Readings (Track 1)

Today’s readings contain far too many issues to deal with even in a long sermon. So let me start by noticing what I’m leaving out.

Joseph’s famine relief strategy. It succeeds, but as the text recounts, at tremendous cost, the Egyptians finally having to sell themselves into slavery to Pharaoh to get the grain to stay alive. This disquieting cost probably motivates one of the more interesting textual variants in Genesis. In 47:21 most Hebrew texts read “As for the people, he removed them to the cities,” but the Hebrew text preserved by the Samaritans and the Greek translations reads “As for the people, he made slaves of them.” Moses brings the Hebrew slaves out of Egypt but leaves the Egyptian people enslaved. There’s some serious unfinished business there.

Paul’s “For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.” The Holocaust forced a rethink of the centuries-old popular idea that the Jews have been replaced as the people of God by the Church, forced us to take this statement of Paul’s more seriously. We’re still working out just what that means.

Jesus’ words: “Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles.” If we’re worried about defilement, maybe better to focus on the heart than on, say, what books are in the public and school libraries.

Last—still noticing what I’m leaving out—while we like how today’s Gospel ends, the preceding verses have long been difficult to understand. What factors in Matthew’s context led him to tell the story the way he does? We don’t know, but continue to work on it.

OK, what’s left? From Genesis: “So it was not you who sent me here, but God.” Understandable hyperbole, but less helpful than what Joseph says later, when, after the death of their father, the brothers come to Joseph terrified that now the gloves will come off. Joseph’s response: “Do not be afraid! Am I in the place of God? Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today. So have no fear; I myself will provide for you and your little ones” (50:19-21).

“Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good.” Joseph doesn’t downplay the evil intentions of his brothers, but he understands that knowing their intentions is not enough to explain what had happened: “God intended it for good.”

This is important for us. Each one of us faces evil, and we do not always have the resources to turn it aside. And part of the fear that we may feel in these situations comes from the sense that our enemies have control of our reality. And what we need to remember in these situations is that God also has intentions. Whatever is happening, God intends it for good. So is evil God’s will? No. But God is capable of using the evil intentions of others for our good.

Immediately? Not necessarily. Joseph spent a good deal of time in slavery and/or in Egyptian prisons before coming into power and confronting his brothers.

“Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good.” If we understand this, it will help us live with hope in otherwise unbearable situations. And here I’m thinking about two different situations.

The first situation: when we’re the victims. Sometimes this has to do with enemies in the classic sense: other human beings who directly oppose us. Today it’s more frequently the case that those who mean evil against us are simply people, companies, or institutions whose good as they understand it involves our harm. It’s often more profitable to market dangerous drugs, to lie to hobble efforts to address our role in climate change. It’s often more effective to take the low road in political contests.

But I spoke of two situations in which this “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good” allowing us to live in hope. The second situation is when we have to confront our own sins. I have damaged other people. It’s really important to know that even in those situations God was seeking their good. That’s not a justification for my actions; it does allow me to look at my actions without self-deception or despair.

“Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good.”  And God is capable of this? This is the testimony not only of Genesis, but also of St. Paul. Had we let our second reading run one more verse we would have heard “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!”

Can we imagine this, that Joseph’s words can be mapped onto the massive evil we face today? Probably not. That’s why Paul’s language is important: “unsearchable…inscrutable.” This is familiar and uncomfortable territory for God’s people. The Babylonian army burning Solomon’s temple, Jesus dead on the cross that Friday afternoon: how does God salvage anything from these? But God did; God does. So Paul’s words, about God and about our hope as we put ourselves in God’s hands.

But back to Joseph…

“Do not be afraid! Am I in the place of God?” Joseph knows that he is not God, and this knowledge gives tremendous freedom. His destiny, his fortune, his vindication—none of these are in his hands; they’re in God’s hands. So Joseph is free simply to follow God’s law, God’s character, free to pardon and reconcile instead of seeking vengeance.

Our society places a heavy burden on each one of us. Each one of us, we’re told, needs to play God’s role, deciding for ourselves what is right, what is wrong, mapping out and achieving our individual destinies. Each person needs to play the role of their own god. The good news is that we don’t have to bear this heavy burden; we don’t have to play God’s role. This doesn’t mean an easy life, but it does mean that we don’t have to juggle two roles, that of God and of a human being. Also for this reason Jesus said: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Now, the story of Joseph is complete in itself. At the same time, it plays a critical role in the Book of Genesis. The first couple, Adam and Eve, sin precisely in seeking to become like God. The serpent had lied: “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (3:4-5). They ate, and death entered, beginning with the conflict between the first brothers, Cain and Abel. And this mortal conflict has continued through the Book of Genesis: Ishmael and Isaac, Esau and Jacob, Joseph and his brothers. And precisely in the moment in which Joseph can continue this cycle, he reverses his ancestors’ decision: “am I in the place of God?” And the book of Genesis, instead of ending in a pool of blood, ends by opening itself to a future in God’s hands.

“Do not be afraid! Am I in the place of God? Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good.” Something to chew on, not simply during the coming week, but during all of our lives.

Readings (Track 1)

Back in mid-June we heard the beginning of the Abraham story with those grand promises of land, posterity, and blessing. Today, a few generations down the line, the whole thing is skidding into the ditch. Jacob has learned nothing about reigning in favoritism, Joseph’s emotional intelligence only has room to improve, and Joseph’s brothers have just sold him to traders headed for Egypt. The smart money might be on the Bible ending at the end of today’s reading.

Then there’s the Gospel. Jesus has sent the disciples off to cross the lake and—at night—they’re battered by the waves, far from the land, the wind against them. So the next chapter will start with Jesus choosing a new batch of disciples?

This, I suppose, is the first thing to notice from these readings: the scenes at the end of the Genesis reading and toward the beginning of the Matthew reading look like endings. By God’s intervention, they’re not, and that might nourish our courage as we face the various situations that have “The End” written all over them.

Next week’s Genesis reading picks up the story years later, and we might wonder how Joseph gets transformed. The Joseph of today’s reading: the fulfillment of his dreams would be very bad news for everyone! So, if you have the chance, read the intervening chapters during the week. They picture a world that should feel familiar. Two quick examples. Potiphar’s wife accuses Joseph of trying to rape her. Potiphar’s obvious response would be to execute Joseph on the spot, but he sends him off to prison because—reading between the lines—that’s easier than confronting his wife over her preferred recreational activities. Pharaoh’s cupbearer’s memory: he first “forgets” and then “remembers” Joseph. This has nothing to do with his memory; it has everything to do with his calculations as to when it’s in his self-interest to keep silent or speak up. And in that world with so many shades of gray Joseph’s God is still able to get things done.

Matthew’s story. It’s obviously a rescue story. It’s equally a sort of epiphany story. The Lord walking on the waters: that’s a frequent OT motif:

From the Book of Job, describing God: “who alone stretched out the heavens and trampled the waves of the Sea;” [9:8]

From the prophet Habakkuk, speaking to God: “You trampled the sea with your horses, churning the mighty waters.” [3.15]

From the Psalms, also speaking to God: “Your way was through the sea, your path, through the mighty waters; yet your footprints were unseen.” [77:19]

And in this scene what had been literary motif becomes part of the narrative.

And then there’s Jesus’ response: “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” “It is I” is a legitimate translation; but the Greek “egō eimi” also appears as a form of divine self-identification. So, for example, “You are my witnesses, says the LORD, my servant, whom I chose, so that you would know and believe me and understand that I am” (Isa. 43:10 CEB*; cf 45:18, 19; 46:4; 51:12).

So Matthew ends the story with “And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, ‘Truly you are the Son of God,’” giving “worshiped” and “Son of God” their full weight. (In Matthew’s Gospel this occurs a few chapters before the Transfiguration story we heard last week, and serves as a sort of run-up to it.)

And in the middle of the story a twist unique to Matthew: After Jesus’ “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid” we read “Peter answered him, ‘Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.’ He said, ‘Come.’ So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus.”

I am in awe of Peter at this moment, because he gets it right. Think of what he could have said:
“Lord, if it is you, how come all this is happening to us?”
“Lord, if it is you, what were you thinking when you sent us off into this storm?”
“Lord, if it is you, make it all stop now.”
No: “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” Let me do what you’re doing.

Rabbi Kuschner starts his famous book (now in a 20^th Anniversary edition) with this: “There is only one question which really matters: why do bad things happen to good people.” Perhaps the book gets better, but it’s not off to a good start, because neither Testament of our Bible is particularly interested in this question. The Bible’s question is how God is overcoming evil and how we are invited into that process. Not “make it stop” but “let me walk on it too.”

In the Book of Acts, when the church first meets persecution, we meet the same attitude in the church’s prayer: “And now, Lord, look at their threats.” And make them stop? No: “and grant to your servants to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”

There’s a case to be made for chutzpah as one of the underrated gifts of the Spirit.

But back to Peter. Jesus responds to Peter’s request with one word: “‘Come.’ So Peter gets out of the boat, starts walking on the water, coming toward Jesus. But then his attention shifts to the strong wind, he becomes frightened, and begins to sink; “Lord, save me!”

Well, that’s familiar territory. G. K. Chesterton put it superbly: “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.” Not that we should be content with doing it badly, but sometimes badly is the best we can do. And the Peter who gets out of the boat is the Peter who later stands in front of the crowd at Pentecost, who walks into the Gentile centurion Cornelius’ house to preach Jesus. Walking on the water was warm-up.

So, whether it’s situations that look like “The End” or “Bad Things Happening to Good People,” the good news for Joseph, Peter, and us is that God finds us, comes to us. And with that there’s Peter as a model: hunkering down in the boat is not our only option. How might today’s Gospel color the way we experience the coming week and how we respond to it?

Readings

Today we’re celebrating the Feast of the Transfiguration, a feast of enough weight that it bumps the usual Sunday after Pentecost readings. Let’s dive in.

Our Gospel begins “Now about eight days after these sayings…” “These sayings”? Luke is pointing back to that high-voltage conversation: “Who do you say that I am?” “The Messiah.” “Which means going to Jerusalem to be rejected, executed, and rise on the third day.” “No way, Lord!” “Yes, way.” And: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me” (Lk. 9:23).

So Jesus is the Messiah (and the disciples have already been sent out by twos to heal, exorcise, and announce the Kingdom) but Jesus’ understanding of being Messiah is completely off everyone’s map. It’s fair to say that the disciples are off-balance from then on. Pulling back the camera: following Jesus was about as “sensible” an option in the first century as it is in the twenty-first. And while the resurrection and Pentecost restored some balance, almost immediately uncircumcised Gentiles were receiving the Spirit, and how do we get our heads around that? Perhaps being off-balance is part of the package.

Anyway, back to the text. “Now about eight days after these sayings…” the disciples are probably wondering if it wouldn’t be smarter to go back to fishing, tax collecting, etc. So it looks like whatever else it is, the Transfiguration is an exercise in damage control. The whole situation doesn’t make sense, but the Transfiguration shows there’s more going on than meets the eye, and the Voice from Jesus’ baptism returns: “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”

When we heard this story back in February I observed that the disciples—all good Jews—knew who Moses and Elijah were; Jesus was the one they were still trying to place. How does Jesus relate to what we already know? But “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” destabilizes that: listen to Jesus to understand Moses and Elijah.

We Gentiles aren’t particularly worried about Moses and Elijah, but we do assume that there’s plenty we already know. And here “know” is about both our ideas and the institutions we inhabit—or that inhabit us. I find it helpful to think in terms of the Greek pantheon. We know how wealth works (Pluto and Wall Street). We know how power works (Ares and the Pentagon). Etc. How, we wonder, does Jesus fit into all of that? And then “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” So the problem is not how Jesus fits in Pluto’s world, but how Pluto fits in Jesus’ world.

In February we were reading from Matthew; today’s text is from Luke. Luke tells us that Jesus, Moses, and Elijah “were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.” ‘Departure’ is a possible translation, but obscures the point, for the Greek word is exodos, which already in the Old Testament names the Israelites’ departure from Egypt. So with that word Luke gives us an interpretation of the Jerusalem events: it’s Exodus 2.0, it’s about freedom. Pluto, Mars, Aphrodite, Apollo, Athena: welcome to Jesus’ world.

A sidebar: there’s a school of Eucharistic devotion that emphasizes our sin, and how much it cost Jesus. And we don’t want to lose sight of our sin. But Luke’s “exodus” reminds us that Eucharist (the word means, recall, ‘thanksgiving’) is about how God sets us free. And in that context “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” reminds us that it’s hard to live as free people if we’re still thinking like slaves.

Then there’s Themis, the Greek goddess of justice (the figure with the scales that’s part of our iconography). In today’s psalm we prayed “O mighty King, lover of justice, / you have established equity; / you have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob.” And particularly with justice it’s so easy to assume that we and Themis already know what justice means.

But for that conversation we need to go back to Moses. Moses’ law shares much with other ancient near eastern codes, but departs in important ways: crimes against people and property are not commensurate, the social status of the victim does not automatically set the penalty, only one eye for an eye, runaway slaves: do not return them to their owner. So already Moses is pushing against some common assumptions about justice.

And, particularly in Matthew—this year’s Gospel—this “what is justice” conversation goes into high gear. The first story Matthew tells is of Joseph, who’s introduced as a just man, but the angel has to challenge Joseph’s justice, lest Mary be “put away quietly.” The scribes and Pharisees were clearly preferable to all the other groups when it came to justice, but Jesus warns “unless your justice exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” We spent most of the Epiphany season listening to Jesus spell that out in Matthew’s “Sermon on the Mount.”

The danger of assuming we know all we need to know about justice is easily illustrated by noticing the speck in our neighbor’s eye. Our brother Patriarch Kirill in Moscow has—tragically—been loudly labeling Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as just. But rather than say “how stupid” or “how evil,” perhaps we should be noticing how easy it is to assume that the Holy One adheres to our notions of justice.

“This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” It’s a life-long challenge/opportunity. A ‘disciple’ is a learner, and there’s no stage beyond disciple, no now-I’ve-learned-all-I-need-to-know stage. So our Book of Common Prayer begins with the Daily Office.

So I suppose this week’s take-away is personal. “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” How’s my listening going? What might I want to tweak/adjust/overhaul?

Lessons (Track 1)

As we’ve heard in the first reading, our hero Jacob has arrived in Haran. Why Haran? Well, taking advantage of the darkness of his father’s blindness, he’d stolen his brother Esau’s blessing, and Esau was out for blood. More, God had promised him many descendants, for that he needed a wife, and what better place to look than his ancestral stomping-ground?

There are two elements in the text we’re not going to focus on, and a third that will be our focus.

The first is the theme of brothers in competition, which has been almost a constant element in Genesis: Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Isaac, Esau and Jacob. And now two sisters: Leah and Rachel. In today’s text they appear very passive; in the texts immediately following their competition will dominate the action. (And those texts are very instructive for males with any fantasies regarding polygamy!) Jacob’s favorite is Rachel, but in God’s pleasure Leah has six sons, including Judah, ancestor of our Lord. The competition and preferences seem nearly inevitable, but we should not suppose—so the text—that God is going to put up with these indefinitely.

The second element: poetic justice as a sign of God’s presence. Jacob had taken advantage of the darkness of his father’s blindness to substitute the younger (himself) for the older (Esau) to steal the paternal blessing. Laban used the darkness of the wedding night to substitute the older (Leah) for the younger (Rachel). “What goes around, comes around.” Or, from St Paul:  “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” Nevertheless, this is more the promise of a resolution than the resolution itself. “Eye for eye” alone produces a nation of the blind.

That leaves the element of desire or love. “So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her.”

And I focus on desire because Jesus focuses on it in the text we heard this morning: “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.”

Now that’s downright interesting. When people think about the kingdom of heaven, or, more broadly, the Christian life, they’re likely to do so in terms of the fear of God (perhaps expressed as what happens to me if I don’t) or of duty. And both the fear of God and duty can be pretty important. But here Jesus is talking about something else: desire.

The kingdom like a hidden treasure, the kingdom like a pearl of great price. And the finder responds neither through fear nor duty, but through desire. And the sacrifices the finder makes are like the 14 years that Jacob dedicated to gaining Rachel.

Where does Jesus get these parables? In this case I think he’s describing his own experience. How so? From the perspective of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, he’s left the carpentry shop and now has nowhere to lay his head. From the perspective of Paul, he “did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.” The Jesus we encounter in the Gospels: a man motivated not by fear, or by duty, but by desire.

That’s Jesus, and to Jesus we might add those we celebrate during the Church Year, and perhaps a few people we know. But how about us? Do we desire God and God’s kingdom? Sometimes. Where does this leave us?

We encounter ourselves as a swarm of desires, which rarely point in the same direction. On the trivial level: I want to be thin; I want unlimited amounts of chocolate. Part of growing up: learning that any serious desire means foregoing other desires.

If we think about the people we know and the people who keep reporters busy, we realize that the choices we make about our desires over time have a cumulative effect: there are lives of great beauty, other lives that are simply ugly, others that leave you scratching your head: “What was that about?”

Further, it’s often a problem to figure out what it is that we desire. We work hard for something we want, and then discover it’s not what we want. The Christian claim is that if we honestly pay attention to this, over time it will lead us to God. Augustine’s Confessions is organized around this insight: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you.”

So how do I deal with my desires? There’s a hard and a less hard way of doing this, and it’s related to today’s collect:

O God, the protector of all who trust in you, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: Increase and multiply upon us your mercy; that, with you as our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we lose not the things eternal…

The hard way is to do it without God as our ruler and guide. And like Augustine this long-term process of trial and error may eventually bring us to God. But this is not the only possible outcome; we can make choices whose cumulative effect is that we can perceive God only as enemy, and then how or whether God can get through to us is beyond human reckoning. So it’s risky.

The less hard way is learning to trust God as ruler and guide, to risk letting God shape or order our desires. The early chapters of Genesis tell us two things. We are created good and in God’s image, so we do not assume that desire per se is wrong. On this point we approach the world differently than the Buddhist, or the Stoic, who assume that desire in itself is the problem. But the second thing the early chapters of Genesis tell us is that we are in rebellion against God, so we do not assume that any of our desires are unaffected. As the collect reminds us, without God “nothing is strong, nothing is holy.” So these chapters tell me that I need to hold each of my desires up to God, and ask “What do you desire that I do with this?”

As we learn to trust God as ruler and guide, as God shapes our desires, these desires become stronger, not weaker. They give us greater, not less, coherence as human beings. They give us the capacity to sell all for that pearl of great price, to give 14 years for Rachel.

Now—and with this I close—the glorious secret is that our desire is only a weak response to God’s desire. “For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” God, the original Lover. And if we return to Jacob laboring 14 years for Rachel, we can see also not so much ourselves laboring to gain God, but God laboring to gain us—for love’s sake.

Readings (Track 1) (Psalm 139 in its entirety appears at the end of the sermon.)

If you’re feeling some whiplash after today’s combination of readings it means you’ve been paying attention. At first glance they go in different directions—so let’s attend to them separately. (And please keep your BCP open to Ps 139 on pp.794-795.)

Genesis. Last week we watched Jacob get Esau’s birthright in exchange for a serving of stew. Since then, that strange scene (equal parts farce and tragedy) in which Jacob, dressed up to smell and feel like Esau, tricks his blind father Isaac into giving him Esau’s blessing. Since then, all Esau’s fantasies have focused on ways to kill Jacob, so Jacob’s been sent off to the relatives until Esau’s anger cools. And in all this God has said nothing to Jacob.

Doubtless, Esau would have had plenty of suggestions as to what God might do/say. “Oh, that you would slay the wicked, O God!” (v.18 in today’s psalm). What God does say: a reiteration of the promises made to Abraham and Isaac, and “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

In short: “I love you; I have plans for you; I look forward to what we can do together.” I think Scripture as a whole encourages us to hear this as God’s address to each one of us. You might want to take today’s lessons home and reflect on God’s words to Jacob during the week. Imagine God expressing that love to you. In today’s psalm (v.13): “I will thank you because I am marvelously made; / your works are wonderful, and I know it well.” Texts like today’s Genesis reading help us believe that.

We let the Genesis reading run a bit farther than the Lectionary assigned to hear the rest of Jacob’s reaction. It’s pure Jacob, that Jacob that’s part of many of us. God’s promise is too general: Jacob wants it nailed down: “If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear, so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, then…” This distrust doesn’t serve Jacob well, but it’s part of the package, part of the package that God—unsurprised—is dealing with. “Lord, you have searched me out, and known me” applies also to Jacob. And perhaps Jacob’s distrust is  part of the futility that Paul talks about that we bring to the table.

Romans. There’s a lot we could notice here; for today I’m focusing on futility. ‘Futility’: Paul uses the word the Greek translation used for the hebel ‘vanity’ that the preacher wrestles with throughout the book of Ecclesiastes. Paul describes it—in passing—as being God’s choice. If asked to explain, I think Paul would say that faced with human disobedience and valuing human freedom, God chooses to let the history play out, including the effects of these disobedient choices, a divine choice that admittedly brings significant pain. “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate” (Gen. 3:12) says Adam, and so sets the stage for patriarchy. And, since—as the ecologists keep reminding us—everything is connected to everything—human choices damage all creation, so that, as Paul puts it “the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now.” So an important take-away: if groaning is part of our present experience, it’s not because we lack faith, or have hit a particularly rough patch (although these things could also be true), but because that’s an appropriate response to our situation, a situation survivable, as Paul reminds us, only by hope.

Matthew. Two weeks ago we hit the question: if Jesus is “the one who is to come” (John the Baptist’s words), why isn’t there more visible progress? And we heard Jesus’ answer: the “wise” and “intelligent” wouldn’t see the Kingdom if it was right in front of them; come to me (all of you!) and I will give you rest. But, since it’s not a simple question, we heard another answer last week: even the divine word is at once powerful and vulnerable: the soil really matters. So “Let anyone with ears listen!”

And because it’s not a simple question, we hear another answer in today’s reading: the Son of Man isn’t the only one sowing seed. (This is probably another dimension of the futility Paul mentions!) Perhaps the clearest echo of this parable is in our baptismal rite:

Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?
I renounce them.
Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?
I renounce them. (BCP 302)

As soil, we need to choose which seed to welcome, and keep choosing.

Equally relevant is the interchange within the parable:

Then do you want us to go and gather them?
No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them.

As other New Testament texts show, in some circumstances “Let both of them grow together” is not the end of the conversation. But it’s a standing warning that attempts to separate weeds and wheat bring their own dangers. Recall Joseph McCarthy and the red scare in the 50s or the church splits over women’s ordination and sexuality. It’s relevant on the personal level. Star Trek TNG fans may recall the episode “The Tapestry.” Captain Picard’s artificial heart is failing. He has an artificial heart because of an impetuous decision in his youth. The character named “Q” gives him the chance to go back in time and make a different decision. But as a result of the different decision he turns out to be a colorless ensign quite unfit for any command. Wheat and weeds: not always so easy to distinguish.

Psalm 139 (BCP 794-795). The psalms are tools for both prayer and reflection. Prayer: there are circumstances in which what’s in our hearts can only be expressed by verses like 18-21. (Wheat and weeds: if “the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God” don’t move me to anger, something else is wrong.) So the verses are there—but precariously. Reflection: Jesus’ example (“Come to me, all you…”) warns me that the “restless thoughts” (v.22) and “wickedness” (v.23) might relate to vv.18-21 in uncomfortable ways. And both vv.18-21 and 22-23 can work pastorally: vv.18-21 to guard against assuming I’m so “advanced” that these would never cross my lips, vv.22-23 to guard against getting stuck in vv.18-21.

How do we wrap this up? Maybe like this. Let’s read v.13 together: “I will thank you because I am marvelously made; / your works are wonderful, and I know it well.” That points to our past and present. At the end of today’s Gospel: “Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!” That’s the future God desires for each of us. So, indeed, “Let anyone with ears listen!”

Psalm 139 (Book of Common Prayer 794-795)

1 Lord, you have searched me out and known me; * you know my sitting down and my rising up; you discern my thoughts from afar.

2 You trace my journeys and my resting-places * and are acquainted with all my ways.

3 Indeed, there is not a word on my lips, * but you, O Lord, know it altogether.

4 You press upon me behind and before * and lay your hand upon me.

5 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; * it is so high that I cannot attain to it.

6 Where can I go then from your Spirit? * where can I flee from your presence?

7 If I climb up to heaven, you are there; * if I make the grave my bed, you are there also.

8 If I take the wings of the morning * and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,

9 Even there your hand will lead me * and your right hand hold me fast.

10 If I say, “Surely the darkness will cover me, * and the light around me turn to night,”

11 Darkness is not dark to you;the night is as bright as the day; * darkness and light to you are both alike.

12 For you yourself created my inmost parts; * you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

13 I will thank you because I am marvelously made; * your works are wonderful, and I know it well.

14 My body was not hidden from you, * while I was being made in secret and woven in the depths of the earth.

15vYour eyes beheld my limbs, yet unfinished in the womb; all of them were written in your book; * they were fashioned day by day, when as yet there was none of them.

16 How deep I find your thoughts, O God! * how great is the sum of them!

17 If I were to count them, they would be more in number than the sand; * to count them all, my life span would need to be like yours.

18 Oh, that you would slay the wicked, O God! * You that thirst for blood, depart from me.

19 They speak despitefully against you; * your enemies take your Name in vain.

20 Do I not hate those, O Lord, who hate you? * and do I not loathe those who rise up against you?

21 I hate them with a perfect hatred; * they have become my own enemies.

22 Search me out, O God, and know my heart; * try me and know my restless thoughts.

23 Look well whether there be any wickedness in me * and lead me in the way that is everlasting.

Readings (Track 1)

How did the world come into being? Israel’s neighbors gave wildly diverse answers to that question. The first chapter of Genesis, echoing one of the Egyptian answers, tells us that God brought the world into being through the word. “Let there be light…” (v.3) “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place…” (v.9) “Let the earth bring forth living creatures…” (v.24). Whatever else we learn from that chapter, we learn that God’s word is powerful and effective.

The psalms return repeatedly to the theme of the word’s power. Psalm 29, which we use every year at Jesus’ Baptism (1^st Sunday after the Epiphany), is one of the better known: “The voice of the Lord is a powerful voice; / the voice of the Lord is a voice of splendor. / The voice of the Lord breaks the cedar trees; / the Lord  breaks the cedars of Lebanon” (vv.4-5).

So when the Word of the Lord—by now clearly with a capital ‘W’—assumes human flesh, we expect it to be powerful, irresistibly powerful. Anything less, and we ask the question John the Baptist asked: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” (Matt 11:3). We heard some of Jesus’ responses to this puzzle last week; in today’s reading we encounter another of his responses.

Jesus tells a story about a sower who sows on different sorts of soil. The seed fares rather badly in the first three soils, but produces yields of 30, 60, and 100fold in the fourth.  The meaning of the story is not self-evident. Fortunately for the disciples—and us—Jesus explains: the sower is sowing the word of the kingdom. The story invites us to wonder about the ways in which the word of the kingdom and a seed are similar. A seed is at once powerful and vulnerable. It can multiply at astounding rates. (Those of us who are not farmers mostly experience this with the plants we do not want.) It is vulnerable—to birds, to thin soil, to inhospitable surroundings. The word of the kingdom—the announcement that the kingdom is near, the description of the life of the kingdom in the Sermon on the Mount—is powerful. In the right soil: St Peter, Catherine of Sienna, Martin Luther King Jr. But it is surprisingly vulnerable: even John the Baptist struggles to accept it, and too many of Jesus’ hearers don’t even try.

The story, that is, is a story to help Jesus’ followers understand the decidedly mixed reception Jesus is receiving. It is a hopeful story: there will be a spectacular harvest. It is a sober story: much of the seed sown will not bear fruit.

Nevertheless—why does God play it this way? It causes us constant confusion. We’re used to power being used to compel. God has that power, but chooses not to use it that way. Something about valuing our freedom. So the seed is vulnerable as well as being powerful.

But Matthew, Mark, and Luke include this story not simply because of its importance in understanding what was happening in Jesus’ ministry then, but also because the Word comes to us repeatedly, and the challenge comes to us as it did to the original audience: “Let anyone with ears listen!”

Frederick Bruner writes “Everything is focused on the essential: that the seed enter the soil—that the Word be heard for what it is, the Word of God. Nothing else matters as much.… The soil that regularly lets seed in, regularly gets fruit out; it is that simple. ‘Seed in, fruit out.’ The soil’s whole task can be summarized in one mandate: give the seed room!” (The Churchbook p.7).

“Seed in, fruit out.” That’s a different vision of a life well-lived than our culture offers us. It’s a more hopeful vision of a life well-lived, for rather than splitting life into pre-productive, productive, and post-productive, it tells us that at any age we can receive the seed, give it room, bear fruit.

“Let anyone with ears listen!” This imperative is behind one of Archbishop Cranmer’s greatest contributions as he re-formed the English church in the 16^th Century. He simplified the eight daily services of the monastic Divine Office down to two, simplified the schedule of readings to achieve continuous readings of the Old and New Testament through the calendar year, and made these two offices, Morning and Evening Prayer, the backbone parish life. So, open the Book of Common Prayer, and, voila, these come first. And today a variety of smartphone apps make the Daily Office even more available.

Our life as Christians is improv. We’re baptized into a long story: Abraham and Sarah, King David, Queen Esther, Mary and Joseph… Jesus’ harvest metaphor and books like The Revelation give glimpses of the story’s ending. Our challenge is to improvise, to live in ways that fit in and maybe enhance the story. And for that most of us need ideas, so Nehemiah in the Persian bureaucracy, Tobit exiled in Nineveh, Dorcas of Joppa and her sewing machine: good friends. So, the Daily Office.

“Let anyone with ears listen!” It turns out to be remarkably difficult to listen. William Stringfellow, a lawyer/lay theologian/activist who will probably enter Lesser Feasts and Fasts once the normal 50-year waiting period has past:

Listening is a rare happening among human beings. You cannot listen to the word another is speaking if you are preoccupied with your appearance or impressing the other, or if you are trying to decide what you are going to say when the other stops talking, or if you are debating about whether the word being spoken is true or relevant or agreeable. Such matters may have their place, but only after listening to the word as the word is being uttered. Listening, in other words, is a primitive act of love, in which a person gives self to another’s word, making self accessible and vulnerable to that word. It is very much like that when a person comes to the Bible…

“Let anyone with ears listen!” And so we’re reminded, once again, that the challenges of relating to God and relating to each other are intimately related. Habits of careful listening (or not) in one sphere will bleed over into the other, for better or worse.

Listening to Jesus’ parable in today’s hyper-polarized context, two additional observations. First, we’d probably misread the parable if we assumed that any of us are only one sort of soil. Perhaps the dynamics associated with each of the soils are playing out in each of us. Second, and related, it’s probably important to keep listening. Even the best of our responses can go off the rails remarkably quickly. It took the French revolution less than three years to get from the Declaration of the Rights of Man (8/26/1789) to the guillotine (4/25/1792).

But it would be a mistake to orient a sermon on this text toward exhortation. The bottom line: the Sower has come and is with us. There will be a rich harvest. Left to ourselves discouragement and despair might make sense—but we have not been left to ourselves. “I am with you always—he promised—to the end of the age.” (Matt 28:20). So, today, this week, “Let anyone with ears listen!”

Readings (Track 1)

If we were putting together a soundtrack for the Gospel of Matthew we would have been using some pretty dramatic music as Jesus’ proclamation of God’s reign scatters all the dreary certainties: the blind don’t stay blind, the dead don’t stay dead, the poor get something other than more bad news. But here, for the bulk of Matt 11, we’d probably turn to the blues. After all that Jesus has done—including walking away from a solid carpentry business—the audience response is deeply discouraging. John the Baptist—the fellow who baptized him—is asking “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” (Mat 11:3). The public in general are acting like cranky children: “’We piped to you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.’” The cities (Chorazin, Bethsaida, Capernaum)—Sodom would have given Jesus a better reception! Davies and Allison describe the woes against the cities as “a testimony to dashed expectations” (1.270)—Jesus’ dashed expectations.

I’d guess most of us could empathize with Jesus at this point.

Nevertheless, what all this leads up to is not the blues but a quite remarkable combination of thanksgiving and invitation. And while there’s plenty that we might explore in the preceding verses—not to mention the other readings—let’s focus on this combination of thanksgiving and invitation.

“I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.”

What has happened is not outside of the Father’s providence. If every hair of the disciples’ heads is numbered, Jesus’ hairs are numbered as well.

But what do we make of Jesus’ language of hiding and revealing? I doubt that it’s about election, God choosing some and not others. Rather, I think it has to do with the vulnerability of those who consider themselves ‘wise’ and ‘understanding’. Wisdom, per se, is good. The thing is, as the Book of Proverbs explores in some detail, those who major in wisdom face the constant temptation to shift from the pursuit of wisdom to the pursuit of what will be recognized as wisdom by the well-heeled.

When Jesus shows up proclaiming God’s reign (“He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly. / He has filled the hungry with good things, / and the rich he has sent away empty” [Lk 1.52-53 BCP]), the wise and understanding know enough to ignore him. The Father hides Jesus by putting him in plain view. Meanwhile, the lowly and hungry (‘babes’ in our text) recognize good news when they hear it.

“All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”

This is, I think, a continuation of the thanksgiving, Jesus giving thanks for the Father’s trust, for what the Father’s entrusted him with, for the privilege of revealing the Father to the world. The task is no easier for Jesus than it was for the prophets—the wise and understanding were a hard audience then too—but Jesus’ wouldn’t trade the task for any other.

As for “no one knows the Father except the Son,” that’s part of an ongoing issue we meet repeatedly in the Old Testament, God’s people assuming they know all they need to know about God. So in Psalm 50:

²⁰ You sit and speak against your kin;
you slander your own mother’s child.
²¹ These things you have done and I have been silent;
you thought that I was one just like yourself.

It’s one of the main problems with idols: they tempt us to think we’ve got the god’s a known quantity. And the idol can’t talk back. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob does talk back, and so the Gospel of John brings Jesus onstage identifying him as the Word. And as the next bit of today’s Gospel reminds us, that we need to get to know the Father is good news. If God were as we often imagine, we’d be in very bad shape.

“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

Rest—one of those self-evidently good things, like happiness.

Looking at the wording of the invitation, it recalls one of God’s promises through the prophet Ezekiel: “I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord GOD” (34:15). “I will make them lie down” gets translated “I will give them rest” in the LXX, using the same word Jesus uses in his invitation. It’s precisely Jesus’ intimate relationship with the Father that authorizes him to extend this invitation. And it recalls Matthew’s earlier description of Jesus: “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (9:36 NRSV). Well, the shepherd has arrived, and it is precisely as shepherd that Jesus is extending this offer of rest.

What sort of rest is Jesus offering? Earlier in the chapter, speaking of John the Baptist, he’d challenged the crowd: “What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces” (11:8-9). So he’s not offering the rest that depends on soft robes and royal palaces.

What sort of rest is Jesus offering? It is rest grounded in Jesus’ presence. The invitation is, after all, “Come to me…” Given Jesus’ unique relationship with the Father, it is God’s presence, for we rightly address Jesus as ‘Emmanuel’, God with us. With God present, rest is possible, even in the midst of a storm Earlier in Matthew we heard “A windstorm arose on the sea, so great that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but [Jesus] was asleep” (8:24). ‘Rest’ doesn’t mean no storms; it means we can learn not to let them disturb our sleep.

What sort of rest is Jesus offering? Today’s text as a whole is a pretty good indication: Jesus has faithfully proclaimed of God’s reign in word and deed, and the response has been John the Baptist’s question, the petulance of “this generation” (“We piped to you, and you did not dance…”), the indifference of the cities. And Jesus is able to rest, to give thanks to the Father. He is able to work with the situation as it is, rather than as he would like it to be. He is able to respond generously to “this generation,” extending an open invitation to “all who labor and are heavy laden.”

“For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Toward the end of the Sermon on the Mount we heard “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.” And now Jesus is talking about ‘easy’ and ‘light’?

Jesus doesn’t explain; let’s wonder a bit. A few weeks back I recalled Scott Peck’s opening in The Road Less Traveled: “Life is hard.” And, Peck argues, life does become easier when we accept that, rather than investing considerable energy in trying to escape it. Jesus wouldn’t argue with that, but probably has more in mind. Perhaps it’s like this: Jesus grounds obedience to the law in love: love God; love your neighbor. And love, argues Augustine, perhaps with a bit of hyperbole, “makes all…easy” (cited in Bruner The Christbook). A bit later in Genesis we’ll encounter Isaac’s son Jacob. Jacob loves Rachel, whose father sets her bride price at seven years. Genesis tells us “So Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her” (Gen. 29:20). Jesus’ yoke is about nurturing love.

Or perhaps it’s like this: the commentator Hare notes that yokes were usually for two animals, and so paraphrases: “Become my yoke mate, and learn how to pull the load by working beside me and watching how I do it” (Bruner The Christbook). That is, we’re going to do this together.

In a bit we’ll celebrate the Eucharist. ‘Eucharist’: the transliterated Greek word for ‘thanksgiving.’ It mirrors today’s text, giving thanks to the Father and inviting all who labor and are heavy laden to receive Jesus, truly present in the bread and wine. As we leave the altar, leave the sanctuary, we do not leave Jesus and his rest. We heard his promise on Trinity Sunday: “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matt 28:20). Amen.

Readings (Track 1)

Looking back at God’s deliverance at the Red Sea, one of the psalms: “Your way was in the sea, / and your paths in the great waters, / yet your footsteps were not seen” (77:19). One reader summarizes: “God makes a way where there is no way.” God makes a way where there is no way: that’s perhaps the most important thing to learn from our first reading.

The story gives us something of both God’s and Abraham’s perspectives; let’s look at both.

God’s perspective. “After these things God tested Abraham.” Why a test, and why such an extreme test? Recall the project as announced in Genesis 12: “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” God’s future with the human family is riding on Abraham. As Mark Twain put it, “Some folk say not to put all your eggs in one basket. I say: ‘Put all your eggs in one basket and watch that basket!”

Why such an extreme test? Well, recall Abraham’s servant’s words: “The LORD has greatly blessed my master, and he has become wealthy; he has given him flocks and herds, silver and gold, male and female slaves, camels and donkeys.” So is Abraham serving God for God’s sake, or for the flocks and herds? Throughout the history of Israel and the Church this has been one of the recurrent core questions. Pick your favorite worst moment in the Church’s history, and this issue is probably at the core. What was the bottom line in the Spanish conquest of the Americas: God or Gold? We have “In God we trust” on our currency. Really? And in which god are we trusting? As the Book of Job frames the question, is God worth serving for nothing? At least, please God, may Abraham, the Father of the faithful, get it right.

So I think we hear sheer relief on God’s part toward the end of the story: “The angel of the LORD called to Abraham a second time from heaven, and said, ‘By myself I have sworn, says the LORD: Because you have done this, and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will indeed bless you, and I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of their enemies, and by your offspring shall all the nations of the earth gain blessing for themselves, because you have obeyed my voice.’”

No less intense, of course, was the experience from Abraham’s perspective.

Our issue, how God could command human sacrifice, would not have been Abraham’s. While prohibited in the Law of Moses, it does not seem to have died out in popular religion until the destruction of the Temple in the 6^th Century BC.

Rather, the issue both for Abraham and the Bible itself: what happens when the promise of God and the command of God are in conflict. “I will make of you a great nation;” and just how is the sacrifice of Isaac part of that?

Gideon —one of the judges—with God’s promise to deliver Israel from the Midianites. And what does God command? Get rid of most of your army.

Ahaz —King of Judah— caught between a very hungry Egyptian Empire and an equally hungry Assyrian Empire. Isaiah the prophet issues God’s command: call all your ambassadors home, tear up the mutual assistance treaties, trust in God alone.

Jesus, with “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased,” ringing in his ears. If there was ever a mandate for action, there it was. And so he meets the tempter in the wilderness, and the command of God as recorded in the Law of Moses vetos all the tempter’s suggestions for putting the Kingdom on the fast track.

If Jesus is not going to turn stones into bread, not going to let the angels deliver him very miraculously & very publicly, not going to negotiate with the one credible power broker this side of heaven, what future does Jesus’ Kingdom have?

God has given us some breathtaking promises. An almost inevitably —that’s why there are so many stories of this in the Bible— we encounter situations in which the promise of God and the command of God are in conflict.

In countries where it’s dangerous to be a Christian, Christian parents face this challenge. Raise our son or daughter as a Christian, or let the local mosque/temple/party headquarters handle their formation? In other contexts there’s still the challenge captured by Thomas More in Bolt’s A Man for all Seasons: “But since in fact we see that avarice, anger, envy, pride, sloth, lust and stupidity commonly profit far beyond humility, chastity, fortitude, justice and thought…” Nevertheless we raise our children to be more like Thomas More than, say, Richard Rich, whose perjury at More’s trial greased the skids for his execution.

Sometimes it’s more narrowly focused, some version of the warning with which last week’s Gospel ended: “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

In these situations the rationale for the command may be opaque, without rhyme or reason. We need the parish around us in such moments, not only to keep us confusing God’s command with our own fears, but also, when it is God’s command, to remind us that Abraham, Gideon & Jesus don’t make bad company.

So we pick up the knife, pick up the fire, and walk with Isaac up the hill. What happens when we get there is not in our control. Abraham got a divine voice and a ram. Gideon sent the Midianites packing. Hezekiah, Ahaz’ son, was rescued from the Assyrian army. Jesus got three nails, a cross, and a crown to go with it. And on the third day that turned out to be the case of God making a way where there was no way. What is in our control is our obedience, our witness.

All well and good —some of us may be thinking— unless you’re the ram. The Jews, out of their generations of experience in serving God “for nothing” have a story about this.

Rabbi Hanina ben Dossa said: Nothing of this sacrifice was lost. The ashes were dispersed in the Temple’s sanctuary; the sinews David used as cords for his harp; the skin was claimed by the prophet Elijah to clothe himself; as for the two horns, the smaller one called the people together at the foot of Mt Sinai, and the larger one will resound one day announcing the coming of the Messiah.”[1]

And so we follow this God who makes a way where there is no way into the coming week.

---

[1] Wiesel Messengers of God 101.

Readings

Sam Kamaleson, a pastor from the Indian subcontinent with whom I worked at World Vision, used to talk about God’s story (one hand) and my story (the other hand) becoming one story (fingers interlaced). Easier said than done; today’s lessons give us an opportunity to think about it.

God’s story. Three weeks ago (Trinity Sunday) our first lesson was the creation story, seven days of God declaring this is good, that is good, the whole thing very good. It’s a very different perspective than the Babylonian (creation itself and humans in particular formed from the corpses of defeated gods of chaos) or the Greek (only a second-rate deity would be fool enough to deal with matter). No: creation is good, the material world is good.

We can pick up the story in Eucharistic Prayer C:

From the primal elements you brought forth the human race, and blessed us with memory, reason, and skill. You made us the rulers of creation. But we turned against you, and betrayed your trust; and we turned against one another.

We should be, I think, surprised that the prayer doesn’t continue with “And so You pulled the plug on the whole thing” or “And so You decided to hang out with the dolphins for the next few thousand years.” Surprisingly, God calls Abraham and Sarah to be the beginning of a pilot project aimed at what the Jews call tikkun olam, repairing the world. God comes to Abraham and Sarah: what might we do together? God’s story + their story becoming one story. That’s the story contained in the Old Testament, the story rebooted when God takes on human flesh in Jesus, the story we enter with our baptism.

It’s probably fair to say that from Sarah’s perspective the project didn’t start out well. She had not borne Abraham an heir, to the point that, bowing to custom, she presented Abraham with her Egyptian slave Hagar so that she might produce an heir by proxy. Hagar conceived, and, understandably, passed up no chance to remind everyone that she was the birth mother of Abraham’s heir. So Sarah had an enemy, and there wasn’t a lot she could do about it. Until, finally, God promised her a son, and delivered on that promise Now Sarah can do something about her enemy. Foreshadowing the treatment her people will receive from the Egyptians some generations later, she demands that Abraham expel Hagar and Ishmael. And Abraham does so—only after receiving God’s promise to look after Hagar and Ishmael.

And in the story we’ve just heard God keeps that promise to Hagar, preserving Ishmael’s imperiled life as God will preserve Isaac’s imperiled life in the next story. “Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him fast with your hand; for I will make him a great nation.”

The Jews, descended from Isaac, and the Arabs, descended from Ishmael, already in the OT are often at odds. And here Sarah’s God is providing a well for Ishmael. The Jews have a legend about that: “the angels appeared against Ishmael before God. They said, ‘Wilt Thou cause a well of water to spring up for him whose descendants will let Thy children of Israel perish with thirst?’ And God: “well, yes.”

God’s story + my story = one story. For Sarah in this episode, not so much, because she’s hit one of the really difficult bits: that someone is my enemy doesn’t mean they’re God’s enemy, that God listens to me when I pray Ps 86 (today’s psalm) and listens to my enemy when they pray Ps 86.

This is a difficult enough bit that the OT keeps coming back to it. Here are a couple more stories.

Some generations later Moses has led Israel out of Egypt, and Joshua has just brought the people across the Jordan to take possession of the promised land. Reading from the fifth chapter of Joshua:

Once when Joshua was by Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing before him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went to him and said to him, “Are you one of us, or one of our adversaries?” He replied, “Neither; but as commander of the army of the LORD I have now come.” (Jos 5:13-14)

“Are you one of us, or one of our adversaries?” “Neither.”

Some centuries later the Northern Kingdom of Israel and Aram (modern Syria) are at war. In a legend from that period, the king of Aram learns that his recent raids have been unsuccessful because the prophet Elisha has been warning the Israelite king about them. He sends out a large force to surround Elisha’s city and capture Elisha. Elisha sees the force, and asks God to blind the soldiers. God does so, and Elisha leads them to the Israelite capital. At this point the Israelite king enters. Reading from the sixth chapter of 2 Kings:

When the king of Israel saw them he said to Elisha, “Father, shall I kill them? Shall I kill them?” He answered, “No! Did you capture with your sword and your bow those whom you want to kill? Set food and water before them so that they may eat and drink; and let them go to their master.” So he prepared for them a great feast; after they ate and drank, he sent them on their way, and they went to their master. And the Arameans no longer came raiding into the land of Israel. (2Ki 6:21-23)

So when Jesus talks about loving one’s enemies as an integral part of what God’s kingdom is about, this isn’t new. Jesus is simply reporting how he’s observed the Father acting “for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous”—not to mention Hagar, the reply to Joshua, Elisha’s treatment of the Aramean raiders.

So when Jesus sends his disciples out to announce this kingdom, he understandably anticipates opposition, because everyone knows that right-thinking people try to help their friends and hurt their enemies. Right-thinking people will take Barabbas over Jesus any day.

“But this love of enemies business can’t be that important to God. If it were, God would impose it.” But that takes us back to the creation story. God thinks that human freedom is good. God thinks that the church’s freedom is good. So God does what God can do, like the woman in one of Jesus’ parables, putting leaven in the dough in the hope of the whole thing rising. God continues to stretch out the now nail-pierced hand to us: how can we make My story and your story one story?

God’s story; my story; one story. There are many ways that invitation will come to us in the coming week. Some of them may have to do with how we choose to respond to our enemies. May our choices bring God joy.

Readings (Track 1)

As summer fast approaches, our lakes become inviting in a new way. For, what do you need to swim? [Water.] What happens if you don’t have any water? [You don’t swim.] So if God came to me and said “You’re going to be a great swimmer,” a fair question would be “Where’s the water?”

This is more or less the situation Abraham was in at the beginning of today’s text. At the beginning of Abraham’s story God promised “I will make of you a great nation.” He was 75 then, and that was 24 years ago. Since then he and Sarah have had exactly…zero children. To make matters worse, his name would have been a sort of standing joke. God had insisted on changing his name to “Abraham,” which was explained as “father of a multitude of nations.”

How many of us have been praying for something for a long time? St. Paul called Abraham the father of all who believe, and he’s also our father in this sense, that he knows what it is to pray for something for a very long time. And one of the reasons this story’s here is to remind us that God regularly works with time frames that we find uncomfortable, painful, and completely inexplicable.

This is particularly difficult for us in this culture, which demands everything now, if not yesterday. So living as a Christian in this culture means being more than a little counter-cultural, being willing to live sometimes for long stretches in the tension between what we are asking God to do and what God is doing.

Anyhow, back to Abraham. After all this waiting, all this predictable scorn, we might expect someone more than a little anti-social. So it might surprise us a little to watch Abraham receiving the three strangers. On the one hand, he is showing the hospitality that custom demands. The frontier between the town and the steppe demands that sort of hospitality, or else no one lasts very long. On the other hand, it is hospitality beyond what convention required, generous hospitality, extravagant hospitality. Watching Abraham and Sarah swing into action we’re given a glimpse as to why God chose them to start a new and decisive chapter in human history.

The narrator has told us what Abraham doesn’t know: these aren’t any three men, but the Lord God. (The narrative, incidentally, goes back and forth between Abraham relating to three and Abraham relating to one, which has lead Christians to see here an early revelation of the Holy Trinity.) Watching Abraham relate to the Stranger or Strangers, we’re reminded of a theme we meet repeatedly in Scripture: how we relate to other people determines how we relate to God. We human beings are simply not designed so we can run one program for relating to people, and another program (a much better program) for relating to God. We’ve got one program that runs for persons, God & others included, so the Judeo-Christian tradition has always encouraged us to pay careful attention to it. This, by the way, is the pragmatic reason for the command to love our enemies. How we treat our enemies spills over into how we treat those we love.

The meal conversation transitions into a conversation about a son, and Sarah, offstage, cannot contain her laughter. The LORD said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh, and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too wonderful for the LORD?” “Is anything too wonderful for the LORD?” That’s a question the text puts pretty directly to Abraham and Sarah and us.

It’s easy to answer that question in the abstract. But the important questions are never abstract. That situation, that wound, I’ve been praying about for years, if not decades: is it too difficult for the Lord? It’s so tempting to reduce the tension: God doesn’t care. The situation doesn’t matter. We don’t matter. And any of these moves erode the generosity displayed in our first reading.

You may recall how Scott Peck began his classic The Road Less Traveled. “Life is difficult.” But, Peck observes, since we don’t like difficult, we often opt for work-arounds that end up compounding the difficulty. You may remember the sitcom Cheers. In a frequent story line a difficulty appears, the regulars opt for an avoidance strategy, that strategy consumes increasing amounts of energy and resources until it all comes crashing down, the final scene including tacit agreement to learn nothing from the experience. Sounds rather like last week’s “She’s my sister” episode.

As Christians, life is difficult also because we confess “God is faithful” and “with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day” (2 Pet. 3:8). To live as daughters and sons of Abraham and Sarah is to guard this tension: it’s part of our identity.

Is anything too wonderful for the LORD?  The answer for Abraham and Sarah comes the next year and its narrative is included in the Old Testament reading. Sarah —well, Abraham and Sarah, but particularly Sarah— has a son who is named “Isaac,” which simply means “Laughter.” The laughter of Sarah’s incredulity has become the laughter of her joy, the sort of joy we also see when a child’s put in a bathtub or a swimming pool. Yes, this family is going to become a family of excellent swimmers.

Now, having heard again this rather bracing story that moves from desolation and barrenness to joy and fertility and in the process challenges us to more faith, more faithfulness, we could easily stop.

But the combination of this story and the Gospel suggests a further step. I’ve read the Old Testament lesson as an invitation to learn from Abraham and Sarah: learn from them the wonderful things that God can do, and imitate their faith, their faithfulness. The Gospel reading with the commissioning of the disciples suggests that we go back to the Genesis story and wonder about how we’re called to imitate the three Strangers. Because that’s what Jesus is sending them and us out to do: go to those who’ve had every reason to give up hope with the words of power and deeds of power that will free them to hope and believe. As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. And we proclaim this good news in hope, for not all the sick among us are cured, and, barring Jesus’ return, these bodies too will die. This is part of what it means to be sons and daughters of Abraham. And even as we proclaim the good news, we keep the welcome mat out for the Three Strangers who—often in ways beyond our imagination—continue to show up at our doorstep.