June 21, Third Sunday after Pentecost
(Proper 7): – Church of Our Saviour
Intractable difficulty of the gospel passage
The other day I was talking with the priest of another congregation about preaching on Trinity Sunday – which we observed two weeks ago. He said, “It’s one of those days in the year when you make a determined effort to find someone else to preach.”
Today’s Gospel passage presents another one of those kind of days. Really, if anybody finds the passage obvious or easy to grapple with I would welcome them to replace me.
Unfortunately, either they didn’t get in touch with me or I failed to reach out to the right people. Here I am.
First of all, this talk about a slave not being above a master – sounds too much like the pro-slavery arguments that have been wrested from the Bible for centuries. It makes me uncomfortable from the start.
The world-wide demonstrations that have been occurring these past few weeks makes me especially uncomfortable.
There’s a litany-like series of sayings from Jesus’ mouth that are breath-taking but also problematic to take literally:
- Nothing covered that won’t be revealed … – whoa, what does that mean?
- Fear – those who can kill the body and the soul
- Threat of: “whoever denies me …”
- Litany of how Jesus has not come to bring peace, has not come to reinforce the family – but perhaps to tear it apart. Set sons & daughters against fathers and mothers.
- Love mother and father over Jesus? …
- Finally the most straightforward thing: “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”
That’s not terribly comforting once you realize that for most of my life I’ve been on the side of those trying to find my life.
Jesus’ words are troubling, difficult to take at face value
“So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.
What does it all mean? What are we to make of it all?
Shall we just say that they add up to emphasizing that it is dangerous to follow Jesus? That if we are being faithful we will be persecuted?
Do we just pursue allegories and metaphors that allow us to skirt the biting nature of the passage?
One approach uses Clarence Jordan’s work to look for answers – the task is to move us out of our comfort zone. What seems familiar – what we think we know and take for granted – may well be deceptive.
Just to be clear: [the year is] 1942. You may be familiar with Jordan through his Cotton Patch translations of the New Testament or because the Habitat for Humanity movement originated from the Koinonia Farm.
[ … ] Jordan’s heroism comes through in his sense of humor. Once accused of fraternizing with Myles Horton, a reputed communist, Jordan retorted, “I really have trouble with your logic. I don’t think my talking to Myles Horton makes me a Communist any more than talking to you right now makes me a jackass.”
Likewise, when the Koinonia community tried selling peanuts from a roadside stand the Ku Klux Klan dynamited the stand. Stubborn like most saints for justice, Jordan put up another stand. It got blown up too. Finally, the Koinonia Farm resorted to mail-order ads: “Help us ship the nuts out of Georgia.” [Clarence Jordan](http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx commentary_id=99)
I kept looking for other ways to enter into the passage. Somewhat surprisingly I found it by way of association with Father’s Day.
Fathers
Over the years I have not often focused on secular holidays. For one reason or another in Hawai’i I was often not preaching on Father’s Day – wasn’t preaching on this day in the lectionary cycle.
The cultural association with fathers follows a kind of fickle path – or maybe I’m just aware of the complex path of my relationship with my father. My relationship has included:
- idolizing him
- rebelling against him
- just being angry with him
- spending decades trying to earn his acceptance
- beginning to find a peace with him only after he died
Our culture has known a variety of attitudes towards fathers:
- When I was a child there were shows like Father knows best
- Then there were decades of fathers being portrayed as bumbling, self-centered, fools
- Currently, the TV series, This is us, has shown a nuanced portrait of a father who knows how to love, is flawed, worshiped, and idolized.
The figure of Abraham as we heard last week would become the father of many nations. The traditional term is Patriarch. It’s just Latin for “head-father”. We heard about Abraham and his wife, Sarah, and their promised son, Isaac.
This week Abraham’s relationship to women gains a spotlight. We only get a tiny snapshot, but the whole picture is huge.
The saga of Abraham in addition to his wife, Sarah, has a vital role for Sarah’s servant and slave, Hagar. And her son Ishmael.
These two took on a prominence in the Quran and related early Muslim literature. They play a role in the striking importance of the 2nd born in the Bible. Ishmael, you see, was Abraham’s 1st born son.
Hagar has a relationship with God that in some striking ways is closer and more intimate than any other person in the Hebrew Scriptures, certainly in Genesis.
Abraham is a father who binds us together in all our diversity. He is flawed, far from perfect, but a father who links together a great disparate family – the human family.
Abraham
Abraham is the father who provides me with insight in today’s Gospel.
Abraham makes it clear to us that we live by God’s gracious gifts not by virtues that we are able to muster.
Abraham calls us to a unity that seems so difficult for us. How is it that we prefer division, and house divided against itself? Abraham wept over the pain and division that he effected and he became the father of many nations.
I’m reminded of the old Jewish story about Adam. The student asks the rabbi, “Why did God create humanity from just one man?” The rabbi answers, “It was so that no one would ever be able to say, ‘My father is better than your father.’”
Abraham is the first of the patriarchs. Yes, father fought against son, brothers against brothers, and on an on it goes.
But in the end there is only one father, one “Abba”.
I place myself in the camp that says Abraham is the father that binds us together
Abraham has provided another lesson for me over the years. It encourages me to look deeper, to take a second, third, and fourth look. It encourages me not to rest on my assumptions. Abraham call us to look again –
You see, after years of reading the Old Testament, years of teaching from and about the Old Testament, it was only about 15 years ago that I was stumped by a question that came from somewhere. It could have been a Jeopardy ® question. “Who was Abraham’s second wife?”
Sure enough, I looked, and there it was in Genesis 25. Her name was Keturah. There are only 2 brief mentions in the Bible about her. But there it is. Something I didn’t know was there, would not have predicted, but real enough.
There are so many things like that in our lives.
Abraham can remind us that what we assume is true may not be so. We owe it to ourselves to look again, a 2nd, 3rd, and 4th time.
When we look again and again, the teaching of Jesus in today’s readings are about life-giving qualities of the Kingdom.
I put myself in the camp that understands Jesus’ words to –
- demand “Costly Grace”,
- demand accountability for the betrayals and failures we are prone to,
- knowing that the promise of “Abba” father will bring us to life in the end
It’s about New Eyes to see
With Abraham, I thought I knew what the story was about. From a young age I had heard the stories. I read the Bible as an adult. I taught the Bible as a priest. Yet it was a random question that caused me to cast out my preconceptions and assumptions, and to look deeper.
Not hearing or seeing what was there all along, I had missed the vital role of Hagar. The first woman to be on – as it were – a first name basis with God. She bore Abraham’s first child. God promised her in ways very similar to what God had promised Abraham. Hagar and her son are important. And their real prominence is only experienced in Islam.
Slavery and deliverance from slavery is an essential part of her story. The experience of being cast away, nearing death in the desert, and then fed and nurtured by God, these are a part of her story.
And she shares them with Jesus. It would seem we are called to follow in the footsteps.
Abraham leads me to be cautious about my own assumptions. And Abraham shows me that God makes straight lines out of our crooked scratching and wanderings.
Abraham leads me to a new way of seeing the Gospel itself.
In the kingdom, Discipleship is costly – Cheap Grace is no longer cost-effective. Gone are the days when faith was a comfortable affair – in my lifetime I have known many for whom their Christian faith was primarily an unchanging comfort zone. Bonhoeffer’s faith-filled confrontation with the evil culture around him is what gave us the term “cheap grace.” It was Jesus who proclaimed it first.
It really matters what we do or don’t do. Doing nothing is a decision nonetheless. There is accountability in the kingdom.
Great Reversal, that the first shall be last and the last shall be first – is in fact good news to those who recognize that they are but formed from the dirt of the earth, humus, and who know themselves in humility.
Tread lightly and softly as you look around you. Listen for the still small voice as well as the earthquakes. The signs of the times will be your guide, to lead you across the landscape of your calling.
Bless the Fathers.
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