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Epiphany 4A: Fools’ Treasure

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fools-goldOLD TESTAMENT:  Micah 6: 1-8

Read the passage from Micah

The writings known as Micah were probably written during the reigns of three kings of Judah: Jotham (742-735 BCE) was a time of growing fear and unrest, Ahaz (735-715 BCE) came when Israel (the Northern Kingdom) was experiencing internal rebellions and rapid turnover of kings, and Hezekiah (715-687 BCE) was the time when Sennacherib marched on and destroyed most of Judah and Jerusalem barely survived.  Micah is associated with Moresheth, a small town about 25 miles from Jerusalem and probably did most of his writing during the reign of Ahaz, when there was great oppression from the upper class.

His message is assurance that this time of oppression would end and a new ruler would come and usher in a time of salvation.  The prophet is claiming a coming new Davidic king, one that would rule relying on the strength of God.  Keep in mind that in this time of exile, it appeared that the Davidic line would be ending.  The prophecy was a reminder that God would keep the promises that God had made, offering new hope to the people in despair.

This passage that we read ends with one of the most familiar and most quoted lines in the Bible.  It sounds so simple—just do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly.  What more do we need to hear?  But back up.  We are told that God has a problem with the people and is going to deal with them.  The people have actually failed in their covenant to God.  And they know it.  They have looked at their lives through God’s eyes and the scene is not a pretty one.  The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.  Those with power are taking and using the resources of the less powerful and leaving them out in the cold, so to speak.  Wealth is becoming concentrated in the hands of a smaller and smaller group of people while homelessness and poverty are growing at an escalating pace.  Clean water is in short supply.  There were those who do not have education or insurance.  (Oh, sorry, I accidentally jumped ahead about 2700 years!)  But the worshipping community just goes right on worshipping and living piously as though nothing was wrong, wondering when this whole Reign of God thing is going to come to fruition.

So, what, they ask, can they do to make it up to God, to make it up to the community and to God?  Nothing except what God has said—live justice, love kindness, walk humbly.  In other words, our faith is not to be measured in piety but in terms of justice and relationships with others and with God.  The object is to overcome separation from God and from each other.  Our religion should be a religion of mercy and justice.  That is the way that God is made flesh; that is the way that we experience the Reign of God.  The prophet Micah would say that right worship and right conduct are undividable; you cannot have one without the other.  Justice and piety are two sides of the same coin.

The truth is, we people of faith, according to Micah, are called to question those systemic injustices that continue in our world.  That’s hard.  After all, what can we really do about them?  Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly.  And if you read Micah, you know that it’s not really just a suggestion.  It’s who we are and who we’re called to be.  It’s the Reign of God coming into our midst.

 

  1. What does this passage mean for you?
  2. What does it mean to do justice? To love kindness? To walk humbly with God?
  3. What evidence do you see of the Reign of God in our world?
  4. Why is it so difficult to embrace that vision?
  5. What happens when justice and piety become separated?

 

 

NEW TESTAMENT:  1 Corinthians 1: 18-31

Read the passage from 1 Corinthians

Once again, Paul is dealing with the people of Corinth.  Earlier in this chapter, he has been bemoaning the divisions in the Corinthian church community.  He starts here not really taking sides, but addressing the issue of wisdom and pointing out that wisdom in Christ is not the same as the wisdom of the world.  He is not attacking being “wise”, but is calling them to a more profound wisdom.

Think about it.  The ugly sight of a mangled human body hanging on a cross confronts normal worldly values.  But these are not worldly values. And this first century church, no less than we, have tried to “clean up” this image and fit it into something that makes sense within the normalcy of the world.  Paul is warning against the structures and intentions of the world that crucified Jesus and that are now trying to make it “presentable”.  Paul is reminding us that for those wise in the ways of God, the cross is salvation.

What the world sees as failure, Paul sees as the beginning of wisdom—real wisdom.  (And keep in mind here that first century Corinth was entrenched in its love for wisdom just like all Greek states.  Paul was hitting them where they lived.)  The cross, the wisdom of God, is downright subversive.  It’s hard to swallow.  In fact, it’s just downright foolishness—the foolishness of a God who would expect those of us living in a world where it’s hard to make a living, hard sometimes to get by, hard sometimes to get what we’re due, to simply do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.

One of the dangers of being in church as often as I am is that it all starts to make sense. I speak of the Christian faith so casually and effortlessly that I begin to think, “Fine thing, this Christianity. Makes good sense.” And then I find myself believing all sorts of things in church that I wouldn’t let anyone put over on me in the real world. That which people would choke on in everyday speech, they will swallow if it’s in a sermon. That’s a blessing for those of us who get paid to preach Christ crucified.

And so Kierkegaard could say, “Christianity has taken a giant stride into the absurd,” and again, “Remove from Christianity its ability to shock and it is altogether destroyed. It then becomes a tiny superficial thing, capable neither of inflicting deep wounds nor of healing them.”

It’s when the absurd starts to sound reasonable that we should begin to worry. “Blessed are the meek. . . .”  “Thou shalt not kill.” “Love your enemies.” “Go, sell all you have and give to the poor.” Be honest now. Blessed are the meek? Try being meek tomorrow at work and see how far you get. Meekness is fine for church, but in the real world the meek get to go home early with a pink slip and a pat on the back. Blessed are those who are peacemakers; they shall get done to them what they are loath to do to others. Blessed are the merciful; they shall get it done to them a second time. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake; they shall be called fanatics.

As Paul says, when you hear the gospel not with Sunday-morning ears but with Monday-morning ears, it can sound foolish indeed — tragically foolish or comically foolish, depending upon one’s point of view.

Is the world more like Sunday morning or Monday morning? [Hmmm…is the church more like Sunday morning or Monday morning.  Now THAT’S a good question!]

A nation that spends billions on sophisticated military hardware and computerized weapons only to be rendered impotent by a mob of poor, screaming Islamic students ought to appreciate the irony of how powerless the powerful can be. Our scientists make medical progress and invent the X-ray, only to find it to be a major cause of cancer. Our advanced technology moves us to the brink of a new Dark Age. It is shocking. how unwise people of wisdom can be…

Along with the world, we expected to see a savior coming to take charge on our terms. Then the parade comes, and we find that we are standing in the wrong place to get a good view. Here comes the carpenter’s son, bouncing on the back of a donkey — not coming for breakfast with [the president and his wife], or dinner with Congress, or [a guest seat with the first lady at The State of the Union Address]. The smart ones, the ones who are well adjusted to the status quo, the ones in the know, neither see nor know — so the story goes. Here is a messiah who does not make sense.

Only the very young, the very old, the women and the simpletons see him. They are standing in the right place to get a proper view. Along with the poor, the maimed, the blind, the lame, the prisoners and the poor old crazed men like Paul, these “fools” see things as they really are.

As for us smart ones, we know better. We know that if we work hard, achieve, get advanced degrees, adjust to the way things are, and act sensibly, we shall be in the know. It all depends on how you look at it.  (Excerpt from “Looking Like Fools”, by William Willimon, The Christian Century, March 10, 1982.)

What it boils down to is that this way of life to which we have become accustomed is possibly not the way of life to which we are called.  We need to look at our lives through the lens of doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God.  What exactly does that mean?  And what do we have to change to do that?

  1. What does this passage mean for you?
  2. What, here, is wisdom?
  3. Do you think we try to “clean up” Christianity or God so that it will fit into our society? In what ways?

 

 

GOSPEL:  Matthew 5: 1-12

Read the passage from The Gospel According to Matthew

Most scholars agree that the core of what is known as the Beatitudes goes back to Jesus.  It is essentially a reversal of the usual value system that was in place in the first century.  The Beatitude was present in the Jewish tradition as a form of proclamation found in wisdom and prophetic writings.  They declare an objective reality as the result of a divine act.  Here, the opposite of “blessed” is not unhappy but cursed.

One thing to note is that the form of these Beatitudes uses two verbs:  are and will.  Each beatitude begins in the present and moves to future tense.  They are, then expressions of what is already true in the Christian community not, necessarily, for individuals, but in community.  The move to the future tense indicates that the life of the kingdom must wait for ultimate validation until God finishes the new creation.  There is a resistance, then, against Christianity as a philosophy of life that would make one healthy, wealthy, and wise.  It is not a scheme to reduce stress, lose weight, advance one’s career, make one financially successful, or preserve one from illness.  It is, rather, a way of living based on the sure and firm hope that one walks in the way of God and that righteousness and peace will finally prevail.

The Matthean beatitudes are spoken from a mountain, probably since, as one writing to the Jewish community, this would depict that it was something important.  (Reminiscent of Moses on Mt. Sinai.)  The version told by the writer of Luke is spoken from a “level place” (sometimes called the Sermon on the Plain.  Matthew’s beatitudes are spoken to a “crowd”.  When Jesus speaks in the Lucan version, he speaks specifically to his disciples.  Matthew version have no corresponding “woes”.  In Luke, there are four “woes” corresponding to four “blessings”.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer said this:  Humanly speaking, we could understand and interpret the Sermon on the Mount in a thousand different ways.  Jesus knows only one possibility:  simple surrender and obedience, not interpreting it or applying it, but doing and obeying it.  That is the only way to hear his word.  He does not mean that it is to be discussed as an ideal; he really means us to get on with it.

The Beatitudes lay out a vision of a reversal of the world we know.  Jesus calls us to a radical kingdom that is totally different than the world in which we live.  Now don’t think that Jesus is merely laying out the conditions under which we would be blessed.  It is rather a promise of a radical reversal, an upside-down (or right-side-up) world.  It is a promise from a God that wants the best for us, a God that sees that we will indeed be blessed.  That is the promise—a blessed relationship with God.  So this is a picture of what that Kingdom looks like.  It is the way it should be and the way it will be.  The Beatitudes are meant to be descriptive rather than instructive.

Brendan Freeman, a Trappist monk, said that “the Beatitudes draw our hearts out of themselves into a new way of understanding our lives…they are deliberately incomplete.  They wait the inclusion of our lives.  Each person fills in the blank space with the details of his or her own life’s situation.” 

 

  1. What does this passage mean for you?
  2. What is the most difficult Beatitude for you to grasp?
  3. What difference does it mean to look at them as descriptive rather than instructive?
  4. In what ways might we interpret The Beatitudes incorrectly?

 

 

 

Some Quotes for Further Reflection:

More than a few Christian might be surprised to learn that the call to be involved in creating justice for the poor is just as essential and nonnegotiable within the spiritual life as is Jesus’ commandment to pray and keep our private lives in order. (Ronald Rolheiser, The Holy Longing)

Do Justice

If there is any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again.  (William Penn)

Love Kindness

Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real.  (Thomas Merton)

 

Walk Humbly

 

Closing

Because we love the world, we pray now, O [God], for grace to quarrel with it, O Thou whose lover’s quarrel with the world is the history of the world . . . Lord, grant us grace to quarrel with the worship of success and power . . . to quarrel with all that profanes and trivializes [people] and separates them . . . number us, we beseech Thee, in the ranks of those who went forth from this place longing only for those things for which Thou dost make us long, [those] for whom the complexity of the issues only served to renew their zeal to deal with them, [those] who alleviated pain by sharing it; and [those] who were always willing to risk something big for something good . . . O God, take our minds and think through them, take our lips and speak through them. Take our hearts and set them on fire.  Amen.   (William Sloane Coffin, available at http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=3160, accessed 26 January, 2011)

 

 

 

Proper 12C: Pray Like This

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Lord's Prayer (Aramaic)FIRST LESSON:  Hosea 1: 2-10

Read the Old Testament passage

Hosea, another “minor prophet”, prophesied in northern Israel about 750-740 BCE (after Amos), which was a tumultuous period with many political power struggles and violence.  During this time, Israel had enjoyed continuing prosperity and successful trade with surrounding nations.  Their prosperity, though, had made them lax in their relationship with God and, in Hosea’s view, society was on a downward spiral of injustice and immorality.  The society was full of religious syncretism, in which competing beliefs and competing deities were fused with belief in YHWH (sort of a “watered down” version of the Torah, in essence).  For Hosea, the society was involved both politically and religiously in “affairs” in which Israel exhibited infidelity.

God tells Hosea to take “a wife of whoredom” and bear children.  The broken marriage reflects what Hosea saw as Israel’s broken relationship with God.  He really saw little difference between the political infidelity and the religious.  He saw them as interwoven and both in need of judgment.

In accordance with the divine command, Hosea chooses Gomer, who some scholars claim may possibly have been a temple prostitute, hanging around the temple waiting to be picked up by anyone who happened by, and they have three children whose names embody the judgment of God. It is possible, too, that the children, especially the second and third, are not Hosea’s, but rather the fruits of attachments that Gomer had with other men. The first child is Jezreel, whose name means, ‘God sows,’ to embody the punishment the people are soon to reap. The city of Jezreel had been the scene of much violence and had become a byword for violence and torture, hardly a happy name to give a first-born son. The second child is named Lo-ruhamah, ‘not pitied,’ to signify an end to the Lord’s pity and forgiveness of God’s people Israel. It is as though God has had enough of the people’s straying; God’s compassion has worn thin.

The third child’s name, Lo-ammi, is especially disturbing, as it means, ‘not my people.’ God’s continual way of saying to Israel ‘You are my people’ and Israel’s response ‘You are our God’ compose the covenant between God and Israel. But this third child’s name indicates God’s covenant with his people is now at an end. Their apostasy means a breaking of the covenant from their side, so that they can no longer be seen as God’s people.

But then the mood of the passage shifts abruptly, promising that at the very place where it was said the people were no longer God’s, they would once again be called ‘children of the living God.’ The change begins with “Yet”—even with all this stuff that has happened, God is still there.  It is as though the end of the covenant is too terrible to contemplate. Perhaps there is also a sense that the overarching love of God cannot be shut out even when the people fall away from their part of the covenant.  Hosea as a prophet is a striking figure. He takes upon himself something of the people’s sin, something of their pain. Through his marriage to Gomer and the birth of the children, he enacts the long-suffering love of God, who bears with his erring people far beyond their deserving. And who in the end opts for compassion and forgiveness as the way to life.

Now, I guess you could ask why in the world God thought it necessary to make Hosea live a life full of infidelity in order to deliver the message.  But, remember, even Moses had to get in there and wander in the wilderness.  The thing is, life with God does not mean that it is somehow sanitized and without difficulty or transgressions.  After all, maybe we’re supposed to squirm a little bit at our own unfaithfulness to God.  Life is life and sometimes it’s how we see God at work in our life.  The passage, uncomfortable as it may be, carries both the pain of unfaithfulness and the compassion of a God who still redeems—over and over and over again. And maybe within that redemption is a reminder that not everyone CHOOSES their life.  It is probably more likely that Gomer was a prostitute not for sex but for money.  Maybe this was her way out.  Maybe it’s a reminder that the world is not sanitized for our enjoyment and God knows that, that God knows how to get in there in the dirt of it all and redeem even the worst injustices that the world holds.  It is a reminder that God is God over all of Creation and promises to redeem the worst that might come along.  And THAT IS good news!

 

1)      What is your response to this passage?

2)      What, for you, does the possibility of being truly “God-forsaken” mean to you?

3)      What message could this hold for our own society?

4)      What message of hope does this passage hold?

 

 

NEW TESTAMENT:  Colossians 2:6-15 (16-19)

Read the Epistle passage

This is sort of a densely-packed lesson but in it, the writer (more than likely not Paul) comes to the heart of the gospel—God’s gracious deliverance of humanity through the death and resurrection of Christ, and our sharing in that deliverance through union with Christ at baptism.  Because Christ shares fully the human condition, we share Christ’s destiny.

The letter begins with words of encouragement and a reminder of what it means to “receive” Christ, to “receive” the gospel.  The word that is translated here as “live” is actually closer to “walk”, which was a common way of talking about a way of life.  So this was directed at converts who are hearing from others that their spiritual “walk” is lacking in some way.

If we take our passage as a whole and include the verses in brackets we can see that these people are concerned about observances in relation to food, drink, festivals, new moons, and the Sabbath. They are also concerned with heavenly powers and authorities, including some kind of veneration of angels and mystical connection with them. There is also the recurrence of the common argument over circumcision as “proof” of one’s righteousness and belief. This may have been a sort of radical form of Jewish Christianity which still upholds the Law and insists that Gentiles observe it.

So the writer again issues a warning against others who threaten their faith.  He specifically warns against those touting “philosophy”, which for the writer implied those things based on human tradition and not on Christ.  “Tradition” here refers to those things that are human constructs that lack divine authority in his understanding.

Colossians grounds its readers in Christ, from being rooted in Christ and then ending it with the image of a body nourished by the head and growing through God.  The letter is a pretty broad canvas.  The crux of it, though, is unity and peace and how those things are at stake.  For the writer, God’s compassion spills into the whole universe and brings it together.  The image of Christ as universal and the church as the universal body of Christ is paramount here.  So these divisions and attempts to break apart what is sealed by Christ should be ignored.  The meaning of life has to do with the love found in Christ, not rules and regulations.  It has to do with this God who redeems our best and our worst.

 

1)      What meaning does this passage hold for you?

2)      How is this message still pertinent today?

3)      What does it mean for you to “receive” Christ?

4)      What does it mean for you that God redeems our best and our worst?

 

 

GOSPEL: Luke 11:1-13

Read the Gospel passage

The opening to our Gospel passage is a request that each of us deeply understands:  “Lord, teach us to pray.”  We want to know how to pray.  We want to have a deep and abiding prayer life that connects us with God and makes our lives richer and fuller.  How do you pray?  Who taught you to pray?  Why do you pray?  We want to find a way to make our prayers more meaningful and more worthy of what God really wants to hear.  Maybe that’s our problem.  We’re trying so hard to bring meaning to our prayer life that we’re not allowing our prayers to bring meaning to our life.  We’re trying so hard to find God that we don’t expect to experience a God who is already there.  God does not need our prayers; we do.  God does not have to be invited into our lives; we just have to open our eyes to God’s Presence.

The truth is, Jesus knew that.  He knew that people struggled to experience the real Presence of God and because of that, they also struggled with how to acknowledge and live with that Presence in their lives.  He knew that we struggled continuously with doubts about God and about what God wanted from us.  He knew that we struggle with what prayer should be.  So he begins where we are—in the midst of that silence that is God.  He began by showing the disciples what was at the very core of his own life—his relationship with God.  Because remember that Jesus had made prayer an integral part of his life.  How many times do we read of him “withdrawing to a deserted place to pray” or “going to the mountain to pray” or “spending the night in prayer with God?”  He prayed before he chose the disciples, when he fed the five thousand, and on the night before he was led to his death.  He even prayed on the cross, a prayer of centering and forgiveness.

What Jesus provided in answer to the disciple’s request is more than just a formula for prayer.  Jesus provided words to address God, words to praise God, and, finally, words to petition God.  The prayer begins by imploring God (and perhaps reminding us that this is God’s place) to take charge of our life and our world, to bring about justice and peace as only God can do.

The remaining petitions have to do with basic human needs, those things that are the very sustenance of our life—food, relationships with others, relationship with God.  They have to do with life.  The prayer does not include petitions for stuff, or comforts, or for things to get easier for us.  It doesn’t even ask God to make things clearer or more sensible to us.  It is a prayer that brings us into life with God.  It is a petition for those things that only God can provide and that we cannot live without.  It is an opening to the awareness that God made us, that we are God’s, and that God’s desire is not for us to be right, or to be good, or to be pleasing, but to be who we were meant to be.  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin once said that “we are not human beings having a spiritual experience.  We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

The prayer that Jesus taught us to pray has nothing to do with knowing the right words.  It really is more about persistence.  Jesus continues in this passage by reminding us to keep asking, keep seeking, and keep knocking.  Far from characterizing God as some sort of celestial Santa Claus who always brings good little boys and girls the things for which they ask, Jesus seemed to assume that God is already in motion, that God has already answered every prayer, and that God has already opened every door that needs to be opened and is standing at the threshold inviting us to enter.  So praying opens our lives to the presence of the God who is always and already there and gives us the realization that God provides life’s minimum daily requirements so that all we need to do is open ourselves to being with God.

In her book,   The Breath of the Soul, Joan Chittister tells of another disciple who expressed the desire that his master teach him how to pray.  “Then here is how,” the Holy One said as he plunged the head of the disciple into a bucket of water and held it there while the disciple struggled to be free. “Why did you do a thing like that?” the disciple demanded to know as he came up out of the water gasping for breath.  “In order to teach you,” the Holy One said, “that when you get to the point where you know you need God as much as you need air, you will have learned how to pray.” ( Joan Chittister, The Breath of the Soul:  Reflections on Prayer (New London, CT:  Twenty-third Publications, 2009), 36.)

Well, that was a little more dramatic than what Jesus did, but I actually think that they were trying to get the same point across.  We are not merely called to pray; we are called to a life of prayerfulness, a life in which every breath we take and every move we make is attuned to the breath and movement of God that is already a part of us.  And in that way, prayer comes with responsibility.  As we enter that realm of God, we, too, are called to be a part of creating a world of justice and peace, of forgiveness, of providing bread for the hungry, and a shunning of those things that temptingly pull us away from where we’re called to be.  Prayer, then, opens us to love and that, too, becomes a way of sustaining our life.

There is a New York Times bestseller that was written by Elizabeth Gilbert that carries the title, Eat, Pray, Love.  The book was ultimately made into a movie.  This book  is essentially the account of a women’s search for meaning in her life.  Assuming that she could not find it where she was, she took off on a whirlwind adventure through Italy, India, and Indonesia, on a quest for enjoyment, devotion, and transcendence.  She finds it but she has to get out of herself and away from the chaos that she has created in her life to find what was there all along—to find the sustenance that is life—to eat, to pray, and to love.  She finds that she cannot exist without each of them and that they were in her life all along.

She says that “the search for God is a reversal of the normal, mundane worldly order.  In the search for God, you revert from what attracts you and swim toward that which is difficult.  You abandon your comforting and familiar habits with the hope that something greater will be offered you in return for what you’ve given up.  Every religion in the world,” she says, “ operates on the same common understandings of what it means to be a good disciple—get up early and pray to God, hone your virtues, be a good neighbor, respect yourself and others, master your cravings.” [Goodness, that sort of sounds like that prayer we know so well!]  She goes on:  “We all agree that it would be easier to sleep in, and many of us do, but for millennia there have been others who choose instead to get up before the sun and wash their faces and go to their prayers.  And then fiercely try to hold on to their devotional convictions throughout the lunacy of another day…Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch.  Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark.  If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be…a prudent insurance policy…I couldn’t care less,” she says, “ about evidence and proof and assurances.  I just want God.  I want God inside me.  I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on water.”( Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love:  One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia (New York, NY:  Penguin Books, 2006), 175-176.)

 

 

1)      What meaning does this passage hold for you?

2)      What does prayer mean for you?  What difficulties with it do you have?

3)      What would it mean for us to see prayer as a “minimum daily requirement”, as life-sustaining?

 

 

Some Quotes for Further Reflection:

Prayer is not merely an occasional impulse to which we respond when we are in trouble:  prayer is a life attitude.  (Wayne Mueller)

Deep within us all there is an amazing inner sanctuary of the soul, a holy place…to which we may continuously return.  Eternity is at our hearts, pressing upon our time-torn lives, warming us…calling us home unto Itself.  Yielding to these persuasions…utterly and completely, to the Light within, is the beginning of true life. (Thomas R. Kelly)

If you begin to live life looking for God that is all around you, every moment becomes a prayer.  (Frank Bianco)

 

Closing

God, You who are Father and Mother to each of us, but nearer than our own breath; Make yourself the center of our world and our lives:  Reign over us and among us.  Let your creative and life-giving will and dream for us happen right now and right here in our world; Make every bite of bread a taste of your loving presence; Don’t make us relive our failures day after day, and help us not to make others relive their own failures.  And do not abandon us to our own violence, but show us the way out of the cycle of violence that threatens to destroy us.  Because your Reign and your Power and your Glory are finally all that matter.  Amen. (The Lord’s Prayer (Paraphrased), by Dr. Virgil Howard, (1936-2006)