNESS he asks for a cup of water, and the one who responds offering for his camels as well is kind. Then he observes and reflects for surely it would take a long time to provide water to a caravan of camels with a watering can. The servant goes with her to her family, and negotiates the dowry, proving that his master can provide for her and that he is devoted. The servant describes his faith and prayer that led him to her, and no one laughs or scoffs, or doubts. Then he asks that she leave home and family to travel with him, demonstrating her commitment and loyalty to the promise. Finally they go. This passage is often used in weddings, to name love at first sight, Rebekah and the servant stop to rest atop a hill overlooking the valley. As she looks down over the land, she sees a man working, just then the man looks up, and across the distance, their eyes meet, and they fall in love.
While the servant is given a voice in this passage, we never learn their name. While traveling a far distance, on an impossible search, he knows he is being led by a spirit. I share with you that this has been a hard six weeks for many reasons, and in the midst of it someone helped celebrate a birthday, someone brought sherbet made from a family recipe, someone brought a nosegay of flowers from their garden, someone brought a quart of strawberries, someone invited us to take part in the Lightning Regatta. I am convinced these were acts of the Holy Spirit in our midst. And I am very thankful and humbled.
The words from Matthew are among the best loved. “All who are weary and overburdened take my yoke upon you.” What we need to remember, is that a YOKE always fit upon the shoulders of TWO OXEN. You cannot have a YOKE OF OX, it would be like a PAIR OF SOCK, or ONE PANT. What Jesus describes is that he/the Holy Spirit has already accepted the yoke and simply awaits our joining to walk along beside.
This is a fellowship, you cannot do alone. You cannot celebrate BAPTIZE yourself, or CELEBRATE COMMUNION in private, because we share together. this is part of the nature of a Sacrament, part of being the body of Christ.
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