Trinity Presbyterian Church of Bethesda
07.29.07; Rev. David Williams
Scripture Lesson: Hosea 1:2-9
What is it with people naming their kids these days?
It’s always been difficult finding exactly the right name for the strange faceless little critter that’s growing in that belly. You can pick names from your family, you can pick names from the world around you...but how do you have any idea if that name will be right for your kid? How can you be sure you’ve got exactly the right one? ‘Cause, you know, it’s vital that you get it exactly right.
This whole modern anguishing over the right name started in the 1970s. As the me-generation grew up, the names of your kids became yet another way to show the world what a wonderful and creatively quirky person you were. Suddenly California classrooms were no longer inhabited by long identical rows of kids named John and Mary and Jane. “Ronald Bates? Here. Mary Johnson? Here. Michael Kim? Here. Sunblossom Moonbeam Unicorn Lee? Sunblossom? Sunblossom! Please stop hiding under your desk, young man.”
Despite the wonderful impact that such names had in providing a consistent stream of business for psychotherapists, it’s a little difficult to see what motivates parents to inflict those names on their kids. Yet decades later, an odd willingness to inflict the strangest of names on children continues.
Last month, there was the case of the New Zealand couple who tried to name their child “4real,” as in the number four attached to the word “real.” Apparently, they’d selected the name after having been amazed at actually seeing the first ultrasound. They finally realized they were having a child..for real. A judge in New Zealand tossed out the name...not because the name was stupid, or because it was basically a form of child abuse, but instead because there is a law there that kids can’t be named with numbers. Now his parents just call him “Real.” Much better.
A couple of years ago, there was that story of a couple in Texas who loved watching sports. They named their child Espen, which was spelled, appropriately enough, E-S-P-N. I suppose that’s slightly better than naming your child History Channel Williams.
To be fair, the tendency to name kids strange things goes well back before the seventies. Take, for instance, the most unfortunate name I encountered in my secular work. It was the name given to the philanthropist daughter of one of the legendarily flamboyant governors of the state of Texas back in the oil boom of the 1950s. She used her family fortune to support all manner of wonderful charitable organizations, including a foundation that helped support research into mental illness. She was a woman who had profound sympathy for the downtrodden and the rejected in society. Perhaps that was in part because her father, Governor James Hogg, inexplicably chose to give her the name Ima. Gee, thanks, Dad.
I’m sure the children of the prophet Hosea felt much the same way. Hosea comes to us from the same time period as the prophet Amos and the prophet Isaiah, in that intense period of transition that came in the eighth century. It was that strange period of peace during which the Northern and Southern Kings prospered. As we heard from the prophet Amos last week, this wasn’t necessarily the best of times for the poor and the downtrodden, as the wealth of those little nations poured into the coffers of the monarchy and the kings followers. But it also was a time in which the worship of the God of Israel began to falter. People began to drift away from the worship of the God that had led the people to the land, and returned to the hilltops to make sacrifices to Baal and Asherah.
It was this betrayal of the worship of God that was the primary concern for Hosea. We don’t know much about Hosea himself, other than that he appeared to have been a member of the priestly caste. What we do know from reading his words is that he was called, as are so many other prophets, to engage in actions that were intended to symbolize God’s intent for the Hebrew people. Each of the prophets managed to do that in their own unique way. Ezekiel, for example, made bread and wandered around in his birthday suit. Hosea, on the other hand, seems to have been called to do strange things in his family life.
Hosea’s strange home life becomes evident early on, when he describes how he named his children. He didn’t go out to Borders and buy 1001 Judean Baby Names. He got the names directly from God. Unfortunately, those names weren’t exactly the kind of names that most of us would be happy to get. The first, Jezreel, didn’t seem quite so bad, unless you knew something about the horrible bloodshed that had occurred in that region over and over again in the centuries that preceded Hosea. It’s like naming your son Columbine. It’s like naming your daughter Fallujah. The second child, a girl, was named Lo-Ruhamah. Sounds nice and breathy and flowy and exotic, until you realize that the name means “not pitied,” or “not shown mercy.” I’d have hated to have been her when she brought home a C-minus on her report card. Hosea’s last child was a boy, and he managed to get the name Lo-Ammi, which means “not my people.” That’s just got to build up a sense of self-esteem.
But as questionable as those names might be as a parenting strategy, they served a real purpose in reinforcing the message of the prophet to his drifting, benighted people. As each of the prophecies that followed the naming indicated, the people of Israel had almost completely fallen away from following their just and righteous God. The nation that relied on the blood spilled on the plains of Jezreel would be broken on those very fields. The nation that claimed that God always acted in their favor would find itself separated from God’s mercy. The people that called themselves God’s people but didn’t live according to His righteous commandments could no longer truly claim that name for themselves.
As harsh as Hosea might seem to us, it is that connection between how we name ourselves and how we act that we should ring in our ears today. Each of us has claimed for ourselves the name “Christian.” It’s the label we apply to ourselves. It’s the name that we claim as an identifier for our faith and as the label for the one that we follow. But just like the people of Israel in the 8th century before Christ, we’ve got to ask ourselves if we’re really deserving of that name.
Yes, it’s something that we call ourselves. We announce it proudly to the world, declaring our fealty and our salvation. We’re sure that we are deserving of the mercies of the God we claim in Christ, and we’re positive that we are His people. But simply applying that name to ourselves isn’t enough to make it real. If we lead our lives oblivious to the suffering in the world around us, seeking our own power and not caring whether the fields that lead to our glory are stained with blood and tears, perhaps we shouldn’t call ourselves Christian, but Jezreel. If we can’t bring ourselves to forgive others as we ourselves would be forgiven, perhaps we are Lo-Ruhamah. If we can’t find it in ourselves to to live lives that radiate the love and mercy of Christ, showing both his peace and his righteousness to all peoples, perhaps we’d be better named Lo-Ammi.
If that name does not tell the world who we are, if it doesn’t match how we live and how we are, then perhaps we should heed the warning of Hosea, and be cautious that God not choose us another name.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Overripe
Trinity Presbyterian Church of Bethesda
07.22.07; Rev. David Williams
Scripture Lesson: Amos 8:1-12
It’s a new Gilded Age!
At least, that was the headline that proudly blared out from the front page of the New York Times that showed up at the door of my hotel room this last week. As I sat recently in the back of a Manhattan deli and that third cup of coffee cleared the haze from staying up way past my bedtime the night before, I dug deep into that eager little article.
Gilded Age, you say? What does that mean? Somewhere in the hazy and distant past of an American history class, you might remember that term. It means...well...what does it mean? The Gilded Age was an era in American history that began in the late 19th century. It was called “gilded” because it was...for some...a time gilded with gold, an era of unparalleled prosperity for the richest of the rich. For those who owned or financed the businesses of the newly industrializing America, the level of wealth generated was unprecedented in modern history. This was the era of the Rockefellers and the Carnegies and the J.P. Morgans, the captains of industry who guided and profited from the explosive growth that was sweeping across America. They commanded a huge portion of the wealth of this country. In today’s dollars, for example, the Rockefeller fortune would ring in at $178 billion dollars. By that standard, Bill Gates seems lower middle class.
For the people who own and fund today’s global economy, that warm blanket of gold seems to be returning. Once again, wealth is concentrating itself in the hands of an elite few, for whom the first decade of this millenia has them soaring higher and higher above the rest of us. There are few places in this country where that surging concentration of wealth are more evident than walking around Manhattan in 2007. That part of the city is fat and happy, glistening with new construction and newly beautified parks. The concentration of wealth is stratospheric, stunning, almost impossible. It isn’t just that some hotels in that city now require you to put down one of your kidneys as a deposit. It’s not just that even apartments the size of a refrigerator box are beyond reach of most mortals. Buying a parking space on the upper West Side will put you back $250,000.
Wealth is piled upon wealth, rising as high and bright as the advertising that blares from the screens in Times Square. It seems like an age of plenty, a time of harvest, when the fruit from all of the labor of all of the world is gathered into the larders of the wealthy. With the average American corporate executive now pulling down a salary 400 times that of their workers, and with the growing concentration of wealth among the very few, it sure must seem like that way...to them, at least.
Throughout history, this pattern has repeated and repeated itself. Wealth concentrates, as riches create power that seeks to gather more riches. It’s a pattern as old as humanity itself, and that’s exactly the pattern that the prophet Amos was shouting about nearly 2,800 years ago. The passage we heard this morning comes to us from around 760 years before Christ, during the reign of King Jeroboam the Second of Israel. For all of the chaos that had wracked both the Southern Kingdom of Judah and the Northern Kingdom of Israel, this period was a had been a relatively calm time in the struggles of the Hebrew people.
For half a century, the wars between the great Empires of the Ancient Near East fell into a lull...Egyptian and Assyrian armies no longer swept back and forth across the land like a plague. In that brief time of peace, the cities of both kingdoms prospered. The educated and literate power elite that gathered around the throne of kings grew in power, as taxation and the strengthening of the monarchy gathered in the wealth. But that prosperity wasn’t something shared by all. For those who didn’t live in the cities, things were not as good as they had once been.
Amos came from just such a place. He was from the village of Tekoa, in the southern kingdom. He was a shepherd, whose flock would have wandered the hills just to the south of Bethlehem. A series of visions drove him to travel to the north, across the border into Israel and up in to the area around Bethel, where he made himself a nuisance to the priests and authorities of the north.
The vision he shared might seem a bit odd to us. Does God show him a golden throne surrounded by many-winged angels? Does he see radiant glory? No...God shows him a basket of...summer fruit. A fruit basket? That’s his vision? What sort of vision is that? That’s not a message from God...it’s the kind of gift you give to a co-worker you barely know. No self-respecting televangelist is going to get up there and say...”Brothers and sisters, the Lord came to me in a dream last night...and in his radiant glory and power he showed me...a fruit basket. He also showed me a nice Hallmark card with a picture of a kitten.”
But Amos didn’t know we’d be hearing his voice nearly 3,000 years later. He was talking directly to the people of Ancient Israel, in terms that they would have understood. This is a passage that requires a little background knowledge about both Hebrew and ancient agriculture.
When Amos says basket of summer fruit, the thing we miss is that he’s making a pun in Hebrew. When God shows him a basket of summer fruit, and then tells him that the “the end has come upon my people Israel,” those are two related words. “Summer fruit” is, in Hebrew, the word qayits. “The end,” in Hebrew, is the word qets. Summer fruit and the end don’t just sound alike, though. Like many Hebrew words that sound alike, they’re related.
When we think of “summer fruit,” we think of sweet buttered corn and watermelon juice dripping red down our chins. But for the ancient Israelites the term “summer fruit” meant the harvest that came at the very end of the season. It was the last of the gathering in, the crop that was brought in just as the growing season was over. Summer fruit didn’t last long. You had to eat it or store it quickly, because it wasn’t going to keep. It was like that banana that starting to brown and tomorrow will be nothing but blackened mush, like that watermelon that seems fine today, but when you cut into it tomorrow, the meat has turned to watery foulness. Summer fruit doesn’t last, and after it’s done, there’s nothing to follow it. The harvest is over.
From the vision of Amos came a word of God’s judgement against those denizens of the ancient cities of Israel. All of the law codes of ancient Israel served to keep their society in balance. Those ancient law helped to maintain a balance in society, a balance under which no one individual or group was to gather too much power or control to itself. The point of the Torah, which is affirmed and lived out by Christ, is that power and material wealth weren’t allowed to become the goal of God’s people. When they do, a society has lost it’s center. It is no longer focused on God’s love and love of neighbor, and is doomed to failure. The eloquent warnings that this shepherd from Bethlehem delivered to Israel proved to be true...as within a generation, Israel had fallen.
Hearing Amos...really hearing him...is as important in our age as it was in his. As amazing and impressive as the riches of the new global economy can be, we’ve got to look hard at them through that prophet’s eyes. When wealth and power become the whole focus of our lives, we lose our sense of responsibility for others. We no longer seek their good, but instead allow ourselves to believe that profit justifies itself. When profit seeks after profit, the world is thrown out of balance. When a few are sating themselves on a harvest of summer fruit, and literally billions are struggling just to have the very most basic staples in life, the world is thrown out of balance.
Such imbalances aren’t part of God’s covenant desire for us, and as the taste of that fruit rests on our lips, we have to be mindful of the warning that Amos bore.
07.22.07; Rev. David Williams
Scripture Lesson: Amos 8:1-12
It’s a new Gilded Age!
At least, that was the headline that proudly blared out from the front page of the New York Times that showed up at the door of my hotel room this last week. As I sat recently in the back of a Manhattan deli and that third cup of coffee cleared the haze from staying up way past my bedtime the night before, I dug deep into that eager little article.
Gilded Age, you say? What does that mean? Somewhere in the hazy and distant past of an American history class, you might remember that term. It means...well...what does it mean? The Gilded Age was an era in American history that began in the late 19th century. It was called “gilded” because it was...for some...a time gilded with gold, an era of unparalleled prosperity for the richest of the rich. For those who owned or financed the businesses of the newly industrializing America, the level of wealth generated was unprecedented in modern history. This was the era of the Rockefellers and the Carnegies and the J.P. Morgans, the captains of industry who guided and profited from the explosive growth that was sweeping across America. They commanded a huge portion of the wealth of this country. In today’s dollars, for example, the Rockefeller fortune would ring in at $178 billion dollars. By that standard, Bill Gates seems lower middle class.
For the people who own and fund today’s global economy, that warm blanket of gold seems to be returning. Once again, wealth is concentrating itself in the hands of an elite few, for whom the first decade of this millenia has them soaring higher and higher above the rest of us. There are few places in this country where that surging concentration of wealth are more evident than walking around Manhattan in 2007. That part of the city is fat and happy, glistening with new construction and newly beautified parks. The concentration of wealth is stratospheric, stunning, almost impossible. It isn’t just that some hotels in that city now require you to put down one of your kidneys as a deposit. It’s not just that even apartments the size of a refrigerator box are beyond reach of most mortals. Buying a parking space on the upper West Side will put you back $250,000.
Wealth is piled upon wealth, rising as high and bright as the advertising that blares from the screens in Times Square. It seems like an age of plenty, a time of harvest, when the fruit from all of the labor of all of the world is gathered into the larders of the wealthy. With the average American corporate executive now pulling down a salary 400 times that of their workers, and with the growing concentration of wealth among the very few, it sure must seem like that way...to them, at least.
Throughout history, this pattern has repeated and repeated itself. Wealth concentrates, as riches create power that seeks to gather more riches. It’s a pattern as old as humanity itself, and that’s exactly the pattern that the prophet Amos was shouting about nearly 2,800 years ago. The passage we heard this morning comes to us from around 760 years before Christ, during the reign of King Jeroboam the Second of Israel. For all of the chaos that had wracked both the Southern Kingdom of Judah and the Northern Kingdom of Israel, this period was a had been a relatively calm time in the struggles of the Hebrew people.
For half a century, the wars between the great Empires of the Ancient Near East fell into a lull...Egyptian and Assyrian armies no longer swept back and forth across the land like a plague. In that brief time of peace, the cities of both kingdoms prospered. The educated and literate power elite that gathered around the throne of kings grew in power, as taxation and the strengthening of the monarchy gathered in the wealth. But that prosperity wasn’t something shared by all. For those who didn’t live in the cities, things were not as good as they had once been.
Amos came from just such a place. He was from the village of Tekoa, in the southern kingdom. He was a shepherd, whose flock would have wandered the hills just to the south of Bethlehem. A series of visions drove him to travel to the north, across the border into Israel and up in to the area around Bethel, where he made himself a nuisance to the priests and authorities of the north.
The vision he shared might seem a bit odd to us. Does God show him a golden throne surrounded by many-winged angels? Does he see radiant glory? No...God shows him a basket of...summer fruit. A fruit basket? That’s his vision? What sort of vision is that? That’s not a message from God...it’s the kind of gift you give to a co-worker you barely know. No self-respecting televangelist is going to get up there and say...”Brothers and sisters, the Lord came to me in a dream last night...and in his radiant glory and power he showed me...a fruit basket. He also showed me a nice Hallmark card with a picture of a kitten.”
But Amos didn’t know we’d be hearing his voice nearly 3,000 years later. He was talking directly to the people of Ancient Israel, in terms that they would have understood. This is a passage that requires a little background knowledge about both Hebrew and ancient agriculture.
When Amos says basket of summer fruit, the thing we miss is that he’s making a pun in Hebrew. When God shows him a basket of summer fruit, and then tells him that the “the end has come upon my people Israel,” those are two related words. “Summer fruit” is, in Hebrew, the word qayits. “The end,” in Hebrew, is the word qets. Summer fruit and the end don’t just sound alike, though. Like many Hebrew words that sound alike, they’re related.
When we think of “summer fruit,” we think of sweet buttered corn and watermelon juice dripping red down our chins. But for the ancient Israelites the term “summer fruit” meant the harvest that came at the very end of the season. It was the last of the gathering in, the crop that was brought in just as the growing season was over. Summer fruit didn’t last long. You had to eat it or store it quickly, because it wasn’t going to keep. It was like that banana that starting to brown and tomorrow will be nothing but blackened mush, like that watermelon that seems fine today, but when you cut into it tomorrow, the meat has turned to watery foulness. Summer fruit doesn’t last, and after it’s done, there’s nothing to follow it. The harvest is over.
From the vision of Amos came a word of God’s judgement against those denizens of the ancient cities of Israel. All of the law codes of ancient Israel served to keep their society in balance. Those ancient law helped to maintain a balance in society, a balance under which no one individual or group was to gather too much power or control to itself. The point of the Torah, which is affirmed and lived out by Christ, is that power and material wealth weren’t allowed to become the goal of God’s people. When they do, a society has lost it’s center. It is no longer focused on God’s love and love of neighbor, and is doomed to failure. The eloquent warnings that this shepherd from Bethlehem delivered to Israel proved to be true...as within a generation, Israel had fallen.
Hearing Amos...really hearing him...is as important in our age as it was in his. As amazing and impressive as the riches of the new global economy can be, we’ve got to look hard at them through that prophet’s eyes. When wealth and power become the whole focus of our lives, we lose our sense of responsibility for others. We no longer seek their good, but instead allow ourselves to believe that profit justifies itself. When profit seeks after profit, the world is thrown out of balance. When a few are sating themselves on a harvest of summer fruit, and literally billions are struggling just to have the very most basic staples in life, the world is thrown out of balance.
Such imbalances aren’t part of God’s covenant desire for us, and as the taste of that fruit rests on our lips, we have to be mindful of the warning that Amos bore.
Monday, July 16, 2007
Packing List
Trinity Presbyterian Church of Bethesda
07.08.07; Rev. David Williams
Scripture Passage: Luke 10:1-11; 16-20
Summer time is travel time, as all of America gets itself loaded up and noodles across state after state of superslab. It’s the season of the roadtrip, but those trips just aren’t what they used to be a decade or so ago. Yeah, the roads are more or less the same. But getting ready for a trip when you’re a dad is nothing like getting ready for a trip as a twenty year old.
Back when I was a younger man, my idea of packing was considerably more streamlined than it is now. I can recall getting off my shift as a dishwasher at U.VA’s academic dining facility, rushing back to my room, and preparing myself for a trip to Williamsburg to visit my new girlfriend Rachel.
I had a very manageable checklist. Item one was to take a quick shower, because the frenetic pace of the dishroom tended to result in me heavily crusted with condiments and little chunks of broccoli. I learned pretty early on that most women don’t really appreciate that look. Item two was to pack everything I needed for a weekend away. That involved, in total, two pairs of underwear and a toothbrush. Total packing and preparation time: ten minutes, seven and half if I was feeling particularly motivated. And after a week or two of being away from her, I was usually feeling pretty darn motivated. Then I’d start up my Honda 750 with a dozen hard stomps on the kickstarter...not that I needed to, but pressing the button on the electric start didn’t have that Marlon Brando feel...and off I’d ride, lickety split, with my mostly empty backpack flapping in the wind behind me. For some reason, my wife to be found my approach to packing strange.
But now we fast-forward eighteen years, and I’m no longer relying on my motorcycle for family trips. Preparing for a journey...even a three-day trip...takes a bit longer than seven and a half minutes. Two days before the trip, there’s a twenty minute list preparation meeting, as we carefully go over every conceivable thing that we might need. At least one point seven five complete outfits is selected for every member of the family for each day of the trip, and several different pairs of footwear, each selected for function. Then there’s the food, which is packed as if we were planning an expedition into a vast and trackless wilderness where the only other option would be to forage in the underbrush. Though the roots and berries in Western Maryland are quite tasty, we’ve found taking the WalMart option just a bit easier.
To the list are added books and DVDs and games and toys for the kids, so that they might not have to spend an unoccupied moment. For the grownups, laptops and cell phones and Blackberries and organizers need to be corralled, so that we can’t be away from our electronic leashes for even one moment. This is followed by a long matching game in which you make sure that you’ve got a charger that matches every one of your devices. Then the packing begins. It’s a three stage process. First, the suitcases are packed and canvas bags are filled up. Then, they’re moved to a staging area near the carport, where they wait until the next morning, when the coolers full of food join them. After the staging area is reviewed to confirm compliance with the established list, they’re moved one by one into the gaping maw of the minivan. I understand that George Mason University now offers vacation logistics coursework as part of it’s executive MBA program.
But that level of preparation seems utterly lacking from the instructions given to the disciples by Jesus in our passage from Luke this morning. This segment of Luke comes as a follow-on to a passage that comes at the beginning of chapter nine, in which Jesus commissions the twelve disciples and sends them out after giving them a set of packing instructions. Back in that chapter, we hear Jesus sending the 12 disciples out with a similar list of what to do and what to bring. Here, we have a mirror of Christ’s demands, and they’re no less challenging when they’re issued to seventy disciples instead of twelve.
Jesus begins his instructions to the seventy with an exhortation, calling them to go out into the world like laborers to a harvest. But then, his instructions get a little challenging. His followers are to “carry no bag, no sandals; and greet no-one on the road.” Here they are, intended to travel through the countryside of Judea, and they can’t even take a bag? What sort of preparation is that? It sounds...even by the standards of the college boy road trip...like a pretty half-baked journey.
Scholarly commentaries on Luke give us several options for how to interpret this peculiar demand that followers not actually go on their journeys in a prepared way. First, because it was structured like a history of the time, and because the structure and language of the Greek used in Luke is very sophisticated, most Bible scholars feel that the Gospel of Luke was written for an audience of well-educated Greek-speaking Christians. Luke’s double emphasis on this act of sending reinforces it, and it may have been kept as part of Luke’s tradition because it was just so hard for his sophisticated audience to hear.
How can you go off unprepared? No money? No way to carry things? No...shoes? Well...you can do it if you are intending to be utterly dependent on both your message and the response of those who will receive you. It’s an act of trust.
That makes sense, but what are we to make of the latter portion of verse four? In it, Jesus counsels “not to greet anyone on the road.” Here the seventy are being told to get out there and spread the Gospel message, and they can’t even talk to the people that they encounter on the way? How does that help? Aren’t they supposed to be sharing information about the Gospel?
What may be being conveyed here is the ferocious urgency of that moment. Through both a seemingly nonexistent packing list and the instruction not to dawdle in conversation on the way, what may be being conveyed here is the intense need for action in the now. The seventy followers of Christ are being told...in no uncertain terms...that they need to get out there and engage the world with Christ’s message of hope and reconciliation. There wasn’t room for fiddling around or worrying over what you brought or didn’t bring. The moment’s pressing, it’s intense, and the need to act upon it is such that you just can’t dawdle.
In that, what Christ may be telling us is that the journey of faith is not like the vacation of a modern American family, in which our immense vehicles are filled with 5 cubic yards of supplies to meed every potential eventuality. The journey of Christian faith may not be like the carefully planned business trip, in which we make sure that we schedule every last moment full of meetings so that we can justify the every penny of the journey to the folks down in accounting.
Instead, our journey of faith and our spreading of the Good News is more like the headlong rush of someone desperately eager to see someone they love. For all of our desire to organize, to be structured and reasonable and decent and orderly, it’s important that we not lose that vital yearning in our own journeys. We’ve got to walk that path with eager intensity, because it is better walked when it that journey is more filled with passion, more filled with urgency, more filled with the desire to share in that presence once again.
07.08.07; Rev. David Williams
Scripture Passage: Luke 10:1-11; 16-20
Summer time is travel time, as all of America gets itself loaded up and noodles across state after state of superslab. It’s the season of the roadtrip, but those trips just aren’t what they used to be a decade or so ago. Yeah, the roads are more or less the same. But getting ready for a trip when you’re a dad is nothing like getting ready for a trip as a twenty year old.
Back when I was a younger man, my idea of packing was considerably more streamlined than it is now. I can recall getting off my shift as a dishwasher at U.VA’s academic dining facility, rushing back to my room, and preparing myself for a trip to Williamsburg to visit my new girlfriend Rachel.
I had a very manageable checklist. Item one was to take a quick shower, because the frenetic pace of the dishroom tended to result in me heavily crusted with condiments and little chunks of broccoli. I learned pretty early on that most women don’t really appreciate that look. Item two was to pack everything I needed for a weekend away. That involved, in total, two pairs of underwear and a toothbrush. Total packing and preparation time: ten minutes, seven and half if I was feeling particularly motivated. And after a week or two of being away from her, I was usually feeling pretty darn motivated. Then I’d start up my Honda 750 with a dozen hard stomps on the kickstarter...not that I needed to, but pressing the button on the electric start didn’t have that Marlon Brando feel...and off I’d ride, lickety split, with my mostly empty backpack flapping in the wind behind me. For some reason, my wife to be found my approach to packing strange.
But now we fast-forward eighteen years, and I’m no longer relying on my motorcycle for family trips. Preparing for a journey...even a three-day trip...takes a bit longer than seven and a half minutes. Two days before the trip, there’s a twenty minute list preparation meeting, as we carefully go over every conceivable thing that we might need. At least one point seven five complete outfits is selected for every member of the family for each day of the trip, and several different pairs of footwear, each selected for function. Then there’s the food, which is packed as if we were planning an expedition into a vast and trackless wilderness where the only other option would be to forage in the underbrush. Though the roots and berries in Western Maryland are quite tasty, we’ve found taking the WalMart option just a bit easier.
To the list are added books and DVDs and games and toys for the kids, so that they might not have to spend an unoccupied moment. For the grownups, laptops and cell phones and Blackberries and organizers need to be corralled, so that we can’t be away from our electronic leashes for even one moment. This is followed by a long matching game in which you make sure that you’ve got a charger that matches every one of your devices. Then the packing begins. It’s a three stage process. First, the suitcases are packed and canvas bags are filled up. Then, they’re moved to a staging area near the carport, where they wait until the next morning, when the coolers full of food join them. After the staging area is reviewed to confirm compliance with the established list, they’re moved one by one into the gaping maw of the minivan. I understand that George Mason University now offers vacation logistics coursework as part of it’s executive MBA program.
But that level of preparation seems utterly lacking from the instructions given to the disciples by Jesus in our passage from Luke this morning. This segment of Luke comes as a follow-on to a passage that comes at the beginning of chapter nine, in which Jesus commissions the twelve disciples and sends them out after giving them a set of packing instructions. Back in that chapter, we hear Jesus sending the 12 disciples out with a similar list of what to do and what to bring. Here, we have a mirror of Christ’s demands, and they’re no less challenging when they’re issued to seventy disciples instead of twelve.
Jesus begins his instructions to the seventy with an exhortation, calling them to go out into the world like laborers to a harvest. But then, his instructions get a little challenging. His followers are to “carry no bag, no sandals; and greet no-one on the road.” Here they are, intended to travel through the countryside of Judea, and they can’t even take a bag? What sort of preparation is that? It sounds...even by the standards of the college boy road trip...like a pretty half-baked journey.
Scholarly commentaries on Luke give us several options for how to interpret this peculiar demand that followers not actually go on their journeys in a prepared way. First, because it was structured like a history of the time, and because the structure and language of the Greek used in Luke is very sophisticated, most Bible scholars feel that the Gospel of Luke was written for an audience of well-educated Greek-speaking Christians. Luke’s double emphasis on this act of sending reinforces it, and it may have been kept as part of Luke’s tradition because it was just so hard for his sophisticated audience to hear.
How can you go off unprepared? No money? No way to carry things? No...shoes? Well...you can do it if you are intending to be utterly dependent on both your message and the response of those who will receive you. It’s an act of trust.
That makes sense, but what are we to make of the latter portion of verse four? In it, Jesus counsels “not to greet anyone on the road.” Here the seventy are being told to get out there and spread the Gospel message, and they can’t even talk to the people that they encounter on the way? How does that help? Aren’t they supposed to be sharing information about the Gospel?
What may be being conveyed here is the ferocious urgency of that moment. Through both a seemingly nonexistent packing list and the instruction not to dawdle in conversation on the way, what may be being conveyed here is the intense need for action in the now. The seventy followers of Christ are being told...in no uncertain terms...that they need to get out there and engage the world with Christ’s message of hope and reconciliation. There wasn’t room for fiddling around or worrying over what you brought or didn’t bring. The moment’s pressing, it’s intense, and the need to act upon it is such that you just can’t dawdle.
In that, what Christ may be telling us is that the journey of faith is not like the vacation of a modern American family, in which our immense vehicles are filled with 5 cubic yards of supplies to meed every potential eventuality. The journey of Christian faith may not be like the carefully planned business trip, in which we make sure that we schedule every last moment full of meetings so that we can justify the every penny of the journey to the folks down in accounting.
Instead, our journey of faith and our spreading of the Good News is more like the headlong rush of someone desperately eager to see someone they love. For all of our desire to organize, to be structured and reasonable and decent and orderly, it’s important that we not lose that vital yearning in our own journeys. We’ve got to walk that path with eager intensity, because it is better walked when it that journey is more filled with passion, more filled with urgency, more filled with the desire to share in that presence once again.
Monday, July 2, 2007
Called To Freedom
Trinity Presbyterian Church of Bethesda
Rev. David Williams; 07.01.07
Scripture Lessons: Luke 9:51-62; Galatians 5:1, 13-25
America is founded on the principles of freedom.
It’s one of the things that we’re proudest of in our society, that we have the right to say what we like and write what we like and do pretty much whatever we like so long as it doesn’t cause harm to anyone else. When we look out at the oppression and struggles of so many of the peoples of the world, it’s something that should rejoice in. And rejoice we do.
Every year around the Fourth of July, we celebrate both the independence of our nation and the whole idea of our own freedom. As ten thousand tons of fireworks crackle in the skies and the stinging stench of sulphur mingles with the fires of a hundred million hotdogs getting overcooked on ten million barbeques, we remember those principles of liberty that define us. With the fragrant smoke of that great sacrifice rising up to fill the nostrils of the Lord that made us free, we feel a swell of pride in our hearts.
But in the midst of that great celebration of our liberty, it’s helpful to remember that sometimes freedom can be a confusing thing. Things that seem to bring liberty can sometimes be other than what they seem. When I was a kid, I can recall chafing at the limitations of childhood. I couldn’t go where I wanted, or do what I wanted. Why can’t a five year old drive? Why can’t an eight year old go hang-gliding? Why can’t a twelve year old ride a moped? I should be allowed to do these things! Aren’t I a person? Aren’t I...and here every child inserts a dramatic pause while looking nobly into the distance...an American? Didn’t God make me free? I yearned for that day when I would be a grownup, because as we all know, grownups can do whatever they want, whenever they want.
Man, did that theory not pan out. Because you grow up. You reach adulthood as a fully fledged, honest-to-God, bonafide citizen of the United States of America. You are at liberty to do whatever you want, whenever you want. Only, for some reason, your boss expects you to get to work at 9:00, and at 8:30 on days when you’ve got a departmental meeting. And you find that you actually have to do that work, and that sometimes that work requires you to be in the office long past the point at which the five o’clock bell has rung. You might want to leave, but for some reason the argument that God made us free doesn’t work with the landlord when the rent comes due...and the folks at Denny’s only buy that the first time you try to get a meal without paying. At least, that’s what they tell me..you’re all invited to give it a try. Though we are absolutely free, life fills itself up to overflowing with commitments that seem to demand all of us...to work, to a spouse, and then to kids, who as they get older complain bitterly to you about their own lack of freedom. If you only knew, kid. If you only knew.
There lies the peculiarity of freedom. Yes, we’re all made free. But who among us is utterly free?
It’s perhaps that point that the Apostle Paul is trying to make in the odd little passage we read this morning from his letter to the church at Galatia. It starts out in a way that should baffle anyone who actually takes the time to think about what Paul is saying. Because remember...Paul likes to fuddle us, in the same way that Christ tended to say things that force you to think. This little passage begins in verse 1 of Chapter five with a ode to freedom that should get every American heart a-fluttering. “For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” You can just see Jesus standing there next to Washington as he crosses the Delaware, the icy breeze making his robe flutter heroically and whipping through his perfectly conditioned shoulder-length hair. It’s enough to make you want to take out a little American flag and wave it. Go Jesus!
After this opening statement in his discussion of freedom Paul puts one last eleven verse attack against his opponents in Galatia...which is a bit on the rude side. You can read it if you like, but I didn’t want to offend anyone. After then we pick right back up again on the subject of freedom in verse 13. Paul’s just told us to be free, stand firm, and not allow ourselves to be enslaved. So how does he follow up? Well, he says this:
“For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another.” We’re...we’re supposed to be slaves to one another? But...Paul...I thought you just said we’re not supposed to submit to the “yoke of slavery.” You said we’re free!
Though it might seem that way, Paul wasn’t contradicting himself. Rather, he was playing with words to show us something important about what it means to follow Jesus. Paul understood the nature of the church and what Christ has called us to do. In Paul’s argument with his opponents in Galatia, he struggled against the idea that being a member of the church is about following a series of rules or regulation.
It’s not about what you eat or don’t eat, or how and when you observe the sabbath, or any of the other laws that governed the Hebrew people. It’s not about simple obedience to a particular way of being. It’s a totally different way to approach God...by allowing...through faith...God to live and work in you in the same way that God lived and worked in Christ. Paul realized that this was a revolutionary thing. It was the most important thing that differentiated this new Christian faith from all of the other faiths that moved in the Greco-Roman world. That’s one of the primary reasons that Paul was so very vocal in opposing the folks who wanted to turn back the clock.
But though Paul was declaring our independence from the oppression of the law, he wasn’t saying that we are free from one another. Elsewhere in his letters, he talks about the church and our lives in Christ as one thing, as we’re all made part of Christ. Instead of viewing our in obedience to demands that are outside of us, Paul saw that a life lived according to the love that Jesus both taught and embodied is something different. It is freedom, but it is a freedom that expresses itself through our love and care for others.
Though this week we celebrate our independence from those powers that oppress human freedom, Paul reminds us that we are not independent from one another. We depend on others...on our friends, on our families, on our communities. Human beings require other human beings, and though we might like to imagine that we are each our own totally self-sufficient little island, that just isn’t real. That is not how the world is, and when we pretend that the freedom to which God has called us has no boundaries, we deceive ourselves.
What freedom does not mean is destroying or tearing down the very things that build us up. As Paul lists the countless ways we harm and destroy one another, he’s aware that to yield to such things is to become enslaved by them. All those hatreds and angers and bickerings that seek to control us are to be cast aside. The freedom to which we are called has nothing to do with those things. It is a freedom to love and rejoice in one another, to support one another, and to live fully aware that as children of the promise we have nothing to fear.
That is the freedom to which Christ has called us.
Rev. David Williams; 07.01.07
Scripture Lessons: Luke 9:51-62; Galatians 5:1, 13-25
America is founded on the principles of freedom.
It’s one of the things that we’re proudest of in our society, that we have the right to say what we like and write what we like and do pretty much whatever we like so long as it doesn’t cause harm to anyone else. When we look out at the oppression and struggles of so many of the peoples of the world, it’s something that should rejoice in. And rejoice we do.
Every year around the Fourth of July, we celebrate both the independence of our nation and the whole idea of our own freedom. As ten thousand tons of fireworks crackle in the skies and the stinging stench of sulphur mingles with the fires of a hundred million hotdogs getting overcooked on ten million barbeques, we remember those principles of liberty that define us. With the fragrant smoke of that great sacrifice rising up to fill the nostrils of the Lord that made us free, we feel a swell of pride in our hearts.
But in the midst of that great celebration of our liberty, it’s helpful to remember that sometimes freedom can be a confusing thing. Things that seem to bring liberty can sometimes be other than what they seem. When I was a kid, I can recall chafing at the limitations of childhood. I couldn’t go where I wanted, or do what I wanted. Why can’t a five year old drive? Why can’t an eight year old go hang-gliding? Why can’t a twelve year old ride a moped? I should be allowed to do these things! Aren’t I a person? Aren’t I...and here every child inserts a dramatic pause while looking nobly into the distance...an American? Didn’t God make me free? I yearned for that day when I would be a grownup, because as we all know, grownups can do whatever they want, whenever they want.
Man, did that theory not pan out. Because you grow up. You reach adulthood as a fully fledged, honest-to-God, bonafide citizen of the United States of America. You are at liberty to do whatever you want, whenever you want. Only, for some reason, your boss expects you to get to work at 9:00, and at 8:30 on days when you’ve got a departmental meeting. And you find that you actually have to do that work, and that sometimes that work requires you to be in the office long past the point at which the five o’clock bell has rung. You might want to leave, but for some reason the argument that God made us free doesn’t work with the landlord when the rent comes due...and the folks at Denny’s only buy that the first time you try to get a meal without paying. At least, that’s what they tell me..you’re all invited to give it a try. Though we are absolutely free, life fills itself up to overflowing with commitments that seem to demand all of us...to work, to a spouse, and then to kids, who as they get older complain bitterly to you about their own lack of freedom. If you only knew, kid. If you only knew.
There lies the peculiarity of freedom. Yes, we’re all made free. But who among us is utterly free?
It’s perhaps that point that the Apostle Paul is trying to make in the odd little passage we read this morning from his letter to the church at Galatia. It starts out in a way that should baffle anyone who actually takes the time to think about what Paul is saying. Because remember...Paul likes to fuddle us, in the same way that Christ tended to say things that force you to think. This little passage begins in verse 1 of Chapter five with a ode to freedom that should get every American heart a-fluttering. “For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” You can just see Jesus standing there next to Washington as he crosses the Delaware, the icy breeze making his robe flutter heroically and whipping through his perfectly conditioned shoulder-length hair. It’s enough to make you want to take out a little American flag and wave it. Go Jesus!
After this opening statement in his discussion of freedom Paul puts one last eleven verse attack against his opponents in Galatia...which is a bit on the rude side. You can read it if you like, but I didn’t want to offend anyone. After then we pick right back up again on the subject of freedom in verse 13. Paul’s just told us to be free, stand firm, and not allow ourselves to be enslaved. So how does he follow up? Well, he says this:
“For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another.” We’re...we’re supposed to be slaves to one another? But...Paul...I thought you just said we’re not supposed to submit to the “yoke of slavery.” You said we’re free!
Though it might seem that way, Paul wasn’t contradicting himself. Rather, he was playing with words to show us something important about what it means to follow Jesus. Paul understood the nature of the church and what Christ has called us to do. In Paul’s argument with his opponents in Galatia, he struggled against the idea that being a member of the church is about following a series of rules or regulation.
It’s not about what you eat or don’t eat, or how and when you observe the sabbath, or any of the other laws that governed the Hebrew people. It’s not about simple obedience to a particular way of being. It’s a totally different way to approach God...by allowing...through faith...God to live and work in you in the same way that God lived and worked in Christ. Paul realized that this was a revolutionary thing. It was the most important thing that differentiated this new Christian faith from all of the other faiths that moved in the Greco-Roman world. That’s one of the primary reasons that Paul was so very vocal in opposing the folks who wanted to turn back the clock.
But though Paul was declaring our independence from the oppression of the law, he wasn’t saying that we are free from one another. Elsewhere in his letters, he talks about the church and our lives in Christ as one thing, as we’re all made part of Christ. Instead of viewing our in obedience to demands that are outside of us, Paul saw that a life lived according to the love that Jesus both taught and embodied is something different. It is freedom, but it is a freedom that expresses itself through our love and care for others.
Though this week we celebrate our independence from those powers that oppress human freedom, Paul reminds us that we are not independent from one another. We depend on others...on our friends, on our families, on our communities. Human beings require other human beings, and though we might like to imagine that we are each our own totally self-sufficient little island, that just isn’t real. That is not how the world is, and when we pretend that the freedom to which God has called us has no boundaries, we deceive ourselves.
What freedom does not mean is destroying or tearing down the very things that build us up. As Paul lists the countless ways we harm and destroy one another, he’s aware that to yield to such things is to become enslaved by them. All those hatreds and angers and bickerings that seek to control us are to be cast aside. The freedom to which we are called has nothing to do with those things. It is a freedom to love and rejoice in one another, to support one another, and to live fully aware that as children of the promise we have nothing to fear.
That is the freedom to which Christ has called us.
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