Month: June 2014

Proper 7A: Being Light in the Darkness

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Light in the darknessOLD TESTAMENT:  Genesis 21: 8-21

To read the Old Testament Lectionary passage, click here

We are familiar with the birth of Isaac.  His birth brings the Abraham story to  climax.  The verses stress that God has made good on the promises and that Abraham has been obedient in naming and circumcising Isaac.  It is the fulfillment of God’s promises to Abraham (and to Abraham’s descendants).  The foundation of something great has begun as the child grew.

But in verse 9, the story abruptly changes.  The reappearance of Hagar and Ishmael makes it impossible to dismiss them as simple diversions in the grand Abraham saga.  They receive almost as much attention as Isaac.  Isaac and Ishmael are both children of promise.  The Judeo-Christian tradition sees that God has made clear that the redemptive purposes on behalf of the world (the whole world, including Ishmael) will manifest themselves through Isaac.  But Ishmael does have claims.  The “other son” (and those that will come after him) are not to be dismissed from the family or from God’s realm.  God will remember both children and their descendants.

The relationship between Sarah and Hagar was either not resolved amicably or has deteriorated in the three years since Isaac’s birth.  Sarah’s depiction of Hagar as a “slave woman” probably drives home her concerns over inheritance rights.  She demands that Abraham send Hagar and Ishmael away.  She does this during the festival associate with the weaning of Isaac, a time of rejoicing because he has survived the difficult first years that most children do not.  (Perhaps she has waited until now to insure that there WAS an offspring.)  She only speaks “about” Hagar, never talking directly to her and again making her appear “beneath” her. Sarah gives Abraham an ultimatum, insisting that he choose between his two sons.  Modern readers probably side with Hagar, feeling sorry for her and with Abraham at the position in which he finds himself.  And, yet, some move must occur if BOTH of the sons are going to follow the shape of their futures that God holds for them.

Both children are recognized as belonging to Abraham but also to a particular future that will be worked out in the future.  God announces that it is through Isaac that descendants will be named for Abraham, probably referring to the covenantal line.  But Abraham can be assured that God will care for the future of Ishmael as well, making of him a great nation.

In this story, the people of God should recognize and rejoice that God’s saving acts are not confined to their own community or their own depiction of who God is.  God’s acts of deliverance occur out and about in the seemingly godforsaken corners of the world, even among those who may be explicitly excluded from the so-called “people of God”.  This story reminds the “chosen” that their God is the God of the world, the God of all Creation, the God who we can only fathom in our small, particular way.

The story of Hagar Hagar is often looked upon as one in which she becomes many things to many people.  In Texts of Terror, Phyllis Trible writes about Hagar’s story in this way:  “Most especially, all sorts of rejected women find their stories in her.  She is the faithful maid exploited, the black woman used by the male and abused by the female of the ruling class, the surrogate mother, the resident alien without legal recourse, the other woman, the runaway youth, the religious fleeing from affliction, the pregnant young woman alone, the expelled wife, the divorced mother with child, the shopping bag lady carrying bread and water, the homeless woman, the indigent relying upon handouts from the power structures, the welfare mother, and the self-effacing female whose own identity shrinks in service to others.”

This text does affirm that God chooses the line of Isaac (even with more intention than if the treatment of the two offspring had been “even-handed”)  But Abraham was chosen so that all families might be blessed through him.  What one does with the Ishmaels of the world in the face of claims for Isaac comes front and center.  God is God; we are not.  God has the power to make all things new.  We are reminded by this text that the world is filled with both physical and spiritual (in the way that Christians relate to Abraham) descendants of Ishmael.  There are 2.8 billion Muslims in the world and close to half live outside of the continent of Africa.  These, too, are the children of Abraham.

For Hagar, while she focuses on her past, God focuses on her future.  In the sixteenth chapter of Genesis, God actually draws her into the conversation.  Hagar is the first person in Genesis to encounter an angel of God and the first woman to be given promises.  She becomes the only person in the Old Testament to actually name God.  Where some would assume that this is a sort of “split-off” of the actual story of God, this narrative tells us that it is, rather, another way of telling the story itself.

 

  1. What is your response to this passage?
  2. How does our tradition usually read this passage?
  3. How does our society treat the “Hagars” of the world?
  4. How does this story call us to relate to the descendants of Ishmael?
  5. How does this text call us to see God?

 

NEW TESTAMENT:   Romans 6: 1b-11

To read the Lectionary Epistle passage, click here

The letter of Romans is essentially Paul’s “manual” for life.  It teaches how to wrestle with the world and wrestle with our faith in the process.  This journey through baptism is a journey of life.  More than just washing away sins, it brings us into unity and participation with the living Christ.  We become not just “sinless”, but Resurrection people, with new lives and new outlooks.  Baptism doesn’t MAKE us children of God but instead puts us on the pathway to living our calling as God’s children.

The passage tells us that “we were buried”; in other words, our old way of living is one that we have let go.  We have buried it and find ourselves raised anew alive in God.  Being alive in God, though, is not a static way of being.  It is a journey, a journey that assures us of life and yet one that does not lay out every detail of that life along the way.  Being alive in God means being alive in the glorious mystery that surrounds us.

In the preceding chapter, Paul depicted God’s grace as the answer to human sin.  No matter our sin, God’s grace is bigger.  But then it is up to us.  This abounding grace is ours for the taking.  It not only forgives; it also reminds us who and Whose we are.  It reminds us that we are God’s children and that life always holds something more.  We move from being the “walking dead”, so to speak, to being alive in Christ.  But, Paul claims, first we have to let go of that death, to let go of the life that is killing us either physically or spiritually.  We have to let go of who we think we are and begin to live as the one that God created us to be.

What the believer does with the facts, says Paul, is to embrace them with a curious kind of realism. When we were baptized, the church was quite candid about the transitoriness of it all. Knowing how we could easily spend our whole lives lying about death, the church got all that over with right at the beginning by holding us under the waters of baptism. Early, back on Ash Wednesday, we were told, “You are dirt and to dirt you shall return” (Gen. 3:19) At the beginning, we were assured that our things, our kings, our empires and our projects don’t last. The church pried our fingers loose, one by one, from these alleged securities and pushed us into dark waters, waters that (surprise!) turned out to be our womb rather than our tomb. Rather than falling back into nothingness, we fell back upon everlasting arms. Death? How can we fear what we’ve already gone through?

We find that, quite surprisingly, we began really to live because we did not have to. All the really interesting people were those who had somehow learned to let go.  Is Paul’s talk of baptismal dying too mystical? I posed that question to a group of ordinary, everyday laypeople in an ordinary Mississippi church. “Has anyone here had to die in order to be a Christian?”  Silence. Then they began to testify.

“I thought that I couldn’t live in a world where black people were the same as white people. When segregation ended, I thought I would die. But I didn’t. I was reborn. My next-door neighbor, my best friend, is black. Something old had to die in me for something new to be born.”

Another said: “I used to be terribly frightened to be alone by myself. When my husband went out of town on business, I either went with him or took the children and stayed with a neighbor. But the night that my eight-year-old child died of leukemia, I stopped being afraid.”

“Forgive me,” I said, “but I don’t get the connection.

“You see,” she explained, “once you’ve died, there is nothing left to fear, is there? When she died, I did too.”

When he spoke of what happened to him on the Damascus Road, Paul never knew whether to call it being born or being killed. In a way, it felt like both at the same time. Whatever it was, it had something to do with letting go. (Excerpted from “Letting Go Down Here”, by William Willimon, in “The Christian Century”, March 5, 1986, available at http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1002, accessed 16 June 2014.)

So, let go…and become alive.

 

  1. What is your response to this passage?
  2. What life is it that you feel you need to “die to”?
  3. What does being alive in Christ mean for you?
  4. Does this give you any new meanings for your own baptism?

 

GOSPEL:  Matthew 10: 26-33

To read the Lectionary Gospel passage, click here

This passage is not one of the most comforting from the Gospels.  Everything will be known—all our secrets, all those things that we are trying to conceal.  Darkness and whispers will become easily seen and easily heard.  But you are a child of God.  God knows you and loves you.  So do not be afraid.  Just have courage.  Because walking from darkness to light is hard.  But you are not alone.

The truth is, this passage is not one of those feel-good healing stories.  It tells of disruption.  After all, Jesus did not come to walk the pathways of this earth to tell us what a stupendous job we were doing in the Kingdom-building department.  Jesus came to show us a new vision, the vision of God. And when new visions come to be, the others are often cut to pieces, curtains torn and storm clouds gather, and that is indeed uncomfortable.  Jesus came to expose the darkness of the world, to show us a different way.

For those of us who have never faced persecution for our faith, never lived in a darkness that we could not imagine, this is hard to grasp.  For most of us, we are born, exist, and will die in at least a dimly lit version of what our faith is.  But what if the world went dark?  What if all that you knew was hidden?  Do not be afraid.  That is what we are told.  You are not alone.

And for us, those who exist in a “peaceful and civilized” society, how should we read this?  Where are our darknesses?  Where are those things that the Way of Christ is exposing?  The truth is, Jesus calls us not to walk with the majority culture, but to align ourselves with the marginalized, to walk straight into the darkness and start shining light everywhere.  We are no longer called to be people of the Empire; we are called to be children of God.  The empires will do their best to crucify Jesus over and over again but, do not be afraid.  Nothing is too great for God.  Being one with Christ, in unity with who God calls us to be, will indeed show us life.

The season of Easter is behind us.  The work of the Resurrection now begins.  Where are you on the road?  Are you existing in darkness or shining light into it?  Be who you are called to be; be Light.

 

  1. What meaning does this passage hold for you?
  2. What darkness do you see in your world?
  3. What does it mean to shine light into it?
  4. How would this passage speak to our world?  Our society?  Our denomination? Our church?

 

 

Some Quotes for Further Reflection:

 

No man is an Island, entire of it self; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee. (John Donne)

 

Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void. (Simone Weil)

 

Don’t ask what the world needs.  Ask what makes you come alive and do it.  Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. (Howard Thurman)

 

 

Closing

 

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.  Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy. O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.

(St. Francis of Assisi)

Trinity A: Together

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Celtic TrinityOLD TESTAMENT:  Genesis 1:1-2:4a

To read the Old Testament Lectionary passage, click here

The writing that we know as The Book of Genesis is actually a composite of three (or possibly more) unrelated oral traditions—Yahwist (J) (10th century bce), Elohist (9th century bce, and Priestly (P) (about 5th century bce).  Each have a different understanding of God and a different focus.  It is important when we read it that we remember that, for all practical purposes, we come as aliens to the culture in which it was written.  This is a story through which we can understanding humanity’s beginnings.

Genesis makes the first claim about God’s character, God’s relationship to the world, and God’s relationship to humanity and to us as individuals.  So, Genesis is not a book that provides easy, historical lessons to life’s questions.  Genesis is an experience that you have to enter.  Theodore Hiebert says of the book:  “Genesis shares the scientist’s fascination with the birth of the cosmos and the origin of life on earth, the anthropologists’ curiosity about the first human beings, the historian’s interest in the beginning of civilization, a family’s esteem for their earliest ancestors, and the theologian’s concern about the founding events of religious traditions.”

To claim that God created the world and all that exists is a matter of faith, grounded fundamentally in God’s self-revelation.  At this level, the opening chapters of Genesis are a confession of faith.  In the passage, the phrase “in the beginning” probably does not refer to the absolute beginning, but to the beginning of ordered creation.  After all, God was there as well as chaos!  “Heaven and earth” is probably not intended to be two separate places but a reference to the totality of Creation.  In fact, Norman Habel contends that this verse IS the account of Creation, followed by a more detailed account in the form of an inclusion.

Light here is not sunlight, but a pushing back of the darkness with life.  The phrase “it was good” does not imply perfection, but rather implies the fulfillment of divine intention.  It was not perfect; it was the way it was meant to be.

According to ancient Israel cosmology, the dome is an impermeable barrier that holds back a great reservoir of water in the sky, separating it from the great reservoir under the earth.  When the “windows of the sky” (7:11) are opened in the Priestly flood story, the water in this reservoir falls as rain.

In verses 11-13, there is a shift in God’s way of creating; the earth itself participates in the creative process.  The description of the plants and trees with their capacity to reproduce by themselves gives evidence for a probing interest in what we would call “natural science”.  (Keep in mind that when this was written, there was no understanding of photosynthesis.  It was ascribed to the powers of the earth.)

“Let us”—refers to an image of God as a consultant of other divine beings.  God is not alone but chooses to share Creation with what God has created.  In the phrase “In our image, according to our likeness”, image should not be construed as identity.  The image functions to mirror God to the world, to be God as God would be to the nonhuman, to be an extension of God’s own dominion.  We are not created to be God.  Think of a photograph, an “image” of the subject in the picture.  The “image” is NOT the subject; it is rather a reminder, something that points to and makes the subject more real.

Abraham Heschel said that “Eternal life does not grow away from us; it is “planted within us, growing beyond us.” (Abraham Heschel, The Sabbath, 74).  The divine resting concludes creation—namely, Sabbath belongs to the created order; it cannot be legislated or abrogated by human beings.  “Finishing” does not mean that God has quit creating.  The seventh day refers to a specific day and not to an open future.  Continuing creative work will be needed, but there is a “rounding off” of the created order at this point.

Also according to Heschel, “The Sabbath is a reminder of the two worlds—this world and the world to come; it is an example of both worlds.  For the Sabbath is joy, holiness, and rest; joy is part of this world; holiness and rest are something of the world to come…The Sabbath is more than an armistice, more than an interlude; it is a profound conscious harmony of man and the world, a sympathy for all things and a participation in the spirit that unites what is below and what is above.  All that is divine in the world is brought into union with God.  This is Sabbath, and the true happiness of the universe…“There are two aspects to the Sabbath, as there are two aspects to the world.  The Sabbath is meaningful to [us] and is meaningful to God….The Sabbath is holy by the grace of God, and is still in need of all the holiness which man may lend to it…Unless one learns how to relish the taste of Sabbath while still in this world, unless one is initiated in the appreciation of eternal life, one will be unable to enjoy the taste of eternity in the world to come.  Sad is the lot of [those] who have no power to perceive the beauty of the Sabbath…” (Abraham Heschel, The Sabbath, 19, 31-32, 53-54, 74)

The high point of Creation is the Sabbath, which is delight in God, one another, and Creation.  It is where it all comes together.  This is the revealing of the God who made us, who conversed with us and with all of Creation even from the beginning, and who saw something in the world that we have not yet been able to see—an order and equality and justice that has been there from the very beginning.  And God saw that it was good. 

  1. What is your response to this passage?
  2. What stands out the most for you?
  3. What do you think is the central point of Creation?
  4. What does the “Sabbath” mean for you?
  5. Why do you think we read this passage in this week in which we are remembering and celebrating the Trinity?  

 

NEW TESTAMENT:   2 Corinthians 13:11-13

To read the Lectionary Epistle passage, click here

This passage is the concluding admonition for this entire second letter to the Church at Corinth.  The “holy kiss”, which is probably a little odd-sounding to us, was essentially a known and usual social convention that Paul has brought into practice in his churches.  The “holy” reference suggests that it was a social convention that was assumed into the church and made acceptable as an intimate greeting.  It became the demonstration of love and peace between members.  The extension “be with all of you” once again affirms that all the Corinthians stand on the same ground (no one is better than the next) and that they belong to one another because of God’s love, the grace in and from Christ, and the fellowship generated by the Holy Spirit.

This short passage is about relationship, that sense of unity that comes from being one with God and one with God’s people.  Kissing, of course, connotes real intimacy. It is closer than just being friends.  It means entering each others’ lives and becoming part of each other.  Although this isn’t a specifically “trinitiarian” text in the classic sense of what that means, it still depicts that close relationship, inseparable and mutual, without any part of the relationship being held above the other.  It depicts who we are called to be and how we are to relate to others within this Kingdom of God in which we already reside. 

  1. What does this closing admonition mean for us?
  2. How can we “live in peace” when there is so much disunity, strife, and suffering in the world?

 

GOSPEL:  Matthew 28:16-20

To read the Lectionary Gospel passage, click here

This is the first scene in which the disciples have appeared since they fled during the arrest of Jesus.  Jesus appears to them and they “see” him.  There is also the element of doubt.  But Jesus comes to this somewhat wavering church and speaks.  The basis for the words of The Great Commission is the claim of that risen Jesus that all authority has been given to him by God.  The commission is to all the “nations”.  The “nations” are to be discipled—go, make, baptize, teach.  Essentially, Jesus has handed the authority given to him by God to those whom he has commissioned.  Jesus’ last words are a promise of his continuing presence during the church’s mission.

When we look more deeply at this passage, we see that there are actually several different ways to translate the phrase “but some doubted”.  To whom do we think the word “some” refers?  We would like to think that it was those outside of the small circle of disciples, those that did not know Jesus as well in the first place.  It is easy, then, for us to dismiss this doubting as unfounded and even wrong.  But this phrase can also be translated as “but some of them doubted”, implying that there were some of Jesus’ inner circle of disciples that had their doubts.  That becomes a little bit more difficult for us to swallow.  After all, if THEY had doubts, where does that leave us?  Or maybe the passage is then saying, “hey, THEY, even they, had doubts; maybe doubting is alright”.  It is no longer a phrase that condemns doubting but rather affirms that it exists.  In the New American Bible, however, it is translated “but they doubted”, meaning that all of the disciples were both worshipping and doubting, doubting and worshipping.  Maybe this is saying that doubt is the norm, something that is perhaps even expected to happen.  Here, doubt is not skepticism or unbelief but rather a part of discipleship itself.  It is a part of what it means to be the church—worshipping and doubting, doubting and worshipping.

Whatever the nature of the resurrection event, it did not generate perfect faith even in those who experienced it firsthand.  It is not to perfect believers that the mission of Jesus Christ is entrusted but to the worshipping and wavering community of disciples.

Hans Kung says this:  Doubt is the shadow cast by faith.  One does not always notice it, but it is always there, though concealed.  At any moment it may come into action.  There is no mystery of the faith which is immune to doubt.

Faith in the resurrection is a matter of worship, not of inference.  But it does not exclude doubt, but takes doubt into itself.  The Great Commission, then, is given to all of us worshipping and doubting believers.

But, ultimately, doubts are supposed to be resolved, right?  With careful study of the Scriptures, everything becomes clear, right?  Well, let me tell you, I have a Masters of Divinity degree on my wall.  And, sadly, I have to tell you…that I do not have all the answers.  That’s not the way it works.  You know what intense theological study does for you?  It doesn’t give you all the answers; it teaches you how to ask the questions.

Part of Jesus’ directive to the disciples was to “teach”.  How do you teach, how do you learn, without asking questions?  Constructive doubt is what forms the questions in us and leads us to search and explore our own faith understanding.  It is doubt that compels us to search for greater understanding of who God is and who we are as children of God.  And it is in the face of doubt that our faith is born.  God does not call us to a blind, unexamined faith, accepting all that we see and all that we hear as unquestionable truth; God instead calls us to an illumined doubt, through which we search and journey toward a greater understanding of God.

So can we live amidst the shadows, the doubts, the varying shades of grey?  Think about different amounts of sunlight.  We have difficulty living in darkness.  We try desperately to artificially light our way or find some way to compensate for our blindness.  But full sunlight is also blinding.  Our eyes cannot take it.  It is those cloudy, gray days that allow us to see the best.  Overcast days are a photographer’s dream.  It is the light mixed with shadows that provides the most clarity and allows every color of the prism to be illumined on its own.

Faith is like that.  For here we have not human truth which we can understand and prove but God’s truth.  True faith is never completely clear.  It remains obscure.  It is always intermingled with shadows and doubts that open our eyes to the only way to deal with them—not by proving them wrong but by looking to God for the light that will make them part of our faith.  “But some doubted”.  They were the ones that saw him and worshipped him and whose faith grew.  They were the ones that were blessed with that reasonable doubt.  It’s called faith.  Thanks be to God!

So, what does this all have to do with the Trinity?  Well, keep in mind that the Trinity is not a doctrine that is perfectly laid out in the Scriptures.  It is rather a human construct that for us Trinitarian Christians represents the fullest understanding of God that we can imagine.  Think of it like this…In the beginning was God.  God created everything that was and everything that is and laid out a vision for what it would become.  But we didn’t really get it.  So God tried and tried again to explain it.  God sent us Abraham and Moses and Judges and Kings and Prophets.  But we still didn’t get it.  God wove a vision of what Creation was meant to be and what we were meant to be as God’s children through poetry and songs and beautiful writings of wisdom.  But we still didn’t get it.

“So,” God thought, “there is only one thing left to do.  I’ll show you.  I’ll show you the way to who I am and who I desire you to be.  I will walk with you.”  So God came, Emmanuel, God-with-us, and was born just like we were with controversy and labor pains and all those very human conceptions of what life is.  Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, was the Incarnation of a universal truth, a universal path, the embodiment of the way to God and the vision that God holds for all of Creation.  But we still didn’t get it.  We fought and we argued and we held on to our own human-contrived understandings of who God is.  And it didn’t make sense to us.  This image of God did not fit into our carefully-constructed boxes.  And so, as we humans have done so many times before and so many times since, we destroyed that which got in the way of our understanding.  There…it was finished…we could go back to the way it was before.

But God loves us too much to allow us to lose our way.  And so God promised to be with us forever.  Because now you have seen me; now you know what it is I intended; now you know the way.  And so I will always be with you, always inside of you, always surrounding you, always ahead of you, and always behind you.  There will always be a part of me in you.  Come, follow me, this way.  Be with me.  Be who I know you can be. 

  1. What meaning does this passage hold for you?
  2. What does the “doubt” mean for you here?
  3. What does “faith” mean for you here?
  4. Taking all three of these Scriptures, what do you think we’re supposed to make of the Trinity? 

 

Some Quotes for Further Reflection:

God is always bigger than the boxes we build for God, so do not waste too much time protecting the boxes.  (Richard Rohr)

 

Faith is better understood as a verb than as a noun, as a process than as a possession.  It is an on-again-off-again rather than once-and-for-all.  Faith is not being sure where you’re going but going anyway—a journey without maps.  Tillich said that doubt isn’t the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.  (Frederick Buechner)

 

So much depends on our idea of God!  Yet no idea of [God], however pure and perfect, is adequate to express who [God] really is.  Our idea of God tells us more about ourselves than about [God].  We must learn to realize that the love of God seeks us in every situation, and seeks our good.  [God’s] inscrutable love seeks our awakening. (Thomas Merton) 

 

Closing

God to enfold me, God to surround me, God in my speaking, God in my thinking.

God in my sleeping, God in my waking, God in my watching, God in my hoping.

God in my life, God in my lips, God in my soul, God in my heart.

God in my sufficing, God in my slumber, God in mine ever-living soul, God in mine eternity.

 

God our Creator, today you bring us to a new stage of our journey to you;  May the presence of your Son guide us, the love of your Spirit enlighten us, until we come at last to you, God blessed for ever and ever.  Amen.

 

(From A Celtric Primer, compiled by Brendan O’Malley, p. 150-151, 60.)