Saul’s poorly thought out oath, vowing his troops would not eat until the battle was won, is an example of poor leadership. He thought of his honor, his image, more than the needs of the troops. Without food they would be too weak to fight the battle. Without food, just the journey itself would exhaust them.
To me this reminds me of the need to see how our actions may influence others, seeing them as human beings with real needs, feelings, and desires.
We forget this. I think of last year when we had so many parentless children standing at our border in need of food, water, clothes to survive. Many politicians sat and argued to politics of immigration, getting caught up in ideology – not seeing the hurting children in need at our door. Not hearing Christ saying to us “I was a stranger and you took me in….” Our politics threatened to keep us from having compassion on others.
We saw this in the discussions of LGBT rights. People would argue about the history of marriage, about abstract theology, all the time forgetting the pain and heartache people faced … People like elderly couples together for decades who could not be there for each other in their final days due to their relationship not being recognized. People like children who could not have their parents’ health care extended to them, or their parent’s right to care for them recognized.
We see it too in our debates between left and right, where we paint those we disagree with using a broad brush as if all people who hold another view are so very hateful, hurtful, or wrong-headed. We forget we speak of other human beings, with real feelings and real needs.
God reminds me in this passage to remember the humanity of all those around me, of all I encounter.
I am struck by the courage of Ananias of Damascus here. God calls him in a dramatic way to reach out to Saul of Tarsus, a man who has been systematically discriminating against Christians, even planning their deaths. He is told to reach out to Saul in love, welcoming him into the community of faith.
To be honest I have trouble continuing to hold out hope for family members and once-friends who’ve cut me out of their life for differences or wronged me in far more minor ways. When I hear the voice of Spirit calling me to continue to reach out for reconciliation, my heart is pained and I want to say “God, are you serious? What’s the point?”
I can’t imagine what it would be like to do what God calls Ananias to do here.
The closest I could imagine is someone who had been a person of color in South Africa under apartheid reaching out for healing and reconciliation with those who ran apartheid. Of course, that is what happened, isn’t it? Desmond Tutu writes in No Future without Forgiveness of how during and after apartheid the religious leaders like himself fighting for an end to the race-based oppression kept reaching out to those who oppressed them, inviting them to change, because they believed the oppressors were also losing their humanity. He says that they tried to set them free, inviting them to rediscover their own humanity.
I think this is why the late Nelson Mandela invited his former jailers to his inauguration and why South African chose a Truth and Reconciliation commission aimed at restorative justice rather than hangings and crimes against humanity trials. They knew that ultimately both oppressor and oppressed had lost some of their humanity in the system of oppression that had ended and that only in healing that rift together could they get to God’s future for them
So I hear a call in this example to not give up on anyone, no matter how much they have hurt me or done injustice. I hear a call to be open to seeing God transform all involved, and to be open to a voice for and agent of reconciliation.
I know for me I still need to work, as Ananias had to, on my own inner resistance. But I know if the Spirit can transform Ananias and Saul, She can transform you and me, too. Let it be so, sweet mothering Holy Spirit. Let it be so
This text includes both pieces of inspiration and also horror to me as I read it
We see inspiration in that Jonathan has such faith in God. He trusts that he and his armor bearer can go forward in faith against any enemy of God and have victory. This is the same kind of faith that we see later in Daniel who stands down King Nebuchadnezzar’s call for him to abandon his faith to save his neck, so that Daniel risks death by fire and lion, believing that one or a few people of faith and God together are a majority. It is the same faith you see in Christians willing to resist the pressure of Rome by sharing their faith, by welcoming children with disabilities into their homes abandoned on the hillsides to die, in serving the poor and sick against the standards of pre-Christian Roman culture. It is the same faith you see Hildegard of Bingen have when, inspired by her visions from God and by anger at clergy and royalty abusing their power, she refuses to follow the medieval church’s rule for women to be silent and spoke out publicly in the streets calling for rulers of church and state to use their power not for selfish means as she saw them doing so but to help the least of these among Christ’s brothers and sisters. We saw it too in the 1800s as believers like Sojourner Truth and the Grimke sisters stood not just against the society at large, a society built on slave-labor and theft of Native American lands, but also against the church which said women ought not to preach. These women spoke up inspired by the Spirit of God proclaiming all are equal, condemning both racist structures like slavery and also the patriarchal structures in church and society that kept women oppressed. Raising their voices they called the world to see their own humanity in cries like Sojourner Truth’s message “Ain’t I Woman?” It is this same faith that led to the Civil Rights movements of the 20th Century and its continued legacy today in work like the Moral Monday movement.
Yet the horror to me as I read this text is that Jonathan’s actions which are inspired by this faith is to slaughter many, many people. His hands are dripping red with blood by the end of this text. In his mind, faith in God’s power ought to be expressed in killing God’s enemies. As a Christian, I find such an application of faith disturbing. This is largely because of what our Lord teaches in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7. There he teaches us to have compassion on all people, including those we experience as our adversaries. We are to not return evil for evil, but respond to their injustice and evil with love. We are to seek to do them good, not evil; to pray for them; to not lose sight of them as also children of God who are of infinite worth. As one bumper sticker I recently saw said, “When Jesus said ‘love your enemies’, I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean kill them”.
Many Christians will try to seek to defend these pictures of holy violence in Scripture. They will say “well, it was the time or place”. “Well, those people fell under God’s judgment”. “Well, they were at war. You don’t win war by making friends and holding hands.” Although I don’t think we have to go so far as to say that we never defend ourselves and others from those who would harm us, I think we need to face squarely that the violence done in the name of God in the Hebrew Scriptures are far out of proportion to self-defense. At points it verges on genocide. Such heartless violence flies in the face of the clear teachings of Jesus.
The book of Hebrews tells Christians, “In the past, God spoke through the prophets to our ancestors in many times and in many ways. In these final days, though, [God] spoke to us through a Son. God made [God’s] Son the heir of everything and created the world through him The Son is the light of God’s glory and the imprint of God’s being…” Our Scripture includes the message of God but imperfectly recorded by some women and mainly men who were inspired by God, but like Paul in 1 Corinthians 7, who include some parts that are God’s very own words to us and some parts that are their own ideas. This is why God has spoken finally to Christians by the Son. It is why when this Son appears in Jesus, He consistently says of the Scripture written so far “You have heard it was written … but now I tell you”.
Jesus clearly differentiates between the true message of God and some of the human ideas, even in Scripture, that have collected around it. Clearly God’s call to covenant, to be a people who are salt and light in this world making a difference by going against the tide is God’s message. But Jesus makes it clear that the God He reveals and knows is not a God who calls humanity to do violence in God’s name or anyone’s name. Any human death is a tragedy of enormous proportions, to be avoided whenever possible. And never done in the name of God.
We need to face that attributing violence to the name of God, even calling it a crusade or holy war, is the original sin of our Abrahamic religions like Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. One need not believe in Jesus who clearly proclaims this to see that reality. One need only look at the history of holy wars such texts inspire if treated as if the violence is truly inspired by God. We see the killing of heretics by the Roman and European powers starting with Augustine’s time to now. We see the bloody Crusades that slaughtered Jews, Muslims, and Christians in cold blood. We see the religious wars of Europe before and especially after the Reformation. We see the history of Christians killing Jews that began before the Inquisition, was brought to a new height in it, and culminated in the Holocaust. We see too in Islam times in which its texts were used by governments to justify war-fare and violence. We see Christians who used these texts to justify acts of terror, lynching, and violence done by the Klan in the American south who said God justified this violence. We see it in the abortion clinic bombings. We see it I groups like Al Qaida and the so-called Islamic state. I could go on… but it is easy to see there is nothing holy about this approach to Scripture. Jesus’s warning that if you live by the sword you will die by the sword, and that one must choose a different path than violence rings true after a look at this history.
For individuals wanting to explore how to understand Scripture and faith in this way – a way not wedded to violence and oppression, but as Jesus calls us to see it as a force of liberation – I recommend Adrian Thathcer’s book The Savage Text: The Use and Abuse of the Bible.
I feel a call as I read this text to re-discover the faith of Jonathan, the faith to move against the tide and to live out my faith in ways that change this world. I also feel a call to examine my own faith to see how much of my own prejudice, fear, hatred, and personal issue I am projecting onto God. When I move with God forward in God’s work of transforming myself and this world, such beauty can emerge but, as with our history of religious violence and prejudice, when I project my own prejudices onto God I can produce such heartache.
What stands out to me in this passage is love in the midst of tragedy. Peter’s love of Jesus makes him want to promise never to give up on Jesus, never to fail, and never to leave his side. Yet Jesus sees what Peter cannot. Jesus sees the power of the forces of oppression Jesus has chosen to stand against and knows it will seek to sift his friends like wheat. He knows, despite their love for him and their well-meaning words, that they lack the strength to stand against that pressure. So Jesus warns them of what is coming, including their rejection, to let them know of his love for them. Aware of what they will endure, Jesus lets them know his love for them does not waver nor will it ever. I believe Jesus does this in order to let them know that his love for him will remain strong no matter how far they fall. Jesus plants the seed for them which will blossom into their realizing reconciliation with him is possible when they encounter him through the experience of the resurrection. In my mind Jesus’ resurrection appearances are scenes not just of hope beyond death but also dramatic depictions of the disciples’ discovery that God’s love transcends death, running out to pursue their reconciliation with God relentlessly.
As I think on this story, I cannot but think of times I failed to live up to what Christ was leading me to do because my ability to remain strong against the world’s pressure to conform just simply wasn’t enough.
I remember in college having been friends with a fellow student who was horribly put down and harassed at my Christian college for being different. I never put him down, but I remember pulling away from him even when I felt “he needs support right now” deep in my soul out of being afraid of how others in school would view me. Deep in the pit of my soul, when I prayed, I felt I was going down the wrong path. I would make good intentions to not leave him in the lurch, but I still ended up doing so. Though our college was a “Christian” one, none of us were living up to the way of Christ in how we treated this young man. Though I can’t confess anyone else’s failings, I can confess my own sorrow and shame about letting the crowd influence me in the way it did.
I could list other points of shame where I know I did not live up to the high call of Christ-like love and I’m sure you could too from your own life. Because of these experiences I can relate out of those moments with the sorrow the disciples later share at abandoning Jesus. The feelings I felt in those moments help me relate with the haunting words of this old DC Talk song –
The reality is, though, that all of us shall fail. We all will have areas of our life in which we lack the strength of spirit and courage of our character to live with consistency. We like the disciples and the words of this DC Talk song, will face into the reality that we stumble, we fall, and we lose the path.
Jesus’ promise to the disciples before their stumbling of a love from him that will not give up even as they falter should remind us, too, that God’s love will not waver to us in our stumbling. It will remain firm.
One day early in my Christian walk, feeling certain I’d stumbled beyond rescue through a failing I now cannot understand how I thought would be beyond forgiving, I read the following words from 2 Timothy 2:13 – “if we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot disown himself”. In some mysterious way God has cast God’s lot with us, so that God will not give up on a one of us, even when we falter, fail, and are faithless. To do so is as if God were giving up on God’s self.
The way I have come to understand this is picturing Jesus’ Incarnation like a mother becoming pregnant. When Jesus entered this world, God cast God’s lot with all of humanity – taking on our flesh, blood, bone, limitations, feelings. In doing so God cast God’s lot with you and me. God wove together God’s future with our own so that God’s future is intertwined with our future, God’s life with our life. God cannot get to God’s future without us and us to ours without God.
It is like a woman who chooses to become pregnant, chooses to become a mother. Now a new life is in her body, and forever afterwards her life is intertwined with that life, her future with its future. “I will always be your mother,” my mom once told me and it is true. As any loving mother knows, once that life enters into your body, and especially once you hold that child in your hands, no longer can you imagine a future as it ought to be without also imaging a future for your child. Your life, your future, and this new life’s future are intertwined. You cast your lot with this child’s lot. You cannot abandon this child without in some sense abandoning a part of yourself.
Of course God’s casting God’s lot with us in Christ’s coming is even more unbreakable, for mothers do for various reasons, though it go against all that is natural in the mother-child bond, abandon their children either as little ones or when they disown them as adults for their choices. Though rare, it happens. But our God shall never disown a one of us, always keeping room for us like the Prodigal Child in Jesus’ parable to come back home again.
This gives me hope, and I hope it gives you hope. I will let myself down. I will fail myself and others. I will let God down. But God will never give up on me. God will never give up on you. God’s love has no limit.
The relentlessness of God’s love for us to me is beautifully pictured in the song “Mercy Came Running”. May its words remind you of the relentless love of God that will not let you, me, or a one of us go.
To me the key to understanding this section of Scripture is the concluding parable Jesus shares: two people are asked to go and do some work. One says “yes” to appear cooperative, but then slinks away into the shadows without putting the hand to the plough. Another argumentatively says “no” but, later, thinks better about it and gets about the business set before them. Jesus suggests the second, not the first, person is the one of these two who is the best example for us to follow
The reading contrasts two kinds of individuals: First, the outwardly religious, highly educated scholars of Scripture who pepper Jesus with hard questions. They present themselves as if they are close to God. After all, they can quote Scripture from memory, always show at worship, and say long beautiful prayers. Yet they feel threatened by Jesus’ words and example. It challenges their status quo, questions their privilege, and calls them out of their comfort zones. They won’t have it. So instead of asking “how can we take up our cross and follow?” they devise complicated theological questions in order to justify things staying as they always have. They demand Jesus prove to them by theology his authority.
In contrast, Jesus describes another group. These are the seemingly unreligious whom those in power have deemed sinners, outcasts, and undesirables who see Jesus’ lifestyle, hear Jesus’ message, and know God is breaking into their life through his life. They can’t quote the Scriptures, don’t know the theology, and couldn’t care less about the ritual and fancy words. But they know love. They know justice. They know too their lives ought to mean more, and choose to transform their lives so that they can become people of this beloved community of peace, love, and justice Jesus describes as the kingdom of God.
Jesus’ words challenge us to ask about our religion and our spirituality. Both can be venues through which we open ourselves up to encounter God. They can be means of hearing Christ’s voice and becoming transformed. They can be ways to becoming people made new, transformed into the hands and feet of God, exhibiting God’s healing grace, reconciling justice, and loving compassion. They can also become masks we put on to convince ourselves and others we are good people. We can say to ourselves “I prayed the right prayer, so even though I don’t do or say a thing, I’m forgiven”. We can tell ourselves we are better than “those people”. We can isolate ourselves through our religion to any people not like us.
For me the reality Jesus is showing – that it is better to embrace the transformation Jesus shows and not hold onto the trappings of religion than to hold to religion in a way that hides from ourselves and others our need for transformation – was demonstrated to me by a man I’ll call “J”. While pastoring in a military town, Kat and I had a church member come face to face with their need to confront their addiction. They joined a twelve-step meeting and invited us to come as a show of support. Through the twelve-step meeting, we came to know “J”.
“J” was a grizzled, hardened biker guy. He had a sharp tongue, and didn’t do much with religion. But when his life hit rock bottom from his drinking, he realized he needed a higher power and got involved with twelve-step spirituality. Now he still didn’t look the part of a religious man. But I’ll tell you what, he was spiritual. He’d become a man, too, of compassion. The church member whom we were supporting had lost it all – job, home, their significant other – due to their substance abuse. “J” took them in, letting them stay in his home. He would give folks the shirt off his back if it would help them. I saw him do that – actually give people clothes from his closet – on many occasions. And give them food, and rides on his bike. And though he didn’t wear it on his sleeve, he was a praying man, praying for every downtrodden person he faced. Why? Not because of some abstract theology, but because he knew what it was like having hit the bottom himself, needing a hand from others and from above to get up again.
About a year ago, “J” passed. But “J” left an impression on everyone he met, one that many people who claim the title of “Christian”, “Jew”, “Muslim,” or whatever religious title fail to do since far too often we use our religion not as a means of confronting who we really are and how we can be transformed into people of compassion but as a means of hiding our failings and appearing better than we are.
“J” became a model for me, an example of what Jesus is saying. Learning such openness, willingness to change, and compassion for others is the point of our religious teachings and our spirituality. Jesus calls us to follow such examples by becoming people who are authentic, true to who we are, while also true to the call to love, to serve, to care selflessly.
In doing so, we fulfill the spirit of our faith and follow in the footsteps of Jesus.
The message I get from this text is to be careful not to rush ahead. In our society, there is pressure to get ahead. To get the next big thing. To buy the better car, phone, house. To get the better job. There is an impatience to have forward momentum. Waiting, being still, can seem like being left in the dust by others who are faster, bigger, stronger, more successful.
I’m reminded of when I used to help kids struggling in school and I’d see one rushing through their school work so that they didn’t get it done right. “It’s not a race,” I’d say.
Saul felt impatient. He wanted things done on his time, in his place. So he took on the job of the prophet and the priest. He offered the sacrifice to God. God had to move on his time table, and those God sent to support him in faith were taking too long. Ultimately this choice was the turning point to Saul’s downfall.
A part of why this is wrong was Saul was bringing down the division between church and state. He as king was taking on for himself the role of prophet, priest, mediator between humans and God. This is the role kings outside of Israel had, some not just declaring themselves mediators between the gods and humans but some a god in the flesh themselves. God appears to want some distance between the kingship and its statecraft and the prophet, priest, or religious center. They need to be somewhat separate so that the faith of the people of God does not become manipulated like puppets on a string to declare as God’s word the wishes of the monarchy. As such it can become a tool of oppression. Likewise if the religious leaders are too caught up in the politics of the day, they can become taken with and drunk on the idea of power forgetting their call to be faithful to love, justice, and mercy.
Another reason it is wrong is there is a desire to leash God here, like God is a pet of the king. God is not a pet we can contain. God is not a dog to be taught tricks. Rather God is wild, uncontainable, like the ocean waves. God moves freely like the wind. To move toward God’s plans one must learn to cooperate with God, to partner with God. This does not mean always blindly waiting, doing nothing, for the prophets of Scripture often challenge God, question God, and argue with God and so affect God’s plans. But it does mean recognizing God is God. You might question, argue with, or wish for different than God’s timing, God’s plan, but ultimately God is God. God sees a bigger picture than you or me. God sees how what is happening will impact not just now but millennia in the future. God sees how our direction will not just impact us personally but also the live of countless others.
Saul is not concerned about the future but what he wants now. He is not concerned about all the others who are impacted by his choice, but only how it makes him look in this moment.
Saul lost the big picture.
We do too, when we are unwilling to wait upon God, to let God’s timing and plans influence ours. We lose the big picture when we are so insistent on our own way we forget that listening to and waiting for God is about also how we impact others – our families, our neighbors, our communities, people we have never met our choices may impact.
Let’s learn to wait on God, to trust in God, and to partner with God. It may seem the one God sends is running late, but if we can learn to see through the eyes of God we will know they are right on time.
Ezekiel is called by God to be a prophet calling out for God’s way to a community whom God likens to a “rebellious house”. God promises Ezekiel will not be harmed by the people who hate his message, whose rejecting response God likens to scorpions and briers.
All in all, I have to imagine such promises were not the buoy of hope Ezekiel wanted in his call message. In essence, God is telling Ezekiel that Ezekiel must speak out for God, truth, and justice among a people who will largely not listen to and reject his message. God is not calling Ezekiel to succeed in earthly terms. In fact, God tells Ezekiel that “you shall speak my words to them, whether they hear or refuse to hear” so that they may know God has provided a prophet among their people.
To me these words are like a bucket of cold water on my child-like hopes that God is wanting me to be a success in human terms. Instead of this God is calling me to be faithful to God’s calling, doing the work God has given me and sharing the words God gives me regardless as to whether society receives it well, knowing God’s concern is faithfulness.
I’ve been there, of course, when the work I felt God call me to do didn’t bring material success but instead, if anything, sacrifice. Though in one sense a discouraging reality check, this text is also a reminder: even those times I saw no fruit borne, I cannot throw up my hands and declare it a failure if I was faithful.
After all, in his lifetime Ezekiel looked like a failure. Yet whose prophet’s words were remembered after Ezekiel’s death and were proven true over the test of time? Ezekiel’s were and now are part of Holy Scripture honored by Jews, Christians, and Muslims.
Similarly, to all human appearances, when Jesus was crucified He was a failed Messiah. Yet today his message continues to transform lives.
I look too at other’s who were called to speak hard truths that seemed to fall on death ears at first. I remember the Grimke sisters in the 1800s who, together with Sojourner Truth, travelled the US preaching a two-fold message – the message of human liberation, that holding people in slavery was evil and must be stopped; and that women are as equally called and gifted as men to lead in society and the church. By and large these women were laughed at and reviled. Yet look – though we continue to have problems with injustice, at least in theory today our society accepts all people ought to be treated equally regardless of race and gender. Slavery is abolished, and women work in leadership in our communities and churches.
I think of Martin Luther King who spoke of a dream of racial equality. He was considered a radical, a socialist, a rabble-rouser to be feared. Yet now streets and community centers are named after him. Though we have yet to fulfill his dream of full racial equality and face threats to the civil rights he fought to make available, as a whole we believe that vision is true and know in our hearts it must be fulfilled.
Likewise, in the late 1960’s, a man named Troy came out of an attempt at suicide, a suicide flowing from being rejected by his family, his church, & his community for being gay hearing the promise “I love you and have never rejected you. Tell those like you I love them too” which he took to be the voice of God. He began to work as a minister who fully welcomed gay people like himself as loved and welcomed by God, while also organizing demonstrations to fight for fair and equal treatment. He was laughed at, scorned, and mocked. But now Rev. Troy Perry’s work has launched not only the Metropolitan Community Churches and related ministries, but inspired a movement in mainline churches like my own denomination to fully embrace LGBT people. It helped lay the groundwork we saw coming to fruition in the recent Supreme Court decision to include same-gender couples in the franchise of marriage. Though his fight for full equality is not done yet, now the hard work of being a prophet to his people is bearing fruit the world can see.
This gives me hope. Sometimes I feel my efforts are shaky, with little impact. Also I see important work to be done to better the world and can despair it cannot be done.
Yet I look up and see prophets in our time, like Rev. Dr. William Barber speaking up against systemic injustice in my home state and even names most won’t know in churches I’m associated with who also join in their way in the struggle.
I feel a reminder in my soul – be faithful. Raise a voice. Put your hand to the plow, unworried about the outcome. And I will bring fruit in time, even if you do not live to see it.
Psalm 121 reminds me that I am seen, I am watched.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I know I have gone through some moments when I wanted to look up into the heavens and say “are you seeing this?” There are times I feel certain God must not be seeing me, must not be hearing me for if God was, how could this be happening? At times it is because of trials I face, and at other times it has been simply in times I felt alone, isolated, cut off.
I think we all go through such times in our lives, and the Psalmist reminds us that God is not sleeping, nor absent, even when the situation doesn’t make sense or we cannot feel God’s loving gaze.
As I read this story, I cannot help but think about a discussion I had about the text in which Jesus falls asleep on the boat with his disciples during a storm at sea. While reading it with the Bible study group I attend I realized a parallel to this image from my own life: When I watch my nephew who is a toddler, the best way to make sure he goes asleep is to put him in a car seat and drive a little. Almost instantaneously after putting him in that car seat, he knocks out. Why? Because he’s with his uncle and aunt, adults he trusts, and he knows he is safe. Could the fact Jesus falls asleep in the storm be a sign that perhaps he has that same attitude to us? In our struggles we feel we need someone to rescue us but Jesus knows he already has given us the resources to deal with the storms we face. He knows he does not need to swoop in but we are ready to deal with what lies before us.
That thought is strangely comforting to me. So many of the times when I felt God must be sleeping or preoccupied, or not really there it was because I prayed, prayed, and prayed and got no answer. As a chaplain and pastor I see so many people go through just such trying times in their own lives. Like my toddler nephew knows his uncle Micah has got it so he can nap, God knows we can handle what lies before us. Like Jesus knew his disciples had it through the storm, God knows we’ve been given the gifts and strengths to handle what lies before us. He’s gotten us ready. So perhaps it is in these times in which we cannot feel God’s gaze upon us that what is happening is not that God is abandoning us, but God is choosing to have faith in us. God is believing in us. God is trusting we can navigate our future with confidence.
God has faith in you.
The psalmist suggests such moments are not God sleeping or not watching. This suggests a different image for me of these moments. One of the things I remember my daddy doing with me as a little boy is teaching me to swim and to ride a bike. Both times he took his time with me. He did it for me, did it with me, let me do it either with training wheels or him in the wings, and then he stepped back and let me do it on my own. Perhaps these moments with God are like this in our lives. Perhaps they are the moment we think our daddy is holding us in the water and we look down to see we are swimming on our own. Perhaps they are the moments we think daddy is holding the back of the bike to keep it steady and we realize he’s standing four feet away waving and watching. In these moments God is not abandoning us but standing ready to help us if we fall but also proud of us, trusting us to live out what we have learned through the strength the Spirit gives.
One of my favorite sayings in the early church is the oft-repeated maxim that in Christ God became a son of men & women so that men and women might become children of God. So often we think that means remaining weak, vulnerable, and dependent on others for our next step. But these examples from Scripture and my own experience make me wonder. No adult parent really deep down wants their children to remain dependent on them for every choice but rather longs to look with pride as their children begin to choose to live out what they have taught them for themselves. I think the same is true with God. God always shall love us as God’s very own but God longs to see us stretch our spiritual legs, grow, and learn to run with confidence the raise before us.
So know this day – and always – that God’s gaze has not left you nor love abandoned you. Rather in that moment God is looking at you, believing in you. God is trusting in you to finish the race God has laid before you, to follow through on what God has shown you. If this is true, why not choose to believe in yourself and in those around you to be capable, with the Spirit’s power, to become the people God has made you & them to be?
Here we see Peter becoming criticized for how wide his welcome as a believer is. The folks who criticize him do so not just because of prejudice, which they are harboring in their heart, but also because they know their Bibles. They can turn to pages that seem to exclude people like Cornelius, who have not been circumcised and do not keep every letter of the ceremonial law. How can Peter welcome them?
This same attitude rears its head throughout church history, and even today.
It reared its head when people quoted their Bibles to argue why women must be silent. “Look,” they said, “the plain words of Scripture say women must be silent in the church. Wives must submit to their husbands”. And so they rejected women called to speak, act, lead, by God. They put down those who embraced them.
It reared its head when churches and communities began to put away rules forbidding people of different races to cooperate, to socialize, to marry. “It clearly says,” they would say, “to not let the foreigner into the assembly; and for the people to only marry their own tribe” and would list verses from Scripture to justify this.
Today we see it again, don’t we, in those aghast that some believers welcome gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people into full fellowship in the church? And that our society is beginning to recognize them and their families as having civil rights?
Yet Peter stands strong in his decision to move beyond what he had always been told the Bible said, to move beyond even its literal meaning, as he followed the lead of the Holy Spirit whom those Scriptures pointed to.
Today as then the question is not “What did God say?” but “what is God saying?” for, as the United Church of Christ oft says, “God is still speaking”.
I think it is because Peter’s insights come not through the literal words of Scripture but a living experience of the still-speaking God he knows as Holy Spirit that Peter does not answer their criticism as we often do by lining up Bible verses or arguing theology. Instead he shares his story, his experience of God the Holy Spirit working through the lives of Cornelius and others. This story transforms him and his hearers.
This reminds me we cannot convince others of what God is doing when God does a new thing simply by winning arguments, lining up reasons, or listing Scriptures. Ultimately it is only through encountering the Spirit at work in us & others they can begin to see what we have come to know. This happens through relationships that are open and authentic across the divides that have emerged, ones in which we can genuinely share our stories.
Let us be open to authentically being led by the still-speaking Spirit into deeper inclusion and welcome. Let us also put aside the need to convince others or prove we are right, instead living genuine lives of connection, openness, and community.
1 Samuel 14:16-30
We saw this in the discussions of LGBT rights. People would argue about the history of marriage, about abstract theology, all the time forgetting the pain and heartache people faced … People like elderly couples together for decades who could not be there for each other in their final days due to their relationship not being recognized. People like children who could not have their parents’ health care extended to them, or their parent’s right to care for them recognized.
progressiveredneckpreacher 