"Whoever Loves Son or Daughter More than Me" (Gen 21:8-21)

Defining Traits

As many of you know, my nephews are twins. But you would have no trouble telling them apart. For one thing, they are fraternal twins with physical differences. One has straight hair, the other has curly hair. One is tall and gangly, the other is short and stocky. But even more distinguishing are their personalities. Part of what makes them so endearing, in my opinion, are their distinctive quirks.

Matthew, the shorter nephew with wild curls, is fascinated by the mechanics of the world. When he first discovered the kitchen sink, he was captivated. He would climb up the counter at every opportunity, pull the handle, and then declare with wonder, “Water goes down the drain! Water goes the drain!” Sometimes I think of Matthew as our little mad scientist. He’s always tinkering with something. If I hear a repetitive noise, “click-click-click” or “scratch-scratch-scratch,” I smile and think to myself, “Oh, that’s Matthew.”

Nathan, the taller nephew, is the helper in the family. When he sees daddy sweeping the floor, he gets out his toy broom and helps. When he sees mommy cooking in the kitchen, he rushes to her side to offer his culinary services. Nathan’s propensity to help sometimes spills over into the sharing of his expert opinions, such as, “I think this needs more chocolate,” or, “Maybe we should take a break and watch TV.” At times, Nathan can even become what one might call bossy. My dad likes to joke about Nathan, “He loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life!” So, when Nathan rushes to my side to see what I’m doing, to help, perhaps to offer his expert opinion, I smile and think to myself, “Oh, that’s Nathan.”

I imagine you can identify traits that define your own children or grandchildren, traits so distinctive that when you observe them you think to yourself, “Oh, that’s Paisley…that’s Olivia…that’s Ashley…that’s Dean…that’s Katie.”

Isaacing

I imagine that Sarah would have recognized such traits in her own miracle child, Isaac, who is three or four years old in today’s story. Maybe it was his distinctive laugh that identified him. (After all, he was named for laughter. Isaac means, “He laughs.”) Or maybe it was the way he interacted with the livestock. Later in life, he would manage the family’s flocks and herds with great success (Gen 26:23-24). Whatever his distinguishing traits were, I imagine that when Sarah saw them, she would smile—maybe laugh—and say to herself, “Oh, that’s Isaac.”

One day, Abraham makes a great feast to mark the completion of Isaac’s weaning. It is a celebration, a rite of passage for Isaac as he moves from infancy to childhood. It should be a day of laughter and joy. Isaac has made it through those treacherous early months and years. He has survived; he has grown healthy and strong. But tragically it is not a day of laughter. It is not even Isaac’s day, at least not as the story is told in the Bible. For Sarah’s focus is elsewhere, on Abraham’s other son, Ishmael.

Our Bible translation says that Sarah sees Ishmael “playing with her son Isaac” (Gen 21:9). But the original Hebrew text is more ambiguous. It simply says that she sees Ishmael “playing.” The word is metzacheq, which comes from the same word from which the name “Isaac” is formed. Therefore, some commentators have suggested that Ishmael is “Isaacing.” That is, Sarah sees Ishmael replicating her own son’s distinctive behavior, whether that’s laughing or horsing around with the livestock. That behavior for which she would have said, “Oh, that’s Isaac!”—she sees Ishmael doing it! She sees her worst fear, namely that Ishmael will take Isaac’s place.

And so on Isaac’s feast day, she pronounces a terrible fate for Ishmael, “Cast out this slave woman with her son” (Gen 22:10). She cannot even say his name, Ishmael. It is as though she cannot accept his presence in the family; it is too great a threat to her plans for Isaac. This day of laughter turns swiftly into a day of tears. The story follows Hagar and Ishmael into the wilderness, where their desperate cries are met with divine help. And there is a beautiful message here in this twist of the story, but where I’m choosing to focus today is back home. Because even as Sarah gets her way, even as Hagar and Ishmael leave forever, I do not get the sense that she is at peace. Rather, I imagine that she is crying too and doesn’t understand why. Didn’t she get what she wanted?

Scratching the Itch

In today’s gospel text, Jesus makes a seemingly impossible demand on his disciples, “Whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matt 10:37). I have often wondered how Jesus could say this, as cold and callous as it can sound. It is certainly not an advertisement for traditional “family values.” But when he goes on to say, “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it” (Matt 10:39), I find myself thinking of Sarah, who seems to have lost her life, or at least her contentment, in her repeated attempts to secure life through a son.

Before today’s scripture, seventeen years earlier, Sarah had worried about even having a child in the first place. In Genesis 16, we learn that her desire for a son was a desire to be, literally, “built up” (Gen 16:2).[1] From the beginning, Sarah has seen her self-worth as rooted in having a son. So, she forces her Egyptian maidservant, Hagar, into a surrogate motherhood. But rather than feel better about herself, she feels even worse, even more worthless. As Hagar’s pregnancy begins to show, Sarah fears that biology will supplant her scheme. She fears that the son of Hagar will never truly be her son.

The same pattern repeats itself today. Sarah now has her own son. But rather than feel better about herself, she feels threatened by someone else: Abraham’s other son, who, ironically, was conceived and born in the first place because of Sarah. Sarah’s repeated discontentment, her never being happy when she gets what she wants, reminds me of the proverbial “scratching the itch.” (As an aside, my nephew Nathan is currently learning the meaning of this metaphor. Despite his mother’s warnings that scratching his itches will make things worse, not better, he can’t help himself, with the tragic result that his legs look like a battlefield.) The more that Sarah tries to secure her own life through having a son, the more she “loses” it through worry and conflict. The more her life looks like a battlefield. Her tragedy is elusively hinted at in the fact that her bitter demand for Hagar and Ishmael’s expulsion are actually her last words in the book of Genesis. After these words, Sarah disappears from the story until the day of her death. Is the storyteller trying to tell us something? Something like what Jesus says, that “those who ‘find’ their life will [actually] lose it” (Matt 10:39)?

Losing Our Lives:

A Guideline for Sane Living?

Now, Jesus’ language about loving him more than our own children is a little provocative, so I do want to underline that I do not think Jesus is pitting himself against our families: “It’s either your children or me!” It helps me to remember that Jesus is “the way, the truth, and the life.” So, when he draws a contrast between loving our children and loving him, I think what he’s talking about is the way we love. It is instinctive for us to love with certain conditions. We generally draw a circle around our love. It usually includes our family. Sometimes we widen it to include our good friends and other people who think like us, or vote like us, or worship the same God that we do. But this conditional love is competitive. It is “us” versus “them,” fueled by the fear that those outside the circle will take what is ours, just as Sarah fears that Ishmael’s presence will somehow diminish Isaac. And it is selfish. It is making an investment in the hope of a return, just as Sarah had hoped to be “built up” by having a son who would be hers.

At first glance, Sarah’s motivation in today’s story may seem natural and healthy. This is just a mama bear who loves her kid and is looking out for his best interest, right? But look a little closer, and we see that her “love” is more about gratifying a desire than it is about caring for others. It is competitive, “us” versus “them,” her against Hagar, Isaac against Ishmael. And the result of this conditional, closed-circle love is that in the process of securing her life, Sarah loses it. What God meant for laughter, has turned into tears. Sarah is perpetually worried and threatened, embroiled in a conflict that she has created. (If it feels a little like I'm piling on Sarah, make sure to come back next week. Abraham will get his own treatment!)

Sarah’s story invites me to pause and ponder where in my life I feel anxiety, worry, impatience, the need to control. What itch am I trying to scratch? … What would it mean to “lose” my life for Jesus and his way of love instead of trying to secure my life? Losing my life sounds so big and idealistic. But in light of Sarah’s crazed experience I’m now wondering if it’s not in fact Jesus’ practical advice for sane living.

Maybe “losing my life” simply means not being the center of the world (which inevitably makes other people peripheral).

Maybe it means caring for others rather than competing or trying to control them.

Maybe it means being patient and trusting in the power of God’s love.

Prayer

God who is love,
In Christ you beckon us
To stop scratching what itches
And instead
To become your healing balm
In the world.
Grant us compassion
For ourselves and for others
When we strive so hard to secure life
…
Make our circles of love bigger
And inspire us with your care,
That we might find life in your kingdom.
In Christ, who leads the way: Amen.

 

---

[1] The NRSV obscures her clever pun—“Perhaps I may be built up (‘ibaneh),” which plays on the word for son, ben—and translates more prosaically, “It may be that I shall obtain children.”

"At the Right Time" (Gen 18:1-15)

Grandma Moses

When is the right time to begin a career? For many people, it is after a time of study and preparation. In more recent history, people have sought degrees or some sort of professional credentials in the field of their anticipated profession. In the older model, folks would seek an apprenticeship with a master in the field and would learn on the job. In either case, the “right time” to begin a career is after a period of preparation and practice. Only after we have proven ourselves to some degree, only after we have demonstrated the requisite knowledge and control do we cross the stage and enter into the profession. And there is a certain logic in this sequence. I don’t know about you, but I would not submit to a surgery performed by a surgeon whose only qualification is reading a book, but who’d never prepared or practiced for surgery, who’d never actually wielded a knife.

And yet, history is filled with counterexamples in which people have wandered into a career late in life and with little or no formal preparation. I remember learning about Grandma Moses in grade school. I was fascinated to learn that she took up painting in her eighties and without any serious schooling. Earlier in life, she had been a quilter. But when her arthritis advanced in old age and made embroidery painful, she took up painting. She didn’t have all of the proper materials, but that didn’t stop her. When she needed to depict tiny details, like mouths or eyes, she used pins or matches. She wasn’t bothered by proper technique either. When her right hand began hurting, she just switched hands and painted with her left.

The lack of artistic knowledge and control did not stop Grandma Moses, as it certainly would have for me. (How often do I say, “Not yet. Not until I’m more prepared.”) Grandma Moses could paint because she was not concerned with results or achievements. She could paint because she did not care what the art critics said.

But perhaps the greatest basis for Grandma Moses’ painting was her trust that there was always more life. Quilting was too painful? No matter, there must be something else….Why not paint?

“The Time of Life”

Today’s scripture is not unlike the story of Grandma Moses. To begin, it is covered in the creases and wrinkles of old age. It is attuned to the meaning of time, namely the loss of ability and control that, after a certain point, we all suffer with each passing day. When the divine messengers inform Abraham that his wife Sarah will have a child soon, the storyteller reminds us that they are both “old, advanced in age” (Gen 18:11). Sarah is ninety. Abraham is ninety-nine. Sarah starts laughing. “After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?” (Gen 18:12). That word “pleasure,” by the way, is ednah, which comes from the same root as Eden, as in “the garden of Eden.” Eden seems so distant from this world, Sarah says; yet the divine messengers suggest it is not. Jesus himself would later insist, “The kingdom of God is among you” (Luke 17:21).

The story of unlikely birth is a firm favorite of the Old Testament. In Genesis alone, it happens on four different occasions. Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, and Tamar all face impossible odds in their quest to have a child (Gen 11:30; 25:21; 29:31; 38:11). Yet in each case, life prevails. They beat the odds with the help of God’s invisible power. I choose to believe that the underlying message of these unlikely births is not literal. The Old Testament is not saying that God is the one who will guarantee the conception and birth of children. I know too many couples who have prayed for decades and tried every possible means and have not had children, and I cannot believe that they are somehow lacking in faith or God has rejected their prayers. Instead, I think the underlying message of these unlikely births is more universal. Life prevails. At the moment when life seems past us, God’s invisible power is at work to raise us to new life.

In their announcement to Abraham, the divine messengers use a curious turn of phrase: Sarah will have a son “in due season,” ka‘et chayyah (Gen 18:10, 14). Literally, “at the time of life.” What does that mean? Some scholars suggest it is a euphemism for the period of gestation. Others suggest it is a poetic reference to springtime. But I wonder if it is not simply a reminder of God’s strange, roundabout timing. Sarah thinks life and Eden have past her by. For her, this is the time of creases and wrinkles, the time of loss and deterioration. But the divine messengers say otherwise. For them, now is “the time of life.”

“Forcing Things” Versus Trust

In one of the other lectionary scriptures for today, Paul marvels at God’s strange, roundabout timing. “While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly….While we still were sinners Christ died for us” (Rom 5:6, 8). From Paul’s perspective, the wonder of God’s care is that it comes to us when we seem to deserve it least: “while we were still weak,” “while we still were sinners.” The logic of our world is that we must first have our lives in order, we must first demonstrate the requisite knowledge and control before we receive the gifts of life. But God confounds the logic of our world. “At the right time Christ died…” The “right time” for God is the precise moment when we realize that we are weak and not in control, the moment when life seems to have past us by.

Faith is not getting our lives in order as much as it is learning to trust in God’s care. For Sarah in today’s scripture, it is learning to trust that now is not only the time of wrinkles and creases, the time of loss and diminishing, but also “the time of life.” For Grandma Moses, it was trusting that, even as she lost the ability to quilt, there was yet more life.

A little earlier in Genesis, Sarah senses her old age and in desperation tries to force things. She essentially opts for a surrogate pregnancy through her Egyptian maidservant, Hagar. But when Hagar becomes pregnant, Sarah feels even more worthless—“less than” her own maidservant. So, she “deals harshly” with Hagar (Gen 16:6). She mistreats her until Hagar runs away into the wilderness.

Commentators have long criticized Sarah for choosing surrogate motherhood. She did not have faith in God, they say. But I have some sympathy for her. She was seventy-five at the time. She herself had not heard any promise from God that she would bear children. So, after years of waiting, she took some initiative. One could even say she did trust that now is “the time of life”; she had not given up hope for a child. But where she loses faith, I think—where she goes astray—is in the employment of force upon her maidservant, first in the unilateral demand that Hagar conceive for her, and then certainly in the physical abuse that results in Hagar’s flight into the desert. The early followers of Christ were unequivocal in their condemnation of force. “Compulsion is not God’s way of working,” writes the author of the Epistle to Diognetus. God “does not use violent means to obtain what he desires,” writes Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon. My favorite comes from Clement of Alexandra, who writes, “God does not compel, since force is hateful to God, but He provides for those who seek.”[1]

All of this is to say, the “right time” for God is not the moment when I’m in control and have everything in order, but the moment when I acknowledge that I’m not in control and instead seek God’s provision. It is only when Sarah has given up designs on the future that God’s care reveals itself in a surprising way. It is only when Grandma Moses relinquishes quilting that she discovers the joy of painting. The good news of today’s scriptures is that God’s timing is not correlated to our ability, but to our inability. When we cannot do it on our own, is “the right time” for God, the “time of life.” It is the moment when we are invited to trust in the invisible care of God, which manifests in new life that we could not foresee.

Prayer

God of life,
Whose timing often confounds
Our expectations and plans,
Sometimes slowing us down when we’re in a hurry,
Sometimes surprising us when we’ve given up,
Always renewing us when we acknowledge
Our lack of control
…
Help us to know
That “now” is the time of life;
That we are right where we are supposed to be;
And that the kingdom of God is near.
In Christ, who died while we were still weak: Amen.

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[1] Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2016), 119.

Unknown Blessing (Gen 12:1-9)

Were You the Architect?

I’d like to begin today with a short thought experiment. Think about the best things that have happened to you over the course of your life. Don’t think too hard; just sit for a moment and see what comes to mind. Maybe one or two or three things for which you are really grateful. Once you’ve thought of a couple things, you might write them down on the blank space of your bulletin insert, or just sit with them in your mind for a moment. I’ll give us all a minute now.

…

Now here's the question I’d like to ask you. Take a look at what you’ve written down. Did these things happen because you had planned them exactly the way they happened? Were you the architect? Or was there an element of surprise or serendipity in them? Was there an element of what our world might call good fortune?

I’m guessing that for many of us, the best things that have happened in our lives have come out of nowhere. Or at least, they weren’t entirely of our own engineering.

I still remember the night in my first year abroad when I went out to the pub thinking I would be meeting one other friend, a fellow Liverpool fan. As it turned out, I ended up meeting a host of people, including a future roommate, through whom I would meet many more friends. It was as though that night a door had opened up and there was a new, unknown world before me.

And I certainly wasn’t the one who opened the door.

The Call of Abraham

Today’s scripture is a familiar one. God calls Abraham to leave his land, his people, and his home. To go where? The unknown. God doesn’t name the destination. He only says that he will show Abraham the way. He also says that it will be a good thing. Abraham will be blessed and will be a blessing. (I wonder if this two-sidedness is true of all blessing. It has no limits. When a person truly receives a blessing, they cannot help but live in a way that is generous and giving.)

In the New Testament, Paul regularly refers back to Abraham as a model for faith. Part of what fascinates Paul—and it fascinates me too!—is that Abraham shows us what faith looks like without the trappings of religion. Abraham lived before there was any Jewish scripture, before there was a Temple, before priests and sacrifices, before worship services—before all of that. Abraham shows us what faith looks like in its plainest form. It’s not about following a set of rules or rituals. It’s not about having all the right beliefs. It’s much simpler. Faith is following God into the unknown and trusting that the adventure will be a blessing.

You might remember from last week how God created everything. It was a dance of call and response. God calls, “Let there be…let there be…let there be…” and the world responds in kind, collaborating with God, giving flesh to God’s loving desire, making something good, very good. What we see in Abraham is an extension of this same creative process. Just as God calls the earth to bring forth vegetation, and the earth brings forth vegetation (Gen 1:11-12), so God calls to Abraham to leave what he knows, and Abraham leaves.

There seems to be an inherently outward movement in God’s creative impulse. In creation, God tells the creatures, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” Spread out. Share the goodness. Multiply it. We see the exact opposite in the Tower of Babel, where humanity gathers together in one place, likely under the command of oppressive leaders who employ forced labor. When God puts an end to that project, he duly scatters the people “over the face of all the earth” (Gen 11:8-9). Spread out, he seems to say again. Do not hoard the gifts of life but multiply them and share them.

Hoarding in Haran?

In fact, this tension between hoarding and spreading may sit at the heart of Abraham’s story. Genesis 11 tells us that, long before God called Abraham, he was born in Ur, the Sumerian capital in Mesopotamia, one of the first recorded cities in our world. One day, his father, Terah, decides to take his family to Canaan. We are given no reason for this sudden move. Some readers have speculated that maybe Terah received the same call from God that Abraham later did. Whatever the reason, Terah does not follow through on his original itinerary, because about halfway through the journey, he reaches the city of Haran and decides to settle there instead (Gen 11:31). Why would he have chosen to stop at Haran? Historians tell us that the name Haran likely comes from an ancient word for “road,” and that it was indeed at a crossroads. In other words, it was a center of trade in the ancient world.

We can imagine, then, that Abraham’s family found Haran to be an appealing destination, a place of security and stability. In Haran, they would have access to everything good the world could offer: good food, quality housing, cultured neighbors. They could drop anchor here and slowly piece together a life of comfort and convenience and predictability.  Here in Haran they had found a foundation for building a good life. They could be architects of their own future and store up whatever treasures they could acquire.

It is at this juncture that Abraham, now at the ripe old age of seventy-five, hears God’s unsettling call. Literally unsettling. Maybe that is true, in some small way, of all of God’s calls—that they are unsettling? Anyway, Abraham leaves. He leaves knowing everything he will be losing and nothing specific about what he will be gaining. All he has is God’s word that he will be blessed and a blessing.

The Gifts and the Giver

What stands out to me at the beginning of Abraham’s journey into the unknown is his habit of building altars to God. Twice in our short scripture, he pauses his journey, not to settle down as his father did in Haran, but to build a momentary altar to God (Gen 12:7-8). Nowhere does God give him instructions to do this. He’s not worshiping God because he’s been told to. He’s not performing some mandated ritual. The motivation seems much more basic: he desires to be near God. I interpret his altars as an expression of his trust. He trusts not in the life that he can build on his own but in the Creator who is doing something much bigger. He trusts not in the gifts of this world, which earlier his family may have hoarded in Haran, but in the Giver, who is always doing something new.

Throughout scripture, there runs a theme of trusting the Giver rather than the gifts themselves. Gifts that are held onto too tightly always seems to turn sour, as in the wilderness when people tried to store up manna and it rotted after a day (Ex 16:19-20), or as in Jesus’ story of the rich fool who builds larger barns only to lose everything in a night (Luke 12:13-21). Instead of clinging to his gifts, Abraham clings to the Giver, who whisks him away from gifts past that he might receive and share unknown blessings.

What I am learning from Abraham today, then—and I suppose I also learn this when I pay attention to Christ—is a few simple things. First, faith is an adventure into unknown goodness. Second, blessings are not meant to be stored up but shared. And third, even when it looks bleak, even when the gifts of the past disappear, even when the future is in the shape of a cross, faith means trusting that the Giver of life does not stop giving.

Prayer

God of Abraham,
Giver of unknown blessings—
Sometimes our gratitude
For the gifts of the past
Mutates into desperate clutching
And storing up
…
Loosen our grip on things
And renew our trust in you, the Giver,
That we may go easy into the unknown
To receive and give your blessing,
To multiply your goodness.
In Jesus Christ, who lived by your daily bread: Amen.

Call and Response (Gen 1:1-2:4a)

A Parable about an Old Sailor and His Stories

There once was an old sailor who had journeyed all around the world on his boat. Sailing was his joy. But one day a great storm, unlike any he had ever encountered before, blew his boat off course, and eventually it was wrecked upon the shores of an uncharted island. The man was too old to rebuild his ship. And the natives, who had never left the island before, had no interest in helping him. So the sailor accepted his fate and resigned himself to living out the rest of his days on the island.

Over time, he developed a reputation as a storyteller. He could not help but tell tales of his adventures on the sea. And his words were enchanting. At night, he would speak by a campfire under the stars, and silence would fall upon his rapt listeners. He described in wondrous detail all the lands he had visited. All the exotic foods that he had tasted, all the colorful outfits he had seen people wear, all the strange customs and ceremonies in which he had participated. His stories were sometimes so outlandish, that the elders on the island cautioned their youth against believing everything they heard.

But their caution fell upon deaf ears. There was a group of youth who were so enchanted, that they began to dream day and night of sailing around the world. So, when the old man passed away, his stories did not. His stories had taken root in the hearts of these youth. Before long, the young dreamers began talking about building a boat of their own and sailing around the world. And that is what they did. There were, of course, many failures en route to their eventual success, but the old man’s stories fueled them like nothing else could. They kept building and trying until one day their boat glided on the water. With smiles, they set out to sea for the adventure of a lifetime.

…

This story is not factual, but I believe it is true. Antoine de Saint-Exupery, who wrote The Little Prince, is attributed with saying, “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up [people] to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”

The most powerful word is not a command or a demand. The most powerful word is the one that inspires.

God Talks to the Chaos

Many religious traditions represent God as all-powerful, an individual who can do whatever he likes. Certainly there are such depictions within the biblical tradition. But at the heart of the biblical tradition, is a rather different picture of God. We see it in today’s creation story. God is a talker. God speaks. Over and over again, we hear God say, “Let there be….” Let there be light, let the waters gather, let dry land appear, let the earth get greener, and so on. Creation begins not with actions but with words. The gospel of John picks up on this in the most succinct way: “In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was God.” And the epistle of John says, “God is love” (1 John 4:8), so we can put the two together and know that God is not just the Word, but the Word spoken in love.

The strangeness of God’s wordy creation cannot be overstated. In the ancient world, there were many creation stories. And nearly all of them have one thing in common. They begin with violence. Chaos is transformed into order by force. In Babylon, the creation story begins with the upstart god Marduk killing the goddess of chaos, Tiamat, and then creating the earth with parts of her body. Greek mythology likewise begins with bloody conflict among the gods. There is actually an enduring logic to these violent creation stories, if you stop to think about it. Many things in our world do begin with violence. Nations are often born from bloody conflict. One of the fundamental stories that our world continues to believe in is what we might call “the myth of redemptive violence.” It is the belief that violence has a redemptive quality, namely that it transforms chaos into order.

The creation story in Genesis 1 is a surprising deviation from the norm. God does not kill the chaos, which is represented by the deep waters and darkness. God talks to it. I would even suggest, God inspires it.

“The Earth Brought Forth Vegetation”

I grew up thinking of the creation story as a rather solitary event. God is the monarch, and creation is his magisterial monologue. He commands one thing after the next, and it is accomplished just as he says. God seems rather like a magician whose word magically creates. “Abracadabra.”

But as I began to read the story more closely, my interpretation started changing. I noticed, first of all, that God is not alone at the beginning. God is not creating something out of nothing. There are pre-existing elements: “the face of the deep,” which contains the dark, watery elements of chaos over which God’s spirit sweeps and to which God lovingly speaks.

Then I noticed that God does not issue commands. Rather God expresses desire in an open, voluntary manner, “Let there be…” This is not a snap of the fingers or a wave of the magic wand. This is a loving call, an invitation, a request—God’s prayer to us. And the existing elements respond! When God says, “Let the earth put forth vegetation,” Genesis tells us, “The earth brought forth vegetation” (Gen 1:12). In other words, God does not bring forth vegetation singlehandedly. “The earth” is its own subject, and it willingly responds to God’s loving invitation and makes it a reality.

Creation is a story of God’s words made flesh. The flesh of vegetation, the flesh of fruit, the flesh of animals. They all take shape as the world responds to God’s loving call. I like to think of creation along the lines of our old sailor, whose words inspire the young shipbuilders and become a reality as they respond. So God’s words inspire creation, and it becomes a reality. God’s love transforms chaos into something good, something very good.

Relationship Is at the Heart of Who God Is

Today is Trinity Sunday, a day when we celebrate the mystery of God, who according to our faith tradition is one reality but three persons, God the Creator, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. I know some people puzzle over the Trinity and argue about its finer details, but I lose little sleep over it. In my mind, it’s not meant to be a dogma we believe even though we don’t understand. It’s meant to be but a tool to help us understand. And here’s how it helps me.

The Trinity—Creator, Christ, Spirit—means that relationship is at the heart of who God is. God would not be God without relationship. These three persons—Creator, Christ,  Spirit—are distinct and yet one, which is what it means to be in relationship. God is not a self-sufficient individual, or an objective observer, or some monarch who sits above his subjects in complete control. God is in relationship.

It’s what we see in creation. God is the Word spoken in love. God is the Spirit of eternal conversation. God lives through call and response. Christ is what happens when the Word is heard and takes on flesh. That is why the gospel of John can speak both of Christ as existing at the beginning, in creation, and then Christ as being born in the person of Jesus, who gave full human expression to the desire of God.

Making Listeners

In the gospel text today, Jesus commissions his followers to “make disciples of all nations” (Matt 28:20). A plainer translation would be, “Make learners of all nations.” My even simpler paraphrase would be, “Make listeners of all nations.” The myth of redemptive violence that the nations predominantly believe in, is the myth that there is a limit to listening, that ultimately we must make our own good independently, by force. But what I see in creation is a very different reality. I see a God in loving relationship. A God who does not conquer chaos but speaks to it. A God whose word has the power to bear fruit and multiply goodness if it can but find a listening ear. For me, to be a disciple, a learner, a listener, means simply that I trust God is always speaking lovingly to us, guiding us, teaching us. And to make learners and listeners of others, is not to have everything figured out but simply to invite them into the conversation, to listen too.

For the Trinity reminds me that God is relationship, conversation, a call looking for a response, a dream waiting to become a reality.

Prayer

Holy God,
Whose loving Word
Inspires goodness and beauty and truth,
Which we see in creation
And even more fully in Christ—
Sometimes we cannot hear you
Because we already have things figured out
And are not listening
…
May Christ and creation model for us
What it means to be disciples—learners, listeners.
Inspire us with your dreams
That we might give them flesh,
Wherever we are.
In Christ, in whom the fullness of God dwells: Amen.