God Works

Pentecost 7a

July 27, 2014

Genesis 29:15-29

I have said it before, but every time I do, I turn out to be wrong.  I am going to say it again though, this is one of the most difficult texts I’ve ever attempted to preach on.  If we take it just on its own merits, what is there to say?  There is no mention of God.  There is no mention of God’s promises.  There is no mention of the fulfillment of God’s promises.  It’s a continuation of an ongoing soap opera of people deceiving each other and making messes out of human relationships. Where is the good news to be found when a man wakes up one morning and discovers that the woman that he thought he married was the wrong woman?  What connection can we make to God’s promises when a man negotiates a business contract using women as his wages?  Why did the people who assigned the readings for this year even think that this was remotely preachable? Because it is not.

Not on its own anyways.

It seems we have approached a moment in the lectionary where a text without context can become dangerous.  There are many, many, texts throughout scripture that, without context, are dangerous because without context we can do with them what they wish, no matter how badly we mangle what is actually meant by the passage as a whole. 

For example – In 1^st Corinthians 10:13, Paul writes “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.” Which is a wonderful, hopeful text…unless you are flailing in the waters of grief and suffering, about to drown because, on your own, you can’t do it no matter how much faith you have.  I’ve heard this text preached in a manner that individuals are encouraged to endure the awful things that life has handed them because God will give them a way to endure it.  But what about the woman in the abusive relationship? What about the employee who is asked to do too much and paid too little but is afraid to speak to his boss out of fear of retribution? What about the person who has been so overcome by depression that death is starting to look like a good way out? If you take a look at the context around it, however, Paul is speaking to an entire community, so when he says you, he actually means “y’all.” So, as a community, you will be able to endure when you lean on each other in times of grief and temptation…and that brings a whole lot more hope when we feel isolated.  Lean in on your community and together you will endure this.

So it can be with this text…one lesson that we can take from this is - if you are willing to work really hard for what you want, you will achieve it and maybe even wind up with more than you expected.  Now, on the surface, there isn’t much wrong with the concept of hard work.  The most rewarding things in life are things that we work hard for, the car we saved up for, the house we built with our own two hands, the first quilt we finished sewing after months or even years of lessons and frustrations.  But then we look around and we see the families with parents working multiple minimum wage jobs just so they can pay their bills.  We see the kids who come to school hungry because the car that his single dad needs to get to work got a flat tire and what money they had left for food was cut significantly so that dad didn’t risk losing his job.  There are lots of people in our country who are working really hard to stay afloat for whom being told that if they just work hard enough, they will get what they want, is a slap across the face. 

Or, one could make an argument based solely off of this passage that using women as a salary option is acceptable…when really, we know that while it was an accepted practice at the time, now…not so much.  I’m pretty sure that you fathers in this room would have a pretty negative reaction if a man doing work for you asked for your daughter as his wages.

If we look at the context, though, we can find so much more…in fact, we have no other choice but to find what else there is to this passage if we are going to talk about God or God’s promises, or even make sense of Jacob’s marrying Leah and Rachel this week and Jacob’s wrestling with God next week.  Two weeks ago, we hear God’s words to Rebekah that her twins would come to be two nations…two nations that would be continually struggling against one another…and that the older would serve the younger.  That is, the promise that God made to Abraham would be fulfilled through Jacob, not through Esau.  And though it happened through Jacob and Rebekah’s deception or Esau and Isaac, Jacob did become the one to whom the birthright and the blessing were given.

Then last week, we heard God’s words to Jacob that God would be with him until his promise to him was fulfilled.  That God would not leave Jacob’s side.  Though we don’t see it directly in the text that we are presented with this morning, I invite you, in this week, to read the passages that follow what we read this morning.  For we will see in the verses and chapters to come after Jacob’s being tricked into marrying both Leah and Rachel was the beginning of a very visible fleshing out of the promise that God had made to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob himself.  To make them the ancestors of many nations, the ones who would have descendants as many as the stars in the sky, the grains of sand in the desert, the specks of dirt on the earth.  For it was through Leah and Rachel, and their two maids, that Jacob would become the father of not one or two children…but of 13 children. 12 sons and 1 daughter.  These sons would become the twelve tribes of Israel. 

And as the history of God’s people continues, we will continue to see the dysfunction and the sin that will plague God’s people.  How, Jacob will deceive Laban, just as Laban had deceived him before.  How Leah and Rachel will struggle against one another out of jealousy that Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah on Leah’s part, and jealousy that Leah was able to bear more children that Rachel on Rachel’s part.  We will see brothers avenge their sister after she is sexually assaulted and then turn and sell their brother out of jealousy.  And we will see forgiveness and compassion as Jacob and Esau reunite.  As Joseph and his brothers reunite. 

And above all, we will see God at work, fulfilling his promises even in the midst of the messes that we humans make out of relationships. 

The God we know and love and serve is a God who never gives up on his people.  When Adam and Eve sinned, he forgave them and provided for them.  When Cain killed Abel, God protected him from retribution.  When sin survived the flood and God promised to never flood the earth again, God has tried again and again to find ways to get through to us a positive way to make his plans for us come to fruition.  And yet, time and again we deceive ourselves and one another  into thinking that we are doing good enough…but are we?

A man in Minnesota shot a woman the other night for asking him to not ride his lawn mower on her front lawn.  The shootings in Chicago continue to make national news headlines every week.  As long as there is violence and hatred instead of love and peace and justice, we are not living up to the plan that God has for us.  And yet that doesn’t keep God from working.  In those pockets of the world where darkness seems to reign, there is always a light shining somewhere.  In those places that we think are lost causes, somewhere there is hope.  In those locations where violence is seemingly never ending, somewhere there is peace.  Because God hasn’t abandoned them.  Just like God won’t abandon us…

  

On Miscarriage

In May, Chris and I got some unexpected news...that we were going to become parents for the second time. We moved quickly from shock to excitement that January would bring new life to our family.

Then, on July 10th, just one day before we hit the 12 week mark, we heard the word that every expectant parent fears most - Miscarriage.  In our case, a missed miscarriage.  We were told that our little one stopped growing at 8 weeks gestation, which means that while my body had shut down the pregnancy 4 weeks ago, it hadn't followed up with miscarrying on its own.  Instead, the morning sickness, the slowly growing belly, etc., all continued, giving us the impression that everything was alright.  That this pregnancy was a healthy one.  That we would be safe telling the congregation on the 13th of July that Eleanor was going to be a big sister.  Instead, our dreams for this child were dashed in the moment that *that* look flashed across the face of my OB.  Medically, a second ultrasound was required to confirm what we feared, but I knew when that first image popped up on the ultrasound screen that January 2015 would not be our month. Even though I knew in my heart, I prayed and pleaded for a miracle. I cried out that God would intervene and that the next morning there would be a small, but strong little one on that ultrasound screen.  That prayer wasn't answered.

So, on July 13th, I stood before a congregation, only a few of whom had heard any of news regarding our pregnancy and miscarriage, and preached that God can take bad situations in our lives and make good come out of them (see blog post entitled Red Stuff).  God still is at work even when it seems that we have hit a road block.  This is what I believe.  That in the midst of miscarriages and cancer (at least two members of the congregation I serve are actively in the midst of this fight) and the messes that we ourselves have created (oh and there are plenty...have you read the news lately? Kyrie eleison), God is still at work and can take these awful situations and make good out of them. Most of the time, this mean that God calls us to be God's presence in the world. To stand up and speak, or act, when injustice and violence plague our cities, our nations, our world.  To celebrate and mourn with each other in the best and worst moments of our lives. To reach out to the lonely, to lift up the poor, to welcome the stranger...you know, the whole love God - love neighbor thing. We can't just stand around because then we are just getting in God's way.

In the midst of this painful and sad situation, we have been surrounded by love.  A love whose origins come from God.  In cards and hugs and loaves of banana bread and words of comfort and shared tears.  As surrounded as we are, I know that there are many women and their partners, who suffer through miscarriages silently, as if the pregnancy never happened.  I mourn for these women who have been told "we don't talk about miscarriages."  I want these women to know that they are not alone.  That they have a support network.  That they don't have to stay silent.  That the children that they lost matter.

There are plenty of articles that have been written about what to say and what not to say to someone who has suffered a pregnancy loss.  This is not one of them.  I do, though, feel the need to comment on one of "don'ts" as a member of the clergy.

"It is all a part of God's plan.  You know that better than anyone else, Pastor"
I may have earned a Masters of Divinity.  I may be an ordained leader in the church.
             I have no better idea about God's plan than anyone else. 
Scientifically speaking, I know that there may be an explanation for why our baby died. However, I cannot and will not say that this was God's plan.  I do not believe that the God whom I have come to know and to love in my faith journey is a God who wakes up in the morning, checks the list of new pregnancies and marks off which ones will result in a live birth and which ones will not - which pregnancies will fulfill dreams and which ones will dash hopes and dreams altogether.
We learn in scripture that death is a result of the power of sin in the world and the powers of sin and death are the very things that God sent his Son into the world to destroy. We also learn in scripture that God's desire is for his creation, a very good creation, to flourish and have abundant life. Finally, we are told in Revelation that God's final plan is to make his home on earth among us on a day in which death and pain and suffering and mourning will be no more (Revelation 21).  I have no idea why our baby died or why God didn't step in. What I can say that I know, though, is that in death our child is resting in God's arms and that God is with us as we mourn the loss of a child that we will never meet in this life.

In the mean time we will mourn and grieve.  We will continue to give thanks for our daughter - the light of our lives - as she continues to grow and amaze us.  We will hope to, one day, add another child to our family.  We will never forget our Snowpea (I have a thing for cute nicknames so I don't have to call baby "it") and we will look forward to the day when we will be reunited with our 2nd child in God's presence.  We do this knowing that we are not alone, which brings with it a level of gratefulness that cannot be expressed.

Red Stuff

July 13, 2014

Pentecost 5

Genesis 25:19-34

This morning, I want to talk a bit about instant gratification.  It’s a pandemic.  If you carry a cell phone of any kind with you, anyone who has your phone number can get ahold of you at any time, day or night.  If you have a smart phone, not only can they call or text you any time, but they can also e-mail you, send you a message via facebook, twitter, snap chat, or Instagram…and, more often than not is it at least hoped for, if not outright expected, that you will respond somewhat quickly.  And it’s not just technology that has us hooked on instant gratification.  Got bad credit? No credit? No problem, we want to sell you something right now.  You know you want it, so come by our store today and drive home with a brand new thing for $25 a month for the next 60 months (plus tax and interest fees).  There was even a commercial that ran at Christmas time advertising an online company that would allow you to buy extravagant Christmas presents on credit and pay it off over the next 12 months…at which point Christmas comes around again and you start all over…but you’re the cool aunt for buying your nephew the ps4 he has been wanting since before it came out. 

The problem with instant gratification is that it wears down on our ability to wait for things and our willingness to work hard in order to achieve our goals.  I once got into an argument with my grandmother because she was boasting about one of my distant relatives who had gotten ordained online so he could do a wedding for a friend.  She couldn’t understand, until I explained it to her, my frustration that she was so proud of him for spending 30 minutes online to get ordained when I was in the middle of a 4 year master’s program which would ultimately result, but not guarantee, my ordination. 

The other problem with instant gratification is that it creates the illusion that we have more control than we actually do. 

As we arrive at this part of chapter 25 of Genesis, we get to a place in the story of God’s people where, if you blink, you will miss something.  We go from Rebekah being barren in verse 21, to Esau and Jacob’s birth in verse 25 to seeing her twin boys as teenagers in verse 28.  These are two boys that never got along, even in the womb.  The Lord tells Rebekah, in the midst of a difficult pregnancy, that her babies would later become two nations, nations that would struggle against each other, but that the older would end up serving the younger.  And when they were born, it was quite apparent that they were different. Esau was born covered in red hair while Jacob was born with smooth skin, though eager to not fall too behind his brother in meeting the world.  As they grew, the differences between Jacob and Esau became more and more pronounced.  Esau, grew up to be a hunter…a real man’s man, where as his little brother, Jacob, preferred a more introverted and refined existence living in the tents where he became quite the cook. 

And the thing that probably intensified the division between the two boys what that mom and dad picked favorites.  Isaac loved Esau because he had a taste for game, whereas Rebekah loved Jacob.  Not usually something that you want to do if you hope that your already feuding kids will get along in the future…or even the present. But so it was.

One day Jacob was cooking some lentil stew and Esau came in to the tent from the fields hungry and demanded a bowl of that “red stuff.”  Jacob consented, but cunningly changes the subject and begins bargaining for Esau’s birthright.  Esau agrees to Jacob’s proposal and, for the cost of his birthright, meaning, his right to double the inheritance and to take the place as the spiritual head of the household after their father died, Esau got a bowl of stew and some bread…but to a teenage boy who thinks he is about to die from hunger, what does that mean when you can have a bowl of lentil stew now? Nothing.

Now, we could do what comes naturally when reading this story and shake our heads and wonder what in the world Esau was thinking for selling his birthright for a bowl of stew…and it must have been some pretty amazing stew.  Esau’s agreeing to sell his birthright for a bowl of stew demonstrated that, in that moment, he cared more about being able to control his hunger right now than he did about his well-being in the future.  He wanted the instant gratification of a full stomach after a day of hunting and farming so much that he wasn’t thinking about the future implications of the deal he made with his brother.  As so he forfeited the privilege of  later becoming the head of the household, of the property and land and wealth that came along with it because he was so fixated on what he could get now that would make him feel better.

Esau is not the only one with issues in this story.  Jacob lived up to the second meaning of his name “the one who deceives” when he took advantage of his brother’s desperate situation.  He knew that Esau was at a weak point due to hunger, and so he took his chance to claim not only the spiritual and material blessing of the birthright, but in this case the promise to Abraham of many descendants and nations was at stake…and who wants to let that go when you have the opportunity to grasp it sitting right in front of you at the cost of only a bowl of stew?

Which begs the question - What’s your red stuff?

 Is there anything that you can think of that you have been offered in the past that offered up so much satisfaction in the here and now that you didn’t even think about the implications for the future? 

Have you ever offered up red stuff to someone else as a way to achieve something that you didn’t think you could get on your own?  No need to answer now…but give it some thought.  We all have our red stuff…the substitute forms of food that feed us immediately and that are within our control…the things that give us that sense of instant gratification.  Things that we are willing to compromise our faith for, for the sake of easier gain. We’ve been offered it…we’ve offered it up to others. 

But here is where the catch comes in.  We may shake our heads at Esau’s quick willingness to sell his birthright for a bowl of stew…we may even shake our heads at Jacob’s taking advantage of his brothers extreme hunger in order to secure the birth right.  But even in the midst of this family feud and the feud caused when Jacob truly steals not only Esau’s birthright but also his blessing, God’s plan is working itself out. This wasn’t simply a brief exchange in which one brother profited in the long term while the other brother profited only temporarily.  The Lord had told Rebekah directly that her older child would serve her younger child, and in the selling of a birthright for a bowl of stew, the Lord’s will was done.  Jacob would be the one through whom the promise to Abraham would be passed down, not Esau.  And so, in this strange interaction between two brothers that never got along in the first place, God’s work still got done. 

God’s work gets done in the strangest circumstances…in the selling of a birthright for a bowl of stew…in the selling of a brother over some extreme jealousy…in the selling of the location of where the Lord’s own son would be praying the night before his crucifixion.

And so the take home here is the in the midst of the bad situations we get ourselves into, God’s GOOD plan is going to work itself out.  And that’s the definition of the Gospel…it is God’s good news in the midst of our bad situations. 

Faith of our Fathers

July 6, 2014

Genesis 24: 34-67

Pentecost 4A

On July 3, 1776, John Adams wrote a letter to his wife Abigail in regards to the proceedings that took place on July 2nd. It was on the 2nd of July, 1776, that the Second Continental Congress voted on a resolution that legally separated the thirteen American colonies from British control. In the letter to his wife, John Adams wrote: “The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.” Mr. Adams was two days off in his guess at when the birthday of the United States would be celebrated…however, for the most part, the majority of what else he wrote to Abigail has happened and continues to occur when we celebrate our nation’s birthday. 

President Adams was a person of faith living in a time of significant transition as the 13 colonies were moving from being subject to British authority to their own autonomy as a country.  What is interesting about this letter to Abigail is that while he was realistic about what declaring independence would mean in the future, he had faith that ultimately the ends would justify the means and that God would grant his blessing upon this new nation.  He continues “You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. -- I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. -- Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will triumph in that Days Transaction, even although we should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.”

Last week we heard about the story of the binding of Isaac.  How Abraham and Sarah had become so enamored with the child that they had waited so long for, that they placed him above God, the one who had provided for their every need.  So God put Abraham to the test, and without questioning, Abraham proved his faith and his trust in God.

That faith and trust carry over to today’s lesson.  We pick up in the middle of the story in which Abraham sends his servant to Abraham’s brother’s house in Haran to find a wife for Isaac. 

Sarah has died and Isaac was nearing 40, which was well passed the typical age in which folks got married at the time.  Abraham did not want Isaac to take a wife from the women of Canaan, the land in which they lived, and he did not want Isaac returning to Abraham’s hometown for fear that he would find a wife there and settle down in Haran, failing to return to the land which he was set to inherit through the promise that God had made to Abraham.

So Abraham sends his servant to Haran, making him promise to bring back a wife for Isaac from Abraham’s brother’s house.  When the servant reaches the city of Abraham’s brother, Nahor, he stops at the well to pray.  His prayer is that God will grant his success in finding a wife for Isaac and asks that the woman that God had set apart for Isaac would come to the well and offer not only to water not only him, but his camels as well.  Before even completing this prayer, we meet Rebekah, who has come to the well to fetch water.  She offers to water Abraham’s servant, as well as his camels. 

Upon completing this task, Abraham’s servant places gold bracelets on her arms and a ring in her nose, which was a way of claiming her for Isaac while also serving to show Rebekah and her family that Abraham would be more than able to pay a bride price for Rebekah.  Rebekah then runs home to tell her family about what had just happened, decked out in the gold that Abraham’s servant had given her.

Our reading picks up here, with the Abraham’s servant’s testimony of God’s enduring loyalty to Abraham by leading the servant to Rebekah, Isaac’s future wife.  His testimony wins the consent of Rebekah’s family and Rebekah agrees to return with the servant to Abraham’s house to become Isaac’s wife.  Rebekah’s agreement to this arrangement is without question, which we will discover later is not surprising considering her decisive nature.  So Abraham’s servant returns to Canaan with Rebekah and her entourage, and she is delivered to Isaac to takes her as his wife and loves her, finding comfort in his love for her in the midst of his sorrow over his mother’s death. 

Faith and trust is an important thread in this story, as it is in many of the stories of Genesis.  Abraham had faith that God would provide a wife for Isaac from the house of his brother.  Abraham’s servant had faith that God would make him successful in his quest to find such a wife, which he saw as a sign of God’s faithfulness to Abraham and wasn’t afraid to tell others about it. Rebekah’s family had faith, upon hearing the testimony of Abraham’s servant, that Rebekah was being called to become a matriarch of many nations and that God would bless her in her travels and into the future.  

And, finally, there is the faith of Rebekah, a faith that cannot be overlooked, because it is faith with which Rebekah makes the decision to leave her father’s house and travel to a land she has never seen before to marry a man she has never met before all based upon the testimony of a stranger she met at a well.  It is her faith which allows Isaac to be comforted after the death of his mother and it is her faith that helps shape the future for her son Jacob, who will later become Israel.  

It was a faith that, similar to Abraham, allowed Rebekah to lean in on the promises that God would provide.  She depended on God above all else, even when it meant that sometimes it meant taking action to help ensure that God’s promises would be fulfilled. 

As we come to the end of a weekend of celebrating out nations independence from British rule, as we walk through a time in which the words independence and freedom are being bandied about in dangerous ways, as we look out upon a nation that is increasingly divided, we are called to look to Rebekah as an example of faith and of dependence on a God who provides and a God who saves.  To lean in on the promises that whether we see it or not, and regardless of the folks who claim that God has folded to the laws of man and agreed to be kicked out of our schools and places of government, that God is still here, still providing, still blessing.  We are called to walk by faith, to believe in the promises of things that we have yet to see, trusting that just as God has made good on his promises in the past, God will continue to make good on his promises to us now and in the future.  

John Adams was right when he wrote Abigail 238 years ago.  He got the date wrong, but he was right about the celebrations, right about the cost of independence, and right about God’s being present in and faithful to this nation, just as God is in every other nation on earth.  And for this we give thanks. 

The Binding of Isaac

In the Jewish tradition, the story of the binding of Isaac is called the Akedah.  It is a story that has challenged many scholars and pastors, especially in our modern time and it is a story that has caused Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike to be seen as suspect by the atheist community.  One prominent Atheist, Christopher Hitchens, in his book “God is not Great,” uses the Akedah as an example of why religion poisons the world.  He argues that it is appalling to think that faith traditions would lift up the story of a man so ready to take the life of his own child to prove his faithfulness to a deity as a bastion of faith, and that a deity who demands child sacrifice is abhorrent in and of itself.  From a preaching perspective, this text is certainly a difficult one. 

How do we be faithful to this story while admitting that a God who commands a man to sacrifice a son who he waited until he was 100 years old to father is quite troubling? Especially in an age when child sacrifice in and of itself is disturbing and where children are highly valued.  A god who commands such a thing is off putting.  A father who agrees to such an act without so much as a “why?” is distressing. So the easy way out would be to toss this text out the window and move on. 

Except, that there is a lot that we can learn from the story of the binding of Isaac.  It is obviously an important part of the Genesis narrative, or the folks who wrote Genesis would not have included it as part of the tale of God’s relationship with Abraham.

Last week, I mentioned that Abraham was very devoted to his God, following from his home to a land he had never seen before, entering into a covenant with God that required the institution of circumcision, believing in God’s word that he would one day be the father of many nations.  And God made good on every one of his promises…even though the last promise took a little longer than most people expected…so long that Sarah and Abraham laughed when they were told that at 98 and 99 years old, respectively, that Sarah would become pregnant and give birth to the son that Abraham had been promised so long ago.  But though it was later on in life, God made good on his promise and Isaac was born. 

I can imagine that Abraham and Sarah loved and doted on their long waited for son greatly…buying him the finest clothes, the most well-bred camels, making sure he ate the finest foods so that their son would grow up to be healthy and strong.  Spoiled was probably an understatement for this couple that waited until their 90’s to have their first, and only, child.  Nothing was too good for Isaac, the son of Abraham. 

It seems, though, that with the clothing and the camels, the toys and the fine meals, that Abraham and Sarah’s attention shifted away from the God who had called on them and provided for them for so long, to the comfortable life they had as a happy family of three.  They were content, they finally had what they had wanted for so long, and their focus changed. 

So God decided to test Abraham’s loyalty.

God had provided everything that Abraham had, his land, his family…all of it had come through God making good on his promises. And so Abraham’s test was to give something back.  Something that was so precious to him that it had caused God to question Abraham’s continuing devotion to him.

“Take you son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.”

To us, this seems like a barbaric command, but to those who live in the time that Abraham lived, a time when child sacrifice was common place, it wouldn’t have been an outrageous request.  In the ancient world, it was believed that offering up the first born child as a burnt offering to the gods was an act that showed great reverence to the gods, and it was believed that such sacrifices would garner favor and protection from the Gods.  So this command to take Isaac and sacrifice him to God would not have been shocking to them like it is to us.  What would have shocked them, however, is that, in the end, God sent his angel to stop Abraham from taking Isaac’s life, offering up – instead – a ram.  Abraham’s loyalty to God had been proven in not only attempting to follow through with God’s command, but in having the faith to be confident in telling Isaac that God would provide the animal for the sacrifice. 

There are many things that we can take away from this text, but I’d like to touch on two of them.  The first is that human sacrifice has no role in our God’s plan.  There are many other gods out there who demand human sacrifice of one form or another, the gods of war and violence demand the sacrifice of not just young men and women who serve their country in the military, but also of our children, of the elderly, and of people of all ages, on the altar of fear and increased gun sales.  The gods of greed demand the sacrifice of the well-being of children at the hands of rising food prices, human trafficking, neglect, cuts to education funding, homelessness, etc,.  These are not sacrifices that our God demands…in fact, scripture tells us that they are contrary to our God’s plan. 

The second thing I wanted to touch on is that sometimes our God does put us to the test.  We don’t like to talk about it…in fact we like to talk about it so little that there has been at least a generation raised up in the church that believes that the sole point of religion is to make them feel better about their lives.  But the truth is that when we faithfully follow God, we are going to asked to do things that don’t make us comfortable, we are going to be challenged to be better at loving our God and loving our neighbor by being called to be honest when we confess the things we have done that we shouldn’t have and the things we should have done by failed to do. We are called to make sacrifices of time, talent, and treasure for the sake of God and for the sake of his gospel. We are called to provide for the needs of others on God’s behalf and to help others to stand up when they have been laid on the altar of sacrifice to other gods.  Sometimes being a follower of God is as far from comfortable as we can get because it means admitting that we are not in control.  And we pray that God will not lead us into temptation out of fear that our lack of faith will be found out, that the curtain we are hiding behind will be pulled back and it will be discovered that we have chosen to seek out a less demanding alternative to God.   

There is a need to return to being honest about what being a descendant of Abraham and a follower of Christ means.  It means that God will test our loyalty to him from time to time…it means we will be asked to make sacrifices of our own time, talents, and treasures…and it means that other, more “fun” and “easy to please” gods are going to come our way and try to take our attention and our loyalty away from our God. 

And we can remain confident in our God, because unlike other gods, our God will not demand human sacrifice, our God makes good on his promises, and our God has shown us the ultimate power of his love for us by giving up his own son so that we could receive the promise of abundant life and of a future with him in paradise.  It is because of these things that we can have confidence in the face of other gods when they come knocking on our door.  For we know that our God provides for every need, even if it means calling on us to be the ones to do the work on God’s behalf, and while sometimes our loyalty to him comes into question, God’s loyalty to us never fails.  

Father Abraham

Pentecost 2a

June 22, 2014

Genesis 21:8-21

Father Abraham, had many sons,

Many sons had father Abraham

I am one of them and so are you

So let’s all praise the Lord. 

And so the song goes, right arm, left arm, right foot, left foot, turn around, sit down.

But the problem is, I don’t know if I want to be all that closely associated with this father Abraham.  I mean, he sounds great at a glance.  He believed God and got up to leave his home land for a land he had never seen before, whose location he wasn’t to know until God placed a big, flashing neon arrow above the place and said “here you go!...but I forgot to tell you about the famine.”  He believed God when God entered into a covenant with Abraham that required that he circumcise himself and all the males in his camp as a visible sign of the covenant. He believed God when God told him that his descendants would number as many as the stars in the sky, even though he was getting on in age and Sarah was barren.  He believed at age 99 the promise that God made to him that Sarah, who was still barren and now 98, would give birth to a son.  He pled for the sake of Sodom and Gomorrah, talking God into sparing the city for the sake of 10 righteous, who sadly were nowhere to be found. I can get behind this Abraham.  I can happily claim this Abraham as an ancestor and praise the Lord for his faithfulness.  

That’s only half of Abraham’s story.  The rest isn’t so great. 

When Abraham and Sarah arrived in Canaan, the land the God had promised them, and found that there was a famine there, they took an extended vacation over to Egypt where conditions were much better.  It seemed to Abraham, however, that the couple had a slight problem.  The problem was, though, that Sarah was quite beautiful…so beautiful, in fact, that Abraham became afraid that upon seeing her, Pharaoh would become so taken by her beauty that he would kill Abraham and take Sarah to be his own wife.  So he made Sarah agree that if anyone asked, she was to say that she was his sister and basically was cool when Pharaoh believed them and took her for his wife anyways.  This wasn’t the only incident like this.  It happened one other time, only the second time, they played Sarah off as Abraham’s half-sister.  

Later on, when Sarah and Abraham realized that their biological clocks were not ticking any slower, Sarah presented Abraham with Hagar, her hand servant, with instructions to take her as a second wife and sleep with her in hopes of producing a child.  This was not a show of Sarah’s lack of faith, but rather a regular custom of the time.  You see, if a woman was married and then found to be barren, she could be cast off by her husband and seen by the community as cursed and disgraced.  So women in situations of infertility would often give their husbands other wives or concubines so that an heir might be produced for her husband and that she might remain married to him. In Sarah’s case, the plan worked a little too well and a little too quickly, it seems for the result of Abraham taking Hagar as a wife was the birth of Ishmael, and a very jealous Sarah, who was so mean to Hagar when she was pregnant, that Hagar ran away from the house.  Hagar eventually returned, but Sarah’s jealousy of Hagar and Ishmael persisted, even through the birth of her own son, Isaac. No child of a slave woman would share an inheritance with her son, Sarah thought.    

Abraham and Sarah were certainly no Holy Couple.  They were certainly faithful to the promises made to them by God and we should hold them in high esteem for that.  When it came to human relationships, however, they were extremely flawed self-preservationists.  More worried about themselves than anyone else, even each other.  Notice how Abraham is more concerned with his own death than Sarah being taken as the part of Pharaoh’s harem?  And Sarah is more concerned with her own offspring than about Abraham’s love for his other son.

I don’t think that this story is ultimately about them, however.  Well, in a way it is, but in a way to points to the fact that when we are left to our own devices, we often act just like Abraham and Sarah when it comes to human relationships…flawed self-preservationists. 

But we cannot ignore the fact that the story is also about these two small role characters, Hagar and Ishmael, the wronged woman and her son.  And as much as this is about Hagar and Ishmael, it’s really not about them, either.  It’s about the actions of God within this story and within the human experience. 

In the midst of the mess that Abraham and Sarah have caused on account of trying to make God’s promise of a son come to fruition by pulling Hagar into the midst, and then casting her out on not just one, but two occasions, God comes through and meets Hagar where she is.  In fact, Hagar is one of the few women in the bible to have direct conversations with God.  The first conversation occurs when Hagar has run away from Sarah.  The angel of the Lord finds her off in the wilderness and instructs her to return to Sarah.  Then he makes a promise to her that her offspring will be greatly multiplied and that she shall name her child Ishmael, which means “God hears.” And what is incredible about this first interaction is that Hagar gives God a name “El-roi” which means “God sees.”  The second conversation that Hagar has with God takes place after Sarah has demanded that Abraham throw Hagar and Ishmael out.  God hears the cries of Ishmael and comes to the aid of the boy and his mother by opening her eyes to the presence of a well in the middle of nowhere. 

Earlier, God had assured Abraham that he would be with Ishmael and make of him a great nation.  And God made good on his promise.  God heard Ishmael’s cries in the wilderness and came to him and remained with him as he grew. 

So what we see in this story of a flawed patriarch and his equally flawed wife, both called and chosen to be the ancestors of many nations, is God’s unwavering compassion in spite of, and often despite of our own human failings in tending well to human relationships.  We see a God who not only hears, but also sees through the midst of our own failings and comes to the aid of those who crying out in the wildernesses that they have been abandoned in.  This is a God who doesn’t just swoop in in the moment of need, but remains along the entire road of the journey. 

Ultimately what it comes down to it is this.  Sometimes we are the Abraham and Sarah’s, focusing more on our own self-preservation than the needs of people around us.  Sometimes, when left to our own devices, we needlessly cast others out so that we can feel comfortable.  And sometimes we are the ones whose needs are overlooked and feel cast out for the sake of others feeling better about themselves. 

But in the midst of the brokenness of human relationships, God is still at work.  Meeting us where we are, hearing us when we cry out, opening our eyes to the resources that we need, and sticking with us along the journey.     

Trinity

June 15^th, 2014

Holy Trinity Sunday

Genesis 1:1-2:3

Did you know that the word Trinity never appears in the bible?  From Genesis 1 to Revelation 21, not once does this word appear in scripture.  Yet, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is a living and vital part of what we confess as a part of our Christian faith.  The doctrine has its origins in the Great commission found at the end of the Gospel of Matthew, in which Jesus commands the disciples to go out and baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Later on, Paul used a Trinitarian formula as a salutation in his writings. The Grace of our Lord, Jesus Christ, the Love of God, and the Communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.  Sound familiar?  It comes from Paul’s 2^nd letter to the Corinthians.

Even though the word Trinity doesn’t appear anywhere in the bible, lots of time, energy, and God only knows how many trees have gone into attempts to explain the doctrine of the Trinity. Many church fathers and scholars have made attempts to explain the Trinity.  I even have a video which makes an attempt to explain it away, but only ends up as a complicated mess.  In the end, the best that scholars and video editors alike can is throw our hands up in the air, say those words that scholars hate to say “I don’t know”, and let the mystery of the Trinity remain, acknowledging that the closer we think we are to figuring it all out, the further and further away we actually are.

We could try to explain the Trinity using analogies…something concrete as an attempt to explain something so abstract.  

When I was in confirmation, our teacher used an apple and an orange to explain the Trinity.  Apples and oranges, we were told, have three parts – the rind, the flesh, and the seed.  Each are a part of the apple or orange, but each is also distinct in form and function.  The flesh of an apple cannot become the seed, and so on and so forth.  When Chris was in catechism in the Roman Catholic Church, he was taught that the Trinity is like the different states of matter in Water.  Ice and water and vapor are all made of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, but they are in different forms. 

At some level the analogies are helpful…but when it comes down to it, they all come up short in trying to capture what the Trinity is. That’s ok, the analogies are supposed to come up short, because human reason cannot wrap itself around what the Holy Trinity is because the Holy Trinity is what it is…a divine mystery…and sometimes letting a little mystery permeate our lives of faith is ok.

So why do we spend a Sunday torturing preachers and parishioners alike with a topic that is beyond human comprehension and always leaves us tied in knots? What the point of assigning a Sunday to something that the more we realize and admit that we cannot understand, the better of we are?

Well, let’s take a step back for a moment and worry less about trying to figure everything out about the trinity and let’s take a look at some things that we do know about God, who is the Trinity.

And I think a good place to start is the question, what is God like?

If you turn on the TV you can easily find televangelists that love to give you their take on God.  God wants you to be rich, if you have enough faith and give enough money to the church, God will reward you…God is angry at this group of people or that group and that’s why natural disasters have happened around places where those people live.  God hates you and me and our children and our whole country…God has let innocent children die in school shootings because we have systematically kicked God out of our schools.  Have you heard these messages? 

There are a lot of folks out there preaching them. 

And, I’m not going to lie, there are some very troubling passage in scripture, particularly in the Old Testament that may lead us to think that these things are true.  In Exodus, God repeatedly hardened Pharaoh’s heart when Moses approached him about letting the Israelites go.  In Job, God makes a bet with a member of the Holy court that Job would not sway from his faith even if he lost everything.  People are struck by lightning for worshipping improperly, the list goes on.  And as these stories become piled upon one another we do start to see an image of an angry and jealous God, a God who pulls on the puppet strings and zaps people with lightning on a whim.

But the problem when we look only to these troubling passages in scripture, when God starts to take on a form that only shows one side of God’s story, the question arises - is the story of God and God is like being told by folks made in the image of God? Or is it a story told by folks who have made god in their image?  Writer Anne Lamont once wrote that you can be pretty sure that you have made god in your images when god hates all the same people you do.  And she’s right.

There’s another side of the story though, one that begins with the beginning of our scriptural witness to who God is. 

The creation story in Genesis 1 tells us a story of a God that exists beyond time and beyond space.  A God not created, eternal, and incomprehensible.  A God who is all powerful…who commands something to come into being and it happens.  A God who calls those things which he created “good” and blessed them and tells them to be fruitful and multiply.  A God who made you and me and the rest of humankind in God’s own image. 

What specifically this means, we aren’t sure. But we can say with absolute certainty that being made in the image of God means that somewhere within us, each of us carry the mark of God.  And though we may try to change it, deny its existence, cover it with tattoos, piercings, different hair colors, it always has been and always will be there.  From our first breath until our last…and then some. 

We were not created out of some whim one day, as is the case in other creation stories of that time.  We are a deliberate creation of God, each carrying the mark of God in us. The mark of a God who cannot be measured by time or space, a God who was not created but created everything, a God in three persons who, though they are individuals, co-exist in a divine dance whose beauty defies our human comprehension.

Each created, as my theology professor in seminary put it, to pray and to play.  To be open to the mysteries of the faith but to trust in their promises.  I don’t know and couldn’t tell you specifically how bread and wine become body and blood in Holy Communion.  But I believe it because Jesus makes that promise to us, to be present in bread and wine at the table. 

I don’t know and couldn’t tell you how the Trinity works.  But of the words of Jesus Christ to baptize in the name of the father, son, and Holy Spirit, I believe in the Trinity.  I believe most of  the words of the Athanasian Creed which speak of an almighty God, three in one, one in three.  Who are three persons and yet one in divinity and glory and majesty.  My faith tells me that this is true, even if trying to understand it means throwing my hands in the air and saying “I don’t get it...and that’s ok.”