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Sunday, December 23rd

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Fourth Sunday of Advent

December 23, 2012

Micah 5:2-5a
Luke 1:46b-55
Hebrews 10:5-10
Luke 1:39-45

Prayer of the Day
Stir up your power, Lord Christ, and come. With your abundant grace and might, free us from the sin that binds us, that we may receive you in joy and serve you always, for you live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Greetings! As our Advent journey draws to a close, there are two events that weigh heavily on my mind. It goes without saying that we need to remember in our prayers all victims of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut last Friday. This tragedy strikes  too close to home. While I listened to the news of this tragedy unfold, I naturally thought about our own children here at Trinity School and breathed a prayer of thanksgiving for their safety even as I was praying for the families of the Sandy Hook victims. As many of you know, my daughter-in-law teaches in an elementary school near Hartford, Connecticut. When the news first broke over NPR, I heard only that the violence had occurred somewhere in Connecticut. I had to listen for several anxious minutes before learning that the school affected was not the one in which she teaches. You may recall how I reported in a recent newsletter article that two of my children had spent the night in Aurora, Colorado just weeks before the mass shooting that took place in a movie theater there. Perhaps such coincidences are not so very remarkable. After all, when your children are spread out all across the United States as mine are, it stands to reason that the likelihood of their being in proximity to such events increases. Nevertheless, they serve to bring home in a very concrete way our vulnerability and that of those we love. Precisely because our children share the helplessness and vulnerability of children in places like Newtown, we experience deeply their tragic loss and unimaginable sorrow. At times like this it becomes clear that we all have a stake in the well being and safety of children in our communities. Everybody’s child is everybody’s business.

Happily, the other event I have on my mind is one of sheer joy. I learned some time ago (and now have permission to share publically) that my daughter Sarah and her husband Caleb are expecting a baby in June. So I look forward with great anticipation to becoming a grandfather! I am also looking at the interchange between the two pregnant women, Elizabeth and Mary, in a new and deeper way this year. Elizabeth acknowledges and Mary sings of the new hope about to be born into the world. It is striking how fragile and vulnerable is this new hope. So deeply dependent is the unborn child on its mother. So helpless and needy it is. If this child of Mary manages to be born alive, he will enter a world in which more than half of all children die before the age of seven. It seems that God is staking a lot on a very doubtful proposition.  Yet the willingness of God to become vulnerable lies at the heart of our faith. Our savior is not Superman. When he is wounded, he bleeds. When he is rejected, his heart breaks. Jesus’ strength lies in his ability to love even those who hurt him. That God continues to breathe such love into a world so filled with violence and death is cause for joy and perhaps the only meaningful way to address the emptiness and despair left behind in the wake of tragedies like Sandy Hook.

Micah 5:2-5a  http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=222764472

The book of the prophet Micah is one of the Minor Prophets. He is “minor,” though, not in terms of importance but by the volume of his work. In comparison with the Major Prophets (i.e. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel & Daniel),  Micah is only a slim collection of prophetic utterances. As is the case for most of the prophets, the book of Micah is not really a book in the proper sense. It is more like an anthology or collection of the prophet’s prophetic speeches most likely compiled and arranged by Micah’s disciples after his death. It is likely that this “book” was edited and supplemented with the work of these disciples and probably reached its final form during or shortly after the Babylonian Exile following the conquest of Jerusalem in 587 B.C.E.

According to the introductory verse of the book, Micah prophesied during the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. This would have made him a contemporary of the prophet Isaiah. At this point, Judah was leading a precarious existence in the shadow of the mighty Assyrian Empire. Micah witnessed the Assyrian attack that would eventually bring to an end the Northern Kingdom of Israel, thereby bringing the Assyrian army to the very border of Judah. In the face of this crisis, King Ahaz saw only two choices. He could join with the Northern Kingdom of Israel and its ally Syria in an anti Assyrian alliance-which appeared doomed to failure. Or he could proactively seek an alliance with Assyria. The emperor of Assyria would no doubt find such an offer attractive. It would give him a small, but effective ally at the rear of his enemies. Control of Judah would also give Assyria a buffer between its own sphere of influence and Egypt, its enemy to the south. Of course, such an alliance would come at a heavy price for Judah, including the loss of a large degree of her sovereignty, the requirement that she receive into her temple the gods of Assyria and heavy tribute payable through taxation of the common people. Yet as unattractive as the Assyrian alliance option was, King Ahaz found it preferable to joining an anti-Assyrian military effort that was likely to end badly.

Micah (and Isaiah) saw yet a third alternative. Judah could wait for her God to deliver her-as God has always done in the past. Though Ahaz proved a disappointing king, Micah is confident that God will yet raise up from Bethlehem (the home of David) a king who, unlike Ahaz, will give to Judah and her people the peace, safety and security for which she longs. Scholars have long debated whether these words constituting the reading for Sunday are actually those of Micah or those of a prophet living after the Exile speaking these words of hope and encouragement to the exiled Jews. I side with those who attribute them to Micah. There is no mention at all of Babylon in chapter 5, but there is a clear reference to the threat posed by Assyria in Micah 5:5. Israel is not addressed here as a community of exiles, but as a nation under siege according to verse 1 (which is not included in our reading). This would fit the historical circumstances in which Micah found himself in the 8th Century B.C.E.  See Isaiah 36 & 37.

However one might date these prophetic words, they reflect Israel’s hope that God would finally raise up a ruler fit to be a king in the proper sense. Christians have long asserted that Jesus constitutes the fulfillment of this hope, but we cannot afford to slide too easily from Micah to the New Testament. Such an identification of Jesus with the one “who shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord” raises more questions than it answers. What sort of security does Jesus provide? In what sense does he stand in “the strength of the Lord”? How can one rightly say that Jesus has “become great to the ends of the earth”? Clearly, Jesus is not the sort of king that would make mince meat out of the Assyrians (or Romans) and re-establish the Davidic dynasty or one like it. What, then, does it mean to call “Lord” and “King” someone who was born out of wedlock in a barn and died the death of a criminal? These are the questions that the gospels and the letters of Paul struggle with.

Something else is worth noting here. The gospel of Luke contains a lengthy genealogy tracing Jesus’ ancestry from Adam through the line of David up to Joseph. Yet Luke takes pains to emphasize that Jesus was not the natural son of Joseph. Consequently, Joseph’s Davidic credentials appear to be irrelevant. If anybody’s genealogy matters here it is that of Mary. But we don’t know anything about her ancestry. So why does Luke include it?

One reason might be that the gospels are not “books” in the sense of having a single author writing his or her own material from start to finish. The gospels consist of parables and sayings from the preaching and teaching of the early church that were subsequently woven into a narrative or “story.” Because the gospel writers were working with material from several different sources and trying to fit it into a coherent story, there were naturally inconsistencies, seams in the narrative and places where the story does not flow naturally. That all may be so, but I think it glosses over the issue with a little too much ease. The gospel writers may have been relying upon material that was handed down to them, but they were doing more than simply stapling pages together. To the contrary, they exercised a high degree of originality and creativity in their use of stories, parables and hymns that came down to them. They took an active part in shaping the tradition to enhance the story they were trying to tell. I doubt that Luke would have intentionally allowed such a great discrepancy to stand unless he had a reason for it.

My belief is that the genealogy over against Jesus’ miraculous birth makes the same point John the Baptist elaborated on last week. “Do not say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.” So also, God does not need the line of David to raise up a savior for Israel. Out of sheer grace, God adopts the line of David-as he once did David himself. Jesus’ status as Savior and Lord does not stand or fall on his Davidic credentials. It stands rather upon the redemptive and grace filled work of God. Out of mercy, compassion and in faithfulness to his covenant with the line of David, God freely adopts that line identifying God’s self with God’s people Israel.

Luke 1:39-45  http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=222764548

I want to move directly into the gospel lesson for Sunday because it seems to address some of the questions raised by our identification of Jesus with Micah’s promised deliverer. I also believe that this narrative is absolutely essential to a proper understanding of verses 45-55 used as this Sunday’s psalmody. This remarkable visit between two women touched in a profound way by the Spirit of God sets the stage for Mary’s remarkable hymn. Elizabeth, you may recall, was infertile and so bore societal “reproach.” Mary also was carrying a child and it is tempting to draw the conclusion that she bore reproach also as the pregnancy was obviously out of wedlock.  Both women would then have been subject to human reproach, albeit for different reasons. Both women also have been divinely vindicated. This provides a delightful literary symmetry that would work nicely in crafting a sermon, but I fear that we might be reading too much into the text. It does not appear that anyone regards Mary with moral distain as a result of her pregnancy. Unlike Matthew’s gospel, Luke does not tell us of any ambivalence on Joseph’s part.  Neither does Mary express any sense of shame or give any indication that she has been subject to moral sanction from any quarter. Thus, the thrust of this encounter appears to be Elizabeth’s affirmation of Mary’s vision and recognition of her unborn child as the one whose way her own son has been sent to prepare.

Most remarkable is, once again, the vulnerability of the promised savior. The helplessness and fragility of this fetus stands out in stark relief against the world dominating might of the Roman Empire. From this vantage point, the cross seems inevitable. A confrontation between this savior and the Empire could end in no other way. What is less obvious and what Luke strives to reveal is that what appears to be inevitable defeat will turn out to have been victory. The cross, Rome’s instrument of terror by which it maintained the pax Romana (peace of Rome), is soon to be snatched from the hands of the Empire to become the symbol of a very different sort of peace-the peace of Christ.

Luke 1:46b-55  http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=222764614

This remarkable hymn of Mary, known as the Magnificat, is woven directly from the worship tradition of the Hebrew Scriptures. The closest scriptural parallel is the Song of Hannah from the Second chapter of I Samuel. Like Elizabeth, Hannah was unable to have children and sought the help of the Lord. Hannah’s song is a hymn of praise and thanksgiving in response to the birth of her child, Samuel. Both hymns praise God for looking upon the humble state of the petitioners and hearing their prayers. Both hymns transition from thanks for personal deliverance to praising God for his compassion for the poor and for raising them up. The theme of the “great reversal” that will be seen throughout Luke’s gospel is reflected in Mary’s song: “God has put down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of low degree.” God’s exaltation of the humble maidservant Mary prefigures the career of Jesus who lifts up the outcast and the sinner. Also prefigured is the day when the reversal begun in Jesus will be complete. “My soul magnifies the Lord…” This is most likely the Greek rendering of a Hebrew expression, “Praise the Lord, O my soul!” See, e.g., Psalm 146:1. The “soul” here is the “self.” Thus, the psalmist praises God with his or her whole being. One could also say that the self becomes a lens for magnifying the glory and goodness of God through the act of worship.

It is critical that Mary’s song be understood within the context of Israel’s covenant relationship with her God. It is not for general consumption. This is not a song about some general social revolution. The salvation spoken of here is very specifically understood as the vindication of Israel’s hope in the covenant promises of Israel’s God. The raising up of the humble and the leveling of the proud takes place within the covenant community when the terms of covenant existence are observed. This covenant life is what makes Israel a “light to the gentiles.” The conclusion of the hymn says it all: “God has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his posterity forever.” Vss. 54-55. As gentiles, we enter into this covenant by the door graciously opened for us through Jesus.

Hebrews 10:5-10  http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=222764662

What more can I say about Hebrews than I have already said? As I have pointed out in previous posts, I have never been convinced that this epistle argues for the superiority of Christianity over Judaism, though it has been so interpreted. I believe rather that the author of Hebrews is struggling with the trauma to early believers resulting from the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. The loss of this structure and the liturgical institutions that gave meaning and substance to the faith of Israel struck a demoralizing blow to all of Judaism, including those Jews who were disciples of Jesus. Judaism dealt with this event by refocusing its worship more deeply in the life of the synagogue and in the study of Torah. Disciples of Jesus turned to the redemptive suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus as celebrated in the worship of the church.

The quotation attributed to Christ in verses 5-7 appears to have been cobbled together from a few Hebrew sayings found in various forms in Psalm 40:6-8; I Samuel 15:22; Psalm 50:8-15; Isaiah 1:10-17; Jeremiah 7:21-26; Hosea 6:6. It is not surprising that the quotation is not precise. The author appears to be working from memory rather than in the stacks of the library. For example, in Chapter 2:6 he or she introduces a citation from Psalm 8 with the words, “It has been testified somewhere…” We need to remember that in this age, centuries before the invention of the printing press, books were available only to a tiny fraction of the population. Reading was a rare skill and a useless one to common people with nothing to read. Consequently, one’s Bible was whatever had been committed to memory-and that typically constituted a lot of material. This is evident from the letter to the Hebrews which is saturated with quotations from the Hebrew Scriptures.

The argument spelled out here is that the Temple and its sacrificial liturgy were merely “a shadow of the good things to come.” Heb. 10:1. They could not effect true reconciliation with God. The Temple was only a symbol of the dwelling place of God and its priests were merely human representatives whose sacrifices could do no more than point to the perfect sacrifice required to establish communion with God. By contrast, Jesus’ faithful life, obedient death and resurrection by the power of God establish communion with God, the reality to which the Temple and its priesthood could only point in anticipation.

Christ the King Sunday, November 25th

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Sunday of Christ the King

Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14
Psalm 93
Revelation 1:4b-8
John 18:33-37

Prayer of the Day
Almighty and ever-living God, you  anointed your beloved Son to be priest and sovereign forever. Grant that all the people of the earth, now divided by the power of sin, may be united by the glorious and gentle rule of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Greetings and welcome! This coming Sunday we celebrate the feast of Christ the King. This feast day, which marks the conclusion of the church year, is relatively new to the church calendar. The Roman pontiff, Pope Pius XI, instituted The Feast of Christ the King in 1925 for the universal church in his encyclical Quas Primas. He saw the rise of nationalism as a denial of Christ as king and viewed with alarm the rise of dictatorships in Europe with the captivating lure of their autocratic leaders. Protestant churches that use the Revised Common Lectionary also observe Christ the King Sunday (titled Reign of Christ Sunday by some). These include the ELCA as well as the Church of England, the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church in North America, the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the United Church of Christ and the Moravian Church.

By ending the church year with a confession of Christ as King, we remind ourselves that history has an end and the end is Jesus. The day will come, St. Paul tells us, “that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow…and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the Glory of God the Father.” Our ultimate allegiance is to Jesus. Loyalty to family, community and nation is only provisional. When faithfulness to Jesus our King brings us into conflict with any of these other claims to our loyalty, “we must obey God rather than human authority.”  Acts 5:29.

Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14  http://www.workingpreacher.org/bible_passage.aspx?reading_id=1424

I discussed at some length the historical context and the outline of the Book of Daniel in my last post for Sunday, November 18, 2012. In short, the book was written to encourage the Jewish people during the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes over Jerusalem from 167-164 B.C.E. Antiochus used barbaric means to force the Jews in Jerusalem to abandon their faith. Those who resisted him were often subjected to torture and execution. In this Sunday’s lesson the prophet Daniel sees God, “the ancient of days” give all rule and authority to “one like a son of man.” It is not clear whether this one is understood to be a human ruler or an angel of God. His rule, however, will be universal. Unlike the empires of Babylon, Persia and Greece which invariably fracture under the weight of so many ambitious rulers seeking dominion, the kingdom of the son of man will remain forever.

As is usually the case for apocalyptic literature (see post for Sunday, November 18, 2012), the message is one of hope and encouragement. Despite all appearances to the contrary, God is still at work in the midst of all the political, social and military turmoil that is turning everyone’s life upside down. It is tempting to sum up all of this with the trite phrase “God is in control.” I don’t care much for that assertion, however. Control is something you exercise over your lawn mower or automobile. It is not something you exercise over someone you love. I don’t think God engineers the events of history so that they occur in accord with some predetermined plan. I do not believe that the murder of six million Jews was part of God’s design. Nor do I believe that God wills cancer, auto accidents, hurricanes and earthquakes. Is God triumphant over all of these things? To be sure, but God’s triumphal victory is a strange kind of victory. It is God’s patience rather than any exercise of power that carries the day. God does not fight fire with fire. That only results in a bigger fire. Instead, God responds to the wastes of our wrath with forgiveness, patience and eternal love. God does not clobber evil. God simply outlasts it. Against God’s eternal determination to save us, our stubborn resistance finally just runs out of steam. That might take some time, but God is nothing if not rich in time. The redemption of all creation is too important a job to rush.

Psalm 93  http://www.workingpreacher.org/bible_passage.aspx?reading_id=1423

In this psalm the God of Israel is acclaimed king, though the proper translation is a matter of some dispute. Some scholars claim that the phrase echoes the proclamation that a human ruler has been elevated to kingship, i.e., “Absalom is King,” (II Samuel 15:10) or “Jehu is King” (II King 9:13). If this be the case, then the proper reading would be “The Lord has become king.” As such, it might contain traces of ancient mythology reflecting a battle between the waters or the great sea monster, Tiamat and the creator god. See vss 3-4. Such mythological imagery is clearly reflected in the Genesis flood narratives, though the “waters” in Genesis are not portrayed as hostile enemies of God. Instead, they are the instruments of God’s judgment against a sinful world. The psalm, then, is a declaration that God is supreme over all other gods and forces of nature. The lack of any specific denial of the existence of other gods argues for an earlier date for the composition of this psalm, surely before the Babylonian exile of 587 B.C.E.

Other scholars are inclined to interpret the psalm as a simple assertion that God is king. Such a confession declares by implication that all other rulers who claim the title of “king” are mere pretenders. In short, it is a political statement. Such an interpretation would comport with a distaste for the monarchy consistent with much post-exilic Judaism fueled by prophetic criticism of Judah’s kings and their unfaithful, disastrous policies. It would also be entirely at home in an environment where, as was the case in post exilic Judaism, such kings as there were ruled over empires whose armies occupied Judah and Jerusalem exercising varying degrees of oppression. Though the kings of the earth may make proud claims of sovereignty, God alone rules the earth and God only is worthy of the title “king.”

Whenever this psalm was composed and however one might interpret the opening acclimation that God is King, the message is clear. God reigns to the exclusion of all others who claim divine sovereignty. On Christ the King Sunday it is appropriate to remind ourselves that we are subjects of Jesus, God’s only Son, our Lord. That does not preclude obedience to human governmental authority. To the contrary, government is a gift of God given for the sake of ordering our lives for good. Yet in a sinful and rebellious world, government tends to overstep its bounds and claim authority that rightfully belongs to God alone. No government has authority to command what God forbids. No government may exercise power that rightly belongs to God alone. No flag of any nation must ever fly higher in our hearts than the cross of Christ.

Revelation 1:4b-8  http://www.workingpreacher.org/bible_passage.aspx?reading_id=1425

The Book of Revelation is, as I have said before, the most frequent victim of preacher malpractice in the Bible. Many people flock to this book with an insatiable interest in discovering when and how the world will end. If centuries of clever and complex interpretation along these lines proves anything at all, it proves that Revelation is entirely unsuited for such a purpose. The book was written to encourage the persecuted churches of Asia Minor with their immediate struggle rather than to spawn speculation by 21st century suburbanites about the distant future.

Our brief lesson for Sunday is taken from a larger greeting from the author of the Book of Revelation, John of Patmos, addressed to the churches of Asia Minor (modern day Turkey) to whom the epistle is written. This is a culture in which it was universally acknowledged that “Caesar is Lord.” To assert that “Jesus is Lord” was an act of sedition. Thus, when John confesses Jesus as “ruler of kings on earth,” he was firing a shot across Caesar’s bow that could well have gotten him crucified.

Like the Book of Daniel, Revelation is written to a people living under persecution or, at the very least, the threat of persecution for their faith. Under such circumstances, it might seem as though God has abandoned his people or that God is powerless to save. How else can one explain Auschwitz, the Cambodian killing fields and the Armenian genocide? Revelation takes this suffering seriously. Jesus warned his disciples that the persecution that fell upon him would meet them as well. His disciples should therefore not be surprised at the ordeal they must undergo. Instead, they must remain faithful even when faith seems ineffective and unable to assist them. They must continue in confidence that the God who raised Jesus from death will prevail over the forces of death embodied in the Roman Empire.

One important theme to keep in mind is the “word” by which God overcomes the forces of evil throughout Revelation. When John describes his vision of Jesus, the only weapon Jesus has is the two edged sword issuing “from his mouth.” Revelation 1:16.  When Jesus Christ returns sitting upon a white horse ready to conquer his enemies, he is referred to as “Word of God.” The weapon with which he smites the nations is “the sharp sword that issues from his mouth.” Revelation 20:15. In short, it is the incarnate Word of the church’s preaching and teaching by which the political and military machinery of Roman oppression will be overcome. That is the only weapon God wields and it is the only arrow in the disciple’s quiver.  God prevails through the incarnate Word by which hearts are won over by faithful witness and preaching. As we sang last Sunday, “For not with swords loud clashing nor roll of stirring drums, but deeds of love and mercy the heavenly kingdom comes.”

John 18:33-37  http://www.workingpreacher.org/bible_passage.aspx?reading_id=1426

This brief snippet from the lengthy interchange between Jesus and Pontius Pilate is laced with irony. Pilate stands in the shoes of Caesar, the one acclaimed “king,” yet as John’s passion story unfolds, it becomes ever clearer that he has no real authority. Pilate must go out to meet his Jewish subjects in the portico because they refuse to contaminate themselves by coming into his courtroom. Though he purports to pass judgment on Jesus, it is Pilate who comes under judgment. Pilate’s tenuous hold on authority weakens with each verse. His interrogation of Jesus gets completely away from him. He cannot get Jesus either to admit that he is a king and so incriminate himself, or to deny his kingship and so pave the way for his release. So far from wielding kingly authority, Pilate finds himself bullied, intimidated and blackmailed by those who are supposed to be his subjects. He sounds almost pathetic when he protests to Jesus, “Do you not know that I have power to release you and power to crucify you?” John 19:10 “Power?” says Jesus. “You must be joking. You have no power. You know as well as I do that this is entirely out of your hands. God is at work here and there is nothing you or your little empire can do to stop it.” (my highly paraphrased rendition of Jesus’ response in John 19:11).

This gospel lesson brings into sharp focus the issue of the day: Is Jesus our King? What sort of King is he? Obviously, he is not the sort of king his accusers are making him out to be, that is, a messianic partisan seeking to overthrow Rome by violence. His kingly authority is not the sort that can get the charges against him dismissed. Yet there clearly is authority here. Jesus is the one character who is not driven by fear, anger or jealousy. Jesus alone is where he is because that is where he chose to be. Jesus is not a victim of circumstance. He is not an innocent bystander caught in the crossfire of somebody else’s fight. Jesus has stepped into Pilate’s court to bear witness to the truth. Pilate cannot handle the truth, but he cannot silence it either. The truth shines through the thin venire of Pilate’s pretended authority and imagined control.

Of course, in the final analysis the truth is not a what, but a who. Jesus is the truth and to know and trust him is to know the truth. It is our bold testimony that we cannot see rightly or understand what is true apart from submission to the kingly authority of Jesus.

All Saints Sunday, November 4th

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Pentecost 23

Isaiah 25:6-9
Psalm 24
Revelation 21:1-6a
John 11:32-44

Prayer of the Day
Almighty God, you have knit your people together in one communion in the mystical body of your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant us grace to follow your blessed saints in lives of faith and commitment, and to know the inexpressible joys you have prepared for those who love you, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Greetings! I hope that all of you are staying high and dry this week. As I write these lines, the wind is just beginning to pick up under a dark and ominous sky. By this time tomorrow, it is anticipated that the full fury of Hurricane Sandy will be whipping our coast and wreaking havoc well into the interior of the country. We do not know yet the full extent of the damage and loss this storm will inflict upon us. Yet we can be confident that however much the elements may pound us, they cannot break the bonds of friendship, unity and commitment to our neighborhoods that bring people together in times like these. So even under the threat of damage and destruction, we give thanks for these bonds that bind us together and pray that God may strengthen them for the tasks of comforting, healing, and rebuilding that lie ahead.

This Sunday we will be celebrating All Saints Day. We will celebrate the saints from our own community that have recently entered into eternal life: Elaine Abrahamson, Bob Nelms, Silvy Lehtmae, Ruth Tropello, Ralph Young and Douglas Campbell. We will celebrate the saints who serve our community of faith as Eucharistic ministers, ushers, alter guild ministers, church council and school board officers, deacons and teachers. We will be welcoming to the Lord’s Table this Sunday two very special young saints who have completed their first communion training. We will also celebrate the saints who throughout the ages have given us an example of faithfulness, compassion and courage in bearing witness to Jesus and the kingdom he proclaims.

Isaiah 25:6-9 http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=218540966

As I have pointed out before, the book of the prophet Isaiah is regarded by most Hebrew Scripture scholars to be the work of three different prophets. Chapters 1-39 are attributed in the main to Isaiah the prophet who lived and prophesied during the 8th Century during the reigns of Judean kings Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah. Chapters 40-55 are attributed to a prophet who preached toward the end of the Babylonian exile of the Jews, declaring to them God’s forgiveness and God’s promise to lead them back from exile to their homeland in Palestine. Chapters 55-65 are the words of a prophet addressing the Jews who in fact returned to Palestine and were struggling to rebuild their community under difficult circumstances. But this neat three part division is still a little too simplistic. All three prophetic collections underwent editing, revisions and additions in the course of composition. Consequently, there are many sections of First Isaiah that probably belong to a prophet of a much later time. So it appears that the words from our lesson, which fall within the chapters attributed to First Isaiah of the 8th Century, are more likely from the time of disillusionment that developed in the post-exilic setting, many centuries after the 8th Century.

The lesson is a small portion of a laeger section beginning at Chapter 24 where the prophet announces that the Lord will lay waste the earth and that all people will be caught up in its desolation. This desolation is of cosmic proportions. Chapter 25 begins with a psalm of thanksgiving to the Lord for God’s just judgment upon the world rulers and his protection for the poor and the needy. It is for this remnant, the poor and the needy who have been ruthlessly oppressed by the kings of the earth, that “the Lord of Hosts will make for all peoples a feast of fat things….”  This judgment for the poor and oppressed includes all nations and peoples, but it is a particularly joyful event for Israel because it demonstrates that God is indeed the very God she has been faithfully serving and in whom she has been placing her hope. No wonder, then, that the people of Israel cry out: “Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us.” This passage is a bold declaration that Israel’s hope in the justice and salvation of God is not misplaced!

Notice that Israel has played no active part in this saving work of God. She has only waited patiently for it. I have to say that this grates on me a bit. Having come of age in a generation that thought it would change the world for the better and which placed a high value on social activism, the notion of sitting and waiting for salvation feels grossly irresponsible. Yet when it comes to God’s kingdom, there is nothing else that we can do. God will establish peace and justice in God’s own time. The temptation we face is impatience. We want the kingdom now and we are prone to take all the military, legislative and revolutionary short cuts necessary to get there. We don’t have time to wait for love to persuade. We don’t have enough patience for the long and difficult work of reconciliation. Prayer seems so weak and ineffectual compared to action. So we push ahead with our own notions of peace and justice, employing our tactics of “shock and awe” to get the job done quickly and efficiently. But that is not the way of our patient God who has all eternity to work with. Changing hearts and minds takes time-a lot of time. God is willing to take all the time in the world to prepare every heart for the coming of his kingdom. Jesus promised that it was his Father’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom. He never said it would be done within the first hundred days of his administration.

Psalm 24  http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=218541027

There has been much scholarly speculation about this ancient hymn of praise. It has often been thought that this psalm is a liturgy for the annual procession with the Ark of the Covenant commemorating David’s movement of the Ark to Jerusalem. (II Samuel 6). This is possible, but there is no direct evidence in the Hebrew Scriptures that such a ceremony existed in Israel. It is probably safe to say that this psalm is a worship liturgy of some sort and that it dates back to the Judean monarchy and perhaps even to the time of David and Solomon. If the psalm does go back to the time of David, then the “holy place” is obviously not the Temple (which was built after David’s death by his son, Solomon), but a tent-like shrine or tabernacle. The “hill of the Lord” is Mt. Zion. The psalm reflects both dimensions of Israelite worship-the coming of God to the sanctuary and the coming of the worshiper into God’s presence there. Because “all the earth” belongs to the Lord, God is not confined to the sanctuary or bound to any holy place. The doors must “lift up” their heads that “the King of Glory may come in,” It is absurd to imagine that any humanly constructed sanctuary could contain the God who laid the foundations of the world. Yet God in his mercy and compassion for Israel voluntarily comes into the sanctuary to meet those who come to worship.

“Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place?” The answer to this question in many of the ancient Near Eastern religious traditions would be strict measures of cultic purity such as ritual washing, fasting from certain foods, abstinence from sexual relations, freedom from disease or physical defect, etc. Indeed, these kinds of cultic purity requirements for worship are found in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. But here the proper preparations for worship are ethical. Honesty and integrity trump external cultic preparations.

What, then, does this psalm tell us about worship? First, worship begins with acknowledging that “the earth is the Lord’s.” This has profound geopolitical, ecological and ethical implications, challenging our accepted notions of land ownership and national sovereignty.

“Get off my land!”

“Who says it’s your land?”

“I have the deed to it”

“Where did you get the deed?”

“From my father.”

“Where did he get it?”

“From his father.”

Where did he get it?”

“He fought for it!”

“Well, then, I’ll fight you for it!”

This little interchange goes to illustrate the obvious: If we go back far enough, we invariable discover that we are living on land our ancestors took away from somebody else. So even if you assume that whatever land is not occupied is up for grabs, it has been several millennia since there has been any such land available for the taking. Claims of land ownership are therefore intrinsically morally suspect. Moreover, the psalmist makes it clear that the earth, every inch of it, belongs to the Lord. Even the promised land was not given to Israel in any absolute sense. Life in the land of Canaan was to be lived in compliance with Israel’s covenant with God. When Israel began treating the land as her own, living contrary to the covenant and exploiting the land and her own people, God expelled her from the land.

Second, the earth is not a ball of resources we are free to exploit at our convenience to serve the national interests of whatever nation state we happen to belong to. If you go back to the second chapter of Genesis, the earth was created first. Only then did God create the human being to tend and care for the Garden God planted in Eden. The message is clear: It’s not all about us. The earth is God’s garden and we are here not as owners, but as gardeners. One objective of worship, then, is to re-orient our hearts and minds to accept God’s ownership of all creation and our privileged position, not as one of domination, but of careful stewardship and responsible care.

Revelation 21:1-6a  http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=218541084

Revelation is by far the most abused, misunderstood and misquoted book in the entire Bible. It has been an inexhaustible source of speculation for people who understand it as the key to figuring out how and when the world will come to an end. This is not the place to embark on a lengthy discussion of the origin, purpose and meaning of Revelation. Nevertheless, I would urge you to read chapters 2 and 3 in addition to the lesson for this Sunday. There you will find seven letters dictated by Jesus to the seven churches of Asia Minor in a vision to the author, John of Patmos. The letters reflect the struggles of a church under varying degrees of persecution. Some of them face prosecution and death. Others face more subtle social pressure to compromise with cultural ethical norms and pagan religious practices. This is a church struggling for survival in a hostile society. The Roman Empire’s oppressive cruelty is given expression in the lurid images of beasts, demons and prostitutes employed by John. The imagery used in describing the Lamb of God, the heavenly court and the angelic forces of God all stretch the imagination to the breaking point, but affirm the ultimate victory of God over against the demonic forces at work in the Empire. Thus, Revelation is not so much a key to the future as it is a word of encouragement and hope for disciples of Jesus who face suffering and persecution in every age. For those of you wishing to understand more about this strange and wonderful book and its proper overall interpretation, I refer you to an excellent article produced by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops at http://www.usccb.org/bible/revelation/0.

Our lesson for Sunday constitutes the climax of Revelation. John witnesses the descent of the Holy City, the New Jerusalem from God to earth. This is highly significant. Note well that John does not describe Christians “going to heaven” to be with God, but God coming to dwell with God’s people. The words “Behold, the dwelling of God is with people,” reflects the heartfelt desire expressed by the Lord throughout the Law and the Prophets. It has never been God’s intent to destroy this world and replace it with a better one. Indeed, God specifically rejected that course of action in the story of Noah’s Flood. (See Genesis 8:20-22). Instead, God makes all things new.

There is both continuity and discontinuity in the new creation-just as there was continuity and discontinuity between the man Jesus the disciples had come to know throughout his ministry with them and the resurrected Christ who appeared to them on Easter Sunday. The Resurrected one was Jesus, to be sure. Yet he was not merely a resuscitated corpse. This resurrected Jesus was alive in a new and powerful sense that placed him beyond the reach of death. His ascension to the right hand of the Father as witnessed by the gospel of Luke does not make Jesus more distant, but renders him even more intimately present than ever before. In the same way, the New Jerusalem is not a spiritual shadow of the dying physical city. Rather, it is a resurrected city that is more intensely alive precisely because it is now animated by the very presence of God in its midst.

I think that the hope contained in this lesson is very well expressed by Professor Brian Peterson of Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary:

“We do not create this new heaven and earth; the New Jerusalem comes down from God, and thus comes only as a gift. We can discern its outline already in the gospel of Jesus, crucified, and risen. Because God is with us already — in the proclamation of the Gospel, at the table of our Lord, and in the Spirit filling the church — we are witnesses to that coming new city, with our words and with our lives. We carry gracious hints of its coming when we live out costly love for one another (John 13), and when we practice startling welcome to those otherwise left outside (Acts 11).”

I urge you to read Professor Peterson’s entire article at http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=5/2/2010

John 11:32-44  http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=218541130

Unlike Matthew, Mark and Luke, John’s gospel is not divided into bite size readings that contain numerous nuggets of insight. John takes his sweet time spinning a yarn. He gives you numerous clues and hints to where he is going that only become clear a chapter or two later when he springs the punch line. I guess that is why John does not get his own year in the lectionary as do his fellow gospel writers. But perhaps the problem is more with us than with John. We are the ones with the short attention spans. We are the ones who begin to glance at our watches when we perceive that worship is not proceeding on schedule. We are a generation in a hurry. As a result, we miss a lot of living as we dart from one point to another with a third point on our mind.

If we begin at the start of Chapter 11, we hear first that Jesus was told of Lazarus’ illness while in Galilee, but chose to remain there another two days before beginning his trip to Judah were Lazarus was. Consequently, Lazarus was dead long before Jesus arrived. Why would Jesus do such a thing? Granted, raising a man from death is a lot more spectacular than simply healing a sick one. But is that any way to treat someone you love? Whatever the reason for his remaining, it is clear that Jesus moves on his own time. He will not let himself be governed by emergencies. He simply refuses to be busy. That must have been the Jesus quality that impressed John most. His gospel is anything but rushed. We proceed leisurely from Galilee to the outskirts of Bethany and more leisurely still from there to the tomb of Lazarus. Jesus is in no hurry to his work and makes clear that what he is about to do will be for the benefit of those around him who are to witness this great miracle.

Jesus wept. Again, I am at a loss to understand why. I expect that Jesus knew what he was about to do. So why weep? I am not convinced that Jesus was weeping for Lazarus. His concern appears to be for the people around him. He is grieved that Martha, while she mouths faith in a future resurrection in the sweet by and by, does not see in him the very presence of resurrection and life. Jesus is grieved at Mary’s sorrow and her seeming lack of even Martha’s level of hope. Jesus is grieved at the mourners who have nothing to offer Mary and Martha but sympathy. He is grieved at the power death seems to be exercising over everyone. He needs to demonstrate in a concrete way that he is the resurrection and the life, that death has no power over him and that he is able to offer life to those enslaved by the fear of death. Hence, the raising of Lazarus.

This story is pivotal for John’s gospel. The raising of Lazarus provokes the meeting of the Sanhedrin at which the decision is made to kill Jesus. The irony here is that Jesus is to be put to death for giving the gift of life. The Sanhedrin will also plot to take the life of Lazarus as his presence constitutes an ongoing testimony to Jesus. This episode expands on and amplifies the prologue to John’s gospel in which it is said of Jesus that “In him was life and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.” John 1:4-5 Neither by killing Jesus nor by murdering Lazarus will the darkness be able to overcome the light of life.

Among other things, saintliness is a life that is not driven. It is not driven by every occurrence claiming to be urgent. It is not driven by fear of what others might think or how they may judge what we do or say. It is not driven by the fear of death. The life of a saint consists of following Jesus at his own leisurely pace focusing on what is significant rather than on everything that seems urgent. This is a wonderful text on which to preach. I only wonder if I have the patience for it!

Sunday, October 28th

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Reformation Sunday (Pentecost 22)

Jeremiah 31:7-9
Psalm 126
Hebrews 7:23-28
Mark 10:46-52

Prayer of the Day
Eternal light, shine in our hearts. Eternal
wisdom, scatter the darkness of our ignorance. Eternal compassion, have mercy on
us. Turn us to seek your face, and enable us to reflect your goodness, through
Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

Happy Reformation! I should start off by saying that the lessons considered in this week’s posting are not those appointed for Reformation but rather the lessons appointed for the 22nd Sunday after Pentecost. Not to worry! I fully intend to observe the Reformation this Sunday. The only difference is that this year I will be reflecting on the Reformation in light of the texts for Pentecost 22. Why? To be honest, I am tired of preaching on the Reformation texts. They come up each year without alteration-that is three times more frequently than other appointed texts. While I do not believe that I have come close to exhausting all these lessons have to offer, I am quite sure that I have exhausted my own stores of insight. So I am taking a break from the Reformation lessons this year. Maybe next year they will look fresh to me once again.

By way of reflection on the Reformation more generally, I have become less and less inclined over the years to focus on the battles of the Sixteenth Century. To be sure, these controversies were important and the expressions of faith that grew out of them need to be preserved. But reformation is not all about preservation. I am convinced that a true church of the Reformation is a church always in the process of reform. It is a church that is always asking important questions. Luther did not initiate the reformation in his day by offering a platform or agenda for reform. He set off the reformation by proposing a series of statements, not for blind acceptance, but for discussion and reflection. These are the famed Ninety-Five Theses. You can read them for yourself at the following link: http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/web/ninetyfive.html In the spirit of Reformation Sunday, I have submitted some theses of my own that I believe the church should consider-particularly the church in the United States. I put these together almost ten years ago on the eve of Reformation for no particular reason. You can read them on this blog at the page entitled Thirty-Two Theses (I could not come up with ninety-five!). These statements are just that-statements. I am not suggesting that they be incorporated into any sort of creed or confession. They might not be phrased in the best manner possible. They have no purpose other than to stimulate discussion about matters that I believe are important.

Jeremiah 31:7-9  http://www.workingpreacher.org/bible_passage.aspx?reading_id=1396&cmpgn=5244

This is a word of comfort to an exiled people. Whether these words are those of the prophet Jeremiah who lived through the horrible last days of Jerusalem and witnessed its destruction or one of his disciples, they lie very close to the raw pain of war, dispossession and dislocation. These are people who know that they have lost much that will never be recovered. Life will never be what it was, even if the prophet’s promise of their return is fulfilled. For upon their return, the people will not find a land flowing with milk and honey, but a land ravaged by war, a city in ruins and a temple that is now only a pile of rubble. So whoever takes seriously this prophet’s promise that God is not through with Israel and that Israel has a future in her own land must wrestle with several important questions: What does it mean to be a nation when you have no government of your own, no claim to the land on which you live and no chance of regaining any measure of national autonomy?

Actually, Israel should know the answer to these questions. After being delivered from slavery in Egypt, Israel lived for forty years in the wilderness with no king, no land and no national identity. Israel had nothing in that wilderness but God’s promise to meet her needs-a promise that was fulfilled again and again along the way. As Jeremiah would have Israel know, God’s faithfulness is all that is needed to sustain God’s people. The rest is just a distraction.

Once again, I think there are parallels here with the people of God today in the United States. I believe that the church is learning once more to live on the margins of society. I say “once more” because we have been in that position before. There was a time when the church was just one of many religious alternatives in a pluralistic world. There was a time when the church dwelt in a hostile culture where she was misunderstood, mischaracterized by her critics and dismissed by the population as a whole. That time was the apostolic age during which disciples of Jesus began colonizing corners of the world with little communities of faith. The church in the days of the Apostle Paul held no real estate or seminaries or colleges. The only thing the church did possess was the good news about Jesus Christ-and that was enough. So to those of us who fear the demise of the church in the Twenty-First Century, Jeremiah would have us know that God is still a Father to us. We have been here before, folks. The future is not a threat to us, but an opportunity to learn all over again what it is that makes us God’s holy people.

Psalm 126  http://www.workingpreacher.org/bible_passage.aspx?reading_id=1395&cmpgn=5244

The psalm begins with the words “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream.” An alternative reading is “When the Lord brought back those who returned to Zion, we were like those who dream.” If the latter reading is adopted, then “those who returned to Zion” are almost certainly the Babylonian exiles. This return was made possible by the edict of Cyrus the Great, emperor of Persia who conquered Babylon. Cyrus decreed that all peoples taken into exile by Babylon, including the Jews, would be permitted to return to their homelands. Such an opportunity would indeed seem like a dream come true. Yet there were also serious obstacles in the way of returning to Palestine. The journey home through what is now the Iraqi desert was itself a perilous trip. Upon return, the Jews found a ruined city and hostile peoples who had come to inhabit the homeland. Rebuilding would be a long and difficult task. Hence, the psalmist prays “Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like the watercourses in the Negeb!” The “Negeb” is a hilly desert region of southern Israel. Water courses there are seasonal, being dry for most of the year but brought to life in the rainy season to revive dormant vegetation. So the psalmist hopes that God will likewise restore and nurture the community of Israel in the land to which she returns. The final verse of the psalm reflects the hope that, just as a bountiful harvest follows the toil of planting, so the sacrifice, hard work and risks taken by the returning exiles will be rewarded with the rebirth of a thriving community.

Of course, it is also possible that the opening lines of the psalm refer more generally to God’s many faithful acts of deliverance for Israel and that the prayer for restoration refers to an unknown calamity at some other point in Israel’s long history. Either way, this is a community that has experienced God’s salvation. Drawing upon this experience of God’s past faithfulness, the community prays hopefully and confidently for God’s future help.

This psalm is classified by most commentators as a “group lament.” A lament, you may recall, is a psalm in which Israel or an individual calls upon God to honor the covenant relationship with Israel and provide deliverance. Sometimes deliverance is rescue from enemies or healing from sickness. Other times it is forgiveness of sin. While the psalm does contain elements of a lament, the psalmist’s prayer goes beyond mere lament and into a bold expression of confidence in God’s faithfulness. Thus, one could also consider it a psalm of trust. The form, however, is of minimal importance. By whatever classification, this psalm is a powerful prayer challenging believers to draw encouragement from God’s past faithfulness as they face an uncertain future.

Hebrews 7:23-28  http://www.workingpreacher.org/bible_passage.aspx?reading_id=1397&cmpgn=5244

This is a continuation of the argument begun in last week’s reading. You might want to refer back to Sunday, October 21st. As you know, I view the Letter to the Hebrews as in part an effort to assist Jewish disciples of Jesus in coming to grips with the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D. Consequently, the author goes to great lengths explaining how Jesus fulfills the function of the Temple and its worship, offering a deeper communion with God and a stronger basis for solidarity with fellow believers. Unlike the temple priests, whose mortality and human frailty required repeated sacrifices, Jesus has been raised from death after having made one single sacrifice that suffices for all time.

My take away from this passage: The church can afford to lose anything it has if only it clings to Jesus. That is basically my observation from last week and so I won’t expand on it further.

Mark 10:46-52  http://www.workingpreacher.org/bible_passage.aspx?reading_id=1398&cmpgn=5244

This is the last healing miracle Jesus performs in the Gospel of Mark. In order to appreciate fully the irony in this story of Jesus’ opening the eyes of the man born blind, we have to back up and review some of the stories we have heard in previous weeks. At the end of chapter 8, Jesus announces that he must go to Jerusalem, be rejected by the people and their leaders, handed over to the Roman authorities and put to death-and raised on the third day. Peter rebukes Jesus. Next, Jesus begins again to explain to his disciples that he must be put to death in Jerusalem and in three days rise. His disciples promptly get into a heated argument over which of them is the greatest. Then Jesus begins his pilgrimage to Jerusalem telling his disciples for the third time that he will die there and be raised. No sooner are the words out of his mouth than James and John approach with a request that they be seated at his side when he comes in glory. You begin to wonder whether these men are blind. Then, at the end of chapter 10, Jesus encounters, Bartimaeus, a man that is indeed blind. This blind man’s faith banishes his blindness and he rises up and follows Jesus on the way. Jesus, it seems, can open the eyes of a man born blind, but he cannot seem to make his witless disciples see.

This miracle prefigures what is to follow. Bartimaeus addressed Jesus as “Son of David,” which, though a messianic term, might also have been no more than a polite form of address. But whatever may have been intended by Bartimaeus, Jesus does ride into Jerusalem in the manner of a king, pronounces judgment upon the establishment of the Temple worship and engages in a number of disputes with his opponents focusing on the nature of his authority. Commentator Morna D. Hooker sees this story of Bartimaeus as a final challenge to Mark’s readers to “follow Jesus in the way,” even as it leads to the cross. The Gospel According to Mark, Hooker, Morna D., Hendrickson Publishers, Inc. (ed. 2005), p. 252. I tend to agree. I believe that Mark’s gospel is directed at a church that has become enamored with institutional success and is in danger of losing its focus on the cross. I base that not so much on assumptions about the Markan church. The truth is, we know next to nothing about the faith community to which Mark was writing. Rather, I believe that fixation on institutional growth, the struggle for power within such institutions and wrongheaded notions of glory have been endemic to the church in every age. That is why this gospel has been preserved in the New Testament. Its call to turn away from the tempting path of glory and success to follow Jesus on the redemptive way of the cross speaks to the church in every age.

“So how will he tie all of these texts into the Reformation?” You might be asking. Well, I think reformation is what happens to the people of God when circumstances make it impossible to turn anywhere but back to their Lord. We sing, “A Mighty Fortress is Our God,” knowing that our God is a “Father” to us as Jeremiah points out. So when Israel lost her land, her king and her temple-the symbols of who she understood herself to be-she turned back to the God who gave her these symbols and who also took them away from her. Israel knew that for there to be any future at all for her, it could only come from the God who called her from slavery to become a special people. Of course, Israel would learn that there is no going back to the way things were. She had to learn that what she regarded as “the good old days,” were not at all good in God’s eyes. Israel would need to learn all over again what it means to be God’s covenant people. She would need to be “re-formed.” The hard work of reformation is likewise reflected in the psalm. Israel is always in need of restoration.

The author of Hebrews similarly calls his hearers to re-imagine their worship life without the Temple and apart from the traditions that formerly gave it meaning. Just as Luther called the church back to a more faithful understanding of Jesus’ atoning work for us by grace through faith, so the author of Hebrews called his hearers to recognize in Jesus the only sacrifice that will ever be necessary and to enter with confidence into the presence of God.

Finally, the Gospel gives us a vivid picture of God’s saving power that removes our blindness, giving us eyes to see the truth that is Jesus. Like Bartimaeus, we are powerless to open our own eyes. We are entirely dependent upon the merciful God who intervenes to save us from ourselves.