Acts of Faith, July 27, 2008

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.