The Power of Community
Michelle Ferguson
Sarah and I were on Highway 99 headed back to Fresno Pacific University. I sat thoughtfully in the passenger seat. “I really wish you had a brother so that I could marry into your family,” I said. We chuckled, but we both knew that it came from deep within me. In that moment I felt a stirring in my heart: life was seeping into my soul as I began to feel things I had never known before.
It is not good to be alone
I transferred to FPU as a sophomore after bottoming out spiritually. During my freshman year, struggles I had pushed away in the excitement of my first years as a Christian refused to be ignored. I found myself face to face with the part of me I feared and hated the most: I was overwhelmed by homosexual feelings for my roommate. I tried to ignore them. I tried to pray them away. I tried to convince myself I did not feel “that way” toward her. I felt discouraged and guilty. And when the opportunity arose to act on my feelings, I felt helpless to resist. I spent the rest of the school year struggling with the conflict between my behavior and my faith.
When I transferred to FPU and started my sophomore year in a new school with no friends, I still had a whole host of “issues” to deal with. I had spent the summer in repentance before God, and as the school year began I took the first steps toward reconciliation with God and with myself. I did not know how (or if) I was going to change, but I knew obedience to my Lord was imperative. The Word of God had cut that message into my heart, and I was determined to walk it out. That year I learned that homosexuality was not my main problem. It was a symptom of wounds I had borne since childhood, and it was a desperate attempt to cope with the pain and emptiness I felt. In order to experience wholeness in Christ I was going to have to dig beneath the surface of my homosexuality and address the roots of my brokenness.
It may seem too simple to say that my real need was for genuine and intimate relationship, but the more I learn about myself and people in general the more I am convinced that the human need for connection should never be underestimated.
I did not grow up with strong or healthy relationships in my life. Seeing the dysfunction between my parents, at an early age I rejected connecting with them. I retreated within myself and detached from life. It was not safe to trust others. I kept everyone out in order to protect myself. Within my walls was a lonely place to be. As a little girl I yearned for a friend. Someone to trust. Someone to know me for real who would love me.
By the time I was in junior high school that yearning had translated into sexual attraction for other girls. I desperately wanted to connect with another girl, and somehow the intimacy of a romantic/sexual relationship seemed to be the answer. I was dulling my loneliness and pain with alcohol and hoping for the perfect best friend to enter my life. I was drawn to “needy” people, and I was determined to fill their needs so that they could be happy. I did not realize that my desire to fill their need was really my way of coping with my unmet needs.
A vision of community
My second year at FPU I took an Anabaptist theology class. We read The Anabaptist Vision and wrote a paper reflecting on Harold Bender’s summary of the distinctive elements of Anabaptism. This assignment helped me find the words for everything God was forming in me. Anabaptism gave me the language with which to articulate and hear the solution for my need. Within the context of community, defined as a voluntary and genuine brotherhood, I saw the possibility for healing and wholeness become a reality. I found my theological home.
For the next two years at FPU I sought out relationships in which to explore this new concept of community. I participated in an accountability and Bible study group with several other girls. We called ourselves On Belay. It was in this group that I formed relationships that taught me healthy same-sex friendship.
As I grew in these friendships, I noticed deep changes occurring in me. As my basic needs for relationship began to be genuinely and appropriately filled, I struggled less and less with homosexuality. By the time I graduated I no longer identified myself as homosexual. My new understanding of relationships and the concept of community brought great healing and helped me reorient my life.
Home is where community is
On Belay gave me the opportunity to experience a new model for same-sex peer relationships that proved powerful; however, my deeper need was for family. Even though my parents’ marriage and our family had been affected by coming into relationship with Jesus Christ, the history of those relationships caused me to look elsewhere for family community. God gave me such a community when Sarah Bergen, one of the girls in On Belay, introduced me to her family.
I automatically felt comfortable and welcomed by her parents Stan and LeeAnn and sisters Melissa and Laura. As I got to know Sarah’s family, I was more and more amazed: I was seeing people who were the kind of family I had longed for all my life.
It is no coincidence that the Bergen family is rooted in Mennonite Brethren faith. Over the last five years I have seen the theology that won my heart worked out in the daily lives of this family. The Anabaptist focus on nachfolge Christi (“following”) is embodied by the relationships between this father, mother and three daughters. As I met and became familiar with the extended Bergen families I realized that this was indeed a community from which to learn community.
In good Anabaptist fashion, I could only learn community by practicing community. The Bergens’ extension of relationship to me each time I visited with Sarah reinforced the work God was doing in my life. Slowly I released and repented of my lifestyle of detachment and began forming authentic ties within the family. This has been a terrifying process at times. However it is the way toward wholeness.
“You belong”
Last November I was struggling with seeing myself as part of the family instead of just “one of Sarah’s friends she brings home.” I wanted to belong, but I was still maintaining a measure of detachment. We sat around Stan and LeeAnn’s dining room table and talked about my feelings. It was hard to be so honest, especially about my fears, but I knew I could trust them with my heart.
I cried, talked and shared about how I had never really let people in before. I told them that one way of keeping my distance was to hold on to the thought that I was only tied to the family through Sarah, that I did not have a place of my own. LeeAnn reached across the table, took my hand and said, “You belong in this family with or without Sarah.”
My heart trembled.
She said it again, “You belong in this family with or without Sarah.” My heart released its last bit of detachment and I let her words in. Again, “You belong in this family with or without Sarah.”
My heart allowed itself to receive words of life, and a wound I had carried for years felt its first healing touch. LeeAnn repeated her words slightly differently, “You belong in this family.” I took my place in the family in that moment. LeeAnn and Sarah shed a few tears. As Sarah and I got into the car to drive back home to Sacramento, Stan hugged me. Even when I started to let go, he held on. His prolonged embrace repeated LeeAnn’s words in his own voice.
Power to transform
By no means has this family exhibited or offered perfection, but it has modeled a lifestyle of love, honesty, intimacy, sacrifice, commitment and interdependence that I have never seen before. Being welcomed into this family has also been my initiation into Mennonite faith and spirituality. The depth of community shared by the Bergens has been shaped by their commitment to Anabaptism and my experience in the Bergen community has shaped the Anabaptist identity to which I have committed myself. This sounds like the truest form of discipleship I could ever describe.
Discipleship is not just Sunday schooling people to know the right things. It is binding oneself to others in community and living out the gospel. Harold Bender writes, “The Anabaptists could not understand a Christianity which made regeneration, holiness and love primarily a matter of intellect, of doctrinal belief, or of subjective ‘experience,’ rather than one of the transformation of life. They demanded an outward expression of the inner experience. Repentance must be ‘evidenced’ by newness of behavior” (The Anabaptist Vision, italics mine).
As I sat in Shafter MB Church for the Christmas Eve service and heard Sarah’s aunt, Ruth Bergen, share her story of dealing with cancer, I heard her telling a story more of community than anything else. After thanking everyone who had prayed, brought food to her home, visited and made visible other forms of support, she said, “The kingdom of God is truly at hand.” I sat amidst that community and my heart said, “Amen.” With Bergens beside, in front and behind me, I was surrounded with examples of the kingdom, of true brotherhood. Though we await the coming of the fullness of God’s kingdom, it is in community that we live in that kingdom here and now and experience healing and wholeness.
Ever since I began to feel life take hold in my heart through this community, I have heard a call to share my story with the larger Mennonite community. God’s Spirit has prompted me to say “Now as to the love of the brethren, you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another; for indeed you do practice it… But (I) urge you, brethren, to excel still more” (1 Thess. 4:9-10).
As Anabaptists we have a certain understanding of the community of God that can offer a prophetic voice in our day. We only need to live it out, to embody it. By confession we do not truly have faith unless we are putting into practice. Brothers and sisters, my life has been changed because of the power found in community. Let us live so as to continue to see God’s power manifested in many others.
This article was published in The Christian Leader (March 2005).
Sunday, September 02, 2007
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Thirsty in a Dry and Weary Land
Michelle Ferguson
July 2006
A Matchbox 20 song I listened to as a teenager has a chorus that goes: she says baby / it’s 3 am / I must be lonely / when she says baby / well I can’t help but be scared of it all sometimes / says the rain’s gonna wash away I believe it.1 If this band is good at anything, it is good at expressing the melancholy, if not apathetic, worldview common to the world in which we live. This song in particular gives us a depressing image: a man cannot sleep; he is up during the “watches of the night” (Ps 63:6) afraid of the relationship he is in; he fears both being truly needed by the woman he loves and that she could leave him. The sound of the voice that sings this song exudes uncertainty, restlessness, hunger. I connected with this song (and with this album) because the music reached down into the deepest parts of me and touched the desire residing there that had yet to find the language and voice with which to be articulated. My seminary journey these last three years has given my desire the language of scripture, maturing it by teaching it to step into the biblical story and echo its characters: I have learned to cry out in prophetic anguish; I have prayed with the psalmists in their laments and thanksgivings; I have tried to question like Job; I have confessed and rebuked in the style of Peter. It is 3:51 am and I know I am lonely.
I am lonely for God, for community. I am lonely with the ache of desire throbbing in my heart, my gut, my soul. Indeed I find myself in “a dry and weary land where there is no water.” I am merely weeks out from my masters program and I am desperate to study and dialogue with others who are just as desperate in their endeavor to study. But here I am, where God has called me. The wilderness. The desert. When I sit in the pew on Sunday mornings my mouth fills with sand, adding insult to the injury of my already parched tongue. When I sit on my couch during the week my soul shrinks the way a piece of meat turns to jerky as the slow heat of an oven sucks its moisture away. In a recent phone conversation with a Fuller professor and well-known Christian philosopher, I heard that I am one of the many seminary grads that have experienced as a result of good theological education the eye opening and heart swelling that ruins me. I cannot live satisfied; I am bound to the insatiable yearning for “something better.” I “have looked upon [God] in the sanctuary” of scripture and seen how far we are from the vision Jesus Christ has ultimately revealed. I praise God for what I have seen, but I cry out to him even more because what I have seen has elicited the response Isaiah gave when he saw God: Woe is me; I am unclean among an unclean people. I feel like I have been sent out into the desert, a prophet lamenting how God’s people just don’t get it. It is lonely out here.
Down deep in our souls in the parts where we cannot hide from ourselves, aren’t we all lonely? Aren’t we all aching to live a vision we probably aren’t even aware of yet? Don’t we know there has to be more than this? Can this really be salvation? Can this really be new creation? This? We aren’t allowed to voice these questions: it feels irreverent, faithless, risky. We’re all at least a little depressed, and we’re all a little afraid that we might find “something better.” What if we needed it? What if it needed us? What if it demanded everything of us? Or, what if we caught the vision and it slipped through our fingers? What if it abandoned us? It’s 3 am and we just can’t help but feel scared… because we’re haunted2 by God calling out to us in the “watches of the night.”
The only way I have found of surviving this “dry and weary land” is to trust that God’s vision, however far we are from seeing and living it out, is on its way to being fulfilled. As sure as God spoke creation into existence, God is speaking new creation into being. His steadfast love holds him in covenant with us. He promises that “as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:10-11). His word has gone out into our world:
I thirst for this newness of life. I thirst for communion with others who have completely offered themselves up to this journey. I endure in the hope that Jesus came to gather his people and will come again to redeem us as sons and daughters. I wait for that Day. I wait with hands stretched out asking for clearer vision with which to know God. I wait with my heart on my sleeve, begging for partners on this road of discipleship.
Michelle Ferguson
July 2006
A Matchbox 20 song I listened to as a teenager has a chorus that goes: she says baby / it’s 3 am / I must be lonely / when she says baby / well I can’t help but be scared of it all sometimes / says the rain’s gonna wash away I believe it.1 If this band is good at anything, it is good at expressing the melancholy, if not apathetic, worldview common to the world in which we live. This song in particular gives us a depressing image: a man cannot sleep; he is up during the “watches of the night” (Ps 63:6) afraid of the relationship he is in; he fears both being truly needed by the woman he loves and that she could leave him. The sound of the voice that sings this song exudes uncertainty, restlessness, hunger. I connected with this song (and with this album) because the music reached down into the deepest parts of me and touched the desire residing there that had yet to find the language and voice with which to be articulated. My seminary journey these last three years has given my desire the language of scripture, maturing it by teaching it to step into the biblical story and echo its characters: I have learned to cry out in prophetic anguish; I have prayed with the psalmists in their laments and thanksgivings; I have tried to question like Job; I have confessed and rebuked in the style of Peter. It is 3:51 am and I know I am lonely.
I am lonely for God, for community. I am lonely with the ache of desire throbbing in my heart, my gut, my soul. Indeed I find myself in “a dry and weary land where there is no water.” I am merely weeks out from my masters program and I am desperate to study and dialogue with others who are just as desperate in their endeavor to study. But here I am, where God has called me. The wilderness. The desert. When I sit in the pew on Sunday mornings my mouth fills with sand, adding insult to the injury of my already parched tongue. When I sit on my couch during the week my soul shrinks the way a piece of meat turns to jerky as the slow heat of an oven sucks its moisture away. In a recent phone conversation with a Fuller professor and well-known Christian philosopher, I heard that I am one of the many seminary grads that have experienced as a result of good theological education the eye opening and heart swelling that ruins me. I cannot live satisfied; I am bound to the insatiable yearning for “something better.” I “have looked upon [God] in the sanctuary” of scripture and seen how far we are from the vision Jesus Christ has ultimately revealed. I praise God for what I have seen, but I cry out to him even more because what I have seen has elicited the response Isaiah gave when he saw God: Woe is me; I am unclean among an unclean people. I feel like I have been sent out into the desert, a prophet lamenting how God’s people just don’t get it. It is lonely out here.
Down deep in our souls in the parts where we cannot hide from ourselves, aren’t we all lonely? Aren’t we all aching to live a vision we probably aren’t even aware of yet? Don’t we know there has to be more than this? Can this really be salvation? Can this really be new creation? This? We aren’t allowed to voice these questions: it feels irreverent, faithless, risky. We’re all at least a little depressed, and we’re all a little afraid that we might find “something better.” What if we needed it? What if it needed us? What if it demanded everything of us? Or, what if we caught the vision and it slipped through our fingers? What if it abandoned us? It’s 3 am and we just can’t help but feel scared… because we’re haunted2 by God calling out to us in the “watches of the night.”
The only way I have found of surviving this “dry and weary land” is to trust that God’s vision, however far we are from seeing and living it out, is on its way to being fulfilled. As sure as God spoke creation into existence, God is speaking new creation into being. His steadfast love holds him in covenant with us. He promises that “as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:10-11). His word has gone out into our world:
God’s vision has been made known to us through Jesus, and inasmuch we follow the Messiah who suffered, we become partners in that vision. There is a connection between seeing God and praising God. And seeing God always radically changes us. If we are not changed, our praise may be nothing more than empty words. As Anabaptists we are convicted that salvation means embodied confession — belief seen in the newness of our life. Spoken words that are not rooted in the reality of our lives are meaningless. Our praise of the God we encounter comes from lips attached to bodies that kneel in repentance and walk the road of the crucified Christ.In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God… He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth… No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known. (John 1:1-18)
I thirst for this newness of life. I thirst for communion with others who have completely offered themselves up to this journey. I endure in the hope that Jesus came to gather his people and will come again to redeem us as sons and daughters. I wait for that Day. I wait with hands stretched out asking for clearer vision with which to know God. I wait with my heart on my sleeve, begging for partners on this road of discipleship.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Lovers Less Wild: Keeping Ourselves from the Kingdom
Michelle Ferguson
March 2006
Jesus came preaching the “kingdom of God.” More often than not we evangelicals think of God’s kingdom in terms of where we go when we die. It is no wonder then than the “gospel” for us mostly means “winning souls.” What if we thought about the Kingdom differently? “Now having been questioned by the Pharisees as to when the kingdom of God was coming, He answered them and said, ‘The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed; nor will they say, 'Look, here it is!' or, 'There it is!' For behold, the kingdom of God is within you’” (Luke 17:20-21). I do not deny that there is a future element to the Kingdom; however, Jesus also teaches that with his coming, the Kingdom has come. Somehow, the Kingdom of God is within us. Like wine is in a cup, the Kingdom is within us.
Before we get too comfortable with that, we also have to remember that Jesus time and time again flipped people’s expectations upside-down when it came to the Kingdom. This is especially true about who was “in” and who was “out.” Jesus came and brought the Kingdom. This fact does not mean that the Kingdom is automatically within us. We are not automatically “in.” Jesus tells parables about people missing their entrance, and making excuses about why they can’t come in. He also tells parables about people thinking they have been reserved a place and being turned away. He tells a parable of a man who enters in but is thrown out. He tells parables about people entering in who everyone else thought would never be allowed in. Let us be cautious about thinking we know how the Kingdom works.
Our question today is - What does it mean to have the Kingdom within us? If we think of the Kingdom in terms of rule, we might understand what Jesus was teaching. The Kingdom of God is God’s effective reign. The praise song we sing that says, “Reign in me,” gets at what the Kingdom is. The Kingdom of God is within us insofar as God reigns in us. Even this idea gets thinned out and reduced as we try and reassure ourselves that we’re “ok” and “in.” We are so preoccupied with being “justified” that we miss most of what Jesus teaches. However, instead of trying to correct the ways we distort what Jesus taught, I will offer one thing to think about.
One of the ways that we reject the reign of God, one of the ways that we keep ourselves from the Kingdom of God is by trading the scandalous, uncontrollable, passionate God for less wild lovers. During Advent I talked a lot about story and the way we need to abandon our small stories so that we can give ourselves to the larger story of God. We were made to live in God’s story. When we do not do that we feel an ache, a loss, a dissatisfaction that lets us know we are incomplete. Living the smaller stories is to live a sub-human existence. Jesus came in the flesh to show us what it meant to be human and to live God’s story. He came to invite us into that, into the Kingdom.
In the drama of kings and kingdoms, we know that there is always an enemy. Satan is the one who has set himself up against God’s Kingdom; he tries to wield power in a way that illegitimately claims authority over us. He wants us to be subjects in his kingdom. One of the ways that he captures us and holds us as slaves is by “convinc[ing] us that we need to create a story to live in that is not as dangerous as the Sacred Romance [God’s story]” (Curtis & Eldredge 116). I believe the “American dream” is such a story. We grow up with our greatest longing being a spouse, 2.5 kids, a dog, a house in the suburbs and cash enough for retirement. The picture we hope for is domesticated life – life under our control, comfortable life. And why not? We deserve it. We’ve earned it. As a Buick commercial once said, “It is not wrong to want luxury; it is wrong not to.” But that story is not our story. That is not what we were created for. That is not what we were called by Christ for. If you read through the gospels, you will see that following Christ means something radically different than that small story of security and ease. And the “American dream” isn’t even the only story that threatens to make us captive to Satan; he’s got a million more he’s ready to whisper into our hearts.
In their book The Sacred Romance, Brent Curtis and John Eldredge devote a chapter to our “less wild lovers.” We live small stories to quiet our heart’s desire for God’s large and wild story. “We both become, and take to ourselves, lovers that are less dangerous in their passion for life and the possible pain that comes with it - in short, lovers that are less wild” (126). They propose two categories of smaller “scripts” that we live: one of the ways we take up less wild lovers is to “choose anesthesia of the heart through some form of competence or order... a soul occupied by a seemingly redemptive busyness” (130-131); the other way we whore ourselves is to “choose a different kind of control: indulgence. We put our hope in meeting a lover who will give us some form of immediate gratification, some taste of transcendence that will place a drop of water on our parched tongue” (133).
We stand in a history of people who have prostituted themselves by chasing other lovers. Read the first couple of chapters of Hosea. Israel is pictured as an adulterous wife climbing the walls to get to her lovers. Are we afraid to truly give ourselves up to the great Romancer of our souls (the one we cannot predict or control)? So we choose affairs of the heart. “We give up desiring to be in a relationship of heroic proportions, where we risk rejection, and settle for being heroes and heroines in the smaller stories where we have learned we can ‘turn someone on’ through our usefulness, cleverness, or beauty (or at least turn ourselves on with a momentary taste of transcendence)” (135). Derek Webb, my new favorite musician, sings one of the small scripts we live: “Don’t teach me how to live like a free man... Don’t teach me to listen to the Spirit. Just give me a new law. I don’t want to know if the answers aren’t easy. So just bring it down from the mountain to me. I want a new law. I want a new law. Just give me that new law.” As Christians we say we are free from a law that forces external behavior (the righteousness of the Pharisees) but that cannot change the heart (Romans 8:3-4). Derek Webb ends his song: “What’s the use in trading a law you can never keep for one you can that cannot get you anything? Do not be afraid...” Making a “new law” out of Christianity is another of our favorite less wild lovers.
Let’s summarize our condition: we trade God’s story for less wild stories; in doing so we keep ourselves from the Kingdom by living Satan’s scripts. Something is horribly wrong. But that is not the final verdict. We do not have to continue the path of pursuing less wild lovers. Hebrews tells us that Jesus experienced life in the flesh and now stands as our perfect High Priest who offers us grace and mercy in our weakness. We can endure in giving up our lives to God’s story because Jesus offers us the way of repentance and new life. Do not be fooled: your lovers will protest your move toward faithfulness to God. It might even feel like you are losing yourself. Hear Jesus’ words: "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it” (Lk. 9:23-24). Following Jesus, living God’s story, costs us our lives. And it costs us our lives every day. Will you challenge yourself to ask, “Is God’s reign effective within me?” Will you plunge into the gospels and measure your story against the story Jesus tells there? Will you repent of your less wild lovers? Will you recklessly abandon yourself to the Romancer of your soul? I long to do this more and more in my life. Will you join me? I need you; we need each other.
Michelle Ferguson
March 2006
Jesus came preaching the “kingdom of God.” More often than not we evangelicals think of God’s kingdom in terms of where we go when we die. It is no wonder then than the “gospel” for us mostly means “winning souls.” What if we thought about the Kingdom differently? “Now having been questioned by the Pharisees as to when the kingdom of God was coming, He answered them and said, ‘The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed; nor will they say, 'Look, here it is!' or, 'There it is!' For behold, the kingdom of God is within you’” (Luke 17:20-21). I do not deny that there is a future element to the Kingdom; however, Jesus also teaches that with his coming, the Kingdom has come. Somehow, the Kingdom of God is within us. Like wine is in a cup, the Kingdom is within us.
Before we get too comfortable with that, we also have to remember that Jesus time and time again flipped people’s expectations upside-down when it came to the Kingdom. This is especially true about who was “in” and who was “out.” Jesus came and brought the Kingdom. This fact does not mean that the Kingdom is automatically within us. We are not automatically “in.” Jesus tells parables about people missing their entrance, and making excuses about why they can’t come in. He also tells parables about people thinking they have been reserved a place and being turned away. He tells a parable of a man who enters in but is thrown out. He tells parables about people entering in who everyone else thought would never be allowed in. Let us be cautious about thinking we know how the Kingdom works.
Our question today is - What does it mean to have the Kingdom within us? If we think of the Kingdom in terms of rule, we might understand what Jesus was teaching. The Kingdom of God is God’s effective reign. The praise song we sing that says, “Reign in me,” gets at what the Kingdom is. The Kingdom of God is within us insofar as God reigns in us. Even this idea gets thinned out and reduced as we try and reassure ourselves that we’re “ok” and “in.” We are so preoccupied with being “justified” that we miss most of what Jesus teaches. However, instead of trying to correct the ways we distort what Jesus taught, I will offer one thing to think about.
One of the ways that we reject the reign of God, one of the ways that we keep ourselves from the Kingdom of God is by trading the scandalous, uncontrollable, passionate God for less wild lovers. During Advent I talked a lot about story and the way we need to abandon our small stories so that we can give ourselves to the larger story of God. We were made to live in God’s story. When we do not do that we feel an ache, a loss, a dissatisfaction that lets us know we are incomplete. Living the smaller stories is to live a sub-human existence. Jesus came in the flesh to show us what it meant to be human and to live God’s story. He came to invite us into that, into the Kingdom.
In the drama of kings and kingdoms, we know that there is always an enemy. Satan is the one who has set himself up against God’s Kingdom; he tries to wield power in a way that illegitimately claims authority over us. He wants us to be subjects in his kingdom. One of the ways that he captures us and holds us as slaves is by “convinc[ing] us that we need to create a story to live in that is not as dangerous as the Sacred Romance [God’s story]” (Curtis & Eldredge 116). I believe the “American dream” is such a story. We grow up with our greatest longing being a spouse, 2.5 kids, a dog, a house in the suburbs and cash enough for retirement. The picture we hope for is domesticated life – life under our control, comfortable life. And why not? We deserve it. We’ve earned it. As a Buick commercial once said, “It is not wrong to want luxury; it is wrong not to.” But that story is not our story. That is not what we were created for. That is not what we were called by Christ for. If you read through the gospels, you will see that following Christ means something radically different than that small story of security and ease. And the “American dream” isn’t even the only story that threatens to make us captive to Satan; he’s got a million more he’s ready to whisper into our hearts.
In their book The Sacred Romance, Brent Curtis and John Eldredge devote a chapter to our “less wild lovers.” We live small stories to quiet our heart’s desire for God’s large and wild story. “We both become, and take to ourselves, lovers that are less dangerous in their passion for life and the possible pain that comes with it - in short, lovers that are less wild” (126). They propose two categories of smaller “scripts” that we live: one of the ways we take up less wild lovers is to “choose anesthesia of the heart through some form of competence or order... a soul occupied by a seemingly redemptive busyness” (130-131); the other way we whore ourselves is to “choose a different kind of control: indulgence. We put our hope in meeting a lover who will give us some form of immediate gratification, some taste of transcendence that will place a drop of water on our parched tongue” (133).
We stand in a history of people who have prostituted themselves by chasing other lovers. Read the first couple of chapters of Hosea. Israel is pictured as an adulterous wife climbing the walls to get to her lovers. Are we afraid to truly give ourselves up to the great Romancer of our souls (the one we cannot predict or control)? So we choose affairs of the heart. “We give up desiring to be in a relationship of heroic proportions, where we risk rejection, and settle for being heroes and heroines in the smaller stories where we have learned we can ‘turn someone on’ through our usefulness, cleverness, or beauty (or at least turn ourselves on with a momentary taste of transcendence)” (135). Derek Webb, my new favorite musician, sings one of the small scripts we live: “Don’t teach me how to live like a free man... Don’t teach me to listen to the Spirit. Just give me a new law. I don’t want to know if the answers aren’t easy. So just bring it down from the mountain to me. I want a new law. I want a new law. Just give me that new law.” As Christians we say we are free from a law that forces external behavior (the righteousness of the Pharisees) but that cannot change the heart (Romans 8:3-4). Derek Webb ends his song: “What’s the use in trading a law you can never keep for one you can that cannot get you anything? Do not be afraid...” Making a “new law” out of Christianity is another of our favorite less wild lovers.
Let’s summarize our condition: we trade God’s story for less wild stories; in doing so we keep ourselves from the Kingdom by living Satan’s scripts. Something is horribly wrong. But that is not the final verdict. We do not have to continue the path of pursuing less wild lovers. Hebrews tells us that Jesus experienced life in the flesh and now stands as our perfect High Priest who offers us grace and mercy in our weakness. We can endure in giving up our lives to God’s story because Jesus offers us the way of repentance and new life. Do not be fooled: your lovers will protest your move toward faithfulness to God. It might even feel like you are losing yourself. Hear Jesus’ words: "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it” (Lk. 9:23-24). Following Jesus, living God’s story, costs us our lives. And it costs us our lives every day. Will you challenge yourself to ask, “Is God’s reign effective within me?” Will you plunge into the gospels and measure your story against the story Jesus tells there? Will you repent of your less wild lovers? Will you recklessly abandon yourself to the Romancer of your soul? I long to do this more and more in my life. Will you join me? I need you; we need each other.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Let Not Our Hearts Grow Fat
Michelle Ferguson
February 2006
Psalm 23 is a beloved prayer in the church because it reminds us of the ways in which God is faithful to provide: green pastures, quiet waters, restoration, paths of righteousness. In times of trouble, when more often than not God’s provision is less apparent, David’s psalm encourages us to hope in the ever-present God in times of trouble, even in the shadow of death. We receive direction, protection, sustenance, and purpose to the point that our cup overflows. We find hope in the promise that goodness and lovingkindness will follow us all our days and that we will dwell in God’s house for all eternity.
As churchgoers if we’re not praying Psalm 23, we’re often praying the Lord’s Prayer. We acknowledge God respectfully and ask that he provide: bread, forgiveness, deliverance.
Much of our relationship with God is about asking him to give us something. If we’re honest, most of what we ask for has nothing to do with need; we ask for what we want, what we feel like, what would be nice. And most of the time what would be “nice” has to do with something we wish to possess. Many “praise reports” detail people who believe God “gave” them new (fancier, bigger, better) RV’s, furniture, houses, etc. These three examples come straight from Mennonites, those who enjoy the title “quiet (simple) of the land.”
This should not surprise us if we actually listen to the prevailing notion of the gospel our evangelistic programs advertise. Many of us would never say we believe in a “health and wealth” gospel, but how true is that when the gospel we hear week after week is being packaged with titles such as “The Benefits of Salvation” and images such as “salvation as a ticket (or blank check) to heaven”? We try to appeal to the consumer in us: evaluate the cost-benefit analysis of the gospel and make a decision today to buy into our program of salvation. Even salvation becomes something we own, something we possess. This is not a biblical picture. Somehow what started out as something good (God’s provision) turns into something false (our manipulated version of the gospel).
I am amazed that a tradition that was borne out of its insistence on following the costly way of Jesus even unto death has capitulated to the Americanized gospel. But, as Derek Webb sings, “Everything’s for sale in the 21st century.” We work pretty hard to sell the gospel. It is no wonder that in order to do so we have to use marketing skills learned from the market society in which we live. We use sex, drugs and rock n’ roll to sell the gospel. Accept Jesus and he will give you a fulfilling marriage… Come to Jesus and find relief for your guilty feelings… Come to our church; we’ve got the best worship band in town! Oh, of course we’ve “spiritualized” everything, but when it comes down to it, following Jesus has been turned into trading the currency of morality for possessions of personal satisfaction.
How does this happen? How do we get so far off the path (the road Jesus traveled)? Hosea 13:1-14:10 is a vital passage to consider in answering this question.
God’s people Israel whom he had “taken in his arms” and led out of Egypt was caught up in worshipping the gods (idols) of the surrounding peoples. Since coming into the Promised Land, Israel knew great abundance. However: “Israel is a luxuriant vine; he produces fruit for himself. The more his fruit, the more altars he made; the richer his land, the better he made the sacred pillars” (Hosea 10:1). Israel was sated and his heart grew proud; therefore, Israel forgot God (13:6). Imagine a grotesquely obese man eating - shoving food into his mouth by the fist-full, half-chewed pieces oozing out of his mouth and dripping down off his chin. Imagine what his heart looks like – arteries clogged, blood barely squeezing its way through, tired ventricles and atrium pumping irregularly. This is Israel’s heart. They ate of the land until they were fat hearted, and then they forgot God. They prostituted themselves with other gods.
God declares his intent to destroy Israel: he will dry up the land, plunder their hoards and slay them. By this they will know that he is God: “Only I the LORD have been your God ever since the land of Egypt; you have never known a [true] God but Me, you have never had a helper other than Me” (13:4). The so-called sustenance they have gorged themselves with will be taken away from them; they will be stripped and exposed to the fact that God is their only true source of life (Fishbane 41).
As is the pattern in prophetic oracles, alongside the declaration of God’s intent to destroy Israel, is God’s disclosure of the way of deliverance. “Return, O Israel, to the LORD your God, for you have fallen because of your sin. Take words with you and return to the LORD. Say to Him: ‘Forgive all guilt and accept what is good; instead of bulls we will pay [the offering of] our lips. Assyria shall not save us, no more will re ride on steeds; nor ever again will we call our handiwork our god, since in You alone orphans find pity!’” (Hosea 14:2-4). These words remind me of Jesus’ message to the towns and villages of Israel: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). If Israel repents, God promises: “I will heal their affliction, generously will I take them back in love; for My anger has turned away from them. I will be to Israel like dew; he shall blossom like the lily, he shall strike root like a Lebanon tree. His boughs shall spread out far, his beauty shall be like the olive tree's, his fragrance like that of Lebanon. They who sit in his shade shall be revived: they shall bring to life new grain, they shall blossom like the vine; his scent shall be like the wine of Lebanon. Ephraim [shall say]:‘What more have I to do with idols? When I respond and look to Him, I become like a verdant cypress.’ Your fruit is provided by Me” (Hosea 14:5-9).
The first image we see is Israel’s fatness. The next image is God stripping the land bare: it becomes like a desert, dry and withered (see fig tree in Matt. 21:19). The image we end with is God’s promise of fruitfulness and nourishment. In the end, Israel may receive sustenance from her God, the only true source of provision, if she confesses her adultery and returns to her first love.
“He who is wise will consider these words, he who is prudent will take note of them. For the paths of the LORD are smooth; the righteous can walk on them, while sinners stumble on them” (Hosea 14:10).
In our American lives of wealth and comfort we are hardly ever confronted with our need. We often insulate ourselves from being aware of other people’s need. What if we reoriented our lives so that we were always aware of need? What if we lived in a way that created dependence on God? What if we lived constantly trusting God’s provision, knowing him as our only source of sustenance and walking with him as if we believed he is our shepherd?
Throughout the Bible God’s holy name is connected to Israel’s faithfulness to him. Our holiness glorifies his name. That is why so many psalmists pleading for God’s deliverance urge God to act on behalf of his “namesake.” When the early church prayed, “Your name be made holy,” they had in mind the sanctification of God’s people. When all things are made new, when the people of God are gathered into his kingdom, God’s name will be confessed and his “glory will be revealed.”
Now is the time when we are called to prepare ourselves, to be ready for the return of Jesus. Living confessionally must include living with hearts dependent on God. That means we have to order our whole lives to that end. Let us examine ourselves, repent where we find our hearts fat, and turn to our source, our God. Let us live lives of true abundance and refuse to settle for lives filled with the artery clogging possessions of the peoples that surround us.
Michelle Ferguson
February 2006
Psalm 23 is a beloved prayer in the church because it reminds us of the ways in which God is faithful to provide: green pastures, quiet waters, restoration, paths of righteousness. In times of trouble, when more often than not God’s provision is less apparent, David’s psalm encourages us to hope in the ever-present God in times of trouble, even in the shadow of death. We receive direction, protection, sustenance, and purpose to the point that our cup overflows. We find hope in the promise that goodness and lovingkindness will follow us all our days and that we will dwell in God’s house for all eternity.
As churchgoers if we’re not praying Psalm 23, we’re often praying the Lord’s Prayer. We acknowledge God respectfully and ask that he provide: bread, forgiveness, deliverance.
Much of our relationship with God is about asking him to give us something. If we’re honest, most of what we ask for has nothing to do with need; we ask for what we want, what we feel like, what would be nice. And most of the time what would be “nice” has to do with something we wish to possess. Many “praise reports” detail people who believe God “gave” them new (fancier, bigger, better) RV’s, furniture, houses, etc. These three examples come straight from Mennonites, those who enjoy the title “quiet (simple) of the land.”
This should not surprise us if we actually listen to the prevailing notion of the gospel our evangelistic programs advertise. Many of us would never say we believe in a “health and wealth” gospel, but how true is that when the gospel we hear week after week is being packaged with titles such as “The Benefits of Salvation” and images such as “salvation as a ticket (or blank check) to heaven”? We try to appeal to the consumer in us: evaluate the cost-benefit analysis of the gospel and make a decision today to buy into our program of salvation. Even salvation becomes something we own, something we possess. This is not a biblical picture. Somehow what started out as something good (God’s provision) turns into something false (our manipulated version of the gospel).
I am amazed that a tradition that was borne out of its insistence on following the costly way of Jesus even unto death has capitulated to the Americanized gospel. But, as Derek Webb sings, “Everything’s for sale in the 21st century.” We work pretty hard to sell the gospel. It is no wonder that in order to do so we have to use marketing skills learned from the market society in which we live. We use sex, drugs and rock n’ roll to sell the gospel. Accept Jesus and he will give you a fulfilling marriage… Come to Jesus and find relief for your guilty feelings… Come to our church; we’ve got the best worship band in town! Oh, of course we’ve “spiritualized” everything, but when it comes down to it, following Jesus has been turned into trading the currency of morality for possessions of personal satisfaction.
How does this happen? How do we get so far off the path (the road Jesus traveled)? Hosea 13:1-14:10 is a vital passage to consider in answering this question.
God’s people Israel whom he had “taken in his arms” and led out of Egypt was caught up in worshipping the gods (idols) of the surrounding peoples. Since coming into the Promised Land, Israel knew great abundance. However: “Israel is a luxuriant vine; he produces fruit for himself. The more his fruit, the more altars he made; the richer his land, the better he made the sacred pillars” (Hosea 10:1). Israel was sated and his heart grew proud; therefore, Israel forgot God (13:6). Imagine a grotesquely obese man eating - shoving food into his mouth by the fist-full, half-chewed pieces oozing out of his mouth and dripping down off his chin. Imagine what his heart looks like – arteries clogged, blood barely squeezing its way through, tired ventricles and atrium pumping irregularly. This is Israel’s heart. They ate of the land until they were fat hearted, and then they forgot God. They prostituted themselves with other gods.
God declares his intent to destroy Israel: he will dry up the land, plunder their hoards and slay them. By this they will know that he is God: “Only I the LORD have been your God ever since the land of Egypt; you have never known a [true] God but Me, you have never had a helper other than Me” (13:4). The so-called sustenance they have gorged themselves with will be taken away from them; they will be stripped and exposed to the fact that God is their only true source of life (Fishbane 41).
As is the pattern in prophetic oracles, alongside the declaration of God’s intent to destroy Israel, is God’s disclosure of the way of deliverance. “Return, O Israel, to the LORD your God, for you have fallen because of your sin. Take words with you and return to the LORD. Say to Him: ‘Forgive all guilt and accept what is good; instead of bulls we will pay [the offering of] our lips. Assyria shall not save us, no more will re ride on steeds; nor ever again will we call our handiwork our god, since in You alone orphans find pity!’” (Hosea 14:2-4). These words remind me of Jesus’ message to the towns and villages of Israel: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). If Israel repents, God promises: “I will heal their affliction, generously will I take them back in love; for My anger has turned away from them. I will be to Israel like dew; he shall blossom like the lily, he shall strike root like a Lebanon tree. His boughs shall spread out far, his beauty shall be like the olive tree's, his fragrance like that of Lebanon. They who sit in his shade shall be revived: they shall bring to life new grain, they shall blossom like the vine; his scent shall be like the wine of Lebanon. Ephraim [shall say]:‘What more have I to do with idols? When I respond and look to Him, I become like a verdant cypress.’ Your fruit is provided by Me” (Hosea 14:5-9).
The first image we see is Israel’s fatness. The next image is God stripping the land bare: it becomes like a desert, dry and withered (see fig tree in Matt. 21:19). The image we end with is God’s promise of fruitfulness and nourishment. In the end, Israel may receive sustenance from her God, the only true source of provision, if she confesses her adultery and returns to her first love.
“He who is wise will consider these words, he who is prudent will take note of them. For the paths of the LORD are smooth; the righteous can walk on them, while sinners stumble on them” (Hosea 14:10).
In our American lives of wealth and comfort we are hardly ever confronted with our need. We often insulate ourselves from being aware of other people’s need. What if we reoriented our lives so that we were always aware of need? What if we lived in a way that created dependence on God? What if we lived constantly trusting God’s provision, knowing him as our only source of sustenance and walking with him as if we believed he is our shepherd?
Throughout the Bible God’s holy name is connected to Israel’s faithfulness to him. Our holiness glorifies his name. That is why so many psalmists pleading for God’s deliverance urge God to act on behalf of his “namesake.” When the early church prayed, “Your name be made holy,” they had in mind the sanctification of God’s people. When all things are made new, when the people of God are gathered into his kingdom, God’s name will be confessed and his “glory will be revealed.”
Now is the time when we are called to prepare ourselves, to be ready for the return of Jesus. Living confessionally must include living with hearts dependent on God. That means we have to order our whole lives to that end. Let us examine ourselves, repent where we find our hearts fat, and turn to our source, our God. Let us live lives of true abundance and refuse to settle for lives filled with the artery clogging possessions of the peoples that surround us.
Monday, August 27, 2007
Purify Our Imaginations
Michelle Ferguson
January 2006
We are people shaped by what we encounter. Whether by television, music, movies, newspapers, advertisements, relationships, or church services, we are constantly being influenced. What enters into us by way of sight, sound, smell, taste or touch becomes part of who we are. The scary thing about living in a society where we are bombarded by stimuli is we cope with encountering so many things by becoming desensitized. We become people who do not even realize how many influences surround us. We become unaware of what is getting in and shaping us. And we’re probably so tired from all the stimulation (whether we’re aware of it or not) that we just want to shut down, check out… go to sleep. We do not feel we have any extra energy to spend on anything. We become people who go through each day guided by that of which we are not aware. And because we are tired, we don’t question it. We “go with the flow.” And as we are carried along with that flow, we become people who gather up extra energy only to attend to crises. Unless we are forced to, we do not often swim against the current that is sweeping us downriver.
I realize that I am living that pattern when I am overwhelmed with feeling that my life is out of control. Things are happening around me and to me, but I am not living the way that I want. Life may not be “bad,” but life is not all I know God has promised it to be. I find myself not being the person God has called me to be. And I wonder why.
When I swim out and take time to sit on the shore, I gain some perspective on the river. And I see that it is taking me where it wants to go by the force of its flow. But where I want to go, where I am called as a follower of Jesus Christ is a location different than the destination of the river.
On the train to class last week I read Matthew’s gospel; on my way home I read Mark’s gospel. It was a surprising experience to finish those two gospels and realize that it had been a very long time since I last read any of the gospels all the way through. Now, I am a seminary student. My full-time job is to study. However, though I may study sections of scripture and read thousands of pages of biblical scholarship and theology each quarter, I haven’t sat with the text of the bible and just read its story in a while.
How in the world am I supposed to be shaped by the good news Jesus Christ proclaimed if I am not living in that text? Jesus said, “If you abide in my word, you are my disciples indeed. And you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” Paul said, “Do not be conformed the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may discern the will of God, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” I am not saying that I never read the bible, but I am realizing that I do not even come close to reading it enough. Is there “enough”? Am I a person shaped by the word of God, or do all the other things that surround me and influence me win as a shaping force in my life?
In the second sermon you let me share with you during Advent I said,
Ellen Davis writes:
We are being shaped every moment. And by what? Things of which we are unaware? Or the story that we have said we believe? Will we protect ourselves from the “pattern of this world” that seems to saturate the very air we breathe? Will we abide in the word that transforms us?
Michelle Ferguson
January 2006
We are people shaped by what we encounter. Whether by television, music, movies, newspapers, advertisements, relationships, or church services, we are constantly being influenced. What enters into us by way of sight, sound, smell, taste or touch becomes part of who we are. The scary thing about living in a society where we are bombarded by stimuli is we cope with encountering so many things by becoming desensitized. We become people who do not even realize how many influences surround us. We become unaware of what is getting in and shaping us. And we’re probably so tired from all the stimulation (whether we’re aware of it or not) that we just want to shut down, check out… go to sleep. We do not feel we have any extra energy to spend on anything. We become people who go through each day guided by that of which we are not aware. And because we are tired, we don’t question it. We “go with the flow.” And as we are carried along with that flow, we become people who gather up extra energy only to attend to crises. Unless we are forced to, we do not often swim against the current that is sweeping us downriver.
I realize that I am living that pattern when I am overwhelmed with feeling that my life is out of control. Things are happening around me and to me, but I am not living the way that I want. Life may not be “bad,” but life is not all I know God has promised it to be. I find myself not being the person God has called me to be. And I wonder why.
When I swim out and take time to sit on the shore, I gain some perspective on the river. And I see that it is taking me where it wants to go by the force of its flow. But where I want to go, where I am called as a follower of Jesus Christ is a location different than the destination of the river.
On the train to class last week I read Matthew’s gospel; on my way home I read Mark’s gospel. It was a surprising experience to finish those two gospels and realize that it had been a very long time since I last read any of the gospels all the way through. Now, I am a seminary student. My full-time job is to study. However, though I may study sections of scripture and read thousands of pages of biblical scholarship and theology each quarter, I haven’t sat with the text of the bible and just read its story in a while.
How in the world am I supposed to be shaped by the good news Jesus Christ proclaimed if I am not living in that text? Jesus said, “If you abide in my word, you are my disciples indeed. And you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” Paul said, “Do not be conformed the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may discern the will of God, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” I am not saying that I never read the bible, but I am realizing that I do not even come close to reading it enough. Is there “enough”? Am I a person shaped by the word of God, or do all the other things that surround me and influence me win as a shaping force in my life?
In the second sermon you let me share with you during Advent I said,
We are called into this story. And the only way in which we can truly enter in and live in this story is to know it as well as Jesus did. And to be readers of the story who encounter this story imaginatively. My favorite Old Testament theologian, Ellen Davis, writes extensively about imagination – and about shaping our imaginations by the text in order to then read the text imaginatively. We can’t manipulate the text to make it say whatever so-called imaginative thing we want it to. We have to submit our imaginations to the story that began at creation and be shaped so that we can engage the text over and over as storytellers.
Ellen Davis writes:
Consider this: imagination is the capacity to envision the existence of something that does not yet exist; we see this in the imagination of the artist. So it makes sense to say that the creation of the world, the covenant between the Creator of heaven and earth and an old man named Abraham, the creation of a nation of priests out of a band of runaway slaves, the incarnation of the Godhead in human flesh, the explosion of death’s finality, the inclusion of the Gentiles in God’s covenant with Israel – all these and more are remarkably imaginative acts on God’s part, acts through which God envisions and effects something totally new, totally unimaginable before it was brought into being. If we are faithful readers of the stories of these imaginative acts, we will find our own imaginations expanded and transformed. Scripture will claim us and make us into new people. (Ellen F. Davis & Richard B. Hays, The Art of Reading Scripture, xvi)The people we will become if we submit ourselves to abiding in scripture are people who resist and escape the force of the river’s flow. We will be people who strike out on the path of Christ because his word will truly be a lamp unto our feet. Life won’t be something that carries us along; it will be the intentional pursuit of the claiming and proclaiming the abundance of God’s promise.
We are being shaped every moment. And by what? Things of which we are unaware? Or the story that we have said we believe? Will we protect ourselves from the “pattern of this world” that seems to saturate the very air we breathe? Will we abide in the word that transforms us?
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Ash Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Bergen Family gathering
OT Reading: Isaiah 58:1-12
Psalm: Psalm 103:8-14
NT Reading: 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
Gospel: Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
Homily – Isaiah 58:1-12
Isaiah’s words will be our focus this evening. They may seem, at first glace, simple or one-dimensional: God isn’t listening because Israel isn’t getting it right. However, if we listen closely, I believe we will hear greater complexity (multi-dimensionality) than we have previously assumed. His words are given to us today, Ash Wednesday, to reveal something about the connection between dust/ash and our human identity. Let us listen.
God responds.
So far so good
When trying to understand this situation, two scenarios might enter our imagination.
I work as a substitute teacher. There are some very challenging days in my line of work. Imagine with me. I am in a forth grade classroom. They are trying to get away with as much as they can because I am not their regular teacher. I am supposed to teach them a new math concept. I explain. I show them several examples on the board. I answer a few questions the students have. I summarize. Then I assign a number of problems for them to do on their own. Inevitably I get one or both of the following questions: “What are we supposed to be doing?” “I don’t get it; how do you do it?” Nine times out of ten the kids who are asking these questions are the kids who were not paying attention when I was teaching the lesson. At this point I try to contain my frustration. I am impatient. I am thinking, “You weren’t paying attention, why should I help you?” Or, in my most stressed out moments, I think, “You haven’t got it by now? You’re hopeless.” I don’t say these things, but I do think them at times. Most of the time, our schedule forces me to leave some students behind.
Is this how we imagine God is with us? Impatiently tapping his foot? Feeling his blood boil? Trying to restrain his anger or frustration? Thinking we’re hopeless? Reading to leave us behind and move to those who are more successful? At his wits end?
Remember our Psalm for today; the psalmist seems to think this is not an accurate picture of God: God is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love (103:8).
Another scenario we might imagine is this: A child tries to get her daddy’s attention. “Look at me. See what I can do?” Underneath those pleas for attention she is thinking: “Affirm me. Tell me I am valuable. Tell me I’m worth something. Tell me you love me. Notice, daddy; please notice.” Dad ignores her or shrugs her off or tells her to go play with her brother or talk to her mother. He’s too busy – watching TV, reading the paper, working in the garage.
Is this how we imagine God? Ignoring us because we’re not worth his time or attention? Is he telling us that we are at the core worthless? Do we have to work harder to impress him so that he’ll notice and give us what we need – his attention, his affirmation, his love? Might our performance win him over?
These two scenarios might play themselves out in our imaginations; however, the images of God they suggest are not the image the text reveals.
What is really going on then?
Israel is trying to measure up in order to sway God. If we do this, God will do this. This line of thinking presupposes that God needs convincing to be on our side. In this case, worship is a payment. What we do is mean to manipulate God, cause God to act the way we want him to. Our “worship” becomes a transaction or leverage with which to bribe or bargain with God. This line of thinking also presupposes that it is what we do that makes us the people of God. We think that our relationship with God, the covenant, is held up by our initiative. This kind of relationship is concerned with status, not relation. If we follow the rules, our relationship with God will be in right-standing; if we break the rules our relationship is in jeopardy. God will be put off or angry and we’ll have to make up for that. This is not covenant; this is contract. If someone breaks a contract, the other party is free to, and in our culture expected to, disregard or break the contract as well. This is not so with God. He is faithful no matter what.
In this passage we see Israel trying to get the law to pay out rewards, and in so doing she resists right relationship with God. Israel is interested in religion, not relationship; she wants self-determined status, not revelation – God’s self-disclosure. This is called autonomy: a law (nomos) unto one’s self (autos), self as the determiner of reality. Autonomy says humans must get to God, get him to act based on human action. Autonomy tries to set up fixed rules, human-made boundaries, instead of entering an ongoing relationship of trusting interaction with God. Essentially the autonomous human being acts as if he is in charge and needs nothing because he can manipulate everything, even God. Living in this way gives us a sense of security rooted in ourselves. If we want God to act, we know the proper words to say and behaviors to act out. If we don’t want God, we do nothing and he stays up in heaven. He comes when he’s called to act according to our wishes.
This is not right relationship; in fact this is not relationship at all. Isaiah’s words show God revealing right relationship, covenant relationship. That relationship is rooted in God being Creator and us being his creation.
God is the Creator of all that is. He is faithful in relationship to his creation. His faithfulness comes out of who he is, not out of any external factor – for example, human behavior. God, the Creator, made human beings and invited them into relationship. Humans were created to be in faithful relationship with God. Part of what this means is that humans must recognize that they are creatures, not Creator. As creatures, faithful relationship with God includes trust, dependence and humility. Trust is ongoing; we walk with God day by day trusting in his live, provision, protection, and so on. Dependence is part of that trust: we depend on God to be the Creator and sustainer of his creation, including us. Humility is the recognition of our identity as creatures and God’s identity as Creator. We do not attempt to be the Creator or try to treat God like a creature.
Our Creator God reveals to us creatures what our creaturely life is to look like; God reveals to us how to be human: he does this in the Law, through the prophets and in wisdom literature; he does this ultimately in Jesus Christ.
In our Isaiah text, God cuts through Israel’s complaints, their attempted manipulation and says:
God’s response shows that part of being in right relationship with the Creator includes being in right relationship with one another. Our creaturely relationships are marked by love and interdependence. We are to care for and take care of one another. We are not to exert power over one another: we are not the Creator; we are all creatures. We’re called to labor with one another and for one another in this human life God has made possible.
Obviously we haven’t “gotten it.” Remember the Psalm again – he is merciful, gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He has been for us since the beginning. He is laboring to recreate us – to restore our true humanity and have us live whole lives, lives at peace. He initiates. He pursues. He is faithful, and his faithfulness is not dependent on our faithfulness (Rom 3:3).
God invites us to trust his vision for our humanity and to live as the creatures our Creator intended. God invites us to experience restored humanity by living by faith – in the faithfulness he has extended and asks us to extend to him and to one another.
God is not a Father that cannot be bothered. God is the Father of the prodigal son, who ignored shame and convention to embrace the son whom he loves. God is the woman who searches after her lost coin, sweeping out the entire house if need be. We do not have to secure God’s love for us because he is faithful, and his love endures. We do not have to work to get noticed by God; he is the God who hears his children’s prayers and cries.
God invites us to cease striving to earn what he offers freely. God invites us to trust his love, his faithfulness. God calls us into a relationship that can be counted on, a covenant relationship. And within that relationship, God liberates us to be trusting, loving, faithful people toward him and toward one another.
Ashes – We are but dust and to dust we shall return.
Psalm 103:14 God knows how we were made
Genesis 2:1-7 this is how we were created
Genesis 1:31 this is very good
“I Boast No More” Caedmon’s Call
This Lent, let us be honest about the picture of God we imagine, and let us recognize how those images keep us in cycles of bondage – the bondage of striving, working, earning. Let us be honest about the way we take comfort in rules and law instead of trusting the relationship God offers. Let us be honest about the ways we assert our independence and reject our true humanity. During the weeks of Lent, let us repent of our distorted images of God and our distorted images of humanity. Let us immerse ourselves in revelation that will set us free to be human, creature in glorious covenant with our Creator.
1st Sunday in Lent, February 25, 2007
Bergen Family gathering
Play:
I Boast No More
I Want a Broken Heart
Ask someone to pray.
Read:
Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16
Romans 10:8b-13
Luke 4:1-13
Sermon
On Wednesday we used ashes to remind us of the fact that we were made from the dust and to that dust we shall return. Understanding our human identity as “from the ash” or “from the earth” is not to say that we are “lower than dirt” or “merely dust” as if the ground we come from is a symbol of what is worthless or tainted. We listened to Psalm 103 tell us that God remembers that we are dust and followed that to Genesis 1 and 2, the creation accounts and heard: In the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens… the LORD God formed ha-adam (human) from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and ha-adam (human) became a living being… God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. The creation, including the human, God deems very good. The fall was just that – a fall. We fell from our “very good” humanness to a sub-humanness, a human identity wrapped up in autonomy, rejection of our limits, our dependence, our need, our inability to generate life for ourselves in our own image for our own ends. Scripture tells us that that life is no life at all. Scripture also tells that God, the faithful Creator, is working to re-create creation – including humanity. He is working to bring into being new creation in all his creatures. And that is what we are: creatures. We are not gods; we are not infinite; we are not self-sufficient. And that is good, very good. Mark Baker writes in his book, Religious No More: “In contrast to individualism, God lovingly invites us to experience our authentic personhood, not by peeling away layers of interconnectedness and interdependence, but by embracing them” (63).
Today is the first Sunday in Lent. This is the Sunday we hear about Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, for this story is the story we live into during Lent. We may choose to follow the Spirit into the wilderness and fast with Jesus. In giving something up we may remind ourselves every time we want that thing of Jesus’ experience of hunger and isolation. In giving something up we may experience the weakness Jesus experienced. In giving something up we may become aware of the ways we rely on the things of the world to sustain us instead of the true Bread of Life, God’s Word, Jesus himself. And isn’t that what we are supposed to realize as we seek to embrace our “authentic personhood,” our true humanity – that one of the ways we keep ourselves in bondage to our sub-human existence is by forgetting where we come from – forgetting the source of our life? Not only did God fashion us from the dust, he breathed life into us from his very self. We often say “I am nothing without God” and I’m afraid we often embrace the connotations of “nothing” when we say this: we think – I am nothing, I am sick, broken, wrong, hopeless. We set God up as this perfect being and we see ourselves as wholly imperfect. We see God as seeing us as disgusting, unable to please him, worthless. Isn’t this the way we feel about ourselves? Our fear? And we project that feeling, that fear onto God. It is like the child who gets dismissed by a father who cannot be bothered: I am worthless, she thinks; I must work harder to be found worthwhile to my daddy. But on Wednesday we heard that this picture is not a picture of our God. Instead, when we say “I am nothing without God” we are trying to confess that God is our source, God gives us life, God sustains our life, without God we have no life. This is what we mean when we say that life is found in Christ. Outside of “in Christ” what we have is not life at all because we have not broken out of our slavery to sub-human existence. So when we give something up, when we participate in a Lenten fast, we start recognizing how we try to create or sustain life apart from God.
This Lent I am going to give up fried food. Why am I doing this? Because when I have a stressful day or week, I am too quick to go to Taco Bell, Carl’s Jr., Generals, Sonic… I am too quick to comfort myself instead of seeking comfort in the true Source of comfort. When I am bored, I am too quick to want to eat something flavorful (and the food that often comes to my mind first when I want something particularly tasty is fried food) instead of seeking the truly nourishing Word of God that fills my days with joy and purpose. When I am lazy, I am too quick to choose fast and convenient (which often means fried) food instead of that which is healthy and energy giving; my laziness gets reinforced instead of challenged, and I am less fit for the path a disciple must walk. I am trying to give up what often threatens to make me forget how I need God, and how my humanity, my creature-identity is connected to him, the Creator, the giver of life. I am trying to submit myself to learning the truth of who God is and who I am and how I am to live out that identity.
I invite you to participate in this Lenten season by following the Spirit out into the wilderness and fasting. Let us take a few minutes to quietly examine what we can choose to give up, something that we might rely on in place of our Source, the Creator God. After allowing yourself a few minutes to prayerfully consider this, spend a few minutes being vulnerable enough with each other to ask, “What do you think I use in this way that I might be able to give up for Lent so that I can position myself to learn the truth about God and myself?” And as we ask each other, let us be discerning and gentle, slow to deal out answers and quick to consider the health and wholeness of the other person.
** 8 minutes **
Play: This World Has Nothing
Turn with me to Romans 10. We have heard this passage a hundred times. It is part of the “Roman Road” or “Steps to Peace with God” approach we imagine when we talk about evangelism. It is the place we turn for assurance that even though we are not perfect, we can know we are saved. We use this passage to convince ourselves that all it takes is “faith” – understood in terms of knowing the right things about Jesus and “confessing” them. If we are Baptist (which is the denomination I belonged to when I “accepted” Christ) we might understand that the right way to do this confessing is by walking down the aisle of a church while a hymn like “Just As I Am” is playing and pray the sinner’s prayer with the pastor. If we are a teenager at a youth convention, we might understand that the right way to do this confessing is by raising our hand after the speaker has asked everyone to bow their heads and close their eyes. I would like us to put aside the images we have and make room in our imaginations to see something else.
"The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart" (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. The scripture says, "No one who believes in him will be put to shame." For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. For, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved." (Romans 10:8b-13)
Up to this point Paul has been arguing that both Jews and Gentiles are included in Christ as the people of God. His argument has foreseen several objections people, particularly the Jews, might have: one of those objections have to do with the law. How can you, Paul, say that the Gentiles are welcomed into the people of God; they don’t obey the law!? They aren’t circumcised; they eat unclean foods; they do not know anything about the Sabbath. These are the things that define a Jew; these are the things that draw the boundary lines for the people of God. Are you saying the law is evil? Are you saying God is giving up on what he put in place? Is that God a God to be trusted? We often read what Paul writes and assume some of the same things: Paul is saying that salvation no longer comes by way of the law; salvation is now by faith. God is changing tactics: now instead of working for perfection, God gives us a perfect status if we say we believe in Jesus. So we come to our passage and hear: If you believe Jesus is the Son of God and that he died for your sins and that God raised him from the dead you will be saved. Salvation, the way we normally hear it, is largely a matter of knowing the right thing, and it must be so that we can stay as far away as possible from “salvation by works” – we do this by leaving out what we do (the law) from our understanding of salvation. A salvation understood in terms of knowledge is largely a salvation defined in terms of status. “Being saved” has to do with God seeing us as perfect even though we are not; it has to do with our future in heaven, not our time on earth. It seems to be that this notion of salvation leaves things just the way they are. It is God that changes (what he sees, the status he affords us), not we who change.
Now, I don’t know about you, but when I read Scripture I hear about a gospel that turns the world upside down and inside out. I hear about the Kingdom of God breaking in now. I hear about captives being set free and the blind seeing and the poor being lifted up now. And I hear those things described as salvation. Is this the salvation we understand or experience?
Might there be something else in Romans 10 to hear? In these 5 and a half verses, what do we notice? I will share one thing I notice.
Paul quotes the Hebrew Bible.
The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart. (vs. 8b; Deut. 30:14)
Turn to Deuteronomy 30. Moses is giving Torah (the law) to the people just before they enter into the promised land. In chapter 29 he warns that some may not “choose life” by following Torah: It may be that there is among you a man or woman, or a family or tribe, whose heart is already turning away from the LORD our God to serve the gods of those nations. It may be that there is among you a root sprouting poisonous and bitter growth. All who hear the words of this oath and bless themselves, thinking in their hearts, "We are safe even though we go our own stubborn ways" (thus bringing disaster on moist and dry alike)-- the LORD will be unwilling to pardon them, for the LORD's anger and passion will smoke against them. All the curses written in this book will descend on them, and the LORD will blot out their names from under heaven. (18-20)
So chapter 30 goes on:
When all these things have happened to you, the blessings and the curses that I have set before you, if you call them to mind among all the nations where the LORD your God has driven you, and return to the LORD your God, and you and your children obey him with all your heart and with all your soul, just as I am commanding you today, then the LORD your God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you, gathering you again from all the peoples among whom the LORD your God has scattered you. Even if you are exiled to the ends of the world, from there the LORD your God will gather you, and from there he will bring you back.
In other words, he will save you.
The LORD your God will bring you into the land that your ancestors possessed, and you will possess it; he will make you more prosperous and numerous than your ancestors. Moreover, the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, in order that you may live. The LORD your God will put all these curses on your enemies and on the adversaries who took advantage of you. Then you shall again obey the LORD, observing all his commandments that I am commanding you today, and the LORD your God will make you abundantly prosperous in all your undertakings, in the fruit of your body, in the fruit of your livestock, and in the fruit of your soil. For the LORD will again take delight in prospering you, just as he delighted in prospering your ancestors, when you obey the LORD your God by observing his commandments and decrees that are written in this book of the law, because you turn to the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. It is not in heaven, that you should say, "Who will go up to heaven for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?" Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, "Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?
Paul has just quoted these verses in 10:6-7.
No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe. See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the LORD your God, walking in his ways, and observing his commandments, decrees, and ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you do not hear, but are led astray to bow down to other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall perish; you shall not live long in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days, so that you may live in the land that the LORD swore to give to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.
Moses is talking about Torah/law; Paul is talking about “the word of faith we proclaim.” Moses says, “It is not too difficult; it is not far away.” Paul says, “That word of faith is so near to you, it is on your lips and in your heart.” Moses connects following Torah with abundant life. Isn’t that what the Jesus Paul is preaching offers us? The end or goal of Torah is life, salvation – being rescued from our waywardness and the death that waywardness produces and being brought back into right relationship with God and one another which produces life. Moses says: Choose life. Paul puts Jesus where Moses put Torah. This is not to say that Paul does away with Torah – in earlier chapters he makes this clear. What Paul understands, however, is that in the same way that Torah produces life, Jesus produces life. After we have gone astray, Jesus saves us from our deathly existence and brings us into life. Jon Isaak, professor at MBBS, in his recently published commentary on Romans, writes: “[Paul] cites Deuteronomy 30:12-14, not to contrast the law, but also to show how the law’s goal is really also about God’s righteous faithfulness: namely, God can be trusted to bring creation to its goal of renewed and true covenantal relations. To do this Paul transforms the text from one concerning Torah commandments to a text concerning the messiah and faith (Johnson 1997:160)” (186).
Paul quotes the Hebrew Bible again:
No one who believes in him will be put to shame. (vs. 11; Isa. 28:16)
Paul draws on the promise in Isaiah 28 that the cornerstone being laid in Zion is to be trusted – that stone will bring salvation. Paul understands that stone to be Jesus. So what is he saying? Those who trust in Jesus to bring about the goal of Torah will not be put to shame, will not be disappointed; Jesus will bring salvation – life. The life Moses told the people in Deuteronomy would be produced by following Torah is the life Jesus makes possible. In an earlier chapter, Paul writes: What the law could not do because of sin, God did in Jesus. The law was kept from doing what it was intended to do because of sin; yet Jesus has defeated sin and death and so can be trusted to bring about the goal of the law: life.
Paul is saying that it isn’t the works of the law, the human initiative and effort, that brings about life (salvation); it is God’s initiative, God’s gracious gifting that works life. Because it is Jesus who is the end/goal of Torah, he offers the life that Moses said would come through Torah. We can trust this.
Paul quotes the Hebrew Bible a third time in this passage:
Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. (vs. 13; Joel 2:32)
In the end things will get bad. Sort of like when God came to Noah and told him to build the ark. Things were bad. Humans were out of control. They were leading deathly existences. They were living sub-humanly. In the story with Noah, God flooded the earth, wiping out the mess of human life. But we know God promises never to do that again. In the New Testament, Jesus says we’ve entered the last days, the end times. Israel knows from her tradition that God will only let all evil go so far. These last days will be evil days, and then God will act to wipe out evil. In Joel we hear how this will happen, and we know that Joel’s words are connected to these last days because Luke quotes Joel in Acts just before Pentecost. Joel says:
Did you hear it? What Paul quotes?
Then everyone who calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved.
How will God defeat evil this time? Not by flood, but by Jesus’ faithfulness. Evil is overcome in Christ. Life is restored in Christ. We are saved in Christ. And saved from what? Evil! Sin! Death! Our sub-human lives! Like being brought back from exile, or like being freed from slavery in Egypt – we are saved to live life, to follow the ways of our Creator and live fully and truly human lives. Lives dependent on the Source of life; lives sustained by covenant relationship – faithfulness to God and to one another.
Jon Isaak writes:
“God’s covenant is a function of God’s gracious election, Paul insists; it is not about Israel’s efforts to find God or to find the messiah. No matter “how high” or “how low” Israel looks to attain the goal of the covenant, these efforts have no value since salvation is a gift. This gift is now present; Christ already “came down” from heaven and was “raised” from the dead. Thus, a text that originally proclaimed the law’s nearness now proclaims Christ’s nearness who is the true content (goal) of the law. In other words, since Jesus is the goal of law, Jesus is thus the living law (Torah). Paul’s intertextual reading results in a tightly connected argument as follows: “(a) there is one God for all. He gifts those who call on him. (b) All those who call on the name of the Lord will be saved. (c) Those whose hearts have faith that God raised Jesus from the dead call him Lord. (d) Those who have faith in him shall not be put to shame” (Johnson 1997:161)” (186-187).
Paul is showing how both Jews and Gentiles can be a part of the people of God. He is showing how legalistic observance of the law that seeks to be the source of one’s own righteousness is not the way of Torah. Torah sought to bring about faithful relationship between Creator and creature because that relationship is the source of salvation and life. The Jews have missed the point about Torah. In Christ, however, we have Jesus as the “living Torah.” He brings about righteousness – right and faithful relationship between Creator and creature. That righteousness is God’s gift – meaning, God was faithful when we were not by coming down on his own initiative in the person of Jesus Christ. He did this because he loved us. And Jesus, as a man, showed us faithful relationship with God. He trusted him, followed him, did what humanity was created to do. He reveals true humanity. And he asks us to have faith in him – not just to know the right answer about who he is, but to be faithful in the way that he is faithful. Because as we live out the humanity God called “very good,” we will have life indeed. We will be saved from the deathliness we are slaves to in our sub-human ways of living; we will be freed to be human in faithful and life-giving relationship with our Creator, our God.
After following Paul into the Hebrew Bible, how might we hear anew our Romans text?
"The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart" (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. The scripture says, "No one who believes in him will be put to shame." For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. For, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved." (Romans 10:8b-13)
Our Gospel text, the story of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness, the narrative context of our Lenten season, reveals Jesus showing us how to be truly human. As a human dependent on the Creator for life and health, he refuses to choose another way. He refuses to try fulfilling his mission another way, Satan’s way. He refuses to trust that there is another way to bring about salvation and life. He trusts God. He leans on God. He understands his identity out of what God reveals not out of what Satan tempts him with. Jesus, in his weakness and neediness, trusts God’s way. It may not make sense (does life by way of death make sense to us?). It may not be the way the world works. But it is God’s way and that way can be trusted. In fact, it is the only way to life.
As we enter into this wilderness story with Jesus by way of fasting, we may become aware of the following: the ways we reject drawing our identity from God; how we fail to see our dependence as part of the goodness of our humanity; our lack of trust in God’s way in the face of so many other options. Let us repent and choose life by seeing how near Jesus is to us – and by following in trust (walking by faith) the way he reveals.
Play: To Trust You; Walk By Faith
3rd Sunday in Lent, March 11, 2007
Bergen Family gathering
Play:
Be Thou My Vision, Ginny Owens
Pray.
Our Lenten texts seem to be leading us on a journey of imagining God and our human identity anew. This morning we will continue this journey.
Read:
Exodus 3:1-15
Play:
I Am, Bebo Norman
Read:
Psalm 63:1-8
Play:
I Will Lift My Eyes, Bebo Norman
Silent Prayer.
Read:
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
Read:
Luke 13:1-9
Sermon
I’m calling today’s sermon “Presence & Seeing” because there are two threads I’ve followed in our Exodus passage: 11 times in our passage (and at least 5 more times in the section this passage belongs to) we hear words having to do with seeing; no less than 8 times (and at least 8 more times in the larger section) we hear language of being, presence. I’ll read it again, this time from Everett Fox’s translation; as I do, listen with these questions in mind: Who is seeing what? and Who is present and what is that presence like?
Read Everett Fox’s translation, Exodus 3:1-15
First, Moses is present in the wilderness. He has fled from Egypt after killing an Egyptian taskmaster, and now he is tending his father-in-law’s flock. Present in this place in this way, Moses sees God’s messenger. So, God’s messenger is present; his presence is manifested in a bush on fire. Moses looks closer: he sees this bush is not burning up. Moses turns to see this sight. Now, God sees that Moses has turned to see. At first Moses was just there, but now he has drawn near; Moses has made himself present to this presence he has seen.
God, manifested in the burning bush, but also somehow looking on, calls out to Moses. Moses responds: Here I am. Here I am; I am present. God says: Do not come near. Moses has turned aside to see, but God instructs Moses to keep some distance. Our text gives us the reason “for this is holy ground.” God’s being there orders the way Moses is there.
Next, God reveals himself: I am the God of your father. Moses hides his face. He shields himself from looking upon God. This is interesting. God’s presence entices Moses to draw nearer and to look; yet God makes sure Moses doesn’t come too close and when Moses understands that it is God who is there, he is compelled to avert his gaze.
Then God speaks: I have seen. I have seen my people suffering in Egypt. And I have come down. I have come to save my people. God’s seeing influences God’s showing up.
We have Moses. Then we have God’s messenger or God himself. Now we have Israel, God’s people. And listen to how God describes the situation in verse 9: So now, here, the cry of the Children of Israel has come to me… Who or what else is present? The cries of Israel. Israel’s cries of suffering have made their presence known – they have become visible - up where God is and now God has come down. Much like Moses turned aside to see the bush on fire, God came down to see the cause of these cries. What God sees moves him to act.
And how does God act? He sends. Moses, you go; I am sending you. God wants Moses to be present in Egypt. And what kind of presence is asked of Moses? Delivering presence. Moses is to be in that place in a saving way.
Of course, we know this story well. Moses argues a bit. Are you sure, God? You want me? Who am I? What can my being there do? How can my presence make any difference? I really don’t see how I can help. Pharaoh is there. (Ah, we have another character now). His presence controls what happens, not mine. Don’t you see that?
And how does God respond? Oh yes, Moses. You’re right. I guess I didn’t look hard enough, assess the situation well enough. Pharaoh is there. And his presence does rule. That is clear to anyone looking on. Right? Wrong. God says: I will be-there with you. There is another presence. Oh, and Moses, just in case you’re not sure, I’ll even give you something you can see that will remind you I’m there. This sign I have sent to be with you. But of course the sign God gives is a sign that is supposed to happen after Moses delivers Israel.
So Moses responds: Um, God, if I go – I’m not saying I will – but if I do, do you have a name I can pass along? Now, we don’t quite understand the significance of this request in our culture. Everett Fox includes commentary on this for us: “When Moses asks God for his name… he asks for more than a title… in the context of Egyptian magic, knowing the true name of a person or a god meant that one could coerce him, or at the very least understand his true essence. [Moses] foresees that the slaves will want to be able to call on this power that has promised to deliver them” (268, 270). If Moses could get God’s name, Moses could control God’s presence, when and how he is there.
God answers with the answer that is not an answer; he gives a name that is not a name. EHYEH ASHER EHYEH. What does this mean? What do your bibles say?
KJV – I am that I am
NKJV, NIV, NASB, NRSV – I am who I am
NJB – I am he who is
Everett Fox renders the name: I will be-there howsoever I will be-there. Why?
Beyond our small passage into the rest of the section our piece belongs to, God keeps assuring Moses that God will indeed be-there. He says it again: EHYEH, I-WILL-BE-THERE sends me to you. And then he gives Moses the identification he has already given him when Moses first turned aside to see. “The God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob” (15 & 6). It is with this that the lectionary ends our passage for this day. Is it significant that God has identified himself in this way twice? Why repeat himself? Could it be that God is recalling the way he has been-there before in the history of his people so that they can remember who this God is and trust that he will be-there for them again?
You may be making connections and playing out implications of this reading already. I’d like to make two observations. First, presence precedes seeing. Israel’s cry became present before God and then God saw Israel’s oppression. God came down, becoming present in the burning bush and then Moses saw. Moses turned, directed his presence, and God saw. God revealed himself, identifying his presence, and Moses hides his eyes (though we can say that he “sees” because he understands whose presence he is in and responds accordingly). God is sending Moses to be present for Israel and they will see that God has also been there by the sign that God gives. Second observation: God’s presence orders our presence. In one sense of the word, God’s showing up demands our turning to see even if only because we’re curious as to what is going on. In another sense of the word, God’s being-there shapes where and how we will be. Moses takes off his shoes. Moses cannot control God’s presence. Moses is sent. Israel will be delivered (even if Pharaoh seems to be the dominating presence).
What do you hear in all this in light of our journey of seeing anew God and our human identity?
I will leave you with one more thought before I send you off to ponder this story on your own. One of my favorite Old Testament theologians, Walter Brueggemann, has shaped this thought in me. He suggests that before we can live a new reality, we have to be able to imagine it. So, before you and I can be present in any transformed or transforming way, before we can put on the new, before we can live into the kingdom, we have to see it. Yet, that which we are given to see is much like the sign God gives Moses – something we see after the promised is fulfilled. We live in a unique time, however, because we are in between that which was given and that which is to come. The ultimate revelation of God’s presence has already come. God-with-us, Jesus the Christ, the one we seek during this Lenten season, has been-there already. And yet, he is to come again. We still await deliverance from this oppression we suffer. And as we look forward to Easter, as we long for the darkness of Lent to end, we follow the way of Jesus. We enter into history and walk his story, anticipating the end we have been promised is coming. God sent Moses. Jesus has sent his disciples. That includes us. We are to be-there. We are to be present in liberating ways. Because God-(is)-with-us. Because we’ve turned and seen. Because our presence brings God’s presence to a people awaiting salvation. That is what we were made for, why our being was made present at all. Out of the earth our Creator shaped us and we became present (alive) when he became present (breathed his spirit) in us. In order for us to live fully human lives, the lives God created us for, we must see. Using Brueggemann’s language – we must imagine. And imagination is hopeful seeing, seeing that which has not yet happened. Imagination is stretching out in trust, seeing that which God promises. In the face of what we may see with our eyes, in the face of what may appear one way, we must imagine according to the promising presence of God. Unless a new reality is opened to us through the door of imagination, unless we dare to see that which defies all that appears to be, we won’t step into and be present in that world, in that kingdom. God reminded Moses of how he has been-there so that he would trust how he will be-there. These stories are reminders for us as we seek to imagine how God might be-there for and in us as he seeks to respond to a world crying out for liberation. Can we imagine? Will we see? Will we exercise trust in the way our psalmist last week and today does? Praising God for that which he will do as if he has already done it? Let us sing a prayer, asking God to help us see that we might be faithfully.
Sing:
Be Thou My Vision
Pray.
4th Sunday in Lent, March 18, 2007
Bergen family gathering
Ask someone to pray.
Read:
AUDREY HINDES: I'm missing my pizza: a mid-Lent pep talk (Fresno Bee)
Read:
Joshua 5:9-12
The LORD said to Joshua, "Today I have rolled away from you the disgrace of Egypt." And so that place is called Gilgal to this day. While the Israelites were camped in Gilgal they kept the passover in the evening on the fourteenth day of the month in the plains of Jericho. On the day after the passover, on that very day, they ate the produce of the land, unleavened cakes and parched grain. The manna ceased on the day they ate the produce of the land, and the Israelites no longer had manna; they ate the crops of the land of Canaan that year.
Psalm 32
Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Happy are those to whom the LORD imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity; I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the LORD," and you forgave the guilt of my sin. Therefore let all who are faithful offer prayer to you; at a time of distress, the rush of mighty waters shall not reach them. You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with glad cries of deliverance. I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you. Do not be like a horse or a mule, without understanding, whose temper must be curbed with bit and bridle, else it will not stay near you. Many are the torments of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the LORD. Be glad in the LORD and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart.
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them." So he told them this parable:
"There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.' So he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, 'How many of my father's hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands."' So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then the son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' But the father said to his slaves, 'Quickly, bring out a robe-- the best one-- and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!' And they began to celebrate. "Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. He replied, 'Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.' Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, 'Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!' Then the father said to him, 'Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.'"
Sermon
In the class I taught this weekend, we looked at the life and world of Jesus by centering on the question – Who is Jesus? Our textual lens was the passage in Matthew where Jesus asks his disciples – Who do people say that I am? – and then turns the question into an opportunity for confession – Who do you say that I am? We saw that the way that question is answered is shaped by what was going on in Jesus’ world, the expectations of the people, and what Jesus did and said. We also explored how one’s answer to the question – Who do I say Jesus is? – usually contains the answer to the question – What did Jesus come to do and how is that mission to be fulfilled? Think about these answers to the question – Who is Jesus? – Messiah, Savior, Lord, Friend.
Last week we spent some time with the identification God gave Moses. God’s name – asher ehyey asher – told the Hebrew people something about what God had come down to do, and how he would do it. I will be-there. Indeed, thousands of years later, God was-there in a way that ultimately revealed how he accomplishes his mission: he was-there as God-with-us, Emmanuel, Jesus.
This evening, our texts urge me to continue the thread we’ve been following from week to week. Who is God? That is, what is our image of God? How do we understand him? And how does that shape how we live with him, how we do relationship with him? And, who are we? We take are cue from God. Our image of God shapes the image we have of ourselves. What is humanity in God’s mind? How did he create us? How are we to live that out? Ash Wednesday set the agenda for us in exploring these questions: God is creator; we are created. God is Source and Sustainer; we are from the earth, given life by his breath, and dependent at every moment. And that is very good.
Where might our texts be inviting us now? What might they have to say about these questions we’ve been pursuing?
Let’s start with our gospel text. What does this parable that Jesus tells say about God? What image might we claim for our imaginations from this story?
This is a God that is overwhelmingly in love with his children.
This is a God that takes seriously our freedom.
This is a God that responds to our unfaithfulness by receiving and restoring us.
This is not a God interested in settling accounts or exacting payment.
This God is a generous giver because he is a generous lover.
We love this parable. And we often hope that this picture really portrays the God we serve. But is this the God we live with, the God we relate to? Take a moment and think about how this image of God might penetrate and take residence in your imagination and heart even more deeply and richly. What images of God and consequent ways of relating with God might be broken down or discarded when we take seriously this image? How might we be called to repent of the distorted images of God we hold?
Now let’s move to our Joshua text. What does this text have to say about the image of God Jesus gives us in his parable? This is the text that inspired me to see how the other texts might be saying something about God the Lover as generous Giver.
Yes, God has liberated the people from Egyptian bondage. But that is not what caught my attention. Look at verses 11 and 12 again. They ate the produce of the land for the first time. The manna was no longer given.
It might be obvious to us that manna was a gift from God while the Hebrew people trekked through the wilderness. They might not always have seen it as such a generous gift; they grumbled and wished they were back in Egypt to eat the food they were given as slaves. But we listen to this story and are amazed: God miraculously provided them with sustenance while they were led out of slavery and toward the Promised Land. I won’t ask us to consider what gifts from God we might grumble against because they seem monotonous, they seem pale in comparison with what our former places of bondage provided us. That is not our focus today. What I will ask of us is to see the connection between the manna ceasing and the people being able to eat from the produce of the land.
At first glance, and definitely at first glance from within our modern worldview, we think the story goes like this: God provided for the people in the wilderness. And then when they got to the land, they ate what they provided for themselves. Someone else grew that produce. Someone else’s work bore that fruit. So once they get to the land, God’s gifts cease to make way for the people to provide for themselves.
This is not what I noticed. After a few weeks of trying to hear the voices of the texts arranged in the Lectionary, the voice I heard speaking from this text sounds like this: The liberated people, in a feast celebrating their liberation, tasted the first fruits of the land and put aside the manna that sustained them in the wilderness. This change signals a shift, but not a shift from God as provider for the people to people as providers for themselves. This change shows God’s gift changing. He goes from God the giver of manna to God the giver of the fruit of the land. Both are gifts. Both are equally dependent on God giving. The land bears fruit because God the Lover is also generous Giver. The people remain dependent on him even when they enter the land. Even when the fruit of the land is in abundance, they remain receivers of God’s sustenance.
God’s will is that we might partake of the bounty of the land. He desires that we enjoy the nourishment and tasty pleasure the land bears. After the people inhabit the land, we often get prophets crying out for the people to remember that God is the giver and that we do not provide for ourselves. There is a correlation between getting fat off the land and forgetting that it is God who is the Source, the Sustainer, the generous Giver. There is a chance that God’s gift from the land will lead to our forgetting God, but God so wants what is rich and good for us that he takes that chance.
Accepting God’s gifts does not have to mean we forget him, however. We determine how we respond to these gifts, and if we recognize them as such. We are free to forget God and pretend as if we provide for ourselves. We are free to draw our security in our own ability and industriousness. We are free to exploit others in that process as they threaten what we’ve worked so hard to possess for ourselves. We are free to treat even our friends as competition in this great American dream of the self-made man, to forget that we are dependent on one another in the web of interdependence God created and affirmed for humanity. We are free to go to war to protect our interests. We are free to do all that.
We are also free to live dependently. We are free to understand that God is-there as Giver. We are free to live each day in response to that generous God. We are free to receive instead of grasp and take. We are free to trust God and rest assured in his generosity. And in light of our 2 Corinthians passage, we are free to be givers in response to God’s gift. We are free to share what we have because we understand we are receivers of a gift that was meant to bless others. We are free to lift up those who have been kicked down by those who forget God in their great rat race to secure a piece of the pie for themselves. We are free to spend all we have – our very selves on behalf of one another. We are free, in other words, to image God in his generosity.
We are free. The choice is ours. Not just now, but that choice has been continually ours all our lives. How have we chosen in the past? How have we lived out our freedom?
I think it is safe to say that in moments of our lives, however short or long, we have chosen in our freedom to forget that God is-there as Giver, that we do not provide for ourselves, and that we do in fact need others. In our moments of forgetfulness, we have related with God unfaithfully, and we have related with our brothers and sisters out of that unfaithfulness. We have caused God pain. We have caused others pain. We have caused ourselves pain. We have wounded.
Now is when we listen to the words of David in Psalm 32.
We can resist admitting our forgetfulness and our unfaithfulness. We can resist admitting the pain we’ve caused and the wounds we’ve inflicted. We might do so out of fear. We might do so because the truth hurts too much. We might do so because we can’t see how things can be made right. Yet, David tells us that confession is the way to be released toward healing. Holding in our sin makes us waste away. Releasing it in confession gives it up to the one who – like in the parable of the prodigal son – embraces us in his generous love and restores us. Blessed are those who have been forgiven, whose sins have been covered.
We cannot jump to being givers if we do not learn to receive from God. And one of the gifts we are dependent on is forgiveness. We cannot be, as Paul says, ministers of reconciliation if we have not experienced reconciliation. Receiving from God is the result of understanding God our Lover and generous Giver. Do we understand him here-with-us as Giver? Is that the God we imagine? Let us dare to infuse our imaginations with God as Giver. Let us, in that transformed imagining, learn to be in relationship with God and each other in more faithful ways.
Ask someone to pray.
5th Sunday in Lent, March 25, 2007
Bergen family gathering
Play: Don’t Get Comfortable, Brandon Heath
Pray.
Read:
Isaiah 43:16-21
Thus says the LORD, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings out chariot and horse, army and warrior; they lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick: Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The wild animals will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches; for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise.
Psalm 126
When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy; then it was said among the nations, "The LORD has done great things for them." The LORD has done great things for us, and we rejoiced. Restore our fortunes, O LORD, like the watercourses in the Negeb. May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy. Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves.
Philippians 3:4b-14
If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.
John 12:1-8
Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, "Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?" (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me."
Sermon/Reflection
As Christians with the luxury of hindsight, we have picked up on the thread in Scripture we call “God doing something new.” We are most aware that in Jesus, God was doing something new. The old is passing away and the new has broken in. We understand ourselves to be living in the era of “something new.”
We are nearing the end of Lent, the end of traveling with Jesus into the wilderness, where in our weakness we learn that God is our Source, that we are dependent on him for life. We’ve learned that we are creatures belonging to this Creator God. As creatures we are dependent. And that is good. We exist because of the generosity of God the Giver. We are sustained from his hand.
In the wilderness we’ve been offered an alternative to God’s provision, an alternative to living as finite and dependent creatures. We’ve been offered something much like what Adam and Eve were offered – a way to reject our creatureliness, our humanness, and to grasp at being gods, creators, makers of our own destiny, providers for ourselves. We have been tempted. And we have become aware that this temptation has been ours many times before. We’ve had the freedom to choose.
And now, our texts today speak of God doing something new. Can we imagine it? Can we dream it? For imagining, dreaming is the doorway into that newness. And in dreaming we trust so fiercely that we praise as if our imagining was reality now. We sing a new song.
We are not deluded, however. We look around and recognize that the old still clings for life and power. We can look at ourselves and see that death grip at work. We have not yet reached the goal. And what is our response? Hopefully it is akin to the apostle Paul’s: I press on, I strain ahead, I shed all that has no place in this new thing God is accomplishing. I die with Christ that I might also rise with him.
In order to die Christ’s death we must live Christ’s life. We must follow his way. The way we saw him choose in the wilderness when he was tempted. The way he pursued throughout his ministry as he brought good news to the poor, proclaimed release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, let the oppressed go free, and proclaimed the year of the Lord's favor (Lk. 4:18-19). The way that led to Jerusalem and to the cross. This is the way that leads through Lent, through the anticipation and agony of Holy Week and finally to the joy of Easter. We stand on the brink of the darkest part of Lent, Holy Week with its Good Friday. We do not have to enter into that week. We can bypass following Jesus there. We can take the alternative routes offered to us. But Paul tells us that he follows Jesus into Holy Week, to the cross, because that is the only way to resurrection.
We’ve tried to see new images of God over the last several weeks. Hopefully, just as we’ve begun to understand what being creatures, being human looks like, we’ve also begun to understand what the Creator, what God looks like. How he is-there with us. How he might be-there with us in the days, weeks, years ahead. This God is trustworthy. This God is loving and giving. This God wants our restoration, our redemption, our reconciliation. He spares nothing, not even himself, to pursue that end on our behalf. Will we, as we stare into the dark days of Lent ahead, trust this God? Will we go where he leads?
Let us spend some time in prayer. As we sit and wait and listen for God to speak, or as we speak honestly with God, or as we continue to reflect on what we have been learning, music will be playing that may assist us in focusing our thoughts, recognizing our need, or finding words to offer to God. Should you need to ask someone to pray with you or for you during this time, feel free to move and do that. Use this time to search your thoughts and hearts, to ponder how you might respond to what we have been learning.
Meditation/Prayer
Play:
Belong, Chris Rice
So Afraid, Bebo Norman
I Know Now, Bebo Norman
If You Want Me To, Ginny Owens
Live, Nichole Nordeman
Stand & Play/Sing/Pray:
Nothing Without You, Bebo Norman
Bergen Family gathering
OT Reading: Isaiah 58:1-12
Psalm: Psalm 103:8-14
NT Reading: 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
Gospel: Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
Homily – Isaiah 58:1-12
Isaiah’s words will be our focus this evening. They may seem, at first glace, simple or one-dimensional: God isn’t listening because Israel isn’t getting it right. However, if we listen closely, I believe we will hear greater complexity (multi-dimensionality) than we have previously assumed. His words are given to us today, Ash Wednesday, to reveal something about the connection between dust/ash and our human identity. Let us listen.
Why do we fast, but you do not see?The people are questioning God. Why don’t you hear us? We’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing – why aren’t you doing what you’re supposed to be doing?
Why humble ourselves, and you don’t even notice? (3a, NRSV)
But they also complain,
Why do we fast and you don’t look our way?
Why do we humble ourselves and you don’t even notice? (3a, Message)
God responds.
Yet day after day they seek me and delight to know my ways
So far so good
as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness and did not forsake theEugene Peterson’s translation, The Message, puts it this way:
ordinance of their God. They ask of me righteous judgments, they delight to draw
near to God. (2, NRSV)
They’re busy, busy, busy at worship, and love studying all about me. To allWorship. Studying. Seeking. Delighting in God’s ways. These sounds like the desired characteristics of God’s people. Yet God thinks they are not a nation practicing righteousness; God thinks they are forsaking his ordinances. They may look like they are living right; however, God seems to think otherwise.
appearances they’re a nation of right-living people – law-abiding, God-honoring.
They ask me, “What’s the right thing to do?” and love having me on their side.
(2, Message)
When trying to understand this situation, two scenarios might enter our imagination.
I work as a substitute teacher. There are some very challenging days in my line of work. Imagine with me. I am in a forth grade classroom. They are trying to get away with as much as they can because I am not their regular teacher. I am supposed to teach them a new math concept. I explain. I show them several examples on the board. I answer a few questions the students have. I summarize. Then I assign a number of problems for them to do on their own. Inevitably I get one or both of the following questions: “What are we supposed to be doing?” “I don’t get it; how do you do it?” Nine times out of ten the kids who are asking these questions are the kids who were not paying attention when I was teaching the lesson. At this point I try to contain my frustration. I am impatient. I am thinking, “You weren’t paying attention, why should I help you?” Or, in my most stressed out moments, I think, “You haven’t got it by now? You’re hopeless.” I don’t say these things, but I do think them at times. Most of the time, our schedule forces me to leave some students behind.
Is this how we imagine God is with us? Impatiently tapping his foot? Feeling his blood boil? Trying to restrain his anger or frustration? Thinking we’re hopeless? Reading to leave us behind and move to those who are more successful? At his wits end?
Remember our Psalm for today; the psalmist seems to think this is not an accurate picture of God: God is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love (103:8).
Another scenario we might imagine is this: A child tries to get her daddy’s attention. “Look at me. See what I can do?” Underneath those pleas for attention she is thinking: “Affirm me. Tell me I am valuable. Tell me I’m worth something. Tell me you love me. Notice, daddy; please notice.” Dad ignores her or shrugs her off or tells her to go play with her brother or talk to her mother. He’s too busy – watching TV, reading the paper, working in the garage.
Is this how we imagine God? Ignoring us because we’re not worth his time or attention? Is he telling us that we are at the core worthless? Do we have to work harder to impress him so that he’ll notice and give us what we need – his attention, his affirmation, his love? Might our performance win him over?
These two scenarios might play themselves out in our imaginations; however, the images of God they suggest are not the image the text reveals.
What is really going on then?
Israel is trying to measure up in order to sway God. If we do this, God will do this. This line of thinking presupposes that God needs convincing to be on our side. In this case, worship is a payment. What we do is mean to manipulate God, cause God to act the way we want him to. Our “worship” becomes a transaction or leverage with which to bribe or bargain with God. This line of thinking also presupposes that it is what we do that makes us the people of God. We think that our relationship with God, the covenant, is held up by our initiative. This kind of relationship is concerned with status, not relation. If we follow the rules, our relationship with God will be in right-standing; if we break the rules our relationship is in jeopardy. God will be put off or angry and we’ll have to make up for that. This is not covenant; this is contract. If someone breaks a contract, the other party is free to, and in our culture expected to, disregard or break the contract as well. This is not so with God. He is faithful no matter what.
In this passage we see Israel trying to get the law to pay out rewards, and in so doing she resists right relationship with God. Israel is interested in religion, not relationship; she wants self-determined status, not revelation – God’s self-disclosure. This is called autonomy: a law (nomos) unto one’s self (autos), self as the determiner of reality. Autonomy says humans must get to God, get him to act based on human action. Autonomy tries to set up fixed rules, human-made boundaries, instead of entering an ongoing relationship of trusting interaction with God. Essentially the autonomous human being acts as if he is in charge and needs nothing because he can manipulate everything, even God. Living in this way gives us a sense of security rooted in ourselves. If we want God to act, we know the proper words to say and behaviors to act out. If we don’t want God, we do nothing and he stays up in heaven. He comes when he’s called to act according to our wishes.
This is not right relationship; in fact this is not relationship at all. Isaiah’s words show God revealing right relationship, covenant relationship. That relationship is rooted in God being Creator and us being his creation.
God is the Creator of all that is. He is faithful in relationship to his creation. His faithfulness comes out of who he is, not out of any external factor – for example, human behavior. God, the Creator, made human beings and invited them into relationship. Humans were created to be in faithful relationship with God. Part of what this means is that humans must recognize that they are creatures, not Creator. As creatures, faithful relationship with God includes trust, dependence and humility. Trust is ongoing; we walk with God day by day trusting in his live, provision, protection, and so on. Dependence is part of that trust: we depend on God to be the Creator and sustainer of his creation, including us. Humility is the recognition of our identity as creatures and God’s identity as Creator. We do not attempt to be the Creator or try to treat God like a creature.
Our Creator God reveals to us creatures what our creaturely life is to look like; God reveals to us how to be human: he does this in the Law, through the prophets and in wisdom literature; he does this ultimately in Jesus Christ.
In our Isaiah text, God cuts through Israel’s complaints, their attempted manipulation and says:
Look, you serve your own interests on your fast day, and oppress all yourGod gets at the heart of Torah, law that points to what it means to be truly human. Israel tries to do the works of the law in a way that completely disregards the spirit of the law. Israel tries to turn the law into a bargaining tool, a way to get God to do what they want, instead of recognizing what is revealed in the law – a guide to living the creaturely lives they were designed to live. If fasting is meant to humble us, to remind us of our identity as creatures in relationship to our Creator, Israel’s fasting means nothing because it does nothing more than dirty their heads with ashes and their knees from kneeling.
workers. Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked
fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high.
Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast day acceptable to the Lord? Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? (3b, NRSV)
God’s response shows that part of being in right relationship with the Creator includes being in right relationship with one another. Our creaturely relationships are marked by love and interdependence. We are to care for and take care of one another. We are not to exert power over one another: we are not the Creator; we are all creatures. We’re called to labor with one another and for one another in this human life God has made possible.
Obviously we haven’t “gotten it.” Remember the Psalm again – he is merciful, gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He has been for us since the beginning. He is laboring to recreate us – to restore our true humanity and have us live whole lives, lives at peace. He initiates. He pursues. He is faithful, and his faithfulness is not dependent on our faithfulness (Rom 3:3).
God invites us to trust his vision for our humanity and to live as the creatures our Creator intended. God invites us to experience restored humanity by living by faith – in the faithfulness he has extended and asks us to extend to him and to one another.
God is not a Father that cannot be bothered. God is the Father of the prodigal son, who ignored shame and convention to embrace the son whom he loves. God is the woman who searches after her lost coin, sweeping out the entire house if need be. We do not have to secure God’s love for us because he is faithful, and his love endures. We do not have to work to get noticed by God; he is the God who hears his children’s prayers and cries.
God invites us to cease striving to earn what he offers freely. God invites us to trust his love, his faithfulness. God calls us into a relationship that can be counted on, a covenant relationship. And within that relationship, God liberates us to be trusting, loving, faithful people toward him and toward one another.
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am. If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. The LORD will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.When we live truly human lives, we will experience the healing, restoration, and peace God promises; we will experience deliverance from our subhuman existence, and that is salvation indeed.
If you refrain from trampling the sabbath, from pursuing your own interests on my holy day; if you call the sabbath a delight and the holy day of the LORD honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs; then you shall take delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.
Ashes – We are but dust and to dust we shall return.
Psalm 103:14 God knows how we were made
Genesis 2:1-7 this is how we were created
Genesis 1:31 this is very good
“I Boast No More” Caedmon’s Call
This Lent, let us be honest about the picture of God we imagine, and let us recognize how those images keep us in cycles of bondage – the bondage of striving, working, earning. Let us be honest about the way we take comfort in rules and law instead of trusting the relationship God offers. Let us be honest about the ways we assert our independence and reject our true humanity. During the weeks of Lent, let us repent of our distorted images of God and our distorted images of humanity. Let us immerse ourselves in revelation that will set us free to be human, creature in glorious covenant with our Creator.
1st Sunday in Lent, February 25, 2007
Bergen Family gathering
Play:
I Boast No More
I Want a Broken Heart
Ask someone to pray.
Read:
Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16
Romans 10:8b-13
Luke 4:1-13
Sermon
On Wednesday we used ashes to remind us of the fact that we were made from the dust and to that dust we shall return. Understanding our human identity as “from the ash” or “from the earth” is not to say that we are “lower than dirt” or “merely dust” as if the ground we come from is a symbol of what is worthless or tainted. We listened to Psalm 103 tell us that God remembers that we are dust and followed that to Genesis 1 and 2, the creation accounts and heard: In the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens… the LORD God formed ha-adam (human) from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and ha-adam (human) became a living being… God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. The creation, including the human, God deems very good. The fall was just that – a fall. We fell from our “very good” humanness to a sub-humanness, a human identity wrapped up in autonomy, rejection of our limits, our dependence, our need, our inability to generate life for ourselves in our own image for our own ends. Scripture tells us that that life is no life at all. Scripture also tells that God, the faithful Creator, is working to re-create creation – including humanity. He is working to bring into being new creation in all his creatures. And that is what we are: creatures. We are not gods; we are not infinite; we are not self-sufficient. And that is good, very good. Mark Baker writes in his book, Religious No More: “In contrast to individualism, God lovingly invites us to experience our authentic personhood, not by peeling away layers of interconnectedness and interdependence, but by embracing them” (63).
Today is the first Sunday in Lent. This is the Sunday we hear about Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, for this story is the story we live into during Lent. We may choose to follow the Spirit into the wilderness and fast with Jesus. In giving something up we may remind ourselves every time we want that thing of Jesus’ experience of hunger and isolation. In giving something up we may experience the weakness Jesus experienced. In giving something up we may become aware of the ways we rely on the things of the world to sustain us instead of the true Bread of Life, God’s Word, Jesus himself. And isn’t that what we are supposed to realize as we seek to embrace our “authentic personhood,” our true humanity – that one of the ways we keep ourselves in bondage to our sub-human existence is by forgetting where we come from – forgetting the source of our life? Not only did God fashion us from the dust, he breathed life into us from his very self. We often say “I am nothing without God” and I’m afraid we often embrace the connotations of “nothing” when we say this: we think – I am nothing, I am sick, broken, wrong, hopeless. We set God up as this perfect being and we see ourselves as wholly imperfect. We see God as seeing us as disgusting, unable to please him, worthless. Isn’t this the way we feel about ourselves? Our fear? And we project that feeling, that fear onto God. It is like the child who gets dismissed by a father who cannot be bothered: I am worthless, she thinks; I must work harder to be found worthwhile to my daddy. But on Wednesday we heard that this picture is not a picture of our God. Instead, when we say “I am nothing without God” we are trying to confess that God is our source, God gives us life, God sustains our life, without God we have no life. This is what we mean when we say that life is found in Christ. Outside of “in Christ” what we have is not life at all because we have not broken out of our slavery to sub-human existence. So when we give something up, when we participate in a Lenten fast, we start recognizing how we try to create or sustain life apart from God.
This Lent I am going to give up fried food. Why am I doing this? Because when I have a stressful day or week, I am too quick to go to Taco Bell, Carl’s Jr., Generals, Sonic… I am too quick to comfort myself instead of seeking comfort in the true Source of comfort. When I am bored, I am too quick to want to eat something flavorful (and the food that often comes to my mind first when I want something particularly tasty is fried food) instead of seeking the truly nourishing Word of God that fills my days with joy and purpose. When I am lazy, I am too quick to choose fast and convenient (which often means fried) food instead of that which is healthy and energy giving; my laziness gets reinforced instead of challenged, and I am less fit for the path a disciple must walk. I am trying to give up what often threatens to make me forget how I need God, and how my humanity, my creature-identity is connected to him, the Creator, the giver of life. I am trying to submit myself to learning the truth of who God is and who I am and how I am to live out that identity.
I invite you to participate in this Lenten season by following the Spirit out into the wilderness and fasting. Let us take a few minutes to quietly examine what we can choose to give up, something that we might rely on in place of our Source, the Creator God. After allowing yourself a few minutes to prayerfully consider this, spend a few minutes being vulnerable enough with each other to ask, “What do you think I use in this way that I might be able to give up for Lent so that I can position myself to learn the truth about God and myself?” And as we ask each other, let us be discerning and gentle, slow to deal out answers and quick to consider the health and wholeness of the other person.
** 8 minutes **
Play: This World Has Nothing
Turn with me to Romans 10. We have heard this passage a hundred times. It is part of the “Roman Road” or “Steps to Peace with God” approach we imagine when we talk about evangelism. It is the place we turn for assurance that even though we are not perfect, we can know we are saved. We use this passage to convince ourselves that all it takes is “faith” – understood in terms of knowing the right things about Jesus and “confessing” them. If we are Baptist (which is the denomination I belonged to when I “accepted” Christ) we might understand that the right way to do this confessing is by walking down the aisle of a church while a hymn like “Just As I Am” is playing and pray the sinner’s prayer with the pastor. If we are a teenager at a youth convention, we might understand that the right way to do this confessing is by raising our hand after the speaker has asked everyone to bow their heads and close their eyes. I would like us to put aside the images we have and make room in our imaginations to see something else.
"The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart" (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. The scripture says, "No one who believes in him will be put to shame." For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. For, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved." (Romans 10:8b-13)
Up to this point Paul has been arguing that both Jews and Gentiles are included in Christ as the people of God. His argument has foreseen several objections people, particularly the Jews, might have: one of those objections have to do with the law. How can you, Paul, say that the Gentiles are welcomed into the people of God; they don’t obey the law!? They aren’t circumcised; they eat unclean foods; they do not know anything about the Sabbath. These are the things that define a Jew; these are the things that draw the boundary lines for the people of God. Are you saying the law is evil? Are you saying God is giving up on what he put in place? Is that God a God to be trusted? We often read what Paul writes and assume some of the same things: Paul is saying that salvation no longer comes by way of the law; salvation is now by faith. God is changing tactics: now instead of working for perfection, God gives us a perfect status if we say we believe in Jesus. So we come to our passage and hear: If you believe Jesus is the Son of God and that he died for your sins and that God raised him from the dead you will be saved. Salvation, the way we normally hear it, is largely a matter of knowing the right thing, and it must be so that we can stay as far away as possible from “salvation by works” – we do this by leaving out what we do (the law) from our understanding of salvation. A salvation understood in terms of knowledge is largely a salvation defined in terms of status. “Being saved” has to do with God seeing us as perfect even though we are not; it has to do with our future in heaven, not our time on earth. It seems to be that this notion of salvation leaves things just the way they are. It is God that changes (what he sees, the status he affords us), not we who change.
Now, I don’t know about you, but when I read Scripture I hear about a gospel that turns the world upside down and inside out. I hear about the Kingdom of God breaking in now. I hear about captives being set free and the blind seeing and the poor being lifted up now. And I hear those things described as salvation. Is this the salvation we understand or experience?
Might there be something else in Romans 10 to hear? In these 5 and a half verses, what do we notice? I will share one thing I notice.
Paul quotes the Hebrew Bible.
The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart. (vs. 8b; Deut. 30:14)
Turn to Deuteronomy 30. Moses is giving Torah (the law) to the people just before they enter into the promised land. In chapter 29 he warns that some may not “choose life” by following Torah: It may be that there is among you a man or woman, or a family or tribe, whose heart is already turning away from the LORD our God to serve the gods of those nations. It may be that there is among you a root sprouting poisonous and bitter growth. All who hear the words of this oath and bless themselves, thinking in their hearts, "We are safe even though we go our own stubborn ways" (thus bringing disaster on moist and dry alike)-- the LORD will be unwilling to pardon them, for the LORD's anger and passion will smoke against them. All the curses written in this book will descend on them, and the LORD will blot out their names from under heaven. (18-20)
So chapter 30 goes on:
When all these things have happened to you, the blessings and the curses that I have set before you, if you call them to mind among all the nations where the LORD your God has driven you, and return to the LORD your God, and you and your children obey him with all your heart and with all your soul, just as I am commanding you today, then the LORD your God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you, gathering you again from all the peoples among whom the LORD your God has scattered you. Even if you are exiled to the ends of the world, from there the LORD your God will gather you, and from there he will bring you back.
In other words, he will save you.
The LORD your God will bring you into the land that your ancestors possessed, and you will possess it; he will make you more prosperous and numerous than your ancestors. Moreover, the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, in order that you may live. The LORD your God will put all these curses on your enemies and on the adversaries who took advantage of you. Then you shall again obey the LORD, observing all his commandments that I am commanding you today, and the LORD your God will make you abundantly prosperous in all your undertakings, in the fruit of your body, in the fruit of your livestock, and in the fruit of your soil. For the LORD will again take delight in prospering you, just as he delighted in prospering your ancestors, when you obey the LORD your God by observing his commandments and decrees that are written in this book of the law, because you turn to the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. It is not in heaven, that you should say, "Who will go up to heaven for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?" Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, "Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?
Paul has just quoted these verses in 10:6-7.
No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe. See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the LORD your God, walking in his ways, and observing his commandments, decrees, and ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you do not hear, but are led astray to bow down to other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall perish; you shall not live long in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days, so that you may live in the land that the LORD swore to give to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.
Moses is talking about Torah/law; Paul is talking about “the word of faith we proclaim.” Moses says, “It is not too difficult; it is not far away.” Paul says, “That word of faith is so near to you, it is on your lips and in your heart.” Moses connects following Torah with abundant life. Isn’t that what the Jesus Paul is preaching offers us? The end or goal of Torah is life, salvation – being rescued from our waywardness and the death that waywardness produces and being brought back into right relationship with God and one another which produces life. Moses says: Choose life. Paul puts Jesus where Moses put Torah. This is not to say that Paul does away with Torah – in earlier chapters he makes this clear. What Paul understands, however, is that in the same way that Torah produces life, Jesus produces life. After we have gone astray, Jesus saves us from our deathly existence and brings us into life. Jon Isaak, professor at MBBS, in his recently published commentary on Romans, writes: “[Paul] cites Deuteronomy 30:12-14, not to contrast the law, but also to show how the law’s goal is really also about God’s righteous faithfulness: namely, God can be trusted to bring creation to its goal of renewed and true covenantal relations. To do this Paul transforms the text from one concerning Torah commandments to a text concerning the messiah and faith (Johnson 1997:160)” (186).
Paul quotes the Hebrew Bible again:
No one who believes in him will be put to shame. (vs. 11; Isa. 28:16)
Paul draws on the promise in Isaiah 28 that the cornerstone being laid in Zion is to be trusted – that stone will bring salvation. Paul understands that stone to be Jesus. So what is he saying? Those who trust in Jesus to bring about the goal of Torah will not be put to shame, will not be disappointed; Jesus will bring salvation – life. The life Moses told the people in Deuteronomy would be produced by following Torah is the life Jesus makes possible. In an earlier chapter, Paul writes: What the law could not do because of sin, God did in Jesus. The law was kept from doing what it was intended to do because of sin; yet Jesus has defeated sin and death and so can be trusted to bring about the goal of the law: life.
Paul is saying that it isn’t the works of the law, the human initiative and effort, that brings about life (salvation); it is God’s initiative, God’s gracious gifting that works life. Because it is Jesus who is the end/goal of Torah, he offers the life that Moses said would come through Torah. We can trust this.
Paul quotes the Hebrew Bible a third time in this passage:
Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. (vs. 13; Joel 2:32)
In the end things will get bad. Sort of like when God came to Noah and told him to build the ark. Things were bad. Humans were out of control. They were leading deathly existences. They were living sub-humanly. In the story with Noah, God flooded the earth, wiping out the mess of human life. But we know God promises never to do that again. In the New Testament, Jesus says we’ve entered the last days, the end times. Israel knows from her tradition that God will only let all evil go so far. These last days will be evil days, and then God will act to wipe out evil. In Joel we hear how this will happen, and we know that Joel’s words are connected to these last days because Luke quotes Joel in Acts just before Pentecost. Joel says:
Then afterward I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female slaves, in those days, I will pour out my spirit. I will show portents in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and terrible day of the LORD comes. Then everyone who calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved; for in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as the LORD has said, and among the survivors shall be those whom the LORD calls. (2:28-32)
Did you hear it? What Paul quotes?
Then everyone who calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved.
How will God defeat evil this time? Not by flood, but by Jesus’ faithfulness. Evil is overcome in Christ. Life is restored in Christ. We are saved in Christ. And saved from what? Evil! Sin! Death! Our sub-human lives! Like being brought back from exile, or like being freed from slavery in Egypt – we are saved to live life, to follow the ways of our Creator and live fully and truly human lives. Lives dependent on the Source of life; lives sustained by covenant relationship – faithfulness to God and to one another.
Jon Isaak writes:
“God’s covenant is a function of God’s gracious election, Paul insists; it is not about Israel’s efforts to find God or to find the messiah. No matter “how high” or “how low” Israel looks to attain the goal of the covenant, these efforts have no value since salvation is a gift. This gift is now present; Christ already “came down” from heaven and was “raised” from the dead. Thus, a text that originally proclaimed the law’s nearness now proclaims Christ’s nearness who is the true content (goal) of the law. In other words, since Jesus is the goal of law, Jesus is thus the living law (Torah). Paul’s intertextual reading results in a tightly connected argument as follows: “(a) there is one God for all. He gifts those who call on him. (b) All those who call on the name of the Lord will be saved. (c) Those whose hearts have faith that God raised Jesus from the dead call him Lord. (d) Those who have faith in him shall not be put to shame” (Johnson 1997:161)” (186-187).
Paul is showing how both Jews and Gentiles can be a part of the people of God. He is showing how legalistic observance of the law that seeks to be the source of one’s own righteousness is not the way of Torah. Torah sought to bring about faithful relationship between Creator and creature because that relationship is the source of salvation and life. The Jews have missed the point about Torah. In Christ, however, we have Jesus as the “living Torah.” He brings about righteousness – right and faithful relationship between Creator and creature. That righteousness is God’s gift – meaning, God was faithful when we were not by coming down on his own initiative in the person of Jesus Christ. He did this because he loved us. And Jesus, as a man, showed us faithful relationship with God. He trusted him, followed him, did what humanity was created to do. He reveals true humanity. And he asks us to have faith in him – not just to know the right answer about who he is, but to be faithful in the way that he is faithful. Because as we live out the humanity God called “very good,” we will have life indeed. We will be saved from the deathliness we are slaves to in our sub-human ways of living; we will be freed to be human in faithful and life-giving relationship with our Creator, our God.
After following Paul into the Hebrew Bible, how might we hear anew our Romans text?
"The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart" (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. The scripture says, "No one who believes in him will be put to shame." For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. For, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved." (Romans 10:8b-13)
Our Gospel text, the story of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness, the narrative context of our Lenten season, reveals Jesus showing us how to be truly human. As a human dependent on the Creator for life and health, he refuses to choose another way. He refuses to try fulfilling his mission another way, Satan’s way. He refuses to trust that there is another way to bring about salvation and life. He trusts God. He leans on God. He understands his identity out of what God reveals not out of what Satan tempts him with. Jesus, in his weakness and neediness, trusts God’s way. It may not make sense (does life by way of death make sense to us?). It may not be the way the world works. But it is God’s way and that way can be trusted. In fact, it is the only way to life.
As we enter into this wilderness story with Jesus by way of fasting, we may become aware of the following: the ways we reject drawing our identity from God; how we fail to see our dependence as part of the goodness of our humanity; our lack of trust in God’s way in the face of so many other options. Let us repent and choose life by seeing how near Jesus is to us – and by following in trust (walking by faith) the way he reveals.
Play: To Trust You; Walk By Faith
3rd Sunday in Lent, March 11, 2007
Bergen Family gathering
Play:
Be Thou My Vision, Ginny Owens
Pray.
Our Lenten texts seem to be leading us on a journey of imagining God and our human identity anew. This morning we will continue this journey.
Read:
Exodus 3:1-15
Play:
I Am, Bebo Norman
Read:
Psalm 63:1-8
Play:
I Will Lift My Eyes, Bebo Norman
Silent Prayer.
Read:
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
Read:
Luke 13:1-9
Sermon
I’m calling today’s sermon “Presence & Seeing” because there are two threads I’ve followed in our Exodus passage: 11 times in our passage (and at least 5 more times in the section this passage belongs to) we hear words having to do with seeing; no less than 8 times (and at least 8 more times in the larger section) we hear language of being, presence. I’ll read it again, this time from Everett Fox’s translation; as I do, listen with these questions in mind: Who is seeing what? and Who is present and what is that presence like?
Read Everett Fox’s translation, Exodus 3:1-15
First, Moses is present in the wilderness. He has fled from Egypt after killing an Egyptian taskmaster, and now he is tending his father-in-law’s flock. Present in this place in this way, Moses sees God’s messenger. So, God’s messenger is present; his presence is manifested in a bush on fire. Moses looks closer: he sees this bush is not burning up. Moses turns to see this sight. Now, God sees that Moses has turned to see. At first Moses was just there, but now he has drawn near; Moses has made himself present to this presence he has seen.
God, manifested in the burning bush, but also somehow looking on, calls out to Moses. Moses responds: Here I am. Here I am; I am present. God says: Do not come near. Moses has turned aside to see, but God instructs Moses to keep some distance. Our text gives us the reason “for this is holy ground.” God’s being there orders the way Moses is there.
Next, God reveals himself: I am the God of your father. Moses hides his face. He shields himself from looking upon God. This is interesting. God’s presence entices Moses to draw nearer and to look; yet God makes sure Moses doesn’t come too close and when Moses understands that it is God who is there, he is compelled to avert his gaze.
Then God speaks: I have seen. I have seen my people suffering in Egypt. And I have come down. I have come to save my people. God’s seeing influences God’s showing up.
We have Moses. Then we have God’s messenger or God himself. Now we have Israel, God’s people. And listen to how God describes the situation in verse 9: So now, here, the cry of the Children of Israel has come to me… Who or what else is present? The cries of Israel. Israel’s cries of suffering have made their presence known – they have become visible - up where God is and now God has come down. Much like Moses turned aside to see the bush on fire, God came down to see the cause of these cries. What God sees moves him to act.
And how does God act? He sends. Moses, you go; I am sending you. God wants Moses to be present in Egypt. And what kind of presence is asked of Moses? Delivering presence. Moses is to be in that place in a saving way.
Of course, we know this story well. Moses argues a bit. Are you sure, God? You want me? Who am I? What can my being there do? How can my presence make any difference? I really don’t see how I can help. Pharaoh is there. (Ah, we have another character now). His presence controls what happens, not mine. Don’t you see that?
And how does God respond? Oh yes, Moses. You’re right. I guess I didn’t look hard enough, assess the situation well enough. Pharaoh is there. And his presence does rule. That is clear to anyone looking on. Right? Wrong. God says: I will be-there with you. There is another presence. Oh, and Moses, just in case you’re not sure, I’ll even give you something you can see that will remind you I’m there. This sign I have sent to be with you. But of course the sign God gives is a sign that is supposed to happen after Moses delivers Israel.
So Moses responds: Um, God, if I go – I’m not saying I will – but if I do, do you have a name I can pass along? Now, we don’t quite understand the significance of this request in our culture. Everett Fox includes commentary on this for us: “When Moses asks God for his name… he asks for more than a title… in the context of Egyptian magic, knowing the true name of a person or a god meant that one could coerce him, or at the very least understand his true essence. [Moses] foresees that the slaves will want to be able to call on this power that has promised to deliver them” (268, 270). If Moses could get God’s name, Moses could control God’s presence, when and how he is there.
God answers with the answer that is not an answer; he gives a name that is not a name. EHYEH ASHER EHYEH. What does this mean? What do your bibles say?
KJV – I am that I am
NKJV, NIV, NASB, NRSV – I am who I am
NJB – I am he who is
Everett Fox renders the name: I will be-there howsoever I will be-there. Why?
God’s answer is one of the most enigmatic and widely debated statements in the Hebrew Bible… What does ehyeh asher ehyeh mean? One’s suspicions are aroused from the outset, for the answer is alliterative and hence already not easy to pin down; the poetics of the phrase indicate both importance and vagueness or mystery. There is some scholarly consensus that the name may mean “He who causes (things) to be” or perhaps “He who is.” Buber and Rosenzweig, taking an entirely different tack (of which one occasionally finds echoes in the scholarly literature), interpret the verb hayoh as signifying presence, “being-there,” and hence see God’s words as a real answer to the Israelites’ imagined question – an assurance of his presence. The B-R interpretation has been retained here [in Fox’s translation], out of a desire to follow them on at least this significant point of theology, and out of my feeling that it also fits the smaller context. For of the several times that [Moses] tries to wriggle out of his mission, God answers him all but once with the same verb, in the same meaning: “I will be-there with you” (270).
Beyond our small passage into the rest of the section our piece belongs to, God keeps assuring Moses that God will indeed be-there. He says it again: EHYEH, I-WILL-BE-THERE sends me to you. And then he gives Moses the identification he has already given him when Moses first turned aside to see. “The God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob” (15 & 6). It is with this that the lectionary ends our passage for this day. Is it significant that God has identified himself in this way twice? Why repeat himself? Could it be that God is recalling the way he has been-there before in the history of his people so that they can remember who this God is and trust that he will be-there for them again?
You may be making connections and playing out implications of this reading already. I’d like to make two observations. First, presence precedes seeing. Israel’s cry became present before God and then God saw Israel’s oppression. God came down, becoming present in the burning bush and then Moses saw. Moses turned, directed his presence, and God saw. God revealed himself, identifying his presence, and Moses hides his eyes (though we can say that he “sees” because he understands whose presence he is in and responds accordingly). God is sending Moses to be present for Israel and they will see that God has also been there by the sign that God gives. Second observation: God’s presence orders our presence. In one sense of the word, God’s showing up demands our turning to see even if only because we’re curious as to what is going on. In another sense of the word, God’s being-there shapes where and how we will be. Moses takes off his shoes. Moses cannot control God’s presence. Moses is sent. Israel will be delivered (even if Pharaoh seems to be the dominating presence).
What do you hear in all this in light of our journey of seeing anew God and our human identity?
I will leave you with one more thought before I send you off to ponder this story on your own. One of my favorite Old Testament theologians, Walter Brueggemann, has shaped this thought in me. He suggests that before we can live a new reality, we have to be able to imagine it. So, before you and I can be present in any transformed or transforming way, before we can put on the new, before we can live into the kingdom, we have to see it. Yet, that which we are given to see is much like the sign God gives Moses – something we see after the promised is fulfilled. We live in a unique time, however, because we are in between that which was given and that which is to come. The ultimate revelation of God’s presence has already come. God-with-us, Jesus the Christ, the one we seek during this Lenten season, has been-there already. And yet, he is to come again. We still await deliverance from this oppression we suffer. And as we look forward to Easter, as we long for the darkness of Lent to end, we follow the way of Jesus. We enter into history and walk his story, anticipating the end we have been promised is coming. God sent Moses. Jesus has sent his disciples. That includes us. We are to be-there. We are to be present in liberating ways. Because God-(is)-with-us. Because we’ve turned and seen. Because our presence brings God’s presence to a people awaiting salvation. That is what we were made for, why our being was made present at all. Out of the earth our Creator shaped us and we became present (alive) when he became present (breathed his spirit) in us. In order for us to live fully human lives, the lives God created us for, we must see. Using Brueggemann’s language – we must imagine. And imagination is hopeful seeing, seeing that which has not yet happened. Imagination is stretching out in trust, seeing that which God promises. In the face of what we may see with our eyes, in the face of what may appear one way, we must imagine according to the promising presence of God. Unless a new reality is opened to us through the door of imagination, unless we dare to see that which defies all that appears to be, we won’t step into and be present in that world, in that kingdom. God reminded Moses of how he has been-there so that he would trust how he will be-there. These stories are reminders for us as we seek to imagine how God might be-there for and in us as he seeks to respond to a world crying out for liberation. Can we imagine? Will we see? Will we exercise trust in the way our psalmist last week and today does? Praising God for that which he will do as if he has already done it? Let us sing a prayer, asking God to help us see that we might be faithfully.
Sing:
Be Thou My Vision
Pray.
4th Sunday in Lent, March 18, 2007
Bergen family gathering
Ask someone to pray.
Read:
AUDREY HINDES: I'm missing my pizza: a mid-Lent pep talk (Fresno Bee)
Read:
Joshua 5:9-12
The LORD said to Joshua, "Today I have rolled away from you the disgrace of Egypt." And so that place is called Gilgal to this day. While the Israelites were camped in Gilgal they kept the passover in the evening on the fourteenth day of the month in the plains of Jericho. On the day after the passover, on that very day, they ate the produce of the land, unleavened cakes and parched grain. The manna ceased on the day they ate the produce of the land, and the Israelites no longer had manna; they ate the crops of the land of Canaan that year.
Psalm 32
Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Happy are those to whom the LORD imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity; I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the LORD," and you forgave the guilt of my sin. Therefore let all who are faithful offer prayer to you; at a time of distress, the rush of mighty waters shall not reach them. You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with glad cries of deliverance. I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you. Do not be like a horse or a mule, without understanding, whose temper must be curbed with bit and bridle, else it will not stay near you. Many are the torments of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the LORD. Be glad in the LORD and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart.
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them." So he told them this parable:
"There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.' So he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, 'How many of my father's hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands."' So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then the son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' But the father said to his slaves, 'Quickly, bring out a robe-- the best one-- and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!' And they began to celebrate. "Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. He replied, 'Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.' Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, 'Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!' Then the father said to him, 'Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.'"
Sermon
In the class I taught this weekend, we looked at the life and world of Jesus by centering on the question – Who is Jesus? Our textual lens was the passage in Matthew where Jesus asks his disciples – Who do people say that I am? – and then turns the question into an opportunity for confession – Who do you say that I am? We saw that the way that question is answered is shaped by what was going on in Jesus’ world, the expectations of the people, and what Jesus did and said. We also explored how one’s answer to the question – Who do I say Jesus is? – usually contains the answer to the question – What did Jesus come to do and how is that mission to be fulfilled? Think about these answers to the question – Who is Jesus? – Messiah, Savior, Lord, Friend.
Last week we spent some time with the identification God gave Moses. God’s name – asher ehyey asher – told the Hebrew people something about what God had come down to do, and how he would do it. I will be-there. Indeed, thousands of years later, God was-there in a way that ultimately revealed how he accomplishes his mission: he was-there as God-with-us, Emmanuel, Jesus.
This evening, our texts urge me to continue the thread we’ve been following from week to week. Who is God? That is, what is our image of God? How do we understand him? And how does that shape how we live with him, how we do relationship with him? And, who are we? We take are cue from God. Our image of God shapes the image we have of ourselves. What is humanity in God’s mind? How did he create us? How are we to live that out? Ash Wednesday set the agenda for us in exploring these questions: God is creator; we are created. God is Source and Sustainer; we are from the earth, given life by his breath, and dependent at every moment. And that is very good.
Where might our texts be inviting us now? What might they have to say about these questions we’ve been pursuing?
Let’s start with our gospel text. What does this parable that Jesus tells say about God? What image might we claim for our imaginations from this story?
This is a God that is overwhelmingly in love with his children.
This is a God that takes seriously our freedom.
This is a God that responds to our unfaithfulness by receiving and restoring us.
This is not a God interested in settling accounts or exacting payment.
This God is a generous giver because he is a generous lover.
We love this parable. And we often hope that this picture really portrays the God we serve. But is this the God we live with, the God we relate to? Take a moment and think about how this image of God might penetrate and take residence in your imagination and heart even more deeply and richly. What images of God and consequent ways of relating with God might be broken down or discarded when we take seriously this image? How might we be called to repent of the distorted images of God we hold?
Now let’s move to our Joshua text.
Yes, God has liberated the people from Egyptian bondage. But that is not what caught my attention. Look at verses 11 and 12 again. They ate the produce of the land for the first time. The manna was no longer given.
It might be obvious to us that manna was a gift from God while the Hebrew people trekked through the wilderness. They might not always have seen it as such a generous gift; they grumbled and wished they were back in Egypt to eat the food they were given as slaves. But we listen to this story and are amazed: God miraculously provided them with sustenance while they were led out of slavery and toward the Promised Land. I won’t ask us to consider what gifts from God we might grumble against because they seem monotonous, they seem pale in comparison with what our former places of bondage provided us. That is not our focus today. What I will ask of us is to see the connection between the manna ceasing and the people being able to eat from the produce of the land.
At first glance, and definitely at first glance from within our modern worldview, we think the story goes like this: God provided for the people in the wilderness. And then when they got to the land, they ate what they provided for themselves. Someone else grew that produce. Someone else’s work bore that fruit. So once they get to the land, God’s gifts cease to make way for the people to provide for themselves.
This is not what I noticed. After a few weeks of trying to hear the voices of the texts arranged in the Lectionary, the voice I heard speaking from this text sounds like this: The liberated people, in a feast celebrating their liberation, tasted the first fruits of the land and put aside the manna that sustained them in the wilderness. This change signals a shift, but not a shift from God as provider for the people to people as providers for themselves. This change shows God’s gift changing. He goes from God the giver of manna to God the giver of the fruit of the land. Both are gifts. Both are equally dependent on God giving. The land bears fruit because God the Lover is also generous Giver. The people remain dependent on him even when they enter the land. Even when the fruit of the land is in abundance, they remain receivers of God’s sustenance.
God’s will is that we might partake of the bounty of the land. He desires that we enjoy the nourishment and tasty pleasure the land bears. After the people inhabit the land, we often get prophets crying out for the people to remember that God is the giver and that we do not provide for ourselves. There is a correlation between getting fat off the land and forgetting that it is God who is the Source, the Sustainer, the generous Giver. There is a chance that God’s gift from the land will lead to our forgetting God, but God so wants what is rich and good for us that he takes that chance.
Accepting God’s gifts does not have to mean we forget him, however. We determine how we respond to these gifts, and if we recognize them as such. We are free to forget God and pretend as if we provide for ourselves. We are free to draw our security in our own ability and industriousness. We are free to exploit others in that process as they threaten what we’ve worked so hard to possess for ourselves. We are free to treat even our friends as competition in this great American dream of the self-made man, to forget that we are dependent on one another in the web of interdependence God created and affirmed for humanity. We are free to go to war to protect our interests. We are free to do all that.
We are also free to live dependently. We are free to understand that God is-there as Giver. We are free to live each day in response to that generous God. We are free to receive instead of grasp and take. We are free to trust God and rest assured in his generosity. And in light of our 2 Corinthians passage, we are free to be givers in response to God’s gift. We are free to share what we have because we understand we are receivers of a gift that was meant to bless others. We are free to lift up those who have been kicked down by those who forget God in their great rat race to secure a piece of the pie for themselves. We are free to spend all we have – our very selves on behalf of one another. We are free, in other words, to image God in his generosity.
We are free. The choice is ours. Not just now, but that choice has been continually ours all our lives. How have we chosen in the past? How have we lived out our freedom?
I think it is safe to say that in moments of our lives, however short or long, we have chosen in our freedom to forget that God is-there as Giver, that we do not provide for ourselves, and that we do in fact need others. In our moments of forgetfulness, we have related with God unfaithfully, and we have related with our brothers and sisters out of that unfaithfulness. We have caused God pain. We have caused others pain. We have caused ourselves pain. We have wounded.
Now is when we listen to the words of David in Psalm 32.
We can resist admitting our forgetfulness and our unfaithfulness. We can resist admitting the pain we’ve caused and the wounds we’ve inflicted. We might do so out of fear. We might do so because the truth hurts too much. We might do so because we can’t see how things can be made right. Yet, David tells us that confession is the way to be released toward healing. Holding in our sin makes us waste away. Releasing it in confession gives it up to the one who – like in the parable of the prodigal son – embraces us in his generous love and restores us. Blessed are those who have been forgiven, whose sins have been covered.
We cannot jump to being givers if we do not learn to receive from God. And one of the gifts we are dependent on is forgiveness. We cannot be, as Paul says, ministers of reconciliation if we have not experienced reconciliation. Receiving from God is the result of understanding God our Lover and generous Giver. Do we understand him here-with-us as Giver? Is that the God we imagine? Let us dare to infuse our imaginations with God as Giver. Let us, in that transformed imagining, learn to be in relationship with God and each other in more faithful ways.
Ask someone to pray.
5th Sunday in Lent, March 25, 2007
Bergen family gathering
Play: Don’t Get Comfortable, Brandon Heath
Pray.
Read:
Isaiah 43:16-21
Thus says the LORD, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings out chariot and horse, army and warrior; they lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick: Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The wild animals will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches; for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise.
Psalm 126
When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy; then it was said among the nations, "The LORD has done great things for them." The LORD has done great things for us, and we rejoiced. Restore our fortunes, O LORD, like the watercourses in the Negeb. May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy. Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves.
Philippians 3:4b-14
If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.
John 12:1-8
Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, "Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?" (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me."
Sermon/Reflection
As Christians with the luxury of hindsight, we have picked up on the thread in Scripture we call “God doing something new.” We are most aware that in Jesus, God was doing something new. The old is passing away and the new has broken in. We understand ourselves to be living in the era of “something new.”
We are nearing the end of Lent, the end of traveling with Jesus into the wilderness, where in our weakness we learn that God is our Source, that we are dependent on him for life. We’ve learned that we are creatures belonging to this Creator God. As creatures we are dependent. And that is good. We exist because of the generosity of God the Giver. We are sustained from his hand.
In the wilderness we’ve been offered an alternative to God’s provision, an alternative to living as finite and dependent creatures. We’ve been offered something much like what Adam and Eve were offered – a way to reject our creatureliness, our humanness, and to grasp at being gods, creators, makers of our own destiny, providers for ourselves. We have been tempted. And we have become aware that this temptation has been ours many times before. We’ve had the freedom to choose.
And now, our texts today speak of God doing something new. Can we imagine it? Can we dream it? For imagining, dreaming is the doorway into that newness. And in dreaming we trust so fiercely that we praise as if our imagining was reality now. We sing a new song.
We are not deluded, however. We look around and recognize that the old still clings for life and power. We can look at ourselves and see that death grip at work. We have not yet reached the goal. And what is our response? Hopefully it is akin to the apostle Paul’s: I press on, I strain ahead, I shed all that has no place in this new thing God is accomplishing. I die with Christ that I might also rise with him.
In order to die Christ’s death we must live Christ’s life. We must follow his way. The way we saw him choose in the wilderness when he was tempted. The way he pursued throughout his ministry as he brought good news to the poor, proclaimed release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, let the oppressed go free, and proclaimed the year of the Lord's favor (Lk. 4:18-19). The way that led to Jerusalem and to the cross. This is the way that leads through Lent, through the anticipation and agony of Holy Week and finally to the joy of Easter. We stand on the brink of the darkest part of Lent, Holy Week with its Good Friday. We do not have to enter into that week. We can bypass following Jesus there. We can take the alternative routes offered to us. But Paul tells us that he follows Jesus into Holy Week, to the cross, because that is the only way to resurrection.
We’ve tried to see new images of God over the last several weeks. Hopefully, just as we’ve begun to understand what being creatures, being human looks like, we’ve also begun to understand what the Creator, what God looks like. How he is-there with us. How he might be-there with us in the days, weeks, years ahead. This God is trustworthy. This God is loving and giving. This God wants our restoration, our redemption, our reconciliation. He spares nothing, not even himself, to pursue that end on our behalf. Will we, as we stare into the dark days of Lent ahead, trust this God? Will we go where he leads?
Let us spend some time in prayer. As we sit and wait and listen for God to speak, or as we speak honestly with God, or as we continue to reflect on what we have been learning, music will be playing that may assist us in focusing our thoughts, recognizing our need, or finding words to offer to God. Should you need to ask someone to pray with you or for you during this time, feel free to move and do that. Use this time to search your thoughts and hearts, to ponder how you might respond to what we have been learning.
Meditation/Prayer
Play:
Belong, Chris Rice
So Afraid, Bebo Norman
I Know Now, Bebo Norman
If You Want Me To, Ginny Owens
Live, Nichole Nordeman
Stand & Play/Sing/Pray:
Nothing Without You, Bebo Norman
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