Worship at home

Disclosure of God comes
by steady discernment and by readiness to trust
Walter Brueggemann

Boundless, O God, is your saving power;
your harvest reaches to the ends of the earth.
Set our hearts on fire for your kingdom 
and put on our lips the good news of peace.
Grant us perseverance as heralds of your Gospel
and joy as disciples of your Son,
Jesus Christ our Lord;
who lives and reigns with you, 
in the unity of the Holy Spirit, 
one God for ever and ever.  Amen¹

Readings for Sunday 5th July 2020: Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 59-67, Psalm 45:10-17, Romans 7:15-25a, Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

There’s no pleasing some people

I talked with an artist one day, in front of a piece of their work, which I didn’t particularly like. It is hard to express the kinds of things that you might say to others, when the artist is present. But this person was incredibly perceptive and ultimately asked what it was that I didn’t like. Amazingly, after I expressed my views, the artist said that all critiques were gratefully received, because it showed that the work had an innate power to provoke response. (as opposed to an insipid piece that the public just walked by.) It is quite a bold approach to life.

John the Baptist and Jesus both offered challenging perspectives on the culture and traditions of the time. Triggering strong reactions from the leadership of the day, Jesus commented on the fact that they neither liked John’s asceticism nor his own social engagement

John was seen as somehow strange because he was teetotal and ate an odd diet and was therefore possessed by a demon. Jesus came eating and drinking with all kinds of people and was therefore a glutton and a drunkard. There is just no pleasing some folks, and they are likened to children who cannot agree on the type of game to play.

Instead, Jesus gives thanks to God for revealing the truth to ‘infants’; in other words, those who neither find the crucified Christ a stumbling block nor foolishness (1 Corinthians 1:18-25). In Christ’s time, these were the underprivileged, the poor, the tax collectors and sinners – all in fact who knew their need of God and were not willing to hide behind a veneer of respectability. Their openness allowed them to hear to good news and to take Jesus at his word.

A lesson in true spirituality

Yet the family we have been following in Genesis are far from marginalised – they own property and servants. In fact, when Abraham dispatches his most trusted retainer to find Isaac a wife from the ancestral homeland, the servant leaves with 10 camels and a load of gifts for the prospective – but as yet, unknown – bride (Genesis 24:10, 22 & 52). By now you should be visualising a whole cavalcade: Abraham’s estate manager, plus camels and enough people to take care of the camels, and then the catering team, with all the provisions for this 600-mile-plus journey.

However, the story is full of people who share the kind of wisdom and spiritual intelligence, humility and gentleness of spirit, that enables them to respond to God.

The servant prayed for divine guidance (24:12) and then did not forget to praise and thank God for divine guidance (24:27). There is surely an important message there!

At this part of the story, Isaac – very much the child of the covenant – has lost his mother, Abraham his wife. But amidst the grief and pain, Abraham took great care to see that Isaac will have a companion in future days.

Being blessed

Very often people talk about being ‘blessed’ now, and not always within a religious context. It seems a term devalued to the sense of describing how things are working out well for them. But in Scripture, to be blessed indicates a knowledge of the love and faithfulness of God. Here is the prayer made by the unnamed servant:

Blessed be the Lord, the God of my master Abraham, who has not forsaken his steadfast love and his faithfulness toward my master. As for me, the Lord has led me on the way to the house of my master’s kin. (24:27)

This is a stunning prayer. Acknowledging that indeed Abraham has been blessed by God’s love and faithfulness, the servant blesses God. Later on, the Psalmist gives us those beautiful words which echo this act of blessing God:

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me bless his holy name (Psalm 103).

What a beautiful way into prayer and worship!

But then does the servant become petulant because his life isn’t so ‘blessed’? Not one bit of it, the servant is overjoyed at the way the Lord has led him. I feel another Psalm coming on: Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. (Psalm 23:6).

Here is a man about his ordinary, everyday life, meeting the instructions of his boss and giving thanks to God for it! I think there is plenty here to reflect upon.

Loyalty and Fidelity

I’m not too sure that these qualities are uppermost in the list of ‘essential’ and ‘desirable’ on job specifications at present, but they are important for all followers of Jesus. Perhaps we should begin with the loyalty of God to those who trust the divine word, and always honours the promises made. (NB. God does not always work to human plans or time-scale.)

This loyalty is infectious: Abraham followed God’s instruction (after quite a long time exploring this particular way of working). Abraham’s servant is an impeccable model of trust. Laban allowed his daughter to leave for a strange land and Rebekah chose a journey to that unknown place to meet an unknown husband and family.

It seems that the God who creates, the God who rescues people from Exodus and Exile, can also gently re-create hearts and minds. This delightful tale reveals what it is to discern God’s mind and then steadily learn to trust. For most of us, it takes a life-time of learning

The text provides an important opportunity to help persons think about faith, what it is and how it comes. In a culture which grasps for visible signs of faith, which is driven toward scientism, and which falls for too many religious quackeries, this story stands as a foil against easy and mistaken faith. The workings of God are not spectacular, not magical, not oddities. Disclosure of God comes by steady discernment and by readiness to trust.²

And finally

Jesus invites us to step out in faith into the unknown. What might post-Covid 19 lockdown churches look like? I can only promise that it is unlikely that it will be a return to the way of life we knew before the pandemic struck. For some people and some church communities, following Jesus will incur a cost: – maybe you already feel weary and burdened with the way life has been over the past few months. But what Jesus offers is a yoke. In other words, he offers to partner with us and to help bear the burden, and in doing so, we discover true rest.

O God of boundless mercy, now we come
bringing our sacrifice of praise
to him who left his heavenly father’s throne
to show the world your saving grace.
Lord, in the light of overwhelming love
what can I give, what offering?
Lord of the harvest, here I am, send me.³

Amen

¹Collect for the fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time. The Methodist Worship Book ©Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes. (London: The Methodist Church in Britain. 1999)

²Walter Brueggemann, Interpretation: Genesis, (Atlanta: John Knox Press 2010), 201

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