Spokane Friends Meeting

Romans 13:8 Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.“

Talking about flying in the face of a usury based culture… “Owe no one anything.” How would you interpret such a mandate? Does it mean to pay your debts? What would that mean about a declaration of bankruptcy? Don’t get yourself indebted to another. Does being indebted make you obligated? I’ve been over my head in reading a Gonzaga Jesuit’s new book called ‘Rethinking Christian Forgiveness‘. There’s this interesting connection between giving and forgiving. To give some one something, according to some, creates an obligation that needs to be satisfied. By the same token, to have harmed someone creates an obligation to replace, repair, resolve the indebtedness that was created in the action that did harm. In the second case the courts wrestle with a huge problem, that of persons serving time needing to make reparations and being incarcerated and unable to work the interest on the debt continues to grow and once the sentence is served the offender has this enormous debt that is beyond their capacity to retire.

But that’s not the focus of Paul’s discourse. He clarifies things by providing an interesting caveat: “don’t owe anyone anything expect to love one another.” O.K. we can understand that. But the phrase goes on and the Greek has a surprise hiding in the word we have translated ‘another’ that for some reason doesn’t get reflected in our English translation. A literal translation of the text says that it is in loving the “different one” that the law of love is fulfilled. Paul is really pulling our chain. Go ahead, let you mind consider the implications or the consequences of loving the different one.

In the next verse Paul lists several of the Ten Commandments. He writes: 9The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet”; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” He says “Adultery, murder, theft, envy and any other commandment you’d like to name are summed up in this word: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” We know that such an expression wasn’t unique to Paul. As a Torah scholar he knew it from what he would have known from the Law of the Priest, we know it as Leviticus 19:9-18.

9When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. 10You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the Lord your God.

11You shall not steal; you shall not deal falsely; and you shall not lie to one another. 12And you shall not swear falsely by my name, profaning the name of your God: I am the Lord.

13You shall not defraud your neighbor; you shall not steal; and you shall not keep for yourself the wages of a laborer until morning. 14You shall not revile the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind; you shall fear your God: I am the Lord.

15You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbor. 16You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not profit by the blood of your neighbor: I am the Lord.

17You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself. 18You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.

The context is quite a description of how we are to treat others. It is the very core of ethical monotheism.

Food is to be left in the field and vineyard for the poor and the alien, those who have to glean in order to survive; stealing, wage theft, dealing fraudulently, swearing, making fun or taking advantage of the disabled, specifically the deaf or blind are proscribed as is judging someone based on their wealth or position. Did you catch that about not benefiting from the blood of your neighbor? Can you imagine what that might mean? One more thing, bearing a grudge and taking revenge against anyone is also forbidden.

We have no idea how old is this language. But we have every reason to believe that it circulated in oral form from the time immediately after the Exodus until, five hundred years before the Apostle Paul, it became hard copy. Interesting enough Jesus was of the same opinion. Remember when Jesus was asked what was the greatest commandment in the law? He conflates the famous in passage Deuteronomy 6:5: 4Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. 5You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. with the last line of the Leviticus passage you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Of course there is the perennial issue about who is one’s neighbor. I like the fact that the Greek uses a word best translated ‘nigh one’, one who is near in time, place or relationship. How about that ‘nigh one’ and “neighbor.” He clarifies that by saying “Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.” Being a Torah scholar, fulfillment of the Law was a big thing with Paul.

That’s the first half of our text for today. So after Paul instructs us about owing no one anything but the requirement of loving them he throws us a curve: 11Besides this, he writes you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. Paul calls us to open our eyes, pick up our ears, our minds and our hearts so we become fully aware. And here is why:

08For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; 12the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; 13let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. 14Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

Paul’s language suggests that some within the church may have been engaged in questionable living, living in ways that seem to thrive in the darkness of night. It’s an accusation of being complicit with the injustice, oppression and violence of the culture. One of the problems of living in the night is that you tend to want to sleep in the day. Paul is clear that people who put the flesh first have yet to wake up. Paul’s call is to open our eyes, our ears, our minds and our hearts.

What Paul points in our putting on the Lord Jesus Christ is, at least from a Quaker perspective is the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, who clothes us, or fills us in such a spiritual gift, this gift of God’s radical love that carries us beyond our own nights,through and beyond our own desires of the flesh and to live not just for ourselves but for the neighbor. Such a Christian life is a daily practice, a continual exercise of practicing Christ’s presence in our life.

If you’d like a secular illustration go watch the movie The Matrix. Remember how the young computer hacker awakens to the reality that humanity has been imprisoned by a world of machines in a net work that harvests the heat and electrochemical energy of human bodies to power the machines themselves. The minds of humanity is busied within a artificial reality.

Paul’s call to wake up is a call to live in the light of day by putting on the Lord Jesus Christ. +Putting on Jesus is living with Jesus as the sole motivation driving us forward. I’ve got to tell you that a culture wrapped in darkness won’t take kindly to your meddling in their fraudulent schemes. When asked on the heels of the English Civil War which side Quakers were on, Edward Burrough, a wonderful early Quaker said, “We are not for names, nor men, nor titles of government, nor are we for this party, nor against the other…we are for justice and mercy and truth and peace, and true freedom, that these may be exalted in our nation.”

Called to be Saints

Paul’s letter to the Romans begins this way: 1:1Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, 2which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, 3the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh 4and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, 5through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for the sake of his name, 6including yourselves who are called to belong to Jesus Christ, 7To all God’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Do you realize that Paul’s salutation to the church in Rome is one long, complex and confusing sentence in which he delineates his theology. We face several challenges that make it difficult for us to understand what Paul wrote, the first being simply trying to make sense out of such complex sentence structures. secondly, Paul wrote in the common Greek of his day attempting to translate Hebrew concepts into what was, for all intents and purposes, a foreign language, a language for which he had to coin words that had never existed before. And then, as we attempt to translate Paul’s ideas into more modern languages, we further distort those concepts. William Tyndale, somewhere around 1500, made the first English translation of Paul’s letters working from Greek texts. Up until then English translations were the result of further translating the Latin Vulgate into an English that most of us can’t understand today.

We make the erroneous assumption that what Paul penned were timeless and generally applicable advices when his intention was to address specific individuals and communities about specific situations. Unless we have an understanding of the cultural situation that Paul was addressing his words can not be applied with any validity to life in the 21st century. Of course there are those who argue that all we need to interpret scripture is scripture itself and while I’m a full supporter of the devotional practice of Lexio Divina, we can’t even understand our own attempts at communicating what’s on our minds without a grasp of context. But probably the biggest hurdle we face is our own theological bias. This is the predictable problem with putting too much faith in paraphrased editions and one of the weaknesses to which the translators of the New International Version admit.

All those are simpler issues with interpretation and translation and don’t begin to touch the more complex problems in understanding Paul. We know little of the Hebrew methods of teaching in which Paul learned and then employed. We know little of his understanding of Scripture from the perspective of a Pharisee. Remember he was proud to identify himself as a Pharisee of the Pharisees. To be a Pharisee was to be a separatist, the equivalent of being a member of the Holiness movement. And lastly, we don’t grasp the deeper mystical aspects of Paul’s Hebrew theology.

So, what was Paul getting to in these beginning words of the Letter to the Romans? I’ve worked over this lengthy sentence to try and discern the purposeful core of it. Why was it that it was important to write to the Romans that he was a servant of Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel? He says that he had received grace and apostleship for a singular purpose: to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for the sake of his (Jesus’ ) name,

In the mid 19th century, in commenting on the Apostle Paul’s salutation in Romans 1, B. W. Johnson wrote: “In the Apostolic age there were no recognized believers but obedient believers.” No nominal Christians, no cultural Christians. The whole purpose of Paul’s ministry was to call Gentiles to the obedience of faith.

That’s an interesting phrase, isn’t it: “the obedience of faith.” Such a simple phrase challenges our ideas of how belief leads to sharing in God’s promise. While it is difficult to keep in mind in the midst of holiday celebrations, shopping, lights and decorations, and joyful carols, Advent is intended to be a season of fasting and there are a variety of ways that this time of contemplation works itself out in the season. Reflection on the violence and evil in the world and in our selves cause us to cry out to God to make things right—or as the composer of our Advent Hymn, O Come, O Come Emmanuel put it “to put death’s dark shadows to flight”. The discomfort of living in the exile of the present can make us want to escape to what must be a better place, to look forward to a future Exodus. And our own sinfulness and need for grace leads us to pray for the Holy Spirit to renew his work in conforming us into the image of Christ. Such a personal spiritual reformation doesn’t lead us to a Christianized nirvana, like a candle blown out. According to Paul, it leads to an obedience of faith; a commitment to work to continue Christ’s work, the work of the prophets before him; the effort to restore God’s creation.

We miss that when our understanding of faithfulness becomes a simple belief in being miraculously lifted from this plane of existence to enjoy a heavenly audience. Without a doubt, when the Church celebrates Advent she makes present this ancient expectancy of the Messiah but it isn’t about some futuristic coming but Christ coming now to empower us to the obedience of faith.

And dare we imagine what that might look like? One traditional goal of the Advent season is to make our souls fitting abodes for the Redeemer. Christ living in us.

Susan and I have been keeping our home ready for potential buyers – we’ve cleared away what seems tons of our possessions – they called it depersonalizing. When we began it was summer time. We’ve had to buy new winter coats because all our winter wear is buried somewhere in that container in the drive way. Each time someone comes to look we vacuum the carpets, swisher the hardwoods, polish woodwork, sinks and faucets. That’s like the beginning of Advent, getting ready for Christ to make Christ’s self known. It would be nice if it got easier but next, as Paul declares himself to be, we too become ‘a servant of Jesus Christ’. What’s next is to see the world and others through Christ’s eyes. It causes us to see how injustice, oppression, violence destroys God’s intention for creation. Now you can understand this phrase of bringing about the obedience of faith. We are called to challenge injustice, oppression and violence, not simply bemoan it or worse look past it.

Phil Gulley recently wrote: “Progress is not inevitable. It is not some great ideal toward which the universe magically bends. Fair play and progress are the result of dedicated people rolling up their sleeves and putting their hands to the plow. The universe will only bend toward justice if we make it so. It is not inevitable. It is the consequences of our unswerving dedication to a world restored. Justice is never a sure thing. The moment we think that justice is inevitable, with no effort on our part, is the moment it begins to recede.

“As Quakers, ours is a double call. Our first responsibility is to be vigilant for justice. When people are diminished, when their rights and dignity are threatened, we must not be silent and still. The second is to love those with whom we disagree, remembering that a nation’s moral stature is only secure when its citizens refuse to hate. As Quakers we must model the reconciliation we promote, even when,especially when, reconciliation has become a minor key in our nature’s song.”

A word that has been playing on my mind for the last week or so. It’s the adjective “obsequious.” While it’s not part of our common vocabulary and it’s a word with which we well may have to come to terms. It means to be excessively servile. Some synonyms are: subservient, submissive, slavish, even brown-nosing, boot-licking, smarmy, a noun might be a ‘toady.’ It’s the opposite of standing against injustice, oppression and violence. As a servant of Christ we are called to the obedience of faith for the sake of Christ’s name. It may be a hard row to hoe, but according to Paul you are called to be a saint, set apart for the gospel of God.

 
Called

The Book of Isaiah begins with Isaiah receiving a vision of the future of the kingdom of Judah. The vision of Isaiah son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.

2Hear, O heavens, and listen, O earth; for the Lord has spoken: I reared children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against me. 3The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s crib; but Israel does not know, my people do not understand. 4Ah, sinful nation, people laden with iniquity, offspring who do evil, children who deal corruptly, who have forsaken the Lord, who have despised the Holy One of Israel, who are utterly estranged! 5Why do you seek further beatings? Why do you continue to rebel? The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. 6From the sole of the foot even to the head, there is no soundness in it, but bruises and sores and bleeding wounds; they have not been drained, or bound up, or softened with oil. 7Your country lies desolate, your cities are burned with fire; in your very presence aliens devour your land; it is desolate, as overthrown by foreigners. 8And daughter Zion is left like a booth in a vineyard, like a shelter in a cucumber field, like a besieged city.

At the beginning of the sixth chapter we read what is called: Isaiah’s Call. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. 2Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. 3And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” 4The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke.

5And I said: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” 6Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. 7The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.” 8Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!”

9And he said, “Go and say to this people: ‘Keep listening, but do not comprehend; keep looking, but do not understand.’ 10Make the mind of this people dull, and stop their ears, and shut their eyes, so that they may not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and comprehend with their minds, and turn and be healed.” 11Then I said, “How long, O Lord?” And he said: “Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is utterly desolate; 12until the Lord sends everyone far away, and vast is the emptiness in the midst of the land.

So, why is it that Isaiah’s call is in Chapter 6 rather than chapter 1? And why is it that his call is dated by the reign of King Uzziah of Judah? What does Uzziah have to do with it at all?

Since David united Israel and began his reign in 1010 God had great plans for his chosen people. In Isaiah chapter 2 we hear: “The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. 2In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it. 3Many peoples shall come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. 4He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. 5O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!

After a good solid beginning things fell apart for Israel. The kingdom split into Judah and Israel and were plundered by their enemies. Idol worship became common place. The security and prosperity that Israel had known in its first one hundred years disappeared. The golden age had ended. It was 268 years later, with the rise of Jeroboam II in Israel and Uzziah in Judah, that harmony, prosperity and security finally returned. As Judah and Israel regained the status of a ‘superpower’ and the Temple and Jerusalem had become a national and religious center Isaiah anticipates the realization of Israel’s ultimate goal. During this prosperous time the prophets hoped for a national religious reawakening. For the first time in very long time a time as glorious as the days of David and Solomon, was achievable. The power and prosperity in the time of Uzziah promised to be the unfolding of an era in which Israel would be able to realize its biblical destiny as we just read from Isaiah chapter 2. They could become the source of guidance for all humankind.

Uzziah was 16 when he began a 52 year reign as king of Judah. The first 24 years of his reign were as co-regent with his father, Amaziah. His reign marked the height of Judah’s power. Early in his reign he stayed faithful to God but as II Chronicles 26 reports. But – well, let me simply read it:

But after Uzziah became powerful, his pride led to his downfall. He was unfaithful to the Lord his God, and entered the temple of the Lord to burn incense on the altar of incense. 17 Azariah the priest with eighty other courageous priests of the Lord followed him in. 18 They confronted King Uzziah and said, “It is not right for you, Uzziah, to burn incense to the Lord. That is for the priests, the descendants of Aaron, who have been consecrated to burn incense. Leave the sanctuary, for you have been unfaithful; and you will not be honored by the Lord God.”

19 Uzziah, who had a censer in his hand ready to burn incense, became angry. While he was raging at the priests in their presence before the incense altar in the Lord’s temple, leprosy broke out on his forehead. 20 When Azariah the chief priest and all the other priests looked at him, they saw that he had leprosy on his forehead, so they hurried him out. Indeed, he himself was eager to leave, because the Lord had afflicted him. 21 King Uzziah had leprosy until the day he died.

Rabbinic sources say that when Uzziah became powerful, he grew so arrogant he acted corruptly, he trespassed against God by entering the Temple to offer incense in a rite that could only be performed by priests. The priests confronted the king. They told him to get out of the Temple. He got angry with them and leprosy broke out on his forehead … and they rushed him out…” There is a Rabbinic principle that when person contracts leprosy they are considered dead. The first words of this Isaiah passage that reads: “In the year that King Uzziah died…” isn’t a reference to Uzziah’s actually death but rather the year in which he became a leper.

His punishment corresponds to his sin. Because of his haughtiness, feeling himself worthy of entering an area of the Temple restricted to priests, Torah commands that as a leper he must be sent away from the Temple and the camp of Israel! A leper, being in the Temple had the effect of making it unclean, defiled. His own sin was quite reflective of his generation. Just like Uzziah, the prosperity and wealth of the people led to their haughtiness. Their pride was more important to them than their faithfulness to God! Their own accomplishments became their idols.

Becoming this light for all nations and people was the purpose for which God had blessed Israel with wealth and security. God intended for Israel to use their new found prosperity towards achieving this great goal. Instead Israel became greedy with its wealth; its society became both affluent and haughty.

This disappointment is reflected in the continuation of the above prophecy 6For you have forsaken the ways of your people, O house of Jacob. Indeed they are full of diviners from the east and of soothsayers like the Philistines, and they clasp hands with foreigners. 7Their land is filled with silver and gold, and there is no end to their treasures; their land is filled with horses, and there is no end to their chariots. 8Their land is filled with idols; they bow down to the work of their hands, to what their own fingers have made. 9And so people are humbled, and everyone is brought low— do not forgive them!

To his dismay, Isaiah now foresees God’s anger and impending punishment of Israel for their misuse of this prosperity. In another chapter God compares God’s own efforts to help Israel prosper to the efforts of a dedicated farmer working hard to assure that his vineyard would produce the finest grapes. Despite the farmer’s tireless efforts, the vineyard produced ‘sour grapes.’ The farmer, so angered and disappointed, decides to allow his vineyard to be trampled upon. So too, God has been angered, for even though God had done everything possible to ensure that Israel would achieve their goal, the exact opposite happened. For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting; And He hoped for justice, but behold He found injustice, For equity, but behold iniquity”

So now we have a new ear to hear Isaiah’s call. He reports in the sixth chapter: I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple. 2 Above Him stood the seraphim; each one had six wings: with twain he covered his face and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. 3 And one called unto another, and said: Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory. In reaction Isaiah says: Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts. … 9 And (God) He said: ‘Go, and tell this people: hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not. 10 Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they, seeing with their eyes, and hearing with their ears, and understanding with their heart, return, and be healed.’ 11 Then said I: ‘Lord, how long?’ And He answered: ‘Until cities be waste without inhabitant, and houses without man, and the land become utterly waste, 12 And the LORD have removed men far away, and the forsaken places be many in the midst of the land.

On a first reading it seems that Isaiah sees God’s presence in the Temple surrounded by angels after which God appoints him to be his messenger. But why must such an enigmatic vision precede God’s charge to Isaiah of his mission? When we listen more closely to Isaiah he reports that he saw God himself, on a thrown, high and lifted up, and only the ‘skirts of his robe’ are still in the Temple. The “seraphim” cover their eyes and begin to move their wings. Even the angels’ recitation of “kadosh, kadosh…” reflects that God’s holiness will not allow God to remain in this Temple defiled by the leper Uzziah. Isaiah’s vision is not of God residing in the Temple but that of God actually leaving the Temple. God’s presence that had been once ‘concentrated’ in the Temple, has now left that spot, and instead fills the entire earth!

This suggests that since it is specifically during this vision that Isaiah receives his mission to inform the people that because of their wayward behavior God will soon come and punish them: “…until towns lie waste without inhabitants and houses without people and the ground lies waste and desolate, for God will banish the people…”

In chapter two, during the early years of Uzziah’s reign, the potential existed for the Temple to become the international symbol of God’s presence on earth. Symbolically, this would be represented by the Shechina, God’s holiness, dwelling in the Temple. Becoming this light for all nations and people was the purpose for which God had blessed Israel with wealth and security. God intended for Israel to use their new found prosperity towards achieving this great goal. Instead Israel became greedy with its wealth; its society became both affluent and haughty. Here is the bumper sticker: He hoped for justice, but behold He found injustice, For equity, but behold iniquity” But now that Israel has become haughty, just as Uzziah had to leave the Temple abandoned by God, Israel, now abandoned by God, will be lead out of the promised land into Babylonian captivity.

Is this lesson for us? Have we become affluent and haughty, willing to take inappropriate liberties with God’s creation? In looking in our land would God find for justice? Would God find equity instead of iniquity?

Despite his gloomy predictions, Isaiah’s prophecy concludes on a note of hope. Despite the forthcoming destruction and exile, a remnant shall indeed return. The thirteenth verse reads: 13Even if a tenth part remain in it, it will be burned again, like a terebinth or an oak whose stump remains standing when it is felled.” The holy seed is its stump. Or, is that our call, to seek to be that remnant that grows from a burnt over stump?

Judaism is strictly monotheistic. God is an absolute one, indivisible, and incomparable being who is the ultimate cause of all existence. It follows that so called “foreign gods,” according to the Babylonian Talmud, simply don’t exist. The story of Jonah is grounded in the belief in the imminent God of creation. The story of Jonah is an elaborate presentation of the ethical implications of monotheism. It is a story that leveraged the children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob out of the limits of their tribalism by learning the meaning of monotheism. On its surface, it is a simple story. It is that of a reluctant Old Testament prophet who is first tossed out of Israel by God then tossed over the railings of a ship by sailors, tossed up on the shore by the big fish and then tossed into the city of Nineveh.

To create the necessary tension, the author of the story has God calling the reluctant prophet to the most pagan places in the whole ancient world, a place well known to all Judeans. That place was Nineveh, the Capitol city of Assyria, the location of King Sennacherib’s palace, home to some six hundred thousand inhabitants. It boasted of the most powerful military force of its day and was a constant threat not only to Israel and Judah but to every other nation of its time. Today, the site of Nineveh is Mosul.

History tells us that the Assyrians worshiped Ishtar: the goddess of fertility, love, sex, war and power. The British Museum displays a spectacular wall relief of the Assyrian siege of Lachesis, arguably Jerusalem at the time of Hezekiah. It shows multiple images of Judeans being impaled and piles of Judean heads – ample evidence that the Assyrian soldiers were paid on a piece work basis. That should make it a bit more understandable that when Jonah received a call from God to preach repentance to the people of Nineveh, instead of obeying and going straight to Nineveh, he went to Joppa and booked passage on a ship heading the absolute opposite way. Who could blame him.

In delving into the story of Jonah I found myself wanting to know what, in the middle of this violent and oppressive culture, enabled its King and the people to hear the message of judgment and grace that Jonah offered?

Along with worshiping Ishtar, the Assyrians also worshiped the goddess Nanshe. She was the goddess of social justice. She nurtured orphans, provided for widows and took in refugees from war torn areas. She guaranteed boundaries, standardized weights and sizes of reed baskets and silver. One hymn about her says: “She is concerned for the orphan and concerned for the widow. She does not forget the man who helps others, she is a mother for the orphan; Nance, a carer for the widow, who always finds advice for the debt-slave; the lady who gives protection for refugees. She seeks out a place for the weak. She swells his collecting basket for him; she makes his collecting vessel profitable for him. For the righteous maiden who has taken her path, Nance chooses a young man of means. Nance raises a secure house like a roof over the widow who could not remarry.

Even among such a near diabolical people there already existed a voice of compassion, a conscience that called Assyrians to the best in themselves. It is so easy for us to dehumanize a people by focusing only on the worst. As ethical monotheists we understand that regardless of whatever a people might call their God, there is only one. And part of that Good News is that the one God, regardless of what name people use for God, God calls each of us to treat each other with love and compassion.

In the first chapter our hero, in disobedience to God’s direction, books passage on a ship going the opposite way that God called him to go. On board ship a great storm rose up. The sailors were afraid and began calling upon their idols to deliver them. They woke Jonah where they found him asleep in the bottom of the ship and asked him to pray to his God to protect them.

Though the sailors cast lots to see who had brought this disastrous storm upon them and the lot fell upon Jonah, he had already admitted that he was a Hebrew and was running away from the Creator God. Jonah asked the men to throw him overboard. At first they resisted and instead they tried harder to bring the ship to land. Finally Jonah convinced them that he was the one whose disobedience had brought punishment upon himself and others around him. Reluctantly the sailors agreed to throw him into the sea.

As soon as Jonah was tossed into the raging sea the storm broke and everything was calm. Chapter two tells us that instead of drowning he was swallowed by a great fish in whose belly he spent three days and nights. When Jonah had had his fill of seaweed and fishy captivity he cried out to God “Those who worship vain idols forsake their true loyalty.” God spoke to the fish who promptly vomited Jonah out onto dry ground.

Being alive and on dry land Chapter three has God repeating Jonah’s commission. He made his way to the city of Nineveh where he declared the judgment of God on the residents. After that he climbed to the top of a mountain to watch the Lord destroy them.

But here’s the problem. The king and people of Nineveh took Jonah seriously. They put on sackcloth and ashes and showed that they truly repented of their wickedness. But now we need to focus on Jonah rather than the people of Nineveh. I harbor a suspension that Jonah feared all along that that would the case? He knew that God is merciful and offers grace to all who ask. For most of the Jewish Scriptures God is understood as a tribal God — The God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the God of Israel, our God. This is the God who actively fights for the tribe, as in the story of the Exodus. But over time the people’s understanding of God matured.

The Jews come to re-understand God as much more than a tribal God, they begin to grasp that God as, well, God, wasn’t just the God of Israel but of all creation. And I have to believe that they begin to see others in a different way. This isn’t as difficult for us because we have Jesus saying: You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? (Matthew 5:43-47)

Jonah wasn’t there. He loathed these people to whom he was sent to declare judgment and mercy. He decided that his role was to make the necessary pronouncements and then sit back and watch the destruction these people rightfully deserved. And then when it doesn’t play out the way he’d hoped and expected, that is these, oh, what’s the recent appellation, oh yes, these ‘deplorables’ actually turn their lives around and receive grace from almighty God– Jonah is dismayed. Imagine. Preaching Good News, having it received by open hearts and not celebrating. “O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. 3And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.”

No, he had the quintessential pity party, worms and all. God had to teach Jonah a lesson, a lesson that is for us as well. Where he went to watch the imminent destruction God let a bush grow up to protect Jonah from the hot sun. And then, just as unceremoniously, God commissioned a worm to killed it. Jonah again wanted to die. was more concerned about the injustice of God killing an innocent plant than for the untold thousands who where spared God’s punishment. “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. 11And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”

Can that be us? Finally, God had Jonah’s attention. The concluding story about the bush is a wonderful illustration of what it looks like to put our trust in politics rather than God. Jonah is obsessed with the inanimate and temporary plant while God has been busy saving a city full of people about which Jonah doesn’t give a rip. God showed Jonah the foolishness of the fact that he was more concerned for the gourd than he was for the people. The gourd, which had no soul, received more attention from the prophet Jonah than thousands of people who were destined to eternal punishment.

Even though these Assyrians were clearly Gentiles, we learn, along with Jonah, that all the earth belongs to God; that God isn’t blind to corruption and oppression and all forms of evil where ever it is occurring; and God cares for all the people Gentile and Jew alike. God is merciful, not just to his chosen but even to worst of humanity you can imagine.

In literature the term everyman has come to mean an ordinary individual who is placed in extraordinary circumstances and with whom the audience or reader is able to easily identify. Jonah is our everyman. What lessons do we learn about ourselves from him? Right now, hours away from counting votes, I think there are people on both sides of the fray who have taken a page from Jonah and expect to sit back and watch people get what they deserve. It’s not a pretty picture.

How do we move past a tribal God? How do we love our enemies and accept that God also loves them? Once we see that God is not just the God of our tribe, our people, the God of those who are like us then we are forced to admit that maybe we should love them.  Even if for no other reason than God loves them. When we recall the horrible cost of hatred and fear of the other, it is good to remind ourselves that we have moved past a tribal God. And that God calls us to a higher way of living.

For our Jewish neighbors Yom Kippur, their Day of Atonement, fell this year on October 11th and 12. Five days after Yom Kippur, they entered a week long festival call Sukkot. Sukkot is a Hebrew word meaning “booths” or “huts.” This distinct traditional festival takes seriously the commandment in Leviticus 23:42 that all who are born Israelites are to dwell in booths seven days. So they erect flimsy, makeshift, temporary small shelters in which to live. It is the Jewish festival of giving thanks for the bounty of the earth during the fall harvest. It’s a time to pray for all the peoples of the world remain safe and prosperous, for those who struggle with terrorist to be vigilant and that those who foment violence to change their ways. It calls attention to the frailty and transience of life and in the end our dependence on God. But more to the point it reminds contemporary Jews of what it was like for their ancestors as they wandered in the wilderness for forty years.  Last Sunday was the last day of Sukkot.

II Samuel 5, tells us that when David was 37-years-old his men captured from the Jebusites the centuries old “stronghold of Jerusalem.” He began an extensive building program in Jerusalem which he renamed “the City of David.” II Samuel 7 tells us that Now when the king (That’s David.)was settled in his house, and the Lord had given him rest from all his enemies around him, the king said to the prophet Nathan, “See now, I am living in a house of cedar, but the ark of God stays in a tent.” Nathan said to the king, “Go, do all that you have in mind; for the Lord is with you.”

David knew what it was like to live alfresco. As a youth and then as a young man, when his family put him to shepherding in the wilderness, he lived in a tent. After he was anointed by Samuel as the successor to Saul  as part of the national military and then as a leader of the insurrection he had lived in tents. And now, after God had brought him through all the struggles and the land was at peace David was living in luxury – in a house made of cedar – which was the finest residential construction available.

After Nathan told David to go ahead and build God a house he got a wake up call from God. “Go and tell my servant David: Thus says the Lord: Are you the one to build me a house to live in? I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle. Wherever I have moved about among all the people of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, “Why have you not built me a house of cedar?”

Without any prayerful consideration Nathan had glibly told his King that whatever he’d like to do would certainly be pleasing to God. If David wanted to take God out of a tent and build for him a temple, what could be wrong with that? For some reason God’s response was “Thank you David, but no thank you.” And Nathan had to go back and deliver that message to his King.

Was God questioning David’s motives? Or was it something about God that caused David’s offer to be rejected? Or maybe both? In practical terms a house for God would be a permanent home for the Ark of the Covenant, the iconic symbol of God’s presence with Israel.  Since the extraordinary march from Sinai the Ark preceded the people, especially when they crossed the Jordan river into the promised land on dry ground.  It was carried around the city of Jericho before the walls fell.  Joshua with all the people in attendance set up the Ark as a ritual site in the ancient city of Shiloh. In the futile attempt to enlist God’s help in defeating the Philistines 1st Samuel tells us that the Ark was brought from Shiloh to lead the army into battle. After twice being defeated by the Philistines they captured it. Each place where the Philistines kept the Ark misfortune happened, all the way from an outbreak of boils, to hemorrhoids to an infestation of mice. After seven months of one misery after another the Philistines returned the Ark to the Israelites. It was left in a field in Judah until the curious neighbors looked into it which result in the whole community being afflicted. They petitioned to have it removed. It spent the next twenty years in the care of Eleazar. It was from here that David decided to have had it moved to Jerusalem. On its way one of the drivers of the cart on which the Ark was carried was smitten when he put out his hand to keep the Ark from falling. Instead of carrying the Ark on to Jerusalem, fearful of it and its power David left the Ark with Odeb-edom for three months. When it’s new keeper prospered greatly David changed his mind and had the Ark brought to Jerusalem.

We could imagine David thinking that if God was given a place of God’s own God would be grateful and bless David even more than he had already. Or maybe he thought that if God had God’s own place God would have some interest in keeping the city of Jerusalem and the nation of Israel safe. One thing seems certain, David brought the Ark to Jerusalem to consolidate his authority as the civil and religious leader and solidify his support in the nation. Having heard the stories and now having seen the power of the Ark David realized that such power independent from his rule as King could be a problem. To provide a permanent home he would, like those before him, benefit from its power but to do so he had to domesticate God’s power. Regardless of David’s agenda, what is clear is that he is told it wasn’t for him to build a box which would hold God.

In responding to David, the first thing God explains is that God never commanded any of Israel’s leaders to build for him a house. God seems to be just fine with the tabernacle. What do you think of the notion that the people of God are, as is God’s own self, not meant to be settled in houses of cedar. What is symbolized by God’s preference for an uncertain structure of the four walls of a temporary dwelling?

In the time of Jesus the people of Galilee were the most religious Jews in the world, they were most highly educated in the Scriptures. More famous Jewish teachers came from Galilee than any other place. Interpretation of Scripture was debated with enthusiasm. It was into that environment that Jesus was born, educated and spent his ministry. Local synagogues hired teachers who were called ‘rabbi’ and though he had responsibilty for the education of the village they were only authorized to teach accepted interpretations of the law. Children began their studies of the Torah at age 4 or 5 memorizing large portions of it.  The best students continued their studies including the prophets and writings and began to learn the interpretations of the Oral Torah. A very few of the most outstanding students were allowed to study with a famous rabbi – they were called disciples. Their teachers saw themselves as passing on a life style to their students. This was the route Jesus took to be acknowledged as a ‘rabbi’. Unlike most rabbis, Jesus appears to be a type of rabbi believed to have the authority to make new interpretations and pass legal judgments. Crowds were amazed because Jesus taught with authority not as their Torah teachers (Matt. 7:28-29). Jesus said that he didn’t come to do away with God’s Torah or Old Testament, he came to complete it and to show how to correctly keep it. One of the ways Jesus interpreted the Torah was to stress the importance of the right attitude of heart as well as the right action (Matt. 5:27-28).  This is one of the most significant concepts of the New Testament. Jesus, the divine Messiah,  taught like a rabbi. He interpreted God’s word and completed it. He demonstrated obedience to it. He chose disciples whom he would empower to become like him and led them around until they began to imitate him. Jesus showed his contemporaries and us that God can’t be domesticated and interpretations of the Words of God were not stagnant and unchanging but alive and applicable to a changing world. The Sabbath, Jesus said, was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

As lovely as is the image of the dove, Celtic spirituality found that the wild goose was a much more appropriate symbol of the Holy Spirit. Wild geese are, well, wild. Untamed, uncontrolled. They make a lot of noise and have a habit of biting those who try to contain or capture them. That has been the experience of Christians with the Holy Spirit for over two thousand years. Repeatedly, when an orthodoxy has taken firm control of the religious establishment, the Spirit of God has broken free and has often bitten those who tried to constrain it. Our understanding of the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit is simply that such spiritual reality extends to us today. Nathan had to tell David, Thus says the Lord: Are you the one to build me a house to live in? I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle. Wherever I have moved about among all the people of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, “Why have you not built me a house of cedar?”  Could it be that we need to hear the same message as we attempt to shore up established and acculturated orthodoxy rather than being open to the fresh breathings of God’s spirit.?

In the Sixty ninth Psalm David describes himself as a poor, despised and lowly individual who lacks even a single friend to comfort him. More numerous than the hairs on my head are those who hate me without reason… Must I then repay what I have not stolen? Mighty are those who would cut me down, who are my enemies without cause… It is for Your sake that I have borne disgrace, that humiliation covers my face. I have become a stranger to my brothers, an alien to my mother’s sons. … Those who sit by the gate talk about me. I am the taunt of drunkards… Disgrace breaks my heart, and I am left deathly sick. I hope for solace, but there is none; and for someone to comfort me, but I find no one. They put gall into my meal, and give me vinegar to quench my thirst…

This is the voice of a tormented soul who has experienced untold humiliation and disgrace. How can this be the voice of the mighty, righteous and beloved servant of God? At what point in his life had he felt so alone, so disgraced, and so undeserving of love and friendship? In this Psalm he reveals that he was shunned by his own brothers (“I have become a stranger to my brothers”), the subject of gossip by the Torah sages who sat in judgment at the gates (“those who sit by the gate talk about me”) and ridiculed by the drunkards on the street corners (“I am the taunt of drunkards”)? Of what was David guilty arouse such ire and contempt?

It isn’t until the Prophet Samuel makes an unusual and unexpected visit to Bethlehem that we first meet David. Samuel invites the elders of the community and the head of the supreme court of Torah law, the most distinguished leaders of his generation, Jesse to a feast to anoint a new king to replace the rejected King Saul. The elders feared that Samuel had somehow learned of some grievous sin taking place in their town. Jesse became anxious when Samuel inexplicably invited his sons to attend the feast. Samuel’s big surprise was that the new king would be one of Jesse’s sons.

Ist Samuel 16:4 Samuel did what the Lord commanded, and came to Bethlehem. The elders of the city came to meet him trembling, and said, “Do you come peaceably?” 5He said, “Peaceably; I have come to sacrifice to the Lord; sanctify yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice.” And he sanctified Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice.

6When they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, “Surely the Lord’s anointed is now before the Lord.” 7But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” 8Then Jesse called Abinadab, and made him pass before Samuel. He said, “Neither has the Lord chosen this one.” 9Then Jesse made Shammah pass by. And he said, “Neither has the Lord chosen this one.” 10Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel, and Samuel said to Jesse, “The Lord has not chosen any of these.” 11Samuel said to Jesse, “Are all your sons here?” And he said, “There remains yet the youngest, but he is keeping the sheep.” And Samuel said to Jesse, “Send and bring him; for we will not sit down until he comes here.” 12He sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome. The Lord said, “Rise and anoint him; for this is the one.” 13Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the presence of his brothers; and the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward.

After Samuel scrutinized Jesse’s sons a Jewish text says that he asks: “Are these all the young men? That’s slightly different from the text with which we are familiar. He chose his words carefully. Had he asked Jesse if these were all his sons Jesse would have been quick to answer in the affirmative. To Jesse’s mind he had no other sons. He says “There remains yet the youngest, but he is keeping sheep.” The Jewish translation says “There is the smallest, but he is keeping sheep”. By small he meant of little or no consequence. He was hoping that Samuel would allow David to remain where he was, out of sight, out of trouble, tending to the sheep in the faraway pastures. According the the Jewish Madrash, Jesse did not give David the status of a son.

When David was born into this prominent family his birth was greeted with utter derision and contempt. In the psalm David says, “I was a stranger to my brothers, a foreigner to my mother’s sons . . . they put gall in my meal, and gave me vinegar to quench my thirst.” He was not permitted to eat with the rest of his family. He was given the task of shepherd and sent to pasture in dangerous areas full of lions and bears because they hoped that a wild beast would come and kill him while he was performing his duties.

Jesse was the leading Torah authority of his day. He was also the grandson of Boaz and Ruth. His grandmother, Ruth, was a convert from the nation of Moab. Because Moab was the nation that refused the Jewish people passage through their land when they wandered in the desert and cruelly refused to sell them food and drink, the oral Torah specifically forbade an Israelite to marry a male Moabite convert yet seemed to exempt female Moabite converts. Tradition actually has it that, on the night of his marriage to Ruth, Boaz died. Ruth had conceived and subsequently gave birth to Oved, Jesse’s father. During Ruth’s lifetime many raised questions about the legitimacy of her marriage to Boaz. Some rabble-rousers claimed that Boaz’s death verified that his marriage to Ruth had indeed been forbidden.

Late in life doubt gripped Jesse’s heart gnawing away at the very foundation of his existence. His integrity argued that if his status of being a veritable Israelite was in question he was not permitted to stay married to his wife, Nitzevet bat Adeal (neat so vich), unquestionably an Israelite herself. Disregarding the personal sacrifice, Jesse concluded that the only solution would be to separate from her, no longer engaging in marital relations.

Afterward Jesse longed for a child who, unlike his seven sons, would have unquestionable Jewish ancestry. His plan was to engage in relations with his Canaanite maidservant, the off spring of which would be legitimate according to the most stringent interpretation of the Torah. The maidservant was aware of the anguish of her mistress, Nitzevet and understood her pain in being separated from her husband for so many years. She also knew of Nitzevet’s longing for more children. The empathetic maidservant secretly approached Nitzevet and informed her of Jesse’s plan, suggesting that they should replicate the actions of Leah and Rachel and switch places.

Nitzevet took the place of her maidservant and that night she conceived. Jesse remained unaware of the switch. After three months, Nitzevet’s pregnancy became obvious. Incensed, her sons wished to kill their apparently adulterous mother and the “illegitimate” child that she carried. Nitzevet, for her part, would not embarrass her husband by revealing the truth of what had occurred and chose to keep a vow of silence.

Unaware of the truth behind his wife’s pregnancy, but having compassion on her, Jesse ordered his sons not to touch her. “Do not kill her! Instead, let the child that will be born be treated as a lowly and despised servant. In this way everyone will realize that his status is questionable and, as an illegitimate child, he will not marry an Israelite.”

From the time of his birth Nitzevet’s eighth son was treated by his brothers as an abominable outcast. Noting the conduct of his brothers, the rest of the community assumed that this youth was a treacherous sinner full of unspeakable guilt. On the infrequent occasions that Nitzevet’s son would return from the pastures to his home he was shunned by the townspeople. If something was lost or stolen, he was accused as the natural culprit, and ordered, in the words of the psalm, to “repay what I have not stolen.”

Only one individual throughout David’s youth was pained by his unjustified plight, and felt a deep and unconditional bond of love for the child whom she alone knew was undoubtedly pure. This was his mother who felt the intensity of her youngest child’s pain and rejection as her own. Torn and anguished by David’s unwarranted degradation, yet powerless to stop it, Nitzevet stood by the sidelines, in solidarity with him, shunned herself, as she too cried rivers of tears, awaiting the time when justice would be served.

When the messenger went out to bring David home from the fields, out of respect for the prophet David first goes home to wash himself and change his clothes. Unaccustomed to seeing David at home his mother asked, “Why did you come home in the middle of the day?” David explained the reason, and Nitzevet answered, “If so, I too am accompanying you.” When David arrived at the festival Samuel doubted whether David could be the one worthy of the kingship. God commanded Samuel, “My anointed one is standing before you, and you remain seated? Arise and anoint David without delay! For he is the one I have chosen!” As Samuel held the horn of oil, it bubbled, as if it could not wait to drop onto David’s forehead. When Samuel anointed him, the oil hardened and glistened like pearls and precious stones. As Samuel anointed David, the sound of weeping could be heard from outside the great hall. It was the voice of Nitzevet, David’s lone supporter and solitary source of comfort. Her twenty-eight long years of silence in the face of humiliation were finally coming to a close. At last, all would see that the lineage of her youngest son was pure, undefiled by any blemish. Finally, the anguish and humiliation that she and her son had borne would come to an end. Facing her other sons, Nitzevet exclaimed, “The stone that was reviled by the builders has now become the cornerstone!” (Psalms 118:22)

How the Book of Exodus begins seems strangely contemporary. An ethnic group which had migrated to Egypt became so numerous that some Egyptians worried that should war break out with one of their neighbors these aliens would become a fifth column which could join with their enemies to take over their country. Believing that the immigrants had grown too many and too strong, Egyptian leaders took steps to stop their growth and limit their influence. They were declared slaves and task masters were set over them to oppress them with forced labor. In the face of this treatment the immigrant group grew even stronger and the locals came to fear and loathe them. And that’s just the first 12 verses.

By the time you get to the fifth chapter, after Moses confronts Pharaoh about his ill treatment of the Israelites, the treatment becomes more intense and the people hate Moses, their champion. God voiced a great promise which Moses shared with the people about emancipation and a land of promise. His own people wouldn’t listen to him. That’s when we hear Moses say: “Why did you send me to these people?”

What follows, as you recall, is a series of plagues during which Pharaoh remains obdurate. The story gets confusing because somewhere in those passages, without explanation, Moses gains stature with Pharaoh’s court and the Egyptians become well disposed toward the Israelites. But still Pharaoh wouldn’t let them leave, even to go worship. The last straw was God telling Moses that God would make a distinction between Israel and Egypt by taking the life of every first born Egyptian. We covered that story a couple of weeks ago when we talked about the Passover which resulted in the Egyptians demanding that the Israelites leave.

Once in the desert, things didn’t go well. Several times the people threaten to string Moses up for making them leave Egypt. When they got to Sinai God spoke directly to them – delivering the first recitation of the Ten Commandments. After that the people pleaded with Moses to talk with God on their behalf because they were too fearful to have God speak to them directly.

Respecting to the people’s request, Moses goes to be alone with God. The text of the report of that meeting is littered with the phrases “Do not” and “You must” like pepper on mash potatoes. Then we read the detailed regulations for the Priesthood. It took a long time for Moses to get all this information. By the time we get to the 32nd chapter, which is our focus for today, and Moses still hadn’t come back down from the mountain the anxiety among the people went off the charts. The people started making demands on Moses’ right hand man, Aaron. Almost everyone calls this passage ‘the Golden Calf incident”. It may be time to give it a new name.

So the text begins:

When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, … as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” Somehow the people hadn’t gotten the memo. To the people’s mind it was the man Moses who brought them up out of the land of Egypt. God made it happen – not Moses. It made we wonder whether we get anxious and impatient when nothing seems to be happening, when our connection to God seems to be off line? And then are we guilty of crediting, or blaming another for something that God has done?

Anyway, the people gathered around Aaron, and said to him, “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; I’m told that the Hebrew text uses the singular ‘god’ in reporting the people’s request of Aaron. Aaron’s response is worthy of our attention: Aaron said to them, “Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” 3So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears, and brought them to Aaron. Back in the twelfth chapter, before the Hebrew children left Egypt, we were told that they plundered their neighbors, so they had gold. The gold that Aaron called for were the earrings of the wives, daughters and the sons. Again, the Hebrew text says that the earrings were torn off ears making it clear that the gold wasn’t given up freely.

How much gold do you imagine Aaron was dealing with? Finding that answer gets us into a huge matter of contention. It’s the question of how many Israelites followed Moses out of Egypt into the desert. Exodus 12:37 gives us the answer but according to Jewish scholarship we’ve mistranslated the text. If you accept the NIV interpretation the number of Jewish emigrees is between two and a half and three million. Scholars who have studied the impact of the immigrating Hebrew children on the promised land say that such a number is impossible. Others who have studied Egypt before and after the Exodus agree that that figure is unrealistic. By defining that illusive word Hebrew word to mean the number of foot soldiers that a tribal unit could muster the result is between 30 and 35 thousand Hebrew children. Now that’s still a good size entourage but certainly not counted in the millions. That equates to twenty to twenty-five thousand women, daughters and sons from whose ears gold earrings were torn. Melted down we are talking about the equivalent of ten bars of gold, clearly enough to mold a nice sized golden calf.

4He took the gold from them, formed it in a mold, and cast an image of a calf; It’s important to remember that the words we next read were not Aaron’s. and they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” The image that Aaron crafted was single and therefore it would be imputing to the Israelites a far greater sin than that of which they were guilty, that of worshiping other gods. 5When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a festival to the Lord.” 6They rose early the next day, and offered burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to revel. Aaron builds an altar to facilitate a festival – not to the Golden Calf, not to other gods, but to the Lord. Some suggests that the golden calf was a reminder of God not a replacement. Others scholars suggest something quite different saying that the golden calf wasn’t made to be an idol, rather it was a pedestal upon which the Lord could be perceived as standing.

Waiting on this passage I came to wonder what god’s we might have standing on the pedestal of our religion?

If we listen to the text where we come out is that, despite what it might have looked like, the partying is a festival to the Lord, those are Aaron’s words; not a worship of other gods or a golden idol. Now that’s a much different picture than we’ve gotten from the sixty year old Cecil B. DeMille movie. But that’s what was going on in the valley. Meantime up on the mountain things are seen quite differently:

7The Lord said to Moses, “Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; 8they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf, and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!

These verses are problematic. The Lord makes the same mistake as the people. “Your people, whom you brought of the land of Egypt” It’s like one parent avoiding responsibility by telling the other that is was ‘your child’ that broke the rules. Moses didn’t bring Israel up out of the land of Egypt. God knows who brought them out of captivity. Secondly, as we just explored, the people hadn’t sacrificed to the calf or other gods but had a festival to the Lord. What are we to make of this? What we do know is God is angry. Instead of seeing the people turn their anxiety about Moses’ delay into a festival to the Lord God accuses them of being stiff necked and worshiping other gods. God tells Moses to go down and deal with them and leave God alone in God’s anger. The text continues:

9The Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. 10Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation.” The offer may have sounded pretty good, but Moses doesn’t bite. This is quite a change – it’s like God going back on God’s promise to Abram. The Lord tells Moses to leave him alone in his anger. He intends that his hot anger will consume them. But Moses doesn’t leave God alone in God’s anger. Moses does the unthinkable. He challenges God.

11But Moses implored the Lord his God, and said, “O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? 12Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people. 13Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.’“

What audacity. That’s called reciting the salvation history of the people. Typically it is to the people that their salvation history of God’s promise is repeated. But Moses repeats it to God reminding God of the commitments made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And here is the good news:

14And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people. It’s called intercession and it challenges our idea that God’s intentions are written in stone. It tells us something we might not want to hear about God’s character. Moses doesn’t leave God alone in God’s anger but reminds God of the promises made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and by extension these same people. Pretty gutsy if you ask me.

Do you think there are lessons for us in this? If God can misinterpret the intent of a people who have risked their lives and livelihood to follow God’s chosen leader into the wilderness – maybe, just maybe we might misinterpret the actions of others? And what of the work of Moses? Staying in God’s company despite God’s anger and confronting God, challenging God, and reminding God of the heart of God’s own character? I want to change the name of this passage from the “Golden Calf incident” to the “Moses changes God’s mind” incident.

Lessons from Passover

When it comes to the time of Passover we Christians naturally focus on the events of Holy Week and as a result miss much of the important lessons that are embedded in the story of Passover itself. Passover is a time of recalling Israel’s emancipation from Egyptian bondage. Thanks to Hollywood there is a lot of things we are certain about in the Exodus story and the reality is that some of it isn’t there. On the other hand there’s a great deal within the narrative that we’ve passed over as unimportant. This little story is a primer on what today we call Christian Social Ethics.

Let’s hear the story of Passover from Exodus Chapter 12.

The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt: 2This month shall mark for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you. 3Tell the whole congregation of Israel that on the tenth of this month they are to take a lamb for each family, a lamb for each household. 4If a household is too small for a whole lamb, it shall join its closest neighbor in obtaining one; the lamb shall be divided in proportion to the number of people who eat of it. 5Your lamb shall be without blemish, a year-old male; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats. 6You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month; then the whole assembled congregation of Israel shall slaughter it at twilight. 7They shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. 8They shall eat the lamb that same night; they shall eat it roasted over the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. 9Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted over the fire, with its head, legs, and inner organs. 10You shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. 11This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly. It is the passover of the Lord. 12For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, both human beings and animals; on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. 13The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. 14This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance.

That Pharaoh was violent in his oppression goes without question, but why does God have to respond with violence? It is the passover of the Lord. 12For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, both human beings and animals; on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. The Midrash teaches that initially when God sought to bring the plagues on Egypt, he intended to begin witht he plague of the first born. One argument for that is Egypt operated on a strick policy of primogeniture, just like Israel. The loss of the first born would completely disrupt Egyptian social structure.

The slaughter of the firstborn has always troubled us. It isn’t an an anonymous angel of death that executes judgment on firstborn in the Passover, it is God. There is a passage in the Talmud which recounts God rebuking the angels in heaven because they wanted to sing hymns of praise while the Egyptians, who are also God’s creatures, perish in the sea. Old Testament professor at Anabaptist Mennonite Seminary, and an Egyptian himself, Safwat Marzouk, has shown in his work on Ezekiel, that the way ancient Israel thinks about Egypt is powerfully shaped by Israel’s own identity struggles. In a way, Israel sees itself in Egypt, and sees in Egypt the possibility of its own assimilation to surrounding cultures. In order to put distance between itself and a nation that seems disturbingly similar, Israel turns Egypt into a monster, a monstrous “Other” that must be demonized.

Though Egypt is the quintessential enemy through out the Hebrew Bible there are other depictions of Egypt that serve to balance this negative image. One example is the story of Hagar. She is an Egyptian, enslaved by Hebrews (Abraham and Sarah). God aids her escape from slavery just like the Israelites are freed from Pharaoh. God makes promises to this Egyptian woman, promises that parallel those made to Abraham. This story, in which the roles are reversed, and in which God is the deliverer of the Egyptian Hagar and her progeny, tells us a great deal about God and God’s never ceasing concern for the oppression of others. In our text for today we learn that should a family be unable to afford a lamb for the Passover, it is the responsibility of a better-off neighbor family to share what they have. The idea that “households join together” and that the lamb shall be divided equally among the persons partaking reflects the deep biblical conviction that the good of the the whole community must and should be intentionally cultivated. The ethical emphasis in the Bible is on the responsibilities of members to the community’s welfare, not, in general, on the rights of an individual.

When in college one of the campus jobs I had to help with tuition was in the library stacks which primarily consisted of piles of old magazines that had been collected or contributed long before I was born. From those old magazines I learned how we, as a nation, dehumanized the Japanese. It still bothers me. It is worth asking whether we turn those with whom we share certain characteristics into an “Other” in order to put distance between us and them. Another example of that is how similar are the views of Christian and Islamic fundamentalists about the role of women and issues of gender. Both believe they are right and everyone else will surely burn in hell. They both want to force their views on others and each of these groups, if they had their way, would have theocratic governments based on their religions. And yet they demonize each other.

The biggest challenge faced by Moses and Aaron was human inertia. The majority of the Israelites, living in Egyptian bondage had no interest in following Moses off into the desert. They embraced the proverbial maxim “better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know.” If you remember the story, even after they were in the wilderness, when things got rough, they were all too eager to return to Egypt, if they would receive them back. The plagues suffered by Egyptians fell equally on them. The fish die off when the river turned to blood effected them; the plague of frogs which while the Israelites found abhorrent – was more a plague on them than their oppressors. For the Egyptians frog legs were a delicacy. They weren’t immune from the stinging insects and wild animals. The illness in the livestock impacted them directly as did boils and fiery hail. Locust consumed their food and they too had to live in darkness. And that last plague visited on the Egyptians, the slaughter of the first born, wasn’t just for the Egyptians, it was for all the residents of Egypt including them. A good question is why the Egyptians didn’t take precautions prescribed by Moses? The only protection for the first born was blood painted on lentil and doorposts, but not just any blood. It had to be the blood of a year old ram or goat.

Like the cow is considered sacred in India so the lamb was in ancient Egypt. Recall from the text we just read that the Israelites were to select a lamb on the tenth of the month to be slaughtered on the evening of the 14th. If you’ve ever thought about the zodiac, Aries, the ram, was the astrological sign for the month in which the Passover occurred and the 15th day is the apex of a lunar month. On the evening of the full-moon of its very own month and at the heights of its presumed powers the Israelites slaughtered the ram-god of the Egyptians enmass and the Egyptians were powerless to prevent it. By selecting the sheep or ram four days in advance the Jews flaunted their intentions. It was so blatant that some of the Jews expressed concern that they might be stoned for committing such an abomination. And then, while the smell of roast lamb permeated the air they smeared the life blood of this animal sacred to their neighbors on their door posts and lintel. After that, staying in Egypt was no longer a choice for the Hebrew children.

The role played by the blood of innumerable slain lambs on the door posts and lintels was a sign to the Lord to “pass over” the house and in so doing safe guard the first born who resided there. There is no accusation of guilt, no sin attached to being a first born that needed to be covered by sacrificial blood. The voice of those who see in the Passover Lamb a likeness to Jesus, bolstered by John the Baptist’s declaration “Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” have to admit that it just doesn’t fit. It might come as a shock but in this story God treats goats and sheep alike. Despite sacred writings repeatedly telling us that God does not want our sacrifices we human beings can’t get it through our heads. The blood on the door post and lintel was a sign that those in the household had forsworn the gods of Egypt. It wasn’t a sacrificial animal, it was supper, a last supper in Egypt for sure.

They were to eat their roasted lamb while being fully dressed, loins girded, sandals on feet with staff in hand and they were eat quickly and there were to be no leftovers. And whatever was left the next morning was to be burned which meant no sack lunches for the journey. Duke’s Old Testament scholar, Ellen Davis, says that Egypt’s economy was based on a trickle down theory, what she described as hierarchical oppression. An abundance of food is produced on the backs of the poor but is enjoyed almost exclusively by the very rich. The economy of the wilderness which they would soon experience in the wilderness required that Israel had to trust God as deliverer and provider. This can’t be disconnected from the need to trust God as the Israelites slaughtered and roasted sacred lambs in the land of Pharaoh. As a practice and as a mentality they would be required to abandon the practices of hoarding and scarcity that had marked their lives in captivity and learn to embrace faith in this God of abundance.

Our passage ends with this: This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance. That gets reinforced in the next chapter. There it says “You shall tell your child on that day, ‘It is because of what the LORD did for me when I came out of Egypt.’” It continues to be a central task for those who trust in God to re-tell this story in every generation — God delivers those who suffer from oppression, that God works for the flourishing of the whole of creation — The testimony of those who have experienced the benefits of God’s saving power is vital and necessary for God’s work to go forward in the world.

The stage on which God’s action takes place in the first eleven chapters of Genesis is the whole world. In the beginning all of creation is declared good but wickedness and violence raise their ugly heads and God determines to have a “do over” in the form of a great flood intended to wipe away all the wickedness and violence.

However Noah, and all who survived the deluge, held tenaciously to the past. God realizes that the wickedness and violence of human beings was not going away and instead of providing blessing for individuals in the world by working through humanity in general, God adopts a new approach: working through a particular individual to bless all the families of the earth. That’s when we meet Abram, aka Abraham.

Without any introduction to Abraham’s native abilities, personality or his previous connection with God Genesis 12:1-3 reads: “Now the Lord had said to Abram: Get out of your country, from your family and from your father’s house, to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

Maimonides, (my mon a dees), the preeminent medieval Sephardic Jewish philosopher, scholar, astronomer and physician wrestled with the same question that still bugs us today. Why did God choose Abram? The scholar’s conclusion is paraphrased in the famous exchange between the British anti-Semite William Norman Ewer who wrote, “How odd of God to choose the Jews,” and the response of American poet Ogden Nash who wrote, “It wasn’t odd; the Jews chose God.” Maimonides maintained that even as a child Abraham entertained new ideas with a willingness to explore and think until, as a result of his own correct understanding, he reached the truth. His conclusion: Abraham chose God.

He figured out that there must be one Power above all powers, one Lord above all lords who is the Master of the Universe and therefore he traded in his native paganism for monotheism. He realized that this Unity behind the apparent diversity that fills the world is an ethical and moral force that insists on righteousness and compassion. But he also came to realize that it is not sufficient to be just a monotheist. It is necessary to be an ethical monotheist. In Genesis 18 the Bible says God chose Abraham “Because … he commands his children and his household after him to observe the way of the Lord to do compassionate righteousness and moral justice.”

This reality became the driving force in Abraham’s life. He built altars and called people to accept his ethical God. Rather than offer sacrifices on any of the altars Abraham calls out to others to join him in his faith and ethical actions. It’s like reading a prologue to the views of Amos, Hosea, Isaiah and even the Psalmist. The binding of Isaac, which occurs much later in Abraham’s life, is a testimony to how unthinkable human sacrifice is to God. Maimonides continues in his description of Abraham’s mission: “Once Abraham recognized and understood the ethical God, he began to tell the idolaters that they were not pursuing the true path; he broke their idols and informed the people that it is only proper to serve the one God in the entire universe and it is only Him that they must serve. Reading this is like jumping ahead in the story to Exodus and the Ten Commandments. Maimonides asserted that the commandment to love God includes “making God beloved to all the people of the earth.” According to Maimonides, our primary call is to convert the world to ethical monotheism.

In the 12th chapter of Genesis God makes three sweeping promises to Abram: land, descendants and that through him all the families of the earth will be blessed. In response, Abram builds altars at Shechem, Bethel and Ai and invokes the name of the LORD.

God had a great deal at stake in all this; with this new approach God has taken blessing of the whole world rides on this one fellow and his family. So what Abram did next must have seemed like having a monkey wrench thrown into God’s plan. A famine having driven the family to Egypt, in order to protect his own skin Abram shoves Sarai, his wife, into the arms of Pharaoh: “Say you are my sister, so that it may go well with me because of you…” So much for ethical monotheism. The Bible repeatedly scorns those who abuse their power by shoving the vulnerable, here women, into danger. In the Christian tradition Abraham becomes known for his great faithfulness, but at this point you have to admit he’s not off to an auspicious start.

In the 13th chapter God elaborates on the promises of land and descendants and asserts that Abraham’s children will be like the dust of the earth: that is his offspring will be innumerable, a great nation. If God has concerns about Abraham due to the unsavory my-wife-is-my-sister maneuver, then we might conclude that Abraham has some serious concerns about God, too. Everyone knows that Sarai and Abraham have no children and that there is no prospect of any children that promise of innumerable progeny is starting to sound pretty empty. Abraham’s response to God’s promises is not recorded–no assent or disbelief, or anything else. How do you imagine Abraham processed these seemingly ridiculous promises of land, progeny and a blessing to all people?

The narrative tells us that Abraham and Lot go their separate ways although Abraham rescues Lot from the big battles raging throughout chapter 14. At the very end of the chapter, Abram refuses the spoils of war from the king of Sodom. Abraham does not take wealth from the king of Sodom or anyone else because God will reward him (literally, “your wages will be very great”).

To this point in the narrative we’ve not been privy to the thoughts of either Abraham or God on how this fledgling relationship is going. God has made grand promises, but we have not known until now what Abraham thinks of those promises or of the promise-giver. Given that the story itself gives us a mixed picture of Abraham’s moral character, God has some reason to wonder whether choosing Abraham was such a good idea, whether he is really able to be the bearer of the promise to the nations. This is in keeping with all other significant Old Testament characters–the “heroes” of the faith were all flawed and broken in one way or another, just like us. So our text for today, Genesis 15:1-6, is a significant moment in the narrative when we are told that God and Abraham are developing a level of trust, and that each is encouraged by the promises or actions of the other.

Gen. 15:After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.”

Then Abram takes this as an occasion to finally burst out with the question that must have surely been weighing on him since chapter 12: what about those kids you promised me? 2But Abram said, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” 3And Abram said, “You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.” 4But the word of the Lord came to him, “This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir.” 5He brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” 6 And he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.

Responding to Abram’s statement “You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir” God offers significant additional information, more information than has been previously revealed: it will not be through the adopted slave Eliezer of Damascus that God will make a great nation of Abraham it will be through a biological child of Abraham’s. While not quite full disclosure Abraham is reassured that his offspring will be numbered like the stars in the sky.

The Jewish Study Bible points out “the pointlessness of all Abram’s recent financial and military success in the absence of a son from whom the promised “great nation” can descend”. What is success if you have no successor? Finally, after three chapters, we are told how Abraham responds to the divine promise of descendants: “And he believed (or trusted) the LORD; and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness.” This got me to thinking about our malaise and our lack of a sense of promise as a Meeting. Like Abraham we are getting older. We’ve had no children for several years. As a Meeting and a denomination, and as a faith community we are declining in numbers in worship as folks drift away, age out or die. It got me to thinking about my constant struggle to remain positive… and hopeful about a future for us.

Like a childless Abram and Sarai we have no one to whom to bequeath our faith. God told Abraham “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” But in our generation we are suffering from light pollution and are unable to contemplate the magnitude of the innumerable stars in the heavens. I’m told that the majority of children in the United States may never experience a sky dark enough to see the Milky Way. Tonight eighty percent of U.S. residents and a third of our global neighbors can’t see the celestial landscape of which we are apart. What is the promise – for us? For Spokane Friends? Are there too many other attractive lights which block out our being able to see the promise? Are the street lights which give us a sense of security in a world we perceive as dark and dangerous actually just more light pollution? Sharing the predicament with Abraham we find ourselves stewing about God’s promise. Not being able to see the stars we forget that it is God who will provide the heirs in our old age even if in this moment it seems unbelievable.

We remain resolved to reject extreme ideologies that perversely misuse religion to justify indefensible attacks on innocent people and to embrace persons of all religions, including our Muslim neighbors, and to welcome refugees seeking safety.

Before 9/11 the average American knew little about Ramadan or sharia law. If asked about Islam most of us would have responded with a blank stare. But not anymore. Not only does every T.V. network have its Muslim expert, books on Islam have become best sellers, and of course pronouncements  from candidates, intended to inflame audiences, have become common place.

It may come as a surprise but with this expanding interest in Islam one lesson we’ve learned in the years since 2001 is that religious prejudice is not always rooted in raw ignorance. Some of the most vocal anti-Muslim critics know a great deal about Muslim beliefs. They also have a tendency to portray Islam in the worst possible way. Embarrassingly for many of us, among the loudest such voices are perceived by the general public to be leaders within the Christian community, Franklin Graham and Pat Robertson to name two. Charles Kammer of Ohio’s College of Wooster says that Graham and Robertson have helped to fuel the rise of what he calls “Christo-Americanism” a distorted mixture of  nationalism, conservative paranoia and Christian rhetoric. They have stirred a general climate of hatred and distrust toward Muslims.

In recent weeks an American Muslim shop keeper was shot three times as he opened his grocery store in Miami, Florida while in Meridan, Connecticut an Islamic center is riddled with bullets. A Muslim student at Wichita State University and his Hispanic male friend were told a man using racial slurs to “go home” and then he beat them. bullet holes were found in the front sign of the Islamic Society of North America headquarters and mosque in Plainfield, Indiana. After being vandalized with Nazi symbols on the exterior a Somali restaurant was set ablaze in Grand Forks, North Dakota. In Fort Bend, Texas a man posted images on social networks with an assault rifle and ammunition threatening to ‘shoot up a mosque’ and while supposedly speaking in Arabic a teenager who was walking with his brother in law outside of a gymnasium in Huntington Beach, California was stabbed by a police officer.

Here in the northwest the Islamic Center of Twin Falls, Idaho was vandalized. In Oregon an elderly Muslim man was killed after being attacked with a shovel, and a Buddhist monk was attacked by someone who apparently thought he was Muslim based on his clothing. In Lynwood, Washington a swastika and the word “ISIS” was scratched into the finish of a woman’s car. Redmond police received several calls threatening worshipers at a large Puget Sound mosque. After posting threats online against a mosque in North Seattle, and claiming to have an assault rifle and extra ammunition, a man was arrested at his home following a brief standoff with police.  And here, in Spokane, the Sikh temple was vandalized by a man who officials say thought the temple was a mosque and that it was affiliated with terrorists and the Bosnia Herzegovina Heritage Association were threatened by graffiti on the walls where they celebrated Ramadan.

Religious intolerance is not a new feature of the American landscape. Quakers experienced it first hand as have Mormons, Roman Catholics and Native Americans. Despite our treasured First Amendment  protection of religious liberty, we as a nation and as citizens have failed to live up to those ideals. The nine/eleven commission’s report said “At 8:46 on the morning of September 11, 2001, the United States became a nation transformed.” In the attempt to restore a sense of security we have traded off an extraordinary level of civil liberties for measures to protect us from attacks by indiscriminate terrorists. In the resulting war in Iraq over 4,400 of our people were killed and over 22,000 were maimed. Another ten thousand allied soldiers were wounded and over 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives in the conflict. According to the Congressional Joint Economic Cmte. the cost of the Iraq war to the U.S. treasury was $3.5 billion not including the ongoing interest we are still paying fifteen years later. And along with a great deal of inconvenience we are well past spending an additional $750 billion of Federal tax money on homeland security.

On this fifteenth anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center it couldn’t be more timely that our Education committee has invited us to consider Lloyd Lee Wilson’s pamphlet Radical Hospitality.

Our secular culture paints the world in which we live as dangerous and threatening and advises us that the whole purpose of the spiritual life is to escape. Popular religious culture tells us that we are engaged in a spiritual struggle with evil. When we ask how to be happy and secure in such a dangerous world we are told that that can be found in the acquisition of power, possessions and privileges. In his Pendle Hill Pamphlet Lloyd Lee Wilson reminds us that, at least for Quakers, we firmly believe that God’s intention for creation is inherently good and harmonious, as pronounced by God at the moment of creation. Such a view is quite contradictory to what the world and orthodox Christianity tells us.  Lloyd Lee Wilson says that, for Quakers, the real question is “How are we to live in God’s creation, broken and troubled as it is?

He reiterates that as Friends we understand that the universe is, at heart, profoundly good and that the places where it appears evil are places of brokenness and distortion, places to which we are called to heal. Our faith isn’t an other worldly escapist religion.
What a challenge. How do we strengthen the capacity of the Church to engage in peace building and healing? Have we, as the Church, adopted peace making, healing and reconciliation as a major focus and goal? Have we decided to devote resources and energy to the peace building effort?

Our prevailing culture sees creation as inherently conflictual, dangerous, and zero sum: there is only so much of any good thing, so more for you means less for me. In this view the stranger is always a threat, an adversary and a competitor. Our faith says that in this inherently good and harmonious world the stranger is our friend, actually the incarnation of Christ and should be offered hospitality.

Fundamentally, what brings us together this week, like any other Sunday, is our faith in Jesus Christ and the service of God’s kingdom. We Quakers join with Pope Benedict XVI in saying “Love of God and love of neighbor have become one: in the least of the brethren we find Jesus himself and in Jesus we find God.”  At the heart of our gathering is the essential biblical links between love of God and neighbor. This is a “formation of the heart” to unite in loving care for all our neighbors. Peacemaking is not an optional commitment but a requirement of our faith. We are called to be peacemakers, not by some movement of the moment, but by our Lord Jesus.

As we embrace and teach peace building, unfortunately, we must humbly confess that all to often there is a gap between the ideals we profess and how we conduct ourselves. The divisions and conflicts within our community and the wider society do find their way into the life of the church, with sometimes terrible human, moral, pastoral; and spiritual consequences. Without truth there is no reconciliation, and without reconciliation our world is trapped in endless cycles of revenge and retribution.

We understand that peace doesn’t consist simply in the absence of war or violence. The underlying causes of conflicts must be addressed. Peace can only be built on justice. People of faith must help and encourage one another to articulate, share and apply such teachings on peace building and its links to justice and human rights in our own communities and together. Another component of our peace building capacity is advocacy. U.S. foreign policy has a profound impact on the prospects for peace and reconciliation. It is critical that our corporate voices be heard in the halls of Congress. We also have to learn to collaborate with others who share this vision if we are to fulfill the declaration of Jesus to the multitudes gathered on the Mount: “Blessed are the peacemakers, they shall be called children of God.” By our work here to become better healers and peacemakers we become more fully God’s children.

On the tenth Anniversary of the events of September eleventh Fr. Timothy Dolan then president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops  voiced this : “we remain resolved to reject extreme ideologies that perversely misuse religion to justify indefensible attacks on innocent civilians, to embrace persons of all religions, including our Muslim neighbors, and to welcome refugees seeking safety. We steadfastly refrain from blaming the many for the actions of a few and insist that security needs can be reconciled with our immigrant heritage without compromising either one.

Approved July 22, 2011 was this statement: New York Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends urges everyone to recognize this anniversary as an occasion to remember that there are always alternatives to violence and that there is a Spirit in every human being which responds with gratitude to these alternatives. The Religious Society of Friends has always upheld the way exemplified by Jesus, who taught us never to return evil for evil, but to love our enemies and pray for them, forgiving them every offense. We confess that we, being human, do not always fulfill this high standard. Nevertheless, we continually strive to discern the guidance of the living God who loves unconditionally, and extends unlimited compassion, comfort, mercy, guidance, grace and revelation to all who ask. We testify to the world that we disown all wars and fighting with outward weapons for any cause whatsoever. These are never necessary. There are no “just wars.” Among the weapons we renounce are the tongue and the pen, when these are used to provoke prejudice and hatred. Neither will we be silenced by fear when we are called to witness against evil masquerading as good. We seek to build a world in which a just peace is possible. We seek the strength to support and keep faith with those who suffer for nonviolent acts of conscience. We live by the gospel of God’s love for all. Join us.

Jesus taught us to never return evil for evil but to love our enemies and pray for them. We also remain resolved to reject extreme ideologies that perversely misuse religion to justify indefensible attacks on innocent people and to embrace persons of all religions, including our Muslim neighbors, and to welcome refugees seeking safety. That’s a tall order, living in a zero sum environment that prefers revenge to reconciliation and forgiveness. But, it is to that our faith calls us.