{"id":893,"date":"2011-08-21T11:50:43","date_gmt":"2011-08-21T15:50:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/?p=893"},"modified":"2015-09-22T15:01:30","modified_gmt":"2015-09-22T19:01:30","slug":"being-taken","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/?p=893","title":{"rendered":"Being Taken"},"content":{"rendered":"

(no audio available)
\nPDF<\/a><\/p>\n

from the 8-sermon series
\n\u201cLessons in the Beginning\u201d
\nwhich began here<\/a> with
\n\u201c Two Tribes in Your Belly<\/a>\u201c<\/span><\/p>\n

Texts on Sunday, August 21, 2011
\nGenesis 24; 1 Corinthians 13<\/em><\/p>\n

Fourteen times in this short story, the action verb in a sentence is taking. There is taking of gifts, of a veil, the not-taking of \u201cmy son back there,\u201d and the taking of a wife. Taking is at the heart of everything we do\u2014 and not just us, but all the animals. Plants, by contrast, with a few weird exceptions, do not take from the world; they accept light and water and the attention of birds and bees. But to take something\u2014this is a marvel: first, a creature must perceive an object, then desire it, then move toward it, and only then, take it. Our often enraptured awe at a television nature program is coiled up in the drama of seeing how animals take what they need. We are watching a basic narrative of our own nature. It is our own story.<\/p>\n

For humans, though, taking gets complicated. We have an eye that sees not only from behind our own need, but also from above; like a great Self witnessing our self and our will, an Eye within the \u201cI\u201d testifying that our eye is but one among many, neither more nor less. We teach our children to see with this witness of conscience; you\u2019ve seen it a thousand times. In a park the other day, I saw a little child a little bigger than another take a ball from the smaller, who instantly started bawling. A parent instantly rose and bore down on the taker . . . and took the ball back for the littler one. How ordinary, yet how complex. Like all the animals, we must be takers, but we spend our life learning how to take in a human way\u2014as if God were my witness, and not my self alone. We\u2019re not very good at this, but we know that the game of life depends on how we take things.<\/p>\n

Sometimes the \u201cthings\u201d we take are people. The crimes most hated\u2014 murder, rape, kidnapping, assault\u2014are awful mistakes; a human inhumanly mis-taking another. The crimes most hidden behind the propriety of wealth and power\u2014economic rape and ecological rape, wars, mass incarceration\u2014 are also inhuman mis-takes; the assaults are not face-to-face, but whole communities taken up by their roots for the love of money and power. The prophet Micah told it long ago: \u201cThey covet fields and houses and take them away; they oppress householder and house . . . because it is in their power to do it.\u201d (Micah 2:1-2) Can it be that God does not grieve our mis-takes?<\/p>\n

And yet, the taking of humans, far from being crime, also belongs to the most thrilling, fruitful, and satisfying adventures of our lives. There is taking a liking to a person. Taking a lover. Taking a new employee. Taking an apprentice under our wing. Taking a child in our arms. There is \u201cWill you take this woman to be your loving and faithful wife, so long as you both shall live?\u201d There is, \u201cThis\u2014my body: broken for you. Now take and eat, remembering me.\u201d Our life depends on how we take things.<\/p>\n

The pathos of the story of Rebekah lies in the taking. All the animal elements are present. There is perception and desire: \u201cThe maiden was exceedingly beautiful to look at.\u201d There is the necessary move: \u201cGo to my land and my kindred.\u201d There is the action: \u201cThen Isaac brought her in to the tent, and took Rebekah and she became his wife.\u201d As we put it, all the animal elements are present. Yet these do not make the story human. In fact, Isaac\u2019s role in these stories is ordinary; he never really chooses to do anything. Watching him feels not much different than observing a gazelle or a rhinoceros through a telephoto lens. What makes this a human story is the mystery in the drama of consent in the will of the one to be taken, in Rebekah. \u201cPerhaps the woman will not be willing . . .\u201d say the family. \u201cAnd if she is not willing . . .\u201d \u201cLet us call the maiden and ask,\u201d they say. \u201cWill you go with this man?\u201d \u201cI will go,\u201d she says. The human story turns not just on taking rightly, but on being taken rightly, too. There in the self-giving that participates freely with taking the heart of human being beats.<\/p>\n

These Genesis stories come vividly to our inward eye, as we have said, not because they happened, but because they are happening. We are watching real life in play\u2014our own life, both personal and public. On the story\u2019s own terms, the history of the world is hanging on Rebekah\u2019s answer to the question, \u201cWill you go?\u201d By preserving this story just this way, Israel has bidden the generations remember\u2014better: cherish\u2014as divine the human practice of asking a person\u2014not telling!\u2014whether she or he will partake in the taking. When it is time for a human being to be taken up into the roles and energies and potentials of adulthood, the family who care for that one must ask, \u201cWill you go?\u201d This is Rebekah\u2019s story and ours. Have there not come moments in your life when the question came to you\u2014or: will come to you\u2014whether you will go, whether you will jump in and partake in the risk of history. From those moments, our life depends. We did not always do this well, but it was always a question of taking\u2014and being taken\u2014well.<\/p>\n

When our thoughts are tamely in their cages, we suppose that taking is mostly the male thing and that being taken\u2014or receiving\u2014is the female thing. This notion may be valid, but it is not true\u2014if by valid we might mean that some evidence obviously supports it; and if by untrue we might mean that an idea offers no great guidance for humans, because more is in play than what is merely evident. The tradition of Genesis bids us accept as true that deep beneath the evidence, we humans all together are playing in the image of God, male and female. This can mean that in the polarities of physical nature\u2014male\/female\u2014we see our true nature and our right relationship to the Divine. That is, in the ordinary pattern of taking and being taken, we can perceive the essential character of the divine action which gives life without end: God sees you, God desires you, and before you know it God has already moved toward you to ask for you, to take you. God takes to Godself what is human\u2014yet only the one who is willingly being taken. This is thrilling, powerful, subversive, erotic, dark and light, creative, for life\u2014 provided the human consent!<\/p>\n

For those who have felt taken by Jesus Christ, and who have taken him as Lord, just exactly this story is in play. \u201cFor God so loved the world . . .\u201d that he took his son, his only son, whom he loved, to offer him, an offering for the life of the world. Though the story of God the Father\u2019s will-to-take encloses mysteries within mysteries, the essential mate in the whole divine\/human drama plays there too for all to see: the Son\u2019s good will in being taken. In this play, the whole palette of love is set before the eye of all beholders.<\/p>\n

We have called the Genesis stories \u201clessons in the beginning\u201d because they reveal what members of a spiritual community can do to move beyond the conditions that threaten their existence into a real future divinely given. Put another way, these stories offer not just heroic models, but directions, signs for all to see in times of trouble. In today\u2019s lesson, just as the family asked of Rebekah, \u201cWill you be taken? Will you go?\u201d and all time and movement hung upon her answer, so it is to this spiritual family, this body, the church, to learn the practice of actually asking you, the individual, at the right time, \u201cWill you be taken? Will you go?\u201d When your heart is broken in compassion for some of God\u2019s children who suffer grievously at the hands of heedless and greedy men, will you be taken into a community of action and resistance? Though you and I, like all the creatures, are wired with instincts to protect what is ours\u2014our body, time, money, things\u2014at the right time, will you be taken by the spirit of abundance and generosity to let life flow through these things and on toward the oceans of God? If you are on the younger side of choosing, will you be taken deep into the question of your vocation to work? To love? To gentle children into life? If in middle years, will you heed the call to rest from your labors now and again, as Jesus continually called his friends to come away with him to a deserted place? Will you be taken, as was the poet Yeats, in this moment recorded from eternity?<\/p>\n

My fiftieth year had come and gone,
\nI sat, a solitary man,
\nIn a crowded London shop,
\nAn open book and empty cup
\nOn the marble table-top.
\nWhile on the shop and street I gazed
\nMy body of a sudden blazed;
\nAnd twenty minutes more or less
\nIt seemed, so great my happiness,
\nThat I was blessed and could bless.
\n(Vacillation, V)
\n<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
And if you have numbered long years of choosing and making, of giving and taking, will you at the right time be taken by the great letting go? Will you get ready to show all us children that you know it is safe to come and to go from this place? Will you go?<\/p>\n
On your answer, all time and movement hang, for your God does not want an unwilling partner. You are the Body of Christ. You, the bread\u2014taken, blessed, broken, given for the world. Make love for God so burn in your heart that you become a willing human, being taken for all.<\/p>\n
Rev. Stephen H. Phelps
\nThe Riverside Church
\nNew York, New York<\/i><\/p>\n
\u00a9 Stephen H. Phelps 2011<\/span><\/p>\n
(read the next sermon in the series, Peace or Justice<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
To take something\u2014this is a marvel: first, a creature must perceive it, then desire it, then move for it, and only then, take it. Our awe at seeing how animals take what they need is rooted in this most basic narrative of our own nature. It is our own story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[87,86,9,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-love","category-relinquishment","category-sermon-2011","category-spiritual-practice"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=893"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1148,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893\/revisions\/1148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}