The Adventurous Lectionary July 26, 2020 Eighth Sunday after PentecostPsalm 119:129-136I Kings 3:5-12Romans 8:26-39Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

Pentecost is the season of divine revelation and profound giftedness. Spirit moves in all things, awakening us to a democracy of inspiration. Gods abundance is strewn everywhere, for all to have, in every time and place and those who are attentive to it will experience wisdom and the ability to discern their vocation in life. They will discover gifts aplenty to serve the world. They will find, as Solomon did, personal fulfillment and from that they will bring justice and abundance to the world. Politicians and citizens alike pay heed your gifts are not your own, nor are they for a select few the wealthy and wise to enjoy. Political leaders are challenged to put communal and global wellbeing above their own political interest. Even among political leaders, our gifts our for the world. Our fulfillment is to bring beauty to the world and, accordingly, to God.

The Psalmist pleas for divine enlightenment for himself and his nation. He rejoices in the wonders of Gods wisdom and creativity. Gods light helps us to see light. Gods light inspires our ordering of the world. Gods law is just and embraces the well-being of all. All can find God, but our commitments to follow Gods law create a field of force that enables others to experience grace and the economic and physical necessities essential for spiritual growth. No one is excluded, although attentiveness enables Gods light to shine more brightly in our lives. The Psalmists affirmation invites progressive Christians to explore what it would mean to seek intimacy with God and live with a sense of wonder at Gods presence in the world. How can living by our theological visions bring beauty and justice to the world?

Gods law is not other nor does it baptize our self-interest. Rather it is the fiber of our being a theonomous reality that will bring wholeness to persons and communities if we but follow. The Psalmist would mourn our time of thin-skinned, lawless, prevaricating leaders and call to such leaders to repent and change course.

Does God give us what we want? Does God speak personally to us, inviting us to share our deepest desires and then receive our hearts desires? Does God truly reach out intimately to us, inviting us to deeper levels of faith? Awed by the task ahead of him as king, Solomon dreams of a divine visitation in which God asks the new sovereign to share his deepest desire. Solomons response is to ask God to give him an understanding and discerning heart. Rather than power or wealth, Solomon asks for wisdom, for the ability to experience Gods guidance in his leadership. Apart from divine guidance, his reign will be a failure. With divine guidance, he can go beyond his own self-interest to discern and seek the needs of the nation.

Solomons dream models our own spiritual adventures. Intentionality is central to spiritual maturity and social responsibility. Just as Charles Sheldon once asked, What would Jesus do? (In His Steps), we would do well to live in constant awareness of Gods wisdom in our lives. Divine wisdom is both long haul and moment by moment in nature. Congregants might be challenged to constantly ask for divine wisdom and understanding. Certainly, this might deliver us from the temptation to focus on our well-being rather than the well-being of the whole. Wisdom focuses on both details and the big picture, and these days we need to be delivered from thinking small and living small in terms of our communal responsibilities. We need to join individual growth with world loyalty. (For more on the ecology of healing, embracing individual and planet, see Bruce Epperly,Process Theology: Embracing Adventure with God, Process Spirituality: Practicing Holy Adventure, Praying with Process Theology: Spiritual Practices for Personal and Planetary Healing.)

Solomons dream invites congregants also to consider whether or not they can receive nocturnal messages from God, welling up from the unconscious. An ever-present God surely communicates through every aspect of our being. Can we ask for divine guidance through dreams and visions?

Solomons dream also challenges the body politic to seek wisdom and self-transcendence. Clearing the swamp is not enough if what takes its place is greed, environmental degradation, a preferential option for the wealthy, and dishonesty and egocentrism at the highest levels of government. Citizens need to pray for their leaders, but also call them to account: are you putting ideology ahead of human and non-human well-being? Is greed and consumption or winning the next election your primary value or liberty and justice for all? Is winning at any cost more important than care for the least of these? Our politicians need to be convicted and to repent of their turning from justice, substituting tweets for transformation and loyalty for compassion and justice. This is especially crucial when politicians deny science and statistics to promote their election chances.

Todays reading from Romans has at least three sermons embedded in it. First, Paul describes the inner wisdom of Gods Spirit. We dont always know whats best, but the Spirit intercedes for us in sighs too deep for words, guiding and enlightening us. The Spirit is the inner voice of God, but it is not private. Gods Spirit, as last weeks passage from Romans asserts, joins the human and non-human. Our deepest prayers have global as well as personal implications.

Similar to the Psalmists experience, God communicates beneath consciousness in preverbal ways intuitions, dreams, and inclinations as well as consciously through scripture and insight.This Spirit-centered passage reminds us that Gods wisdom trumps our own. We often dont know whats best and need to open through prayer and meditation to a greater wisdom and a higher power.

Second, and I prefer this translation, in all things God works for good to all this work together for God. This translation suggests a wide open universe, characterized by a divine-human melody of call and response. Though divine wisdom precedes our response, God does not determine all things, and yet is present in all things as the force of healing and fulfillment. There is a hint of predestination in the passage, and if we interpret this in a strong sense most of humanity is excluded, contrary to the spirit of the first half of Romans and its implicit universalism. The divine decision includes all creation and when we turn toward God, the goodness of life bursts forth in our lives. Predestination must be global to be congruent with Gods love. Predestination is not ultimately about power or exclusion and focus on power necessarily excludes those we deem as others but providential care, mated with respect for creaturely agency, that all be saved and healed.

Finally, Paul proclaims that we are more than conquers and that nothing can separate us from the love of God. Our relationship with God includes all of lifes unfixables (Alan Jones) and necessary losses (Judith Viorst). People we love die of cancer, parents and spouses grieve the loss of loved ones, and we face our own mortality. These are all part of Gods world and inevitable. Still, we can experience Gods presence and peace in the midst of all the threats of life. The peace that passes all understanding is born of a heart of wisdom that experiences Gods own wisdom embracing all of our beginnings and endings.

The gospel reading also speaks of the inner energy of God that enables seeds to grow to great plants and guides us toward surprising moments of grace. Grace gives life and nurtures. The only appropriate responses are joy, gratitude, and service.

The final section of todays gospel lesson, however, is a spiritual buzzkill there is a sense of total destruction and abandonment for those who fall away. Some will be irreparably lost. If you choose to read this, you must preach about it. Is this destruction final or is it a pruning or refining enabling us to grow spiritually? Does God turn Gods back on wayward humanity, condemning backsliders to eternal damnation for finite sinfulness? Or, is the fiery furnace a purifying crucible that peels that which stands in the way of our relationship with God, so that we and the whole earth may experience divine blessing?

Todays passages invite pastor and congregants alike to bathe themselves in Gods ubiquitous wisdom. Help is on the way and wisdom emerges sufficient for todays challenges. We dont need to depend on our political leaders for our moral compass; follow Gods vision, we have all the wisdom we need to call them to a higher morality. God speaks to us in scripture, worship, prayer and meditation, dreams, and intuition, and all encounters can become messages of God. It is up to us to listen, follow, and respond in ways that bring wholeness to the world. It may mean prayer and protest, and confrontation with injustice in quest for Gods realm.+++Bruce Epperly is a Cape Cod pastor, professor, and author of over fifty books including HOPE BEYOND PANDEMIC, FAITH IN A TIME OF PANDEMIC, and GOD ONLINE: A MYSTICS GUIDE TO THE INTERNET.

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The Adventurous Lectionary The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost July 26, 2020 - Patheos