Lament

Proper 19C: Lost and Awakened

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Humble Wisdom (Blog)FIRST LESSON:  Jeremiah 4: 11-12, 22-28

Read the passage from Jeremiah

This lament of Jeremiah is part of the larger unit that describes the looming Babylonian threat on the horizon.  In sight of this threat, the people have not heeded warnings and have continued down paths that the prophet feels called to denounce and condemn.  In the context in which this was written, Israel was a virtual land bridge between Asia and Africa, a place of trade between East and West.  Look upon it as a crossroads, as a place where the decision could be made to go one way or the other.

Egypt was the great power to the South and Babylon to the North.  Assyria had just been defeated by Babylon, the monster just north of Israel.  This was a time of rebellion after rebellion against Babylon, to which Babylon acted with greater and greater punitive measures until the Temple was completely destroyed in 587 BCE.  This began nearly three centuries of exile for the people of Israel.  Jeremiah tried to stave off this rebellion against a great power of Babylon and cautioned a more humble approach to international affairs.  He was reminding the people to not act so mighty and powerful and look at what was happening. According to Old Testament commentator R. E. Clements (1988, p. 42): “Jeremiah appears to have addressed a people who were so self-assured in the rightness of their cause, and in the backing God must give to it, that they discounted the serious possibility of harsh Babylonian reprisals taken against them.” 

We are told of a hot wind, an unbearable wind.  This is not a gentle flowing breeze like we begin to get this time of year.  This is the hurricane-force winds that come when we are near the eye of the storm.  This is a wind that is destructive.  Jeremiah saw imminent political and military disaster for his nation and for the world around him.  He was trying a last-ditch effort to turn the tide toward good.  He desired the kings to be more humble and the people more compassionate.  He was trying to open the eyes of his hearers that they might be honest with themselves.  No more looking for someone to blame.  Things were bad.

The prophet depicts a coming destruction of all of Creation, of everything that the people know.  It is literally the “unmaking” of Creation, borrowing some of the same language from the Creation story in Genesis.  But rather than “it is good”, it is proclaimed to be a desolation, an ending.  It is a bleak passage, void of plans for redemption or resurrection.  Instead, we are left with a desolate silence.

Some would take it as a promise of a vengeful God to destroy the Creation that has in essence turned its back on its Creator.  But instead, what if it were a warning? God has given us the power to make decisions, to choose right or wrong.  It is not an easy thing.  Power can be destructive when we choose to use it that way.  Perhaps this is a warning against the ultimate destruction that we humans hold in our hands.  After all, God has entrusted us with this Creation.  What happens when we don’t choose to respond to God’s call?  What happens when we forget who and whose we are?  What happens when we let power get in the way of conversation and greed get in the way of compassion?  We have, then, set our feet on a path of ultimate destruction.

It’s hard to read this and place ourselves in this passage.  It’s so bleak and depressing.  SURELY we’re not that bad.  SURELY this is about another time and another people.  Well, it is.  It’s about a people that were sure that God was on their side no matter what.  They believed that this line of David would never be broken and that God would always dwell with them.  So, when Jeremiah enters, it’s really just downright insulting. (Jeremiah was probably accused of being unpatriotic and unfaithful!)  And yet, we DO somehow belong here.  Maybe we’re a little too sure of our rightness, a little too sure that God is pleased with what we do.  And, uncomfortably, the whole prospect of the unmaking of Creation is looming much more closely to us in our world today as our nation and our leaders make the case for yet another military action.  But we don’t want to hear this in church.  We want to leave feeling better about ourselves.  We want to come and be protected from weapons of mass destruction.

So, did we miss it?  Aren’t Scriptures supposed to have some sort of good news in them?  The good news is that God patiently waits until we turn away from ourselves and toward God. God is always and forever remaking us and unmaking us into what God envisions we can be.  (Hmmm!  Have you ever thought that God might not be unmaking God’s Creation, but rather ours.)  You see, God did not promise that the world would be easy; God did not offer a Creation that did not sometimes shake and tear and come down upon its people and itself; God never told us that the road would be straight and protected.  God promised us that when it was all said and done, we would have life abundant—here, now, for the taking. Life is not easy; life is eternal; and it is very, very good.

 

  • What is your response to this passage?
  • How would this depiction play out in our world today?
  • Where do you see our world in this warning from Jeremiah?
  • What keeps us from turning toward God?

 

 

NEW TESTAMENT:  1 Timothy 1: 12-17

Read the passage from 1 Timothy

The two letters of Timothy and the letter of Titus make up what is known as the Pastoral Epistles, meaning that they were addressed to the whole church, rather than a specific group.  This letter is assumed to be pseudipigraphic, not written by Paul but in the form and shape of Paul.  It is a letter to a young person that wanted to further the gospel to encourage and guide him, to remind him that there will always be rough patches.

So here, probably in the words of one of Paul’s apostles rather than Paul himself, we begin with a letter of thanksgiving for Paul’s ministry.  It is likely that this letter stems from the period well after Paul’s death when new generations were having to cope with problems similar to what Paul faced, to cope with the veritable “unmaking” of Creation around them.  For that reason, it also echoes Paul’s sentiment toward fellow children of God.

It matches Paul’s thought that responding to God’s compassion is not receiving a guarantee for a future gift, but taking up an offer of a relationship with God. We are invited in grace to get on board and go along with this God who is on a mission and where there will be a role, often a distinctive ministry, for us. Paul became a model of conversion, a hero for many early Christians and that understanding comes through in the passage.

It is interesting that whoever the writer is sees himself or herself as the ultimate in sinners—the “foremost”, the NRIV translates.  It is the ultimate “lostness”, the quintessential wilderness.  And the fact that we are found is the ultimate “foundness”, the amazing grace that is our lives.

You may or may not know the story of an 18th century slave trader named John Newton.  Sailing back to England in 1748, the ship he was on encountered a severe storm and almost sank.  While in route, he read the Bible and began to think about God and God’s impact on his life.  He would become an Anglican minister.  But it would be years before he finally accepted the fact that the slave trade was wrong and that his life truly needed to turn toward God.  In 1779, Newton wrote the words of his life, a hymn of forgiveness and redemption, regardless of whatever it is we do.  Amazing Grace is one of the most recognizable hymns in the Western world.

 

  • What meaning does this passage hold for you?
  • What does this passage say about our image of God?
  • What is grace to you?
  • Why do we have such a hard time with the fact that grace is “undeserved”?

 

 

GOSPEL:  Luke 15:1-10

Read the passage from The Gospel According to Luke

Lost and Found…the theme appears again and again in the Scriptures.  It is both comforting and disconcerting, because at times we are the found children telling our story and helping others and at other times we are the lost ones, trying to find our way back to God.  The truth is, it is not that our lives go back and forth between the two, but that we learn to live with the two in juxtaposition—both the found children and the lost souls.  We want to be comfortable with the words of this passage, but we’re not…not really.

The shepherd and the woman both show that careful attention to detail that is also known as hard work. Think of all that hiking over hills, the scrambling down creek banks and climbing through brambles: all in search of one sheep that could have nibbled itself into trouble a thousand different ways. Or think of all that housework! Sweeping, moving furniture, rearranging clutter, crawling around on the floor. We can live our whole lives this way, always diligently searching for lost items and responsibly returning them to their correct location: a place for everything and everything in its place. That everything-in-its-place kind of responsibility is not what these searches are about. Instead, the search of the shepherd and the woman are all about joy, a joy that comes with celebration that what was lost is now found.

The truth is, there is a lot of lostness around us.  We try hard to look for God, to find that place where we are both comfortable and committed to God.  But we continue to waffle back and forth between the found children and the lost ones, trying to find our way back home.  We want to be found; we want to feel joy.  After all, it is the foundness that matters, the foundness for which we are searching.  It is the foundness that our faith is about.

We spend a good part of our lives trying to look for God.  And yet, the Scriptures remind us that it is not God who is lost from us but rather we who are lost from ourselves, lost from who God created us to be.  God created us in the image of the Godself.  And in those times when we seem to wander away in the darkness and lostness of our lives, it is God who unmakes us and recreates us once again, gathers us in and again breathes a part of the Godself into our being. Perhaps it is our lostness that teaches us how to be with God.  Because once we lose ourselves in God’s being, once we relinquish control and quit working so hard to find ourselves, once we realize that we are never really lost at all, it is then that we will know that we are always found by God.

 

  • What meaning does this passage hold for you?
  • To what do you equate being “lost”?
  • To what do you equate being “found”?
  • What part of yourself do you need to lose to be found?

 

Some Quotes for Further Reflection:

 

The word dies whenever reality demands absolute dominion. (Amery, at Yad Vashem (Israel Holocaust Museum))

Give me a transformed and undefended heart. (St. Augustine)

Let yourself get shaken up.  What are you willing to give up to ensure your own unfolding, and the unfolding of what is holy in life?  Where you stumble, here is your treasure.(Joseph Campbell)

 

 

Closing

In the beginning, O God, When the firm earth emerged from the waters of life You saw that it was good.  The fertile ground was moist.  The seed was strong.  And earth’s profusion of color and sent was born.  Awaken my senses this day to the goodness that still stems from Eden.  Awaken my senses to the goodness that can still spring forth in me and in all that has life. Amen.

(Celtic Benediction)

 

 

Proper 8B: Get Up and See What is New!

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"Raising of Jairus' Daughter", George Percy Jacomb-Hood, 1885 (Oil on canvas)
“Raising of Jairus’ Daughter”, George Percy Jacomb-Hood, 1885 (Oil on canvas)

OLD TESTAMENT: 2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27

To read the Old Testament Lectionary passage, click here

We sort of passed over this part, but at the end of the First Book of Samuel, Saul and his son Jonathan are killed fighting the Philistines and so today we read David’s lament over them. (We don’t really know anything about the Book of Jashar—it is perhaps a book that has long since been lost into history.) It is interesting, though. Saul has been trying to kill David and David has been on the run from him. So, Saul’s death means that David is no longer a hunted man. He now has a clear shot to the throne of Israel. But Saul has many relatives and sons who could claim power with more legitimacy than David.

Jonathan, the other one who has been killed, is actually a close friend of David’s. So the lament begins with a call to not share this news with the Philistines, which would give them further cause to rejoice at Israel’s expense. By making this lament, David is placed in the role of a close relative or heir. And here, the relationship between Saul and David changes somewhat. David is now speaking on behalf of Israel. It is just good politics. And his own lament for Jonathan is for a friend that he has lost.

But the lament goes deeper than that. It is also a lament for Saul, the man who had tried to kill him. The death of Saul marks the defeat of Israel. David curses the very mountains where Saul has died. So this lament is not only an expression of grief but may also be David’s own realization that he has gone too far. He has lost both his closest friend and his greatest enemy. Everything has changed.   And David realizes that the grief he is experiencing is even more challenging.

But David also realizes that the grief that he experiences is not private. Any time a community experiences a shift of any sort, there is always some grief. There is even disbelief. Perhaps it is also a commentary on the tragedy of war. Either way, the lament is real. It is from the deepest part of the soul. And it acknowledges that even grief and sadness and disbelief are part of life, part of God.

And we are all familiar with the words from this passage, “How the mighty have fallen!” But often we use it almost as a sort of satisfaction that someone has “gotten their due.” Is that really what it is here? It seems to be more shock and disbelief and a sort of question of “What next?” Maybe the “What next?” question is the important thing. Where do we go when the world as we know it has been shattered? Where do we go when, seemingly, for good or bad, we are left to pick up the pieces? Where do we go when all of the characters that were in place before have somehow changed? How do we “fix” it? Maybe the story is about healing, about wholeness, about experiencing those painful and cataclysmic shifts in our lives when God invites us to something new.

 

  1. What is your response to this passage?
  2. How would you characterize David’s grief and his lament?
  3. What strikes you about David’s friendship with Jonathan?
  4. What strikes you about David’s relationship with Saul?
  5. What message would this story have for our world or society today?

  

NEW TESTAMENT: 2 Corinthians 8: 7-15

To read the Lectionary Epistle passage, click here

This passage falls within a two-chapter section where Paul appeals to the Corinthians for money to help “the saints”, who are most likely the churches in Jerusalem. He calls the endeavor a charis, which is translated as “generous undertaking”. But the word charis is also translated in other places as “grace” or “blessing”. (It’s the same root as our “charisma” or “charismatic”) So Paul uses it to describe the gifts of the Macedonian churches and presents them as harmonious, of good will, generous, sincere, deeply and fervently pious, and strongly affectionate toward Paul and his coworkers. Then he begins with flattery, essentially trying to convince the Corinthians that they are just as good as the Macedonians.

So it appears that getting a congregation to dig deep into its pockets is as old as Christianity itself (and my guess would be that it’s actually older). Picture Corinth as one of the sort of “up and coming” cities by the sea that enjoyed a flourishing economy and a prime spot in Rome’s eyes. So because the Jerusalem “mother church” was poor, Paul urged the more prosperous Corinthians to do the right thing. But, of course, the reason that they are asked to give is because they have been given to in Jesus Christ. Christ gave up everything for them; what portion of their abundance can they do without? He is not, though, falling into the trap of claiming that God should be worshipped with money. There is nothing about “paying God back” or about rewards for our investment in the beyond. In other words, the argument is pretty sound: We’re all in this together. Give what you can. Give what you are called to give.

It seems that Paul is not only pressing them to give, but also to realize why giving is important. For Paul, financial stewardship is not gratitude, but about living a Christ-shaped life. Stewardship is really a form of communion in the name of Christ. It is a way of participating with Christ in the building of the Kingdom of God. His passion and his focus is about more than raising money; it is about furthering God’s Reign in the world. He believes that the way believers use their resources—money, time, talents (charis)—is a reflection on their understanding of God, God’s Kingdom, and themselves as children of God. This is not intended to be a stewardship campaign; it is, rather, the way the Gospel is lived out in our community and our lives. It is a vision of a Kingdom that shares resources, shares lives, and, together, brings about God’s vision here on earth. It is not a vision of a world where everyone is the same but rather a vision of a whole balance.

Walter Brueggemann contends that the Bible starts with a Liturgy of Abundance. He sees Genesis 1 as praise for God’s generosity. And throughout Genesis, the Israelites celebrate God’s abundance and generosity. Then by Genesis 47, the concept of scarcity is introduced. Pharaoh has all the land except that belonging to the priests. The world has shifted. What will we do now?

  1. How does this passage speak to you?
  2. What is you reaction to pleas for financial gifts?
  3. How do you equate financial giving with spirituality?
  4. What does the notion of the “liturgy of abundance” versus the “liturgy of scarcity” mean for you?
  5. What message does this passage hold for our society today or for us as individuals?
  6. Do you think you live more within a liturgy of abundance or a liturgy of scarcity?
  7. What does the way we use our resources say about our understanding of God, God’s Kingdom, and ourselves as children of God?

 

GOSPEL: Mark 5: 21-43

To read the Lectionary Gospel passage, click here

Here, the writer of the Gospel According to Mark, inserts one story into another to provide an ongoing theme. Here, when a wealthy man wants Jesus to heal his daughter, he must wait for the healing of a destitute woman. Jairus was highly-esteemed and probably wealthy. He recognizes Jesus and begs Jesus to heal his daughter. So Jesus agrees to travel with him to address his need. But then suddenly a woman appears. She has suffered for twelve years with a “flow of blood”, implying some sort of menstrual disorder. (Now keep in mind, according to the Hebrew laws laid out in our Book of Leviticus, that blood could not be touched and mixed with other fluids, so, essentially, she would have been shunned from society.) She seems to not really understand what Jesus is about; it seems that she sort of has a magical understanding of Jesus’ healing powers.

The number “twelve” is always significant—all-encompassing, all-pervasive (i.e. twelve tribes, twelve apostles). Think about it she had to be exhausted. It had consumed her life. And, interestingly enough, the little girl was twelve years of age, the age signifying the onset of menstruation, of adulthood.

So, later, Jesus says that it the woman’s faith—not magic, not even miracles—that not only makes her well but also brings her salvation. In the meantime, though, Jairus’ daughter has died. But Jesus admonishes everyone that death is not the final answer. In the presence of God’s healing power, even death does not overtake life. The child is restored to life and is shown to be “only sleeping”.

Think about it, though. We talk about the great faith of the hemorrhaging women, but what about Jairus? In Jesus’ day, about 60% of live births died by their teens. (And these were the ones who were viably born at all!). AND this child was a girl. At the time, no one really much cared whether or not female children lived. They were really almost a drain on the family’s resources. And yet, this father couldn’t bear to lose his little girl. He was a wealthy leader in the community. He crossed the line of “acceptable protocol” and asked Jesus, who many doubted was even for real, for help.

Throughout this passage and, indeed, throughout Mark, the word “immediately” is used. The writer of Mark’s Gospel had a real sense of the urgency of Jesus’ message. But we should not get wrapped up in this passage as one demonstrating that things always end in “happy endings”. Christ is the ruler over all things—time and space, planned and interrupted, and even life and death. Persons of faith will suffer but they will always, through the healing touch of faith in Christ, live in peace and wholeness. That is what healing is about. Think about the faith of the hemorrhaging women. She had the audacity to transgress a whole host of social protocols when she touches Jesus’ robe without permission. And Jairus’ faith, causes him to fall prostrate at Jesus’ feet. These challenge us to examine our own faith, asking how we find the strength to claim God’s promises of healing and hope for ourselves, and how we empower others to do the same.

Notice, too, that Jesus does not pick and choose how and to whom wholeness comes. Everyone who is suffering, everyone who is in need, is a child of God. Everyone is invited into it and it is not really acceptable for anyone to want. In a sermon on this passage entitled “Healing Powers” (06/19/2009), Kate Huey writes:

Barbara Brown Taylor and Frederick Buechner have both written beautiful sermons on this text, and they bring the scene alive before our eyes. Buechner is tender as he puts us in the place of the little girl, as Jesus speaks to us, taking our hand and telling us to rise up and live: “You who believe, and you who sometimes believe and sometimes don’t believe much of anything, and you who would give almost anything to believe if only you could…. ‘Get up,’ he says, all of you–all of you!” Jesus gives life not only to the dead, but to those of us who are “only partly alive…who much of the time live with our lives closed to the wild beauty and the miracle of things, including the wild beauty and miracle of every day we live and even of ourselves.” That, Buechner says, is the power at the heart of this story and all of our stories: “the power of new life, new hope, new being.” Whether we take notice or not, miracles happen around us every day, and “every single breath we take,” Taylor writes, “is a free surprise from God. Faith does not work miracles. God does.” And every miracle, she says, is “a preview of the kingdom.”

  1. What meaning does this passage hold for you?
  2. How does this speak to you about your own faith?
  3. What interruptions get in the way of our faith?
  4. What “social protocols” get in the way of our faith?
  5. What message does this hold for our world today?

Some Quotes for Further Reflection:

Prayer is not simply a matter of bending the vector of divine will toward my will, my needs, and my hopes. More profoundly to ask something of God is to edge into deeper relationship with God. God’s mind may or may not be changed, but I–my mind and heart–may be. (Michael Lindvall)

In the midst of the sorrows is consolation, in the midst of the darkness is light, in the midst of the despair is hope, in the midst of Babylon is a glimpse of Jerusalem, and in the midst of the army of demons is the consoling angel.  The cup of sorrow, inconceivable as it seems, is also the cup of joy.  Only when we discover this in our own life can we consider drinking it. (From Can You Drink the Cup? by Henri J.M. Nouwen, 38)

 God does not promise that we shall all be spared suffering but does promise to be with us in our suffering. Trusting that promise, we are enabled to recognize God’s sustaining presence in pain, sickness, injury, and estrangement. Likewise, God does not promise that we will be cured of all illnesses; and we all must face the inevitability of death… The greatest healing of all is the reunion or reconciliation of a human being with God. (U.M. Book of Worship, p. 614-615.)                                                                          

 

Closing

Incoming tide of God, Overwhelm me.  Carry me out into Your unimaginable depths.  Amen. (Pat Bennett, from Friends and Enemies)