Proper 27, Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time – November 9, 2014

By David Grant Smith

Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25

It is rather ironic that this reading should come on the Sunday following national mid- term elections in the United States. It would seem that Joshua was placing a ballot before the people: vote for the LORD, vote for the gods of Egypt, vote for the gods of the Amorites, or vote for the the gods beyond the Euphrates. In a process-relational reading of this text, we might want to take a stand different than that which Joshua did — we may want to affirm the diverse expressions of faith that can enrich a people, embracing religious pluralism as a way of finding unity in diversity. But, for good or ill, that isn’t the way the story was written. It was written with a bias toward everyone embracing the same spiritual path — lock, stock, and barrel. In the word of Joshua (not to mention the world of those who collected the ancient stories and compiled them), there was no room for interfaith dialog; there could only be one God, and only one religion.

Another problematic piece of this text is how Joshua proclaims that God would not forgive them if they strayed from their relationship with God and flirted with other deities. The idea that God is unwilling to forgive is thwarted in so many parts of the Bible that it would be hard to list them all. It may be both helpful and instructive to share this with congregations who may be struggling with such a unrelentingly “jealous” (to use Joshua’s word) image of God.

With issues of religious pluralism aside (and the blatant “manifest destiny” issues from the broader narrative as considered in last week’s commentary), it may serve some good purpose to consider the benefits of having a unified spirituality within a community. The community described in the broader narrative is a people in transition. They have traveled from Egypt to this “promised land.” They have left the bondage of slavery and have begun to taste the fruits of freedom. And now that they have arrived in their destination, they must coalesce and form a nation. Given their common experience (the communal past) and their common goal for which they are striving (something hoped for in an open future), it may serve them well to unite spiritually as they work together to discern how the divine initial aim is luring them to respond in the here-and-now. Having a communal understanding of what God’s nature is, and how to have God’s will come into fruition (concrescence), might help them to have a common mission. Perhaps this is giving Joshua (and the later redactors) more credit than is due, but this perspective on the reading may make for an interesting conversation on how a congregation is made up of multiple opinions gathered around a common mission.

Another approach to this reading may be to actually engage the spiritual pluralism that exists in our individual congregations. Within a community of faith there are multiple images of God, and multiple approaches to faith, mission, etc. And in that same community there will be multiple ways of understanding the Divine, the initial aim, and the lure toward a next step. Yet, we purposefully work toward a common goal, and we consciously or unconsciously (if we are a healthy community) try to find ways of weaving those diverse understandings of God, faith, mission, etc., into a cohesive tapestry that helps us to define who we are as a congregation. Perhaps there are various gods and/or images of God(s) which we have to discard in order to form that communal spiritual experience that defines how we interface with the world. Being intentional as a community of faith, discussing how we do this both individually and corporately, enables a community to discern how to act in the present moment, and how to step forward together into an open future. This is not unlike what happened that day at Schechem.

Psalms 78:1-7

This week’s response to the first reading is a lovely piece of wisdom literature in the form of a hymn on intergenerational faith experiences. As communities of faith tend to do, the hymn explores the wonders of the past, and how the community discerned God’s lure in previous moments. But the hymn doesn’t stay in a glorification of the past, at least not in an idolatrous way — rather, it states the wonderful mysteries of the past in such a way that we cannot help but to pass those epiphanies on to all future generations. There is much to be valued in communal memory, especially when it is bent toward an open future which is intentionally populated with new generations and (implicitly, if not explicitly) new perspectives. Communal memory, when shared with younger generations, provides an overarching context of where the community of faith has been in the past, affirming how it got to be where it is in the present.

As process-relational people, we know that our individual and collective past help to shape us, and that the past is something we always carry with us. Yet, we don’t believe that the past is necessarily deterministic of how we will behave, act, react, think, feel, and believe in the future. We are always products of free will, and we always are stepping into an open future. We tell our children of our past so that they not only know what our intended direction was at any given point of our journey, but also so that they may not make the same mistakes we did. And we share with our children the moments of our past where we were uncertain of God’s leading (or where we were simply making things up as we went along to the best of our ability). All of this can be valuable knowledge in helping future generations in our faith communities become empowered to become leaders, and to be discerning people who are involved in the life of their faith community, and who can know that they, too, have a relationship with God.

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

First Thessalonians is believed by most scholars to be Paul’s earliest known letter, making it the earliest piece of Christian literature contained in the New Testament. This would make today’s reading the earliest written down Christian eschatology! The operative words in this passage are found in the first and last sentences of it: hope and encouragement. Paul’s aim wasn’t so much to give a blow-by-blow literal timeline of what things will take place at the end of time in a chronological order. Rather, his aim was to provide hope and encouragement to the members of the Church who were grieving the deaths of their loved ones. Paul’s descriptive scene comes down to this bottom line understanding: God is bigger than death, and death is not the end of our relationship with God.

It’s rather a shame that Paul’s image of hope and encouragement have so often been used as a bullwhip to manipulate people into believing in some fill-in-the-blank doctrine. As process-relational people, we don’t traffic with the idea that God is coercing us into beliefs — rather, we believe that God is persuading and inviting us into relationship with God (and not with doctrines about God). Using peoples’ innate fear of being left out, left alone, and left behind as a tool to propagate a proselytizing agenda is cruel, and doesn’t do much to hold up a very loving image of God. But by focusing on the idea that God is bigger than death, and that death doesn’t end our relationship with God, can be of great comfort when facing the death of loved ones. Paul’s sharing of his imagination of the end of time wasn’t intended to frighten people, but to comfort them, and to be an image whereby people could encourage one another.

Matthew 25:1-13

As the Church Year winds its way toward its conclusion, we have three Sundays in a row that draw the Gospel reading from Matthew 25. Though the narrative of Matthew reaches its dramatic climax with the Passion and Resurrection stories, this chapter could easily serve as the climax for the teachings of Jesus. The author of Matthew cites a verse from Isaiah and comments on it in chapter 1 to drive home the importance of the one who was to be born, and about whom the book was written: “‘and they shall name him Emmanuel’ (which means, ‘God is with us’)” [Matthew 1:23b]. Then the author ends the Gospel with these words on Jesus’ lips: “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age” [Matthew 28:20b]. If these two verses were to serve as “bookends” to the contents of the Gospel helping to define its theme, it would seem that the point of the Gospel is to show the ways that “God is with us” in and through our experience of Jesus and his teaching and ministry. But Jesus takes that idea to another level in chapter 25 by showing us the ways that “God is with us” in all circumstances — not just in him. And the parable of the bridesmaids gets things started.

Looking at the parable through a Whiteheadian lens, the story is about the need to always be stepping into each moment prepared to receive God’s initial aim, and to be equally prepared to work with God in such a way that God’s initial aim comes into concrescence in our lives. Those bridesmaids who were prepared — the ones who had enough oil for the long haul — were able to stay the course and greet the bridegroom when he arrived; they represent those among us who live in a state of perpetual mindfulness — they are always open to seeing what is happening around them, and they are always open to (and expectantly looking for) God’s initial aim to intersect with their lives and the circumstances around them. The other bridesmaids — those who had to go out and get more oil — represent those among us who become distracted, who lose their sense of attentive mindfulness, and who don’t focus on their surrounding circumstances and/or God’s initial aim luring them into action; they miss particular moments of concrescence; they become “shut out” from having a particular manifestation of the initial aim come to fruition at a particular moment in their lives.

The image of the bridegroom shunning the unprepared bridesmaids is disturbing. And it truly is disturbing when we leave ourselves in a position to miss great moments of creative transformation in partnership with God in our lives. Some of those missed moments are painful for us; some are painful for others; and all are painful for God who always only wants the best for each of us. But the Good News in a process-relational way of looking at things is that even though there are some missed opportunities (a true reality for every creature that draws breath), that doesn’t mitigate God’s presence and interaction in our lives; the initial aim is always targeted to our next moment of possibility. The grace of the lifestyle which Jesus called “the kingdom of heaven” is that we are always able to refocus our efforts when we miss the “bridegroom” of particular moments, and know that God’s lure toward creative transformation will be with us in the next moment, the next interpersonal encounter, the next opportunity. The only way that we will experience the misfortune of the bridesmaids who were shunned from the banquet is if we keep knocking on the door of particular bygone missed moments; because in dwelling on those missed moments of concrescence we miss more opportunities to greet the “bridegroom” of the ever-targeted initial aim of God into our lives. In this parable we see that “God is with us” in the ever-present lure of God to work with God in transforming the world — something worth staying awake for, no doubt!

The Rev. David Grant Smith is a priest in the Episcopal Church, and is currently doing a residency in Clinical Pastoral Education at Christiana Care Health System in Newark, Delaware, where he is the Chaplain Resident for Pain & Palliative Care. From early 2008 until July of 2014 he had been the Rector of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Penn Yan, NY (where he was ordained), in the Episcopal Diocese of Rochester, where he is still canonically resident as a priest. Prior to his ordination to the priesthood in 2008, David had a career as a lay professional in church music. In addition to his interests in weaving process theology in and through preaching, liturgy, teaching, and pastoral care, David enjoys travel, writing, and spending time with family & friends.