Summer Holidays

Please forgive me for not posting for the next few weeks. After a short trip to Michigan, my wife Melody and I will be at our little cottage on Bobs Lake, Tichborne, Ontario, Canada, until August 1. No internet, no email, just birds and fish and bugs.

Thank you, congregation of Old First, for giving me this time off to rest and recuperate.

Love, Daniel

Sermon for July 6. Genesis Stories: Rebekah

Proper 09, Genesis 24:35-38, 42-67, Psalm 45:10-17, Romans 7:15-25, Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

Rebekah says, "I will." I will, I want to.

Her bold answer is the key to her story. She decides to go right away, and that’s a leap of faith. She had the right to stay home ten days. Those ten days would be the time for her to collect her many gifts, and to enjoy her new status as a betrothed. She gives that up when she says, "I will." That’s the only choice she’s given here, and that’s the choice she makes.

Consider how little she had to say. Her marriage was arranged by her father and brother with the servant of Abraham. Nobody asked her for her opinion. It was not done. She was not part of the negotiations. Nobody asked her, "Do you, Rebekah, take Isaac, to be your wedded husband?" She was never consulted her if she would say "I do." The only reason she’s asked anything at all is as a ruse against the servant of Abraham. But against the odds, she says, "I will."

She goes against her family. They assume she’ll say, "Of course not." They expect her to stay ten days, in order to honor them, and also for her family getting many gifts from their neighbors. But her choice denies them their fair share, and what will be their compensation for never seeing her again? What was she thinking, that she said, "I will"? So is this what it means to live by faith, to be a stranger to your family, to be an alien in the world?

Rebekah goes against the social laws of her day, and St. Paul writes, But I see in myself another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells within me. And yet Rebekah chose not to be captive to the social laws of her day, nor captive to her family’s expectations, she chose for freedom, but at what great risk, for what did she really know was ahead for her?

Think of Rebekah in the midst of her family when Jesus says, But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, "We played the flute for you and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn." She did not dance but neither did she mourn. She set her eyes forward and looked to the promise she could hardly see. This is to live by your faith. You live in the future, you live in terms of the promise.

She is the one like Abraham. Like him she left her home behind to go to an unknown land. And her choice was more costly then Abraham’s, for she risked her family’s anger. But she did it anyway. Which is what Jesus did. Jesus is like Rebekah.

Do you want Rebekah as your mother? Do you want to say, against the odds, "I will"? To choose for the future, to choose for the promise, to accept that you may be a stranger and a pilgrim in the world, that you go against the conventions and assumptions and expectations, that you might be charged with disloyalty, and disappoint your loved ones? Do you want to live like this? Neither eating nor drinking, and being criticized for that, or eating and drinking, and being called a glutton and drunkard and friend of sinners?

Yes, you do want to live your life like this, you do want Rebekah as your mother, you do want, every day, to say, against the odds, "I will." You do want to keep stepping out into God’s promise.

Your experience will likely be more like Rebekah’s than like Abraham’s. Her experience is closer the ordinary. The call of Abraham came directly from God. Abraham somehow recognized it as the voice of God and no one else. And God kept talking to him throughout his pilgrimage.

But with Rebekah, the call to faith came through the invitation of another human being, in the voice of the servant of Abraham. It was not direct but indirect. So her response was riskier than Abraham’s. How could she say this was God’s will? Isn’t it much easier to be able to say, "I’m doing this because God told me too," than to have to say, "I’m doing this because I wanted to, and I’m risking that it’s right."

You meet some pious people who explain their decisions by saying that they’re doing what God told them to do. You might think you have to say the same. Well, we can be too pious for the Bible. You don’t have to speak like that. You don’t have to say, "God told me so." You can say, "I want to." I will go. I choose what I choose, and I trust God.

God wants us to say, "I will," God wants us to say, "I want." Only not in terms of the flesh, but rather in terms of God’s promises. Typically we say "I want" in terms of our flesh, as an expression of desire, or lust, or greed, or for our fair share, or to satisfy an appetite, or in conformity with the laws of society and with the rules and conventions of the world.

That’s what Paul means by his term, the flesh in Romans 7. He doesn’t mean the physical body, but all of life as it tries to be independent of God, both body and soul as independent from God’s Spirit, human culture as deaf to God’s Word. The flesh commands our wanting and willing. Like Rebekah’s family, which lived so conventionally, but apart from the promise to Abraham, and independent of the providence of God, and all the risks involved.

The point is to convert your willing and your wanting from gratification into faith, from satisfaction into hope, and from possession into love. I know you want this.

How often we find ourselves discouraged in our wanting and our willing by the confusion inside us. How often we find ourselves choosing the very opposite of what we really want. We choose poorly, and we only see it afterwards. "Why did I choose this, what was I thinking?"

St. Paul describes our condition with so much compassion. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. . . . I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.

In a way, it’s easier for non-believers, because if we stay within the flesh at least we are unified, but if I’m a Christian it always feels like there are two of me, my life in God’s Spirit and my life in the flesh. Should I turn the other cheek, or should I stand up and fight? Should I accept my suffering, or should I defend myself? Should I tithe, or should I pay down my mortgage? It never ends. We get frustrated and discouraged.

The whole family of Rebekah is inside you, Bethuel her father, Milcah her mother, Laban her brother. They are always with you, for your whole life, and you will always be drawn to their interests, and to the social laws they represent, and the laws of the flesh, and your appetites. You will be giving in. And you will also keep returning to God in confession and humility and longing and even in grief.

But at the same time more deeply in you is Rebekah, your mother, the matriarch of Jesus, she is real in you, she is the deepest part of you, and that’s the you that God keeps looking on. Midst the clamor of the voices of the family system inside you, and through the noises of the world and all its expectations, and even through the constant static of your flesh, God can hear your voice, God knows what you really want, God knows what is your deepest will, even in those many times that you can’t see it through, God knows it, and recognizes it, and reckons it to you as perfection. God believes you when you say, I will, even when you have a very hard time believing yourself. God believes in you.

Copyright © 2008 by Daniel Meeter, all rights reserved.

They're Looking at a Waterfall

The Next Step for our Homeless Men

Well, good news. We've got our homeless men housed. The Three Homeless of Old First, plus three more who have to Old First asking for help. Thanks to Common Ground, and the city's Department of Homeless Services, we've got a little thing going. Hooray.

But, here's the next step: Frying Pans. Curtains. Tea Towels. Dishes. Napkins. You know, the ordinary things, the personal touches that turn a house into a home.

So, the Park Slope Coalition for the Homeless is working on the next step. The Coalition includes Old First, Congregation Beth Elohim, the Park Slope Civic Council, and some neighbors.

Here’s how it works. Common Ground has selected ten clients (including the three who used to live on the steps of Old First) to receive housewarming care packages. Common Ground will help the clients with their wish lists (dishes, linens, bath accessories, small kitchen appliances, etc.). Once they finish the wish lists, it's our turn to get to work.

First, we’ll collect donated items on the wish lists, from now through July 27. Next, we’ll have volunteers work with the DHS to gather the donations and package them for delivery to the clients, and then deliver them, starting at the beginning of August.

For personal items, we'll help the clients choose their own items. They'll get gift cards to use at a the store of their choice. We'll need volunteers to assist the clients on their shopping trips, accompanied by a staff member from Common Ground or DHS.

Won’t you join us in this exciting opportunity to help our less fortunate neighbors? You can sign up with us at our coffee hour after church on Sundays. Or you can call the church office and leave your name and contact information. 718-638-8300.

(This was written by Pat Caldwell and Pastor Meeter)

Orange Tree in the Park

Well, not an orange tree exactly. But Prospect Park has an Osage Orange tree.

They are native to the American West.

This one stands at the waymeet just down from the Nethermead Arches.

This one is a good size. The species is not typically towering tall, not compared to other trees, including the ones around it. But this one is doing very well, and looks very healthy.

The young osage oranges are just beginning to grow on it. I wonder if they are edible?

Summer Concerts at Old First

Theresa Levin, a member of Old First, has organized this summer evening concerts. They're free, and the church doors will be open to the street. Walk in, stay as long as you like, and enjoy the music.

Sermon for June 22, revised: Hagar

Note: Please accept my apologies. I posted my sermon a couple days ago, and it remains below. But I was just not happy with it. It didn't feel right. So I went at back again this morning, and wrote a new version, with a whole new ending. Sorry to have published them both, but look, Beethoven published three successive revisions of the overture to his opera Leonora, and then he wrote a whole new overture and changed the opera's name to Fidelio.


Proper 07, Genesis 21:8-21, Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17, Romans 6:1-11, Matthew 10:24-38

Our story from Genesis doesn’t make Abraham look very good. The tone of the story is so bald and so dry that you have to say the story is on Hagar’s side.
Let me give you the background. God had promised Abraham that he would be the father of many nations, and that his descendants would posses the promised land. Of course these promises depended on Abraham having at least one child, but he had none. After years and years of waiting, his wife Sarah proposed that Abraham take her slave-girl Hagar as his concubine, and that if she bore him a son, he could inherit their riches and the promises, and Sarah would adopt him as her own. Abraham did not protest this proposal nor resist performing it!

According to the accepted ethics of their day, there was nothing wrong with what Abraham and Sarah did. But for the editors of Genesis, with the later standards of the Ten Commandments, this was adultery. But even worse, Abraham had failed in his faith, from fear that God would fail to keep the promise. He was insulting God, because he did not count on God to keep his word. Abraham was afraid for his future, and so he descended to the ordinary ethics of his day.

Because Abraham was the paterfamilias he had the power of life-and-death among his household. Because Hagar was a slave she had no rights. Abraham had the right to have sex with his slave-girl, especially in order to get himself an heir. Sarah had the right to give him her slave-girl, and also to take for her own the son of the slave-girl. Abraham had the right to disinherit the boy whenever his usefulness was over, and Abraham had the right to let his slaves go free.

This freedom was no benefit to Hagar and her son. Back then every woman had to be under the protection of a man, and now there was no one to protect her or her son, and any man could have his way with them. Every town or village would be dangerous for them. So she took her chances on the desert. Of all the things that Abraham did to Hagar, casting her out was the meanest.

By the standards of the day he did nothing unethical, but Genesis depicts it as dishonorable. The dishonor of Abraham is shown in the contrast of his actions. The night before, he is an honored man, with many servants, who can afford a great feast to honor little Isaac. But the next morning, before the light of dawn, surreptitiously, he gets rid of Hagar and Ishmael. He doesn’t use his servants, he does a servant’s job himself, and he’s cheap at it, only a little bread and water. This is how he treats his son and his concubine. Dishonorable and even shameful.

We also we have to deal with God’s apparent complicity. God tells Abraham to do what Sarah said to do. True enough, God was not at all complicit in Abraham taking Hagar in the first place, and it’s clear that this whole mess resulted from his having doubted God. It’s also true that God promises Abraham that Hagar and Ishmael will survive and someday flourish, but how can Abraham tell this to Hagar, how could she trust him or have any hope? She’d need to have even greater faith than Abraham himself.

God does rescue her, but it’s not pretty. Why does God allow her to suffer so much first? And why does God ignore her tears, and only respond to the crying of Ishmael? Does she count for nothing? God watches her suffering from heaven, and only saves her at the last resort. Once again, God waits till after every other hope is gone. Or do we say that God is always just in time? And that we have to learn the hard way that it’s not our time that counts? And that God’s long, slow strategy forces us to face our fears?

I think I can say that fear is the opposite of faith. I don’t think the opposite of faith is doubt. Yes, in some ways, but not most deeply. Most existentially, I think, the opposite of faith is fear. Fear that God will not come through. Fear that God will not deliver, that God will not keep all those promises, or that God’s promises are too good to be true. Fear that even if God is real, and good, and true, and that God loves us, still God remains an ideal, with promises that are ideal, and just not real, and you finally have to make do with things the way they are.

Sarah was operating out of fear for her child Isaac, and in order to protect him from what she was afraid of she was willing to let Hagar and Ishmael suffer. It was out of fear that she stood so firmly on her rights, and I wonder how much it’s true for all of us, that when we stand by our rights there is fear beneath it. Abraham was distressed and operating out of fear. He feared the anger of Sarah, and the dissension in his house, and I think he was even afraid of his guilt with Hagar and Ishmael, which is why he ended up treating them so shamefully.

Not all fear is bad. Fear has its place. There is of course such a thing as healthy fear, and the Bible is firm on the necessity of fearing God. And when we plan our future, we have to build in healthy fear of certain things. But then we also have to ask, when does this fear lead us to do things, which, though they may be acceptable and even ethical to the standards of the time or of the world, are things that end up hurting people, or not caring for the powerless, or that lead to exploitation, or violence, or even actions of dishonor? Because we are afraid?

I think about how deep in my own life has been my fear for my children, and how much I have acted out of that, and how that has hurt them more. How much is fear an assumption of our nation’s policies. Where is this fear healthy and where does it get us into a deeper mess? We fear the intentions of Iran. We fear the future cost of oil. We fear the damage from drilling in Alaska. We fear the terrorists worldwide. We fear the warming of the globe. We navigate which fears to live by and which fears to rise above, and that influences how we vote. We find that our national fears give resistance to our national ideals and what American stands for.

As for us who are religious, our fears give resistance to our faith in the promises of God, and so, like Abraham, we surrender to the ordinary standards of the world. But if the promises of God run counter to the expectations of the world, how are we supposed to apply them to public secular world where these promises have no self-evidence or privilege?

Please notice that fear is addressed by both the epistle and the gospel. Jesus keeps telling his disciples not to be afraid, as if the discipleship he calls them to will bring them new occasions for being afraid, as if the promises of God so raise our expectations of the world that we will have more opportunities for doubt than those who do not know the promises.

Jesus calls us, not to have no fear, but to face our fears, and to choose what we will be afraid of. Jesus calls us to work the dynamic of fear and faith in a new way, not the old and ordinary way of fear being the opposite of faith, but the new way that comes from the power of the resurrection, that by God’s Spirit our faith can be the governor of what we fear, and that fearing God we fear no man.

That we fear God, and thus do not fear death. That we fear love, and fear it so much that we will not do what is not love. That we fear justice, and fearing justice that we will not do injustice, even to preserve ourselves. That we fear truth and hope, even if it means our family members be against us. That we learn to fear with love, and that we love what we fear. This is the healthiest fear, to fear with love, and to fear only that which we can love.

I know how much I run my life by fear. Fear of so many things, fear of future obligations, future conversations, fear of injury, fear of losing what I’ve gained. This fear leads me to weakness and many machinations, and people say they understand, and it’s okay, it’s quite acceptable. But you know what, I want to live by my faith. Not in the common wisdom of the world, but in the promises of God.

This takes learning that God is always just in time, and not my time. This takes reminding that God’s strategy is to make good out of the worst and new life out of death. This takes reviving my faith by repenting of the selfishness in my fear. I do this because I want to participate in God’s strategy for blessing the world.

Copyright © 2008 by Daniel Meeter, all rights reserved.

Sermon for June 22: Genesis Stories: Hagar

Proper 07, Genesis 21:8-21, Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17, Romans 6:1-11, Matthew 10:24-398

Our story from Genesis doesn’t make Abraham look very good. The tone of the story is bald, so dry, so droll, that you have to say the story is on Hagar’s side.
What are we do to with this? We can say that the Bible doesn’t spare us, that this is the way it is, this is what happens in the world. The exploitation of Hagar is a form of the corruption of creation from human sin. The powerful exploit the powerless. Even among God’s people.

We can say that this illustrates the argument of St. Paul, that Abraham was saved by his faith, not his works.

We can say that this illustrates the confession that the people of God have no reason to boast in our own goodness, but only in the gift of righteousness to us from God because of Christ. But I want something more from this passage, I want to find the blessing in it.

Let me give you the background of the story. God had promised Abraham that he would be the father of many nations, and that his descendants would posses the promised land. Of course these promises depended on Abraham having at least one child, but he had none. Finally, his wife Sarah came up with the plan to give her slave-girl Hagar to Abraham as his concubine, and that if they had a son, he could inherit their riches and the promises, and Sarah would adopt him as her own. There is no record that Abraham resisted or protested. Ha.

Though this all was quite acceptable in Abraham’s day, for the editors of Genesis, and by the later standards of the Ten Commandments, this was adultery. More to the point, Abraham had failed in his faith, he was not counting on God to keep God’s word. This was an insult to God. The editors of Genesis intend a parallel with Adam and Eve.

There was nothing wrong with what Abraham and Sarah did according to the accepted ethics of their day. Hagar was their slave, and she had no rights. Abraham was the paterfamilias, and he had the power of life-and-death among his household. Abraham had the right to have sex with his slave-girl, especially in order to get himself an heir. Sarah had the right to give him her slave-girl, and also to take for her own the son of the slave-girl. Abraham had the right to disown the boy whenever his usefulness was over, and Abraham had the right to let the slave-girl free.

Some liberation for the slave-girl and her son! In those days every woman had to be under the protection of a man, and now that she was set free no one would protect her or her son, and any passing male could have his way with them. Any town or village or even a partly populated area would be dangerous for them. So she flees into the desert, where the elements were less malicious than men. Setting Hagar free was the meanest thing that Abraham did to her.

By the ethics and standards of the day what he did to her was acceptable, but the story depicts it as shameful and dishonorable. The shame and dishonor of Abraham is shown by the contrast of his actions. The night before, he is a highly honored wealthy man, with many servants, who can afford a great feast for baby Isaac. But the next day, surreptitiously, before the light of dawn, he makes Hagar and Ishmael get away, and he doesn’t use his servants, he does a servant’s job himself, and he’s cheap at it, only a little bread and water. This is how he treats his son and the mother of his son, whom he made love to. Shameful and dishonorable.

We know that great men FDR and Martin Luther King Jr had sordid episodes on the side, and we forgive their dishonor for the sake of all the good they did. But what’s hard here is the apparent complicity of God. God seems to go along with it. True enough, it was by going against God that Abraham got everybody into this, and it’s true that God told Abraham that Hagar and Ishmael would survive, and that God would make a nation out of them, but even if Abraham tried to use this news to comfort her, how could she trust him or even have hope? She would have had to have an even greater faith than Abraham himself.

Even the manner of God’s rescue is unsettling to us. Why should God allow her to suffer so deeply first? And why should God ignore her tears, and only respond to the crying of Ishmael? Does she count for nothing? The Bible doesn’t spare us. This is what happens.

If we review the stories of our own lives, we can think of ourselves as like each of these characters. I have been Ishmael, I have been Hagar, I have been Abraham, I have been Sarah. Haven’t you? Haven’t you been like Ishmael, the innocent victim? Haven’t you been like Hagar, a victim because you had to go along with a plan because you couldn’t say no, and then you had to suffer for it? Haven’t you been like Abraham, the good guy who was complicit in unfairness and ended up hurting people? Haven’t you been like Sarah, the one who stood by her rights and acted out of fear? Haven’t you been all of these by turns?

Where is the blessing in this story? God intends to bless the world through us, and to do that, God gathers, protects, and preserves us as a community of faith, not for our own benefit only, but for our blessing of the world. But God blessing us does not prevent our suffering. God does not prevent the machinations of mankind, the exploitation of each other, or the manipulation of relationships. The justice of God does not prevent injustice. The strategy of God is patient and long-suffering, and God does not intervene in human events apart from doing it through us.

God’s strategy is to bless the world insofar as we live according to the promises and visions that God has given us. If we believe God’s promises and visions and live our lives by them, we bless the world. The promises of God are not only salvation and eternal life, but also the new life now, a different way of living now, the power of the resurrection now, a new humanity now, and we realize the new humanity to the extent that we live by the promise and the vision.

We are always tempted, like Abraham and Sarah, to believe half way. To figure that God is good but not realistic, and that we have no choice but to live by the ethics and standards of our day, the rules in play, and the wisdom which, apart from the gospel, makes so much sense. But the life of faith must feel like losing our lives, not trying to save them.

We are tempted, like Abraham and Sarah, to compensate for God instead of counting on God. But the life of faith does not depend on the strength of our faith. It doesn’t matter if our faith is weak, because the point of faith is not the power of our own faith. It’s much more like doing the math, and adding up what God has done and adding up what God will do, and counting on God to be telling the truth and being true to God’s word, and living our lives as if God is really telling the truth.

The way for us to be blessing in the world is to count on the promises of God instead of the standards and ethics accepted by the world, and those promises include some promises about our behavior, and our daily choices, and how we treat our Hagars and our Ishmaels, and our Sarahs for that matter. And how we treat our larger lives of buying and spending and such, because this will affect the treatment of the Hagars of Darfur and the Ishmaels of Aghanistan.

Yes, we are accurate to look at exploitation and dishonor and say, this is what happens, this is the way it is, but we must also say this is not how it must be, and this is what else can happen, when we look at the world with the vision and promise that comes from the resurrection of Jesus and the new life that he started and that we have with him.

Copyright © 2008 by Daniel Meeter, all rights reserved.