Solomon Prayed for God to Answer the Prayers of Foreigners

In his prayer dedicating the Jerusalem Temple, King Solomon recognized it as extending the promise God had made to Abraham in Genesis 12:3, “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” God’s intention is to include all people in steadfast love, so Solomon prayed in 1 Kings 8:42-43, “When a foreigner comes and prays toward this house, then hear in heaven your dwelling place, and do according to all that the foreigner calls to you, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you.” We who follow Jesus recognize no distinction between nationalities, races, genders, classes for all are one in Christ. (Romans 10:12; 1 Corinthians 12:13; Galatians 3:28) This is not limited to those who share our faith in Christ but included even those who would consider us to be enemies, as Jesus said in Matthew 5:44 and Paul affirmed in Romans 12:14-21. By extending the love of Christ toward those who are different than we are, perhaps even feared or despised by some, we begin now to experience what we anticipate when we will gather with those from every tribe and language and people and nation around the Throne singing praise to Christ. (Revelation 5:9)

This is not to say that differences of culture, ethnicity, background, etc. don't matter but they are not to disrupt either Christian unity or our common humanity as we live out the love of Christ.

My Soul Cries Out

Last week I wrote how singing Robert Lowry’s hymn My Life Flows On in worship with Spirit of Peace Lutheran Church shaped my meditation, which persisted through the week. http://nstolpepilgrim.blogspot.com/2018/07/above-earths-lamentation.html Then we sang it again in worship with Milwaukee Mennonite Church yesterday afternoon (August 5, 2018). I had been singing it each morning between my lectio divina and Prayer Psalms, listening as intently as possible for the “sweet though far off hymn that hails a new creation” and attending to the faint echoes of the music in my soul. I know I sang it in snatches and in entirety both mentally and vocally through the days of the week. I believe it was beneficial and sustaining for me, even if incrementally, as I continued to wrestle with both internal and external lamentations, tumult, and strife.

For a long time that hymn/folksong has strengthened me and guided me when the path ahead seemed dark and uncertain. I used it for an important turning point in the lives and relationships of a couple in my unpublished novel The Ghosts of Mystic Hills Cemetery. I went back and reviewed that chapter and posted it in my Writing Workshop blog at http://nstolpewriting.blogspot.com/2018/08/nils-from-ghosts-of-mystic-hills.html. Having it come back in worship again a week later, was like bringing the sweet but far off hymn a little nearer and intensifying the echoes in my soul. Not just an affirmation of my meditations this week, it was as though I was hearing the assurance that the hymn that hails the new creation will indeed drown out, indeed drive out, that cacophony of the earth’s lamentations, tumult, and strife that had been weighing me down recently.

The singing of it in worship yesterday came in the context of 16 year old Soraya Keiser’s worship message (sermon) of her learnings from a double pilgrimage she took this summer. First was to historic civil rights sites in the southern US. Dare I call them shrines? Second was to violence torn Guatemala to by sharing life with its victims. Not only was I amazed at the profundity of her insights, but it was the sweet song of the new creation being sung aloud in our very presence.

We ended that worship by singing My Soul Cries Out, with its plaintive refrain of hope that “the world is about to turn.” Again, I was prompted to sing along with the great chorus, confident that “the poor will weep no more, for the food they can never earn; there are tables spread, every mouth be fed,” and God “wipes away all tears for the dawn draws near.” Despite appearances to the contrary, the largely hidden turning of the world is relentless and ultimate. Thanks, Soraya for affirming this with your words and these two songs!

Terminal Symptoms

The intentional pursuit of happiness is a sure sign of terminal hedonism. The intentional pursuit of greatness is a sure sign of terminal hubris.

 True greatness is the byproduct of humble service. What Jesus said is not specifically religious but dependable for all humanity. “Whoever wants to be great must be last of all and servant of all.” Matthew 20:26-27; Mark 9:35; 10:43-44.

 True happiness is the byproduct of the blessedness Jesus illuminated in the Beatitudes. Matthew 5:3-12; Luke 6:20-22. This is not pious sentimentality but radically countercultural. Imagine the reaction if this was posted where posting the Ten Commandments is sometimes advocated.

·         “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

·         “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. 

·         “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. 

·         “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. 

·         “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. 

·         “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. 

·         “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. 

·         “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 

·         “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

Above Earth’s Lamentation

I identified with Psalm 120:6-7 in my Psalm prayers this morning. “Too long have I had my dwelling among those who hate peace. I am for peace; but when I speak, they are for war.” The vitriolic political hostility so persistently expressed by many who claim the name of Christian painfully pierces my heart. I understand having different political opinions, but I do not understand the anger, sometimes violent language, aimed at those who disagree. I understand deep concerns about character flaws, moral failure, and evasion of integrity, but I do not understand attacking and mocking people rather than addressing issues. If you are reading this and interpret it as directed at those on the right end of the political spectrum, you probably have good reason to think that. Conversely, if you are assuming I am critical of voices from the left end of the political spectrum, you probably have good reason to think that too. I expect and welcome vigorous political debate in our democratic society, including among Christians. However, I ache for unity in Christ that supersedes these differences among those who us who follow Jesus to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God as Micah 6:8 teaches us.

My point is that the lines from the Psalm articulated the alienation and exclusion I have been feeling from those with whom I have presumed to be united in Christ. I have been struggling with how to live in the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace, as Ephesians 4:3 instructs us. This is in the Epistle from the lectionary readings for next Sunday (August 5, 2018) and which I expanded on in this post from July 7, so I am feeling a double emphasis.  http://nstolpepilgrim.blogspot.com/2018/07/under-siege-unity-of-spirit-in-bond-of.html

Though definitely of a different nature and magnitude, I have also been wrestling in my prayers to discern a unified direction for Candy’s Dad’s future. At 91 years old with some challenges of age and health, he still lives in his own home with a good caregiver. He is mentally and emotionally capable of making his own choices, which is wonderful if sometimes challenging. David and I visited him a couple of weeks ago to help with getting the house organized. Candy and I were with him last week so his caregiver could visit her Dad in Michigan. Exploring the options and timing for his next steps is not easy. I have been feeling some internal turmoil in this uncertain time. At the same time, Candy and I are thankfully and joyfully confident in our living arrangement sharing a duplex with David’s family and accessing support resources in Milwaukee for our journey with Candy’s Alzheimer’s. I am finding this juxtaposition unsettling.

In worship yesterday with Spirit of Peace Lutheran Church, with whom we worship on Sunday mornings, we sang the Robert Lowry hymn My Life Flows On. For a long time I have loved and drawn on this hymn, especially the line in the refrain, “No storm can shake my inmost calm while to that Rock I’m clinging.” Psalm 120 prompted me to acknowledge that my inmost calm seems to be shaking lately, so I took the hymnal to the porch and actually sang the entire hymn aloud (hopefully not so loud as to torture neighbors, Candy, or David’s family). I was challenged to cling to that Rock ever more fiercely. I was challenged to keep singing above earth’s lamentation that recently has been troubling my inmost calm. I cannot announce some instant, miraculous peace or resolution. Rather, God’s calling to keep my focus on Jesus so I am not thrown off balance myself and Candy can be as stress free as possible as we embrace each day’s joy.

Growing Into a Dwelling Place for God

These people were staying in tents after their homes were destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. As a young woman living in Oakland, California and part of the First Swedish Baptist Church, she helped care for similarly displaced people in that congregation's facilities. The picture below was taken the same year. It is the string band who accompanied that congregation's worship. My grandmother is in the back row, next to the man playing the mandolin.

As frequently seems to happen, the richest insights come later in the week after I have been encountered by how the passages first present themselves. So here I am on Friday rather enthralled by a connection I first noticed yesterday in 2 Samuel 7:1-14a and Ephesians 2:11-22. When David was securely established as King of all Israel, he wanted to build a house, a temple, for God, which is rejected by God’s word to Nathan the Prophet. This section of Ephesians concludes with affirming that in Christ, we are becoming the household of God, growing into a holy temple, being built into a dwelling place for God.

I am not among those who view biblical prophecy or the Hebrew Scriptures as some sort of code by which we can predict history, if only we could decipher the cryptic message as though the Bible was God’s Ouija Board.  But I do believe profound patterns weave their way in and out of human spiritual consciousness and the shared experiences and insights of the community of faith generation after generation. The expansive interaction of the language in these two passages, separated by perhaps a millennium, illuminates the current path of my journey.

Early in my career, I adopted the metaphor of living in tents from Hebrews 11:9-10 as defining guidance for my path. I started out in Christian education research and curriculum development, went on to congregational education ministry, and concluded as a pastor. My wife of nearly 50 years has been a faithful and patient companion on this journey that took us from Minnesota, to Illinois, to New Jersey, to Ontario, to Wisconsin, to Texas, to Oklahoma, and now back to Wisconsin. When people ask where we are from, I typically answer with some variant on “Yes.” … Then I add, “I grew up in California and my wife in Minnesota, and we have pitched our tent in a half-dozen places.”  Now in our 70s, we anticipate that we will be tenting in Milwaukee, sharing a duplex with our son and his family, for the rest of our days. We have gone from caring for the souls of congregations of God’s people to journeying together with my wife’s Alzheimer’s. We do this with profound gratitude for and dependence on our family’s support, even as we endeavor to support her 91 year old father who continues to live in his own home in Minneapolis as his strength declines. I do not view this as some unjust burden but as a joyful and suitable conclusion of our journey.

So when King David wanted to build a suitable house for God, he was expressing the desire for a tangible expression of God’s power in his own journey. Ah yes, a building people could see and touch and marvel at to focus their attention on the majesty of God. Aware that God had been with David all along, the Prophet Nathan gave the preliminary go-ahead. God did not reprimand either Nathan or David for this, but directed their attention to dig deeper. God didn’t need human trappings to be recognized as glorious. A tent would do. Sure it had been a beautiful artistic expression of worship in its time. Who knows what remained of the Tabernacle from the Wilderness days by David’s time? But human artistry paled by comparison to the God it honored. I won’t spell out the details, but I am not leaving a legacy of institutional success. Two of the congregations and one of the organizations with whom I served no longer exist. Others are much diminished from their peaks.

The image of the tent in Nathan’s word from God for David suggests God is portable, on a journey, not interested in being confined to a single location or moment. So while David would not build a physical house for God, God promised to build a house from David. The sense of the word switched to mean a legacy in descendants, people. This goes beyond the Davidic royal line in ancient Judah and takes on what have come to be identified as messianic overtones, but mingled with the seemingly contradictory promise of building a physical Temple, which happened through David’s son Solomon. Held up against this elevated language, Solomon was surely a disappointment. Yet, the promise of a community of people to come after David points to something far greater than a building or a regal dynasty.

So while not a wooden, literalistic prophetic fulfillment, the imagery of Ephesians expands of the household motif. Gentiles who had no connection with David, inherit a place in the household of God. The scope of David’s legacy is so expansive that all humanity is included. It is about people, not physical buildings or human institutions or structures. On my journey I have been a participant in this community of love. At every one of the campsites on our journey we have added to our rich treasury of relationships. Though measuring my contribution to the lives of these folk is impossible and probably counter-productive, we thrill to continue to be included in the now widespread journeys of many whose paths crossed ours decades ago. I am learning to appreciate that this legacy in people is far more significant and satisfying than career monuments. Indeed, we are the ones who have been enriched. We are the rich legacy of many hundreds of others, some we knew but most we didn’t.

The whole Temple motif, built and joined as a structure with foundations and cornerstone, is given a distinctly organic significance in Ephesians. This household of God grows into a dwelling place for God. I grew up hearing 1 Corinthians 6:19, “Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you,” as a stern caution about tobacco, alcohol, drugs, and sex. As I probed scripture and faith with emerging adult maturity, I began to quiver at the wonder of the Spirit of God dwelling in me. As my meditations progressed this week, I have pondered that the temple God inhabits is in the spaces between the people in my treasury of relationships, and far beyond that to the entire realm of human love.

Two Dancers

As I have returned to the lectionary readings for Sunday, July 15, 2018 during my breakfast lectio divina each morning this week, my attention has hung on the two dancers. David in 2 Samuel 6:5, 14 and Salome in Mark 6:22. As we have been making our way through the history of Saul and David in 1 and 2 Samuel, and through Mark’s Gospel, I wondered how much intentionality went into getting the two dancers for the same Sunday, and whether this detail had any particular significance.

Neither Mark nor Matthew 24 mention Salome’s name. That detail comes from extra-biblical historical sources. Besides being more convenient than “that girl,” many many artists have taken some delight in portraying Salome’s dance. Her age is not specified, and some think she may have been a very young teen. Again the text does not say so, but more than just artists have presumed her dance was sensuous and seductive, playing up to Herod’s vulnerabilities. She was the daughter of Herod’s brother Philip, so his niece. She was also the daughter of Herodias whom Herod had taken as wife from his brother, so she was also Herod’s step-daughter. As I reflected on this tangle of relationships, it became a counterpoint to David’s dancing.

Yes, David’s relationship with his wife Michal, who was also the daughter of his predecessor and rival Saul, scrambles the story of David’s joyful bringing of the Ark of God to Jerusalem. She was apparently embarrassed at David’s uninhibited, exuberant dancing. Perhaps she felt shame that her husband exposed what she felt that only she was entitled to see, just too sensuous for public.  At the very least, David’s dancing was not dignified enough for the king.

David danced, leaping with all his might (vv. 5, 14), which apparently prompted others to join in. Bringing the Ark of God to Jerusalem was an occasion for exuberant joy. When Michal objected, he answered that he was dancing before the Lord, not for a human audience. My meditations have contrasted Salome’s dance and David’s.  Who was the audience of each? What did each put into their dance? I purposely avoided some sort of moral tongue clucking and finger wagging. Rather, I went in the direction of pondering what do I do with all my might before the Lord? What do I celebrate with uninhibited exuberance?

As the week went on, I was drawn more and more into the Epistle reading from Ephesians 1:3-14. I am certain I am finding connections the lectionary committee never imagined. The style of this introduction to Ephesians is not a theological discourse but an enthusiastic layering of one delight in what God lavishes on us in Christ after another. They don’t just run on, one into the next; they build in crescendo. I have read this exegeted in detail in commentaries and heard it expounded in sermons. Juxtaposing it with David dancing with all his might, I began to envision this as a verbal dancing with all of not just the writer’s might, but also an invitation for all of us to join in the frolic with all of our might. I read aloud the first section as something akin to an e e cummings or Lawrence Ferlinghetti poem.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,

who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 

just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world

to be holy and blameless before him in love. 

He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ,

according to the good pleasure of his will, 

to the praise of his glorious grace

that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.

In him we have redemption through his blood,

the forgiveness of our trespasses,

according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us.

With all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will,

according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, 

as a plan for the fullness of time,

to gather up all things in him,

things in heaven and things on earth.

We are beloved children of God, not because we remember God but because God remembers us.

This quote from Ardie Goering's article about her father's journey into dementia in the July 2018 issue of "The Mennonite" (pp. 16-18) not only spoke to me about the journey Candy and I are on with her Alzheimer's but of something foundational that I have said and written in a variety of ways for years. 
"The essence of our personhood and faith is not our ability to remember. We are beloved children of God, not because we remember God but because God remembers us."
I know predestination and election have been the arena of highly acrimonious debate for centuries. But those words were not invented by the Calvinists. Some form of elect occurs 16 times in the NRSV New Testament, and destine 12 times. Whether you think my statement matches whatever understanding of predestination and election you hold or oppose, on all the ups and downs of my journey with Jesus, I have often taken considerable comfort from believing that God holds onto me even, maybe especially, when I am too fragile to hold onto God.