The Old Testament God vrs the New Testament Jesus

            This week’s sermon explores the differences between the Old Testament and the New Testament. quite an undertaking to explain in the space of a 10 to 15 minute sermon.  So I began my research as any child of the computer age would, I went to the internet and googled the question “What is the difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament.”  The answers that came back to me were quite interesting.

• “The Old Testament was written before Jesus was born and the New Testament was written after.”  
• “The New Testament is the sequel to the Old Testament.”
• “The Old Testament is the covenant between God and the Israelites (sons of Abraham) and the New Testament is the covenant between God and everyone else.”
• “The Old Testament is Jewish, the New Testament is Christian.”
•  “In the Old Testament, the stories tell of a wrathful and vengeful God, whereas he does not exhibit his wrath as often in the New Testament until the book of Revelation.” 
• “The Old Testament is about the Law, The New Testament is about grace.”
• “The New Testament trumps the Old Testament.”

There are a lot of opinions out on the World Wide Web but it is hard to figure out what is the truth.  It reminds me of my very first day of Old Testament class in seminary.  The professor began the class by asking us to share our perceptions of the Old Testament and many of the answers that came were similar.  Many of us said that we didn’t like the Old Testament because the God of the Old Testament is a vengeful and angry God.  We thought that the Old Testament was all about sin, starting with the fall of humankind from it’s beginnings in the Garden of Eden.  That in the Old Testament God was all about laws and obedience, bringing wrath upon those who disobeyed him.  Some perceived the Old Testament as writings of doom and gloom where God thought badly of humankind and that in order to redeem us God sent his gentle son Jesus to be sacrificed for our sins which is written about in the New Testament.   In essence what we were saying was that the Old Testament was bad and the New Testament was good.  So why were we endeavoring to take a year long class on a section of the Bible we so detested, does required class for graduation ring any bells.  But thank goodness for required classes because they can help a student to open their eyes to new ways of seeing old stories.

First we must remember that the Bible is not just one book; but it is a collection of 66 books that tell the story of God’s relationship with humankind and creation.  Throughout the New and Old Testament this relationship is communicated through covenant—the promises of God made to humankind to love, care for, and guide us in the ways that give us life.  In the Old Testament the covenant is expressed most simply when God said, “I will walk among you, and I will be your God and you shall be my people.” (Leviticus 26:12).  This covenantal relationship was also expressed by Jesus in the New Testament when he made this promise to the disciples at the Last Supper “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” (1 Corinthians 11:25b)[i]  The Bible is not a single story with a single plot line, but rather the books of the Bible are put together like a family album.  The Bible contains a compilation of different kinds of literature.  Within it are sagas, laws, poetry, and even heroic biography to name a few.  Some of the books of the Bible are in placed in chronological order whereas other parts of it seem to be out of sequence. 

The Old Testament is the life story of Ancient Israel.  What some are now designating as the Hebrew Scriptures.  The distinction between the Old Testament and the New Testament is only a Christian one.  For the Jewish community there is only one Testament and they refer to it as the Tanak.  The Christian Bible divides Older Testament into four sections.  The First being the Pentateuch, the first five chapters of the bible which tells the basic story of the Israelite people which includes laws to guide them in living.  There we have Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.  Then come the numerous historical books, Joshua, Judges, Kings, Chronicles and others which talk about the political history of the Israelites Nation.  Then we have the books of Poetry and Wisdom, the book of Job, Psalms Proverbs etc. Then it come the prophetic writings:  Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel to name a few.  In these we find stories where God calls prophets to speak on his behalf to warn nations that if they keep doing things the way they are, that calamity will come down upon them.

            The New Testament contains the stories of the Christians.  It begins with four different accounts of Jesus’ life and ministry in the Gospels:  Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  The story continues with the history of the first Christians in the book of Acts.  Then we have the records of the early church through Paul’s letters to various churches, what we call the epistles.  Then the New Testament ends with the Book of Revelation which is the prophesy of what the world will be like in the culmination of the things to come. 

The over arching theme of the Old and New Testament is the grace and love of God.  Throughout the Bible, God longs to be in relationship with humankind, God blesses humankind with an abundance so that all may have what they need to live whole sustainable lives.  However God also gives humankind free will, we can either move towards God and heeds Gods call to spread the blessing of abundance or we can move away from God and deal with the consequences.  What the stories of the Old Testament are trying to do is to explain why life is difficult.   Beginning with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, we hear stories of the consequences of people and nations who fall short of God’s call for all of creation to live in right relationship with each other.  God’s will is justice for all of God’s creation. 

The law is the same throughout the Old and New Testaments.  It is grounded in covenant, which is God’s commitment to be in relationship God’s people.  The punishment that nations and peoples suffer in the Bible is not by God coming down on them to smite for their bad behavior.  Rather the punishment suffered is a result of a a nation living in unjust ways, where wealth is held by few while many live in poverty, where nations fall by their own arrogance and abuse of the earth leads to plagues, storms and famine. 

Unfortunately misinterpretation and misunderstanding have given the Old Testament a bad reputation in Christian Church history.  Throughout history some have incorrectly interpreted the New Testament as being over and against the Old Testament.  Pieces of it have been taken out of context and misunderstood to validate such things as violence against Jewish folk, the taking back the Holy Land through the crusades and conquering new lands in the name of Jesus. 

The Gospel of John has been misused many times for this purpose.  In it we read, “He came to what was his own and his own people did not accept him.  But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God”   This text has been used to discriminate against people of the Jewish faith and the Hebrew scriptures.  But if we take into account the context in which this gospel was written, we remember that the early Christians whom the evangelist John writes to were part of the Jewish community but in conflict with their faith community because of their belief that Jesus was the messiah sent by God to be the embodiment of God’s grace and love.  They were expelled from their church home, the synagogue and so they had to carve a new church home for themselves.  What this newly formed community needed was comfort and assurance and John provides it for them by recalling that Jesus wasn’t accepted by his people either.

The God of the Old Testament and the Jesus of the New Testament are the same.  In the Christian tradition we believe that Jesus is God incarnate.  That God loved the world so much that God poured Godself down into the human form of Jesus.  And the New Testament very clearly states that the incarnation of Jesus did not do away with all the teachings that came before him, as he states in the gospel of Matthew, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.” Matthew 5:17-18 

The accomplishment of the Law is love and God’s love and grace are found in the stories of both Old and New Testaments.  Do not think that one is better then the other because it is all God’s story.  May it be so.  Amen.

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[i] Kathleen C. Ackley, Project Editor; writers: Kealahou Alika…[et al.] Affirming Our Faith:  A Congregations Guide to Confirmation. (Cleveland: United Church Press, 2008),  44.

Ruth the Moabite - Where ever you go I will go

Hello, my name is Ruth. 

Perhaps you have heard of me. 

I’m the great grandmother of King David and I’m the great great grand mother of Jesus 28 times removed. 

I am from the land of Moab over by the dead sea. 

I have an amazing story to tell, so amazing that someone actually wrote it down and put it in your scriptures and they named the book after me. 

Quite an achievement because I am a woman and there is only one other book in the Bible that is named after a woman.

My story begins with my mother-in-law Naomi. 

She and her husband Elimelech (a-lee-ma-lech) suffered a great famine in the land of Judah. 

So they and their two sons Mahlon and Chilion left Bethlehem, their hometown and immigrated to Moab. 

This undertaking was a great risk for Elimelech and Naomi because the Moabites were despised by their people the Israelites. 

The Israelites would joke that nothing good comes from Moab, that the Moabites were strange people, who prayed to strange Gods, worshiped in strange ways and ate strange food. 

But for Elimelech and Naomi’s family, the fear of hunger overtook their fear of what was different and so they settled into Moab and became part of the Moabite community.

Unfortunately illness overtook Elimelech and he died, leaving Naomi with her two sons in this strange land of Moab. 

She was resourceful and made due with what little she had and rose her sons Mahlon and Chilion to become good strong men. 

I was married to her younger son Chilion. 

It was quite controversial me a Moabite woman to chose to be married to a foreigner.  Marriages are usually arranged by the brides father, and no one ever marries for love.  But when Chilion and I met we knew we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together.  My father had a fit when I told him I wanted to marry Chilion an Israelite. 

He told me that if I married “that foreign boy” that he would disown me.

 It devastated me to leave my family but I had to go where my heart was leading me.

When I moved into Chilion’s home, his mother Naomi showed me such loving kindness.  It seemed like she knew what I was going through, because she had lost all ties to her family when she moved from Bethlehem to Moab. 

She treated me like I was her own flesh and blood, remaining steadfast and true to me when my family abandoned me. 

For ten years we lived as one big happy family, me Chilion, his brother Mahlon and his wife Orpah and of course Naomi. 

Orpah and I tried hard to give our husbands sons, but it was not to be. 

On our tenth year together, an illness plagued the land of Moab and too the lives of Chilion and Mahlon.  This left us three women, Naomi, Orpah and myself widowed and childless. 

Not a good place for a woman that time to be in. 

You see, women were considered the property of men. 

A woman’s very survival depended upon the men that she was connected to. 

It starts with the father giving his daughter to be a wife to a man of his choosing. 

Then it was the wife’s job to provide male heirs to her husband. 

Women could not own or inherit land. 

If a woman was not connected to a man as a daughter, wife or mother, she was nothing.

So knowing she had nothing and she was nothing, Naomi left Moab to go back to her homeland of Bethlehem in Judah hoping that one of her townspeople would take pity on her and care for her. 

Orpah and I decided to follow her to Judah because really we had nothing to lose. 

A little ways into the journey Naomi realized that it was foolish for us to follow her into Israelite territory. 

Unlike the Moabites, the Israelites were not keen on foreigners. 

Their rulers even told their men to cast out their foreign wives and children from their households in order to purify the land of Israel. 

Naomi said, “Go back each of you to your mother’s house.  May the Lord deal kindly with you as you have dealt with the dead and with me.  The Lord grant that you may find security, each of you in the house of your husband.” 

Orpah and I cried and begged her to let us continue but Naomi said, “Turn back, my daughters, why will you go with me? Do I still have sons in my womb that they may become your husbands?  Turn back, my daughters, go your way, for I am too old to have a husband. Even if I thought there was hope for me, even if I should have a husband tonight and bear sons, would you then wait until they were grown? Would you then refrain from marrying? No, my daughters, it has been far more bitter for me than for you, because the hand of the Lord has turned against me.”

Orpah kissed Naomi and left back to Moab, but I clung to her and saying,

‘Do not press me to leave you
or to turn back from following you!
Where you go, I will go;
where you lodge, I will lodge;
your people shall be my people,
and your God my God.
17 Where you die, I will die—
there will I be buried.
May the Lord do thus and so to me,
and more as well,
if even death parts me from you!’

How could I leave this woman who showed me such kindness, loyalty and compassion when my family abandoned me. 

I could not stand to live with out her. 

When Naomi saw how determined I was to go with her, she silently continued her journey to Judah with me trailing behind her. 

When we got to Bethlehem, Naomi would not even acknowledge my presence as her companion.  When she ran into some of her women friends in Bethlehem she told them to call her Mara which means better.  She said, “I went away full, but the LORD has brought me back empty.”  (1:21)

All the while forgetting that she returned to Bethlehem with me, her daughter-in-law.  Her friend derided me, calling me Ruth the Moabite, woman of the despised people of Moab.

I knew that I was a burden to Naomi as her foreign daughter-in-law and I was willing to do anything I could to be of help to her. 

One morning I told her that I was willing to risk life and limb by going out alone to the fields to glean the left over crops from the harvest. 

It was dangerous for a woman, especially a foreign woman to wander around Bethlehem alone.

I hopped that I’d find someone who would take pity on us and hire us as servants. 

Naomi dismissed me, saying“Go my daughter.” And so I went. 

As providence would have it, I came to a field that belonged to Boaz. 

Now I didn’t know it at the time, but Boaz was a relative to Naomi, and he was wealthy.  Boaz had heard from his neighbors about Naomi and me. 

He was impressed at what he heard of my steadfast and loyal love to Naomi. 

So he let me keep close to his women servants, giving me the choicest of leftovers. 

Then Boaz invited me to eat at table with him and his servants. 

I tell you my cup runneth over, because by the time I was done gleaning I had enough wheat and barley to last Naomi and I for 30 days. 

When I came home with my harvest, Naomi was astonished. 

She asked me how I got so much wheat and barley and I told her all about Boaz. 

Her eyes became as big as saucers, she had thought her and her husbands family all died in the famine, but obviously Boaz survived.

Naomi was so grateful to me for the kindness and loyalty that I had given her that she wanted to secure my future by joining me with Boaz. 

She devised a scheme where I could win Boaz’s hand in by entrapping him in a levirate marriage. 

I didn’t feel comfortable doing this but because I loved and trusted Naomi, I willingly went along with her plan. 

I won’t go into details but after a night on the threshing floor, a nail biting trial in front of the town elders and a negotiation with an even closer relative of Naomi’s, Boaz was finally able to take me as his wife, thus giving security not only for myself but for my mother-in-law Naomi. 

God gave me the gift of a son which Boaz and I named Obed. 

When he was born it was a blessing for both Naomi and me. 

The towns women blessed Naomi by saying “Blessed be the Lord, who has not left you this day without next-of-kin;^* and may his name be renowned in Israel!  

He shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age; for your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is more to you than seven sons, has borne him.” 

She took Obed to her bosom and became his nurse.  And the towns women sang, “A son has been born to Naomi”

What is amazing about my story is how God worked through my devotion to Naomi to do God’s will. 

In other stories you hear about God intervening in history through wars, plagues, seas parting and burning bushes. 

But in my story, God worked behind the scenes. 

Sometimes it was done by putting us in the right place at the right time or just by inspiring someone’s generosity.

What I’ve learned is that God longs to go where ever we go in our life journeys and in times of adversity, God will work through the people who love us to help us ‘make a way out of now way’ just as God worked through me to help Naomi. 

Thanks be to God.

What Happens When We Die? Considering the Communion of Saints.

            Every morning Beloved and I like to take a walk around our apartment complex after having our daily cups of coffee.  Most mornings are spent in deep conversation and on a particular morning last week Beloved was trying to engage me in her thoughts about the tumbling economy, the starving children in Somalia, and the conflict over our nation’s debt crisis.  Nothing small or casual but I was too distracted t listen to here.  As she spoke every word sounded like the adult voices that you hear on Charlie Brown cartoons, “mwa, mwa, mwa”  When she realized that I wasn’t hearing a word she was saying, she demanded, “Pay attention to me, I’m talking about the state of our world.  What could possibly be more important than that.”  “Well dear,” I replied, “I’m just thinking about the sermon I have to give this week on what happens to us when die.  Just how am I going to fill up a 15 minutes sermon saying, ‘I don’t know.’”  Then she said, “Well isn’t it communion Sunday this Sunday.”  “Wonderful” I replied, “I get to say ‘I don’t know for a 10 minutes meditation!” 

Death is truly the final frontier.  All of the questions and notions of what happens after we die and lead us to one conclusion, that when we die we go somewhere else.  Where, we don’t know.  We haven’t been able to fly a human into death and have them come back to us to give us a full report of what’s out there.  Other than Jesus and Lazarus and a couple of other people in the scriptures, we mortals have not been resurrected from the dead.  We get hints of life after death from those who have had near death experiences but they are just that, hints.

            What images come to mind when you think of the afterlife.  Some of us associate heaven with clouds, harps, and streets paved in gold.  We imagine that our deceased loved ones are up there (point up) dressed in white robes blissfully enjoying one another.  We recall the many jokes about people waiting in line at the pearly gates with St. Peter as a heavenly bouncer deciding who gets in and who stays out.  We tremble as we imagine that other place, down there, (point down) the place we call hell.  It is the place where all the bad people are supposed to go to pay for their sins.  This is a place that is full of fire and brimstone, where we hear people crying in agony.  This place of eternal damnation is controlled by a scary looking red monster with horns and a pitchfork. 

            Where do these images of heaven and hell come from?  Do they come from our scriptures or from other sources?  Even if they are in our scriptures, are they meant to be taken literally or metaphorically?  Both the Old and New Testaments speak of heaven and hell and our scriptures give us assurance of eternal life, but what is this eternal life that we keep hearing about. 

            It is hard for us to conceive that the life force of a person, what we call the soul ceases to exist when the body dies.  Just as Einstein states “Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it just changes form.”  Some faith traditions believe in reincarnation, that when a body dies, its life energy is passed onto another living form being born.  I tell you if that is true, I’m going to come back as a housecat, now that’s a great life!  Our tradition believes that one day we will be resurrected as shown to us by the bodily resurrection of Jesus on Easter morning.  In the epistle this morning we hear the Apostle Paul’s proclamation of the resurrection.  Paul is assuring his listeners that because God raised Jesus from the dead that death does not have the final word.  As the apostle Paul states, “Death has been swallowed up in victory.  Where O death is your victory?  Where, O death is your sting?  The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.  But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Cor. 15:54b-51)  What Paul is saying is that because Jesus rose from the dead we can face the reality of our bodily deaths courageously and faithfully.[i]  Knowing that physical death is not final, but merely changing form from this world to the next gives us the confidence to live in the ways of Jesus even if doing so leads us to suffering and even death in the hands of our persecutors. 

            The daunting question in this of life after death quandary is really one of salvation.  How do we know if we are the ones who are going to an eternity with God or an eternity of damnation?  Many Christians believe that the only way to heaven is in exclusively believing in Jesus.  In the gospel we hear Jesus say, “I am the way the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14: 6)  But Jesus did not mean to be exclusionary.  He’s not saying it’s either my way or the highway.  The words “I am” come from the Older Testament story where God tells Moses that his name is “I Am” thus what Jesus is doing whenever he says, “I am” such as “I am the bread of life, I am the light of the world” he is declaring the divine name of God and fusing it with a human longing.  So when Jesus says, “I am the way…no one comes to the father except through me.” Jesus is joining the human longing for spiritual certainty with the name of God.[ii]  He is stating that anyone could have the same close and abiding relationship that Jesus has with God if they follow the way that Jesus lived his life!  Jesus lived in the way of love that embraced all of humanity as children of God.  He lived in the way of generosity that knew that God has blessed all creation with abundance both in this life and the life beyond it.  To live outside this way of love and generosity was to live in a state of alienation, separation from God.  This is living in a state of hell.  To live in a place of hate, in a place fear, in a place of perceived scarcity, in a place of harsh judgment that according to Jesus is living in hell.  However, hell is neither lasting nor is it a final destination.  As Jesus assures us in the gospel, “In my father’s house there are many dwelling-places.  If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?  And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you myself.  And you know the way to the place where I am going.” (John 14: 2-5) 

            What happens to us when we die?  We don’t know, but we have faith that we will go someplace beyond this world to where God dwells.  We catch a glimpse of it every time we gather around this table for the sacrament of communion.  In the breaking of the bread and the pouring of the cup we participate in the foretaste of the heavenly feast to come.  We have faith that one day we will gather together transformed in the presence of God.  We will gather with those who have come before us and all who will come after us and all of creation will sit at table with Jesus and the saints and share in the communion of the bread of life and the cup of liberation.  May it be so.  Amen.

           

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[i] Maria Marsala “1 Corinthians 15:51-58:  Homiletical Perspective” FOW Year C, Vol. 1(John Knox Press: Louisville KY 2009), 399.

[ii] Shannon Michel Pater “John 14:1-14: Exegetical Perspective” Feasting On the Word, Year A, Vol. 2 (John Knox Press: Louisville KY 2010) , 469.

Judaism, Islam, Christianity – They all Started with Abraham

Genesis 12: 1-4a

             16:1-6

             17:15-22

             21:8-18

            As many of you know I am going off lectionary for the rest of the summer.  I thought it would be fun to see what questions might be stirring within the hearts and minds of many of you.  A number of you gave me topics that were relevant, thought provoking and theologically challenging.  I will begin this sermon series with a question that many of us are contemplating especially in this day and age which asks what are the parallels the three dominant world religions of our time: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. 

            In order to understand these faith traditions we have to start with a history lesson.  Now anyone who has ever taken a class from me knows that I am a religious history geek.  I love delving into the past and figuring out how each historical event connects to one another through time.  So you can imagine that I had a lot of fun doing research for this sermon.  Yes the three traditions are connected, one coming from another.  This morning we heard some of the stories of Abraham.  The Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths all claim Abraham as a Patriarch.  We remember that over 2000 years before the birth of Jesus, Abraham was called by God to leave his country of Haran (modern day Turkey) to the promised land of Canaan (modern day Palestine).  There God would make him and his descendants a great nation.  “I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing… and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (12:2a-3)  Thus began the covenantal relationship between God and Abraham.  The covenant was a series of promises, God promises blessings to him if Abraham will promise obedience and worship only to the one God Yahweh.

            At the time of Abraham there were many competing gods.  It was common practice to worship idols, little to large clay statutes that depicted the likeness of a particular god.  Worship for the purpose of appeasing and giving sacrifice to the gods who were indifferent to human morality or conduct.  So for example if a woman was barren, she would worship and leave an offering to the goddess of fertility in hopes of being able to have children.  Traditional Jewish stories called the Midrash state that when Abraham was a little boy, he thought that idol worship was foolishness.  However Abraham’s father made and sold idols for a living, so you can imagine that Abram’s opinion caused a bit of tension in his house.  One day Abram was asked to mind his father’s store and as soon as his father left, Abram took a hammer and smashed all the idols.  When his father returned and saw the destruction he yelled at Abraham “What happened.” Abraham replied “The idols fought and destroyed each other.”  Of course his father didn’t believe him and he told Abraham that the idols were just objects of clay and stone with no powers of their own.  Abraham asked his father, “If idols have no power of their own why do you worship them?”  Scholars debate whether belief in the only one God Yahweh was started by Abraham or if Abraham was a returning to a pre-historic tradition.  Regardless, I’m sure he still went to bed with out his supper the night he destroyed the idols.

             One of the blessings that God promises Abraham is that he will have numerous descendants “as numerous as the stars in the sky” (22:17) However Abraham’s wife was barren and both Abraham and Sara were of advanced age.  Given the grim situation, Sara took things into her own hands and told Abraham to try to conceive a child with her slave Hagar, for any child of her slave would become her own.  Hagar gives birth to Abraham’s first born son and calls him Ishmael.  As the story goes, years later God gives Sara a son Isaac.  Sara does not want Ishmael, Abraham’s oldest son to take her son Isaac’s inheritance so she demands that Abraham cast out Hagar and Ishmael into the wilderness.  Abraham is greatly disturbed for Ishmael was his flesh and blood, but God assures him that Hagar and Ishmael will prosper, “As for the son of the slave woman, I will make a nation of him also, because he is your offspring.” (21:13) Muslims believe that they are the descendants of Ishmael’s legacy.  According to the Muslim tradition it was Ishmael, not Isaac whom God commands Abraham sacrifice.

            Rooted in Judaism, Christianity traces its legacy to Abraham through Isaac.  The early Christians were part of the Jewish community but in conflict with them because of their belief that Jesus was the messiah sent by God to be the embodiment of God’s grace and love.  They were expelled from their church home, the synagogue and so they had to carve a new church home for themselves.  Even so, they did not do away with the foundational stories of their faith the stories of the Abraham, Moses, Noah and others.  They kept the Jewish scripture and through out the New Testament we hear the stories of Abraham. Jesus refers to Abraham in his preaching and teaching.  The apostle Paul lifts Abraham as an example of faith.  In Paul’s letter to the Hebrews he states, “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going ” (Heb 11:8)

            Now Islam started over 600 years after Jesus’ birth through the revelation of the Quran (Muslim Scriptures) to the prophet Muhammad.  It is said that the angel Gabriel spoke the words of God directly to Muhammad who was illiterate at the time, and so it is believed that every word of the Quran is the inerrant word of God whom the Muslims call Allah.  Muslim tradition believes that their people were descendants of Ishmael and that Allah made Muhammad his final prophet to correct the mistakes and interpretations of the former prophets of Judaism and Christianity.  So it would seem that replacement theology has had a trickle down effect, with Christianity superseding Judaism as the new covenant in Jesus Christ and Islam superseding both Christianity and Judaism as right theology.

            While it is hard not to be frustrated by one tradition calling ours wrong, we need to remember that God is a great and unknowable entity.  As hard as we might try, we cannot put God in a box.  Just as God has many paths of reaching us, God has provided many paths to reach God.  Be it Judaism, Islam or Christianity, as long as we make an effort to connect with the one who is greater than us, God is satisfied.  Theologian and religious scholar Karen Armstrong states that the commonality of all world religions is that at our best we are compassionate, at are worst we are controlling.  All three religions call for peace and social justice and seek to make a world where all of creation to live in right relationship with each other.  It is when religion is used to control that it goes against what ever scripture it ascribes to.  When the Taliban was in control of Afghanistan, their regime was oppressive especially to women and girls.  The rules set forth requiring women to cover themselves from head to toe and the restrictions on the education of girls did not come from the Quran or Muslim tradition, instead it was an exaggeration of some Muslim beliefs on modesty blown out of proportion to control half their population.  The same could be said about the terrorist attacks or violent acts done in the name of God.  Despite claims to the contrary the religions of Islam, Judiasm and Christianity condemn violence. 

            We must remember that compassion, forgiveness and peace rule the day for all three traditions.  All three faiths believe that God is merciful and forgiving and that we who are children of God are called to do likewise, whether our earthly example is Moses, Jesus or Muhammad.  For we all believe in the same higher power, be it God, Yahweh, or Allah.  May it be so.  Amen

Midweek Garden Blogging

It's going to be a bumper crop!

Roma Tomato

Wild Flower

Zucchini

Cherry Tomato

To God be the Glory! My garden.

Unlike the sower in Jesus' parable of the soils, I have to carefully planted my seeds and seedlings to bear fruit.  This year looks great, I think I'll be in for another fantastic harvest.  Here are the flowering blossoms.

Squash

Tomatoes

Beans

Cucumber

Chard and Kale

Lil' guy and his new friend tiger.

"Don't you dare take away my new comfy bed."

I Love to Till the Story

Romans 4:13-24
Matthew 13: 1-9, 18-23

        “Do you remember when…”  This line is said at many gatherings, be it of family or of friends.  In May I had the pleasure of seeing most of my family, aunts, uncles, cousins at a family reunion at my brother’s house and the line “Do you remember when…” could be heard throughout the party, Mom do you remember when…., Aunt Barb do you remember when…, Lucia do you remember when…. The bond that holds families together is the stories that we share with each other.  Some have said that the Bible is a family album of sorts.  It is a collection of old family stories passed down from generation to generation for thousands of years to sustain this family of faith. 

Have you ever heard a story told by two different people, are the stories exactly the same.  No they are not, each tells the story from their vantage point.  So too there are stories in the Bible that appears more than once such as the story about the feeding of the five thousand, or the story of the Jesus’ death and resurrection.  The elements of the stories are the same, yet each writer has their own spin on the story, bringing their unique perspective into the telling of the great story.

Much of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim heritage begins with the call of Abraham, where God exhorts him to “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. ²I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.”  All three of the great monotheistic religions (that means religions that believes in One Supreme God) recognizes that Abraham was the gardener called by God to plant the seeds of these great faith traditions. 

In the epistle we read this morning the Apostle Paul is asking “Do you remember when…” as he recollects the Abraham story.  He recalls the great faith that Abraham had when he heeded God’s call to leave his country to “become the Father of all nations.”  He remembers that Abraham and his wife Sarah were old and thus unable to have children, and yet he believed in God’s promise that he and Sarah would have descendants greater than the number of the stars in the sky. 

We continue sharing these stories about Abraham and Sarah, and Jesus and his followers because their stories meet our stories.  These stories are the seeds upon which God’s love grows and blossoms.  The gospel reading this morning is a parable illustrating the growth of God’s word using the image of a peasant farmer casting his seed confidently into the fields.  The path, rocky ground, thorns and good soil are metaphors for the communities who receive the gospel.  God’s word is broadcast out into the world in a haphazard way.  It seems like the sower doesn’t give a rip where the seeds ends up, just tossing it hither and yon with the confidence that somehow he will reap a great harvest despite the waste of seed in the process.  

I find this parable problematic because I am an avid gardener and I wish that I could just go out into my garden, toss some seed and boom, have a bumper crop of vegetables for me and my partner to eat, can and give away.  However, this is not the case. I carefully cultivate my garden plot in order to have a productive garden.  I start by amending the soil with lime to reduce the acidity of the plot.  Then I fill the plot with pounds and pounds of miracle grow gardening soil to make it more plant friendly.  Then I have to carefully plan where I will plant my seeds and seedlings. As the seeds sprout, I fertilize them and weed them.  I stake my tomato and cucumber plants so that they don’t fall to the ground when they start bearing fruit.  I then water my garden on daily basis and give it the occasional dose of fertilizer to maintain growth. 

Yet I can still find grass and weeds coming through the sidewalks, rock gardens and even the retaining wall.  Uuuuggh, you’d think that because they were deprived of soil and sun that grass wouldn’t grow there, but it does.  Everyday, I have to pick the grass, weeds and tree sprouts out of my sidewalk to prevent concrete mishaps.  How to make sense of this parable?  However, in writing this sermon, I started to play around with the metaphor a bit.  When am I the seed, when am I the soil, when do I blossom and when do I whither away.  Where am I planted.  How am I tilled.  Who is tilling me and who am I called to till.  My mind came up with the following idea, maybe I am the seed, and perhaps God is the sower.  Or maybe I am the soil, and God is the cultivator.  Perhaps I am the plant, and God is the gardener.  It is God who throws the seeds of the great story to all people throughout the world.  It is unpredictable how the word will take hold.  It may fall on the path so to speak and be snatched away, however, there is always the chance that the seed will fall into the crack and take root anyways.  It may fall on fertile ground, yet it may get choked by any weed growing around it and die unless the gardener takes time to pull the weeds from the soil so that the plant may flourish.  The point of the parable is that all things are in God’s hands and that God will work with any kind of soil to yield a harvest.  The good news of God’s love for all of God’s creation will take despite any failure or opposition. 
     Consider how the African American slaves were given the gospel before the American Civil War.  The plantation masters wanted to plant the stories of the Bible in their slaves minds to make them more obedient and subservient.  Yet when the stories took root in their hearts, the slaves were able to hear God’s promise of freedom and liberation through the story of Moses leading the Hebrew slaves out of Egypt in the book of Exodus.  God continued to cultivate the story in the hearts of the slave’s children and grand children into freedom from slavery.  This story continued to blossom even in the face of Jim Crow racism and it bore fruit in the hundreds full in the civil rights movement. 
        The joining of the great story and our story is the garden upon which the fruits of God’s work blossoms in our community of faith.  It is when we share with each other “I remember when God was present in my life…” that the seeds of God’s word are scattered that build the kingdom of God one story at time.   
May it be so.  Amen.