Social Instructions

Text: Philippians 2:1–13
Other texts: Ezekiel 18:1–4, 25–2; Matthew 21:23–32

There are two brothers on the cover of today’s bulletin. You know from the Gospel reading that one is the good brother and one is the bad brother. You can tell who is the good brother. He is the industrious one carrying the shovel. The bad brother is sneaking out to the left of the page to escape. Or maybe I have it backwards. Maybe it is the other way around. The bad brother is all dressed up like he is going to work in the vineyard as his father asked him to, but as soon as he gets out of view he will put the shovel down and sit under a tree. Or just hold on to the handle, looking good, while he chats with his buddies. The good brother does not care how he is dressed. He does not put on airs; he just goes to work. I guess there is no way to know, really, who is good and who is not.

Lutherans are fond of saying the we are both saints [not the canonized kind] and sinners at the same time. This is not because humans are wishy-washy. Being complicated in this way is the nature of humans. Sometimes we do good, sometimes not. Hooray when we do, too bad when we do not. Sometimes good comes because of what we do, sometimes in spite of it. And bad things in a similar way.

But even if we are both saints and sinners, and even though the good that comes sometimes seems to come from God’s hand and not ours—all that does not mean that being saintly or sinful are the same thing. They are not equal. Of the two, being a saint is better.

In Ezekiel—the first reading today—the people quote a proverb (not an official proverb, not from the Book of Proverbs, just a saying). The proverb says that the parents’ sins (the sour grapes) are visited on the children (setting their teeth on edge). God says through the prophet that God does not want to hear this kind of talk anymore. It is true that we feel the effects of the actions taken by our parents and their parents and so forth. And it is also true that what we do will affect our children and grandchildren. But it is not true, according to this passage, that we are victims of a kind of historical reductionism: that our past determines our present, or that our present determines the future. That we are just bits of life carried downstream by the flow of events. Instead, what we do matters. For better or worse, it makes a difference what we do. Better, once again, to be a saint.

This is not to say that the past does not matter. It might seem that the prophet is describing a kind of death-bed conversion here. When the righteous turn away from righteousness, they die. And when the wicked turn away from wickedness, they live. Repenting—which means to turn—does change things. But it does not wipe out either the effects or the memories of past actions. It does change the present. A life of evil is not rendered good by a change of heart, but the change of heart does make things better. In the present. That is, this is not about judging someone’s moral net worth. It is about what kind of person he or she wants to be, or is, at the moment. It is a better life, a fuller life, to be righteous. It is a worse life, a deadly kind of way of living, to be evil. Changing what you believe and changing what you do changes who you are. Being good is good for you and the world. Be a saint. Everyone will benefit.

If we have a change of heart, what should our new heart be? Presumably, we would like saintly hearts. If so, the Apostle Paul, who is never shy about giving us his opinion, tells us exactly what we must do. Here is his list: 1. Do nothing from selfish ambition and conceit. 2. Regard others as better than yourselves. 3. Look first to the interests of others rather than your own, and 4. Be of the same mind as Jesus. In summary. be humble. Have a humble heart.

It is hard to imagine in the world, with all the striving and grabbing and proclaiming going on, that being humble is high on most people’s list of goals. Rather, being ambitious and self-interested—enlightened or not—is. Being so is our culture’s creed. The path of humility is not one most of us wish to take. We do not value humility, at least in ourselves.

But we are followers of Jesus. Paul reminds us of that and connects what we do to what Jesus did. He quotes a very old hymn about Jesus. Jesus emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, and humbled himself. That is not to say that Jesus was timid or diffident. He was passionate, energetic and courageous. It seems like God is hoping for in us, as followers of Jesus, a combination of energy and humility.

When the hymn talks of Jesus’ emptying himself, it possible to hear that as: Jesus strives mightily against his godly nature, but remains true to his human one. But God is a person who, in our experience, does things for us, with us in mind. God does not prefer to strut around saying how great God is. God creates the good world and feeds us in good season. God so loved the world that God came as Jesus. The God of the Bible is overwhelmingly a generous God. Jesus, the human embodiment of the nature of God, is naturally inclined to empty himself, rather than, as Paul says, to exploit his position.

Number four on Paul’s list—be of the same mind as Jesus—could be translated one of two ways. It could mean: have the same mind as Jesus. That is, be like Jesus is. Or, it could mean: let the same mind be in you that you have in Jesus. That is, you are already as Jesus is; go with it. Let the Jesus-mind that is in you be the boss of you. Then being a saint is not a struggle against your nature, but an embracing of your nature. A letting go of some other stuff in you that is keeping you from the energetic humility of Jesus.

Our joy is complete in others, as Paul says. We are in this together, and we know in our hearts that that is true. It hurts to see others suffer. It lessens us, makes us individually incomplete. That is because of the Jesus-nature in us, the image of God in which we are made. We become complete when we are overcome by others’ needs, pain, hope, and desire.

The problem with the two brothers in the parable is not that one worked and the other did not. And the problem is not that they did not do what they said they would. The one brother worked when he said he would not, and the parable clearly favors him. The problem was that other brother was chattering away, making claims that he had no intention of fulfilling. Getting admiration for saying the right thing, but not intending to do it. He was posturing.

He is like those who talk about compassion, but are mean spirited. Who talk courage but who have no nerve. Talk generosity but are miserly. Talk concerned but can’t be bothered. [It seems we are hearing a lot of talk like that these days.]

If you are trying to empty yourself, you can not at the same time be full of yourself. You can not be humble if the thing you are most concerned about is yourself. You cannot hear the voices of others calling to you if you delight so in the sound of your own voice.

When we prosper while others are suffering, we are not prospering. We are not joyful. We are not complete. We are not the Christ in us.

The priests ask Jesus about his authority. As Christians, we claim that Christ is authoritative. David Brooke wrote the other day that a competitive society like ours “requires a set of social instructions that restrain naked self-interest and shortsighted greed.” If we take Jesus as our authority, then we have those instructions.

Be humble. Look not to your own interests. Do nothing from selfish ambition. Regard others as better than you. Be overcome by the call of others. Listen to God and God’s children. For as Paul writes, it is God who is at work in you.

Angry Men

Text: Jonah 3:10–4:11 and Matthew 20:1–16

It is not hard to think that the dark force of anger has taken over the heart of the world, driving out compassion as thoroughly as it did from the heart of Jonah.

As often, the first reading and the Gospel reading are related. Today they are stories of angry people. Angry for different reasons. Angry at God, at other people, at God’s mercy for those other people. In one story, the story of Jonah, the angry person is a prophet and he talks to God. In the other story, the parable of the workers in the field, the angry people talk to a property owner, whom some think stands for God. Each story ends with a question from God.

Jonah was a reluctant prophet, as most prophets are in the Bible. God called him for a mission. The mission was to warn the people of Nineveh that God was planning to destroy the city and the people in it. That’s because Nineveh was evidently a pretty rotten place, brutal and wicked. But Jonah tried to run away from God. He sailed off, but soon was swallowed up by a big fish (which we all think of as a whale). After three days of this, the whale vomited him up (Jonah evidently disagreed with the whale), and Jonah went to Nineveh, where he told everyone that they had forty days to clean up their act, or else.

Which they did. They believed Jonah. They took off their everyday outfits and put on sackcloth, they fasted, and they prayed. They “gave up their evil ways and their violence,” the story says, and said to one another, “Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.” They did these things, and God did relent. God changed God’s mind. Which brings the story up to the passage for today.

You might think Jonah would be thrilled at his success. His preaching saved 120,000 people (and many animals) from suffering and death. But he was not pleased. He was displeased, it says, and he became angry. The word means he burned hot with anger. “I knew it!” he says to God. “Didn’t I say so when you first tagged me for prophecy.” I knew four things about you: 1. you, God, were a person of grace and mercy, 2. you were slow to anger, 3. you were steadfast and patient in your love, and 4. you were eager to not punish people.

Basically, God was as unlike Jonah as you could get. God was slow to anger, and Jonah was quick to anger. God favored mercy, and Jonah favored vengeance. Jonah was committed to punishment and God was committed to finding ways not to punish. Jonah thinks God is just wrong about all this. He knew what God was like—merciful and all that—and he didn’t like it.

Jonah felt that a rule was a rule. If you are brutal and wicked, you have to pay. A last minute apology should not get you off the hook. Repentance should not get you off the hook. Nothing should get you off the hook, including divine compassion. You do a bad thing, you get punished. That is only fitting and fair. (Jonah does not point out that God let him, Jonah, off the hook when he fled and ended up in the whale’s belly.) The text does not say anything about how we all do bad things once in a while, though that would be a good question to ask Jonah.

What God does ask Jonah is: “Jonah, should I not be concerned about Nineveh?” That is the question. “Should I not have compassion for Nineveh?” God does not deny that Nineveh was bad. God does not deny that maybe they deserved to be punished. God does not deny that they violated the rules, the law, the orderly operation of things. What God says is that, in spite of all that, God prefers not to punish. God has a preference for compassion. Is it good for you to be so angry, Jonah? God asks. Should I not be concerned about Nineveh? God asks. And with that question the story and the book of Jonah ends.

A rich man, a landowner, hires some day laborers to work in his vineyard. This story in Matthew is a parable, usually interpreted as a allegory. The landowner hires five groups of people over the course of the day. He agrees on a wage for the first group, but is a little vague about what he’ll pay the others. At the end of the day, when they line up to get what is owed them, the landowner pays all workers the same amount. The ones who worked all day get the same as the ones who worked just an hour.

The ones hired first were angry at the rich man. Presumably they wished he had paid them more—unlikely as they had already made the deal—or paid the others less. But all the workers were poor. They all needed work. None of them was getting paid much. They were all in the same boat. One reason the people are angry is that they are powerless and the rich man is powerful.

But the other reason, the reason they state, is that the landowner has made them—the last hired—equal to us—the first hired. He has not made the last first, but has made the first and the last be the same. They is no distinction between them in his eyes. He treats them equally poorly or well.

Jesus is not trying to tell us, I suspect, that God is arbitrary and high-handed. But that, like the landowner, God has a preference for grace. “Are you envious,” the man asks, because I am good?” And with that question, the parable ends.

Rules—about crime and punishment, about fair pay for work, about agreements—serve people because they try to make things orderly and predictable. Not everything need be negotiated from scratch, some things go without saying, people do not need to be super vigilant about every moment and action. There is a structure to the world in which people move. Jonah’s complaint and the workers’ complaint amount to arguments for good order. They do not like it when God relents (they would say reneges) or is unfairly (as they think) generous.

It is not that order is not good to God. It is that order is not primary. For God, compassion and generosity are. Unconditional grace, as modern Christians would say, is the primary mode of God. Both these stories are examples. Equality and fairness sometimes (even often) align with compassion. But when they do not, compassion prevails.

We are called in our lives of faith to change. God calls us to change, to be different than we are or might be. We are faithful not only to praise God and not only to know God, though those are both fundamental and important. But we look to God to form us to be better, to do good, to change the world if we can for the better. We look to the actions of faith—worship and study and prayer and sacrament—partly to be able to listen to God telling us how. If we believe God to be merciful, slow to anger, persistent and patient in loving, and eager to find reasons not to punish people, then we can lean on that belief to shape our lives and our actions to be the same.

Some people are angry, as Jonah was, that people do not get what they deserve. And they are angry, as the workers were, that people don’t deserve what they get.

We are called to not let anger drive out compassion from the heart of the world. In our angry world, we are called to be voices for compassion instead. In our angry world, we are called to be voices for generosity. God asks: should I not be concerned for Nineveh? Should not God be concerned for all people? And if God is, then are we not also called to be?

Speaking in Concert

Text: Matthew 18:15–20

How does it make you feel to know that if you and someone else agree about anything you ask, God will do it? How does it make you feel to know that if two other people agree, they get the same deal?

Does it console you, knowing that God responds to the prayers of people? Or are you dubious, wondering how well this actually works in practice? Are you amused, thinking that the chance of any two people agreeing on anything substantial is very small? Or are you terrified, knowing the harm that can be done—that has been done, is being done—when humans are given power.

This passage seems to grant us a great power. The power to confer. The power of agreement. And the power to enlist God in our own endeavors. Yet it seems unlikely that Jesus would give us carte blanche, a blank check, to get whatever we ask for, as long as two of us agree. Not only unlikely, but in violation of our understanding of scripture and of human experience.

The story in Matthew starts with two brothers. Our Bible translates this as “another member of the church,” but that is because it wants us to realize that is not just brothers who sin against one another. Sisters do, too. But brothers and sisters are different than church members; they are more closely connected and intimate. This reading is about more than just what to do about a difficult fellow parishioner.

Brothers fight. Siblings fight. People fight with one another. So here’s what Jesus says to do first: talk to each other. Just the two of you. Alone. Sometimes that works. If so, good for you both. But sometimes people don’t listen to one another. Note that the goal here is not agreement but communication. Being attentive to one another. Listening to complaints and fears and hopes. But if he didn’t hear you, it says, bring along some buddies. And finally if he doesn’t listen to them either, then you can bring in the church. And if that does not work … well, we’ll talk about that in a minute.

There is a widening circle of involvement here. From just the two of you at first to the whole community. Fights rarely affect only the two combatants. When parents battle, children suffer. When nations battle, the populace suffers. Violence and anger are corrosive and cancerous conditions that often touch others besides ourselves. Not always, so the first remedy is the least aggressive. But if it is not enough, in the end the community has an obligation to become engaged.

But no matter what, the goal of the process in the passage is not punishment but reconciliation. It is not even redemption—we are not talking here about making people better—but the restoration of relationships. We hope not to shame each other, to embarrass or chastise each other. Not to make people feel bad about what they have done. But instead to bring people back who are lost. Or who we feel have sinned against us. To allow people back who have been cut off, ignored, or condemned, or ridiculed.

This passage in Matthew is sandwiched between the parable of the lost sheep (that’s the story illustrated above the altar) and a story in which Jesus tells Peter that Peter must forgive others 77 times, which means forever (we’ll talk much more about that next week). These are stories of reconciliation. People are lost and then recovered. And not necessarily easily, but through persistence and dedication to the principal of forgiveness. About which Jesus had a lot to say.

Near the end of this passage, after you and your associates and your church have all confronted your brother or sister, when all else has failed to open his or her ears, “let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.” Before we think this means that we are being instructed to write this person off, we need to remember that Jesus loved people like that. Earlier in Matthew he is called a friend of sinners and tax collectors. And it is true. He hung around with them and shared meals with them.

With Jesus, there is no end to reconciliation. We work at it until it works. There is no giving up in disgust or dismay. If we have to stay there all night. Or all our lives.

We are not so great at living beyond the fight. We know how to celebrate victory, but we are horrible at living in peace, existing with our neighbors who once were our enemies, and just staying with that. We are not good at what Jesus tried to teach us, which is how to forgive so that we can live beyond the sin against us. Listen to your brother who has sinned against you. And in the end, if that does not work, treat that one as a sinner and a tax collector. Someone you live with.

Jesus tells us that if two agree about anything, God will do it. In the next verse, he tells us that if two (or maybe three) are gathered, Jesus will be there with them. These two verses are not describing two different things. They are parts of the same requirement. If we are gathered and Jesus is there, then we will ask what God can in good conscience do.

The word “agree” in this passage is the basis for the word “symphony.” To agree means to speak together. The power to forgive does not depend on our ability to speak the same words in the same voice. It requires that we speak in concert, led by Christ.

The power of agreement is not a general power. We are not being given the words to some magic incantation. The power is specific. It is the power to forgive (which Matthew in our Bible calls loosing and binding).

It is the power to forgive what is difficult to forgive. It is a power given to us by Jesus to hang in there and forgive what otherwise might be impossible. When we are gathered together, and imagine Jesus standing there with us—can we ever say “OK, I’ve had it. I’ve tried my best. But enough is enough. I am out of here. See you in court. Or on the battle field.” Can we ask God for victory if we do what Jesus does not?

Or can we instead ask God for the power to do what Jesus asks us to do: to persist in forgiveness, and live in peace?

The Man Who Would Not Be King

Text:, Matthew 16:21-28
Other texts: Exodus 3:1-5

Last week we heard Peter name Jesus as the Messiah. “Bless you,” Jesus said to Peter after Peter proclaimed this. Jesus told him that his insight was God-sent. Jesus names him Rocky (from Simon) and tells him that the church of Christ will be built on his stoney shoulders.

What a difference a week makes. Or in the timeline of the story, what a difference a moment makes. For when Jesus gets down to details of what being the Messiah might mean, Peter rebukes him. Jesus talks about the days ahead filled with suffering and fear-driven violence. But Peter cannot stand it. “God forbid it,” he says to Jesus, meaning “I, Peter, wish I could forbid it.” This is not what Peter hoped for for his friend and not what anyone hoped for in a Messiah.

Jesus is tempted lots throughout his short life. First, in the desert, where in some versions of the Gospel the devil offers him food, safety, and power. And at the end of his life, on the cross, where he is tempted to do something—flee, perform a miracle, who knows—to save himself, to escape his coming execution. And here with Peter, to abandon his mission, which anyone can see will lead to a bad end for him. In all these cases, the underlying temptation is the same: to live an ordinary life, in peace, with good friends and daily bread.

But that is not his job. He has come to heal the world, and no matter what you think that means, it entails struggle and grief.

But there is a second temptation for Jesus. And that is the temptation to be the warrior that many of his followers hope for. The Messiah not in the way Jesus describes it here, but the king that the crowds wish him to be. Someone who will conquer the land for Israel and defeat the oppressors and occupiers. A king like great King David, who once ruled Israel. Someone who knows how to fight and to win. Not go quietly to the cross.

In Exodus, God comes to the world to be a savior. God calls to Moses because God sees that the people of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are enslaved and oppressed. I have observed the misery of my people, God says. I know their suffering, and I have come to free them from slavery in Egypt. This is a story of promise, since God promises not only to free the people but to bring them to a fertile and good land, a land of milk and honey. The story for Israel promises a happy ending.

But there is a story on the other side, which is the story of the people who lived in the land before the Israelites invaded it. Given to Israel, it is taken from the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. Other people. It is hard to know in real life whether the story really turns out well in the end, for much of the rest of the Bible is the story of battles won and lost, people exiled and returned, cities destroyed and rebuilt. It is still today a violent and open-ended story.

The temptation to turn salvation (which means healing) and redemption into warring, and to turn God, including in the form of Jesus, into a warrior, finds its source not in the divine being but in our own hearts. We want a victory over enemies, freedom from oppressors, bountiful lands. We want to think that God is on our side and no other side. We want our salvation at whatever cost, not wondering whether God works that way at all. We wish to enlist God in our battles.

For some, this is the point of God. The emperor Constantine, who in the fourth century allowed Christians to worship freely and to gather publicly, had a change of heart—or so the story goes—when he won a battle led by banners showing the cross of Christ. For some, the light of Israel to the gentiles was not the example of a compassionate and obedient community, but the rise of a nation in an otherwise occupied land.

At the end of this story in Exodus, Moses asks for God’s name. And God gives Moses two different names. God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” God said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I am has sent me to you.’” But then there is another name, given in an identical protocol: God said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The LORD, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’”b This is my name forever, says God. But which name?

This second name is the name of a God of a particular people, the people of the tribe of Abraham and his descendants. But the other name, the first name, is the God of creation, creator of the universe and all that is in it.

In Christ, the savior refuses to be king, becoming instead a victim, true to his teaching, and showing us thereby a different way for the world to be. No wonder Peter says, “God forbid it.” But God backs this plan of Jesus. Jesus rejects our temptations. “Get behind me,” he says to Satan. The longing for a warrior king God is human thing, not a divine thing. We are wise not to be tempted to ask our God of creation to be a destroyer of enemies. And not to think that the destruction of enemies is the work of our own healing God.

The Way of Blessing

Text: Psalm 67

We have been reading Genesis after coffee hour. This is the fifth or sixth book of the Bible that we are reading straight through, guided only by our curiosity and the Holy Spirit. We started with Job, and have since read a mix of Old and New Testament books.

But we have come to Genesis to start at the beginning of things, thinking that not only would we get the foundation stories of our faith, we would get some of the fundamental theology, too. And so it has turned out to be.

Genesis starts with two different stories about the beginning of the world. You are probably familiar with both. The first is the creation of the world in seven days including one day of rest. Let there be light. After each day, God sees that what was there was good. And at the end, God sees that everything God had made was very good. Things are good, very good. The word means perfect, or just right, just as things should be. And that’s how the story ends. God sees all creation as very good.

The second story is the story of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. This is a very different story from the first. It is less cosmic, more local, for one thing. And the events are different and in different order, for another. And in this story, things are not so good. The story is full of procedures and rules. And full of judgment. The first couple are disobedient. And as a result, they lose their garden, and are exiled from it. And that’s how that story ends. Not very good.

These two stories represent two ways to think about the nature of humanity and about God’s relationship with us. These two ways are in tension throughout the Bible, and in our own thoughts and conversations about how things are, how they got that way, and what the future holds.

In one way, people are intrinsically not so good. They do bad things, and the way to make the world work is to keep them in check. I’m going to call this the way of troubles. There is a lot of this in both the Old and New Testaments.

In the other way, people are intrinsically good. They do bad things because they are fearful or cowardly—things get in the way of being good. The way to make the world better is to help them overcome their fears. I’m going to call this the way of blessing. And there is a lot of this in both Testaments, too.

How you think about people affects how you think about God. Is God mostly someone who keeps us all on the straight and narrow through rules and punishments? Or is God mostly someone who helps us to do the right thing by freeing us from our timidity? I do want to point out that in both views, God acts out of love for us and does not abandon us. Someone once called these two ways of God’s acting as God’s saving activity and God’s blessing activity.

The psalm today, Psalm 67, is all about God’s blessing activity. It does not equivocate. It is about God’s blessings, God’s goodness. It starts out first asking for God’s blessing. Then in the middle it gives thanks for God’s blessings so far. And finally at the end it asks that God’s blessing please continue on in the future.

The psalm is strikingly satisfactory. It feels good to read and hear this psalm. It has an atmosphere of rest and confidence. Something that reformer John Calvin called repose. There is a sense here of being so completely blessed by God that we are as we are meant to be, complete in ourselves and married to God our creator.

It seems that there are no enemies here. That is not quite true, but the enemies are off stage, so to speak. In the wings. It is not that the psalm is naive about the ways of the world. It does not deny sorrow and oppression and violence. They have and no doubt will again have their time, but that time is not now.

This psalm is a little treatise on blessing. It tells us four things about the way of blessing.

First, we agree that there are some good things in the world. Perhaps you think this should go without saying, but no one sees good things all the time and some people never do. In times of deep despair and loss, it is hard to see any good. “The earth yields its increase,” says the psalm, but sometimes it feels, or it is, that earth is barren and there is no harvest. To see blessings is to first see good.

Second, we acknowledge that God is the source of all good things. “God, our God, has blessed us,” says the psalm. A blessing is not just something good, it is a gift from God. If you think that the person responsible for the good in your life is you, then good for you, but it is not a blessing. Blessings reveal God, or perhaps blessings are a way for God to reveal God’s self. Blessings are pure grace, unearned, undeserved and often unexpected.

Third, that God blesses us makes a difference to other people. Our mission as a worshipping community is to be a light to others so that they also might see and know God as we do. Others see the blessings we have received, the psalm says, and are glad and sing for joy. “May God bless us,” it says, “so that your way may be known upon earth.” Blessings reveal the nature of a gracious God.

And fourth, blessings move us to be grateful. “Let the people praise you” is the psalm’s refrain. Gratitude for our blessings is not a requirement but a response. It is a benefit. Gratitude itself is a blessing. It is better to wake up feeling grateful rather than sour. Better to go to bed feeling grateful rather than disappointed. God’s blessing gives us a target for our gratitude. As in the psalm, in the same breath we ask for and are thankful for God’s blessings.

We’ve been talking about blessings as if they were things. But they are not things. They are embodied in things: a good harvest, as in the psalm; good friends, music, prosperity, lively energy, contentment. But to see those things as gifts from God, to see them as blessings, to be thankful for them, is more like a lens through which we see the world. Or a framework that organizes our thoughts about the world and what happens to us in it. To see things as blessings is to see in a particular way. When we hear the psalm, it appeals to us because we can admire the writer of it for the clarity and enthusiasm through which he or she views the world.

At one point, in our long-distant past, when the people of God were trying to decide whether to be people of God after all, Moses stood before them and asked them to choose between two ways of being: I put before you blessings and curses, Moses said. The psalm describes a way of living that is available to us, has been offered to us. A way of seeing. A way of blessing.

May God bless us. Our God has blessed us. May God continue to bless us.

Little Steps for Little Feet

Text: Matthew 14:22-33

There are three versions of this story in the Bible, the other two are in John and Mark. But what makes this one special is that most of the action is centered around Peter, who does not even appear in the others. Peter, a man who in all the Gospels is a stand-in for us as we try to figure out how to live a life of faith.

Many people see this passage as a story of a man who starts out in faith but ends up in doubt. They see the faith that Jesus commends Peter for enabling him to step out of the boat into the troubled sea. The implication is that with just a little faith in Jesus we can, with his help, do miraculous things. That may be so, but that is not how this particular story goes.

The disciples are alone on a troubled sea at night. Water, even though the source of livelihood for the people in the area, can be deadly. Just as it is for modern day fishers and other workers on the sea. The waves are tormenting the boat. Surely the disciples must be tired, and it is likely they are frightened, too. That’s even before they see an apparition—not a ghost like a long-dead soul, but a shadowy and ominous presence. And it is walking on the sea, which is pretty weird. But hooray! It is Jesus. “It’s me” he says. Don’t be afraid. It is hard to tell whether that worked for most of the disciples, who we imagine to be cowering in the back of the boat.

But Peter is being Peter, a man who is without fear, because he is so clueless. Not much fazes Peter. Does he first look back on his huddled colleagues? But then he turns to the ghost who claims to be Jesus and says, “if you are Jesus, ask me, Peter, to walk over to you on the water.” What a strange request. Any other test would have been safer. Some authentication password or security questions. “Tell me your mother’s birthday.” Or “Who is Martha’s sister?” Or just ask him to come a little closer. But Peter asks Jesus to ask Peter to step onto the sea. So Jesus does. “Come,” says Jesus. Come Peter, here to me. Come walk to me as I am walking to you.

Peter is in a pickle. He has painted himself into a corner. Do the other disciples tease him now? Nice going, Peter. You are in deep trouble now. Good luck with that walking on water thing.

There is a moment of faith in this story. But this is not quite that moment. Peter steps from the boat. This moment is perhaps a moment of regret at his foolishness. His big mouth getting him into trouble as usual. Or a moment of bravado. He steps from the boat. Thinking, I’m convinced, that he is about to take a cold bath.

But he does not. Imagine Peter, looking down at his feet, standing on top of the swirling waves below him. It is a shocker. This is the moment of faith. When Peter does not sink. When he realizes that he will not sink, when he knows that Jesus is in control of the dreaded sea, that this person ahead of him is Jesus.

Peter walks up to Jesus—how many steps did it take? how long did it take? Long enough for the moment to fade, as faith sometimes does. Fear overcomes Peter, the enormity of what he has done, the violence of the world around him, even with Jesus by his side. He begins to sink, cries out to Jesus, and takes his saving hand.

Ah, Peter, says Jesus. You of little faith, our Bible puts it. But there is no condemnation here. The word Jesus uses could mean that Peter has a little quantity of faith. Or it could mean that he had a short moment of faith, which seems to me to be more true to the circumstances. Jesus is not berating Peter for having too little of some magic substance. It is just as likely that he is praising Peter for having enough faith, even if it only lasted for a minute or two. Good for you, Peter, I hear Jesus saying. Even though you were scared, you did it. Here now, take my hand and we’ll go back to the boat together.

Faith is not so much something you have. But something that happens to you, or that is a part of you, or that colors the way the world looks to you. It is not a thing as much as a way of understanding things. Not a substance, but an action on the part of God.

Faith sometimes comes to us—that is, happens to us—in a powerful blasting moment. An instant transformation that makes our lives different forever. In this moment we lose an old way of being and come upon a new way. So such moments are scary and exhilarating, for they mean a loss of the familiar and the discovery of the unforeseen.

And sometimes faith happens to us in secret. Hidden from us. And one day, we find, like Peter, that we have been acting in faith, trusting in God, and listening to hear God’s voice as we plan our futures and understand our present.

But more often, faith grows in us, like affection or love for another. It is like trust, which as you know is another meaning of the same word. It takes a long time to develop, and the path is often a rocky one, as it is in any ongoing relationship. There are good times and tough times. It develops, rather than progresses. It is less like a wedding and more like a marriage.

When Jesus calls Peter, he does not call Peter to be faithful. He does not ask Peter to feel some way, or even to believe some thing. This is not a call to conviction or devotion, but a call to obedience. He asks that Peter obey him. To do something. It does not matter whether Peter believes Jesus or not, only that he does what Jesus asks him to do.

God calls us, even when we do not know that it is God calling, and we respond even when we do not know to what we are responding. For some reason, we take that step off the boat. The water supports us as it never did before. We are surprised. Maybe later, like Peter, we become confused (Jesus says to Peter: why did you become of two minds). Life becomes more ordinary. We sail on, as the disciples, Peter, and Jesus did.

This is not the end of the story for Peter, but one episode in an ongoing saga, with high and low points yet to come.

A life of faith is full of small steps. Actions—occasionally big, usually little—that sometimes lead to unexpected results. Doing what Peter does—that is: Listening to what Jesus says. Taking him seriously. Trying to respond. Seeing what happens when we do.

The Prayers the Spirit Prays for Us

Text: Romans 8:26-39

The Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.

This verse is the scriptural basis for the closing of the prayers of the people, when we rely on the Spirit to pray the secret prayers that are deep in our hearts. We assume with these words that there are longings of our hearts that we cannot express, or perhaps even know in detail.

We are not complete without God. If we are complete without God, would we pray? If we are strong, and clear minded, and self-satisfied, it is hard to know quite what we would pray for. Maybe we could pray in a transactional way, like ordering something from Amazon.com. A prayer could be an order, or a wish list. But this is not what Paul is talking about.

Paul is talking about being separated from God. And things that might separate us from God. Things that get in the way of our being close to God. When you hear that neither death, nor life, not angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor power, no height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus—when you hear these words, you might be moved to tears. How could this be? To be alone from God is scary and disorienting and lonely.

Partly it is like being alone from anyone you long to be with. Your lover, or your parent or your children, or a friend who is far away. Or just being alone. But more deeply, it is that God is part of us, essential to our existence. And to be separated from God is like drowning. Suffocating. We are not built to be without God. Perhaps that’s one of the things we mean when we say we are made in God’s image. You might feel this even if you do not believe it. You might find Paul’s words powerful even if you do not even believe in God. It is not about belief.

In these past few days of hot and humid, people have been feeling crummy and confused. Out of sorts and unable to think clearly. Trying to do useful work in the heat feels like when you read the same paragraph in a book over and over again and just don’t get it because your mind is mush.

But it does not require extreme weather to be distressed and disoriented. We are never as focussed, bright, and strong as we would like to be. It is our creaturely nature. Even though we have deep longings, it is not always clear what we want. Not all that we desire is easily expressed. The Spirit helps us in our weakness, the verse says. The word for weakness means “not strong.” It is not a question of failing or not living up to expectations. No one says you are weak because you cannot lift a mountain. You are just not strong enough. The Spirit helps us because it is our nature to not always know clearly how to ask and what to ask for. Even when we are desperate to. We do not know how to pray as we ought, it says. But again, there is no judgment here, no should. The word translated as “ought” that Paul uses means more like: what we need to say to convey what we mean. We don’t even know it, much less know how to ask for it. Or sometimes we just cannot pray. Out of shame, or anxiety and the press of time, or being tongue-tied. We could use some help.

The Spirit helps us, Paul says. It does not help us like someone we hire to help us. We are not paying the Spirit to do our praying for us. It helps us more like someone who loves us helps us. Someone who knows us intimately and respectfully. Who sometimes knows what we want better than we do. The word that Paul uses to describe what the Spirit does when it helps us is a strange one. It appears only here and in the story of Mary and Martha in the Gospel of Luke. The word implies a generosity plus togetherness, or being with. One Bible says that the spirit joins its help to our weakness.

It seems from this passage that God puts the Spirit into us in order that the Spirit can speak our deepest longings to God. The Spirit intercedes—another strange word that appears only here in all the Bible—intercedes with sighs too deep for words, it says. The Spirit says for us what we cannot seem to express. Our inexpressible groanings, as one Bible puts it. As someone said, we have our own personal groaner. And the job of that groaner is to convey to God our ongoing state and desires.

There are many things that might come between us and God. Things that might separate us from God. Paul makes a partial list of them. They are not cosmic but day to day and ordinary. Hardship: that is, the meeting of daily needs in times of want. Not enough food, no shelter, illness. Distress: that is, being without options, stressed and pressured, feeling stuck in a tight spot, no clear exit. Peril: that is, physical danger, risks and hazards. The sword: that is, war and violence.

Fear and worry and anger and suffering sometimes turn us to God, but just as often they keep us away—drive us away. We become silent as far as God is concerned. We are not interested in praying—either to talk to God or to listen. We feel estranged. Perhaps we want to be separate from God. Perhaps we are looking for reasons not to engage with God. Perhaps we really couldn’t care less about God at the moment. But the Spirit continues to keep the lines open, the channel open.

There is nothing in all creation that can separate us from God. Not even our own silence. It is our destiny, as Paul says, to be connected to God. God makes it happen. Not because of our own efforts or desires, but because of God’s. For better or for worse, we cannot mess this up. God will not leave us alone.

Made from God, when separated from God we feel incomplete and homeless. The Spirit resides in our heart, praying for us, so that we might be drawn home, and made whole.