New Creation

Lent 4B: Trading Snake Stories

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bronze-snakeOLD TESTAMENT: Numbers 21: 4-9

To read the Old Testament Lectionary passage, click here

This is truly one of the oddest passages in the Scripture. It’s probable that the only reason that it even shows up in our lectionary is because this week’s Gospel passage actually refers to it. Here we find the people of Israel in the wilderness. They have been delivered from their captivity and, once again, as they’ve done before, they are complaining, “murmuring” about how bad they have it. “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt,” they cry to Moses, “to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water and we hate this miserable food that we do have.” (So, apparently, it wasn’t that they didn’t HAVE food; they just didn’t have what they wanted!) Now if you remember a similar occasion in the Book of Exodus, God hears the complaints of the people and rains down manna upon them.

But this time, God sends poisonous snakes. The Hebrew word is seraph, which could also be translated as fiery serpents or winged serpents. Whatever they are, I don’t think it’s a good thing, particularly when they are surrounding you and biting you. The serpents bite the people and many of the people die. So, the people come to Moses, full of remorse for complaining and they beg him to pray to God to make the snakes go away, as if Moses is some sort of divine snake handler. But in a curious, and certainly unexpected, move, God does not take the serpents away. Instead God sends a strange remedy. God tells Moses to make an image of a snake. Moses makes one out of bronze and, following the divine instructions, sets it on a pole. And, just as God told Moses, whenever a serpent would bite someone, that person could look at the bronze serpent and live.

Think about it, though. From the very beginning of Creation, the snake has slithered on its belly and eaten only dust without a word of complaint. What better character to rule over the people when they complain about the choice of food? The snake comes to teach humility and patience. Snakes demand our full attention. And in response to the plague of snakes, God gives the people a snake. It is a way of teaching them to look at their fears, to look at themselves, to look at those things that get in the way of life. It is a sight that brings fear and loathing and one that is truly hard to find God’s presence in it. This is a creature that has resigned itself to full surrender.

This is very interesting. God sends snakes to combat snakes; God does not destroy the snake as evil; instead God recreates the image of the snake. And centuries later…Jesus’ death is recreated into something that conquers our own and our lives are recreated into something that lasts for eternity. Snakes for snakes, death for death, life for life—it is a paradox.

 

The ancient rabbis equated both the primordial serpent and Satan himself with a force known as the “yetzer ha-ra.” This Hebrew expression is often translated as “the evil urge,” but this translation is dangerously misleading. According to the Jewish understanding, the good Lord implanted into every human being this yetzer ha-ra, a drive that combines features of ambition, greed and desire.

There is a myth found in the Talmud that relates how the Jewish sages, shortly after the Babylonian Captivity, were determined to put an end to this threat [of this adversary depicted as the serpent]. Encouraged by their recent success at eradicating the “urge” to worship idols (an urge that had been such a constant stumbling-block to earlier generations, but which no longer held any appreciable attraction to the Jews of their time), –these sages now felt (understandably) that they were “on a roll.” So they decided to seize the opportunity to capture and destroy the “yetzer ha-ra” itself. And they were successful. They caught the beast and bound it in chains, eagerly awaiting the moment when they would remove it from the world for all time. But soon strange reports started arriving: Nobody was showing up at work anymore. No one wanted to marry or raise families. The chickens were not laying eggs! Life had all but stopped.

Now these sages came to the realization that they had misunderstood the nature of this “evil urge.” For the drives represented in that faculty are essential for the proper functioning of humanity as God planned us to live our lives. The urge is not “evil” in any absolute sense, but only when it is allowed to trespass beyond its legitimate domain… [For instance], ambition can be an admirable quality when it is channeled towards spiritual creativity and service of humanity, but is a fiery scourge when it is twisted into unrestricted covetousness. It was this failure to set limits to the “yetzer ha-ra” that was represented by the serpent in the Garden of Eden. This made the serpent a suitable instrument of divine punishment–but also of healing. The conclusion from all this is that our role as humans is not to eliminate the “serpent,” the yetzer ha-ra, but to keep it under control and direct it to a productive course. Jews believe that this is best done by following the values and way of life set down in the Torah. (Excerpt from “Brazen Serpents”, a sermon available at http://people.ucalgary.ca/~elsegal/Shokel/Preaching/S970309_Serpent.html.)

 

  1. What is your response to this passage?
  2. What do you think of the characterization of the snakes as humble and patient?
  3. So what is the snake on the pole supposed to do for us?
  4. So what does the midrash story mean for you? Do you think there is an “evil” in your life?
  5. So what, for you, does this say about the power of God in the world? In one’s life?

 

 

NEW TESTAMENT: Ephesians 2: 1-10

To read the Lectionary Epistle passage, click here

This is a typical “Reformation” passage. The author starts with a “before”. The three “before” characters are sin, Satan (the “power of the air”), and self. (The power of the air is a Greek reference. The Greeks believed that there was a space between the moon and the earth that was dominated by demonic activity. It’s just a way of thinking through the theology within their own understanding. Verse 4 begins the “after “ position. “But God who is rich in mercy…” The before, semi-dead state was never the way that we were supposed to be. We were made for greater things. God brings transformation through Christ.

The emphasis here is the shift from “before” to “after”; in other words, transformation. The agent of the change is God. We are playing a part in the change. This Scripture is a central tenet of the Christian faith. The writer emphasizes that we are saved by faith. But it is not an empty do-nothing faith. Good works, rather than being frantic acts to achieve a heavenly residence, are not transformed into the way we are supposed to live. They become the expressions of God in the world.

BUT the writer of this letter (who is more than likely not the Apostle Paul but rather a later follower or disciple of Paul’s) seems to be really focused on continuing this separation between this world and God, between the “sinful” world and God’s promise of grace and life. Paul had introduced the notion of being justified by grace through faith, the notion that God was a redemptive God, that it was a process by which we traversed the experience of this world and along the way encountered God. BUT, here, that word “saved” appears, as if it’s past tense, as if it is some badge of honor that we earn and wear as we continue to be forced to live in this sin-filled world in which we live. Somewhere along the way eschatology became realized, “already”, rather than something to which we look and live into.

Now keep in mind that this letter was probably written in the late first century. Jesus had come, died on the cross, and the Resurrection on which everything that is “Christian” is based had happened. And Jesus had promised to return. That had been imminent for Paul. BUT that hadn’t happened yet. The first century Christian followers (it still wasn’t “Christianity”, per se, the way we think of it today) were wondering if perhaps they had misunderstood, perhaps they had gotten the whole thing wrong. So the emphasis for the writer of Ephesians (as well as others), was a notion of echatology that had already happened, an emphasis on the crowned Jesus sitting at the right hand of God. And for those of us who are still mired in the throes of worldly evil and worldly despairs, there became a separation, a dualism that was put into place that pretty much exists even today. So many of us live in this world, burdened by sin, and hope against hope that God will swoop in and save us.

Really? Is that it? What happened to “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, BUT in order that the world might be saved through him.“? (But…but…but) God’s vision of the Kingdom of God is not to shun the world or even to rid us of all things worldly. God’s vision of the Kingdom of God is to recreate the world into what it is called to be–BUT the whole world, not the ones who follow the rules or the ones who are “good”, but everyone. So in this life of faith, we do not magically crossover to being “saved” from being “unsaved” and then sit back and wait for God to pluck us out of our miserable existence. Rather, we yield to new meanings and new circumstances as God recreates our lives into Life and brings about the fullness of the Kingdom of God throughout this wonderful created world in which we live.

That’s what Lent is about–new meanings and new circumstances. Maybe it’s about dropping the “but” in life. God created the life that each of us has. Why would God call us to leave it behind? Rather God is recreating it as we speak, bringing it into being, into the image that God envisions for it. You know, if we look at things with the eyes of a world where God is not, a world that waits for God to return, there is always a “but”; BUT if we look at all of Creation with the eyes of faith, with the eyes of those who believe in a God who came into our midst to show us how much we are loved, everything has an AND.

 

  1. What meaning does this passage hold for you?
  2. What meaning does this “before” and “after” hold for you? Does that sound to much like an “event” of conversion, rather than a process?
  3. What does being “saved by faith” really mean for you?
  4. How would you describe faith?

 

 

GOSPEL: John 3: 14-21

To read the Lectionary Gospel passage, click here

Well, obviously, this passage begins with the reference to our snake story. This is followed by one of the most well-known passages. Scripture proclaims that God’s extravagant love for the world is a self-giving act of grace. But are God’s love for the world and God’s giving of the incarnate, crucified, resurrected Son limited to the part of the world that believes what God has done? John’s Gospel assures us that “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

This Scripture begins at the last part of what is actually a response to a misunderstanding by Nicodemus. Jesus predicts the Passion, drawing on what would have been a familiar passage as an analogy. There are parallels between the two—“look at the serpent and live” and “believe in the Son of Man and live eternally”. There is also the familiar light / darkness language. To love darkness rather than light is disobedience. In this season of Lent, we consider our disobedience, our “dark” living. If, then, believing is the same as obedience, do we really believe?

The third verse of this passage, though, is, of course, the “elephant in the room”, so to speak. It’s on street corners and marquis, T-Shirts, football helmets, and sometimes painted on faces at sporting events. It is often taken as the quintessential “insider” verse, the badge of honor for the believing Christian. It is often interpreted as “God came; God came to save me and the rest of you are on your own.” But keep in mind that this Gospel was written later than the others. To be a follower of Christ, a person of The Way, was just downright hard. You were NOT an insider. You were part of a fledgling and sometimes persecuted minority that was just trying to hold it together. So, these words would have been words of encouragement, words of strength, a way of defining who they were as a Jewish minority. It was a way of reminding them why they were walking this difficult (and sometimes dangerous) path—because of the great Love of God. But in the hands of the 21st century Christian majority in our society, they become weapons. They turn into words of exclusion, designating who is “in” and who is “out”. Well, first of all, nowhere in the Gospel are we the ones called to make that determination. And secondly, look at the whole context of this Gospel by the writer known as John. It starts out with Creation. It talks about this great Love that is God. And it proclaims that God came into the world to save the world. So how did we interpret this that God had quit loving some of us?

The Truth (that’s with a capital T) reminds us that God offers us Life, that God, in effect, DID come into the world to save us—mostly, I would offer, from ourselves, from our misdirected greed, our disproportionately selfish ambition, and from our basic desires to be something other than the one who God has called us to be. God desires this for everyone. God really does want to save the world from the world. And so the Kingdom of God seems to us to sometimes be inching (or perhaps slithering!) in rather than pervading our world. I think that the world DOES need to somehow be moved to believe, DOES need to somehow begin to see itself anew. But that will never happen if the cross is raised as a weapon. SURELY, we get that it’s something other than that! Remember, God redeemed it. God took something so loathsome, so foreboding, so, for want of a better word, evil and turned it into Life. God is doing the same for the world. God loves the world so incredibly much that God would never leave us to our own devices (or even, thankfully, to those of who count ourselves as well-meaning believers!). Instead, God comes into the world and offers us life; indeed, loves us so much that God offers us recreation, redemption, and renewal. Don’t you think THAT’S the story? It’s not about who’s in or who’s out. It’s about Love. It’s a promise that there’s always more to the story than what we can see or fathom or paint on a sign. To say that we believe does not qualify us for membership; it leads us to The Way of Life.

 

  1. What meaning does this passage hold for you?
  2. How does this Scripture speak to you?
  3. How is this Scripture misused?
  4. Does the story that we read from the Old Testament shed (no pun intended!) any new light on the meaning of the Cross for you?

 

 

Some Quotes for Further Reflection:

 

There was, indeed, something I had missed about Christianity, and now all of a sudden I could see what it was. It was the Resurrection! How could I have been a church historian and a person of prayer who loved God and still not known that the most fundamental Christian reality is not the suffering of the cross but the life it brings?….The foundation of the universe for which God made us, to which God draws us, and in which God keeps us is not death but joy. (Roberta Bondi)

 

Surrender does not simply mean that I quit grieving what I do not have. It means that I surrender to new meanings and new circumstances, that I begin to think differently and to live somewhere that it totally elsewhere…Surrender is the crossover point of life. It distinguished who I was from who I have become. (Joan Chittister, Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope, p. 58-59)

 

It is well know that Christ consistently used the expression “follower.” He never asks for admirers, worshippers, or adherents. No, he calls disciples. It is not adherents of a teaching but followers of a life Christ is looking for…Christ came into the world with the purpose of saving, not instructing it. (Soren Kierkegaard, in Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter, p. 55-56)

 

Closing

 

The way to Jerusalem is cluttered with bits and pieces of our lives that fly up and cry out, wounding us as we try to keep upon this path that leads to Life.

 

Why didn’t somebody tell us that it would be so hard?

 

In the midst of the clutter, the children laugh and run after stars. Those of us who are wise will follow, for the children will be the first to kneel in Jerusalem.

 

Amen.

(“The Way to Jerusalem is Cluttered”, from Kneeling in Jerusalem, by Ann Weems, p. 42)

Epiphany 3B: Becoming Who You Are

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Image of ChristOLD TESTAMENT: Jonah 3: 1-5, 10

To read the Old Testament Lectionary passage, click here

The book of Jonah is a strange story told in just forty-eight verses. There is little documentation as to who wrote it, under what circumstances, when it was written, and, for some, even why it was written. The story is of a fictitious character named Jonah, perhaps named and derived from the prophet Jonah, son of Amittai. But the folkloric and almost comedic tone of the story suggests that it may come from an independent tradition of the telling of miraculous tales. No one really knows, though, what genre or story-type would have sparked this book.

Leading up to our reading, the story is told of Jonah, who is a pretty well-known prophet as Old Testament prophets go not, probably, because of what he did or what he said but because of what lore says happened to him. Because, you see, Jonah was not the most willing of prophets. When God told him to go to Ninevah, Jonah didn’t question or hesitantly stammer out the list of weaknesses that made him unlikely for this mission. No, Jonah ran away! He went and found a ship and tried to sail away from God. And then, in the midst of a fierce and terrifying storm, Jonah fell asleep. So believing that he may have with his actions brought this calamity upon others, Jonah volunteered to be thrown into the sea. Well, you remember the rest of the well-known story: Jonah was swallowed by a fish, he prayed and prayed and remembered his God who had done so much in his life, and then the fish regurgitated him onto the beach. You know…apparently being a prophet is sometimes messy business!

Actually the “messy” part of this story is that Jonah’s acts not only got himself into trouble, but also endangered others. It’s a hard lesson. We are not lone rangers in this world. What we do, what we choose to do, and sometimes when we try desperately to save ourselves from change, we endanger others.

So the next time the Lord spoke to Jonah, calling him to go to Ninevah and tell them to change, Jonah obliged. He probably wasn’t that happy about it but, after all, once you’ve been thrown up by a fish, you pretty much listen. So he went to the people of Ninevah. Now Ninevah was a major city—lots of commerce and wealth. They pretty much had it all figured out. But somewhere deep inside of them, something was missing. There was still poverty; there was still inequality; and there was still the sense that this was not all there was. So they listened to Jonah. More importantly, they heard Jonah. After all, they were headed for destruction. So they vowed to change, donning sackcloth and fasting and begging God for forgiveness. When God saw that they really got it, that they really intended to change, God saved them from themselves.

In Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, Father Mapple, the preacher at the Whaleman’s Chapel in New Bedford, names “willful disobedience” as Jonah’s sin. He observes that God more often commands than seeks to persuade because what the deity wants of us is too hard for us. “And if we obey God, we must disobey ourselves; and it is in this disobeying ourselves, wherein the hardness of obeying God consists.” (From The New Interpreter’s Bible, p. 501) While that may sound a bit harsh to our grace-filled 21st century ears, I think there is some truth to it. Sometimes God must do something a little rash to get our attention, to jolt us out of our complacency, to, in effect, will us to “disobey” ourselves, to change pathways from the one on which we travel, and follow where God leads.

Truthfully, though, the whole story is sort of a caricature. I think those who desperately cling to literalism would struggle a bit with this story. A big fish? Really? And an entire city on the brink of hell suddenly repent? Really? Maybe we CAN just chalk it up to grace. You know, amazing things happen on this journey of faith, things that we do not expect, things that we do not plan, things that make no sense. Divine mercy and compassion always win. Maybe that’s the moral of the story. And, when it’s all said and done, when we just can’t seem to make it work, just can’t seem to get on the road, God lovingly chases us down and walks with us to the right place. In Feasting On the Word, Donna Schaper reminds us of the old Jewish proverb that reads: “Whenever someone says, “I have a plan,” God laughs.”

And when it’s all said and done, Jonah really doesn’t change all that much. I don’t think Jonah is in line for sainthood any time soon. He’s like most of us. Maybe that’s the point too. God calls us all. And if we mess it up or just flat run away, God always gives us another shot. And even those of us who do everything we can to avoid where God is trying to take us can end up saving a city (if we don’t get swallowed up first!)

 

  1. What is your response to this passage?
  2. What message does it provide for you?
  3. How would you respond to Melville’s notion of “willful disobedience”?
  4. What parallels for our time do you see?
  5. What is our Ninevah?
  6. Do you think there is a prophetic word of God in play today?
  7. What does this say about our own calling from God?

 

 

NEW TESTAMENT: 1 Corinthians 7: 29-31

To read the Lectionary Epistle passage, click here

For Paul, there was a sense of urgency here. He believed, it seems, that the “end of time” as we know it was coming quickly. Paul assumes here that although individuals are called by God, they also make choices for which they are responsible. Here, Paul is warning against being entrapped by the world’s values and not paying attention to what was coming. Paul urged his readers to remain unchanged even in the midst of a changing world. For him, believers need to keep a “long view”, without letting the world drag them down or away. Paul did not think that the world was objectionable or irrelevant but, rather, not the focus of where we should be living. For Paul, the new Creation is beginning to break in and we should be living “as if” it has already happened.

Well, on the surface, it seems that this Scripture was proved wrong. After all, here we sit nearly 2,000 years later, world essentially intact. And yet, it’s not wrong. We have been promised that there is something up ahead. Our faith tells us that at some point the Kingdom of God will come in all of its fullness and, in effect, I guess, “swallow up” (pun intended!) the world as we know it. Paul is not like those few in our current day that attempt to pin point the exact time when this will all happen. Paul just wanted to believe that it was coming AND that it was happening as we speak. It’s a message of transformation. It’s a call to live into it, to live as if the Kingdom of God has come. It’s not a threat; it’s a promise—and an incredible one at that! The Kingdom of God will come in God’s time and at the appropriate time. And whether or not it happens on your way home, tomorrow, or 3,000,000 years from now, it really is imminent. It’s the stuff that our faith is about.

The point is that we are called to live eschatologically, into the future coming of God’s Kingdom. And knowing the certainty and the imminence of, we are called not to remove ourselves from this world but to align its being with what we know is coming. We are called to live “as if” it has already happened.

 

“Let it be told to the future world … that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive… that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it].” (Thomas Paine, “The Crisis”, written December 23, 1776.)

 

America, In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested, we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back, nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

 

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends — hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism — these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility — a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world; duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

 

This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

 

This is the source of our confidence — the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.

 

President Barack Obama

Inaugural Address, January 20, 2009

 

  1. What meaning does this passage hold for you?
  2. How do you think this relates to our lives today?
  3. What would that mean to you to “live as if”?

 

 

GOSPEL: Mark 1: 14-20

To read the Lectionary Gospel passage, click here

Jesus’ first disciples are fishermen from Capernaum, a settlement that stretched along the lakefront. He calls two pairs of brothers—Peter and Andrew and James and John. The story is written in the familiar “call” formula used throughout the Scriptures: (i.) Setting—Fishermen by the sea; (ii.) Summons—Come and follow; and (iii.) Response—They left and followed. The fact that the men drop both occupation and family obligations demonstrates for this Gospel writer that their call comes from God. In fact, it indicates that Peter and Andrew left immediately to follow Jesus. Needless to say, this calling to follow Jesus represented an extraordinary interruption in one’s life and may possibly have even been offensive. For fishermen, a departure might have put the welfare of the entire family at risk. But Jesus provides a “substitute” for their current occupation—becoming, now, “fishers of people”. It doesn’t mean, here, that we are all called to be “fishers of people”. It just means that the gifts we have, God is prepared to use. It means that our calling is not to be something we’re not, but to become fully who we are.

But there’s something else at work here too. The story represents that these were relatively prosperous fishermen, implying that for that culture, the disciples were not uneducated or impoverished. They were not out of work. They actually had a pretty lucrative fishing business. (Boy, what is the deal with fish this week?) But the point is that they actually had something that they had to give up to follow Jesus. They had to give up the lure of this world—money, security—to become who they were meant to be. You know, God never promised that this road was easy; the promise was that it was the one that was right, that was who we are. And, really, if it was easy, why would we need faith at all?

And yet, this call story is not so drastically removed from our own. We are called each and every moment to change pathways, to become who we really are. But it means that we have to give up this self that we’ve created, this self that we’ve tried so hard to fit into this world. We have to follow. And that’s what discipleship is all about. It is not what we do; it is who we are.

 

The Christian writer, Barbara Brown Taylor, tells in one of her books about a time in her life when she was struggling mightily with sense of call. She simply could not figure out what it was that God wanted her to do and be. Did God want her to be a writer? Did God want her to be a priest? Did God want her to be a social worker? Did God want her to teach? She simply didn’t know. And in her frustration and exasperation, one midnight, she says, she fell down on her knees in prayer and said: “Okay, God. You need to level with me. What do you want me to be? What do you want me to do? What are you calling me to do?” She said she felt a very powerful response, God saying, “Do what pleases you. Belong to me, but do what pleases you.” She said it struck her as very strange that God’s call could actually touch that place of her greatest joy, that she could be called to do the thing that pleases her the most.

Another Christian writer, Frederick Buechner says, “Our calling is where our deepest gladness and the world’s hunger meet.” Think about that. “Our calling is where our deepest gladness and the world’s hunger meet.” But there are other times when God’s call does not come so much from a place inside of us but comes from a place outside of us. Sometimes we’re being called to places we never dreamed we’d go, to do things we never dreamed we’d do, to say things we never dreamed we’d say. (From “Where You Never Expected to Be”, a sermon by Dr. Thomas Long, October 22, 2006, available at http://www.csec.org/csec/sermon/long_5004.htm, accessed 14 January, 2012.)

 

  1. What meaning does this passage hold for you?
  2. What does this tell you about your own discipleship or your own calling?
  3. What is the difference between the notion of being a disciple as what we do and the idea of being a disciple as who we are?
  4. How does that change our view of our own calling?
  5. Do you feel like you’ve given anything up to follow Christ?

 

 Some Quotes for Further Reflection:

Call is something you must do to save your life. (Dr. Virgil Howard, Perkins School of Theology)

 

The desire to fulfill the purpose for which we were created is a gift from God. (A.W. Tozer)

 

Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you. (Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation, 3)

 

 

Closing

 

You must give birth to your images. They are the future waiting to be born. Fear not the strangeness you feel. The future must enter you long before it happens. Just wait for the birth, for the hour of new clarity…Amen. (Rainer Maria Rilke)