God's House

Isaiah 49:8-16a
Psalm 131
Matthew 6:24-34
Picture, if you will, a home—not just a place where people live, but where the members of a family feel like they belong. There is warmth in this place—there are times that people disagree—but never a time where people are abandoned or excluded from one another. In the heart of the house is a parent, a mother, a father—it doesn’t matter—it is one who is responsible for the love and the care that all receive. Some of it is directly from the parent’s hand, or from the other members of the family—all the children of God. I can hear God speaking with wonder and love at the sight of those children, working, resting and living their lives.

When I woke from resting, my little one was sitting against me awake but relaxed and secure because I was there. I know she wondered why I slept while she was awake—I was tired, creation takes a lot of energy and time. I needed the rest to be ready for my continuing work—and I needed to rest to show her how important it was to rest after hard work had been done. She was concerned, I know, and wanted to be near me even as I slept. But I know, even if she didn’t know yet, that she’d have been in my arms immediately, cradled against me, comforted and safe before any real hurt came to her.

Though no longer a nursing infant, she was still comforted by the warmth of my body reminding her of the hours we’d spent in that most intimate of connections between mother and child. We had both needed it—that memory—and we would continue to need it as she grew more and more independent of me and as I grew freer of the constant need of an infant. In that close contact was the reminder that we would always be connected—even if we weren’t in physical contact with one another.

She didn’t need my touch constantly anymore—she could work and play for hours on her own or with her brothers and sisters. As she grew that time would grow longer and longer. Yet no matter how she grew—or how much her siblings grew—she would still need to know me, to know I was with her to support, to listen, to advise—even to discipline, correct and curtail her behavior.

And when that is necessary, even now, my child grows angry at me and at herself, and at all who are around her for awhile. But after reaching my limits and her own, I always gather her up in my arms and remind her that I love her. Even now, when she is too young to understand, I explain what her actions meant—why she wasn’t to do it any more—how her actions could hurt her or other. She doesn’t understand yet—but she will and these words will be a reminder, written within her—at least that is my hope and will for her life.

I speak to her brothers and sisters, too, as they grow and as they learn more about themselves and about the lives that they will lead as they become adults. I can look at their little sister and at them and see how they change from moment to moment—what they need from age to age. And they know the stories of my love for all of them—how I have cared for them from century to century and from nation to nation.

I have watched them journey from age to age; Abraham’s journey to the land of my promise took years because he and I had to learn all about one another. And Sarah had to trust me, too, as her journey toward motherhood took longer than she’d planned. I never abandoned any of Abraham’s children, though some promises are better remembered than others.

Jacob, his sons and daughter, his wives and all of his family lived in my promise, yet they journeyed beyond the land of Abraham for a time. The journey back there took awhile because, again, those children and I had to relearn and renew the covenant that I’d had with their ancestors so many centuries before. I learned that they needed strong boundaries and clear expectations so that they and all who met them would understand that they were my children—and that they still are my children.

As my children, no one has ever made me angrier than they have made me. I have cried at their indifference and raged at their callous disregard for me by their disregard of one another. Some of them are wealthy and generous; some are wealthy and miserly to the point of evil; some are poor and hard-working; some are poor and lazy; some are completely helpless and must be cared for by the others; some are so good at caring for others that they forget about their own needs.

When they make me angry, I show them why. When the wealthy and powerful took advantage so many centuries ago, I sent them away from the land of my promises. I never left them alone, but revealed to them that blessing and riches didn’t go with them and with my presence among them. I sent them messages through those who continued to listen to my voice. While they were still in exile, I said,
I have kept you and given you as a covenant to the people,to establish the land, to apportion the desolate heritages; 9saying to the prisoners, ‘Come out’, to those who are in darkness, ‘Show yourselves.’They shall feed along the ways, on all the bare heights shall be their pasture; 10they shall not hunger or thirst, neither scorching wind nor sun shall strike them down,[1]
My servant spoke these words to them—wrote them to last for generations, so that all of my children would know that my love outlasts my anger and my disappointment. And they wondered still if I loved them. My daughter said, ‘God has forsaken me, God has forgotten me.’ I argued,
15Can a woman forget her nursing-child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb?Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. 16See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands;[2]
Then, as now, some believed in my love and some did not—most did. And I continued to walk with them as they began to rebuild the city that had been destroyed. They built me a home there—not that I was limited to that space—but my children seem to need a place to visit me, just to know I’m there. I created them that way, it seems.

And some took note of my presence with great affinity. They realized that my presence didn’t always announce itself with trumpet blasts and thundering drumbeats. Often they felt me in the peace of which I am made.
. . . my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high;I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. 2But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.[3]

These children of mine—the ones who listen and the ones who write and speak of me—they are the joy of my heart. I want to be their joy, too. So I continue to touch and to care, even though it hurts more than anyone can imagine. My children, some more than others, have listened and carried my words as if they were my own. My son Jesus taught them by recognizing my presence in the care I extended to the simples of my creations—the ones who do my will without words.

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, 29yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. 30But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” 32For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
34 ‘So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.[4]
I spoke through my son, Jesus, and I spoke through Isaiah, my child and my servant and through Jeremiah, one of my youngest at the time. My household continues to be built in spurts and starts—sometimes well and sometimes badly so that walls have to be torn down and rebuilt on strong foundations. But my message has continued throughout the movement of time and in whatever place my children live. I care for you with my own hand—and I charge you to care for one another because that’s also how I care for you. I and building a house—built of the lives and love of my children founded on my love and my life. It is founded on the love of Jesus, my son, too, who created a family of his followers to build after he left them. My spirit through him continued to inspire and to move my children to do the work that he left, that I have commissioned in the world. My house—the kingdom of Jesus’ preaching—is being built by my hand and by the hand of all who do my will and love with the love that I give them.

My house is not built all at once and each child’s contribution may not seem significant to that one or any other. But it is being built, even as I and all of you live within it. Another of my children, Robert Kennedy, saw this truth, this incremental homebuilding 40 years ago. “Let no one be discouraged by the belief there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world’s ills, against misery and ignorance injustice and violence. . . . few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of our generations.”[5]

This is the home that I see God building; these words are the words that I imagine God speaking to us through the stories of God’s work in history—through God’s work in us and in all of God’s children.

Ponder these words, imagine God’s home being built—in microscopic increments—in the lives, hopes and dreams of all who seek God’s love in their lives, whether they know it or not.

To the glory of God. Amen.
[1] Isaiah 49.8-10
[2] Isaiah 49:15-16
[3] Psalm 131.1-2
[4] Matthew 6.28b-34
[5] Behold, Pentecost 2 3008 (Year A), May 18-August 31, 2008, 2008, p. 23.

Creation, cont'd

Genesis 1:1-2:4a
Psalm 8
2 Corinthians 13:11-13
Matthew 28:16-20

Many people I know tend to struggle with self-image—some people feel unworthy and nothing they do or say means anything and some continually strive for praise, seeming to boast about themselves. Most of us tend to one or the other. Either we don’t receive praise for our accomplishments well because we don’t want to seem arrogant or we seek out praise and approval because we need to build ourselves up. I have always had the feeling that even those who seem arrogant and overly confident in themselves were trying to make up for some kind of emptiness inside. I could be wrong. And I know that there are people who seem to have a good, solid awareness of their worth—not perfect—but aware of their inherent worth to their families, friends, employers and to God. They can say, along with the psalmist, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”[1] They can balance their lives as they hear the psalmist witness again,
3When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; 4what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals* that you care for them?[2]

It’s healthy and whole to recognize the wondrous ways that God has created us—each one of us. It’s freeing to realize that God creates wonders and we are among them—perhaps not the most impressive, but we are among them. Though we may recognize God’s influence and genius in the complex accomplishments of humanity; we can also recognize God in the ways we respond to weakness and the ways that mercy brings us together. The recent trend to recognize disabilities as different abilities may seem only about political correctness, but people who cannot see, hear or live that way that the healthiest among us may reveal understandings that those of us with sight and hearing would never recognize on our own.

On Star Trek: The Next Generation, Jordy was blind. The technology of the future had provided him with the ability to see—and to see in an unusual way. He could make out objects for practical purposes, but his visor provided him with the ability to see physical features unseen by the normal human eye. He could see molecular makeup of the objects around him because his visor was made to do that. One storyline revealed that it was possible for him to have sight if he received a particular treatment but he was hesitant because he would lose his particular perspective and he had been blind from birth. He worried that it would change his identity in basic, important ways. But technological advancement isn’t what I mean when I say that those with different abilities reveal gifts most of us can’t imagine.

God created us in great diversity, blessing us through our genes to produce a fantastic variety of people, not to mention, plants, animals, fungi and microscopic life. Our differing abilities are revelations of the variety that comes out when we adapt to our circumstances, when some of us survive because of our differences and others develop ways of understanding that fit particular settings of time and place.

One of my great-nieces was born with a genetic disorder that means, consequentially, she won’t ever be able to have children. She has lower than average intelligence and aptitude for learning, too, although that isn’t always the result of her particular disorder. Sometimes it has no effect on intellectual development, though it always has distinct physical effect of infertility. She is also very pretty with big blue eyes and caramel-blond hair. She is very loving and thrives on affection. Her disorder will not be passed onto children, yet her loving nature is a gift to the people in her world.

She is a gift all unto herself—her life will never be about genetic legacy, only about what she does and gives to those around her. I think it’s a wonderful result of a potential tragic situation. I hope that those who are closest to her lift up the gifts she has to give as she grows into her life.

The first account of creation in the bible is recounted in the first chapter of Genesis. If we listen while it is read, we can hear God’s intention for goodness and order in creation. What we don’t hear is an account of historical or biological accuracy. We hear of God’s intention to imbue creation with the ability to continue to create on its own. We hear God’s call for humanity to have dominion as God has dominion—in our own image, God says. To rule as God rules means to rule with mercy, justice, compassion and an awareness of the power to bring harm or injury.

As the first chapter of Genesis’ account of creation builds from its chaotic beginning—we hear God’s desire for an orderly progression: the light of day and the dark of night; the border between water and air; the tidal bounds between sea and land and plants to grow on the land. Then we hear about each realm of creation once again. The light of day is given an orb to rule it, the sun and the dark of night a lesser orb, the moon along with the stars. The water and the skies are filled with fish and birds respectively. Then the land is filled with creeping creatures and herd animals and finally with humanity as the crown of creation—not because we are more wondrous, but because we are to be responsible for what has been created in the same way that God is responsible for all that God has done.

God creates a time of rest, too, a day in each week that demonstrates the abundance of all that God has done. Order within the chaos of creation includes time when humanity and those creatures that live with humanity can rest and take time from toiling for their sustenance.

The story of creation in Genesis 1 isn’t how God created the heavens and the earth; it is why God created the heavens and the earth.

God created so that creation could continue to create—to grow and develop as species, not just humanity, but all creation. God created so that humanity could learn about God from the experience of dominion and authority. What is it like to be God—have and raise a loving child, teach others to value what you value and love what you love: farming, teaching, mining, cooking, sewing, whatever it is . . .

As we continue reading the story of God’s interaction with humanity throughout the biblical witness, we read of God’s development in relationship with humanity. When God encountered homicide, God didn’t kill Cain; God exiled him from those he knew best. When God found that humanity had become exceptionally violent and corrupt, God re-created humanity through Noah and his sons. Even then, as Noah demonstrated, God hadn’t perfected humanity, just gave them a new and less complicated start. And God made a covenant to never destroy all life again. God’s walk with human beings continued in Abram, later Abraham, and Sarai, later Sarah, and with Hagar, the mother of Ishmael.

God created humanity, not to fail, but to carry within each one, the possibility of creation—the image of God’s own self. In the materials for this week, I ran across a wonderful comment on this text. In Genesis 1:26, we read, God says, “Let us make humankind* in our image, according to our likeness.” A rabbi was once asked why the creation account in Genesis 1:1-2:4a says God created humankind “in our image”? If God is one, to whom does the “our” refer? The rabbi said God looked into the future and saw that after humans were created, some would bring about righteousness on earth but others would bring evil. God reconsidered creating humans so that no evil would come to earth but then realized that no righteousness would come either. So God lifted up mercy and said to her, “Let us make humankind in our image,” and then humankind was born.[3]

We contain the possibility and the potential for good that God has created in us. We also contain the possibility and the potential for evil. Sometimes that is more obvious to us. But each of those possibilities, for good and evil, are necessary for us to continue to create. We are given full freedom to do the worst we can—and we are given the opportunity to create the best that we can imagine.

The story of creation continues throughout the biblical witness—as humanity tries and fails and tries and succeeds over and over again. Most of the stories of humanity, we hear from the people of Israel, God’s designated witnesses—but we hear a little from beyond them, too. Stories of a righteous Moabite women and a stubborn, but grateful Aramite generals reveal that God worked beyond the borders of Israel, too. The story of Job doesn’t mention Israel, but God reveals great truth and wisdom in the story of his tribulation and life.

Creation continues as we read the stories of God’s work in Jesus. I don’t believe that Jesus intended to reinvent the wheel, as it were, when he began to preach, teach and heal in Galilee and Judea. He spoke the simple truths that he had learned from the history of his people and that he had experienced as he lived within his special relationship with God. He saw corruption and greed within those meant to carry on religious tradition and he saw righteousness in men like Nicodemus and Joseph of Aramathea.

He commissioned his disciples as a new creation to baptize a covenanted people, like Israel, that would witness to God’s work in their lives beyond the life of Jesus himself. The creation became the church and is witnessed to by the stories that its members began to tell about Jesus. Some of the stories are written in the gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke-Acts and John are witnesses to four traditions that kept Jesus’ stories alive in their communities. And then we have the less story-filled, letters of Paul and other teachers of the early church who taught by argument and example rather than by story as in the gospels.

And as time passes and history moves us from age to age, God continues to work within the lives of human beings all over the earth. When great tragedy strikes, God works through our creative responses to alleviating suffering—toward giving mercy as the rabbi might say. God’s witness is in our call to justice for those who are hurt in places like Myanmar and China. And God’s witness is in the voices that seek to open Myanmar to relief workers—at least in my opinion.

The self-image of humanity takes quite a beating in the daily news—if we listen to the worst that we do to one another. And we do awful things. Yet we also create and nurture wonderful things, too. When we think of Islam today, we may only think of terrorism and the hatred that we receive in some quarters of that religious faith. But scholars within Islam were the finest medical minds in centuries past. They were open-minded and more compassionate toward religious diversity than Christians of the same era.

Creation continues, as always, going up and down through times of growth and times of destruction, hopefully moving us onward toward the restoration of the health and vitality that God created within each of us and within all created by the voice of God, by the hand of our creator, by the order and the process that God began.

To the glory of God in whose image we are made—in whose universe we are called to serve and live. Amen.
[1] Psalm 139.14b
[2] Psalm 8.3-4
[3] Seasons of the Spirit, May 18, 2008, Logos Productions.

Embodied Spirit

Often when I talk to folks about the universality of God—that God is everywhere and that God is indescribable—I hear from them that of course, then, God is spirit. And I agree, but with some hesitation . . . I also wonder if that means that they are uncertain about God’s embodiment, that God exists with some substance, not as ethereal stuff. Spirit is one of those churchy kinds of words that has been influenced more by Western philosophical understanding than through the understandings of the biblical tradition in the old testament.

In western philosophy, spirit and body are two separate things—one eternal and potentially perfect and the other mortal and terminally flawed. This comes through Plato and Aristotle from Socrates—you might not think that’s important to you, but it is because it is one of the ways that Christianity has been informed by culture rather than scripture. Plato regarded the objects of the real world as being merely shadows of eternal Forms or Ideas. Only these changeless, eternal Forms can be the object of true knowledge.[1] But our knowledge is, by virtue of our limitations, only a perception. Aristotle proposed a group of universals that represent the common properties of any group of real objects. The universals, unlike Plato's Ideas, have no existence outside of the objects they represent.[2] It is through Aristotle that we have an understanding of ultimate function of the ideal—that an object can look like one thing, say a loaf of bread and be another thing, the body of Christ.

These ideas are pervade our culture, such as when we deny the importance of the physical body and its needs—people starving themselves for the sake of “ideal” beauty when a healthy body needs so much more care. Or we deny the importance of the physical when sexual infidelity is swept under the carpet because it doesn’t “that’s just how men or women are.” Or it is denied when we regard only sexual fidelity within marriage as important when emotional or mental fidelity is just as crucial to its health.

It also helps to understand how important these are when we are encouraged to forget physical suffering because we’ll be rewarded for our faith in that eternal someday—when the physical suffering of the oppressed: historically slaves heard this message and more contemporarily when the poor are encouraged to be good rather than to strive for the betterment of their lives and the lives of their families. In South America, for example, abject poverty was deemed the inevitable plight of the poor and it would be reconciled in eternity. This comes from the idea that the accepted form of social structure is God planned and God-ordained.

Christianity began to be influenced more by these western ideas of dualism very early in its history, but not right away. And Jesus in himself denies this dualism—that flesh is evil and spirit is good—because he was flesh, he was embodied. Beyond the time of the first century, that became a problem when people began to believe that all flesh was evil. They had to find a way of understanding how the flesh of Jesus was not as sinful as all other flesh.

And sometimes, with the background and understanding that we have as inheritors of the ideas of flesh and spirit, we read the New Testament as if it also supported this idea of flesh as evil and spirit as good. The gospel of John can be misread this way—but it contains its own defense against the dualism. This gospel is about God enfleshed in Jesus Christ—it is about God tabernacling or dwelling in the tent of humanity as the first chapter of John explains.

Despite the mortality of the human body—that it is impermanent, limited by time and durability—it is not by definition evil. Jesus was resurrected as a body of flesh, blood and breath, as is described in this gospel, too. In this gospel, Jesus visits the disciples several times embodies, eating, drinking and breathing, partly to reveal that he was a enfleshed still as they were. And on this day of Pentecost when we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit, we also celebrate that the Holy Spirit dwells in flesh within people who are members of the body of Christ and within the body that is made up of all of Christians. The individual person and the church of Jesus Christ are together and separately vessels of the Holy Spirit.

In John’s gospel, the gift of the Holy Spirit was given to the disciples as they gathered in a secluded room, quietly and intimately. 21Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ 22When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.[3] His very breath—the air expelled from Jesus’ lungs—was Holy Spirit, Holy Breath, Holy Wind. The life it contained, his spirit incarnate, was conferred to the flesh and bodies of his disciples as they shared the very air he breathed.

Breath and wind are synonymous, identical things in the Old and the New Testament—using the same word to describe how it is that God enlivens flesh, ruach. The wind of God blows in the first few words of Genesis; the breath God blew into the body into the human being that God made of the soil; the winds of all directions blown into life in Ezekiel’s valley of dry bones. It is also the same in the New Testament—breath and spirit, wind, life—pneuma. Jesus said that we must be born from above, by water and spirit; John the baptist describes Jesus as the one who would baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.[4] Jesus assured his disciples that in the words of their breath, the Holy Spirit would be present. When they bring you to trial and hand you over, do not worry beforehand about what you are to say; but say whatever is given you at that time, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit.[5] The body of Christ continues and lives according to the manifestation of the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit does its work and moves through the people it inhabits.

Luke described the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts in a very distinct way from the way that the Holy Spirit is depicted in John . . . there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 4All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. [6] Still, it was as enfleshed in the bodies of the disciples, now apostles—but filling them, enflaming them, inspiring them to speak in the known languages of all the Jewish people who lived in the lands beyond Israel. As the disciples spoke, as they were deemed drunk, they reveal God’s Spirit—God’s life—in a way that had never been experienced before. And it had come to them with a noise like wind—it had come to them as tongues of fire, settled on each of them.

I don’t pretend to understand the hows and whys of these two very different descriptions of the initial gift of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament. What I know is that between John and Luke we have a more complete picture of what kind of gift that it was God gave to the body of Jesus Christ. It is simple and intimate, full of the warmth of breath and living flesh. It is comforting and comfortable, revealing that we are never alone with the Spirit of God within. It is the life of the body of Christ, ever incarnate, ever present in the flesh and blood of its members. And it is passion and fire, ceaseless energy, diversity of tongues and races, the movement and dance of the whole body and of each member in that body. The Holy Spirit is intimate, warm and close; the Spirit is scary, mysterious and risky to live with.

And within all of its manifestations, it is the source of all that we bring to the body of Christ. It comes to us through the waters of baptism and in the words of the preacher. The Spirit is conferred by the hands of those designated by the church as pastors and elders and it is given by the hands of kindness by each Christian who gives love to those in sorrow or who are in need.

The gifts of the Spirit can be revealed in the most educated theologian, the most charismatic and moving preacher, and in a smile of welcome from a child or in a caress of caring when that’s what is needed most. The Holy Spirit fires our blood in some manifestations and calms us serenely in others. We must have both, the comfort and the serenity—the passion and the fire.

It is the incarnation that is important—living out the manifestations of the spirit, however they exist within each one and within this community of faith within the body of Christ. I have seen outstanding generosity within this body and I have seen profound theological action. I have seen righteous anger in many faces—some with whom I have agreed and some with whom I have not. I have seen courageous dependability in the faces of those facing tragedy or death.

And the Holy Spirit gave each one according to what was needed and to whom it was given. Each one of us has the ability to carry out ministry through the gifts of the spirit, through the membership in the body of Christ and through the waters of baptism. We are called upon to live them as we are taught by those who know how to love, as we are taught directly through the presence of the spirit.

Julia Kasdorf, a poet born into the Mennonite and Amish community of Miflin County, Pennsylvania wrote it this way.

“What I learned from my mother”
I learned from my mother
how to love the living
to have plenty of vases on hand
in case you have to rush to the hospital
with peonies cut from the lawn
black ants still stuck to the buds.
I learned to save jars
large enough to hold fruit salad
for a whole grieving household
to cube home-canned pears and peaches
to slice through maroon grape skins
and flick out the sexual seeds
with a knifepoint.
I learned to attend viewings
even if I didn’t know the deceased
to press the moist hands of the living
to look in their eyes and offer sympathy
as though I understood loss
even then.
I learned that
whatever we say means nothing
what anyone will remember
is that we came.
I learned to believe
I had the power
to ease awful pains materially
like an angel
like a doctor.
I learned to create
from another’s suffering
my own usefulness
and once you learn how to do this
you can never refuse.
To every house you enter
you must offer healing
—a chocolate cake you baked yourself
the blessing of your voice
your chaste touch.[7]

What we do, how we live, where we go and what we say as embodied and very fleshly human beings inhabited by the Holy Spirit are, by our nature and those to whom we must ministry, are embodied, enfleshed, physical kinds of things. We feed the sorrowing and those in need of food. We touch those we love and those who are in need of our touch, to be clean, to be clothed, or to be assured of their own worth and existence. Without flesh and body and what we do with them, the Spirit within us serves no purpose not even to ourselves. When we deny the passion or the comfort, we deny the gift we are given. Without the Body, what is Spirit? Without Spirit, what is Body?

[1] http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/RefArticle.aspx?refid=761563506&pn=2
[2] Ibid.
[3] John 19.21-22
[4] Matthew 3.11b
[5] Mark 13.11
[6] Acts 2:2b-4
[7] Julia Kasdorf