For there's no other way
Commentary
When I sit down to plan the worship services for this Sunday, I will start by penciling in John H. Sammis' hymn, "Trust And Obey." If Sammis had chosen to devote individual verses in his hymn to biblical characters, he could easily have included some that we will read about this week.
See Abraham packing up and leaving home in response to God's difficult directive. See Matthew leaving his tax table, apparently without bothering to pack up, in order to follow the one whose invitation included no details. See the grieving father turning to Jesus in the face of death, and see the bleeding woman reaching out to touch, just to touch, with the hopeful expectation that she would be healed.
Sammis' recipe is simple. It may even seem simplistic to sophisticated folk who see in all things 1,000 shades of gray. But for Sammis, the whole matter of the Christian life could be distilled down to two words: trust and obey.
We see those two words personified in the life experiences of the people in our passages for this Sunday. And their stories combine to give credence to Sammis' challenging summary: "There's no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey."
Genesis 12:1-9
Ralph Waldo Emerson attributed to a group of "embattled farmers" on April 18, 1775, "the shot heard round the world." His poetic assessment captures one of the mysterious realities of history: that the impact of certain special events far exceeds the boundaries of their immediate time and place. Emerson recognized that the first gunshots fired at Lexington and Concord triggered the start of something that would have global and lasting significance.
Genesis 12 features that kind of monumental moment. It is a watershed. Some characters and events in scripture occupy only their own time and space, but what God both required and promised in this passage set the stage for virtually everything that follows in the biblical story: a promised land; a chosen people; a covenant relationship with that people. All of these crucial and continuing matters are given birth in this brief, pivotal conversation.
This passage is a filet cut. It is not flowery or redundant, nothing unnecessary. Rather, it is thick with concise, significant statements.
It begins with the command to go, and God is painfully specific about the implications of that departure. He itemizes the required abandonment in concentric circles that move ever closer to home for Abram: your country, your kindred, and your father's house. Those phrases can each be translated directly into our day, into our circumstances. What would it mean to you or to me to be called by God to leave country, kin, and home?
The threefold reference to what Abram has to leave is echoed later in another, greater sacrifice that God asks of him: "Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love ..." (Genesis 22:2). And, likewise, God's instruction in this episode to go "to the land that I will show you" is similarly reminiscent of the occasion when God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac: "on one of the mountains that I shall show you" (Genesis 22:2). The similarities between the two incidents help us to recognize something of the sacrifice involved in this particular episode from Abraham's life.
I come from and hold onto an Armenian tradition, but there is no denying the truth of God's choice in this episode. When we open to Genesis 12, the world is anonymously populated, and from out of that indeterminate population, and without explanation, God chose one man. Abram did not initiate; God did. The Lord might well have said to him what Jesus said in the end to his disciples: "You did not choose me but I chose you" (John 15:16).
God's selection of one man and his descendants, however, is manifestly inclusive. We are sometimes given to think that a targeted choice, as opposed to an open invitation, is an exclusive thing. By asking only your family to come to the party at my house, I seem to be leaving out all of the other families I know. In God's case, however, it seems that he wants everyone to come to the party at his house, and he intends to use this one particular family to reach them all: "in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."
Romans 4:13-25
We noted earlier that the Genesis 12 passage reported a watershed event. An anonymous old man from Mesopotamia packing up and moving to Canaan, where he would never own more than a burial ground, shouldn't be remembered even 100 years later. And yet, 2,000 years after the fact, Paul wrote about that old man. And 4,000 years after the fact, we are still reading and talking about him.
Paul is exploring the meaning and importance of faith, and he finds fertile ground in the example of Abraham. Citing that example here, Paul offers to the Romans (and to us) both an understanding of justification by faith and an exemplary model of what our faith should be like.
Paul gives expression to some unspoken parts of Abraham's story. He says that Abraham "considered his own body" and "considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb." That's natural. That's human. Abraham's achievement was not in turning a blind eye to the facts of his circumstances. Romantic love may be blind; faith is not. The man or woman of faith does not take the child's approach -- closing the eyes, covering the ears, stomping the feet and hollering so as not to see or hear what is unwelcome. Rather, faith looks plainly at the facts, but not exclusively at the facts.
"Hoping against hope" is Paul's honest assessment of what Abraham did. Was he a dreamer? In denial? Out of touch with reality? No, but rather in touch with a greater reality than just his age and his wife's condition. He considered those matters, but the central issue for him was "the promise of God" and "being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised." Simple.
The Greek word that Paul uses to describe what Abraham did not do -- "waver" -- appears nowhere else in the New Testament. The King James offers an appealingly picturesque translation of it: "he staggered not at the promise of God." Abraham's faith was unflinching, even in the face of his own "as good as dead" body. His faith was unblinking, even when presented with the reality of "the barrenness of Sarah's womb." Neither of these were circumstances that Abraham himself could change. They were certainly, however, circumstances that could have altered his outlook and poisoned his hope. In the end, they proved to be circumstances within which our can-do God could work.
Abraham's marvelous example in this passage, of course, was to enable Paul to make a larger point. Abraham predated the giving of the law to Moses by hundreds of years, and so Paul uses Abraham on several occasions to illustrate the primacy of faith. We are not saved by the law, we are not made righteous by the law, we do not receive God's promises through the law, and our relationship with him is not ultimately based on the law. Faith is the central issue. Abraham was counted as righteous, he plainly had a covenant relationship with God, and he received God's promises. And all of that came about by faith, not by law.
Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26
There is an astonishing economy to Jesus' call. Many of us cherish the image and the truth of the hymn "Softly And Tenderly Jesus Is Calling," but that does not seem to be the scene here at Matthew's tax table. No four verses slowly sung here while urging folks to come to the altar. It's a short, simple statement. "Follow me." It's a second-person, singular, imperative.
We command a dog with brevity. Heel. Sit. Come. Stay. And it is only where the dog, rather than the master, is in charge that the pet owner stands outside calling and pleading for the animal to come.
Disciples are not dogs, of course, but Jesus is the master. He is the owner, the lord, and we do a disservice to him, to scripture, and to our congregations when we make obedience a matter of cajoling and pleading. Jesus called. Matthew followed. Simple. Not easy, of course, but simple.
The call of Matthew is followed immediately by the scene of Jesus eating with Matthew and his friends. As lepers were the only companions for lepers, so too it seems that sinners were the only companions for sinners. Those whom society ostracizes find company and comfort with one another.
Because our people may be so steeped in the biblical understanding that all have sinned (see Romans 3:23), they may be handicapped in their ability to appreciate the cultural distinction implicit here between the sinners and the righteous. In my experience, church folks in America are so acquainted with the truth that we are all sinners that they may be overly resigned to the truth. "Nobody's perfect" is the unofficial amendment to our creed, and sin is reckoned as an inevitable part of life for believers and unbelievers alike.
We see a different self-assessment, however, in some of the characters of scripture. Job insists on his own righteousness (see Job 27:6; 32:1). The psalmist makes an unapologetic distinction between the wicked and sinful, on the one hand, and the righteous, on the other (see, for example, Psalm 1). The rich young ruler was confident that he had obeyed all of the laws (Luke 18:21). And as to righteousness under the law, Paul calls himself blameless (Philippians 3:6). This kind of background should shed light on the dualistic categorization of people reflected in the thinking of that culture: the Pharisees were "righteous," while Matthew and his crowd were "sinners."
If we feel the slightest contempt for the Pharisees, then we will likely be delighted by this potent moment in Matthew 9. Knowing that the Pharisees were scornful of the company Jesus kept, he said to them, "Go and learn what this means, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' "
The quotation that Jesus cited comes from the Old Testament prophet Hosea (6:6). Aside from the point of the prophetic reference, or the larger truth that Jesus was trying to convey, there is an instant of high drama here. "Go and learn what this means," Jesus said to the Pharisees, directing their attention to a passage of scripture.
No one said that to the Pharisees.
Who tells the CEO to study the employee handbook? Who sends the professor back to the textbook? That the experts in the scriptures should themselves be sent back to the scriptures, and with such an elementary assignment -- "learn what this means" -- must have turned their faces red.
In the second portion of our Gospel Lesson, Matthew reports the coincidence of two healings: the synagogue leader's daughter and the hemorrhaging woman. Matthew's account of the episode lacks some of the drama found in Mark (5:22-23) and Luke (8:41-42). In those other gospels, the man's daughter is not yet dead, but dying. There is an understandable urgency, therefore, in the man's request for Jesus to come to his house, and the bleeding woman's need must have seemed to him an intolerable delay.
In the most important details, of course, all three gospels concur: the woman was healed and the daughter was raised.
Jesus dismissed the mourners outside the house, saying, "Go away; for the girl is not dead but sleeping."
The distinction that Jesus makes here between death and sleeping is an uncertain one. In the story of the raising of Lazarus, Jesus first tells his disciples that Lazarus is sleeping, only to say more plainly a moment later that Lazarus was dead (John 11:11-14). Of course, such cryptic speech is more characteristic of John's Gospel, and the Greek words for both "sleep" and "death" are different in the Lazarus episode than here in Matthew.
Some have suggested that the girl was actually in a kind of coma, rather than technically dead, and thus the distinction made by Jesus. In either case, the truth remains the same. Whether she was comatose or deceased, the gathered grievers had given up hope for the little girl. And whether she was technically dead or not, only Jesus could restore her, alive and awake, to her parents.
The image of Jesus dismissing mourners is a powerful one. I'm glad for a Lord who puts mourners out of work. Those mourners, in turn, dismissed Jesus, which is a startling response. They laughed at him.
Here is the one, who will not only raise up the little girl, but who will himself be raised from the dead, and at whose name every knee will one day bow. They laughed at him. The angels worship and adore him. The demons hate and fear him. But only foolish humanity would laugh at him.
Sarah, in her own way, laughed at God in the Old Testament (Genesis 18:12). It was not sinister; it was reflex. Perhaps we could make the same charitable case for the mourners in Matthew 9. In any event, the underlying problem is the same: the people knew better. God said that Sarah would have a son, but she knew better. Jesus said that the girl was not dead, but the mourners knew better. Their reaction is understandable, but their position is untenable: namely, that they know better than the Lord does.
Thinking we know better than God about what is and is not possible, what can and cannot happen, is an error that did not die with the mourners outside of Jairus' house.
Application
In 1955, John F. Kennedy wrote a book titled, Profiles in Courage. This week's lections might encourage a preacher to plan a sermon series titled, "Profiles in Faith."
It was faith that prompted the grieving father and the bleeding woman to turn to Christ in their need. Each one had reason to despair. According to Matthew, the synagogue leader's daughter had already died. Who goes to someone -- anyone but an undertaker -- for help at that point? He went to Jesus. Meanwhile, the woman had suffered for twelve years. You and I have watched some parishioners suffer through extended illness. After three years, do they continue to feel hopeful? Do they aspire to anything but "managing" their condition and pain after five years? Do they hope for anything more than surviving -- and after ten years do they even hope for that? She went hopefully to Jesus, which is a remarkable act of faith.
Abraham and Matthew, meanwhile, exhibit the feet of faith. The Lord commands Abraham to pack up and go. The Lord commands Matthew to drop everything and come. For both the patriarch and the publican, the risk is immense, and the future is unknown. Familiarity and security are traded in on God's call.
I see a trio singing in heaven. Abraham and Matthew singing with John Sammis: singing the words that Sammis wrote and that they themselves had lived. "What he says we will do, where he sends we will go; never fear, only trust and obey."
We are invited to sing -- and live -- along.
Alternative Applications
1) Genesis 12:1-9. The final line in this passage could be the caption under the entire picture of Abraham's life: "And Abram journeyed on by stages...."
See the stages of his journey. Pulling up his roots to move to a new land, and to start a new life. The frightened flight to Egypt motivated and marked by a sense of insecurity. And it's an episode that seems to be relived later near Gerar. There are all the troubles that come with his companion, Lot: the strife between their camps, the military rescue, the grim prospect of judgment on Lot's adopted hometown, and the horrifying sight on the morning after. There is the encounter with the mysterious Melchizedek, as well as later visits by "angels unawares." God keeps promising both property and progeny, but years and years pass without either coming true. Then comes the unfortunate Hagar and Ishmael episode, with years of attendant conflicts. There is circumcision. Then Isaac. But that laughter is interrupted a few years later with an awful test on a mountain in Moriah. Abraham loses his lifelong companion, and consequently seeks to find one for Isaac. And, finally, there is throughout his story the constant moving from place to place: a nomadic existence in a land where he would never own more than a burial ground.
Strange hero, this Abraham. He is not the warrior and conqueror that David was. He was not an agent of miracles like Moses. He did not live in the splendor and accomplishment of Solomon. He did not serve as God's spokesman to his generation, like Elijah. Rather, he was a man who packed up and left home because God told him to. He circumcised himself and his household because God told him to. He led his cherished son up a mountain to sacrifice him because God told him to. He was faithful and obedient, journeying by stages, with the promises of God always, it seems, unseen beyond the horizon. And he is an example to us all.
2) Romans 4:13-25. This selected lection is just one of the places where Paul cites Abraham as the father of the faithful, and uses the example of that patriarch to illustrate a crucial truth about the gospel. If your congregation needs clarity on the doctrine of salvation by faith alone, and "not of works, lest any man should boast" (Ephesians 2:9 KJV), this Sunday may provide that opportunity. I would use Abraham's story and Paul's passage to preach a sermon called, "Abraham's Pre-Law Degree."
I would not begin with Abraham, or with Paul, for that matter. I would set the stage by illustrating the central importance of the law for Israel: its primary location within the Hebrew Scriptures; the dramatic fanfare of its presentation at Sinai; its symbolic place in the Ark of the Covenant; its prescribed prominence in Israel's life (e.g., Deuteronomy 6:6-9); and its beloved place in the lives of God's people, as articulated in Psalm 119.
Then, having established the significance of the law, I would turn to the story of Abraham: his foundational role in Israel's history and salvation history, his marvelous example, his close relationship with God, his righteousness, and his receipt of God's promises.
And then I would make Paul's point: all that Abraham was, and did, and had came before the law and apart from the law. That, then, would become my entree into explaining the essential role of faith in our salvation, our living, and our relationship with God.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 50:7-15
(This is the alternative psalm for Proper 5)
Does God need our worship? According to Psalm 50, the answer is a resounding, "No." Who are we, mere humans, to offer praise to the almighty, who is adored by the heavens themselves -- who in their silent, twinkling witness declare God righteous (v. 6)?
The psalmist imagines an ancient court proceeding as the setting for this psalm. The suzerain addresses the court, declaring simply, "I am God" (v. 7). No further testimony is needed. This declaration is reminiscent of the scene in the movie comedy, Oh, God, in which God (played by a decidedly ordinary-looking George Burns) is asked by the grocery-store clerk (played by John Denver) to offer some proof of who he is. God produces a business card. When the baffled human takes it into his hands and looks it over, the card is blank except for one word: "God." (It makes sense: why would the creator of heaven and earth need an address, let alone a fax number?)
The temple sacrifices -- subject of so many intricate regulations -- mean little to the Lord: "I will not accept a bull from your house," God responds imperiously, to those who casually sin, then seek to atone through sacrifice (v. 9). Does God, to whom belong "the cattle on a thousand hills," truly need such paltry offerings (v. 10)?
Because of its emphasis on offering, this psalm could be a stewardship text. There is a theological dilemma inherent in any discussion of Christian stewardship. What does one give to a person who has everything? What use does God have for our offerings? Does the difference between one dollar and twenty dollars in the offering plate make any difference at all in the great cosmic scheme?
Yes, it does. But it makes more difference to us, the givers, than it does to God. Always, in stewardship, the need of the giver to give is more important than the need of the receiver to receive.
See Abraham packing up and leaving home in response to God's difficult directive. See Matthew leaving his tax table, apparently without bothering to pack up, in order to follow the one whose invitation included no details. See the grieving father turning to Jesus in the face of death, and see the bleeding woman reaching out to touch, just to touch, with the hopeful expectation that she would be healed.
Sammis' recipe is simple. It may even seem simplistic to sophisticated folk who see in all things 1,000 shades of gray. But for Sammis, the whole matter of the Christian life could be distilled down to two words: trust and obey.
We see those two words personified in the life experiences of the people in our passages for this Sunday. And their stories combine to give credence to Sammis' challenging summary: "There's no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey."
Genesis 12:1-9
Ralph Waldo Emerson attributed to a group of "embattled farmers" on April 18, 1775, "the shot heard round the world." His poetic assessment captures one of the mysterious realities of history: that the impact of certain special events far exceeds the boundaries of their immediate time and place. Emerson recognized that the first gunshots fired at Lexington and Concord triggered the start of something that would have global and lasting significance.
Genesis 12 features that kind of monumental moment. It is a watershed. Some characters and events in scripture occupy only their own time and space, but what God both required and promised in this passage set the stage for virtually everything that follows in the biblical story: a promised land; a chosen people; a covenant relationship with that people. All of these crucial and continuing matters are given birth in this brief, pivotal conversation.
This passage is a filet cut. It is not flowery or redundant, nothing unnecessary. Rather, it is thick with concise, significant statements.
It begins with the command to go, and God is painfully specific about the implications of that departure. He itemizes the required abandonment in concentric circles that move ever closer to home for Abram: your country, your kindred, and your father's house. Those phrases can each be translated directly into our day, into our circumstances. What would it mean to you or to me to be called by God to leave country, kin, and home?
The threefold reference to what Abram has to leave is echoed later in another, greater sacrifice that God asks of him: "Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love ..." (Genesis 22:2). And, likewise, God's instruction in this episode to go "to the land that I will show you" is similarly reminiscent of the occasion when God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac: "on one of the mountains that I shall show you" (Genesis 22:2). The similarities between the two incidents help us to recognize something of the sacrifice involved in this particular episode from Abraham's life.
I come from and hold onto an Armenian tradition, but there is no denying the truth of God's choice in this episode. When we open to Genesis 12, the world is anonymously populated, and from out of that indeterminate population, and without explanation, God chose one man. Abram did not initiate; God did. The Lord might well have said to him what Jesus said in the end to his disciples: "You did not choose me but I chose you" (John 15:16).
God's selection of one man and his descendants, however, is manifestly inclusive. We are sometimes given to think that a targeted choice, as opposed to an open invitation, is an exclusive thing. By asking only your family to come to the party at my house, I seem to be leaving out all of the other families I know. In God's case, however, it seems that he wants everyone to come to the party at his house, and he intends to use this one particular family to reach them all: "in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."
Romans 4:13-25
We noted earlier that the Genesis 12 passage reported a watershed event. An anonymous old man from Mesopotamia packing up and moving to Canaan, where he would never own more than a burial ground, shouldn't be remembered even 100 years later. And yet, 2,000 years after the fact, Paul wrote about that old man. And 4,000 years after the fact, we are still reading and talking about him.
Paul is exploring the meaning and importance of faith, and he finds fertile ground in the example of Abraham. Citing that example here, Paul offers to the Romans (and to us) both an understanding of justification by faith and an exemplary model of what our faith should be like.
Paul gives expression to some unspoken parts of Abraham's story. He says that Abraham "considered his own body" and "considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb." That's natural. That's human. Abraham's achievement was not in turning a blind eye to the facts of his circumstances. Romantic love may be blind; faith is not. The man or woman of faith does not take the child's approach -- closing the eyes, covering the ears, stomping the feet and hollering so as not to see or hear what is unwelcome. Rather, faith looks plainly at the facts, but not exclusively at the facts.
"Hoping against hope" is Paul's honest assessment of what Abraham did. Was he a dreamer? In denial? Out of touch with reality? No, but rather in touch with a greater reality than just his age and his wife's condition. He considered those matters, but the central issue for him was "the promise of God" and "being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised." Simple.
The Greek word that Paul uses to describe what Abraham did not do -- "waver" -- appears nowhere else in the New Testament. The King James offers an appealingly picturesque translation of it: "he staggered not at the promise of God." Abraham's faith was unflinching, even in the face of his own "as good as dead" body. His faith was unblinking, even when presented with the reality of "the barrenness of Sarah's womb." Neither of these were circumstances that Abraham himself could change. They were certainly, however, circumstances that could have altered his outlook and poisoned his hope. In the end, they proved to be circumstances within which our can-do God could work.
Abraham's marvelous example in this passage, of course, was to enable Paul to make a larger point. Abraham predated the giving of the law to Moses by hundreds of years, and so Paul uses Abraham on several occasions to illustrate the primacy of faith. We are not saved by the law, we are not made righteous by the law, we do not receive God's promises through the law, and our relationship with him is not ultimately based on the law. Faith is the central issue. Abraham was counted as righteous, he plainly had a covenant relationship with God, and he received God's promises. And all of that came about by faith, not by law.
Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26
There is an astonishing economy to Jesus' call. Many of us cherish the image and the truth of the hymn "Softly And Tenderly Jesus Is Calling," but that does not seem to be the scene here at Matthew's tax table. No four verses slowly sung here while urging folks to come to the altar. It's a short, simple statement. "Follow me." It's a second-person, singular, imperative.
We command a dog with brevity. Heel. Sit. Come. Stay. And it is only where the dog, rather than the master, is in charge that the pet owner stands outside calling and pleading for the animal to come.
Disciples are not dogs, of course, but Jesus is the master. He is the owner, the lord, and we do a disservice to him, to scripture, and to our congregations when we make obedience a matter of cajoling and pleading. Jesus called. Matthew followed. Simple. Not easy, of course, but simple.
The call of Matthew is followed immediately by the scene of Jesus eating with Matthew and his friends. As lepers were the only companions for lepers, so too it seems that sinners were the only companions for sinners. Those whom society ostracizes find company and comfort with one another.
Because our people may be so steeped in the biblical understanding that all have sinned (see Romans 3:23), they may be handicapped in their ability to appreciate the cultural distinction implicit here between the sinners and the righteous. In my experience, church folks in America are so acquainted with the truth that we are all sinners that they may be overly resigned to the truth. "Nobody's perfect" is the unofficial amendment to our creed, and sin is reckoned as an inevitable part of life for believers and unbelievers alike.
We see a different self-assessment, however, in some of the characters of scripture. Job insists on his own righteousness (see Job 27:6; 32:1). The psalmist makes an unapologetic distinction between the wicked and sinful, on the one hand, and the righteous, on the other (see, for example, Psalm 1). The rich young ruler was confident that he had obeyed all of the laws (Luke 18:21). And as to righteousness under the law, Paul calls himself blameless (Philippians 3:6). This kind of background should shed light on the dualistic categorization of people reflected in the thinking of that culture: the Pharisees were "righteous," while Matthew and his crowd were "sinners."
If we feel the slightest contempt for the Pharisees, then we will likely be delighted by this potent moment in Matthew 9. Knowing that the Pharisees were scornful of the company Jesus kept, he said to them, "Go and learn what this means, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' "
The quotation that Jesus cited comes from the Old Testament prophet Hosea (6:6). Aside from the point of the prophetic reference, or the larger truth that Jesus was trying to convey, there is an instant of high drama here. "Go and learn what this means," Jesus said to the Pharisees, directing their attention to a passage of scripture.
No one said that to the Pharisees.
Who tells the CEO to study the employee handbook? Who sends the professor back to the textbook? That the experts in the scriptures should themselves be sent back to the scriptures, and with such an elementary assignment -- "learn what this means" -- must have turned their faces red.
In the second portion of our Gospel Lesson, Matthew reports the coincidence of two healings: the synagogue leader's daughter and the hemorrhaging woman. Matthew's account of the episode lacks some of the drama found in Mark (5:22-23) and Luke (8:41-42). In those other gospels, the man's daughter is not yet dead, but dying. There is an understandable urgency, therefore, in the man's request for Jesus to come to his house, and the bleeding woman's need must have seemed to him an intolerable delay.
In the most important details, of course, all three gospels concur: the woman was healed and the daughter was raised.
Jesus dismissed the mourners outside the house, saying, "Go away; for the girl is not dead but sleeping."
The distinction that Jesus makes here between death and sleeping is an uncertain one. In the story of the raising of Lazarus, Jesus first tells his disciples that Lazarus is sleeping, only to say more plainly a moment later that Lazarus was dead (John 11:11-14). Of course, such cryptic speech is more characteristic of John's Gospel, and the Greek words for both "sleep" and "death" are different in the Lazarus episode than here in Matthew.
Some have suggested that the girl was actually in a kind of coma, rather than technically dead, and thus the distinction made by Jesus. In either case, the truth remains the same. Whether she was comatose or deceased, the gathered grievers had given up hope for the little girl. And whether she was technically dead or not, only Jesus could restore her, alive and awake, to her parents.
The image of Jesus dismissing mourners is a powerful one. I'm glad for a Lord who puts mourners out of work. Those mourners, in turn, dismissed Jesus, which is a startling response. They laughed at him.
Here is the one, who will not only raise up the little girl, but who will himself be raised from the dead, and at whose name every knee will one day bow. They laughed at him. The angels worship and adore him. The demons hate and fear him. But only foolish humanity would laugh at him.
Sarah, in her own way, laughed at God in the Old Testament (Genesis 18:12). It was not sinister; it was reflex. Perhaps we could make the same charitable case for the mourners in Matthew 9. In any event, the underlying problem is the same: the people knew better. God said that Sarah would have a son, but she knew better. Jesus said that the girl was not dead, but the mourners knew better. Their reaction is understandable, but their position is untenable: namely, that they know better than the Lord does.
Thinking we know better than God about what is and is not possible, what can and cannot happen, is an error that did not die with the mourners outside of Jairus' house.
Application
In 1955, John F. Kennedy wrote a book titled, Profiles in Courage. This week's lections might encourage a preacher to plan a sermon series titled, "Profiles in Faith."
It was faith that prompted the grieving father and the bleeding woman to turn to Christ in their need. Each one had reason to despair. According to Matthew, the synagogue leader's daughter had already died. Who goes to someone -- anyone but an undertaker -- for help at that point? He went to Jesus. Meanwhile, the woman had suffered for twelve years. You and I have watched some parishioners suffer through extended illness. After three years, do they continue to feel hopeful? Do they aspire to anything but "managing" their condition and pain after five years? Do they hope for anything more than surviving -- and after ten years do they even hope for that? She went hopefully to Jesus, which is a remarkable act of faith.
Abraham and Matthew, meanwhile, exhibit the feet of faith. The Lord commands Abraham to pack up and go. The Lord commands Matthew to drop everything and come. For both the patriarch and the publican, the risk is immense, and the future is unknown. Familiarity and security are traded in on God's call.
I see a trio singing in heaven. Abraham and Matthew singing with John Sammis: singing the words that Sammis wrote and that they themselves had lived. "What he says we will do, where he sends we will go; never fear, only trust and obey."
We are invited to sing -- and live -- along.
Alternative Applications
1) Genesis 12:1-9. The final line in this passage could be the caption under the entire picture of Abraham's life: "And Abram journeyed on by stages...."
See the stages of his journey. Pulling up his roots to move to a new land, and to start a new life. The frightened flight to Egypt motivated and marked by a sense of insecurity. And it's an episode that seems to be relived later near Gerar. There are all the troubles that come with his companion, Lot: the strife between their camps, the military rescue, the grim prospect of judgment on Lot's adopted hometown, and the horrifying sight on the morning after. There is the encounter with the mysterious Melchizedek, as well as later visits by "angels unawares." God keeps promising both property and progeny, but years and years pass without either coming true. Then comes the unfortunate Hagar and Ishmael episode, with years of attendant conflicts. There is circumcision. Then Isaac. But that laughter is interrupted a few years later with an awful test on a mountain in Moriah. Abraham loses his lifelong companion, and consequently seeks to find one for Isaac. And, finally, there is throughout his story the constant moving from place to place: a nomadic existence in a land where he would never own more than a burial ground.
Strange hero, this Abraham. He is not the warrior and conqueror that David was. He was not an agent of miracles like Moses. He did not live in the splendor and accomplishment of Solomon. He did not serve as God's spokesman to his generation, like Elijah. Rather, he was a man who packed up and left home because God told him to. He circumcised himself and his household because God told him to. He led his cherished son up a mountain to sacrifice him because God told him to. He was faithful and obedient, journeying by stages, with the promises of God always, it seems, unseen beyond the horizon. And he is an example to us all.
2) Romans 4:13-25. This selected lection is just one of the places where Paul cites Abraham as the father of the faithful, and uses the example of that patriarch to illustrate a crucial truth about the gospel. If your congregation needs clarity on the doctrine of salvation by faith alone, and "not of works, lest any man should boast" (Ephesians 2:9 KJV), this Sunday may provide that opportunity. I would use Abraham's story and Paul's passage to preach a sermon called, "Abraham's Pre-Law Degree."
I would not begin with Abraham, or with Paul, for that matter. I would set the stage by illustrating the central importance of the law for Israel: its primary location within the Hebrew Scriptures; the dramatic fanfare of its presentation at Sinai; its symbolic place in the Ark of the Covenant; its prescribed prominence in Israel's life (e.g., Deuteronomy 6:6-9); and its beloved place in the lives of God's people, as articulated in Psalm 119.
Then, having established the significance of the law, I would turn to the story of Abraham: his foundational role in Israel's history and salvation history, his marvelous example, his close relationship with God, his righteousness, and his receipt of God's promises.
And then I would make Paul's point: all that Abraham was, and did, and had came before the law and apart from the law. That, then, would become my entree into explaining the essential role of faith in our salvation, our living, and our relationship with God.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 50:7-15
(This is the alternative psalm for Proper 5)
Does God need our worship? According to Psalm 50, the answer is a resounding, "No." Who are we, mere humans, to offer praise to the almighty, who is adored by the heavens themselves -- who in their silent, twinkling witness declare God righteous (v. 6)?
The psalmist imagines an ancient court proceeding as the setting for this psalm. The suzerain addresses the court, declaring simply, "I am God" (v. 7). No further testimony is needed. This declaration is reminiscent of the scene in the movie comedy, Oh, God, in which God (played by a decidedly ordinary-looking George Burns) is asked by the grocery-store clerk (played by John Denver) to offer some proof of who he is. God produces a business card. When the baffled human takes it into his hands and looks it over, the card is blank except for one word: "God." (It makes sense: why would the creator of heaven and earth need an address, let alone a fax number?)
The temple sacrifices -- subject of so many intricate regulations -- mean little to the Lord: "I will not accept a bull from your house," God responds imperiously, to those who casually sin, then seek to atone through sacrifice (v. 9). Does God, to whom belong "the cattle on a thousand hills," truly need such paltry offerings (v. 10)?
Because of its emphasis on offering, this psalm could be a stewardship text. There is a theological dilemma inherent in any discussion of Christian stewardship. What does one give to a person who has everything? What use does God have for our offerings? Does the difference between one dollar and twenty dollars in the offering plate make any difference at all in the great cosmic scheme?
Yes, it does. But it makes more difference to us, the givers, than it does to God. Always, in stewardship, the need of the giver to give is more important than the need of the receiver to receive.
