3 Lent B March 4, 2018
Exodus 20:1-17 Psalm 19
In literate cultures, the guarantee of a person's identity has often been the signature of a person. Today when people are unable to write their fingerprint is regarded to be their signature and in this day of credit and debit card chips, a pin number becomes one's verified signature.
What is the meaning of a signature? It is meant to verify the identity of the signer with the document or item that is signed. The signer can be separated from what is signed but the signature carries the identity of the signer in the time of the signer's absence. The signature of Picasso on his painting is important long after he is dead and gone for art dealers wanting to verify authenticity.
Signature is the outward and separated sign of a person on a document or item. Yet the signature is a sign of connection of the signer with what is signed.
Signum is the Latin word for sign; the Greek word for sign is semeion. Perhaps you know that the study of signs and symbols is called semiotics. You know that a semaphore is a flag used for flashing signals.
Signs is an important word in the Bible; it occurs in relationship to how human beings understand that God is known to us in creation, even when we can't see the full divine plenitude because we don't have the capacity. We ask, how does the great creator mark or sign the creator's works so that we the creatures can know divine authorship of this life?
We are told that creation happened with divine utterances. God said, "Let there be light, and there was light." We are told that the Word was in the beginning with God, the Word was God and that all things came into being because of the Word.
So, the biblical stories are words, and we are told that God is Ultimate Word in being the creating author, the Playwright of this great Play of life as we know it. And this world is so complex, so diverse, and yet we find the simplicity of single colors of white or black co-existing with a rainbow of many mixed colors. We are given a script of life that is revealed in the limitations and boundaries of our human capacity, but God, the Great Playwright of life also allows individual ad libbing in this great Play of life. And how we ad lib really matters; ad libbing expresses our genuine freedom.
The great Divine Playwright has left signs of the divine presence; signatures of God being with us even when in God's greatness, God is absent because of our limited human ability to verify the full scope of divine plenitude.
The Hebrew Scriptures are writings about the signs and signatures of God that occurred to the people of the past: water coming out of a rock, seas parted, oil poured on the head of messiah kings, clouds and fire on the mountain top, a burning bush, plagues sent by God, a talking donkey, fire from heaven, a chariot of fire, a still small voice, and many many more. The writers of the Hebrew Scripture were people who wanted to know how and when God was involved with creation. If God is the Author of life they wanted to know if God put specific signatures on events, things and in people such as kings, sages, prophets and wisdom teachers, judges, and ordinary moms and dads and shepherds and soldiers. The confession of the writers of the Hebrew Scripture is that God provided signs of the divine presence and action.
The question for any age is this: Does God continue to sign this age with evidence of the divine presence and action? More personally: Does God sign the events and circumstances of your life and my life with evidence of the divine presence and action?
The signs and signatures of God are topics of our Bible readings today. We have the account of the giving of the Law, the Ten Commandments. In the accounts of the Mt. Sinai event, it is written that God wrote the laws on the tablet with the divine finger. The laws were God's etched signature; they were not God but evidence of God within the human experience. As God's signature, the laws were perhaps the most important Sign of God in the Hebrew Scriptures.
In the New Testament writings, the religious folks in Palestine were presented as people who were still interested in the signs of God. Signs of God, is a much larger category than a miracle or a wonder. A Sign was something that convinced someone of God's distinct presence or action, and though there might be a private sign between God and a person, the telling signs were those that became significant for the greater community.
The New Testament is a collection of writings based upon the experiences of people who understood Jesus Christ to be the Ultimate Sign of God in their lives. But the writers of the New Testament also wrote much about the people who did not understand or were not convinced about Jesus Christ being the Ultimate Sign of God in their lives.
For people who do not know the game of baseball, they can observe some very strange behaviors. An outsider to baseball might observe an older beer bellied man in a coaching box, touching himself in strange ways with a continuing series of gestures. What is that fool doing touching himself in strange ways? The baseball insider has to explain that the coach is relaying signs to the players to do things like take a pitch, or steal, or bunt. So the signs mean something very important to those within the baseball game; to the unknowing outsider the gestures seem like human foolishness.
The writer of John presented a story of an interaction of Jesus with some people who did not understand the signs. Jesus had cleansed the temple of its crass commercialism and his opponents wanted to know what sign, by what divine authority did he attacked the sellers of sacrificial offerings in the temple complex. Jesus cryptically identified the Temple with his own body and said it would be destroyed and raised in three days. The readers of John's Gospel knew that the Temple had been destroyed in the year 70 but they also knew that Jesus had died and reappeared after his death to inspire the formation of the church. However, for the community from which the Gospel of John derived, there remained many people who did not understand the seeming cryptic signs that were known and appreciated within the church of believers.
St. Paul wrote that the Jews were seeking a sign but they could not see or understand Jesus and his death as a sign of God's messiah. St. Paul wrote that for those who understood the cross of Christ as the power of God to transform one's interior life, it was the important sign of life. The Greeks were looking for logic and wisdom. How could the death of Jesus signify something important? Logic would say that the death of Jesus would be the end of the Jesus Movement, but in the baffling wisdom of God, this illogical death was the wisdom of God and was proven in the effects that it was having in the lives of many people.
Now to you and me. Our lives can have many events which may seem illogical in being connected with God. The cross of Jesus? How could that be a signature or sign of God? We can have such seeming illogical events in our lives, events of pain, hurt, loss or failure. But: Subsequent resurrection events can remake some very terrible things into the very wisdom of our future lives of having empathy, compassion and ministry to others when they are faced with the seeming contradictory events of pain and loss in life and the mercy of God.
My prayer for each of us is to have the wisdom to be able to read the signs of God within our lives, both personally and as a parish. Let us not discount what the wisdom of God can do with some seeming events in our lives that don't seem to be events of mercy and favor. Let us in faith keep looking for resurrection when events contrary to mercy and favor seem to have us baffled and doubtful. And when we experience resurrection joy, let us remember it when we certainly go into the next valley of our lives.
You and I are invited to the Signs of God in our lives; even those that are signified by the power and the wisdom of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Amen.
Exodus 20:1-17 Psalm 19
1 Corinthians
1:18-25 John 2:13-22
In literate cultures, the guarantee of a person's identity has often been the signature of a person. Today when people are unable to write their fingerprint is regarded to be their signature and in this day of credit and debit card chips, a pin number becomes one's verified signature.
What is the meaning of a signature? It is meant to verify the identity of the signer with the document or item that is signed. The signer can be separated from what is signed but the signature carries the identity of the signer in the time of the signer's absence. The signature of Picasso on his painting is important long after he is dead and gone for art dealers wanting to verify authenticity.
Signature is the outward and separated sign of a person on a document or item. Yet the signature is a sign of connection of the signer with what is signed.
Signum is the Latin word for sign; the Greek word for sign is semeion. Perhaps you know that the study of signs and symbols is called semiotics. You know that a semaphore is a flag used for flashing signals.
Signs is an important word in the Bible; it occurs in relationship to how human beings understand that God is known to us in creation, even when we can't see the full divine plenitude because we don't have the capacity. We ask, how does the great creator mark or sign the creator's works so that we the creatures can know divine authorship of this life?
We are told that creation happened with divine utterances. God said, "Let there be light, and there was light." We are told that the Word was in the beginning with God, the Word was God and that all things came into being because of the Word.
So, the biblical stories are words, and we are told that God is Ultimate Word in being the creating author, the Playwright of this great Play of life as we know it. And this world is so complex, so diverse, and yet we find the simplicity of single colors of white or black co-existing with a rainbow of many mixed colors. We are given a script of life that is revealed in the limitations and boundaries of our human capacity, but God, the Great Playwright of life also allows individual ad libbing in this great Play of life. And how we ad lib really matters; ad libbing expresses our genuine freedom.
The great Divine Playwright has left signs of the divine presence; signatures of God being with us even when in God's greatness, God is absent because of our limited human ability to verify the full scope of divine plenitude.
The Hebrew Scriptures are writings about the signs and signatures of God that occurred to the people of the past: water coming out of a rock, seas parted, oil poured on the head of messiah kings, clouds and fire on the mountain top, a burning bush, plagues sent by God, a talking donkey, fire from heaven, a chariot of fire, a still small voice, and many many more. The writers of the Hebrew Scripture were people who wanted to know how and when God was involved with creation. If God is the Author of life they wanted to know if God put specific signatures on events, things and in people such as kings, sages, prophets and wisdom teachers, judges, and ordinary moms and dads and shepherds and soldiers. The confession of the writers of the Hebrew Scripture is that God provided signs of the divine presence and action.
The question for any age is this: Does God continue to sign this age with evidence of the divine presence and action? More personally: Does God sign the events and circumstances of your life and my life with evidence of the divine presence and action?
The signs and signatures of God are topics of our Bible readings today. We have the account of the giving of the Law, the Ten Commandments. In the accounts of the Mt. Sinai event, it is written that God wrote the laws on the tablet with the divine finger. The laws were God's etched signature; they were not God but evidence of God within the human experience. As God's signature, the laws were perhaps the most important Sign of God in the Hebrew Scriptures.
In the New Testament writings, the religious folks in Palestine were presented as people who were still interested in the signs of God. Signs of God, is a much larger category than a miracle or a wonder. A Sign was something that convinced someone of God's distinct presence or action, and though there might be a private sign between God and a person, the telling signs were those that became significant for the greater community.
The New Testament is a collection of writings based upon the experiences of people who understood Jesus Christ to be the Ultimate Sign of God in their lives. But the writers of the New Testament also wrote much about the people who did not understand or were not convinced about Jesus Christ being the Ultimate Sign of God in their lives.
For people who do not know the game of baseball, they can observe some very strange behaviors. An outsider to baseball might observe an older beer bellied man in a coaching box, touching himself in strange ways with a continuing series of gestures. What is that fool doing touching himself in strange ways? The baseball insider has to explain that the coach is relaying signs to the players to do things like take a pitch, or steal, or bunt. So the signs mean something very important to those within the baseball game; to the unknowing outsider the gestures seem like human foolishness.
The writer of John presented a story of an interaction of Jesus with some people who did not understand the signs. Jesus had cleansed the temple of its crass commercialism and his opponents wanted to know what sign, by what divine authority did he attacked the sellers of sacrificial offerings in the temple complex. Jesus cryptically identified the Temple with his own body and said it would be destroyed and raised in three days. The readers of John's Gospel knew that the Temple had been destroyed in the year 70 but they also knew that Jesus had died and reappeared after his death to inspire the formation of the church. However, for the community from which the Gospel of John derived, there remained many people who did not understand the seeming cryptic signs that were known and appreciated within the church of believers.
St. Paul wrote that the Jews were seeking a sign but they could not see or understand Jesus and his death as a sign of God's messiah. St. Paul wrote that for those who understood the cross of Christ as the power of God to transform one's interior life, it was the important sign of life. The Greeks were looking for logic and wisdom. How could the death of Jesus signify something important? Logic would say that the death of Jesus would be the end of the Jesus Movement, but in the baffling wisdom of God, this illogical death was the wisdom of God and was proven in the effects that it was having in the lives of many people.
Now to you and me. Our lives can have many events which may seem illogical in being connected with God. The cross of Jesus? How could that be a signature or sign of God? We can have such seeming illogical events in our lives, events of pain, hurt, loss or failure. But: Subsequent resurrection events can remake some very terrible things into the very wisdom of our future lives of having empathy, compassion and ministry to others when they are faced with the seeming contradictory events of pain and loss in life and the mercy of God.
My prayer for each of us is to have the wisdom to be able to read the signs of God within our lives, both personally and as a parish. Let us not discount what the wisdom of God can do with some seeming events in our lives that don't seem to be events of mercy and favor. Let us in faith keep looking for resurrection when events contrary to mercy and favor seem to have us baffled and doubtful. And when we experience resurrection joy, let us remember it when we certainly go into the next valley of our lives.
You and I are invited to the Signs of God in our lives; even those that are signified by the power and the wisdom of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Amen.
