Wrestling with Sacrifice

sermon by Torin Eikler
Genesis 21:8-21          Genesis 22:1-14

Over the past couple of weeks Carrie introduced you to her process for approaching difficult scriptures.  The process I use is pretty similar though there are some differences.  Not surprising since we all approach scripture in different ways.  We also need to practice techniques several times before they become ingrained habits that are easy (or easier) for us to use.  So, rather than walk you through my own way of trying to understand difficult texts in detail, I’m going to follow the pattern set out by my lovely and talented co-pastor; though as you will see, I plan to add a couple of things along the way.

Before we really get into things, though, let me go over the steps that we used last week.  It will make things easier for those of you who were here, and it will help the rest of us feel like we know what’s going on. 

There are three stages in this process: preparation, unearthing, and application.  The first involves reading (or hearing) read the scripture text and paying attention to the feelings that rise up within us.  We sit with those feelings for a time … without judgment … as we uncover our assumptions and preconceptions about the text, and then we ask God to clear a way for us to hear a new word.

The second stage involves digging deeper into the text.  It is filled with history, socio-cultural context, and literary analysis. At the heart of this unearthing is an effort to step out of our cultural assumptions and understandings, including some of our beliefs about the nature of scripture.  These words were written by people who lived a long time ago about their own experience of the world, and they contain the interpretations and assumptions of their cultures.

Finally we arrive at the step where we try to find some meaning in the text for ourselves in our time and in our cultural context.  This is what most of us are looking for when we read the Bible, and with the scriptures that we read and preach on more often, it can be a fairly easy process.  Difficult passages like this one and so many in the narrative histories of the Old Testament are a whole other matter.  The powerful imagery mixed with the violent and the grotesque take them completely outside of our ability to relate to them.  I think that’s why we find them difficult in the first place.

 

Preparation….  Let’s start with the feelings that this story of Abraham, Isaac, and God brings up.  You haven’t had the benefit of a week’s time to let these words stew in your heads.  So, I’ll read them again for you – and here is one the places that Carrie and I differ a little.  When I come across a text like this one, I read it through in more than one translation.  Linda read us the New Revised Standard Version earlier.  So, I’m going to read from the New International Version.  Remember to pay attention to the feelings raised by the story.  You’ll have a chance to share them in a minute.

Genesis 22:1-14….

Some time later God tested Abraham.  He said to him, “Abraham!”
            “Here I am,” he replied.
Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah.  Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.”

Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey.  He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac.  When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about.  On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance.  He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey awhile I and the boy go over there.  We will worship and then we will come back to you.”

Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife.  As the two or them when on together, Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?”

            “Yes, my son?” Abraham replied.
            “The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”

Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.”  And the two of them went on together.

When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it.  He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood.  Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.  But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!”

            “Here I am,” he replied.
“Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said.  “Do not do anything to him.  Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”

Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns.  He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son.  So Abraham called that place “The Lord Will Provide.” and to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.”

[silence]

What are some of your initial feelings, reactions, or questions?  God ahead and share them out loud, whatever they are ….

[space for sharing]

Good….  Thank you for sharing.  My first response is one of disgust and disbelief.  I simply cannot believe that God would ask for such a sacrifice.  Even if it were within God’s being to request such a thing, I cannot stretch far enough to accept that God would grant Abraham and Sarah the child that they had longed for – the child they had been promised – and then take him away just to prove faithfulness.

I also feel pain, anger, and despair.  I guess that’s because I am a father now, too, and when I put myself into the story I find myself in Abraham’s place, tying up my sons, laying them on the altar, and picking up a knife to cut the joy out of my soul.  Actually, if I were in Abraham’s place I would probably be turning away from God.  I would be shouting and cursing and crying at the pain of the choice laid before me.  But that’s just me….

 

Now let’s look at our preconceived notions about this text….  Have you ever heard anyone preach a sermon about the testing of Abraham before?  Did any Sunday School teachers ever discuss it in class?  This story is a bit more well-known than Hagar’s tale.  So, I’m pretty sure you’ve been told what it means at some time or another.  Why don’t you share your experiences or the interpretations that you have been taught with someone near you….

[pause for sharing]

I know some that was easier for some of you than others.  For my own part, I remember having two different themes from this story drilled into me during Sunday School.  The first was obedience and the second was trust.  Put together they made the moral of the story: “faith means trusting God enough to obey him unquestioningly.”  If you know me at all, you’ll know that it has always been the last part of that phrase the grates on me the most.  Unquestioning obedience (especially to a God who demands human sacrifice) is not one of my strong points.  I need help discovering how to do that.

Some of what I heard you all sharing was similar to that. 

 

Now that we have that out in the open, let’s pause for a moment to ask God to help us clear a path through it all….  Take a moment to find a calm center.  Take hold of all the feelings and struggles that you have uncovered and hold them out to God….

God, take all that I am holding –

            the feelings, the assumptions,
            the messages that have been hammered into me again and again –
            take them. 
Hold them for me and clear a space where I can let go
            so that my hands may be open to receive new insight…
            so that I can flow into the grace of your love and wisdom
                       and receive a living word to light the way for me.
AMEN.

 

Okay so far?  Let’s add a little background and context.  We don’t need to do much, I think, since Carrie set the scene so well.  We just need to note that in the time of Abraham, sacrifice was understood not just to be good, but to be a necessary part of worship.  It was the only way to make restitution for sins and/or to sooth angry gods, and the more precious the scapegoat, the greater the debt repaid … the greater the sin forgiven.  So, sacrifice – even human sacrifice – wasn’t seen as beyond the pale in the way that we think of it now.

It might also be good to remind us all that the stories in Genesis are narratives meant to shed light on the experiences of the Hebrews and offer insights through retelling their encounters with the God they knew intimately.

And Abraham knew God well.  They had a long-standing relationship with a tradition of God asking Abraham for obedience that may seem harsh to us.  Over the years Abraham was sent to strange countries, endured spousal mishaps, battle, circumcision (as a grown man I might add), family feuds, Sodom and Gemorrah, a son saved and lost to exile, and a son given according to promise.  Through it all, God walked with him and cared for him, and Abraham felt himself to be blessed despite the difficulty of what had been asked.

Perhaps it’s not so surprising, then, that in this story Abraham seems to trust God beyond what we would expect.  That’s one interpretation that I’ve read.  Another one that I heard from a student at seminary was that Abraham knew God well enough to know that this was just a test – to know, as he told Isaac, that God would provide a lamb for the sacrifice. 

 

Maybe Abraham was really testing God to see if God would actually go through with it.  Everyone tests everyone else in a family after all, and ultimatums (especially the extreme ones) often bring that out in us the most.  Or, maybe Abraham was just an idiot.  

Sorry, it’s all those pesky judgments of mine coming back out again, and we have put those things away for now.

So…, all of those interpretations could be right.  We’ll never know, and that’s why we have to hold them all in their competing, confusing clamor as we wait for God to provide clarity.  But, and here is another way that I’m different than Carrie, I can’t let go as well as she can. My linear mind keeps on pushing for something – anything solid that I can hold onto.

 

I like what Carrie had to say about looking at ourselves in the mirror of scripture.  It’s not something I have thought of in that way before, and so I did that this time.  What I found was surprising.  It’s not so much that Abraham went along with God’s demand in this text that makes it hard for me.  It’s more that I cannot see myself doing the same thing. 

Facing up to that truth is hard enough for me that I keep on wrestling with the story.  I try looking at it from different angles and making different guesses.  When I’m honest, I don’t really do that order to understand it (though that would be nice).  I do it in order to explain it away – to take the bite out of it or dismiss it all together.

And that has me wondering about the scriptures that I don’t struggle with.  What about the ones that I am comfortable with?  Love you neighbors as yourself.  Feed the hungry and provide hospitality for the homeless.  If you love me keep my commandments.  What about those lovely gems?  Should teachings that were challenging enough to get Jesus killed in his own time be challenging for us as well or can we be relax into their comfortable embrace?

I am comfortable with them, but I’m not sure that I should be.  If I step back and look at my life, it doesn’t follow those guidelines … not really.  I have heard those words often enough, made my own compromises often enough, given in to the voice of my culture often enough … that I have grown callus.  Jesus teachings should be a struggle, I think, at least as much as the stories of Genesis, and I wonder what would happen if we spent as much time wrestling with them.

How would we change if we opened ourselves up to the old familiar passages in the same way we have over the past couple of weeks?  What new word of transformation would the Spirit bring us if we ask?  Would we become something new if only we were to bind up our beloved, comfortable lives and lay them on the altar?

 
I wonder.

Wrestling Continued ...

2nd part of sermon by Carrie Eikler

Last week we began the process of talking about how we wrestle with difficult scriptures.  Scriptures that make us uncomfortable, or even offend us.  I compared this to the wrestling match Jacob had with the angel, which why I decided to include that scripture again.  To remind us of the very real, physical effects holy wrestling can have on us.

I went through the process suggesting we start out with spiritual preparation and invited you into that on Sunday.  I invited you to hear Genesis 16:1-16, a scripture that I struggle with and note the initial feelings and assumptions you may have about this story: the conventional moral that is often heard, the insight into who God is that is often presented.  And I asked you to pray for a clearing through all of these preconceived notions that may prevent you from hearing the living word.  Now for those of you who weren’t here, or didn’t watch it online, we are going to hear the text again and I’ll invite you to do a quick scan of these things.  What initial reactions arise in you?  What do you like or don’t like?  How have you heard this story?  I invite Linda to read this scripture to us again and will have just a moment of silence afterwards…[Genesis 16:1-16].

So, I ask you, to begin with…what are some of your initial reactions?  Feelings?  Questions?  Go ahead and share them out loud.  Good thoughts about it, critical thoughts…[space for sharing]

My initial reaction is one of anger towards God.  It seems as though God tells Hagar to go back into what seems to me an abusive relationship, not least of all to return to slavery.  My mind quickly goes to all the abused women who have been told it is the duty to return to abusive partners, or who feel they can’t leave for fear of what might be done to them or their children.  And even though the harsh treatment is from one woman to another,  I fear that this story could be set up for abuse itself, saying God favors women’s roles (as wives and mothers) over women’s safety.

I also feel pity. Not just for Hagar, but also for Sarai who faces infertility. 

Honestly, I don’t feel anything for Abram expect resignation. 

Now there are other feelings I have…but that’s enough for now. J  Essentially, I feel anger and pity.

This is not a scripture that we hear as much as Noah’s ark, or the Beatitudes so to come up with a common moral of this story may not be so easy as others.  But maybe you’ve heard sermons on this before?  Let’s tell one another perhaps what you’ve heard about this…[pause for sharing]

Well, again, not able to really pinpoint “popular sermons” on this scripture, I feel as though I see a theme emerge of trust.  Trust that God knows what is best.  Trust that God will give you strength, even if you are scared.  Honestly, this is a very good theme, I’d say!  But I sometimes get rubbed the wrong way when we say “trust” but…who really knows what that looks like?  How do we trust with doubts?  How do we trust with fear for our lives, or our children’s lives?   Trust is not something that we can just be told to do.  Trust is something we need help in showing what it looks like.

So I’ve heard…. [summary of congregational sharing]

and I’ve heard… [summary of congregational sharing]

Now is the time when we pray a prayer of clearing.  So I invite you to do that with me right now.  Take a deep breath, and holding all the feelings that you have shared, or not shared but hold within your heart, hold them out to God…

God, take all of this
All these feelings, all these assumptions,
all these tapes in our heads playing over and over again,
and give me a new word.
A living word.
Make a space within my heart where the wrestling can rest,
and I can flow in your wisdom and grace and insight and love.
Amen.

Next in the “Carrie’s steps to wrestling with scripture” is the unearthing phase where to some extent we get to know the time and place and context this scripture was written in.  As I said last week, this is especially important for me as I use this process in preparing for sermons, and may seem less important in devotional life, but I’ll reiterate a few items to at least keep in mind.

We cannot jump to conclusions about what scripture means because it was written in a different time, a different place, and a different culture from us, in a different language from our own.  This most certainly does not mean we cannot learn from it, or apply it to our lives.  It just means we can’t be so quick to say “Ah, this it what it means”…even literally. 

Last week I spoke a bit about literary genres and mentioned that Genesis is a narrative, indeed, it is a family narrative, telling the Hebrew story about how the earth came to be, how people were created, how the Hebrew nation grew.  We know that other cultures and traditions have creation stories, flood stories, family stories.  It looks at Israel’s history through a theological lens, and God is very much a character, the same as Abraham and Hagar and Cain and Eve.  God speaks, moves, is present, and is engaged with.  This isn’t the case in other books of the Bible.  Other works has God as an “out there” deity to be looked at.  In Genesis, God is part of the story, to be engaged with.

Which is why this moment with Hagar and God is so intimate.  God comes to Hagar, through an angel, which in Genesis is almost to be seen as one and the same-just as we might talk about Jacob wrestling with the angel is the same as Jacob wrestling with God.  And God, or the angel, proclaims a blessing on Hagar and a prophecy, not unlike the one the angels speak to Mary upon conceiving Jesus: “Now you have conceived and shall bear a son…”

So what about the whole polygamy thing?  This is definitely a product of a different time and culture.  (This is why I think we should be slow to say we base our virtues of family values on the Bible.  Which family in the bible? J ).  Or the fact that Hagar was a slave?  We don’t really understand the implications of this culture where slaves could become wives, or how wives interacted, or who was superior.  But aside from all that,  I think it is enough to say…let’s look at the verbs that are used in describing this relationship.

Above and beyond what generally takes place in a slave-master relationship, the author deemed it fit to say that Hagar looked with contempt, that Sarai degraded her,  that Hagar ran away.  Whatever the make up here is, something broke free of the norm and caused Hagar to flee.

So we’ve done a little literary research, a bit of wondering about social make up.  So what?

Well if anything,  it reminds us  (as I’ve said before) that what we are wrestling with here is so far from our immediate understand that maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to take meaning from it but… we shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss it either.  The mysteriousness of the text can be an entry point into the mystery of the one to whom the text points.

Last week I said that one way I wrestle with difficult scriptures is to look at them as confessions.  This is one way I look at the history of Israel, with the bloody violence and the continual language of feeling as though God deserted them and then God came back, but then they failed, and God deserted them again.  It’s very confessional in nature.

But I can approach a narrative like this in a confessional way, as well.  Not in that I am saying the author wrote it as a confession, but I approach my reading with a confessional heart.  Where is there pain in this story?  Where have people, in my estimation, acted unjustly towards another human being, or the earth, or even turned against God.  And rather than saying “they” did these bad things, I quickly hold  mirror up with the text and ask, how have I (for personal confession) or “we” (for social confessions) acted in a similar, human, fragile—yes, sinful—way.

This time that I approach the story, it is in a very personal way—and again this isn’t what you will get out of it.  I approach it as a woman who has successfully bore three children into this world.  I am confronted with the pain and frustration of millions of women who have lost children, or have been unable to conceive.  I trust I do not look upon them with contempt, as Sarai felt Hagar did, but this calls me to sensitivity and awareness of those who cannot, or choose to not, bear children.

We can also look at this confessionally: how has a history of slavery shaped our current lives together?  How has abuse shaped women’s lives and their fleeing from or clinging to God?  How can you give a word of love and protection to women facing such difficult choices: not saying “God sent Hagar back, so you go back too” but saying God provided Hagar with protection and we want to provide you with protection.  So instead of lingering in anger towards the text or God, we ask what is ours to do in situations where people are facing fear and abuse.

But above all, we can approach scripture confessionally, knowing the impact and abuse these scriptures have had on perpetuating cycles of violence.  We confess we have been part of a Christian community that has used its holy text to oppress.  These stories remind us of that and awaken us to the louder call throughout scripture: to bring justice to the captives and dignity to all God’s children.  Again, we don’t let the uncomfortable feelings paralyze us, we ask God,:what are you calling us to do?

Now this doesn’t solve all the troubling things that might arise in us.    Coming up with these answers will take more questions, more wrestling.  And I hope you do that work and continue to ask scripture these questions. In a culture where we want everything yesterday, approaching difficult stories and let them work themselves out within us over time is not enticing.

But sometimes, my friend, it is a necessary step in the struggle, to pause in wrestling.  Not to give up, but to sit in hopeful expectation.  Many times when I pray for clarity on difficult scriptures, I sit with God and I don’t have any expectation that God will give me the answers.  At that time, in the clarity of a Google search. 

I do believe that in quiet waiting and fervent prayer, God plants a seed.  And that seed is watered by living Christ’s path and loving with Christ’s love and confessing into Christ’s grace.  And an answer will be revealed in time.  A connection, an insight.  And I’ll go on to wrestle with something else.

And I have a final confession—and this where outgoing pastors get a sense of freedom and perhaps get into a little trouble—I have to confess that one of my frustrations being a pastor is that in standing here every other Sunday and wrestling with difficult texts is that I feel the burden to convince you.  To make it make sense to you.  To find the application for you.  To take the questions or struggles you might be facing with this text and find a nice, tidy, palatable answer.  Even when I’m not sure I have it.

Now, maybe you expect that and maybe you don’t.  This is a struggle of many congregations and pastors.  I am not going to convince you of anything, or assuage your anger or answer your questions in a 15-20  minute sermon.  What I hope I have done in my time here, is help you to ask the questions.  To encourage you to ask the questions, not of me or your pastor now or in the future, but to ask God the questions.

I will have considered my time with you fruitful if you feel you are not only able to approach God with your struggles and questions, but I will feel I have done my job if you feel compelled to do that.  Enticed to be frustrated.  To feel it is worth it.  To see opening the scriptures, wrestling with the scriptures, and coming away without answers but more questions not as a failure or a cop-out, but as well with your time and spiritual energy.

And I trust, like Hagar, that no matter what I am returning to in my struggle, or what lies ahead, God is present.  God will protect.  God will bless.

Wrestling with Scripture

1st part of a sermon by Carrie Eikler

In the TV drama, Angels in America a character named Joe reflects on a small childhood obsession:

“I had a book of Bible stories when I was a kid.  There was a picture I’d look at twenty times every day: Jacob wrestles with the angel.  I don’t really remember the story, or why the wrestling—just the picture.  Jacob is young and very strong.  The angel is a…beautiful man, with golden hair and wings, of course.  I still dream about it.”  And Joe concludes, “It’s me.  In that struggle.  Fierce, and unfair.  The angel is not human, and it holds nothing back, so could anyone human win?  What kind of fight is it?  It’s not just.  Losing means your soul thrown down in the dust, your heart torn out from God’s.  And he concludes, But you can’t not lose.”

Friends, when it comes to faith, there is a lot of wrestling involved.

Prayer?  Wrestling.

Worship?  Wrestling.

Scripture?  Definite wrestling.

When I think of some of the serious wrestling in my faith life, and maybe you can commiserate, the angel I wrestle with is not the lovely, blond, beautiful angel of Joe’s picture bible.  It is more like a huge, stinky, Mexican luchador, with a mask on so I can’t see its face, and a little too much spandex for my liking. 

But I have to say, scripture is one of the biggest wrestling matches I have, my biggest luchador. It is ink on page and while there are as many interpretations of it as there are stars in the sky, there is something that makes this book…indeed, this Holy Book, a red herring for many Christians.  Don’t touch it.  Don’t change one jot or tittle.  Take it word for word and even if you don’t understand it, don’t question it.

Do you wrestle with scripture?  You know I do, as you can already tell.  There is so much that I find offensive, hateful, misogynistic, racist, violent,  un Christian (and unJewish, really) unGod-like…in my interpretation.  In my understanding.

 

Today my friends, I want to simply share with you one of the ways (and there are more than one way) that I engage this wrestling match with difficult scriptures.  In the next few weeks we are going to be encountering some scriptures in Genesis that are difficult for by Torin and me, and likely you.  And a lot of this process is based on my particular interpretation of the Bible—the 10cent seminary word here is hermeneutic—my interpretation.  It may not be your hermeneutic, and if not, thank you for at least allowing a space to share with you my process.  And yet, it may spark something for you.  I hope so.

Just like the angel of God who wrestled with Jacob, wrestling with scripture is a holy act.  It engages us, touches us, makes us engage it, touch it.  And no matter how we end up after wrestling with it, as Joe in Angels in America, you can’t not lose.  Because you will be transformed.

So most of you know I don’t give point-by-point sermons.  Point 1, point 2, point 3.  Well, today I am giving myself grace to deviate from that. 

 

When I think about wrestling with scripture, I see three phases: the preparatory phase, the unearthing phase, and the application phase.

The preparatory phrase is deeply spiritual for me.  When presented with a difficult scripture, I first note the feeling that arises in me.  Is it anger?  Fear?  Disgust?  Delight? Complete and utter exhaustion.? I sit for a while and wrestle with that feeling, without judgment.  And really, we can give thanks to these scriptures for calling something out within us to work with, to attend to, to engage.  Better a passionate response, than no response.

After I sit with those feelings, I note my assumptions.  How have I heard this scripture before?  What have been the sermons I’ve heard on this?  What is, for lack of better terms, the conventional moral of the story.  What have I always been told this story “means”?

Then after I get in touch with my initial reactions and assumptions, I pray.  That might seem an obvious step, but this is special prayer of clearing.  I ask God to clear what may be blocking me from hearing new word, not dismissing my feelings or throwing them out the way.  Not denying what I like or dislike Not disregarding everything I have learned, but to clear a path, or at least a space within my heart for a word of God to come shining through in new ways.

Now I don’t know if that is the easy part or the hard part, this preparation.  It probably has to do with the state I’m in emotionally, or the particular scripture I’m getting ready to wrestle with.  But the next part of my lucha-my struggle-is quite different.  This is where I try to dig deeper into the text. The “unearthing” phase.

I read the scripture again, reminding myself that this was not written by someone like me, living in my time, shaped by the course of history and social movements and wars and influential people and political decisions that have shaped me.  Honestly, the writers of scripture have little to resemble us in many ways.  So to jump to an easy conclusion about what these people “really meant” about God is wrong. ( I don’t usually call things so blatantly wrong, but this I will: to jump to an easy conclusion about what these people “really meant” about God is wrong)

In fact, the time span of all the books in the Bible cover thousands of years of literature.  Think about Barbara Kingsolver and St. Augustine writing their experiences of God and put them into a book and call it Holy and that’s about the extent and more so of what we’re looking at in the Bible!

This comes from the culture of the near east, with many micro-cultures within: Hebrew,  Syro-Phonecian, Roman, Greek.  This was written over two thousand years ago in a predominately patriarchal culture.  In this culture, because most scriptures were written by men, lifting up men’s position, placing superiority of men over women, speaking of God as man…this does not mean that is how God wants us to live.  It means these scriptures were written in a time when society shaped itself around these social structures.  It is how people saw their world in that time, for good or for ill, and is bound to shape their interpretation and writing.  It does not mean they are social structures God wants for our time or for God’s kingdom.

 

Scripture also has many genres.  Some are theological historical books, a retelling of history where the author tried to see God’s hand at work in the shaping of their history: Exodus, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, these are theological histories.  There are books of poetry: of course, the psalms and the erotic and overlooked and underappreciated Song of Songs.  There are books of the law such as Leviticus. There are narratives: Genesis, the Gospels, Ruth, Esther, where the focus is on the characters and the development of a plot and weaving in danger and suspense and love and all that good stuff of a novel.  There are letters: Paul!  There is wisdom literature: the Book of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes.  Apocalyptic literature: Revelations and Daniel.

When wrestling with scripture I must acknowledge the different types of literary genres to help me read it.  I don’t look to take away from my reading of Maya Angelou’s poetry the same thing I would take away from reading read a biography of Pope John Paul II or the political works of Noam Chomsky.  So I can’t approach all the books of the bible with the same lens.  I ask myself not just what is being conveyed, but how is it being conveyed.

So all this stuff is kind of heady.  But another way I like to unearth scripture is to approach it as if it were a prayer.

There are many types of prayers and while you may not be able to name them, you have certainly experienced them.  Prayers of praise, prayers of thanksgiving, prayers of affirmation, prayers of petition and intercession-where we ask for help, prayers of confession.  Often times the scriptures reflect some type of sense of these prayers.

And it is the prayer of confession that I have found helps me with some of the more troubling scriptures.  I can’t tell you what an impression it made on me when in seminary a professor said “We can’t always read scripture looking for direction or instruction.   The stories weren’t all written with that mind.  Sometimes the stories are written as confessions.  Confessions of people believing God was telling them to do something—kill, pillage, rape—and the consequence show the folly of that.”

Sometimes when approach difficult texts, I have to read them as confessions.  I don’t do this as an apologetic or to dismiss the gravity of the situation.  But I can’t look at all scripture as prescriptions—telling me what to do—but sometimes I must read it as descriptions—showing us what people tried to do, and showing us consequences.

 

And finally, I read scripture with the belief that it is a living word. I believe that the text itself grows in meaning as I engage with it.  That I am changed, and in some way, the text grows and changes as well, presenting itself to a new culture, with new challenges and insights.  I’ll explore more next week these last few items: reading scripture confessionally and with the belief in the living word …

Because next week we will have a chance to practice this. Next week we are going to look at Genesis 16:1-16, a text that I struggle with, and maybe you too.  But we are going to begin the wrestling today As we move into waiting worship, I am going to read that text and invite you into the preparatory phase and I invite you to continue engaging with this text throughout the week.

As I read this scripture note what feelings arise in you.  If you have heard this text before, consider what you have heard about it, how you’ve heard it preached on before, what is a moral?  Or maybe, where does your mind jump to conclusions?  Note that and this week, be in prayer for a clearing.  That God may bless those, but also gently make space for a new revelation.

Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, bore him no children. She had an Egyptian slave-girl whose name was Hagar, ²and Sarai said to Abram, ‘You see that the Lord has prevented me from bearing children; go in to my slave-girl; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.’ And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. ³So, after Abram had lived for ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her slave-girl, and gave her to her husband Abram as a wife. ⁴He went in to Hagar, and she conceived; and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress. ⁵Then Sarai said to Abram, ‘May the wrong done to me be on you! I gave my slave-girl to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the Lord judge between you and me!’ ⁶But Abram said to Sarai, ‘Your slave-girl is in your power; do to her as you please.’ Then Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she ran away from her.

7The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur. ⁸And he said, ‘Hagar, slave-girl of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?’ She said, ‘I am running away from my mistress Sarai.’ ⁹The angel of the Lord said to her, ‘Return to your mistress, and submit to her.’ ¹⁰The angel of the Lord also said to her, ‘I will so greatly multiply your offspring that they cannot be counted for multitude.’ ¹¹And the angel of the Lord said to her,
‘Now you have conceived and shall bear a son;
   you shall call him Ishmael,
   for the Lord has given heed to your affliction.
¹² He shall be a wild ass of a man,
with his hand against everyone,
   and everyone’s hand against him;
and he shall live at odds with all his kin.’
¹³So she named the Lord who spoke to her, ‘You are El-roi’; for she said, ‘Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?’ ¹⁴Therefore the well was called Beer-lahai-roi;
it lies between Kadesh and Bered.

15Hagar bore Abram a son; and Abram named his son, whom Hagar bore, Ishmael.

¹⁶Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael.

[Waiting Worship]

As we go into this week of wrestling, receive this blessing from Carter Heyward:

May we realize that God’s blessing upon us—that for which we have
wrestled, some of us for so long and so fiercely—is that we be empowered
to welcome and bless those who, like Jacob, indeed, like most of us,
do not deserve to be blessed.

May we sustain the confidence and courage, the compassion and humor,
to realize the sacred power in this stunning opportunity which is ours
today, and will be ours, forever.
(pause)
This blessing will not be taken from us.

Rich Spirit Soup

sermon by Torin Eikler
Acts 2:1-21     Numbers 11:24-30

Last week we celebrated Ascension Sunday – the festival that marks the departure of Christ in the heavens and the promise of a return when the time is right.  We left the disciples excited and stunned, waiting in Jerusalem for the arrival of the Spirit.  This week we celebrate Pentecost and the fulfilled promise of the Spirit’s coming.

Often the story of Pentecost focuses us on the disciples’ miraculous speaking in tongues or on the open invitation to the children of God from all over the world that those words offered or on how this was the birth of the church that would spread across the Roman Empire and then the world.  But I want to set all that aside because a question has been growing in the back of my mind for the past several weeks.  I want to know what happened to the disciples that morning.  What happened when the Spirit descended to dance with them as tongues of fire?  What changed for them besides the languages they spoke?  What changed within them that made all the rest of the story possible?  Because the Spirit did change them.  In just a moment’s time they became different people: courageous where they had been fearful, bold where they had been timid, loud and eloquent where they had been quietly mumbling through the good news they had to share.

 

When I lived in Elgin, IL, a part of my work regularly included traveling to the airport to convey visitors or colleagues to and from the Church of the Brethren Offices.  At its fastest the trip took about 50 or 60 minutes depending on how closely you followed the speed limits (which I always did, of course).  Every once in a while traffic was extra light and you could get there in 45 minutes.  Most of the time, though, I ended up traveling through the beginnings or the tail ends of rush hour.  So, I normally counted on an hour and a half and arrived on time or a few minutes early.

I spent the traveling time listening to radio – usually to one of the Chicago NPR stations, and one morning I heard a fascinating story about the models that were in the works to predict traffic patterns.  They were discussing a recent breakthrough in which a researcher had compared traffic patterns – and particularly traffic jams – to the behavior of water that has been cooled below 32º but kept from freezing.  That super-cooled water behaved in pretty much the same way as water that was just above the freezing point, but it was different in one important way.  If you were to drop even a tiny fragment of ice into it, the entire container of water would freeze solid instantly.

When I first thought of the change that came when the Spirit fell upon the disciples, the image of that water becoming ice in just an instance rose up in my mind.  It certainly captures the suddenness of what happened there in Jerusalem, but it still isn’t quite right.  The disciples did not freeze up in that moment.  They did quite the opposite.  They came to life.

 

When we moved to Morgantown seven years ago, I began to garden in earnest.  I had helped out with the garden that my parents planted for most of my life … sometimes more – an hour a day in high school, sometimes less – just harvesting potatoes, snapping bean, and freezing corn in college, and sometimes very little because I used to take just one bite of everything I saw when I was little.  I had helped, but I didn’t really know everything that went into it until I got here.

I discovered that first year, that there is a whole lot more preparation involved than I ever realized.  You start your garden in the fall, not the spring.  You prepare the ground then, turning in compost or leaves or grass clippings (especially important in our clay-ee soil) and pulling out those late season weeds before they get a chance to plant their own seeds where you want yours to go.  You let it sleep throughout the winter month in the hopes that it will somehow become a richer, looser, loamier soil, and then you turn it all over again when the cold and the ice finally let it go.  Another round of fertilizing and loosening, and finally you get to lay out your rows and plant your seeds.  Then it’s water and weed and water and weed all through the spring and early summer as the seedlings grow into plants and, finally, produce the vegetables you’ve been working on for nine or ten months.  And then it’s back to the beginning again.

That sounds a bit more like the disciples.  They were a garden of sorts there in Jerusalem; one that had been waiting for the spring rains and the summer sun.  All winter long, the soil of their spirits had been resting.  Jesus had come and heaped on the fertilizer and pulled out the weeds that might have choked off their growth.  In his return he added more, mixing and mixing so that they would be ready to receive the life to come.  Then he spent forty days with them planting seeds and leaving them to rest in the rich, quiet, fertile ground he had prepared.  Finally, the Spirit came to water and the warm and the lives of the disciples took root and grew, sending out leaves and runners into the world.

 

But that’s not quite right either.  The vibrant color of Pentecost is in it.  The life is there, but not the suddenness.  The disciples didn’t send out small sprouts, slowing growing to produce fruit.  They exploded into vivid motion – into rich and enticing evangelism – into testifying to the power and blessing of Christ alive in the world despite all the efforts of the powers of the day.

Maybe what they experienced on that day was more like the completion of a complex stew.  I’m thinking of something like “Stone Soup”.  Many of you know what that is already, but for those who don’t Stone Soup is a book that tells the story of a traveling monk who finds himself in an unwelcoming town.  Person after person makes excuses for not sharing their food with him, but they have no reason to refuse when he asks to borrow a soup pot.

The monk takes the pot to the center of town where he fills it with water and sets it over a fire.  He then put a stone in the bottom, telling the curious onlookers that this stone always produces magnificent soup.  As the people watch and wait to see if this monk can really produce soup from a stone, the monk cleverly fools them into bringing various vegetables and salt that will make the soup taste even better.  And in the end, the village has provided the food for a delicious stew that they all share together in the town square.

 

I’m thinking that the story of the disciples on Pentecost is quite a bit like Stone Soup … only in reverse.  They themselves were very different people – as different as potatoes and onions and peas, and they had been left to stew for a time.  Their praying and eating melded the different flavors of their experiences and their passions together into a unified community that had depth and variety, but lacked a certain je ne sais quoi.  Into that mix, the Spirit descended like a few teaspoons of salt sprinkled over the top, and instantly the bland broth was transformed into a delicacy, bringing out the character of each individual and adding a rich fullness that brought the stew to life – rich fullness that became a blessing to all those who tasted this miraculous soup made from the stones of unknown men.

 

Three different ways of thinking about what the Spirit can and does do with people.  I think that last one is the best fit for what happened to the disciples on that long-ago day when they sprang into new life.  But the real question is: which one are we.

Which one are we?

Are we the traffic jam waiting to happen?  I think it’s pretty safe to rule that one out.  We are not “the frozen chosen.”  At least I don’t see any evidence of that as I talk with, worship with, and live with you.  You are not … we are not super-cooled in any sense of the word.  There is much too much passion alive within us.

Are we the garden coming into its fullness?  I think we like to think of ourselves that way, and there is a lot of truth to that.  We are a people who are reaching and growing toward the light.  We are watered and cared for as a beloved treasure of God.  We seem to move in fits and starts – sometimes quickly and sometimes so slowly that it seems we are not – though we are full of life.  Yes … I think we are like the garden in many ways, but I wonder if we aren’t really the stew. 

 

Over the past few years, I have become convinced that this congregation has been … well … swelling.  I have felt a tension growing among us (and not a tension born from anxiety).  There just seems to be so much potential … so much energy in this community of faithful believers – an energy that is waiting for the right moment to burst forth.  I don’t know what the key ingredient is – the salt that will transform us into a vibrant blessing that draws people to us like moths to a flame, but it is coming.  The enduring promise fulfilled at Pentecost assures us that it is coming.

In the meantime, we continue to do what we do well.  We love one another.  We pray together.  We worship and eat together.  We work at the little things that we need to do to keep on going.  And we keep an eye out for the tongues of flame or the sprinkle of salt.

May it be so.