Blogging Towards Sunday

July 8, 2007

WWJD

WhatWillYouDo?

The Lectionary List Scriptures that I'm reflecting through and meditating upon this week as I prepare to guide the worship celebration at Fruitvale Church this coming Sunday include Psalm 30 and Luke 10:1-20. Here are some of my thoughts as I encounter these passages, looking for God's footprint taces and listening for the Spirit's Word for us today in these ancient words. I also surf the web to make a photo montage that I hope brings some of the symbols of the assages to life as concrete, pertinent and participatory.

Psalm 30 is interesting. One of my favorites...the bit about night and day...transformation of our feelings, fears, and flights...from terror to joy, from mourning to dancing. The poetry is masterful, (re)telling the story of salvation, deliverance, healing that the poet has experienced; offering a testimony of who God is based on the subjective experience of what God has done for this psalmist-poet. The testimony of Psalm 30 invites us to belief, and to practice/experience of a God who heals, who creates and is just. A God who restores life, transforming weeping at nightfall into joy by sunrise, who turns mourning into dancing, who seems to be like a judge/jury before which a lawyer is pleading his case.

Walter Brueggemann, an Old Testament Scholar writes about the Hebrew Scriptures, "Speech consitutues reality, and who God turns out to be in Israel depends on the utterance of the Israelites or, derivateively, the utterance of the text." (p. 65, Theology of the Old Testament) What he's saying is that we only know who God is by the testimony that's passed on to us. We we claim it's not literally "true" we miss the boat entirely. The psalmist isn't trying to convince us to believe this or that with facts, objectively accurate historic data, or scientific theories. She's telling us of her faith, the transformation experience in her life that only the God of the Isaelites could have made happen. It's in her testimony words that God comes alive for us, in her speech that God takes form and shape in our imagination. She's not trying to be objective in a PC scientific way. She's lifting up her testimony as divine revelation in a pluaralistic setting, inviting us to start our reflection in a different place than the laboratory, news room, or fact-checking history storehouse. It's a truth that's deeper than literal, wider than historical, and more human than scientific. What I find powerful about all of this is that this testimony is shockingly different. Here's is a compassionate God who can be angry, who seems to calm down and intervene based in part upon the supplication, entreating, and pleading of the psalmist basically asking God to change his mind. It's not what we tend to think of when we fathom God. It's not a God in the clouds with lightening bolts, zapping us at will. It's a God that values relationship, community, dialogue, interdependence, the other.

Luke 10:1-20

This story of Jesus sending out the 70 is striking in a similar way. Jesus seems to say some harsh things. It's not just "love everyone and hug a tree" nor is he saying "wipe everyone out who isn't a card-carrying member of the Republican party towing the family values party line." Rather Jesus sends out his followers to speak for him. Again it's their testimony that make God real, their utterance of the good news that makes God present. But Jesus wants to make sure that they're balanced...that they neither abuse others or are abused. Curiously Jesus starts with a list of "not-to-dos" (v.3-4) before continuing on to a list of "to-dos." It's all about focus, balance, and hospitality. Jesus says that Sidon and Tyre (non-Jewish towns, pagan towns, towns from the other tribes/ethnicities) that seem to get it more than the towns which have known Jesus' words, actions, and presence (Caperaum).

The Kingdom of God comes near to those that receive it...not just in a prayer, or an out-of-body experience but in concrete, corporeal hospitality. Does God change his heart? Did Jesus make up his mind based on the judgement and experience of his disciples? Seems crazy to me that an all-knowing, all-powerful God would act in such a seemingly irresponsible way. So is it a hoax? Or is it of a deeper truth than we ever imagined?

Yesterday I had a great conversation after church with some friends about doing what God asks. First of all it's hard enough to know what God wants, or as some recently have said to know "What Would Jesus Do?" But these passages seem to point to a God that wants us to participate, to act, to be involved, to offer our testimony - not in some lone ranger sort-of-way, but submitted, informed, formed, sent out. We talked yesterday about WWJD? That in the end the real point is not what Jesus did but rather What Will You/We Do? We have to know the story, claim the testimony of those who've gone before us, for ourselves...and then speak, act, relate, and live from the underlying truth, ethic, and praxis. Jesus never waited in line for an IPhone, lost friends in a drive by gang-related shooting, or crossed a picket line to buy his groceries....so how do we decide and discern how we will live and act from the deep truth that we know in our relationship with Christ?

Not sure how to preach on this, how to present it on Sunday in a way that's both experiential and revelatory, participatory and reflective. Any thoughts?