 -Rev Melissa Fain- 1 One Sabbath, when Jesus went to share a meal in the home of one of the leaders of the Pharisees, they were watching him closely. 7 When Jesus noticed how the guests sought out the best seats at the table, he told them a parable. 8 “When someone invites you to a wedding celebration, don’t take your seat in the place of honor. Someone more highly regarded than you could have been invited by your host. 9 The host who invited both of you will come and say to you, ‘Give your seat to this other person.’ Embarrassed, you will take your seat in the least important place. 10 Instead, when you receive an invitation, go and sit in the least important place. When your host approaches you, he will say, ‘Friend, move up here to a better seat.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all your fellow guests. 11 All who lift themselves up will be brought low, and those who make themselves low will be lifted up.” 12 Then Jesus said to the person who had invited him, “When you host a lunch or dinner, don’t invite your friends, your brothers and sisters, your relatives, or rich neighbors. If you do, they will invite you in return and that will be your reward. 13 Instead, when you give a banquet, invite the poor, crippled, lame, and blind. 14 And you will be blessed because they can’t repay you. Instead, you will be repaid when the just are resurrected.” Luke 14:1,7-14 CEB If you want a scripture that shows Jesus acting like a Boss, this is one of them. This whole event was a Jesus trap. I'm not talking about the fun Mouse Trap kind either. This was an obvious, from ten miles away, bear trap! Our hint is in verse 1. Ancient Near East writers were not concerned with what a person in the text physical did. It's so difficult for us to wrap our Western Brains around that idea that many of us unintentionally fill in the gaps. I used to be a terrible gap filler. I wanted to know how Jesus moved when talking about water with the Woman at the Well. I wanted to see how his words felt when he said, "Let the person without sin cast the first stone." I could feel my body pantomiming the action. I think there's a place for looking beyond the text to the missing action, but not first addressing the words written, is a rookie mistake. (I'm much more of a contextual pantomimer today.) See, the Bible is kinda like condensed soup. The most important parts of the story were written down because transmission was widely a verbal craft, and writing supplies were at a premium. When these stories were first written, there was a strong verbal tradition. The reader/speaker knew how to enrich the text. They were trained to pass down the inflection and action to future generations. By Jesus' time, that verbal tradition was beginning to be lost, while the text was still to the point. Any action needs our attention, because it's not there for the sake of being there. "They were watching him closely." I just want to go on a small tangent and talk about how I personally react to traps. I'm an extrovert who was thrown into an introvert's world due to childhood trauma. Confrontation was seen as dangerous, because anything could happen during it. Today, I know there is healthy confrontation, and unhealthy confrontation. I remove myself from the unhealthy, and attempt to engage the healthy variety. I have been in situations where unhealthy confrontation was a trap to catch me in something. When people act within those systems in that way, I freeze up and become the broken introverted teenager. I hate being that person, so I leave. It ultimately becomes the right move for me and the people involved. Jesus fought back. Not with yelling, or punches. With their weapons- the law. There's something thrilling when you watch a fight and one side begins to use their enemy's weapons. A recent fictional example would be Thanos using the power stone to punch Captain Marvel. (I won't explain why, if you live under a rock and haven't see the movies. If you have, you know what I'm talking about.) The above text is from the Revised Common Lectionary. Churches across the world use it to pick their readings for sermons and contemplation. What's missing from this text is verses 2-6. Without those verses you might think Jesus is just lightly punching with his words. It's just table etiquette and giving to those who can't give back. Oh, no! It's way more than that. Jesus dropped a healing in a Pharisee's house, on the Sabbath! One Sabbath, when Jesus went to share a meal in the home of one of the leaders of the Pharisees, they were watching him closely. A man suffering from an abnormal swelling of the body was there. Jesus asked the lawyers and Pharisees, “Does the Law allow healing on the Sabbath or not?” But they said nothing. Jesus took hold of the sick man, cured him, and then let him go. He said to them, “Suppose your child or ox fell into a ditch on the Sabbath day. Wouldn’t you immediately pull it out?” But they had no response. When Jesus heals in the Bible he does the action and moves on. When Jesus disarms a Pharisee trap, he turns the trap into a question and gives it back. Here, he is doing both.
If Jesus just healed the man they would have had him for "working on the Sabbath." That's why he asked the question. When they didn't answer, that was a known acceptance of the question. Saying nothing in this day and time was like saying "go ahead." For whatever reason, they didn't want Jesus to not heal this man. My guess being that he was part of the Pharisee inner circle. They wanted him healed, but they didn't want to verbally give Jesus permission to do it. By asking, he disarmed that trap. Only, that's not all, he doubles down and mentioned a caveat to the rule, and not just any caveat, but one they openly disagreed with .They believed the ox could have been kept in the ditch, and allowed to die. Jesus adds a child, and they are speechless. Are they going to suggest a child should die in a ditch?! Well, yeah, but they can't verbally say that! So they are speechless and end up accepting what Jesus said through their silence. With these six verses we can now see how dangerous the party actually was! By questioning their seating he calls them arrogant and by inviting only themselves, he calls them exclusionary! And he did it in a way he was untouchable! Even speaking against what he was saying would have made it worse. "Oh yeah, we want to murder children, and exclude those in need all while we praise ourselves." Jesus was in the lion's den and left unscathed, the lion's mouths glued shut. Like. A. Boss.  -Rev Melissa Fain- 4 The Lord’s word came to me: 5 “Before I created you in the womb I knew you; before you were born I set you apart; I made you a prophet to the nations.” 6 “Ah, Lord God,” I said, “I don’t know how to speak because I’m only a child.” 7 The Lord responded, “Don’t say, ‘I’m only a child.’ Where I send you, you must go; what I tell you, you must say. 8 Don’t be afraid of them, because I’m with you to rescue you,” declares the Lord. 9 Then the Lord stretched out his hand, touched my mouth, and said to me, “I’m putting my words in your mouth. 10 This very day I appoint you over nations and empires, to dig up and pull down, to destroy and demolish, to build and plant.” Jeremiah 1: 4-10 CEB The scripture is beautiful, isn't it? I mean, how great would it feel to know you were set apart before you were even born?! Just sit back, pull those legs up and relax! You're set! Only. Those words were shared before it happened. What was "it"? The Babylonian exile. The Southern Kingdom was gathered up, taken to Babylon, and forced to remain- apart from their temple. If you don't see how devastating that is, you don't understand the mindset of the people it happened to. The Ancient Near East believed gods lived on their land. Literally. They believed, if you wanted to visit the God of Abraham you had to travel to Jerusalem. For example, when Naaman, a General of Aram, was cured from leporsy by rinsing seven times in the Jordan, he dedicated himself to the God of Abraham. He didn't want to move, so he filled carts with dirt, so he could properly worship God on their land. Those exiled didn't have carts of dirt. They had nothing, and it came through in Psalm 137. Alongside Babylon’s streams, there we sat down, crying because we remembered Zion. We hung our lyres up in the trees there because that’s where our captors asked us to sing; our tormentors requested songs of joy: “Sing us a song about Zion!” they said. But how could we possibly sing the Lord’s song on foreign soil? Jeremiah's story is the exile's story. He was on the path to greatness. He was going to be a Priest, and a Prophet. What did that get him? At first, punishment. He was beaten and confined by fellow Priests for his call as a Prophet. Later, exile. Mental devastation. We really can't comprehend it today. Modern culture is a wandering people. We don't settle. We move across state lines, sometimes at a moments notice. In a lot of ways it doesn't feel like a big deal. Only it was. These were a people who had generations in one place. It was a connection to the land and community we just can't comprehend. Then, to believe being exiled also meant being disconnected from God? You might as well attempt to transplant an adult oak for the damage it did to the Judeans. Roots were irreparably severed. Moving the Judeans to a foreign soil was a Babylonian play. When they conquered land, they often took the elite from that land and put them in Babylon. It kept the powerful close, while making sure no one was left who could do anything back home. Jeremiah was part of that exile. The PointMinistry can just be horrible! (Says the minister, but follow me here.)
Many of us, as clergy, don't have healthy boundaries, so we get worn out too quickly. When a minister does have healthy boundaries it's viewed as suspect. Then, a minister will spend his or her energy clarifying or defining a weekly schedule instead of doing the work at hand. As more and more congregations struggle with their numbers, more and more churches take on toxic attributes. The person at greatest risk of that toxicity are ministers. It's underpaid, overworked, and statistically dangerous to clergy's psyche. If anyone understood the reality of being called to a broken system, it was Jeremiah. The call didn't become null and void because the story took a dark turn. Maybe we want to believe that calls are all sunshine and lolly pops. It's not. No one should want to be called. It's not fun. It's not glamorous. It can just be horrible! That makes the words of the Lord even more important. "You are set apart. You will be sent. You will be rescued. You will speak my Word." Think of that! Jeremiah's beaten but God's words are still true. Jeremiah's cannot be a Priest without the Temple, but God's words are still true. Jeremiah is with a people who lost everything, but God's words are still true. It makes what Jeremiah said to the Judeans in exile all the more important. "The time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah." (Jeremiah: 31:27-34 CEB) When everything appears lost, when everything is clearly broken, there is Jeremiah- set apart, speaking love, doing what God always intended him to do. As more and more ministers find themselves exiled in the wilderness, we need to know- the call hasn't changed its purpose, just location. Consider Jeremiah. We're beaten, but not destroyed. We're exiled, but not lost. We're away from the Temple we love, but not God and God's people. Most importantly, we are here for a reason. The work continues in a foreign land.  -Rev Melissa Fain- When I knew Fig Tree was going to be a thing, I was pregnant with God's call. In the beginning there was no differentiation between the two. We were one in the same because I was birthing something into being. (Not language I made up. Paul connected new ministry with giving birth. I'm just a female that actually understands the pain involved in pregnancy and labor.) There came a point where that call was born and people had the opportunity to see it apart from me. Yet, like a mother caring for her infant, everything came through me. I was charged with getting that call through it's infancy. New Church development has changed their language to plants, but something is lost in horticulture. We are growing the Body of Christ. That's an animal. Seeing new church starts as birthing and raising helps these new ministers understand why the early stages are so laborious. Just as you wouldn't put a baby on a high ropes course, you wouldn't put a new church start in big mission projects. They can't even digest things fully unless it's broken down first. That was me. Feeding and caring for something that I have always hoped and hope will be bigger than me. Well, in July we turned 7. From conception to now, Fig Tree has existed in some form. She's old enough to give control over in some form, like sending your child to school. The person is strong enough to hear multiple voices and take it in. I'm far less worried about the dangers of the world. There is less of a chance she will be devoured by the stronger presences out there. I do need to tell you what she is. Fig Tree is glue. Most Churches and organizations are not glueThe phrase "All are welcome," is not true. Now, before you brick and mortar churches get up in arms and call me heretic, hear me out. No church is called to reach everyone. God includes everyone, but individual institutions meet needs differently. There is a prison ministry in Kentucky. You can't tell me the victims of the prisoners would be comfortable in that ministry. That's okay. To say you are something solidifies what you are for the people you are for. Prisoners need God just as much as anyone else. Most churches are called to be solid: to be something specific to a specific group of people. The more solid a church is with who they are, the better they meet the need of the people they are called to reach. Churches don't like to hear this. They want to be everything to everyone because God calls all. Only, a single church is not God. A church is a piece of the whole. Just like individual body parts are called to specific tasks, so it is true of individual churches. Why is that true?Most glue today is synthetic. It's made in a lab. Natural glue is a beast all it's own- literally. Before we figured out how to fake glue, we did it through a process of breaking down collagen in an animal and condensing it. This required boiling connective tissue multiple times, and drying it out in sheets. Then, breaking the sheets into clumps and adding water back, but only just enough to make it usable. To make an animal into glue, everything animal like must be destroyed first. Almost every church wants to be glue, especially when their numbers start to dwindle. They are asking themselves, "How can we bring in diversity?" when all they are really asking is, "How do we keep from dying?" You can make a solid mission into a glue, but at the cost of everything. It all has to be ground down and boiled down until all there is, is glue. You can't have a solid mission and be glue. The purpose of glue is to bring missions and purposes together. Glue doesn't get focus or adoration. You don't look at the finished product and go, "Wow, that glue holding it all together is the real winner. No, it disappears into the finished product. Most churches and organizations are too solid, to be defined as glue. That's right and good for them. They should clarify what makes them solid, not soften what is already working. Fig Tree exists as glueI was brainstorming great organizations that are glue-like, and I was failing. That's because, the internet is very uncomfortable with the make-up of glue. People want things that are solid. They want people to pick a side so they know whether they're supposed to hate or love them. The phrase, "If you're church isn't talking about [A], than you shouldn't be going to that church." is a very tweetable statement.
Fig Tree's mission is to the brokenness in the world. I, Melissa Fain, was personally chewed up, broken down, and made into something new. Seven years ago I personally had a choice. I could pour myself into a mold, and solidify myself into a "camp," or I could remain liquid to solidify others. For me, it was an easy choice. Because I was pregnant with the call of Fig Tree, my spiritual DNA as it was at that time, became Fig Tree's DNA. My biggest fear, as we move into the childhood phase of this mission, are people who want us to solidify, or yell at us for what they think we might be. Right now, solid voices can come on and this is a place where they can be heard. I don't agree with all of them, and I couldn't. It's diverse. We've had writers from multiple denominational, political, and personal experience. I can only hope over the next seven years, we get more diverse, not less. We can do that, because we're glue. When it's all said and done, no one is going to see Fig Tree. They will see the organizations and people surrounding it. If that be the case, praise be to God.  -Rev Melissa Fain- 1 When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. 2 The more I called them, the further they went from me; they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and they burned incense to idols. 3 Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk; I took them up in my arms, but they did not know that I healed them. 4 I led them with bands of human kindness, with cords of love. I treated them like those who lift infants to their cheeks; I bent down to them and fed them. 5 They will return to the land of Egypt, and Assyria will be their king, because they have refused to return to me. 6 The sword will strike wildly in their cities; it will consume the bars of their gates and will take everything because of their schemes. 7 My people are bent on turning away from me; and though they cry out to the Most High, he will not raise them up. 8 How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart winces within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. 9 I won’t act on the heat of my anger; I won’t return to destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not a human being, the holy one in your midst; I won’t come in harsh judgment. 10 They will walk after the Lord, who roars like a lion. When he roars, his children will come trembling from the west. 11 They will come trembling like a bird, and like a dove from the land of Assyria; and I will return them to their homes, says the Lord Hosea 11:1-11 CEB When I was around my son's age, I used to think the Israelites got in trouble pretty much every single year from the moment they called Israel home. From the major to the minor prophets- it all takes up about ¼ of the Hebrew Bible. Then I learned there are stories that overlap, prophets that were called at the same time, but to another group of Israelites. I wanted to know- why? Every prophet is unique in their own way. Jeremiah was the Prophet in exile. Elisha was the hot-tempered Prophet, while Elijah was the Prophet called to pass on the torch. Samuel was the Prophet called to start a dynasty, while Jonah was unwillingly called to the enemy. Hosea, our Prophet for today, was the only Prophet who was native to the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Basically, while Israel started as one big country in the beginning… (You know- Joshua fit the battle of Jericho. The walls came tumbling down. Saul says he’s king of the new country. Nope. It’s the youngest Shepherd boy, David, son of Jesse. David kills Goliath, and is later anointed king. He marries multiple women then falls in love with the one he couldn’t have. After getting that woman’s husband killed in battle, he marries her and sires Solomon. David would have many sons sired from multiple mothers. Those boys did not get along. It’s a mess that includes rape, murder, and war. It led to one of the sons staging a coup that actually kicked David out of the north for a bit. David passed away, Solomon was named king, and Jereboam, one of the sons, was not having it. Jereboam left with 10 of the Northern tribes, calling it Israel. The Southern part, that included Jerusalem, was led by Solomon. It was called Judah. The unity of Israel once they had a king did not even last one generation.) I shared this cliff notes version of Israelite history because with every Prophet in the Hebrew Bible being Judean except Hosea, we should wonder how God is going to talk to a self-exiled people. For starters, God names their failure. They are like uncontrolled doves or pigeons. They have no purpose. They are flying without a destination. They gave themselves away. Instead of finding vassals, or countries that could give their allegiance to them and therefore God, they became vassals to other countries. These countries worshipped Baal, and now so had the Northern Kingdom. Therefore, God’s action will always include naming our failure. See it like our spiritual lives being on an epic map. We always need to come to terms with where we ended up. Here’s where we are, and here’s how we ended up here. Own it. Nothing is going to take it back. Pretending it doesn’t exist won’t change anything. Then, God names what is going to happen. For the Northern Kingdom, they are going to fall. They can’t keep a king, and Assyria is going to use that to their advantage. We often translate this as God’s wrath. In reality, we should see this more as the consequence of our poor choices. This scripture is very parental in that way. God even talks of the Northern Kingdom like a mother swaddling a baby. I believe good parenting let’s their kids know how they failed and tells them the consequences of their failure. But, while there are ministers who stop at the brimstone, this scripture does not. God finally talks about love. I love how the bird analogy comes back again. God becomes like a roaring lion. We should see that like a scary action. That loud noise is mentioned for a purpose. Have you ever heard a loud noise and seen birds take off? See, God’s okay being the bad guy if it gets the people back on track. The Northern Kingdom were like disorganized pigeons, but God’s willing to scare them away from the danger. We know this is more than wrath because there is a phrase used that reads “return to me.” In Hebrew it’s a phrase used in ancient love poetry. God’s love is like a golden chord. It’s always dropped down to us like a lifeline, a reminder of eternal love. Even when we ignore the call to grab it, it’s still there. Even when, in our personal rage, we cut it, it remains, waiting for us to tie it back. God’s love did not stop because the Northern Kingdom took their ball and made a new home. God’s love did not end when they chose to worship Baal. Yes, there can come a point when our choices were so poor, the path back to God will hurt, but only to burn out the iniquity so we can once again grab that loving connection once again. God’s love is bigger than our sin. God loves to bring us out of sin. God does not want our destruction. God wants to destroy what keeps us from God, because God loves. Resources: (Books I used to write this)
Harper Collin's Study Bible The Prophetic Literature (Dr. Jordan Petersen) The Harper Collin's Bible Dictionary |
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