NINTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

I Kings 3:5-12

Psalm 119:129-136

Romans 8:26-39

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

Prayer of the Day: Beloved and sovereign God, through the death and resurrection of your Son you bring us into your kingdom of justice and mercy. By your Spirit, give us your wisdom, that we may treasure the life that comes from Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

It is not surprising that Solomon should seek wisdom in his prayer to the God who visits him in his dreams. He describes himself as “but a little child” who has inherited his father’s throne and must now reign over “a great people that cannot be numbered or counted for multitude.” The geopolitical landscape of the ancient near east was no less dangerous and complex than the global landscape of today. Peace and prosperity were maintained by strategic military alliances, trade agreements and treaties governing the use of land passages and waterways. Each nation had its own vital interests and ambitions. Israel’s wellbeing, indeed, its very existence as a nation state, required a leader capable of navigating these dangerous waters, avoiding its reefs and shoals.

The wisdom for which Solomon prays, however, is not the wisdom of politics and statecraft. Instead, he prays for wisdom to discern “between good and evil.”  That is precisely the wisdom God promises Solomon. Significantly, however, God does not simply open up Solomon’s brain and pour wisdom into his head. Instead, God points Solomon to the place where wisdom can be found. You will obtain wisdom, God tells Solomon, if only you “walk in my ways, keeping my statutes and my commandments.” That way of wisdom is spelled out more specifically in our Psalm reading for this Sunday, wherein the psalmist declares that the “unfolding of thy words gives light; it imparts understanding to the simple.” The psalmist goes on to tell us that “with open mouth I pant, because I long for thy commandments” and pleads with God, “teach me thy statutes.”  The psalmist prays, “keep steady my steps according to thy promise, and let no iniquity get dominion over me.”

Wisdom is not to be confused with mere knowledge. It is not obtained through the acquisition of information. Knowledge can unlock the secrets of the atom. Wisdom guides us in how we can use that information in life giving ways. Knowledge defines the parameters of what we are capable of doing. Wisdom guides us in determining what we ought to do. Knowledge consists of learning facts that exist independently. The earth orbits the sun whether we are aware of that fact or not. Wisdom, however, does not exist in a vacuum. It is relational. Wisdom is acquired by having one’s character shaped and molded by living faithfully within the community of God’s covenant people. Wisdom is not taught in the classroom, inscribed on the pages of a book or programed into any app. It is not imparted overnight. It is won little by little over a lifetime, one triumph, one tragedy, one love, one heartbreak, one friendship, one betrayal at a time. Wisdom is not commensurable with intellect. A genius can still be a fool, while many persons I have know with severe mental impairments radiate profound wisdom.  

Lately, artificial intelligence (AI) has been very much in the news. It came to my attention recently through an e-mail from a very dear friend who asked me if I had any thoughts about the “meteoric rise of AI.” I had to confess that I had not given AI much thought. Perhaps I have been remiss in this regard. Many scientists, engineers and medical experts have been expressing concerns about AI, its potential effects on education, our health, particularly that of children, the job market and our society generally. How do people of faith evaluate and respond to these concerns? Perhaps our readings for this Sunday can give us a window into that meteoric rise and what it might mean for us.

First off, the issue of delegating human thought is not entirely new. Back in my third grade year, the Pee Chee was a standard requirement. It was a black and yellow folder with images of young people playing football, tennis or basketball. It had two wings, one for holding lined paper and the other for placement of completed homework assignments. Significantly, it also had a multiplication table printed on the inside flap with which you could find the answer to multiplication problems involving integers from one through twelve. My third grade teacher hated that table with a passion comparable to Cotton Mather’s hatred of the devil. She felt that these diabolical tables discouraged memorization that would, in turn, cripple our progress in learning higher mathematics. The first task we were given on the first day of school was to take our scissors, cut the multiplication table out of our Pee Chees and throw it away.

Instead of throwing my multiplication table away, I taped it to the inside of my desk where I could easily consult it. I never felt that I was cheating when using the table. I understood fully well the basic arithmetic functions required for higher level computations. Exercising those functions repeatedly seemed silly when the answer was available right in my desk. Why let memory games take time and energy away from solving complicated equations? The same goes, I suppose, for calculators and other computation devices. They can be said to free our minds from mundane mental tasks so that we can focus on higher levels of thinking and doing. Nothing wrong with that as far as I can see.

The internet took us to new levels. When I first began practicing law, electronic legal databases and the internet platforms making them available were in their infancy. Legal research for small firms like mine was slow and labor intensive. We did legal research by sending first year associates down to the county law library to pour over hundreds of volumes of case law and state statutes. Composing a legal memo on a single issue could take weeks. Within five years following my date of hire, internet libraries like Westlaw and Lexis became widely available at a reasonable subscription fee. They made it possible to research an issue under the law of all fifty states and the federal government with a few keystrokes. In twenty minutes you could have a list of links to all the court decisions published from the formation of the country to the last twenty-four hours. That was a significant development, doing much to level the playing field between small firms like mine and the big city firms with their own large, expansive and fully staffed law libraries.

Of course, the internet has been a mixed bag. Though it has put more information at our fingertips than any generation before us, it has also been a vector for dangerous misinformation, conspiracy theories and violent ideologies. The internet has built bridges of knowledge and understanding between diverse communities and people who would otherwise never have crossed paths. It has also allowed racist groups throughout the world to find one another and unite in their violent and hateful acts. The internet opened new frontiers of knowledge and exciting media for sharing it with school age children, thereby enriching their educations. At the same time, social media has proven toxic to our children, exposing them to cyber bullying, stalking by online predators and radicalization by extremist groups. As with all human knowledge and achievement, wisdom is required to ensure that the internet is experienced as blessing rather than curse.

In the last year it seems that AI has taken a quantum leap. Not only are computers able to accumulate, organize and analyze data faster and more efficiently than humans. They are now capable of using their data to compose music, teleplays, fairy tales, student essays and answers to test questions. Computers have, without human direction and on their own initiative, undertaken the learning of languages and assimilation of information deemed helpful to their tasks. To say that they have minds of their own probably overstates the case. Still, their emerging management capabilities are beginning to transform the work place by, among other things, eliminating jobs. These effects are being felt throughout our workforce and not only by administrative assistants, librarians, accountants and others who manage information or crunch numbers. One of the concerns raised in the current Hollywood writer’s strike is the potential use of AI to replace script writers for performers and actors. I hasten to add here that the same has been true for every technological advance. The printing press ended the scrivener’s guild. The industrial revolution displaced numerous crafts. Makers of buggy whips, fountain pens and typewriters can testify to the pain that comes with technological advances.

Still, there is something different about the most recent developments in AI. It is one thing for machines to take over menial tasks that free us up to be more productive in other ways. It is one thing to rely on computers for collecting and organizing data for our analysis. We can even live with computers conducting rudimentary analysis of data for us. But it is a little unnerving to have them writing our speeches, producing paintings in the style of Van Gogh and composing music on par with Mozart. One cannot help but wonder, will the day come when humans have nothing to do but oil the machines and watch them work? Or will the machines learn to service themselves and decide that we humans are an unnecessary nuisance? This is truly the stuff of science fiction along the lines of the Matrix and Terminator movies.   

I am not convinced that computers are even close to achieving anything like human consciousness. Nor do I think they are malevolent in and of themselves. I don’t lose much sleep worrying that they will take over the world. However advanced they may be, computers do only what they have been programed to do. Even where they discover new and more efficient ways to do what they are programed to do, they still are doing what they are programed by us to do. That is what worries me. Our culture is rife with systemic inequality, racism and injustice. The last thing we need is technology to run our discriminatory justice system, our inequitable banking systems and our deeply racist law enforcement systems more efficiently.  

Allow me to illustrate. An AI program designed to manage our nation’s healthcare system-such that it is-could prove to be a nightmare. That is not because the computer might get it wrong, but because it would probably get it right. Currently, our healthcare system consists of doctors for whom medicine is a marketable and profitable commodity. It is run by insurance companies which make money by charging as much premium as the law will allow and providing as little coverage as they can get away with. It is under the sway of pharmacology companies that make money by selling their wares for as much as they can. The people the system is supposed to serve are, in reality, serving the system-assuming they have health insurance or lots of money. An AI program managing such a system would naturally do what our system is already doing now, namely, providing as little healthcare as possible for the highest price while seeking to deny as many claims as possible in order to maximize profit. The only difference is that AI would do the job with greater ruthless efficiency.  

Of course, a different kind of healthcare system with priorities different than the corporate bottom line could also benefit from AI. Computers could assist us in identifying communities underserved by doctors and hospitals and suggest ways to improve access to high quality care for these communities. AI can enable doctors, nurses and social workers to interface virtually with persons for whom traveling to appointments is difficult. Computers can respond initially to an individual’s health inquiries and point that person to nearby providers who might be of assistance in diagnosing and treating them. For a healthcare system in which the health and welfare of all people is paramount, AI has huge potential for improving medical care and treatment.     

In the end, AI will only be as good for us as we are wise. From the day the first human picked up a stone and recognized that it could as easily grind his corn as smash his neighbor’s skull, we have been faced with the same urgent need for wisdom, which alone can protect us from ourselves and our inventions. The monsters we see in AI are only a reflection of the ones lurking in our souls. Like Solomon, we find ourselves in possession of something bigger than ourselves, something that offers tremendous promise and potential for good, but also something that could hurt us badly if we fail to manage it properly. Let us hope that we find the humility of Solomon to pray for the wisdom that AI might become for us a blessing.

Here is a poem/song by Denny Zager and Rick Evans. It paints a grim picture of human destiny, our dependence on our technology and our relationship with the planet. It might very well prove prophetic. Yet the way of wisdom offers us an alternative.

In the Year 2525

In the year 2525
If man is still alive
If woman can survive
They may find

In the year 3535
Ain’t gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies
Everything you think, do, and say
Is in the pill you took today

In the year 4545
Ain’t gonna need your teeth, won’t need your eyes
You won’t find a thing to chew
Nobody’s gonna look at you

In the year 5555
Your arms are hanging limp at your sides
Your legs got nothing to do
Some machine’s doing that for you

In the year 6565
Ain’t gonna need no husband, won’t need no wife
You’ll pick your son, pick your daughter too
From the bottom of a long glass tube, whoa, whoa

In the year 7510
If God’s a-comin’ he ought to make it by then
Maybe he’ll look around himself and say
Guess it’s time for the Judgement day

In the year 8510
God is gonna shake his mighty head
He’ll either say I’m pleased where man has been
Or tear it down and start again, whoa, whoa

In the year 9595
I’m kinda wondering if man is gonna be alive
He’s taken everything this old earth can give
And he ain’t put back nothing, whoa, whoa

Now it’s been 10, 000 years
Man has cried a billion tears
For what he never knew
Now man’s reign is through

But through eternal night
The twinkling of starlight
So very far away
Maybe it’s only yesterday

In the year 2525
If man is still alive
If woman can survive
They may thrive

In the year 3535
Ain’t gonna need to tell the truth…

Source: Musixmatch (for non-commercial use only). Denny Zager and Rick Evans were partners in an American rock-pop duo. They were active during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Zager was born in February of 1944 in Wymore, Nebraska. Evans was born in January of 1943 in Lincoln, Nebraska. Evans died in February of 2018. Zager now lives in Lincoln, Nebraska where he builds custom guitars. Zager and Evans are best known for the above hit song premiering in 1969. The song became a number one hit single, the only one the group ever had. You can hear a recording of the song at this link.

Life in the Weeds

EIGHTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Isaiah 44:6-8

Psalm 86:11-17

Romans 8:12-25

Matthew 13:24-30; 36-43

Prayer of the Day: Faithful God, most merciful judge, you care for your children with firmness and compassion. By your Spirit nurture us who live in your kingdom, that we may be rooted in the way of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“….in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, ‘Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’” Matthew 12:29-30.

True, ripping out the weeds is likely to uproot the wheat. Yet there is a downside to letting them grow together until the harvest. The weeds use up moisture and nutrients in the soil that would otherwise nurture the wheat. They will grow up to block the lifegiving rays of the sun. Weeds can become havens for unwanted insect pests. There is no getting around the fact that the weeds are a problem and will continue to be such until the time of harvest. Even then, they are bound to make the harvest a good deal more labor intensive than it would otherwise be. I can understand why the slaves of the householder would prefer to deal with them sooner rather than later.

I think this might be the attraction pre-millennial (“Left Behind”) religion holds for so many. At first blush, the idea of God intervening to rapture the pure in heart out of this evil world, cleansing the earth by means of the “great tribulation,” and bringing back the faithful to rule over a purified planet sounds attractive. The problem, however, is that even the true believers, the pure in heart, those who have “accepted Jesus as personal Lord and Savior” are still sinners. The tendency toward selfishness, suspicion toward God and one another and all the other characteristics that always seem to get us into trouble in this age will be present among those who return in the next to reign over the new world-which will not stay new for long. The line between good and evil does not run neatly along international borders, cultural divides, religious communities or political party membership. It runs right through the middle of every human heart. The weeds are rooted, along with the wheat, in the depths of our souls. Uprooting them cannot help but damage the harvest.  

This parable has often been interpreted to mean that we are powerless to deal with evil. Poverty, injustice, racism, war and all the menial day to day evils like road rage, unhelpful telephone menus and double parked vehicles are grim realities of life in this world, the resolution of which must await the final judgment. You can’t eradicate evil, so you just have to learn to live with it. But given this parable’s context within Matthew’s gospel, we know that cannot be the case. Jesus makes clear that his disciples are not called merely to endure evil passively. They are to be “light to the world” and “salt to the earth.” Matthew 5:13-14. Their good works are to “give glory” to God. Matthew 5:16. Jesus sends his disciples to make disciples of all nations so that they may teach the world all that he has taught them. Matthew 28:19-20. Evil is not to be tolerated. Evildoers are to be exposed, denounced and resisted by faithful witness to the truth in word and deed. Judgement of evildoers, however, belongs to God alone. It is not for disciples of Jesus to attempt the separation of wheat from weeds, sheep from goats, righteous from unrighteous. When the church oversteps its authority and usurps this dread responsibility, it never ends well.

Sometimes separation of wheat from weeds is undertaken with the best of intentions and supported by sound moral logic. By way of illustration, allow me a brief hypothetical. You are in command of an elite force of commandos trained in executing rescue missions. You learn that an angry mob of religious fanatics is about to stone a man for expressing his differing religious beliefs. The man is a community leader with a proven record of public service, including the provision of relief for widows and their children. With careful planning, you are convinced that you can rescue the soon to be victim with a minimal loss of human life. By employing the best strategy and state of the art military technology, you succeed in disbursing the mob and rescuing the man destined for death. A terrible act of mob violence against an innocent victim has been prevented. In the process, a few of the perpetrators are killed, including a young man who, though not actually involved in the violence, was actively encouraging it and holding the coats of those preparing to throw stones. All in all, from a military and humanitarian point of view, the mission is successful.

Those of you familiar with the Book of Acts will recognize immediately that this successful military exercise prevented the death of Saint Stephen by killing Saint Paul. The point I am trying to make is that one never knows what one is doing when, for whatever noble reason, a person takes one life in order to save another. What looks to my eye like a weed could well be the seed of God’s future harvest. Good and evil are so inextricably bound together among nations, between individuals and within each human heart that we cannot extricate the latter without mortally wounding the former. No human life can be judged until it has finally come to the end God determines and no one other than God is capable of judging it. There is nothing for it but to live faithfully and bear fruit in the weeds.

Living in the weeds calls for patience. I think there is no greater temptation afflicting good and well meaning people than impatience, a desire to root out evil and injustice by whatever means necessary. The temptation is particularly strong where evil actions threaten the lives and wellbeing of other people, as in my hypothetical. Faithful witness, peaceful resistance and love in the face of hatred are too slow and too ineffective. We prefer measures that get results and get them quickly. What is war, after all, but an attempted short cut to peace? Violence, coercion and intimidation always promise swift resolution to complex problems, but they never deliver. Jesus understands that there are no shortcuts to God’s gentle reign of justice and peace. There is no way to peace but peace itself. Who are the wheat stalks and who are the weeds? I strongly suspect we are all a mixture of both. There is no quick and easy way to cleanse the weeds from the field, from our world or from our hearts. Cleansing comes only through the slow burning fire of repentance that is God’s life giving judgement.

Here is a poem by William Carlos Williams that speaks of a burning that is both painful and redemptive.

Burning the Christmas Greens

Their time past, pulled down
cracked and flung to the fire
—go up in a roar

All recognition lost, burnt clean
clean in the flame, the green
dispersed, a living red,
flame red, red as blood wakes
on the ash—

and ebbs to a steady burning
the rekindled bed become
a landscape of flame

At the winter’s midnight
we went to the trees, the coarse
holly, the balsam and
the hemlock for their green

At the thick of the dark
the moment of the cold’s
deepest plunge we brought branches
cut from the green trees

to fill our need, and over
doorways, about paper Christmas
bells covered with tinfoil
and fastened by red ribbons

we stuck the green prongs
in the windows hung
woven wreaths and above pictures
the living green. On the

mantle we built a green forest
and among those hemlock
sprays put a herd of small
white deer as if they

were walking there. All this!
and it seemed gentle and good
to us. Their time past,
relief! The room bare. We

stuffed the dead grate
with them upon the half burnt out
log’s smouldering eye, opening
red and closing under them

and we stood there looking down.
Green is a solace
a promise of peace, a fort
against the cold (though we

did not say so) a challenge
above the snow’s
hard shell. Green (we might
have said) that, where

small birds hide and dodge
and lift their plaintive
rallying cries, blocks for them
and knocks down

the unseeing bullets of
the storm. Green spruce boughs
pulled down by a weight of
snow—Transformed!

Violence leaped and appeared.
Recreant! roared to life
as the flame rose through and
our eyes recoiled from it.

In the jagged flames green
to red, instant and alive. Green!
those sure abutments . . . Gone!
lost to mind

and quick in the contracting
tunnel of the grate
appeared a world! Black
mountains, black and red—as

yet uncolored—and ash white,
an infant landscape of shimmering
ash and flame and we, in
that instant, lost,

breathless to be witnesses,
as if we stood
ourselves refreshed among
the shining fauna of that fire.

Source: American Religious Poems, Edited by Harold Bloom & Jesse Ruba (c. 2006 by Library Classics of the United States, New York, NY) pp. 195-198. William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) was an American poet, writer, and physician. He was born in Rutherford, New Jersey. His father was born in England but raised from the age of 5 in the Dominican Republic and his mother came from Puerto Rico. The Caribbean culture of his family had an important influence on Williams. In addition to his writing, Williams had a long career as a physician. He practiced pediatrics and general medicine at Passaic General Hospital. He served as chief of pediatrics from 1924 until his death. You can read more about William Carlos Williams and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

SEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Isaiah 55:10-13

Psalm 65:1-13

Romans 8:1-11

Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

Prayer of the Day: Almighty God, we thank you for planting in us the seed of your word. By your Holy Spirit help us to receive it with joy, live according to it, and grow in faith and hope and love, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“Listen!” Matthew 13:3.

I have heard and preached more sermons on Jesus’ parable of the sower and the seed than I can remember. Most of them skate dangerously close to allegory, thereby missing the parable. Jesus himself must resort to allegory for the sake of his witless disciples. For you see, a parable is like a joke. You either get the punch line and respond with laughter, surprise or perhaps outrage, or you sit scratching your head and wondering what you missed. The disciples evidently need an explanation of the parable. Jesus could have been none too happy about that. It was kind of like someone in the audience asking a stand up comedian to explain his joke. It’s a clear sign that the act is bombing. The parable, it turns out, is not an allegory describing different kinds of hearers-though I suppose one could expound it that way. It is a good deal simpler than that. In fact, it can be summed up on one word: Listen.

Listening is a rare skill these days. Perhaps it always was. That is unfortunate because without it, communication is severely compromised. I have a feeling that much of the time most of us fail to hear what others are trying to tell us or see matters from their perspective. Nowhere is that more evident than in our dialogue over race. I notice a tendency among those of us who identify as white to fill up the conversation with demonstrations of our own lack of prejudice, as though that were the issue. We have no end of stories to share about our black college buddies, coworkers and neighbors with whom we have “always gotten along just fine.” The issue, of course, is not how we are getting along but how our conversation partners are getting along-which is frequently not “just fine.” I sense a deep seated fear on the part of us white folk of learning that the schools from which we graduated with fond memories, the police whose presence gives us a sense of comfort and security, the government institutions over which we feel entitled to have a say and the workplaces we experience as opportunities for professional advancement, financial security and comradery are the same places people of color often experience and have memories of loneliness, exclusion and hostility. Intentionally or not, we are sending a clear message: We don’t hear you and we don’t want to hear you.

Sometimes listening requires one to look past the words in order to find the message. It was in the first or second year of my ministry, just about a week after Christmas, that Gene came bursting into my office in a fit of rage. “I told you I wanted to have ‘Hark the Harald Angels Sing’ in the candle light service,” he practically shouted. I pointed out that I had included more than a few of the Christmas favorites he requested and that, even on Christmas, there are only so many carols one can sing. That did not placate Gene. “Pastor, we have sung that hymn every Christmas for as long as I have been in this church. There was no reason for leaving it out this year.” I apologized and assured Gene that I would definitely work it in next Christmas. “Fine,” said Gene. “But I might not be here next Christmas.”

As it turned out, Gene had been diagnosed with an inoperable, untreatable heart ailment that was worsening with each month. This confrontation was not about Christmas, planning the candle light service, the selection of hymns or any other churchly matter. It wasn’t about me and my pastoral leadership. This was a man trying to tell me that he was dying, that his time was limited and that he was struggling to hang onto and savor every scrap of everything that brought back precious memories, that was solid and predictable, that made his life meaningful. But before I could hear Gene, I had to get past my defensiveness and insecurity, factors that almost caused me to miss an opportunity to speak a word of grace. “Seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand.” Matthew 13:13.

For centuries we have lacked eyes to see and ears to hear the cries of our planet, increasingly stressed by our ruthless exploitation. This summer, clouds of smoke from wildfires in Canada blocked the sun and fouled the air of our northern cities. Rising ocean temperatures generated storms ravaging the south with tornadoes, floods and lethal heat. As these disasters wreak havoc on our lives and foreshadow global upheavals for millions word wide, still, right wing leaders scoff at the very idea of humanly induced climate change and clamor for access to the few remaining wild sections of our earth for more deforestation, strip mining and “development.” “Drill baby, drill!” as the Republican conventioneers chanted a decade ago. Or, as conservative pundit, Ann Coulter is known to have said, “Take the earth and rape her.” Meanwhile, God’s good earth cries out for deliverance and warns of the consequences of our heedless consumerism. “Seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand.” Matthew 13:13.

As Jesus points out, there are plenty of things that get in the way of listening. The internet is bristling with posts seemingly designed more to elicit outrage than spread useful information. Nothing dims the capacity to listen more than righteous (or unrighteous anger). Like the very devil, it sweeps away one’s capacity to focus, empathize and keep an open mind. Given that much of the news we get these days comes in the form of soundbites, Facebook posts, five minutes of mainstream media discussion and tweets, it should not surprise us that much public knowledge, including knowledge of the Bible and religion, is wading pool shallow. As such, it forms a poor foundation for developing mature and enduring understanding. God knows that, in this information age, there is no shortage of distractions keeping our minds running in a thousand different directions, many of which lead nowhere. Among all of the hysteria, misinformation, distractions and hostility, Jesus invites us to be attentive to the Word that, as the prophet Isaiah reminds us, “shall not return to [God] empty, but [] shall accomplish that which [God] purpose[s], and succeed in the thing for which [God] sent it.” Isaiah 55:11.

A better way is waiting to be seen. A hopeful word is waiting to be heard. But in order to receive it, we must be schooled in the art of listening. Here is a poem by Robert King about listening. The subject here is insects, but the call to listen could as well be directed to the voices of those among us whose cries for justice and compassion fail to rise above the noise of pop culture, consumer advertising and political rhetoric. The injunction to listen could as well be aimed at the shrieking winds, roaring wild fires and crumbling ice fields of a planet being murdered by the bottomless pit of human greed. The need for listening extends to the growing cries of angry individuals who lack the language and conceptual tools needed to articulate their pain. Above all, the call to listen invites us to be attentive to the signs of God’s inbreaking reign in the midst of all this. Listen!

Listening

Now glory be to good

things singing around us

in the darkness, listen.

Listen: inside the crickets’

scalloped chirping, scrapers

trilling against dry files,

the grasshoppers rasping

from their stalks, the sticks

and thin strings of katydids,

cicadas drumming thickly

in the thick trees vanishing

into the throbbing dark,

we listen until we’re not

listening. Our ears fizz

with their electric persistence.

We do not care insects see-saw

In the hazardous guessings of sex,

Or that cicadas have churned

for years under the earth, or

that in the dark, large world

they are leagues apart, singing

to find each other, themselves.

The world is all alive

is all we know, something

thrilling the air, a murmer

reminding us of every

summer we remember,

something awake all night

which numbs, soothing us under.

Sleeping, or bodies cool.

Only the crickets insist.

Is it? Is it? they ask all night

and answer, It is. It is.

Source: Poetry, July 1988. Robert King (d. 2017), founder of the Colorado Poets Center, was born in Denver, Colorado. He received his bachelors degree in English from the State University of Iowa and returned to Colorado, where he earned a masters degree in American Literature from Colorado State University. He earned his Ph. D. in English and Creative Writing from the University of Iowa. He taught for three years at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks and then took a position at the University of North Dakota where he spent the bulk of his career teaching English and creative writing. In 1971 he was named Outstanding Professor at that institution and received the UND Faculty Achievement Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1996. He also lectured frequently at the University of Nebraska and the University of Northern Colorado. You can read more about Robert King and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Zechariah 9:9-12

Psalm 145:8-14

Romans 7:15-25a

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

Prayer of the Day: You are great, O God, and greatly to be praised. You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you. Grant that we may believe in you, call upon you, know you, and serve you, through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

The Lord is gracious and merciful,
   slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
The Lord is good to all,
   and his compassion is over all that he has made. Psalm 145:8-9.

This refrain echoes throughout the Hebrew Scriptures and finds expression throughout the New Testament as well. The God portrayed in the Bible hates nothing that God has made. God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. Ezekiel 33:11. God would have God’s salvation reach the end of the earth. Isaiah 49:6. It is God’s will that all should reach repentance and be saved from the destructive power of sin. II Peter 3:9.

Sadly, I have spent a good deal of my ministry disabusing people of contrary perceptions of God. I have encountered several young people who left the church because they were convinced, for one reason or another, that the God preached from the pulpit had nothing for them but condemnation and threats of punishment. I have met more than a few people who have grown up in a church that compelled them to hide or deny their sexual identities because they were deemed sinful. In short, the church has often proclaimed a god who is vindictive and merciless, quick to anger, abounding in wrath, a god whose default posture toward creation is anger, disappointment and contempt. This is a god who cares more about obedience to its rules than the people it created; a god who throws a fit over a same sex relationship but cares not a flying fruitcake about government policies that impoverish thousands of people. I have said before and will say again, there is no such God. Nor should there be.

Nevertheless, I hasten to add that God’s love for creation cannot simply be equated with our human notions of love. God is God and we are not. God’s ways are not our ways and those ways do not always comport with liberal, protestant, ever white, ever polite notions of progressive ethics. God is entitled to do things forbidden to us mortals. Most importantly, God is entitled to take human life-and does just that. “Turn back, you mortals,” says the Lord in the 90^th Psalm. Psalm 90:3. “Remember that you are dust and to dust you will return,” pastors intone as they impose ashes on our forehead. God means to make an end of us all. Nobody gets off this planet alive. For our part, we human beings are forbidden from taking human lives. Moreover, as Martin Luther points out, the commandment forbiding murder does not merely preclude violence. It imposes a positive duty to go out of our way and do everything possible to assist our neighbors to live and to thrive.

God alone is entitled to execute retributive justice, whereas we are not. As Saint Paul reminds us, “‘Vengeance is mine,’ says the Lord.” Romans 12:19. While the psalmists often cry out to God, begging for vengeance to be carried out against their enemies and frequently let God know in graphic terms how they would like to see it done, they wisely leave that task in God’s capable hands. Once again, God’s ways are not our ways. As the Prophet Jonah had to learn, God’s view of who deserves punishment for what, when and on which terms does not comport with our myopic views on the subject. The justice we human beings are called to practice is distributive rather than retributive. It is a justice that calls for protection of the most vulnerable in our midst, the equitable sharing of earth’s bounty and reverant respect and care for creation.

Judgment, like retribution, also belongs to God. Is it possible that a person becomes so thoroughly depraved that the Creator no longer recognizes the divine image in the creation and says, “I never knew you; go away from me”? Because Jesus raises that prospect, we would be foolish to dismiss it. But that question must remain introspective: To what extent am I being formed by Jesus and his community of faithful disciples? What are the demonic influences that threaten to shape my character in ways inconsistent with God’s gentle reign? Is the image of Christ recognizable in the way I live? As far as others are concerned, it is presumed that all people, even those who appear completely depraved to our eyes, are the object of God’s love and capable of redemption. Thus, Jesus warns his disciples, “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged.” Matthew 7:1.

One might well wonder why a God who is good and almighty does not intervene to prevent the catastrophic suffering witnessed by us on a daily basis. Indeed, if God is good and all that God made is good, why do these catastrophes occur in the first place? I do not pretend to have answers to these questions, but there are some counterquestions that I believe can help us think about this conundrum. Once God speaks the words “let there be,” is God still all powerful? Can God still be omnipotent once something other than God is called into existence? Is creating the universe a little like bringing a child into the world? Once a child is born and begins to grow, its parents might have hopes, dreams and expectations about its future, but every parent knows that a child has a will of its own. Its life often follows a trajectory its parents find distressing, disappointing and perhaps devastating. In many circumstances, intervention is difficult and can sometimes do more harm than good. Parents sometimes find themselves feeling as helpless as they are concerned. Is it the same with God and God’s creation? Are there limits to how much a loving God can do for a wayword world?

It seems that a degree of randomness is woven into the fabric of creation. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was planted among all the other good trees in the Garden of Eden. So, too, the serpent was a creation of God no less than any other living thing. We are told that it was “subtle,” but not that it was evil. The potential for things to go very wrong has been present from the beginning. Our world is not a safe playground. Lightning strikes the good as well as the wicked. Tornadoes demolish churches along with porn shops. A drunk driver hits a school bus, kills and injures numerous children and walks away without a scratch. Genetic irregularities cause birth defects, crippling diseases and premature death. Could God have made a universe without such devastating randomness? I don’t know. But I wonder what a universe without randomness would be like? I wonder what life would be like if everything went according to plan? What would it be like to live without surprises? Discoveries? Unanticipated endings? Is it possible to have love without heartbreak? Joy without sorrow? Anticipation without disappointment?

Of course, there is human evil and horrors that we bring upon ourselves. Could God not intervene to prevent the worst of these horrors? If God is God, could not God have stopped Hitler in his tracks? Diverted the airplanes away from the Twin Towers and Pentagon on 9/11? Prevented war from breaking out in eastern Europe? Again, it is not clear to me what God could or could not have done in response to these horrors. Again, did God surrender God’s omnipotence by the act of creation? I don’t know about that. What I do know is that God does intervene to save us from our self destructive instincts and acts-though not in the way we might wish. We might prefer a God who steps in and “fixes” things for us; a God who has the power to make us behave ourselves. We have had leaders like that throughout history. They are called dictators and the price they extract for the order, safety and stability we crave is steep and bloody. Is that what we desire from God? Stalin on steroids?

Whatever we might want from God, it is clear that God has no interest in ruling the world through coercive power. God does not want a world that behaves because it is terrified to do otherwise. God desires a world that obeys because it knows that its Creator loves it and wills for it abundant life. That appears to be the point of the Flood Story in Genesis. At the end of the story, as Noah, his family and the animals he preserved emerge from the ark and the scent of Noah’s sacrifice rises to God’s nostrils, God declares:

 “I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done.
As long as the earth endures,
   seedtime and harvest, cold and heat,
summer and winter, day and night,
   shall not cease.” Genesis 8:21-22.

In sum, God is saying “No. I will not be that kind of God. This is not the way in which I will reign over my good creation.” Does God become angry? Is God wrathful? To be sure. But, once again, God’s anger is not to be equated with human wrath that is fequently petty and vindictive. Human anger is all too often the engine of vengeance and retribution. God’s wrath is directed at human injustice and the consequent suffering it inflicts upon humans. It is not directed against humans themselves. God is angry for us, not at us.

To be sure, God will overcome the world, but not by a show of shock and awe. God will overcome the world by gaining its trust, winning its heart, persuading it to believe God’s promise to bring to fulfillment its deepest yearnings for wholeness. To do that, God put’s God’s skin in the game. “The Word became flesh,” John the Evangelist tells us, to “dwell among us.” John 1:14. The Word dwells among us, not as a king, president or dictator, but as a child born to a homeless couple, a refugee from political violence and a victim of a corrupt criminal justice system. Jesus experienced human life at its worst, human beings at their most depraved and the world at the height of its cruelty-and gave his life to it just the same. Jesus was the best God had to give the world. When the world rejected and killed him, God raised him up and offered him back again. God continues to offer us Jesus and will do so until we recognize in him the face of a God who “is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” God’s power is God’s pateince. God’s might is God’s refusal to be drawn into the vortex of retribution that has characterized so much of human history. God defeats evil by outlasting it.

Here is a poem by the mystic, Mechthild of Magdeburg, that testifies to the heart of the God professed in the Scriptures.

God’s Absence

God speaks to the soul

And God said to the soul:

I desired you before the world began.

I desire you now

As you desire me.

And where the desires of two come together

There love is perfected.

Source: Beguine Spirituality (The Crossroad Publishing Company, Inc., 1989) Mechthild of Magdeburg (1207-1282) was monastic and mystic born to a noble Saxon family. At age 12 she had the first of several visions. In 1230 she left her home renouncing all claim to wealth and privilege to join a Beguine order at Magdeburg. There she seems to have risen to a position of authority in the community. She became acquainted with the Dominicans and became a Dominican tertiary, studying many of the Dominican writers. It was her Dominican confessor, Henry of Halle, who encouraged and helped Mechthild to compose The Flowing Light. Mechthird’s criticism of church dignitaries and their religious laxity along with her claims to theological insight by reason of her visions aroused ecclesiastical opposition. Some clerics called for the burning of her writings. In old age Mechthird lost her sight and found herself alone and the object of much criticism. Around 1272, she joined the Cistercian nunnery at Helfta, where she was given protection and support in the last years of her life. You can read more about Mechthild of Magdeburg and sample more of her writings at the Poetry Foundation website.