Matthew 22:34-40
I have always loved words. I like to read, to talk, to write, to do word puzzles. I enjoy beautiful turns of phrase. I love sentences. And I especially appreciate the gift that some people have of summing things up, getting to the point. Give it to me straight; don't beat around the bush.
The teachers of the law who Jesus encountered in our text were known for their love of the sound of their own voices. They loved their own words far more than they loved the word of God, which is why when the Living Word was in their midst they hated him. By the time our reading begins in v. 34, Jesus has already silenced the questions of the Sadducees and the Pharisees are taking their turn in trying to stump Jesus. "Rank the laws," they challenge him, expecting him to begin rambling as they would have done. Jesus bests them by answering the question they didn't ask: How do all the individual laws work towards a larger purpose? Love the Lord with everything. That's first. Love your neighbor as yourself. That's second. That's it!
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Monday, December 7, 2009
The Price of Freedom
Revelation 1:1-8
Sacrifice is something that previous generations understood intimately. On this the 7th of December, we might remember the sacrifices of US citizens during the World War II era as soldiers went to war and those who were left at home experienced rationing and other deprivations. Everyone in that generation knew that there was a price for the preservation of freedom. One of the challenges that we have now as a nation at war is that we at home find ourselves so disconnected that the fighting doesn't seem real to us, unless we have a relative who is actually deployed. (For Bob Herbert's discussion of the particular impact on the children of those deployed, click here.) Even those who make the political decisions that lead to military action are unlikely to have sons or daughters whose necks will be on the line once the decision is made. The cost is so abstract for us, that we forget that there is a price.
The message of Revelation 1 is multifaceted, but it like the rest of the book is designed to reorient our thinking about the past, present, and future. The revelation or "unveiling" comes from God to the angel to John to the reader to the hearers to provide the blessing of insight that goes beyond human perception. And this first section about Jesus Christ is foundational to all of the rest of the discussion. Jesus is the faithful witness, the one whose record is true. Jesus is the firstborn from the dead, the one who creates the pathway for all of us to follow into eternal life. Jesus is the prince over all the kings of the earth, the one before whom all the governors and potentates of this world will have to bow.
But none of those titles struck me as much as the phrase that followed them: To him who loved us and freed us from our sins with his blood.... Forgiveness and freedom are never cheap, even though sometimes we live as if they are. The breaches and the gaps and the problems that our sins cause for us and for others are not easily washed away. Loving us and making a way for us to worship God in spirit and in truth cost Jesus his life. Now we live as a community, a kingdom of priests unto God. This is no light thing.
As we share in this season of Advent, celebrating his coming, today we remember that the one who was born as a baby died on a rugged cross and will return as ruler of all. We remember also that the freedom we have become of his first advent was not cheap.
Sacrifice is something that previous generations understood intimately. On this the 7th of December, we might remember the sacrifices of US citizens during the World War II era as soldiers went to war and those who were left at home experienced rationing and other deprivations. Everyone in that generation knew that there was a price for the preservation of freedom. One of the challenges that we have now as a nation at war is that we at home find ourselves so disconnected that the fighting doesn't seem real to us, unless we have a relative who is actually deployed. (For Bob Herbert's discussion of the particular impact on the children of those deployed, click here.) Even those who make the political decisions that lead to military action are unlikely to have sons or daughters whose necks will be on the line once the decision is made. The cost is so abstract for us, that we forget that there is a price.
The message of Revelation 1 is multifaceted, but it like the rest of the book is designed to reorient our thinking about the past, present, and future. The revelation or "unveiling" comes from God to the angel to John to the reader to the hearers to provide the blessing of insight that goes beyond human perception. And this first section about Jesus Christ is foundational to all of the rest of the discussion. Jesus is the faithful witness, the one whose record is true. Jesus is the firstborn from the dead, the one who creates the pathway for all of us to follow into eternal life. Jesus is the prince over all the kings of the earth, the one before whom all the governors and potentates of this world will have to bow.
But none of those titles struck me as much as the phrase that followed them: To him who loved us and freed us from our sins with his blood.... Forgiveness and freedom are never cheap, even though sometimes we live as if they are. The breaches and the gaps and the problems that our sins cause for us and for others are not easily washed away. Loving us and making a way for us to worship God in spirit and in truth cost Jesus his life. Now we live as a community, a kingdom of priests unto God. This is no light thing.
As we share in this season of Advent, celebrating his coming, today we remember that the one who was born as a baby died on a rugged cross and will return as ruler of all. We remember also that the freedom we have become of his first advent was not cheap.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
I Want to Be Ready
Malachi 3:1-4
With the first snow, or at least the threat of snow, came one of the annual winter rituals. In supermarkets all over the city, shoppers crowded lines and lanes stocking up, not necessarily because they believed the forecast but just in case. The meteorologist read the signs on the doppler radar and saw the signs of a snowstorm ahead. Why are you stocking up after hearing the reports? Not necessarily because I believe I will be snowed in; I want to be Ready. What I cannot understand is why we don’t stay ready. Winter comes around every year, and most years it brings snow.
The prophet Malachi, whose name means messenger acts as a kind of weather forecaster. His writings occurred during a time of restoration and rebuilding on one hand, and complacency and corruption on the other hand. The book of Malachi is designed as a series of statements followed by questions. It reads like a kind of argument between God and God's people in which the central question has to do with where divine justice and judgment are. This section of the book has come to be identified as a prophecy concerning the coming of the Messiah and is taken up in the New Testament as a word about the coming of John the Baptist.
One thing is clear in the text: Eventually God always comes to claim what belongs to God. It seems that the corruption of the temple and the corruption of the worship have gone unnoticed by God, but things are not always as they seem. The prophet declares that God is sending a messenger ahead of God and that eventually God will come back and occupy God's temple. If you're waiting for justice, you hear this news with anticipation.
The question is Will I be ready? The Lord is, after all, like a refiner's fire and a fuller’s soap. Both refining and fulling have as their goal the removed of impurity. To refine silver and gold the refiner heats the metals to exactly the right tipping point to allow the impurities to burn away or be taken out. To full wool, the fuller uses special soap and often agitates the cloth in an effort both to cleanse and to thicken and strengthen it. In our lives, the Lord is really both the refiner and the fire, both the fuller and the soap. None of these processes is necessarily pleasant, but everything God does in our lives is purposeful.
The Lord who enters the temple come with his own tools for making it fit.
In Advent, let us hear anew the messenger and pray for our preparedness.
With the first snow, or at least the threat of snow, came one of the annual winter rituals. In supermarkets all over the city, shoppers crowded lines and lanes stocking up, not necessarily because they believed the forecast but just in case. The meteorologist read the signs on the doppler radar and saw the signs of a snowstorm ahead. Why are you stocking up after hearing the reports? Not necessarily because I believe I will be snowed in; I want to be Ready. What I cannot understand is why we don’t stay ready. Winter comes around every year, and most years it brings snow.
The prophet Malachi, whose name means messenger acts as a kind of weather forecaster. His writings occurred during a time of restoration and rebuilding on one hand, and complacency and corruption on the other hand. The book of Malachi is designed as a series of statements followed by questions. It reads like a kind of argument between God and God's people in which the central question has to do with where divine justice and judgment are. This section of the book has come to be identified as a prophecy concerning the coming of the Messiah and is taken up in the New Testament as a word about the coming of John the Baptist.
One thing is clear in the text: Eventually God always comes to claim what belongs to God. It seems that the corruption of the temple and the corruption of the worship have gone unnoticed by God, but things are not always as they seem. The prophet declares that God is sending a messenger ahead of God and that eventually God will come back and occupy God's temple. If you're waiting for justice, you hear this news with anticipation.
The question is Will I be ready? The Lord is, after all, like a refiner's fire and a fuller’s soap. Both refining and fulling have as their goal the removed of impurity. To refine silver and gold the refiner heats the metals to exactly the right tipping point to allow the impurities to burn away or be taken out. To full wool, the fuller uses special soap and often agitates the cloth in an effort both to cleanse and to thicken and strengthen it. In our lives, the Lord is really both the refiner and the fire, both the fuller and the soap. None of these processes is necessarily pleasant, but everything God does in our lives is purposeful.
The Lord who enters the temple come with his own tools for making it fit.
In Advent, let us hear anew the messenger and pray for our preparedness.
Friday, December 4, 2009
Justice
Amos 5:1-17
When I was an undergraduate, one of the largest courses at the college was a course taught by Michael J. Sandel, a professor and political philosopher, whose lectures consistently packed Sanders Theater with wide-eyed young adults who were entertained by his challenge to us to define Justice. I have had occasion to think of that course in recent days because Sandel, a lot grayer and balder than he was in those days, has just published a book and is hosting a PBS series on the subject matter of this course that he has now taught for more than 30 years. But as I think of Justice (the name by which this moral reasoning course was known) I am disturbed to realize how marginalized thoughts of real justice are. They are pushed aside, just as the people whose lives most cry out for justice are themselves so often far from the center of our thoughts or deliberations.
The text in Amos startles me as I ponder this because of the degree to which its condemnations seem contemporary. I know the locations Bethel, Gilgal, and Beersheba are far removed from us. But the condition of hardened hearts unwilling to receive the correction of true prophets who speak the truth about greed, mismanagement, theft, and poverty - all of that is as true in the 21st century urban world we inhabit as it was in the 8th century before Christ, when the prophet's words first were written. Worse still, in our times we experience the same kind of spiritual numbness and hypocrisy that allowed God's people to feel justified even as they exploited their kin (you know, God's other children). The message of the text is that the Lord will pass through, and how terrible will the day of the Lord be for those who fail to heed the righteous claims of those who cry out for justice.
For too long, the church has vacillated between a commitment to personal salvation and a commitment to social justice. To treat these foci as if they are incompatible and competing is to miss the point that Amos screams. To seek God we must also seek justice for those made in God's image. And on this 5th day of our Advent journey, the demand to make justice central is not merely an exercise in political philosophy for the entertainment of adolescents, it is God's call.
When I was an undergraduate, one of the largest courses at the college was a course taught by Michael J. Sandel, a professor and political philosopher, whose lectures consistently packed Sanders Theater with wide-eyed young adults who were entertained by his challenge to us to define Justice. I have had occasion to think of that course in recent days because Sandel, a lot grayer and balder than he was in those days, has just published a book and is hosting a PBS series on the subject matter of this course that he has now taught for more than 30 years. But as I think of Justice (the name by which this moral reasoning course was known) I am disturbed to realize how marginalized thoughts of real justice are. They are pushed aside, just as the people whose lives most cry out for justice are themselves so often far from the center of our thoughts or deliberations.
The text in Amos startles me as I ponder this because of the degree to which its condemnations seem contemporary. I know the locations Bethel, Gilgal, and Beersheba are far removed from us. But the condition of hardened hearts unwilling to receive the correction of true prophets who speak the truth about greed, mismanagement, theft, and poverty - all of that is as true in the 21st century urban world we inhabit as it was in the 8th century before Christ, when the prophet's words first were written. Worse still, in our times we experience the same kind of spiritual numbness and hypocrisy that allowed God's people to feel justified even as they exploited their kin (you know, God's other children). The message of the text is that the Lord will pass through, and how terrible will the day of the Lord be for those who fail to heed the righteous claims of those who cry out for justice.
For too long, the church has vacillated between a commitment to personal salvation and a commitment to social justice. To treat these foci as if they are incompatible and competing is to miss the point that Amos screams. To seek God we must also seek justice for those made in God's image. And on this 5th day of our Advent journey, the demand to make justice central is not merely an exercise in political philosophy for the entertainment of adolescents, it is God's call.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Attention Getter
Amos 4:6-13
There is a kind of chronic neurosis that long-time Christians often display: we look for the reason in everything. What I mean by that is that we look for the "cause" behind every difficult or inexplicable thing that happens to us or to people close to us. The danger of that attitude is best exemplified biblically by the incorrect but firmly held convictions of Job's friends that Job must have done something to merit the disaster his life had become. It's good to read Job so that we know that there may not be answers to why calamity comes upon us, but we need to read Amos 4 to remember that sometimes we need to ask the question.
The prophet Amos, whose oracles regarding the injustice and evil in the community have inspired prophets centuries and continents removed from his context, speaks for a God who sometimes tries to get human beings' attention. Hunger, drought, blight, pestilence, scarcity, war, devastation - all kinds of calamity in succession emerged to make the people stop and ask the question: Am I/are we living right? The God whom Amos quotes sounds almost perplexed, certainly frustrated at the hardness of the hearts and the dullness of the ears of people who should be able to recognize the signs of God's displeasure. "But you would not turn," God says almost incredulously.
As I read the text from Amos, my first inclination is to recoil from the image of a God who would withhold rain and send war. My own sense of justice is troubled by the certainty that in any national tragedy many innocents suffer, and I am disinclined to see God as the source. At the same time, something about this text speaks urgently to the individual and the community that has parted company with right and righteousness. We are not always innocent. And when we are wrong, what, if anything, can shock us enough to arrest our attention so that we can hear God say, "Repent"? When God snatches us like a brand out of the fire of our own or others' making, it's not always harmful to ask whether there's something God is trying to tell us.
Is God trying to tell you something? Is today's challenge God's way of getting your attention? Or not.
There is a kind of chronic neurosis that long-time Christians often display: we look for the reason in everything. What I mean by that is that we look for the "cause" behind every difficult or inexplicable thing that happens to us or to people close to us. The danger of that attitude is best exemplified biblically by the incorrect but firmly held convictions of Job's friends that Job must have done something to merit the disaster his life had become. It's good to read Job so that we know that there may not be answers to why calamity comes upon us, but we need to read Amos 4 to remember that sometimes we need to ask the question.
The prophet Amos, whose oracles regarding the injustice and evil in the community have inspired prophets centuries and continents removed from his context, speaks for a God who sometimes tries to get human beings' attention. Hunger, drought, blight, pestilence, scarcity, war, devastation - all kinds of calamity in succession emerged to make the people stop and ask the question: Am I/are we living right? The God whom Amos quotes sounds almost perplexed, certainly frustrated at the hardness of the hearts and the dullness of the ears of people who should be able to recognize the signs of God's displeasure. "But you would not turn," God says almost incredulously.
As I read the text from Amos, my first inclination is to recoil from the image of a God who would withhold rain and send war. My own sense of justice is troubled by the certainty that in any national tragedy many innocents suffer, and I am disinclined to see God as the source. At the same time, something about this text speaks urgently to the individual and the community that has parted company with right and righteousness. We are not always innocent. And when we are wrong, what, if anything, can shock us enough to arrest our attention so that we can hear God say, "Repent"? When God snatches us like a brand out of the fire of our own or others' making, it's not always harmful to ask whether there's something God is trying to tell us.
Is God trying to tell you something? Is today's challenge God's way of getting your attention? Or not.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Happiness Is
Psalm 119:1-24
Who doesn't want to be happy? I know if you ask the children in your family what they want for Christmas, you'll get a list for Santa that would break the parents' bank. And if we're honest, most of us adults when asked what we want can go on and on with everything including having a material/financial needs met, having our relationships restructured, having our employment more adequately remunerated. Bottom line: we'd give the kids a run for their money in making our lists. But wait, what about happiness? Oh... yeah... that. I think we think that if we get the rundown of our lists, then happiness surely will follow. I mean what's missing from our bank accounts, our ideal homes, and our work life is the sum total of what keeps us from being happy. Right?
The Psalmist wouldn't agree. By his accounting, happiness is actually knowing what is right (the Lord's precepts) and doing it. The people who know the Lord's law and who walk in God's ways, those are the happy people. They are the ones who are wiser than the years. They are the ones who are protected even under assault. They are the ones who have clear paths. They are the ones who live with consistency.
For many years, the Lord and I have been having an ongoing conversation in which I feed God my list of the things that will complete my life and fulfill my joy - legitimate longings and desires to have and be what I fantasize will make me happy. I am relentless in asking. And God's answer does not change: Trust me. Seek my face. Find joy and gratitude in the life you have. Watch it unfold. Be happy now. I guess Advent is time again to work on this.
Who doesn't want to be happy? I know if you ask the children in your family what they want for Christmas, you'll get a list for Santa that would break the parents' bank. And if we're honest, most of us adults when asked what we want can go on and on with everything including having a material/financial needs met, having our relationships restructured, having our employment more adequately remunerated. Bottom line: we'd give the kids a run for their money in making our lists. But wait, what about happiness? Oh... yeah... that. I think we think that if we get the rundown of our lists, then happiness surely will follow. I mean what's missing from our bank accounts, our ideal homes, and our work life is the sum total of what keeps us from being happy. Right?
The Psalmist wouldn't agree. By his accounting, happiness is actually knowing what is right (the Lord's precepts) and doing it. The people who know the Lord's law and who walk in God's ways, those are the happy people. They are the ones who are wiser than the years. They are the ones who are protected even under assault. They are the ones who have clear paths. They are the ones who live with consistency.
For many years, the Lord and I have been having an ongoing conversation in which I feed God my list of the things that will complete my life and fulfill my joy - legitimate longings and desires to have and be what I fantasize will make me happy. I am relentless in asking. And God's answer does not change: Trust me. Seek my face. Find joy and gratitude in the life you have. Watch it unfold. Be happy now. I guess Advent is time again to work on this.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
No Easy Answers
Psalm 10
There really is significant biblical precedent for questioning God. I know you would never guess it based on the conventional wisdom passed on through Sunday school lessons and sermons, but "Why" is very much a part of the faithful person's prayer lexicon.
Hear the Psalmist in the face of trouble asking God why God is on the sidelines instead of changing the course of the game. But don't rush to the end of the Psalm too quickly. Don't you do the disappearing act of hiding behind an affirmation of faith without fully exploring the painful space of "no easy answers." For a moment, let's just tell the truth. Doesn't it feel sometimes as if just at the moment when having an omnipotent God would be most helpful, God goes into hiding? I mean, you pray for a parking space and it appears almost like magic, but when you really need some help - poof, no God nowhere. All you see are the signs of your misery; all you hear are the taunts of the people who thought your faith was futile or silly anyway. What is there to say to God in that moment but "Why?"
This Advent journey does not promise easy answers to the whys and the whens of our lives. It doesn't even guarantee that by Christmas we'll be sure we know where the Christ child lays. What it does is to invite us to take our own questions seriously and to bring them in the raw honesty to the place of worship.
There really is significant biblical precedent for questioning God. I know you would never guess it based on the conventional wisdom passed on through Sunday school lessons and sermons, but "Why" is very much a part of the faithful person's prayer lexicon.
Hear the Psalmist in the face of trouble asking God why God is on the sidelines instead of changing the course of the game. But don't rush to the end of the Psalm too quickly. Don't you do the disappearing act of hiding behind an affirmation of faith without fully exploring the painful space of "no easy answers." For a moment, let's just tell the truth. Doesn't it feel sometimes as if just at the moment when having an omnipotent God would be most helpful, God goes into hiding? I mean, you pray for a parking space and it appears almost like magic, but when you really need some help - poof, no God nowhere. All you see are the signs of your misery; all you hear are the taunts of the people who thought your faith was futile or silly anyway. What is there to say to God in that moment but "Why?"
This Advent journey does not promise easy answers to the whys and the whens of our lives. It doesn't even guarantee that by Christmas we'll be sure we know where the Christ child lays. What it does is to invite us to take our own questions seriously and to bring them in the raw honesty to the place of worship.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)