What is Love asking of me?

1 Corinthians 13

22^nd Sunday after Pentecost/ 20^th October 2013

The Thursday Morning Bible Study resumed several weeks ago.  We’re walking our way through the book of Isaiah.  In addition to the actual text itself we’re using Walter Brueggemann’s commentary as our guide.[1] Brueggemann is fond of using the proper name Yahweh when referring to the God of Abraham and Sarah. Why does he do this? Because, in part, the use of the word “God” really isn’t all that helpful and tells us very little about the nature and purpose of this One we address as God.  “God” has become such a generic word, meaning whatever we want to project upon it. 

            And so we took some time in the class exploring the meaning of the word.  What do we mean, biblically-, theologically-speaking, when we use the word God?

            We get our cues from a burning bush that spoke to Moses. We find the story in Exodus, chapter three.  You’ll recall that after murdering an Egyptian who was caught beating a Hebrew slave, Moses fled to the wilderness of Midian.  He became a shepherd, minding his own business, trying to life as inconspicuously as possible.  One day he took his flock up to Mount Horeb.  It was there that a bush was set alight, without being consumed by the flames.  When Moses noticed the bush he “turned aside.” And when God saw that Moses turned, God spoke to him out from the bush, “Moses!  Moses!”  Moses was summoned, called and he responded.  God told him that the Hebrew people in slavery are suffering greatly.  They need someone to go and save them.  They need someone like you, Moses.  So, I’m sending you back to Egypt, back to Pharaoh.  You’re to go to Pharaoh and tell him that he needs to release all his Hebrew slaves.  Then Moses asks, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors have sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” (Ex. 3: 3:13).

            Then God responds to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.”  God said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”  And here we’re given God’s true name:  I AM.  “This is my name forever, and this my title for all generations” (Ex. 3:15).  I AM. That’s the name of God.  Eyeh asher eyeh.  I AM WHO I AM.   Or, simply, I AM.  In Hebrew four letters are used, Y-H-W-H (there are no vowels in ancient Hebrew).  Just four letters:  YHWH.  The vowels came later.  YAHWEH.  

            What does it mean?  It’s not easy to translate but it means something like this:  the one who causes to be, the one who creates.  Or simply, he creates.  It means, “I was who I was and will be who I will be.”  What’s significant here is that this name is not a noun.  It’s a causative verb form.  God’s name is not a noun, but a verb.  Yahweh is the One Who causes all things to be, the one who causes one to exist, to be.   Yahweh is the one who gives life.  It can mean “the one who causes to breathe,” meaning to breathe is to live.  What’s fascinating about this word is that the image of God we’re given here is not a static noun, but a dynamic verb.  Yahweh acts, moves, causes to be—not only once at the beginning of time, at creation, but continually acting, moving, causing to be.  The name is unpronounceable (to this day for Jews) and not read in temple. Every time you read the word LORD, capitalized in the Old Testament, behind it, in Hebrew is YHWH. The name is Holy.

            Yahweh is a verb.  Yahweh creates, restores, heals, saves, judges, redeems, energizes, authorizes, empowers, calls, sends, transforms.  Yahweh acts.  In fact, theologians have said that we don’t know anything about God beyond God’s actions because the only thing we know about God is what we know when God acts.  And from a Christian perspective, there is no stronger demonstration of the God who acts than that moment when the Word became flesh and dwelt among us full of grace and truth (John 1: 1-5).  From the Christian experience, the fullest revelation of God’s actions toward humanity is in and through the life, death, and resurrection—the acts—of Jesus Christ, who taught us and showed us that Yahweh’s being is summed up with this understanding: that Yahweh is love and loves you and me. 

            For it’s Love—with a capital “L,” meaning God’s Love, or just simply God—it’s Love that creates and restores and heals and saves and judges and redeems and energizes and authorizes and empowers and calls and sends and transform. 

            Love in scripture is not exclusively a feeling.  It’s a verb.  It’s a choice.  It’s action.  We hear in 1 John 3: 18, “Little children, let us love not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” Love does something. 

            We can hear it here in 1 Corinthians 13:  Love is…with echoes of “I AM,” enacted through the verb “to be.”  Listen to the various ways love is enacted:  Love is patient.  Love is kind.  Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.  Love doesn’t insist on its own way; it’s not irritable or resentful; Love does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.  Love bears all things.  Love believes all things.  Love hopes all things.  Love endures all things. Can you hear, can you feel the dynamism, the movement at work here?  Love enacted.  Love embodied.  Love acting and moving and calling and trying to realize something, achieve something, cause something to exist or come into being. Love working toward something, with a goal in mind. 

             Because we know in Christ that God is love, then love and God become synonymous.  God bears all things.  God hopes all things.  God endures all things.  We know through Christ that God desires to become enfleshed in our lives.  Love is God enacted.  God is love enacted.  God embodied.  God acting and moving and calling and trying to realize something, achieve something, cause something to exist or come into being in us and through us, through this congregation (!), for us and for the world. Through us, God is working toward something, with a goal in mind, and we have been called, summoned, chosen to be God’s co-workers building the Kingdom.  God’s presence, power, will, drive, hopes, dreams are at work in and through us.

            I believe there is a power at work within us.  By virtue of our baptisms, the power is there. In fact, this extraordinary power—that does not belong to us—is alive within us and working through us and allowing us to do far more than we could ever possibly imagine, allowing us to love more deeply than we could ever possibly imagine, enabling us to do more, give more, risk more, accomplish more, forgive more, serve more, endure more than we could ever think possible.

            That’s what Love is doing. And as I suggested several weeks ago in a sermon, regarding this Love at work in the world…yes, it’s within us, but it’s also asking something of us.  This Love is looking to us, counting on us, dreaming through us.  This Love that created and sustains us is also requiring something of us.  There’s considerable expectation built into our relationship with Yahweh.  There’s a burden of responsibility. For Love waits for your response, waits for you to “turn aside” and move toward the burning bush, waits for your reply, waits for you to act; Love waits for you to say, “Here I am, send me.”  Or, “Here I am, use me, Lord.”   Or, “Here I am, Lord, with gratitude I give…

                        I will serve… 

                        I will forgive… 

                        I will heal… 

                        I will restore… 

                        I will build, rebuild… 

                        I will act….

            What is Love asking of me?  That’s the question we’re being asked to ponder.  As we approach Commitment Sunday on November 17, as we consider our financial pledge to God’s work among us, the Stewardship Committee is asking us to prayerfully reflect upon this question.  Love, with a capital “L,” is another way of saying God or Yahweh. What is Love asking of me? We intentionally framed it this way to make it personal.  We invite you to pose that question to yourself, prayerfully, address the question to Love, and then listen to your heart for the response.  We’re not suggesting that you to ask, what’s the church asking of me…   Not what “I” want to give…  It’s bigger than the church, bigger than you and me.  But what is Love asking of me, requiring of me?  …

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[1]Isaiah 40-66, (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 1998).

A Grateful Heart

Luke 17: 11-19

21^st Sunday after Pentecost/ 13^th October 2013

You never know what you’re going to encounter on the way to Jerusalem.  You never know what you’re going to encounter on the way.  You never know what you’re going to encounter when you walk with Jesus. For he takes you from where you are to where you need to be. 

            On the way, along the way, the journey leads out beyond “home” to a place new, a different place.  And it’s there, at a point between “home” and one’s destination, in this “region between Samaria and Galilee,” something happens.  Galilee is home, it’s Jewish territory, it’s a familiar place, the place of origins.  Samaria is definitely not home. It’s an unfamiliar place for Jesus and his followers, it’s not safe, it’s “unclean,” disturbing, alienating, unnerving.  Yet, it’s here on the margins, in this “region between,” out there in a kind of religious No Man’s Land, where clean and unclean mix, out there on the margins of society, where the excluded and feared are sent to live and die, that something holy occurs. 

“Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” They saw him approaching the village.  Forced to live in a ghetto, ostracized, cut off, they’re the first to see him.  Keeping their distance they cried out from the shadows, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”  They knew who he was.  Word spreads.  Miracle workers and faith healers were a dime-a-dozen in their day, but Jesus was different.  What he offered women and men was different.  His way was unique. 

According to Luke, when Jesus “saw them,” he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.”  Taking him at his word, trusting in the authority of his word, they go, even before they’re cleansed, and on the way, “as they went, they were made clean.”

 

Luke tells us they were lepers, which could refer to a variety of contagious skin diseases.  They were sick, a threat to the well-being of society, and so they were rejected, forced to live in isolation, cut off from their family and friends, alone.  Out there in No Man’s Land it didn’t matter if one was Jew or Samaritan, they shared a different stigma, a common stigma: they were unclean, not worthy of life in community.  They would be welcomed back if they could prove that they were cured, no longer a threat, and then ritually cleaned, certified by the religious authorities, by the priest, declared safe.  That’s why Jesus tells them to go to the priests for the priests were the gatekeepers. The only way home for lepers was through the approval of the priests.

            Without even doubting Jesus’ skills as healer, they head straight for the priests.  The sooner they satisfy the priests the sooner they’ll be home to their loved ones. And so they go.  From the way Luke tells the story it looks as if the lepers don’t discover their changed condition until they’re on the way. “And as they went, they were made clean.”  Trusting and obeying Jesus’ commands they go. And then something happens, the healing occurs, and then they’re cleansed.

            How do we know this?  Because Luke tells us, “Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back,….”  They were healed en route, on the way, their healing discovered en route. 

            Ten are cleansed, one turns back to offer thanks and praise. We don’t want to be too hard on the other nine.  What would you have done?  Eager, desperate to return home, back to loved ones, family, eager to leave the margins and enter back into the heart of society, return to normalcy, you’re just grateful to be out of No Man’s Land.  We don’t hear what happens to them or what their reception at home was like. 

            It does look as if they were ungrateful, that they just used Jesus, took advantage of his power, took advantage of his mercy.  You can appreciate Jesus’ frustration and disappointment.  He gives and gives and gives and look what he gets in return.  ‘Twas ever so.

            Ten are cleansed, one returns thanks and praise.  And that one was a Samaritan, this “foreign-born,” as Jesus describes him.  He turns back.  He’s grateful.  While Jesus would have liked all of them to return thanks, he’s grateful that at least one person responded this way. 

            Give thanks.  That seems to be the point here.  Remember to say “thank-you.”  Be grateful for what the Lord had done for us.  Remembering to say “thank-you” is good, appropriate.  It’s the polite thing to say. We could call do better about being thankful for what God has done and is doing for us.  We get aught up in the busy-ness of our lives, earning a living, working hard, eager to get on to the next thing that we forget to stop and remember and give thanks and praise to God.  On the surface, the story seems straightforward enough.

            But there’s something else going on here. We can go deeper.  “Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice.”  The Samaritan.  He disobeys Jesus and he disobeys the Jewish Law.  He doesn’t go to the priests.  He doesn’t go to the religious authorities.  He’s a Samaritan; he’s not like the others.  He’ll always remain unclean in the eyes of Jews.  He turns back.  I wonder, at what point along the way did he realize that his heart was guiding him back the other way?

At one point he decides, he turns around, breaks free from the nine, and turns back to the source of his healing.  And he didn’t go quietly.  He goes with “a loud voice” praising God for what happened to him.  He doesn’t need the validation of the religious community.  He doesn’t need their imprimatur to be cleansed.  He doesn’t want to go with them.  He wants to go to Jesus, to be with Jesus.  He wants to complete the circle and return thanks to the giver of this gift.  The gift—the healing and the cleansing—are not complete, are not real until he returns thanks to the giver.  That he must do. 

            And so when he finally catches up with Jesus he falls at his feet, prostrate, down and flat at Jesus’ feet, offering praise and offering thanks.  Thanks! Thanks to the man who gave his life back to him.  Yes, Jesus healed his leprosy, but more than that, he gave him his life back, he gave him a future.  The healing of the leprosy was one thing; we might even say it was secondary. Because with this healing he gained something else, he was “seen” as a human being again and then welcomed back into society.  He was seen. He was noticed.  He was recognized.   And so he returns thanks to Jesus, returning praise to God.

            But there’s even more going on here and it’s easy to miss.  Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean?  But the other nine, where are they?  Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?”  Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”

            Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.  You might be asking, I thought he was already healed?  I thought Jesus healed them all “on the way” to the priests? Should the Samaritan take credit for his healing?        

            Ten were healed, but only one was declared “well”—the one who returned thanks and praise to God.  It’s a subtle distinction being made here, but it’s important.  It’s there in the text, in the Greek, however it gets lost in English.  The word Jesus uses here for “well” is the Greek word sozo (sozo) meaning “whole” or “saved.” It’s the only time “well” is used in the story.

Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you whole.  What did he do to obtain this wholeness?  His faith and trust, his praise and thanks demonstrated to Jesus that he knew the true source of his life.  The Samaritan is not whole until Jesus declares that he is. The Samaritan might have been healed, on the way to being cleansed, even welcomed back into society, but unless there is gratitude rooted and grounded in God and who God is, then one is not whole, one is not well, but still sick.  We could say, then, that one can be sick and still whole because one’s identity, one’s being is rooted and grounded in God’s generosity and faithfulness. The presence of illness and disease are no barriers to feeling a sense of wholeness and completeness, because this sense of wholeness is rooted in one’s relationship with God.  The reverse is also true; it means that one can have physical health, but not be well or whole, because the source of your life is not flowing from the one who is life and gives it freely, abundantly.  It’s means you can appear healthy, but still have a sick soul, because you’re not grounded in the One who gives you life. 

We are whole, are becoming whole when our hearts are filled with gratitude for who God is toward us. 

We are whole, are becoming whole when the meaning of our lives is rooted and grounded in God’s mercy toward us. 

His gratitude saves him.  Gratitude makes him whole.

And with our wholeness, Jesus sends us on our way.  Get up and go!  The Samaritan then goes with his wholeness, his wellness, back home, to his family, his community, his village, his life.  Healed in body, yes, but more than that, whole in mind and body and spirit, with a grateful heart he’s sent. 

Gratitude saved him; now gratitude sends him.  Gratitude made him whole; now gratitude allows him to help others become whole. 

As a result, this story provides for us a far more expansive understanding of sin.  Instead of seeing sin at acts of omission or commission in need of forgiveness, one at a time, sin is anything that undermines or inhibits the wholeness that Jesus now tells us belongs to the Samaritan.  If you want to know where sin is at work in your life, then pay attention to what hampers and hinders your sense of wholeness.  Sin is anything that destroys individual life or community, anything that keeps us from being whole. This is the deep healing that Jesus offers us. 

And we miss the point if we think it’s only about physical healing.  What Jesus is “seeing” and “healing” is the division in society and within people caused by disease and illness and even ignorance.  He doesn’t see a disease—leprosy—he sees people, women and men, who are trapped, caught, suffering, and alienated from God.  He can free them from their disease, but what matters more is the deep societal, systemic healing required for a people. This is what makes him a unique healer. This is why he was different. What matters more, deeper than the physical healing, is the spiritual well being, the psychological, emotional, spiritual wholeness of God’s people.

And that wholeness comes in and through praise and thanksgiving, with and through a grateful heart. It’s gratitude that sends the Samaritan back to Jesus with a loud voice praising God.  Praise is what makes us whole.  The German theologian and mystic Meister Eckhart (1260-1328) said, "If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough."  Enough, indeed. 

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Image: Cleansing of the Ten Lepers, Codex Aureus of Echternach (11^th century, Germany).

Light in the Darkness

Isaiah 58:6-12 & John 1:1-15

World Communion Sunday/ 

6^th October 2013

 Not for ourselves but for the whole world were we born. This was the motto of the Liverpool Institute, where Sir Paul McCartney (the former Beatle) went to high school. Non nobis solum sed toti mundo nati. It left a deep impression upon him. No longer a secondary school today, but with McCartney’s support it has become the Liverpool Institute for the Performing Arts. The motto remains. McCartney incorporates these beautiful words into the beginning of his composition, the Liverpool Oratorio, which tells the story of growing up in Liverpool.[1] The opening lines are sung by children.

            Not for ourselves but for the whole world were we born. It’s not explicitly Christian, but it could be.  For the world... A world so loved by God…. We don’t exist for ourselves. We exist for our neighbors, for the wider, broader world.  

            From Isaiah’s perspective it’s what God desires, it’s what’s near and dear to God’s heart: to bring light to the dark places of the world.  And people with a heart for God have a heart, and people with a heart for God have a heart for what God desires.  This is the purpose of faith, this is the end of our worship, this is the focus of discipleship, what God wants us to do: loose the bonds of injustice—you and me, loose them, now. Undo the belts attached to the yoke oppressing God’s people and weighing them down—you and me, right now. Let the oppressed go free; break the yoke—right now, you and me. Break it. Shatter it—every yoke.  Share your resources, feed the hungry, provide shelter for the homeless, become a place of safety for the exile, clothe the naked, and don’t ignore the needs of those nearest you, right beside you. 

            And then do you know what will happen when we engage in justice making, when we help liberate God’s children?  Do you know what will happen when we care for the needs of the afflicted and shatter every yoke? “Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly;…” (Isaiah 58:8). Twice Isaiah makes this point, “Your light shall rise in the darkness” (Isaiah 58:10).

            The light rises not when the darkness is gone, but rises within the darkness.  The transition from night to day doesn’t occur in the moment, but gradually.  The morning light appears in the darkness of the night and then scatters the darkness. That’s what happens when we engage in this work of light, the work of God.

            What Isaiah is also getting at here is that when we remove the yoke from our neighbors and break it, when we “satisfy the needs of the afflicted” (Is. 58:20), the healing that springs up will be the healing of the soul of the people, of the nation. It will yield the healing of the people, of the community, of the nation.  Parched places will become refreshing springs for all to share (Is. 58:11). The ruins of civilization will be rebuilt, with new foundations established providing for the future. When God’s people act this way they will be known for posterity as Repairers of the Breach—meaning the people who healed the holes and gaps of society, people who repaired ruptures and healed the deep wounds of society—people who restored the streets so that people could live in them and children play in them again with safety (Is. 58:12).

            World Communion Sunday reminds us that it’s not just our streets that need repairing (which they do), but that we as Christians have a responsibility for our sisters and brothers around the world. Why? Because through the Holy Spirit, we are connected to them.  They share our burdens (they really do) and we share theirs, particularly Christians in Syria (There was a moving article in yesterday’s Washington Post about the plight of Christians there.), or just two weeks ago we witnessed the worst terrorist attack against Christians, at worship, in Peshawar, Pakistan, or think of Coptic Christians in Egypt or the Protestant and Roman Catholics in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is integral to the health of a congregation to have ties with the global church; yes, we have a lot to offer the world; but the world has a lot, maybe more, to offer us, to teach us how to love and serve Christ, to suffer with and for the gospel, to share with us some of the joy of Christ.

            World Communion Sunday is one of my favorite Sundays of the year.  Today, we celebrate our connection to the wider world. As the world shrinks around us daily (primarily through the internet) we’re come to know in new ways that we are really one, not only as Christians, but that we share a common humanity.  “People on other continents are not merely the other, the faceless crowd ‘over there.’ They are our other, members of our extended family even though there is an ocean between us.”[2] 

            The contemporary writer and pastor Samir Selmanovic makes a crucial point in this regard. Born in the former Yugoslavia to a Muslim father and a Christian mother, but was raised an atheist, he later became a Christian.  Selmanovic echoes Isaiah with this claim: “People who lived before us and will live after us are connected to us as well.  Everything we do is linked to our past, and everything we achieve will be left in the hands of those who will come after us. To alleviate suffering in a remote corner of the world or in a remote time or future is not an act of charity anymore but an act of solidarity.”  … “Those who will be hurt or blessed by our thoughts, prayers, or actions might be completely unknown to us, but our lives will affect them, and their lives will affect us.  Whatever we do, say, prayer, or think now matters to ‘them.’”[3]  We are one.

            The 13^th century Chinese poet Kauan Tao-Sheng (1262-1319) knew then what we need to remember now.  She put it this way:

            Take a lump of clay,

            Wet it, pat it,

            Make a statue of you

            And a statue of me

            Then shatter them, clatter them,

            Add some water,

            And break them and mold them

            Into a statute of you

            And a statue of me.

            Then in mine, there are bits of you

            And in you there are bits of me

            Nothing ever shall keep us apart.[4]

            “In mine, there are bits of you; in you there are bits of me.” 

            What does this sound like?  Doesn’t it sound like Communion?  Eat this bread. Share this cup. In remembrance.  Remember—not just recalling the past, but re-membeing, connecting member to member, forming a larger body. Participating in the body of Christ.  For this was Jesus’ mission and his hope for us and for the world he died to save. 

            Before his death, Jesus prayed for his disciples and for the world and said to God:

“I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one.  As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (John 17:20-23). 

            That the world might know how much it is loved.  May it be so.

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[1] Paul McCartney and Carl Davis, Liverpool Oratorio, (EMI Records, 1991).

[2] Samir Selmanovic, It’s Really All About God:Reflections of a Muslim Atheist Jewish Christian (Jossey-Bass, 2009), 243.

[3] Selmanovic, 244.

[4] Kauan Tao-Sheng, untitled poem in Theodor Reik, Of Love and Lust (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1,949), 73.