Luke 10:25-37
Ordinary 15
July 18, 2010
William G. Carter
Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.” But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
We have heard this one before, haven’t we? This is a favorite parable for many people. The Good Samaritan is a favorite story for Vacation Bible School. Sometime in the middle of last week, I could hear somebody down the hall telling it to children. It has appeared in church school curricula, and depicted on flannel boards. Justifiably so: it is a story central to the teaching of Jesus. It instructs all who love Jesus.
This is a story that energizes mission committees, outreach projects, and Presbyterian deacons. Anybody who cares about the commandment to love our neighbors will be called and empowered by this story. In the centuries since this story was first told, Christian people have built Good Samaritan Hospitals. They have volunteered at Good Samaritan soup kitchens. They care for the infirmed at Good Samaritan nursing homes.
And it is a story with a prophetic edge. Not only does it offer a call to love our neighbors, it calls upon us to love our enemies. Jews and Samaritans were enemies; two thousand years later, they are still enemies. When Jesus told this story, he was putting his own life at risk. He was suggesting to a Bible scholar in the Jerusalem establishment that a hated heretic with questionable theology was both a neighbor and a possible good example. I’m certain that prompted somebody to sharpen iron nails, grab a few hammers, and prepare a wooden cross.
Why, just imagine if some esteemed preacher were to announce there is an Afghan terrorist hiding in a cave. We know where he is. He is hungry and wounded. Left for dead in a pool of his own blood. And the preacher says, “We must find him, feed him, bind his wounds, and tend to his needs.” Can you imagine someone saying such a frightening, terrifying, naive sort of thing? Then you can imagine how the true blue patriots of Jesus’ day would have regarded him for telling this kind of story.
The parable of the Good Samaritan is a familiar story, an energizing story, and a prophetic story. We know all of that. Jesus tells this story to enlarge our world. He pushes anybody who can hear him beyond the safe and predictable. And he calls us to act for the benefit of other people, even if they hate us. The Law of God is clear: “You shall love the neighbor as yourself.” This story is a Grade A Illustration of God’s Holy Word.
You know that. I know that. But this time through the parable, I believe there is a lot more to the story. We focus on the central character, this compassionate outsider who bends down to dress the wounds of a perfect stranger. We can snicker at the pompous priest, and then the cautious Levite, as both pass by a person in great need. But here’s what I want to know: what about the victim in the ditch? As Jesus tells it, the story is really about him. In case you forgot, here’s how the parable begins: “There was a man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. He fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him, beat him, and left him half dead. A priest saw him and passed by. A Levite saw him and passed by. A Samaritan saw him and stopped to help...” The man must have really been out of it - - because he allowed somebody to help him.
Do you know what I’m talking about? There are a lot of people who need help, but they refuse it. Money may be tight, but they are too proud to ask for assistance, much less look for an extra job. There might be trouble at home, but they dress up for church. The teenage daughter may have skipped out of the house, but her name is never spoken around friends. A diagnosis comes back after a dark stain appears on the CAT scan, but a good front is presented with a lot of positive attitude.
It’s enough for some people to create a new Bible verse: “God helps those who help themselves.” Those words never actually appear in the Bible, but for some people, especially self-reliant American people, that is their Gospel. Their motto goes like this: “Don’t need any help. I can do it myself.”
Remember the old skit? I think it was on that ancient comedy show “Laugh-In.” A Boy Scout offers to help an old lady cross the street. He takes her elbow, and she hauls off and smacks him. She had no intention of crossing the street.
Really now, what is best for another person? Do we presume to know?
I can tell you a lot of stories of how I attempted to help somebody and it turned out badly. My very first church, I was working part-time at an urban church in New Jersey. Between the two worship services, a young man appeared in my door. He told me a down-and-out story. I gave him twenty bucks, partly to help him, mostly to ease my conscience. I was thinking about the parable of the Good Samaritan. Later my supervisor asked if I had noticed the runny nose, the red eyes, the signs of addiction. It never occurred to me: I was just trying to be a Christian.
The custodian in my last church woke up a homeless couple sleeping on the steps. He wanted to have them arrested, so I said, “Leave them with me.” After he left, I pulled some food out of my own kitchen cupboard: Kraft macaroni and cheese, canned fruit, a half-gallon of milk. The woman said, “Don’t you get it? We’re homeless.” Meanwhile her companion was looking around the house to see what he might see. I offered to take them to a shelter and they refused to go. “Been there, done that” was the reply. So what do you do?
One of the church’s elders convinced the session to free up $500 from the Memorial Fund as first month’s rent on a small apartment. He stood up on Sunday and announced the need for a bed and basic furniture. The congregation came through. He got them settled, got them jobs, brought them to Sunday worship, took them to their jobs. And then one day, they disappeared without a trace.
Over the years, I have offered teenage offenders a chance to work out their public service hours, only to have some of them skip out before they were done, and then blame me when I wouldn’t lie for them to the officials. I have been included in drug and alcohol interventions, a few of which exploded before my eyes. I have married off pregnant couples, hoping that might provide some stability in their lives; not always the case. I have offered a listening ear to people whose mental and emotional diagnoses were way beyond my puny capacity to offer much assistance. I have painted the homes of people whose lives were devastated by poverty, only to discover another work team was dispatched the next year to the same home to do the same work.
Have you ever tried to help somebody and then wondered if it did any good? It is complicated to care for other people. Either their lives are such a mess – or our lives are such a mess – that it feels like meddling and muddling, all at the same time. (Am I the only one here who feels this?)
Remember our Bible story? Did you ever wonder what happened the next day? Perhaps the victim woke up, realized where he was, and trashed the hotel room. Or the innkeeper ran the American Express card that the Samaritan had left and discovered it was stolen.
Or maybe it turned out well, and the wounded man healed, and the Good Samaritan returned and they became friends. They caught a glimpse of what God intends for all humanity. So they decided to head back up to Jerusalem and spread the good news. As they made their way back up the road, whistling “Kum Ba Yah,” suddenly the same robbers jumped out and beat up both of them.
I don’t want to be cynical. I simply want to say how difficult it is to help somebody. To actually help somebody. I have seen good-hearted Presbyterians donate warm cashmere sweaters for migrant workers. I have noticed an occasional dented can of creamed corn cast off and placed on the food pantry table. To help somebody – to really help somebody – is to take them seriously. To love them just as much as we love ourselves – and for any self-centered people among us, that would be considerable.
Garret Keizer is a high school English teacher and a part-time Episcopalian lay minister. He writes about this Bible story, and says:
Jesus is hardly ever seen doing the three helpful things we are most often called upon to do. He never donates money, gives advice (in the specific sense of “Here’s what you ought to do”), or offers support (in the uncritical sense of “Everything you’re doing is perfectly fine”). We see him reaching out to those at the margins of society to remind them that they too have a place in the kingdom of God, but we never see him sacrificing his time or his agenda on the altar of another person’s loneliness. Nor do we see him investing much energy in helping people to get along, as that is generally understood. “Master, speak to my brother that he will divide the inheritance with me.” To which Jesus replies, “Man, who made me a judge or divider over you?” adding a few disparaging words on covetousness for good measure. Surely the most underrate answer to the currently popular question “What would Jesus do?” is “Nothing.” (Help: The Original Human Dilemma)
What Jesus does do, however, is to tell this story. This familiar, energizing, prophetic – and troubling – story. Jesus pushes us to expand our view of the neighborhood. We don’t live in a suburb. We live on a planet. Every single person has a point of need, a point at which they must be taken seriously. And I mean, every single one of us has some great need. What we should pray for are the eyes to see the needs in others, and the needs in ourselves.
Some years ago, on our church’s first mission trip to Haiti, our team was returning through the Port au Prince airport. It was a hard week of living with the people of the land, and we were working through its hypnotic effect on us. As we get into the terminal, there was a group of church kids from Colorado. All forty of them wore the same yellow t-shirts, had the same cheerful grins. These sun-tanned kids were singing Jesus songs, and it was obvious they had not gone to the same places where we had gone, or seen the same poverty we had seen. A few of the teenage girls were putting corn rows in one another’s hair. One of them said, “I never would have learned how to do this if I hadn’t come on this trip.” It was her reason for going to Haiti, I’m afraid. It was an exotic location. She was never allowed to get close enough to the neighbors to see who the neighbors were. She was never challenged to look deeply into her own broken heart.
The first step on the journey to compassion is to see who is around us, to really see them, to see them in their true joys and sorrows beneath the masks they put on. That’s what the Samaritan does. He steps over the invisible line to bind up wounds and show some care. In that move, he begins to repair the breach that separates all of us from one another.
You know that breach: walk into a room, there is somebody I don’t know, should I say hello and step over the dividing line? The lady next door is yelling at her kids again. She does that a lot. Should I step across the border of my plot of land and interrupt, possibly interfere? The worker in the next cubicle is coming late to work, leaving early, taking long lunch breaks, asking me to cover for him. Do I pause, step into his space, and ask what’s really going on?
The Bible says the Samaritan “felt it in his gut.” What did he feel? “Compassion” – literally to “suffer with.” He felt “sympathy” – literally to “share the pathos” of being human. He chose to participate in the human race, to take part in the life of his neighbors. It was not enough for him to co-exist on the same GPS coordinates. He extended himself for the benefit of somebody else. As a Samaritan in a Jewish land, he knew how it felt to be wounded. And whether the Jewish man was conscious or not, he received the help that was offered.
Listen, I know this is only a story, but it sounds like a miracle. One person offers specific help to another. Another man receives the help he is given. Today I ask you: which of these is the greater miracle?
In Norman Maclean’s story “A River Runs Through It,” Norman and his Presbyterian minister father are talking about Paul, the other son. Paul is living on the fast track to destruction, and his brother and father are worried about him. Both of them want to help, but they worry it won’t do enough good. Then Rev. Maclean says,
“You are too young to help anybody and I am too old. By help I don’t mean a courtesy like serving chokecherry jelly or giving money. Help is giving part of yourself to somebody who comes to accept it willingly and needs it badly. So it is that we seldom can help anybody. Either we don’t know what part to give or maybe we don’t like to give any part of ourselves. Then, more often than not, the part that is needed is not wanted. And even more often, we do not have the part that is needed.”
This, in a nutshell, is the problem of help. And it throws us back on the very words that called us to worship: “Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth.” The church is God’s triage ward, where all of us present our broken souls to a Great Physician who alone has the power to heal us. Here is where we learn of God’s great salvage mission to the world. The God we meet in Jesus Christ is our help, if only we can receive it.
And for those who can receive, we are called to pass along whatever help we ourselves have received. All of us are neighbors, after all; neighbors of one another, neighbors of the world. This much is true.
And yet I will tell you one more truth: I have learned where the kingdom of God is located. The kingdom of God is wherever people accept help from their neighbors. For their neighbors are sent to them by God.
(c) William G. Carter
All rights reserved
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Detours Ahead
Luke 9:51-62
Ordinary 13
June 27, 2010
William G. Carter
As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”
Luke describes the Christian life as a journey. Faith is a travelogue between beginning and end. There is a starting line, for all of us begin somewhere; and then we are off to travel our lives with Jesus. It is an expedition full of adventure and growth. The journey is just as thrilling as the destination. As a way of teaching us about the journey, he describes the journey that Christ took.
There was a day, says Luke, when Jesus decided to go to Jerusalem. In the words of Isaiah, “He set his face like flint.” Jesus left behind the carpenter shop and the teaching stump. He left behind what was known, settled, and comfortable. And he stepped out to travel toward the cross. That was his destination, his calling. It was the way that he lived out what it meant for him to be God’s person in the world.
The Bible says this is our journey as well. It is journey where Christ is loved and honored. His concerns become our concerns. We are called to join the ministry of Jesus – come what may. We take up his mantle, and do his work with our own heart, minds, hands, and feet.
And that is exactly how the story unfolds for today. Jesus and the boys are traveling. They begin his final journey toward Jerusalem, a journey that will take half this book. He knows where he is called. He knows what he is destined to do. It doesn’t matter if others understand his purposes or not. Jerusalem is his end.
Along the way, in a story that is ready-made for a three-part sermon, he encounters three different people who could be part of his journey. Each one hears his invitation, each one responds a different way, and in each case Jesus reveals what could be a detour from being his disciple.
The first person steps up to Jesus on the road. He’s a volunteer and says, “I will go wherever you go.” It is a noble idea, but I think Jesus cracks a smile. It’s that very noble word “wherever.” The man says he will go “wherever.” Really? The word is worth a deeper examination. Are we willing to go wherever? Would we do anything?
Jesus pushes back. “Foxes have holes, and birds have nests…” He speaks slyly in a code language. In his day, there were some affluent people related to King Herod called “the Herodians.” They were people who fancied themselves as the ruling class. They lived in great comfort, and Jesus says, “If you want nice curtains and comfortable beds, the foxes have their holes.”
The Roman army was portrayed popularly as a flock of birds. Vultures perhaps, or certainly hawks. They swarmed into a village and plucked everything out of the ground. They take whatever they need from others, and fly away. “If you want to consume vigorously and viciously, the birds build their nests.”
“But the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” That is strange and disturbing. In the Jewish scriptures, the Son of Man was the supreme authority over all the nations. He has power, glory, and might. And in the same breath, Jesus adds, “He is homeless.” Or maybe another way to say it, “Every place is his home.” He gets around. And he’s not staying in the holes of rich foxes or the nests of violent birds.
It is a jarring retort. It is not merely that he declares we have to be itinerants to follow him. But he seems to be saying that we cannot be in love with our own comfort. If we follow Christ, there will be no pillows to soften the trip (I’ll say it with a wink: why do you think we took so long to pad those pews?). There will be no extravagance (like those school board members who got a free trip to Orlando). There will be no resting place to lounge and become lazy. A listless disciple is a contradiction in terms.
Oh, says Jesus, if you want to follow me, live modestly. Stay portable. Don’t anchor yourself in the ports that are protected from the acts of God. Become familiar with people who are deprived of comfort. Don’t let all the world’s goodies separate you from the world’s needs.
He says this, I think, because his face is set toward Jerusalem. He is called to give his life in the most costly way. This is the cross before him. Golgotha is not a place where he has gone before. It will not be familiar or comfortable. Jesus cannot expect it to be easy or fun. His destiny is not in a five-star hotel.
And then Jesus spots a second possible disciple. He is a recruit and he is willing to follow – or so it would seem. But he has a grief problem. He has a father that he needs to bury. We might think that is a justifiable excuse, but Jesus blasts him with a harsh word: “Let the dead bury the dead!” It is one of the rudest, coldest things that Jesus ever said.
Or is it? Our Men’s Breakfast group was studying this passage a month ago or so, and discovered there is more to the story. The Middle Eastern scholars tell us that, in that culture, the man was not asking permission to attend a funeral. If there was really a funeral, he would have been there. He wouldn’t have been hanging around the road, waiting for Jesus to walk by. Oh no, he would have been by his father’s coffin, surrounded by the whole family.
It turns out that it’s a traditional phrase. As somebody notes, say, for instance, that a Jew of Jesus’ day announced that he wanted to move to Brazil, assuming he knew where Brazil was. All of the neighbors would ask, “But aren’t you going to bury your father first?” His father might still be as healthy as a horse. The cultural expectations are that you stick around, that you take care of father and mother, that you put your own decisions on hold until your family responsibilities are concluded. If it takes another twenty years for the Old Man to die, it takes another twenty years. Your life has to go on hold.
So Jesus slaps the son with a hard word: Let the dead bury the dead. That is, he is saying, “Let the spiritually dead bury their own. But if you’re going to be part of my Father’s Kingdom, if you are going to be part of my kingdom, than I come first. The Kingdom of God comes before family duties and neighborhood expectations. Christ is more demanding, more central, more significant than anything or anybody. Especially if it’s a lame excuse by a man who is hanging around by the road and whose father is not dead yet.
Jesus says, “Follow me!” The man responds, “I’d love to, but . . .” I’d love to, but. Sometimes we say such a thing to define ourselves, over against the primary call.
I’d love to do the work of servant, but . . .
I would gladly serve as a leader, but . . .
I know the junior high group needs a teacher, but . . .
I know those hungry people have great needs, but . . .
I know there are mourners who would appreciate my consolation, but . . .
It can be a way of saying we recognize what God’s invitation entails. That is different from the first guy, who didn’t seem to know. Yet for some reason, even we know it, we cannot yet do it. We end up defining ourselves by saying, in essence, “I discern the need, yet here I am.” We keep it at arm’s length.
And then there’s the third person. He is another volunteer and willing to follow Jesus, too – but he states his condition: “Let me go home first and take my leave.” That’s what it really says – he’s not merely going home to “say goodbye,” or “bid farewell,” but to “take his leave.”
This is a phrase we don’t use very much, but they know all about it in the Middle East. If you are invited to a party, you honor your host by attending. If you have something else to do, and it cannot be rescheduled, then you ask permission to not attend, or to depart early. This is called “taking your leave.” It is requesting permission from the main figures of the household for them to excuse you. It is the polite thing to do.
So this third guy wants to go home and request permission from his father to let him follow Jesus. If it is the planting season, he’s out of luck. If it’s the growing season, he’s out of luck. If it’s the harvest season, he is really out of luck. Do you get the picture? He is putting his family ahead of the call of Christ. He is letting them call the shots on whether or not he will get in step with Jesus. As Jesus puts it, he is taking his hands off the plow.
It’s an issue, of course, that still comes up in a hundred different ways. As we will hear Jesus say in one of the texts this summer, “Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division . . . I have come to set father against son, daughter against mother” (12:51-53). Again, it’s a troublesome, divisive word - - because Jesus is saying that he is more important than those who are dear to us. He is at the center of our lives. He demands our complete obedience and our absolute attention. Jesus is the One who calls for us. He enlists us to serve, and empowers us to do so. He frees us from every other distraction, beginning with the relationships that lie closest to our hearts. And he persistently asks, “Do you love me more than these?”
Being a Christian is not merely a matter of going to church. It is first and foremost a following of Jesus. We learn how to do this better when we go to church, as the scriptures are opened, as the prayers are voiced, as the mission is named and engaged. But the heart of being Christ’s disciple is traveling with him, going to the places where he leads us and calls us. It’s doing the kinds of things that he wants us to do. We love the stranger, for Jesus breaks down human divisions and extends God’s reach. We welcome people regardless of politics, gender, or income, because Christ welcomes all to his Table. We offer the cold cup of water to those who are thirsty. We offer the kind blessing to the person ravaged with despair. And we keep listening for what he wants us to do.
Four summers ago, I was retreating in a remote monastery, and a woman came to visit her father. He was now one of the brothers there. He joined the monastic community after the death of his wife, who was also her mother. There had always been the tug on his heart to join up with such a community. He had heard about them as a young man, but fell in love, got married, went to work, and they had a child. He never forgot the Voice of love calling him to a life of prayer. They raised the daughter. His wife was sick, and he nursed her until death. Then he had a big yard sale, put the house up for sale, unloaded everything, and then joined the monastery. That was fifteen years before.
Now she had traveled for two days to visit him. Twice a year the abbot permits the visit. She drove out to meet him, bringing him a bag of chocolate bars to share. The vow of silence was lifted by the abbot. They shared good memories of times past, told stories about their current lives, laughed and joked. The visit ended with an embrace, a promise to pray for one another and to write once a week. Then he returned to the cloister and its silence.
Then she explained to me, “This is what God has called my father to do. I respect that. He will remain with these brothers until he dies and he is in better hands than mine.” She said, “I am grateful that he took time out to marry mom, to raise me, but now it’s time for him to do what God calls him to do. He has never been happier.”
It was a shocking, stunning conversation. It reminded me of the ongoing call and cost of discipleship. You and I are called to follow Christ too, even if we are not called in the same ways that man is answering his call.
Yet one thing was very clear to me: he is keeping his hands on the plow.
(c) William G. Carter
All rights reserved
Ordinary 13
June 27, 2010
William G. Carter
As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”
Luke describes the Christian life as a journey. Faith is a travelogue between beginning and end. There is a starting line, for all of us begin somewhere; and then we are off to travel our lives with Jesus. It is an expedition full of adventure and growth. The journey is just as thrilling as the destination. As a way of teaching us about the journey, he describes the journey that Christ took.
There was a day, says Luke, when Jesus decided to go to Jerusalem. In the words of Isaiah, “He set his face like flint.” Jesus left behind the carpenter shop and the teaching stump. He left behind what was known, settled, and comfortable. And he stepped out to travel toward the cross. That was his destination, his calling. It was the way that he lived out what it meant for him to be God’s person in the world.
The Bible says this is our journey as well. It is journey where Christ is loved and honored. His concerns become our concerns. We are called to join the ministry of Jesus – come what may. We take up his mantle, and do his work with our own heart, minds, hands, and feet.
And that is exactly how the story unfolds for today. Jesus and the boys are traveling. They begin his final journey toward Jerusalem, a journey that will take half this book. He knows where he is called. He knows what he is destined to do. It doesn’t matter if others understand his purposes or not. Jerusalem is his end.
Along the way, in a story that is ready-made for a three-part sermon, he encounters three different people who could be part of his journey. Each one hears his invitation, each one responds a different way, and in each case Jesus reveals what could be a detour from being his disciple.
The first person steps up to Jesus on the road. He’s a volunteer and says, “I will go wherever you go.” It is a noble idea, but I think Jesus cracks a smile. It’s that very noble word “wherever.” The man says he will go “wherever.” Really? The word is worth a deeper examination. Are we willing to go wherever? Would we do anything?
Jesus pushes back. “Foxes have holes, and birds have nests…” He speaks slyly in a code language. In his day, there were some affluent people related to King Herod called “the Herodians.” They were people who fancied themselves as the ruling class. They lived in great comfort, and Jesus says, “If you want nice curtains and comfortable beds, the foxes have their holes.”
The Roman army was portrayed popularly as a flock of birds. Vultures perhaps, or certainly hawks. They swarmed into a village and plucked everything out of the ground. They take whatever they need from others, and fly away. “If you want to consume vigorously and viciously, the birds build their nests.”
“But the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” That is strange and disturbing. In the Jewish scriptures, the Son of Man was the supreme authority over all the nations. He has power, glory, and might. And in the same breath, Jesus adds, “He is homeless.” Or maybe another way to say it, “Every place is his home.” He gets around. And he’s not staying in the holes of rich foxes or the nests of violent birds.
It is a jarring retort. It is not merely that he declares we have to be itinerants to follow him. But he seems to be saying that we cannot be in love with our own comfort. If we follow Christ, there will be no pillows to soften the trip (I’ll say it with a wink: why do you think we took so long to pad those pews?). There will be no extravagance (like those school board members who got a free trip to Orlando). There will be no resting place to lounge and become lazy. A listless disciple is a contradiction in terms.
Oh, says Jesus, if you want to follow me, live modestly. Stay portable. Don’t anchor yourself in the ports that are protected from the acts of God. Become familiar with people who are deprived of comfort. Don’t let all the world’s goodies separate you from the world’s needs.
He says this, I think, because his face is set toward Jerusalem. He is called to give his life in the most costly way. This is the cross before him. Golgotha is not a place where he has gone before. It will not be familiar or comfortable. Jesus cannot expect it to be easy or fun. His destiny is not in a five-star hotel.
And then Jesus spots a second possible disciple. He is a recruit and he is willing to follow – or so it would seem. But he has a grief problem. He has a father that he needs to bury. We might think that is a justifiable excuse, but Jesus blasts him with a harsh word: “Let the dead bury the dead!” It is one of the rudest, coldest things that Jesus ever said.
Or is it? Our Men’s Breakfast group was studying this passage a month ago or so, and discovered there is more to the story. The Middle Eastern scholars tell us that, in that culture, the man was not asking permission to attend a funeral. If there was really a funeral, he would have been there. He wouldn’t have been hanging around the road, waiting for Jesus to walk by. Oh no, he would have been by his father’s coffin, surrounded by the whole family.
It turns out that it’s a traditional phrase. As somebody notes, say, for instance, that a Jew of Jesus’ day announced that he wanted to move to Brazil, assuming he knew where Brazil was. All of the neighbors would ask, “But aren’t you going to bury your father first?” His father might still be as healthy as a horse. The cultural expectations are that you stick around, that you take care of father and mother, that you put your own decisions on hold until your family responsibilities are concluded. If it takes another twenty years for the Old Man to die, it takes another twenty years. Your life has to go on hold.
So Jesus slaps the son with a hard word: Let the dead bury the dead. That is, he is saying, “Let the spiritually dead bury their own. But if you’re going to be part of my Father’s Kingdom, if you are going to be part of my kingdom, than I come first. The Kingdom of God comes before family duties and neighborhood expectations. Christ is more demanding, more central, more significant than anything or anybody. Especially if it’s a lame excuse by a man who is hanging around by the road and whose father is not dead yet.
Jesus says, “Follow me!” The man responds, “I’d love to, but . . .” I’d love to, but. Sometimes we say such a thing to define ourselves, over against the primary call.
I’d love to do the work of servant, but . . .
I would gladly serve as a leader, but . . .
I know the junior high group needs a teacher, but . . .
I know those hungry people have great needs, but . . .
I know there are mourners who would appreciate my consolation, but . . .
It can be a way of saying we recognize what God’s invitation entails. That is different from the first guy, who didn’t seem to know. Yet for some reason, even we know it, we cannot yet do it. We end up defining ourselves by saying, in essence, “I discern the need, yet here I am.” We keep it at arm’s length.
And then there’s the third person. He is another volunteer and willing to follow Jesus, too – but he states his condition: “Let me go home first and take my leave.” That’s what it really says – he’s not merely going home to “say goodbye,” or “bid farewell,” but to “take his leave.”
This is a phrase we don’t use very much, but they know all about it in the Middle East. If you are invited to a party, you honor your host by attending. If you have something else to do, and it cannot be rescheduled, then you ask permission to not attend, or to depart early. This is called “taking your leave.” It is requesting permission from the main figures of the household for them to excuse you. It is the polite thing to do.
So this third guy wants to go home and request permission from his father to let him follow Jesus. If it is the planting season, he’s out of luck. If it’s the growing season, he’s out of luck. If it’s the harvest season, he is really out of luck. Do you get the picture? He is putting his family ahead of the call of Christ. He is letting them call the shots on whether or not he will get in step with Jesus. As Jesus puts it, he is taking his hands off the plow.
It’s an issue, of course, that still comes up in a hundred different ways. As we will hear Jesus say in one of the texts this summer, “Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division . . . I have come to set father against son, daughter against mother” (12:51-53). Again, it’s a troublesome, divisive word - - because Jesus is saying that he is more important than those who are dear to us. He is at the center of our lives. He demands our complete obedience and our absolute attention. Jesus is the One who calls for us. He enlists us to serve, and empowers us to do so. He frees us from every other distraction, beginning with the relationships that lie closest to our hearts. And he persistently asks, “Do you love me more than these?”
Being a Christian is not merely a matter of going to church. It is first and foremost a following of Jesus. We learn how to do this better when we go to church, as the scriptures are opened, as the prayers are voiced, as the mission is named and engaged. But the heart of being Christ’s disciple is traveling with him, going to the places where he leads us and calls us. It’s doing the kinds of things that he wants us to do. We love the stranger, for Jesus breaks down human divisions and extends God’s reach. We welcome people regardless of politics, gender, or income, because Christ welcomes all to his Table. We offer the cold cup of water to those who are thirsty. We offer the kind blessing to the person ravaged with despair. And we keep listening for what he wants us to do.
Four summers ago, I was retreating in a remote monastery, and a woman came to visit her father. He was now one of the brothers there. He joined the monastic community after the death of his wife, who was also her mother. There had always been the tug on his heart to join up with such a community. He had heard about them as a young man, but fell in love, got married, went to work, and they had a child. He never forgot the Voice of love calling him to a life of prayer. They raised the daughter. His wife was sick, and he nursed her until death. Then he had a big yard sale, put the house up for sale, unloaded everything, and then joined the monastery. That was fifteen years before.
Now she had traveled for two days to visit him. Twice a year the abbot permits the visit. She drove out to meet him, bringing him a bag of chocolate bars to share. The vow of silence was lifted by the abbot. They shared good memories of times past, told stories about their current lives, laughed and joked. The visit ended with an embrace, a promise to pray for one another and to write once a week. Then he returned to the cloister and its silence.
Then she explained to me, “This is what God has called my father to do. I respect that. He will remain with these brothers until he dies and he is in better hands than mine.” She said, “I am grateful that he took time out to marry mom, to raise me, but now it’s time for him to do what God calls him to do. He has never been happier.”
It was a shocking, stunning conversation. It reminded me of the ongoing call and cost of discipleship. You and I are called to follow Christ too, even if we are not called in the same ways that man is answering his call.
Yet one thing was very clear to me: he is keeping his hands on the plow.
(c) William G. Carter
All rights reserved
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Forgiven Much, Forgiven Little
Luke 7:36-8:3
Ordinary 11
June 13, 2010
William G. Carter
"Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.”
I will guess that Simon went to a lot of trouble. It's not every day that Jesus comes by for dinner. As with every honored guest, you pull out the finest china, polish the silver, and press the linen napkins. Simon the Pharisee had a closet full of such things. He was an influential man with a beautiful home. In his employ were a number of well-trained servants who knew when to serve the soup and when to replace the salad forks. And also around that lovely home of his, there was a high fence with a single gate.
Now Luke does not mention the fence with the gate. That was an inadvertent omission. Luke meant to say it, but forgot to say it. There had to be a fence. Every really nice home has some kind of fence around it. Sometimes it is electronic and marked by little flags, to keep the family pets from wandering too far. Usually it is tall and imposing, to keep the undesirables out.
If Simon was a rich and influential person, as most first-century Pharisees were, there was a fence around his house. And about the time he expected Jesus to show up for dinner, he told one of the servants to go and unlock the gate. That's good old-fashioned, down-home, Middle Eastern hospitality. When you expect a guest: you open the gate.
Jesus is welcomed into his home. He is invited in through the gate. But apparently it was left open for a little too long – because look what else wandered inside. It’s a woman. We don’t know her name, but apparently everybody in town knew who she was. Luke calls her a “sinner.” We never learn what kind of sins she committed - - but we can probably guess. There’s probably a big capital “A” stitched to her smock.
Simon knows who she is. He has been watching her for years from behind his fence. He doesn’t know her name – or at least he never says it. But he is clear about her reputation. He regards her as trash, blown in from the street, and makes a mental note to close the gate more quickly next time. But on this occasion – his charitable invitation to Jesus might serve him and his purposes.
The fact is, Jesus has been troubling the Pharisees for two whole chapters of this story. They come to hear him teach, and then they see him heal. He announces the forgiveness of God – and they question this. A paralytic starts dancing – and they are amazed. Then Jesus goes to a dinner party at the house of a tax collector, one of those scurrilous collaborators with the Empire, and they complain that he is not very careful about his righteousness. He eats with the wrong people. He doesn’t stick to their rules.
This is a section of Luke’s Gospel with a number of controversies like that – and then Simon the Pharisee invites Jesus to his table, in through his gate. And while they exchange pleasantries and pita bread, that woman walks in. She caresses his feet. She rubs perfume on his toes. A man’s feet are private. They are not for the massaging hands of a sinful woman. In his mind, Simon the Pharisee is very clear about what she is doing. He says as much to himself – and our modest Bible translators have cleaned up the language in English.
Do you know she is doing? To put it literally, she is “starting a fire.” She is crossing a moral boundary, right there, in a Pharisee’s house! So Simon says everything he’s been told to say, everything he’s been told to believe – that this woman was a sinner, that this woman is a sinner – she is trying to ignite some passion right there at his dinner table. It’s disgusting, it’s inappropriate. If Jesus were a real holy man, he would know what kind of person she is. And he would keep her on the other side of the fence.
This is a common approach to religion. We learn the lesson early. There is right and there is wrong. If you are right and others are wrong, some kind of fence should be erected.
When I was growing up, we were told very clearly who the sinners were. They were the people from Spencer Avenue who sat on the church lawn on Saturday nights, smoked cigarettes, and drank Genesee Cream Ale. They left the empties behind. As the ushers began to hand out bulletins before Sunday worship, an angry deacon went around the front yard with Hefty bag, scooping up the beer cans. More than once I learned the lesson: “those people are not welcome in our pretty little church.” They are sinners.
At one memorable congregational meeting, somebody stood up to declare it was the minister’s job to yell at those people, to chase them away. After all, he lived in the house next door that the church provided. You couldn’t expect one of the professionals who lived in a big house up on the hill to drive down and police the church yard. They were busy – they had plans to go to the country club and knock down a half dozen cocktails. That’s what the respectable people do. They do not mingle with sinners.
I like how Jesus handles this embarrassing moment. He tells a little story. It seems that every time he finds himself in an awkward situation, he tells a story. “Once upon a time,” he says, “there was this banker. She had two people who owed her money. Both of them defaulted. One owed about $70,000. The other owed about $7000. Neither one of them could pay. So she canceled both debts. Which one of them will love her more?”
Well, that’s easy. That’s a softball question. If you have been forgiven a huge debt, you’re going to love your banker a lot more than if you were forgiven a modest debt. Isn’t that right?
Why, just imagine if you needed a major operation that you could not afford? You really needed that operation or else you would die – but you couldn’t afford the operation. And then, the surgeon said, “Listen, I’m going to handle the cost of this. Don’t worry about a thing. I will cover it myself, because you really need that operation.” And he is good for his word.
Now, isn’t that better than owing somebody twenty bucks, and they say, “Forget about it”? Of course it is.
Jesus simply tells the story and asks the question. The answer is obvious. Whoever is forgiven a great debt is probably going to love the person who forgave them! That is the point of the story . . . and it’s dangling out here. Nobody seems to get it.
When I was fifteen or so, I had dinner at my minister’s house. His son Jonathan was one of my good friends. They were planning a cookout, as I recall, so Jonathan invited me for dinner. As his father, the pastor, was putting burgers on the grill, his mother called out, “Jonathan, I thought we had more hamburger buns. Go down to the corner market and pick up a pack. Take Bill with you.” We cut through the back yard, went along the ancient cemetery, came around the alley – and there they were, sitting on the church steps: six burly people, smoking cigarettes, and drinking Genny Cream Ale. They looked rough. They had dark hair and tattoos. They hollered, “Hey! What are you doing?” We ran all the way to the market and made our purchase.
Then we had a moral dilemma: we had to return the same way. Jonathan liked to act tough, so he took charge. We walked around the corner, right up the church steps, and he looked them in the eye, and said, “How are you doing? Nice night, isn’t it? My name is Jonathan.”
One of them said, “Hey, you’re the minister’s kid – I didn’t recognize you before. I thought you were just a couple of kids getting in trouble.” Then he looked over his shoulder and said, “This is a peaceful spot. We like it here – even if some of those church people are uptight. But your dad, he’s alright. Sometimes he stops by to talk to us. Never chases us away. So we sit here on Saturday nights and guard the place from hoodlums like you. It feels right.”
It was a strange conversation. And the next morning, right before worship, as some uptight deacon scowled while retrieving the one green can that the squatters had forgotten to collect, it seemed that he was overplaying his part. Did you ever notice? Some people are so darned righteous that they become obnoxious. And some of the people they would so quickly shoo away are kind, and protective, and strangely benevolent. Something has happened in them, but it really hasn’t happened in the so-called righteous person.
At the center of God’s Kingdom is the announcement of forgiveness, the cosmic cancellation of debt. It is the news that every single one of us has had a great debt canceled. We were in over our heads. There was no way we could pay – and God, the Rightful Owner of Everything, out of great mercy, said, “You are forgiven. You are free. Enjoy the grace of the kingdom.” There is only one way to respond – and that is with love. If we know that much has been forgiven, we will show great love.
Monday, October 2, 2006 was a bright beautiful fall day. The children at the West Nickel Mines School were surprised by a man who backed his truck onto the school property. A few knew him – he normally drove the milk tanker to some of their farms. This day, however, something was dreadfully wrong. He pulled out a gun, rounded up the children, and started firing. As state police stormed the schoolhouse, he turned the gun on himself.
This was a tragedy that should never, ever happen. The 24/7 news media descended on Nickel Mines, not really understanding that it is an Old Amish community. There were few interviews with the townspeople. No access was given for armchair psychologists. The Amish Christians would bury their dead with dignity. They would not invite CNN or Fox News to push their news cameras into their grief.
And then, a few field reports began to surface. There was word that within hours of the shooter’s rampage, some of the Amish families had gone to his home, to sit with his widow, to speak words of comfort and consolation. They held her hand, looked her in the eye, and said, “We forgive your husband for what he has done.” And not one visit, but many visits – followed by gifts of food and money from the Amish – as a way of announcing that there would be no revenge, no retribution, no more damage in response to that great sin. They forgave him, and released him from what he did.
On Wednesday at 5:30 a.m., two days after the tragedy, the grandfather of two little girls who had been killed was walking by the schoolhouse. He was reflecting on his loss. All of a sudden, a news team jumped out of the bushed, turned on lights and camera, and held a spontaneous interview. The reporter asked, “Do you have any anger toward the gunman’s family?” He said, “No.”
“Have you forgiven them?” He said, “Yes, I have forgiven them in my heart.”
“How is that possible?” He said, “Through God’s help.” The world just couldn’t believe this. It became the major story of the day: AMISH PEOPLE FORGIVE THE SHOOTER. And their mercy was expressed in more than words. When the gunman’s family gathered for his funeral at the end of the week at a nearby Methodist church, more than half of the seventy-five mourners were Amish. They believed it was the right thing to do. They joined in prayer, sang the hymns, and spoke of their love and support for his widow and family, and their forgiveness of him.
One theologian who wrote of the occasion did his best to explain to the world. When forgiveness is the ongoing practice of Christian people, it shapes everything that they do. They are able to forgive because they know themselves to be greatly forgiven. Because they believe God has forgiven them so much, they are free to forgive others and show great love. And a small piece of Lancaster County looked like heaven on earth. (Donald Kraybill, Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy)
This is the kind of faith that saves us – a faith that we are forgiven greatly, and therefore called upon to love greatly. This is the faith that saves the whole world – and sends us out in peace.
(c) William G. Carter
All rights reserved
Ordinary 11
June 13, 2010
William G. Carter
"Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.”
I will guess that Simon went to a lot of trouble. It's not every day that Jesus comes by for dinner. As with every honored guest, you pull out the finest china, polish the silver, and press the linen napkins. Simon the Pharisee had a closet full of such things. He was an influential man with a beautiful home. In his employ were a number of well-trained servants who knew when to serve the soup and when to replace the salad forks. And also around that lovely home of his, there was a high fence with a single gate.
Now Luke does not mention the fence with the gate. That was an inadvertent omission. Luke meant to say it, but forgot to say it. There had to be a fence. Every really nice home has some kind of fence around it. Sometimes it is electronic and marked by little flags, to keep the family pets from wandering too far. Usually it is tall and imposing, to keep the undesirables out.
If Simon was a rich and influential person, as most first-century Pharisees were, there was a fence around his house. And about the time he expected Jesus to show up for dinner, he told one of the servants to go and unlock the gate. That's good old-fashioned, down-home, Middle Eastern hospitality. When you expect a guest: you open the gate.
Jesus is welcomed into his home. He is invited in through the gate. But apparently it was left open for a little too long – because look what else wandered inside. It’s a woman. We don’t know her name, but apparently everybody in town knew who she was. Luke calls her a “sinner.” We never learn what kind of sins she committed - - but we can probably guess. There’s probably a big capital “A” stitched to her smock.
Simon knows who she is. He has been watching her for years from behind his fence. He doesn’t know her name – or at least he never says it. But he is clear about her reputation. He regards her as trash, blown in from the street, and makes a mental note to close the gate more quickly next time. But on this occasion – his charitable invitation to Jesus might serve him and his purposes.
The fact is, Jesus has been troubling the Pharisees for two whole chapters of this story. They come to hear him teach, and then they see him heal. He announces the forgiveness of God – and they question this. A paralytic starts dancing – and they are amazed. Then Jesus goes to a dinner party at the house of a tax collector, one of those scurrilous collaborators with the Empire, and they complain that he is not very careful about his righteousness. He eats with the wrong people. He doesn’t stick to their rules.
This is a section of Luke’s Gospel with a number of controversies like that – and then Simon the Pharisee invites Jesus to his table, in through his gate. And while they exchange pleasantries and pita bread, that woman walks in. She caresses his feet. She rubs perfume on his toes. A man’s feet are private. They are not for the massaging hands of a sinful woman. In his mind, Simon the Pharisee is very clear about what she is doing. He says as much to himself – and our modest Bible translators have cleaned up the language in English.
Do you know she is doing? To put it literally, she is “starting a fire.” She is crossing a moral boundary, right there, in a Pharisee’s house! So Simon says everything he’s been told to say, everything he’s been told to believe – that this woman was a sinner, that this woman is a sinner – she is trying to ignite some passion right there at his dinner table. It’s disgusting, it’s inappropriate. If Jesus were a real holy man, he would know what kind of person she is. And he would keep her on the other side of the fence.
This is a common approach to religion. We learn the lesson early. There is right and there is wrong. If you are right and others are wrong, some kind of fence should be erected.
When I was growing up, we were told very clearly who the sinners were. They were the people from Spencer Avenue who sat on the church lawn on Saturday nights, smoked cigarettes, and drank Genesee Cream Ale. They left the empties behind. As the ushers began to hand out bulletins before Sunday worship, an angry deacon went around the front yard with Hefty bag, scooping up the beer cans. More than once I learned the lesson: “those people are not welcome in our pretty little church.” They are sinners.
At one memorable congregational meeting, somebody stood up to declare it was the minister’s job to yell at those people, to chase them away. After all, he lived in the house next door that the church provided. You couldn’t expect one of the professionals who lived in a big house up on the hill to drive down and police the church yard. They were busy – they had plans to go to the country club and knock down a half dozen cocktails. That’s what the respectable people do. They do not mingle with sinners.
I like how Jesus handles this embarrassing moment. He tells a little story. It seems that every time he finds himself in an awkward situation, he tells a story. “Once upon a time,” he says, “there was this banker. She had two people who owed her money. Both of them defaulted. One owed about $70,000. The other owed about $7000. Neither one of them could pay. So she canceled both debts. Which one of them will love her more?”
Well, that’s easy. That’s a softball question. If you have been forgiven a huge debt, you’re going to love your banker a lot more than if you were forgiven a modest debt. Isn’t that right?
Why, just imagine if you needed a major operation that you could not afford? You really needed that operation or else you would die – but you couldn’t afford the operation. And then, the surgeon said, “Listen, I’m going to handle the cost of this. Don’t worry about a thing. I will cover it myself, because you really need that operation.” And he is good for his word.
Now, isn’t that better than owing somebody twenty bucks, and they say, “Forget about it”? Of course it is.
Jesus simply tells the story and asks the question. The answer is obvious. Whoever is forgiven a great debt is probably going to love the person who forgave them! That is the point of the story . . . and it’s dangling out here. Nobody seems to get it.
When I was fifteen or so, I had dinner at my minister’s house. His son Jonathan was one of my good friends. They were planning a cookout, as I recall, so Jonathan invited me for dinner. As his father, the pastor, was putting burgers on the grill, his mother called out, “Jonathan, I thought we had more hamburger buns. Go down to the corner market and pick up a pack. Take Bill with you.” We cut through the back yard, went along the ancient cemetery, came around the alley – and there they were, sitting on the church steps: six burly people, smoking cigarettes, and drinking Genny Cream Ale. They looked rough. They had dark hair and tattoos. They hollered, “Hey! What are you doing?” We ran all the way to the market and made our purchase.
Then we had a moral dilemma: we had to return the same way. Jonathan liked to act tough, so he took charge. We walked around the corner, right up the church steps, and he looked them in the eye, and said, “How are you doing? Nice night, isn’t it? My name is Jonathan.”
One of them said, “Hey, you’re the minister’s kid – I didn’t recognize you before. I thought you were just a couple of kids getting in trouble.” Then he looked over his shoulder and said, “This is a peaceful spot. We like it here – even if some of those church people are uptight. But your dad, he’s alright. Sometimes he stops by to talk to us. Never chases us away. So we sit here on Saturday nights and guard the place from hoodlums like you. It feels right.”
It was a strange conversation. And the next morning, right before worship, as some uptight deacon scowled while retrieving the one green can that the squatters had forgotten to collect, it seemed that he was overplaying his part. Did you ever notice? Some people are so darned righteous that they become obnoxious. And some of the people they would so quickly shoo away are kind, and protective, and strangely benevolent. Something has happened in them, but it really hasn’t happened in the so-called righteous person.
At the center of God’s Kingdom is the announcement of forgiveness, the cosmic cancellation of debt. It is the news that every single one of us has had a great debt canceled. We were in over our heads. There was no way we could pay – and God, the Rightful Owner of Everything, out of great mercy, said, “You are forgiven. You are free. Enjoy the grace of the kingdom.” There is only one way to respond – and that is with love. If we know that much has been forgiven, we will show great love.
Monday, October 2, 2006 was a bright beautiful fall day. The children at the West Nickel Mines School were surprised by a man who backed his truck onto the school property. A few knew him – he normally drove the milk tanker to some of their farms. This day, however, something was dreadfully wrong. He pulled out a gun, rounded up the children, and started firing. As state police stormed the schoolhouse, he turned the gun on himself.
This was a tragedy that should never, ever happen. The 24/7 news media descended on Nickel Mines, not really understanding that it is an Old Amish community. There were few interviews with the townspeople. No access was given for armchair psychologists. The Amish Christians would bury their dead with dignity. They would not invite CNN or Fox News to push their news cameras into their grief.
And then, a few field reports began to surface. There was word that within hours of the shooter’s rampage, some of the Amish families had gone to his home, to sit with his widow, to speak words of comfort and consolation. They held her hand, looked her in the eye, and said, “We forgive your husband for what he has done.” And not one visit, but many visits – followed by gifts of food and money from the Amish – as a way of announcing that there would be no revenge, no retribution, no more damage in response to that great sin. They forgave him, and released him from what he did.
On Wednesday at 5:30 a.m., two days after the tragedy, the grandfather of two little girls who had been killed was walking by the schoolhouse. He was reflecting on his loss. All of a sudden, a news team jumped out of the bushed, turned on lights and camera, and held a spontaneous interview. The reporter asked, “Do you have any anger toward the gunman’s family?” He said, “No.”
“Have you forgiven them?” He said, “Yes, I have forgiven them in my heart.”
“How is that possible?” He said, “Through God’s help.” The world just couldn’t believe this. It became the major story of the day: AMISH PEOPLE FORGIVE THE SHOOTER. And their mercy was expressed in more than words. When the gunman’s family gathered for his funeral at the end of the week at a nearby Methodist church, more than half of the seventy-five mourners were Amish. They believed it was the right thing to do. They joined in prayer, sang the hymns, and spoke of their love and support for his widow and family, and their forgiveness of him.
One theologian who wrote of the occasion did his best to explain to the world. When forgiveness is the ongoing practice of Christian people, it shapes everything that they do. They are able to forgive because they know themselves to be greatly forgiven. Because they believe God has forgiven them so much, they are free to forgive others and show great love. And a small piece of Lancaster County looked like heaven on earth. (Donald Kraybill, Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy)
This is the kind of faith that saves us – a faith that we are forgiven greatly, and therefore called upon to love greatly. This is the faith that saves the whole world – and sends us out in peace.
(c) William G. Carter
All rights reserved
Saturday, June 5, 2010
The Compassionate Thing to Do
Luke 7:11-17
Ordinary 10
June 6, 2010
William G. Carter
Through the summer, we will explore that phrase “Thy kingdom come.” The Gospel of Luke will be our main course, offering a diet of stories, parables, and dramatic actions. And the text for today comes from chapter 7:
Soon afterwards [Jesus] went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him. As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town. When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, “Do not weep.” Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, rise!” The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has risen among us!” and “God has looked favorably on his people!” This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country.
I can't think of anything more difficult than losing a child. It ranks at the top of the worst situations we can ever know. And I have seen the situation plenty of times.
My first funeral when I came to town was a young man who started home on a Friday night and never got there. When we gathered for the service, his mother was numb. His sister was angry. Nobody knew what to say, until his mother spoke and said, "This is not right. A mother is not supposed to bury her son." What else can anybody say?
On the evening of my last birthday, after the balloons ran out of gas and the remainder of chocolate cake was covered and put away, I went to sit with a family who had just lost their son. He was a talented athlete. He had everything to live for, but chose not to live at all. We sat together for two and a half hours, most of it in silence. The line into the funeral home stretched around the block. Inside, teenagers draped on one another's shoulders. Over the quiet muzak, all anybody could hear were the sounds of sniffles and moans. The parents stood by the open coffin, shook hands, and said, “Thank you for coming.” What else could anybody say?
On such occasions, we speak carefully. In measured tones, we usually offer a brief word. We say, "I'm sorry for your loss," or "I miss your son," or "I give thanks for his life, and the joy that he brought you." Or perhaps we say something like this: "I don't know what to say . . . but I am here if you need me."
The mother in our Gospel story was surrounded by an entire village. A large crowd stood around her. She had lost her son. We don't know if he died from illness or accident. It didn’t matter. Everybody was there, surrounding his mother in support. God knows, she needed it.
She was a widow. In the Bible’s world, that means she had no income. The neighbors were sympathetic, although many of them prayed privately that they would not become like her. A widow could not work for pay in ancient Israel. She was totally dependent on the kindness of neighbors and remaining members of her family. This woman lost her only son, who had survived with her after his father had died.
What would you say? What is the compassionate thing to say?
As that woman and her crowd moved toward the cemetery, they were blocked by another crowd. Jesus was at the front of that crowd. He saw the coffin on the back of a cart, saw the somber men standing beside it, and saw the widow covered with a black shawl. It was a scene that stirred up deep feelings in the pit of his stomach. That’s where compassion is seated in the human soul: somewhere down deep. It begins to well up and swirl, sometimes physically shaking us into action. As somebody once said, “Compassion is the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else’s skin..” (Frederick Buechner). Jesus was feeling it as he looked upon that scene. We can expect him to speak the compassionate word, to do the compassionate thing.
He is so full of compassion, says Luke, that he looks the widow right in the eye, and says, “Stop crying. Cut it out. No more tears.”
Clearly Jesus would have benefited from visiting a bereavement support group. They would have set him straight. Grief never happens in a straight line. It swirls around. It resists our management. Grieving people should weep whenever they need to. Anything can set off the feelings of loss, so we let them out whenever they come. Keep some extra tissues in your tunic, and don’t apologize.
And the Lord Jesus, so full of compassion, looks at her – looks at them all – and says, “Stop your weeping.” That’s strange. Let me just say it.
He has acted like this before. One day, he was teaching and healing. He was so full of power. Everybody was reaching to touch him. They could feel the healing power, and they saw others all around being cured. And he looked at them and said, “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh” (6:21). That was a strange thing to say, followed immediately with the words, “Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep” (6:25). It almost sounds like he is declaring, “Everybody gets a turn!” If you weep, you will laugh; if you laugh, you will weep; if you weep, you will laugh; and so on.
As a way of testing his own words, Jesus stops a funeral procession in a small, little town. He tells the mother of the deceased to stop her weeping. Then he speaks to the corpse, “Young man, I tell you to get up!” The dead man sat up and started to speak, and Jesus gave him back to his mother.
Now, I can’t explain a story like this. It’s a kingdom story. It comes from that hidden realm where the life-giving God rules over everything, even death. That is how I understand the Gospel word “kingdom” – it’s the place where God is the ruler. Every once in a while, we hear these tales, or we see these visions, and we might believe that life as we know it is not the way life really is.
Over the years, I have taken part in enough funeral processions that I really don’t expect them to be interrupted. You’re born, you live, you die, you stay there – that is life as we know it. I visited a cemetery yesterday. The flowers from Memorial Day are still blooming. They were taken there by people who still grieve for loved ones, who accompanied them to plots and places of rest, and expect their loved ones to stay there.
But there’s the possibility that God has another kind of kingdom, that God is not bound by our rules. It pushes us to stay open to the ways that God truly runs the universe. These are the ways that lie outside of our control, and usually outside of our observation. But Jesus has come to lob them into our lives and awaken us to God’s grace.
Maybe you heard how the priest, minister, and a rabbi were all chatting over breakfast one day. The subject turned to death. Specifically, what do you want people to say at your funeral? The priest thought for a moment, and said, “I want them to look at me and say ‘he lived a holy and joyful life.’” It was the minister’s turn, and she said, “I would like to say ‘she made a difference in the lives of others.’”
As they spoke, the rabbi began to smile. “What about you, Irving?” said the priest. “What would you like them to say at your funeral?” The rabbi said, “I want people to say, ‘I think I just saw him start to move.’”
“Blessed are those who weep now, for they shall laugh.” That is the promise of God’s Kingdom. It is a promise from the future, hurled back toward us. This is how Jesus works, as you know. He is one with the Father, timeless and unbound by our conceptions of time. He brings us these promises from God and God’s future – and he helps us of the time when every sickness is healed, when all the hungry are fed, when injustice is dismantled, when every tear is dried, when life is given back in resurrection.
Jesus works with a backwards power. He is ahead of us – and when we hear of the amazing miracles of scripture, it is as if he throws a piece of the future backwards toward us. A crowd is miraculously fed here and now – it is a glimpse of what is coming for every hungry person. The blind person gains sight – it’s a vision of the Final Vision. A dead person is raised – that is a sign of God’s future, given here and now, for comfort, edification, and anticipation.
So maybe there’s more to compassion than offering a sympathetic ear or a comforting hug. Indeed these are gifts to all whose lives are disrupted by trouble and death. It is compassion, also, to point to a Living God whose ways are better than our own. There is a spiritual reality beyond the mechanics of our culture and the customs of our churches. Jesus calls it “the kingdom.” It is an upside-down, topsy-turvy, forward-backwards realm of grace. It’s a whole new order, whereby Jesus loves the unlovable, heals the incurable, and crowns the wretched of the earth.
His Mama sang about it before he was born: “God will lift those of low degree, and knock the high and mighty off their thrones” (1:52). Her Son began preaching it on the very first day: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to bring good news to the poor, to let the oppressed go free” (4:18-19). And now we are left with this disturbing little tale of a widow who lost her only son, only to have him raised from the dead and placed back into her arms. Something is afoot in the ways of God.
So I invite you to keep your heart open as we move through the summer and discover more about these ways. There’s no telling what a Living God is going to do.
For now, I want to set the Table with some words from a favorite theologian. He is an Episcopalian by the name of Robert Farrar Capon, and he puts all on the line this way:
Jesus came to raise the dead. Not to improve the improvable, not to perfect the perfectible, not to teach the teachable, but to raise the dead. He never met a corpse that didn’t sit right up then and there. And he never meets us without bringing us out of nothing into the joy of his resurrection: you, me… and poor old Arthur down by the docks with his pint of Muscatel in a brown paper bag. We are all dead. And he raises us all . . . because his Word is the word with the ultimate bark, and when he says, ‘Arthur, come forth,’ that’s all old Arthur needs. His nothin’ ain’t nothing no more.
When I preach something like that, I get two reactions. I see smiles. I see faces light up – faces which, in spite of a lifetime’s exposure to the doctrine of grace, seem for the first time to dare to hope that maybe there isn’t a catch to it after all, that even out of the midst of their shipwrecks they are still going home free for the pure and simple reason that Jesus calls them. I see barely restrained hilarity at the sudden perception that he really meant it when he said his yoke is easy and his burden light.
But after the service, in the time it takes them to get downstairs to the coffee hour, the smiles have been replaced by frowns. Their fear of the catch has caught up with them again, and they surround the messenger of hope and accuse me of making the world unsafe for morality. (Robert Farrar Capon, Between Noon and Three: Romance, Law, and the Outrage of Grace, p. 129-130.)
Ah, don’t let the world squeeze you back into its mold. The Kingdom of God is Good News. It is the announcement that death does not have the final word on anything or anybody. Our deadly ways will not reduce the love of God.
In fact, the world tried to shut down Jesus. Nailed him to a cross, put him in a dark hole. But look: here he is – here and now – and he calls us to the banquet hall of his kingdom.
(c) William G. Carter
All rights reserved
Ordinary 10
June 6, 2010
William G. Carter
Through the summer, we will explore that phrase “Thy kingdom come.” The Gospel of Luke will be our main course, offering a diet of stories, parables, and dramatic actions. And the text for today comes from chapter 7:
Soon afterwards [Jesus] went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him. As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town. When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, “Do not weep.” Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, rise!” The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has risen among us!” and “God has looked favorably on his people!” This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country.
I can't think of anything more difficult than losing a child. It ranks at the top of the worst situations we can ever know. And I have seen the situation plenty of times.
My first funeral when I came to town was a young man who started home on a Friday night and never got there. When we gathered for the service, his mother was numb. His sister was angry. Nobody knew what to say, until his mother spoke and said, "This is not right. A mother is not supposed to bury her son." What else can anybody say?
On the evening of my last birthday, after the balloons ran out of gas and the remainder of chocolate cake was covered and put away, I went to sit with a family who had just lost their son. He was a talented athlete. He had everything to live for, but chose not to live at all. We sat together for two and a half hours, most of it in silence. The line into the funeral home stretched around the block. Inside, teenagers draped on one another's shoulders. Over the quiet muzak, all anybody could hear were the sounds of sniffles and moans. The parents stood by the open coffin, shook hands, and said, “Thank you for coming.” What else could anybody say?
On such occasions, we speak carefully. In measured tones, we usually offer a brief word. We say, "I'm sorry for your loss," or "I miss your son," or "I give thanks for his life, and the joy that he brought you." Or perhaps we say something like this: "I don't know what to say . . . but I am here if you need me."
The mother in our Gospel story was surrounded by an entire village. A large crowd stood around her. She had lost her son. We don't know if he died from illness or accident. It didn’t matter. Everybody was there, surrounding his mother in support. God knows, she needed it.
She was a widow. In the Bible’s world, that means she had no income. The neighbors were sympathetic, although many of them prayed privately that they would not become like her. A widow could not work for pay in ancient Israel. She was totally dependent on the kindness of neighbors and remaining members of her family. This woman lost her only son, who had survived with her after his father had died.
What would you say? What is the compassionate thing to say?
As that woman and her crowd moved toward the cemetery, they were blocked by another crowd. Jesus was at the front of that crowd. He saw the coffin on the back of a cart, saw the somber men standing beside it, and saw the widow covered with a black shawl. It was a scene that stirred up deep feelings in the pit of his stomach. That’s where compassion is seated in the human soul: somewhere down deep. It begins to well up and swirl, sometimes physically shaking us into action. As somebody once said, “Compassion is the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else’s skin..” (Frederick Buechner). Jesus was feeling it as he looked upon that scene. We can expect him to speak the compassionate word, to do the compassionate thing.
He is so full of compassion, says Luke, that he looks the widow right in the eye, and says, “Stop crying. Cut it out. No more tears.”
Clearly Jesus would have benefited from visiting a bereavement support group. They would have set him straight. Grief never happens in a straight line. It swirls around. It resists our management. Grieving people should weep whenever they need to. Anything can set off the feelings of loss, so we let them out whenever they come. Keep some extra tissues in your tunic, and don’t apologize.
And the Lord Jesus, so full of compassion, looks at her – looks at them all – and says, “Stop your weeping.” That’s strange. Let me just say it.
He has acted like this before. One day, he was teaching and healing. He was so full of power. Everybody was reaching to touch him. They could feel the healing power, and they saw others all around being cured. And he looked at them and said, “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh” (6:21). That was a strange thing to say, followed immediately with the words, “Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep” (6:25). It almost sounds like he is declaring, “Everybody gets a turn!” If you weep, you will laugh; if you laugh, you will weep; if you weep, you will laugh; and so on.
As a way of testing his own words, Jesus stops a funeral procession in a small, little town. He tells the mother of the deceased to stop her weeping. Then he speaks to the corpse, “Young man, I tell you to get up!” The dead man sat up and started to speak, and Jesus gave him back to his mother.
Now, I can’t explain a story like this. It’s a kingdom story. It comes from that hidden realm where the life-giving God rules over everything, even death. That is how I understand the Gospel word “kingdom” – it’s the place where God is the ruler. Every once in a while, we hear these tales, or we see these visions, and we might believe that life as we know it is not the way life really is.
Over the years, I have taken part in enough funeral processions that I really don’t expect them to be interrupted. You’re born, you live, you die, you stay there – that is life as we know it. I visited a cemetery yesterday. The flowers from Memorial Day are still blooming. They were taken there by people who still grieve for loved ones, who accompanied them to plots and places of rest, and expect their loved ones to stay there.
But there’s the possibility that God has another kind of kingdom, that God is not bound by our rules. It pushes us to stay open to the ways that God truly runs the universe. These are the ways that lie outside of our control, and usually outside of our observation. But Jesus has come to lob them into our lives and awaken us to God’s grace.
Maybe you heard how the priest, minister, and a rabbi were all chatting over breakfast one day. The subject turned to death. Specifically, what do you want people to say at your funeral? The priest thought for a moment, and said, “I want them to look at me and say ‘he lived a holy and joyful life.’” It was the minister’s turn, and she said, “I would like to say ‘she made a difference in the lives of others.’”
As they spoke, the rabbi began to smile. “What about you, Irving?” said the priest. “What would you like them to say at your funeral?” The rabbi said, “I want people to say, ‘I think I just saw him start to move.’”
“Blessed are those who weep now, for they shall laugh.” That is the promise of God’s Kingdom. It is a promise from the future, hurled back toward us. This is how Jesus works, as you know. He is one with the Father, timeless and unbound by our conceptions of time. He brings us these promises from God and God’s future – and he helps us of the time when every sickness is healed, when all the hungry are fed, when injustice is dismantled, when every tear is dried, when life is given back in resurrection.
Jesus works with a backwards power. He is ahead of us – and when we hear of the amazing miracles of scripture, it is as if he throws a piece of the future backwards toward us. A crowd is miraculously fed here and now – it is a glimpse of what is coming for every hungry person. The blind person gains sight – it’s a vision of the Final Vision. A dead person is raised – that is a sign of God’s future, given here and now, for comfort, edification, and anticipation.
So maybe there’s more to compassion than offering a sympathetic ear or a comforting hug. Indeed these are gifts to all whose lives are disrupted by trouble and death. It is compassion, also, to point to a Living God whose ways are better than our own. There is a spiritual reality beyond the mechanics of our culture and the customs of our churches. Jesus calls it “the kingdom.” It is an upside-down, topsy-turvy, forward-backwards realm of grace. It’s a whole new order, whereby Jesus loves the unlovable, heals the incurable, and crowns the wretched of the earth.
His Mama sang about it before he was born: “God will lift those of low degree, and knock the high and mighty off their thrones” (1:52). Her Son began preaching it on the very first day: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to bring good news to the poor, to let the oppressed go free” (4:18-19). And now we are left with this disturbing little tale of a widow who lost her only son, only to have him raised from the dead and placed back into her arms. Something is afoot in the ways of God.
So I invite you to keep your heart open as we move through the summer and discover more about these ways. There’s no telling what a Living God is going to do.
For now, I want to set the Table with some words from a favorite theologian. He is an Episcopalian by the name of Robert Farrar Capon, and he puts all on the line this way:
Jesus came to raise the dead. Not to improve the improvable, not to perfect the perfectible, not to teach the teachable, but to raise the dead. He never met a corpse that didn’t sit right up then and there. And he never meets us without bringing us out of nothing into the joy of his resurrection: you, me… and poor old Arthur down by the docks with his pint of Muscatel in a brown paper bag. We are all dead. And he raises us all . . . because his Word is the word with the ultimate bark, and when he says, ‘Arthur, come forth,’ that’s all old Arthur needs. His nothin’ ain’t nothing no more.
When I preach something like that, I get two reactions. I see smiles. I see faces light up – faces which, in spite of a lifetime’s exposure to the doctrine of grace, seem for the first time to dare to hope that maybe there isn’t a catch to it after all, that even out of the midst of their shipwrecks they are still going home free for the pure and simple reason that Jesus calls them. I see barely restrained hilarity at the sudden perception that he really meant it when he said his yoke is easy and his burden light.
But after the service, in the time it takes them to get downstairs to the coffee hour, the smiles have been replaced by frowns. Their fear of the catch has caught up with them again, and they surround the messenger of hope and accuse me of making the world unsafe for morality. (Robert Farrar Capon, Between Noon and Three: Romance, Law, and the Outrage of Grace, p. 129-130.)
Ah, don’t let the world squeeze you back into its mold. The Kingdom of God is Good News. It is the announcement that death does not have the final word on anything or anybody. Our deadly ways will not reduce the love of God.
In fact, the world tried to shut down Jesus. Nailed him to a cross, put him in a dark hole. But look: here he is – here and now – and he calls us to the banquet hall of his kingdom.
(c) William G. Carter
All rights reserved
Saturday, May 29, 2010
The Very First Thing That God Did
Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
Trinity Sunday
May 30, 2010
William G. Carter
Does not wisdom call,
and does not understanding raise her voice?
On the heights, beside the way,
at the crossroads she takes her stand;
beside the gates in front of the town,
at the entrance of the portals she cries out:
“To you, O people, I call, and my cry is to all that live…
The LORD created me at the beginning of his work,
the first of his acts of long ago.
Ages ago I was set up, at the first,
before the beginning of the earth.
When there were no depths I was brought forth,
when there were no springs abounding with water.
Before the mountains had been shaped,
before the hills, I was brought forth—
when he had not yet made earth and fields,
or the world’s first bits of soil.
When he established the heavens, I was there,
when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
when he made firm the skies above,
when he established the fountains of the deep,
when he assigned to the sea its limit,
so that the waters might not transgress his command,
when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
then I was beside him, like a master worker;
and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always,
rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.
Today is called Trinity Sunday. It comes every year on the week after Pentecost. It is the one day that the church sets aside to ask a really big question: what kind of God do we have? Other Sundays mark special events – the coming of a Savior, the raising of the dead, the visit of the Spirit. We hear curious teachings, dramatic stories, and controversies that Jesus creates and escapes.
So today we pause to think about God. What kind of God do we have?
Each of the scripture texts offers an answer in progress. The Psalm speaks of God the Creator. There isn’t much scientific offered, because God stands outside of the human sciences. We can turn to the sciences to learn how things work. There are mechanical rules and forces like gravity, but we did not design them. We can name each star and chart where we see it, but we cannot make our own stars. In the end, we can only be filled with awe.
And then to think that God even notices us! As the Psalmist sings, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established, what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?” (Psalm 8:3-4)
What kind of God do we have? There is no first-hand description, for no one has ever seen God. The best we have is Jesus, and then we have to figure out the best language to talk about him. He speaks of our ignorance in the Gospel of John, and how we cannot even bear to know everything he has to reveal to us. And that, he declares, is why the Holy Spirit has come: to keep teaching us, to keep guiding us, to keep leading us ever more deeply into the heart of God. God the Father sends God the Spirit to glorify God the Son.
And if that causes your head to spin, you are thinking rightly about the Trinity. We are too small to understand our God, but our God stays in perpetual motion: teaching, guiding, speaking, declaring. Once in a while, we understand a little bit more, because Jesus – through the Spirit – speaks about the Father. (John 16:12-15)
What kind of God do we have? Of the three provisional answers today, my favorite comes from the eighth chapter of Proverbs. The book of Proverbs gives us a poem. It’s an unusual poem. It is not the kind of poem that rhymes, which is a good thing since it’s in Hebrew. Rather, it’s the kind of poem that imagines.
On the very first day of the universe – before God created that first cup of coffee, even before God created “morning” - the very first thing God ever did was to create a playmate. God did not go it alone. God wanted some company. God dreamed up a conversation partner, somebody to bounce off some new ideas. So God created a lady and named her Wisdom. When the first fields were created on the very first planet, God and Wisdom joined hands and skipped through the fields. Daisies sprung up in each of the places they touched down.
When God started hurling the stars into the sky, Wisdom said, “You missed a spot – put one over there!” “In fact,” said Wisdom, “if it’s not too arrogant, how about if you group some of those stars like a metal cup? And over there, how about an archer with a belt?” God said, “What’s an archer?” And Wisdom said, “I guess you had better dream one up!”
This is how it was, when God created the heavens and the earth. God had a good friend to offer some help.
According to the poem, she is very Wise. Her primary ability is to speak. She is incapable of speaking a false word – every pearl on her lips is the absolute truth. One day, she noticed God down by the river bank, scooping up some mud, and shaping it into a Mud Person. God said, “Watch this!” and blew some Holy Breath into the figure’s nostrils. It came alive! Wisdom said, “Is that it? It’s kind of funny looking. Better give it some hair.” So God blinked – and the Mud Creature had hair. Wisdom said, “Oh, come on, be generous! Give it some more hair!” So God blinked again, and Wisdom giggled and said, “I wasn’t thinking you should put any hair on its back.”
Off she bounded, with God right behind. Together they fashioned palm trees, volcanoes, and dung beetles, mountains, oysters, and coyotes. Suddenly Lady Wisdom giggled again. God said, “What’s so funny?” She whispered something into the Creator’s ear, and God smiled. So God said, “Let there be dinosaurs!” and there were dinosaurs. Wisdom laughed, “That will teach those silly creationists.”
This is how it was, when God began to create the heavens and the earth. It was playful. It was fun. Together Wisdom and the Creator dreamed up the three-toe sloth. At first, most of the three-toed sloths of the world were in the French Alps – but they had nowhere to swim, so God flew them down to the rain forests and put them near the pools.
Another day, Wisdom returned from a morning jog. “Just got back from the Garden,” she said, “and I think we have a problem.” God looked up from the telescope he had just created and said, “What’s going on?”
“Well, it’s that hairy Mud Creature of yours. He was trying to catch a squirrel and give it a kiss. It was ugly.”
God sighed and said, “Why can’t he be more like me? The idiot needs a brain.” Lady Wisdom said, “Go one better – make a woman. Consider him as your rough draft.” And it was so.
This is how the Jews imagine God: as playful, as creative, accompanied by the very first work of creation, Lady Wisdom. Listen to what she says: “I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always.” It sounds a bit like the first words of that hymn we like to sing: “I danced in the morning when the world was begun, and I danced in the moon and stars and the sun.” The hymn, as we have it, sings specifically of Jesus – at Bethlehem he had his birth, he danced on a Friday when the sky turned back – that’s Jesus. But hundreds of years before Jesus appeared, the Jews knew God to be a playful presence in the world, taking delight in all creatures, and speaking the life-giving truth.
So when Jesus appeared, people who believed in him already had a language for speaking of him. Jesus is the Wisdom of God – the difference being that there is One God, with Wisdom as a Holy Personality. And just as, in the Jewish imagination, Lady Wisdom danced with the Creator on that first morning, the Triune God – Father, Son, and Spirit – danced in complete community and creativity. This is how Christians imagine our God.
The question today: what kind of God do we have? The poem in Proverbs 8 imagines a God who delights in everything that is made, a God who enjoys the beauty and the intricacy of everything that springs from the Divine Imagination. Elie Wiesel says God made us because God likes good stories – and you and I are full of them.
It’s interesting to me that, over the centuries, Christian doctrine has imagined God in different ways. Often the ways that people depict God say more about the people who are doing the imagining, and the times they are living in, than it does about God. When King James tried to unify the British Empire, he authorized a new translation of the Bible so that everybody in the Empire would be reading one text. He also required an oath of allegiance that declared the Pope had no authority of him, and thought of a dozen ways to give the Puritans a hard time. As far as I can tell, this also seems to be about the time when British Christians started declaring that “God is in control of all things.” Not merely sovereign, but “in control.”
That kind of language, that “controlling” language, is very different than the playful language of our poem in Proverbs. To speak of God as “controlling” is to presume a consistency that the Jewish scripture does not maintain. The God of Israel is elusive, unpredictable, just out of sight – yet very much the force behind all life. God can be experienced as the foundation that will not be shaken, yet equally known as the wind that disrupts and topples. “The Voice of Glory thunders,” says the Psalmist, while at least one prophet met God in “the sound of sheer silence,” otherwise translated “a still small voice.” God is so great as to come anywhere, to speak in thunderclaps and silences, and to say anything. That unpredictability is part of God’s playfulness, and it evokes awe.
But there is also God’s great delight. Not only is God powerful enough to save us, God chooses to do so – because God enjoys what God has made. Listen to the words of Lady Wisdom: “I was God’s daily delight, rejoicing with God always, rejoicing in God’s inhabited world and delighting in the human race.” That tells us more about God and the source of our greatest human hopes.
Yesterday morning was a beautiful morning. For no apparent reason, my wife and I got up early. Pulling on our housecoats, we took mugs of hot coffee to the front porch. A number of you know where I live – it’s a housing development. We chatted quietly, waved to the occasional dog-walker, and commented on how hard they were working. The lawn mowers had not yet started. It was a sleepy morning or so we thought. As we sat there, we began to pay attention.
A Downy woodpecker climbed up a tree, while another peeped around the trunk and said, Boo! Two chipmunks scampered after one another. Jamie said, “Look at that!” and pointed to the plume of a baby squirrel’s tail as it moved through the grass. An indiscriminate bumblebee moved from one flower to another, humming as he went. The roses winked at the day lilies. Antiphonal choirs of birds sang separate symphonies to one another. The coffee grew cold as we took in this spectacle – everything was so completely alive, so completely joyful. We were part of this amazing frolic as the world began to wake up.
It was then that I heard Lady Wisdom say, "When God made the earth, I was God's daily delight, rejoicing always in the inhabited world, and delighting in the human race."
And I can believe it.
(c) William G. Carter
All rights reserved
Trinity Sunday
May 30, 2010
William G. Carter
Does not wisdom call,
and does not understanding raise her voice?
On the heights, beside the way,
at the crossroads she takes her stand;
beside the gates in front of the town,
at the entrance of the portals she cries out:
“To you, O people, I call, and my cry is to all that live…
The LORD created me at the beginning of his work,
the first of his acts of long ago.
Ages ago I was set up, at the first,
before the beginning of the earth.
When there were no depths I was brought forth,
when there were no springs abounding with water.
Before the mountains had been shaped,
before the hills, I was brought forth—
when he had not yet made earth and fields,
or the world’s first bits of soil.
When he established the heavens, I was there,
when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
when he made firm the skies above,
when he established the fountains of the deep,
when he assigned to the sea its limit,
so that the waters might not transgress his command,
when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
then I was beside him, like a master worker;
and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always,
rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.
Today is called Trinity Sunday. It comes every year on the week after Pentecost. It is the one day that the church sets aside to ask a really big question: what kind of God do we have? Other Sundays mark special events – the coming of a Savior, the raising of the dead, the visit of the Spirit. We hear curious teachings, dramatic stories, and controversies that Jesus creates and escapes.
So today we pause to think about God. What kind of God do we have?
Each of the scripture texts offers an answer in progress. The Psalm speaks of God the Creator. There isn’t much scientific offered, because God stands outside of the human sciences. We can turn to the sciences to learn how things work. There are mechanical rules and forces like gravity, but we did not design them. We can name each star and chart where we see it, but we cannot make our own stars. In the end, we can only be filled with awe.
And then to think that God even notices us! As the Psalmist sings, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established, what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?” (Psalm 8:3-4)
What kind of God do we have? There is no first-hand description, for no one has ever seen God. The best we have is Jesus, and then we have to figure out the best language to talk about him. He speaks of our ignorance in the Gospel of John, and how we cannot even bear to know everything he has to reveal to us. And that, he declares, is why the Holy Spirit has come: to keep teaching us, to keep guiding us, to keep leading us ever more deeply into the heart of God. God the Father sends God the Spirit to glorify God the Son.
And if that causes your head to spin, you are thinking rightly about the Trinity. We are too small to understand our God, but our God stays in perpetual motion: teaching, guiding, speaking, declaring. Once in a while, we understand a little bit more, because Jesus – through the Spirit – speaks about the Father. (John 16:12-15)
What kind of God do we have? Of the three provisional answers today, my favorite comes from the eighth chapter of Proverbs. The book of Proverbs gives us a poem. It’s an unusual poem. It is not the kind of poem that rhymes, which is a good thing since it’s in Hebrew. Rather, it’s the kind of poem that imagines.
On the very first day of the universe – before God created that first cup of coffee, even before God created “morning” - the very first thing God ever did was to create a playmate. God did not go it alone. God wanted some company. God dreamed up a conversation partner, somebody to bounce off some new ideas. So God created a lady and named her Wisdom. When the first fields were created on the very first planet, God and Wisdom joined hands and skipped through the fields. Daisies sprung up in each of the places they touched down.
When God started hurling the stars into the sky, Wisdom said, “You missed a spot – put one over there!” “In fact,” said Wisdom, “if it’s not too arrogant, how about if you group some of those stars like a metal cup? And over there, how about an archer with a belt?” God said, “What’s an archer?” And Wisdom said, “I guess you had better dream one up!”
This is how it was, when God created the heavens and the earth. God had a good friend to offer some help.
According to the poem, she is very Wise. Her primary ability is to speak. She is incapable of speaking a false word – every pearl on her lips is the absolute truth. One day, she noticed God down by the river bank, scooping up some mud, and shaping it into a Mud Person. God said, “Watch this!” and blew some Holy Breath into the figure’s nostrils. It came alive! Wisdom said, “Is that it? It’s kind of funny looking. Better give it some hair.” So God blinked – and the Mud Creature had hair. Wisdom said, “Oh, come on, be generous! Give it some more hair!” So God blinked again, and Wisdom giggled and said, “I wasn’t thinking you should put any hair on its back.”
Off she bounded, with God right behind. Together they fashioned palm trees, volcanoes, and dung beetles, mountains, oysters, and coyotes. Suddenly Lady Wisdom giggled again. God said, “What’s so funny?” She whispered something into the Creator’s ear, and God smiled. So God said, “Let there be dinosaurs!” and there were dinosaurs. Wisdom laughed, “That will teach those silly creationists.”
This is how it was, when God began to create the heavens and the earth. It was playful. It was fun. Together Wisdom and the Creator dreamed up the three-toe sloth. At first, most of the three-toed sloths of the world were in the French Alps – but they had nowhere to swim, so God flew them down to the rain forests and put them near the pools.
Another day, Wisdom returned from a morning jog. “Just got back from the Garden,” she said, “and I think we have a problem.” God looked up from the telescope he had just created and said, “What’s going on?”
“Well, it’s that hairy Mud Creature of yours. He was trying to catch a squirrel and give it a kiss. It was ugly.”
God sighed and said, “Why can’t he be more like me? The idiot needs a brain.” Lady Wisdom said, “Go one better – make a woman. Consider him as your rough draft.” And it was so.
This is how the Jews imagine God: as playful, as creative, accompanied by the very first work of creation, Lady Wisdom. Listen to what she says: “I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always.” It sounds a bit like the first words of that hymn we like to sing: “I danced in the morning when the world was begun, and I danced in the moon and stars and the sun.” The hymn, as we have it, sings specifically of Jesus – at Bethlehem he had his birth, he danced on a Friday when the sky turned back – that’s Jesus. But hundreds of years before Jesus appeared, the Jews knew God to be a playful presence in the world, taking delight in all creatures, and speaking the life-giving truth.
So when Jesus appeared, people who believed in him already had a language for speaking of him. Jesus is the Wisdom of God – the difference being that there is One God, with Wisdom as a Holy Personality. And just as, in the Jewish imagination, Lady Wisdom danced with the Creator on that first morning, the Triune God – Father, Son, and Spirit – danced in complete community and creativity. This is how Christians imagine our God.
The question today: what kind of God do we have? The poem in Proverbs 8 imagines a God who delights in everything that is made, a God who enjoys the beauty and the intricacy of everything that springs from the Divine Imagination. Elie Wiesel says God made us because God likes good stories – and you and I are full of them.
It’s interesting to me that, over the centuries, Christian doctrine has imagined God in different ways. Often the ways that people depict God say more about the people who are doing the imagining, and the times they are living in, than it does about God. When King James tried to unify the British Empire, he authorized a new translation of the Bible so that everybody in the Empire would be reading one text. He also required an oath of allegiance that declared the Pope had no authority of him, and thought of a dozen ways to give the Puritans a hard time. As far as I can tell, this also seems to be about the time when British Christians started declaring that “God is in control of all things.” Not merely sovereign, but “in control.”
That kind of language, that “controlling” language, is very different than the playful language of our poem in Proverbs. To speak of God as “controlling” is to presume a consistency that the Jewish scripture does not maintain. The God of Israel is elusive, unpredictable, just out of sight – yet very much the force behind all life. God can be experienced as the foundation that will not be shaken, yet equally known as the wind that disrupts and topples. “The Voice of Glory thunders,” says the Psalmist, while at least one prophet met God in “the sound of sheer silence,” otherwise translated “a still small voice.” God is so great as to come anywhere, to speak in thunderclaps and silences, and to say anything. That unpredictability is part of God’s playfulness, and it evokes awe.
But there is also God’s great delight. Not only is God powerful enough to save us, God chooses to do so – because God enjoys what God has made. Listen to the words of Lady Wisdom: “I was God’s daily delight, rejoicing with God always, rejoicing in God’s inhabited world and delighting in the human race.” That tells us more about God and the source of our greatest human hopes.
Yesterday morning was a beautiful morning. For no apparent reason, my wife and I got up early. Pulling on our housecoats, we took mugs of hot coffee to the front porch. A number of you know where I live – it’s a housing development. We chatted quietly, waved to the occasional dog-walker, and commented on how hard they were working. The lawn mowers had not yet started. It was a sleepy morning or so we thought. As we sat there, we began to pay attention.
A Downy woodpecker climbed up a tree, while another peeped around the trunk and said, Boo! Two chipmunks scampered after one another. Jamie said, “Look at that!” and pointed to the plume of a baby squirrel’s tail as it moved through the grass. An indiscriminate bumblebee moved from one flower to another, humming as he went. The roses winked at the day lilies. Antiphonal choirs of birds sang separate symphonies to one another. The coffee grew cold as we took in this spectacle – everything was so completely alive, so completely joyful. We were part of this amazing frolic as the world began to wake up.
It was then that I heard Lady Wisdom say, "When God made the earth, I was God's daily delight, rejoicing always in the inhabited world, and delighting in the human race."
And I can believe it.
(c) William G. Carter
All rights reserved
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