Practicing God’s Expectations

The Season of Lent is that intense time of the Christian Year when we’re expected to search the inner depths and own our actions more’n ever. Lessons for the upcoming weekend dwell heavily upon what God expects from those who claim God’s Name. One of our prevalent myths is that “God knows that we’re flawed persons, so God expects little. Ergo, we can do whatever feels good and blame our sinful natures.” Don’t buy it! As a good parent, God hopes for the best, and is glum when we screw up. The Good News? God is willing to pick us up, brush the dust off and dry our tears, sending us out once again to do better…

The Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17)? Sometimes relegated to an ancient expression, these remain the covenantal expectations between God and the People being formed into a Holy Nation in the kiln of the Sinai peninsula. Walter Brueggemann writes in the NEW INTERPRETER’S DICTIONARY, “These commands might be taken not as a series of rules, but as a proclamation in God’s own mouth of who God is and how God shall be ‘practiced’ by this community of liberated slaves.” Barbara Brown Taylor continues, “These practices are not kindly suggestions. They express the purposeful will of God for God’s people…. the teaching describe the way of life. To ignore them is to wander into the ways of death.” (FEASTING on the WORD, B 2:77) Even though they could be read as an impetus to private morality, their real value is as a corporate ethic of this nation God has founded.

Paul explores the wholeness of the Cross in his letter to the Corinthian church (I 1:28-25). In the noise of the City of Man, a rather strident voice is heard announcing that the most terrifying torture of authority is but a way-station along the road of salvation. “We proclaim Christ crucified… to those who are being called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” Here is God’s “no!” to the idea of decay and ruin. Here is God’s “yes!” to unfolding life and the continuance of trust as God’s People attempt to hold high expectations. To this writer, the Crucifixion is Jesus saying to the World’s Power, “Hit me with your best shot: I’ll live ANYWAY!”

John’s Gospel places the Cleansing of the Temple (2:13-22) near the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, whereas Synoptic writers include it at the end of Jesus’ travels, during Holy Week. Wherever we find it, the importance of this story is to convey Jesus’ impatience with too many diversions standing between worshipers and God. Some have claimed that there’s a justice part of this, addressing the exploitation of the poor trying to correctly worship. Maybe…yet I’d like to see Lordly Passion (“Zeal for your house will consume me!”) as symbolic of the reality of God overthrowing the trappings and traditions which could be based on Good Sense, in favor of a more simple yet loving expression of Torah. The question arises for each age thereafter: how worldly (secular) can the Church afford to be without losing itself?

I’ve spent my entire life attending to the busy-work of the Church. I hope that God’s Expectations have been found somewhere in this jumble of endless meetings, letter writing and arranging the building’s schedule! Yet beyond Church Renewal comes this directive to re-visit the essentials of living in harmony with God and God’s human creation. The end is more than Happily Ever After, it’s participating in the holy act of maintaining Creation in a relationship with the Creator.

In the process of unfolding, Horace Brown King

My encounter with Scripture passages assigned to the upcoming weekend may be viewed each Tuesday at this spot on Facebook; or at horacebrownking.com