Sunday, June 19, 2011
Sunday Sermon text - Trinity and Creation: Unflattening God
Genesis 1:1-2:4a; (Matthew 28:16-20)
Trinity and Creation: Unflattening God
James Sledge June 19, 2011, Trinity Sunday
On Trinity Sunday I’m reminded of something my favorite Theology professor, Doug Ottati said a number of times. “Functionally, most of us are Unitarians.” He wasn’t talking about what we “believe,” but how we actually conceive of God. We may sing “God in three persons, blessed Trinity,” we tend to reduce God to one of those persons.
Since it’s a trinity, there are at least three possibilities. Some folks become Unitarians of the Spirit. Quakers tend in this direction. For such folks, God is conceived as Spirit.
Others go with a Unitarianism of the Son. For them, God is Jesus. Their prayers are addressed to Jesus, and his name is invoked repeatedly in these prayers.
But among Presbyterians, and probably most mainline Protestants, the hands-down favorite is Unitarianism of the Father. God is Father. Some pray to “ Father God.” It isn’t that Jesus or the Spirit are discounted. They are important, but they are junior partners. The Father is God and, Jesus and the Spirit are derivative in some way.
This Unitarian tendency is understandable. The Trinity is profoundly unpictureable. But I think this is the Trinity’s true genius.
It insists on a God beyond our ability to fully picture or understand, a God who will not easily be manipulated or managed for our own purposes.One of the fundamental problems with religion is that it wants to manage God and God’s blessings. Religion tells you what you need to do or believe in order to get on God’s good side, to be saved, to get rich, to go to heaven, and so on. But this attempt to manage God requires flattening God into something manageable. It requires reducing God to something more like us, who conforms to our ideas and ways of seeing the world.
This flattening, managing tendency impacts how people handle passages such as the Creation account we heard this morning. Some hear straightforward history and science. Others hear a mythic description of the grand ordering of the cosmos. But in both cases, the story is often slotted into preconceived notions about God and flattened so that it fits whatever religious management strategies we prefer. Rarely is the story allowed to do its deep, theological work of opening us to a God who is, finally, beyond our conception.
The opening of Genesis is epic poetry, liturgy and praise, having more in common with the Psalms than with history, science, myth or philosophy. And contrary to religious management tendencies that imagine it written for our use, it is addressed to Hebrew exiles in Babylon, at a moment of extreme crisis. The promises of Yahweh their God seem to have failed. The Babylonian gods have proved mightier. Jerusalem and God’s Temple lay in ruins; God’s chosen people are captives. Their very survival as a people is threatened, and their understandings of their God and their relationship to that God have been shattered.
In the midst of this crisis, the Israelites care nothing of how long it took for the world to be created, how old it is, or how it is ordered or structured. What they need is a new and expanded understanding of God, of God’s relationship to Creation and to them.
The poem seeks to provide that. And while it shares elements common to the creation myths of Babylon and other Near Eastern peoples, those elements are dramatically recast to give a remarkable, new picture of God. This God looks vastly different from typical, Near Eastern gods resembling human rulers and potentates. This God does not need Creation or feed on its produce. This God is no local deity, but a God who speaks into being the vast cosmos that is the object of God’s care and delight. Over and over the poem repeats the refrain, And God saw that it was good. The “good” here is not a utilitarian good. This is an aesthetic good. God saw that it was grand, glorious, wonderful, beautiful. This wonderful creation abounds with the blessing and fertility God speaks as creation joyfully responds to its Creator.
Finally God creates humans. They are spoken into existence just like the rest of creation, but there is something different here. Humanity bears the image of God. The language is odd, and it gets mangled in translation. Humanity is spoken of in the singular. So God created the human in his image. In the image of God he created him (her, it). But then the poem shifts to the plural. Male and female God created them. Whatever this image of God is about it isn’t about maleness or femaleness. God’s image applies to the human creature. But sexual diversity exists within the creatures.
Over the centuries there has been much debate about where in humanity the image of God resides; reason, language, and self-awareness are all suggested. But the poem speaks of none of these, only of dominion over the earth, authority over all God has spoken into being.
And here those religious management tendencies kick in. People imagine creation as ours to do with what we will, to bend to our will, to exploit, little more than a resource at our disposal. But this requires flattening God back into a human looking ruler who exercises dominion and authority as we humans do. But the God pictured in the poem does not coerce or exploit. This God only speaks, calls, and blesses.
And on this Trinity Sunday, we also hear Jesus, God the Son, say, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” But consider the way Jesus exercises authority; a gentle grace that beckons the hungry and thirsty to come to him; a patient grace that invites us to discover our true humanity in the ways he lives and teaches. Here truly is the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep.
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. Here is the Old Testament image for God and for Israel’s kings. God’s exercises dominion and authority as a caring shepherd.
But if God’s understanding of authority is surprising, perhaps the most striking and radical element of the Creation poem is Sabbath. Sabbath evolved into a day of worship and a rule to follow, but here Sabbath is simply about rest. God rests – not because God is tired or worn out, but because things are complete. This God who rules by gracious invitation exhibits no anxieties that creation will spiral out of control. Which would seem to say to us made in God’s image that the world will not come apart if we do not exert maximum effort 24/7. Creation is safely in God’s hands and we are free truly to rest.[1]
Sabbath is a radical idea in our anxious world where endless striving is the preferred way. Sabbath blurs the distinctions between rich and poor, powerful and powerless. In the true rest of Sabbath, no one lords over another; no one competes with another; no one seeks advantage over another. All are at peace because all are at rest.
“Not possible,” we say. And we flatten God back into a manageable deity who fits into our image of how the world should work, a god who plays by the world’s rules, a god who blesses our plans and schemes rather than inviting the world into the wonderful, new possibilities of God’s dominion and authority.
Trinity. God is Spirit. God is Son. God is Father. God is all of these which means that God cannot be reduced to any of these, nor flattened into a generic go we carry around in our pockets to use as we see fit. God is too big, too beyond our grasp, too wonderful; too grand, beautiful, and glorious for us to do anything other than stand in awe, to lose ourselves in worship and praise. And finally, to give thanks that Jesus invites us, and the Spirit fits us, to enter into this unpictureable relationship that is the Trinity.
Thanks be to the Triune God!
[1] See Walter Brueggemann, Genesis, Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982) pp. 35-36.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Spiritual Hiccups - Beware of... Pastors?
In today's gospel reading, Jesus warns his followers, "Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets." In Jesus' day, "scribes" were teachers and experts in the Law. They were esteemed religious and community leaders. And in that sense, they occupied a role not so different from the traditional one many pastors have filled in their communities.
Things are rapidly changing in our culture, but many congregations still expect their pastor to have connections to the Chamber of Commerce, participate in one of the local service clubs, and give invocations at civic events. Given this civic standing of pastors, they were often expected to drive a certain sort of car and to dress in the same attire as other important local business folks.
Change a few words in the above quote from Jesus, and he might be heard talking about pastors. That's a bit unnerving, for a pastor. "Beware of the pastors, who like to walk around in long robes and love to be greeted with respect..."
I suspect that most pastors enter their vocation out of a true sense of calling, seeking to live out their faith. But the call to follow Jesus and work for the kingdom he proclaims is often in tension with other calls, calls to make a living, to provide for a family, to support a congregation and denomination the pastor loves, and so on. Add to these a little natural human ambition and ego, and it can be very difficult to separate God's call from other motives.
Jesus said, "Beware of..." I wonder what he warn us about if he walked our streets today.
Click to learn more about the Daily Lectionary.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Spiritual Hiccups - Risky Faith
It seems to me that many Americans, both those in the Church and those who are "spiritual but not religious," envision a God who is extremely safe. God is sweet and kindly, a source of warmth, blessing and contentment. No wonder so many of us recoil at the line in Psalm 147 a notion found repeatedly in the Bible, "The LORD takes pleasure in those who fear him."
When the disciples receive the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, this wonderful gift emboldens them, grants them amazing powers, and compels them to proclaim the message of Jesus. But the Spirit was not the nice gift of a doting grandfather. This gift would turn their lives upside down and would place them in dire situations where they would have to decide between fulfilling their call or saving their lives.
Many of us think of Jesus as cancelling out all those Old Testament images of a God who tests Abraham by asking him to kill his own son. But Jesus demands that those who follow him give up their own lives. Paul insists that to be in Christ is for the old self to die. And in The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer speaks against the "cheap grace" of a sweet, benign God. Grace is costly, he insists. Its cost is seen in the cross demanded of Jesus. And its cost is seen in Christ's call. "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die."
None of this is to deny or diminish God's grace and providential care. But the biblical God is not to be taken lightly. God's love calls us into a relationship of risky trusting. Our testing may be nothing like Abraham's, but we are tested every day as we must decide whether to follow the path of faithful, trusting discipleship that takes up the cross, or whether we will trust in the safe God of our own devising.
Click to learn more about the Daily Lectionary.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Spiritual Hiccups - Reversal
After she presents Samuel to the priest, she offers a prayer or song, one that seems to be a model for Mary's song/prayer known to many as the Magnificat. The same themes of reversal that Mary sings are found here. The power of the mighty is broken while the feeble are strengthened. Those who were full now struggle to find food while the hungry grow fat.
Jesus also speaks of reversal in his ministry, of the first being last, of sinners and prostitutes going into the kingdom ahead of the devout.
Oddly, despite the Bible regularly trumpeting this theme of reversal, religion seems most often to be focused on the status quo. In virtually every culture history has known, religion ends up a partner in maintaining the status quo. Despite the Bible's words on bringing down the powerful and lifting up the poor and oppressed, religion, including the Christian Church, very often becomes an ally with the rich and powerful, as well as an enemy of the poor and oppressed. Christian theologians once provided religious defenses of slavery. One esteemed theologian from my own Presbyterian seminary was still arguing that the Bible supported slavery years after the Civil War. More recently, the South African practice of apartheid was formally sanctioned by church theology.
It seems that there is a strong conserving tendency in the human creature's innate religiosity. But God's reign does not arrive via conserving, but via radical change, by everything being made new.
Just about every Sunday I pray, "Thy kingdom come..." But often it seems there is an unspoken caveat. "Just keep things pretty much as they are."
Click to learn more about the Daily Lectionary.
Monday, June 13, 2011
Spiritual Hiccups - Passing Down the Faith
Anyone who has paid close attention to life in the Church has likely noticed large numbers of parents who are active in Church but whose children are absent. I have heard some of these parents say that they think faith is a personal choice and they don't want to force it on their children. And so I know of many children still in elementary school who decide for themselves whether or not to "go to church."
Now if this is starting to sound like the self-serving whining of a pastor who wants more children involved in church programing, that's not where I'm going with this. I'm more interested in what this situation says about the faith of their parents. Many of these same parents require their children to participate in sports and other "enrichment" activities. They certainly require their children to attend school. This would seem to suggest that these parents view education and enrichment activities as essential components to leading a productive, fulfilling life. But Christian faith seems not to be so essential.
In her book, Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church, Kenda Dean notes that the vague, banal notions of Christianity uncovered in the "National Study of Youth and Religion" - something the study labeled "moralistic, therapeutic, deism" - were not invented by these young people. They learned to be "almost Christian" in the Church. They got their vague notions of faith from a Church that had watered down the faith over the years to the point that many parents understand it to be less important than youth soccer or piano lessons.
And I must confess that I both grew up in and - even as a pastor - too often still proclaim the message of this vague faith that has little to do with actual life, that matters less to real life than music lessons or Little League. I have to admit that I've been quite comfortable with a faith that is not incarnated into daily living, that is no more than a set of beliefs and notions. I have my own tendency to be "almost Christian," to believe but still be indistinguishable from the culture, with no discernible faith practices that embody the way of living Jesus taught.
A lot of Mainline Protestant congregations worry a lot about Christian Eduction programs for children. We are forever trying out new curriculum and models for the Sunday School hour, as though 45 minutes a week on 2 or 3 Sundays a month for 9 months of the year is going to shape and form people into something other than almost Christians. If anything, it seems that we adults are the ones who need to relearn what it means to be Christian. Maybe then we would be able to sing with the psalmist about one generation lauding God's works to another.
Click to learn more about the Daily Lectionary.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Sunday Sermon text - Body Parts
1 Corinthians 12:3b-13
Body Parts
James Sledge June 12, 2011 – Pentecost
Today is one of the big celebrations on the Church calendar. It is Pentecost, the birthday of the Church, the day the Holy Spirit is given so that Jesus’ followers can begin to be his witnesses in all the world. Of course you would never mistake Pentecost for some of the other celebrations on the Christian calendar. Church attendance swells at Christmas and Easter, but Pentecost, especially on years when it falls in the summer, barely elicits a yawn. This year Pentecost comes at the same time as graduations and the end of the school year. If anything, attendance will likely be down in many congregations.
But despite fewer worshipers, Pentecost does share something in common with Christmas and Easter. Like those high holy days, it tends to be a recollection of something that happened long ago; Jesus’ birth, his resurrection, and today, the gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church. Isn’t it wonderful what happened nearly 2000 years ago? The disciples able to speak in other languages… Amazing. But what does any of that have to do with me or you?
Growing up Presbyterian, I didn’t hear a lot about the Holy Spirit,
except for the Pentecost story. Oh, it was there in the Apostles’ Creed that we said every Sunday. After God the Father who created heaven and earth, and then a lot about Jesus, his birth, trial, death, and resurrection, we finally said, “I believe in the Holy Spirit,” or the Holy Ghost as we said when I was a kid, only making things even more mysterious. So I believed in the Spirit, which the Creed said had something to do with the virgin Mary having a child, but none of that seemed much related to my life, in or out of church.Growing up, I never realized that “the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins,” and so on, were all connected to the Spirit. I was perfectly happy to leave the Holy Spirit to the Pentecostals and other enthusiastic sorts who practiced a less subdued, orderly, and controlled version of faith.
When I went to seminary, my particular school had a number of things they did to keep the school connected with the local congregation. One was to send out teams of students to churches within a reasonable driving distance where we would gather at the church for supper and fellowship on Saturday evening, stay that night with church members, and then lead worship and Christian Education on Sunday. I think we did this three or four times over the course of the school year.
When the team that I was part of began to think about what we would do when we visited these churches, we decided to work with the theme of the Holy Spirit. All of us, it seems, realized that our understanding of the Holy Spirit was a bit fuzzy, and we suspected the people in the congregations we would visit were a lot like us. And so with more than a little trepidation, we started working on a worship service, sermon, class, children’s message, and so on that would address this.
This was over 15 years ago, and so my memory’s a bit hazy. But I do remember that we used the same Scripture I just read from 1 Corinthians. And I recall that when I preached, I decided to test Paul on his contention that no one can say, “ ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.” I told the congregation that we would try it, and then I yelled out “Jesus is Lord!” and waited to see if anything happened. Nothing did, but a number of people in the pews looked a little uncomfortable.
The Holy Spirit makes a lot of Presbyterians uncomfortable. We’re perfectly happy remembering that day almost 2000 years ago when the Holy Spirit stirred things up and empowered frightened disciples to begin proclaiming the good news to complete strangers. But the last thing we want is for a divine wind to rush through here some Sunday morning, spin us around in our seats, and launch us into some new enterprise that we have no idea where it might lead.
But Paul insists that if we have even the most rudimentary faith, the Spirit is at work in us. The Spirit is forming and shaping us into integral parts of the body of Christ. The Spirit is bestowing gifts to each of us. I’m not talking about talents that we are born with; I’m talking about spiritual gifts that allow all of us to do our part. As Paul makes clear, “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit. Not “To some,” but “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”
Imagine for a moment that you are getting ready to attend a dinner party. Some of the folks there will be good friends and others will barely be acquaintances. There’s likely to be a bit of drinking before dinner, and clusters of folks will gather in conversation. Now nothing ruins a dinner party like people getting into a heated argument, so what topics do most people know to avoid in such settings?.. That’s right; religion and politics.
No doubt there are times when adhering to the old adage against discussing religion and politics is probably the way to go. Certainly, trying to win a religious argument at a party is bad form. But from this practice of polite etiquette has arisen the unfortunate notion that religion and faith are private things.
Faith most certainly is a personal thing. But it is not private. Faith, by its very nature, binds us together into one body. The Spirit connects and knits us together, making each of us an essential part of the body. Each of us has a role to play. Each of us had gifts to add, and when we suppress the Spirit’s work in us, we diminish the body.
Anyone in a congregation who has ever tried to recruit Sunday School teachers, elders or deacons, someone to lead a project or program, or someone to sing in the choir has heard people say, “Oh, I could never do that.” At times these objections may be well founded. The choir is probably not the best place for a person who genuinely cannot carry a tune to serve. But many times such objections come with reasons such as, “My faith isn’t strong enough. I don’t know the Bible well enough. I don’t understand the Presbyterian system enough.” Such statements may be real or false modesty, but regardless they seem to proclaim, “The Holy Spirit cannot use me.”
This disdain for the Holy Spirit is aggravated by the notion of faith as a private thing. When people think that faith is about private beliefs, that even though serving at church or in the community may be a nice thing to do but it is not an integral part of faith, it is no wonder they are perfectly content to believe and “go to church.” No wonder they think of teaching, singing in the choir, being part of a mission project, of serving as an elder or deacon as something for other people, for the extra effort sort.
But Paul tells his congregation that if in any small way they have begun to experience Jesus as Lord of their life, if in any small way the seed of faith has begun to grow in them, then the Holy Spirit is at work within them, empowering them, gifting them, equipping them so that together they can do all that is necessary to be the body of Christ. Together, when each of us adds our gifts and does our part, Christ’s presence is made know to the world through us. But when faith turns private and the work of the Spirit is resisted, the body is wounded, injured and dismembered. The Church ceases to be the body of Christ and becomes little more than a gathering of people who share similar beliefs.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that virtually everyone here today has experienced some sort of faith. We’ve all felt ourselves drawn toward Jesus in ways great or small. And so I can say to all of you that God’s Spirit is at work in you. The presence of the risen Christ is touching you right now, seeking to stir you and activate you for the common good. The creative power of the Spirit is at work in you this very moment, equipping you to be an absolutely essential part of the body. And the body is not whole without you.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Spiritual Hiccups - God's Heart
Many of my own spiritual challenges involve moving past this. Drawing close to God, becoming aware of God's presence, resting in God, all require a God who is more than concept. Relating to God in some way would seem to require a certain dynamism on the part of God, and expansiveness that drives God to engage, and even to risk, for the sake of relationship. There has to be something going on in the heart of God.
I have sometimes been jealous of my more evangelical and fundamentalist brothers and sisters, especially of the way the seem to perceive of God so personally. But at the same time I am repelled by the way some of them seem to know a God who seems so preoccupied with damnation and punishment of those who don't get the rules of the relationship figured out just so.
Maybe that is why I was so struck by a line in today's reading from Ezekiel. While it is a section that talks about punishment and the death of the wicked, it also speaks of God's desire for the wicked (and to my mind wicked is a much worse condition than getting your theology wrong) to turn and be spared. "Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, says the Lord GOD?"
It's obviously a rhetorical question that must be answered, "No," but the implications are huge. I assume that if God takes no pleasure in punishing, if God much more desires reconciliation, then it must cost God something to punish. Far from the image some Christians project of a God who cavalierly sends off countless souls to eternal punishment, such a possibility must be gut wrenching for God.
I've long been suspicious that one of my biggest spiritual liabilities is how deeply Greek, philosophical notions of God are embedded in my faith. For those not up on your Greek philosophy, such a God cannot experience anything gut wrenching. Such a God is by nature perfect and thus static and impassive.
But if Jesus is really in some way the image of God, then I'm going to have to go with a God whose gut is churning.
Click to learn more about the Daily Lectionary.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Spiritual Hiccups - The Secret of Life
Brooks connects our current, cultural climate to "baby-boomer theology," and such baby-boomer self absorption often times works its way into to my generation's attempts to be "spiritual." There is much fascination with going inward, deeper into the self. And while I think this a vital component of the spiritual life, it is no end in itself.
One of today's morning psalms, Psalm 147, sings God's praises. It does so by rattling off a long list of the things God does, and almost all of these are directed toward the care and nurture of others. God heals the brokenhearted, lifts up the downtrodden, sends rain to the earth, and feeds the wild animals. Even the negative activity of casting down the wicked is a way of caring for those who are oppressed and exploited. In both Psalm 99 and 147, God's greatness is displayed in God's graciousness and God's love of justice. Throughout the Old Testament, God is revered as one slow to anger, abounding in mercy and steadfast love.
I had a seminary professor who used to speak of the difference between us and God being that we tend to be grasping and constricting. (He would take his open arms and clutch them to his chest.) But God, on the other hand, is always going out from Godself in expansive, self giving love. (He would then spread his arms out as wide as they would go.)
It seems to me that we become most fully human, that the image of God in us becomes most visible, when we discover this "secret" that my professor talked about and David Brooks writes about. Only when life responds to the needs of others, only when it reaches out from self, only when we lose ourselves in our callings, do we find our deepest, truest humanity.
Click to learn more about the Daily Lectionary.
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Laborers Needed
When I speak of a preoccupation with salvation, I don't mean that Jesus doesn't offer such. But too often salvation has been understood to mean nothing more that a status with regard to life after death. And I have no doubt that this is a gross distortion of the biblical notion of salvation. Salvation is more than a promise of something in the future. It is a present quality of life. As the Apostle Paul writes, we become "a new creation" in Christ. Salvation is something lived out now.
I have become increasingly convinced in recent years that much of the Church's malaise is related to its neglecting Jesus' core message of the kingdom. Faith became divorced from much of life, concerned with little but status. In the worst forms of this, life on earth and creation itself become of no importance at all. All that matters is "the life to come."
Fortunately, this is changing. Increasingly churches are recovering the good news that the kingdom has come near, and that we are called to show this approaching new day to the world. But many more need to hear Jesus anew on this. As in Jesus' day, laborers for the kingdom are still hard to come by.
Click to learn more about the Daily Lectionary.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)