I've got a secret
Commentary
Our texts for this Sunday continue the theme from a week ago, namely, that Christians are engaged in a struggle, but that God is with us to help us. Today the thought is carried a step further. It is in the secret, mystical, often difficult-to-describe side of the Christian experience that we learn to know the work of God. The dream of Jacob, Paul's word about the "witness of the Spirit," the parable of the seed growing in the midst of the weeds -- all are signs of the work of God in the life of believers, a work that often is not apparent from the outside.
It would be easier for us if we preached only on the Gospel Lesson for this Sunday. After all, who believes that God actually communicates through a dream? There are lessons to be learned from "Jacob's Ladder," but we better not dwell on the thought that dreams are a means of revelation. And the very complex and murky area of "the witness of the Spirit" might be too difficult for our listeners to handle -- or for us to preach about.
That would be a serious mistake. On one of my trips through the Bible, I deliberately noted each time a dream played into a significant event in biblical history. I was amazed! Over and over there was a direct connection. If one takes just one book of the Bible -- the Acts of the Apostles -- one finds that, almost without fail, each new step in the development of the early Christian community was preceded by a revelation through a dream or unusual phenomenon.
As for the "witness of the Spirit," it has been rightly called the most neglected doctrine of the Christian church. The secret work of the Spirit in the heart of the believer is difficult to describe. We may even think that it is of no interest to the congregation. Yet, whether it be dreams, visions, sense perceptions, "witness of the Spirit," or any other of a plethora of unusual experiences, they are not uncommon among believers. When Father Andrew Greeley asked a representative group of church members about such experiences some years ago, the results were stunning. Though they seldom speak openly of them, a strong majority of believers attest to the reality of such revelations from God.
Yes, we must handle all of this with great care. But to avoid it because it is difficult to speak about would be a mistake. And, of course, the Gospel Lesson for today gives us firm ground on which to stand. No matter what the experience -- or lack of it -- of each listener, most can testify to the struggle they are engaged in to be Christian. And most will welcome any insight we have to aid them in their progress along the pilgrim's way.
Grist For The Mill
Genesis 28:10-19a
The significance of Jacob's dream is that it comes at a time and a place where it is least expected. He is in trouble and on the run. Though his mother sent him away for what she hoped was a short time, Jacob must have felt that he was on a trip with no return. He was afraid. He must have wondered what it meant to have the birthright, to carry the responsibility for the future of a promised people. And the place was as desperate as his spirit. Though many a lovely sanctuary now claims the name "Bethel," the original site was one of emptiness and desolation.
Thus the dream comes as a great surprise. There is no sign that Jacob is asking for a dream or some other sign of reassurance. He doesn't deserve one. It is a dark, depressing moment in his life. There is no hint in the text of Genesis that God approved of what he had done to get himself into this dilemma. But God works in spite of that background. The dream is a gift to Jacob, pure and simple. Little wonder he exclaims, "Surely the Lord is in this place -- and I did not know it!" And little wonder he calls it an "awesome place" and looks back to it as the very spot where his life was forever changed.
As with Jacob, there are two sides to our encounters with God. The first is that they are "awesome." We would like at times to escape, to wish that God would forget us, knowing that we are worthy of nothing. We feel numb. We are not even sure we want to be remembered by God. The very fact that we cannot escape this "Hound of Heaven," that we cannot "ascend to heaven" or "make our bed in Sheol" or "take the wings of the morning and settle in the farthest limits of the sea" troubles us. It is indeed an awesome thing! God will not leave us alone.
The other side, however, is the good news. Whether we are too depressed to want it, or feeling too guilty to deserve it, God comes and comes and comes. It may be a dream -- and could be if we were more in tune with the subconscious side of our lives. It may be a letter, or a phone call, or a chat with a friend or stranger, or a word in a sermon or Bible study, a visit with a counselor, a conversation at a Bible camp or retreat. These moments, like that for Jacob, are not necessarily sought after. They "just happen" -- because God is at work.
I went off to Bible camp the day after I was confirmed. It was a rather crude setting at that time. The bunk beds sagged. The chapel pews were hard and uncomfortable. My purpose in going surely was not to find God. I was hoping to meet cute girls from other churches! But God had some surprises in store for me. Eyes were opened, a heart was "strangely warmed," a small beginning of a sense of call to ministry was felt. I looked into the starry sky one night near the end of the week and was overwhelmed at the awesomeness of God, and the wonder that this God of grace should care for me. It was my "Bethel" -- my time and place of meeting with God in an awesome, surprising, and unexpected way.
Sitting in the pews this Sunday will be listeners who have had significant, surprising encounters with God. You need only ask, "Have you felt God's presence at some special time and in some special, awesome way in your life?" This is a time to help them reclaim that encounter, to affirm it as a work of God, and to assure them that this same God of grace is at work in the ordinary events of their lives.
Romans 8:12-25
It has been suggested that the trouble with our discussions of the Holy Spirit is that we know too much or too little. For most of us, it is probably too little. Until recently, most seminaries devoted little time to the study of the Spirit. That led to the ignorance of the subject in the churches, on the one hand, and abuse of it, on the other.
When Paul writes to the congregation in Rome about the "witness of the Spirit" (8:16) he has already laid solid groundwork. The God who calls us in Christ, who convicts us of our sin, who makes us right by faith, who frees us from the curse of the law, who gives victory over the flesh -- this is the God we meet through the "witness of the Spirit." If we preach on this text, it is important to set it into that larger context. This is what keeps us from running off into a form of spiritualism that is disconnected from the rest of the body of Christian theology and from the realities of the daily struggle to be Christian.
Though we affirm the importance of dreams and of the mystical side of Christianity, we are constantly warned that this does not bring escape from the difficulties of life. Thomas Merton once cautioned those who sought to flee the public square to find "true spirituality" in the monastery that they would be disappointed. There is nothing superior about such a life, he insisted. "The chief dignity of a monk lies in the fact that he has abandoned competition and the quest for human glory and is content to be the last of all." (Thomas Merton, The Silent Life; New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1957, p. xiii.) The most admired mystics, both modern and ancient, are always involved in the affairs of the world around them. Evelyn Underhill says of Saint Bernard: "Though a life of silence and prayer was doubtless what he loved, he never shirked the active side of existence, or failed to act up to his own declaration that the whole object of contemplation was to make (others) better shepherds of souls." (Evelyn Underhill, The Mystics of the Church; New York: Shocken Books, 1964, p. 85.) Frank Laubach, a modern mystic, did more than anyone else in the twentieth century to wipe out our illiteracy.
In this text Paul describes our relationship with the Holy Spirit in family language. To know God through the Spirit is to be able to say, "Abba! Father!" Those of us blessed with a kind and loving father can understand what he means. Those who were cursed with an abusive father may have to find another model. But all can identify with what Paul has in mind. All have had at least one special person who reached out and said, "I love you. You're all right just as you are. I accept you. I will help you." That is the one with whom we have the "Abba!" relationship. And that is the miracle of the Good News -- that the One who is "wholly other" and so awesome that we scarcely dare to say the Name -- that this One also loves and cares for us and invites us to pray, "Our Father...."
We have not dealt fully with this text, of course, until we point out the content of verses 18-25. This only underscores what we have just said. Not only does the "spiritual life" involve us in the world, but it also calls us, inevitably, to suffering. Reginald Fuller goes to the nub of this paragraph when he writes:
Paul had never denied the ecstatic gifts of the Spirit, but always emphasized that the real test of the Spirit was not ecstasy but suffering in the way of the cross -- hence the last point of this reading, the proviso that we must suffer with Christ now if we are finally to share his glory. (Reginald Fuller, Preaching the New Lectionary: The Word of God for the Church Today; Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1974, p. 384.)
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
What we have just said about Paul's understanding of the Christian in the world surely fits with the accent of the Gospel Lesson. The wheat does not grow in isolation from the world, in only favorable circumstances, and with little opposition. Wheat and weeds are all mixed together.
The interpretation of the parable, separated from the parable itself by three shorter parables, may well have been aimed at an early church audience. By then the church was more settled. But it was also a church that now realized the "enemy" was not only on the outside, but right within the church itself. Right within "the family" are those who do not put the concerns of the kingdom first and foremost. In fact, some are opposed to the mission.
If that is the intent of 13:36-43 we find its application to the current scene most helpful. Over the years of my ministry as pastor and bishop the greatest problems I had to deal with were not brought on by those in the community or the larger society. On the contrary, our most vexing difficulties are those within the congregation and among believers in the same family of faith.
This is, however, dangerous ground. Whenever we get involved in this issue it is tempting to make judgments about those who are "wheat" and those who are "weeds." Our Lord's earlier word of caution, "Do not judge, so that you may not be judged" (7:1), is good to keep in mind. To avoid this inclination we should do well to search our own hearts and our own actions to see what we ourselves may be doing -- or not doing -- that brings damage to the Christian community.
We also need to keep in mind God's promises that we, like Jacob, are not forgotten by God in our work for the kingdom. And we can also take courage from Paul's word that assures us that the Spirit of God is quietly at work even in the midst of conflicts that seem to have no resolution.
Patience is named as one of the gifts of the Spirit in Galatians 5. That is what Christ calls for in the parable. We want immediate resolution. We want to see progress toward a final answer.
"Christian patience," writes William Barclay, "is not a grim, bleak acceptance of a situation; even the patience is irradiated with joy." But having said that, he also agrees that "it may be ... the hardest lesson of all to learn is how to wait ... when nothing seems to be happening, and when all the circumstances seem calculated to bring nothing but discouragement." (William Barclay, Flesh and Spirit; Nashville: Abingdon, 1962, p. 96.)
Our hope and our help is with the One who is in charge of the harvest and who will separate out those who "shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father" (13:43).
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By James A. Nestingen
Genesis 28:10-19a
The good Lord is apparently willing to make some adjustments. By rights, at least originally, it should have been Esau seeing angels and hearing God's voice. But by the time Rebekah and Jacob got done with him, they aced Esau right out of the succession. Always ready for another sinner, the God of Abraham and Issac goes right along with the plotting, choosing Jacob!
If anybody ever had a claim to such a name, it was this man. Jacob means "the one who supplants" or "cheats." Perhaps, going by his Uncle Laban's scheming and Rebekah's kitchen conniving ("I'll make that goat taste for all the world like rabbit stew!"), Jacob's cleverness came from his mother's side of the family. But then Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac were hardly innocents themselves.
In fact, the whole lot of them -- Jesus' genealogy, to be sure -- could use some moral scrutiny. Whether Jacob's forebears or progeny, their story is full of the stuff of the evening news: frauds, rapes, dirty tricks, opportunism, sexual highjinks, things sinners have been known for since leaving the garden.
So the real hero here is not Jacob. Neither is it humanity in general, somehow smuggled onto Jacob's ladder to replace the angels, according to the old Bible camp spiritual. The center of attention is God, compliant enough to yield to a Jacob and pass the covenant made with Abraham and Isaac into his hands.
Religious people have had trouble with this for generations, going all the way back to the days of Scripture. There are accounts of God's covenant with Abraham that make the promise of it conditional on his obedience (Genesis 17:1-2). And even Jacob's story gets told so that he gets flattened out into pious conformity.
The Scripture gives way to complete a picture for that. Conniving with his mother, stripping Esau of both birthright and blessing, tipping high-stakes partnership deals with Laban in his own direction, and now catching forty winks where he can find them, Jacob's sins are life-defining.
At the same time, there is a deeper word here. Taking him on, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and now Jacob throws caution and qualifiers alike to the wind. It is flat out, unconditional, sure-as-you-are-sitting-there promise: land, offspring, and blessing, the whole works, along with this word, "Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I promised you" (verse 15). It's just like him, the one who raised Jesus from the dead.
It would be easier for us if we preached only on the Gospel Lesson for this Sunday. After all, who believes that God actually communicates through a dream? There are lessons to be learned from "Jacob's Ladder," but we better not dwell on the thought that dreams are a means of revelation. And the very complex and murky area of "the witness of the Spirit" might be too difficult for our listeners to handle -- or for us to preach about.
That would be a serious mistake. On one of my trips through the Bible, I deliberately noted each time a dream played into a significant event in biblical history. I was amazed! Over and over there was a direct connection. If one takes just one book of the Bible -- the Acts of the Apostles -- one finds that, almost without fail, each new step in the development of the early Christian community was preceded by a revelation through a dream or unusual phenomenon.
As for the "witness of the Spirit," it has been rightly called the most neglected doctrine of the Christian church. The secret work of the Spirit in the heart of the believer is difficult to describe. We may even think that it is of no interest to the congregation. Yet, whether it be dreams, visions, sense perceptions, "witness of the Spirit," or any other of a plethora of unusual experiences, they are not uncommon among believers. When Father Andrew Greeley asked a representative group of church members about such experiences some years ago, the results were stunning. Though they seldom speak openly of them, a strong majority of believers attest to the reality of such revelations from God.
Yes, we must handle all of this with great care. But to avoid it because it is difficult to speak about would be a mistake. And, of course, the Gospel Lesson for today gives us firm ground on which to stand. No matter what the experience -- or lack of it -- of each listener, most can testify to the struggle they are engaged in to be Christian. And most will welcome any insight we have to aid them in their progress along the pilgrim's way.
Grist For The Mill
Genesis 28:10-19a
The significance of Jacob's dream is that it comes at a time and a place where it is least expected. He is in trouble and on the run. Though his mother sent him away for what she hoped was a short time, Jacob must have felt that he was on a trip with no return. He was afraid. He must have wondered what it meant to have the birthright, to carry the responsibility for the future of a promised people. And the place was as desperate as his spirit. Though many a lovely sanctuary now claims the name "Bethel," the original site was one of emptiness and desolation.
Thus the dream comes as a great surprise. There is no sign that Jacob is asking for a dream or some other sign of reassurance. He doesn't deserve one. It is a dark, depressing moment in his life. There is no hint in the text of Genesis that God approved of what he had done to get himself into this dilemma. But God works in spite of that background. The dream is a gift to Jacob, pure and simple. Little wonder he exclaims, "Surely the Lord is in this place -- and I did not know it!" And little wonder he calls it an "awesome place" and looks back to it as the very spot where his life was forever changed.
As with Jacob, there are two sides to our encounters with God. The first is that they are "awesome." We would like at times to escape, to wish that God would forget us, knowing that we are worthy of nothing. We feel numb. We are not even sure we want to be remembered by God. The very fact that we cannot escape this "Hound of Heaven," that we cannot "ascend to heaven" or "make our bed in Sheol" or "take the wings of the morning and settle in the farthest limits of the sea" troubles us. It is indeed an awesome thing! God will not leave us alone.
The other side, however, is the good news. Whether we are too depressed to want it, or feeling too guilty to deserve it, God comes and comes and comes. It may be a dream -- and could be if we were more in tune with the subconscious side of our lives. It may be a letter, or a phone call, or a chat with a friend or stranger, or a word in a sermon or Bible study, a visit with a counselor, a conversation at a Bible camp or retreat. These moments, like that for Jacob, are not necessarily sought after. They "just happen" -- because God is at work.
I went off to Bible camp the day after I was confirmed. It was a rather crude setting at that time. The bunk beds sagged. The chapel pews were hard and uncomfortable. My purpose in going surely was not to find God. I was hoping to meet cute girls from other churches! But God had some surprises in store for me. Eyes were opened, a heart was "strangely warmed," a small beginning of a sense of call to ministry was felt. I looked into the starry sky one night near the end of the week and was overwhelmed at the awesomeness of God, and the wonder that this God of grace should care for me. It was my "Bethel" -- my time and place of meeting with God in an awesome, surprising, and unexpected way.
Sitting in the pews this Sunday will be listeners who have had significant, surprising encounters with God. You need only ask, "Have you felt God's presence at some special time and in some special, awesome way in your life?" This is a time to help them reclaim that encounter, to affirm it as a work of God, and to assure them that this same God of grace is at work in the ordinary events of their lives.
Romans 8:12-25
It has been suggested that the trouble with our discussions of the Holy Spirit is that we know too much or too little. For most of us, it is probably too little. Until recently, most seminaries devoted little time to the study of the Spirit. That led to the ignorance of the subject in the churches, on the one hand, and abuse of it, on the other.
When Paul writes to the congregation in Rome about the "witness of the Spirit" (8:16) he has already laid solid groundwork. The God who calls us in Christ, who convicts us of our sin, who makes us right by faith, who frees us from the curse of the law, who gives victory over the flesh -- this is the God we meet through the "witness of the Spirit." If we preach on this text, it is important to set it into that larger context. This is what keeps us from running off into a form of spiritualism that is disconnected from the rest of the body of Christian theology and from the realities of the daily struggle to be Christian.
Though we affirm the importance of dreams and of the mystical side of Christianity, we are constantly warned that this does not bring escape from the difficulties of life. Thomas Merton once cautioned those who sought to flee the public square to find "true spirituality" in the monastery that they would be disappointed. There is nothing superior about such a life, he insisted. "The chief dignity of a monk lies in the fact that he has abandoned competition and the quest for human glory and is content to be the last of all." (Thomas Merton, The Silent Life; New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1957, p. xiii.) The most admired mystics, both modern and ancient, are always involved in the affairs of the world around them. Evelyn Underhill says of Saint Bernard: "Though a life of silence and prayer was doubtless what he loved, he never shirked the active side of existence, or failed to act up to his own declaration that the whole object of contemplation was to make (others) better shepherds of souls." (Evelyn Underhill, The Mystics of the Church; New York: Shocken Books, 1964, p. 85.) Frank Laubach, a modern mystic, did more than anyone else in the twentieth century to wipe out our illiteracy.
In this text Paul describes our relationship with the Holy Spirit in family language. To know God through the Spirit is to be able to say, "Abba! Father!" Those of us blessed with a kind and loving father can understand what he means. Those who were cursed with an abusive father may have to find another model. But all can identify with what Paul has in mind. All have had at least one special person who reached out and said, "I love you. You're all right just as you are. I accept you. I will help you." That is the one with whom we have the "Abba!" relationship. And that is the miracle of the Good News -- that the One who is "wholly other" and so awesome that we scarcely dare to say the Name -- that this One also loves and cares for us and invites us to pray, "Our Father...."
We have not dealt fully with this text, of course, until we point out the content of verses 18-25. This only underscores what we have just said. Not only does the "spiritual life" involve us in the world, but it also calls us, inevitably, to suffering. Reginald Fuller goes to the nub of this paragraph when he writes:
Paul had never denied the ecstatic gifts of the Spirit, but always emphasized that the real test of the Spirit was not ecstasy but suffering in the way of the cross -- hence the last point of this reading, the proviso that we must suffer with Christ now if we are finally to share his glory. (Reginald Fuller, Preaching the New Lectionary: The Word of God for the Church Today; Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1974, p. 384.)
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
What we have just said about Paul's understanding of the Christian in the world surely fits with the accent of the Gospel Lesson. The wheat does not grow in isolation from the world, in only favorable circumstances, and with little opposition. Wheat and weeds are all mixed together.
The interpretation of the parable, separated from the parable itself by three shorter parables, may well have been aimed at an early church audience. By then the church was more settled. But it was also a church that now realized the "enemy" was not only on the outside, but right within the church itself. Right within "the family" are those who do not put the concerns of the kingdom first and foremost. In fact, some are opposed to the mission.
If that is the intent of 13:36-43 we find its application to the current scene most helpful. Over the years of my ministry as pastor and bishop the greatest problems I had to deal with were not brought on by those in the community or the larger society. On the contrary, our most vexing difficulties are those within the congregation and among believers in the same family of faith.
This is, however, dangerous ground. Whenever we get involved in this issue it is tempting to make judgments about those who are "wheat" and those who are "weeds." Our Lord's earlier word of caution, "Do not judge, so that you may not be judged" (7:1), is good to keep in mind. To avoid this inclination we should do well to search our own hearts and our own actions to see what we ourselves may be doing -- or not doing -- that brings damage to the Christian community.
We also need to keep in mind God's promises that we, like Jacob, are not forgotten by God in our work for the kingdom. And we can also take courage from Paul's word that assures us that the Spirit of God is quietly at work even in the midst of conflicts that seem to have no resolution.
Patience is named as one of the gifts of the Spirit in Galatians 5. That is what Christ calls for in the parable. We want immediate resolution. We want to see progress toward a final answer.
"Christian patience," writes William Barclay, "is not a grim, bleak acceptance of a situation; even the patience is irradiated with joy." But having said that, he also agrees that "it may be ... the hardest lesson of all to learn is how to wait ... when nothing seems to be happening, and when all the circumstances seem calculated to bring nothing but discouragement." (William Barclay, Flesh and Spirit; Nashville: Abingdon, 1962, p. 96.)
Our hope and our help is with the One who is in charge of the harvest and who will separate out those who "shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father" (13:43).
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By James A. Nestingen
Genesis 28:10-19a
The good Lord is apparently willing to make some adjustments. By rights, at least originally, it should have been Esau seeing angels and hearing God's voice. But by the time Rebekah and Jacob got done with him, they aced Esau right out of the succession. Always ready for another sinner, the God of Abraham and Issac goes right along with the plotting, choosing Jacob!
If anybody ever had a claim to such a name, it was this man. Jacob means "the one who supplants" or "cheats." Perhaps, going by his Uncle Laban's scheming and Rebekah's kitchen conniving ("I'll make that goat taste for all the world like rabbit stew!"), Jacob's cleverness came from his mother's side of the family. But then Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac were hardly innocents themselves.
In fact, the whole lot of them -- Jesus' genealogy, to be sure -- could use some moral scrutiny. Whether Jacob's forebears or progeny, their story is full of the stuff of the evening news: frauds, rapes, dirty tricks, opportunism, sexual highjinks, things sinners have been known for since leaving the garden.
So the real hero here is not Jacob. Neither is it humanity in general, somehow smuggled onto Jacob's ladder to replace the angels, according to the old Bible camp spiritual. The center of attention is God, compliant enough to yield to a Jacob and pass the covenant made with Abraham and Isaac into his hands.
Religious people have had trouble with this for generations, going all the way back to the days of Scripture. There are accounts of God's covenant with Abraham that make the promise of it conditional on his obedience (Genesis 17:1-2). And even Jacob's story gets told so that he gets flattened out into pious conformity.
The Scripture gives way to complete a picture for that. Conniving with his mother, stripping Esau of both birthright and blessing, tipping high-stakes partnership deals with Laban in his own direction, and now catching forty winks where he can find them, Jacob's sins are life-defining.
At the same time, there is a deeper word here. Taking him on, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and now Jacob throws caution and qualifiers alike to the wind. It is flat out, unconditional, sure-as-you-are-sitting-there promise: land, offspring, and blessing, the whole works, along with this word, "Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I promised you" (verse 15). It's just like him, the one who raised Jesus from the dead.
