Dijon on the Farm (Matthew 13:31 - 33)

        Anybody here ever planted a seed? How about baked a loaf of bread? Well, then, these parables should resonate with you, just a little anyway . . . But there's one big difference between what we do here in the21st century and what they did in Jesus' day, the 1st century. In ancient agronomic societies, planting and baking weren't recreational activities. They weren't a matter of want-to, but a matter of have-to, a matter of need. Oh, I know ...many people who garden eat what they grow, and what other reason but to eat it would somebody bake bread? But most of us don't have to do those things, we can just run out to Kroger's for some veggies or bread. And if we want something a bit fancier, well there's always Panera Bread to do your baking.

        But when planting and baking are necessary for survival, it becomes work, it becomes drudgery . . . It involved a lot of bending over: in the hot sun to fold seed into the ground, and in front of the gaping maw of a hot, manure-fired oven, with no air conditioning in sight. So that's the first thing about these two parables: they described foundational activities, planting and baking, baking and planting foundational to 1st century life. If you wanted wheat, someone in the family--usually the men--had to put the seed in the ground the self. If you wanted bread, someone--usually the women-- had to bake it themselves.

        The second thing to notice is that together, these parables are are aimed at a broad cross-section of people. They have men covered--they're the ones doing the planting--as well as women, because they're the ones doing the baking. Again, it's different today: it's not nearly so cut-and-dried. Seed-planters--gardeners--are at least as likely to be women these days as men, and there are some fine, male bakers who. In 2010, all of Great Britain was shocked--shocked, I tell you!--when a man won the first Great British Bake Off, and last year, there were as many male contestants as female . . what is the world coming to?

        So we have "women's work" and "men's work" covered, and they're both, backbreaking activities crucial for survival, and that would seem to be the extent of the parallels between the,. After all, there's not a lot of similarities between planting and baking, except for the fact that without the first the second would be impossible. So why are they back-to-back, and more importantly, in what way is God's reign--called by Jesus here the Kingdom of Heaven?

        Well, one interpretation is suggested by the text itself: the mustard seed "is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree." And this is certainly true: if you google middle eastern mustard plants, you'll see be-turbaned individuals standing in front of towering plants that spread riotously behind them. Indeed, a little, tiny seed yields big plant-dividends, providing all kinds of room for birds of the air, and most anything else.

        As far as the bread-making goes, we are handicapped just a little by our translation: the Greek word translated here as "yeast" is actually "leaven:" a baker would save just a little of the dough from the last batch to leaven the current one. Exactly like with sourdough today, dough would be saved from day to day," but the analogy between mustard seeds and leaven is the same. A tiny pinch would be folded into the bread--like the seed is folded into the soil?--making a large amount of bread, capable of feeding whole family, giving them a way to live just as the mustard plant gives birds a place to live.

        That's one layer of interpretation, and it has certainly been preached that way: I belief I did it here the last time this passage rolled around. The kingdom of heaven is like planting a mustard seed and folding yeast into dough because from extremely small beginnings--just a tiny nudge, a near invisible presence, great things, surprising things, take shape.

        But here's the thing: in the ancient Middle East, mustard plants were noxious weeds, and nobody would be caught dead planting one in their garden. In fact, rabbinic law--the Law of Diverse Kinds--prohibits planting mustard. Why? Because if you do so, the mustard quickly jumps rows, mixing with the other plants, violating prohibitions in the Torah about mixing things of different kinds. Thus, mustard plants were considered unclean, or at least leading up to it.

        In a similar way, leaven was considered evil, and perhaps unclean: everywhere it is mentioned, with the possible exception of this parable, it has evil connotations. In Leviticus, a person who eats leavened bread during Passover is to be cut off from the fellowship of Israel. Perhaps this is why in this parable--again contrary to our translation--the Greek original says the woman "hid" the leaven in the dough.

        So: here you have a couple of bad actors which, if not actually unclean are on speaking terms with the concept, and like Jacob--the little weasel who founded Israel--their disreputable presence creates great and wondrous things. And that's another layer of interpretation of these two parables: what is considered unclean by the religious establishment--and I'd expand that to polite society in general--what's often unacceptable by the establishment is often just what is used to further the kingdom of God. In fact, God--the author and creator of all--is the one who put it there, who hid it in the dough, who buried it in the soil of the universe.  The Bible is full of examples--Abraham himself, the uber-patriarch of both the Hebrews and the Muslims, doesn't act particularly honorably much of the time. The prostitute Rahab saves the day by keeping Joshua's spies safe from the King of Jericho, and the woman at the well, who had had five husbands, becomes the first evangelist. Over and over, God uses the most fragile vessels, the least of these to sew the seeds of the kingdom.

        But wait--there's more! In Christian metaphysics--metaphysics is the study of the spiritual, unseen structure of the cosmos--the realms of the divine are said to be perpendicular, at right angles to our our horizontal existence, our existence in the worldly plane. We live out our lives on solid, horizontal ground--this is before the invention of flight, a time when living in the vertical plane meant falling of a cliff--we live out lives in the horizontal, and a tree reaches upward, symbolizing the vertical dimensions, the realms of the divine.

        Scholar Lynn Bauman tells us that image of a tree is universal across cultures and histories . . . Depending on the culture, the image of the Tree varies by species, but the upshot remains the same: at the heart of the universe is a living entity which, like a tree, has grown from something small. And we are all--not just the birds of the air but all of creation--shielded by its leaves. We move in and out of its branches and are nourished by its fruit. We build our nests in its boughs, and raise our young in the shelter of its limbs.

        The image of the Tree of Life is a metaphor for--it represents--the immense, magnetic and universal pole around which all cosmic reality is structured. Just like warm, abundant bread, it grows from the smallest thing, hidden by God in the dough, in the warp and weft of our lives. Where is that abundance breaking out in your life? Where do you see the kingdom exploding out, shockingly, excitingly breaking into your daily grind? And where in that daily existence do you feel sheltered, nurtured by the sun-dappled leaves of the universal Tree? I challenge you, I challenge us all, to seek it out. Because only if we seek it shall we find.
Amen.

Rock Head (Genesis 28:10-19a)

     Our passage opens with "Jacob left Beer-sheba and went toward Haran," and boy, is that ever an understatement.  There's a whole lot of history wrapped up in that one terse line . . . it’s more like "Jacob snuck out of Beer-sheba, and went to Haran."  or "Jacob left Beer-sheba on the lam, and went to Haran" or how about this:  "Jacob ran out of Beer-sheba just one step in front of his enraged and murderous brother, and went toward Haran, where he was expected to get a wife, settle down, and stay out of Esau's way." that would have more fully described the situation . . . as he sets out on his journey, he’s just one step away from being a fugitive, a refugee from his own family.

Let's recap, shall we?  Isaac – now blind and in his dotage – nevertheless retains his strong preference for Jacob's brother Esau, who was only seconds older – by a heel's-breadth – than Jacob.  Back when they were born, Genesis tells us –with characteristic understatement – "Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field, while Jacob was a quiet man, living in tents.  Isaac loved Esau, because he was fond of game."  And there you have it – Esau was a good old boy, a man of the field, probably drove a four-by-four camel, but Jacob was quiet, and preferred the tents, and that's where the women hung out, for Pete's sake, and Jacob was a mama's boy for sure, and you know how macho men like Esau treat a mama’s boy, you know how society, even now, treats one of those . . . the snickers, then whispers, “I’ve always thought that he was a little, you know, light in the loafers . . .” Is it any wonder that "Isaac loved Esau, but Rebekah loved Jacob."

And as usual, the dysfunctionality in the parent's relationship was played out in that of the brothers.  Not once but twice did Jacob take by trickery what was not rightfully his . . . Remember when he got Esau to trade his birthright for a lousy plate of stew?  Then later, at Rebekah's urging, he took advantage of Isaac's blindness and feeble-mindedness and dressed up like Esau and stole his blessing, and that's what put him on the run.  Esau hated Jacob, and he said to himself  “My father isn’t long for this world then I will kill my brother Jacob”

And so Jacob's carrying more baggage than just a toothbrush and a spare change of clothes . . . he's on the run from his family, from the comfort of Isaac's riches and his mother's arms, from everything he loves and knows . . . and we know that he's not exactly what Cecille B. DeMille would order from central casting to play a hero.  He's a conniver, he's a deceiver, he's a cheat, one of those weasely little outsiders like Shylock that get blamed for everything.

And now, in our passage, Jacob is retracing—in reverse—the route of his illustrious grandfather Abraham, he's returning to Abraham's kinfolk in Haran to get himself a wife . . . and there's nobody with him, he's all alone, hardly befitting the son of a wealthy herdsman like Isaac . . . and he's tired when darkness arrives, at what our passage calls "a certain place," he's weary to the bone, and so he takes one of the stones of the place, and he puts it under his head – his back is killing him – and lays down.

And he dreams, and behold! there's a ladder, set up against the earth and its top – literally in Hebrew "head" – its head reaches up into the heavens, just as Jacob's head is on that very earthbound rock . . . and on the ladder are angels – literally messengers – of God, ascending and descending.  And Jacob knows immediately what he's seeing . . . it's a pathway between the worlds, like the ones in temples that the priests use to go up into God's presence . . . it's like a rift between planes of existence . . .

The Celts believed that there are thin places between the worlds, places where the fabric separating one world from another is thin, and that the right people – or things – can travel between the world's through these places . . . My friend Roberta, a mystic, went to the Isle of Iona in Scotland, the oldest Christian site continuously in use in the West, and she could feel the worn place there, she could feel the heavens or God’s Kingdom or something there, perhaps brought on by centuries of use . . . maybe that's what Jacob feels or sees or experiences in his dream . . . a thin place, imaged as a ladder – or more faithfully to the Hebrew, a ramp – a two-way highway to heaven, brothers and sisters, wide enough for angels to pass one another on their way to and fro . . . and today, when I think of this scene, I don't think of a ladder or a ramp, I picture escalators in a department store, and here's Jacob down below, looking up, and the angels, the messengers of God are gliding up and down, through the opening into and out of the floors above.  Only it isn’t some department store, they aren’t going between small appliances and women’s apparel, they’re reporting to God above, and bringing God’s messages back on the return trip.

But they don’t bring them to Jacob, he gets special treatment, and behold!  God is standing right there beside him, delivering the message his very own self: "I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father – and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and your offspring, to you and your seed . . ."  And once again, here is the concept of land, or earth, and it’s used five times in this passage . . . land saturates the Hebrew scriptures . . . the most common Hebrew word for it – aretz – appears 2500 times . . . it's no coincidence that name of the first man, Adam, is another Hebrew word for earth.  Even today, this concept is threaded through the Jewish consciousness, at least in the Holy Land . . . one of the biggest newspapers in Israel is named Ha-Aretz . . . the land . . .

See the symbolism at work here? Jacob’s head is on the land, just as the head of the ladder is in heaven . . . Jacob is of ha-Aretz, of the land . . . he in a sense is the land—earthy, tricky, sometimes hard to deal with . . . though he doesn’t know it, he carries all the hopes of his people for a place of their own with him . . . And the Lord promises all the land under his head to him and his offspring . . . and they will be like the dust of the land, and they shall spread out – in Hebrew it's literally burst – that they will burst out onto the world, to the east and west and north and south, and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in Jacob and his offspring . . . and by now, it's sounding mighty familiar to Jacob, because it’s nearly word-for-word what God has said to Abraham over the years . . . just as he was setting out from Haran, the Lord had said "I will make of you a great nation . . . and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed, "and another time, a little further down the road "I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth; so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted."  And in point of fact, that's the . . . point . . . what we have here is a reiteration of the Abrahamic promise, the Abrahamic covenant, upon which all of Israel's claim to fame – then as well as now – has been based. And it comes to Jacob in a dream.

It reminds me of the old story—forgive me if I’ve told you this—the story of a woman who went to a shrink and told him the Lord told her in a dream to become a preacher, and the shrink says—reaching for the thorazine—but Liz  . . . that’s only a dream, and Liz looks at him like he’s an idiot and says “Of course it is—God speaks to us in dreams.”

And she’s right—God speaks to people in dreams.  Or at least God did . . . he doesn’t seem to much any more . . . we are so rational, so steeped in our materialism—both from a philosophical standpoint and a consumerist one, they are really one and the same—that we don’t hear or see God any more, and we pooh-pooh modern stories like that, and prescribe anti-psychotic drugs . . . and maybe that’s one reason we have so much trouble just relying on God, just letting go and letting God, as the saying goes.  We really don’t believe God comes down into our lives, we think it’s all primitive clap trap.  We believe in a God, but it’s a neutered God, trapped in our own rationalistic prison.  God still comes to us in dreams, but we don’t believe it when it happens.

But God doesn’t just come to us in dreams, God comes to us in everything and in everybody. And I confess that I’m not very good at seeing this . . . I’m not saying that everything is a message from God, every little jot and tittle of daily life, but we tend to miss these things in our daily life that are . . . we tend to get busy, we tend to forget to look, and in fact, perhaps, it’s impossible with our harried lives . . . but we can often see it in retrospect, can’t we, see God’s working, God’s speech after it’s happened . . . and so developing the capability and habit to look for it is important . . . and when I remember to do it, the Benedictine practice of examining the day before bed helps tremendously, it helps me to see the little in-breakings of God’s kingdom in my own life . . .

When Jacob wakes up, he's awe-struck, and says "How awesome is this place, anyway? Surely the Lord is in this place . . . and I did not know it."  And in gratitude – or maybe so God won’t change his mind and fry him instead – Jacob builds a church . . . well, maybe not a church, but a shrine like the ones Abraham used to make all the time . . . he takes the stone where he'd laid his head and poured oil over its top, literally over it's head, as it says in Hebrew, and sets it up as a pillar, as a sacred marking spot, a pointer to the divine.  And the anointing with oil of the standing stone’s head symbolizes the anointing of Jacob himself as the successor to Abraham.  And he calls the place where he knew God was with him Bethel, which means house of God.  Surely God is in the house, and I did not know it.

This knowing of God’s presence can be elusive to us today . . . we have to cultivate the practice of looking, and often we have to be content to glimpse little signs and signals, little indicators that God is here beside us in the world . . . but they are there, they’re all around us, just as God surrounds us, working and speaking to us all the time. God spoke to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Paul and Teilhard de Chardin . . . and God speaks to us.  And in these days of political posturing, of harm and heartache and hope, it’s ever-more important that we listen to God in the community, but more importantly, as God speaks through one another . . . and we need to keep one thing in mind: God doesn’t speak to us in anger and resentment, God is not a troublemaker or a pot stirrer.  God treats us and speaks to us as we would like to be treated and spoken to, and we should do the same with one another. We should treat each other with kindness and patience and forbearance, and with the knowledge that God speaks through one another. So let’s be gentle with one another and listen.  Amen.

Bad Agriculture (Matthew 13:1-9; 18-23)

      It's hot there beside the sea, great billowing, shimmering sheets of heat rise from the sand, so that even the healthiest shrub looks wasted, shriveled-up, ready to die, and that's the way all the humans feel as well . . . dry, used-up, parched-grey in the afternoon light . . . it's too early for cool breezes, for desert-evening evaporative cooling . . . and yet, still a crowd gathers, a roiling, dangerous, smelly crowd . . .if it's hot outside the crowd, in the open desert that wraps the sea of Galilee like a shroud, imagine what it's like in it's middle . . . and personal hygiene?  Well, it's not of the highest caliber, and the disciples, who'd followed Jesus out of the house, are now sandwiched 'twixt crowd and water, and everybody gets it when Jesus hops into a boat tethered in the shallows, and so there they are, crowd and disciples on the beach, Jesus in a boat just off-shore, late-afternoon sun beating on them so that it felt like you could crack an egg and fry it right there on Bartholomew's bald head.

      But then Jesus speaks and the disciples forget the heat, they forget the discomfort, they forget that most people around them hadn't used Dial – don't you wish everyone did? – because the master is speaking, and though he doesn't have an unusually fine voice, though it isn't a street-corner orator's practiced instrument, though he doesn't sound like Biggus Maximus—currently number one on the Palestine top-50 with his hit "Do The Existential With Me"—the crowd is transfixed, stopped cold in their tracks, frozen like a cheap margarita.  And although later on, nobody in the crowd – including the disciples – can say what it was about his voice that moved them, everyone is caught up in the moment, the earth seems to stand still, and Jesus begins to speak.

      "Listen," he says, "A sower went out to sow.  And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path."  and from the crowd comes a murmuring: "Uh, oh . . . that can't be good . . ." "That's gonna be a waste of some good seeds . . . " And when Jesus says, "the birds came along and ate them up," there's a general agreement from the crowd, a wise nodding of heads – "That's right," someone says, "Been there, done that!"

      Jesus continues: "Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where there wasn't a whole lot of soil, and they sprang up like a house afire, 'cause the soil was so shallow, you understand . . ." and again the crowd is with him, cause it's an agricultural area they're in, and everybody knows about planting seeds . . . and so when Jesus tells them that the sun rose and scorched the seedlings and they withered away, they're way ahead of him "I just knew that was gonna happen," they say. . . . and the story goes on in the same vein: "Other seeds fell among the thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them," and now the crowd's turning on him "We came out in this heat for that?"  they're saying "that's just basic common sense . . ."  And finally, Jesus ends it, he reaches the punch-line "But the other seeds, which fell on good soil, they brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.  Let anyone with ears listen!"

      And up from the crowd we hear a collective . . . "Huh? What's he trying to say here?  Of course when you plant seeds on the path, they're gonna get eaten . . . of course when you plant 'em in the rocks, they're gonna get burnt up . . . of course when you plant 'em in the briars they're gonna get choked out.  Every farmer worth his salt knows that . . . and while we're on the subject, what kind of farmer does a thing like that, anyway?  That's some kind of bad agriculture you've got there . . ."

      Now of course, it doesn't stop there . . . the more thoughtful among them know that there's more to it than meets the eye . . . or rather than meets the ear . . . and a number of people in the crowd set about trying to figure out what it all means . . . let's see, who does the sower represent?  The emperor?  But if it's the emperor, then what's the seed?  And why would that ol' skinflint Tiberius waste any of it, anyway?  The only thing he's known to waste is other people's money, and then for his own pleasure . . . So maybe the sower is God, but that leaves the same problem, what's the seed?  Maybe it's rain . . . after all, didn't Jesus himself say that God sends rain on the righteous and unrighteous alike . . . maybe the rocky ground is the unrighteous and the good soil the righteous but then what's the pathway represent?  And the briar patch?  In an allegory, you see, you have to have a one-to-one correspondence . . .

      Meanwhile, the disciples ask Jesus why he speaks in parables, why he doesn't just say what he means outright, and his answer – conveniently cut out of the middle of our lectionary reading – is basically because it's for them – i.e., the disciples to know – and everybody else to find out, and that's a whole 'nother sermon, thank the Lord, but he does tell them the meaning of the allegory, for that's indeed what it is.

      "The seed," Jesus says "is the Word of the kingdom"  – and the disciples hit themselves on the forehead and say "of course, the Word of the kingdom . . . why didn't we think of that?" – and when anyone hears it but doesn't understand, the evil one comes along and snatches it away – that's the bird action, here – and that's what's sown on the path.  And the disciples are nodding their heads – God must be the sower, the seed's the good news of the Kingdom of God, the pathway signifies folks in which the devil removes that Kingdom-news from their hearts, just plucks it up like a ripe pomegranate.  Got it.

      "And furthermore," Jesus says "the seed sown on rocky ground is the person who receives this Kingdom-word with joyful heart, but shallow roots . . . and the scorching sun of adversity and persecution burns hot, and he is scorched and falls away . . ." and again the disciples nod sagely . . . yes, yes, we know a few folks like that, that's for sure . . . And it goes on like that, Jesus explaining what each correspondence in his allegory means: the word sown in the thorns is the one who hears the words, but lets the cares of the world—and the lure of riches and wealth—choke it out of them; the seed sown in good soil is the one who hears the word of the Kingdom and understands it, who bears fruit and yields results for the Kingdom, "in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty."

      And so now the disciples understand, now they get it:  Don't be like that pathway guy . . . don't let those old birds come along and snatch the word right out from under your noses . . . and don't be rocky-ground shallow either, don't be rootless, stand firm . . . don't let a little thing like a death in the family or bankruptcy or genocide in Darfur destroy your faith in God . . . and perhaps most importantly, don't let idol worship, the worship of planes, trains or automobiles, choke the word out of you like a blackberry vine . . . be careful – it's easier for a seven-forty-seven to land in Greenhills than for a rich man get into heaven.

      And so there it is . . . a simple morality tale, don't be a don't bee, do be a do bee . . . the seed on the rich soil understands the word and acts on it, producing fruit and yielding yield.  They go out, proclaiming the Word to all the nations, and the deep-soiled folks who hear it do the same, and pretty soon, you've got a world religion.

      And that's how it's often preached today as well . . . all you out there in the pews, stand firm in adversity, don't let the love of things, the love of your money, choke the faith out of you, etc., etc.  And maybe that's OK, but what I want you to notice is that we read admonition into this passage, it's not there on the surface . . . that is, Jesus doesn't say that his listeners need to act one way or another, he doesn't end his explanation with "Therefore I say unto you, be like the deep-soil . . ."  In the parable of the sower he's merely describing what happens when the word is sown . . . it's either plucked up, scorched out, choked out or it produces.  Furthermore, in that part of the passage conveniently cut out of the lectionary, he implies strongly that it's God who causes people to not understand that very parable – certainly word of the Kingdom in and of itself.

      Hmmm . . . what if we concentrate not on the results of the sowing – that is, not on the people in which the word is sowed – but on the sower.  After all, Jesus himself calls it that, he calls it the parable of the sower, not the story of the soil . . . and the first thing that hits me about the sower is that bad agriculture we talked about earlier . . . the sower seems to be a pretty grim farmer.  I mean, seed is expensive, it costs money, a lot of companies like Pioneer and Monsanto have made a bundle producing seed . . . and here this sower is, just wasting it – what we have here is a picture of a farmer – whom we know is God, right? – pitching the seed on infertile ground and fertile, on the receptive and unreceptive, on the righteous and the unrighteous alike, and God seems to have no control over the end result.

      Wait a minute . . . no control?  That doesn't sound like the God we know . . . the God we know is in charge, in control, or – as we good Calvinists say – our God is Sovereign.  Consider the lilies of the field, why don't you, God's got them – and the whole world – in his hands.  And since God made the pathway, the rocky soil, and every briar in that old briar patch, God must know ahead of time which one's gonna be receptive and which one's not.  Unless . . . maybe the sower in our parable doesn't represent God!  Maybe we've just assumed that because, well, who else would sow the word of the Kingdom if not God's own self?   Well . . . we Christians, for one.  We're supposed to preach the gospel, we're supposed to spread the Good News like so much broadcast soybean seed . . . the last thing Jesus says in this Gospel is "Go ye therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."

      And if we're the sower, it's not up us to determine who the receptive soil is or where it's going to be, it's not up to us to determine to whom the seed goes, we are required just to spread it everywhere, on pathways and rocks and thorn-choked ground and deep, rich soil . . . it's up to God the creator to determine where it bears fruit.  This – to me, anyway – is a powerful, freeing word . . . it's not up to us, it's saying, it's up to God.

      Note that this doesn't absolve us of responsibility, it doesn't mean we're not to work for the coming of the kingdom, proclaiming the Gospel – as St. Francis said, in words if necessary.  After all, we are the sower.  What it means is that if the word is faithfully planted to the ends of the earth, we aren't responsible for the results.

      And it means something else, as well . . . God's word – which the Gospel of John says is Christ Jesus himself – God's word, God's saving grace is so abundant, so overflowing that it can be sown where it might not produce . . . on rocky ground and on flagstone pathways . . . in the most secular-seeming avenues of power and our most blasted-out, cement-choked ghettos.  God's grace is super-abundant, outrageously abundant, scandalously abundant . . . there's enough for Christians and Muslims, CEOs and meth dealers, U.S. Presidents and subway bombers.  And, gloriously, magnificently, amazingly, there's also enough . . . for you and me.  Amen.

Sigmund and Paul (Romans 7:14 - 25a)

     About a quarter of the New Testament was either written by Paul, or written in his name by one of his followers, so his influence on Christianity has been enormous.  All of his writings are letters, and most are in response to specific situations. Galatians, for example, was written in response to teachings that it was necessary to be circumscribed to be a Christian. First Corinthians was written because some in that church were getting too big for their britches, thinking they were already exalted, and above everybody else because of it. Only Romans – our present letter – appears not to have been written about a specific problem. Paul was planning to visit the Roman church, and meant this letter to be an introduction, a kind of a statement of his theology. Our passage is part of a larger discussion on how he views the law, which in this case means the Mosaic law, which all Jews were bound to obey.

And this discussion betrays a deep ambivalence on Paul’s part – he views the law as holy, and in fact, he says he delights in the law, at least in his innermost self . . . it’s his other parts – his members, whatever those are – that are the problem. In fact, he says, he sees in those members another law at work, a sinister law at war with the law of his innermost self – and this other law wins, and makes him a captive, a prisoner of war, to this law of sin that dwells in his body. And it’s this personification of sin that’s key to understanding this passage, for it is sin pictured as a malevolent entity that has entered Paul’s body like a marauding army.

But what does sin actually do? How does it invade its target, which is Paul’s body? Earlier in the argument, he makes the astonishing claim that sin actually uses the law against us – the law, which we think produces life, actually is perverted by sin to produce death. He says “the very commandment” – that's the law – “that promised life proved to be death to me” – and it's important to realize that while he personalizes everything for emphasis, he means it to describe the human condition. His confessional tone masks a finely-honed argument. He says that “sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment” – and again he means the law – “deceived me and through it killed me.” And what did it deceive him about?  The life-giving nature of the law – that just by obeying the law, or rather, trying to obey it, life will be the result.  Relying on the law, instead of God’s free gift of grace, is tantamount to idolatry, but the idol isn't some tree god or wooden statue, but we ourselves – in our insistence that by following some set of rules, we can justify ourselves, and so void the need for grace.

Amazingly, though, it is through the law that sin obliterates us – “If it had not been for the law,” Paul says, “I would not have known sin.”  It gets its foothold through the law – if the commandment had not said “thou shalt not covet,” we would not have known what it is to covet. But it’s not some lame excuse for doing bad things, some easy “you’re not sinning if you don’t know it’s a sin” . . . for Paul, sin is actively at work in the commandments, in the law, producing, for example, all manner of covetousness, all manner of desire.

And so that’s where we stand at the opening of our passage. It’s not that the law is bad – after all, that’s holy, that’s from God. It’s that sin takes the law and perverts it and uses it. And now Paul seems to get even more intense, even more personal “I do not understand my own actions,” he says – “I do not do what I want, but the very thing that I hate.” He knows that the law is good, and he doesn't get it – why does trying to live up to it turn out so badly? The results are unmistakable – he doesn't do what he wants, he doesn't stop coveting, for instance, but ends up doing what he hates, he ends up coveting all the more.

And it's interesting that the lectionary begins where it begins, and doesn't include the first part of the argument, and I think that this is just the place modern interpreters veer off into the ozone a little bit . . . we tend to look at it through modern eyes, as if it’s simply a personal confession, and not a theological discussion about sin and the law. And because it sounds so plaintive and personal we overlay our own modern angst upon it, and view it in psychological categories. It's as if some psychiatrist – we’ll call him Sigmund – has got Paul on the couch:

Paul says “I do not understand my own actions . . . I do the very thing I hate.”

Sigmund strokes his beard and pushes his glasses further up on his nose.  “Aha!” he says, “Something deep within you is at work, here . . . deep within what we call your subconscious. It is very interesting . . . go on.”

“Well . . .  it’s like it's no longer I that do these things, these things I hate, but sin that dwells within me . . .”

And Sigmund says “Wait a minute, wait a minute . . . what is this ‘sin?’ Is it a thing, or a person, is it something you do, some kind of a force of nature, what?”

“Well,” Paul says, “It is kind of like a person . . .  I feel it living within me, in my body . . . and it’s doing these things I hate, making me do them, and it’s not me . . .”

“Did you ever see the movie Alien? Never mind . . . that is a joke . . . well, what we seem to have here is a classic case of my theory . . . this sin you say is deep within you, this is what we call the id. They are your deepest desires, what drives you to seek pleasure – all coming from sex, I might add – and the shapes they take are formed by events and people early in your life, so early that often you do not remember, but I can assure you they were there. Tell me – what was your mother like?”

“She was nice . . . very kind and loving . . .”

“Obviously, you are repressing . . . because of these childhood traumas, these urges seem foreign to you, like something dwelling within you . . . you call it sin, but I can assure you, it is part of you.”

Paul says “But I seem to know what to do, but just can’t do it.”

“Ah. That is what we call the super-ego, also coming from childhood experience. And it is at war with the id, it is like tanks and guns and planes,” and Sigmund makes shooting motions and Ack, Ack sounds, saying “and then the U.N. Peacekeeper – the ego, your conscious self – it tries to mediate, but becomes neurotic and compulsive, and it says bad things without even thinking . . .”

“But where is God in all of this?”  asks Paul.

“God?  God?  What is this God?  It is all in yourself . . .” He looks at his watch “but, I am sorry . . . Your time is up . . .”

      Modern psychology tends to locate everything within us, as intrinsic to us, as a part of us, and that is simply incompatible with Paul’s worldview. Paul very clearly believes in evil as an entity, as a force, and he calls it sin. Never sins, as in things that we do . . . to Paul, doing bad things is the result of sin, not the thing itself, and sin is an independent force of evil.

And so we have two competing worldviews, seemingly irreconcilable. One sees the evil we do as the result of an outside power, and although it may invade our bodies, is nevertheless foreign to them. In the other view, internalized experience is the driving force, all the interactions between ourselves and others – mainly our parents – and our bad behavior is the result of trying to cope with it all, trying to make our way in the world in spite of all we have gone through.

And I don’t know for sure, but I bet a lot of us read this passage from the second perspective, which, after all, is the modern one . . . it explains an observable phenomenon – the propensity we have for doing things we know are wrong – in nicely rational, scientific terms . . . and certainly, it fits what we’ve learned in the past hundred years about the way families and other social structures operate. For instance, we know now that many – but not all – pedophiles were themselves molested as children, but we don’t have to be so extreme. Most of us remember hurtful things done to us as children, things that we find ourselves doing today, even though we hate them now as much as we did back then. Family therapists tell us that behavioral pathologies are passed down from generation to generation like a bad cold.

And if we read Paul that way, it is comforting, in a warm and fuzzy way . . . “Oh, look,” we say, “He understands.  He gets it after all.”  He must not be as cold, or as sexist – or whatever we’ve projected back onto him – as we thought. “I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” Right on Paul! Amen! We’ve all been there. And there’s nothing wrong with reading it this way. After all, Paul was human, and he doubtlessly drew on his own experience to write this passage.

But if that’s the only way we read it, if we treat it as some quaint, pre-scientific way of looking at evil, and interpret it as a rare example of Pauline empathy, we miss the depth of Paul’s argument, and the power in what he says. For what he’s describing is the power of evil to use Mosaic law – instituted by God, handed down by God, created by God – against the people of God. The power of evil – which he calls sin – uses a creation of God to produce death, instead of life, which is what God wants for us all.

And that’s the question – how can something created by God, as scripture insists is the case for Mosaic law, how can something created by God be turned to evil in the end? And it happens not just within Mosaic law, but in many other things as well. Take churches, for example . . . as much as we’d like not to believe it, some churches are pathological, some produce nothing in the way of life; when you walk into them you feel only the hurt and pain and, finally, death. And yet, the church is created by God, scripture is very clear about that . . . how or what can turn something good so that evil is the result?

The easy answer, the one you always hear, is that it’s people who do it. Human beings are not perfect, and if they get their hands on it, they’ll inevitably muck it up. But people were created by God just like the church and the law . . . and just like those things, they were created good. It says so right there in Genesis one. And so if people are the culprits the question is the same: how or what can turn something

Well, the answer is . . . I don't know. It's the old, old question of “the problem of evil,” rearing its ugly head. All theological systems – from Reformed to Lutheran to Wesleyan – have ways of thinking about it, but none are, in the end, satisfactory. Over on the secular side, psychiatry creates theories of personality and the mind – we've had a little fun with Freud's version – but none are complete, none are entirely satisfactory in the end.

What we do know is this . . . what Paul calls sin can corrupt God’s good creation, and Paul takes us to the point of desperation over it. “Wretched man that I am,” he says, “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” And we can hear the despair, feel the hopelessness and desperation in the face of evil . . . Who will do it? Who will rescue us from our bondage to death?

And suddenly Paul shifts from despondency to joy, from lament to thanksgiving. It seems as if it just breaks in to the argument, as if he is not entirely in control . . . “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Of course, he has the answer – we have the answer! Who will rescue us from our bondage to evil? God will, through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Through the Christ event, through the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we are rescued from the law of sin . . . and the good news is in that one little word . . . rescue. It's as if we're foundering at sea, sinking into the cold depths, and Christ the rescue-diver pulls us to the surface. Or we're passed out in a burning, smoke-filled room, flames licking at our feet, and Christ the fireman slings us over his shoulder and carries us to safety. We have been rescued, set free, cut loose from the net of sin.

But in our Presbyterian theology salvation extends beyond justification . . . it extends to physical rescue as well . . . And so we might well ask: Who will rebuild us, restore us renew us once again, after the storm?  God will, through Jesus Christ our Lord! 

I don't know the mechanics of it, I don't know the science or the science fiction of it, all I know is what is true . . . the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set us free from the law of sin and death.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.

Chain of Love (Matthew 10:40 - 42)

     This is a short yet mighty passage, full of depth out of proportion to its length. It is also a saying of a certain species, a certain kind: it's a Wisdom saying, so-called because it offers wisdom for daily living, how to live daily in the light of the Divine Living One. Of course, in our Christian faith, this means living in God through God's Son Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit.

But the Wisdom tradition long predates Christianity: there were Wisdom schools throughout the ancient Middle East. Perhaps the preeminent such school was in Babylon, where the Israelites were exiled for forty years, from 586 to 546 B.C. During that time, they were exposed to this Wisdom school, and out of that contact came what Biblical scholars call Wisdom literature, embodied in our Scripture by Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, and some of the later psalms. They tend to be works of a more philosophical and mystical nature, in contrast to the more action- and ethics-oriented bent of earlier Israelite writing.

Listen to a typical Wisdom saying, this one from Proverbs: “My child, if you accept my words and treasure up my commandments within you, making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding; if you indeed cry out for insight, and raise your voice for understanding; if you seek it like silver, and search for it as for hidden treasures—then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.” And it sounds like a pretty straightforward "if-then" proposition, albeit in poetic terms: if you listen to my words, really listen then everything will be ok. But then you start to think about it, and it opens up like a flower of infinite possibility: what does the author mean by "accept and treasure" his or her words? And why--and, more importantly, how--should one "search for it like hidden treasures?" Isn't it right there, coming out of his or her mouth, written down on paper? And what the heck does “understanding the fear of the Lord” even mean, anyway?

And that's the way it is with the saying of Jesus we just read. On the surface, it appears to be just an "if you do good things, then you'll get rewarded" kind of deal. But if you dig into it, if you burrow down and really think about it, that interpretation falls apart, or at least it's shown to only scratch the surface. it begins with a statement establishing Jesus' lineage: “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me." It does s several things. First, it sets up the notion of ”welcome“ as the theme of the saying, conjuring up images of a householder or innkeeper, standing at their door with a smile on their face. In other words, the first thought is that it's about hospitality, and that's fine, because hospitality is a major theme in Scripture.

The next thing the opening sentence does is it establishes the authority of whomever Jesus is talking to: whoever welcomes you welcomes me. And to whom is Jesus talking? Why, the twelve, his original disciples: this is the last part of the instruction he gives them as he's sent them out. Whoever welcomes you welcomes me . . . in some mysterious way, beyond mere representation, y'all are expressions of me. Later in Matthew's Gospel, he expands it to the poor and marginal, saying whatever you've done to the least of these you've done to me.

Finally, the opening establishes his own relationship to the Divine: whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. And if a similar relationship holds between the one who sent him--presumably, of course, God--as between Jesus and his disciples, then in some mysterious way, Jesus is an expression of the Divine (Remember, this was written centuries before the notion of the Trinity took shape.) And these kind of "chain" sayings, evoking serial relationships, are very important in the Gospels, as members of our Bible study on John can attest. Sometimes it seems that that Gospel is one chain-statement after another.

So it's a saying about welcome, already, and in typical literary fashion, Jesus goes from the general to the specific, using a modification of the chain-statement do do it: “Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous." And this is where it starts to get a little weird. Because on the surface it looks great: whoever welcomes prophets and the righteous in their names will get prophets' and righteous folks' rewards, but then you stop and think: is that really so wonderful? Because prophets aren't always treated so great, are they? Especially these days, when they get shot up with Thorazine and tucked away where the sun don't shine.

But even back in the day, when folks generally believed in such things, prophets often ended up on the short end of the stick. Just look at what happened to John the Baptist, Jesus' predecessor as Prophet-in-Chief: his head was served up at Herod's feast on a platter. Come to think of it, Jesus himself, whom Christians believe is the prophet to end all prophets, ends up spiked to a tree for his trouble. And now we're beginning to get the idea: far from painting a rosy picture about what it means that we in some ways are identified with Christ, it's beginning to look like a decidedly mixed bag: if you take on this authority--and do Christians have any choice?--if you take on this authority, watch out. That cup from which Jesus drinks you shall indeed drink.

Ditto with the righteous: religious persecution has always been a fact of life for them, no matter what their flavor of faith might be. Spreading righteousness often goes against the status quo, upsets he apple cart . . . Look at what's happening now, with Muslims and Christians persecuting one another; the continual, sporadic persecution of Jews; and the ongoing, violent persecution of Buddhists by various governments in the Far East. And of course, once again for Christians, the model of the persecuted righteous one is one Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

So, far from being a straightforward "if you do good you get good" kind of deal, it seems to be a reminder to the disciples, at the conclusion of their sending-out, just what might happen to them if they are faithful to their call. Those who give hospitality to prophets and the righteous will be tagged as one of them, will do so in their name. If you think this is gonna be a walk in the park, Jesus seems to be saying, you are sadly mistaken.

But now we come to the third admonition--these things come in threes, you know--and suddenly, the pattern is broken. "Whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.” Anyone who does even the slightest good deed to one of these little ones . . . You don't even have to go so far as welcome them, to invite them into your house for dinner or for milk and cookies, just give them a little water . . . Folks who do that won't lose their reward.

Jesus goes from prophets to the righteous, and for the third, crowning example, we might expect somebody even more upstanding, "Whosoever welcomes holy ones" or something, but what we get are "little ones," and there are several possibilities as to whom Jesus means by this . . . Most link it to the "least of these" later in Matthew, where the King says "whatever you've done to the least of these, you've done to me." In this scenario, the "little ones" are the poor, the marginalized, the vulnerable. They are little, like children--arguably the most vulnerable in ancient society--and like that King, Jesus is giving special praise to folks who serve them: people who do that won't lose their reward.

But what if Jesus really is going up the ladder of "worthiness," from prophets--pretty good--to the righteous--really good--to little ones--the best? What would make the "little ones" greater than the others? Well, let's remember that this is a Wisdom saying, and in Wisdom literature, childlike qualities are considered to be desirable . . . Recall that a bit later on in Matthew, Jesus tells disgruntled disciples that the kingdom belongs to little children "such as these," and in Wisdom circles it's not their naïveté that is desirable, although they may be that, or their innocence, although they may be that as well, but their closeness to the Source, unity with the creator, a state they were in once, and one to which they will return.

Take newborns. They are completely unable to tell the difference between themselves and anything or anybody else. They haven't learned to discriminate between themselves and others, they aren't even capable of it, yet. Slowly they learn--partially through developmental advances, partly through learning from us--to view everything around them as "not-them," as not-the-mama or not-the-papa. This is subject-object thinking, and it is essential to navigating the world.

At the same time, infants have an openness to new experience, they are like a sponge, soaking it all up, and they have not learned to distrust yet. And this, obviously, can be a disadvantage in a dangerous world, children better learn to distrust strangers pretty quick these days . . .

And that's key: in passages like this, Jesus isn't advocating that anyone be little children, that they return to that state completely, but that they have the qualities of openness to the Divine--and thus to others, within whom the divine dwells--and a certain inclusiveness, a realization that because of this, we are indeed all one. An ability to think discriminately, yet realize that just because we view someone as "not-us" that their opinion, way of life and et cetera are not inferior..

Maybe that's what Jesus means when he tells us to be wise as serpents yet gentle as doves: we're not to abandon our psychological development, our ability to discriminate, just our propensity to judge. We're not to abandon our learning, our ability to think rationally and fruitfully, to build great buildings and fill whole books with our knowledge, just the notion that that's all there is.

Integrating these childlike qualities into our daily, human existence is the province of spiritual development, the fruits of both an active and passive prayer life. As the summer wears on, I hope to come back to these topics and examine how this can be so. By doing so, we surely will not lose our reward. Amen.