At nine Jimmy was your typical young boy in many ways, except for the fact that his family lived below the poverty line. His mother gave him the last five dollars to go to the store to get dinner for the whole family. Being a family of five, they had been through all of their food and needed something else. Five dollars would cover the cost of peanut butter and bread, and if he was lucky and things were on sale hotdogs for the whole family. When he got to the mart, he found that the bread alone would be $3 and whether hotdogs or peanut butter were the choice, at best he could not get out for under the $5 bill he had. So he walked quickly by the peanut butter, which was conveniently next to the bread, put the jar in his pocket and paid for the bread. He stole, and according to the law, this is a punishable offense, but this act allowed his family to eat something that night, otherwise, they would starve.
A scenario like that would have been foreign to me growing up. While our family was not the wealthiest, we never were without. When I first heard that scenario in ethics class in high school I actually thought that the child should be punished because he clearly did something wrong. I entered the debate citing everything I knew about law and a legalistic understanding of community. I won the debate, and was quite proud of myself. Early in college, I was posed in an ethics discussion again with the same scenario. I was ready to jump in with my winning debate when a friend of mine jumped into the conversation before me. He spoke of having the exact same dilemma. He said that in his case he only had a few coins, but his family had not eaten for a week. He struggled all day knowing he had to do something and he made his way off. He hid the bread and the peanut butter and bought a pack of gum. On his way out the cashier said, “Enjoy your sandwiches.” He said he cried the whole way home, but he ate that night. He was thankful that the cashier had compassion for him and chose to look the other way. But he said that he was desperate and had he not done that; who knows what would have happened to his family, especially his younger siblings. Thankfully things changed for his family, but he asked the class “who does the law really protect and why?” That sparked fierce debates and changed me to ask what would I do if stuck in that situation? His story changed me, and I began to think about my arguments that were so good and realized that the only way they held up were to ascribe to law over compassion. It is interesting to think of that “ethics debate” and the scripture that we encounter this week. In the church, many traditions try really hard to express who is in and who is out. This is true even in the early church. Paul recognizes this and says essentially to the people that by being so focused on the law they cannot be faithful to God. Paul points out that “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” It makes no difference what you have or what you go into faith with as long as you go in; that is what counts. I have been thinking of the story over the past few days in terms of the church. If the convenience store were the church, the peanut butter and bread were the message of Christ. Compassionately, we would wholeheartedly say come and take what you need, but do we really mean that? Do we freely give God’s love with no expectation in return? Do we teach that all who call on the name of the lord are saved? Or do we create laws or put up roadblocks so only a certain type of person can truly receive the sustenance we offer? Think about that as we explore Romans 10:5–15 this week.
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After last Sunday and our discussion I think it could be fun to spend some time with the book of Hebrews. This is the largest non-Pauline letter in the Bible. Though throughout history the authorship has been debated. The King James Version does attribute it to Paul; however, most scholarship points other directions. The Authorship questions and debate has always placed a shadow on the text, since in some ways there are parts which stand in contrast to what Paul taught. This means that if Paul were the author it would represent changes rather then a difference of interpretation or witness.
This is a big thing, because it impacts how we go forward with the passage. Take the letters that are ascribed to Paul. When reading them chronologically, the reader will see a definite growth in the letters. Though the core witness does not change, Paul develops visions and understandings that shape how we continue to approach the Christian community, a great example being the Body, which is explicitly used in our Foundations section of the Book of Order (part of our denomination’s constitution). Hebrews as a standalone text offers us a perspective that is knowingly different than the Pauline vision and goes to challenge our faith and understanding of God. But just as if you were to go hear two pastors preach on the same text, both would approach and preach differently, it does not make one right and the other wrong, but it will have the Holy Spirit challenging you to rethink and struggle in different ways. All of this is to say that for the next five weeks we are going to talk about faith, and specifically how we interact with God and how that impacts our understanding of community.
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. 2 Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval. 3 By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible. I think that this will be a great way for us to begin to explore two of the areas of interest that we lifted up in the importance of community and how God communicates with us, since it is by faith that both of those things happen and through our searching and struggles we begin to see and understand God. The first examples this week are Abel, Enoch, and Noah. An interesting mix and some forefathers who definitely have some baggage! As bad as both Cain and Abel were, what was interesting about the faith reference of Abel is that he is the one who brought a sacrifice of belief and God deemed that more worthy than any physical sacrifice. For Enoch, the witness of faith is trust. The burden of Faith that Enoch teaches is that we need to not only believe that God exists, but we also have to trust that God cares for us. The last of the three who we look at this week is Noah, whose faith made him an outcast, yet also gave him salvation. I hope that you can join us this week and the next five as we grow together in our faith. On Sunday we will be having a discussion about Sexuality, Gay Marriage, and the Church. I have been talking about this for some time. I encourage you to come! While I am not going to talk about that issue specifically in this article, in a lot of conversations I have had with people I have noticed a pattern which is what I am going to talk about here and that is it open a conversation into the different ways in which we live out our spiritual lives and how that impacts both our relationship with God and the greater community.
For many in the church, we often feel like we have a split personality. On one side we have all of the traditions we have learned. Even in traditions who claim not to have dogmas, essentials, fundamentals and the like, we have developed teachings that become so ingrained it is hard to fight off a change of interpretation or understanding. This often causes a lot of internal conflict in both the spiritual life as well one’s self-identity. It reminds me of a story an older member of one of my previous congregations told me. When he was a kid he was taught that only evil bad people would write with their left hand. Being born left-handed he struggled to teach his right hand to do what he knew his left hand could do instinctively. When he got to college he was struggling to keep up with taking notes, this was way before computers. The professor who had developed an affinity with him asked if he could teach him short hand to get his notes quicker so he would pass the class. When the professor started to work with him he said “let’s try something” put the pen in his left hand, and this man was off to the races. He still learned shorthand, but began to write with his left hand. Towards the end of that semester some things started to turn for him, and he began to equate them with his writing with his left had. He felt as if he was now doing evil and was reaping the punishment. At the time of this story, the man was in his eighties and still mostly wrote with his right hand. He said he knew better and it was not a bad thing, but those voices and teachings were too hard to overcome. We know that a good percentage of the population is left-handed. Not too long ago we thought, and some churches taught, that this was a sign of evil. To some that was never accepted, but to many it was, and even after society changed its understanding, ingrained in some was a sense of superiority for being right handed and in others shame for being left handed. But for this man, even though he knew he was silly, and being left handed was ok, he never could let himself just be and find a level of reconciliation between what his heart, head, and faith were telling him. A lot of times in the church we have a difficulty when things change, especially big understandings, because we cannot find reconciliation between what the heart feels, what the head understands, and what faith tells and expects from us. What makes this overly complicated is when the faith traditions seem to change directions or our world changes and all three are no longer in alignment and we feel as if we have nothing to stand on except the core of what we were. When I first started out in ministry, God was pretty well defined for me. I knew the expectations, the teachings, and so on. It worked well, lead me to becoming ordained, finding success and growing to a certain point where it now longer worked and the teachings no longer matched what I was experiencing, so I had to do the difficult job of figuring out all of the differing parts of my faith. As I was starting to gear up for a battle at My session meeting over two issues, Gay Ordination and the document on the Lordship of Jesus Christ. a wise elder told that story. At the end he shed a tear saying “we spend so much time in our lives so sure of what God said and wants that we forget how it impacts others and impedes God’s love.” In Christ, Bryan This week we move back to our journey with Jacob and one of my favorite stories of the Old Testament, Jacob wrestling with God. Many of the commentators and sermons you will hear will talk about this being an analogy of faith and how we all wrestle with God and struggle in our faith. It is interesting because even to call it “Jacob wrestling with God” is to undercut what is going on.
A better title might be “God picks fight with Jacob” since it is clear that God initiates the battle. And it is a battle, not like two brothers wresting or a collegiate fight, this was all out MMA, no holds barred, mixed martial arts! At the end, interestingly enough, not only did he survive, but Jacob almost wins, at which point God pushes his joint out of socket. Even at that Jacob holds the man down, now realizing who this is, and demands a blessing! Jacob has some guts. But he also started to become wise. Jacob knew God, he respected God, and God respected him. This wrestling match between God and Jacob showed us three very important things. First, Jacob accepts God. He knows God has the power to kill him, but does not backdown from the fight, recognizing that God will not go that far. Two, Jacob knows God, immediately Jacob can sense who it is that picks the fight and he knows what he needs to do to get the blessing he deserves. And lastly, God knows Jacob. God knew what Jacob wanted and needed, the Blessing but he could not just give it over, Jacob had to prove himself. It is also important to note that Jacob is no longer a young man. He has two wives and two servants, and between his wives and servants he has sired 11 children. At this point in his life Jacob knows an intimacy with God that many of the patriarchs never achieved. Jacob also has developed a relationship with God that was similar to a teacher who has grown fond of a troubled student; while the student perpetually drives the teacher nuts, the teacher cannot help but love them. This is whom Jacob is, the rebellious troubled student who refuses to listen, but God just can’t stop loving. But like that troubled student, there is an underlying respect and fidelity that is present. According to the text, Jacob knows pretty quickly who it was that picked the fight. Which furthers our understanding of the intimacy of their relationship. But Jacob was determined not to let God get the better of him. I find this powerful for today, because so often when we think of God we think of what God is doing for us. Often people pray to God to make their lives better, or to bring health. What God wants from Jacob and subsequently from us is our respect, devotion, and love. The thing we forget often when reading the bible is that the relationship between the patriarchs and God is very personal. Almost like best friends or brothers. This means that their relationships are not stagnant, nor are they like a child obediently following their parent. This is important, because it is the relationship that God is longing for, but the further we get from creation, the less likely we are to have that relationship. We see this erode in the bible. Even by the time David is king there is a lot of distance between Samuel and God making God much more mysterious than we see in Genesis. In our modern times, this often leaves people with a sense of loss. There is the desire to have that personal relationship, but it is hard. In a real way, almost impossible! |
AuthorRev. Dr. Bryan James Franzen Archives
September 2018
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