Splanixomai: The compassion of Christ by Pastor Roger Parrish-Siggelkow 2/19/12
Splanixomai compassion (c2005 Joel Mason)
Oh what kind of love is this? Oh what kind of love is this?
You always expect out of me more failure, than I expect out of myself.
Oh love so sweet, Love without conceit.
Splanixomai compassion, Is rolling over me.
(For 15 years, Marnie and I raised our family with four other couples in a loose-knit Christian community. Each of the couples had children, thirteen children total, and in many ways, these other ten children are like nieces and nephews. Joel Mason is one of these nephews, almost like another son, who is our son Ry’s best friend. This song is called Splanixomai, sung by Joel with Ry harmonizing.)
Matt 9:35 Jesus went around visiting all the towns and villages. He taught in the synagogues, preached the Good News about the Kingdom, and healed people with every kind of disease and sickness. 36 As he saw the crowds, his heart was filled with pity for them, because they were worried (harassed) and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
Mark 1:40-45 A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” 41 Jesus was moved with compassion. He reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” 42 Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cleansed. 43 Jesus sent him away at once with a strong warning: 44 “See that you don’t tell this to anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.” 45 Instead he went out and began to talk freely, spreading the news. As a result, Jesus could no longer enter a town openly but stayed outside in lonely places. Yet the people still came to him from everywhere.
These verses from Matthew and Mark are just two of many that reveal the profound depth of God’s mercy and compassion for us. To paraphrase the great 20th century Swiss theologian Karl Barth: The expression ‘compassion’ (splanixomai in the Greek) is a strong word which is hard to translate. The best definition would be from the ‘guts or the bowels’. Jesus was not only deeply moved by the misery which surrounded Him-sympathy is far too feeble a word- but the feeling of compassion went right into His guts, into Himself, so that people’s misery was now His misery. Christ’s suffering was more His than those who suffered it. He takes our suffering upon himself and lays it on Himself…it is no longer just ours, but His suffering. The cry of those who suffer is only an echo…Jesus brought to us not just salvation but radical and total and definitive self-giving to and for our cause. In his self-giving He was the Kingdom of God come on earth…" (adapted from Karl Barth, CD IV.2, 185)
And hear the great English preacher Charles Spurgeon: “...If you would sum up the whole character of Christ in reference to us, it might be gathered into this one sentence, "He was moved with compassion—(splanixomai.)"…I suppose that when (he) looked upon certain sights, those who watched him closely (saw) that his internal agitation was very great, his emotions were very deep, and then his face betrayed it, his eyes gushed like founts with tears, and you saw that his big heart was ready to burst with pity for the sorrow upon which his eyes were gazing.”
Let’s consider the man with leprosy:
In the time of Jesus, leprosy was a dreaded and somewhat common disease. Though modern medicine has almost wiped out leprosy today, there are still lepers today. India alone has 1000 leper colonies. It is a highly contagious disease and in the Jewish culture of Jesus’ time, the man with leprosy is ritually ‘unclean’ and he is prohibited from participating in the central functions of his religion and culture.
A person with leprosy had to announce Unclean whenever he or she walked by a ‘clean’ person. So, the person with leprosy was not only suffering with a debilitating and disfiguring disease, his core identity was that of an unclean outcast. A person with leprosy was cut off and rejected—because of bacterial disease in the body. The man with leprosy is completely cut off from his family and society. The phrase ‘Unclean’ in the Bible is not a moral designation but a ritual one, but in all respects, it plays out as a total rejection of the person. Those who are unclean are sent to leper colonies, away from the community, until they return to a state of normalcy.
Look at the way the man approaches Jesus. He kneels down and begs, expressing deep humility and need. He does not presume to deserve to be healed, and so he says, "If you are willing, you can make me clean." He recognizes Jesus’ power and authority and he has faith that Jesus can heal and cleanse him if he so desires. His humble trust might serve as an example as we seek what we need from God.
But then look what happens when the man is healed! He completely disregards Jesus’ counsel and tells everybody what happened!
Let’s look at Jesus.
Mark says that Jesus touched the leprous man as part of the healing act. To touch someone who was unclean meant that you became unclean yourself. Lepers were never allowed to touch anybody clean lest they defile that person. The person with leprosy was literally untouchable. Jesus explodes this taboo by touching the man.
And Jesus reached out and took the man’s leprosy and put it on Himself; now the leper could go home clean. Strangely, you might say that Jesus then became a ‘leper’, unclean because he touched someone unclean, and because of the man’s outburst, he is now an outcast, unable to be with the people he so longed to touch.
The word ‘splanixomai’ is nuanced and also suggests ‘anger’. Some commentators have suggested that Jesus is acting out of righteous anger because of the social system that marginalizes the sick, casting them away from the love and support of family and friends. These commentaries suggest that Jesus was radically attacking the social and religious system, which denied the sick person his right to human dignity and love.
And from the text, we can say that Jesus is willing and ready to touch us. In this regard, we could say that our sin is like leprosy. We are ritually unclean. Jesus is willing, even deeply yearning (from his guts) to cleanse and heal everyone who comes to him in faith, with a humble heart. He is willing to forgive and heal all of us from sin.
Yes, Jesus touches all of us in our leprous condition. He reaches out from his compassion from his guts, with mercy and tears and groaning. With great cost to himself. He does not touch us and walk on by to the next poor leper. No, his compassion rolls and rolls over us. It rolls over me and you.
How does this story move us?
Do you remember the WWJD fad? It’s obvious what Jesus did in this situation. Some questions for us to consider this morning:
Who might be considered lepers in our culture today? Who are people we refuse to touch because to us, they are ‘unclean’? (Old people, homeless people, AIDS patients, homosexuals, mentally ill, physically and mentally impaired people, drug addicts... )
How might we show splanixomai compassion to marginalized and/or rejected people today? How can we reach out and touch them?
Jesus was moved by compassion. Seeing the miserable condition of His beloved ones caused Him to reach out and touch them with his splanixomai compassion.
Let me close with a short scripture from 2 Corinthians: 3-5Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, {4} who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. {5} For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.
The Jews have a word for a person who has a heart of compassion and mercy like Jesus. The word is mensch. Next week, I will exhort us all to become mensches. Amen.
Oh what kind of love is this? Oh what kind of love is this?
You always expect out of me more failure, than I expect out of myself.
Oh love so sweet, Love without conceit.
Splanixomai compassion, Is rolling over me.
(For 15 years, Marnie and I raised our family with four other couples in a loose-knit Christian community. Each of the couples had children, thirteen children total, and in many ways, these other ten children are like nieces and nephews. Joel Mason is one of these nephews, almost like another son, who is our son Ry’s best friend. This song is called Splanixomai, sung by Joel with Ry harmonizing.)
Matt 9:35 Jesus went around visiting all the towns and villages. He taught in the synagogues, preached the Good News about the Kingdom, and healed people with every kind of disease and sickness. 36 As he saw the crowds, his heart was filled with pity for them, because they were worried (harassed) and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
Mark 1:40-45 A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” 41 Jesus was moved with compassion. He reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” 42 Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cleansed. 43 Jesus sent him away at once with a strong warning: 44 “See that you don’t tell this to anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.” 45 Instead he went out and began to talk freely, spreading the news. As a result, Jesus could no longer enter a town openly but stayed outside in lonely places. Yet the people still came to him from everywhere.
These verses from Matthew and Mark are just two of many that reveal the profound depth of God’s mercy and compassion for us. To paraphrase the great 20th century Swiss theologian Karl Barth: The expression ‘compassion’ (splanixomai in the Greek) is a strong word which is hard to translate. The best definition would be from the ‘guts or the bowels’. Jesus was not only deeply moved by the misery which surrounded Him-sympathy is far too feeble a word- but the feeling of compassion went right into His guts, into Himself, so that people’s misery was now His misery. Christ’s suffering was more His than those who suffered it. He takes our suffering upon himself and lays it on Himself…it is no longer just ours, but His suffering. The cry of those who suffer is only an echo…Jesus brought to us not just salvation but radical and total and definitive self-giving to and for our cause. In his self-giving He was the Kingdom of God come on earth…" (adapted from Karl Barth, CD IV.2, 185)
And hear the great English preacher Charles Spurgeon: “...If you would sum up the whole character of Christ in reference to us, it might be gathered into this one sentence, "He was moved with compassion—(splanixomai.)"…I suppose that when (he) looked upon certain sights, those who watched him closely (saw) that his internal agitation was very great, his emotions were very deep, and then his face betrayed it, his eyes gushed like founts with tears, and you saw that his big heart was ready to burst with pity for the sorrow upon which his eyes were gazing.”
Let’s consider the man with leprosy:
In the time of Jesus, leprosy was a dreaded and somewhat common disease. Though modern medicine has almost wiped out leprosy today, there are still lepers today. India alone has 1000 leper colonies. It is a highly contagious disease and in the Jewish culture of Jesus’ time, the man with leprosy is ritually ‘unclean’ and he is prohibited from participating in the central functions of his religion and culture.
A person with leprosy had to announce Unclean whenever he or she walked by a ‘clean’ person. So, the person with leprosy was not only suffering with a debilitating and disfiguring disease, his core identity was that of an unclean outcast. A person with leprosy was cut off and rejected—because of bacterial disease in the body. The man with leprosy is completely cut off from his family and society. The phrase ‘Unclean’ in the Bible is not a moral designation but a ritual one, but in all respects, it plays out as a total rejection of the person. Those who are unclean are sent to leper colonies, away from the community, until they return to a state of normalcy.
Look at the way the man approaches Jesus. He kneels down and begs, expressing deep humility and need. He does not presume to deserve to be healed, and so he says, "If you are willing, you can make me clean." He recognizes Jesus’ power and authority and he has faith that Jesus can heal and cleanse him if he so desires. His humble trust might serve as an example as we seek what we need from God.
But then look what happens when the man is healed! He completely disregards Jesus’ counsel and tells everybody what happened!
Let’s look at Jesus.
Mark says that Jesus touched the leprous man as part of the healing act. To touch someone who was unclean meant that you became unclean yourself. Lepers were never allowed to touch anybody clean lest they defile that person. The person with leprosy was literally untouchable. Jesus explodes this taboo by touching the man.
And Jesus reached out and took the man’s leprosy and put it on Himself; now the leper could go home clean. Strangely, you might say that Jesus then became a ‘leper’, unclean because he touched someone unclean, and because of the man’s outburst, he is now an outcast, unable to be with the people he so longed to touch.
The word ‘splanixomai’ is nuanced and also suggests ‘anger’. Some commentators have suggested that Jesus is acting out of righteous anger because of the social system that marginalizes the sick, casting them away from the love and support of family and friends. These commentaries suggest that Jesus was radically attacking the social and religious system, which denied the sick person his right to human dignity and love.
And from the text, we can say that Jesus is willing and ready to touch us. In this regard, we could say that our sin is like leprosy. We are ritually unclean. Jesus is willing, even deeply yearning (from his guts) to cleanse and heal everyone who comes to him in faith, with a humble heart. He is willing to forgive and heal all of us from sin.
Yes, Jesus touches all of us in our leprous condition. He reaches out from his compassion from his guts, with mercy and tears and groaning. With great cost to himself. He does not touch us and walk on by to the next poor leper. No, his compassion rolls and rolls over us. It rolls over me and you.
How does this story move us?
Do you remember the WWJD fad? It’s obvious what Jesus did in this situation. Some questions for us to consider this morning:
Who might be considered lepers in our culture today? Who are people we refuse to touch because to us, they are ‘unclean’? (Old people, homeless people, AIDS patients, homosexuals, mentally ill, physically and mentally impaired people, drug addicts... )
How might we show splanixomai compassion to marginalized and/or rejected people today? How can we reach out and touch them?
Jesus was moved by compassion. Seeing the miserable condition of His beloved ones caused Him to reach out and touch them with his splanixomai compassion.
Let me close with a short scripture from 2 Corinthians: 3-5Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, {4} who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. {5} For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.
The Jews have a word for a person who has a heart of compassion and mercy like Jesus. The word is mensch. Next week, I will exhort us all to become mensches. Amen.
Lazarus in the Bosom of Trump Tower 2/5/12
Pastor Roger Parrish-Siggelkow
Hello friends-
It’s great to see you again after a week away. Marnie and I had a whirlwind trip last week off to Princeton, New Jersey to visit our son Ry and his family for a few days and then we spent a day in New York City, and re-adjusting on Tuesday and Wednesday. So much happened in our week, and I’d like to unpack one of my bags with you this morning.
Princeton University is one of the 8 Ivy League schools, or one of the Big Three, or as they say (in exaggerated Oxford accent) the 'Holy Trinity' along with Hah-vahd and Yale. It was founded in 1746 and its beautiful 500 acre campus features big stone castle like buildings, primarily in the Collegiate Gothic style built in the early 1800’s. Princeton Theological Seminary, right next-door, features the largest theological library collection in the United States and second in the world, behind only the Vatican Library in Rome. The library has over 1,000,000 bound volumes, pamphlets, and microfilms. Walking through the campuses you can almost hear the shots of the Revolutionary War battle of Princeton and the voices of people like Albert Einstein and F. Scott Fitzgerald who lived and worked here. There is a lot of history, genius, old money and power in these hallowed halls. Princeton Theological Seminary alone has a one billion dollar endowment!
Ry wanted to take all six adults and three children into Manhattan, which is about an hour ride on the train, so we all got up Saturday morning and hopped the New Jersey train into Manhattan. We piled out right at the Museum of Natural History and toured the world’s greatest collection of dinosaurs, (after all we did have a 5 year old boy in tow!) then we took the subway down to Central Park. We spent the afternoon walking through the Park; stopping to watch an impromptu break dance show, an African drummer and roller blade and Frisbee exhibitions. We paid a street artist to draw a portrait of our grandchildren, we gawked at the horse drawn carriages, the Dakota Building where John Lennon lived and where he was shot. At dusk, we walked down 5th Avenue, past Saks 5th Avenue, Ralph Lauren, Gucci and Trump Tower, past Rockefeller Center and the Empire State building and we shopped at FAO Schwatrz, the world famous toy-store. ( I did not dance on the world's biggest piano, which is for sale for $250,000.) We ended up at Times Square, which is the huge intersection with the 100 foot flashing LED screens you see on TV on New Year’s Eve with a million people celebrating.
In our gawkers’ stroll down 5th Ave we also saw homeless people in the doorways. One man was two doors down from Gucci and the Trump Tower. Another man had a cardboard sign propped up next to his trash bag full of extra clothes. “Please help. Everybody needs help sometime in life.” He had a hat lying on the sidewalk with about $10 in quarters and bills in it. We ate a late dinner at an Irish Pub in Times Square and sleepily took the train back to Princeton.
The next morning we caught our flight back to Minneapolis. On the way home, I was thinking about my sermon series on Abraham but the images of Princeton’s ivy-covered walls, the multi-colored humanity in Central Park and Times Square, the glitz and diamonds of 5th Avenue, the Stieff stuffed teddy bears and Barbie displays in FAO Schwartz, and the homeless men in the shadows of the iconic New York skyscrapers kept interrupting my sermon plans.
And then Jesus’ story of the rich man, Lazarus and the bosom of Abraham thrust itself upon me. Do you remember this story from Luke, chapter 16? The Rich Man and Lazarus
19 There was once a rich man who dressed in the most expensive clothes and lived in great luxury every day 20 There was also a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who used to be brought to the rich man's door, 21 hoping to eat the bits of food that fell from the rich man's table. Even the dogs would come and lick his sores. 22 The poor man died and was carried by the angels to sit beside Abraham at the feast in heaven. The rich man died and was buried, 23 and in Hades, where he was in great pain, he looked up and saw Abraham, far away, with Lazarus at his side. 24 So he called out, Father Abraham! Take pity on me, and send Lazarus to dip his finger in some water and cool off my tongue, because I am in great pain in this fire! 25 But Abraham said, Remember, my son, that in your lifetime you were given all the good things, while Lazarus got all the bad things. But now he is enjoying himself here, while you are in pain. 26 Besides all that, there is a deep pit lying between us, so that those who want to cross over from here to you cannot do so, nor can anyone cross over to us from where you are. 27 The rich man said, Then I beg you, father Abraham, send Lazarus to my father's house, 28 where I have five brothers. Let him go and warn them so that they, at least, will not come to this place of pain. 29 Abraham said, Your brothers have Moses and the prophets to warn them; your brothers should listen to what they say. 30 The rich man answered, That is not enough, father Abraham! But if someone were to rise from death and go to them, then they would turn from their sins. 31 But Abraham said, If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone were to rise from death.
Older Bible translations say that Lazarus was resting in the ‘bosom’ of Abraham. I like that a lot better than Lazarus 'sitting beside' him. In my sermon a couple weeks ago I said that it is our interpretation of a scripture that informs what we believe and how we act--the ideas that we pull out of the biblical texts and the things we add to the text are the ways we try to make sense of these stories, parables, and teachings in the Bible. It is our interpretation of the stories. These interpretations are a way of illuminating the Bible to go beyond simple religious, legal or moral teachings. It fills in many gaps left in the stories regarding events and personalities that are only hinted at. The goal is to discern the fullness of what was spoken by God.
In the Luke 16 text:
-Is Jesus telling us the story of the rich man and Lazarus to warn us about the burning fires of hell? Is Jesus saying that rich people go to hell, the poor go to heaven?
-Is Jesus warning Jews to accept the poor beggars in their midst, i.e. the gentiles, the have-nots?
-Is it a warning against luxurious living at the expense of the poor? A strong message to be generous and merciful to all, especially the poor?
In context, my primary interpretation of this story, especially when I consider many other Biblical stories, is that Jesus is trying to help his listeners understand how serious it is to indulge yourself while ignoring the poor. It seems fairly evident to me that the parable is meant to rebuke heartless, selfish use of wealth.
There are four parts in the story—the conduct of the rich man, his fate after death, the suffering of Lazarus while on earth and his comfort in the bosom of Abraham, that is—in heaven--and finally, the verdict-there is no excuse for the selfish, rich man. God’s warning has been clear and sufficient enough to save us from the rich man’s bitter fate.
Jesus wishes to point out the sin and fate of the heartless rich, wallowing in luxury with starving beggars at the gate. It is a sin which solicits judgment, and a bitter penalty. The rich man is not in Hades because he wore a purple robe and fancy underwear, nor because every meal had been a feast, but because, while living the high life, he disdainfully ignored the beggar in his sight, and used his riches on himself.
In this part of the story Lazarus is simply the means of bringing out the rich man's heartlessness and self-indulgence. There may be a clue to the character of Lazarus in his name, which means 'God is help.' As Lazarus is the only name in the parable, it likely suggests that he clung to God as his only hope. Now, the rich man was not bound to go and looking for poor people, but Lazarus was right at his door. We all have opportunity to help others less fortunate. Doing nothing when Lazarus is at our gate is the great sin of omission, and marks a person with no compassion. We might say the parable is suggesting that to live for self is death. We see Lazarus in the afterlife nestled in the bosom of Abraham, now the possessor of abundance, comfort and delight, while the rich man suffers torment.
The last part of the narrative teaches that the fatal sin of heartless selfishness is inexcusable. The rich man complains to Abraham, ‘If I had only known, things would have been different.’ He shifts blame from himself onto a defense of innocence and ignorance. And Abraham's answer is sort of: 'Men only hear what they want to hear and disregard the rest', to quote another prophet, New York City’s Paul Simon.
But often, men will not be persuaded—for persuasion has as much to do with a heart change as with head knowledge. Jesus is saying in this parable: We have as much witness from heaven as we need. The worst woman knows as much of her duty as the best woman does.
No, the rich man is in torment because he lived only for himself. He not because he did not know that it was wrong, but because he did not choose to do what he knew was right. He is paying the piper. He gets what’s coming to him.
Walking on the hallowed Princeton campus and thinking about its multi-billion dollar endowments to educate the elite, and ruminating on our family trip to Manhattan down the streets of glitz and glam of 5th Avenue and then to see homeless men on the sidewalks in the shadow of Gucci and Trump Tower, it all distressed me. How can I gawk at the jewelry in Tiffany’s while a man my age is drunk under the window? How can we shop for $990 doggie bags and fail to drop a dollar in his hat? And the more I thought about this, the angrier I got. The 5th Avenue walk is the story of Lazarus and the rich man come to life! I wanted to walk into Trump Tower and drag the Donald out of the tower. I’d sit him down next to the homeless Lazarus and yell: You’re fired! And then I’d track down Mr. Gucci and Mr. Tiffany, put them up on their counters and take off their diamond soled shoes and give them to Lazarus outside!
…But, beloved, over the next few days, as these vengeful thoughts didn’t relieve me of my sadness, I came to the realization that I, too, am like Mr. Trump and Gucci and Tiffany. My son is the Princeton man. I am the rich man. And--I am--Lazarus. I am them and they are me.
Donald Trump may be an egomaniac and a billionaire. But would I behave differently if I was in his $3000 shoes? We are all tempted by the love of money, the comforts it brings, the delusion that all is well because well….because we are well. But, the reality is we are all in this life together and in this parable Jesus is addressing us—he’s not speaking as some sort of 'pre-communist’, telling us we must all share the wealth equally. No, Jesus is saying it is evil when we love our money, luxury and comfort so much that we do not share with our brother and sister in need. It is evil when greed blinds us to the needs all around us. And greed tempts us all. And out of control greed leads to $990 dog bags while our neighbor eats dog food out of the bag--if he is lucky.
This, I believe is the best interpretation and lesson of the parable. Share with others in need, and share from your heart of compassion. And compassion is the key. It is a heart change. And by including Abraham in the story, is he suggesting that all children of Abraham--that is children of faith--should know better?
Now here I am with you, back in God’s country. According to the sign 249 souls live in Orr, and if we counted all the people in Orr and Cook and Kab and Ray and Littlefork and I-Falls and Fort Frances and Crane Lake and Buyck, we would have a tiny white group of the mass of people walking through Central Park last Saturday. As I think back on my walks on the streets of Princeton and New York, I have renewed compassion for the hundreds of thousands of people I saw those days. For the rich and the poor, for the ivy-league students and gawking tourists, for the break-dancers and street vendors, for the Trumps and the homeless. I hope and pray that you and I will experience Christ’s compassion for people.
Matt: 9:36 "When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd."
I’d like to close with a quote from Karl Barth, who is the primary theologian our son Ry is studying at Princeton.
"...The expression ‘compassion’ (splanixomai in the Greek) is a strong one which defies adequate translation. (from the guts) (Jesus) was not only affected to the heart by the misery which surrounded Him-sympathy in our modern sense is far too feeble a word- but it went right into His heart, into Himself, so that it was now His misery. It was more His than that of those who suffered it. He took it from them and laid it on Himself…it was no longer theirs at all, but His. The cry of those who suffered was only an echo. Strictly speaking, it had already been superseded...Jesus had made it His own. To the mercy of God which brings radical and total and definitive salvation there now corresponded the help which Jesus brought to men by His radical and total and definitive self-giving to and for their cause. In this self-giving, by the fact that His mercy, in this sense, led Him to see men in this way, He was on earth as God is in heaven. In this self-giving He was the Kingdom of God come on earth."
- Karl Barth, CD IV.2, 185.
Amen, brother Karl. Amen.
Pastor Roger Parrish-Siggelkow
Hello friends-
It’s great to see you again after a week away. Marnie and I had a whirlwind trip last week off to Princeton, New Jersey to visit our son Ry and his family for a few days and then we spent a day in New York City, and re-adjusting on Tuesday and Wednesday. So much happened in our week, and I’d like to unpack one of my bags with you this morning.
Princeton University is one of the 8 Ivy League schools, or one of the Big Three, or as they say (in exaggerated Oxford accent) the 'Holy Trinity' along with Hah-vahd and Yale. It was founded in 1746 and its beautiful 500 acre campus features big stone castle like buildings, primarily in the Collegiate Gothic style built in the early 1800’s. Princeton Theological Seminary, right next-door, features the largest theological library collection in the United States and second in the world, behind only the Vatican Library in Rome. The library has over 1,000,000 bound volumes, pamphlets, and microfilms. Walking through the campuses you can almost hear the shots of the Revolutionary War battle of Princeton and the voices of people like Albert Einstein and F. Scott Fitzgerald who lived and worked here. There is a lot of history, genius, old money and power in these hallowed halls. Princeton Theological Seminary alone has a one billion dollar endowment!
Ry wanted to take all six adults and three children into Manhattan, which is about an hour ride on the train, so we all got up Saturday morning and hopped the New Jersey train into Manhattan. We piled out right at the Museum of Natural History and toured the world’s greatest collection of dinosaurs, (after all we did have a 5 year old boy in tow!) then we took the subway down to Central Park. We spent the afternoon walking through the Park; stopping to watch an impromptu break dance show, an African drummer and roller blade and Frisbee exhibitions. We paid a street artist to draw a portrait of our grandchildren, we gawked at the horse drawn carriages, the Dakota Building where John Lennon lived and where he was shot. At dusk, we walked down 5th Avenue, past Saks 5th Avenue, Ralph Lauren, Gucci and Trump Tower, past Rockefeller Center and the Empire State building and we shopped at FAO Schwatrz, the world famous toy-store. ( I did not dance on the world's biggest piano, which is for sale for $250,000.) We ended up at Times Square, which is the huge intersection with the 100 foot flashing LED screens you see on TV on New Year’s Eve with a million people celebrating.
In our gawkers’ stroll down 5th Ave we also saw homeless people in the doorways. One man was two doors down from Gucci and the Trump Tower. Another man had a cardboard sign propped up next to his trash bag full of extra clothes. “Please help. Everybody needs help sometime in life.” He had a hat lying on the sidewalk with about $10 in quarters and bills in it. We ate a late dinner at an Irish Pub in Times Square and sleepily took the train back to Princeton.
The next morning we caught our flight back to Minneapolis. On the way home, I was thinking about my sermon series on Abraham but the images of Princeton’s ivy-covered walls, the multi-colored humanity in Central Park and Times Square, the glitz and diamonds of 5th Avenue, the Stieff stuffed teddy bears and Barbie displays in FAO Schwartz, and the homeless men in the shadows of the iconic New York skyscrapers kept interrupting my sermon plans.
And then Jesus’ story of the rich man, Lazarus and the bosom of Abraham thrust itself upon me. Do you remember this story from Luke, chapter 16? The Rich Man and Lazarus
19 There was once a rich man who dressed in the most expensive clothes and lived in great luxury every day 20 There was also a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who used to be brought to the rich man's door, 21 hoping to eat the bits of food that fell from the rich man's table. Even the dogs would come and lick his sores. 22 The poor man died and was carried by the angels to sit beside Abraham at the feast in heaven. The rich man died and was buried, 23 and in Hades, where he was in great pain, he looked up and saw Abraham, far away, with Lazarus at his side. 24 So he called out, Father Abraham! Take pity on me, and send Lazarus to dip his finger in some water and cool off my tongue, because I am in great pain in this fire! 25 But Abraham said, Remember, my son, that in your lifetime you were given all the good things, while Lazarus got all the bad things. But now he is enjoying himself here, while you are in pain. 26 Besides all that, there is a deep pit lying between us, so that those who want to cross over from here to you cannot do so, nor can anyone cross over to us from where you are. 27 The rich man said, Then I beg you, father Abraham, send Lazarus to my father's house, 28 where I have five brothers. Let him go and warn them so that they, at least, will not come to this place of pain. 29 Abraham said, Your brothers have Moses and the prophets to warn them; your brothers should listen to what they say. 30 The rich man answered, That is not enough, father Abraham! But if someone were to rise from death and go to them, then they would turn from their sins. 31 But Abraham said, If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone were to rise from death.
Older Bible translations say that Lazarus was resting in the ‘bosom’ of Abraham. I like that a lot better than Lazarus 'sitting beside' him. In my sermon a couple weeks ago I said that it is our interpretation of a scripture that informs what we believe and how we act--the ideas that we pull out of the biblical texts and the things we add to the text are the ways we try to make sense of these stories, parables, and teachings in the Bible. It is our interpretation of the stories. These interpretations are a way of illuminating the Bible to go beyond simple religious, legal or moral teachings. It fills in many gaps left in the stories regarding events and personalities that are only hinted at. The goal is to discern the fullness of what was spoken by God.
In the Luke 16 text:
-Is Jesus telling us the story of the rich man and Lazarus to warn us about the burning fires of hell? Is Jesus saying that rich people go to hell, the poor go to heaven?
-Is Jesus warning Jews to accept the poor beggars in their midst, i.e. the gentiles, the have-nots?
-Is it a warning against luxurious living at the expense of the poor? A strong message to be generous and merciful to all, especially the poor?
In context, my primary interpretation of this story, especially when I consider many other Biblical stories, is that Jesus is trying to help his listeners understand how serious it is to indulge yourself while ignoring the poor. It seems fairly evident to me that the parable is meant to rebuke heartless, selfish use of wealth.
There are four parts in the story—the conduct of the rich man, his fate after death, the suffering of Lazarus while on earth and his comfort in the bosom of Abraham, that is—in heaven--and finally, the verdict-there is no excuse for the selfish, rich man. God’s warning has been clear and sufficient enough to save us from the rich man’s bitter fate.
Jesus wishes to point out the sin and fate of the heartless rich, wallowing in luxury with starving beggars at the gate. It is a sin which solicits judgment, and a bitter penalty. The rich man is not in Hades because he wore a purple robe and fancy underwear, nor because every meal had been a feast, but because, while living the high life, he disdainfully ignored the beggar in his sight, and used his riches on himself.
In this part of the story Lazarus is simply the means of bringing out the rich man's heartlessness and self-indulgence. There may be a clue to the character of Lazarus in his name, which means 'God is help.' As Lazarus is the only name in the parable, it likely suggests that he clung to God as his only hope. Now, the rich man was not bound to go and looking for poor people, but Lazarus was right at his door. We all have opportunity to help others less fortunate. Doing nothing when Lazarus is at our gate is the great sin of omission, and marks a person with no compassion. We might say the parable is suggesting that to live for self is death. We see Lazarus in the afterlife nestled in the bosom of Abraham, now the possessor of abundance, comfort and delight, while the rich man suffers torment.
The last part of the narrative teaches that the fatal sin of heartless selfishness is inexcusable. The rich man complains to Abraham, ‘If I had only known, things would have been different.’ He shifts blame from himself onto a defense of innocence and ignorance. And Abraham's answer is sort of: 'Men only hear what they want to hear and disregard the rest', to quote another prophet, New York City’s Paul Simon.
But often, men will not be persuaded—for persuasion has as much to do with a heart change as with head knowledge. Jesus is saying in this parable: We have as much witness from heaven as we need. The worst woman knows as much of her duty as the best woman does.
No, the rich man is in torment because he lived only for himself. He not because he did not know that it was wrong, but because he did not choose to do what he knew was right. He is paying the piper. He gets what’s coming to him.
Walking on the hallowed Princeton campus and thinking about its multi-billion dollar endowments to educate the elite, and ruminating on our family trip to Manhattan down the streets of glitz and glam of 5th Avenue and then to see homeless men on the sidewalks in the shadow of Gucci and Trump Tower, it all distressed me. How can I gawk at the jewelry in Tiffany’s while a man my age is drunk under the window? How can we shop for $990 doggie bags and fail to drop a dollar in his hat? And the more I thought about this, the angrier I got. The 5th Avenue walk is the story of Lazarus and the rich man come to life! I wanted to walk into Trump Tower and drag the Donald out of the tower. I’d sit him down next to the homeless Lazarus and yell: You’re fired! And then I’d track down Mr. Gucci and Mr. Tiffany, put them up on their counters and take off their diamond soled shoes and give them to Lazarus outside!
…But, beloved, over the next few days, as these vengeful thoughts didn’t relieve me of my sadness, I came to the realization that I, too, am like Mr. Trump and Gucci and Tiffany. My son is the Princeton man. I am the rich man. And--I am--Lazarus. I am them and they are me.
Donald Trump may be an egomaniac and a billionaire. But would I behave differently if I was in his $3000 shoes? We are all tempted by the love of money, the comforts it brings, the delusion that all is well because well….because we are well. But, the reality is we are all in this life together and in this parable Jesus is addressing us—he’s not speaking as some sort of 'pre-communist’, telling us we must all share the wealth equally. No, Jesus is saying it is evil when we love our money, luxury and comfort so much that we do not share with our brother and sister in need. It is evil when greed blinds us to the needs all around us. And greed tempts us all. And out of control greed leads to $990 dog bags while our neighbor eats dog food out of the bag--if he is lucky.
This, I believe is the best interpretation and lesson of the parable. Share with others in need, and share from your heart of compassion. And compassion is the key. It is a heart change. And by including Abraham in the story, is he suggesting that all children of Abraham--that is children of faith--should know better?
Now here I am with you, back in God’s country. According to the sign 249 souls live in Orr, and if we counted all the people in Orr and Cook and Kab and Ray and Littlefork and I-Falls and Fort Frances and Crane Lake and Buyck, we would have a tiny white group of the mass of people walking through Central Park last Saturday. As I think back on my walks on the streets of Princeton and New York, I have renewed compassion for the hundreds of thousands of people I saw those days. For the rich and the poor, for the ivy-league students and gawking tourists, for the break-dancers and street vendors, for the Trumps and the homeless. I hope and pray that you and I will experience Christ’s compassion for people.
Matt: 9:36 "When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd."
I’d like to close with a quote from Karl Barth, who is the primary theologian our son Ry is studying at Princeton.
"...The expression ‘compassion’ (splanixomai in the Greek) is a strong one which defies adequate translation. (from the guts) (Jesus) was not only affected to the heart by the misery which surrounded Him-sympathy in our modern sense is far too feeble a word- but it went right into His heart, into Himself, so that it was now His misery. It was more His than that of those who suffered it. He took it from them and laid it on Himself…it was no longer theirs at all, but His. The cry of those who suffered was only an echo. Strictly speaking, it had already been superseded...Jesus had made it His own. To the mercy of God which brings radical and total and definitive salvation there now corresponded the help which Jesus brought to men by His radical and total and definitive self-giving to and for their cause. In this self-giving, by the fact that His mercy, in this sense, led Him to see men in this way, He was on earth as God is in heaven. In this self-giving He was the Kingdom of God come on earth."
- Karl Barth, CD IV.2, 185.
Amen, brother Karl. Amen.
Abraham 3: Father of the modern family?
Pastor Roger Parrish-Siggelkow
1/22/12
For the last several weeks we’ve been talking about Abraham, the father of the faith journey, and how the three great monotheistic religions of the world, Judaism, Christianity and Islam all claim Abraham as their forefather. We’ve talked about how he was blessed by God with the promise of land, descendants, prosperity, protection and God’s friendship. There is so much that can be said about this one man and his family that a pastor could spend a whole year mining these stories from Genesis! But you can relax--I’m not going to do that, but it looks like I’ll be spending at least a couple more weeks looking at his story and what it means for us today.
Today, I would like to draw attention to what you could say is obvious: Abraham and his family are what we today might call A dysfunctional family. Have you ever turned on the television and watched a reality show like ‘Wife Swap’ or a sitcom like ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’ or ‘Modern Family’? It’s evident that many families today are pretty confused. Some of us long for the good old days when things weren’t so screwy, maybe back to black and white movie and TV days, and perhaps there is some truth in our fading memories of the good old days, but I don’t know--The Great Depression, Nazi Germany, The Korean War, The Cold War, McCarthyism, Civil Rights crises, 1960’s assassinations, Vietnam War, disco music—no, the world has been a pretty screwed up place since--well--since the family of Abraham.
Today we are going to look at some of the other major characters in Abraham’s life, and I mean major characters. And I’d like you to listen carefully to the way I tell their story.
Picture this: A strong and jealous wife, Sarah. In her youth, she is quite a beauty, even a King’s wife for a short time. But now late in life, barren Sarah suggests to her husband Abraham that he should have sex with one of their slave girls, Hagar, so that they would have a child, and she figured that the child would be hers, as Hagar was her slave, her personal property. Abraham dutifully obliges and Hagar becomes pregnant. Once she’s pregnant with Abraham’s child, the slave girl looks upon her mistress with contempt and smirks at her. So Sarah beats her up and Hagar runs away into the desert, but she comes back to live with the family. A few years later, the aged Sarah has a son with Abraham, too, and one day the two half-brothers are playing together. Sarah sees this and in a fit of jealousy, demands that our hero Abraham send the boy and his mother away. And so he casts out his oldest son Ishmael and his wife Hagar with a skin-full of water and piece of bread—into the desert to die. But out in the wilderness, at the last minute, God comes and saves them and sends them back home again. They survive, but the effects of this rejection and trauma on Hagar and Ishmael must have been profound. Ishmael never talks to his dad again.
In a story of eye-popping cowardice and lust, Abraham’s nephew Lot offers up his two daughters to a group of gangster rapists, and then, even when the city of Sodom is being torched by God for its perversion and Godlessness, his wife lustfully turns to go back! And so she is turned into a pillar of salt. That’s a unique way to die. Soon after Lot’s daughters get him drunk and have sex with him so they can continue the family line! Oy vey. (which means Ouch! :) )
Back to papa Abraham? We already know the story about how he lied to Pharaoh to save his own skin by asking Sarah to say she was his sister and not his wife. And then the King sends her back and Abraham gets to keep all the silver and gold! He profits from selling his wife to the King! Later our faith hero sets out to kill his other son Isaac, on orders from God. No wonder we don’t hear much about Isaac later as he was in therapy his whole life dealing with the day dad planned to kill him because God said so. We do know he enjoyed sitting in his tent and eating the meat his son Esau killed.
And what about Abraham's grandsons Jacob and Esau? Father Isaac favors Esau, his hunter son. But his wife Rebecca strongly favors Jacob, the ‘original mama’s boy’. She tricks Esau out of his birthright as the first-born son and secures it for Jacob--which in that culture--meant everything. Wow! Ever hear of sibling rivalry?
How about this?! Grandson Jacob has twelve sons with four different wives. He favors one of his younger sons, Joseph, so obviously that his step-brothers are bitterly jealous. Joseph prances about in an expensive rainbow colored coat his father gave him and tells them of his dreams, which celebrate his favor and rule over them. “Who do you think you are, little bro?!” they exclaim and one day out in the country they get their chance and throw him down a well. Then they drag him out of the well and sell him to traveling Egyptians as a slave. But at least they don’t kill him! Then they come home and tell poor dad that his favorite son Joseph is dead--killed by a wild animal.
Remember that I asked you to listen carefully to the way that I told this story? The things that we pull out of the biblical texts, and the things we add that are not written in the text are the way we make sense of these stories, parables, and teachings in the Bible. It is our interpretation of the stories. These interpretations are a way of illuminating the Bible that go beyond simple religious, legal or moral teachings. It fills in many gaps left in the narratives regarding events and personalities that are only hinted at.
What I just presented to you suggesting that Abraham was the father of a very dysfunctional family is an interpretation—But, it certainly is not the only way to tell the story, is it? It’s not the way the story would be told to children in Sunday School, or to teenagers in confirmation class. It’s probably not the way you’ve heard it before, either, as Abraham is mostly revered by Christians as the great father of faith.
Over the last 25 centuries there have been countless commentaries on the meaning of these stories in Genesis and speculation on the things that are said and things that aren’t said. In other words, our understanding of these stories comes down to hundreds of thousands of conversations and interpretations of the ancient texts. And we are still re-interpreting them to this day.
Remember that the approved scriptural texts, what we call the canon (or measuring stick) were closed by about 100CE for the Jewish Bible and 400 CE for the Christian Bible. Once the canons were closed, the problem facing the faith communities has been: How do we "search out" and understand the texts?
The Jews call these educated conversations searching out the scriptures—midrash, and Christian theologians and pastors use the Greek word exegesis, which are educated interpretations of the Bible as an eternal text, applying a set of principles established by the faith community to interpret them. The ultimate goal is to discern the fullness of what was spoken by God. In developing midrash or exegesis, there are two schools of thought on how to handle the language of the sacred texts. One is that the language of the Bible is the language of human discourse, and is subject to the same redundancies and spontaneity that we all encounter in conversation. The other view holds that Scripture is the Word of God, and no word is accidental. Every repetition, every apparent mistake, every peculiar feature of arrangement or order has meaning.
Exegesis and midrashism place the responsibility on the reader to reach an acceptable understanding and application of the text. While the interpretation is always governed by the wording of the text, it allows for the reader to project his or her inner struggle into the text. This allows for some very powerful and moving insights, which may at times, have very little connection with the text. The great weakness of this method is that it always threatens to replace the text with an outpouring of personal reflection. The great strength is that it illuminates the text with greater insight.
The themes in the story of Abraham and his family are deep and painful: women’s infertility, surrogate motherhood, class differences, slavery, deceit, sibling rivalry, extreme jealousy, abandonment, and the price human beings sometimes pay to be chosen and called. It’s pretty clear that we’re not talking about holy, pious, ‘good’ people here. They are selfish, jealous, angry, fearful, cold-hearted people. Just like us. And that is the good news!
Over the last three weeks, I’ve closed my messages with personal invitations from the story of Abraham. We can rejoice that we are called by God to walk this faith journey and through faith in Christ, we receive the promise of His blessing, fruitfulness, and friendship. Just like Abraham, we desire God’s blessings of a good home, a piece of land, good health and a family. We want to be friends with God. Just like him, our families have troubles. Our finances don’t always work out. We make bad decisions. Our children act out. Our grandchildren wander. Perhaps you can see a bit of your own family in Abraham’s family stories. Maybe you are struggling with a family situation that is causing you distress, and that nobody understands your disappointment and pain. Perhaps you even feel that you have fallen out of God’s grace. You feel all alone and undeserving of God’s mercy. Though it is so painful to live in families with problems, and though it is hard to acknowledge our own behaviors that we despise, God is not surprised by our dysfunction or in old-fashioned words—our sin.
And He had a plan for us: Jesus would come to bring the hope of reconciliation for all who believe. Beloved, as children of Abraham, and friends of Christ, you are God’s children.
2 Cor 5:17-21 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
The scriptures say that all of us, like sheep, have wandered astray. Let us return together this morning.
Let’s sing Amazing Grace together.
Abraham 2: Blessing, Blood and Land
1/15/12 Pastor Roger Parrish-Siggelkow
Genesis 17:1-7
When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, I am the Almighty God. Obey me and always do what is right. I will make my covenant with you and give you many descendants. Abram bowed down with his face touching the ground, and God said, I make this covenant with you: I promise that you will be the ancestor of many nations. Your name will no longer be Abram, but Abraham, because I am making you the ancestor of many nations. I will give you many descendants, and some of them will be kings. You will have so many descendants that they will become nations. I will keep my promise to you and to your descendants in future generations as an everlasting covenant. I will be your God and the God of your descendants. I will give to you and to your descendants this land in which you are now a foreigner. The whole land of Canaan will belong to your descendants forever, and I will be their God.
This month we are talking about the story of Abraham in Genesis 12-25. If you miss a Sunday and would like to read any of these messages, you can go online to our website www.northernminnesotaministries.com and click on ‘Sermons’.
If you remember from last week…
In Jewish tradition, Abraham is the forefather of the Jews through his second born child, Isaac, whose mother was Sarah. Isaac is God’s chosen son to carry the promise and is father to Jacob, who becomes the father of the twelve tribes, including Judah who become known as the Jews.
In Islamic tradition, Abraham is considered a prophet of Islam and the forefather of Muhammad through his firstborn son, Ishmael.
In Christian tradition, God's promise to Abraham is fulfilled in its entirety through Isaac and Jacob’s bloodline and we (as Gentiles, or non-Jews) are adopted into the family through the blood of Jesus Christ. It is Christ who provides the way of faith for all mankind to be grafted in to the ancestral 'tree' through Abraham and his descendants.
The Big Story of God begins in Genesis with ‘Let there be Light!’ Cameras! Action! And then Adam and Eve choose the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil; that is to say they want to be like God, and they are cast out of the Garden, and then the first murder, and the flood, and God tries to begin again with Noah and the promise of the rainbow and then comes the tower of Babel, which is men trying to be like god again.
The question is sometimes asked: Who is the most tragic figure in the Bible? Is it Jeremiah, the weeping prophet? Is it Abel who is killed by his brother? Job who loses everything? John the Baptist? Judas? No, the most tragic figure in the Bible is God. He is the heartsick father who keeps trying to develop a relationship with his children but suffers rejection and heartache as we choose to cut him out and go it alone.
In Genesis 12, we see God starting a relationship with humanity a third time, but this time God initiates a relationship with one man, and through Abraham and his family will be the ancestors of three great religions of the world lived out in 4 billion people’s lives in 2012.
Out of Ur, in what is now modern day Iraq, comes our hero Abram, whom God will re-name Abraham which means Father of Many Nations, and this begins a covenant relationship of blood and land with him. Abraham received God’s promise of blessing. He will become so prosperous that when men wish to invoke the highest good for themselves or one another, they will say, “May you be as blessed as Abraham was.” Today I would like to take a look at these blessings and promises.
1 God promises him a land. The LORD said to Abram …“Look around from where you are in Canaan, to the north and south, to the east and west. All the land that you see I will give to you and your descendants forever. I will make your descendants like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone could count the dust, then your descendants could be counted. Go, walk through the length and breadth of the land, for I am giving it to you.”
Yet all of Abraham’s life, he was a wandering pilgrim. He never got to settle in the promised-land, nor did he see his son settle there. The only land he ever owned in the land of Canaan was the burial plot for himself and his wife Sarah, and this, too, is important as his body planted in the grave is the metaphorical ‘seed’ of Abraham that is planted in the promised land and it is this seed that will grow into the tree of Abraham, from which the tree of life, Jesus Christ, will grow.
As seen through Jewish eyes, this land of Abraham is the promised land, and during the reign of King David and Solomon, approximately 600 BC, it was their land for a time. But since the destruction of Solomon’s temple, around 2500 years ago, the Jewish descendants of Abraham have wandered the world in a state of exile from their land, in what is called the Diaspora or the dispersed.
2 God promises to bless him and protect him. God says: “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.” This blessing is not just material prosperity but God’s presence with him as he travels through life. In the Genesis account, God chooses Abraham, speaks with him, challenges him, listens to him, protects him from potential harm, blesses him with children when he and his wife are old and beyond child bearing years. When Abraham lies to protect himself by telling kings that his beautiful wife Sarah is his sister, he receives more riches than he had before. All through his life, God’s favor is evident and according to Genesis, he lives to the ripe old age of 175. Now whether that is his literal actual age, we don’t know, but it is clear that Abraham lived to be a very old man!
3 God promises to bless his descendants. Gen: 17:1-8 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, I am the Almighty God. Obey me and always do what is right. I will make my covenant with you and give you many descendants. Abram bowed down with his face touching the ground, and God said, I make this covenant with you: I promise that you will be the ancestor of many nations. Your name will no longer be Abram, but Abraham, because I am making you the ancestor of many nations. I will give you many descendants, and some of them will be kings. You will have so many descendants that they will become nations. I will keep my promise to you and to your descendants in future generations as an everlasting covenant. I will be your God and the God of your descendants. I will give to you and to your descendants this land in which you are now a foreigner. The whole land of Canaan will belong to your descendants forever, and I will be their God.”
There is a lot of historical pain embedded in this text. In 1949, the state of Israel was established for the Jewish people, the sons and daughters of King David, the direct descendants of Judah, the son of Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham in this land of Canaan where Abraham and Sarah were buried nearly 4,000 years before.
4 God calls Abraham his friend. “But you, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen, you descendants of Abraham my friend. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” And for us as children of Abraham, we hear echoes of this John 15 when Jesus says: “I do not call you servants any longer, because servants do not know what their master is doing. Instead, I call you friends, because I have told you everything I heard from my Father.”
After almost 4,000 years, Abraham’s name is still great as the father of many nations and as the friend of God. Abraham believed and obeyed God and God saw him as righteous. He is our father in faith. Now, Abraham is not just the great patriarch of the three great religions. His life is also a model for the individual pilgrim of faith.
That is to say, his life is an example for you and me. Hearing the call and making a personal commitment to worship the one true God is the same invitation put before each of us. Trusting God could mean leaving your home, your family. Following God means that you commit to a journey of faith. It means to know him in your individual consciousness. To respond to the call God gives to each of us is to be a child of Abraham, to learn to live by faith.
The most profound lesson we can learn from Abraham is that we need to be willing to risk everything for the blessing of the relationship with God.
This might give you a little pause when we pray the Lord’s prayer together: “Your will be done…”
Let me just say that Marnie and I have both heard this Abraham and Sarah call several times in our journey of faith together, and certainly with our move up here to this ‘promised land’ we are trusting that it is God who has called us in our old age to...have a baby...no, wait I mean...to uproot and leave our town, our family and friends.
God has called us to leave what we know for that which is unknown, and we believe that we receive the same promises God gave to Abraham: We have been called by God into a good land to live in. We have been blessed by God’s presence and protection. We have been given spiritual children. We have been graced by the promise of being God’s friend.
And this call goes out to all people of faith. To give up what we know for the call to that which is unknown, to trust in this God of Abraham.
The father of Abraham, that father of Isaac, Jacob, David and Jesus—it is He who is calling you today.
Genesis 17:1-7
When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, I am the Almighty God. Obey me and always do what is right. I will make my covenant with you and give you many descendants. Abram bowed down with his face touching the ground, and God said, I make this covenant with you: I promise that you will be the ancestor of many nations. Your name will no longer be Abram, but Abraham, because I am making you the ancestor of many nations. I will give you many descendants, and some of them will be kings. You will have so many descendants that they will become nations. I will keep my promise to you and to your descendants in future generations as an everlasting covenant. I will be your God and the God of your descendants. I will give to you and to your descendants this land in which you are now a foreigner. The whole land of Canaan will belong to your descendants forever, and I will be their God.
This month we are talking about the story of Abraham in Genesis 12-25. If you miss a Sunday and would like to read any of these messages, you can go online to our website www.northernminnesotaministries.com and click on ‘Sermons’.
If you remember from last week…
In Jewish tradition, Abraham is the forefather of the Jews through his second born child, Isaac, whose mother was Sarah. Isaac is God’s chosen son to carry the promise and is father to Jacob, who becomes the father of the twelve tribes, including Judah who become known as the Jews.
In Islamic tradition, Abraham is considered a prophet of Islam and the forefather of Muhammad through his firstborn son, Ishmael.
In Christian tradition, God's promise to Abraham is fulfilled in its entirety through Isaac and Jacob’s bloodline and we (as Gentiles, or non-Jews) are adopted into the family through the blood of Jesus Christ. It is Christ who provides the way of faith for all mankind to be grafted in to the ancestral 'tree' through Abraham and his descendants.
The Big Story of God begins in Genesis with ‘Let there be Light!’ Cameras! Action! And then Adam and Eve choose the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil; that is to say they want to be like God, and they are cast out of the Garden, and then the first murder, and the flood, and God tries to begin again with Noah and the promise of the rainbow and then comes the tower of Babel, which is men trying to be like god again.
The question is sometimes asked: Who is the most tragic figure in the Bible? Is it Jeremiah, the weeping prophet? Is it Abel who is killed by his brother? Job who loses everything? John the Baptist? Judas? No, the most tragic figure in the Bible is God. He is the heartsick father who keeps trying to develop a relationship with his children but suffers rejection and heartache as we choose to cut him out and go it alone.
In Genesis 12, we see God starting a relationship with humanity a third time, but this time God initiates a relationship with one man, and through Abraham and his family will be the ancestors of three great religions of the world lived out in 4 billion people’s lives in 2012.
Out of Ur, in what is now modern day Iraq, comes our hero Abram, whom God will re-name Abraham which means Father of Many Nations, and this begins a covenant relationship of blood and land with him. Abraham received God’s promise of blessing. He will become so prosperous that when men wish to invoke the highest good for themselves or one another, they will say, “May you be as blessed as Abraham was.” Today I would like to take a look at these blessings and promises.
1 God promises him a land. The LORD said to Abram …“Look around from where you are in Canaan, to the north and south, to the east and west. All the land that you see I will give to you and your descendants forever. I will make your descendants like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone could count the dust, then your descendants could be counted. Go, walk through the length and breadth of the land, for I am giving it to you.”
Yet all of Abraham’s life, he was a wandering pilgrim. He never got to settle in the promised-land, nor did he see his son settle there. The only land he ever owned in the land of Canaan was the burial plot for himself and his wife Sarah, and this, too, is important as his body planted in the grave is the metaphorical ‘seed’ of Abraham that is planted in the promised land and it is this seed that will grow into the tree of Abraham, from which the tree of life, Jesus Christ, will grow.
As seen through Jewish eyes, this land of Abraham is the promised land, and during the reign of King David and Solomon, approximately 600 BC, it was their land for a time. But since the destruction of Solomon’s temple, around 2500 years ago, the Jewish descendants of Abraham have wandered the world in a state of exile from their land, in what is called the Diaspora or the dispersed.
2 God promises to bless him and protect him. God says: “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.” This blessing is not just material prosperity but God’s presence with him as he travels through life. In the Genesis account, God chooses Abraham, speaks with him, challenges him, listens to him, protects him from potential harm, blesses him with children when he and his wife are old and beyond child bearing years. When Abraham lies to protect himself by telling kings that his beautiful wife Sarah is his sister, he receives more riches than he had before. All through his life, God’s favor is evident and according to Genesis, he lives to the ripe old age of 175. Now whether that is his literal actual age, we don’t know, but it is clear that Abraham lived to be a very old man!
3 God promises to bless his descendants. Gen: 17:1-8 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, I am the Almighty God. Obey me and always do what is right. I will make my covenant with you and give you many descendants. Abram bowed down with his face touching the ground, and God said, I make this covenant with you: I promise that you will be the ancestor of many nations. Your name will no longer be Abram, but Abraham, because I am making you the ancestor of many nations. I will give you many descendants, and some of them will be kings. You will have so many descendants that they will become nations. I will keep my promise to you and to your descendants in future generations as an everlasting covenant. I will be your God and the God of your descendants. I will give to you and to your descendants this land in which you are now a foreigner. The whole land of Canaan will belong to your descendants forever, and I will be their God.”
There is a lot of historical pain embedded in this text. In 1949, the state of Israel was established for the Jewish people, the sons and daughters of King David, the direct descendants of Judah, the son of Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham in this land of Canaan where Abraham and Sarah were buried nearly 4,000 years before.
4 God calls Abraham his friend. “But you, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen, you descendants of Abraham my friend. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” And for us as children of Abraham, we hear echoes of this John 15 when Jesus says: “I do not call you servants any longer, because servants do not know what their master is doing. Instead, I call you friends, because I have told you everything I heard from my Father.”
After almost 4,000 years, Abraham’s name is still great as the father of many nations and as the friend of God. Abraham believed and obeyed God and God saw him as righteous. He is our father in faith. Now, Abraham is not just the great patriarch of the three great religions. His life is also a model for the individual pilgrim of faith.
That is to say, his life is an example for you and me. Hearing the call and making a personal commitment to worship the one true God is the same invitation put before each of us. Trusting God could mean leaving your home, your family. Following God means that you commit to a journey of faith. It means to know him in your individual consciousness. To respond to the call God gives to each of us is to be a child of Abraham, to learn to live by faith.
The most profound lesson we can learn from Abraham is that we need to be willing to risk everything for the blessing of the relationship with God.
This might give you a little pause when we pray the Lord’s prayer together: “Your will be done…”
Let me just say that Marnie and I have both heard this Abraham and Sarah call several times in our journey of faith together, and certainly with our move up here to this ‘promised land’ we are trusting that it is God who has called us in our old age to...have a baby...no, wait I mean...to uproot and leave our town, our family and friends.
God has called us to leave what we know for that which is unknown, and we believe that we receive the same promises God gave to Abraham: We have been called by God into a good land to live in. We have been blessed by God’s presence and protection. We have been given spiritual children. We have been graced by the promise of being God’s friend.
And this call goes out to all people of faith. To give up what we know for the call to that which is unknown, to trust in this God of Abraham.
The father of Abraham, that father of Isaac, Jacob, David and Jesus—it is He who is calling you today.
1/8/12
Abraham, Father of the Faith Journey
Pastor Roger Parrish-Siggelkow
Good morning. Today I’d like to begin a three-week sermon series talking about Abraham, who is the person God called to begin a covenant relationship with His people.
The Bible is the Big Story of God who created the world and who loves the world He created. It is His story of faithfulness, and redemption and it is the story of His love for people, his very flawed children. It is the telling of the story from Genesis to Revelation that is our story as people of faith, as followers of Jesus. It is God’s story of reconciliation in our hands, on our lips, and in our hearts.
Abraham’s story is told in Genesis chapters 12-25. Somebody should make a movie about his life, for Abraham’s life is a Hollywood drama jam-packed with intrigue, deceit, travel, war, sex, pathos and adventure—as well as great irony and faith. For our purposes, I will not be giving a text-by-text study of Genesis over the next three weeks, but I hope to illuminate a few texts to support how important his story is in the history of western civilization and in our lives as people of faith.
First a little background and then I will try to show you why I have come to see Abraham as such an important religious figure today. So, I hope you are awake and that you buckle up for a little crash course in ancient history!
Abraham, who was known as Abram until God changed his name when he was 99 years old is the one credited forefather of the three great mono-theistic religions (people who believe in One God)--Judaism, Christianity and Islam. He was a direct descendant of Noah's son Shem and according to both the Hebrew Bible and the Koran, he became the forefather of many tribes, including the Israel-ites, through his son Isaac and the Ishmael-ites through his son Ishmael.
In Jewish tradition, Abraham is the grandfather of the Israel-ites through his second born child, Isaac, whose mother was Sarah. The mother of his firstborn son, Ishmael, is identified as Hagar, Sarah’s Egyptian slave. And in Jewish tradition, Isaac is the chosen son and father to Jacob, who was renamed Israel.
In Islamic tradition, Abraham is considered a prophet of Islam and the forefather of Muhammad through his firstborn son, Ishmael.
In Christian tradition, God's promise to Abraham is fulfilled in its entirety through Isaac and Jacob’s bloodline and is offered to Gentiles or non-Jews through faith in Jesus Christ. It is Christ who provides the way for all mankind to be under the same covenant that was offered to Abraham and his descendants.
As Abraham’s story opens, his name is Abram and he is 75 years old. (Hmmm…it sounds like the first 75 years of his life weren’t all that important! Like some sort of Branson night club joke: OK, so God turns to Abram and says: “Son, now that you’re 75 and all grown up, you are ready to begin an adventure with me. I want youse to move from da lakes der and go where I tell you—to the land I’ve promised yoo—North Dakota and oh yah, a few years later in the story, yer wife der Lena, she’s gonna have a baby!!” )
Kind of comforting for some of us in January in Minnesota--as we reach a certain age? Our greatest adventures are yet to come!? Abraham lived another 100 years. (Lord, have mercy!)
“So Abram went, as the LORD had told him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Haran. He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the servants they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there. Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. The LORD appeared to Abram and said: ‘To your offspring I will give this land.’ So Abram built an altar there to the LORD, who had appeared to him. From there he went on toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the LORD and called on the name of the LORD.”
Here we have the beginnings of a whole new world. A world in which the one true God chooses one man and through his faith and obedience, God sets out to establish a covenant relationship with a ‘called out people’ and to promise them a land to live in. As we find out two generations later in the Bible, these people of the covenant will become the twelve tribes of Israel, as the children of Jacob/Israel. God calls a man and the man responds in faith. He believes and obeys. Abraham is our father in the faith journey.
The text continues in Genesis 12 reporting that there was a famine that came into the land and Abram and his entourage uprooted again and traveled to Egypt. (Abram was a very rich man and when he began to travel, it was like a small town moving across the deserts and plains, complete with thousands of heads of cattle and sheep.)
“As Abram was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, ‘I know what a beautiful woman you are. When the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me but will let you live. Therefore, say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you.’ And when Pharaoh’s officials saw Sarai, they praised her to Pharaoh, and she was taken into his palace, (that is to be one of his wives.) Pharoah treated Abram well for her sake, and Abram acquired more sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, male and female servants, and camels.”
Well, it seems our father Abraham is faithful and obedient but he certainly isn’t above being shrewd, politically astute and selfish. And the thing is--it seems to work out well for him! The story of Abraham told in chapters 12-25 in Genesis covers 100 more years of Abraham’s life, and we find him in and out of trouble with kings, and tasting sorrows and joys with his wife and children. We hear him wrangle with God. We see him willing to obey God even if it might cost him the life of his son. We learn of God’s covenant with him to establish a faithful people and a land and as Isaiah says later even to be called--a friend of God. There is a lot of spiritual territory to cover in the re-telling of Abraham’s story. What I hope to convey to you this morning is just how crucial his story is to Jews, Christians and Muslims, and how each of these religions has co-opted Abraham as their own.
Abraham was important to Jews, because he is the father of Isaac who is the father of Jacob who became Israel, or Father of the Jews. Jews trace their bloodlines back to Abraham , establishing their rights to the land of Canaan, what is now roughly modern-day Israel, Lebanon, and the western parts of Jordan and Syria. They lay claim through the promise of this blood and land. It is also through Abraham that the right of circumcision is established as the mark of the covenant between God and his chosen people in Gen 17.
But remember Abraham was not a Jew!
Abraham is very important to Christians because Paul traces the roots of righteousness to him in his letters to the Romans and the Galatians. “Genesis 15:6 says: Abraham believed God and because of his faith God accepted him as righteous.” Paul continues his argument: Abraham was regarded as righteous before he was circumcised, so the real descendants of Abraham are the people who have faith, not those who are circumcised blood relatives.” So it is through the door of faith in Jesus that Paul invites all Gentiles, Greeks, women and slaves into the house of God as children of God.
In this little sentence, Paul, himself a Jew by blood, is saying that the new covenant is now faith in Christ. Paul goes on to say that people are saved by faith and not by obedience to the law, which is what orthodox Jews believe. No wonder they wanted to kill him! Some have suggested that Paul is sawing Jews off the Abrahamic tree of life!
So it is that the story of Abraham has been re-interpreted through the lens of the meaning of Christ’s death and resurrection. Salvation comes by faith and not by obedience to the law.
So here we see that both Jews and Christians regard Abraham as their father, but each in a different way. One by direct bloodline and circumcision, the other by adoption, through faith in Christ’s blood.
Muslim tradition also sees Abraham as a father in their faith, and they have re-interpreted the story of Abraham through his son Ishmael. About 600 years after Christ, ‘a new prophet arose in Mecca to deliver the Arabs to what he considered their rightful place in the history of salvation. He was around 40, a well-to-do trader, married and illiterate.’ His name was Muhammad and he claimed that he had received The Q'uran ("the recitation”)—as the verbatim word of God--Allah. Muslims believe the Quran to be verbally revealed through the angel Gabriel from God to Muhammad over a period of approximately 23 years beginning in 610 CE, when Muhammad was 40, and concluding in 632 CE, the year of his death. Like the Jew and the early Christians, the Arabs in 600 CE were a marginalized nomadic people group. They worshipped many gods, and Muhammad’s vision of the Arabs as a chosen people by the one true God, who has now revealed Himself fully to Muhammad quickly took hold.
Today, many Muslims have reinterpreted the story of Abraham to promote him as the first true follower of Allah and they see themselves as the rightful heirs to the line of Abraham through the bloodline of Ishmael and many believe that Jews and Christians must be converted to Islam, which is the ultimate revelation of God as revealed to Muhammad.
No wonder we find ourselves in such a terrible pickle in the Middle East. 1500 years of holy Crusades, jihads, wars, displaced homeless people, rocket fire, suicide bombings, and daily tension as people of three faiths try to live in some sort of ‘peace’ together.
Both Jews and Arabs are descended from Abraham, but Abraham himself was neither "Jew" nor "Arab". What all three faiths agree on is that Abraham is the forefather of faith in the one true God.
Who are the children of God? This is the question that each religion answers differently.
Jews say: The people who have directly descended from Abraham and Isaac, those who have been circumcised and obey the laws of Moses, as it is written in the Torah and the rest of the books.
Christians say: The people who have descended from Abraham, and who believe in Jesus Christ, and those who do His will, as it is written in the gospels and the rest of the New Testament.
Muslims say: The people who obey and worship Allah, the father of Mohammad, who has given us His final word in the Q'uran.
I hate to leave you hanging, but all good stories do that, don’t they?
Abraham, Father of the Faith Journey
Pastor Roger Parrish-Siggelkow
Good morning. Today I’d like to begin a three-week sermon series talking about Abraham, who is the person God called to begin a covenant relationship with His people.
The Bible is the Big Story of God who created the world and who loves the world He created. It is His story of faithfulness, and redemption and it is the story of His love for people, his very flawed children. It is the telling of the story from Genesis to Revelation that is our story as people of faith, as followers of Jesus. It is God’s story of reconciliation in our hands, on our lips, and in our hearts.
Abraham’s story is told in Genesis chapters 12-25. Somebody should make a movie about his life, for Abraham’s life is a Hollywood drama jam-packed with intrigue, deceit, travel, war, sex, pathos and adventure—as well as great irony and faith. For our purposes, I will not be giving a text-by-text study of Genesis over the next three weeks, but I hope to illuminate a few texts to support how important his story is in the history of western civilization and in our lives as people of faith.
First a little background and then I will try to show you why I have come to see Abraham as such an important religious figure today. So, I hope you are awake and that you buckle up for a little crash course in ancient history!
Abraham, who was known as Abram until God changed his name when he was 99 years old is the one credited forefather of the three great mono-theistic religions (people who believe in One God)--Judaism, Christianity and Islam. He was a direct descendant of Noah's son Shem and according to both the Hebrew Bible and the Koran, he became the forefather of many tribes, including the Israel-ites, through his son Isaac and the Ishmael-ites through his son Ishmael.
In Jewish tradition, Abraham is the grandfather of the Israel-ites through his second born child, Isaac, whose mother was Sarah. The mother of his firstborn son, Ishmael, is identified as Hagar, Sarah’s Egyptian slave. And in Jewish tradition, Isaac is the chosen son and father to Jacob, who was renamed Israel.
In Islamic tradition, Abraham is considered a prophet of Islam and the forefather of Muhammad through his firstborn son, Ishmael.
In Christian tradition, God's promise to Abraham is fulfilled in its entirety through Isaac and Jacob’s bloodline and is offered to Gentiles or non-Jews through faith in Jesus Christ. It is Christ who provides the way for all mankind to be under the same covenant that was offered to Abraham and his descendants.
As Abraham’s story opens, his name is Abram and he is 75 years old. (Hmmm…it sounds like the first 75 years of his life weren’t all that important! Like some sort of Branson night club joke: OK, so God turns to Abram and says: “Son, now that you’re 75 and all grown up, you are ready to begin an adventure with me. I want youse to move from da lakes der and go where I tell you—to the land I’ve promised yoo—North Dakota and oh yah, a few years later in the story, yer wife der Lena, she’s gonna have a baby!!” )
Kind of comforting for some of us in January in Minnesota--as we reach a certain age? Our greatest adventures are yet to come!? Abraham lived another 100 years. (Lord, have mercy!)
“So Abram went, as the LORD had told him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Haran. He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the servants they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there. Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. The LORD appeared to Abram and said: ‘To your offspring I will give this land.’ So Abram built an altar there to the LORD, who had appeared to him. From there he went on toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the LORD and called on the name of the LORD.”
Here we have the beginnings of a whole new world. A world in which the one true God chooses one man and through his faith and obedience, God sets out to establish a covenant relationship with a ‘called out people’ and to promise them a land to live in. As we find out two generations later in the Bible, these people of the covenant will become the twelve tribes of Israel, as the children of Jacob/Israel. God calls a man and the man responds in faith. He believes and obeys. Abraham is our father in the faith journey.
The text continues in Genesis 12 reporting that there was a famine that came into the land and Abram and his entourage uprooted again and traveled to Egypt. (Abram was a very rich man and when he began to travel, it was like a small town moving across the deserts and plains, complete with thousands of heads of cattle and sheep.)
“As Abram was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, ‘I know what a beautiful woman you are. When the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me but will let you live. Therefore, say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you.’ And when Pharaoh’s officials saw Sarai, they praised her to Pharaoh, and she was taken into his palace, (that is to be one of his wives.) Pharoah treated Abram well for her sake, and Abram acquired more sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, male and female servants, and camels.”
Well, it seems our father Abraham is faithful and obedient but he certainly isn’t above being shrewd, politically astute and selfish. And the thing is--it seems to work out well for him! The story of Abraham told in chapters 12-25 in Genesis covers 100 more years of Abraham’s life, and we find him in and out of trouble with kings, and tasting sorrows and joys with his wife and children. We hear him wrangle with God. We see him willing to obey God even if it might cost him the life of his son. We learn of God’s covenant with him to establish a faithful people and a land and as Isaiah says later even to be called--a friend of God. There is a lot of spiritual territory to cover in the re-telling of Abraham’s story. What I hope to convey to you this morning is just how crucial his story is to Jews, Christians and Muslims, and how each of these religions has co-opted Abraham as their own.
Abraham was important to Jews, because he is the father of Isaac who is the father of Jacob who became Israel, or Father of the Jews. Jews trace their bloodlines back to Abraham , establishing their rights to the land of Canaan, what is now roughly modern-day Israel, Lebanon, and the western parts of Jordan and Syria. They lay claim through the promise of this blood and land. It is also through Abraham that the right of circumcision is established as the mark of the covenant between God and his chosen people in Gen 17.
But remember Abraham was not a Jew!
Abraham is very important to Christians because Paul traces the roots of righteousness to him in his letters to the Romans and the Galatians. “Genesis 15:6 says: Abraham believed God and because of his faith God accepted him as righteous.” Paul continues his argument: Abraham was regarded as righteous before he was circumcised, so the real descendants of Abraham are the people who have faith, not those who are circumcised blood relatives.” So it is through the door of faith in Jesus that Paul invites all Gentiles, Greeks, women and slaves into the house of God as children of God.
In this little sentence, Paul, himself a Jew by blood, is saying that the new covenant is now faith in Christ. Paul goes on to say that people are saved by faith and not by obedience to the law, which is what orthodox Jews believe. No wonder they wanted to kill him! Some have suggested that Paul is sawing Jews off the Abrahamic tree of life!
So it is that the story of Abraham has been re-interpreted through the lens of the meaning of Christ’s death and resurrection. Salvation comes by faith and not by obedience to the law.
So here we see that both Jews and Christians regard Abraham as their father, but each in a different way. One by direct bloodline and circumcision, the other by adoption, through faith in Christ’s blood.
Muslim tradition also sees Abraham as a father in their faith, and they have re-interpreted the story of Abraham through his son Ishmael. About 600 years after Christ, ‘a new prophet arose in Mecca to deliver the Arabs to what he considered their rightful place in the history of salvation. He was around 40, a well-to-do trader, married and illiterate.’ His name was Muhammad and he claimed that he had received The Q'uran ("the recitation”)—as the verbatim word of God--Allah. Muslims believe the Quran to be verbally revealed through the angel Gabriel from God to Muhammad over a period of approximately 23 years beginning in 610 CE, when Muhammad was 40, and concluding in 632 CE, the year of his death. Like the Jew and the early Christians, the Arabs in 600 CE were a marginalized nomadic people group. They worshipped many gods, and Muhammad’s vision of the Arabs as a chosen people by the one true God, who has now revealed Himself fully to Muhammad quickly took hold.
Today, many Muslims have reinterpreted the story of Abraham to promote him as the first true follower of Allah and they see themselves as the rightful heirs to the line of Abraham through the bloodline of Ishmael and many believe that Jews and Christians must be converted to Islam, which is the ultimate revelation of God as revealed to Muhammad.
No wonder we find ourselves in such a terrible pickle in the Middle East. 1500 years of holy Crusades, jihads, wars, displaced homeless people, rocket fire, suicide bombings, and daily tension as people of three faiths try to live in some sort of ‘peace’ together.
Both Jews and Arabs are descended from Abraham, but Abraham himself was neither "Jew" nor "Arab". What all three faiths agree on is that Abraham is the forefather of faith in the one true God.
Who are the children of God? This is the question that each religion answers differently.
Jews say: The people who have directly descended from Abraham and Isaac, those who have been circumcised and obey the laws of Moses, as it is written in the Torah and the rest of the books.
Christians say: The people who have descended from Abraham, and who believe in Jesus Christ, and those who do His will, as it is written in the gospels and the rest of the New Testament.
Muslims say: The people who obey and worship Allah, the father of Mohammad, who has given us His final word in the Q'uran.
I hate to leave you hanging, but all good stories do that, don’t they?
Peace (and Quiet)
Christmas Eve, 2011
Pastor Roger Parrish-Siggelkow
Luke 2:11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be a sign to you: "You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” 13 Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, 14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”
I remember several Christmas seasons when I was a young father and our children were small. I would wake up early just before dawn, plug in the Christmas lights on the tree, sit down on the couch with a cup of coffee and just stare at the beautifully decorated and twinkling tree. After a few minutes, one of our young children would sleepily wander into the living room and sit on my lap. As the years go by, I can’t remember which child it was anymore (Marnie assures me it was each of them in different years) but the feelings of warmth, love and joy in my memory is strong. The two of us would snuggle together and silently consider the Christmas tree before the rest of the house woke up. It was very quiet. And I was at peace. It was a very busy season of life, but in my treasured memory banks, these moments of sweet love, peace and quiet still bring a smile many years later to this grandfatherly boyish face.
Much of life is a whirlwind of loud busyness and work. As Shakespeare said: Sound and fury, signifying nothing. I am thankful for life’s small moments of peace and quiet. Maybe that is why I love Christmas and winter in the north woods. Life slows down. Elemental things become more important. Fire and warmth. Family. Friends. Good food and drink. And did I mention fire and warmth?
Most of us live our lives in such a flushed, crazy, pressurized rush that we have no time to rest and reflect on our lives. “As Nigel Marsh observes:“…Thousands and thousands of people are leading lives of quiet ‘screaming’ desperation where they work long, hard hours at jobs they hate, to enable them to buy things they don’t need, to impress people they don’t like...” This is the spirit of the age. If breathing wasn’t an involuntary response, well, most of us wouldn’t waste the time. And if the truth be told, many of us—maybe all of us—are much afraid of too much quiet.
“I’m so busy,” and “I want it all,” are the maxims of our day.
To take time to rest and contemplate is not part of the 21st century American psyche’s wiring. To take time for a little peace and quiet and take stock of your life, your joys, your sorrows? Why?
“No! We are ready for action, man! What’s next?”
But the possibility of peace that has come into the world through the birth of this one little child who is the Prince of Peace is the greatest gift of all time--waiting for us under the tree. Yet it is a gift that most of us leave unwrapped. It takes some time in the quietness of our hearts to unwrap and receive the gift of peace.
I am no longer a young father, stealing a few moments of peace and quiet in front of the sparkling tree. I don’t know how or when it all happened, but I am now Taid--grandfather in Welsh. The times with my kids on my lap in the busy prime of life are long gone and have recently been replaced by walks in the woods with my dog, Buddy. (What’s that you say? Child replacement?) I throw a stick. He fetches it. And we do that over and over again as we traipse through the snow.
While out walking with Buddy this week, I had a couple hours of peace and quiet. I breathed in the cold pine scented wind and caught a whiff of wood smoke from a cabin chimney. I saw an eagle fly overhead. I listened to the crunching of my boots on the fresh snow and I heard the wind whistling high in the tall snow-tipped pines. I silently offered a prayer of thanks for the wonderful people in my life. For my wife and children. My mother. My grandchildren. My friends.
July 3, 2011
Proverbs 3:5-6
"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and in all your ways acknowledge him and He will make your paths straight."
Last Sunday, I suggested that if we open up your Bibles and let them flop open to the middle, we will probably find ourselves in the Psalms, which could be called God’s Heartbook. If we lean a little toward the New Testament, we find the next book—Proverbs, which could be called God’s Headbook. In the Book of Proverbs we find all sorts of pithy pieces of wisdom for life.
When our children were very young, Marnie and I helped them memorize these two ‘proverbial’ verses from Proverbs 3, and over the years the simple, profound words of instruction have brought much comfort to me, for I do desire to trust God and acknowledge Him in all that I do. I am a long ways off from doing that perfectly, but my heart has been set on this since I first became a follower of Christ when I was 22.
Tomorrow is July 4th, Independence Day in our country, and we will celebrate America’s declaration of independence from colonialism. We will have picnics, shoot off fireworks and honor the sacrifices of all the people who have lived and died to protect our many freedoms. As I was praying about this message, I felt a nudge to offer another perspective from the Proverbs.
Dependence Day
Today, as followers of Christ, we celebrate Dependence Day. Today we can gather together and say to God and to one another: “We are dependent on you, God. We need Your guidance. We are dependent on you for meaning in life. We need Your spirit to bring us hope. We need one another.”
Many of us have headed to the woods because we are smart, self-sufficient, resourceful, independent people. And we are proud of our ability to survive and endure. I know this morning as I look out at you, I am speaking to a group of resilient, industrious, strong, vibrant people who have learned to overcome many adversities and to adapt to many changes. You don’t live in these woods very long if you aren’t tough and resourceful!
(I’m thinking of Char out in the woods working her chainsaw! Coming home and scaring a bear out of her kitchen. And Eddie as a little boy petting his little black dog, only to discover it was a bear cub! He still tells that story 75 years later!...)
As many of you know, Marnie and I bought a British Yellow Lab puppy to accompany us on our journey to the north woods. We’ve had him for a couple weeks and he is proving to be a delightful companion; happy, content, trusting, and eager to please—but at the same time, maybe a little slow to learn, hesitant, easily distracted....
Hmmm…sounds like me.
We’ve been working on basic obedience work. “Buddy, Come. Sit. Stay. OK.” He’s getting the come…and the sit bits… Stay is a little trickier.
As I spent time with Buddy over the last couple weeks, I’ve been taught many valuable lessons about obedience, trust, love and dependence. Of course our little buddy is completely dependent on us to feed him, to show him affection, to take him to the doctor for shots and check-ups. He is also like a baby and needs a lot of training in how to function in the world. As I’ve pondered the growing relationship between my puppy and me, I’ve discovered several key lessons for the both of us.
Come. Sit. Stay. OK !
Come. When I call for my puppy, I am excited when he cocks his head and comes bounding toward me. I open my arms and welcome him. ‘Good boy!’ I say. ‘Good buddy!’ And I scratch his ears and forehead. Buddy melts. I think this is much like the way God invites us to come to Him. When we come enthusiastically bounding up to him in prayer, for guidance, comfort, strengthening; to exchange our independence for dependence on Him, God is pleased.
Sit. I’ve been working with Buddy on learning how to sit. He’s picking it up quickly, especially when there is a little milk bone treat after he sits and stays. When we come bounding in from our work, God asks us to sit. Maybe it’s a time to read our Bibles or meditate on other devotional readings. Perhaps it is a prayerful conversation while walking in the woods or heading off on a day of fishing. Maybe it is considering the lake horizon at the end of the day. God yearns to spend time with us, bringing us His wisdom and assuring us of His great love and care. As King David said: God has shown me the paths that lead to life and His presence fills me with joy.
Stay. We are tempted to get up and run away. To accomplish some task. To fix something. But God asks us to stay a little longer until we are at peace. Then the release…
OK! and off we go! We can choose to walk in independence through our lives until one day we hit the difficult end of the road. Or we can trust that following God will lead us on the path of life whose end is very good.
Those of you who are dog owners know the peculiar love that captivates you when you bring home a puppy. You are so happy when the puppy responds to your call, and so impressed, even grateful, when the pup is obedient. And your heart overflows with love for the puppy. All she wants to do is to please you.
I wonder: Does God look fondly at us when we respond to his invitation: Come. Sit. Stay. Could it be that we are loved so deeply akin to the way we love our vulnerable pups? And what of our love for our family, friends and neighbor? Where does this love come from? I submit to you: Love comes from God.
As we travel the journey of life, we are frequently tempted to go it alone. We say: I can do it myself. I’ll handle it. We get scared. We run and hide.
But wisdom, says the writer of Proverbs, comes from trusting the Lord and acknowledging Him—in all circumstances. We can depend on Him. He will make our paths straight. We will find Him if we seek him with our whole heart. God is calling us to “Come” today …”Sit”….”Stay”.
Everything will be OK. “Good boy... Good girl...”
