God vs. God

written by Jeff Alexander

The lectionary is a funny thing. It’s usually pretty straightforward on holy days and other specific celebrations, but the routine-Sunday combinations of Old Testament – Psalm – Epistle – Gospel often keep a poor preacher on his/her toes. This Sunday, in the midst of a celebration of baptism, was no exception. Not only were we treated to Paul’s enumeration of the sins of the flesh – and no reading is a crowd-grabber without “licentiousness” in it! – but the Gospel focused on some of Jesus’ harshest words.

As recounted by Luke (9:57-62), various anonymous speakers express their desire to follow Jesus, but only after completing routine and (on the surface) understandable tasks. “I just have to bury my father,” says one; “I’m coming after I say goodbye to my family,” states another. Would we deny these acts to anyone before they were to jump into a life-changing and life-consuming responsibility? I sure wouldn’t.
And yet, as Katherine Speeckaert pointed out in her reflection, Jesus bluntly responded that both had to choose, then and there, between these actions and devoting their lives to His service. Period. No do-overs, time-outs or polling the audience. This would have been especially troublesome for the mourning man, as Jewish law – God’s law – was very strict on the requirement for burial of a dead body.

What, I wonder, are the first-time attenders among the baptism family thinking? “Woah, this isn’t what I came for. I just wanted to be here for my [family member/friend/co-worker], snap a few cute pictures and fill myself with finger sandwiches and ultra-frosted cake.” Or are they even listening? Are we even listening to Jesus’ words?

There’s the point on which Kat zeroed in. Jesus didn’t hesitate to be controversial or to jar His listeners, even to the point of seemingly contradicting the Father’s will. How can we reconcile when Jesus’ commands fly in the face of the Law?

Step 1 is seeing, through Jesus’ eyes, how God’s commandments and laws had become a way for the religious elite to stay eliter than the rest of the citizenry. “Hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy about you, saying: ‘These people draw near to Me with their mouth, and honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me. And in vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ ” (Matthew 15:7-9). Jesus, like God, is all about the heart, not the action; the relationship, not the procedure. The ultimate worth of the Law, and its rituals, was to draw all Jews to the Father. Even love for the family and the ritual of burial are consumed by the call of Christ to be His disciple.

As Kat underlined, the Christian life is not one of ease. There is no room for the half-hearted when Jesus is the desire. Remember, the context for this reading was in the midst of Jesus heading relentlessly towards the cross. How can we not give our all in the face of His suffering, humiliation and excruciating death on the cross? We are baptized into a faith that demands our total obedience and willingness to sacrifice for the One who sacrificed His earthly life for our eternal salvation. This is reflected in the very sober promises of the sacrament of baptism, and ring true through the lives of all believers.

Maybe the lectionary wasn’t so strange after all.

The Unnecessary Savior

On Sunday, Fr. David spoke about how the ‘world’ seems to have decided it doesn’t need God anymore. It goes about its business -- Grand Prix, the World Cup, etc. -- thinking that God isn’t a part of it at all. Life is fine just the way it is: a solitary individual or group or team going about their business for their own benefit, and nothing more.

It’s when you’re really down, when you really hit rock-bottom, that you know God is with you. Fr. David reminded us of the story of Joseph, who was sold into slavery by his own brothers and ended up in prison after being accused of a crime he didn’t commit. All that time, God was with him, and God had a plan. Joseph wasn’t in it alone.

How many times in our own lives have we felt God’s presence beneath layers of setback and hardship? Feeling like we have nowhere else to turn really does awaken a knowledge of God’s presence in a person’s heart. We come to know, in our difficulties, that God has a plan for us in our lives and will not abandon us to ourselves. For some reason, God is always easiest to see against starkness and barrenness. From within comfort and extravagance, He often can seem absent.

It’s important to remember that God is with us in our successes as well as our failures. God’s plan for Joseph wasn’t only that he would suffer but that he would rise to greatness, and someday use that power for the good of others -- even those who had brought harm to him in the first place.

God raises us up, and we always need him. The ‘world’ is wrong to think that God is dead or unnecessary, because the whole world, in all its aspects, is held within God’s eternal plan. It is important that we, as Christians, do not forget our dependence on God, or we may become caught up in a world bent on living without Him. Our God is with us both in sickness and in health, in abundance and drought.

In what ways do we, as a community and as people, acknowledge our dependence on God’s saving help?

A Still, Small Voice

This Sunday we heard testimony from Missy about how God is at work in her life. She spoke about feeling lost in the hectic rhythm of day-to-day life, about feeling spiritually lost, and about feeling as if she were in a void sometimes. I’m sure everyone has felt that way at least once in their lives. In the midst of our busy days, how do we find our way back onto the path? How do we find time to get un-lost when all our responsibilities are pressing down upon us?

Missy testified powerfully about the effect taking five minutes out for God can have on our day and on our lives. By spending a few moments in quiet meditation at the beginning of the day, she found a space to be alone with God, and the effect of having that space for relationship spread through the rest of her life.

She also spoke about the signs in her life that led her to slow down and take time for God, time to find her way back onto the path again. For her, these signs were physical illnesses. The idea that God wants us to take a break at times is a really important lesson that we as a society often forget. When people run into adversity in their lives, the often-heard message is one that urges us to keep going, work harder and –whatever we do – not to give up. But maybe that isn’t always what we need to do, maybe we shouldn’t always be forging blindly onward. Instead we may need, as Missy did, to take time out and discern what God wants for us in our lives. It might be that we need to move sideways to get onto the path, and that charging straight ahead is exactly what we shouldn’t do.

One could say that Sunday’s service was exactly the opposite of the still space where Missy found God: full of music and words and reflection and speech. One could say that, but it would be wrong. We are called to seek God in all things and in all the manifold ways we seek God, we find that stillness. That still, small voice within the chaos; that still, small voice that leads us home.