Favorite Sermons
2019
Sermons are posted here when someone requests to see them. If you would like a copy of the most recent sermon, please contact the church office at (218) 236-1756 or [email protected]
Riches I Heed Not
Luke 13:10-17
Rev. Michelle Webber
August 25, 2019
The 13th chapter of Luke begins with the phrase “at that very time.” And then the whole chapter deals with different concepts of time. There’s the parable of the barren fig tree in which the owner wants to tear out the tree after 3 years because it has not produced, but his steward cautions to fertilize it and wait another year. Sometimes God’s fruits take longer than you expect. Then the parable we heard today, followed by the parables of the mustard seed and the yeast. Tiny things that, given time, become much bigger. Sometimes when you wait for God’s fruits, they are bigger than you could imagine.
So let’s think about time.
I once read a quote from a pastor who was retiring after many decades of ministry. He said his secret to not burning out was two week vacations. He said it took the whole first week to stop thinking and worrying about church. And then the second week he could totally relax. I did a google search to see if I could find the quote- so I could cite the author. But what I found were articles titled “Taking a two-week vacation may be a career killer.” (https://www.businessinsider.com/taking-a-two-week-vacation-may-be-a-career-killer-2012-4, 8-24-19), which lays out how a two week vacation communicates that your job is not really all that important and the company could probably do without you, even if two week vacations are good for you psychologically, and “Can’t Take More Than a Week Of Vacation Time, Leaving Work After Dark, And More…” in an advice column called “Ask a Manager.” (https://www.askamanager.org/2018/01/cant-take-more-than-a-week-of-vacation-at-a-time-leaving-work-after-dark-and-more.html.8-2-19) The letter asks how common it is to have a no vacations longer than a week policy. The issue in her job is that no one is cross trained and no one gets paid without her performing her job. There is only one week each month when there are no payroll duties. The answer is that it is not uncommon, but it is ill-advised. After my initial shock that what I found were people complaining that or explaining why they can’t or shouldn’t take two week vacations, I began to really appreciate the biblical call to Sabbath, and Jesus’ contribution to how Sabbath ought to be practiced.
The kind of Sabbath possible in a two week vacation, time when you can totally relax, is important in life. It promotes healing. It helps us connect with spirit. It keeps us from those wonky behaviors we exhibit when our lives are out of balance. It helps us renew our relationship ties. Two week vacations help us have a healthier relationship with time. Both articles I mentioned quoted experts saying that this kind of Sabbath makes people healthier and likely better employees in the long run.
I relished my two week vacation. My first week I went to my sister’s, a place away from my chores and projects. Time was different and not just because I was in a different time zone. My only worry was what we were going to eat for that day. I was able to disconnect from the minutia of day to day stresses. Who are we hiring to repair the basement? Has my kid finished her school assignment? When are my bills due? Have I heard back from the potential confirmation sponsor? When can I do a home visit with the church elder? All of the balls we try to keep in the air at once. The ability to set them down for a moment and just be is truly healing.
Imagine your things- whatever they are- were actual balls. At some point you have to set them down to rest your arms. The same is true for your soul. You have to lay your burdens down and rest your soul. This is one of the purposes of Sabbath, to set down all of the balls we try to keep in the air at once and just be.
How often do you allow yourself that luxury?
Even that I think of it as a luxury when our sacred text asks us to do this a day every week is telling of our strained relationship with Sabbath. Sabbath is a time when you step away from work, not because your work is damaging in any way and not because you have little responsibility or your work is unimportant, but because it is healing to just be and not do. The tradition Jesus was raised in counted the Sabbath from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. Friday before the sun went down was spent in preparation. Washing and cooking and pausing projects, then there was a celebratory meal at sundown. Because no matter what else was happening, the Sabbath was a celebration and a thanksgiving, a time to lay down not just the work, but also the worry, because stepping away from worry is truly healing. So if you are in mourning, you pause and celebrate the Sabbath and remember that there is always something for which to give thanks.
This is why the leader of the synagogue is so indignant towards the woman. “There are six days in which work can be done,” he says, “Come on one of those days to be healed.” He is not a bad person. He is looking out for the healing of the Sabbath rituals. He is defending the ritual of praising God no matter what else is going on in your life. Even on a day of pain, your soul grows when you focus on the things for which you are grateful.
Here Jesus makes a new contribution to thinking about Sabbath- a new Sabbath guideline. Do any of you remember, in the time before cell phones, when beepers were just coming out? The first people to carry beepers were first responders. I worked in a movie theater and the only beepers we heard going off were doctors. And we did not shush them. We did not ask people to silence their beepers, because if they beeped it was because someone needed them to save their life.
Jesus heals the woman on the Sabbath because she carried a worry, a pain, an affliction she could not set down to celebrate the Sabbath. Jesus had the privilege to be able to take away her burden. How could he put down his power and just be, when she could not put down her burden. Or perhaps it was just so much a part of who he was that in order to just be he had to remove her burden. Afterward Jesus has no less ability to Sabbath, but the woman has the ability to be worry free for the first time in 18 years. How could he not?
The story takes place in the synagogue, in the sanctuary. Another righteous reason the leader of the Synagogue wants to protect the Sabbath is that the temple on the Sabbath is a sanctuary, a place of refuge. If you are a person that many people come to for help, you know the power of sanctuary. Being at my sister’s house can be like this for me. I said my only worry was what we were going to eat for the day, but I didn’t really worry about that, because my sister was in charge. I made some requests. I wanted to eat Mexican food and have sushi and indulge in fresh, local summer fruits. But she chose the restaurants and produce markets and drove us there. The only people asking anything of me where back here in Moorhead. This kind of sanctuary makes Sabbath possible, for me. Had I stayed in town for the two weeks, I might not have gotten the same depth of Sabbath. I still would have been worrying about who we are going to hire to fix our basement and if my kid finished her homeschooling…
The leader of the synagogue wanted Jesus to have sanctuary in the temple on the Sabbath. Don’t ask this of him now, when he is having some time to relax. But Jesus had a different need. It’s not that he didn’t relax or retreat or find sanctuary. Jesus went up the mountain. He withdrew to a place alone. He took his disciples out of Jerusalem to rejuvenate. Jesus took time for sanctuary, it just wasn’t in the temple on the Sabbath when he had the means to unburden the woman, when being who he was meant healing her. He had the beeper that went off to save someone’s life. And he didn’t want anyone to ask him to silence it.
There is a tension for us in this story, in the way that Jesus does sanctuary. This thing we do that we call Christianity is not a solo activity. We might withdraw and pray. We might go off alone to recharge and rejuvenate, but being a Christian is a communal experience. We come to this sanctuary both for time to reflect and for time to connect. We come both to unburden ourselves and experience Sabbath and to be inspired to live in ways that unburden others.
Which brings us to the picture of the woman on the bulletin cover. It is a stock image that reminded me of the woman in the story, bent for 18 years. he picture is before she goes into the sanctuary. She is ashamed. She is tried and in pain. She is burdened. Imagine a picture of her coming out of the sanctuary, healed, not in pain, and unburdened. This is what we want when we come here, right? To walk in burdened and walk out free? To come in with our pains and leave with our joys. And, I’m sure, we understand the frustration of the Synagogue leader. He wants Jesus to be unburdened and free and sees the woman’s request as more appropriate of a different time.
See, it all comes back to time. If this time is sanctuary and Sabbath and holy then it implies at the other times are not. Monday morning, Jesus says, Is no less holy than the Sabbath meeting in the sanctuary. The Sabbath time and the sanctuary place are meant as reminder of the important of these things, not as a rule that all else should be barred. They point to the good thing, but are not the good thing itself. This is important because it frees us to find sanctuary in our ordinary lives and our ordinary times, just as it frees us to respond to our ability to unburden others during the times we typically set aside for Sabbath and sanctuary.
May you have this week he gift of Sabbath time and the gift of sanctuary, whether it be here and now or tomorrow or Wednesday at three or some other time. For God’s fruits don’t always, perhaps don’t often produce in the times we expect. Amen.
August 25, 2019
The 13th chapter of Luke begins with the phrase “at that very time.” And then the whole chapter deals with different concepts of time. There’s the parable of the barren fig tree in which the owner wants to tear out the tree after 3 years because it has not produced, but his steward cautions to fertilize it and wait another year. Sometimes God’s fruits take longer than you expect. Then the parable we heard today, followed by the parables of the mustard seed and the yeast. Tiny things that, given time, become much bigger. Sometimes when you wait for God’s fruits, they are bigger than you could imagine.
So let’s think about time.
I once read a quote from a pastor who was retiring after many decades of ministry. He said his secret to not burning out was two week vacations. He said it took the whole first week to stop thinking and worrying about church. And then the second week he could totally relax. I did a google search to see if I could find the quote- so I could cite the author. But what I found were articles titled “Taking a two-week vacation may be a career killer.” (https://www.businessinsider.com/taking-a-two-week-vacation-may-be-a-career-killer-2012-4, 8-24-19), which lays out how a two week vacation communicates that your job is not really all that important and the company could probably do without you, even if two week vacations are good for you psychologically, and “Can’t Take More Than a Week Of Vacation Time, Leaving Work After Dark, And More…” in an advice column called “Ask a Manager.” (https://www.askamanager.org/2018/01/cant-take-more-than-a-week-of-vacation-at-a-time-leaving-work-after-dark-and-more.html.8-2-19) The letter asks how common it is to have a no vacations longer than a week policy. The issue in her job is that no one is cross trained and no one gets paid without her performing her job. There is only one week each month when there are no payroll duties. The answer is that it is not uncommon, but it is ill-advised. After my initial shock that what I found were people complaining that or explaining why they can’t or shouldn’t take two week vacations, I began to really appreciate the biblical call to Sabbath, and Jesus’ contribution to how Sabbath ought to be practiced.
The kind of Sabbath possible in a two week vacation, time when you can totally relax, is important in life. It promotes healing. It helps us connect with spirit. It keeps us from those wonky behaviors we exhibit when our lives are out of balance. It helps us renew our relationship ties. Two week vacations help us have a healthier relationship with time. Both articles I mentioned quoted experts saying that this kind of Sabbath makes people healthier and likely better employees in the long run.
I relished my two week vacation. My first week I went to my sister’s, a place away from my chores and projects. Time was different and not just because I was in a different time zone. My only worry was what we were going to eat for that day. I was able to disconnect from the minutia of day to day stresses. Who are we hiring to repair the basement? Has my kid finished her school assignment? When are my bills due? Have I heard back from the potential confirmation sponsor? When can I do a home visit with the church elder? All of the balls we try to keep in the air at once. The ability to set them down for a moment and just be is truly healing.
Imagine your things- whatever they are- were actual balls. At some point you have to set them down to rest your arms. The same is true for your soul. You have to lay your burdens down and rest your soul. This is one of the purposes of Sabbath, to set down all of the balls we try to keep in the air at once and just be.
How often do you allow yourself that luxury?
Even that I think of it as a luxury when our sacred text asks us to do this a day every week is telling of our strained relationship with Sabbath. Sabbath is a time when you step away from work, not because your work is damaging in any way and not because you have little responsibility or your work is unimportant, but because it is healing to just be and not do. The tradition Jesus was raised in counted the Sabbath from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. Friday before the sun went down was spent in preparation. Washing and cooking and pausing projects, then there was a celebratory meal at sundown. Because no matter what else was happening, the Sabbath was a celebration and a thanksgiving, a time to lay down not just the work, but also the worry, because stepping away from worry is truly healing. So if you are in mourning, you pause and celebrate the Sabbath and remember that there is always something for which to give thanks.
This is why the leader of the synagogue is so indignant towards the woman. “There are six days in which work can be done,” he says, “Come on one of those days to be healed.” He is not a bad person. He is looking out for the healing of the Sabbath rituals. He is defending the ritual of praising God no matter what else is going on in your life. Even on a day of pain, your soul grows when you focus on the things for which you are grateful.
Here Jesus makes a new contribution to thinking about Sabbath- a new Sabbath guideline. Do any of you remember, in the time before cell phones, when beepers were just coming out? The first people to carry beepers were first responders. I worked in a movie theater and the only beepers we heard going off were doctors. And we did not shush them. We did not ask people to silence their beepers, because if they beeped it was because someone needed them to save their life.
Jesus heals the woman on the Sabbath because she carried a worry, a pain, an affliction she could not set down to celebrate the Sabbath. Jesus had the privilege to be able to take away her burden. How could he put down his power and just be, when she could not put down her burden. Or perhaps it was just so much a part of who he was that in order to just be he had to remove her burden. Afterward Jesus has no less ability to Sabbath, but the woman has the ability to be worry free for the first time in 18 years. How could he not?
The story takes place in the synagogue, in the sanctuary. Another righteous reason the leader of the Synagogue wants to protect the Sabbath is that the temple on the Sabbath is a sanctuary, a place of refuge. If you are a person that many people come to for help, you know the power of sanctuary. Being at my sister’s house can be like this for me. I said my only worry was what we were going to eat for the day, but I didn’t really worry about that, because my sister was in charge. I made some requests. I wanted to eat Mexican food and have sushi and indulge in fresh, local summer fruits. But she chose the restaurants and produce markets and drove us there. The only people asking anything of me where back here in Moorhead. This kind of sanctuary makes Sabbath possible, for me. Had I stayed in town for the two weeks, I might not have gotten the same depth of Sabbath. I still would have been worrying about who we are going to hire to fix our basement and if my kid finished her homeschooling…
The leader of the synagogue wanted Jesus to have sanctuary in the temple on the Sabbath. Don’t ask this of him now, when he is having some time to relax. But Jesus had a different need. It’s not that he didn’t relax or retreat or find sanctuary. Jesus went up the mountain. He withdrew to a place alone. He took his disciples out of Jerusalem to rejuvenate. Jesus took time for sanctuary, it just wasn’t in the temple on the Sabbath when he had the means to unburden the woman, when being who he was meant healing her. He had the beeper that went off to save someone’s life. And he didn’t want anyone to ask him to silence it.
There is a tension for us in this story, in the way that Jesus does sanctuary. This thing we do that we call Christianity is not a solo activity. We might withdraw and pray. We might go off alone to recharge and rejuvenate, but being a Christian is a communal experience. We come to this sanctuary both for time to reflect and for time to connect. We come both to unburden ourselves and experience Sabbath and to be inspired to live in ways that unburden others.
Which brings us to the picture of the woman on the bulletin cover. It is a stock image that reminded me of the woman in the story, bent for 18 years. he picture is before she goes into the sanctuary. She is ashamed. She is tried and in pain. She is burdened. Imagine a picture of her coming out of the sanctuary, healed, not in pain, and unburdened. This is what we want when we come here, right? To walk in burdened and walk out free? To come in with our pains and leave with our joys. And, I’m sure, we understand the frustration of the Synagogue leader. He wants Jesus to be unburdened and free and sees the woman’s request as more appropriate of a different time.
See, it all comes back to time. If this time is sanctuary and Sabbath and holy then it implies at the other times are not. Monday morning, Jesus says, Is no less holy than the Sabbath meeting in the sanctuary. The Sabbath time and the sanctuary place are meant as reminder of the important of these things, not as a rule that all else should be barred. They point to the good thing, but are not the good thing itself. This is important because it frees us to find sanctuary in our ordinary lives and our ordinary times, just as it frees us to respond to our ability to unburden others during the times we typically set aside for Sabbath and sanctuary.
May you have this week he gift of Sabbath time and the gift of sanctuary, whether it be here and now or tomorrow or Wednesday at three or some other time. For God’s fruits don’t always, perhaps don’t often produce in the times we expect. Amen.
Mercy
Luke 10:25-37
We know the story of the Good Samaritan very well. Most of us can probably picture ourselves somewhere in the story. I think I have always pictured myself as the Samaritan and felt this story as a call to care. Some of us might feel like the man beaten and left for dead, hoping against hope that someone would stop to help us, but unable to call out for it. Others might identify mostly with the priest and the Pharisee who have perfectly justifiable reasons for not helping. Or with the inn keeper who becomes the man’s care-taker when the Samaritan drops him off. Who do you identify with most in this story?
This story comes along at least once every three years in the lectionary, but it must have a good agent because there are other lectionary texts we don’t know so well. Perhaps this story says something essential to us as 21st century Christians. It never fails to amaze me how each time I read one of the Gospels closely I gain a new insight. I first read the Gospels in middle school. And I’ve dedicated my life to studying them for almost twenty years. You’d think I would had learned just about all there is to know about them at this point. But this time around, reading Luke, has impressed upon me the importance Jesus gives to sending people out to do ministry.
Last week we learned about the 70 who were sent out to heal the sick with some very specific instructions. This week Jesus sends out to do ministry, to do mercy, someone who came to trick him into saying something incriminating. It is genius level compassion.
Rev. Dr. Rob Voyle teaches that Jesus uses three kinds of compassion.
The first is “tenderness toward another who is in pain.”[1] We see this in the story of the Good Samaritan in the line “when he saw him, he was moved with pity.” (Luke 10:33) Now, we see pity as a negative emotion, but here it is used in the same way we might say “moved with compassion.” If it described what we think of as pity, the Samaritan could have kept on walking. All three of the passersby might have looked on him with pity, but all three of them had justifiable reasons for not acting on it and it is the action that moves pity to compassion.
Compassion is this tender hearted moment when your soul acknowledges someone else’s suffering, followed by a desire to do something to alleviate the suffering. And I think it is one of the things lost between people of fervently different political views in our contemporary culture, the open-ness of heart to see and acknowledge each other’s suffering and the desire to do something to alleviate it.
I originally had here an example of a Facebook meme I have seen used to shame people on both sides of an issue. The same one, simply targeted in different directions. But I took the meme out because it was impossible for me to find language to describe it that wouldn’t have fed one side’s shame machine. This is how far we have gotten from tender hearted compassion for those on the opposite side of the aisle. Our language has been charged with shame and accusations to the point where there are not enough benign words to talk about divisive issues.
Were we to see all people with our heart’s ability to recognize their humanity and see their suffering, just like we see our won suffering, shame would not be a tool we use, political or otherwise.
So there’s the first kind of compassion: tenderness, mercy. It is a moment of seeing with one’s heart or one’s soul the suffering of another person or a group of people and being moved to do something about it. And it is sorely needed today.
The second kind of compassion is fierce compassion. This is the ability to use our anger to fight for justice. Think of Jesus in the temple, turning over tables. This is fierce compassion. He is using his anger to bring about change that will ease suffering. Fierce compassion’s power lies in the “single-minded, determined action,” (Voyle, Pg. 4) that is possible when we are motivated by anger. The classic modern example of this type of compassion would be Saul Alinksy[2], who organized impoverished neighborhoods in Chicago. His premise was that you can use someone’s anger to excite them into taking risks with their persons in such a way to highlight the injustice going on and motivate change in the world. What makes you angry?
Saul Alinksy would see this anger as a motivational gift to go do something about it. There is not a direct use of fierce anger in the story of the Good Samaritan, but it has been used this way. I have heard and read, and possibly even written, countless sermons and commentaries on this passage that seek to capitalize on the anger we feel when the priest and the Levite pass the man by as a way of motivating us to be like the Samaritan.
So there’s the second kind of compassion: fierce compassion. It is the use of anger to motivate us for sustained action that ends suffering.
The third kind of compassion, and the one I think Jesus masters in telling the story of the Good Samaritan, is mischievous compassion. “Tenderness and fierceness tend to be linear and transparent,” Voyle points out, easily understood by spectators, “Mischievousness is non-linear and it is often unclear to the recipient.” (Voyle, Pg. 6)
The point of compassion is to move someone from one place to another. In the case of the man left for dead, to move him from actively dying to recovering. In the case of the lawyer who asked Jesus the question, from a place where he is testing Jesus, to one where he goes out into the world and does Jesus’ ministry.
The man left for dead has no trouble seeing the compassion of the Samaritan and understanding what the impact will be on his life. The lawyer asking Jesus questions has no clue the answer will not reveal something about Jesus, which is his point, but change him in unpredictable ways, transform him from the trickster into a disciple. This is mischievous compassion. And we better watch out because Jesus is a master at it. We just might find ourselves transformed when we study his teachings.
Here is the narrative of the story told to highlight mischievous compassion.
The 70 disciples that Jesus sent out to heal in his name have just returned, excited that they were actually able to heal people in Jesus’ name. Jesus celebrates in prayer and then commends the 70. “Just then,” Luke says, giving the sense that the lawyer walks up while Jesus is still talking to the 70. “a lawyer stood up to test Jesus.” The lawyer is being mischievous. We don’t know if he was discerning if he should follow Jesus or if he was trying to trip him up so he could accuse him of blasphemy. The King James version reads “tempted,” instead of tested which would suggest the latter, that he was, as the devil in Jesus’ sojourn in the desert, tempting him to sin.
But Jesus doesn’t take the bait. He turns the questions around, “What do you think?” So the lawyer answers and Jesus affirms his answer. Likely not what the lawyer expected, but he rolls with it, asking for clarification, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus answers with a story. Already that’s a little mischievous. Try doing this in your everyday life. People don’t always appreciate it.
Jesus describes someone in deep suffering. He puts him alone on a road between two Hebrew strong holds, Jericho and Jerusalem. Robbers strip him, beat him, and leave him for dead. It is not easy to get more vulnerable than that. The hearer could well put himself in that place. He might have traveled that road himself. He might have worried he would be robbed while traveling that road.
Jesus gives two examples of people who see the beaten man and pass by. The priest and the Levite, both of whom are religious leaders. The priest was responsible for the ritual relationship between the people and God and would have been made ritually unclean by touching the man, he would have been unable to perform the ritual he was on his way to perform. If he does not correctly perform the ritual, it might bring God’s retributive anger down on the whole of the community. The offerings required by Hebrew law were at least as valuable to the whole community as the life of one person and so, though he might take pity, he walks by. The Levite was responsible for the relationship between God and one of the tribes of Israel. Similarly, the rituals he performed and instructions he gave were at least as valuable to that tribe as the life of one person. He would also have become ritually unclean by touching the beaten man and so he walks by.
The lawyer might be getting a clue at this point about Jesus’ mischievous compassion. As a lawyer he would have been asked to help people figure out both Roman and Jewish law. These two examples were of people who committed to living 100% by the law, whose adherence to the law had implications for the whole of the Jewish community. And yet they did not act out of compassion.
Jesus gives a third example. He names someone the lawyer would not expect to be named as a neighbor- someone whose faith practice is different from that of the Israelites. This is a mischievous choice. But the lawyer is so wrapped up in the story- of the man left for dead- his heart was moved from pity to compassion, from feeling to action. Jesus asks, “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”
And now Jesus has turned the tables completely. What began as a lawyer trying to trip him up, has turned into a disciple being asked to articulate Jesus’ ministry. He answers, “The one who showed mercy.”
Mercy, like compassion, includes the understood meaning that one is moved to action. Jesus is changing the law from one of pity to one of mercy or compassion. And then he changes the man, “Go and do likewise.”
Jesus has not told him how to think, Not given him the key to inherit eternal life, but given him the opportunity to articulate his own beliefs to work out his own morality and then Jesus tells him to go in the world and act on his beliefs, to take the step from feeling to action.
The man who came to him to test him, perhaps even to tempt him to sin, is transformed into a disciple. This is genius level mischievous compassion.
And in my study this week I was transformed. No longer do I identify most strongly with the Samaritan. Now I identify most strongly with the lawyer, the one who was transformed by his encounter with Jesus. Does anyone else now identify with a different character in the story?
The reality is that when we have an authentic experience of Christ, be it while in deep meditation, while being the hands and feet of Christ’s ministry doing mercy in the world, or through a careful reading of scripture, we just might find ourselves transformed.
We just might move from being the tempter to a disciple. We might move from being near death to a place of new life. We might be moved from looking on someone with pity to seeing their humanity and being moved to compassion, to enacting mercy. We might be able to look honestly at all of the reasons why we shouldn’t and be moved to act anyway.
My prayer for us this week is that we open ourselves to the possibility of transformation.
[1] Voyle, Robert J, Psy. D.,COMPASSION AND THE CRAZY WISDOM OF JESUS or ONE PERSON'S WAY TO TRANSFORM THE WORLD ROBERT J. VOYLE, PSY.D., Pg. 3
[2] While not quoted directly, this article was used for reference. https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/saul-alinsky-4118.php 7-11-19
This story comes along at least once every three years in the lectionary, but it must have a good agent because there are other lectionary texts we don’t know so well. Perhaps this story says something essential to us as 21st century Christians. It never fails to amaze me how each time I read one of the Gospels closely I gain a new insight. I first read the Gospels in middle school. And I’ve dedicated my life to studying them for almost twenty years. You’d think I would had learned just about all there is to know about them at this point. But this time around, reading Luke, has impressed upon me the importance Jesus gives to sending people out to do ministry.
Last week we learned about the 70 who were sent out to heal the sick with some very specific instructions. This week Jesus sends out to do ministry, to do mercy, someone who came to trick him into saying something incriminating. It is genius level compassion.
Rev. Dr. Rob Voyle teaches that Jesus uses three kinds of compassion.
The first is “tenderness toward another who is in pain.”[1] We see this in the story of the Good Samaritan in the line “when he saw him, he was moved with pity.” (Luke 10:33) Now, we see pity as a negative emotion, but here it is used in the same way we might say “moved with compassion.” If it described what we think of as pity, the Samaritan could have kept on walking. All three of the passersby might have looked on him with pity, but all three of them had justifiable reasons for not acting on it and it is the action that moves pity to compassion.
Compassion is this tender hearted moment when your soul acknowledges someone else’s suffering, followed by a desire to do something to alleviate the suffering. And I think it is one of the things lost between people of fervently different political views in our contemporary culture, the open-ness of heart to see and acknowledge each other’s suffering and the desire to do something to alleviate it.
I originally had here an example of a Facebook meme I have seen used to shame people on both sides of an issue. The same one, simply targeted in different directions. But I took the meme out because it was impossible for me to find language to describe it that wouldn’t have fed one side’s shame machine. This is how far we have gotten from tender hearted compassion for those on the opposite side of the aisle. Our language has been charged with shame and accusations to the point where there are not enough benign words to talk about divisive issues.
Were we to see all people with our heart’s ability to recognize their humanity and see their suffering, just like we see our won suffering, shame would not be a tool we use, political or otherwise.
So there’s the first kind of compassion: tenderness, mercy. It is a moment of seeing with one’s heart or one’s soul the suffering of another person or a group of people and being moved to do something about it. And it is sorely needed today.
The second kind of compassion is fierce compassion. This is the ability to use our anger to fight for justice. Think of Jesus in the temple, turning over tables. This is fierce compassion. He is using his anger to bring about change that will ease suffering. Fierce compassion’s power lies in the “single-minded, determined action,” (Voyle, Pg. 4) that is possible when we are motivated by anger. The classic modern example of this type of compassion would be Saul Alinksy[2], who organized impoverished neighborhoods in Chicago. His premise was that you can use someone’s anger to excite them into taking risks with their persons in such a way to highlight the injustice going on and motivate change in the world. What makes you angry?
Saul Alinksy would see this anger as a motivational gift to go do something about it. There is not a direct use of fierce anger in the story of the Good Samaritan, but it has been used this way. I have heard and read, and possibly even written, countless sermons and commentaries on this passage that seek to capitalize on the anger we feel when the priest and the Levite pass the man by as a way of motivating us to be like the Samaritan.
So there’s the second kind of compassion: fierce compassion. It is the use of anger to motivate us for sustained action that ends suffering.
The third kind of compassion, and the one I think Jesus masters in telling the story of the Good Samaritan, is mischievous compassion. “Tenderness and fierceness tend to be linear and transparent,” Voyle points out, easily understood by spectators, “Mischievousness is non-linear and it is often unclear to the recipient.” (Voyle, Pg. 6)
The point of compassion is to move someone from one place to another. In the case of the man left for dead, to move him from actively dying to recovering. In the case of the lawyer who asked Jesus the question, from a place where he is testing Jesus, to one where he goes out into the world and does Jesus’ ministry.
The man left for dead has no trouble seeing the compassion of the Samaritan and understanding what the impact will be on his life. The lawyer asking Jesus questions has no clue the answer will not reveal something about Jesus, which is his point, but change him in unpredictable ways, transform him from the trickster into a disciple. This is mischievous compassion. And we better watch out because Jesus is a master at it. We just might find ourselves transformed when we study his teachings.
Here is the narrative of the story told to highlight mischievous compassion.
The 70 disciples that Jesus sent out to heal in his name have just returned, excited that they were actually able to heal people in Jesus’ name. Jesus celebrates in prayer and then commends the 70. “Just then,” Luke says, giving the sense that the lawyer walks up while Jesus is still talking to the 70. “a lawyer stood up to test Jesus.” The lawyer is being mischievous. We don’t know if he was discerning if he should follow Jesus or if he was trying to trip him up so he could accuse him of blasphemy. The King James version reads “tempted,” instead of tested which would suggest the latter, that he was, as the devil in Jesus’ sojourn in the desert, tempting him to sin.
But Jesus doesn’t take the bait. He turns the questions around, “What do you think?” So the lawyer answers and Jesus affirms his answer. Likely not what the lawyer expected, but he rolls with it, asking for clarification, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus answers with a story. Already that’s a little mischievous. Try doing this in your everyday life. People don’t always appreciate it.
Jesus describes someone in deep suffering. He puts him alone on a road between two Hebrew strong holds, Jericho and Jerusalem. Robbers strip him, beat him, and leave him for dead. It is not easy to get more vulnerable than that. The hearer could well put himself in that place. He might have traveled that road himself. He might have worried he would be robbed while traveling that road.
Jesus gives two examples of people who see the beaten man and pass by. The priest and the Levite, both of whom are religious leaders. The priest was responsible for the ritual relationship between the people and God and would have been made ritually unclean by touching the man, he would have been unable to perform the ritual he was on his way to perform. If he does not correctly perform the ritual, it might bring God’s retributive anger down on the whole of the community. The offerings required by Hebrew law were at least as valuable to the whole community as the life of one person and so, though he might take pity, he walks by. The Levite was responsible for the relationship between God and one of the tribes of Israel. Similarly, the rituals he performed and instructions he gave were at least as valuable to that tribe as the life of one person. He would also have become ritually unclean by touching the beaten man and so he walks by.
The lawyer might be getting a clue at this point about Jesus’ mischievous compassion. As a lawyer he would have been asked to help people figure out both Roman and Jewish law. These two examples were of people who committed to living 100% by the law, whose adherence to the law had implications for the whole of the Jewish community. And yet they did not act out of compassion.
Jesus gives a third example. He names someone the lawyer would not expect to be named as a neighbor- someone whose faith practice is different from that of the Israelites. This is a mischievous choice. But the lawyer is so wrapped up in the story- of the man left for dead- his heart was moved from pity to compassion, from feeling to action. Jesus asks, “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”
And now Jesus has turned the tables completely. What began as a lawyer trying to trip him up, has turned into a disciple being asked to articulate Jesus’ ministry. He answers, “The one who showed mercy.”
Mercy, like compassion, includes the understood meaning that one is moved to action. Jesus is changing the law from one of pity to one of mercy or compassion. And then he changes the man, “Go and do likewise.”
Jesus has not told him how to think, Not given him the key to inherit eternal life, but given him the opportunity to articulate his own beliefs to work out his own morality and then Jesus tells him to go in the world and act on his beliefs, to take the step from feeling to action.
The man who came to him to test him, perhaps even to tempt him to sin, is transformed into a disciple. This is genius level mischievous compassion.
And in my study this week I was transformed. No longer do I identify most strongly with the Samaritan. Now I identify most strongly with the lawyer, the one who was transformed by his encounter with Jesus. Does anyone else now identify with a different character in the story?
The reality is that when we have an authentic experience of Christ, be it while in deep meditation, while being the hands and feet of Christ’s ministry doing mercy in the world, or through a careful reading of scripture, we just might find ourselves transformed.
We just might move from being the tempter to a disciple. We might move from being near death to a place of new life. We might be moved from looking on someone with pity to seeing their humanity and being moved to compassion, to enacting mercy. We might be able to look honestly at all of the reasons why we shouldn’t and be moved to act anyway.
My prayer for us this week is that we open ourselves to the possibility of transformation.
[1] Voyle, Robert J, Psy. D.,COMPASSION AND THE CRAZY WISDOM OF JESUS or ONE PERSON'S WAY TO TRANSFORM THE WORLD ROBERT J. VOYLE, PSY.D., Pg. 3
[2] While not quoted directly, this article was used for reference. https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/saul-alinsky-4118.php 7-11-19
Dancing with the Divine
Proverbs 8:1-8, 22-31
June 16, 2019
Rev. Michelle Webber
Trinity Sunday
Rev. Michelle Webber
Trinity Sunday
Before I begin, I want to read one more scripture. We have heard Proverbs 8 and an artistic interpretation of Genesis 1:1-4. (Big Momma Makes the World) I want to read to you from the beginning of the Gospel of John.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the word was with God, and the Word was God. It was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through it, and without it not one thing came into being. What has come into being in it was life and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.” (NRSV modified to reflect Greek’s gender neutral pronouns used by original author)
When I was in high school my church, which loved theater, hosted a one-woman play called “Mother Wove the Morning.” It was about the history of the divine feminine in Judeo-Christian tradition. And it began with Sophia (in Greek) hokma (in Hebrew). In the beginning of what was to become Judaism, Yahweh, like all of the other gods in the ancient Middle East, was half of a divine duo. It was Yahweh and Hokma. This is perhaps why the God in Genesis who creates people says “We created them in our image, male and female we created them.”
But the early Hebrew religion had one attribute so different from surrounding religions that Hokma got lost. “The Lord our God is one,” (Deut. 6:4) begins the she-ma, the most ancient and holy of Hebrew prayers. The Ten Commandments say, “You shall have no other gods before me.” (Exodus 20:3) So the imagining of God as two genders, male and female, was collapsed into one God whose feminine aspects were de-emphasized. They are still there in our scriptures, but you have to look for them.
This morning we hear a scripture that calls out Hokma/Sophia, wisdom, the divine feminine that is still a part of our tradition. Not surprisingly, wisdom is one of the generative forces of God. “My cry is to all that live” she says. There is a portion of the chapter that today’s reading skips, in which wisdom declares that it is by her insight and strength that just rulers rule. Her favor is the favor of God that Israel spends the bulk of the Hebrew scriptures trying to keep or to regain. Later, she says, “From the beginning I was with the Lord, before creation of the earth began,” just as the Gospel of John says that Jesus was in the beginning with God and that all things came into being through him.
And I think this image, of wisdom and Jesus and God all being together in the beginning before creation, is what inspired the Seasons of the Spirit (https://www.seasonsonline.ca/) curriculum writers to use the metaphor of dance for today. There was God, who we often call creator, and there was wisdom, Sophia, as the generative force. And then John throws in Jesus. Some have substantiated a thesis that describing Jesus in this way was one way of covering up our roots of worshiping a divine feminine, In this thesis, Jesus is not part of the dance of God at the beginning of time, but Sophia was and Jesus is put there to please the patriarchal systems that had evolved.[1]
In one sense this matters greatly whether we understand the divine to have a feminine generative aspect because by any observation of the created world, females are a necessary part of creating life and if our divine metaphors of creation ignore women it suggests that human women are only a means to creation and not creators ourselves, which allows laws and attitudes to prevail that treat women as little more than medical equipment for developing fetuses. So I find it useful to understand that the logos that will be the incarnated Jesus, which has no gender assigned to it in the beginning of the Gospel of John, is actually the same generative force that Proverbs describes as the divine feminine wisdom and that creation has come about by the dance of both male and female creators.
In another sense it doesn’t matter if we understand the Logos to be the feminine divine known as wisdom. Imagine God, the creator, who is, in our tradition, most often understood to equate in some way with a masculine gender, and the logos, who is described in the Gospel of John as gender neutral, dancing at the beginning of time with Sophia, the divine feminine, and that somehow in that dance all things came into being. It’s like God began to dream and to dance and out of that energy came wisdom and out of that energy came the logos, the word. And together they were with God and they were God and through that dance all things came into being. Not one thing came into being without them. This is the dance of life.
Genesis tells us that every time this dance of the divine created something, light and dark, water and dry land, plants and animals, they looked at it and declared it good. There is an essential value in the created world just for being created. When a sprout breaks forth from a seed it does not have to prove its worth in the world, it is good just for being what it is. When a child is born it does not have to prove its worth to the world, it is good just for being who it is.
Part of the wisdom of these three texts, of God in Genesis and the wisdom of God in proverbs, and of God as the logos in John, is that these aspects of God exist in all times. God is still, even now, in the beginning doing the dance of creation. When we understand God this way, as dancing the dance of creation in all times, as looking at all created things as good, as (like proverbs tells us) delight being part of the generative process, we can see that as humans, created in the image of our gods, that there is nothing we need to do to prove our worth in the world, even as adults, that we are good just for being who we were created to be.
Another awesome thing about seeing God as these three aspects, dancing together to create life, is the ways it gives us permission to view gender. I love the fact that Jesus has no gender in John until he is incarnated. I think it gives great freedom to people whose hearts, whose souls, feel different from the constrictive gender binary that western cultures place on their bodies.
If there are three aspects of the generative force of God dancing together to create all things, then no one gender expression can conceive of themselves as THE creator, with god-given rights to control the means of creation. Then when God says, “Let us make humankind in our image,” (Gensis 1:26) then all people can feel God’s delight dancing around them, creating them just as they are.
Some argue that we see the divine feminine come around again in the Gospel of John when Jesus tells us that the paraclete (John 14:16) will be sent to be with us- the Holy Spirit, the aspect of God that is constantly seeking to be in relationship with us. In John 14:25 we are told the paraclete will teach us all things.
Our brains have been well trained to think of God as a trinity and reading Genesis, Proverbs, and John together We have been given this picture Of a dance of three, Creator, wisdom, and word, dancing life into the world. Then John busts in with the paraclete. The word is a legal one in Greek, meaning comforter or advocate[2], like someone who might be assigned to a child who needs a voice in court. John’s Jesus says, “God will give you another paraclete who will be with you forever.” (John 4:16) The king James inserts the parenthetical (which is the Holy Spirit) after “paraclete,” making clear that the spirit of God available to us throughout time is the one who Jesus has been calling on throughout the gospel of John, the one who descended on Jesus like a dove when he was baptized, the one we hear of in chapter 20 when Jesus appears to the disciples after he is resurrected and breaths on them, just like God’s breath on the waters in Genesis. And they receive the Holy Spirit.
This paraclete, which feminist theologians believe was understood orinigally as feminine[3], just as the wisdom we read of in proverbs, is equal in spirit to Jesus (“just like me” John 14:16). She dances with us, just as she danced in the beginning of creation with God the creator and the logos who would incarnate as Jesus.
When we reach out to God in prayer, in meditation, in intention, in doing the work of Christ’s church, it is the Holy Spirit that fills us, the paraclete, Sophia
"With great understanding
Wisdom is calling out
As she stands at the crossroads and on every hill
She stand by the city gate
Where everyone enters the city
And she shouts
I am calling out to each of you!"
(Proverbs 8:1-8, Contemporary English Version)
We are still dancing with the divine.
And I know some of you are with me, hungering for a fuller definition of God than father, dancing in delight at the idea that we were created out of the dance of three different gender expressions of God and that the aspect of God who fills us with spirit is wisdom, Sophia, paraclete, Holy Spirit. And I know that some of you find in this revelation that the Judeo-Christian tradition includes a feminine concept of God something foreign
And both are ok.
I was watching a silly TV show this week called 4 weddings[4]. I love all things wedding. In this show we follow four brides, who each attend each other’s weddings and then rate them 1 to 10. And the winning bride wins a honeymoon
This particular episode focused a lot on the dancing at the reception. The weddings were set in New Orleans and one wedding had some weird New Orleans tradition in which the couple dances in the middle and people joined in dancing around them in costumes, including an alligator. From the outside it looked like a mosh pit and a lot of fun. Another weddings has what is called a second line, which is a dance line led by a mardi gras band that took the guests from the ceremony to the reception. Another one had the Saints cheerleaders doing a dance (the bride was a cheerleader) and the last one had a conga line, but not much other dancing.
At the end of the show we get to see who the winner is and what scores the other brides got on different aspects of their wedding. At this point in the show I always think, it is nice to win the honeymoon, but there are really no losers in this show. Each bride has planned the wedding of her dreams. Each bride thinks their wedding was the best, because it included the things that were in her heart. I would have HATED doing a cheer routine with professional dancers at my wedding. I might not even be that interested in watching a bride do it at her wedding, but for this bride, it was heaven because it was an authentic expression of who she is. Dancing with the divine is like that. I think this one of the most beautiful things about the metaphor of God as a dancing trio.
If thinking of God as your Heavenly Father is your authentic expression, then by all means dance with your father who is in heaven. If the divine feminine, the mother who wove the morning, makes your soul sing, then grab onto the circle dance of the divine feminine and dance in the moon light. If the incarnated logos- Jesus- is where you find God, then ask yourself “What would Jesus do?” and go do it in the beautiful dance of living like Christ.
The trinity is a gift inside a gift.
“The Lord our God is One” and yet s big enough and dynamic enough and loves us deeply enough that however God manifests for you is part of the dance of God.
---
[1] https://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/namesofjesus/jesus_-_the_wisdom_of_god June 17, 2019. This is one example of the these that Jesus is what is referred to as wisdom in the Hebrew scriptures. I do not quote this article.
[2] Wikepedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraclete. “Etymology” Muddiman, Barton
Paraclete comes from the Koine Greek word παράκλητος (paráklētos). A combination of "para" (beside/alongside) and "kalein" (to call),[1] the word first appears in the Bible in John 14:16.[2] John Muddiman and John Barton further explain the development of the meaning of this term;
The word parakletos is a verbal adjective, often used of one called to help in a lawcourt. In the Jewish tradition the word was transcribed with Hebrew letters and used for angels, prophets, and the just as advocates before God's court. The word also acquired the meaning of 'one who consoles' (cf. Job 16:2, Theodotion's and Aquila's translations; the LXX has the correct word parakletores). It is probably wrong to explain the Johannine parakletos on the basis of only one religious background. The word is filled with a complex meaning: the Spirit replaces Jesus, is an advocate and a witness, but also consoles the disciples.[2]
[3] http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0259-94222016000100026 An example of feminist theology about the feminine nature of the paraclete. I do not quote from this article.
[4] TLC
“In the beginning was the Word, and the word was with God, and the Word was God. It was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through it, and without it not one thing came into being. What has come into being in it was life and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.” (NRSV modified to reflect Greek’s gender neutral pronouns used by original author)
When I was in high school my church, which loved theater, hosted a one-woman play called “Mother Wove the Morning.” It was about the history of the divine feminine in Judeo-Christian tradition. And it began with Sophia (in Greek) hokma (in Hebrew). In the beginning of what was to become Judaism, Yahweh, like all of the other gods in the ancient Middle East, was half of a divine duo. It was Yahweh and Hokma. This is perhaps why the God in Genesis who creates people says “We created them in our image, male and female we created them.”
But the early Hebrew religion had one attribute so different from surrounding religions that Hokma got lost. “The Lord our God is one,” (Deut. 6:4) begins the she-ma, the most ancient and holy of Hebrew prayers. The Ten Commandments say, “You shall have no other gods before me.” (Exodus 20:3) So the imagining of God as two genders, male and female, was collapsed into one God whose feminine aspects were de-emphasized. They are still there in our scriptures, but you have to look for them.
This morning we hear a scripture that calls out Hokma/Sophia, wisdom, the divine feminine that is still a part of our tradition. Not surprisingly, wisdom is one of the generative forces of God. “My cry is to all that live” she says. There is a portion of the chapter that today’s reading skips, in which wisdom declares that it is by her insight and strength that just rulers rule. Her favor is the favor of God that Israel spends the bulk of the Hebrew scriptures trying to keep or to regain. Later, she says, “From the beginning I was with the Lord, before creation of the earth began,” just as the Gospel of John says that Jesus was in the beginning with God and that all things came into being through him.
And I think this image, of wisdom and Jesus and God all being together in the beginning before creation, is what inspired the Seasons of the Spirit (https://www.seasonsonline.ca/) curriculum writers to use the metaphor of dance for today. There was God, who we often call creator, and there was wisdom, Sophia, as the generative force. And then John throws in Jesus. Some have substantiated a thesis that describing Jesus in this way was one way of covering up our roots of worshiping a divine feminine, In this thesis, Jesus is not part of the dance of God at the beginning of time, but Sophia was and Jesus is put there to please the patriarchal systems that had evolved.[1]
In one sense this matters greatly whether we understand the divine to have a feminine generative aspect because by any observation of the created world, females are a necessary part of creating life and if our divine metaphors of creation ignore women it suggests that human women are only a means to creation and not creators ourselves, which allows laws and attitudes to prevail that treat women as little more than medical equipment for developing fetuses. So I find it useful to understand that the logos that will be the incarnated Jesus, which has no gender assigned to it in the beginning of the Gospel of John, is actually the same generative force that Proverbs describes as the divine feminine wisdom and that creation has come about by the dance of both male and female creators.
In another sense it doesn’t matter if we understand the Logos to be the feminine divine known as wisdom. Imagine God, the creator, who is, in our tradition, most often understood to equate in some way with a masculine gender, and the logos, who is described in the Gospel of John as gender neutral, dancing at the beginning of time with Sophia, the divine feminine, and that somehow in that dance all things came into being. It’s like God began to dream and to dance and out of that energy came wisdom and out of that energy came the logos, the word. And together they were with God and they were God and through that dance all things came into being. Not one thing came into being without them. This is the dance of life.
Genesis tells us that every time this dance of the divine created something, light and dark, water and dry land, plants and animals, they looked at it and declared it good. There is an essential value in the created world just for being created. When a sprout breaks forth from a seed it does not have to prove its worth in the world, it is good just for being what it is. When a child is born it does not have to prove its worth to the world, it is good just for being who it is.
Part of the wisdom of these three texts, of God in Genesis and the wisdom of God in proverbs, and of God as the logos in John, is that these aspects of God exist in all times. God is still, even now, in the beginning doing the dance of creation. When we understand God this way, as dancing the dance of creation in all times, as looking at all created things as good, as (like proverbs tells us) delight being part of the generative process, we can see that as humans, created in the image of our gods, that there is nothing we need to do to prove our worth in the world, even as adults, that we are good just for being who we were created to be.
Another awesome thing about seeing God as these three aspects, dancing together to create life, is the ways it gives us permission to view gender. I love the fact that Jesus has no gender in John until he is incarnated. I think it gives great freedom to people whose hearts, whose souls, feel different from the constrictive gender binary that western cultures place on their bodies.
If there are three aspects of the generative force of God dancing together to create all things, then no one gender expression can conceive of themselves as THE creator, with god-given rights to control the means of creation. Then when God says, “Let us make humankind in our image,” (Gensis 1:26) then all people can feel God’s delight dancing around them, creating them just as they are.
Some argue that we see the divine feminine come around again in the Gospel of John when Jesus tells us that the paraclete (John 14:16) will be sent to be with us- the Holy Spirit, the aspect of God that is constantly seeking to be in relationship with us. In John 14:25 we are told the paraclete will teach us all things.
Our brains have been well trained to think of God as a trinity and reading Genesis, Proverbs, and John together We have been given this picture Of a dance of three, Creator, wisdom, and word, dancing life into the world. Then John busts in with the paraclete. The word is a legal one in Greek, meaning comforter or advocate[2], like someone who might be assigned to a child who needs a voice in court. John’s Jesus says, “God will give you another paraclete who will be with you forever.” (John 4:16) The king James inserts the parenthetical (which is the Holy Spirit) after “paraclete,” making clear that the spirit of God available to us throughout time is the one who Jesus has been calling on throughout the gospel of John, the one who descended on Jesus like a dove when he was baptized, the one we hear of in chapter 20 when Jesus appears to the disciples after he is resurrected and breaths on them, just like God’s breath on the waters in Genesis. And they receive the Holy Spirit.
This paraclete, which feminist theologians believe was understood orinigally as feminine[3], just as the wisdom we read of in proverbs, is equal in spirit to Jesus (“just like me” John 14:16). She dances with us, just as she danced in the beginning of creation with God the creator and the logos who would incarnate as Jesus.
When we reach out to God in prayer, in meditation, in intention, in doing the work of Christ’s church, it is the Holy Spirit that fills us, the paraclete, Sophia
"With great understanding
Wisdom is calling out
As she stands at the crossroads and on every hill
She stand by the city gate
Where everyone enters the city
And she shouts
I am calling out to each of you!"
(Proverbs 8:1-8, Contemporary English Version)
We are still dancing with the divine.
And I know some of you are with me, hungering for a fuller definition of God than father, dancing in delight at the idea that we were created out of the dance of three different gender expressions of God and that the aspect of God who fills us with spirit is wisdom, Sophia, paraclete, Holy Spirit. And I know that some of you find in this revelation that the Judeo-Christian tradition includes a feminine concept of God something foreign
And both are ok.
I was watching a silly TV show this week called 4 weddings[4]. I love all things wedding. In this show we follow four brides, who each attend each other’s weddings and then rate them 1 to 10. And the winning bride wins a honeymoon
This particular episode focused a lot on the dancing at the reception. The weddings were set in New Orleans and one wedding had some weird New Orleans tradition in which the couple dances in the middle and people joined in dancing around them in costumes, including an alligator. From the outside it looked like a mosh pit and a lot of fun. Another weddings has what is called a second line, which is a dance line led by a mardi gras band that took the guests from the ceremony to the reception. Another one had the Saints cheerleaders doing a dance (the bride was a cheerleader) and the last one had a conga line, but not much other dancing.
At the end of the show we get to see who the winner is and what scores the other brides got on different aspects of their wedding. At this point in the show I always think, it is nice to win the honeymoon, but there are really no losers in this show. Each bride has planned the wedding of her dreams. Each bride thinks their wedding was the best, because it included the things that were in her heart. I would have HATED doing a cheer routine with professional dancers at my wedding. I might not even be that interested in watching a bride do it at her wedding, but for this bride, it was heaven because it was an authentic expression of who she is. Dancing with the divine is like that. I think this one of the most beautiful things about the metaphor of God as a dancing trio.
If thinking of God as your Heavenly Father is your authentic expression, then by all means dance with your father who is in heaven. If the divine feminine, the mother who wove the morning, makes your soul sing, then grab onto the circle dance of the divine feminine and dance in the moon light. If the incarnated logos- Jesus- is where you find God, then ask yourself “What would Jesus do?” and go do it in the beautiful dance of living like Christ.
The trinity is a gift inside a gift.
“The Lord our God is One” and yet s big enough and dynamic enough and loves us deeply enough that however God manifests for you is part of the dance of God.
---
[1] https://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/namesofjesus/jesus_-_the_wisdom_of_god June 17, 2019. This is one example of the these that Jesus is what is referred to as wisdom in the Hebrew scriptures. I do not quote this article.
[2] Wikepedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraclete. “Etymology” Muddiman, Barton
Paraclete comes from the Koine Greek word παράκλητος (paráklētos). A combination of "para" (beside/alongside) and "kalein" (to call),[1] the word first appears in the Bible in John 14:16.[2] John Muddiman and John Barton further explain the development of the meaning of this term;
The word parakletos is a verbal adjective, often used of one called to help in a lawcourt. In the Jewish tradition the word was transcribed with Hebrew letters and used for angels, prophets, and the just as advocates before God's court. The word also acquired the meaning of 'one who consoles' (cf. Job 16:2, Theodotion's and Aquila's translations; the LXX has the correct word parakletores). It is probably wrong to explain the Johannine parakletos on the basis of only one religious background. The word is filled with a complex meaning: the Spirit replaces Jesus, is an advocate and a witness, but also consoles the disciples.[2]
[3] http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0259-94222016000100026 An example of feminist theology about the feminine nature of the paraclete. I do not quote from this article.
[4] TLC