Proper 12C + 7.28.13 + Justice and the Beloved Kin of God

M. Campbell-Langdell+

All Saints, Oxnard

                            (Hosea 1:2–10 [1:2–9; 2:1 DHH]; Psalm 85; Col. 2:6–15, (16–19); Luke 11:1–13)

“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return. ”[1]

Listening to today's scriptures, I'm inclined to think Annie Dillard's onto something.

Listen to Ps. 85:5:  "Will you be displeased with us for ever? * will you prolong your anger from age to age?"
How many of us have felt that?
And then think on The Hosea reading.  In the light of the birth of Kate, Duchess of Cambridge's comment on the new prince,  "any parent knows what I feel", we note that God is asking Hosea to take what is most precious, his children,  and name two of them “Lo-ruhamah” and “Lo-ammi.”  Unlike “George Alexander Louis,” a name which states a proud kinship and family heritage, these names in Hosea mean "not loved" and "no kin of mine."[2]   It's no wonder clergy sometimes get asked, “Does God punish us?” or “Could it be God is testing me?”  There are certainly places in the scriptures where God seems a God of vengeance.  Surely only a mean, abusive God would ask this of his people, of his prophet, to take that which is precious and disown it.

How to square this with the kindly image of God as Abba, Our Father in heaven?

In the gospel passage for today, Jesus says that we are not just kin, but because of that, we are provided for, given good food and support if we are persistent in prayer.
God begins to seem less a punisher as much as a just householder.   The kind of parent who really cares.  Yet the world can be cruel.  Because we have free will and therefore a chance to choose good or evil, we are often assaulted by the injustice in this world.  It can give us scorpions and serpents.  Jesus isn’t just pulling those assaults on our senses out of thin air.  He knows that the world can be cruel.  He’s about to see it in more stark clarity than ever in his suffering and death.

Because Jesus, scripture-lover that he was, knew the next step in Hosea’s story also.  Hosea’s children’s names are changed.  Because in 2:1, God says “Say to your brother, Ammi, and to your sister Ruhamah.”  Here we see that their names have changed.  They are now “Kin-of Mine” and “Loved,” respectively.  We too are beloved, kin of God.
And we, beloved children of God, are called into relationship, so that God can help us handle the changes and chances of this life.

That we may so pass through things temporal, that we lose not the things eternal.
So strap on your metaphorical crash helmet and look at this prayer, the tool that Jesus gave us to use to help live into this relationship.

John Dominic Crossan says that this, “The Greatest Prayer” as his book is titled, is a revolutionary and profoundly socially important prayer.  It is not simply a private interchange between an individual and God.  He mentions that the key words “name,” “kingdom” and “will,” point to heaven and “food,” “debt,” and “temptation” point to earth. To have a good relationship with earth—with our food, debt and temptation, we need to try to order our lives according to God’s just will in heaven.  In this sense, Crossan sees heaven as less a place in the future as a way to live into God’s will here on earth.  Crossan says that this prayer is not only about a petition to God to do something for us—to provide us food, or forgive us sins, or protect us, it is also about empowering us to live into a more just distribution of food in our world, to forgive each other’s debts literally (and here is where Crossan prefers “debts” to “sins” in his translation) to allow for economic justice and to empower us to avoid the temptation, which Crossan sees primarily as a temptation to commit violence. 

This whole interpretation is based on a sense that Abba, the word Paul uses, a much more intimate word associated with the Father, is not a distant imperial leader but a kind, loving and just householder, who provides justly if not always equally to everyone in the household.[3] 
Jesus is saying that we are part of the household of God.  So, how are we praying?  And what are we doing to make the world more loving and more just?  We are already working on food justice with the Community Garden and with Bread of Life, and in our own outreach ways on bringing economic justice.  We will soon have a community-wide forum later in August on prevention of violence in our communities, to help us each not fall into the temptation of being less of a child of God than we can be by committing violence.

But our call, our crash-helmet call, is to live into this.  It can be dangerous to live this out because Jesus doesn’t promise us security.  But it is part of the privilege and responsibility each of us has as the beloved kin of God.  

Because, at base, that’s what we are. Children of God. We may feel abandoned at times, unloved and abandoned by God, but God yearns for us to turn to God in prayer, to remind us of just how loved and claimed we each are.  We may feel cast aside due to our sin or our troubles, but Jesus has already put all sin aside.  He has nailed it to the cross.  He has taken the cruelty of the world and overcome it.  He has shown us how loving and just God is.
So take that weight off your shoulders, child of God. The world isn't easy, but we, loved and kin of God, brothers and sisters in Christ, we can face it together, with God's help.  And perhaps we can help bring about the kingdom, a world that is more loving and more just, every day.

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[1] Annie Dillard, quoted from: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/170797-on-the-whole-i-do-not-find-christians-outside-of.

[2] Carol A. Newsom, “Footnote to Hosea 1:10- 2:1,” Oxford Annotated Bible, 2001.

[3] John Dominic Crossan, from a Presentation at Trinity Santa Barbara, March 1, 2013 based on his book The Greatest Prayer.