Our lectionary texts for this week are Isaiah 5:1-7, Luke 12:49-56, and Hebrews 11:29-12:2.
Throughout my life, I've pictured Jesus as many things.
I've pictured Jesus as a baby in a manger, wrapped in swaddling clothes, crying when the hay pokes him in the eye, inspiring wide-eyed looks in the eyes of new parents who don't know what to do with their tiny bundle of joy.
I've pictured Jesus as infinitely patient, his hands always willing to reach out and touch one in need of healing, enduring gracefully as crowds press in on him so forcefully he can barely move.
I've pictured Jesus as an abundant provider, breaking 5 loaves and 2 fish into a feast sufficient for thousands and offering bread and cup even to a friend he knew would betray him.
I've pictured Jesus as a wise storyteller, crosslegged on hillsides imparting deep truths peppered with images from everyday life.
I've pictured Jesus in physical agony, his breath slipping away as his figure slumps down on a cross.
But I must confess...I don't think I've ever pictured Jesus as stressed out.
Yet this is the Jesus we get in this week's Gospel text, where Jesus says, "I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!"
A few chapters ago in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus set his face towards Jerusalem, knowing that the city where both his people and his adversaries lie is where he must go. He begins to walk the road steadily, resolutely--a road that can only lead to his death when he confronts the powers that be with his radical message. Yet along the way, we get little indication that Jesus is stressed out about this inevitable end to his earthly days. When I'm stressed out, I make time for no one and no thing beyond the "must dos" on the list most days. But along the journey, Jesus has taken time to tell stories to inquisitive minds about good Samaritans and persistent friends; he has spent time in the homes of friends, encouraging them to slow down and focus on the one thing needed; he has even given lovely speeches about considering the lillies of the field, and about not storing up frantically in barns but sharing freely with one another.
Yet here, the intensity of this mission Jesus is pursuing and the hard truth of where he is headed seem at last to be sinking in; and Jesus starts showing signs of stress. The disciples he has worked so hard to prepare to take up his mantle of leadership are just ambling along the road behind him like they're out for a summer stroll. Jesus came to set things on fire, but barely a smoldering ember can be seen among a people who seem to still be asleep to Jesus' message. Jesus' fan club is tagging along after him but totally missing the gravity of what he is about, the importance of his mission and the important role they will be called to take up in carrying it on beyond his imminent departure.
Jesus is stressed out; and Jesus has every right to be. Here he is, about to give his life for these people...about to lay down all that he is...but will it make a difference at all? Will anyone be ready to step up to the plate and continue this passionate pursuit of the Kingdom of God?
For any of us who have ever wondered if what we're doing matters at all...it looks like Jesus wondered, too.
How should we take this new view of our Savior? How should it impact and shape our lives? And if these are the things Jesus really worried about...doesn't it seem they should be things we worry about, too?
It's certainly food for thought on this hot summer evening. May the fires Jesus came to light be stoked in us even now.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
A Really Good Question
Our Lectionary Texts this week are Isaiah 1:1, 10-20, Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16, and Luke 12:32-40.
When I read the Lectionary Texts to begin preparing for each week, the first thing I do is read each text in several different translations. I'll usually read several more traditional translations--NRSV, NIV, NASB--and then read The Message, a modern paraphrase of scripture that we use from time to time in worship at Broadneck. As I was reading the Isaiah passage, I was struck by Eugene Peterson's interpretation of verses 11-12: "Why this frenzy...? Whoever gave you the idea of acting like this, running here and there, doing this and that--all this sheer commotion in the place provided for worship?"
Our passages this week all challenge what I think has become a common cultural assumption in the church: that the busier we are doing good things for God--the more frantic our activity cramming in every possible holy thing that we can--the better disciples we are. After all, there is so much to be done, all the time; how will it ever happen if we're not running here and there, doing this and that? Like those addressed in Isaiah, we're not often running around filling our lives with horrible things; often our lives are filled with good things we need to be doing. Most of us like our lives to be full with activity, and we're afraid that if we slow down, we won't know what to do with ourselves, and everything will fall between the cracks--and we may fall as well.
In Luke, however, Jesus says something really interesting as Jesus addresses this fear: "Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." Huh. This sounds like the opposite of frenetic activity to me...in letting go of our grasping frenzy, it seems, we bring joy to a God who wants to give us good gifts. We become free enough from crazy activity to engage in intentional activity--being generous of our time with others, not neglecting those it is easy to sweep past in a rush, hearing God when God places a crazy call upon our lives to journey to a place we do not know and cannot see.
Summer is often seen as a slower time, but it seems like this summer the frenzy has not slowed--every person I have talked to this week about the summer has expressed to me wonder at where the time has gone, at how they haven't had the chance to do all the different things they were going to do in this time of more leisurely pace. The world is in a frenzy; but who told us this was a good idea? Certainly not God, our readings seem to indicate.
"Why this frenzy?" That's a really good question for each of us to consider as we continue to follow Jesus on the road of discipleship--Jesus who found time in his journey to consider the questions and needs of each person he met, who always moved with purpose and focus but never, it seemed, in hurry or empty habit. What drives our frenzy...and what would it take for us to not be afraid, believing God wants to give us a kingdom that we don't have to scurry towards desperately, but that is already unfolding among us?
When I read the Lectionary Texts to begin preparing for each week, the first thing I do is read each text in several different translations. I'll usually read several more traditional translations--NRSV, NIV, NASB--and then read The Message, a modern paraphrase of scripture that we use from time to time in worship at Broadneck. As I was reading the Isaiah passage, I was struck by Eugene Peterson's interpretation of verses 11-12: "Why this frenzy...? Whoever gave you the idea of acting like this, running here and there, doing this and that--all this sheer commotion in the place provided for worship?"
Our passages this week all challenge what I think has become a common cultural assumption in the church: that the busier we are doing good things for God--the more frantic our activity cramming in every possible holy thing that we can--the better disciples we are. After all, there is so much to be done, all the time; how will it ever happen if we're not running here and there, doing this and that? Like those addressed in Isaiah, we're not often running around filling our lives with horrible things; often our lives are filled with good things we need to be doing. Most of us like our lives to be full with activity, and we're afraid that if we slow down, we won't know what to do with ourselves, and everything will fall between the cracks--and we may fall as well.
In Luke, however, Jesus says something really interesting as Jesus addresses this fear: "Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." Huh. This sounds like the opposite of frenetic activity to me...in letting go of our grasping frenzy, it seems, we bring joy to a God who wants to give us good gifts. We become free enough from crazy activity to engage in intentional activity--being generous of our time with others, not neglecting those it is easy to sweep past in a rush, hearing God when God places a crazy call upon our lives to journey to a place we do not know and cannot see.
Summer is often seen as a slower time, but it seems like this summer the frenzy has not slowed--every person I have talked to this week about the summer has expressed to me wonder at where the time has gone, at how they haven't had the chance to do all the different things they were going to do in this time of more leisurely pace. The world is in a frenzy; but who told us this was a good idea? Certainly not God, our readings seem to indicate.
"Why this frenzy?" That's a really good question for each of us to consider as we continue to follow Jesus on the road of discipleship--Jesus who found time in his journey to consider the questions and needs of each person he met, who always moved with purpose and focus but never, it seemed, in hurry or empty habit. What drives our frenzy...and what would it take for us to not be afraid, believing God wants to give us a kingdom that we don't have to scurry towards desperately, but that is already unfolding among us?
Sunday, August 1, 2010
With Bands of Love
Well, we didn't get a blog up this week due to the fact that I was in the deep mountains of West Virginia beyond even the reach of the World Wide Web, and the sermon did not get recorded this week due to the fact that I completely neglected to push the record button. Let's just say this has not been a good week for me and technology (though it was an amazing week of serving alongside of some exceptional people in West Virginia)!
So, in lieu of these things, here is today's sermon in print form. No matter how far my human words fall short of the beauty of God's words within this passage, Hosea's poetry is too beautiful not to put something out there about it.
So happy reading to those who were not with us in worship today, and may you go forth into this week surrounded by the remarkable love of God...when I truly think about it, it's a love that never fails to baffle my mind. May the images of this passage baffle your mind as well, and turn your heart towards the One who is always turned towards you.
Peace,
Abby
With Bands of Love
August 1, 2010
Hosea 11:1-11 (with Luke 12:13-21, Colossians 3:1-11)
One of the more amazing aspects of our West Virginia mission trip this past week was the fact that it was truly intergenerational. Now, I’ve been on a lot of mission trips before, but it’s always been with teenagers and a few chaperones, or a group of all college students, or a team made up solely of adults. West Virginia, however, was one of those rare experiences where people from age 2 to well into their 70s were working and living side by side. There were whole generations of families: a grandfather brought his two elementary-aged grandsons, sets of adult siblings with young children enjoying cousins from different parts of the country, parents embracing a rare week with college students. The intergenerational beauty went beyond biological ties, too: An older member of the group looked up a child in the community she’d taught the summer he was in third grade, only to learn upon this trip that he’d enlisted in the army. A child brought along a toy frog from a story Jolly told last summer that had stuck with him all year, running up to Jolly to show it to him the first night.
We live in a society where we are often compartmentalized by age or life stage—even much church programming is age-based. It’s hard to be intergenerational nowadays, and I’m grateful to pastor a church that is intentional about making relationships across age groups a priority. Yet this trip went beyond intergenerational programming to provide an opportunity for generations to share life, not just for an hour but over an extended stretch. A byproduct of this was that, by being in community with the different generations, I got to witness moments, particularly between parents and children, that I would not have been privy to otherwise. I got the holy and…well…prayerful privilege of being in the backseat while a learners permit-holding teenager had the new experience of interstate driving, the parent offering steady guidance to prepare the child for the day when they would not be riding shot gun to talk them through it. I sat between two parents at breakfast reflecting on shifting relationships young adult children charting their independence from the family household. Every word they spoke of their children, both of concern and of pride, was spoken with resonating love, and to be part of moments like these resonated with the holy. After all, how often do we get a real, unfiltered glimpse of someone else’s heart in relation to those they care about most? How often do we get to listen in and observe parents working out their love for their children, seeking ways to strengthen the relationship that are compassionate, authentic, and form their children in the right ways?
The eleventh chapter of Hosea grants us a rare opportunity to glimpse the heart of a parent renegotiating relationship with a growing child. It may not seem all that rare to us to catch a glimpse of God as Parent. After all, the teachings of Jesus have made God as Parent a common image or metaphor. Each week we use such language in corporate prayer and personal relationship with God. Yet the hearers of Hosea’s day didn’t have this privilege. Imagery of God as Mother or Father is used barely a dozen times in the Old Testament--it was far too intimate a distinction for a God defined as holy and set-apart. Old Testament depictions of God rarely get up close and personal; we don’t get many unplugged looks into God’s heart. Yet in this section of Hosea, we get a look at the heart of God that is more direct and raw than any encountered before.
Hosea gives us this rare picture of God’s soul by taking a trip through the family photo album, so to speak. Yet the scrapbook pictures Hosea lays out for us are odd—this is not the scrapbook one would usually show the company. It’s a collection of the most personal and private moments of the family life. Beyond this, the album is odd in another way: it’s not full of pictures of the children growing up, but full of pictures of the parent. This scrapbook is not all about Israel; it is about God. We sit with God in this passage flipping through the scrapbook because God, somehow, needs to take this journey to remember.
We open the cover to the first page, and there’s a shot of God’s face, beaming, the proudest new parent you’ll ever see. You can’t quite make out the squirmy bundle filling God’s arms in this picture, but you can tell it is the thing God has most longed after. God had yearned for a child to share God’s life with, and the day had finally come to make the long journey to Egypt to complete the adoption of the child God loved and had chosen—a child trapped in a horrible life of slavery. With uncontainable love, God had made a very intentional choice to bring home this vulnerable baby to share fully in God’s life and all that God has. A friend once told me the story of the day she brought her adopted daughter home from Central America. It had taken years of saving money, applications, prayerfully discerning the child she felt called to mother, and hoping against hope for this a child to be granted to her. As she stepped off a plane with her new five-month-old in her arms, she said, “My eyes sparkled as if I had pulled off this great thing I thought I would never achieve, that was almost too wonderful to believe—even though I was a single mom, I had a child of my own, and I could not wait to share my life with her.” That look—that’s the one sparkling in God’s eyes here.
Turn the page from this first beautiful moment, and there’s a picture of God intensely focused on the child, calling it over and over by the name God carefully selected—Israel—until at last the child recognizes its name for the first time, responding to the Parent’s voice. Turn another page, and there’s God laughing and shaking God’s head while spooning food into the baby’s mouth, undeterred by the sweet potatoes and rice cereal being sprayed back across God’s face. There’s a soft shot of the baby’s delicate cheek pressed against God’s more weathered one, both faces indescribably content. Flip another page, and now you see God’s index fingers, stretched inwards towards each other with tiny fists wrapped around them, a child nearly ready to walk wobbling unsteadily between the hands it trusted.
Hosea gives us all these beautiful pictures of God—a family scrapbook of tenderness, a side of God’s private, most intimate life rarely seen. But then comes a slew pictures most of us would choose to leave out of our family albums. There’s one of God’s hands cupped around God’s mouth—screaming, trying in vain to get Israel to listen to God’s voice above the many other voices now falsely calling their name, gasping with hoarseness as Israel wanders farther and farther out of earshot. Then one of God standing alone in the grass where God had first taught Israel to walk, squinting toward the horizon seeking the child who used its new skill not to walk with God, but to wander back towards the place God had gone to all that trouble to rescue them from in the first place. You’re almost afraid to flip the page, because the next picture shows a devastating look of resignation on God’s face. This shot captures the moment where God sees the writing on the wall, what the unavoidable consequences of Israel’s choices are going to be.
At last we come to a blank page in the scrapbook: what is God going to do next? In a way, our passage brings us to the moment where God sits, album in lap as God is jostled from the once-beautiful past back to the difficult present. God has to decide what the next page is going to be. Now, God was not born yesterday. God has seen this story unfold before. God has even written books on how this—God is a renowned, published parenting expert! The next step was laid out pretty clearly in Deuteronomy 21: If a parent has a stubborn and rebellious child, who will not obey the voice of her father or the voice of his mother, and, though they chastise the child, will not give heed to them, then the father and mother shall take hold of the child and bring him or her out to the elders of the city at the gate of the place where they live, and they shall say to the elders of the city, "This our child is stubborn and rebellious and will not obey our voice.” Then all the men of the city shall stone the child to death with stones; so you shall purge the evil from your midst; and all Israel shall hear, and fear. Israel’s fate has already been determined: they should be destroyed. All the pieces are in place for this to happen: Assyria is ready to trample Israel, poised with soldiers’ weapons trained on the child’s heart. There’s even precedent in place for allowing such destruction to happen: Israel will meet the fate of Admah and Zeboiim, two of the places decimated along with Sodom and Gomorrah.
But then, just before completing the script that already seems to have been written for God and God’s child, God has a moment. God experiences a gut check of sorts—God remembers…that God is God. God remembers who God is at God’s core, before the rules, beyond the ways we humans can conceive of God or expect God to behave. God remembers the part of God that God cannot deny—that core of passionate, insane, never-letting-go love that caused a God who could have had anything to go looking for a child to call God’s own in the first place. God remembers the love that set this whole story into motion and realizes the thing that is truest about God’s self, that God really needs God’s children to know.
So God pulls out a pen and begins to spell out for God’s beloved what most needs to be understood, crafting the most unexpected of love letters: “How could I ever give you up,” God writes painstakingly, “you who I’ve chosen and loved? How could I ever let you go? I cannot—just the thought of it turns me inside out, ties my heart in knots, churns my stomach within me. If I did such a thing, I would cease to be who I am—and I’m not like anyone who has ever loved before. I will not let you go—I cannot! So this story isn’t going to end the way you thought it would—it’s not going to end the way I thought, once, that it might—in fact, this story is not going to end at all. You’re not going to grow up and leave the nest, we’re not going to grow apart, you’re not going to become independent and move away from me. I can’t hold you like I did when you’re a baby anymore—we can’t go back to that—and I can’t take away the consequences of your bad choices—you’re going to suffer a lot. But we can go forward together, and in fact we must; and a day is coming, very soon, where we will. My love will pursue you like a lion, my persistent presence will startle you like a roar. It will be enough to call you back to me not just for a moment, but in a way that will last—it will bring us home to one another, to the place we most deeply belong.”
It can be odd to think of God in this deeply personal way; it can feel almost wrong, in some senses, because God, as God pointed out, is so much more than a human—so much bigger than our imaginations. But through this prophetic word, God chooses to be surprisingly different than we’d have a right to expect. Rather than leading by the letter of the law, by actions that are practical, or by well-tested standards, God leads God’s children with cords of kindness and bands of love. God chooses to continue the story, to continue the relationship, to refuse to let it ever end. Sometimes the story will be continued difficult ways: like in the parable we read from Luke this morning, where God addresses God’s misguided child with a lion’s roar--the only parable in the New Testament where God directly speaks, another rare glimpse of God’s heart calling out to the beloved who is wandering and misled. God goes to the uncomfortable length of sending God’s only begotten child, the very love of God’s heart, just to show again that God is among us, refusing to let us go. After all of this, God clothes God’s fallen children with new selves, with chances for life and love beyond beyond the worst mistakes. God shows, time and time again, that God cannot give us up, will not give us up, will go to any length—through discipline and through grace, which often end up being the same thing—to show God’s love to God’s children, and to give them the chance to return.
There is no volume of pictures and no collection of stories that can help us understand the fierceness of such a love; but thanks be to God for being such a passionate Parent. Thanks be to God for never losing sight of God’s heart, one filled with love for us that pursues and leads us every day. Thanks be to God for a love that surpasses even our human bonds of love for one another, that teaches us anew the lengths to which love will and must go. Thanks be to God for this indescribable gift—the gift of a love and a heart that never ends.
So, in lieu of these things, here is today's sermon in print form. No matter how far my human words fall short of the beauty of God's words within this passage, Hosea's poetry is too beautiful not to put something out there about it.
So happy reading to those who were not with us in worship today, and may you go forth into this week surrounded by the remarkable love of God...when I truly think about it, it's a love that never fails to baffle my mind. May the images of this passage baffle your mind as well, and turn your heart towards the One who is always turned towards you.
Peace,
Abby
With Bands of Love
August 1, 2010
Hosea 11:1-11 (with Luke 12:13-21, Colossians 3:1-11)
One of the more amazing aspects of our West Virginia mission trip this past week was the fact that it was truly intergenerational. Now, I’ve been on a lot of mission trips before, but it’s always been with teenagers and a few chaperones, or a group of all college students, or a team made up solely of adults. West Virginia, however, was one of those rare experiences where people from age 2 to well into their 70s were working and living side by side. There were whole generations of families: a grandfather brought his two elementary-aged grandsons, sets of adult siblings with young children enjoying cousins from different parts of the country, parents embracing a rare week with college students. The intergenerational beauty went beyond biological ties, too: An older member of the group looked up a child in the community she’d taught the summer he was in third grade, only to learn upon this trip that he’d enlisted in the army. A child brought along a toy frog from a story Jolly told last summer that had stuck with him all year, running up to Jolly to show it to him the first night.
We live in a society where we are often compartmentalized by age or life stage—even much church programming is age-based. It’s hard to be intergenerational nowadays, and I’m grateful to pastor a church that is intentional about making relationships across age groups a priority. Yet this trip went beyond intergenerational programming to provide an opportunity for generations to share life, not just for an hour but over an extended stretch. A byproduct of this was that, by being in community with the different generations, I got to witness moments, particularly between parents and children, that I would not have been privy to otherwise. I got the holy and…well…prayerful privilege of being in the backseat while a learners permit-holding teenager had the new experience of interstate driving, the parent offering steady guidance to prepare the child for the day when they would not be riding shot gun to talk them through it. I sat between two parents at breakfast reflecting on shifting relationships young adult children charting their independence from the family household. Every word they spoke of their children, both of concern and of pride, was spoken with resonating love, and to be part of moments like these resonated with the holy. After all, how often do we get a real, unfiltered glimpse of someone else’s heart in relation to those they care about most? How often do we get to listen in and observe parents working out their love for their children, seeking ways to strengthen the relationship that are compassionate, authentic, and form their children in the right ways?
The eleventh chapter of Hosea grants us a rare opportunity to glimpse the heart of a parent renegotiating relationship with a growing child. It may not seem all that rare to us to catch a glimpse of God as Parent. After all, the teachings of Jesus have made God as Parent a common image or metaphor. Each week we use such language in corporate prayer and personal relationship with God. Yet the hearers of Hosea’s day didn’t have this privilege. Imagery of God as Mother or Father is used barely a dozen times in the Old Testament--it was far too intimate a distinction for a God defined as holy and set-apart. Old Testament depictions of God rarely get up close and personal; we don’t get many unplugged looks into God’s heart. Yet in this section of Hosea, we get a look at the heart of God that is more direct and raw than any encountered before.
Hosea gives us this rare picture of God’s soul by taking a trip through the family photo album, so to speak. Yet the scrapbook pictures Hosea lays out for us are odd—this is not the scrapbook one would usually show the company. It’s a collection of the most personal and private moments of the family life. Beyond this, the album is odd in another way: it’s not full of pictures of the children growing up, but full of pictures of the parent. This scrapbook is not all about Israel; it is about God. We sit with God in this passage flipping through the scrapbook because God, somehow, needs to take this journey to remember.
We open the cover to the first page, and there’s a shot of God’s face, beaming, the proudest new parent you’ll ever see. You can’t quite make out the squirmy bundle filling God’s arms in this picture, but you can tell it is the thing God has most longed after. God had yearned for a child to share God’s life with, and the day had finally come to make the long journey to Egypt to complete the adoption of the child God loved and had chosen—a child trapped in a horrible life of slavery. With uncontainable love, God had made a very intentional choice to bring home this vulnerable baby to share fully in God’s life and all that God has. A friend once told me the story of the day she brought her adopted daughter home from Central America. It had taken years of saving money, applications, prayerfully discerning the child she felt called to mother, and hoping against hope for this a child to be granted to her. As she stepped off a plane with her new five-month-old in her arms, she said, “My eyes sparkled as if I had pulled off this great thing I thought I would never achieve, that was almost too wonderful to believe—even though I was a single mom, I had a child of my own, and I could not wait to share my life with her.” That look—that’s the one sparkling in God’s eyes here.
Turn the page from this first beautiful moment, and there’s a picture of God intensely focused on the child, calling it over and over by the name God carefully selected—Israel—until at last the child recognizes its name for the first time, responding to the Parent’s voice. Turn another page, and there’s God laughing and shaking God’s head while spooning food into the baby’s mouth, undeterred by the sweet potatoes and rice cereal being sprayed back across God’s face. There’s a soft shot of the baby’s delicate cheek pressed against God’s more weathered one, both faces indescribably content. Flip another page, and now you see God’s index fingers, stretched inwards towards each other with tiny fists wrapped around them, a child nearly ready to walk wobbling unsteadily between the hands it trusted.
Hosea gives us all these beautiful pictures of God—a family scrapbook of tenderness, a side of God’s private, most intimate life rarely seen. But then comes a slew pictures most of us would choose to leave out of our family albums. There’s one of God’s hands cupped around God’s mouth—screaming, trying in vain to get Israel to listen to God’s voice above the many other voices now falsely calling their name, gasping with hoarseness as Israel wanders farther and farther out of earshot. Then one of God standing alone in the grass where God had first taught Israel to walk, squinting toward the horizon seeking the child who used its new skill not to walk with God, but to wander back towards the place God had gone to all that trouble to rescue them from in the first place. You’re almost afraid to flip the page, because the next picture shows a devastating look of resignation on God’s face. This shot captures the moment where God sees the writing on the wall, what the unavoidable consequences of Israel’s choices are going to be.
At last we come to a blank page in the scrapbook: what is God going to do next? In a way, our passage brings us to the moment where God sits, album in lap as God is jostled from the once-beautiful past back to the difficult present. God has to decide what the next page is going to be. Now, God was not born yesterday. God has seen this story unfold before. God has even written books on how this—God is a renowned, published parenting expert! The next step was laid out pretty clearly in Deuteronomy 21: If a parent has a stubborn and rebellious child, who will not obey the voice of her father or the voice of his mother, and, though they chastise the child, will not give heed to them, then the father and mother shall take hold of the child and bring him or her out to the elders of the city at the gate of the place where they live, and they shall say to the elders of the city, "This our child is stubborn and rebellious and will not obey our voice.” Then all the men of the city shall stone the child to death with stones; so you shall purge the evil from your midst; and all Israel shall hear, and fear. Israel’s fate has already been determined: they should be destroyed. All the pieces are in place for this to happen: Assyria is ready to trample Israel, poised with soldiers’ weapons trained on the child’s heart. There’s even precedent in place for allowing such destruction to happen: Israel will meet the fate of Admah and Zeboiim, two of the places decimated along with Sodom and Gomorrah.
But then, just before completing the script that already seems to have been written for God and God’s child, God has a moment. God experiences a gut check of sorts—God remembers…that God is God. God remembers who God is at God’s core, before the rules, beyond the ways we humans can conceive of God or expect God to behave. God remembers the part of God that God cannot deny—that core of passionate, insane, never-letting-go love that caused a God who could have had anything to go looking for a child to call God’s own in the first place. God remembers the love that set this whole story into motion and realizes the thing that is truest about God’s self, that God really needs God’s children to know.
So God pulls out a pen and begins to spell out for God’s beloved what most needs to be understood, crafting the most unexpected of love letters: “How could I ever give you up,” God writes painstakingly, “you who I’ve chosen and loved? How could I ever let you go? I cannot—just the thought of it turns me inside out, ties my heart in knots, churns my stomach within me. If I did such a thing, I would cease to be who I am—and I’m not like anyone who has ever loved before. I will not let you go—I cannot! So this story isn’t going to end the way you thought it would—it’s not going to end the way I thought, once, that it might—in fact, this story is not going to end at all. You’re not going to grow up and leave the nest, we’re not going to grow apart, you’re not going to become independent and move away from me. I can’t hold you like I did when you’re a baby anymore—we can’t go back to that—and I can’t take away the consequences of your bad choices—you’re going to suffer a lot. But we can go forward together, and in fact we must; and a day is coming, very soon, where we will. My love will pursue you like a lion, my persistent presence will startle you like a roar. It will be enough to call you back to me not just for a moment, but in a way that will last—it will bring us home to one another, to the place we most deeply belong.”
It can be odd to think of God in this deeply personal way; it can feel almost wrong, in some senses, because God, as God pointed out, is so much more than a human—so much bigger than our imaginations. But through this prophetic word, God chooses to be surprisingly different than we’d have a right to expect. Rather than leading by the letter of the law, by actions that are practical, or by well-tested standards, God leads God’s children with cords of kindness and bands of love. God chooses to continue the story, to continue the relationship, to refuse to let it ever end. Sometimes the story will be continued difficult ways: like in the parable we read from Luke this morning, where God addresses God’s misguided child with a lion’s roar--the only parable in the New Testament where God directly speaks, another rare glimpse of God’s heart calling out to the beloved who is wandering and misled. God goes to the uncomfortable length of sending God’s only begotten child, the very love of God’s heart, just to show again that God is among us, refusing to let us go. After all of this, God clothes God’s fallen children with new selves, with chances for life and love beyond beyond the worst mistakes. God shows, time and time again, that God cannot give us up, will not give us up, will go to any length—through discipline and through grace, which often end up being the same thing—to show God’s love to God’s children, and to give them the chance to return.
There is no volume of pictures and no collection of stories that can help us understand the fierceness of such a love; but thanks be to God for being such a passionate Parent. Thanks be to God for never losing sight of God’s heart, one filled with love for us that pursues and leads us every day. Thanks be to God for a love that surpasses even our human bonds of love for one another, that teaches us anew the lengths to which love will and must go. Thanks be to God for this indescribable gift—the gift of a love and a heart that never ends.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
You're Asking For It...
The lyrics of a song by one of my favorite musical artists, Bebo Norman, rang in my head as I read our texts for this week (as well-written songs often do when I read scripture!). In his song "Pull Me Out," Norman asks God a simple question about what is going on, then follows that question up by singing the following line about the way he perceives God's reaction to his question: "And what about the way I said that made you turn around and shake your head like I don't even know what I'm asking for?"
Our scripture lessons for this week (Hosea 1:2-10, Psalm 85, and Luke 11:1-13) all involve the act of asking--requests, demands, questions. But when it comes to asking, how often do we make God turn around and shake God's head like we don't even know what we're asking for?
Somehow, I think we inspire this reaction in God at least once a week in our congregation, in that moment where voices join together out of the quiet following our sharing of joys and concerns to pray together a variation on those words that Jesus taught his disciples when they boldly asked him, "Lord, teach us to pray." The disciples likely had no idea what they were asking for...they thought they were doing what any good disciples did, what John's disciples did when they asked him for a form of prayer that could be uniquely theirs and identify them as their Master's followers. They thought they were following disciple protocol...and maybe, as a bonus, if Jesus taught them to pray, they could be as connected to God as Jesus was in those frequent moments when he communed with the Almighty.
In Luke's rendition of this teachable moment, Jesus gives the disciples an even more stripped down prayer than the one the disciples are given in a similar scene in Matthew (a text that is closer to what we actually pray when we say the Lord's Prayer together--see Matthew 6:9-13). Yet these few simple lines are stunning in their asking. First, look at how Jesus tells them to approach the Creator of the Universe--they are to call him Abba. This is not the formal "Father" of what we pray, but the informal, intimate name of "Daddy." Then they are to ask of him five things--five things that, if granted, could completely change the world. It's interesting how little this prayer has in common with many of the things we offer up for prayer during our joys and concerns time--it's a prayer that focuses much less on our local and individual needs of healing and strength and comfort and offering thanks, and more on God acting to transform the entire cosmos. Hallow your name, God--reveal Yourself in the fullness of who You are. Your kingdom come--make this earth reflect Your nature and Your priorities. Give us this day our daily bread--each and every one of us relies upon you. Forgive us as we forgive others...let your forgiveness and ours mirror one another. And don't let us be tempted by anything that would take our eyes off of you.
What are we asking for here? It's kind of insane, actually. We're asking for a whole new world...one where God is seen to be who God is, in all God's holiness and intimacy, in all God's judgment and mercy. We're asking not for the ways of our own kingdoms, but of God's. We're asking for bread to be provided for all people, regardless of the cost. We're asking not just for God's forgiveness, but that we might set the standard of gracious forgiveness, being as forgiving of others as we hope God will be of us. We're asking to have our backs turned on the things that turn us from God and our lives wholly refocused on this One.
Congregations around the world say these words together each week just falling unconsciously into their rhythm, into their comfort, into the beauty of voices joined into one...but do we even know what we're asking for? Furthermore, if we really believed God would respond to what we ask, would we be so quick to do so?
Asking is central to what we do when we worship God--we ask for guidance, ask for God's blessing, ask for healing, ask for wisdom, ask for courage to be God's people. But if Jesus' response to the disciples' inquiry is any indication, we'd better be careful what we're asking for...because if we serve a faithful God, we just might get it.
Our scripture lessons for this week (Hosea 1:2-10, Psalm 85, and Luke 11:1-13) all involve the act of asking--requests, demands, questions. But when it comes to asking, how often do we make God turn around and shake God's head like we don't even know what we're asking for?
Somehow, I think we inspire this reaction in God at least once a week in our congregation, in that moment where voices join together out of the quiet following our sharing of joys and concerns to pray together a variation on those words that Jesus taught his disciples when they boldly asked him, "Lord, teach us to pray." The disciples likely had no idea what they were asking for...they thought they were doing what any good disciples did, what John's disciples did when they asked him for a form of prayer that could be uniquely theirs and identify them as their Master's followers. They thought they were following disciple protocol...and maybe, as a bonus, if Jesus taught them to pray, they could be as connected to God as Jesus was in those frequent moments when he communed with the Almighty.
In Luke's rendition of this teachable moment, Jesus gives the disciples an even more stripped down prayer than the one the disciples are given in a similar scene in Matthew (a text that is closer to what we actually pray when we say the Lord's Prayer together--see Matthew 6:9-13). Yet these few simple lines are stunning in their asking. First, look at how Jesus tells them to approach the Creator of the Universe--they are to call him Abba. This is not the formal "Father" of what we pray, but the informal, intimate name of "Daddy." Then they are to ask of him five things--five things that, if granted, could completely change the world. It's interesting how little this prayer has in common with many of the things we offer up for prayer during our joys and concerns time--it's a prayer that focuses much less on our local and individual needs of healing and strength and comfort and offering thanks, and more on God acting to transform the entire cosmos. Hallow your name, God--reveal Yourself in the fullness of who You are. Your kingdom come--make this earth reflect Your nature and Your priorities. Give us this day our daily bread--each and every one of us relies upon you. Forgive us as we forgive others...let your forgiveness and ours mirror one another. And don't let us be tempted by anything that would take our eyes off of you.
What are we asking for here? It's kind of insane, actually. We're asking for a whole new world...one where God is seen to be who God is, in all God's holiness and intimacy, in all God's judgment and mercy. We're asking not for the ways of our own kingdoms, but of God's. We're asking for bread to be provided for all people, regardless of the cost. We're asking not just for God's forgiveness, but that we might set the standard of gracious forgiveness, being as forgiving of others as we hope God will be of us. We're asking to have our backs turned on the things that turn us from God and our lives wholly refocused on this One.
Congregations around the world say these words together each week just falling unconsciously into their rhythm, into their comfort, into the beauty of voices joined into one...but do we even know what we're asking for? Furthermore, if we really believed God would respond to what we ask, would we be so quick to do so?
Asking is central to what we do when we worship God--we ask for guidance, ask for God's blessing, ask for healing, ask for wisdom, ask for courage to be God's people. But if Jesus' response to the disciples' inquiry is any indication, we'd better be careful what we're asking for...because if we serve a faithful God, we just might get it.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
The Sermon Not Being Preached This Week
Well, since this week is Music and Arts Camp at Broadneck, our sermon on Sunday will be offered not by me, but by 30 elementary schoolers. They have spent this week learning what it means to embody God's love for others in the way Jesus embodied God's love as he lived with us. It is going to be an amazing morning as we hear these kids proclaim in word and song this worldwide premier of "Becoming Christmas," a musical drama written by two members of our congregation. I hope as many of you who are able will be with us!
The good and bad news about this is that we won't get to deal with the appointed lectionary texts for this week--including the Gospel text of the story of Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38-42)--in worship for another three years. It's a brief enough episode that I'll just paste the text here(from the NRSV):
Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home.She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me." But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her."
The good news about not having to preach on this is that I get to avoid a text that has always rubbed me a bit. I think it has bothered me because of the way I typically hear it presented: that it's a story about choosing one sister's way or the other's. Either you're a Mary or you're a Martha--one who sits at the Lord's feet or one who slaves away in the kitchen, a be-er or a do-er. This bothers me as one who feels like she's not, actually, Mary or Martha. Rather, it's more like Mary and Martha are at war within me. Part of me is compelled to cook as many casseroles as possible, while another part hungers simply for the chance to be as near to Jesus as I can be. Part of me wants to busy myself filling glasses or fetching water or doing something productive to serve Jesus, while another part thirsts just to hear what he is saying. By not having to listen to Mary and Martha's tale this year, each of us participating in the sermon can avoid having to confront the Mary and Martha demons at war within us. We can avoid the guilt trip over how much time we spend doing for God rather than simply being with God, avoid dealing with our anger over how everyone else seems content to sit on their rear ends while we're slaving away, avoid the reminder of how people get mad at us when we choose to abide with Jesus rather than keep up the pace of things that need to be done...the list goes on and on.
But the bad news about not preaching this passage is that I thought about it in a new way this week--from an angle that might actually give me a way to preach the story that I could live with it. It's intriguing to consider the words which begin our pericope (that's a fancy biblical word for "a short episode or story"--save it for your next Scrabble game). The crucial words in the story could very possibly be "now as they went on their way." I am fairly sure I've always heard this story talked about in isolation, as an episode from Jesus' life that is not really connected with anything else going on in Luke's narrative. But Luke, ever the orderly historian, obviously wants us to connect what is happening in this pericope to what has happened just prior.
What has just happened? The things that we've been learning about over the past few weeks in our lessons. Jesus has set his face towards Jerusalem and laid out some of the cost of following him on this newly-directed journey: having no home, leaving behind family, not looking back. He has commissioned 70 to go into all the villages and towns where he will go carrying nothing with them, relying on random hospitality and carrying nothing but open hands, seeing the Kingdom of God draw near. Then we witness, just prior to this episode, the encounter of Jesus with a lawyer who wants to know how to inherit eternal life--then gets instead a story about what it is to be and have a neighbor. What do these stories that precede Mary and Martha's moment in the sun have in common? Well, they're all about discipleship that looks a little reckless and insane. They're all about our utter dependence on God. They're all about a Gospel that will challenge our habits and practices and standard beliefs and reorient us towards things and ways that are radically unfamiliar.
So how does this shed light on Mary and Martha's dinner party with Jesus? This is the sermon that is not being preached this week. I think, however, that reading about Mary's act of boldness to sit at Jesus' feet as a disciple (a place no woman of repute would EVER be found) and Martha's busy hideout in the kitchen in light of this context might have the power to give the story a slightly different spin. It might become a story that challenges us, again, to let go of the familiar-- the busy kitchen work we hold on to rather than taking the risk of emptying our hands enough to draw near to Jesus . It might become a story that reminds us of how at God's mercy we really are--Jesus could have sent Mary away to help Martha, leaving her humiliated, and no one else would have thought a thing of it...but he let her stay. It might become a story that challenges us to think about the busy things we hide behind and fill our lives with to drown out Jesus' beckoning of us towards the one thing that matters, this Kingdom that is coming near to us.
Thank goodness the kids are preaching this week, so these are questions I get to sit with for another three years before I have to speak about them! May we all find courage to sit with such challenging questions of discipleship just as Mary sat at the feet of Jesus, knowing that in pursuing hard questions we are pursuing the one thing Jesus desires for us.
The good and bad news about this is that we won't get to deal with the appointed lectionary texts for this week--including the Gospel text of the story of Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38-42)--in worship for another three years. It's a brief enough episode that I'll just paste the text here(from the NRSV):
Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home.She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me." But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her."
The good news about not having to preach on this is that I get to avoid a text that has always rubbed me a bit. I think it has bothered me because of the way I typically hear it presented: that it's a story about choosing one sister's way or the other's. Either you're a Mary or you're a Martha--one who sits at the Lord's feet or one who slaves away in the kitchen, a be-er or a do-er. This bothers me as one who feels like she's not, actually, Mary or Martha. Rather, it's more like Mary and Martha are at war within me. Part of me is compelled to cook as many casseroles as possible, while another part hungers simply for the chance to be as near to Jesus as I can be. Part of me wants to busy myself filling glasses or fetching water or doing something productive to serve Jesus, while another part thirsts just to hear what he is saying. By not having to listen to Mary and Martha's tale this year, each of us participating in the sermon can avoid having to confront the Mary and Martha demons at war within us. We can avoid the guilt trip over how much time we spend doing for God rather than simply being with God, avoid dealing with our anger over how everyone else seems content to sit on their rear ends while we're slaving away, avoid the reminder of how people get mad at us when we choose to abide with Jesus rather than keep up the pace of things that need to be done...the list goes on and on.
But the bad news about not preaching this passage is that I thought about it in a new way this week--from an angle that might actually give me a way to preach the story that I could live with it. It's intriguing to consider the words which begin our pericope (that's a fancy biblical word for "a short episode or story"--save it for your next Scrabble game). The crucial words in the story could very possibly be "now as they went on their way." I am fairly sure I've always heard this story talked about in isolation, as an episode from Jesus' life that is not really connected with anything else going on in Luke's narrative. But Luke, ever the orderly historian, obviously wants us to connect what is happening in this pericope to what has happened just prior.
What has just happened? The things that we've been learning about over the past few weeks in our lessons. Jesus has set his face towards Jerusalem and laid out some of the cost of following him on this newly-directed journey: having no home, leaving behind family, not looking back. He has commissioned 70 to go into all the villages and towns where he will go carrying nothing with them, relying on random hospitality and carrying nothing but open hands, seeing the Kingdom of God draw near. Then we witness, just prior to this episode, the encounter of Jesus with a lawyer who wants to know how to inherit eternal life--then gets instead a story about what it is to be and have a neighbor. What do these stories that precede Mary and Martha's moment in the sun have in common? Well, they're all about discipleship that looks a little reckless and insane. They're all about our utter dependence on God. They're all about a Gospel that will challenge our habits and practices and standard beliefs and reorient us towards things and ways that are radically unfamiliar.
So how does this shed light on Mary and Martha's dinner party with Jesus? This is the sermon that is not being preached this week. I think, however, that reading about Mary's act of boldness to sit at Jesus' feet as a disciple (a place no woman of repute would EVER be found) and Martha's busy hideout in the kitchen in light of this context might have the power to give the story a slightly different spin. It might become a story that challenges us, again, to let go of the familiar-- the busy kitchen work we hold on to rather than taking the risk of emptying our hands enough to draw near to Jesus . It might become a story that reminds us of how at God's mercy we really are--Jesus could have sent Mary away to help Martha, leaving her humiliated, and no one else would have thought a thing of it...but he let her stay. It might become a story that challenges us to think about the busy things we hide behind and fill our lives with to drown out Jesus' beckoning of us towards the one thing that matters, this Kingdom that is coming near to us.
Thank goodness the kids are preaching this week, so these are questions I get to sit with for another three years before I have to speak about them! May we all find courage to sit with such challenging questions of discipleship just as Mary sat at the feet of Jesus, knowing that in pursuing hard questions we are pursuing the one thing Jesus desires for us.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
A Tale of Two Neighborhoods
Greetings, Broadneck Blogosphere! It's a joy to be coming alongside of you in this conversation around our worship scriptures, and a joy to gather with many of you each week as we explore God's oh-so-simple-but-so-bafflingly-complicated Word for our lives together in community. I believe that every time we authentically seek to encounter God's Word, we cannot help but be formed and transformed by it...so engage this blog with hope, yet proceed with a proper dose of holy caution:)
Our main scriptures for consideration this week are Amos 7:7-17 and Luke 10:25-37. At first glance, it's hard to imagine two more divergent passages to bring into conversation with one another. The latter, after all, is a passage--the story of the Good Samaritan--so culturally well-known that many states have laws named after it to protect the rights of those who stop to aid stranded motorists. It's one of the handful of biblical stories where even marginal churchgoers could provide you with its high points without the benefit of a text in front of them. The former, meanwhile, is an obscure episode from a prophet so unknown that his words are included in a measly 5 of the 156 weeks of the Revised Common Lectionary (and only on two occasions--this week and next!--is it the primary text rather than an "alternate"). Ask even the most fervent churchgoer to tell you something about Amos, and most would give you a blank stare. Apart from Jonah and his whale, the so-called "Minor Prophets" (the technical name for those whose writings are found between the Old Testament books of Hosea and Malachi) seem aptly named...their writings, filled with archaic language of judgment and doom, are so minor as to not merit much of our attention, in church or in culture.
So why not ditch Amos (and the cavalcade of Minor Prophets we'll encounter over the next few weeks) and just focus on Luke? Well, there are a couple of strong reasons to keep Amos' words in play.
First, this may seem obvious, but the Old Testament prophets did not just speak to societies past; their words, though set in a particular context, still ring true today, because it is the role of the prophet to direct the hearer's attention to the bigger picture. As Craig Smith and Mark Buckley explain in their intro to The Inclusive Hebrew Scriptures, "prophets revive our capacity to feel and draw our attention to what we would rather not see." Prophets, with their sometimes uncomfortable rhetoric, speak to our hardened hearts and reveal our well-cultivated blind spots. Amos does this so beautifully but painfully in today's passage. The kindgom of Israel, which everyone thought was doing SO well, is in actuality a kingdom that has fallen out of step with the plumb line God intended for its design, becoming a curse to its neighbors rather than the blessing to all nations it was intended to be. Such words are painful, but the sort of truth-speaking that is needed even when it causes us to lash back like Amaziah in hopes that these are words we can ignore.
Second, I think we should hold on to Amos because his message is not as far from Luke's as it may seem. Sure, Amos speaks of judgment while Jesus tells a tale of mercy; Amos speaks in strange, almost indecipherable metaphor, while Jesus speaks of people and places with whom the inquisitive lawyer would have been intimately familiar. But in reality, Amos and Luke are both speaking of matters very close to home: matters of what it means to live by the first law given God's people, the declaration that we are to love the Lord our God and love our neighbor as ourselves. Luke and Amos, though separated by time, context, and popularity, together give us a tale of two neighborhoods--one headed for disaster because of its failure to live by God's standards of justice and faithfulness, and one for whom there is still hope if they can realize their neighborhood is far bigger than they'd ever imagined. Both are stories intended to reform, form, and transform their hearers by revealing the heart of God--a heart that seeks to see the divided people God created learn to live in fellowship with one another and their Maker.
These two tales are ones we in the church need to hear...no matter how familiar or unfamiliar they are, no matter how uncomfortable they make us. I hope you'll join us Sunday as we continue the conversation!
Peace,
Abby
Our main scriptures for consideration this week are Amos 7:7-17 and Luke 10:25-37. At first glance, it's hard to imagine two more divergent passages to bring into conversation with one another. The latter, after all, is a passage--the story of the Good Samaritan--so culturally well-known that many states have laws named after it to protect the rights of those who stop to aid stranded motorists. It's one of the handful of biblical stories where even marginal churchgoers could provide you with its high points without the benefit of a text in front of them. The former, meanwhile, is an obscure episode from a prophet so unknown that his words are included in a measly 5 of the 156 weeks of the Revised Common Lectionary (and only on two occasions--this week and next!--is it the primary text rather than an "alternate"). Ask even the most fervent churchgoer to tell you something about Amos, and most would give you a blank stare. Apart from Jonah and his whale, the so-called "Minor Prophets" (the technical name for those whose writings are found between the Old Testament books of Hosea and Malachi) seem aptly named...their writings, filled with archaic language of judgment and doom, are so minor as to not merit much of our attention, in church or in culture.
So why not ditch Amos (and the cavalcade of Minor Prophets we'll encounter over the next few weeks) and just focus on Luke? Well, there are a couple of strong reasons to keep Amos' words in play.
First, this may seem obvious, but the Old Testament prophets did not just speak to societies past; their words, though set in a particular context, still ring true today, because it is the role of the prophet to direct the hearer's attention to the bigger picture. As Craig Smith and Mark Buckley explain in their intro to The Inclusive Hebrew Scriptures, "prophets revive our capacity to feel and draw our attention to what we would rather not see." Prophets, with their sometimes uncomfortable rhetoric, speak to our hardened hearts and reveal our well-cultivated blind spots. Amos does this so beautifully but painfully in today's passage. The kindgom of Israel, which everyone thought was doing SO well, is in actuality a kingdom that has fallen out of step with the plumb line God intended for its design, becoming a curse to its neighbors rather than the blessing to all nations it was intended to be. Such words are painful, but the sort of truth-speaking that is needed even when it causes us to lash back like Amaziah in hopes that these are words we can ignore.
Second, I think we should hold on to Amos because his message is not as far from Luke's as it may seem. Sure, Amos speaks of judgment while Jesus tells a tale of mercy; Amos speaks in strange, almost indecipherable metaphor, while Jesus speaks of people and places with whom the inquisitive lawyer would have been intimately familiar. But in reality, Amos and Luke are both speaking of matters very close to home: matters of what it means to live by the first law given God's people, the declaration that we are to love the Lord our God and love our neighbor as ourselves. Luke and Amos, though separated by time, context, and popularity, together give us a tale of two neighborhoods--one headed for disaster because of its failure to live by God's standards of justice and faithfulness, and one for whom there is still hope if they can realize their neighborhood is far bigger than they'd ever imagined. Both are stories intended to reform, form, and transform their hearers by revealing the heart of God--a heart that seeks to see the divided people God created learn to live in fellowship with one another and their Maker.
These two tales are ones we in the church need to hear...no matter how familiar or unfamiliar they are, no matter how uncomfortable they make us. I hope you'll join us Sunday as we continue the conversation!
Peace,
Abby
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Pride and Prejudice
This week’s scriptures are 2 Kings 5:1-14, Luke 10:1-11, 16-20 and Galatians 6:1-6.
In these passages, I was struck by the acts of pride and the warnings against pride. In 2 Kings, Naaman gets all full of himself when Elisha doesn’t come out to greet and heal him. Instead Elisha sends instructions via messenger to wash in the River Jordan seven times. Naaman goes off on a rant and has to be reined in by his servants. They point out to him that the task (washing seven times in the river) is so easy that he would be remiss not to try it. Because they are only servants, they can not be forceful in pointing out Naaman’s prideful reaction, but they do get him to reconsider. And they are right—it works. If Naaman’s pride carried the day, he would have gone away uncured. Instead he is cured and accepts God as the only God.
In the Luke passage, the seventy go out in the name of Jesus to heal the sick and spread the good news. They “return with joy, saying, ‘Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!’” Like kids they puff out their chests saying “Look what I can do!” But Jesus calms them down, telling them that they have great powers now, but that they should not “rejoice” in this. Rather they should rejoice in the promise of a heavenly welcome. Jesus wants them to do the work of God not because having awesome powers over sprits and demons is so cool, but because it is what you do when you are blessed by God.
Finally, Paul in Galatians 6 warns against thinking too highly of one’s self. A person should not “think they are something” or compare themselves to their neighbors. Instead, each person should look to their own tasks and take pride from a job well done. When helping a person who has sinned, help them gently. Putting yourself above others does not help the sinner to heal or the Church to grow stronger.
It’s interesting how in all of the passages pride was tied up with receiving help or helping others. Its easy to see how pride could get in your way when you are the one who needs help, but how often do we ask ourselves if we are getting a little too prideful about the act of helping others? Now notice how in all of the passages, overcoming pride or moving beyond an initially prideful reaction moves people closer to God. Sometimes it is hard to find God in the midst of our own hang-ups and self-importance. And sometimes we need someone else to point out our assumptions and help us get back on track. What strikes me is that the person who calls us on our behavior isn’t always who we expect it to be. It might be a great or wise leader…or it could be a couple of servants.
Next week, Abby Thornton, the new pastor at Broadneck, will start blogging here. To learn more about Abby visit our web page:
http://www.broadneckbaptistchurch.org/pastor.html
Please join me in welcoming Abby!
With love and hope,
Susan
In these passages, I was struck by the acts of pride and the warnings against pride. In 2 Kings, Naaman gets all full of himself when Elisha doesn’t come out to greet and heal him. Instead Elisha sends instructions via messenger to wash in the River Jordan seven times. Naaman goes off on a rant and has to be reined in by his servants. They point out to him that the task (washing seven times in the river) is so easy that he would be remiss not to try it. Because they are only servants, they can not be forceful in pointing out Naaman’s prideful reaction, but they do get him to reconsider. And they are right—it works. If Naaman’s pride carried the day, he would have gone away uncured. Instead he is cured and accepts God as the only God.
In the Luke passage, the seventy go out in the name of Jesus to heal the sick and spread the good news. They “return with joy, saying, ‘Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!’” Like kids they puff out their chests saying “Look what I can do!” But Jesus calms them down, telling them that they have great powers now, but that they should not “rejoice” in this. Rather they should rejoice in the promise of a heavenly welcome. Jesus wants them to do the work of God not because having awesome powers over sprits and demons is so cool, but because it is what you do when you are blessed by God.
Finally, Paul in Galatians 6 warns against thinking too highly of one’s self. A person should not “think they are something” or compare themselves to their neighbors. Instead, each person should look to their own tasks and take pride from a job well done. When helping a person who has sinned, help them gently. Putting yourself above others does not help the sinner to heal or the Church to grow stronger.
It’s interesting how in all of the passages pride was tied up with receiving help or helping others. Its easy to see how pride could get in your way when you are the one who needs help, but how often do we ask ourselves if we are getting a little too prideful about the act of helping others? Now notice how in all of the passages, overcoming pride or moving beyond an initially prideful reaction moves people closer to God. Sometimes it is hard to find God in the midst of our own hang-ups and self-importance. And sometimes we need someone else to point out our assumptions and help us get back on track. What strikes me is that the person who calls us on our behavior isn’t always who we expect it to be. It might be a great or wise leader…or it could be a couple of servants.
Next week, Abby Thornton, the new pastor at Broadneck, will start blogging here. To learn more about Abby visit our web page:
http://www.broadneckbaptistchurch.org/pastor.html
Please join me in welcoming Abby!
With love and hope,
Susan
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