October 16, 2016 "Do Not Lose Heart"

Genesis 22 Jeremiah 31:23-40 Luke 18:1-8 The Abraham and Isaac story presents a faith question: Whether life is only about our fulfillment of our desires, or whether we can live in a relationship of faith and commitment without a reward at the end? I recall turning 30 with the realization that all my personal goals had been met, I had graduated from Seminary, been called to a Solo church, owned my own home, had a wife, 2 children, 2 cars and a dog. After 25 years of trusting God’s Promise, trusting God’s Covenant, God fulfilled Expectations with the birth of this child. Now God challenges Abraham whether possessing all he ever wanted, whether he can still believe? God Calls Abraham, and Abraham’s immediate response is “Here I AM!” Only a few verses later as they trudge up the mountain, Isaac recognizes all the elements necessary for making a sacrifice, except the sacrifice, and Isaac asks Abraham: “Father” and Abraham responds to his son “Here I AM!” This not a response to our teacher of :“Present,” but to both God and Isaac, Abraham responds with UnConditional, UnQualified Commitment. And 3rd, when Abraham was about to sacrifice his firstborn, the Voice of God called and Abraham responded “Here I AM.” No matter what God’s Command, no matter what Isaac’s Question, Abraham is resolved to act. The questions we asked a few moments ago of new members, the questions we ask of the church in the Sacrament, are also intentionally open ended and vague Commitments without Qualifiers or Conditions. Regardless of what comes, without certainty of the future, even fearing what the future may bring, we are asked for a statement of faith, a covenant of commitment, and the response is an unconditional unqualified response both to God and to one another: “Here I AM!” Last Sunday, I flew home to Skaneateles from Louisville, Kentucky, and as a life-long Leaf Peeper, I was shocked to witness the change, not simply from Green to Orange, Crimson and Gold, but because of this year’s drought simply a weary lifeless Brown. The Book of Jeremiah is often described as the First Book of LAMENTATION, and this section as “The Little Book of Consolation” because after 30 Chapters of God WATCHING & SEEING, as Israel Tore itself Down, Uprooted, Broken Apart and Laid Waste, God promises something new. Answering the question we each ask at differing times, it is Not that God causes suffering, but God watches and sees, and does not intervene against our free will. There is a wonderful wordplay here in Hebrew, because in Hebrew every word has no more than a three consonant root. Jeremiah described for 30 Chapters that “God Watched and God Saw” As the Nation was torn down, broken, uprooted and destroyed, in Hebrew the verb for “Seeing” is the word SHaQeD. Now, after the verb SHaQeD has been said over and over, God uses a new verb SHoQeD meaning God will Plant and Grow, except that in Hebrew there were no vowels. Change, here is that throughout Israel’s History, their focus had been upon conquering the Empire, controlling the universe. God’s declaration is that if you control the whole world, dissecting and knowing everything without trust or faith, you cannot find God. The people had been a people of Law. From our earliest covenants, there had been expectations of rules to live by and what laws we would follow in order to keep faith. But humanity has always had an innate form of dementia, we forget. We function at life, we go about our routines of keeping house and family and work, but we regularly forget: God and God’s laws. In response, Judaism had established extensive payment systems to atone for the debt of our sins. Sacrificing two turtledoves to redeem the birth of a firstborn male. Sacrificing a lamb for the Passover. Sacrificing a Red Heifer and bathing in the ashes. Now after decades of destruction, of Tearing Down, Uprooting, Breaking Apart and Laying Waste, God affirms to Jeremiah “Here I AM” and not only has God resolved ALL past debt, God changed the relationship, no longer to be about Laws but instead about Love and Commitment. Hebrew had a generic reference to God as Lord and Master, the Hebrew word for this being baal, the difficulty being that when the Israelites rejected God and made idols of their own creation to worship, they also called these Baals with a capital B. Here, God provides that instead of Lord and Master, God can refer to Spouse/Love/ Husband/ Wife/ Partner. The great problem of Love and Marriage is that you cannot track the debts of your partner: She did not phone. He came home late. She spent too much on shoes. He forgot the milk. He went to porn websites. Looking for affection she flirted with another. The difficulty of an UnQualified, UnConditional Commitment is that all of those wrongs, all the many sins of a lifetime, are forgiven; and all that matters is not losing heart. Many of you will recall that we had a member, a Widow, named Marie Knox, who every week not only came to Bible Study, she would take Barclay’s Commentary to prepare questions about the passage. In the 1950s William Barclay published a wonderful very useable commentary on every book of the Bible often with little stories to help explain the passage. Barclay’s analogy about Jesus’ Parable of The Widow, described a Scullery Maid in the time of Indentured Servants and Great Manor Houses like Downton Abbey. This woman had no rights and no freedom, she was for a part of her life owned by another because of her family’s debts. The one personal thing she did, was that each night after everyone else had read the Newspaper, she would take the section on Family Announcements, and before going to sleep she would pray for each one. She began praying for each Baby born, naming them by name, before God. Then she would pray for each couple getting Engaged or Married, that they would be loving to each other and have a blessed life. Finally she would pray for the Dead, naming each soul committed that day to Almighty God not to be forsaken. Barclay claimed she prayed ceaselessly, petitioning God for others without reserve. Who knows how many lives were blessed by this one, praying for those she never knew? Throughout history, this has been the standard interpretation of this text, that God is far more generous and compassionate than this Judge and whether the Judge cared and would be influenced or not, we like the Widow we should pray always. I have several difficulties with interpreting the parable in this way. 1. First, it emphasizes that the only obstacle to faith is How Much we pray, so if we pray more, if we were better people and less sinners, we might get what we want. That is not faith. 2. Second, interpreting the Parable this way, we approach Prayer as being like our Christmas list, or the 3 wishes of a Genie. “Lord, I want Jim to be healed; I want peace in Syria; I want a new blue bicycle…” When I married into Judy’s family, her mother had a Honey-Do List under a magnet on the Refrigerator door. Trying to make a good impression, I set about accomplishing everything on that list of projects, all the while Judy’s brother and father laughed knowing that list, like our wishes, has no end. Approaching this parable differently, I came up with a fresh interpretation this week. While God is often described as Judge, and God is often depicted in parables; for this parable, start with the Judge being a human being. What do we know about the judge? The Judge does not care about people or God or what others think, he cares about nothing except himself… That sounds a lot like people, like us, caring only about winning, not about others or about God. While the Widow is compassionate and caring and unrelenting for justice. She sounds a great deal like God. So what if the parable is about God trying day after day to have us hear God’s case of compassion for others, and although we do not care about God or others, we know that eventually God will wear us out, the Hebrew phrase is literally to cause us a black eye. And the question comes, when the Son of Man returns, will he find faith on earth?