June 5, 2010
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God is back, and meeting the needs of the people
I was struck by the way Eugene Peterson paraphrased the verses 16-17 from today’s reading from the Book of Luke, chapter 7. I enjoy having the readings for Sunday read out of the Message Bible because I think we hear the stories in new ways and we can see new meaning in them. I think we need a short course on Bible translation to better understand The Message Bible. The Message Bible is not a translation of the Bible, it is a paraphrase. Eugene Peterson did not use the ancient texts that we have of the Bible and do a literal translation of the words found in the texts. What he did was to read the stories in the Bible and find ways to tell the same story using contemporary language. He attempted to take the common phrases of the ancients and state them as common phrases we use today. Bible scholars do not give much credibility to a paraphrase because it is subject to the person doing the paraphrase injecting their own perceptions of what a phase or word might mean in contemporary language. What Eugene Peterson has paraphrased as “God is back, looking to the needs of his people.” is “God did look upon his people” in Young’s Literal Translation. The ancient languages of the Bible did not use tenses to indicate past, present, or future as we do in our language so it is difficult to read the meaning as to something that was happening, did happen, or would happen. The original text does not contain anything to support the people were saying God had gone away and was now back and caring for the people. Maybe Eugene Peterson paraphrased it the way he did because he sensed the people’s excitement came from the fact that something that had been missing in their lives had returned, they once again felt God’s caring presence.
It makes sense to me the people might have felt that way and responded that way to seeing Jesus restore the Widow’s child to her. It is a challenge for us to sense God’s care and presence when life is difficult and seems unfair. I can only imagine how the widow in the first story felt and whether she felt abandoned by God. She did not have enough to feed herself and her son and she was ready to use the last of the food they had for a simple meal and then die. Elijah asked her to trust him and trust God and give him the last morsel of bread she had and God would take care of her and her child. I wonder if she also felt God was back and taking care of her needs. The question is whether God ever goes away and leaves us uncared for or do we get so distracted and self-absorbed that we do not sense God’s presence and care. Illness, financial problems, relationship problems, or the loss of someone we love can press so hard on us that we feel we are all alone and no one cares. We can get ourselves so caught up in how we are going to manage, what we are going to do, and even what we think others need to do for us that we fail to stop and let the presence of God wash over us and care for us. Sometimes the church can be like this also, we get so focused on the problems, the short resources, the dwindling membership, the disagreements between us that we think are ours to manage that we forget this is God’s church and God loves it like a person loves their beloved spouse. We forget to stop and let the Spirit of God fill us as a congregation and show us the way God has called us to go.
We do need to aware of the situations in our life that challenge us, we cannot ignore illness, financial problems, relationship conflicts, or not grieve the loss of someone we love and this congregation cannot ignore the lack of resources, or dwindling attendance, or the things that divide us. The point is how we respond to these challenges. I have often heard it said, “There is nothing left to do but pray.” or “all we can do is pray.”, as if prayer is our last resort rather than I first response. When we feel God is distant from us, when we feel God doesn’t care, the problem is not the location of God or God’s level of concern. The problem is our failure to seek God and to allow God to touch us with a healing touch. The widow in the story of Elijah could have told him she couldn’t spare the last morsel of bread she had and she would have missed out on God’s blessing. The second widow in the Luke story could have told Jesus not to intrude on her grief and she too would have missed a blessing. God can meet our needs, but God does not force help upon us. God waits patiently for us to allow God into our lives to be cared for and to have our needs met. God isn’t really back and meeting our needs, God never left us and never will. Amen.
