Creation

“Creation” is a message in the series “Genesis: In the beginning…” preached Sept.15, 2019, at Edgerton United Methodist Church, Edgerton, Kansas, by the Rev. James Hopwood; Psalm 104.1-5,10-15, Genesis 1.1-25

In Hebrew, the first word of the first book of the Bible is Beresith, meaning “beginning.” So that’s how the book is titled in the Hebrew Bible. The first Greek translation preferred another word, meaning “origin” or “generation,” and that’s how we get the English title “Genesis.”

The first chapter of Genesis is poetry and liturgy. It’s a hymn of creation. It’s doxology. It’s a proclamation of faith in the God of creation and a declaration of the good of God’s creation.

Throughout this account, God is the leading actor, the prime mover. Genesis confidently asserts that God created all that is. The Hebrew word for “create” is bara. It always refers to an act of God. It never refers to an act by anyone but God. Only God is creator.

Throughout this account, God is called Elohim. Just as God is a generic name for deity, so is Elohim. Still, Elohim is commonly used as a name for the God of Israel. By using the name Elohim, Genesis is telling us that the God of Israel is creator of the world, and only the God of Israel, not any other gods you might name. Elohim has a personal name, too, that we’ll encounter later in Genesis.

Many of us are used to hearing the opening words of Genesis as, “In the beginning, God created…” There’s great gravity in that. “In the beginning, God…” How else could it be? God is the prime mover, so it all begins with God.

However, most modern translations word it differently. They say, “When God began to create…” The Hebrew allows for both translations, and there’s debate among scholars as to which rendering is best.

The question is whether God creates the universe out of nothing – ex nihilo, as the Latin has it – or perhaps God makes it out of something that already exists, though you might presume that God created that, too – perhaps right before this story starts.

The New Revised Standard Version tries to have it both ways. It says: “In the beginning, when God created…”

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.

The word when does seem to imply that God starts with something. That something is a formless void. In Hebrew, that’s tohu wa bohu. That expression is so much fun to say – tohu wa bohu – that the English language has taken it in as a loan word, tohubohu. It means chaos or confusion. Work it into a party conversation, and you’ll amaze your friends: tohubohu.

When God starts to create the earth, it is a formless void: a vast, bottomless, expanse of water called the Deep. Hovering over the Deep is ruach Elohim – a wind from God, the breath of God, the Spirit of God. Commentators say it broods over the Deep the way a hen broods over her eggs; it flutters over the Deep the way an eagle flutters over her young. There is tension implied, a sense of expectation and anticipation. Something big is about to happen.

God says, “Let there be light.” And there is light. Just like that. God’s word is that powerful. God speaks, and it is so. But God’s word is more than speech. God’s word is person.

The gospel of John tells us, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” and “All things came into being through him” (John 1.1-3). This is the Son whom the Apostle Paul says “is the image of the invisible God, the one who is first over all creation, because all things were created by him … and through him and for him” (Colossians 1.15-16, CEB)

God sees that the light is good. God does good work. It’s exactly what God intended it to be. Now God separates light from darkness, calling them day and night. Because night came first, the people of Israel have always marked the start of each new day in the evening, at sunset rather than at sunrise. That first evening and morning complete the first day. It’s a Sunday, by the way.

You may ask, “How can there be day and night when the sun hasn’t been created yet?” Genesis does not say. Nor does it seem to care. Poetry has its own logic.

God says, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” And it is done.

Instead of “dome,” some translations say “firmament” or “vault” or “expanse.” The word “firmament” comes from Latin and is the least descriptive of all the terms. What God is doing here is inserting a hard dome into the waters to create space between the waters above and the waters below. The Hebrew word suggests a hammered-out metal bowl. Think of this dome as a big metal mixing bowl turned upside down.

God calls the dome Sky. In other accounts, we’ll learn that the sky has slots or doors in it that swing open to let the waters above fall down as rain. But there’s nothing solid for the rain to fall on yet, so on the third day, God rolls back the waters under the dome so that dry land can appear. God calls the dry land Earth and the waters Seas. God declares these things to be good, too.

Having prepared proper space for life, God creates life, starting with vegetation of all kinds. God gives these plants and trees the freedom to reproduce after their own kind through seeds. They now become God’s sub-creators, subcontractors in creation.

On day four, God hangs lights in the dome of the sky. The two great lights – the sun and the moon – separate the day from the night. They travel across the dome of the sky and return, day after day, night after night. Lesser lights – planets and stars – rule the night. The movements of these celestial objects mark the passage of time and are signs of the passing seasons as well.

Thus Genesis declares that all the sun gods and moon gods and planet gods of other nations are nothing but lights in the sky, created by the one and only true God, Elohim. They’re not even creatures with a will or consciousness. As the Isaac Watts hymn says, “The moon shines full at God’s command and all the stars obey.”

This isn’t the first time the Genesis story pushes back against the religions of other nations. Israel shares with all ancient nations certain beliefs about how the universe is put together, including the sky as an inverted bowl and waters above and below it. But Genesis offers a different take on how the universe got this way – specifically who did it and why.

The word we heard earlier translated as Deep is in Hebrew tehom. It’s not so much a description of something as it is a name of someone. Her name is Tiamat. In the creation myths of many ancient peoples, she’s a primordial sea monster. She is slain by a young god who’s variously named Baal or Ba’al or Bel or Hadad or Marduk. Whatever his name, this god splits her watery corpse in two and places the dome of the world in between to create the world.

Not so, Genesis says, without bothering to even mention the other stories. God created all this by God’s powerful Word. Still, references to other creation stories occasionally creep into the biblical accounts, where Tiamat is given the name Rahab. Isaiah 51.9 says, “Was it not you, Lord, who cut Rahab in pieces, who pierced the dragon?”

Now you see one of the reasons some scholars insist that God must have created the universe ex nihilo, out of nothing. They want to avoid the idea that creation involved God slaying a sea dragon. On the other hand, some scholars want the sea dragon to be there, because they can then argue that God didn’t create evil; it was there all along.

One off the things that makes theology so fascinating, and so frustrating, is that not only are there layers of meaning in the biblical texts themselves; there also are layers of intent and mistrust and deception in each interpreter. Including, of course, you and me.

On the fifth day, God fills the seas with swarms of living creatures and fills the skies with flocks of birds. The sea creatures include sea monsters, though not the primordial kind, like Rahab or Tiamat. These are ordinary sea monsters like the whale and the shark and the octopus.

Other biblical texts give some sea monsters names: Leviathan and Behemoth. It’s uncertain whether these refer to a primordial sea monster or your ordinary sea monster. The popularity of the legend of the Loch Ness Monster testifies that a couple thousand years after these texts were composed, we’re still fascinated by the idea of mysterious dragons from the sea.

Anyway, having created fish and birds and sea monsters, too, God blesses them all. “Be fruitful and multiply,” God says, again giving them freedom to reproduce after their kind.

On the sixth day, God creates land creatures of all kinds: wild animals that can’t be tamed and creeping critters and cattle and domesticated animals, too. And God announces that it’s all good. That doesn’t mean that it’s perfect. It means that it’s what God intends, what God had in mind in creating it.

Everything has a purpose. Everything works together the way God purposed. And, as Hebrew thinking will later tell us, everything is connected. Everything is related. And all things are supposed to work together in harmony, in shalom.

But God isn’t done creating yet. Next, God will say, “Let us make humans in our image, according to our likeness…” Very soon, things will start to get sticky.

That’s where we’ll pick up the story next Sunday. But before we leave today’s account, there are likely some stray thoughts we ought to corral.

First, what can we make of this story? It has great beauty and spiritual power. It declares emphatically that God is creator. God created all there is, obviously with great care and love. But…

Is it true? That’s what we children of the Enlightenment want to know. That’s the question we’ve been trained all our lives to ask. Is the story true? Well, true in what sense? This is not a scientific account of creation. If you insist that it is, please explain to me this business with the metal dome and waters above and below the earth. Call it a metaphor, if you like, but you can’t take it literally.

No, Genesis has other things on its mind. When we ask it to provide a scientific explanation of the way things are, we’re missing the point. Genesis wants to talk about the majesty of God’s creation. We want it to talk about plumbing and wiring. About those things, this creation hymn cares very little

There are ways you can harmonize Genesis with the science of any age at any time – and they all involve standing on your head while performing great feats of mental gymnastics and the kinds of contortions that you normally see only at a show by Cirque du Soleil.

Still, consider this thought. Today we think the dome is a fantastic notion. We know there’s nothing hard and metallic up in the sky because we’ve been up there many times. We’ve gone to the moon and back, and we’ve sent satellites far beyond. There is no metal dome.

But have you ever seen pictures of the earth from space? There is a domelike thing that’s very visible. It’s called the ozone layer. It protects us from harmful radiation from the sun. Alas, our use of certain chemicals and gases have poked holes in the ozone layer. An international treaty in 1987 greatly cut back the use of one kind of fluorocarbon gas. But we’re replacing it with another kind of fluorocarbon gas. This one doesn’t destroy ozone, but it does trap heat.

So we’re living in this greenhouse, where heat can’t escape, and now we’re threatened by global warming that by the end of this century could kill half the world and make the surviving half wish they were dead.

God created the world, and God called it good. God’s creation is still good. But we’re destroying it. As we’ll see next week, we are commissioned to preserve it, not destroy it.

O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! When I look at the sky, the work of your hand, and the moon and the stars that you have placed there, I wonder how it is that you care so much for me and others like me. But I am so thankful, Lord, so thankful that you do care.

Amen.

Prelude

“Prelude” is the first message in the series “Genesis: In the beginning…” preached Sept.8, 2019, at Edgerton United Methodist Church, Edgerton, Kansas, by the Rev. James Hopwood; Psalm 8, Isaiah 40

Today we begin an adventure of discovery. We’re going to explore the origin of all things, as recorded in the Bible. Our chief guide will be the first three and a half chapters of the book of Genesis.

You may think that you already know a lot about the Genesis accounts of creation. I certainly thought I did until several months ago. Then a book I was reading* challenged me to dig deeper. The deeper I dug, the more I realized how little I really knew, and the more I was challenged to dig even deeper.

In this series of messages, I’ll share some of the results of that digging. I hope you find this tale as fascinating and fulfilling and ultimately as faith-building as I have found it.

I guarantee that you will learn a few things. Learning some new things may require you to unlearn a few old things. You may be challenged and sometimes even angered by some of the things I suggest. I ask you to keep an open mind and prayerfully listen and prayerfully study on your own.

Genesis may be familiar to us all, but that very familiarity can blind us to its truth. Without doubt, Genesis is one of the most misunderstood, misinterpreted, mistranslated and misapplied books of the Bible. That’s why it’s so important that we study it deeply and carefully and prayerfully.

Today’s message is mostly introductory. Introductions are important, you know. You may be like me and forget a person’s name 30 seconds after you hear it. But looking someone in the eye and saying, “I’m glad to meet you” is an excellent way to begin a relationship. You can relearn the person’s name later. First, you meet the person, and in that introduction learn just enough about that person to intrigue you and make you want to learn more.

To introduce you to Genesis, I’ll tell you a few things that it is, and something that it isn’t.

It’s foundational

Genesis is the first book of the Bible. That placement gives it great prominence and great authority. It is a foundational text. It’s one of the foundational texts of our faith. You could call it one of the pillars of our faith.

Genesis sets the stage for the rest of the Bible drama. It sets a tone that will influence how we react to and how we understand all future scenes in the drama.

Genesis is meant to introduce and provide an interpretive lens for understanding everything that follows. What happens in Genesis is meant to flavor our understanding of everything that happens afterward. We interpret all other events in light of these first events.

It’s formational

We are not meant merely to be informed by this story. We’re meant to be formed by it. Genesis is a formational text. This is not just a good story. It’s a life-changing story. It’s intended to help form our character. It’s intended to tell us who we are as human beings and how we relate to God, how we relate to other humans, and to animals, and to the world we live in.

It’s relational

In other words, Genesis is very much about relationship. It is inherently relational. Scholar Walter Brueggemann says that the fundamental issue in Genesis is the relation of creator and creation. “Upon that issue,” he says, “everything else hinges.” [ Walter Brueggemann, Genesis: Interpretation commentary, 12.]

It’s theological

The relation is never one-sided. A true relationship never is. But God is always the prime actor, the prime mover. And God’s prime motivation is a – in fact, God’s only motivation – is love.

As 1 John 4.19 reminds us, “We love because God first loved us.” We cannot even know what love is until God shows us by loving us. Sometimes we experience God’s love directly. Most often, we experience God’s love indirectly, channeled through the love of others.

So these early chapters of Genesis are deeply theological. They tell us about the nature of God. They tell us that God created our world for God’s purposes and for God’s glory.

Creation is a free and selfless act on God’s part. But God creates because God wants to be involved in creation. God wants to be involved with us.

It’s evangelical

Genesis also is evangelical. It’s proclamation. It’s gospel. The word “gospel,” means “good news,” and Genesis brings good news. It tells us not only that God loves us but also that we were created for God’s good purposes. This means that Genesis is not just a statement about the past. Rather, as Christian philosopher Jamie Smith says, “it’s a calling to a future.” It’s a proclamation about who we are becoming. [ James K.A. Smith. You Are What You Love. 171 ]

It’s essential

That means it’s essential for our understanding of everything, starting with God.

Thirteenth-century theologian Thomas Aquinas once said: “Any mistake we make about creation will also be a mistake about God.” [ Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, II.3.1, ii.3.6 ]

And if we view God wrongly, we will view ourselves wrongly, frequently with tragic results.

It’s controversial

Because we do often view God and ourselves wrongly, we often read Genesis badly. That means it’s controversial. There are few things you can say about these creation stories that will not set the fur to flying. People can get really touchy about these things.

I hope you don’t get touchy as we turn now from what Genesis is to what it is not.

It’s not a textbook

I said earlier that Genesis is formational. But it is not, strictly speaking, informational. That is, Genesis is not a textbook. It’s neither a history nor a biology book; nor a chemistry or geology book; nor a paleontology or archaeology book; nor an astronomy or physics book.

Some people insist that Genesis is a science textbook. If you think it is, I suggest that you have never read a science textbook.

Your Bible does not have a fold-out sheet displaying the periodic table of elements. It has little interest in such things. It was written long before the age of modern science. You are looking in the wrong place if you expect to find science in it.

Tell me, if you wanted to rebuild the carburetor in a 1979 Chevy Camaro, would you look in the Bible for instructions? If you wanted to repair a mitral valve prolapse in someone’s heart, would you look in the Bible for instructions?

No, the Bible is neither a car repair manual nor a guide to heart surgery. You know that. So why would you look to the Bible for a scientific account of the creation of the universe?

Genesis has no interest in science because it is pre-science. Science, as we know it, came long after the Bible was written. Galileo, who died in 1642, is often called the father of modern science. For proposing that the earth revolved around the sun, Galileo was persecuted by the church, which insisted that the Bible places earth at the center of the universe.

For the most part, the church has been at war with science ever since. It should not be. God is the author of all truth, and science is the pursuit of truth about how the universe works. Science cannot talk about God because God cannot be proved scientifically. Nor should we even try. If we could “prove” God scientifically, what we proved could not be God, because God is bigger than all our proofs.

Of course, the biggest fracas over Genesis involves biological evolution – specifically, how human beings came about. Anti-evolutionists frequently say that evolution is “only a theory,” as if it were mere speculation, such as, “I believe that the moon is made of green cheese.”

Scientific theory is not about speculation, or a random guess. A scientific theory is an explanation of how things work that is supported by mountains of evidence accumulated over a long time. Gravity is as much a theory as evolution. If you think gravity is only a theory, you are welcome to walk to the edge of a cliff and prove it wrong.

Two recent competitors to scientific theory are so-called “Creation Science” and “Intelligent Design.” Both are pseudoscience, scientific imposters.

“Creation Science,” or “young earth creationism,” says that the earth is only 6,000 years old. It arrives at this date by compiling the years given in all the family histories listed in the Bible.

James Ussher, the archbishop of Ireland, did this in 1658, and confidently stated that creation began at 6 p.m. Saturday October 22 in the year 4004 before the Christian era. Using the same method, ancient Jewish tradition set the date of creation as October 7 in the year 3761, hour not specified.

I cannot explain the 243-year difference in their calculations, or why October figures into both. It doesn’t matter. Scientific dating finds the earth to be 4.5 billion years old, and the universe more than 9 billion years older than that. For these numbers there are huge amounts of evidence. For the notion of a young earth, there is no evidence.

Young earth creationism is a statement of belief based on a certain narrow interpretation of Genesis as a textbook. Young earth creationism is not scientific, and it is not true.

Intelligent Design is an idea cooked up mainly to poke holes in the theory of evolution, and it’s not even very good at that.

The idea goes back to Aquinas, who said that if there is a complex design, there must be a designer. It was one of his five “proofs” of the existence of God. But logical proofs cannot make God exist, and more than they can make God cease to exist.

Intelligent Design says that God is the grand designer that Aquinas says is necessary. But it offers no evidence, because, of course, there can be no such evidence. God is much too elusive to be captured in a test tube or seen in a microscope or even hinted at in a particle accelerator. You can intuit the presence of a design, but you can never prove it.

And saying “God did it” advances our practical knowledge of how the world works not one bit. It won’t contribute to a cure for cancer, or for a solution to global warming, or for much of anything else.

Many scientists do, however, embrace one sort of intelligent design. Many scientists believe that God created life as we know it – through the process of evolution.

I won’t belabor this anymore. If you want to discuss this afterward, I’m happy to listen to your views. You don’t have to agree with me on everything – and I don’t have to agree with you on everything.

Theologian Marva Dawn says the biblical accounts “are not intended to ask the What? and How? of biology or astronomy or the When? of prehistory.” Rather, they ask Why? and Who? “And the answer is, for the glory of God.” [ Marva J. Dawn. In the Beginning, God. 17, 24)

The glory of God is a major reason the Bible was compiled in the first place.

Understand, please, that just because Genesis is the first book of the Bible doesn’t mean that it was written first.

Certainly parts of it are ancient. Some of the songs and narratives recorded in Genesis are among the oldest known in human history. But most historians think that the book did not reach its final form until the time of the Babylonian exile, which began 586 years before the time of Jesus.

That’s when the Babylonian army destroyed the city of Jerusalem and hauled the elite of Jewish society into exile in Babylon. The exile created a fundamental identity crisis for Jews. Why did God allow this tragedy to happen? Or was God simply too weak to prevent it? Does God, in fact, exist?

In the years during and shortly after the exile, Jewish scholars gathered their sacred texts and shaped them into the coherent narrative that we know today, starting with the creation of the world. They needed this narrative to restore their sense of identity. A full generation of Jews grew up in Babylon and never knew their homeland. They had to know their story. They had to know where they came from and what God had in mind for them.

Psalm 137 captures the unease of the time. “By the rivers of Babylon, we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion. How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” (Psalm 137.1,3)

Genesis sings the Lord’s song in a new key. It tells the story of God’s relationship with humanity, focused on God’s relationship with this one people that God chose as representative to the rest of the world.

In one sense, the opening chapters of Genesis tell the entire saga of Israel in terms of a simple drama set in a garden called Eden. That story ends in exile, too, but the return of Israel from exile in Babylon lends hope that God will act to redeem God’s people, for God is always faithful, especially when God’s human partners are not.

You may have noticed that neither of our scripture readings today is from Genesis. They are introductory readings from the many other references to creation woven throughout scripture. The Psalm proclaims God’s majesty displayed throughout creation. Isaiah lectures those who presume to question God’s power.

God’s power and majesty are fully evident in these early chapters of Genesis. They tell a fascinating story about who God is, and who we are. If you don’t understand already that you are a beloved child of God, you will before this story concludes. Next week we’ll begin to tell it, with those memorable words, “In the beginning…”

** ** **

* The book was The Very Good Gospel: How Everything Wrong Can be Made Right, by Lisa Sharon Harper.

Step Down

“Step down” is a message in the series “Good counsel for a good life,” preached Sept. 1, 2019, at Edgerton United Methodist Church, Edgerton, Kansas, by the Rev. James Hopwood; Luke 14.1, 7-14.

Many people who have read the gospels have noticed that in Luke’s gospel especially, Jesus seems to spend a lot of time eating. Maybe it’s because he’s an itinerant preacher who has no place to lay his head (Matthew 8.21), but he sure gets invited to dinner a lot.

In the tradition of Psalm 23, he’s often invited to eat in the presence of his enemies – and they are often looking for a way to trip him up. Perhaps because he’s so often on guard, Jesus sometimes responds by being a very rude guest. You wonder why the dinner invitations keep coming.

In today’s gospel story from Luke, Jesus is sharing a meal with a prominent member of the religious group called Pharisee. Now, we tend to think negatively of Pharisees, for some fairly good reasons, but we also need to remember that of all the varieties of Judaism in Jesus’ day, the Pharisees probably are the ones closest to Jesus’ way of thinking. They try hard to live out their faith. They just get so tied up in their own personal piety that they tend to lose sight of God.

Pharisees are not exactly allies of Jesus, but they are not always opponents either. Just a little while before this story, some Pharisees approach Jesus to warn him that he needs to be careful because the local big man, Herod Antipas, is out to arrest him.

On this Sabbath day, we’re told, the Pharisees are watching Jesus closely – some with genuine interest, surely, but others ready to pounce at the slightest provocation. Jesus pounces first. He notices that immediately after arriving, some guests don’t wait to be escorted to a seat but head straight for the places of honor near the host.

You know how it works. People who think they are big shots always arrive fashionably late, so that they can be seen by everyone, and they head directly for the prime spots, daring someone to challenge them.

Seeing this, Jesus tells a story. Luke calls it a parable – a story with a built-in zinger.

Jesus says: “When you are invited to a wedding banquet, don’t sit at a place of honor, in case a more distinguished guest arrives, and your embarrassed host has to ask you to go sit over their by the kitchen door.

“No, go sit at the lowest place, so that when your host sees you, he may say, ‘Friend, move up higher.’ Then you will be honored rather than disgraced in everyone’s sight.”

That sounds like sound advice doesn’t it? Especially in a culture that is so heavily invested in notions of honor and shame, it makes good sense to avoid putting yourself in a situation where you might look bad.

In fact, there’s an ancient proverb that says much the same thing. Proverbs 25:6-7 says,

“Do not put yourself forward in the king’s presence or stand in the place of the great, for it is better to be told, ‘Come up here,’ than to be put lower in the presence of a noble.”

But Jesus has more in mind than simple advice. He ends his parable with an aphorism that many of his followers will find familiar: “For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Similar counsel comes from the Talmud, an authoritative collection of Jewish teaching over hundreds of years. Jesus is part of that tradition, of course, so it’s no wonder the sayings sound familiar.

The Talmud says: “Anyone who humbles himself, the Holy One, Blessed be He, exalts him; and anyone who exalts himself, the Holy One, Blessed be He, humbles him.” (Babylonian Talmud, Eruvin 13b)

It should be obvious now that that Jesus isn’t merely offering advice on wedding etiquette. He’s not offering advice at all. He’s telling us how God responds to certain behavior, and how we should respond to God. He’s offering us divine counsel – and that’s a whole lot better than any human advice you’re ever going to get.

This series of messages is titled “Good counsel for a good life.” It’s not called “Good advice for a good life.” These are not pithy sayings about how to get along in the world. These are some of Jesus’ prescriptions for fruitful and fulfilling life in God’s kingdom.

This is not advice from some seasoned sage who has seen it all and done it all and wants to help you avoid the pitfalls of life that he encountered personally. No, this is good counsel from the one who is named Wonderful Counselor. This is holy guidance from one who offers us the gift of the Holy Spirit, our Paraclete – that is, our counselor, our advocate, our intercessor and helper.

Be humble, Jesus says. He’s not talking about the kind of humility that says, “See how humble I am.” He’s talking about radical humility, kingdom of God Jesus-following put-the-other-person-first humility.

To illustrate, Jesus lectures his Pharisee host.

“When you give a banquet, don’t invite your friends or your relatives or your rich neighbors, because they could invite you in return, and you could be repaid for your effort.

“No, when you give a banquet, invite the poor and the sick, the hurting and the untouchable because they can’t repay you. But you will be blessed, and you’ll be repaid at the great feast in God’s kingdom.”

That’s true humility. By inviting those who can’t possibly repay you, you are inviting from the purest of motives: concern for their welfare without concern for your own personal advancement.

We in the church do that frequently through various outreach and mission efforts. In this church, specifically, we offer the weekly Grace Café or our annual Thanksgiving dinner, and we are major supporters of the community food bank operating out of our former parsonage.

We don’t expect any kind of repayment for these acts. We don’t even expect our guests to return on Sunday morning for worship and maybe one day to become members. Besides being unrealistic, such expectations are self-serving rather than other-serving. We would be looking at those we invite with an ulterior motive, a concealed agenda, dollar signs in our eyes.

On the other hand, note that we invite people into our building. It is, after all, our ministry center. It’s designed for such a purpose. Only rarely do we invite those who are poor and marginalized into our homes.

Part of the difference is cultural. In the time of Jesus, all households are expected to extend hospitality to any person in need. Typically, the poorest people extend the most hospitality to those in need, and the richest people extend the least. That’s because the poorest people recognize the value of being hospitable to others, and the richest people imagine that they are self-sufficient so everybody else ought to be, too.

We don’t have that culture of hospitality today, except on special occasions or in a few isolated communities. The very notion is considered insufferably old-fashioned, not to mention dangerous. Who knows what kind of people might come into your house, and what they might steal on the way out? No, best confine such efforts to the church building, where we can keep an eye on people.

It’s ironic that we today so often condemn the strict social hierarchies of Jesus’ time, while pretending that we live in a classless society where social hierarchies don’t exist. We can pretend they don’t exist because our social status offers us privilege. Being privileged, we can “live above” such notions. That is, we can ignore certain social rules because they don’t apply to us.

But Jesus says a reversal is on its way, and it’s called the kingdom of God.

Jesus says, “Those exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Jesus says, “The last will be first, and the first will be last” (Matthew 20.16).

So what seat do you take without thinking? Where do you sit when you’re operating on autopilot? Are you first or last? Are you humbled or exalted? Do you assume that you somehow “deserve” a good seat, or are you willing to defer to others? To put it another way, do you sit at the back of the bus when you’re not required to sit there by law or social custom?

On December 1, 1955, a black seamstress named Rosa Parks boarded the Cleveland Avenue bus in Montgomery, Alabama, headed home work. When the bus got full, and the driver told her to give her seat to a white person. She refused.

She was tired, she says. She was no more tired physically than she usually was, but she was tired of “giving in.” She was tired of having to endure the constant humiliations she was subjected to under the harsh Jim Crow laws of Southern society. Her arrest and conviction led to a long bus boycott and a Supreme Court ruling that doomed all such segregation laws.

(Did you know, by the way, that later in life Rosa Parks became a deaconess in the African Methodist Episcopal Church? If you’re looking for a Methodist saint, she’s one.)

This may seem contradictory, but it’s not. By refusing to give up her seat on the bus, she embodied the spirit of radical humility. The big shots could arrive fashionably late and hope to claim the prime spots, but she’d had enough of that. She’d been held down long enough. She just wanted to be recognized as human, and treated the way Jesus says we should treat all fellow humans – with respect and, yes, with love.

Be humble, Jesus says. He’s not offering practical advice to avoid embarrassment. He’s offering good counsel for a good life. If you’re not humble, you will be humbled, Jesus says. You may, in fact, be humiliated. You may find yourself being treated in the same shoddy manner that you treat other people. O the shame of it!

Jesus is a bit like the TV game show host who issues the loud invitation: “Come on down!”

Come on down, he says. Step down. Step down to the lowest level.

He did, after all.

He never regarded equality with God as something he could exploit to exalt himself and humiliate others.

Rather, he emptied himself, taking the lowest human form.

And being born in human form, he was humble and obedient even to death, even to death on a cross.

Therefore, God also highly exalts him and gives him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and earth and under the earth, and every tongue proclaim that Jesus the Messiah is Lord of all, to the glory of God the father. (Philippians 2.6-11)

And all who bend the knee and proclaim him as Lord try to follow him, try to be like him, thinking as he does, doing as he does. Remembering his counsel to be humble, we are mindful of where we sit, and why we sit there

We don’t take the first seat on the bus.

But neither do we take the last seat available.

We don’t take the best seat.

Instead, we take the worst seat.

We take the back seat.

We sit right next to Jesus.

And wherever he goes, we go with him, knowing that however low we go, he is always willing to go lower, and when he is raised up, he will raise us up with him (1 Peter 5.6).

Amen.

Act Now

This is a message in the series “Good counsel for a good life,” preached Aug. 25, 2019, at Edgerton United Methodist Church, Edgerton, Kansas, by the Rev. James Hopwood; from Luke 13.10-17

Some people – and you may be one of them, but I’m not pointing fingers – simply cannot drive faster than the posted speed limit. If the signs say 65, you’ll drive up to but no more than 65. Some people – and I hope you’re not one of these – make sure they don’t speed by deliberately going 5 miles below the speed limit.

These folks, frankly, drive me crazy. I suppose they do what they do because they cannot abide the notion of breaking the rules. Rules are rules, they say. If the sign says speed limit 65, that’s what it means. Speed limit. No more than 65.

Fine. Takes all kinds, I say. But sometimes rules are made to be broken.

Say you’re driving down the highway at no more than the posted 65 miles per hour, and one of your passengers becomes suddenly, violently, gravely ill. She’s choking. She can’t breathe. She is in great distress. Would you drive faster to get her to a hospital, if you could do so safely? Of course, you would. It’s a matter of priority. Hang the speed limit. The welfare of a human being comes first.

The traffic rule is relatively insignificant. Its value pales in comparison to the value of a human life. If you can safely break the rule to save a life, you probably should do it.

Jesus broke a lot of rules in his day. Today we’ll explore part of what that can mean for us in our day.

It’s the Sabbath – Saturday by our reckoning – and Jesus is teaching in a local synagogue. No doubt his reputation has preceded him, so the synagogue leaders are pleased to have him, but maybe also apprehensive about what he will say and do.

As a teacher, he has been known to say some pretty outrageous things. As a healer – well, healing is a wonderful thing, but he has been known to heal people on the Sabbath. Strictly speaking, that’s forbidden. It’s against the rules. And Jesus is known for breaking the rules.

Sure enough, into the synagogue comes a woman who has an obvious problem. She walks bent over, and the curvature of her back makes it obvious that she cannot stand up straight.

Several medical conditions could cause this kind of deformity, including severe arthritis. Just the other day, I saw a man who walked so bent over that he could not crane his head far back enough to see ahead of him. He needed someone to guide him so he wouldn’t walk into things.

This woman has suffered with her condition for 18 years. Our gospel says it was caused by a demon or evil spirit that had taken up residence in her. Most forms of illness in that day and age were attributed to bad spirits.

Whatever the cause, her condition ruled her life. Besides the obvious constraints it placed on her everyday activities, she also was marginalized, if not outcast, in the town. It takes a courage for her to walk into the synagogue this day and risk being politely ushered back out into the street. Because of her demonic possession, she’s considered unclean and untouchable.

As soon as he sees her, Jesus calls her over to him. That, in itself, is exceptional. She’s supposed to stay on the women’s side of the room. Then he says, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” Then he lays hands on her – another exceptional act. Miraculously, she is able to stand up straight, and she praises God for her cure.

The leader of the synagogue is aghast. Not once but several times, he tells the people, “There are six days of the week on which work can be done. He could have healed her on one of those days, not on the sabbath, when work is forbidden.”

His point is simple, and as far as it goes, perhaps accurate. If a person’s life is at stake, that consideration could overrule a sabbath restriction. But this woman has suffered from this problem for many years and is in no immediate danger. What is one more day going to matter?

To Jesus, even one more day of suffering is intolerable. “Hypocrites!” he says. “If your ox or donkey was thirsty on the sabbath, wouldn’t you untie it and lead it to water? It wouldn’t die without water for one day. But you would break the law to get the animal a drink, wouldn’t you?”

And then the clincher, as far as he is concerned: “Ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for 18 long years, be set from this bondage on the sabbath?”

Part of what they’re arguing about is an interpretation of one of the 10 Commandments. There are two versions of the 10 Commandments in scripture, and they give different reasons for observing the sabbath.

The version that’s found in Exodus chapter 20 says: “Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. … For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh.”

God stopped working. So should you. End of story.

But the version of the commandment found in Deuteronomy 5 provides a different motivation. “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day” (Deuteronomy 5.15).

In Deuteronomy, sabbath is a day to cease work in order to celebrate freedom. It’s a day of celebration as well as a day of rest. So in the mind of Jesus and others who interpret the law this way, it makes perfect sense to heal the woman on the sabbath. Jesus sets her free from bondage on the day that celebrates freedom from bondage. Glory to God!

Jesus sets her free from the ailment that has crippled her for 18 long years.

Jesus sets her free from the demon the caused her crippling.

Jesus sets her free from the shame of demon possession and marginalization within her own community.

Jesus sets her free from the state of ritual impurity that she has lived in because of her illness. By touching her, he reverses the contamination of her condition. Power flows from him to her, cleansing her and healing her.

In one act, Jesus accomplishes so much to help this woman.

The leader the synagogue and his allies probably still don’t get it, but the common folk in the synagogue do, and they are delighted. In their eyes, Jesus’ opponents are put to shame for the shabby way they treat this woman.

If God gave this day to humans as a day of rest, Jesus reasons, it should not be made a day on which some humans impose new burdens on others.

For, he says, “The Sabbath was created for humans. Humans weren’t created for the Sabbath. Therefore, the Son of Man is Lord even over the sabbath” (Mark 2.27-28).

Doubtless, the leaders of synagogues did not set out to create new burdens for others, but that is the effect of what they did. What they were trying to do, most likely, is called “fencing the Torah.”

The idea comes from Deuteronomy 22.8, where you are told to build a parapet around your flat roof so no one will fall off it, get hurt and have cause to sue you. Similarly, the interpreters of Torah built fences around laws to keep people from breaking the laws.

In the same way, we build fences around our houses to keep errant drivers from plowing into our living rooms. Driving 5 miles under the speed limit is fencing the speed law to make sure you don’t break it.

The intent is good. Jesus himself builds some tall fences around the Torah. For example, he says, “You’ve heard it said, ‘Don’t commit adultery.’ I say, if you look at someone with lust, you’ve already committed adultery in your heart” (Matthew 5.27-28).

But problems arise when we mistake the fence for the law the fence is trying to protect. Problems arise when we make the fence into a new law and enforce it so rigidly that we lose sight of the intent of law itself. That’s what some religious leaders in Jesus’ time have done, and that’s why the gospels record so many spats between them and Jesus.

They confuse human and divine teaching, Jesus says, and they lay heavy burdens on the shoulders of others (Mark 7.7, Matthew 23.4).

Sometimes today we frame the argument like this. Which takes precedence: rules or relationship? The rules were designed to foster human relationship, so when the rules fail to do that, relationship must reign over rules.

Love, not legalism, must reign in our hearts and our lives. When we view the Bible as a list of rules we have to follow, we are missing the point of the whole thing. The rules are there to guide us into and keep us in proper relationship with God and others. It’s the relationship that’s most important, not the rules designed to foster the relationship.

Just as the sabbath was created for humans, not humans created for the sabbath, so rules were created for humans; humans were not created for rules. And Jesus is not only Lord of the sabbath. Jesus also is Lord of all rules.

Understand, I’m not saying that rules have no value. I once knew a fellow who violated a safety rule in a factory. His mistake could have gotten himself and others seriously injured or killed. He lost his job, but he now knows the importance of following safety rules.

But when we enforce rules that hurt others, rules that marginalize others, rules that belittle others, rules that trivialize others, we cannot simply shrug and say, “I’m just following the rules.” No, we’re allowing ourselves to be used for evil purposes, and we are using rules as an excuse.

One of the great tragedies of modern Christianity is the way that American evangelicalism has succumbed to the reign of rules enforced by male authority figures. The Pharisees of Jesus’ time might have been proud. I doubt that Jesus is.

What’s the practical application of today’s scripture reading? Simple. People come first. Rules come second. Rules serve people. People don’t serve rules. If you’ve got a chance to do good, don’t wait for a better moment. Do it now.

In his first appearance at a synagogue in Nazareth, Jesus announces his mission statement, which he takes from the prophecy of Isaiah. “The Spirt of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4.18-19, Isaiah 61.1-2).

The sabbath and the Lord’s Day are good days to do these things. But every day of the week is a good day to bring good news to the poor. Every day of the week is a good day to proclaim release to the captives. Every day is a good day to proclaim recovery of sight to the blind. Every day is a good day to free the oppressed and announce the time of the Lord’s favor.

Every day is a good time to proclaim the liberating gospel of Jesus Christ. Every day is now. The time is now – so act now, before it’s too late.

Amen.

Keep Alert

“Keep alert” is a message in the series “Good counsel for a good life,” preached Aug. 18, 2019, at Edgerton United Methodist Church, Edgerton, Kansas, by the Rev. James Hopwood; from Matthew 25.1-13 and Luke 12.35-40.

It doesn’t happen to most of us nearly as often as it might have in the past, so it’s always shocking when the power goes off. Suddenly, it’s a lot darker than it was, and in an instant the steady hum of the air conditioner or furnace or refrigerator is replaced by the sound of … nothing … except gasps of surprise and dismay.

Maybe you were at a dramatic moment in your favorite TV show, or you were making bread dough in the electric mixer, or straining your eyes trying to tie a tiny fishing fly or sew a button on a shirt, or reading a good book…

The list of common things you could have been doing is long. But now you can’t do any of them because you’re sitting in the dark, wondering when the power will come back on and hoping it’s soon because you have a lot of things you want to do – and if the heat or AC doesn’t come back on soon, you’re going to start to get uncomfortable.

If the power is off long enough, you may want to dig in the closet for some candles and your storm lamps – those oil lamps you inherited from grandma with the cloth wick and the sooty smoke and the smell that lingers long after the lamp is put out.

It hasn’t been that long since the whole world was lighted that way, and much of it still is. To survive in our world, even if you have electricity, you need some sort of lamp to light your way.

Lamps and light are mentioned frequently in scripture. I’m going to focus today at two stories that Jesus tells about lamps, and about readiness for the unexpected. As we proceed, keep in the back of your mind the idea of the lights going out.

The first story Jesus tells is from Matthew’s gospel. It’s a parable – that is, a story in which one thing is set aside another for comparison, to make a certain point. In this story, the subject is the kingdom of God, and the story that’s set aside it for comparison concerns 10 bridesmaids.

Each has a lamp she will use to light the way for the bridegroom into the wedding banquet. It’s likely a small lamp that can be held in the palm of her hand. Half the bridesmaids think this through and carry with them a small flask of oil to replenish their lamps, should the night go longer than expected. Half the bridesmaids don’t think ahead and don’t carry extra oil.

Naturally, the bridegroom is delayed in arriving. When finally he arrives, everyone jumps up with their lamps to greet him. But the foolish bridesmaids who didn’t think ahead now realize that they don’t have enough oil to last very long. And the wise bridesmaids who did think ahead don’t have enough oil to share, so the foolish bridesmaids run off to buy more oil.

We could chastise the wise bridesmaids for not sharing, but this parable isn’t about sharing. It’s about being ready. The foolish bridesmaids pay the price for not being ready. When they get back to the party, the door has been shut, and they can’t get in. “Who are you?” the bridegroom asks.

So, Jesus says, keep awake, because you don’t know the day or the hour when the bridegroom is coming.

Jesus is the bridegroom, of course. He refers to himself that way several times. So if this story tells us something about God’s kingdom, it must be that we can’t know when Jesus is coming to usher in the kingdom in all its glory, so we’d better be ready at all times.

How do we do that?

The second story comes from Luke’s gospel. It begins with Jesus saying, “Be dressed for action, and have your lamps lit.”

Neither of these stories directly address the issue of being properly dressed. That comes up in another story from Matthew (Matthew 22.11-13). A king is throwing a wedding banquet for his son, and he notices a guest who is not wearing a wedding robe. He says, “Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?” The guest offers no excuse, and the king has him thrown out.

“Be dressed for action, and have your lamps lit,” Jesus says.

The characters in this story apparently are household slaves. They want to be ready when their master returns from the wedding banquet, even if he is delayed for some reason. They’ll be happy if they’re alert and ready when he returns, even if it’s in the middle of the night, even if it’s almost dawn. And here’s an unexpected turn. If he finds them alert and ready, he’ll take off his wedding duds and put on his serving clothes, and he will serve them!

What’s up with that? We’ll return to that in a moment.

“You must be ready,” Jesus says, “for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”

How unexpected an hour? Suppose that your house is broken into one night, and the thief quietly makes off with some of your most valuable possessions, and you sleep through the whole thing. What do you say the next morning when you discover the burglary? “I wish I’d been awake when that guy broke in! If I’d known he was coming, I would have stayed awake and stopped him!”

But he didn’t call you ahead of time to say, “Hey, I’m coming to rob your house tonight.” You didn’t know when he was coming, and you didn’t stay awake, and you got robbed. Well, you can’t stay up all night every night, can you? You’ve got to know when the thief is coming. You can’t stay on high alert forever.

You just can’t. It is physically impossible. If you try, you will wear yourself out physically and mentally and every other way there is, and you’ll suffer a breakdown.

Remember a few years ago when the country was in a panic about foreign terror attacks? There were five security levels: green for low, blue for guarded, yellow for elevated, orange for high, and red for imminent. The system was quickly abandoned because it was too complicated and too confusing, and it rarely dipped below yellow, so people were kept in a constant state of semi-panic, ready to jump to real panic and hyper panic at any moment.

On some naval vessels and imaginary starships of the future, the captain calls for Battle Stations when the threat of danger is high. But you can’t keep your people on high alert for very long. After awhile, you have to let them stand down. If you don’t, sheer nervousness is liable to lead to a tragic mistake.

So, if you can’t be on Red Alert all the time, why is Jesus telling us to be on Red Alert all the time?

Or is that what he’s telling us? I don’t think it is.

Be awake, be alert, be ready, he says. Be dressed for action, have your lamps lit, and have some extra fuel handy if my return is delayed. Which it will be, of course. Why else would he tell us to be prepared for delay?

The “thief in the night” story is powerful. Be ready, or you’ll be sorry. But that’s not Jesus’ primary message. His primary message is the opposite: Be ready and you’ll be glad.

Or as my seminary preaching teacher Gene Lowry puts it, “position yourself to be surprised.”

“Look, I’m coming like a thief in the night,” Jesus says (Revelation 3.3, 16.15; 1 Thessalonians 5.2, 2 Peter 3.10). And if he catches you ready, what happens? He takes off his wedding duds and puts on his serving duds, and he serves you. Read the story in the 13th chapter of John’s gospel about Jesus washing the feet of his disciples at the Last Supper, and you’ll see an amazing parallel to this story in Luke.

Be ready, and you’ll be blessed. Be ready, and you’ll be happy.

That’s a far cry from the message you’ll get from popular, toxic, so-called evangelical Christianity. You’ve seen the bumper sticker or Facebook meme: “Jesus is coming. Look busy.” That’s supposed to be ironic, but it’s often taken seriously, as a solemn warning. Jesus is coming, and he’d better not catch you napping, so if all you’re doing is leaning on that shovel, at least keep one eye open so when the boss appears you can raise your head and pretend that you’ve been busy.

You ought to be aware that Jesus is not fooled by counterfeit Christian activity, and if that’s what you’re relying on to save you, you may find yourself pounding on that door, saying, “Lord, Lord, open to us” and hearing Jesus saying, “Truly I tell you, I don’t know you.”

Another thing. Don’t look for signs. I know that all the hack TV preachers love to go on about “signs of the end times,” and “signs that Jesus’ return is near,” and all that rot, but Jesus makes it clear several times in several ways that there are no signs.

That’s why you have to be ready. Like the thief who wants to break into your home, Jesus is not going to call you ahead of time and say, “Hey, I’m coming.” He’ll come when the time is right, and you want to be ready. You want to be ready not because he’ll slap you silly if he catches you napping. You want to be ready because if you’re napping, you’ll miss one big party where you’re a featured guest.

So how do you stay ready?

Let’s circle back to where we began, talking about when the electricity goes out. How do you get ready for that? Some folks have powerful generators that kick in the moment the power fails. Even those require a certain amount of maintenance, or they’ll just sputter and die, and what you sputter afterward isn’t for repeating in public.

If you don’t have a super generator at your house, you need to be ready for a blackout. That means you have some flashlights in easy-to-get-to places, and extra batteries. You don’t want to be like those foolish bridesmaids, after all. And you want to have candles and those oil lamps and extra oil in a place that’s relatively easy to get to in low light, so you’re not tripping through the basement in the dark looking for them. (I did that once. Never again.)

The point is, you don’t have to live on pins and needles. You don’t have to live on Red Alert. You just have to be ready in case it happens. And if it’s that simple to prepare for something bad happening, can it be any harder to prepare for something good happening?

The foolish bridesmaids were foolish in that they were not prepared to welcome the bridegroom. They thought they were, until the time came, and then they realized that they weren’t ready at all. How can we be sure we’re ready?

What does it mean to be ready? Read the gospels, and you’ll know. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12.30-31).

Keep short accounts, Jesus says. If you have a problem with somebody, make it right fast (Matthew 5.23-26). Or, as the Apostle Paul interprets it, as far as you are able, live peaceably with everyone (Romans 12.18).

I could go on, but I hope you’re with me. There is no room here for hatred or bigotry of any kind, especially bigotry that you think is protected by religious privilege. If you think you’re better than someone because you’re a Christian and he’s not, or you’re a better Christian than she is, or any other superiority complex you may have, I ask you to think again.

Think of the humble carpenter from Nazareth who gave his life for all, not just for the religious elite. Think of the one who promises that if he catches you alert and ready, he’ll make you the center of the party.

Be ready for Jesus’ delay, and be ready for his sudden arrival. Be ready, and you’ll be blessed. Be ready, and you’ll be happy.

And the power will never go off again.

Amen.