🐮 Proper 19

Readings: Exodus 32:7-14 and Psalm 51:1-10 1 Timothy 1:12-17 Luke 15:1-10.

To Do:

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Reflection

 Good morning and welcome to Proper 19. This is Brother Logan Isaac, broadcasting from Albany, Oregon. This morning's readings come to us from Exodus 32, Psalm 51, 1, Timothy one, and Luke 15, and the, I've lost track of whether I'm doing the, um, thematic reading or the chronological reading. I used to have, uh, or I used to use.

A system or a platform that let me choose. And I would always choose the thematic one, but I, I, they, something changed. And now I'm doing this. I say that because the combination of Exodus 32 and Moses arguing with God and Luke 15, this parable of the money or the lost sheep, um, they don't. Appear at first to be conjoined.

But I think they are in, in the sense of like a thing and a shadow. Um, a shadow isn't really a thing. It is merely the absence of a thing or the, a lowered amount of a thing. Um, if you stand out on a sunny day, you'll see your shadow will be the direct opposite. Um, direction from you, as you, as the sun. Um, and it, it moves with you.

It appears real, but there you, there's no way to measure it. Um, all you're measuring is the lack of light or the relative lack of light, um, that is cast by your presence. Um, it's an echo of the thing. And echoes and shadows are not always bad. They're just not the thing. It's helpful to think about cold.

As the absence of heat. Dark is the absence of light, but there's a good reason for darkness. There's a good reason for cold, for preserving food, for like, I don't mean to, I don't say this to mean that they're bad, but if you are thinking about, say, temperature, and you think they're equal, you'll eventually find out they're not.

You'll eventually find out that your shadow and you are not. Are not equal. Even though in Peter Pan he has a shadow with its own mind. Um, and I say that because like there's this whole kind of linguistic or literary tradition of talking about one shadow is, is kind of bad. And in the West we have this idea that.

Um, we say both that with Augustine, that evil is a privation, but then we say we're born evil, um, which we heard in the psalm today, and I just think that's false. I see in the Hebrew scriptures. A form of teaching or form of knowledge that is different than say the Greeks. You know, the philosophical school that came out of like sacred geometry and Pythagoras and all the rest, um, two parallel tracks saying.

Different things, but I think one is always and ultimately going to be more true. And I think that is the, the moral meaning of a thing. Um, the sense that we give, or the meaning that we give things precede our explanations about it. I'm going too far down this rabbit hole in Luke. He talks about. Sheep because shepherds and shepherd sheep herding are a central symbol for the Hebrew imagination that gave birth to Judaism and the monarchy and second temple Judaism, like it all derives from some proto Israelite or Hebrew system of meaning.

And part of what that is doing is at the very earliest stage, um, Cain and Abel were presented as polar pears. One was a farmer, the other was a shepherd. The farmer was the stronger cautionary tale because farming can lead to urbanization. And this idea, this shadow thing we call ownership of the land or property.

Um, once we believed we could own and possess land, we then anthropologically said, okay, now we can own and possess people. And Israelites did that. They struggled with that. Um, but the shepherd is something that Jesus is using to point out to the true believers, the rank and file believers. Like, let's pretend you're a shepherd.

Let's pretend you're a believer and you are. Literate in the stories that, uh, the Hebrew Bible presents to us. Shepherds are gonna be really important. And he says, you lose one. You're looking for it much less. Two. But then he says a second time for people who are maybe not believers who are more Roman or Greek in their comportment.

And he says, okay, well imagine you have a coin, right? And coin. A currency to stand in for the labor that you do. But hopefully if you don't worship Yahweh, who is like the, you know, the is represented through the Shepherd King David, maybe you, maybe you believe in mammon. Okay, so let's say you have a 10 coins and you lose one.

You want that coin back. That is the, he presents two stories for two different audiences to say the same thing. I value every single sheep like you value money. Doesn't it make sense that if you lose one, it has value to you, you will seek it out. Now, I say that the, the, these were both kind of like flip sides of the same coin, or the shadow kind of meaning, I think of value and life and dignity as being.

You know, one kind of synonym in what I'll call Christianity, right? I don't know that everybody feels this way, but he's using the, the kind of corrupted or degraded thing. Look, let's just make everything money. Whatever you're able to earn will turn it into money. Work labor becomes money. Okay, well, let's.

I'll use that metaphor if you need me to. I'll use the more ancient Hebraic, uh, pastoral metaphor as well to talk about how human beings have value. Human beings are coins. If, if you worship mammon, fine, think of other human beings as money. Give them a value if you must, and it feels weird, and I think Jesus would be like, yeah, it's supposed to feel weird because you should intuit that every human life has value.

And I think of that like as an inversion, not necessarily like a bad thing, but like when Moses argues with God and Abram argues with God, the Greeks had this idea that, yeah, you know you can reason with the gods, but ultimately they don't care about you. They're just in it for their own selfish goals, and you have to kind of treat them almost like humans that can live forever.

But the Hebrews were like, no, there's, there's one God. Everything that we see and think, and believe and can observe, obeys one set of rules, call that a God. The Greeks and a lot of other indigenous societies, a lot of indigenous societies will choose symbols to represent the things that they can't understand, they can't control, and it's, it's de personified, right?

You can't argue with the great spirits. You don't even know where they are. The the white buffalo mother or, or I mean like, uh, spider woman. There are all these different spirits or things that are symbols for what we can't quite control. We can't quite wrap our head around and the Hebrew Bible takes a very different tack with this.

It begins, I think, with. The assumption that something somewhere within humanity is where we find this thing that we cannot quite name and figure out. We cannot quite name and figure out ourselves. And if that's true, if the divine, the eternal, the spiritual is somehow inside us, then we, or something like us is also recognizable.

Uh, in all these things that we can't quite understand. And so of course we argue with God because we argue with each other. I mean, look at Job. But here in Exodus we have this reminder that God can be persuaded that God is invested in God's own pri, God's own character, a reputation just like Abram used.

Well, is it not like you, that blah, blah, blah. Moses says, um, far be it from you. Um, to do this and that and the other thing, think of what the Egyptians will think, right? If you want to be credible before even the Egyptians, you've got to outdo them. With your God likeness. Not only can I destroy your entire army, I'm not, I'm going to honor and abide by the things that I said to the Israelites, whether I like it or not.

And frequently God seems to not like the decisions that God has made about the Israelites. And there's this massive swing back and forth, this kind of pendulum, um, of God, like really being satisfied with Israel and then really being upset and like, how do we. Understand a god like that, that we can't like put a pin in.

I think that was the beauty of the, the philosophy, the wisdom of the Hebrew imagination that gives rise to and can be traced back to Torah and the prophets, uh, the law and the prophets. That I think is a beautiful thing. Not only does it kind of call into question a lot of the Western assumptions that we have around like.

You know, original sin and everything else, but like it's right there in the Bible. Why do we no longer argue with God? Why do we no longer trust that God is the same as He? As, as they were yesterday, that and that they are today? Why don't we see in Moses and Abram permission to argue with and listen to, um, and persuade God?

Um, it's, it's not. It is not an easy thing, but I do think it's a natural thing. I believe that all we need to know about God, we can know in nature. That is not to say we will know everything. That is to say that within the system of meaning that we've created is because the system of meaning that we've created survives.

It must have driven. Been derived from something that has always been true. That's why I, I think I've said elsewhere that I still read the Bible and I'm fascinated by it. The Hebrew scriptures, the Christian New Testament, um, because it seems to be the truest thing that humanity has ever said. Its about itself and its surrounding surroundings, and Aristotle likely is also.

True in a similar sense, but I don't think in the same fundamental sense. Um, just because Abram and Aristotle aren't alike in every single way, does not mean that they are, you know, contrasting voices. I think they're doing similar work from dissimilar perspectives. Um, but both seem to not only be. True enough, but also point us in a direction that could, that hopefully allows us to keep learning from ourselves by learning in community and speaking, being at least willing to try to speak of multiple.

Lang an omni language, I suppose you could say right back to Jesus. Like, okay, let's presume that you're a child of Israel. You like shepherds right now. Think like if David the shepherd king, if he lost one sheep, you think he'd be the kind of king to let it go? No, he'd go out and find it. Okay. Let's say you're, you're great with money.

Let's say you're not a corrupt tax collector who's lining the pockets of Rome. Wouldn't you want one coin if you lost it of 10? Like sure it's not much, but still it's got inherent value. My sheep, my coins have inherent value. My people have inherent value. Our people, I, me, myself, I have inherent value. I am worthy.

I am good. Uh, and God can see me and. Is responsive to my needs and my concerns.