We in the 21st century are not all that different from those men and women in the 1st century who sat at Jesus’ feet, listening to him teach with parables. One similarity across the millennia is that whether we live today or whether we lived 2000 years ago, most of us prefer to see the world in black and white.
There are good guys and bad guys, heroes and villains. For us, there is Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, Cinderella and the Wicked Stepmother, Barack Obama and Glenn Beck, the Tea Party and the Liberal Establishment. For Jesus’ listeners, there were the one God Jews and the Zeus loving pagans, the Jewish peasant class and the Roman Emperor himself.
And yet, we will discover that this parable about the Pharisee and the tax collector praying next to each other in the synagogue is not black and white at all, but rather many shades of gray.
Presbyterian pastor and seminary professor Victor Shepherd tells the story like this: “A Pharisee and a tax-collector go to church together. The Pharisee is morally circumspect. He’s squeaky clean, consistent in it all as well. He’s a genuinely good man. There’s nothing deficient or defective in his religious observance or his moral integrity. There isn’t a whiff of hypocrisy about him. As soon as he gets to church he reminds God how circumspect and how consistent he is.
(The) tax-collector, (however, was part of the) most despised group in Israel. (Tax collectors) made a living collecting taxes for the Roman occupation…This branded them publicly as exploitative, ready to “fleece” their own people, greedy, and heartless concerning the kinfolk they kept impoverished.
The Pharisee looked at this one tax-collector in church, looked away and then looked up, nose in air as he said “God, I thank you I am not like other men. They are extortionists, unjust, adulterous. I’m none of this. I am not like them. I’m not at all like this creep standing beside me.” The tax-collector, we’re told, made no religious claim at all. He simply cried, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner.’”
Now, at first glance, the tale may look black and white. However, when you closely observe the two characters in the story, this simplicity rapidly disappears.
The parable presents a conundrum, a puzzle, a brain teaser, a mind boggler. The Pharisee or the tax collector? Who does one identity with? Jesus’ listeners would not have enjoyed being associated with either one. There is no good guy in this parable. There is no hero.
On the one hand, Jesus was perpetually in conflict with the Pharisees. They were the religious hierarchy and way too tight with the Roman government. Pharisees dictated the nits and nats of Jewish holiness and considered themselves to be of that righteousness.
However, Pharisees also had the reputation of being religious hypocrites. Because they were generally well off, they had the financial means to observe all the complexities of the Mosaic law, down to the tiniest nit or nat, something impossible for most of the Jewish populace. Those who followed Jesus had no love for the Pharisee in our parable.
Yet, on the other hand, a tax collector was the scum of the earth. As the author of a blog entitled “Magdalene’s Musings” wrote, “If Pharisees were models of holiness and righteousness, tax collectors were models of a different kind: they were mostly thought of as models of greed, uncleanness and dishonesty,…working on behalf of the enemy,… making themselves rich off the misery of their own people.
Tax collectors were traitors.” Those who followed Jesus had no love for the tax collector in our parable either.
That is the conundrum. Who does one identify with?
The Pharisee was not a bad person. His religion was his passion. He would be the one in church every Sunday without fail. He loved the Bible, and its literal teachings dictated how he lived his life. He was a good upstanding Jew.
In fact, he lived in exemplary fashion, going above and beyond the minimum requirements for a good religious life. He fasted regularly – and he tithed on everything he acquired, even down to the herbs in his garden. He invested 10% of his treasure where his heart was – and looking at it from the perspective of this day and age, that is nothing to sneeze at. The Pharisee had religious zeal. Seen from this perspective, the Pharisee is no villain.
Of course, Jesus points out that he does have this shortcoming when it comes to his prayer life. His prayers seem less about God and more about himself – though all he was doing really was offering prayers of gratitude – thanking God that he was blessed in not being like the tax collector who prayed beside him.
Now, the tax collector – well, he is a different story. Not a paragon of good solid ethics, he would never be elected church treasurer. As United Church of Canada pastor David Ewart notes, “Not only does collecting taxes make one very unpopular, it also makes one unable to live according to the teachings of the Bible because one must constantly be in contact with ritually unclean people and goods. And taxes paid for the Roman armies and elites that were occupying the Holy Land.” Seen from this perspective, the tax collector is no hero.
However, when it comes to his prayer life, this fellow got it right. His words may not have been very articulate, but they were to the point. He asks for mercy and throws himself upon the grace of God. And in the long run, Jesus seems to say, his seeking of forgiveness in the face of tremendous odds counts for something.
Who does one identify with? It is a conundrum. The pompous prig of a Pharisee who deeply loves his God and his church? Or the irreligious, morally bankrupt tax collector who throws himself on the mercy of Yahweh? It is a puzzle, a brain teaser, a mind boggler.
As I thought about the parable this week, I wondered if perhaps there is no black or white answer to that niggling question of who we identify with – Pharisee or tax collector. Perhaps Jesus did not mean for there to be a clear right or wrong. Perhaps we are meant to learn something about prayer from both the tax collector and the Pharisee. Perhaps we are not meant to judge either one of them but simply to acknowledge that, if we look closely, we will see ourselves in the eyes of both of them.
Take the prayers of the Pharisee. They were prayers of thanksgiving – and surely there is nothing untoward in that. So often we come to God with a list of demands. We want healing for him, luck in the job search for her. We want some sort of holy intervention, so that we will sell our house or our child will travel safely back to college.
But we seldom actually thank God for that child in the first place – or even for another blessed day of life itself. Where the Pharisee went astray was not in being grateful to God, but in holding up and thereby judging the tax collector as his spiritual opposite. And when he did that, he was no longer praying but comparing.
But haven’t we all done that on occasion? We hear of mudslides in Guatemala and thank God that it was them and not us. We read in the newspaper of children killed in a car accident on prom night and thank God that our own children came home safely. We have all done it. We are all like the Pharisee.
Take the prayers of the tax collector. In spite of the fact that he was morally bankrupt, a deeply flawed human being, he understood his relationship with God clearly enough to be ever so humble in his prayers, thereby setting up a marvelous teachable moment – and that is this:
We too must be self-reflective enough to acknowledge to God our sinfulness, our shortcomings – even as count our blessings and present our list of demands to the Almighty. We too must trust enough to openly share our deepest and darkest secrets with God. Admitting out loud his deep need for God was what justified the tax collector.
And just as we are all like the Pharisee, so we are also all like the tax collector. Face it – we may not be cheaters and chiselers like he, but we all have something deeply sorry about our lives. From the tax collector’s experience, we are assured that owning up to the bad and ugly things about us will be OK – and indeed will serve to cement even more our relationship with the Almighty.
The parable is surely a conundrum, a puzzle that has no black and white solution. However, I think that the interplay between the Pharisee and the tax collector is a way for Jesus to remind us just how important prayer is in our relationship with God.
Surely it has the potential to help us discover more of who we are and who God is – even if we at times stumble in our attempts to pray properly.
Martin Luther King, Jr., [said] “to be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.” This parable teaches us that "prayer is the occasion for honesty about oneself (but also) generosity about others…(For Jesus’ listeners and so for us) prayer is not a last resort when all the plans and programs and power plays have failed; prayer is, rather, the first and primary task of Christians" (Charles Cousar) – even though, as the Pharisee and the tax collector illustrate for us, we have not yet perfected the technique.
Rev. Nancy Foran is the pastor of the Raymond Village Community Church in Raymond, Maine
www.rvccme.org
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Luke 18:1-8 "Live Boldly"
“You see,” Jesus said as the peasant entourage of listeners settled down at his feet for a good story, “there was this widow, and she had been wronged.” And the audience clucked and whispered and nodded their heads. They knew what “being wronged” meant. It happened to them all the time – being cheated, getting the short end of the stick. They knew from their own experience that it was not a good place to be.
Why, the dear old soul really had nothing going for her. She was powerless because when she had buried her husband, she had buried her identity as well. She was a nobody because that was just the way it was with women who were not associated with a better half, a better half who could be depended upon to speak up in times of need.
She was poor – because all the widows of whom Jesus ever spoke were poor – and because she was poor she had no money with which to grease the wheels of justice. She could not have put up a bribe even if she had wanted to. When you lined up all the things that worked against her, the chance of her wrong being righted was virtually nil.
“And then,” continued Jesus, “there was this judge - and the judge was corrupt.” And his listeners knowingly nodded their heads once again. Judges like that were a denarius a dozen. They knew that taking bribes was probably so commonplace in that judge’s book that he had most likely rationalized that it was best for society if he filched a shekel or two from the poor whenever he could.
The audience could picture that judge. He was calloused and had long ago mastered the ability to simply look the other way when it suited his purposes. He was condescending – adept at staring through those wire rimmed glasses he wore down the length of his pointy nose to whoever groveled at his feet.
They just knew that he was the kind of judge who ordered his assistants to bribe the riffraff outside of the Tent of Justice, so only those with the ability to pay were prompted to plea their cases. And the shekels came rolling in – even if true justice slipped out the back door.
“So,” said Jesus, “There was this widow and there was this judge.” But that is where the stereotypes ended. Because the widow was not like the usual run-of-the-mill widows the judge was used to. This one was persistent. This one just did not give up.
Every time the judge turned around, there she was – giving him that look and shaking her finger at him. She rattled the tent flaps, and he could hear her arguing with his bouncers as he shuffled papers around on his desk.
She found him at the café on Main Street in the morning just as the waitress brought him a platter of steaming eggs and sausage – and well before his second cup of coffee.
She was right there when he snuck out of his flimsy Tent of Justice for a cigarette. And when all he wanted was a few minutes of quiet in the mid-afternoon for a cup of tea and a biscuit – there she would be. She badgered him all the way home – night after night.
He even dreamt about her. It was the same dream every night, one of those recurring things. The widow would be following him down a long darkened tunnel that seemed to go on forever, her high pitched voice bouncing off the floors and ceiling, echoing up and down the ancient passageway and rattling interminably inside his head -
- Until he could stand it no longer. “Leave me alone!” the judge shouted one day at the widow in broad daylight. “I give up. You can have what you want. Just get out of my life. Just leave me be.” And she did. And he did. And the parable ended.
An assistant manager of a large department store saw a boy standing at the bottom of the escalator one day. The assistant became suspicious. He watched the boy for a while. The boy had his eyes glued on the moving handrail. Finally the assistant approached the lad and questioned him.
"Something wrong, young man?" he asked.
"No sir," replied the boy, not taking his eyes off the handrail, "I'm just waiting for my bubble gum to come back."
Persistence - that is what this parable is about. As a prelude to the actual story, Jesus tells his listeners that this tale is about prayer and its link to the kind of perseverance that the old widow demonstrated. And most sermons I have heard on this passage focus on just that – on how we need to be persistent in our prayers, how we need not be alarmed if our prayers are not answered in our own good time, how we need to be conscious of what many see to be the causal relationship between prayer and faith.
And those are certainly worthy topics to spring from this parable in the Gospel of Luke. However, I keep thinking that prayer is not (or at least should not) be something we do in a vacuum, closed off from the world. I am reminded of Frederick Douglass when he said, “I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.”
To be truly efficacious, prayer necessarily involves action on our part. And so, it would seem to me that if Jesus is telling us to be persistent in our prayer life, then he is also implying that we must be persistent in all of life as it unfolds before us. And when we think about the parable from this wider perspective, suddenly it becomes both a daring call to action and a profound word of hope.
Just as the old powerless widow was as feisty as could be, just as she was persistent to the point even of obnoxiousness, just as she never gave up when the world around her was probably snickering behind her back or laughing out loud in her face, so I believe that we are called to do the same. We are not pawns in this world, being moved around by some Higher Being. No – we are powerful – masters of our own destiny.
Live boldly this parable is telling us. Figure out what your passion is, where your heart lies – and act upon it. As Episcopal priest, Barbara Brown Taylor, noted about the widow: "She is willing to say what wanted – out loud, day and night, over and over – whether she got it or not, because saying it was how she remembered who she was. It was how she remembered the shape of her heart…" Live boldly.
God did not put us on this earth to be wishy washy, to take whatever comes our way. Though that is sometimes mistakenly called meekness, it is in reality lack of conviction. God put us here to be agents of change and transformation, to live with passion and conviction.
Along about Saturday afternoon last weekend, at mile 15 of 23 miles, I wondered why I do these 3 day, 60 mile breast cancer walks. Oh, it is fun to wear pink, but the mobile showers are not the Ritz. Trying to get your 40 winks in one of literally a thousand cheap pink pup tents inches apart from each other gets old after the first year or so. Getting dressed in your sleeping bag so you can stay warm at 5:30 A.M. is not something I would want to do every day either. And a weekend of porta-potties? Need I say more!
And yet, there is something about 2700 people – walkers and volunteer crew – coming together not only with a common commitment to rid the world of cancer but also with a marvelous love for life itself, all of us participating in this event because of a strong belief that everyone deserves a full and rich lifetime and no one should have to endure months and years of surgeries and chemotherapy treatments -just to be able to be there when a toddler grows old enough to start kindergarten.
There is something about 2700 people coming together with a shared passion - albeit edged with blisters and ice packs – and a commitment to live that passion, walk that conviction, even if you are hobbling a bit at the end of the day but still trusting that tomorrow you will not be so stiff and so you will go on – and on – and on.
In a world that is too often jaded and cynical, apathetic, inert, and focused on what we can not do, there is something about 2700 people coming together to be what Leonard Pitts, a fellow walker and syndicated columnist for the Miami Herald wrote last Wednesday, to be like ants. “Ants don't know about inertia,” Pitts writes. “They have a goal: to build and expand their underground cities. And they do achieve this by working cooperatively, moving earth one grain at a time.”
This parable is about persistence. It is about having the widow’s hutzpah to keep nagging the judge even when it seems pointless to continue to do so. It is about putting one foot in front of the other when what you really want to do is take your shoes off and put your feet up. It is about looking deep inside of you and discovering what means the most to you – whether that be a cancer-free world, simply another day lived, or something in between.
This parable is about persistence, but it is also about realizing that if you live persistently, as the old widow did, you will also live boldly as she likewise did.
If you consciously and persistently pursue your passion, whatever it may be, you will live boldly. It can be no other way. And when you live boldly – oh, the things you will do, the ways the world will change.
When you live boldly – oh, what you will realize about life itself. That it is not about challenges that are too big, problems that are too complex, difficulties that can not be handled, or dilemmas that can not be untangled.
No – when you live boldly, you will realize that life is indeed a journey and it is what we – each one of us – will choose to make of it. It is an adventure – one to be enjoyed, to be savored. And in the end, it is for living. Live boldly!
Rev. Nancy Foran is the pastor of the Raymond Village Community Church in Raymond, Maine
www.rvccme.org
Why, the dear old soul really had nothing going for her. She was powerless because when she had buried her husband, she had buried her identity as well. She was a nobody because that was just the way it was with women who were not associated with a better half, a better half who could be depended upon to speak up in times of need.
She was poor – because all the widows of whom Jesus ever spoke were poor – and because she was poor she had no money with which to grease the wheels of justice. She could not have put up a bribe even if she had wanted to. When you lined up all the things that worked against her, the chance of her wrong being righted was virtually nil.
“And then,” continued Jesus, “there was this judge - and the judge was corrupt.” And his listeners knowingly nodded their heads once again. Judges like that were a denarius a dozen. They knew that taking bribes was probably so commonplace in that judge’s book that he had most likely rationalized that it was best for society if he filched a shekel or two from the poor whenever he could.
The audience could picture that judge. He was calloused and had long ago mastered the ability to simply look the other way when it suited his purposes. He was condescending – adept at staring through those wire rimmed glasses he wore down the length of his pointy nose to whoever groveled at his feet.
They just knew that he was the kind of judge who ordered his assistants to bribe the riffraff outside of the Tent of Justice, so only those with the ability to pay were prompted to plea their cases. And the shekels came rolling in – even if true justice slipped out the back door.
“So,” said Jesus, “There was this widow and there was this judge.” But that is where the stereotypes ended. Because the widow was not like the usual run-of-the-mill widows the judge was used to. This one was persistent. This one just did not give up.
Every time the judge turned around, there she was – giving him that look and shaking her finger at him. She rattled the tent flaps, and he could hear her arguing with his bouncers as he shuffled papers around on his desk.
She found him at the café on Main Street in the morning just as the waitress brought him a platter of steaming eggs and sausage – and well before his second cup of coffee.
She was right there when he snuck out of his flimsy Tent of Justice for a cigarette. And when all he wanted was a few minutes of quiet in the mid-afternoon for a cup of tea and a biscuit – there she would be. She badgered him all the way home – night after night.
He even dreamt about her. It was the same dream every night, one of those recurring things. The widow would be following him down a long darkened tunnel that seemed to go on forever, her high pitched voice bouncing off the floors and ceiling, echoing up and down the ancient passageway and rattling interminably inside his head -
- Until he could stand it no longer. “Leave me alone!” the judge shouted one day at the widow in broad daylight. “I give up. You can have what you want. Just get out of my life. Just leave me be.” And she did. And he did. And the parable ended.
An assistant manager of a large department store saw a boy standing at the bottom of the escalator one day. The assistant became suspicious. He watched the boy for a while. The boy had his eyes glued on the moving handrail. Finally the assistant approached the lad and questioned him.
"Something wrong, young man?" he asked.
"No sir," replied the boy, not taking his eyes off the handrail, "I'm just waiting for my bubble gum to come back."
Persistence - that is what this parable is about. As a prelude to the actual story, Jesus tells his listeners that this tale is about prayer and its link to the kind of perseverance that the old widow demonstrated. And most sermons I have heard on this passage focus on just that – on how we need to be persistent in our prayers, how we need not be alarmed if our prayers are not answered in our own good time, how we need to be conscious of what many see to be the causal relationship between prayer and faith.
And those are certainly worthy topics to spring from this parable in the Gospel of Luke. However, I keep thinking that prayer is not (or at least should not) be something we do in a vacuum, closed off from the world. I am reminded of Frederick Douglass when he said, “I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.”
To be truly efficacious, prayer necessarily involves action on our part. And so, it would seem to me that if Jesus is telling us to be persistent in our prayer life, then he is also implying that we must be persistent in all of life as it unfolds before us. And when we think about the parable from this wider perspective, suddenly it becomes both a daring call to action and a profound word of hope.
Just as the old powerless widow was as feisty as could be, just as she was persistent to the point even of obnoxiousness, just as she never gave up when the world around her was probably snickering behind her back or laughing out loud in her face, so I believe that we are called to do the same. We are not pawns in this world, being moved around by some Higher Being. No – we are powerful – masters of our own destiny.
Live boldly this parable is telling us. Figure out what your passion is, where your heart lies – and act upon it. As Episcopal priest, Barbara Brown Taylor, noted about the widow: "She is willing to say what wanted – out loud, day and night, over and over – whether she got it or not, because saying it was how she remembered who she was. It was how she remembered the shape of her heart…" Live boldly.
God did not put us on this earth to be wishy washy, to take whatever comes our way. Though that is sometimes mistakenly called meekness, it is in reality lack of conviction. God put us here to be agents of change and transformation, to live with passion and conviction.
Along about Saturday afternoon last weekend, at mile 15 of 23 miles, I wondered why I do these 3 day, 60 mile breast cancer walks. Oh, it is fun to wear pink, but the mobile showers are not the Ritz. Trying to get your 40 winks in one of literally a thousand cheap pink pup tents inches apart from each other gets old after the first year or so. Getting dressed in your sleeping bag so you can stay warm at 5:30 A.M. is not something I would want to do every day either. And a weekend of porta-potties? Need I say more!
And yet, there is something about 2700 people – walkers and volunteer crew – coming together not only with a common commitment to rid the world of cancer but also with a marvelous love for life itself, all of us participating in this event because of a strong belief that everyone deserves a full and rich lifetime and no one should have to endure months and years of surgeries and chemotherapy treatments -just to be able to be there when a toddler grows old enough to start kindergarten.
There is something about 2700 people coming together with a shared passion - albeit edged with blisters and ice packs – and a commitment to live that passion, walk that conviction, even if you are hobbling a bit at the end of the day but still trusting that tomorrow you will not be so stiff and so you will go on – and on – and on.
In a world that is too often jaded and cynical, apathetic, inert, and focused on what we can not do, there is something about 2700 people coming together to be what Leonard Pitts, a fellow walker and syndicated columnist for the Miami Herald wrote last Wednesday, to be like ants. “Ants don't know about inertia,” Pitts writes. “They have a goal: to build and expand their underground cities. And they do achieve this by working cooperatively, moving earth one grain at a time.”
This parable is about persistence. It is about having the widow’s hutzpah to keep nagging the judge even when it seems pointless to continue to do so. It is about putting one foot in front of the other when what you really want to do is take your shoes off and put your feet up. It is about looking deep inside of you and discovering what means the most to you – whether that be a cancer-free world, simply another day lived, or something in between.
This parable is about persistence, but it is also about realizing that if you live persistently, as the old widow did, you will also live boldly as she likewise did.
If you consciously and persistently pursue your passion, whatever it may be, you will live boldly. It can be no other way. And when you live boldly – oh, the things you will do, the ways the world will change.
When you live boldly – oh, what you will realize about life itself. That it is not about challenges that are too big, problems that are too complex, difficulties that can not be handled, or dilemmas that can not be untangled.
No – when you live boldly, you will realize that life is indeed a journey and it is what we – each one of us – will choose to make of it. It is an adventure – one to be enjoyed, to be savored. And in the end, it is for living. Live boldly!
Rev. Nancy Foran is the pastor of the Raymond Village Community Church in Raymond, Maine
www.rvccme.org
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Psalm 137 "Love and Anger"
Psalm 137
If you attended Sunday School as a child, you probably learned that the Book of Psalms in the Old Testament part of our Bible is really a collection of songs, traditionally said to be written by King David. I have a vivid image of a long ago square paperback children’s book whose cover featured a very sweet-faced, Caucasian looking young David at the feet of Saul (the first king of Judah). David was playing his harp – or lyre – presumably composing all 150 psalms as he sang.
Though it makes for a lovely scene, the book’s illustrator was historically grossly inaccurate. You see, most modern Biblical scholars attribute only 73 of the psalms to David, and the likelihood that he wrote them as a youngster is slim to none.
The remaining psalms, such as the 137th, which we just read, were composed much later in Jewish history. We know that to be true because psalms like the 137th reflect devastating events that were unimaginable during King David’s glorious reign.
I think that this 137th psalm is one of the most powerful psalms of all. You see, it is an immense outpouring to God of all the sorrow and all the anger with its irresistible thirst for vengeance that overwhelmed the Israelites – understandably so - at the time the song was written.
Last week here in church, we talked about the prophet Jeremiah intuiting the inevitable fall of Jerusalem in 588 BC and the subsequent loss of the Jewish homeland to the Babylonians. As Jeremiah predicted, the Holy City was destroyed, and the temple lay in ruins.
For a people who had understood itself to be chosen by God, these circumstances were pretty hard to fathom – and that is why the psalmist sang about them. He was trying to make sense of these events that made no sense.
According to Walter Brueggemann, “The political-military experience…(was) effectively transposed into a deep theological crisis.” As UCC pastor, Kate Huey, speculated, “This disaster shook the people to their core (where trust in God lives), and drew from them questions, cries of anguish, and a thirst for vengeance.”
The Babylonian army had brought the Israelites to their knees, but the worst part was that much of the population was forcibly exiled to the far side of nowhere, there to become strangers in a strange wasteland – physically separated from families and communities, not to mention that Holy of Holiest place where God resided.
“Alongside Babylon's rivers we sat on the banks; we cried and cried, remembering the good old days in Zion” - Jerusalem.
Their lives and culture had fallen apart. What had happened to them? How had they gotten here, where, as Kate Huey writes, the “past was separated from the present by the ashes of destruction, by miles of desert traversed under duress, and by the scenery of a land foreign and strange?”
These years of exile were a time of barrenness, bitterness, brokenness – and homesickness beyond measure. Yet, as painful as it was to remember Jerusalem, it would be even worse to forget. The experience of being taken captive and forcibly relocated led to decades of trying desperately to keep the ancient story alive – yet fearing that someday their children would not remember, that someday a future generation would be assimilated into this pagan culture and would lose its own identity, lose its God.
“If I ever forget you, Jerusalem, let my fingers wither and fall off like leaves. Let my tongue swell and turn black if I fail to remember you..”
It was a time of tears, and that is part of what the Psalmist is telling us. It was a time so sad that the Israelites could not even sing –
“Alongside the quaking aspens, we stacked our unplayed harps.”
It was impossible to play a single note even when the soldiers who stood nearby mockingly demanded a song. “Hey, Jewboy, sing us a song. Sing us a song about your happy homeland so far away.”
But beyond the sadness, it was also a time of great anger coupled with a deep seeded wish for revenge, and that is also what the Psalmist is telling us.
“GOD, remember the ruin of Jerusalem…And you, Babylonians—ravagers! A reward to whoever gets back at you for all you've done to us; Yes, a reward to the one who grabs your babies and smashes their heads on the rocks!”
Wow! Now that is pretty harsh! And yet, as the Psalmist sings to God of all the vengefulness and grief and anger and fear and homesickness and abject sorrow, in doing so, he invites the Holy One to embrace that which lies deepest in his heart and in the hearts of the exiles.
It is not a pretty sight for Yahweh/God to behold. The psalmist know that but through his song prays that God will not turn away in disgust and displeasure but rather will accept the invitation and enter into the bleakness and ruin of their lives.
Sometimes I think that today we have homogenized our relationship with God. Our prayers are composed and controlled and seldom are a groaning cry. Our hands are neatly folded and are not often raised in an angry fist shaking in the direction of the Almighty.
We tell one another that there is a good reason that we are under terrible financial stress, that our spouse was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, that our seemingly happy marriage ended in shock and pain – and if we do not really believe there is a reason, we convince ourselves that there must be, but we just are not good enough or faithful enough to see it clearly. And the anger and sadness we feel is heaped upon our spouse or child or the ones we love – rather than upon the shoulders of the one who has always understood the depth of our pain.
Human emotions are powerful and real. Sometimes we feel like crying. Like the Israelites, we too hurt and bleed and despair. We find ourselves exiled, strangers in a strange wasteland of grief and sadness.
Alongside Babylon's rivers we sat on the banks; we cried and cried,
Sometimes we do not feel like singing. There is nothing to sing about, and the words will not come. We wish we could go back to the way things were before but know we can not. And the pain squeezes our heart, and the anger engulfs us – and paralyzes us.
“Alongside the quaking aspens we stacked our unplayed harps.”
And sometimes we even feel like hating. We feel like putting a fist through a wall, lashing out at the spouse who did not ask first but deputized us as a cancer caretaker. We feel like damning the collection agencies that haunt us and getting back at the one who walked out on us and our marriage. There is nothing to build up. All that is left is to destroy.
Psalm 137 taps into those potent emotions. It can be a scary song because if we listen carefully to its words, they become our words too. The anger, the sadness, the vengefulness - these painful emotions – are at one time or anther - our emotions.
However, it is this naming of the deepest parts of our humanity that makes the psalms so powerful. They voice those deepest, most painful realities and trust that “God loves us as we are.” (Huey)
The anguished questions, the angry fist shaking, the eyes dimmed with weeping, the pillow wet with tears (Kathy Galloway) are all part of a truly honest relationship with God. You see (and this is the Good News), God accepts all of us – the sadness, the anger, even the thirst for vengeance. That is what the Psalmist is saying to us.
He is not whining or simply bemoaning the fact of the exile, but through this song, he is taking it all to God. He is praying his experience. Surely Walter Brueggemann is right when he says: “It is an act of profound faith to entrust one’s most precious hatreds to God, knowing they will be taken seriously.”
Pray your sorrow then. Pray your anger and your stress. Pray your despair and even your wish for vengeance. Cry out to God whatever lies deepest in your heart, trusting that the love which passes all our understanding is so profound that God will hold us close through it all – weeping with us, maybe even sometimes getting angry alongside us, but surely in the end bringing justice, healing, wholeness, and hope to us and to the world.
Written by Rev. Nancy A. Foran, pastor of the Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine
www.rvccme.org
If you attended Sunday School as a child, you probably learned that the Book of Psalms in the Old Testament part of our Bible is really a collection of songs, traditionally said to be written by King David. I have a vivid image of a long ago square paperback children’s book whose cover featured a very sweet-faced, Caucasian looking young David at the feet of Saul (the first king of Judah). David was playing his harp – or lyre – presumably composing all 150 psalms as he sang.
Though it makes for a lovely scene, the book’s illustrator was historically grossly inaccurate. You see, most modern Biblical scholars attribute only 73 of the psalms to David, and the likelihood that he wrote them as a youngster is slim to none.
The remaining psalms, such as the 137th, which we just read, were composed much later in Jewish history. We know that to be true because psalms like the 137th reflect devastating events that were unimaginable during King David’s glorious reign.
I think that this 137th psalm is one of the most powerful psalms of all. You see, it is an immense outpouring to God of all the sorrow and all the anger with its irresistible thirst for vengeance that overwhelmed the Israelites – understandably so - at the time the song was written.
Last week here in church, we talked about the prophet Jeremiah intuiting the inevitable fall of Jerusalem in 588 BC and the subsequent loss of the Jewish homeland to the Babylonians. As Jeremiah predicted, the Holy City was destroyed, and the temple lay in ruins.
For a people who had understood itself to be chosen by God, these circumstances were pretty hard to fathom – and that is why the psalmist sang about them. He was trying to make sense of these events that made no sense.
According to Walter Brueggemann, “The political-military experience…(was) effectively transposed into a deep theological crisis.” As UCC pastor, Kate Huey, speculated, “This disaster shook the people to their core (where trust in God lives), and drew from them questions, cries of anguish, and a thirst for vengeance.”
The Babylonian army had brought the Israelites to their knees, but the worst part was that much of the population was forcibly exiled to the far side of nowhere, there to become strangers in a strange wasteland – physically separated from families and communities, not to mention that Holy of Holiest place where God resided.
“Alongside Babylon's rivers we sat on the banks; we cried and cried, remembering the good old days in Zion” - Jerusalem.
Their lives and culture had fallen apart. What had happened to them? How had they gotten here, where, as Kate Huey writes, the “past was separated from the present by the ashes of destruction, by miles of desert traversed under duress, and by the scenery of a land foreign and strange?”
These years of exile were a time of barrenness, bitterness, brokenness – and homesickness beyond measure. Yet, as painful as it was to remember Jerusalem, it would be even worse to forget. The experience of being taken captive and forcibly relocated led to decades of trying desperately to keep the ancient story alive – yet fearing that someday their children would not remember, that someday a future generation would be assimilated into this pagan culture and would lose its own identity, lose its God.
“If I ever forget you, Jerusalem, let my fingers wither and fall off like leaves. Let my tongue swell and turn black if I fail to remember you..”
It was a time of tears, and that is part of what the Psalmist is telling us. It was a time so sad that the Israelites could not even sing –
“Alongside the quaking aspens, we stacked our unplayed harps.”
It was impossible to play a single note even when the soldiers who stood nearby mockingly demanded a song. “Hey, Jewboy, sing us a song. Sing us a song about your happy homeland so far away.”
But beyond the sadness, it was also a time of great anger coupled with a deep seeded wish for revenge, and that is also what the Psalmist is telling us.
“GOD, remember the ruin of Jerusalem…And you, Babylonians—ravagers! A reward to whoever gets back at you for all you've done to us; Yes, a reward to the one who grabs your babies and smashes their heads on the rocks!”
Wow! Now that is pretty harsh! And yet, as the Psalmist sings to God of all the vengefulness and grief and anger and fear and homesickness and abject sorrow, in doing so, he invites the Holy One to embrace that which lies deepest in his heart and in the hearts of the exiles.
It is not a pretty sight for Yahweh/God to behold. The psalmist know that but through his song prays that God will not turn away in disgust and displeasure but rather will accept the invitation and enter into the bleakness and ruin of their lives.
Sometimes I think that today we have homogenized our relationship with God. Our prayers are composed and controlled and seldom are a groaning cry. Our hands are neatly folded and are not often raised in an angry fist shaking in the direction of the Almighty.
We tell one another that there is a good reason that we are under terrible financial stress, that our spouse was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, that our seemingly happy marriage ended in shock and pain – and if we do not really believe there is a reason, we convince ourselves that there must be, but we just are not good enough or faithful enough to see it clearly. And the anger and sadness we feel is heaped upon our spouse or child or the ones we love – rather than upon the shoulders of the one who has always understood the depth of our pain.
Human emotions are powerful and real. Sometimes we feel like crying. Like the Israelites, we too hurt and bleed and despair. We find ourselves exiled, strangers in a strange wasteland of grief and sadness.
Alongside Babylon's rivers we sat on the banks; we cried and cried,
Sometimes we do not feel like singing. There is nothing to sing about, and the words will not come. We wish we could go back to the way things were before but know we can not. And the pain squeezes our heart, and the anger engulfs us – and paralyzes us.
“Alongside the quaking aspens we stacked our unplayed harps.”
And sometimes we even feel like hating. We feel like putting a fist through a wall, lashing out at the spouse who did not ask first but deputized us as a cancer caretaker. We feel like damning the collection agencies that haunt us and getting back at the one who walked out on us and our marriage. There is nothing to build up. All that is left is to destroy.
Psalm 137 taps into those potent emotions. It can be a scary song because if we listen carefully to its words, they become our words too. The anger, the sadness, the vengefulness - these painful emotions – are at one time or anther - our emotions.
However, it is this naming of the deepest parts of our humanity that makes the psalms so powerful. They voice those deepest, most painful realities and trust that “God loves us as we are.” (Huey)
The anguished questions, the angry fist shaking, the eyes dimmed with weeping, the pillow wet with tears (Kathy Galloway) are all part of a truly honest relationship with God. You see (and this is the Good News), God accepts all of us – the sadness, the anger, even the thirst for vengeance. That is what the Psalmist is saying to us.
He is not whining or simply bemoaning the fact of the exile, but through this song, he is taking it all to God. He is praying his experience. Surely Walter Brueggemann is right when he says: “It is an act of profound faith to entrust one’s most precious hatreds to God, knowing they will be taken seriously.”
Pray your sorrow then. Pray your anger and your stress. Pray your despair and even your wish for vengeance. Cry out to God whatever lies deepest in your heart, trusting that the love which passes all our understanding is so profound that God will hold us close through it all – weeping with us, maybe even sometimes getting angry alongside us, but surely in the end bringing justice, healing, wholeness, and hope to us and to the world.
Written by Rev. Nancy A. Foran, pastor of the Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine
www.rvccme.org
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Jeremiah 32:1-3, 6-15 "Buy!"
One of my all-time favorite movies is “Gone with the Wind.” I love the opulent costumes, the dramatic storyline, and the marvelous insights into Southern plantation life, all set against the backdrop of the Civil War. Over and above all that, of course, Rhett Butler is not so bad either – especially when he picks up Scarlet O’Hara and carries her up that long staircase for a night that is probably best left to our imaginations.
Now that Joe and I have our little farm in Naples, the ending of “Gone with the Wind” makes a lot more sense to me. Perhaps you recall the last scene when Scarlet is silhouetted against the Georgia evening sky, holding the red earth of Tara, her beloved plantation, in her hands, finally understanding something her father had told her years before. She might have lost her husband, lost her daughter, lost all the wealth she had grown accustomed to, but she still had the land – and from that she could forge a future.
Both the real and symbolic significance of land – real estate – goes back to the very beginnings of Biblical lore – stretching all the way in history to God’s promising land to Abraham – and the journey the old nomad and his family undertook to reach that Promised Land.
However, just as Moses died before he set foot on the land God gave to the Israelites, so Abraham never got there either. By the time he died, the only land he owned was the cemetery plot he had purchased for Sarah, his wife. It would be many hundreds of years later that Abraham’s descendents led by Joshua would finally take possession of the gifted land, only to lose it time and again as one empire or another overran the tiny Jewish nation.
The significance of land is a recurrent theme in the Old Testament – and so we should not be all that surprised to find real estate the topic of the passage we just read. Here, embedded in the book of Jeremiah, is a strange little story about the prophet purchasing utterly useless land on a real estate tip from God.
The year is 588 B.C. - five hundred and eighty eight years before the birth of Jesus. The city of Jerusalem is under siege, and the vast army of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, is camped at its gates. Jeremiah is the top dog prophet of Zedekiah, the current King of Judah.
And Jeremiah knows what is going to happen. He is not called a prophet for nothing. Resistance is futile, he realizes. The Babylonian armies will prevail, the Holy City will fall – and, for the Israelites, all will once again be lost. And, being the good prophet and servant of Yahweh/God, Jeremiah told the King and the royal military commanders exactly that.
Well, you can imagine the impact of such an announcement on the morale of both the troops and the civilian populace. Not surprisingly, King Zedekiah was exceedingly displeased with the prophet’s report. As kings in that day were wont to do when they did not like what they were told and because Jeremiah was so maddeningly persistent in his prophecies of doom and gloom, King Zedekiah imprisoned Jeremiah, placing him under house-arrest as a traitor.
And there, while Jeremiah was in jail, something very unusual happened. God gave the prophet a real estate tip. "Your cousin is going to offer to sell you some land. When he does, buy it."
How crazy is that! The land is going to be overrun by the Babylonian army any minute now. The Jews will be ousted – and God says “Buy!”?
Jeremiah is in prison and will never see the land. The mightiest empire in the world will occupy it anyway. No one in Jeremiah’s generation will ever inhabit the land, much less prosper on it – and God says “Buy!”?
Vandals are camped outside the Holy City walls. The people inside are starving, sick, and desperate – unable to tend the land outside the city anyway. And everyone knows that being in a battle zone wreaks havoc on real estate - and God says “Buy!”?
Buy? When the land is useless, worthless, and a horrible reminder of everything that has been lost? This is like buying stocks when the market is crashing, or purchasing a home even as you watch it disappear down a sinkhole (Scott Hoezee).
“Yes,” God says to Jeremiah. “Buy.” And being the good prophet and servant of Yahweh/God, Jeremiah does just that. The old prophet buys the land from his cousin – and even makes quite a public display of his outrageous and seemingly foolish decision by making sure that the purchase is witnessed and registered. Then he buries the deed in an earthen jar to preserve it.
What a marvelous Biblical scene this is – and such an insight into Jeremiah’s relationship with the Almighty. Jeremiah’s trivial action of purchasing this worthless piece of real estate is a mighty and highly visible symbol of faith in God and hope for better times ahead.
When Jeremiah seals the deed in an earthenware jar, he provides the nation of Judah with a potent reminder that, all rationalism aside, the future is in God’s hands, not the hands of the Babylonians.
Through this real estate deal, through this seemingly bad investment on Jeremiah’s part, God is telling the people that the horrific circumstances in which they now find themselves is not the end.
There is a future – a good future for them – so good that God’s prophet himself is investing in it. There will come a time when the Promised Land will have value once more – when it will be economically worthwhile for everyone to buy and sell. Though it may be impossible to fathom now, one day the people of the covenant will again have the land because that is what God has always promised. God has not sold Israel. One day, the Jewish people will return.
In a way, Jeremiah’s very act helps to create that future for the Jewish people and challenges them to once again dream God’s dreams, invest in God’s future. Jeremiah puts his shekels where his faith is – and that is in the power and promises of Yahweh/God.
Like the ancient Israelites, you and I do not live in easy times. The economy hardly seems to be recovering. You may be worried about getting a job, keeping your job, selling your home, or making ends meet. You may feel overwhelmed by the poverty statistics nationwide – 1 in 7 people in our country living below the poverty line. As the talk of election and re-election heats up, you may wonder if real change is ever possible – or if it will always be the same old political bluster.
But remember Jeremiah’s real estate deal. Remember that in the midst of whatever our circumstances are, just as for the people of ancient Judah, there is good news for us too – and that is that this God of Jeremiah – this God of hope, this faithful God – is our God as well. It does not mean that all our problems will be solved. It does not mean that you will sell your house tomorrow or finally find a job. It does mean, however, that there is something to be said for trusting as Jeremiah did that a better future lies ahead.
Hold fast to that hope, tenuous as it may seem at times. Carve your future out of the sure and steadying knowledge that just as God had something better in mind for the Israelites after they were exiled to Babylon, so it will be for us.
Though it may be different than we expect, life will persist and somehow flourish. The future is worth investing in. As Walter Brueggemann once wrote: “The threats do not wane. The dangers are not imagined, the power to undo is on the loose…." God's word, however, "cuts the threat…siphons off the danger…tames the powers," and tells us, "do not fear."
United Church of Christ pastor Thomas Warren notes that “in January of 1943, three months before he was arrested and subsequently killed by the Nazis, Lutheran Pastor and Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote these words about Christian hope and faith when times are dark: "There remains for us only the very narrow way, often extremely difficult to find, of living every day as if it were our last, and yet living in faith and responsibility as though there were to be a great future. It is not easy to be brave and keep that spirit alive, but it is imperative."
And so Jeremiah buys the land – when investing in land is illogical – because he trusts in the promises and goodness of God. And so we struggle in our own dark times to live in the great hope of tomorrow – as individuals and as a community of faith – because we too trust in the promises and goodness of God.
Perhaps that is one of the most important things we can do as a faith community – be a source of that hope for Raymond and beyond. As Thomas Warren explains, we “build up the church, build up God's kingdom, build up God's reign of justice and righteousness and peace. (We) invest in and prepare the ground for the future. (We) show the world that God's spirit is alive and well here on earth - no matter the cost, no matter the risk, no matter the bad news of the day. Indeed the future of our lives, the future of our churches, the future of our world is not pre-determined; the future hangs in the balance.”
This is the kind of radical hope – and the outlandish investment style - that is required of us, we who are the Jeremiahs of our day.
by Rev. Nancy A. Foran
Pastor, Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine
www.rvccme.org
.
Now that Joe and I have our little farm in Naples, the ending of “Gone with the Wind” makes a lot more sense to me. Perhaps you recall the last scene when Scarlet is silhouetted against the Georgia evening sky, holding the red earth of Tara, her beloved plantation, in her hands, finally understanding something her father had told her years before. She might have lost her husband, lost her daughter, lost all the wealth she had grown accustomed to, but she still had the land – and from that she could forge a future.
Both the real and symbolic significance of land – real estate – goes back to the very beginnings of Biblical lore – stretching all the way in history to God’s promising land to Abraham – and the journey the old nomad and his family undertook to reach that Promised Land.
However, just as Moses died before he set foot on the land God gave to the Israelites, so Abraham never got there either. By the time he died, the only land he owned was the cemetery plot he had purchased for Sarah, his wife. It would be many hundreds of years later that Abraham’s descendents led by Joshua would finally take possession of the gifted land, only to lose it time and again as one empire or another overran the tiny Jewish nation.
The significance of land is a recurrent theme in the Old Testament – and so we should not be all that surprised to find real estate the topic of the passage we just read. Here, embedded in the book of Jeremiah, is a strange little story about the prophet purchasing utterly useless land on a real estate tip from God.
The year is 588 B.C. - five hundred and eighty eight years before the birth of Jesus. The city of Jerusalem is under siege, and the vast army of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, is camped at its gates. Jeremiah is the top dog prophet of Zedekiah, the current King of Judah.
And Jeremiah knows what is going to happen. He is not called a prophet for nothing. Resistance is futile, he realizes. The Babylonian armies will prevail, the Holy City will fall – and, for the Israelites, all will once again be lost. And, being the good prophet and servant of Yahweh/God, Jeremiah told the King and the royal military commanders exactly that.
Well, you can imagine the impact of such an announcement on the morale of both the troops and the civilian populace. Not surprisingly, King Zedekiah was exceedingly displeased with the prophet’s report. As kings in that day were wont to do when they did not like what they were told and because Jeremiah was so maddeningly persistent in his prophecies of doom and gloom, King Zedekiah imprisoned Jeremiah, placing him under house-arrest as a traitor.
And there, while Jeremiah was in jail, something very unusual happened. God gave the prophet a real estate tip. "Your cousin is going to offer to sell you some land. When he does, buy it."
How crazy is that! The land is going to be overrun by the Babylonian army any minute now. The Jews will be ousted – and God says “Buy!”?
Jeremiah is in prison and will never see the land. The mightiest empire in the world will occupy it anyway. No one in Jeremiah’s generation will ever inhabit the land, much less prosper on it – and God says “Buy!”?
Vandals are camped outside the Holy City walls. The people inside are starving, sick, and desperate – unable to tend the land outside the city anyway. And everyone knows that being in a battle zone wreaks havoc on real estate - and God says “Buy!”?
Buy? When the land is useless, worthless, and a horrible reminder of everything that has been lost? This is like buying stocks when the market is crashing, or purchasing a home even as you watch it disappear down a sinkhole (Scott Hoezee).
“Yes,” God says to Jeremiah. “Buy.” And being the good prophet and servant of Yahweh/God, Jeremiah does just that. The old prophet buys the land from his cousin – and even makes quite a public display of his outrageous and seemingly foolish decision by making sure that the purchase is witnessed and registered. Then he buries the deed in an earthen jar to preserve it.
What a marvelous Biblical scene this is – and such an insight into Jeremiah’s relationship with the Almighty. Jeremiah’s trivial action of purchasing this worthless piece of real estate is a mighty and highly visible symbol of faith in God and hope for better times ahead.
When Jeremiah seals the deed in an earthenware jar, he provides the nation of Judah with a potent reminder that, all rationalism aside, the future is in God’s hands, not the hands of the Babylonians.
Through this real estate deal, through this seemingly bad investment on Jeremiah’s part, God is telling the people that the horrific circumstances in which they now find themselves is not the end.
There is a future – a good future for them – so good that God’s prophet himself is investing in it. There will come a time when the Promised Land will have value once more – when it will be economically worthwhile for everyone to buy and sell. Though it may be impossible to fathom now, one day the people of the covenant will again have the land because that is what God has always promised. God has not sold Israel. One day, the Jewish people will return.
In a way, Jeremiah’s very act helps to create that future for the Jewish people and challenges them to once again dream God’s dreams, invest in God’s future. Jeremiah puts his shekels where his faith is – and that is in the power and promises of Yahweh/God.
Like the ancient Israelites, you and I do not live in easy times. The economy hardly seems to be recovering. You may be worried about getting a job, keeping your job, selling your home, or making ends meet. You may feel overwhelmed by the poverty statistics nationwide – 1 in 7 people in our country living below the poverty line. As the talk of election and re-election heats up, you may wonder if real change is ever possible – or if it will always be the same old political bluster.
But remember Jeremiah’s real estate deal. Remember that in the midst of whatever our circumstances are, just as for the people of ancient Judah, there is good news for us too – and that is that this God of Jeremiah – this God of hope, this faithful God – is our God as well. It does not mean that all our problems will be solved. It does not mean that you will sell your house tomorrow or finally find a job. It does mean, however, that there is something to be said for trusting as Jeremiah did that a better future lies ahead.
Hold fast to that hope, tenuous as it may seem at times. Carve your future out of the sure and steadying knowledge that just as God had something better in mind for the Israelites after they were exiled to Babylon, so it will be for us.
Though it may be different than we expect, life will persist and somehow flourish. The future is worth investing in. As Walter Brueggemann once wrote: “The threats do not wane. The dangers are not imagined, the power to undo is on the loose…." God's word, however, "cuts the threat…siphons off the danger…tames the powers," and tells us, "do not fear."
United Church of Christ pastor Thomas Warren notes that “in January of 1943, three months before he was arrested and subsequently killed by the Nazis, Lutheran Pastor and Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote these words about Christian hope and faith when times are dark: "There remains for us only the very narrow way, often extremely difficult to find, of living every day as if it were our last, and yet living in faith and responsibility as though there were to be a great future. It is not easy to be brave and keep that spirit alive, but it is imperative."
And so Jeremiah buys the land – when investing in land is illogical – because he trusts in the promises and goodness of God. And so we struggle in our own dark times to live in the great hope of tomorrow – as individuals and as a community of faith – because we too trust in the promises and goodness of God.
Perhaps that is one of the most important things we can do as a faith community – be a source of that hope for Raymond and beyond. As Thomas Warren explains, we “build up the church, build up God's kingdom, build up God's reign of justice and righteousness and peace. (We) invest in and prepare the ground for the future. (We) show the world that God's spirit is alive and well here on earth - no matter the cost, no matter the risk, no matter the bad news of the day. Indeed the future of our lives, the future of our churches, the future of our world is not pre-determined; the future hangs in the balance.”
This is the kind of radical hope – and the outlandish investment style - that is required of us, we who are the Jeremiahs of our day.
by Rev. Nancy A. Foran
Pastor, Raymond Village Community Church, Raymond, Maine
www.rvccme.org
.
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