Tag: Prophets

Love Comes to the Loveless

“‘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.’”[1]

Introduction

Sermons on love are commonplace; this sermon being no exception. From weddings to funerals, from Easter to Pentecost, from Sunday to Sunday, one will encounter some religious and spiritual reflection on love. In fact, one could argue, most sermons probably end on a note that emphasizes love in one form or another. Why all this emphasis? Because we don’t get it.

I don’t blame the audience; I blame the people teaching on love. Too often love is spoken of as a feeling no different from the feeling of comfort, something that is nice and cozy. When speaking of God and God’s essence as love, it’s just mentioned that “God is love” without following up explaining what that means for fleshy meat creatures here on planet Earth. Or, someone will say, “God loves you,” without making it known through their deeds causing this love to remain abstract. People aren’t given love as the substance of action; rather, they are given love that is oil through fingers desperate to hold on to anything and grasping nothing.

As I look around, I feel that we love the idea of love, we are in love with the word, and we love the way it makes us feel when we say it or hear it said. However, in general, we encounter and are more oriented toward lovelessness than love. In a world built on the virtue of austerity, love—real love, the type of love that speaks and does—seems a costly extravagance of energy, energy we don’t have being caught in perpetual hyper-vigilance while swimming in a sea of chaos and confusion. Love is too risky; we are too vulnerable. It’s better to lose love than to lose in love.

But, yet,: Advent.

Advent slips in through the back door and dares to suggest Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love. The fourth Sunday in Advent solidifies the interruption to our normal, day-to-day descent into chaos and tumult, where lovelessness reigns. And I think this is why the fourth Sunday of Advent carries love with it; the fourth Sunday in Advent is the manger of Love and thus we must come face to face and contend with it as it speaks to us and illuminates our lovelessness          .

Isaiah 7:10-16

Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz, saying, Ask a sign of the Lord your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven. But Ahaz said, I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test.

Isaiah tells us that God spoke to Ahaz encouraging him to ask for a sign. Ahaz refuses. In so many situations, Ahaz’s actions would be considered upright and good. However, in this instance, God, through Isaiah, is asking Ahaz to ask for a sign. Thus, not to ask for one, not to seek one is—in this moment—disobedience to God, it is a spurning of God’s grace, it is a rejection of God’s mercy, it is a turning one’s nose up to an invitation from God to see something different.[i] Then Isaiah said:

“Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary mortals, that you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel. He shall eat curds and honey by the time he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted.”

God, through Isaiah, addresses Ahaz’s callousness and not only Ahaz’s but the callousness of the people of Israel, too.[ii] Isaiah is a prophet speaking to both the authorities of Israel as well as the people with whom he identifies; his love for both is palpable because it is the love of God for both. Isaiah also feels God’s pain and sorrow in experiencing and feeling Israel’s turning away (both leader and person alike).[iii] So, Isaiah is not going to let Ahaz off the hook here, and he won’t let the people either. As the leadership leads, so the people follow suit. For Ahaz to reject God’s invitation to ask for a sign is an indication of a heart that is closed to what is possible, to that new thing; it is a hard heart; a loveless heart.[iv] And if the leader feels this way, then the people do, too. They have all left God and God feels this abandonment. So, consumed by the passion of God, Isaiah must expose this hardness of heart and he does so by expressing God’s weary towards the people to expose their own agony and lovelessness.[v]

While Isaiah exposes Ahaz’s hardness of heart thus also the hardness of heart of the people, Isaiah deeply identifies with the people eager to hear and feel God among them and moving toward them. So, Isaiah prophesies a sign that God is coming to them, a child will be born to an unmarried young woman (not a young virginal girl (non-menstruating)).[vi] Through Isaiah, God promises that this son will barely come of age when Israel’s oppression will be eliminated, the land of the two kings—whom Israel dreads—will be deserted. The promise here in Isaiah isn’t necessarily the boy born to the young woman; the promise is that before he comes of age, Israel will be liberated. The promise is of God’s liberation of which this child named Immanuel is a sign that the two kings and their nations will be removed from the backs and necks of the people of Israel. This one named Immanuel reminds Israel that God is with them and that when God is with them, they need not fear any person for God is with them and God is for them and if God is for them then who can be against them? This one named Immanuel will be the sign that God loves them and is coming to take their hearts of stone (loveless hearts) and give them hearts of flesh, hearts able to and filled with love.

Immanuel. God is with Israel. Immanuel. Love is with Israel and where there is love there is neither fear nor dread. Isaiah is summoning the people back into love with Abba God, their first love, the one who loved them from the first.

Conclusion

Love isn’t something we cause ourselves to have or something we drum up from the depths of our souls. It’s a gift. It’s life. It’s God. Love comes to us. Love comes low to us, to seek us as we are, wherever we are even when we are absolutely loveless. Love takes our hand to guide us into God. Love will even come down so low that it will be born into fleshy vulnerability, among dirty animals and unclean people, in straw and hay, wrapped in meager swaddling clothes, laying in the lap of an unwed, woman of color without a proper place to lay her head. He, Jesus the Christ, Immanuel—God with us—is our Love, is our Love for right now, in the darkness of late fall, in the tumult of our lives, in the fatigue of our bodies and minds, and dwells with us transforming our lovelessness—part by part—into love. Incarnated love knowing God is with us and God is faithful.

God comes, Beloved, bringing love to the loveless.

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

[i] Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah: A Commentary, The Old Testament Library (Louisville: WJK, 2001), 65. “It is not merely a suggestion from the prophet, but an invitation from God himself to request a sign.”

[ii] Abraham K. Heschel, The Prophets, (New York: JPS, 1962), 16-17. “The prophet faces a coalition of callousness and established authority, and undertakes to stop a mighty stream with mere words. Had the purpose been to express great ideas, prophecy would have had to be acclaimed as a triumph. Yet the purpose of prophecy is to conquer callousness, to change the inner man as well as to revolutionize history.”

[iii] Heschel, Prophets, 81. “…the sympathy for God’s injured love overwhelms his whole being. What he feels about the size of God’s sorrow and the enormous scandal of man’s desertion of God is expressed in the two lines …which introduce God’s lamentation. ‘Hear, then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary men, that you weary my God also?’ (7:13). In different words addressed to the king, the prophet conveys his impression of the mood of God: As happened in the time of Noah and as is happening again, God’s patience and longsuffering are exhausted. He is tired of man. He hates man’s homage, his festivals, his celebrations. Man has become a burden and a sorrow for God.”

[iv] Heschel, Prophets, 208. “The fault is in the hearts, not alone in the deeds.”

[v] Heschel, Prophets, 17. “It is embarrassing to be a prophet. There are so many pretenders, predicting peace and prosperity, offering cheerful words, adding strength to self-reliance, while the prophet predicts disaster, pestilence, agony, and destruction.”

[vi] Childs, Isaiah, 66. Unmarried maiden of full sexual age (‘almāh) and not a young virginal girl

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“Nothing Seems to Satisfy”: Craving Community

Psalm 130:5-7 5 My soul waits for God, more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning. O Israel, wait for God, for with God there is mercy; with God there is plenteous redemption, and God shall redeem Israel from all their sins.

Introduction

A byproduct of our habitual consumption is a growing inability to stick with a community beyond what it can give to and do for me. With my focus on me and my happiness and comfort, I’m less obliged to stick with something when the rubber meets the road.  Now, I’m not saying that someone should stick with a community that is violent in any way—be it socially, physically, emotionally, or spiritually violent. What I’m saying is that we have a consumer attitude toward our communities; as long as I’m getting what I paid for, or what I want, I’m in. If that changes, I’ll leave. I am irreplaceable, but this community? Replaceable.

The irony here is that if your community is easily replaceable—being able to easily switch one community out for another—you are, too. If you can slip in and out of groups easily, if you’re always on the hunt for something better, then you do not allow yourself any time to cultivate interest in the group or the group to develop interest in you. Remember from the Lent 2 sermon on identity, irreplaceability is hinged on someone or something taking an interest in you, loving you, desiring you, missing you when you’re gone, wanting you to return. As more of our communities fall to consumerism, the more we become lost in the sea of replaceability. In fact, our relationality is further compromised; how relational can we be when our communities are fleeting? And if our relationality is faltering, then so too is our identity because will anyone take an interest in me long enough to stick around? And if that, then we are destabilized because we’re left with only ourselves and our own skepticism where nothing is permanent therefore nothing is permanent.

We’re consuming our communities and nothing seems to satisfy.

Ezekiel 37:1-14

Then God said to me, “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’ Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says God: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am God, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, God, have spoken and will act,” says God.

Our prophet is Ezekiel, a prophet and priest of Jerusalem. He lived through the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, he’s a prophet during the exile to Babylon. It’s from this context Ezekiel speaks; it’s to the exiled people, those having lost their land, their temple, their community, Ezekiel brings the living word of God.[1] Ezekiel’s prophecies engage the imagination through the abstract and absurd.  In this particular prophecy, Ezekiel speaks from a valley of dry (dead) bones, where God dropped him off. Ezekiel’s story invigorates attention being more than acquired knowledge and “quiet insight”; “It is a startling event: a thunder in the world and a lightning in the soul.”[2] Those who have ears to hear begin listening: What about these dry bones surrounding our prophet who bears the weight of God’s divine hand?[3]

Ezekiel is commanded to speak to the dead bones, to prophecy to them the word of God. An absurd request, but nonetheless Ezekiel does. Ezekiel speaks the promises of God over these dead bones: I will, says God, bring breath to you, add sinew and ligaments, I will put muscle and flesh on you, and I will bring you back to life. As Ezekiel speaks these words promising life, the bones begin to move, come together. As they come together, they are being covered with sinew and flesh just as God promised. What once looked dead and dried up, alienated and isolated, too far gone to be of any good, are now bodies lying before Ezekiel.

Then Ezekiel is commanded to prophesy to the breath, to summon the four winds to come into these new bodies. And he did, and as he did the bodies became animated and living, standing up before Ezekiel. Then God spoke one more time: God promises God’s people will be brought out of death, out of dried-upness, out of alienation and isolation and will be made to be God’s people on God’s land once again. God will raise the dead because God will restore the people of Israel and restore them to each other and to their own land.[4] Life will triumph over death just as restoration triumphs over exile, because God’s word of promise doesn’t fall flat, it does what it intends to do. God holds Israel’s future, it’s not closed off; God isn’t distant but close, as close as breath in an animated body; Israel won’t spend eternity separated from each other, exiled from their community.[5]

Conclusion

Our communities seem to be dissolving right before our eyes; people come and go so quickly. The ties that bind no longer hold; this is one of the reasons why the church is suffering so much right now. The consumerism embedded in the fabric of the church creates a competitive environment between churches as they fight over the same group of people and trying to be unique. Sadly, in so doing they cease to be unique communities because they must offer what everyone else is offering and in at least the same but most likely in more entertaining ways. Pastors compete against pastors, worship leaders against worship leaders, youth leaders against you leaders. In this environment, you can’t risk actually being unique, because you may risk your spot on the field, competing against the others. In this environment, community must be forsaken for the bigger goal: bodies and dollars. But doesn’t this mean sacrificing the beloved of God for numbers? Doesn’t this defeat the purpose of being a church when we become just one more spiritual strip mall?

So, if nothing seems to satisfy, how do we oppose this dissolution of community, this threat of consumerism? We must look beyond ourselves and our deeds. We must be awakened to our deep-seated need and hunger for community.

We want community. We want a place where everyone knows our name, sees us, knows us, remembers our birthdays, where we can risk being unique, where we can have our irreplaceability affirmed, where we are needed and where we are missed when we’re not here. I’m crazy enough to think that church was once and can be that place again. Churches came into existence to be small communal events, to share a story and to share a meal, where it was safe to believe and have faith in God incarnate raised again, Christ Jesus; where the Spirit called each person to dare to love like God, daring to love those declared unlovable by the society around them.

Church is where you’re brought alongside that guy you don’t really understand, that lady who never says a word, that person who seems really eager to leave, that kid who likes to hoot and holler during the sermon, that whacky priest in stilettos. In church you’re asked see your similarity with all these various people sitting next to you, people you may not commune with Monday through Friday, but on Sunday you do. Every Sunday each of you sets aside everything making you different and you come to these pews to share in hearing an ancient story, recite and respond with the same words, and confess and receive absolution together. Here we come together and join at the rail, each of us empty handed with each other and with God. Here we are spiritually awakened by the power of God’s spirit and come to terms with our hunger for God.

In our hunger for God, we long for community. In our desire for God we are brought together to feast at God’s table as one body. In this community, we’re brought out of the death of alienation and isolation, and we are brought together; we are summoned out of death and into life with each other. It is here, in the midst of the divine hope and love where I find community with you, because you are the beloved of God and God is where you are; God is where we are in the hunger.

(for part 1 click here, part 2 click here, part 3 click here, part 4 click here)

[1] Sweeney, Ezekiel, JPS Study Bible. 1042. “The book of Ezekiel presents the words of Ezekiel son of Buzi, a prophet and priest, and one of the Jerusalemites exiled to Babylonia with King Jehoiachin in 597 BCE by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kings 24.8–17). Like his older contemporaries Jeremiah, 1, Ezekiel lived through the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 586 and the early years of the Babylon exile.”

[2] Abraham K Heschel The Prophets New York, NY: JPS 1962. 444.

[3] Heschel, Prophets, 444. “‘The hand of God,’ a synonym for the manifestation of His strength and power (Isa. 10:10; 28:2; Deut. 32:36), is the name the prophet uses to describe the urgency, pressure, and compulsion by which he is stunned and overwhelmed. ‘For the Lord spoke thus to me with His strong hand upon me’ (Isa. 8:11). ‘I sat alone, because Thy hand was upon me’ (Jer. 15:17). ‘The hand of the Lord was upon me’ (Ezek. 37:1; 3:14, 24). The prophet very rarely speaks of God’s face; he feels His hand.”

[4] Sweeney, Ezekiel, 1114. “In its plain-sense meaning, the image symbolizes the restoration of Israel to its own land.”

[5] Sweeney, Ezekiel, 1042. “He wrestles with the problems posed by the tragedies of Jerusalem’s destruction and the Babylonian exile: Why did God allow the Temple and Jerusalem to be destroyed? why did God allow the people of Israel to be carried away into exile? What future is there for Israel?”

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