What can we say March 23? Lent 3

    Isaiah 55:1-9. How eloquent, hopeful, countercultural, stunning! God’s prophet speaks to hopeless exile saying “Come and buy” – and “without money”! You can almost hear a street peddler hollering out to come and buy his wares – but at below bargain basement prices. You’re broke? You’re like that kid in that Norman Rockwell-ish postcard with empty pockets – but no worries. Come. Eat. Eucharistic. Grace.

   It’s all free. You who have no money? Come. Buy. And not the cheap, blue light special stuff. What is fabulously precious. Steve Shoemaker preached a brilliant sermon years ago playing on Anne Tyler’s Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. Ezra Tull takes over Mrs. Scarlatti’s restaurant, and decides to make whatever food people are homesick for. Then Steve wound up the sermon by inviting the listener to imagine coming into God’s very fine restaurant. You survey the menu – and realize there are no prices listed. You assume therefore it’s absurdly expensive, and you’re in trouble. Just then the waiter asks you what you’d like, what you really want. You pause, then take a leap… but ask how much it costs. The waiter says, Nothing, it’s on the house.

   Via the prophet, God asks why we spend so much for what doesn’t satisfy. Walter Brueggemann speaks of the “junk food” of the empire. The Rolling Stones sang it: “I can’t get no satisfaction.” William Temple suggested the world is like a shop into which some mischievous person has sneaked during the night and switched all the pricetags around – and so our tragedy is we spend ourselves on what has little to no value, while the precious things are quite affordable or actually free.

   There’s so much in this short text! “Seek the Lord while he may be found, while he is near.” Is the Lord going away soon? Or is the “while” always? Claus Westermann translated it “Seek the Lord since he may be found, call on him since he is near.” The language of return, “abundantly pardon,” and God’s thoughts being so much higher than ours. Let these thoughts rumble around the room. Don’t over-explain.

   God’s grace is unconditioned (unearned, undeserved) yet not unconditional (as in, a response really is required, and is empowered!) – as John Barclay puts it in his book Paul & the Power of Grace. Clearly – as the prophet who just spoke of eating without paying says “Let the wicked forsake their ways” and “Return to the Lord.” Isaiah might help us not to be so confused about Paul, or grace!

   The prophet’s (and God’s!) question, “Why spend money for what is not bread, what does not satisfy?” evokes some images. Thomas Merton – or was it Stephen Covey? – suggested that we spend our lives climbing some ladder, only to get to the top and realize the ladder was leaning aginst the wrong wall. William Temple envisioned a shop window into which some devilish person has sneaked during the night and switched all the pricetags around – and so we spend our lives on what seems valuable but is worthless, and then miss what is precious but apparently cheap or free. Fritz Bauerschmidt notices that “When we expect the passing things of this world to bear the full weight of our love, they collapse under that weight, their own structural flaws revealed in their inability to bear that weight.” Ponder this! Preach this.

   God’s ways “are higher.” There is a hidden plot beneath, or above, the obvious plot of the meandering of the world as we superficially experience it. We observe things from on high, as if on a high mountain surveying things – or to use Ron Heifetz’s business model, from the balcony, looking down so we get what’s going on big picture down there.

   1 Corinthians 10:1-13. Paul (for my tastes) over-spiritualizes real historical things that happened for the Israelites. They at “spiritual food, drank spiritual drink – from the spiritual rock.” His angle on the exodus story could be read as anti-semitic or supersessionist – but need not be. It’s a long way from saying, lamely, “like Jews do, those Jewish idolaters rose up to play” and saying truly “like we all do, they rose up to play.” Echoes of the funny but humbling Exodus 32 here.

   Arrggghhh. Paul utters one of those awful tidbits Christians toss out to make sense of and attempt to comfort those facing tragedy. “You will not be tested beyond your strength.” Many of us cope with issues far beyond our strength – but you just hang in there. Does God dole out our troubles, almost flattering us with more trials than the few the weenies must bear??

   Context, context, context. Ben Witherington reminds us that in this chapter, Paul is a pastor for those tempted to indulge in pagan feasts. God gives those so allured to resist. “The Corinthians then are to endure and prevail over the temptation to go to idol feasts. God will provide them with an out… Paul believes that God never allows a Christian to be tempted to such a degree that by God’s grace one cannot resist or find a way of escape. This does not mean one will necessarily resist.”

   Roy Harrisville makes it more contemporary: “This test you face, this possibility of idolatry, of conceiving God in your own image, as a projection of your own willing and feeling… of understanding God as designed to actualize your potential, the option to define faith hope and love from below is as common as breathing. To resist it lies within the will and permission of God who will see to it that the test is matched by an escape.”

It’s instructive to see Paul not being a full of laid back grace here. Plenty of Don’t!s. You have to wonder how the Don’t!s, surely needed in cosmopolitan Corinth which earned its dubious party reputation, actually played there, especially with the nuanced reading of an old Israelite wilderness tale.

   I’m a little bit bugged too by verse 13, which resembles the awful “God won’t give you more than you can handle” silliness church people trot out when sorrow strikes. Kate Bowler (Everything Happens for a Reason), among others, has assessed the futility and theological weirdness of such a notion. If we pay attention to Paul, he’s a little better than what we presume. He chides the Corinthians who must feel their tests are so great; he’s saying Hey, it’s common to humanity to struggle to be holy. If there’s strength required, it’s God-given, God-inspired, not just strength you happen to wield. 

   More importantly, the “you”s in verse 13 are plural. Paul Sampley wisely clarifies that testing “is never presumed by Paul to be borne by an individual alone… So the text supposes that God will not test us beyond what all of us can bear together.” I like that. Being holy is tough; bearing suffering is harrowing. We do these things together, or not at all.

   Luke 13:1-9. Two News Flashes! Pilate has ordered the execution of a group of Galileans, which takes place as they are offering their sacrifices in the Jerusalem temple. Josephus doesn’t mention this… Jesus hears this news, and reminds his listeners of the 18 who died when a tall stone structure hovering over the Pool of Siloam crumbled. Pilate’s bloodletting sounds a note of injustice, while the collapse of the wall feels tragic. Was the tower part of an aqueduct Pilate was building with pilfered treasury funds?

   Injustice and tragedy are clamped together here with a single response. Jesus might have consoled his friends with judgment on the wicked foreigners, the Romans. Instead, he invites the fuming disciples to repent! Self-righteous bluster can only shield one from the ongoing responsibility simply to repent.

    Those who suffer injustice themselves need, always, to repent – and those who’ve endured tragedy need to repent, to turn to God. Bonhoeffer suggested that repentance “is not in the first place thinking about one’s needs, problems, sins, and fears, but allowing oneself to be caught up into the way of Jesus Christ.”

   Jesus clearly refutes any notion of retribution – which Dorothee Soelle called “theological sadism.” His query, “Were they worse sinners?” is simple for the wise to answer. Of course not. 

   Wendy Farley is insightful here: “One of the most terrible beliefs of Christianity is that God punishes us with suffering. It is a belief inflicted on grief-stricken or pain-ridden individuals to justify their suffering and on groups to justify their continued oppression. The association of suffering with punishment denies the right to resist suffering. This sadistic theology conspires with pain to lock God away from the sufferer. This is the theology of Job’s comforters.”

    Jesus’ parable of the fig tree turns tragic news into hope. It’s time to chop it down – but Jesus says Wait. God’s mercy extends – for years! Your ministry isn’t bearing fruit? Your people aren’t? You aren’t? Hang on. It’s God’s work.

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  Check out my book, The Will of God - on precisely these hard questions about why bad things happen, and when bad things happen.