**NEW** Preaching on Creation: Sunday August 7-13 in Year A (Thompson)
All-Encompassing, Hopeful, and Embodied Faith
In his
commentary, Andrew reflects on God reaching us through our surroundings
and how God’s active presence, within and beyond us, forms us for
sustained action for the sake of the world.
Care for Creation Commentary on the Common Lectionary
Readings for Sunday August 7-13, Year A (2020, 2023)
1 Kings 19:9-18
Psalm 85:8-13
Romans 10:5-15
Matthew 14:22-33
Introduction
It’s no secret that the United States’ narrative of individualism and
self-sufficiency has and is devastating our environment and many
communities who are underrepresented in systems of power. Lutheran
ethicist Cynthia Moe-Lobeda encourages an alternative way of
understanding oneself and one’s spirituality which runs counter to these
individualistic narratives that oppress our neighbors and God’s
creation. Moe-Lobeda names this lens “Critical Mystical Vision,” which
includes seeing “what is going on,” “what could be,” and “seeing ever
more fully the sacred Spirit of life coursing throughout creation and
leading it—despite all evidence to the contrary—into abundant life for
all” (Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, Resisting Structural Evil: Love as Ecological-Economic Vocation,
Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 113-114, Kindle). Moe-Lobeda planting her
ethic in this ground of critically acknowledging one’s experience,
seeing new pathways to take for the journey ahead, and God’s continued
guidance towards that longed-for state of affairs of dynamic
relationality offers hope for the journey and energy towards making it a
reality (Resisting Structural Evil, 114, 120 Kindle). By
continuing to develop the portrait of God actively abiding within us
through creation, we are provided perspectives and practices which
cultivate inspiring hope. This hope grounded in faith acknowledges
despair and pain and seeks to do something about it, moving the parishes
we serve and beyond towards a more communal worldview and brighter
tomorrows.
1 Kings 19:9-19: Embodied Faith in the Sheer Silence
The Kings reading for August 9th begins this week’s expansion of this
Western-influenced perspective of God. This exploration of Elijah’s
story follows Elijah’s lone prophetic witness against four hundred and
fifty prophets of Baal, which resulted in the LORD being revealed boldly
to the community as the giver of water and fire, primary elements of
sustenance and life (1 Kings 18:17-46). While this demonstrated God’s
sovereignty as greater than the perceived power of Baal affirmed by
members of the Israelite community and leadership at the time, Elijah
also unsettled the status quo in the process, leading him to flee after
Jezebel threatened his life (1 Kings 19:1-8). We enter into the 9th
verse of chapter 19 with Elijah spending the night in seclusion within a
cave in Mount Horeb, the site where God had cared for the Israelites
with water from a stone and provided guidance in the form of a new
covenant from a fire (Exodus 17:6; Deuteronomy 4:9-15).
God reaches out to Elijah, asking him why he is there. Elijah
responds, explaining that he has continued to answer his call, and even
so the present oppressive system continues to exploit the agrarian
culture at the time for their own gain and idolatrous practices, thus
breaking the covenant with God for the Israelite people to “love the
Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all
your might” (Deuteronomy 6:5; Gale A. Yee, “1 Kings 17:1-22:53: The
Ministries of the Prophets Elijah and Micaiah” in Fortress Press Commentary on the Bible: Two Volume Set,
Gale A. Yee, Hugh R. Page Jr., Matthew J. M. Coomber, Margaret Aymer,
Cynthia Briggs Kittredge, David A. Sánchez, eds. Minneapolis: Fortress
Press, 2014, Kindle). By breaking this covenant and exploiting the
agrarian culture at the time, they also “[deprive] the alien, the
orphan, and the widow of justice,” as these vulnerable populations
especially relied upon gleaning practices in the fields, as outlined in
Deuteronomy as well (Deuteronomy 26:12-13, 27:19; Yee, “1 Kings
17:1-22:53,” Kindle). Elijah’s response to God feels drenched in the
question of “Why?”—Why does this pain and suffering continue to happen,
and why do my neighbors and your people continue to suffer as the
covenant continues to remain unacknowledged and they seek to take my
life? Elijah shares his story and experience with hopes that the status
quo may be changed and seeks guidance about how to make that happen. How
often do we find ourselves asking these questions too, especially when
like it feels as though justice is nowhere to be found and God does not
seem close by?
In their first exchange, God commands Elijah to go outside the cave
and listen, “for the LORD is about to pass by” (1 Kings 19:11). We
recall here that when Moses experienced God passing him by, he too was
encouraged to stay by himself inside the cleft of a rock or a cavern
(Exodus 33:20-23). At that moment, the very same signs that accompanied
God’s presence listed in Isaiah 29:5-6 occur outside the cave, including
a whirlwind so strong that it split the mountains, an earthquake, and
then a fire (1 Kings 19:11-12). However, the writer(s) of 1 Kings
reports that the LORD was not present in those spaces, and that after
the fire there was “the sound of sheer silence” (1 Kings 19:13 NRSV).
Elijah seems to have discerned that God’s presence was not communicated
via the classic mediums for the divine to be revealed. Upon hearing the
silence, however, Elijah responds to God’s invitation to leave the cave
and experience the LORD passing by. Upon arriving at the entrance of the
cave, God asks again what Elijah is doing at Mount Horeb. Elijah
repeats his response, and this time the writer(s) reports that Elijah
discerns how God will restore justice to the land, namely in the means
they understood at the time, which was by putting righteous leaders back
into leadership positions.
So, what changed between these two sets of questions and responses?
God reveals Godself and the will of God in a vehicle that is atypical to
how God has been most clearly revealed in the past to God’s people. The
prophet Elijah thus receives a broader lens that God’s movement is not
limited only to the more easily perceptible movements of nature or in
bold displays of divine intervention. Instead, even in the absolute stillness of the air, God is still moving and is still present with God’s people—hearing
the cry of the oppressed, stirring people’s hearts towards ensuring
justice for the sake of the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner, and
unsettling oppressive systems which seek to silence the voices of
prophets who are speaking truth to power. God’s presence is not limited
only to the mediums themselves, but it is communicated into us
through such means. Whether it be within the cave, within the clouds,
within the fire, within the water, within the stillness—God also stirs
within us, towards our very innermost selves, to remind us of God’s
abiding presence. God’s presence does not just linger there either.
God’s presence communicated through these creative means revealed to
Elijah the means for how justice would be offered in his time. God’s
revelation to Elijah appears to have encouraged him to continue the work
he has been called to do, as in the very next verse he goes forth to
anoint Elisha, thus continuing the process of unsettling and dismantling
the oppressive political system at the time.
The 1 Kings passage invites readers to reflect over two questions:
How do you see God moving in this world and within you, and how are you
going to respond? On the road of activism, silence can sometimes be
viewed as a scary wall, indicating that one’s actions they once believed
were in line with their vocation are actually running off track or are
not making a difference. The question people in this position may
encounter next is “What comes next?” This seems to be a root of the
response Elijah offered to God’s question: “What are you doing here?”
Through Elijah’s encounter with God in and through nature, he seems to
have found an expanded perspective that is grounded in his continued
faith and results in new directions to explore. While we treasure the
narratives where God is moving in big and bold ways because they are
exciting and often deliver the justice we long for on a daily basis, we
are invited to expand our lens like Elijah so we may remember that
milestone moments are not the only places where God is active. God is
also present and moving in those moments which seem like anything other
than momentous; we see here that God can use the stillness, the space we
inhabit, the things we perceive and experience each as leaping off
points to move us, and in the process reveals God’s will of compassion
and justice. So, once the LORD passes by you in this way, what will you
do next?
Psalm 85:8-13 and Romans 10:5-15 – God Revealed and Moving, Within and Beyond Ourselves
The readings for this week from Psalm 85 and Romans 10 offer more
rich imagery which help us better engage Moe-Lobeda’s third aspect of
Critical Mystical Vision: “seeing ever more fully the sacred Spirit of
life coursing throughout creation and leading it—despite all evidence to
the contrary—into abundant life for all” (Resisting Structural Evil, 114,
Kindle). The psalm reading this week carries on the theme found in 1
Kings 19:9-18 of listening for God, who “…will speak peace to [God’s]
people, to [God’s] faithful, to those who turn to [God] in their hearts”
(Psalm 85:8 NRSV). This conception of God includes the idea that God’s
glory (another term often associated with God’s abiding presence) dwells
in our land, which the writer perceives as causing love, faithfulness,
righteousness, and peace to also be gifted to the world by extension.
What hopeful imagery associated with the fruits of listening and
discerning God’s active presence amongst us! The writer perceives the
world as being infused with the Spirit of life, and by extension finds
hope in God’s presence.
In Psalm 85:11, we are treated to another set of rich imagery:
“Faithfulness will spring up from the ground, and righteousness will
look down from the sky.” It first casts an expansive view of the extent
of God’s presence, as God’s presence is associated with both parts of
the binary of up and down. This sentiment in Psalm 85:11 resonates with
the ideas shared in the opening verses of the Romans reading, which
encourages readers to not pin Christ’s presence to one place by assuming
the righteousness associated with faith is found in one precise
direction or space. Instead, we are encouraged to believe that “The word
is near you, on your lips and in your heart” (Romans 10:8). The English
translation offered by the NRSV here makes sense but misses out on just
how connected the word is to God’s people, as the “on your lips and in
your heart” literally translated from the Greek is “in your mouth (stoma)
and in your heart.” The Greek presents God’s presence here as being
very much internalized here. This internalized focus presents yet
another dynamic portrait of God’s abiding presence within us while also
including how God offers faith to us right where we are and that the
righteousness of God saturates the very air we breathe. These images
resonate with the comforting sentiment that our justifying, reconciling,
and renewing faith itself is “sparked” by God, which orients the life
we live in response (Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Article
4.73-74, 110-116 in Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert, eds., The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 2000, p. 132, 138-139). Yet again we see how God
oftentimes reveals God’s movement within us through these external means
and empowers us to live in an awe-inspired and hope-filled manner if we
remain tuned into God’s embracing movements.
We can see through these verses images which reflect the ongoing
nature of God’s life-giving presence, whether it be within the rhythmic
beats of our heart internally or a seed’s continued growth through the
dirt. Both of these images are similar in the fact that they represent
internal, life-giving processes which make action possible in the
future. So too does the faith which springs up from the ground of our
very being make possible the work we are called by God to do in this
world. Such work is often hard and exhausting, and sometimes can feel as
though we are stuck in the dirt; however, when we look out at the large
trees and the many blades of grass tenaciously growing up and out in
the air, we can see little reminders of God’s creative work in this
world continuing every moment, with every breath we breathe, with
whatever growth is sustained, and with every heartbeat, as the Word
abides in each and every one of those spaces. We can go forth, knowing
God has deeply rooted and nourished each of us in the ground from which
faithfulness springs through the waters of our baptism and the Word. To
use the words from the close of the Romans reading for this week, we are
rooted yet are also sent as those beautiful messengers proclaiming
God’s steadfast love, faithfulness, justice, and peace for the sake of
the broader web of life, of which we too are a part and have been called
to tend. The question remains, “How is God stirring you to live out the rooted-in-faith-life you have been freely given by God?”
Matthew 14:22-33 – An Invitation to Trust and Walk Upon the Mysterious Waves
The Gospel reading for this week continues our exploration of how
cultivating Moe-Lobeda’s “Critical Mystical Vision” allows us to see the
world through a hopeful, spiritually rich lens which informs bold
action. This passage takes place in a chapter where Jesus finds out
about John the Baptist’s execution at the hands of the corrupt political
system run by King Herod, and seeks rest in solitude while in a boat
upon the waters. He later returns to the crowds, and in his time with
them communicated his compassion by curing the sick and showcasing the
abundance of God by multiplying the small amount of food they had for
the nourishment of all in attendance. Yet again, we see how God chooses
to move through physical means to provide insights about God’s character
and movement towards life for all.
After these acts of care and time spent with the community, the
Gospel of Matthew reports that Jesus sent the disciples on a boat to go
to the other side to Gennesaret, where Jesus and the disciples yet again
engaged deeply with the community and Jesus provided care for them
(Matthew 14:34-36). The journey in-between the two shores is our focus
for this week, as the disciple’s boat is buffeted by what Bible scholar
Douglas R. A. Hare refers to as waves which “tortured” the disciples.
Hare minces no words about the dire predicament set before them, and
that it is crucial to the narrative that this is when Jesus appears to
the disciples, revealing that care and guidance are key aspects of
Jesus’ activity as the Messiah (Douglas R. A. Hare, Matthew.
Interpretation: Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. James
Luther Mays, Patrick D. Miller Jr., and Paul J. Achtemeier, eds.
Louisville: John Knox Press, 169). We see revealed through Jesus that
God is caring and present with those amidst the storms of life,
encouraging us to look out upon our respective communities for those we
may accompany on the journey as well.
As we continue surveying the disciples experience upon the sea, we
find the disciples looking out upon the roaring waters after a full
night of wrestling with these waves to see a figure moving towards them.
The disciples together “cried out in fear,” and immediately Jesus
offers words of comfort (Matthew 14:26-27). At this point, Peter alone
responds, asking Jesus to invite him on the waters too if his Lord is in
fact there. Jesus offers the requested invitation. Peter then steps out
upon the waves, begins to walk towards Jesus, and as he recognizes a
strong gust of wind, he becomes frightened and begins to sink. As he
sinks, he cries out to Jesus for deliverance, and Jesus immediately reaches
out to catch him. Jesus encourages him to hold onto the faith he had
which encouraged him to step out onto the water in the first place and
then guides him back onto the boat, at which point the storm ceases and
the disciples worship Jesus.
Hare’s analysis of this passage uplifts that Peter’s stepping upon
the waves is unique to Matthew’s telling of the disciples’ storm
experience, suggesting that Peter represents a key representation of
“…what it means to be a Christian caught midway between faith and doubt”
(Matthew, 169). Put another way, Peter represents to the
reader the life of someone engaging in Critical Mystical Vision. The
group on the waves originally saw Jesus as a ghost. Upon hearing the
figure on the waves, Peter chose to see things differently, trusting in
Jesus’ presence and asking to step out onto the risky waves with him.
Now, this does not mean that Peter was ignorant of the surroundings he
was in. The fact that he requested that Jesus himself command him upon
the tempestuous waters suggests that he was critically aware of the
space he was in, yet hoped through his faith that God’s power would be
sufficient to carry him on the way (Hare, Matthew, 170). Even
when the situation shifted and his faith was shaken by the wind, Peter
again cried out in hope that Jesus would hold him up when Peter alone
could not. Jesus immediately responded, and upon returning with Peter to the boat, the disciples cried out in worship, claiming Jesus as the Son of God.
And why these immediate turns to praising Jesus? My guess is this is
not only because the storm had subsided. Instead, Jesus communicated
clearly to these disciples that he is there to continue providing care
for them, even when he had perhaps appeared distanced from them when he
went away to the mountain to pray (Matthew 14:23). Moreover, Peter
stepped out in hope, and although the journey took a different path than
he perhaps had expected, he encountered Christ. Peter chose to see with hope, and his life and the disciples lives were changed by the experience that followed.
Even though he fell into the waters, had he not trusted in his faith
and seen the figure only as a specter or something to tempt him, then he
likely would not have had the experience which revealed a whole new
relational dimension between him and Christ. Their awareness of Christ’s
presence and care for them deepened immensely through his accompanying
them in the storm and upon the very waters that threatened their boat.
This is not to say that Peter saw everything as safe or rosy. It is
clear that Peter was abundantly aware of the stormy waves; however, he
fixated upon Christ for the first steps into new understanding (Hare, Matthew,
170). Through Peter’s hope and through the storm God revealed new
depths to Peter’s faith. Yet again, God moves amidst nature and the
discerning heart towards communicating new truths about who God is and
who we are called to be in response.
The waves can represent the mysterious, presently-uncharted places
for us. As we continue wrestling with how we are to answer our call to
love our neighbor amidst this complex world, we find hope in the truth
revealed in this passage that Jesus is already ahead of us in those
currently mysterious spaces. We experience the tug to move just as Peter
was called by Jesus upon the waters. We trust that Christ is with us
upon those waves, ready to catch us if we begin to sink. We believe
Christ still invites us to live into the faith sparked within us for the
sake of those experiencing the pain and fear associated with the
tumultuous waves of this life. So, where is Jesus ahead of you,
providing hope for the journey ahead and calling you to join him amidst
the storms which visit us in this life for the sake of those whose are
being engulfed by the waves?
Questions to Ponder and Embody in Hope
Elijah, the Psalmist, Paul, and Peter each saw the world with hope
and faith that God was moving and was encouraging them to move as well.
They each experienced hardship and saw that the road towards living out
their call was one that had obstacles and risks along the way. However,
they also saw the dynamic presence of God moving on the road, both
within their very bodies and alongside them in God’s creation. Out of
this deeper perception and God’s reminder of God’s compassionate
presence, they continued to move forward in hope that God’s will might
be done through them, not for their own sake, but because they were
obligated to do so by our Creator and Sustainer, and because they saw
the world needed it. The questions raised by these readings before us
then as called and claimed children of God are: What do we perceive?
In what ways is God moving within us and within our surroundings? Where
are the stormy waves God invites us to walk upon? What will we do in
response as we live rooted and fixed upon the faith offered to us by
God? We live out of our embodied faith and experience. We reflect
on what could be with hope inspired by God’s will of justice,
compassion, and dynamic relationality. We continue to step out upon the
waters to which we are called, listening for God’s continued presence
and guidance, whether it be found on the waves, in the fires, in the
wind, in the silence, in our words, or within our very hearts. May we
view the world through the “Critical Mystical Vision” Moe-Lobeda
describes, trusting that God is renewing us as faith springs up from the
ground to which we have been rooted, that God sends us with hope, and
that God invites us to embody the insights gained from God’s movement in
nature towards our very internal selves for the sake of the world.
Andrew Thompson
athompson5@capital.edu
Andrew Thompson is a second year Master of Divinity, Word and
Sacrament Track, student at Trinity Lutheran Seminary at Capital
University. Andrew graduated from Capital University in 2019 with a BA
in Religion and Philosophy, and much of his work embraced an
eco-theological framework. Andrew presented eco-theological work at
several undergraduate conferences, created an eco-theologically-centered
campus ministry outline and program content for his senior thesis, and
also served as a camp counselor at a Lutheran Outdoor Ministries in Ohio
camp. Andrew hopes to serve the world and the church as a campus
pastor, and as a continued advocate and ally for environmental justice.
