The Road Leading to Jerusalem

The beginning of Holy Week, the scene in which Jesus makes a “triumphant entry” into Jerusalem, is a scene that is ultimately political.  Jesus demands his followers make a choice between two kings and kingdoms. Since chapter eight, when Peter and the disciples recognize that Jesus is the Messiah – the King of the Jews – everything that Jesus has done and each step they have taken have led them to this point.  Jesus has continually set before them illustrations of what God’s Kingdom looks like against the reality in which they live. Parables and healings have been interspersed with predictions that such a movement will lead Jesus to the cross. Jesus makes it clear that we cannot have it both ways – loyalty to the status quo makes one an enemy of God’s Kingdom.  Likewise, loyalty to God’s Kingdom and King Jesus makes one an enemy to those that wield power through any means other than servanthood.

The stakes are high.  Jesus knows the costs and continues to explain them to his disciples.  Challenging the powers will get you killed. But the price of living fully the life God designed far outweighs the false choice of living life in competition with one another, looking out for oneself at the expense of others.  Servanthood is the calling God places on each of us – carrying one another’s burdens as equals, rather than rivals.

Jesus’ remarks, in Mark 10: 32-45, sum this up.  Jesus is on the road to Jerusalem with his disciples.  He knows this road will end in Jerusalem with suffering and humiliation.  The disciples still think it will end triumphantly. Which makes Jesus’ triumphant entry all the more jarring for we who know how the story goes.  Along the road, Jesus pointedly tells the disciples that he would be handed over to the authorities, not as a hero but as a traitor. Immediately, after what should be frightening news, James and John ask Jesus to “grant us whatever we ask.”  Those demanding words end up being a request for special status when God’s kingdom comes.

Ever been talking to your kids and as soon as you finish explaining some serious life lesson, they abruptly change the topic around something they want?  These two disciples seem to have had the same problem. Have the been listening? Do they not understand? Patiently, Jesus once again explains the difference between ‘pagan’ rules and God’s Kingdom.

You know how it is with pagan nations, he said. Think how their so-called rulers act.  They lord it over their subjects. The high and mighty ones boss the rest around. But that’s not how it’s going to be with you. Anyone who wants to be great among you must become your servant.  Anyone who wants to be first must be everyone’s slave. Don’t you see? The son of man didn’t come to be waited on. He came to be the servant, to give his life “as a ransom for many.”

It’s with this understanding that Jesus makes his entry into Jerusalem.  It’s God’s holy city but it’s a city far from God, filled with people more concerned with getting ahead, no matter who may get stepped on in the process.  It’s a city Jesus can’t rule over. It’s a city with an agenda moving in the opposite direction of his calling; living opposed to his rules. While the common among them may have greeted Jesus as a king, the powerful wouldn’t let Jesus get any further than this simple ride on the back of a donkey.

Such background work has been helpful to me as I approach Palm Sunday.  To see Jesus’ entry through the lens of his journey to Jerusalem, against the cultural norms in which he lived, and through the not-quite perceiving eyes of his disciples paints a picture of two competing ethics:  An ethic of self-promotion that isolates and an ethic of servanthood that welcomes community. For Mark, it’s the ethic of servanthood and community that motivates Jesus’ actions and stories during the week leading up to Good Friday.  This holy week, may the simple ethic of servanthood overcome the loud and prevalent ethic of self-promotion. May we make enough room in our busy days for the presence of Christ to slow us down and correct our inclinations for self and open us up to the blessing of serving others.

  • What keeps us from accepting the posture of servanthood?
  • How are we like James and John?
  • Is it easy to recognize the difference between self -promotion and servanthood?  Are the differences more subtle than we like to think?
  • What habits must we change in order to be a servant?
  • What positions or things are we holding on to that prevents us from embracing servanthood?
  • What does a community that submits to each other look and feel like?
  • How is that different than our present communities?
  • To whom is such a community the most attractive?

Read Mark 8:1 – 10:52 prior to class this week.  Challenge your class to do the same. Will Jesus’ triumphant Entry look different after a close reading of these stories?

Challenge your class to continue its reading during holy week, following Jesus’ passion: Mark 11:1- Mark 15:39.  Does the servant ethic continue?

Transforming Grace

The old Peanuts cartoon has Snoopy on top of his doghouse, anxiously waxing philosophical, asking:

“Where am I going?  What am I doing? What is the meaning of life?”

snoopy

Deep questions, certainly.  Trouble is, do we find ourselves asking that question enough?  What is the point of our life – of any life? What am I doing about it?  Does the direction I go make a difference?

For Paul, these were the big questions.  They were the questions he gave the rest of his life to understand and to give an answer for on behalf of everyone he encountered.  His own life was his biggest and best answer. He had been living the life of the upward and respected. He knew “what was what” and he worked hard to maintain his place in Jewish and Roman life.  But, one day, on the road to put those pesky Christians in their place, he met Jesus. And life as he knew it changed. What was up became down. And he understood love, mercy and grace for the first time.  For the first time, Paul didn’t and couldn’t earn his way. It was freely given. Which made him want to do a whole lot.  Not for himself but for everyone else. Because he now possessed a grateful heart.  Everything now was gift and the gift needed to be shared, not hoarded.

This is what led Paul to write all those letters, as difficult as they are to understand, sometimes.  Like Christ was transformed on the other side of the resurrection, so too was Paul on the other side of Damascus and so too are each of us every time the Spirit shows us just how out of control we really are, left on our own, yet how very blessed we have become to be called children of God.

So transformation is the heart of the matter of the lesson for this Sunday as it is also at the heart of the letter to the Ephesians.  God’s grace has transformed us to understand our whole existence, our direction, our whole purpose in a different light. We are fundamentally different creatures with a different purpose after our baptism.  The tension that remains is we live in a hostile world that either is looking in the dark while asking the same questions as snoopy or has completely ordered their lives around a purpose that amounts to little more than “me.”

For those of us who are new creations in Christ, Paul wants us to remember where, like himself, we have all come from.  And for those who haven’t yet discovered their potential newness, the household of God is to be a clear signpost for the hope they can have in a new life and purpose in Christ, and a firm direction for getting there.

The best I can do to help you guide your class in encountering Paul’s message is offer my own visual summation of Paul’s message in Ephesians 2 and to offer two perspectives from theologians much better versed in communicating just what transformation is.

First, I offer you Eugene Peterson’s overview of Ephesians.  To understand Paul’s overarching goals in his letter is to better understand his reasoning in chapter two.

What we know about God and what we do for God have a way of getting broken apart in our lives.  The moment the organic unity of belief and behavior is damaged in any way, we are incapable of living out the full humanity for which we were created.

Paul’s letter to the Ephesians joins together what has been torn apart in our sin-wrecked world.  He begins with an exuberant exploration of what Christians believe about God, and then, like a surgeon skillfully setting a compound fracture, “sets” this belief in God into our behavior before God so that the bones – belief and behavior – knit together and heal.

Once our attention is called to it, we notice these fractures all over the place.  There is hardly a bone in our bodies that has escaped injury, hardly a relationship in city or job, school or church, family or country, that isn’t out of joint or limping in pain.  There is much work to be done.

And so Paul goes to work.  He ranges widely, from heaven to earth and back again, showing how Jesus, the Messiah, is eternally and tirelessly bringing everything and everyone together.  He also shows us that in addition to having this work done in and for us, we are participants in this most urgent work. Now that we know what is going on, that the energy of reconciliation is the dynamo at the heart of the universe, it is imperative that we join in vigorously and perserveringly, convinced that every detail in our lives contributes (or not) to what Paul describes as God’s plan worked out by Christ, “a long-range plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in him, everything in deepest heaven, everything on planet earth.  -Eugene Peterson’s introduction to Ephesians, The Message.

Our goal as teachers is much the same as Paul’s. To help Christ-followers understand that to celebrate the gift of God’s grace without any sign of real transformation is to miss the point entirely.  To be a new creation in Christ is just that – we are changed people; transformed, with a new way of seeing, understanding and relating to the world around us.  We have the answers Snoopy is looking for. Yet transformation most of the time isn’t the flash of blinding light Paul experienced. Rather, it is a gradual change that requires the prayers and the practice of a people, together.  It takes work. The church encourages this change in one another, but not for the sake of the church or ourselves. Instead, this transformation, though meaningful and deep, is for the sake of the world.

To better compare and contrast what Paul is describing in Ephesians 2, I’ve drawn a little diagram: image002

Lastly, one of the most creative storytellers and theologians in our recent history is Frederick Buechner.  Follow this link to read a moving description of Paul’s transformation and the different and purposeful work that came out of Paul’s conversion.  It is worth the read and paints a beautiful picture of the transformation found in embracing God’s grace. Good work doesn’t earn us a place in God’s good grace but God’s good grace motivates us to work to reflect a good and loving God.

Questions:

  • How do you know when someone has changed (transformed)?
  • Is all change good?
  • What makes for good change?
  • Is change easy?
  • In a system that elevates the individual above a community, what will be the sacred cows that stand in the way of transformation to Christ-likeness?

Encountering the Ten Commandments for the First Time, Again.

This Sunday’s lectionary text is a very familiar one – even for marginal church attenders and those have no desire for church.   It is the first account of the giving of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17).  We hear a lot about the Ten Commandments these days.  Especially where they should be or shouldn’t be displayed.  Everyone has an opinion.  Everyone is looking to control them.  But what does God have to say about the commandments that God gave?   These, after all, are created and given by God to humankind for our good.  In assuming this is an old and familiar story, are we missing how the commandments are life-giving?  In the fight for where they fit into our cultural life, are we missing the commandments purpose?

In my study this week, I’ve been challenged to see the commandments anew – as a life-giving gift that helps us lead a life that reflects the character and image of God.  If God is trustworthy, faithful, peaceful and desiring of relationship with creation, then we must live our lives in ways that resemble this.  Often, we read these commandments as negatives.  And they are written as such … “thou shall not…”  But the commands are parameters that are given for our benefit.  What if the class was challenged to write the commandments in the affirmative:  “Thou shall…”  or “You get to…”  or “Blessed are those who…”

In lieu of my own exegesis this week, (theological talk for critical explanation or interpretation of a text) I offer you all the following resources that shaped my study this week.  They are worth your consideration.  Two commentaries found online:

http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/sermon-starters/lent-3b-2/?type=the_lectionary_gospel  Be sure to scroll down to the Exodus commentary found after the commentary on the gospel lesson.

http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2368  This commentary is more dense but worth wading into.  Among other things, it address our proclivity to control God rather than to allow God to guide us.

Finally, a reflection from Barbara Brown Taylor, found in the Feasting on the Word preaching commentary:

“Since the giving of the Torah on Sinai is celebrated during the Jewish festival of Shavuot, a wealth of story and tradition surrounds the first hearing of the commandments.  One midrash says that the people had little choice but to accept Torah from God, since God plucked up Sinai and held it over their heads, threatening to drop the mountain on them if they did not received the commandments.  In happy counterpoint to this legend, more and more religious Jews observe the first night of Shavuot by staying up all night to study Torah, Talmud and other sacred writings together.  They offer this annual all-night gathering, known as tikkun, for the mending of the world.”

If nothing else, stories and traditions like these remind Christian interpreters of the Ten Teachings that these teachings have been around a long time.  They are never our possession, any more than the God who uttered them is.  Instead, we stand among a people counted as God’s peculiar possession, set apart by holy speech and practice for the mending of God’s holy world.”  -Barbara Brown Taylor

How can the world be mended by our living in response to the Ten Commandments?

Taking Up Our Cross

The challenge to those we teach today is to understand the cross and apply it to our circumstances.

What is a cross?  Its symbolism and meaning are ubiquitous today.  It’s certainly more than an intersection of two lines.  It’s a fashion accessory for many.  We see it in appear in all types of art.  For sure, its a symbol of our faith.  We see placed prominently in Christian churches of all stripes.  We see it used as a memorial and in cemeteries.  Its presence can bring peace and assurance to our life and faith.  But unfortunately, it has also been misused over time as a symbol of intolerance, threat and fear.  Certain “Christian” bodies have used it to signify that their perspective is right and all others best move out of the way. While this is as far from the message of Christ as one can get, it actually is in keeping with the original Roman intent for the cross.

A Roman cross wasn’t a thing of beauty.  It was something to be feared.  It was an instrument the Roman authorities used to establish their rule far beyond Rome as they subdued people and civilizations that stretched as far north as modern day England, as far south as Morocco, and as far east as Iraq.  In doing so, they achieved a span of about 200 years, between 27 BC and 180 AD, which is known as “Pax Romana,” or Roman Peace.  During this time, their empire thrived, intricate roads were built connecting this vast empire and aqueducts carried fresh water into cities and dirty water away.  But the cross may have been one of its most useful instruments.

The cross was a popular method of dispatching threats to the empire. “Romans practiced both random and intentional violence against populations they had conquered, killing tens of thousands by crucifixion,” says New Testament scholar Hal Taussig, who is with the Union Theological Seminary in New York.

Crosses were then used as a way to repress any possible insurrection.  They were usually set up in public places, like at a crossroad, and became a signpost to all who traveled that Caesar and Rome was a power to take seriously.  This cross did not offer people traveling directions but rather, with a corpse left hanging on it offered directions of another kind:  Know your place in this Roman order and everything will remain peaceful for you.  Make even the slightest waves in opposition and you can expect to join this man on your own cross.  These “signposts” were found all over the Roman world.

This is what the disciples had in their minds when Jesus, after being identified as the Messiah, announced “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”  Can you imagine both the horror and confusion that must have surrounded them?  This gifted rabbi that people had been flocking to hear speak and be healed by is telling us that he is the long awaited savior of our people.  He’s the Messiah!  But instead of saving us from the oppressive Romans, he is asking us to embrace their form of submission!

No wonder Peter, who first identifies Jesus as the Messiah, reacts so forcefully at Jesus’ teaching of his rejection.  Peter, like many of us, wants to take control of the situation and preserve his leader and movement.  Given the context of the Roman world, perhaps Jesus is simply stating a fact.  If I am what you say I am, the local authorities and ultimately Rome’s response will be to kill me.  But Peter’s desire to fight fire with fire was not the agenda God had planned for his son.  And, after forty days of training in the wilderness to resist satan’s temptations, Jesus’ work pays off as he resists any plan of self-preservation, even when it comes from his star pupil.

Would-be messiahs were nothing new in first century Palestine.  More than a few had risen to prominence, with their own band of disciples and the cause of God and nationalism as their banner.  Violence and death were always their end as they resisted the empire’s strength.  After each demise, there was nothing left to show for their efforts.  Jesus’ call was to embrace, on behalf of his followers, the path of savior through martyrdom.  Looking back at the witness of Christ in the gospels, it appears that part of God’s beautiful plan was that only through the embrace of self-sacrifice can the movement of God’s reign ever come in any significance.

What does this scripture have to say to followers of Christ today?  What kind of self denial and cross is Jesus asking us to carry?   And how abrupt and difficult is such a message to our ears?  To answer, we must first start with the question, “who do we say Jesus is?”

Who do we say Jesus is?  This question makes all the difference.  If we are going to take up our cross, we first have to believe the cause is worthy of suffering.

This is the question that gets this whole scene started.  Jesus and his disciples have been traveling from town to town preaching God’s kingdom, casting out demons and healing the sick.  He’s developed quite a fan club.  And Jesus wants to gauge his disciples by asking them about the folks they are encountering.  What are they saying about me?  Do they recognize me?  But ultimately, he wants to know if they, who have been with him the most, recognize him for who he really is.

When Peter makes his confession, the wheels start to turn. A messiah by any other name than Caesar is someone with a mark squarely on his shoulders.  The disciples have given up everything to follow him.  With this news, they may have to give up their life.  Peter and the others were probably ready to die for Jesus’ cause, to go down swinging in a fight against the evils of the empire.  What Peter did not like, what he didn’t fully understand, was Jesus’ acceptance of what seemed like defeat.  His teaching that he would die seemed like a certainty, not a possibility.  How could the Messiah be victorious when he was ready to accept death at the hands of the enemy?

Yet, as the story plays out, Jesus’ death is not the end but rather the beginning.  Jesus’ death changes everything.  Jesus’ willingness to trust fully in God’s authority over everything rather than the Ceasar’s violent version of reality, put Jesus on a cross but brought those who follow him life.  Today the Pax Romana is but an ancient history lesson.  But the gospel of Christ is embodied in every person who believes and follows.  Jesus’ death and resurrection was the ultimate signal that humans, no matter how powerful or threatening they appear, can’t really have any lasting power over God’s creation.

So, how we understand who Jesus is will make a difference in how we understand the cross that Jesus asks us to carry, and our willingness to pick it up and follow him.  What is our cross today?  Is it worth our sacrifice in order to bear it?

The challenge to those we teach today is to understand the cross and apply it to our circumstances.  The cross may not mean a literal death or martyrdom.  Rather, it may mean that we have to daily say no to things that stand in the way of our ability to fully trust in God alone.  What systems and technologies do we trust more than God?  Are we able to fully claim the way of Jesus above the way of capitalism, a particular political point of view, the threat of violence, a work ethic that drives us to continuous work or lifestyles that compromise our ability to see God at work and join God there?

These lifestyles, as an example, are not necessarily scandalous.  But, it very well may be in our comfort, in our overwhelming options of how to use our time and wealth, that we choose being served rather than serving. What does this look like?  If it is a continual guilt trip, then we don’t want it.  But, I think the Jesus way is a simple truth that our life is more than the conveniences we have become enslaved to.  As we follow Christ, we start to recognize this but too often we give into our own Peter rebuking us, trying to keep us safe, in a predictable place we can control.

Following Jesus is a greatest adventure.  Walking in his footsteps brings us purpose beyond anything else society can offer.  The tension is that society doesn’t want this adventure and doesn’t trust it or celebrate it.  Society wants to stay in a system that is predictable and controllable.  The adventure of faithfully following Jesus will either go under the radar of popular culture or it will be rejected.  This is just one of the crosses we as Christians are called to bear.  Being unpopular, crazy or both.

So, what does it mean to bear our cross?  We have collective crosses we must bear faithfully for God such as coming to terms with gun violence in America.  And we all have our own crosses that require sacrifice and faith to bear.  What will it look like for a community of Christ followers to bear our burdens (our crosses) together?  Is it possible?  I pray and hope that it is.

For a radical example of taking up the cross, Greg and Helms Jerrell have followed Jesus’ call to minister among a marginalized neighborhood in Charlotte, NC (http://qcfamilytree.org/).  Instead of pastoring in a church setting, which would have perhaps brought them more comforts and middle class lifestyle, they were called to Enderly Park.  Their choice has made them who they are and they wouldn’t change a thing!  A mission team will go to serve with them and learn with them June 27-30.  Sign up at http://www.hrbcrichmond.org/my-hrbc

Our Limiting God

“This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and everything living around you and everyone living after you. I’m putting my rainbow in the clouds, a sign of the covenant between me and the Earth. From now on, when I form a cloud over the Earth and the rainbow appears in the cloud, I’ll remember my covenant between me and you and everything living, that never again will floodwaters destroy all life. When the rainbow appears in the cloud, I’ll see it and remember the eternal covenant between God and everything living, every last living creature on Earth.” – Genesis 9:12-16, The Message

We study a familiar story this week, but we skip the two-by-two part along with the rains come tumbling down section and head straight to what God promises creation after the floodwaters subside.  In Genesis 9, we find the first mention of a covenant in the Bible.

In the ancient near east, a covenant was an agreement between two groups.  Most always, this agreement was a promise made by a conquering kingdom to not destroy the conquered kingdom and even protect this people in exchange for access to the conquered’s resources and land.  The agreement is reciprocal but not equal:  We the conquering will not destroy you but will protect you as long as we have access to the resources that will make us greater.  There is clearly a have and a have-not.

What we see in the covenant promise that God makes to Noah’s family on behalf of all creation is different.  Clearly God is the powerful player in this scene.  God has just all but wiped out his creation, save for Noah’s family and the two-by-twos.  But as one scholar puts it, God appears to be just a little shocked at the display of his strength toward creation. Therefore, God makes a unique covenant, a one-sided covenant, with the people and animals that God delivered.  In doing so, he sets his bow down in the clouds, as a warrior would do when he has come home from battle.

This rainbow becomes a sign for God and a reminder that he will never destroy creation again.  The rainbow acts as a reminder to God.  I admit I’ve never given much thought to the rainbow being a reminder for God.  I’ve always seen it as a reassuring sign for creation.  Why does God need reminding?

Perhaps it is because when God promises to not destroy, God is limiting his ability to bring to an end to his creation.  And from time to time, humanity’s propensity to selfishness might just frustrate God enough to consider it again.  And why would God want to do this?  If we look back to Genesis 6:5, we read that God saw the wickedness that had overtaken all of creation  – that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only to evil continually.  And God is sorry about his creation – enough to blot them out; except there is Noah. So God saves the only family that found favor in his sight.  And God destroyed the rest!

We don’t spend much time on this part of the flood story, do we?  We love the faithfulness of Noah and the way God saves his family and all the animals.  Its safe.  We make it a children’s story and decorate nurseries with these images.  But the times leading up to the flood and the catastrophic flood are far from G-rated!  There are very adult themes here.  God was fed up with the evil in his creation’s heart.  Seems like the world was like Las Vegas, times ten!  Even God’s angels got into the mess, falling in love with women and impregnating them with giants!  Really?  Read Genesis 6:1-4.

To harken back to Adam and Eve’s original sin, it appears that the people of Noah’s day had no regard for God or his commands, which were created for the purpose of humanity’s flourishing.  People had their mind set on evil, day and night (6:5).  I take this to mean people did whatever made them feel good, putting their desire ahead of the good of the whole and the order that God had created.  Such disregard for God, the divine parent who cared so much for creation, was enough for any mortal to give up.  And for a moment, so the scripture says, so did God.

But there was Noah. God provided the necessary instructions for Noah’s family to survive.  They boarded a ship and the floods came.  But what about all those bent on evil?  What happened to them?  They got what they deserved, right?  Can you picture the hopeless struggle as the waters rush and rise?  Its not a pretty sight.  And now that Noah, his family and the animals had survived, God, fresh from his victory in battle, is ready to lay his weapon down for good.

What must it be like to be angry at creation?  Many of us have been angry at our children, sure.  But angry enough to kill?  Is this really the kind of God we read about in the rest of our Bible and worship?  Its hard to imagine.  But his wrath is right there in scripture. Is there more to this?

Since the beginning, civilizations have had their flood narratives.  What does one do when everything they know is wiped out by rushing water?  When lightening strikes from the sky?  Thunder rolls overhead?  We know a lot about the weather today (although not enough to control it or even predict it well).  But in ancient times, this was all mysterious and assigned to the anger of God.  Certainly, we know that sin is pervasive and at times almost irresistible to humanity.  Its can be enough for anyone (even a deity) to want to give up.

Recalling that much of the Torah was written down during the Babylonian exile, what might the homeless Israelites have thought of this story?  They believed their continual sin had carried them away into exile.  Might flood stories also be explained as righteous anger?

The beauty of God’s covenant is that, no matter the cause of the flood, we see God taking initiative to promise that no matter what evil may come in the future, God will not destroy, even though it may be tempting as evil can be so frustrating and hurtful.  But God is willing to be limited so that even when humanity turns to evil all the time (and I think we can admit it still happens) God will refuse to destroy.

With this in mind, I think the story can be more about who the LORD God is in contrast to those other near eastern gods.  Whatever resemblance God and the flood may have had in other flood stories, the covenanting God who limits his power out of love and compassion for creation is a far more compelling and, in the end, powerful.  It is also a foreshadowing of God’s final redemptive work through Jesus, as he limits himself all the more, taking the form of a human and denying any divine privilege. (Philippians 2)

What I take from this story is God does hate the state that sin leaves us in but loves us so much that he finds another way around the sin problem.  It wasn’t through destroying his wayward creation but being vulnerable enough to conquer the sin that would put Christ to death.

One last feature I noticed, with the help of others: God’s bow – the rainbow – is taut, as if strung and ready for action.  A bow that is strung will look more like the bending arch in the sky than one that is not loaded.  This could reflect that God is patient with his creation even though his patience is tense, full of pent up energy.  He’s laid his bow down but it doesn’t mean God is OK with the evil that remains in creation.  And because God was willing to suffer at the hands of evil, God knows all the better the terror that it inflicts on us.  Just look at the evil that leads one teenager to kill so many other innocents this week.  And even how we are becoming so used to it.  So, no.  God isn’t OK with the evil that woos us.  So, just as the rainbow is a reminder to God that he will never destroy his creation for even this, the strung, tense bow should also be a reminder that God doesn’t take our sin lightly.  In righteous love, God has defeated evil through his incarnational sacrifice.  But in God’s righteous anger, God is still burdened by the sin that keeps us from fully knowing and seeing his love, this side of the kingdom.

Therefore, I believe that anyone who suffers for righteousness sake, who stands up for God’s creation in the face of evil can expect to suffer but also expect to be blessed.  (Beatitudes, Matthew 5)

  • How does our lesson speak to God’s radical love in the face of even the heartbreaking events of this week?
  • While God will not destroy us because of our sin, what might the taut roundness of the rainbow reveal about God’s attitude toward sin?
  • Following God’s example, should our attitude toward sin be different than our attitude to those who sin?  How does our attitude toward sin and sinners reflect that God’s Kingdom is available to all?

 

 

Brilliant Dust

On Wednesday, we observed Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the season of Lent.  In comparison to other Christian observances, this one may strike us as the strangest. On our way to resurrection and God’s plan of making all things new, what do we need to know about frailty, dust, death and repentance?  Lent, oddly, reminds us of our place in God’s larger story.  Still not a fan?  Hear me out.

The common refrain we hear during the imposition of ashes are the words: “Remember, you are dust and to dust you shall return.”  Pleasant, I know, but this is on purpose.  In Genesis 2:7, we read of how God formed man from the dust of the ground.  We are created from dust.  And if we pay attention to the places we live and work, we notice we are good at creating dust.  Our bodies are constantly shedding and creating new skin. We are literally dust.

But the story doesn’t end with dust.  Genesis 2:7 continues to say “the Lord God breathed into the nostrils of this man and he became a living being.”  We are who we are because we carry God’s breath.  The word for human or man in these verses is adam, which means dirt in Hebrew and adamah means ground or land.  So God formed us from the dirt of God’s creation and gave us our uniqueness among all creation when God breathed divine breath into us.

Equipped with God’s life-giving breath, God empowers humans to have dominion over the dirt of the world.  With our God-given breath, we are able to cultivate life from the dirt which sustains us and all other living creatures.  But if we are honest, we are also capable these days of much more than sustaining lives.  We are also capable of destroying life, too.

As we quickly see in the next two chapters of Genesis, these special creatures called humans are also capable of turning their backs on their creator and capable of destroying God’s very good creation.  So, from Genesis 4 through today,  we continue to deal with this tension of creativity and destruction.  We see such beauty in our world.  People are capable of such kindness and self-sacrifice, one to another.  But people are also capable of destruction, cruelty and selfishness, too.

And before we, who were given the responsibility of divine creativity, alters God’s good work to an unrecognizable wasteland of greed and hubris that leads to destruction, we need a reminder of who we are and our place in God’s world (not our world).  The jarring words “remember – you are dust” are there to save us.  God created you with divine breath.  You bear the resemblance of God.  But you must also remember that none of us are God.

Acknowledging that we are not God is getting harder these days.  No one really goes around calling themselves god.  But check our behavior.  How often do we as individuals or as a society consult with our creator before moving ahead with our latest project that may impact the earth, the oceans or fellow human beings?  Our behavior reflects our unwillingness to accept that we are dust, that our bodies wear out and that our planet is also finite.  What it does show that we are deeply interested in ourselves.  We would make poor gods, at least when compared to the true God in whose likeness we are created.

And since we are created in God’s image and with God’s breath, the good news in all of these ashes is that there is deep meaning and purpose in our lives.  When we acknowledge that God created us with the responsibility to take this very good creation and do something beautiful with it, well, that should both scare us and excite us!

To quote one theologian’s musings on our spectacular dustiness:

“To regard ourselves responsible for our future, responsible for the very human race itself and the very planet itself, is not arrogance but recognition of the truth.  But all such human responsibility depends on one immense condition, that we never forget that we too are creatures, children of the same Majesty who formed the planet and the suns and galaxies which surround us.  In that sense, created and formed, given the gift of life, we are dust.  Brilliant dust? Yes.  Creative, thinking dust?  Yes, but still dust.  For all the brilliance and creativity and thought and imagination within that dust are the shimmering traces of that divine breath within us.”  -Herbert O’Driscoll, A Year of the Lord

Put a different way, we’ve been given this one brilliant and beautiful gift of a life from our creator.  How will we use it?  Will it reflect the intention and desires of our Lord?  Will it lift up and and bless both the creator and creation as worthy investments of our time, our creativity and praise?  Or will our abilities be forgotten and lost in self-adulation and even destruction?

Such questions remind me of a Switchfoot song, Live it Well, which asks the same kind of questions.

Healing Presence

Below, I start by restating the student sheet introduction statements.  Then, I give my impressions followed by a couple of video illustration suggestions.

What is important to know?  Jesus is not scared of brokenness – either physical or spiritual.  His willingness and ability to heal draws a crowd.  Jesus can give them what they long for.  What is it that they long for?  (Wholeness?  Acceptance?  New life?)

Where is God in these words?  Jesus’ healing is powerful.  The Greek word egeiro is used here and in Mark 16:6 in reference to Jesus’ resurrection.  It seems that Jesus’ work is not healing just for healing sake.  It is restorative.  For Simon’s mother in law, her social responsibility to was to provide for guests when they were present in her home.  Today, her guest was none other that the Son of God!   The healing restored to her the social expectation and meaning for a homemaker in 1st century Palestine.  It restored her dignity.  Don’t mistake the role of Simon’s mother as normative for today, however.  That would be missing the point!

So what does this mean for our lives? God recognized that nearness and even touch were important for building a relationship and trust.  Thus, God put on flesh and came near to his creation he was seeking to re-connect.  The incarnation, God becoming flesh, is a astounding show of God’s love for creation.  Jesus was willing to come into contact with all kinds – no matter their ailment.  That means none of us are ever to far gone for Jesus to come near to us and restore us!  In Mark 1, that included the demon possessed, the sick and the unclean – those skin diseases believed to be spread by touch.  If Christians are considered the body of Christ, what does our willingness or unwillingness to associate with others say about who Jesus is?

Now what is God’s word calling us to do?   How have we been healed and restored by God’s word or by God’s healing touch?  How has that healing allowed us to use our words and deeds to heal and restore others?

All of us are children of God, created in the image of God.  All of us also live in a world where sin still is present.  We can’t deny it – every new day brings heartache and disappointment for so many.  Our human condition brings with it the capacity to do great and creative things and to fail; to hurt others and let others down.  Some bodies are capable of at one point running a sub-four minute mile or jumping hurdles and the next moment succumbing to cancer.  It leads us all to ask, where is God in this?  If we are created in God’s image, why all the pain, the sickness, the heartbreak?  How are we, God’s children, capable of such beauty and such evil?  The simple answer, of course, is sin.  The sin that started in our inability to fully trust God but rather to think of ourselves as God.  Its that same sin, our desire to think of ourselves as God that prevents us from most fully reflecting the image of God.  Rather, its in our humility to trust God fully and to put our neighbor first that is ironically the way we reflect the divine.

Mark introduces Jesus, the Son of God, in fast-paced snippets.  We learn about John the Baptist, Jesus’ baptism, Jesus’ wilderness temptations, Jesus’ proclamation that he embodied God’s reign come near and his call of his first disciples, all within the first 20 verses of chapter one!

Then, we find Jesus teaching in the synagogue on a Sabbath.  He spoke with authority, which is to say he was interpreting the scriptures without the help of another teacher or prophet.  (See N. T. Wright, Mark for Everyone p. 11, last paragraph).  Who better to recognize the authority of his teaching than the demon possessing a man present in the synagogue?  The demon obeys Jesus’ command and the assembly is amazed.

The scene switches to Simon’s mother-in-law’s home.  There, she is sick and unable to offer the typical hospitality that was expected of a first century Jewish home.    We don’t know anything about her illness.  But what seems to be significant is that Jesus is able to restore her health in such an effective way that she begins to serve her guests.  I don’t think this is a story about God’s desire for gender roles.  What it does speak to, however, is that in Jesus’ day, a woman’s role was wrapped up in her ability to offer hospitality to her guests.  Her sickness may have been grave.  She may have been brought back from the brink.  But at the least, her dignity was restored as she was able to provide what her peers would have expected her to do with guests in her home.

In the section after our reading, Jesus and his disciples happen upon a leper.  Lepers were some of the untouchable in Jesus’ day, with fear that their skin disease would be caught not just by touch but if they were within eye shot of others.   Therefore, lepers existed outside towns, alone and ostracized. This leper also recognizes who Jesus is and asks for healing.  Jesus is filled with compassion instead of repulsed as most would have been. (the Greek is splagchnizomai which is translated indignant or filled with compassion)  He reaches out and touches the leper!  And the leper is healed.

What do these miracles have in common?  What do they mean for we who follow Jesus, today?

For each of these people, the man demon possessed, the sick mother-in-law and the leper, were all  in one form or another considered less than whole.  One was possessed.  We may consider this person mentally ill today although this is to not diminish the reality demonic forces.  One could no longer do the tasks that gave her meaning. And the last was completely cut off from the community because of a physical ailment. But, when, in the NT, the person with leprosy was declared clean, it was her/his ticket to re-enter community, to be engaged again in work, family, worship, life. When the demonized person was set free, s/he was set free to fully connect again with others. Simon’s mother-in-law was raised to do the things that gave her purpose and meaning. The person who carried a sick one to Jesus walked home arm-in-arm with that one. These are not stories of magic; they are stories of human community being healed from the brokenness that sickness, disease, and mental illness can bring.

We know of the faithful Christians who do not receive the healing they prayed for, who suffer in a quiet but dignified way.  Is there hope for them in this scripture?  There is, if healing equals human connection.  If healing means God’s love for humanity does not depend on what society deems as acceptable.  If healing means that because of God’s work in Jesus, all can find full communion with God.  But this truth must be echoed in the way Christians in the present treat all God’s children.  That all people are worthy of our care, our time and our effort.

Martin Luther King’s vision of a Beloved Community that reflects God’s reign is the outcome of this kind of healing.  To offer a quote from Dr. King:  “But the end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved community. It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opposers into friends. The type of love that I stress here is not eros, a sort of esthetic or romantic love; not philia, a sort of reciprocal love between personal friends; but it is agape which is understanding goodwill for all men. It is an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return. It is the love of God working in the lives of men. This is the love that may well be the salvation of our civilization.”

from “The Role of the Church in Facing the Nation’s Chief Moral Dilemma,” 1957

God’s Kingdom, God’s rule is evident in this world when, in seeking God first, we are able to offer to others the dignity of a love that seeks to elevate others instead of ourselves.  As Jesus says later in Mark:  Whoever wants to be first among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.  (Mark 10:43-44).

Did you see Patch Adams when it was released in 1998?  It is the true story of an unconventional Dr. who learned to offer healing to others in unconditional ways.  In one scene, he brings laughter to children suffering from cancer in a sterile and serious hospital ward. https://youtu.be/byPJ22JDFjI  In another he argues that all people can be doctors when they see one another not as patients or problems but as people who can offer healing. https://youtu.be/Pr9ruvxA3K4 These clips may be helpful in illustrating the point or starting a conversation.

Discernment, Calling and MLK

Today’s lesson asks learners to consider how Samuel’s discernment of God’s call on him informs how we, in present day, discern God’s call.  This is an important topic!  How we hear, understand and interpret the voice of God will determine how we make choices big and small, treat our neighbors and bear witness to God.  So, getting discernment right is critical.  In 2014, the church went through a brief discernment exercise in order to hear God’s voice and know God’s longings for our church’s worship services.  I wrote a discernment guide each class used.  In advance of this Sunday’s lesson, I think it is important to take a look at an excerpt of that guide.

What is Discernment?

In its simplest form, spiritual discernment is the choosing between two perceived good options, through the leadership of God’s Holy Spirit.   Discernment shifts the question, however, from what we personally want, wish, or think to God’s yearning or longing for our lives within the particular question.  Discernment, then, is a discipline.  It does not come naturally to we who live in a sin-sick world.  While we are a redeemed people, the culture in which we live is constantly telling us through numerous modes to put our personal wishes and desires first.  Put another way, we have been taught that we indeed are the captain of our ship; that we are right!

The Biblical witness tells us otherwise.  In fact, it reminds us that we often are wrong.  Stories throughout the Bible reveal that God has a plan for creation but it also shows the disastrous results of what happens when God’s people follow their own desires and will instead of God’s.  Following God’s desire for us requires what Paul called “dying to yourself.”  Giving up control and being led to places and situations that we may not choose alone.  This is why following the path of Jesus seems so unattractive to a culture that believes it knows best.

But Jesus’ witness and Paul’s testimony actually proves a paradox about life; that giving up control – this dying – is actually finding life, for the first time!  (Philippians 2; Galatians 2)  So we must admit that what we are embarking on is neither natural for us nor easy.  It takes practice.  And it is not a goal we can ever fully achieve.  Rather, it’s an exercise that works particular spiritual muscles.  If we stop, the muscles atrophy and become weak.

In seeking spiritual discernment, the first question is “who is in charge?” and the second is “how do I know what God wants me to do?”  Closely following both questions is the question “how do I recognize God’s voice above my own voice, simply echoing back my own desires?”

Since spiritual discernment requires relinquishing control, it is important that we do not sabotage the process by bringing our agendas or desires to the table.  (Again, this is not an easy process!)  If we believe God is in control and we are to find abundant life by being obedient, then we have to become “indifferent” to the outcome we seek.  This is far from an uncaring attitude but rather another way of stating that we truly want to make God’s desire our desire.  Therefore, a key term to keep with you throughout the discernment process is an attitude and posture of “holy indifference.”

Discernment is an art, not a science.  It is about finding God’s yearning for the direction of each of our lives individually, and the direction of our congregation, corporately.  It is not a once-and-for-all answer to our questions but a continual seeking for God’s longing as we accept the invitation to live into the abundance God so freely gives us.¹

So spiritual discernment can be compared to a process or a journey.  It is not linear – it doesn’t follow a step one, step two, step three format.  While this guide will give you the tools and practices to listen for God’s longing for your life, it ultimately is about cultivating a relationship, which requires give-and-take.

Relationships that are intimate and successful are those that cultivate trust and practice listening.  These are critical in the spiritual discernment process.  God desires a relationship with each of us.  We have to trust that God, through the Holy Spirit, desires to be known.  Through the practices laid out in this guide, we have to learn to be in tune with God’s voice.  This means we must practice the discipline of listening.  Once again, in our    culture, listening to one another, much less God, is a challenge that requires much practice.  It’s the emptying of our own noise and the noise around us so we can be available to the movement of something that is both otherworldly and at the same time very close.

Knowing God’s longing for us throughout our life becomes clearer as we continue to practice holy indifference, trust in God, and in listening to God’s spirit through prayer, study, silence, spiritual friendships, worship, and service to others.  Eventually, as we continue these practices, spiritual discernment becomes a way of life.

 

The story of Samuel’s call is both straightforward and difficult.  The narrative is simple to follow – God calls Samuel three times but Samuel doesn’t recognize God’s voice.  It is not until Eli recognizes God’s work in Samuel’s confusion that Eli helps direct Samuel’s ears.

Application for today’s lesson is important:

  • How do you recognize and trust the voice of God?
  • How do you recognize and scrutinize your own voice?
  • Who is in charge?  Is it God or you?
    • Eli’s sons put themselves in charge of the temple rituals, instead of trusting God.  God refuses to work in people who put their interests ahead of God’s.  Like Eli’s sons, they will miss out on the blessing of God working through them to heal the world.
  • Who is an Eli in your life – someone who recognizes the voice of God and points you in the direction where you can hear it, no matter the consequences of the message?

Answers don’t come quick or easy when an individual or group sets out to discern the voice of God.  But it is the only way to test our own bias and the pull of the fallen world against the longings of God.  Often, it is in the process or journey of discernment that growth happens.  I pray that your group hears this hard but important truth.

Monday is the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday.  MLK founded his movement of nonviolent resistance on the witness of Christ and his faith that God stands with weak, the marginalized, the poor and the hungry.  In order to stand in non-violent protest, in order to love their enemies, in order to not strike back, the beloved community that Dr. King helped form had to practice.  They practiced getting shouted at, punched, attacked.  And they practiced not striking back.  They also practiced looking their attacker in the eye, what they believed would be a disarming reaction to their attack.  They did this because, like Jesus, they believed even their enemies were children of God and that they had the capacity for good.  The discipline to behave in this way, to radially love your enemies is not a simple choice.  In order to say yes to such a call, it takes a discerning heart.  May we cultivate discerning hearts as we at HRBC create God’s beloved community here.

I’ve share this before, but kids president does a great job honoring MLK:  Watch and share his video here:

Order Out of Chaos

This week’s review of Feasting on the Word material:

  1. Thinking theologically about chaos and order in Genesis 1
  2. Encouragement for using small group discussions
  3. An online resource for crashing waves
  4. Wifi password

How do we explain chaos we experience in our lives, see in others’ lives or see in our world, today?  In the same way, how do we explain the amazing order we find in creation and in our world?  Our bodies are amazing examples of order.  Also, if the earth’s orbit or axis varied just slightly, the earth wouldn’t be able to sustain life.  We see incredible examples of order and chaos around us.  So, how do we explain it?  This question is one of the chief theological questions that all religions deal with and one that God, as made known to us in the Bible, doesn’t shy away from.  God answers these pressing questions right at the beginning with the opening line:

“In the beginning, God…”

Before we can attempt to explain order and chaos, we have to start with our belief that before all of this, there was God.  God brought life and order out of chaos and God called it good.  The account of this process of bringing order out of chaos in Genesis 1 gives some detail to how God did this.  The author describes God working over a period of days and creating the world through God’s voice.  God speaks and there is life.  We aren’t given any more detail than this.  So, the scientific mind in each of us will be left unsatisfied with such scant detail.  The point of Genesis 1 is not for God to let us in on the specifics of God’s creative work but to simply yet confidently state that it is God who did the creating.  And also to point out that God invites his creation – men and women – into the creative process.  We too are given the ability to create.

In Genesis 1, God creates humankind in God’s image.  In some way, we resemble God.  The ability to order and create are a couple of these attributes that resemble God.  God gave humans the authority to rule over the rest of creation and to use his creation to continue to create.  The theological implications of this belief leads us to ask how we have used our creativity and ability to rule and order since.  Are we creative in relationship with God and in obedient faith in God?  Or do we strike out on our own, distrusting God and believing that we can truly be in charge, alone?  This is the outcome of the fall.  Believing the serpent’s lie, that God did not have our best interest in mind, humans bought into the notion that they could order their own lives outside of God.  Ironically, this re-introduced chaos into the world.   Thus, we live with the tension of beauty and order in creation alongside chaos that sin introduced.

The author of the lesson refers to the Genesis account of creation as having been written during the days of the Babylonian exile.  Many scholars, based on textual and archeological research, believe that much of the Old Testament came to its form during and after the Babylonian Exile.  This is the first time that this culture, with its oral tradition, had to face the reality that being carried into a different culture may necessitate a written account of its history and how God has moved among them.  Not that everything was written down at the same time.  There are also stories of Hilkiah finding the book of the law in the temple while it was undergoing renovations (2 Kings 22 and 2 Chronicles 34).  This is just prior to exile.  There is a sense that the King Josiah and the people were not familiar nor did they obey the law that they found in the temple.  This may imply that the reason they were under siege from foreign nations was their disregard of the law.

No matter when the creation story was recorded, the Babylonian exile is a huge moment in Israel’s history.  It was a time of national defeat and humiliation.  It was a time when God’s order didn’t hold and was understood as punishment for Israel’s unfaithfulness, their desire to follow their own desires instead of God’s.  Remembering the creation story – that God brought order out of chaos – must have given the people facing life in a foreign land hope.  God could overcome chaos once more.

How does faith in God’s creative work then and now bring us hope in the present, when things feel out of order, uncertain, even scary?

What is significant about water in the Genesis story?  As the lesson mentions, the gospel lesson for this week is found in Mark 1:4-11, the story of Jesus’ baptism.  What role does water play in the gospel lesson?  How does our baptism reflect a change in our lives – from chaos without God to order and purpose under God?  Note that God affirms both creation and Jesus’ baptism as being good.

Our new material employs a lot of small group discussion.  How often does your class work in small groups?  Small group work may initially be uncomfortable for some.  Instead of listening to others, small group discussion invites everyone to contribute.  For introverts, this can be much easier than contributing in a large group setting.  It also keeps one or two folks from always dominating the conversation.  Some of the best insight can come from those who don’t normally contribute.  Small group discussions allow everyone to be heard.  After small group discussions, invite each group to report back to the larger group.  You will multiply your insight and wisdom for the collective group by using this strategy!  Even small classes can split into small groups of two or three per group.  Just be sure to give specific instructions and have the discussion questions available for each group.

This week’s lesson suggests using ocean sounds to direct the class’ attention to God’s creative work.  For those who have access to a laptop or smart phone, I’ve found a good YouTube channel that plays ocean waves crashing.  Look it up and use it during your intro!

https://youtu.be/PoAeFpUB1hA

Also, be aware that you will need to sign on to our open wifi at church.  The password is: John3:17.  This simply keeps people off our wifi who don’t need to use it, thus slowing down the connection for those who do need it.  Hope you find your connection speeding up!