Marty and the Brick

Luke 17:5-10

The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” The Lord replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you. “Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’? Would you not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink’? Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!’”

Back in the early 70’s, Marty, a young engineer at Motorola, was asked to lead a team on a project to develop the next generation of a car radiotelephone.  Before he jumped in though, he stepped back and took some time to question what every had assumed was always true.  That led him to a new question, “Why is it that when we want to call and talk to a person, we have to call a place?” That led his team to begin working on disconnecting the person from a particular place… a home, an office, or even a car.  In 1973, Marty made the first cell phone call on a phone that would be known as “the brick” which cost $4000 and had a whole 20 minutes of battery life.  He didn’t just plow forward on old assumptions.  He stepped back and questioned old assumptions and with that, he and his team ushered in a whole new age in communication.

That, I think is what Jesus is doing in today’s Gospel lesson.  The apostles had come to Jesus in a panic.  They had suddenly realized that being apostles meant following in Jesus’ footsteps… INCLUDING doing all the incredible things that Jesus did!  They had watched as Jesus calmed storms, cured disease, made people walk again, fed five thousand with pretty much nothing, and hey, let’s not forget that little thing he did called raising the dead!  Their panic came from an their assumption, that the reason Jesus could do those incredible things was that his faith tank was chock-a-block, full up to the tippy top.  Out of that assumption they asked for their faith tanks to be filled up too, so they could do what they were being called to do.    

But Jesus replied in a way that was meant to rattle them out of those old assumptions.  He said, “Guys, if faith was something that could be poured into you, then with just a single drop you’d be able to shoot this tree out into the ocean and while you were at it you could turn the moon into green cheese too!" At this point, in my imagination, Jesus breaks the fourth wall of the Bible and looks right at you and me.  He shakes his head and says, “Apostles? Can you believe these guys.  Sheeeeesh!”

THAT, Jesus was telling them, was NOT the way faith works! And yet, in spite of that, people even today continue to insist THAT is exactly the way faith works.  As a chaplain in seminary, I was sitting with a father one Saturday on the oncology floor.  We sat there as his 20 something year old son’s life was coming to an end.  The dad was in agony.  He would sit by his son’s bed for a while then get up agitated and pace a bit.  But then two “Prayer Warriors” came in.  They had been sent by some other member of the family and when the dad got up to pace the next time, they told him, “Don’t loose faith or he won’t be healed.”  They believed that if this dad’s faith tank went empty, that, not the cancer, would be the reason his son died.  I’m not sure if even 26 years later, I’ve ever been as angry.  

Faith is indeed a gift from God, but to assume that gift is something poured into us, leads to all sorts of bad theology and hurtful and exclusive places.  That’s why Jesus was helping those apostles then, and us apostles now, to step back from old assumptions and see that faith was not something God poured into a tank within us, instead it is us who are swimming in an infinite pool of faith… It is in God, as Paul says, that we live and move and have our being!  We are literally swimming in faith, breathing it in and out like a fish swims and breaths and lives in water.  

Faith is not measured in gallons or pumped into us like gas at from a pump.  Faith is a gift in which we live each and every moment of our lives.  It is a gift of belonging.  It is like amniotic fluid filling a womb where we grow with loving and gentle guidance… where we are willed and coaxed and lured and poked and cajoled with love and care and tenderness toward not just life, but abundant life.

That’s what Jesus was trying to tell the apostles with that last piece of today’s Gospel.  I know the slavery bit gets very  sticky for us, but when we put that aside, what Jesus is telling us is that faith doesn’t come to us with a cosmic bang, an intellectual revelation, or even an angelic visit.  Faith surrounds us and fills us, in, with and under the regular ebbs and flows of everyday living.  Faith comes as we get up for work in the morning and put on the coffee.  Faith surrounds us as we answer emails and scroll through the news.  Faith flows through us as we come home tired and exhausted and over the world in general… and then go ahead and get dinner ready in spite of being over the world in general.  Faith comes to each of us as a gift... in, with, and under every step and every breath we take through each and every day.  

That’s what makes faith a REAL gift.  You don't have to work for it, search for it, qualify for it, or ask for it.  It's simply always there, surrounding each and every one of us, flowing through us, in every moment of our lives in everything we do.  Faith is everywhere we live.  Faith is everywhere we move.  Faith is everywhere we have our being and immersed in that Faith God is always and forever moving us toward new and abundant life, for ourselves and for the world around us.  Amen. 

The Parable of the Governors and Lazarus

Luke 16:19-31

“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. He called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.’ But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.’ He said, ‘Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father’s house— for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.’ Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.’ He said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

Once there was a man named Lazarus.  He was a teacher with over 20 years of experience teaching in Venezuela.  Yet, even with this position, his monthly salary only paid for two days worth of food for his family.  Leaving everything he knew behind and willing to do almost anything so that his family could simply eat, Lazarus found himself with his family and many others at a gate.  On the other side of this gate sat a rich and powerful man who dressed in the very best suits and ate sumptuous food every single day in his mansion.

One day this rich man conspired with another rich man and gathered up Lazarus and his family and others like them and loaded them all on a bus and drove them to the Navel Observatory in Washington DC… to the home of Vice President Harris.  With deceit and lies they loaded others onto chartered planes and flew them to Martha’s Vineyard, demanding that all these refugees go and fetch their political water for them.  

Between these rich men and these refugees a great chasm has been fixed.  Some might imagine that this great chasm was one created by God in judgement.  But the One who created all things and called them, not simply good, but very good, does not divide… does not separate… does not condemn… does not fix chasms.  In this parable, ripped directly from our headlines, we see very clearly the ones who have fixed this chasm are the rich men themselves. 

It was not, however, their wealth or their positions of power that put that chasm into place.  It was their insistence that they were in no way Lazarus’ brother… they were in no respect a fellow Child of God to Lazarus, they were not Lazarus’ neighbor, but instead they insisted on the demonic notion that they were somehow Lazarus’ superior… Lazarus’ better.  So they ate richly while Lazarus and millions of refugees went hungry.  They sat comfortably inside their governors’ mansions while Lazarus and those like him sat with their starving children outside their border’s gates.  They were at ease while Lazarus literally scrambled for the life of his family.    

Chasms are not dug by wealth but with evil arrogance, a sense of entitlement, and an air of superiority.  When will these men and their ilk see what they have done?  When will they change?  If this parable is any indication, change seems unlikely for men like this.  It doesn’t seem like there is anything that would convince them they are wrong.  Even being dead, tormented in Hades, and looking straight into that chasm, the rich man in the parable continued to believe and act like he was better than Lazarus.  He still expected to be able to order Lazarus around.  He thought that he was still better than Lazarus and even his own DEATH did not change his mind!  

Pulling sermon illustrations from our headlines for this parable is terrifyingly simple.  Using DeSantis and Abbott in this role of the out of touch rich man is the epitome of type casting but if the typecasting fits...  What they are doing is what we are warned against in this lesson.  They are treating fellow human beings as less than human and in doing so, digging a chasm that separates them from their brothers and sisters and from abundant life.  What they have done is horrible, and historically, stunts like these have at times, and under the right conditions grown into evils beyond our imaginations like slavery and segregation, even like the holocaust and the killing fields.

Now, not every situation ends up at that level of horror.  But all of them start in exactly the same way as this parable starts… with one human being becoming convinced, for whatever reason, that another human being is NOT, in fact, their neighbor.  Is NOT their sister or brother in Christ… is NOT made as they were, in the image of God.  They all begin with a growing arrogant superiority, believing that this other human being is somehow “illegal” a “foreigner” a “libtard” or a “Branden” and when one human being can convince themselves that the other less than human… that brings them to the precipice where the unimaginable becomes possible. 

THAT is the critical lesson from this parable.  It is easy to see that the rich man was wrong once he was tormented in Hades.  It’s easy to see the evils of the the countless genocides that have happened in our world and the limitless injustices that make the news and the callousness of political hacks.  But it is a challenge for folks like you and me to recognize we too have within us the ability and the means to begin digging a chasm of our own making between us and our neighbors, even in our little town, and even in our little lives.  

This parable is a warning to us that the actions of our lives are either digging chasms wider or pulling them closer.  None of us have the luxury of just staying out of it.  This parable puts each of us very intentionally and very uncomfortably in that rich man’s shoes and asks us what will we do about that person down there at the gate?  Will we look away or will we remember that whoever they are, wherever they might be from, whatever they may believe, whatever hardships they might bring with them, they are our brothers and sisters and together with them we are children of God.  Amen. 

Not Fair! Thank God!

Luke 16:1-13

Then Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.’ Then the manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’ And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes. “Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”

That’s not fair!  We hear that from kids a lot.  If your sister gets a big present for Christmas and you don’t… that’s not fair!  When she got the front seat to the grocery store you got it on the way back.  That’s just fair!  But it’s not just kids, is it?  Did you hear all the cries of “It’s not fair!” from supposedly grown adults when student loan forgiveness was announced?  We want what’s fair and that’s why this lesson is so hard.  The story begins with a manager squandering the boss’ money.  As the story continues it looks like the guy’s going to get what’s fair… he’s going to get sacked!  But then… THEN he gets praised instead!  What the what!?  You know why that doesn’t feel fair?  Because its not fair!  It’s completely and totally unfair!  Jesus… what are you doing?

What Jesus was doing is telling a parable.  A story that starts out by settling us all in for a nice little Sunday morning ride in Jesus’ Parable Truck through the country.  But then, out of nowhere, Jesus hits the gas and cranks the wheel and we either hold on for dear life and come away with a radically new understanding of God… OR we get slammed against the far window where the door pops open and you roll out of the truck onto the road as Jesus speeds off in a different direction.  

There was once a financial manager who managed the accounts of a wealthy person and all their business.  For some reason the rich guy lost confidence in this man and told him to turn over his books and get lost.  This seemed like the end of the world to the accountant.  He was dead.  He’d never get another accounting job, he didn’t exactly have a laborer’s build and sleeping on the street would not be good for his back at all.  So he figured as his last act as manager he’d use some of that creative accounting he’d been accused of and endear himself to the people in town.  So he took the bills people owed and he doctored them.  You owe $1000 bucks?  Scratch that out.  Now you owe $50.  You owe $10,000?  Let me take off a zero in quickbooks.  There… now you owe $1000.  

That was NOT how his soon to be former boss liked business to be done!  He was strict.  He kept accurate records to the penny.  People have a debt.  They pay the debt.  No exceptions!  That was the bosses rules.  But now this accountant, with his future buried six feet under, thought it was time to change the rules so that he would have a place to stay that didn’t involve a cardboard box or a dumpster.  The accountant changed the rules and then (hold on now, here comes the whiplashing turn) his old boss tells him what a great job he did and gives him back his career and his life.  What, the, WHAT?  THAT doesn’t make sense.  It’s not fair.  Well…

In this parable Jesus is the unjust steward.  Jesus is that weasel of an accountant.  His boss is God and you and I are the ones who are impossibly in debt to the big guy.  God, the big boss, had always run his business the same way.  The fair way.  Break the rules, pay the price.  That’s fair.  God kept very good and perfect books down to the last penny. 

Now comes Jesus with his long hair and funny cloths and he starts keeping the books for the boss.  He gets fired, his career is dead, he is crucified but in that death he is free to do some creative accounting that he could never have done alive.  And that is just what Jesus did.  He fixed the books for us all, taking away all the records that the boss had been keeping on us.  Erasing forever all the records of all the stuff we owed.  Why did he do that?  He did it for the same reason the Unjust Steward did it in the parable.  He did it for the relationships.  Jesus desperately wants to have a relationship with each one of us.  He wants to be invited into our homes and into our hearts.  

Jesus took his death and with that death changed the accounting rules forever.  He not only lowered our bills, he erased them completely… forever.  And then, just like in the parable, Jesus is praised by the Big Boss and brought back to life again because, as it turns out, the Big Boss is WAY more interested in being in relationship with you and me than being paid back.  It turns out God’s not fair.  Of course if God was fair we’d all be doomed.  None of us can keep up with those payments and those who think they can are fooling themselves.  Yup, the lesson of this parable is that God is completely and totally unfair.  Thanks be to God.  Amen

Two Sides of a Lost Coin

Luke 15:1-10

Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” 

So he told them this parable: “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance. “Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ 

Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

Today is September 11th.  On the Sunday following the original September 11th, this was the Gospel.  I think on that day, more than any other day, EVERYONE in our nation knew what it felt like to be that lost sheep, separated from everything familiar… everyone in our country knew the loneliness of the coin that had rolled off and now rested in some dark crevasse.  On that Sunday after 9-11, I think our country, for that one brief moment, understood the beginning of this parable more clearly and more personally than they ever had before.  We were all lost.  We all knew it.      

I would have liked for us as a nation back then to have had the courage to sit in that lost darkness a bit longer.  To not just react and lash out in fear.  I would have liked us as a nation to have sat still long enough to experience the truth, that finding the “lost” is THE specialty of the Good Shepherd… the expertise of our Divine Homemaker.  It is, after all, precisely the lost whom God comes to find, the broken that God comes to heal, the last whom God makes first, the weakest that are made strong and the dead that God raises up to new life.  

Instead we insisted we’d make our own way back to the flock... that we could roll ourselves back to the purse, that we would work out our own salvation.   We tried to do that for more than two whole decades and we found out, at an unfathomable cost, that no nation… no one… can work out their own salvation.  As a nation we were not ready to learn what this parable has to teach us.  

   

So what does this parable have to teach?  First it wants us to know that no matter how it is we manage to get lost in this life, the fields are searched and the floors are swept and in Christ’s life, death and resurrection each and every one of us is ALWAYS found!  Each and every one of us and every molecule of creation are lifted onto the Good Shepherd’s shoulders and fed with the bread of life… each and every one of us and every molecule of creation are swept up to drink from the cup of salvation.  On one side of that coin from this parable, it teaches us that we are all broken and lost in some way or another, but that in Christ, God finds us all!

On the other side of this parable’s coin, we’re also taught that together WE are the Body of Christ.  Individually we ARE the broken, the lost, the last, AND… TOGETHER we are the Body of Christ, called and sent into the world to seek out and lift up those folks who have wondered off with their heads down, eating one tuft of grass after another until they suddenly don’t have any idea where they are any more.  Together WE ARE the Body of Christ, called and sent into the world to sweep up those who have been thrown away into dark corners… lift up those who have rolled out of sight, and return those who have fallen through the cracks back to the life they were created to live.  It is one of the mysteries of faith.  Individually we can only be lost.  Together we are nothing less than the Body of Christ.  

In 2001 the nation was not able to see over the rubble and through the smoke and the pain and fear to recognize in all that death, the opportunity for resurrection that had been offered to us on the other side.  It was an opportunity for us to be transformed in those days, months, and years following 9-11.  Transformed together… to reset our national DNA and see ourselves in a new way… with honesty, humility, repentance, and empathy… to be turned over as a nation from a group of fear filled and lost individuals on the one side, into a nation that came together and acted like the Body of Christ together like the other.  

This parable on that first Sunday after 9-11 didn’t work that way and perhaps that’s not how this parable was meant to work at all… for everyone… all at once.  Perhaps this parable… maybe all parables… are meant to be told over and over and over again so that they are always there being told when we are finally in a place to hear them fully and embody them deeply.  Maybe parables are meant to transform the world like a river carving out a canyon and not all at once in a single day.  

I don’t really know to be honest, but maybe that’s how parables work and maybe, just maybe, one or two of us are ready to hear this parable today like we’ve never heard it before.  To finally give up trying to roll ourselves back to the purse and just sit still, knowing that the fields are searched and the floors are swept and we are all found.  Then, finally seeing we have been found, perhaps we will flip the coin over and live more deeply from this day forward into our place in the Body of Christ.  Amen.   

Gotta Hate Your Momma!

Deuteronomy 30:15-20

See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the Lord your God, walking in his ways, and observing his commandments, decrees, and ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you do not hear, but are led astray to bow down to other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall perish; you shall not live long in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days, so that you may live in the land that the Lord swore to give to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

Luke 14:25-33

Now large crowds were traveling with him; and he turned and said to them, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.

Let’s see… blessings and curses… life and death… slavery… hating mom, dad, the spouse and kids.  Got it!  Note to self:  Take this Sunday off in three years… Okay… that’s on the calendar now…. SO what do we do with this?  What do you do with the parts of the Bible that are like this?  I once preached at a Jewish Congregation in Maine and the Torah portion was from Deuteronomy.  It wasn’t the one we read today…. today’s is a cake walk in comparison!  That one covered… and these are just a few of the highlights mind you… how to marry someone you’ve captured in a war… turns out it’s quite a process.  How to deal with your two wives and the kids… carefully.  How to get the town folk to stone to death your rebellious kid… three chapters in the Talmud on that one.  What to do with executed bodies… don’t leave them out AND how to handle poo while you're serving in the army… it’s complicated.  So what do you do with stuff like that?  What do you do with the parts of Scripture that include stoning your kids to death, curses, slavery, and have Jesus telling us to hate our mom and dad?  What do we do when Scripture brings us stuff like THIS?

One popular option I hear people say is “I follow the New Testament God and not the Old Testament God.”  Well, first… that doesn't help with the "hate mom and dad" thing.  That IS in the New Testament.  Second, doing that is called Marcionism and that’s a heresy, so I’m going to say don't do that.  Another thing people do is the old “stick your fingers in your ears and say LALALALALALA really loud” trick and just ignore these parts.  But that didn’t work when I was five so I'm sure it’s not going to cut it fifty years later either.  The other thing we could do with this sort of stuff is to actually look at it... look at the context, the history, and culture of the time, the literary style… in other words, don’t try to go around it or run away from it… instead, dive deeply, right into the heart of it!

So, when you dive deeply into hating mom, dad, the spouse and the kids, what do you see?  The first thing I see is that Jesus is NOT talking about SALVATION.  This isn’t about where we go when we push up daisies or pull the pin.  This is about DISCIPLESHIP.  It’s about how we walk through THIS life.  And what does Jesus say is required to be a disciple in this passage?  Everything.  All that you have.  Yup, 100% perfect, unwavering discipleship requires that you follow in Jesus’ footsteps so perfectly that there is none of you left.  None left for mom, dad, the spouse or the kids.  So with that in mind, how are you doing with your discipleship?  Not quite there yet?  Yeah, me neither, but what people always seem to miss is that we are not expected to be there yet!  This is discipleship we’re talking about.  This is us trying to walk through life the Jesus way.  This is living our lives doing the things Jesus did in his life… living day in and day out with love, compassion, sacrifice and generosity.  Discipleship is, by definition, always a work in progress for us from our very first breath to our very last.  Discipleship is not a destination.  

What Jesus told this crowd, with “hate your family” level drama, is that Discipleship is something you will ALWAYS be working TOWARD and never something you will ever manage to complete and THAT’S the real gift buried under the drama in this lesson.  We’ll never be perfect at discipleship any more than we will ever perfectly forget our entire family.  That’s how it’s supposed to be!  But now, in this lesson and in Jesus' life, we have the tremendous gift of a particular DIRECTION for us to walk in our lives.  No more wondering how to walk through life.  Now we know!

That’s also what God was trying to do in the first lesson.  God had just presented humanity with the Manufacturer’s Manuel for Being Human.  It’s like the one for your car that’s in your glovebox.  You know, the one that you only get out to remember how to change the clock?  Yeah that one.  Well, God gave us a “How to Function Best as a Human” manual and told the people that if they followed it and walked in God’s ways, THAT way leads to life.  BUT, God says, if you DON’T follow that manual, then things won’t go as well.  This isn’t a threat by God any more than your car’s instruction manual telling you to change the oil is a threat from Nissan!  God just knows how we work best because God made us!  Nissan knows best how their cars work because they made them.  Change the oil, get the scheduled maintenance and your car will “live long in the land”.  Ignore the scheduled maintenance and your car “shall seize up in the land that you are crossing.”

The last thing I’ll tell you about how to handle the hard, strange, and downright terrible things we find in Scripture is don’t lose sight of the entire Word of God forest studying the minute details of one particular tree!  Keep in mind that it’s Jesus who is the Word of God and to read Scripture as intended, we need to read it through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus… we need to read it through Love.  If it’s not about love, it’s not about God, as Bp. Curry says and I’ve found over the years that if you’re having trouble seeing Love in a particular passage on the surface, the way to find it is to dive into it’s deep end.  It’s in there.  Guaranteed.  Amen.