Beyond Wood and Stone

As a Professor in a Seminary for the past 14 years, the subject of ‘call’ was basic to my work.  Students preparing for ministry in Christian churches are expected to be able to talk about their ‘call to ministry’, to be able to draw upon Biblical narratives to back up their own stories, and to feel comfortable with the notion that God has called them to a particular form of life and occupation. A large part of my job of ‘pastoral formation’ was to teach ‘call’, and to evoke from students a capacity to reflect upon and articulate their own unique sense of God’s call to them.

I have to remind myself that not everybody thinks the subject of God calling people is either ‘ordinary’ or ‘normal.’  I also have to remind myself that for many centuries the Christian church has tended to reserve that language of ‘call’ for its professionals – clergy, priest, pastors, nuns, monks, missionaries, so much so that ‘ordinary’ folk were not expected to experience the call of God in any describable or tangible way.

Nothing could be further from the Biblical record!! Scripture is full of stories of young boys, teenage girls, middle aged women, old men, murderers, thieves, agricultural workers, fishermen, housewives, slaves, servants, sick people, soldiers, groups of people, even whole nations,  and….even donkeys (!) hearing God call to them personally by name, to do something of value on God’s behalf in the world of creation.  Perhaps that list doesn’t sound so ‘normal’, but the cumulative effect is that God seems to be rather indiscrimate, and flambouyant in the way God calls upon us to partner with God in fleshing out the Dream of God.*

This season of Epiphany (Year B) delves into some of these ‘call stories’, so what better time for me to re-learn what this  notion means to the men, women, children of Cedar Park who are not necessarily planning to ‘work for God full-time’  but who nevertheless want to make sense of those nudges, longings, questions, whispers, dreams, which prod them to want to make a difference in the world for good, or who want to follow the Christian way. While my seminary teaching experience brings a lot to the table in this conversation,  I  am looking forward to learning from you what this notion of call means to you as you live out your daily lives.

In sermons on Sunday, and in conversations during the week (and with groups like the Women’s Group who are exploring the same theme),  we have an opportunity to ask ourselves as a community and as individuals “What is God calling me/us to be or do?”  Come along for the journey, add your comments here, go to the Church website to read ther sermons I’m preaching on this topic, send me an email, pick up the phone, share your own call stories, help us learn more about the ways God invites us in to living the Dream.

The art work is “Calling Disciples” by He Qi, posted  here courtesy of Vanderbilt Divinity Library.

What a weekend of celebration at Cedar Park!  The Service of Lessons and Carols on Saturday Night, under Douglas Knight’s direction – and inspiration -  was an evening of wonder, joy and hope.   My thanks to EVERYONE who made that evening such a celebration of the “Message of Christmas” – choristers, lighting, sound, welcomers, printers, coffee and tea makers, bakers, bow-tie makers, music sorters, and all who brought family, neighbours and friends to share the vitality of this amazing commuity! (For those who want to read the “Christmas Message” from this Service, click this link: The Christmas Message Dec 17 )

And Sunday’s KidZone pageant “It wasn’t the Hilton You Know!”  was SUCH a delight to behold! The energy, enthusiasm, care, preparation, and performances were exceptional. Baby angels running up the aisle on cue! Kids of all ages, sharing song, drama, and joy as they shared the true message of Christmas.  They were right, weren’t they?  It’s not about how ‘spectacular’ we can make this message, it’s about realizing that God’s child is born, and born again and again, in the simplicity of ordinary lives, because it’s from such tiny beginnings that worlds can change.  Our children enlarged our vision and hope of God’s Dream yesterday, and I am truly grateful!

Our CedarPark Youth in Action group took the same message to the neighbourhood last night as they went carolling, and collecting food for St. Columba House, and money for their school project in Haiti. God comes to us, making hope and light take on flesh and heart in us,  if we give God a chance!

Please, anyone who was at these events, feel free to add your own Hallelujahs, below!

Instead of ‘writing about’ the texts concerning John the Baptizer, I’m offering this as a meditation/poem/reflection. I hope you ‘enjoy’ – if that’s the right verb.   Elisabeth

 

If you look at the top of the screen you’ll see a page link to Cedar Park’s Advent Exploration Series on Desmond Tutu’s book God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope for our Time. If you cannot join in the groups on Wednesday evenings or Thursday mornings, this is YOUR “Third” way to stay connected to this Advent Series. Take a look by clicking the page above.

November 27th and Advent is already upon us. As I said at Church on Sunday, you’d think with all the ‘warning’ that comes into the inbox of a clergyperson advertizing this or that resource or product guaranteed to make Advent more meaningful this year,  I’d feel more ready than I do.  The world “out there” is also heralding the “Holiday Season” with its lights, tinsel, decorations, music, so why the unreadiness, and ambivalence?

This year one of my excuses is the Lectionary. Year B is particularly tough on the preacher who wants to tread gently and softly into the Advent Season. Unlike the years when we get to read Matthew or Luke, this year we have the Gospel of Mark. If you take a look at the first chapter of Mark’s Gospel, you’ll find no angels, no Mary and Joseph, no pregnant trip to Bethlehem, no Wise Men  or  field-abiding Shepherds. Instead we leap straight into the life and mission of the adult Jesus.  How do we do Advent without an infant Jesus?

But take another look at the very first verse of Mark again.

“The beginning of the Gospel (good news) of Jesus Christ, Son of God.”  It took my rather curmudgeonly New Testament Professor to make me (and my classmates) slow down enough to take notice of that verse. It seemed so… ordinary, unimaginative, formulaic, unecessary even… rather like saying “Okay, here we go” or “Once upon a time.”  But as my professor pointed out,  Mark never wastes a word for the rest of his Gospel, so why would he throw in something insignificant at the beginning?  Reading through Mark’s Gospel in a sitting (it’s not that long, possible over a grande latte, or a double double), you discover that’s true; it’s a lean, fast paced Gospel that has an even more startling ending….. (clue, the original ending is at 16:8a).  And both together help the reader to see what Mark is getting at.  The book he wrote about Jesus is just the beginning.  The “Good News of Jesus Christ” is still being lived out in those of us who are alive today.

Mark has a mighty strange way of launching us, headfirst into the deep end of Advent.  By simply telling us “This is the beginning”, and by implication, the rest is ours to tell.

On Mark’s beginning, welcome to Advent.

A little known fact, even among Christians is that we work from a different calendar than the typical 12 month one. For Christians the “year” begins on the first Sunday of Advent, and runs through until “Reign of Christ Sunday.”  Which is this week, so yes, our Christian Year is almost over.   Perhaps it’s fitting then that the Gospel text for this Sunday is Matthew’s vision of Christ in Judgment at the end of time.   The end of a year is a popular time to ‘judge’ the year just passed,  but when we associate the word “judgment” with Christian religion, it takes on a much more ‘scary’ tone.

This passage (Matthew 25:31-46 http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2025:31-46&version=MSG) has inspired artists to paint it in all is glory and horror (just do a google image search and you’ll see.   What I find even more frightening however, is the way that this text has been used within the Christian tradition to generate fear, to browbeat and guilt-trip people into submission in a way that runs completely counter to the original intent of this passage, which was to portray in vivid terms the Dream of God, which is the reconciliation of all creation to Godself.

Matthew doesn’t make this easy for us to see however, because he has a tendency to overdrawJesus’ teaching about judgment.  We have to remember that this particular Gospel was written in a climate of persecution and fear in the aftermath of the destruction of Jerusalem by Rome in CE 70. Matthew’s community was predictably defensive, and wary of both Rome and the Jewish communities which attacked them for their allegiance to “the Way” of Jesus of Nazareth. They were sensitive to the judgments of others, and desperate to show that their “Way” was in accordance with the teaching of Jesus.

Jesus is likely the originator of this vivid portrait, precisely because he is steeped in the Old Testament prophetic understanding of God’s Kingdom, where justice, the practice of mercy, and the protection of the poor are benchmarks of God’s covenant relationship with God’s people, and of the people’s faithfulness to God. As God has done for us, so God calls us to do for others.

Portrait is a good word to describe this text.  Unlike what most of us have been led to believe, this text is not a description, nor a prescription, nor yet a prediction of “what will happen.”  It is a parable. Yes. Let me repeat that. It is a parable. A word picture using vivid extremes to fuel our imaginations about what the Kingdom of God come among us looks like. The kingdom come among us is when not only God, but we are busy feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless, visiting the prisoner and tending the sick. Those who are citizens of this God-Dream-Come-True are doing what God has been doing for us all along.  By contrast, the second half of the parable describes what the opposite will look like, and it is so ridiculously awful that no-one would choose to go there.

And that’s the point of a parable. Opening an imaginative window of possibilities that allow us to imagine ourselves in God’s Dream, and then to change or reorient our lives to make that dream come true.  Jesus tells the parable so that we have the opportunity to imagine and to choose to weave dreams with God and to build the kingdom of peace with justice, of compassionate love, along with Jesus and the company of the ‘blessed.”  This is a GOOD NEWS picture, if only we can jettison all that fearmongering that has encrusted it for so long.

Last week I posted a quote from Henri Nouwen (see post below this one). I was preparing a sermon called “Blessed” in which I proposed a) that “Blessed” can simply mean “to be touched by God”, and God is most likely to be found among those who are in most need of God’s touch – the mourners, the lost, last, least, left behind.  And b) that the “Blesseds” in the Beatitudes were not values to aspire to;  after all, I said as an aside,”Who wishes to aspire to mourning?”

As a family we weren’t to know that 48 hours later, we would be the ones in mourning, reeling at the news of Norman’s father’s sudden death. In the hours since,  we have been “Blessed” – touched by God   through this Community of Faith at Cedar Park. Outpouring of condolences, cards, emails, hugs, cups of tea,tears for us, practical helpers offering rides to airports, marshalling helpers to pick up the worship responsibilities for Sunday so that I can be with Norman and the family for the funeral in Devon, UK.   I look at that quote from Nouwen, and I am so, so, deeply grateful that these are now no longer mere words on a page, but truths we are experiencing among you.  This is  what “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” means.  God touches us where we most need God’s touch, where our hearts are near breaking point. God’s healing touch is made tangible through the gift of community.

Thank you. I thank God for you.

My thought for the day…. as I watch many in our community embody this ‘caring friendship’ with one another. Be blessed!

 

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.”   Road to Daybreak.  Henry Nouwen.

All are welcome to come and join us for a six-week Exploration of Prayer, which begins this Wednesday at 7:30 at the Church.   It would be a little too crass to call this series “Prayer for Dummies”,  but it truly is a “Beginner” series. You don’t need to know anything about praying to enjoy this series, but if you do, then we’d welcome your wisdom, enthusiasm and input.

You’ll notice a new page (up at the top) called “Prayer” which is a resource page for those of you who want to keep up with the series at a distance, or for those who can’t come to each week, but want to see what you missed!  There will be links, resources, and a summary of each week’s exploration.

Do join us, in person, or online!

Readings for this Sunday can be found at this link: http://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts.php?id=157.   The text for preaching  this week will be the reading from Exodus 3:1-15,  which tells of the encounter of Moses with God in the desert of Midian.

 As one commentary rightly points out, this is one of the “Top Ten” biblical stories known by most people who have some Christian or Jewish background.  For many there is even a reinforcing visual memory from the night-time scene in Cecil B. de Mille’s classic  The Ten Commandments (if you want to see it, try this link from movieclips.com:http://cli.ps/ZMLYH).  And for our younger generations, they now have their own visual cue from Dreamwork Studio’s  Prince of Egypt. (YouTube clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VTH5SWDFq4).  

Often familiarity with a story dulls our attention to its oddness. The writers of the book of Exodus were trying to convey something of the awesome mystery of the way God chooses to come alongside humanity in intimate encounters like this one, while still trying to honour the ’otherness’ or mystery of God.  

God comes close yet still remains mysterious.   This is perhaps how many of us experience God;  we may have a moment we can recall, of sensing the closeness and realness of God. For some this can be in a moment of awe at creation’s splendour, for others it is in the sense of a personal disaster averted, or the life-giving touch of another human with a sense of divine love or power that’s so radically different than everyday interaction.   In this way it’s likely that many of us can relate to this particular story – we know God comes close, but still remains mysterious.

Another way this story seeks to convey God’s  otherness is in the way God answers Moses’ very useful question in verse 13: “If they ask me what your name is, what shall I tell them?”  The NRSV uses upper case letters to signify that God’s answer is a name. “I AM WHO I AM.”   If this looks more like a sentence than I name, you’re right.  God’s Name is essentially a verb. (The qal imperfect first personal singular form of hayah, for those that want to know!)

It’s wise at this point to turn to Jewish scholars to get a handle on what this might mean, but there answers may prove less than satisfactory if you want to reduce God’s name to something logically or scientifically comprehensible.  As one such scholar sums up three thousand years of scholarship:  ” The name of God is by its very construction beyond all attributes of language, and beyond all possibilty of defnition; it connotes simply that God is the source of all verbs, all actions, all being.”  

An ancient Rabbinic commentary on this verse of Scripture writes: 

“The Holy One, Blessed be He, said to those, You want to know my name? I am called according to my actions.” (Exodus Rabbah 3:6).

Within Jewish, and some parts of Christian tradition, this utter mystery of the God who is called by a Verb –  ”I am who I am” (or “I will be who I will be”) was conveyed in print and spoken words in a distinctive way; God’s Name (see above)  was no longer spoken aloud, and in some Hebrew Bibles was not even written out in full, or contained a deliberate error, so that people would not read it aloud by mistake.   If a reader saw these four Hebrew consonants, they would say instead “Adonai” = the Lord.  Or would simply say “HaShem” = the Name. 

When Christian scholars in the Sixteenth century learned Hebrew, they tried to create a way of saying “The Name” that fit with the four consonants, first needing to identify letters in our own alphabet that matched the Hebrew: JHVH  or YHWH. If you add vowel sounds, the result that some came up with was JeHoVah  -  we still sing this word in the famous hymn “Guide me O thou Great Jehovah”,  or “YaHWeh” – the pronunciation you’ll find in the Roman Catholic  New Jerusalem Bible,  and in many contemporary sacred songs written in the 1970s and 1980s. 

In contemporary Jewish tradition you will still see the reverence with which the Name of God is treated, portrayed in written texts, as “G-d” (not writing out the name in full), or in written and spoken English as simply “The Name”  – e.g. some of the wonderful sacred poetry written by Leonard Cohen in Book of Mercy.