I remember a dear soul from my previous congregation that, while having great difficulty walking, would seem to be one of the first to fellowship time where he would stand right in front of the chips. This man could not have salt at home, so his one time for breaking that rule was church coffee hour, and he never wanted to miss a moment! Salt is something in our world that we understand fairly well. On one hand salt is necessary, a little here and there is needed for a healthy life. Interestingly, in human history there were times when salt was as precious as gold.
We learn early in life the benefits of salt as it relates to food and through learning the other benefits, but we also learn and know that as good and necessary as salt is, since salt is so pervasive in food and drink, salt can actually be a deadly weapon in our lives. Hence, the low salt-diet of my former parishioner. Beyond people, salt can be good and bad too. Salt can be used to regulate soil so that crops grow more plentifully, but too much salt can kill all of the plants. One of the problems farmers on the east coast have with hurricanes is that the coastal farms often lose their entire crops when the winds and storms blow the ocean water onto the land. So with salt there is a balance to what is good and what is bad. In Matthew 5:13-20, Jesus is using the example of salt to relate to the laws and their roles within the community. Too much salt overwhelms the senses and loses its effectiveness. The same problem happens with the law; when the law is driven by other law, control, power, and so on, eventually it loses its purpose and becomes about something very different. It goes from being about participating in a healthy community to becoming an unhealthy one. Interestingly, Jesus does not decry the law to be bad or in need of abolishment, but rather the law needs to be transformed or adjusted so that it “gets right” once again. So his understanding of what needs to be done with the Law and prophets is to accept that the law is complete, and that which God has commanded will be completed, BUT there is a balance that needs to be achieved; this comes later as Christ once again addresses the “golden rule” which follows later in the Sermon on the Mount. It is interesting how often we let the “law” come between fellowship and faith. For many of our brothers and sisters in faith that are Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, or Intersexed, the teaching of the law had built a wall between them and a relationship with God. This is interesting, because if the law is about bringing people closer to God, when the law is used to demean or degrade an individual or group, it can separate them from God even more. The same is true when we let “the law” control our lives, as the Pharisees did, being such sticklers to the law they could not see to help another out because the day was to be holy. I like the way Eugene Peterson translates Matthew 5:16b: “By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.[1]” Being the salt of the earth is as much about keeping the law as it is finding balance, with compassion and acceptance. It does not always mean that you have to understand what others are going through or even always accept, but it does mean that you need to respect them and know that God loves them the same way God loves you. Moreover, it is important to trust and know that judgment is with God, but our place is to be the salt of the earth, knowing how we add to one another, and knowing when we are just too salty.
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As many of you know we are coming to the end of this chapter of the Gathering. Over the next few weeks we are going to explore what is next for us and for our community. It is important that whatever happens, we maintain the relationships and insight that we have brought to the service, but really take time to focus on what we have learned and how we have grown from this experience. The hope is that sometime this spring, summer or fall we can re-launch the service with advertising and a campaign to have it be a size that is sustainable and self-sufficient. To that end, I want you to know that as long as there is interest, I am committed to the service, I still believe that we are doing something great in the Gathering, and I think we are all ready to really get behind what we always hoped this service could be.
The idea of looking at creation stories will help us look for important themes and understandings of what good beginnings look like and how we can facilitate them. This week I am going to skip the first creation story and jump to the second story, commonly known as the “Adam and Eve” story. This is different from the first story in both the order of creation and the purpose of it. Stylistically, the story is also different as the first story is more narrative, while the second is more poetic in the Hebrew. However, implicit in both stories, creation comes from something. This is a theme that is highlighted throughout the Bible as the world is always in a state of creation and recreation. What I like about the Adam and Eve story is that it is the first place in the Bible where we see a real desire of God for us to be happy. When God creates the world, God realizes that it is not complete, so from the earth humankind is created. Then comes food, and when God realizes that this person he created was lonely, God creates animals to keep company. But even that does not keep the person happy, so god creates another person and all is good, at least for the moment. The issue in creation that this story highlights is the role of God as this faithful servant of man who is doing God’s best to make the person happy, but happiness still alludes the man that is left. When God finally makes the man happy in creating a partner, there is contentment and freedom, but something else has been planted that will come to eventually destroy humanity, that being the tree and the eventual sin that would be embraced when the fruit is taken. Some might point to the tree of knowledge as a sign of planned imperfection by God towards this world. Others show it as a test by a God who is faithful to us, but we often are pulled away from being faithful to God. While still others point to the tree being a planned lesson by God so that humankind may learn and understand their role within the larger narrative of the biblical story. In either case, the reality that we have is that once the tree is invaded we can never go back to the way things were and we are thrust into a new reality. In fact, many might say that within this creation narrative we are already given seeds of recreation. Over this week I encourage you to read through the Adam and Eve story and see if you can find the theme of creation and recreation. See if you can connect with what their plight is and ask yourself, if God created you this way, would you be happy? Would you even be thankful to God? All of this is central in understanding what creation is all about. |
AuthorRev. Dr. Bryan James Franzen Archives
September 2018
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