Broken, Part 1: Broken Bodies, Broken Spirits

Romans 8:1-11  

There is a movie called Changing Lanes about two men who have a minor traffic accident. Gavin is a lawyer on his way to an important court hearing that means hundreds of millions of dollars to his firm. Doyle is a recovering alcoholic who is also on his way to court, a custody hearing that, while it doesn’t mean much to anyone else, means the world to him. The accident and other mishaps along the way, the high stakes that are involved for them both, all lead to a day that brings out the absolute worst in each man. Both of these men started out their day with high spirits and good intentions. By the end of the day each had discovered his own frightful capacity for sinfulness.

Doyle says at one point during this day, “I am the same man today that I was yesterday.” And yet today everything is different than it was yesterday, all because he was provoked, hurt, discounted, and then he made some bad decisions. Something similar happened to Gavin. His desires were frustrated, and for someone of power who is accustomed to having things go his way, this was intolerable. He, too, then made some bad choices.

All along the way, they want to make excuses for their behavior, saying, “That wasn’t me, I wasn’t myself. I don’t normally do things like that.” But in reality, it was them, they were acting themselves, a part of themselves they didn’t usually show. At the end of this day, both Gavin and Doyle would know the meaning of Paul’s words from the seventh chapter of Romans: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”

We have just finished six weeks in the book of Genesis, and some of those difficult stories are still on our minds. While there is no question that Genesis is challenging, today we will begin to see that the apostle Paul’s letter to the church in Rome provides some serious challenges of its own.

I have said before that the letters of the New Testament give us a glimpse into the churches of the first century, showing us what kinds of problems they were struggling with. For example, when we read the letters to the Corinthians, we can see that they had problems with pride and class divisions in their worship gatherings. In the letters to the Thessalonians, the earliest letters, we can see the anxiety of this young church. We see that each of these letters were written in a particular context to address particular concerns.

Yet the letter to the Romans feels different. And the main difference, I think, is due to the fact that this is a church Paul has never seen. Unlike the others, he did not found this church. He has not had the opportunity to visit this church yet, although he makes it clear that he very much wants to. In a sense, this is a letter of introduction. Paul is sending his calling card, and letting them know just where he is coming from, in a theological sense.

This letter to the Romans is the most theological letter of Paul’s writings that we have. This chapter, in particular, is where we get much of the grit of our Christian beliefs, but it isn’t spoon-fed to us, by any stretch of the imagination. The benefits we receive from Romans are won through faithful attention to the text and its applications to our lives. Portions of chapter 8 are often used in funerals; I remember one funeral in particular, when a daughter of the deceased said to me afterward, “I got lost in Romans. But when you talked about Dad, I found my way again.” It is when we can see the connection to the particulars of life, when we can connect the words on the page to our own lives, that they give us meaning.

So to understand this passage from the letter, we first need to go back to the previous chapter, to see where Paul is coming from, to better understand where he is going, and what it all means to us. Where he is coming from, is a serious contemplation on the problem of sin. He is telling us it is impossible for us to save ourselves through our own actions, however upstanding our behavior might be. He speaks very poignantly and personally about the frustrations of sinful human nature, saying, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” For it is sin that dwells in us, having such force over us that we cannot seem to do right no matter how much we want to. “I find it to be a law,” he says, “that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand.” Does anyone not understand what he’s talking about?

Paul is speaking for all of us, to all of us, when he describes the agony of our human weakness. We are not so sophisticated in the 21^st century that we do not know “the weakness of the flesh,” as Paul says. But Paul goes on to say that we who are in the Spirit are free from sin and death, free from the bondage of a life of the flesh.

And so, for us who know Jesus Christ and the Spirit who sustains us, but who also know the power of sin, we wonder how we ought to hear these words. Are we among those who walk according to the Spirit, or walk according to the flesh? Are we among the sinners or among the saved? The answer is we are both. This is a hard answer for us to accept.

Elsewhere in the New Testament we read, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” Yet looking at our sinful hearts, unflinching, is a hard thing to do. We often choose to set our sight elsewhere. It is not hard to look around and find sin in someone else. And when we do, we are often mystified as to how that someone else can be so sinful.

A recent conversation brought this to mind for me. It seems that everywhere I go there are conversations about the current opioid epidemic. And most of us not only distressed, but also bewildered about it. A woman I know said, “Most of these people are poor. I don’t understand how they can spend the money on drugs.” This was not the first person who has said this, and surely not the last. But I don’t think any one of us should be incapable of understanding that a person will go to any lengths to feed an addiction. A person will beg, borrow, lie, or steal to feed an addiction. Now, you and I might feel contempt for that behavior. We might even feel contempt for that person. But do you know that person feels just as much contempt as you do? Most likely, he feels contempt for himself.

It is as Paul says, “I do the very thing I hate…I know that nothing good dwells within me.” This is, my brothers and sisters, a terrible and tragic place to be. It is a place without hope.

You and I want to be as far away from this place as we can possibly get. You and I want to erect a barrier, a wall, between ourselves and this place of despair where there is nothing good and no hope. You and I want to create the idea of a world in which there are two kinds of people: those who would do such inexplicable things, and those who know better; those who are possibly irredeemable, and those who are like us.

The thing we so often hate is twofold: to acknowledge the very humanness of those we see as broken, and to acknowledge the very brokenness of ourselves.

We cannot move off of square one without that knowledge. In the film Changing Lanes, Doyle has found himself at a new low point and his AA sponsor says something beautiful to him: “You saw today that everything decent is held together by covenant. Truly, you cannot legislate goodness; goodness comes only from a promise we make to one another and God, and that God makes to us. By the end of the day, Gavin and Doyle had become truly unnerved by the thoughts and actions they were capable of. They were forced to acknowledge their own brokenness; they had both reached rock bottom, which is actually a place of opportunity. In that place, they had the choice of taking a step in a new direction. And so do we.

The life of the Spirit gives us hope and new life, the hope that comes from Christ, the new life that comes from the Spirit who dwells within us. We are, essentially, still the same broken souls we were before. And it is truly only in knowing this that the healing can begin, where we become able to enter into the new life that God is offering us.

God’s Creative Connection, Part 6: Designing Love

Genesis24.34-38, 42-49, 58-67      

In the movie industry they have a phrase – the meet cute.  It is a term used to describe a scene in which the man and the woman meet each other for the first time, future lovers who don’t yet know each other. When Gene Kelly jumps into Debbie Reynolds’ car in Singing in the Rain. When Hugh Grant spills orange juice on Julia Roberts in Notting Hill. When Claudette Colbert finds herself sharing a bus seat with Clark Gable in It Happened One Night. In countless romantic comedies there is a meet cute. Even in real life there is the meet cute.

I love to ask people how they met their spouses – everyone has a story. Kim and I met in a restaurant where I was working, the Hyde Park Bar and Grill in Austin Texas. My boyfriend at the time, Doug, struck up a conversation with him at the bar and introduced us. Thank you, Doug. There is always an element of chance, of luck, in the story of “us.”

But it is not just luck – there is also ingenuity, design. Sometimes it is there from the get-go, like Barbara Stanwyck in The Lady Eve, who watches Henry Fonda in her compact mirror, waiting for him to walk her way, then slyly sticks out her foot to trip him. Other times, the design comes later, in creating ways to meet again, and again, and again.

In life and in love we all need a little luck and a little design to find our way. Abraham’s servant needed both when he went out in search of a wife for Isaac.

If there is one thing we know for certain, it is that Isaac deserves to have something good come his way. After what he went through on Mount Moriah, the young man deserves to be comforted and loved. And so, in his final days, his father Abraham seeks to ensure that his son will not be left alone, but will love and be loved. He asks his servant to swear that he will do this thing for him.

The servant set out with the intention of following Abraham’s instructions to the T. The details are left for him to figure out, however, so he designs a plan. The first part is this: he will wait at the well for a young woman to come.

It is worth saying that, in the Old Testament, a well is often the site of a meet cute. When a man and a woman meet at a well it means that love birds will be singing. The servant is making a rather obvious choice when he choose the well. Good for him, I say.

The second part of his plan is this: he will wait for a young woman to approach the well, and if she offers to give him water, and also water his camels, she will be the one. It’s a clever design, isn’t it? On the one hand, it is a way of asking God for a clear sign – to show him the woman that God has chosen for Isaac. On the other hand, it is designed to ensure that, whether God is guiding this encounter or not, the woman he chooses for Isaac will be hardworking, generous, and hospitable.

And so, finding her, he proceeds on to her home, to speak with the men of the family. He explains his purpose and asks that Rebecca be allowed to be married to Isaac. The men agree to his request, and when she is asked, Rebecca does not hesitate to agree also. She has an adventurous spirit; she gamely says goodbye to her family and follows this stranger to a new land to meet the man who will become her husband. And, of course, they lived happily ever after. The end.

There are so many ways this could have gone bad. If no young woman who met his requirements had appeared at the well. If her kin had said no to the servant’s request. If Rebecca, herself had said no.

And once they returned home, things could have gone wrong. If Isaac had not appreciated her. If Rebecca had not loved him. If there was no tenderness, no comfort in their union. It takes some design and also some luck –

Or is it just luck? If there is one thing the scriptures tell us, from beginning to end, it is that God’s hand is in all things. And when something appears to be luck, might it actually be the designing hand of God?

The stories of our lives; when we look back on them, we might see that they are made up of various elements, patches of various colors, sizes, and textures. They include some of our own design, some of the designs of others with whom we cross paths, who have an impact on our lives, and the designs of God, who is ever present with us, through the ups and downs and meanderings of our days.

From the beginning when God began creating this beautiful ordered world and made us co-creators with God; through the desert wanderings, years of barrenness while those who watch and wait might hear the message from God that they need to hear; through the scheming, through the struggles and difficult relationships when God manages to make something out of our messes in spite of us; through it all God’s creative Spirit is with us. Through our hopes and our fears, and the years of wondering what the heck we are doing, God’s creative Spirit is with us. Through our worst moments and the moments of our greatest faithfulness, God’s creative Spirit is right there with us, partnering with us, because there is always more creative work to be done.

And there is more creative work yet to be done.

photo credit: "American Boy Meets British Girl - Love and Romance on the Home Front."  By Ministry of Information Photo Division Photographer - http://media.iwm.org.uk/iwm/mediaLib//41/media-41751/large.jpgThis is photograph D 4761 from the collections of the Imperial War Museums., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30878253 

God’s Creative Connection, Part 4: God Will Provide?

Genesis22:1-18

In William Styron’s story, Sophie’s Choice, Sophie is a Polish woman who was sent to Auschwitz with her young son and daughter. The defining moment in this story is one of Sophie and her children, standing in line with all the other prisoners, waiting to be processed when a German officer approaches her. He offers Sophie a choice: which one of your children should be killed? Choose or they will both be taken. She chose her daughter.

In Toni Morrison’s story, Beloved, Sethe is a runaway slave living in Cincinnati with her four children. When the master hunts her down, Sethe grabs her children and runs to the toolshed with the intention of killing them all, rather than see them returned to slavery. The youngest, a two-year-old girl, is killed before Sethe is stopped.

These are stories I considered this week, as I tried to imagine the circumstances under which a parent would sacrifice his or her child. Both of these novels, you should know, are based on true stories. They would have to be, for who would dare make up such a thing?

I have to ask this question, because the story of the binding of Isaac – although it undoubtedly points to a meaning larger than itself – doesn’t allow me to easily move beyond the central event. And the rescue of Abraham and Isaac at the last moment, doesn’t offer much relief. The story is a trauma – to Abraham, to Isaac, and to everyone who hears it.

It is a story that seems to change everything. Abraham will no longer be the same. Isaac will not be the same. Even we are not the same after hearing it. Sarah might never have learned what went on up on Mount Moriah, but she certainly knew that her husband and son were not the same when they returned.

It is a different kind of story from some of the others in the Abraham and Sarah saga. Abraham, who is sometimes a lively conversation partner with God, is here silent. Abraham, who experienced feelings of deep distress when Ishmael was banished from the camp, is here detached, seemingly unaffected.

For one member of the roundtable, Abraham resembled an automaton – a creation without a will of his own, whose only purpose was to serve the commands of the creator. He seemed almost inhuman. We can imagine Abraham silently and stone-faced, marching up the mountain, speaking only when necessary, as Isaac asks where is the lamb? and he answers God will provide. We see him focused, deliberate. We can see him standing over the boy on the altar they have made, raising his arm high above his head, clutching the knife as he looked down at the face of his son.

We can even imagine Abraham being so tuned out to the world around him that he doesn’t hear the voice of the angel telling him to stop! This is our fear as we listen to the story. Like the phone call from the governor, ordering a stay of execution, that comes a moment too late. Because death cannot be undone.

It seems almost incredible that Abraham actually does hear the command and he stops his hand in the air. God provides a ram in the thicket as a proper sacrifice. Isaac’s life is saved. Abraham is saved from being the one who kills laughter. And we are all saved from the dreadful possibility of a God who would demand human sacrifice.

It is a story about a testing, which is something I resist. The notion that God will test us in such horrific ways is deeply troubling to me. To take one’s beloved children right up to the edge and then stop – as if to say, “just kidding!” feels cruel to me. Yet, when I consider the stories of Sophie and Sethe, I am reminded that evil will certainly test us in some horrific ways. Perhaps it is essential that God take those testings very seriously and meet the challenge with testings of God’s own.

The temptations of evil are real. We know the story of how Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, and we know that we, ourselves are tempted by evil in the same ways. Do we want to imagine we are self-sufficient, making our own bread from stones, providing all we need by our own power? Do we want to imagine that we can turn our attention and our loyalty to whatever idol seems to offer the greatest return at any given moment? It is a choice we can make. But when we do, we have made the choice to turn our backs on God and all that God alone is able and willing to do and give for us. We turn our backs on love and life itself.

It is a serious commitment – a stunning choice. Will we offer ourselves, wholly and completely to God or not?

This is a sober consideration that brings to the forefront the awful power of God and the awful demands of obedience. Perhaps not unlike a traditional tale that is often lifted up in Presbyterian circles about the young candidate for ministry who is thoroughly tested by his elders to be sure his doctrine is sufficiently orthodoxy. After hours of questioning, they have been unable to stump him, so in a final attempt to find the limits of this young man’s faith, one old pastor asks this: “Young man, would you be willing to go to hell for the glory of God?” and the candidate answers, “Sir, I would indeed. In fact, I would be glad for this whole presbytery to go to hell for the glory of God.”

In the end, we know that the powers of evil are not imaginary, but very real. In the end, we have to admit that the sufferings of this world cannot be avoided by anyone. The bindings and the tears are part of our story, too. In the end, we are assured that for those who hear and obey God’s voice, God will provide.

And in that case, we are assured, there is nothing in all of creation that can separate you from the love of God, who is truly willing to go to any length at all for me and for you.