Fear of the Lord

The sudden harsh beeping of the Emergency Broadcasting System interrupts our day and is followed with the words, “This is just a test…” The story of the Binding of Isaac [Genesis 22:1-14], the long promised and awaited son of Sarah and Abraham, begins with the words, “After these things came to pass, God tested Abraham.” And to modern ears it all sounds terribly harrowing: asking the aging patriarch of all monotheistic religion, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, to sacrifice the son he thought he would never see. But this is not “just a test.” This is Elohim, the title for the Bible’s God of Justice, setting the stage for all that is to come after – all of which depends on Abraham, who so far has not been 100% dependable. Looking to the end of the story, what appears to be at stake is what the Bible repeatedly calls “fear of the Lord.”

“Now I know that you are one-who-fears-God, since you did not withhold your son, your one-and-only, from me” [v 12]. It helps to know that there is no equivalent Hebrew word in the Bible for ‘religion,’ so that “fear of the Lord” serves that purpose. ‘Fear of the Lord’ is about having a relationship with the One ineffable and transcendent God who has chosen you, Abraham in this instance, to be the one person God can trust to be a blessing to all the peoples of the world – which is God’s stated promise and desire to and for Abraham. “Fear of the Lord” is the core religious virtue in the Bible; “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; fools despise wisdom and instruction.” (Prov 1:7). To fear God is to live in humble recognition of the incalculable difference between God and humans. This story is the first time we see anyone practicing this virtue. So, this is not just a test. This sets the table for everything that eventually winds up with God coming to us himself as flesh and blood in Jesus, who descends from this first family of the biblical narrative. All this leaves the morally alert reader with two questions: How could a virtuous person be willing to kill a child? And, How could a good God demand that Abraham kill his son?

To address these questions I am grateful to a long-time friend and colleague, Ellen Davis, and her analysis of this important narrative found online at Bible Odyssey. Davis allows that although the story is often cast as being about obedience, we all know there is no virtue in absolute obedience to tyrannical demands. The opening words, “After these things…,” however, suggest that there is more to this request. God’s plan for the entire human family is at stake in this one man, and so far, he has not been particularly virtuous or trustworthy. For instance, he has given up his wife Sarah twice to the harem of a foreign king to save his own skin, not trusting God to find a way forward. Mutual Trust is the issue at stake in this episode. Mutual Trust is necessary to bring blessing and good to the all the peoples of the world. The point of the test is to see if Abraham trusts God even to the point of being willing to sacrifice his son whom he loves. Abraham’s Fear of the Lord is the human condition upon which the entire future of the covenant, and human kind, rests. We’re not talking about Abraham’s obedience, but rather his trust in the Lord, aka his ‘fear of the Lord,’ so that the Lord knows he can trust Abraham.

Davis goes on to say that there are only two grounds upon which God can be exonerated from charges of sadism or tyranny. First, this is a real test. The book of Genesis offers no evidence whatsoever to “support the common theological notion that God knows everything before it happens, every human response before it is offered. Thus, when Abraham passes the test, God’s own relief is palpable: ‘Now I know,’ says the Lord. (Gen 22:12). [Ibid, Bible Odyssey] God asks everything of us and has no idea how we might respond. This is Free Will.

God asks everything of Abraham so that Abraham will realize who is ultimately in charge of the covenant: Elohim, the God of Justice. When Abraham submits to the request to sacrifice Isaac, he behaves very differently than when he interceded for the innocent people of Sodom back in Genesis 18, where he aggressively, and rather presumptuously, challenges God’s judgment: “Shall not the judge of all the earth do what is just?” (Gen 18:25). As a result of the power of his intercessory prayer, Abraham is the first person in the Bible called a prophet by God. In the worldview of Genesis, a true and trusting relationship with God entails a balance between such boldness on behalf of humanity and submission to God. Both are necessary for Jews, Christians and Muslims to remain in covenantal relationship with God. “Thus,” concludes Davis, “with this most important ancestor, the Bible begins to show what it is to serve ‘prophetically’ in the covenantal context: negotiating dual commitments to humanity and to God, from moment to moment, discerning when to challenge God on behalf of a weak and sinful humanity and when to submit in “fear” to the sometimes inscrutable divine demand.” [Ibid]

The tenth chapter of Matthew winds up a long discussion of what is required of all who would be disciples of Jesus. Jesus himself pushes both boldness and submission a bit further when he says, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet's reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple-- truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.” [Mt 10:40-42] Those who will be welcomed not only by Jesus but by God his Father, “the one who sent me,’ are those who welcome Prophets like Abraham who embody these core biblical values of boldness on behalf of humanity and submission to God. The same pertains to those “righteous ones” who strive to honor all aspects of the covenant which demands love of God and love of neighbor.

This is a call to radical hospitality as Jesus pushes commitments to humankind one step further it seems – those who offer “a cup of cold water to one of these little ones” will not lose their reward! Little ones can refer to children, who in the culture of the first century middle eastern world were at the very bottom of the social hierarchy – along with slaves, foreigners and the poor of the land. It is easy to welcome prophets and those who carefully observe Torah and the covenant. Further, marriage and creating families is not primarily about happiness, but about sustaining trust and our hope that the falseness of this world is ultimately bounded by a greater truth and light despite the fact that the world rarely provides much evidence that such hope is justified. Like Abraham, we are setting the table for all that is to come after us!

Later, Jesus indeed extends the notion of “these little ones” to all those who are hungry, thirsty, naked, in prison, in need of healing, and strangers [Matthew 25:31-46]. These are not only to be welcomed but to be served. On our knees. Like the one who gets down on his knees to wash our feet. He says that in serving them we are serving him- Jesus. And in serving Jesus we serve God. To show ourselves as those who truly wish to be disciples and those, who like father Abraham, ‘fear the Lord,’ we have a whole lot of welcoming and serving to do. To live a life of ‘fear of the Lord’ is not easy work, as Abraham learned on top of Mount Moriah. But the rewards at the end of the day are worth every difficulty and demand made – eternal life with the Lord of Life, Justice and Love.

Every day, after all else we do, we are being tested. Every day we are sent to the top of Mount Moriah to sacrifice things we hold dear, things that we love, so that God’s promises for humankind are sustained. Every day God seeks evidence that we are those people who truly can be trusted to be people capable of both boldness on behalf of humanity and submission to God’s covenant promises. Every day God looks to us to be a people who are a blessing to all others, to all the peoples of the Earth. Not some, not many, but all – all the peoples of the Earth. Amen.

We Shall Do This!

Tribalism. We are faced with tribalism daily in America: the behavior and attitudes that stem from strong loyalty to one's own tribe or social group. This word seems antithetical to what we think of as the mission of Jesus Christ: to unite all peoples as one and make us one with our Creator. Others have summed it up in words like, “May we know that we are of You, may we know that we are in You, may we know that we are one with You, together one.” [John Philip Newell, Praying with the Earth, p28] But then there is this from Matthew’s Jesus: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.

For I have come to set a man against his father,

and a daughter against her mother,

and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;

and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.” [Matthew 10:34-35]

Naturally, we want to know what’s up. How does this all square with the Lord’s deep desire for unity and oneness? As I shared with a Bible Study group the other morning: The Bible does not try to be consistent; it aims to be true. For these words setting family members against one another come directly from the prophet Micah, chapter seven, not long after the most famous words from Micah: “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”  [Micah 6:8]

What the prophet Micah does is describe the situation on the ground: corruption in Jerusalem has dissolved all socially productive relationships into parties and tribalism some 8 centuries before Jesus. Any cursory reading of the gospels reveals that things have not changed that much: tribalism in the sense of competing political and religious parties was again rampant, further complicated by the occupation by Caesar’s Rome. Jesus remembers Micah’s warning.

Since last Sunday, we wake up almost every day to find another Black man or woman has been hung from a tree or a lamppost and ruled “no foul play.” This is set against the backdrop of American tribalism with White Privilege being challenged by the Black Lives Matter movement, energized by a series of police killing several unarmed black citizens during the time of the current pandemic – and throughout history. Although White Supremacist movements adopt symbols of the Church on their costumes and iconography, and might even seize upon this passage in Matthew as justification for their violence and brutality against People of Color, it’s plain to see by anyone who reads the Bible that none of this appropriation of Biblical warrant for Racism stands up against a serious reading of the texts from Genesis through Revelation!

What Jesus, and Micah before him, is saying is that one cannot live with the good news of the kingdom of God in one compartment of one’s life, and at the same time leave everything else in another compartment unchanged by the Gospel of Christ. The Good News is not a “salve,” writes Thomas G. Long, “it is a sword that pares away all that is not aligned with the kingdom… it shakes up values, rearranges priorities, reorients goals.” [Thomas Long, Matthew, p. 122] So, when does this sword begin to do its work? When does it begin to pare away all that is not aligned with the kingdom? When does it begin to shake up our values, rearrange priorities, and reorient goals?

Can we even begin to imagine this sword of the kingdom like a sharp paring knife on an apple slicing away the continued violence and discrimination against People of Color? There go Jim Crow Laws falling to the floor. Another slice around and away go segregated schools and the more modern so-called Christian Academies that prohibit People of Color from attending. Another slice of his mighty sword and all inequality in school systems across the country disappear. There goes red-lining housing mortgages and small business loans for minorities. Slicing deeper into the fruit of White Privilege and Racism, and there fall the bricks they hurled at Martin Luther King Jr as he walked the streets of Cicero, Illinois. Then fall all kinds of Police Brutality aimed against African American men and women like Fred Hampton and Breonna Taylor who, decades apart, were shot while they were still in bed. Falling to the floor are more slices that represent naming towns, streets, and erecting statues to honor those who sought to dissolve the US, and building a bridge in 1940 to honor Edmund Winston Pettus, a former Confederate brigadier general, U.S. senator, and Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, which became the site of Bloody Sunday on March 7,1965. The sword of the Lord lops off all the times I stood by as classmates referred to African Americans as apes, coons, jungle bunnies, the N-Word and worse, eventually leading to eight long years calling the President of the United States and the First Lady apes, coons, jungle bunnies, the N-Word and worse, denying their personhood, denying that they were even American. Watch as His terrible swift sword lops off voter suppression, the horrors of reconstruction and founding of the Ku Klux Klan in the name of Christ; the theft of much of Mexico, the enslavement of Asians to build the railroad, the internment of Japanese Americans in camps all over the US; the depravities of Manifest Destiny and claims that it was God’s will to push out and eliminate the Native Peoples of this continent. His sword slices away at generations of slavery and the trading of human beings as mere commodities like cotton and wheat, and those Christian Clergy arguing that God, Jesus, Paul and the Bible support the very idea of slavery. Another slice and that part of the Constitution that says a Black man and woman only count as 3/5^ths of a person is gone, sliced right down to the core where once in a bold declaration to the people of the world we the people said that all men are created equal. Among the seeds in the core are the words of Jesus, Moses, the Prophets, and the Lord God himself expressing a deep desire that we all be one with God and one with one another. And when I look at the peelings on the floor I see a Black man running in the morning as I do every day get chased by men of My White Tribe in their pick-em-up trucks and shoot him and crow about it with laughter and pride. I can still see a Black man on the ground with the knee of a policeman of My White Tribe on his neck for almost nine minutes while the immortal words of “I can’t breathe” are heard once again throughout the Land of the Free and the Home Brave. And I ask myself, what have I done or said that could have made a difference, that could reconcile race relations, that could bring us closer to the vision, values and life of the Christ my White Tribe claims as its own – as if God in Jesus Christ is a commodity to be exploited, not a person who came to free people, all people, even White People, from their bondage to Sin.

And I weep, and I feel shame,

And I wish My White Tribe had never ever crossed the ocean to this New World,

And I pray that one day My White Tribe might stop, look at itself, shut up and

Listen to Jesus as if for the first time, and learn what it means to Love God and Love Neighbor,

And put an end to what must make our Lord and Savior look down on us from heaven

And weep, incredulous, that after all He has done our internecine tribalism still persists.

“He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” We can do this. We must do this. We shall do this. Amen. This is true. It is so. Amen.

The Sin of Racism

“How shall I repay the Lord for all the good things he has done for me?” asks the poet of Psalm 116 on behalf of all God’s people. And as Paul points out, all the good things God does for us God does even though we continue to be sinners. “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” [Romans 5:8]

Meanwhile, there are crowds of people, people who are harassed, feeling helpless, like sheep without a shepherd – no coherent leadership, no good shepherds. No one in the established leadership of the nation hears their cry for help, for relief, for care and compassion. Seemingly, only Jesus notices he goes about curing every sickness and disease. One might say there is dis-ease in the land, and those in charge have no idea what to do, or what might help. Or, worse still, those in charge do not even see that there is a sickness and dis-ease across the land. And if they do, they are content to continue to profit from it.

What ought to demand our attention is that in the midst of sickness, dis-ease, harassment and a palpable sense of helplessness, Jesus sees opportunity – and it is opportunity that demands urgency to be addressed. “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. I cannot do this alone. Join me in finding a cure for this sickness and dis-ease that has plagued our land and our people for centuries now – there’s no time to lose!”

He appoints twelve people to harvest souls and dispel the sickness and dis-ease that has plagued the land for centuries. He knows there is resistance to change and he will need help to keep his mission going. In his list, however, are a few surprises, a few notorious sinners: Matthew the Tax Collector has been fleecing the people while collaborating with the enemy-oppressors from Rome; Simon the Cananaean was a revolutionary Zealot advocating overthrowing Rome by force. Imagine Matthew and Simon working side-by-side. And then there is Judas the betrayer. Even while we are still sinners, God does not call the qualified. God qualifies the called.

And lest we think this is disconnected from all that is going on all around us today, consider the seemingly odd instruction to “stay away” from Gentiles and Samaritans. That is, only go to “our people.” This could sound like a kind of of racism. But he seems to say, the sickness and dis-ease is most prevalent among our own people. They are the ones who need our help-the ones like us.  

I remember when I first arrived back in Maryland in 1994, the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church had issued a Pastoral Letter on The Sin of Racism. Such letters are to be read in public worship on Sunday Morning. And there was a parishioner who sent a several page, single-spaced letter to the then Bishop of Maryland, +Ted Eastman, arguing that racism is not a sin. Don’t go to the towns of all these other people – it is our people who are lost, harassed, without leadership, beset with a sickness and dis-ease, mired in sin – the sin of privilege, or narcissism, or racism, or bigotry – it is a dis-ease with other people, people not like ‘our people.’ It is therefore, says Jesus, our people who need healing, and compassion, and to be harvested here and now and brought into the kingdom of God’s Love for those others we don’t want to be with.

How shall we repay the Lord for all the good things the Lord has done for us? This is the question for all of us. Jesus offers a Way – a mission of shepherding with mercy and compassion. While we are still sinners, Jesus dies for us, over and over again. Only now his name is George, Breonna, Ahmud, Freddie, Trayvon, Michael, Tamir, Jimmy Lee, Emmett, Medgar, Jonathan, Martin and countless others we have never heard of. We are so lucky that God’s Grace is Amazing. But how many more have to be martyred for the Sin of Racism before we hear our Savior calling, “Who will come and work today? The harvest is waiting, but the laborers are few.” When will we join those who have said, ‘Here am I, O Lord, send me!’ How shall we repay the Lord for all the good things he has done for us? To be continued. Amen. It is so. It is the truth. Amen.

Trinity Sunday: Breaking The Silence

Breaking The Silence

“Every real poem is the breaking of an existing silence, and the first question we might ask any poem is, What kind of voice is breaking silence, and what kind of silence is being broken?”  -Adrienne Rich from her collection of essays titled Arts of the Possible. A new poet-friend, Kathleen O’Toole, shares this manner of putting the question in her latest collection, This Far. Having been an avid birder since grade school, and in the summer every day awakening to a symphony of birdsongs just outside the bedroom window, I find myself fascinated when O’Toole writes in her poem, From Birdsong:

On a Sierra Retreat, I’m enthralled with birds

and birdsong. I learn of avian constraint: birds

the same size, same shape, can only distinguish

themselves with song; of the mountain chickadee

singing threat with the number of notes in her call,

of golden eagles, navigating wind currents by memory.

Today a naturalist spoke of the risk that birds take

just to sing, revealing themselves to predators.

So when you hear a bird sing, she must have

something important to say. These days

when my mother speaks of Dad’s death, she says,

We thought we had at least another year.

       [Kathleen O’Toole, This Far, Paraclete Press:2019, p12]

The same may be said about the voice of God. God’s creative voice breaks the silence of chaos to say, “Light!” Later God breaks the silence of creation and says, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness…” Later, in the Garden, when the man and woman have eaten from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, when suddenly they “heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden,” God calls out of the silence, “Where are you?” It’s a parental voice of concern breaking the silence of shame and fear.

Where are you? This is the one question God is always asking us. It is a question we would do well to put to ourselves. Where are we right now? As a people? As a nation? As those creatures created in the image and likeness of God, where are we? And now I find myself thinking, as it is with the avian crowd, God takes a tremendous risk in speaking to us at all. After all, will we listen? More importantly, will we hear? Do we even allow a moment’s silence in the busyness of our lives that could even be broken by God’s compassionate and curious voice?

Fortunately for us, there are those who have heard the voice of God and have recorded what they have heard. One of them, a 14^th century anonymous woman on her near-death bed heard God say: All shall be well. All shall be well. All manner of thing shall be well. Turns out there was more. She took the name of the church where she chose to live in a shed attached to the side of St. Julian’s in Norwich, England. She lived alone. With much silence I imagine. She heard God’s voice of compassion in that silence and she wrote it all down, first in a short version, a kind of outline; then in a longer version – the earliest surviving book in the English language written by a woman, Showings. Here is what she heard:

And so our good Lord answered to all the questions and doubts which I could raise, saying, comfortingly: I may make all things well, and I can make all things well, and I will make all things well, and I shall make all things well; and you will see yourself that every kind of thing will be well.

          [Julian of Norwich, Showings, Paulist Press: 1978, p 229]

And, as if that is not enough, she goes on to interpret what she has heard:

When he says ‘I may’, I understand this to apply to the Father; and when he says ‘I can’, I understand it for the Son; and when he says ‘I will, I understand it for the Holy Spirit; and when he says ‘I shall’, I understand it for the unity of the blessed Trinity, three persons and one truth; and when he says ‘You will see yourself’, I understand it for the union of all men who will be saved in the blessed Trinity. [Ibid]

Perhaps the most tender, insightful and eloquent reflection on the nature of God in the English language. What St. Athanasius sums up in 676 words, the voice Julian hears sums it all up in 58 words - 142 with the commentary. Perhaps, on Trinity Sunday this is all that needs be said about the Triune nature of God – this God who chooses to live as a community within a unity.

Julian refers to ‘three persons and one truth.’ Traditionally we sing things like, “God in three persons, blessed Trinity.” The clergy who struggled to put God into words in the creeds did not all speak the same language: some spoke Latin, some spoke Greek. They finally agreed on persona for the three natures of God: persona is the Greek word for the large masks that early Greek actors would use to portray their characters. One actor, then, could wear three different personas, yet behind the mask is just one person. The historic creeds all insist there is only one God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. This God has been experienced as having at least three personas: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

What Julian does, however, is to go a step further. The Showing, or Revelation, she heard describes these three personas as moving as one unity from potential to intention to action: I may, I can, I will, I shall is what she hears our good Lord say. Suggesting, better than perhaps any creed has so far, that God not only has potential (I may, I can), and purpose (I will), but actually shall act upon that purpose, which quite simply is to “make all things well.”

And that’s not all! “And you will see yourself that every kind of thing will be well.” We will see! Seeing, not as in “seeing is believing,” but rather seeing as experiencing the living God actually making all things well.  

Alas, there is implicit in this Showing of Julian’s that all things currently are not well. Yet, as Stanley Hauerwas reminds us in his collection, A Community of Character, we are those people who sustain the virtue of hope in a world that rarely shows much evidence that such hope is justified, for we are assured that the falseness of this world is ultimately bounded by a greater truth. This is what it means to be created in the image and likeness of a God who desires to make all things well. That is, we are to be co-creators of all that will be well for others, for ourselves, for all of creation. Way back in Genesis chapter 1 we learn that we are created in the likeness of the One who may, can, will and shall make all things well.

Suggesting that Trinity Sunday is as much about who we are and whose we are and what we are created to say and do. We are created with potential, intention, and the capacity for action that brings wellness to others and to the world. Like birds and God, when we break the silence, we take a risk. The silence we are called to break is the silence of injustice. The silence of prejudice. The silence of woundedness and hurt. The silence of fear. Yet, we are called to take the risk to break such silences in the name of Julian’s Triune God. And we are empowered to take such risks on the promise Jesus delivers to his remaining eleven disciples on a mountain top in Galilee, far away from the madding crowd in Jerusalem: Lo, I am with you to the end of aeon, to the end of the age, to the end of time. [Matthew 28:20]

It seems that God’s voice of compassion risks breaking the silence to let us know we are not alone. The God who can, who may, who will and who shall make all things well is with us now and forever. For those who listen in the silence will hear and are promised we will see that every kind of thing will be well! Amen.