How Manifold Are Your Works

My first and deepest experiences of God came from the natural world. Only there do I feel most at home, least aware of myself, the deepest peace. I still cannot believe that I am so lucky as to live in a place where I can walk out into that world every morning, to see the dawning light in an endless sky, where plants and birds gradually emerge from the darkness. It empties me for the rest of the day.

Psalm 104 is one of my favorite psalms for that reason. The psalmist intimately knew the natural world and saw the finger of God everywhere, from the beasts of the field to the birds of the air, through plants and trees and rock badgers and mountain goats. Even the labor of humans is seen as part of the cycle of God’s creation.

In the book of Job, God as Creator has an overwhelming transcendence. The writing is astonishing in its anthropomorphism, beautiful in its poetry. “Where were you?” God asks the miserable, irritated Job. “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?...who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?” – a passage that never fails to bring tears to my eyes, for the sheer joy of creation.

One might think that a scientist would be sighing at all of this pre-scientific thought. Yet it precisely illumines the limits of science. A mechanistic view of the world, which science necessarily takes, does not provide for joy and beauty except as evolutionary adaptations needed for the continuation of the species (or perhaps incidental to our existence, which is even worse). Can I be faulted for preferring morning stars that sing together?

I can forget myself in the natural world, but it is in the world of people that I choose to dwell. And where there are people, there are the Jameses and Johns who want to get ahead of their fellow travelers. Jesus has a few words for them. One is know what you are asking. James and John said that they could drink the cup of Jesus and be baptized with him, and indeed James was later killed by the sword. At least John, tradition tells us, lived to a ripe old age.

Jesus also talks about servanthood: “Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant…For the Son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” The self-emptying that is necessary in order to serve others is not so different from the loss of self-awareness I experience in the natural world. Maybe that is why a morning walk prepares me so well for a day among people. If I start the day lost among the joy of creation, I am less likely to magnify my importance among fellow travelers. O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all.


Pentecost 20 – Job 38:1-7(34-41); Psalm 104:1-9,25,37b; Hebrews 5:1-10; Mark 10:35-45

Images of Jesus

Several pictures of Jesus stand out from my childhood. In one he is carrying a lost lamb on his shoulders, with the rest of the obedient flock in the background. (That was in the room where the Sunday School met; the implication for us wayward children was obvious.) In another he stands at a door and knocks. The third is at the garden of Gethsemane, when he kneels and fervently prays. The largest one was behind the pulpit of my father’s church, Jesus walking on a path along the Sea of Galilee. In all of them, Jesus is tall and white and handsome. The backgrounds are idyllic; the setting Victorian. Jesus could be knocking at the house where Santa Claus lives, for all we know.

In my current church there is a picture of Jesus that is clearly more modern. He is still white, but now bearded, and laughing. No longer is he the somber, you’d-better-watch-out Jesus of the nineteenth century. This is definitely a 1960s portrait. Only his head shows, but you can sure that he’s wearing sandals. He might even have beads around his neck!

How can we reconcile this friendly, mild-mannered Jesus with what we read in Scripture? “The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword,” the letter to the Hebrews tells us, “piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” And in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus calls remarriage adultery, and says that it is practically impossible for the wealthy to enter the kingdom of God. No wonder his disciples object! This is not the warm, fuzzy “What a friend we have in Jesus” that they’ve been looking for. This is a demanding Jesus who turns every expectation upside down.

I think that’s why I’ve always had a problem with some of the revival hymnody of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It’s just a little too chummy, too focused on the self. “And he walks with me, and he talks with me” is reassuring, no doubt, but hardly how one would describe a person who drives out moneychangers with a whip of cords.

Yet in the midst of that severity, there is always love. The rich young man got off to a rocky start by calling Jesus good teacher. But his earnestness and his devotion to right behavior impressed Jesus, who looked searchingly at him and loved him. Jesus wanted him on board. So he asked him to do one more thing – the very thing that it turned out he could not do.

That’s where the living and active word of God appears, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joint from marrow. Nothing is hidden from God. And God demands nothing else than all of us. If there is anything in our lives that is more important than God, it must go. For some, that means selling what they own and giving money to the poor. For others, it will mean leaving home and family. (I should point out that, in spite of Peter’s statement that the disciples had left everything, it appears that he still had a house in which his mother-in-law lived, and a boat from which to fish.) The critical element is to jettison whatever separates us from God, and then obey Jesus’ words: “Come, follow me.”

Can that be captured in a picture? Probably not. Besides, no one wants to meditate on a painting of someone walking away from Jesus, grieving and shocked – especially not a rich man. We’d rather have our prosperity gospel. We’d rather believe that being rich is a sign of being blessed by God. But that’s a blog entry for another day!

Pentecost 19 – Job 23:1-19, 16-17; Psalm 22:1-15; Hebrews 4:12-16; Mark 10:17-21

Walking the Lectionary Tightrope

Sometimes I’m just a little envious of my fellow clergy in churches where a lectionary is not used. They can preach on whatever they choose. It may be the news of the week, or favorite Bible passages, or topics of interest to the clergy (which was actually the description of Sunday morning discussions at an Episcopal church). They can plan a whole series of sermons on whatever strikes their fancy.

But I have to follow the lectionary, whatever it brings. This week it brings trouble. We’ll start the first of four weeks of Job, so I get a chance to explain why a loving God allows suffering, in ten minutes or less. Or I could try to lead everyone through the theological and philosophical arguments of the “letter” to the Hebrews and watch the eyelids droop. Or I could tackle Jesus’ statement that remarriage after divorce is adultery, in a parish with numerous people in second and third marriages. Having been married for thirty-four years to “the wife of my youth,” as the psalmist says, there’s no way I could understand divorce well enough (thank God) to avoid offending a large part of my congregation.

Satan might be fun to talk about, especially in the context of Job, where he is ha-SaTAN, the Accuser, the one who stands before God and accuses people of sinning – falsely, as it turns out. However, that doesn’t get around the problem that God allows Satan to afflict Job with loathsome sores, having already convinced God to let him kill all his cattle and children. (The lectionary mercifully skips those verses.) Besides, I remember what C.S. Lewis said about writing The Screwtape Letters – it “was all dust, grit, thirst, and itch.” Thinking about evil is not how I want to spend my time.

“But we do see Jesus,” the writer of Hebrews says. And that, really, is the saving grace of the readings in a nutshell. We do see Jesus. It can be very hard to see Jesus in the depths of suffering or the pain of divorce. But Jesus is there, nonetheless. I had a seminary professor who bristled every time a student used “mystery” to explain a difficult theological concept. She wanted us to use our God-given reason to grapple with the complexities of a problem. Yet ultimately God is mystery, a mysterium tremendum as a theologian once said, and the love of God given to us through Jesus Christ is something far beyond our comprehension.

Maybe that’s why I like it when Jesus says, “whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” The Greek is as ambiguous about “as a child” as the English – does it mean as a child would, or as one receives a child? – yet it seems to me that Jesus means the former. He’s talking about all of the layers of emotional and intellectual baggage in adults that obscure the vision of something full of wonder and mystery. The Pharisees tried to trip up Jesus with a question about divorce, and the disciples did their best to keep children away from him. He said, no, let these children come to me, for they see things more clearly than you do. They know love when they see it. They don’t ask me tricky questions. They don’t try to keep people away from me. They just love me for who I am. So he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.

Pentecost 18 – Job 1:1,2:1-10; Psalm 26; Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12; Mark 10:2-16

Salty Disciples

There are times when I wish Jesus had talked in plain English (or Greek or Aramaic or whatever) rather than parable and metaphor and hyperbole. Of course, he got in enough trouble as it was using the words he did! But what are we to do with cups of cold water and stumbling blocks and cutting off limbs and salty disciples?

I do know that the people who say that they read the Bible literally (as if that is not in itself a type of interpretation) like to focus on the unquenchable fire and undying worm of hell, to which they will gladly condemn other people. Other verses they conveniently overlook. The last time I noticed, no one had hands or feet cut off or eyes plucked out because they caused one to stumble. We are careful about what we take literally and what we call hyperbole.

But that doesn’t mean that what Jesus says can be ignored. He wants us to know that being a disciple is serious business. It is literally a matter of life and death. We can hem and haw in our post-Enlightenment, more enlightened way of thinking. We can say that it reflects Mark’s community, and a time of persecution, but life is different now and things aren’t that bad. Tell that to the Christians in Sudan, or anywhere else where being a believer can court death. I thank God that we do not live in a country where there is such persecution. Yet I believe that our faith is the weaker when it is not challenged. I’ve always thought that one of the reasons that Mormonism continues to grow is that every young male is expected to go door-to-door and witness to the faith. Persevering in spite of having doors slammed in your face must make one a stronger believer.

What about those salty disciples? These verses sent me to a commentary, for I’ve never been able to make head or tail out of the salt references. I’m still not sure I can, but here’s what I found. Salt was associated with the Jewish temple sacrifices, which were of course burned (thus being salted with fire). Jesus appears to be warning his followers that they will be sacrificed, a not unreasonable expectation at that time. And the salt of the day wasn’t pure salt, iodized and always pouring out of a round blue box. It was evaporated deposits from the Dead Sea and full of impurities like gypsum, so the saltiness of sodium chloride could be accidentally washed away. Now aren’t you a better person for knowing all that?

One of these weeks there’s going to be a Gospel passage for which I can say, aha, I know just what that means! And I’ll tell everyone reading this blog what it means, and then I’ll get a bunch of comments that begin, “Have you thought of this…I always thought it meant this…Where did you go to seminary, anyway?” Humbled, the week after that I’ll start with “There are times when I wish that Jesus had talked in plain English…”

Pentecost 17: Mark 9:38-50. The commentary I used was The Gospel of Mark by N.T. France (2002, Eerdmans), pp. 384-385. Once an academic, always an academic.

A Capable Wife

What’s a poor preacher-man to do, when his preacher-wife is coming to church, and the first words out of the lector’s mouth will be “A capable wife who can find?” No doubt it will be a cause for great mirth among the congregation. Several years ago we went to a service where the scheming scheduler had arranged for the priest’s husband to read “Women should be silent in church,” much to the amusement of everyone.

What really struck me about Sunday’s reading from Proverbs, however, is how little it supports the traditional cultural model of the stay-at-home wife whose entire life revolves around her husband. Yes, “she rises while it is still night and provides food for her household.” (Not even the promise of Peet’s is enough to convince R to get up in the dark.) But she also buys a vineyard and plants it. She sells merchandise and plans for the future. She is not dependent on her husband for her identity; instead, Proverbs implies that it is because of her reputation that “her husband is known in the city gates, taking his seat among the elders in the land.”

It is the woman’s wisdom that is especially praised, however, and her kindness to the poor and needy. Those biblical qualities are much more important that superficial appearances. “Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.” Talk about counter-cultural!

James picks up on the concept of wisdom, contrasting holy wisdom with “earthly, unspiritual, devilish” actions born of “envy and selfish ambition.” James often gets hammered because he is so focused on what one does – Martin Luther hated what he called James’ “works-righteousness” – yet if one reads closely, James is saying nothing more than one’s inner life is revealed in one’s outward actions. Even Jesus said that!

The Gospel has an excellent illustration of what James is talking about. Jesus has once more predicted his betrayal and death, and how do his disciples respond? They get into an argument about which one of them is the greatest. They are driven by envy and selfish ambition. When Jesus calls them on it, they hang their heads and can’t say a word. So he goes into teacher mode and gives them a lesson, complete with an illustration. If you want to be great, he says, you’d better act with humility, as though you were a servant of everyone else. Look at this child, he says. If you welcome this child in my name, you welcome me and the One who sent me.

So, do we conflate the readings and say “A capable wife must be last of all and servant of all”? Hardly. I wouldn’t say that even if R weren’t listening! It’s simply not true to the biblical witness. All of us, male and female, are to respect God, care for the poor and needy, and examine our actions for what they reveal about our inner thoughts. For cultural reasons, it is probably the case that males need to focus more on being servants of all (to counter pride) and females on how capable the woman of Proverbs is (to counter self-doubt). Yet as Paul writes, in Jesus Christ there is neither male nor female. All have fallen short of who God created us to be, and all of us are in need of amendment of life.

Now if I can just figure out how to wake up to the smell of pumpkin chocolate-chip muffins.


Pentecost 16: Proverbs 31:10-31; Psalm 1; James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a; Mark 9:30-37

Fiery Tongues

I was lucky enough to start my seminary days at a place that required knowledge of the biblical languages. So when I took a course on the Gospel of Mark, we started each class translating the Greek passage for the day. And when it came time to write an exegesis paper, we were expected to do some Greek word study as well. My paper was on this Sunday’s reading. I could have a lot to say when I preach. Yet somehow I have a feeling that most of my parishioners don’t come to church to learn the intricacies of the Greek language.

Sunday we will be commissioning church school teachers. Perhaps I could dwell on this statement of James: “Not many of you should become teachers.” But why discourage the dedicated souls who have been recruited to fill those slots? Why try to convince them that they will be judged with greater strictness, when we are delighted that they have stepped up to guide our youth?

“For all of us make many mistakes,” James adds. Now there’s something that’s universal. In our corporate confession we admit to things we have done and things we have left undone – the classic sins of commission and omission. It’s not just what we do, but what we fail to do, that separates us from God and one another. “Who can tell how often he offends?” asks the psalmist.

James particularly focuses on the sins of the tongue. “The tongue is a fire,” he states, “a restless evil, full of deadly poison.” Just two weeks ago Jesus gave us a nasty list of what can come out of the human heart through the tongue, including deceit, envy, slander, pride, and folly.

Folly is the special concern of Proverbs. It is the antithesis of wisdom. Personified Wisdom scoffs at the foolish, laughing when their foolishness results in calamity. That sounds harsh, but are we so different? Are we not fascinated by human and natural disasters? Why are some so ready to attach blame to people who suffer? Why is there smug satisfaction when a person who stumbles “gets theirs?”

The reason, I think, is a human tendency to minimize our own sins by enlarging the sins of others, using that fiery tongue. That’s the reason the early monks of Egypt valued silence. They knew that it was hard not to sin if they opened their mouths. One garrulous man even carried stones in his mouth for three years until he learned to be quiet.

We don’t need to carry stones in our mouths, but we do need to learn to watch our speech. As James reminded us a couple of weeks ago, we need to be slow to speak and quick to listen. Only then will we be less likely to sin against God and one another. And you can do that without even knowing any Greek.

Pentecost 15: Proverbs 1:20-33; Psalm 19; James 3:1-12; Mark 8:27-38

Throwing Food to the Dogs

Now that the Episcopal Church has officially accepted the Revised Common Lectionary, occasional surprises pop up in formerly familiar readings. This week, for instance, we no longer have just the happy tale of a deaf man who is healed, but the story before it: the foreign woman who swallows Jesus’ calling her a dog in order to get her daughter healed. Well, it’s not quite that blatant. When she begs Jesus to heal her daughter, he says to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Rather than leave in a huff, she replies with a twist of her own: “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” At that, Jesus heals her daughter.

What are we to make of this? One of my seminary professors insisted that Jesus was just testing her, that he intended all along to heal her daughter. Perhaps. But does that make it any better? Does testing by insult sound like something Jesus would do? Those who are more focused on Jesus’ humanity (and doubtful of his divinity) cite this passage as one that shows Jesus learning and growing in his vocation. The encounter with this Syrophoenician woman, they say, showed Jesus that his message wasn’t just limited to the Jews. She taught him that he was supposed to speak to the Gentiles as well.

Support for that view comes from the next story, in which Jesus takes a very roundabout route home and ends up healing a deaf man in Gentile territory. But this isn’t the first time Jesus was in the region of the Decapolis. He had made a memorable visit there earlier, sending a pile of demons from a crazed man into a herd of pigs that promptly rushed into the sea and drowned. It’s a wonder they let him back in town.

I have an old leather-bound Oxford Annotated Bible I bought when I was fifteen that still helps me out when I end up in a theological corner. Under the parallel passage in Matthew’s Gospel, I find this note: “Jesus consistently said that his primary mission was to call Jews back to God. The Gentile woman’s claim must be based on her own personal acceptance of his message. The distinction is between his mission and his willingness to respond to faith wherever found.” In other words, if she’s second string, she better really want to play if she’s going to get any time in the field. Well, I can buy that, but it still doesn’t explain how Jesus treated her. Yes, I know he was a Jewish male and she was a Gentile woman, lower than low, but this is Jesus Christ we’re talking about here.

So do I long for the good-ol’-days of the prayer book lectionary? No. At least not for that reason. I appreciate Bible passages that continually challenge me. When I think I know who Jesus or God is, or who I am for that matter, a Syrophoenician woman pops up and turns my certainty upside down. Maybe that’s what happened to Jesus. Maybe not. But I’ll bet he did know all along that he was going to heal her daughter.