Seen and unseen: what really matters!
Commentary
Object:
Thanks to the ubiquitous presence of smartphones that double as cameras, we have become almost -- almost -- godlike in our ability to see and be seen. Any politician, celebrity, or for that matter ordinary person who believes that at any particular moment they are not seen in what they do may be delusional! There are good aspects to this. After the Boston Marathon terrorist attack there was a call to individuals to download their photographs and movies in order to give authorities clues as to the perpetrators. We have become the eyes of the justice system. Catheterization gives us a real-time look into our own hearts. Parents can keep an eye on their sleeping infants.
Sometimes we forget in this YouTube age that what we see is not all there is. The unseen forces -- love, compassion, hope -- color what we see and dictate our actions with regards to what is visible.
In these three scriptures we see a cellphone view of properly conducted sacrifices in Isaiah, what choice Abraham and Sarah make, and just how difficult Jesus seems to make it for us to be disciples. But what we don’t see are hearts filled with injustice and callousness towards the suffering on the part of those making perfect sacrifices. We see what Abraham and Sarah do, but we don’t see what it means. And even if we understand what Jesus calls us to do, we don’t see why.
These scriptures invite us to perceive an even deeper reality. Seen and unseen, we can discover what really matters.
Isaiah 1:1, 10-20
Isaiah’s prophetic ministry spanned decades during some of the most tumultuous times imaginable. In this first chapter what we see isn’t the reality. Harsh words from the Lord are spoken through the prophet. We see elaborate and correctly conducted rituals of sacrifice in the most holy Temple in Jerusalem, the city of David, the city of God. We see Leviticus come alive as people faithfully keep covenant with God in the midst of sight, sound, and smell.
That’s not what the prophet sees. Sodom, Gomorrah, injustice, greed! God expresses hate -- a strong word -- for the sacrifices because they are done in the wrong spirit. God calls out to the people through the prophet: “...learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow” (v. 17). What is seen in public is not as important as what remains unseen -- except by God!
Keep in mind that the people didn’t invent these sacrifices. They are called for in God’s word! Part of the sacrificial system was to hallow the connection between the people and what they ate, to recognize that all of life is sacred and precious to God. This is lost when people pay lip service to worship, acting like saints in public while living like the devil.
To quote myself (Robert W. Neff and Frank Ramirez, Country Seer, City Prophet: The Unpopular Messages of Micah and Isaiah, p. 10):
In this passage, Isaiah says that real worship relies less on doing things exactly right on the altar, and more on developing right relationship with God. It matters little what you offer in sacrifice when you come into the sanctuary with blood on your hands (“with iniquity”).
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
Think of key moments in our nation’s history -- the Civil War, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War. We all know what happened, but there can be more than one opinion about what it all means.
The author of the letter of Hebrews interprets the story of Abraham, and comes out a little different than Paul, James, and Genesis. There is agreement about the facts, about what is seen. But what does it mean?
Paul and James grapple with questions of faith versus works, and with who Isaac represents and who Hagar and Ishmael represent. In the Genesis account Abraham’s obedience despite the long delay in the fulfillment of the promise is heightened by the fact that there can be no fulfillment to this promise except in this world.
For the author of Hebrews, Abraham and Sarah demonstrate faith in what is unseen, a faith in heavenly things, a heavenly reward. He might have dwelt briefly in the land he was promised, but that was a shadow of the greater inheritance to come in the next life.
How do we reinterpret this story with regards to our own faith journey? Abraham and Sarah strove for what is unseen. They strove for what really mattered. Do we as believers and as a church insist on seeing the fulfillment of the promise now, or is our faith in something greater, and only dimly seen for now?
Luke 12:49-56
You sometimes hear from folks that the Old Testament reveals a harsh, unforgiving God, while the New Testament is built around a loving Jesus. Actually, God’s passionate love is threaded throughout the prophetic books of the Bible, while Jesus... well, you can’t control Jesus. Jesus says some loving, comforting things, but Jesus also says some harsh, puzzling words -- like this passage.
Here he speaks of anguish, coming end times, and division among families. He seems to be talking about a family of five -- mother, father, son and wife, along with a daughter. What we want is for Jesus to talk about the sanctity of the family and let us sing “Blest Be the Tie that Binds.” What we see is a picture of a family torn about because of the sword Jesus brings! So what are we not seeing?
Maybe we’re not looking with the eyes of the evangelist Luke. Luke is addressing members of the Roman empire in his gospel. Many of these people lived in the Roman household. The Roman household was a complex economy that included hierarchies of relatives: children, grandchildren, parents, grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, and various wards, as well as servants and slaves and attendant trade and craft experts. Everyone -- the large extended family, slaves, artisans -- lived and worked together. They were engaged in the family craft and they worshiped the family’s patron god.
The first-century Christians, no longer able to worship those patron gods, formed new family households (remember Lydia in Acts, for instance, and Philemon, and the four house churches in Corinth each headed by a patriarch or matriarch) with Christ at their center and not a Roman or Greek god. That’s what we don’t see -- the audience that Luke is addressing.
Jesus derides his listeners for being unable to read the signs of the times the way they read the agricultural signs of the sky and the weather. While we may not have to make a choice between family and faith if we share the same basic values, we assume that we don’t have to choose between God and country, that the aims of the world are always the same as God’s aims. We are unwilling to stand up and be counted when everyone else is following along instead of following God.
That’s probably a moment when we’d like to be unseen!
Sometimes we forget in this YouTube age that what we see is not all there is. The unseen forces -- love, compassion, hope -- color what we see and dictate our actions with regards to what is visible.
In these three scriptures we see a cellphone view of properly conducted sacrifices in Isaiah, what choice Abraham and Sarah make, and just how difficult Jesus seems to make it for us to be disciples. But what we don’t see are hearts filled with injustice and callousness towards the suffering on the part of those making perfect sacrifices. We see what Abraham and Sarah do, but we don’t see what it means. And even if we understand what Jesus calls us to do, we don’t see why.
These scriptures invite us to perceive an even deeper reality. Seen and unseen, we can discover what really matters.
Isaiah 1:1, 10-20
Isaiah’s prophetic ministry spanned decades during some of the most tumultuous times imaginable. In this first chapter what we see isn’t the reality. Harsh words from the Lord are spoken through the prophet. We see elaborate and correctly conducted rituals of sacrifice in the most holy Temple in Jerusalem, the city of David, the city of God. We see Leviticus come alive as people faithfully keep covenant with God in the midst of sight, sound, and smell.
That’s not what the prophet sees. Sodom, Gomorrah, injustice, greed! God expresses hate -- a strong word -- for the sacrifices because they are done in the wrong spirit. God calls out to the people through the prophet: “...learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow” (v. 17). What is seen in public is not as important as what remains unseen -- except by God!
Keep in mind that the people didn’t invent these sacrifices. They are called for in God’s word! Part of the sacrificial system was to hallow the connection between the people and what they ate, to recognize that all of life is sacred and precious to God. This is lost when people pay lip service to worship, acting like saints in public while living like the devil.
To quote myself (Robert W. Neff and Frank Ramirez, Country Seer, City Prophet: The Unpopular Messages of Micah and Isaiah, p. 10):
In this passage, Isaiah says that real worship relies less on doing things exactly right on the altar, and more on developing right relationship with God. It matters little what you offer in sacrifice when you come into the sanctuary with blood on your hands (“with iniquity”).
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
Think of key moments in our nation’s history -- the Civil War, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War. We all know what happened, but there can be more than one opinion about what it all means.
The author of the letter of Hebrews interprets the story of Abraham, and comes out a little different than Paul, James, and Genesis. There is agreement about the facts, about what is seen. But what does it mean?
Paul and James grapple with questions of faith versus works, and with who Isaac represents and who Hagar and Ishmael represent. In the Genesis account Abraham’s obedience despite the long delay in the fulfillment of the promise is heightened by the fact that there can be no fulfillment to this promise except in this world.
For the author of Hebrews, Abraham and Sarah demonstrate faith in what is unseen, a faith in heavenly things, a heavenly reward. He might have dwelt briefly in the land he was promised, but that was a shadow of the greater inheritance to come in the next life.
How do we reinterpret this story with regards to our own faith journey? Abraham and Sarah strove for what is unseen. They strove for what really mattered. Do we as believers and as a church insist on seeing the fulfillment of the promise now, or is our faith in something greater, and only dimly seen for now?
Luke 12:49-56
You sometimes hear from folks that the Old Testament reveals a harsh, unforgiving God, while the New Testament is built around a loving Jesus. Actually, God’s passionate love is threaded throughout the prophetic books of the Bible, while Jesus... well, you can’t control Jesus. Jesus says some loving, comforting things, but Jesus also says some harsh, puzzling words -- like this passage.
Here he speaks of anguish, coming end times, and division among families. He seems to be talking about a family of five -- mother, father, son and wife, along with a daughter. What we want is for Jesus to talk about the sanctity of the family and let us sing “Blest Be the Tie that Binds.” What we see is a picture of a family torn about because of the sword Jesus brings! So what are we not seeing?
Maybe we’re not looking with the eyes of the evangelist Luke. Luke is addressing members of the Roman empire in his gospel. Many of these people lived in the Roman household. The Roman household was a complex economy that included hierarchies of relatives: children, grandchildren, parents, grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, and various wards, as well as servants and slaves and attendant trade and craft experts. Everyone -- the large extended family, slaves, artisans -- lived and worked together. They were engaged in the family craft and they worshiped the family’s patron god.
The first-century Christians, no longer able to worship those patron gods, formed new family households (remember Lydia in Acts, for instance, and Philemon, and the four house churches in Corinth each headed by a patriarch or matriarch) with Christ at their center and not a Roman or Greek god. That’s what we don’t see -- the audience that Luke is addressing.
Jesus derides his listeners for being unable to read the signs of the times the way they read the agricultural signs of the sky and the weather. While we may not have to make a choice between family and faith if we share the same basic values, we assume that we don’t have to choose between God and country, that the aims of the world are always the same as God’s aims. We are unwilling to stand up and be counted when everyone else is following along instead of following God.
That’s probably a moment when we’d like to be unseen!
