Slave, Hired Hand, Friend - Relating to God

So many in the world now are experiencing a level of cloistering that we never imagined. We are all looking for “coping” mechanisms and hacks to navigate this new sense of being isolated. For Christians, there is a deep tradition of social distant practices which we in the Protestant world have sort of misunderstood and eschewed. Those are the practices developed by the Abbas/Ammas of the deserts of Syria and Egypt. These proto-monastics have many stories of how to be in relationship with one another and with God while practicing social distancing.

For those of us new to the disciplines of silence, solitude and mystery, it may be tempting to consider how we relate to God before we engage in these practices. Because how we understand our relationship with God, influences how we practice these disciplines. I find the Gregory of Nyssa had a decent way to think about different stages of how we relate to God.

First we could serve God or practices these disciplines out of fear, like a slave would do. Fear that if we do not then God will be displeased and we will bear the wrath of the Master. Gregory goes on to say that rather than that of a slave, sometimes we serve God or practices these disciplines like a hired hand looking for a reward or payment.

Perhaps you have experienced or seen these ways of being in relationship with God. That we should do things so that we don’t get punished or that we should do things for a heavenly reward. The motivation to do things in service for God may be motivating but it also dismisses how the incarnated God known as Jesus, calls us friend.

This is where Gregory suggests we should be serving God and practicing the disciplines - out of friendship with God. Out of pure love of God like that of a child who identifies God as their parent.

So this season of practicing different disciples, consider do you feel like you are slave, hired hand or friend of God. And do not forget that only one of those is Good News.

Passage of Scripture

Christians talk about scripture passages or, in the singular, a passage of scripture. The emphasis is on the phrase is the word scripture. And understandably so. Scripture the first authority (not the only authority) that Christians use to make sense. There is wisdom in the scriptures that often remains hidden to us until we prayerfully engage and wrestle with it. But I do not have to extol the importance of scripture, but rather I wanted to highlight the other word: passage.

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Scripture offers us different passages, different ways, different paths to see and understand the world. There is the prophetic passage. The pastoral passage. The priestly passage. There are more passages of scripture than we can list here to be certain. These different passages of scripture guide and lead us. Like other passages in our lives, scripture passages also have many things to see and notice that are just as important (sometimes more so) than the destination the passage takes us to.

Most people who read the Bible tend to journey such that a set of passages are more worn than others. This does not mean the other, less journeyed passages are unimportant, only that through discernment we attempt to find the well worn paths. Jesus preferred the passages of Isaiah and the Psalms over, say passages of Numbers or Nehemiah. We all have passages we walk and make clear for others to journey with us.

Some say that we are to take each section of the Bible with equal weight. I find this almost impossible to do. Even Jesus had his preferred passages. And so, if Jesus is our teacher and he says that we will do things greater than he (John 14:12-14), then is it possible that we too will have preferred passages of scripture?

Reading the Bible Like a Zacchaeus

Canadian Lutheran theologian Jann E. Boyd Fullenwieder wrote in Proclamation: Mercy for the World:

Like Zacchaeus of old, we climb up into the scriptures, a great tree of life grafted to the Crucified One’s cross, that we might see Jesus. There we discover that we, too, are seen, named, invited, and welcomed to share the life of God, whom we spy through the branches and leaves of scripture, even as Christ has already spied us.

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First of all, can we just admire the beauty of Fullenwieder’s language?

Reading the Bible is much less about learning all the nuances of the leaves and branches and much more about an encounter with the Divine. It is less about knowing how to understand the Bible as it is about seeing and being seen by Christ. If our engagement with the scriptures lead us to know more about the Bible but nothing about Jesus Christ then we are just studying dead trees.

If our Bible study is interested in “going deep into the word” then we may very well miss an encounter with Christ as we are busy with our heads in the book.

Perhaps the reason reading the Bible for many of us is boring is that we are reading it like we read a map: for information. Scripture reading is less about the information in the tree and more about looking for God, who knows your name and invites you to join in the journey.