Isaiah 43:1-7 (first published 11 January 2004)
So Poseidon gathered his clouds together, grasped his trident, stirred it around in the sea, and roused the rage of every wind that blows till earth, sea, and sky were hidden in cloud, and night sprang forth out of the heavens. Winds from east, south, north, and west fell upon Odysseus all at the same time, and the welling of the sea was tremendous, so that Odysseus' heart began to fail him. "Alas," he said to himself in his dismay, "what will become of me?" . . . But Athena resolved to help Odysseus, so she bound the ways of all the winds except one, and made them lie quite still; but she roused a good, stiff breeze from the north that should smooth the waters until Odysseus reached the land.Throughout Odysseus' long journey home, he can always count on the protecting presence of the goddess Athena, who has taken a special interest in him and his fate. He suffers great loss along the way, but in the end, he returns to his home in Ithaca and is united with his family. The affinity of Athena for Odysseus, however, pales in comparison with the love of God for his exiled people in today's reading. Many from the nation of Judah had been taken into exile in Babylonia, and two generations later, with the advent of Cyrus the Great of Persia, they had the opportunity to return to their homeland. Those who had lived in Judah prior to exile had experienced tremendous loss. The temple had been destroyed, the walls of Jerusalem had been torn down, and thousands had lost their lives. They and their descendants were understandably wary of leaving what had become a fairly comfortable situation for them. What if they met danger along the way? What if there were bandits on the road? What if the inhabitants of the land rejected them? What if the land itself refused to yield its fruit? In the face of these "what ifs," the prophet (traditionally called Deutero-Isaiah, or Second Isaiah) speaks words of great comfort to his people, which are from God:
The world is a scary place, and often a dangerous place. It is tempting to give into fear and complacency, but when God calls us to try something new, to move into the unknown, God also promises to be with us, not because God finds us worthy and brave, as Athena saw Odysseus, but because God created us and loves us.Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Because you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Do not fear, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you; I will say to the north, "Give them up," and to the south, "Do not withhold; bring my sons from far away and my daughters from the end of the earth-- everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made."
Psalm 29 (first published 9 January 2005)
Where was God when the tsunami hit? "The Lord sits enthroned over the
flood," the psalmist says. Was the tsunami truly an "act of God"? Are
any natural disasters really acts of God, in the sense that God ordained
them? The question of why God allows catastrophic events to occur is as
old as the belief in God. One possible answer to the question is that God
is punishing people for their sins. Such an attitude seems to get a boost
from the stories of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible,
but only if Abraham's probing question is ignored: "Will you indeed sweep
away the righteous with the wicked? . . . Shall not the Judge
of all the earth do what is just?" Those who perished in the flood waters
in south and southeast Asia were no more wicked than people anywhere else
in the world. Perhaps the flood was in response to a lack of faith among
the people? But Muslims, Christians, Hindus, and others lost their lives
pretty much indiscriminately. Interestingly, there was one group of
people living in the path of the tsunami that apparently suffered few or
no losses. This group consists of the inhabitants of several small
islands off the southern tip of India, tribes of people called the Jarawa,
Great Andamanese, Onges, Sentinelese, and Shompens. These people are
isolated culturally, religiously, and linguistically from the rest of the
world, and their lifestyle reflects that of their remote ancestors in the
Stone Age, perhaps 70,000 years ago. Some scientists suggest that their
closeness to nature allowed them to pick up on signs of impending disaster
that more "civilized" people missed. Is civilization itself the sin that
God is punishing? Perhaps in part, as I will explain below. I don't
think that divine punishment is a factor at all in the disaster, but sin
is a factor. However, it is not the sins of the people directly affected,
but rather the sins of wealthy and developed nations--and wealthy and
developed parts of the countries that were affected. "Civilization" often
leaves many people behind and in fact worse off, relatively speaking, than
they would have been without the influence of civilization. If a tsunami
of similar size were to hit southern Florida or southern California, both
of which are also densely populated, loss of life would be much less.
Why? First of all, warning systems are in place to protect the wealthier
parts of the world, but no such warning system is in place in the Indian
Ocean. Second, sturdier construction techniques and more stringent (or
existent) building codes yield structures that are not as fragile as the
huts of many of those who were killed. Third, lack of education, poverty,
and overpopulation--the detritus of civilization--feed on one another and
contribute to a disproportionate number of poor people living in areas and
under conditions that are more susceptible to natural disaster. (Why else
would Hurricane Mitch in Honduras kill thousands while four hurricanes in
Florida in 2004 killed only a handful?) God indeed sits enthroned on the
flood, but God is not responsible for all the death and destruction of
nature. Natural disasters act without prejudice, and innocent people are
often killed. However, people of faith who understand the nature of
structural injustice and can trace its effects can speak out and act in
ways to mitigate the effects of nature on the world's weakest and most
vulnerable people.
Acts 8:14-17 (first published 11
January 2004)
In the movie The Mission, priests are sent into the jungles of South America to convert the native people. After initial rejection, eventually many do respond to the gospel message. Before long, however, the greed of the colonial powers takes precedence over the spiritual state of the Guarani, and hundreds are slaughtered in order to confiscate their land. The justification which even many church leaders give is that the Guarani are not fully human. At best they are like human children, so their rights and concerns are of no importance. Throughout history groups of people have looked down their noses at their neighbors who were different in some way. The Greeks described those who couldn't speak their language as "barbarians" (from the onomatopoetic "bar-bar," an imitation of the sounds the non-Greeks made when they spoke). The descendants of Europeans who settled North America considered the Native Americans "savages." The white Australians considered their Aboriginal predecessors to be unintelligent and sub-human. Over the years in many countries, but especially in so-called "Christian" Europe, many of those who called themselves Christians despised the Jews in their midst. The early church was not immune to prejudice, either. The Jews looked down on the Samaritans as half-breeds and heterodox. When Samaritans began converting to Christianity, rather than welcome the new converts with open arms, the first thing the Christian leaders in Jerusalem did was to send two of their most authoritative figures, Peter and John, to check on the veracity of their conversion experiences (the Jerusalem church treats the Gentiles converted under Paul's preaching similarly at a later date). Perhaps that is the significance of the interesting aspect of this story that the Holy Spirit did not come upon the Samaritans until the arrival of Peter and John. I don't think that the delayed advent of the Spirit was so that the Samaritans could see the incredible power that Peter and John had, much less that Peter and John, as official representatives of the Jerusalem church, were the official bearers of the power of the gospel (contrast the story of Cornelius and his household in Acts 10, where Gentiles received the Spirit without any laying on of hands). On the contrary, I think the event described shows that Peter and John--and by implication the Jerusalem church--needed to witness firsthand that God had chosen the Samaritans as equals. Those of us in the industrialized world have much to learn from our brothers and sisters in the developing world concerning faith, love, and praxis. We need to build bridges to those who are different from us, whether those differences are in the areas of ethnicity, nationality, language, skin color, or doctrine. Blessed are the bridge-builders, for they shall be blessed, and learn, and grow stronger in their faith.
A group of prisoners were sitting around the yard one day telling jokes. The problem was that all of the prisoners in the group had been in the stir so long that they knew all the jokes that all the others did, so they were reduced to telling the same jokes over and over. In fact, they told the same jokes so many times that they began to number the jokes. "Number 21," one of the prisoners would say, and the others would roar with laughter. "Seventeen!" would cry another, and again the rest of the group broke out laughing. One day a new prisoner was added to the group, and he sat around watching the others. "Fifty-six," said one prisoner, and the others laughed until their sides hurt, all except the new guy, who sort of smiled and grinned, without really knowing why. After observing for about ten minutes with a bewildered look on his face, one of the regulars realized what the problem was, and explained the situation to him. "Oh, I see," said the new guy. "Let me try one!" "OK," said the other inmates. "Number 45!" said the new man triumphantly, but his face quickly lost its glow when he noticed that the other prisoners weren't laughing. Some were looking at their shoes, others were looking uncomfortably at one another, and still others were pretending to try to whistle a tune. "What's wrong?" asked the newbie. "I don't get it! Why aren't you all laughing?" After a moment of uncomfortable silence the oldest prisoner took it upon himself to be the bearer of bad news. "Son," he said, "you just don't know how to tell a joke!" It's important to tell a joke right, and it's important to tell a story right as well. In fact, the way someone tells a story is often just as important as the story itself. All three Synoptic Gospels include the story of Jesus' baptism, but Luke's rendition of the story is different--oddly different at first glance. In 3:15-17, Luke describes John the Baptist's warning to those Jews who have come out to receive his baptism, and in 3:21-22 he describes Jesus' baptism. However, in 3:18-20, before Jesus' baptism, Luke describes John's arrest and imprisonment. A close look at Luke's account of Jesus' baptism reveals another oddity: Luke doesn't say anything about who actually baptized Jesus! It's not that Luke thinks Jesus baptized himself or that someone besides John baptized him. Luke tells the story the way he does because he wants to stress that the start of Jesus' public ministry is a major turning point in history, the start of something completely new. John the Baptist was a great prophet, perhaps the greatest of the prophets who came before Jesus, in Luke's estimation, but he lived in a different era, the time before Jesus. That is the reason that Luke finishes his story about John the Baptist and gets him out of the way early in the gospel. The only other time John is mentioned, in chapter 7, he is already in prison and his ministry is over. Luke doesn't want his readers to have any doubt about the importance of the start of Jesus' ministry, and he is willing to modify the story he borrowed from Mark in an unusual way to make his point. The theme of "new beginnings" is an important one for Luke, as we will see as we follow Luke's version of the greatest story ever told throughout this church year (with occasional interruptions from the Gospel of John). It promises to be an interesting journey, because unlike the new prisoner, Luke does know how to tell a joke.