Abraham, David, Veggietales, and our journey into God’s heart
All of us imagine Biblical persons from what and who we have known. Did a medieval monk imagine Abraham as a neighbor, or a monastic brother, or a wandering Asian trader they once met? We build our ideas about scripture from people we meet, now television and films, and perhaps memories of Children’s Bibles or famous art. My intentional adult journey with Jesus and community and scripture began about the same time that Veggie Tales was picking up steam. Maybe you remember it – an animated series teaching biblical stories and Christian virtues with singing tomatoes and blueberries. When I started down this road I barely knew the difference between Genesis and Revelation. So even though I was an adult when I began real learning about scripture, I must confess to you, that even after all these years, when I encounter young David, thanks to Veggie Tales I cannot help but imagine David as a stalk of broccoli (well actually it is asparagus, but I didn’t know that till now).
The anonymous artisan who crafted the message for the Hebrews is working with their own influences. They know the Hebrew scriptures deeply, however, they only know the Greek version. The decision of what was officially scripture in Judaism doesn’t solidify until after the time of Jesus. In the hundreds of years closest to his birth, there was a Hebrew set of texts and a set of texts that had been translated into Greek. The two sets were slightly different because the religion was fluid and neither copying by hand nor translating is ever precise. Furthermore, the Greek version had more texts, which come down to us in three ways. In a Catholic Bible they are in the Hebrew Scriptures. If you have a very protestant Bible, they are not there at all. If you are Episcopalian or Anglican you keep them in their own section, called the Apocrypha, and we use them for learning and spirituality but not for doctrine.
Getting back to the setting of the letter to the Hebrews – if you lived and practiced in what is called the Diaspora – where Jewish communities settled in Europe and Africa and further east in Asia in the 100ish years of time before Jesus – you might, like this author, know one version and not the other. This only matters here because it highlights how varied our shared experiences of our inherited stories can be.
Here we are invited into the white spaces around the black ink of the stories, a practice known as mid-rash. He is paraphrasing from the texts he knew, and playing with them in his heart. He is doing what we should all do, jump into the text and feel ourselves inside the story. What this author notices and shares is the motivation of these biblical heroes. They are focused on what heart and soul and drive and grit kept Abraham and Noah and others going. And the author feels it was trust. Not cognitive agreement with a factoid or ideology, but a sense of abiding purpose supported by an infinite presence of wisdom and hope. No magic talismans or brown-nosing donation, nothing graspable or tangible, but what kept the ancients on the way was wholehearted trust.
This second reading is also exploring an idea of how now on the road of life and discipleship to Jesus relate to eternity. And doing so in a way that isn’t native to ancient Judaism. The imagery of this life being a shadow of a more vivid eternity, that we journey through the toils and troubles of this life until we at death reach the further shore: is Platonic (as in Plato) and Greek and here is one of the places it finds its way into this tradition, and became so common to Christian and Christian-ish culture that we don’t always notice grasp that it is an evolution and an adaptation. Sometimes in the pluralistic reality of life the encounter with other beliefs and philosophies is a chance to clarify and distinguish. Other times it is a chance to discover something fresh and true that God is offering us.
The imagery of this life being an echo of Abraham’s pilgrimage with all its disappointment and delight and screw-ups, is a comforting insight and a chance to be re-shaped. The focus is on how the now relates to the forever. That how we make our way through this life matters to God. That we are supposed to be disciples not box-checkers-offers. We have been called through the night on a journey to the deeper and brighter and more holy heart of God. This blended storytelling holds hands with Isaiah and Jesus urging mercy and acts of justice over posturing and thin religiousness. It leads us on the journey declaring that the way of Jesus is that we take on his story as our story. That is what take, eat, drink, be one with me means.
In the last two and a half years we have never stopped and just quit being church. We adapted and learned and changed and there is more to do till kingdom come. We are living into what is strange and hard and hopefully beyond our sight, glorious. We are walking on in the middle of drastic changes and twists in what it means to be a loving serving striving community of disciples. We are trying to trust what is seen and unseen, yet wholeheartedly there, and how that has changed. Perhaps revealed its real self. We have let go of a whole lot so we can focus on what matters to God. And even with all we do not understand and the problems we cannot plan for, we trust, we give thanks, we break bread, we make our way through the beauty and paces of being the church.
One more thing, our 2022 journey through the Chronicles of Narnia faithfully echoes this very section of the message to the Hebrews. CS Lewis was certainly playing with this part of the New Testament, feeding our imaginations with what it could look and feel like to make our way to an eternal home. He is quoted as saying the intention with the Chronicles was to un-stained-glass the faith. His books take us through a strange wilderness where the comforts of the past have faded, and where we are not alone in our journey. If you haven’t joined us in Narnia, maybe you should give it a try. Lovely late summer reading.
So, what stories, movies, persons, and experiences fill in the gaps of color and feeling and landscape when you hear our lessons today? Do they inform and guide, make you laugh, or get a bit in the way? (The getting in the way is a good thing as long as you learn that it is in the way.) The far side of this life of stumbles is a land of milk and honey and living waters that taste more like milk and honey, and the water is more refreshing than anything we have yet known. We have to make our way together with Jesus lending a hand, while we respond in word and deed, leaping up and saying here I am, I can help. Through the strengths and trials, the graces seen and unseen, God is with us. We moving on in faith, not just with a click of a thumbs up, and not just silly songs with cucumbers and tomatoes forever. We move with God from curiosity to curiosity, one foot in front of the other, deeper, higher, real-er. It matters right now for the last and the least and the lonely and the lost, and the right now matters to our home in God’s heart.