March 11, 2001
© 2001 Grant M. Gallup
Genesis 15: 1-12, 17-18 A promise to childless Abram
Psalm 27 Dominus, illuminatio
Philippians 3:17:4-1 Our commonwealth is in heaven
Luke 13:(22-30) 31-35 Herod the Fox, Jesus the Hen
The readings today are about destinations, travel plans, and pilgrimages. The people of God are always on the move, it's a Rolling Stone upon which Christ built his Church--this faith commitment of apostolic origin, and it had better be, or it gathers moss. We are called always to be out the door and in the wind. From the time of Abram/Abraham, whom God called to move on out of Ur of the Chaldees, and the first part of that trip, like all trips, was out of doors; indeed, A Star Trek future is proclaimed: "God brought him outside and said, 'Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you can.'"
But he didn't spend all the time contemplating, or we would still be waiting for his move. Looking towards the heavens puts the future in perspective--sub specie aeternitatis. God promises to form the future, to form a People. Abram, old and childless, is in a bad way for future prospects, in a culture built squarely on progeny as the only future. So he had, according to common legal practice in the ancient middle east, adopted a servant, who would take care of him in his old age and benefit as his heir. Somebody remembered here as Eliezer of Damascus. But YHWH intervened and said to Abram, "Get up, we're on the move." And YHWH makes a Pacto with Abram, the foundation covenant of all our faith. And not only our faith as Jesus Christians, for Abram is the father founder (and Sarah the mother founder) of all our hopes, Jews and Muslims too, all of whom look here for the fountains of our faith.
Here in this ancient tale we hear today how this happened. For both YHWH and Abram, this had to have been a pilgrimage of trust--for Abram is himself an Ancient of Days, and so the geezer God and the geezer believer commit themselves to each other in old age, and hope for progeny. The sacrifice, a very primitive one to us who are accustomed to symbolic, bloodless and sacramental or hygenic financial sacrifice, meant chunks of flesh laid out as prima facie evidence of life and death commitment. The visting YHWH walks amidst the sacrifice, like a Jewish momma in a kosher butcher shop, sniffing the the roasts and cutlets, in a ritual whereby the violators of a contract are promised that they will be likewise spatchcocked, skewered and laid out for the beasts and birds of prey, if they should ever violate the terms of the deal that they "cut," the pact they bound themselves to.
So YHWH binds godself to accept such slaughter, bound now to Abram by the promise of YHWH's own life pledged here in sacrifice. It's a frightful risk that Abram takes, because he puts himself in the hands of God. But God is taking the same risk, for progeny.
"It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God," says the letter to the Hebrews, and D. H. Lawrence responded: "but it is a much more fearful thing to fall out of them. . . Save me, O God, from falling into the ungodly knowledge of myself as I am without God. Let me never know, O God, let me never know what I am or should be when I have fallen out of your hands, the hands of the living God. . . Let me never know myself apart from the living God." Our Pacto with the living God puts us forever in those hands.
"To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, from the Nile (or the wadis of Egypt) to the river of the Euphrates. . . the Lord promises to be Abram's backup, his deliverer. "Your reward shall be very great, your descendants, old man, shall be numberless!"
Longing for a better land is there in Psalm 27 as well, for "What if I had not believed that I should see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.?" Fundamentalists of all the faith communities have always thought it obligatory to draw up real estate contracts for God's signature on their political solutions, and to make bloody war and to draft their tenuous peace/piece treaties and Camp David agreements over the land of the dead, always appealing to these texts as to quit claim deeds from the county surveyor's office. Indeed, the current usurping landlords in Palestine, the State of Israel, invented by the British foreign office on its own maps, founds its 20th century military imperium in Palestine firmly on such Bible stories, and supported by ancient traditions of land-grabbing, honored also in our hemisphere by Manifest Destiny and Westward the Course of Empire takes its sway. The U. S. practically considers Israel the newest star in its bomb-spangled flag. But Paul in the epistle speaks of another land: "Our commonwealth is in heaven," he writes, "and from it we await a liberator." "God alone," says St. Augustine, "is the counry of the soul." That ultimately must be our pilgrimage's goal. The eretz Israel of the soul is YHWH, who walks through the shambles (a word that means a slaughter-house) and binds himself to a people of faith, and not to the boundaries of a client state of the U.S. empire, invented to control the supply of oil in the middle East and to feed a mythology of world dominion.
Paul is writing to his first European church, the little one in Philippi, and he is writing because he's worried about some of the Jesus Christians there. When he speaks of the "enemies of the cross of Christ," in contrast to the friends of the cross, he is not speaking of pagans, of those outside the covenant religion. He couldn't care less about their praxis. He's upset because these "enemies of the cross of Christ" (in contrast the friends of the Cross) are also his fellow church members. He warns them about those who live in an earthly-minded way instead of a heavenly-minded way. He warns about those whose "god is their belly." And we often think that this means those who have fallen off their Lenten diets and gone back to martinis, sirloins, and hot fudge sundaes. Well, the commentaries don't give us such an easy out. . . for those "whose God is their belly" is symbolic language for all those who live life solely on the level of the senses, as if they were all that mattered: satisfying all the appetites, as we are urged to in TV advertisements. "The belly" also stands for the part of the anatomy that's slightly below it, but modestly out of sight until late night TV, or the Playboy channel. "The belly" stands for the canasta basica of consumerist capitalist culture, which commoditizes all of life. Paul reminds folks again that the earth with all its beauty and wonder, its capacity to please and inspire and delight, is not the ultimate goal of human destiny, nor is it all intended for the supermarket shelf. The Lord is going to change our present "vile bodies" into a body of glory. The biological equipment we presently have is limited (as you get older, you will learn more about its limits) and as we get older, the equipment breaks down, needs repair, and eventually quits. Our bodies die. To live as if the flesh--the sarx--were all there is forgets our heavenly commonwealth, forgets the commitment we made with YHWH when together we laid out the sarx--the meat--on the grill: our own and God's Our commitment to Another Country--the one we already have passports for--"our citizenship is in heaven," one translation puts it. We're on the way to eretz Israel, our real home, but that's not the same as Tel Aviv or our Florida retirement. Paul calls us not to forget the passports we have in our pockets. Jesus, too, calls us to the pilgrimage: "Will those who are saved be few?" he is asked. Always, when confronted with folks who dropped theological ínquiries into his Question Box, Jesus adroitly sidesteps, and responds to this query, "Will the saved be a small number?" by saying, "Well, they'll be skinny, because the gate is narrow." Those who are burdened with too much of this world, too much baggage, won't get through the strait gate, the narrow way, that leads to life. (I see northamerican guests here at the Casa in Managua who pack as if they were on safari, and arrive with enough stuff for a month's meals, as if we had no rice and beans in Managua. Others travel with a toothbrush and a backpack, and move easily as breeze.)
What will you do when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Sarah and Rachel and Rebekah come to sit down in the commonwealth of God, with folks from all over the world (not just from within the boundaries of the nation state of Israel, or the Bible Belt, or the Kingdom of Judah, or the Third Reich, or the Fourth Republic, or the United States of America) coming to sit down in the Commonwealth of God, with folks from all over the world, not just Jesus Christians, not just Jews and Muslims, but folks from Shinto temples and Zoroastrian funeral pyres, and Communist Great Halls of the People--all kinds of folk who respond in faith, coming to sit down in the Commonwealth of God, and you exclusivists cast out?
Jesus weeps over this--and note the wondrous feminine image here) "How often would I have gathered you together as a hen gathers her brood, but you would not." You would not come and get under my loving wings of protection. So Jesus reminds us that he is the Hen of God, and Herod is the Fox whose days are numbered--the political solutions which always work mayhem in the henyard. So Jesus beckons us to join him in pilgrimage. Joanna, wife of Herod Antipas' butler, was one of the squadron of women that supported Jesus' ministry and accompanied him, and through her spying on her husband Jesus doubtless got word of the Fox's plans, for it was when Antipas heard Jesus was in Galilee that he concluded the man was dangerous, and put out word that he wanted "to meet him." (Like President Aleman wanted to "meet" Dorothy Granada.) But Dorothy and Jesus stayed on the move. The unrelenting grace of God bids us to join Jesus in pilgrimage: "Behold, we go up to Jerusalem." To the city of Salem, the land of Peace.
Lent is the season of pilgrimage, not of settling down into an eretz Israel of our own political arrangement with the gods of the age. We are going somewhere, we are moving. Supposing Abram had settled down in Ur? And Paul got tenure at the University of Tarsus as chair of the philosophy department? And Jesus opted for cabinet making in Capernaum, learned to read and write and wrote a book with "Soul" in the title?
God is on the move and comes to every one, in the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor hanged in a Nazi concentration camp a few days before the end of World War II. They are about God's own pilgrimage, as well as ours:
All go to God when they are sore bestead,
Pray to God for succour, for God's peace, for bread,
For mercy for them, the sick, the sinning, the dead.
All of us do so, Christian and unbelieving.
All go to God when God is sore bestead,
Find God poor and scorned, without shelter or bread,
Whelmed under weight of the wicked, the weak, the dead.
Believers stand by God in God's hour of grieving.
God goes to everyone when sore bestead,
Feedeth body and the spirit with God's bread,
For Christians, pagans, alike God hangs there, dead.
And both alike forgiving, forgiving.
So it is not only God's people who are always going somewhere, always on the move. It is also God who is always going somewhere, always on the move. The Liturgical expression of this is always the Processional. Anglicans are so fond of it-- (and the Puritans hated Processionals, and forbade them) -- We never take the short way into church, nor the quick way to heaven, but a splendid and self-assured stroll with a place for everyone on the path, and detours with the incense, sending relish down the sanctuary side. The longest way round is the shortest way home. "Like a mighty army moves the Church of God." But also, like a pilgrim people. For "here we have no continuing city, but seek one to come," says St. Paul. And this same God comes to us each morning, passing in the midst of our sacrifice, binding Godself to our commitment, with God's own life. To bind us close to God, to promise us God's unrelenting presence, and promise us God's very life to back up the commitment. God walks in the midst of the "shambles" -- the way we have laid out our lives, in pieces and pledges-- and God promises always to accept what we offer.
GRANT GALLUP
CASA AVE MARIA
MANAGUA, NICARAGUA C.A.
gallup@tmx.com.ni
Please sign my guestbook and
view it.
Statistics courtesy of WebCounter.