Seeing the world through Abraham's eyes
Commentary
Object:
Scott Camp told of a university student who was working on a doctorate investigating the social culture of the Navajo people. For a full year the young man lived with a Navajo family, participating in all the regimen and rituals of their lives.
Since Navajo households are often intergenerational, the grandmother, a wizened old woman, was matriarch of the home. She moved slowly and quietly among them, ever-present even without speaking. Though she knew little English, she soon became fast friends with the doctoral student. Somehow they shared a communication that needed few words. When the time finally came for him to leave, she uttered a single sentence that gathered into it the essence of what it means to be soul mates. She said: "I like me best when I'm with you!"
A good friend brings out the best in us. Certainly God brought out the best in Abraham. That's understandable. But notice carefully the way Abraham sees and is viewed in today's passages. God was Abraham's best friend, of course, but Abraham was also called a friend of God! There is something in our relationship with God that brings out the best in both of us!
We call it grace, no matter which way it flows between friends. The Pioneer Girls Leader's Handbook says it this way: "A friend hears the song in my heart and sings it to me when my memory fails." Maybe that's why God delights in our music. God will never forget who he is so long as we keep singing Amazing Grace.
Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16
Abram was an Aramean from the heart of Mesopotamia whose father Terah began a journey westward that Abram continued upon his father's death. Whatever Terah's reasons might have been for moving from the old family village -- restlessness, treasure-seeking, displacement, wanderlust -- Genesis 12 informs us that Abram's continuation of the trek was motivated by a divine call to seek a land which would become his by providential appointment. This is the first of four similar divine declarations that occur in quick succession in chapters 12, 13, 15, and 17. Such repetition cues us to the importance of these theophanies, but it ought also to cause us to look more closely at the forms in which the promises to Abram are made.
In brief, Abram's first three encounters with God are shaped literarily as royal grants. Found in every society, but standardized in the ancient world by the Babylonians, these were essentially gifts presented by someone with great authority to a person who was singled out for special favors. Only in Genesis 17 does the language of the dialogue change and elements are added to give this fourth interaction between God and Abram the flavor of a Suzerain Vassal covenant. This is very significant. In Genesis 12, God promises (royal grant) to give the land of Canaan to Abram and his descendants. Yet when a famine threatens, Abram quickly runs from this land to Egypt, as if the land is not worth receiving or having. Again, in Genesis 13, God reaffirms the divine donation (royal grant) of the land to Abram, and Abram barely hangs onto it, more by show of arms than trust in God. In one of the most familiar stories of Abram's life, Abram and Sarai are promised (royal grant) a child in their old age. Since this is beyond human possibility (both husband and wife are in their ninth decade), Abram and Sarai scheme to get Sarai's young maid Hagar pregnant by her employer. All of the royal grants end with less faith and divine "success" than God intends. Only in today's lectionary reading does the divine tack change (moving from royal grant gifts to a Suzerain-Vassal reciprocal covenant), with an outcome (see Genesis 22) far more different: Abraham emerges engaged with God in lock-step commitment to the Creator's missional initiative, designed to bring all nations back to their relationship with God.
For Israel, standing at Mount Sinai in the context of a Suzerain Vassal covenant-making ceremony, the implications would be striking. First of all, the nation would see itself as the unique and miraculously born child fulfilling a divine promise. Israel could not exist were it not for God's unusual efforts at getting Abram and Sarai pregnant in a way that was humanly impossible. Second, they were the descendants of a man on a divine pilgrimage. Not only was Abram en route to a land of promise, but he was also the instrument of God for the blessing of all the nations of the earth. In other words, Israel was born with a mandate and it was globally encompassing. Third, while these people had recently emerged from Egypt as a despised social underclass of disenfranchised slaves, they were actually landowners. Canaan was theirs for the taking because they already owned it. They would not enter the land by stealth but through the front door; they would claim the land, not by surreptitious means or mere battlefield bloodshed, but as rightful owners going home. This would greatly affect their common psyche: they were the long-lost heirs of a kingdom returning to claim their royal privilege and possessions. Fourth, there was a selection in the process of creating their identity. They were children of Abraham but so were a number of area tribes and nations descending from Ishmael. What made them special was the uniqueness of their lineage through Isaac, the miraculously born child of Abram and Sarai's old age. Israel had international kinship relations but she also retained a unique identity fostered by the divine distinctions between branches of the family. Fifth, in the progression of the divine dialogue with Abram there was a call to participation in the mission of God. As the story of Abram unfolded, it was clear that his commitment to God's plans was minimal at best until the change from royal grants (Genesis 12, 13, 15) to the Suzerain Vassal Covenant of chapter 17.
Each time Abram was given a gift he seemingly threw it away, tried to take it by force, or manipulated his circumstances so that he controlled his destiny; only when God took formal ownership of both Abram and the situation through the Suzerain Vassal Covenant of Genesis 17 was there a marked change in Abram's participation in the divine initiative. The renaming of Abram and Sarai to Abraham and Sarah were only partly significant for the meaning of the names; mostly they were a deliberate and public declaration that God owned them. To name meant to have power over, just as was the case when a divine word created the elements of the universe in Genesis 1 and Adam named the animals in Genesis 2. Furthermore, in the call to circumcise all the males of the family, God transformed a widely used social rite of passage symbol into a visible mark of belonging now no longer tied to personal achievements like battlefield wins or hunting success, but merely to the gracious goodness of God and participation in the divine mission.
What was that divine mission? Only when Israel heard the rest of the covenant prologue and then followed Moses to the promised land would it become clear. Still, in recalling the tale of father Abraham in this manner, Genesis places before Israel at Sinai the important element of unique identity: we came into this world miraculously as a result of a divine initiative to bless all the nations of the earth; therefore we are a unique people with the powerful backing of the Creator and participating in a mission that is still in progress.
Romans 4:13-25
You remember the story... Abraham was a great old man, probably 125 or so! God had come to him in the past in strange and wonderful ways. When he wore a younger man's clothes, the voice had called him on a journey with no fixed destination. But the beckoning was always one of blessing: "I'll give you land beyond measure! I'll make sure you have a child, old as you are! Your descendants will populate these hills and valleys like rain!"
Well, the land sort of took him in. Moreover, after some fits and starts he and Sarai did get a child. Even though his pension plan was still not entirely clear, life in these later years was peaceful and prosperous. After all, there was Isaac. His boy's name meant "Laughter!" and that's certainly what he brought Abraham these days. Life had turned out okay.
Now the voice came to him again. But was it really the same voice? "Sacrifice your son Isaac on the altar to me!" it said. What kind of God was this? Or was it perhaps a demon's mocking mimic? "Kill your boy! Choke out the Laughter!" God forbid! Please, God, let it not be so!
There would be no sleep this night. Abraham's mind whirls while his old bones crawl in pain. Get the servants... Get the transportation... Get provisions... Get wood... Get the son...
Three days' travel they go with every step harder than the last. Isaac chatters his usual banter, laughter echoing in Abraham's cold heart. Reluctantly Abraham spies the high place finally -- the mountain of doom -- the plateau of death.
Strangely gruff, Abraham orders the servants to stay. "The boy and I will go it alone from here." Two on a murderous mission. Only one will return. The father-son hike soured even more when Isaac's laughter lilted a deadly chilly question: "Where's the lamb, father?"
What could Abraham say? Does he tell Isaac the truth: "Son, the God who said he loved me enough to give you to your mother and I now says he wants you back, and I've got to do the dirty work!"? How do you lie with a straight face when heaven is ripped apart by hell? Is it a spiteful retort, spat out in unholy jest, that finally clears his throat: "My son, God will provide..."?
So here they are, clearing and building and preparing. Now the end creeps with horror into Isaac's eyes. His father binds him. His father thrusts him on the wood. His father stands over him with a glinting knife. And the Laughter dies...
But not yet. In a miraculous moment, time stops and grace points to another sacrifice. The son is free, faith is affirmed, and he calls the place Moriah.
Moriah is one of those delightfully ambiguous names that can mean several things at once. It probably has to do with seeing at this point, or knowing. Where God sees, he will be seen. Something like that.
What is it that God sees on a mountain called Moriah? For one thing, he sees a man. A weak man. A stumbler on the earth. A business man who got ahead in life. A husband who cheated on his wife. A father who knew the joy of bringing new life into being.
Even more than that God sees a man who was willing to put it all on the line. Here was someone who counted his relationship with the God of the voice to be the one thing that mattered, the one thing that put everything else together, the one thing that could raise even heaven out of this stench of hell.
Probably the most important thing about the moment of seeing is not only that God sees Abraham there on Mount Moriah. In some mysterious way God is also seen by Abraham.
A geography lesson tells the rest of the story. On this same barren spot of ground, centuries later, David would urge Solomon to build the temple of God. It would stand as a doorway between earth and eternity. Then, in the mysterious design of the ages, one day another Father would walk these slopes with another Son. That Son, too, would raise his voice to his Father, and the Father, for a time would be silent. The wood of the offering would be prepared, and the Son would be lifted as a sacrifice. On what the world would later call "Good Friday" this other Father would shed tears of pain as his Child died, this time with no escape.
Somehow history would repeat itself and more with a vengeance. Yet this lamb would also be chosen by God for the altar. Laughter would be silenced for three days while all the world looked on in wonder.
Abraham found his faith that day on Mount Moriah, but it cost God his Son on the same spot. The mystery of life is found now not in a faith that pretends laughter but in a promise that God knows pain. Because he has walked a mile in Abraham's shoes and ours, God will never leave us. He will never forsake us. This is the message of Paul in today's lectionary reading.
Mark 8:31-38
In the second century, Bishop Papias knew that the church of his day recognized this shortest of the gospels as consisting essentially in the preaching of Peter about Jesus, then recorded by Mark. Such a view is certainly consistent with several internal hints: Peter's call to be a follower of Jesus is the first to be recorded (Mark 1:16), even though each of the gospels reports the various callings in different sequences; Peter is identified as "Simon" early in the gospel (Mark 1:16, 29, 36), which fits with the probable way he was addressed by his family and friends before Jesus renamed him (Mark 3:16) "Rocky" (the essential meaning of the Greek name "Peter"); the story of Jesus healing Peter's mother-in-law is told with more personal detail (Mark 1:29-37) than is found in its other gospel recordings (Matthew 8:14-15; Luke 4:38-39).
Here, in one of the pivotal passages of the gospel, it is Peter who both understands and misunderstands the character, purpose, and meaning of Jesus all in one blustering move. As Jesus moves determinedly toward Jerusalem and crucifixion, he attempts to ramp up his close friends' understanding of the events ahead. The implications are clear -- Jesus is about to die violently.
Peter, of course, protests loudly. Seeing things only from a human perspective, the only moral for the story Jesus is telling appears to be tragedy and disaster. Doubly discouraged (because his friends still don't understand the truth about him, and because they present the largest roadblock in is way), Jesus matches Peter's feistiness with sharp words of his own. The intense exchange draws public attention, and Jesus uses the occasion to mount a pulpit and declare the upside-down truth of heaven on earth's preoccupied landscape.
Application
A gracious woman in the latter half of her life was once giving advice to a marriage preparation class that I organized. When it comes to making purchases, she told the young women of the group, "Don't ever buy anything on credit. Always pay for everything with cash."
Incredulous laughter rippled around the room. Can you imagine a modern wallet with no credit cards in it?
Credit is a slippery thing. You may want it, but if you mention that, you won't likely get it. In fact, you might even get blacklisted instead. Gilbert and Sullivan have their Captain of the H.M.S. Pinafore proclaiming his eminent worth in their operetta of that name. Behind him a chorus declaims and defames: "He is an Englishman! For he himself has said it, And it's greatly to his credit, That he is an Englishman!" All the while, of course, the audience is laughing at his buffoonery.
Sometimes we look for credit by association. In the last years of his life, composer Louis Antoine Jullien dreamed of writing one final work. He said he would like to set the words of the Lord's Prayer to music. Wouldn't it look wonderful, he asked his colleagues, to have a title page that read: The Lord's Prayer. Words by Jesus Christ. Music by Jullien...?
The best credit, of course, is neither earned nor grasped. This is the point of all three passages in today's lectionary readings. This is what Abraham learned early in our history, and what we still see when we peer through his eyes.
Alternative Application
Romans 4:13-25. Because Paul had not yet made a visit to Rome, his letter to that congregation was less personal and more rationally organized than was true of most of his other letters. Paul intended this missive to be a working document that the congregation already established in the capital city of the empire and would be able to read and discuss together in anticipation of his arrival, which was planned for some months ahead (Romans 1:6-15). Paul's working theme and emphasis was the new expression of the "righteousness of God" that had been recently revealed with power through the coming of Jesus Christ (Romans 1:17).
Because Paul moved directly from a brief statement about the righteousness of God into an extended explication of the wrath of God revealed against wickedness (Romans 1:18), many have interpreted Paul's understanding of God's righteousness as an unattainable standard against which the whole of the human race is measured and fails. Only in the context of this desperate human situation would the grand salvation of Christ then be appreciated and enjoyed.
But more scholars believe that Paul's assertions of the righteousness of God have a positive and missional thrust. In their understanding of what Paul says, it is because of the corruption and sinfulness that is demeaning and destroying humanity that God needed again, as God did through Israel, to re-assert the divine will. In so doing, God's focus was not on heaping judgment upon humankind, but instead that of drawing people back to the creational goodness God had intended for them. This was, in essence, the same missional purpose that God had planned for Israel during the Old Testament.
This more positive perspective on the righteousness of God fits well with the flow of Paul's message. In chapters 1:18--3:20 Paul describes the crippling effect of sin. But once the stage has been set for his readers to realize again the pervasive grip of evil in this world, including within their own divided and deluded hearts, Paul marches Abraham out onto the stage as a model of divine religious reconstruction. God does not wish to be distant from the world, judgmental and vengeful. Instead, as shown to Abraham, God desires an ever-renewing relationship with the people God made. Thus, as exhibited in Abraham's life (Romans 4), God initiates a relationship of favor and grace with us.
One of my favorite stories about Abraham Lincoln comes from his Illinois days as a young lawyer. An angry man stormed into his office demanding that he bring suit against an impoverished debtor who owed him $2.50. "Make him pay!"
Well, Lincoln didn't want anything of the sort to happen. The debtor couldn't pay the $2.50, the creditor didn't need the $2.50, and society shouldn't be run by either such greed or such insensitivity. So Lincoln declined the case.
Unfortunately the man kept pressing, and since Lincoln was the only lawyer available, he was forced to serve the suit. First, though, he charged the man $10 for legal fees. Then he brought the defendant in, gave him $5.00 for his time, and asked if the charges were accurate. He readily agreed, and out of his newly gotten $5, paid the $2.50 he owed. Everyone was satisfied, including the irate plaintiff, who never realized that he spent $10 to collect $2.50!
Now turn that story around and think of it from this angle: A man with no credit is burdened by a debt he could never repay. Along comes an Advocate he can't hire to resolve a matter he can't win. Suddenly, in a transaction he could never accomplish, the debt is gone, the creditor has disappeared, and he has money in his pocket! All he had to do was agree to the terms.
So it is with faith, says Paul in Romans 4, as he calls to mind the journey and faith of Abraham. Don't try to figure it out and certainly don't claim credit for it. But when it's there, you'll know it. And so will others!
Since Navajo households are often intergenerational, the grandmother, a wizened old woman, was matriarch of the home. She moved slowly and quietly among them, ever-present even without speaking. Though she knew little English, she soon became fast friends with the doctoral student. Somehow they shared a communication that needed few words. When the time finally came for him to leave, she uttered a single sentence that gathered into it the essence of what it means to be soul mates. She said: "I like me best when I'm with you!"
A good friend brings out the best in us. Certainly God brought out the best in Abraham. That's understandable. But notice carefully the way Abraham sees and is viewed in today's passages. God was Abraham's best friend, of course, but Abraham was also called a friend of God! There is something in our relationship with God that brings out the best in both of us!
We call it grace, no matter which way it flows between friends. The Pioneer Girls Leader's Handbook says it this way: "A friend hears the song in my heart and sings it to me when my memory fails." Maybe that's why God delights in our music. God will never forget who he is so long as we keep singing Amazing Grace.
Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16
Abram was an Aramean from the heart of Mesopotamia whose father Terah began a journey westward that Abram continued upon his father's death. Whatever Terah's reasons might have been for moving from the old family village -- restlessness, treasure-seeking, displacement, wanderlust -- Genesis 12 informs us that Abram's continuation of the trek was motivated by a divine call to seek a land which would become his by providential appointment. This is the first of four similar divine declarations that occur in quick succession in chapters 12, 13, 15, and 17. Such repetition cues us to the importance of these theophanies, but it ought also to cause us to look more closely at the forms in which the promises to Abram are made.
In brief, Abram's first three encounters with God are shaped literarily as royal grants. Found in every society, but standardized in the ancient world by the Babylonians, these were essentially gifts presented by someone with great authority to a person who was singled out for special favors. Only in Genesis 17 does the language of the dialogue change and elements are added to give this fourth interaction between God and Abram the flavor of a Suzerain Vassal covenant. This is very significant. In Genesis 12, God promises (royal grant) to give the land of Canaan to Abram and his descendants. Yet when a famine threatens, Abram quickly runs from this land to Egypt, as if the land is not worth receiving or having. Again, in Genesis 13, God reaffirms the divine donation (royal grant) of the land to Abram, and Abram barely hangs onto it, more by show of arms than trust in God. In one of the most familiar stories of Abram's life, Abram and Sarai are promised (royal grant) a child in their old age. Since this is beyond human possibility (both husband and wife are in their ninth decade), Abram and Sarai scheme to get Sarai's young maid Hagar pregnant by her employer. All of the royal grants end with less faith and divine "success" than God intends. Only in today's lectionary reading does the divine tack change (moving from royal grant gifts to a Suzerain-Vassal reciprocal covenant), with an outcome (see Genesis 22) far more different: Abraham emerges engaged with God in lock-step commitment to the Creator's missional initiative, designed to bring all nations back to their relationship with God.
For Israel, standing at Mount Sinai in the context of a Suzerain Vassal covenant-making ceremony, the implications would be striking. First of all, the nation would see itself as the unique and miraculously born child fulfilling a divine promise. Israel could not exist were it not for God's unusual efforts at getting Abram and Sarai pregnant in a way that was humanly impossible. Second, they were the descendants of a man on a divine pilgrimage. Not only was Abram en route to a land of promise, but he was also the instrument of God for the blessing of all the nations of the earth. In other words, Israel was born with a mandate and it was globally encompassing. Third, while these people had recently emerged from Egypt as a despised social underclass of disenfranchised slaves, they were actually landowners. Canaan was theirs for the taking because they already owned it. They would not enter the land by stealth but through the front door; they would claim the land, not by surreptitious means or mere battlefield bloodshed, but as rightful owners going home. This would greatly affect their common psyche: they were the long-lost heirs of a kingdom returning to claim their royal privilege and possessions. Fourth, there was a selection in the process of creating their identity. They were children of Abraham but so were a number of area tribes and nations descending from Ishmael. What made them special was the uniqueness of their lineage through Isaac, the miraculously born child of Abram and Sarai's old age. Israel had international kinship relations but she also retained a unique identity fostered by the divine distinctions between branches of the family. Fifth, in the progression of the divine dialogue with Abram there was a call to participation in the mission of God. As the story of Abram unfolded, it was clear that his commitment to God's plans was minimal at best until the change from royal grants (Genesis 12, 13, 15) to the Suzerain Vassal Covenant of chapter 17.
Each time Abram was given a gift he seemingly threw it away, tried to take it by force, or manipulated his circumstances so that he controlled his destiny; only when God took formal ownership of both Abram and the situation through the Suzerain Vassal Covenant of Genesis 17 was there a marked change in Abram's participation in the divine initiative. The renaming of Abram and Sarai to Abraham and Sarah were only partly significant for the meaning of the names; mostly they were a deliberate and public declaration that God owned them. To name meant to have power over, just as was the case when a divine word created the elements of the universe in Genesis 1 and Adam named the animals in Genesis 2. Furthermore, in the call to circumcise all the males of the family, God transformed a widely used social rite of passage symbol into a visible mark of belonging now no longer tied to personal achievements like battlefield wins or hunting success, but merely to the gracious goodness of God and participation in the divine mission.
What was that divine mission? Only when Israel heard the rest of the covenant prologue and then followed Moses to the promised land would it become clear. Still, in recalling the tale of father Abraham in this manner, Genesis places before Israel at Sinai the important element of unique identity: we came into this world miraculously as a result of a divine initiative to bless all the nations of the earth; therefore we are a unique people with the powerful backing of the Creator and participating in a mission that is still in progress.
Romans 4:13-25
You remember the story... Abraham was a great old man, probably 125 or so! God had come to him in the past in strange and wonderful ways. When he wore a younger man's clothes, the voice had called him on a journey with no fixed destination. But the beckoning was always one of blessing: "I'll give you land beyond measure! I'll make sure you have a child, old as you are! Your descendants will populate these hills and valleys like rain!"
Well, the land sort of took him in. Moreover, after some fits and starts he and Sarai did get a child. Even though his pension plan was still not entirely clear, life in these later years was peaceful and prosperous. After all, there was Isaac. His boy's name meant "Laughter!" and that's certainly what he brought Abraham these days. Life had turned out okay.
Now the voice came to him again. But was it really the same voice? "Sacrifice your son Isaac on the altar to me!" it said. What kind of God was this? Or was it perhaps a demon's mocking mimic? "Kill your boy! Choke out the Laughter!" God forbid! Please, God, let it not be so!
There would be no sleep this night. Abraham's mind whirls while his old bones crawl in pain. Get the servants... Get the transportation... Get provisions... Get wood... Get the son...
Three days' travel they go with every step harder than the last. Isaac chatters his usual banter, laughter echoing in Abraham's cold heart. Reluctantly Abraham spies the high place finally -- the mountain of doom -- the plateau of death.
Strangely gruff, Abraham orders the servants to stay. "The boy and I will go it alone from here." Two on a murderous mission. Only one will return. The father-son hike soured even more when Isaac's laughter lilted a deadly chilly question: "Where's the lamb, father?"
What could Abraham say? Does he tell Isaac the truth: "Son, the God who said he loved me enough to give you to your mother and I now says he wants you back, and I've got to do the dirty work!"? How do you lie with a straight face when heaven is ripped apart by hell? Is it a spiteful retort, spat out in unholy jest, that finally clears his throat: "My son, God will provide..."?
So here they are, clearing and building and preparing. Now the end creeps with horror into Isaac's eyes. His father binds him. His father thrusts him on the wood. His father stands over him with a glinting knife. And the Laughter dies...
But not yet. In a miraculous moment, time stops and grace points to another sacrifice. The son is free, faith is affirmed, and he calls the place Moriah.
Moriah is one of those delightfully ambiguous names that can mean several things at once. It probably has to do with seeing at this point, or knowing. Where God sees, he will be seen. Something like that.
What is it that God sees on a mountain called Moriah? For one thing, he sees a man. A weak man. A stumbler on the earth. A business man who got ahead in life. A husband who cheated on his wife. A father who knew the joy of bringing new life into being.
Even more than that God sees a man who was willing to put it all on the line. Here was someone who counted his relationship with the God of the voice to be the one thing that mattered, the one thing that put everything else together, the one thing that could raise even heaven out of this stench of hell.
Probably the most important thing about the moment of seeing is not only that God sees Abraham there on Mount Moriah. In some mysterious way God is also seen by Abraham.
A geography lesson tells the rest of the story. On this same barren spot of ground, centuries later, David would urge Solomon to build the temple of God. It would stand as a doorway between earth and eternity. Then, in the mysterious design of the ages, one day another Father would walk these slopes with another Son. That Son, too, would raise his voice to his Father, and the Father, for a time would be silent. The wood of the offering would be prepared, and the Son would be lifted as a sacrifice. On what the world would later call "Good Friday" this other Father would shed tears of pain as his Child died, this time with no escape.
Somehow history would repeat itself and more with a vengeance. Yet this lamb would also be chosen by God for the altar. Laughter would be silenced for three days while all the world looked on in wonder.
Abraham found his faith that day on Mount Moriah, but it cost God his Son on the same spot. The mystery of life is found now not in a faith that pretends laughter but in a promise that God knows pain. Because he has walked a mile in Abraham's shoes and ours, God will never leave us. He will never forsake us. This is the message of Paul in today's lectionary reading.
Mark 8:31-38
In the second century, Bishop Papias knew that the church of his day recognized this shortest of the gospels as consisting essentially in the preaching of Peter about Jesus, then recorded by Mark. Such a view is certainly consistent with several internal hints: Peter's call to be a follower of Jesus is the first to be recorded (Mark 1:16), even though each of the gospels reports the various callings in different sequences; Peter is identified as "Simon" early in the gospel (Mark 1:16, 29, 36), which fits with the probable way he was addressed by his family and friends before Jesus renamed him (Mark 3:16) "Rocky" (the essential meaning of the Greek name "Peter"); the story of Jesus healing Peter's mother-in-law is told with more personal detail (Mark 1:29-37) than is found in its other gospel recordings (Matthew 8:14-15; Luke 4:38-39).
Here, in one of the pivotal passages of the gospel, it is Peter who both understands and misunderstands the character, purpose, and meaning of Jesus all in one blustering move. As Jesus moves determinedly toward Jerusalem and crucifixion, he attempts to ramp up his close friends' understanding of the events ahead. The implications are clear -- Jesus is about to die violently.
Peter, of course, protests loudly. Seeing things only from a human perspective, the only moral for the story Jesus is telling appears to be tragedy and disaster. Doubly discouraged (because his friends still don't understand the truth about him, and because they present the largest roadblock in is way), Jesus matches Peter's feistiness with sharp words of his own. The intense exchange draws public attention, and Jesus uses the occasion to mount a pulpit and declare the upside-down truth of heaven on earth's preoccupied landscape.
Application
A gracious woman in the latter half of her life was once giving advice to a marriage preparation class that I organized. When it comes to making purchases, she told the young women of the group, "Don't ever buy anything on credit. Always pay for everything with cash."
Incredulous laughter rippled around the room. Can you imagine a modern wallet with no credit cards in it?
Credit is a slippery thing. You may want it, but if you mention that, you won't likely get it. In fact, you might even get blacklisted instead. Gilbert and Sullivan have their Captain of the H.M.S. Pinafore proclaiming his eminent worth in their operetta of that name. Behind him a chorus declaims and defames: "He is an Englishman! For he himself has said it, And it's greatly to his credit, That he is an Englishman!" All the while, of course, the audience is laughing at his buffoonery.
Sometimes we look for credit by association. In the last years of his life, composer Louis Antoine Jullien dreamed of writing one final work. He said he would like to set the words of the Lord's Prayer to music. Wouldn't it look wonderful, he asked his colleagues, to have a title page that read: The Lord's Prayer. Words by Jesus Christ. Music by Jullien...?
The best credit, of course, is neither earned nor grasped. This is the point of all three passages in today's lectionary readings. This is what Abraham learned early in our history, and what we still see when we peer through his eyes.
Alternative Application
Romans 4:13-25. Because Paul had not yet made a visit to Rome, his letter to that congregation was less personal and more rationally organized than was true of most of his other letters. Paul intended this missive to be a working document that the congregation already established in the capital city of the empire and would be able to read and discuss together in anticipation of his arrival, which was planned for some months ahead (Romans 1:6-15). Paul's working theme and emphasis was the new expression of the "righteousness of God" that had been recently revealed with power through the coming of Jesus Christ (Romans 1:17).
Because Paul moved directly from a brief statement about the righteousness of God into an extended explication of the wrath of God revealed against wickedness (Romans 1:18), many have interpreted Paul's understanding of God's righteousness as an unattainable standard against which the whole of the human race is measured and fails. Only in the context of this desperate human situation would the grand salvation of Christ then be appreciated and enjoyed.
But more scholars believe that Paul's assertions of the righteousness of God have a positive and missional thrust. In their understanding of what Paul says, it is because of the corruption and sinfulness that is demeaning and destroying humanity that God needed again, as God did through Israel, to re-assert the divine will. In so doing, God's focus was not on heaping judgment upon humankind, but instead that of drawing people back to the creational goodness God had intended for them. This was, in essence, the same missional purpose that God had planned for Israel during the Old Testament.
This more positive perspective on the righteousness of God fits well with the flow of Paul's message. In chapters 1:18--3:20 Paul describes the crippling effect of sin. But once the stage has been set for his readers to realize again the pervasive grip of evil in this world, including within their own divided and deluded hearts, Paul marches Abraham out onto the stage as a model of divine religious reconstruction. God does not wish to be distant from the world, judgmental and vengeful. Instead, as shown to Abraham, God desires an ever-renewing relationship with the people God made. Thus, as exhibited in Abraham's life (Romans 4), God initiates a relationship of favor and grace with us.
One of my favorite stories about Abraham Lincoln comes from his Illinois days as a young lawyer. An angry man stormed into his office demanding that he bring suit against an impoverished debtor who owed him $2.50. "Make him pay!"
Well, Lincoln didn't want anything of the sort to happen. The debtor couldn't pay the $2.50, the creditor didn't need the $2.50, and society shouldn't be run by either such greed or such insensitivity. So Lincoln declined the case.
Unfortunately the man kept pressing, and since Lincoln was the only lawyer available, he was forced to serve the suit. First, though, he charged the man $10 for legal fees. Then he brought the defendant in, gave him $5.00 for his time, and asked if the charges were accurate. He readily agreed, and out of his newly gotten $5, paid the $2.50 he owed. Everyone was satisfied, including the irate plaintiff, who never realized that he spent $10 to collect $2.50!
Now turn that story around and think of it from this angle: A man with no credit is burdened by a debt he could never repay. Along comes an Advocate he can't hire to resolve a matter he can't win. Suddenly, in a transaction he could never accomplish, the debt is gone, the creditor has disappeared, and he has money in his pocket! All he had to do was agree to the terms.
So it is with faith, says Paul in Romans 4, as he calls to mind the journey and faith of Abraham. Don't try to figure it out and certainly don't claim credit for it. But when it's there, you'll know it. And so will others!
