The Creative Caregiver

Ron Valadez · The Creative Caregiver

 Inspired by Genesis 1:1-5 & Matthew 6:28-30

 1st of 3-week sermon series on the Apostles' Creed

This week we begin a short three-week series on the Apostles’ Creed. Followed by a series on the sacraments, and then a series on Stewardship. Those sound fun, don’t they! Well, they do to me! I haven’t gotten a chance yet to do a series that’s more topical in nature. Most of the others have been centered on a particular book of the Bible. Having said that though, all of these series will be taking us back to the Bible, back to the origins of all those topics as found in the Bible. Of these three series, I think this one will be the most challenging for me. Not because it’s a difficult topic, but because I have mixed feelings about creeds. Some of you may not know this but not all churches use the Apostles’ Creed, or our other one, the Nicene Creed. 

Some churches use entirely different creeds. Some churches use none. Some churches, like my last congregation, write their own creeds! To varying degrees of success but we don’t need to go there. These aren’t my issue though. My issue with creeds, come from the way they have been used in the past, and continue to be used today. Rather than being the useful teaching aids that they could have been, they have usually been used as a line in the sand and therefore a tall border wall keeping many people out. Instead of helping people explore the basics of our faith, they were used as a litmus test to keep people out of churches who didn’t believe exactly like them. Churches have a bad habit of not wanting people who are gonna question their beliefs. Imagine that! And the creeds began being recited in the same spirit that we recite the Pledge of Allegiance. 

Today, many churches still recite a creed every Sunday. Bethlehem did here too, that is until they met me. I use it in worship, begrudgingly, during seasons that it makes sense to use them: the Apostles’ Creed during Lent as it is the creed most associated with baptism, and the Nicene Creed during the season of Easter, but not on Easter Sunday! And here’s why, Easter Sunday is when we have more visitors than any other Sunday. And where do visitors come from? Everywhere! From every culture, from every generation, from every status, from every walk of life, and, from every walk of faith, sometimes of no faith! Which is why we only use a creed for two seasons a year. Because it’s about reading the room, only the room for us is the entire world. 

Today there are more unchurched people than the church has ever seen before. The church decline that so many churches are really feeling today, started back in the 60’s. So now we have multiple generations of people that just don’t have much, if any, experience in church, let alone know much about our faith. I mean, people don’t even want their weddings and funerals in church much anymore! However, for many people, maybe even some of you, there comes a point in their life when something sparks their interest, their curiosity. Sometimes it’s a relative that sparks that interest, sometimes it’s a friend, a birth of a child, sometimes it’s a life tragedy of some kind. And so they show up on our doorstep, for Sunday worship, and are expected to begin reciting “I believe in God the almighty…etc.” 

If that happened to me, I’d be thinking, “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hold up a sec! I just got here! And you want me to agree to what?” Some might think, “Well, no one said they had to recite it with us!” And to them I’d say, but how do think that makes a visitor feel? How welcoming is that? That would be like me having one of my atheist friends over for dinner and making her sit through a prayer! I’m not doing that to them! I bet many of you wouldn’t either! Because one, you know hospitality better than most. And two, you also know how not to be a jerk to people! When we welcome people, we welcome all of them, everything that makes them who they are, and who are they are not. And that means welcoming their questions, their inquisitiveness, their doubts, their skepticism, their level of knowledge of things we have taken for granted, their arguments and debates! 

In the grand scheme of things, over the past two thousand years, this is not something that the church has had to adjust to in a long time. Not since the first century of our existence. But if the church has any future in the world, it’s gonna have to start learning a whole new level of hospitality. We’re now in the bonus rounds of hospitality! This is like a surprise quiz in hospitality class at the end of the semester! No longer are all our new members gonna come in nice, neat little packages with a bow put on by their previous congregation. No, that’s too easy! Some are going to expect us to put our money where our mouth is and walk with them, no matter how uncomfortable their path may be; explore faith with them; give them a safe place to wrestle their doubts; and give them all the time they need, and then some. 

But slapping them with a creed on day one, is not the way to do that. And let’s be honest here, there’s lots of stuff in our creeds that many of us have questioned, and continue to wrestle with. So, let’s not pretend we’ve got our act together here either! But our faith is not about knowing a bunch of facts, it’s about the journey, with God, with each other, and with the world. And speaking of the world, the first section of the Apostles’ Creed is just one line, but it’s a powerful one! “I believe in God, the almighty, creator of heaven and earth.” It seems pretty straightforward, but I assure you, volumes have been written about this one line! We could talk about what it means to believe in something or someone. We could talk about what it means to be almighty. 

We could talk about what it means to create, or what and where heaven and earth are. But I think we will talk about something that we don’t recite here at Bethlehem, the word Father. Now, we don’t use that title here often because not only is it not the way many people see God, but for some it’s too painful, like those who have had no positive males in their life, maybe only abusive ones at that. So to lump God in with all those, is just too big a hurdle for many, and I don’t blame them. So, we try to use neutral language and titles for God here, but I’ll be the first to admit, we lose something when we drop the parental language. But, “I believe in God, the parent almighty” just sounds stupid. So, I was thinking, if I were writing this 1500 years ago, how would I describe God? 

Well, hopefully, I would have the sense to ask Jesus. No, I don’t mean in prayer. I mean, what did Jesus have to say about God the almighty creator? How did Jesus describe God? In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus said this, “Look at how the lilies in the field grow. They don’t wear themselves out with work, and they don’t spin cloth. But I say to you that even Solomon in all his splendor wasn’t dressed like one of these. If God dresses grass in the field so beautifully, even though it’s alive today and tomorrow it’s thrown into the furnace, won’t God do much more for you, you people of weak faith?” Y’all think I’m rough on you! At least I’ve never called you people of weak faith! Seriously though, Jesus here is taking a look at the God of creation and seeing a God that cares for that creation. 

Cares deeply, and personally. This is not a God who set the world in motion and then stepped away. This is not a God who watches from afar when God gets bored. Jesus saw a God so intimately woven into our lives that God even cares about our basic needs. And this is the God that we proclaim in the first line of the Apostle’s Creed. So, to answer my own question, if I wrote this first line centuries ago, I think I’d write it something like this, “I believe in God the almighty, the creative caregiver of heaven and earth.” I like creative caregiver because, one, it’s not locked in the past, as if God’s act of creation isn’t still going on. And two, because caregiver gives it that parental touch and so much more. I also think of the way that an adult child becomes the caregiver of their parent, in the greatest role reversal of life. 

I think of the single parent trying to make ends meet while being the caregiver their children need. I think of the hospice worker who somehow treats their patients as if they were one of their own. I think of the schoolteacher who sacrifices her own income for children who aren’t even hers. I think of the nurses who saw us through the pandemic, often being the only one to sit with the dying as COVID overtook someone else’s loved one. Is God a father? Sure. Is God a mother? Sure. But God is so much more than either of those titles. That is the God that Jesus knew. And that is the God that we proclaim in that one little line from the Apostles’ Creed. Thanks be to God the almighty, the creative caregiver of heaven and earth. Amen.

Romancing the Bible

Ron Valadez · Romancing the Bible

 Inspired by Song of Songs

As some of you may already know, I don’t listen to much Christian music in my personal life. I did go through a phase in my twenties that started with Christian pop and ended with Christian metal, but that phase finally went by the wayside.  One of the things that I didn’t like about contemporary Christian music, which me and my seminary buds used to always make fun of, was that many of the songs were a bit too sappy for me, and by that I mean that a lot of them sounded like romantic love songs to God, or as we would call them in seminary, “Me and my boyfriend Jesus songs.” I mean, just listen to some of these lyrics. This is one from a song by Casting Crowns, “Your fragrance is intoxicating in our secret place. Your love is extravagant.” Come on. 

I don’t know about you but I have never commented on how God smells while in prayer! However, I tell my wife all the time how good she smells. Here’s another one, this one from Gateway Worship “I wanna…lay back against you and breath, feel your heart beat. This love is so deep, it's more than I can stand. I melt…” Again, I just don’t talk to God that way! Am I alone? I have talked to my wife like this before though. Oh man, you should see some of the love letters we’d write to each other back in the day. Talk about sappy! They’d probably make us gag today! Anyway, this caused a disconnect between me and a lot of contemporary Christian music, and I eventually just gave up on it. Besides, I have always found more of God or spirituality or religious themes in secular music than I have in contemporary Christian music anyway. 

However, I don’t share this just so I can dump on contemporary Christian music like my seminary buds and I used to do, but rather, to come to its defense. Never thought I’d say that! Because something else I learned in seminary, as I took a deeper dive into scripture than I ever had before, was that the Bible was overflowing with romantic love references! And here’s the kicker, at least half of those references were not between humans, but between God and humans, even going so far as to use the image of marriage to describe our relationship with God. So, as it turns out, all those sappy contemporary Christian songs that we used to make fun of, were quite biblical the whole time! Who knew! I still don’t listen to contemporary Christian music, but I at least can appreciate it now, and even use it in worship. Some of it. 

And speaking of worship, our Jewish siblings have the tradition of reading or singing very specific Bible books on major holidays, in their entirety! Esther is read on the festival of Purim, commemorating the saving of the Jewish people from a Persian king; Ruth is read on their festival of Pentecost, a harvest festival commemorating the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai; Ecclesiastes, or as they call it, Qoheleth, is read on the Feast of Tabernacles, commemorating their reliance on God during their nomadic days before they took the promised land; Lamentations is read on the Ninth of Av, when they remember various disasters like the destruction of their temples; and last but not least, can anyone guess what holiday Song of Songs is read on? Passover! And I find that fascinating and weird and profound all at the same time! 

Why? Because Song of Songs is a love song! And not just any love song but a romantic, passionate, erotic, love song! Not the kind of song that we usually think of during a major religious holiday! But that is exactly what the ancient rabbis did when they put their Bible together. I mean, listen to some of these lyrics! “An enclosed garden is my lover; an enclosed pool, a sealed spring. Your limbs are an orchard of pomegranates with all kinds of luscious fruit, henna, and spices:…myrrh, and aloes, with the very choicest perfumes!...Let my love come to my garden; to eat its luscious fruit!” Here’s another one, “'I have taken off my tunic—why should I put it on again? I have bathed my feet—why should I get them dirty?' My love put a hand in through the latch hole, and my body ached for my love. I rose; I went to open for my love, and my hands dripped myrrh, my fingers, liquid myrrh, over the handles of the lock.” 

Whew! Is it getting hot in here? Did someone turn the AC down again? Here’s one more, “You are so beautiful, so lovely—my love, my delight! Your stately form resembles a date palm, and your breasts are like clustered fruit. I say, ‘I will climb that palm tree; I will hold its fruit!’ May your breasts be now like grape clusters…I belong to my lover, and my lover’s longing is only for me.” Ok, so I’m sure you get my surprise that this is read, in its entirety, on Passover. Not to mention, how it got into the Bible at all! Even more puzzling is that this is one of only two books in the entire Bible that never mentions God, not once. Anyone know what the other book is? Esther! Didn’t know there’d be a quiz today did you? Also, modern scholars believe that this was a secular song first, that was later coopted by the ancient Jewish community. 

So, what did they see in this book, that not only allowed them to include it into their holy scripture, but read it at every Passover? Well, like myself and many others, they had no problem hearing God or religious themes in secular music. And, like I mentioned before, the Bible is full of romantic love references to describe our relationship with God. That got me thinking about romantic love, and dissecting it a bit. What are the building blocks of romantic love, and how did they apply them to us and God? It’s not really something that is part of our own modern faith journeys, but now I’m wondering if we might be missing something! By not including this kind of love in how we think about the love between us and God, are we cheating ourselves out of an ancient but profound approach to our faith? 

Well, let’s see. I’d love to hear what you would add to this list but these are some of what I came up with as elements that make up romantic love. Fidelity. Fidelity is loyalty of the most intimate kind. Now, fidelity between humans often has a sexual connotation but it doesn’t have to. As we apply it to God’s love, we are reminded of how all-consuming God’s love is, how deeply it penetrates the core of our very souls, to the point that the two, us and God, are made one. And anything that gets in the way of that oneness, that tries to get in between, threatens that fidelity. 

Here’s another element of romantic love, respect, mutual respect. The kind of respect that acknowledges the autonomy and free will of the other. The kind of respect that protects one from being forced upon by the other, or made to become someone who they are not. As much as God wants to have a close relationship with everyone, God will not force Godself upon anyone. Likewise, we also should not box God into our own image, but should allow God to be who God is, no matter how uncomfortable that makes us sometimes. Just ask the prophet Jonah about that! 

I’m gonna put the next two on my list together, dire and passionate. A dire passion. Not only should there be passion between two lovers but there should also be an urgency to it, as if time is running out, or as if there may be a threat around the next corner. Though we only have 26 years under our belt, one thing we have noticed in our own marriage is that time is running out, meaning it has gone by faster than could have ever imagined. And, that there often is a threat just around the corner, a threat to our love. And it’s this dire passion that keeps us on the alert, as well as reminds us to not take time for granted. 

I’m gonna pair these next ones as well. Two more elements of romantic love are irrationality and blindness. Romantic love can cause you to do some of the dumbest things you’ll ever do in your life, as well as allow you to overlook so many faults in each other. Now that last one is easy to apply to God as God overlooks all of our faults! But irrationality, that might take a little imagination, but I think God acts irrational all the time in God’s continuing effort to love us. As we’ve heard in other Bible books, God’s ways are often seen as foolish, irrational even; but that’s just because of how much God loves us. 

And lastly, romantic love should be pleasureful. You know, when I was growing up, somewhere along the way I came to the conclusion that sexual pleasure was bad, dirty, ungodly, unholy, defiling, and in my mind, that meant it was evil. It was a very unhealthy perspective on sexual pleasure. And in my conversations over the years with many other people, I’ve learned that I was not alone. That many other people’s childhood caused them to come to that same conclusion. Which is another reason why I love that those ancient rabbis included this book in their holy scriptures, because pleasure, even the sexual kind, is anything but ungodly. As we learned last week, God wants us to enjoy life, to take pleasure in what we can, no matter the kind of pleasure we’re talking about. Safely, of course. 

What a gift this book is, opening up these and so many other elements of romantic love to the way we think and live into our relationship with our God! But it can’t end there. So, your homework for this week, no, scratch that, your homework for the rest of your lives, is to imagine and practice, what this kind of love might look like out in the real world, because what we say and do in here only matters if it matters out there. So, what might fidelity, an intimate loyalty, look like out there? What might respect, mutual respect, that creates safe places out there, look like? What might a dire passion look like as you traverse this world? What might a blind and irrational love look like out there? 

And what might the world look like if we started caring about how much pleasure is in people’s lives? I think you’d agree that pleasure, of any kind, is vital to a healthy life. Yet, despite our caring for people's needs like food, and water, and shelter, I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone ask how much pleasure our unhoused have, or the single parent working three jobs, or the elderly living alone. So, that’s all, just work on those from now to eternity. In the meantime, I pray that you, my friends, experience the intimate richness of God’s love, as it urges you to open up that love for others. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Pure Imagination

Ron Valadez · Pure Imagination

 Inspired by Ecclesiastes 1:2-11; 3:1-17

Have you ever watched a movie and have it go right over your head? Or, as soon as the credits start rolling you just think to yourself, “What in the world did I just watch?” I had that experience with the movie “mother!” It stars Jennifer Lawrence. Has anyone seen that? That’s ok, I don’t recommend it. Not that it’s a bad movie, in fact, I thought it was a great movie, that it was wonderfully acted and made. However, it was a very disturbing movie and when it was over, I was left wondering not only what I just watched but why did I just have to endure that? In a nutshell, for those of you who haven’t seen it, Jennifer Lawrence plays a mother who throughout the entire movie is harassed and assaulted, in every way imaginable, with no help from anyone including her husband. 

After she and her baby both die a horrific death, she wakes up in her bedroom, looking different, but having to relive the whole experience once again in a never-ending cycle. Now, in spite of there being clues along the way, I had to look up what I had just watched, and apparently, the movie was about our exploitation and abuse of Mother Earth. Yeah, whoosh, right over my head! Without help, I don’t know how long that would have taken me to get, or I would have just given up thinking that was two hours I was never getting back. It was simply beyond my imagination. When I found out its real meaning, I wasn’t disappointed, I thought it was brilliant, and if it hadn’t been so disturbing, I would have watched it again with the new eyes and ears of my new understanding. 

Our Bible reading for today is a third selection from the Bible’s wisdom literature, this one from Ecclesiastes. If Proverbs was written by a wiser middle-aged Solomon, then the ancient rabbis used to say that Ecclesiastes was written by an old bitter Solomon, long jaded by a long-lived life. Think Walter Matthau from Grumpy Old Men or Larry David from Curb Your Enthusiasm. This author was wise, sure, but just like in our youth, wisdom can easily come off the tracks in this author’s old age. Today we read two selections from Ecclesiastes, from chapters one and three, and they give us a good taste of what this short little book is about. Let’s just say, we don’t catch the author at their finest hour. If this was a friend of yours talking like this, your first question would be, “Are you ok? Let’s grab a coffee and chat.” 

Clearly, they are not ok. Though we may not know who exactly wrote this, we can surmise that this was someone of great power and experience, someone who has seen the world and all that it has to offer, and is reflecting on what they have seen now that their life is almost over. The author has come to some conclusions, and they are not very positive ones! I want to pause here for just a minute and caution you from the urge to make everything ok for this writer. I think it’s in our nature to not only try and fix other people’s challenges or conclusions they’ve made, but also to try and explain it, make sense of it, make it fit into the nice, neat, safe little boxes that our minds have constructed. Especially when dealing with a Biblical author who is writing some disturbing things! 

But also when in the presence of a friend or family member who is going through something. However, there is something to be said for just sitting in it with them. Allowing them, and ourselves, to express our disappointment, even if it’s in God, to express our anger, our sarcasm, our bitterness, even if it’s directed at God, even if it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, even if it’s contradictory to everything they, or we, have said before. It might take some serious restraint, but there is a hidden power in just sitting in it with them. All we can hope is that there is someone willing to sit in it with us as well, if need be. This author is really going through something, and by first just sitting in it with them, you are thereby saving a seat next to you, when you need someone to sit in it with you. By first honoring this author’s challenges, you honor your own. 

But this author, geez, it sounds as if they have lost something, doesn’t it? Was it hope? Faith? Their wisdom? It even sounds like they just don’t care anymore, about anything! The first words are, “Perfectly pointless, says the Teacher, perfectly pointless. Everything is pointless.” The Teacher, by the way, is who the book is named after. In Hebrew it’s not called Ecclesiastes but Koheleth, which can mean the teacher, or speaker, or even preacher. And you probably know that opening line as “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.” Pointless is probably a better translation, but meaningless is even better than that. This poor writer has concluded that everything is meaningless. After all the hard work of life, the writer has noticed that nothing changes. 

Life is just this endless cycle of repeated patterns, and no matter how much or how little someone does, it never changes. “There’s nothing new under the sun” the author says. Here’s the thing, I don’t think the underlying issue here is a loss of hope. Oh they may have lost that too but I don’t think that’s the core of the problem. Nor do I think it’s a loss of faith or wisdom. What’s been lost by this author is an imagination. Bear with me. Did you notice how black and white their observations were? Birth and death. Uprooting and planting. Crying and laughing. Mourning and dancing. That whole list is full of things that are on opposite ends of their spectrum, but the author is not seeing them as a spectrum, but as if that’s all there is to life. But we know there is so much in between, so much gray to life than that. 

And I don’t know about you but I have shed tears of sadness and laughed at the same time! I have also inadvertently planted something while I was uprooting something else only to find out when that something sprouted. Likewise, I guarantee you that the parents of a wedding couple who are dancing at the reception are also mourning the loss of their once baby who is now going off to make a life of their own without them. And we who dwell on this side of the cross, we people of death and resurrection, we know that death and birth happen simultaneously all the time. But all these things aren’t so obvious are they? They aren’t always seen with the naked eye. But take some imagination in order to really see them, to see the grays of life. But oh the love and grace and richness you will see! 

With just a little imagination, you will see what makes life worth living, generation after generation, even though not a whole lot really changes. Or in the words of Willy Wonka, “There is no life I know, to compare with pure imagination. Living there, you'll be free if you truly wish to be. If you want to view paradise, simply look around and view it. Anything you want to, do it. Want to change the world? There's nothing to it.” Now, I could have ended my sermon right there, but, speaking of changing the world, I think a lot of the world's problems are caused by a lack of imagination. For instance, it takes no imagination to see an unhoused person on the street and think they’re lazy. But it doesn’t take much to begin to ask questions like, I wonder how she got to that point in her life? What led to this? 

It takes no imagination for a white person to see a black man and begin to feel some apprehension or fear, and maybe even assume he’s up to no good. But just a little bit of imagination could not only convince that white person that they have no reason to suspect anything, but may even get that person to begin to explore where those feelings and thoughts came from. It takes no imagination to ask a brown person where they come from. But with some imagination, you might think, I bet that person gets asked that all the time, even though they’re just as “American” as I am. And with one more dash of imagination, you might even ask yourself, “I wonder what that feels like, to be asked that all the time, in your own home country.” 

Like watching a movie that goes over your head like a fighter jet, or in the case of this author, after watching so much of life and their world, and it still not making sense or seeming pointless, meaningless. Don’t despair. Sit with Koheleth for a bit. Take your time. But don’t stay there. Ask yourself how much of your imagination you are using. Is it even turned on? When something doesn’t make sense to me, that’s usually the case. But don’t just do it for your own benefit, but for the benefit of the world, as you see the world, and the people therein, with new eyes, the eyes of your God-given imagination, giving you the power to pass on the love, and grace, and richness of life, that have been opened up for you. Thanks be to God. Amen.

What the World Needs Now is Wisdom, Sweet Wisdom

2nd of 4 Week Series on Biblical Wisdom Literature

Inspired by Proverbs 8:1-11, 22-36

What is wisdom? Boy, that sounds like the beginning of the most boring sermon you’ve ever heard, doesn’t it? I hope it is not! But we’ll see. However, writing a sermon in the COVID fog that I have been in, I had no idea what might come out of my brain! I can only hope that the Holy Spirit has fog lights. So, Sarah started a four-week series on Biblical wisdom literature with you last week. And I honestly have no idea how much introductory info she gave you on that topic so forgive me if I end up repeating something she already shared with you. It’s difficult for me to not give you any of it though because the books that we are reading from are not usually given much attention, and so to have this opportunity is very exciting for a Bible geek like myself! But I’ll try not to bore you with a bunch of textbook mumbo jumbo. Well, not too much anyway! 

Biblical wisdom literature contains five books: Job and Psalms, each of which I’ve done a series on in the past, as well as the three books we will read selections from over these four weeks, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs. Of the three I’d say Proverbs gets the most attention, at least as far as personal study or devotion go, but none of them really get much attention in worship. And to be honest with you, seminary does not teach much on any of these books either. Unless they offered a class specifically on these, you’d be lucky to get one class session on any of them. Which is why I jumped at the chance to do this series with you! I’m always up to learn new things, but learning new things with you all is just icing on the cake! 

As far as authorship goes, it’s the same old story. These books were probably not written by who we’ve been taught they were, in this case, King Solomon, David’s son. Oh, some of the content I’m sure, especially from Proverbs, was preserved from Solomon, but like most Bible books, they were written and compiled each by multiple authors. However, there is an interesting story that I found helpful that the ancient rabbis used to tell about these three books. They would say that Song of Songs was written by a young amorous Solomon, Proverbs was written by a much wiser middle-aged Solomon, and Ecclesiastes was written by a bitter old Solomon. Though their authorship was a bit off, I liked how they gave a tone to each of these books, to help us approach each differently, because I think you’ll see that they were mostly right. 

Proverbs often comes across like just a collection of wise sayings whose chapters sometimes follow a theme, and sometimes are just random one-offs thrown together. However, in this eighth chapter that I just read from, we get something a little different. It’s not a list of wise sayings. And it’s not a story either. What we get is a voice. A new character enters the scene, who has come to be known as Lady Wisdom. Sounds very Arthurian, doesn’t it? But there are no swords in stones here, this character is even bigger than that! You might be surprised, even a bit impressed, that they would make this character a woman. Before you give them too much credit, you should know that wisdom literature was directed at young men. And so, to attract them to these teachings, wisdom was often portrayed as an attractive woman. 

Regardless of the intentions, today I think we can and should celebrate any powerful, loving, female voice that we can get our ears on, especially when it comes to scripture. We are thankfully not obligated to use a female voice the way the author or original readers did. So, as we take a look at this character, there are three questions that I’d like us to explore: What is wisdom? Who is wisdom? And why is she so important? Alright, what is wisdom? And again, my apologies if Sarah already went over this last week. How do we define wisdom? Ok, I hate when pastors do this but sometimes you just have to! The dictionary definition of the word wisdom is, “having experience, knowledge, and good judgment.” Now, far be it from me to disagree with the holy dictionary, so I’ll let Lady Wisdom do that. 

Let’s talk about what wisdom is not. Wisdom is not a good education. Some of the wisest people I’ve known in my life didn’t have a high school diploma. Something I’ve heard often is, wisdom isn’t just about having book smarts but street smarts. However, I’m not so sure Lady Wisdom would agree with that either. I think she’d say it’s more than just street smarts too. It’s more than just having common sense. Here’s another one, wisdom doesn’t mean sinlessness or perfection. In fact, wisdom can often cause you to sin, like when you have to choose between the lesser of two evils. Wisdom also doesn’t mean playing it safe, because wisdom often causes us to take risks. And lastly, but this is by no means an exhaustive list, wisdom doesn’t guarantee a good life, particularly by society's standards. 

So what is it!? Wisdom, in the biblical sense, is knowledge, combined with common sense, bound by love—whether that be love for yourself, for those around you, or for strangers—knowledge combined with common sense, bound by love. We’re gonna circle back to that. Let’s tackle the second question. Who is Wisdom? It’s hard to say but that hasn’t stopped scholars from trying. Some say she is the literary personification of a concept. Others say that she is one of the many voices or manifestations of God found throughout scripture. Some say she was Christ, others say she was the Holy Spirit, and others say she is God. I’ll let you decide, as any of those answers have merit. What I think will help us explore who she is though, is to focus on what she is doing in this passage. 

A narrator begins the chapter by telling us that Wisdom cries out to us, signifying not only a yearning for a relationship with us, but also that she is the initiator of that relationship. The narrator goes on to say she does this from any place that we can hear, including by the city gates. Not a minor detail because who else is known for trying to get people’s attention at the city gates? Prophets and prostitutes—speaking to both the divine and alluring nature of Lady Wisdom. Then it quickly switches to first person and we hear her voice directly. After trying her hardest to convince us to listen to her because of how important she can be for us, she launches into a lecture on where she comes from, or should I say, when she comes from, from before the beginning of creation. 

Everything we know, has been touched by, influenced by, co-created by her. Which brings us to our final question of the day, “Why is she so important?” Well, if the fact that she represents knowledge combined with common sense bound by love, and that all we know has been co-created by her, isn’t enough to seek and follow her, she gives us one more reason at the end. She says, “Those who find me find life…And those who hate me love death.” I typically don’t succumb to absolutes like that but I gotta be honest, it’s kind of refreshing to hear her be so black and white with us. Life, or death, you choose, there’s no in-between. And though life is surely full of gray, we also know that we’re faced with black and white, right and wrong decisions all the time. 

And how we decide at each of those instances, is dependent upon whether we have sought and found Lady Wisdom and chosen to follow her, or not. Will we choose the way of knowledge combined with common sense and bound by love, the way of life, or the way of death? Look, I’m all about education, but education alone is not what will make this planet a better place to live in for future generations. And I’m all about good ol’ fashioned common sense, but common sense alone ain’t gonna do it either. 

Theologian Craig Koester once said, “Doing God's work is what we do with the rest of our lives outside of church, and Wisdom literature is deeply invested in that.” And so we are called, from the city gates, to seek and follow Lady Wisdom, thereby becoming cocreators with her. Creating life, wherever we can, whenever we can, in a world filled with so many kinds of death—with our knowledge, combined with our common sense, bound by love—love for ourselves, love for those we surround ourselves with, and love for the stranger. Seek wisdom, my friends! Not just for your sake, but for the sake of the world, and generations to come. Thanks be to God. Amen.

A Diaspora of the Heart

Ron Valadez · A Diaspora of the Heart

 Inspired by 1 Peter 1

Today we begin a five-week series in First Peter. It’s a short little letter, and we are going to read nearly all of it over these five weeks. It’s a letter that doesn’t usually get a whole lot of attention, which is unfortunate because there’s a lot of good stuff here. However, there’s also some not-so-good stuff here. I mentioned that we’re reading nearly all of it. Well, the part that they have skipped includes that good ol’ gem, “Wives, submit to your husbands.” Feel free to boo that out loud. I did wonder for a moment why they didn’t include that section. I mean, it could have given pastors the opportunity to address it. But the more I thought about it, the more I agreed with skipping it, because, really, what is there to say about it? 

The only faithful response to that is to say, with all due respect, that’s wrong, and we don’t believe that. Even I couldn’t spin that into something wholesome! Even I couldn’t give you some other perspective that could somehow make it acceptable or useful in today’s world. It’s just a byproduct of another culture with a very outdated moral code. So, I know there are plenty of biblically astute people here who may have wondered why we’re skipping that part, and so I thought it only fair to explain why. I’m not dodging anything! You know that’s not me. Think of it as, we’re just not giving it any more attention than it deserves. So, moving on! 

Let me give you a little of the context in which this letter was written. It wasn’t written to a specific church in the way that many of Paul’s letters were. It was written with the intention of it being passed around to many churches in many lands. As such, the author took care to make it as accessible to as wide an audience as possible, knowing that it would be read by both the Jewish community as well as those outside that community. This makes this letter one of the most applicable to us two thousand years later, and that will also be the most important lens through which we should interpret this letter, but more on that in a bit. Before we get into that, I should mention that scholars aren’t sure who wrote this letter. 

Despite it being named after the Apostle Peter, we also know that Peter was illiterate. That, coupled with the fact that the Greek of this letter is written in a very advanced, high-level Greek. Way more advanced than even Paul’s letters. It’s a nightmare to translate. So, it could have been written by a colleague of Peter’s, or just someone writing in the spirit of Peter, which was very common in that day and not frowned upon. We just don’t know for sure. Regardless, I’m glad it still made it into the Bible. As I said, lots of good stuff here. Well, except for that part that we’re just gonna ignore. Lastly, the persecution of Christians is also an important piece of context that heavily influenced this letter. However, we have to be very careful applying this one to ourselves today because we are not persecuted. Not even close. 

Alright, with that context in mind, all of which I know you will remember over these five weeks, let’s dig in to chapter one. In all honesty, we’re not going to dig very far today because the first verse gives us so much, not only for today, but for this entire series. The author begins with, “To God’s chosen strangers in the world of the diaspora.” To God’s chosen strangers in the world of the diaspora. From the word go, the author gives us the perspective, the posture, from which we are to hear and consume this letter. As God’s chosen strangers in the world of the diaspora. Let’s tackle that sentence backwards, and begin with the word diaspora. I’m not sure how familiar that word is for you but it takes some unpacking in order for us to get the most out of it, especially because it’s importance cannot be overstated. 

It's an old Greek word that literally means to scatter or to disperse. In recent years I’ve heard the word diaspora refer more and more to the scattering of the African population across the globe by way of the slave trade. Traditionally though, the word diaspora has probably been most used as a reference to the scattering or dispersion of the Jewish population. The scattering of their people started while Abraham was still alive, beginning with the events that led to Egyptian slavery. From there, some of them returned to reconquer the land they claimed as their own, but even that didn’t last long, as there’s always a bigger fish. From the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians, to the Romans in Jesus’ day, all these empires participated in the Jewish diaspora, the scattering, the dispersion, of the Jewish population across the four winds of Earth. 

However, many scholars today do not believe this to be what the author of First Peter is referring to. A few verses later the author writes, “you were not liberated by perishable things like silver or gold from your meaningless ancestral way of life.” Ok, we may not know who exactly wrote this letter, but we do know that it was most likely someone from the Jewish community, and therefore would never refer to Judaism as a “meaningless ancestral way of life.” So, the author isn’t referring to the Jewish diaspora, but to something else. A Christian diaspora? Well, sort of but not exactly. This wasn’t a literal diaspora, this wasn’t a geographical scattering of Christians the author was talking about—but a diaspora of the heart, where it really mattered. 

Christianity flourished under this model. Why? Well, the Jewish Christians knew from their ancestry just what it meant to be a scattered people, strangers to the world. And the non-Jewish Christians knew this from the point of view of being persecuted. This gave them an edge that their enemies were not ready for. This allowed them the unique gift of being able to identify, to relate, with all those in their world that were also suffering, whether that suffering came from the empire, or the rich, or their religion, or some other oppressor like slavers or men or whoever. Those who were suffering weren’t looking to the powers that be for relief. They knew the powers that be very well and the only thing they were offering was more pain. And then along come these weird Jesus people. 

Some people were calling them Christians, some were calling them the people of The Way, and they followed the ways of this poor, persecuted, carpenter/prophet/healer/messiah/God-in-flesh person who didn’t seek power, who didn’t seek fame, who didn’t seek money, who didn’t seek land, let alone a home, who just loved people, to the last dying breath, and beyond they even said, and here’s the kicker, who could relate, who could empathize with us, from lived experience, from Jesus’ own heart of diaspora. This is what made the ways of Jesus so powerful! This is what made the followers of Jesus so inviting! This is what the author of First Peter didn’t want them to lose! This is why the author called them, called us, “God’s chosen strangers.” But then we sold out. 

About 200 years after the writing of this letter, the persecution of Christians officially ended, and about a decade after that happened, the Roman Emperor became a Christian, making Christianity not just the favored religion, but the government-sanctioned religion. Meaning, people no longer saw Christianity as the people of relatable relief, but instead, just one more of the powers that be. What was once this little Jewish sect, exploded into a mighty force, spreading across the world, not out of kindness and empathy, but by force—the once persecuted, became the persecutor. What probably seemed like gaining an edge, was really losing the edge that really mattered—the heart of the diaspora, of being scattered, of being strangers. 

Ok, that was heavy, let’s end on a positive, because as you will see, this letter is a very positive one. But without this foundation of the diaspora of the heart, it will be meaningless to us. Let’s fast forward to today and the state of the church we find ourselves in. Though we are still not being persecuted, we certainly aren’t what we used to be, are we! We no longer hold much power, yet we still carry the baggage of an oppressor. As such, our numbers have dwindled worldwide, our worship attendance has dwindled worldwide, and unfortunately, our influence has dwindled worldwide. So, you may be wondering, what keeps this pastor going, what gives me hope, why do I still do what I do? Well, because I think, whether we like it or not, we are returning to the state in which we started. 

We now have this opportunity to rediscover, the heart of diaspora, the heart that we were born with two-thousand years ago—the heart of a people who were scattered but not lost, the heart of a people who were homeless but were citizens of God , the heart of a people who were powerless but found strength together, the heart of a people whose suffering turned into serving others in need. So when people ask me what I think about our dying religion, how can I not be hopeful, excited even? Death is how we know things are just getting started! Death is when God does God’s best work! So, as we read through this short but powerful letter, remember that a diaspora of the heart is at the core of it, and not just it, but at the core of who we are, and not for our sakes, but for the sake of the world, always for the sake of the world. Thanks be to God. Amen.