Heavy Yokes

Jesus said, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

How was your Fourth of July?  Did you get to cook out or cook in?  Did you have any friends over?  Did you have a few drinks?  Did you maybe overdo it a little bit?  If so, you are in good company.  There is someone else I know who always enjoyed having a good time and knew how to celebrate with friends on special occasions.  Jesus of Nazareth.  Yes, that is right, Jesus!  In today’s Gospel reading he acknowledges that his critics think he is a glutton and a drunkard.  His critics also don’t care much for his choice of company, complaining that he is friends with tax collectors and sinners.

This highlights something we see woven throughout the gospels: Jesus approached religion very differently than did the religious leaders of his day.  For them, religion was a duty, an obligation, perhaps even a burden.  It was laden with rules and requirements that spelled out in exacting detail what one must do in order to be clean and holy and right in the eyes of the Lord.

Jesus takes a different approach.  For him religion is life-giving and life-affirming, rather than life-restricting and life-denying.  “We humans were not made so that there would be someone to keep the Sabbath laws,” he taught, “rather, the Sabbath was made for us so that we might have a day of rest from our work.”  “All of the laws come down to this,” he said, “Love the Lord your God with all you heart, soul, mind, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself.”

In the Christian tradition an ox’s yoke is an image of discipleship.  It suggests that we are bound to something that guides and directs our actions in life.  Jesus notices that those who understand religion to be nothing more than rules and obligations are weary and carrying heavy loads.  He invites them to change yokes, to take on his yoke in order to be guided by him.  When Jesus says “My yoke is easy and my burden is light” he is saying that his approach to religion gives life.  It does not take it away.

The burden of a heavy yoke runs deep in the Hebrew tradition.  When the Israelites came into the Promised Land they assimilated into a region already inhabited by numerous clans and tribes.  These varied groups practiced all manner of different things.  The Lord God gave Moses The Kedoshim, or Holiness Code, along with a healthy dose of ‘do’ and ‘don’t’ laws to follow in order that God’s priests and God’s people would be holy (literally ‘set apart’) from the culture around them.  God’s people were not to blend in, but to stand out by standing for something very different.

In preparation for the program at our Wednesday evening pot-lucks I have had the wonderful opportunity to reread the Book of Leviticus.  It contains of plethora of directions.  Here are some of the laws about what can and cannot be eaten:

·   All animals with divided hoofs that eat cud are acceptable with the exception of camels, badgers, hares, and pigs (I’m thinking our cookout after the service could be a code breaker).

·   All water or sea creatures with fins and scales, but none without fins and scales (so much for shrimp cocktail and crab cakes).

·   No eagles, vultures, osprey, buzzards, kites, ravens, owls, cormonrant, water hen, stork, heron, hoopee or bat (well, God didn’t have to tell me I can’t eat bats because I was already on board with that one).

·   No winged insects except locust, crickets, and grasshoppers.

After these dietary laws follow copious instructions about what a person who touches a carcass must do in order to be clean again.  Women are unclean and impure after childbirth.  Unclean for seven days and impure for 33 days after giving birth to a boy, 14 days and 66 days after giving birth to a girl.  There is an entire chapter set aside for how to deal with this.

Perhaps the most unappealing section of Leviticus is the one that describes various skin diseases and how the priest is to examine people for them.  A lengthy process is laid out for declaring a person clean from leprosy and the kinds of offerings that person is to make over a period of time.  Priests were charged with going into a leper’s home to make an inspection.  I am glad none of this is in my job description! 

The Lord God is concerned with balding.  Here is what is said to Moses:  “If anyone loses the hair from his head, he is bald but he is clean.  If he loses the hair from his forehead and temples, he has baldness of the forehead but he is clean.  But if there is on the bald head or the bald forehead a reddish-white diseased spot, it is a leprous disease… and he is unclean.” (13:40-42).  I think I make the cut!

Here is a list of other subjects covered in Leviticus:

·   Bringing sacrifices to the tent of meeting.

·   Prohibitions against eating blood.

·   Prohibitions against uncovering the nakedness of kin.

·   Prohibitions against certain sexual practices, especially when linked to pagan rituals and worship.

·   Prohibitions against eating sacrificed food after it is two days old.

·   Commands not to reap an entire harvest or to pick up fallen grapes.  These are for the poor.

·   Commands on how to treat the disadvantaged.

·   No cross-breeding, cross planting, or clothing of mixed material (19:19).

·   No witchcraft, haircuts, beard trimming, or tatoos commemorating the dead.

·   Do not make your daughter a prostitute.

·   Treat aliens well.

·   Do not cheat other people.

·   No child sacrifices.

·   No mediums or wizards.

·   Special instructions for priests (with special emphasis on not accepting animals for sacrifice that are less than perfect).

·   The appointment of festivals – Passover, Unleavened Bread, first fruits, atonement, harvest (booths).

You cannot begin to imagine the complexity that emerges around making sacrifices.  First, there are several different kinds of sacrifices and while they may involve the same things to be sacrificed, different things must be done depending on the purpose.  Sometimes the priests eat the meat that has been sacrificed and sometimes they don’t.  Two of Aaron’s sons make a mistake and throw out what they are to eat and the results are, well, not pretty.

And speaking of things that are not pretty, let me introduce you to a little tradition known as The Ordeal of Bitter Water from the 5^th chapter of the Book of Numbers.  It provides the Lord’s direction for a husband who suspects his wife has been unfaithful.  If a husband is overcome with a “spirit of jealousy”, i.e., thinks his wife has strayed, he is to take her to the priest.  He presents to the priest a grain offering to which the priest adds holy water and dust from the floor.  This mixture becomes known as the Curse of Bitter Water.  The wife in question drinks the potion.  If it makes her violently sick then she is guilty.  If it does not she is innocent. 

And as if all these religious decrees were not burdensome enough, centuries of commentary gets added to them the way more and more laws get tacked on to the US tax code.  Eventually no one understands them and everyone lives in fear of being wrong.  No one wants to be audited either by the IRS or by God.

The initial value of all these laws was to keep the Israelites as a people set apart from the culture around them.  Some of this related to distinctiveness – they do this, but we do that.  Some of it related to practicality and common sense – they eat whatever, but we won’t eat things that may make us sick.  Some of it represented an advance in civilization – you sell your daughters into prostitution but we will not.  And some of it – like the Bitter Waters – is ripe for reform. 

Whatever purpose it served, by Jesus’ day it had become oppressive.  It is against this backdrop that he says, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”  C.S. Lewis once said that Christians don’t think God loves us because we are good, but that God makes us good because God loves us.  I think that is a wonderful yoke to carry.

I’ll leave you with a blessing from the Methodist writer William Arthur Ward, whose thinking inspired many over the course of the last century:

   The adventure of life is to learn.
   The purpose of life is to grow.
   The nature of life is to change.
   The challenge of life is to overcome.
   The essence of life is to care.
   The opportunity of life is to serve.
   The secret of life is to dare.
   The spice of life is to befriend.
   The beauty of life is to give.

Now there is a yoke I would like to bear.  Jesus said, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

 

The Akedah

 

 

This morning we hear again one of the most dramatic stories in all of Scripture.  Its Jewish title is the “Akedah” – the Binding of Isaac.  Just nineteen verses long (we did not read the last five this morning), it is noteworthy that this event is referenced nowhere else in the entire Old Testament.  No prophet, no psalmist, no king, no priest ever spoke of it or wrote about it in such a way that it made it into the biblical canon.

 

It is tempting to hold that the entire story was simply too toxic to touch, but, in fact, this is not true.  It is one of the most discussed and plummeted episodes not just in the bible, but in our entire culture.  Countless people down through the ages have reflected on one aspect of the story or another.  Ideas are explored, opinions put forth, and new insights continually emerge. 
 

For example, why did God want to test Abraham?  The Book of Jubilees, written two centuries before the birth of Jesus, connects this testing to the testing of Job.  Jubilees contends that a dark angel by the name of Mastema went to God and questioned whether Abraham’s faith was a strong as God believed.  This set in motion a testing just as Satan’s question about Job begins his ordeal.  According to Jubilees, Mastema and the angel Gabriel accompany Abraham and Isaac up the mountain and Gabriel eventually intervenes to save the child. 
 

What does Abraham think of all this?  Some rabbis writing material contained in the Talmud and Midrash hold that he is stoic and obedient while others contend that he is wracked with guilt and washed over with distress.  And what about Isaac?  Does he have any idea what is about to happen?  Does he resist or submit?  Is he afraid or does he have faith?  Some suggest that he actually asks to be bound so that he is not able to flinch at the last second and ruin the sacrifice. 
 

There is a 15^th century work called The Brome Play.  It is a short drama performed by a travelling band out of the back of a wagon.  The only characters in the play are Abraham, Isaac, God, and the angel.  As the drama unfolds Abraham confesses to Isaac about the impending sacrifice.  Isaac, puzzled, asks what he has done wrong.  Nothing, Abraham replies.  God requires it.  Isaac accepts his duty, but Abraham begins to waver. 
 

Isaac:

And is it God’s will that I should be slain?

Abraham:   

Yea, truly, Isaac, my son so good,

and therefore my hands I wring.

Isaac:          

Now, father, against my Lord’s will

I will never complain loud or still:

He might a send me a better ending

If it has a been his will.

Abraham:   

Forsooth son, unless I did this deed

Grievously displeased our Lord would be.

Isaac:         

Nay, nay father, God forbid

that ever ye should grieve him for me…

Therefore do the Lord’s bidding,

and when I am dead, pray for me.

But father, tell ye my mother no thing.

Say I am in another country dwelling.

Abraham:  

A, Isaac, Isaac, blessed may thou be.

My heart beginneth strongly to rise

to see the blood of thy blessed body.

Philosophers from Augustine to Kant to Kierkegaard have seen in this story how the ethical becomes suspended by the religious.  In his 1920 poem Upon the Altar, Yitzhak Lamdan sees in it the trials of Jews down through the ages, always being sacrificed and offered up to God.  Bob Dylan even wrote a song about it:

Oh God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son"

Abe says, “Man, you must be putting me on”

God say, “No.”  Abe say, “What?”

God say, “You do what you want Abe, but

The next time you see me comin’ you better run”

Well, Abe says, “Where do you want this killin’ done?”

God says, “Out on Highway 61”

As I said, there a wide array of folks who have looked at this story down through the ages. 

I spent the week reading James Goodman’s book But where is the lamb?  In it he explores the way this narrative has been imagined and reimagined over the centuries.  He attributes the vast diversity of thought to two factors.  First, the story itself is so dramatic and its primary characters demand or do things we would never expect.  And second, the narrative is so utterly economical and lean.  While it tells much, it leaves out even more: God’s motivation, Abraham’s thoughts, Isaac’ understanding, and more.  These gaps invite reflection and interpretation and keep the story always alive and always fresh. 

And it is possible for the same person to turn it and see something completely different than he saw years before.  I hope you had a chance to see the e-news that came out on Friday.  In it I included pictures of two works by Rembrandt inspired by this story.  The first, an oil painting, was done in 1634.  In it, Abraham forcefully holds down his bound son.  His arm is cooked, but a small angel flying above him has grabbed it and the knife is falling.  Abraham seems startled that the proceeding has been interrupted.  He is prepared to do his duty and is puzzled that it is suspended.

Rembrandt’s second work is an etching completed in 1655, twenty-one years later.  By this point in life, the artist has had to bury children and now has only one son.  It goes without saying that he possesses a much broader and deeper emotional experience than when he did the oil.  In the etching, Abraham holds Isaac close to himself.  There is an angel behind him whose wings fan out from one edge of the work to the other.  This angel has both arms wrapped around Abraham in an embrace so tight and intimate that the arm with the knife is unable to move.  The angel is so close it appears to whisper in Abraham’s ear and he is turning to face God’s messenger.  In this second work, Abraham appears not to be startled but emotionally exhausted.  This experience has taken a toll on him, just as life has taken a toll on the great artist who created it.  Yet, through it all, the more he has gone through the closer he has experienced God to be.

Reflecting on the insights of current biblical scholars, Goodman writes,

“The story we know can only be understood in the context of [God’s promise to make Abraham’s offspring a mighty nation] and the threats to [this promise], which means in the context of the entire Abraham cycle.  It begins with God’s first call and command (give up your past) and God’s promise (I will bless you) and proceeds from there, ever so slowly, characterized by confusion about both the promise and the plan, by questions about who was going to get what when, by uncertainty and doubt, by snares and detours, by heartaches, grave threats, and near death.  Nothing is for certain.  Nothing comes easy – without testing, trial, without degradation.”

I think the older Rembrandt would applaud this statement.  Perhaps more than anything else, the Akedah speaks to the reality that life is not always blue skies and seashells.  There are times when it is downright gritty and gut-wrenching.  Faith is not for the faint of heart.  The only way through life is the way of testing, trial, and degradation – what Jesus calls the Way of the Cross.

The person of faith will exhibit both obedience (as did the Abraham in Rembrandt’s oil) and reflection (as we see in the etching).  The French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas believes that the key moment in the narrative is when Abraham drops the knife.  “That Abraham obeyed the first voice,” writes Levinas, “is astonishing: that he had sufficient distance with respect to that obedience to hear the second – that is essential.”

Well, in addition to my “copious” research, I spent the week in conversation with several colleagues who also were eager to gain a deeper understanding of the Akedah.  The finest insight I received came from that noted theologian, choir member, food pantry volunteer, and bulletin folder, our own Nancy Bangley.  When I told her I was reading about the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac, she looked off into the distance and said, “Well, sometimes life is really difficult and you don’t know what to do, and then – puff (as she said this she waved her arms in a big circle) – God shows you the way to go and everything is OK again.”  That just may be the single best summation of this story in the last 3,000 years!

We all have had our Akedah moments of testing, trial, and challenge.  More await us in the days and years to come.  At these times, if we locate the moment in this story, some of the following thoughts emerge for us to ponder:

·   Why is this happening?  Did I cause it?  Is God behind it?  Is the only reason this is happening is because it is?

·   How is this moment affecting me?  Have I distanced myself from my emotions or have my emotions taken over?  Either way, is it helpful or not?  Am I thinking clearly?  Who can I share this with in order to gain the wisdom and perspective of another?

·   Where is God in all of this?  If I don’t know, then can I trust that God is present and have faith that I will see and sense God at some point in the future?  Do I believe as Abraham did, that on this ‘mount’ the Lord will provide?

·   What is the ‘knife’ I have to drop?  What is the thing I must let go of in order to transform this awful moment into something holy and grace-filled?

 

Hagar & Ishmael

Today’s Old Testament reading is part of a larger narrative and needs to be put into context.  For years, Abraham and Sarah have been playing out a drama related family, inheritance, and faith.  God has promised that Abraham will be the father of a mighty nation.  In order for this to happen he must have at least one son.  The problem is that Abraham is old and Sarah is well past the child-bearing age, so she takes matters into her own hands.  She owns an Egyptian slave girl by the name of Hagar (the bible gives us no indication of how Hagar came to be in her possession, but tradition holds she was the daughter of the Pharaoh and was given as a gift).  Sarah offers Hagar to Abraham.  It is an act that, on the surface, appears selfless, but is also faithless.  Sarah does not trust in God’s ability to fulfill a promise.  Abraham, not surprisingly, accepts her offer and while this doesn’t fit with what we think of “bible teaching about marriage”, it was in keeping with the customs of time.

One of the amazing things about this story is that while Abraham and Sarah are the main characters, our moral sympathy lies with Hagar, the slave.  No one asked her if she wanted to be given to Abraham, just as they surely didn’t ask her if she wanted to be a slave or to leave Egypt.  Neither Abraham nor Sarah even speaks about Hagar using her given name.  They only talk about her as “my slave girl” or “your slave” – robbing her of her humanity, her dignity, and her basic rights.  Sarah goes so far as to say the child Hagar bears will not belong to her, but to Sarah. 

It comes as no surprise that after she conceives Hagar looks on Sarah with contempt.  Nor is it surprising that Sarah becomes bitter about the plan she hatched as it comes to pass.  She projects her anger on to Abraham who, in turn, disassociates himself from any responsibility and puts the whole mess back in Sarah’s lap.  And what is the end result?  Hagar, pregnant, alone, and in a foreign country, must flee into the barren wilderness.

There, in the desert, an amazing thing happens.  God appears to Hagar just as God appeared years ago to Abraham.  For the first time in the bible, God demonstrates a quality that will become central to Hebrew and Christian theology, namely that God sees affliction and comes to the rescue of those wrongly persecuted.  God makes a promise to Hagar and also a demand.

The promise: that God will make a multitude of her son’s offspring and that this multitude will be given a land, albeit the desert; a promise on par with the one made to Abraham.

The demand: Hagar must return to Sarah and submit to her.

Return to the place you were treated so badly seems like an odd request, but it is made by the same God who Jesus says cares for every bird that falls and numbers every hair on our head.  That Hagar takes comfort in God’s promise and acts on God’s demand demonstrates she alone in this narrative comes close to having what we think faith to be.

So Hagar gives birth to a son that Abraham names Ishmael.  While we don’t read it in today’s lessons, it is interesting to note that when Abraham makes a covenant with God, Ishmael is the next person after Abraham to enter into the covenant through the sign of circumcision.  Out of a dubious beginning Abraham receives a son whom he truly loves.

And then some thirteen years later Sarah gives birth to Isaac.  For a brief time the step-brothers exist peacefully in what surely was a shaky family arrangement.  Then, in the reading we heard this morning, Sarah catches the older Ishmael ‘playing’ with the much younger Isaac.  Now the Hebrew word translated as ‘playing’ contains some dark overtones.  Some bibles translate it as ‘mocking’ – Ishmael was mocking Isaac.  Beyond this (and here comes a PG-13 warning) the word hints at sexual molestation.  (In Genesis 39, where Potiphar’s wife is unsuccessful in her attempts to seduce Joseph, she tells others that Joseph tired to make ‘sport’ of her by sleeping with her – and ‘sport’ is the same verb as play or mock.)  Two other traditions are worth noting.  One holds that Ishmael was making pagan idols and sacrificing insects before them.  This kind of “play” would have been a bad influence on Isaac.  Another tradition is more direct.  It holds that Ishmael was using a bow to shoot arrows at his 3-year-old step-brother.

Well, whatever Sarah observes taking place between Ishmael and Isaac, her reaction is immediate and volatile; Hagar and Ishmael must be cast from the house, expelled from the land, and cut out of any inheritance.  Abraham delays.  That this is not an easy decision indicates he has some affection for Ishmael and Hagar.  Abraham then has a dream that God will protect and bless the two.  Only then does he send them off with provisions.  But Abraham, who in the past has demonstrated gracious hospitality to visitors and generously with his nephew Lot, only provides the mother and son with a loaf of bread and some water.  These meager rations, while amounting to little more than a death sentence, also provide a Eucharistic image of God’s presence and care.  When the provisions run out, Hagar and Ishmael are in dire straits.  God comes to her again, promises blessings, and reveals the location of nearby water, the source of life in the desert. 

Ishmael is the displaced rival, the birthright will go to the younger boy, but God’s blessing goes to both.  In time Ishmael will father twelve sons who become the pillars of the Arab people.  Muslims will trace their ancestry to Abraham though him.

Over the years, extra-biblical stories continue to emerge about Ishmael, just as they do about Abraham.  Both Jewish and Islamic traditions hold that Abraham made journeys into the desert to visit Hagar and Ishmael.  Muslims locate Mecca as the site where God revealed the water and gave the blessing.  Here, Abraham discovers the ka’aba – the large black cube said to have been built by Adam.  Damaged by the flood in Noah’s time, Abraham and Ishmael come together to restore it.  When their work is completed Abraham calls on all creation to make a hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca – an act which to this day remains one of the five pillars of Islam.

Other legend stories are not so kind.  For instance, one story in Judaism (but not the bible) contends that God put nine-tenths of all that is repulsive in life into the Arab people, and only one-tenth of all that is good.  Such stories are little more than reflections of strained relations between Judaism and Islam at the time of their authorship, but they have a way of coloring our world-view even today.  It is an understanding that cannot be supported by the narratives in Genesis. 

Many Christians hold that God rejects Ishmael and has little regard for Hagar.  In the supplanting of the older by the younger, St. Paul sees a metaphor of the Law being supplanted by the Gospel.  As such, we in the Christian tradition have been happy to relegate Hagar and Ishmael to the shadows.  This too is not good.

The Genesis narratives call on us at least to do the following:

·   To acknowledge the moral complexities of life.

·   To understand that faith and faithfulness are the not exclusive domain of those within our own tradition.

·   To confess the injustices those in our tradition have committed and to repent of ramifications in our own day.

·   To recognize that God’s blessing, God’s concern, God’s providential care, and God’s heart lies with Ishmael and his descendants as much as it lies with Isaac and those of us who trace our ancestry through him.

·   To keep in mind that families are fragile and delicate entities whose balance and harmony are easily lost as one person’s actions affect the entire group.  Acts of faithlessness send shockwaves through those closest to us.

·   To trust that if God cares for even the smallest creatures then God cares for us; that we who trust in God remain in God’s care and keep.  Even Hagar and Ishmael, bit actors in the salvation story we tell and teach, were guarded and governed by God.

·   To strive to create in our own world in our own time a harmonious family of faith that Abraham desired, but failed to achieve between his sons Ishmael and Isaac.

This one final thought… if Abraham is the father of our faith, than we might want to think of Hagar as our mother in affliction.  She was the first person in the Genesis story to be treated harshly and unjustly.  And that treatment elicits from God and compassion that remains true to this day.  As one scholar puts it,

“Hagar stands for all women exploited, abused, rejected.  She is the alien without rights, the woman who faces her pregnancy alone, the wife divorced for the sake of another woman, the homeless woman, the welfare mother, the woman who lives for others, works for others, serves others and then finds herself abandoned.”

If we don’t care for how Hagar is treated in these stories then perhaps we need to rethink our attitudes about and concern for women like her in our own day.  Surely God cares about them as much as God cared about Hagar.

 

Method and Meaning

I remember vividly the first day of my class in 9^th grade biology.  The teacher approached the blackboard, picked up a piece of chalk, and in silence wrote out the letters G O D.  He stepped back, looked at it for a while, moved down the blackboard, and then wrote ‘Evolution’.  He let a moment or two pass for reflection then moved back to the board and drew a line between the two words he had written, indicating that the two concepts were separate and mutually exclusive.  After more silence, he picked up an eraser, moved to the board, and wiped away the word “God”.  Those of us with faith protested vehemently and he took great delight refuting the best arguments we thirteen year olds could muster.

Fast forward to my senior year at a Christian college where a group of my friends – devout and conservative to the core – ran the school newspaper.  Given this platform, they launched an assault on the school’s science department, accusing them of being too dismissive of creationism (a term that, in 1982, I had never heard before).  I remember one professor – a God-fearing, church-going man – standing before a student forum and with great angst confessing that he had read all the creationism material and, try as he might, could not embrace it.

Creationism, it seems to me, is grounded in a belief that holds if the bible is not infallible in all things then it cannot be trustworthy in anything.  From their perspective, if creation did not unfold over six days (just like it says in Genesis 1) then what in the bible can you believe?  It is the same reason why some people look for a wooden ark at the top of a mountain, Egyptian chariots at the bottom of the Red Sea, and any example of a person being swallowed by a whale and surviving.  For them, the more you can nail down a specific detail of the bible the more confident you can be of the whole bible.  It is an all or nothing approach and in some respects, the biology teacher came to the bible in the same way, the only difference being he chose ‘nothing’ over ‘all’.

We Episcopalians hold that every word of the bible does not have to be literally true in order for God to speak to us through it.  Take this morning’s beautiful reading from the first chapter of the Book of Genesis.  I am moved every time I hear it, especially if I lay aside what it says about the method of creation and listen intently for what it says about the meaning of creation.  What it says about meaning is not diminished even if what is says about method is not entirely accurate.  If you listen to the story so as to derive from it a “God-revealed method” (as creationists do), then you quickly move from hearing to trying to get a round biblical peg to fit into a square scientific hole.  But if you listen for meaning, the story opens up into something rich and wonderful.

As we listen to it in this way this is what we begin to hear:

¡ God exists as the sole creative force moving in and through all creation.  We rightly affirm this in Eucharistic Prayer C when we say,

At your command all things came to be: the vast expanse of interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses, and this fragile earth, our island home. 

By your will they were created and have their being.

Richard Dawkins and Stephen Hawking may believe that everything came about out of nothing and there is no need to posit the existence of God to explain reality, but we hold different.  Every masterpiece is painted by an artist, every great music score has a composer, and every breath-taking poem has an author.  Our faith is that something critical is lost when you ignore the Producer and only look at the product.  

¡ If we listen carefully we can hear that creation itself is part of an unfolding and surprising drama.  “God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.  And God saw that the light was good.”  There does not appear to be a blueprint.  With each day and each act, God pauses, reflects, and evaluates.  It is as if God must survey the impact of each step.  And seeing the results, God is pleased.  With each day and each new act, God appears to take it all in.  One act begets another.  There is a certain connectedness to what God creates, with each building on what has come before.

¡ Of all that is created, humanity holds a unique distinction in that we are made in God’s image and likeness.  Being thus made, we are able to fulfill God’s command to have ‘dominion’ over all creation.  The Hebrew word for ‘dominion’ (rada) implies care-giving and nurturing, never exploitation.  God entrusts to humanity the on-going care for and development of what God has brought into being.  The journey continues and the future is largely in our hands.  We are entrusted with the care and keep of all things.  It is within our power to protect the earth and all living things and it is within our power to damage or to destroy them.

¡ When God surveys all that has come about in creation God sees that it is “very good”.  Creation is not perfect.  Nothing, short of God, is.  But our fragile island home is a good place, filled with God’s blessing.  Through human work and effort the journey of creation continues to unfold in magnificent and wonderful ways.  We are blessed to have an abundance of food, shelter from the elements, access to healthcare, recreation, and the arts.  We have the ability to ensure that every human being can share in these blessings, but it takes work: the work of world peace and developing economies so that each person can benefit and grow from the fruits of his or her own labor and efforts.  The earth will support us all if we manage it well, strive for peace, respect the dignity of every human being, and treat others as we would like them to treat us.  Wendall Berry, the Kentucky farmer and poet put it best: “Treat the people downstream the way you would like the people upsteam to treat you!”

These are some of the things we hear when we listen for meaning embedded in the creation story.

This morning we heard God’s first command to the human family: “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it and have dominion.”  In the Gospel reading we heard God’s last command: “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”  As we listen for meaning we are called to proclaim meaning.  This is precisely where we differ from creationists.  They listen for method in order to proclaim method.  It matters not if a person believes God created the world in 144 hours (six days).  What matters is how God calls a person to be a part of creation. 

Today we celebrate the Creator God who has brought into being all that is and given it into our hands.  We people of faith believe there is a right way to use this gift, to express our divine nature, and to honor the God who has entrusted it to us.  We proclaim our faith to the world, both through our words of worship and through our daily actions.  Rather than pursue an antagonizing debate about the method of creation we focus on the meaning, embracing insights derived through technology and our God-given reason, but always knowing that the works of our hands and minds will never tell us about the intent and purpose behind all that is.  Only the Master Painter, Composer, Poet, Author of all that is can lead us down the path of this pursuit, the pursuit of meaning. 

 

The Holy Spirit's "Basic Plan"

 

Pentecost Sunday: the day we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit.  Of all the significant holy days in the liturgical year, perhaps this one feels the least “Episcopalian” of all.  In fact, it might not even measure up to the days we remember the metaphysical poets John Donne and George Herbert (or maybe that is just me).  We Episcopalians (known in some circles as “God’s frozen chosen”) are not likely to start dancing in aisle, swooning in the Spirit, or babbling the language of an unknown dialect.  Batting balloons in the air at the Passing of the Peace will push us to the limit.  No, this seems like a day for other Christians – for Pentecostals and Charismatics, for faith healers and snake handlers.

 

Is the Holy Spirit for us?  Is there any way we can claim this day for ourselves, given our less than ecstatic experience of the third Person of the Trinity?

 

Pentecost is an ancient Jewish festival – one of the three most sacred of the year.  Falling fifty days after the Passover, it celebrates the first fruits of the spring harvest and commemorates the giving of the Law to Moses on Mt. Sinai.  These links are largely lost to us today because it is also the day the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples for the first time and gave birth to the Christian church.  That day, the Spirit transformed a rag-tag, quizzical, and lost group of bewildered followers into gifted, energized, and passionate leaders who proclaimed the Gospel with such power it changed the world.

 

Every Sunday, before the beginning of the early service, I gather with the lector and offer this prayer:

 

Gracious heavenly Father, we thank you for this opportunity to worship you and to praise you most holy Name.  Bless us now, so that all that we say and do – every thought, word, act, and gesture – might bring honor and glory to you and to your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.  We ask these things in his name.

 

And then a couple of years ago it dawned on me that the prayer addressed only 2/3rds of the Trinity so I amended it:

 

We ask these things in his name, mindful of the power and presence of your Holy Spirit.  Amen.

 

I really do believe in the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, here, in this service and in every aspect of our lives. 

 

As best as I can tell from Scripture, the Holy Spirit is God’s gift to all people in all times and places.  The more dramatic manifestations of the Spirit – tongues and the like – seem to be isolated and local, appearing in the New Testament in just a few specific communities.  Much has not changed over the centuries.  The Spirit is present throughout the church, but only here and there is it manifested in what for some are spectacular ways, while for others are curious at best.  I suspect that those of us who are on the Holy Spirit’s ‘basic plan’ do just fine with our faith without having the ‘premium package’ and all its special and exotic features.

 

Let me describe the ‘basic plan’ by naming two primary ways “the power and presence of the Holy Spirit” is at work in our midst.  Each flows from a distinctive meaning of the word paracletus – the Greek word used by the bible to describe the Holy Spirit.   

 

The more common use of paracletus means ‘advocate’ – one who draws close and stands with us in a time a need; one who takes up our cause as his own.  In the Greek usage, this person could be a defense attorney, a doctor, or a supportive friend.  Alan Jones, former Dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, once wrote that there are three times when the Holy Spirit is most present in our lives: “In the unpredictable, in the place of risk, and in those areas over which we have no control.”  Are not these the times when we desperately need God by our side. 

 

I see the power and presence of the Holy Spirit time and again when a family pulls together to face a crisis, when prayerful church leaders determine to meet a challenge head-on, when an individual at the end of her rope entrusts herself to God’s care and keep.  These are the kinds of moments we allow God to do for us and through others what we cannot possibly do on our own.  It is the strength we find in grief, the courage we find in fear, the trust we find when faced with something beyond our abilities.  This is the Holy Spirit we all know and this is the Holy Spirit we celebrate today.

 

There was a second use of the word paracletus.  It was a military position of sorts.  Once a general determined to go to battle, he would gather the troops and call upon a skilled orator to address them.  This person, known as the paracletus, was charged with delivering a rousing speech that would make even the bleakest situation appear to be winnable.  It is from such moments that we get the expression “It is time to fire up the troops.”  The paracletus was today’s equivalent of the coach speaking to the team at halftime or the motivational speaker brought in to address a company’s employees.  The goal was to lift up morale and to prepare the audience for the work ahead.

 

Look at the disciples gathered in that closed room.  They lack leadership, drive, purpose, initiative, and direction.  This is hardly a fighting force to take on the world, let alone preach is such a way that 3,000 people will be baptized by sundown.  All of that is before the paracletus goes to work bringing fire, but more importantly lighting a fire is each one of them.  The Spirit becomes in them what Jesus talked about in today’s Gospel reading, “out of a believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.”

 

I see this living water and this passion moving in and through our congregation.  I see it when the choir attempts an anthem I might have thought beyond their ability and yet they dive in with confidence and perform it beautifully.  I see it when a father, son, and son-in-law stand a grill and with great joy cook burgers and hotdogs for our picnic.  I see it at all the odd hours I stumble in here and find Miko hard at work cleaning a place that she deeply loves.

 

But the Holy Spirit as paracletus does much more than light a fire in us for ministry.  It also lights a fire in us for life itself, in all of its many glorious and divergent manifestations.  Bishop Hollerith is fond of saying to the clergy of the diocese that if we don’t have a passion in life for something that exists beyond the bounds of the church than we are going to be pretty boring people and priests.  My colleagues are passionate about things like bird watching, sustainable gardening, kayaking, cooking, playing the ukulele, creating graphic novels of biblical stories, flipping houses, running, drinking Starbuck’s coffee, hanging out with grandchildren, writing poetry, hunting, fishing, golf, and tennis.  The bishop himself has spent years making a steam powered boat, machining all the parts by hand.  Me, I am known for bike riding and home renovations.  I suspect that each of us finds in our particular passion a fire for life as God intends it, lived in goodness, thankfulness, and enthusiasm.

 

William Blake, the 19^th Century Romantic painter and poet, who had a deep, mystical bent running through his spirit, wrote this in a poem about Pentecost:

 

Unless the eye catch fire, God will not be seen.
Unless the ear catch fire, God will not be heard.
Unless the tongue catch fire, God will not be named.
Unless the heart catch fire, God will not be loved.
Unless the mind catch fire, God will not be known.

 

This is exactly the work of the Paracletus – Advocate and Energizer.  It is this Spirit that we celebrate today and invite anew into our lives.  It is this Spirit we depend upon for counsel and comfort when times are dark and demanding.  It is this Spirit we welcome as the fire of our eyes, ears. tongue, heart, and mind so that life might be for us truly alive, flowing with rivers of living water.