Tag: Dependence on God

By Faith We Are Healed

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

Through nearly every outlet of our socials, we are bombarded by health and wealth influencers, bio and cash hackers promising us sure fire ways to get and stay fit and rich. Whether it’s a food to avoid or consume in high quantities, an elixir or potion to drink no matter how noxious, or a revealed secret that this or that industry doesn’t want you to know, these influencers and hackers will sell you whatever you want to hear except the truth. They will focus on you, making your ill health and unwell-being, your lack of prosperity and thriving your fault, and if you can just do this one thing, consume that one ingredient, you will change your life and, even, refuse the grim reaper his visit. Keeping you consumed with yourself and what you lack while convincing you that success is just one root vegetable away, allows these charlatans to keep you asleep and numb to the real problems of the human condition.

The problem is neither one’s inability to secure health and wealth nor the natural occurrence of death. Our issue, fundamentally, is our obsession with power (domination)[ii] and violence.[iii] We are obsessed with consuming: we consume creation, we consume each other, we even consume ourselves. And by “consume” I do not strictly mean our insatiable hunger for things, but our insatiable hunger for power and domination wherein we use war and violence to “secure” our privilege and greatness. There is nothing that can stand in our way that we can’t and won’t destroy, even ourselves and the very ground under our feet.

In this septic and toxic atmosphere, it’s no wonder that we can barely keep our relations intact. When each person is a consumer, consuming what is necessary to stay on top, no one is safe and everyone is a potential threat. This very mentality and orientation in the world causes fractures in our relationships with ourselves, with one another, with creation, and, most importantly for us, with God. (Yes, even God becomes an ideology to be consumed and, if God gets too big, someone to be dominated and forced to do our will.) It is not so much our bad habits and our good ones that will bring us closer to or farther from death; it’s our relationship with power and violence; it’s our willingness to see everything and everyone else as a means to an end, a crumb for consumption.

Isaiah 25:1-9

O Lord, you are my God;
I will exalt you, I will praise your name;
for you have done wonderful things,
plans formed of old, faithful and sure.
For you have made the city a heap,
the fortified city a ruin;
the palace of aliens is a city no more,
it will never be rebuilt.
Therefore strong peoples will glorify you;
cities of ruthless nations will fear you.

Isaiah’s opening words here are a song of thanksgiving offered from the broader community.[iv] Even though Isaiah speaks in the first-person singular, he speaks for the great Israel and Judah—as the prophet does in their prophetic role as representatives of both God and the people. Isaiah credits God with great and beneficent action, action that is so strong that human made fortifications, palaces, and human manufactured security cannot withstand God’s action, especially God’s action on behalf of the people who need God to act.

For you have been a refuge to the poor,
a refuge to the needy in their distress,
a shelter from the rainstorm and a shade from the heat.
When the blast of the ruthless was like a winter rainstorm,
the noise of aliens like heat in a dry place,
you subdued the heat with the shade of clouds;
the song of the ruthless was stilled.

When the poor and needy cry out, God is there, says Isaiah. Make no mistake, this includes the flora and fauna of creation. Isaiah does not resort to pleas for the rulers of the kingdom of humanity to act right because these very ones are spiritually ill because their politic is driven by consumption and their weapons are violence and war;[v] Isaiah knows there is stronger medicine needed to correct this sickness[vi] plaguing Israel and her people, especially the widow and orphan, the hungry and thirsty, and the ostracized and marginalized.[vii] There is no political alignment with another nation or people that will solve Israel’s problems and such alignment will only prove deadly;[viii] alliances with other nations provoke more consumption and goad those so allied into more violence and war. In other words, alliances are not part of the cure, but the disease.

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines,
of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.
And he will destroy on this mountain
the shroud that is cast over all peoples,
the sheet that is spread over all nations;
he will swallow up death forever.

Israel and Judah have (repeatedly) turned to their own devices, wisdom, and strength to try to build a (false) sense of security through deals with other peoples and nations; according to Isaiah, they must only turn to Abba God who is the one who will establish and make for God’s self a people who walk in God’s light. Isaiah makes it clear that these ones—the elect of God—are to live by faith (even if it is difficult); faith is the basis of Israel’s and Judah’s life—life with God, life with themselves, life with creation, life abundant.[ix] It is not by alliances within the kingdom of humanity that will bring the desired security and prosperity; these will only bring war, violence, and death. Faith in God anchors the one who believes in the God who cannot fail to provide comfort and security for God’s people.[x] God is the only one who can inoculate Israel and Judah against the infection of consumption and her children (violence and domination). How? Faith renders the one who has it dependent on God and not on their own strength; once the believer is here in this humble space, the desperate need to be on top, to dominate, to consume, to use violence clears up and out. In this way, faith makes space for something new because it demands the one who has it to release the old, tried, and failing ways of the kingdom of humanity; therein space is made for an interruption by the divine Spirit bringing long awaited redemption from this human sickness.[xi]

Then Abba God will wipe away the tears from all faces,
and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth,
for the Lord has spoken.
It will be said on that day, Lo, this is our God;
we have waited for him, so that he might save us.
This is the Lord for whom we have waited;
let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.

God will bring God’s justice; human made alliances and pacts with other human-made kingdoms will not, these will only bring more war and violence, more death of human beings. God heals God’s people, God soothes those who weep in sorrow and sadness, God cloths those disgraced by human violence in divine garments of mercy and righteousness.[xii] God will bring justice where humans within the kingdom of humanity bring only injustice and therein God is exalted and glorified.[xiii] As the irregularity of human injustice is interrupted by God’s justice, human beings are liberated from the captivity to violence and domination, born into love out of consuming indifference, brought into new life out of death.[xiv]

Conclusion

On this day we take a moment to reflect on the way our sickness has ravaged both the land and the people who were cared for and worked this land before us. This is a day that reminds us how much we need and are dependent on Jesus and our faith in him; he is our cure, he is our comfort, he is our way in this world as we work with him to keep human life human (Paul Lehmann). Today, it makes the most sense to give those whom we’ve harmed the final word about the destructive power of consumption, how it plagues humankind, and the divine food that brings life.

Everything was water except a very small piece of ground. On this were the eagle and Coyote. Then the turtle swam to them. They sent it to dive for the earth at the bottom of the water. The turtle barely succeeded in reaching the bottom and touching it with its foot. When it came up again, all the earth seemed washed out.

Coyote looked closely at its nails. At last, he found a grain of earth. Then he and the eagle took this and laid it down. From it they made the earth as large as it is. From the earth, they also made six men and six women. They sent these out in pairs in different directions and the people separated.

After a time the eagle sent the Coyote to see what the people were doing. Coyote came back and said: “They are doing something bad. They are eating the earth. One side is already gone.”

The eagle said: “That is bad. Let us make something for them to eat. Let us send the dove to find something.”

The dove went out. It found a single grain of meal. The eagle and Coyote put this down on the ground. Then the earth became covered with seeds and fruit. Now they told the people to eat these. When the seeds were dry and ripe the people gathered them. Then the people increased and spread all over. But the water is still under the world.[xv]

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] See Carter Heyward, The Seven Deadly Sins of White Christian Nationalism, 49-64.

[iii] See Heyward, The Seven Deadly Sins, 127-139.

[iv] Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah: A Commentary, The Old Testament Library (Louisville: WJK, 2001), 183. “The opening verses are classified form-critically as a psalm of thanksgiving.”

[v] Abraham K. Heschel, The Prophets (New York: JPS, 1962), 73. “Politics is based on the power of the sword. But Isaiah as waiting for the day when nations ‘shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.’ Alliances involve preparation for war, but Isaiah was horrified by the brutalities and carnage which war entails. In his boundless yearning he had a vision of the day when ‘nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more’ (2:4).”

[vi] Heschel, Prophets, 172-173. “Dislike for the world or disparagement of civilization is alien to the prophet. His attachment to God calls upon him to be involved with humanity. Yet in the face of idle and false imposition, he announces the contingency and insecurity of civilization, the sickness and liability of man. Israel is under judgment; the covenant with God must not be taken as immunity from judgment.”

[vii] Heschel, Prophets, 73. “Isaiah could not accept politics as a solution, since politics itself, with its arrogance and disregard of justice, was a problem. When mankind is, as we would say, spiritually sick, something more radical than political sagacity is needed to solve the problem of security.”

[viii] Heschel, Prophets, 73. “For the moment a clever alignment of states may be of help. In the long run, it is bound to prove futile.”

[ix] Heschel, Prophets, 73. “Indeed, it is hard to live by faith. But Isaiah insisted that one cannot live without faith…faith is not an easy or convenient path. There are frustrations in store for him who expects God to succeed at every turn in history.”

[x] Heschel, Prophets, 73. “War spawns death. But Isaiah was looking to the time when the Lord ‘will swallow up death for ever, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces (25:8…). Israel’s security lies in the covenant with God, not in covenants with Egypt or other nations. The mysterious power of faith maintains: God alone is true protections. Such power will not collapse in the hour of disaster…”

[xi] Heschel, Prophets, 94. “Something new, an outburst of the Spirit, will initiate redemption.”

[xii] Heschel, Prophets, 214. “The grandeur and majesty of God does not come to expression in the display of ultimate sovereignty and power, but rather in rendering righteousness and mercy.”

[xiii] Heschel, Prophets, 214. “Isaiah’s declaration does not speak about values, and its intention is not to assert that holiness and justice are very much alike, or that justice is holy, or that holiness is just. Isaiah speaks about God, and his intention is to say that the Lord of Heaven and earth, of nature and history, finds His true exaltation in justice.”

[xiv] Heschel, Prophets, 215. “If justice is but a category, a conformity, then injustice must be regarded as an irregularity, a deviation from the norm. But justice is like a mighty stream, and to defy it is to block God’s almighty surge. The moralists discuss, suggest, counsel; the prophets proclaim, demand, insist.”

[xv] http://straightarrow.org/stories/indigenous-stories/yokut/the-beginning-of-the-world-wukchamni-yokut/

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Fruitful Trees, Well Nourished

Psalm 1:1a, 2-3 1 Happy are they who have not walked in the counsel of the wicked…Their delight is in the law of God, and they meditate on God’s law day and night.

Introduction

Our Psalm for today is an acclamation of the well-being of the one who follows God. Verse 1 always catches my eye. The Psalmist writes, “Happy are they who have not walked in the counsel of the wicked, nor lingered in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seats of the scornful!” I always wonder what people hear when they hear the word “sinners” and the phrase “the scornful.” I think people think that sinners and “the scornful” (those worthy of being scorned) are all the “bad” people, the ones who don’t fit the preconceived agreed upon notion of “the mold,” those who do “bad” things, break the civil law/code, those who are rude, impolite, terse, etc., people who swear, don’t get up early, skip reading their bible, drink spicey brown waters…. Sometimes I see that church history has done number on vulnerable human beings with the definition of what a sinner is, usually participating in this allocation of “sinner” toward those who are bad defined by deeds and actions just mentioned. (Even to the point of conflating aspects of one’s body and identity with being sinful.) Sometimes (often?) I worry how many of you think you are the “sinner” who is “not good enough” to be addressed and welcomed by God.

But who, according to the bible, are the “sinners” and those who are “scornful”? From what I can tell, it has less to do with petty demerits and absolutely nothing to do with the status of one’s body and physical expression and more to do with how and what human beings value. In other words, sinners and the scorned are those who choose idols over God as their object of love and dependence. In other, other words, they are those who have chosen themselves, their own ways and turned their backs on God and God’s ways.

Jeremiah 17:5-10

When God’s people and their leaders go astray, a prophet is summoned and provoked by God to see and hear, to share and identify with the pain and turmoil both divine and human. Jeremiah is such a prophet. He was summoned during one of the “…most crucial and terrifying periods in the history of the Jewish people in biblical times: the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple of Solomon, followed by the beginning of the Babylonian exile.”[1] Jeremiah’s prophecies are unique because he uses his own experience to communicate to the people and before God. Jeremiah shared ire over having to speak judgment, expressing his anger toward God as well as his empathy towards and over his people; Jeremiah believed his people would turn, repent, and come back to the word of God.[2] Where last week Malachi was exposing the people, this week Jeremiah is frustrating the rulers of the Jewish people, exposing that everything was not fine especially within the leadership. According to Jeremiah, there was a problem when the people relaxed their relationship to God and God’s word and when the leaders sacrificed God’s people to their own comfort and security rather than shepherding them toward God’s peace and justice, towards God’s mercy and love.[3]

So, Jeremiah, in the passage assigned for today, says, “Thus says Abba God: Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from Abba God,” (v.5). Who are the “cursed”? The ones who, according to God’s word and Spirit through Jeremiah, do not trust in God. It’s not the ones who drop the occasional verbal bomb, or the ones who can’t get their act together (whatever that means). It’sn’t the ones who can’t do everything according to the Holy Law of God. It’s anyone who trusts in mere mortals…and flesh…and who[thusly] turn away from God. In other words, what Jeremiah is pointing out here is that when the leaders of Israel forsake their posture towards God, they begin to build idols to replace God and those idols look a lot like themselves; as the leadership goes, so, too, will the people. As leadership becomes haughty, so will the people. As leadership becomes violent, so will the people. As the leadership turns away from God and toward their own strength, so will the people. Some may think, as long as there’s law and order and everyone knows their place…so what?

Well, it’s not that simple. According to Jeremiah, when the leadership (thus the people) turn from God and toward themselves they are uprooting themselves from the nourishing soil of God’s love and justice, mercy and peace and forcing tender roots into parched land. Jeremiah writes, “They shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when relief comes. They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness…” (v.6). In other words, they are bound for death, everything they have they believe is of their own power, but it will wither and die because they are no longer rooted and anchored in the fertile soil and nourishing waters of God’s provision, and, thus, they’re cursed.[4] For Jeremiah, the idols of Israel are themselves, and this idolatry will be their downfall, not because God has left them but because they have left God and opted for their own “common sense” and judgment of the kingdom of humanity.

Jeremiah drives home the stark reality, “Blessed are those who trust in God, whose trust is Abba God. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it’s not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit,” (vv.7-8). These are the those who keep their eyes and faces fixed on God; those who do this are those whose bodies follow where their faces are turned, and eyes are focused. These ones thrive in all sorts of tumult because they are fully dependent on God, roots planted in God’s nourishing soil: God is the source of their substance, their love, their liberation; to veer from God is to steer away from life toward death. They have shrugged off the idolatry of humanity, choosing instead to fear God.[5] These are the ones who not only do good works in the world to the glory of God, these are the ones whose hearts hear God’s voice and respond to it (Dt. 6). They are, 100%, fully dependent on God.

Jeremiah continues with words of exposure and judgment, “The heart is devious above all else; it’s perverse– who can understand it? I the Lord test the mind and search the heart, to give to all according to their ways, according to the fruit of their doings,” (vv. 9-10). Turning back to those who are cursed, Jeremiah explains that their current predicament of being under God’s wrath (destruction of the Temple, impending exile, drought) is their own doing because they’ve been led astray by their own desires and devising, making idols reflecting back their own image. According to Jeremiah, they’ve brought their own judgment upon themselves. It’s time for Israel to turn back to God and forsake their idols; they must turn toward God and forsake themselves and their own “reasonable” and “rational” machinations of the heart and mind[6] which often leads astray and produces corresponding fruit of chaos, destruction, violence, and death.[7]

Conclusion

What’s the hope here for Israel considering Jeremiah’s summons and exposure? For their consciences to be burned by the light of God’s truth and presence in and through the words of the prophet. Here, healthy shame and despair, the type that drives people toward God, is the soothing balm of Gilead because in turning (back) to God—finding one’s “trust” and full dependence on God—is the source of the people’s life, love, and liberation.[8] This is the consistent and inerrant word found in our sacred text of the first and second testaments: God desires God’s people to be with God, to know—deeply and profoundly—how much this God is for them—through thick and thin, in good and bad. The cursed are those who have stepped out from under and away from this God who is for them; the blessed are those who are fully dependent on God, remaining in God’s care and nourished therein, as Luke says in the gospel, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God…But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation,” (Lk 6:20b,c, 24). It’s the poor who are the ones who are blessed because they are fully dependent on God, while the rich, according to Luke, often go their own way making idols that look like themselves.

Beloved, God has come close to us in Christ and even closer through the power of the Holy Spirit. Let us remember that our very lives, our love, and our liberation is not hinged on the machinations of our heart and mind, but on the word of God that is the good news about Jesus and is Jesus. As we gather weekly and hear the word of God, may we also hear the sweet summons of a God who is so for us that God desires to always dwell with and among us. Going about things on our own power and strength ends in destruction, violence, and death, but going forward with and in the power of God, remembering who we are and whose we are, brings life, love, and liberation not only to our own exhausted and fatigued bones, but to our neighbors out there who are suffering and struggling, barely making it from one day to the next because we will be “trees planted by streams of water, bearing fruit in due season…”

[1] Marvin A. Sweeney, “Jeremiah,” The Jewish Study Bible, Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation, eds. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: OUP, 2004), 917.

[2] Sweeney, “Jeremiah,” 917. “[shared] his anguish and empathy at the suffering of his people, his outrage at God for forcing him to speak such terrible words of judgment against his own nation, and his firm belief that the people of Israel would return to their land and rebuild Jerusalem…”

[3] Sweeney, “Jeremiah,” 917-18.

[4] Sweeney, “Jeremiah,” 961. “A person who relies on idols is like a bush in a parched land that knows nothing, but those who trust in God are like well=watered trees that produce fruit…”

[5] Heschel, Prophets, 209. “To fear God is to be unafraid of man. For God alone is king, power, and promise.”

[6] Heschel, Prophets, 128. “Jeremiah knew that the malady was not primarily in the wickedness of the deeds, but in ‘the stubbornness of their evil hearts’…in their ‘evil thoughts’ …not only in their evil manners.”

[7] Heschel, Prophets, 121. “Instead of searching their own lives for the failures that brought down God’s wrath on them, the people resented Jeremiah’s prediction of doom, accusing him of ill-will, as if he were to blame for the disaster he predicted. Was Jeremiah an enemy of his people?…Deeply hurt by the accusations, Jeremiah protested before God his innocence and his love of his people. The word of doom was not born in his heart (17:6).”

[8] Heschel, Prophets, 192. “Where signs and words from without fail, despair within may succeed.”

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