Jer. 18:1-18 Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17
Philemon 1-20 Luke 14:25-33
The people who came to write down the words of the Bible understood that the God and the Jesus whom they wrote about, often issued some rather harsh words about people's behaviors.
It would be true to say that holiness and and unattainable perfection stand in stark contrast to our as of yet imperfect behaviors.
It is also insightful to indicate that people are to degrees, willfully imperfect based upon their exposure to the lived-out and practiced standards of more enlightened exemplar of living.
When we read the seemingly harsh words attributed to God and Jesus in the biblical writings, it is important to look at contexts of the words, especially in trying to imagine the community situations which brought the words to promulgation as the holy words to be retained as standards in continuous communities of Jewish and non-Jewish peoples.
What are some of those harsh words? Jeremiah presents God as a Potter who has the ability to form a vessel one way or another. It is a curious metaphor assuming a piece of clay in the divine potter's hand has a degree of freedom to resist being made in an ideal way. The angered divine potter is seen threatening to force environmental challenges on this willful piece of clay in formation who doesn't seem to want to follow God's patterns as seen in fidelity to the law.
The metaphor of God as a Potter seems to present God as a hovering parent micro-managing each misdeed of a willful child.
This view would seem to contradict a view of a degree of freedom which is necessary to uphold the moral and spiritual integrity of human behavior.
I tend to understand these very anthropomorphic views of God and providence, not as God micromanaging human situations; rather, they are presentation of prophets and seers who believe God, within a divinely inspired world, is a friendly presence within this world and uses all aspects of the world to be signs of a loving discipline of humanity toward perfectible behaviors. Even though the presentations are starkly anthropomorphic, they are a witness to the belief that the universe is a friendly expression of divine discipline toward human perfectibility.
The failure of humanity to move in positive ways toward perfectibility becomes expressive of their alienation from what is best for them. Eventually human badness gets confronted with opposing forces. The prophets believed that the ability for coming to self-correction is built into the creative order, and so there is a presentation of God as all being a Potter who creates toward perfectibility.
Such a view is consistent with the Psalmist being amazed by how he or she is made. Being made wonderful means being given a growth path in perfectibility. And when human beings leave the path of perfectibility, the prophets believe in a divine correcting universe which can be known as discipline by humans who are in process.
Jesus appeared in this world as the example of human perfectability to present a corrective path to recover from a predominance of human alienation from the path of perfectibility.
What are the big principles of human perfectability found in the seeming harsh and hyperbolic statements of Jesus?
First, God is the owner of everything. So people who usurp possessions as being their own, need to give up all possessive claims to anything, which in spiritual shorthand means that people need to realize that we do not belong to ourselves, therefore we and all that we have belong to our creator. The words of Jesus point to the early Christian spiritual practice of using the cross of Jesus as a spiritual force to die to possessiveness of one's life and the things of one's life.
God is also a heavenly parent for one humanity; but human beings have divided themselves into separate groupings and families as a way of denying equal status of other people.
The words of Jesus with hyperbolic effect proclaim, hate for every family situation which purports to be a replacement of all being in the family of God who is our heavenly parent.
The family of Christ was to be a family of people with the equal dignity of bearing the image of God. So for St. Paul, this meant that every other identity could not be a primary identity. Being in Christ, meant that in spirituality, this identity was beyond markers like male, female, Jew, non-Jew, slave or free. St. Paul exhorted his fellow worker Philemon to accept back into his household and fellowship, Onesimus, a runaway slave who had come to know himself as being in Christ. St. Paul wrote that because both Philemon and Onesimus were one in Christ, the slave and master designation, though significant in Roman society, did not hold in the kingdom of heaven.
The words of Jesus were presented as warning about how people would be treated who regarded themselves in the great family of God. People who believe in lesser identities such as rich, poor, Jew, Gentile, American, African, male, or female as final identities will promote segregatory behaviors of discrimination and they will persecute those who believe in the love of God for everyone.
Small minded people will often threaten and persecute people who promote an equal love for all people.
The Gospel for us today is to be persuaded that we are called to love in God's big family of love. But the Gospel also is a warning to us to be prepared for those who cannot yet accept how great the love and justice of God is.
Let us be sure of our call to the love of God today. And let us receive the boldness of God to endure that call to love with people who cannot yet accept this great call of love. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment