Author: Steve

I was given a bottle of bait that was meant to last the day. My great aunt had a “secret” recipe for a soft dough made from white bread, Velveeta cheese, and a little water and flour. The night before we went fishing she would make a batch, pack it into those little bottles, and then assign one to each fisherman.

The trick was to turn that bottle of bait into fish. I learned that you couldn’t leave the lid off or it would dry out. On the other hand, you had to be careful not to leave it sitting where it could slide open into the water and get soaked through and ruined. It was fun to toss little bits of bait to the small fry in the shallows, but if you did too much of that, you would quickly get to the bottom of the bottle. Likewise, if you constantly whipped your line in casting, the bait would fly off the hook and be wasted. And the most frustrating threat to bait supply was the wily trout which would steal the dough right off the hook, over and over, without getting caught. Trying to set the hook too fast or too hard only aggravated this situation because it often pulled the hook right through the soft bait and left it behind for the fish to enjoy at their leisure.

Good fishing business meant taking that little treasure of bait and carefully stewarding it, but also putting it to good use for its intended purpose. The result was often a creel full of fish to take home for the skillet.

Good business means managing assets, stewarding them but also putting them to good use so that they result in profits. Yet fishing and business both take place in the larger context of the business of life, which itself requires that we discern our assets, those gifts which God has bestowed upon us, and both steward and put them to use.

Proverbs 11, like most chapters in the book, is a collection of sayings without any obvious single connection or theme. But this Sunday I’d like to suggest that the theme of “good business,” as I’ve described it above, the good stewarding and use of what God has given us, works pretty well as a way to get hold of this chapter.

Verses 1-3 begin the chapter with some words about the way we conduct literal business, calling for honesty, humility and integrity. Verse 4 then warns us not to mistake the business of making money for the real business of life. The following verses on through verse 11 suggest that our real business is righteousness.

Then verses 12 to 15 offer thoughts that may again apply to literal business practice, calling for gentle speech, trustworthiness, the seeking of advice, and the avoidance of risky ventures.

Verses 16 and 22 focus on women, the latter verse suggesting that physical beauty is a wasted asset in the absence of the virtue of kindness called for in verse 16.

Several verses in the last part of the chapter, 17, 18 and 24-26, suggest that good business includes generosity, that it is bad business to withhold what others need.

Verse 29, made famous by the play and film both titled “Inherit the Wind,” teaches us that the business of leaving or having a good inheritance is more about gracious and loving relationships in a family than about building a large bank account.

And the last two verses, 30 and 31, again place the greatest profit or value in the intangible wealth of righteousness and how we have built up and cared for each other. The final word of the chapter is another warning like we saw last week in 10:16 about the deadly repayment that will be received for bad business, that is, for wickedness.

If I had to take care of my little bottle of bait in order to come home with some fish, how much more do we need to do good business with what God has given us, in order to come home to Him with righteousness and love and life.

I was playing a computer game, but I suddenly had to make a choice which yanked my mind out of the game world and into spiritual reality. It was early in the nineties and this was the Sierra On-line adventure, Conquests of Camelot. I was playing King Arthur, and my knights had gone missing while pursuing the Holy Grail. Arthur was setting off to find them and to find the Grail itself.

The game began with Arthur’s preparations, among which was seeking spiritual guidance in a nearby chapel. There I saw two altars (I found this old screen shot on-line). One (on the left) had a Christian chi-rho symbol, while the other had what looks like a cross. But I learned that the “cross” decorated an altar to Mithras. I could make the Arthur character kneel at the Christian altar and offer a gold coin. That seemed to be the right answer. To my dismay, though, I discovered I could make no further progress beyond that point. I looked for on-line hints and learned that the puzzle could only be solved by having Arthur kneel at the other altar as well and offer a gold piece to Mithras. He has to worship both gods to succeed.

I had been looking forward to hours of mental enjoyment playing through this game, but I simply could not bring myself, even in a fictional world, to make that gesture of offering and service to a lord different from Christ (I even hesitated today to post the screen shot, which has Arthur kneeling before the Mithras symbol). I erased the game from my hard drive, boxed up the floppy disks and sent it back to Sierra. Fortunately, they were willing to refund my money.

We’ve gone through the first nine chapters of Proverbs, seeing that either/or of commitment to the true God versus something else portrayed in the two female figures of Wisdom and Folly. Now as we begin the actual proverbs of the book, we find that either/or built into the first large section of sayings in chapter 10 through chapter 15. Almost all the verses in those six chapters consist of some statement and then an antithesis, signaled by the English word, “but.”

So in this week’s text, Proverbs 10:1-17, all except verse 10 take the “this, but that” form. Verse 1 starts it out with, “Wise children bring joy to their father, but foolish children bring grief to their mother.” Verse 17 concludes our text with “Whoever heeds discipline shows the way to life, but whoever ignores corrections leads others astray.” Joy/grief, life/death, righteous/wicked, poverty/wealth, blessing/cursing, hatred/love–all these dichotomies show up over and over as Proverbs helps us discern how many of our little choices aim in one big direction or the other, away from God or toward Him.

My wife Beth would vehemently urge me to remember that within the Christian faith, there are many opportunities to practice a health, wholesome both/and thinking. Christians affirm both the body and the soul, both the heart and the mind, both love of God and love of neighbor. Yet the way into that blessed and happy world of holistic both/and celebration of all that God has made also requires some separation, some either/or, some choice to seek Him rather than the other ideas or gods proposed to us.

That good both/and also unfolds here in Proverbs as we see the negative warnings paired with and counteracted by the positive assertions about life which show God at work. So the warning of verse 2 that “Ill-gotten treasures have no lasting value, but righteousness delivers from death,” is supported by the gracious word of verse 3 that, “The Lord does not let the righteous go hungry, but he thwarts the craving of the wicked.”

As we work through all these either/ors in the next few weeks, my hope is that we will be drawn toward the One who truly centers all of life and connects us together in His kingdom.

One of our young men at church, a programmer, occasionally sports a T-shirt which reads, “There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who don’t.” Categorizing people into two types is something we do both humorously and seriously all the time. We can joke that “There are two types of people in the world: those who think there are two types of people in the world and those who don’t.” More seriously, Christians reading the Bible are fairly apt to believe there are just two types of people, the righteous and the wicked or the saved and the lost.

Dichotomies fill our thinking about others. We categorize in terms of rich and poor, white and people of color, male and female, and all sorts of other binary distinctions we find among us.

The book of Proverbs is no stranger to this “two-types-of-people”  thinking. We see wise vs. foolish, wicked vs. righteous, poor vs. rich, lazy vs. diligent, honest vs. dishonest, and several other bifurcations throughout its pages. Yet when we turn to chapter 9, we find those female personifications of Wisdom and Folly, the two women who’ve been vying with each other all along in Proverbs, addressing just a single type of person. In verse 4, Wisdom says, “Let all who are simple come to my house.” In verse 16, Folly says exactly the same, “Let all who are simple come to my house.”

In other words, there is really only one kind of person in the world. At root we are all fallen, sinful, foolish human beings desperately in need of instruction. The only difference is the invitation to which we respond, to Wisdom’s call to come and learn and find life, or to Folly’s call to come and remain ignorant and remain dead.

Verse 10 of Proverbs 9 centers Wisdom’s house firmly in the sphere of right relation to God, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Ultimately, the choice between wisdom and foolishness is a choice to come to God or not.

Yet we all start in the same place. We are all start out “simple,” sinful, lost. The only final difference between us is the choice of direction, the invitation we accept. May we all, as this chapter urges, be wise enough to accept correction and instruction and turn toward the “house” that is full of life.

What are the gifts of the Holy Spirit? Ask any of my Protestant evangelical friends that question and they are likely to rattle off several of the blessings mentioned in Romans 12, I Corinthians 12 or Ephesians 4: prophesy, faith, teaching, encouragement, as well as offices like pastor, apostle, prophet, and then, of course, the more spectacular, “charismatic” gift of speaking in tongues.

However, I learned a few years ago that my Catholic friends would give a completely different answer… from the Old Testament, Isaiah 11:2-3. Speaking of the Messiah, Isaiah identifies the Spirit which will be upon Him in 6 (or 7 according to the Septuagint text from which Catholic translations were originally made) aspects, beginning with “the Spirit of wisdom.” Catholic theology identifies these seven mostly cognitive virtues as the “gifts of the Holy Spirit” and correlates that theology with the seven “spirits of God” before the throne in Revelation 1:4.

I don’t feel any need to adjudicate between the different Protestant and Catholic views of spiritual gifts. My unstudied take on it is that, like many dichotomies in theology, it’s a matter of both/and rather than either/or and that we can learn from each other.

For my purposes this coming Pentecost Sunday, with my sermon text as Proverbs 8:22-36, I wish merely to note that wisdom clearly is one of the works of the Holy Spirit. In John 16, Jesus declares that the Spirit is the Spirit of truth and will guide His disciples into truth. Last week we heard Paul in Ephesians 1:17 pray for the gift of the “Spirit of wisdom” for his readers. A “message of wisdom” is one of the gifts of the Spirit in I Corinthians 12:8.

In Matthew 12:42, in the course of dealing with the charge that He is working miracles by the agency of an evil spirit and right after condemning blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, Jesus declares that in Him there is a wisdom greater than Solomon’s. In I Corinthians 1:24 Paul refers to Christ as “the wisdom of God.”

In our text from Proverbs 8, as in much of the first nine chapters of Proverbs, Wisdom is personified by a female figure, sometimes called “Lady Wisdom.” Ancient Christians identified that figure with Jesus Christ, especially because of the way our text evokes the description of the role of the Word in creation in John 1 and in what Paul says in I Corinthians 8:6 and in Luke’s quotation of Paul in Acts 17:28.

Irenaeus demurred and identified Wisdom with the Holy Spirit rather than Christ. Recently a number of contemporary theologians have gone along and found a supposed ground here for giving the Holy Spirit a female gender.

The fact is, neither identification of the figure of Wisdom with a person of God, either Christ or the Spirit, is totally correct. Lady Wisdom in Proverbs is a literary device like the characters of Hopeful and Obstinate and Faithful and the Giant Despair in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. Neither Bunyan nor the writer of Proverbs intends us to totally identify their personified abstractions with actual persons, even divine persons. They only mean us to help us grasp the importance of these virtues or vices by giving them human-like voices.

In all this, we can still definitely connect the Holy Spirit with the gift of wisdom. Those who labor to discover the mysteries of creation explore one aspect of that gift. Those who seek wise and just solutions to human problems appreciate another aspect. And those who, like many philosophers and theologians, see wisdom directing us toward Jesus Christ as the completion of wisdom are discovering a very rich part of that gift of wisdom. The Holy Spirit works in it all.

The Spirit’s gift of wisdom fits well into the Pentecost story. As many have often pointed out, the miracle of that day is more than just of speaking other tongues. As Acts 2:6 says, they each heard in their own language, an intellectual gift of understanding that is a kind of wisdom.

Amazon keeps inviting me to turn on “1-click ordering.” Yes, it’s a simple way to order through a trusted source without having to specify a payment option or a shipping address or other information, and without having to confirm the order in an extra step or two. It would simplify the steps to that new book or computer part I am about to buy. Yet I’m leery of making my commitment to a purchase too quick and easy. I like the extra steps which give me time to make sure that my order is correct, that the price is what I expected, and that it’s going to the right place. I also appreciate one last chance to decide that maybe I don’t need that item right now after all, so I can delete it from my shopping cart.

The beginning of Proverbs 6, verses 1-5, warns against hasty, thoughtless business transactions. We don’t have enough historical information about business practices in the ancient world to say exactly what is pictured here, though it appears to be the offering of a personal pledge to secure the debt of another person. In other words, it is what we would call co-signing on a loan.

Loaning at interest to fellow Israelites was forbidden by Mosaic law, but no-interest loans were still made as a form of generosity and often some sort of security for the loan was pledged. In the absence of any capital to pledge, it seems a person in need might seek the pledge of another, but that particular practice is discouraged here because of the risk it might bring to one’s own personal property, perhaps a house, or even to one’s own self, since defaulted debts were often covered by selling the debtor into slavery.

So at first glance the wisdom here is a cautious prudence aimed at avoiding business entanglements which could cause personal disaster. With a little leap we might apply that wisdom not only to co-signing on the loans of others but to all hasty business dealings, like shopping on-line or taking on personal debt of any sort. Beware of such transactions and, if you have landed yourself in any such entanglements, as verses 3 to 5 counsel, do not rest until you are free of them. These might be wise words for those, like my own children, taking on or working to pay off hefty student debt.

Verses 6 to 11 of Proverbs 6 continue the theme of diligence with some famous counsel to the “sluggard,” or lazy person. I heard the King James version of the first half of verse 6, “Go to the ant, thou sluggard,” many times as a boy, spoken usually by my great aunt who cherished it as a suitable admonition for lazy children who were slow about their chores.

In any case, this second direction of the chapter, regarding laziness, seems also admirably suited for encouraging the sort of work ethic we value in America. Like pledging security for another person’s debt, laziness also leads to personal disaster, to poverty.

What needs to be remembered here is that it is a logical fallacy (undistributed middle) to reason that since laziness leads to poverty, then if Sally is in poverty then Sally must be lazy. That’s like reasoning that because all cats are animals, then if Sally is an animal, then Sally must be a cat.

So this text is not meant to be a whip to lash the poor with their supposed laziness, but instead a goad for all of us to consider the consequences of not giving proper diligence to the labor necessary to sustain life and well-being.

The other thing to remember about this admonition regarding laziness is that Scripture warns against spiritual laziness and poverty which can exist even in the hardest working and wealthiest of us. To be consumed every waking hour and every day with laboring for money is a form of spiritual sloth which can only lead to the worst spiritual destitution.

Even as I write this I’m reminded of a couple who used to be part of our church who left off attending worship in order to look after their business during the downturn a few years ago. A recent conversation with one of them about their concerns and priorities made it clear that spiritual poverty has been the result, though they “work hard” seven days a week.

This little section of Proverbs seems focused on material diligence, but the lessons seem extremely applicable to spiritual life. Be careful about hasty commitments of any sort, which may bring spiritual ruin. Be diligent and hard-working in spiritual discipline in order to escape a poverty much worse than any lack of money.

O.K., I never do Facebook surveys, games, “Which invertebrate larger than a breadbox are you?”-type nonsense. But my dear wife just answered the “What kind of old person will you be?” survey and came out as the “Elder-in-love,” a person who celebrates his/her 50th anniversary and shares much joy with a beloved spouse. You might be happy to know my results came out the same, although I wouldn’t have been surprised to wind up in a “Grumpy old fart” category.

(That’s not us in the picture, by the way, for anyone reading this who doesn’t know us. And we’re celebrating our 35th anniversary this year in June.)

In any case, that goofy little quiz made a point much better expressed in Proverbs 5, the joy and delight of faithfulness in marriage. As I mentioned in passing in last week’s sermon, the first nine chapters of Proverbs bounce back and forth between a metaphorical depiction of wisdom and folly as a good woman and an evil woman, respectively, and a literal admonition to avoid an evil, “loose” woman and the sin of adultery. This week we are going to sit down in chapter 5 and take seriously that literal warning.

Once again, of course, we must recognize that Proverbs originally addressed young men, but it is simple enough to transform the warning here into female terms and hear a caution for young women to avoid the attractions of sweet-talking “bad boys.”

These days of “safe” sex might make the warning in verses 3 and 4 that “the lips of a loose woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil, but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword,” seem a bit quaint. But I would challenge us to consider whether anyone, male or female, who has had a series of casual relationships has much in the way of true and lasting happiness out of those experiences. My guess is that the reality is more like much sorrow and pain.

Yet this text is a bit unique in that, while full of warning, it also offers beautiful images of the joys of faithfulness in marriage in verses 15-19. Verse 18, “rejoice in the [spouse] of your youth,” is a sweet command when it is faithfully carried out. Verse 19 is reminiscent of the language of the Song of Songs in its joyful celebration of human physical intimacy in sacred context of marriage.

The end of the text in verses 21-23 invites us to make the metaphorical leap and see one’s faithfulness to a human spouse as an image of faithfulness to God, as well as of the pursuit of wisdom rather than folly. My conviction is that the literal and metaphorical work together so well because that was God’s design in human life. To be male and female is to be created in the image of God’s own triune life of unity in difference.

God thus uses the image of husband and wife here in Proverbs and the Song of Songs,  in the prophets, Ephesians 5 and the closing chapters of Revelation as a picture of our relationship with Him, so that faithfulness in marriage is closely connected with faithfulness to God. I would go so far as to say that one loses one side of that connection with severe peril to the other side, and that maintaining one side of the connection aids and supports the other side.

Of course, human life and marriage is fraught with failure, disappointment and pain. Many who would like to experience the joy of a long, faithful marriage are prevented by failure, whether of their own or of a spouse, or by early death, or by the simple misfortune of finding no spouse, or by other sorts of circumstances which conspire against the human happiness pictured in verses 18-19. And of course we must recall that our relationship with God is the primary thing, so that a number of us are called to good and whole lives of singleness, which is no less a way to be a good and faithful human being.

In it all we must constantly affirm what II Timothy 2:13 teaches, “if we are faithless, he remains faithful.” It is the faithfulness of God which undergirds and makes possible all human faithfulness, and God’s faithfulness which remains even when our faithfulness falters and fails.

This past Sunday a guest speaker in our adult Sunday School spoke about ministry to Muslims. In the course of his talk he told us that “Islam” is an Arabic word for “submission,” that is, submission to Allah. However, Muslims will often say that “Islam” means “peace,” because the consonants of the word in Arabic are related to the Hebrew/Arabic word for peace, shalom. It may be misleading to leave out the literal sense of “submission” when explaining the meaning of Islam, but the connection makes good sense, even in Jewish and Christian terms.

As we move on in Proverbs to chapter 3 we encounter the only two times the Hebrew word shalom “peace” is used in the first nine chapters. In verse 2 the parent says that their teaching and commandments will provide peace (translated “abundant welfare”), while in verse 17 we read about wisdom “all her paths are peace.”

It’s often been noted that the Hebrew concept of shalom is much richer and broader than our notions of peace. For us it’s almost a negative concept, the absence of conflict, or perhaps an internal sense of calm and tranquility. But as the first translation (“abundant welfare”) attempts to communicate and as the whole chapter unfolds, shalom denotes a wide sense of well-being that includes material prosperity, mental calm, and spiritual security. It is both peace with God and peace with other human beings.

The message of Proverbs is that wisdom is the path to shalom, to peace, as it says directly in verse 17. That is why, in verses 13-16 wisdom is prized higher than precious metals or jewels, and is said to provide long-life and honor. That is why in verses 21-26 wisdom is what gives one a sense of confidence and brings sweet and peaceful sleep without fear.

This extensive peace, this shalom is an extravagant promises for the pursuit of wisdom. To some extent it requires the rest of the book of Proverbs to unpack this promise and show how it can result from seeking wisdom. In the meantime it is good to know that there is another route to peace and prosperity besides the endless hard work and eternal vigilance by which we have often pursued those prizes.

I hear a lot of Hollywood tag lines these days, but not many proverbs. Short memorable phrases that recall the whole flavor of a movie, like the Terminator’s “I’ll be back,” or the Ghostbusters’ “Who you gonna call?”, seem to have replaced the more folkloric expressions of popular wisdom which seemed to be always dropping from the mouths of previous generations.

Many of those once popular proverbs came from Scripture or else from Ben Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac. Of course they haven’t wholly disappeared. Even younger generations have likely heard, “Pride goeth before a fall,” or “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” However, my impression is that there is a general decline in the espousing of proverbial wisdom. The big exception may be in the popular maxims of business where lines like “Good is the enemy of great,” are repeated often. Yet even in business we have Dilbert cartoons regularly debunking trite managerial maxims and little genuine respect for what can be learned via a single well-turned phrase.

Still and all, the Bible speaks often of wisdom, and the single book of the Bible which is most fully focused on the exposition of wisdom is Proverbs, a compendium of those short, memorable phrases, so many of which, at least until the last couple decades, have been part of everyday conversation and common sense.

So I felt inspired last fall while on my annual prayer retreat to commit to preach through the book of Proverbs this year, starting this coming Sunday. The opening verses, Proverbs 1:1-9, are in themselves a defense of paying attention to, learning from, and even committing to memory some proverbial wisdom. There is good instruction to be had here, say verses 4 and 5, for both the simple and the wise.

Verse 7 includes the bookmark phrase of the whole book, occurring here at the beginning and again at the end in Proverbs 31:30, “the fear of the Lord.” That attitude of respectful, humble reverence for God is the both the “beginning of knowledge” here at the outset and the capstone of a beautiful life at the close of the book. This by itself is worth a lifetime of reflection and internalization of how such “fear” works out in practical terms. It’s my hope we can gain some such wisdom this spring, summer and fall as we look together at the wisdom collected in this now neglected book.

And since it’s also Mother’s Day this Sunday, we will note that, as Solomon begins to expound his proverbs, it’s to parents in verses 8 and 9 that he first points as sources of instruction in this sort of wisdom.

There are plenty of people ready to poke holes in Christian faith, whether by questioning the veracity of the Bible, denying the intelligibility of doctrines like the Incarnation or the Trinity, or pointing fingers at the bad behavior of Christians. We can spend quite a lot of effort trying to plug those holes through solid apologetic debate or by works of service wherein we demonstrate that our faith does produce good action. And that is time well spent.

It came to me, however, while I meditated on this week’s Gospel reading from John 20:19-31, that you could say our faith is founded upon holes! It was the holes in Jesus’ hands and side which were the basis of faith for Thomas. And “those wounds yet visible above,” which Godfrey Thring celebrates in third verse of “Crown Him with Many Crowns,” continue to be foundational to our understanding of what God has done for us in Christ.

Our faith is one which accepts the wounding, the holes punched by the world in us and what we believe, and, by the grace and strength which raised Jesus from the dead, triumphs over those holes, even glories in them.

On the sillier side of thoughts about all this is an old science fiction short story by Theodore Sturgeon, “It Was Nothing — Really!” Sturgeon imagines a brilliant discovery prompted by the observation that toilet paper almost never tears at the perforations. The only conclusion is that somehow the paper is stronger at that point where the holes are punched. This leads to the reasoning that if removal of material makes something stronger, then removing even more material will make it even stronger, until you reach the point where you have removed all material and are left with an indestructible “nothing.” Thus is invented a powerful force field.

The Sturgeon story is nothing but geeky silliness, but it carries a hint of the sober truth about the Gospel, about our faith and life in Christ. Paul says, “when I am weak, then I am strong,” because that is when the power of God shows up. Just like for Jesus, the holes in us, our wounds, are just the place where the real strength of God appears among us.

Christ is risen! Holes and all.

“She came in like she owned the place,” is what you or I might say about a guest who entered our home and began to rearrange the furniture or the dishes in the kitchen cupboards. That is how Jesus strode into the temple, just after the Palm Sunday “triumphal entry,” as recorded in Matthew 21:12-17. His actions there demonstrate an ownership of this “house of prayer,” as He names it in verse 13, quoting Isaiah 56:7.

I decided to extend the Palm Sunday text (Matthew 21:1-11) this year to include the “cleansing of the temple,” because, while the common lectionary gives us John’s account (John 2:13-22, in Lent of Year B) of Jesus cleansing the temple early in His ministry, the lectionary totally omits the second cleansing recorded by Matthew, Mark and Luke, occurring in Holy Week. Since what Jesus says upon cleansing the temple the second time is completely different from what John records for the first cleansing, it seems worth our attention.

I’ve learned from Don Carson’s commentary on Matthew that the quotation of Isaiah and the word Jesus uses to condemn the merchants and moneychangers doing business in the temple court shows us something of significance for the church in regard to our mission and purpose in relation to the world around us.

Let’s begin with Jesus’ charge that the offenders He chases out have made the place a “den of robbers.” The word for “robber” is the same one used to describe the two men crucified on either side of Jesus in Matthew 27:38, though the NRSV chooses to translate it “bandits” at that point.

As I preached about the parallel crucifixion text in Luke last fall on Christ the King, “robbers” or “bandits” is a bit misleading. Though the word literally means something like “those who seize” or “plunderers,” in Jesus day it was regularly and most frequently associated with the Zealots, a nationalist group of Jewish rebels opposed to Roman domination. We might call them “terrorists” or perhaps “freedom fighters,” depending on one’s point of view, today.

In any case, it is very possible that Jesus is not so much condemning the larcenous practices of those who changed money and sold sacrificial animals, as He is condemning a Jewish nationalist spirit. That is further supported when we take account of the actual location of the commerce going on in the temple. It must have been in the outer court of the temple, the court of the Gentiles, the one part of the temple which a non-Jew might enter in order to worship God.

Moreover, that quotation from Isaiah 56:7 is truncated in Matthew, but in Mark 11:17 it is completed, “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations.” Jesus’ complaint is that this temple, this house of God, is meant to be a place where all people can come and speak to and meet God, but that the noise of a marketplace and a Jewish exclusivism has ruined the provision for the non-Jew to have a point of entry into true worship.

And to return to where I started, Jesus states this claim on the original purpose of the house as its true owner. He can “rearrange the furniture” to make room for those seeking God because this is His house.

You and I might want to look at how we behave in the “house of God” today, whether that is a physical place of worship or the spiritual house of God in the community of the Church. Have we made our physical acts of worship and our Christian community a “house of prayer” where people may come and meet God, or have we excluded them with all the “business” and other transactions in which we engage, shutting off the opportunity for genuine communion with God?

O.K., I’m officially a dolt. I realized that as I began to study this coming Sunday’s sermon text, the end of Genesis 3, the expulsion from the garden in Genesis 3:20-24. While doing so I made a connection with Tolkien’s mythical history of Middle Earth which I had never seen before.

Though I am sure it was plain to many others, I never could quite figure out why in Tolkien’s universe west is good and east is bad. The elves and wizards come from the west. Orcs and evil come from the east. The Shire is in the west, Mordor is in the east. When the travelers sing an elegy to Boromir in a moving scene at the beginning of The Two Towers, they name the north, south and west winds in his praise, but Gimli refuses to sing of the east wind. And when we come to the Silmarillion we learn that the angels/gods dwell in the true west of the world.

Like an idiot I somehow imagined that Tolkien’s orientation to the west was some product of European prejudice. And I recalled that the Bible has a somewhat eastward orientation. The temple faces east. And there is a long-standing Christian tradition (evidently based somewhat on Matthew 24:27) that Christ will return from the east. Orthodox Christians bury their dead facing east so they will see Christ as He returns to raise them. So I simply chalked up Tolkien’s predilection for the west as an accident of his lineage as an Englishman.

But then yesterday I found the explanation of the westward orientation of Tolkien’s world staring me in the face. Of course, in Scripture human beings were cast out of paradise toward the east! The angel and flaming sword guard Eden on its eastward side so that we cannot return. Which is exactly the story Tolkien imitates and repeats in his mythology of the elves departing the paradise of Valinor eastward into Middle Earth.

So I’m a dolt for not seeing it for all these years, but Tolkien’s many tales of the struggles and woes of men and elves (and dwarves and hobbits) very much reflects the Bible’s picture of our current human situation. We live east of Eden. Paradise is no longer accessible to us and we live a hard existence, scraping for sustenance and in constant conflict with each other, as we heard last week in the punishments God dished out for sin in Genesis 3:14-19.

As John Steinbeck’s novel of that title, East of Eden, suggests, human life outside paradise is fraught with pain and sorrow. Yet it is into that location that God came in Jesus Christ to redeem us. He didn’t call us into some heroic quest to return west to paradise, but came to meet us where we are, east of the garden of His peace and joy.

And maybe that other biblical orientation toward the east, where the temple faces and Christ will return, is a sign that our salvation still lies east, not away from the pain of the world, but into it and through it. That is certainly how Jesus saved us. He went through the Cross and death and into new life. So our journey of faith is in the same direction. And as G. K. Chesterton pictured in his marvelous little book Man Alive, by traveling far enough in that one direction we will journey clear round the world and arrive at home. So God takes us eastward, away from Eden, but in the end brings us back to Paradise.

You run a red light or drive too fast and a police offer pulls you over, writes you a ticket, and you must pay a fine. You steal from your employer and when it is discovered you are fired and arrested for theft. In these situations sin, wrong-doing has been punished, consequences have been imposed by a legitimate authority.

You eat too much. In the short run you suffer indigestion. In the long run you gain weight and incur the accompanying health problems. You lie. People around you begin to distrust you and you find yourself isolated and friendless. In situations like this, sin has incurred natural consequences. What you have done proves harmful and destructive to yourself even though no one has directly punished you.

As we continue in Genesis 3, looking at the Fall of humanity and its aftereffects, we come to Genesis 3:14-19 and see God pronouncing what appear to be punishments on the serpent, on the woman, and on the man. However, we might wonder if at least some of what is described are not in fact the natural consequences of what was done.

“Virtue is its own reward,” is a familiar saying, suggesting that a good character needs no external reward, but carries with it happiness as a natural consequence. In William Young’s novel, The Shack, God the Father is made to suggest the converse is true, “Sin is its own punishment,” that is, sin will produce an unhappiness, “devouring you from the inside.”

The truth, as often seems to be the case, is found somewhere in the middle, a both/and understanding of the consequences of sin. God clearly and directly adds humiliation and suffering to the experience of the serpent and Adam and Eve. There is punishment. On the other hand, the conflict and interpersonal struggle between the serpent and human offspring and between Eve and her husband seems more like the natural consequences of sin’s entry into human life. The ensuing conflict between Cain and Abel appears to follow in this way. In a disordered world, where sustenance must now be gained by hard work, disharmony naturally arises as the brothers attempt to offer their work to God.

Yet all is not punishment or unfortunate consequence in these verses. At least since Irenaeus, many Christians have seen Genesis 3:15 as the protevangelium, the first preaching of the Gospel. God’s promise that the “seed of the woman” would strike the head of the serpent, while “the seed” is struck in the heal, is seen as fulfilled in the work of Jesus Christ, who in His suffering and death and resurrection undid the serpent’s work and gave the serpent a final death blow.

This text is rich and suggestive for all sorts of conversation, including whether the situation described in verse 16, that Eve is to be “ruled over” by her husband is another consequence of that first sin, and not a God-designed natural order at all. Thus the original intention of creation was gender equality and partnership, rather than male headship, which is only a punishment or consequence of the Fall.

I’ll be thinking and praying about these things the rest of the week and welcome other thoughts and comments.

Lots of people are trying to figure out whom to blame for the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight 370. Many world leaders are blaming Vladimir Putin for Crimea’s secession from Ukraine and annexation by Russia. Putin on the other hand blames Ukrainian leadership for not recognizing the Russian heritage and connection of the people of Crimea.

It’s business as usual in our world, especially in the public, political arena. People seek to justify themselves, and make themselves appear superior, by finding others to blame for problems and wrong-doing.

This very human process of blaming goes right back to the beginning. In Genesis 3:8-13, we find Adam and Eve immediately ready to point their fingers at someone else when God confronts them with their sin. Adam points at Eve, and Eve points at the Serpent.

Blaming continues right on through human history as a way to dissociate oneself from one’s own sinfulness. From nations blaming each other for aggression to individuals pointing the finger at each other to explain personal violence.

The French historian and philosopher Rene Girard maintains that blaming others, the process of “scapegoating,” is in fact the root of human sinfulness and violence. Girard believes the Bible reveals the scapegoat process beneath all human interaction. Girard’s thought is complex and I’m pretty sure I don’t completely understand it, but at least one way to appropriate it is to say that God finally and completely reveals the hopelessness of blaming (scapegoating) by His gift of a perfectly innocent scapegoat in Jesus Christ. His sacrifice on the Cross puts an end to our need to blame each other.

In any case, in the Gospel lesson I’ve selected to join the Genesis text this Sunday, John 8:1-11, Jesus clearly demonstrates that we cannot point our fingers at each other, blame each other, without first confronting the reality of our own sin. And once we have done that, the same mercy which He showed the woman in the passage becomes available to us.

Dazzling light blazes, music soars, and one man is chosen to come up into the light and glory. No, it’s not our text for this coming Sunday, Exodus 24:12-18 nor our corresponding Gospel text about the Transfiguration, Matthew 17:1-9. It’s the end of Steven Spielberg’s iconic, remarkable film, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” At the end of what Spielberg clearly portrays as a kind of religious quest, Roy finds what he has been seeking in his mashed potato sculptures of Devil’s Tower in Wyoming, and is welcomed up into the alien ship and soars off into space.

Our ability to read the Bible texts for this Sunday and perceive in them a revelation of the glory of God, both in the Lord whom Moses encounters and in the transfigured Jesus whom Peter, James and John encounter, is severely impaired and distorted by Spielberg’s film and any number of movies (such as “Contact”) that have followed. They invite us to take our desire for God and confuse it with a longing to know that “we are not alone,” but share this universe with other beings who are like but different from ourselves, maybe because they are a bit smarter and kinder.

I truly enjoy science fiction. It was my genre of choice as a youth, and I still look for books and films that capture some of the wonder and fun I experienced reading Asimov or Heinlein, and watching “2001” or the original “Star Wars.” Yet the Bible, especially our texts for today, invite us into the discovery of a glory and wonder that is both further away and closer to home than any which alien visitors might bring us.

That the creator of the universe would choose to be present with us is a glory which surpasses all the surreal light shows that Hollywood can create, even with the extra help of CGI these days. When in our text in verse 12 God calls Moses up to join Him on the mountain, it’s not for a mystical, surreal experience. It’s to receive God’s instruction for living in the very concrete form of laws written on tablets of stone. The point is not to transcend ordinary life. It’s for the glory of God’s own life to enter into ordinary life, to enter our daily living and transform us.

The same is even more true of the Transfiguration of Jesus. It is glorious, it is wonderful, but in many ways it is all very down to earth. In the midst of the same sort of cloud of glory which covered Sinai, this Man Jesus is identified by the voice of God as His beloved Son, the one to whom they, and everyone, should listen. God’s glory enters into human life, even takes on humanity in the person of Christ.

All those films suggest we should be looking for sound and light extravaganzas if we’re going to have true experiences of the glory of God. Our texts suggest we may need to be looking in simpler, more mundane places. Perhaps one of the most truly dazzling display of God’s glory is in the lives of those who by the grace of Jesus are living out in concrete, solid ways the kind of life described in the Commandments and modeled by Jesus Himself. And if we wish to encounter our Lord Himself, perhaps we need look no further than the bread and cup resting on the Table before us as we gather Sunday morning.

Forget the sculpted mashed potatoes, mysterious music, and the light show. Come and meet the Lord as we eat and drink in His glory through His broken body and shed blood on Sunday morning, then go out into the world to display that glory in our own lives.

I’m disappointed in myself that on a theme dear to my heart, the River of God, I’ve missed more than one opportunity to blog here about the sermon for the week on that theme. Yet all those sermons are available on our church website at http://www.valleycovenant.org/sermons%20text.htm.

However, the fact that I’ve missed those chances fits with how I want to talk about this week’s final text on the River, from Revelation 22:1-7. As we come to the end of the Bible we find there a river like we found at the beginning, in Genesis 2, a river which springs up at God’s command to water our world and even the Tree of Life which offers us life eternal. As I’ve been saying right along about its appearance throughout Scripture, it’s the same river, the River of God.

Yet that is so contrary to experience. As the Greek philosopher Heraclitus discerned millennia ago, “You cannot step twice into the same river, for fresh waters are always flowing in upon you.” He is also supposed to have said the simple little Greek phrase panta rei, “everything flows.” These sayings were part of his larger picture of our reality as a realm of constant, inevitable and often regrettable change. Nothing, absolutely nothing, it seems, stays the same.

All it takes is enough years of living to start to believe Heraclitus had it absolutely right. Everything flows away from us. A good friend from graduate school, only a couple years older than I, dropped dead of a heart attack while hiking with his family last week. With just a random survey of my life I consider the facts that my barber of twenty years retired a few months ago, my youngest daughter just announced her engagement, and that I just learned our favorite Greek restaurant in Seattle has closed and the building has become a bank. Every aspect of life is in a constant flow of change.

Yet the Gospel good news is that Heraclitus was wrong. Here at the end of our story is the same river. As its water flows out of God’s throne in verse 1, we understand that it is constantly the same water, the same refreshing gracious Spirit of God who never changes, but constantly saves and renews and restores.

There’s so much here I hope to say and explore on Sunday. In verse 2 the promise from Ezekiel 47:12 is repeated, that the tree of life growing along the River will be “for healing.” John adds, “for the healing of the nations,” in other words, for healing the whole world. We will be healed by the gift of life eternal, time enough to discover that in God, in His River, nothing is really lost.

This promise is secured in verse 4, with the words, “they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.” We will look upon our Lord who cherishes each of us enough to mark us as His own. And I must believe that if God love us that much, then He loves what we truly love, that nothing good we desire will be forgotten or lost, that all the pleasures and joys that seemed to have drifted away on time’s current are still there, still deep in the channels of God’s River.

So verse 6 says, “These words are trustworthy and true.” My understanding of them may be flawed, but the words are true. The same River will be there as was there at the beginning, because the same God will be our God forever and always. May verse 7 be fulfilled and may we come soon to that River’s shore.