The Eyes of Experience

Job 42:1-6(10-17) & Mark 10:46-52
Reformation Sunday/ 25th October 2009
Preached at Nassau Presbyterian Church, Princeton, New Jersey

Somewhere along the way, I wish scribes had etched in the text of Job, right here at the start of chapter 42, in big, bold letters: STOP: SILENCE. When we consider Scripture, obviously full of words, and think of our Presbyterian world, also full of words (you have to admit, we really are a wordy bunch), it’s easy to read past, speak over the silence, fail to dwell in the silence before the word. The mystics tell us all wisdom flows from silence and all wisdom leads to silence. Job is all about wisdom; which means silence can’t be far away. Yet, we find a seamless transition from the end of chapter 41 to these extraordinary six verses of chapter 42.

What’s in 41? The culmination of Yahweh’s wild sermons out of the whirlwind, Yahweh’s answer to Job’s unyielding demands for an explanation regarding his suffering. Earlier, Yahweh says to Job: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me. Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me if you have understanding (Job 28: 2-4).” Yahweh cross-examines Job with question after question. The Voice graciously shakes Job’s foundation, shatters everything he assumed – of himself, of his neighbors, his precarious hold on reality, his place in the universe, even his image of the God he thought he knew. On and on Yahweh graciously assaults his sensibilities and his reason, questions everything Job thought he knew about just about everything. And then Yahweh stops at the end of 41. It’s here, just before 42, in this liminal space, I believe, we need silence: hold your tongue, listen, consider, behold. I imagine Job at that point speechless, breathless, gasping for air, in shock. Here before him out of the whirlwind is the voice of the Unnamable One, the Holy of Holies, what Rudolph Otto (1869-1937) called, the mysterium tremendum et fascinans, this mystery that evokes both frightens and fascinates. (1) What do you say in such moments? What would you say? What is there to say?

Then…when the time was right, out of the silence, with humbled conviction born of experience, Job begins to speak. Here is the goal of this wisdom tale, the theological nerve-center of the text, it’s wild and electric like the voice of God. “I know you can do all things,” Job says, “and nothing you wish is impossible.” Then Job verbalizes, as if mumbling to himself the earlier question posed to him by Yahweh: “Who is this whose ignorant words cover my design with darkness?” Job continues: “I have spoken of the unspeakable and tried to grasp the infinite.” Again, he remembers what Yahweh said, “Listen and I will speak: I will question you, please, instruct me.” Then Job finally gets it and says: “I had heard of you with my ears; but now my eyes – my eyes – have seen you. Therefore, I will be quiet, comforted that I am dust.” (2) From silence to silence.

It might be easy to miss the significance of Job’s confession. Many turn to the book of Job searching for answer to the theodicy question, of why the innocent suffer and how can a just God allow it. Sure, in the epilogue we see Job’s life is restored, but if we expect some resolution to these questions we will leave grieving, feeling unsettled. We will leave disappointed and troubled with an image of God who likes to cuts deals with Satan to test us.

But it was the wise William Blake (1757-1827) who centuries ago offered a different perspective that warrants our attention. Blake spent a lot of time with Job’s story, eventually producing those marvelous engravings of scenes from the book of Job. For Blake, the text is less about theodicy than it is about transformation. (3) It’s about the transformation, change, metanoia that occurs when we come to the limits of our knowing and find ourselves confronted by the face of the living God.

You see, prior to the whirlwind, Job’s world revolved around a clear understanding of right and wrong, individuals were rewarded appropriately with blessing or punishment within a retributive system administered by a just God. “Job’s case against God assumes not that the system is wrong …but that God has failed to govern the created order justly.” And so he questions God’s justice. (4) But Job is searched and questioned by God and in the process discovers there is more going on around him than meets the eye.

Then, at the point of exhaustion and desperation Job hits a theological wall. He discovers that the religious view of his community, his friends, his tradition – what he was taught in Sabbath school, as it were – are not equal to the existential challenge facing him. Job’s theological perspective is insufficient to speak to the complexity of his trauma, this man who has been to hell and back, who has seen into the face of the void, lost family, friends, the flesh on his bones, body full of sores and grieving in ashes asking, Why? Why? Why? His trauma calls into question everything. He gets to a point where his understanding of God can no longer yield meaning in the face of such tragedy. While Job never gives up on God, although his wife said, just curse God and die (Job 2:9), and his friends weren’t much help either, in the end he had to give up his old understanding of God and God’s justice in order to yield to something new. He couldn’t do that alone.

There comes a time when we must yield to a “higher intelligibility,” a wider frame of knowing. (5) At one point or at many we all hit that theological wall, when we admit that our perspectives are too narrow and limited. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) once described the work of poetry as “purging the film of familiarity which obscures from us the wonder of our being.” (6) Something of the same is involved when we “see” God. The “film of familiarity” is wiped away and we are transformed and we see something new. Job confronts the inadequacy of his former way of seeing the world. His experience of God then yields a wider, more comprehensive view of reality, of justice, of God. It’s the gracious reframing of the world, the self, even the God he thought he knew for something far more profound and grand and expansive. Job discovers that, “The world is a manifold of intensities each with its created integrity, mystery and even untamable wildness, not to be humanly comprehended or controlled.” (7) It’s the vision that changes everything.

I believe it’s still possible for us to have visions – yes, even Presbyterians (believe it or not). Whether gradually over a lifetime or in the moment, moments of extraordinary insight, numinous, religious experiences like this, of significant power, and terror, and even beauty, when the Holy helps us see what we could not see before, to learn anew. Giving us new “spectacles,” as Calvin (1509-1564) would have said, that allow us to see more clearly in the “theatre” of God’s glory.(8)

To see; that’s the critical point. “I had heard of you with my ears, but now my eyes see you.” More than hearing about God, Job has seen God for himself. After the whirlwind, Job also discovers the inadequacy of a faith that comes only by hearsay, passed on, received passively. It’s been said, “The person who hungers and thirsts after justice is not satisfied with a menu. It is not enough for [one] to hope or believe or know that there is absolute justice in the universe: [one] must taste and see it.” (9) Sure, Job heard all about God, heard about what God was like, and he lived assured in that world until everything fell apart. What he graciously received in the end was not the inherited faith of family or the pious platitudes of well-meaning friends, but something that came through his own existential encounter with God, face-to-face, a journey that only he could take, yielding a wisdom that came not from a distance, but from, through, and within his gut, his heart. It was something of God that couldn’t be taught, it had to be evoked, experienced, encountered.

For those of us in the Reformed tradition, talk about personal experience generally makes us uneasy. There is an ongoing struggle for us between the authority of revelation – that is, God’s insight, wisdom, and grace that comes upon us, that comes from above, that breaks into our lives – and the authority of personal experience. We tend to talk about revelation, maybe it’s safer. Now, I know this is tricky and complicated theological ground. We are right to be skeptical of anything that smacks of individualism or subjectivism. Yet, I fear we’re losing touch with the individual, the personal. Every experience is not of God. Every voice we hear is not of God. Just this week I received a seven-page, single-space letter from someone claiming to be, “The ONLY True Prophet of God,” writing to tell me the “Truth about Muslims, Jews, Catholics, Homosexuals, and Dinosaurs.” Yet, there are people in the church and outside it who want to take their experience seriously, as valid, but don’t know how. There are folks in the church who have had profound religious experiences, but never say a word about it. There are people who want to share what they are learning, like Job, through their ongoing encounter and relationship with God, particularly through Christ, and want to be faithful to it.

I’m particularly sensitive around this issue. Here’s why. In my middler year at Princeton Seminary I took a class on Calvin; I wrote my final paper on the opening sentence of the Institutes (1559), “Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. (I.1.1)” Calvin goes on to say, determining “which precedes and brings forth the other is not easy to discern. (I.1.1.)” Knowledge – for Calvin, an existential apprehension – of ourselves leads to a knowledge of God and from knowledge of God we turn to a true knowledge of ourselves. (10) Well, I was in a state of existential shock when I opened the envelope with my paper in it and saw the red-penciled grade: D-. Now, I had pretty good grades at the seminary, but was struggling in this class, with others (I might add), with a C+ going into the final. So, yes, this means I have a D+ on my transcript from Princeton Seminary in Calvin. What doctoral program would ever admit me? What presbytery would ever ordain me? – I thought my life as a Presbyterian was over! The professor said I didn’t place a sufficient emphasis on revelation in the knowledge of God. Personal knowledge alone is incapable of knowing God. I had another professor look it over and he said it definitely wasn’t a D paper. But, I decided not to fight it.

It was humbling, to say the least. Revelation now plays a significant role in my theology! But after twenty-one years (yikes), I’m still not thoroughly convinced it’s that simple. My own journey has brought me back to this again and again. How we know anything in this mysterious universe is far more complicated than Calvin ever could have imagined. As Stacy Johnson says in his recent book on Calvin, “knowledge of God and knowledge of self are intimately linked.” (11) A true knowledge of ourselves means being real and honest about who we are and aren’t, what we can and cannot know. But our experience still has to count for something: what our hearts know, deep in our souls, all our losses, our traumas, our sufferings, our relationships, our gifts, our personalities, all get caught up in the mix in what we know of God and how we know God. Augustine (354-430) asserted, “To know myself is to know you,” O God. (12) Sure, theology is not biography, but we can’t totally disconnect them. Theology is not anthropology, but we can’t completely sever them in human experience. For what else do we have except our experience, limited as it is?

Sometimes experience of God is prior to dogmatic formulation, experience grounds conviction. In one of her letters, Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964) wisely wrote, "Conviction without experience makes for harshness." (13) We run the risk of becoming exceptionally harsh in emphasizing conviction and ignoring, if not silencing the experience of many sisters and brothers who want to tell us something of Christ's love and what the Spirit is doing in their lives. In my ministry I find that far too many people fail to honor their experience. I have, regrettably, far too many times discounted the value of mine. In his recent book, theologian David Ford suggests in his reading of Job this amazing gift, that God might actually be “pleased with those who refuse to fit new experience unquestioningly into traditional teaching about God, who ask radical questions about God, their experience and their traditions, who never let their desire for the truth of God and God’s justice be quenched, who are open to new possibilities and surprises even in the sphere of their core convictions, and who above all cry out with integrity before God and resist all attempts to misinterpret, marginalize, or stifle that cry. (14)

One person for whom this was powerfully true was Carl Jung (1875-1961), the depth psychologist. I’ll close with this account. Jung’s father was a Swiss Reformed pastor near Basel, but he did not find any life in his father’s faith. Jung was told his First Communion would be a great experience. Instead, nothing. “For me,” he said, “it was an absence of God and no religion. Church was a place to which I no longer could go. There was no life there, but death.” Yet, early in his life he had profound encounters of the Holy that forever changed the course of his life; even though they overwhelmed and scared him, he knew there was power to heal in them, they offered hope, and he spent the rest of his life trying to be faithful to those experiences – despite considerable resistance. He said they were moments of an immediate, “direct living God…,” the God that his father lacked and could not give him. As Jung put it, “God alone was real – annihilating fire and an indescribable grace.” (15) Annihilating fire; indescribable grace. I love that.

Job’s story says: this is what it’s like to encounter the living God, to know God, not know about God. Not someone else’s encounter, not someone else’s story, not someone else’s experience, not a dead tradition, but a living faith. It looks something like this: a life-changing, frame-bending experience of earth shattering significance, radical insight, insight of cosmic proportions that comes over, around, in, through, and to us and opens our eyes – our eyes, not someone’s else’s eyes – and allows us to see reality transformed and transfigured; to see a new world which despite all the pain and suffering and sorrow of our lives still has the capacity to yield meaning; an experience of the Living God that grounds all of our theological claims and creeds, that sets our hearts on fire and fires our imaginations, that sends us down new roads, wherever the Lord wants to take us, following him, like Bartimaeus (Mark 10: 52), with eyes that now can see.

Prayer: Holy One, give us more to see, give us ever more to see. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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Image: William Blake, "Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind," Plate XIII, "Illustrations of the Book of Job" [1823].

Sources:
1. Rudolph Otto, The Idea of the Holy, trans. John H. Harvey (London: Oxford University Press, 1958), 13-30.

2. Stephen Mitchell’s translation, The Book of Job, trans. and with an introduction by Stephen Mitchell (HarperPerennial, 1992), 88.

3. Mitchell’s helpful essay on the meaning of Job, xxix.

4. David C. Hester, Job (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 88

5. James E. Loder, The Transforming Moment, second edition (Colorado Springs, CO: Helmers & Howard, 1989), 216.

6. A Defense of Poetry (182), cited in Paul Bishop, Jung’s Answer to Job: A Commentary (Brunner-Routledge, 2002), 50.

7.David F. Ford, Christian Wisdom: Desiring God and Learning in Love (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 114.

8.John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (1.6.1; 1.14.1); Commentary on Psalm 104:31, cited by William J. Bouswma, John Calvin: A Sixteenth Century Portrait (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 135.

9.  Mitchell, xxvii.

10. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill; trans. by Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960), 1n., 36. On this seeming ambiguity in the relation between divine knowledge and self-knowledge, see Serene Jones, “An Apology for Divine Wisdom,” in Calvin and the Rhetoric of Piety (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995), 87-120.

11. William Stacy Johnson, John Calvin: Reformer for the 21st Century (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 51.

12. Viderim me, viderim te, quoted by St. Teresa of Ávila [1515-1582], The Interior Castle, The Complete Works of St. Teresa, vol.2, trans. and ed. E. Ellison Peers (London: Sheed & Ward, 1957).

13. Flannery O’Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor, Selected and Edited by Sally Fitzgerald (New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1995), 97.

14. Ford, 129.

15. C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Recorded and Edited by Aniela Jaffé; trans. Richard and Clara Winston (New York: Vintage Books, 1973), 57, 73. C. G. Jung, The Red Book (Liber Novus), ed. Sonu Shamdasani, preface by Ulrich Hoerni, trans. by Mark Kyburz, John Peck, Sonu Shamdasani. (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 2009). See Shamdasani’s Introduction, 194.

The Face(s) of God

1 Peter 4: 7-11
28th Sunday in Ordinary Time/ 11th October 2009


“The end of all things is near; therefore be serious and discipline yourselves for the sake of your prayers.” This is an odd juxtaposition. Isn’t it? “The end of all things is near,” Peter believed. Then he tells his church how to live in the interim. What he suggests is really remarkable. It’s not the end of the world ethic we might expect. There’s no, “the end of all things is near,” so go out and enjoy yourself: eat, drink, for tomorrow we die. This is not a command to hunker down in a monk’s cell to get your spiritual house in order, or to remove yourself from the cares of the world. In fact, all the things he directs his church to do are actually the kinds of things one might expect in people who are going to be around for a while.

Instead, this is the ethic Peter gives his community. When Peter says, “be serious,” it’s another way of saying, “Preserve your sanity.” Protect your mind. In other words, knowing that God’s day is coming, use your mind to make proper decisions. Know what’s important, necessary, and know what isn’t. Know proper proportions. Know what you need and what you don’t need. Know how much is enough and how much needs to be given away.

When Peter says, “discipline yourselves,” it’s another way of saying, “Be sober.” In light of the coming day of God, be alert. Don’t be drunk (which is what’s implied in the Greek here). But be responsible, not frivolous and certainly not gloomy. But serious in the sense that everything we do matters to someone, particularly God.

Sanity and sobriety are required for the sake of prayer. For how else can we pray? And, without prayer how else can we discern God’s will for our lives? How else will we be empowered to live the Christian life? Without prayer, how else can we, “maintain constant love for one another,” as Peter urges us then in the text? The word “constant” here implies a love outstretched, reaching out, ever taut with tension, like the muscle of an athlete that is perfectly stretched, as in a race. It means every muscle in one’s body is stretched in a constant expression of movement, of activity – for the Christian, a constant love that even covers and stretches over a multitude of sins. It’s all for the sake of this new kind of love. This is the kind of ethic Peter gives to the community. The end of all things might be near. But then he sends them out.

Be hospitable to one another – without complaining about it (in other words, stop wining). Open your doors, open your hearts to the world, to strangers, because one time you were not part of the church of Christ, expand your heart; one time you were not part of the household of God, one time you, too, were a stranger to Christ. Be responsible to and for one another. Share.

Indeed, “Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received (1 Peter 4:10).” Thus, we have the context for the text our stewardship committee selected for this year’s stewardship season. This is the text we’ve invited to reflect upon, pray about, and discern what it means for us individually.

We probably need to draw out the meaning of this phrase, “like good stewards.” We can only be good stewards when we realize that it means to be a steward. Peter says to the church: think of yourselves as stewards.

In Peter’s day a steward was very important. He might be a slave, but his master’s goods were in his hands. He was trustworthy. There were two types of stewards, the dispensator, the dispenser who was responsible for all the domestic arrangements, all the household supplies. And the vilicus, the bailiff, who was in charge of his master’s estates and acted as landlord to his master’s tenants. “The steward knew well that none of the things over which he had control belonged to him; they all belonged to his master. In everything he did he was answerable to his master and always it was his interests he must serve.” The implication here is obvious: “The Christian lives under the conviction that nothing he or she possesses of material goods or personal qualities is his own; it all belongs to God and one must ever use what one has in the interests of God to whom one is always answerable.”

We’re even asked to be stewards of our words. “Whoever speaks must do so as one speaking the very words of God; whoever serves must do so with the strength that God supplies (1 Peter 4:11).” Would we talk to each other difference, even the daily internal dialog we have with ourselves, if we considered it God’s word? How would we spend our time differently, if we considered it God’s time? How would we share our hearts, gifts, our resources, our money, if we thought of them as God’s gifts, God’s resources, and God’s money which we are saving and investing in order to do God’s work? Remarkable, this is the ethic Peter presents to us.

The “end of all things is near,” is not language we usually hear in Presbyterian circles. Another way of getting at what Peter is saying here is to say, when the end of time comes, when the end of our time comes, when we die, we can say we’ve been happy if we lived our lives in a certain way. Happiness is expanding our love and widening our hospitality and deepening our generosity and strengthening our service and sharing our gifts, all for the glory of God. Happiness is not a life of selfish gain, of hoarding and greedy accumulation, but of joyfully, cheerfully sharing all our resources, our gifts, not as if they belong to us, but as if – because they do – belong to God, entrusted to us, to be shared.

Why? So that God may be glorified in all things through Jesus Christ! We live this way all for the glory of God. Why? Because to live this way is happiness. When we live this way, to the glory of God, we get a glimpse of the very face of God. Because this is God’s way and when we live this way we get glimpse of the face of God in the people we love and welcome and are generous toward and serve.

We all want this kind of happiness. When scripture says, “God loves a cheerful giver (2 Corinthians 9:7),” the Greek is literally, “hilarious.” There’s a part in our souls that really wishes we could live and give this way. We all want to see the face of God. But, there’s a little bit of Ebenezer Scrooge in all of us –fearful, angry, anxious. Like, old Ebenezer, we’re not really happy living this way, not proud of this part of ourselves. We’re not really happy living this way, we want redemption, and we want release. Our souls long to live God’s way, our hearts desire not constriction, but expansion in love, to grow into a new way of being. But it’s just so difficult for us, I’m not sure why. We’re fearful of change. We’re fearful of giving. We’re fearful of not having enough. Maybe we’re unable to really trust, maybe even trust God to provide.

My friend, Carlos Wilton, a Presbyterian minister in New Jersey, tells this story. “In downtown Seattle a few years back – though it could have been any city in this land – a man was walking down the street just a few days before Christmas. He came upon one of those Salvation Army kettles. As he approached the volunteer, an old woman ringing the bell, he felt an unaccustomed spirit of generosity wash over him. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out all his change. He dropped every last coin into the kettle with a smile.

The man turned to leave, but then he stopped. He reached into his back pocket, pulled out his wallet and emptied everything last bill into the kettle as well. Grinning like an idiot, he walked away with a bounce in his step. But about two blocks later, the bounce wore out. Suddenly it hit him! “What have I done?” he asked himself. The man turned around, walked back to the old woman and asked for his money back. He got it, and left again, walking very quickly this time, head down, looking neither to the right nor the left.”

“For two blocks…that man walked in the Kingdom of God. For two blocks he was free of the burden of his possessions. For two blocks he put other people above himself. For two blocks he was self-giving and generous. For two blocks he was blessed; but like most of us, he could not stand the uncertainty that goes with that much blessing. He wanted to continue to think he is in control. He walked back, out of the realm of God and back into the well-worn grooves of his weary world.”

Sometimes it’s scary walking into the Kingdom of God, living the life of Christ, being self-giving and generous. But when we do, we get a glimpse of God. “God is known,” John Calvin (1509-1564) said, “where humanity is cared for.” The face of God is revealed in how we serve one another. When we serve and share we get a glimpse of the face of God.

“…that God may be glorified in all things through Jesus Christ.” This seems to imply that God’s glory is mixed up in all things, in all the stuff of life, in people and all the things that people do. When we are stewards of God’s various forms of grace, then God’s glory is being revealed all around us and in us. That’s what I mean by seeing the face of God – we see God there. And when we are serving one another with all of this grace that’s entrusted to us, we come to see the many faces of God upon all that we do.

The face of God emerges when we’re generous, when we share, when we love – and it emerges in the faces of people who receive what we give and share, in the face of the people we love. I wish I had to power to deprogram that part of our brains that equates stewardship with fundraising and collecting money. Stewardship is not about financial figures on a ledger, but faces. It’s not about not fundraising and budgets, but about faces. It’s about the faces of people whose lives are transformed through the sharing of what’s been entrusted to us. It’s about the faces of people who encounter the face of God when we’re generous.

Think of the faces: Where do you see God’s face in this congregation? Where do you see signs of God’s compassion? God’s face is all over this congregation.

o I see it in you. We see it in one another;
o Read the ‘thank you’ notes on the Mission bulletin board and think of the faces of people whose lives have been changes because your support of this ministry;
o I wish you all could see the face of the children who come down and sit up front for the children’s message, to see the joy on their faces, who hear the gospel and get it;
o Can you see it in the compassion and love found in this community? As we suffer with those who suffer and rejoice with those who rejoice? Personally, I don’t know how people get by without the love and support of the church family.

This week, before you determine your pledge for 2010, before you look what you gave this year and decide what you will give, I invite you to sane and sober prayer. And as you pray, conjure up the faces: the face of the people in this church, over the years, the faces of the people sitting beside you, the faces of our children, try to envision the faces of people around the world who see the face of God in our mission giving, and imagine the faces of people who will become part of this community. It’s about the people – and lives touched and change for the glory of God. Give more than you have in the past. Before you pledge, ask: “Is this gift given to the glory of God?” Then fill out your pledge card – make it a commitment, be bold. It’s your covenant between you and God. Then make your pledge – do it to the glory of God.
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Sources:
William Barclay, The Letters of James and Peter, revised edition (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1976), 251-255.

Carlos Wilton’s sermon, “Hilarious Giving,” in William G. Carter, ed. Speaking of Stewardship: Model Sermons on Money and Possessions (Louisville: Geneva Press, 1998), 72-73.

Calvin’s Commentary on Jeremiah 22:16, cited in William Stacy Johnson, John Calvin: Reformers for the 21st Century (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 13.

Going Global

Psalm 8 & Hebrews 1: 1-4, 2:5-12
World Communion Sunday/ 4th October 2009

As I read over the lectionary text from Hebrews for this morning, I found myself drawn toward certain phrases and images. First, know that this is a very difficult text to preach on because there’s so much going on behind the scenes, so much which needs to be known before one can attempt to interpret it. Scholars think the opening verses are derived from an early Christian hymn known by heart to the first readers. It’s a hymn that makes substantial theological claims, staking out a strong Christology – that is, who Jesus is – not unlike our opening hymn this morning, “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name.” You can almost hear the earliest believers singing something like, “All hail the power of Jesus’ name!/ Let angels prostrate fall;/ Bring forth the royal diadem,/ And crown him Lord of all!” Lord of all – that’s the image that seems to surface for me reading through these days.

There’s an ancient ritual called lectio divina. It’s a way to read scripture devotionally – not as a scholar, but as someone who goes to scripture in order to hear the Word of God, to listen for what God might be saying. It goes something like this: read out a passage aloud or silently and then be attentive to the words or phrases in the text that seem to speak to your heart, or invite your attention, that strike you, that jump out at you. You can do this alone or in groups. It’s a remarkable way to pay attention to what the Spirit might be trying to say to you through the text. It’s a way to listen for God.

On a Communion morning, in a full service, Hebrews is a text that lends itself to lectio divina, a kind of free-association. Indeed, I found my eyes, my heart drawn to a portion of these verses,
“Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds.”

Or this verse, “He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word.”

Or this verse, “when he had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.”

Over and over again, we have this image of Christ who lives with God and reigns over our lives. He’s the same Christ who existed with God at the creation of the world, the same Christ through whom the worlds were created.

This is an extraordinary image of a cosmic Christ whose very presence sustains all things by his powerful hand. Not sustained all things… Not will sustain all things… But, sustains all things by his powerful word – the creative, dynamic, life-bringing Word of God that is spoken through Jesus, the very articulation of which sustains the universe and the very substance of our second-by-second existence in God’s world. This is the Christ who reigns on high over the world, this world in which we live and move and have our being. Highfalutin theology, to be sure.

But is it true? We have a grand, global vision of a universe that is sustained by the benevolence of God, full of the glory of God, as John Calvin (1509-1564) tirelessly tried to show us. How did Calvin do it? In a world such as his, rife with violence, disease (like the plague), and destruction, how could Calvin see God’s glory? How do we? Look at the world around us and what do we see? There’s greed on Wall Street and in the marketplace, violence in the streets (such as Derrion Albert who was beaten to death by a gang of kids this past week in Chicago), deception in the halls of government. It hardly seems like the Son of God is running the show. Think of the tsunamis that devastated Samoa and American Samoa this week. On this World Communion Sunday when our eyes turn from our local congregation to our bonds with the global church, to sisters and brothers around the world who share our love for Christ, many of whom suffer at a level we cannot even begin to imagine. So often peace and justice do not kiss (see Psalm 85:10), but extends fists of defiance. From global warming to the torn fabric of society to the broken places of the human heart, all creation seems to be under the sway of tragic evil.

The author of Hebrews was not oblivious to this apparent contradiction. A mature faith lives with contradiction. He wasn’t blind to the political and social circumstances of his day. He could affirm that nothing is outside God’s control, and yet, at the same time, realistically confess that everything is not the way it will be. “But we do see Jesus,” the text says. “But we do see Jesus (Hebrews 2:9).”

And what have we learned, we who have seen Jesus? As royal subjects of the one who reigns in love, we have a special place in God’s world or kingdom (as Jesus would have said) or realm of God. We are children of God, crowned with glory and honor. And so my eye was drawn to this verse, “It is fitting that God, for whom and through him all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For the one who sanctified and those who are sanctified all have one Father. For this reason Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters… (Hebrews 2: 10-11)”

Where do we know that God is present in the sufferings and sorrows of the world? When we see Jesus – the Pioneer of our faith one who defeated death and sat down in Majesty on high (Hebrews 1:3).

We don’t say this lightly or as pious platitude. Jesus’ experience of human sin and suffering, because it is God who knows our suffering, paved the way for God to be present to us, God’s children, even and maybe especially when we suffer. Why doesn’t God just remove all the suffering? I don’t know. We don’t know. There’s no answer to that question. But what we do have is the knowledge that God, through Christ, is present to us in our suffering. The resurrection and exaltation of Christ on high means that suffering will never have the last word in God’s kingdom, death will not have the last word. For the sake of God’s children, God is working through the suffering of the world, through our pain and our sorrow, in order to redeem and save.

And so my eyes were drawn to this text: “I will proclaim your name to my brothers and sisters, in the midst of the congregation I will praise you (Hebrews 2:12).” We join arms with our brothers and sisters here and around the world, united in our sufferings, sharing our sorrow, but also sharing our praise and united in our affirmations.

Later on in Hebrews, the author tells us, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1).” Yes, the needs of the world are immense and it might appear to our eyes God is not providentially caring for us. But “we do see Jesus” and see in him the promise, God’s promise, that God will never leave us or forsake us – or this beloved world that Christ died to save.

We come to the Lord’s Table on this World Communion Sunday with the hope that we do see Jesus – will again or for the first time – to meet him here in the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup, to meet him here in one another, and then we will be sent out to see him at work in the world.

We do see Jesus and through him can see the world anew; not as others see it, but as Christ sees it; not the world as it is, but the world, by God’s grace, as it shall be – as it shall be.
Thanks be to God.
_____________
Hymn text: Edward Peronet (1726-1792) first published in the Gospel Magazine in England, 1779.

The Word on the Street

Luke 24: 15-25
Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time/ 27th September 2009

Earlier this month I was San Juan, Puerto Rico, for two and half days – not on a mini-vacation, not to soak up some rays at the beach, but as part of a task force visiting el Seminario Evangélico de Puerto Rico, an ecumenical Protestant seminary, 90 years young, with strong foundational ties to the Presbyterian Church (USA). Why was I there? For the past six years I’ve served as an elected member of COTE – the Committee on Theological Education of the General Assembly. My last meeting will be this November in San Francisco. I chair the elected members of the committee and am convener of the task force formed to reaffirm and revise the General Assembly’s covenantal relationship with the Evangelical Seminary of Puerto Rico. The covenant will be reaffirmed when the General Assembly meets this July in Minneapolis.

One evening we had dinner in Old San Juan and afterward walked around the streets of the colonial city, founded by Ponce de Leon in 1521. Almost every building from the colonial era, with its strong Spanish influence, has balconies with elaborate grill work which overlook the street. Looking up at those balconies and then looking down at the street, I remembered something I read in the works of John Mackay (1889-1983). Mackay was president of Princeton Seminary in the 1940s and 1950s. That evening I was walking with the current president, Iain Torrance, which probably also to trigger the memory. Mackay was a truly great leader of the church, one of my heroes. He was a brilliant theologian who famously denounced McCarthyism in a “Letter to Presbyterians” in November, 1953, which both The New York Times and The Washington Post commended in an editorial. Mackay actually preached here in Catonsville, from this pulpit. In the 1930s Mackay studied existentialism in Spain with the Christian philosopher, Miguel Unamuno (1864-1936). It was in Spain that he came to these thoughts.

In one of his books Mackay compares two perspectives – the perspective from the balcony and the perspective from the road. The balcony, often attached to the front of Spanish buildings, above the heat, the dust, and the stench of the road, allowed you to look down upon the street without getting too close. From the balcony, you watch the world go by from a distance. He saw the Balcony as a symbol of the soul, as a perspective some have of life. He contrasted the Balcony with the perspective one has from the Road, of how the world is viewed from the road. This, too, is a state of the soul – the soul literally grounded, in Christ. “By the Road [we] mean the place where life is tensely lived,” Mackay wrote, “where thought has its birth in conflict and concern, where choices are made and decisions are carried out. It is the place of action, of pilgrimage, where concern is never absent from the wayfarer’s heart. On the Road a goal is sought, dangers are faced, life is poured out.” Mackay called Christians to come down from the balcony – into the highways and byways, the lanes and alleys and roads of the world – stop letting life pass you by, stop being a spectator, and get from the balcony onto the road, get involved with people where they live.

The highways and byways, the lanes and alleys, the streets and roads where people – all people live – that’s where the dinner host in Jesus’ parable sends his servant. We find this parable in Luke situated among Jesus’ teachings about hospitality and welcome, about the cost of discipleship, of the need to be salt in the world, and other parables about what the kingdom of God is like – parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the prodigal son. Parables, all, of being lost and found, of being welcomed in and included, of invitations extended to live in God’s new world being formed in Christ – and the cost and, therefore, resistance we experience in living out God’s mission.

Jesus’ parable came as a response to a dinner guest who says with an elitist air of privilege, “Blessed is the one who will eat bread in the kingdom of God.” Blessed – happy – indeed – assuming, of course, he’ll be at the table! Then Jesus tells this parable that pierces through his pious pronouncement. Truly, blessed is the one who eats bread in the kingdom of God. But don’t be surprised when you see who is in the kingdom of God, Jesus says. So he tells this parable of a great banquet with many guests invited. You know the story – they all come up with excuses why they can’t get to the party (implied here are also the excuses we give for not getting to worship). All the excuses involve an excessive entanglement with possessions and personal involvement – being just too blasted busy. They have other things of interest, other concerns occupying their time. The people making excuses are all wealthy – they purchased land, ten oxen is a significant investment. The only justifiable excuse, and just barely, is being a newlywed.

Furious, the host sends the servant out with a new guest list. Those with excuses won’t eat bread in God’s kingdom – because they don’t value fellowship with the host over the value they place on everything and everyone else. Instead, the host goes radical – of course, Jesus goes radical in the thrust of the parable. Go out into the streets and lanes –not where the privileged live in their big homes (probably with balconies) – and invite “the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.”

The host is not simply being charitable to these folk in need. It’s far more radical than that. You see, what we need to know is that all of these people – the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame – are all people in Jesus’ time who would have been considered unacceptable to God, because their conditions and illnesses were signs of God’s judgment for some assumed sin in their life. They would not have been on anyone’s invite list – and certainly not on God’s Kingdom Guest List. In fact, we know from the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in the 1940s, written by the Jewish Essene community at Qumran, these contemporaries of Jesus, living in the wilderness to the east of Jerusalem along the Dead Sea state explicitly that the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame would be excluded from the eschatological banquet feast of God at the end of time. But they’re not excluded in Jesus’ vision of God’s Kingdom – and not in his church! This is a significant and radical undoing of the norm.

The invitation is extended indiscriminately – to those rich and well-fed and full of excuses, but also to the hungry, the poor – to all people in all circumstances. Everyone is invited. However, Jesus is pretty clear which ones he thinks will be more receptive to his invitation. It’s the person who acknowledges lack, who comes empty; who confesses need, insufficiency, weakness, brokenness, the one who has had a rough and difficult life is most open to God’s invitation and gathers for bread at the Lord’s table.

The point is clear for Luke – here and throughout his Gospel and Acts: Jesus came for the people who are generally not on the invite list, those who are unwanted, the outcasts, the people the world leaves out, forgets, ignores, doesn’t care for, excludes, judges, people who are feared because they are deemed different, particularly by the people in power. Everyone on Jesus’ second list is powerless and marginalized. These are the people Luke tells us who are to be invited into the life of the church, because it’s for them that Christ has come into the world, to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, the recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free (see Luke 4: 18-19!). Jesus is basically saying, “Fetch all the people on the street without discrimination.” We know that this parable is very old, going right back to Jesus. It’s also found in the Gospel of Thomas (c. 140 A.D.), which is a collection of sayings with no narrative. (The manuscript was found in Egypt in 1945. ) In it we find Jesus saying, “Invite whom you find (Saying 64).” That’s what happens.

When the poor, the cripple, the blind, and the lame come into the banquet hall – which is the church – they discover that in God’s kingdom “there is still room.” “There is still room.” So, the host sends out the servant, “Go out into the roads and the lanes, ….” Implied in the Greek here are the hedges or fences along the road where the homeless poor camped out, seeking shelter. It’s as if the host is saying, leave no inch of ground uncovered. “Go out…and compel, persuade (there’s even a sense of urgency in the invitation) people to come in, so that my house may be full.” Friends, behold the extraordinary generosity of our God! This is what God’s amazing kingdom is like: and it’s the vision, the mission that must inform the work of the church, the church as an agent of the kingdom!

Our gracious Host wants the banquet hall to be full, for the invitation to be extended, for the church to reach out on the road where people live. For us to reach out…to extend the invitation.

Extending the invitation – that’s a good definition of evangelism, that “E” word that stirs panic in most Presbyterians. Yesterday, I was on the phone with my good friend, Christy Waltersdorff, a Church of the Brethren minister, serving a church in Lombard, IL. I asked her what she was preaching on today. She said, “Leadership.” She asked me. I said, “I’m preaching on evangelism.” To which she said, “OH – Scary.”

Extend the invitation to all people, indiscriminately, to come and share with us what God is doing in our lives and in this church and in the world. Come and be part of God’s good news. It’s not our responsibility whether or not folks respond. We have no power over that. That’s God’s work, the work of the Spirit. But we are called to extend the invitation – otherwise how else would people know they’re invited? How else would people on the outside of the church know it’s safe to come here, that visitors are expected and welcomed? How else would people know what we’re about and the work God calls us to if we don’t invite them?

Did you know that in countless surveys and studies of why people decide to go and eventually join a church, there’s one factor that always emerges as primary, above all others? People join a church not because of its choirs, organist, music director, or music program; not because of the beautiful sanctuary and modern facility; not because of the preaching in the pulpit or the pastoral care; not because of the Christian Education program or ministry with youth; not because of its mission work or its presence in the community; not because of its adult education offerings; and not because the church is friendly. The number one reason a person attends and eventually joins a church is because someone – a member of the church, whom they know and trust – invited them to worship.

You might be thinking to yourself – wow, that’s impressive. I wish I could do my part and invite someone to worship. What can I do? Glad you asked!

We’re going to embark on a little adventure as a church, sponsored by the Outreach Committee with the help of the Vision Task Force. On Saturday morning, November 14, we’re going to walk through the streets and roads of Catonsville, going door-to-door, and inviting our neighbors – if they’re not already part of a worshipping community – to join us. We’re not going out to convert anyone or engage in theological debate. We’ll have door hangers with a simple message about the church to leave behind; we’re simply inviting people to join us. We’ll gather for some training, pray, go out in twos, and then return back to share our experiences. This might be ambitious, but I would love us to have about thirty people volunteer, people who are comfortable talking with strangers, people eager to offer a happy, smiling face of Catonsville Presbyterian to the community. Give it a try. Teenagers are of course welcome. It might be something you wish to do as a family. And you’ll even get some exercise out of it. Sure, you might be nervous about doing something like this (most calls from God make us nervous). It might even sound un-Presbyterian (that might be a good thing). We need to step out of our comfort zone as a church. All we’ll be doing is going out to invite people to come in that God’s house might be full. Pray about. Ask God if this is something you need to do.

The Sri Lankan evangelist, and ecumenical leader, D. T. Niles (1908-1970), once defined evangelism as “one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.” That’s also a good definition of Christianity. From that perspective, we’re all beggars, hungry to be fed at the Lord’s table, inviting fellow-beggars to the table. Not a bad image to keep in mind this week as we prepare to break bread and share the cup at the Lord’s Table on World Communion Sunday. “Blessed – happy – is the one who will eat bread in the kingdom of God.” Happy indeed.

_______________
Sources:
John A. Mackay, A Preface to Christian Theology, Introduction by John Baillie (London: Nisbet & Co, Ltd., 1945), 30.
Luke Timothy Johnson, Sacra Pagina: The Gospel of Luke (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1991), 228-233
The Gospel of Thomas is known as a New Testament apocryphon. This Coptic papyrus manuscript was discovered in Nag Hammadi, Egygpt.

Photo: Catonsville Arts and Crafts Festival along Frederick Road, September, 2008.

Explorers, Not Mapmakers

Proverbs 3: 13-18 & Luke 2: 41-52
25th Sunday in Ordinary Time/ 20th September 2009

“Are we there yet?” How many times have we heard these words anxiously echoed from the back seat of the car or min-van? Perhaps it was just this past summer. Can you remember saying the exact same words as a child? “Are we there yet?” We know how frustrating it is to hear this question (particular if you’ve only driven around the corner on the start of a very long journey). I learned that in Eric and Tara Ebersole’s household the question, “Are we there yet?” was answered with, “Yes, we are. Now get out!”

But there’s also something about the getting there, no matter where “there” is, that is frustrating for us, no matter our age. We don’t like that feeling of being between places, not home, not at our destination: en route. Other times we’re in a rush to arrive, only to ask, “What was the rush?” We’re destination focused, as we should be. We all need to have a sense of the direction toward which we’re moving. Sometimes, however, we’re so obsessed with the destination, rushing to get where we need to be, that we miss out the joy of the journey. Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) said it so well, “To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.” (Virginibus Puerisque, 1881)

From the beginning the Christian life has been viewed as a journey – with a definite destination in mind, yet an expedition with many roads all leading to the Celestial City. The earliest followers of Jesus were not called Christians but as we glean from John’s gospel and from Acts, they were known as the Way (Acts 9:2). Jesus himself said, in John, “I am the Way, and the truth, and the life (John 14:6).” It was understood that to follow Jesus meant to follow the one who is the Way, it meant to walk with the Way, on the way, on the road of faith, of discipleship, of the cross, of servant-hood – the life Jesus bids us welcome when he says, “Follow Me.”

“Are we there yet?” What does the Christian say? No. We’re on the way. Whenever someone asked my grandmother, Ann, “How are you?” She often gave this memorable response, “I’m getting there.” She never let on where “there” was, but she was on the way. The same is true for us in the life of faith. None of us are there yet. Perhaps if someone asks you, “Are you a Christian?” the best response, honest respond might be, “Not yet, but I’m getting there.” This is not to suggest that we are earning our salvation or working our way there without grace, but that we are on the way to becoming who Christ knows us to be.

It’s important to remember we’re not there yet. Sure, we might be baptized, we can declare our pedigree: attended church school (even with perfect attendance, like I had), confirmed member of the church, serve the church, attend worship regularly, serve as an elder, deacon, trustee, maybe even a minister of Word and Sacrament. We can recite by memory and confess with all integrity every article of the Apostles’ Creed. You might know your Reformed theology and your Bible. Work tirelessly in mission. Give generously to the church, even tithe, more than tithe. But all of this doesn’t come close, part but not all of what it means to be a disciple – a student of Jesus Christ; it doesn’t come close to understanding what it means to be a follower of the Lord.

I loved the quote Dorothy Boulton selected for last week’s bulletin on Kick-Off Sunday, by the great Presbyterian theologian, Robert McAfee Brown (1920-2001), “BE IT HEREBY ENACTED that every three years all people shall forget whatever they have learned about Jesus, and begin the study all over again.” I uttered, “Amen,” during the sermon – maybe I should have spoken up and said it louder (saying, “Amen” during a Presbyterian sermon, is allowed, by the way). We can’t assume we know. What’s required, especially in our age full of intellectual and theological arrogance, is humility of knowledge, we need to be able to say – as an expression of a mature faith – “I don’t know and I’m eager to learn, I’m eager to discover.” We can’t assume that we have this faith all figured out. To be a disciple of Christ means to be a student, with Jesus as the teacher. It means to be constantly open to the new thing to be learned as the foot of the master.

I loved Dorothy’s sermon last week. She beautifully lifted up themes that are so central to the Christian life and needed in the life of the church today, themes of considerable significance for me as a Christian and as a pastor. Being a Christian is not about simply learning facts and reciting creeds and ideas and beliefs, cramming all this “data” in our heads and then spitting them out when needed. That might be religion, but it’s not faith – an active, dynamic, living, breathing faith that comes through a relationship with God in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. That’s completely different. Like any relationship, we come to know the other by relating and encountering and listening to the other over time, we come to deeper knowledge through the relationship. That’s the way it is with the Spirit. The Christian life is a relationship over time.

Are we there yet? Are we, as a church and as individuals, fully embodying Christ’s message and love in every aspect of our lives? Are we so confident that we have God all figured out? Are we so confident we fully understand who Jesus is and what he expects of us and wants for us and for the world? Of course not – and, I would go so far to say, “And give up trying! Enjoy the journey!”

There is never a point of arrival (at least not in this life). Not only are we people of the Way, we are also people walking with the Way, on the way to the life Christ dreams for us, individually and together. The Christian life is a dynamic experience, we’re always on the move, filled with curiosity and questions, eager to learn (as we see in Jesus learning and then teaching in the temple), continuously searching for wisdom (as we see in Proverbs), searching for deeper insight into the depths, with a hunger for meaning, never satisfied with the surface, with things as they, ever open to what can be, of what is to be discovered in new territory.

Luke gives us just one verse to sum up Jesus’ development from adolescence to adulthood: “And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.” (Torrance) Jesus life becomes the pattern for our own, who shows us what it means to be human and human in relationship with God. In and through the relationship over time with him comes the wisdom and knowledge. The literal meaning of “increased” here means, “beat his way forward blow by blow,” as in a struggle. This is what Jesus experienced, and what he experienced for us, and what we experience when we’re in him, growing with him, maturing in wisdom with him.

Are we there yet? Of course not, thank God, but we’re on the way – or can be with the Spirit’s leading. The Christian life is not static, but dynamic, words like growth, development, transformation, change, process, movement, journey, adventure describe our experience in Christ, these words are part of the Christian vocabulary they inform our reality, they shape the rhythm of our days. We’re on the way – we need to be on the way.

But it has to be our journey, along our own road. You can’t walk someone else’s journey, it has to be yours. My journey is not yours and yours isn’t mind, but we can learn something about the experience and help one another along the way as companions in the journey. We need to take responsibility for our growth, inner growth and outer; it’s why we offer adult education. Growth is expected – venturing out, studying scripture, deepening prayer life, engaging in worship, reading, listening, doing, growing up and growing down, exploring out inner lives – ever growing in wisdom and understanding. It’s so critical that we move beyond the faith we had as a child. The faith we had a child is great, but it’s not sufficient to speak to the complexity of life, or when tragedy strikes, or when we experience suffering, or try to make sense of our circumstances or the world as adults with the faith perspective we gained as children. It’s not sufficient. It’s why throughout Paul’s letter he was always encouraging his churches to move from a liquid diet to solid food (1 Corinthians 3: 1-4). Setting our face forward, we strive for the goal of the upward call in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3: 13-14). We set our face forward and move.

When Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) moved his massive, conquering army across Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan, he was confronted by a frightening sight. The army emerged through a dense forest and before them stood the Himalayan Mountains – and they stopped there awestruck and afraid. While they conquered every enemy in their path, there was one more fear to face – the unknown. You see, they arrived at the edge of the known world. They marched clear off the map. There was no map for the territory beyond that point. Alexander’s commanders wanted to return and go back. But then Alexander spoke and said, “Every army in the history of the world has always been tempted to go back to what it has known, and we can do that if you want. But, a truly great army will always march off the map and conquer new worlds. We have a choice – we can be an army that turns back to what is familiar, or we can be a truly great army and march off the map and conquer new worlds.” They marched off the map. That’s a powerful image. This is always the choice before us as Christians and as a church, isn’t it? We can be tempted to turn back to what is familiar, or we can be faithful and march off the map and explore and discover new worlds.

That’s the image that George MacLeod (1895-1990) has given us, the progressive, visionary founder of the Iona Community and the one responsible for the restoration of Iona Abbey. On Friday evening, the pastor of Dickey Memorial Church, Liz Johnson, married, Scott Blythe, a Scot, a pastor, and a member of the Community – so were his three groomsmen. It was a real honor and joy talking with them about the Community, group of about 200 scattered through the world who continue the work Macleod started. Macleod was a liberal-progressive-evangelical-mystic-Presbyterian-Christian. I remember reading these words from his biography, on the plane back to New York after having lived in Scotland for the year, 18 years ago. They struck me then and continue to shape me. They offer a vision of what it means for us to be Christian, to be church, to be faithful. “For Christ is a person to be trusted, not a principal to be tested. The Church is movement, not a meeting house. The faith is an experience, not an exposition. [And] Christians are explorers, not mapmakers.” Not mapmakers, but explorers led by the Spirit of the Risen Christ toward God’s redemptive vision of the world. May it be so.

____________
Sources:

Robert McAfee Brown, The Bible Speaks to You (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1985), 87.

Thomas F. Torrance, Theology in Reconstruction (London: SCM Press, 1965), 132.

I’m grateful to Theodore J. Wardlaw, president of Austin Theological Seminary, Austin, Texas, for this illustration. “Remembering Who We Are,” sermon preached July 8, 2009, Montreat, North Carolina.

George Macleod, first printed in the Coracle, 1942. Cited in Ronald Ferguson, George MacLeod: Founder of the Iona Community (HarperCollins, 1990), 195.

Seeing the World through the Heart

Daniel 10: 2-20a & Matthew 6: 22-23

Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time/ 23^rd August 2009

 

    It's easy to skip right over these verses in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. Coming after the Lord's Prayer, these verses are among Jesus' short aphorisms or sayings, quick teachings. They are embedded between the well-known warning against storing up treasures on earth and how a disciple cannot serve both God and wealth (6:19-21), followed by Jesus' invitation for us to consider the lilies of the field, how they neither toil or spin with anxiety, but grow trusting in the providence of a loving Father (6: 24-34). Wedged into between these admonitions is a two-verse teaching about sight, which is easy to miss and misunderstand, easy not to see. So let us look.

"The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness."

Now, if you're an ophthalmologist or optometrist, you probably would question this verse, because Jesus' description of how the eye works is biologically, clinically incorrect. Today, we understand the eye as a receptacle of light. The eye is a window that lets light in. Eyes are organs that detect light and send signals along the optic nerve to the brain. Sight is contingent upon the ability of light to get into the eye. That's why cataracts and other obstructions need to be removed in order to improve sight.

But how can the son of God who had a role in creating you and me not know how the eye works? There's obviously more going on here than meets the eye.

First of all, Jesus was merely reflecting the ancient understanding of how the eye actually works. They believed that the eye itself was a lamp, the actually source of light. There are several similar references in scripture, also within paganism. We find in Proverbs, "The light of the eyes rejoices the heart, and good news refreshes the body (15:30)." The source of that light or lamp was deep within the self. The inner light that was mediated through the eyes and then projected out upon an object that accounts for seeing. The better the inner light meant the better the lamp of the eye, which meant the better one's view of the world.

Now if the inner light was bad or unsound the lamp of the eye would be unsound and dull, as well, which meant it would be difficult for you to really see the world with any clarity An unsound inner light results in confusion – because you can't see – and eventually darkness. This means that even in broad daylight, if your inner light was unsound or full of darkness, your perception of the would could still be distorted. Just imagine then how dark it would be if the inner lamp of your eye were dark, so that you could see, but not really see. You would have vision, but not sight or insight. Your entire world would be distorted, your perspective perverted. For it is possible to walk with vision, but not really see. From a theological perspective, it is possible to see, but really be blind.

Just before offering these words about seeing, Jesus says, "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also (6:21)." To talk of one's heart was Jesus' way of describing the core of the self, the inner self or psyche or soul, who we really are. Jesus makes a connection between the inner light and heart; there is also a link between one's heart and one's ability to see. To put it another way, Jesus says the one who follows him in the kingdom sees with and through the heart. The Christian sees with the heart, through the heart.

When the heart is transformed by the grace of God we then look out with compassion upon the world. When hard, cold, indifferent hearts are warmed by God's love our outlook changes. When the human heart suffers and even breaks, we then look out and see the suffering and brokenness all around us to which formerly we were blind. When the heart has been quickened by a sense of the overwhelming mystery, majesty, and generosity of God, we then look out to the world struck by the sheer beauty and giftedness of life. The old world is renewed over and again by the renewing of our hearts. Everything is refigured and transfigured when we look at everything and everyone in the world with hearts rooted in God's love for us,

This is why Christians see the world differently from everyone else – it's what happens when we see with our hearts convicted by grace, seeing with the heart of God, so that God's concerns, God's heart, become the concerns of our hearts. For those in the Kingdom of God everything looks different. The Christian perceives the world with a unique kind of depth that has its origins deep within the heart renewed and renewing by Christ. And, the resurrection changes how we view everything. This morning we will close worship with an Easter hymn that speaks of the changed perspective the resurrection brings. Even our attitude toward money changes when hearts are transformed. All of life becomes aligned with the generosity of God and we see the abundance set before us.

Do you see the world with your heart, through your heart? Psychologists, since Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and Carl Jung (1875-1961), have shown us that what we see or don't see – within us, in others, of reality – has to do with what's going on in our hearts and brains. Reality is malleable; it isn't fixed.

Contemporary physics is showing us that to a considerable degree the world becomes as we see it. There's a whole lot going on in front of our eyes but we cannot see it. We only see what we want to see. "This is because we only see what we believe is possible and what we deem possible is contingent upon patterns of learned behavior."

"For example, there is a story of what it was like when [Christopher] Columbus' [c.1451-1506] ships first arrived in the Caribbean. The people of the islands could not see the ships sitting out there on the horizon, because it was unlike anything they had ever seen before. There was no knowledge in their brain, [no framework,] no experience of what clipper ships looked like. The shaman, the religious leader, stood along the shore looking out at the horizon and noticed some ripples out in the ocean, but no ship. He didn't know the cause of the ripples. So he went out for several days and looked and looked and looked until eventually he began to see the ships. [The ships came into focus.] The shaman went and told others and because they placed their trust in him, they also began to see the ships." I learned about this account from watching the movie, "What the Bleep Do We Know," which if you haven't seen it, go and rent it (or buy it, which is what I did after renting it). It's full of similar examples.

This is a powerful illustration. Even though light was getting into their eyes, they still couldn't see the ships. Maybe Jesus knew more about quantum physics and the physical make up of the world than he let on. There's more going on around us all the time. We see what we believe is possible. We live in a participative universe; to a remarkable degree, the world becomes exactly what we bring to it. Jesus brought and brings us a new vision. Jesus brught and brings something new to the world and he invites us to see what he sees.

How are we seeing the world? If the inner eye of the heart is dark, then the world becomes very dark indeed. How about us? What are we looking at, but not seeing? Is God's abundance and presence at work, right in front of you, yet invisible? Can you see in the person beside you? At work in this church? Is God's calls before us, but we fail to see it? Are the needs of suffering people all around, but we cannot see them? What prevents you from seeing? Like the natives trusting the shaman, we need to trust Jesus' vision of the world and live into it. He will help us to see – because we need help to see. We each have blind spots.

We need visionaries, and artists, and poets who give us more to see. We can be especially thankful for the sharp, discerning eye of the poet.

The Nobel laureate, Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004) had a great eye. He was a Christian and looked out upon the world with such a view. He could find the ordinary as the occasion for extraordinary praise and wonder. Listen and "see" how he catches an ordinary street scene:

But a paraplegic in my street

Whom they move together with his chair

From shade to sunlight, sunlight to shade,

Looks at a cat, a leaf, the chrome on an auto,

And mumbles to himself, 'Beau temps, beau temps.' [Beautiful time.]

It is true. We have beautiful time

As long as time is time at all.
 

For the paraplegic every living thing is the occasion for praise – beau temps, beau temps. So beautiful, beautiful time that allows us to see. The paraplegic sees what most of us overlook and Milosz helps us to see the paraplegic, whom we might have missed. Like Jesus, he calls us to see.
 

And when we see – really see the kingdom before our eyes – we know it and everything changes with it. We finally see what we've been missing. Suddenly there is an illumination and what is illuminated is nothing less than shear beauty.
 

Ten years ago the provocative movie "American Beauty" was released, with a brilliant screenplay by Alan Ball and directed by Sam Mendes. It's a disturbing film, provocative. It's certainly not for everyone and I wouldn't recommend it for everyone. Yet, there are so many poignant and gripping scenes in that movie which wake you up and force you to see reality in a new way.
 

At one point one of the leading characters is murdered, shot. While looking at the life drain away from his body, we hear his voice floating over the images of the crime. He says: "I had always heard your entire life flashes in front of your eyes the second before you die. First of all, that one second isn't a second at all, it stretches on forever, like an ocean of time… For me, it was lying on my back at Boy Scout camp, watching falling stars…And yellow leaves, from the maple trees, that lined my street…Or my grandmother's hands, and the way her skin seemed like paper…And the first time I saw my cousin Tony's brand new Firebird. [And the people I loved.] I guess I could be pretty [ticked] off about what happened to me…but it's hard to stay mad, when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at the once, and it's too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst…And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life…You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure. But don't worry…you will someday."
 

Have there been moments in your life when you have been so struck by the exquisitely heart-breaking beauty of this world, the beauty of people, the beauty of creation, even the beauty of the most mundane, ordinary thing – like an folding metal chair, a pen, a paper clip – so much beauty that it's just impossible to take it all in, that fills your heart ready to burst like a balloon?
 

It's through hearts that expand and then break with love and beauty – like Jesus' own heart and his heart in ours – that transforms the way we look out and see the world, a world with people living, and suffering, and dying, and yet always yearning for life and ever more life. Hearts that expand and then break with love and beauty – that changes everything.
 

Prayer: Jesus – give us more to see. Give us hearts that expand and break in compassion, that through our broken hearts we might see the world anew, discovering the needs of your people, and discovering in everyone and every blessed thing your beauty that transfigures all. Amen.

 

                        

Who is Your Neighbor?

Luke 10: 25-37
Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time/ August 16, 2009

The story of the Good Samaritan is probably Jesus’ best-known parable. It’s often seen as a simple lesson in the virtue of reaching out to one’s neighbor. And yet its familiarity might be why this story often fails to have the impact it must originally have had. It was theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968) who reminded us that whenever we read scripture we need to approach it as if we’re hearing it for the very first time. We shouldn’t read scripture assuming there’s only one lesson or meaning to get out of the text, and then assume we understand it. Scripture doesn’t work this way. We return to scripture again and again to mine its treasures in order to hear what God might be saying today to us anew through the text. Otherwise scripture runs the risk of becoming a dead text. If we think we know its meaning, then there’s no motive to listen for the Word of God.

This is not a dead text. Our familiarity with this story might lead us to assume that we know what Jesus is talking about. The idea of a “Good Samaritan” has certainly made its way into the secular vernacular. We read this text, hear this parable and think that Jesus is offering a lesson about the kind of lives we’re supposed to live, about how we’re expected to treat one another, especially the stranger, that person in need we come across. We might think it’s a nice story designed to make us nice people. But, this is more than a story. It’s a parable.

Parables are not simply morality tales, providing guidelines for behavior. That’s not what parables are designed to do. Then what are they supposed to do? Parables are related to the Hebrew tradition of teaching through proverbs, riddles, and wise sayings. But as a form, they are utterly unique to the New Testament. Jesus is the first teacher to employ them and do so in remarkable ways. Parables are not simply illustrations or examples to help us understand complex theological ideas. They are short narrative fictions that always refer to some external symbol, they point to something else, designed to help us grasp something else. And that external symbol is the Kingdom or Realm of God. This is the filter through which we must hear Jesus’ words.

The parables are always intentionally shocking. They are designed to wake us up and turn us inside out. We return to them again and again in order for us to fathom the mysteries of God, so that the truths they contain might enfold us, encourage us, and penetrate our lives. Parables pack a powerful punch right to the gut of our complacency and dullness regarding the Kingdom of God. That’s what this parable does. And it packs a powerful punch – especially to the lawyer, the rabbinic scholar who tried to test Jesus by asking, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?”

First, this rabbinic scholar, this student of the Jewish Law, is asking this question not because he wants to know how to get into heaven. Indeed, that’s how you might have heard this text, that Jesus telling us if you want to get to heaven, then this is how you must behave. It’s not that simple. The lawyer is worried about the state of his soul. He wants to be assured that he is inheriting the fullness of life that comes with God’s covenant with the Hebrew people. For the lawyer, the way to the life of God is by following the Law (Torah) in every excruciating detail. He is obsessed with “getting it right,” obsessed with perfection, a cold, ethical exactitude, and is afraid of getting it wrong. We know that around this time there was a saying about the study of Torah that “the study of the Law is of higher rank than practicing it.” This guy knows the Law and his responses to Jesus are correct. But you can be technically observant, know all the answers, but be very far the intent of the law.

Jesus throws the question back at him, “You’re the expert, why are you asking me?” And, again, the lawyer’s response is scripturally correct. He pulls from Deuteronomy, he quotes the correct scripture. God has a claim over every aspect of our lives – heart, soul, strength, and mind. We are called to love God with the depth of who we are, with our innermost being, to love God with energy, strength, inner resolve and intellect. We are to withhold nothing back from God. The lawyer knows the answer. It’s in his head. He knows the Law. He knows the facts – but he is lost and far from the Kingdom of God, as far as Jesus is concerned. It’s not enough to simply know these things – we have to do them. Really do them.

But who is my neighbor? Ah, that’s the tricky part. Society during Jesus’ time was made up of strictly ordered boundaries – and you did not cross them. Society was hierarchical and patriarchal. There were Jews and then Gentiles – and Samaritans were in a class all by themselves. These were foreigners who were not expected to show sympathy to anyone. It was your religious duty as a Jew to maintain these boundaries all the time, because boundaries allowed groups to assert power over the other. Your “neighbor,” generally viewed, didn’t mean everyone, because there are limits. Your respect and care only extended to your particular group, you didn’t reach out to “those” people. Because many Jews at this time were anxious about whether they were keeping every aspect of the Law and because they were trying to maintain the strict boundaries of their society, they were also asking: What is the absolute limit required for me, what is the minimum I can get away with in order to fulfill the Law and no more? There was a reluctance to do anything more than the minimum.

The road from Jerusalem down to Jericho descends 3,300 feet over seventeen miles. It was a very dangerous place, full of bandits. This man, unidentified, is beaten, stripped, and left for dead. He has no identity, except need. The priest was expected to help – but he passed on the other side of the road. The Levite was the lay associate of the priest. Maybe he passed on the other side and maybe looked away because if this man was dead, the priest and Levite were obligated to bury him. And burying him would have made them ritually unclean for a time. It’s easier to just keep going.

Then Jesus knocks the lawyer in the gut. The next person who comes along is a Samaritan – and it is the Samaritan who does what the Law requires, indeed he does more than the minimum. He exceeds the Law and ignores the societal boundaries. Now it might be tough for us to see just how shocking it would have been for this lawyer to hear this story, but we must try. Jesus was being intentionally offensive in order to wake up this rabbinic scholar.

From a Jewish perspective, Samaritans were not good people. Only a non-Jew could see a Samaritan as good. They were pseudo-Jews, subhuman. They were a ritually unclean people, descendants of mixed marriages with people of Assyria (2 Kings 17: 6, 24). This account would have been earth-shattering, mind-blowing for the lawyer. It would have meant the collapse of his moral world order, the collapse of reality. It would have been offensive, shocking. He probably went away with a massive headache, dizzy, stunned, and in a daze. By depicting the hero as a Samaritan, Jesus was demolishing all the exclusionary boundary expectations of his time and dehumanized people – and calls us to do the same. Social position, categories – race, religion, region, gender – count for little. In a world where there were strict lines of insiders and outsiders, the Jesus movement sought to dissolve all these boundaries. It’s really quite extraordinary. So that after these categories are stripped away, what’s left is the individual, a person like you and me in need. The neighbor, then, becomes, as Kierkegaard (1813-1855) taught us, is the one who is standing before or beside you, no matter whom he or she might be. The neighbor is everyone. Breaking down the barriers that divide, you reach across them and you show mercy so that the one seen is thereby acknowledged as worthy of love and respect.

Why? Not because if you live this way – behave this way, being simply nice and civil – you get to go to heaven. Not because this is what God expects from us and therefore we have to do it, as if it were our duty. This is about more than merely ethical duty. If you hear this parable as only a command, as a law to be followed then you’re not hearing it. It’s more than a command. It would be cruel for Jesus to set this up as an ethical ideal knowing full well that no one can fulfill it and then judge us for failing. The gospel is good news precisely because it does not offer us an ethical legalism, does not offer us one more list of do’s and don’t’s, does not offer us yet one more empty strategy to improve our lives in quick, easy steps that we can master in a few weeks.

This parable packs a punch because it allows us to fathom the divine mystery and tells us something about God, the God who reaches out across the great divide that separates us from God and shows mercy. Ultimately, this parable is not a moral lesson for us, as much as it is for us a profound theological disclosure into the very depths of God’s being, of God’s nature. Jesus says, This is God. Through this parable Jesus seems to be saying, You’re far from God because your imaginations need to be re-ignited. You have to be open to the unimaginable. If you want to take part in the life of God, then you must rethink how you envision God. If you want to take part in eternity, then you have give up the ways you have thought about God. If you want to realize the promises of being a child of God (which is eternal life), then give up childish ways of looking at God, then think of God in this way.

God is like that Samaritan who reaches out for the victim and cares for the one left for dead along the side of the road. For Jesus to use this image, this metaphor would have been extremely offensive, scandalous – which is the point. God is like a Samaritan who will not walk on the other side of the road to avoid us. This is who God is – Yahweh, like the Samaritan, is not limited by destructive boundaries, nor does Yahweh act with a calculating heart, but is rich in mercy and free to show mercy. That’s who God is. God is rich in mercy.

When we know that God is merciful – that’s when we know how to be merciful. It cannot be taught, it has to be experienced, received. Loving our neighbor must not be divorced from the wider mercy of God. Our love for our neighbor is an expression of the love God has for us already. Those who show mercy (and receive mercy) are living in the Kingdom. We don’t worry about rewards. We don’t get the Kingdom if we’re merciful. We get to live in the Kingdom, when we know God is merciful.

When mercy is shown, we discover that the Kingdom is nowhere other than here. It’s the quality of life we receive when we know God’s mercy and with hearts that are generous and good, we reach out toward each other. We see our neighbor. We at times stop along the highways of our lives and notice people – really see people, hold them with high regard, not as an it, but as a thou, as Kierkegaard said, and struggle for what’s best for them and reach out to them, our neighbors. We see our neighbors as thou – the drivers that drive us nuts on the beltway, the person at work who drives you crazy, the person behind the check-out register at Safeway, fellow travelers (I had to remind myself of this while traveling over the last two weeks, encountering all kinds of people in many different airports. I was losing my patience.), the people we meet along the way who are usually invisible to you. They are all thou-s. And we treat them as such, not because we have to; but because we want to. This makes all the difference in the world. This is the difference, of whether we are near or far from the Kingdom.