Not Being like God

Genesis 3, John 1, Genesis 1, Acts 5, assorted verses from the Gospels, Psalm 23

Preached at Tigard Community Friends Church

September 29, 2019

            Since I retired from paid employment, people have asked me how I’m spending my time. This is an embarrassing question to answer, since, after 37 years of grad school and working, I’m doing just whatever I feel like doing each day. I don’t usually feel very productive, though recently my spouse and I dug around 80 holes in order to plant shrubs, trees, roses, perennials. We unearthed rocks that were a foot across, and left some buried that were larger. Sometimes it’s easier to rethink where the plant goes.  Some of the holes were nearly pure gravelly rock. So it’s been fun. I could say I’m productively working to help stabilize the climate, if I wanted to try to impress myself, but really I just wanted plants around me to make me happy.

This relates to what I’m learning about my relationship with God in these days of unpaidness. I’m learning what it means to simply be human with God and with other people. I’m learning that my being human is enough for God. And I’m recognizing that a lot of what drove me through my working life as a university professor and administrator was the desire to be a little more than simply human.

For one thing, I wanted to be tougher than the rest. So I went back to teach an hour after a root canal. I taught on crutches two days after knee surgery. I attended a facilities committee meeting the afternoon of the day my dad died.  I wanted to be and to be seen as ultra committed, reliable, and tough.

I also wanted to be in charge. I liked the classroom where I wrote the syllabus and ran the agenda for each day. I also liked the challenge of managing the human beings in my classes toward learning and growing. I created open space for my students in the classes, but it was my open space. I didn’t relish the idea of co-teaching a class, with the constant negotiation of what to do each day.

I wanted to be recognized as a leader by my peers and my boss. I could be bought with promises of access to leadership opportunities. I was successful in getting the leadership openings I wanted until one time when I was spectacularly unsuccessful and some of my colleagues thought I should leave and go work elsewhere. I was devastated and resentful and angry. It was the death of a dream, only I went on living.

Now, when I look back, I still feel the sting, and I know it was an actual death for me. I did go on to be general superintendent of NWYM, but I think I would have found the job of general superintendent unbearable if I hadn’t already had my ambition and some of my need for approval snuffed out. Since leaving that superintendent work, I am finding that my spiritual task now is to learn how to be simply human.

I recently read Jacques Ellul’s The Subversion of Christianity and William Stringfellow’s Instead of Death, both books from decades ago that I find enormously relevant to where I see myself and where I see my co-travelers in our local and global cultures. I just mention these, not because I will be quoting them a lot, but because their analyses underlie my thinking to some extent, so if you’re interested, you can read them for yourselves.

I want to take us back to the Garden of Eden, and the temptation scene (Genesis 3). The setup is this: God has created the whole earth and set the father and mother of humanity in a garden where all their needs are met. There are also two miraculous trees, the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, or, as it turns out, the Tree of Death.  God sets them free to eat anything in the garden EXCEPT the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God says, “In the day you eat of it, you will surely die.” So, the tempter says to the woman, “You won’t die. The truth is that God knows that in the day you eat from that tree, then your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” The woman looks at the tree again and thinks to herself, I want to become wise. This is a temptation to which I am vulnerable. I want to be wise, to be discerning, to judge what is good and what is evil. In the terms of this story, I want to be like a god. So what might be the downside?

The downside is fear. When she and the man eat the fruit, the result is that for the first time, they fear meeting God face to face, they hide from God, God exposes them as having disobeyed, they are ashamed of who they are, human beings naked before God, and they leave the garden to enter a world of toil and shame, a world, as Stringfellow says, enslaved to death and the fear of death.

There is so much to explore in the temptation story that I will leave aside to focus on this. The woman was tempted to become like God, to be one who decides what is good and what is evil, to judge as God does. But when God judges, God knows all there is to know. Humans don’t. We are always judging from a basis of incomplete knowledge. In fact, we tend to identify the unknown as evil, and we learn to fear and even hate it. Thus the natural darkness of night becomes a place of terror because we don’t know what’s hidden by the dark; we become afraid that evil hides in dark places. We start identifying darkness with evil when, in fact, it is a part of God’s good creation.

We don’t even know everything about ourselves. Some aspects we aren’t even aware of until anger, stress or danger (names for fear) bring them to the surface. And some of what we know we don’t want to embrace as part of ourselves. It isn’t long before we are afraid to look inside ourselves; we start hating parts of ourselves that we don’t understand and we judge to be evil, and then start projecting that self-hatred onto other humans or the creation. 

As human cultures, we make systems to protect ourselves from the unknown, and these systems end up enslaving us. So we cannot stop stockpiling retirement resources, we cannot stop building more efficient ways to kill our enemies, we cannot risk losing the opportunities that higher education opens up, we cannot run up outrageous medical costs without insurance, we cannot admit that other persons or nations have the same rights we do. We are in bondage to all the ways we protect ourselves from what we fear. And we turn what we fear into an evil, whether God considers it thus or not. This is the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And ultimately, the fear of the unknown is the fear of death, the great unknown.

We humans are already like God in one way: we bear God’s image, as the earlier creation narrative says. “Let us make humans in our image,” say the Trinity to each other, “male and female.” So in a fundamental sense, to be human is to be made in God’s image.  All humans, everywhere. As the gospel of John says, nothing was made without God’s Word, which lights up every person who comes into the world. And the Word became flesh, and lived among us, and we saw his glory, the glory of God’s only begotten Son, full of grace and truth.

So the riddle is, why do humans, who are from the start made in God’s image, feel the need to become like God, judging and separating good from evil? Why do humans not just live in close relationship with God and let God judge and guide? Why do humans want to prove they are tough, in control, and able to lead? Why not pay attention to the one who is full of grace and truth? Why would any of us, when facing the choice, prefer to decide good and evil ourselves rather than to live receiving God’s judgment of good and evil? I think it is because we have a hard time with how God judges. We judge God’s judging, and God is either too harsh or too lenient.

As a child, I always liked the Bible stories where God wipes the floor with those who sin. I used to ask my sister to read me about Ananias and Sapphira when I was under 7 years old. For those who don’t remember, they lied to Peter the apostle and to the Holy Spirit of God about how much of their money they were giving to the gathered church, and they fell down dead. I think this must have operated like a horror movie for me, because I was always afraid of God’s judgment, based partly on that story and others like it and on my own tendency to run into trouble with my parents or other adults.

But now, as I am gradually learning in fits and starts how to be human in relationship to God, I am grateful for the patience of God, God’s long-suffering, and the mercy of God, God’s loving-kindness, and the grace of God that puts all of God’s resources on my side.

Jesus shows us how God judges when he says, “He causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.” When he says, “You work so hard to have your outside self appear right and perfect, but God sees the dead bones and rotting flesh in your hidden life.” When he says, “O Jerusalem, how I long to gather you to myself like a hen with chicks, but you do not want that.” When he said, “You will deny knowing me. The accuser has desired to grind you up like wheat, but I have prayed for you, and when you return to knowing me, strengthen your fellow travelers.” When he said, “Where are your accusers? Neither do I condemn you. Go and don’t do this again.” When he said, “I came into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world through me might be saved.” When he said, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.” (I suspect Jesus prays this for us every moment of every day.)

I remember reading a poem by Robert Browning where an outsider to Jewish society meets the resurrected Lazarus and is astonished at his mixed up priorities. The traveling doctor cannot understand why Lazarus has no interest in the coming confrontation with Roman armies but concerns himself about trivial actions of his child. For those who don’t know, Lazarus has died and been brought back to life. The most feared unknown of all, death, has conquered him and then been conquered, and nothing is the same for Lazarus after. Browning imagines him observing the world with the eyes of a child, full of wonder and awareness of glory. He imagines him as especially characterized by “prone submission to the will of God, seeing it, what it is, and why it is.” Lazarus seeks, as the outsider puts it, not to please God more than as God pleases. In other words, his zeal to obey doesn’t outrun God’s word to him.  He does no more and no less than God asks of him.

[Lazarus] loves both old and young,

Able and weak, affects the very brutes [animals]

And birds—how say I? flowers of the field—

As a wise workman recognizes tools

In a master's workshop, loving what they make.

Thus is the man as harmless as a lamb:

Only impatient, let him do his best,

At ignorance and carelessness and sin—

An indignation which is promptly curbed…

Robert Browning, “An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician”

This is a picture of how we can be human in relationship with God. Loving God’s creation, including ourselves; loving other humans, no barriers; living as obediently as we can in response to God’s conversation with us; resisting the urge to judge; seeing clearly and without fear; being “pleased to live just as long as God pleases, and living just as God pleases.” Jesus showed us how to live with absolute trust in God, and when we know that the great, glorious God has given us the gift of love and God’s self to love, we can also trust God with our days and our nights, we can trust God when we can see and when we are in the dark. God will lead us in right paths for God’s own sake. Let’s be who we are and let God be who God is.

Jesus, Privilege, Victims, and Empathy

John 8:1-16

Recently, an old friend said, “We are all victims.” A young queer acquaintance of mine wrote, “everyone is not a victim. everyone does not experience harm in the same way.” So I spoke to my old friend and said, “Your words were hurtful.” He reiterated his belief that we are all victims. And I said, “Until you are willing to say publicly why you are a victim, how you’ve been victimized, you don’t get to say, ‘we.’”

The #metoo campaign startled a lot of my (male) friends. Surely it isn’t true that so many (all?) the women they know have been sexually harassed or abused. Surely the women who said #metoo need to publicly say how they were victimized. Otherwise, how can people know if the women are telling the truth or are exaggerating the harm or even making things up? So said (some of) my (male) friends.

As an aside, I really liked the idea someone put forward that men should ask themselves, “Would I treat Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson like this?” If the answer is no, then don’t treat the woman or girl like that either. If you wouldn’t extend a hug past 2-3 seconds for “The Rock,” then don’t do so for a female friend or acquaintance. If you wouldn’t spread into Dwayne’s space, don’t spread into hers. If you wouldn’t ask Mr. Johnson for a kiss—or just plant one on his lips—don’t try it with a woman. (Interestingly, women will need a different image to deter them from sexually harassing a man—maybe they need to envision a giant toad or a cobra or a python. This might also help women know when we can say “no.”)

So, back to the main story. I said on my FaceBook page, “Me too,” and I didn’t publish there why I posted it. I estimate at least ten percent of my FB friends know part of my reason for joining in, but not one of them knows all the reasons. And I don’t plan to put my life history in the public eye to justify my use of the phrase.

So we have a conundrum here. I want my old friend (white, male) to ante up his story of victimization before he can join in with #metoo, before he can say, “We are all victims,” but I can hardly bear to tell my counselor—sworn as she is to confidentiality—all the ways I’ve been victimized. Shame, self-blame—these cause me to withhold many experiences. And then there’s fear—the fear that if I share, the response will be, “What did you do to cause him to treat you like that?” And a new harm will be added to my collection. Or the response will be, “You need to forgive,” as if forgiveness erased pain, shame, self-loathing, fear. The lack of empathy for the seven year old I was (and inside still am) is a failure of imagination.

Patriotism may be the last refuge of the scoundrel, but religion may be the first, judging from my experiences. As a Christian child and woman, it pains and angers me to say that nearly all my victim experiences have been perpetrated by Christian men. The main exception is bullying/abuse by bigger kids, though these were in Christian school.

The way it works, as I see it, is this: a person of privilege has to drag out the story of victimization in order to show that he or she has the standing to speak to/with other victims. Those with less privilege can say #metoo, and they do not have to drag all the shaming things that have happened to them into the light. But when these things are dragged into the light, privilege may have something to answer for.

We can see the torture—perhaps even unmentionable rape by Roman soldiers—and crucifixion as evidence Jesus knows what we experience when we are harassed or abused. And these end-life events were not his only moments of rejection, shame, and threat of personal harm.

When he publicly claimed that God was sending him, that he was the one, his hometown folk tried to kill him, to push him off a cliff (Luke 4:29). Jerusalem folks threatened to stone him (John 8:59, 10:31). He evaded these physical harms, but the rejection fueled many of his hot statements condemning faithlessness and hypocrisy. The long-term result of Jesus’s victimization is the deconstruction of privilege everywhere.

A story found in John’s Gospel shows us this.

As a Jewish male—and one often recognized as a rabbi—Jesus had some of the marks of privilege in his culture. At the same time, his country was occupied by Roman soldiers, some of whom, it appears from John the Baptizer, extorted money from the citizenry and bullied unprotected Jews. Jesus’s privilege was also bounded by his status as illegitimate, which limited his ability to marry and made him a target for malicious ridicule (John 8:41).

Jesus used his privilege to welcome (Zaccheus the taxman, the sinful woman and her tears, the hemorrhaging woman, the children) and to confront (the rich young ruler, the religious elites, his own disciples, the Syro-Phoenician woman). He gave away privilege to talk as equal human beings with the Samaritan woman, with Mary and Martha at Lazarus’s tomb, with his mother Mary at the Cana wedding.

So Jesus’s behavior chronicled elsewhere in the Gospels is in line with what we see in the story of the woman taken in adultery and brought to him for judgment. The men in this story have all the privilege. The absence of the male adulterer speaks to this fact. The crowd speak to Jesus as a person of privilege—male, Jewish, a rabbi—and test him to see if he belongs with them. Will he uphold the system that privileges him?

Jesus resists their manipulations. He takes his own sweet time to sketch in the dirt. He knows he is inside a hostile circle. He knows a stray rock—or many stray rocks—may hit him as they punish the sinful woman. He knows that the only way to retain privilege and to stay personally safe is to step away from the woman and join those holding stones. But he stays beside her and challenges the crowd. He raises the double standard which privilege makes the norm when he says, “Let the one without sin cast the first stone.”

As the members drop their stones and slink away, he speaks to the woman. I have always seen her in my imagination as cowering in terror, but perhaps she was defiant, loud, shouting to the crowd that she knew things about them, that she might hurt them if she got a chance. Either way, as the members drop the rocks and edge away, Jesus speaks to the woman, cowering or shouting obscenities, inviting her to be calm, to look around, to go without shame or blame, to go forward as a responsible human being.

So what can we learn from Jesus about privilege, about #metoo, about “we are all victims”?

1.     What Jesus does is to stand by the least powerful person and against the crowd. As the only one on the scene with the qualifications to act as judge and jury, Jesus chooses to be with the accused and to share her fate.

2.     What Jesus exposes, at the same time, is that all are sinners. All have erred, strayed, avoided obeying, disobeyed, bent what is true, and so on. No one has superior status, either social or moral. We have to confront personally and seriously our own carelessness or cruelty as part of learning how to be humane, to be kind rather than victimizers. Not one of us gets to be judge and jury for another.

3.     To say “We are all sinners” is not the same as saying, “We are all victims.” It is saying “We have all done harm to others, we are all complicit in making others into victims.”

4.     So whenever we find ourselves in a crowd with rocks in our hands, we will find Jesus standing beside the person who is about to die, whose shame and fear are leaking out everywhere, who feels completely alone.

5.     Jesus told us, “Just as you have acted toward the least—the powerless, the alien, the despised other—you have acted toward me. When you assert your privilege to exclude, silence, shame, blame, diminish, even destroy another person, you are doing the same to me.”

William Blake pointed out that it is natural for those who have experienced tyranny to rebel against it and to overthrow it. It is also natural for the former rebels to become tyrants in their turn. We who have privilege can break this cycle. We must recognize who the outsider is, whom the present system victimizes, and stand beside them against the powers that be. The tide can turn, and those who previously stood above in the place of privilege can find themselves in the center of the circle, threatened with stoning. In that moment, Jesus stands inside the circle again, drawing in the dirt, facing the accusers with the same challenge. “Let those among you without sin cast the first stone.”

"You’ll never know the hurt I suffered nor the pain I rise above
And I’ll never know the same about you, your holiness or your kind of love
And it makes me feel so sorry"--Bob Dylan

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Fear of the Overwhelming Enemy

Fear of the Overwhelming Enemy
Preached 2/1/09 at Vancouver First Friends

One hot and windy August night, my husband Mark and I were awakened at 11:30 p.m. Our neighbor drove up our driveway, honked his horn, and, shouted, “There’s a car on fire across the road.” Then he left. We went into the living room and looked across the road by our mailbox. There was indeed a fire. The summer had been dry in the Northwest, marked by forest and brush fires. Our new puppy had chewed up every hose we owned but one. Mark went outside. I stayed inside with our sleeping children and called 9-1-1.

While I watched, I saw the fire suddenly flare up. The pine tree at the end of our driveway seemed in imminent danger. All the vegetation was dry. The wind was blowing sparks onto the road, where Mark and neighbors were directing the little water that came through our 5/8-inch hose. In the interval before the fire trucks arrived, I felt panic rise in my throat. I knelt and prayed for the safety of our children, for the preservation of our property, and for protection for Mark.

It was a reasonable fear. It took hours to completely extinguish the fire, but no one was hurt and, except for our mailbox and the car, no property was lost. I do not believe that God was grieved over the fact that I was afraid in an emergency.

But that moment of panic was nearly immobilizing for me. And I think that my more chronic fears are similarly immobilizing. One spring when I was afraid at a fairly low but constant level, I suffered from a burning esophagus and hid out in my house.

Because our fears inhibit our ability to live the abundant life Jesus promised, we do well to examine them in the light of Scripture, which is filled with God’s instruction to us: “fear not.” This command runs throughout the Old and New Testaments, showing the recurring need of God’s people to be reminded not to be afraid. The Psalms show the various psalmists’ need to remind themselves that they will not fear. Psalm 46: 1, 2 “God is our refuge and strength, a well proved help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change …”

The word fear includes the meaning of “reverence”; what we chronically fear, we bow down to. In fact, what we fear becomes a rival to God in our lives. We let our fear take from us our gifts, our callings, our health, our children, and our principles. At the same time, the Bible is full of reassurances that we need not feel panic, paralysis, or self-hatred in response to God: “Do not be afraid, little flock,” Jesus tells us, “for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32). Central to our understanding of our relationship to God should be this principle out of Zechariah’s hymn of praise on the birth of his son John: “that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies, might serve God without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days” (Luke 1, 74-75).

The Bible shows us one way to deal with fear in the story of King Jehoshaphat of Judah, 2 Chron. 20:

Jehoshaphat is one of the good kings. He has destroyed idols, instituted a system of justice, and set his heart to seek God.

One day messengers come and tell him that a large army is coming against Judah from Edom. Jehoshaphat is afraid. He prepares himself to seek the Lord and proclaims a fast throughout his country of Judah. Israelites come to Jerusalem from all over to seek the Lord. Jehoshaphat leads them in this prayer:

“O Lord, God of our ancestors, are you not God in heaven? Do you not rule over all the kingdoms of the nations? In your hand are power and might, so that no one is able to withstand you. Did you not, O our God, drive out the inhabitants of this land before your people Israel, and give it forever to the descendants of your friend Abraham? They have lived in it, and in it have built you a sanctuary for your name, saying, ‘If disaster comes upon us, the sword, judgment, or pestilence, or famine, we will stand before this house, and before you, for your name is in this house, and cry to you in our distress, and you will hear and save.’ See now, the people of Ammon, Moab, and Mount Seir, whom you would not let Israel invade when they came from the land of Egypt, and whom they avoided and did not destroy--they reward us by coming to drive us out of your possession that you have given us to inherit. O our God, will you not execute judgment upon them? For we are powerless against this great multitude that is coming against us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.”

The Lord responds through one of the people there: “Thus says the Lord to you: ‘Do not fear or be dismayed at this great multitude; for the battle is not yours but God’s . . . This battle is not for you to fight; take your position, stand still, and see the victory of the Lord on your behalf, O Judah and Jerusalem.’ Do not fear or be dismayed; tomorrow go out against them, and the Lord will be with you.”

The next morning, Jehoshaphat encourages his people to believe God, and he leads them in the chorus, “Give thanks to the Lord, for his steadfast love endures forever.” (Perhaps this is the tile of Psalm 136, which begins that way.)

When they arrive at the battlefield, all the army coming against them lies dead already. Two groups had attacked and destroyed the third, and then they turned on each other. It takes Jehoshaphat and his people more than three days to salvage the usable items these armies left behind them.

The fear of God comes on all the kingdoms of the countries when they hear that the Lord has fought against the enemies of Israel. And the realm of Jehoshaphat is quiet, for God gives him rest all around.

What we can learn:
1. Jehoshaphat’s fear is reasonable--the army coming is overwhelming.
2. Jehoshaphat reminds himself and God of God’s previous intervention on behalf of Israel; he does not go into a lot of detail about how big the army is or how well-armed. It is not helpful to repeat to ourselves the horrible, gruesome, painful details about the person or event we fear. In other words, he concentrates on God, not on the enemy.
3. His response is to believe the word of God. He seeks God’s will, fasts and prays, admits his own powerlessness, and goes into danger singing about God’s love.

I think in these times about the economic downturn and how it is too big for us to fix as individuals, how it will change our lives. What do we do? Apparently, we can profitably learn from Jehoshaphat’s example:

We choose to believe the word of God.
We rehearse how God has helped us before.
We seek God’s will.
We fast and pray.
We admit our own powerlessness.
We go on our way singing about God’s love.

Fasting here can be a symbol to us of choosing to depend on God to sustain us, rather than working to sustain ourselves. I don’t like giving up meals, but it’s much harder for me to give up trying to control outcomes. That is a true fast for me.

Let’s link this to a New Testament story from Mark 4.
After spectacular miracles and several parables, Jesus says to the disciples, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd behind they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

1. It is reasonable to fear the overwhelming power of natural forces, just as it is reasonable to fear an overwhelming army.
2. This is a picture of our lives: we are a boat crossing the sea; when a storm, a crisis, a potential disaster arises, we are afraid. Though our fear is reasonable, it shows the limits of our faith. After all, Jesus is in us, in our boat, and we cannot be destroyed.
3. Like the disciples, we need to fear (revere) the one who can calm the storm, instead of fearing the storm.

When we are called to let God fight for us, we may discover that God solves our problems so spectacularly that we live in peace because no one wants to mess with our God. Or we may find that, like Jesus, we are crucified with criminals on the way to resurrection.

Being called to let God do the fighting is not the same as setting ourselves up to be victims. In fact, it is fear that turns us into victims: inside we bow down before the overwhelming enemy. When God calls us to let God fight for us, and we are obedient, we are able to go into danger singing. We understand why Jesus told us to turn the other cheek. When someone hits me on one side of my face, I can choose to respond fearlessly--I neither run nor fight. I can stand up before my enemy and turn to that enemy the other side of my face. This is a sign of courage, not of compliance. When I don’t respond to danger with fear, I get to keep my dignity.

“Happy are those who fear the Lord” (Psalm 112:1). “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32). “We are being rescued from the hands of our enemies, so that we might serve God without fear, in holiness and righteousness before God all our days” (Luke 1, 74-75). God wants to preoccupy us to a greater extent than anything else in the world. “Happy are those who fear the Lord” (Psalm 112:1).