Exodus 3: 1-15
Matthew 16:21-28
There is fighting in Libya. Hurricane Irene made landfall and is working the way up the East-coast. An earthquake struck Washington DC. All the things that technology was supposed to do for us, and thus far, we have access to many bits of in formation and we become distracted by many things. I am never certain if when something happens, I am supposed to TWEET first, or FACEBOOK, to send a TEXT or LINK-IN, or EMAIL, and wonder why we cannot simply TALK TOGETHER FACE TO FACE? We now are developing APPS for anything we could want to do, but HOW this affects us, and who we are becoming, we have not yet come to know.
Yesterday afternoon, I had a wedding, and as the guests were entering I heard a voice from decades ago a man we had known in college in the Midwest 35 years ago was walking up the steps. In that lull after the wedding and before the reception begins, we visited together with quick and deep summaries of the important events and circumstances in our lives. He described his partner and how they had met a dozen years ago. As a very gentle and soft-spoken man, I was not surprised nor concerned that he described having come to the awareness that of knowing himself, and that he was gay. And the way he described it, the process of coming to know who he is and claiming who he is, I responded: “I have never thought of it this way before, nor heard it described as such, but I think most of us, speaking for myself, I also have spent most my life searching for who we are, at 53 still questioning what I want to be when I grow up. That has been punctuated over the years with marriage and children, education and experiences, but for you it has seemed to have been focused on your most intimate commitment.” With all the distractions of life, jobs and careers, the economy, worries about children and pets, we lose sight of what we hold most dear, what we believe and who we think we are.
The story of Moses begins here, not in a palace, not in the Temple, not while doing the most grand of things, but rather the most mundane. While this orphaned Hebrew child may think he knows who he is, raised in the household of the Pharaoh of Egypt, who recently witnessed the racism and prejudice of an Egyptian beating a slave, and instinctively struck and killed the abuser, tried to get away from his past, tried to go to a new place, marrying and herding sheep for his father in law Jethro a priest and leader of Midian. STILL, God knows who he is, where he is, what he has done, and God cares.
We often become distracted reading this passage, by the burning bush. After all, it's FIRE, and yet the bush is unharmed, not consumed by burning. Listening to the story in context, it is as if, the whole point of the burning bush is to DISTRACT MOSES FROM DISTRACTIONS. Seeing the bush out of the corner of his eye, he could no longer look down at his feet. Seeing the bush burnt but not consumed he had to take his eye off the sheep, off the path, off his worries and doubts and regrets, and look up. Moses had to pause his TEXT MESSAGING about what he saw and GO SEE rather than TWEETING about it as an observer he was Called to participate. From that moment of DISTRACTION, there is no longer concern about the burning bush, but GOD who speaks and is present with Moses here on Holy Ground. What a perfect metaphor for the CHURCH, WORSHIP, being the COUMMINTY OF FAITH to one another, we were never supposed to be an Institution, Perfect, we were never to be the IDEAL. As brilliant as the sermon may be, as much as we may rehearse and practice, despite the brilliance of the windows, the majesty of these gold pipes and the music created, all of worship is to DISTRACT US from OUR DISTRACTIONS to consider what is of value, who we are and where we are going. This is a passage about a Calling, a vocation, the seriousness of what we believe to how we live.
Like many of you, I had a mentor growing up, going to school, the early years of my career, who has now gone. Whenever I returned, he would ask the same Biblical question, “What's the latest theory about the TETRAGAMMANON?” When first he asked I was not certain what TETRAGAMMANON even was, but quickly came to know he was referencing Moses' 4 letter name for God.
In that this mentor had also gone to seminary and been a preacher, I thought of all the things that have not changed since you went to seminary probably at the top of the list of what has not changed is the meaning of this 6000 year old name for God. But deferring to his wisdom and experience and concern, I thought it a teaching exercise, so attempting to prove my knowledge recited “YHWH is so holy, we never speak it, but seeing the letters instead choose to speak ADONAI. The Word YHWH is the Verb TO Be, so anything that has being God is in it. Literally, “I AM WHO I AM, I AM WHAT I AM and WHAT I HAVE DONE and WHAT I WILL BE.” He smirked replying that “I AM WHAT I AM” is the catch phrase for POPEYE the Sailor, not the God of all Creation, Lord and Redeemer.
Over the years, I had struggled to understand and come to explain what I thought this mentor was asking. Now that he has died, listening to the text again, We hear the VERBS of what is said from the bush: “I HAVE SEEN,” “I HAVE HEARD,” “I HAVE KNOWN” are part of a recurrent identification from God, the fourth verb of which is “AND I HAVE REMEMBERED” the promise.
The point of the name for God, is not which is the prettiest name, or only as an explanation of identity, but that of all places, in this most common, most mundane, while taking sheep to pasture, Moses sees the BUSH that is a Reality, it is on fire and it is not burned. If Moses had simply heard a voice, while doing his task, the words would have been intangible, invisible, like theory, idea or philosophy, Abstract WORDS only something to know; but this bush is real and the burning is real, and it not being burned by the burning is also real, so the words that are said, that this is Holy Ground, that God IS, and God SEES, and GOD HEARS, and GOD KNOWS and GOD REMEMBERS, and that no matter how far away we may run, God is with us, all that is the REALITY. The Winds and rain and flooding of Irene have been the story of the last 72 hours, the tremors of Washington have already ceased, be those the ones of politics or those deeper in the earth, the fall of a dictatorship, even the intrinsic worth of our homes and land, and the problems of this week, all is distraction, all will pass. What Moses discovers is real, is that as much as he tried to run away from who he was, to hide what he had done, God sees, God hears, God knows and God remembers the promise. That is the FOUR PART IDENTIFICATION OF GOD, the Tetragammanon.
As much as we try to “Create” ourselves, as much as we try to hide our secrets and what bothers us most, the Burning Bush is physical evidence God knows and is not distracted by who we are. God accepts us, and stays with us through all our arguments, until finally we are left without distractions.
We recall the question of Jesus to the Disciples “Who do People Believe is the Messiah, and Who do you think I Am?” to which Simon replies with the Confession “You are the Christ, son of the living God.” Yet, the meat of the revelation comes here afterward. For just like Moses having found the Bush, Simon found the right response, each now have the resources to know who and God is, Christ is, but each is also very human, responding to adversity, to obstacles and threats with “NO, God forbid.” The core of the Confession in response to Jesus is the Christ, the Redeemer, Son of the Living God, is to cut through all distractions to say “Yes, AND he suffered and died, that nothing, not suffering, not death, not anything which may frighten us CAN EVER separate us from the love of God.” That is the meaning of Salvation.
Amazing, when we see and hear and know and remember the Promise that nothing can ever separate us from the Love of God, suddenly all the storms and distractions, the TWEETS and POKES and PINGS, the FRIENDING and UNFRIENDING, the Crises of the Day, even the anxieties about who we really are, all seem to fall into place.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Sunday, August 21, 2011
August 21, 2011 "Biblical Juxtaposition"
Exodus 1:1 -2:10
Matthew 16:13-20
Part of our desire for control, the means by which we make the world our own is through knowledge and understanding, to be able to plan with confidence, to make happen what we desire. But as much as we plan out for our children where they will live, where they will go to school, what they will study, there are circumstances of this life that surprise. What we do with those circumstances, how we choose to respond, these are acts of faith!
For the last hundred years and more, a controversy has swept Western Culture...whether we choose to believe Genesis' account of Creation, or whether we choose to believe in Evolution from a Big Bang. The Bible makes emphasis through juxtaposition, through Irony. The ultimate irony being that from a people who have biologically and culturally evolved, we have faith in God. There is irony that the more technologically advanced we have become, the more predisposed, absolutist and intractable.You have to be Democrat or Republican, you have to be rich or poor, for or against. The great joke of Western Society is that The Bible is Counter-Cultural! This sacred manuscript beginning in Ancient Mesopotamia long before the Caesars, before Alexander the Great, this foundation of morals, law, human culture, faith and ethics, emphasized MULTI-TASKING before we learned to use our opposable thumbs for typing on a Smith-Carona let alone an iPod or iPad. The Scriptures routinely explain one idea in tension with another; we only understand freedom when set against the backdrop of slavery, we only understand defiance when set against an absolute degree of control; we understand grace over against Law; we understand hope in the midst of loss and despair.
Our ancestors had two stories of where they came from. The first is that our ancestors were Nomads, wandering Arameans, descended from a childless couple. We possess these many ancient stories of Adam, of the Tower of Babel, of Noah, of Abram who while free, a nomad traveling the earth like the wind, he possessed no Land, no Name, and no Child. There was also the reality that our parents and grand-parents for generations had been slaves in Egypt. The Bible is not concerned with trying to determine which is right, which will win, the Bible draws the threads of all the parts of reality together.
The Book of Exodus begins with a series of Names taken from the conclusion of Genesis. Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob was the father of 12 sons and several daughters who along with their families settled in Egypt during the great drought and famine. At that time, Jacob's family numbered 70 persons, and Jacob's favorite son: Joseph, whom he thought he had lost was the most powerful person in all Egypt. In the midst of this drought and famine in a foreign land, the descendants of Abraham, our ancestors multiplied just as commanded in the book of Genesis. Eventually Joseph and all of their generation died off. There came to power a new Pharaoh who no longer honored what had been established in the past.
There are many forms of exterminating a culture. We have heard story after story of Genocide, from Esther to the Holocaust, from Rwanda to the Middle east and Africa, where one race attempts to eliminate another. To control the economy, to control the means of production, to deny education are also means of eliminating others. To consciously make another people slaves, is an attempt at control, at domination, at denial of their humanity, the reality is that both the slave and the master lose their humanity. According to Anti-Slavery International, the oldest organization tracking this, there are currently 20 million people who are slaves, sold for as little as $15 a head.
Ten years ago, we began relationship with refugees from South Sudan. How wonderful that we have come to know these persons and Jacob and Santino, John and Martha, Andrew and Mary Ninkir. We have often referred to the story of their village being burned and the children walking across the country. The fact of the matter is that throughout Africa, India, China, South America, Europe and America today, there are still slaves. 20 million people.
The Book of Exodus is wonderful in its subtle portrayal. This new Pharaoh, the leader of the nation who is responsible for the welfare of their people creates an economic recovery plan of building Storehouse Cities. Pyramids filled with food for future generations, but built by human slaves. The first means of CONTROL, the first means of extermination of this people that have grown numerous, is slavery. But it seems the more harsh the slavery, the more humanity is denied, the more they reproduce. The second means of CONTROL is to kill all the male babies at birth. The foolishness of Pharaoh is not thought through because by killing off the male babies, he is killing off the future workforce, future slaves to build his pyramids. But Powerful and Mighty Pharaoh, ruler of the Ancient World gives orders to the Midwives to kill the baby boys. What is the role of a Midwife? To do whatever is necessary to preserve the life of those being born, and Pharaoh commands them to do the opposite. Now names are important to us. One of the most loving acts parents provide are to give their child their name. And in the wedding celebration, the couple choose their identity and name. In this story from Exodus we have very few and important names. What is the name of the Pharaoh who built great food storehouses? What is the Pharaoh's name who ordered murder? What is Pharaoh's daughter's name? We do not know. What are the names of the Baby's mother and father, we do not know. But the names of the MIDWIVES, those who trust God and defy the Pharaoh are named Shiphrah and Puah, “Life” and “Fulfillment”.
SO in an act of CONTROL, of increasing desperation, Pharaoh bypasses the Midwives and goes directly to the parents, telling them when you give birth to kill their children. To demonstrate what lunacy this is, Pharaoh has a specific means of murder, they are to throw them into the River. But the name of the River in Egypt is The Nile, meaning SOURCE OF LIFE. So the people are to follow the laws of Pharaoh by killing their children in the Source of Life. We do not know the name of this couple, the Bible tells only two things, they are of the House LEVI, meaning the holy order of the Priesthood and they love their baby.
This un-named woman acts in faith. She does what the Pharaoh commands placing her child in the Nile but she does so recalling the story of Noah, fashioning an ARK of gopher reeds and bitumin and pitch to make it waterproof. AND she appoints the child's sister to act as witness. A witness is not an innocent bystander caught unaware who reports what they think they saw. A witness is intentionally appointed to observe and to bear testimony, if possible to intercede to act in faith. The baby who is brought up out of the Moss and Water, is given an Egyptian Name: MOSES and a nurse who is his own mother.
As much as we try to control, try to know and understand, there are conclusions which surprise us. There are times in which juxtaposition is not one idea against another, so much so as one idea informed by another. According to Matthew, Jesus and the Disciples were talking as they walked together, and Jesus asked Who do people believe is The Messiah, the Savior, the Son of Man? And they gave all the traditional answers. Then Jesus asked “Who do you think I am?” Putting A and B together Simon responded “You are the Son of God!” Now up until that moment, no one in all history had put together that the Representative of Humanity, the Son of Man, would also be the Son of God. That these two were united in one life was a new thought a new reality, that God had become human. In response Jesus gives Simon a Nick-name, a name meaning two different things. Up until then there was no name Peter this has become adopted by our culture, the name Cephas has the same root origin as “Petrified” like in Petrified wood that becomes like stone. However, “petrified” can also refer to being immobilized by fear. Cephas can mean the Moveable Stone, this brick that will be used, as well as this immense immovable rock. The problem for the Church is that at times we have been elements, bricks used to build society, at times we have been an immovable wall, at times we have acted in fear, and at times, we have been able to be transformed from being one thing like a tree into something different and permanent like stone.
The question for us as a People of Faith is not which are we, Rich or Poor, Right or Wrong, Republican or Democrat, but whether we can serve as Witnesses for what is going on in the world. Whether we will make connections, between which companies own which subsidiaries, which movies and television shows are paid for by which advertisers, what are the connections between governmental policies and human lives, and are we willing in our places of comfort and security to recognize that slavery and inhumanity still exist.
Matthew 16:13-20
Part of our desire for control, the means by which we make the world our own is through knowledge and understanding, to be able to plan with confidence, to make happen what we desire. But as much as we plan out for our children where they will live, where they will go to school, what they will study, there are circumstances of this life that surprise. What we do with those circumstances, how we choose to respond, these are acts of faith!
For the last hundred years and more, a controversy has swept Western Culture...whether we choose to believe Genesis' account of Creation, or whether we choose to believe in Evolution from a Big Bang. The Bible makes emphasis through juxtaposition, through Irony. The ultimate irony being that from a people who have biologically and culturally evolved, we have faith in God. There is irony that the more technologically advanced we have become, the more predisposed, absolutist and intractable.You have to be Democrat or Republican, you have to be rich or poor, for or against. The great joke of Western Society is that The Bible is Counter-Cultural! This sacred manuscript beginning in Ancient Mesopotamia long before the Caesars, before Alexander the Great, this foundation of morals, law, human culture, faith and ethics, emphasized MULTI-TASKING before we learned to use our opposable thumbs for typing on a Smith-Carona let alone an iPod or iPad. The Scriptures routinely explain one idea in tension with another; we only understand freedom when set against the backdrop of slavery, we only understand defiance when set against an absolute degree of control; we understand grace over against Law; we understand hope in the midst of loss and despair.
Our ancestors had two stories of where they came from. The first is that our ancestors were Nomads, wandering Arameans, descended from a childless couple. We possess these many ancient stories of Adam, of the Tower of Babel, of Noah, of Abram who while free, a nomad traveling the earth like the wind, he possessed no Land, no Name, and no Child. There was also the reality that our parents and grand-parents for generations had been slaves in Egypt. The Bible is not concerned with trying to determine which is right, which will win, the Bible draws the threads of all the parts of reality together.
The Book of Exodus begins with a series of Names taken from the conclusion of Genesis. Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob was the father of 12 sons and several daughters who along with their families settled in Egypt during the great drought and famine. At that time, Jacob's family numbered 70 persons, and Jacob's favorite son: Joseph, whom he thought he had lost was the most powerful person in all Egypt. In the midst of this drought and famine in a foreign land, the descendants of Abraham, our ancestors multiplied just as commanded in the book of Genesis. Eventually Joseph and all of their generation died off. There came to power a new Pharaoh who no longer honored what had been established in the past.
There are many forms of exterminating a culture. We have heard story after story of Genocide, from Esther to the Holocaust, from Rwanda to the Middle east and Africa, where one race attempts to eliminate another. To control the economy, to control the means of production, to deny education are also means of eliminating others. To consciously make another people slaves, is an attempt at control, at domination, at denial of their humanity, the reality is that both the slave and the master lose their humanity. According to Anti-Slavery International, the oldest organization tracking this, there are currently 20 million people who are slaves, sold for as little as $15 a head.
Ten years ago, we began relationship with refugees from South Sudan. How wonderful that we have come to know these persons and Jacob and Santino, John and Martha, Andrew and Mary Ninkir. We have often referred to the story of their village being burned and the children walking across the country. The fact of the matter is that throughout Africa, India, China, South America, Europe and America today, there are still slaves. 20 million people.
The Book of Exodus is wonderful in its subtle portrayal. This new Pharaoh, the leader of the nation who is responsible for the welfare of their people creates an economic recovery plan of building Storehouse Cities. Pyramids filled with food for future generations, but built by human slaves. The first means of CONTROL, the first means of extermination of this people that have grown numerous, is slavery. But it seems the more harsh the slavery, the more humanity is denied, the more they reproduce. The second means of CONTROL is to kill all the male babies at birth. The foolishness of Pharaoh is not thought through because by killing off the male babies, he is killing off the future workforce, future slaves to build his pyramids. But Powerful and Mighty Pharaoh, ruler of the Ancient World gives orders to the Midwives to kill the baby boys. What is the role of a Midwife? To do whatever is necessary to preserve the life of those being born, and Pharaoh commands them to do the opposite. Now names are important to us. One of the most loving acts parents provide are to give their child their name. And in the wedding celebration, the couple choose their identity and name. In this story from Exodus we have very few and important names. What is the name of the Pharaoh who built great food storehouses? What is the Pharaoh's name who ordered murder? What is Pharaoh's daughter's name? We do not know. What are the names of the Baby's mother and father, we do not know. But the names of the MIDWIVES, those who trust God and defy the Pharaoh are named Shiphrah and Puah, “Life” and “Fulfillment”.
SO in an act of CONTROL, of increasing desperation, Pharaoh bypasses the Midwives and goes directly to the parents, telling them when you give birth to kill their children. To demonstrate what lunacy this is, Pharaoh has a specific means of murder, they are to throw them into the River. But the name of the River in Egypt is The Nile, meaning SOURCE OF LIFE. So the people are to follow the laws of Pharaoh by killing their children in the Source of Life. We do not know the name of this couple, the Bible tells only two things, they are of the House LEVI, meaning the holy order of the Priesthood and they love their baby.
This un-named woman acts in faith. She does what the Pharaoh commands placing her child in the Nile but she does so recalling the story of Noah, fashioning an ARK of gopher reeds and bitumin and pitch to make it waterproof. AND she appoints the child's sister to act as witness. A witness is not an innocent bystander caught unaware who reports what they think they saw. A witness is intentionally appointed to observe and to bear testimony, if possible to intercede to act in faith. The baby who is brought up out of the Moss and Water, is given an Egyptian Name: MOSES and a nurse who is his own mother.
As much as we try to control, try to know and understand, there are conclusions which surprise us. There are times in which juxtaposition is not one idea against another, so much so as one idea informed by another. According to Matthew, Jesus and the Disciples were talking as they walked together, and Jesus asked Who do people believe is The Messiah, the Savior, the Son of Man? And they gave all the traditional answers. Then Jesus asked “Who do you think I am?” Putting A and B together Simon responded “You are the Son of God!” Now up until that moment, no one in all history had put together that the Representative of Humanity, the Son of Man, would also be the Son of God. That these two were united in one life was a new thought a new reality, that God had become human. In response Jesus gives Simon a Nick-name, a name meaning two different things. Up until then there was no name Peter this has become adopted by our culture, the name Cephas has the same root origin as “Petrified” like in Petrified wood that becomes like stone. However, “petrified” can also refer to being immobilized by fear. Cephas can mean the Moveable Stone, this brick that will be used, as well as this immense immovable rock. The problem for the Church is that at times we have been elements, bricks used to build society, at times we have been an immovable wall, at times we have acted in fear, and at times, we have been able to be transformed from being one thing like a tree into something different and permanent like stone.
The question for us as a People of Faith is not which are we, Rich or Poor, Right or Wrong, Republican or Democrat, but whether we can serve as Witnesses for what is going on in the world. Whether we will make connections, between which companies own which subsidiaries, which movies and television shows are paid for by which advertisers, what are the connections between governmental policies and human lives, and are we willing in our places of comfort and security to recognize that slavery and inhumanity still exist.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
August 14, 2011, "Shifting Paradigms"
Genesis 45:1-12
Matthew 15:10-31
Our Scriptures this week, demonstrate the difference between understanding what you have known and believing what you hope will be, a shift from knowing the Promise through what has been to Dreaming of a new and different future yet to be revealed. The difficulty of Israel was how to connect from Ancient Stories of our Patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to the reality that for generations we have been slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt. The Passover, the Red Sea, the Ten Commandments, the Wandering in the Wilderness and coming into the land as a new Nation, Freedom and the Law, all this only make sense against the context that our ancestors were slaves. So how does a people, a culture, shift from the beloved histories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to Moses?
Joseph is different from the Patriarchs before him. The last many weeks we have shared the stories of Abram, who left home and family to follow God, believing in a Covenant Promise of a Land and Name and as many children as there are stars in the heavens. We shared the Promise of Isaac, whose name means laughter, and the joy that was brought to this family long after they imagined possibility. We recalled how Sarah had used her Egyptian handmaid Hagaar to get a son under her control, then was jealous of Ishmael, when far beyond her time she conceived and bore Isaac, that Sarah wanted the Egyptian's baby Ishmael put to death, instead Abraham sent him into the wilderness where Ishmael's crying was heard by God.
We emphasized that Isaac was a model of the Promise, questioning whether Abraham would be willing and able to sacrifice the Promise, to sacrifice Isaac, or if possessing, he would abandon faith in God. After Abraham, we followed his son Isaac who fell in love, but he and his wife each played favorites among their twins, until her twin Jacob tricked his brother Esau out of his birthright by using Esau's hunger, his need for food. Having tricked his brother, Jacob deceived their father Isaac, then ran away to a far distant country, where he took as a wife Leah and Rachel the woman he truly loved, and also conceived by their handmaidens, after decades returned with his family to wander with God, following the Promise of a Land and Name and Generations in the land of the Canaanites.
The Patriarch Jacob had 10 sons and a daughter, when his beloved Rachel gave birth to her first born Joseph, then years later Baby Benjamin and she died in childbirth. Jacob, like his parents before him played favorites, that while he loved all his children, he treated Joseph differently. We remember the Coat of Many Colors, every color reminiscent of the lush Promise of the Garden of Eden. Some paradigms seem universal to all families. The elder ones are the first born and doted upon as infants, but by the time younger children come along not only have the parents been worn down, when the younger ones come of age we tend to have more time to listen and talk together, sharing hopes and dreams as adults. Joseph uses his relationship with their father Jacob against his brothers, tattling on them as younger children often do.
Joseph recognized from the first, that he was different from his brothers. What may not be immediately apparent is that Joseph was also different from the Patriarchs before him. Where Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Jacob, had all been focused on the Promise of God, Joseph never mentions the Promise, rarely even mentions God, Joseph instead is a Man of Dreams, who believes in the power of his Dreams. Rather than a Promise of Land and a Name and Children, in Joseph's Dream all his brothers bow down before him. In another, his brothers, his mother and father, are as the Sun and Moon and Stars, that all bow to the earth before Joseph. As the third of four children, like Joseph I recall spying upon and tattling on the older ones. I also recall being suspended by my ankles and dropped through the haychute by those same brothers. Joseph's brothers drop him into a pit, then devise to sell him into slavery to Ishmaelites. The brothers return to their father Jacob, and deceive him to gain the love he had for Joseph. But Jacob is inconsolable in his loss of his son. Jacob retreats into himself, believing the promise is no more, the child he loved is dead, he focuses only upon his loss.
Joseph gets into all kinds of trouble when away from family, when away from the Promise of God. Eventually, Joseph finds himself in the Pharaoh's dungeon, imprisoned as a slave. But it is here that Joseph uses his dreams and interpretation of dreams. Joseph, like his father before him, could have wallowed in grief, mourning the loss of what had been. Instead, Joseph uses his dreams to benefit his others, the cook and butcher who feed him, eventually even guiding the Pharaoh's Dreams.
After the Recession two years ago, the political games of the Debt Ceiling, and the turbulence of the International Stock Market these last several weeks, many of us have lost sleep.Two years ago, when the Housing Market Recession began, I recall forecasts that it would take two years for our Economy to recover to where it was. A month ago, the forecasters described another two years before things would be back like they were before. With the losses and gains of this last week, does anyone remember what the values used to be?
Last night I had a dream. I was down at the water's edge, when Seven Fat Porkbelly's came down to drink, and they drank with a great thirst, but the lake was still replenished. Then Seven Sickly Scrawny Pork-bellies came down, and these consumed the seven fat Porkbellies. And I recalled the Dreams of Joseph and Pharaoh, except that just before I awoke I heard a voice proclaim, “Stay away from the Porkbellies, you are Kosher.”
Joseph is a different Patriarch, from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They each believed in the Promise of God, they spoke with God and followed God, knowing God heard their cries. Joseph's is a Civil Religion, Joseph rarely even mentions God exists. Joseph believes in his Dreams. But when given the opportunity, when his brothers are in need of food and he has all the power, instead of retribution, instead of recalling past hurts and losses, rather than being focused on forgiveness Joseph loved his brothers, and acts for their future, letting down his guard, to reveal who he really is to them. And it here, that Joseph describes God has been present using all our circumstances, even the ones that seemed to be for evil turned out to be for a purpose that benefitted life.
We live in changing times, times when old Paradigms, old ways of thinking and relating seem out of touch. There are certain of Jesus' words that strike us as being out of touch, especially harsh when it was not needed. Others have looked at this collection of passages in the 15th Chapter of Matthew and guessed that he had a bunch of miscellaneous stories so put them all together; but I think there is a link here, that it is not the way things were created, not the circumstances that present themselves that are good or bad or evil, but what we choose to do with them, whether we choose to act as if this moment is a circumstance of healing of faith or not, whether we see God in this moment and act in faith or only by our past devices.
How odd, that Matthew does not identify this woman who seeks out Jesus as being a Gentile, a non-Jew, as being a woman of Tyre or Sidon, as he was wandering through that non-Jewish region, but instead, rather than identifying her as a Greek or a Roman, she is named as a Canaanite. She has no individual name, but is identified as one of the Rejected People of the Old Testament, one of those displaced by Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Moses and David and Solomon. She seeks Jesus out. The automatic response is rejection, the Messiah has come for God's own people. Over the years, I have heard many describe frustration with this passage, that they actually prefer the company of their dogs to their own children, or that their dogs were better trained. I think perhaps the meaning of the words is not that Jesus insulted her as a Dog, or as a Rabid Wild Beast, but as a Pet, a member of the household who is not a son or daughter. But still she presses to change the relationship, she acts in faith. Matthew is unique among the Gospels, for Matthew Jesus is not only the Messiah, not a dispenser of miracle cures healing the whole world, but repeatedly in addition to caring for the crowds, he responded to someone from outside the faith community, the Gerasene Demoniac who identified himself as “Roman Legion”, this Canaanite woman, who themselves crossed the boundary of distance to act in faith, to believe life could be different and asked for help.
Too often, we in the faith community, are like the Sunday School teacher beginning a lesson on the Parable of the Publican and the Sinner who each went up to the Temple to pray, and though the Teacher has a wonderful, insightful lesson prepared, begins the class with a prayer “Thank God we are members of this Presbyterian Church not like that Publican who condemned the Tax Collector.” We need to question changing our paradigms, considering whether we have lived in the past, held back by our losses and grief, whether we have judged others as Canaanites, and whether we act only to fulfill our dreams, or if we could envision that God uses even our circumstances for life, helping others to believe.
Matthew 15:10-31
Our Scriptures this week, demonstrate the difference between understanding what you have known and believing what you hope will be, a shift from knowing the Promise through what has been to Dreaming of a new and different future yet to be revealed. The difficulty of Israel was how to connect from Ancient Stories of our Patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to the reality that for generations we have been slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt. The Passover, the Red Sea, the Ten Commandments, the Wandering in the Wilderness and coming into the land as a new Nation, Freedom and the Law, all this only make sense against the context that our ancestors were slaves. So how does a people, a culture, shift from the beloved histories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to Moses?
Joseph is different from the Patriarchs before him. The last many weeks we have shared the stories of Abram, who left home and family to follow God, believing in a Covenant Promise of a Land and Name and as many children as there are stars in the heavens. We shared the Promise of Isaac, whose name means laughter, and the joy that was brought to this family long after they imagined possibility. We recalled how Sarah had used her Egyptian handmaid Hagaar to get a son under her control, then was jealous of Ishmael, when far beyond her time she conceived and bore Isaac, that Sarah wanted the Egyptian's baby Ishmael put to death, instead Abraham sent him into the wilderness where Ishmael's crying was heard by God.
We emphasized that Isaac was a model of the Promise, questioning whether Abraham would be willing and able to sacrifice the Promise, to sacrifice Isaac, or if possessing, he would abandon faith in God. After Abraham, we followed his son Isaac who fell in love, but he and his wife each played favorites among their twins, until her twin Jacob tricked his brother Esau out of his birthright by using Esau's hunger, his need for food. Having tricked his brother, Jacob deceived their father Isaac, then ran away to a far distant country, where he took as a wife Leah and Rachel the woman he truly loved, and also conceived by their handmaidens, after decades returned with his family to wander with God, following the Promise of a Land and Name and Generations in the land of the Canaanites.
The Patriarch Jacob had 10 sons and a daughter, when his beloved Rachel gave birth to her first born Joseph, then years later Baby Benjamin and she died in childbirth. Jacob, like his parents before him played favorites, that while he loved all his children, he treated Joseph differently. We remember the Coat of Many Colors, every color reminiscent of the lush Promise of the Garden of Eden. Some paradigms seem universal to all families. The elder ones are the first born and doted upon as infants, but by the time younger children come along not only have the parents been worn down, when the younger ones come of age we tend to have more time to listen and talk together, sharing hopes and dreams as adults. Joseph uses his relationship with their father Jacob against his brothers, tattling on them as younger children often do.
Joseph recognized from the first, that he was different from his brothers. What may not be immediately apparent is that Joseph was also different from the Patriarchs before him. Where Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Jacob, had all been focused on the Promise of God, Joseph never mentions the Promise, rarely even mentions God, Joseph instead is a Man of Dreams, who believes in the power of his Dreams. Rather than a Promise of Land and a Name and Children, in Joseph's Dream all his brothers bow down before him. In another, his brothers, his mother and father, are as the Sun and Moon and Stars, that all bow to the earth before Joseph. As the third of four children, like Joseph I recall spying upon and tattling on the older ones. I also recall being suspended by my ankles and dropped through the haychute by those same brothers. Joseph's brothers drop him into a pit, then devise to sell him into slavery to Ishmaelites. The brothers return to their father Jacob, and deceive him to gain the love he had for Joseph. But Jacob is inconsolable in his loss of his son. Jacob retreats into himself, believing the promise is no more, the child he loved is dead, he focuses only upon his loss.
Joseph gets into all kinds of trouble when away from family, when away from the Promise of God. Eventually, Joseph finds himself in the Pharaoh's dungeon, imprisoned as a slave. But it is here that Joseph uses his dreams and interpretation of dreams. Joseph, like his father before him, could have wallowed in grief, mourning the loss of what had been. Instead, Joseph uses his dreams to benefit his others, the cook and butcher who feed him, eventually even guiding the Pharaoh's Dreams.
After the Recession two years ago, the political games of the Debt Ceiling, and the turbulence of the International Stock Market these last several weeks, many of us have lost sleep.Two years ago, when the Housing Market Recession began, I recall forecasts that it would take two years for our Economy to recover to where it was. A month ago, the forecasters described another two years before things would be back like they were before. With the losses and gains of this last week, does anyone remember what the values used to be?
Last night I had a dream. I was down at the water's edge, when Seven Fat Porkbelly's came down to drink, and they drank with a great thirst, but the lake was still replenished. Then Seven Sickly Scrawny Pork-bellies came down, and these consumed the seven fat Porkbellies. And I recalled the Dreams of Joseph and Pharaoh, except that just before I awoke I heard a voice proclaim, “Stay away from the Porkbellies, you are Kosher.”
Joseph is a different Patriarch, from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They each believed in the Promise of God, they spoke with God and followed God, knowing God heard their cries. Joseph's is a Civil Religion, Joseph rarely even mentions God exists. Joseph believes in his Dreams. But when given the opportunity, when his brothers are in need of food and he has all the power, instead of retribution, instead of recalling past hurts and losses, rather than being focused on forgiveness Joseph loved his brothers, and acts for their future, letting down his guard, to reveal who he really is to them. And it here, that Joseph describes God has been present using all our circumstances, even the ones that seemed to be for evil turned out to be for a purpose that benefitted life.
We live in changing times, times when old Paradigms, old ways of thinking and relating seem out of touch. There are certain of Jesus' words that strike us as being out of touch, especially harsh when it was not needed. Others have looked at this collection of passages in the 15th Chapter of Matthew and guessed that he had a bunch of miscellaneous stories so put them all together; but I think there is a link here, that it is not the way things were created, not the circumstances that present themselves that are good or bad or evil, but what we choose to do with them, whether we choose to act as if this moment is a circumstance of healing of faith or not, whether we see God in this moment and act in faith or only by our past devices.
How odd, that Matthew does not identify this woman who seeks out Jesus as being a Gentile, a non-Jew, as being a woman of Tyre or Sidon, as he was wandering through that non-Jewish region, but instead, rather than identifying her as a Greek or a Roman, she is named as a Canaanite. She has no individual name, but is identified as one of the Rejected People of the Old Testament, one of those displaced by Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Moses and David and Solomon. She seeks Jesus out. The automatic response is rejection, the Messiah has come for God's own people. Over the years, I have heard many describe frustration with this passage, that they actually prefer the company of their dogs to their own children, or that their dogs were better trained. I think perhaps the meaning of the words is not that Jesus insulted her as a Dog, or as a Rabid Wild Beast, but as a Pet, a member of the household who is not a son or daughter. But still she presses to change the relationship, she acts in faith. Matthew is unique among the Gospels, for Matthew Jesus is not only the Messiah, not a dispenser of miracle cures healing the whole world, but repeatedly in addition to caring for the crowds, he responded to someone from outside the faith community, the Gerasene Demoniac who identified himself as “Roman Legion”, this Canaanite woman, who themselves crossed the boundary of distance to act in faith, to believe life could be different and asked for help.
Too often, we in the faith community, are like the Sunday School teacher beginning a lesson on the Parable of the Publican and the Sinner who each went up to the Temple to pray, and though the Teacher has a wonderful, insightful lesson prepared, begins the class with a prayer “Thank God we are members of this Presbyterian Church not like that Publican who condemned the Tax Collector.” We need to question changing our paradigms, considering whether we have lived in the past, held back by our losses and grief, whether we have judged others as Canaanites, and whether we act only to fulfill our dreams, or if we could envision that God uses even our circumstances for life, helping others to believe.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
"Naming What Was Hidden" July 24, 2011
Genesis 30: 25-43
Matthew 13: 31-35 & 44-52
Years ago, when my bride and I first married, we had very little. We lived in a Studio apartment on the Upper Westside of Harlem in Manhattan as I went to Seminary and she to Grad School. As wedding gifts her grandparents had refinished a table and chairs for us, and our most precious possession was a noisy, metal, 20 year old used window air conditioner from her uncle. Routinely, in each week's trash we would find a broken chair, a trunk painted the wrong color, and we carried these back to refinish and furnish our home. When we graduated and went to the first church, the movers said “Now all these antiques need to be insured.” Over 30 years, with two children now grown, we have accumulated a lot of stuff, and periodically we want to bring everything out, new and old, discerning what is really needed. The same is true in faith, except perhaps what is brought out of our faith is more obscure.
Parables... Guilt... Forgiveness... Predestination... Rights of a first born... Let my people Go... A 2000 year old weapon of execution... Conversion... Salvation... How do we bring out into the open, all that we have hidden and accumulated, in order to discern what we truly believe in? Recently, I learned a wonderful interpretation of “Predestination” having nothing to do with circumstances being fore-ordained, with damnation or election, but that Predestination is the response of those who do believe that who they are and what they experience in life is a gift from God. As opposed to “The Devil Made me Do It,” or “Being a Victim of Society,” or simply “Bad luck,” to intentionally claim “You are Blessed by God.”
Some of us grew up Catholic, must they throw away the Holy Rosary; some began life Jewish must they abandon the Table fellowship of the Seder and the saying of prayers to worship; Christian denominations separated 5-800 years ago are there still pieces of value that separate us, or do we cling to being separate from others? While many of us grew up as Presbyterian or Episcopalian, Baptist and Orthodox, it seems the fastest growing most prevalent faith today is what is described as “Shiela-ism.” You won't find the times of worship services for Shiela-ism listed in the newspaper, on-line or on a sign board. Shiela-ism, is Shiela or Steve or Sally deciding for themselves what they think is going to be important, making it up as they go along.
There are three primary differences in Shiela-ism and Presbyterianism. First, because Steve-ism is going to be different from Sheila-ism, Shiela-ism only has room for one, each of us individually going about life trying to make sense for ourselves. Second, because Shiela-ism is focused only on what we choose to believe, there is not even room for God, and we believe and worship only ourselves. Third, that having no one and nothing, not even God to relate to, we obsess and fill ourselves with guilt, crazy ideas others would have been able to challenge or to share, or to forgive us for ages ago, but we made ourselves the center of our identity and faith, without the ability to be forgiven or to know we are loved. Funny how much we worry about the estimated value of our homes, how much we try to effect the curb-appeal, when the value is only realized when we sell our home to move on; yet our faith in God, our ethics and values of what is really important go hidden gathering dust, until crises arise, and suddenly we desperately want prayer to work for us, suddenly we want to find the faith we used to have.
Faith is not about having occupied a pew for an hour each week, not about knowing when to stand up or how loudly we sing, not even guilt over how few Bible verses we memorized. Faith is what gives your life meaning and purpose, what would you live and die for? Part of the reason for a disconnect between that generation that fought WWII and the Generation who matured in the 1960s and 70s and between that generation and those fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq today, has been whether we knew we had something to believe in, whether we believe in our band of brothers, or whether cynically, we questioned if there was anything worth believing in. What would it be, to be working at our jobs as routine as plowing a field back and forth all day every day, when suddenly you find a buried treasure? The parable questions, would you pocket what you found, always concerned someone would contest your having it, or would you go about proving your right and ownership before claiming the prize. The underlying question however is what would it be to find a treasure in the midst of daily routine? Something worth selling everything else, risking everything, to be part of.
The ancient story of Genesis is marvelous. For while it is external, following the misadventures of all the generations of the dysfunctional family of Abraham, there are pearls here for each of us.
The story of Jacob, begins with Isaac and his wife Rebekkah playing favorites between their twin sons. Isaac loves Esau who is all boy, a hunter and fisher, an outdoorsman. Rebekkah loves Jacob, Mom's boy who helps her and takes care of whatever she needs.Through their children, Isaac and Rebekkah play out their relationship, and try to win, over each other as to who is more important, who is right. Jacob, the younger twin, the favorite of his mother, tricks his brother, deceives their father and having gotten the better of everyone has no place safe once he has won, so runs away.
Jacob returns to the land where his grandfather Abraham had grown up, goes to his mother Rebekkah's family, to Rebekkah's brother Laban. And what do expect is going to happen? Rebekkah and Isaac did not invent their relationship out of thin air, their relationship was modeled after that of their families, so right away Jacob and the extended community are contesting for who will dominate, who will win. There is a custom that everyone wait until all the sheep are brought in, and together the shepherds roll away the rock to water the flocks. In a feat of strength, challenging cultural norms and concerned only with his own success, Jacob rolls the boulder away to water the flocks of Laban's daughter Rachel. Jacob the trickster, the deceiver, now gets tricked by his uncle Laban into marrying Leah the first born as well as Rachel the wife he prefers and committing to 14 years of free labor. There is no thought to Leah's feelings, or to Rachel's, Laban like Jacob seems to see people as objects to be manipulated, possessions to be used.
Our passage this morning comes after Jacob has worked for Laban for nearly 20 years. He has two wives, and their maids, 11 sons and a daughter , the youngest of which is his favorite Rachel's first-born Joseph. With Joseph having been born, Jacob wishes to return to the promised land, but Laban does not want him to go. Laban knows that he has prospered by having Jacob work for him, so when push comes to shove offers to pay Jacob. Each one tries to manipulate and trick the other, without revealing to the other what they are really about.
How difficult to read this passage this week, as the leaders of our government contest over the Debt. Hopefully, we will not offend anyone's politics by naming what may have been hidden, that what drives the debate is not concern over the National Debt, over what will happen to our economy and future. One side wants to protect the entitlement of those who worked for and accumulated their wealth. The other side wants to protect the entitlement of programs for the marginalized. Both want to protect the wants of their constituents, both want to be re-elected, and both sides want to win by whatever means. Not far different from Laban and Jacob in their game of breeding and hiding flocks.
The contest between Jacob and Laban is finally settled by Jacob's wives, Laban's daughters who saddle their camels and making ready to leave. Returning both men to what this was really all about, Laban letting Jacob's people go, a phrase that would be echoed in future generations between Moses and Pharaoh. Yet, even then, the daughters as members of this family trick their father one last time.
Would that in the midst of this current debate, someone would question the intrinsic meaning of our DEBTS, and whether we really believe the words of Our Lord's Prayer. That we turn to God asking for daily bread, and asking that our Debts would be forgiven as we forgive our Debtors. Perhaps in that way, rather than this being an 11th hour political fight between parties, we would consider our value system, and International Debts between nations who can never repay the principle let alone compounded interest.
Matthew 13: 31-35 & 44-52
Years ago, when my bride and I first married, we had very little. We lived in a Studio apartment on the Upper Westside of Harlem in Manhattan as I went to Seminary and she to Grad School. As wedding gifts her grandparents had refinished a table and chairs for us, and our most precious possession was a noisy, metal, 20 year old used window air conditioner from her uncle. Routinely, in each week's trash we would find a broken chair, a trunk painted the wrong color, and we carried these back to refinish and furnish our home. When we graduated and went to the first church, the movers said “Now all these antiques need to be insured.” Over 30 years, with two children now grown, we have accumulated a lot of stuff, and periodically we want to bring everything out, new and old, discerning what is really needed. The same is true in faith, except perhaps what is brought out of our faith is more obscure.
Parables... Guilt... Forgiveness... Predestination... Rights of a first born... Let my people Go... A 2000 year old weapon of execution... Conversion... Salvation... How do we bring out into the open, all that we have hidden and accumulated, in order to discern what we truly believe in? Recently, I learned a wonderful interpretation of “Predestination” having nothing to do with circumstances being fore-ordained, with damnation or election, but that Predestination is the response of those who do believe that who they are and what they experience in life is a gift from God. As opposed to “The Devil Made me Do It,” or “Being a Victim of Society,” or simply “Bad luck,” to intentionally claim “You are Blessed by God.”
Some of us grew up Catholic, must they throw away the Holy Rosary; some began life Jewish must they abandon the Table fellowship of the Seder and the saying of prayers to worship; Christian denominations separated 5-800 years ago are there still pieces of value that separate us, or do we cling to being separate from others? While many of us grew up as Presbyterian or Episcopalian, Baptist and Orthodox, it seems the fastest growing most prevalent faith today is what is described as “Shiela-ism.” You won't find the times of worship services for Shiela-ism listed in the newspaper, on-line or on a sign board. Shiela-ism, is Shiela or Steve or Sally deciding for themselves what they think is going to be important, making it up as they go along.
There are three primary differences in Shiela-ism and Presbyterianism. First, because Steve-ism is going to be different from Sheila-ism, Shiela-ism only has room for one, each of us individually going about life trying to make sense for ourselves. Second, because Shiela-ism is focused only on what we choose to believe, there is not even room for God, and we believe and worship only ourselves. Third, that having no one and nothing, not even God to relate to, we obsess and fill ourselves with guilt, crazy ideas others would have been able to challenge or to share, or to forgive us for ages ago, but we made ourselves the center of our identity and faith, without the ability to be forgiven or to know we are loved. Funny how much we worry about the estimated value of our homes, how much we try to effect the curb-appeal, when the value is only realized when we sell our home to move on; yet our faith in God, our ethics and values of what is really important go hidden gathering dust, until crises arise, and suddenly we desperately want prayer to work for us, suddenly we want to find the faith we used to have.
Faith is not about having occupied a pew for an hour each week, not about knowing when to stand up or how loudly we sing, not even guilt over how few Bible verses we memorized. Faith is what gives your life meaning and purpose, what would you live and die for? Part of the reason for a disconnect between that generation that fought WWII and the Generation who matured in the 1960s and 70s and between that generation and those fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq today, has been whether we knew we had something to believe in, whether we believe in our band of brothers, or whether cynically, we questioned if there was anything worth believing in. What would it be, to be working at our jobs as routine as plowing a field back and forth all day every day, when suddenly you find a buried treasure? The parable questions, would you pocket what you found, always concerned someone would contest your having it, or would you go about proving your right and ownership before claiming the prize. The underlying question however is what would it be to find a treasure in the midst of daily routine? Something worth selling everything else, risking everything, to be part of.
The ancient story of Genesis is marvelous. For while it is external, following the misadventures of all the generations of the dysfunctional family of Abraham, there are pearls here for each of us.
The story of Jacob, begins with Isaac and his wife Rebekkah playing favorites between their twin sons. Isaac loves Esau who is all boy, a hunter and fisher, an outdoorsman. Rebekkah loves Jacob, Mom's boy who helps her and takes care of whatever she needs.Through their children, Isaac and Rebekkah play out their relationship, and try to win, over each other as to who is more important, who is right. Jacob, the younger twin, the favorite of his mother, tricks his brother, deceives their father and having gotten the better of everyone has no place safe once he has won, so runs away.
Jacob returns to the land where his grandfather Abraham had grown up, goes to his mother Rebekkah's family, to Rebekkah's brother Laban. And what do expect is going to happen? Rebekkah and Isaac did not invent their relationship out of thin air, their relationship was modeled after that of their families, so right away Jacob and the extended community are contesting for who will dominate, who will win. There is a custom that everyone wait until all the sheep are brought in, and together the shepherds roll away the rock to water the flocks. In a feat of strength, challenging cultural norms and concerned only with his own success, Jacob rolls the boulder away to water the flocks of Laban's daughter Rachel. Jacob the trickster, the deceiver, now gets tricked by his uncle Laban into marrying Leah the first born as well as Rachel the wife he prefers and committing to 14 years of free labor. There is no thought to Leah's feelings, or to Rachel's, Laban like Jacob seems to see people as objects to be manipulated, possessions to be used.
Our passage this morning comes after Jacob has worked for Laban for nearly 20 years. He has two wives, and their maids, 11 sons and a daughter , the youngest of which is his favorite Rachel's first-born Joseph. With Joseph having been born, Jacob wishes to return to the promised land, but Laban does not want him to go. Laban knows that he has prospered by having Jacob work for him, so when push comes to shove offers to pay Jacob. Each one tries to manipulate and trick the other, without revealing to the other what they are really about.
How difficult to read this passage this week, as the leaders of our government contest over the Debt. Hopefully, we will not offend anyone's politics by naming what may have been hidden, that what drives the debate is not concern over the National Debt, over what will happen to our economy and future. One side wants to protect the entitlement of those who worked for and accumulated their wealth. The other side wants to protect the entitlement of programs for the marginalized. Both want to protect the wants of their constituents, both want to be re-elected, and both sides want to win by whatever means. Not far different from Laban and Jacob in their game of breeding and hiding flocks.
The contest between Jacob and Laban is finally settled by Jacob's wives, Laban's daughters who saddle their camels and making ready to leave. Returning both men to what this was really all about, Laban letting Jacob's people go, a phrase that would be echoed in future generations between Moses and Pharaoh. Yet, even then, the daughters as members of this family trick their father one last time.
Would that in the midst of this current debate, someone would question the intrinsic meaning of our DEBTS, and whether we really believe the words of Our Lord's Prayer. That we turn to God asking for daily bread, and asking that our Debts would be forgiven as we forgive our Debtors. Perhaps in that way, rather than this being an 11th hour political fight between parties, we would consider our value system, and International Debts between nations who can never repay the principle let alone compounded interest.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
"Thin Places" July 17, 2011
Genesis 28:10-ff
Luke 8:26-ff
In Ireland, they have a name for places like where Jacob slept and dreamed of the Ladder between Heaven and Earth, places like where the one whose identity was Mob/ Legion/ Demoniac met Jesus. They call these “THIN PLACES,” locations where the separation between heaven and earth are thin.
In our Feng Shui, Martha Stewart obsessed desire for perfection, we imagine places where we would meet God as being perfection. Where grass would not crunch beneath our steps from dryness, gardens would be immaculate without a weed, woodland creatures would be called Flower and Thumper, and rather than the sound of traffic, we would hear the rhythm of wind through leaves and the melody of water spilling over a brook. But the Bible is not pristine and composed, those who have shared their faith here know that life is messy and often times brutal. Thin Places more often are desolate, harsh, places of banishment where uncontrolled persons would be put away as if dead. Both passages this week are of these Thin Places, Places of Banishment, Places where Heaven and Earth meet, where we most often encounter God.
In order to receive what is here, we need to grasp what it is to be banished. In our Family Systems, our sense of Normal, when there is that which is a violation, abhorrent, something we cannot accept or tolerate, we execute a Cut-Off, we Banish. In a time in human societies when union between people of the same sex is legalized, when dictators are overthrown without being put to death, it is hard to imagine that only a generation ago for a Catholic to marry a Protestant would have been grounds for the family to never speak to their son or daughter again. Quite possibly, while televised coverage and the legalization of human rights have created safeties, prejudice and hostility are the more dangerous because they are less visible, more subversive. When Isaac realized that Jacob had tricked his Father into giving Jacob everything, when Esau knew that his own brother Jacob had stolen the blessings of his inheritance from his father, Isaac sent Jacob away.
In Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Romeo is banished for the accidental killing of Juliet's cousin. Romeo describes that to be banished is worse than the punishment of Execution; to be kept alive, but sent away from everyone and everything you love, never to be able to go home, never again to embrace or simply be with your family, never again to do what is normal what was taken for granted. Imagine a family genealogy, in which there are those whom the family does not claim as being one of us.
By stealing the birthright, by claiming what was not his, by tricking everyone, Jacob has cut himself off and now as one without Country, without Family, without place or heir, he wanders through a place unknown, and exhausted lays down to sleep. We have to be careful in interpreting Holy Scripture from our contemporary understandings. We read of a son who was loved by his mother more than she loved anyone else, and we jump to Sigmund Freud; we read of Jacob having a dream of God and having been influenced by Carl Jung we look for Symbols and Archetypes behind every image. Before we suggest electro-shock therapy or lythium for the one Jesus encountered, we need to accept the importance of what is described to people of faith in their own time. This dream was not a working out of Jacob's oedipal complex. This dream was not a desire to kill his father. This dream Jacob saw as an encounter with God, as real and tangible as Moses' Burning Bush, or the parting of the Red Sea, or Isaiah having his unclean lips cauterized by a flying Seraphim. The importance of this being a Dream is simply that Jac ob could no longer control and manipulate outcomes. This is who Jacob had been, he manipulated his brother into selling his birthrights, he controlled and manipulated his father into giving him the family blessing and promise, but in our dreams we are witnesses not manipulators in control.
What Jacob witnessed, when he was not in control, is that rather than God being the Judge he anticipated, sitting in a far off Heaven, Earth and Heaven are connected. Not only is there a web of ladders connecting us, but as isolated and cut-off as he was, still God was present with him. In essence, by his trickery and manipulation, by the sins of his life, Jacob had created for himself the identity God knew Abraham and Isaac to have had. Read in this way, I am not certain Abraham or Isaac had ever claimed in their own identity that they were without Nation, without Family, without Home, without … because they had had the Promise, they were with God. What Jacob witnessed was the reality of the Incarnation, GOD IS WITH US, even when Banished, cut off, isolated and absolutely alone, without the ability to communicate or make connections, still God is with us.
In this dream, God vows three things: God re-establishes the PROMISE given to Abraham, and the INCARNATION that eventually would be promised in Jesus Christ that the Lord would be with us, but ALSO Jacob is given Hope in a future HOMECOMING. The Banished, Those in Exile, The Lost would eventually be redeemed. There is a subtlety here, that Almighty God, Eternal and Everlasting Creator, Redeemer and Judge, vows all this to Jacob, and in reply Jacob says IF, IF you will, then I vow. Imagine on your Wedding Day being invited to share your vows of Commitment, Fidelity and Loyalty and Love, and in response to the other professing For Better and Worse, Richer and Poorer, In Sickness and in Health AS LONG as we both shall ever live, you respond IF YOU DO, THEN I WILL. A Vow is not a contract, not even a Sacred promise or Covenant. A Vow is a YIELDING of our Self, rather than claiming our wants or our needs, or our desires, rather than seizing the day, and going for the gusto, a vow places ourself in relationship to fulfillment of the other's needs and wants.
The one Jesus encounters, on the other side, no longer is claimed as a human being, in his raging, in his torment, his family, friends, neighbors have found the only means they thought they could of coping. They chained him to the tombs of the dead. This is a scene filled with images. He is dead to them. Like Eve and Adam after being found sinful, he is Naked and knows he is Mortal, Sinful and LOST from God. But Jesus does not banish this one. Jesus sits down with him, treating him as a man. Ironically, here we have tried to describe him as “One” rather than The Person, or The Man, because his Town and Village and Family no longer claim him as being a person, a human being, and yet when asked his identity, this one claims so many voices in head that he is a MOB, a Military Legion of Rome WARRING inside him. The difficulty of Mental Illness is that it would be far easier if like this one, the person knew and claimed the desire to yield, but instead when a person is raging they want the rest of the world to change to fit them. Increasingly, I think our whole world is ill believing everyone and everything can be manipulated and controlled and made to fit our individual realities. The Rupert Murdocks and Bernie Madoffs, truly believe they have done nothing wrong, they each have created ethical constructs in which they are the center of their world, they are God and there can be no other. The most difficult part of this story, is not that the Savior healed this man, but that the town and village and his family preferred he had stayed as he was, because they knew how to respond to that. Accepting him as a Man, yielding to trust him again as a whole person, especially when the cure had cost them the sacrifice of a whole herd of livestock is a risk.
But the THIN PLACES of life, the SANCTUARIES are not Ivory Towers with Majestic Pipe Organs. In another church, in an earlier time, we had a man come to worship one day, saying that years ago he and his wife had lived in this community. He had devoted himself to his business and had no time for anything else. Now he was retired and she had passed, their children had their own lives. SO he wanted to make a gift to the Church. Seeing the Sanctuary had solid Oak Pews, he volunteered to donate the upholstering of cushions to make the pews more comfortable. It took the congregation 6 months and the appointing of two committees to decide to accept the gift, because they were not certain they should be comfortable in the Sanctuary, they sort of appreciated the discomfort of the hard Oak Pews.
The hardest part of REDEMPTION, the HOMECOMING promised to Jacob, is letting go our “IF-s” and choosing that we can yield to the wants and needs and desires of Vows to others.
Luke 8:26-ff
In Ireland, they have a name for places like where Jacob slept and dreamed of the Ladder between Heaven and Earth, places like where the one whose identity was Mob/ Legion/ Demoniac met Jesus. They call these “THIN PLACES,” locations where the separation between heaven and earth are thin.
In our Feng Shui, Martha Stewart obsessed desire for perfection, we imagine places where we would meet God as being perfection. Where grass would not crunch beneath our steps from dryness, gardens would be immaculate without a weed, woodland creatures would be called Flower and Thumper, and rather than the sound of traffic, we would hear the rhythm of wind through leaves and the melody of water spilling over a brook. But the Bible is not pristine and composed, those who have shared their faith here know that life is messy and often times brutal. Thin Places more often are desolate, harsh, places of banishment where uncontrolled persons would be put away as if dead. Both passages this week are of these Thin Places, Places of Banishment, Places where Heaven and Earth meet, where we most often encounter God.
In order to receive what is here, we need to grasp what it is to be banished. In our Family Systems, our sense of Normal, when there is that which is a violation, abhorrent, something we cannot accept or tolerate, we execute a Cut-Off, we Banish. In a time in human societies when union between people of the same sex is legalized, when dictators are overthrown without being put to death, it is hard to imagine that only a generation ago for a Catholic to marry a Protestant would have been grounds for the family to never speak to their son or daughter again. Quite possibly, while televised coverage and the legalization of human rights have created safeties, prejudice and hostility are the more dangerous because they are less visible, more subversive. When Isaac realized that Jacob had tricked his Father into giving Jacob everything, when Esau knew that his own brother Jacob had stolen the blessings of his inheritance from his father, Isaac sent Jacob away.
In Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Romeo is banished for the accidental killing of Juliet's cousin. Romeo describes that to be banished is worse than the punishment of Execution; to be kept alive, but sent away from everyone and everything you love, never to be able to go home, never again to embrace or simply be with your family, never again to do what is normal what was taken for granted. Imagine a family genealogy, in which there are those whom the family does not claim as being one of us.
By stealing the birthright, by claiming what was not his, by tricking everyone, Jacob has cut himself off and now as one without Country, without Family, without place or heir, he wanders through a place unknown, and exhausted lays down to sleep. We have to be careful in interpreting Holy Scripture from our contemporary understandings. We read of a son who was loved by his mother more than she loved anyone else, and we jump to Sigmund Freud; we read of Jacob having a dream of God and having been influenced by Carl Jung we look for Symbols and Archetypes behind every image. Before we suggest electro-shock therapy or lythium for the one Jesus encountered, we need to accept the importance of what is described to people of faith in their own time. This dream was not a working out of Jacob's oedipal complex. This dream was not a desire to kill his father. This dream Jacob saw as an encounter with God, as real and tangible as Moses' Burning Bush, or the parting of the Red Sea, or Isaiah having his unclean lips cauterized by a flying Seraphim. The importance of this being a Dream is simply that Jac ob could no longer control and manipulate outcomes. This is who Jacob had been, he manipulated his brother into selling his birthrights, he controlled and manipulated his father into giving him the family blessing and promise, but in our dreams we are witnesses not manipulators in control.
What Jacob witnessed, when he was not in control, is that rather than God being the Judge he anticipated, sitting in a far off Heaven, Earth and Heaven are connected. Not only is there a web of ladders connecting us, but as isolated and cut-off as he was, still God was present with him. In essence, by his trickery and manipulation, by the sins of his life, Jacob had created for himself the identity God knew Abraham and Isaac to have had. Read in this way, I am not certain Abraham or Isaac had ever claimed in their own identity that they were without Nation, without Family, without Home, without … because they had had the Promise, they were with God. What Jacob witnessed was the reality of the Incarnation, GOD IS WITH US, even when Banished, cut off, isolated and absolutely alone, without the ability to communicate or make connections, still God is with us.
In this dream, God vows three things: God re-establishes the PROMISE given to Abraham, and the INCARNATION that eventually would be promised in Jesus Christ that the Lord would be with us, but ALSO Jacob is given Hope in a future HOMECOMING. The Banished, Those in Exile, The Lost would eventually be redeemed. There is a subtlety here, that Almighty God, Eternal and Everlasting Creator, Redeemer and Judge, vows all this to Jacob, and in reply Jacob says IF, IF you will, then I vow. Imagine on your Wedding Day being invited to share your vows of Commitment, Fidelity and Loyalty and Love, and in response to the other professing For Better and Worse, Richer and Poorer, In Sickness and in Health AS LONG as we both shall ever live, you respond IF YOU DO, THEN I WILL. A Vow is not a contract, not even a Sacred promise or Covenant. A Vow is a YIELDING of our Self, rather than claiming our wants or our needs, or our desires, rather than seizing the day, and going for the gusto, a vow places ourself in relationship to fulfillment of the other's needs and wants.
The one Jesus encounters, on the other side, no longer is claimed as a human being, in his raging, in his torment, his family, friends, neighbors have found the only means they thought they could of coping. They chained him to the tombs of the dead. This is a scene filled with images. He is dead to them. Like Eve and Adam after being found sinful, he is Naked and knows he is Mortal, Sinful and LOST from God. But Jesus does not banish this one. Jesus sits down with him, treating him as a man. Ironically, here we have tried to describe him as “One” rather than The Person, or The Man, because his Town and Village and Family no longer claim him as being a person, a human being, and yet when asked his identity, this one claims so many voices in head that he is a MOB, a Military Legion of Rome WARRING inside him. The difficulty of Mental Illness is that it would be far easier if like this one, the person knew and claimed the desire to yield, but instead when a person is raging they want the rest of the world to change to fit them. Increasingly, I think our whole world is ill believing everyone and everything can be manipulated and controlled and made to fit our individual realities. The Rupert Murdocks and Bernie Madoffs, truly believe they have done nothing wrong, they each have created ethical constructs in which they are the center of their world, they are God and there can be no other. The most difficult part of this story, is not that the Savior healed this man, but that the town and village and his family preferred he had stayed as he was, because they knew how to respond to that. Accepting him as a Man, yielding to trust him again as a whole person, especially when the cure had cost them the sacrifice of a whole herd of livestock is a risk.
But the THIN PLACES of life, the SANCTUARIES are not Ivory Towers with Majestic Pipe Organs. In another church, in an earlier time, we had a man come to worship one day, saying that years ago he and his wife had lived in this community. He had devoted himself to his business and had no time for anything else. Now he was retired and she had passed, their children had their own lives. SO he wanted to make a gift to the Church. Seeing the Sanctuary had solid Oak Pews, he volunteered to donate the upholstering of cushions to make the pews more comfortable. It took the congregation 6 months and the appointing of two committees to decide to accept the gift, because they were not certain they should be comfortable in the Sanctuary, they sort of appreciated the discomfort of the hard Oak Pews.
The hardest part of REDEMPTION, the HOMECOMING promised to Jacob, is letting go our “IF-s” and choosing that we can yield to the wants and needs and desires of Vows to others.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
July 10, 2011, "The Seeds that Change the Soil"
Genesis 25:19-34
Matthew 13: 1-9 & 18-23
The Parable of the Sower has been told and retold, to where even Matthew has made the telling an allegory, with a static meaning. The Trodden Path is this, the Birds refers to that, the Good Soil is what we all desire to be. But what Jesus taught was not an allegory with one singular static meaning, he shared a parable. The beauty of a parable is that it can be examined for ever fresh understandings, which because of our vantage point, our blinders, our historic perspective may have previously been limited to only particular understandings.
The Parable of the Sower is: A Sower went out to sow. At which point, the parable could be about understanding the Sower whom we are to emulate, or the seed, or the differing kinds of soil, or...
What has always been surprising, has been Jesus immediate description about the Sower. The Sower does not discriminate between good soil and hard or broken soil. The Sower does not treat the seed as a limited expensive commodity, but rather lavishes all the earth with a blanket of seed. How often, we treat acts of God, acts of Grace, Blessings, Good things as a rare occasion!
The Parable of the Sower is: A Sower went out to sow. At which point the parable could be about the miraculous abundance of the seed. Ordinarily a seed of wheat is planted, and every stalk has the potential of growing 30, 60, even 80 kernels. Some of the seed does not germinate, some does not grow, some is carried off and consumed, some choked out by weeds. So the yield of the wheat is decreased as well. A Sower who was able to sow, having every seed produce 30 would have enough to feed their family for a year. A Sower who was able to sow, having every seed produce 60 would be able to feed and care for their entire Village. But this seed the Sower sows yields 100 fold, without waste or loss.
The Parable of the Sower is: A Sower went out to sow. At which point, the parable could be about the power of the seed sown by the sower to change the world even hard rock. The Sower does not carefully cultivate and furrow the soil for every seed to have the optimum opportunity to yield. The Sower does not get down on their hands and knees planting individual seeds of grace. The Sower lavishes the seed upon the ground like water, as if the seed were to change the earth, rather than the earth providing nutrients to the seed. But what if that is the way of the world? A tiny seed, when planted, has the force and power to break open, sending forth microscopic hairlike tendrils, which enter the crevices and cracks between particles. The tiny tendrils then grow and swell becoming larger, and in this way break open rock.
Years ago, in another community, a child murdered both of his parents. He was sent to a Federal prison for children. I had never before known such a hard steel place of brokenness and despair. I recall driving through gates high electric fences the tops and gates with razor wire. Coming inside, you needed to empty everything from the outside into a locker, taking off belts and shoes as well. When your number was called upon, standing before a guard who opened your mouth and physically searched you. Then a door slid open in a steel wall as the guard said “Step inside.” The door slid shut and loudly clanked locked, five seconds went by before the door on the other side slid open and after you stepped through, slid shut with a metallic locking sound. At which point you were guided through a series of corridors and cell blocks. The children were each in a locked cell, with a small opening like a mail-slot about three feet from the ground. Hands reached out, eyes peered through. What I recall was the deafening silence of being surrounded by so many children not talking. At one point I remember saying to one pair of eyes “God loves you.” The words were like seed of God falling on hard steel and rock.
Last evening, a child in our community drowned and I went to Children's Hospital with the family. It was surreal, to be surrounded by room after room of children, children who I thought should be playing, reading, singing, laughing and instead were dying, suffering. It was broken hard soil where it would be easy to lose faith.
Sometimes, the hard soil, the impermeable rock is not places like prisons or hospitals, but our family systems. Each of our families behave in the ways they do because these are the only ways their parents and ancestors knew. We repeat the family systems, making the same mistakes over and over, becoming more and more intractable, harder and harder. What would it be to have a Seed of God planted?
That is the story of Jacob and Esau. Though twins, Esau was the first born and should have inherited everything. But favoritism took place, election occurred. While Isaac, the son of Abraham and Sarah, himself the heir and fulfillment of the Promise of God, loved Esau, Rebekah loved Jacob. And God entered in giving the Promise to jacob instead of the first born. That election, that claiming by God, disrupted everything; the conflict disrupted the family. Everything about Genesis changes because Jacob receives the seed, the blessing of promise.
My own children contacted me recently to say, Dad we have watched and observed you, and in many ways we behave exactly like you. We no longer want to be treated as just your children, we want to be your confidants, your trusted colleagues, your adult children and friends. How hard it is for us to change behavior, to change our systems, to change what we have always known, and witness that the seeds of change change us as well!
This has become a Church guided by Mission. While we have a strong music program and a strong educational program, we live as a missional church. The wonderful nature of this, is that while in mission we have tried to care for others, to give to others, we have been changed by mission. This morning the Chancel of the Church is knee deep in a wall of 3500 pair of shoes, our giving of our excess to those who have none. In the process we develop different relationships with one another, we soften and yield and come to know and trust each other in ways we never would have before. Mission is not simply about writing a check, or volunteering, not only about work overseas and around the corner in our neighborhood, but the “soil of our being” being changed.
Matthew 13: 1-9 & 18-23
The Parable of the Sower has been told and retold, to where even Matthew has made the telling an allegory, with a static meaning. The Trodden Path is this, the Birds refers to that, the Good Soil is what we all desire to be. But what Jesus taught was not an allegory with one singular static meaning, he shared a parable. The beauty of a parable is that it can be examined for ever fresh understandings, which because of our vantage point, our blinders, our historic perspective may have previously been limited to only particular understandings.
The Parable of the Sower is: A Sower went out to sow. At which point, the parable could be about understanding the Sower whom we are to emulate, or the seed, or the differing kinds of soil, or...
What has always been surprising, has been Jesus immediate description about the Sower. The Sower does not discriminate between good soil and hard or broken soil. The Sower does not treat the seed as a limited expensive commodity, but rather lavishes all the earth with a blanket of seed. How often, we treat acts of God, acts of Grace, Blessings, Good things as a rare occasion!
The Parable of the Sower is: A Sower went out to sow. At which point the parable could be about the miraculous abundance of the seed. Ordinarily a seed of wheat is planted, and every stalk has the potential of growing 30, 60, even 80 kernels. Some of the seed does not germinate, some does not grow, some is carried off and consumed, some choked out by weeds. So the yield of the wheat is decreased as well. A Sower who was able to sow, having every seed produce 30 would have enough to feed their family for a year. A Sower who was able to sow, having every seed produce 60 would be able to feed and care for their entire Village. But this seed the Sower sows yields 100 fold, without waste or loss.
The Parable of the Sower is: A Sower went out to sow. At which point, the parable could be about the power of the seed sown by the sower to change the world even hard rock. The Sower does not carefully cultivate and furrow the soil for every seed to have the optimum opportunity to yield. The Sower does not get down on their hands and knees planting individual seeds of grace. The Sower lavishes the seed upon the ground like water, as if the seed were to change the earth, rather than the earth providing nutrients to the seed. But what if that is the way of the world? A tiny seed, when planted, has the force and power to break open, sending forth microscopic hairlike tendrils, which enter the crevices and cracks between particles. The tiny tendrils then grow and swell becoming larger, and in this way break open rock.
Years ago, in another community, a child murdered both of his parents. He was sent to a Federal prison for children. I had never before known such a hard steel place of brokenness and despair. I recall driving through gates high electric fences the tops and gates with razor wire. Coming inside, you needed to empty everything from the outside into a locker, taking off belts and shoes as well. When your number was called upon, standing before a guard who opened your mouth and physically searched you. Then a door slid open in a steel wall as the guard said “Step inside.” The door slid shut and loudly clanked locked, five seconds went by before the door on the other side slid open and after you stepped through, slid shut with a metallic locking sound. At which point you were guided through a series of corridors and cell blocks. The children were each in a locked cell, with a small opening like a mail-slot about three feet from the ground. Hands reached out, eyes peered through. What I recall was the deafening silence of being surrounded by so many children not talking. At one point I remember saying to one pair of eyes “God loves you.” The words were like seed of God falling on hard steel and rock.
Last evening, a child in our community drowned and I went to Children's Hospital with the family. It was surreal, to be surrounded by room after room of children, children who I thought should be playing, reading, singing, laughing and instead were dying, suffering. It was broken hard soil where it would be easy to lose faith.
Sometimes, the hard soil, the impermeable rock is not places like prisons or hospitals, but our family systems. Each of our families behave in the ways they do because these are the only ways their parents and ancestors knew. We repeat the family systems, making the same mistakes over and over, becoming more and more intractable, harder and harder. What would it be to have a Seed of God planted?
That is the story of Jacob and Esau. Though twins, Esau was the first born and should have inherited everything. But favoritism took place, election occurred. While Isaac, the son of Abraham and Sarah, himself the heir and fulfillment of the Promise of God, loved Esau, Rebekah loved Jacob. And God entered in giving the Promise to jacob instead of the first born. That election, that claiming by God, disrupted everything; the conflict disrupted the family. Everything about Genesis changes because Jacob receives the seed, the blessing of promise.
My own children contacted me recently to say, Dad we have watched and observed you, and in many ways we behave exactly like you. We no longer want to be treated as just your children, we want to be your confidants, your trusted colleagues, your adult children and friends. How hard it is for us to change behavior, to change our systems, to change what we have always known, and witness that the seeds of change change us as well!
This has become a Church guided by Mission. While we have a strong music program and a strong educational program, we live as a missional church. The wonderful nature of this, is that while in mission we have tried to care for others, to give to others, we have been changed by mission. This morning the Chancel of the Church is knee deep in a wall of 3500 pair of shoes, our giving of our excess to those who have none. In the process we develop different relationships with one another, we soften and yield and come to know and trust each other in ways we never would have before. Mission is not simply about writing a check, or volunteering, not only about work overseas and around the corner in our neighborhood, but the “soil of our being” being changed.
Sunday, July 3, 2011
July 3, 2011 "How Shall We Respond"
Genesis 24: 34-67
Matthew 11: 16-30
The Scriptures appointed for this day, represent a hard word for a community of successful people, particularly on the weekend of National anniversary. For the hard sayings of Jesus are not “Well done good and faithful servants, you have succeeded! You have taken 5 talents and made 5 more. You have used your wisdom and intellect to amass great power for yourselves. You killed your enemies, now dance upon their graves!” But rather to ask, as we approach the 10th Anniversary of September 11th, what will we celebrate, what are we honoring? Do we witness great accomplishments of human achievement, passing out awards as if someone has to have this so who has not received recognition lately, do we perceive summer as reward of time off for a long year of hard work? Or is it possible for us, in the midst of life, to recognize God's hand at work, not in miraculous, magical, impossible circumstance, but with resilience: Believing and Affirming? Only, only in the midst of these challenges to why did we not witness and believe in miracles; these curses to those who believe that they have succeeded because of good looks or because they showed up, do we receive the familiar and longed for words of comfort “Take my yoke upon you.”
The Bible has a different starting point than we assume in most of life. The Bible defines our lives in Affirmation. Trust is not earned, Trust is automatic, and can be lost. Rather than approaching one another as enemies, as adversaries and competitors, rather than living life in Suspicion, to begin in Affirmation of Life as a Gift and Unmerited Gift from God. Would that we could respond to life as an Affirmation!
We have done an odd thing in our Lives, First, they are not ours but belonging to God. Related to this, Baptism is not an about birth. Graduation is not the endurance of years of schooling. Marriage is not for everyone, and does not automatically come after Graduation and before children. Communion is not a ritual or Sacrament of the Church. All of these are opportunities to name and claim Faith in God. Baptism does not make life guaranteed, inoculated, or easy, if anything the opposite, because claiming this life for God, we must then question: So God where were you, and why, and how is this life holy? Would that we could respond to life as an Affirmation!
The love affair of Isaac and Rebekah is a marvelous story of love and faith, for it is a story of Love at First Sight, and also of the Trust of an Arranged Marriage. Remember that in the Abraham narrative of Genesis, everything is about trusting the Promise. God found a couple already advanced in age and promised to bless their lives, Promising to give to them a Name and a Land and Children whose lives are a blessing from God. Time transpired, and the woman conceived and bore a child, an only child, he grew and matured, and the Promise of a Name and Land and Children as a Blessing, was passed to Isaac. The Mother died, and the question became, where is the woman worthy to continue as the new Sarah, where is the wife of Abraham's Heir, who will be the mother of God's Promise?
There is this unnamed servant who goes at the Command of Abraham, searching to fulfill the Promise. He may have thought the clouds would part and a shaft of sunlight would illumine her, that birds would sing and flowers bloom. But instead, the unnamed servant himself humbly offered a prayer to God. “LORD, May the one of Your choosing be gracious and generous, offering hospitality.” He sits beside a well in the heat of the afternoon and asks for a cup of cold water. She hears and responds in faith. Not only does she get it for him, she provides for his animals as well. What is miraculous in this story, is not trumpet blasts, not magic incantations, but rather very subtly in the text, the Bible describes that an angel has led them. How often we perceive circumstance, we see development of our accomplishments... Faith is naming the presence of God in all things. Would that we could respond to life as an affirmation!
Throughout the Bible there is recognition of covenant, commitment, loyalty and fidelity, honesty and integrity, compassion and love, but this passage also names a frequent Biblical Image of being Led. Just as the Psalms describe “You lead me beside still waters, You lead me in paths of righteousness,” as the Abraham narrative had told of Sarah and Abraham being Led, so also later with Moses and the people being Led through the wilderness for 40 years, here Rebekah is Led to Isaac. Would that we could respond to life as an Affirmation!
The Love Story of Isaac and Rebekah is marvelous because their's is at the same time both the Story of Love at First Sight and an Arranged Marriage. One of the questions we ask of those getting married, is “How did you decide you were ready to be Married?” Not how did you meet. Not why is he perfect. But the realization, that while often others have not been ready, there does come a time in our lives when we want to be married. Years ago, in another congregation, there was couple who had had an arranged marriage. Until their wedding night, they had never seen one another face to face. Their description was that they were ready to be married. They trusted their family to find someone for them. And over a lifetime, you learn to love, to make accommodations and to be husband and wife to one another. Rebekah looked down over the Valley, as Isaac lifted his view, and they saw one another. Would that we could respond to life as an Affirmation!
Throughout the last two decades, those who have led us as a Nation, both Leaders of the Church and Leaders of our Governments, have been accused of abuses. Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Martin Luther King, neighboring priests and pastors, all have been given great responsibility, and are rightly revered for their accomplishments. But each has also had their dark side. As stories of abuse have come, they often felt like a Neighbor having Cancer. We recognize it as horrible, we bake a cake, or drop off flowers, but we do not allow it to affect us, this is not our problem, once we sent the card, or delivered the flowers it was not ours anymore. Then my father died and a man contacted the family to say our father was his father. His story was that this had happened between my father's marriages, lonely people comforting each other. But, the very idea was offensive, it undermined all we knew all we believed about the one we loved most. What is given to us is the greatest trust, we are to be present in the fullness of life, and in the midst to name miracles, to witness to the presence of God. As we do, we recognize human frailty and vulnerability, power corrupting, rather than affirmations of love.
This Sacrament we have shared is not about everyone closing their eyes as the priest renames what we have known as common bread and juice is now holy and miraculously different. This Sacrament we have shared is that in the hard stuff of life, we name and claim that there is brokenness, and that there is a cup of hope, there is forgiveness, as refreshing as being offered a cup of cold water. We pray God will use us for generosity and graciousness, offering hospitality to those we do not know, that through our lives God's angels may call others to believe and respond.
Matthew 11: 16-30
The Scriptures appointed for this day, represent a hard word for a community of successful people, particularly on the weekend of National anniversary. For the hard sayings of Jesus are not “Well done good and faithful servants, you have succeeded! You have taken 5 talents and made 5 more. You have used your wisdom and intellect to amass great power for yourselves. You killed your enemies, now dance upon their graves!” But rather to ask, as we approach the 10th Anniversary of September 11th, what will we celebrate, what are we honoring? Do we witness great accomplishments of human achievement, passing out awards as if someone has to have this so who has not received recognition lately, do we perceive summer as reward of time off for a long year of hard work? Or is it possible for us, in the midst of life, to recognize God's hand at work, not in miraculous, magical, impossible circumstance, but with resilience: Believing and Affirming? Only, only in the midst of these challenges to why did we not witness and believe in miracles; these curses to those who believe that they have succeeded because of good looks or because they showed up, do we receive the familiar and longed for words of comfort “Take my yoke upon you.”
The Bible has a different starting point than we assume in most of life. The Bible defines our lives in Affirmation. Trust is not earned, Trust is automatic, and can be lost. Rather than approaching one another as enemies, as adversaries and competitors, rather than living life in Suspicion, to begin in Affirmation of Life as a Gift and Unmerited Gift from God. Would that we could respond to life as an Affirmation!
We have done an odd thing in our Lives, First, they are not ours but belonging to God. Related to this, Baptism is not an about birth. Graduation is not the endurance of years of schooling. Marriage is not for everyone, and does not automatically come after Graduation and before children. Communion is not a ritual or Sacrament of the Church. All of these are opportunities to name and claim Faith in God. Baptism does not make life guaranteed, inoculated, or easy, if anything the opposite, because claiming this life for God, we must then question: So God where were you, and why, and how is this life holy? Would that we could respond to life as an Affirmation!
The love affair of Isaac and Rebekah is a marvelous story of love and faith, for it is a story of Love at First Sight, and also of the Trust of an Arranged Marriage. Remember that in the Abraham narrative of Genesis, everything is about trusting the Promise. God found a couple already advanced in age and promised to bless their lives, Promising to give to them a Name and a Land and Children whose lives are a blessing from God. Time transpired, and the woman conceived and bore a child, an only child, he grew and matured, and the Promise of a Name and Land and Children as a Blessing, was passed to Isaac. The Mother died, and the question became, where is the woman worthy to continue as the new Sarah, where is the wife of Abraham's Heir, who will be the mother of God's Promise?
There is this unnamed servant who goes at the Command of Abraham, searching to fulfill the Promise. He may have thought the clouds would part and a shaft of sunlight would illumine her, that birds would sing and flowers bloom. But instead, the unnamed servant himself humbly offered a prayer to God. “LORD, May the one of Your choosing be gracious and generous, offering hospitality.” He sits beside a well in the heat of the afternoon and asks for a cup of cold water. She hears and responds in faith. Not only does she get it for him, she provides for his animals as well. What is miraculous in this story, is not trumpet blasts, not magic incantations, but rather very subtly in the text, the Bible describes that an angel has led them. How often we perceive circumstance, we see development of our accomplishments... Faith is naming the presence of God in all things. Would that we could respond to life as an affirmation!
Throughout the Bible there is recognition of covenant, commitment, loyalty and fidelity, honesty and integrity, compassion and love, but this passage also names a frequent Biblical Image of being Led. Just as the Psalms describe “You lead me beside still waters, You lead me in paths of righteousness,” as the Abraham narrative had told of Sarah and Abraham being Led, so also later with Moses and the people being Led through the wilderness for 40 years, here Rebekah is Led to Isaac. Would that we could respond to life as an Affirmation!
The Love Story of Isaac and Rebekah is marvelous because their's is at the same time both the Story of Love at First Sight and an Arranged Marriage. One of the questions we ask of those getting married, is “How did you decide you were ready to be Married?” Not how did you meet. Not why is he perfect. But the realization, that while often others have not been ready, there does come a time in our lives when we want to be married. Years ago, in another congregation, there was couple who had had an arranged marriage. Until their wedding night, they had never seen one another face to face. Their description was that they were ready to be married. They trusted their family to find someone for them. And over a lifetime, you learn to love, to make accommodations and to be husband and wife to one another. Rebekah looked down over the Valley, as Isaac lifted his view, and they saw one another. Would that we could respond to life as an Affirmation!
Throughout the last two decades, those who have led us as a Nation, both Leaders of the Church and Leaders of our Governments, have been accused of abuses. Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Martin Luther King, neighboring priests and pastors, all have been given great responsibility, and are rightly revered for their accomplishments. But each has also had their dark side. As stories of abuse have come, they often felt like a Neighbor having Cancer. We recognize it as horrible, we bake a cake, or drop off flowers, but we do not allow it to affect us, this is not our problem, once we sent the card, or delivered the flowers it was not ours anymore. Then my father died and a man contacted the family to say our father was his father. His story was that this had happened between my father's marriages, lonely people comforting each other. But, the very idea was offensive, it undermined all we knew all we believed about the one we loved most. What is given to us is the greatest trust, we are to be present in the fullness of life, and in the midst to name miracles, to witness to the presence of God. As we do, we recognize human frailty and vulnerability, power corrupting, rather than affirmations of love.
This Sacrament we have shared is not about everyone closing their eyes as the priest renames what we have known as common bread and juice is now holy and miraculously different. This Sacrament we have shared is that in the hard stuff of life, we name and claim that there is brokenness, and that there is a cup of hope, there is forgiveness, as refreshing as being offered a cup of cold water. We pray God will use us for generosity and graciousness, offering hospitality to those we do not know, that through our lives God's angels may call others to believe and respond.
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