What's Our Problem?

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Genesis 2:15-3:7

Just something to say here as a preliminary to the discussion of this story of Eve and the Serpent; the people who wrote this down did not have the same understanding of history that we have today.  We think of history as true if the facts or details are correct.  Back then, probably around 900 BCE, the truth of history was not found in the facts but in what it said about us.  It’s like the difference between a genealogy and family stories.  Genealogies are full of dates and details.  Family stories tell us who we are.  There are certain stories that I will tell my children about their great-grandparents that have nothing to do with dates and details but everything to do with who Benson’s are in character.  The Garden of Eden story of Genesis 2 and 3 is like a family story that tell us about who we are as human beings.  It describes and explains the fundamental human problem.  It isn’t so much about how humanity’s problem with that “S-word” sin began, though that could be part of the intent behind it.  It is more so that the story describes how we are right now, this very moment.  

The person who wrote down Genesis 2 and 3 wants us to know that God created us humans and placed us in His good creation with certain responsibilities.  The Creation is really, really good, “very good” in fact, and we have incredible freedom to explore it, tame it and, indeed, to enjoy it.  God put a limit on our freedom that we have difficulty heeding.  One obvious piece of evidence that we have a problem is the way we use our freedom to exploit the Creation.  No wonder our Creator has placed a limitation on our freedom.  

The limitation?  There’s that one tree in the garden we ought to leave alone because it is the death of us.  It is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Although the fruit looks good, it is far from it.  Paying attention to the word play in the tree’s name, it is not the Tree of the Knowledge of Good or Evil.  It is Good and Evil.  As a result, of eating it we become both good and evil.  Good looks evil, evil looks good, and the two are mixed up in everything we do; indeed, every thought that we have.  Sometimes, we think we are doing the good only to wind up doing evil.  So also, sometimes we have to do what we know is evil hoping that the end result will be good.  That’s the main rationale behind war and the free market economy.  Moreover, if you pay attention while you read the Bible, you will begin to notice that even God often has to do evil when dealing with us so that good will result.  So also, God is very good at taking the evil that we intentionally do, the evil we do wanting evil to result, and using it to bring about the very good; the crucifixion of Jesus being the best example.

So, the key thing that the writer of Genesis 3 wants us to know about ourselves is that at our very cores we have an enmeshing, a melange, of good and evil.  The end result of this enmeshment is a profound wounding of both our relationship to God and to each other.  Instead of the wonder of innocence, we have a persistent sense of shame, nakedness, and so we hide.  With respect to our relationship to God, we are afraid of God and want to hide from him but from even though we don’t have to.  It is impossible for us to seek God and find him because we come up with some pretty bizarre ideas about God and create false images to convince ourselves that God is the problem.  So, it winds up God has to seek us out and confront us as to why we are hiding from him.  Thus, we find that we are unable to accept responsibility for the way we are and for what we do.  We will even point at God and say, “If God is a really loving God, why did he put that tree in the garden.”  Moreover, we want to be God or at least be equal to him.  

This problem also profoundly affects our relationships.  The crown jewel of God’s very good creation, human relationship, which is the image of God in us, is made ugly by our blaming, our efforts to control, profound emotional pain, and guilt and shame.  We are no longer in the garden carrying out our joyful created purpose.  We hurt and we hurt others.  Finally, there’s the brutal reality of death.  

Our problem is a sickness, a disease of the mind as it affects how we know and understand God, ourselves, each other, and the world in which we live.  This sickness profoundly culminates in the harsh reality of death.  Humanity is a mess of brokenness, futility, shame, and death, in fact the whole Creation is this way because humanity, it’s caretaker, is sick to death because we have this Knowledge of Good and Evil rather than Life.

Having said that, there is a deeper question we must ask: What makes us this way?  Why do we eat that damned fruit?  This is where we have to pay careful attention to the conversation between Eve and the Serpent.  First, who is this Serpent?  Well, traditionally people have said that the Serpent is Satan.  Yet, I don’t think the writer of Genesis 3 had a very developed understanding of Satan.  The being we call Satan doesn’t really start to show up in ancient Israelite writings until 500 years later.  That said, the who or what is it?  

Here’s another more likely possibility.  Genesis 3 was most likely developed during the days of King Solomon in the 900’s BCE when there was a Temple and a priesthood with the luxury of time to write.  At that time, the big problem they wrote about in their struggle to be faithful to God was idolatry.  Their dominant God-question (so also ours) was “How do you worship one God when everybody else around you has a bunch of gods?”  Moreover, the worship of those other gods was quite more hedonistically appealing than the worship of Israel’s God who simply required obedience to a code of upright conduct rooted in uprightness, justice, and equity.  Idolatry is the problem the Serpent represents.  

Why a serpent?  Well, when the Israelites were in Egypt in the land of Goshen, the main Egyptian god over that area was a goddess named Wadjyt who was a winged serpent.  She was Pharoah’s protector and the protector of the Nile Delta, that breadbasket of Egypt.  She was powerful.  If you recall pictures of Pharoah’s wearing a turban with a serpant head poking out the front, that’s Wadjyt.  If you remember in the story of the Exodus, the greatest temptation they faced along the way was to stop following God and turn back to Egypt and its gods.  So, the Serpent represents our inclination to turn away from God and worship other things and even ourselves as gods.  

This story was most likely written down Solomon was king and Solomon’s first wife was an Egyptian princess.  He built a shrine for her within the confines of the Temple complex for her to worship her God and followed suit with the rest of his 700 hundred wives.  He littered the Temple complex with shrines and then worshipped these other gods as well.  This story was probably written down by priests serving during Solomon’s day to prophetically call him out on his complicity in idolatry with his wives.  Thus, Solomon resembles the rather stupid, silent Adam who stands by while Eve eats the fruit and passes it to him to eat…and he does.  So, at the heart of our problem of knowing good and evil is our idolatry, worship other things as God and also wanting to be or be like God ourselves.  

Moving on, the way that our idolatry weasels us into eating the wrong fruit is that it twists our understanding of God by challenging God’s authority to place limitations on human freedom.  Let’s take a brief look at how the conversation between Eve and the Serpent unfolds.  First, God said to Adam, “You may freely eat of every tree in the garden; but of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”  Next, somewhere along the way Adam had to tell Eve about the Tree but in so doing he seems to have changed what God said.  He probably said to her something like, “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.”  Adam doesn’t want his perfect helpmate to die, so in fear he added the words “nor shall you touch it” to discourage her all the more from eating of that Tree.  This addition of “nor shall you touch it” is what the Serpent used to twist Eve’s understanding of God.  

The Serpent began his testing of Eve by seeing how much she knew about God and what God had actually said about things in the Garden.  He said to Eve, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden?”  Eve answered, “We can eat from any tree” (not God said we can eat from any tree). “But God said, “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.”  That’s not quite what God said.  The question the Serpent asked focused Eve on the rules and starts to change her understanding of the God she knew.  Eve’s understanding or knowledge of God then began to morph from God being the loving Creator, their Father-like friend who gave humanity immense freedom in the garden and who in love warned them of the real danger to human existence the Tree posed, into thinking of God as simply being a rule making God who nonsensically limits human freedoms.  

Having gotten Eve to understand God and God’s motives wrongly, the Serpent outright lied and gave a false reason for why God gave that commandment.  He said, “You won’t die.  God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God (or gods), knowing good and evil.”  The serpent reduced God to simply being a lying, jealous, power-mongering rule maker who was withholding from them the secret knowledge of good and evil that only gods have.  

With God’s authority and identity undermined, Eve was left to her own ability to discern the value of the fruit and the merit of eating it.  To her eyes, what God had in essence declared to be evil appeared very good.    Notice that Eve’s and Adam’s eyes were not opened until they both ate the fruit because we are relational beings who do not exist in the vacuum of individualism.  Our sickness is never simply an individual problem.  Other people are affected by everything we do for good or for bad.  After they both had eaten the fruit, their eyes were opened and what they sqw was their own nakedness.  The secret knowledge they received was a sense of shame that could not be alleviated.  Out comes those grossly inadequate fig leaves.

So far, I’ve said this story tells us that our problem is that each of us in our very core is both good and evil.  The reason for this is that we are idolatrous.  We like to put our faith in things other than the loving God who has created us.  In order to persist in idolatry we have to convince ourselves that the God who created us in love in his own image is simply a petty, lying rule maker who wants us to tow the line or else.  

Interestingly, if you go to people who don’t go to church but have grown up in Western Culture and ask them what church-going Christians believe about God.  They will say that we believe God is a rule making God who demands we be obedient or he will send us to Hell when we die.  They think this because the church particularly in Europe and North America has walked hand in hand with the Serpent and given them this idea.  In order for our culture to be so materialistic, consumeristic, imperialistic, so warring, so indulgent; in order for us Western Christians to be like that and worship our culture’s false gods of money, sex, and power we have needed to understand the God who made us in a way that is different from how God has revealed himself.  We have had to convince ourselves that the Triune God of grace, the loving Communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who made humanity to be a loving communion in his own image is rather an angry, bearded, old man sitting on a throne in a far away place called heaven watching to see if we can obey those impossible rules he set up for us because he enjoys punishing us even when we’re good and then somehow the wicked always seem to get their way.

The amazing thing we see in the rest of chapter 3 when God comes looking for Adam and Eve is that God hasn’t changed towards them/ towards us.  It is we who have changed.  Though there are inevitable consequences for what we do, God didn’t get Adam and Eve for what they did.  In love, God covered their nakedness.  So also, God covers us for our idolatry.  In Jesus Christ through the presence of the Holy Spirit with us and in us he has once and for all covered our shame.  Now, as disciples of Jesus Christ filled with the Holy Spirit we can live in him and with one another in loving community that reflects the image of God – living according to that one commandment of loving each other.  In Christ, we are in the New Garden.  Now, we get to eat of the Tree of Life.    

Leave that false image of God the rule-making judge behind and the idolatry of power, sex, and money that comes with it.  Follow Jesus and find your new life that’s hidden with him in God.  Devote yourselves more fully to living the new humanity, the humanity that’s not driven by self-indulgence and the inordinate pursuit of freedoms which we think make us happy.  But rather let yourselves be driven by the love of God.  We have one commandment to follow in the living and life-giving, that we love one another as Christ Jesus has loved us.  That’s the secret knowledge found in the Tree of Life.  May our eyes be opened to our beauty of being made in God’s image rather than our nakedness.  Amen.

 

Deep Thoughts on Prayer

Luke 9:28-36

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Atop the Blue Ridge Mountains not far from where I grew up in Waynesboro, Virginia there is a tourist attraction known as Humpback Rocks.  It is a rather large outcropping of rocks that delivers a spectacular view of the Shenandoah Valley.  The climb up is one of the steepest and most strenuous one-mile hikes you will come across, but it’s worth it.  If you get out on the edge you of the rocks, you can have that Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie Titanic “King of the World” sensation.  Unfortunately, since my 20’s I have found being out on the edge of anything just a little too terrifying.  If you fall off, it’s about a fifty or more-foot drop just to get into the tree tops below.  It’s a place you need to be careful, but the view is worth it.  It’s “good”.

I’ve been up on Humpback a couple of times on rainy-ish days when the clouds are blowing by.  It’s awesome to watch a cloud coming at you, billowing its way along the ridges, engulfing everything along the way and then…it engulfs you.  I have been up there when you couldn’t see but a few feet in front of you.  If you’re not familiar with the rocks, you’re best to just sit right down and wait it out.  In those fogged-out moments it is not “good” on Humpback.  It’s terrifying.  

I think of those experiences on Humpback when I read this story of the Transfiguration.  Peter, James, and John go up on a mountain with Jesus to pray and it’s good.  But then comes the cloud and they find themselves engulfed by it.  It’s terrifying.  Yet in their case, it’s not the fog that terrifies them.  It’s that they have found themselves in the presence of God.  What shall we say about that?

Well to start, what we have here in this story of the Transfiguration is one of those rare moments in the Gospels when God fully reveals himself and to the consternation of many, God reveals himself as Trinity.  There’s Jesus the Son, the voice of God the Father, and the Holy Spirit showing up as the terrifying cloud.  Something similar happened at Jesus’ baptism when he began his ministry.  Jesus, the Son was in the water.  God the Father spoke from heaven.  The Holy Spirit came on him like a dove.  That was the beginning of his ministry and now it happens again this time as Jesus begins his journey to the cross.

Well, I’m going to apologize to you for what I’m about to do next.  I’m going to get a little theologically heavy on you and talk about the Trinity and what prayer is.  To do that it’s best we don’t start by trying to do the math: you know, 3-in-1, 1-in-3.  It’s better to think of Trinity as the relationship in love of the persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  They are three persons who are in a relationship of mutually giving, unconditional love and this relationship of love is what they each are in themselves.  It’s like me saying “What makes me “Me” is all the significant relationships I’ve had in life.”  Sure, I’m uniquely me, but I am not “me” without those significant and formative relationships.  As persons, we aren’t islands to ourselves.  We are persons in relationships.  The Father isn’t the Father without the Son and the Spirit, nor the Son without the Father and the Spirit, nor the Spirit without the Father and the Son.

 Since Trinity is this eternal relationship of love, we must note that communication is always happening between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  In essence, this is prayer.  We ask what does a Triune God in all eternity do in his very self?  Well, God talks among himself…God prays.  God in God’s self as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is always praying.  The book of Hebrews says that Jesus is ever-standing before the Father in the Spirit praying interceding on our behalf which also implies that the Father in the Spirit is always listening and answering.  Jesus is always praying for us and the Father is always listening and answering for us and the Spirit carries it out.  

Now here’s one more to wrap your head around.  The Holy Spirit due to his abiding in us and bonding us to Jesus the Son, he brings us as God’s beloved children into that eternal praying of the Son to the Father and the Father’s hearing and answering his beloved Son.  The Apostle Paul tells us in Romans 8 that the Holy Spirit is always in us praying and when we don’t know what to pray, especially when we are deeply hurting and cannot put words to it, the Holy Spirit is in us praying with sighs too deep for words.  Our praying is participating in the praying that God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit does within Godself.

I bet you never thought of prayer that way.  We are inclined to think of prayer as our talking at God from a vast distance and God from a distance hearing and maybe from a distance answering at us.  But the truth is, prayer is our participating in the communication that goes on within the Trinity in such a way that by the work of the Holy Spirit our prayers become Jesus’ prayers and his ours.  When we pray Jesus is in us and us in Jesus.

Well, your theological moment is done, but let me make use of that basic thought about prayer – that prayer is our participation in Jesus’ own praying in the midst of the life of God the Trinity – let me use that to set the stage for what is going on here in Luke.  You see, what we have here in Luke’s account of the Transfiguration is a moment when certain of the disciples entered into the “cloud” of Jesus’ praying.  Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell this story of the Transfiguration, but Luke tells it from a different perspective.  He is the only one to put the Transfiguration into the context of prayer.  It happens while Jesus is praying and his disciples are attempting to pray with him.  

So, we have Jesus heading up the mountain to pray.  Peter, James, and John are with him and as he begins to pray, of course they begin to fall asleep.  Prayer would not be prayer if we didn’t have a good nap.  Do I hear an amen?  Oddly, they manage to stay awake and suddenly they find themselves engulfed in the “goodness” of pure light.  Jesus’ face has changed and his clothes have become dazzling white.  Jesus, glorified, unveiled before them in his relationship with the Father in the Spirit.  

Then, they see two more people with Jesus, Moses and Elijah who are themselves no strangers to talking with God on the mountaintop.  On Mt. Sinai, Moses heard the voice of the LORD and received the Commandments.  Moses was also the great mediator.  Up on the mountain he talked the LORD out of destroying the Israelites for their idolatry in the Golden Calf incident and convinced God not to abandon his people but to continue on with them; and not just from afar, but present with them dwelling in their midst in the tabernacle, and leading them as a whirlwind by day and a pillar of fire by night.  Moses intercedes for God’s people, so does Jesus for us his beloved sisters and brothers.

Elijah also had a Mt. Sinai experience. On Mt. Sinai he, the greatest of the prophets excepting John the Baptist, heard the “still small voice of the Lord” while hiding there in a cave.  Elijah was on the run, afraid for his life for he had slaughtered the prophets of Baal and offended the very wicked King Ahab.  Elijah thought he was the only faithful person left in Israel, but by that still small voice God assured him he was not the only one and told him to go back to Israel for there were 7,000 still faithful waiting for him.   jLikewise, Jesus was the only truly faithful one and yet he would die a death akin to the one that Ahab threatened Elijah with and yet be raised and ascend into heaven from where we await his return.  In a way, Elijah’s presence here is the still small voice of assurance from the Father to Jesus that though the cross lay ahead, he will live.

Peter, James, and John find this experience of praying with Jesus to be “good".  Peter’s remarks about its goodness reminds me of the Creation story and God saying at the end of each day of Creation “good”.  There is something “Creation-y” in the order of New Creation going on here in this experience of being with Jesus in his praying.  

Well, the moment is good and they want it to go on forever but reality sets in, if I might say it that way.  We could say that Peter, James, and John were suddenly awakened from a dream-like state and confronted with God in God’s very self.  The cloud of the Holy Spirit overshadows them. Things become darkened as they enter into the cloud.  Their feelings of “good” turn to outright terror.  “Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the shadow of death.”  Then, God the Father speaks to them just as he spoke to Moses and to Elijah.  “This is my Son, my Chosen One.  Listen to him.”  And…and there’s silence.  It’s time to go to Jerusalem.  They kept this one to themselves.

This moment leaves us with having to balance the goodness of being with Jesus in his praying with the daunting task of actually listening to him and doing what he says.  In the cloud of Jesus praying, we discover that God is with us and experience the “good-ness” of his living and life-giving presence, the Holy Spirit, with us.  In the cloud of Jesus praying, we discover that Jesus is praying for us, that he is praying for things to work together for the good for us.  It is in the cloud of Jesus praying that we meet Moses, so to speak, where we are awakened to our idolatry and discover “forgiveness”.  It is in the cloud of Jesus praying that we, like Elijah, hear the still small voice of assurance, that God knows our faithfulness and has a plan for us.  This is especially “good” when we feel alone and even abandoned in our faithfulness.  In the cloud of Jesus praying, we find the strength and direction to go on with Jesus’ ministry, his mission for us.

Being with Jesus in his praying is very good but…we still have to listen to him and do what he says.  Jesus tells us we have to deny ourselves and pick up our crosses and follow him.  He tells us we have to love and pray for our enemies.  He tells us we have to forgive rather than hold grudges.  He tells us we have to love one another as he has loved us…unselfishly, without condition…to name a few.  These are difficult things to do and not only to do but to have them become who we are at the very root of who we are.  Impossible tasks if we were simply left to them, but here’s your word of grace for the day.  As prayer is our participation in the Trinity’s life of prayer, the more time we spend in prayer the more God’s nature just naturally rubs off on us and we become more able to listen to Jesus and do what he says.  Entering the cloud of Jesus praying is where and how we become more like him, where his “Me” shapes the “me” we each were made to be. Amen.

  

Spiritual People

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1 Corinthians 2:12-3:11

My best friend throughout seminary was a graduate of West Point Military Academy came to seminary straight from his first enlistment as a captain with the United States Army.  He was very black and white in his view of the world due to his military background.  In his world, it was “These are you orders.  Carry them out.”  “This is what your commanding officer says.  Do not question.”  He had a difficult time with the liberal atmosphere of seminary which gave room for questioning particularly when the questioning seemed to be just about “me”, “my” rights, and “my” agendas and particularly matters of political correctness.  Often in our private conversations after classes, he would offer a commentary on the “me” focused agendas of some of our fellow students, a commentary which almost always included “Oh waa.  What a bunch of babies.”  It was always my job (and his wife’s) to bring him down off the pedestal and remind him he needed to be more understanding.

But anyway, that thing he always said, “O waa. What a bunch of babies.”  It’s the sort of thing you can say to your platoon when they are whining and complaining about things in the field.  But, it’s not the sort of thing you can say like when you’re a minister and addressing a church conflict.  (Incidentally, he had two shortish pastorates and then reenlisted to become career Army as a chaplain and did two tours in Iraq.)  You don’t say that, but it seems in our reading today that Paul did just that to the Corinthian churches.  “You bunch of babies.  Drink your milk.  You’re not ready for solid food.”

The reason Paul calls them a bunch of babies has to do with their spirituality.  “You’re not spiritual people.  You’re a bunch of babies.”  If I ever said such a thing to a group of people in one of my congregations, I have no doubt that I would soon be looking for another church.  You just don’t do that, but Paul did and he had his reasons.  And of course, I need to take a few minutes to explain what those reasons were.  So…sit back and settle in.

According to the Book of Acts, Paul was in Corinth for about a year and a half and he planted several small churches that gathered in people’s homes which were most likely the homes of people wealthy enough to have a space large enough for a gathering of twenty or more people.  Judging from Paul’s two letters to the congregations, congregational life in those churches was very much on the Charismatic side and likely what we would call Pentecostal today.  People were speaking in tongues and prophesying and singing praise songs.  The early church was also very empowering for women and so there were women speaking in tongues and prophesying, teaching, and leading worship.  So, small, lively fellowships meeting in people’s homes.

Interestingly, there is nothing in Paul’s letters or the Book of Acts to indicate that when Paul left he had appointed leaders in any of the congregations.  It may have been that as active as the Holy Spirit was there, Paul either expected that the Spirit would make leaders obvious or things were so egalitarian and spontaneous that Paul didn’t think they needed them.  The lack of appointed leadership proved problematic.  Groups of people need leaders.  

Feeling the leadership vacuum after Paul left, individual people and cadres in the churches began to compete over who would be in charge.  There were the wealthy patrons who owned the houses.  There were wise philosophical types who thought that the intelligentsia should run the show.  There were “spiritual” women who thought that since they spoke in tongues and prophesied so much they should be in charge.  There were also the name-droppers – “I follow Paul.” “I follow Apollos.”  “I follow Peter.”  “I follow Jesus.”  They thought that being students of a particular teacher should hold sway.  The jealousies and quarrellings that ensued damaged the fellowships.

In Paul’s opinion, the arguing that ensued over who should run the show made them look like babies.  And not only the arguing, when they celebrated communion, which they did as part of a meal, it was nothing more than a party at which the rich were feasting and getting drunk while poorer people had to stand back and watch.  There was a man who was playing husband to his own stepmother and nobody called him on it.  They were taking each other to court and suing each other.  Worship was developing into a spectacle of incoherent tongue speaking.  The resultant disunity and immorality that arose from certain members seeking to run the show is why Paul called them babies and blatantly noted that they were not spiritual people.

But…what does Paul mean by “spiritual people”.  What is it to be “spiritual”?  Well, due to the breadth of the topic, it’s kind of hard to nail Paul down on this one but then again, it’s not.  In the two chapters leading up to our reading Paul has talked about personal weakness, the cross, ministering according to giftedness that the Holy Spirit gives, and having the mind or mindedness of Christ.  Later in the letter he talks about love, unconditional and sacrificial love.  Love…you can speak in tongues and prophesy, and understand mystical stuff and be knowledgeable in the faith, but if you don’t have love, you’re a banging gong or clanging symbol.  

At almost every church wedding these verses get read from 1 Corinthians 13:4-8: “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth.  It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”  This love is what being spiritual looks like.  Marriage is a huge spiritual exercise when this love is practiced.  

In 2 Corinthians 5 Paul talks about our being entrusted with a ministry of reconciliation.  This ministry of reconciliation involves working on our healed relationship with God and striving to heal our broken relationships with each other.  And, being that counter-cultural presence in the lives of people that encourages them to do the hard work of forgiveness and working things out.

In Philippians 2 Paul tells us to have among us the mind or mindedness of Christ which he describes with the words of a popular hymn in the early church.  The hymn was about how Jesus emptied himself of his divinity and became human, like us in every way, not to rule over us but to serve us.  This emptying of self even led to Jesus dying on the cross but God raised him and exalted him above all others.  So also, in love we are to empty ourselves of our desires to rule over others and to self-serve and rather serve one another making sure those around us get their needs met.  Self-emptying and serving in love is being a spiritual person.  That’s spirituality in Paul’s book if you can actually tag a definition on that very vague word.

Paul also talks about prayer, praying without ceasing really.  As we are to have the mind or mindedness of Christ, what we do with our own minds and mindedness is important.  If you are anything like me, then your mind is your worst enemy.  By mind I mean that part of us that worries and quite frankly just won’t shut up.  It tries to mindread other people and figure out motives and explanations for things that are usually just self-destructive babble and not the way things are in reality.  Getting control of the mind is hard.  Some spirituality people talk about emptying the mind, turning it off, and becoming nothing.  Paul goes a different direction and tells us to dwell on the good, pray, meditate on Scriptures, sing hymns and psalms to ourselves.  Also, take time to bring what’s on your mind, what’s troubling you before God.  Focusing our minds on God-things will change the things we’re minded on.  To be minded on something is to be focused if not fixated on it, driven by it.  To have the mindedness of Christ is to be focused on his Presence and seeking to be driven by his love.

The continual praying of the Lord’s Prayer is a fruitful spiritual practice.  And not just praying it according to wrote memory, but rather learn to desire what you’re praying for in it.  How does it apply to me and my life, our lives.  When we say “hallowed be your name” that’s an invitation to think about what we truly think and feel about God.  What does “Thy will be done” look like for our lives.  Who do we need to forgive and who needs to forgive us.  From what trials do we need saving.  From what evil do we need to be delivered.  Another way of think about that evil thing is to ask what lies am I believing that are causing hurt to myself and to others.    

Being spiritual, a spiritual person, is to let God be the one who unconditionally and sacrificially loves us and then be that way to the people around you.  Being this spiritual person brings healing, reconciliation, and hope into the world.  Spiritual people are mindful of the Presence of God, prayerful, and minded on unconditionally loving and serving others.  One last thing to mention, spiritual people will suffer.  This is the way of the cross after all.  Sacrificially loving others that they might find Christ and find healing and life in him does not come without ambivalence being directed towards us.  But he is with us.  God’s Presence is our comfort, our assurance, our peace, and sometimes joy even arises; joy in the midst of some pretty painful circumstances.  Amen.  

 

 

  

Salt and Light

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Matthew 5:1-16

Years ago, my son and I (he was about two) were checking out at a Home Depot and the cashier who seemed to be of Hispanic background just started to go on and on about how cute William was (and he was). Then, in the middle of her praises she said, “God bless you”.  You don’t hear “God bless you” too often anymore except from insincere politicians using the Lord’s Name to their own advantage.  So, I found this blessing quite touching and I said, “And you too.”  

Oddly, just days after that happened, I was down at Mississauga area mall donating blood.  You folks know that routine.  They drain you and then walk you over to the cookie table to fill you up.  The volunteer at the table that day was an elderly woman of Indian background.  She didn’t talk much.  When I finished my snack, she said, “Thank you” and made sure I knew to pull the straw out of my juice box so the box could be recycled.  After I garbaged my trash I turned to her and told her bye and then she unexpectedly and quite loudly and in a very serious tone of voice exclaimed, “God bless you.”  Once again quite touched, I said, “And you too.”  

Though many years ago those two blessings stick out to me as powerful examples of what we the followers of Jesus are about in this world.  We are to be a blessing to people, a blessing to our communities.  That simple desire and, indeed, prayer and the act of saying “God bless you” in my opinion embodies the heart of what Christian presence in a community needs to be about; indeed, what we Christians need to be about - blessing.  We are those whom Jesus has blessed with his presence and his favour so that we might bless and be a blessing to this world.  That’s the way God works. God blesses people so that they might be a blessing to others. God’s blessing does not end simply with the well-being of an individual.  The blessing comes to a person and through that person to others.  Therefore, blessings are meant to be shared.  

If we look at the Old Testament to the father of Biblical faithfulness, Abraham, we see this “blessed to be a blessing” motif spelled right out.  God called Abraham by inviting him to leave his father’s house and land and go to a land that God would show him.  If he did, God would bless Abraham by giving him that land and numerous descendants to fill it.  God’s promise to Abraham was, “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.  I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed (Gen. 12:2, 3).”  Those God blesses are to be a blessing to others.

This should really make us think about what we mean when we say we have been blessed with wealth, a home, family, friends, or health.  For those things to truly be a blessing from God, we must share them with others that they might be blessed as well.  Maybe God means for our wealth to be shared with the poor, our homes with the homeless, our families with the widowed and orphaned, our friendships with the friendless, and our health with the disabled.  

Today’s passage comes immediately following the Beatitudes, which are Jesus’ “God bless you” to his disciples.  They are Jesus saying to his disciples, “You are blessed by my Father, our Spirit, our presence and favour are upon you, so that we, through you, may bless others”.  This idea of being blessed to be a blessing is behind what Jesus meant when he said to his disciples, “You are the salt of the earth” and “You are the light of the world”. 

How? It is through the working of the Holy Spirit who makes us hear God’s call to us to be Jesus’ disciples and who awakens in us the awareness that we need God’s Presence and help deep in our hearts.  The Holy Spirit reveals God’s very self to us as an unseen presence of loving-kindness by whom we are beloved.  Encountering this love changes everything.  The Holy Spirit compels us to be peacemaking Kingdom-bringers manifesting Jesus’ reign in love even if it means persecution.  God’s Presence and working among us and in us each is a blessing of personal healing resulting in a new sense of purpose.    

But, we need to also not be naïve, this blessing is a gut-wrenching revelation of ourselves as sinners and moreover the result of living in God’s blessing is so often persecution. (I wonder how long it took for both of those women to be told by their employers to stop blessing people.)  Nevertheless, the intent behind the blessing that Jesus gives to us is that since we are being blessed with coming to know God the Father through the Son in the presence and working of the Holy Spirit and are being changed by him, we will and must in turn become a blessing to others.  We must live to reveal God’s loving-kindness and mercy to others.  We must do this not only as individuals who show the love of God, but also as an authentic community of faith, a gathering of people made new in Jesus Christ.  Our life together as a congregation will and must be a blessing to others.  

Let’s look briefly at being the salt of the earth.  Most commentators will define what it is to be the salt of the earth by describing how we use salt: seasoning, preservative, cleansing agent, or medicinally.  But if we look at how salt is used in the Bible, we find some interesting things.  Salt was a required ingredient in the incense that they burned in the temple to represent the prayers of the people.  They also sprinkled every sacrifice offered to God with salt.  In both these cases salt was an anti-corrupting agent.  If we are the salt of the earth, then we are what God has given his Creation to keep it a pure and pleasantly good offering of praise in God’s eyes.  Our prayers in the name of Jesus are the salt mingled with the pleasant aroma of the prayers of all peoples. 

There was also something called a “covenant of salt.”  Two friends when making an agreement would eat salt together as a symbolic gesture of the desire that nothing would corrupt the friendship and nullify the agreement.  That in mind, we, as the salt of the earth, are the anti-corrupting agent God has given to keep the bonds of human community authentic.  Unconditional and sacrificial love made real in the on-going work of healing and of forgiveness and reconciliation is the evidence of our saltiness.  If we lose that love and find some other reason to exist than healing and forgiveness and reconciliation, quite literally we are good for nothing. Sorry to say that so bluntly.  

Moving on to light, in the Bible you will find that more often than not light means something more than just plain light.  Light is what makes God and his actions see-able.  Light is knowledge of and also the knowing of God.  In the Psalms, the psalmists often speak of the light of God’s countenance, the felt brightness of his smiling upon us.  In other places, light is God’s salvation, God’s acting for our deliverance, shinning out to those who live in darkness.  In the Gospel of John Jesus refers to himself as the light of the world.  In him we see God and we see how we ought to be.

The light we share in our fellowship is Jesus himself abiding in our midst in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.  Jesus is the light of the world in and through us.  Those who live in the darkness of this sin-broken, sick, and hurting world should be able to look into our fellowship and see that the God who is the loving communion of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit has blessed us with his own loving kindness.  People should be able to look at us and see authentic human fellowship that shines forth the forthcoming of the new heaven and new earth that Jesus is bringing with him.  This world needs precisely what God has blessed us with – newness of life filled with God’s very self.  

God is blessing us.  God is blessing us to be a blessing to others.  Let’s take this God-indwelt fellowship forth and give it to the community around us; unselfishly and expecting nothing in return.  This will require that we stand in faith on the knowledge that God is in our midst.  This will also require patience and the expectation that the results may be quite different than what we expect, hope for, or even dream of.  God is moving in us producing fruits from us that are evident in this profound love we have for one another.  Let’s take the risk of letting our little light shine.  After all, it’s God’s light and it is brighter than the sun.  Finally, let’s not be so timid and make it a point to say “God bless you” to people.  Amen.