Is your head spinning? Or maybe just hurting at the speed with which we went from celebrating the life-giving reign of Christ last Sunday, to giving thanks on Thursday, to the blatant, in your face celebration of consumerism of “Black Friday” – which in the spirit of holiday creep began several days before Friday.

TV, radio, newspapers, e-mail inbox- all have been full of promotions and ads. The inducements to spend, to get a deal and to acquire the things needed for a perfect holiday.

It takes constant vigilance to avoid the “happiness is just one purchase away” syndrome. Especially when this year a major retailer has a frequently run commercial showing boxes of  ”Joy” and “Love”  being delivered out of a semi trailer. Yep, let’s all go and buy a nice big box of joy.  

On the other hand, it’s not uncommon to find people bemoaning the consumerism of the “holidays”  and advocating a return to the real meaning of Christmas.

Our longing for the iconic Christmas of long ago can turn into the burden of a perfectly decorated house with lovely handcrafted ornaments on the tree. The aroma of homemade cookies, fudge and Christmas dinner delights your houseful of family and friends. 

Then there are those of us who set our sights on a deeply spiritual Christmas.  Special  devotional time. Meaningful prayer. Extra worship services. Spiritual discipline turns into spiritual marathon. We are exhausted by Christmas.

It can take a lot of effort to get through this season. Expectations run high. It seems that everywhere you turn there is someone telling us about the best deals, the best presents, the best recipes, the best decorations, the best carols, the best Christmas pageant, the best worship service. The message: we owe our families and our selves the best. Particularly at Christmas. Why? Because we deserve it, we earned it.  Exactly why we deserve it is a little unclear.  Never the less, we chase after the idol of the perfect Christmas.

If you are like me, you can’t step out of the gift buying, decorating, and cooking Christmas culture. At least not without stepping on many toes, not least the toes of your own family. And you don’t want to ignore the spiritual dimensions of Christmas.

What to do?   Besides hide until January?

If you can stand some more holiday advice, may I suggest…

Setting some limits.  For me that means setting limits for myself.  I spend some time thinking seriously about how much shopping, baking, decorating and yes, even spiritually how much I can realistically do.

This season highlights the pull and tug of the secular and the sacred. The pull and tug are always there, but it is much more acute this time of year. The days of Advent remind me of how much trouble I have living holistically. In some ways it is easier segregating the world into sacred and secular spaces. Holding the two together?  Nearly impossible some days.

But yet…. We receive little glimpses, if we have the eyes to see. The small act of kindness in the midst of a crowded mall. The unexpected gift of cookies from a neighbor. A card from a long-lost friend. A moment when you think about your family and are deeply thankful for them. Opportunities to be kind. Opportunities to give to another. To drop a few coins in the kettle. To let someone go ahead of you in line.  Small things. But then again, the kingdom of heaven is found small things and unlikely acts,  a mustard seed, a little yeast, and even a baby.

I’d like to know, what do you think? 

Where do you find your glimpses of heaven?

I wanted to think a bit today about what it means to call Jesus king. For those of us who observe the liturgical year, tomorrow is Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday of the church year.   The gospel reading for Christ the King Sunday this year is John 18: 33-37.   

 ”King” is a difficult word for Christians in the US. We have a historical and cultural bias against kings. We don’t talk much about kings, at least not in a “nice” way. But once a year the liturgical calendar causes us to consider the “king” word. It is fortunate that Christ the King Sunday comes right before Advent when many of us begin singing carols to the “newborn king”. It is good for us to spend some time thinking about this king and  this king’s kingdom.

  We often get ourselves in trouble one of a couple of ways when we think about kings and kingdoms. We either overly spiritualizing Jesus’ kingdom or we assume that Jesus will rule as typical human kings rule with crushing power and might.

The passage in the Gospel According to John can be read in more than one way. Sometimes, depending on the translation, Jesus’ reply to Pilates question is “My kingdom is not of this world”.  People can interpret, “not of this world” to mean a sort of dualism. Jesus’ kingdom is spiritual and not part of the material world. Jesus doesn’t, and by extension Christians ought not to, concern himself overly with the things of this world. This earth is not where the kingdom is found or located.

The NRSV translates Jesus reply as “My kingdom is not from this world”. The “from” points us toward thinking about origins. We ask people, “Where are you from?” It’s not an idle question. The answer can tell us some important things. “I am from here” can suggest that you and I have some things in common- a shared local culture, perhaps a shared worldview, perhaps a shared history.  To answer ” I am not from here”, might serve to highlight distinctions. I might be defining myself  as different in some way. Where I am from can tell you some important things about me.

In Greek, the word in question here is “ek”  ( I have to apologize, I don’t know how to get Greek letters into WordPress.) It means “out of” or “by” and is used with the genitive case which describes or defines. Ek can have to do with place, with origin, source, or cause, or with time. ( My  Greek Lexicon has 3 pages of fairly small print concerning how the word “ek” is used, so my discussion here is not exhaustive. ) According to my lexicon, in John 18:36 the meaning has to do with origins. My kingdom is not of earthly origin.

I would like to suggest that Jesus is not talking about the present and/or future location of his kingdom but rather where his kingdom originates and therefor where his kingdom gets its values. Jesus goes on to clarify this  by telling Pilate that if his kingdom were like other kingdoms of the world, Jesus’ followers would be fighting for Jesus freedom. But behavior in Jesus’ kingdom is not typical kingdom behavior.

Jesus’ followers are not fighting because this world doesn’t matter. They are not fighting because they are living in this world by completely different rules. Where Jesus is from shapes the actions of Jesus and his followers.  Certainly the actions of Jesus’ life tell us that Jesus and his followers are living by another set of values.

Pilate has never encountered a king and a kingdom like this. The disciples have lived with this king and by these new values and they still find if difficult. Modern followers of Jesus have seen glimpses of this kingdom but it is so easy for us to get confused. We start thinking Jesus will be a king like any other great king, crushing opponents, ruling from a position of power, rewarding the faithful.  On the other hand, if we try hard to visualize what Jesus’ kingdom looks like,we have such difficulty that we can’t imagine how it can work in this world and we shift the kingdom into a spiritual realm.

But the reality is somewhere else. The kingdom is here, in this world operating with a completely different set of values. It’s tough to hold on to. It’s tough to see. It’s tough to live. It’s good to have “Christ the King” Sunday to remind us.

I’d like to know,what do you think?

Perhaps you saw this story about Oreo. It’s a sad story and there are lots of things we could say about it. All I know about Oreo’s situation is what I could read on-line and based on that, it appears the ASPCA did the responsible thing.

These sorts of situations, where an animal has been abused, evoke strong emotions and rightly so. Animal abuse is a terrible thing and should not be tolerated. It does seem to me, based on the on-line comments, there are a few things we need to think about a little more carefully.

I was really quite amazed at the commentors who were willing to second guess the animal behavior experts. This is a widespread phenomena in our society and I wonder why we are unwilling to acknowledge the expertise of specialists. I will however, not speculate here about that, but leave the analysis of this to the experts in human behavior.

Many commentors thought Oreo should be sent to a “no kill” shelter. In an ideal world, that would be nice. In the real world “no kill” shelters run out of room and resources. They simply cannot take every animal. For example, read the Best Friends Animal Society’s admissions policy carefully. I’m not being critical of Best Friends, not at all. I do want to point out that the need is enormous and the resources are limited.  By the way, New York City appears to have made commendable progress in reducing the number of animals euthanized.

Other commentors thought the ASPCA didn’t try hard enough to rehabilitate Oreo. I wasn’t there, I cannot know. As the result of all my years as a veterinarian I can say that there are mean dogs, and there are aggressive dogs, and then there are truly dangerous dogs. While there are not many, truly dangerous dogs they do exist and we cannot underestimate or ignore the injury they are capable of causing.

Where ever Oreo went, someone would have to care for Oreo and that someone would be in physical danger- unless of course there was essentially no human contact. But dogs are social animals and the a life time of solitary confinement strikes me as inhumane.

 In an ideal world we would be able to heal every animal. In the real world there are limits to what we can do.  We cannot cure every medical condition and we cannot cure every mental condition. Treating animal behavioral and emotional problems is extremely difficult. We know more than we used to, but there is still much to learn.

Let me tell you about a real situation. When I was in practice, a family brought in their dog who was suffering from separation anxiety. This is a fairly common problem in dogs and it can be successfully treated. We tried the standard treatments without success. The family worked with a local animal behavior specialist without success. We tried various medications without success. They consulted with  nationally recognized veterinary behavior specialists. This family did everything that was recommended. They tried hard,very hard for years. Nothing worked. This poor dog was miserable. Actually worse than miserable. This dog was terrified to be alone for even short periods of time. Eventually the family reluctantly decided to euthanize the dog. Not because they didn’t love the dog but because no one could ease the suffering of this dog. Believe me, we all cried that day. Writing about it many years later still brings tears to my eyes.

Friends this is a broken,fallen world and there are some things no amount of human love can fix. For our animal companions there are some things worse than dying- a life of fear, or unmanageable pain, or isolation. The people who work and volunteer at shelters and humane societies do their best. It can be tough work, both physically and emotionally.

It was a sad day, a tragic day for Oreo and for the folks at the ASPCA. Euthanasia is never the first choice. Sometimes there are not good options and it is the least bad choice. But far too many animals are euthanized every day all across the country because of the lack of resources to treat and care for them.  All of us who care about animals, whether we work in the field, advocate for animal issues, or provide loving homes for our pets, all of us hope for the day when:

 The wolf shall live with the lamb,

the leopard shall lie down with the kid,

the calf and the lion and the fatling together,

and a little child shall lead them.

The cow and the bear shall graze,

their young shall lie down together;

and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,

and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.

They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain;

for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.    (Isaiah 11:6-9)

Community. We talk about it quite a lot, we even long for it, but what is it?

Here is what the Random House Dictionary says:

 1. a social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality, share government, and often have a common cultural and historical heritage. 

 2. a locality inhabited by such a group. 

 3. a social, religious, occupational, or other group sharing common characteristics or interests and perceived or perceiving itself as distinct in some respect from the larger society within which it exists (usually prec. by the): the business community; the community of scholars. 

4. a group of associated nations sharing common interests or a common heritage: the community of Western Europe. 

 5. Ecclesiastical. a group of men or women leading a common life according to a rule.

6. Ecology. an assemblage of interacting populations occupying a given area. 

7. joint possession, enjoyment, liability, etc.: community of property. 

8. similar character; agreement; identity: community of interests. 

9. the community, the public; society: the needs of the community.

Is there an aspect of community that the dictionary missed?

 I think about community and I wonder. Is community  discovered or made? Do we simply find ourselves part of a community? Or can we actively make or form community? Or is community self creating or self forming. What makes something a community rather than a group or a town or a club? What is distinctive about a community? Do different sorts of community develop in different ways?

I don’t have an answer to these questions. If you do, I’d like to hear it. I have been wondering about  community for a while now.What I do know is that communities are important.

The value of community was brought home to me when we moved five years ago. We left behind several communities: at church, in our neighborhood, at our children’s school, and at our work.  It takes a long time -at least for me- to feel at home in new communities. Finally this year, I am feeling that I am a part of several communities in our new town. 

The communities I feel most at home in and  where I felt most comfortable the most quickly were the communities that required the most of me. Not surprisingly the communities I have given the most to are the most significant communities for me. 

 There does seem to be different kinds of community. Some are more meaningful, more important than others. Even within a particular community, different members may place a different level of value on that community.

Communities are complex. Identity and culture intimately affect communities. All communities arise from culture and all communities shape culture. Communities are shaped by the identities of their members and communities shape the identities of their members.

What is a community? How do communities work? Perhaps this community can help me think about it. This is a topic we will return to from time to time.

I’d like to know what do you think?

This week, I am posting a sermon which I originally preached in 2003 at Parkville Presbyterian Church where I was a seminary student intern.

Hebrew Bible lesson, Ruth 1:1-18

New Testament lesson, Mark 12:28-34

Ruth is moving to a new town, actually a new country.

 It can be hard to move, even if you’re looking forward to the move. It’s hard to leave friends and familiar routines. When you get to the new town, you have to find a place to live, you have to find a new grocery store and you have to find where they keep the chocolate milk in the new store. You have to find a new gas station. You have to figure out which day is trash day. You hope you can find a new pediatrician before one of the kids gets sick. There are a thousand things that you did in your old home that you have to do in your new home but they’re all different and difficult because you are in a new place. Even if you are excited about the move, the actual moving and resettling is hard and stressful. Most of us don’t move for the “fun” of it, we move for a reason. A new job, to be closer to family, a better climate; lots of reasons, but we have a reason. So why did Ruth move? Why does Ruth follow Naomi? It’s not because Naomi was begging her to come along. In fact, Naomi gives Ruth every reason not to come.

     In their culture to be a widow and childless is to be in a precarious position. Women had no inheritance rights. Their security was found in their husbands and children. Think of other Bible stories about widows. I can’t think of one who is not in dire straits. Naomi is widowed, childless and she is living in a foreign land. Her situation could not be much worse. So she decides to return home. Her daughters in law want to come with her. Naomi reminds them, she is not going to marry again. She is not going to have more sons. None of the means available to women in her time for personal security will exist for her.

Naomi has nothing to offer Orpah and Ruth, she cannot offer them well being. Their best option is to return to their mother’s homes. There, perhaps, another marriage can be arraigned and their future secured. Orpah is obedient to her mother in law, as their culture expected her to be. And although she was sad, reluctantly she went home. But Ruth is not obedient; she does not follow society’s expectation. She does not obey her mother in law. Instead Ruth declares her loyalty to Naomi,

“Where you will go, I will go,

where you lodge, I will lodge,

your people shall be my people,

and your God, my God

Where you die, I will die- there I will be buried”

     Ruth has just proclaimed her intention to radically change her life. She will live with Naomi, even though Naomi has just told her there is no future for them together. But why?

   She will change her homeland and cultural identity. But why? She is a Moabite and the Moabites have historically been Israel’s enemy. Remember in Deuteronomy, Moabite men are excluded from the congregation because the Moabites denied food and water to the Israelites during the Exodus. The king of Moab hired Balaam to curse Israel. The Moabites have been one of the oppressors of Israel. Ruth may be willing to make the Israelites her people. But will they accept her?

    She will worship Naomi’s God.  But why? She can’t just add the Lord to the Moabite gods she grew up with. She must renounce her gods and her faith. She cannot worship them and God. She must worship only the one God of Israel.

    She will be buried with Naomi. But why? In their time it was very important to be buried in ones’ homeland. Remember Jacob’s request to be returned home from Egypt after he died? And Joseph takes his remains home. And before Joseph dies he also requests to be returned home. And the Israelites take his remains home.

     Ruth’s commitment is, when you think about it, extraordinary. The Rabbis’ place Ruth alongside Abraham for her decision to follow. And they point out that Ruth, unlike Abraham, does not have a direct revelation from God. Ruth in Jewish tradition is the ideal convert. But why? Why does Ruth make such a drastic conversion ?

Why does she follow Naomi?  Is it something about Naomi?

  It’s certainly not that Naomi is perfect. She’s not a one dimensional, too holy to be real character. After Ruth declares her intention to journey with Naomi, the text tells us Naomi, “said no more.” Now it could be that Naomi has simply accepted Ruth’s decision to come along, but some scholars suggest that Naomi is mad, so mad she stops talking to Ruth. They think that Naomi knew it would be hard enough to return home widowed and childless, after being gone ten years and now she has a Moabite widow tagging along with her.

 And when Naomi returns home and is greeted by her friends, you can hear her pain,

“Call me Mara, (call me bitter),

for the Almighty has dealt bitterly with me,

I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty;

why call me Naomi when the Lord has dealt harshly with me

and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?”

      So why does Ruth follow Naomi?

 Is it something about Naomi? I think it is.

Ruth lived with and observed Naomi for at least ten years. Ruth saw Naomi’s actions day in and day out, in good times and in bad. Ruth saw Naomi lose her husband and all her children. After these losses, Naomi feels she must send the rest of her family, her daughters in law, away. But even as she tries to send them away, Ruth hears Naomi entrust them to God and ask God’s blessing on them.

     What an amazing person Naomi must have been. I think Ruth was able to convert, to give up her people, her homeland and her gods because of the faithfulness, the loving kindness she saw day after day, year after year in Naomi’s life. The loving kindness. The Hebrew word is Hesed. It means loving kindness but it means more. Hesed is a kind of steadfastness, a loyalty. It is to care for another with whom you are in relationship. It’s a care that goes beyond what is expected or required. Hesed is frequently used in the Bible to describe God’s acts of mercy and grace.  It is an attribute, a characteristic of God. It’s an extraordinary commitment.

     Actually this little Book of Ruth, its only four chapters, is full of people performing acts of loving kindness and loyalty. After Ruth and Naomi return to Bethlehem, Ruth goes to glean or gather grain in the barley harvest. As it turns out she gleans in the field of Naomi’s kinsman, Boaz. Boaz notices Ruth and after learning who she is, he ensures she is able to gather enough grain. He instructs his harvesters to leave a little extra for Ruth. Boaz and Ruth end up getting married. They have a son, Obed. And Obed becomes the father of Jesse. And Jesse becomes the father of David. Who becomes King of Israel. The story is a wonderful tangle of relationships, each person caring for the other. Ruth for Naomi, Naomi for Ruth. Boaz for Ruth. Naomi for Boaz and on and on. And through it all God is working through regular people, day after day, year after year. It’s a nice story, with a happy ending.

      But, this story raises an uncomfortable question for me. If someone watched my life, or your life, and they are watching, if someone was watching my life, would they see in me the faithfulness, the Hesed, that Ruth saw in Naomi?

     I can think of people I have known who were like Naomi. All Saint’s Day is an appropriate time to recall those faithful people we have known. I remember my father in law, Walter Lloyd Jones. He pushed his church, a large middle class church in a changing downtown, to feed homeless people on Sunday mornings because other food programs didn’t operate on weekends. So First Presbyterian Church of Flint, Michigan offered Sunday morning breakfast to the homeless and my father in law invited them to church too. He also devoted his latter years to a jail ministry, and in spite of painful arthritis and a failing heart, he went to the county jail twice a week because he cared about the prisoners and what would happen to them.  We can be thankful for the witness of his life and of so many others like him.

     Perhaps you can think of others who live faithful lives. Like the kindergarten teacher who daily loves a roomful of wiggly five year olds and helps them discover how wonderful it is to learn. The neighbor who shovels your sidewalk just because he was outside first. The receptionist who is patient with a customer who is confused. The desk clerk who is kind to an angry person and tries to solve a problem she didn’t create.

     If someone was watching my life, would they see in me the faithfulness Ruth saw in Naomi. When things get difficult at work, the boss is unfair, or the workload escalates what do my co-workers see?  When the line is long and the service poor and the store is too hot, what do the people around me see? When it’s those difficult couple of hours in the late afternoon, the kids are home, and they’re hungry and tired. Its time to start dinner and homework and then the juice gets spilled. What do my children see?

     In the gospel lesson today, Jesus tells us we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our strength and to love our neighbor as our self. It seems to me that must have been what Naomi did; love God and neighbor even as she lived as a stranger in a foreign land, even when she lost those most dear to her. Ruth must have seen the loving kindness of God in Naomi’s life.

          For us as Christians, in a sense; Jesus is our Naomi. Jesus is the one who shows us how to live. Jesus is the one we are to follow, the One for whom we forsake the false gods of our culture. Jesus is the one who calls us to live as strangers even in our own land. As Naomi and Ruth walked home to Bethlehem together, Jesus walks with us. And even death does not separate us.  For some people, the only way they are going to meet Jesus is through you and me. If someone were watching my life, who would they see?  

     The One who is truly God and also truly human shows us how to be most truly and fully human. As Ruth looked to Naomi and followed, will we – day in and day out, in good time and in hard times- will we look to Jesus and follow him?

*******************************************

Two notes:

A quite belated thank you to the people of Parkville Presbyterian Church for all your kindness. They were ( and I’m sure still are) a wonderful church, welcoming and encouraging myself and other seminary students.

I’m giving a presentation tomorrow afternoon( Humans, Animals, and God: Rethinking Creation) at the Midwest Popular Culture/American Culture Association Annual meeting in Detroit. If you are going to be there too, please introduce yourself. I’d like to meet you.

Just like may folks who went to seminary, I have a shelf full of books on evangelism. Sadly most of them are not very good. They are not very good because, for the most part, they treat evangelism as an add on project of the church. Evangelism is a program we place on our “to do” list and then check off when it is accomplished. Or more commonly in my experience, we let it slide to the bottom of our list and then drop off the edge of the page.

This month I read another book on evangelism for mainline Protestant churches. To be completely honest, I didn’t want to. The members of a committee I am a part of were asked to read this book. Being a good committee member I read the book, but I wasn’t expecting much from it.

It turns out, however, that a good book about evangelism does exist. Unbinding the Gospel: Real Life Evangelism by Martha Grace Reece is a very good book about evangelism. There is a surprising wealth of insight, practical and spiritual, for a 200 page book.Best of all, this book does not offer a program for us to follow but rather asks us to think and pray about what evangelism is and the ways we resist it and the ways we might embrace it.  There are two main ideas I would like to highlight today, our mainline “problem” with evangelism and how we might begin to rethink what evangelism is.

 Part of what makes this a good book about evangelism is the author’s honesty about why we mainline Protestants don’t “do” evangelism. Most of us get more than a little uncomfortable talking about evangelism, in part because many of us have been on the receiving end of some aggressive and poorly done evangelism. Our other problem is we think evangelism means we have to talk about our faith in a way that risks alienating our friends or involves approaching strangers and forcing a discussion about salvation. These are real perceptions and many of us who avoid “doing” evangelism  these are our reasons why.

The book however confronts us with a deeper truth. Many of us in mainline churches haven’t thought deeply or seriously about why our faith is important. People who grew up in the church may take their faith and their church for granted. Sometimes our failure to tell others about our faith is because we don’t think we have much to offer. For some of us, we simply don’t know how to put our faith into words. We need to practice talking about our faith. We need to spend some time thinking deeply with others about our faith and our relationship with God.  For others of us, we can’t tell someone about the good news because we’re not quiet sure what it is or why it matters.

To be sure, there are many people in mainline churches who have a deep, rich faith. Sometimes they are hard to notice because they don’t draw attention to themselves. They share their faith by what they say and what they do.  They bring other people to faith in personal and quiet and life changing ways.

These are the people who understand evangelism as Martha Grace Reese defines it, “…[E]vangelism is anything you do to help another person move closer to a relationship with God, or into Christian community.” I like this definition. I can do this. I might even have done this.

Evangelism as she describes it, is not a program to follow, but a way of life. Individuals and congregations who are growing in faith naturally share it.  This sort of evangelism starts with our own life and in our own families and congregations and then moves into neighborhoods and communities. It is an organic sort of evangelism that begins with personal spiritual growth and then grows to embrace the people around us.

The thing that delighted me most about this book was Martha Grace Reese’s insistance that prayer, as individuals, in small groups, and as a congregation is essential.  In fact she advises that before “doing” anything else the people involved in church leadership and evangelism spend months in prayer together. She has practical advise on helping our churches be welcoming places for people but it is all rooted in listening and discerning God’s will in the life of the people and of the congregation.

As people and congregations pray and grow they will have an authentic faith to share and they will, guided by the Spirit, recognize appropriate and natural situations in which to share their faith.

I’d like to know what do you think?

I spent the day yesterday at the Interfaith Dialogue Conference, sponsored by Grand Valley State University and the Kaufman Interfaith Institute. The link above will take you to the GVSU site, the Kaufman Institute and the conference site. Yesterday’s talks are not yet available on line (as of Friday, October 16, 2009) but the talks from 2006 are and are well worth your while.

One of the speakers, Donniel Hartman, made in interesting observation. He commented that God appears to care about what we humans think about God. We are prohibited from profaning the name of God. Hartman asked how can it be that the Creator of the Universe cares what we think? It is, he says, an absurd idea. Why should this matter to God?

It’s a question we might forget to ask. Those of us in the Abrahamic traditions have our Scriptures which we believe are God’s revelation to us. The idea that God reveals God’s self to us and that our response matters to God is part and parcel of our faith. That familiarity doesn’t mean the idea should go unexamined.

This concept that  God’s reputation matters shows up in the Bible. Here are a couple of examples, you may add your own -and please do.

Psalm 115:1-2 

Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory, for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness. Why should the nations say, “Where is their God?” 

In Psalm 74 a defeated Israel asks, “How long, O God, is the foe to scoff? How long, Is the enemy to revile your name forever?” (v10-11).

When the people make the golden calf after the escape from Egypt, God is angry and tells Moses,

“Now let me alone,so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation.”  But Moses implored the Lord his God and said, “O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought our of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to the, ‘I will multiply your descendants like the starts of heaven, and al this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’” (Exodus 32:10-14)

So it seems to matter to God what people think. At least Moses thinks God’s reputation is important. Otherwise why would he bring it up? And this line of reasoning works, God does not destroy the people who will become Israel.

 Why does what we think matter to God? And it’s not only what believers think but what the neighbors, the non believers think. And not only non believers think but  what the enemies think.  Why does God care what his enemies think? I don’t know.  Even though I don’t know why this is so, this does tell us something important about God. For reasons known only to God what we think, no matter who we are,  matters to God.

 Now I know for many of you this seems incredibly obvious.  We matter to God. But why is there anything about us that is even remotely interesting to God? It’s amazing. We ought to be walking abound all day stunned by this revelation.

But as is our human inclination, we take God’s interest in us as our due. Of course God cares about what we think- how could God not find us fascinating and wonderful? We’re simply the most wonderful things ever made, right?

Even if we are the most wonderful thing ever made, or one of many wonderful things God made, the reality that God desires to be in a relationship with us is still astounding.

On at least one level, the fact that God cares what we think about God implies that the relationship with humans is important to God. And of course, if it’s important to God it should be important to us.

Relationships matter to God. Our relationship with God matters.  

God cares about the relationship with Israel and with Israel’s enemies. So we should care about our relationships with our “Israel”, our families, neighbors, fellow citizens and  also with our enemies.

God cares what people think about him. I don’t think this is because God is worried that people won’t like him.  God is concerned that people know the true God, the God of Covenant faithfulness, the God who stands by Israel through thick and thin. God wants to be honestly and truthfully known. That is important for us as well. For us to be concerned about what people think about us doesn’t mean we should try to be someone we are not, but rather we should be concerned that we are known as a person of faith.  A person of faith for whom honest and caring relationships matter.

Why does God care what we think about God?  A mystery but a joyous one.

I’d like to know, what do you think?

I have been re reading Barbara Brown Taylor’s book An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith, in particular the chapter on “The Practice of Getting Lost”. She writes about how we stick to safe paths and avoid stepping out of our comfort zones to avoid taking risks and getting lost.  “If you do not start choosing to get lost in some fairly low-risk ways, then how will you ever manage when one of life’s big winds knocks you clean off your course?”… ” The Bible is a great help to me in this practice [of getting lost], since it reminds me that God does some of God’s best work with people who are truly, seriously lost.” (p. 72, 73)  She contemplates Abraham and Sarah’s “willingness to get lost”. (p. 73)

As I thought about this chapter, I had a little trouble with the idea of getting lost. I like to know where I am and what is going on. The idea of intentionally getting lost is, well, not too appealing. After all, I wouldn’t be in control then, would I? Then of course I “got” it. My difficulty with getting lost is that what is lost is my control of my life. As if I ever truly was in control of my life…

I am also reading, with some community college students, Quentin Schultze’s book, Here I Am:Now What on Earth Should I Be Doing. In this book he makes a helpful distinction between the common vocation of all Christian to love God and neighbor and the various stations we find ourselves in. (9-10) By station Schultze means the various particular life situations we find ourselves in-parent, friend, accountant, veterinarian, neighbor, mechanic, stranger at the grocery store.  Our vocation does not change but the ever changing and multifaceted nature of our stations requires us to continually discover the ways we are to work out our faith.

Schultze echos Martin Luther’s understanding that God provides for us in the variety of stations found in the world. “He [God] provides stations so we can all serve each other for the good of society as well as the church. Each of us depends on other stations… The historical meaning of station is ‘where one keeps watch’ … In our stations, we caretakers stand watch on behalf of the Lord in the service of others. ” (15)

What these authors have to say runs counter to our American myth of the self sufficient loner and the self made individual. Our culture celebrates the individual and values independence.  It’s not bad to be an individual and to be independent as long as we remember that we’re neither as self made  nor as independent as we might think.

Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers pokes some substantial holes in the myth of the self made individual. None of us gets to where ever we are by ourselves. 

As the saying goes, does it take a village? 

In one sense it takes all of civilization both past and present. Without Gutenberg and his printing press I would not have read any of the books I just wrote about. Without my public school teachers, I couldn’t have read those books. As for writing? Certainly I don’t even know how to make a pencil, let alone a computer. 

And yes it does take all the people I come in contact with every day. The school secretary, the dry cleaner, the person who carries out my groceries, the dentist, the driveway repair people, they all take care of me in quite particular ways.

What does it mean to recognize our profound and God given interdependence?

In my village, it means- at the very least- I should be more intentionally aware of those around me and more vocal in my gratitude.

On a somewhat larger scale, what would recognizing our interdependence mean? Would we be less inclined to bad mouth and demonize those with whom we disagree? Could we value people with different opinions and ideas?  We don’t have to agree, but perhaps we could recognize that talking with someone who holds a different opinion shapes us in good and helpful ways.

What things large and small would change?

How would our understanding of God change?

I’d like to know what do you think?

Earlier this week at Jesus Creed, the topic was Biblical authority and the historical reliability of the Bible.  ( by the way, the Jesus Creed post-God, Science, and Evolution is worth a read as well). 

These sorts of discussion always cause me to wonder why some of us  Christians are so insistent that Scripture conform to society’s standards, in particular standards about historical and scientific reliability.  The problem is that usually when we’re talking about the historical and scientific reliability of the Bible, we’re using concepts that modern historians and scientists no longer affirm and use.

I’m no historian, but to the best of my knowledge, historians now understand that the worldview and culture of the person writing history affects how the history is written. So if we are reading a history of colonial India written by an English colonist, we’ll learn a different story than if we read about colonial India from the perspective of an Indian.The idea that there is one correct version is history is, well, history.  When people are discussing the historical accuracy of the Bible, we ought to ask, whose version of history are we talking about?

If Egyptian records do not mention the Exodus, does that mean it didn’t happen? Or does it mean that Egyptian historians decided the event was not worth recording? Or that it was too embarrassing to record? Or too politically dangerous to record?

In some regards we are back to the perennial question, “what is truth?” and can we ever really know  what truth is? But for today perhaps our question could be phrased, ” Is history the best and final authority on what is true?”

Now, please note, I’m not saying the Bible is fiction. There are historically accurate events recorded in Scripture. On the other hand, not everything presented in a historical fashion is historically correct in every detail.

But does historical accuracy really say anything about the trustworthiness of the Bible? Only if you reduce truth to facts.

It seems to me that Christians have unwittingly accepted a small definition of truth.  Truth has become what is historically or scientifically verifiable.  But don’t we find truth in other places?  Can truth be found in beauty?  In art? In music? Can truth be found in relationship? In community? Is there truth in love that cannot be described or quantified by history and science?

It is important to understand where the Bible is historically accurate and where it is not. It is important to think about why Biblical authors made the decision to tell the stories in the way they did. It is important to think about why certain stories have been handed down for centuries.

By the way, an insistence on the primacy of the historical and scientific accuracy of the Bible is a relatively modern phenomenon. The Church has never restricted itself to only a historical or literal reading of Scripture. Even the apostle Paul writes that the story of Hagar and Sarah is an allegory (Gal 4:22-27).

The “either or” argument – either the Bible is entirely true or it is all false- has never made much sense to me. If we can’t prove Baalam’s donkey really talked, the entire Bible is untrue? That just seems illogical to me. We know that there are a variety of writing genres in Scripture.  My hunch is, that ancient people realized, better than we, that Truth is too complex to be confined to historical facts.  If you have ever cried over the ending of a novel, you know that’s true.

I want to suggest we have let our understanding of  truth become too small. We have forced truth into the small boxes of history and science. Scripture is about more that history and science.  The stories in the Bible, the historical and all the rest, are about relationship. The relationship between God and people. This relationship is found in historical accounts. But the story of this relationship is also told truthfully in poetry and song, in parable and in prophecy.

I wonder if we lessened our desire for the truth of historical accuracy and strengthened our desire for  the truth of  a relationship with God -the relationship the Bible tells us about, how would our lives change?

I’d like to know, what do you think?

One of the commentors from last week posed this thought,

…but I have to say I don’t believe “original sin” can possibly mean different things to a theologian and other Christians who study God’s Word. If so, and if only theologians are capable of thinking rightly on this key doctrine, God’s Word is not fully effective for the laity. This is contrary to everything Luther taught–and I can’t believe Calvin thought otherwise, either. Perhaps you’re saying the theologian has more terms available.

We have an interesting situation don’t we? Our tendency as people (myself very much included) is to look for the one correct interpretation. We Christians certainly do this with the Bible. It appears to me that Muslims and Jews have similar debates over interpretation. Scientists debate the correctness of various hypothesis. We want to know. We want to make sense of the world and our experiences in it. We want to understand.

And of course, we each want to be right.

So how can serious and sincere students of Scripture come to different conclusions? We know it happens. You don’t have to spend much time in Bible study before you will hear someone say, “Well I always thought Paul meant …. when he said …”. Almost without fail someone else will say, ” Really? I was taught that when Paul wrote ….. he meant ……”

What do we do with this? How do we know what the correct interpretation is? How can we be sure that we are “thinking rightly”? Which interpretation does God prefer?

For some of us, the idea that there might be more than one plausible interpretation to a particular portion of scripture is troubling. We can become anxious about the correctness of our beliefs. Most sadly, we can divide ourselves into groups based on our differences. I would like to suggest that we don’t need to be overly troubled by this.

Just to clarify: I am not saying that every possible interpretation of a particular Biblical passage is correct.  I am suggesting that more than one interpretation may be valid and faithful. I also am not saying that appropriate Biblical interpretation rests solely on our personal preferences and beliefs. However our particular life situations shape the ways we respond to the Biblical text. I am also not saying that we can never know what God intended a particular passage to communicate to us.  I want to be clear, I am not saying that we can know nothing concretely about God and that religious faith is nothing more than personal opinion. On the other hand, we cannot know and understand everything, there are limits to what God reveals and to what we are capable of understanding.

So with those caveats out-of-the-way, some thoughts about why we don’t need to be overly upset about differing Biblical interpretations.

It seems to me that we should acknowledge and appreciate the richness and complexity of the Bible. The interactions between the individuals in any particular part of scripture, the human author(s), the Holy Spirit, and later readers are complex. There are also social and cultural differences that must be recognized.  This can account for a variety of readings but that doesn’t necessarily support the idea that there may be more than one plausible and faithful interpretation.

We also know, if we have lived long enough, that our interpretation of what we thought a particular story or parable was about when we were 20 might be different by the time we are 50.  Does that mean that what we understood at 20 was wrong? Or is what we think at 50 wrong?  Can they both be right?  How do we know?

I want to suggest four things today- and this certainly won’t exhaust the topic.

First, God is complex, more complex than we can imagine. As finite human beings our ability to understand God is limited. As we change and grow, our ability to understand God changes and grows.  To paraphrase Saint Paul, we only see in part.  You and I each bring different experiences, different personalities, different abilities to understand to the same complex God. Perhaps rather than obsess on our differences, we should be more amazed and grateful that there are areas where we agree!

Which brings me to a recurring theme on this blog, humility. While it is good and important to search for truth, humility about our conclusions is also good and important. It’s tough to balance proper humility with proper certainty.

The third piece to the puzzle of interpretation is community. We don’t have to figure everything out by ourselves. There is certainly reading and thinking that needs to be done by each of us, individually. But the community of faith can and should help us. The community of faith includes people we know, the authors and commentators we read and listen to, and the historic teaching of the Church.  We are shaped by this community and we each help shape the community. It’s a huge web of ideas and conversations extending all around us. It can be difficult to make sense of things when we are in the midst of multiple conversations. Like sausage making, the process isn’t pretty. But slowly and gradually we gain understanding as individuals and as the Church.

In the end, it comes down to our trusting relationship with God. God is present in all these conversations. God is present in the middle of the variety of voices.  It seems to me that it’s not so much about being correct as it is about being faithful.  Faithfulness in Biblical interpretation is the process of continuing to study, continuing to learn, continuing to listen. We won’t always be right. Sometimes, we won’t even be close. But we can know that God is always with us. Anselm gave us a phrase that’s helpful, faith seeking understanding. He got the order right, I think. First faith, second seeking, and lastly understanding. 

I’d like to know, what do you think?