Build and Plant
“Build and Plant”
Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, Year C, August 25, 2019
Jeremiah 1:4-10 Luke 13:10-17
Pastor Andy Kennaly
Sandpoint, Idaho
In Henry David Thoreau’s book, “Walden” he talks about winter setting in with very cold temperatures. Animals, such as voles, make warm beds, crawl in them, and hunker down to stay warm. But people create a spacious place, such as a house or cabin, and then the air is heated and people can walk around in that warm space as if it’s summer. There is something unique about human beings in their approach to living in relation to their environment, something different than other creatures. People create tools, such as lamps, and use them to shape life as desired, like keeping a light on well past sunset. Yet as different as we are, we’ll still connected.
In Jeremiah we also see the prophet appointed to do things, to shape culture as God appoints him “over nations and kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.” This huge responsibility is a tremendous calling. Even Jeremiah recognizes his inability, feeling small in the face of such overwhelming powers. Yet this passage shows God encouraging Jeremiah to not feel small because, indeed, he is connected to God. In fact, God has intimate knowledge of his life. While Jeremiah focuses on lack and begins with negative thinking, God is positive and provides graceful abundance.
This type of contrast is echoed in Luke’s story of Jesus healing a woman bent over for 18 years, bringing in the negative energy of the leader of the synagogue who wants to follow the letter of the law regarding healing on the Sabbath. This leader is treating this woman worse than an animal, while Jesus honors her human dignity. As she stands up straight, her response is praising God. As Jesus confronts the limiting thoughts and actions of the synagogue leaders, “the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.”
This past Wednesday I went to Spokane for an Inland Northwest Presbytery gathering unlike any I’ve ever been to. As people shared their joy of faith and life through music, song, poetry, story, and sharing about what God is doing in their neighborhood, this experiential experimentation was a supportive place of sharing and encouragement. I shared some writing, a short prose and a couple poems. One story that stood out for me was from the Pastor at Lidgerwood Presbyterian Church in north Spokane, along with a local woman who came to that church and asked to create a ministry which connects with youth who are falling through the cracks. Juveniles who need to do community service, kids who are neglected, those who don’t fit in, generally very poor, even malnourished. The church was open to exploring how they could use their facility in partnering with other agencies to create relationships that teach positive aspects of life, such as nutrition, study skills, music, and art. They are creating gardens and murals and transforming the neighborhood as they partner with God’s Holy Spirit at work in non-traditional ways that the church is not used to, but is open to. How is it that this small church of older members with no children actively participating is now birthing a ministry for youth?
Nothing can be done when it starts on a negative note. When you start in the hole of lack or futility or despair or guilt and shame, you will stay in that hole. This is the case, on a larger scale, for the Church as its shaped by narrow interpretations of Augustine’s fourth century doctrine of Original Sin. This has shaped the Church for over a thousand years but it is not going to serve the Church well into the future. Our world faces things Augustine could not have anticipated, such as nuclear weapons and greenhouse gasses. These are existential threats not only to people, but to God’s lovely creation.
How do we come alongside Jeremiah to hear encouragement and calling? How do we not be overwhelmed by the absurdity of the systems and traditions we assume are normal? How do we, like Jesus, confront misinterpretations of essential understandings of human dignity and divinity? How do we confront hypocrisies as people in power perpetuate violence and injustice, and they unleash their anger when their ego-centric status quo is critiqued, exposed, and challenged? Are we willing to walk the road of the prophet, or align with Jesus in non-violence that leads to a cross? What is it that empowers Godly people to live into the Beatitudes and discover blessedness in meekness, and Godly Presence in peacemaking?
Something I heard this week suggested that what helped Jesus on the journey toward the cross, as he lived his ministry facing such intense scenes like we read about this morning involves the way it started. His public ministry begins at his baptism, and in the midst of the Holy Spirit descending on him like a dove, which is a symbol of peace, he hears a voice of God the Father saying, “You are my Son, my Beloved. With you, I am well pleased.”
And what happens to Jesus, as an archetypal figure, happens to all of us. Jesus represents humanity, so that message comes to us as well. This is why, as Jesus calls the woman over, reaches out and says, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment,” she is healed. Was her ailment the stooping over? Or was it being treated subhuman by society and those in authority using rules to manipulate, much like we do in our own time? Or was it her own thinking, assuming God was punishing her or she wasn’t worthy of such blessing? Ailment is a big word in this case, and she is free.
This is not freedom to do whatever you want, not freedom in a politically, arrogant attitude like we see as people quip slogans like, “Freedom isn’t free.” Freedom has more to do with responding to the world’s needs from the grounded power of grace and love, certainly not violence. Freedom is like the prophet saying, “Yes, I will go and I will speak for you are with me.” Freedom is an inner freedom that does not depend on external circumstance or the lack of suffering or pain.
To come alongside Jeremiah and to enter the joy this woman is gifted with in Luke, let’s turn to a couple of people to frame a helpful starting point for inner transformation that can lead to global transformation. Let’s look as Richard Rohr shares some quotes from Pope Francis as the Pope talks about non-violence as a key aspect of who Jesus is and how we are called to live our faith and lives. Also we’ll read some Matthew Fox as he emphasizes the importance of starting on a positive rather than negative, on original blessing and what he calls, Via Positiva as we claim our place as God’s beloved, as God is pleased.
As we hear thoughts from Pope Francis, let’s listen for the core that makes non-violence possible: He says, “I pray that the image and likeness of God in each person will enable us to acknowledge one another as sacred gifts endowed with immense dignity…. May charity and nonviolence govern how we treat each other as individuals, within society and in international life […], the hallmark of our decisions, our relationships and our actions, and indeed of political life in all its forms…. Violence is not the cure for our broken world. […] An ethics of fraternity and peaceful coexistence…cannot be based on the logic of fear, violence and close-mindedness, but on responsibility, respect and sincere dialogue. Hence, I plead for disarmament and for the prohibition and abolition of nuclear weapons: nuclear deterrence and the threat of mutual assured destruction are incapable of grounding such an ethics. […] Jesus taught that the true battlefield, where violence and peace meet, is the human heart: for ‘it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intensions come’ (Mark 7:21)….Jesus marked out the path of nonviolence. He walked that path to the very end, to the cross…(Ephesians 2:14-16). Whoever accepts the Good News of Jesus is able to acknowledge the violence within and be healed by God’s mercy, becoming in turn an instrument of reconciliation. In the words of Saint Francis of Assisi: ‘As you announce peace with your mouth, make sure that you have greater peace in your hearts.’… As my predecessor Benedict XVI observed…: ‘For Christians, nonviolence is not merely tactical behavior but a person’s way of being, the attitude of one who is so convinced of God’s love and power that [they are] not afraid to tackle evil with the weapons of love and truth alone.’ (Richard Rohr, Center for Action and Contemplation, Daily Devotional for Wednesday August 21 2019, with footnotes online to site other works and quotes, https://cac.org/politics-for-peace-2019-08-21/).
“So convinced of God’s love and power that they are not afraid.” “Make sure you have greater peace in your hearts.” That’s the idea as we look at Matthew Fox and Via Positiva as he says: “Some readers have wondered if we seem to be spending too much time on the Via Positiva – they are eager to move on to the Via Negativa, the suffering of the world, and eventually to the Via Transformativa – what we can do about that suffering. I fully understand the eagerness to move on to climate change and so much else that needs correcting. But […] we cannot just charge in with our reptilian brains firing as we have tended to do in the past (consider wars for example) as if we are going to solve the problem with the same mindset with which the problem took root. Einstein warned us of that, didn’t he? That we need a different consciousness than that which gave birth to our deepest problems to solve them. […] Via Positiva is the difference between cynicism and goodness, despair and hope, vitality and apathy, [a love for life and a compulsive fascination for death], […]. We really have to lead with love and with joy and with gratitude and not with panic or ‘I will fix it’ or ‘let’s kill the bastards.’ […] Today […] we struggle for the air and the waters and the forests and the soil and the oceans and the animals and the fishes and the trees and the insects and so much more. But first we have to love all these beings. […] The crises we face today is opening up our minds and hearts far beyond the human agenda […]. More than ever, then, we need to stop and sit and be present to the Via Positiva to allow our love for the world and the world’s love for us to be deeply felt. This can carry us beyond nationhood and ethnic or racial or religious smallness into the much bigger world of creation itself. Love will be the source of our energy and our imaginations that will render us effective agents for deeper change. Not superficial change, but a change that begins and ends with the reverence and gratitude we all carry in our hearts toward the universe that has birthed us. With that kind of deeper perspective our prophetic callings stand a better chance of effective results. We taste the future, the goal, even as we walk the way. And it is a loving journey.” (Daily Meditations with Matthew Fox, August 19, 2019, https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.org/2019/08/19/as-we-reach-a-milestone-some-thoughts/).
As we journey deeper into love, opening our hearts to the original wisdom in and through which we are created, seeking awareness of the Living Christ in all things, as God’s beloved, claimed by divine dignity, the Jesus Way is calling us be prophetic from a foundation of positive transformation. Thanks and praise be to God for this ‘path of descent’ deeper into love, both NOW, even as forever. Amen.