Disruptions
“Disruptions”
Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, September 25, 2022
Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15 Psalm 91:1-6 Luke 16:19-31
First Presbyterian Church of Sandpoint, Idaho
Pastor Andy Kennaly
Dyno, as worship leader has read from Jeremiah, and a real estate person I’m sure Dyno has an appreciation for the transaction that gets recorded not only in government records or at a title company, but in the Bible. Here is a field purchased, documented, and the records put in safe keeping. This is good because everything else in that context is in turmoil, faces destruction and breakdown as the Empire of Babylon invades, destroys, and tries to control. Even the prophet is in prison, yet God’s word comes.
In my newspaper article last Friday one of the sentences suggests that peace is more than the absence of war. Peace does not necessarily mean violence does not exist. The peace Jeremiah proclaims has more to do with courage through the violence and hope for redemptive outcomes. He shares God’s proclamation, “Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.”
We see from the Psalmist that the Most High provides shelter, the shadow of the Almighty is becomes “my refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust.”
This is an amazing sentence, “my God, in whom I trust.” It may mean that we trust in God, but this leaves open the possibility, perhaps even the assumption, that God is external, a supreme Being far above and away, separate in holiness from creation, creatures, you and me. But more likely it seems powerful to comfort if “my God, in whom I trust” is an existential statement, describing our existence, that we are in God. “My God, in whom,” meaning we are in God as we trust, and it’s because we’re in God that trust is possible and reliable.
As most Hebrew scriptures are written, the Psalmist uses images to express deep truths. Like, “God will cover you with God’s pinions, and under God’s wings you will find refuge; God’s faithfulness is a shield and buckler.”
This sentence starts with pinions and ends with a buckler. A pinion is the outer part of a bird’s wing. This image is as God’s wing enfolds us implies shelter, indeed it says ‘refuge.’ This is pinion as a noun. More modern definitions involve a gear mechanism, like rack and pinion steering in a car’s drivetrain. The psalmist didn’t know about cars, but knew about birds and wings and how protective this is.
The buckler is about God’s faithfulness, like a shield and buckler. A shield is large and protects one from missile weapons, like arrows. A buckler is smaller, worn on the wrist, only about a foot and a half wide at the most, and is easily maneuvered for defenses as enemies try hand to hand combat. Under a pinion, protected by a buckler. God’s faithfulness is sure.
Another definition of pinion is as a verb. It is to retrain or immobilize someone by tying up or holding their arms or legs. This comes from the practice of clipping wings, taking off that outer section, the pinion, so birds can’t fly. But here we see this used as encouragement, that we can’t flee from God’s love and care. We are bound, and it’s God’s faithfulness that does this.
Jeremiah seems so sure. The Psalmist seems confident of God’s goodness. They both trust the power of God in the face of tremendous odds, active resistance, and contexts that would make it seem foolish to have such faith. And yet their historic contexts are not the story with staying power. Their relational context is the grounding force. They don’t get a choice on what befalls them, and they have troubles. They do have the option of noticing, of coming to an awareness that even in the midst of troubles, God is there.
Luke’s gospel tries to encourage the outsider, the marginalized, to experience this type of deliverance. This story is filled with reversals, and what our world would promote, like wealth and success, don’t even lead to the rich man getting named in this story. Instead, it’s the poor man who suffers, Lazarus, who is named. This Greek noun in Hebrew is Eleazar, which means, “God has helped.” Jeremiah is writing about God’s help, the Psalmist is writing about God’s help, and Luke writes about God’s help.
Strange images, like the angels carrying off Lazarus after he dies, in contrast to the rich man who dies and is buried. There’s spacial imagery, with up and down indicating various qualities of experience, and a gulf fixed between. It doesn’t say who fixed it, who put the gulf there, but in a world based on a civilization that promotes wealth inequality, enforces borders not only for protection but exclusion, and powerful elites literally look down on the poor masses as they fly over in their Gulf Streams and Lear Jets, it’s not a stretch to say the gulf is fixed not by God, but by people not paying attention, not claiming inherent connections.
This story may suggest that God is critical of Western culture. Written not long after Plato the philosopher gained prominence to shape assumptions and behavior, entire cultures bending toward systems of injustice and violence, this passage is a satire on civilization, and a wake-up call for nothing less than the emergence of a new civilization.
As the Pharisees try to ridicule him, Jesus’ response is nothing less than a proclamation of God’s reign, one that has, in Christ, fulfilled the law and the prophets. God sees the heart. Jesus shows us how imminent God is.
Barbara Brown Taylor shares a reflection on these themes as she says, “Popular religion focuses so hard on spiritual success that most of us do not know the first thing about the spiritual fruits of failure. When we fall ill, lost our jobs, wreck our marriages, or alienate our children, most of us are left alone to pick up the pieces. Even those of us who are ministered to by brave friends can find it hard to shake the shame of getting lost in our lives. And yet if someone asked us to pinpoint the times in our lives that changed us for the better, a lot of those times would be wilderness times.” (Celtic Daily Prayer Book Two, Farther Up and Farther In, William Collins publisher, 2015, pages 1291-1292).
The wilderness has much to teach us. Those places where deeds of established properties don’t help us. The church has much to learn from the wild. Sometimes it is our own assumptions, the structures of our institutions, and the dominance of outdated worldviews that prevent our experience of God’s faithfulness, protection, and presence. Sometimes its when these face disruption that our faith grows the most, deepens with glimpses of mystical connection, and falls further into the unending love of union with God.
May God help us through disruptions as we put our faith in the One who is faithful still. In Christ, we give thanks as grace unfolds. Amen.