“Redeeming Obedience”
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
8/7/16
“Go…to the
land that I will show you,” says Yahweh to Abram.
Moses delivers
ten plagues – each plague an order for Pharaoh to release the Hebrews.
Then Moses delivers the 10
Commandments to the Hebrews.
For
generations, Israelite judges and kings receive and give all sorts of orders.
Some good. Some really bad.
Hosea gets one
of the most interesting orders. God tells him, and I quote, “Go, take for
yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom…” God mandates Hosea’s
marriage as an object lesson for unfaithful Israel. Like God, Hosea makes the
best of a heart-breaking relationship.
After finally
doing as God tells him to do, the Apostle Paul writes lots of letters telling
others what to do.
The biblical
story teems with divine and human directives. Whether implied or directly addressed,
the issue of obedience lies at the core of these stories.
The very word obedience conjures up all sorts of
images. For some, they are images of honor and loyalty. When given some sort of
command, they tend to hear, ‘Do this, because I trust you to do it well.’ Or, ‘Don’t
do that, because I love you. You may hurt yourself or others.’
Conversely, some hear the word obedience and think of subservience, of
the loss of dignity and individuality, and of outright oppression. They tend to
hear, ‘Do this, or Don’t do that because I said so, and I’m more important than
you.’
Cultures based on power and wealth tend
to reduce obedience to the defense of some status quo. The Church is no
exception. Ever since the fourth century when Constantine legalized
Christianity, and 67 years later when Theodosius I declared it the only legal
religion in Rome, the Church has cultivated fear, hindered Love, and shrunk
God, by issuing edicts, writing doctrines, and creating structures to protect
and serve its state-sponsored privilege.
Power and wealth have little to do with faith
and obedience, though. They assure us of what appear to be guaranteed things
and convict us of what appear to be obvious things. When human minds reduce
Mystery to certainty, ears and hearts shut. Walls and fists come up. The embarrassing
messiness and the inspiring beauty of stories then fade from the holy narrative.
Without story, we lose the relational context for commandments, pronouncements,
and proverbs. Obedience, then, becomes shallow, rocky soil. Faith cannot grow
in it.
The writer of Hebrews nurtures the
soil of story in order to make his point on obedience. He recalls the seminal,
Hebrew narrative. Deep within Abraham there stirs a hope for new beginnings. He
looks toward the horizon and knows that beyond the limits of his sight lie new
lands and new possibilities. Unwilling to ignore this restless, exciting, holy
urge, Abraham obeys, and he goes. He
trusts that he will know what he is looking for when he finds it.
Abraham’s journey illustrates for
us a hope-inducing, vision-crafting truth: God is both transcendent and immanent.
Relish this irony: While we do experience
and speak of God as The Creator, an unfathomably Eternal Energy
at work beyond us, that wild and boundless image of God is incomplete. It casts
God out there, into the sky, into the
future. Obedience, then, becomes a desperate
attempt to placate a fearsome and unknowable master. So, we fear the unknowable
other in ourselves and our neighbors.
Scripture reveals an immanent God,
as well. To imagine God dwelling as deeply and eternally within each of us as
well as God reaching far beyond us expands our understanding of God. It leaves
nothing and no one out. Remember, when Abraham leaves Ur at God’s urging, every forward footstep
shatters the prevailing theology of place-bound gods. Abraham’s journey proclaims one God who encompasses and permeates all things. His story completely
transforms the concept of relationship, of homeland, and of obedience.
Knowing God and knowing Self are
intimately connected. Human kinship defies theological and ideological dogma. Homeland,
in the spiritual sense, defies political borders. And obedience is not about sacrificing
one’s unique giftedness. It is willfully and daringly claiming and sharing our
true selves before God. Jesus exemplifies this mold-breaking, law-bending,
“your will be done” obedience. Faithful obedience leads us to our God-imaged
core. And there we find not original sin but “original blessing”1 –
the innate holiness that is our participation in God.
In 1983, Matthew
Fox, then a brother in the Dominican order, coined the phrase “original
blessing.” When he began to call into question centuries-old doctrines
regarding sin and grace, Fox was called up for review by the Vatican. Two years
later, he was cleared, and he continued to challenge tradition by teaching a radically
gracious and inclusive theology. In 1993, “Fox was expelled from his monastic
order for failure to fulfill his vow of ‘obedience’ to church authorities.”2
It seems to me
that Matthew Fox had simply deepened his obedience to God. He embraced the immutable
holiness within himself, within you and me, within all humanity, and within every
aspect of the creation. Having heard from a transcendent/immanent God, Fox obediently went in search of a new
homeland. In finding new identity, new belonging, and new creative potential in
himself and in all that God has made, Fox follows Jesus in setting an example of
redeeming the very notion of obedience.
To be sure, living
in intimate, relational obedience to the immanent/transcendent God requires
profound humility. The relentless temptation, as Jesus himself discovers, is toward
arrogance and self-righteousness. That’s why the Abrahamic faiths are communal journeys.
Servants of God need the tension of relationship to keep things in perspective.
To accept our essential holiness is to play with fire.
Yet even then, “When I look at your
heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have
established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that
you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned
them with glory and honor.” (Psalm 8:3-5)
“The kingdom
of God is not coming with things that can be observed,” says Jesus, “For, in
fact, the kingdom of God is among you.” (Luke 17:20-21b) Other translations read,
“the kingdom of God is within you.”
“Christ,” says
Paul, is “the secret centre of our lives.” (Colossians 3:4a – J. B. Phillips NT)
Friends, this
is spectacularly good news. It is resurrecting news, timely news. And it is
ever so demanding. God is our hope and our homeland. God is the center of our
being and the relationship between us.
May we choose, deliberately and
gratefully, to live the journey of faithful obedience
this day and all days. For in doing so, we embody the covenant God makes with
Abraham: We receive blessing, so that through us “all the families of the earth
[may also] be blessed.”
2Ibid.
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