The Lectio Letter - Issue #105 - #The God who sees us helps us see Him
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Well the Children of Promise Camp happened! After all the anticipation, fundraising, and planning it was simply the most beautiful time seeing these children come to know God’s goodness in a deeper way. The three days were captured in these 3 videos which are 9 minutes well spent if you ask me (of course I don’t claim to be unbiased).
I suspect a number of you reading this gave towards camp. We are so grateful. The name of God’s first location for humans was Eden, meaning delight, it was what we were made for and it was so wonderful to catch expressions of delight in so many of these children who spend their lives in very challenging contexts to be a child.
Maybe caught a glimpse of us heading into the swimming pool (yes, in wetsuits!)? Well, we spent about an hour and a half in there and in return came home with a good southern hemisphere winter cold which doesn’t seem to be in a rush to go anywhere. But we are still beaming about those rich few days.
Over the last couple of days, as a way to recover from what has been a particularly full couple of months and in preparation for the next few months which seem to be shaping up similarly I took a silent retreat for 48 hours. During it I was able to hike up to a peak overlooking Masi and our valley which I haven’t climbed since we first came here with a short term team in 2008. It was good to close the loop and remember God’s faithfulness to us over those years.
What I’ve been reading
A Different Way - Christopher A Hall
About 10 years ago, I struggled to know what ‘one volume’ book on discipleship I would give to someone. These days, I would struggle to pick!
Our friend Chris Hall’s book A Different Way has certainly made it to the top of that list. Chris was academically mentored by Thomas Oden in Early Christianity, pioneered an infamously excellent course on introductory christian spirituality at Eastern University and was then was brought into to Renovare to succeed Richard Foster.
The book begins with distorted views of God that we need to be exorcised of, followed by a reflection on what it means to follow Jesus in the ‘time between the times’ or as it is more often referred to as ‘the now and not yet’ he then moves on to winsomely unpack classic spiritual disciplines in a rooted yet engaging way. It’s an instant classic.
The Word Made Flesh by Ian A. McFarland
I began this book after a hearty endorsement from Lucy Peppiatt and it has not disappointed. I had not come across McFarland before but he deserves much more attention than he has received from my perspective. As a student of Tanner, there are themes of Barth here but it is not a recapitulation of Barth, it is instead, what he calls a chalcedonianism without reserve.
When the Church has sought to speak of the relationship of Jesus’ humanity and divinity, it has often struggled not to put them in competition with one another or instead to mix them. As any student of chtristological heresies knows, that way lies heresy.
But few people that I have read have constructively engaged in articulating the hypostasis relationship other than re-affirming the seemingly conflicting reality that Jesus Christ is fully divine and fully human. This book, although slim and readable, often requires a careful tracing of the argument, I’m half considering a book group!
Watching
(The End of) The Bear
Not being someone who has had extensive experiences with the feeling of anxiety, watching ‘the Bear’ is about as close to a simulated experience as I would want to get! Having worked as a kitchen porter in a commercial kitchen in my teenage years there are enough reference points here to know the creators of the Bear did an excellent job re-creating the ‘feel’ of a commercial kitchen. If you haven’t seen this then I will warn you that it is not always easy watching and there is a reasonable level of bad language, but this TV show has felt like something particularly stand-out in it’s ability to convey creativity and humanity in all it’s brokenness and goodness. This was the final season and it was a delight.
Sugar Season 2
This was one of those TV shows I was intrigued by but knew Rachel wouldn’t enjoy. So I tend to save those for airplanes. Sugar starts off as a simmering narrative surrounding a mysterious private investigator but as things progress things take a significant twist. I won’t ruin it for you, but the second season has just been released.
Enola Holmes 3!?
It’s historically anachronistic in the most heavy handed way, but you can’t help but appreciate a light hearted comedic drama like this. Rachel and I both enjoyed watching this together.
What we’ve been cooking: Fennel Sausage Ragu & Pasta
As I mentioned last edition, it is winter here and we have been looking to find ways to warm up ourselves!
I saw someone on YouTube make what I thought looked like a 5/10 sausage meat ragu and I got inspired to find something more delicious. As you’ll see the receipe below was enough for us to make 3x what we needed and so we froze leftovers in preparation for this week after camp when we haven’t felt like cooking.
It was an adaption of British Chef Rick Stein’s Recipe here with a few AI assisted tweaks.
Ingredients for the Ragu
1 kg (ideally coarse) pork sausage meat
40 ml extra virgin olive oil
30 g unsalted butter
375 g onion, finely diced
250 g celery, finely diced
4 garlic cloves, finely grated
2 tsp fennel seeds, toasted and lightly crushed
1 tsp chilli flakes
2 tsp finely chopped rosemary
375 ml dry white wine
300 ml homemade chicken stock
250 ml double cream
125 g Parmigiano Reggiano
30 g cold unsalted butter
1 tsp aged white balsamic vinegar
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Instructions
Heat a large heavy casserole, Dutch oven, or sauté pan over medium-high heat, add the olive oil, Divide the sausage meat into 3–4 batches to keep the temperature in the pan high. You can basically leave it completely undisturbed for 3–5 minutes. It should cook off excess water and begin attaching the base of the pan in a fond (a brown layer on the bottom of the pan).
Add a few splashes of white wine and scrap with a wooden kitchen tool to lift the fond. Keep doing this until the sausage is cooked, browned and plenty of fond has been de-glazed. This creates the foundational flavour depth for the whole ragu, so don’t be tempted to skip it.
In a separate pan, heat to medium-low, Add butter, Add finely chopped onion and celery (I put them through a food processor with the single slice blade disc. Cook gently for 20–25 minutes. Stir occasionally. The vegetables should become soft and sweet with little or no browning.
Now Add garlic, fennel seeds, chilli flakes, rosemary, Cook for about 1 minute until fragrant.
Then add in all browned sausage and juices to the pan, Pour more white wine, Scrape up every bit of fond, Simmer until the wine is almost completely reduced, The pan should look nearly dry.
Add chicken stock, Bring to a gentle simmer, Partially cover and Cook for 45–60 minutes.
Bring plenty of salted water to a full boil and cook pasta. (Pasta sticking together happens mostly because it was boiled in too small a pan with too little water).
In the Ragu pan stir in the cream, Simmer gently for 10–15 minutes, then remove from the heat, Stir in grated Parmigiano, Whisk in the cold butter until glossy.
Lift the pasta with tongues into a colander to drain excess water. Then add to the ragu.
Take table spoon of the leftover pasta water and add to the ragu while mixing in the pasta. The added water should begin to loosen the ragu sauce so that it begins to ‘stick’ to the pasta instead of the pasta being clumped up together. The sauce should cling to every strand and become glossy.
Place in warmed bowls. Spoon extra ragù over the centre, Garnish with: Parmigiano shavings and freshly cracked pepper.
Some Music I’ve been listening to
This has been on repeat, bringing summer vibes to a wintry Cape Town!
This on in the background while reading
and this for pre-dinner drinks
The God who sees us helps us see Him
The ministry we have followed Jesus into is the work of seeing and hearing people: the work of accompaniment. People, often in the midst of pain, tension and challenges, long to receive a word of peace which might encourage and strengthen them for the steps that follow.
When we walk alongside people, especially in situations of deep agony, words often become worthless and simple presence (seeing and hearing) becomes the needed offering.
If a person has a sense of friendship with and courage in God, they might join the Psalmist in complaint to God. That cry could well transform their circumstances, and I have often wondered whether what most of us actually need, in our most desperate moments, is to experientially know that we are crying out to a God who sees and hears us.
It is easy to become convinced by the Accuser that God is aloof in the moments when we need Him the most, so what would help us become people who encounter God, in such a way that we know we are seen and heard, even in our most felt-forsaken moments?
To Become a People who can See and Be Seen
The biblical narrative reveals who God is. But it also shows us the intention for humans; to be God’s image bearers.
In the original language and surrounding context of the earlies verses in our modern Bibles, the more literal translation is that we are made to be “statues or idols.” We are not inanimate, but we are the place where God’s creation turns to see the image of the otherwise invisible God.
Moving a little further forward, Genesis 3 reveals that no human was fully faithful to that calling until Jesus, who the writer of Colossians describes as the “Image of the invisible God,” making the connection back to the earliest Genesis account of God’s intention.
The words in the original language for humans being like “idols” was loaded language in the context of God’s people in the ancient world. Idols were not flesh and blood, but wood and stone.
Idols, in the ancient world, became the particular place where that deity made their home after what was known as an “inspiriting” ceremony. Before the moment of inspiriting, the ancient imagination saw the idol as the wood and stone block that they were. Just before the deity took up residence in that wood or stone, the priest of that cult would carve or ‘open’ the eyes, ears and mouth and would breathe on the wood or stone. At this point, the idol would be considered in-spirited, or indwelt by that god.
All throughout the Hebrew testament, the surrounding reality of other nations’ gods looms large. When the people of God are led astray through imitating the idolatry of the surrounding people, they are said to become like them.
Phrases in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the Psalms (also later in Matthew and Acts) pick up a similar sense that God’s people, through their idol worship, have become like the idol, with eyes that cannot see, ears that cannot hear, and mouths that cannot speak.
Is it any wonder that Jesus spent so much time opening blind eyes, deaf ears, and bringing speech to the mute? He was restoring what humans were always meant to be, because seeing, hearing and speaking are at the core of who God is, and consequently at the core of what it means to be human, made in God’s image.
We become like the God we worship
We see a pattern throughout scripture of the main characters (those we presume are God’s chosen) being the ones who fail to see, hear and speak correctly.
They assume God doesn’t see or listen, and they haven’t attended closely enough to the speech of God.
Tragically, we become the image of the God we worship.
The Servant at the Centre of the Story
The lectionary text from a couple of weeks ago focused on the rescue of Hagar. The pattern of the bible is repeated in her story. While we keep looking for the main character, the gaze of the narrative turns towards a despised or forgotten person within the hierarchy of personhood in the ancient world.
The story of Genesis begins with a focus on the life of Abram, who for no particular reason that we can discern is chosen by God and given the task of setting out to begin a new creation within his family who will be multiplied beyond their ability to count.
The counterintuitive nature of this call is that Abram and his wife are well past child-bearing age. While they receive a sense of God’s promise, the impatience of Sarai leads her to couple Abraham with her servant. In Genesis 16, Sarai experiences the regret of having paired her slave with her husband and, once pregnant, Hagar begins to despise Sarai. Sarai complains to Abram who reminds Sarai that Hagar is her property to deal with. Sarai begins to mistreat Hagar in ways that are not described in the text but are enough that Hagar runs away.
Hagar’s choice to run away was essentially a decision of suicide in both the geographical and social context she finds herself in. The angel of the Lord, however, waits for her alongside a spring. Hagar is Egyptian and here we see an Egyptian enslaved by a proto-Hebrew, who the Hebrews will chase into a series of deserts, just as later in the story the Egyptians will chase the Hebrews into the desert and across a body of water. It is at this well (or spring) that the angel of the Lord asks questions before proclamations.
The Questions God Asks
Much like the response of God who goes to find the original image bearers who have hidden in Genesis 3, we discover the humility of God in the words of this angel who asks “where are you coming from?” and “where are you going to?”
Initially, these are empathy and listening questions. They are the questions a first responder might ask a traumatized person in order to re-ground them: “who are you?” and “where are you?” hoping to discourage disassociative behaviours which may cause them greater harm. They are also questions of identity and destiny, but the nature of these questions is not the thing I want to focus on, although seeing, hearing and speaking are significant to this story.
The Promise God Gives
My focus is on the promise of the Lord to Hagar, and Hagar’s response. In Genesis 21:18, the angel gives Hagar the same promise as Abram and Sarai received from God:
I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.
In Genesis 16:11, the promise begins like this;
The angel of the Lord also said to her:
“You are now pregnant and you will give birth to a son. You shall name him Ishmael, for the Lord has heard of your misery
This of course should peak New Testament ears to hear the word of the angel to Mary:
“You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus.”
In this case, not Jesus (meaning YHWH saves) but Ishmael (God hears) because the Lord hears Hagar’s misery as the Lord will have heard the misery of His people Israel.
Then, in verse 13, Hagar famously names God:
“You are the God who sees me” for “I have now seen the back of the One who sees me.”
That is why the well there was called Beer Lahai Roi (Well of the Living One who Sees Me.) Once again, New Testament ears can pick up a melody from the life of Jesus, who meets a socially despised woman at a well and sees her.
She goes off to tell everyone about the Messiah, the God who has seen her, and everything she has done.
A Return to the Desert for Good
Moving forward in Hagar’s story, by Chapter 21 of Genesis, the tension of Ishmael and Isaac has begun to grow, as a result of the impatience called “God Hears” (Ishamael) and the result of promise called “He Laughs” (Isaac).
In ancient times, the first born of a family, no matter the situation within which they are born, holds a significant place, especially as it relates to inheritance, which is Sarah’s great protest.
Once again, the scripture story inverts and upsets the assumed commonsense of surrounding culture. Abel is favoured over Cain, the inheritance goes to Isaac over Ishmael, Jacob over Esau, Joseph over his brothers, and David over Jonathan. The birthright in God’s imagination doesn’t comply with human assumptions about power which so often lead to abuse of such power.
Despite Sarah receiving a new name in receipt of her promise, her distaste for Hagar and Ishmael, a personified reminder of her haste and the fracture she had created at the heart of her family, remains.
This time around, however, Abraham is no longer passively dismissive of Sarah’s distaste for Hagar and responds in care for his first born son, Ishmael.
Through Abraham, God provides bread and water for Hagar’s and Ishamel’s wandering departure into the desert. At this point, the original Hebrew hearers knowingly see in the foreigner Hagar, the Egyptian, the foreshadowing of their own wilderness wandering and God’s provision of manna, known as bread from heaven.
As despair sets in and the water runs out, Hagar leaves Isaac under a bush as an early anticipatory burial. She goes off, a bowshot away, lifting up her voice, weeping, unable to stay alongside her son in his impending death.
Ishmael is the firstborn left to die under a bush, but as the Angel of the Lord comes again to Hagar, he asks another question followed by the reassurance, “Do not be afraid.” God has, (as Ishamel’s name serves as a reminder), heard the boy.
This time, God opens Hagar’s eyes to see a well of water and Ishamel is saved. Genesis records that God was with the boy as he grew up.
The God who Sees Me Helps Me See
As I have sat with the story of Hagar in the midst of my own life these last weeks, I have been reminded of the way in which my own service to others can be misunderstood, or even despised.
We come to a point when we realise that we are participating in some circumstances that are well beyond our ability to control, and we have to unjustly bear the consequences of them. To put it mildly, it is wearying.
It is not unusual to experience feelings of tiredness, rejection, and even a level of forsaken despair. Of course, we have a servant king who has gone ahead of us in this. Jesus knew what it is to serve and yet be misunderstood, even despised. He is the one who goes to the cross and experiences forsakenness so that in our own sense of forsakenness, we may find him.
When in the desert, we need more than ever to hear and see again the God who sees us. As in Hagar’s story, we may not be delivered from the desert, but we may have our eyes opened to see that there is a source of life, a well of living water, a spring that never runs dry right where we are found, because Jesus is the one we have known as Immanuel.
+May the God who sees us, help us see Him.
That’s all for now…
