Empty Fullness
Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16 / Romans 4:18-25
A Sermon by the Reverend Eun-Joo Myung
The so called “ancestor of faith,” Abraham received God’s promise a second time that he and his wife would have many descendants according to Genesis Seventeen. And he still had no child with his wife Sarah.
Do you think Abraham did believe God’s promise?
I thoughtfully doubt it. Although, we did not read it today, following today’s text, it is said, “Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old?” Abraham said to himself, “Can Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?” And he added, “O that Ishmael might live in your sight” (Gen 17:17-18).
However, Abraham became the ancestor of Faith. Paul proclaims that Abraham was “hoping against hope” (Rom 4:18). Paul, in this epistle, explains hope. “Hope that is seen is not hope” (Rom 8:24). Since hope can be unpredictable, it often takes us by surprise. Like Abraham and Sarah’s story!
For hope to be hope it has to have the wisdom to discern something new in our routine lives and to understand change in a world that seems indifferent to new seasons and generations.
When we hope for justice to prevail in society, for love for our neighbors, even enemies, or for peace in the world, we need something other than selfish hope. What do we need besides hope? It is faith.
Faith is this wisdom that makes it possible for us to perceive elements of surprise in hope.
Hope without faith is like a husk without rice, a body without the spirit, a daydream unrelated to reality.
Then, what is faith?
Here is a story of a descendent of Abraham and Sarah from Holy Land, Palestine… Jean Zaru, a former member of the Central committee of the World Council of Churches and a vice president of the World YWCA, an author and a Palestinian Christian woman told this in the book, Speaking of Faith…(Jean Zaru, “May God’s Peace, Mercy, and Blessing Be Unto You, “ in Speaking of Faith, ed. Diana L. Eck, and Devaki Jain)
(with a different voice) “As a Palestinian Quaker woman, a native of the Holy Land, I have been confronted all my life with structures of injustice. As a Palestinian, I have lived under military occupation since 1967. As an Arab woman in a male culture, I have no equality with my brothers. And as a pacifist in an area of military conflict, I am often misinterpreted as being passive or submissive or accepting of injustice…
Living under military occupation has made me go through deep self-searching, and I have been confronted with three loyalties. The first loyalty is to Christ, who calls us to love our enemy. The second loyalty is to our fellow-men or women in need or trouble, to aid them in whatever way we can. The third loyalty prevents us from being willing to aid our invader. In our situation, no one can set the rules for us to follow, but what we can do is to testify that, in our experience, the spirit of God leads us into the truth and gives us the needed guidance in every situation.
We have gone through circumstances of great privation, anxiety and suffering. All these seemed at times to weaken our sense of dependence of God. But when I know that wherever I am, whether in affluence or in poverty, whether I have personal liberty or not, God has a service for me to render, I feel a sense of both hope and joy.”
The “Holy” land…. it has been in the news… not since the birth of the state of Israel in 1948…but since Abraham and his family left their home in Mesopotamia some 3,500 years ago to seek a new home in Palestine.
Zaru told the story about faith in a world of divided loyalties and of religious and political conflicts. She talked about her faith related to loyalty. The word loyalty shows relationship here…
Relationship with God, relationship with others, and relationship with the world…
“[My] first loyalty is to Christ” It is not all that she says. It is to Christ who calls us to love our enemy.
Who is Christ? My Christ, your Christ, and the Christ of most Christians is not necessarily Jesus himself, the son of Mary and Joseph. The confession of faith in Christ as the savior of the world unfortunately is not always the same thing as following the Jesus who lived and died.
We must go on to say, in what kind of Christ we confess our faith? What is important is that Zaru goes on to tell us who Christ is for her, to what kind of Christ she is prepared to pledge her loyalty.
Loyalty to Christ who calls us to love our enemy…
We must explain to which Christ we show our loyalty.
We now begin to understand how the Palestinian Christian woman and her fellow Palestinian Christians put themselves in a serious situation they are not saying this in a peaceful environment, but in an environment filled with tension and hostility.
“You have heard that it was said,” Jesus said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your God in heaven…” (Mt 5:43-45)
What is meant by “enemy” must be those people who oppose you, who try to do you harm, who plot evil things against you.
Jesus had them, too.
Jesus also asked for prayers for enemies. For Jesus, prayer is a communion with God in the deepest parts of his heart and being. In prayers he puts himself in the hand of God.
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Of course, Faith is faith in God. It is not faith in other human beings. We worship God, but we do not worship human beings.
Faith, basically, is faith in God. But it must be remembered that faith in God does not become “awareness of God” or “experience of God” until it becomes “awareness of others” – including human beings.
For Christians it is the loyalty to Christ “who calls us to love our enemy” that leads to loyalty to “fellow-men or women in need or trouble” in human beings.
About twenty years ago, in 1988, Palestinian Christian churches in Jerusalem issued their first unified statement.
A part of the statement is like this, “We stand with the suffering and the oppressed, we stand with refugees and the deported, we stand with those who mourn, we stand with the poor…we stand with…”
It has to be reminded that Jesus – himself poorlived, worked, and died with the poor.
The heart of it is these few words: “We stand with…” Faith is not doctrine. It is not liturgy. It is standing with others.
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Loyalty to Jesus…
Loyalty to the needy and the oppressed…
The third is loyalty to country. It sounds like narrow nationalism or like a call to national defense against outsiders. This tells the relationship with the world. Because loyalty to country follows loyalties to Jesus and to the needy, regardless of background of politics, race, gender, or class…
Thus, Loyalty, combined with faith, becomes a respectable word.
Jean Zaru ends her statement, “What we can do is to testify that, in our experience, the Spirit of God leads us into the truth.”
What then is faith?
Faith is the response to the Spirit of God, which recruits men and women to engage in rebuilding human community.
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A disciple of Buddha, asked him what faith is. The teacher answered “Nothing much but to hear…. When you hear a story teller, you just hear the person. All the labor is on his/her side. As the person talks, you hear the one. There is no special way of hearing. No thinking is needed here. Faith is awakened by hearing.”
What do we hear?
I would like to invite us to meditate a part of this poem “When Someone Deeply Listens to You” by John Fox.
When someone deeply listens to you
It is like holding out a dented cup
You’ve had since childhood
And watching fill up with
Cold, fresh water
When it balances on top of the brim,
You are understood.
When it overflows and touches your skin,
You are loved…
Water cannot be poured into an overturned cup, but when it stands in its natural position, anybody can pour water into it and as fully as it can hold.
Let us hold “the cup of our heart” upright, ready to receive God’s saving love in Jesus and to be filled with it…
Then, let it be overflow.
Amen.
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