Nurture Faith with Dr. Doug Hood

After the Flood…

The following meditation is written by Dr. Doug Hood’s son, Nathanael Hood, a student at Princeton Theological Seminary.

“Noah, a farmer, made a new start and planted a vineyard. He drank some of the wine, became drunk, and took off his clothes in his tent. Ham, Canaan’s father, saw his father naked and told his two brothers who were outside. Shem and Japheth took a robe, threw it over their shoulders, walked backward, and covered their naked father without looking at him because they turned away. When Noah woke up from his wine, he discovered what his youngest son had done to him. He said, “Cursed be Canaan: the lowest servant he will be for his brothers.”

Genesis 9:20-25 (Common English Bible)

Does anyone else think it odd that the story of Noah and the Flood is one of the first Bible stories we tend to teach our children? Far from the stories of Jesus healing the sick, Moses leading the Hebrews out of Egypt, or Jonah sitting in the belly of a whale, the story of the Flood is one of apocalypse—the world ends! Countless men, women, children, and animals drown! Yet Noah is a mainstay of Sunday Schools everywhere. On a certain level, it’s understandable why: in addition to being one of the most dramatic and suspenseful stories in the Old Testament, it’s a useful tool for teaching the importance of living kind, righteous lives like Noah and trusting in God the way his family did while on the Ark. The story of the Flood is also an easy way to teach children how God always keeps God’s promises—you can point to a rainbow as proof! So we clean up the story, sidestepping the human suffering and focusing on the happy ending.

But there’s another part of the Noah story that nobody really tries to sanitize because nobody really tries to discuss it anymore: the Curse of Ham. After the Flood, after the world has dried up and the animals have returned to the earth, Noah and his family begin building a new home. Noah abandons his previous responsibilities as shipbuilder and sea captain and becomes a farmer, a toiler of the land. One of the first things he does as an ex-sailor is plant a vineyard, make wine from the grapes, and get blackout drunk. So drunk, in fact, that he ends history’s first bender passed out and naked. When his son Ham finds him, he tells his other two brothers about their father’s sorry state. These two brothers then take a garment, hold it between them, and walk backwards into their father’s tent to clothe his nakedness without seeing it. After waking and learning what his sons did, Noah curses Ham. Or more specifically, Ham’s son—Noah’s own grandson— Canaan. Turning then to the two sons who covered his nakedness, he praised them and doomed his grandson Canaan to their perpetual slavery. The story of Noah then ends.

What exactly did Ham do to justify this perpetual slavery of his ancestors? The answer is…we’re not sure. There’s a long history of Jewish and Christian scholars trying to reverse engineer Ham’s supposed transgression, some saying it was sinful in Biblical times for sons to see their fathers naked, others identifying absent details and suggesting he castrated his father. But personally, I don’t think there was a rational reason for Noah’s curse, because I don’t think Noah was acting rationally. I think Noah was traumatized, and in his trauma lashed out at Ham over a trifling matter in a way that would hurt him the most, by hurting his son. Think back to the realities of the flood—the suffering, the death—and consider that Noah witnessed it all firsthand. Do you think he ever looked out on the flooded world and trembled at the thought of the waters never receding? Do you think he ever wondered if he deserved to survive at all?

I’ve been thinking about Noah, trauma, and survivor’s guilt a lot lately. In a way, we’ve all lived through our own Flood recently in the shape of COVID-19. What was Noah’s family living on the Ark but a literal quarantine? COVID might not be flooding cities, but millions have died from it. In its own way, the resulting societal trauma has been just as devastating. I’ve seen friends and loved ones—good, kind, generous people—transform into hungover Noah’s, desperate to relieve their trauma by ripping and tearing into bystanders and fellow congregants over things as simple as mask mandates. By the grace of God, this pandemic will blow over one day. And once these floodwaters recede, what next? Will we try to reconcile with those we’ve hurt? Will we try to repair our broken communities, re-knit our divided congregations, revive our lost friendships? The stakes are too high not to try, lest we—just like Noah—doom ourselves and our loved ones to a perpetual slavery of hate and resentment.

Joy,

Harold Blake Walker writes, “We live by faith or we do not live at all.  Either we venture or we vegetate. If we venture, we do so by faith, simply because we cannot know the end of anything at its beginning.”ⁱ Walker applies this principal to marriage, the pursuit of a career, and the challenge of overcoming any of life’s difficulties. There is little certainty in life. Either we risk obtaining what we desire or we remain single, fail to realize what our potential may be, and are stopped by any resistance that places itself between us and what we want. Once we accept the veracity of Walker’s premise, the question becomes, “How do we proceed with an act of imaginative faith?

We begin by paying attention – paying attention to the object of our desire. I first noticed the woman that I would eventually marry in Hebrew Language Class. She was attractive, clearly intelligent, and was engaging with other students. As many men have said before me, any notion of a romantic relationship with her would be a reach. Yet, I refused to simply dismiss the possibility. I paid attention to her. I looked for opportunities to engage in conversation with her. Then I looked for clues that she may be responsive to a friendship, moving to a deeper engagement and finally, the most terrifying risk of all, asking her out on a date. She could have politely refused. Clearly admired by both students and faculty, this was a risk.

This same dynamic is at play in any arena of life. If we desire anything, we begin by paying attention to the small things, gathering clues here and there for the next step that we will take. We make a mental picture of taking possession of what we want and strive forward toward it. That is what this passage from Hebrews means by “Faith is the reality of what we hope for” – we strive forward as though what we desire is now a reality – that we have already taken possession of it. Yes, moving forward may meet with failure. That woman in Hebrew Class may have said “no” to my request for a shared dinner. But the answer was located on the other side of faith – on the other side of taking the risk to ask.

The Book of Hebrews does not minimize the difficulty of faith. An easy faith is a contradiction of terms. Faith, as we have acknowledged, carries an element of risk. And great faith has always had to reckon with great doubt. We possess faith only as we fight for it each day – keeping our eye on the object of desire and recapturing its allure each day. Then we must doubt our doubts and move steadily forward in the direction we wish to go. Yes, the burden of doubt occasionally presents struggle and strain. All great ventures of our lives require struggle and strain. But triumphs are not won without an unquenchable belief that we can achieve what we desire. It all begins with one step forward. That is living by faith

Joy,

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ⁱ  Earl Nightingale, Transformational Living: Positivity, Mindset, and Persistence.  (Shippensburg, PA: Sound Wisdom, 2019) 77.

Theodore Roosevelt, our nation’s 26^th president, was born a frail, sickly child with debilitating asthma. At seventeen, Roosevelt was as tall as he would grow, five feet eight inches, and was just shy of 125 pounds. His health, a continual concern of his parents, prompted Theodore Senior to decide that the time had come to “present a major challenge to his son.”ⁱ At the age of twelve, Theodore – nicknamed, Teedie – was told by his father that he had a great mind, but not the body. Without the help of the body, the mind could not go as far as it should. “You must make your body. It is hard drudgery to make one’s body, but I know you will do it.”ⁱⁱ Teedie made the commitment to his father that he would do so. The promise was adhered to with bulldog tenacity. The young Theodore Roosevelt took personal responsibility for his physical health and development.

Hezekiah, king of Judah, became a very sick man during his leadership. He had a wound that had become so serious that his spiritual counselor, a prophet named Isaiah, informed him that he should put his affairs in order because he was dying. That diagnosis came like a bolt of lightning to Hezekiah. In desperation, Hezekiah “turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord.” He pled with the Lord to reward his faithfulness as a man of God and to spare his life. Then, the scriptures tell us, Hezekiah cried and cried. Before Isaiah had left the courtyard of the king’s residence, God sent him back to Hezekiah with another and more hopeful message: “I have heard your prayers and have seen your tears. So now I’m going to heal you. I will add fifteen years to your life.”ⁱⁱⁱ Then follows something that is most curious: Isaiah orders a bandage made of figs be placed on the swelling. Hezekiah prayed and Isaiah prepared a bandage: prayer and responsibility.

With powerful clarity, this passage of scripture teaches us that two things were responsible for Hezekiah’s rapid recovery: prayer and a bandage, faith and personal responsibility. If the king was to recover his health, both were required. The Bible refuses to indicate which of the two was the more important. We cannot know which was the most effectual. The message is that without either of them Hezekiah would have died in the prime of his life and at a time when his country most needed his leadership. The power of the Assyrian king, and his armies, threaten the peace Judah. The death of Hezekiah would have made Judah most vulnerable to their enemies. With his health restored, Hezekiah was able to defend his nation from the Assyrian threat. This story provides an important lesson for God’s people: While prayer is essential it must never be made a substitute for personal responsibility.

There are people who make the mistake of choosing between the two, prayer and responsibility. We have seen in the news recently where parents of a particular Christian sect refused medical treatment for their young son because they chose the avenue of prayer alone. A choice between faith and medicine is simply not supported by this Bible lesson. Each is a gift of God and each has its own power. Faith and medicine are both means of healing. They belong together. Both are agents of a compassionate God. Prayer and personal responsibility cooperate closely in effecting the highest well-being of those who struggle with illness. This story from 2 Kings reminds us not to neglect either. The second century French physician, Paré, reminds us of this truth when he wrote, “I dressed the wound and God healed it.”

Joy,

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ⁱ Edmund Morris, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (New York: Random House, 1979), 32.

ⁱⁱ Morris, 32.

ⁱⁱⁱ Portions of 2 Kings 20:5,6.

I once knew a woman whose romance had gone on the rocks. She made a grand announcement to her work colleagues that she was never going to permit herself to fall in love again. “You only get hurt,” she said. I was a young graduate student struggling in the romance department myself so I remained silent. Fortunately, an older and wiser woman who was our supervisor made the observation, “If you deal with each disappointment that way, you don’t live.” I don’t recall how many work associates where present at that moment but each of us became silent as those few words sunk deeply into our hearts. The supervisor continued, “Reassess that relationship. Take something useful from it. Make it fruitful for the next.”

The Apostle Paul wanted to go to Spain. He had his heart set on it. Paul’s zeal for preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ compelled him to reach the outermost rim of the world. What Paul got was a prison cell in Rome. Like my work colleague, Paul was disappointed. Life’s unexpected turns and twist never permitted Paul to take that journey to Spain. That one historical fact dispels the notion that those who follow Christ are never disappointed, never experience disruptions in their own life journey. Paul wanted Spain. Paul got a prison cell. How Paul responded is instructive for us. Paul used that time in prison to reassess God’s claim upon him, Paul wrestled something useful from his disappointment. Imprisonment provided quiet time to penetrate deeply into the mysteries of Christ.

Psychologists tell us that suicide, addictions, and some forms of nervous breakdowns is evidence that people are ill equipped to manage disappointment. Loss and disappointment, regardless of the magnitude, deprive us of our ability to think and act beyond ourselves. Our focus on the disappointment becomes so sharp that we are unable to see what remains that is positive in our lives. Consequently, loss and disappointment shrinks our life to the exact size of our desire that is unmet. Popular speaker and author, John Maxwell, encourages us along a different path – encourages us to embrace failure and disappointments, extracting from them lessons that results in us “failing forward.” It is then that mistakes, failures, and disappointments become stepping-stones to something so much more.

Few people have the opportunity to live life on the basis of their first choice – whether that be a choice in career, a spouse that “checks all the boxes,” or some other longing. Paul wanted to go to Spain. He got a prison cell. A large majority of us will find that life moves in directions not of our choosing. That is precisely when the Christian faith tells us that we should get something out of every experience, every new direction, even out of disappointment. The bulk of the New Testament is letters written by Paul – many of them written while in prison! After twenty-some years as an iterant preacher, Paul gets a prison cell. At last, Paul found the quiet time to think deeply about what he had learned of Jesus Christ and pour those thoughts out in written form that would be Paul’s greatest contribution to the Christian Church.

Joy,

The following was written by Dr. Doug Hood’s son, Nathanael Hood, a second year student at Princeton Theological Seminary.

Of all the things in the Bible that puzzle and frustrate historians and theologians, perhaps the greatest is the nearly thirty-year gap in the story of Jesus’ life between his birth and the start of his ministry. What happened during these lost years? The Bible only gives us a few details. One of the most significant happens in the second chapter of Luke when Mary and Joseph take the infant Jesus to the Temple in Jerusalem for the first time. During this presentation, the Holy Family meets a man named Simeon. The text doesn’t tell us much about Simeon—all we know for certain is that he was a “righteous and devout” man who had received a promise from the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he laid eyes on the Messiah. And indeed, on that day, that promise was fulfilled. The text tells us that the Holy Spirit itself came to Simeon and guided him to the Temple whereupon he took the infant Jesus in his arms and praised God, proclaiming him a revelation to the Gentiles and a glory for Israel.

Although he may have fallen a little out of importance in our Protestant tradition, Simeon is a very important figure in both Catholic and Orthodox Christianity. In addition to being canonized as a saint in both traditions with multiple feast days, he is also venerated as a prophet. He has been immortalized in paintings, stained glass, and altarpieces all over Christendom, and he has been the subject of music from some of the greatest composers in history, such as Johann Sebastian Bach. Not just that, but the aforementioned blessing Simeon gave while holding the Infant Jesus—known as the Nunc Dimittis—has been used by the Catholic Church as a prayer since the fourth century. Truly, Simeon is a model for steadfast faith being richly rewarded.

But I suspect Simeon’s story provides small comfort for most people looking for evidence of God’s presence in the world. Most of us will never witness a miracle like Simeon. Most of us will live lives like Anna. For you see, Simeon wasn’t the only one who recognized the infant Jesus when he was first brought to the Temple. There was another—there was an old woman named Anna who lived in the Temple courtyard. She was unique in her familiarity with loss and heartbreak. According to the text, she was widowed only seven years after getting married. According to Luke, she never remarried, and depending on how you translate the original text, she spent either the next sixty-odd or eighty-four years living in the temple courtyard without means or family which, in the time of ancient Israel, made her a non-person. She was a prophet, yes, but a prophet on the margins, well familiar with all the pains, and disappointments, and injustices of life.

And yet! Anna recognized the Messiah. Unlike Simeon, Anna recognized the Christ all by herself. Then she did something even more extraordinary: she spread the Word! Shortly after his blessings, Simeon disappears from the biblical record. But not Anna. She stayed. She witnessed. Indeed, most of us will not live lives like Simeon. Most of us will live quiet, unseen, under-appreciated lives. Most of us will wonder if the world ever will get any better, if our prayers truly mean anything, if our lives are being used by God at all. One can’t help but wonder if Anna, in her loneliness, ever felt the same. But again, it was Anna who recognized the Messiah and witnessed to the world. Perhaps it was because of her difficult life, not despite it, that she was so capable. We cannot all be Simeon. But we can all strive to be Anna. And in that striving, by touching others with our quiet Christian compassion and love, we can create a chain of healing greater than anything any of us will ever be able to comprehend. It takes a Simeon to shock the world. But only a multitude of Anna’s can save it.

Joy,

It is always possible to dwell on the bright as well as the dark side of life. Yet, for many people, they are inclined to direct their attention to what may go wrong, to anticipate the bitter rather than the sweet, the tears rather than the smiles, and the difficulties rather than the opportunities that may lie in the New Year that stretches out before them. This way of looking at things is probably nothing more than a carryover from how their parents approached life from year to year. Perhaps this is a view fashioned by disappointments and struggles over many years. But it remains a choice that anyone can make – quieting the voice of negativity and grasping the promise of faith that God is for us as we cross from one year to the next.

This is not to be blindly idealistic. People of faith know as much about real trouble as any non-believer, perhaps much more, in fact. Those who don’t have faith often need a distraction to push through each day, some measure of artificial stimulation. Having no faith or hope they look to escape from the real challenges that confront every one of us. Alcohol, recreational drugs, or acquiring things of luxury and comfort divert attention from life’s challenges and disappointments. Conversely, people of faith are genuine realists. They acknowledge and face real misfortune and then look right through the trouble to something beyond – they see hope in the promises of their faith. That is the real difference.

It should be clear that the Bible never asks that we turn away from the facts, that we deceive ourselves in order to be a people of faith. As Christians we are aware of our own capacity for greed, and cruelty, and selfishness. We know that those who would trample over us care little about our faith and that disillusionment lurks around every moment of every day. Such has always been the case and always will be. Emerson said: “He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear.” But, in faith, we can look into the dense fog of the New Year without too much uneasiness because God moves forward alongside us, a God that is always struggling with us, always bringing good out of evil.

Life can be a struggle. Not every cloud will have a silver lining and not every wrong will be righted in this life. Ambitions may continue to remain unfulfilled and broken relationships may never be repaired. But that does not diminish the promise of faith that God is for us. Whoever believed that every round of disappointment, and meanness, and heartbreak is the whole story? Life also consists of laughter, moments of happiness, and serendipitous occasions of surprise and delight. Each struggle to be experienced above the loud clamor of negativity. Our own free agency allows us to choose the tone that we attach our lives to. Perhaps all we need in the New Year is to be reminded that if God is for us, who is against us?

Joy,

Speed bumps are intentional obstructions along routes traveled by motorized vehicles to slow drivers down. They indicate the need for caution, that something unusual is present and requires particular attention for safe navigation forward. Ignore the speed bump and the driver will experience a jolt and, perhaps, minor damage to their vehicle. Matthew’s Gospel has placed a speed bump into the Christmas narrative. If ignored – or not noticed – the reader will miss a greater truth that Matthew wishes to convey. Rather than hurrying to the end of the story, Matthew wants the reader to make a rich discovery as the story unfolds: The magi made much of their journey to Bethlehem without the light of the star.

Notice the speed bump: the magi enter the City of Jerusalem and make inquiry as to where the “newborn king of the Jews” is born. They began their journey to find the baby when they saw a star in the east but now the light of that star is unseen. Now they must ask directions. Consulting with the chief priests and legal experts, King Herod learns that the Christ was to be born in Bethlehem. Herod then sends the magi on their way in that direction. Only when they come to Bethlehem do they see the light of the star again. This is why the magi “were filled with joy”, Matthew tells us. They were on the right road and the promise of that star was about to be realized. Finding the child with Mary, his mother, the magi fell to their knees, honored him, and presented their gifts.

Matthew is writing to a particular people who are on the cusp of disillusionment and abandoning their faith. The decision to follow Christ has resulted in estrangement from those family members who don’t believe in Jesus. More, followers of Jesus are no longer welcomed in Jewish worship. Divided from their loved ones and unwelcomed in the faith community, it is easy to question if they are on the right road. The easy path would be to admit a mistake in following Jesus, abandon the Christian movement, and return to the embrace of family and cherished worship. The light that began their faith in Jesus has dimmed considerably and now they are traveling in the dark.

So it may be with our faith. Oftentimes we do not experience the power, the light, the vitality of the faith we once experienced. Difficulties overwhelm, the road becomes dark, and we are disillusioned.  The path that was once clear is now an unknown way. Matthew wants us to remain confident in the promise. Circumstances may require that we stop, reassess our route, and seek guidance as the magi did in Jerusalem. But then, start out once again. There is much in the world – and in our lives – that we cannot change. It’s not our task to repair the brokenness all around us. What we can and must do, says Matthew, is speak of the promise of “the newborn king” that comes in the midst of that brokenness, kneel before him in worship, present our gifts, and trust that it will be enough.

Joy,

Thomas Long taught a three-week class, Preaching the Gospel of Matthew, during the summer of 1992. The first day we were assigned homework that seemed daunting – prepare for the next day a mini-biography of each name in Matthew’s genealogy, which begins his Gospel. Each student worked late into the night in the Princeton Seminary library, occasionally looking-up at one another to gauge one another’s reaction to the surprises we were uncovering. As we proceeded with name after name in the family tree of Jesus Christ, it seemed we were reading the scandal page of one of those sensationalist newspapers found in larger cities. Sprinkled throughout the bloodline of Jesus were checkered people: Rahab, the prostitute, Ruth, that brazen Moabite, and King David himself, father of a son with another man’s wife. Brokenness abounded!

If we are honest, many of our families are much like Jesus’ family. Sprinkled throughout our bloodline are scandals, betrayal, addictions, and moral failure. My paternal grandmother was an alcoholic, who lost her marriage due to her addiction, my father, as a teenager, attempted suicide as a result of a mother who couldn’t raise him and a stepmother, who wouldn’t, and, eventually, was raised by a grandmother. My mother’s father abandoned a wife and children to begin another family that she would become part of and mental health issues – including a struggle with depression – etched its mark upon both her and her brother. Most of my life I have struggled with depression. Brokenness is an unwelcomed guest that many of our families are familiar with. The common challenge is to overcome our embarrassment and to look for God’s wondrous power to transform each one of us.

Joseph struggled as we do. He is engaged to Mary and had reason to believe that the wedding would proceed according to the tradition and custom of his Jewish faith tradition. Then, Mary is pregnant with a child that is not his. Soon, Mary would be showing. Careful wedding plans have now gone awry. Joseph must have felt betrayal, embarrassment, and anger. What is he to do? On one hand, Joseph, being a righteous man, could not tolerate his fiancée’s apparent infidelity. The law and personal honor demanded that he break-off the engagement. There seemed to be no other option. On the other hand, Joseph loved Mary and could not imagine her suffering the indignity and ridicule that would be hers by a public separation on the charge of infidelity. So what does Joseph do? A quiet separation would protect both Mary’s welfare and Joseph’s honor.

Then, God gives Joseph a new commandment, “a new and higher law,” writes Thomas Long, that required “a new and higher righteousness”: “Joseph son of David, don’t be afraid to take Mary as your wife, because the child she carries was conceived by the Holy Spirit.”[i] Here was an invitation to shatter the confines of a law absent of grace and become a genuinely righteous man that moves toward others, including his fiancée, with embracing love. Rigid obedience to the law cannot and should not stand in the way of God’s mercy. In the chancel of First Presbyterian Church of Delray Beach is a beautiful stained-glass window. Someone in worship once commented to me that the beauty of that window provided comfort each week. Yet, one must not overlook that the beauty of that window is created from shards of broken glass painstakingly reassembled by the hand of a master artist.      

Joy,

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[i] Matthew G. Long, Matthew, (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Know Press, 1997) 13.

There is a Christmas song that ponders in a rather wistful manner, why the world is unable to embrace the spirit of Christmas all year long. At Christmas, we crawl out from our hard shell of self-concern, our eyes sparkle with wonder, and we behave with an uncharacteristic charity toward all people. We slog through eleven months of drudging effort, eyes squarely focused upon survival in a competitive marketplace with little attention to others, and then Christmas comes. We throw off the heavy coat of selfishness for a time. Kindness permeates the places of our soul made callous by fear of scarcity and generosity flows from hidden springs in our heart. We play, we laugh, and we are amiable to the stranger and friend equally. That Christmas song is on to something. Why can’t we have the spirit of Christmas all year long?

Bethlehem is a divine interruption. The world today is little different from the world that welcomed the birth of Jesus. Enemies are everywhere and national security continues to be a pressing concern. Inequity of wealth among people of every nation conveniently ignores the apostle Paul’s call that those who have much shouldn’t have too much and those who have little shouldn’t have too little (2 Corinthians 8:13-15). But Bethlehem invites the world to a fresh imagination; to imagine a world where instruments of war are repurposed into farming instruments and people impulsively and joyfully share from their abundance so that others may simply have enough. Bethlehem asks that we look at the world differently, asks that we live differently.

The spirit of Christmas is a deep and persistent call to pay attention to God. It is a call to see and participate in the creation of a new world where peace and good will abounds. Bethlehem is not an occasional indulgence – an occasion where we lay aside for a moment careful attention to our health and consume copious quantities of Christmas cookies and eggnog. Bethlehem asks that we care about the world of which we are a part. Bethlehem invites us to join the angels in announcing that God has unleashed upon the world a new order where all people may find carefree rest in God. Bethlehem is not a charming dream. It is not an aspirational goal. Bethlehem is a confident and certain reality. God has come into this world and nothing is going to be the same.

Go to Bethlehem this year. Go and bow down before this magnificent birth of a new world order. Discover in Bethlehem God’s divine intention for each of us; discover that peace and good will is not for one month of the year but God’s gift to be embraced and shared all year. But if you go to Bethlehem, recognize that Bethlehem makes demands upon all who visit. Bethlehem asks that you dedicate your life to speeding up the tempo of good will in all your relationships. Bethlehem will ask you to guard your speech and exercise restraint in the use of acrimony, harsh, and mean criticism. Bethlehem will demand civility, humility, and respect of others, particularly of those you disagree with. And Bethlehem will ask of you uncommon generosity toward others. Bethlehem asks a good deal from all who visit. But Bethlehem gives in return God’s peace. That is the spirit of Christmas.

Joy,