Tag Archives: brokenness

Psalm 109 A Prayer For God’s Vengeance

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From Susan Harris Anger and art// A Rage to Paint https://www.susanharrisart.com/blog

Psalm 109

To the leader. Of David. A Psalm.
1Do not be silent, O God of my praise.
2For wicked and deceitful mouths are opened against me, speaking against me with lying tongues.
3They beset me with words of hate, and attack me without cause.
4In return for my love they accuse me, even while I make prayer for them.
5So they reward me evil for good, and hatred for my love.
6They say, “Appoint a wicked man against him; let an accuser stand on his right.
7When he is tried, let him be found guilty; let his prayer be counted as sin.
8May his days be few; may another seize his position.
9May his children be orphans, and his wife a widow.
10May his children wander about and beg; may they be driven out of the ruins they inhabit.
11May the creditor seize all that he has; may strangers plunder the fruits of his toil.
12May there be no one to do him a kindness, nor anyone to pity his orphaned children.
13May his posterity be cut off; may his name be blotted out in the second generation.
14May the iniquity of his father be remembered before the LORD, and do not let the sin of his mother be blotted out.
15Let them be before the LORD continually, and may his memory be cut off from the earth.
16For he did not remember to show kindness, but pursued the poor and needy and the brokenhearted to their death.
17He loved to curse; let curses come on him. He did not like blessing; may it be far from him.
18He clothed himself with cursing as his coat, may it soak into his body like water, like oil into his bones.
19May it be like a garment that he wraps around himself, like a belt that he wears every day.”
20May that be the reward of my accusers from the LORD, of those who speak evil against my life.
21But you, O LORD my LORD, act on my behalf for your name’s sake; because your steadfast love is good, deliver me.
22For I am poor and needy, and my heart is pierced within me.
23I am gone like a shadow at evening; I am shaken off like a locust.
24My knees are weak through fasting; my body has become gaunt.
25I am an object of scorn to my accusers; when they see me, they shake their heads.
26Help me, O LORD my God! Save me according to your steadfast love.
27Let them know that this is your hand; you, O LORD, have done it.
28Let them curse, but you will bless. Let my assailants be put to shame; may your servant be glad.
29May my accusers be clothed with dishonor; may they be wrapped in their own shame as in a mantle.
30With my mouth I will give great thanks to the LORD; I will praise him in the midst of the throng.
31For he stands at the right hand of the needy, to save them from those who would condemn them to death.

This process of reflecting on scripture, particularly the parts of scripture that the church rarely utilizes, has opened my eyes to a far more dynamic and honest relationship between God and God’s people. Sometimes that dynamic and honest relationship is uncomfortable for people who grew up, like me, in churches where prayer was always a calm and measured practice. Psalm 109 rarely will find its way into a church bulletin or a sermon, but this psalm of imprecation that prays for harm to come to a wicked person provides a fertile place for discussion of the relationship between ourselves, others who have wronged us, and God. Anger and the desire for vengeance are powerful emotions, and too often we as people of faith have refused to give voice to these human feelings. Yet, these feelings will find their way into our lives and into the culture around us.

In a situation where the relationships that shape our society are shattered the faithful ones cry out to God. They name the brokenness that they encounter. They name those who have wronged them. But the brokenness of the world and the person who has brought about the suffering are placed into God’s hands. The person lifting up this cry to God has no ability to determine what God will do with the prayer and the ‘wicked one.’ Here, instead of suppressing the reality of suffering and pain or taking vengeance into their own hands, the faithful one cries out in desperation to God to act on their behalf.

Ellen Davis’s chapter on the cursing psalms in Getting Involved with God: Rediscovering the Old Testament (Davis, 2001, pp. 23-29) has shaped a lot of my thinking about the imprecatory (or cursing) psalms in general and this psalm in particular. The language of the bible shapes should shape our practices of faith, and the psalms and the prophets can give us language to articulate our honest feelings in our conversations with God. These may not be the more attractive offerings of thanksgiving or praise, but these words and feelings we also commit to God’s steadfast love. Ellen Davis shared the advice she received from a professor to take the imprecatory psalms into the chapel at a time when it was unoccupied and pray them at full voice. The experience helped her to move beyond her hurt and begin the needed journey to forgiveness. She remarks afterwards,

For the cursing psalms confront us with one of our most persistent idolatries, to which neither Israel nor the church has ever been immune: the belief that God has as little use for our enemies as we do, the desire to reduce God to an extension of our own embattled and wounded egos. (Davis, 2001, p. 26)

God cares for both the faithful and the wicked. Yet, that does not mean that the crimes of the wicked are not noticed by God. Psalm 109 anticipates a God who both hears this petition and acts upon it. The wicked and deceitful seem to have no problem using their words to shatter or their lies to cause harm to both the individual and the community. There are times when the innocent are surrounded by words of hate or attacked without justification. There are situations where love is repaid with hate and good with evil. As I was working through this psalm, I was reading Elie Wiesel’s Night where he shares his experience of being a young Jewish boy whose hope and faith were broken in Auschwitz in 1944 and Suzanne Collins, Sunrise on the Reaping which continues the fictional Hunger Games series where children are put into a fatal game for the entertainment of the powerful. Both the historical and the fictional may be extreme examples of a world where wickedness has triumphed over kindness, but the origin story of the people of Israel is the story of a God who rescued them from oppression and slavery. It is a story of a God who heard their cries and acted for their rescue from that a world without steadfast love.

One of the keys to hearing this psalm occurs in verse six. Most English translations being the verse with “They say” which places the most extreme portions of the psalm in the mouths of the adversary. Yet, there is no textual support in Hebrew for the words “they say.” (Bellinger, 2014, p. 473) Even if these words are put into the mouth of the adversary, the psalmist still wishes for these words that the adversary pulls around themselves like a cloak may become the garment they wear every day and soak into their body like water or oil all the way to the bones. Whether you read these words as being spoken by or toward the adversary, this brokenhearted prayer ascends to God bearing the hurt and brokenness of the psalmist’s world asking for God to intervene on the psalmist’s behalf and answer the psalmist’s pain.

The Hebrew word hesed, often translated steadfast love when coming from God or kindness (as in verse 12 and 16) when coming from other people, is a key idea throughout the Old Testament. Hesed is tied to the covenant between God and God’s people, as well as the covenant between the people of God. Central to the accusation of this individual is their failure to show hesed.

For he did not remember to show kindness (hesed), but pursued the poor and needy and the brokenhearted to their death. Verse 16.

Hesed is the glue that holds the Hebrew society together. It is both the proper relationship between God and God’s people but also the proper relationship among the people. When hesed is not present, the poor, needy, and brokenhearted die. The implications of a person living in disregard for the standards of society may be fatal. This could apply to a nobleman in Jerusalem who takes advantage of the vulnerable or a businessperson or politician who uses their influence in a way that impacts the physical and emotional health of others. The bible’s way of thinking assumes a common obligation between humanity and creation to care for one another. I once heard Rolf Jacobson remark that the Ten Commandments and the law in general were about, “my neighbor’s best life.”

The words directed at the wicked adversary are sharp. That a wicked person would be appointed against him, someone to accuse him on his right hand, when he is tried to be found guilty (Hebrew wicked), and that his prayers would be sin (either missing the mark or something refused by God). That his life would be short and another would claim his position, that even his wife and children would bear the repercussions of his fall. The adversary created a world without hesed (kindness) for the psalmist and now may the world fail to show him hesed. That the sins of his ancestors would be remembered and yet his memory fade. In Hebrew I don’t think there could be a stronger curse than to encounter a world devoid of hesed.

 One verse of this psalm has entered the political dynamics of the United States. I first encountered a bumper sticker with Psalm 109:8, “May his days be few, may another seize his position” referring to Barak Obama. The psalm is used to appear to be prayerful and cursing at the same time. Psalm 109:8 may have been utilized before Barak Obama, but I have seen it used to piously point to Donald Trump and Joe Biden since. It is unlikely that most people who have worn this psalm proudly on a shirt, button, or on their car read the entirety of the psalm, but unfortunately in the polarized and angry political climate the vengeful desires against not only those in power but their entire family would probably be embraced by many. Verse eight is also the only verse of this psalm that appears in the New Testament, in Acts 1:20, when Peter makes the case for replacing Judas. Yet, the use in the New Testament bears no desire for vengeance on Judas, merely understands the psalm as authorizing the search for a new disciple to fill the twelfth position after Judas’s death.

How do we use this rarely utilized psalm. My first reflection comes from Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his The Prayerbook of the Bible:

So the psalm of vengeance leads to the cross of Jesus and to the love of God that forgives enemies. I cannot forgive the enemies of God by myself, only the crucified Christ can; and I can forgive through him. So the carrying out of vengeance becomes grace for all in Jesus Christ. (DBWE 5:175)

Bonhoeffer takes the traditional Lutheran law-gospel hermeneutic where the psalm of vengeance (as law) pushes us to the love of God in Christ (gospel). As Ellen Davis mentioned earlier our inability to see anything redeemable in our enemies does not preclude God from acting in mercy and grace towards them. But Ellen Davis also has a wise if uncomfortable way of utilizing these psalms of cursing:

If you have the courage (and it will take some), try turning the psalm a full 180 degrees, until it is directed at yourself, and ask: Is there anyone in the community of God’s people who might want to say this to God about me—or maybe, about us? (Davis, 2001, p. 28)

We may not feel oppressed. We may not have anything we need to forgive in another, but perhaps there is someone who we have wronged. Whose futures have we, intentionally or unintentionally, harmed? Whose wives and children have learned to curse our names as individuals or as a group? Whose reputations have we destroyed? In her own way she encourages this use of the psalm as law which highlights the places where we also have not shown hesed.

Yet even a psalm of cursing ends with thanks to the God who defends the needy and saves from those who would condemn. Ultimately hesed, so important to this psalm and the Old Testament in general, is one of the defining characteristics of God. God is both the model of what hesed looks like, but also the one who intervenes when hesed is not found. This psalm has demonstrated all the differences between the world of oppression the psalmist lives in and the world God intends for God’s people. It resonates with the Lord’s prayer which calls out to God for God’s kingdom to come and God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Bradford Pear

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Bradford Pear Tree After a Storm, Own Picture

They put me in this ground because I grow up fast
Spreading out my arms full of foliage in the hot sun
On summer days, I appear strong and full and healthy
My shallow roots shoot through the brown clay
Like a spider web gathering all the water from the ground
My heavy green crown provides a deep shade for the earth
Roots and crown absorb all the sun and water of heaven
Suffocating any life that may want to grow in my shadow

Yet, trees like me are notorious for shattering in the storm
Every branch goes back to a single point on my trunk
My long, heavy laden, branches too firm to bend in the wind
And my crown breaks in the spring and fall rainstorms
The wind snapping my arms and dropping them on the ground
Blocking paths and roads, waiting to be cut up and taken away
I grow up fast and I look like a king only to dethroned by the elements

My query about things that we expect to grow up too fast
Who learn how to rely on a single point of strength in the sun
Who may at times appear full, healthy, strong and immovable
Perhaps sheltering others in their canopy absorbing the heat
Or absorbing all the light and water suffocating those nearby
Why we’re surprised when they break leaving destruction around
When their lives are short and they are more brittle than they seem
When their roots are shallow and the storms of life are too great?
And we clear away the fallen limbs and foliage, the broken crown
Making space for another Bradford pear tree to grow up in the space
As their ancestor’s memory is ashes and smoke in the firepit of history

Psalm 51 Seeking the Possibility of Redemption

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Palma Giovane, Prophet Nathan ermahnt Konig David (1622)

Psalm 51

<To the leader. A Psalm of David, when the prophet Nathan came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.>
1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.
3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.
4 Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment.
5 Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.
6 You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.
7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
8 Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have crushed rejoice.
9 Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.
10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.
11 Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit.
13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you.
14 Deliver me from bloodshed, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your deliverance.
15 O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.
16 For you have no delight in sacrifice; if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased.
17 The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
18 Do good to Zion in your good pleasure; rebuild the walls of Jerusalem,
19 then you will delight in right sacrifices, in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings; then bulls will be offered on your altar.

The relationship between the speaker and God has been broken because of the psalmist’s own actions and there is no future without God’s forgiveness. The superscription gives us one possible moment to read the psalm from: the moment when David is confronted by the prophet Nathan about his adultery with Bathsheba and the arrangement of the murder of her husband, Uriah. (2 Samuel 11-12) This moment of betrayal of both David’s responsibilities to his people and the favor that God has bestowed upon him changes everything: trust has been broken, the innocent bore the cost of David’s actions and in the words of this psalm David’s iniquity, sin and transgressions have broken the relationship with God. Yet, this psalm could apply to any experience of guilt and shame where one’s actions have failed match one’s called identity as a person of faith. When a person who sought God’s heart stumbles, when a righteous one commits iniquity, when the one who once was clean is now polluted by sin and when one’s transgressions place a wall between the transgressor and God these words allow the penitent one to seek the possibility of forgiveness and reconciliation with God and a return to their former state of grace.

The hope of the penitent lies in the character of God outlines in verse one: God is a God of steadfast love and abundant mercy. There characteristics of God’s character are matched against the trilogy of terms for acts against God: iniquity, sin and transgression. The sinner in the psalm stands permanently marked by their sin and in need of cleansing. They have become defined by their actions and their guilt shows them how their actions have not matched the calling they bore before the people. The guilty one was a righteous one whose entire life was lived in the presence of God and now their actions which may have once been concealed from others were seen by God and they confess that God is justified in God’s judgment of them. Others may have been injured by the psalmist’s actions (and the in the narrative of David and Bathsheba a family was broken, a man was killed, and David failed to be the king he was supposed to be) but here the brokenness is between the psalmist and God and the hope rests in God’s cleansing and restoration.

The guilt of the actions has transformed the person at their deepest level. Everything of who they are is now tainted by a part of themselves they wouldn’t have believed before. They question everything about their story from their conception to the present. They have been transformed into a sinner, one who is separated from God and others and is defined by their transgressions. The psalmist probably doesn’t see their actions as a result of “original sin” passed on from generation to generation but instead views their entire life under the judgment and pollution of their iniquity. They know they need to be purged, cleansed and washed by God in order to remove the stain that their sin causes them to bear. They know that they need to learn truth after their lies, wisdom after the folly of their innermost heart, a holy spirit to replace their sinful one. They need to be recreated as a new being in order to have a future beyond their brokenness. Yet the God of mercy and steadfast love could forgive the people of Israel when they worshipped a golden calf (Exodus 32-34) and while cleansing oneself and receiving a new heart, spirit and future are impossible for the psalmist on their own, they are the type of action that a merciful and forgiving God does. The psalmist hopes for a return to their life in God’s presence where God no longer looks upon their sins but upon the redeemed sinner.

From their place of shame, the psalmist attempts to barter with God. I know when I was growing up that I was taught not to barter with God but the more of the scriptures I read the more I see places like this psalm where a person attempts to barter with God, and I’ve had to rethink this. For the speaker, they will teach, sing, declare and offer right sacrifice If God will restore the relationship. The psalmist doesn’t have much to offer beyond their acknowledgment of their sin which broke the relationship and their promise to live better in the future but the offering a broken spirit, broken and contrite heart. They are hoping through an exchange with God of receiving a new spirit and heart in return for their broken spirit and heart. God becomes for the poet the surgeon who can place in them a new heart and renew a right spirit. Perhaps by the penitent’s witness the good that God does for them will also extend to the rest of the people and allow for Zion’s pleasure and strength to be renewed. As we saw in the previous psalm the sacrifices and burnt offerings are not needed by God, but just as a broken heart and spirit were preconditions in the psalm for forgiveness and renewal the new orientation of the speaker places sacrifices and worship as acts of thanksgiving for the God who blots out transgressions, washes away the iniquity and cleanses the sin because of God’s steadfast love and abundant mercy.

Psalm 38 A Cry for Forgiveness and Healing

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Psalm 38

<A Psalm of David, for the memorial offering.>
1 O LORD, do not rebuke me in your anger, or discipline me in your wrath.
2 For your arrows have sunk into me, and your hand has come down on me.
3 There is no soundness in my flesh because of your indignation; there is no health in my bones because of my sin.
4 For my iniquities have gone over my head; they weigh like a burden too heavy for me.
5 My wounds grow foul and fester because of my foolishness;
6 I am utterly bowed down and prostrate; all day long I go around mourning.
7 For my loins are filled with burning, and there is no soundness in my flesh.
8 I am utterly spent and crushed; I groan because of the tumult of my heart.
9 O Lord, all my longing is known to you; my sighing is not hidden from you.
10 My heart throbs, my strength fails me; as for the light of my eyes — it also has gone from me.
11 My friends and companions stand aloof from my affliction, and my neighbors stand far off.
12 Those who seek my life lay their snares; those who seek to hurt me speak of ruin, and meditate treachery all day long.
13 But I am like the deaf, I do not hear; like the mute, who cannot speak.
14 Truly, I am like one who does not hear, and in whose mouth is no retort.
15 But it is for you, O LORD, that I wait; it is you, O Lord my God, who will answer.
16 For I pray, “Only do not let them rejoice over me, those who boast against me when my foot slips.”
17 For I am ready to fall, and my pain is ever with me.
18 I confess my iniquity; I am sorry for my sin.
19 Those who are my foes without cause are mighty, and many are those who hate me wrongfully.
20 Those who render me evil for good are my adversaries because I follow after good.
21 Do not forsake me, O LORD; O my God, do not be far from me;
22 make haste to help me, O Lord, my salvation.

This is a song for a broken heart, a broken body or a broken spirit. The psalm cries to the LORD for mercy, for reconciliation and for renewed presence. We never hear in this psalm the sin which the author believes they are suffering from but this sin which is mentioned but never named is the perceived cause of the psalmist’s suffering. Something has come between the singer of these words and the LORD whom they cry out to. Something has, in the poet’s mind, caused God to turn away in anger and indignation. Something they believe has caused God’s disposition to them to change dramatically. They are no longer at peace with God. Their relationship with their creator has been fractured and they stand in the position of helplessness and weakness. They feel the weight of God’s judgment and perhaps their own as well upon them.

 While there is no easy or direct correlation between sin and sickness in the bible, the psalmist’s cries do ponder a connection between their physical, emotional and spiritual health. Sin can cause suffering in body and mind and the feeling of abandonment or shame can manifest in physical and emotional ways. While the psalmist language is probably in some senses metaphorical it doesn’t mean that the language of the psalm doesn’t base itself upon the actual pain that the psalmist feels. As Beth Tanner can say, “The burden of sin burns inside, and the whole body feels the strain (v.7) The insides feel faint, and the spirit is crushed (v.8); even if quiet on the outside the mind roars over the torment in one’s heart (v.8)” (Nancy deClaisse-Walford, 2014, p. 358) The poet has something they feel intensely that has separated them from the protection and provision of their God, some unspoken sin that is seen by God and makes itself known in their body and spirit. They stand in need of forgiveness and reconciliation which will also begin the healing of their mind and flesh.

The poet’s plight is heightened by the distance and judgment they now feel from their community. Friends and neighbors who one relies upon now stand at a distance. Perhaps they feel like a leper who is cut off from the community for fear of contagion or perhaps, like the friends in Job’s narrative, the neighbors and friend have decided the sickness must be a judgment of God. Friends and neighbors stand aside while enemies perceive an opportunity. The weakness of the psalmist becomes a reason for their increased isolation from the community which they also rely upon. They have no words to answer the whispers they imagine being spoken of them as the lie (actually or metaphorically) prostrate and crushed unable to rise.

Though God may have turned away in indignation, at least in the psalmist’s perception, and they feel that God is just in God’s anger they plead for mercy and restoration. They trust that God will not ultimately forsake them. They have reached the point where they are ready to let go of the sin they conceal in their breast and the burden they have carried. They wait upon the LORD for their strength to be renewed. The psalm ends with the cry for the LORD’s steadfast love to overcome the indignation rightly felt. Where the poet feels distance from God and community they call for God’s return and healing. They call out in urgency for their case is dire. They end with the cry for their salvation and we, with the psalmist, enter their time of waiting for the LORD’s action.

Exquisitely Tender

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I’m doing my best to play on through the pain
Putting on my bravest face as I try make it through
Yet, somehow my soul is exquisitely tender today
As if some wound on my heart was bleeding underneath
And I know that at the slightest touch the façade I wear
Might fall away as the pain comes pouring out
If I had a choice I would retreat away from the world
Like a wounded animal not wanting to snap out
At those who might inadvertently make things worse
And if tear would fall from these stoic eyes I wonder
What types of tears they might be:
Would they be tears of rage or pain or fear or confusion?
For perhaps the worst part is I don’t know what to feel or why I hurt
I just know that I am exquisitely tender and I’m doing all I can
To hold it together and keep my temper from flaring
And my emotions from falling apart under the strain
And like a repetitive stress injury it just needs time and space
To heal and to be isolated from the stress that broke it in the first place
And yet, it seems, that there is no protective cast or brace
No doctor’s orders or physical therapist’s demands
Or balm in Gilead to magically heal the sensitive soul

Mosaic

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Mosaic from the parish church of Saint Michael and Saint Peter, Antwerp

Mosaic from the parish church of Saint Michael and Saint Peter, Antwerp

Looking back on all the pieces of my life
Is not like looking at a picture composed on a canvas
That brings together the palette of colors and shades
To paint a portrait of a person who emerges whole
Stepping forth from the dreams and imagination
 
Nor is it like a sculpture chiseled out of the stone
Seeing the beauty that rested within the raw resources
Standing unchanging and immovable once complete
Where the finished product is merely a skilled refining
Calling forth the potential residing within the granite
 
No, the artist who worked on my life must love mosaics
Being able to pull together the discordant colors and jagged edges
Patiently arranging the broken pieces to see something larger
Seeing something of hidden beauty among the broken shards
Using the mortar of life to bring together the shattered stone

An Authentic People: Being the Body of Christ- A Sermon from July 28, 2013

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Aime Nicolas Morot, Le bon Samaritain (1880)

Aime Nicolas Morot, Le bon Samaritain (1880)

Last week I talked about who we are, that at our root we are baptized children of God, marked with the cross of Christ and sealed by God’s Holy Spirit. That nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord and nothing can take that away from us, nothing can change who we are, that we are God’s chosen people. So I guess the next logical question to come out of this is so now what do I do with this? How do I live out of this?You see for a lot of Christian traditions the way they understand the journey of faith is it ends when they make a choice for God and that is the high point and you have reached the goal, but as Lutherans Christians we understand it differently…God made a choice for us and we spend the rest of our lives trying to live out of that incredibly gracious calling that God has for us, to make sense of the new world of possibilities that creates for us. And God does have a dream for us and a calling for each of us in the midst of our lives. And God has always had this dream and vision for working through God’s people. Of us being the body of Christ, to use Paul’s language, of being the hands and feet of Christ reaching out into the world. If you remember through the Story that we went through last year God begins by setting a family and then a people aside to be a blessing to the world. As we recall from Genesis 12: 1-4

Genesis 12:1 The LORD had said to Abram, “Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father’s family, and go to the land that I will show you. 2 I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others. 3 I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt. All the families on earth will be blessed through you.”

James Tissot, Abraham and the Three Angels

James Tissot, Abraham and the Three Angels

Abram, later renamed Abraham was not set apart for his own benefit, but so that all the families on earth would be blessed through him. His life was to be a blessing to others and he was to live out of this calling and adventure that God set before him. Did Abram lose sight of this vision at times, yes, did he focus on his own understanding and his own strength, yep, but God kept calling him back to the vision that God had, to the adventure God had laid before him. God never abandons Abraham and Sarah or leaves them. Later when it was no longer just a family, but an entire nation Moses reminded them (Deuteronomy 4: 37)

37 Because he loved your ancestors, he chose to bless their descendants, and he personally brought you out of Egypt with a great display of power.

And in Isaiah we see some of the vision that the people were to be if they could live into God’s vision of shalom and peace:

Isaiah 2: 2-5
2 In the last days, the mountain of the LORD’s house will be the highest of all– the most important place on earth. It will be raised above the other hills, and people from all over the world will stream there to worship. 3 People from many nations will come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of Jacob’s God. There he will teach us his ways, and we will walk in his paths.” For the LORD’s teaching will go out from Zion; his word will go out from Jerusalem. 4 The LORD will mediate between nations and will settle international disputes. They will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will no longer fight against nation, nor train for war anymore. 5 Come, descendants of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the LORD!

Paul captures this vision in Romans when he speaks of creation’s redemption is waiting on us:

Romans 8: 18 Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later.
19 For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are.
20 Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope,
21 the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay.
22 For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.
23 And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us.
24 We were given this hope when we were saved. (If we already have something, we don’t need to hope for it.
25 But if we look forward to something we don’t yet have, we must wait patiently and confidently.)
Creation is waiting on us to become the people we have been created and called to be. Paul has a lot of confidence in this vision of what we as a gracious people can be and how powerful that would be, but as I think about it-Paul has every reason not to trust people, Paul who has seen the very churches he founded bicker and squabble over leadership, spiritual gifts, money, power, becoming intoxicated with the way things are in the world, becoming impatient for God to come and act now, and yet, in the midst of all of this, Paul has an amazing confidence in God to take these people with all their problems and addictions, these people who don’t know their right hand from their left and for them to be transformed by God’s love and turned into a gracious people who can reflect this transforming love of God into the world by being transformed into the people they were always created to be. People who can love the Lord their God with all their heart and soul and mind and strength and to love their neighbor as themselves. Yet I think often we are like the lawyer in Luke’s gospel, we come in asking the wrong question:

Luke 10: 25-37
25 One day an expert in religious law stood up to test Jesus by asking him this question: “Teacher, what should I do to inherit eternal life?”

Now to be fair, when the people of Jesus time talk about what we translate as eternal life they are talking about a very earthly reality, it is the new creation and it is something that God going to do on earth and it is tied in with Jesus’ vision of the kingdom of God. In effect this lawyer or scribe asks, “what must I do to be a part of what is going on with this kingdom of God you are always talking about.” It is something Jesus’ has pointed to so many times that he lets the lawyer answer the question:

26 Jesus replied, “What does the law of Moses say? How do you read it?”
27 The man answered, “‘You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.’ And, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.'”
28 “Right!” Jesus told him. “Do this and you will live!”

I think we also know the right answer, if you listened last week you know that for Jesus love is the law, you shall love the Lord your God with all you heart and soul and mind and strength, from the very heart of the Jewish understanding of the law (Deuteronomy 6:5) and love your neighbor as yourself ( Leviticus 19:18). Jesus had been calling people back to this throughout his ministry, it wouldn’t have been a surprise and it wouldn’t even have been very controversial, yet doing it-that is another matter, and how far does it extend, who can I justify excluding from this, who is my neighbor and who isn’t

29 The man wanted to justify his actions, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

Where can I put up fences, where can I draw a line between holy people and unholy people, between righteous and sinners, between insiders and outsides, who can I eliminate, help me see where the boundaries are. You certainly can’t mean everyone…not the Samaritans, the Romans, the revolutionaries, the Greeks, the Egyptians, the sinners and tax collectors, the prostitutes, the uneducated, the out of work, the poor, those who speak different, who believe different, who act different, who worship other gods, surely not them. Who can I leave out?

Jan Wijnants, The Parable of the Good Samaritan (1670)

Jan Wijnants, The Parable of the Good Samaritan (1670)

30 Jesus replied with a story: “A Jewish man was traveling from Jerusalem down to Jericho, and he was attacked by bandits. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him up, and left him half dead beside the road. 31 “By chance a priest came along. But when he saw the man lying there, he crossed to the other side of the road and passed him by. 32 A Temple assistant walked over and looked at him lying there, but he also passed by on the other side. 33 “Then a despised Samaritan came along, and when he saw the man, he felt compassion for him. 34 Going over to him, the Samaritan soothed his wounds with olive oil and wine and bandaged them. Then he put the man on his own donkey and took him to an inn, where he took care of him. 35 The next day he handed the innkeeper two silver coins, telling him, ‘Take care of this man. If his bill runs higher than this, I’ll pay you the next time I’m here.’ 36 “Now which of these three would you say was a neighbor to the man who was attacked by bandits?” Jesus asked.
37 The man replied, “The one who showed him mercy.” Then Jesus said, “Yes, now go and do the same.”

Go and live like this, and you will know what the kingdom is all about, live in a world where you build walls to separate us from them and you will never know. Live in mercy and grace, unafraid of what might happen, unafraid of the contamination of unholiness, willing to risk that in caring for someone else: a stranger, a beaten down one left on the side of the road that you also might be looked upon as the ceremonially unclean social outcast and religious heretics that most of the Jews believed the Samaritans to be. They were in many ways worse than the rest of the gentiles for in their eyes they were an unholy mingling of the chosen people with the other nations and they worshipped the same God in the wrong way at the wrong places and they refused to admit that the ways that the real Jews did it was right. Generations of hostility marked the border between Jew and Samaritan, Yet Jesus calls us to imagine a world beyond walls, where our own actions make neighbors of those in need and our love is a part of the healing of humanity and the rest of the world.

I want to invite you to imagine with me what the body of Christ, as Paul called the early church would look like if we could be captured by this kind of a vision. I want you to imagine what it would be like if everyone was here not because they felt they were supposed to be, or that they were trying to take care of the afterlife, or that they were here because mom or dad, of husband or wife, or friends thought they should be but rather imagine for just a moment if everyone was really here because they loved God with all their heart and soul and mind and strength and every song sung was a love song toward the God who loved us and would not allow us to be separated from that love, every prayer was in the confidence that God not only heard but cared for the words that were said, and we trusted that we were here in this place because as the Greeks in Jerusalem said to the disciples, “Sir, we want to see Jesus”. And what would it look like for the body of Christ to live out of that love, carrying it out into the world unafraid of the boundaries that had been set up between righteous and unrighteous, between classes and races and sexes, between us and them and we really were planted like the trees of life around the trees on each side of the river of God in the new creation with leaves for the healing of the nations. Where we are so grounded in the love of God that we really can love ourselves and from that place of love we can risk going out to love our neighbors. Where we begin to lean into the new creation and we begin to heal ourselves and heal the world, for as Paul points to the world is indeed waiting on the revelation of these children of God. And it begins with acts of love, caring for the man on the side of the road or the person going through a divorce, or the child who doesn’t seem to fit in, or the mother dealing with a screaming infant, or the person who doesn’t speak English or who can’t seem to find a job. It means being willing to be a part of Christ’s reaching out into the world through us to be a foretaste of the feast to come in the new creation. Sometimes it means bearing the disbelief of a society that cannot believe that we would give away some of our money to someone else, or that we would reach out to talk to and touch those who no one wants to touch. There is a story of a young priest who went to see Mother Teresa in Calcutta and after following her around during the day was struck by how unreligious her work seemed and then when he remarked to her how unclean and unholy it seemed she reached down and picked up a man dying who weighed very little and turned towards the this young priest and said here is the body of Christ given for you, for it was there in the poor that Christ was appearing and she was able to serve him.

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Corrupted Justice: Jeremiah 5:18-31

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Icon of Jeremiah

Icon of Jeremiah

Jeremiah 5: 18-31

18 But even in those days, says the LORD, I will not make a full end of you. 19 And when your people say, “Why has the LORD our God done all these things to us?” you shall say to them, “As you have forsaken me and served foreign gods in your land, so you shall serve strangers in a land that is not yours.”
 20 Declare this in the house of Jacob, proclaim it in Judah:
 21 Hear this, O foolish and senseless people,
 who have eyes, but do not see,
 who have ears, but do not hear.
 22 Do you not fear me? says the LORD;
Do you not tremble before me?
I placed the sand as a boundary for the sea, a perpetual barrier that it cannot pass;
 though the waves toss, they cannot prevail, though they roar, they cannot pass over it.
 23 But this people has a stubborn and rebellious heart;
they have turned aside and gone away.
 24 They do not say in their hearts,
 “Let us fear the LORD our God, who gives the rain in its season,
 the autumn rain and the spring rain, and keeps for us the weeks appointed for the harvest.”
 25 Your iniquities have turned these away, and your sins have deprived you of good.
 26 For scoundrels are found among my people; they take over the goods of others.
 Like fowlers they set a trap; they catch human beings.
 27 Like a cage full of birds, their houses are full of treachery;
therefore they have become great and rich, 28 they have grown fat and sleek.
They know no limits in deeds of wickedness;
they do not judge with justice the cause of the orphan, to make it prosper,
 and they do not defend the rights of the needy.
 29 Shall I not punish them for these things? says the LORD,
 and shall I not bring retribution on a nation such as this?
 30 An appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land:
 31 the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule as the prophets direct;
 my people love to have it so, but what will you do when the end comes?
 
In a brief interlude in the poetry (v. 18-19) we see some hope in the future, it is a dim hope, but it is a hope nonetheless when people after all the destruction ask ‘why has this happened’ and the answer is simply you chose to serve strange gods, so you have gone to serve strangers in another land. In a broken home sometimes someone has to leave, but God has not closed the door to a return, in fact it seems to be God’s continual hope through all the pain, yet God will not be tame or mocked. The relationship will not be one where God will bend to whatever the people think is right. God has not given up on God’s vision of justice and shalom. Yet the people are not in a place where their eyes can see or their ears can hear yet because their heart is in the wrong place and one the wrong things. Literally they are heart-less or empty hearted (NRSV senseless) and their heart is no longer in the relationship with God.

Justice has been so corrupted towards the wealthy that the cause of the orphan and the needy are neglected. The way things are remain irreconcilable with God’s vision of justice, and yet the very mouthpieces that should be calling for faithfulness and correction are behind the corruption. Prophets and priests rule and direct falsely and the people love the falseness. Patrick Miller speaks truth about this passage when he states:

This is a strong indictment of a community in which the politically powerful and the well-to-do amass possessions and wealth at the expense of the marginal and those in society who do not have the protection and power, in which flagrant manipulation of the socioeconomic system to the advantage of the advantaged is simply ignored. The picture is as familiar at the beginning of the third millennium CE as it was in the first millennium BCE. (NIB 6:621)

The Bible often has harsh words for those who are wealthy and in power, especially among the prophets. Most people assume wealth in the Bible is primarily viewed as a source of blessing, and that is one theology present within the Bible, but more commonly in the prophets and throughout most of the New Testament power and wealth are temptations and things that may distort one’s relationship with God. This is difficult for most people to accept, and I struggle with it myself but God does have a vision of a society that all can live in justice and peace and everyone has enough. Perhaps it is a utopian dream, perhaps it is naïve, and perhaps looking at the world through a dream like this opens a person to see the dystopia within the reality they live in, but at the same point just because the way that the people love and the prophets and priests in Jeremiah’s time proclaim may be easier, it doesn’t mean it is the right way.

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