Etiquette for God's realm
Commentary
It has happened to me often enough in my ministry that I must conclude that it is a common experience among pastors. You have performed the marriage ceremony and have accepted the family's (usually insistent) invitation to attend the wedding reception, not infrequently because they would like you to say the prayer before the meal or attend to some other formality of the occasion. But formality not being what it used to be, you arrive at the banquet hall to find that not all of the seating has been pre-assigned with place cards. Most of the tables have what might be called "open seating," but the head table and perhaps a few close by do have designated seating for what must be presumed to be honored guests.
No host is directing the wedding guests, so what do you do? Do you assume that since you performed the ceremony and will soon be giving the invocation that there must be a place card somewhere with your name on it, and if not at the head table then certainly one of those nearby? But it would be embarrassing to nonchalantly make your way past each setting only to find that none of the settings had been set aside specifically for you. Besides, the evening would be passed much more pleasantly seated with folks you know from your congregation than with distant relatives who have come for the festivities from equally distant cities. So do you simply head for some much less prominent seating?
Being the pastor, you will immediately recall that Jesus told a parable relating to this very situation. You head for one of those undesignated tables. Better to be asked to join the prime seating than to be perceived as presumptuous (Luke 14:8-10). Proud of both your biblical literacy and your exemplary humility you find a seat on the fringes of the room. Yet as you sit there, you begin to wonder: Was Jesus really saying nothing more in this parable than the advice one might have just as easily found in the manners books by Emily Post or Amy Vanderbilt?
Jeremiah 2:4-13
The lectionary reading from Jeremiah is the second segment of a five-part oracle that spans all of chapter 2. The oracle begins by recalling the covenant fidelity of the Israelites to God using the imagery of a young bride and groom on what might be called their honeymoon (2:1-3). The remaining sections consist of alternating indictments of Israel and Judah's religious (2:4-13, 20-28) and political disloyalty (first with the Assyrians, 2:14-19, and later with the Egyptians, 2:29-37). The overarching structure of the oracle is provided by the use of the riv form, a type of "lawsuit" in which God substantiates charges against the people by calling witnesses; cites proof of God's own fidelity to the covenant; challenges the people to defend themselves against the charges; and finally pronounces the verdict and punishment.
Following a summons to hear these charges (2:4), the reading begins with a rhetorical question put to the people as defendants by God as the prosecutor. God asks what it was that the Divine had done to provoke their ancestors to reject the covenant with God and to seek "worthless things, and became worthless themselves" (2:5). This charge plays on two meanings of the Hebrew word hebel; it is used both to mean "idols" (see Jeremiah 8:19) and "something that is worthless" (most famously the "vanity" that is cited some 36 times in Ecclesiastes). Thus by turning away from the worship of God to instead make a covenant with "empty" idols, the people had become worthless themselves. Another wordplay is used when the specific god of these idols, Baal, is identified at 2:8. Baal is both the name of a god in the Canaanite pantheon and the common Hebrew word for "husband." The people have left their marriage covenant with God, despite the blessings God had given them in the Exodus from Egypt and settlement in the bountiful land promised to Abraham, and taken on a new husband in Baal even though that meant going "after things that do not profit" (2:6-8).
God has been left literally dumbfounded by this rejection. Even those peoples throughout the Mediterranean basin who worshiped gods that in actuality were non-existent ("even though they are no gods") have nevertheless remained faithful in their loyalty to them (2:10-11). From this action God distills two charges against the people of Judah: "They have forsaken me," a real source of provision for the "living water" on which their lives themselves depend; and they have mistakenly concluded that they could provide for themselves when they "dug out ... cracked cisterns that can hold no water" (2:13).
Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
The book of Hebrews closes with a number of briefly stated admonitions. The topics to which they refer are wide-ranging and switch rapidly. To the degree that the author makes any attempt to relate them to a common theme, that theme is expressed in the final verses of the lectionary reading. Doing good by sharing of one's self and one's possessions are "sacrifices" that are "pleasing to God," and the offering of such sacrifices is a continual responsibility.
The first set of admonitions (13:1-5) can be construed as specific examples of ways that one can fulfill the opening command to maintain "mutual love." Recognizing a mutuality between persons calls forth "hospitality to strangers" because there will be occasions in which we will all find ourselves to be the stranger. It reminds us that the inhuman conditions in which some people are imprisoned and even tortured is dehumanizing to us all. And the mutuality of love within marriage, extending even to sexual relationships (a truly radical notion in the social context originally addressed by this author), must be honored not only between the partners but also by society itself.
Attitudes toward money and possessions are to be established by the recognition that God is the source of all that we have (13:5-6). God's provision is both secure and sufficient. Any affection relative to the material goods necessary for this life is properly directed to the one who supplies them rather than to the goods themselves or the money that is exchanged for them.
The specific "leaders" referred to in 13:7 would appear to be the elders within the religious community (cf. 13:17). They are the ones who "spoke the word of God to you" both by formal instruction and by the conduct of their lives, setting an example of faith for others to imitate. The foremost such leader is, of course, Jesus Christ, whose consistency of example is emphasized by the declaration that he "is the same yesterday and today and forever."
The lectionary skips over the material in 13:9-14. There would appear to be two reasons for this decision. First, this material at a minimum tends toward a "supercessionist" position of followers of Christ as compared to those who have remained within the traditional covenantal relationship of Judaism. It presents the kosher dietary practice as of no benefit, and exalts the "altar" at which this community worships as one at which the Jewish priests "have no right to eat." The irony is that these arguments follow very traditional forms of rabbinic disputation melded with specific Neo-Platonic philosophical speculation. Thus, the second reason for passing over these verses is that a proper understanding of the details in this argument (the significance of being "outside the camp," of "having no lasting city, but looking for the city that is to come," and so on) requires extensive explanation. If the religious and philosophical aspects of this argument are correctly understood, then it can be properly seen as a debate within a religious tradition rather than one religion superseding another. But unless the topic of the sermon was itself the relationship between Judaism and Christianity, the intricacies of explanation called for go far beyond what can be developed homiletically as background.
Luke 14:1, 7-14
The Gospel Lesson recounts two of a series of three parables (14:7-11, 12-14, 15-24) constructed around the behavior of hosts and guests at dinner parties. The evangelist has placed all of these parables in the narrative context of a Sabbath meal to which Jesus had been invited (14:1). Whether the occasion prompted the series of parables in the manner that the evangelist presents them, or alternatively the evangelist gathered them together at this point in his narrative because they share a common setting, is of course now impossible to determine (cf. the cluster of parables about lost sheep, coins, and sons in Luke 15). It is also somewhat beside the point. One of the characteristic features of Jesus' parables, as with most successful parables, is that they draw on a common experience of life to explain the uncommon or unknown. Thus, these parables are not ultimately about table manners but about proper decorum for those "who will eat bread in the kingdom of God" (14:15).
The first of the parables is related from the vantage point of the invited guest. Elaborating on what was already well-established advice (cf. Proverbs 25:6-7), Jesus directs guests not to presume that they are among the most prominent persons invited to the meal. It is better to be brought up to a higher station among those who have gathered than to embarrass both yourself and your host by being asked to make a place for others who are more honored. One could, of course, employ this bit of conventional wisdom as a way to game the system and seek to draw attention and honor to one's self. Deliberately and publicly taking a place associated with low honor, one could make a most public show of false modesty while being escorted by the host to a more honored position in the sight of the assembled guests. To cut off such Machiavellian schemes, Jesus underscores the moral of the story: "For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted" (14:11).
But the point of the parable is hardly about place settings at dinner parties. It is about the core value of humility within the realm of God. The evangelist has highlighted this purpose by identifying the story as a "parable," and phrasing the moral in the passive voice also subtly reinforces it. This verb form was commonly used to indicate divine agency without explicitly naming God as the one who acts. Thus, to say that some "will be humbled" while others "will be exalted" is to say that God will bring down those who exalt themselves and will honor those who are genuinely humble in deferring to the honor of others.
The second parable takes up the point of view of the host rather than the guests, and is thoroughly rooted in the patronage systems of Greco-Roman society. Within those cultures people were able to place others within their debt by feting them as honored guests at public gatherings. If prominent members of the community accepted your invitation, you not only assured yourself a reciprocal invitation from them but also immediately raised your own social standing by their willingness to incur this social debt. Hosting one's peers or social superiors was a means of maintaining or advancing one's own social position.
Jesus advises people to instead host "the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind" at their banquets. Since such people in that culture were both socially despised and economically disadvantaged and so unable to repay the social debt themselves (14:14b), it is possible to hear in this advice a reversal of the usual customs. But it may be the parable is less about overturning the patronage system than about recognizing the ultimate patron. Since God is the patron of the physically, socially, and economically disadvantaged who are invited as guests in the divine kingdom (as in the third parable of this sequence, 14:21b), then receiving them likewise earns God's favor. Once more the use of the passive voice ("will be blessed," "will be repaid") implies that God does for them what the disadvantaged cannot.
Application
When we are trying to teach the rules of social etiquette and decorum to our children, one of the tried and true principles is to point out patterns that make sense of what can otherwise be a hopelessly confusing hodge-podge of apparently ad hoc rules. Thus while we may hope that they will one day be able immediately discern the difference between a salad fork and a dinner fork, between a soup spoon and a dessert spoon, between a butter knife and a steak knife, we usually begin by pointing out that the proper eating utensils for each course of the meal can be identified simply by working from the outside-in of a correctly arranged place setting. Obviously if they don't eventually learn the distinguishing characteristics of each utensil they will never be able to correctly set the table themselves, but familiarity with the patterns will itself help with learning the particularities.
So it is as well for learning the etiquette of God's realm. There are similarities between the world in which we live and the realm perfectly ordered according to God's will, and that is why Jesus was able to use parables as a means of relating our common experience to the all too uncommon expectations of divine justice. There are fundamental principles at work in God's wisdom that provide the basis for all the specific types of behavior that are expected of those "who eat bread in the kingdom of God."
The New Testament lessons for this week help us to identify those principles and patterns. One is the need for mutual love. When we recognize the interdependence we all share with each other, we will recognize our need to deal with others in the ways we would consider just for ourselves. Another is our ultimate dependence upon God. When we have the faith to see God as not only the source of what we have gained in the past but also a sure help for what we will need in the future, we will be able to keep our affections directed at the one with whom we are in relationship rather than on the things that arise from that relationship. Yet another is genuine humility. When we come to understand that the most honorable thing in any of us is that God has accepted the role as our patron, we will be able to acknowledge the respect that is due to everyone as a child of God.
Alternative Applications
1) Jeremiah 2:4-13. By the time this Sunday rolls around, the United States Supreme Court will have issued its ruling in the case of Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow (case no. 02-1624) over whether the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance is a violation of the "establishment clause" in the First Amendment. There has been widespread public opposition to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision ruling that that phrase was an unconstitutional breach of the "separation of church and state." Members of Congress from both major political parties assembled en masse on the Capitol steps to recite the current pledge in response, and most religious conservatives have decried what they see as yet another effort to remove God from the public sphere of American life.
There have been other religious persons, however, who would be just as glad as Mr. Newdow to see the phrase "under God" removed from the pledge. If the legal argument for retaining it and other official declarations about God in our civic life (e.g., the motto "In God We Trust" on our coins, and the proclamation "God save the United States and this honorable Court" that opens sessions of the Supreme Court itself) is that "God is so generic in this context as to be a neutral" expression of belief, as Justice Stephen Breyer stated during oral arguments of the Newdow case, then maybe the cost of inclusion is just too high.
One wonders where the prophet Jeremiah would have come down in this discussion. Would he have joined those who see the removal of the words "under God" as forsaking our nation's relationship with the God who, in the words of our Declaration of Independence, as Creator "endowed us with certain inalienable rights"? Or would he have agreed with those who remain in covenant with God but would nevertheless accept the removal of the phrase because it has become in some sense meaningless? In other words, is an expression of "ceremonial Deism" in public life itself an expression that we, like the people of ancient Judah, have gone "far from [God], and went after worthless things, and became worthless [ourselves]" (Jeremiah 2:5)?
2) Jeremiah 2:4-13; Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16. Many modern Christians have divided their lives into two portions. There is the mundane, day-to-day stuff of living that we consider ourselves more than competent to take care of. We do our jobs, tend to our families, and perhaps (time permitting) even contribute to the broader civic good. Then there are the big things that threaten to overwhelm us. Sometimes they are bad things like catastrophic illness, or they may even be good things like entering into a new marriage or celebrating the birth of a child. When these things happen, we reach beyond ourselves and turn to God for help. Yet both these lessons remind us that we are dependent upon God's help for the mundane stuff as well. Even the things we take for granted are there because God's faithfulness to us is "the same yesterday and today and forever." Maybe it is time to take a break from patting ourselves on the back and to thank God for the "fountain of living water" from which we draw on a daily basis.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 81:1, 10-16
The writer of Psalm 81 employs a most interesting mixed metaphor. It is not mixed, however, because the psalmist was careless and not paying attention to his subject matter. On the contrary, it is because of an important insight into human nature that the psalmist has us "eating with our ears."
Verse 10 rehearses what was, and is, the most basic confession of faith for followers of the Lord. God speaks and says, "I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. Open your mouth and I will fill it."
This single confession draws together the full sweep of Hebrew salvation history. From the great "I am" of Moses meeting at the burning bush, to the dramatic rescue out of Egypt, the daily manna and ultimately to the bounty of the Promised Land. The psalmist skillfully draws us by means of this confession into what will be the Lord's complaint with God's people. We are ready for it and we hear it coming. In fact, if we peak ahead to the next verse, we can actually see its opening volley, "But my people...."
The way the psalmist leaves us in verse 10, however, we are expecting some sort of complaint about what God wanted us to eat. The second phrase, "Open your mouth and I will fill it," leaves us expecting God to complain, "But my people would not eat what I gave them." Instead, however, the psalmist writes, "But my people would not listen to my voice" (v. 11).
Why the mixed metaphor? Why set us up for food and then give us words? The clue is given in the final verse where the psalmist reintroduces the feeding/food imagery. He writes, "I would feed you with the finest of the wheat, and with honey from the rock I would satisfy you" (v. 16). The key word is "satisfy."
The people have been trying to satisfy their needs. They have gone off on their own trying to find contentment, peace, security, and meaning. But in following their own lights they abandoned the only authentic source for those kinds of things -- the Lord's words and way. God tried to stop them, but they would not listen. They wanted what they wanted, and the Lord let them go to pursue it (v. 12).
God let them go, and waited. God knew that the longer they followed the empty paths of their own counsels, the emptier their lives would become. Sooner or later, they would become hungry for the truth that truly satisfies. They would need real security from real danger; they would need real help with real problems. They would eventually realize that their meager diet of self-gratification was killing them, and that they must feed on the words that constituted their existence in the first place.
Then, and only then, would God be able to give them what would save them. It's not that God was unwilling. The problem was with their appetites, not God's willingness to care for them. Anytime they were ready, God was ready with his menu.
"I will fill their mouths," God says, "if only they will open their ears."
No host is directing the wedding guests, so what do you do? Do you assume that since you performed the ceremony and will soon be giving the invocation that there must be a place card somewhere with your name on it, and if not at the head table then certainly one of those nearby? But it would be embarrassing to nonchalantly make your way past each setting only to find that none of the settings had been set aside specifically for you. Besides, the evening would be passed much more pleasantly seated with folks you know from your congregation than with distant relatives who have come for the festivities from equally distant cities. So do you simply head for some much less prominent seating?
Being the pastor, you will immediately recall that Jesus told a parable relating to this very situation. You head for one of those undesignated tables. Better to be asked to join the prime seating than to be perceived as presumptuous (Luke 14:8-10). Proud of both your biblical literacy and your exemplary humility you find a seat on the fringes of the room. Yet as you sit there, you begin to wonder: Was Jesus really saying nothing more in this parable than the advice one might have just as easily found in the manners books by Emily Post or Amy Vanderbilt?
Jeremiah 2:4-13
The lectionary reading from Jeremiah is the second segment of a five-part oracle that spans all of chapter 2. The oracle begins by recalling the covenant fidelity of the Israelites to God using the imagery of a young bride and groom on what might be called their honeymoon (2:1-3). The remaining sections consist of alternating indictments of Israel and Judah's religious (2:4-13, 20-28) and political disloyalty (first with the Assyrians, 2:14-19, and later with the Egyptians, 2:29-37). The overarching structure of the oracle is provided by the use of the riv form, a type of "lawsuit" in which God substantiates charges against the people by calling witnesses; cites proof of God's own fidelity to the covenant; challenges the people to defend themselves against the charges; and finally pronounces the verdict and punishment.
Following a summons to hear these charges (2:4), the reading begins with a rhetorical question put to the people as defendants by God as the prosecutor. God asks what it was that the Divine had done to provoke their ancestors to reject the covenant with God and to seek "worthless things, and became worthless themselves" (2:5). This charge plays on two meanings of the Hebrew word hebel; it is used both to mean "idols" (see Jeremiah 8:19) and "something that is worthless" (most famously the "vanity" that is cited some 36 times in Ecclesiastes). Thus by turning away from the worship of God to instead make a covenant with "empty" idols, the people had become worthless themselves. Another wordplay is used when the specific god of these idols, Baal, is identified at 2:8. Baal is both the name of a god in the Canaanite pantheon and the common Hebrew word for "husband." The people have left their marriage covenant with God, despite the blessings God had given them in the Exodus from Egypt and settlement in the bountiful land promised to Abraham, and taken on a new husband in Baal even though that meant going "after things that do not profit" (2:6-8).
God has been left literally dumbfounded by this rejection. Even those peoples throughout the Mediterranean basin who worshiped gods that in actuality were non-existent ("even though they are no gods") have nevertheless remained faithful in their loyalty to them (2:10-11). From this action God distills two charges against the people of Judah: "They have forsaken me," a real source of provision for the "living water" on which their lives themselves depend; and they have mistakenly concluded that they could provide for themselves when they "dug out ... cracked cisterns that can hold no water" (2:13).
Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
The book of Hebrews closes with a number of briefly stated admonitions. The topics to which they refer are wide-ranging and switch rapidly. To the degree that the author makes any attempt to relate them to a common theme, that theme is expressed in the final verses of the lectionary reading. Doing good by sharing of one's self and one's possessions are "sacrifices" that are "pleasing to God," and the offering of such sacrifices is a continual responsibility.
The first set of admonitions (13:1-5) can be construed as specific examples of ways that one can fulfill the opening command to maintain "mutual love." Recognizing a mutuality between persons calls forth "hospitality to strangers" because there will be occasions in which we will all find ourselves to be the stranger. It reminds us that the inhuman conditions in which some people are imprisoned and even tortured is dehumanizing to us all. And the mutuality of love within marriage, extending even to sexual relationships (a truly radical notion in the social context originally addressed by this author), must be honored not only between the partners but also by society itself.
Attitudes toward money and possessions are to be established by the recognition that God is the source of all that we have (13:5-6). God's provision is both secure and sufficient. Any affection relative to the material goods necessary for this life is properly directed to the one who supplies them rather than to the goods themselves or the money that is exchanged for them.
The specific "leaders" referred to in 13:7 would appear to be the elders within the religious community (cf. 13:17). They are the ones who "spoke the word of God to you" both by formal instruction and by the conduct of their lives, setting an example of faith for others to imitate. The foremost such leader is, of course, Jesus Christ, whose consistency of example is emphasized by the declaration that he "is the same yesterday and today and forever."
The lectionary skips over the material in 13:9-14. There would appear to be two reasons for this decision. First, this material at a minimum tends toward a "supercessionist" position of followers of Christ as compared to those who have remained within the traditional covenantal relationship of Judaism. It presents the kosher dietary practice as of no benefit, and exalts the "altar" at which this community worships as one at which the Jewish priests "have no right to eat." The irony is that these arguments follow very traditional forms of rabbinic disputation melded with specific Neo-Platonic philosophical speculation. Thus, the second reason for passing over these verses is that a proper understanding of the details in this argument (the significance of being "outside the camp," of "having no lasting city, but looking for the city that is to come," and so on) requires extensive explanation. If the religious and philosophical aspects of this argument are correctly understood, then it can be properly seen as a debate within a religious tradition rather than one religion superseding another. But unless the topic of the sermon was itself the relationship between Judaism and Christianity, the intricacies of explanation called for go far beyond what can be developed homiletically as background.
Luke 14:1, 7-14
The Gospel Lesson recounts two of a series of three parables (14:7-11, 12-14, 15-24) constructed around the behavior of hosts and guests at dinner parties. The evangelist has placed all of these parables in the narrative context of a Sabbath meal to which Jesus had been invited (14:1). Whether the occasion prompted the series of parables in the manner that the evangelist presents them, or alternatively the evangelist gathered them together at this point in his narrative because they share a common setting, is of course now impossible to determine (cf. the cluster of parables about lost sheep, coins, and sons in Luke 15). It is also somewhat beside the point. One of the characteristic features of Jesus' parables, as with most successful parables, is that they draw on a common experience of life to explain the uncommon or unknown. Thus, these parables are not ultimately about table manners but about proper decorum for those "who will eat bread in the kingdom of God" (14:15).
The first of the parables is related from the vantage point of the invited guest. Elaborating on what was already well-established advice (cf. Proverbs 25:6-7), Jesus directs guests not to presume that they are among the most prominent persons invited to the meal. It is better to be brought up to a higher station among those who have gathered than to embarrass both yourself and your host by being asked to make a place for others who are more honored. One could, of course, employ this bit of conventional wisdom as a way to game the system and seek to draw attention and honor to one's self. Deliberately and publicly taking a place associated with low honor, one could make a most public show of false modesty while being escorted by the host to a more honored position in the sight of the assembled guests. To cut off such Machiavellian schemes, Jesus underscores the moral of the story: "For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted" (14:11).
But the point of the parable is hardly about place settings at dinner parties. It is about the core value of humility within the realm of God. The evangelist has highlighted this purpose by identifying the story as a "parable," and phrasing the moral in the passive voice also subtly reinforces it. This verb form was commonly used to indicate divine agency without explicitly naming God as the one who acts. Thus, to say that some "will be humbled" while others "will be exalted" is to say that God will bring down those who exalt themselves and will honor those who are genuinely humble in deferring to the honor of others.
The second parable takes up the point of view of the host rather than the guests, and is thoroughly rooted in the patronage systems of Greco-Roman society. Within those cultures people were able to place others within their debt by feting them as honored guests at public gatherings. If prominent members of the community accepted your invitation, you not only assured yourself a reciprocal invitation from them but also immediately raised your own social standing by their willingness to incur this social debt. Hosting one's peers or social superiors was a means of maintaining or advancing one's own social position.
Jesus advises people to instead host "the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind" at their banquets. Since such people in that culture were both socially despised and economically disadvantaged and so unable to repay the social debt themselves (14:14b), it is possible to hear in this advice a reversal of the usual customs. But it may be the parable is less about overturning the patronage system than about recognizing the ultimate patron. Since God is the patron of the physically, socially, and economically disadvantaged who are invited as guests in the divine kingdom (as in the third parable of this sequence, 14:21b), then receiving them likewise earns God's favor. Once more the use of the passive voice ("will be blessed," "will be repaid") implies that God does for them what the disadvantaged cannot.
Application
When we are trying to teach the rules of social etiquette and decorum to our children, one of the tried and true principles is to point out patterns that make sense of what can otherwise be a hopelessly confusing hodge-podge of apparently ad hoc rules. Thus while we may hope that they will one day be able immediately discern the difference between a salad fork and a dinner fork, between a soup spoon and a dessert spoon, between a butter knife and a steak knife, we usually begin by pointing out that the proper eating utensils for each course of the meal can be identified simply by working from the outside-in of a correctly arranged place setting. Obviously if they don't eventually learn the distinguishing characteristics of each utensil they will never be able to correctly set the table themselves, but familiarity with the patterns will itself help with learning the particularities.
So it is as well for learning the etiquette of God's realm. There are similarities between the world in which we live and the realm perfectly ordered according to God's will, and that is why Jesus was able to use parables as a means of relating our common experience to the all too uncommon expectations of divine justice. There are fundamental principles at work in God's wisdom that provide the basis for all the specific types of behavior that are expected of those "who eat bread in the kingdom of God."
The New Testament lessons for this week help us to identify those principles and patterns. One is the need for mutual love. When we recognize the interdependence we all share with each other, we will recognize our need to deal with others in the ways we would consider just for ourselves. Another is our ultimate dependence upon God. When we have the faith to see God as not only the source of what we have gained in the past but also a sure help for what we will need in the future, we will be able to keep our affections directed at the one with whom we are in relationship rather than on the things that arise from that relationship. Yet another is genuine humility. When we come to understand that the most honorable thing in any of us is that God has accepted the role as our patron, we will be able to acknowledge the respect that is due to everyone as a child of God.
Alternative Applications
1) Jeremiah 2:4-13. By the time this Sunday rolls around, the United States Supreme Court will have issued its ruling in the case of Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow (case no. 02-1624) over whether the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance is a violation of the "establishment clause" in the First Amendment. There has been widespread public opposition to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision ruling that that phrase was an unconstitutional breach of the "separation of church and state." Members of Congress from both major political parties assembled en masse on the Capitol steps to recite the current pledge in response, and most religious conservatives have decried what they see as yet another effort to remove God from the public sphere of American life.
There have been other religious persons, however, who would be just as glad as Mr. Newdow to see the phrase "under God" removed from the pledge. If the legal argument for retaining it and other official declarations about God in our civic life (e.g., the motto "In God We Trust" on our coins, and the proclamation "God save the United States and this honorable Court" that opens sessions of the Supreme Court itself) is that "God is so generic in this context as to be a neutral" expression of belief, as Justice Stephen Breyer stated during oral arguments of the Newdow case, then maybe the cost of inclusion is just too high.
One wonders where the prophet Jeremiah would have come down in this discussion. Would he have joined those who see the removal of the words "under God" as forsaking our nation's relationship with the God who, in the words of our Declaration of Independence, as Creator "endowed us with certain inalienable rights"? Or would he have agreed with those who remain in covenant with God but would nevertheless accept the removal of the phrase because it has become in some sense meaningless? In other words, is an expression of "ceremonial Deism" in public life itself an expression that we, like the people of ancient Judah, have gone "far from [God], and went after worthless things, and became worthless [ourselves]" (Jeremiah 2:5)?
2) Jeremiah 2:4-13; Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16. Many modern Christians have divided their lives into two portions. There is the mundane, day-to-day stuff of living that we consider ourselves more than competent to take care of. We do our jobs, tend to our families, and perhaps (time permitting) even contribute to the broader civic good. Then there are the big things that threaten to overwhelm us. Sometimes they are bad things like catastrophic illness, or they may even be good things like entering into a new marriage or celebrating the birth of a child. When these things happen, we reach beyond ourselves and turn to God for help. Yet both these lessons remind us that we are dependent upon God's help for the mundane stuff as well. Even the things we take for granted are there because God's faithfulness to us is "the same yesterday and today and forever." Maybe it is time to take a break from patting ourselves on the back and to thank God for the "fountain of living water" from which we draw on a daily basis.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 81:1, 10-16
The writer of Psalm 81 employs a most interesting mixed metaphor. It is not mixed, however, because the psalmist was careless and not paying attention to his subject matter. On the contrary, it is because of an important insight into human nature that the psalmist has us "eating with our ears."
Verse 10 rehearses what was, and is, the most basic confession of faith for followers of the Lord. God speaks and says, "I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. Open your mouth and I will fill it."
This single confession draws together the full sweep of Hebrew salvation history. From the great "I am" of Moses meeting at the burning bush, to the dramatic rescue out of Egypt, the daily manna and ultimately to the bounty of the Promised Land. The psalmist skillfully draws us by means of this confession into what will be the Lord's complaint with God's people. We are ready for it and we hear it coming. In fact, if we peak ahead to the next verse, we can actually see its opening volley, "But my people...."
The way the psalmist leaves us in verse 10, however, we are expecting some sort of complaint about what God wanted us to eat. The second phrase, "Open your mouth and I will fill it," leaves us expecting God to complain, "But my people would not eat what I gave them." Instead, however, the psalmist writes, "But my people would not listen to my voice" (v. 11).
Why the mixed metaphor? Why set us up for food and then give us words? The clue is given in the final verse where the psalmist reintroduces the feeding/food imagery. He writes, "I would feed you with the finest of the wheat, and with honey from the rock I would satisfy you" (v. 16). The key word is "satisfy."
The people have been trying to satisfy their needs. They have gone off on their own trying to find contentment, peace, security, and meaning. But in following their own lights they abandoned the only authentic source for those kinds of things -- the Lord's words and way. God tried to stop them, but they would not listen. They wanted what they wanted, and the Lord let them go to pursue it (v. 12).
God let them go, and waited. God knew that the longer they followed the empty paths of their own counsels, the emptier their lives would become. Sooner or later, they would become hungry for the truth that truly satisfies. They would need real security from real danger; they would need real help with real problems. They would eventually realize that their meager diet of self-gratification was killing them, and that they must feed on the words that constituted their existence in the first place.
Then, and only then, would God be able to give them what would save them. It's not that God was unwilling. The problem was with their appetites, not God's willingness to care for them. Anytime they were ready, God was ready with his menu.
"I will fill their mouths," God says, "if only they will open their ears."
