🐮 Proper 14

Readings: Genesis 15:1-6; Psalm 33:12-22; Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16; Luke 12:32-40.

To Do:

• Get your #GruntGod Season Pass

• Attend GruntCon on October 25th in Albany, Oregon

Reflection

Good morning and welcome to Proper 14. This is Brother Logan Isaac, broadcasting from Albany, Oregon. This morning's readings come to us from Genesis 15, Psalm 33, Hebrews 11, and Luke 12. And I always like the Old Testament reading 'cause we have two New Testament readings in the Psalm, but the Old Testament, there's something unique there and I'm always find myself gravitating toward it.

And this morning it was verse three. And Abram said, you have given me no offspring. So a slave born in my house is to be my heir. And in my house stood out to me as well as slave. And it's almost certainly a bed, which means slave or servant or worker. And house is almost certainly bait, which means both wide household like the.

My affairs, as a head of a household, he has family, he has a spouse, children workers below him, livestock, and that's what house is like. The house of David. And I mentioned David because that's specifically what enters my mind and Christians believe that. Mary's son, Joshua, is the fulfillment of this, generations long promise by Yahweh, the god of the universe to make Abrams seed numerous among all the nations, right?

And he is. They're not necessarily. Biological children, but certainly spiritual children. The Abrahamic faith make up, I want say probably 80% of the world's population. Maybe more, I don't know. Or maybe less, actually, I'm not sure. And so Abraham, or Abraham, as he had his name changed was. Given this promise and he says how's this gonna happen?

I don't have any offspring. I can't, produce children and he has a slave or a worker as part of his camp who's going to inherit it because they're probably the oldest male. And I couldn't help but think that's true for David as well. When you say Jewish or Judaism, that elevates the house of Judah, the Royal House, which rose to power first with Shaul and then David and then Solomon before the kingdom was split into two.

And we know David existed in some way, shape, or form before written stuff was, popularized or codified. And so he's kinda like this Arthur figure. Somebody back there provided the foundation for David, just like there's somebody back there who provided the foundation for King Arthur. But anyway I'd like to stray from using the framework of the House of Judah because as someone who aspires to be Christian to follow Mary's son, Joshua.

The text, the New Testament texts that contain most of the material that we have on this individual. He doesn't have any royal blood. Ja. Joseph, who is of the Davidic line is not his biological father. He's adopted father, and we don't know who the father is. If you're a cynic, just know that he's a bastard child, a mamzer.

Whose lineage is questionable and that's really bad at the time. If you didn't know who your father was you had no rights, you had no claim, you had no inheritance. And if the Judaic line, the royal blood is the one that gets cut off, Mary May well be saying, a slave born in my house is to be God's heir or God saying via Mary.

A slave, a worker, a servant, a cutoff. One is to be God's heir, and it rings true because there is no, in the story, there is no royal blood In Jesus' veins, there is Mary's blood, and Luke one, Mary and Elizabeth are called Seuss Genis, which means one gene, one gene pool a blood relative, and Elizabeth is called a daughter of Aaron.

Which is to say a, an inheritor of the high priestly line. So if Mary's son has any biological material from his fully human parent, it's a Levitical blood, not Judaic blood. Two different houses. Not Judah, but Levi and specifically ironic Levite, a high priest or eligible for the high priesthood.

And if you if Abram and David and Mary are these three really important characters, they all share this line. A slave born in my house is to be my heir, which is a way of saying like an outsider, a nobody is going to be given all that I have to reign in my house to, to govern my house. And it's true.

There is no Davidic blood in. Jesus. And so David could be, as well, could be saying it as well as Abram. And Abram is worried. He he first has Ishmael with Hagar who's a concubine, which you could, I don't know if she's ever called an aed a servant or a worker, but she might be a, I suspect she is.

And so it's this re recurring theme. Abram is worried about having an outsider. He's given finally his own son, Isaac, through Sarah. David is worried about, passing things on and he has Solomon, but Solomon doesn't. Or it fails to keep the kingdom together because he's used to opulence. He has this huge palace, bigger than the temple that he builds for God.

There's something wrong there. And Mary similarly is of lowly status does not have much to give. And God echoing Abram and David has decided that an A slave born in God's own house is going to rise to the top. So Abram, David, and God are all saying this or Ken all say this line and have it still be true.

We go on in the readings about faith being the true inheritance and Paul picks up on this a lot. He didn't write Hebrews, it's likely that one of his students or disciples maybe wrote it, maybe Apollo, but they were very familiar with the Old Testament. And it, it provides this insight into an internal debate within the community of faith following Christ.

Who's in and who's out? Is it the children of Abraham, the Jews? Is it the Gentiles the nations that. Israel wanted to be like, according to one Samuel eight who is it? Who's in, who's out? And specifically are those on the outside going to be put in power? That's the fear of that with privilege, that the people we've put out of power are going to take it from us and rule over us.

And that is what. I think it still rings true today. We're afraid of the poor ruling over us because they're poor for a reason. We failed to create systems that provided for their own flourishing and now are they going to do to us? What has what we have done to them? And Christ? In Christ, God says, yes, the poor will be put in power, but the poor.

Are my poor, and they will govern in a way, or the, I don't wanna say the good poor, but those who have been poor have learned humility. And if they're successful in governing, it's because they've put that. Lesson that principle first, to never humiliate someone else just to get ahead because they've been humiliated.

Remember you were strangers in the land. Remember you were slaves. Remember what it's like to not have anything. And when I put you in power, when I give you manna from heaven, power, don't take more than you deserve or than I give and remember to treat others as I have treated you. Not as they have treated you, but as I have treated you.

And finally in the gospel of Luke, blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes. Blessed are those who are underneath everybody else who still manage to do what is expected of them. There's all kinds of power dynamics and it says slave, but in Greek it would've. Likely been Tainos, which is lowly.

We, one of the great, one of the disgusting tragedies of the modern English speaking world is that it's centered on the American imagination. And the American imagination produced chattel slavery. And so when we hear slave, we think of niggers, people that. Whose very existence is offensive to the Landed elite.

And that's, that is, taking evil to an 11. But when we hear slave in the Hebrew and the Greek, we should be thinking workers, laborers, normal, everyday folk who just fell on hard times, not people who have been locked up and beaten and massacred in mass like that. It's hard to get past our own mistakes, our own corruption.

And yet we have to be able to hold the two intention at once the. The straightforward reading of worker labor, but also what we've done to work in our own society in this advanced, industrialized, capitalistic imagination has made work something that is exploited and is exploitable. And so it's important to remember that.

It is those people that we have put out that God is bringing in and may even be bringing in to rule over us. And if they're successful, if God is successful in placing those in power who deserve it, then they won't treat us the way that we have treated them. And that's not fair, but that is grace.