Suffering

Lent 3A: Thirsting Anew

shelliwilliamsLeave a comment

03-19-2017-Lent 3AOLD TESTAMENT:  Exodus 17: 1-7

To read the Old Testament Lectionary passage, click here

The Book of Exodus stands at the center of Israel’s faith tradition, primarily because so much of it is about the Exodus, itself.  The Book of Exodus begins the work of Moses.  The Book carries themes such as liberation, law, and covenant.  As to the arrangement of the Book of Exodus itself, the first 15 or so chapters are essentially a narrative about liberation.  (Essentially the deliverance of the Hebrews…the “Let My People Go” theme.).  Then beginning mid-way through Chapter 15, the tone shifts to the question of “Is the Lord Among Us or Not?” Following that is the charter of the holy nation, the pattern of the tabernacle, and then sections on sin and restoration and Israel’s obedient work.

The passage that we read is set in this second section and is part of what is sort of a “wilderness journey”.  Here, Israel’s life in the wilderness is very precarious.  There is no water to drink, no resources for living, and (easily) they begin to doubt God’s existence.  They think that God has deserted them.  Here they had done exactly what God had said and now it seemed that they were being left to die in the desert.  They complain to Moses, but Moses cannot make water.  He does not want to be blamed.  You know that Moses probably just wanted to run away, to get away from all of the complaining.  He also reprimands the Israelites for criticizing him and for testing Yahweh.  In essence, it seems that he, if only for a moment, equates his own leadership with that of God.

The second exchange includes God and produces a life-giving outcome that Moses could not produce alone.  The problem was solved!  In verse 7, the names given to this place mean “test” (Massah) and “quarrel” (Meribah).  The narrator turns the problem back toward the people.  In essence it becomes a story of “unfaith”.  What got in the way was not God’s lack of response but, rather, the Israelites lack of trust of God.  This story of “unfaith” sort of critiques that view of religion that judges God by whatever outcome the asking community received.  God does not reward and punish people based on whether or not they deserve it.

Now, in Israel’s defense, this was true thirst.  In this passage, I don’t think “thirst” implies a metaphorical spiritual thirst.  They needed water.  This story is set in the wilderness.  It’s hard for us to imagine true wilderness—no resources, no direction, nothing to sustain us.  And the desert must be the wilderness of all wildernesses.  Without trees, there is no way to gauge where you are or how far you’ve come.  Any shadow or dark spot is worthy of suspicion as something of which you must be aware.  And rather than the path being hard to see or hard to tread, it is continually changed by the winds and sands.  And yet, wilderness is over and over again the setting through which people find their faith.

Implicit in this story is an account of egos being tripped up—both for Moses and his followers.  The Israelites thought they deserved something better.  They thought that if they followed God and did what they were called to do, God would reward them.  They didn’t have the faith to know that God was with them.  They wanted it NOW.  And for Moses, he fell into the trap of thinking that he was doing everything right, that the people should just shut up and listen to him.  He forgot that he was instrument of God.

The image of thirsting is profoundly human.  It is a deep human need.  But when our needs become more important than the source from which we came, then fears and panic set in.  Alexander Baillie says that “one needs to keep on thirsting because life grows and enlarges.  It has no end; it goes on and on; it becomes more beautiful…One cannot be satisfied until one…ever thirsts for God.”

This is considered one of those “murmuring” stories of the Old Testament.  We do the same thing.  Perhaps our complaining and our murmuring gets in the way of our hearing God.  Several years ago, I was sitting in a room at Lakewood UMC in North Houston listening to interviews of ministerial candidates.  It was apparently a children’s choir room.  There was a sign on the piano that said “Listen louder than you sing.” Now if you’ve ever sung in a choir, you know EXACTLY what this is saying.  (Shhh!  Listen, feel the energy that the choir holds, the music that we can only create together.)  But I think it fits great with this passage.  What would have been different if Moses had done that?  What would have been different if the Israelites had done that?  What would be different if we did that?  

  1. a.      What is your response to this passage?
  2. b.      In what ways are the Israelites a mirror image of our own lives today?
  3. c.       What is your image of the wilderness here?
  4. d.      What is your image of the “path” down which God leads us?
  5. e.       What does our thirst have to do with our faith and our relationship with God?

 NEW TESTAMENT:  Romans 5: 1-11

To read the Lectionary Epistle passage, click here

This section of Romans begins a section on what Paul called the “true humanity” of God’s people in Christ.  There begins more of a focus on the connection that humanity has through Christ, rather than focusing on Jesus himself.  Essentially it is about what follows once one is justified by faith.  For Paul, this is the “new Exodus”.

The passage that we read focuses on a new relationship of love on both sides—both humans and God.  So God’s justice has led to that perfect peace.  (Keep in mind that this “perfect peace” is set in the midst of Rome, where Augustus Caesar had established the Roman Pax, which sought to move in on the entire world.  It doesn’t mean the same for us, but Paul essentially takes the “motto of the day” and turns it toward belief in God’s coming peace.)  Paul focuses on this as a different kind of peace, one that places its hope in glory, but one that will include suffering as part of that larger hope.  Paul maintains that we should indeed celebrate this suffering.  He claims that suffering produces patience, which produces character.  Indeed, suffering deepens hope.  Like the passage from Exodus, this thought denies that idea of God having some sort of reward and punishment system.  Instead, God enters our suffering with us.  And being in a “right relationship” with God means that we embrace all that is God—even the God who stays in the midst of suffering.

Walter Brueggemann claims that “suffering produces hope”.  He points out that the Jewish community has memories of the exile, of deep and profound suffering and that Christians have the memory of the cross.  It means that we engage so deeply in the suffering of the past and the suffering of the present, that we imagine something new.  Thomas Merton says that “the Christian must not only accept suffering:  [the Christian] must make it holy.”  That is probably strange to most of us.  Suffering is bad; suffering is unwarranted; suffering is something that we all try to avoid.  And yet, suffering happens.   I don’t think it’s helpful to dismiss it as the “will of God”, as if God is somehow sitting off somewhere calculating who to inflict next.  God is not like that.  We all have needs.  We will all suffer.  And where is God?  There…the place God is…is in the midst of all of the suffering.  God walks with us through it, loving us and holding us, and gives us a glimpse of what is to come.  God, remember, was there, even on the cross.  If nothing else, the suffering in the world reveals the heart of God, reveals all this is holy.  Paul said it better:  suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope…God’s love poured into our hearts.  He was right.  It is a celebration.  Because, you see, when we suffer, when we hurt, when the comforts of our lives are even momentarily stripped away, we are capable of seeing hope.  We are capable of imagining something new. From the darkness, we are finally capable of seeing and knowing the Light.  Suffering changes our perspectives and reframes what comes next in our lives.  It once again reminds us what God has done and what God will do. And it gives us the ability, finally, to see things differently.

God is continually giving newness.  God is continually reframing every moment of our life until all of Creation has been brought about right.  God is continually giving us the opportunity to glimpse what lies ahead, to see beauty even before it exists.  Even in this season of Lent, when we are surrounded by reminders of suffering, we are given holy glimpses of what is ahead.  If you count the 40 days of Lent, they do not include Sundays.  The Sundays of Lent are known as “little Easters”, opportunities to glimpse and celebrate the Resurrection even in the midst of the darkness.  That is the cause for celebration about which Paul wrote.

  1. a.      What is your response to this passage?
  2. b.      What does that “perfect peace” look like for you?
  3. c.       What is your image of suffering and how it relates to hope?
  4. d.      What meaning does that hold for us during this Lenten season?

GOSPEL:  John 4: 5-26 (42)

To read the Lectionary Gospel passage, click here

In this passage, Jesus’ ministry enters a new stage.  He leaves the confines of traditional Judaism and turns to outsiders, those who his Jewish contemporaries would have rejected.  First on the list are the Samaritans.  The less than civil relationship between the Jews and the Samaritans dated back at least 1,000 years before the birth of Christ.  Both believed in God.  Both had a monotheistic understanding of the one true God, the YHWH of their shared tradition of belief.  But where the temple of YHWH for the Jews existed on MountZion in Jerusalem, the Samaritans instead worshipped God on MountGerizim near the ancient city of Shechem.  And with that, a new line of religious understanding was formed.  The Samaritans believed that their line of priests was the legitimate one, rather than the line in Jerusalem and they accepted only the Law of Moses as divinely inspired, without recognizing the writings of the prophets or the books of wisdom.   What started as a simple religious division, a different understanding of how God relates to us and we relate to God, eventually grew into a cultural and political conflict that would not go away.  The tension escalated and the hatred for the other was handed down for centuries from parent to child over and over again.

So, here is Jesus breaking all of the boundaries of traditional Judaism.  He, unescorted, speaks to a woman.  He speaks to a woman of questionable repute.  And he speaks to the enemy. The truth is, there is nothing about this woman that is wrong or sinful or anything else that we try to tack on her reputation.  This woman was just different.  Her life had been difficult.  She lived in darkness.  And the most astonishing thing is that this seemingly low-class woman who is a Samaritan becomes the witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Once again, the Gospel is found not in Jerusalem and notMt. Gerizim but in our shared existence as part of this “new humanity”.

Now, the woman does miss Jesus’ point.  She looks upon Jesus as some sort of miracle worker, rather than seeing that he offers a new way of being.  Even this story deals with suffering—the woman surely suffered.  Good grief, she was there by herself—couldn’t even face the crowd.  And Jesus—well Jesus was just thirsty.  We all have needs; we all have fears—that is the nature of our true humanity.  And maybe the story teaches us that from our need we will realize who God is.  This woman’s new life begins when she recognizes Jesus’ true identity.  Maybe that’s our problem.  We are still looking for the Jesus that will make our lives easier rather than the one who will give us new life. 

  1. a.      What is your response to this passage?
  2. b.      Where do you find yourself in this story?
  3. c.       Where is Jesus once again today placed behind those boundaries of respectable and ordered faith?
  4. d.      What Lenten message does this bring about for us?

  

Some Quotes for Further Reflection:

 Thou hast made us for Thyself, and we cannot find rest until we find it in Thee. (St. Augustine of Hippo)

Too many of us panic in the dark.  We don’t understand that it’s a holy dark and that the idea is to surrender to it and journey through to real light. (Sue Monk Kidd)

The spiritual life does not come cheap.  It is not a stroll down a Mary Poppins path with a candy-store God who gives sweets and miracles.  It is a walk into the dark with the God who is the light that leads us through darkness. (Joan Chittister, Called to Question: A Spiritual Memoir, p. 91)

Closing

O come, let us sing to the Most High, Creator of the Cosmos;  let us make a joyful song to the Beloved!  Let us come to the Radiant One with thanksgiving, with gratitude let us offer our psalms of praise!  For the Beloved is Infinite, the Breathing Life of all.  The depths of the earth belong to Love; the height of the mountains, as well.  The sea and all that is in it, the dry land and air above were created by Love.

O come, let us bow down and give thanks, let us be humble before the Blessed One!  For the Beloved is Supreme, and we, blessed to be invited to friendship as companion along the Way!  O that today we would harken to the Beloved’s voice!  Harden not your hearts, as in days of old, that you be not separated from Love.  Be not like those who hear the Word and heed it not, thinking to be above the Most High.  For life is but a breath in the Eternal Dance, a gift to be revered with trust, an opportunity to grow in spirit and truth, That in passing into new Life, you enter into the Heavenly City.  Amen. (“Psalm 95”, in Psalms for Praying:  An Invitation to Wholeness: An Invitation to Wholeness, Nan C. Merrill, p. 197-198)

Proper 22C: How Much Faith is Enough?

shelliwilliamsLeave a comment
mustard-seed-piety-choi
“A Mustard Seed”, by Piety Choi (PietysArt.com)

FIRST LESSON:  Lamentations 1: 1-6

Read the passage from Lamentations

Lamentations is a book of poetry around the subject of unspeakable suffering.  In Hebrew, the name of the book means something like “funeral dirges”.  The writings come from a place of deep and profound hurt and, for that reason, the book is often considered on the margins of the liturgies of both Judaism and Christianity.  The book is actually a short collection of five poems in response to a national tragedy.  There is debate over which historical setting to which it is responding, but more than likely it was written in the aftermath of the Babylonian invasions of Jerusalem. (about 587 or 586 bce)  There was a real sense of just how God could have let this happen.  The primary speaker is an unknown narrator and the audience, too, is unidentified.  There is an overwhelming tone of sorrow and shame and a sense of nostalgia, a remembrance of what “was” (and perhaps what “could have been”).

Keep in mind that this is a people who have long seen themselves as “chosen” by God, as delivered by God from slavery in Egypt and led to a promised land, a people whose holy place was high upon a solid rock.  Israel had faith in God to protect them.  But now the temple mount has fallen (the first of several times, we know now).  The people of God had been given the promised land and they had filled it with their lives, their families, and their homes.  They had established the city of Jerusalem as the capital and built God a great Temple there.  But the city and the temple has now been desecrated by the Babylonians.  Life as they know it is gone.

The writings are riddled with the question “Where was God when all this was going on?”  The reading begins with a depiction of Jerusalem as one in misery, utterly alone, and with a precarious future.  When you get to the later verses, the grief almost becomes palpable—even the gates are desolate, perhaps hanging precariously from their hinges with no protection and no welcome.  And yet, there is a sense of owning of one’s guilt, of one’s part in what has happened.

National tragedies tend to render communities speechless.  The collective grief can be overwhelming.  We, too, have experienced that.  Lamentations names what is wrong, what is out of order in God’s world, what keeps human beings from thriving in all their creative potential.  Acts of lament expose these conditions.  They give us permission to cry, to grieve, perhaps to wail (the way African cultures do), to truly lament.

And even in the midst of darkness, the grieving community looks to God.  There is a realization that while circumstances may change, God is always present and is always steadfast.  Even in the darkest darkness, God is present.  The Book of Lamentations challenges us to reexamine what “blessed” means, what faith means.  It challenges our vision of that for which we hope—something beyond the way things were before.

Jesus wept, and in his weeping, he joined himself forever to those who mourn.

He stands now throughout all time, this Jesus weeping, with his arms about the weeping ones; “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted”.  He stands with the mourners, for his name is God-with-us.  Jesus wept.

 “Blessed are those who weep, for they shall be comforted.”  Someday.  Someday God will wipe the tears from Rachel’s eyes.

 In the godforsaken, obscene quicksand of life, there is a deafening alleluia rising from the souls of those who weep, and of those who weep with those who weep.  If you watch, you will see that hand of God putting the stars back in their skies one by one.  (From Psalms of Lament, by Ann Weems, xvi-xvii)

  • What is your response to this passage?
  • What benefit do you see for laments, for the naming of what is wrong?
  • Why is this so difficult for our society today?
  • What message of hope does this hold for you?

  

NEW TESTAMENT:  2 Timothy 1: 1-14

Read the New Testament passage

As we have said, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus are known as the “pastoral epistles”.  Their main purpose was to establish a pattern of ministry and church structure, along with a pattern of “truth”, faith, and sound teaching.  Many try to take these together, but this can be misleading because 2 Timothy has a little bit different scope, focusing primarily on personal character of believers, rather than the patterns of the church.  Most scholars assume that these letters were not written by Paul but, rather, by a student or disciple of Paul’s.

In this week’s passage, the writer refers to the faith in which one has grown, the faith of his ancestors and then proclaims it to be a faith that is continued through the apostolic order, of which the liturgies and order is a part.  The writer doesn’t mean this to be looked upon as a “hand-me-down” faith, but one that is already there.  In essence, this writing is not refuting the forms of worship of the day or of one’s history, but simply infusing them with the Christian spirit—“in Christ Jesus”.  The writer talks of “rekindling” the gift of God that is in each of us, a spark that has been there all along.

The second part of the reading begins with the admonishment “do not be ashamed.”  This is odd-sounding to us, but first-century Mediterranean culture was very much an “honor-shame” society.  The social ethos encouraged the pursuit of works of honor.  So the writer is using it to depict that not acting in accordance with God’s calling and with one’s faith would bring shame.  We are told to join in suffering for the Gospel.

This is sort of a creedal-type statement which is a confession of God (not of Christ).  It lays out the Gospel as an account not so much of what Christ has done as of what God has done through Christ.  Faith is also depicted as a “deposit”, something that one initially had that now needs to be increased. It’s hard, though, to not read this as if faith is more formalized.  Instead of believing “in”, it almost admonishes us to believe “that”.

Depicted here is a faith that cannot be separated from one’s faith tradition.  But it means making sure that the connections are upheld and maintained and then passed on to the next generation.  It speaks of faith as a connectedness, an ongoing relationship with those before us, those after us, and all of those with whom we share community in this moment.

The Apostle Paul understands that there is no inherent conflict between the personal and communal aspects of faith. No human being is born an orphan. We are all born into a family. The Bantus of South Africa say, Umuntu, ngamuntu, ngabantu — a person is a person because of other persons. We are born into relationship, we grow and live in relationship and we die in relationship. Our modern Western notion of personal independence and psychic autonomy distorts the truth about us. Transposed into African, the sophisticated Cartesian formulation Cogito ergo sum, “I think, therefore I am,” would read Cognatus ergo sum, “I am related, therefore I am.” To the question “Who are you?” the African would answer, “I am my mother’s and father’s child, of the lineage of so-and-so, of the house of X and Y, of the tribe of Z.” By which time the impatient European or American has moved on to other matters. Yet the Bible is replete with such genealogical material, and even Jesus is situated in its repetitive detail.

Although faith challenges individuals, heroic individualism does not exhaust faith’s fullness and power. At its heart is the gift of memory, the ability to recall and reappropriate. Faith does not just arouse and satisfy the craving for individual gratification or fill our hunger for self-esteem, important as those things are. Faith connects us with others, grants us a name and an identity by which we can respond to God’s call, and assures us that others know that name. Thus is established the social roots of person-hood. When those roots are touched then the branches of my being stir in response. A baptismal is thus the symbol of our integrity, the cup of sacrament filled with the whole body. When Africans name a child at a dedication ceremony they think of it as giving life, the abundant life of relatedness.

And so the apostle affirms Timothy’s faith by a threefold naming — the names of his grandmother and mother and his own name. Wherever the faith has spread it has promoted and been promoted by this sense of names. As long as our names exist the church has hope of continuing community. (Lamin Sanneh, “Naming and the Act of Faith”, in The Christian Century, October 4, 1989, available at http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=889, accessed 29 Sept 2010)

  • What meaning does this passage hold for you?
  • What do you think of this depiction of faith?
  • What does the notion of “sound teaching” mean to you?
  • What does this idea of the “handing down of faith” mean for you?

 

GOSPEL:  Luke 17:5-10

Read the Gospel passage

The Gospel passage for this week begins with a discussion of faith that plays right into what we read in the Epistle passage.  This section (including the four verses that come before) pull together four units of sayings:  a warning against causing others to stumble, a challenge to be forgiving, a call to exercise faith, and a reminder of the duties of discipleship.  Then the passage itself starts out with a reference to increasing one’s faith.

It is important to look at what comes before this.  Last week’s Scripture reflected the story of the rich man and Lazarus; and then in the first few verses of the seventeenth chapter of Luke, there are these teachings related to our concerns for the little ones in this world, for the ways we injure and sin against each other, and the call to forgive.  Forgive…There are so many needs in the world.  There is so much conflict.  How can we make it through?  We begin to understand and identify with the disciples’ request:  “Increase our faith.”  Help us get through this; give us strength; make it better; we know that you can make it better.  Because, going back even farther, if we can’t forgive, then we become “occasions for stumbling” for someone else.  Lord, help us!  Help us do what is right!

After all, that’s what we should do.  But then the next part of the passage comes into play.  If one is only doing what he or she SHOULD do (as in the servant), then why would the result include a reward?  If one is meeting expectation, then one is really just average.  For the writer of Luke, forgiving is what we should do.  We are not owed anything for doing that.  It is who we are.  It is the expectation.  It reaps no reward.  It is faith that gets us where we need to be.  God’s favor is an act of grace—unearned, unmerited, and, usually, undeserved.  The place at the table is a gift; it is not earned.

The biggest problem here is that the disciples have made faith a commodity, something that can be measured.  We do it too.  And that doesn’t really work when it comes to faith.  Think about it.  Faith is faith.  If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, a tiny speck of a thing, you have faith.  And if you have faith enough to move mountains, to overcome anything, you have faith.  It’s all the same thing.

Maybe the question is not how much we have but what it is.  In our world today, we seem to be bombarded with a theology of certitude, sort of a “my faith’s bigger than your faith” mentality, as if living the right way and dressing the right way and thinking the right way and voting the right way makes us somehow more faithful than someone else.  We live as if being sure of what we know and what we believe means that we have more faith, means that we’re somehow better or more advanced than those who doubt and continue to search.  But, again, what is faith?  I think it is trust in something so much bigger than we are that we cannot imagine it.  I think it is accepting a certainty in the existence of something of which we are a little (or maybe a whole lot) uncertain.  And I think it is, finally, realizing that we are not in full control of our lives, or our world, or our destiny, and that what we do is only a small piece of this veritable tapestry that is our world.

The only certainty that we really have is that faith involves uncertainty.  We are not called to a blind and unexamined faith but one that is illumined with all that God calls us to encounter in life.  “Increase our faith?”   What does that mean?  Remember, faith is faith.  You could say, then, that merely desiring faith is faith.  And desiring to increase one’s faith is a faithful and faith-filled response to God’s calling into relationship.  This is not a commodity nor is it a finished product that we must work to obtain.  Faith is faith.  Desiring faith is faith.  And “having faith” is not about faith at all.  Flannery O’Connor once said that “when we get our spiritual house in order, we’ll be dead.  This goes on.  You arrive at enough certainty to be able to make your way, but it is making it in darkness.  Don’t expect faith to clear things up for you.  It is trust not certainty.”

 

  • What meaning does this passage hold for you?
  • How prevalent do you think the thinking that we “earn” God’s love or that we “earn” heaven is today? What does that say about our faith?
  • What is faith to you?

 

 

Some Quotes for Further Reflection:

There are two ways to slide easily through life:  to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking. (Theodore Rubin)

Faith listens to life and hears something new. Faith drifts off during a sermon and lands on new terrain. Faith sings a new song and suddenly knows more. Faith feeds a stranger and responds differently to one’s own meal. Faith makes wild leaps, risks strange thoughts, dashes outside the box, asks foolish questions, hears unexpected voices. Little by little, faith’s “whole being” grows deeper and deeper, broader and broader.  (Tom Ehrich, 12/09/2005, Listening Faith:  Teens and Others)

It’s when we learn faith that happiness comes—real happiness, that underlying descant of the soul that tells us over and over again that what is, in some strange, unexplainable way, is good.  Most of all, faith tells us that what is, is more than good.  It is becoming always better.  In ways we never thought possible.  And how can that be?  Because God’s ways are not our ways.  It is in the depths of darkness that we learn faith; it is in retrospect that we come to recognize love in darkness.  (Joan Chittister, Called to Question, 213)

 

Closing

Plunge into the Ocean of Love, where heart meets Heart, Where sorrows are comforted and wounds are mended.  There, melodies of sadness mingle with dolphin songs of joy; Past fears dissolve in deep harmonic tones, the future—pure mystery.  For eternal moments lived in total surrender glide smoothly over troubled waters.

Hide not from Love, O friends, sink not into the sea of despair, the mire of hatred.  Awaken, O my heart, that I drown not in fear!  Too long have I sailed where’ere the winds have blown!  Drop anchor!  O, Heart of all hearts, set a clear course, that I might follow!  Guide me to the Promised Shore!

Amen. (Nan Merrill, Psalms for Praying:  An Invitation to Wholeness, Psalm 137, p. 288.)