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“Everything Is Good” based on Zephaniah 3:14-20 and 1 Timothy 4:1-6, 9-10

I was trained in process theology, which focuses on genuine free-will and understands God to be all-good and all-knowing, but NOT all powerful (because that would defy free will). These days I mostly don’t think about process theology, it just sort of flows through me without awareness. But then I came upon the line from 1 Timothy, “For everything created by God is good, and nothing for rejection, rather received with thanksgiving.”1

Reading that, my heart leapt for joy! An affirmation of the goodness of creation! YES! A reminder to focus on the good! YES! A move towards gratitude, as spiritual practice, YES!

And about that far into my excitement, I found the counter-narrative building up in me. Because there are weapons of mass destruction and addictive recreational drugs and I’m not willing to go so far as to claim they are good. Now, if you want an easy way out of this, you can say simply that “everything created by GOD is good” and not everything created by humans. Truthfully, that’s probably a good distinction.

But, this is where I find I’m truly a process theologian. Process theology says that any capacity that exists can be used for good or for evil, and that as capacity increases so too does the capacity for good and in equal measure the capacity for evil. So, power. Any given power can be used for good, or for evil. To go back to my prior examples, we might think of the scientific and engineering minds as well as the money that was used to create weapons of mass destruction and that those resources could have been used quite differently – maybe to modernize the electrical grid or enable tree planting to fight climate change or… all sorts of things. The capacities can be used for God. God intends them for good. But we are free to choose how we use them.

Unfortunately, quite often, people choose to use power and capacity for evil. The reasons are wise ranging, and quite often those doing great harm are doing so because they were also harmed, but the truth is that there is a lot of bad stuff out there. And society is rife with collective horrible decisions.

And, I think there is wisdom still in 1 Timothy’s “For everything created by God is good, and nothing for rejection, rather received with thanksgiving.” Because I think God did create everything for good, and nothing for rejection – and WE have choices about how we use stuff.

In Dr. Gafney’s reflections on this text she said, “The Epistle is highlighting how very much opposite of the spirit and teaching of Christ are the false doctrines they are rebuking; doctrines that limit and exclude.”2 Now, this argument is powerful and beautiful, and should be held carefully.

My specific concern is the decision made by the early Church to not require followers of Jesus to follow kosher guidelines. I think that decision was fine, but I also think it it is a faithful choice for Jewish people to be kosher, and for religions to have dietary codes. I’m reminded of a young friend who kept kosher, and was willing to talk about it who said, “It is what I can do to remind myself regularly of God.” Beautiful.

Which I guess is to say that religious dietary codes can be good.

And lack of them can be good.

The capacity of all things to be good makes space for us to consider what it means to use any given thing FOR good. How can we sanctify something in how we choose to use it? 1 Timothy says, “For it is sanctified by God’s word and prayer,” but I think there is a little bit more to it.

If everything is made to be good then even the most basic parts of our lives are sanctified. What does it mean to eat with an awareness of the goodness of the food we have, and God’s blessings on it? Does that change the pace at which we eat, the presence of prayers of grace, the amount of attention we give to the flavors of our food? Does it impact what we choose to eat when we are thinking of eating itself as a potential moral good for ourselves and the world?

What does it mean to think of sleep as GOOD? How does that impact how we approach it?

Or, this was a recent insight for me, what does it mean to think of exercise as “the opportunity to move with joy?” (Because if I’m honest I have mostly thought of it as “the best way to quickly punish my body for the fact that I sit too much.”) I think maybe thinking of exercise as a good gift from God can create some pretty radical changes for me.

Or, what does it mean to notice the goodness and sanctity of … the chance to sing a hymn together, or the joy of a cup of tea, or a random meeting on the sidewalk? The simple little things that make up our days and our weeks, what if they ARE all meant for good?

There was a line in a commentary on Ezra that I read in preparation for out Bible Study that really stood out for me. The author, Dr. Tamara Cohn Eskenazi who is a Rabbi, points out that Ezra is not focused on the work of heroes but rather on the work of the people as a whole. She says, “Success is not a return to glory but the sanctification of the mundane, ‘daily, prose-bound, routine.’”3

Sanctification: making something holy. So “success” is finding the holy in the mundane.

Now, the things that have done great harm to us or others – we need to be clear those were not God’s intent – but what if God is working with us to transform them anyway? To bring healing and to make it possible to bring whatever good is able to come out of even great harm. (From Zechariah, “I will change their shame into praise.”)

What if God is up to all kinds of good all the time all around us and all we have to do is notice?

Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

Isn’t that wonderful?

Amen

1 1 Timothy 4:4,Translation by Wilda Gafney, A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church (New York, NY: Church Publishing, 2021), p. 49.

2 Wilda Gafney, A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church, p. 50.

3 Tamara Cohn Eskenazi, In an Age of Prose: A Literary Approach to Ezra-Nehemiah (Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 1988), p. 187.

January 29, 2023