Even when we forget

Genesis 12-21 

Episode 3: Hagar, Abraham & Sarah

I spent several days this week gathered in Maine with pastors who have been in a grant together for three years called “From Relevance to Resonance,” seeking to orient our lives and ministry work around the action of God. We gathered to talk about how fast our world moves, and how what keeps us human is not striving to keep up but receiving the resonant moments of uncontrollable aliveness that awaken us to the world and reconnect us to God and each other. And we discussed how we want to lead in the church to help each other pay attention to God. But even these people, who were literally there talking about trusting that God is real and really does stuff, found ourselves forgetting that God is real and really does stuff.  

It’s so easy to slip into thinking that it’s up to us – whatever it is. That we are supposed to make God’s work happen or bring about God’s future.  This is a foolish and dangerous mistake, but nevertheless, there you go. We all keep making it.

And with that, we turn to our ancestor, Abram.  God promises Abram that his descendants will number the stars, and through Abram’s line the whole world will be blessed.  But there is no way for Abram and his wife Sarai to fulfill this promise – they can’t create a multitude, let alone a single child. This blessing has to come from God. 

The covenant God made with all creation back with Noah, to never give up on the world, gets legs in the covenant God makes with Abraham. God chooses one family to know God and be in direct relationship with God, so that through them God might gather the whole beloved world into God’s Shalom, fullness of life.

So, leaving everything they know, all the ties and security they had, uprooted and wandering, Abram obeys. They go where God leads them, with only God’s promise holding them. 

But if you’ve read the whole scripture texts we’re covering today, you’ve seen that they keep on forgetting God is the one leading. And God has to keep reminding them that they are not in it to save their own skin; they are in this life to know and love God, and to let God make them a blessing to the world.  

God didn’t choose Abram and Sarai because of their great character or their unique skills. They were not especially worthy or extraordinary.  They became the people in whom God’s story is concentrated because God’s goodness and mercy can be revealed in any life, every life. God chose these people to be the ones through whom God would bless the world and so that is what happens. 

But it’s a really long wait. Really long, and even though God keeps reminding them their offspring will number the stars and will bless the world, instead of trusting God to fulfill the promise through them, Abram and Sarai get tired of waiting and take things into their own hands. They attempt to produce what God has promised to provide. 

A sure sign we’re NOT living in the covenant love of God is when we instrumentalize others.  When other people are not siblings in the human family who belong to God and to us, but obstacles to resist or despise, or objects to use or discard, we have turned our back on God and each other and made this about saving ourselves. 

So they make their slave-girl into a means to an end. They try to transcend their own limitations and their own embodiment by using her body to do God’s work for God.

Only once this thing they’ve schemed - that denies their belonging to God and violates their belonging to each other - achieves what they’d hoped it would, things get ugly. 

When the pregnancy begins to show suddenly it’s no longer like placing an order from an online shopping site. They are human beings, all, in this together. The way sin plays out, if we remember Adam and Eve, is that when we forget that God is God and we are in God’s loving care, when we violate our belonging in mutuality to one another, what comes next is shame, blaming, hiding and competing. We’ve moved ourselves to the center of our story, so the people around us become a threat. God cannot be trusted, we are lost in the consequences of our sin, unable to free ourselves from the cycles of fear, anger and selfishness that got us there in the first place. We are unavailable to God or one another, and the life-giving moments of resonance that reconnect us cannot be received. We are cut off from the life we are made for, life in relationship. Inaccessible and isolated, we only relate to the world through aggression. 

Remember, in the days of Noah, humankind became so violent, and ‘pursued only evil continually’ that they lost their humanity, and wreaked destruction on God’s beloved creation. This grieved God so badly that God almost wiped everything out, returning the world to nothingness to start over. But God’s deep love for creation and God’s mercy prevailed, and God committed to never give up on us. 

When Sarai abuses the girl she flees to the wilderness, which was like plunging into nothingness, into non-being. It’s the untamed wild where, centuries later, the Holy Spirit will drive Jesus, right after he is baptized. Barren, desolate and dangerous, the wilderness is the physical location of utter isolation. At that time deities were always attached to people and places, so to head to nowhere was to go literally into godforsakenness, to go where the gods don’t even go, to lose the groundedness in time and space that define us as creatures. She is fleeing to most certainly die.

But instead of becoming nothing, nowhere, we’re told exactly where Hagar is. “God found her by a spring of water in the wilderness- the one on the way to Shur.” 

God found her because God was looking for her. God looks for us. God goes where no decent god goes, into the wilderness and nothingness, to find us. God calls Hagar by name-  the first time she’s addressed that way in the story.  God says, Hagar, slave girl of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going? 

Why does God ask questions? It’s not like God doesn’t know the answers. When Adam and Eve hide naked from God in the garden and God asks, Where are you?  Of course God knows right where they are. So why ask? God asks questions to invite us back into the conversation. God brings us back into relationship and response. God addresses us as persons, and summons us back to the belonging that holds us.  

 “I am running away,” Hagar answers God. 

God meets Hagar in her despair. Tell your story to me Hagar, so it will no longer be what has power over you.Let me bear with you your experience of nothingness so that I may heal you and restore you to your true identity as one whom I care for who is called to care for others.  

After God hears Hagar and ministers to her, God tells her to go back. Not to a place, but to a person, Go back to Sarai. Humbly submit to her.  Instead of Sarai forcing her slave girl to submit, Hagar, seen by God, is going to Sarai in freedom and offering to care for Sarai. It’s Jesus’ Turn the other cheek–  a self-emptying action that requires that you see me as a person with agency, choosing to address you, another person. 

No longer as an object to use, or an enemy to despise, they must encounter one another as persons. From the nothingness of despair, Hagar is restored to personhood and agency, and sent to minister to Sarai, who is trapped in her own wilderness of regret and rage.  

 Then God makes a covenant with Hagar, giving her a future and a promise greater than any wrongs done to her. Her story will live on through generations too numerous to count – a promise mirroring the one given to Abram and Sarai. 

God pulls us out of nothingness and gathers us into the future God is bringing into the world. This is God’s future, not ours. So we don’t get to decide when or how it comes. We get to watch and join in as it comes.

Finally God gives Hagar the name for her son, swaddling him in promise before he’s even born. Ishmael means “God listens.” Then something quite marvelous happens: Hagar names God.  She is the first person in scripture with the boldness to name God. She calls God The God who sees.

Hagar returns to Sarai, and ministers to her in her despair. She shares the story of being found by God; she comes trusting in the promises of a God who sees us.   

Fourteen years later Sarai conceives, and at 90 years old her waiting finally end. God’s promised blessing is fulfilled through utter impossibility, because it’s God who acts, and not we who make God’s work happen or bring about God’s future. And Sarai, whose name meant ‘Princess’ will become Sarah, ‘Mother of Nations.’ alongside Abraham, “Father of a multitude of nations.”

And wouldn’t it be great if human beings just got it and stayed in right connection to God and each other all the time? But we don’t. Abraham and Sarah’s story continues, and they do a lot of dumb stuff with bad consequences. They keep forgetting God is the one leading. And God keeps reminding them that they are not in it to save their own skin; they are in this life to know and love God, and to let God make them a blessing to the world. And our bible includes all of that because this is not about extraordinary people doing great things, it’s about the God who chooses ordinary people to participate in God’s healing and trust in God’s promises together. 

So often in life things feel impossible and hard. But this God moves in impossibility. This God goes to the desolate places where the gods of this world will not go, and asks questions that set us free. This God listens, and sees, and calls us to minister to real people, and live into God’s future with hope. This God is so committed to loving and saving the world that God comes into this world as one of us, vulnerable and weak, and then plunges into the godforsakeness of death, so that not even that death separate us from God. 

God’s covenant with us means God’s grace comes first, before we mess up, claiming us for love. And God’s grace comes last, after all is said and done, claiming the world for love. And in the middle as we muddle, God’s grace continues claiming us for love. 

Humans can be horrible. And humans can be amazing. We can be courageous and loving, kind and brave. And we can be selfish and awful, calloused and uncaring. If the trajectory of the world were up to us, clearly, we’d be doomed. It’s easy to go down that path and assume that’s where it’s all headed. But God is real rightnow, and does stuff right here, in our very own lives, and way over there in the lives we can only watch from afar with sorrow and helplessness. God is real and doing stuff in the world.  We’re invited to trust this and join this.

Today we will baptize Imogen into the covenant family of God, this family that includes Isaac and Ishmael, Hagar and Sarah, Abraham and Noah and Eve and Adam, and you and me too. Her middle name already means “grace” in Japanese, and when we make the sign of Christ’s death and resurrection upon her, her new first name will forevermore be “Beloved, Child of God.”  

And the God who is real will really do stuff in Imogen’s life.  And we are here for it. We’re here to help her watch and join in. We’re here to listen to her stories, and encourage her in ministry, and be open together to those resonant moments we can’t control when we taste the fullness of it all. We’re here to live into the promises of God together, and practice trusting God to fulfill those promises through us. We get to practice living bravely into God’s reality even when it’s impossible, or especially then, seeing the world in all its beauty, and not shying away from its pain, because God comes into nothingness to minister to us and sends us there to minister to others.  

And because we all forget and remember together, one day, Imogen will undoubtedly remind you in some way or another of God’s grace, the love that claims us, and in this way, like those before us, we will continue to live in God’s covenant of shalom that gathers us and holds the world forever. 

Amen. 

 

What faith is really about

 I once had a friend who became a Christian later in life because of a mystical encounter with Jesus, where Jesus appeared to him and spoke to him. He loved Jesus. But he was NOT a fan of the bible.  Years later we started reading the bible together in a group, and it was the first time he had dived into it with openness. 

Actually, not the first time. 

The first time was when he was mountain biking alone and came around a corner to see, laying next to the path, a bible, open to the sky. A sunbeam was shining down on the pages. He stopped the bike and got off. With heart pounding he reverently approached the bible. Picking it up gently, he read from the open page…something about wiping out the enemy peoples and not marrying the foreigners or you’d be punished by God. Horrified and confused, he threw down the bible and got back on his bike and didn’t have anything to do with Christianity for years, until Jesus appeared to him.
 
Today’s scripture is a great example of why the bible is best read with others. Yes, personal devotion and bible reading is great, and God speaks to us through scripture when we are alone. But we are reading something ancient from cultures we have very little in common with, and oh my goodness, but it can be confusing and sometimes horrifying.  I actually get a little excited when a passage feels weird and inaccessible at first glance, because I trust that all scripture has a word for us from God, and not seeing it right away just means there’s going to be a treasure there if we dig.  We also do well to read it together with one another because we can help each other recognize our own bias, our own cultural lens that is coloring how we hear the words.
 
In this text the disciples ask a very discipley question, the kind of question pastors and Christian educators today wish people more would be asking, the question we all feel we should be asking, “increase our faith!” Ok, not a question, more a demand. But still. It’s a good thing to want, right? More faith? What better to demand?
 
But Jesus’s answer, let’s face it, it’s just weird.  First he says if they had even the amount of faith the size of a mustard seed they could tell a tree to stand up and go plant itself in a lake and grow there and it would. Then Jesus goes into this thing about slaves. Which feels so problematic today it’s hard to even read the words aloud much less attribute them to Jesus, the gist of which is, slaves are just there to work and shouldn’t be rewarded for it. So they should just consider themselves worthless slaves for only doing what they ought to have done anyway. 
The word of the Lord. 
 
I bet they wish they hadn’t asked.
 
But I kind of get why they did. 
 
Because just before this Jesus said, 
“Hard trials and temptations are bound to come, but it’s bad for whoever brings them on! Better to wear cement shoes into the ocean than to cause one of these little ones to stumble. And he also said, “Be alert. If you see your friend going wrong, correct them. If they respond, forgive them. Even if it’s personal against you and repeated seven times through the day, and seven times they say, ‘I’m sorry, I won’t do it again,’ forgive them.”
"The apostles came up and said to Jesus, 'Give us more faith.'”

So, yeah. I’m guessing the ante feels high.  I’m thinking the disciples are feeling the pressure.  This all feels pretty daunting. They’re probably thinking, How can we manage not to screw this up? Maybe what we need is some more faith!  
 
And suddenly, just like that, they’re in the way of fear. How do we know? Because according to them in this moment, faith becomes something we do. Earn. Measure. Accumulate. Faith becomes power. Power to live right, sure, but power, nevertheless. Which is actually not at all what faith is.
 
Faith is much closer to admitting we are completely powerless to live right. 
 
I think Jesus tells these ridiculous stories, these mini-parables, if you will, to highlight just that. And he may have had a little edge to his voice too. Like, do you guys even listen? Fine, let’s play the game your way. Let’s say faith is power. If that’s the case, then faith is so powerful, that a tiny little bit can do this thing that defies all laws of nature. 
 
They asked for more “faith,” but what they were asking for was more control.  They were asking for the ability not to fail, some way to guarantee success at this discipleship thing.  Jesus just jumps right to furthest logical conclusion of their aims – you’ll know you’ve succeeded when you’ve accumulated enough faith to command nature, on the one hand, or when you’re obediently doing your duty without ever expecting recognition or reward, on the other.  
 
Maybe succeeding at faith isn’t the goal. Maybe faith isn’t about succeeding or failing at all. 
 
I have come that you may have life, and have it abundantly, Jesus says. Follow me, Jesus says. The son of man came not to be served, but to serve. Jesus says. 
 
We don’t forgive, and care for those more vulnerable than ourselves, and love and serve, as Christ does, because we are doing our duty like obedient slaves. And we don’t uphold the weak and restore broken relationships because we are racking up points or dodging punishment.  
We live in love because we are loved. We care for others because we are drawn into God’s life of care. We forgive because forgiveness gives us back to each other and to ourselves. We live in the way of God embodied in Jesus because our true humanity is found in, and not apart from this love and care for each other and the world. 
 
Rowan Williams says discipleship is “learning how to be a place in the world where the act of God can come alive.” When we confess our sin, or stand up for those weaker than ourselves, or do something kind for someone else, we are a place in the world where the act of God comes alive. 
 
Faith, then, is not a quantifiable element. It’s a nudging toward, a longing for, a questioning, and doubting, and trusting, and forgetting, and remembering, and messing up, and confessing, and being forgiven, and learning, and braving, and caring, and reaching out, and messing up again, and apologizing, and being forgiven, and being hurt, and forgiving, and seeking, and longing some more.  
 
Faith is allowing yourself the possibility that Jesus is here, and then letting yourself wonder about who this Jesus is and what he’s up to in your life, in this conversation, in this tragedy, in this ordinary moment.  It is Christ’s work, Christ’s relationship to God, Christ’s faithfulness that holds us. We surrender our sorry, striving selves into trust.  Because it’s a relationship – all of life is – a relationship with our maker, with our fellow human beings, with the earth in which we live, and the person we are and were and are becoming.  
 
And just like the disciples, we forget this. And we ask for more faith so we can do it right and not screw it up. But faith is a willingness to live attentive, expectant, awaiting the action of God in the world, trusting it is always about to occur.
 
There is a kind of gift in taking something to its natural absurd conclusion. We did that together a decade ago when we faced our fears. In the Gathering Room hangs a sign that says, “We are exactly the right size and make-up and have all the resources we need for what God wants to do in and through us.” That was only said because we stated the opposite of what we really thought and wrote it down. What we really thought in 2011, when we let ourselves be brutally honest about our fears, was that we were too small, too old, and didn’t have enough money. We might as well have said, “Increase us! Increase our faith!”
 
But then then we took it to its logical absurd conclusion. What are we saying, actually? That we are too small to love our neighbor? That we are too old to help each other seek God? That we don’t have enough money for God to work through us? That we are not big enough, young enough, rich enough for God to use us? How absurd are these ideas we’re clinging to?  How do they hold us back from what God has for us?  
 
So we stepped out in faith and stated the opposite and began to live into it. Which is to say, we recognized that it’s not about us at all, it’s about God and what God is already doing, and what God wants to do, in our lives, in the world, through us, with us. We get to participate not because we’re so powerful and impressive, but actually because we’re not. And then, it’s about us too – because God uses exactly what we already are to accomplish God’s purposes. Each unique person participates, and God is not limited by our strength or hindered by our weakness. God works and we get to join in. That’s it. Faith is trusting this. Entrusting ourselves to this. Wondering about who this God is, seeking this Christ.
 
There are all sorts of ways the bible leads us back to God and God’s kingdom.  

Sometimes it’s through comforting things, like when Jesus says, Come to me all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest. Take my yoke on you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls.  That’s an invitation to faith.
 
And sometimes the bible leads us back to God when Jesus gets sassy and sarcastic. Or cryptic and enigmatic. When he forces us to look at ourselves, or holds up the things we think are so solid and sure and shows them to be flimsy and ridiculous. And that’s an invitation to faith too.
 
There’s no measuring in faith. No game. No losing or winning. There’s only love – God who came in to free us from our impossibility. We will hurt one another. Undoubtedly. But thanks be to God we can forgive. We will stumble. No question. But thanks be to God we will be forgiven. We are held in love. Invited into faith. And all the disciples would have had to say is help me. Help me forgive. Help me not cause others to stumble. Help me, God. Those are the words of faith. And when we say those words, we are learning how to be a place in the world where the act of God can come alive.

 
Amen.

To watch together for God

Psalm 119:103-105

Luke 24:36-53

Yesterday at a party, and I was standing in the kitchen, asking my sister if someone I had just seen outside was a new friend she’d been telling me about, and while the question was half way out of my mouth, the person walked in, and I felt busted, and ended up awkwardly cutting off my sentence and introducing myself instead.  I had acted like she wasn’t there and suddenly she was, and everything changed. 

That’s kind of what happened in this scene. While they were talking about Jesus, he showed up among them.

You guys, they’d been saying, he’s really alive! We were walking to Emmaus and this stranger started talking to us, and he turned out to be Jesus! Were not our hearts burning within us while spoke?

And when we invited him back for dinner and he broke the bread, suddenly our eyes were opened and we recognized him!

Without a cell phone to call back and say, “You’ll never believe what just happened!,” instead they hit the road that same night and had raced back to where they’d come from, and they were just now sharing these stories in the wee hours with the rest of them, who, it turned out, had stories of their own, and suddenly, Jesus himself stood among them.

And they were startled and terrified and thought they were seeing a ghost.

It doesn’t matter how much we may believe with our head that God is real, that Jesus is here, that God can intervene, or speak to us, or do something that turns our life around, we have no rubric for this sort of thing. So often, when it happens, we are astonished, startled, terrified even.

In fact, all the most profound realities of life are this way- knowing you are about to have a child is night and day different from someone placing a tiny screaming stranger in your arms.

We all know in our heads we will one day die, but dying itself? No matter how much we try to prepare, we will be utterly unqualified, and yet we will do it anyway.

All the things that call us to our true selves as children of God, that strip away illusion, the things like love, transformation, forgiveness – we are not prepared for them, no matter how much we think we may be, they surprise us. Like waking from a dream, when they come they make life feel altogether new and different.

And now, here is Jesus. The one they saw die. The one they buried and began to grieve. He is back. But he’s also different. Like, how you might be different if death can’t kill you.  Different in a way that isn’t bound by time and space – he keeps appearing and disappearing where he will. He is unrecognizable at first, and yet, it’s him.

So they are aghast, and can’t seem to move past it, even seeing his hands and side, and touching him, and they still can't absorb it.  

Here, he finally says, when the staring gets to be too much, Do you have anything to eat? And they get him some fish and he eats it in front of them. And they watch, until it starts to feel a little normal, and then they begin settle into the new new, at least enough to sit and listen to him talk to them like he used to before he died.

And when he does, he opens up the scriptures to them.

He starts way back and tells how it all fits together, how God’s unfolding story of love and hope begins way at the beginning, and weaves through their history, the kings and the prophets and the judges, how all of it was part of the same trajectory – God made it all for love and call us to love, and how God came into this world, to set us free from everything that keeps us hostage, and how God with us walked among them, shared this life with them, and now, right now, near the platter of fish bones, as the lamp is burning low, and the sun is just peeking up the horizon, is sitting with them. 

And he talks about repentance – remember that word? How it means changing your mind, letting go your way of seeing things and picking up God’s way? – that this invitation is to be extended to all the world, beginning right here, among these people who have done that just moments ago and even still now are in the midst of it.

And forgiveness of sins – freedom from all that keeps us captive to the injuries we commit against ourselves and others, all that separates us from God and each other, release to live for God and for others - this is the message that they will soon be carrying to everyone, everywhere, starting right here where they are, in this very place.

And then, before he leads them to a mountaintop and disappears, Jesus gives them a new identity, a calling. You, he says, you are witnesses. Your role is that of a witness.

Witnesses testify to what they have seen or experienced. 

Witnesses don’t become witnesses because they believe or can recite back something specific.  

A witness isn’t skilled worker with training, or a stellar student with perfect test scores; a witness doesn’t prove their abilities or worth in order they become one.

Witnesses are not directors. 

They aren’t tour guides or teachers; they aren’t trying to decide where things will go or how they should turn out, or make anyone else decide anything either.  

They don’t interpret things or turn them into lessons. 

They simply experience something, and then tell about it. 

That’s what witnesses do.

These people, in their joy, disbelieving and still wondering, were witnesses.

And what these witnesses had to share, so far, was that Jesus came among them. Ate some fish. Told them about the scriptures. Disappeared from their sight. The same Jesus they had seen teach and heal and suffer and die. That’s what they have to tell.

That’s what they tell each other; every time they get together, they witness to what they’ve experienced, what they felt when they heard him call them by name, what they thought when they realized it was him standing among them, what happened inside them when their eyes were opened and they recognized him, or how their hearts were burning within them, or what they heard when he unpacked the scriptures and told how it all fit together.

They witness.

And the act of witnessing to each other opens up the space between them where Jesus can encounter them all over again. It’s the place the Holy Spirit likes to hang out. Between us.

There is no such thing yet as church. There are no Christians.

There isn’t a bible – just the beginning of one –the Hebrew Scriptures we call the Old Testament. They studied and learned and knew the same scriptures we hold here before us. Except the parts that weren’t written yet because they were happening to them right then, so that we can read about it now, so that we can witness the witnesses witnessing the witnesses.

Because, you know where this is going, right?

We are witnesses too.

We are witnesses to the God who is witnessed through this book. I

f you want to see who God is, look at Jesus, and if you want to see who Jesus is, look in this book. And here he is, sitting with his friends, showing them how this whole story fits together.

The Holy Spirit meets us we read together what they read; this is our family scrapbook of meaning, filled with letters, laws, poetry and prose, music and metaphors, heartbroken lament and frustrated complaints, euphoric praise and joyful celebration, retellings of the lives of the leaders and the losers in both gripping and boring ways, describing the ongoing struggles of a people to be faithful, and the ongoing faithfulness of a God that never wavers – it all witnesses to this one big thing God is doing, has always been doing, and will never stop doing: This most real and true thing about love and repentance, forgiveness and new life, belonging, healing and hope.

You and I are part of that story. 

As witnesses, we are called to pay attention. 

To notice and share about where we see Jesus.  

And not unlike these disciples, we might not recognize him at first, sometimes not until we hear him call us by name.   

And sometimes we will know him in the breaking of the bread- as we share meals with each other side by side in our humanity, or we will know he was there, talking to us, when our hearts burn within us and we say to each other, wait, back there when that was happening, did you feel it too?   

And like all those who saw the risen Christ in the flesh, just when we seem to grasp hold of him he vanishes; he’s elusive, Jesus can’t be captured and owned. 

He comes and goes as he pleases.

But instead of giving up, we keep witnessing, and practicing being witnesses. 

So we have to get together with each other and tell our stories.  

And in a few weeks when we hear how church starts, we'll notice that it starts just like that, because that’s actually exactly what church is – people breaking bread together and telling stories of how they see Jesus, and looking at scripture together at the words of the witnesses who’ve gone before, and trusting that through these words God will speak to us right now.

This is not about believing something with your head and getting others to think the same way. 

This is about trusting something with your life and telling what that feels like.

And trust is that kind of thing that you only learn by doing. 

You put one foot tentatively out, maybe with wonder and disbelief, even, and then you start to lean some weight on it until you can step out with the other foot and stand, and then the next, and soon you look back and see how much trusting you’ve done and how far you’ve come. 

And you witness about that too, Hey look! I trust! Look how much trusting I’ve done!  And people can celebrate with you and share about their own trusting that might help you to trust even more, until you’re a bunch of witnesses whose lives are part of this one big thing God is doing, every day part of it, people who are learning to watch for, each moment, where is God going to show up next.  And when we have trouble trusting, we share that too, God is there too, and others trust for us, and that’s also what it means to be witnesses. 

We are going to give the kids new bibles in a few minutes. 

And we will tell them we trust God to speak to us through these words. 

That is, we act like God will, and we lean in and expect it to happen, and the trust grows from there. The Holy Spirit, we will tell them, uses these words to teach us, challenge us, encourage us.  And because this bible shows us who Jesus is, it helps us see Jesus in our own lives and in the world around us. 

These bibles show us God is love, forgiveness is real, life is hard, people are always messing up and hurting each other, and God keeps on loving us. 

They witness to us, so that we can witness too.

And the wonderful thing about the bible is that because God is not a ghost relic of a past devout era, or an imaginary notion of comfort or authority, not an idea to believe in, or a concept to learn about, but because God is real, beyond the cosmos and here in our own lives, right now, that means that you might open your bible and God will use it to tell you what you need to hear right now. God will speak right to you through words that have spoken to people for centuries. 

And if right now you are sad or scared, and at another time in your life you feel confused and lost, or hopeful and peaceful, God may use the very same verses and tell you something new through it, speak right into your situation, in a different way than the last time you read it. 

And the person sitting next to you? They may have something altogether different happening in their life, and God might talk to them through the same scripture, exactly what they need to hear, which may be different than what you’ve heard!

This is why we do faith in community. We are in this together. Our lives are witnesses to each other. We read the bible together because we learn from each other and we witness God in each other’s lives –sometimes more quickly than in our own.

So by giving the kids bibles, we are saying to them, Your story is part of God’s story, and it is part of our story. Together we will watch for God in the world and in each other’s lives. We will share our insights and our experiences. We will pray for each other and trust that our lives are part of the one big thing God is doing.

Like those first witnesses long ago, we come here with each other to be called back to our true selves as children of God, to have illusions stripped away, to be reawakened to love, forgiveness, transformation and the other truest things in life, to share our experiences and encounters, and to feel overwhelmed and astonished sometimes, as the new normal sets in and we begin to recognize Jesus, in that space where the Holy Spirit likes to hang out, between us.  

And I promise that, from time to time, when we’re not expecting it, we too will find that while we are talking about Jesus, he shows up right here among us.  

Amen.

Nevertheless and Always (or, What's the Bible All About?)

2 Timothy 3:14-4:5
Psalm 119:97-104

A young man receives a letter, perhaps the final letter, from someone he loves who is soon likely to die, a mentor who has nurtured and supported him through the years.  He is struggling in a new ministry in a difficult time, and the letter is a gift.  It encourages him to continue in the face of hardship, to pursue, to trust God in the middle of it, to remember and live like those he loves who have gone before and shown him what faith means, (along with lots of more directed instructions on how to live together as the church).

A young man gets a letter.  And in the letter, this older teacher reminds him that one thing that helps him to live into the truth that in Christ we are saved and freed and sent to the world – is scripture.  Scripture that the mentor says is able to strengthen his faith in Christ, scripture that is inspired by God – God breathed. 

And the letter is delivered into his young friend’s hands, filled with love and prayers and hope for the young man, the budding evangelist and teacher, as he witnesses the story of his life, and this community of lives, unfolding in God.

The scripture our letter writer is referring to, of course, is the work of the prophets, and the stories of Israel’s covenant relationship with God, God’s enduring faithfulness despite Israel’s unfaithfulness.  Spoken stories passed through generations, scrolls taught in the synagogue, promises shared around the dinner table and the fire late at night.  It is the words of the Psalmists - songs of praise and anguishing tomes of despair and grief, and expressions of great joy and gratitude. It is proverbs of wisdom, life lessons in line and meter, it is love poetry and character dramas and differing accounts of similar events throughout the time of the kings that highlight different aspects of the human experience and of God’s relentless devotion to God’s people.  A revealing scrapbook of stories and glimpses of life of those gone before, it is poems and lists and yearning and confidence put down in words and picked up later as true and authoritative testimonies to God. 
This is the scripture that our letter writer commends to our doubting and fragile follower.  This is the scripture that he says will help him to learn and to teach, will keep him grounded in Jesus Christ, and quite astonishingly, even reveal Christ to him, even though almost nothing has yet been written about Jesus, and certainly nothing that he is referring to. 

He doesn’t mail his young friend a bible.  There is no bible yet.  Instead his letter itself ends up in the bible that ends up in our hands as we struggle through our own versions of doubt and belief, of fear and faith, of following in the footsteps of our ancestors in the faith, and practicing the faith in community, carrying on the tradition which at times carries us when we aren’t sure what to do or how to believe.  This letter ends up being for us just what it speaks about, God-breathed, inspired, useful for teaching and guidance, helpful to keep us grounded. 

But our writer didn’t know that, couldn’t know that. But the magnificence of the Bible, our sacred writings, our scripture as Christians is its mosaic of little stories of people’s live and faith that make up one big story about God.

It begins in the beginning ‘In the beginning…” Genesis says, “God created.”  The first words about God and most frequent depiction of God throughout the bible, one who created, who creates, who is creative.  So in the very beginning with God’s creative force, it begins.  

And this book, this remarkable collection of books that is at the same time one book, ends in the very end. Revelation gives us drama, allegory and cryptic and colorful storytelling that speaks of the end that is to come – when God will be our God and we will live as God’s people, and God will wipe every tear from every eye and suffering and pain will be no more, when all wrongs will be made right and the creativity that spun the world into being will pull it into it’s complete and glorious culmination. So the end of this book we call the bible is the end of the Story, capital S.

 

And in between its pages are stories, small s, so many lives unfolding, so many varied characters – kings and queens and peasants and prophets, shepherds and squires and slaves and children, thieves and soldiers, priests and lawyers, strangers and families.  As Buechner says, “men and women of very possible sort, heroes and scoundrals and some, like ourselves, who from time to time manage to be something of both.”[1]  And here in this book we watch them wrestle with meaning, and life, and what it means to live.  

This is the startling beauty of the bible, that as God breathed life into humanity their stories are breathed into as well, and this creative God creates and restores them, and us - because if it begins at the very beginning and ends at the very end, then we find ourselves, our own stories, somewhere between the very beginning and the very end as well. We are in the middle between Genesis and Revelation[2] with all of these other people of faith and fear… we are right alongside the letter writer and its young recipient.

Scripture is remarkably candid: filled with messy humanity, paradoxes and the frustrations, something to offend almost everyone, God’s enduring and comforting presence, and horrifying absence at times. But the many many ways people talk about their faith, live their faith, seek to understand their faith that have been collected here as a way to help us talk about our faith, live our faith, and seek to understand our faith.  It shows us both favorable and unfavorable times, in season and out of season times, when people both succeeded and failed at this life of faith and still God’s grace and mercy prevailed. 

Contradiction and paradox, by the way, are this book’s great forte.  This book screams the great “nevertheless!” into our world.  The bible is full of stories where winners and losers write the history differently and both versions are included, where people amend and change other people’s stories, and translate and transcribe and rearrange, where questions are more important than answers and specific instructions for specific situations get canonized for all time, and it’s cut and pasted together over long spans of time and argued over and compiled - it is all these things and nevertheless it is the very word of God, God-breathed!

We ourselves are filled with inconsistency and ambiguity, we’re forever hurting one another without even trying, and we’re always changing and adapting and repeating old mistakes, and we join right on in the world’s workings where even with enough for all, people go hungry, and nevertheless God chooses us to be a blessing to the world.

Scripture witnesses to the birth and life of a poor peasant man, nothing much to look at who lived to his mid thirties and was executed as a common criminal who nevertheless is the very Lord and Creator of all.  
Because as God’s Story, as God’s word, it is, in the end (and the beginning) the word about Christ Jesus, the WORD of God. It is the many different angled glimpses at the actions of God incarnate, the Creator with us and for us, as he walked and spoke and healed and lived, here among us, to redeem us. God made known, revealed in its pages in flesh and blood just like our own flesh and blood. The very word that spoke the world into being now speaks to us through the broken witness of those gone before, through this ordinary and extraordinary book filled with contradictions and difficulties, just like life, just like us! 

The bible is a testimony, many, many testimonies of God’s creative faithfulness in people’s lives.  And each one of us has our own. Each one of us could share, in poems or words of wisdom, or narratives, or parables or paint or sewing or music or building or baking or caring for children or parents, or whatever way we create and communicate in the world, we could, and do, share our own testimony to God’s faithfulness in our lives.  We have a story that is part of this story.  And sometimes we can’t see our own story, but others can. 

Faith is believing, and doubting and ultimately trusting, that God is at work - when we see it and when we don’t. Nevertheless and always, God is at work.  We have this promise in the person of Jesus Christ.

So here is what our letter writer wants to impart to his protégé.  First: faith, and life, are found in Jesus Christ the person, God with us, who has come to share our place and defeat the power of death.   

The second thing is that we now live that reality, and we do not live it alone. We live it with others, we read scripture with others, we build community with others, we struggle and celebrate with others, we rejoice and we weep with others, and in that way we actually encounter Christ Jesus, who is here, with us as we are here with each other- the Body of Christ alive in the world. 

And then he says that we do this together connected to each other and learning from the faith of those gone before. This isn’t about some kind of right belief, this is about how you live your life.  And really, it is about how WE live our LIFE, because it is never alone, never merely internal, or mental, it is always physical, actual, real and shared. 

And finally, he points him to scripture, a precious gift.

But sometimes, when we come to this book we get afraid, because it doesn’t feel much like a gift. We forgot that it isn’t, and never was, about how much we know or understand or remember about what is inside of it, or even how well and consistently we believe in any of it.  

It is always first and foremost about the grace of God in Christ Jesus that claims us before we have a chance to know or believe anything, long after we’ve stopped really knowing or remembering anything, through all the times in between when for whatever reason we’ve stop believing.  This is what it is really about. 

 

We forget that faith itself is a gift and we get to nurture it, that life is a chance to participate in this story, that in fact, and quite amazingly, our lives already do, because God is still creating and recreating.  We could scarcely fathom that people look at us and see the faithfulness that strengthens their own faith, but they do. Or that one day someone might read a letter you’ve written to a young grandchild or godchild or son or daughter and this letter would give them strength and guidance and teach and ground them in the same way our letter of long ago does for us, in the way the faith of Timothy’s mother and grandmother did for him as this letter points to.

So relax. We’re in this faith thing together.  And we’re going to read the bible together. We are going to talk about it and not duck out at the hard parts. We are going to wrestle with it and let it mess with us. 
We are going to struggle together with what it means that this is God-breathed by the Creator who is still creating and creating and creative, and we’ll point out together where we see the breath of God and the creativity of God speaking the world and through our very own lives, our very own stories that are nestled within God’s Story. 

We are going to assume that by doing this our faith will be strengthened, and by that I mean we will follow Jesus more consciously, we will share in God’s healing more generously.  We will be less susceptible to the lies and myths of our own world and time – which are different and yet similar to those of every world and time – recognizing and resisting together the tendency towards independence and isolation, judgment and ingratitude, apathy and anger, and the eternally human habit of listening only to those who are saying what we want to hear.  

Instead we will trust that it will nurture in us strengthening resolve to give, share, pray and to notice God at work in the world and join where we see the breath and spirit moving, stirring, transforming. 

We are going to read the bible together and it will help us remember to remind each other that the end is one day coming, that we are part of a story that is always creatively moving forward.  It will help us live in the hope of a day when justice and peace and love prevail. 

We are going to find times and places to support each other and ground each other in the truth of our salvation in Jesus Christ, in the truth that this great big messed up world actually belongs to God who is subtly and boldly weaving all things towards redemption in his backwards, inside out way, that brings life out of death and hope from despair and creates anew and anew.

And we are going to remember, because we read together, that this is our story, and not so much that we claim it, though we do, unabashedly and sometimes with uncertainty, but that this story is our story because it claims us. Because it has a hold on our lives and we are in it.

And as we do this, may we begin to find, like the Psalmist, that it tastes like honey in our mouth, and may we revel in what a gift it truly is. 

---

[1] This quote is from a wonderful article entitled, “The Good Book as a Good Book” in Secrets in the Dark: A life in sermons.

[2] I am indebebted to David Lose for this concept