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Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) 6:
32-37 June 20,
2010 IN
THE TRADITION OF SIRACH With this being Father’s Day, this morning I would like to acknowledge a few of those that I would celebrate as our “spiritual fathers” or the “church fathers.” But first of all, please accept this disclaimer and apology. In talking about our church fathers, we should really acknowledge and celebrate our church mothers as well, but this is Father’s Day after all, and so please forgive me for this chauvinistic indiscretion.! We’ve been working on a series of sermons on St. Paul, and perhaps it’s been apparent, and not that he needs it from me, but I’ve been trying to reclaim and restore the reputation of St. Paul as one of the great, great fathers of the church. By no means perfect, but St. Paul was of critical importance in helping us to become the church universal we are today. As important as St. Peter was, St. Paul, in my estimation, was even more important, for he was the one who propagated the good news of Christ far and wide, helping Christianity to become not just a tiny isolated sect within the Jewish family but indeed one that was accessible to all nations and cultures. But before we get to St. Paul there is someone else that I would have us explore as being the archetype or at least the prototype of what a father should be. In the Arabic tradition they have the rather interesting tradition of honoring someone by giving them a second name in which they incorporate the name of the father’s son. For example, my father’s name was Edward and in the Arabic tradition, as a way of honoring him, they might say, “Abu David” or Father of David. Although, I have to say, I am quite sure there were times when my father probably didn’t think of that as being all that much of an honor! So, in this sermon we’re going to end up with a tribute to St. Paul as one of the great fathers of the church as it is today, but in that Arabic tradition, who was “Abu St. Paul? Who were St. Paul’s spiritual fathers and grandfathers? I would guess that if you know much about your bible, you might be inclined to want to go all the way back to old Father Abraham as the archetypal, quintessential father, giving him the honorary name, Abu Jesus, Abu St. Paul, Abu St. Augustine, Abu Martin Luther, Abu John Wesley, Abu John Robinson, so on and so forth. I confess I have a great deal of trouble with Mr. Abraham, however, and most of my trouble with Abraham is rooted in what is perhaps the most troubling and perplexing of all the stories in the bible, the story of how Abraham really felt that he was called by God to sacrifice his own son, Isaac. Not to mention the fact that Abraham already had a son in Ishmael, whose mother was Hagar, but Hagar was subordinate to Abraham’s wife, Sarah, and so when late in life Sarah finally had a child, then Hagar and Ishmael became expendable – the world’s first “throw away child.” And if this example of “fatherhood” wasn’t bad enough we have this story of how after Sarah gave birth to Isaac, somehow Abraham got it into his head that God was calling him to take Isaac out and to sacrifice him with a knife. Picture young innocent Isaac thinking that he’s going out for a nice walk with his dad. As a child, there was nothing I enjoyed more than going out at 5 AM to play pitch and catch with my father before he had to go off to work -- baseball this time of the year and football in the fall -- and so I can imagine how joyous young Isaac must have been as he took his father’s hand to go out for a walk. But then, all of a sudden, he sees his father pull a long knife out of his belt, and just as the unsuspecting Isaac is to be sacrificed, a lamb appears and Abraham then realizes he is supposed to slaughter the lamb instead. A delightful little children’s story! …Supposedly about how one should be obedient to God, no matter what, or to use Kierkegaardian language, in our obedience to God, there should be “a teleological suspension of the ethical” (that makes it a lot more palatable and understandable, does it not!) that our obedience to God should be greater than even our love for our children. I wonder how many gruesome theologies were borne out of this story! I have seen so many ministers and theologians, including Soren Kierkegaard, wrap themselves into all kinds of theological knots trying to make sense out of this story, trying to etherealize, trying to spiritualize, trying to apologize, trying to gloss over just how horrifying this story is. In interfaith conversations, the name of Abraham frequently comes up – as we sometimes speak of Jews, Christians and Muslims as being the “family” of Abraham or all of us being in the “Tent of Abraham.” In popular interfaith dialogue, Abraham is thought of as being the father or the patriarch of the Jewish, Muslim and Christian traditions, but I for one would not want Abraham to think of himself as Abu David. Up at Hartford Seminary, they have a program called, “Building Abrahamic Partnerships”, but I confess I have to say, I’m not interested in building an “Abrahamic Partnership;” I’m all for having Christians, Jews and Muslims get to know each other better and what is even more important, to work together for common cause on issues of justice and peace and human rights, but please, please don’t put me in the “tent of Abraham”; I’d rather sleep outside under the stars. At one of our interfaith gatherings, someone asked me just how important Abraham was to my Christian faith, and I confess I wasn’t very diplomatic. I said, “He is not at all important”, but certainly there are plenty of others, patriarchs and matriarchs, for whom I would be very proud to be called their son. Isaiah, Micah, Amos, Hosea, Jeremiah…. I would be very proud to think of them as being, “Abu David”, if you will. But also, this morning, I think of another man by the name of Sirach or Jesus the Son of Sirach or using the Hebrew, Joshua the Son of Sirach. All of this gets rather confusing, and so we’ll simply refer to him as Sirach. We learn about this man of wisdom not in the Old Testament or in New Testament, but rather in that biblical no-man’s-land, known as the “Apocrypha.” Don’t look for it in your pew bibles; unfortunately, you won’t find it, for it’s not considered one of the canonical books of the bible. And yet what you find in this book is not at all unlike what you would find in the Book of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, all part of the Wisdom literature of the bible. What I love about this book and what makes it particularly appropriate for Father’s Day is that it was written by Sirach’s grandson as a tribute to his grandfather, and so think of it as a Father’s Day card, in honor of his grandfather, and what you find in this book is a string of pearls, if you will, a compilation of this grandfather’s wisdom, all the things that he tried to teach his children and his grandchildren. I wouldn’t say that I agree with everything in this book; some of it does not stand the test of time, but much of it does. Take for example how the grandson remembers how his grandfather had said, Do not hate toilsome labor, or farm work, which were created by the Most High. I think of how this resonates with the wisdom of St. Paul who in his letter to the Greek community of Thessalonica told them to, “aspire to live quietly, to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands.” The sanctity of ordinary work; the wisdom that can be found in working with your hands; the importance of industry and hard work, the satisfaction that can be found in a job well done, and I can picture St. Paul working on his tents, with proud blisters on his fingers even as he was conceptualizing his understanding of Christ – no disconnect between the head and the heart and the hands, but all working in wonderful synchronicity. I think of the spiritual genealogy connecting Sirach and St. Paul and later on a man by the name of Brother Lawrence, for whom prayer and a mystical experience could be found not only in the sanctuary down on your knees but also in the kitchen as he washed the dishes for the monastery. So, in speaking of Brother Lawrence, perhaps we should also refer to Sirach and St. Paul as Abu Brother Lawrence. I also love how Sirach’s grandson remembered how his grandfather had said, What race is worthy of honor? The human race. What race is unworthy of honor? The human race. This is important wisdom for any father or grandfather to pass on, that there is an inherent duplicity in our human nature, that we are capable of extraordinary creativity and kindness and love, but also we are ever so capable of cruelty as well, or as the Psalmist said, “we are fearfully and wonderfully made”, capable of wonderful generosity but also very capable of destroying this beautiful earth with our greed and our warring madness. St. Paul never forgot that at one time he had been Saul of Tarsus. He never forgot that at one time he had been a cruel and uncompromising zealot. He never forgot the darkness within the recesses of his own spirit. He never forgot how he himself had been an accomplice to evil, and yet he also never forgot to remind us what our true spiritual identities are, that there is dignity and nobility and goodness coursing through our veins. And so think of Sirach as Abu St. Paul and maybe, maybe Abu Socrates as well, for it was Socrates who said, “the unexamined life is not worth living”; “Know thyself”, a reminder that we should know as much as possible about our human nature, both our capacity for goodness and our capacity for evil. Although, being that Socrates was older than Sirach, we should refer to Socrates as Abu Sirach, for Socrates lived in about 400 BC and Sirach in about 180 BC. During this time in which we grieve over the terrible devastation of the oil spill off the coast of Louisiana, I hope we will remember that our faith and our spirituality are not just a part of our Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes, something we can pick up and put down whenever we want, but if it’s a true faith and a true spirituality, then it’s something that affects every aspect of our lives. Before he died, I can picture Sirach with his grandson on his knee, sitting outside in the garden, looking out over the Mediterranean Sea, trying to impart to him how wonderfully interconnected all of creation is, saying to him: By his council, God stills the great deep and planted islands in it. Those who sail the sea tell of its dangers, and we marvel at what we hear. For in it are strange and marvelous works, all kinds of creatures of the sea. Because of God the messenger finds the way, and by his word all things hold together. Though we speak much we cannot reach the end, And the sum of our words is: “God is the All.” I don’t know what these strange words mean to you, but for me there is great wisdom in these words, wisdom that far, far exceeds the wisdom in the story of Abraham and Isaac. I would rather live in the tent of Sirach than the tent of Abraham. I think the human race would do well to sit at the feet of Grandfather Sirach and ponder what he means when he says that by God’s word – the logos – all things hold together, for God is the All.” At this time when so much seems to be rendered asunder, at this time when the earth is crying out from oil spills, at this time when Pelicans can no longer fly because their wings are encrusted with oil, at this time when the earth moans from so much abuse, at this time in which we are sacrificing the future of our children not with Abraham’s knife but rather by the choices that we make, would that we all could heed the wisdom of Sirach who might also be known as Abu John Muir, and Abu Henry David Thoreau and Abu Chief Seattle and Abu Rachel Carson and Abu Roger Tory Peterson and Abu St. Paul who said and said so beautifully, “Christ is all and is in all.” Christ is also in that pelican trying so hard to fly. In this world where there is so much I and me and mine and greed and narcissism, would that all the grandchildren of Sirach could remember that all important word “All” once again. Listen again to the words of our scripture lesson for this morning where a grandson remembers how his grandfather had said: If you are willing, my son,
you will be taught, And if you apply yourself you will become clever. Finally, I see a direct connect, a beautiful spiritual genealogical connection between the Wisdom of Sirach and how St. Paul said, When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child, but when I became a man I put away childish things. Contrary to the story of Abraham and Isaac, faith is more than just obedience; faith is more than just obedience to external authority; faith is more of a journey toward spiritual maturity and enlightenment; it is the process of becoming, little by little, what we were created to be. It is the process of growing in wisdom and in stature, learning from our elders, until little by little we become the very LOVE out of which we were created, and All in All, that’s a good place to be! For that blessed reminder, I give thanks to St. Paul and also Abu St. Paul, my spiritual grandfather, a man by the name of Joshua ben Sirach. Amen.
David W. Good Old Lyme, Connecticut
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