Their nerves must have been frayed. Surely everyone in Egypt was on edge. Think what all had endured. First, the water of the Nile turned foul. Then, frogs, gnats, and flies proliferated well beyond what could be considered a nuisance. It constituted a public health crisis that infected livestock and created boils on human flesh. Next, the weather turned bad… thunder and hail wreaked havoc. Surely crops were damaged and whatever was left standing was soon devoured by a devastating swarm of locus that covered the land. As if all of this was not bad enough, the country was thrust into three whole days of near darkness.
The plagues against Egypt. We have the advantage of looking back on them with historical and (more important) theological perspective. We view them through the lens of Moses’ confrontation with the Pharaoh. We see them as acts of divine judgment on an oppressive regime and people. We understand their severity as testaments to the hardness of the human heart. But try if you can to put yourself in the sandals of an average Egyptian or typical Hebrew. Most likely you would have no knowledge of the greater goings on. There was no ‘God channel’ you could tune in to get the official word from Moses or even the spin from Pharaoh’s cronies. The only things you would know are misery, suffering, and fear. What in the world is going on and what is going to happen next?
It shouldn’t be too hard for us to imagine the plagues from this perspective, after all, within the last thirty days we have endured a swamp fire (with its thick, choking smoke), an earthquake, and a hurricane. We know what its like to be stuck in our home, to be cut off from the world, to have our normal course of food disrupted, and to lose the ability to engage in our livelihood. It is miserable – isn’t it! – and it wears on us – doesn’t it! Toss in the terrible economy, the sour nature of political discourse in our country, and the approaching tenth anniversary of 9/11 and you a get sense of why life feels so difficult. It feels not unlike what the Hebrews and the Egyptians felt so many years ago.
For them the worst was still to come. The tenth and final plague was to be the most devastating of all: the death of the firstborn male in each family – the one in whom was invested all the hope for the family’s security and future.
The Passover instructions tell us much that is helpful in our day as we face our challenges. They are, if you will, God’s evacuation plan for the Hebrew people. Let’s consider some of the details and ponder what they might say to us here and now.
• First, God directs the Hebrews to mark time by the lunar cycle, as opposed to the Egyptian’s use of the sun. God declares that both time and the Hebrew people belong to God. Every vesture of enslavement and oppression is to be thrown off. God’s people are to regard themselves first, foremost, and always as God’s beloved. This tells us that our identity is not grounded in our social status nor is our value measured by our 401k. Our identity and value stand on the firm foundation of God’s love for us.
• Next God directs the Hebrew people to gather as households and neighborhoods. After all the people had been through and given what they were about to endure, God’s wisdom directed the people not to face it alone. We need each other at all times. We especially need each other in times of great stress and calamity. If you hunkered down last weekend with family and if you ventured out after Irene to commiserate with neighbors then you understand why God grouped people together in the face of this final calamity. We survive together or we suffer alone.
• Marking the lintel of the house with blood serves as a symbolic preparation for the storm to come. The avenging angel will see it and pass over that house leaving the firstborn unharmed. The preparations we made before Irene were more concrete – buying water and batteries, putting away patio furniture, and tying down what might blow away. But there was something equally symbolic to this as well. It gave us the feeling we had done all that was within our power and our control to be ready for what might happen and there was something comforting in that.
• The lamb is roasted quickly and unprepared. There is no time to marinate it or add garnishes beyond the bitter herbs. Bread is baked in a hasty fashion. The people were told, “Make as much as you can as fast as you can. Do not bother to leaven the dough because there simply isn’t time to sit around idly while it rises.” God told to people to prioritize and to prepare. Do now what matters most. There is not a minute to waste. We went through a similar process of discernment: what should we cook, what should we gather, what do we need to face an extended period of disruption?
• God’s next to last directive is for the people to eat “with loins girded, sandals on your feet, your staff in your hand, you shall eat hurriedly.” God’s people are to be ready to move at a moment’s notice. They are to pack light so that they can travel fast. It is a sobering and sensible reminder that our most important possessions in life are our life and our family and the bare essentials we need to provide for both. The day before Irene hit Rt. 460 westbound became a huge bottleneck in Windsor. Fortunately I was travelling east and did not have to suffer through it. Some of the west-bound cars bore the obvious signs of disappointed vacationers fleeing the coast: car top carriers, bicycle racks, beach chairs tied to the roof, that kind of thing. Most cars, however, looked to be residents of Virginia Beach, Norfolk, and other low-lying areas who were heeding the advice to evacuate. With the exception of one or two cars pulling a trailer loaded with stuff, these folks simply packed a bag and got out; measuring life more important than material things.
All these practical reminders are seeds which give rise to a spiritual benefit. Plagues and hurricanes and hardships have a way of refocusing us on what really matters. They force a clarity upon life; bringing into focus what often gets blurry when times are good. Is it any wonder then that God’s last directive to the Hebrew people is the call to remembrance. “You shall celebrate this day as a festival to the Lord; throughout all generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance.”
Much of what the Hebrews (and all God’s people) are to remember is that God delivered those oppressed from the land of Egypt. But what we might want to remember this day is how God directed them to prepare for the worst in the best possible way: remember that you belong to God; gather with family and friends; prepare as best you can; think through what you will need; be prepared to move at a moment’s notice. These are lessons not just for plagues, not just for hurricanes, and not just for disasters, but for all of life. It is a good way to live because it is God’s way to live. It is how the God who gives us life guards us to see us through.
Remembering together in the presence of God has a way of putting the past in the past and helping us to reengage life again. It puts us on a path forward with sure footing, knowing that a sense of ‘normal’ will once again return even as we acknowledge our dependency on God alone… God who has been with us, is with us even now, and will be with us in the trying times of the future.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Baptismal Vows vs. the World's 'Salvation'
I have said before that I graduated from college with a double major in religion and economics. The school I attended was conservative in both fields and that perspective stays with me even now. The bible has a great deal to say about economics. It strongly supports the idea of private property, for example, by forbidding the movement of boundary markers. It establishes a social safety net through such directives as leaving a portion of a field unharvested and not picking up grain that falls to the ground - both are to be left for those in need. The culture’s emphasis on hospitality provided for those travelling and those in transition. The bible forbids the incursion of debt and decries coveting what another has but you do not. It clearly commands that promises must be kept, especially those made by the powerful to those who are poor and vulnerable.
The bible is deeply suspicious of centralized government. The prophet Samuel objected to Israel’s desire for a king, insisting that each individual would be better off accountable only to God. Jesus’ political teachings (things like render unto Caesar…) come at a time when his part of the world was occupied by a foreign government – the Romans. Against their oppressive presence, Jesus put forward the notion of the Kingdom of God.
This suspicion of a central government goes back in history to this morning’s reading from the Old Testament. The Hebrew people, who hade been invited to live in Egypt during a time of severe famine, find their fortunes turned when a new regime looks less than kindly upon them. As a people they are forced into servitude and become targets of genocide.
This whole scenario came about because generations earlier a Hebrew named Joseph became well-positioned in the Egyptian government after predicting the coming famine. The Pharaoh empowered Joseph to appropriate huge amounts of food during good years and to store it as a means of getting through the lean times. It was a centralized approach to the problem that had intended and unintended consequences. On the positive side, it accumulated food reserves that lasted through the famine. On the negative side, it created great wealth and power for the government, impoverishing those who had to pay for the food they had grown years before. And for the Hebrew people, invited to Egypt by one of their own, it eventually led to misery.
Those of us in the conservative camp wonder how a decentralized approach might have played out. What if Pharaoh had warned the people of the coming famine and encouraged every person and family and tribe to store up food on their own? Surely some would have ignored this; others may or may not have been able to help them through. Each person would have been accountable for his or her own actions. No one would have ended up beholden to the Pharaoh.
This outlook, and the lessons derived from it, continues to drive the economic and political perspective of conservative Christians in America. It fosters a deep distrust of government and a yearning for personal freedom. Mix into this a literal interpretation of the Book of Revelation and you can see why so many in this camp paint such a negative picture of the direction our country is headed politically and economically.
I don’t believe apocalyptic writing is best understood as a figurative prescription of events yet to unfold, so I do not believe that a doomsday is inevitable. I do believe that the bible contains God’s revelation of God’s love for creation; a revelation that describes the best way for us to live in accordance with how the world has been formed. To live otherwise is to invite our downfall.
In today’s Gospel reading Jesus asks his followers what many say is the most important question each of us can ever consider… “Who do you say that I am?” In a slightly different way it is a question I will ask in a few moments of Hunter’s parents and godparents. And in that every baptism provides each one of us with the opportunity to renew our own baptismal covenant, it is a question I will ask of each of you:
Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Savior?
Do you put your whole trust in his grace and love?
Do you promise to follow and obey him as your Lord?
The answer to each is a direct, firm, “I do.” Far more than just doctrinal concerns that reverberate only in the church, and much more than boxes to check off on an insurance policy to get you into heaven, these questions cut right to heart of how we live and move and have our being in today’s world.
Do you turn to Jesus Christ accept him as your Savior? ‘Turn’, turn from what? Well the previous questions give us a clue. In them we renounce Satan, the world, and the self. We turn from these to Christ. Now, most of us find turning from Satan not to be much of a problem because we never engaged in direct allegiance to this being. Turning from our own evil desires is a different matter altogether. For the most part we know what these are and will struggle with them all of our life – gaining the upper hand at some instances, while falling short at others.
In our day and age I believe the most challenging renunciation is turning for the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy us. It is like asking a fish not to swim in water. We are so immersed in our world that it is nearly impossible to step away from it in order to gain perspective on it. Every Sunday we hear Jesus proclaim a another reality he calls God’s kingdom, but I for one always wrestle with the temptation to water down what he says so that it more closely resembles our ‘watery’ world.
The driving forces behind our current economic and political lives can be characterized by ancient words like greed, covetousness, envy, and idolatry. We want more, we want what others have, we want it all, and we want it right now. We want a feeling a safety and security and when something happens to disrupt this we want new laws, new regulations, and new programs that will make it never happen again.
In such a climate, our savior becomes our possessions, our ability to purchase what we want when we want it, and a strong, centralized government to ensure that it all works out without so much as a hiccup. Through baptism we turn away from this and accept Christ as our Savior, not just to get us into a next life, but to find fullness of life here and now.
Do you put your trust in Christ’s grace and love? This question asks us to proclaim that we need most to make it in this life can not be found at the mall, it is not achieved by building up fortunes in the stock market, and it can not be earned through a ‘healthier lifestyle.’ We are a people who believe that what we need first, foremost, and always is grace (and awareness of the riches God so freely shares with us) and love (a sense of God’s unconditional presence and unflinching desire to see us thrive).
Do you promise to follow and obey Christ as your Lord? We are a people whose prayer to God is always, “O Lord, what should I do?”, “O God, how should I live?” More and more, it is a question being asked less and less.
I watched a documentary a few weeks ago called Inside Job. It chronicled the 2008 collapse of the financial world. Here is one slice of how that disaster came to be. The financial firm Goldman/Sacks bought up thousands upon thousands of shaky mortgages (mortgages put out by Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, and up until 48 hours before it all fell apart, given the highest investment rating by Standard & Poors). They bundled these properties into what was called ‘derivatives’ and sold them on the open market. Private investors like you and me bought them through our managed our 401k’s. Local pension funds for firefighters and teachers also invested heavily, believing them to be worthy and reliable. Long after Goldman/Sacks knew the derivates were nothing but junk they continued to promote them while at the same time insuring against their collapse by taking out policies with firms like AIG.
Well, as you know, the whole house of cards came tumbling down, plunging us into a world-wide recession, leaving 10% of the population unemployed, and stripping each one of us thousands upon thousands of dollars in equity and savings. The government stepped in and bailed out the industry, but the people who ran these markets played the system well and walked away with billions of dollars in earnings and bonuses. I do not envy their wealth because I do not want to be accountable for their sins.
Do you promise to follow and obey Christ as your Lord? How should I live? What should I do? I should live in a way which, to the best of my ability, provides for me and for my family. I should live for myself in a way that promotes the well-being of all and does not deplete from it. I should live not for myself as the world defines ‘self,’ but for him who died and rose for me.
These are dark times in which we live. I don’t know if they are darker than other times, but it is certainly a time of despair. It is a time when the light of Christ burning in each one of us committed to living out our baptismal covenant is a sign of hope to this sinful and broken world. It is a time for those of us who have died with Christ in the waters of baptism to rise up in newness of life; a life God intends as a blessing for the world. We have a different Savior than the world offers. We strive not for the things of this world, but for a deeper awareness of God’s grace and love. We follow Christ as Lord who guides us into a life marked by integrity, generosity, and a concern for the welfare of the world.
The bible is deeply suspicious of centralized government. The prophet Samuel objected to Israel’s desire for a king, insisting that each individual would be better off accountable only to God. Jesus’ political teachings (things like render unto Caesar…) come at a time when his part of the world was occupied by a foreign government – the Romans. Against their oppressive presence, Jesus put forward the notion of the Kingdom of God.
This suspicion of a central government goes back in history to this morning’s reading from the Old Testament. The Hebrew people, who hade been invited to live in Egypt during a time of severe famine, find their fortunes turned when a new regime looks less than kindly upon them. As a people they are forced into servitude and become targets of genocide.
This whole scenario came about because generations earlier a Hebrew named Joseph became well-positioned in the Egyptian government after predicting the coming famine. The Pharaoh empowered Joseph to appropriate huge amounts of food during good years and to store it as a means of getting through the lean times. It was a centralized approach to the problem that had intended and unintended consequences. On the positive side, it accumulated food reserves that lasted through the famine. On the negative side, it created great wealth and power for the government, impoverishing those who had to pay for the food they had grown years before. And for the Hebrew people, invited to Egypt by one of their own, it eventually led to misery.
Those of us in the conservative camp wonder how a decentralized approach might have played out. What if Pharaoh had warned the people of the coming famine and encouraged every person and family and tribe to store up food on their own? Surely some would have ignored this; others may or may not have been able to help them through. Each person would have been accountable for his or her own actions. No one would have ended up beholden to the Pharaoh.
This outlook, and the lessons derived from it, continues to drive the economic and political perspective of conservative Christians in America. It fosters a deep distrust of government and a yearning for personal freedom. Mix into this a literal interpretation of the Book of Revelation and you can see why so many in this camp paint such a negative picture of the direction our country is headed politically and economically.
I don’t believe apocalyptic writing is best understood as a figurative prescription of events yet to unfold, so I do not believe that a doomsday is inevitable. I do believe that the bible contains God’s revelation of God’s love for creation; a revelation that describes the best way for us to live in accordance with how the world has been formed. To live otherwise is to invite our downfall.
In today’s Gospel reading Jesus asks his followers what many say is the most important question each of us can ever consider… “Who do you say that I am?” In a slightly different way it is a question I will ask in a few moments of Hunter’s parents and godparents. And in that every baptism provides each one of us with the opportunity to renew our own baptismal covenant, it is a question I will ask of each of you:
Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Savior?
Do you put your whole trust in his grace and love?
Do you promise to follow and obey him as your Lord?
The answer to each is a direct, firm, “I do.” Far more than just doctrinal concerns that reverberate only in the church, and much more than boxes to check off on an insurance policy to get you into heaven, these questions cut right to heart of how we live and move and have our being in today’s world.
Do you turn to Jesus Christ accept him as your Savior? ‘Turn’, turn from what? Well the previous questions give us a clue. In them we renounce Satan, the world, and the self. We turn from these to Christ. Now, most of us find turning from Satan not to be much of a problem because we never engaged in direct allegiance to this being. Turning from our own evil desires is a different matter altogether. For the most part we know what these are and will struggle with them all of our life – gaining the upper hand at some instances, while falling short at others.
In our day and age I believe the most challenging renunciation is turning for the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy us. It is like asking a fish not to swim in water. We are so immersed in our world that it is nearly impossible to step away from it in order to gain perspective on it. Every Sunday we hear Jesus proclaim a another reality he calls God’s kingdom, but I for one always wrestle with the temptation to water down what he says so that it more closely resembles our ‘watery’ world.
The driving forces behind our current economic and political lives can be characterized by ancient words like greed, covetousness, envy, and idolatry. We want more, we want what others have, we want it all, and we want it right now. We want a feeling a safety and security and when something happens to disrupt this we want new laws, new regulations, and new programs that will make it never happen again.
In such a climate, our savior becomes our possessions, our ability to purchase what we want when we want it, and a strong, centralized government to ensure that it all works out without so much as a hiccup. Through baptism we turn away from this and accept Christ as our Savior, not just to get us into a next life, but to find fullness of life here and now.
Do you put your trust in Christ’s grace and love? This question asks us to proclaim that we need most to make it in this life can not be found at the mall, it is not achieved by building up fortunes in the stock market, and it can not be earned through a ‘healthier lifestyle.’ We are a people who believe that what we need first, foremost, and always is grace (and awareness of the riches God so freely shares with us) and love (a sense of God’s unconditional presence and unflinching desire to see us thrive).
Do you promise to follow and obey Christ as your Lord? We are a people whose prayer to God is always, “O Lord, what should I do?”, “O God, how should I live?” More and more, it is a question being asked less and less.
I watched a documentary a few weeks ago called Inside Job. It chronicled the 2008 collapse of the financial world. Here is one slice of how that disaster came to be. The financial firm Goldman/Sacks bought up thousands upon thousands of shaky mortgages (mortgages put out by Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, and up until 48 hours before it all fell apart, given the highest investment rating by Standard & Poors). They bundled these properties into what was called ‘derivatives’ and sold them on the open market. Private investors like you and me bought them through our managed our 401k’s. Local pension funds for firefighters and teachers also invested heavily, believing them to be worthy and reliable. Long after Goldman/Sacks knew the derivates were nothing but junk they continued to promote them while at the same time insuring against their collapse by taking out policies with firms like AIG.
Well, as you know, the whole house of cards came tumbling down, plunging us into a world-wide recession, leaving 10% of the population unemployed, and stripping each one of us thousands upon thousands of dollars in equity and savings. The government stepped in and bailed out the industry, but the people who ran these markets played the system well and walked away with billions of dollars in earnings and bonuses. I do not envy their wealth because I do not want to be accountable for their sins.
Do you promise to follow and obey Christ as your Lord? How should I live? What should I do? I should live in a way which, to the best of my ability, provides for me and for my family. I should live for myself in a way that promotes the well-being of all and does not deplete from it. I should live not for myself as the world defines ‘self,’ but for him who died and rose for me.
These are dark times in which we live. I don’t know if they are darker than other times, but it is certainly a time of despair. It is a time when the light of Christ burning in each one of us committed to living out our baptismal covenant is a sign of hope to this sinful and broken world. It is a time for those of us who have died with Christ in the waters of baptism to rise up in newness of life; a life God intends as a blessing for the world. We have a different Savior than the world offers. We strive not for the things of this world, but for a deeper awareness of God’s grace and love. We follow Christ as Lord who guides us into a life marked by integrity, generosity, and a concern for the welfare of the world.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Jesus Lacking Generosity & Trust
In his book Civility, The Yale law professor Stephen Carter describes his childhood memory of what it was like to be a black family moving into an all-white Washington DC neighborhood in 1966. While only eleven, he had heard stories about things white people did to black people – stories based partly in truth, but largely on the imaginative retelling so typical of children that age. Carter remembers sitting on the front porch of his family’s large, new home feeling lonely, isolated, and afraid.
Suddenly a neighbor appeared next door – a woman with a booming voice they would come to know as Sara Kestenbaum – and as she got out of her car she shouted a very loud and enthusiastic “Welcome!” to Stephen and his siblings. Sara quickly disappeared into her house, only to reemerge moments later with a tray of snacks for the children to eat. Her simple act created for Stephen a sense of belonging where it had not existed before. Years later he would reflect that her action required both generosity and trust. He writes:
“Sara Kestenbaum was generous to us, giving of herself with no benefit to herself, and she demonstrated not merely a welcome that nobody else offered, but a faith in us, a trust that we were people to whom one could and should be generous.”
Her generosity, Carter observed, involved a cost – the price of the snacks, the time spent preparing them, foregoing other opportunities, perhaps inviting the scorn of others in the neighborhood – and, he writes, her trust involved a risk – she took a chance that the children she reached out to would receive, value, and respect her generosity.
More and more we live in a society where we do not know each other, and not knowing each other seem to think it does not matter how we treat one another. Today’s gospel reading goes right to the heart of this. It is a unique story in the New Testament in that its hero is a gentile woman and its villain is Jesus. She has so much going against her. She is a woman. She is a despised Canaanite. She is in need and uncontained in her pleadings for help.
Jesus is tired from weeks of exhausting preaching, teaching, healing, and confrontations. He simply wants to be left alone and so is dismissive and insulting. “I was sent to find the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” he tells her. Then he adds, “It is not right to take the children’s food and feed it to the dogs.” It was a cold, cutting thing to say, wasn’t it. If Sara Kestenbaum displayed generosity and trust, then, here at least, Jesus displays the exact opposite. He is not willing to do anything for this woman nor does he see her as a person worthy his time.
Some biblical commentators, uncomfortable with the way this story portrays our Lord and Savior, suggest that Jesus was just testing her – a little challenge to see what she was made of. Some play off the notion that Jesus is all-knowing and thus knows where the conversation will end. This, they suggest, renders the insult meaningless. To be honest, I don’t see it. All I see here is a very human Jesus doing exactly what we humans do from time to time. He is selfish, rude, and uncivil… at least at first.
But the Canaanite woman will not be deterred. Motivated by a desperate desire to get help for her daughter, she is resilient and resourceful. She shrugs off the insult and uses it to her advantage. “Even dogs get to eat the crumbs that fall from the children’s table.” Hers is a costly response in that it foregoes the anger appropriate in the face of such disrespect and it goes right to the heart of generosity; “Jesus, even a little bit of your time and attention will do me great good.” It is a trusting response, risking that Jesus can be a better person than he has shown up to this point.
Instantly Jesus’ perception is transformed. He wakes up to a new reality that all human beings – which the Gospel proclaims were made by and through him – all human beings (even if they be ‘foreign dogs’) are worthy of God’s love. It is a first glimpse into a debate the early Church would have to hash out some years later – that the Gospel is intended for Jews and Gentiles alike. Until this moment in his ministry, it appears that even Jesus did not grasp this. But through this encounter, the Canaanite woman’s faith in him expands his faith in all people.
The exchange from her on is brief. Jesus expresses great admiration for her faith and grants her desire. The text says that her daughter, who may or may not even have been present, is healed at that moment. They did not know each other before this encounter and there is no indication that Jesus and the Canaanite woman ever met again, but still the story tells us that how we treat one another, even (and especially) the stranger, does in fact matter.
In today’s Old Testament reading we hear the story of Joseph forgiving his brothers who years before had sold him into slavery. Now a powerful figure in the Egyptian government, the brothers need food that Joseph has placed in reserve against a severe famine. Joseph’s act of generosity is very costly. He foregoes revenge he could have (and some might argue should have) enacted on his brothers. His trust in them is risky. They might be the same jealous rascals they had been so many years ago, but even more likely it could jeopardize his position in Egypt. But Joseph’s actions, like those of Sara Kestenbaum, create a sense of belonging where it had not existed before. It transforms brokenness into blessing.
This morning we welcome two persons – one a child, the other an infant – into the Christian faith and life through baptism. Next week another infant will be baptized. In the liturgy I will ask if you will do all in your power to support these persons in their life in Christ. In effect, God is asking if you are willing to place your trust in these children; believing that they – along will all God’s creatures – are worthy of God’s love. And God will be asking if you will be generous with them; giving of your time, your talent, your treasure, and your heart. In some respects what God asks of you will cost you very little, in other respects it will cost you everything, for it will require you no longer to live merely for yourself, but also for the sake of others in the Name of Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior.
Last Friday several of us gathered at Jack and Barbara West’s home for our monthly Holy Smoke & Ale. Eric Freel brought his daughter Polly, who is one of the youngsters we always see running up here to attend Children’s Chapel. Several times during the evening I saw Ginger Owen, who is one of the people who teaches Children’s Chapel, take Polly out in the back yard to see the water or inspect a bird feeder or look at that the flowers. Ginger was both generous and trusting, as was Polly who now sees her as someone worthy of her generosity and trust. How much did it cost them? Not a lot, in terms of how the world measures cost, but everything in terms of how Jesus measures it. How much did each risk? Again, not a lot and everything.
Again I say that more and more we live in a society where we do not know each other, and not knowing each other seem to think it does not matter how we treat one another. Sara Kestenbaum, Joseph, Polly and Ginger, and the Canaanite woman remind us that God’s kingdom looks very different from the ways of this world. Even our Lord needed to be touched by the generosity and trust of others so that he could be transformed into the image God.
Suddenly a neighbor appeared next door – a woman with a booming voice they would come to know as Sara Kestenbaum – and as she got out of her car she shouted a very loud and enthusiastic “Welcome!” to Stephen and his siblings. Sara quickly disappeared into her house, only to reemerge moments later with a tray of snacks for the children to eat. Her simple act created for Stephen a sense of belonging where it had not existed before. Years later he would reflect that her action required both generosity and trust. He writes:
“Sara Kestenbaum was generous to us, giving of herself with no benefit to herself, and she demonstrated not merely a welcome that nobody else offered, but a faith in us, a trust that we were people to whom one could and should be generous.”
Her generosity, Carter observed, involved a cost – the price of the snacks, the time spent preparing them, foregoing other opportunities, perhaps inviting the scorn of others in the neighborhood – and, he writes, her trust involved a risk – she took a chance that the children she reached out to would receive, value, and respect her generosity.
More and more we live in a society where we do not know each other, and not knowing each other seem to think it does not matter how we treat one another. Today’s gospel reading goes right to the heart of this. It is a unique story in the New Testament in that its hero is a gentile woman and its villain is Jesus. She has so much going against her. She is a woman. She is a despised Canaanite. She is in need and uncontained in her pleadings for help.
Jesus is tired from weeks of exhausting preaching, teaching, healing, and confrontations. He simply wants to be left alone and so is dismissive and insulting. “I was sent to find the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” he tells her. Then he adds, “It is not right to take the children’s food and feed it to the dogs.” It was a cold, cutting thing to say, wasn’t it. If Sara Kestenbaum displayed generosity and trust, then, here at least, Jesus displays the exact opposite. He is not willing to do anything for this woman nor does he see her as a person worthy his time.
Some biblical commentators, uncomfortable with the way this story portrays our Lord and Savior, suggest that Jesus was just testing her – a little challenge to see what she was made of. Some play off the notion that Jesus is all-knowing and thus knows where the conversation will end. This, they suggest, renders the insult meaningless. To be honest, I don’t see it. All I see here is a very human Jesus doing exactly what we humans do from time to time. He is selfish, rude, and uncivil… at least at first.
But the Canaanite woman will not be deterred. Motivated by a desperate desire to get help for her daughter, she is resilient and resourceful. She shrugs off the insult and uses it to her advantage. “Even dogs get to eat the crumbs that fall from the children’s table.” Hers is a costly response in that it foregoes the anger appropriate in the face of such disrespect and it goes right to the heart of generosity; “Jesus, even a little bit of your time and attention will do me great good.” It is a trusting response, risking that Jesus can be a better person than he has shown up to this point.
Instantly Jesus’ perception is transformed. He wakes up to a new reality that all human beings – which the Gospel proclaims were made by and through him – all human beings (even if they be ‘foreign dogs’) are worthy of God’s love. It is a first glimpse into a debate the early Church would have to hash out some years later – that the Gospel is intended for Jews and Gentiles alike. Until this moment in his ministry, it appears that even Jesus did not grasp this. But through this encounter, the Canaanite woman’s faith in him expands his faith in all people.
The exchange from her on is brief. Jesus expresses great admiration for her faith and grants her desire. The text says that her daughter, who may or may not even have been present, is healed at that moment. They did not know each other before this encounter and there is no indication that Jesus and the Canaanite woman ever met again, but still the story tells us that how we treat one another, even (and especially) the stranger, does in fact matter.
In today’s Old Testament reading we hear the story of Joseph forgiving his brothers who years before had sold him into slavery. Now a powerful figure in the Egyptian government, the brothers need food that Joseph has placed in reserve against a severe famine. Joseph’s act of generosity is very costly. He foregoes revenge he could have (and some might argue should have) enacted on his brothers. His trust in them is risky. They might be the same jealous rascals they had been so many years ago, but even more likely it could jeopardize his position in Egypt. But Joseph’s actions, like those of Sara Kestenbaum, create a sense of belonging where it had not existed before. It transforms brokenness into blessing.
This morning we welcome two persons – one a child, the other an infant – into the Christian faith and life through baptism. Next week another infant will be baptized. In the liturgy I will ask if you will do all in your power to support these persons in their life in Christ. In effect, God is asking if you are willing to place your trust in these children; believing that they – along will all God’s creatures – are worthy of God’s love. And God will be asking if you will be generous with them; giving of your time, your talent, your treasure, and your heart. In some respects what God asks of you will cost you very little, in other respects it will cost you everything, for it will require you no longer to live merely for yourself, but also for the sake of others in the Name of Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior.
Last Friday several of us gathered at Jack and Barbara West’s home for our monthly Holy Smoke & Ale. Eric Freel brought his daughter Polly, who is one of the youngsters we always see running up here to attend Children’s Chapel. Several times during the evening I saw Ginger Owen, who is one of the people who teaches Children’s Chapel, take Polly out in the back yard to see the water or inspect a bird feeder or look at that the flowers. Ginger was both generous and trusting, as was Polly who now sees her as someone worthy of her generosity and trust. How much did it cost them? Not a lot, in terms of how the world measures cost, but everything in terms of how Jesus measures it. How much did each risk? Again, not a lot and everything.
Again I say that more and more we live in a society where we do not know each other, and not knowing each other seem to think it does not matter how we treat one another. Sara Kestenbaum, Joseph, Polly and Ginger, and the Canaanite woman remind us that God’s kingdom looks very different from the ways of this world. Even our Lord needed to be touched by the generosity and trust of others so that he could be transformed into the image God.
Monday, August 8, 2011
That Sinking Feeling
At age 23 I found myself in charge of a massive, two-week day camp run out of an Episcopal Church. It featured over 150 campers, twenty-some paid college students, and multiple volunteers. Making matters more challenging, the program I inherited included over-night camping trips for the boys and then the girls. The year before a volunteer drowned at the overnight and I was determined that this year’s outing would go smoothly. I worked and planned and strategized, but nothing could avert the rude awakening coming my way.
The overnight featured a day canoe trip, camping, a morning paddle, and a finally a three-hour bus trip home. The first day with the boys went well, but the second day not so much. Pulling up to the canoe livery in a bus to take the boys home, I found the owner waiting for me. He was an imposing man, a former All-Pro defensive tackle with the Cleveland Browns. It seems that the boys – led or misled by their counselors – had canoed past their pickup point. To make matters worse, those college-aged leaders had allowed the boys to get so strung out along the river that some were ahead, some were behind, and some were hopelessly lost in the middle. Some boys, tired and hungry, had gotten out of their canoes and walked up to a farmhouse to call their parents. Other boys had gotten off the river and were found hitch-hiking along remote country roads.
As you can imagine, this giant of a man was handing it to me pretty good. “What do you want me to do?” I asked him. “Go take care of your girl campers,” he said, “while I straighten out the mess with your boys.” When I drove up to campsite, the girls had already arrived in their canoes. Their leaders had them in a circle playing games and things were going better than could be expected. But at that very moment, workmen nearby operating a bulldozer knocked over a utility pole sending a live electric wire crashing down within a hundred feet of all our girls. It was then that I uttered a prayer which I have never forgotten, “Oh God, please get us out of this O.K. and I promise never again to attempt something this massive and this foolish.”
I can still recall that sinking feeling in my stomach which accompanied the realization that even my best efforts were not enough to ward off disaster. I imagine it is the feeling Peter must have had as he began to sink in the waters of the Sea of Galilee. I suspect that Joseph too knew this feeling as he sat in the hole, cast down by his older brothers for ratting them out and parading around his favored status. “On no,” both must have thought, “this is not going to end well.”
I have been reading a book by Donald Capps called The Decades of Life in preparation for an adult education class in September. In the book, Capps examines Erik Erickson’s life cycle model where certain conflicts take place at different ages of our life. They begin at a certain age, but are revisited throughout life. If Erickson were to examine today’s readings about Joseph and Peter, and if he were to ponder the fiasco of the camping trip I led, I think he would reflect on them in light of Initiative vs. Guilt. Erickson holds that this conflict first arises in preschoolers and Capps adds that it seems to reemerge in our twenties (the age I was, Joseph may have been approaching, and Peter might have been).
It is in our twenties that we become self-starters and begin to take action without being urged by others. The twenties seem to be a time to test and try our sense of initiative. It is an age when we can no longer sit back passively and wait for life to come to us. We must strike out on our own and begin to make our way in the world. It can be an exciting time of great daring. Think about Peter. He initiated the idea to walk out on the water to Jesus. True, he asked for permission, but it was his idea and his alone.
If you think about it, perhaps you initiated your most adventurous undertakings in your twenties. There are at least two reasons why this happens. First, while we have initiative, we do not possess yet a full awareness of our own particular gifts and skills. We think we can take on the world and don’t fathom how we are uniquely qualified to take on only certain parts of it. The other reason we are so open to attempt big things in our twenties is that we don’t fully appreciate how circumstances might work against us. I am not sure how old Robert Burns was when he wrote that the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray, but I am willing to bet it was well after his twenties. At this age we dare great things, often times not fully understanding ourselves and being somewhat naive as to the ways of the world.
There is an old Peanuts cartoon where Charlie Brown finds Sally making two lists; one very short and the other very long. “What are you doing,” he asks her. “I am making two lists of all the things I have learned in life,” she answers. “Why are they different sizes,” he inquires. “Well,” says Sally, “this long list is all the stuff I learned the hard way.”
Erickson held that the great conflict of this stage is between initiative and guilt. The idea of initiative carries with it the inevitability that one will make mistakes, have errors in judgment, and fail to achieve the outcome desired. Joseph didn’t understand the consequences of putting himself at the head of the family parade and usurping the rightful place of his brothers. Peter thought that if Jesus could do it, he could too. I imagined that I could control all the variables through proper planning and clear communication, regardless of my untested abilities at planning and communicating.
We try new things and sometimes we fail. Erickson states that out of such experiences we begin to develop a conscience marked more and more by the ability to engage in self-observation, self-guidance, and self-punishment. In other words, we develop the capacity to direct, evaluate, and correct ourselves. Our next initiative will be a little different from the last, marked by the seeds of insight that become ours as we ask what about what I tried went well and what about it did not.
Each Sunday morning the Church invites us to confess our sins, to name things done and left undone. Sometimes what we confess arises from our own willfulness – we knew what we ought to do, but didn’t want to do it – but many other times what we confess emerges from the inevitability that when we try we sometimes fail. Knowing that we can be forgiven gives us the permission to try again; to initiate anew, but this time more self-aware and savvy.
Now in my early fifties, I want to report that I still get that sinking feeling from time to time, though not as often. It happens when I screw up or when events beyond my control turn for the worse. I am better now at figuring my way out and I am better at turning to God to discern how God might guide me. I am better about owning up to my failures, asking for forgiveness, and accepting that I am forgiven.
When his brothers threw him down in that hole, Joseph’s life literally bottomed out. But it was also a turning point for him – a place to access all that he had done that contributed to his predicament. He would sink again in life, several times in fact. But he learned something in that hole. He learned how to endure and emerge better for the experience. Years later he would reflect that what his brothers had intended as evil God used for good.
Peter too learned from his walk on the water. Sure, he would fail again, but after this it was always related to being a rock – a figure trying to figure out how to lead the early church. Never again would he fail on an initiative as sketchy walking on water.
I believe God sides with those who try and has limited use for those who, because of failure, fail to ever try again. I want to leave you with a brief poem by the welsh poet R.S. Thomas that describes how God is with us as we take initiative in life and things do not turn out as we hoped:
When we are weak, we are
strong. When our eyes close
on the world, then somewhere
within us the bush
burns. When we are poor
and aware of the inadequacy
of our table, it is to that
uninvited the guest comes.
The overnight featured a day canoe trip, camping, a morning paddle, and a finally a three-hour bus trip home. The first day with the boys went well, but the second day not so much. Pulling up to the canoe livery in a bus to take the boys home, I found the owner waiting for me. He was an imposing man, a former All-Pro defensive tackle with the Cleveland Browns. It seems that the boys – led or misled by their counselors – had canoed past their pickup point. To make matters worse, those college-aged leaders had allowed the boys to get so strung out along the river that some were ahead, some were behind, and some were hopelessly lost in the middle. Some boys, tired and hungry, had gotten out of their canoes and walked up to a farmhouse to call their parents. Other boys had gotten off the river and were found hitch-hiking along remote country roads.
As you can imagine, this giant of a man was handing it to me pretty good. “What do you want me to do?” I asked him. “Go take care of your girl campers,” he said, “while I straighten out the mess with your boys.” When I drove up to campsite, the girls had already arrived in their canoes. Their leaders had them in a circle playing games and things were going better than could be expected. But at that very moment, workmen nearby operating a bulldozer knocked over a utility pole sending a live electric wire crashing down within a hundred feet of all our girls. It was then that I uttered a prayer which I have never forgotten, “Oh God, please get us out of this O.K. and I promise never again to attempt something this massive and this foolish.”
I can still recall that sinking feeling in my stomach which accompanied the realization that even my best efforts were not enough to ward off disaster. I imagine it is the feeling Peter must have had as he began to sink in the waters of the Sea of Galilee. I suspect that Joseph too knew this feeling as he sat in the hole, cast down by his older brothers for ratting them out and parading around his favored status. “On no,” both must have thought, “this is not going to end well.”
I have been reading a book by Donald Capps called The Decades of Life in preparation for an adult education class in September. In the book, Capps examines Erik Erickson’s life cycle model where certain conflicts take place at different ages of our life. They begin at a certain age, but are revisited throughout life. If Erickson were to examine today’s readings about Joseph and Peter, and if he were to ponder the fiasco of the camping trip I led, I think he would reflect on them in light of Initiative vs. Guilt. Erickson holds that this conflict first arises in preschoolers and Capps adds that it seems to reemerge in our twenties (the age I was, Joseph may have been approaching, and Peter might have been).
It is in our twenties that we become self-starters and begin to take action without being urged by others. The twenties seem to be a time to test and try our sense of initiative. It is an age when we can no longer sit back passively and wait for life to come to us. We must strike out on our own and begin to make our way in the world. It can be an exciting time of great daring. Think about Peter. He initiated the idea to walk out on the water to Jesus. True, he asked for permission, but it was his idea and his alone.
If you think about it, perhaps you initiated your most adventurous undertakings in your twenties. There are at least two reasons why this happens. First, while we have initiative, we do not possess yet a full awareness of our own particular gifts and skills. We think we can take on the world and don’t fathom how we are uniquely qualified to take on only certain parts of it. The other reason we are so open to attempt big things in our twenties is that we don’t fully appreciate how circumstances might work against us. I am not sure how old Robert Burns was when he wrote that the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray, but I am willing to bet it was well after his twenties. At this age we dare great things, often times not fully understanding ourselves and being somewhat naive as to the ways of the world.
There is an old Peanuts cartoon where Charlie Brown finds Sally making two lists; one very short and the other very long. “What are you doing,” he asks her. “I am making two lists of all the things I have learned in life,” she answers. “Why are they different sizes,” he inquires. “Well,” says Sally, “this long list is all the stuff I learned the hard way.”
Erickson held that the great conflict of this stage is between initiative and guilt. The idea of initiative carries with it the inevitability that one will make mistakes, have errors in judgment, and fail to achieve the outcome desired. Joseph didn’t understand the consequences of putting himself at the head of the family parade and usurping the rightful place of his brothers. Peter thought that if Jesus could do it, he could too. I imagined that I could control all the variables through proper planning and clear communication, regardless of my untested abilities at planning and communicating.
We try new things and sometimes we fail. Erickson states that out of such experiences we begin to develop a conscience marked more and more by the ability to engage in self-observation, self-guidance, and self-punishment. In other words, we develop the capacity to direct, evaluate, and correct ourselves. Our next initiative will be a little different from the last, marked by the seeds of insight that become ours as we ask what about what I tried went well and what about it did not.
Each Sunday morning the Church invites us to confess our sins, to name things done and left undone. Sometimes what we confess arises from our own willfulness – we knew what we ought to do, but didn’t want to do it – but many other times what we confess emerges from the inevitability that when we try we sometimes fail. Knowing that we can be forgiven gives us the permission to try again; to initiate anew, but this time more self-aware and savvy.
Now in my early fifties, I want to report that I still get that sinking feeling from time to time, though not as often. It happens when I screw up or when events beyond my control turn for the worse. I am better now at figuring my way out and I am better at turning to God to discern how God might guide me. I am better about owning up to my failures, asking for forgiveness, and accepting that I am forgiven.
When his brothers threw him down in that hole, Joseph’s life literally bottomed out. But it was also a turning point for him – a place to access all that he had done that contributed to his predicament. He would sink again in life, several times in fact. But he learned something in that hole. He learned how to endure and emerge better for the experience. Years later he would reflect that what his brothers had intended as evil God used for good.
Peter too learned from his walk on the water. Sure, he would fail again, but after this it was always related to being a rock – a figure trying to figure out how to lead the early church. Never again would he fail on an initiative as sketchy walking on water.
I believe God sides with those who try and has limited use for those who, because of failure, fail to ever try again. I want to leave you with a brief poem by the welsh poet R.S. Thomas that describes how God is with us as we take initiative in life and things do not turn out as we hoped:
When we are weak, we are
strong. When our eyes close
on the world, then somewhere
within us the bush
burns. When we are poor
and aware of the inadequacy
of our table, it is to that
uninvited the guest comes.
Monday, August 1, 2011
"We have Nothing Here but..."
The Disciples answered Jesus, “We have nothing here but...”
Five loaves of bread, two fish, and 5,000 people: the prospects did not look very promising, did they? Jesus had only two things going for him: gratitude and helpers. He took what little had been rounded up and gave thanks. Then he marshaled his volunteers and put them to work. The result was more than anyone could have asked or imagined.
The learnings that come out of this episode can not be exhausted in a hundred sermons. Here’s what I see today: a little generosity, a lot of thanks, and people who are willing to lend their talent can make a huge difference. For me, this is one of the most exciting aspects of parish ministry and all of life. It is incredibly rewarding to see a group of people take marginal resources and, rather than complain about what they don’t have, do something amazing with what they do have. That kind of spirit is infectious and it fuels the mission of God’s people.
St. Paul’s Food Pantry is an example of how it happens. The Pantry thrives because you are generous, because a few people put their heart and soul into it, and because we are grateful to be doing God’s work. We have made some changes to the Pantry in recent months. First, it was moved from a small room off the Parish Hall to two larger rooms in the Christian Education wing. Next, we entered into a relationship with the Norfolk Food Bank. This allows us to buy more food and at reduced rate and gives us access to free food collected from various canned-food drives around Hampton Roads. And finally, the clients now come into our Pantry and select the food they want off the shelves. They ‘shop’ for what they need.
These changes have had a tremendous impact. The typical number of clients each week has gone from around forty to around ninety. It really is something to see the nonstop parade of people in the parking lot on Monday morning. I suspect, and I hope, that the ministry will continue to grow and to reach more people in the area who can make effective use of a little bit of help.
The growth in the Food Pantry ministry has created some challenges, as you might expect. Yes, we may need additional funding, but the biggest challenge is that the work load is eclipsing what three or four or five volunteers can do on a weekly basis. The Vestry and I are talking with our Food Pantry volunteers and chewing on different ideas that will make it possible for more members of St. Paul’s to roll up their sleeves and help. By the fall you will be hearing more about this.
I continue to be encouraged by the steady progress we are making on the Hope for Haiti project. So far we have raised enough money to pay for 209 bricks for a new Anglican cathedral in Port-a-Prince, and we are well on our way toward our goal of 300, or $3,000. It has been an effort marked by creativity and initiative. We have worked for and served one another in small ways resulting in gifts of gratitude, not charity. I have mentioned our approach at several different diocesan gatherings and those present have taken notice. When all is said and done, St. Paul’s alone will have raised about 10% of all that is collected in our diocese. But the real story of our project has been our method and that’s what people are noticing.
All four gospels tell the story of the feeding of the 5,000. It is only John’s Gospel, the last of the four to be written, that mentions the bread and fish were given by a young boy. The first three gospels fail to mention this detail, perhaps (mistakenly) thinking it not to be important. But it is, because one person’s generosity set in motion a ministry that met the needs of all.
Over the years, there have been some interesting attempts to explain away the miraculous nature of this story. One commentator posited that Jesus had a huge hidden supply of food, which he kept delving into as the Disciples returned with empty baskets that needed filled – call this the ‘smoke and mirrors’ theory.
Another more plausible explanation is that many in the crowd had no food, but a few did. Through the boy’s act of sharing and Jesus’ response of giving thanks and distrusting, it encourages those who had to share generously with those who were lacking. There is a part of me that wishes this was the story we had been given. It would be so easy to preach the meaning of something like that! It rings true to experience, but only to a certain degree. It misses that ‘God-element’ that always seems to accompany real Christian mission and ministry – that knowing sense that something more than meets the eye has taken place.
If Jesus could feed 5,000 people with the offering brought forward by one person, imagine what he could have done with the food offered by, say, five people… or ten… or a hundred.
For some time now I have been chewing on an idea born of a concern. My concern is this: three years ago, when a tornado ripped through our community, Episcopal dioceses and congregations from all over the country sent money here to help with relief efforts, $125,000 in all! Since that time, other communities have been devastated, earthquakes have leveled cities, and famine has gripped far away places, yet we have not responded as a parish. It is so easy to be overcome with fatigue at the magnitude of suffering in our world that simply doing nothing becomes the only option. Why give up my bread and fish when it will do so little good?
Well, today’s gospel reading gives us the answer to that question, we just need to figure out a mechanism to help us respond. So here is my idea. I would like us to institute something we might call “Change the World” Sunday. It might be as frequent as the first Sunday of the month; perhaps it might take place quarterly or at the beginning of each new liturgical season. “Change the World.” I have a lot (and I mean a lot) of change laying around my house. There is a bowl of it in the kitchen and a plate of it in my bedroom. There is a box of change in my closet and there is even a penny that has been laying on the floor of my upstairs hallway for several months now (and please don’t extrapolate from that my housecleaning regiment).
On “Change the World” Sunday, you can bring in as much or as little change as you like. We collect it in a big jar, designate a beneficiary (like the people in Alabama whose community was torn apart last spring), we cash it in at a coin machine, and we send a check to help people in need. To a certain degree, the message from today’s gospel is that it doesn’t matter how much you collect, but that you participate. If you contribute and give thanks, God will take care of making it make a difference.
These are lean times that we live in. I have been a priest for nearly twenty-five years now and during that time I don’t recall a single Vestry meeting where we sat around wondering what to do with all the extra money laying around the church. Still, we have always been able to do what we needed with what we have been given.
More and more, I sense God inviting me and God’s people to move from a lifestyle marked by self-interest to one characterized by generosity and sacrificial love. This is at the heart of the Gospel because it is at the heart of God, whose extravagant, generous love for all creation is made known to us in Jesus Christ. We experience God as close and we know God more fully whenever our lives are marked by generous concern for another.
Five loaves of bread, two fish, and 5,000 people: the prospects did not look very promising, did they? Jesus had only two things going for him: gratitude and helpers. He took what little had been rounded up and gave thanks. Then he marshaled his volunteers and put them to work. The result was more than anyone could have asked or imagined.
The learnings that come out of this episode can not be exhausted in a hundred sermons. Here’s what I see today: a little generosity, a lot of thanks, and people who are willing to lend their talent can make a huge difference. For me, this is one of the most exciting aspects of parish ministry and all of life. It is incredibly rewarding to see a group of people take marginal resources and, rather than complain about what they don’t have, do something amazing with what they do have. That kind of spirit is infectious and it fuels the mission of God’s people.
St. Paul’s Food Pantry is an example of how it happens. The Pantry thrives because you are generous, because a few people put their heart and soul into it, and because we are grateful to be doing God’s work. We have made some changes to the Pantry in recent months. First, it was moved from a small room off the Parish Hall to two larger rooms in the Christian Education wing. Next, we entered into a relationship with the Norfolk Food Bank. This allows us to buy more food and at reduced rate and gives us access to free food collected from various canned-food drives around Hampton Roads. And finally, the clients now come into our Pantry and select the food they want off the shelves. They ‘shop’ for what they need.
These changes have had a tremendous impact. The typical number of clients each week has gone from around forty to around ninety. It really is something to see the nonstop parade of people in the parking lot on Monday morning. I suspect, and I hope, that the ministry will continue to grow and to reach more people in the area who can make effective use of a little bit of help.
The growth in the Food Pantry ministry has created some challenges, as you might expect. Yes, we may need additional funding, but the biggest challenge is that the work load is eclipsing what three or four or five volunteers can do on a weekly basis. The Vestry and I are talking with our Food Pantry volunteers and chewing on different ideas that will make it possible for more members of St. Paul’s to roll up their sleeves and help. By the fall you will be hearing more about this.
I continue to be encouraged by the steady progress we are making on the Hope for Haiti project. So far we have raised enough money to pay for 209 bricks for a new Anglican cathedral in Port-a-Prince, and we are well on our way toward our goal of 300, or $3,000. It has been an effort marked by creativity and initiative. We have worked for and served one another in small ways resulting in gifts of gratitude, not charity. I have mentioned our approach at several different diocesan gatherings and those present have taken notice. When all is said and done, St. Paul’s alone will have raised about 10% of all that is collected in our diocese. But the real story of our project has been our method and that’s what people are noticing.
All four gospels tell the story of the feeding of the 5,000. It is only John’s Gospel, the last of the four to be written, that mentions the bread and fish were given by a young boy. The first three gospels fail to mention this detail, perhaps (mistakenly) thinking it not to be important. But it is, because one person’s generosity set in motion a ministry that met the needs of all.
Over the years, there have been some interesting attempts to explain away the miraculous nature of this story. One commentator posited that Jesus had a huge hidden supply of food, which he kept delving into as the Disciples returned with empty baskets that needed filled – call this the ‘smoke and mirrors’ theory.
Another more plausible explanation is that many in the crowd had no food, but a few did. Through the boy’s act of sharing and Jesus’ response of giving thanks and distrusting, it encourages those who had to share generously with those who were lacking. There is a part of me that wishes this was the story we had been given. It would be so easy to preach the meaning of something like that! It rings true to experience, but only to a certain degree. It misses that ‘God-element’ that always seems to accompany real Christian mission and ministry – that knowing sense that something more than meets the eye has taken place.
If Jesus could feed 5,000 people with the offering brought forward by one person, imagine what he could have done with the food offered by, say, five people… or ten… or a hundred.
For some time now I have been chewing on an idea born of a concern. My concern is this: three years ago, when a tornado ripped through our community, Episcopal dioceses and congregations from all over the country sent money here to help with relief efforts, $125,000 in all! Since that time, other communities have been devastated, earthquakes have leveled cities, and famine has gripped far away places, yet we have not responded as a parish. It is so easy to be overcome with fatigue at the magnitude of suffering in our world that simply doing nothing becomes the only option. Why give up my bread and fish when it will do so little good?
Well, today’s gospel reading gives us the answer to that question, we just need to figure out a mechanism to help us respond. So here is my idea. I would like us to institute something we might call “Change the World” Sunday. It might be as frequent as the first Sunday of the month; perhaps it might take place quarterly or at the beginning of each new liturgical season. “Change the World.” I have a lot (and I mean a lot) of change laying around my house. There is a bowl of it in the kitchen and a plate of it in my bedroom. There is a box of change in my closet and there is even a penny that has been laying on the floor of my upstairs hallway for several months now (and please don’t extrapolate from that my housecleaning regiment).
On “Change the World” Sunday, you can bring in as much or as little change as you like. We collect it in a big jar, designate a beneficiary (like the people in Alabama whose community was torn apart last spring), we cash it in at a coin machine, and we send a check to help people in need. To a certain degree, the message from today’s gospel is that it doesn’t matter how much you collect, but that you participate. If you contribute and give thanks, God will take care of making it make a difference.
These are lean times that we live in. I have been a priest for nearly twenty-five years now and during that time I don’t recall a single Vestry meeting where we sat around wondering what to do with all the extra money laying around the church. Still, we have always been able to do what we needed with what we have been given.
More and more, I sense God inviting me and God’s people to move from a lifestyle marked by self-interest to one characterized by generosity and sacrificial love. This is at the heart of the Gospel because it is at the heart of God, whose extravagant, generous love for all creation is made known to us in Jesus Christ. We experience God as close and we know God more fully whenever our lives are marked by generous concern for another.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Treasures Old & New
Jesus asked his disciples, “Have you understood this?” “Yes,” they said. “Everyone who understands what I say,” he said, “is like a person who brings out of his treasure what is old and what is new.”
The old and the new: we in God’s Church live in a dynamic tension between what God has revealed and what God is revealing. We are like trees planted by water, whose roots sink into something set and stable and we are like a leaf in the wind, being blown to a fro by the Holy Spirit. This tension is manifested in many different ways; pleas to post the 10 Commandments on courthouse walls express a longing for olden treasures while calls to allow women a greater role in the life of the Roman Catholic Church cry out for what is new.
Years ago I was at a meeting of clergy gathered to give counsel to a bishop. In attendance was a priest who served in one of the northern Virginia parishes that later would leave the Episcopal Church, attempting to take diocesan property with them. This priest was well-dressed for the meeting, in a suit and tie you might expect to see worn by a highly-placed beltway insider. He sat at a table with his palm-pilot docked on a keyboard, which was cutting edge technology in the day. If there were a GQ Magazine for clergy, he could have been on the cover. When the conversation turned to issues of human sexuality, he criticized the direction the church was headed stating it was trying to be too much like the world. I kept to myself my amusement at the irony, but have always held the moment as an image of how the goodness of newness, like beauty, is often times in the eye of the beholder. My new may not be good to you.
When we talk about the church moving toward what is new and holding on to what is old it is important to make a distinction between method and message; the two are not the same, but both are important. Our methods of communicating the Gospel are closely tied to the culture. After I was newly ordained I attended a seminar designed to train churches how to set up telemarketing phone banks to “get the word out.” Today that approach is passé; swamped by the public’s distaste for it and by the rise of social networks.
Method. I jokingly told Doug Kincaid that he was in charge of organizing a task force to recommend how best to incorporate projection screens in our worship space. Being one of our most conservative members, I don’t expect a report any time soon. Still, we live in a culture that has moved from verbal to visual and this presents both challenges and opportunities for our method of worship.
New methods seem to come and go as the culture moves along, but new messages have a way of causing a stir before they take root. If we were gathered at St. Paul’s 160 years ago, no doubt our pews would be populated with slave-owning parishioners. Any sermon that attempted to repudiate the bible’s apparent validation of this institution would have been round rejected as “new-fangled” hogwash. But today, that “new” teaching is a part of the “old” message entrusted to us.
In his address at diocesan council last February, our bishop said it was time to organize a task force to help our diocese have conversation around issues of sexuality and the blessing of same gender unions. He pointed out that next summer’s General Convention of the entire Episcopal Church will receive liturgies for the blessing of same-gender unions and make some determination about what to do with them. His reasoning for calling together a task force is sound: it is better to go into such a moment informed and in communion with one another than to be blindsided by it.
As I listened to the bishop I agreed with the need for such a group to begin to meet, but thought to myself, “I don’t have a clue what they should do and I feel sorry for whoever is asked to serve on it.” Later that day the bishop approached me and said, “Keith, I need you to do me a favor.” He didn’t even have to say it, the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach told me that he wanted me to co-chair the group.
I have spent the better part of my ordained ministry trying to stay out of this “fight,” but I have to tell you it is fascinating reading material and listening to personal stories from all points of view and perspectives because they exhibit the dynamic tension between what God has revealed – the old – and what God is revealing – the new. Our task force meets for just the second time later this week. I have no idea where we are heading or what we will produce, but it feels like one of those good and godly challenges to figure out which treasures of the old should not be discarded and which treasures of the new should not be discounted.
Churches in the reformed tradition have a saying that goes semper reformanda – “always reforming.” It is rooted in a belief that the church can never stand pat. We treasure what is new because the Church is to be more than a museum and more than a historical society. The Church is to be God’s greatest and most effective means of mission; giving shape and substance to God’s love for the world. The Church values what is old because it is impossible to make sense of our on-going story without the perspective and wisdom of the old, old story.
We heard this morning a string of parables calling on us to imagine a new reality called the kingdom of heaven. It is a reality emerging from the rich tradition of Judaism and God’s on-going promise to use that people as witness to divine love. This new kingdom is like something that starts off small, but in the end is very large. It is like leaven which animates dormant flour. It is like discovering an unexpected treasure. It is like stumbling across the one thing you have spent all your life searching for. It is like a very large haul of fish that must be sifted for what is good to eat and what is not. Each image in its own way describes a treasure that is old and a treasure that is new.
Ultimately the kingdom of heaven is God’s dream for creation. It is a dream that we see as if through a mirror dimly. It contains both what it old – what was, is, and always will be – and it contains what is new – what is yet to be seen. It can be a bit scary living in this tension, but it can also be exciting. It is scary when something fundamental to our understanding of God’s dream is challenged. It is exciting when God challenges a wrong we ourselves are powerless to make right.
“Do you understand all of this?” Jesus asked his followers. Doubtless they did and they didn’t. They had an inkling that Jesus was going to turn over some tables, but did not at the time have a full vision of the kingdom of heaven. Holding tight to what we have been given, let us move forward with courage and good will toward all as we lay hold of treasures yet unseen.
The old and the new: we in God’s Church live in a dynamic tension between what God has revealed and what God is revealing. We are like trees planted by water, whose roots sink into something set and stable and we are like a leaf in the wind, being blown to a fro by the Holy Spirit. This tension is manifested in many different ways; pleas to post the 10 Commandments on courthouse walls express a longing for olden treasures while calls to allow women a greater role in the life of the Roman Catholic Church cry out for what is new.
Years ago I was at a meeting of clergy gathered to give counsel to a bishop. In attendance was a priest who served in one of the northern Virginia parishes that later would leave the Episcopal Church, attempting to take diocesan property with them. This priest was well-dressed for the meeting, in a suit and tie you might expect to see worn by a highly-placed beltway insider. He sat at a table with his palm-pilot docked on a keyboard, which was cutting edge technology in the day. If there were a GQ Magazine for clergy, he could have been on the cover. When the conversation turned to issues of human sexuality, he criticized the direction the church was headed stating it was trying to be too much like the world. I kept to myself my amusement at the irony, but have always held the moment as an image of how the goodness of newness, like beauty, is often times in the eye of the beholder. My new may not be good to you.
When we talk about the church moving toward what is new and holding on to what is old it is important to make a distinction between method and message; the two are not the same, but both are important. Our methods of communicating the Gospel are closely tied to the culture. After I was newly ordained I attended a seminar designed to train churches how to set up telemarketing phone banks to “get the word out.” Today that approach is passé; swamped by the public’s distaste for it and by the rise of social networks.
Method. I jokingly told Doug Kincaid that he was in charge of organizing a task force to recommend how best to incorporate projection screens in our worship space. Being one of our most conservative members, I don’t expect a report any time soon. Still, we live in a culture that has moved from verbal to visual and this presents both challenges and opportunities for our method of worship.
New methods seem to come and go as the culture moves along, but new messages have a way of causing a stir before they take root. If we were gathered at St. Paul’s 160 years ago, no doubt our pews would be populated with slave-owning parishioners. Any sermon that attempted to repudiate the bible’s apparent validation of this institution would have been round rejected as “new-fangled” hogwash. But today, that “new” teaching is a part of the “old” message entrusted to us.
In his address at diocesan council last February, our bishop said it was time to organize a task force to help our diocese have conversation around issues of sexuality and the blessing of same gender unions. He pointed out that next summer’s General Convention of the entire Episcopal Church will receive liturgies for the blessing of same-gender unions and make some determination about what to do with them. His reasoning for calling together a task force is sound: it is better to go into such a moment informed and in communion with one another than to be blindsided by it.
As I listened to the bishop I agreed with the need for such a group to begin to meet, but thought to myself, “I don’t have a clue what they should do and I feel sorry for whoever is asked to serve on it.” Later that day the bishop approached me and said, “Keith, I need you to do me a favor.” He didn’t even have to say it, the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach told me that he wanted me to co-chair the group.
I have spent the better part of my ordained ministry trying to stay out of this “fight,” but I have to tell you it is fascinating reading material and listening to personal stories from all points of view and perspectives because they exhibit the dynamic tension between what God has revealed – the old – and what God is revealing – the new. Our task force meets for just the second time later this week. I have no idea where we are heading or what we will produce, but it feels like one of those good and godly challenges to figure out which treasures of the old should not be discarded and which treasures of the new should not be discounted.
Churches in the reformed tradition have a saying that goes semper reformanda – “always reforming.” It is rooted in a belief that the church can never stand pat. We treasure what is new because the Church is to be more than a museum and more than a historical society. The Church is to be God’s greatest and most effective means of mission; giving shape and substance to God’s love for the world. The Church values what is old because it is impossible to make sense of our on-going story without the perspective and wisdom of the old, old story.
We heard this morning a string of parables calling on us to imagine a new reality called the kingdom of heaven. It is a reality emerging from the rich tradition of Judaism and God’s on-going promise to use that people as witness to divine love. This new kingdom is like something that starts off small, but in the end is very large. It is like leaven which animates dormant flour. It is like discovering an unexpected treasure. It is like stumbling across the one thing you have spent all your life searching for. It is like a very large haul of fish that must be sifted for what is good to eat and what is not. Each image in its own way describes a treasure that is old and a treasure that is new.
Ultimately the kingdom of heaven is God’s dream for creation. It is a dream that we see as if through a mirror dimly. It contains both what it old – what was, is, and always will be – and it contains what is new – what is yet to be seen. It can be a bit scary living in this tension, but it can also be exciting. It is scary when something fundamental to our understanding of God’s dream is challenged. It is exciting when God challenges a wrong we ourselves are powerless to make right.
“Do you understand all of this?” Jesus asked his followers. Doubtless they did and they didn’t. They had an inkling that Jesus was going to turn over some tables, but did not at the time have a full vision of the kingdom of heaven. Holding tight to what we have been given, let us move forward with courage and good will toward all as we lay hold of treasures yet unseen.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Search Me Out, O God
Psalm 139
Lord, you have searched me out and known me; *
you know my sitting down and my rising up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
You trace my journeys and my resting-places *
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Indeed, there is not a word on my lips, *
but you, O Lord, know it altogether.
You press upon me behind and before *
and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; *
it is so high that I cannot attain to it.
Where can I go then from your Spirit? *
where can I flee from your presence?
If I climb up to heaven, you are there; *
if I make the grave my bed, you are there also.
If I take the wings of the morning *
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
Even there your hand will lead me *
and your right hand hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely the darkness will cover me, *
and the light around me turn to night,”
Darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day; *
darkness and light to you are both alike.
For you yourself created my inmost parts; *
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I will thank you because I am marvelously made; *
your works are wonderful, and I know it well.
My body was not hidden from you, *
while I was being made in secret
and woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes beheld my limbs, yet unfinished in the womb;
all of them were written in your book; *
they were fashioned day by day,
when as yet there was none of them.
How deep I find your thoughts, O God! *
how great is the sum of them!
If I were to count them,
they would be more in number than the sand; *
to count them all, my life span would need to be like yours.
Oh, that you would slay the wicked, O God! *
You that thirst for blood, depart from me.
They speak despitefully against you; *
your enemies take your Name in vain.
Do I not hate those, O Lord, who hate you? *
and do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
I hate them with a perfect hatred; *
they have become my own enemies.
Search me out, O God, and know my heart; *
try me and know my restless thoughts.
Look well whether there be any wickedness in me *
and lead me in the way that is everlasting.
A few years ago there was an Episcopal comedian making the rounds at diocesan councils throughout the church. Now, I admit, you after to be pretty hardcore into our denomination to appreciate Episcopal humor. One of his lines, which I am sure you won’t laugh at now, poked fun at assigned bible readings that skip over certain verses. “Are you like me,” he asked? “Do you want to pull out a bible and read the stuff they didn’t want you to see?”
We jumped over fives verses in today’s gospel reading because in it Jesus tells another parable before explaining the one we read. Not much drama there. The Psalm reading for today, however, called for verses 1-11 and 22-23. This focused the psalm more toward the Old Testament reading, highlighting God’s abiding presence with us as God was present with Jacob. But what was to be omitted is worth reading and thus we recited the entire 139th Psalm, not just a portion of it.
Appointed psalms often get chopped up. As I said, sometimes it is done to focus the poem more toward the theme of another appointed reading. Other times it is because the verses are just down-right embarrassing. Take Psalm 137 for instance. It begins with that beautiful, moving lament:
By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept,
when we remembered you, O Zion.
But we tend not to hear the last two verses in public worship:
O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy the one who pays you back
for what you have done to us!
Happy shall he be who takes your little ones,
and dashes them against the rock!
Surely you can understand why these two verses are left out.
In addition to its soaring poetry the 139th Psalm contains a similar obstacle:
Lord, you have searched me out and known me; *
you know my sitting down and my rising up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
***
If I take the wings of the morning *
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
Even there your hand will lead me *
and your right hand hold me fast.
***
For you yourself created my inmost parts; *
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
***
I will thank you because I am marvelously made; *
your works are wonderful, and I know it well.
***
How deep I find your thoughts, O God! *
how great is the sum of them!
If I were to count them,
they would be more in number than the sand; *
to count them all, my life span would need to be like yours.
Think how impoverished our doctrine of God and our doctrine of humanity would be without these incredible, theological insights. But all of the wonderful, sacred reflection leads up to this:
Oh, that you would slay the wicked, O God! *
You that thirst for blood, depart from me.
They speak despitefully against you; *
your enemies take your Name in vain.
Do I not hate those, O Lord, who hate you? *
and do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
I hate them with a perfect hatred; *
they have become my own enemies.
It almost feels like the writer took a sharp turn and drove the psalm right off a cliff. No wonder these verses get omitted from our public reciting! And yet, to my reading, they are the key to understanding the entire psalm. Let me explain.
It is clear that beyond all the magnificent language and imagery, the psalm’s author is filled with anger. He is consumed with rage at his enemies, at those who take God’s name in vain, at the wicked in the land.
Now, anger takes many different shapes and forms; some appropriate, some not.
• Rage is a violent outburst of anger in which self-control is lost.
• Fury is an overwhelming rage of such frenzy that it borders on madness.
• Indignation is a righteous anger aroused by what is considered unjust.
• Wrath is deep indignation that expresses itself in a desire to punish or to get revenge.
It is hard to say which of these the psalmist experienced, but this we do know: the author – no matter how justified he or she may have been in feeling anger – was not comfortable with its intensity. He or she wonders if it is the appropriate response or not.
And so the psalmist confesses a belief that God is always present, that God made the author to be who he or she is, that God knows the author through and through, that God’s insight is deeper and greater than anything we can imagine. Given all of this, the author lays out the hatred he or she feels.
Search me out, O God, and know my heart; *
try me and know my restless thoughts.
Look well whether there be any wickedness in me *
and lead me in the way that is everlasting.
“Here I am God, bare and unvarnished. Now tell me if I am justified to be this angry or am I nurturing sin with all that is raging inside me.”
It is a powerful psalm not just because of what it says about God and not just because of what it says about God’s craftsmanship displayed uniquely in each one of us, but also because it demonstrates how one person presents him or herself to God for examination, for judgment, and for correction. “O God, am I right to feel the way I do?” What an incredible prayer.
Many of the psalms approach God with a question and in some of them God responds, but not here. This one ends with the psalmist’s offering of self before God. Whatever God’s response was, the psalmist chooses not to incorporate it in this work. I am O.K. with that. Imagine if God’s answer to this person was, “Of course you are right to hate your enemies.” Then the psalm would be used as a proof-text to justify all anger. Or what if God’s answer was, “No, you are wrong to hate.” Well, then the psalm might be used to say all anger is unjustified. What the psalm gives us is the question; the witness of one person placing him or herself before God seeking divine discernment.
Some people say that the bible has all the answers to life’s questions. While it does contain some concrete direction, often times what the bible gives us is a question. The question of Psalm 139 is “Am I right to hate my enemies?” And while it does not give us the answer, still there is something incredibly valuable about its witness, isn’t there. It calls us to be people who come before God continually, presenting ourselves, our actions, our motivations, our emotions before the seat of the One who is always with us, who formed us to be who we are, and who knows us inside and out.
Search me out, O God, and know my heart; *
try me and know my restless thoughts.
Lord, you have searched me out and known me; *
you know my sitting down and my rising up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
You trace my journeys and my resting-places *
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Indeed, there is not a word on my lips, *
but you, O Lord, know it altogether.
You press upon me behind and before *
and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; *
it is so high that I cannot attain to it.
Where can I go then from your Spirit? *
where can I flee from your presence?
If I climb up to heaven, you are there; *
if I make the grave my bed, you are there also.
If I take the wings of the morning *
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
Even there your hand will lead me *
and your right hand hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely the darkness will cover me, *
and the light around me turn to night,”
Darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day; *
darkness and light to you are both alike.
For you yourself created my inmost parts; *
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I will thank you because I am marvelously made; *
your works are wonderful, and I know it well.
My body was not hidden from you, *
while I was being made in secret
and woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes beheld my limbs, yet unfinished in the womb;
all of them were written in your book; *
they were fashioned day by day,
when as yet there was none of them.
How deep I find your thoughts, O God! *
how great is the sum of them!
If I were to count them,
they would be more in number than the sand; *
to count them all, my life span would need to be like yours.
Oh, that you would slay the wicked, O God! *
You that thirst for blood, depart from me.
They speak despitefully against you; *
your enemies take your Name in vain.
Do I not hate those, O Lord, who hate you? *
and do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
I hate them with a perfect hatred; *
they have become my own enemies.
Search me out, O God, and know my heart; *
try me and know my restless thoughts.
Look well whether there be any wickedness in me *
and lead me in the way that is everlasting.
A few years ago there was an Episcopal comedian making the rounds at diocesan councils throughout the church. Now, I admit, you after to be pretty hardcore into our denomination to appreciate Episcopal humor. One of his lines, which I am sure you won’t laugh at now, poked fun at assigned bible readings that skip over certain verses. “Are you like me,” he asked? “Do you want to pull out a bible and read the stuff they didn’t want you to see?”
We jumped over fives verses in today’s gospel reading because in it Jesus tells another parable before explaining the one we read. Not much drama there. The Psalm reading for today, however, called for verses 1-11 and 22-23. This focused the psalm more toward the Old Testament reading, highlighting God’s abiding presence with us as God was present with Jacob. But what was to be omitted is worth reading and thus we recited the entire 139th Psalm, not just a portion of it.
Appointed psalms often get chopped up. As I said, sometimes it is done to focus the poem more toward the theme of another appointed reading. Other times it is because the verses are just down-right embarrassing. Take Psalm 137 for instance. It begins with that beautiful, moving lament:
By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept,
when we remembered you, O Zion.
But we tend not to hear the last two verses in public worship:
O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy the one who pays you back
for what you have done to us!
Happy shall he be who takes your little ones,
and dashes them against the rock!
Surely you can understand why these two verses are left out.
In addition to its soaring poetry the 139th Psalm contains a similar obstacle:
Lord, you have searched me out and known me; *
you know my sitting down and my rising up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
***
If I take the wings of the morning *
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
Even there your hand will lead me *
and your right hand hold me fast.
***
For you yourself created my inmost parts; *
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
***
I will thank you because I am marvelously made; *
your works are wonderful, and I know it well.
***
How deep I find your thoughts, O God! *
how great is the sum of them!
If I were to count them,
they would be more in number than the sand; *
to count them all, my life span would need to be like yours.
Think how impoverished our doctrine of God and our doctrine of humanity would be without these incredible, theological insights. But all of the wonderful, sacred reflection leads up to this:
Oh, that you would slay the wicked, O God! *
You that thirst for blood, depart from me.
They speak despitefully against you; *
your enemies take your Name in vain.
Do I not hate those, O Lord, who hate you? *
and do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
I hate them with a perfect hatred; *
they have become my own enemies.
It almost feels like the writer took a sharp turn and drove the psalm right off a cliff. No wonder these verses get omitted from our public reciting! And yet, to my reading, they are the key to understanding the entire psalm. Let me explain.
It is clear that beyond all the magnificent language and imagery, the psalm’s author is filled with anger. He is consumed with rage at his enemies, at those who take God’s name in vain, at the wicked in the land.
Now, anger takes many different shapes and forms; some appropriate, some not.
• Rage is a violent outburst of anger in which self-control is lost.
• Fury is an overwhelming rage of such frenzy that it borders on madness.
• Indignation is a righteous anger aroused by what is considered unjust.
• Wrath is deep indignation that expresses itself in a desire to punish or to get revenge.
It is hard to say which of these the psalmist experienced, but this we do know: the author – no matter how justified he or she may have been in feeling anger – was not comfortable with its intensity. He or she wonders if it is the appropriate response or not.
And so the psalmist confesses a belief that God is always present, that God made the author to be who he or she is, that God knows the author through and through, that God’s insight is deeper and greater than anything we can imagine. Given all of this, the author lays out the hatred he or she feels.
Search me out, O God, and know my heart; *
try me and know my restless thoughts.
Look well whether there be any wickedness in me *
and lead me in the way that is everlasting.
“Here I am God, bare and unvarnished. Now tell me if I am justified to be this angry or am I nurturing sin with all that is raging inside me.”
It is a powerful psalm not just because of what it says about God and not just because of what it says about God’s craftsmanship displayed uniquely in each one of us, but also because it demonstrates how one person presents him or herself to God for examination, for judgment, and for correction. “O God, am I right to feel the way I do?” What an incredible prayer.
Many of the psalms approach God with a question and in some of them God responds, but not here. This one ends with the psalmist’s offering of self before God. Whatever God’s response was, the psalmist chooses not to incorporate it in this work. I am O.K. with that. Imagine if God’s answer to this person was, “Of course you are right to hate your enemies.” Then the psalm would be used as a proof-text to justify all anger. Or what if God’s answer was, “No, you are wrong to hate.” Well, then the psalm might be used to say all anger is unjustified. What the psalm gives us is the question; the witness of one person placing him or herself before God seeking divine discernment.
Some people say that the bible has all the answers to life’s questions. While it does contain some concrete direction, often times what the bible gives us is a question. The question of Psalm 139 is “Am I right to hate my enemies?” And while it does not give us the answer, still there is something incredibly valuable about its witness, isn’t there. It calls us to be people who come before God continually, presenting ourselves, our actions, our motivations, our emotions before the seat of the One who is always with us, who formed us to be who we are, and who knows us inside and out.
Search me out, O God, and know my heart; *
try me and know my restless thoughts.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
