A New Name

Then the man said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.”  Gen. 32:28

My son Andrew and his new wife Jessica had barely left on their honeymoon when I received a phone call.  The caller ID startled me.  It was the first time I had seen my new daughter-in-law use her new name.  Who is Jessica Sauls?

Taking a new married name is much more an intentional choice these days than when Ginger and I got married.  It makes my daughter-in-law’s enthusiasm about it more powerful and laden with meaning than if she had done it because of tradition or someone else’s expectations.  Instead, she had made it an expression of herself and what she was making for herself. 

Jacob also took on a new name at a crucial moment in his life.  His had to do with returning to a family left behind years before in betrayal, but as a new person shaped by his experience away.  Jessica’s had to do with her choice to start a new life with my son.  Both represent adventures, and like all adventures, both have an element of striving in them, which is to say having some strife. 

I think my daughter-in-law will find, as did Jacob,  that the blessing is in the striving itself.  Blessing is found in the striving that comes with building a new life.  That’s how God will shape her . . . and us into new creations.  It is how she will answer the question she has taken on for herself:  Who is Jessica Sauls?

Peace,
+Stacy

Manners

I often get Jesus and my mother confused.  It is understandable.  My mother spoke on his behalf with some regularity. One of his lessons according to my mother was this:  “Remember the magic words—please and thank you.”  And that for a long time was how I understood this story about the healing of the ten lepers (Lk. 17:11-19), the fact that only one of them went back to say “thank you.” That’s the one who was the good boy.  But I had missed the details of the story. 

One of those details is that the only one of the ten lepers to come back after being restored to health was a Samaritan.  I have always thought that detail was there because Samaritans were not noted for having good manners. 

I now don’t think that is what this story is about at all.  The thing to note is that there is no reason at all for the Samaritan leper, even though healed, to go show himself to the priests, as Jesus has instructed all of them.  The priests at the Temple in Jerusalem would have had no more use for this Samaritan as a healed leper than they had before.  He was just as much an outcast as he was before he got rid of the leprosy.  He could no more be restored to the life of the community now than before.

And so this one leper, the Samaritan, does what people who could not be accepted anywhere else typically did in those days, and typically do still.  He returned to Jesus.  The place for the outcast, the marginalized, the oppressed, the misfit, the foreigner is in Jesus.  Polite society—the priests and the Pharisees and the decent folks in town—has nothing to do with these people.  Jesus, however, did.  And if we seek Jesus, we will, too.

Peace,
+Stacy

Just Another Rich Man

OK, this one is troubling.  It’s the story of a rich man and Lazarus, the poor man just outside the rich man’s gate.  (Luke 16:19-31)

The rich man “was dressed in purple and fine linen and . . . feasted sumptuously every day.”  On the other hand, there was Lazarus, “covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table.”  It is quite the contrast.

Lazarus died.  The rich man also died and was buried.  Only in his torment in Hades does the rich man realize the chasm between him and God.  He asks Abraham to have Lazarus bring him water.  Abraham refuses.  “Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things.”  Then he asked Abraham to send Lazarus to warn his brothers so that they would not meet a similar fate.  Again, Abraham refuses.  “They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.” 

The rich man’s torment in Hades is not what is meant to catch our attention or even scare us.  What ought to scare us is the detail in the parable that the poor man has a name, Lazarus, and the rich man does not.  Something about the rich man’s life leaves him nameless.

It is not, I think, that the rich man was bad.  We certainly have no reason from the parable to think so.  It is not, I think, that the rich man had great wealth.  I see no reason to think from the parable that the rich man is punished for his wealth.  It is not, I think, that the rich man’s gain was ill gotten.  Again, the parable gives us no reason to think so.

The point is that names are superfluous unless we are in relationship with one another.  I do not need to know the name of someone with whom I have no contact.  I do not need to know the name of someone who does not affect my life.  I do need to know the name of those I love.  And without love, I myself might as well have no name at all.

It seems to me that the rich man’s failure is that he bypassed the opportunity to love Lazarus because there can be no love without sharing.  His failure to share the scraps from his sumptuous table is startling given the picture of the man just outside his gate, covered with sores, starving, and fighting off the dogs.  Sharing is what gives us a name.  It is what makes us who we are.  Otherwise, we’re just another rich man unknown to anyone who cares.

Peace,
+Stacy

I’m Too Old

Charlie Skinner is a character on a TV series called “Newsroom.”  He is played by Sam Waterston, one of my favorite actors.  Skinner is a bit crusty and rather heavy-drinking.  But he also has vision and a heart for adventure, and he knows when he’s getting sabotaged.  He is willing to take risks to pursue that vision, even in the face of resistance, and that’s what I admire most about him.

It is in the face of such resistance that he delivers a line to which I have already referred back many times.  “I’m too old to be governed by fear of dumb people.”

It’s a little bit shocking at first.  One should be careful about dismissing people who see things differently as dumb, of course.

Still, I wonder if Jesus wouldn’t have liked Charlie Skinner.  He himself once told a parable about a rich man and his property manager (Lk. 16:1-8).  It’s a little bit shocking, too.

The rich man was displeased that the manager was squandering his property, and so he called for an accounting.  The manager, realizing he was about to be discovered, quickly called in his employer’s debtors and used his authority while he still had it to reduce their debts to the rich man so that they would owe the manager a favor after he had been dismissed.

The rich man found out about it.  You would think he would have been furious.  Instead, he commended the manager’s ingenuity.  “And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.”  (v. 8)

It turns out smart really is the new rich.  It was the old rich, too.

The church is ambivalent about smart, I think.  Sometimes we find smart people too “in their heads” and not enough “in their hearts.”  The church has a significant anti-intellectual streak from time to time.  Jesus also said, after all, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.”  (Mt. 11:25)  There are times when smart gets very much in the way of seeing as Jesus might. 

Still, I think Jesus may have had an appreciation for smart people, at least that they had their usefulness.  Maybe he didn’t want them to get too big for their britches, but a little smart in the service of the reign of God isn’t such a bad thing either, because the reign of God is something there is always going to be resisted by “the children of this age.”  And not just by dumb people.   

But here’s where Charlie Skinner certainly has it right.  Life is way too short to be governed by fear of just about anything.  Smart sometimes helps us get beyond it.  In fact, the more fearful we get, smart turns out to be just about the only way out.

Peace,

Three Parables

There is a series of three parables in the fifteenth chapter of Luke.  They come together because they are meant to be read together.  Most unfortunately, our lectionary separates the third from the first two.  The first two are the reading for this week (Lk. 15:1-10).

The first two involve a shepherd who leaves 99 sheep behind to go in search of one that is lost and a woman who searches diligently for one of ten silver coins that has been lost and then throws a party to celebrate.  In both cases, Jesus asks a question:  Who would not do likewise?

The correct answer is no one.  I know we like to assume it is everyone, but I don’t think anyone who actually heard Jesus tell these stories would have made that mistake.

A shepherd with 100 sheep leaves 99 to go in search of one.  It’s a sweet picture, but it would be insane.  No one in their right mind would put 99 sheep at risk, leaving all of them at the mercy of the wolves, to go in search of one.  For one thing, it makes no economic sense at all, and sheep in Jesus’ world were not pets; they were commodities.  But even if you want to project compassion onto the shepherd’s motives, it is not compassionate to put one sheep in harm’s way, to say nothing of 99, in order to rescue another.

And the woman with the coin is certainly just a matter of economics.  She loses one coin and searches diligently for it.  Perhaps anyone would do that.  It makes perfect sense.   But what does not make sense is to throw a big party to celebrate finding the coin when the party probably cost more than the coin that was lost.  The woman would have been better off financially to just leave the coin lost. 

And that’s where the third parable comes in, the one that is saved for the next week’s readings.  We know it as the Parable of the Prodigal Son.

Now a son or daughter, everyone would indeed agree, is of much more value than a sheep or a coin.  And the lost son in the story clearly did break his father’s heart.  But unlike the shepherd or the woman, the father does not go looking for him.  That, I suspect, was as difficult for Jesus’ hearers to understand as it would have been for them to fathom the shepherd leaving the flock or the woman’s response to finding the coin.  At least it is difficult for me to understand.  If Jesus had pointed out that the father did not go after the boy and again asked those around him who would not do likewise, I suspect they once again would have exclaimed, “No one.” 

Nevertheless, I think Jesus knew what he was talking about.  At least when it comes to lost sons or daughters, they rarely come home by pursuing them.  Pursuing them, in fact, quite often has the opposite effect.  Keeping a distance, and maybe even increasing it, works better.

It’s much harder to do.  But, God knows, it’s probably the only way.  One can only hope it works as to us.

Peace,
+Stacy

The Parable of the Potter

Jeremiah learned something about God by observing a potter working at his wheel.  (Jer. 18:1-11)  What he learned is worth looking at.  The message is not what it may appear at first.

This is what Jeremiah observed.  “The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter's hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him.”  (v. 4)  The overall message has to do with God’s ability to punish the disobedient and save the repentant.  We rightly see God in the potter, but perhaps not so rightly see the nation of Judah, and by extension, humanity, in the vessel.

The human part of the analogy is not the vessel. It’s the clay.  God destroys the vessel, but God keeps the clay.  The clay is reworked and neither destroyed or even replaced.

One should not read into this that God is pleased with the human side in the parable of the potter.  There is a message of judgment to be sure.  But there is something much more important, much more surprising, and much more hopeful.  The really stunning thing about this story in the Bible is not that God judges the vessel.  It is that God and the clay are responsive to each other.

The clay is shaped at the potter’s hand.  When it is spoiled, it is reshaped.  God is not content with the vessel that is less than God intends.  So God reworks it.  God responds to the clay.  The vessel may start out badly but be righted into a vessel that pleases God.  The clay responds to God.

The creation is in God’s, the potter’s, hands.  But the result takes the potter and the clay together.  God is the potter.  We are the clay.  Fulfilling God’s design takes both, each responding to the other.  Creation is on-going.  We do not work alone.  Neither does God.

Peace,
+Stacy

He Never Worked a Day in His Life

Jesus was teaching in a synagogue on the sabbath (Lk. 13:10-17).  He encountered there a woman described as crippled by a spirit for 18 years such that she was “quite unable to stand up straight.”  As Jesus was known to do, he laid his hands on her and healed her from her illness.  “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.”  This did not please the leader of the synagogue who complained that Jesus had violated the Sabbath.  “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.” 

It wasn’t that the leader of the synagouge was either hard-hearted or legalistic.  It is that he knew the importance of sabbath, of disconnecting from work just long enough to be reminded of our humanity; just long enough to be reminded that we are creatures who live in the immensity of God’s love quite regardless of merit and not the creator who is the ground of all being; just long enough to be reminded of who we truly are, children of God, nothing less and nothing more.  This is not easy for us to do, which is why it requires vigilance and discipline.  The synagogue leader had a justifiable concern for that. 

And so work is to be avoided on the sabbath.  For one day a week, that’s all, work is to be put aside to reclaim the place we hold in God’s love for the creation.  Jesus did not disagree.

What Jesus did do was have different perspective on what work was.  Instead of seeing healing as work as might a physician available for hire, Jesus sees the cure of the woman’s ailment as a liberation from an oppressive spirit.  He compares what he has done for the woman to what anyone would do for an animal, an ox or a donkey tied up so that it could not reach life-giving water.  This is not work; it is release from what binds, which in a sabbath sense, is the opposite of work.  This is not a forgetting of who we really are; it is a reminder of our true identity as free human beings, which is God’s beloved.  This is not a matter of discipline guarding us from what diminishes our humanity; it is a matter of liberation setting us free to live our humanity fully. 

So what sets us free is not work at all, even if we sometimes make the synagogue leader’s mistake and think of it as such.  Indeed, setting us free is the whole intent of the sabbath.  The life to which we aspire is to be ever more set free until all our lives are lived as children of God, perfectly free human beings, loving and beloved, always liberating and never working at all.  It is for every single day because sabbath is not intended as a once-a-week suspension of the normal rules, but as the way life has been intended to be lived from the very beginning. 

What human beings ought to aspire to, it seems to me, is that when they die, what all will say about them is not a list of their accomplishments but that they never worked a day in their lives.  I’m pretty sure Jesus didn’t.

Peace,
+Stacy