The Rock From Which You Are Hewn

God’s story woven into lives of ordinary men…

There’s an interesting word of encouragement that the prophet Isaiah gives the Jews when they are in Exile, when they were poised between the choice of assimilation and despair. It says,

‘Listen to me you that pursue righteousness, you who seek the Lord. Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for he was but one when I called him and I blessed him and made him many’. 

I like what Walter Brueggemann says about theses verses. He says that Isaiah is saying if you want to seek God, look to the oldest, most embarrassing beginning we ever had. He says firstly, remember Abraham. On the one hand, he is the strange, impressive father of the faith who leaves his home at God’s command & goes out on a long journey. On the other hand, Abraham is also a pitiful figure – often helplessness and filled with fear.  Two times he gives his wife Sarah away to other men to save his own skin. Despite God’s promise of a child with Sarah, he sleeps with Sarah’s servant Hagar, to get an heir.

Often Abraham appears so confused, so unsure, so barely faithful.

And when you are done reflecting on Abraham, remember Sarah your mother. Sarah is the beautiful woman who other men desire. She is also the mother of Isaac, the promise carrier. However, when you remember Sarah, remember her oldness, remember her barrenness, remember her mocking laughter in the face of God when He promises her a son.

Yet when you remember Sarah, remember that this old and pitiful woman now laughs a new laugh – an Easter laugh. God uses her very barrenness to create newness. Sarah is the example for all barren people, who have within them no gift of life, no capacity for faith – yet God does something new and unexpected in the face of all the evidence.

What impresses me about this foundational story of Scripture, is what it says about the way God’s story is unfolding among us. Abraham and Sarah are people we can identify with because they are fragile and tentative, often moving forward with fear & hesitation. These are people just like us.

You know, God’s story often isn’t in the grand epics of history, the stories told by the winners. When I read the large sweep of Scripture, it seems to me that God’s story is mostly unfolding quietly, below the radar, twisting and turning – always with the very real possibility of failure. Yet when we remember this story of faith, remember that it is told and retold through the same fragile stories of other biblical characters. Remember the scheming of a timid Jacob, the stuttering of a reluctant Moses, the paranoid actions of a bipolar Saul, the treachery of a wife stealing David, the depressed and suicidal Elijah…

The very wonder of God’s story is that he achieves his purposes in the world through broken ordinary people, just like us.

Bruggemann says we remember these stories because they model faith and they invite faith.

We remember these stories because when these fragile people centered their stories in God’s story, they lived life BIG – filled with purpose, newness and imagination.

Really Turning the Other Cheek

“You have heard it said, ‘You shall not murder’ and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment’. But I say to you that if you are angry with your brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment…”.

“You have heard it said, ‘An eye for an eye…’. But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also…”.

 “You have heard it said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…”.

 

I really feel the stretch of Jesus’ teaching in these passages from the Sermon on the Mount. When I reflect on how my own life measures up to the Sermon on the Mount, I have a sense of missing the mark, of failing daily. In my darker moments I would be sorely tempted to just… give up !

Now, I also balance this with the tension of experiencing God’s grace, of my sense of assurance that the blood of Jesus covers my sin, that before the throne of God I am already declared pure, holy, acceptable, with a righteousness that is not my own. The freedom of it allows me to enter boldly into the presence of God Himself.

While the grace of God releases me from the overwhelming sense of guilt that comes from working hard for salvation, I also wrestle with the tension of scriptures like Mt 5:20, that says, “unless our righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, we will never enter into the Kingdom of Heaven…”. What about John 14:12 where Jesus says, “The one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and in fact will do greater works than these…”. 

Words like these create tension, they create discomfort and uneasiness within us about the teachings of Jesus. I wonder if the anxiety & dissonance is Jesus’ intention, indeed God’s intention for Scripture in general ?  You see I think God can work with us in those places. He wants access to all areas of our lives. I think these are the teachable moments, the places where Jesus teachings can be translated into meaningful action that flavours our total response to living. 

Rather like a wise man who builds his house upon the rock….

 

Oh My God !

I remember my wife being away at a conference and being busy preparing dinner in the kitchen. I was focused and safely immersed in the mundane activities of domestic bliss, when all of a sudden I could hear a high-pitched cry from the garage.  I thought nothing of it because my two boys playing, regularly involves rather loud high-pitched yelps of both pleasure & pain. The problem was that 15 seconds later the noise of it was still there and it was becoming more earnest by the second. It made me come out running, muttering under my breath.

I opened the side door of the garage and the scene unfolded before me. Both boys were crying but my older one was lying on the ground thrashing about grabbing at his neck. At first I thought he was fitting or that he was choking on something but then I was reminded of his high pitched screaming. I rushed to his side and tried to move him and found the situation even more sinister.

Both of my sons had become entangled in a deadly web of almost invisible nylon kite string. Now keep in mind one is six and the other is only four. The older one had the string dangerously wrapped a number of times around his neck. The string was also wrapped tightly around the younger one’s arms and torso and every time he moved in panic, trying to help his brother, the string would pull tighter, cutting into his older brother’s neck.

In those desperate moments my vision narrowed and I felt myself rushing to the precipice of unspeakable horror. My heart was beating out of my chest and I felt sluggish in my thinking.  It took me what seemed forever to break those deadly cords.

When I had finally freed both my boys, I held them tightly, speaking to them quietly, reassuring them with tears streaming down all our faces…

I was very fortunate that day, life isn’t always so forgiving !

You know, it is in those moments, when we are immersed in overwhelmingly difficult circumstances, beyond our control – that Jesus’ cry from the Cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me ?” seem most accessible & resonate deeply within me. 

You know life wasn’t supposed to be this way. In a more just world, a life lived well is supposed to bring blessing & the favour of God. It is the ones who deliberately pursue their selfish & evil ways that are supposed to suffer and to perish.

Yet as the writer of Ecclesiastes observes the world is rather more topsy-turvy. There are, “righteous people who perish in their righteousness and there are wicked people who prolong their life in their evildoing.” 

These last words of Jesus resonate within me for all the times I have been pushed around and broken by a capricious and self-centered world. A world where God sometimes seems distant, even disinterested.