Sermon, 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 15, 2021, "King Solomon and the Long Arc of Justice"

B Proper 15 20 Ord Pilg 2021
1 Kings 2:1-9, 23-27
August 15, 2021

           This summer I followed the Revised Common Lectionary to write a sermon series hoping to lay before you a tradition within Scripture that is strongly anti-authoritarian.  Contained within that Biblical tradition are values which have early strands of democracy sewn within them and seek to liberate the oppressed and protect the most vulnerable.  Particularly in Jewish faith and tradition, the most vulnerable are known as the widow, the orphan, the immigrant, and God’s good creation.  Many Biblical writers earmark unfaithfulness, prophets can readily predict the doom of a nation, when the nation’s values undo these protections and we begin to see creation coming undone.  The whirlwind is unleashed.  Mountains tremble, the seas foam and roar, and the soil is despoiled.  These are the canaries in our collective coal mine. 

           As people of faith, we are required to engage the Biblical tradition as one of our tools of discernment.  I hope you heard me sharing some of the Bible’s deep and ancient truths during this sermon series but also challenging part of its tradition—particularly in this story line—its patriarchy.   The Bible can wax romantic in some unhealthy ways and, at the same time, critique romantic nostalgia.  For example, in this story line, we can hear the tradition waxing romantically about King David as the Chosen One but then critiquing that tradition to say that we are to evaluate, discern, and judge the integrity of a person not based on some romantic, Chosen-One status but based on deeper values.  A Chosen-One is chosen not because it is foretold but because they reflect God’s own heart through a love of neighbor, the practice of justice and defense of the vulnerable, and care and compassion for all of creation.  In other words, the Bible also says the “Chosen-One” is revealed through their life and practice.   Even the greatest of leaders, foretold or not, should be held accountable for their violence, cruelty, and lack of integrity.

           I hope you have heard me at least imply these Biblical truths at one time or another during this sermon series.  The Bible is incredibly complex, often with diverse messages, sometimes with messages that stand diametrically opposed to one another.  But there are times when you can see one tradition talking to another over long stretches of Biblical narrative.  For example, when the people ask the prophet Samuel to appoint for them a king, and Samuel returns to tell them what God has said the king will do.  The king will take away—repeated over and over again.  Much later in the Biblical narrative, aware of the earlier story, the story tells how King David rapes Bathsheba and kills the faithful warrior Uriah.  Repeated over and over, in lieu of the words “take away,” the actions of King David are noted by the word “send” to reflect his unwillingness to take personal responsibility for his evil and unjust actions. 

           I’m a Biblical geek like that. I find these things fascinating and hope that by relating them to you, you might develop just a tiny bit of curiosity about the tradition yourself?  Maybe?  Or a willingness to engage the tradition realizing that there is no special wisdom for it?  It is just doing hard work with the text.  And some of you might be interested?  Maybe?

           Today we have that continuing, long-running narrative that began with Samuel appointing a king over Israel.  Israel is approaching its zenith as the world’s number one super-power.  David lies on his death bed, advising his son, Solomon, who is soon to take over the throne, a throne that will have many rivals with David’s many wives, concubines, and sons.  King Solomon will take Israel to its highest power in the world, the wealth of the world flowing to Israel.  But is this what God wants?  Does God care about this?  To have the wealth of the world flowing to you, to be the world’s number one superpower . . . are those God’s values? 

For the seeds of division are planted during the reign of King Solomon such that Israel later splits into two different nations:  Israel in the north and Judah in the south.  And the term used for the slave labor Solomon employs for his building projects, missim, is the same Hebrew word used to describe the slave labor of the Hebrew people when they lived in bondage in Egypt.[1]  Someone is not happy with King Solomon.  And that is being made apparent in the Biblical text. 

           Let me again return to that Biblical text we have before us today.  King David lies on his deathbed, just before his son Solomon is to ascend to the throne.  He sends for Solomon.  David calls him to his side and tells Solomon to eliminate, to kill all his political rivals.  Solomon does so but for one priest who appears to have too much moral cache to eliminate, the priest Abiathar.  Too many people have seen Abiathar living out God’s covenant with integrity, about the very things that are found in the Ark of the Covenant.  So Solomon exiles Abiathar away from the religious, political, and economic center of Israel in Jerusalem, to Abiathar’s rural hometown of Anathoth.

          There, for 400 years, the priests of Anathoth, watch as Jerusalem falls into ever greater self-deception by aspiring to the values of material prosperity and military security.  Solomon, the master economist, through trade and arms deals brought gold flowing into the city of Jerusalem.  And with that gold, he built a ceremonial center, the Temple, for a God who had chosen to reside among the people in a tent--always humble, always on the move.  When the Children of Israel were delivered from the Egyptian Empire this God chose to abide in a tent.[2]

Mindful of the long-running Biblical narrative, the book of Jeremiah begins with the words, “These are the words of Jeremiah, Hilkiah’s son, who was one of the priests from Anathoth in the land of Benjamin.”  Abiathar, the priest of integrity banished to Anathoth by King Solomon, that whole story now comes full circle.  Jeremiah, the prophet, who is imprisoned for his lack of patriotism, thrown down a well because he is unwilling to agree with the “good news” brought to the king by the corporate media, comes from the village of Anathoth, the place of priestly exile.  Jeremiah says that the unsustainable imperial values of wealth, power, and insider information must give way to God’s long time, community values of chesed, tzedekah, and mishpat--steadfast love, righteousness, and justice.  These are the deep values which manifest love of God, neighbor, and all of creation, values spoken in the Ten Commandments which said, “Thou shalt not be like the imperial power . . . Egypt.”  And yet, the boy Jeremiah now confronts an imperial power that has all the markings of Egypt.

And the power that Jeremiah critiqued was just not military in nature, it was of a patriarchal power and violence run amok that allowed King David to have hundreds of wives and concubines . . . and still find it necessary to rape the foreigner, Bathsheba and kill her husband, Uriah.  

What does God value?  Is it imperial power that God longs for, to be declared the winner in the violence humankind does to one another?  Or are there deeper values, more ancient values which reflect God’s will for all of creation?   Are there any echoes, any explicit references we might find in Jesus’s teaching, or something specifically the Gospel writers might share to show where Jesus’s heart was?

Several weeks back, you may remember that Diane and Lisa sang the title song from the now Broadway musical, The Color Purple.  Here are some of the lyrics in that song: 

God not some gloomy old man
Like the pictures you've seen of Him
God not a man at all

Gary Ellis

God is the flowers and everything else
That was or ever will be
And when you feel the truth so real
And when you love the way you feel
You found [God]
Just as sure as moonlight blessed the night

Like a plate of corn
Like a honeybee
Like a waterfall
All a part of me

Like the color purple
Where do it come from?
Open up your eyes
Look what God has done

 That song references the moment in Alice Walker’s book when Shug tries to help Celie get past thinking of God as The Man who oppressed her life, severed her relationship with her sister, and kept her in-line through violence.  Shug tells Celie to look first at God’s bountiful and abundant love in the trees and then tells her, “I think it [ticks] God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.”[3] 

I told Diane and Lisa when they suggested that song that I had always

thought Walker’s beautiful prose was reminiscent of a Scripture verse from the Gospel of Matthew and Luke, “Consider the wildflowers!  They neither work nor labor and yet King Solomon in all of his glory was not decorated in beauty like the flowers of the field.”[4]   It is a reminder that Jesus does not value the things that Solomon does but is in keeping with a Jewish tradition of critiquing imperial power.  And we cannot add value to our lives in our labor or striving, in our anxiety or worry, but that we, indeed God’s good earth, are created in wild and free-growing beauty.  That value is created within you and you and you.  It is something that no world superpower can give to us, something no king or president can “take away.”  You . . . we were created beautiful and wild. 

I know.  How did you get there, Biblical geek Mike?  But I do think that is found within the Biblical text. 

I pray that we might all grow into that spiritual truth, down deep into our bones.  And then live our lives in that truth so those deep and ancient values over and against imperial powers shared by Biblical writers, preached by the prophet Jeremiah, and taught by Jesus might be typed on every last red blood cell in our bodies.  The imperial powers will forever try to tell us that they dictate value.  But we . . . we were born beautiful and wild and free.  Praise God.  Amen. 

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[1] John J. Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, Ed. 2 (Minneapolis:  Augsburg Fortress, 2014), p. 269

[2] Walter Brueggemann, The Collected Sermons of Walter Brueggemann, Vol. 1 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2011).

[3] Alice Walker, The Color Purple (New York:  Penguin, 1989).  The actual word is “pissed.”

[4] Luke 12:27; Matthew 6:29. 

Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 19, 2018, "Praying for Wisdom"

B Proper 15 20 Ord 2018

I Kings 3:5-12

August 19, 2018

          It was the first time they had been together as a family in three years.   Craig and Amy knew the groom in college.  Jennifer and Mason had graduated from high school with the bride.  Though Craig did not participate in the conversation, the topic of conversation centered around their sister, Amy, who couldn’t make it to the wedding and would be late getting to the reception.  Amy had recently joined a remote Hutterite community just outside of Cut Bank and was engaged to one of the elders in the church.  Jennifer and Mason couldn’t help poking a little fun at their older sister, even in her absence, wondering how many farmhands she had to give birth to before they would let her speak at a church meeting.  Or whether Hutterites wore Birkenstocks and whether Amy would have to sell her collection.

          Craig politely laughed at the musings of his brother and sister, as if they were a distant conversation he could barely overhear.  He was on slow stew.  Not that he expected his sister to check with him for her every decision, but this just made absolutely no sense.  He and Amy had been inseparable for so long.  There was a time when they wouldn’t even go on a first date without getting approval from the other sibling.  Craig’s wife, Deanna, had been on Amy’s volleyball team and Amy had introduced Deanna to Craig.  Craig was the only one who believed Amy could make it through graduate school.  Craig had been there all those sleepless nights when Amy had lost her daughter, fixing tea, reading her good books, turning off any sappy music.  He was the one Amy could call at all hours in the night, the older brother who was her protector, her defender, her safe harbor amidst any storm.

          So what was this, Craig thought.  Amy had just dropped off the earth for two years.  And with two kids and his job in full swing, Craig never really thought to call until Jennifer, his youngest sister, called him to say that Amy had gone off the deep end and gotten married to some Amish guy outside of Glacier.  Well, they weren’t married, they were engaged and it was Hutterite not Amish.  But Craig was mad that Amy hadn’t even told him.  Must have been pretty ashamed that she wouldn’t even call.  Craig was mad that she might think anything was beyond the pale, mad that Amy might be unwilling to call because she was ashamed.  She knew better.  She knew better.

          When Amy arrived, Mason and Jennifer were ready.  Amy knew it was coming.  Jennifer started, “Where did you get that wonderful bun hairstyle?  Do tell, who is your hairdresser?”  Amy laughed and turned her head to each side, “Doncha’ love it, no muss, no fuss.  All the girls in Cut Bank just have to have one.”  Mason continued, “I wondered when those long skirts were going to come back into style.”  Amy curtsied before she took her seat and shot back at Mason, dismissing him with a smile and wave, “You’ve always had such a fascination with women’s clothing, Mase.”  Jennifer and Mason smiled with her. 

Craig did not intend to be so funny.  “So where’s your new collar and leash?”

          Amy ignored the comment and sat, “So, hey guys!  Did I miss all the good appetizers?”  The conversation continued with Amy asking about Mason’s kids and Jennifer’s new job and boyfriend.  Craig continued to throw nasty little barbs Amy’s way, sometimes stopping the conversation, sometimes even leading Mason and Jennifer to stare down Craig.  Jennifer tried to lighten the conversation several times, sure that Amy was beginning to tear up as Craig’s little quips cut closer and closer to the heart.  Both Craig and Amy avoided eye contact with each other.

          Just after the dancing started, Mason and Jennifer left to see if they could see how the new bride was doing.  Craig finally looked up at Amy and shook his head.  “What, Craig?  Is there something else you want to say?  Or is it easier to take potshots without talking?”

          Craig shook his head again and looked away.  “You are just a shame.  Why would you think we even want you as a sister anymore?  You finally pulled off your stupidest stunt.”

          There it was.  Right to the heart.  And Amy’s tears began to flow.  She turned away hoping she could stem the tide, but it was no use.  She left the table.  Jennifer and Mason returned surprised not to see Amy.  “Where did Amy go?” Mason asked.  Craig shrugged his shoulders.  Jennifer could tell that Craig had done something.  “You butthead.  What did you say to her?  I swear, Craig, you can be a horse’s patoot sometimes.  This is Amy.  She cares more about you than anybody else in the world.  She adores you.  If you throw that away . . . “  Craig was ignoring Jennifer.  “Oooooooh, Craig, get up and go find Amy.”

          A little surprised by Jennifer’s emotion, Craig got up from the table and began looking around the hotel for his sister.  It wasn’t long before he found Amy.  She was in a small room, just off the front desk, turned away from the door, and sitting on an ottoman.  Craig sat down in the chair next to the ottoman, still pretty mad, not sorry that his sister was in tears. 

          “Jennifer sent me to find you.” Craig said, plainly.

          “Can you feel the love?” Amy said, choking back her tears.

          “The love?  The love?  I didn’t drop off the face of the earth two years and then show up as some conservative, Bible-beating, bun wearing woman who goes against everything she believes in.”

          Now Amy was more angry than sad.  “You haven’t taken the time to know what I believe in, Craig.  And you could have picked up the phone and called too.  I love you, Craig.  But I have to grow up too.  I have to grow up too.”

          “How is this growing up, Amy?  All this is, is letting other people run your life.  Now this guy will decide how you go in and how you go out.  This church tells you what to believe.” 

          “How do you know all this, Craig?  How do you know all this?  You don’t know a darn thing.”

          “I don’t know a darned thing, Amy?  Where is the radical Amy?  Where is the Amy who searched and thought?”  Craig moved his face in a sneer right beside Amy as he spit out his words, “Where is the strong sister I once had?  What would Abigail think if she were still alive to see her mother?” 

          “How dare you, Craig!  How dare you talk about Abigail!  You know the last thing Abigail wanted before she died?  Do you?  She wanted a video game, Craig!  A video game was more imprinted on her brain, ran through her blood, was in her skin more than her own mother.  She didn’t want me!  She wanted a video game, Craig!  A video game! 

“Yes, you were there for me when Abigail died.  But this community has been there for me too.  When I could no longer pray, they prayed for me.  When I could no longer hope or trust, this community hoped for me.  When I could no longer look at the world, they looked at it for me so that I could see the beauty once again, the life once again, the fire once again.[1]  They loved my way through the dark.”

            “Remember the two things you gave to me on that day in college, when you told me the one thing you always have to do is to discern your path?  You gave me that quote from story from Rumi, do you remember it?”  

            Craig mouthed the words to the story as Amy told it, “‘A certain person came to the Friend's door and knocked.  

            "Who's there?"

            "It's me." The Friend answered, "Go away.  There's no place for raw meat at this table."  

            ‘The individual went wandering for a year.  Nothing but the fire of separation can change hypocrisy and ego.  The person returned completely cooked, walked up and down in front of the Friend's house, gently knocked.  

            "Who is it?"  

            "You." 

            "Please come in, my Self.  There's no place in this house for two.’"[2]

            And it was you that read me that Scripture verse where Solomon prays to God for discernment, for wisdom.  I’m working on those things, Craig.  I’m trying to find the heart of God, burning for it, trying to be well-cooked.”

Even though Craig remembered, he was unmoved. “Apparently the heart of God looks a lot like what Donald Trump wants for you.”

          “Right, Craig.  I dare say, whose life looks more like Donald Trump’s life?  How many cars do you have, Craig?  Where did you take your last vacation, was it the coast of Florida?  When we need something we go with the whole community on one van.  How many of your neighbors do you know?  I know my whole community by its first and last names.  I know all the children in my community by name.  I know all the people who need help getting to church by name.  Maybe people like Donald Trump because he doesn’t pretend to be something he is not, he isn’t a hypocrite.”

“Oh, come on,” Craig interjected.

Amy shrugged.  “I’m just saying.  But it’s not about Donald Trump, Craig.  We live simply, eat simply, touch the earth simply.”

Craig interjected. “Think simply.”

          “Maybe so, Craig, maybe so but do you remember when you had all those sit-ins on campus to protest the university’s investment in fossil fuels or pipelines?  How you regularly protested climate change?  You were on fire.  All I wanted to be was like you, to have that fire.  You talked quite a bit about the Heart of God then.  You were the one who read to me from St. Catherine of Genoa, Julian of Norwich, St. John of the Cross, Therese of Lisieux and told me that they searched so fervently after the Heart of the God that their lives turned on the dime.  They were on fire.  They craved that wisdom, that discernment every day of their lives.  Like you did, Craig.  Like you did.  All I wanted was to be like you, Craig.  My life has turned on the dime and I feel, for the first time, like I’m on fire, like I’m free.”

          Craig’s tone softened.  “You’re using a lot of past tense to talk about me being on fire.”

          “My life is not your life, Craig.  You have to discern your own path.  You are my dear, sweet brother who has spent most of the evening making me cry.  We don’t use these words in the community, but . . . you bastard.”

          “How are you free, Amy?  Aren’t you giving all that freedom away?”

          Amy reached up and held the side of Craig’s face in her palm, tears still rolling down her cheeks.  “My life is not your life, Craig.  The boundaries I choose in the community help me to be free.  Who do you see at the forefront of all these social justice movements?  Priests and nuns who are free.  They are able to turn on a dime.  You put them in jail, they don’t have any family depending on them.  They chose those community boundaries and they are free.”

          “So I’m not free, Amy?  I don’t have the fire?”

          Amy shook her head.  “Craig, please don’t make me spell all this out.  Don’t make me differentiate between you and me.  I’m just learning.  I’m just a little pup on the path.   I’m loving my way through the dark.  But my heart is on fire, Craig.  I’m just trying to pray the Solomon prayer every day of my life.  ‘God, give me the wisdom for today, to know the path for today.’  But I don’t have it all figured out.  I want to do this with your blessing.”

          “I can’t give that to you, Amy.  I just can’t.  My blessing.  I just feel like you are turning your back on everything we had together as family, as brother and sister.”

          Amy once again began to cry.  And Craig turned his back on Amy and left the room.  Once again, Amy prayed for wisdom, to find the path in front of her.  Amen.

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[1] Wendy Farley, The Wounding and Healing of Desire:  Weaving Heaven and Earth (Louisville, Kentucky:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), p. 137.

[2]The Enlightened Mind, An Anthology of Sacred Prose, edited by Stephen Mitchell.  Harper Collins, 1991, quoting Jelaluddin Rumi (1207-1273), founder of the Whirling Dervishes.

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 6, 2017, "Life is struggle"

A Proper 13 18 BFC 2017

Genesis 32:22-32

August 6, 2017

My sophomore year in high school, a rock band named Kansas released a song that became revered by all the too-serious kids like me.  “Now, don't hang on, nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky.  It slips away, and all your money won't another minute buy.  Dust in the wind.  All we are is dust in the wind.”   If I could only convince (name withheld to protect the innocent), cheerleader captain, how truly deep I was as a high school sophomore, she might even look my way.  I just had to keep my singing voice under wraps.  Alas.  (looking wistfully into the distance)  (name withheld to protect the innocent).  Dust in the wind.  (sigh)

“All we are is dust in the wind,” the chorus goes, a truth we affirm every Ash Wednesday in this church.

Following on the popularity of the song, in the late 80s, there was a movie, titled “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.” Bill and Ted, slackers and surfer dudes from the West Coast, show that they have an intelligence and depth of their own when they travel back in time to round up historical figures and bring them back to the present to ace their history exam.  Bill gains the respect of the wisdom teacher, Socrates, by quoting the Kansas lyric, “All we are is dust in the wind.”  It is not how life should or ought to be, but how life is.  Bill and Ted later quote a wisdom proverb from Socrates, “The only true wisdom in the world consists in knowing that you know nothing,” to explain their wide-eyed awe for the world and lack of school smarts.  In the end, Socrates, tainted by television, quotes a famous soap opera to share what he has learned from modern society, “Like sands through the hour glass, so are the days of our lives.”

Wisdom Literature is comfortable with double edges and double meanings, with paradox and different intelligences, with two opposite sayings being true at the same time.   It is a depression-era grandmother saying, “A nickel’s a lot of money if you don’t have it.”  Or Yogi Berra saying, “It’s ain’t over until it’s over.”  My favorite Yogiism is, “I tell the kids, somebody's gotta win, somebody's gotta lose. Just don't fight about it. Just try to get better.”  There is not necessarily a moral there, or a should or ought in that, but a truism about life. 

I believe we have one of those Wisdom Literature stories before us in Genesis today.  Jacob has tricked his brother, stolen Esau’s birthright, been tricked himself by his father-in-law, Laban, into marrying both of his daughters, Leah and Rachel, Jacob then conspires with Leah and Rachel to trick their father.  And so, Jacob, who has tricked others and been tricked himself, wonders whether there will be some consequence to his behavior when he meets his brother Esau.  So to soften the heart of Esau, in dreading the meeting with a brother he duped, Jacob sends gifts ahead hoping to appease him.  Just before this upcoming meeting, Jacob falls asleep and dreams of divine presence--a ladder to heaven, with angels ascending and descending.  Yes, life and places in life, may feel particularly charged with God’s presence and blessing. 

But there are other times when life feels like a struggle with God, wrestling and fighting until we receive the intended blessing, refusing to let go until we, ourselves, are marked by the altercation. 

I think this story says very little about the character of God or what God asks of us.  But I do believe the story says something about the nature of life, the times when everything in our life seems like a struggle, a wrestling match with God.  Sometimes the reality of life is such that we just need to walk through or wrestle with it in all of its messiness just to know we are blessed.

          There is an interesting twist in this Biblical story about Jacob wrestling with the Divine Being.  One part of Biblical tradition suggests that we cannot see the face of God and live.  You may remember that God did not allow Moses to see the divine face for fear of the harm that it may cause Moses.  God showed Moses the divine backside—the first mooning, I call it.  In this story, Jacob claims to have seen God face to face and found out that God might be a whole lot more abrasive and not so touchy-feely as portrayed in much of our modern spirituality.  You think you want to meet God?  You think you want to have a divine experience?  The story teaches that you do not walk from such an experience without a little rough and tumble.  The story teaches that the only way any one walks away from such a divine experience is with a limp.

          As I stated, this wisdom story seems to run counter to the theology and spirituality of our time.  Worship and faith are only considered worthy of our time the more we feel comfortable and familiar with them.  But that seems rather odd, doesn’t it, when we also believe that faith should have something to do with growth, no matter what our age?  And most all growth happens as a result of some painful experience that moves us off our dime to take in some new reality.  Who willingly and knowingly embraces pain and struggle for growth?  Who really wants to break a hip for an encounter with the Divine?

          Yet, we know the truism of that in mountains climbed.  Very few of us get to look out from a mountain peak (maybe some of you could afford the helicopter ride) but most of us will see a mountain peak only by the struggle of the climb.  Mission trips teach that kind of wisdom.  Community becomes a powerful thing on mission trips because a small group of people have the same kind of sleep deprivation, ride in the van together long enough, call forth from themselves strength they never knew they had, wait for sacred words spoken in a language they don’t understand on knees that ache from the length of service together such that everyone in the group knows that nobody in the world has the same experience as we have shared.  One of the most meaningful mission trips I have ever been on began with the airline losing all of my luggage.  I became famous for the plastic underpants, the only thing available to me, at one of the local stores.  Even with all my preparation, I could not imagine that such bad fortune would release me to an incredible experience of God in a community of youth and young adults to whom I feel forever tied.  We all walk with the same limp, forever changed by a divine mutual experience that has transformed how we see one corner of the world.

          And the text is unclear.  Jacob gets renamed as “Israel” which could mean “one who wrestles with God” but the text might be more clear in meaning that “God wrestles.”[1]  So maybe it is that when we wrestle with life we do not imitate Jacob so much as we imitate God’s work in the world.  Blessing and growth only occur when we are willing to get involved with the messiness of life and wrestle as God wrestles.

          Hebrew Scripture scholar, Walter Brueggemann, believes that to be true to our faith in this time and place, we must indeed embrace pain and struggle to undercut a royal consciousness within our present culture.[2]  The Egyptian Pharaohs embraced a royal consciousness.  King Solomon, the ruler of the United Monarchy in Israel, embraced a royal consciousness.

          Brueggemann believes the royal consciousness, as embraced by the Pharaohs and King Solomon and our present-day spirituality is marked by three characteristics.  First, many of us live in an economics of affluence such that we are so well off that pain is not noticed.  Whenever the hint of pain or struggle is at our doorstep, we or our national leaders deflect, numb, or engorge ourselves to avoid the pain or struggle.  Second, we live in a politics of oppression in which the cries of the suffering are sent further and further to the edge.  Those who would provide megaphones to the suffering are laughed at or ridiculed as kooks or traitors.  Third, the royal consciousness supports a religion that makes God so present that God’s abrasiveness, absence, presence in the wilderness or the desert, rough around the edges character and work in other parts of the world are not noticed.  The problem is reduced to a psychological problem.[3]

          As in the time of Pharaohs and King Solomon, I think Brueggemann’s observations suggest that we are not asking ourselves deep, painful, struggling questions like:  What if the problems in not only Syria but also in our country, are based on our inability to weep over the tragedy that continues?   What if the inward barrenness we might experience is based on our numbness to the incredible barrenness and famine experienced in so many places in the world?  What if our loss of meaning is based on an inability to struggle with the problems within our own Christian faith where we cannot imagine that the words “Christian” and “terrorist” could go in the same sentence?  Even when Anders Behring Breivik and Timothy McVeigh so strongly identified themselves as Christian. fundamentalists?  What if God feels so absent because we are unwilling to wrestle with God, to suffer the pain found deep within the heart of God, to hear the cry that comes deep within the being of God?

          On a personal level, to know life as struggle means that we do not see others with perfect health and wealth as blessed by God.  It may be just chance or circumstance.  To know life as struggle means that we do not expect our marriages to be all roses and lemonade but understand the necessary painful choices we need to make for growth and commitment.  To know life as struggle is to make choices that are for the healing of ourselves, our communities, and the world that might lead us, personally, into greater suffering.  To know life as struggle means that doubt and difficult discernment are a part of life of faith, and that certainty is sometimes a tool of something that makes us comfortable but creates pain in the world.

          This wisdom story teaches that only when we are willing to enter into struggle and pain with God do we receive blessing.  Jacob, sign and symbol of a whole nation, crosses over to a new reality, emerges with a new name, and becomes forever the people who struggle with God.  May we, remembering our story, have the wisdom, the courage, to embrace that kind of faith, that kind of life.  And in return, may we know God’s blessing.  So that even though we know crossing over into a new reality might create suffering, we are willing to cross over to a new reality, emerge with a new name, and grow and flourish as God struggles and as we struggle.  For if our life is absent of struggle, are we choosing a royal theology that runs counter to the narrative of God?  Are we choosing to avoid the necessary pain that would bring about our growth?  Faith is not always about “ought” and “should” but about a willingness to struggle with the life God has given us, however imperfect, so that we might receive intended blessings.  May we live into that.   For, all we are is dust in the wind but, at the same time, so much more than that as God wrestles with us.  Amen.

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[1] Sara Koenig, “Commentary on Genesis 32:22-31,” Working Preacher, October 17, 2010, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=710.

[2] Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, second edition (Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 2001), pp. 39-57.  Qoholeth and numbness in Ecclesiastes, weeping in Jeremiah, grief in Amos, and “Jesus wept.”

[3] Ibid, p. 36.  Brueggemann goes on to write that the royal consciousness has a royal program of achievable satiation marked by:  1) a management mentality that believes there are no mysteries to honor, only problems to be solved.  2)  the program legitimated by an “official religion of optimism” which has no business but to maintain our standard of living, ensuring God’s place in the palace 3) a requirement to annul the neighbor as life-giver; it imagines that we can live outside history as self-made men and women.  (p. 37).