There is a story I once heard preached about a rare act of generosity in the otherwise harsh life of a slave on the Southern Plantation. Apparently, it became something of a tradition for the plantation owners to allow the slaves to cut down a tree at Christmastime and burn it. As long as the tree was burning, they didn’t have to work.
Well, slaves may have been uneducated and overworked but that didn’t make them stupid. Weeks before Christmas, they would cut down a tree and soak it in water and then allow it to dry off just enough so it would still light and burn, but because it was still wet, it would burn more slowly. This, of course, meant that the slower the tree burned, the longer they didn’t have to do the hard work on the plantation.
The preacher compared this to hesed, which is the Hebrew word for the steadfast, loving kindness of God. We first hear about hesed in today’s collect. We pray, “O Lord, make us have perpetual love and reverence for your holy Name, for you never fail to help and govern those whom you have set upon the sure foundation of your loving-kindness . . . “
We are set upon the sure foundation of hesed – loving kindness. It is hesed – God’s mercy, God’s compassion, grace, love and God’s faithfulness – that is set in the foundation of the world. Hesed, found some 250 times in Hebrew Scripture, expresses an essential part of God’s character. Hesed describes a sense of love and loyalty that inspires merciful and compassionate behavior toward another person.
Hesed has been described as 'the love that never lets you go.'
But, God’s mercy and
compassion often surprises us – or disappoints us – because it doesn’t meet our
expectations. Or, manifests itself in a way that is confusing or confounding to
us.
In the first scriptural passage we heard this morning, Elijah, alone on Mount
Horeb after fleeing for his life from the rage of Queen Jezebel for his
uncompromising denunciation of idolatry and injustice, encounters a series of
awe-inspiring events—a great wind, an earthquake, and a fire—but each time, we
are told, God was not in the particular force of nature. And then, after the
fire, in the words of the New Revised Standard Version, comes “sheer silence.”
The narrative goes on to say that at this point Elijah “wrapped his face in his mantle” and went out from where he had been hiding. Then he hears a voice that speaks to him, asks him a question, and gives him direction about what his next move should be.
That is most assuredly not
the Hollywood version of an appearance by God. No burning bush. No dramatic
entrance. Just “sheer silence” which is also translated in the King James
Version as “a still small voice”.
What’s going on here? Was God just clearing God’s throat the other times? It’s
not that God isn’t present in the chaotic times of our lives. It’s just that
such moments may not be the most optimal times for discerning how God’s call is
beckoning us forward.
Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, made a similar point when he
suggested that moments of crisis are not the best times for making important
decisions.
For example, when a marriage hits a rough spot, the temptation to
bail out can be powerful. But Ignatius would counsel patience precisely at such
a time. Wait until things have calmed down, and then listen for the
voice of God. Careful spiritual discernment should be about mindfully weighing
options, not putting out fires (or surviving storms and earthquakes).
That is because like a slow
burning tree in the slave quarters of a Southern Plantation, God’s hesed, God’s
loving kindness, is at the foundation of our relationship with God and others.It's the love that never lets you go.
However, if you want God in the dramatic, in the unexpected, in the spectacular, you’ve got it in spades when Jesus healed the Gerasene demoniac. I mean, the demons were TALKING, for goodness sakes. That’s right out of a Hollywood movie like The Exorcist. And then, Jesus casts those demons into a herd of swine who then throw themselves off a cliff and into the abyss.
Surely, we have seen the hand
of God! But, when the people in country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Jesus’
hometown of Galilee, saw their neighbor, fully healed and learned his story, they were afraid.
“Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked
Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear.”
And so, Jesus got back in his boat and left. The man he had healed begged to go with Jesus and his disciples, but Jesus, filled with hesed, told the man to go back to his home and tell the people what had happened to him. And that’s exactly what the man did.
In the absence of the voice
of Jesus, his miraculous works of healing were amplified for everyone to hear.
Anyway. Like that Christmas log in the slave quarters of the Southern
Plantation, the hesed of God is the sure foundation of our relationship with
God and others.
It surprises us, continuing to burn long past our expectations
or anticipations.
Today is Father’s Day, when we honor or at least remember the biological person in our lives who we call “Dad” or “Daddy” or “Pop” or “The Old Man.” We also honor those in our lives who have been for us that strong, steady parental presence, teaching us life’s lessons about honor and duty while providing guidance and protection, love and nurturance.
Today is also Juneteenth, the day the U.S. Army took possession of Galveston
Island, a barrier island just off the Texas coast that guards the entrance to
Galveston Bay, and began a late-arriving, long-lasting war against slavery in
Texas.
This struggle, pitting Texas freedpeople and loyalists and the U.S. Army
against stubborn defenders of slavery, would become the basis for the
increasingly popular celebrations of
Juneteenth, a predominantly African-American holiday celebrating
emancipation on or about June 19th every year.
We long to be able to live into the high calling of which Paul wrote in his
letter to the people of Gallatia, which we know today as Turkey. Paul said, “There
is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer
male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”
May we all, one
day, soon be free of prejudice and oppression – and the impulse to treat others
who are different from us as ‘lesser than’ or unworthy.
Our hearts are also broken as
we learn about yet another mass shooting, this time, at St. Stephen’s Episcopal
Church in Vestavia Hills, an affluent suburban church outside of Birmingham,
Alabama during a “Boomer’s Potluck”.
The shooter was in his 70s as was one of his victims, a woman; the other two were octogenarian men. No motive is yet known.
With all of the insanity in
this world, it may seem to some as if God has abandoned us, walked away from us
in complete and utter disgust and anger.
And, no one could blame God, really.
We seem to look for ways to fight with each other, to separate ourselves from
one another, to be discourteous and disrespectful to one another. It is not
uncommon to see flags flying from people’s homes or vehicles with obscenities –
or coded obscenities – written on them.
We separate ourselves by colors – red people
over here on the right, blue people over there on the left – like little
children in the school yard or primitive tribes in some undeveloped country.
But, on this second Sunday in the long, green season of Pentecost, we are reminded of what is at the very foundation of our relationship with God and with each other: Hesed.
Hesed surpasses ordinary kindness and friendship. It is the
inclination of the heart to show “amazing grace” to the other. Hesed
runs deeper than social expectations, responsibilities, fluctuating emotions,
or what is deserved or earned by the recipient. Hesed finds its home in
committed, familial or neighborly love, and it comes to life in actions.
Hesed is the love that never lets you go.
We see the hesed of God in the striking and dramatic, but mostly we see hesed in small, every day acts of kindness. The recognition of service. A small word of thanks. The simple adherence to the vows we took at baptism: To seek and serve Christ in others and to respect the dignity of every human being.
If I can leave you with any image of the hesed of God – the loving kindness at the very foundation of our relationship with God and the kind of relationship God wants us to have with each other – may it be that image of the slow-burning Christmas tree set by the slaves on that Southern Plantation.
May we, like them, find creativity
and ingenuity even in the midst of injustice and oppression and violence. May
the waters of our baptism give us the endurance to continue to burn with the
passion of the gospel.
May we be so SOAKED and water-logged with the waters of baptism that the gospel will burn in us and surpass even our expectation or anticipation.
And may our emancipation and liberation in Christ Jesus
set us free to love one another as He loved us so that the world may be a
better place for us and our children and our children’s children, from
generation to generation.
May the foundation of hesed on which God has set us, burn slowly and strongly in our hearts forever.
May we know the hesed of God which will never let us go.
May it be so.
Amen.
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