Twisting God

 

Twisting God

 

Psalm 1
1:1 Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers;

1:2 but their delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law they meditate day and night.

1:3 They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither. In all that they do, they prosper.

1:4 The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away.

1:5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;

1:6 for the LORD watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.

 

 

Twisting God or trusting God?, that is the question. At least that’s what comes to mind when I read a psalm like the Psalm 1 that talks of "prospering," and well-rooted trees vs. sinners and scoffers. It’s such a short Psalm, but it lays out one of the fundamental paradoxes of faith—do we trust God? Or are we “twisting” God to be our personal “genie in the lamp”? Do we find our delight in the Lord? Yield the fruit of God’s nurture? Or are the ways we attempt to manipulate the divine leaving us twisting like chaff in the wind? 

 

The easiest interpretation of this psalm would be to see it as a “righteous vs. sinful” dichotomy, but instead, let’s skip the indictment of the “wicked,” and focus on the difference between the “trusters” and the twisters of God, starting with the “trusters.” 

 

Psalm 1 describes those who genuinely trust God as ones who do not follow the advice of the wicked--not a very flattering qualifier, is it? The Hebrew word translated here as “happy” is ashrei, which may better be expressed as “fortunate,” as in “Fortunate are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked.” Fortunate, indeed. And the original word for “wicked” may be rendered “foolish,” as well. Again, this different angle on the translation brings us back to my suggestion that the Psalm is more about the foolishness of manipulating ("twisting") God vs. trusting God to deeply root and nurture us as people of faith. In taking this tack, we are not reducing the harm to the human condition made by “wickedness” and “sin,” we are simply nuancing the psalm's meaning in order to extract a more practical lesson from it. After all, do any of you want to advance a defense of "wickedness" and "sin"? I thought not...

 

Those who are the most “fortunate” are the ones who put their trust in the Lord and seek to follow God’s precepts, believing that God will illuminate their paths and “walk through the valley of the shadow of death” with them, as we read 22 Psalms later. Trusting in God, as a practice, will inherently lead us away from the counsel of the foolish, and ultimately away from the temptations OF wickedness and sin. Trusting in God leads to prosperity, saleah in Hebrew, which may also be translated “to advance” or “to make progress.” These latter meanings sound very Wesleyan—“going on to perfection,” remember? Of course, libraries of books and seasons full of sermons have been written on what it means to “trust” God. For me, trusting God means living my life guided by Mr. Wesley’s “quadrilateral” of scripture, tradition, experience, and reason, all of which help us hone in on what God expects of us, desires of us, hopes of us, and tries to love us into being, as a person of God. When you get enough "persons" of God together, we become the PEOPLE of God—a group that can change the world, bring about peace, justice, and the fulness of the Kingdom of God, with the help of God. Trusting in God also leads to a life enriched through contemplation, prayer, and seeking the presence of God. Trusting in God means being willing to rest in the arms of God during times of suffering, rather than striking out violently against our tormentors or wallowing in self-pity. A famous proverbs text says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not into your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge God, and God will direct your paths.” Jesus stated it thusly: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength…” and “love your neighbor as yourself.” Follow this advice, and you WILL “advance” and prosper (sounds a little Vulcan?).

 

Trust between two people takes time to develop and must be earned. So it is with trusting God, only in this case, it’s because it takes practice on OUR part, not because we have to “earn” anything. Grace is a gift, but putting it into practice is what builds our trust in God. This psalm says such wonderful things about what develops when we DO trust in the lord: we become “happy,” fortunate people; we don’t fall prey to the foolish and the ideologies and schemes they proliferate; we learn to “delight” in the Lord, like a well-rooted tree gathers in water, sunlight, and nourishment; and we won’t so easily “wither,” which sounds good to me! We seem to be living in an age of “withering,” with everything from the environment, to the church, to our politics languishing in a state of “withering,” similar to leaves falling off of the life-giving branches of the tree and blowing around like chaff in the wind. Give me the “streams of water” that God offers to quench our thirst and nourish our “roots” in, when we trust in God!

 

The “foolish” we are warned against in this psalm may BE foolish because they are attempting to TWIST God. We all do this, to some extent, but it is just too easy to “make our bellies our God,” so to speak, meaning we make OUR desires a higher priority, and our PERSONAL prosperity the aim, rather than seeking the Kingdom of God. When we set these as our “A-list,” we must then manipulate—twist—our theology in such a way that God, as we conceive God, exists to meet OUR needs. The twisted God is the God of our own design, the God who we turn into the genie in the lamp, summoning him to grant us our “three wishes.” If we twist God enough, this is exactly what we turn prayer into—making our demands before God, and expecting that the results will be the fulfillment of these demands. If we “twist” too far in this selfish direction, we may then quickly become disillusioned with our faith AND God when too many things on our “prayer list” go unfulfilled. 

 

This is a hard thing to write about, or even to ponder, because as I said earlier, we ALL do this, to some extent, and some of this "personalizing" is legitimate. In order to develop a more “intimate” relationship with God, we DO need to imagine God as someone we CAN grow close to, and as our human relationships—i.e. marriages and friendships—show us, we “choose” to be with people we judge to be more compatible with us. So, when we attempt a “closer walk” with God, it is helpful and very human to “imagine” God in such a way that our “comfort level” is reached with the Almighty. If we don’t advance in this direction with God, we may postpone or even eschew growing the kind of closer relationship with God that God invites us to, and may stay on the “outside looking in” like those folk who can’t get beyond calling God “the Man Upstairs.” I don’t believe our personal “conceptualizing” of God in order to grow closer to God is a BAD thing, but it may turn counterproductive, if not downright dangerous, if we give in to the temptation to “keep twisting” until “God” pretty much mirrors US. Twisting our concept of God too far in our direction turns us into spiritual narcissists—the God we worship is a “selfie.” 

 

Ludwig Feuerbach, a 19^th Century anthropologist and philosopher, in his book, “The Essence of Christianity,” stated that the most frequent human/divine flaw he observed was precisely the product of this narcissistic twist: Our God becomes US, writ large. In a modern (and a bit more humorous) vein, author Anne Lamott said: “You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” Now THERE’S the ultimate twist! 

 

God is not white or black, brown, or red; God is not a socialist, a communist, or a libertarian; God is not a Republican or a Democrat; nor is God allied with any one nation or religion. In fact, you will find the divine truth in all of these groups, and in none of them, just the same. God is God, and Jesus put “skin” on the divine, both to draw close to us and to understand our plight. God DOES want a closer relationship with us, and has revealed Godself to us in Jesus Christ, and in the teachings of the scriptures and other holy writ. God continues to reveal Godself to us through the Spirit of God, and in the “spirit of the age.” God is providing a "picture" of just who God is, so we may become “comfortable” with drawing ourselves closer to God without needing to “twist” our view of the image of God too far. I believe this is why the Bible says we are “made in the image of God.” ALL of us---ALL OF US have some of the “image of God” in us, and it is THIS image we are to incorporate into our trust, not our twist. God doesn’t need our “spin” of who God is; instead God invites us into the perichoresis, or the “divine dance” of how God “interfaces” within the Godhead, and with the wider creation, including US. It’s a waltz, friends, not the Twist!

 

I could have called this message, “Twist and Shout,” for that may be how we have putted up the world right now. “Trust and Obey,” as the hymn writer has said, may be the better way to get it straightened out! But maybe it is just simpler to do what Jesus said: Love GOD and love EACH OTHER. This week, may the very first of the 150 Psalms recorded in the Bible give us encouragement--that God DESIRES to “delight” us with God’s presence--and the COURAGE to do what WE need to do to run from the fools and the scoffers, and learn to fully trust in God. And no, let’s NOT all “do the Twist”! Amen.

Love In

Love In

 

John 15:9-17
15:9 As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.

15:10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love.

15:11 I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.

15:12 "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.

15:13 No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends.

15:14 You are my friends if you do what I command you.

15:15 I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.

15:16 You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.

15:17 I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

 

 

If Jesus were preaching this sermon in a seminary homiletics class, he would have most likely flunked it. We were taught to “nuance” our ideas and to draw the listener in to what we have to say—make them “work for it,” a bit, don’t just spoon feed the text to them, or be so obvious as to where the message is going that they would quickly lose interest, and get a jump on their daydreaming. Jesus ignores the best of homiletic training. He hits us with a firehose.

 

If you read this text and DON’T get the idea that Jesus wants us to love one another, you need to work on your comprehension skills. At least nine times in these nine verses, Jesus says something about love: as God loved HIM, so he loves us; we are challenged to “abide” in his love, just as he abides in God’s love; then love becomes a “commandment,” that we love one another as Jesus loves us; love means that we should be willing to “lay down our life for a friend.” Jesus really goes overboard on love, here. And for why?

 

I’m guessing because he really wanted us to GET it! It would be genuine, sacrificial, and “abiding” love that would distinguish the faith he was instituting from those that went before. Laws, rules, and other human trappings had distorted the earlier messages God tried to get to humanity, through priests and prophets, and several types of “Moseses.” Human intervention had weaponized the laws God meant for good, and most especially to be used to keep us at peace with one another; rules designed to create harmony among the human community had been sharpened like arrows and shot into the heart of “offenders” who clearly didn’t “respect God’s law,” at least that’s what those firing them, said. The prophetic messages meant to bring folk back toward paradise had instead penalized and paralyzed them. Honestly, things were a mess here. A “new commandment” was needed to get God’s redemption story back on track. What God intended as a great epic had become a “B” movie, quickly labeling the “good guys” from the bad. And the badly cast religious leaders had recomposed the cathartic and salvific lines of dialogue the prophets had given them into really bad writing. Jesus had to fix it, if God’s goal of bringing the human race back from the brink was to be realized.

 

Now, most of the time, Jesus and his messages would have done OK in homiletics class. Remember the parables? Good stories that elucidate on the point of the text were always winners, and Jesus had some really good stories, didn’t he? Who is my neighbor? Answer: the parable of the Good Samaritan. How does God deal with the lost? Three stories in a row: The lost sheep; the lost coin; and the lost son. What is the Kingdom of God like? Pearls of “great price,” or a giant drag net, gathering “fish” of every kind into it—more good stories. Won’t God get mad at us if we keep bugging God with our needs? Not according to the persistent “Friend at Midnight” story Jesus told. Honestly, God comes across as a pretty good character as Jesus tells it. God seems to be willing to “forgive and forget” all that we have done to putt up the creation; God will never turn the divine “back” on us; God will painstakingly pursue the “lost” among us, and not write us off; and like a “good friend,” God will literally lay down the divine LIFE for us, in order to rescue us. Indeed, God doesn’t have it IN for us, as the religious leaders in Jesus’ day seemed to believe, but in the Christ Event, God is CREATING an “in” for us, inviting us back into relationship with Godself, AND into the Kingdom of God. 

 

I know we say we believe this stuff. I’ve been in a whole host of Methodist meetings where that call/response thing was chanted: “God is GOOD, ALL the time! ALL the TIME, God is GOOD!” And then we dragged out all the old rules that listed just who all this “Good God” would smite because of their behavior, their “unorthodox theology,” or their unacceptable sexual orientation. The “in” God sought to create to save us was too quickly used on some to show them the door because their “authority of scripture” was inadequate, or they had “chosen” to fall in love with the wrong gender. “Sin” became what THEY do, not what WE do.” If the tongue is a minuscule, yet extremely dangerous organ, as scripture says, then the word “they” may be its worst poison, separating the "us" from the "them."

 

This week, at least for Methodists, this began to change. Our 2020 General Conference (yeah, weird, I know—2020 General Conference, thanks to OUR rules...) voted with an oversized majority to remove exclusionary language from our rules that had, since 1972, been used to relegate the LGBTQ community to a prohibited “they.” With the actions of this Conference, a healing of Methodist LGBTQ persons can begin. The “lost siblings” have been invited home. It’s time to “kill the fatted calf” and break out the rainbow robes. Should we celebrate this Good News? Yes, but first, we must cry with them, for their pain and rejection has been legion and long. With the “wave of the hand” (a vote), a “new commandment” has been instituted, but the healing will be slow and long, and no apology will wipe away decades of banishment and disdain. While our LGBTQ siblings were never “incompatible” in God’s eyes, our contrived rules and harmful “interpretation” of scripture originally intended to set us all “free, for freedom,” has done its harm. Now, though, we have a “new commandment.” May the healing begin!

 

In this weekend’s lectionary text I’ve selected, Jesus turns the “in” into a LOVE IN! There is a reason he goes absolutely nuts in the message related in this text to “LOVE ONE ANOTHER AS I HAVE LOVED YOU.” Actually there are MANY reasons, but for Methodists this week, one we may cite is that he must have been looking far off in the future—to a Methodist General Conference in 1972—when we would declare a whole branch of the human family as “incompatible.” So, seeing this, Jesus immediately began to hammer out justice and ring a bell of freedom, and its name was LOVE. Like the hippies of my day, he staged a Love In. And his Love In would be the “in” for all people. It says so, right here in this text: “I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends…” This week, we Methodists finally pronounced our LGBTQ siblings, “friends.” 

 

Of course there is a problem with all of this. For it to happen in the Methodist family, the “elder brother” had to get mad and leave. 25 to 30% of our household exited the back door. Even as we welcome our LGBTQ siblings and begin mending our relationship with them, we recognize that someday we will need to find a way to heal the chasm opened up by the disaffiliation of so many churches, pastors, and ones who were earlier disenfranchised and marginalized by the unfair judgment of the church. The healing of the LGBTQ wounds may begin immediately; addressing the issue of forgiving and reconciling with those who left, claiming we are “apostate” and “un-orthodox” in our beliefs, will take time. Most of us aren’t ready to address this, yet. For now, we’ll do our best to follow Jesus’ “Love In” example to welcome those who have, for so long, been on the outside, looking in.

 

In this text from John 15, Jesus is quoted as saying, “You did not choose ME, I chose you.” Let’s think about that for a moment. What does it mean, when held up against the prevailing evangelical message of “finding Jesus,” or “coming to know Jesus”? What of the unction to “give your life to Christ,” or “inviting Christ into your life”? Maybe Jesus really DOES do the “choosing,” and he chooses all of us. I’m not suggesting “universal salvation,” other than to point out that Christ HAS offered it to every human being, and the “ticket” has already been punched. Rather than “coming to Jesus,” Jesus has come to us, has chosen us, and the only “decision” we make is when we wake up to the conscious fact of this. And what if someone doesn’t come to “know” this, are they still “chosen” by Jesus? Frankly, this is WAY beyond my paygrade to call, but it sure sounds like Jesus is the one doing the choosing. John Wesley understood this. His “orthodoxy” was pretty darn unorthodox! “Offer them Christ” is a lot different than “leading people to Christ.” We offer to all what Jesus has already offered to all. Some with catch on with it, others may take longer to “see” it, or may never “come around” before Christ chooses them! Wesley also opened the Eucharist to anyone, including unbaptized, not-yet Christians, because he believed they might come to realize their “chosen-ness” at the Communion table. Many did, and many still do, in my experience. 

This invitation for “any” to come to the table of the Lord was part of my doctoral project and thesis on “Welcoming the Stranger: Assimilating Guests into the Congregation.” I wrote that this is an “un-orthodox” tenet of true Wesleyan theology, but that it is key to the kind of “full welcome” we offer. During my oral defense of the dissertation, one of my readers “objected,” out of disbelief that this is what Methodists truly believe. (His denomination only invites “baptized Christians” to the Communion table, believing it is a restricted banquet.) He reached out to a fellow professor—a Methodist—who assured him that my assertion was accurate. Of course, another reader brought up the fact that my denomination, while offering the open table, closed most opportunities to members of the LGBTQ community. Against that, I could not argue, at least not back in 1998. Today, after this week, things would be different! 

 

Jesus’ command to “love one another as I have loved you” has now opened the door to another group formerly marginalized by The United Methodist Church. Someday, it will lead us to some form of reconciliation with those who have disaffiliated from the denomination, after we get over our pain from it. Of course, our “pain” pales in comparison to the pain our LGBTQ siblings have experienced since 1972. Jesus tried for a Love In. We organized, built hierarchies, and started legislating rules to make sure that the “body” was “pure.” We’ve come a long way from the love command, frankly, and the path we took was most likely the wrong one. At the least, it led to a dead end. 

 

The Good News is what the hymn writer told us: “I serve a Risen Savior, he’s IN THE WORLD today!” Because Jesus lives, and the Spirit of Jesus is among us, always, the Love command can be “resurrected,” too! This week, the “finger” of the Body of Christ known as The United Methodist Church took an important step in again heeding it, and moving closer to “purity.” We are again “welcoming the stranger,” a Bible “code” for building a “love bridge” to someone different than we. May we “reborn” United Methodists begin the rejoicing. The time will come to reconcile with those who rejected us. It has to, for the Love command will take us there. Amen.