Psalm 100
November 23, 2014
“The Song That Never Ends”
Rev. Dr. David A. Davis

Make a joyful noise to the Lord all the earth.

Worship the Lord with gladness;

Come into God’s presence with singing.

             A long time ago I listened to a lecturer who pointed out that the organ is built for singing. An organ breathes just like us; pushing air through the pipes to make and sustain sound. The sounding board in piano is built within the frame and the sound bounces from within. There is no sounding board in an organ. The sounding board is the room, the hall, the sanctuary. The main stop on an organ, the musician pointed out, is intended to match the voices of a congregation. The organ is built for singing. You and I are built to praise God; to make a joyful noise, to worship the Lord with gladness, to come into God’s presence with singing. With the very breath we have, and our ability to sustain a note, our lips shall show forth praise. The sounding board of our praise isn’t simply the blue sky on a bright morning or the glowing red mountains at sunset, some part of the frame of God’s creation. No, the sounding board of our praise is the community of faith. We are intended to praise God together.

You can imagine it as well as I can. A preacher glancing out at the congregation during the singing of the second hymn. They are singing “How Great Thou Art”. So the pastor, she has the opportunity to look out at the congregation instead of the words printed in the hymnbook. Like most ministers she enjoys the chance to look out at the many faces in the congregation. It is one of the privileges of standing up front; especially when the church is singing. This particular morning the church is a bit more crowded because of the baptism that was earlier in the service.

“O Lord My God when I in awesome wonder consider all the works thy hands have made.” The pastor sort of sighs to herself. She has long since grown tired “How Great Thou Art” but boy, the congregation loves to sing it; every time. She stands looking out like a farmer surveying the field a daybreak. Some folks catch her eye and smile. Others sing with their eyes closed. Still others never look up from the book. She chuckles in her head when she see the long time member who couldn’t sing lick, but he was belting it out. “I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder, thy power throughout the universe displayed.”

The pastor is jolted from her wistful trip through the congregation, jolted by the stare coming from a man back on the right in the middle of the pews. She didn’t know who he was, maybe a family member or friend of the baptismal family who didn’t want to sit down front. She is taken aback by his glare. He held no hymnbook. His lips moved not one bit. He just stared, right at her. When she caught his eye, he didn’t even look away. “Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee. How great thou art, How great thou art!”

She can’t stop thinking about the man with the stare. Was he angry? Mad at having to be in church? Did he have God-issues? Maybe he just couldn’t sing? As she kept scrolling through the possibilities, the preacher notices a church member in the pew who taps the man on the shoulder, whispers something, and offers him a hymnbook opened to the page. He smiles, mouths thank you, and takes the book. “Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee. How great thou art, How great thou art!”

The man never did sing but he followed along for the last few lines of the hymn. After the service, in the hallway the minister calls out to that member who spoke to the visitor. “I’m just curious, what did you say to that guy that convinced him to take the hymnbook. Judging from the look on his face, I would never guessed he would have accepted it”. The member sort of smiled, “I would have been more discreet if I would have known you were watching! “No, really, what did you say?” “I just leaned forward, held out the hymnbook and said “Here, you ought to try, this is who we are”. The pastor and member enjoyed that moment together; the man accepting the hymnbook. As they headed off in different directions the pastor stops and turns around, “By the way, did you mean singing hymns is who are, or that hymn, “how great thou art” is who we are”. The member stops, thinks just a second. “Yes” was the response…..It is who we are.

Know that the Lord is God

It is God that made us, and we are God’s

We are God’s people, and the sheep of God’s pasture.

             We belong to God. Some things you can never repeat enough. You can never tell someone enough. You can never sing enough. A pastor with a child in arms standing at the fount; “you belong to God.” A gaggle of kids gathered here on the chancel and the story teller week after week after week; “you belong to God”. Upstairs on the third floor, Sunday mornings, Sunday nights, overnight retreats, the message from the youth director, it’s not all that complicated; “you belong to God”. A chaplain working on campus, a pastor sitting with someone in the office, a deacon taking flowers to a home where grief abounds, “you belong to God.” At the bed side, the pastor prayers and whispers, “It’s okay, you belong to God.” You can never repeat it enough, tell it enough, sing it enough.

When I was in seminary, I did my field education up in Montclair at Central Presbyterian Church. There was a member at Central named Arthur Northrup. Arthur always sat in the third pew so he could hear better. He was a stately man with no shortage of opinions; especially when it came to the sermons that seminary students preached. The pastor told us early on not to worry about the scowl on Arthur’s face during worship, or when we were preaching, that’s just how God made his face. “He’s really a sweetheart”, the pastor assured us. Because we could see him up there in the front, not far from the chancel, I learned early on that Arthur never sang a hymn, except maybe in his head. One Sunday morning my seminary colleague who was also an intern, called the children down for the time with the children. At the end of her message she invited the children to sing “Jesus Loves Me.” The children sang it once and then the intern invited the congregation to join in a second time. I looked over and there was Mr. Northrup singing every word, with quite a smile. You can never sing it enough; we belong to God.

Enter God’s gates with thanksgiving,

And God’s courts with praise

Give thanks to God, bless God’s name.

             Give thanks to God, bless God’s name. At all times. In every season. Give thanks to God, bless God’s name. In joy and in sorrow. On the mountaintops and in the valley. Give thanks to God, bless God’s name. When you’re on top of the world and when the world seems like it is falling apart around you. When you feel like singing at the top of your lungs and when someone else here this morning has to sing for you. Give thanks to God, bless God’s name.

The hymn setting of Psalm 100, our opening hymn this morning, the tune name for “All People on Earth Do Dwell: is Old Hundreth. Old Hundreth. A familiar tune for the doxology as well. Old Hundreth. “Old” and “Hundreth”; it’s sort of self-explanatory. Psalm 100 and a tune that has been around since 1551; the Genevan Psalter. Maybe you read the footnote in our new hymnal, Psalm 100 and the tune have been paired in almost every English-language hymal for the last 450 years. That’s old….hundreth.

But its also “old” like old uncle Charlie” or “my old friend Millie” or my old favorite sweatshirt with holes in the elbows and fraying all around the collar. Old as in familiar and well-worn and trusted. “Old hundredth” because the follows of Jesus have sung it for 450 years over and over; no matter what, no matter where, no matter…old hundredth. Give thanks to God, bless God’s name. Even when the song of praise is a daring, defiant, act of resistance when the world’s song of chaos, destruction, and death comes with such a loud blast. Yet, even then, give thanks to God, bless God’s name. Psalm 100 as a persistent, counter-intuitive word of assurance and hope juxtaposed to life’s very real struggles for peace, or justice, or righteousness. In life and in death, give thanks to God, bless God’s name.

A beer commercial came on as I was watching a football last week. The scene is a local tavern where the bartender pours a beer and sets it upon a table in front of an empty chair. It seems one of the regulars is serving in the armed services and the commitment there at the bar is to pour the beer every day until he returns. It’s a moving scene when the veteran returns and everyone lifts a glass to him without saying a word. What most caught me off guard in the commercial was the music, the solo piano, the tune that was playing all through the commercial. I actually hit rewind on the DVR so I could listen. “What a fellowship, what a joy divine, leaning on the Everlasting arms.” I decided not to over-interpret the music choice; it was a commercial after all, a beer commercial. The jarring juxtaposition of a beer advertisement and a gospel hymn was enough.

Give thanks to God. Bless God’s name. Those moments of juxtaposition; praise and life, singing through tears and with clenched teeth. Maybe the most memorable, and meaningful, old psalm 100.

For the Lord is good;

God’s steadfast love endures forever,

And God’s faithfulness to all generations.

 When our daughter Hannah was young, she always liked having a song sung to her as part of the routine. Sometimes the song was the prayer. Often she fell asleep while her mother or I was doing the singing. She is 23 now but I remember one night when she was about 5 or 6 she asked me, “Daddy will you sing that song we did in church?” It took a while for us to figure out which one she wanted. We went through several selections. She couldn’t remember the name. Eventually we figured out she meant “Lift High the Cross”. I started singing: ‘lift high the cross, the love of Christ proclaim.” Hannah joined right in. “the love of Christ proclaim”. We sang it together. My typical fatherly response back then? It would have been to say “Hannah, it’s late. You let me sing. You roll over, close your eyes. I will sing. You try to go to sleep.” But that night, we sang together all the way to end, a few times. “the love of Christ proclaim….till all the world adore his sacred name.”

It’s who we are. Instruments intended for God’s praise. Intended to praise God together. And when you have the chance to share that praise with the next generation, to all generations…well, that’s just perfect. Absolutely perfect.

Make a joyful noise to the Lord all the earth.

Worship the Lord with gladness;

Come into God’s presence with singing.

 

Know that the Lord is God

It is God that made us, and we are God’s

We are God’s people, and the sheep of God’s pasture.

 

Enter God’s gates with thanksgiving,

And God’s courts with praise

Give thanks to God, bless God’s name.

 

For the Lord is good;

God’s steadfast love endures forever,

And God’s faithfulness to all generations.

© 2014, Property of Nassau Presbyterian Church
Contact the church to obtain reprint permission.

Joshua 24:14-28
November 9, 2014
“Whom Will You Serve?

“Whom Will You Serve?”

 

          “Choose this day whom you will serve….As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” A famous quote from Joshua snipped from the last chapter of the biblical book that shares his name. “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” It’s from Joshua. Even though you remember it from the cross-stitch your grandmother made, the one that hung over the chair in the living room; the one so old the colors in the thread had long since faded away. “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” The quote doesn’t come from your grandmother. It comes from Joshua. Before you saw it on your grandmother’s artwork; before you saw it on the decorative plate in Aunt Kate and Uncle John’s kitchen, before you learned the verse in an anthem when you were in second grade, before you saw it on a poster in the Christian bookstore at the mall, before all of that, it was Joshua. “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” And it wasn’t even the most memorable thing Joshua said that day when he spoke to all of Israel.

It was quite a scene. Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel; he summoned the elders, the leaders, the judges, the officers. It was everyone. All of Israel together. As the bible puts it: “they presented themselves before God.” “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel” That’s how Joshua launches in. He starts by rehearsing a bit of history; Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Esau, Moses. “When I brought you out of Egypt” and “when the Lord put darkness between you and Egyptians” and “Afterward you lived in the wilderness a long time” and “I brought you”, “I handed them to you”, “I rescued you”, “I gave you”. “I gave you a land on which you had not labored, and towns that you had not built, and you live in them; you eat the fruit of the vineyards and oliveyards that you did not plant”. Joshua before all of Israel and he was just warming up. Next comes our text for this morning.

Joshua 24:14-28

          One last verse: “After these things Joshua, son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died…” What he said, what Joshua said to all of Israel, it was his dying word; important words. And “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord?” Probably not the most compelling among the dying words.

With the decision placed on the table, the rhetorical gauntlet tossed down, “choose this day whom you will serve”, the people of God don’t hesitate one bit. “Far be it from us that we would serve other gods” and they then do their own remembering about all that God has done. “We will also serve the Lord, for he is our God”. And that’s when Joshua said….wait for it….you won’t find the needlepoint on this one….that’s when Joshua said, “you can’t serve the Lord; God is a holy God. God is a jealous God. You can’t do it, he told them. “No, we will serve….you are witnesses against yourselves, you have chosen to follow the Lord, to serve God!…..we are witnesses….then put away the foreign gods, lift you hearts to the Lord…..The Lord our God we will serve, God we will obey!!”

The most memorable, the most compelling of Joshua’s words; No, you can’t do it! You can’t serve the Lord! Affirming what he implied when laid down the challenge: “now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose someone else.” If your unwilling, if you can’t do it, what’s it’s going to be. If you are unwilling. The King James translates it a bit more harshly; not just if you can’t do it, but “if it seems evil unto to you” to serve the Lord. If you think it to be evil; serving God, if you think it’s all wrong, if you think it’s going to be too hard, or if you think it is going to cause you trouble, if it seems like a bad choice, then you’d better pick something else. If you think all of this is a problem, Joshua said to all of Israel, then make another choice. “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” Joshua flat out told them they couldn’t do it! Of course, Joshua was right. The next book of the bible, the Book of Judges, the very last verse, “In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did was what right in their own eyes.”

          That nice devotional sounding affirmation is what the church remembers from Joshua’s dying words to the people of Israel as “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” That’s nice for a cross-stitch, but it doesn’t quite capture the moment. It doesn’t sum up the weight of the matter, Joshua before the people, and all the people before God. There was a stronger, more compelling message that day worth remembering: you can’t make this choice and do whatever is right in your eyes! Or as Old Testament professor Walter Brueggemann puts it, this is Joshua warning the people if they make this choice, if they choose the Lord, the choice is going to bring them a bunch of trouble. You can’t frame your faith and hang it on the wall. You have to live it, choose it, work at it, every day. And as Jesus said, “You can’t serve two…you will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other.” And Joshua seems to say, before you turn the choice into some kind of trophy on your wall, you ought to at least know it’s not all that easy.

A while back I was asked if I could be interviewed about preaching for some research. As the conversation was just getting started the person expressed gratitude for our church’s website, how in preparation for the discussion, the person could listen to so many of my sermons posted there. After a basic intro question about sermon process and week to week routine, the second question caught me by surprise, “how you decide when to bring politics into your preaching?” I was sort of taken a back. The tone of the question made the questioner’s own opinion quite clear. My mind raced as I first tried to think what sermon was being referred to; or what topic struck a nerve. I quickly decided to bypass a clarifying question by asking for an example from recent material and offered instead a broader answer, “Well, I start every week with a biblical text. Many preachers are topical preachers, I am not one. I have never thought of myself as one who preachers politics. I am called to preach the gospel and it seems to be the gospel has a word to bear on your life, my life, and our life together. If that’s what you mean by getting political, amen! I said.”

I should have tossed a little Joshua in with my answer. When you stand before the people of God and talk about serving and choosing and all the other gods out there, and how choosing God isn’t going to be all that easy, someone is going to think you’re being too political, or your meddling, or you ought to stick to spiritual things. I should have just mentioned Jesus and the quote about God and mammon; serving one and hating the other. The one who interviewed me, I imagine the person read some reference I made to gun violence and the idolatry of the Second Amendment, or maybe my mention of the sinful state of race relations in our country, or maybe immigration, who knows, what I should have said was that as soon as Jesus mentioned money in the gospel, it all got political. That’s what they say, isn’t it? It always about the money. As Brueggemann once said, “Christians have a long history of trying to squeeze Jesus out of public life and reduce him to a private little Savior.” Or put another way, this choice, your choice to serve the Lord, it’s more than a craft project. If you are unwilling to serve the Lord, if you think it to be evil unto to you; serving God, if you think it’s all wrong, if you think it’s going to be too hard, or if you think it is going to cause you trouble, if it seems like a bad choice, then you choose, choose whom you will serve.

Three times the people affirmed their choice. Joshua made a covenant with the people that day and he wrote it in a book. He took a large stone and set it up under the oak tree in the sanctuary of the Lord. He told the people to look and remember their choice. He gave them a sign so that they could remember; remember they were choosing to serve God and God alone. A sign for them to remember that God is a jealous god. A sign to remember when they dabbled again with the gods beyond the river. A sign to see every day. A sign to remember that God had chosen them and they had chosen God.

Last month I was with 25 colleagues; a peer group of pastors that gets together twice a year for learning, support, and care. We always finish our time with communion. We did that the last morning at the Table by intinction. Truth is, I don’t’ get to be on the receiving end of communion all that often. You sort of forget what a blessing it is in that moment, to receive, to take, eat, and drink, to take, tear and dip, to hear someone else say the words, “body of Christ broken for you”, “blood of Christ shed for you”. To experience the very promise of God, the Word of Lord with this dripping piece of bread in your hands.

It was a couple of hours later, in the airport, I was reading the paper and I looked down, and I had this long grape juice stain rolling down my shirt. It will not be a surprise to anyone that a stain on my shirt after a meal is not all that uncommon. Just not after that meal. I laughed at myself as I lowered my head to get a whiff to see if it was grape juice or ketchup. If you’re going to have a stain, if you’re going to bear a mark, if you’re going wear it, what could be better. A sign of the salvation promise of Jesus. That Christ has chosen me and in response to such love and grace, I choose to live for him.

 

© 2014, Property of Nassau Presbyterian Church
Contact the church to obtain reprint permission.

I Thessalonians 1:1-10
October 19, 2014
Reel to Reel
Rev. Lauren J. McFeaters

[i]

 

The Thessalonians are a wreck. Newly devoted to faith, there are pressures from all sides to return to the lives from which they had turned away. Fear and apprehension runs deep. Outright persecution is firing down from every side; fury and anger that this band of Gentile believers would tear themselves away, from a community that until very recently, had been their source of values and standards.[ii]

 

The Thessalonians are soul sick. Some of their members, their dearest friends, have not only died, but died before the Lord has returned. Grieving; they are lost, confused, forsaken. And in their hurt and emptiness they want only one thing: their pastor Paul. But instead of receiving Paul himself, the postman knocks at the door with a letter. Grateful, they gather round the table, because they know, if Paul can’t get to them; if he can’t care for them in person, he’ll send them what they need.

 

And he does. He sends them words. Not doctrinal theories or blunt directives, but words of affection.^[iii] And they read his letter for all they’re worth. They take a deep cleansing breath of the scent of his phrases; they weigh the substance of his sentences.[iv] From their soul sickness they hear the very best of encouragement:

Grace to you and peace.

I give thanks to God for all of you.

My heart breaks because I care for each of you so deeply

and I miss you so much.

 

But you must hold onto this:

You are not at the mercy of your fears,

For you are imitators of the Lord,

for in spite of torment and distress,

you receive God’s Word with joy.

         

You are imitators of the Lord,

for in spite of torment and distress,

you receive God’s Word with joy.

 

You may notice in the bulletin insert for Children’s’ Sabbath there is a logo for The Children’s Defense Fund. It’s a picture, a crayon drawing, of a small boat on a churning, turbulent sea and inside the boat is a small child. Above the child are these words written out in a child’s hand:

Dear Lord, be good to me.

The sea is so wide

and my boat is so small.

 

Marian Wright Edelman, President of the Children’s Defense Fund said recently said this:

For more than fifty years we as a nation have dreamed about a day when our children will be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. For more than 200 years, we as a nation have been dreaming of a time when we recognize that all of us are created equal and entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

And I believe that since the beginning of humankind, God has been dreaming when we will understand that each and every child is precious to God and finally cherish and protect every child.[v]

Dear Lord, be good to me.

The sea is so wide

and my boat is so small.

 

You are imitators of the Lord,

for in spite of torment and distress,

you receive God’s Word with joy.

 

To become imitators of our Lord; to take action on behalf of others, to receive the Word with joy in the midst of fear, we must be on a particular road and that road is maturity, maturity in Christ. And to mature we must trust. And to trust we take our fears and dreads, and in spite of them, we live for our Lord and act on behalf of others:

 

That’s Christian maturity, at any age – when we develop and ripen, and move beyond ourselves, and get out of our own way. It’s one of the things I love most about Paul: his unrelenting mission for us to grow-up; his dogged way of kicking us in the pants; his crushing, in-your-face evangelism that will stop at nothing until we can shout from the rooftops that Jesus is Lord.

I have to be honest though. It’s at this point that Paul usually loses me. For with his mission for our faith, comes his form of letter writing that’s unremitting and incessant and hammering and I get lost every time. I can’t keep up. Ten verses of anything Paul writes, let alone ten paragraphs, is usually too much for me.

 

Dear Lord, be good to me.

My brain is so small

and Paul’s epistles are so wide.

 

It’s not a good problem for a pastor. Paul is so intellectual, so cerebral, so systematic, so analytical, so, so…OK I’m just going to say it: He’s so male. So utterly different than myself and dissimilar to the way my brain functions. I often yearn for the Apostle Paula.

 

My friend Jacq Lapsley once said not to worry; just take Paul in sentences. And in my head I’m saying, thank you my sweet friend, but you’re a biblical scholar and can read the bible in a gazillion languages; chapters at a time. Sentences are just too much. Anyway, Paul’s last name was probably Lapsley. But I listened to her and worked on figuring out how Paul and I could be on the same page.

 

It turns out I needed to take Paul to the movies, the cinema, the big screen. Let me explain. Do you ever remember being at a movie (now this is before digital film-making came into play) and did you ever notice every once in a while in the upper right corner of the screen came a series of black and white circles? Dots? In the film world those are called “cue marks” or “changeover cues” and they’re printed right on the film on the last frames of a film reel.

 

They’re visual prompts for the projectionist. Back in the projection booth the projectionist waits for the signal to change the film reel. Two projectors sit side by side. One reel of film is showing the film while the other reel is cued up to go as soon as the projectionist sees those dots and circles.[vi]

 

That’s how to understand and be guided by Paul.

By the power of the Holy Spirit, we move from

Frame to Frame to Scene to Scene to Reel to Reel.

 

And it works. As if on cue, Paul flashes circles on screen and we are rolled into a new idea, smaller bites that move us into hope:

• God chooses you.
• In spite of fear – receive the Word with joy.
• You are an example to all the believers.
• You serve the living and true God.

 

As if on cue, Shannon Daley-Harris and Marian Wright Edelman flash the circles on screen and we are rolled into a

new frame, a new scene, a new reel:

• Every child is precious in God’s sight.
• Every child deserves a strong start.
• Children who receive a high-quality early childhood

education are more likely to graduate from school,

maintain a job, contribute to society;

and they are less likely

to be funneled into the prison pipeline.

• We can help every precious

child flourish to their God-given potential.[vii]

 

God-given potential.

OurGod-given potential;

it means everything doesn’t it, for all of us?

 

And this is howPaul tracks us down; he rummages around our hearts until we can’t sit still. Thank goodness he’s relentless, unyielding, and dogged and he reaches up through the centuries and lays this at our feet:

• Fear and soul-sickness about the future we have no control over has no place in our lives of faith.
• It weakens our God-given potential and our capacity for generosity; it demoralizes our hearts,
• It keeps us immature and undeveloped,
• And it’s a scandal to the Gospel because when we’re wrapped in our own fear it undermines our service to others and our joy in faith.

 

What then are we to do? Well we huddle around that table with the Thessalonians, answering the knock at the door, opening the letter full of the truth we already know.[viii]

 

You are not at the mercy of your fears,

You are followers of the Lord,

And by the power of the Holy Spirit,

Frame by Frame.

Scene by Scene.

Reel by Reel.

you receive the Word with joy.

Thanks be to God.

 

ENDNOTES

 

[i] 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10: Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace. We always give thanks to God for all of you and mention you in our prayers, constantly remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. For we know, brothers and sisters beloved by God, that he has chosen you, because our message of the gospel came to you not in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction; just as you know what kind of persons we proved to be among you for your sake. And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for in spite of persecution you received the word with joy inspired by the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia. For the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but in every place your faith in God has become known, so that we have no need to speak about it. For the people of those regions report about us what kind of welcome we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath that is coming.

[ii] The New Oxford Annotated Bible NRSV. Eds. Bruce M. Metzger and Roland E. Murphy. New York: Oxford University Press, 291, 1991.

[iii] M. Eugene Boring and Fred B. Craddock. The People’s New Testament Commentary, Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004, 644.

 

[iv] Mortimer Adler. How to Read a Book: The Art of Getting a Liberal Education. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1940. As cited in Beverley Roberts Gaventa’s First and Second Thessalonians, from the series, Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Preaching and Teaching. Louisville: John Knox Press, 1998.

[v] “A Letter from Marian Wright Edelman” included in Shannon Daley-Harris’s “Precious in God’s Sight: Answering the Call to Cherish and Protect Every Child. The National Observance of Children’s Sabbaths® Celebration: A Multi-Faith Resource for Year-Round Child Advocacy, Volume 23, 3, 2104. www.childrensdefense.org.

 

[vi] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cue_mark.

 

[vii] Shannon Daley-Harris. “Promoting Your Children’s Sabbath: Ideas for All Faiths.” National Observance of National Observance of Children’s Sabbaths® Celebration of the Children’s Defense Fund, 2014, 8. www.childrensdefense.org/child-research-data-publications/data/2014-sabbath-manual/documents/sabbath-2014-promotion.pdf.

 

[viii] Elizabeth Barrington Forney. Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary – Year C, Volume 4: Season After Pentecost 2 (Propers 17-Reign of Christ).

 

© 2014, Property of Nassau Presbyterian Church
Contact the church to obtain reprint permission.

John 12:20-26
August 24, 2014
“Where to Look”
Rev. Dr. David A. Davis

The first congregation I served down in Blackwood, NJ has a sanctuary that seats about two-hundred people. There is a lot of wood in the room; the pews, the pulpit, the railing at the chancel. It is all a beautiful light colored oak. Like this sanctuary here at Nassau, there are two aisles that divided the room in thirds; no center aisle. In good early American Presbyterian fashion, a central pulpit elevated slightly. With the lack of a center aisle, the people in the pew sit directly in front of the pulpit. It is an historical, architectural theological point: the congregation there for worship and the pulpit front and center. The congregation seated before the Word. The sermon, the gospel proclaimed given spatial priority.

On the back of that pulpit in Blackwood is a very small plaque that only the preacher can see. The plaque has an inscribed bible verse. “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” There is no chapter and verse listed. No bible reference, just “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” It is a message from the congregation to their pastor: “through your preaching, we wish to see Jesus.” Each and every Sunday, in every season, the intent of gospel proclamation is to present Christ Jesus to the gathered community, the hearers of the Word.

One year I was getting ready for vacation. I had invited a seminary classmate to preach for me while I was away. I tried to think of a light-hearted way to prepare the plaque for her visit. “Ma’am, we would see Jesus” didn’t seem quite right. So I took a little piece of electrical tape and just covered the first word. So as soon as she came in for worship and sat down in the chair right behind the pulpit, she would see it. “We wish to see Jesus”.

Not surprisingly, that plaque is not unique to one beautiful and modest sanctuary in South Jersey. The message appears to preachers in pulpits in churches all over. One will never know how many, but in countless congregations in sanctuaries all over, the concealed message from congregation to pastor is tucked in some way, somehow: “We wish to see Jesus.” A theological affirmation of the role of preaching and the Word proclaimed in our tradition.

“We wish to see Jesus.” John 12:21. In the gospel account, the request to see Jesus comes from some Greeks who came to Philip. Philip goes and shares their plea with Andrew. Together, Andrew and Philip go and tell Jesus. They wish to see Jesus. In the big picture of John’s gospel, in the flow of the chapters, that request from some Greeks comes right after John’s account of the Palm Sunday Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem. The wish to see Jesus, it comes on the heels of Palm Sunday and comes right before John’s prolonged account of the Last Supper, and Jesus’ priestly prayer in the Garden. The wish to see Jesus comes just before John writes about the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus. It comes right before that moment, as John puts it, “Having loved his own who were in the world, Jesus loved them to the end.” The wish to see Jesus is an upbeat to the downbeat John’s telling of the Passion story. It is the forward to the last act in the gospel play. In a gospel that has its own famous prologue, the wish to see Jesus is a fleeting prologue to the suffering, the death and the resurrection of the Son of God.

John 12:21, b. “We wish to see Jesus”. Notice, here in John, surrounding that wish, there’s no sermon. Teaching from Jesus, yes. But no parable filled sermon, no Book of Acts like proclamation. With all due respect to the preaching tradition honored by the hidden pulpit plaque, the answer Jesus offers to Andrew and Philip has little to do with preaching. Here in the 12^th chapter of John’s gospel, Jesus answers the request by telling once again about his own death and resurrection: “the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified….a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies… And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” John the narrator takes away any possibility of confusion when it comes to the language and the images coming from Jesus. “He said this” John tells the reader, “to indicate the kind of death he was to die.” The answer to the wish matches where the wish falls in the narrative. If you wish to see me, Jesus responds to the Greek worshipers, then now is the time to really pay attention. If you want to see Jesus, John responds to his readers, now is the time to really pay attention. “We wish to see Jesus”; it’s about more than a good sermon. It is the gospel’s emphasis on the suffering, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus.

Notice too, how Jesus includes in his answer some teaching, some language that strikes a familiar chord for those who have ears to hear. As Jesus and the Gospel of John respond to that wish with the strongest of directional cues toward the cross, another familiar strain can be heard. “Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.” For the experienced hearers of the Word, a familiar tune is struck in the ear and in the heart. Like in a Bach cantata when the main tune returns to the violins. Like in a jazz improve when the tenor sax soloist suddenly does a riff on a tune everyone knows like “When the Saints, Come Marching In”

As Jesus so clearly tells the Greek worshipers and John’s readers and the disciples and the church to now be ready to focus on the cross, a familiar tune can also be heard. “Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.” You know the tune, “Whoever wants to be first, must be last of all….Whoever wants to be the greatest among you, must be a servant of all….the first shall be last….the greatest shall be the servants.” One cannot look to the cross for any length of time without hearing a song in your head start to play; a song about selflessness, and putting others first, and love poured out. If you want to see Jesus, yes, pay attention to his suffering, and his death, and his resurrection. But Jesus shall be revealed in those who proclaim the gospel with lives in serve to others. Jesus shall be made known by those who strive for a servanthood like his. Jesus will be seen in you and your call to service in his kingdom. If you want to see Jesus, don’t forget to look to the least not the greatest, to the last not the first, to those who serve others and serve Christ’s kingdom.

The easy sermon move at this point would be an illustration about Mother Theresa or Pope Francis or Loaves and Fishes or a 24 hour hired caregiver who becomes part of the family or guy in the church who spent his retirement driving shut-ins to doctors’ appointments. But a glorification of servant heroism can so easily let you and I off the hook. Christ’s call to servanthood, it would seem, comes with an even more basic, yet profound, affirmation about how you and I are called to live out our faith. Christ’s tune of serving the other and loving the other and welcoming the other, it plays at the most foundational level of our humanity; how we relate to and treat one another and the stranger. How we encounter others in a Christ-like way. If the world today is going to see Jesus, then it ought to begin not with the world’s greatest sermon on his death and resurrection, it ought to begin with how those of us who take the name Christian live our lives one on one on one. We wish to see Jesus.

I have found the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri heartbreaking, troubling, and discouraging in so many ways that go beyond my ability to find words. In reading the stories that report on reactions and opinions all across the country, it is clear that in general, the response of African Americans and the response of white Americans is profoundly different. In other words, issues of race and racism continue to plague our nation. My guess is that my retired Presbyterian minister colleagues here at Nassau would attest that church did better on race relationships 50 years ago. I am quite sure that Len Newton who died just a few weeks ago, who worked on matters of racial justice in this town pretty much his whole life, I am quite sure Len would tell me the church’s voice was much stronger back in the day. God rest his soul.

One journalist spoke about the need for new civil rights leadership and the lack of strong voices in the black community and in the white community. Stronger leaders, bolder politicians, preachers stepping up. That may be all true and worthy of discussion. But that so easily lets you and I off the hook (well, maybe you, not me). If the church is going to reclaim its voice for justice and peace, if the world today is going to see Jesus, then it ought to begin not with the world’s greatest sermon on his death and resurrection, it ought to begin with how those of us who take the name Christian live our lives one on one on one. Before forming an opinion, before making a conclusion, before joining an argument, before judging, listen to that song that’s playing in head and in your heart, a song about selflessness, and putting others first, and love poured out.

Last week I attended an event over at Princeton Seminary that included a series of presentations and discussions to help students and church leaders think about the wider church’s response to the events in Ferguson. I listened to Professor Bobby William Austin. At one point he offered that the white community doesn’t understand why the African American community is so angry. One of the reasons, he explained, is that every African American male has a story to tell about an encounter with police; every African American male. As I sat there as a white male, it occurred to me that if every African American male has a story to tell, the first think I ought to do before I have an opinion, or make a judgement, or offer a pronouncement, the first think I ought to do is listen.

So much of the church’s time and energy is spent arguing about things. In the Presbyterian world that is never more true than before and after a General Assembly. The church historians in our midst will affirm that it is nothing new and some of the arguments have been and are about important things. But nowhere does the gospel promise that one will see Jesus by winning an argument. But Christians sure excel in the making of and the carrying on of arguments. Before there was cable talk shows making a spectacle out of argument there was the church, and there were Christians doing just a fine job at arguing. How about less arguing and more serving, less win at all cost rhetoric and more loving your neighbor, less wanting to be right and more wanting to listen and care, less judging someone of a different race, or economic status or political party or religious faith, less judging and more “how can I let this not just be about me……how can I let you be first…how can how can I let my love pour out.” I’m not talking about politicians, I’m talking about the followers of Jesus.

You can’t look to the cross and forget about your call to be a servant of all.

 

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Matthew 13:44-53
“Treasures Old, Treasures New”
August 3, 2014
Rev. Lauren J. McFeaters

“Treasures Old, Treasures New”

Matthew 13:44-53 [i]

 

You may have seen the play or the film, Inherit the Wind. It’s an account of the 1925 trial of the high school teacher John Scopes for breaking Tennessee state law and teaching the theory of evolution rather than rather than the Biblical account of creation The title of the play comes from scripture; Proverbs 11:

He who troubles their own house will inherit wind,

And the foolish will be servant to the wise hearted.[ii]

 

William Jennings Bryan was the prosecutor and you may remember that he was a stalwart activist in the religious movement we know as Fundamentalism. The defense attorney for the case was Clarence Darrow; a different kind of man.

The play was a sensation and brought to life a piece of history long forgotten. And even though Williams Jennings Bryan won the case and Mr. Scopes was fined $100, Bryan’s his life was never the same. Clarence Darrow’s determined and indomitable defense of Mr. Scopes and dealt a fierce blow to Jennings Bryan. Just days after the trial ended, William Jennings Bryan died. [iii]

There is a quite heartbreaking scene in the play, for me it’s the crucial dramatic moment. A brash reporter hears of Bryan’s death, and says to Clarence Darrow:

Why should we weep for him in death?

Why should we weep?

You know what he was a

Barnum & Bailey Bunkum he was;

a Bible-Beating Blowhard.

 

But Clarence Darrow replies:

“A giant once lived in that body.

But the man got lost –

lost because he was looking for God

too high up and too far away.” [iv]

 

As Jesus leads us into today’s parables he is insistent that we not get lost looking for the Kingdom of Heaven too high up and too far away.Instead he takes us to field and farm, village and lakeshore. He takes us to the earth, to soil and produce. He takes us to the marketplace, to the mercantile and business center. He takes us to the fishing village, to salt and sea, sorting the catch and mending nets, and says the experience of our day-to-day life; our everyday routine is the stuff of the divine; just real-life women and men and youth going about their everyday work. [v]

Jesus says; don’t get lost looking for the Kingdom of Heaven too high up and too far away. Why? Because he knows we are a people who will complicate our lives of faith at the drop of a hat. We will choose bewilderment rather than clarity; bafflement rather than peace, many times believing a life of faith must be complex and confounding when the opposite is true: our life of faith is a simple gift: a treasure found and a joy to behold . God’s kingdom life is a of fathomless value; a treasure hidden in a field; a pearl that becomes a quest; a net that’s cast wide and deep; a treasure full of the new and old.

One preacher puts it like this:

When we truly encounter something precious, something of inestimable value, nothing else compares to its value. The kingdom of heaven is like this. When we truly encounter it and realize what it is, it enters our hearts, seizes our imaginations, and overwhelms us with its precious value. No price is too great; nothing that we own can rival its value…

And it comes to us in the everyday when we are studying or driving or cooking or raising children or going to meetings.

• In the everyday God leads us to a field:
• Perhaps something unexpectedly delightful takes you by surprise and laughter takes over;
• Perhaps God breaks into your sadness, your gloom and offers the a cool breeze across the face to calm and sooth;
• Perhaps God breaks into your fear, your panic, your anxiety and sends a word of hope and confidence;
• Perhaps God breaks into your grief and heartache and offers a pearl – a line from a book or a phrase from a hymn that drifts across the memory like the scent of perfume.

This is the Kingdom of Heaven – life becomes holy, God is near, and everything pales before this new and breathtakingly priceless truth.” [vi]

Jesus says; don’t get lost looking for the Kingdom of Heaven too high up and too far away. The parables offered in our hearing keep us close to our lives. Bringing out of our treasures what is new and what is old – what is refreshing and what is deep-rooted, what is original and what is long-standing.

So how does that happen? We keep coming to church, singing our hymns, proclaiming our affirmations; praying for a desperate world; giving thanks for God’s grace. All of us who preach, says Scott Hoezee, keep cracking open the ancient book looking to the Spirit to guide us to truth that is anything but ancient. We keep gathering at sick beds and death beds and whisper our prayers for the Spirit of the resurrection to be with us in life and in death. We keep splashing water onto the baptized and eat of the bread and drink of the cup. ^[vii]

 

Forty five years ago last week in July 1969, Apollo 11 took Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins to the moon and it became “one giant leap for humankind.” And the news has been bursting with stories and remembrances and tributes to this monumental achievement.

But what you may not know, because it was kept a secret, is that Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong celebrated communion on the moon. It was as a part of their faith and vocation.

Buzz Aldrin, a ruling elder at the Webster Presbyterian Church in Webster, Texas near Houston, said,

“We wanted to express our feeling that what humanity man was doing in this mission transcended electronics and computers and rockets…so I wondered if it might be possible to take communion on the moon, that as we reached out into the universe, we trust that we are doing God’s eternal plan for [hu]man[kind].” [viii]

Aldrin said that right away question came up. It was a Presbyterian question:  Was it theologically correct, [was it decent and orderly] for a layperson to serve communion in space?  I am not kidding. And to make sure he and his pastor contacted the General Assembly and got back a quick reply that it was a go and a plan was put in place. Aldrin took a tiny wrapped package of bread, wine and a small chalice.

When he and Armstrong had landed on the moon, Aldrin said “Houston, this is Eagle. I would like to request a few moments of silence and invite each person listening in, wherever and whomever he [or she] may be, to contemplate for a moment the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in their own individual way.”

Inside the lunar module, Buzz Aldrin unstowed the elements in his flight pack.  He put them on a little table. He poured the wine into a small chalice and in the one-sixth gravity of the moon the wine curled slowly and gracefully up the side of the cup. This is the body of Christ. This is the cup of salvation. They prayed, they ate, they drank, and they gave thanks. [ix]

And then Buzz Aldrin read from John 15:5:

Jesus said, I am the vine, you are the branches.

Those who abide in me

and I in them

bear much fruit,

because apart from me

you can do nothing.

 

You see we are not lost;

And God is not too high up and too far away.

God is here.

 

Thanks be to God.

 

Lauren J. McFeaters

Nassau Presbyterian Church

Princeton, New Jersey

8^th Sunday after Pentecost & the Sacrament of Communion

August 3, 2014

 

ENDNOTES

 

[i] Matthew 13:44-53 – ‘The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. ‘Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it. ‘Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. ‘Have you understood all this?’ They answered, ‘Yes.’ And he said to them, ‘Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.’ When Jesus had finished these parables, he left that place.

[ii] Proverbs 11:28-29, NRSV.

[iii] William L. Dols. Sermon: “Looking for the Kingdom of God Too High Up and Too Far Away.” Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52. Day1.org, Alliance for Christian Media, Inc., July 28, 2002.

[iv] Inherit the Wind, by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee; debuted at Broadway’s National Theatre, New York City, April 21, 1955.

[v] Talitha J. Arnold. Matthew 13: 31-33, 44-53 from Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary – Feasting on the Word – Year A, Volume 3: Pentecost and Season After Pentecost 1 (Propers 3-16). Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012, WORDsearch Corp.

[vi] Thomas G. Long. Matthew. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997, 156-157.

[vii] Scott Hoezee. “The Lectionary Gospel, Year A, Matthew 13” from the Center for Excellence in Preaching, Calvin Theological Seminary, Grand Rapids, Michigan, calvinseminary.edu.

[viii] Buzz Aldrin. “Communion in Space: An Astronaut Tells of a Little-Known but Significant Event on the Moon.” Guideposts Magazine, October 1970. As found in an article by Yasmine Hafiz, “The Moon Communion of Buzz Aldrin that NASA Didn’t Want To Broadcast.” The Huffington Post; Huffingtonpost.com; July, 19, 2014.

[ix] Buzz Aldrin.

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July 27, 2014
Matthew 13:31-35
“Small But Mighty”
Rev. Lauren J. McFeaters

 

You know and I know parables are sneaky. Parables are tricky. Parables are thorny. At first they sound like good-natured stories we might experience in daily life. For instance:

• “A certain man had two sons”
• “A woman searched the house for a coin.”
• “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers.”
• “Ten young women took their oil lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom.”

As we listen to Jesus’ parables unfold, straightforward stories become a maze of mystery. And before we can catch up with him he’s turned the corner and he’s off and running through a thornier labyrinth. Jesus is so sneaky. He hands us a lesson drawn from common life then expects us grasp the uncommon. Most times he doesn’t even explain what he means, and when he does, you wonder why he didn’t just say it like that in the first place.[i]

One preacher puts it like this:

“Parables are mysterious, and their mystery has everything to do with their longevity. Left alone, they teach us something different every time we hear them; they speak across great distances of time and place and understanding.”[ii]

My friend Christy Waltersdorff who’s a pastor in Chicago introduced me to a love of mystery novels. She says we probably enjoy them because, in the end, we can trust the mystery and riddles will fall into place and be solved. That’s why I dive head first into reading Dorothy Sayers, John Le Carre, and Louise Penny. They’re the very best at taking you on a mysterious adventure with depth and complexity and intrigue, and then at the end, tying it all up with a bow – very satisfying reading.

Not so with Jesus. Not so satisfying at the end; lots of unknowns. When his mystery stories are told, you’re left to your own untangling. He often told a story then just walked away leaving people to decipher the puzzle; crack the code. And maybe, just maybe, that is the purpose. Jesus is never into easy answers. More than once the disciples asked him what he meant. Sometimes he told them. But mostly he didn’t. What he wants us to do is to listen for truth. Parables are more than lesson-driven stories; they are truth about the Kingdom of God. [iii]

And so he says to us: I want you to experience the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth, and I’ll tell you a story…

“The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed

that someone took and sowed in his field;

it is the smallest of all the seeds,

but when it has grown

it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree,

so that the birds of the air

come and make nests in its branches.”

 

What is the Kingdom of Heaven?

 

“The Kingdom of Heaven is like yeast

that a woman took

and mixed in with three scoops of flour

until all of it was leavened.”

 

These parables bring us down to earth; every day stories about small ordinary seeds and soil, yeast and flour; the day-to-day life of farmers and homemakers doing every day routines. And of course, says one preacher, that’s the whole point. We are created to experience everyday life through the eyes of the divine; called to witness to the mystery of a Kingdom here and now led by a Lord both human and divine. In these parables, Jesus puts that incarnational focus not on himself but on the world around him.[iv]

 

The parables offered in our hearing are small but mighty. Mustard seeds are both small and their plants are intrusive and not often planted with crops. They absolutely wreck a crop’s neat rows and well-ordered frame. So perhaps there’s something intrusive and jumbled about the Kingdom of Heaven; something aggressive and muddled?

 

Not such good news for Presbyterians. I am shocked I tell you, shocked to think that the Kingdom of Heaven might be a messy place; might not be cultivated in descent and orderly rows. I am shocked I tell you, shocked to think that the Kingdom of Heaven might be a chaotic place; might not be cultivated in a neat and tidy framework. The Kingdom of Heaven must be sown in methodical, systematic, ship-shape patterns.

 

Ted Wardlaw says it like this: In the church, we want to be able to define what fits within it and what does not. So naturally, there are important foundations to our faith – as there should be. We have Scripture. We have creeds. We have liturgy. We have tradition. We have sacraments. We also have boundaries — nice neat rows of carefully tended doctrine and practice. Then, just when we are least expecting it, we also have the voice of God whispering in our ear—pushing us beyond our boundaries, forcing us to discern whether they are in fact our boundaries or God’s boundaries. In this sense, “the Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed” – the Kingdom of Heaven is like yeast —a small but mighty symbol of how God is forever invading our orderly sense of things. It just hides there—in the seed bin, in the hand, in the kitchen, in the church, in the mind of God—like a mustard seed, like a grain of yeast – treasure [v] small but mighty.

 

Small things that have expansive consequences. Small but mighty. This, says Jesus, is the way of the Kingdom of Heaven. Seed by seed. Loaf by loaf.

 

Ann Lamott tells a story of her childhood. She says:

Many years ago my brother, who was 10 years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’s had 3 months to write. It was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin, and my brother was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said,

 

“Bird by Bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.” [vi]

 

We Christians would do well to take things bird by bird.We’d do well taking things seed by seed; loaf by loaf. Simple steps, simple compassion, simple listening, sometimes messy, sometimes jumbled, sometimes intrusive, taken one at a time it had expansive consequences: Letting God intrude in the cultivated soil of our certainties creates something new.

 

Decipher the puzzle. Crack the code.

Seed by seed. Loaf by loaf. Bird by bird.

 

The Kingdom of Heaven is like that:

water simply splashed on Makario

and on the head of every youth who left this morning for Montreat Conference Center.

God’s small and mighty gifts:

mustard seeds; yeast, and drops of water;

Planted and baked and poured.

Seed by seed.

Loaf by loaf.

Bird by bird.

Splash by splash.

 

Thanks be to God.

 

Lauren J. McFeaters

Nassau Presbyterian Church

Princeton, New Jersey

7^th Sunday after Pentecost

July 27, 2014

 

ENDNOTES

 

[i]Christy Waltersdorff. Sermon: Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52. York Center Church of the Brethren, Lombard, IL, June 29, 2014.

[ii]Barbara Brown Taylor. The Seeds of Heaven, “Learning to Live with Weeds.” Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004, 33-41.

[iii]Christy Waltersdorff. Sermon: Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52. York Center Church of the Brethren, Lombard, IL, June 29, 2014.

[iv]Talitha J. Arnold. Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary – Feasting on the Word – Year A, Volume 3: Pentecost and Season After Pentecost 1 (Propers 3-16). Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012, WORDsearch Corp.

[v] Theodore J. Wardlaw. Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary – Feasting on the Word – Year A, Volume 3: Pentecost and Season After Pentecost 1 (Propers 3-16). Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012, WORDsearch Corp.

[vi] Ann Lamott. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. New York: Pantheon.1994.

 

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July 20, 2014
Genesis 28:10-22
What About Those Angels?
Rev. Dr. David A. Davis

Last week when we left Jacob, he had just sold his older brother Esau a bowl of red stew for the simple price of all the rights and privileges due the oldest son. As the story continues in the Book of Genesis, when their father Abraham was “old and his eyes were dim”, Jacob doubled down on that birthright bargain by tricking his father. You remember, with his mother’s help and with Esau’s clothes and some animal skins tossed in because Esau was so hairy, Jacob served his father a meal and some wine, convinced him he was his older brother, and deceptively received the blessing intended for Esau. Rebekah heard that Esau was planning to kill Jacob so she tells Jacob that he should go away until Esau calms down. Also, Rebekah was determined that Jacob would not marry one of those Canaanite women. Two reasons, then, for Jacob to leave town. So at the instruction of his father and his mother, Jacob set out for Uncle Laban’s house where he was to find one of his daughters to marry.

Genesis 28:10-22

            He came to a certain place. Somewhere between Beer-sheba and Haran. A certain place. Not a place with name, just a place. Jacob came to a certain place where he intended to spend the night for no other reason than it was the end of the day, the sun was down. It was just a place along the way. A certain place. No place. In a book of Genesis full of places that have names and names that have meaning, this place that would soon be called Bethel, when Jacob stopped there at the end of the day, it was just a certain place. It probably could have been any place. It was just a place. And with apparently nothing else to do there, as the Bible tells it, Jacob took one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and he lay down in that place.

It was there in that place that Jacob had a dream. He dreamed that there was a ladder, a staircase, a ramp that went from earth all the way to heaven. In his dream he saw the angels of God going up and going down, up and down, up and down. And in his dream, the Lord appeared and said to Jacob, “I am” and “I will”. The Lord said to Jacob “all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and your offspring.” The Lord said to Jacob, “I am with you ”, “I will keep you”, “I will not leave you”. When Jacob woke up he said “Surely the Lord is in this place….how awesome is This place. It’s the house of God, the gate of heaven.” The certain place became the awesome place because of that dream.

It must have been a grand stair case or something like it; the ladder. With a foundation there on earth and then reaching up into the sky as far as the eye could see. A connector of earth to heaven. You don’t need a degree in dream analysis to get the symbolism; like God and Adam reaching out to each other in Michelangelo’s Sistene Chapel fresco. Jacob’s ladder. A bridge between heaven and earth. But the ladder, that’s not what makes the place awesome.

The angels, the messengers of God ascending and descending. What’s with the angels? Jacob understood them to be messengers of God but as to biblical and fanciful descriptions of angels, the reader gets nothing. Up and down. Up and down. That’s it. No, “be not afraid”. No “behold”. No bright clothes. No wings. No halo. Nothing. Nada. Under performing angels at best. In a pageant portrayal of Jacob’s life, no one would be clamoring to be an angel. At least in Jacob’s description and experience of the dream, the angels are underwhelming. The angels aren’t what make the place awesome.

The Lord said to Jacob, “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go.” Like the psalmist who testified to the Lord who “hems me in, behind and before”, to the Lord who will “hold me fast” even at the farthest limits of the seas. The Lord said to Jacob, “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go.” Like Jesus telling the disciples, “I will be with you always, until the end of the age”. The Lord said to Jacob, “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go.” Right there in a certain place; not a holy place, not the right place, not the special place, not the place he left, not the place he was going, right there in that place, The Lord said to Jacob, “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go.” That’s awesome.

In his dream, the Lord stood beside Jacob and said “I am with you”. Translators of the Hebrew text are not of one mind here. In the King James, the Lord stood above the ladder. Others say the Lord stood on the ladder. And still others have the Lord there next to Jacob. Above the ladder. On the ladder. Beside Jacob. The language could go either way. Picture this; Jacob is lying there on the ground with this stone pillow; and in his dream he is looking at this ladder with the angels up and down, up and down. He is looking up like someone stretched out and looking at the stars. And then, here’s the Lord, right next to him, looking up, saying to Jacob, “wow, that’s really cool!” And the Lord turns to Jacob right there in the middle of nowhere, in that place, and says “You know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go.” It’s not the ladder, it’s not the angels, it’s God and God’s promise and God right there on the ground beside him. Or with a nod to John Calvin, God came all the way down. And as for the dream, God didn’t really need the ladder or the angels.

For all we sing about “Climbing Jacob’s Ladder”, it’s a bit odd that Jacob never set foot on the ladder. Jacob didn’t climb one rung of the ladder. Jacob never made it to the ladder. The Lord’s promise didn’t depend on his ladder dexterity. He didn’t have to climb. The Lord came to him. He didn’t make it that night to one the designated holy spots where dreams and visions were expected. The Lord came to him. Jacob and his dream, it wasn’t a result of his virtue or his high moral standards or his purity. No, the Lord came to him, anyway. The Lord’s promise came to him. Jacob didn’t earn it. He didn’t climb and scratch for it. He didn’t ask for it. He didn’t deserve it. The Lord nestled up beside him and told him “I am with you always.” The only way to wrap head and heart around it, the only conclusion, is that it was a gift. The certain place became the awesome place because of the unexpected, unmerited, promise and presence of God.

Just a few weeks ago, I was invited to participate in a panel discussion up at the Islamic Center of Central Jersey there on Rt 1. The topic was “Understanding Forgiveness and Reconciliation: An Interfaith Dialogue”. The event was schedule on the threshold of Ramadan and there were probably a hundred or so people; men on one side, women on the other. Rabbi Feldman from the Jewish Center was on the panel along with Imam Chablis and few other Muslim leaders. Rabbi Feldman went first and in his ten minutes shared wisdom, practice, and theology from his tradition. During the question and answer, the first question was about fasting and atonement or forgiveness. The Rabbi was able to name several holidays and times of the year where fasting was crucial. I spoke next and talked about how Jesus stands at the very heart of forgiveness in the Christian tradition. How he modeled forgiveness in the gospels. How he taught and commanded forgiveness in the gospels. And how through his cross and resurrection we accomplished, mediated, brought about God’s forgiveness for us. As forgiven children of God, then, we are able to forgive. I rushed through my ten minutes and it came time for questions.

The first question and the only question was about fasting. I should have seen it coming; on the doorstep of Ramadan and just learning more about fasting in the Jewish tradition. I should have seen it coming. But I was sort of caught off guard because my prepared remarks said nothing about fasting. So I fumbled around and gave a nod to some Christian traditions who fast and I ended up talking about Lent. It was embarrassing and I missed a really important inter-faith educational opportunity. Because no one else in the room could imagine forgiveness without fasting. And what I should have said first when I was asked if Christians fast related to God’s forgiveness, I just should have said “no; it’s a gift, an awesome gift. The unmerited, unexpected, promise and presence of God. It’s a gift called grace. You don’t have to climb. And it’s awesome.

God’s promise. God’s presence. And the certain places of your life and mine. One day this week I had a full day of visits. I met with a family to plan a funeral. I visited someone who now has a new knee. Another person is losing a long battle with a horrible disease. I saw a newborn beautiful and healthy baby who was about 20 hours or so old. I saw someone who is on hospice at home. And someone whose vacation was interrupted by a health scare so lots of tests are going on. Over at the hospital, I kept getting texts from the office; just found out so and so is there, or check on so and so in room….As I said to my family that night at dinner, it was full pastoral day. Or to put it another way, I visited lots of “certain places” that day.

And in every place, the Lord was nestled up right there. “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go.” What was maybe the most remarkable part of the day, was that everyone one of those folks knew it; the gift of God’s presence and promise. Every single one, maybe with the exception of baby Lucy, oh but her family knows. And they (and we) get to tell her!! But that day, I got to go from place to place, room to room, and at every visit, God was so present. As sure as I am standing here, I could feel it. It, it was like a dream. You just never know. How or when certain places become awesome places.

© 2014, Property of Nassau Presbyterian Church
Contact the church to obtain reprint permission.

July 20, 2014
Genesis 28:10-22
What About Those Angels?
Rev. Dr. David A. Davis

Last week when we left Jacob, he had just sold his older brother Esau a bowl of red stew for the simple price of all the rights and privileges due the oldest son. As the story continues in the Book of Genesis, when their father Abraham was “old and his eyes were dim”, Jacob doubled down on that birthright bargain by tricking his father. You remember, with his mother’s help and with Esau’s clothes and some animal skins tossed in because Esau was so hairy, Jacob served his father a meal and some wine, convinced him he was his older brother, and deceptively received the blessing intended for Esau. Rebekah heard that Esau was planning to kill Jacob so she tells Jacob that he should go away until Esau calms down. Also, Rebekah was determined that Jacob would not marry one of those Canaanite women. Two reasons, then, for Jacob to leave town. So at the instruction of his father and his mother, Jacob set out for Uncle Laban’s house where he was to find one of his daughters to marry.

Genesis 28:10-22

            He came to a certain place. Somewhere between Beer-sheba and Haran. A certain place. Not a place with name, just a place. Jacob came to a certain place where he intended to spend the night for no other reason than it was the end of the day, the sun was down. It was just a place along the way. A certain place. No place. In a book of Genesis full of places that have names and names that have meaning, this place that would soon be called Bethel, when Jacob stopped there at the end of the day, it was just a certain place. It probably could have been any place. It was just a place. And with apparently nothing else to do there, as the Bible tells it, Jacob took one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and he lay down in that place.

It was there in that place that Jacob had a dream. He dreamed that there was a ladder, a staircase, a ramp that went from earth all the way to heaven. In his dream he saw the angels of God going up and going down, up and down, up and down. And in his dream, the Lord appeared and said to Jacob, “I am” and “I will”. The Lord said to Jacob “all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and your offspring.” The Lord said to Jacob, “I am with you ”, “I will keep you”, “I will not leave you”. When Jacob woke up he said “Surely the Lord is in this place….how awesome is This place. It’s the house of God, the gate of heaven.” The certain place became the awesome place because of that dream.

It must have been a grand stair case or something like it; the ladder. With a foundation there on earth and then reaching up into the sky as far as the eye could see. A connector of earth to heaven. You don’t need a degree in dream analysis to get the symbolism; like God and Adam reaching out to each other in Michelangelo’s Sistene Chapel fresco. Jacob’s ladder. A bridge between heaven and earth. But the ladder, that’s not what makes the place awesome.

The angels, the messengers of God ascending and descending. What’s with the angels? Jacob understood them to be messengers of God but as to biblical and fanciful descriptions of angels, the reader gets nothing. Up and down. Up and down. That’s it. No, “be not afraid”. No “behold”. No bright clothes. No wings. No halo. Nothing. Nada. Under performing angels at best. In a pageant portrayal of Jacob’s life, no one would be clamoring to be an angel. At least in Jacob’s description and experience of the dream, the angels are underwhelming. The angels aren’t what make the place awesome.

The Lord said to Jacob, “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go.” Like the psalmist who testified to the Lord who “hems me in, behind and before”, to the Lord who will “hold me fast” even at the farthest limits of the seas. The Lord said to Jacob, “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go.” Like Jesus telling the disciples, “I will be with you always, until the end of the age”. The Lord said to Jacob, “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go.” Right there in a certain place; not a holy place, not the right place, not the special place, not the place he left, not the place he was going, right there in that place, The Lord said to Jacob, “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go.” That’s awesome.

In his dream, the Lord stood beside Jacob and said “I am with you”. Translators of the Hebrew text are not of one mind here. In the King James, the Lord stood above the ladder. Others say the Lord stood on the ladder. And still others have the Lord there next to Jacob. Above the ladder. On the ladder. Beside Jacob. The language could go either way. Picture this; Jacob is lying there on the ground with this stone pillow; and in his dream he is looking at this ladder with the angels up and down, up and down. He is looking up like someone stretched out and looking at the stars. And then, here’s the Lord, right next to him, looking up, saying to Jacob, “wow, that’s really cool!” And the Lord turns to Jacob right there in the middle of nowhere, in that place, and says “You know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go.” It’s not the ladder, it’s not the angels, it’s God and God’s promise and God right there on the ground beside him. Or with a nod to John Calvin, God came all the way down. And as for the dream, God didn’t really need the ladder or the angels.

For all we sing about “Climbing Jacob’s Ladder,” it’s a bit odd that Jacob never set foot on the ladder. Jacob didn’t climb one rung of the ladder. Jacob never made it to the ladder. The Lord’s promise didn’t depend on his ladder dexterity. He didn’t have to climb. The Lord came to him. He didn’t make it that night to one the designated holy spots where dreams and visions were expected. The Lord came to him. Jacob and his dream, it wasn’t a result of his virtue or his high moral standards or his purity. No, the Lord came to him, anyway. The Lord’s promise came to him. Jacob didn’t earn it. He didn’t climb and scratch for it. He didn’t ask for it. He didn’t deserve it. The Lord nestled up beside him and told him “I am with you always.” The only way to wrap head and heart around it, the only conclusion, is that it was a gift. The certain place became the awesome place because of the unexpected, unmerited, promise and presence of God.

Just a few weeks ago, I was invited to participate in a panel discussion up at the Islamic Center of Central Jersey there on Rt 1. The topic was “Understanding Forgiveness and Reconciliation: An Interfaith Dialogue”. The event was scheduled on the threshold of Ramadan and there were probably a hundred or so people; men on one side, women on the other. Rabbi Feldman from the Jewish Center was on the panel along with Imam Chablis and few other Muslim leaders. Rabbi Feldman went first and in his ten minutes shared wisdom, practice, and theology from his tradition. During the question and answer, the first question was about fasting and atonement or forgiveness. The Rabbi was able to name several holidays and times of the year where fasting was crucial. I spoke next and talked about how Jesus stands at the very heart of forgiveness in the Christian tradition. How he modeled forgiveness in the gospels. How he taught and commanded forgiveness in the gospels. And how through his cross and resurrection we accomplished, mediated, brought about God’s forgiveness for us. As forgiven children of God, then, we are able to forgive. I rushed through my ten minutes and it came time for questions.

The first question and the only question was about fasting. I should have seen it coming; on the doorstep of Ramadan and just learning more about fasting in the Jewish tradition. I should have seen it coming. But I was sort of caught off guard because my prepared remarks said nothing about fasting. So I fumbled around and gave a nod to some Christian traditions who fast and I ended up talking about Lent. It was embarrassing and I missed a really important inter-faith educational opportunity. Because no one else in the room could imagine forgiveness without fasting. And what I should have said first when I was asked if Christians fast related to God’s forgiveness, I just should have said “no; it’s a gift, an awesome gift. The unmerited, unexpected, promise and presence of God. It’s a gift called grace. You don’t have to climb. And it’s awesome.

God’s promise. God’s presence. And the certain places of your life and mine. One day this week I had a full day of visits. I met with a family to plan a funeral. I visited someone who now has a new knee. Another person is losing a long battle with a horrible disease. I saw a newborn beautiful and healthy baby who was about 20 hours or so old. I saw someone who is on hospice at home. And someone whose vacation was interrupted by a health scare so lots of tests are going on. Over at the hospital, I kept getting texts from the office; just found out so and so is there, or check on so and so in room….As I said to my family that night at dinner, it was full pastoral day. Or to put it another way, I visited lots of “certain places” that day.

And in every place, the Lord was nestled up right there. “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go.” What was maybe the most remarkable part of the day, was that everyone one of those folks knew it; the gift of God’s presence and promise. Every single one, maybe with the exception of baby Lucy, oh but her family knows. And they (and we) get to tell her!! But that day, I got to go from place to place, room to room, and at every visit, God was so present. As sure as I am standing here, I could feel it. It, it was like a dream. You just never know. How or when certain places become awesome places.

 

© 2014, Property of Nassau Presbyterian Church
Contact the church to obtain reprint permission

July 6, 2014
Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67
“Well Thought Out”
Joyce MacKichan Walker

Abraham, Rebekah and Jacob

 Once again everyone is talking about girls – girls and science, girls and body image, girls and unequal wages. In June a male Japanese parliamentarian heckled a young female speaker asking for support of equal pay for equal work in Japan – where women make about 70% of the salary of their male counterparts. By the way, our national average for 2012 was 80%.[1] Because his comments were made public, and because of the backlash, he had to apologize for what he referred to as a “lighthearted” jibe about marriage. What he yelled during her speech was, “Why don’t you get married?” and   “Can’t you bear a child?” Thankfully, the days of making such remarks and getting away with it behind closed doors exited with phones that take videos and cameras the size of an ear lobe.

 

On June 30 a video called “Run like a girl”[2] was posted on youtube. It went viral overnight, helped along by Good Morning America, which picked it up the next morning and talked about the premise that the self-confidence of girls plummets when they reach puberty. In what looked to the participants like auditions for a bit part in a movie, teenagers were asked to demonstrate what it looks like to run, hit, and throw like a girl. I think you can picture the results – arms flailing; contained, half-hearted movements; an imaginary ball dropping 10 feet out in front and slowing rolling to a dead stop. Awkwardness and embarrassment. Then pre-adolescent children were asked the same question. They brought it all on – a full sprint, karate moves, and a throw that would reach first base from third without a bounce. The take away? Run like a girl. Throw like a girl. It works.

 

Being an avid Canadian hockey fan, I tried not to miss a game they or the American Olympic team played in Sochi in February. The Canadian women’s team won the gold medal on a Thursday. I’ll spare you the name of their opponent. Before the men’s final to be played on the following Sunday, Canada against Sweden, a member of the women’s team was asked what advice she had for the men’s team. Without missing a beat she said, “Play like a girl.”

 

Unfortunately some of the negative images and practices come from patriarchal societies and times portrayed in the Bible. Some are real. Some are misrepresentations and misinterpretations of biblical times and stories. A former employer of a very large independent, conservative church in Washington State recently posted a letter of explanation about his departure from the church and what he called his “sins,” including this “confession”:

“During this time I made some huge mistakes. Pressured my brilliant and hard-working wife to give up her dream of law school and have a baby and be a stay-at-home mom as soon as possible. There’s nothing wrong with kiddos (I love my daughter) and staying home with kids is great if you want to. What isn’t great is that I allowed others to take verses from the Bible out of context and put a law on my wife and rob her of a dream. I only added pressure on her. It was wrong, and I’m terribly sorry.”[3]

 

Ironically, churches currently leaving the PCUSA denomination over inclusion of LGBT leadership, and other named and unnamed discontents, are moving to denominations that don’t ordain women. Many presbyteries offer gracious dismissal policies – the opportunity to leave the PCUSA for another denomination with their property, which legally belongs to the presbytery. Presbyteries and congregations then participate in celebrations of congregational ministries that have enriched the PCUSA. Women clergy and officers in those congregations who participate in the service of worship may be doing so for their last time. In their new denomination, they will no longer have a voice or a place as a pastor or elder. In another arena, a popular t-shirt logo I’ve seen on the Princeton Seminary campus        and in other places, says simply, “I preach like a girl.”

 

In June thirty-four pilgrims, Nassau members and friends, spent two weeks in Switzerland and neighboring parts seeing the “hidden treasures” found and shown to us by Karlfried Froehlich. Dr. Froehlich is arguably our most popular adult education guest, a native of Germany, and an incredibly gifted interpreter of pre-reformation biblical art. We focused on early paintings in churches and, day after day, I noticed the number of women depicted on these walls: women who were faithful, engaged followers of the Christ, women whose stories were told to centuries of worshippers whose devotion was shaped by their service and example. Mary the mother of Jesus, Elizabeth, Mary Magdalene, women followers at the tomb, women with lamps trimmed at the marriage feast, Mary anointing Jesus’ feet with oil and drying them with her hair. They all served Jesus – like a girl.

 

We didn’t see a picture of Rebekah, but amidst all the stories of the patriarchs in Genesis, I think she’s worthy of her own mural.

 

They always used to be called the stories of the patriarchs, and listed as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the forefathers. That famous chapter in The Letter to the Hebrews remembers them that way – only the fathers, and the faith of the fathers. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. In Hebrews, the meaning of faith – it’s defined with all the examples from Genesis. Abel, Enoch, Noah; then Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, all heirs of the promise. True, Sarah is mentioned, but because she was barren.

 

We’re more inclusive now, more sensitive to the role the women played, more careful to notice the fact that God called them too, God used them too, God gave them the promise too.

In the Old Testament at least, I think Rebekah helped.

 

I hadn’t really noticed how little the Genesis novel makes of her husband, Isaac, especially in comparison to Abraham and Jacob, until I went looking for his story again. Abraham gets thirteen chapters, and honorable mentions in lots of others’ stories. The call to leave his home, “I will make of you a great nation,” the promise of land and descendants, the imperative to be the Father of All Nations, travelling adventures with Sarah, dividing land with his nephew Lot, making a covenant with God, progeny attempts with Hagar and Ishmael, the miraculous birth of Isaac after Abraham is visited by God’s messengers and Sarah’s laughter is acknowledged. Abraham’s act of faith in the face of the possibility of great sacrifice. Abraham’s protection of God’s promise by sending today’s faithful servant on a journey to find a wife for his heir Isaac –  Abraham’s  doing.

 

Jacob’s part is equally profound and well known. Fifteen chapters of dramatic intrigue as he buys Esau’s birthright for a bowl of stew, gains the blessing due the firstborn, escapes Esau’s anger, dreams a ladder, marries two sisters, outwits a crafty uncle, wrestles an angel, reconciles with his brother, fathers a dozen boys (and sadly one daughter who is raped), and manages to survive their antics to be returned to the land of promise for burial.

 

Isaac, on the other hand, seems to have a bit part. After an early brush with sacrificial death at the hands of father Abraham and Father God, he’s the passive recipient of a marriage arranged by his father. The promise is bestowed, but God is clear about why: “Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.” Of Isaac’s two sons, he backs the loser, seems too easily deceived by the other, and too impotent to do anything about it.

 

Now Rebekah. If anything, she’s the one who seems more like Abraham. She’s the one who chooses to leave her homeland and family in response to a promise. True, the servant sets up a sweet game: “[L]et the young woman who comes out to draw, to whom I shall say, ‘Please give me a little water from your jar to drink,’ and who will say to me, ‘Drink, and I will draw for your camels also’— let her be the woman whom the Lord has appointed for my master’s son.” But Rebekah knows nothing of this. She sees his need and offers to help before he can even finish his silent prayer. We don’t want to get too literal here but I’m hoping the men we learn later are with the servant helped! Ten camels, each able to drink thirty gallons of water in ten minutes…one pitcher, one teenage girl…maybe standing in line at the well…at a minimum it’s an incredibly generous and gracious offer; in reality it’s a monumental task! Thank goodness Rebekah can run like a girl!

 

And true, nobody’s a fool here! The servant bides his time and takes it all in. The genealogy is right, the storyteller lets us know earlier that the girl is beautiful and a virgin, and when he asks, she tells him they have plenty of room for his whole party, and lots of food. What’s not to love about this find!

 

In fairness, or I think to her credit, Rebekah too can see the entourage she has encountered, feel the weight of the gold nose-ring and the bracelets, and make all the family tree connections for herself.

 

Even her brother Laban gets all the right clues – 10 camels and servants and fine jewelry, gifts for all, and signs of a generous dowry. It’s very easy for a resounding “Yes!” to form on this family’s lips!

 

I’d like to make more of Rebekah’s choice in the matter, but in those times and in this story, it might be disingenuous. Her father and her brother together made the agreement. They ask Rebekah, “Will you go with this man?”, but it’s after the transaction has been struck. And the question they are asking is really, “Will you go right now without the usual time of preparation?,” not “Is this what you want?”

 

Rebekah mounts her camel and rides off into the land of promise,             blessed by her family. “May you become thousands of ten thousand,” and seemingly eager for this new life adventure. She certainly proves herself ready and able. Her impact and influence far surpass that of her husband Isaac. If you read ahead, if you recall the stories, God tells her which of her twin sons will inherit and embody the promise and the covenant. She backs the dark horse, the younger son Jacob.            She helps him gain the place of the heir,       against the wishes and preference of Isaac for elder son Esau. She protects Jacob from the consequences of the trickery she helps effect. She makes a plan with him for his escape to go and live with her brother Laban. And Rebekah then gets Isaac to think he came up with the plan, by worrying aloud about Jacob’s marrying a local woman. Isaac bites, and suggests Jacob go to live with Laban.

Sound familiar? Rebekah, like Abraham before her,             makes the plan that sends Jacob back to Abraham’s homeland for a wife, and the continuation of the covenant promise. Since you recognize that déjà vu, you won’t be surprised by this one. Jacob then meets his wife Rachel at a well. Our vacation Bible school children may know that Moses meets his wife at a well too. Well = eharmony.com.

 

I’m afraid we may have missed it – God is at work here! Yes through the patriarchs, but in this part of the story it’s Rebekah God uses to enact God’s purposes. The servant asks God to identify the woman by her gift of hospitality (vs. 43) – Rebekah obliges. The servant worships and blesses God for Rebekah’s graceful response (vs. 48). Rebekah’s brother and father see God’s hand in what transpires – “This is all the Lord’s doing. We have nothing to say about it. Here is Rebekah, right in front of you. Take her and go. She will be the wife of your master’s son, just as the Lord said.” (vs. 50-51). The servant knows exactly. Rebekah is “the woman the Lord has selected for [Abraham’s] son” (vs. 44).

 

And through it all, Rebekah listens, chooses, acts, obeys, plans, loves, and serves her God – like a girl.

 

As we have heard through the stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob forever, with a great calling comes great responsibility, the responsibility to live into what God reveals to us as God’s intention for God’s creation and the heirs of God’s promise. When the world tells you to be more like the women in the Bible, or to fight against the biblical image of women, remember Rebekah. She, like all of us, is made in the image of God.

June 29, 2014
Genesis 22:1-14
“When a Story is the Best You Can Do”
Rev. Dr. David A. Davis

Back in April I had the honor of participating in the funeral for Peter Hodge down at the Princeton United Methodist Church. Peter was a funeral director here in Princeton for more than forty years. As you can imagine, funeral directors and ministers work together on a regular basis and Peter was very good to me when I came to Nassau Church. There were four pastors who led his service and we were all sitting together that morning waiting for the procession to arrive so the service could start. Of course, we were talking about Peter. Someone mentioned how generous Peter was and then all four of us had a story to tell. I told of the day Peter and I were having lunch at Panera. Our daughter was just starting college. I was more than a bit in shock by the outcome of the FASFA and pending tuition reality and I was sharing my anxiety with Peter and wondering how on earth we were going to pull it all off. Peter listened, never taking his eyes off me, looking straight into my eyes, and at one said, “Leona and I would be happy to loan you $20-25,000. No interest. You pay it back when you can.” I shook my head in front of the other pastors and said, “I never took him up it but can you believe that?” Then each one went on to tell a story, not quite one upping each other, but close, all about Peter’s generosity. “Can you believe that?”

At some point, very early on, the recorders, the story tellers, the matriarchs and patriarchs called by God to shape and to tell of God’s promise and God’s people, our forebears when it comes to the Word; at some point in the anointed, Holy Spirit filled circle of those who spoke and those who wrote, someone must have brought up Abraham’s faithfulness, and the stories just started to flow. “Abraham’s faithfulness, can you believe that? The time God tested Abraham? Can you believe that?”

It is a gut-wrenching story. The binding of Isaac. The sacrifice of Isaac. The testing of Abraham. It is one of those texts of scripture that gets more gut-wrenching over time, not less. It gets harder, not easier; harder to read, harder to understand, harder to experience, harder to find meaning. Every time you read it, or hear it, or see it in art, it is as if something new punches you in the gut. (1) “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love”, (2) Father!….where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”, (3) Abraham lied and said Sarah was his sister in order to save her. Abraham begged God to spare Sodom and Gomorrah, and here,  not a word  to plead for his son. (4) “Here I am” Abraham says three times. First when God calls for the test. Then when Isaac calls for an explanation. And when the angel of the Lord tells him to stop. “Abraham! Abraham! Here I am” Simple words loaded with such weight. Here I am.

Here’s what struck me fresh in the gut this week. “On the third day”. It seems like such a minor point. On the third day. No, it’s not that the three days somehow foreshadow resurrection as in on the third day he rose again. No, three days Abraham traveled with Isaac and two helpers. Three days he had to live knowing what this test was going to be and clinging to the hope that in some way God would provide. Three days is much too long for any parent. Take that worry that comes in the 30 minutes when your child is late coming home at night with the car and multiply it by infinity. Three days.  On the third day.  And then, after Isaac’s inquiry and after the others are left behind, the bible says “the two of them walked on together.” Maybe it is as my children get older I don’t take for granted the opportunity to walk somewhere together. When my son was four someone saw us walking hand in hand and told us we walked the same way. So that verse right there, it kind of breaks your heart. Abraham and Isaac walking together toward Moriah; father and son.

The rub of the text comes when you find yourself once again caught off guard by a face value reading that allows the raw humanity to drip through, when you find yourself responding on a base level. But it is not difficult to grasp on to theological and biblical explanations in order to sort of mitigate or lessen that challenge. Jewish scholar Jon Levenson sums it up in the context of the fulfillment of God’s promise and the divine plan. “Abraham surrenders his beloved son to the God who made his miraculous conception possible. The natural father hands over the son born outside the course of nature to the divine father whose due he is….though Abraham does not give up his son through sacrifice, he gives him up nonetheless, to the God who gave Isaac life, ordered him slaughtered, and finally grants him his exalted role in the divine plan.”

            Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggeman points out the story is to be read and understood within a mysterious frame of God’s testing and God’s providing. That faithful people will find themselves most days striving to serve a God who both tempts and provides; and at the end of the day discovering once again a total dependence on what Brueggeman calls the “inscrutable graciousness” of God. Like many others in the Christian tradition, Brueggeman sees in this story a foreshadowing of the death and resurrection of God’s only Son. Abraham walked with Isaac to Moriah with a beyond understanding deep conviction that God would bring life even out of this plan of death. Abraham bore a kind of implanted pre-resurrection hope described by the preacher in Hebrews at chapter 11. Any suffering Abraham experienced, then, in offering his son only points to the suffering of God in the ultimate giving of God’s son. For Brueggeman the mystery of testing and providing in the Hebrew Scriptures becomes for the church, the mystery of death and resurrection. God being faithful to the promise of salvation.

The biblical theology is there and offers a variety of ways to read of the sacrifice of Isaac. I guess the older I get and the longer I do this work, I’m just not willing to let the “gut-wrench” go. It seems more honest and more fitting and more human to let the discomfort stand. Or as the philosopher Kierkegaard would put it, you can’t just remove the anxiety from Abraham’s story. In his book “Fear And Trembling”, Kierkegaard aptly points out the preacher’s dilemma here. Early on in the essay, he imagines how preachers who do really well on Sunday extoling this text and the righteousness of Abraham could then find themselves having to be really effective pastors on Monday talking someone down from the edge of unspeakable domestic violence. Kierkegaard points out how folks used to say that “it is too bad things do not go in world as the preacher preaches” but with texts like this, and preachers trying to preach them well, people will come to say “fortunately things do not go as the preacher preaches, for there is still some meaning in life, but there is no meaning in those sermons.”

One Episcopal vicar sums it up fairly well in wrestling with this biblical story so full of sacrifice and such drastic obedience. She writes, “I associate none of these things with the God I have come to know in my life.” It is part of the gut-wrench, isn’t it?  Amid all that can cause your heart to stir when you read and hear it again and again, part of what makes it all so raw, is a portrayal of God that is so foreign, so distant from experience, so unacceptable to the God we know in Jesus Christ. For nothing can separate us from the love of God made known to us in Jesus Christ our Lord.

A few weeks ago I stood in front of the Princeton community gathered in the University Chapel for a memorial service for Liz Erickson. Her tragic death at 46 has rocked our town. I told the congregation that afternoon that the most important theologian in my life was my mother. She knew what it was like to bury one of her children. And as I watched her, me at a very young age, as I watched her, I learned that it was okay to be angry at God, that shouting at God was a prayer, and that vacuous pious words about God and death and heaven and God’s will….they aren’t helpful or really all that faithful.  Trust me, if you said to my mother that it must have been God’s will that her 21 year old son died in a car accident, you would only say it once. My mother came to believe what other preachers have said, that when God embraces one of God’s children who comes home way too soon, God’s heart is broken too. So you can’t just let the “gut-wrench” go when it comes to the story of Abraham, Isaac, and of course, God. “The faithfulness of Abraham, can you believe that?”
Part of what draws me in to these biblical narratives that tell of the matriarchs and patriarchs of the faith is the raw humanity that never goes away; you can’t ignore it for the sake of starched doctrine. What do you think Bathsheba would say about David’s righteousness? What would Joseph say about his brothers’ faithfulness?  What would Leah say about Jacob’s faithfulness? What would Sarah say about Rebekah’s faithfulness? What would Hagar and Ishmael say about Abraham’s faithfulness? What would Esau say about Jacob’s righteousness? What would Isaac say about Jacob’s faithfulness?  Yet story after story is told about how the people of God walked on together with a deepening trust in the faithfulness of God. Amid joy and sorrow, praise and lament, mountaintops of life and valleys of death, this wonderful and gut-wrenching swirl of life, and wordless, deepening trust and believe and witness, that as we walk on, God in Jesus Christ, walks with us. Abraham, Isaac, and God, and this life giving, life sustaining, life meaning trust. Abraham, and Isaac, and God, walking on together. Can you believe that? Sometimes a story is the best you can do.

Stan Smoyer was more than a 50 year member of our church we he died a few years ago. His philanthropic legacy is known all around Princeton (Smoyer Park) and up at Dartmouth, his alma mater. In my early years here Stan and Margie were still spending winters in Florida. Stan would always stop in the office the week they were leaving and the week they returned. He would joke about how, if he didn’t return he wanted to make sure I knew who he was for his funeral. But the visits were always about more than that. I will never forget that day Stan told me about his son Bill who was killed in Vietnam. He described Billy, his life as an athlete, how much he loved him and how he missed him “You know, I have never forgiven God for that” he said with tears in his eyes. Then he paused, and said “but I’m still here (meaning my office at the church) and we’re still working on it.” He meant he and God, they were still working on it. Or in other words, they were still walking on together. He and God.

I don’t think any of Stan’s family or friends would compare him to Father Abraham but his was a gut-wrenching story too. Maybe for some of us, they will sit around and tell stories of righteousness and faithfulness. But for most, if not all of us, it will be stories that just drip with our humanity and how (to use the words of the gospel song) we learned to trust in Jesus, we learned to trust in God; a life giving, life sustaining, life meaning trust. Sometimes all you can do is tell a story, but oh, the stories I could tell, Stories of you, me, and God, how we are walking on together. Can you believe that?

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