Weaving Good

Genesis 37:3-8, 17-22, 26-34 and 50:15-21

“Weaving Good ”

25 September 2016 St. Andrew’s Military Chapel Singapore

            Little brothers are so annoying at times. They get all the special treatment and attention, relaxed curfew rules, and if there is ever an argument or fight the younger brother always comes out smelling like roses because he would never start an argument.

            Well, that’s at least what us older brothers would like everyone to believe. Disclaimer: my brother and I had our moments, but we get along just fine and I hold no ill will against the favoritism he received J

            Joseph does nothing to dispel these stereotypes. The Joseph we meet in in Genesis 37 is a certified brat. He tells his brothers on multiple occasions they will all bow down to him because he is the greatest of the bunch. His father keeps him home while the rest toil in the fields and even gives Joseph a special cloak, the famous Technicolor Dreamcoat.

            I don’t blame his brothers for holding a bit of a grudge and wanting to teach Joseph some humility. But, they went a bit far in their endeavor to bring their annoying little brother down a notch or two.

            I may have threatened my own brother with shipping him off myself, but it was nothing more than threats. I’m pretty sure I also frequently tried to convince him he was adopted, because who would let this annoyance into our family? We may have also had a few fights where some good-natured roughhousing got a bit out of control or what seemed like a good defense of personal space or property was taken too far. But, I never actually thought of throwing him in a ditch or selling him to someone (maybe I did think of selling him off).

            Good thing Ruben spoke some sense into the family mob and told them to not kill Joseph and just leave him in a pit for a while so he could go and clean up the mess later. However, his brothers were a step ahead of him and went back to the pit to sell him off, but some other wanderers had already found Joseph and sold him where he eventually lands in Egypt.

            Joseph’s story includes a bit more suffering. He becomes a member of Potiphar’s household, does quite well in his role actually. For someone who really hadn’t worked a day in his life, he becomes the head of Potiphar’s house running the day-to-day helping Potiphar prosper. Potiphar noticed that Joseph had a special blessing and continued to rely on Joseph.

            Potiphar’s wife becomes jealous and covetous of Joseph, eventually accusing him of sexual assault. Potiphar, without even asking for the whole story, throws Joseph into jail. Again, in the midst of that suffering and tragedy, people are put under Joseph’s care and he takes care of his fellow prisoners. In prison Joseph is correctly interpreting dreams, the same thing that got him into this whole mess. Wword gets back to Pharaoh about Joseph’s dream reading ability.

            Correctly interpreting Pharaoh’s dream about an upcoming famine, Joseph is put in charge of preparing Egypt for the famine. Again Joseph is influencing people outside of Israel. Eventually, his brothers come to Egypt looking for relief from the famine because Egypt is the only nation that properly prepared and has so much grain stored up they can sell to other nations.

            Joseph gets back at his brothers a bit and requires them to bring their youngest brother to Egypt with them. Despite the pleas of Jacob to let Benjamin stay in Israel, the family returns with Benjamin and learns that Joseph never died but that his being sold into slavery worked out for the good of Joseph, his family, and the nation of Israel.

            Nice, neat, and tidy. Just the way we like our fairy tales to end. However, this isn’t a fairy tale, it’s a story of how Israel is able to survive almost any circumstance because God is at work in every situation.

            Just looking at the news every day, we know that happy endings for those in slavery are not the norm. There are many happy endings, but there are many more that don’t end this way. So, it may be hard to see God at work in the darkness of the world. How do we make sense of this happy ending when we know what happens in the world around us?

            There are many ways to translate the Hebrew word that gives us the word intend in verse 50. One way to read this verse is “Even though you planned to harm me, God considered/wove it for good.”

            If we read it this way it changes our interpretation from where God is the one who lets bad things happen or causes them to occur to a reading where God can work good through what the world intends for ill. God has the ability to take horrible things and weave them into something beautiful through the redemptive power of God’s grace.

Will this always occur? No. But, the possibility of that redemption, even if the metamorphosis occurs without our knowledge is what nourishes a hopeful life.

            A situation that looked close to unredeemable at the time became something unexpected. I can find that transformation not just in Joseph, but throughout the story of Israel. But that’s not just Israel’s story, it is our story. 

            The wandering Abraham finds a lasting home, the murderer Cain is protected by God, barren women like Sarah and Rebecca have children, Hagar and Ishmael get a nation, the devious Jacob is renamed Israel, and even arrogant Joseph is humble and forgiving of those that made him suffer immensely. John Newton goes from slave trader to writer of Amazing Grace. Horatio Spafford pens It is Well With My Soul while sailing over the route where his family perished in a sinking.

Christians are a weird family, completely different in almost every way but united through our faith. We, in the line of Israel, are a family full of deception, jealousy, hatred, gossip, wishing of ill will, ignorance of social ills, the list goes on. However, our family is resilient, ultimately reliable, and most important, redeemable. For we are all redeemable regardless of what we have and haven’t done.

            What we intend for harm and ill will is not beyond the reach of God’s grace and redemption. No matter the evil in one’s heart, it cannot overpower the love and grace of God. I may never see the battle won on a grand scale where all pain is washed away, but I can see the small victories of grace over despair each and every day. At times, it may feel like despair is winning the day in my own life, but my faith in God’s grace and love gives hope for the next breath, the next step, the next day. So I too can be like Joseph and open for God to redeem any situation I find myself to reflect God’s glory and power to the world.

Promises Promises

Genesis 15:1-6

“Promises, Promises”

18 September 2016 St. Andrew’s Military Chapel Singapore

            We all like receiving promises and blessings from others. Promises give us hope and something to look forward to as we trudge through the valleys of life. While they may show us that we are small because someone is offering the gift of a promise or blessing to us, at the same time promises and blessings demonstrate to us that we are part of something much greater than ourselves.

            Sometimes promises are small. An ice cream for good grades. The knowledge the tooth fairy will leave a small amount of money in exchange for a tooth. The ability to start in a sporting event for your final home game or match (especially for those of us that struggled to even make the team much less to get playing time). Maybe the promise to play in a big game if the score is way too lopsided (in your team’s favor or against).

            Other times we receive or make large promises. Paying for a child’s education (maybe with some strings attached). Signing a mortgage on a home. Getting married. Having or adopting a child or children.

            Sometimes promises are fulfilled and we are grateful. Sometimes promises are broken and we are disappointed at best and devastated at worst. Accepting the gift of a promise means that we are putting our trust in another person to fulfill that promise. Even if we put it to paper and sign something that is legally binding, there aren’t any guarantees.

            Then, there are promises that are fulfilled, but just not in the way we expect or desire to have a promise fulfilled.

            At this point in Abram’s life, he has been promised a great deal from God in exchange for a few things. Leave his home, drag his immediate family away from the land he knew to a new land without any support in exchange for the hope that he would one day be the start of a new nation in this strange new world he found himself.   

            He’s done all that and yet, at the ripe old age of 75 he is still without an heir. He could legally pass everything along to one of his servants allowing the promise to be fulfilled through his household, but God specifically said it would be fulfilled through his offspring. So Abram does what we all do, he lodges a complaint with God.

            In the Old Testament, blessings follow a fairly predictable pattern. The recipient receives a blessing or promise and will then protest in some manner as to why the blessing won’t work (human circumstances that will preclude its fulfillment, a feeling of inadequacy in the recipient). But, there is always God saying, “Relax, I’ve got this.”

            And that’s the part we tend to miss even today, God’s reassurance.

            It’s easy for us to get so focused on the humanity in which we live that we forget to let God be God in our lives. We all do this, so it’s kind of reassuring that the father of our faith, the soon to be renamed Abraham, has similar doubts within his own faith.

            Remember, in Abram’s case even the reassurance of God talking to him and having him physically look at a representation of the vastness of his influence wasn’t enough to prevent him and Sarai from trying to fulfill God’s promise by their own methods, or even laughing at God years later while still awaiting the glimmer of fulfillment to the promise.

            The promise God made to Abram and Sarai could literally be one regarding their life or death. Back in the day, one depended on children to care for them in their later years. Families expected that the children would take care of their elders as they aged and were unable to tend the flock, sow and harvest the crops, go and draw water from the well. Without children, as one got older they were at the mercy of may factors because Social Security, 401Ks, super annuation, whatever we do for retirement planning, was thousands of years away.

            So, in spite of Sarai being unable to have children, God has promised them a long life with someone to care for them as they grew older and to continue the family in a new land. By providing the promise of children to those without prospects of having a child, God has provided new life and resurrection to this family. But, not in the way or on the timeline they are expecting and that is why it is easy to miss God’s reassurance of “I’ve got this.”

              Along with missing God’s reassurance, sometimes it’s also easy to forget the reason God blesses individuals. God doesn’t bless for an Instagram hashtag or to show off our blessing to the world. Just as when God first blessed Abram saying, “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing…and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed,” we too are expected to bless the world.

            That isn’t a condition on the blessing; it’s the result of the blessing. God blessed Abram before he could live into his part. God used Abram, and plans to use everyone else who proclaims a belief in God to bless the world as a result of receiving a divine blessing. I read a great definition of what is meant by being blessed to be a blessing. Walter Brueggemann writes that a blessing is “not a direct responsibility to do something for others but that the life of [the one blessed] under the promise will energize and model a way for the other nations also to receive a blessing from this God.”

            Maybe I’ll never know what my blessing to the world looks like or ever see the blessing played out because I am only planting seeds and my time on earth will end well before those seeds bear fruit. Maybe I have blessed someone or something and didn’t realize it at the time. Either way, it is my faith in God’s steadfast promise that I will bless the world not to receive God’s blessing and love, but as a result of God’s loving me enough to bless me.

            When I experience the normal course of doubting God’s promises and wondering if I am blessed or am a blessing to the world, I can reflect back on Abram and Sarai and draw strength from the fact that they and I are walking the same journey. Moments of absolute knowing, moments of asking if God really does have a plan, moments of laughing in God’s face, moments of awe that God would dare use me as part of the grandest plan of all, and moments of relief that God’s got this.

            More than anything, Abram and Sarai show us that faith is hard. There will be starts and stops with doubt and dark times as part of the journey. Sometimes we’ll laugh in God’s face at the sheer absurdity of the request and/or reward. But, what we do know is that promise will be fulfilled in God’s way on God’s timeline which, at times, will defy all logic and reason. Even more, we may never see the fulfillment of that promise in our lifetimes, but we lean forward, knowing that God is present and active in our lives and the world keeping God’s promises and blessing us to be blessings to the world. God’s got this.

Equal Mercy

Luke 18:9-14

“Equal Mercy”

28 August 2016 St. Andrew’s Military Chapel Singapore

            Anyone remember group projects during school? The ones where you get paired up with people you don’t like or, more frustrating, people that won’t or can’t carry their share of the load. Those in the group who just don’t try, don’t offer any real insight to the planning and execution of the assignment. It’d be fine if they’d at least participate in the construction of the model, share some of the typing, or just go buy snacks to fuel the mad rush towards completion the night before.

            Yet, despite offering absolutely no tangible help or support in the overall success or failure, they get the same grade as the ones that pull the all-nighters and do all of the heavy lifting over the duration of the project.

            Even if you try to address it with the teacher, the most likely response to your pleading cries of mercy from the all-powerful teacher is “play the hand you are dealt” or something very similar.

            Then you ponder the situation in which you are doing more than required and all of the work while someone else does nothing and gets the same reward or punishment and realize it happens in more places than school. We find this scenario playing out in thousands of places and situations all around us. It makes us mad.

            Then we hear today’s Scripture and realize when we feel that way in our daily lives we are just like the Pharisee in this parable. We’ve done all the work and should be the one getting all of the glory. If life was fair, each person on the project would be rated separately by their individual contribution to the goal. If God was fair and just, then the tax collector wouldn’t receive the same justification as the righteous.

            When we think that mercy and forgiveness in the kingdom work in some karma like fashion, we miss the point of the kingdom. The Kingdom’s economy doesn’t make much sense to us, but I’m not sure it was designed to make human sense. That’s a hard pill to swallow, because we don’t like that kind of economic system.

            It’s hard not to sympathize with the tax collector. He’s at the temple praying for mercy, what we all should pray every time we encounter the divine. He’s also a pretty brave, and brazen, man. In that day, he wasn’t high on the list of people other Jews would want to hang out with.

That’s probably why he was sitting in the back pew, as far away from everyone else as he could possibly get. He may even have been doing everything in his power to find a quiet corner and wedge himself into the building to keep from being seen. A tax collector was seen as a combination of collaborator with Rome and extortionist of his fellow countrymen.

            Yet, for reasons we aren’t told, he enters the temple and asks for mercy and forgiveness. What’s so disturbing is that those hearing Jesus tell the story, as well as us here today, know that he deserves that mercy and justification before God. And we know he will walk away with the mercy he requests and desires.

The Pharisee in this story isn’t a typical Pharisee, in fact he’s probably a humorous caricature going above and beyond what most people do. Jesus describes him in this way to make a point. But, it isn’t a negative point about purity codes, scorn directed at Pharisees or the temple, nor about personal righteousness.

Our nameless Pharisee has done everything right, goes above and beyond what is required of him. He probably isn’t doing this to prove his merit and worthiness of salvation, he knew he was justified before God. He is thanking God for his calling and ability to live into a deep relationship with God. I doubt God was upset at the fact he was listing his righteousness in his prayer. God was probably disappointed that the Pharisee was comparing his deeds with another’s. A fact of the story that most likely shocked those listening to Christ because Pharisees weren’t known back then to dismiss members of the community, even tax collectors.

The real provocation in this parable is the relationship between these two extreme examples. The saintly Pharisee and the repentant tax collector are both embellished examples designed to provoke and prove a point.

The translation of one single word can make a significant difference in how an entire event is interpreted. In verse 14, there is a small Greek word, para. The NIV, NKJV, and NRSV all translate it as rather than. “This man went down to his home justified rather than the other.” Making para a comparative term is a perfectly valid way to translate it into English.

However, para is also the root for the word parallel. Those that remember geometry know that parallel lines travel infinitely together, alongside. In this translation, the two men would leave equally justified and in receipt of the same mercy.

Because parables are not designed to reinforce stereotypes but are told to shatter myths and provoke us, I think the second translation is the better choice. Having the tax collector leave full of mercy and the Pharisee empty handed is what we expect, it’s what we want. We want to see the boastful knocked down a peg or two. We want a rags to riches story, we love second chances provided it fits our narrative.

Both of these men have done things that displeased God. The tax collector stole from family members through his business practice to make some money, but he was just working within the system. The Pharisee has done everything right, even more than expected. He just made one mistake, praying a competitive prayer, and we jump all over him as getting his just desserts. They both need mercy, and they both walk away with the mercy they need.

Isn’t both of them walking away full of mercy the crazier ending, the more provocative way to end the story? It’s harder for us to hear and accept that God’s mercy is boundless and there for everyone. No matter how many times we come to the table, get what we need and still see the leftovers at the table, we’re naturally going to assume that mercy is scarce or only available for those who aren’t sinners. For then we don’t have any control over whom we get to spend eternity with.

Over the last few weeks as we’ve been journeying through these parables, I’ve been reading a book called Short Stories by Jesus. The author, Amy-Jill Levine, reads para as parallel so verse 14 reads, “this man went down to his home justified alongside the other.”

She then states that from this reading, “We see that divine grace cannot be limited, for to limit this grace would be to limit the divine. This unlimited generosity is something many of us find problematic. We are quite happy when we are saved; we are less happy when this salvation is extended to people we do not like, especially when our dislike is bolstered by seemingly very good reasons such as, “He’s a sinner.”

She also explored this parable at play in our group project setting. “The [member], whom we dismissed as lazy, as stupid, or as unable to contribute, may well have done what he could. He may have felt himself unworthy; indeed, the others may have signaled to him that we were disappointed he was assigned to our group. He trusted in us; he trusted in the system. Had we been more generous with him rather than resentful, we would have learned more as well. And what if he didn’t care at all? What if he depended on us, even thought we were fools for doing his work for him? What we do is still worthwhile. We can afford to be generous. There are other systems of justice in which his contributions or sins will be assessed.”

What we do is worthwhile and we can afford to be generous. Where are we like the Pharisee and need to be more generous and merciful to those who we feel are dragging us down or using the system? Where are we like the tax collector and need the system to help us out, need the system to give us a break? Perhaps this parable is Jesus telling us he cares more about how we love our neighbor and spread mercy and justice generously without question rather than how we get into heaven.

A Man in a Ditch

Luke 10:25-37

“A Man in a Ditch”

21 August 2016 St. Andrew’s Military Chapel Singapore

            Another familiar story. Not just to Christians. We even have laws based on this parable. Good Samaritan laws protect those who stop to help injured persons in good faith so that people are less apt to pass by a person who needs assistance. Because in most cases, some treatment is more important than no treatment so countries have developed laws to protect those who are helping as best they can even if they make mistakes in the assistance they render.

            These laws are a result of one way to read this parable. A reading in which we ask, why are we not helping all of those we encounter in a ditch by the side of the road? If others are going to leave people behind without any care, then I should be the one that comes to their aid and love my neighbor in need.

            Sounds pretty easy, right? Back in 1973, researchers conducted an experiment testing how people would react to a similar situation as the one we heard today. 40 students were gathered in one building and after completing a questionnaire about their religion, were told to head to another building to either give a talk on vocation or a talk on the Good Samaritan. As part of the assignment they were given various levels of hurry to make the talk.

            As they went to the other building to give their “talk” they encountered an individual who was in need of assistance. Care to guess how many stopped to help? On average 40% and it ranged from 63% in the low hurry category to 10% in the high hurry category. Oh, and the other important factor; this occurred at a seminary.

            Helping is much easier said than done. So before I get all self-righteous about how the priest and Levite reacted, keep in mind there’s about a 40% chance I’d stop and help depending on what occupies my mind.

Jesus uses this parable to demonstrate we are all neighbors and are called to help each other in our time of need. Those in need are more important than our next appointment, our next task, our daydreaming, our fear, whatever is holding us back from loving our neighbor. Perhaps we can all (myself included) do a better job paying less attention to Pokemon as we walk, and focus more on our surroundings and looking for ways to not just appreciate creation, but to love our neighbors along the way.

            If I turn this precious jewel of a parable to another angle, what I see is Jesus asking from whom will you accept help?

            As Jesus told this parable, the crowd most likely anticipated both the priest and Levite to help out the man. Though surprised at the lack of compassion from the first two, the listeners were waiting for the rescue. They knew this type of story. The third person would be the one who stopped, for the hero in these stories was always the third person. As Jesus told the story where the leaders of the community passed by, the crowd may have started to smile because it was going to be one of them to rescue the injured man.

            But, Jesus turned everything upside down. It was a Samaritan who stopped. Sometimes we forget just how shocking this was to Christ’s audience. It would be like us retelling the story with a paramedic and a Marine walking by but a member of ISIS helping the American lying half-dead by the road. 

            So there is a lingering question, from whom am I willing to accept help? My own kind of people either by race, gender, nationality? Would I accept mercy bestowed by my enemy, the one society teaches me to reject?

            When we read it from this angle, the question posed to us changes from “When should I help?” to “From whom am I willing to receive help?” That is an important question, especially in light of how we find and receive mercy.

            Mercy, by its nature is unexpected. Mercy is a surprise. It renews a life, restores a life, without warning without merit. Because mercy is not what karma dictates, it enters the scene from unnoticed corners of the stage. How many times have I not received mercy because it arrived in an unmarked package? Or, worse yet, have I rejected mercy because the package was unappealing?

            Let me turn this parable to one more angle, this time to the vision Martin Luther King saw in his readings. He preached on this very passage the night before he was assassinated. King saw the characters as having three outlooks on life. The robbers thought, “what’s yours is mine.” The priest and Levite thought, “what’s yours is yours and what’s mine is mine.” Sounds pretty familiar. The Samaritan’s philosophy is “what is mine is yours.” A way of life based on outrageous generosity and the way that lives out the command to love our neighbor.

            King then distills the parable down to the questions it asks of us. “The question is not, what will happen to me if I stop, but what will happen to him if I do not?” A question to move me from self-love and self-worry to true love of neighbor. What would the world look like if the church would first ask the question, “What will happen to people if I don’t stop to help?”

Who, other than the church, is truly there to combat evil in the world where we find it without regard to themselves? Who would step into dangerous places without ulterior motives? Yes, the church has it’s ugly warts and scars from its help rooted in the wrong reason, but that doesn’t take away the fact we are called to step in and care for the other.

King says “what is required of us is a kind of dangerous unselfishness.” Dangerous in that it puts us at risk for many things. Risk of bodily harm, risk of losing material wealth, risk of social ridicule, risk of all sorts of things because we decide to love our neighbor, to love everyone.

Risk is part of our lives and in Christ we are called to take larger risks of love because we have freedom in the knowledge that we are the recipients of the greatest love of all. Let us live into the many visions of this parable such that we both give and receive love from our neighbor, including our enemies, not for ourselves but because of God’s overabundance of love for us.