Promises, Promises

February 26th, 2010

Readings for Sunday, March 1, 2010

The question for me, growing out of the Genesis reading for this week, is “What does it mean to live as though God is faithful?”

After all, Abraham had lots of reason not to trust in God. He received in a vision a bunch of outlandish promises about land and descendants, and in this passage we haven’t seen any of those promises fulfilled yet. On the basis of some sort of vision and hope, he picks up and leaves town, together with Sarai and his household, never to return. The promises he thought he had received wouldn’t be realized for generations after his death. Many of us who live in a society focussed around self-gratification and immediacy would probably consider him loony.

Maybe it’s loony to trust in a faithful God.

There’s certainly lots of evidence that trusting in God doesn’t always get you what you want. Trusting in a faithful God doesn’t mean that people don’t get cancer, or have marriage problems, or watch their kids die in Afghanistan. It doesn’t mean that couples who can’t conceive just haven’t prayed hard enough or trusted deeply enough. I suspect that lots of the Olympic athletes prayed to God before their event, but they certainly didn’t all end up on the podium. And for every story of “personal bests” and defeating the odds, there are many more (I’m sure) of “typical” performances, disappointments, missed opportunities, risks that didn’t pay off. Clearly trusting in a faithful God isn’t a magic talisman against misfortune or disappointment. And the best guarantee of success at the Olympics (or at life) seems to me to be a combination of hard work, good coaching, and just plain luck.

So what does it mean to trust in a faithful God?

What did it mean for Abraham? It meant that he chose to live as though there was more to life than being an ordinary land-owner in Ur. He chose to live as though being child-less didn’t mean that he had no future. He chose to live as though life were an adventure to be engaged in, rather than an experience to be endured. He chose to live as though the barriers and problems he encountered would not – could not – prevent God from doing what needed to be done in and through him.

That feels too simple – too poly-anna-ish: just behave like an optimist and the whole world will shine on you. Religion has to be more than just pop-psychology! And though there’s some truth to the idea that optimism can be a self-fulfilling prophecy, some optimists are so out of touch with “reality” that they don’t seem to live in the same world as the rest of us. I like Abraham because he wasn’t an eternal optimist; he didn’t pull his punches; he didn’t avoid the hard questions; he second-guessed his decisions several times. And yet, at the end of the day, we still tell his story because something about it still rings true for us.

The idea that ultimately God’s love and God’s purpose, and God’s blessing will prevail (all appearances to the contrary) is a remarkable statement of faith in Abraham’s world, and in ours. And yet isn’t it that sort of faith that drove Jesus to preach about the Kingdom of God in the midst of the brutality of the Roman Empire? Isn’t it that sort of faith that led Wilberforce to challenge the institution of slavery; that drove unionists to organize in the 19th century; that inspired Dickens to write stories about the social inequities of his time; that leads to social reform and declarations of human rights and champions of “justice” in every time and place. And at the end of the day, isn’t that the sort of mark that would be good to leave on the world?

Abraham caught a glimpse of a God that was more interested in blessing than in curse; more interested in overcoming barrenness than in imposing restrictions; more interested in possibility than in the world as we see it now. He became the patriarch for three of the world’s great religions – three traditions which, each in their own way, strive to continue the journey he began and live in the light of his experience that the world as we know it is not all there is or can be. It’s a vision that’s been tarnished by self-interest and clouded by hatred at times in all three of our traditions … and yet beneath the accumulations over the years there remains in all three of our traditions a sense that there is something true in the life of our ancestor which we need to both venerate and emulate as we look at the world we find ourselves in and wonder about what it might become.

Posted in 2010 Lent | Comments Off

Will You be Mine?

February 10th, 2010

Readings for February 14, 2010

The roots of Valentine’s Day are hazy and obscure – the day has more cache as a Hallmark holiday than anything else. Wikipedia says there were a host of early Christian martyrs named Valentine – probably Feb 14 was chosen in honour of a priest who died in 270 and was canonized in 475 … but there was no connection between that Valentine (or any other) and romantic love till the time of Chaucer (1382). Giving “valentines” to one’s lover became very popular in the 18th and 19th centuries, and has become overly commercialized and sentimentalized since then. Historically we’re on very very shaky ground here!

For me Valentine’s Day conjures up memories of cartoon character cut-outs shared at school – when it was necessary to give “a valentine” to everybody in the class – which always seemed to rob the whole experience of any meaning. After all, if everyone is your valentine, does that mean that you have a “special” relationship with nobody?

For adults Valentine’s Day is a double-edged sword – largely because our intimate relationships are the things that can bring both the greatest joy and the greatest pain to our lives. For those in an intimate relationship that truly feeds their souls, it’s a joyful opportunity to celebrate that. For those who long to be but aren’t; for those who used to be and are no longer; for those whose “valentine” has died, or left them, or hurt them, or abused them … this is a day to avoid at all costs.

On this day, of all days, we’re invited to read the story of the Transfiguration, and the story of Moses with the stone tablets in his hands and his face shining with the glory of God. The connection is accidental – the Lectionary writers didn’t intend to make us read these texts on Valentine’s Day – but it’s an interesting coincidence.

It’s interesting because Valentine’s Day reminds me of how powerfully love transforms us when it’s present and pure; how powerfully we long for it when it’s absent or broken or perverted. Is the Transfiguration of Jesus somewhat akin to the way that young lovers “glow” with the excitement of new love? Is the glory on Moses’ face somehow similar to the radiance we experience when we feel deeply and truly known and appreciated and delighted in? Is the common human experience that gets so sentimentalized or trivialized on Valentines’ Day actually itself a pale copy of an even deeper encounter with the Source of Love and Radiance and Delight? Can it be that human beings are invited into a relationship with the Divine that has the power to draw us into something transcendent and breath-taking?

In a way God is sending a Valentine to the world, in both the story of Moses and the story of Jesus transfigured. In each case, God reaches through the barrier that separates us from the Divine; in each case there is light and joy and hope that comes from being met and known so deeply; in each case God says to the people around those remarkable leaders, “Will you be mine?”

Posted in 2010 Epiphany | Comments Off

Let the Power Fall on Me

February 5th, 2010

Readings for Sunday Feb 7, 2010

I was in the church on a Sunday afternoon a few weeks ago, overhearing my Pentecostal colleague preaching about power. A Filipino Pentecostal church uses our space on Sunday afternoons, and I’m usually long gone by then, but this week I was intrigued. I didn’t hear the whole sermon; didn’t really agree with a lot of the theology of it; and felt uncomfortable with the high emotionalism of the style of preaching – I guess it’s a good thing that we have different styles of churches because I’m sure those folks would feel as uncomfortable with my preaching as I do with theirs! But I was struck by the preacher’s insistence on power. God’s power. God’s power which is available to us if we call on it. God’s power which transforms everything. God’s power which will empower us. God’s power which will make everything better. When we feel powerless, we need to reach for God’s power.

Judging from the way the preacher harangued the congregation, those folks frequently feel powerless.

So do I.

In my rationalistic, post-modern 21st century way, I too wonder about the power of God, and about feeling powerless. With all the authority that people like me grant to science, rationalism, psychology and medicine – authority which is well earned, I think – what’s left for the power of God to do? Do we even believe in the power of God any more? If so, what’s like? What does it do? What difference does the power of God make to the world?

Someone was telling me recently about going to see the movie “Legion.” According to the trailer, here’s the premise: the last time God lost faith in the world he sent a flood; this time he’s sending a legion of angels. It seems to be a movie about human beings can fight back against the power of a wrathful and disappointed God.

I haven’t seen the movie; don’t really want to. But I’m fascinated by how our 21st century post-modern imaginations are still captured by the idea of an angry destructive deity who wants to hurt us. All too often, “power” is simply short for “power to destroy.” Power on the silver screen is shown with explosions, earthquakes, tsunamis and buildings crashing to the ground. The power of God is most obvious in apocalyptic imagery. And the power of human beings is shown in exactly the same ways.

When we feel powerless to change things, we reach for that which seems most powerful.

The fascinating thing about the Legion trailer is that the human beings think they can fight the angels. They think they can stand up against that kind of super-human destructive force, and actually preserve something worth saving about humanity. In the same way, the hero of Harry Potter is the boy, not the wise wizard; the “good guys” in Avatar are the peasants with bows and arrows up against a science-fiction army with laser weapons. There’s a theme running through here – that a different kind of power can confront the super-human destructive forces that appear so domineering.

That’s the kind of power I see operating in today’s lesson from Luke. The power of God is the power to bring abundance into the midst of scarcity – to fill the fishing nets that were empty all night; to transform water into wine; to transform 5 loaves and two fish into enough for 5000. It’s the power to inspire people to discover ways to engage the destructive forces in creative and life-giving ways. It’s the power that grows out of weakness; the power that is life-giving rather than soul-destroying.

If God’s power is to send angels to destroy the world … I too would rather side with the humans who want to fight it. But if God’s power is to ensure that everyone has enough fish to eat … and if that’s the power that can be marshalled against the destructive force of laser beams and CGI explosions … then let the power fall on me!

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God and the Hometown Boy

January 28th, 2010

Lessons for Sunday January 31, 2010

I’m astonished by the commentators I read on this passage who suggested that this story is an example of how the Jews rejected Jesus. In this day and age is that really something we have to keep addressing over and over again? I think that any interpretation of any biblical story that paints “us” automatically as the good guys – the ones who always get it right — needs to be viewed with a lot of suspicion. Not that we don’t get it right sometimes – but we need to acknowledge that the gospel is “news.” It’s not life as usual – for the first audience or for today’s. That means it’s going to rub some people, and some interest groups, the wrong way.

I wonder if the trouble with a lot of preaching these days – mine included – is that it doesn’t leave people mad. After all, Jesus says some remarkable things in Nazareth about preaching good news to the poor – the sorts of things that you would think would make people get excited – and instead they try to run him out of town.

It makes me think of Clarence Jordan and Martin Luther King Jr. It makes me think of the heros of the faith who have stood up to the powers that be and hammered away for justice and equity for the poor, and the captives and the blind. The speeches of MLK inspired both riots and hope. Clarence Jordan was reviled and venerated.

It also makes me think about the State of the Union address last night – and a President who says that we never thought change would be easy or quick or even popular. He urges his colleagues to show leadership rather than take pot-shots, and to work for real change for real people, rather than just votes for the next election. It’s fascinating to me how many commentators seem to think this is just blowing hot air – they don’t know whether spouting these kinds of things will actually help his poll-numbers. They clearly assume that a President simply can’t mean what this President says; he must simply be using self-serving rhetoric. And so his words – which could, I suppose, provoke a riot if taken seriously – are written off by the hometown crowd as empty.

Are we too close to the gospel to hear what Jesus really has to say? Have we tamed his message so much that we think “good news to the poor” simply means giving a few coins to a homeless person, instead of offering them dignity and real hope? That “recovery of sight to the blind” means nothing more than putting the CNIB out of business, instead of taking off our own blinders and seeing the world the way God sees it? That “the year of the Lord’s favour” means that we all get golden stars on our Sunday School attendance records, instead of having our financial debts forgiven?

Somewhere I read that part of the impact of our populace so mired in debt is that we are afraid to take political/social stands that might be unpopular with the people who sign our pay cheques. We can’t afford to risk … and we’re caught on a treadmill of having to earn more and more money just to stand still, so that we don’t have the time or the creativity to step back and ask the real deep questions of meaning and direction and purpose. Would the “year of the Lord’s favour” allow us to do that? What might we feel free doing or saying, if we didn’t have to worry about the next pay cheque, or the one after that? Might we try to offer some of the same kind of freedom to “the poor,” “the captives,” or “the blind?”

The people ran Jesus out of town; in the same way that “the people” are rejecting government health care in the US; in the same way that “the people” called for Jesus rather than Barabbus; in the same why that “the people” are afraid of anything new that might compromise an advantage that one of them might have over another. We want the poor around; they remind us how rich we are. We want the captives in prison; the remind us how we value our freedom. We want to be in debt; it feeds the ideology that says that we’ll feel better as soon as we buy the next thing (and even though we never really feel better we don’t give up on the ideology. That would be too radical. We just assume that we failed to buy the right thing, and so we go further into debt looking for the next one.

Posted in 2008 Advent/Christmas | Comments Off

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