Phil Kniss: What God does with failure

March 29, 2009
Lent 5
Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 51:1-12; John 12:20-26

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Human beings fail.
Often. And miserably.
Human beings disappoint each other.
Often. And deeply.
Human beings hurt each other.
Often. And with great consequence.

On the one hand,
there’s not a lot of good we can say
about the human condition.
Human failure, deep human failure,
is in our face every time we pay attention to the news,
whether global, national, or Harrisonburg community news.

In our community a young woman is being tried
for the death of another woman in our community,
because the young woman apparently drank heavily
until the wee hours of the morning,
and in a drunken fog got behind the wheel of her car.
Her failure to use good judgement, and moderation,
resulted in the tragic death of a wife and mother and friend.
Her failure ended tragically.
But failures in judgement and moderation
that are absolutely identical to hers,
happen dozens of times, daily, all over this very community.
The consequences may not be newsworthy,
but they harm just as many people.

On the national front,
a man recently went to jail for crimes driven by unmitigated greed.
A ponzi scheme larger than any in history,
destroyed countless lives, and businesses, and relationships.
And the same failure to value the dignity and worth of others,
the same sin of greed,
is continuing to destroy lives, and businesses, and relationships,
all over our country and world.

On the global stage,
where do we start?
Everywhere we look,
the failure to respect the worth of human beings
from other nations, or ethnic groups, or religions,
the failure to love . . .
is devastating the world as we know it.

Human failure is epidemic. It is endemic.
That is, it’s constantly and everywhere present.
We obviously don’t need to look across the ocean, or state lines,
to see it.
We don’t even have to look as far
as the Rockingham General District Court.
We need only look in our church,
in our own families.
We need only look in the mirror.

Choices that I myself make,
sometimes hurt, and disappoint, others in my life.
Human failure is rampant.
And in many situations, even in our own lives,
the result is devastating.
Human beings sin against each other, and against God,
often, and with great consequence.

So what do we do with . . . human failure?
What do we do when others fail?
I think we all know what happens much of the time.
We point fingers.
We make sure that as many people as possible
see that failure clearly, and in detail,
so that we come out looking good in comparison . . .
so that our own failures fade in proportion.

That seems to be the norm . . .
bolster our own self-image,
by shining light on the failure of others.

I sometimes wonder whether that’s what actually
drives the news industry in our culture.
That’s why tabloid journalism sells.
That’s why the more sensational the failure,
the larger the headline.

It reassures us average citizens
who are good people,
but have real-life, everyday struggles with greed,
that we are not anything at all
like those monsters who took bonuses at AIG.
We are a completely different species
than those corrupt thugs on Wall Street,
and those greedy bank executives, and corporate CEO’s.
It helps our own lives just . . . shine . . .
compared to that scumbag of a person
who robbed a bank or convenience store.

Seeing a sordid story of some pervert’s gross sexual misconduct
splashed across the pages of the paper,
can have the effect of making those among us
who struggle with sexual brokenness and addictions
minimize our own temptations,
or pass off our own indiscretions
as something completely different.

What do we do with human failure?
We create distance between us and them.
We point our fingers, and call people
monsters, and thugs, and scumbags, and perverts,
so we don’t have to do the painful work of examining ourselves.
But what should we do with human failure?
How do we respond to the sheer overwhelming mess
the human race is in?
How do we relate to those close to us
who have failed us miserably?
Or how do we relate to our own failures?

We could take a hint, perhaps, from what God does with failure.
_____________________

Each Sunday during Lent, and this is the fifth one,
we have looked at a different Old Testament covenant.
One with Noah, one with Abraham,
one with the Israelites at Mt. Sinai,
and last Sunday, the bronze snake covenant for healing.

But in all of these covenants,
and every other agreement between God and God’s people,
the people failed.
They did not live up to God’s intentions.
They cheated on God, in a major way.

So in today’s text, in the book of Jeremiah,
we see what God does with these multiple failures.
But before we look again at Jeremiah 31,
let’s jump back a few chapters,
and get a picture of how God really felt about these failures;
how these human failures impacted God.

Here is what God says (Jeremiah 11):
“Both the house of Israel and the house of Judah
have broken the covenant I made with their ancestors.
They have returned to the sins of their ancestors,
who refused to listen to my words.
They have followed other gods to serve them.

Therefore, I will bring on them a disaster they cannot escape.
Although they cry out to me, I will not listen.
The towns of Judah and the people of Jerusalem
will go and cry out to the gods to whom they burn incense,
but they will not help when disaster strikes.”

“Do not pray for this people,” God said to Jeremiah,
“or offer any plea or petition for them,
because I will not listen when they call to me
in the time of their distress.
What is my beloved doing in my temple
as she, with many others, works out her evil schemes?
Can consecrated meat avert your punishment?”

God could not have been more hurt, more disappointed, more angry,
and more justified in unleashing that anger on the people.
God wanted this relationship to be one that worked.
God had carried out God’s part of the covenant.
God poured everything into these people.
these people he loved,
these people he called friends,
these people he called his own wife.
But the people rejected God’s love, with contempt.
They acted like God’s love for them didn’t matter in the least,
and ran after other gods to worship them.
God was as angry as any scorned lover would be.

So clearly, it’s all over for the people.
Those monsters, those scumbags,
deserve whatever they have coming.
Well, in fact, the disaster God predicted did happen.
The consequences came, right on schedule.
They were raided by foreign armies,
carried away captive into a strange land,
their temple demolished,
their holy city in ruins.
God’s covenant with his people was over.
We know what to expect.
When we turn a few more pages in book of Jeremiah,
we will see the words, “THE END,”
in all block letters in the center of a blank page.
That had to be the end of the story.
Total failure, which leads to total destruction.

But instead, we turn the page and find Jeremiah 31.
“The days are surely coming, says the Lord,
when I will make a new covenant
with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.”

What?? A new covenant!!?? With the same people!!??
You’ve got to be kidding.
Jeremiah . . . you must have heard God wrong.
After the way they treated God? Again??

Is God so desperate as to try to make another go of it with Israel?
Apparently so.
“This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel
after those days,” says the Lord.
“I will put my law within them,
and I will write it on their hearts;
and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

After all this, God still wants to identify with these people.
God is still enamored with the people he chose.
God still wants his relationship with them to be rebuilt.
God is going to see that the new covenant gets internalized.
It’s not enough for the law to be carved in stone.
It’s not enough for the people to know, in their heads,
what God wants.
Knowledge of God must be written on the human heart.
Deep, experiential knowledge
of God’s great love and mercy and justice
must be deep within,
pulsing through our entire beings,
as essential to life as our very heartbeat.

You see, unlike us,
God doesn’t deal with failure by creating distance.
God doesn’t try to build up his own reputation,
by gloating or pointing fingers at those worthless scumbags.
God doesn’t move away from those who fail.
God moves toward them.
God pursues them. Persistently.
Second chances aren’t enough.
It’s fifth, sixth, and seventh chances.
Seventy chances times seven.

That is, to put it simply, awe-inspiring.
But it’s also, as some have said, “the grammar of the gospel.”
It is the basic structure of God’s good news.
It’s God’s powerful, persistent, unstoppable movement
from brokenness, toward wholeness,
from alienation, toward community,
from being lost, toward being found,
from condemnation, toward salvation,
from death, toward life.

That’s what God does with failure.
God redeems it.
Creates new life from it.
_____________________

I think that should say something to us,
in terms of how we respond to the failures of others.
When people hurt or disappoint,
do we create distance? or move toward?

Now, I recognize that immediately there is tension,
when I imply that we imitate God’s endless mercy.
Because there is the very real and life-preserving concern for safety.
So I want to be clear that I’m not saying
we should give offenders blank checks for offending again.

There are some relationships that go beyond
hurt and disappointment,
to abuse and violence.
Sometimes distance, and even strong barriers,
are exactly what is needed,
for the health and well-being of everyone concerned.

And furthermore, God did not give God’s people a blank check.
God called them back into a relationship that had a history,
a relationship based on rebuilding genuine trust,
and then God held them accountable.
Of course, there never is a perfect parallel between
God’s relationship with God’s creatures,
and the relationships of fallen and broken human beings.

Nevertheless,
God’s love, paired with God’s justice,
is a powerful thing,
and we do have something to learn from it.
Failure happens.
And what God does with failure,
is redeem it.
Again and again.
That is who God is, and what God does.
Takes what seems dead, and creates new life from it.
_____________________

That’s why in Psalm 51 which we sang,
the psalmist, devastated by his unspeakably horrible sin,
could come broken and begging to God,
and make a such bold request of God,
trusting that God would say “yes,”
“Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and put a new and right spirit within me.
Do not cast me away from your presence.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation.”

And that’s what the heart of Jesus’ words were about
in the reading from John this morning.
“I tell you for certain,” Jesus said,
“that a grain of wheat that falls on the ground
will never be more than one grain unless it dies.
But if it dies, it will produce lots of wheat.
If you love your life, you will lose it.
If you give it up in this world, you will be given eternal life.”

It seems, to the untrained eye,
that the seed dropped in the ground is dead and gone forever.
The very same forces of death
that cause a fallen tree to decay and return to the soil . . .
those same forces do their deadly work on the seed.
They soften and begin to rot the hard outer layer of the seed.
But those death-dealing forces are the very ones
that end up freeing God’s life-giving powers to burst forth,
and grow new life.
That is the grammar of the Gospel.
That is how God works!

But, here in John 12 is revealed an essential truth.
Before God’s life emerges,
the seed must fall to the ground,
and surrender its seed-ness.
It cannot hold on for dear life to that inner treasure,
or that dear life will wither away and really die.
No, it must surrender to One greater than itself.
In God’s economy, protection of life, equals death.
But surrender of life equals true life.
It’s that simple, and that difficult.
In the words of Jesus,
“If you love your life, you will lose it.
If you give it up in this world, you will be given eternal life.”

I don’t know what this surrender looks like for each of us personally.
It will look different for you, than it will for me,
because there are different things we are clinging to,
that hold back the life that God wants to free in us.
But I am certain,
that God will wait until we drop the seed into the ground.
God will not knock it from our hands.
God waits for our surrender.

God waits until we stand before him open-handed and empty-handed,
and say “You, God, are all I have. My life is in your hands.”

It is in that spirit of surrender that I invite us to sing again,
our theme song for Lent,
“You are all we have, you give us what we need,
our lives are in your hands, O Lord,
our lives are in your hands.”

If you don’t need the music, and many of you won’t,
let’s simply sing it with our palms outstretched,
and imagine, if we can, that thing, or situation, or thought,
to which we cling,
that’s preventing the new life God wants to grow in us.
Hold it there, loosely, in open palms, and offer it to God.
If you need the book, that’s fine. Turn to STJ 29.
Just find some way to also symbolically surrender to God,
whatever needs to be surrendered.
Truly, our lives are in God’s hands.

—Philip L. Kniss, March 29, 2009


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Ross Erb: What to do in the darkness

March 22, 2009
Lent 4
Numbers 21:4-9

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Recently there had been a lot of excitement for the people of Israel.
Finding out that God was there and cared,
having a hero like Moses come out of nowhere to stand up to Pharoah,
those were great times.
Then the plagues came,
and the whole lot of them fleeing as Egypt mourned the deaths of its firstborn,
seeing the Red Sea part,
watching the Egyptian army get mired in the mud and then covered by the waters.
It was so easy to believe that God had come back to redeem His chosen people.

They sang after they got across the sea.
A body of water between them and Egypt,
the Egyptian army destroyed,
the promise of a return to their historic home. God was good!
And then the pillar of cloud and fire moved on in front, and the whole group followed.

Things kind of went downhill then.
There are at least 4 incidents recorded in Numbers, prior to Numbers 21
where the chosen people, God’s elect, act pretty...well, pretty much like anyone else in the world. Kind of like spoiled children.
After 4 lessons about how they need to trust in God, you would think that the message would have gotten through.

But no, as they set out from Mount Hor they start to grumble again.
All this walking, the terrible food, not much water, it’s hot, maybe it’s cold...
The complaining stops pretty quickly when the snakes appear.
This is a bad situation. Snakes everywhere, and they are nasty.
People are dying, many people.

And all of a sudden the Israelites are back to Moses saying,
“We’ve sinned, not just against God, but against you too. Ask God to take the serpents away.”
Notice what the people asked for.
“Pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.”
Simple and direct. But God does not take the serpents away.
Moses is told to make an image of the very thing that is causing the pain, a snake,
and stick it up on a pole.
To receive healing, the Israelites had to face that which was causing them pain and suffering and death.

Perhaps more importantly, God did not just remove the snakes from their midst.
That would have been so easy, so clean.
Suffering comes, cry out to God for forgiveness or help, problem goes away.
But for healing, something was required of the Israelites. They had to have faith.
They had to be actively involved in turning and looking toward the image that had been erected, even while the snakes were still slithering around amongst them.

God’s people live today very much as they have through the ages.
At least here in North America that seems to be true.
When we face troubles, when life gets hard, we cry out.
We might even blame God for the hardships.
We complain and wonder why God doesn’t take our troubles away.

But if God didn’t take the serpents away from the midst of the Israelites,
how is it that we feel that God should be taking our troubles away?
God loved the world so much that he sent His own Son to live among us.
God saw humanity mired in our sin and pain and suffering,
and made a way for us to be saved from our sin – redeemed.
And interestingly, the image that is used in John 3 is that image of the serpent on the pole. Jesus was raised up on the cross, just like the serpent on the pole.
Just like the Israelites, if we turn to that which has been raised up, to the cross,
and believe, we will receive healing, redemption.

It would have been nice if God had simply removed evil and sin from this world.
Take those serpents away from us!
Instead, we have to, in the midst of our suffering and pain, turn to the cross and believe.
Our journey through Lent reminds us of that task.
We live in the midst of darkness, but we have seen the light.
The world is not perfect, but in Christ we have glimpsed perfection
and we have been invited to move toward that perfection.
In the midst of darkness, we will not see the light unless we open our eyes to look.
Otherwise, the darkness covers all.
Christ doesn’t take away the pain and trials that we face, He only helps us to bear them and gives us hope.

Vaclav Havel, was the last President of Czechoslovakia, and the first Prime Minister of the Czech Republic. He has a quote that speaks powerfully about hope. He says, “Hope is not a prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart." We are called to orient our hearts toward Christ, even in the midst of darkness.

On the eve of our tenth wedding anniversary,
Cathy and I sat down across from each other to talk.
We were talking about where we were going to live.
Our three children were still young, Peyton was 4, Brendan and Aaron only about 6 months old. We were talking about where we were going to live,
and it wasn’t like we were planning that we would live together.
We weren’t liking each other so much just then.
In our marriage relationship, it seemed like there was a lot of darkness.
The next day, at a surprise anniversary celebration with family and friends,
we put on a good front, but we didn’t want to be there.

In the midst of that darkness, we did turn to God for help.
We were not in a position where we could stand the mess we were in,
and it didn’t seem that we could change it ourselves.
Fortunately for us, God raised up someone to help us.
Delphine Martin was a counselor at the counseling agency begun by churches in the Kitchener-Waterloo area.
She met with us, probably not more than 6 times,
but enough to get us unstuck, to get us talking again.
That is what we needed, and we are both convinced that God used Delphine to save our marriage. It wasn’t easy, and it required a great deal of faith and commitment and hard work on our part.
It was not quick as Cathy and I moved from despair about our marriage
to contentment and then joy.
We didn’t necessarily see and acknowledge that God was working in our marriage as it was happening.
And that’s the thing about darkness.
Sometimes it just moves from dark to light in small increments,
and it is in looking back that you can see the change,
or all of a sudden you realize that it is not so dark.

Marilyn Chandler McEntyre wrote a poem titled, “What to do in the darkness”
and I find it to be a vivid image of how we can live in this present age.
Let me share it with you.

What to do in the darkness
Go slowly
Consent to it
But don’t wallow in it
Know it as a place of germination
And growth
Remember the light
Take an outstretched hand if you find one
Exercise unused senses
Find the path by walking it
Practice trust
Watch for dawn

I have asked three people to share stories of times when they were in darkness,
and God brought hope or healing, where they saw light.
Children, for the first story, I invite you to come up here and join me on the story blanket.
Lori Leaman is going to join us as well.
After she is done, the others can come up in the order listed
and share their stories with the congregation.

I have been talking about times when are sad or scared or hopeless. Lori, can you tell us about a time like that in your life?

THREE STORIES ARE TOLD

As we move toward Easter
we have an opportunity this morning to turn our faces toward the cross.
This Lenten season we may be facing situations where we are burdened with worry or fear, sadness or pain.
Christ has been lifted up.
We believe in him, and we are moving toward the light,
even as we are in the midst of darkness.
We acknowledge Christ as the One sent into the world,
not to condemn it but to save it.
We need saving, and it may be hard work.
Our work doesn’t save us,
but it is hard work to keep oriented toward our source of help.
If you wish, as we sing these next songs,
you may come forward with your burdens to ask for prayer or anointing with oil.
We can do as the Israelites did, and as Jesus said we should do,
and turn to that which has been lifted up.
Really, it’s all we have.


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Phil Kniss: Starting with the story

March 15, 2009
Lent 3
Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19; John 2:13-22

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I’m a list-maker.
I know a lot of you are too.
Lists keep our lives in order.
At least if we bother to look at them, and follow them.
I also think there’s something in our spiritual DNA,
and maybe cultural DNA, as Mennonites,
that make us likely to love lists.
Our theology emphasizes the “doing” side of faith.
Not to the total neglect of “being,”
but we do like our “doing.”
Ours is an active faith, and rightly so.
We are concerned about ethics.
We want to do right by God.

So a list like the Ten Commandments suits our spirituality very well.
This is a good list for people prone to measure their righteousness,
by what they do, or don’t do.

But let me make a case
for not reading these as just a spiritual “to-do list.”
Open your bulletins and look at how we printed them.
You may have noticed these things already,
but look at the title—the Decalogue.
That’s what Bible scholars call this text.
“Decalogue” just means, “Ten Words.”
“Ten Commandments” is the more popular title.
Both titles work. But I prefer “Ten Words.”
For a particular reason.
Which relates to another thing you might have noticed,
See anything strange about how these are numbered?

I imagine, if you did like me,
and memorized the Ten Commandments in Sunday School
or Bible School,
commandment #1 was the first half of what the bulletin says is #2:
“You shall have no other gods before me.”
And commandment #2 was the second half:
“You shall not make for yourself an idol.”
or in King James, “graven image.”
From there on they’re same.
So what’s with this number 1?
It’s not even a commandment.
“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt,
out of the house of slavery.”
The traditional Hebrew and Jewish numbering of these ten words
begins with one that is not a commandment.

See, these are not just a sterile list of isolated rules and prohibitions.
These are divine words, “words” in the sense of
solemn utterance of the one God Yahweh.
And since Day One of Creation,
we know the power of an utterance of God.
Words of God have the power to create, and to define.
“And God said, let there be . . . and there was . . .”

We cannot underestimate the importance of these ten words,
that God uttered to God’s people at a particular time.
A people who, by the way, were very new
to this relationship with God.
Who barely knew who this God was.
Who very recently in their history,
were first introduced to this God,
by a man who came into Egypt from a far country,
and claimed to be one of them,
sent by God to bring them out of slavery.
That was Moses.
And the only thing Moses could really say about who God was,
was that his name was, “I am.”
As a people, they knew nothing
about the nature and character of this so-called God,
whether God’s intention was to rescue them,
or exterminate them.
And they honestly wondered sometimes,
when they ran out of food and water in the wilderness.

So there they were,
a massive movement of people wandering in the desert,
led by a man who claimed to represent an unknown God.
These Ten Words could not have been more important,
or more timely.
It cannot be overstated.
These words meant everything to the people.
By these solemn utterances, this loving, Creator God
was speaking something into existence,
speaking life and breath into a people.
Just like in the six days of Creation,
God was speaking into existence.
Was creating a people of covenant.

The ten words begin the way they need to begin.
Word #1: “I am the Lord your God,
who brought you out of the land of Egypt,
out of the house of slavery.”
That word . . . was the foundation for everything that followed.
The so-called ten commandments,
start by becoming grounded in the story.
These ten words cannot, ultimately,
be separated from that story
of a God who has endless compassion and love
for the people God called into being.
These are words that come from a God
who is seeking a mutual loving relationship with a people.
These are words that start with the story
of God intervening in history,
and delivering people from oppression.

Most Christians today see this as a list of commands
that can be isolated, abbreviated,
neatly numbered, in two parallel columns,
inscribed onto stone or bronze or wood,
and hung on a wall or made into a monument.
We can look at them, and admire the wisdom contained in them,
as well we should.
There’s nothing wrong with putting them on display
for a reminder to ourselves and others.
But there is a risk in doing that, if we’re not careful.
We are tempted to separate them from the story,
to let them lose their grounding in a particular history.
These ten words started with a story.
They are directly tied to the most important story
in the Jewish faith tradition,
and it’s right up near the top in our own tradition,
the story of God delivering the people from slavery in Egypt.

So, the Jewish numbering of the Decalogue, the Ten Words,
makes this necessary link between law and story.
They begin by declaring who God is in relation to this story.
“I am the Lord your God.”
I am the God who loves you.
Who saw your suffering in Egypt,
and had compassion on you.
I delivered you.
I am The One.”

Word #1 is not the first thing to check off on their holy to-do list.
It’s not the first thing they have to do.
It’s the first word they have to know.
God is a saving, redeeming, freedom-giving God,
who brought them out of slavery.
That is the one fundamental truth,
that gives meaning to all the other commandments.
The other nine words
rise directly out of God’s loving and saving action toward us.

So these commandments don’t come across as,
“Do this, or else!”
They come across as, “I love you my children, I want you to be free.
Free from slavery. Free from bondage.
Free to be whole people.
Free to be in right and joyful relationship with me.
Free to be in right and joyful relationship with each other.

These commandments, contrary to what we think sometimes,
do not constrict us, they free us.
They show us what true freedom looks like.

“Thou shalt have no other gods before me”
is not a tedious burden to bear.
We are not hindered . . . we are freed to worship one God.
We don’t have to worry about dividing our allegiance
between multiple gods,
worshiping one while trying not to offend another.
We need not deal with conflicting loyalties.

“Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain”
does not constrict our full expression.
It means we are free to give honor to God by our words.

“Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy”
means that after a week of labor
we are free to rest in God’s love and care,

“Honor thy father and thy mother”
means we are free to be in right relationship
to those God has given us to guide us through life.

“Thou shalt not kill”
means we are free to enjoy mutual acts of kindness and justice
in our relationships with others.

“Thou shalt not commit adultery”
means we are free to experience the joy and security
that fidelity to a marriage covenant can bring.

“Thou shalt not steal”
means we are free from the anxiety of grasping for more,
free to be grateful, and generous with others.

“Thou shalt not bear false witness”
means we can discover the freedom that comes
from simply speaking truthfully.

“Thou shalt not covet”
means we are free to enjoy what we have,
to be content in our own abundance.

If the Lord our God who uttered these words
is the very same one who brought the people out
from under oppression,
we can be sure that these commandments are God’s way
of continuing to set us free,
of defining for us a new, and free, and joyful, and full life.

When we look at them this way,
the commandments do not lose their authority.
The laws still stand.
We ignore them to our detriment.
But they come from a God who built a reputation
on setting people free.
God’s law is a fence we can welcome.
It gives us parameters that provide security and safety,
and within which we have the room we need
to move around and enjoy a full and rich life.

These ten words were welcomed by the wandering people of Israel.
They were celebrated then.
They continue to be celebrated.
_____________________

Case in point? Psalm 19.
The law, according to the psalmist,
is a sweet and precious gift of God,
a gift to write lofty poetry about.

Psalm 19 doesn’t sound at all like the typical sober Christian
who talks about God’s law.
We like to get all serious and studious,
and determined and disciplined,
when we talk about God’s commandments in scripture.
We like to talk about the great ethical demands they place on us,
and upon others.
We like to measure ourselves,
and we really like to measure others,
against the high ethical standards of the law.
That’s not quite the tone we get from Psalm 19.

The writer, in his sheer delight over God’s law,
has gotten downright giddy and romantic about it.
He’s writing about laws, and rules, and statutes, and commandments. But he sounds like he’s writing a restaurant review
after having had the most exquisite meal of his life.
It practically oozes with poetic praise
and syrupy sweetness.
“Ah, God’s law. (mppwah!!)
Perfecto!
Revives the soul.
It’s clear.
It’s pure.
It warms the heart.
Sweeter than the drippings of a honeycomb.”
Those are all words the psalmist uses,
to describe the law.

I’m pretty sure the psalmist wasn’t Mennonite.

But it wasn’t just one romantic poet who felt that way about the law.
It’s part of the Jewish mindset.
There is a love and warm, emotional devotion to the Torah.
If you visit a synagogue, you will see them carry the scroll around,
and everyone reaches out to touch it, to kiss it.
And some Christian traditions are similar.
In many high churches, the reading of the Gospel
is done with the utmost of devotion
and with a sense of awe.
A few years back we asked a visiting Indonesian pastor
to read the Gospel at one of our Taizé services.
At the conclusion of his reading,
he lifted the Bible to his lips and kissed it.
There is something of that nature . . .
sweetness, beauty, priceless treasure . . .
that we miss out on completely,
if we only see these Ten Commandments as a list,
and divorce them from their story.

These commandments are so important,
and so valuable to our lives and faith,
because they started with a story,
involving God and God’s people.
They came as a timely gift
from a God who loves and redeems.
A God who delivers those in bondage.
A God who has compassion on the suffering.

It is a constant, and perennial temptation for us humans.
To take a precious and sublime gift of a gracious God,
and turn it into something mundane,
to rob it of its pulsing life,
to make it into a commodity,
a list,
a transactional arrangement.

I wonder if that’s why Jesus got so angry at the money changers.
They were taking a precious gift of God,
the joy of giving worship and sacrifice to God in the temple.
A gift that should have inspired an outbreak of generosity,
a demonstration of God’s wild economy of giving away,
of sharing,
of making sure everyone had what they needed to worship.
Instead, the whole thing became a transaction.
God needs animal sacrifice. You don’t have animals.
So you pay me cash,
I give you the lamb or dove,
you pay God by sacrificing the animal,
God pays you by forgiving your sin.
Everybody pays, and gets what they want.
God gets some worship.
You get forgiveness.
I get a little richer.

We take a precious gift of God,
something perfect and pure,
something sweeter than the drippings of the honeycomb,
and make it a common object to be purchased,
or compiled into a list of things to do to buy our righteousness.

I invite us to be resisters.
Go from this place determined to resist this temptation
to turn the precious into the common,
to turn the gift into a transaction.
Let us go with a renewed commitment to soak ourselves in the story,
to revel in the God who loves us,
who hears our deepest longings, our cries for freedom,
who wants to redeem us,
to save us from whatever holds us hostage.
Let us place ourselves right into the story
of a loving, saving, redeeming God.
Because . . . "this is a story full of love,
and a song to set us free." (Hymnal Worship Book #315)

—Philip L. Kniss, March 15, 2009


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Barbara Moyer Lehman: Family, Faith and Future Generations

March 8, 2009
Lent 2
Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16; Romans 4:13-25; Mark 8:31

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Jimmy Carter is quoted as saying, “God always answers prayers. Sometimes it’s, ‘Yes’. Sometimes the answer is, ‘No’. Sometimes it’s, ‘You’ve gotta be kidding!’” I wonder if Abram might have muttered that very phrase to himself or maybe even out loud, when God announces to him that at the ripe old age, (very ripe), of 99, Abram will become the father of MANY nations. Who knows what he said under his breath. His mutterings, if there were any, are not recorded in scripture. What is recorded, interestingly enough, is what he DID! He fell facedown! Eugene Peterson in The Message states, “Overwhelmed, Abram fell flat on his face.” Is it any wonder? Out of the barrenness and emptiness that he and Sarai experienced for umpteen years, God is now promising something more! Lots more, new life, fruitfulness! But the fulfillment of God’s promise depends entirely on trusting God and his way.

In the first 7 verses from Genesis 17, God first reveals himself to Abram as God Almighty, El Shaddai. He instructs Abram, commands him to, “Walk before me faithfully and without blame. THEN I will make my covenant between me and you.” What does God promise? What is the covenant?

• that Abram will become the father of many nations, he will be VERY fruitful, his numbers will be greatly increased. (this also results in a name change....Abram to Abraham!)
• that a permanent relationship, an everlasting covenant, between God and Abram, and ALL of his descendants after him, will be established
• that God will be Abram’s God and the God of ALL his descendants after him.
• (verse following also includes the land of Canaan that will be given to him)

God’s command requires that Abram conduct himself before God in complete obedience. When Abram and Sarai are well past retirement age, in the over the hill category, maybe several hills, God basically tells them, “I have something more for you to do.!”

And of course, it is not just about Abram. God tells Abram that Sarai will be blessed and that surely Abram will have a son BY HER. Sarai will become Sarah. She will be blessed so that she will be the mother of nations and kings will come from her.

It sounds like the patriarch and matriarch have work to do. Time to come out of retirement, tell the family the good news, try to explain to the neighbors, make some clothes for the child to come, paint the nursery, and repeat over and over again, this is NOT a dream. We are going to be parents!!

Unbelievable though it may seem, Abraham and Sarah, are to be the parents of many nations, not one single nation, but MANY! The fact that the promise to both Abraham and Sarah is recorded is significant. God’s hand is at work, in both lives! Out of barrenness and emptiness, God is promising life and hope. This divine covenant which God is establishing extends to all the peoples that will come from their offspring. It becomes part of our story. And the story must continue to be told. God’s patient and long relationship with all of these generations of offspring down through the ages is meant to form and transform people who are willing to know God, to follow God, to serve God and to be instruments of God’s blessing to others.

Abraham is an important figure in Judaism. He is the model Jew. Abraham is also important in the New Testament. He is mentioned 72 times. 18 times in Romans. Another lectionary text for today, Romans 4:13-25, tells us a lot about Abraham. Chapter 4 is often seen as a ‘faith’ chapter. It focuses on Abraham’s faith, but also on God’s faithfulness. It portrays all who believe, Jews and Gentiles, as Abraham’s seed. The Abraham story is used in Romans to help address questions of the identity of the Christian community in Rome, the co-existence together of Jews and non-Jews. Abraham represents the inclusion of Gentiles in the people of God without circumcision or observance of the law. Abraham represents one who is saved through faith, not saved by works. He is the father of us all, Jews and Gentiles.

John Toews in the commentary on Romans writes: “Because Abraham is our father, all members of God’s people stand on the same level playing field. We become members of God’s people on the same basis, by faith and obedience, as all other believers. Children who have the same God and the same father(Abraham) should make peace with each other rather than fight each other.” (p. 129)

Abraham trusted God. This trust in God was not easy. When his body seemed incapable of human reproduction, Abraham trusted God to reverse the human condition......he trusted that somehow God would perform a miracle.

Peterson’s The Message, in Romans 4 expresses it this way:

“When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn’t do but on what God said he would do. And so he was made father of a multitude of peoples. God himself said to him, “You’re going to have a big family, Abraham!’
Abraham didn’t focus on his own impotence and say, “It’s hopeless. This hundred year old body could never father a child”. Nor did he survey Sarah’s decades of infertility and give up. He didn’t tiptoe around God’s promise asking cautiously skeptical questions. He plunged into the promise and came up strong, ready for God, sure that God would make good on what he had said. That’s why it is said, ‘Abraham was declared fit before God by trusting God to set him right.” But it’s not just Abraham, it’s also us! The same thing gets said about us when we embrace and believe the One who brought Jesus to life when the conditions were equally hopeless. The sacrificed Jesus made us fit for God, set us right WITH God.”

Faith in God is a struggle, especially when you see a very real situation and see no way out of it, when the reality of the circumstances are so complex and complicated that in human eyes and hearts it feels hopeless. Abraham trusted God above the reality of the circumstances and his situation. He lived “out of faith”. His children are people who live “out of faith” in God. Abraham is the father of those who trust God in confidence that they are included in the community of God’s people. It is part of our story. Are we telling the story? How are we telling the story?

We know that God’s hand was upon us as a people, down through generations in our Anabaptist history. People who trusted God, who had to trust, because sometimes they lived in difficult times and circumstances and in desperate situations. The seeds of the martyrs produced faithfulness for the next generations. The stories continue.
In 1573, Maeyken Wens is burned at the stake in Antwerp, Belgium with a tongue screw in her mouth to prevent her from witnessing during the execution. She, a young mother with children, writes from her prison cell a letter to her family, encouraging her son, not to be afraid. She writes that the Lord has taken away all her fear. She lets go, relinquishes her family into God’s care, rather than renounce her faith. That’s a story that cannot die. It reminds us of the unconditional trust and faith that we must have in God.

Are we telling our stories? Ann Weems, a Presbyterian writer, in the mid 1980's came out with a book, Family Faith Stories. She takes us through many stories of her own rich heritage out of the Scottish Presbyterian faith. She reflects on the question, “Who are my people?” For her they are the Scots who left the land of Scotland for the shores of South Carolina, and there they knelt in prayer in gratitude for God who led them to this land.

Who are your people? It is an ancient question? What is your tribe, your clan? Where do you come from? What are your roots? What are your stories and who is telling them? Will the next generation know our stories of faith? God’s faithfulness to us? Our faith in God that brought life out of death, hope out of despair, fruitfulness out of barrenness?

Ann Weems writes:

Ours is the faith
that directs our coming in and going out,
the faith that orders our lives,
the faith that demands risk and standing up and speaking out,
the faith that asks us to believe and to love,
the faith that asks us to live all the rest of our days
for the furthering of the Kingdom of God. (p. 29)

God blessed Abraham and Sarah. God continues to bless us. God called them out of retirement for there was still more for them to do......become parents of nations, and kings and peoples. They trusted God. God continues to call us for there is more to be done. We, too, need to trust in God. God equipped Abraham and Sarah for what they needed to do as father and mother to nations. God equips us for whatever task he is calling us to do.
Our children need to know our stories, our faith stories...how God has continued to walk with us and work in our lives.

In December I was Christmas shopping at a local large bookstore. I found this book and bought two of them. (From Grandma with Love) Most of you know I am a proud grandma of two beautiful granddaughters. This book, one for each of those girls, will tell them much about my story and the important things in our history. It will be a huge project that will be done in stages, I’m afraid, as I have time. The part that intrigued me most was the 4th chapter, titled, What I Leave to You. It provides space and a way for me to share important events in my lifetime and during my lifetime. There is a section on Hard Times (and how I survived them) Where I turned for strength....where I found comfort...what I learned from the experience...some lessons I learned. Another section includes, Grandma’s wisdom, (what life has taught me). The last section of that part is titled My Dreams for You.

Working on this has already been an interesting experience. It will be a major accomplishment for me to complete, but if it never gets totally finished, what I can get done, will be enough. I want my grandchildren to know from whence they came. I want them to know our stories, family stories, treasured memories of joy and pain, faith stories and my hopes and dreams for them. I want them to know what connects them to the generations before them and what needs to be told to their children some day, over and over again.

Ann Weems writes:

These people who lived six generations back and I....
We are linked forever throughout history.
I am flesh of their flesh,
but even more,
I am heart of their hearts,
For who they are
they gave away to those of us who followed....
And the children of Israel
(back generation after generation after generation)
And I
are linked together throughout eternity,
For in the beginning was the Word
and through time the Word
is spoken.
Those who hear the story
live
abundantly,
the love of God written on their hearts. (p.43)

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Phil Kniss: The Great Flood -- a Love Story

March 1, 2009
Lent 1: God provides for creation
Genesis 9:8-17; 1 Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:9-15

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There aren’t many Bible stories like the one we read in Genesis today.
I’ll bet you could go to just about any public place
in this country right now—
city sidewalk, park, shopping plaza,
talk to the first random person you meet,
and I think you would find,
even in this secular, post-Christian, biblically illiterate culture,
that chances are extremely high
that person could recite the basic elements of this Bible story.
They’d probably get some details wrong—
might even get Noah and Moses mixed up.
But they could tell you that Noah built a big boat called an Ark,
and brought two of every animal, male and female,
onto the boat,
and then there was a big flood that destroyed the world,
except for those on the boat,
and after it was over, a rainbow appeared in the sky.
Nine times out of ten, I bet. They’d get it right.
People know this story.
They’ve been exposed to it since infancy.

You want proof?
Walk into one of our local temples to the god of American consumerism:
Super Wal-Mart, Target, Penney’s, take your pick.
Walk the aisles, and count how many times you see
this story depicted on children’s products—
toys, books, bath towels, pajamas, wallpaper.

I don’t think you can say that about any other Bible story. Period.
Everybody knows this story.
But . . . do we know this story?
I mean, really know it to the point
where the truth of this story lives and breathes in us?
I invite us to open ourselves anew to this story,
and ask it the questions that need to be asked.

I put it that way, because we often ask other questions of it.
People have been obsessed about whether it’s literally true.
Some Christian organizations have spent millions
trying to prove this story historically and scientifically.
Some claim they’ve found the ark.
Those questions might be fascinating to think about.
They just aren’t the right questions.
Because this primaeval story
is not about science or about history.
It is a story about God.
It is a story that has been given to us,
and told and retold through the ages,
because people want to know . . . need to know . . .
what kind of God is it that we have?
What is God’s character?
What is God’s relationship to us, human beings?
Those are the questions this story is intended to answer.

But as soon as we frame the question that way things get complicated.
That’s an even more thorny and difficult question
than questions of history and science.
Who is this God who would destroy the whole world
and every living thing,
after he created it and called it very good,
just because he got mad at us human beings?
Is this a God of love . . . or not?

I just invited you to open yourself to this story in a new way.
Well, I want you to come to know and experience
this story of the Great Flood,
first and foremost, as a love story.
It is a love story in the classic sense,
with the usual plotline . . .
the first falling in love,
the disappointment, betrayal, and anger,
the deliberate rebuilding of trust,
and starting over with a new appreciation for each other.

It helps us to see this,
if we realize what was going on here
with the original tellers of the story.
Here, as in many other Bible stories,
God is anthropomorphized.
That’s a long word with a simple meaning—
God depicted as human.
And that’s really about the only way we puny human beings
can get any sort of handle on what God is like.
We have to compare this huge, ultimately unknowable God,
with something we do know.
And this is not just something we do to God.
God does it for us.

If scripture is inspired by God,
then God must have inspired the anthropomorphiz-ing.
I’m just trying to see how long I can make that word.
See, God wants to be known.
God is a God of revelation.
So God not only allowed us humans,
but inspired us humans,
to see, and to record, our impressions of God,
even if those impressions were only partial,
and came in bits and pieces,
and were refined and improved and clarified over time.

So if we look at these ancient texts that way,
instead of reading them like a science textbook,
they not only come alive,
but we can embrace the truthfulness of the whole story
more completely and with more gratitude
for these Holy Spirit-inspired Bible story-tellers.

So . . . what makes this terrible story of death and destruction,
a love story, of all things?

Well, stick with me.
Let’s look at it as God-inspired human story-telling
that emerged from a particular point in time,
that opened up the story of God a little bit further,
that unraveled more of the mystery.

This story emerged at a time when Israel’s understanding
of their One God Yahweh was very limited.
The only thing they had to compare to,
was the way nations around them understood their gods.
Other nations had their own ancient stories of great floods.
In some of those stories, there were many gods,
in conflict with each other,
and this battle between the gods produced the floods.
Suffering humans were barely a blip on the radar of these gods.
The destruction of human life was merely
collateral damage in the war between the gods.

But the story that Israel was given, and that we’ve been given,
through the gracious gift of God-inspired scripture,
reveals a very different kind of God.
Even though it’s written from a human point of view,
and paints God with human characteristics,
the God-inspired truth comes through.
It reveals a new and profound truth about the One God,
the Creator of the universe.
This God loves his human creation . . . loves them,
and longs for them to live in right relationship
with God, each other, and the world.

The God of our Bible is a passionate God.
God feels . . . deeply.
And in looking at his human creation before the flood,
God was deeply pained.
The very people God created in order to love him,
and be loved by him,
were not only refusing to love God,
they did not love their fellow human beings.
Gen. 6:11 says the earth was “filled with violence.”
They were wasting their priceless gift of humanity.
This was deeply painful to God, we are told.
Gen. 6:6: “The Lord was sorry
that he had made humankind on the earth,
and it grieved him to his heart.”
So in God’s deep despair,
God made the fateful decision to destroy this corrupt life,
and try again.

And we know the story. It rained for 40 days and 40 nights.
Flood waters covered the earth,
and destroyed every living creature,
except those on Noah’s boat.
Eventually, the water went down,
and Noah, his family, and the animals with them,
came off the boat and got ready to start life all over again.

Noah built an altar of thanksgiving to God, we are told in chap. 8,
and this God (portrayed as someone with eyes and a nose)
looked down, and smelled the sacrifice (v. 21).
And the implication is that God also looked around
at what was left of his beautiful creation.
And God was once again struck with regret.
Or at least, with deep sorrow at the gravity of destruction.
Five times in just a few verses, God says, with feeling,
“Never again . . . never again . . .
never again will I do what I have just done.”

First, God was sorry he had made humankind.
Now, God sounds sorry he had them destroyed.

We naturally feel a bit uncomfortable with a God who says,
in essence, “Whoops! My bad!”
But God is portrayed numerous times in scripture,
as one who repents, who changes his mind,
who alters course.
Of course, this is the human angle on the divine will.
But by telling the story this way,
we are reassured of God’s most essential characteristic,
God’s core nature is love.

If God is so pained by the violence of human beings,
and so pained when they are destroyed,
it must mean that God is really invested in us.
God must really love and care about who we are,
and how we live with him and with each other.
God is not a remote, cold, and uncaring deity,
who gets into random battles with other gods,
and who hardly notices when humans suffer as a result.
No, God owns what God has done.
God grieves over human suffering.
Whether the suffering was brought on by their own violence,
or whether the suffering was brought on by God’s judgment,
either way . . . God grieves when God’s beloved ones suffer,
or when they fail to live up to their created beauty.

God . . . the Creator of the Universe . . . is invested in us.
Think about that!
And think what a profound . . . and world-view changing . . .
revelation that was for the people of Israel
who heard this story for the first time.
And whose only prior notion of God came from stories
coming out of Egypt and Babylon and such.

In the flood story, the truth about God comes out.
God loves them.
And God loves everything God has created.
In Genesis 9, God is essentially saying,
“Don’t look back at this flood,
and draw the wrong conclusion about me.
I’m not about destroying life.
I’m about creating and sustaining life.
My heart is oriented toward you, my people.
I love you. And I will always love you.
No matter what you do to me.
I will keep loving you.
If you cheat on me again, I will be faithful to you.
I promise to love and sustain you forever,
and I will never forget my promise.
Just to make sure,
I’ll put a rainbow in the clouds to remind me.
Whenever I see the rainbow,
I’ll think of this promise to you.
I am for you, not against you.”

When you read it this way, there is no denying it.
The flood story is a love story.

It’s not true to the story, to read chapters 6-8,
and conclude that the main purpose of this story is to reveal
God’s terrible wrath and power to destroy.
This is a story about how God came to decide, literally,
to love the world without condition, and to redeem it.
When you read the first nine chapters of Genesis, creation to flood,
you see a story with lots of interesting twists and turns.
Love and fellowship . . . and murder and deceit.
But in all its complexity, it is finally, ultimately, a love story.
God, the lover, is jilted and betrayed. Repeatedly.
But in the end, it’s not God’s anger, judgment, and regret
that defines who God is.
It is God’s decision to love and redeem.
It is God’s choice to make a covenant,
and provide a way to be restored.

This story of the Great Flood teaches us that
God is inclined toward this world; he will not turn his back on it.
God is drawn toward this world, even with all its brokenness,
its corruption, its violence.
God is drawn toward the world with love and compassion.

And out of this love, comes a covenant between God and all creation.
This is huge.
This is not just a promise for Noah and his descendants.
This is a covenant between God and every living thing.
Every . . . living . . . thing.
And God made sure we heard that right, in Genesis 9.
In eight verses it’s repeated eight times.
Listen [count]
v. 10 – with every living creature; every animal of the earth
v. 11 – all flesh
v. 12 – every living creature for all future generations
v. 15 – every living creature; all flesh
v. 16 – every living creature
v. 17 – all flesh that is on the earth
8 times.

That’s one strong theological argument
for loving and caring for the earth and all its living things.
Every living creature is a part of this covenant with God,
and is an object of God’s love.

And it’s certainly a strong argument
to celebrate God’s deep and abiding and unconditional
love and longing for us human beings.
God is oriented toward us.
God leans toward us.
God, the lover, wants to be in relationship with us.
God has been saying to his people ever since Noah,
“You are my beloved child.”
God said it through Abraham, through the psalmists,
through the prophets,
through the writers of the gospels and epistles.
Most powerfully, God said it to his own Son, at his baptism,
in the gospel reading this morning,
“You are my Son, the Beloved.”
After which Jesus was thrust into the wilderness of temptation.
But he went there with those words ringing in his ears,
“You are my Son, the Beloved. With you I am well pleased.”

The wilderness is real, for Jesus and for us.
The judgment that comes with rebellion is real,
in Genesis and now.
The suffering we heard described by the apostle in 1 Peter is real,
both for the righteous and the unrighteous.

All that is real.
But just as real, and just as important
in this season of Lent,
and in this season of global anxiety, fear, and violence,
is . . . the love of God—
the unending, unconditional, unfathomable
love of God for all human beings, and for all creation.
Let us walk whatever wilderness is required of us,
today and in the coming days,
but let us walk it in the full awareness
of God’s great love, rich and pure, measureless and strong,
the saints’ and angels’ song.
In the face of all that is wrong in the world,
let us stand and loudly proclaim this love of God,
by singing #44 in Sing the Journey. “The love of God”

– Philip L. Kniss, March 1, 2009


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