Second Sunday in Lent, B; March 1, 2015; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

O God of the Word, grant us the wisdom, the strength and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

A few weeks ago at our Annual meeting, we engaged in an exercise of writing words that we relate to prayers for Emmanuel for help, of thanksgiving, and of awe. We saw a graphic representation of the words in our Annual Report document, a picture called a word cloud, which shows the words in font sizes that increase the more times a word appears in a document. Joy Howard took the words of our prayers and made word clouds at the meeting. The word clouds are now on Emmanuel’s web page in the section about the Annual Meeting. Mike Scanlon is in the process of transferring the images onto a banner for the lobby – so look for that in the next few weeks.

I tell you that, both to bring you up to date on the progress of communicating our parish’s prayers, and also to explain that I’ve been thinking a lot about word repetition – how often certain words are used in comparison to other words, and how word use forms us (and deforms us). Words come in and out of favor; new words get created and grow in popularity enough to make their way into our lexicons. Other words fade into desuetude. (One of my favorite words – desuetude – a word that has become itself — a state of disuse.) When I read scripture, I pay close attention to words that are used and words that are not used. Words matter. After all, “In the beginning was the Word.”

If you’ve ever asked me about reading the Bible, you will know that I urge you to read an edition that contains scholarly explanatory material (called a study bible) with maps, charts, charts, orienting introductions, and most importantly, footnotes. [1] I love footnotes because they reveal things both about the scriptural text, and also about the editing team, which challenge and amuse me. Do the footnotes gloss over textual discrepancies and translation uncertainties? Do they try to reconcile or make sense of them? Do they cover up or disclose things that scholars cannot make sense of or agree on? I’m endlessly fascinated. Annotated Bibles published by Christian and Jewish publishing houses are the books closest to my desk in my study at home.

By now, you’ve probably guessed that there are translation and word frequency issues in our readings this morning! Here’s what grabbed me this week and would not let me go. “When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said to him, “I am God Almighty…” And next to the word Almighty there is the tiniest lower case letter indicating a note at the bottom of the page. The note in the Oxford edition reads: “Traditional rendering of Heb El Shaddai.” I saw that and wondered, wait a minute — whose tradition? I pulled the Jewish Publication Society’s Bible [2] off of the shelf to look at this verse of Genesis. It reads “When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am El Shaddai” (not translated). There is a tiny note that reads, “Meaning of Heb uncertain.” There is not enough agreement, according to the editors to translate the word Shaddai. (El is God.)

You know, Shaddai is not some word for an obscure plant that is now extinct. This is a word that is being used by God to describe God’s very self. Shaddai is a name of God. It’s not a word that gets used very much at all in the Hebrew Bible – only 48 times, and two-thirds of those times are in the book of Job. [3] Shaddai is used to describe God of blessing and mercy in the Torah, and God of destruction and calamity in prophets and the other Biblical writings. In the ancient Jewish translation into Greek, the Septuagint, the word is not included or translated in this verse. But by the time the scriptures were translated into Latin in 400 CE, Shaddai gets translated as omnipotens. Maybe you’re wondering what happened with the concept of the omnipotence (all powerful) [4] of God in the New Testament? Pantokrator (Greek for all powerful) appears only ten times – nine of which are in the Book of Revelations. Our Gospels never describe God as almighty. Jesus never calls God almighty. The church developed creedal statements in the 3^rd and 4^th centuries call God almighty. In our hymns and prayers, we refer to God as almighty a LOT. In fact, in our corporate worship, we describe God as almighty more than any other word.

Here’s a gem: an important medieval Rabbi, called Rashi, who wrote comprehensive commentaries on the Bible, translated the word Shaddai as sufficient. He explained this verse of Genesis as God saying to Abram, “I am [God] whose divinity is sufficient to all creation.” [5] God Sufficient – God Enough, Ample, Plenty – as in, you don’t need any other god – as in, with the Holy One, you are fully equipped. It seems to me that this translation disarms the age-old argument of theodicy – that is, how can we make sense of God as both all good and all powerful? Rather than God Almighty. It’s God all good and God Sufficient. God Enough. The Passover song Dayenu comes to mind. What if, as a Lenten discipline, we started imagining – indeed praying to the Holy One as Sufficient, as Enough, as Ample, as Plenty. Dayenu! How might that Lenten practice draw us nearer to God’s saving Love?

I also want to say some things about our Gospel lesson from Mark. Jesus had a difficult exchange with Peter in which Jesus called Peter, Satan. The word satan means adversary. The choice to make that word into a proper noun is an editorial and theological choice that seems so corrupt to me. Jesus was saying to Peter that Peter was not giving him the kind of support that Jesus was looking for. Jesus and Peter both seem angry in this exchange – they were rebuking, strongly admonishing each other – they were arguing. Then Jesus turned to the group of disciples and the crowd and shouts: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed what can they give in return for their life?” In other words, remember what your life is for. What is your life for?

What does deny yourself mean? I want to offer to you what I think this might mean. But first I want to tell you what I’m quite sure it does not mean. It does not mean that you must pretend to be someone other than yourself. It does not mean adopt an alias or wear a disguise. (In fact, it means take off your disguise.) It does not mean be self-less – do not have a self. In fact, the whole notion of an individual self is a fairly modern and fairly western concept. In the context of much of the rest of the world, and in the context of first century Palestine, denying oneself means, breaking away from your primary systems of identity that keep you “in your right and rightful place” — your kinship group – your tribe – your class or station. It means breaking away from all of the ways things “have to be” because of your social and political and economic context. Then, as now, this is a very risky – and even reckless idea.

What does taking up a cross mean? Again, I want to start with what this does not mean. To take up your cross was absolutely not a euphemism for suffering. Having a cross to bear did not mean suffering with an illness; it didn’t mean suffering with someone else’s illness; it didn’t mean living with loss or disappointment. In Jesus’ time, the cross was the most unambiguous instrument of capital punishment, used on the lower classes, slaves, criminals, violence inciters, insurgents, and traitors, to maintain the rule of Roman law. It was employed in theaters, on hilltops, and along busy roads, as a grotesque billboard warning anyone who might be tempted to subvert the dominant political and military and economic order. What does “for the sake of the gospel” mean? In Jesus’ time, it meant “everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat. Come buy wine and milk without money and without price.” [6] It meant to “bring good news to those who are oppressed, to bind up those who are brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to those who are captive, and release to those in prison.” [7] It still does mean those things. Taking up a cross for the sake of the gospel means voluntarily picking up a burden on behalf of another which will probably cause you to fall on your face, and might cost your whole life, for the love of God. The thing is, none of us is getting out of here alive. So how are you going to spend your life? Spend it gladly because you actually can’t save it. Carry one another’s burdens gladly – carry the cross gladly, because you only have one life to give. Spend it well.

Taking up your cross meant risking persecution and even death as punishment for working to alleviate the human suffering by feeding and healing and freeing those who were least and lost and last. Taking up your cross meant challenging the systems that make and keep people least and lost and last. Taking up your cross meant risking persecution and even death as punishment for speaking truth to power – for insisting on holding the powers and principalities accountable. Clearly, according to these instructions, the stakes are very high and so are the demands on anyone who wants to follow Jesus. And I bet more than a few people in the congregation are thinking, “well I guess those instructions leave me out.”

So for those who might be thinking that, here’s something I want to teach about scripture. There’s a difference between prescriptive and descriptive passages in scripture. A prescriptive passage is like a prescription that a doctor writes for medicine. Prescriptions tell you what to do or how to behave – what to take to make you better. Descriptions talk about how things are. It’s not always easy to tell which is which in the Bible, because sometimes prescriptions are written like descriptions and descriptions are written like prescriptions. I think this passage in Mark, even though it sounds like a prescription, like what someone has to do to follow Jesus, is really a description of what people who are following Jesus have done. Simon Peter says as much soon after this when he complains to Jesus that they have left everything to follow Jesus. What these words are doing here is assuring those people that they’ve done the right thing.

So leaving social and political and economic structures behind and risking persecution to alleviate the suffering of others was what Jesus’ followers were doing in Mark’s story. The point, though, the whole objective was (and still is) working to alleviate the suffering of others. That’s what spreading the Good News is all about. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of Jesus message, I think, to interpret the Gospel as somehow meaning that suffering is God’s will. It might be inevitable, but it is not what God wants, according to Jesus.

This Lent, let us examine what we are doing to alleviate the suffering of others – feeding and healing and freeing those who are last and least and lost? Let us examine again what we are doing to expose and challenge the systems that keep people that way? The Gospel assures us that the path that we are on as we do the work of alleviating suffering of others will take us deeper and deeper into the heart of God, Who is Sufficient – Who is Plenty.

You may have heard that Leonard Nimoy died on Friday. He was famous for playing the Vulcan character Spock in the TV and movie series “Star Trek.” The New York Times produced a short video of Nimoy talking about how he came up with the Vulcan salute that accompanies the blessing, “Live long and prosper.” He first saw the gesture as a little boy when he peeked out from under his father’s prayer shawl during an Orthodox Jewish service, even though he’d been told to close his eyes. It’s an ancient Jewish gesture of blessing, and a manual approximation of the Hebrew letter Shin, which is the first letter in the word Shaddai, God Sufficient. So live long, prosper, and share your prosperity with those who are least and lost and last.

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