What or Who’s Your Idol?
1 Timothy 6:6-19; Jeremiah 31:1-3, 6-15; Luke 16:19-31
My story is a lot like yours. When Paula and I got married, we had a few things of our own. We got a used bed frame from a friend and bought a mattress set and a sofa with wedding money. We furnished the rest of our apartment with pieces from our parents’ homes. When we moved to the first church manse, all we needed was the car, and half of a 20 ft. U-Haul truck. Eleven years later, when we moved to Waverly, we had acquired two children, a cat, and enough belongings to fill a full-size van twice, the car once, and the biggest trailer the mover had. The disassembled swing set was strapped to the back of the trailer. I would hate to think how much space would be required today, even after moving two children into their own homes.
In the closing remarks of his first letter to Timothy, Paul tells the up and coming presbyter, “We didn’t bring anything into the world and so we can’t take anything out of it” (v. 7). That may be, but between birth and death, we grasp everything we can, like sailors clinging to the flotsam of a shipwreck. It’s as if our lives depended on how much we can hold onto. That’s why we don’t easily identify with the parable that Jesus told about the pearl merchant selling his entire stock in order to purchase the pearl of great price. We want all the pearls we have and the other one too.
As the bumper sticker says, whoever dies with the most toys wins. Its an economic world. Everything has to be latest and newest, bigger and better. The housing bubble and the recession we are still trying to get beyond, the military budget, the race for super-encryption that the NSA can’t yet decipher, even the massive outlays made for medical care – as wonderful as it is – are all symptoms of our unwritten, unconscious desire to cling to everything that we can get our hands on and our arms around.
The grocery store my mother shopped at would have occasional shopping sprees. The drawing winner would get ten minutes to go through the store and get as much in the shopping cart as was possible. Mom never won that drawing, but we would sometimes try to decide whether it was better to grab high-priced but perishable items or lots of lesser priced shelf stable items. We had a freezer, so we would probably have gone after meat rather than canned goods.
“We didn’t bring anything into the world and so we can’t take anything out of it.” So what are we doing with everything in between?
Paul wants us to grab onto something other than our checkbooks and retirement portfolios. I suspect that he would argue that people who seek to maximize their worldly worth, so as to not get underwater with overextended or sub-prime mortgages, are probably deeply submerged in the spiritual accounts mortgaged beyond all possibility in matters of spirituality.
That was probably the case with the rich man in Jesus’ parable (Luke 16:19-31). He may have had sumptuous Michelin five-star feasts and designer label purple linen clothes, but he was bankrupt in his spiritual portfolio. He wound up in the spiritual debtor’s prison with no way out.
“We didn’t bring anything into the world and so we can’t take anything out of it.”
Too often both the Timothy excerpt and the parable recorded by Luke have been used as cheap shots to condemn people with wealth or as sop for the poor urging upon them a pale future hope of eternal life.
Paul, in his words to Timothy, wanted to provide the basis for believers to shape the way they relate to others and to world. Paul wants Christ’s followers to cling to Christ first and foremost. He tells his readers to take hold of eternal life. This isn’t a futuristic goal, something we get for having behaved in our time on earth. Recent scholarship suggests that Paul was less future oriented and more concerned with the present than has been assumed.
When Paul wants believers to grab eternal life, he means now, in the ways that they live out their faith in Christ. We have no say in what happened before we were born (“we didn’t bring anything into the world”) and we won’t have any say about what happens after we are gone (“we can’t take anything out of it”). So the only effect we can have on the world, the only prospect we have making a difference, the only opportunity of being faithful, is while we are in the world. Eternity is now. “Now is the time! Here comes God’s kingdom! Change your hearts and lives, and trust this good news!” (Mark 1:15).
Eternity happened when the “Word became flesh” (John 1:14). Christ’s coming not only interrupts present time with the eternal, but also converts it and creates new life. That changes how we look at life. As Jesus said so often, “You have heard that it was said, .... But I say to you.” The blind see, the lame walk, the deaf hear: sometimes literally, always spiritually.
Paul again gives the commandment to seize, to grab, to lay hold of, as he concludes his admonition to Timothy. “Tell people who are rich . . . to do good, to be rich in the good things they do, to be generous, and to share with others. When they do these things, they will save a treasure for themselves that is a good foundation for the future. That way they can take hold of what is truly life” (vv. 17-19). By this statement Paul sets up a contrast between real life and destructive life. Paul sees that the pursuit of riches – for riches’ sake – is the destructive life.
As he said earlier, “People who are trying to get rich fall into temptation. They are trapped by many stupid and harmful passions that plunge people into ruin and destruction” (v. 9). Paul’s grammar suggests that the damage he speaks of is not just the self-inflicted damage of the people who pursue riches, but also the damage they do to the people who are destroyed in the pursuit of those riches.
That is a very subtle distinction. And it is one that brings us all up short. Even those of us who perceive ourselves to be relatively poor are caught in the complicity of it. We want cheap electricity, for example, and we are willing to let miners get black lung disease to feed our electric meters. We want the freedom to drive anywhere at 60 or 70 mph, and we are willing to risk destroying coast lands for off-shore drilling, risk contaminating ground water through hydraulic fracturing, or make enemies of Islamic people, all because of our greed for petroleum. We want inexpensive clothing made for slave’s wages in fire-trap factories. We want low priced food laced with pesticides that cause chronic diseases in underpaid and uninsured migrant workers. We want. We want. We want.
The real life which Paul affirms is “richly provided” by God. It is not about us and our cravings for latest and newest, bigger and better, winners and losers. It is about a fullness of life that is to be shared, to be given and not taken. When we orient our lives around God, when we understand that we are but a single atom in the whole molecule of God-created life, then we can begin to scent out real life, true life, eternal life – all in the here and now. Focusing on God allows us to see what is temporary as well as what destroys ourselves and others.
Orienting around God is but a start. Unless we are careful, we will develop practices and rituals which will take the place of God, and start a new cycle of destructive life. Only as we keep giving away does the fountain of living faith, the well of living water, keep flowing.
“We didn’t bring anything into the world and so we can’t take anything out of it.”
We are not called to worship the sign of the dollar or even the sign of the church. We are called to worship the one whose sign is the cross.
Sunday, September 29, 2013
Monday, September 16, 2013
Functional Atheism
Psalm 14; Luke 15:1-10; Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28
I always find the opening to Psalm 14 abrupt. It certainly is to the point: “Fools say in their hearts, There is no God.” It has a near twin, Psalm 53 which may have come through a remembered source originating in Northern Kingdom, while Psalm 14 may have been edited in Judah.
Although this psalm is rooted in a particular time, attributed to David, it is a timeless psalm. So many psalms are personal, about the one who sang or prayed them, about situations in the singer’s life. This psalm speaks corporately, about the nation. That adds to its timeless quality.
The first part of Psalm 14 is a deep-sighed lament for the total corruption of human beings.: “Fools say in their hearts, there is no God.” This verse has been used often to define atheism. Don McKim writes that in the Old Testament, the fool is not only one with no sense, but also the one who resolutely rejects the highest “wisdom” of all, which is the fear and obedience of God. The fool is the one who disregards God, convinced that God does not matter in life. Fools have closed their minds to God and all of God’s instructions.(1) They do not define God as nonexistent. They shut God out from their life. The fool, nabal in Hebrew, is not the simpleton or a gullible fool. Rather, the fool may be too smart for his or her own good. The fool’s mind is hardened to God and not open to instruction.
Isaiah contrasts righteous rulers with fools in chapter 32. “See here: A king rules to promote righteousness; rulers govern to promote justice, each like a shelter from the wind and a refuge from a storm. ... Fools speak folly; their minds devise wickedness, acting irreverently, speaking falsely of the Lord” (Isaiah 32:1-2, 6).
The fool is the one who says “there is no God” in order to justify their own existence and their own hand in it. If they could figure out how to be self-generated, without benefit of parents or parental rearing, they would be inwardly delighted. Because fools are self-made and responsible to no one other than themselves, they always have the answers, always know how to fix what is wrong in everyone else. They are full of negatives for everyone else, because the only positive is themselves.
The negative is used twice in the opening verse of the psalm: “There is no God,” and “not one of them does anything good.” In verse 2, “No one does good — not even one person!” the psalmist puts the exclamation point on his assertion. Fools don’t waste time debating whether God exists. They dismiss the possibility that God might have any relevance to the present or future. If God did exist, then God is the watchmaker God who started everything off and then left creation to its own devices.
Paul Froese and Christopher Bader, in their book, America’s Four Gods, note that nearly 40 percent of all American’s believe in a disengaged God.(2) Two-fifths of those believe that while God may not be actively involved with the world, God will still zap people for not getting life right. The remaining three-fifths believe that God is not only not involved, but also doesn’t care.
There appear to be two options for the people who believe in a disengaged God. People may live with impunity – it doesn’t matter what they do, they can get away with anything because God won’t judge them. Or people may be so sensitive to the lack of what they perceive as a caring God, that they attempt, not in so many words, to become the missing God and do everything that is needful and right for the world. This is perhaps because they think that God will judge them or perhaps because of some innate, non-divinely planted, sense of right and wrong. Both approaches are utter foolishness because both approaches dismiss God’s relevance.
For the last two decades physicist Richard Dawkins has been the champion of intellectual atheism. The psalmist is not decrying a cognitive approach to atheism. The psalmist is addressing the soul. The comments about fools and their behavior is a moral assessment, not an intellectual one. Psalm 14 addresses “practical atheism” rather than “philosophical atheism.”(3)
The psalmist rails against the behaviors of the fools. “They are corrupt and do evil things; ... all these evildoers, devouring my people like they are eating bread but never calling on the Lord. ... [They] humiliate the plans of those who suffer” (vv. 1, 4, 6).
The folly of fools, according to the psalmist is that they deny God’s concern for those whom they exploit. They believe and act with impunity because “there is no God” to hold them accountable for their corruption or to defend the interests of the oppressed. There is no place for intellectual debates about the existence of God. The psalmist’s concern is real-life questions of oppression and resistance. The chief theological question in the psalmist’s poem is “justice, not belief, the chief error is oppression not secularism.” The folly which the psalm attacks is “the folly of the social injustice that cuts the oppressor off from God.”(4)
This folly denies the God-image in the person who is the fool. This folly denies any God-given worth in the other person. Think about the way the pompous rich man ignored poor Lazarus at his gate until death exchanged the circumstances of each (Luke 16:19-31). Folly is thinking that no one has any responsibility for anyone except him- or herself.
Think about the rich man who grew so many crops that he had to tear down his too-small barns and build bigger ones. Only he didn’t live to see the benefit (Luke 12:16-21). Perhaps some of his storage problem could have been solved by sharing the grain with those not as fortunate as he was.
Think about all the well-to-do people strutting by the Temple collection box dropping in huge amounts of spare change while a poor woman quietly puts in two of the smallest coins of the realm (Luke 21:1-4). The rich expect to be thanked and lauded. The poor woman just gratefully wants to do her part.
All this folly is often cloaked in the garb of religion. These people worship the rites and rituals but not the righteous God. They claim God for themselves and only do lip service to God for others, unless it is on their own terms. This is functional atheism. It passes for faith but is a hollow shell.
Fools did not pass out of existence after the psalmist’s scathing rebuke of them. Like the proverbial poor, fools are always with us. They are the people who would deny supplement nutrition assistance to one group of neighbors while subsidizing agribusiness. Fools are the people who jack up the price of health care so that only the insured can afford to be healthy.
Dwight Eisenhower was a man of very quiet, personal faith. He spoke against foolishness nearly 60 years ago when he said, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”
Yet in the midst of “corrupt” men and women who disregard God, the “righteous” pray for deliverance and restoration. “God is with the righteous generation.” Salvation will “come out of Zion,” from God. Hope is fixed on God. The relentless, recurring theme of scripture is that salvation comes from God, comes as a gift to the people and causes the people to rejoice. Even in the midst of fools who disavow God in action if not in words, God will deliver the righteous. God delivered Christ from the foolishness of Pharisees, Sadducees, Romans, and others. God delivered him along with sinners and tax collectors, Samaritans and Gentiles, those who were lost or left out, and those who were dismissed by the fools as unworthy of God’s love and grace.
Our hope is grounded in God’s work, so that the pervasive presence of God will cause all foolishness to cease and divine and human joy to unite to the glory of God.
(1) Donald K. McKim, “Psalm 14 - Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 4, ed. David Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 56.
(2) Paul Froese and Christopher Bader, America’s Four Gods: What We Say about God — and What That Says about Us (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), Kindle Locations 462-468, 476-479.
(3) J. Clinton McCann Jr., “The Book of Psalms” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 4, ed. Leander Keck (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), 729.
(4) J. David Pleins, The Psalms: Songs of Tragedy, Hope, and Justice (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1993), 173.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com
Copyright 2013 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
I always find the opening to Psalm 14 abrupt. It certainly is to the point: “Fools say in their hearts, There is no God.” It has a near twin, Psalm 53 which may have come through a remembered source originating in Northern Kingdom, while Psalm 14 may have been edited in Judah.
Although this psalm is rooted in a particular time, attributed to David, it is a timeless psalm. So many psalms are personal, about the one who sang or prayed them, about situations in the singer’s life. This psalm speaks corporately, about the nation. That adds to its timeless quality.
The first part of Psalm 14 is a deep-sighed lament for the total corruption of human beings.: “Fools say in their hearts, there is no God.” This verse has been used often to define atheism. Don McKim writes that in the Old Testament, the fool is not only one with no sense, but also the one who resolutely rejects the highest “wisdom” of all, which is the fear and obedience of God. The fool is the one who disregards God, convinced that God does not matter in life. Fools have closed their minds to God and all of God’s instructions.(1) They do not define God as nonexistent. They shut God out from their life. The fool, nabal in Hebrew, is not the simpleton or a gullible fool. Rather, the fool may be too smart for his or her own good. The fool’s mind is hardened to God and not open to instruction.
Isaiah contrasts righteous rulers with fools in chapter 32. “See here: A king rules to promote righteousness; rulers govern to promote justice, each like a shelter from the wind and a refuge from a storm. ... Fools speak folly; their minds devise wickedness, acting irreverently, speaking falsely of the Lord” (Isaiah 32:1-2, 6).
The fool is the one who says “there is no God” in order to justify their own existence and their own hand in it. If they could figure out how to be self-generated, without benefit of parents or parental rearing, they would be inwardly delighted. Because fools are self-made and responsible to no one other than themselves, they always have the answers, always know how to fix what is wrong in everyone else. They are full of negatives for everyone else, because the only positive is themselves.
The negative is used twice in the opening verse of the psalm: “There is no God,” and “not one of them does anything good.” In verse 2, “No one does good — not even one person!” the psalmist puts the exclamation point on his assertion. Fools don’t waste time debating whether God exists. They dismiss the possibility that God might have any relevance to the present or future. If God did exist, then God is the watchmaker God who started everything off and then left creation to its own devices.
Paul Froese and Christopher Bader, in their book, America’s Four Gods, note that nearly 40 percent of all American’s believe in a disengaged God.(2) Two-fifths of those believe that while God may not be actively involved with the world, God will still zap people for not getting life right. The remaining three-fifths believe that God is not only not involved, but also doesn’t care.
There appear to be two options for the people who believe in a disengaged God. People may live with impunity – it doesn’t matter what they do, they can get away with anything because God won’t judge them. Or people may be so sensitive to the lack of what they perceive as a caring God, that they attempt, not in so many words, to become the missing God and do everything that is needful and right for the world. This is perhaps because they think that God will judge them or perhaps because of some innate, non-divinely planted, sense of right and wrong. Both approaches are utter foolishness because both approaches dismiss God’s relevance.
For the last two decades physicist Richard Dawkins has been the champion of intellectual atheism. The psalmist is not decrying a cognitive approach to atheism. The psalmist is addressing the soul. The comments about fools and their behavior is a moral assessment, not an intellectual one. Psalm 14 addresses “practical atheism” rather than “philosophical atheism.”(3)
The psalmist rails against the behaviors of the fools. “They are corrupt and do evil things; ... all these evildoers, devouring my people like they are eating bread but never calling on the Lord. ... [They] humiliate the plans of those who suffer” (vv. 1, 4, 6).
The folly of fools, according to the psalmist is that they deny God’s concern for those whom they exploit. They believe and act with impunity because “there is no God” to hold them accountable for their corruption or to defend the interests of the oppressed. There is no place for intellectual debates about the existence of God. The psalmist’s concern is real-life questions of oppression and resistance. The chief theological question in the psalmist’s poem is “justice, not belief, the chief error is oppression not secularism.” The folly which the psalm attacks is “the folly of the social injustice that cuts the oppressor off from God.”(4)
This folly denies the God-image in the person who is the fool. This folly denies any God-given worth in the other person. Think about the way the pompous rich man ignored poor Lazarus at his gate until death exchanged the circumstances of each (Luke 16:19-31). Folly is thinking that no one has any responsibility for anyone except him- or herself.
Think about the rich man who grew so many crops that he had to tear down his too-small barns and build bigger ones. Only he didn’t live to see the benefit (Luke 12:16-21). Perhaps some of his storage problem could have been solved by sharing the grain with those not as fortunate as he was.
Think about all the well-to-do people strutting by the Temple collection box dropping in huge amounts of spare change while a poor woman quietly puts in two of the smallest coins of the realm (Luke 21:1-4). The rich expect to be thanked and lauded. The poor woman just gratefully wants to do her part.
All this folly is often cloaked in the garb of religion. These people worship the rites and rituals but not the righteous God. They claim God for themselves and only do lip service to God for others, unless it is on their own terms. This is functional atheism. It passes for faith but is a hollow shell.
Fools did not pass out of existence after the psalmist’s scathing rebuke of them. Like the proverbial poor, fools are always with us. They are the people who would deny supplement nutrition assistance to one group of neighbors while subsidizing agribusiness. Fools are the people who jack up the price of health care so that only the insured can afford to be healthy.
Dwight Eisenhower was a man of very quiet, personal faith. He spoke against foolishness nearly 60 years ago when he said, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”
Yet in the midst of “corrupt” men and women who disregard God, the “righteous” pray for deliverance and restoration. “God is with the righteous generation.” Salvation will “come out of Zion,” from God. Hope is fixed on God. The relentless, recurring theme of scripture is that salvation comes from God, comes as a gift to the people and causes the people to rejoice. Even in the midst of fools who disavow God in action if not in words, God will deliver the righteous. God delivered Christ from the foolishness of Pharisees, Sadducees, Romans, and others. God delivered him along with sinners and tax collectors, Samaritans and Gentiles, those who were lost or left out, and those who were dismissed by the fools as unworthy of God’s love and grace.
Our hope is grounded in God’s work, so that the pervasive presence of God will cause all foolishness to cease and divine and human joy to unite to the glory of God.
(1) Donald K. McKim, “Psalm 14 - Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 4, ed. David Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 56.
(2) Paul Froese and Christopher Bader, America’s Four Gods: What We Say about God — and What That Says about Us (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), Kindle Locations 462-468, 476-479.
(3) J. Clinton McCann Jr., “The Book of Psalms” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 4, ed. Leander Keck (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), 729.
(4) J. David Pleins, The Psalms: Songs of Tragedy, Hope, and Justice (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1993), 173.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com
Copyright 2013 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
Sunday, September 8, 2013
Silly Putty or Vitreous China
Jeremiah 18:1-17; Philemon 4-16; Luke 14:25-33
Do any of you know what “vitreous china” is? That’s a technical description of a material which is made into products we used every day. The dictionary defines vitreous this way: “of the nature of or resembling glass, as in transparency, brittleness, hardness, glossiness, etc.” Perhaps you will better know it if I use the word porcelain. I am referring particularly to toilet fixtures. The main part of a toilet is actually more complex than it appears. A variety of parts are molded into shape and put together like a puzzle. Then the completed unit is fired in a large kiln until the material turns into a single unit. An enamel coating is applied and the piece is fired again to create the glassy-finished product we all take for granted until it stops up. The end product is strong and durable under normal use. The ceramic finish makes vitreous china the perfect material for use in bathroom fixtures, as it is impervious to water or harsh chemicals and is easily cleansed of germs.
I suspect that nearly everyone is familiar with Silly Putty. It was originally created by accident during research into potential rubber substitutes for use by the United States in World War II. Silly Putty is a toy based on silicone polymers which display unusual physical properties. It bounces, but breaks when given a sharp blow and can also flow like a liquid. It will act as an elastic solid over a short time period but as a viscous liquid over a long time period. You can shape it into something, but if left alone, it will eventually conform to the shape of the container it is in. Hence the egg-shaped packaging.
These two substances, vitreous china and Silly Putty, are very different in their nature and in their uses. The image that God gives to the prophet Jeremiah is a whole lot closer to Silly Putty than it is to vitreous china.
Clay is not the easiest medium to work in. There are many different kinds of clay based on the minerals in the compound. Depending on the intended use and the potter’s desired technique, one clay will perform better than another. Clays of different kinds are found in specific places.
The potter that Jeremiah visited evidently was having some difficulty with the clay he was working. “The piece he was making was flawed while still in his hands, so the potter started on another, as seemed best to him.” What God tells Jeremiah is, it is my prerogative to do the same thing with the House of Israel. If the clay, the people, won’t form right, probably because of impurities in it, then God will reform it, perhaps even use a different lump of clay. That’s what God says, “I am a potter preparing a disaster for you.” The inadequate, unworkable lump of clay which Israel has been, will be tossed aside in favor of a lump of clay which can be formed into a useful vessel.
God says, “Turn from your evil ways; reform your ways and your actions.” But the reaction that God got was, “What’s the use! We will follow our own plans and act according to our own willful, evil hearts.”
The House of Israel, like people in general, resented being formed, or worse, re-formed. People don’t want to be molded, pushed or prodded into a particular shape or purpose. We are very happy, thank you very much, being just the way we are. In other words, we want to be vitreous china rather than Silly Putty. We want to be in a fixed shape. We don’t want to be elastic, we don’t want to shaped, crushed, reshaped. We want to choose our form, our shape, our purpose.
And where does that get us? Consider God’s accusations against Israel:
The LORD proclaims:
Ask among the nations:
Have you ever heard anything like this?
Virgin Israel has done the most horrible thing.
Does the snow on the mountains of Lebanon ever melt entirely off their rocky cliffs?
Do the cool mountain streams ever dry up?
(Those are rhetorical questions with the expected answer, “Of course not. We would remember if the snow ever melted or the streams dried up. The prophet continues:)
Yet my people have forgotten me;
they have offered sacrifices to a lie.
And so they have stumbled along the way,
even along the ancient paths.
They have taken side roads,
not the main roads.
They have ruined their country
and brought utter shame on it.
Even though God created them, the people of Israel refused to be the clay that God could form into a reverently worshiping, compassionately serving, justice rendering people.
It was role reversal. The people were trying form God into what they wanted God to be. They wanted a God who would let them do whatever they wanted to do. They wanted a God who would allow them to put their thumbs on the scale, to short the change, to bait and switch the goods, so that they could get ahead of everyone else, even their own kinfolk.
Plain and simple, they wanted to be the potter, not the clay. And it wasn’t just God that they wanted to form and reform, but everyone else as well.
Isn’t that the usual human attitude. “There is nothing wrong with me, but you are all messed up. And I can fix you. I know what is right for you. I can tell you what you need.”
And conversely, “Don’t you tell me what to do. Keep you hands off of me. You don’t know a thing about me. Just leave me alone.”
We are forever attempting to usurp God’s potter role. We are going to remold everyone else. It would be bad enough if there were only a few people who were trying to reshape, reform the rest of us. But we are all guilty of it some extent. So it is like a chain reaction pile up on an Interstate highway. One big mess.
Through the experience of being with the Apostle Paul the runaway slave Onesimus was reformed by the working of the Holy Spirit. He was now a brother in Christ, to Paul, to the other believers in Paul’s traveling group, and to Philemon, who also had come to know Christ through Paul’s ministry. Paul is very clear to Philemon that he shouldn’t undo what God had done in Onesimus’ coming into a relationship with Christ. Philemon was not Onesimus’ potter, God was.
Jesus said to the crowd, “Whoever comes to me and doesn’t hate father and mother, spouse and children, and brothers and sisters — yes, even one’s own life — cannot be my disciple.” A relationship with Christ reshapes each of us. We can no longer be in the fixed vitreous china relationships with others that we once were. God remolds us into a disciple shape. God reforms us into new attitudes and understandings about God, others, and ourselves. “Whoever doesn’t carry their own cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”
God desires to reshape us into a cross-carrying disciple. And God is willing to do it however many times it takes. God would rather reform us as if we were Silly Putty rather than have to take us in the form of vitreous china, smash us to smithereens, and cast the useless pieces aside. Will you be formable in God’s hands?
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com
Copyright 2013 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
Do any of you know what “vitreous china” is? That’s a technical description of a material which is made into products we used every day. The dictionary defines vitreous this way: “of the nature of or resembling glass, as in transparency, brittleness, hardness, glossiness, etc.” Perhaps you will better know it if I use the word porcelain. I am referring particularly to toilet fixtures. The main part of a toilet is actually more complex than it appears. A variety of parts are molded into shape and put together like a puzzle. Then the completed unit is fired in a large kiln until the material turns into a single unit. An enamel coating is applied and the piece is fired again to create the glassy-finished product we all take for granted until it stops up. The end product is strong and durable under normal use. The ceramic finish makes vitreous china the perfect material for use in bathroom fixtures, as it is impervious to water or harsh chemicals and is easily cleansed of germs.
I suspect that nearly everyone is familiar with Silly Putty. It was originally created by accident during research into potential rubber substitutes for use by the United States in World War II. Silly Putty is a toy based on silicone polymers which display unusual physical properties. It bounces, but breaks when given a sharp blow and can also flow like a liquid. It will act as an elastic solid over a short time period but as a viscous liquid over a long time period. You can shape it into something, but if left alone, it will eventually conform to the shape of the container it is in. Hence the egg-shaped packaging.
These two substances, vitreous china and Silly Putty, are very different in their nature and in their uses. The image that God gives to the prophet Jeremiah is a whole lot closer to Silly Putty than it is to vitreous china.
Clay is not the easiest medium to work in. There are many different kinds of clay based on the minerals in the compound. Depending on the intended use and the potter’s desired technique, one clay will perform better than another. Clays of different kinds are found in specific places.
The potter that Jeremiah visited evidently was having some difficulty with the clay he was working. “The piece he was making was flawed while still in his hands, so the potter started on another, as seemed best to him.” What God tells Jeremiah is, it is my prerogative to do the same thing with the House of Israel. If the clay, the people, won’t form right, probably because of impurities in it, then God will reform it, perhaps even use a different lump of clay. That’s what God says, “I am a potter preparing a disaster for you.” The inadequate, unworkable lump of clay which Israel has been, will be tossed aside in favor of a lump of clay which can be formed into a useful vessel.
God says, “Turn from your evil ways; reform your ways and your actions.” But the reaction that God got was, “What’s the use! We will follow our own plans and act according to our own willful, evil hearts.”
The House of Israel, like people in general, resented being formed, or worse, re-formed. People don’t want to be molded, pushed or prodded into a particular shape or purpose. We are very happy, thank you very much, being just the way we are. In other words, we want to be vitreous china rather than Silly Putty. We want to be in a fixed shape. We don’t want to be elastic, we don’t want to shaped, crushed, reshaped. We want to choose our form, our shape, our purpose.
And where does that get us? Consider God’s accusations against Israel:
The LORD proclaims:
Ask among the nations:
Have you ever heard anything like this?
Virgin Israel has done the most horrible thing.
Does the snow on the mountains of Lebanon ever melt entirely off their rocky cliffs?
Do the cool mountain streams ever dry up?
(Those are rhetorical questions with the expected answer, “Of course not. We would remember if the snow ever melted or the streams dried up. The prophet continues:)
Yet my people have forgotten me;
they have offered sacrifices to a lie.
And so they have stumbled along the way,
even along the ancient paths.
They have taken side roads,
not the main roads.
They have ruined their country
and brought utter shame on it.
Even though God created them, the people of Israel refused to be the clay that God could form into a reverently worshiping, compassionately serving, justice rendering people.
It was role reversal. The people were trying form God into what they wanted God to be. They wanted a God who would let them do whatever they wanted to do. They wanted a God who would allow them to put their thumbs on the scale, to short the change, to bait and switch the goods, so that they could get ahead of everyone else, even their own kinfolk.
Plain and simple, they wanted to be the potter, not the clay. And it wasn’t just God that they wanted to form and reform, but everyone else as well.
Isn’t that the usual human attitude. “There is nothing wrong with me, but you are all messed up. And I can fix you. I know what is right for you. I can tell you what you need.”
And conversely, “Don’t you tell me what to do. Keep you hands off of me. You don’t know a thing about me. Just leave me alone.”
We are forever attempting to usurp God’s potter role. We are going to remold everyone else. It would be bad enough if there were only a few people who were trying to reshape, reform the rest of us. But we are all guilty of it some extent. So it is like a chain reaction pile up on an Interstate highway. One big mess.
Through the experience of being with the Apostle Paul the runaway slave Onesimus was reformed by the working of the Holy Spirit. He was now a brother in Christ, to Paul, to the other believers in Paul’s traveling group, and to Philemon, who also had come to know Christ through Paul’s ministry. Paul is very clear to Philemon that he shouldn’t undo what God had done in Onesimus’ coming into a relationship with Christ. Philemon was not Onesimus’ potter, God was.
Jesus said to the crowd, “Whoever comes to me and doesn’t hate father and mother, spouse and children, and brothers and sisters — yes, even one’s own life — cannot be my disciple.” A relationship with Christ reshapes each of us. We can no longer be in the fixed vitreous china relationships with others that we once were. God remolds us into a disciple shape. God reforms us into new attitudes and understandings about God, others, and ourselves. “Whoever doesn’t carry their own cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”
God desires to reshape us into a cross-carrying disciple. And God is willing to do it however many times it takes. God would rather reform us as if we were Silly Putty rather than have to take us in the form of vitreous china, smash us to smithereens, and cast the useless pieces aside. Will you be formable in God’s hands?
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com
Copyright 2013 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
Sunday, September 1, 2013
Better a Debtor
Better a Debtor?
Luke 14:1, 7-14; Jeremiah 2:4-13; Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
Last week, one of our neighboring Presbyterian churches, the McArthur Church, celebrated the commissioning of ruling elder Christine Burns to pastoral service for the congregation. Christine is a member of the nearby Wilkesville Church. The McArthur Church is half of the Vinton Area Ministry. The other half is the McArthur Trinity Episcopal Church. For many years my dear friend and colleague, Kay Puckett, pastored both churches and she had permission from the Episcopal bishop to celebrate communion. After she retired about a dozen years ago, two Episcopalian deacons served the church and the presbytery granted them permission to celebrate communion.
During that time the bishop visited the Trinity Church and a couple of retired Presbyterian colleagues were there. As a courtesy, they were invited to join the procession. In fact, they got to be the first ones to go down the aisle. One of the them thought that was really something. Sometime later it was revealed to them that in an Episcopal procession, the least important people lead the procession and the most important person comes last, namely the bishop. There’s a twist on the first shall be last and the last shall be first.
Unfortunately this passage has been over-used, if not abused, in trying to put people in their place. Lots of inferiority complexes and undue humility have roots from here. That said, it is true that there are people who need to be lowered a peg or two in their self-estimation. There are people for whom the world is not big enough for their egos. Jesus was addressing his remarks to them. His hearers likely agreed with him and began to name some candidates, all the while missing his true inference.
I knew a colleague who got a letter from Who’s Who, and was all thrilled and honored. Then he found out the price of the book and the plaque. He had second thoughts about the price of fame.
When Jesus says, “Those who make themselves low will be lifted up,” I can’t help but think of Jesus’ own example. Paul’s Christological hymn in his Letter to the Philippians (2:7) says:
. . . he emptied himself
by taking the form of a slave.
That self-emptying is important. Jesus was able to do what the rich young man could not, what many others could not. He didn’t have wealth to give away, but he gave up grandiose thoughts about himself. He gave up the notion that he was the center of the universe and that the world owed him. He gave up the idea that he mattered more than anyone else. He let go of any potential claims he might have had upon anyone. He emptied himself of everything that kept him away from God.
Ron Byars notes that the Apostles’ Creed leaps from “born of the Virgin Mary” to “suffered under Pontius Pilate.”(1) The earliest creed makes no mention of anything that Jesus did in the three years that he roamed Galilee, Judea, and Jerusalem. Everything Jesus did was displayed for all the world to see through the cross and the resurrection. He humbled himself. He was exalted, not by his own effort, but by the grace, the will, the pleasure of God. The lowest shall become the highest. The least born shall become the first born.
We all have highborn ideas, attitudes, and expectations that drive us to the places of honor. We have desires, yearnings, misconceptions, and misinformation that lead us to claim honor out of proportion to the ranking that God has determined is ours. This doesn’t negate who we are. We are who God has created us to be through a unique collection of skills, talents, and gifts. We are who we are, but not more. God wants us to rise to our full potential. But God will be upset with us if we get above our raising, as Appalachian folk describe it.
All that talk about not getting above ourselves is followed by an admonition about giving parties in order to get invited to parties. That saying may be equally difficult for us to wrap our thinking around. Hospitality is a key Biblical tenet. We have the word from the Letter to the Hebrews: “Don’t neglect to open up your homes to guests, because by doing this some have been hosts to angels without knowing it.” That may be a direct reference to Abraham’s entertaining the angels that announced the promised birth of Isaac. But there are numerous other passages where messengers of God — human or angelic — were entertained to the blessing of the household.
We all enjoy the company of family and friends. Some not often enough, others too often. Sharing meals together is a way of spreading out the expense for those of us who are households of one. This week you cook, I’ll cook next week. That makes good sense. It’s an equal exchange. No one gains or loses.
Jesus is talking about people who were social climbers, people who wanted an opportunity to see the inside of the fancy new house on the hill, or to taste the haute cuisine of someone’s new chef, or to rub shoulders with somebody important who is an acquaintance of the brother-in-law of your wife’s stepmother’s cousin twice removed. Remember the flap several years ago when a socialite couple crashed a party at the White House? Most people don’t crash parties, but they will try to finagle an invitation.
If we play turn about with dinner invitations, it becomes a competitive sport. We get caught up in making sure that we did as much as you did, and we will check to see that you did as much as we did. Someone is going to fall short. Someone’s feelings are going to get hurt. The game will escalate. I have to do better than you, because you did better than I did the last time around.
Jesus did not talk about manners. He was not concerned with what “RSVP” means or which fork is for salad and which is for dessert. Those things have their place, but not in the realm of God’s rule. Jesus wants to reorient the focus of hospitality. Jesus shares his table with people who are not normally invited by hosts with conventional values — “the poor, crippled, lame, and blind.”
Every age has its outcasts. Jesus challenges us to reach across the boundaries of place and time, of class and culture, of race and gender, of education and economics. Jesus calls us to be more aware of those from whom we are more inclined look away or not even see.
The Pharisees were often depicted as people who only ate with their kind. Generally, their relationships with Jesus were antagonistic. They complained because he ate with “tax collectors and sinners”(2). Jesus may be quoting their complaint about him (7:34) when he says: “The Human One came eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunk, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ ”
Yet, Luke (and only Luke) tells us that Jesus ate with Pharisees(3). Maybe he was practicing in reverse what he was preaching. Each time he ate with them there were controversies: about the “sinful” woman who anoints Jesus; about proper ritual washings before eating; and the healing and teachings of today’s reading. Apparently Jesus (the glutton that he was) would eat (and probably drink) with anybody — perhaps even with you and me!(4)
While that thought may evoke a grin, it is absolutely true. Jesus does associate with us. And there is no way that we can ever pay him back. We are forever debtors to God for the life we have had, and the life we will have. Not just the biological life that evokes daily complaints about aches and pains. But also the spiritual life fortified by the Holy Spirit. Unlikely guests that we are, Jesus has invited us to the reign of God — the heavenly banquet. Let us not take the invitation for granted. Let us not wonder about why some are there (they’ll be wondering about us as well). It is better to be debtor to God than have everyone trying to repay us because they want a favor in return.
God invites us. Let us extend the invitation wherever we go. Amen.
(1) Ronald P. Byars, “Luke 14:1, 7-14: Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), Year C, volume 4, 23.
(2) Luke 5:30, 33; 15:2.
(3) Luke 7:36; 11:37; 14:1.
(4) Brian Stoffregen, “Gospel Notes for Next Sunday,” Proper 17 // Lectionary 22 C: Exegetical Notes on Luke 14:1, 7-14, Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 11:49 AM.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com
Copyright 2013 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
Luke 14:1, 7-14; Jeremiah 2:4-13; Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
Last week, one of our neighboring Presbyterian churches, the McArthur Church, celebrated the commissioning of ruling elder Christine Burns to pastoral service for the congregation. Christine is a member of the nearby Wilkesville Church. The McArthur Church is half of the Vinton Area Ministry. The other half is the McArthur Trinity Episcopal Church. For many years my dear friend and colleague, Kay Puckett, pastored both churches and she had permission from the Episcopal bishop to celebrate communion. After she retired about a dozen years ago, two Episcopalian deacons served the church and the presbytery granted them permission to celebrate communion.
During that time the bishop visited the Trinity Church and a couple of retired Presbyterian colleagues were there. As a courtesy, they were invited to join the procession. In fact, they got to be the first ones to go down the aisle. One of the them thought that was really something. Sometime later it was revealed to them that in an Episcopal procession, the least important people lead the procession and the most important person comes last, namely the bishop. There’s a twist on the first shall be last and the last shall be first.
Unfortunately this passage has been over-used, if not abused, in trying to put people in their place. Lots of inferiority complexes and undue humility have roots from here. That said, it is true that there are people who need to be lowered a peg or two in their self-estimation. There are people for whom the world is not big enough for their egos. Jesus was addressing his remarks to them. His hearers likely agreed with him and began to name some candidates, all the while missing his true inference.
I knew a colleague who got a letter from Who’s Who, and was all thrilled and honored. Then he found out the price of the book and the plaque. He had second thoughts about the price of fame.
When Jesus says, “Those who make themselves low will be lifted up,” I can’t help but think of Jesus’ own example. Paul’s Christological hymn in his Letter to the Philippians (2:7) says:
. . . he emptied himself
by taking the form of a slave.
That self-emptying is important. Jesus was able to do what the rich young man could not, what many others could not. He didn’t have wealth to give away, but he gave up grandiose thoughts about himself. He gave up the notion that he was the center of the universe and that the world owed him. He gave up the idea that he mattered more than anyone else. He let go of any potential claims he might have had upon anyone. He emptied himself of everything that kept him away from God.
Ron Byars notes that the Apostles’ Creed leaps from “born of the Virgin Mary” to “suffered under Pontius Pilate.”(1) The earliest creed makes no mention of anything that Jesus did in the three years that he roamed Galilee, Judea, and Jerusalem. Everything Jesus did was displayed for all the world to see through the cross and the resurrection. He humbled himself. He was exalted, not by his own effort, but by the grace, the will, the pleasure of God. The lowest shall become the highest. The least born shall become the first born.
We all have highborn ideas, attitudes, and expectations that drive us to the places of honor. We have desires, yearnings, misconceptions, and misinformation that lead us to claim honor out of proportion to the ranking that God has determined is ours. This doesn’t negate who we are. We are who God has created us to be through a unique collection of skills, talents, and gifts. We are who we are, but not more. God wants us to rise to our full potential. But God will be upset with us if we get above our raising, as Appalachian folk describe it.
All that talk about not getting above ourselves is followed by an admonition about giving parties in order to get invited to parties. That saying may be equally difficult for us to wrap our thinking around. Hospitality is a key Biblical tenet. We have the word from the Letter to the Hebrews: “Don’t neglect to open up your homes to guests, because by doing this some have been hosts to angels without knowing it.” That may be a direct reference to Abraham’s entertaining the angels that announced the promised birth of Isaac. But there are numerous other passages where messengers of God — human or angelic — were entertained to the blessing of the household.
We all enjoy the company of family and friends. Some not often enough, others too often. Sharing meals together is a way of spreading out the expense for those of us who are households of one. This week you cook, I’ll cook next week. That makes good sense. It’s an equal exchange. No one gains or loses.
Jesus is talking about people who were social climbers, people who wanted an opportunity to see the inside of the fancy new house on the hill, or to taste the haute cuisine of someone’s new chef, or to rub shoulders with somebody important who is an acquaintance of the brother-in-law of your wife’s stepmother’s cousin twice removed. Remember the flap several years ago when a socialite couple crashed a party at the White House? Most people don’t crash parties, but they will try to finagle an invitation.
If we play turn about with dinner invitations, it becomes a competitive sport. We get caught up in making sure that we did as much as you did, and we will check to see that you did as much as we did. Someone is going to fall short. Someone’s feelings are going to get hurt. The game will escalate. I have to do better than you, because you did better than I did the last time around.
Jesus did not talk about manners. He was not concerned with what “RSVP” means or which fork is for salad and which is for dessert. Those things have their place, but not in the realm of God’s rule. Jesus wants to reorient the focus of hospitality. Jesus shares his table with people who are not normally invited by hosts with conventional values — “the poor, crippled, lame, and blind.”
Every age has its outcasts. Jesus challenges us to reach across the boundaries of place and time, of class and culture, of race and gender, of education and economics. Jesus calls us to be more aware of those from whom we are more inclined look away or not even see.
The Pharisees were often depicted as people who only ate with their kind. Generally, their relationships with Jesus were antagonistic. They complained because he ate with “tax collectors and sinners”(2). Jesus may be quoting their complaint about him (7:34) when he says: “The Human One came eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunk, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ ”
Yet, Luke (and only Luke) tells us that Jesus ate with Pharisees(3). Maybe he was practicing in reverse what he was preaching. Each time he ate with them there were controversies: about the “sinful” woman who anoints Jesus; about proper ritual washings before eating; and the healing and teachings of today’s reading. Apparently Jesus (the glutton that he was) would eat (and probably drink) with anybody — perhaps even with you and me!(4)
While that thought may evoke a grin, it is absolutely true. Jesus does associate with us. And there is no way that we can ever pay him back. We are forever debtors to God for the life we have had, and the life we will have. Not just the biological life that evokes daily complaints about aches and pains. But also the spiritual life fortified by the Holy Spirit. Unlikely guests that we are, Jesus has invited us to the reign of God — the heavenly banquet. Let us not take the invitation for granted. Let us not wonder about why some are there (they’ll be wondering about us as well). It is better to be debtor to God than have everyone trying to repay us because they want a favor in return.
God invites us. Let us extend the invitation wherever we go. Amen.
(1) Ronald P. Byars, “Luke 14:1, 7-14: Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), Year C, volume 4, 23.
(2) Luke 5:30, 33; 15:2.
(3) Luke 7:36; 11:37; 14:1.
(4) Brian Stoffregen, “Gospel Notes for Next Sunday,” Proper 17 // Lectionary 22 C: Exegetical Notes on Luke 14:1, 7-14, Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 11:49 AM.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com
Copyright 2013 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
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