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The Imprint of Glory

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Hebrews 1:1-4
David A. Davis
October 3, 2021
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You won’t be surprised to know that I have a lot of conversations about Jesus. This week as I sat with these first few verses of the Letter to the Hebrews, I found myself thinking about all those conversations. Not the kind of conversations that happened at cocktail parties, or on the soccer sidelines, or on airplanes when someone found out what I did for a living. And not the conversations in classrooms or on campus or at a presbytery meeting where a candidate is being examined for ordination to the ministry of Word and Sacrament. No, this week, as I have been pondering the Letter to the Hebrews, pondering “He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being”, I have been recalling the really important, deeply felt, intellectually challenging, honestly searching, lifegiving and life-forming, one on one foundational kind of conversations I have again and again about Jesus.

Conversation I have with you. About belief. About resurrection. About miracles. About divinity. About the heavenly Christ. About Trinity. About Jesus in a multi-faith world. About a relationship with Jesus lost, a relationship found. Over the years, those conversations about Jesus have led me to believe that the church has done a disservice to you. Not Nassau Church in particular but the church tradition. Because over and over again in those conversations, I speak with folks who have been led to believe that they are the only ones who have doubts, or who wrestle with questions, or who want are sure they believe one thing or another (including some of the really big things deemed so important by the theological tradition). No one in our congregation nor anyone who joins us along the way think they are all alone when it comes to daring to wonder about this Jesus.

The truth is, the followers of Jesus have being trying to understand Jesus since the day the Lord put Peter and the disciples on the spot. “Who do you say that I am?” Since the time John penned the prologue to his gospel. “And the Word became flesh and lived among us.” And since the Preacher in the Letter to the Hebrews stood up and began to speak. “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days God has spoken to us by a Son, whom God appointed heir of all things, through whom God also created the worlds. He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being.” If you don’t think you have any questions when it comes to understanding Jesus, at some point today, tonight, or this week, sit down and read the Letter to the Hebrews from beginning to end! Some complicated stuff about Jesus! In every century, in every generation, from the greatest theological minds to the faithful disciple slugging it out in a pew somewhere every Sunday, the most faithful souls, not just the ones labeled as skeptics, not just the ones history calls heretics, but a great cloud of witnesses, those who know themselves to be followers, they try to figure it out. They have been willing to ask. They have learned to lean in when it comes to wrestling with this Jesus, God’s only Son, our Lord!

My hunch is that’s because life happens. The questions keep coming, the doubts real, and the conversations about Jesus multiply because amid our ivory tower, church pew, theological library kind of search for answers…life happens. Later here in Hebrews, the preacher says that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever”. Jesus Christ is the same but we surely are not. Life surely is not. The last 19 months or so have made that abundantly clear. Life never just stays the same. Questions about Jesus keep coming because life keeps coming. Children grow. Parents die. Joy abounds. Tragedy strikes. Love sparks. Relationships fail. Walls come down. Walls go up. The world shrinks. Interfaith dialogue is not longer a world council, it’s a third grade class. Wars never cease. Disease and virus rage. The markets rise and fall. What was once the next generation now rocks their grandchildren to sleep. Through it all, you and I, we keep talking about Jesus. Not because we can’t come up with answers but because every Sunday’s affirmation of faith is different. I’m talking about words or the reference or even what we say together in unison. Every Sunday’s affirmation is a living, breathing witness to our faith. Every Sunday, from the pastoral realities of congregational life to the incredibly complex web of conversation that defines our life as a community, we stand with John and his Gospel, we stand with the preacher in the Letter to the Hebrews, we stand with the disciples, we stand with the great cloud of witnesses and point to Jesus, “the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being.”

The imprint of glory. If I had been keeping score over the years when it comes to conversations and questions about Jesus, the score would indicate that most of the questions, the doubts, the noodling is about the divinity of Jesus; the fully divine, Son of God, Word become flesh, first born of all creation kind of stuff. But this exact imprint of God’s very being, this Jesus we talk about and point to, he is the one who touched the unclean and knelt to embrace the sinner and chose to dine with the least religious one he could find. The exact imprint of God’s very being dared to speak to a woman at the well that everyone knew he was supposed to hate. He found himself duly challenged, even chastised by a mother who demanded table crumbs for the well-being of her daughter. He allowed a tax collector to treat him as a guest and a woman to anoint his feet. The exact imprint of God’s being touched the long suffering, wiped tears from a woman about to be stoned, and challenged every authority that threatened the community’s understanding of justice, compassion, and mercy.

He turned matters of the law into matters of the heart, placed the care of an individual above celebrating the sabbath, and defined servant-leadership long before the Harvard Business Review. The exact imprint of God’s being exhibited a divine non-violence that ought to have forever changed the triumphalism and conquering way of the Christian tradition. He challenged understandings of money and power and piety far more than anything to do with human sexuality or with what some call “family values”. This Jesus who is the reflection of God’s glory, He shed his own tears in grief and shed more tears at the utter despair and disgrace of the sinfulness of humankind when he wept over Jerusalem. He left little doubt as to his concern for the poor and his embrace of the outcast and his exhortation to care for those in prison. This Jesus shed tears and showed anger and sweat blood and found himself abandoned there on the cross suffering with broken bones and a broken heart. Yes, the imprint of God’s glory.

I don’t know about you. But in this season of life’s journey, it feels like a time to be less worried about the divinity of Jesus and a lot more captive by and drawn to his humanity. In just a few minutes, as I offer a prayer at the Table in our celebration of the Lord’s Supper, you will hear these words: “Jesus healed the sick though he himself would suffer, he offered life to sinners, though death would hunt him down, he opened wide his arms and surrendered his spirit.” The meal is so much a taste of his humanity. And his humanity was “the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being.” We might never completely be able to wrap our heads around the divinity of Jesus. Indeed, there will always be doubts and questions because…because life happens. But as for tears and anger and suffering and compassion and a broken heart? Is there anyone among us who doesn’t understand that?

Stumbling Blocks

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Mark 9:38-49
David A. Davis
September 26, 2021
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I laughed out loud in my office this week as I read a commentary on this passage from the Gospel of Mark. I can promise you that it is not common to find humor in a biblical commentary. That’s not to say that biblical scholars lack a sense of humor (or at least any that might be here in the room or joining in worship virtually!) One would just not expect to find something funny when it comes to the genre of biblical commentaries. But here is the sentence that made me chuckle: “…most interpreters…insist that Jesus would not have intended that his followers maim themselves.”  Most…not all.

Maybe when Jesus brought the rhetorical heat, it came with a cadence that encouraged some call and response. “If your hand causes you to stumble…cut if off…And if your foot causes you stumble” And he waits, and a few of the disciples shout “cut it off”.  “And if your eye causes you to stumble. “Tear it out” comes the response with a shout. Though you would probably need to mention a few more body parts to really get the congregation into the hellfire and brimstone sermon. The turn or burn sermon. But, of course, for any teaching or any sermon there is always the chance that the rhetorical flare or the hyperbole or the illustration or the example or the joke, for that matter is remembered more than the intent, the meaning or the content. That might be true even for Jesus here in Mark. “Most interpreters insist that Jesus would not have intended that his followers maim themselves.” The sentence sort of indicates at least some distraction in the history of interpretation.

In the narrative of Mark’s gospel, this language from Jesus comes just after the disciples were arguing with one another about who was the greatest.  You remember that Jesus said “whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Jesus also took a child in his arms and said to them “whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” Then, according to Mark, it was John who ask about someone casting out demons. John is playing the role usually reserved for Peter. The disciple spokesperson not getting what Jesus is trying to say and then asking the wrong kind of question or saying the wrong thing. “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, we tried to stop him, because he was not following us. Not following…US.

Some have suggested the reference to “us” excludes Jesus himself. John provoked the response from Jesus because the disciples were worried people were not following them. But even if the royal “us” includes Jesus, the question certainly continues the theme of the disciples’ misguided concern for themselves and their desire to claim parochial ownership when it comes to teaching of Jesus. No, it didn’t take long for the followers of Jesus to stake an exclusive claim to the gospel. It started right away and pretty much never stopped. The church and the “ its our way or the highway” approach to biblical interpretation, theology, discipleship and pretty much the whole of Christian life.

Jesus implies that the one casting out demons was doing it in his name and says “Whoever is not against us is for us.” Whoever is not against is for us. Jesus turns that old rallying cry “whoever is not for us is against us” on its ear. But my colleagues on the church staff pointed out this week when we talked about this passage in Mark out under the tent that in Matthew Jesus says “whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.” That was in a discussion with the Pharisees who were accusing Jesus of casting out demons in the name of Beelzebub. Here the turn around is in a conversation with the disciples as Jesus yet again tries to challenge the relentless urge of the disciples to always make it about themselves. The relentless urge to make the gospel of Jesus Christ all about us rather than them. “Whoever is not against us if for us.”

Jesus again turns to the example of a child, a little one, “one of these little ones who believe in me.” Hopefully those little ones in Mark had gone off to worship explorers before Jesus speaks of lopping off body parts! “If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little one who believe in me…”  Stumbling block. The take on stumbling blocks tends to go one of two directions. There is the morality approach. That stumbling blocks come with human sinfulness. With one of my sins, I am then leading someone else to sin. Or a stumbling understood more in terms of faith. That something in my behavior, my language causes someone else to falter in their faith. To backslide as some would say. Doing or saying anything that could cause someone to lose faith.

In Romans, the 14th chapter, Paul puts stumbling block in the context of judgment of others.  “Let us therefore no longer pass judgment on one another, but resolve instead never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of another.” (Romans 14:13) In I Corinthians, stumbling block comes up again in the conversation about which foods to eat or not eat. “Take care that this freedom of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the vulnerable.” (I Corinthians 8:9)  If the question is whether stumbling blocks refer to leading someone into sin or causing faith to falter the answer seems be to yes. Anything that puts a wedge in someone’s connection with God, seeds disinterest in a relationship with Jesus, causes someone to care a little less when it comes to believing, following Jesus. Anything that tears a bit at the life of discipleship. Stumbling blocks.

In Matthew, Jesus calls Peter a stumbling block when he was talking his own suffering and death and Peter would have nothing of it. “Get behind me Satan!” Jesus said. His familiar stumbling block sermon that talks of body parts comes in Matthew simply with the question Jesus asked to the disciples: “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And Jesus puts a child among them and then launches in on the sermon. But for Mark’s Jesus, the “stumbling block riff” comes in response to the disciples own self-absorbed conversation. Think about it. Jesus brings some rhetorical heat when he gets apocalyptic. “Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom; there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.” (Luke 21:10-11).  Jesus certainly gets fiery with the religious leaders. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” (Matthew 23:29) But here in Mark, all the rhetorical heat, the fiery threat of the worm that never dies, the salty language about ripping out body parts, it’s all in response to the disciples’ inability to learn that the gospel of Jesus Christ is not just about them! Jesus must have been convinced that the relentless urge to make the gospel of Jesus Christ all about us rather than them was going to drive people away from him. Yes, Jesus was convinced and apparently more than a little bit passionate about it as well.

One of the worst feelings in the world for a pastor has to be when someone leaves the church because of you because of something you did or didn’t do or something you said or didn’t say in your sermons. I’ve certainly had my share here at Nassau Church. The first was in the first weeks I was here when someone came to my office to tell me they were leaving because of all the fuss that came with the arrival of the new pastor after four years of an interim. “No one should be that important in a church” was the summary. There have been others and a bit more after the election in 2016. I was being too political in my preaching they told me.

But leaving a congregation, or course, shouldn’t be equated with a widening rift in a relationship with God. That is a heavy and harder thought for any of us to ponder. That any of us would somehow do harm when it comes to someone else’s walk with God. But an even heavier thought, an even harder thought, is to then try to wrap head and heart around the collective nature to it, the collective reality to it. After all, Jesus wasn’t responding just to John, he was responding to the disciples, to all of his followers, and to the church of Jesus Christ ever since.  It’s a heavier thought, a harder thought because we know it’s true. The church as a stumbling block. One doesn’t need to take a church history class down the street or look around today very long or far to find examples of the church claiming parochial ownership of the teaching of Jesus, or the church staking an exclusive claim on the gospel, or the church and an “our way or the highway” message, or the church and the relentless urge to make the gospel all about us rather than them. And before anyone thinks I am just pointing fingers elsewhere, we could all read the history of the First Presbyterian Church in Princeton together. It’s our history.

Back in the summer, a journalist who was writing about the Roman Catholic Church’s sacramental theology and decisions about who should receive communion or not wrote that the church had a responsibility to protect the sacrament. I can’t speak to sacramental theology in the Roman Catholic Church but I do know that the sacraments, the grace of God, and the gospel are not ours to protect as if they somehow belong to us. No one who hears that sermon from Jesus wants to be a stumbling block. And the place to start, the first thing to do, the part to work on right away, is worry less about the gospel and us and think more about the gospel and them. All the fiery rhetoric in the world can never distract from this: “whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”  Yes, Jesus said that too.

Every Act of Love

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2019-2021 Artist-in-Residence, Trudy Borenstein-Sugiura, has been faithfully working through these trying times on a new artwork for our church entitled “Every Act of Love.”  Utilizing the art of collage and incorporating donated documents and individually created pieces, Trudy has created a breathtaking banner where the life of our congregation frames a dove, cross, and a quote of Mother Theresa: “Every act of love is a work of peace.”   We will welcome Trudy and her art in worship in an act of dedication on Sunday, October 3. 

 

Higher Ground TBS Residency.mp4 from Cynthia Groya on Vimeo.

 

The Wisdom from Above

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James 3:13-18
David A. Davis
September 19, 2021
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The Epistle of James is known for “works”. When the church thinks of James, the church thinks of “works”. For those who celebrate the Letter of James and those, like Martin Luther, who critique it, it’s about “the works”. When it comes to James, you can’t get away from the works.  “Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above…be doers of the word, not merely hearers…those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act, they will be blessed in their doing…do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? … you do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself…what good is it if you say you have faith but do not have works…Mercy triumphs over judgment. Mercy triumphs over judgment…If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food and one of you says to them, ‘go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that…faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead…Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith…Just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead…faith without works is dead…faith without works is dead…faith without works is dead’.  That’s all James on “works”. If there is a takeaway from James, it’s “the works”.

So much on works that its way to easy to miss the wisdom. Don’t forget about the Letter of James and wisdom. The wisdom from above. The works come from the wisdom. Wisdom from above leads to the works. Any critique of James centers on the contrast with one of the essential tenants of the Reformed faith: one is saved not by works but by grace through faith. You can’t earn your salvation. It is gift of God. Therefore, the caution to James is what the theological tradition labels “works righteousness”. There is righteousness alright in James. But it is not “works righteousness”. It is “works of righteousness”. Listen again to the text from James:

“Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom. But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth. Such wisdom does not come down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish. For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.”

The wisdom from above. For James, the wisdom from above leads to a harvest of righteousness. There is no shortage of the image or use of the word “harvest” throughout scripture. Think Jesus in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.” Think Jesus and his parable of weeds and the wheat or the parable if the vineyard or couple more parables. Think the Book of Ruth and Ruth gleaning the edge of the field during the harvest. The prophet Jeremiah refers to the people of Israel as God’s first harvest. “Harvest” runs all through the pages of scripture. But James has a different take on the harvest. The harvest of righteousness. In James the Greek word translated as harvest is different from the word found in the gospels. The word used in James is the word for fruit. Here in James the harvest of righteousness is the fruit of righteousness. The only other time the phrase “harvest of righteousness” appears in the New Testament is in Philippians. “This is my prayer” Paul writes, “that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that in day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the praise and glory of God.” (1:10-11). Like James, in Greek it is the fruit of righteousness. Fruit like in Galatians 5:22, “the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” Fruit like in Ephesians 5:8-9 “For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light—for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true.” Fruit like in John 15 when Jesus said “I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last”.

“The wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.” For James, the wisdom from above leads to the fruit of righteousness. And righteousness, well, all through scripture righteousness is righteousness. A reference to what God requires. Righteousness has to do with the godly work of righting what has been wrong. That the kingdom here on earth might nearly be as it is in heaven. Righteousness. Not just our righteousness, thank God, but the righteousness of Jesus Christ working in and through and among us. Righteousness in the bible; it’s a synonym for justice. “The fruit of justice is sown in peace by those who make peace.” And for James, the harvest comes one fruit at time. It comes with a wisdom that is pure, peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, and without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.

The Jewish Center of Princeton is sponsoring The Sukkah Village Project in conjunction with the celebration of the Jewish holiday of sukkot. There will be sukkahs like the one being built out-front all-over town for the next week or so. It was an idea that Rabbi Feldman had before he tragically died the Jewish Center is carry out the idea in his memory. Each sukkah will be auctioned off with money going to various non-profit partners. Of the many things sukkot means in the Jewish faith, one of them I remember from Rabbi Feldman is that it is a time for Jewish people to remember that they were once refugees with no homes. Thus, the temporary shelter of a sukkah built outside of the home. The organizers asked several clergy in town to write short devotionals that can be accessed by smart phones at each sukkah in the village by scanning a code. I wrote my brief devotional about the history of refugee resettlement at Nassau Church that goes back now I think a bit more than fifty years and how appropriate it is for the congregation to be preparing to receive another family during the celebration of Sukkot.  Fifteen families from 11 different countries. Soon, it seems, sixteen families from 12 different countries. It averages out to one family every five years.  One family.

I have told you before and I won’t ever forget the story from years ago now when two of our members being invited to another Presbyterian church to talk about Nassau’s immigrant and refugee work over the years. one of the members of that congregation raised a hand and expressed the concern of how you could justify the time, effort, and money for just one person one family at a time. One of the guests from Nassau responded that morning by describing the incredible impact on their own life and what a particular relationship with and immigrant freed from detention had meant to him. “I wouldn’t have it any other way!”  was the general theme of the answer.

Is there any other way to do it?  To live the gospel, to harvest righteousness, is there any other way, other than one person, one piece, one piece of fruit at a time? The fruit of righteousness. There’s nothing low hanging about it. Because that would mean it was easy. The harvest of righteousness comes one piece of fruit at a time. And these days and in our world that can be so paralyzing when it comes to know where to start or what to do or how to make a difference, James offers something of an unrelenting reminder, a bit of jab of the elbow, that when it comes to the harvest of righteousness?  Every bit counts, every effort counts, every fruit counts. “The wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. And the harvest, the fruit, of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.”  In the wonder of God’s love and in the grace of Jesus Christ, when it comes to James on wisdom, the wisdom from above. It’s more than a conditional clause; an “if then” statement. If you live by the wisdom from above, then you will bear the fruit of righteousness. It’s so much more than a conditional clause. It’s a promise. When you soak in, take in, immerse yourself in the wisdom from above, God shall take your fruit and multiply it in the kingdom and there will be this palpable, living, breathing, harvest of righteous.

The Inclining Ear of God

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Psalm 116
David A. Davis
September 12, 2021
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“I love the Lord, who had heard my voice, and listened to my supplication, for the Lord has given ear to me whenever I called”.  The Lord has given ear to me. The Lord, the Lord who created the heavens and the earth. The One who called Abraham and promised to make of him a great nation. The Lord who spoke to Moses from a burning bush. The God who heard the people’s cry amid the bondage of Pharaoh. The Lord God Almighty has given ear to me. God hears…me?

“I’ll call out to God as long as I live because God listens closely to me.” The God who created me. The God who knows the number of hairs on my head. The God who in and through Jesus Christ promises never to leave or forsake me. The God who in the power of the Holy Spirit promises to intercede for me with sighs deeper than words. God listens closely to me. Listens closely. Like someone completely hanging on every word of the latest Ted Talk. Like a conductor who can hear when the second trombone in the orchestra is half a beat late on an entrance. Like the couple who have listened so closely to each other for so long the sentences don’t even have to be finished anymore. Like the new couple so in love they can hear each other like birds whispering at a crowded family dinner table. God listens closely…to me?

“Because God turned an ear to me, I will call on God as long as I live.” God turns an ear.  Like Jesus who would stop along the way when someone in need of healing would call his name. Or like when Jesus stopped to heal the woman with the hemorrhage because she touched his cloak. God turns an ear. Like someone turning an ear to hear better. Like someone turning an ear to hear a second time. Like someone turning an ear because their attention has been grabbed. God turns an ear….to me?

“I love the Lord who heard my cry.”  Not just songs of praises. Not just shouts of joy. Not just prayers of adoration. But a cry. Not just the intercessions for others, the list of names that can go on forever. Not just the constant and always needed prayer for peace, justice, and righteousness to fill the earth. But a cry. Like a parent who can pretty much hear the cry of an infant before any noise comes. Like a best friend who knows that hearing a cry is more important than having any words to say. A cry that is a shout, a teeth rattling wail. Or a cry that is silent with the tears speaking volumes. A cry that comes when words never will. A sudden cry. A one-time cry. A cry that lasts and lasts and lasts. “I love the Lord who heard my cry.” The Lord hears my tears. The Lord hears…my cry?

“I love the Lord because the Lord has heard my voice and my supplications. Because the Lord inclined an ear, therefore I will call on the Lord as long as I live.”  The Lord inclined an ear. Yes, like a bending over to listen to a small child who has the most important thing to say. Yes, like sitting down and drawing close to the one you love because the conversation is so important. And yes, like looking up and inclining an ear almost out of deference and out of respect because the one about to speak is important, really important, very important, special, precious, no matter what is about to be said. The Lord inclined an ear. The Lord inclines an ear…to me?

The inclining ear of God. Rather than an image that adds to an unhelpful  anthropomorphic stereotyping of God. It is an image that may transform the nature of hearing or listening to something far beyond an ability to perceive sound. An understanding of hearing that is not bound to a particular human sense; a sense not experienced by all. The inclining ear of God. The image that inspires the psalmist brings a promise to us.  The song of the psalmist bears witness to the listening presence of God in our lives. The prayer of the psalmist proclaims the faithfulness of our God who receives our cry in a manner that has nothing with sound. It is a promise of God to claim, to bear witness, and to cling to for God’s people.  But you and I know that holding on to that promise is not easy when it comes to life of faith in all of its fullness. The hills, the valleys, the turns, the bumps, and the bruises that come with the life of faith. Not an easy promise to hold on to and pretty much never was for the people of God; the inclining ear of God.

That God hears you. God listens closely to you. The Lord turns an ear to you. The Lord hears your cry. God inclines an ear to you. It is more than a primer on prayer. It is also far from an affirmation that answers all the theological questions that quickly follow regarding unanswered prayer. But the promise tells of the very nature of God. The promise not just of God’s presence but of God’s attentive presence. That God hears you is as foundational to our faith as God loves you. It is who God is. That by the grace and mercy of God and unbound from sound, God listens and hears even you, even me.

On September 16, 2001, there were so many people in this sanctuary that one might have thought it was Easter morning. But that morning a few days after September 11th could not have been anything farther from Easter. I preached on another psalm that morning. Psalm 137. “By the rivers of Babylon- there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion….How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?”  In that sermon I suggested that the landscape of our lives changed amid the violence and destruction and magnitude of suffering and death. It suddenly felt like we were living in a foreign land. I asked if there was still a Lord’s song to be sung?

Here’s the end of that sermon from twenty years ago: “Indeed the nation will sing; “God Bless America” and “My Country Tis of Thee” and “America the Beautiful.” The songs of pride and determination that tell important history and unite and motivate.

And for the people of God there is a prior song. Like those who were the first to sing Psalm 137, it starts somewhere in the deepest part of our memory. Something of a primordial cry. It starts with comfort, and it speaks of strength, and the notes tell of the presence of God in the rubble that is the shadow of death. The melody hauntingly tells of the tears of God. The song proclaims an unfathomable love, and Savior’s promise, “I will be you always.” The song bears witness to our belief that nothing shall separate us from that love of God. The song affirms that the most powerful forces of evil shall never, ever overcome the mercy of God. The Lord’s song affirms that the voice of death and despair shall one day be silenced for all eternity, because “he was crucified, dead, and buried. He descended into hell, and on the third day he rose again from the dead.”

By the rivers of Babylon we will surely sing of that break of dawn that comes after the dark night of the soul, of how God will again turn our mourning into singing, and how weeping will someday turn to dance, or how the exile is followed by the welcoming home, a return of glory, a return to glory. As Mary heard the voice of the Risen Savior call her by name on the Resurrection Day, we too look to that victorious God of life, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God.” We are surrounded by that great cloud of witnesses, the church in every time and place, and we dare to affirm that we afflicted in every way, but not crushed, perplexed but not driven to despair, persecuted , but not forsaken, struck down, but not destroyed….” We sit and weep now, but we shall again stand and sing, for the light has come into the world, and the darkness shall never overcome it.”

I know the prior song of the people of God is timeless but I am not sure I ever imagined those last paragraphs would be again as relevant to our pandemic lives in a divided nation today as they were then. It is so striking to proclaim the promise of a Lord’s song still to sing when we have not and really still can’t sing (at least like we sang in this overflowing sanctuary on September 16th, 2001. But then again, there is a prior promise that comes with the prior song of the people of God. That prior song of God just sort of presumes that God is listening. But it’s not a promise to just skip over; the promise of the inclining ear of God. And when you once again find yourself living in what seems like a foreign land now for all sorts of different reasons than twenty years ago, it’s not a promise to skip over, it’s a promise to cling to.

The attentive presence of God to and for you.

Food For The Journey

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I Kings 19:4–8
Len Scales
September 5, 2021
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For some of us this story might sound surprisingly familiar, since Rev. Yedea Walker preached the same text only a few weeks ago. We are hearing it again so soon because UKirk Collegiate Ministries Association, the network of over 200 Presbyterian campus ministries, of which Princeton Presbyterians is a part, crafted liturgy around this passage to celebrate college students and young adults. I’m grateful for Jasmine & British, campus ministry colleagues from HBCU’s who wrote this morning’s liturgy and selected this morning’s Scripture readings for our connectional church to consider together. Yedea focused on the power of rest for Elijah, and this morning I want us to turn to God’s provision for Elijah.

When we arrive at 1 Kings 19, verse 4, Elijah is fleeing for his life and from his life. He is in danger and he is distressed & depressed. We find him in the wilderness with all expectations that he is leaving his prophetic role behind. But even though Elijah has abandoned God’s call on his life in this moment, God has not abandoned him.[1]

God sends an unexpected messenger to Elijah with a cake baked on a hot stone and water. The angel wakes Elijah and encourages him to “Get up and eat.” Elijah does, and then goes back to sleep. The angel wakes Elijah for a second time saying, “Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.”

It’s clear that the journey has already felt too much for Elijah leading up to this point, but God has not abandoned him. God has sent sustenance needed and Elijah goes in “the strength of that food.”

Burnout, stress, grief—all these things are potent and rampant right now. The pandemic is evolving, and the “return to normal” hoped for at the beginning of the summer remains elusive in so many ways. Massive weather events have impacted neighbors across the United States, in Haiti, and just this week in our own state and congregation. The humanitarian need in Afghanistan and of those experiencing forced migration is staggering.

It is understandable to want to follow Elijah in fleeing from oppressive reality, but it makes God’s steadfast presence even more important. No matter what, God is not abandoning us. God does not abandon you.

In today’s reading, God provides sustenance for the journey for Elijah, elsewhere in Scripture, we see God provide unexpected meals to entire communities. Manna rains down in the wilderness. Jesus multiplies the gift of a little boy to feed 5,000. Jesus prepares breakfast for his disciples on the beach after his resurrection.

Today, God feeds us in this meal we will share at communion.

This meal has taken unexpected shapes since March 2020, and each has been nourishing. This is true for communion at Breaking Bread Worship as well, the worship service of Princeton Presbyterians, the campus ministry for undergraduate and graduate students.

Pre-pandemic, we’d gather in Niles Chapel on Sunday evenings during the academic year for songs, prayer, sermon, and communion. The bread was baked Sunday afternoon, so often you could still feel its warmth and the smell lingered in the chapel. After worship, students often hung out around the communion table, eating more bread and checking in with one another before the week ahead.

During the pandemic, Breaking Bread Worship moved to zoom, we adapted to celebrating communion only monthly as part of the conclusion of each sermon series. There was still meaning in seeing friends from London to California take elements from their home, often crackers and water, and partake together.

There was another kind of communion that we took up that sustained the community as well. The first half of our time together was worship, and the second half we divided into breakout rooms to share with one another and hold one another in prayer. It was amazing to see the community show up with even more consistency in this new format than in previous years. God had not abandoned us, and was providing a way forward for the community.

So we come to a new season, grateful students have returned to campus and the opportunity for in-person classes. We will navigate yet new protocols for how we gather for worship and communion tonight and in the coming weeks. We do so knowing that God is giving us the fuel we need for the next leg of this journey.

This morning we all come to this table together, those in person at 61 Nassau Street and those joining online.

“Get up and eat” the messenger of the Lord says. We will need sustenance for what is next. We partake of this meal today as a sign that God has not and will not abandon us. God is fueling us for the ways we will continue to adapt as individuals and a community.

Maybe this meal is the first course God is giving you before you need to lay your head down to rest some more. Maybe it is the second course launching you on the next stretch of the journey. Either way, God does not abandon you. Quite the opposite, God shows up here and now, reminding us in material ways, with elements we can taste and see, of God’s transformative power in our lives and that of our community.

The provision of God continues to surprise us through the generosity of God’s messengers, including in our very own congregation. Just in the last few weeks that has looked like:

  • families and individuals packing lunches and baking cookies to contribute to Nassau’s own annual Loaves & Fishes project.
  • record breaking generosity to meet the increased cost of supplying 250 backpacks full of supplies for school-age neighbors in Trenton and an additional gift for art supplies at Hedgepeth-Williams Middle School in partnership with Westminster Presbyterian Church.
  • and just this week more provisions offered to continue the work God calls Nassau Presbyterian Church to as we respond to the need of Afghan refugees.

My prayer is that this meal, this hour of worship, this day, can be a part of God’s provision for you, replenishing you for what is ahead, whether it is the second half of the nap you need or traveling the next stage in this wilderness we continue to face together. Amen.

[1] Hens-Piazza, Gina 1-2 Kings (Abingdon, 2006) p.184

 

The Common Purpose

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I Corinthians 3:5-9
David A. Davis
August 29, 2021
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Common purpose. “The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose.” Common purpose. A closer translation of the Greek would be a bit simpler. The one who plants and the one who waters are one. One plants. One waters. But only God gives the growth, the Apostle writes. So the common purpose isn’t from the planter or the waterer. The common purpose is God’s purpose. You will remember that Paul addresses the strife in the Corinthian church right up front in chapter 1 of First Corinthians. After the greeting, the salutation and the thanksgiving, Paul begins the body of the letter with this appeal:” I appeal to you by the name of Jesus Christ, that all of you, be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose.”  The same mind in the language of Paul, is the “mind of Christ”. The same purpose in the language of Paul, is the very purpose, the common purpose of God. Furthering God’s field. Expanding God’s building. Or to use another of the Apostle’s terms, showing, living, witnessing, proclaiming, “a more excellent way.”

In just these early chapters of Paul’s letter, one to three, the references to the jealousy, the quarreling, the division, basically the bad behavior of the Corinthian Christians, Paul’s references come right before and right after him writing about the cross of Christ. “For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it the power of God…Christ crucified.” To stop and think about it, to even mention the crucified Christ and the people’s jealousy and quarreling in the same paragraphs, the same argument, the same letter, it ought to be a jarring juxtaposition. Paul refers to those in the Corinthian church as “infants in Christ”. A less biblical way to say it, perhaps, is that Paul is telling them their acting like children. It is as if he is pointing to the cross of Jesus, “Jesus Christ and him crucified” and pondering their childish behavior and saying, “really?” And from that exasperating juxtaposition of the self-emptying of the Son of God, the Savior of the world on the cross and humanity’s ever-present penchant for jealousy, quarreling, and selfishness, the arc of the Apostle Paul’s argument in the First Letter to the Corinthians…you know where that arc is heading. “Love is patient, love is kind, love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.”  It is the very arc of the common purpose of God. “The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose.”

I want to let you in on a little secret, share some inside information. Do you want to know what pastors are talking about these days amongst themselves? What my colleagues are all asking one another when you are not around to listen? “Will they come back?” Not “if we build it, they will come” but “if the way be clear, will they come back?”  Whenever that is, when it is safe and healthy to gather again, will the sanctuaries fill. It may sound like an overly dramatic question. But the lack of physically being together to tend to the community of faith, weeks, months, years…..it can make all of Paul’s teaching on life in the community of faith, on the practicalities of life together, on caring for one another and loving one, it can make it sound not aspirational but nostalgic.

On the other hand, our experience of scripture as the Living Word by the power of the Holy Spirit and the grace of God, is the Word God speaks when we read in context, when we read in real time, when we read here and now. And to read Paul this week, Paul on the crucified Christ in the face of division, quarreling, and selfishness that is screaming pretty much everywhere, it’s clear that the common purpose, the common purpose of God, is so much bigger than we imagine. So much bigger than this community of faith or that community of faith, this church or that church, the Body of Christ here or the Body of Christ there.

In his book, The Continuing Conversion of the Church, Darrell Guder concludes with a compelling insight. Jesus called twelve disciples to be with him and to learn from him what it meant to be his witnesses, his messengers. “But” Dr Guder writes, “they were not to stay with him, not to reduce their vocation as his ‘called out people’ to their internal life and all that that they would do as a gathered community.” In other words, Christ’s call was about more than what disciples do when they are together, when they can be physically present together. When Professor Guder was working with us in adult education to understand and claim our identity and celebrate Nassau Church as a “missional congregation”, I asked him for a different word. It just seemed the term he and others spent much of their careers studying and writing about had become a bit overused and maybe had begun to lack some clarity. He thought about it and said, “how about a sending congregation”.  A sending congregation. A congregation sending disciples of Jesus Christ out into the world to further the common purpose of God. Sending the followers of Jesus into the world to further God’s field. Sending them to expand God’s building. Instead of wringing hands about whether you will come back, pastors like me ought to be sending you as followers of Jesus and children of God, sending you to show, to live, to witness, to proclaim “a more excellent way” in God’s world. To show, to live for, to witness to Jesus Christ and him crucified in a world so defined by division, quarrelling, and selfishness.

Our family lost a dear friend two weeks ago. Charlie was the clerk of Session in the congregation I served for 14 years. He was still the clerk of Session when he died 21 years later. He was Pop Pop Charlie to our children. One of our kids said they never heard him say a bad word about anybody. The phone call at the end of April to tell Charlie and his wife Isabel about the birth of our granddaughter was absolutely the best.

The first time I met Charlie he asked me what on earth does a guy from Harvard and Princeton want to us in Blackwood, NJ. When I was leaving 14 years later, he said to me with a smile, “See, I told you wouldn’t stay”.  Charlie took his Session minutes very seriously. He was not happy when the presbytery reviewer of his minutes gave him a demerit because it was recorded in the minutes that the Session voted to give me a Christmas bonus. It was a change in terms of call and should be voted on by the congregation, the reviewer noted. The next Christmas Eve, after the late candlelight service, now after midnight, Charlie came up to me, said “Merry Christmas” and handed me a brown paper bag of money he had collected from the congregation.

In my profession it won’t surprise you that I have read a lot of obituaries. For all kinds of reasons, I had trouble getting through Charlie’s obituary. It took me a few tries. There was a paragraph that listed everything he did in that congregation: clerk of Session, choir, teaching church school, leading youth group and more. There was also a paragraph about his life in the community. Some of it I knew about. Some I didn’t. What struck me was that the paragraph on what he did in the community was twice as long as the one about his life in the church.

And I knew Charlie well enough to know that the shorter paragraph was what influenced and inspired the longer paragraph. He wasn’t perfect and he rarely had a thought that he would keep to himself, but with his life, in his slice of the world, he served God’s common purpose. That obituary won’t ever make it to the New York Times, but in the 80 or so years of Charlie’s life, he did his part when it came to planting and water, in tilling God’s field, shaping God’s building, not just in his community of faith but in the world God created.

These days when the world’s heaviness is unrelenting, when fires rage and storms come one after another, when yet another school year and another church year starts amid the ongoing pandemic, when so much behavior on display in the public square is so appalling that division, quarreling, and jealousy don’t really describe it, it’s hard not to feel weary or helpless. But here’s what I am going to do. I am going to think about Charlie and all the Charlies I have been blessed to know and love and be inspired in my life, in my ministry. Because, you know, it is “a great cloud of witnesses.” A great cloud of witnesses, you and me. And God is calling us, just like God always has and God always will, God is calling us to serve God’s common purpose, to do just a bit of planting, to just lay a brick or two in the slice of the world God entrusts to you.

Because in every generation, in every season, in every storm, in every moment of strife, in every congregation, in every neighborhood, the one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose. It’s God’s common purpose. If, like me, there are moments of weariness or helplessness these days, try this prayer. It’s a prayer by St. Francis of Assisi. A prayer for you and me and God’s common purpose in our lives

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not seek so much
to be consoled as to console,

to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive,

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.

 

Teachable

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Galatians 3: 23-29[i]
Lauren J. McFeaters
August 8, 2021
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As we found out last week, in Paul’s opening words of this Letter, he’s quite enraged, infuriated. When we meet the Galatians today, they have been further trounced upon by Paul.

You will remember Paul is the founding pastor of the Galatian churches and word has reached him that opponents are guiding his churches away from an inclusive gospel; casting doubt upon Paul’s apostolic authority. Paul is accused of preaching an immature, underdeveloped type of faith.

And so Paul rants. He raves. His voice reverberates from hundreds of miles away, right up through the ink on the page: “O you reckless, idiotic Galatians: you do not have to become Jews to be Christian; males need not be circumcised; no one need keep kosher, nor follow the Laws of Moses, to belong to the family of Christ Jesus. Not food, nor ritual, or law is needed to be free, in the One who has saved us – anything else is a perversion of the Good News of Christ. You are traitors to a life in Christ. O foolish idiotic Galatians!

It finally came to me this week: as Paul lashes out to this church he loves, he does it, not out of anger or fury; he lashes out because of fear. Fear, dread, anxiety, because he’s so far away, he can’t get to his people, his congregations, to shake them and persuade them, and love them and remind them that, Christ crucified and raised, is for all humanity. It’s a fear born because he knows they’re still toddlers; not yet grown up in Christ.

You can smell his fear lifting off the page. It’s a living, breathing, gasping thing, because Paul is fighting for the very soul of the church:  to preach Christ crucified, not as a reward to be earned through the Law, but a gift given to each and every person – in joy.

When we listen today we begin to hear words written in a new key. Listen again:

My Beloved Ones – please do not be so foolish!

Who has bewitched you?

Until you are mature enough, to respond freely in faith, to the living God, you have been carefully surrounded and protected by the Law of Moses.

And that law has been like your babysitter, your tutor, the disciplinarian, who escorts you to school and protects you from danger.

But now, Christians, you have arrived at your destination, and no longer need a child sitter, for in your Lord, you have found your place in the world. [ii]

Christian maturity. If there’s anything that characterizes Christian maturity, it is the willingness to become a beginner again, for our Lord. [iii]

More than anything else, the issue we wrestle with is maturing in faith.

  • Why can’t I get beyond this nagging feeling that I’m stuck, and my faith hasn’t grown for years?
  • How do I even know when I’m living in faith?
  • The last time I seriously considered my faith was in Confirmation Class.
  • What’s the mature response of faith to the everyday and serious situations in my life?

A friend of mine recently had a really devastating work experience. She’s a teacher, and as the school year was ending, she applied for an internal job that would mean a promotion. She has 15 years of teaching experience in her district and was sure the promotion would be offered to her. The devastation came when the job was offered to a teacher with 2 years’ experience; 2 years to her 15.

“Why,” she asked her principle? “Please explain to me how this happened? It makes no sense.” Her principle laid it out before her: I’m so sorry, but the reality is, you really haven’t had 15 years of teaching experience – you’ve had one year’s experience – 15 times.

After days of upset and tears, she came to an understanding that her principle was correct. After the shock, she got really honest, and using this huge setback as a wake-up call, she admits,

“I’ve been too set in my ways, too eager to keep things the way they are. I’ve been too rigid and talked more than listened; was fearful more than free. I haven’t asked God to guide me for years; I’ve forgotten how to learn and grow.”

The ability to be teachable; the willingness to be teachable: these are the watchwords for growing in faith. For me, there are four phrases that mark the mature Christian. Things I have to learn to say over and over again:

“I need your help.” “I’m so sorry.”

“I don’t know.” “I was wrong.” [iv]

I’ll say them again. And if you read Louise Penny, you will recognize these:

“I need your help.” “I’m so sorry.”

“I don’t know.” “I was wrong.”

For Paul and his beloved Galatians it’s all about maturity in Christ. Maturity at any age: as children, youth, adults – all belong, all can grow, all can progress.

This is one of the things I love most about Paul:

  • his unrelenting quest for us to grow-up;
  • his dogged way of kicking us in the pants;
  • his overwhelming, in-your-face evangelism.

Paul tracks us down, haunts us until we listen, and rummages around in our hearts until we get it right. He’s a terrier for the gospel. Not an elegant Airedale, but a scruffy, muddy, growling Jack Russell.  He’s a relentless evangelist, a doggedly unyielding  presence that God puts in our lives:

  • This Paul that puts Christ crucified front and center;
  • Puts font and table right out there for all to see;
  • Gifts from God for the people of God.
  • Gifts of grace meant for each and every person.
  • That God is the central most important part of life.
  • Nothing will stop Paul from making us teachable.

And why? Because when we learn to grow-up in Jesus, we learn of a love, that does for us, what we cannot do for ourselves – and that love produces gratitude and compassion – the heart of authentic Christian maturity.

Hear the Good News:

Like a parent holding a child at the font, whispering all the dreams and possibilities for that child’s future, Paul picks us up, dusts us off, and sets us on the path to growth.

Like a family member and friend cheering a child on, Paul wakes us up, splashes us through the waters of baptism, as the Spirit of God makes us one in Christ.

Because we are heirs according to the promise.

And that is Good News.

What better news could there be? [v]

 

ENDNOTES

[i]  Galatians 3: 23-29: Now before faith came; we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham and Sarah’s offspring, heirs according to the promise. [NRSV]

[ii]  Adapted from Eugene Petersen’s The Message. Colorado Springs, CO:  NavPress, 1993, 394.

[iii]  John Richard Wimber. Christian Quotations. Compiled by Martin H. Manser. Louisville, KY:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2001, 244.

[iv]  Phrases inspired by Louise Penny.

[v]  Billy D. Strayhorn. “Heirs According to the Promise,” found in A Hope That Does Not Disappoint:  Second Lesson Sermons for Sundays after Pentecost (First Third) Cycle C. Lima, Ohio:  CSS Publishing Co., 2000.

 

Obedience

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Galatians 1:1-12[i]
Lauren J. McFeaters
August 1, 2021
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I don’t know how many of you were huddled in your basements, closets and hallways Thursday evening, as Tornadoes roared in to our surrounding counties, but the ferocity of Thursdays weather had nothing on Paul’s explosive temperament shown in this text. Did you hear the absolute contempt for anyone who tries to dilute the Gospel?

The scripture I read for you was a calm and steady reading. I read it for meaning. I used evocative pauses and expressive pacing, in the way I have been taught, and in the way I uphold. But trust me when I say, there was nothing about my reading of this text that comes close to Paul’s fury with the Galatians.

It really goes like this:

Galatians, you sniveling idiots.

You are traitors to a life in Christ.

You are passive, weak, and stoop to believing those who turn up and say only Jews can follow our Lord.

You pervert the Gospel! You abandon our Lord.

So someone has to be in authority here –

it’s not them, it’s certainly not you,

it is only Jesus the Messiah, and God the Father,

who raised him from the dead. [ii]

Can’t you see Paul writing this letter in some far off region; perhaps from prison, feverishly pacing with a fist in the air?

  • There’s no “Peace be with you,” or
  • “Galatians, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved.”
  • He doesn’t give thanks.
  • He’s just incensed because news has reached him that the Galatians have succumbed to an “exclusive gospel” – meant only for those who follow Moses. [iii] [iv]

Dan Clendenin puts it like this, Paul uses the harshest language to repudiate those who had narrowed the gospel down to a Jewish sect. Paul’s gospel was about expanding the message to include Gentiles, any person who is not Jewish, and all the world.

This is why Paul said that in serving God he didn’t seek human approval. If you want human approval, you privilege your own In group over every Other group. You limit God’s love to your own clan and claim to be the sole inheritor of the divine promise.

The “true gospel” that Paul defends is one that expands the love of God in Christ to all people (without exception). In Galatians, Paul says the Gospel of our Lord bursts our normal boundaries of exclusion, like race, religion, gender, and class — “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ.” [v]

It takes a lot of practice to appreciate Paul. Most of my life I’ve misunderstood him. I’ve been afraid of him. The man is a tidal wave of rage. But when you realize that the oldest writings of the New Testament come from Paul, and half of the New Testament is attributed to Paul and his followers, you take a new look at why his fury turns out to be such a gift.

And I love him for that because sometimes we need to be shocked and shaken out of our:

  • Greeting-Card faith;
  • Our soft-indulgent faith;
  • Our lethargic, docile faith;
  • and instead we need to be plunked by tornado, like Dorothy in middle of Munchkin Land, and into a vortex of faith where we’ve drop-kicked at the cross: where Christ crucified, is not a soft pillow to sleep on, but a fountain of deliverance and rebirth.

Many years ago, before I was a pastor, I was a pastoral counselor, and I served at a counseling center here in Princeton called the Northeast Career Center that was founded by our General Assembly in 1965 as a place church folks, clergy, and seminarians, to go and do the work of vocational discernment. Through a series of evaluations, assessments, and conversations, we guided people to evaluate their work and life and to ask the central questions:  Who is God calling you to be?  Where is God calling you to serve? What do you need to get there?

It’s really meaningful work to take stock of your life and to prayerfully discern what’s coming next. It takes willingness, honesty, and risk to lay our lives before God, and to change the things that keep us from maturing in Christ.

What I found, and I include myself, is the number one thing that that holds people back from full maturity in Christ is having issues with authority. And what I mean is:

  • Just like the Galatians, we struggle to be obedient to Christ.
  • Were prone to take an easier and softer way.
  • We fight against those in authority: Authority over us and on behalf of us.
  • We battle, sometimes passively, sometimes aggressively against the ties that bind.

But in the end, I’ve come to learn we’re not so much people who have issues with authority.

We are people who have issues with obedience.

And to whom are we to be obedient?

To Christ.

For Christ died for us. Christ rose for us.

Christ reigns in power for us.

It is Christ who prays for us.

Anyone who is in Christ – is a new creation.

The old life is gone, and a new life has begun.

When we rely on our own way, the effects on our lives are devastating.

  • our willfulness destroys trust.
  • our disobedience leads to terrible decision-making.
  • our self-indulgence annihilates ours souls, breaks our families, and puts an end to relationships.

But day by day when we seek to live the Gospel life – Inch by inch, when we offer ourselves in obedience to our Lord  – we heal, we find a new freedom, we are restored, enlivened. It’s a joy like we’ve never known, a grounding, a daily action that puts us in God’s hands. Where else would we want to be?

We offer our lives to our Lord –

the same One who gave up his authority for us,

who was obedient to the point of death,

even death on the cross.

The same One who gave us his body and blood.

 

Take. Eat. Take. Drink.

Do this in remembrance of Me.

 

ENDNOTES

[i]  Galatians 1:1-12:  Paul an apostle sent neither by human commission nor from human authorities, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead and all the members of God’s family who are with me, To the churches of Galatia: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to set us free from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen. I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let that one be accursed! As we have said before, so now I repeat, if anyone proclaims to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let that one be accursed! Am I now seeking human approval, or God’s approval? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still pleasing people, I would not be a servant of Christ. For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. [NRSV]

[ii] Adapted from Eugene Peterson’s The Message. Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 1993.

 

[iii] Margaret Whyte. “Sermon:  Galatians 1.” www.ChurchofScotland.org, June 2013.

 

[iv] Jaime Clark-Soles. “Commentary on Galatians 1.” Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN, workingpreacher.org, June 2010.

 

[v]  Dan Clendenin. “No Other Gospel.” www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/977-no-other-gospel, May 22, 2016.

 

 

Left Off The Dance Floor

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II Samuel 6:12-23
David A. Davis
July 25, 2021
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Some might remember that the conversation Jesus has with the Samaritan woman in the gospel of John is the longest conversation Jesus has with anyone in the four gospels. Longest in terms of number of verses, dialogue, and the narrator’s portrayal of the moment. But the Samaritan woman doesn’t get a name in John. A long lingering conversation with Jesus that upset the disciples who couldn’t believe Jesus was talking to her. And she doesn’t have name. Then, pretty much in complete contrast, there is in the Old Testament, a woman whose name is Michal. Who, as you can tell from the snippets of I and II Samuel I read to you, appears briefly on the scene and then disappears for awhile only to come back again…briefly. The reader knows her name but has to work a bit, take a few notes, connect the dots, to learn of her story.

Michal’s father was King Saul. Her husband, her first husband was David. According to the biblical text, Michal loved David. For those keeping score this summer, it will come as no surprise that King Saul intended to take advantage of Michal’s love for David. Saul offers Michal to David in marriage but for the price of a hundred Philistine foreskins. The intent is to put the one Michal loved in grave in the battle with the Philistines. To be blunt, Saul is trying to get David killed. But the violence of war tilted in David’s favor and David does return to claim Michal as his wife. King Saul, Michal’s father is ever more afraid, jealous and angry with this now son-in-law as he realizes that only does his daughter really love David, David has found favor in God’s sight. So Saul just keeps trying to stop David’s inevitable rise to power. At one point Michael discovers yet another one of her father’s plots to harm David. He helps her husband escape by putting a fake body in his bed, throwing some blankets over it and tell the intruders “he was just sick”

David slipped out the window and goes on the run for his life. He marries a few more wives along the way. In David’s absence, Michal’s father gives her in marriage to another man named Palti. When David becomes king he demands that Michal be returned to him reminding anyone and everyone how he risk his life for the price he paid Saul to marry Michal. As Michal is being led back to her first husband David, the bible narrator tells of her second husband, Palti, walking behind her, weeping all the way until he was told to just go home. Maybe it was his love for Palti but the bible does just come out and say that.

All of that brings back to David’s grand procession of the ark back to Jerusalem after the death of Uzzah on the threshing floor. This triumphal entry into the city of Jerusalem comes with David dancing before the ark wearing next to nothing. Michael looks out the window and sees the husband she once loved leaping and dancing and according to the text, “she despised him in her heart.” “How the king of Israel honored himself today, uncovering himself before the eyes of this servants’ maids, as any vulgar fellow might shameless cover himself.” “Just like any vulgar fellow”, she says. Men. Her husband points out that the Lord chose him over her father to be king and that he was dancing before the Lord and the would humble or humiliate himself again and again and those maids will still honor him. As the story comes to an end and Michal’s appearance in scripture comes to end, the reader is told that Michael, whose father was Saul and whose husband was David, never did have any children of her own. Or as the bible puts it, “And Michal, the daughter of Saul had no child to the day of her death.”

Scholars point out that the ancients who lean toward a pro-David narrative here in I and II Samuel likely want to be clear that Saul in no way contributed to the lineage of David. But notice, even in her departure from scripture’s page she has a name. She’s not just Saul’s daughter. She’s not just David’s wife, Palti’s wife. She’s Michal. And to know her story, to remember her story, you sort have to piece it all together. She has a story and she deserves some attention. And let’s not be historically naïve or unsophisticated in the remembering. The world of the bible is certainly not unique when it comes to a rather utilitarian view of marriage, relationships, political alliances, politics, family arrangements, expected gender roles, and hearts crumbled in a heap somewhere on the floor of career advancement and a play for power. All of it and the world of the bible; not unique then, not unique now.

But there is one aspect in the story of Michal as it is told in the context of the scripture that I find myself coming back to. According to the community of scholars, Michal is the only woman in the Hebrew bible who is described as “loving” a man. The only place in the Old Testament where it comes right and says it, “she loved him.” Michael loved David. That’s her entrance, “Saul’s daughter Michal loved David.” So to come to a point at the end of the story where “she despised him in her heart”, that’s quite a story, quite a stretch, from loving to despising. So human…..so real.

Commentators offer rather unconvincing possibilities when it comes to Michal’s change of heart. She was resentful at being forced to come back to David leaving her husband Palti behind. Or she only recently discovered that she only one among many of David’s wives (though given a world of multiple wives and concubines, that seems unlikely). That she blamed him and now despised him for the decline and fall of her own family with the line of King Saul coming to an end in her own barrenness. Though again, in helping to save David from her father’s own hand, also seems unlikely.

Remember, in her brief appearances, Michal is no passive wallflower. Michal sends word of her love for David to her father. Michal works to prevent her father from killing the man she loves. Michal hatches a plan to save her husband and gets him away from his pursuers. And in the strongest of voices, Michal compares the king to every other vulgar man on the street. In her book Just Wives: Stories of Power and Survival in the Old Testament and Today, Professor Kathie Sakenfeld comes to the conclusion that in these snippets of Michal’s story, scripture portrays Michal as little more than a political pawn whose destiny is determined by others. So it must be, it must be that in that audacious ark dance from David, when he once again left Michal off the dance floor of his life, that something must have all come together in Michal’s heart.  Somehow, watching him dance pretty much naked before the ark, she realized what pretty much everyone, including David, had done with her love for him. Dr. Sakenfeld writes that she finds herself remembering Michal and lamenting. That she finds herself right there with Palti, remembering Michal with tears. And we also remember that she loved him. Michal loved David. The story if Michal is something of a tragedy in literary terms. And it’s a tragedy in terms of love. What pretty much everyone, including David, what the world had done with Michal’s love for David. Yet, I keep coming back to where the story started. She loved him.

I have told you before of a church door conversation one day after worship. The Response of Praise that Sunday had been a setting of a Desmond Tutu text Goodness is Stronger than Evil

Goodness is stronger than evil; love is stronger than hate:

Light is stronger than darkness; life is stronger than death.

Victory is ours; victory is ours through God who loves us.

The person at the door quoted the; “love is stronger than hate” and said to me, “So you really believe that?” Think of all the songs we sing when a similar church door question could come. “They’ll know we are Christians by our love”. Our love, really? “He came down that we may have love, he came down that we may have love, he came down that we may love, hallelujah, forever more.” That we may have love, look around pastor, how’s that going?  You can understand those who question when the world tries so hard to stomp out love.

“Love is strong than hate” “So you really believe that?”  And the answer at the church door, the answer remains the same. Yes, I believe it…because I’ve seen it. The promise of God’s love and grace still breaking in despite the power and politics and drama of our lives, despite the world’s lust for hatred, bitterness, and violence. And every Sunday we gather here, the whole rag tag lot of us, yearning, expecting, believing, and knowing that God still blesses us and God’s world with gifts of grace, and joys of life, and yes, acts/signs/experiences of love, kindness and care. It happens again and again and again in your life and in mind, in our life together, in the life of faith, God blesses us with sign amid our own brokenness, despite our own sinfulness, and even in the world’s darkness. And stories of our forebearers remind us again and again that we ought to be vigilant lest even our best attempts at piety and faithfulness often stomp on, misuse, or overshadow God’s commandment that we love one another and our neighbor as ourselves.

In the liturgy of marriage, this phrase can be found in the wedding prayer: “may their life together be a sign of God’s love in this broken world in which we live.” When Cathy and I were being married 35 years ago next week, we were seminarians reading to offer a theological dissection of every part of the service. We shared with the friend, colleague, and mentor who would officiate at the service that we weren’t sure of that one phrase in the prayer. Our live together a sign of God’s love in the broken world? That’s a lot a responsibility. That’s a high expectation. That’s a tall order. The wise pastor looked over at us with a smile that said, “oh you young over zealous seminarians.” What he actually said was something like “when it comes to any sign of God’s love in the broken world, what other choice does God have?”

It was the Apostle Paul who wrote, “faith, hope, love abide, these three, and the greatest of these is love.” Maybe it is historically naïve and unsophisticated, but when you tell the story of Michal, when you think of Michal, when you remember Michal, remember that she loved him.