Luke 18: 9-14
October 24, 2010
Maybe you are like me. Maybe when you hear this passage about prayer you feel a little angst – angst over exactly which one of the characters you are most like. When I hear Jesus condemn one and praise the other I can’t help but ask, “Which one am I?” Am I like the Pharisee, sure of myself and my goodness, happy with my pious practices, feeling good about how religious I am, how much I volunteer, how much I give, how much I read the bible and pray? Do I, like the Pharisee, say to myself “I’m glad I’m not like that misguided person over there!” Or, am I like the tax collector, humble and honest?
I hope I am like the tax collector. I certainly do not want to be condemned by Jesus. I even try to be like the tax collector. I check myself from time to time: do I think I’m too great, always right, pious, better than everyone else. Sometimes I don’t pass the test and I realize I do think these things. But other times, I can honestly answer, “no, I am pretty darn humble,” and I feel good about that. I feel safe in the glow of Jesus’ praise. I don’t exalt myself and so I am exalted by God. Most of all, I feel relieved to not be like those Pharisees….oops. It’s one giant trap. As soon as I have any sense of clarity that I am the tax collector, and I feel pretty good about that, I have become the Pharisee.
The truth is, when I read this parable I realize that the Pharisee and tax collector both live in me – within my one person. It’s not about the Pharisees verses the tax collectors of the world. When we see the Pharisee and the tax collector as prototypes for distinct groups of people, it tempts us to categorize ourselves and others as either one or the other. The truth is, as we all try to be faithful people, both live within us.
The Pharisee was well intended, I suspect. He was doing what he thought to be the faithful thing…giving to the temple, praying regularly, fasting. Pharisees were not the bad people we often make them out to be; they were as well intentioned as you and me. It’s just that human brokenness crept in and he began to feel quite righteous in his faith, and judgmental of those who weren’t like him. “I’m glad I’m not like the tax collector,” he says. Many Pharisees believed the tax collector’s whole life was an affront to God. Tax collectors colluded with the Roman Empire – taking money from ordinary folks to fill the coffers of the royalty and elite. The religious folks thought tax collectors were bad, by definition. Much like we would feel about any member of the Taliban, for example.
That Pharisaic tendency lives in me…I think it lives in all of us; that tendency to revel in our religion and believe we’ve got it and others don’t. We are well intended, but we veer off course – and often we can veer off course when we think we’re being most religious. We think we are doing what God wants us to do, and others are clearly not. But the fact is we will be wrong sometimes – it’s inevitable. We will be wrong and others will be right, even when we truly believe we are being faithful.
The tax collector is the antidote to our tendency to slip into the Pharisee inside of us. What was it that Jesus was praising in the tax collector? Well, he names it: humility. Instead comparing himself to others, the tax collector looks to God and confesses his own brokenness. He was the same mix of good intentions and human frailties as the Pharisee, but instead of seeing the frailty of others in order to feel justified in who he was, the tax collector looked first for the log in his own eye.
He, like everyone else was living in an imperfect world and the terrible system of which he was a part was also the system that supported him, made it possible for him to work and go about his daily affairs. He could no more escape his system than we can escape, say, capitalism. Capitalism both provides us a way of life that we pretty much like, and it taints us because when we participate in it we automatically participate in the bad as well as the good. As my dad says, when I’m complaining about the bad parts, “You’re right, it’s not perfect, but it’s the best thing out there.” It’s not perfect. And actually, to assume that it’s necessarily better than everything else out there might be a bit Pharisaic.
We buy more clothes if they are cheap, which pressures companies to make things cheaper, which means they find cheaper labor in other countries and these countries have less just labor laws than ours. And that’s just one example. We’re in it and we’re in it deep. So we have to figure out how to be faithful in it, rather than believing we can somehow rise above it.
As we try to live our lives in an imperfect world, sometimes we respond from that Pharisaic part of ourselves thinking we can rise above it all through religion or moral action or free markets or the right government. And sometimes we respond like the tax collector – confessing our brokenness and the brokenness of the world. We are, plain and simple, a mix of both.
I continue to be dismayed by what I’m hearing out there as elections approach. Here’s one example: Recently, someone told me that she was talking to one of her friends. Her friend was upset by what some politician in the opposing political party was saying. At some point in the conversation he said to her: “You simply can’t be both a Christian and a member of your political party at the same time. It’s impossible.” I was stunned when she told me this. These were friends. But we all know how much of this is out there, and when there is not even the veneer of friendship, it gets really nasty, hurtful and spiteful. It reminds me of the Pharisee: You can’t both be a tax collector and have a relationship with God. Jesus sought to challenge this notion that some are suited for religion and faith and some are not based on who they are, what they do, or how they vote.
November 2nd is coming and I’m here to tell you: There is no perfect vote; we know this. Some things the republicans will do better than the democrats and sometimes it will be the reverse. And of course sometimes – if not often – they both get it wrong. And we could respond to this like the Pharisee and be convinced that we are somehow able to rise above it all because we are moral, upright, intelligent people who do know what’s right and which party does the right thing. Or, we can realize that we are complicit in all of this imperfection whether we vote republican, democrat, green or not at all. No matter what we do, we are a part of an imperfect system, and we must act within it, make decisions, take part, and try as best we can to be faithful in everything we do. At the same time we also have to remember that no matter who or what we vote for, we will endorse something or affirm something we don’t really believe – that doesn’t really reflect our faith and values.
Of course some of us will vote one way, some another way. The vote doesn’t indicate people’s faithfulness. Turning to God does, and trying as best as we can to live out what we hear from God. Maybe the most faithful thing we can do as a congregation is to vote in different ways. If we as a congregation sought to figure out which vote was the most faithful and everyone decided the same thing, we would be making a pretty extraordinary claim: That one party is always more on the side of God than any other. A moment’s thought should make us shrink from such a claim. All parties have their moments, and all work contrary to God’s purposes at times. All have been known to pander to people’s self interests, and they all have corrupt politicians. Power, lies, money, and other things often win out over service to the people. Our different, imperfect, faithful votes are a witness to both the imperfection of the system and the complexity of the faith journey where good, faithful people vote differently.
If we think that the faithful decision matches up perfectly with our decision every time, we’re probably relying on that Pharisee inside us. The key is to constantly be honest that we need God’s forgiveness – sometimes for things we are very aware of and sometimes for things we don’t even know about. Like the tax collector, we’re part of the system, whether we like it or not. And as a part of that system we do things and participate in things that put us in need of confession, of God’s forgiveness.
In worship, we always have the prayer of confession right near the beginning. In some ways, we are trying to emulate the tax collector knowing that we are a mix of good and bad, and the way forward is to confess the brokenness and then act as one freed and forgiven: forgiven not because of our own actions, not because we are more faithful than others or because we vote the right way or think the right way or feed the poor or tithe our earnings or pray every day, but forgiven because of who God is. When we are honest in confession it opens the way for God to work through us. If we don’t know forgiveness, if we aren’t freed, we will be paralyzed by the imperfections of this world and stuck in indecision. We will be unable to choose or act because often, if not always, there is no perfect choice.
The prayer of confession is a call to our best selves – the good parts of the Pharisee inside us: generosity, faithful practices, serving others. Having confessed to God, and opened the way for God to work through us, we can act with conviction – not a conviction that lacks humility, but a conviction that comes from our faith – a conviction that God is with us and doing things in and through us. The conviction is not that we are always right, or that God is always on our side, or that my way is more moral than yours: we might be right, we might be doing what God wants, we might be making the more moral choice; but not always and not completely. Each choice will be tainted with the brokenness of this world, and some choices will be flat out wrong. But the awareness of this, and the honesty about this is what gives us the Christ-like attitude toward others and this world – and that’s at least as important as how we vote on November 2nd.
There’s really no “good guy” / “bad guy” story in this parable. It’s both / and. It’s a story about the brokenness of this world: the political systems are broken, the economic systems are broken, and yes, even the religious systems are broken. And yet we live and operate in all of them. We can and should try as hard as we can to heal and restore these systems, but in the meantime, being aware of our own imperfections and the inevitability that we are complicit in the sinful parts of each of these systems will go a long way toward reconciliation with people with whom we disagree or that we judge.
It’s a story about a good ole’ dose of humility – which is really the art of recognizing ourselves in the other and the other in ourselves. The Pharisee and tax collector are just two parts of the same person. We aren’t one or the other, our neighbor isn’t one or the other, we all struggle with being faithful in an imperfect world faced with impossible decisions. That awareness alone – that confession – will make us more connected to God. Forgiven and freed by God, we can make our choices, love our neighbors, and depend always on the grace of God no matter what we do. Amen.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Preach It!
2 Timothy 3:14-4:5; Luke 18:1-8
October 17, 2010
Last week I was one of two keynote speakers at an event at the college. I was introduced first, and for those of you who come here week after week, you will have no difficultly imagining what my talk looked like. I typed out every single word I was going to say ahead of time, I stood at the podium with my manuscript in front of me, and I read each and every word on the page, looking up as often as I could, but certainly never so much that I would lose my place or, God forbid, say something that wasn’t written down in black and white. I stood perfectly still the whole time, the only movement of my body being my hand turning the page every 1 ½ minutes. The organizer of the event had told me how long she wanted me to speak, so I spoke for exactly that long…I know, because I timed myself before hand and I strayed not one word from the script.
After I finished, I sat down and listened while the next speaker was introduced. When he went up to the podium, he had not a single piece of paper in his hand. He spoke freely, loudly, personably. He was funny. He told stories. Clearly he had thought ahead of time about what he was going to say, but there was no script. He looked at the audience the whole time. He even moved around a little bit behind the podium! I, along with everyone else, was riveted. Of course I was. This was a true preacher.
Technically, I am a preacher. It’s what I’m doing now, it’s what you hire me to do. But some people are “preachers”. These are the folks who elicit the invariable “preach it!” from the congregation. Or they are the ones who bring people to tears from either laughing or crying. They have charisma, they have story telling abilities, they have – I am painfully aware of – a good memory .
Now, I know, I know, there isn’t just one way to preach. In fact, we all have different preferences, different comfort levels with preaching. I suspect that some of you find it comforting that your pastor reads every single word off the page, rather than get worked up into sweat about the wiles of hell. That’s not to say you wouldn’t appreciate a bit more animation from time to time, or even a drop more humor, in the sermons you hear each Sunday, but in general, how I preach probably says something about what our church believes about preaching in general.
Specifically, we are wary of loud proclamations, universal truths, emotional appeals, alter calls and exhortations. And not just in terms of what you want to hear on Sunday morning from the pulpit, but I would venture to guess that most of you do not go about your own lives talking about your faith in such a way that people spontaneously cry out “preach it, sister!” from time to time.
With firsthand knowledge, I can say this is a congregation of made up of people of strong faith. You are active in your faith – meaning you work hard to mold your life and behaviors to your values and beliefs. You think about what it means to follow Jesus and to love God. You take seriously the task of being human in this world and living in such a way that would please God. If I were to say, “hey everyone, it’s time for community meal again, tons of people would sign up in an instant. When stewardship time comes around, all of you put your generous hearts into practice without needing to be prodded, or needing a clever, large scale programs. When something needs to be done either here at the church or in the community, there is never a shortage of people in this congregation ready to act out their faith in whatever way necessary.
But, if I were to say, “we need volunteers next Saturday to go evangelize. The signup sheet is out in fellowship hall, so stop and sign up on your way out of church this Sunday,” I’m guessing that sheet would stay pretty blank. Maybe a couple of people would sign up because they would feel bad if no one else did, but they would not be excited about what in the world “evangelize” might entail. “Evangelize”, “preaching our faith,” “spreading the good news,” “saving people,” – these are common Christian words and phrases, but they are not everyday words in our little congregation. “Tolerance,” “inclusion,” “respect for differences,” “humility,” “kindness,” “respect,” these are concepts we are much more comfortable with.
Paul was a preacher. Paul was an evangelist. He spread the word, and did so in such a way that we can rightfully credit him with the start of the entire Christian church movement. He was not subtle, or bashful. He did not mince words, and he definitely had no trouble ticking people off. This letter to Timothy is probably not written by Paul, but it is written by someone who knew Paul well and who does a good job of capturing Paul’s voice. The author writes from the point of view of Paul in prison. It’s a kind of “last words” letter. It’s impassioned, heartfelt, and very, very challenging. The message seems clear: “Preach it!”
“Proclaim the message! Be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, encourage…do the work of an evangelist.” This is what the author imagines Paul would tell the church as he sits in jail nearing the end of his life. How does this sound to you? I’m guessing many of you feel about the same way I do when I read this: It’s not my place to rebuke people or convince them of what I believe. It’s not my place to push my religion or beliefs on other people. My job is to simply live out what I believe. That’s how I speak about my faith…through my actions. Walk the talk, right?
But I think one question this text asks of us is whether we live our faith too quietly. In our efforts to not browbeat or offend or draw attention to ourselves, is it possible that our walk is not speaking loudly enough?
These instructions to convince, rebuke, encourage, evangelize come on the heels of an oft-quoted, often grossly misunderstood, verse in the bible: “All scripture is inspired by God and useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” Now, first, we need to remind ourselves what this verse is not saying. Since the bible as we know it and have it did not exist when this was written, it does not mean that the author was saying that this particular book that we call the bible, or our scriptures, is written letter for letter by God.
The scriptures this author was talking about were the books of his faith tradition – more or less what we now call the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible. But it was not canonized – meaning no one had yet said, “Here they are; these are the scriptures; nothing more, nothing less.” Instead, the scriptures were the stories of the Jewish people – the stories of Abraham and Sarah, the Exodus, Moses, the judges, kings and prophets, the Psalms and the Lamentations. The laws and the myths about creation and the fall of humanity.
When this letter to Timothy was written, there were disagreements in the church. Different people in authority were saying different things, and some in the church were, according to the author, being led astray from what Paul had always taught. The solution was to call people back to the basics. It was to call them back to the stories and writings of their faith. But those stories are only useful because they are, as the author says, inspired. In Greek, inspiration has to do with breath – the stories are “God-breathed.” They have life. And for Paul and his Christian followers, they have been given breath through the life of Jesus. This author is saying that the stories are more than just stories – when they are inspired, God-breathed, they really can speak to us, affect us, shape our faith and show us who God is.
This book – this bible – is only useful for us and the world if it is inspired – if it is God-breathed. It is, in other words, only useful as more than an antique document if we give it breath and life. The idea is not just that we be inspired by Scripture. The idea is that we become inspiring Scripture – that we breathe life into these words for our time and place. In the same way Jesus, Paul and others breathed life into their scripture in their time and place.
If our words and actions brought these scriptures to life, it would be quite a scene. These scriptures are radical – they are undignified, unconcerned with convention or decorum. Look at the parable of the widow and the judge. This is a story of begging, it’s a story of desperation, it’s a story that compares God to a mean, uncaring, unfair judge, for goodness sake. Jesus’ parables are meant to bring his scriptures – the Jewish scriptures – alive…and his parables are full of desperate characters, odd and startling comparisons. That’s because the bottom line of the scriptures for Jesus is that Yahweh is the God of those who suffer injustice – the undignified, humiliated ones. And that’s startling. Such a God lacks decorum. Jesus’ own life was like this. As he spread the good news – lived the scriptures, proclaimed the message – he fashioned a life that offended, confounded, shocked, and confused others. Much like the widow, he kept after the cause of justice because he knew that was the cause of God.
It is important for us to walk the talk, and I do still think actions speak more loudly than words. But I also believe part of our task is to evangelize – to proclaim the message of our scriptures. And we do that not by mindlessly reciting them, or hammering people over the head with them, but by giving them breath and life through our actions, through our words, through what we have to say to this world today. And that won’t always be polite, or respectful, or popular. It won’t, much to my chagrin, always be planned and scripted. It won’t be easy.
Sometimes it means we look like the widow: crying out for justice day and night, annoying the heck out of people. We have the luxury of being polite, because we are not the widow. We are not, by and large, the ones desperate for justice. But the world cannot afford our luxury. Our lives need to preach a bit more loudly. Our lives could be more evangelistic in their call for justice and proclamations that God is on the side of the poor. Our lives, actions, and words could be much more bold in their claims of hope for a hurting and cynical world.
Preaching, or evangelizing, does not mean trying to apply an ancient document literally, legalistically and prescriptively to our lives. Evangelizing does not mean converting souls so people don’t go to hell. I don’t know how something so magnificent – the idea of scriptures being God-breathed – has become something so offensive: the idea that we are to shove this book down other people’s throats until all they can do is choke out the words, “Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior.” Evangelizing means believing the God we learn about in our stories, in the stories of Abraham and Sarah, Moses and Miriam, the prophets and the kings, the parables and the poems is a God that matters to the world. And this world is in need of knowing the God of our scriptures – not because everyone should be Christian or should act like you and me, but because the God of our scriptures speaks to the injustices we find so frustrating and demoralizing; the God of our scriptures is on the side of the least and the last.
Our scriptures, when brought to life, can offer the world a new way of living with one another…they can offer the world an alternative to what we have…they can offer a compelling vision of God’s realm. When we live our lives according to the scriptures – when we live for justice and are on the side of the least and the last – we are preaching…the scriptures come alive for people, they reveal those things that must change and they offer hope to those who most need it.
Preaching means giving breath to the word of God today – and we are all called to be preachers in this way. We are called to bring the scriptures alive. We might do that with words, we might do that with actions, but we need to be loud about it. We need to really “Preach it!!” Amen.
October 17, 2010
Last week I was one of two keynote speakers at an event at the college. I was introduced first, and for those of you who come here week after week, you will have no difficultly imagining what my talk looked like. I typed out every single word I was going to say ahead of time, I stood at the podium with my manuscript in front of me, and I read each and every word on the page, looking up as often as I could, but certainly never so much that I would lose my place or, God forbid, say something that wasn’t written down in black and white. I stood perfectly still the whole time, the only movement of my body being my hand turning the page every 1 ½ minutes. The organizer of the event had told me how long she wanted me to speak, so I spoke for exactly that long…I know, because I timed myself before hand and I strayed not one word from the script.
After I finished, I sat down and listened while the next speaker was introduced. When he went up to the podium, he had not a single piece of paper in his hand. He spoke freely, loudly, personably. He was funny. He told stories. Clearly he had thought ahead of time about what he was going to say, but there was no script. He looked at the audience the whole time. He even moved around a little bit behind the podium! I, along with everyone else, was riveted. Of course I was. This was a true preacher.
Technically, I am a preacher. It’s what I’m doing now, it’s what you hire me to do. But some people are “preachers”. These are the folks who elicit the invariable “preach it!” from the congregation. Or they are the ones who bring people to tears from either laughing or crying. They have charisma, they have story telling abilities, they have – I am painfully aware of – a good memory .
Now, I know, I know, there isn’t just one way to preach. In fact, we all have different preferences, different comfort levels with preaching. I suspect that some of you find it comforting that your pastor reads every single word off the page, rather than get worked up into sweat about the wiles of hell. That’s not to say you wouldn’t appreciate a bit more animation from time to time, or even a drop more humor, in the sermons you hear each Sunday, but in general, how I preach probably says something about what our church believes about preaching in general.
Specifically, we are wary of loud proclamations, universal truths, emotional appeals, alter calls and exhortations. And not just in terms of what you want to hear on Sunday morning from the pulpit, but I would venture to guess that most of you do not go about your own lives talking about your faith in such a way that people spontaneously cry out “preach it, sister!” from time to time.
With firsthand knowledge, I can say this is a congregation of made up of people of strong faith. You are active in your faith – meaning you work hard to mold your life and behaviors to your values and beliefs. You think about what it means to follow Jesus and to love God. You take seriously the task of being human in this world and living in such a way that would please God. If I were to say, “hey everyone, it’s time for community meal again, tons of people would sign up in an instant. When stewardship time comes around, all of you put your generous hearts into practice without needing to be prodded, or needing a clever, large scale programs. When something needs to be done either here at the church or in the community, there is never a shortage of people in this congregation ready to act out their faith in whatever way necessary.
But, if I were to say, “we need volunteers next Saturday to go evangelize. The signup sheet is out in fellowship hall, so stop and sign up on your way out of church this Sunday,” I’m guessing that sheet would stay pretty blank. Maybe a couple of people would sign up because they would feel bad if no one else did, but they would not be excited about what in the world “evangelize” might entail. “Evangelize”, “preaching our faith,” “spreading the good news,” “saving people,” – these are common Christian words and phrases, but they are not everyday words in our little congregation. “Tolerance,” “inclusion,” “respect for differences,” “humility,” “kindness,” “respect,” these are concepts we are much more comfortable with.
Paul was a preacher. Paul was an evangelist. He spread the word, and did so in such a way that we can rightfully credit him with the start of the entire Christian church movement. He was not subtle, or bashful. He did not mince words, and he definitely had no trouble ticking people off. This letter to Timothy is probably not written by Paul, but it is written by someone who knew Paul well and who does a good job of capturing Paul’s voice. The author writes from the point of view of Paul in prison. It’s a kind of “last words” letter. It’s impassioned, heartfelt, and very, very challenging. The message seems clear: “Preach it!”
“Proclaim the message! Be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, encourage…do the work of an evangelist.” This is what the author imagines Paul would tell the church as he sits in jail nearing the end of his life. How does this sound to you? I’m guessing many of you feel about the same way I do when I read this: It’s not my place to rebuke people or convince them of what I believe. It’s not my place to push my religion or beliefs on other people. My job is to simply live out what I believe. That’s how I speak about my faith…through my actions. Walk the talk, right?
But I think one question this text asks of us is whether we live our faith too quietly. In our efforts to not browbeat or offend or draw attention to ourselves, is it possible that our walk is not speaking loudly enough?
These instructions to convince, rebuke, encourage, evangelize come on the heels of an oft-quoted, often grossly misunderstood, verse in the bible: “All scripture is inspired by God and useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” Now, first, we need to remind ourselves what this verse is not saying. Since the bible as we know it and have it did not exist when this was written, it does not mean that the author was saying that this particular book that we call the bible, or our scriptures, is written letter for letter by God.
The scriptures this author was talking about were the books of his faith tradition – more or less what we now call the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible. But it was not canonized – meaning no one had yet said, “Here they are; these are the scriptures; nothing more, nothing less.” Instead, the scriptures were the stories of the Jewish people – the stories of Abraham and Sarah, the Exodus, Moses, the judges, kings and prophets, the Psalms and the Lamentations. The laws and the myths about creation and the fall of humanity.
When this letter to Timothy was written, there were disagreements in the church. Different people in authority were saying different things, and some in the church were, according to the author, being led astray from what Paul had always taught. The solution was to call people back to the basics. It was to call them back to the stories and writings of their faith. But those stories are only useful because they are, as the author says, inspired. In Greek, inspiration has to do with breath – the stories are “God-breathed.” They have life. And for Paul and his Christian followers, they have been given breath through the life of Jesus. This author is saying that the stories are more than just stories – when they are inspired, God-breathed, they really can speak to us, affect us, shape our faith and show us who God is.
This book – this bible – is only useful for us and the world if it is inspired – if it is God-breathed. It is, in other words, only useful as more than an antique document if we give it breath and life. The idea is not just that we be inspired by Scripture. The idea is that we become inspiring Scripture – that we breathe life into these words for our time and place. In the same way Jesus, Paul and others breathed life into their scripture in their time and place.
If our words and actions brought these scriptures to life, it would be quite a scene. These scriptures are radical – they are undignified, unconcerned with convention or decorum. Look at the parable of the widow and the judge. This is a story of begging, it’s a story of desperation, it’s a story that compares God to a mean, uncaring, unfair judge, for goodness sake. Jesus’ parables are meant to bring his scriptures – the Jewish scriptures – alive…and his parables are full of desperate characters, odd and startling comparisons. That’s because the bottom line of the scriptures for Jesus is that Yahweh is the God of those who suffer injustice – the undignified, humiliated ones. And that’s startling. Such a God lacks decorum. Jesus’ own life was like this. As he spread the good news – lived the scriptures, proclaimed the message – he fashioned a life that offended, confounded, shocked, and confused others. Much like the widow, he kept after the cause of justice because he knew that was the cause of God.
It is important for us to walk the talk, and I do still think actions speak more loudly than words. But I also believe part of our task is to evangelize – to proclaim the message of our scriptures. And we do that not by mindlessly reciting them, or hammering people over the head with them, but by giving them breath and life through our actions, through our words, through what we have to say to this world today. And that won’t always be polite, or respectful, or popular. It won’t, much to my chagrin, always be planned and scripted. It won’t be easy.
Sometimes it means we look like the widow: crying out for justice day and night, annoying the heck out of people. We have the luxury of being polite, because we are not the widow. We are not, by and large, the ones desperate for justice. But the world cannot afford our luxury. Our lives need to preach a bit more loudly. Our lives could be more evangelistic in their call for justice and proclamations that God is on the side of the poor. Our lives, actions, and words could be much more bold in their claims of hope for a hurting and cynical world.
Preaching, or evangelizing, does not mean trying to apply an ancient document literally, legalistically and prescriptively to our lives. Evangelizing does not mean converting souls so people don’t go to hell. I don’t know how something so magnificent – the idea of scriptures being God-breathed – has become something so offensive: the idea that we are to shove this book down other people’s throats until all they can do is choke out the words, “Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior.” Evangelizing means believing the God we learn about in our stories, in the stories of Abraham and Sarah, Moses and Miriam, the prophets and the kings, the parables and the poems is a God that matters to the world. And this world is in need of knowing the God of our scriptures – not because everyone should be Christian or should act like you and me, but because the God of our scriptures speaks to the injustices we find so frustrating and demoralizing; the God of our scriptures is on the side of the least and the last.
Our scriptures, when brought to life, can offer the world a new way of living with one another…they can offer the world an alternative to what we have…they can offer a compelling vision of God’s realm. When we live our lives according to the scriptures – when we live for justice and are on the side of the least and the last – we are preaching…the scriptures come alive for people, they reveal those things that must change and they offer hope to those who most need it.
Preaching means giving breath to the word of God today – and we are all called to be preachers in this way. We are called to bring the scriptures alive. We might do that with words, we might do that with actions, but we need to be loud about it. We need to really “Preach it!!” Amen.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Will the Real God Please Stand Up
Jeremiah 29:1,4-7; 2 Timothy 2:8-15
October 10, 2010
Chaos, defeat, exile, fear, anger – it was not a good time in the life of the Jewish people when Jeremiah lived. Babylon had destroyed their homeland, and many had been taken to live in the enemy’s country. It was a disaster on a scale most of us cannot imagine. And everyone was asking the same question: “What the heck do we do now?” And as you can imagine, as is always the case, there were some differing ideas about that. When times are tough, when what you know is under attack, there is generally no shortage of opinions about how you are supposed to respond.
In exile, the people turned to the prophets to tell them what God wanted them to do. Some prophets at the time, like a man named Hananiah, said God wanted the people to resist Babylon and hold tight because they would soon be returning to their homeland, and the leaders of Babylon would be brought to justice by Yahweh. We read of his prophesy in the chapter right before our passage in Jeremiah this morning. Yahweh, the argument goes, is the God of the Jews and so anyone who messes with the Jews will not get away with it for very long. God, like an overprotective father, will “take care of things,” and life will go back to normal – the chosen people will once again be an independent nation- in charge of their own lives and destiny.
Jeremiah, another prophet, disagreed with this. He believed God was saying that this was not a temporary exile, and God was not going to exact revenge on Babylon for the destruction brought on Judah. Instead, Jeremiah believed God was using Babylon to do God’s work. The rulers of Judah and Israel had strayed from the Mosaic law; they had failed the poor, orphans, and widows, they had allowed injustice to reign supreme, and God would not stand for that anymore. So, Jeremiah’s argument goes, God sent the king of Babylon to teach the Jews a lesson. Given this, the Jews were not to resist their exile; they were to settle in and make peace with it, make peace with their enemies, and learn again how to live as God’s people.
Two prophets, two opinions, two Gods? These are both respectable prophets. Both had been credible in the past. People believed both were legitimate prophets of Yahweh. Now they are both claiming to speak for God , yet saying the exact opposite of the other. If Jeremiah and Hananiah were living today, I can imagine one as a pundit on MSNBC and the other on Fox News. They are both passionate, both believe that they speak for Yahweh, both believe they know what is best for the Jewish people in exile.
I can also imagine two neighbors talking over strong coffee one morning in their new homeland, Babylon; one having heard Hananiah, the other Jeremiah. Each believed what they heard. After all, it came from a prophet of God! Prophets know what they are talking about. It’s one person’s opinion against another. And so, political division is born and people have to take sides. How in the world were the people supposed to know who to listen to? Who was right? Who really speaks for God?
The only proof Jeremiah offered was something like, “I’m the true prophet of God because God says I am.” Well, that’s enough for me. As long as you say that you speak for God, then I’m convinced. Jeremiah’s defense of his authority is a bit suspect, don’t you think? Surely that could not have been terribly convincing to the people living in Babylon either. Figuring out who was right must have been pretty tricky.
We have a similar situation in 2 Timothy. The letter was written by a follower of Paul and he is concerned Christians are turning to other leaders whose ideas differed from Paul’s. There are new teachers, Hymanaeus and Philetus. They are denying that there is a future resurrection. Probably their view was associated with an individualizing of hope. They saw the gospel as something which guaranteed an individual eternal life, including life after death. Paul had a much broader vision of hope: Rooted in gospel images of social justice, Paul envisioned all of society – all of humanity – transformed. Hymanaeus and Philetus were preaching a spirituality of just the soul, and the author of 2 Timothy saw this as a gross misunderstanding of the gospel. So he wrote a letter. And the people who heard it read had to make a choice: Who’s right? How do they decide?
For that matter, how do we know today who speaks for God? We get lots of advice about what the Christian thing to do is. We hear it on the radio, the TV, in church, from our neighbors, etc. Good, honest, earnest people disagree about what it means to be Christian, what it means to be faithful, what God really wants us to do. How do we know? How, you know in the world, do we know what God really wants for our lives? Who should we vote for? Who can be ordained? When should we use war and violence? How do we get eternal life? What is sin? If we’re honest with ourselves, even if we might have answers to these questions, we can never be 100% sure that we know we are doing God’s will.
Some settle this matter by choosing a god who does and says what they want. Or put another way, their god ends up being always on their side – blessing everything they do…and the proof that God is on their side is their success, their power, their wealth and prosperity. It reminds me of how Christianity became the dominate religion of the Roman Empire in the 4th century. Back in the year 300 CE, Christianity was a pretty obscure, and at times derided, religion. The god of the Christians was not the god most chose. Then, one day, the emperor – Constantine – was facing a pretty tough battle. Odds were heavily against him. Before going into battle, Constantine invoked the aid of the god of the Christians. He put a Greek monogram of the first letters of the name of Christ on his standards – the sign he carried that led the soldiers into battle. He won, and those letters became a talisman for him. He declared Christianity an acceptable and good religion with an effective god. From then on, his commitment to Christianity seemed to be based largely on a belief that if he wasn’t a Christian, things would go poorly for the empire.
This seems to me to be a suspect way to decide if God is really God. If we use Constantinian logic, then if you pray to Jesus and the prayer is not answered, that means Jesus is not worthy of your faith. If you pray to the Hindu god Kali for health and prosperity and then win the lottery, that’s a sign that Kali is the goddess for you. If one prophet says something you like, and another something that would make your life difficult, the prophet of God the one that says what you like. Surely this cheapens God and reduces life to a divinely sanctioned, self-centered existence.
This wasn’t the logic used by the Israelites living in exile. They chose Jeremiah as the true prophet, but Jeremiah was saying God was not on their side at the moment. God was not protecting their country, their self interests. Yet somehow they believed Jeremiah spoke for their God. “Seek the welfare, shalom, peace of the city where you now live,” Jeremiah tells the people. That could not possibly have been what they wanted to hear. “Fight, resist, you’re going to be coming home and Babylon will get their comeuppance!” That’s what people would have wanted to hear after everything they had been through. So why didn’t they choose Hananiah as their prophet? Why does the Hebrew bible have a book called Jeremiah and not one called Hananiah?
In the same chapter that Hananiah gives his thoughts on what God is saying to the people, we see that at first Jeremiah listened to Hananiah. I suspect he too really wanted to believe Hanahiah. He wanted, as much as anyone else, for this all to be a terrible dream, for Babylon to be punished for what they did. But something in him told him that wasn’t how his God worked – that wasn’t the way of Yahweh.
In a very telling piece of scripture, Jeremiah says to Hananiah, “The prophets who came before you and me from ancient times prophesied war, famine, and pestilence against many countries and great kingdoms. 9But the prophet who prophesies peace, when the word of that prophet comes true, then it will be known that Yahweh has truly sent the prophet.” (Jer. 28: 8-9). When we hear about peace, and when we bring about peace, that’s when we know we are hearing and listening to God’s voice. It’s easy to preach a God that is always on your side, that always wants the defeat of your enemy, that always champions your causes. Jeremiah could have preached about God’s hatred of the enemy. Instead, he preached peace with them. Shalom. It wasn’t easy to hear, but it must have resonated with the people as being like the God they had known in their scriptures, in the stories of their ancestors.
Listening for God is tricky business. There will always be competing voices – sometimes competing voices from our own scriptures, sometimes competing voices of people we trust and respect, sometimes competing voices in our own heads. In the end, I think the best we can do is look at the overarching themes of the bible, of our faith tradition, and of the life of Jesus, and use them as our guideposts: Shalom, peace, healing, justice, care for the poor and weak.
Elizabeth Schuessler Fiorenza is a feminist biblical scholar. I remember reading her books as a student at the University of Iowa. In one book, she made the point that a single, biblical text can be interpreted many different, legitimate ways. It wasn’t just that a text can say whatever you want it to say. She pointed out that rigorous, intelligent, genuinely faithful interpretations of one text can yield different, sometimes conflicting, results. That’s because we can’t ultimately know what was in the minds and hearts of the authors; we don’t have Jesus sitting here to settle disputes. On top of that, each of us inevitably brings our own biases and experiences to the bible when we read it and try to make sense of it. That’s not bad, it just is what is.
Without having the actual Jesus or Paul, or Matthew, Mark, Luke and John right in front of us today, we simply can’t know what they would say to us now about our issues and our world. We can only ever guess. And there are many, many good, sound guesses out there – and they don’t all agree with each other.
Fiorenza did not try to resolve this. She did not try to say, “if you apply the best possible scholarship to the texts, you will be able to figure out what Paul really meant, and further what his words mean for us today.” She did not deny the need for good scholarship. Some interpretations are not tenable. They have no basis at all in the text or the historical analysis. But, she said, there will always be multiple ways to hear the text, multiple possible interpretations that are equally justifiable. The answer is not to figure out the right one among them – as if that exists. The answer, she said much to my shock at the time, is to simply choose the most liberating one among them. I was scandalized by this. It seemed so self-serving. Just choose the one you like best?
But over the years I have come to understand the wisdom in what she said. She wasn’t arguing that we just choose the one we like best. In fact, it is at times almost exactly the opposite. She was arguing that the overall message of the bible – the overall truth about God as revealed in scripture and in Christ - is one of liberation for the oppressed, peace for the beaten, wholeness for the broken. And many times, we are not the oppressed one, or the beaten one or the broken one, and so we are not choosing the interpretation that benefits us. In fact we are often forced to choose the interpretation that costs us if we apply this standard.
I still find her advice scandalous at times. I still struggle with whether it’s just another version of choose the God that best suits you. And maybe that’s a good thing – it keeps me humble in the whole task of listening for God’s word today. I suspect as soon as it feels easy, straightforward and comfortable, I will have lost my way. But one marker I use is that choosing the most liberating interpretation means we are not choosing the God that best suits us – we’re looking to the welfare of others – the shalom of the city, as Jeremiah says.
How do we sort through all the voices out there? How do we know when we are being faithful? How do we know a true prophet from a false one, a true teaching from one that will lead us astray? It’s tricky business. Jeremiah says we will know a true prophet when peace is the bottom line. Timothy says simply, “remember Jesus Christ.” Remember what his life was like, remember that it led to his death, remember that death does not have the final say, remember that he cared for sick and poor, outcast and sinner, the least and the last. If we think we are hearing God, yet all we hear is what we want to hear, our ears might be tuned to the wrong station. If we hear God calling us to be with those Jesus lived his life serving, we might be on to something. If we hear God calling us to make peace with our enemies, even though that seems impossible, we might be on to something. If we hear God calling us to seek the liberation of the oppressed, the poor and the weak, we might be on to something.
May our ears be open to the true prophets of our day; may we be open to hearing God’s word; and may our lives be a reflection of the God we know in Jesus Christ. Amen.
October 10, 2010
Chaos, defeat, exile, fear, anger – it was not a good time in the life of the Jewish people when Jeremiah lived. Babylon had destroyed their homeland, and many had been taken to live in the enemy’s country. It was a disaster on a scale most of us cannot imagine. And everyone was asking the same question: “What the heck do we do now?” And as you can imagine, as is always the case, there were some differing ideas about that. When times are tough, when what you know is under attack, there is generally no shortage of opinions about how you are supposed to respond.
In exile, the people turned to the prophets to tell them what God wanted them to do. Some prophets at the time, like a man named Hananiah, said God wanted the people to resist Babylon and hold tight because they would soon be returning to their homeland, and the leaders of Babylon would be brought to justice by Yahweh. We read of his prophesy in the chapter right before our passage in Jeremiah this morning. Yahweh, the argument goes, is the God of the Jews and so anyone who messes with the Jews will not get away with it for very long. God, like an overprotective father, will “take care of things,” and life will go back to normal – the chosen people will once again be an independent nation- in charge of their own lives and destiny.
Jeremiah, another prophet, disagreed with this. He believed God was saying that this was not a temporary exile, and God was not going to exact revenge on Babylon for the destruction brought on Judah. Instead, Jeremiah believed God was using Babylon to do God’s work. The rulers of Judah and Israel had strayed from the Mosaic law; they had failed the poor, orphans, and widows, they had allowed injustice to reign supreme, and God would not stand for that anymore. So, Jeremiah’s argument goes, God sent the king of Babylon to teach the Jews a lesson. Given this, the Jews were not to resist their exile; they were to settle in and make peace with it, make peace with their enemies, and learn again how to live as God’s people.
Two prophets, two opinions, two Gods? These are both respectable prophets. Both had been credible in the past. People believed both were legitimate prophets of Yahweh. Now they are both claiming to speak for God , yet saying the exact opposite of the other. If Jeremiah and Hananiah were living today, I can imagine one as a pundit on MSNBC and the other on Fox News. They are both passionate, both believe that they speak for Yahweh, both believe they know what is best for the Jewish people in exile.
I can also imagine two neighbors talking over strong coffee one morning in their new homeland, Babylon; one having heard Hananiah, the other Jeremiah. Each believed what they heard. After all, it came from a prophet of God! Prophets know what they are talking about. It’s one person’s opinion against another. And so, political division is born and people have to take sides. How in the world were the people supposed to know who to listen to? Who was right? Who really speaks for God?
The only proof Jeremiah offered was something like, “I’m the true prophet of God because God says I am.” Well, that’s enough for me. As long as you say that you speak for God, then I’m convinced. Jeremiah’s defense of his authority is a bit suspect, don’t you think? Surely that could not have been terribly convincing to the people living in Babylon either. Figuring out who was right must have been pretty tricky.
We have a similar situation in 2 Timothy. The letter was written by a follower of Paul and he is concerned Christians are turning to other leaders whose ideas differed from Paul’s. There are new teachers, Hymanaeus and Philetus. They are denying that there is a future resurrection. Probably their view was associated with an individualizing of hope. They saw the gospel as something which guaranteed an individual eternal life, including life after death. Paul had a much broader vision of hope: Rooted in gospel images of social justice, Paul envisioned all of society – all of humanity – transformed. Hymanaeus and Philetus were preaching a spirituality of just the soul, and the author of 2 Timothy saw this as a gross misunderstanding of the gospel. So he wrote a letter. And the people who heard it read had to make a choice: Who’s right? How do they decide?
For that matter, how do we know today who speaks for God? We get lots of advice about what the Christian thing to do is. We hear it on the radio, the TV, in church, from our neighbors, etc. Good, honest, earnest people disagree about what it means to be Christian, what it means to be faithful, what God really wants us to do. How do we know? How, you know in the world, do we know what God really wants for our lives? Who should we vote for? Who can be ordained? When should we use war and violence? How do we get eternal life? What is sin? If we’re honest with ourselves, even if we might have answers to these questions, we can never be 100% sure that we know we are doing God’s will.
Some settle this matter by choosing a god who does and says what they want. Or put another way, their god ends up being always on their side – blessing everything they do…and the proof that God is on their side is their success, their power, their wealth and prosperity. It reminds me of how Christianity became the dominate religion of the Roman Empire in the 4th century. Back in the year 300 CE, Christianity was a pretty obscure, and at times derided, religion. The god of the Christians was not the god most chose. Then, one day, the emperor – Constantine – was facing a pretty tough battle. Odds were heavily against him. Before going into battle, Constantine invoked the aid of the god of the Christians. He put a Greek monogram of the first letters of the name of Christ on his standards – the sign he carried that led the soldiers into battle. He won, and those letters became a talisman for him. He declared Christianity an acceptable and good religion with an effective god. From then on, his commitment to Christianity seemed to be based largely on a belief that if he wasn’t a Christian, things would go poorly for the empire.
This seems to me to be a suspect way to decide if God is really God. If we use Constantinian logic, then if you pray to Jesus and the prayer is not answered, that means Jesus is not worthy of your faith. If you pray to the Hindu god Kali for health and prosperity and then win the lottery, that’s a sign that Kali is the goddess for you. If one prophet says something you like, and another something that would make your life difficult, the prophet of God the one that says what you like. Surely this cheapens God and reduces life to a divinely sanctioned, self-centered existence.
This wasn’t the logic used by the Israelites living in exile. They chose Jeremiah as the true prophet, but Jeremiah was saying God was not on their side at the moment. God was not protecting their country, their self interests. Yet somehow they believed Jeremiah spoke for their God. “Seek the welfare, shalom, peace of the city where you now live,” Jeremiah tells the people. That could not possibly have been what they wanted to hear. “Fight, resist, you’re going to be coming home and Babylon will get their comeuppance!” That’s what people would have wanted to hear after everything they had been through. So why didn’t they choose Hananiah as their prophet? Why does the Hebrew bible have a book called Jeremiah and not one called Hananiah?
In the same chapter that Hananiah gives his thoughts on what God is saying to the people, we see that at first Jeremiah listened to Hananiah. I suspect he too really wanted to believe Hanahiah. He wanted, as much as anyone else, for this all to be a terrible dream, for Babylon to be punished for what they did. But something in him told him that wasn’t how his God worked – that wasn’t the way of Yahweh.
In a very telling piece of scripture, Jeremiah says to Hananiah, “The prophets who came before you and me from ancient times prophesied war, famine, and pestilence against many countries and great kingdoms. 9But the prophet who prophesies peace, when the word of that prophet comes true, then it will be known that Yahweh has truly sent the prophet.” (Jer. 28: 8-9). When we hear about peace, and when we bring about peace, that’s when we know we are hearing and listening to God’s voice. It’s easy to preach a God that is always on your side, that always wants the defeat of your enemy, that always champions your causes. Jeremiah could have preached about God’s hatred of the enemy. Instead, he preached peace with them. Shalom. It wasn’t easy to hear, but it must have resonated with the people as being like the God they had known in their scriptures, in the stories of their ancestors.
Listening for God is tricky business. There will always be competing voices – sometimes competing voices from our own scriptures, sometimes competing voices of people we trust and respect, sometimes competing voices in our own heads. In the end, I think the best we can do is look at the overarching themes of the bible, of our faith tradition, and of the life of Jesus, and use them as our guideposts: Shalom, peace, healing, justice, care for the poor and weak.
Elizabeth Schuessler Fiorenza is a feminist biblical scholar. I remember reading her books as a student at the University of Iowa. In one book, she made the point that a single, biblical text can be interpreted many different, legitimate ways. It wasn’t just that a text can say whatever you want it to say. She pointed out that rigorous, intelligent, genuinely faithful interpretations of one text can yield different, sometimes conflicting, results. That’s because we can’t ultimately know what was in the minds and hearts of the authors; we don’t have Jesus sitting here to settle disputes. On top of that, each of us inevitably brings our own biases and experiences to the bible when we read it and try to make sense of it. That’s not bad, it just is what is.
Without having the actual Jesus or Paul, or Matthew, Mark, Luke and John right in front of us today, we simply can’t know what they would say to us now about our issues and our world. We can only ever guess. And there are many, many good, sound guesses out there – and they don’t all agree with each other.
Fiorenza did not try to resolve this. She did not try to say, “if you apply the best possible scholarship to the texts, you will be able to figure out what Paul really meant, and further what his words mean for us today.” She did not deny the need for good scholarship. Some interpretations are not tenable. They have no basis at all in the text or the historical analysis. But, she said, there will always be multiple ways to hear the text, multiple possible interpretations that are equally justifiable. The answer is not to figure out the right one among them – as if that exists. The answer, she said much to my shock at the time, is to simply choose the most liberating one among them. I was scandalized by this. It seemed so self-serving. Just choose the one you like best?
But over the years I have come to understand the wisdom in what she said. She wasn’t arguing that we just choose the one we like best. In fact, it is at times almost exactly the opposite. She was arguing that the overall message of the bible – the overall truth about God as revealed in scripture and in Christ - is one of liberation for the oppressed, peace for the beaten, wholeness for the broken. And many times, we are not the oppressed one, or the beaten one or the broken one, and so we are not choosing the interpretation that benefits us. In fact we are often forced to choose the interpretation that costs us if we apply this standard.
I still find her advice scandalous at times. I still struggle with whether it’s just another version of choose the God that best suits you. And maybe that’s a good thing – it keeps me humble in the whole task of listening for God’s word today. I suspect as soon as it feels easy, straightforward and comfortable, I will have lost my way. But one marker I use is that choosing the most liberating interpretation means we are not choosing the God that best suits us – we’re looking to the welfare of others – the shalom of the city, as Jeremiah says.
How do we sort through all the voices out there? How do we know when we are being faithful? How do we know a true prophet from a false one, a true teaching from one that will lead us astray? It’s tricky business. Jeremiah says we will know a true prophet when peace is the bottom line. Timothy says simply, “remember Jesus Christ.” Remember what his life was like, remember that it led to his death, remember that death does not have the final say, remember that he cared for sick and poor, outcast and sinner, the least and the last. If we think we are hearing God, yet all we hear is what we want to hear, our ears might be tuned to the wrong station. If we hear God calling us to be with those Jesus lived his life serving, we might be on to something. If we hear God calling us to make peace with our enemies, even though that seems impossible, we might be on to something. If we hear God calling us to seek the liberation of the oppressed, the poor and the weak, we might be on to something.
May our ears be open to the true prophets of our day; may we be open to hearing God’s word; and may our lives be a reflection of the God we know in Jesus Christ. Amen.
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