Blessed to Bless

That Which Name May Not Be Uttered

A sermon given by Fr. Tim Sean Youmans on the Feast of the Holy Name, at St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral Oklahoma City. Numbers 6:22-27, Galatians 4:4-7, Luke 2:15-21 and Psalm 8.

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Someone new comes to St. Paul’s, you have seen them here a few times, they have their new burgundy extra large coffee mug. You have every intention of introducing yourself and so finally comes the chance.

“Hello, my name is . . .

And then comes an awkward hiccup in the conversation. He is supposed to then tell you his name. But he doesn't, and so finally you ask, “So, tell me your name?”

And he says to you, “I don’t have a name.”

That’s it. You wait a few beats for the explanation, but it doesn’t come.

But, surprisingly to you and to everybody else at church, no-name is a big hit. People like this guy. He is friendly as not to be creepy, funny, pleasant to talk to. And as it turns out, incredibly dependable. He volunteers at the Guild of St. George, is an after-school mentor for New Hope. And he becomes an intricate part of St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral.

Far-fetched I know, but even so. What would we do for naming him?

Inevitably, this fellow would receive a nick-name, or perhaps a whole cadre of them. Scott Raab and the folks in the choir would start calling him Sine Nomine, the latin for “no name.” And Dean Lindstrum starts calling him “go-to-guy” because he always shows up to volunteer.

Prince died this year. The musician. Do you all know who Prince is?

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today, to get through this thing called life. Electric word life, it means forever, and that's a mighty long time, but I'm here to tell you...There's something else...the afterworld. A world of never ending happiness, you can always see the sun, day or night. So when you call up that shrink in Beverly Hills, you know the one, Dr. Everything'll Be alright, instead of asking him how much of your time is left ask him how much of your mind, Cause in this life things are much harder than in the afterworld in this life, you're on your own.

Prince did something like this back in the 90s. He announced that he would no longer be known as Prince, but instead only be known by a symbol he had created. It was a protest against his record company who would not give him creative control of his music and he felt like Prince was someone else, someone out his control, owned by someone else. Prince, or “the artist formerly known as Prince,” did not want to be limited by other’s definitions of him. Often when others name us, it is their way of controlling us. Beware people who are too quick to give nicknames.
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The voice in the Burning Bush tells Moses to go back to Egypt and rescue his people.

Moses says, “Suppose my people ask who it is that sent me? Who should I tell them sent me?”

And God’s response is elusive. In the Hebrew, it is four consonants, Yod, Hey, Waw, Hey, translated by sound into english as YHWH. But this was word that was not a word in use. But it was close to a word, an approximation of the verb “to be.” And so it gets translated as “I am that I am.” It's intended meaning was not clear, because it did not have a familiar tense. And as peculiar as it is, it’s intended meaning was likely “existence.” Moses asks God who he is and he says “existence.”

What happened over time is that the name of God (“Who should I say sent me?”), permanently became an unknowable, unspeakable thing. Conservative Jews don’t ever refer to God by that name, or by any name, but rather by simply saying, Elohim Hashem, or god of the name, or an even longer version “that which name may not be uttered.”

Does that make anyone here think of anything? Lord Voldemort, from the Harry Potter stories, yes?

So, what happens over time in that culture is that God, or “that which name may not be uttered” garners and collects nick-names. God was given descriptive names based on how they perceive God acting and behaving among them.

El Shaddai (God almighty, God is enough, or God of the dark mountain)
Jehovah-Raah (The Lord My Shepherd)
Jehovah Rapha (The Lord That Heals)
Jehovah Makeh (The Lord Who Strikes You)
Jehovah Shammah (The Lord Is There)
Jehovah Tsidkenu (The Lord Our Righteousness)
Mekoddishkem (The Lord Who Sanctifies You)
El Olam (The Everlasting God)
Qanna (Jealous)
Jehovah Jireh (The Lord Will Provide)
Jehovah Shalom (The Lord Is Peace)
Jehovah Uzi (My Strength)

So “that which name may not be uttered” is known to us, but known only as though seen through a veil. Our knowledge of God is limited and elusive. St. Augustine, who wrote prolifically about God, said it this way. “We can say nothing about God, but we must say something.”

With this in mind I want you to begin to hear, as we read scripture together at church in the coming year, how often there is reference to “the name” of God. Scripture asks us to honor the name, revere the name. How can we honor something that we do not know fully what it is, how can we worship a mystery?

This isn’t an unusual question in reading the Scriptures. There is a pattern in the Jewish tradition of interpretation, or Midrash, as it is known, of holding a variety of ideas about God together, even when they seem to conflict.

Jewish stories almost are asking you to consider “on the one hand this” “on the other hand that.” A session of Midrash would take a story or a precept and literally write it in the middle of blank piece of paper and then in the margins write the various ways the story could be understood depending on context.

John Dominic Crossan calls this pattern in scripture a rhythm of assertion-and-subversion. He says that “a vision of the radicality of God is put forth,” he says “and then later, we see that vision domesticated and integrated into the normalcy of civilization.” He calls it a pattern of

yes and no
declaration and invalidation
pronouncement and annulment
assertion and subversion.

God is playing cat and mouse with us.

But then God became flesh. On the 8th day Joseph and Mary have him circumcised, he becomes a child of the Covenant. The Angel told Joseph, you will call him Yeshua, which means salvation. It is into this world that God comes, this broken, fragile world. And God comes this time, finally with a proper name. Jesus comes to save. Saving comes into our lives, to bring healing, to repair what is broken, to bring order to our disorder. And I must say that I've always been confounded that in the larger Christian community this notion of salvation has primarily been understood as being saved after this life into the next. I have no doubt that is part of God's larger economy, but his saving means to rescue us now, in this life; in our marriages and in our relationships, our work, the anger the frustration, the brokenness.  It is there that Jesus brings his energy, his wisdom and redemptive rescuing presence. Jesus saves us now as much as after.

This has been a tough year for many of you, one in which you find it difficult to see the slow work of God in your midst; on the one hand this, one the other hand that. But God is among us, saving. And so with that in mind, I close this sermon with a poem by Mary Sarton called “New Year Poem.”

Let us step outside for a moment
As the sun breaks through clouds
And shines on wet new fallen snow,
And breathe the new air.

So much has died that had to die this year.
We are dying away from things.
It is a necessity—we have to do it
Or we shall be buried under the magazines,
The too many clothes, the too much food.
We have dragged it all around
Like dung beetles
Who drag piles of dung
Behind them on which to feed,
In which to lay their eggs.

Let us step outside for a moment
Among ocean, clouds, a white field,
Islands floating in the distance.
They have always been there.
But we have not been there.

We are going to drive slowly
And see the small poor farms,
The lovely shapes of leafless trees
Their shadows blue on the snow.
We are going to learn the sharp edge
Of perception after a day’s fast.
There is nothing to fear
about this revolution…
Though it will change our minds.

Aggression, violence, machismo
Are fading from us
Like old photographs
Faintly ridiculous
(Did a man actually step like a goose
To instill fear?
Does a boy have to kill
To become a man?)

Already there are signs.
Young people plant gardens.
Fathers change their babies’ diapers
And are learning to cook.
Let us step outside for a moment.
It is all there
Only we have been slow to arrive
At a way of seeing it.
Unless the gentle inherit the earth
There will be no earth.

Crossan, John Dominic, How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian: Struggling with Divine Violence from Genesis Through Revelation, Harper Collins, New York, NY 2015.

“New Year Poem” by May Sarton from Collected Poems. © Norton, 1993.

Into the Weary

A sermon given by Fr. Tim Sean Youmans on the 4th Sunday of Advent at St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral, Oklahoma City, OK. Isaiah 7:10-16, Romans 1:1-7, Matthew 1:18-25, Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18

Intotheweary

I needed a sign.

It was the summer before my senior year of high school in Cheyenne, WY, and for the previous three years I had been embroiled in painful conflict with my step-father. A family therapist we had sought out for help suggested it might be a good idea to give everyone a break. I spent spent the summer with my grandparents in Bartlesville, OK.

It was a whirlwind summer. To make friends, I attended my Grandparents church, First Baptist Bartlesville, which had a youth group of over 100 kids. I’d never seen anything like that, having grown up in a small American Baptist Church in Wyoming. I met a girl named Gigi, and she invited me to Falls Creek (which if you do not know is a Southern Baptist encampment that has over 5,000 kids in attendance every week. For some perspective, St. Crispin’s, our camp, has around 60 kids kids a week).

Well, I fell in love with Gigi, as much as an 18 year old kid can fall in love, but I also fell in love with Jesus, as much as an 18 year kid old can fall in love with Jesus. Gigi and Jesus. At the end of the summer I was sure of one thing; I did not want to go back to Wyoming. And so, I asked if I could spend my senior year in Oklahoma.

So I made my case to my mother. And to my surprise she said, “It’s up to you. It’s your decision.”

I desperately wanted to go. I was weary, and living at home with my step-father was exhausting. To me, a new beginning made sense. But, even at 18, I was intuitive enough to see that it was going to break my mother’s heart.

She had been through a divorce, the only one of her six siblings whose marriage had failed, and she had married a man that brought conflict into our house. I knew she did want to fail as a parent, also. I sensed it then, but as a parent, I know it now.

But, she said, it was my decision.

I remember it as if it were yesterday, not some 30 years ago. I laid on our back patio and looked up into the cool Wyoming August night and I prayed. “God, I want to go, but I don’t know if it is the right thing.

At that moment, a shooting star streaked across the night sky. At 18 I was egocentric enough to believe that God had hurled a meteor through the earth’s atmosphere just for me.
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Joseph wanted to do the right thing. St. Chrysostom, our 4th century golden mouth preacher, delineated his inward struggle.

“To keep Mary in his house appeared to be a transgression of God’s law, but to expose and bring her to trial would cause him to deliver her to die. He would do nothing of the sort. So Joseph determined to conduct himself now by a higher rule than the law. Now, Chrysostom writes, grace was appearing, and this event would be the first of many “Tokens of exalted citizenship.” ¹

Even in utero, the spirit of Jesus was reimagining the precepts of God.

King Ahaz in our Hebrew reading. He did NOT want a sign. In fact, the backdrop of that story has to do with Ahaz wanting to embrace the most expedient political solution to a complicated social and religious problem. And God desperately dares Ahaz to ask for a sign. Ahaz refuses, God sends one anyway. A young woman will give birth to a son, and his name will be Immanuel, God with us. But Ahaz wasn’t interested in that answer.

You must be careful in asking God for things, God may just give you something you do not want.

God gave Joseph a sign also, in the form of a dream. I’d be curious to hear from those of you who have vivid dream lives. There have been a few rare occasions when I have awoke from a dream and everything, the contents of the dream, the way my body felt, the notions I had about what I was supposed to do, they all pointed to the dream being from God. Carl Jung had language for this, he called the compensatory dream, dreams that are putting in work. What about you?

Joseph wanted to stay true to the Torah, he was a righteous man, but he also wanted to be kind to Mary. Into the midst of his weariness, her weariness, God gave him a sign. This situation, God would say in the dream, requires you to do the hard thing, which as is often the case, also the right thing.

Do you look for signs? Let me ask it this way, “What is the degree and manner of your superstition?” I have little doubt that all of you make most of your decisions with a good measure of reason and common sense. But what of the mystical? Superstition, comes from the Latin and old french, meaning to stand over, to stand outside the basics of a thing. Do you do that? And don’t mishear me, I am a Christian priest, I’m pretty superstitious. It’s what I do for a living.

Maybe it is your weariness that creates the context for God to work mystically in your life. Weariness makes you vulnerable to the fantastic.

God gets weary. Did you hear that? Weary in getting our attention. “Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary human beings, that you weary my God also?

And in the Psalms,

O Lord God of hosts,
how long will you be angered
despite the prayers of your people?
You have fed them with the bread of tears;
you have given them bowls of tears to drink.

What has broken your heart this year? What has worn you out? A job that frustrates you, a family member that is sick, your own wavering health, a job that seems to take more joy than it remotely gives you, struggling to improve your performance and never quite feeling like you are achieving what you are supposed to achieve.

The child, Isaiah tells Ahaz and the House of David, His name will be Immanuel, which means God is with us. Jesus steps in your wavering confidence, your frustration with a broken life. God in fact is weary along with you. This is the dream that God implants in Isaiah’s mind, and it is the dream that he put into Joseph's mind. Mary will have a child and you will name him Yeshua, God saves. And he will be born into your weariness and walk with you.

I want to give you some homework this week, in these final cold days as we approach the Christmastide. And this is form of an Ignatian exercise, a version of the examen that occurs at the end of the day. Take a piece of paper and on one side, write something that is a struggle for you, and on the other side make an attempt to identify how God is present in that struggle. And then, as strange as this may sound, place it under your pillow as you go to sleep.

Gracious and loving God, visit us in our weariness, vulnerable to your fantastic grace. Give us sign that we too might reimagine your law, be tokens of your exalted citizenship.

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¹ Chrysostom, The Gospel of Matthew, Homily 4.4

 

Jesus the Teacher, Part I

This is part of a group at Casady School and St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral in OKC who are reading through the Bible together, God's Grand Narrative.

For this entry, you are going to be reading two of Jesus' Sermons, Matthew 5-7 and Luke 6:1-49. But don't do it yet.

These are two collections of Jesus' teachings that will seem very similar. But I want you to read closely because they have some subtle differences. These two “sermons” come with a host of questions that cannot be answered definitively. Is this the same sermon remembered differently? Did Jesus teach this to different groups and tweak it each time? Regardless, I want you to look for the ways they are different. Before you read, consider a couple of things.

I asked you in the two earlier chapters, when we were considering Jesus as a healer, what he did for a living. Again, most of us have a mental picture of him as a carpenter because that is what Joseph did. No doubt he was familiar with the craft, but it is most likely that Jesus chose to study to become a Rabbi or a teacher of Jewish spirituality. And like schools for young adults today there were various levels of respected schools back then also; There were the “ivy league” type rabbinical schools that existed in Jerusalem and the larger town centers. Most likely Jesus studied with a local Rabbi in the rural synagogue near Nazareth, or in the larger nearby town Sepphoris.

The various Gospel accounts describe Jesus as a “different” kind of teacher, as one who taught with authority and not as the scribes and pharisees. As you can imagine, many of the teachings of Moses had multiple ways of understanding and applying them. What tends to happen in churches (and schools) is that people end up arguing about ideas rather than than what the ideas mean for their life. Knowledge becomes a game that you are trying to win. Jesus apparently cut through those games and got to the heart of the matter. People noticed.

We don’t have time in our class to read and discuss all of Jesus teachings, though I think in many ways that would be more what Jesus would want us to being doing, rather than the birds-eye view we’ve been taking. The parables and sermons of Jesus would be an important class all by itself. So after this brief introduction, I hope you’ll feel you have the context to focus more on Jesus teachings about God and day to day life.

Now go settle in and read these two sermons. The first is Matthew 5-7, the Sermon on the Mount. The second is shorter but has some similarities, Luke 6:1-49, the Sermon in the Valley. Then come back and finish this chapter.

The first part of the Sermon on the Mount is the best known teachings of Jesus. They are often called “the Beatitudes” because of the litany that repeats itself at the beginning of each line--blessed are (the poor in spirit, the meek, those who mourn, those who hunger and thirst for right-living, etc.) Each of these have the potential of generating important discussions. What does Jesus mean when he says that those who have a poor spirit are blessed? Shouldn’t we have a rich spirit?

Also in the Sermon on the Mount, do you notice that Jesus may be contradicting himself when he tells them to perform works of goodness so others can see and praise God, but then later excoriates those who practice their spirituality to be seen by others. Obviously Jesus wants us to parse out the specific internal complexity of both. It IS good to share examples of goodness, but it is also true that people can easily do those things for reasons that make them worse people and not more loving. But that is what good spiritual discussions will do, ask us to grapple with these types of questions. Jesus wants you to have those discussions.

Did you notice any differences between the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) and the Sermon in the Valley (Luke 6:1-49)? The beatitude phrasing is slightly different, isn’t it? In Matthew he says the “poor in spirit” are blessed, whereas in Luke he says “the poor.” What is the difference and why? In Matthew 5 he encourages those who are struggling with their life in God, but in Luke he excoriates those who are rich, as well as those who laugh in this life. It is harsher. Why?

A couple of questions I want you to wrestle with; Some think this is the same sermon remembered or written down differently. Some would say those who recorded it altered it to fit the version of Jesus they preferred. This practice is called redaction. The Gospels are generally believed to be collections of stories that were passed around verbally and in scrolls to the various groups of followers that cropped up after the resurrection of Jesus. So you see why people could see that happening. But I want you to consider something else.

Do you remember early on in our study of Jesus the background I gave you to the different ways the Jewish culture responded to and dealt with Roman occupation? Look at them again:

Sadducees: This was the ruling class of the Jewish society. They could be called the sell-outs in that they often did anything they could to compromise with the Roman government and still hold onto their Jewish identity. Because of this, they tended to be wealthy and well connected economically.

Pharisees. The way they coped with Roman occupation was to lean heavily into their Jewish religious practice and culture, being as non-Roman as possible. So they created a complex series of rules and practices that accentuated their faith. They are often depicted as the villains of the New Testament because some of the rules were extreme (a modern example of this would be families who never let their kids watch TV, go to any movies, or listen to any music but Christian music). But Pharisees were not villains, they were sincerely trying to embrace their faith in hopes that it would encourage the coming of the Messiah.

Essenes. I call these the “hippies” or monks of the time. They disconnected from the Roman society altogether, set up tent cities, lived in caves in separated Jewish communes. The Romans generally cared less about these groups, save for the fact that they didn’t pay any taxes, but at least they weren’t being a problem. They, too, waited for the Messiah.

Zealots. These were the revolutionaries who hated the Roman occupation and wanted to overthrow them. The planned insurgent attacks on the Romans (and in some historical accounts snuck up on Sadducees and cut their throats) and attempted to raise small armed forces that would be ready to fight when the Messiah arrived.

When you read the teachings of Jesus try always to keep in mind these four different types of listeners. Recognize that if you had been alive back then you likely would have been sympathetic to one of these groups over the others. As I said when I first introduced this, it wasn’t a clear-cut sort of arrangement. You could be be a Sadducee and hate that you were such a sell-out. You could be a Essene and have doubts about living your life so separate from the struggle of society. You could be a Pharisee and think maybe you were too over-the-top with your expression of your Jewish faith. It would be like being a Republican but knowing full-well that you appreciate much of the government regulation safety-nets that it provides, you just wish it weren’t so unmanageable. And vice versa. Most of us a complicated mixtures of a variety of cultural expressions. We manage our lives from a variety of vantage points.

These two sermons seems to have different audiences, and that is partly what I like about Jesus as a teacher. He loved and was concerned about everybody; religious, secular, rich, poor, angry, cynical, sell-outs. And his message wants to penetrate to the heart of who you are in all its complexity. When people say that Jesus “saves” that doesn’t only mean you are saved from hell after this life and go to heaven, it means you are saved from your own self-destructive tendencies to make yourself the God of your own life, and all the negative and hurtful fallout from that it breeds.

Your next reading will be a sampling of some of the other of Jesus’ more well-known teachings, the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, and the Sower and the Seed.

God's Annoying Friend

A sermon given at St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral on July 24, 2016, the 10th Sunday after Pentecost, considering Genesis 18:20-32 and Luke 11:1-13.

I have some idea of what God expects of me, but I have less confidence in naming specifically what it is I can expect from God. Think about that for a minute. I can have a good idea of what it God wants from me, but I’m less sure of what it is I am allowed to want from God.

Is that at the heart of the disciple’s question, “Lord, teach us how to pray.”

I was a hospital chaplain for a couple of years after I finished at the seminary and Karen was finishing up her PhD. My supervisor said to me, “I notice you tend not to pray for healing with your patients. Why is that?

I knew why, but was sheepish because I wasn’t proud of the reason. I didn’t want to raise their expectations of God. Ask God for healing, God does not grant you healing, and then these patients and their families are angry and upset with God.

His response to me? “Who made you God’s PR man? Does God need you to take care of him?”

Working in that same hospital, I received a call to a family in the cancer ward whose mother was soon to die after a long and difficult battle with cancer. The family had all gathered around her bedside because they wanted to be there when she died. For those of you who have gone through that experience you know that it isn’t always an easy thing to gauge. People tend not to die when we would like them to. It doesn’t happen the way it is depicted on TV or in movies.

But the nurse, in an effort to DO something tangible for them (because we want to do something tangible), suggested they call the chaplain to speak directly to their unconscious mother and tell her that it was okay to “let go.” Tell her that God was ready to receive her, the family was gathered to honor her, and that she didn’t need to fight anymore.

The nurse explained to me my assignment and after meeting the family and talking for a bit we moved around their mother’s bed, I spoke directly to her, something similar to what they had asking me to do, and then proceeded to invite them to join hands and pray to God, repeating a lot of what I said to their mother, but this time as an appeal directly to God.

“Show your mercy and loving kindness and assure your servant that she has fought the good fight, run the race set before her and she has kept the faith.” Something along those lines. And when I said “Amen,” I noticed that the family almost on cue, all at once, turned and looked their mother, expectantly, as though she would at that very moment, breath her last breath. And then after a few beats, when it didn’t happen, a few of them looked at me, as if to say, “Uh...it didn’t work.”

I wanted to say, “Look, I’m good, but I’m not THAT good.” They were tired, they were exhausted, and as happens with most families in similar situations, they eventually dispersed and she died with just a few of them by her bedside.

Jesus had been away praying, as he often did. When he returned, they asked him to teach them how to pray. Show us the way to relate to God so as live into its full potential. They had seen Jesus heal people, perform miracles. In this same Gospel, preceding this story, Jesus had sent out 70 people out in pairs to teach and to heal, and when they came back they were ecstatic. It worked. They told him, “Lord, even demons obey us when we use your name. And he tells them that he has given them authority over all the power of the enemy.”

Teach us how to pray. Tell us what to say.

The movie Shadowlands was about the relationship between C.S. Lewis and Joy Davidman, his wife late in life who died after a long battle with bone cancer. There is a scene in the movie when Lewis’ Priest is commiserating with him skeptical friends who are chiding him for praying for his wife Joy in her illness. The priest tells Lewis, after hearing bits of good news about her treatment that God is, to chagrin of skeptical friends, finally answering his prayers. Lewis responds,

 

“That’s not why I pray. I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time – waking and sleeping. Prayer doesn’t change God- it changes me.”

Jesus does give us some language to use, but the words aren’t magic. They do not force the hand of God. The story Jesus tells afterwards gives the fuller picture of what the “formula” is for God to be active in your life. If you’re looking for a formula, Jesus gives you the Lord’s prayer, and this:

You must be persistent, like an annoying friend. You must come to God, no matter the circumstances, no matter the outcome. In fact, the story he tells is vague in the response of the friend. At first the friend says, "No. Go away."  But after second thought he gives in. It makes me think of marriage, all those times when spouses ask the other to do something even though we would prefer not to, but then turn around and do it anyway, in a huff, full of resentment.

It’s not the only time Jesus depicts prayer as bothering God until God reluctantly gives in. Later in the book of Luke Jesus compares God to an unfair and cantankerous judge, who only gives a woman seeking justice what she is asking for because she is bothering him and he just wants her to go away.

Why is Jesus being so sassy about prayer?

His tone is acerbic. He calls his disciples evil, for crying out loud! Is this what it looked like when Jesus was having a bad day?

The best answer I can come up with isn’t very satisfying. Perhaps Jesus is confounded that we are even asking the question. Maybe prayer is not that complicated. The relationship between God and human beings may be (I can have some good idea about what it is that God expects from me, but I am less sure of what it is that I can expect from God), but the bones of that interaction are not. Show up. Pray. Say anything.

Today’s Hebrew scripture was the story of Abraham haggling with God over whether or not to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. You could say they are arguing. You could say that Abraham is trying to manipulate God, like a child asking parents for just 20 more minutes on the XBox, then 15 more minutes, then ten. But think about it, the only people we really care to argue with are the ones we are closest to.

Tonight, if you had no other choice than to wake up a friend because you needed something, which friend would you disturb? They are the ones who you are truly intimate with, the ones you trust with that kind of vulnerability. God is one of those people.

Frederick Buechner, wrote in his work The Magnificent Defeat:

If we are really seeking God’s power, then I have one thing to say--perhaps it is not the only thing, but it is enormously important: Ask for it...Pray. In whatever words you have. And if the little voice that is inside all of us as the inheritance of generations of unfaith, if this little voice inside says, "But I don't believe. I don't believe," don't worry too much. Just keep on anyway. "Lord, I believe; help my unbelief" is the best any of us can do really, but thank God it is enough.”

 

My Tribe. Your Tribe. Our Tribe.

The following is part of a read thru the Bible group, God's Grand Narrative, from Casady School and St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral in Oklahoma City.

Read the entire Book of Ruth. It’s not long. Or, watch The Bible Project video:

 

The most recognizable passage from Ruth is one you may have heard at a wedding:

“Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the LORD do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.”

You can hear the poignancy for a wedding, but when you read the book you realize these are words spoken between a mother-in-law and her widowed daughter-in-law. But in the sense that a marriage between any two people is a convergence of two cultures, the words fit perfectly.

The significance of the book of Ruth is two fold. It's about the confluence of two cultures, and it lays some genealogical groundwork for what will become the most celebrated King in Israel’s history--David. Both of these things are important to larger themes within the Hebrew Scriptures.

Now, let's weave back to previous stories you have read in order to highlight what I think is one of the more important themes in the Bible; tribal identity, interaction, and confluence.

Remember God’s initial covenant with Abraham and Sarah?

“I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

Part of what I think you see being worked out over their history (birds-eye-view of the Bible) is how to be a chosen people, unique and set aside by God, a kingdom of priests, whose ultimate mission is to bless all the tribes of the earth, and not see your culture as superior and one of higher value than the others. I think the idiom "threading a needle" is useful here, because this is something hard for all of us.  We are tribal creatures, and they had to build a culture, protect it, and in doing those things not get swept up into cultural exceptionalism.

Blessed by God
Being a Blessing

You see this needle being threaded in the marriages of Isaac and Jacob; go marry someone from your own tribe, and whatever you do, don't marry a Canaanite (Genesis 24:1-4 and 28:1). You see this needle being threaded in the development of the Halakhah in the Wilderness (“treat foreigners fairly for you yourselves were once aliens in Egypt” and “when you encounter their shrines and temples, tear them down”). And you see it being threaded when God uses a Moabite witch named Balaam to bless Israel.

The book of Joshua and Judges are much harder to “thread.” And there are no simple interpretations of those accounts. A displaced people, fleeing slavery, needed to settle somewhere, their ancient home from 400 years earlier in Canaan being the place to which they hoped to return. Could they have negotiated the land on which they might settle? Our idealistic side would hope so, and there are accounts of Abraham insisting he pay for land he acquired as he moved into Canaan. W have all observed how difficult cultural diffusion is in modern contexts, how much harder it must have been in ancient settings.

The book of Ruth is a bright moment in the midst of all this brutality. “In the period of the Judges...” it begins, a Hebrew woman named Naomi has married her sons to Moabite women. Moab was one of those regions the Hebrews had to pass thru on the way back to Canaan. Naturally there was some cultural mixing. Her sons die unexpectedly, and Naomi tells the Moabite daughter-in-laws to go back to Moab. One of them does return--Orpah--but one stays--Ruth. And Ruth makes a vow to her mother-in-law to join her tribe and religion permanently. Ruth eventually becomes the great grandmother of King David. The fact that she is a Moabite convert is important to that larger theme of God’s universal blessing of all tribes.

But it's messy, and it will get messier. Hang in there, it is a long and winding road...

A couple of things to note from Ruth:

Oprah Winfrey was named after Orpah in this story, but it changed to Oprah over time because people had difficulty spelling the name.

When Ruth “uncovers Boaz’s feet” that was a euphemism for a physical romantic relationship. Strange, eh?

Next reading will be the Book of Job, chapters 1-2.

 

Samson the Anti-Hero

This entry is part of the "God's Grand Narrative" Bible reading group out of Casady School and St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral in Oklahoma City.

Read Judges 13-16

Samson is what some would call “a hot mess.” I know it is tempting to see him as a full throated hero of the Hebrew Bible, and he is later held up by the writer of Hebrews of a man of great faith. But the heroism is more complex, particularly because it is located within the convoluted shadows of the Judges.

His mother, the wife of Manoah, has a hard time getting pregnant and makes a plea to God (a typology of Sarah, Rebekah, and Rachel). When she is blessed with a son, they dedicate him as a Nazarite to God, who will lead his people in defeating the greatest enemy of that period, the Philistines. The Nazarite vow was prescribed in the Halakhah for those that wanted to live a particularly devout life. Nazarites were required, among other things:

• Follow the Halakhah closely
• Abstain from wine or any sort of grapes or raisins
• Not cut their hair

The prohibition against wine people generally understand. But grapes and raisins? The answer is nebulous. Some sources say it was because grapes were associated symbolically with blood and a Nazarite was not to handle blood. Or it could be that grapes and raisins were associated with sacrifices made by fertility religions (something we talk about in greater detail in 7th grade), and to abstain from those things was to be careful not to give any impression of unfaithfulness to God. And this would apply also to raisin cakes. But honestly, who really likes raisin cakes? But I digress…

Grown to full stature, one of the first things Samson demands of his father is to marry a Philistine woman. Samson has a penchant for Philistine women. These are ancient stories, so they aren’t always going to spell things out for you, but this one should seem obvious. The last thing a Nazarite would do is unite himself to a woman who practices a different religion. But did you see what the parenthetical said?

(His parents did not know that this was from the Lord, who was seeking an occasion to confront the Philistines; for at that time they were ruling over Israel.)

Wait! What? It was from God? This raises all sorts of questions. Is God using hypocritical acts as a means of positioning Samson to fight Philistines? Is his lackadaisical Nazarite vow a guise? Is this ancient counter-intelligence? Or is he just a lousy Nazarite?

What then is set into motion are a series of what I would call “seedy” stories about Samson:

• Touches a dead animal, forbidden by Jewish law, and eats honey out of the carcass.
• Feeds this impure honey to his parents without their knowledge.
• Loses an impossible bet with his Philistine bridegrooms because his Philistine fiance manipulates him.
• Pays the bet by killing thirty men.
• When his Philistine father-in-law gives away his bride, Samson burns down the village with 300 helter-skelter foxes.
• When he is arrested for burning down the village, Samson kills a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass.

I see a literary pattern, that of a reckless man throwing himself boorishly into various situations that inevitably lead him to killing Philistines, which was the purpose of his life.

Which leads to the most well known story; Samson and Delilah. See again the introduction to this story at the outset of chapter 16:

“One day Samson went to Gaza, where he saw a prostitute. He went in to spend the night with her.”

I can assure you that visiting a prostitute is not something Halakhah allows. But it re-enforces the sketchy nature of our hero. He meets Delilah, a Philistine woman, who then tries to repeatedly kill him by asking for the source of his super-strength, and each time he lies to her, killing the men that she had unleashed on him.

(His parents did not know that this was from the Lord, who was seeking an occasion to confront the Philistines; for at that time they were ruling over Israel.)

And then, for no apparent reason whatsoever, he tells her the truth, this after three attempts at killing him. Cut off his hair and he loses his strength. The men fall upon him, gouge out his eyes, and send him to prison. Eventually, his hair begins to regrow and he performs one last feat that kills thousands of Philistines, collapsing the temple pillars, when 3000 Philistines are on the roof. And there, Samson dies.

One. Hot. Mess.

Literary device calls this the “anti-hero.” An antihero or antiheroine is a protagonost who lacks conventional heroic qualities, such as idealism, courage and morality. They often possess dark personality traits such as disagreeableness, dishonesty, and aggressiveness. These characters are usually considered "conspicuously contrary to an archetypal hero.” (Wiki)

Though the writers of Judges may not have been explicitly aware of the device, an anti-hero is what they were writing about, and it fits into the larger atmosphere of the book of Judges; a people struggling to live into their identity in their God, and follow the ethical edicts presented in Halakhah. The complexity of this story is in that pesky parenthetical. Is this what God wanted? Does God use the flawed and sketchy to accomplish his purposes? What about the hero-hero? What about the life well-lived? Those are also found in the book of Judges, the undulating, up and down ride of the book of Judges.

I said earlier in our reading when we came to the story of Noah, and I'll say it for this one also, “Samson is no children’s story.”

Our next reading will be the book of Ruth.

I'll Take the Incompetent Ones

This entry is part of the "God's Grand Narrative" Bible reading group out of Casady School and St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral in Oklahoma City.

Read Judges 6-7 and 11-12

The middle section of Judges has a series of stories about the Judge Gideon. For the most part, Gideon is presented as one of the faithful “good” judges. He is best known for “putting out a fleece,” a sign he asked God to give him to assure him of God’s presence. A fleece was an animal fur used to keep warm and it’s where we get the name for our fuzzy jackets. Over time the phrase “putting out a fleece” referred to looking for a sign when making a decision. In the story, Gideon sets the fleece outside his tent and asks God to keep the fleece dry from the morning dew as a sign. God does so. But Gideon very presumptuously asked him to do it a second time for assurance, but to switch it around; make the fleece wet and keep the ground dry.

Does this remind you of any previous stories thus far?

It should. Remember Moses pestering God with the same questions about presence? He wanted multiple reassurances that God would be with them in the wilderness. And his second-guessing changed that relationship with God, from face-to-face to “only seeing his backside.”

Our students typically make this connection and a few even remember the concept of “typology,” a concept or theme that repeats over time across different stories, that we introduced during the story of Joshua crossing the Jordan river (a type of Red Sea). Gideon’s fleece story is a typology of the earlier Moses account, but the consequences are harder to see.

God is going to be with Gideon, but God sets Gideon back on his heels by asking him not to send the full strength of 22,000 troops into battle. Rather, he tells him to send 12,000 of them home. And then to make it worse, tells Gideon to pair them down even more with an unusual test. Send the men down to the river and have them take a drink of water. 9,700 of them scoop up the water in their hands. 300 of them shove their face into the water and ”lap it like a dog.”

Which one would make the better soldier?

The men who scoop it up, because they can drink and still stay aware of their surroundings. If you shove your face into the water, your enemy can sneak up on you and bash your head in. God tells him to take the 300 incompetent ones. So you want to question God? He may just make you go into battle the hard way, so that you will need to depend on him, or so this story goes. This is a typology of the Moses encounter.

The battle is a somewhat well-known one. The 300 troops surround the Midianite camp with lamps inside clay jars, and on signal, they smash the jars, blow the shofars, and start screaming. The Midianites panic and end up fighting each other.

Next we jump to a dark story. I question whether our kids should read this story (trust me, there are worse in Judges), but they need to see the undulating spiritual life in Judges that was described earlier in the book.

The story of Jephthah the Gileadite, in chapter 11, demonstrates this. A member of a neighboring tribe that was partially allied with Israel, he leads a pro-Israel attack against one of their old rivals, the Ammonites. Sounds good enough, but he makes an unnecessary vow to God that if given a victory, he will sacrifice the first person he sees coming out of his house upon his return, as a tribute to God. He wins, and who comes out of his house as he strolls up the driveway? His daughter.

He wails and moans but keeps his commitment, confessing to his daughter his deep regret, but insistent to her that he keep his vow. She agrees, but asks him to allow her and her closest friends to go on a two-month retreat in the mountains to grieve the loss of her future. Upon her return, he puts her to death.

The kids in class cry out, “Idiot!” They think the father is pretty stupid (but they also are critical of the daughter for coming back from her mountain retreat). Invariably someone asks, “Is this okay with God?” The answer is no. Human sacrifice is forbidden by the halacha. So this story, in a very indirect way, captures the convoluted, up and down, janky spiritual instincts of the people during this period of their history.

If you want to see an even worse demonstration of this, then read “A Levite and His Concubine” in Judges 19. This is a story we most definitely cannot read in Middle Division Bible class, and if you read it, you will see why. The period of the Judges shows a long slow downward spiral. Remember the key verse of Judges? “In those days Israel had no king, so the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes.”

The last bit in this reading that is of note is what I sometimes call “Bible Nerd Knowledge.” Have you ever heard of a Shibboleth? It is a term that means insider language or a kind of cultural code word. Most cultures have some version of this, as well as fraternities, clubs and really any kind of organizations. Episcopalians are lousy with insider words. we have fancy words for everything. Heck, we call our janitors “Sextons.” Pretty fancy.

The idea of a “Shibboleth” comes from Judges 12. The Ephraimites attacked the Gileadites and lost. The defeated Ephraimites tried to sneak back home but the Gileadites set up a check-point to capture them. At the checkpoint they were asked to say the word “Shibboleth.” As it turned out, Ephraimites couldn't pronounce the “sh” sound, and could only say “Sibboleth.” When they couldn’t pronounce the word correctly, they killed them as traitors on the spot.

There is a little bit of a “leap” from this story to the idea of insider code language, but what does translate is the idea that groups are identified by language. In modern parlance that is sometimes called a “Shibboleth.”

Our last reading from the Judges is the story of Samson, in its entirety, chapters 13-16. As a teaser, know that this story has typically been overtly sanitized for children’s church school. This is the rough version, and Samson is the prototype hero for the period of the Judges. You will see what I mean as you read...

Judges 13-16

Worst. Book. Ever.

This is part of a commentary series, God's Grand Narrative, comprised of folks reading thru the Bible along with the Biblical Literature class at Casady School, OKC.

Read Judges 1-4

The book of Judges is the worst book in the Bible. I know that looks a bit strange in print, but I don’t write it for shock value. There is actually theological merit to the idea. It is a book that records some horrific behavior, and overall the book of Judges is set up like a long winding downward spiral, getting worse as it moves toward its ending. As I’ve mentioned before in this series, there are passages in the book of Judges that we most certainly cannot read with 6th Graders. I’ll point those out later as we move through the book.

The key verse in Judges, the one that captures the atmosphere of most of the book, is found in chapter 17:6. “In those days Israel had no king, so the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes.” Not every story in the book is so dark, but many of them are. In class we talk about an undulating spiritual life, like a roller coaster. You see this upward and downward spiritual health described in 2:16-19. If the people had a good and faithful leader, the flourished. But when good leadership died they began to tank. Most of us have seen this in some form in our families and businesses. Leaders who are competent and have integrity matter for the health of community.

There are some well known infamous stories early on. The story of the Judge Ehud killing King Eglon of Moab. He goes under the guise of paying his taxes but ends up thrusting a sword into the King’s fat belly, so fat that it consumes the sword and spills his guts on the ground. Ehud leaves, locking the door behind him. The King’s attendants think the door is locked because the King is going the bathroom, the smell coming from his quarters confirming this. Eventually they realize that he is not well and break in to find him dead. Dark humor in an ancient form.

A similarly dark story is described in the exploits of the one female Judge in the period. Deborah is a strong and faithful leader, and she inspires a woman of the Kenite tribe to kill an opposing general named Sisera by driving a stake into his head while he sleeps in her tent. Chapter five concludes the early sections of the Judges with a song praising Deborah for her leadership and faithfulness to God.

It is at this point that I introduce to our classes a Mnemonic Device that helps them remember the larger story of the Bible. I call it the “Stages of Israel’s Life.”

The idea of Israel works on a variety of levels.

1. Israel was a person, the grandson of Abraham. His name was Jacob, but was changed to Israel after a night wrestling with God. The name means, he who wrestles with God.

2. Israel became a cultural tribe of people.

3. Israel eventually becomes a geographical location, a place.

4. Israel is a religious faith. You can convert to Judaism if you were not born a Jew or lived in Israel.

Person, Culture, Place, Religion

So the Mnemonic “Stages of Israel Life,” works as a kind of metaphor of the birth and development of this multifaceted idea of Israel, the cultural religious group that descended from the grandson of Abraham. And just like a person has stages of life, I found that the stages match up, in some fashion, to the events and stages of "Israel’s" life. Let me show you:

Conception: In the creation stories, the garden, the fall, Cain and Abel, the Flood, there was no formal Judaism. But after the fall God “conceived” of a culture that would eventually usher in blessing for all the families of the earth. Judaism (Israel) had not been born yet, but it had been conceived.

Infancy: The fall was the problem, the answer to the problem was to create a culture through which humanity could be repaired. When God called Abraham and Sarah to start a culture that would bless all the people of the earth, a religion was “born.” They were small, like an infant.

Childhood: Abraham’s family grew when he had Ishmael, Isaac, and the his grandson Jacob and Esau, and Jacob had twelve sons. They went from a family to a tribe, just like an infant grows in size.

Teenage Years: Eventually Israel (formerly Jacob) moves to Egypt during a famine. They remain in Egypt initially as guests, but eventually are enslaved and remain there 400 years. During this phase they become full-grown in size as a culture, hundreds of thousands of people. But as they leave Egypt and move into the wilderness, they, like a teenager, find themselves living in-between who they are and who the eventually will become. They are a little rebellious (golden calf, constantly challenging Moses) and they need rules (the 613 laws of Halacha) to keep them on the path.

Young Adult Phase: Many young adults, though certainly not all, go through a period of duplicity. They are acting like adults, but they also are living carefree and somewhat selfishly. They are trying to figure out what kind of an adult they want to be, but they are inclined to float around and not commit to much of anything. This fits accordingly with the period of the Conquest and the book of Judges; selfish, acquiring land, an undulating spiritual life, and a shaky commitment to God. I help the kids understand this part of the Mnemonic metaphor by calling this the “Justin Bieber” phase of Israel’s history. Bieber is basically a good guy, who most of the time wants to do the right thing, but he gets distracted and does dumb selfish things. That is the period of the Judges.

Our next reading will be Judges 6-7 and 11-12.

 

Canaan as an Abstraction

This is one in a series of posts walking thru the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures called "God's Grand Narrative," a group of parents at Casady School in OKC reading thru the Bible together.

I learned to play the guitar in college, sitting in my dorm room. One of the bands guitar playing got me interested in was the Indigo Girls. Their big hit was “Closer to Fine,” which had some big coming-of-age idealism in it, perfect for a young college student. But there was another song I learned to play, “Land of Canaan.”

You can go to the East
To find your, inner hemisphere.
You say we're under the same sky babe,
You're bound to realize, Honey, it's not that clear.
I'm not your promise land
I'm not your promise one
I'm not your Land of Canaan, sweetheart,
Waiting for you under the sun.

I'm lonely tonight, I'm missing you now.
I'm wanting your love and you're giving it out.
I'm lonely tonight.

 

The narrator in the song is lonely, wants to be with the other person that night, but she insists that despite the loneliness, the other person is not her land of canaan.

Obviously, the narrator is not talking about a strip of land in the middle east. Instead, “canaan” has become an abstraction of the very specific idea described in the books of Genesis, Exodus, Joshua and Judges. It represented a place, a person, or a situation that was safe and permanent. It represents home.

Now this may seem obvious, but it is important in understanding how the scriptures are used by its readers. I call this the practice of abstraction. You take a story, an image, or idea that is connected first to a very specific context, and you in some ways remove it from it’s original context and make it an abstract notion that can be applied to other things. This is often done with ideas, images and stories in the scriptures.

The Land of Canaan, the Promised Land, the Land Flowing with Milk and Honey.  It was a place, and still is, of great longing and conflict.  But it has also grown into an abstract idea of that place in life where we feel safe and the most at home.

The African American spiritual “Off to Canaan Land” is sung in anticipation of being in a place where there will be civil rights and equal opportunity.

 

There is an Orphanage in Uganda called “Canaan Land Children’s Home.”

 

I ask our students "What place, person, or group of people feels the most "home" for you?  What is your "Land of Canaan?"  And if you don't feel like you have found it yet, what do you think it might be?"

PapaYou+

400 Years is a LONG Time

This is part of an online reading group, God's Grand Narrative, that is moving through the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures together.

Read Exodus 1-14

Joseph is the bridge between Abraham’s tribe in Canaan and the story of Moses in Egypt. Joseph, you recall, was a hero in Egypt, but eventually a Pharaoh rises to power who had no regard for Joseph. The tribal people of Abraham were initially respected in this foreign settlement and in some sense were seduced by the affirmation they received in Egypt under Joseph. They were given a separate place--the Land of Goshen--to dwell in order to maintain some cultural distinction. But they stayed too long, because they were eventually enslaved by a Pharaoh who didn’t care about the past. 400 years pass--a very long time.

The way we cover these chapters in 6th Grade Bible is to watch Dreamwork’s animated film “Prince of Egypt.” And the story tends to be familiar to older generations because of the Charlton Heston movie of the 1950s.

The name Moses (moshay) is Egyptian and sounds like the words “to draw out.” This has a double layer of meaning, the first being the description of the Egyptian princess drawing him out of the water, and then secondarily Moses rising to draw the people out out of slavery.

This is the first time many of our students are confronted with the notion of “infanticide,” the execution of infants in order to oppress or control a population of subjugated people. When God commits the same act against the Egyptians as the crowning act of the Ten Plagues, it is in response to the atrocity the Pharaoh committed against the Hebrews infants, an example of parallelism in Hebrew story telling.

Moses marries Zipporah, a Midianite shepherdess. Midian is a region in northern Africa traditionally populated by darker skinned Africans. So there is some precedent for the idea that Moses married a black African. Regardless, he married outside his tribe. So he was a Hebrew who was raised culturally as an Egyptian but also married the daughter of Midianite priest named Jethro. There is a lot of ethnic, religious, and cultural integration, and this will raise questions as we move forward in the story.

Moses asks God his name. God responds with an obscure Hebrew word (YHWH) that had never been in use, but that was similar in form to the verb “to be.” It has been translated “I Am, or “I am that I am.” A more awkward but maybe more accurate rendering would be “existence.” Regardless, it sets a precedent in Hebrew culture of God being nameless, and can only be explained in terms of God’s actions in his relationships. To name something is to define it and in a sense control it. Have you ever met someone who controls their relationships by giving everybody nicknames? It may be disguised as “cute” and friendly, but on another level it is patronizing. God cannot be defined and controlled. God is nameless and held in mystery. Hebrews thus have referred to God as “God of the name” or “He whose name may not be spoken.”

A couple of things we traditionally do with these sections of scripture in class. I ask the kids to memorize the Ten Plagues. Here is a list of them:

1. Water into blood: Ex. 7:14–24
2. Frogs: Ex. 7:25–8:15
3. Lice: Ex. 8:16–19
4. Wild animals, possibly flies: Ex. 8:20–32
5. Diseased livestock: Ex. 9:1–7
6. Boils: Ex. 9:8–12
7. Thunderstorm of hail and fire: Ex. 9:13–35
8. Locusts: Ex. 10:1–20
9. Darkness: Ex. 10:21–29
10. Death of firstborn: Ex. 11:1–12:36

The final plague is the source of the Passover Feast the Jewish people still celebrate today, a festival which also symbolically points to the sacrifice and salvation of Jesus in Christianity, as Jesus celebrated the Passover meal as his last supper with his disciples before his blood was shed to save and protect his people from judgment and death. These are called “types,” which are ideas or symbols that repeat themselves in different forms across different stories.

One last interesting note. Did you notice the strange story of God setting out to kill Moses as he headed back to Egypt to rescue the slaves? (Exodus 4:24f). These are the kinds of encounters I find fascinating, like puzzles that need solving. Moses’ Midian wife Zipporah intercedes by circumcising their son and dousing Moses’ big toe with the blood from the procedure. Don’t read too much into the big toe, which likely means that she threw the extracted foreskin at Moses’ feet.

So what does it mean? It may mean that Moses had only a vague knowledge of the rite of circumcision and had dismissed it as being necessary. Remember, he was not raised as a Hebrew slave and as we will see in later readings, the larger Hebrew tribe was unclear on their ancient tribal obligations. Remember that 400 years had passed. What sense of their ritual and practice had been forgotten, or muddled, in the generations of abuse and slavery? Lodged in this story is the heroics of Zipporah, the non-Hebrew Midianite woman, who recognized what was needed, a firm commitment to the tribes ancient God, and his covenant. She circumcise the child and throws the evidence at Moses feet, and only then are they able to head toward Egypt committed to their new venture.

The next reading will be Exodus 15-18. “We’ve been set free. What now?”