Love Comes to the Loveless

https://youtu.be/d-uhzBKV_D4

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[1]

Introduction

Sermons on love are commonplace; this sermon being no exception. From weddings to funerals, from Easter to Pentecost, from Sunday to Sunday, one will encounter some religious and spiritual reflection on love. In fact, one could argue, most sermons probably end on a note that emphasizes love in one form or another. Why all this emphasis? Because we don’t get it.

I don’t blame the audience; I blame the people teaching on love. Too often love is spoken of as a feeling no different from the feeling of comfort, something that is nice and cozy. When speaking of God and God’s essence as love, it’s just mentioned that “God is love” without following up explaining what that means for fleshy meat creatures here on planet Earth. Or, someone will say, “God loves you,” without making it known through their deeds causing this love to remain abstract. People aren’t given love as the substance of action; rather, they are given love that is oil through fingers desperate to hold on to anything and grasping nothing.

As I look around, I feel that we love the idea of love, we are in love with the word, and we love the way it makes us feel when we say it or hear it said. However, in general, we encounter and are more oriented toward lovelessness than love. In a world built on the virtue of austerity, love—real love, the type of love that speaks and does—seems a costly extravagance of energy, energy we don’t have being caught in perpetual hyper-vigilance while swimming in a sea of chaos and confusion. Love is too risky; we are too vulnerable. It’s better to lose love than to lose in love.

But, yet,: Advent.

Advent slips in through the back door and dares to suggest Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love. The fourth Sunday in Advent solidifies the interruption to our normal, day-to-day descent into chaos and tumult, where lovelessness reigns. And I think this is why the fourth Sunday of Advent carries love with it; the fourth Sunday in Advent is the manger of Love and thus we must come face to face and contend with it as it speaks to us and illuminates our lovelessness          .

Isaiah 7:10-16

Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz, saying, Ask a sign of the Lord your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven. But Ahaz said, I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test.

Isaiah tells us that God spoke to Ahaz encouraging him to ask for a sign. Ahaz refuses. In so many situations, Ahaz’s actions would be considered upright and good. However, in this instance, God, through Isaiah, is asking Ahaz to ask for a sign. Thus, not to ask for one, not to seek one is—in this moment—disobedience to God, it is a spurning of God’s grace, it is a rejection of God’s mercy, it is a turning one’s nose up to an invitation from God to see something different.[i] Then Isaiah said:

“Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary mortals, that you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel. He shall eat curds and honey by the time he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted.”

God, through Isaiah, addresses Ahaz’s callousness and not only Ahaz’s but the callousness of the people of Israel, too.[ii] Isaiah is a prophet speaking to both the authorities of Israel as well as the people with whom he identifies; his love for both is palpable because it is the love of God for both. Isaiah also feels God’s pain and sorrow in experiencing and feeling Israel’s turning away (both leader and person alike).[iii] So, Isaiah is not going to let Ahaz off the hook here, and he won’t let the people either. As the leadership leads, so the people follow suit. For Ahaz to reject God’s invitation to ask for a sign is an indication of a heart that is closed to what is possible, to that new thing; it is a hard heart; a loveless heart.[iv] And if the leader feels this way, then the people do, too. They have all left God and God feels this abandonment. So, consumed by the passion of God, Isaiah must expose this hardness of heart and he does so by expressing God’s weary towards the people to expose their own agony and lovelessness.[v]

While Isaiah exposes Ahaz’s hardness of heart thus also the hardness of heart of the people, Isaiah deeply identifies with the people eager to hear and feel God among them and moving toward them. So, Isaiah prophesies a sign that God is coming to them, a child will be born to an unmarried young woman (not a young virginal girl (non-menstruating)).[vi] Through Isaiah, God promises that this son will barely come of age when Israel’s oppression will be eliminated, the land of the two kings—whom Israel dreads—will be deserted. The promise here in Isaiah isn’t necessarily the boy born to the young woman; the promise is that before he comes of age, Israel will be liberated. The promise is of God’s liberation of which this child named Immanuel is a sign that the two kings and their nations will be removed from the backs and necks of the people of Israel. This one named Immanuel reminds Israel that God is with them and that when God is with them, they need not fear any person for God is with them and God is for them and if God is for them then who can be against them? This one named Immanuel will be the sign that God loves them and is coming to take their hearts of stone (loveless hearts) and give them hearts of flesh, hearts able to and filled with love.

Immanuel. God is with Israel. Immanuel. Love is with Israel and where there is love there is neither fear nor dread. Isaiah is summoning the people back into love with Abba God, their first love, the one who loved them from the first.

Conclusion

Love isn’t something we cause ourselves to have or something we drum up from the depths of our souls. It’s a gift. It’s life. It’s God. Love comes to us. Love comes low to us, to seek us as we are, wherever we are even when we are absolutely loveless. Love takes our hand to guide us into God. Love will even come down so low that it will be born into fleshy vulnerability, among dirty animals and unclean people, in straw and hay, wrapped in meager swaddling clothes, laying in the lap of an unwed, woman of color without a proper place to lay her head. He, Jesus the Christ, Immanuel—God with us—is our Love, is our Love for right now, in the darkness of late fall, in the tumult of our lives, in the fatigue of our bodies and minds, and dwells with us transforming our lovelessness—part by part—into love. Incarnated love knowing God is with us and God is faithful.

God comes, Beloved, bringing love to the loveless.

[1] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[i] Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah: A Commentary, The Old Testament Library (Louisville: WJK, 2001), 65. “It is not merely a suggestion from the prophet, but an invitation from God himself to request a sign.”

[ii] Abraham K. Heschel, The Prophets, (New York: JPS, 1962), 16-17. “The prophet faces a coalition of callousness and established authority, and undertakes to stop a mighty stream with mere words. Had the purpose been to express great ideas, prophecy would have had to be acclaimed as a triumph. Yet the purpose of prophecy is to conquer callousness, to change the inner man as well as to revolutionize history.”

[iii] Heschel, Prophets, 81. “…the sympathy for God’s injured love overwhelms his whole being. What he feels about the size of God’s sorrow and the enormous scandal of man’s desertion of God is expressed in the two lines …which introduce God’s lamentation. ‘Hear, then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary men, that you weary my God also?’ (7:13). In different words addressed to the king, the prophet conveys his impression of the mood of God: As happened in the time of Noah and as is happening again, God’s patience and longsuffering are exhausted. He is tired of man. He hates man’s homage, his festivals, his celebrations. Man has become a burden and a sorrow for God.”

[iv] Heschel, Prophets, 208. “The fault is in the hearts, not alone in the deeds.”

[v] Heschel, Prophets, 17. “It is embarrassing to be a prophet. There are so many pretenders, predicting peace and prosperity, offering cheerful words, adding strength to self-reliance, while the prophet predicts disaster, pestilence, agony, and destruction.”

[vi] Childs, Isaiah, 66. Unmarried maiden of full sexual age (‘almāh) and not a young virginal girl

#AbrahamHeschel #Advent #Advent4 #BrevardChilds #DivineLove #FleshyHeart #GodIsLove #GodSLove #HardnessOfHeart #Isaiah #Liberation #Life #Love #Lovelessness #Prophets

Hope Comes to the Hopeless

https://youtu.be/fbW2ngbR5QM

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

Hope. Peace. Joy. Love. These are the words that define Advent. These are the words that define the Christmas season. These are the words that represent to us the very characteristics of God: God is hope; God is peace; God is joy; and, of course, God is love. And if these words tell us who God is and how God is toward us, then these words should be fundamentally definitive for humanity who wis made in the image of God. These words should describe us and define our activity in the world; we should not only have hope but bring hope, not only have peace but perform peace, not only have joy but be joy, and not only experience love but share love in the way it is so desperate to be shared from one human being to another no matter sex, class, race, age, identity in the world.

Sadly, these four words don’t often define humanity…especially now in this moment and at this time. We’re more hopeless than ever, we are downright peaceless, our joy is suffocated by grief and fatigue, and love seems too risky, so we bury it under resentment, anger, and fear as we divide and pull apart from each other. How do we have hope when every other time we’ve had hope it’s been thrown to the ground and smashed into thousands of pieces? I can’t have hope because I’m submerged in the waters of hopelessness and I’m tired of being let down again and again and again by this fickle friend. And to be honest, I don’t want hope; I’m too fatigued to have hope.

But, yet: Advent.

Advent slips in through the back door and dares to suggest Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love. The first Sunday in Advent is an interruption to our normal, day-to-day decent into chaos and tumult, where hopelessness reigns. And I think this is why the first Sunday of Advent carries hope with it; the first Sunday in Advent is the manger of Hope and thus we must come face to face and contend with it as it speaks to us and illuminates our hopelessness.

Isaiah 2:1-5

In days to come
the mountain of the Lord’s house
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
and shall be raised above the hills;
all the nations shall stream to it. (v2)

Isaiah declares to all of God’s people God is on God’s way and among them God will build God’s house. God’s house will be built in such a way it will be visible and accessible to all and not reserved for a privileged few. It is in and through this divine house that all will be one, the unity of humanity made known by the dwelling of divinity.[ii]

Isaiah continues,

Many peoples shall come and say,
‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of Abba God,
to the house of the God of Jacob;
that [Abba God] may teach us [Abba God’s] ways
and that we may walk in [God’s] paths.’
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,
and the word of [Abba God] from Jerusalem. (v3)

As Isaiah paints a vision of God’ house dwelling among God’s people instigating unity within humanity, he exposes God’s desire for all of God’s people to be with God, to learn from God directly, and walk (humbly) with God. God’s house and God’s presence among the people will draw the people unto God and by being drawn unto God the people inwardly digest God’s love, God’s life, and God’s liberation becoming one with God and with each other—on the whole earth[iii] as it is in the entire heavens.

Then Isaiah says,

[Abba God] shall judge between the nations,
and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning-hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more. (v4)

The instruction and guidance mentioned before turns toward judging and arbitration. God’s judgment and arbitration will be that which brings tangible and material peace among the people. By God’s presence, God’s righteousness will expose the people and illuminate their crooked pathways and straighten them, guiding them into what is true and right.[iv] God’s righteousness will be their righteousness; God’s justice will be their justice for they have learned the ways of God, the ways of divine justice informed by mercy. [v] Human ingenuity will transform by the exposure of God’s righteousness and justice; it will turn away from making weapons for war out of the metal forged from the earth and the greediness from the heart. Rather, they will make tools of love, life, and liberation out of those instruments meant to reinforce indifference and bring death and captivity. No longer will humanity worship its power in terms of arsenals and treasuries; [vi] God will be their all in all.[vii] God will be theirs and they will be God’s, and they will walk in God’s ways all their days knowing nothing any longer of the horrors and carnage and absurdity[viii] of war[ix] and obscene violence[x] knowing only the love of God and the love that binds them to each other. Power and might beaten into mercy and peace. [xi]

Isaiah finishes,

O house of Jacob,
come, let us walk
in the light of [Abba God]! (v5)

Isaiah exhorts the people of God to walk in the light of Abba God, they are to grow and rejoice in this light, becoming more and more, day by day, like their Abba God. This light is God’s light; this light is God in God’s self; this light is divine hope given to the entire earth and all the people. And it is good.

Conclusion

Hope isn’t something we cause ourselves to have or something we drum up from the depths of our souls. It’s a gift. It’s the light. It’s God. Hope comes to us. Hope comes low to us, to seek us as we are, wherever we are even when we are absolutely hopeless. Hope takes our hand to guide us into its light. Hope will even come down so low that it will be born into fleshy vulnerability, among dirty animals and unclean people, in straw and hay, wrapped in meager swaddling clothes, laying in the lap of an unwed, woman of color without a proper place to lay her head. He, Jesus the Christ, Immanuel—God with us—is our hope, is our hope for right now, in the darkness of late fall, in the tumult of our lives, in the fatigue of our bodies and minds, and dwells with us transforming our hopelessness—part by part—into hope. Incarnated hope knowing God is with us and God is faithful.

God comes, Beloved, bringing hope to the hopeless.

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] Abraham K. Heschel, The Prophets, (New York: JPS, 1962), 169. “The prophet may be regarded as the first universal man in history; he is concerned with, and addresses himself to, all men. It was not an emperor, but a prophet, who first conceived of the unity of all men.”

[iii] Heschel, Prophets, 169. “Isaiah proclaimed God’s purpose and design ‘concerning the whole earth’ (14:26), and actually addressed himself to ‘all you inhabitants of the world, you who dwell on the earth’ (Isa. 18:3…) delivering special prophecies concerning Babylon, Moab, Damascus, Egypt, Tyre, and others…”

[iv] Heschel, Prophets, 169. “It is the God of Israel Who summons the mighty men to execute His designs (Isa. 13:3, 5), Who calls the nations of the world into judgment, and it is He Whom one day all nations shall worship in Zion (Isa. 2:2 ff….”

[v] Heschel, Prophets, 96. “Zion is where at the end of days all the nations shall go to learn the ways of God.”

[vi] Heschel, Prophets, 183. “The sword is the pride of man; arsenals, forts, and chariots lend supremacy to nations. War is the climax of human ingenuity, the object of supreme efforts: men slaughtering each other, cities battered into ruins. What is left behind is agony, death, and desolation. At the same time, men think very highly of themselves….Idols of silver and gold are what they worship.”

[vii] Heschel, Prophets, 183. “Into a world fascinated with idolatry, drunk with power, bloated with arrogance, enters Isaiah’s word that the swords will be beaten into plowshares, that nations will search, not for gold, power or harlotries, but for God’s word.”

[viii] Heschel, Prophets, 160. “The prophets, questioning man’s infatuation with might, insisted not only on the immortality but also on the futility and absurdity of war.”

[ix] Heschel, Prophets, 73. “…Isaiah was horrified by the brutalities and carnage which war entails. In his boundless yearning he had a vision of the day when ‘nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more’ (2:4). War spawns death. But Isaiah was looking to the time when the Lord ‘will swallow up death for ever, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces…Israel’s security lies int eh covenant with God, not in covenants with Egypt of other nations.”

[x] Heschel, Prophets, 160. “When the prophets appeared, they proclaimed that might is not supreme, that the sword is an abomination, that violence is obscene. The sword, they said, shall be destroyed.”

[xi] Heschel, Prophets, 207-208. “God not only asks for justice; He demands of man ‘to regard the deeds of the Lord, to see the work of His hands’… ‘to walk in His paths…”

#abrahamHeschel #advent #advent1 #divineLight #emmanuel #hope #hopelessness #immanuel #isaiah #prophet

“Salvation will come”

https://youtu.be/4oGRuMJnviE

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[1]

Introduction

It’s mid-November, and we’re coming to the close of our liturgical year. It’s been a long year. Our socio-political landscape is marked by tumult and chaos, no matter what voting party you ascribe to. The ups and downs, the wins and losses, the intermingling of hope and despair are exhausting. We’re tossed about on the waves caused by those who tromp about leaving bodies in the wake, those who have more power, more money, more authority, more status than we do; we’re left wondering if we, the ones being represented, actually matter in this battle for who has the most toys (read: money, weapons, prestige, etc.). It’s hard to feel the ground under our feet when truth feels downright elusive; anyone else feel more and more skepticism toward anyone claiming to tell the truth? A diet of chaos and tumult with a big glass of skepticism never nourishes and always depletes. Humans are not meant to run on fumes for so long.

I don’t know about you, but I’m existentially and physically fatigued.

And that’s not even including our own personal lives and the things that have come and gone. Over the course of a year, we gain a lot, that is true. However, over the course of a year, we lose a lot, too. Some of us have lost family members, partners, and friends, acquaintances and colleagues. Whether to the cold hands of death or the firey fingers of derisive and divisive ideologies demanding cult-like adoration and adherence, there are people who were in our lives at the start of the year who are no longer darkening our doorways. Sadness, sorrow, grief, and regret are pretty wretched snacks; none of which actually satisfy our hunger and only leave a really bad, lingering aftertaste.

I don’t know about you, but I think I really need an intervention, a divine intervention, a good-news intervention. I need a light to pierce this darkness threatening to consume me, you, us, God’s beloved. I need to be interrupted and divorced from the dominant narratives of fear and anger. I need to be relocated in something new, something firm, something that is steady when everything else is rocky. I need a divine “normal” when nothing is normal anymore.

Isaiah 65:17-25

For I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered
or come to mind.
But be glad and rejoice forever
in what I am creating;
for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy,
and its people as a delight.

Isaiah’s words are a warm comfort to the parched soul. Ancient words to a people eager to know God is still their God; a need to know that they’re still seen by their God, that they’re still heard by the God who led them out of captivity in Egypt into the liberation of the reign of God. Through Isaiah, God proclaims that what was will be eclipsed by a new thing God will do in both heaven and on earth; the world will be changed when God shows up.[i]

I will rejoice in Jerusalem,
and delight in my people;
no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it,
or the cry of distress.
No more shall there be in it
an infant that lives but a few days,
or an old person who does not live out a lifetime;
for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth,
and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed.

Isaiah declares to the people that God’s joy and delight will be with God’s people. Not only will God take delight and have joy in God’s people, God’s joy and delight will be with and among the people; they, the children of God, will have access to and participate in that divine joy and delight. Weeping and distress will be no more. Isaiah’s comments about death highlight that life will be lived to the fullest, celebrated with joy and delight, with mercy and grace, by faith and love. For the one who dies when it is time to die will be the one who has lived well and has been alive all their days and those days will be many. They will also be the one who die in God’s delight and joy and will be taken further into God’s delight and joy; those who survive will celebrate such a one, for there will be no need to mourn.

They shall build houses and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
They shall not build and another inhabit;
they shall not plant and another eat;
for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be,
and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
They shall not labor in vain,
or bear children for calamity;
for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord–
and their descendants as well.

Isaiahs’ imagery turns to the work of the people when God shows up, and the reign of God takes over. It will no longer be toil; it will be work that’s pleasing not only to God’s eye but to the eye of the one who works. What Isaiah is describing here is a lack of exploitation of the laborer; the fruit of their hands will be the product of their own work, and they will enjoy it.[ii] Children will not be born into systems that steal human dignity, reducing them to things that toil to make others rich and some even richer. Isaiah’s words also point to a satisfaction and satiation. There’s an emphasis on a distribution of satisfaction in the work of their hand and a feeling satiated is hinted at. It’s not about grain silos and treasury vaults to store up for one’s self and keeping it from others. Rather, it’s about everyone receiving what they need all the days of their life, each day blessed by God. And even further, it’s about letting the surplus go to those who lack. All are cared for; none go hungry, thirsty, naked, or unhoused.

Before they call I will answer,
while they are yet speaking I will hear.
The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,
the lion shall eat straw like the ox;
but the serpent– its food shall be dust!
They shall not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.

God’s people wonder if they’re heard, and they are heard; God’s people wonder if they’re seen, and they are seen. God not only sees them and hears them, God’s presence, Isaiah prophecies, will be so close to them that even before they pray their prayers will be answered.[iii] The people of God will be seen and heard intimately and vulnerably because God will be accessible by all who are seeking God.[iv] Isaiah tells the people, “Salvation will come…”[v] God comes for God’s people, the curse from long ago will be undone, the exile of recent will be terminated forever. Prey and predator will lie down together, they will stop hunting and being hunted, anger and fear will depart; the new heavens and the new earth will even be a place of refuge for animal-kind. But not for the serpent who is, according to Isaiah, reduced to eating dust; while the world, humanity and animal kind will feel relief from the burden of the curse in God, the serpent will bear it out as was long ago promised by God,[vi]

The Lord God said to the serpent,
“Because you have done this,
cursed are you among all animals
and among all wild creatures;
upon your belly you shall go,
and dust you shall eat
all the days of your life.[vii]

Conclusion

Isaiah tells Israel, “salvation comes,” and it will. Isaiah tells Israel, “God comes,” and God will. Isaiah tells Israel, “help comes,” and it will. Because their God is a God of the people, of the humble people who are at their wits end, hanging from the very bottom of the rope, the ones ready to give up. As Isaiah says elsewhere, “a bruised reed [Abba God] will not break, and a dimly burning wick [Abba God] will not quench; [Abba God] will faithfully bring forth justice.”[viii]

We are not abandoned, forsaken, or alone. We are not ungrounded, destabilized, or uprooted. We are not consumed by grief, sorrow, or despair. We are not ignored, dismissed, or forgotten. Isaiah’s words to Israel become words to us today, where we are and as we are. Beloved, God comes; Beloved, salvation comes; Beloved, help comes. For, behold, Christ Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us will be born to us, to identify with us, to dwell with us, to be God close to us, and he will be the light that pierces the darkness forever.

[1] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[i] Benjamin D. Sommer, The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 913. “This passage recalls the initial prophecies of Deutero-Isaiah in its exuberant tone and literary style, but the nature of the prediction goes beyond those found in chs. 40-48: The world itself will be transformed in the new age that God brings.”

[ii] Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah: A Commentary, The Old Testament Library (Louisville: WJK, 2001), 538. “The imagery of joy and absence of weeping is set in contrast to the sorrow through which the community of faith has come. The planting of vineyards and the enjoying of its fruits is simply the converse of Israel’s experience of exploration and conquest.”

[iii] Sommer, “Isaiah,” 913. “In 51.9-11 and chs 63-64, the people wondered whether God listens to their prayers. God answers this question here: In the future, God will answer prayers before the people even utter them.”

[iv] Childs, Isaiah, 538. “Verse 24 once again repeats the theme of chapter 65 of God’s utter accessibility in his calling and answering those who seek his presence.”

[v] Abraham K. Heschel, The Prophets, (New York: JPS, 1962), 158.

[vi] Childs, Isaiah, 538. “The line ‘dust will be the serpent’s food’ is a play on Gen. 3:14, which describes the curse of the serpent at the Fall.”

[vii] Genesis 3:14

[viii] Isaiah 42:3

#AbrahamHeschel #Beloved #BenjaminDSommer #BrevardChilds #Darkness #DivineLiberation #DivineLight #DivineLove #Genesis3 #GodSLove #Hope #Isaiah #Jesus #Light #MartinLuther #NewCreation #NewHeavensAndNewEarth

“Prone to Wander”: Willingly Killing God

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0PRAuPWMEk&authuser=0

Luke 18:13d: “‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’”

Should have done it sooner but I didn’t because
I don’t even know myself
Everything I’m based on is just something I was
And I can’t even sell myself
Oh mirror mirror hanging on the wall
Show me how to love myself
Should have done it sooner but I didn’t because
I don’t even trust myself[1]

We are so prone to wander from the God whom we love that we will willingly choose indifference rather than love, captivity rather than liberation, and death rather than life. We will forget what we stand for, whose we are, and what we were meant to do and be in the world; for what? Short term success? We will throw our friends under the bus, and we will forget our neighbor and let them be dragged by the words and deeds of others; for why? To keep ourselves secure in our peer groups, at work, and hidden from the judgmental eye of our family? We will literally scorch the earth for profit, burn every bridge out of vengeance, and cut off our noses to spite our faces; for whom? No one. In the end no one will be in our corner because their bodies will be casualties in our own personal vendetta against life, love, and liberation.

I look much smaller seen from inside out
Far too small to see myself
Down on reflection, cast in hate and in doubt
Flawed and flaws I add myself
Oh mirror mirror hanging on the wall
Please just show me someone else
My hopes were low and I got so much so less
Nothing left to save myself[2]

I wish I had better news. But I don’t. At the end of the day yesterday, we all imagined that we would do what the Israelites did during the Passover, that we would exclaim with Peter, Wash all of me!, that we wouldstep back from our own weak and faulty judgment and trust God, letting faith work itself out in actions of love and trust in God and in our community. The reality is that our exposure yesterday bleeds into today: we’re not able to suspend our judgement long enough to bring God glory and well-being to our neighbor. In fact, we are dead set on doing the exact opposite:  dragging God down to our level, baptizing God in our image, and driving our neighbor further and further into alienation and isolation.

Each day a broken clock is true at least twice
Twice the odds I give myself
I know it would be kinda easier sometimes
If I felt like someone else
This is my SOS, these are the bridges I’m burning
I never needed such help, this is my SOS
I gave my level best, these hands are drowning, not waving
This is my SOS, this is your heart and I’m breaking[3]

The worst part about all of this is that we’re all captive and complicit in the destruction and death raining down around us. We definitely bring it upon ourselves and of our own volition. To be honest, can we even choose anything different? We’re steeped and marinated in a culture that prizes a dog-eat-dog mentality, where the dog is another human being (our neighbor, our friends, our family). We grow up thinking that our free will is what caused us to become so successful, ignoring the luck of birth year, family of origin, skin color, sex assigned at birth, ability to fit in with the status quo, and the access to funds that open doors. We are bombarded with explicit and implicit messages that human beings are only as good as their productivity, the tautness of their skin, the firmness of their muscles, and the sturdiness of their steps. We’re drowned in a deluge of national and local rhetoric that plays off of our worst fears and provokes our deepest anger, that convinces us to confuse security built by militarized weapons with enduring peace. It’s not only that we have a wandering heart—we do; we’re taught to wander, to stray, to estrange ourselves from God and rewarded with cash to do so…if we’re lucky. In doing so, we are prone to promote death (in all of its insidious manifestations), even to the point of causing it.

Isaiah 53:1-12

Surely he has borne our infirmities
and carried our diseases;
yet we accounted him stricken,
struck down by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions,
crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
and by his bruises we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have all turned to our own way,
and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
By a perversion of justice he was taken away.
Who could have imagined his future?
For he was cut off from the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people.
They made his grave with the wicked
and his tomb with the rich,
although he had done no violence,
and there was no deceit in his mouth.

Isaiah doesn’t identify who the speaker is here; it could be anyone: rulers of other nations, the Israelites themselves, Isaiah himself.[3] The passage is also silent as to whether this suffering servant suffered and the others did not, or if he suffered alongside the suffering of others.[4] The absence of a definitive voice and the ambiguity of the extent of suffering allows this passage to be a point of brutal exposure. As we take on the role of speaker, we become accountable in this event because the “we” and “our” become our pronouns; we’re implicated, we’re guilty, we’re the ones who transgressed and sinned and put it on an innocent other and then, like narcissistic, gaslighting pros, we turned against him and accounted and accused him of being stricken by God.

We enter the narrative as the ones who scapegoated Christ to appease our own judgments of good and right and wrong and bad. And, whether we like it or not, we are exposed. We cannot have it any other way; as these prophetic words are read to us, we are brought into the prophet’s pain[5] at what is to come for the suffering servant. In being brought into Isaiah’s pain, we’re brought into God’s pain and thus we’re exposed for who and what we are. We’re not given an option to discard the invitation; our RSVP has already been mailed back affirming that we will attend this event of the destruction of the innocent one as our. In other words, we, with Isaiah and God and the Suffering Servant, are invited to suffer, too.[6]

And we do suffer. We suffer because we’re guilty. We might be wonderfully and fearfully made, but we’re guilty; we’re beloved and complicit; we’re helpless and captive and condemned. No matter what justifications and excuses we may throw around, the reality is: we’ve brought ourselves here, to this point, to the depths of the horrors of human existence, to the reality that we would rather harm and kill anyone who comes against our power and privilege. Isaiah brings us into the light of our most dire confession and transfers to us his suffering and agony, [7] transfers to us God’s suffering and agony[8] because of our wayward hearts hardened by our greed, lust, vanity, rage, theft, gluttony, and pride. Here, in the light shining through the suffering servant, the blood on our hands is illuminated. There’s no getting ourselves off this hook.

Conclusion

We’re in agony, we’re suffering, we’re stuck, we’re captive to death, and we’re exposed.

Rather than let Christ’s voice call us, Christ’s actions challenge us, Christ’s presence change us, we clamor for Jesus’s death, and we get it. Because we would rather be violent to reinforce how right we are than suffer the humiliation of maybe being wrong; because we prefer to stay on our own devised course, we refuse to change directions and dare to take an unfamiliar path; because we’re prone to wander because of our own choices and calcified hearts, the judgment of God is surely upon us. Today, in this story, we’re reminded that Jesus bore our iniquity…because he bore our very, very bad judgment informed by the doctrines and dogmas of the kingdom of humanity and not the kingdom of God.[9] The weight of that judgment, as we watch and witness the death of God by our hand, renders us to our own death. Today, our incarceration to our own comfort, to what makes our own selves feel safe, to our obsession with violence and death comes to a cataclysmic head-on collision with God; none of us survive.[10]

Today, we get what we want; by our own hands we realize and affirm our captivity to our own fear and our anger. Today, we stop moving and we curve all the way in. Today, we’re dead where we are and as we were, stuck in the thick of violent impulses and submerged in our own human-made culture of death. Because today, we killed God.

[1] Sneaker Pimps, “SOS (feat. Simmone Jones),” verse 1.

[2] Sneaker Pimps, “SOS (feat. Simmone Jones),” verse 2.

[3] Sneaker Pimps, “SOS (feat. Simmone Jones),” verse 3 and chorus.

[3] Benjamin D. Sommer, “Isaiah,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 891. “The identity of the speakers who express their shock at the career of the servant is unclear.”

[4] Sommer, “Isaiah,” 891-892. “Either the servant suffered on behalf of the speakers (i.e., the guilty were not punished at all), or he suffered along with the guilty, even though he himself did not share in the guilt of his fellow Israelites. The former idea (i.e., the notion of vicarious suffering) would be unusual for the Bible; the latter idea (the idea of corporate guilt) is not.”

[5] Abraham Heschel The Prophets New York, NY: JPS, 1962. 149.

[6] Heschel, Prophets, 149. “As a rule we reflect on the problem of suffering in relation to him who suffers. The prophet’s message insists that suffering is not to be understood exclusively in terms of the sufferer’s own situation. In Israel’s agony, all nations are involved. Israel’s suffering is not a penalty, but a privilege, a sacrifice; its endurance is a ritual, its meaning is to be disclosed to all men in the hour of Israel’s redemption.”

[7] Heschel, Prophets, 149. “Deliverance, redemption, is what the Lord has in store for Israel, and through Israel for all men. Her suffering and agony are the birth-pangs of salvation which, the prophet proclaims, is about to unfold. In answer to the prophet’s fervent invocation (51:9), the Lord is about to bare His arm or His might before the eyes of all the nations. (Cf. 52:10 with 53:1).”

[8] Heschel, Prophets, 151. “Israel’s suffering is God’s grief. In reflecting on what this people has endured, His words sound like pangs of remorse.”

[9] LW 17:221. “It was not for Himself and His own sins, but for our sins and griefs. He bore what we should have suffered.”

[10] LW 17:221-222. “We thought he was suffering because of His own sin, as it were. In the eyes of the world and of the flesh Christ does not suffer for us, since He seemed to have deserved it Himself. This is what the prophet says here too, that He was judged guilty in the eyes of the world. It is therefore difficult to believe that such a one suffered for us. The Law is that everybody dies for his own sins. Natural reason, and divine as well, argues that everybody must bear his own sin. Yet He is struck down contrary to all law and custom. Hence reason infers that he was smitten by God for His own sake. Therefore the prophet leads us so earnestly beyond all righteousness and our rational capacity and confronts us with the suffering of Christ to impress upon us that all that Christ has is mine. This is the preaching of the whole Gospel, to show us that Christ suffered for our sake contrary to law, right, and custom.”

#AbrahamHeschel #BadNews #Captivity #Death #GoodFriday #HolyWeek #Indifference #Isaiah #JPSStudyBible #MartinLuther #SneakerPimpsSOS

Remember and Rejoice Even Now

https://youtu.be/oYMcbvGXxaM

Canticle 9 The First Song of Isaiah Surely, it is God who saves me; I will trust in Abba God and not be afraid. For God is my stronghold and my sure defense, and Abba God will be my Savior.

Introduction

Joy. Joy? In this economy?

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been awash in many a meme and reel describing the harriedness of a mom during the Christmas season. From doing advanced math to figuring out the equity calibration among the presents for the kids to just making sure that things are “merry and bright” and feel like Christmas, these memes solicit a chuckle here and there as I navigate the various holiday season enterprises. The funniest memes and reels include moms who must also navigate a Christmas season with a kid who has (the audacity to have) a December birthday…

Joy. Joy? In this economy?!

But Joy is precisely what is being asked of me as I show up here, in this place. Maybe the audacity isn’t so much my kid who has a December birthday, but mine…can I have the audacity to have joy…even now?

We speak of Advent as a time of waiting and expecting; I don’t know about you, but sometimes when I’m waiting and expecting something I’m really just catastrophizing and imagining the worse, dreading everything. But what if the news to come is good? What if the waiting and expecting is for something remarkable, life-altering, world changing, something categorically awesome and awe-filled, something that rejuvenates tired bones and fatigued bodies, something that solicits that electrical surge of No Way! through the brain when something unbelievable happens? What if joy and its activity “rejoicing” are precisely the emotive and active prospects of this very moment, of this very economy, of this very time of waiting and expecting?

Canticle 9 The First Song of Isaiah

Therefore you shall draw water with rejoicing from the springs of salvation. And on that day you shall say, Give thanks to Abba God and call upon Abba God’s Name…

Our canticle brings us into the realm of rejoicing, whether we like or not and whether we are ready for it or not. The canticle starts with a declaration from Isaiah, “Surely, it is God who saves me; I will trust in Abba God and not be afraid” (v.1). These words of Isaiah begin to conclude what has come before in the previous eleven chapters.[1] The words are not strictly Isaiah’s though, they are for the assembly. These prophetic[2] words of Isaiah 12 are liturgical words, thus, per Advent 1, they are psalmic.[3] It is not only Isaiah who praises Abba God; it is Israel’s summons to praise God because of all the good things God has done: God has been Israel’s “stronghold” and “sure defense” and God has demonstrated God’s self to be Israel’s savior (v.2). In remembering these deeds of God and the salvation they receive from God’s hand, Israel is ushered into the celebration of rejoicing and praise (v.3),[4] not unlike Moses and Israel did when they were liberated from Egypt. The words of Isaiah 12:1-6 are a litany of quotations from the psalms, other portions of Isaiah, and exodus.[5] Israel is being swept up in the great and grand salvation of God because God’s salvation is not one and done; God will always be their God thus their salvation, and they will always be God’s people in need of saving.

As the canticle continues with v. 4, “And on that day you shall say, Give thanks to God and call upon God’s Name; make God’s deeds known among the peoples; see that they remember that God’s Name is exalted.” On that day…meaning, not only on back then when their foreparents stood on the shore of the sea liberated from Egyptian oppression, but on any day when God’s salvation is made known to the people shall they give thanks and call upon God. Israel has been saved, is being saved, and will be saved; Isaiah has the fullness of time in view. [6] Israel will remember that God has saved and in remembering will look forward to God’s salvation in the future; with both their past and future secured in God, Israel’s salvation is present tense and they are liberated to brings God’s justice further into the world.

With the imagery of the Passover and liberation from Egypt in mind,[7] the canticle beckons the Israelites to remember that it is a faithful remnant that call upon God’s name, who respond to God’s judgment and redemption; and this is Isaiah’s hope.[8] The remnant is not the powerful, not the leaders, not the ones out front; the remnant is hidden among the regular people, like you and me, the ones calling out to God from their squalor, from their pain, from their suffering, from their oppression, from their existential fatigue;[9] they are the ones who remember the great deeds of Abba God and abide in God.[10] Martin Luther in The Bondage of the Will, says something similar about the true church of Christ, “The Church is hidden, the saints are unknown.”[11] The promised new community which the remnant constitutes is heard, according to Isaiah; their present reality is formed by a mutual remembering of the past and this constitutes the future of Israel.[12] God’s people will not be easily snuffed out no matter where they are or where they go because God is both their defender and their salvation in every moment. It is the remnant, spread far and wide, whose voices become one as they “Sing the praises of Abba God, for Abba God has done great things, and this is known in all the world” (v.5), and as they “Cry aloud” and “ring out [their] joy” because they are anchored in God because God is with them and God is their God and they are God’s beloved. [13]And knowing an believing this, there is reason to rejoice even in the waiting and expecting; especially in the waiting and expecting.

Conclusion

In Advent, we are summoned in and asked to remember while we wait. Following the logic of Isaiah 12:1-6, when we remember we also find ourselves looking forward to God who is our past and our future. We dare to look forward, to pick up heavy heads and cast tired eyes into the great unknown and dare to look forward with confidence that God will do what God has promised God will do because God has demonstrated God’s self as trustworthy (yesterday, today, and tomorrow). In this sacred time of waiting and by our holy remembering, we join our voices with that ancient remnant of Israel, those eager voices of yesteryear crying out to God. In this sacred time of waiting and by our holy remembering, we join our voices to those who cry out today for God’s intervention: those who are threatened with extinction and cry out to God, those who are scared to live as they are and cry out to God, those who fear for the lives of their loved ones because of the color of their skin and cry out to God, those who only know the cold bars of captivity and cry out to God, those who cry out to God from the depth of their nakedness, hunger, thirst, and loneliness. Israel’s call in the world is to think upon the gråeat actions of God and to then participate in God’s mission in the world righting the wrongs in the world. For those of us here today, those of us also waiting and remembering, we, too, are asked to participate in righting wrongs, in identifying with the least of these, in seeking God’s justice and peace in the world.

So, as we refresh our exhausted minds by remembering once again the off-the-wall story of God coming low in the humble form of a baby born to Mary in a cave so that God’s self can identify with God’s beloved, let us also find new energy to sing and praise God, to throw our hands up and rejoice again…even now, especially now.

[1] Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah: A Commentary, The Old Testament Library (Louisville: WJK, 2001), 107. “The chapter offers a response to the great deeds of God’s salvation to his people in Zion that were recorded in the previous eleven chapters.”

[2] Childs, Isaiah, 108. “It seems clear that the traditional conventions of the Psalter have been reused to shape an eschatological psalm of thanksgiving into a new vehicle for the prophetic proclamation of the book.”

[3] Childs, Isaiah, 108. “…chapter 12 is dominated by the psalmic language of Israel’s liturgy.”

[4] Childs, Isaiah, 108. “Verses 3 and 6 bracket the second confession and offer further theological grounding for the call of praise by the community of faith.”

[5] Childs, Isaiah, 108. “The passage is a veritable catena of citations and allusions form other sections of Isaiah, from Exodus, and the Psalter. For example, v. 1=Isa. 5:25; v. 2a=Ex. 15:2b; v. 2b=Ex. 15.2a; v. 3=Isa. 35:10, 55:1; Ps. 105:41, 43; v. 4=Ps. 105:1, 148:13; v. 5=Ex. 15:1, 21.”

[6] Childs, Isaiah, 109-110. “The theme of salvation is repeated three times, not just as a promise extended, but a reality experienced…It is this experience of the redeeming mercy that evokes joy as an inexhaustible source of life-giving water. Moreover, as with the rest of the Psalter, the experience of salvation calls forth a witness to the rest of the world that bears testimony to the wonders of God’s might works.”

[7] Childs, Isaiah, 110. Analogy between this text and Moses’s song in Ex. 15.

[8] Childs, Isaiah, 109. “The major point to make is that chapter 12 presents the voice of the faithful remnant of Israel responding to the great deeds of God, both in judgment and redemption, which had occupied the prophets throughout the former chapters.”

[9] Childs, Isaiah, 110. “Thus an analogy is established between redeemed Israel after the deliverance from Egypt and the present remnant, who in their experience of faith already stand on a safe shore a second time after having been rescued from enemies and exiles.”

[10] Abraham K. Heschel, The Prophets, (New York: JPS, 1962), 208. “God not only asks for justice; He demands of man ‘to regard the deeds of the Lord, to see the work of His hands’ (Isa. 5:12; cf. 22:11), ‘to walk in His paths’ (Isa. 2:3). ‘If you will not believe, you will not abide’ (Isa. 7:11).”

[11] Martin Luther “Bondage of the Will” LW 33:89

[12] Childs, Isaiah, 109. “Up to now there had been the promise of anew community of faith that would emerge from the ashes of Israel’s destruction, but the actual voice of the remnant had not been heard. The presentation of this voice of praise serves to confirm that the new society of faith was not merely a future promise, but was a present reality, made concrete first in the son Shearjashub (7:3) , but above all in the sign of Immanuel (7:14). This community of faith confirms in liturgical praise its experience of God, and the choice of the idiom of the Psalter bears testimony to the liturgical actuality of the worship.”

[13] Childs, Isaiah, 110. “In the response of faith the reality of the divine presence, ‘God with us’ (Immanuel), has been experienced, pointing to the full eschatological consummation of the kingdom of God. Israel can shout in joy because the Holy One of Israel, who has always reigned over his creation (6:3), even now shows himself mighty in the midst of his people (v. 6). The eschatological tensions of the chapter testify that the remnant already shares in that for which it waits in expectation.”

#AbrahamHeschel #Advent #Advent3 #BondageOfTheWill #BrevardChilds #God #Isaiah #Israel #Joy #MartinLuther #Rejoice #Remembering #Remnant #Salvation #Waiting

Luke 18:13d: “‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’”*

Introduction

I know what I’m supposed to say
The lines on the script say that I’m okay
Standing on an island
I can only hear the silence
Deaf to the crowd that I claim to know
Standing in an ocean
I can barely feel the motion
All these waves drag me down
And I feel like I gotta go
I’m a castaway[1]

We are people who would rather grow still and die than move forward and change. We’d rather drown than fall head first in the void, letting go of our grip on comfort and what’s known.

I wish I had better words. But I don’t. One can die before they physically die. A person can drown without water. Death is only the cessation of movement forward and therein it can take many forms. Individually, we all suffer from the virus of the fear of change. We are so afraid of it that we get mad at people for changing (either good or bad). Relationships end because people change, and we are left where we were; I don’t even know who you are any more… We would rather leave beloved communities because too much has changed, it’s all unfamiliar; this isn’t anything like I remember. We cling to dusty relics hoping they will bring us the same joy they once did but no longer can and maybe they never did in the first place. We strive for happiness by thinking that all we need to do is to find that thing that was, that used to be. We valorize former versions of ourselves, thinking that if we want to be happy now, we need to go back to something that we believe used to be but never were.

My face is wearing thin
These thoughts, they chafe against my skin
Lost in the crowd again
And I swear I met this guy who seemed like a friend
Wow, look how far I’ve fallen
Now, everything’s dark
And I don’t wanna fall again
I’m a castaway[2]

We, ourselves, resist change as if change itself is the last word forever forbidding us from comfort and peace. I find this virus in my own flesh. I get stuck in wanting to reach and stretch backward to retrieve some form of me that was something better than I am now. If I could just get back there, be that person, recreate that sensation and feeling, then maybe I can be happy now. Maybe I’ll reach for some music, some habit, some fake mentality to recreate what I am convinced was there. But it’s a lie; a lie that kills the present and thus erases both the future and past. Trying to go backwards to retrieve something and drag it into the present prohibits me from going forward and forces the past (it’s stories and memories, it’s sensations and feelings) to bear a burden it cannot hold; the past can never be the present because it will dissolve into dust I our hands. We even resist change with ever weapon it has when it threated to take from us what we have grown accustomed to and know, what is familiar; we shun off anything new for fear that it will swallow us whole and forbid us from never having comfort again. As we resist change and forbid moving forward, we remain stuck in the past and captive to what was. In other words, WE ARE DEAD.

It’s okay to feel alone right now
I promise one day that we’ll make it out
Disney movies always have a happy ending
But I’m not feeling too happy yet
So I guess it’s not the end
Is there anyone out there
Looking out at sea
‘Cause I’m kinda scared now
That there’s no one there
For me[3]

Should I mention our desire to maintain systems and judgments, ideologies and dogmas, that have long ago expired? Systems and structures starting off well-meaning and decent become septic and toxic when we—in our voracious hubris—would rather die than see something new take its place. We’d rather that people suffer than maybe change the smallest part of the way we think about things because that change would require us to die to something that has brought us (too much?) comfort over the years. We’d rather leave people behind who love us because they’ve changed rather than dare to change with them. We’d rather grow cold than admit defeat or fault.

Isaiah 53: 1-9
He was despised and rejected by others;
a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity;
and as one from whom others hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him of no account.
Surely he has borne our infirmities
and carried our diseases;
yet we accounted him stricken,
struck down by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions,
crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
and by his bruises we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have all turned to our own way,
and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
By a perversion of justice he was taken away.
Who could have imagined his future?
For he was cut off from the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people.
They made his grave with the wicked
and his tomb with the rich,
although he had done no violence,
and there was no deceit in his mouth.
(Is. 53:2c-6, 8-9)

The agony articulated by one of the Isaiahs is our agony.[4] Today, this is where we are. Agony. We are in agony because we are exposed. Exposed to the core. Some how we must hold the goodness of our divine creation and our guilt of complicity in the myriad forms of death swirling all about us. We can be good and guilty. We can be beloved and guilty. (We must ditch the binary of guilty is bad and not-guilty is good. If we can’t, we’ll find ourselves justifying more and more death and violence and our confessions will become more and more false.) We can be good and guilty of participating in systems, narratives, ideologies, theologies, dogmas, doctrines that harm other people and ourselves. I know I am guilty of this. I know you are guilty of this. We are all convicted here.

Isaiah’s prophetic prayer highlights that whether we know it or not, whether we want to admit it or not, we are in agony and are suffering. We are suffering because of our resistance to move forward, our fear of change, our inability to let go and fall into something new. Thus, this suffering is not the product of divine chastisement; it’s the product of our own hands.[5] We are caught up in the muck and mire of the tension between being held captive and being complicit in our suffering and the suffering of others. Isaiah says, all have gone astray, we have all turned to our own way. Each of us is called to account for our complicit and captive actions against the revolution of divine life in the world.

We are in so much agony and suffering that our anger and fear cause us to choose to put God to death than abandon our own comfort security.

Conclusion

We are in agony, we are suffering, we are stuck, we are captive, and we are exposed.

Rather than let Christ’s voice call us, Christ’s actions challenge us, Christ’s presence change us, we clamored for Jesus’s death, and we got it. Because we hate change, hate being challenged, hate being called to move forward, the judgment of God is surely upon us. Today, in this story, we are reminded that Jesus bore our iniquity…because he bore our very, very bad judgment informed by the doctrines and dogmas of the kingdom of humanity and not the kingdom of God. The weight of that judgment, as we watch and witness the death of God by our hand, renders us to our own death. Today, our incarceration to our own comfort, to what makes our own selves feel safe comes to a cataclysmic head-on collision with God; none of us survive.

Today, we get what want, we force the past to be the present and erase the future; by our own hands we realize and affirm our captivity to our own fear and our being stuck in anger. Today, we stop moving; today, we are dead where we are as we were. Because today we killed God.

* small portions of this sermon are found in the Good Friday sermon from 2022.

[1] Kroh, “Castaway (feat. Halfy & Winks),” verse 1. This song was recommended to me by my son, Jackson H. L. Larkin

[2] Kroh, “Castaway (feat. Halfy & Winks),” verse 2.

[3] Kroh, “Castaway (feat. Halfy & Winks),” Chorus and Outro.

[4] Abraham Heschel The Prophets New York, NY: JPS, 1962. 149.

[5] Heschel Prophets 151

https://laurenrelarkin.com/2024/03/29/buried-in-the-past-captive-to-what-was-personal-agony/

#AbrahamHeschel #Agony #Castaway #Confrontation #Cross #Death #DeathOfGod #Exposure #GoodFriday #Isaiah #Jesus #Kroh #PersonalGuilt #PowersOfSinAndDeath #Suffering

Psalm 103:20-22 Bless God, you angels, you mighty ones who do God’s bidding, and hearken to the voice of God’s word. Bless Abba God, all you his hosts, you ministers of God who do God’s will. Bless God, all you works of God, in all places of God’s dominion; bless Abba God, O my soul.

Introduction

We are about a month away from hitting the fourth anniversary of Covid_19 shutting down the world and turning it completely upside down. I can simultaneously believe and not believe that it’s been that long and only that long. It feels like yesterday and so long ago. Time feels thin right now, caught in a paradox of fast and slow, so close and yet so far away, here and not here.

But it’s not only time that feels caught in such a paradox. The atmosphere surrounding our bodies feels caught in its own paradox of familiar and strange. I don’t think I feel all that different than I did on March 12, 2020, but then I feel completely different, like maybe I don’t share one genetic similarity with that woman. But I do! She and I are one, and we did go through and are still going through that massive event that plunged the world into chaos.

And it’s more than just a personal sensation, something unique and private to me. It’s impacting all of us. And not only those of us here in this room, but in our community, in our state, in our nation, and in our world. This entire ball of matter orbiting its sun feels submerged in tumult. One global event after another arises, reminding us viscerally that our lives are short and our bodies fragile and vulnerable. We are not in control, are we? War and violence, genocide and extermination, hate and rage are the fuel motivating bloated egos consumed with power toward global extinction. Our own country grows continually divided over who has liberty and who doesn’t, xenophobia is (re)peaking (if you are not just like us then you are against us), our neighbors are becoming our supposed enemies to our own private freedom and liberty blinding us to the fact that we might be the enemy to ourselves; in short, everything and everyone is a threat. Our many places of worship, those once deemed sacred and safe places, are now battle-ground-zeros for so many people who are sure they know exactly what God thinks and wants, drawing lines thick and dark in the sand, meanwhile fighting terribly to keep their institutional heads above the waters of financial ruin and destitution, afraid to let death come and claim its victims and houses.

Almost four years ago we were thrown into a rupture in time and space, and—I don’t know about you—but it doesn’t feel like we’ve been rescued from it just yet. In fact, I’ll say it boldly, we have not been rescued; we’re still in the rupture. We are further in and further down, but not up and not out.

So, what do we do? Well, the tendency for human nature is to go backward, return to the shore of familiarity and comfortable, swim back to what was, and to ignore that our memory of the past silences malicious secrets and covers over terrible deeds. Humans are convinced that what we know is easier to battle than what we don’t know. We love to look backward with rose colored glasses and reminisce with fondness about things that, frankly, never truly existed as remembered. Our minds lie to us, lure us backward toward images of yesterday that are (actually) images of never-where and never-when. We are easily seduced by thoughts that somehow the past was better, more vibrant, simpler, without difficulty; wasn’t it easier back then…

Human beings have a hard time fighting against this lure and seduction of the romanticized past; the more we fight the more stuck we become. We are buried in the past, captive to what was.

Joel 2:1-2,12-17

Blow the trumpet in Zion;
sound the alarm on my holy mountain!
Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble,
for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near–
a day of darkness and gloom,
a day of clouds and thick darkness!
Like blackness spread upon the mountains
a great and powerful army comes;
their like has never been from of old,
nor will be again after them
in ages to come.

It seems Joel’s ancient, prophetic words ring true today. There is trembling among the people, darkness and gloom feel real while clouds and thick darkness taunt us from above. The day of God comes, and we’re yet to be saved from it. There is fear here, in Joel’s words. The people should be afraid of God, says Joel, but not of humanity.[1] But this fear is not because God’s principle characteristic is anger or wrath because God’s character is foremost longsuffering and patient, forgiving and merciful. [2],[3]

Yet even now, says the Lord,
return to me with all your heart,
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
rend your hearts and not your clothing.
Return to the Lord, your God,
for he is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love,
and relents from punishing.
Who knows whether he will not turn and relent,
and leave a blessing behind him,
a grain offering and a drink offering
for the Lord, your God?

The people should fear this day of God’s arrival because God will come and expose that what the people have created as a sham: mere phantoms of good; things built in the image of humanity and not by the divine inspiration of God’s loving and gracious Spirit. Joel’s pronouncement of God’s coming judgment and anger summons the people out of themselves—their egos, their power, their pleasure, their comfort—and redirects them to a proper relationship to God (one of dependence and trust, one of reverence and forgiveness). Joel makes it clear, the people have gone astray, they must return to God because in this return God’s displeasure is (potentially) fleeting; it is a moment in time that happens, it will not last forever. [4]

Blow the trumpet in Zion;
sanctify a fast;
call a solemn assembly;
gather the people.
Sanctify the congregation;
assemble the aged;
gather the children,
even infants at the breast.
Let the bridegroom leave his room,
and the bride her canopy.

God loves God’s people; however, according to all the prophets of Israel and including Joel, God does not love it when the people forfeit their relationship with God for a relationship with power and privilege thus obstructing the wellbeing and livelihood of their neighbors. God does not deal kindly with such mischief. Thus, with their society on ethe edge of judgment and being engulfed by the divine pathos for the Beloved, according to Joel, God’s people can do something to mitigate this coming moment of wrath: they can turn to God because God is merciful and gracious[5] and this turning to God will turn away God’s displeasure,[6] especially if they return in time before God’s day of judgment arrives.[7]

Between the vestibule and the altar
let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep.
Let them say, “Spare your people, O Lord,
and do not make your heritage a mockery,
a byword among the nations.
Why should it be said among the peoples,
`Where is their God?'”

The Spiritual Leaders of God’s people, according to Joel, are to weep and pray. This is the beginning of a restored orientation toward God. The Spiritual Leaders petition God for God to spare the people and to honor God’s “heritage” thus establishing God’s people among the nations from this time forward. Therein God’s presence among the people will be sustained, letting the world know that God has not abandoned God’s people. Thus, Joel’s question posed by the mouths of priests, “Where is their God?” is moot because God is with them. However, if there is no return to God, then the bitter question remains on the mouths of Israel’s adversaries: where is the Lord your God?[8]

Conclusion

What direction should God’s people turn to return to a right relationship and orientation toward God? Not backward. Israel must not turn backwards to seek God because God is not located in the past, like a relic, stuck in the time and place of yesterday. By going backward, Israel would be betray just how deep is their alliance with their own image. To return to what is known and familiar is always to return to what is human, comprehended with the eyes and ears, to that which is known. To return to what is familiar to deprive God of faith and honor, trust and glory. Thus, it is the way of stagnancy and the status-quo, the way of fearing humans and not God. Going backward, for Israel, will seal their death sentence, hammer in the last nail in their coffin.

To return to God is to move forward into the unknown, to jump into the void, to dive into the rupture. It is all about facing the chaos and discomfort of that which is unseen and yet held by faith and hope. To hear the summons of God from the void, to sense the prophetic summons of God beckoning from the rupture, is to trust and to account to God that which is God’s: worthy of trust and faith; it is to proclaim that God is the truth and the way, thus God is the life. To move forward by faith and trust is to declare to the people and the world that God has not abandoned God’s people; to dive into the void is to affirm that even in this chaos God is present and able to bring order; to jump into the rupture is to render trustworthy God’s promises that all things are possible with God and that God can and will create out of nothing, once again.

So, today we stand at the edge of the void, on the precipice of the rupture, daring to hear the divine summons to enter this darkest of dark nights, and to hold on, by faith, to the presence of God as we tumble into what appears as death and nothingness. All the while we are beckoned to keep looking forward, holding God’s hand as God brings us to God and God’s new thing in the world—not an old thing, not a familiar thing, but a new thing. Tonight, we are brought deep into the divine womb to be born again of God by faith (trust) with thanksgiving into the divine light, life, and liberation. Born again as God’s people resurrected from the past and liberated from what was…

[1] Abraham K. Heschel, The Prophets, (New York: JPS, 1962), 209. “To fear God is to be unafraid of man. For God alone is king, power, and promise.”

[2] Heschel, Prophets, 285. “It is impossible to understand the meaning of divine anger without pondering the meaning of divine patience or forbearance. Explicitly and implicitly, the prophets stress that God is patient, long-suffering, or slow to anger…”

[3] Heschel, Prophets, 285. “Patience is one of the thirteen attributes of God,’ yet never in the sense of apathy, of being indifferent. Contrary to their thinking was the idea of a God who submits to the caprice of man, smiling at the hideousness of evil The patience of God means his restraint of justifiable anger.”

[4] Heschel, Prophets, 290. “Anger is always described as a moment, something that happens rather than something that abides. The feeling expressed by the rabbis that even divine anger must not last beyond a minute seems to be implied in the words of the prophets.”

[5] Heschel, Prophets, 290. “Merciful and gracious, rahum ve-hannun…are qualities which are never separable in the Bible from the thought of God.”

[6] Ehud Ben Zvi, “Joel,” The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 1166. “As the text leads the readers to sense that human society and culture in Judah are at the brink of obliteration, it asks them to identify with a prophetic voice that calls on them to return to the Lord, to fast and lament. Then the book moves to Judah’s salvation and the rangement of passages dealing with the ideal future, in which the fate of the nations figures prominently.”

[7] Ehud Ben Zvi, “Joel,” 1170. 2.12-17, “On the need to turn back to the Lord, and for a communal lamentation. This must be done before the arrival of the Day of the Lord, which is near or close…otherwise Israel too will be the victim of God’s power.”

[8] Heschel, Prophets, 292fn17. “Anguished by the blows of enemies, Israel was the butt of stinging sneer: ‘Where is the Lord your God?’”

https://laurenrelarkin.com/2024/02/14/buried-in-the-past-captive-to-what-was-ash-wednesday/

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