Maker of heaven and earth
Commentary
Okay, sooner or later, and more likely sooner than later, if you engage in the homiletical
enterprise you are going to have a gut-wrenching moment of, "Oh, my God, what I am
going to do with this?" We are presented with such a stellar moment as we consider the
interesting richness of the texts given for, in my part of the world, a warm Sunday
morning. Sometimes it is too much potential, other times it is too little possibility in the
texts. Often, as on this Sunday, one is plunged into pondering just how these texts hold
together in providing a course we can chart. Deep breaths: We are given "David, be angry
but do not sin," and "the bread of life." Deeper breaths, heart in mouth now: "Absalom
hanging from a tree, a fragrant offering sacrifice, and smell of the bread of life." That's it:
smell of corpse, fragrance, bread rising. That's it, whew!
An alarm goes off in head, "Attention, attention, this is not a drill!" You are about to crash and burn. You have just entered preaching purgatory. The oxygen masks will deploy. Please wait for instructions to proceed to the emergency exits located over the wings and in the forward areas of the cabin.
I begin to feel like Absalom suspended in the forest caught hanging between heaven and earth. Struggling for breath, swinging above the texts, and feeling totally vulnerable: If things don't come together soon, this column may be shorter than anyone imagined or desired. Between heaven and earth, is in some sense where I live all the time trying to make the tradeoffs between one and the other. Of course the vulnerable, exposed, desperate, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" moment is not the place I want to go to write. However, between heaven and earth is the place that becomes the source of life for that is where I find myself falling into the hands of God. More often it is where I come alive. In the wee hours of the morning caught between slumber and alertness, in the place between nightmares of the way the world often is and daydreams of the way things might be: these are often the places from which sermons do come.
"Attention, attention, we have the situation under control. Please return to your seats and fasten your belts and remain seated until we have arrived at the gate. Thank you for flying Pneumatic Airways."
The three texts invite us to spend some time flying between heaven and earth to consider what should rise to heaven and what comes down from heaven and how it should be handled. David as well as Absalom is caught between heaven and earth. The letter to the Ephesians defines Christ as a sacrifice that produces a fragrant offering to God. The gospel speaks of rising to eternal life through the one who has come down.
Language seems here to burst the bounds of the human mind. The words seem to race ahead of our ability to absorb the thoughts. However, isn't that what we are called to do -- maintain the tension between heaven and earth: at a funeral, with a youth pondering a career that provides big ticket vacations, or a vocation from God; a congregation considering how to think globally and act locally, or a church facing financial crisis? Resolving the tension leaves the gospel flat and bereft of energy. Somehow our lives must have both the positive and negative polls for any energy to flow. In a way those who were saying, "Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, 'I have come down from heaven'?" were so earthbound that they flattened out heavenly realities. The letter to the Ephesians brings us down to earthly realities, "Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil." The reading from the Hebrew Testament makes clear that not even kings escape the tension between heaven and earth. Kings cannot escape this reality, then are we likely to do any better?
2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33
"Deal gently for my sake with the young man Absalom. And all the people heard when the king gave orders to all the commanders concerning Absalom." From the moment that we read these words, we know that the stage has been set for ominous events. Knowing David as one does by this time in the story this cannot be good. That his son is in rebellion can only set the stage for tragedy of biblical proportions.
Yet, David's life, while of biblical magnitude, is a story that has very human dimensions. While few of us will find ourselves caught in midair like Absalom, all of us deal with the tension of living midway between heavenly possibilities and earthly responsibilities. David finds himself caught between loving his child and the difficult tasks of living out the family script. In many ways this son of his is living out David's own story, for he, too, was a tribal leader who found that he was at odds with the central authority. Unfortunately, this struggle must be acted out and lived out in a family context. Of course, in some sense it is always lived out in a family context. Where do we not find our strength but by testing it out in the relatively safe confines of parent-child relationships? David counsels his commanders to deal gently with the young man Absalom, not even mentioning that the young man in question is the king's son. In the midst of family scripts and living out family struggles, we do turn our children over to the world and hope that they will be dealt with gently.
The tragedy arises, as it does in our lives, from the naive expectation that the world will be able to accommodate our expectations for an easy transition into adult roles. As in our world, "The battle spread over the face of all the country; and the forest claimed more victims that day than the sword." The battles stretch from what our children will watch and listen, to the wars they will fight, to the commercialism they are exposed to, and the commoditization of the human soul that they will be expected to participate in. In the ensuing fog that envelops all as the battle spread over the whole country no one will escape for the forest will take as many as the actual physical killing. It will take the child who is eating breakfast watching the morning news and hearing war characterized as "shock and awe." It will take young imaginations as they are taught to believe in something like surgical air strikes and smart bombs as the answer to human fears. In the darkness of the forest, and the inability to see the forest for the trees, it will take time from the development of young minds to do civil defense and bomb drills as was routine in my elementary school days. By the time I had gotten to high school, it seemed that someone had figured out that these drills had little to do with our surviving a nuclear attack and had much do with our accepting the notion that victory was a meaningful term in a nuclear conflict.
Samuel warned the Hebrews this would happen in their pursuit of a monarchical solution to their polity problems. He said, "These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots ... He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers." Here David finds that not even the king's son is immune from being "taken."
David is caught between public role and private life: public life that will give power and privilege, but that will take much of what he cherishes. Can we avoid this struggle? Can we afford to be oblivious to what the forest can take? Somehow we must live in the tension and look for openings in the forest that might provide some opportunity for coming through unscathed. To deny how we will be taken is to limit our ability to respond when we are taken to places that take our youth and threaten our future. This is a dilemma that human beings live in and with. Walter Brueggemann reminds us that there was even an opening in the forest for Richard Nixon in his going to China when others could not politically afford the journey. On the other hand, the Advent carol pleads for the coming one to ransom captive Israel from having been taken.
Ephesians 4:25--5:2
Here is life's problem and life's opportunity: caught between two legitimate polls that have potential to short out or provide significant energy flow. Daily I know the near magical capacity that computers provide by enabling me to seemingly be everywhere at the same time. On the other hand, I also experience their demonic facility to rob me of the ability to be fully there at any one time. I struggle with law and love, justice and mercy, zigzagging my way through life. My path often leaves me and others dizzy and feeling that life can be quite a roller coaster.
I feel all contact with the ground slipping away from me as I ride the roller coaster called the letter to the Ephesians. As I scan today's reading, I find myself on the going up side of the roller coaster experience. "Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy." Yes, yes: it is about time. Thieves at the garage that services my car, thieves at the cable company that charge so much to be entertained, thieves that hold me hostage when I go looking for a parking space to watch a live Red Sox game, thieves that charge the entrance fee at the national park that my tax dollars paid for, or thieves that rob me of my sanity as I try to figure out Medicare Part D. These people need to be brought into line. I exult when the letter goes after those who have a mouth. It is time, in my opinion, for a lot of people to shut up. "Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear." It's about time that those people get with the program. How am I expected to function if they are not uttering words that make it possible for me to operate gracefully? "Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice." Yes, it is time for those people to lose the attitude. Does anyone doubt that such smarminess has been the downfall of many congregations? Gee, I never knew what impact and power the letter to the Ephesians could have!
There is a bit that does put me off. "Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger." That is not all that helpful. It is one of those places that I do not wish to be caught between two truths that have the potential to grind me into spiritual pulp. I have no trouble speaking the truth in a rage. Speaking any truth in a rage has a way of coming out much less than the truth. On the other hand, the truths that I speak in well- modulated, carefully crafted sentences, often come out less than the truth because they are disconnected from what I am really angry about. Being angry, but not sinning, does not come easily. Either I overshoot the mark with an anger that does outlast many sunsets or the sun comes up and I so cushion my anger that what I am really feeling never sees the light of day.
I am struck by the closing image of this lesson. "And live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God." While it leaves me in the same place suspended between heaven and earth, attempting to stay connected to my anger without sinning, it affords me a way of faithfully living positioned between these two polls. If it is the fragrance offered to heaven then it must be fueled by something earthly. The image suggests that I must pay attention to both -- where I am coming from and where my anger is going. In a jumble of metaphors that nevertheless straightens me out, does the anger lead to as much light as heat? I suspect that the test here is not the temperature, but the fragrance and just to whom it is the most pleasing.
John 6:35, 41-51
"No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day." Once again, I hear the alarm bells going off and I have a sinking sensation that I am headed for a spiritual crash. What scares me is that these words evoke another passage that reverses the equation. "No one comes to the Father except through me." Such a passage has a way of throwing the modern multicultural understanding completely off balance. Can we live with a text that might leave us with the only permissible position being aggressive attempts to convert one another? Not only does this leave me uncomfortable, it seems less likely to win people to a more excellent way than aggressive efforts at conversion. This world already suffers from too many people who claim to be the sole possessors of the truth.
However the lections today suggest maintaining balance between the heavenly hope and earthly reality. These texts must be read together. No one comes to Jesus except through the Father. Elsewhere Jesus says, "You did not choose me but I chose you." This is a bit humbling. We do not come because of our own insights or traditions but because of God's gift and our openness to receiving the gift. This is something that cannot be forced. "The Spirit blows where it blows." If folks somehow manage to find themselves being Christian, it is because of a mystery, that though we cannot fully explain it, it has embraced us.
This has a wonderful way of toning down the moral intensity that leads to insensitivity, which comes from exclusive reading of "no one comes to the Father except through me." On the other hand we must admit that what has made Christianity a driving force is not just intellectual acuity but a missionary vibrancy. Christianity must somehow generate both ends of the equation. It is a place where we are caught. In such places we find ourselves working out our salvation in fear and trembling.
Jesus' auditors seem to have a problem with this balancing act. They were saying, "Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, 'I have come down from heaven'?" If he comes from heaven it cannot be from families that we know. If it is a working out of the family dynamics that we are acquainted with, then it cannot be from heaven. Yet, it is often in the facing and working out of the family dynamics and the human relationships that we are familiar with that we can experience the more excellent way that can draw us to Jesus. On the other hand, does not Jesus' teaching about family say that those who do the will of God become part of his family?
Once again we find ourselves caught between two polls as we seek to respond to Jesus' words: living out and learning from the families of our origins as we move in the direction of the kind of human relations that God intends for us. In one sense, we find that we must use all the strength that we can muster to live between these two polar opposites. On the other hand, in living in this space we find all the strength that God has to offer us. It is when we ignore the opposite poll and the dynamics of "living in, but not of, the world" that we find ourselves in trouble.
Application
I began with a sense of panic at the thought of trying to find a unity of purpose in these texts. I found myself in one of the states of suspended animation where I stare at the texts and ponder how close I am to retirement. Often I find that texts drive me to such places of desperation. Indeed, not until I am willing to go to such places, finding myself stripped of all my images of competence and self-sufficiency, that I am ready to be vulnerable enough to let the texts speak to me. More often than not, I find the clue to shaping a sermon lies in a thought or image that was cast away too early in the process.
In the process that led to my reflections on these texts I found meaning in the notion of "being in suspended animation." When you think about it, that phrase is a bit of an oxymoron. Something of biblical proportions begins to take shape here. After all, we Christian folk believe that life comes from one who is suspended on the cross midway between heaven and earth. My thought begins to move in the direction of asking, "Is there any other kind of animation than the suspended kind?" In, but not of, the world, keeping food on the table and keeping human, think globally -- act locally, add years to your life and life to your years: life seems to come at us in pairs, if not opposites, and at least requires us to do the work of living in the tension between the two. The clinical definition of death is the total absence of tension in the body. The definition of life is finding what it means to live faithfully between the polls of tension that life presents us with. It is there that life moves beyond stiltedness to a lively animation. As the letter to the Ephesians puts it, this pattern of life leads to something that begins to replicate the kingdom of God: Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
Alternate Application
Ephesians 4:25--5:2. "Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy." To whom is this actually addressed? Do you visualize some kid on the run with a pocketful of candy from a local all-night store? Do you see a home invasion with the attendant sense of violation so that going home never quite means the same thing? Do you see a corporate board room?
It is interesting that the end result is to share something with the needy. Is it just something to give the needy? Or, if we expand our understanding of robbery, do we discover that what we have to share with the needy is their sense of exposure, powerlessness, and marginalization? We might find that we have victimized ourselves by engaging in robbing others of their dignity and pride. If you have tried figuring out Medicare Part D you might feel that you have been robbed of your sanity. Perhaps what we need to discover is that we have been among those that have been the robbers and who need to hear this text in another way. On the other hand, it is often hard for us to admit that we were not smart enough to avoid having fallen in among robbers let alone fallen in with robbers. We do not like admitting that we have been had. Our anger might be projected on those who have fallen among robbers, leaving us more prone to blame victims that change the system that we otherwise benefit from. One wonders how our children and grandchildren will hear this text in light of global warming and the level of national debt that we are carrying.
Much of how we act in faith now will depend on how we hear this text.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 130
Back in the '60s, there was a phenomenon known as trading stamps. At grocery stores and other vendors, shoppers would receive an amount of stamps proportionate to their spending. The idea was that you would save these stamps in little books conveniently provided by the stores, and then turn them in for all kinds of delectable prizes.
So, with books brimming with stamps, people would go to what was known as a redemption center. There would be gleaming products on the shelves and smiling attendants to help. You could turn your stamps in at this redemption center for an electric frying pan, a fancy new steam iron, or a backyard barbecue grill.
All in all, it was a neat arrangement and a very clever marketing ploy. The closest thing to it today are the airlines who offer frequent flyer miles which can be redeemed, after you accumulate enough, for free flights.
This sense of redemption is the coinage of our culture. Like a flat stone hurled against the surface of the water, it skims and skips along without that satisfying plunk of a splash. For us, redemption is a kind of barter. We redeem our stamps or our miles for goods and services that we desire. After all, they were called "trading" stamps, right?
But for Israel, and other nations in the long line of history, redemption is a somewhat different matter. This kind of redemption is no mere visit to the trading post. This kind of redemption has to do with being rescued. In this psalm, the writer howls out from the depths of misery and begs for God's redemption.
Thinking about those trading stamp redemption centers, one wonders about how our churches fare in this regard. Would we call our churches redemption centers? Do we engage in worship and ministry with the notion of redemption in mind? And if so, what does it look like? Do we invite people to trade in their "iniquities" (v. 3) for God's saving power? If so, what does that look like? Are we able to move beyond the trading stamp model of redemption and go deeper into the notion that we are all in need of rescuing, and that we are all called to "wait" upon God's salvation?
It is a tension that comes to us all as we strive to be faithful. How is it that we wait upon our redemption? How is it that we teach and lead? How is it that we build communities that are redemption centers?
An alarm goes off in head, "Attention, attention, this is not a drill!" You are about to crash and burn. You have just entered preaching purgatory. The oxygen masks will deploy. Please wait for instructions to proceed to the emergency exits located over the wings and in the forward areas of the cabin.
I begin to feel like Absalom suspended in the forest caught hanging between heaven and earth. Struggling for breath, swinging above the texts, and feeling totally vulnerable: If things don't come together soon, this column may be shorter than anyone imagined or desired. Between heaven and earth, is in some sense where I live all the time trying to make the tradeoffs between one and the other. Of course the vulnerable, exposed, desperate, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" moment is not the place I want to go to write. However, between heaven and earth is the place that becomes the source of life for that is where I find myself falling into the hands of God. More often it is where I come alive. In the wee hours of the morning caught between slumber and alertness, in the place between nightmares of the way the world often is and daydreams of the way things might be: these are often the places from which sermons do come.
"Attention, attention, we have the situation under control. Please return to your seats and fasten your belts and remain seated until we have arrived at the gate. Thank you for flying Pneumatic Airways."
The three texts invite us to spend some time flying between heaven and earth to consider what should rise to heaven and what comes down from heaven and how it should be handled. David as well as Absalom is caught between heaven and earth. The letter to the Ephesians defines Christ as a sacrifice that produces a fragrant offering to God. The gospel speaks of rising to eternal life through the one who has come down.
Language seems here to burst the bounds of the human mind. The words seem to race ahead of our ability to absorb the thoughts. However, isn't that what we are called to do -- maintain the tension between heaven and earth: at a funeral, with a youth pondering a career that provides big ticket vacations, or a vocation from God; a congregation considering how to think globally and act locally, or a church facing financial crisis? Resolving the tension leaves the gospel flat and bereft of energy. Somehow our lives must have both the positive and negative polls for any energy to flow. In a way those who were saying, "Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, 'I have come down from heaven'?" were so earthbound that they flattened out heavenly realities. The letter to the Ephesians brings us down to earthly realities, "Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil." The reading from the Hebrew Testament makes clear that not even kings escape the tension between heaven and earth. Kings cannot escape this reality, then are we likely to do any better?
2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33
"Deal gently for my sake with the young man Absalom. And all the people heard when the king gave orders to all the commanders concerning Absalom." From the moment that we read these words, we know that the stage has been set for ominous events. Knowing David as one does by this time in the story this cannot be good. That his son is in rebellion can only set the stage for tragedy of biblical proportions.
Yet, David's life, while of biblical magnitude, is a story that has very human dimensions. While few of us will find ourselves caught in midair like Absalom, all of us deal with the tension of living midway between heavenly possibilities and earthly responsibilities. David finds himself caught between loving his child and the difficult tasks of living out the family script. In many ways this son of his is living out David's own story, for he, too, was a tribal leader who found that he was at odds with the central authority. Unfortunately, this struggle must be acted out and lived out in a family context. Of course, in some sense it is always lived out in a family context. Where do we not find our strength but by testing it out in the relatively safe confines of parent-child relationships? David counsels his commanders to deal gently with the young man Absalom, not even mentioning that the young man in question is the king's son. In the midst of family scripts and living out family struggles, we do turn our children over to the world and hope that they will be dealt with gently.
The tragedy arises, as it does in our lives, from the naive expectation that the world will be able to accommodate our expectations for an easy transition into adult roles. As in our world, "The battle spread over the face of all the country; and the forest claimed more victims that day than the sword." The battles stretch from what our children will watch and listen, to the wars they will fight, to the commercialism they are exposed to, and the commoditization of the human soul that they will be expected to participate in. In the ensuing fog that envelops all as the battle spread over the whole country no one will escape for the forest will take as many as the actual physical killing. It will take the child who is eating breakfast watching the morning news and hearing war characterized as "shock and awe." It will take young imaginations as they are taught to believe in something like surgical air strikes and smart bombs as the answer to human fears. In the darkness of the forest, and the inability to see the forest for the trees, it will take time from the development of young minds to do civil defense and bomb drills as was routine in my elementary school days. By the time I had gotten to high school, it seemed that someone had figured out that these drills had little to do with our surviving a nuclear attack and had much do with our accepting the notion that victory was a meaningful term in a nuclear conflict.
Samuel warned the Hebrews this would happen in their pursuit of a monarchical solution to their polity problems. He said, "These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots ... He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers." Here David finds that not even the king's son is immune from being "taken."
David is caught between public role and private life: public life that will give power and privilege, but that will take much of what he cherishes. Can we avoid this struggle? Can we afford to be oblivious to what the forest can take? Somehow we must live in the tension and look for openings in the forest that might provide some opportunity for coming through unscathed. To deny how we will be taken is to limit our ability to respond when we are taken to places that take our youth and threaten our future. This is a dilemma that human beings live in and with. Walter Brueggemann reminds us that there was even an opening in the forest for Richard Nixon in his going to China when others could not politically afford the journey. On the other hand, the Advent carol pleads for the coming one to ransom captive Israel from having been taken.
Ephesians 4:25--5:2
Here is life's problem and life's opportunity: caught between two legitimate polls that have potential to short out or provide significant energy flow. Daily I know the near magical capacity that computers provide by enabling me to seemingly be everywhere at the same time. On the other hand, I also experience their demonic facility to rob me of the ability to be fully there at any one time. I struggle with law and love, justice and mercy, zigzagging my way through life. My path often leaves me and others dizzy and feeling that life can be quite a roller coaster.
I feel all contact with the ground slipping away from me as I ride the roller coaster called the letter to the Ephesians. As I scan today's reading, I find myself on the going up side of the roller coaster experience. "Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy." Yes, yes: it is about time. Thieves at the garage that services my car, thieves at the cable company that charge so much to be entertained, thieves that hold me hostage when I go looking for a parking space to watch a live Red Sox game, thieves that charge the entrance fee at the national park that my tax dollars paid for, or thieves that rob me of my sanity as I try to figure out Medicare Part D. These people need to be brought into line. I exult when the letter goes after those who have a mouth. It is time, in my opinion, for a lot of people to shut up. "Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear." It's about time that those people get with the program. How am I expected to function if they are not uttering words that make it possible for me to operate gracefully? "Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice." Yes, it is time for those people to lose the attitude. Does anyone doubt that such smarminess has been the downfall of many congregations? Gee, I never knew what impact and power the letter to the Ephesians could have!
There is a bit that does put me off. "Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger." That is not all that helpful. It is one of those places that I do not wish to be caught between two truths that have the potential to grind me into spiritual pulp. I have no trouble speaking the truth in a rage. Speaking any truth in a rage has a way of coming out much less than the truth. On the other hand, the truths that I speak in well- modulated, carefully crafted sentences, often come out less than the truth because they are disconnected from what I am really angry about. Being angry, but not sinning, does not come easily. Either I overshoot the mark with an anger that does outlast many sunsets or the sun comes up and I so cushion my anger that what I am really feeling never sees the light of day.
I am struck by the closing image of this lesson. "And live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God." While it leaves me in the same place suspended between heaven and earth, attempting to stay connected to my anger without sinning, it affords me a way of faithfully living positioned between these two polls. If it is the fragrance offered to heaven then it must be fueled by something earthly. The image suggests that I must pay attention to both -- where I am coming from and where my anger is going. In a jumble of metaphors that nevertheless straightens me out, does the anger lead to as much light as heat? I suspect that the test here is not the temperature, but the fragrance and just to whom it is the most pleasing.
John 6:35, 41-51
"No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day." Once again, I hear the alarm bells going off and I have a sinking sensation that I am headed for a spiritual crash. What scares me is that these words evoke another passage that reverses the equation. "No one comes to the Father except through me." Such a passage has a way of throwing the modern multicultural understanding completely off balance. Can we live with a text that might leave us with the only permissible position being aggressive attempts to convert one another? Not only does this leave me uncomfortable, it seems less likely to win people to a more excellent way than aggressive efforts at conversion. This world already suffers from too many people who claim to be the sole possessors of the truth.
However the lections today suggest maintaining balance between the heavenly hope and earthly reality. These texts must be read together. No one comes to Jesus except through the Father. Elsewhere Jesus says, "You did not choose me but I chose you." This is a bit humbling. We do not come because of our own insights or traditions but because of God's gift and our openness to receiving the gift. This is something that cannot be forced. "The Spirit blows where it blows." If folks somehow manage to find themselves being Christian, it is because of a mystery, that though we cannot fully explain it, it has embraced us.
This has a wonderful way of toning down the moral intensity that leads to insensitivity, which comes from exclusive reading of "no one comes to the Father except through me." On the other hand we must admit that what has made Christianity a driving force is not just intellectual acuity but a missionary vibrancy. Christianity must somehow generate both ends of the equation. It is a place where we are caught. In such places we find ourselves working out our salvation in fear and trembling.
Jesus' auditors seem to have a problem with this balancing act. They were saying, "Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, 'I have come down from heaven'?" If he comes from heaven it cannot be from families that we know. If it is a working out of the family dynamics that we are acquainted with, then it cannot be from heaven. Yet, it is often in the facing and working out of the family dynamics and the human relationships that we are familiar with that we can experience the more excellent way that can draw us to Jesus. On the other hand, does not Jesus' teaching about family say that those who do the will of God become part of his family?
Once again we find ourselves caught between two polls as we seek to respond to Jesus' words: living out and learning from the families of our origins as we move in the direction of the kind of human relations that God intends for us. In one sense, we find that we must use all the strength that we can muster to live between these two polar opposites. On the other hand, in living in this space we find all the strength that God has to offer us. It is when we ignore the opposite poll and the dynamics of "living in, but not of, the world" that we find ourselves in trouble.
Application
I began with a sense of panic at the thought of trying to find a unity of purpose in these texts. I found myself in one of the states of suspended animation where I stare at the texts and ponder how close I am to retirement. Often I find that texts drive me to such places of desperation. Indeed, not until I am willing to go to such places, finding myself stripped of all my images of competence and self-sufficiency, that I am ready to be vulnerable enough to let the texts speak to me. More often than not, I find the clue to shaping a sermon lies in a thought or image that was cast away too early in the process.
In the process that led to my reflections on these texts I found meaning in the notion of "being in suspended animation." When you think about it, that phrase is a bit of an oxymoron. Something of biblical proportions begins to take shape here. After all, we Christian folk believe that life comes from one who is suspended on the cross midway between heaven and earth. My thought begins to move in the direction of asking, "Is there any other kind of animation than the suspended kind?" In, but not of, the world, keeping food on the table and keeping human, think globally -- act locally, add years to your life and life to your years: life seems to come at us in pairs, if not opposites, and at least requires us to do the work of living in the tension between the two. The clinical definition of death is the total absence of tension in the body. The definition of life is finding what it means to live faithfully between the polls of tension that life presents us with. It is there that life moves beyond stiltedness to a lively animation. As the letter to the Ephesians puts it, this pattern of life leads to something that begins to replicate the kingdom of God: Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
Alternate Application
Ephesians 4:25--5:2. "Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy." To whom is this actually addressed? Do you visualize some kid on the run with a pocketful of candy from a local all-night store? Do you see a home invasion with the attendant sense of violation so that going home never quite means the same thing? Do you see a corporate board room?
It is interesting that the end result is to share something with the needy. Is it just something to give the needy? Or, if we expand our understanding of robbery, do we discover that what we have to share with the needy is their sense of exposure, powerlessness, and marginalization? We might find that we have victimized ourselves by engaging in robbing others of their dignity and pride. If you have tried figuring out Medicare Part D you might feel that you have been robbed of your sanity. Perhaps what we need to discover is that we have been among those that have been the robbers and who need to hear this text in another way. On the other hand, it is often hard for us to admit that we were not smart enough to avoid having fallen in among robbers let alone fallen in with robbers. We do not like admitting that we have been had. Our anger might be projected on those who have fallen among robbers, leaving us more prone to blame victims that change the system that we otherwise benefit from. One wonders how our children and grandchildren will hear this text in light of global warming and the level of national debt that we are carrying.
Much of how we act in faith now will depend on how we hear this text.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 130
Back in the '60s, there was a phenomenon known as trading stamps. At grocery stores and other vendors, shoppers would receive an amount of stamps proportionate to their spending. The idea was that you would save these stamps in little books conveniently provided by the stores, and then turn them in for all kinds of delectable prizes.
So, with books brimming with stamps, people would go to what was known as a redemption center. There would be gleaming products on the shelves and smiling attendants to help. You could turn your stamps in at this redemption center for an electric frying pan, a fancy new steam iron, or a backyard barbecue grill.
All in all, it was a neat arrangement and a very clever marketing ploy. The closest thing to it today are the airlines who offer frequent flyer miles which can be redeemed, after you accumulate enough, for free flights.
This sense of redemption is the coinage of our culture. Like a flat stone hurled against the surface of the water, it skims and skips along without that satisfying plunk of a splash. For us, redemption is a kind of barter. We redeem our stamps or our miles for goods and services that we desire. After all, they were called "trading" stamps, right?
But for Israel, and other nations in the long line of history, redemption is a somewhat different matter. This kind of redemption is no mere visit to the trading post. This kind of redemption has to do with being rescued. In this psalm, the writer howls out from the depths of misery and begs for God's redemption.
Thinking about those trading stamp redemption centers, one wonders about how our churches fare in this regard. Would we call our churches redemption centers? Do we engage in worship and ministry with the notion of redemption in mind? And if so, what does it look like? Do we invite people to trade in their "iniquities" (v. 3) for God's saving power? If so, what does that look like? Are we able to move beyond the trading stamp model of redemption and go deeper into the notion that we are all in need of rescuing, and that we are all called to "wait" upon God's salvation?
It is a tension that comes to us all as we strive to be faithful. How is it that we wait upon our redemption? How is it that we teach and lead? How is it that we build communities that are redemption centers?
