13th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Proper 8)

June 29, 2008

    From Violence to Peace, Exclusion to
    Hospitality

This week we encounter terrifying commands and prophesy from patriarchs, prophets and apostles. Abraham is asked to sacrifice Isaac, the very embodiment of God’s promise of a great lineage. Jeremiah recalls those who prophesied war, famine and pestilence. Paul notes that we move from slavery to sin to slavery to righteousness. In each instance, hard words give way to promise: Isaac is spared, the true prophet speaks peace, discipleship is recast as freedom.

This week's lectionary Bible passages:

Genesis 22:1-14 & Psalm 13 or Jeremiah 28:5-9 & Psalm 89: 1-4; Romans 6:12-23; Matthew 10:40-42

“Will I worship a God who demands hu-
man sacrifice? Decidedly not! But this story of Isaac and Abraham seems to me to say that God continues to communicate and calls us to keep our ears and hearts open to new understandings of God's will in our lives. I can embrace that!"

Julienne Buenting

“If obedience to God can only be proven through one’s willing-
ness to sacrifice one’s child, then faithful disobedience is required."

Scott Haldeman

“As we listen for God's word amid all that we hear — as we try to discern what comes from the Spirit and what is false prophesy — these texts guide us.  They call us to listen for the word which saves, which challenges us with its truth-telling, which calls us to be instruments of God's goodness and grace, and which invites us to welcome all in God's name.” 

Nate Metrick

“Faithful discipleship sometimes requires engaging a world of conflict. Our desire for peace and our longing to raise the ‘festal shout’ ought not to be satisfied with vain hopes and cheap imitations of shalom, but only with the real thing, which requires, as Jeremiah knew, a truth-telling about our vulnerability and our failings.”

Timothy J. San-
doval

    What's Out in the Conversation
    A conversation about this week's lectionary Bible passages

This week we discover that the Word of God, words that nourish and empower, is not always the same as the word-by-word text read from the Bible. Where is the Word of God in the midst of so many words in the Bible? 

Paul, in Romans 6:12-23, with no hint of hesitation, relies on the metaphor of slavery to communicate the dynamic between obedient disciple and divine Master. Of course, slavery is not remarkable in his day. Slavery was simply one of the institutions that “was” and so serves well his purpose of describing the conversion of the heart in those who find themselves turning to God as known in and through the Crucified One: “You, having been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and … you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness” (verse 17-18).  

Yet, even as he proceeds, Paul lets us know that such an analogy is not necessarily the last word: “I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations” (verse 19). And so, are we not free to shift the metaphor, to find more fitting words to describe our relationship with the One whose very name is Love? While slavery still exists, the ownership of one human being by another can no longer be justified. Faith that is reduced to obedience to tyrannical power is similarly unsuitable as a description of the Gospel’s good news.

	We have discarded both the institution of slavery and its usefulness as a metaphor to describe the life of faith. Can we not also leave behind the stories that have been used to condemn same-sex love, listening instead for a word of freedom?

In Genesis 22:1-14, Abraham hears a voice that stays his hand, halts the arc of the knife: “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to harm him!” (verse 12). Does God repent of the command? Did Abraham pass the test or did he fail it? Might the words that are placed in the mouth of a male angel actually be the cry of Sarah, Isaac’s mother, who laughed at the news that she would bear a son in her old age, this son now bound upon an altar? 

Many LGBT daughters and sons have been sacrificed on the altar of so-called obedience to God, to church authority, to the idol of “family values.” Whether told directly that this is the best way to deal with a child who has come out or simply having absorbed the deadly message that to be queer is to be condemned, many parents subject their children to harmful reparative therapies or reject them altogether. Even when rooted in sincere concern for both happiness in this life and salvation in the next, such obedience is not faithfulness. Abraham and Sarah are, after all, on a risky yet rewarding sojourn into unknown territory – a promised land towards which God is leading them. They leave everything behind to risk that God’s promises are true. This is not a story of keeping things the way they have always been, but of striking out towards an ill-defined but exhilarating future. “Do not harm the child” (verse 12), the angel says still.  And, we might add, “Come with me to a land where God provides, where the vulnerable are protected, where the knife of sacrifice is laid aside.”

An additional image of God’s promised future may be contained within Psalm 13. Is it Isaac who cries out? Is it the one bound on an altar of narrowly construed propriety or morality (even so-called faithful obedience) who feels as if God is hiding the divine face and yet who continues to trust? Is not this one the one who is saved, who rejoices as God’s love embraces, who sings of God’s bountiful gifts of life and love?

	What or whom are you sacrificing — whether by condemning, killing or abandoning — in the name of obedience as the angel cries out “do not harm this one”?

Jeremiah 28:5-9 challenges us to discern the welcome-but-false prophesy from the harder-but-true divine word. The prophet Hananiah predicts peace and return — yet conflict, alienation and exile define reality for those to whom he speaks. In our own day, disease ravages, famine sweeps across the globe, and war and rumors of war are heard at every turn. As in Jeremiah’s time so in ours, we must listen closely for the word that is from God. In this passage, Jeremiah is criticizing Hananiah for prophesying wrongly, for promoting peace and restoration of the people.  Jeremiah is convinced that such promises are false. Hananiah, one might say, preaches an easier word, a word that people in the ruler Zedekiah’s court no doubt longed to hear, a nationalist word, a word in his and his own people’s self-interest. But according to Jeremiah, this word is deceptive — a term he uses not here, but in other places to great effect (for example in 7:4)). The word of peace must wait.

For Jeremiah, and so perhaps for us, this is a moment in which we are called not to shrink from or turn a blind eye to conflict, but instead to enter and diagnose the signs of the times so that the word of peace, the word of shalom, that we long to hear, long to proclaim, might come to pass.

Psalm 89:1-4, 15-18 offers the deeper truth, assuring us of God’s abiding covenantal faithfulness and peace. God’s love is steadfast. God’s faithfulness need not be doubted. Whether or not, as it seems for Jeremiah, we will only know that the promise of peace is sure when it comes to pass. With the psalmist we can walk in the light of God’s promise and join in the festal shout that God is leading us home!

	Where do you hear a word of hope that can sustain faith when you feel far from home? What word of hope do you have to sustain others who may find themselves on the verge of despair?

Matthew 10:40-42 places the responsibility for hospitality back in our own hands. We are to welcome the prophet in the name of a prophet, the righteous one in the name of righteousness, the little ones who are thirsty in the name of the disciples. Of course, we are also to allow ourselves to receive hospitality — to be welcomed and, thereby, to represent Christ to those who offer us a place at the table and a cup of refreshment. God is not pushing us away but waiting to be welcomed. The word of exclusion gives way to the word of welcome – the word of violence to the word of peace and the word of bondage to the word of freedom.

	What water, what word of welcome, do you have to offer those who remain thirsty for love and hope and embrace?

       
    Holy One, in whom alone we trust,
    You who do not delight in the blood of children sacrificed,
    You who do not take pleasure when parents reject or
         try to “fix” their LGBT daughters and sons,
    You who require that we never say, “I have no need of you”
         to another member of the One Body,
    You whom we welcome when we ignore the thirst of those parched in the
    deserts of alienation,
    You who entrust us with your work of reconciliation, hospitality and
    healing,
    Provide for us this day grace, freedom, power and hope,
         that we might communicate your welcome to all,
    In the name of the One who said “Come unto me and I will give you rest,”
    Amen.

Bible passages are selected based on the Revised Common Lectionary, copyright © 1992 by Consultation on Common Text (CCT). All rights reserved. Used by permission.