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Church of Our
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Mark A. Lewis,
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MLewis@secaucus.org
Dorothy Fowlkes
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Mar 01
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oursaviour
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Self-Control
--
Not God Control
Reflections on the
lessons
for the Third Sunday of Lent18 March 2001
By The Rev. Mark A. Lewis, Vicar
Exodus 3:1-15 / Psalm 103:1-11
I Corinthians 10:1-13 / Luke 13:1-9
I am so glad that my grandmother is not God. She LOVES it when people are inching their way toward disaster. And seems to want to nudge them on and hurry things up a bit. You can tell by the way her voice lights up what she really wants. I had a call from my grandmother last night. And she had news of a young friend of ours, a girl we've known since she was born.
Now, Allie is 16 and has her first real boyfriend. Typically, her parents are wary. The boy has "weird hair." He's a "wild driver". And then he got into a fight at a schol ballgame and -- in the heat of the moment -- yelled something about a gun. Never mind that these kids see each other most regularly in church on Sundays. The fight and the gun coment settled it for Allie's parents. They put their feet down. NO MORE BOYFRIEND. It's over.
"They're right," I allowed, "but I hope they know that's the quickest way to make her only have eyes for him." Granny majestically says "Parents have to tell their children what to do, what's right and what's wrong. And then after that if the child doesn't do what they say then the parents have done all they can and it's the up to the child to face the consequences."
And I imagine the sound of her licking her lips in anticipation of watching a child "face consequences". It's a wonder my mother and I are alive today to marvel at her cold blood.
That's the big difference between my Grandmother and God. With God -- regardless of whether we suffer from accidents, or enemies, or our own rebellion -- our comfort and our hope stem from the covenant certainty that God forgives us and promises to restore us, always hoping for our repentance -- hoping for us to catch a new vision of life. And, regardless of circumstances, God offers us restoration, ultimately not because of any human response, but because God has decided that reconciling, forgiving love is essential to being the kind of God that God wants to be.
And I'm also glad that I am rarely visited anymore by the Jehovah's Witnesses I see working neighborhoods all around me. I have a real problem with their name. It takes an amazing chutzpah to appropriate the Hebrew scripture's sacred Name for God, "Jehovah". They take the word traditionally associated with the Mosaic revelation of God's name and make it their property, their trademark like "Coke" or "Xerox."
Jews were -- and are -- reluctant to speak or write God's name. They're so afraid to "take God's name in vain." Charles Russell, who invented the Jehovah's Witnesses, had no such timidity. Neither do most of us. And nowadays we increasingly hear the name "Yahweh" pronounced, more or less correctly, in church.
Lots of people who read the lessons in churches insert the sacred name wherever "Lord" appears in the English text. They're more squeamish about using sexist language than about offending the ancient Hebrew deity. And that has its good points. The movement to use inclusive language about God is a way to give more names to the deity, so God won't be stuck with only masculine names. It's a way to break open our definitions and admit that there's more to God than just what we allow.
Naming is a way of controlling identity. Parents control their children, at least early on. And one of their first acts is to give the child a name. At baptism, I look at the parents and godparents and bid them to "name this child". And that's the name. Adam named his neighbors, the animals and plants, because they were under his control.
Citizens' Band radio users -- and Internet chatroom visitors -- take on ad hoc names to use in their specialized worlds. CB'ers used to call the names "handles". I like that image: Names as handles. To get a handle on something means to be able to move it, to transport it, to pick it up and set it down at will.
Moses wanted to get a handle on the God he met at Horeb, in the bush. In ancient times, as even now, people wanted to know the name of their God. It helps, for purposes of control; it helps to get God's attention. Moses knew that the Egyptians had lots of gods. And they all had names, so the priests and people would be able to get their attention when they wanted it. Like a website address, you have to know it and get it exactly right or you don't get connected the way you want to be. Moses knew that if he were to go to Pharaoh and say that he had come from the God of the Hebrews, with certain demands, that Pharaoh just might ask, "Who is this God of yours? What's his name?" Moses knew that he would look stupid if he went to Pharaoh and was unable to name the God that he was supposed to be representing.
And it occurred to him, "Who am I to speak to Pharaoh in the name of the God of the people of Israel?" God's riposte to that was "Go on ahead, I'll be with you." Moses didn't even know how to identify the One who spoke to him in the bush to the people of Israel themselves? "If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, 'The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,' and they ask me 'Well, what's his name?' -- how do you want me to answer them?"
So it's control of the people, not only of their God, that Moses is looking for. But this God is not to be manipulated, this God is not to be picked up and moved about and fenced in. This God says, "I am who I am. What you see is what you get." This is the God who acts. The one who causes things to be. "You'll know me by what I do for you. What you will see is what you can talk about."
The God that Moses meets determines where the Holy Ground will be. This God is not sequestered in temples made by human hands, whether Egyptian or Hebrew or Babylonian or Greek or Roman. This God acts in all the peoples of the earth, in their history, and in their lives, but this God cannot be named nor manhandled nor put into a box.
Human beings everywhere name some buildings as sacred, some time as hallowed, some particular people as holy ones. But the God that stands behind those pragmatic choices is not bound by any of that naming. God may decide at any time to appear in a bush instead of a basilica. Or clothed in a desert wind instead of royal robes.
Paul tells us more about our relationship with this God whose name is What You See Is What You Get. Paul says a conventional religious relationship with God is not all bad, but it's not enough -- it will not suffice. Plenty of people who came before us had perfectly good religions, he says. But where are they now? Paul says they were all too confident when they dared to speak for God. They thought their religion had given them a handle on God. And the danger is there for us, too. "We must not put the God we worship to such a test." God has some unpredictable snakes up his sleeve, Paul warns.
Well, maybe. Jesus isn't so sure of the correlation between snakebites and faithlessness, nor is Jesus sure that natural disasters or political actions have the hand of God in them. Some people told Jesus about a group of Galilean Jews who were attacked while they were at worship. And their own blood ran with the blood of the goats and sheep they were killing for religious sacrifices. Jesus asks, "Do you really think those poor folks were worse sinners than all their neighbors?" Do you really think God punishes people this way? And then he refers to a current event, the disaster at Siloam, where a building collapsed and killed eighteen people. An evil human act. And a random accident. We can hear the survivors tut-tutting. Too bad about the victims, but they must have had it coming, or "their time was up" as if God were a housecat teasing mice, playing around for hours before pouncing at last when the game gets old.
I don't think so, says Jesus. Isn't that really just looking for more ways to control God, when we try to assign God some motive for everything that happens? In insurance policies we dump all the random catastrophes on God, calling tornadoes and fallen trees "acts of God". When you think of it, isn't THAT taking God's name in vain, in an empty and deeply silly way?
Jesus says, No Way! I tell you. But unless you turn yourselves around, you will perish just as surely as any other kind of victim does. But it will be your presumptuousness that does you in, Jesus declares. Stop trying to control God. Stop trying to pin names on God for other people, and telling them what their relationship with God ought to be.
Jesus says, let me tell you a story about everyone's relationship to God, and God's way with us. A man has a tree in his vineyard, and comes seeking fruit and finds none. He says to the gardener, "Look, I've come here after fruit for three years. Cut this tree down. Why should it use up the ground?" But the gardener answers, "Oh, let it slide for another year. Let me dig around it and put on some fertilizer. Let's be patient, let's try a little harder, let's see what else might work, let's postpone our final answers, postpone judgment. It may yet come around. If not, there'll be time enough for the hatchet if that really turns out to be the only choice. Why don't you just relax and stop trying to make the tree do what you think it should do -- when you think it should do it? And why not leave me be to do what gardeners do? If you stop trying to name everything and control everything won't we all three be better off?"
In Lent, the trick is to concentrate on self-control, not God control.
-- Mark Lewis
Your comments or questions are welcome MLewis@secaucus.org.
Links to additional "Reflections on Lessons" may be found at the bottom of the Sunday web page.
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