What can we say October 16? 19th after Pentecost

   "Who Will Be Saved?" was my sermon Sunday - with an expansive view of grace and who's included and how. Got pushback, naturally....

    Jeremiah 31:27-34 provides a resounding echo of Jeremiah’s call, where God invited him into the labor of plucking up and breaking down, then to build and to plant. Now God is ready to sow. The image of God as sower: did Jesus ponder this when fashioning his parable?

   Late in Jeremiah’s ministry, after the agony of Jerusalem’s destruction, God promises to “watch over them.” Such a tender image! Do preachers ponder this for preaching or to reflect on their own call and ministry. What has unfolded? What has God done? Or not done yet? Can we without being trite promise our people that God still has a good work to do? Or are we still at an early-Jeremiah stage, where more plucking up and breaking down is in store? I think it’s entirely valid for the preacher simply to raise questions, and let the people ponder.

   Gazing off toward the horizon of God’s future, Jeremiah upends a proverb Ezekiel also used about the sour grapes and descendants’ teeth being set on edge. Americans fantasize they are independent and free, but quite clearly parental stuff creeps into the children. Genes determine so much. Adverse Childhood Experiences determine so much of our mental and even physical health. The old saying “Jesus might live in his heart, but grandpa lives in his bones” is hauntingly true. Not to mention historical and cultural impacts. One generation makes a pact with the culture (Let’s have smart phones!) and the next can’t extricate itself (I’m addicted to this thing). One generation indulges in foolish foreign policy, and the next can’t figure out a simple exit strategy.

   Sam, a character in Christopher Beha's novel, The Index of Self-Destructive Acts, always felt he "was in permanent danger of turning into his father... Sam hadn't entirely purged this atavistic terror that the father's sins might be visited upon his son." A common theme in literature, film, music... and so we'd best be attentive to the fear, and the reality - despite Jeremiah, who bothered to say this for stellar reasons.

   Jeremiah overhears in God’s vigilance a day when this chain will be broken. That’s the goal of the church’s work, right? Not a little charitable patch or salve here and there, but a generational breaking of the cycle of poverty, or spousal abuse, or injustice in the streets. We don’t seem entirely capable of pulling this off. But God is, and our privilege and responsibility will be to share in God’s labor for such a day.

   A new covenant will be forged. Teaching, and laws won’t be required. People will simply know the Lord. It will be engraved on their hearts – which can be our goal even now. We preach and minister so our people might develop muscle memory, instincts, a kinship with the mind and heart of God so they needn’t check the rules but will spontaneously embody God’s way. I like Sam Wells’s suggestion – that God isn’t a 911 resort in a crisis, but such a constant that we actually then manage to steer clear of many crises.

   2 Timothy 3:14-4:5. I’m the rare clergy person on this – but work with me: avoid doing what Paul does! “From childhood we’ve known the sacred writings,” and “Those from whom you learned the faith” are phrases that make sense for lifelong churchgoers. The newbie will shrug. Or someone like me, whose parents were quite like that, will feel alienated. And how many people learned so much Bible and churchiness growing up and as big people feel utterly smug – and are transparently mean and judgmental?

   Paul is coping with a cultural crisis he sees dawning. “A time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine but have itching ears, accumulating teachers to suit their own desires.” That time is right now – and probably has held at countless points throughout history. Surely for us. What’s the counter? Paul relies on the astounding claim that Scripture is inspired.

   What is Scripture? Never have we experienced such a huge preaching/pastoral question!!! Maybe need a class (or classes) instead of a sermon. And yet to stake out the beauty, wonder, and life of Scripture in preaching is essential. It’s “inspired.” Not radioactive, or dictated by God. In-spired means “breathed into.” God breathed life into this book, and breathes life into us through this book. So much of it is puzzling, crazy, rambling, confusing, a big problem. God wants us to read such a book.

   Chris E.W. Green (check out my podcast with him!) writes wonderfully about Scripture. Hospitality is required, and induced by reading. “Our readings of Scripture can be sanctifying if they actually change our lives so we become more and more strangely roomy and inviting.” This happens best through what puzzles and troubles us. “What seems to us wrong or strange in Scripture is in point of fact simply a reflection of what is wrong and strange in us.” Indeed, “receiving the Scriptures in all their humanity, we find ourselves humanized.” “God uses Scripture to overthrow our false conceptions of God.” We pray for that in-breathing Spirit to inspire our reading, expecting that “the Spirit at times obscures the Scriptures sanctifyingly for us. The Spirit keeps us, for a time, from seeing clearly the meanings of Scripture so we can begin to learn Christ.”

   You might also conclude that if God wishes to be known through tales of dysfunctional families, court cases, love poetry, wars and outlandish dreams, then it must be the case that the God in question is right there in the thick of our dysfunctional families, legal doings, romance, battles and fantasies. God isn’t confined in a pretty chapel, or to the times our eyes are closed. With eyes wide open, we see God everywhere, with everybody. If we believe this, then we can begin to think differently about other books we might read. God loves books, and reading – and not just pious stories and books, if the Bible itself is any indication! More on this later.

   Inspired Scripture isn’t a bank vault of golden truth, and it’s not a weapon to wield to judge others. It’s “useful” – for? “Teaching, reproof, correction, training,” to make us “proficient, equipped for good work.” It’s functional, not ontological (fancy words, but you know what I mean). The test isn’t what we think about this book, but what work we let it do on us and in us – and on us and in us as the Body of Christ.

   Chapter 4 offers wise counsel for clergy, to proclaim in all weather, to convince and rebuke (do we even try?), to be patient in teaching, to endure suffering. I can complain or feel sorry for myself when I suffer in ministry – or I can sense some deep solidarity with Paul himself. At least I can try.

   Luke 18:1-8. What an unusual context Luke provides: this parable is “about their need to pray always and not to lose heart” – assuming you won’t – and will! A lousy judge responds to a pestering woman. Is the widow like God, pestering us to do justice?? Ben Witherington warns against utilizing or playing on the stereotype of nagging woman.

   On our “need” to pray, I think of Isaac Bashevis Singer: “I only pray when I am in trouble. The problem is, I am in trouble all the time.” Allegory isn’t the way, or else God is the judge who says “I have no respect for anybody” and gets sick and tired of her bugging him. Of course, there is a bit of a theological wink in pondering God as the unjust judge. God isn’t fair. The courtroom is rigged, for the judge is also the defense attorney, not to mention the victim who will bear the penalty.

   Anyhow, it’s not that God “grants” justice, so much as God “does” justice: the Greek is poies. Our minds flit, rightly, to Micah 6:8, where we learn that God desires that we to do justice (the Hebrew Jesus would have had in mind was mishpat). In my book on Micah 6:8 (What Does the Lord Require?): “It seems that God does not merely want us to want justice, or to wish justice would happen. God doesn’t say ‘Think about justice’ or ‘Campaign for justice’ or even ‘Pray for justice.’ Justice reveals what is in the heart of God. Mishpat is God’s dream for a special kind of community… A thumbnail summary of what mishpat justice is about in Israel would be this: justice is when the poorest are cared for. A just society is not necessarily the one where fairness reigns and the diligent are rewarded. A just society is the one where everyone belongs, where the neediest are taken good care of, where no one is hungry or disenfranchised. Walter Brueggemann suggests that justice requires us ‘to sort out what belongs to whom and return it to them.’” It’s all God’s – and so the Haitian proverb applies: “God gives, but God doesn’t share.”

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   Check out my book, valuable for preachers and laity (a great group study) during Advent, Why This Jubilee? - reflections on carols, sacred and secular.