The good people of Brett-Reed Presbyterian Church in King William County welcomed me to their pulpit this morning! And this is what I had to say about things that defile and the great faith of a Canaanite woman:
14 August 2011
13 August 2011
Sermon on Jacob's wrestling match
Genesis 32: 22-31
We have gotten to know the youthful Jacob, the up-and-coming, hard bargaining con man. We have gotten to know the young adult Jacob, a heart sick young man tricked on his wedding day into marrying the wrong woman by a father-in-law even more shifty than Jacob himself.
Today we meet Jacob at mid-life, or a bit beyond. Twenty years have passed. A lot has changed. Jacob arrived at Laban's home with just the clothes on his back, a fugitive from justice, alienated from his family. Now Jacob is the husband of two wives, the father of twelve sons and a daughter, and the owner of a vast herd of livestock, donkeys, camels, cattle, and sheep. All this despite being repeatedly deceived and swindled by his father-in-law. There wasn't a bargain Laban made with Jacob that he didn't somehow alter or find a loophole to get out of, yet Jacob has rolled with the punches and finally bested his deceitful in-law. Jacob is a resourceful survivor, and middle age finds him blessed in innumerable ways.
But now, the prosperity of the present has fallen under the dark shadow of the past. Jacob is returning to Canaan, to his homeland. That means meeting up with the older brother from whom he wrestled his birth right and from whom he stole his father's blessing. Jacob sends a vanguard of servants on ahead of him, and they return with ominous news. "Esau is coming with 400 men!" It would appear as though the older brother intends to administer some vigilante justice to redress past grievances.
Perhaps it would have been easier for Jacob to stay put in the east, despite having to sleep at night with one eye open, looking out for his crafty father-in-law, despite the smoldering resentment and even open hostility he endured from his less prosperous cousins. But No. Jacob returns to Canaan. He confronts the past. He confronts the brother he wronged, even at the risk of losing life, family and fortune.
For you see, returning to Canaan is not only a reckoning with the past, it means embracing the future as well. Canaan is the Promised Land, the land that the Lord swore to give to Jacob's descendants. So if he and his children are to have any kind of future, they must put themselves at risk in the present in a daring confrontation with the past.
How does Jacob confront the past? Well, there's something of the old deal-maker still afoot. He sends gifts of livestock on ahead of him, thinking that the one who traded his birth right for a mess of pottage might be mollified by mutton and steak. He also divides his main company in two thinking that if Esau and his men destroy one, the other might escape. Jacob still thinks that there's no problem that flattery and resourcefulness cannot solve.
But in the midst of Jacob's planning, he stops to pray. It's the first time that we've seen the man pray, and it really is a thing to behold. "O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, O Lord who said to me, 'Return to your country and to your kindred and I will do you good,' I am not worthy of the least of all the steadfast love and all the faithfulness that you have shown to your servant, for with only my staff I crossed this Jordan, and now I have become two companies. Deliver me, please, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I am afraid of him; he may come and kill us all, the mothers with the children. Yet you have said, 'I will surely do you good, and make your offspring as the sand of the sea, which cannot be counted for their number.'"
Jacob reflects on his life, on his stunning reversal of fortunes, and gives all the credit to God, and none to himself. He confesses that he's not worthy of all the good that God has done for him. He boldly reminds God of the promises God made to do him good, and confesses that he's filled with fear despite those promises. So he asks the Lord to deliver him, admittingthat in the midst of all his planning and strategizing it's not within his power alone to exorcise the demons of the past. Ultimately, only God can "deliver us from a past that we cannot change, and open to us a future in which we can be changed."
Coming to terms with the past means coming to terms with God. Before we can reckon with our nemesis, there must be a reckoning with the Almighty. This is why Jacob prays in the midst of his planning, and this is why Jacob's confrontation with Esau is preceded by a night-long wrestling match with the Almighty.
This reckoning with the Almighty, this coming to terms with the Lord, isn't a pleasant experience. The paradox is that peace with God doesn't come without a fight. To make peace with us, God fights against us. God wrestles with us, tests us and wounds us.
This takes place in many ways. God invites us to tell the truth when keeping quiet is the prudent thing to do. God rouses us to action when circumstances would dictate lying low. God lifts us out of our comfort zone and puts us among people and in places that generate extreme discomfort.
And just as God wrestles with Jacob at night, God challenges us at night. We have nightmares in which we face horrible adversaries and situations, or nightmares in which we do horrible things, and I wonder if in these bad dreams the Lord is not showing us the evil that lurks within us.
Now in his commentary on this scripture, John Calvin notes the absurdity of a human being struggling with God. I mean, surely Jacob is in good shape, having lived the life of a rancher for a couple of decades, but is he buff enough to wrestle with the maker of heaven and earth? Yet the nighttime visitor is unable to prevail over Jacob, who won't let him go unless he blesses him. How can this be? How can a mere mortal go toe-to-toe with the Almighty?
Calvin replies that the same God who fights against us also fights for and with us, by giving us the faith and patience and stamina to withstand the strongest blows. The result of this struggle in which God both pins us to the ground and fills us with the power to throw off our adversary is a faith and discipleship that is tougher and stronger.
What becomes of Jacob after his dark night of the soul? The sun rises on a new man, with a new name and a new identity. Before he was Jacob, which in Hebrew means, "he takes by the heel, or he supplants." It’s not a flattering name, and a name that Jacob has spent his whole life trying to live up (or down) to. Jacob is a heel. But after a night of grasping and grappling with the source of love and justice, Jacob has become Israel, meaning "one who strives with God and humans and prevails."
In his letter to the Romans, Paul argues that in order to attain righteousness, one must strive for it based on faith. Jacob/Israel has obtained righteousness; the next day when he meets his brother Esau he offers to return the blessing he once wrestled from him. Of course the blessing is not Jacob's to dispose of, but it's a powerful gesture nonetheless. The grasper has become a giver. And he makes this gesture on the basis of faith, for in his prayer he acknowledged that the Lord and not his own craftiness was the source of his blessings, blessings he did not deserve.
But the new man with a new name and a new righteousness greets the new day with a permanent disability. Israel, the one who prevailed in his struggle with God, limps to his meeting with Esau.
Jacob didn't emerge from his wrestling match with God unscathed. Jesus, who rendered perfect obedience to God, didn't leave this world without being scarred and wounded. The same is true for us. We too will be marked, scarred, wounded and disabled by the God who fights for us and against us. The limps and scars testify both to the seriousness of our sin, which God can only be hostile to, and our costly triumph over sin, made possible by the wounds of Christ.
Limping, Jacob looks up to see dust rising in the distance. Esau and his 400 men have arrived. Jacob goes before his wives and children, putting himself between them and a potential enemy. The con artist is a man of courage. He has changed! But the courageous, disabled supplanter is astonished when Esau dismounts, runs to him, hugs him, kisses him, and weeps, like a long lost brother with a better history might. Has time healed all wounds? Has God restrained the wrath of the not-chosen one, Esau?
Or perhaps this is not their first meeting in twenty years. Jacob named the site of his wrestling match Penuel, meaning, "Face of God," for there he'd seen God face to face, yet lived to tell about it. Now, before the gracious, forgiving Esau, Jacob says, "Seeing you is like seeing the face of God." Is that because Esau's mercy is a reflection of merciful God who blesses the unrighteous? Or perhaps it was Esau who snuck across the creek the night before and waylaid Jacob. It happened at night. We didn't get a good look at his face. He never would tell us his name. We don't know. But Jacob recognizes him the next day. Maybe Esau is in a move to forgive today because he already got some good licks in last night.
It remains a mystery, the relationship between the wrestling match at Penuel, and the reconciliation in Canaan the next day. What is clear is that only by confronting God and by confronting the past can Jacob have any hope for the future.
We know what it's like to walk in Jacob's shoes. We too have skeletons in our closets. We too have wronged others or been wronged, both individually and corporately. Those old hurts and grievances cast a shadow that even the glitter of our present treasures cannot entirely chase away.
We’d rather let sleeping dogs lie. But rest assured, the only way forward is backward, to return to what grieves us, and hurts us, deal with them, and put it to bed. We too, like Jacob, have been promised a homeland, a time and place of abundance, where every wrong will be righted, and every tear dried and every sin forgiven. But the road to that blessed land run through the past that we as individuals or as a society have been spending our whole lives running away from. Along that way, the Lord lies in wait for us, to test us and ultimately to do us good. It is a difficult way, but only by coming to terms with the past, and wrestling with God in the present can we hope to have any kind of a future.
Sermon on Jacob's weddings to Leah and Rachel
Genesis 29: 15-30
“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in,” said the poet Robert Frost. That’s not quite true of Jacob’s family of origin, but fortunately for him, Frost’s statement it is true of Jacob’s extended family. Upon reaching Haran, Jacob runs into the beautiful and gracious Rachel and gallantly removes the stone from a well for her so that she can water her sheep. When Rachel hurries home to announce to her father, Jacob’s uncle Laban, that a long-lost relative has arrived, Laban rushes to greet the young antihero of our story.
Laban knows and practices all the social graces. In opening his home to Jacob he shows hospitality to strangers, and expresses due joy at this surprise family reunion. Now he intends to do right by his troubled nephew who needs a new lease on life, and a little guidance maybe. “I could use a man like you in my organization. But you’re family. You’re not just another hired hand. Name your price!” Jacob thinks about it and replies, “I will work for you for seven years in exchange for the hand of your daughter Rachel in marriage.”
Jacob has already met Rachel, whom the narrator of our scripture passage describes as beautiful and gracious. These two characteristics don’t always go together. I think of the artificial beauty and bad behavior of the cast of Jersey Shore or any number of pop culture icons (skin baked to an unnatural shade of orange in the tanning salon, mouthy, mean). But Rachel’s not a mean girl. She learned from her father the meaning of words like honor, hospitality, manners, humility, and she coupled those virtues with natural good looks. Rachel is Jackie Kennedy without the pill box hat, or Kate Middleton without the tiara.
But Laban has another daughter, Leah. Now Leah’s distinguishing feature is her eyes, which some translations report as being “weak,” while others report as being “lovely.” Which is it? Is Leah the four-eyed ugly duckling in the family? (I say this as someone who’s worn glasses or contacts since I was 11). Or could Leah star in a mascara commercial?
It’s ambiguous. But there’s nothing ambiguous about Rachel’s qualities, and Rachel’s the one with whom Jacob is smitten.
Laban agrees to Jacob’s terms. Really, it’s a win-win situation. Laban gains a son-in-law and doesn’t lose a precious daughter to someone outside the clan (those considerations ranked highly in that time and place). For his part Jacob gets to marry a gracious and beautiful woman. So Jacob sheared the sheep, pruned the vines, and harvested the wheat for seven years, but for him it passed by like a mere seven days on account of his love for Rachel.
This is the ideal work situation. Some of the more painful and tragic human predicaments arise when people find themselves trapped in work that exploits, degrades, or can’t cover the bills. But Jacob’s toil and the desires of his heart have converged in this contract he’s signed with Laban. We might even be tempted to speak of Jacob’s career in the employ of Uncle Laban as a vocation, a term which the author Frederick Buechner defines as, “Where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” And we might add that such is the way with most young men, for whom love and passion is the highest motivator.
But Laban is not a young man. Laban is an old man, and old men aren’t motivated by love. Old men are motivated by money. Laban has two valuable assets to protect, his younger daughter Rachel and his older daughter Leah. Laban’s interests diverge from Jacob, and while a deal is a deal, Laban will see to it that his interests are served in whatever agreement he comes to with his young, romantic nephew.
Times up! Seven years toil means wedding bells should be ringing anytime. Laban is a man of his word. He finds a preacher, reserves the fellowship hall, and invites the entire neighborhood to share in the joy. But that evening, he turns Jacob’s joy to consternation. He sends Leah to the honeymoon suite instead of Rachel. Our narrator captures the shock and embarrassment in the short, eloquent sentence, “When morning came, it was Leah!”
For this switcharoo to work we can assume a couple of things. First, we can assume that the women were veiled. The veil reminds us, as if we needed reminding, that this story is situated in a world in which women were property, which is still the case for many women. Second, we can assume that no small amount of alcohol was consumed between the words “I do,” and the happy couple retiring for the evening. At any rate, the groom awakes to discover that the woman he thought was his sister-in-law is his wife, and that his wife is not his wife, but his sister-in-law. In the dawn’s early light, it dawns on Jacob what kind of man his father-in-law is. Laban’s polish conceals a scheming mind and a heart of stone.
“Why have you deceived me?” Jacob demands to know. A deal is a deal, and the deal was that he’d work seven years for Rachel, not Leah. He has a right to be angry.
Or does he? This is rich, isn’t it? The man who took advantage of his father’s failing eyesight to steal his brother’s blessing wants to complain that in the low light of the bridal chamber somebody got one over on him? Not very self-aware, are you Jacob?
Really the two incidents have nothing to do with each other. At the ground level, so to speak, Laban really has swindled Jacob, and it’s wrong to con people; end of story. It’s even wrong to con con artists.
But we aren’t watching this story unfold at the ground level. We share the narrator’s omniscient point of view. We know all about Jacob’s history, and we can’t help but conclude that some kind of poetic justice is being served here, even though the Lord God, the ultimate source of all true justice, is absent as a character in this part of the story.
The Hindus have the concept of karma in their religion, the notion that, to put it a bit crudely, what comes around goes around. There’s a similar idea the Christian Bible. In Samuel and Kings and Chronicles, the historical books of the Bible, the Lord often deals with Israel in a tit for tat fashion. If you obey, says the Lord, you will be blessed. But if you disobey, you will suffer. So when Israel’s kings worship idols and oppress the poor long enough, eventually they lose their kingdom to oppressive idolaters. And here in Genesis 29 we see the deceiver himself deceived. Our narrator never says, “This took place in order to punish Jacob for wronging his brother Esau,” but we can’t help but wonder.
And wonder is what we do in our lives. Sometimes God speaks to us directly, as God spoke to Jacob in a dream in last week’s scripture reading. But most of the time, we have to infer God’s will for our lives. Whether life’s banes are crosses to bear or our just desserts, and whether life’s blessings are gifts from God or ill-gotten gains—that’s often a matter of interpretation.
Laban is not only treacherous; he is smooth! When the young man Jacob gets hot under the collar, Laban replies, “Oh, it must have slipped my mind. You see, in our country, the elder daughter has to be married first. I’m sure this seems somewhat arbitrary to you, and I’ll admit that in a perfect world everyone could marry for love or whatever, but a man of my age has learned to respect the value of custom and tradition.” And then Uncle Laban throws his arm over Jacob’s shoulder and adds, “Now look out there at all those people we’ve invited. We can’t let them down, can we? It’s important that we not make a scene. Let’s keep up appearances and complete the reception, and I’ll tell you what. I really want to work with you on this. How about… I don’t know… another seven years, and you can marry Rachel too.”
Now that’s how you do it! Not only does Laban double-cross Jacob, he makes Jacob a party to Jacob’s own exploitation! Waylan Jennings once sang, “Old age and treachery always overcomes youth and skill,” and he could have been singing about Jacob and Laban, couldn’t he?
And if Jacob’s labor of love for Rachel’s hand represents the ideal work situation, then Laban’s underhandedness represents the reality. For when it comes to the exchange of goods and services, the strong, by hook or by crook, arrange things so that their strength is maintained or even increased, all while coming off smelling like a rose.
“This is not done in our country, giving the younger before the firstborn.” Laban’s words remind us that what brought Jacob to Haran was his violation of his brother’s “natural rights” as the elder son. Is this some sort of veiled allusion to Jacob’s past?
I doubt it. While our narrator does report that Jacob told Laban everything upon his arrival in Haran, I cannot help but think Jacob was a bit reticent to supply all the gory details. No. Laban is an accidental prophet. He’s not the only one in scripture. We think of Caiaphas. When Caiaphas prudently and rather cynically sold out Jesus to the Romans, he said, “It’s better that one man die for the whole people.” Had no idea what he was saying. So too with Laban. His words carry a double meaning to which he is blind, but which to us, is abundantly clear. The firstborns will get their revenge!
Where does this all leave us? In the end, Jacob gets twice as much work and twice as many wives as he bargained for—one of whom he loves more than the other. Interestingly, the Lord, who has inexplicably favored the younger son Jacob to this point, now reverses course. Four-eyed Leah, married to a man who doesn’t love her, finds favor in the eyes of the Lord. She bears the majority of Jacob’s children, the eponymous ancestors of the twelve tribes of Israel. Yet the Lord does not overlook Rachel. After all, it’s not her fault that she’s pretty, is it? She too bears a son, Jacob’s youngest. And the conned son-in-law finally gets a leg up on the man who lives in the biggest house on the biggest hill in Haran. Jacob’s flocks outperform his uncle’s, and when trouble brews between Jacob and his jealous in-laws, Jacob flees with his wives, children and flocks, and Laban can’t do a thing about it.
A pattern is emerging. In conflicts in which the power dynamic is unequal, the Lord God seems to put his thumb on the scale of the weaker party to make it a fair fight. At the same time, the successes and reversals which any one particular character in our story experience seem to be of a two steps forward, one step back quality. The Lord, who promised to Jacob that all families on the earth would be blessed in him, really does seem determined that blessing and not curse be the last word pronounced on each of these very questionable people. As we find ourselves in conflicts, whether they are within families or between nations, on the job, in the community or in society, let us not forget God’s hidden thumb on the scale and God’s resolve to bless everyone.
11 August 2011
Dear layperson
Your preacher is having a hard week. The gospel lesson for this Sunday is Matthew 10:15-28, in which Jesus loses an argument with a desperate mother, and not before practically calling her a b***h.
"Great," your preacher is thinking. "I've busted my butt working these people up into a congregation that Jim Wallis would be proud of. And here's Jesus being as waspish to this woman as my parishioners are to the country club help!
In fact it's so bad that your preacher is pondering the unthinkable for this Sunday: preaching from the Old Testament!
It may not come to that. There are any number of coping strategies at the lectionary blogs and websites which may help your preacher deal with Rude Jesus.
For instance, your pastor might go all in for making the woman the hero and Jesus, if not the villian, then at least in need of an attitude adjustment. We can call this the Damn the Christology, full speed ahead strategy:
Isn’t that the function of a prophet, to cry after us until we bump our heads on our own truth? Jesus bumps his head in this story, that’s for sure. He bumps his head right on his own words. Isn’t that what a prophet stirs in you, that memory of who you are, and what your mission is? The woman shouts the truth at Jesus!
So the Canaanite woman is the Way, the Truth and the Life, and no one comes to the Father except by her.
Another strategy is not print the text in the bulletin; pull the pew Bibles; read the text quickly; make the disciples the villians in the sermon and hope nobody heard the stuff Jesus said about dogs. This is the whitewash by avoidance strategy:
So stretch your imaginations to entertain the scene. Gathered in one corner are those familiar disciples, for Matthew the true blue representatives of the faithful lost sheep of Israel, now leaping into the fray like so many ravenous beasts, as it were self-styled guarantors of the holy tradition, on their guard lest the mercies of God be wasted on the unworthy. Like a gang of watchdogs at the door they are about the checking of IDs and keeping out the non-pedigreed riffraff. On the other side of the gate stands this outsider, a woman no less, one lone representative of the dogs of religion, now become as it were a lost sheep plaintively pleading for the mercy of the master shepherd. No English translation can capture Matthew's careful orchestration of the painful choral refrain. "Lord, have mercy," the dog's solo bleating cry. "Get rid of her," the "lost-sheep chorus" barks back in reply.
And into this fray strides the shepherd, who not only welcomes this newest and most unlikely of disciples, but praises her great faith!
But there is another option, an option so shocking to the sensibilities of do-gooding, mainline preachers and their insufferably nice, suburbanite congregations that it takes an exegete the likes of (dum, dum, dum!) JOHN CALVIN to go there:
The pride of the flesh must fall down, when we learn that by nature we are dogs... [T]he treachery and revolt of Adam made it proper that the Lord should send to the stable, along with dogs, those who through the guilt of our first parents became bastards; more especially when a comparison is made between the Jews, who were exempted from the common lot, and the Gentiles, who were banished from the kingdom of God. (Calvin's Commentaries Volume XVI: Harmony of the Evangelists).
Option #3 is to say that the woman is a b***h. And so are you and I. Doubly. Because we're sinful members of the human race, and we're gentiles to boot! Violent, idolatrous gentiles. And if we are somehow one of those who come from north and south and east and west to sit at table in the kingdom of God, we'll be lucky if our seat is under the table, gobbling up the crumbs of hesed that fall from the plates of Abraham, Issac and Jacob.
Maybe that's what you need to hear this Sunday. And what your preacher needs to preach.
I like what's behind door #3 because it trusts Jesus more than the first interpretation, and it goes head-on at what is troubling in the text, unlike the second interpretation. Most of all, it doesn't turn history on its head like the second interpretation which, wanting to make a point about tolerance and inclusivity, casts the Jews of all people in the role of high and mighty oppressors. Ironic indeed that it's the spectacularly anti-Semitic Calvin to whom we owe this exegetical honesty.
04 July 2011
Independence Day sermon
I filled in yesterday at New Covenant Presbyterian Church, and this is what I said:
Tomorrow is Independence Day. It’s not an explicitly Christian holiday; it’s a holiday we share with American citizens of all faiths or even no faith. Nevertheless it’s a pretty big deal, and it seems appropriate to consider this holiday as we gather for worship on this Lord’s Day.
For that reason I chose this passage from Paul’s letter to the Galatians to preach on today. There’s two concepts in this morning’s scripture lesson—freedom and law—that we Americans celebrate this time every year. It’s not surprising to us that these concepts turn up not only in American history but in the Christian scriptures as well, but as we shall see, Paul has an interesting take on these words freedom and law that may help us see these virtues in a new light.
We live in a free country. For Americans, we experience freedom primarily as freedom from external restraints, especially those that may be placed on us by the government. In the United States there’s no such thing as government censors ripping out pages from library books to “protect” us from dangerous ideas. If we don't like the President, or the governor, or the dog catcher we can tell our neighbor over the back fence or write a letter-to-the-editor and it won't come back to haunt us. If we own a business, sure we’re taxed and regulated, perhaps more than we’d like to be, but we don’t have to display a picture of some President-for-life in the front window lest the secret police call on us in the dark of night, questioning where our loyalties lie. We’re a free people.
We also live in a land where the rule of law is taken seriously. Of course there is corruption, but we can say with some confidence that due process, not a bribe, turns the wheels of justice. If the President wants to win a second term in office, he or she has to win re-election in a free and fair process. He cannot surround the opposition party’s headquarters with tanks or jail his opponent on trumped up charges.
Such examples seem strange and absurd to us, but even after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the successful struggle against Apartheid and this year’s Arab Spring, millions of people are forced to put up with such absurdities each and every day. At times we face great challenges in life, but at least we don’t have to deal with these types of challenges. Today and tomorrow it’s appropriate to thank God for that.
But when we turn to the apostle Paul’s letter to the Galatians, we find additional guidance on the concepts of freedom and law, some of which contradicts what our society takes for granted. Let’s begin with freedom. We Americans often speak about freedom as if it’s an end unto itself—as if there is no greater good than making as much money as you can or sounding off whenever you wish, without fear of being fined or jailed for your opinions. But as Paul sees it, freedom is only a means to an end. “For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another.”
For many Americans, the automobile is an iconic symbol of freedom. Imagine yourself in a convertible, flying down Route 66, the sun shining, the wind in your hair. Paul asks us free Americans, “Where are you going in that car? Is your destination the dead-end self-indulgence, or is it the land of neighborly love?”
That’s the dangerous aspect of living in American society. It’s as if the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the free enterprise system hand us the keys to a shiny new car without any guidance whatsoever on where to drive that car. “Spiritual GPS not included.” If we lack a moral compass or a spiritual map, we’re liable to end up in what Paul calls the ditch of the flesh: sexual immorality, the angry factionalism of an Us-Versus-Them mindset, over-eating, blacking out and other empty and frivolous pleasures.
What Paul recommends instead is to hand those keys over to the Holy Spirit, and let the Spirit lead us and guide us so that we can make better use of the freedoms that we enjoy, so that we can get somewhere worth going. Only when the breath of the Spirit fills us will the words we choose be kind and gentle, seasoned with the salt of peace, and most importantly, only then will our words be truth spoken in love that can build up, not tear down our neighbors. In this land of opportunity, we can invent a new product or start a new business and make some money, but only when we are guided by the Spirit will we be able to open our hands and live generously and not miserly with the fruits of our labors.
Now Paul didn’t know what a red convertible was, so he uses different metaphors about the point of being free. In fact he uses strong, even offensive language. “You were called to freedom… but become slaves to one another.” This way of stating it goes back to the great Old Testament saga of the Hebrew slaves’ Exodus from Egypt, in which the Lord said to Pharaoh, “Let me people go, so that they may serve me.” Old and New Testaments agree that true freedom is obedient service to God and neighbor.
How can this be? How can any form of servitude be freedom? In George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the words WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENTH were carved on the walls of the Ministry of Truth. Isn’t Paul playing an insidious word game here?
I don’t think so. The commandment “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” like all commandments, sounds restricting, but is in fact liberating. The person who freely submits to the needs of his/her neighbor in the name of Jesus Christ is free from many oppressive tyrants.
For instance, the peaceful, patient man or woman is not dominated by a desire to get even. He or she is not enslaved to angry feelings. The generous person is the truly rich person, for the ability to part with one’s money easily demonstrates that one is a master of, not a slave to money. We experience these freedoms paradoxically, in the mode of service, but they are freedoms nonetheless.
It’s for this reason that Paul describes the Christian life more in terms of spiritual fruit than in terms of a nose-to-the-grindstone struggle to do the right thing. Led by the Spirit and not by the desires that emanate from a brooding mind or a hardened heart or other parts of the body, the Christian blossoms with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. These are goods that money can’t buy.
In terms of the law, Paul says something astonishing: those who are led by the Spirit are not subject to the law. Not subject to the law? We American Christians take pride in the fact that we are law-abiding people. Paul’s language here sounds equally troubling.
But think about it. The law forces people to do good by threatening them with punishment if they do evil. In other words, the law leads people to do the right thing for the wrong reason. The law can modify external behavior but not the inward disposition.
The person who is under the law, therefore, does not commit adultery, not because he believes that his wife is entitled to the same steadfast love that God has shown him, but because he knows she’ll take him to the cleaners if he cheats. A person who lives by the law may honor her father and her mother, not as a way of honoring her Father in heaven, but to keep from getting cut out of the will. Perhaps he won’t murder his tyrannical boss, not because he sees even in this person vestiges of the image of God, but because he doesn’t want to go to jail. Perhaps she won’t embezzle money, not because she respects the people whose money she’s entrusted with, but because she doesn’t want to wind up on the front page of the newspaper.
It’s better than anarchy, but what a sad and cramped way to live! And this minimal standard of morality is the best that a free society can do.
But if we are led by the Spirit, we are not subject to the law. The Spirit leads us to love freely and unreservedly. When we love our neighbor as ourselves, we joyfully and automatically honor our parents, our marriage vows and our neighbor’s right to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and not out of a grudging and calculating spirit.
Or rather, it is the Spirit joyfully fulfilling the law in us. Remember again Paul’s description of Christian virtues as fruits of the Spirit. That leads us to consider this table, where the fruit of the field and of the vineyard are set before us, through which we can partake in the body and blood of the Lord.
Jesus said, “I am the vine; you are the branches; abide in me and you will bear much fruit, for apart from me, you can do nothing.” We can think of God the Father as the ground, the source of all that is, and the Son, Jesus Christ, as the vine sprouting forth from the Father. The Spirit is that mysterious process of growth in which the nourishment that the vine draws from the ground is communicated to us and blossoms and bears fruit in our lives.
Because of the land in which we live, we have opportunities that others do not—opportunities that we should give thanks for today. But because we belong to the one who invites us to eat and drink at this table, we and those of many lands, have opportunities to blossom in ways that no government, society or nation can confer. Let us give thanks for that as well.
06 February 2011
Today's sermon
As Christians, God has blessed us with a rich variety of spiritual practices which we can use to deepen our relationship with God. There is this meal set on the table before us, in which Jesus Christ, truly present in the power of the Holy Spirit, imparts himself to us, so that it is no longer you or I who live, but Christ who lives in us. There are the words of the psalms and our favorite hymns which give voice to the deepest longings of our hearts in the face of the Eternal Mystery. There is fasting, which is mentioned in this morning’s Old Testament reading, not as popular a spiritual discipline as others, I suspect, but nonetheless quite valuable. As Jesus explained to Satan during his long fast in the wilderness, we do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Emptying our stomachs for a time is an opportunity to be filled with the bread of life.
What happens when none of that stuff works anymore?
23 January 2011
Chemo for the Body of Christ
In the Sunday School class I'm teaching, we're reading Luther for Armchair Theologians by Steven Paulson. The second reviewer at the Amazon page for this book correctly notes that Paulson doesn't put Luther's doctrine of justification front and center; rather he emphasizes themes in Luther's life and writings that are neglected by most people aside from professional theologians: no free will, the creative power of the Word (wholly external to the believer), and how scripture interprets you, not the other way around.
However, I'm not sure whether or not this makes the book a bit less accessible to lay people, which the reviewer fears. In stressing this set of themes, Paulson conveys the polemical, even offensive edge to Luther's theology, which has as much to do with content as it does Luther's or the author's style. And I don't think you've understood Luther until and unless you either feel appalled at what you've read, or feel like you've been punched in the gut.
For instance: since, according to Luther, there is no free will that can turn to Christ, no divine spark that can be fanned into a flame, no nothing within except an abyss of God-hatred, there is no sense telling people what they ought to do to please God or how to do it. Aside from maintaining civil order, the only point of all those commandments in the Bible is to show you how you don't live, not how you ought to live.
This results in some odd sounding preaching.
26 December 2010
Saving the innocents with a magic screwdriver
It's just as well that the congregation where I was going to fill in this morning canceled services. I was getting ready to offer a definitive answer to a question that I'm only prepared to think out loud about: why did God save only Jesus, and not all the innocents in Bethlehem?
In an article in Review and Expositor, Frank Tupper offers an interesting answer: Joseph was the only one to whom a warning would have made any sense. For example, if I had dreamed last night that my children were in mortal danger, I would not have packed them in the car that very instant and driven to Florida. I would have got up, fixed myself a glass of water, shaken the cobwebs of that nightmare out of my head, and returned to bed. And so would have the fathers of Bethlehem.
Joseph was in a different situation. Joseph knew the true identity of the boy in the crib under his roof. Joseph, like everyone, knew he was ruled by a ruthless monarch. Furthermore, Joseph surely knew that the identity of his son was known to the king, thanks to the visit of the magi. Finally, Joseph had experience trusting and acting on his dreams. So when the angel visited him one night prophesying doom unless he and his family got out of Dodge, Joseph alone was prepared to act on that information.
Thus, says Tupper, the Slaughter of the Innocents suggests that God's special providence (miracles) usually defers to God's general providence (God's creation of a world whose orderliness we call "laws of nature," conditioned by time and space, filled with human beings whose exercise of free will--embedded in the mysterious nexus of finitude sin and redemption--is the story of history). God may well intervene in a given situation to give it a nudge toward the best possible outcome, but what is possible is to a great extent already determined by what has unfolded up to that point. This is not to say that there are things God cannot do, but it is to say that when God intervenes, God does so respecting the integrity of what God has created and permitted--which is another way of saying that God is always true to himself.
Clearly this won't satisfy everyone, and if we have experienced the murder of one of our own children we might well want a bit more intervention from the Almighty. But I can't imagine that a more active intervention would make the situation any better. Chaos and evil make life unpredictable and at times unbearable, but so would a Deity who kept stepping onto the stage of human history coaching the actors on blocking and intonation according to plot changes he's composing at that very moment.
I imagine it would be like living in the world of David Tennant's Doctor Who. As a Time Lord, the Doctor frequently intervenes in history both for its own sake and to make subsequent events turn out OK. Usually such interventions are known only to the viewer and the Doctor's lovely human sidekick, but during Tennant's run as the Doctor, he saves planet Earth from full-scale, extraterrestrial and very public invasions of Daleks and Cybermen, not to mention nudging a crashing spaceship away from Buckingham Palace. As I watched the human race experience redemption on an annual basis by a mysterious, benevolent visitor in a flying phone booth, armed only with a magic screwdriver, I couldn't help but wonder, "If this were really happening, how would the markets react?"
If the angels were to act any more overtly in their war against the demons than they do, I'm not sure we could tolerate it any better than the present miseries that make us question God's power and goodness. I do wonder, however, if a series of gentle nudges can get the universe to the place where the scriptures promise that it will wind up: where death is destroyed, and the home of God is among mortals. That would seem to require a kind of special revelation at odds with the general revelation we see on a daily basis.
On the other hand, Paul compares our present state to our resurrected state by appealing to the continuity and discontinuity between a seed and a fully grown plant. If we didn't know anything about botany, it would seem incredible that a series of small steps could lead from one to the other. Yet it does. So maybe this incredibly violent, evolving universe can be nudged toward utopia.
But if so, that would seem to require patience. If it took 13 billion years for the first resurrection to occur, it might take another 13 billion years for all the rest of them to occur.
01 August 2010
Sermon on the rich fool
Behold the executive summary:
The full text is below the fold:
Marvin
Ordained in the Presbyterian Church (USA), I am a Ph.D. student at Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, Virginia, a husband, and father of two red-headed boys.
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