Hagar Treated Horribly

Sermon preached June 22, 2014

Text: Genesis 21:8-21

            Bob Marley, “Redemption Song”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrY9eHkXTa4

            This is a redemption story.  It is a very human story, with characters whose actions and feelings we recognize.  It is a story, as well, about God.

            The text we read today is only part of the story, so let me share more of what happens before and after.  Our Scripture reading begins with the early years of Isaac, the biological child of Sarah and Abraham.  What has come before (Genesis 16) is that Sarah, not conceiving any children of her own instructs Abraham to “go into my slave girl... that I shall obtain children by her.”  The slave girls name was Hagar, and she was an Egyptian.  “And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai” (Genesis 16:2) Hagar became pregnant, and the relationship with Sarah deteriorated.  At one point, Hagar tried to run away from the harsh treatment of Sarah.  She is met by an angel of God who promises her that her son, Ishmael, shall be the beginning of a great people.

            Later, Sarah herself becomes pregnant, gives birth, and this child’s name is Isaac.  Isaac grows and Sarah sees him playing with his half-brother Ishmael.  The sight disturbs her and she tells Abraham to cast Hagar – “this slave woman” - and Ishmael out.  Abraham is distressed, but senses the voice of God, and sends Hagar and Ishmael away, giving them some bread and a skin of water.

            The water runs out, and Hagar is now the one distressed.  Seeing little hope, and sure that her child is going to die out in the wilderness, she places Ishmael under a tree and walks away, because she does not want to watch her child die of dehydration.  Hagar weeps, but apparently so does the child, for “God heard the voice of the boy” and God responds. God calls Hagar by name, she is not just the “slave woman” in God’s sight.  God’s angel speaks words of assurance – “do not be afraid.”  Water is found, and “God was with the boy.”

            That is the end of our reading for today, but the story continues.  When Abraham dies “his sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him” (Genesis 25:9).  We get a report about the descendants of Ishmael, and then we lose his story.  But in Islam, Ishmael’s story has additional features.  In the Quran, and in other Islamic sources, the story is told that Hagar and Ishmael end up in the vicinity of Mecca in Arabia.  The story goes on to say that before he dies, Abraham finds Hagar and Ishmael in the area of Mecca, and that when they are reunited, father and son rebuild the Kaaba, a temple to the one true God said to have originally been built by Adam. (Esposito, What Everyone Needs to Know About Islam, 5-6.  Also The Quran: 3:84, 4:163, 14:39; and especially 2:125-129).  The annual pilgrimage to Mecca in Islam is rooted in this story.

            This is a very human story.  There is sex and childbearing and jealousy and relationship issues and slavery and surrogate parenting and death.  This is also a story about God and about redemption.  Theologian Frederick Buechner characterizes the Hagar story this way: The story of Hagar is the story of the terrible jealousy of Sarah and the singular ineffectuality of Abraham and the way Hagar, who know how to roll with the punches, managed to survive them both.  Above and beyond that, however, it is the story of how in the midst of the whole unseemly affair the Lord, half tipsy with compassion, went around making marvelous promises, and loving everybody, and creating great nations, like the last of the big-time spenders handing out hundred dollar bills. (Peculiar Treasures, 52)

            This is a story about God, about a God who may be characterized as “half tipsy with compassion.”  It is about a God who acts to redeem.  Redemption is an interesting word.  It has something to do with exchange or purchase (redeem a coupon), with buying back or recovering ownership (redeem a ring from a pawn shop), with setting free or deliverance (redeem a slave), with restoring the honor or worth or dignity of someone (redeeming oneself).  In this story it is a difficult situation - a poor, single slave woman and her young son out in the wilderness running out of water – that needs redeeming. Here redemption has to do with restoration, with freedom, with recovery.  Out of this difficult, hurtful, horrendous set of circumstances God restores possibilities for life.  God sets free for new life.  God helps Hagar and Ishmael recover hope.  God, half tipsy with compassion, redeems an ugly situation where Hagar has been treated horribly.

            God as redeemer.  It is a familiar phrase to those of us in the church, and we Christians often most associate God’s activity as redeemer with the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.  This story reminds us that while there is something unique about God’s redeeming work in Jesus, God has been about redemption from early on.  God does not simply become half tipsy with compassion in Jesus, that’s who God is.  God’s creative love is always at work toward redemption – toward freedom, restoration, recovery.  God is always at work taking difficult, hurtful, even horrendous circumstances and turning them so that some good can emerge.  And God’s creative redeeming love is a responsive love, responsive to all the circumstances of human existence.  Is even God surprised in this story, as someone in the Bill Moyers discussion group on Genesis suggested?  Sarah acts, and not well, and God responds.  Abraham sends Hagar and Ishmael away, and God responds.  Hagar sets her son beneath a tree and walks some distance, unable to bear the slow death of her son, and God responds.  I think human freedom is genuine, is real, and I think God’s creative love is always responsive to the circumstances we create.  God’s response is always in the direction of redemption, and there is no situation beyond God’s redemptive activity.  There is no situation beyond God’s redemptive activity.

            So what do we do with this?  We are invited to see God’s redemptive activity in our lives and in the world.  We are invited to participate in God’s redemptive activity in our lives and in our world.  See God’s redemptive activity.  Be part of God’s redemptive activity.  There are personal and social dimensions to this seeing and being.

            One of the interesting moments in the story of Hagar which we read is that no one calls her by name until God does, and by the way the language of the angel of the Lord was a way that the ancient Israelites talked about God’s presence with a person.  In Genesis 16, where an angel first appears to Hagar, she calls God “Elroi” – one who sees and says, “Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?”  So in Genesis 21, Sarah simply refers to Hagar as “this slave woman.”  Even God, in speaking to Abraham, only refers to Hagar as “your slave woman.”  Later, hearing the cry of Ishmael, God addresses her, “What troubles you, Hagar?  Do not be afraid.”

            Sometimes redemption in our lives comes with being known, trusting that God knows us, knows us by name, and cares for us.  Where have you had those redemptive moments in your life?  Where have you heard God call your name and speak those wonderful biblical words, “Do not be afraid”?  And there are also redemptive moments when we can, in a sense, be the voice of God for others, reminding them of their importance to God, of their status as beloved of God, where we can help them recover their dignity and sense of worth.

            I read a powerful story about social redemption this week.  Adriaan Volk was South Africa’s minister of law and order between 1986 and 1991.  It was a strange and strained time in South Africa.  The government was under increasing pressure for its apartheid racial policies.  The white government wanted to retain power, yet also appear “humane.”  Volk’s police “resorted to dark, cloak-and-dagger tactics to dispose of apartheid’s enemies” (The New Republic, June 30, 2014, p. 37).  Anti-apartheid activists were kidnapped, drugged, and some killed.  One strange plot involved the Rev. Frank Chikane.  Chikane interdenominational church group was suspected for harboring armed militants.  Volk’s police force poisoned a pair of Chikane’s underwear, lacing them with a potent insecticide.  Chikane was so sickened that he had to be flown to the United States for medical treatment.

            August 1, 2006, Volk appeared at Chikane’s office.  Chikane was now part of the government of South Africa.  Volk pulled out his Bible, and spoke words that were difficult for him.  “I have sinned against the Lord and against you.  Will you forgive me?”  He handed his Bible to Chikane and took out a rag and a basin.  “Frank, please, would you allow me to wash your feet?”  “Why would you want to do that?”  “I must humble myself before you, for what we did, for what we were trying to do.” For Volk it was a redemptive moment.  He realized for just how long he had viewed himself as superior to South African black.  He sought out others to wash their feet.  This is a story of social redemption.  At a time that still can be tense between blacks and whites in South Africa, Volk is witnessing to a way forward.  We need to see such redemptive moments in our world.

            We can also be part of redemptive moments in the world.  The precise nature of redemption in the wider world can be more difficult to discern.  Part of being a redemptive presence in the world is to hear the cries of the hurting, the dispossessed, the children.  But what might redemption look like for the crying children detained at the U.S. Mexico border, many of them fleeing violence in their own countries?  I am not sure.  Part of redemption is seeing the situation as something more than persons trying to enter our country illegally.  It is trying to discover why children would undertake such an arduous journey.

            What of the relationship between Jews and Christians and Muslims in our world?  What might redemption look like?   Can we feel something of the poignancy of Isaac and Ishmael together burying their father, and in that sense that we share something together as Christians and Muslims and Jews?  Perhaps part of redemption is working to avoid the broad negative stereotypes of Muslims that are too common, finding the worst in Islam and painting all Muslims with that same brush.  Would we consider it fair to have all Christians portrayed as Fred Phelps or as the pastor in Florida wanting to start a bonfire with Qurans?  I think redemption in interreligious relationships looks like friendship as written about by United Methodist theologian Marjorie Suchocki in her book on religious pluralism, Divinity and Diversity: Friendship requires a forthrightness about who we are, and an eagerness to listen to who the other is.  Friendship requires knowing one another, which requires witnessing to one another about our experiences, our beliefs.  And friendship involves us in working together for the common good of a world of peace, of sustainable lifestyles, of care for the planet and all its inhabitants. (11)

            So we have this story of Hagar, of Hagar treated horribly, and of God, of a God who, half tipsy with compassion is always working to redeem, restore, set free, turn things toward the good.  This God who called Hagar by name continues to call each of us by name and continues to work redemptively in our lives and in our world.  Do you hear God calling you by name?  Do you see redemptive moments?  Are you willing to be a redemptive presence in the world?  Amen.

“Faith Forum After Hours”:  The following questions were included in the bulletin and used for that discussion.

Questions for Reflection

What are some of your initial reactions to this story?

What do you think of this characterization of the entire Abraham, Sarah, Hagar story?

The story of Hagar is the story of the terribly jealousy of Sarah and the singular ineffectuality of Abraham and the way Hagar, who knew how to roll with the punches, managed to survive them both.  Above and beyond that, however, it is the story of how in the midst of the whole unseemly affair the Lord, half tipsy with compassion, went around making marvelous promises, loving everybody, and creating great nations, like the last of the big-time spenders handing out hundred dollar bills.  

                                                            Frederick Buechner, Peculiar Treasures

How do you understand God in this story?  Is God in control all the time and over all the circumstances or is God responding creatively in love to human choices?  What do you think about this question posed to the story?  But does that mean that even God is surprised – that like Sarah, who didn’t anticipate her emotional reactions to Hagar being pregnant, God didn’t know He would respond this way to the child? (Bharati Mukherjee in Bill Moyers, Genesis)

In Islam, the story is told of how Abraham is later re-united with Hagar and Ishmael.  Abraham finds them near present-day Mecca.  He and Ishmael rebuild the Kaaba, believed to have been originally built by Adam as a temple to the one true God.  The Muslim practice of taking a pilgrimage to Mecca is rooted in this story.  Do you think the story of Abraham and Hagar and Ishmael, as found in Genesis, provides any resources for thinking about the relationship between Jews, Christians, and Muslims?

Where have you seen redemption - difficult, hurtful, even horrendous circumstances shifted so that good emerges – in the world?  Where have you experienced redemption in your life?

Don't Know What You've Got

Sermon preached June 15, 2014

Texts: Genesis 1:1-2:4a

            Joni Mitchell, “Big Yellow Taxi” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94bdMSCdw20

Counting Crows, “Big Yellow Taxi” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvtJPs8IDgU

            It is appropriate to begin this sermon with this song.  Obviously I think it is fitting to begin most any sermon with a song, but there is something particularly appropriate this morning.  It is appropriate to begin with this song because we will return to its theme later, but also appropriate because one creative endeavor deserves another.

            Genesis 1 is a creative endeavor.  It is wonderfully written, beautifully constructed.  It flows like poetry.  It is rich in meaning.  This morning, I want to offer three thoughts about this passage.

            The first thing that I want to say, that I think needs to be said is that Genesis one is not science.  Now I don’t want to say that science writing cannot be beautiful and creative.  It can be.  But Genesis 1 is not science.  It is not biology.  It is not geology.  It is not geography.  It is not oceanography.  It is not climatology.  Genesis 1 is a theo-poetic writing, a piece of writing that combines theology and poetry.  When we were in New York we visited the American Museum of Natural History.  There was a wonderful display about human evolution and within it was a video of a number of scientists who addressed the compatibility between religious faith and evolutionary science.  The need for this arises out of frequent mis-reading of Genesis 1.

            As best we can tell, this writing was probably finalized during the time that the Israelites were in captivity in Babylon.  Just a quick bit of history here.  Israel was a united kingdom under Saul, David and Solomon.  After Solomon, the nation divided between North and South – Israel and Judah.  In 722 BCE the Assyrian Empire defeated the Northern Kingdom and part of the strategy of conquering empires was to send significant numbers of people into exile.  In 587 BCE, the Babylonian empire conquered the Southern Kingdom and sent people into exile in Babylon.  This was a time of great political crisis, but also a time of great theological crisis.  Where is God?  Who is God?

            The Babylonians had an answer.  There were many gods, with the king of the gods being Marduk.  The basic Babylonian creation epic (Enuma Elish) is the story of the power of Marduk over all the other gods.  In the epic, human beings were made from the blood of a murdered god and were created for the purpose of serving the gods.  Marduk’s closest representative on earth was the king of Babylon.  It is the king who is the image of God. (Walter Wink, Just Jesus, 103-104).

            The contrast with Genesis 1 is stark.  Genesis 1 is a theo-poetic celebration of the goodness of God, the goodness of creation, and the importance of the human person, male and female.  “God saw everything that had been made, and indeed, it was very good.”  “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”  In the midst of political defeat and exile, an Israelite theologian-poet, inspired by God, pens words about the goodness of God, the goodness of creation, and the dignity of the human.  This is not a biology that tells us how we came to be.  It is a theology that tells us who we are and what it means to be human.

            In addition to being a celebration of the goodness of God, the goodness of creation, and the dignity of the human this theo-poetic writing is a celebration of God’s creativity, and an invitation for human creativity.

            The very first words of the Bible are, “In the beginning when God created.”  God is one who in the midst of chaos and darkness creates order and light.  This creative God creates abundantly.  “The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it.”  “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.”  “Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind.”  God’s creativity is abundant and abounding.  We who are created in the image of God are created to create.

            Linking God’s creativity with human creativity the late Harvard theologian Gordon Kaufman wrote: Humans did not bring the world into being, and it is not we who sustain it….  There is a powerful, awe-inspiring creativity manifest in our world – and, indeed, in ourselves: the new, the novel, the unforeseeable, the previously unheard of, break forth roundabout us and in our midst; and human life continues to be sustained from beyond itself….  We are called to participate ever more fully and effectively in the creative transformation of our existence. (Gordon D. Kaufman, In the Beginning… Creativity, 70)

            Much earlier, the twelfth-century abbess, mystic and artist, Hildegard of Bingen, wrote: Humankind, full of all creative possibilities, is God’s work.  Humankind is called to co-create…  God gave to humankind the talent to create with all the world. (in Matthew Fox, Creativity, 230)

            The kind of creativity to which we are invited is not the artistic creativity of geniuses, though some of you may have such gifts.  It is not necessarily what the psychologist Abraham Maslow called “special-talent creativeness.”  Rather it is a creativity that can be expressed in every area of life.  Maslow:  Whatever one does can be done with a certain attitude, a certain spirit that arises out of the nature of the character of the person performing the act.  One can even see creatively – a greater freshness, penetration, and efficiency of perception. (Abraham Maslow, Motivation and Personality, 2^nd Edition, 170, 171).  God is creative, and we, created in the image of God, are invited to be co-creators of the world.  We are invited to live every day with a certain creativity.  We are invited to see the world in new and fresh ways, making new ways of living possible.  In New York this past week we visited the Museum of Modern Art.  I know I do not have that kind of artistic talent, but I find that art inspires me to find my own creativitiy.

            If this story is a celebration of creativity and an invitation to creativity, it is also an invitation to care.  That is the third thing I want to say.  This theo-poetic piece is not science, but is a celebration of and invitation to creativity, and an invitation to care.

            God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth”….  So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work he had done in creation.

            It is important to think through some of these words – subdue, dominion.  I think they have to do with responsibility, not with wastefulness or abuse.  I love how the poet Denise Levertov conceives of the human vocation based on this story.

Miswritten, misread, that charge:

subdue was the false, the misplaced word in the story.

Surely we were to have been

earth’s mind, mirror, reflective source.

Surely our task

was to have been

to love the earth,

to dress and keep it like Eden’s garden.

That would have been our dominion:

to be those cells of the earth’s body that could

perceive and imagine, could bring the planet

into the haven it is to be known,

(as they eye blesses the hand, perceiving

its form and the work it can do).            (“Tragic Error” from The Life Around Us, 13)

            We are to be earth’s mind, mirror, reflective source.  Our task is to love the earth, to dress and keep it like Eden’s garden – a garden that does not appear in this creation story but in the second creation story in Genesis that begins in chapter 2.  That story is not science either.  Our dominion is to be those cells of the earth’s body that can perceive and imagine.  Our dominion is to bring the planet into the haven it is to be known.

            How are we doing here?  Like many, I am concerned.  Environmental care issues have become too politicized and polarized.  We have some whose environmental concern seems deeply out of touch with the necessary tragedies of life, that all animal life lives to by devouring other life, even if it is plant life.  There are others who seem to think that resources are there to be used for the economy as we now conceive it, almost regardless of the long run consequences for air and water.  The issue of climate change has become so politicized that for some even to ask about it is overly political.

            Shouldn’t the church, though, shouldn’t we who are invited and called to care for creation at least be able to ask tough questions about how we are caring for the environment?  Shouldn’t we be able to ask about climate change and to have civil conversations about it?

            This year, The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its fifth assessment report arguing for the human impact on climate and for the increasing impact of climate change on the world.  This spring the White House released the National Climate Assessment.  Over recent decades, climate science has advanced significantly. Increased scrutiny has led to increased certainty that we are now seeing impacts associated with human-induced climate change.  Critics claim that both these organizations are too politically motivated.  How about the University of Minnesota Alumni Association?  The Summer 2014 has on its front cover “What Can We Do About Climate Change? Plenty”  Jonathan Foley, Director of University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment: “There is no doubt that the effects of human activities, especially the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere through our burning of fossil fuels and our land use practices, are changing our climate.”

            What if we are part of the problem, but fail to acknowledge it?  How will we be judged in our care of creation?  What if there are some things we can do, and perhaps this is where we need to be spending more time and attention discussing possible actions, but what if there are some things we can do, but never get around to discussing the possibilities or doing anything at all?  How will we be judged in our care of creation?  Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you got til it’s gone.  Will that be our situation someday down the road?  I thought about some of the potential impacts of our changing climate this week.  If the sea rises, parts of Manhattan will be under water.  The impact of climate change will affect the poorest on the planet.

            When I read Genesis 1, I am moved, deeply moved.  Inspired by the Spirit of God, the writer of this theo-poetic piece speaks of God’s goodness and God’s creativity to a people in exile, to a people who perhaps don’t see much goodness or creativity.  The piece celebrates God.  The piece invites us to live into the image of God.  There is an invitation here in our own challenging situation to use our creativity, to use our best science, to do what we can to be earth’s mind, mirror, reflective source, to care for the earth like tending a garden.  The piece invites us to creative courage, which the psychologist Rollo May defines as “the discovering of new forms, new symbols, new patterns on which a new society can be built” (The Courage to Create, 13).  Hear the call to creative care and creative courage, modeled on God and on the writer of this beautiful t

theo-poetic.  Amen.

This Sunday we began a “Faith Forum After Hours” time for sermon feedback.  The following questions were included in the bulletin and used for that discussion.

Questions for Reflection

“Genesis 1 is not science.”  When you hear that so starkly stated, how do you feel?  How does this have an impact on your understanding of the Bible?

Humans did not bring the world into being, and it is not we who sustain it….  There is a powerful, awe-inspiring creativity manifest in our world – and, indeed, in ourselves: the new, the novel, the unforeseeable, the previously unheard of, break forth roundabout us and in our midst; and human life continues to be sustained from beyond itself….  We are called to participate ever more fully and effectively in the creative transformation of our existence. (Gordon D. Kaufman, In the Beginning… Creativity, 70)

            Humankind, full of all creative possibilities, is God’s work.  Humankind is called to co-create…  God gave to humankind the talent to create with all the world. (Hildegard of Bingen in Matthew Fox, Creativity, 230)

            Whatever one does can be done with a certain attitude, a certain spirit that arises out of the nature of the character of the person performing the act.  One can even see creatively – a greater freshness, penetration, and efficiency of perception. (Abraham Maslow, Motivation and Personality, 2^nd Edition, 170, 171). 

Reading these three quotes, how do you think about the idea of being a co-creator with God?  Where do you experience your creative best?

Miswritten, misread, that charge:

subdue was the false, the misplaced word in the story.

Surely we were to have been

earth’s mind, mirror, reflective source.

Surely our task

was to have been

to love the earth,

to dress and keep it like Eden’s garden.

(Denise Levertov, from“Tragic Error” in The Life Around Us, 13)

If part of our task as created in God’s image is to love the earth how can the church foster constructive conversations about environmental issues which often get pushed into narrowly partisan political frames?  How can we talk about climate change?

What might we be doing to love the earth better?

Jesus is Just Alright

Sermon preached June 1, 2014

Texts: Acts 1:6-14

            “Jesus is Just Alright” The Byrds.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpKAQacDkFo

            With this sermon title there was really no mystery about a song I might play this morning, that is, for those of us who know about this song.  The only mystery may have been – The Byrds or The Doobie Brothers.  This was The Byrds.

            Jesus is just alright.  Yes.  But Jesus is really more, so much more for Christians.  He is absolutely central to and for our faith and life.  At the heart of the Christian Bible we have four stories about the life of Jesus, four stories – the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  The story is told with different emphases and nuances four times because of the importance of Jesus.

            Here is a small sampling of quotes from theologians and biblical scholars about Jesus and Christian faith.  People are Christians because Jesus is basic to their belief (Douglas John Hall, Why Christian?, 18).  For those who identify themselves as Christians… Jesus is the author of our humanity (Walter Wink, Just Jesus, 15).  For Christians, Jesus is utterly central.  In a concise sentence, Jesus is for Christians the decisive revelation of God. (Marcus Borg, Jesus, 6. Also Convictions, 15)

            Jesus is utterly central.  He is at the heart of Christian faith.  He tells us about God.  He tells us about the possibilities for our lives, what being human can mean.  Christians are people who are passionate about Jesus.  So what might today’s rather strange story being trying to say to us about this Jesus?  Let’s admit it; this is a rather strange story.

            The disciples are together with the risen Jesus.  They are wondering what happens next.  “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”  The question is one that seems to indicate that they still have not really grasped the mission of Jesus, which is not the restoration of a nation, but the transformation of the world.  Jesus shifts the conversation to that transformative work.  “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

            What happens next is the strange part.  When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.  Suddenly, woosh, and Jesus is just gone.  The strangeness continues.  While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly, two men in white robes stood by them.  They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?”  Seems like kind of a silly question.  Wouldn’t you be looking up as Jesus is wooshed away?

            But what is this story trying to tell us about Jesus, who is central to our faith, the decisive revelation of God?  How about this – maybe we can get Jesus wrong.  Maybe it is important to let certain of our ideas and/or images of Jesus go so we can go and be better witnesses to Jesus with our words and our lives.  Just as the old Zen master said “if you meet Buddha on the road, kill him” perhaps there are times when we have to grow beyond some of our ideas of Jesus so the power of Jesus can reach us again.

            When you read this text from Acts, we still see the disciples struggling to understand just what Jesus was up to, even after the resurrection.  “When are you going to restore the fortunes of Israel?” they wonder.  But Jesus is not a nationalistic hero whose task was to restore the fortunes of a particular people.  Jesus is about transformation, about the power to be more human, about relationship to God.

            At the end of his book, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, Marcus Borg describes his understanding of what Jesus means.  Discussing the Greek and Latin roots of the English word “believe,” and noting that they have to do with “giving one’s heart” rather than intellectual assent, Borg writes: Believing in Jesus… means to give one’s heart, one’s self at the deepest level, to the post-Easter Jesus, who is the living Lord, the side of God turned toward us, the face of God, the Lord who is also the Spirit (137).  This giving is not simply a one-time thing in Borg’s understanding, a single statement of commitment.  Rather it is an on-going journey, “a journeying with Jesus” (135).  This journey means continuing to learn and grow.  It means to be in a community with others on the way.  It means becoming more compassionate. (Borg, 135-137).  By the end of our text for today, there are the beginnings of the disciples getting it.  They are together.  They are praying.  They are widening the circle to include women.  This community of prayer will become a community of prayer and  power in the next chapter, fearless, courageous, Spirit-filled as they carry on the work of Jesus in the world.

            I think we get Jesus wrong, get our relationship with Jesus wrong, when we see it as too passive and/or as too static.  Giving one’s self at our deepest level to Jesus is not simply staring into space saying “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.”  “Why do you stand looking up toward heaven?  There are moments for that, to be sure, but it is not all of the Christian life.  Giving one’s self at our deepest level to Jesus is not a one-time commitment, it is not saying “yes” and standing still.  It is not simply saying that I accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior and stopping there.  It is a journey of growth and adventure.  In the process some of our ideas about Jesus and the Christian life may be wooshed away.

            Rather than being passive or static, our relationship to Jesus, to God through Jesus, is a relationship of maturation.  In the first chapter of Colossians, Paul writes about wanting everyone to be “mature in Christ” and goes on to say, “for this I toil and struggle with all the energy that God powerfully inspires within me” (Colossians 1:28-29).  In Ephesians, he writes about growing to “maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ” (Ephesians 4:14).  The writer of James encourages his readers to become “mature and complete, lacking nothing” (1:4).  Another way to think about this idea of maturing in faith is to remember that Jesus, in John 15, shifts the language about his relationship to the disciples.  “I do not call you servants any longer… but I have called you friends” (15:15)

            If we really want to grab hold of the meaning of the ascension story, perhaps we need to look inward.  Someone has written that “the ascension confirms the belief that what is highest above human beings is what is most inward” (Walter Wink, The Human Being, 156, refers to Ricouer, Symbolism of Evil, 270).  Jesus is wooshed away, but Jesus remains present within.  There is the power of the Spirit in our lives, a power for growth, for maturing, and a power that moves us out into the world to offer words of grace and forgiveness and engage in compassionate healing action.  We are to grow and mature, to the measure of the full stature of Christ, or in Eugene Peterson’s rendering, grow into “fully mature adults, fully developed within and without, fully alive like Christ.”  To be fully alive like Jesus is inward development and outward compassion.

            For Christians Jesus is central, but we can get Jesus wrong.  We can become too passive or too static rather than be on the journey of maturing, of working with the power of the Spirit to become fully mature adults, mature within and without, fully alive in Christ.  To live the Jesus’ life is to become friends with Jesus, to share his journey, to be about his transformative work in the world.

            Christians are people passionate about Jesus, because he is the author of our humanity, the one in whom we become fully mature and fully alive, the one in whom we see God.  It is not always easy to be passionate about Jesus when Jesus gets used to justify being anti-gay, or anti-science, or when people are threatened with Jesus – “turn or burn.”  Yet we are a people passionate about Jesus, even as we seek to get Jesus right.  This week, I want you to take some time to think about your relationship with Jesus.  How has being on the journey with Jesus made a difference for you?  How has giving your deepest self to the power of Jesus’ Spirit made a difference for you?  Where has Jesus helped you to be more fully mature, more fully alive?  What would you tell someone if they asked you about your faith?

            Christians are people who are compassionate.  We seek to make the world more whole, to offer grace, healing, food for the hungry, justice for the oppressed, peace in the midst of conflict.  An old hymn says, “Jesus, thou are all compassion.”  I think that gets Jesus right.  How has giving your deepest self to the power of Jesus’ Spirit moved you to compassionate action in the world?  Where might the Jesus Spirit of compassion be leading you next?  Ask yourself that this week, too.

            Christians are on a thoughtful journey.  Maturing is being able to ask questions and to engage in self-reflection.  Are there place where your understanding of Christian faith has itself become a problem to your growth and development?  Are there places where you need to let certain ideas or images about Jesus or faith be wooshed away, so you can be filled anew with the life-changing power of God’s Spirit?  Take some time this week for that reflection.

            Passionate, compassionate, thoughtful – fully mature adults, fully developed within and without – for this we struggle with all the energy God powerfully inspires within us.  We are not those who just stand there looking to the sky.  We give our deepest selves to Jesus and join him on the journey of transformation.  Amen.