Tag Archives: Church

Sunday, August 30th

August 24, 2015UncategorizedBabylonian Exile, Baptism, Bible, Church, Covenant, Deuteronomy, discipleship, economic injustice, economic justice, economy, Exodus, faith, gay and lesbian, gospel, gun violence, guns, illegal aliens, illegal immigrants, justice, Lectionary, Letter of James, Moses, poor, poverty, Psalms, Religion, Saint Paul, Sunday Lessons, theologyrevolsen

FOURTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9
Psalm 15
James 1:17-27
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

PRAYER OF THE DAY: O God our strength, without you we are weak and wayward creatures. Protect us from all dangers that attack us from the outside, and cleanse us from all evil that arises from within ourselves, that we may be preserved through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

Our lessons this week focus on what is “clean” and “unclean;” on what qualities are required of one who would approach a holy God in worship; and on what it means to “keep your soul diligently” by obeying the Commandments. These were deep concerns of the Pharisees who, I believe, have gotten a bum rap from Christian preachers over the centuries. These folks were mindful that their call to be God’s chosen people set them apart from all other nations, tribes and peoples. They understood that their lives were to reflect the generosity and compassion God had demonstrated toward them throughout their history. The rituals they observed were designed to remind them that each moment of every day belonged to the Lord; each activity was an opportunity for worship; all the good things in daily life were gifts from the generous hand of a God who never tires of giving. It comes in poor grace for us mainline protestants, whose lives differ so little from those around us that no one would know we were affiliated with a church unless they bothered to ask, to criticize the Pharisees for desiring to give expression to their identity as God’s people. I could wish that my own church were a bit more “Pharisaic.”

But there is a danger inherent in pursuing holiness. In their zeal to keep the Torah, the Pharisees developed “the traditions of the elders.” These statutes, though not specifically grounded in Torah, nevertheless spelled out what the teachers of the law believed to be the natural implications of Torah obedience. These rules formed a “hedge” around the Torah to ensure that nobody ever got close enough to the commandments to break them. The problem is that they also prevented one from getting close enough to keep them. Sometimes faithfulness to the traditions blinded the Pharisees to the demands of the law and even provided convenient excuses for avoiding the divine commandments. What is “legal” does not always equate with what is “holy.”

What was true of the Pharisees is no less so for Christians. White evangelical Christians experience scruples over baking a cake for the reception of a same sex wedding yet, according to a recent poll, they also overwhelmingly support a presidential candidate who promises to boot eleven million resident aliens out of the country if elected. Can you guess which of these two activities the Bible actually condemns? If you are in doubt, check out Leviticus 19:33-34. Apart from the requirement of leaving the yeast out of Passover bread, I can’t find any other passages that regulate baking. Oddly enough though, Saint Paul tells us that “if your enemy is hungry, feed him…” Romans 12:20. So it seems to me that, even if you do regard a same sex couple as the enemy, baking a cake for them is precisely what you should be doing. Amazing what you learn when you actually read the Bible instead of letting politicians tell you what it says!

The sad truth is that Christians are just as guilty (perhaps more so) of reading the Bible through the lens of their preconceived, culturally conditioned notions of “clean” and “unclean” as were the Pharisees. We have allowed our economic interests, professional ambitions, racial prejudices, cultural biases and national loyalties to distort the commandments into instruments of hatred and exclusion. We are allowing the good news of Jesus Christ to be drowned out by the self-righteous, preachy-screechy moralism of an angry minority imagining that its own self-made “values” embody God’s commands. Jesus is speaking directly to us in this week’s gospel: “you have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition!” Mark 7:9.

I don’t believe the Pharisees were entirely off base. They recognized that, for followers of a God who frees the slave, cares for the oppressed and seeks the good of the least, some things truly are unclean and must be avoided. They were simply confused, as are we, about what those things are. So perhaps we ought to ask, what is truly unclean for us? The automobiles we drive that contribute to global warming and ecological imbalance? The food we consume that is produced at bargain prices by undervalued and underpaid labor? The television programs and movies that flood our living rooms with violence, exploitive sex and stimulate our endless appetite for unsustainable consumption? Firearms designed for no other purpose than to kill people?

In the final analysis, the critical question is not so much about what is to be avoided as what is to be pursued. Jesus has told us that the two greatest commandments (which in reality are one command) are to love God and to love our neighbor. Nowhere is God’s holiness better seen than in the face of another created in God’s image. There is no other way to love God than loving God’s creatures. These love commands determine the shape of any and all tradition-not the other way around.

Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9

The Book of Deuteronomy is the fifth and last of the five making up the “Books of Moses” or the “Pentateuch.” Literally translated, the word “Deuteronomy” means “second law-giving.” In fact, however, the orations given by Moses reflect not so much a different law as an application of the same law given at Sinai to Israel’s new circumstances. More than a recitation of the statutes given in Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, the orations of Moses in Deuteronomy articulate a unique polity under which Israel is to live and by which she is to be distinguished from the rest of the world’s nations. Like other books in the Pentateuch, Deuteronomy is a work that was completed in several stages. Though sources incorporated into the final product are likely much older, the book itself was likely completed at some point between the fall of the Northern Kingdom in 721 B.C.E. and the return of the Exiles from Babylon around 535 B.C.E. Scholars generally agree that parts of Deuteronomy are related to the book discovered in the Temple archives during the reign of King Josiah beginning in 621 B.C.E. See II Kings 22:3-13. The book as a whole, however, appears to have been addressed specifically to the returning Babylonian exiles as they set about reconstituting and rebuilding their communal existence.

Deuteronomy’s literary setting is the conclusion of Moses’ life and ministry. Israel stands poised to cross the Jordan River and enter into Canaan. The years of living as wandering nomads have come to an end. Israel’s settled future as a nation in its own right is about to begin. The critical question is: what sort of nation will Israel be? At the dawn of history, Cain asked God rhetorically, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Genesis 4:9. That cold indifference characterized humanity’s efforts to unite the world through empire. All such human endeavors ultimately crumble under the weight of human pride leaving the world divided by language, tribe and nation. Genesis 11:1-9. Israel got a taste of imperial life at the bottom of the societal food chain during her years of slavery in the land of Egypt.

Moses makes clear to Israel that God did not liberate her from Egypt and bring her safely through the wilderness only to create another Egypt, another oppressive empire living off the forced labor of its oppressed subjects. Israel is not to be distinguished by its commercial success or its military might. When the nations of the world look to Israel they are not to be terrified of its power or dazzled by its wealth. Instead, they will say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.” vs. 6. “For what great nation is there,” asks Moses, “that has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is to us; whenever we call upon him? And what great nation is there that has statutes and ordinances so righteous as all this law which I set before you this day?” Vss. 7-8. Israel’s greatness lies in her recognition that the earth is the Lord’s. Her possession of the land is a gift given not in perpetuity, but as a sacred trust to be used for the greater glory of her God. Israel is not to replicate Egypt by enslaving the resident aliens within her borders (or booting them out and building a fence against them for that matter). Instead, she is instructed to “Love the sojourner therefore; for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.” Deuteronomy 10:19. Furthermore, Israel is to be a nation without poverty. Disparity in wealth there may be, but Israel’s statutes and ordinances governing commerce and agriculture ensure that no one must ever go without the necessities of life: “And when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field to its very border, nor shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger; I am the Lord your God.” Leviticus 23:22. Moreover, “If there is among you a poor man, one of your brethren, in any of your towns within your land which the Lord your God gives you, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother, but you shall open your hand to him and lend him sufficient for his need, whatever it may be.” Deuteronomy 15:7-8.

Jesus also made it clear to his disciples that they were to be an alternative community modeling a different way of living together. “You know that those who are supposed to rule over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Mark 10:42-45. The community of disciples is subject to a kingdom without borders. In Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female, straight nor gay, legal nor illegal, criminal nor law abiding citizen. See Galatians 3:28. All of these are called to be one body of which Jesus Christ is the head.

Psalm 15

Archeologists have recovered a number of religious inscriptions instructing worshippers in the ancient world concerning the preparations to be made and conditions to be fulfilled before entering a shrine or temple. These texts usually set forth a list of cultic requirements for cleansing, proper ritual attire and acceptable offerings. Our psalm focuses instead on traits of character and ethical conduct as critical for determining worthiness to approach the Lord in worship. See Rogerson, J.W. & McKay, J.W., Psalms 1-50, Cambridge Bible Commentary (c. 1977 Cambridge University Press) p. 65. The requirements for approaching the Temple have less to do with placating the desires of a ritualistically finicky deity than they do with conduct of the worshiper toward his or her neighbor. There is much that could be said about the importance of truthful speech, faithful friendship, speaking well of one’s neighbor and honoring one’s promises. But I want to focus on just one characteristic of the righteous worshiper that caught my eye this week.

The one worthy to approach the Lord in worship does not put out his money at interest. Vs. 5. This injunction sounds a little archaic to generations raised in an economy that runs on credit. Unless we are one of the fabled 1%, most of us buy houses, cars and education for our children with money we have not yet earned. If there were no credit, I would not own a home and my children would likely not have had a college education. Hopefully, I would be able to find a rental unit within walking distance of the church. Otherwise, I would have to rely on public transportation or the kindness of my wealthier neighbors. There is no question that credit has allowed me to enjoy a lifestyle to which I could hardly aspire without it.

On the face of it, there is nothing unfair about reasonable interest. If I receive money from the bank that I have not yet earned, it is only fair that the bank be compensated for losing the use of its money for a period of time and for taking the risk that I might not be able to pay it back. But there is more than fairness at stake here. There is something fundamentally troubling about the fact that the middle class lifestyle many of us enjoy; the business opportunities that many entrepreneurs are able to seize; and the chances for making quick and easy fortunes on equities and commodities markets all are based on money which has yet to be made or on the future value of goods or business ventures that is speculative. If everything from my car to Facebook is being paid for with phony money, there is good reason not only for financial concern but for deep moral reflection. There is an element of profound self-deception here that hides the true cost of what we are purchasing and conceals the risks of the transactions we enter into. The projected cost as well as the anticipated profits from fracking for natural gas, exploiting offshore oil and building nuclear energy plants cannot possibly reflect the potential economic, environmental and geopolitical forces that might very well erase all profit and inflict losses now unimaginable. The value of the fruits and vegetables we purchase does not reflect damage inflicted on the soil and ground water by pesticides, agro fertilizers or the destabilizing effect of holding prices down through use of low cost foreign labor both here and abroad. What we should have learned in the 2008 debacle applies not only to mortgages, but to everything we purchase in a credit driven society: an economy that grows by encouraging people to spend money they don’t have to buy things they cannot afford is bound to crash sooner or later.

I am not suggesting a return to barter economy. Nor am I suggesting that you all go out and cut up your credit cards (though in some extreme cases, that is actually good advice). I do believe, though, that in this time and place when everyone is fixated on “the economy,” people of faith need to go beyond the sterile debate over how best to revive it and begin questioning the fundamental assumptions that underlie our economic relationships and whether those assumptions ring true. A righteous economy is one that values all things genuinely and elevates the well-being of creation and human community over profit.

James 1:17-27

First, a word or two about the Book of James: Though styled as a letter, the book reads more like a string of sermonetts on different topics. There is no lack of debate among scholars as to whether James, the putative author of the letter, was actually the brother of Jesus we meet in Acts addressing the earliest disciples of Jesus, or a disciple of James writing in his name to a second or third generation Christian community, or some other Christian leader named James. Though many of the teachings in the book are close and even identical to sayings of Jesus, Jesus is mentioned only twice.

Scholars have argued for centuries about the theme and structure of the Book of James. Some commentators insist that there is no structure and that the Book is simply an anthology of loosely connected admonitions. Julcher, A., An Introduction to the New Testament, c. 1904 by Putnam, translated by J.P. Ward) pp. 356-358. Most commentators, however, believe that the book is held together by a structure of some sort, though they disagree over whether the structure is thematic, grammatical/syntactical (sections linked by key words or rhetorical refrains) or determined by liturgical usage. For a very thorough discussion of these formal/structural issues, see Johnson, Timothy Luke, The Letter of James, The Anchor Yale Bible, Vol. 37A (c. 1995 by Yale University Press) pp. 11-15. For a brief but thorough review of the Letter of James, its origins and content, I urge you to read the Summary Article written by James Boyce, Professor of New Testament and Greek of Luther Seminary at enterthebible.org.

The one theme that strikes me particularly this week begins at verse 19. “Let every man be quick to hear and slow to speak.” This is at variance with the encouragement I have always been given to “speak up.” As a shy introvert, I suppose that encouragement was a salutary influence. Yet as introverted as I might be by nature, I am just as prone as anyone to let anger take the wheel of my heart. Frequently, I take issue with people before trying to understand what the issue is. Often, I am more interested in refuting people I believe to be in error than in listening carefully for whatever truth may lie at the heart of what they are saying. Even when I remain characteristically silent, that does not mean that I am listening with care. Often my silence is spent in crafting my response to an argument I have not thoroughly considered. So shy people, no less than extroverts, must take James’ warning to heart.

I have often been tempted to publicize a special event at our church inviting everyone in the community who has left the church, who is not interested in the church or who is angry at the church to come and tell us why. For our part, we would promise not to argue or even answer their charges. Our role would be simply to listen. The only thing that gives me pause is doubt about my ability to keep my mouth shut. I am sure that I would hear many criticisms of the church that seem unfair, inaccurate or misplaced. I would be tempted to jump to the church’s defense with some well-reasoned response. But that would defeat the whole purpose. The ministry of listening is just that: remaining silent; making space for people to express their hurt without having to fear retaliation; showing hospitality to strangers; and creating an environment in which reconciliation is possible. So what do you think? Are we up for this?

Finally, I am struck by the phrase, “the anger of man does not work the righteousness of God.” Vs. 20. There is a lot of righteous anger out in the Christian community these days. Websites like those of the Christian Coalition, Women Concerned, Family Research Council are emitting virtual tidal waves of anger against the government, higher education, certain politicians, civic organizations, scientists, gays, lesbians and transgendered folk for reasons they can probably explain better than me. But what interests me and what is not at all evident in their propaganda is what these folks are all for. Even when they mention Jesus (which is rarely), the picture I get is a guy who is against all the things they are against. But what does he stand for besides defunding Planned Parenthood, kicking undocumented people out of the United States, shaming single mothers, driving sexual minorities back into the closet and voting liberals out of congress? The message coming out is entirely negative. This is a religion of unmitigated anger.

I don’t mean to suggest that all of this is emanating solely from the right wing of the right wing. Though I think white so called “evangelicals” have mastered institutionalized anger better than most of us, we of the mainline are not immune from the disease. I note that a good many of my own church’s social statements often spend a tad too much ink on moral outrage against racism, pollution, genocide and whatever else and a bit too little on leading us to vision of the kingdom of heaven. Indeed, the very fact that these are denoted “statements” says volumes. As James points out to us, we must be “doers of the word, not hearers only, deceiving []ourselves.” Vs. 22. Speaking out against racism is likely to earn us the deserved label of hypocrite as long as we remain one of the most racially exclusive churches in the United States. Naming the sin does little for a church that does not model righteousness.

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Once again, the lectionary people have so thoroughly butchered this text that I hardly know what to do with it. Generally speaking, chapter 7 of Mark begins with a dispute as to what constitutes uncleanness. The disciples’ eating with “hands defiled” sparks an argument between Jesus and the Pharisees. Vss. 1-2. Mark tells us by way of a parenthetical remark that the Pharisees do not eat without washing. Vss. 3-4. Some scholars have argued that this passage is anachronistic pointing out that, in the time of Jesus, the practice of washing utensils could only have pertained to the priests whose sustenance was the meat and fruits of ritual sacrifice. See Numbers 18: 8-13. Though not specifically commanded, the necessity of washing utensils used for the priests’ meals and the requirement of cleansing their hands was readily inferred. The ritual of hand washing for the laity is not documented anywhere in the early First Century. The most ancient Jewish writings indicating that some Jews imposed this requirement date from about 100 C.E. As pointed out by more recent commentators, however, these sources describing practices of the Second Century C.E. do not negate the possibility that the same or similar practices existed in the First Century. Mark’s gospel is competent evidence that the rule concerning washing before meals may have been advocated by some Pharisees during the time of Jesus, even if not universally accepted by all. Hooker, Morna D., The Gospel According to Saint Mark, Black’s New Testament Commentaries, (c. 1991 by Morna D. Hooker, pub. by Henderson Publishers, Inc.) pp. 174-175; see also Taylor, Vincent, The Gospel According to St. Mark, (2d Add.), Thornapple Commentaries, (c. 1966 by Vincent Taylor, pub. by Baker Book House Co.) pp. 338-339; Nineham, D.E., Saint Mark, The Pelican New Testament Commentaries (c. 1963 by D.E. Nineham, pub. by Penguin Books, Ltd.) pp. 192-193.

The question of whether this story is an actual remembrance of an encounter between Jesus and some Pharisees early in the First Century or whether it reflects a dispute between the Synagogue and the church at some later time is mildly interesting, but finally misses the point. Whenever it arose, this tradition was of human origin. It should be noted that the practice of washing had nothing to do with hygiene and everything to do with ritual holiness. To treat something as holy is to recognize it as having been set aside for a sacred purpose. Meals are understood in Jewish tradition as holy in just that sense. They are the medium of covenant renewal and community solidarity. You are defined by what you eat and who eats with you. That should not be at all hard to understand and appreciate for disciples of Jesus whose most significant worship activity is the Eucharist.

Jesus had no objection to ritual per se. Ritual can serve as a helpful reminder that all aspects of life are occasions for glorifying and thanking God. But ritual is distorted and burdensome when it becomes master rather than servant. When sickness or hunger prevent a child of God from enjoying the Sabbath rest God intends for all God’s creatures, it is sinful to prevent healing or preparation of food that would open the door to Sabbath rest for such excluded persons. So also common people, having only limited access to water for drinking and none for the luxury of washing (frequently the case in semi-arid climates), must still eat in order to be whole. A tradition that bars a hungry person from enjoying meal fellowship and God-given nutrition does precisely the opposite of what ritual is supposed to do.

Jesus cites the prophet Isaiah: “Because this people draws near to me with their mouth and honors me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment of men learned by rote; therefore, behold, I will do marvelous things with this people, wonderful and marvelous; and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the discernment of their discerning men shall be hid.” Isaiah 29:13-14. Actually, Jesus quotes only verse 13, but his hearers would have been well aware of what follows. So also would they have been aware of the verses immediately before: “And the vision of all this has become to you like the words of a book that is sealed. When men give it to one who can read, saying ‘Read this,’ he says, ‘I cannot, for it is sealed.’ And when they give the book to one who cannot read, saying ‘Read this,’ he says, ‘I cannot read.’” Isaiah 29:11-12. Their rituals have sealed off the meaning of the scriptures for Jesus’ opponents rendering them unintelligible.

Excluded from the Sunday reading is Jesus’ condemnation of the use of “corban” to deny aging parents the support owed by their children under the Ten Commandments. Mark 7: 9-13. The term, “corban” means simply “dedicated to God” and, as such, holy. Just as holy food must not be handled with unwashed “common” or “unclean” hands, so property declared corban may not be used for the mundane purpose of providing for the needs of an aging parent. While the precise legal consequences and the manner of declaring something corban remain obscure, the point Jesus makes is clear. Here, too, tradition is intended to serve God’s people in honoring the great commandment to love God and love the neighbor as one’s self. When tradition is used to circumvent the requirement of the divine command, it is abused. So, too, a literal application of the law that violates its spirit is just as evil as outright disobedience.

Jesus goes on to discuss what makes a person unclean. Clearly, it is not what goes into a person, but what comes out. This theme will be repeated in the story of the Syrophoenician woman whose daughter Jesus heals in next week’s gospel lesson.

Sunday, August 23rd

August 17, 2015UncategorizedAbraham, Babylonian Exile, Book of Joshua, Church, Covenant, discipleship, Eating, Exodus, faith, idolatry, Jerusalem, Joshua, justice, Lectionary, peace, Persecution, Psalms, Religion, Saint John, Saint Paul, Sunday Lessons, theology, violencerevolsen

THIRTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18
Psalm 34:15-22
Ephesians 6:10-20
John 6:56-69

PRAYER OF THE DAY: Holy God, your word feeds your people with life that is eternal. Direct our choices and preserve us in your truth, that, renouncing what is false and evil, we may live in you, through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

I have never spent more than a few days on a farm and then only as a small child. But in recent years I have gotten to know a few farmers. My conversations with them have given me a glimpse or two into what farming is like. One thing I know is that, for farmers, death is not an abstraction. Turkeys are butchered. Hogs are slaughtered. The sight, sound and smell of death permeates life on the farm. Farmers come in from work with death on their clothing, death on their hands and death under their fingernails. They cannot escape being conscious all the time of what urban folk like me conveniently forget: that the pound of hamburger, the package of drumsticks, the strip steaks and the pork chops we buy at Shop Rite were once living, breathing animals that somebody had to kill. Even those of us who are vegetarians cut down, uproot and devour what was once alive. In order for us to live, something else has to die.

So maybe it should not surprise us overly much to hear Jesus telling his disciples that their lives depend on eating his flesh and drinking his blood. Eternal life is costly. Making it available to the likes of you and me required the death of God’s Son. Having it requires internalizing Jesus which, in turn, puts us in the path of martyrdom. Paul urged the disciples in Rome to present their bodies “as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.” Romans 12:1. For a people whose Lord’s body was nailed to a cross, these words could not have been understood metaphorically. Rome knew well how to disfigure, torture, violate and kill human bodies. The disciples knew that imitating their Lord might well lead them into the gaping jaws of that empire. Yet such is the cost (and the privilege) of living eternally in a culture of death.

To be a disciple of Jesus is to know that you have the blood of the Lord on our hands. It is to know that you must answer “yes” to the question propounded in the old spiritual: “Where you there when they crucified my Lord?” To believe in Jesus is to understand that he died because he entrusted himself to us-and we murdered him. Yet, as it turns out, Jesus was not just another victim of injustice. Rather, he is God’s way of exposing injustice and God’s means of overcoming that injustice with God’s more infinitely powerful capacity to forgive. In the cross, we are shown to be the true victims-victims of or our own distrustful, vindictive and violent ways. We are finally saved from the whirlpool of our hate by a love that outlasts it.

This is a hard word for all who would like to believe that there really is nothing wrong with us; that the answers lie in enacting the right legislation, electing the right candidates to office or funding the right programs. It is a hard word for all who imagine that a tepid “spirituality” promising tranquility, lower blood pressure and a happier existence is a suitable substitute for living among recovering sinners seeking freedom from the addictive bondage of selfishness. Jesus’ words are hard for rugged individuals who imagine that they can truly pull themselves up by their own boot straps to a life that is eternal. Today’s gospel is bad news for mega-church leaders who fill auditoriums by preaching a happy clappy religion and imagine that they are fulfilling Jesus’ commission to make disciples. But as Peter rightly recognized, these words of Jesus, hard as they are, are the words of eternal life.

Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18

The Book of Joshua tells the story of the Israelites’ entry into the Promised Land after forty years of wandering in the wilderness. Joshua, the successor to Moses, led the Israelites into Canaan where they conquered the Canaanites and redistributed the land among their own twelve tribes. The book ends with a covenant ceremony in which the people of Israel vow in the presence of Joshua and their God to forsake all other gods and “serve the Lord.” Vs. 18 That is where our reading for this Sunday fits in.

A cursory reading of the Book of Joshua could lead one to believe that Israel had, under Joshua’s leadership, thoroughly exterminated the Canaanite population from the Promised Land. A closer reading reveals, however, that the Canaanite influence remained after Israel’s entry into the land. Vs. 15. Though no longer a military threat, the Canaanite agricultural society and its underlying religion posed an even greater danger to Israel’s existence. As Israel began its transition from a tribal nomadic society to a settled farming community, a significant theological question arose: could this God who successfully led Israel out of Egypt, across the desert and into Canaan now also provide rain, protection from insect pests and other favorable conditions required for growing staple crops? Or should Israel turn to the various gods and goddesses of the Canaanites who specialize in agriculture? The choice was not as clear cut as might appear to us moderns. For ancient peoples, there was no distinguishing between the role of religion and practice when it came to planting, cultivating and harvesting. It was nearly impossible for Israel to absorb Canaanite farming methods apart from Canaanite religion. Participation in the cultic worship of the fertility goddess, Ashroth, was no less critical than fertilizing your field with manure.

We read in verse 1 that the people “took their stand before God.” The phrase recalls the seminal moment when Israel first stood before Sinai where she made her covenant with God. Exodus 19:17. The story thereby emphasizes that this covenant is not a “new” commandment, but the renewal of the covenant made before Moses at Sinai.

Shechem, the site of this covenant ceremony, is located about forty miles north of Jerusalem. It later became the first capital of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Some commentators see in this location the author’s/editor’s hope that this city and other territories of the Northern Kingdom destroyed by Assyria in 722 B.C.E. might be recovered by the Southern Kingdom of Judah. This hope may, in part, have inspired Hezekiah’s failed revolt against Assyria in 701 B.C.E. The northern territories were, in fact, successfully (albeit briefly) recovered by King Josiah who reigned over Judah between 640 B.C.E.-609 B.C.E. It is also possible that this text reflects a post-exilic context given Joshua’s near certainty that Israel will fail to fulfill her vow to serve the Lord only. See Fox, Everett, The Early Prophets, The Schocken Bible: Volume II (c. 2014 by Everett Fox) p. 118.

“Beyond the River” (Vs. 14) is a reference to the Euphrates and could denote either Mesopotamia or Harran, both points along Abram’s journey to Canaan. Genesis 11:31-32; Genesis 12:1-6. The point here is that the demand to abandon worship of gods other than Israel’s God is grounded in the call to the patriarchs and matriarchs. It is evident that idol worship was as much a temptation for them as for Israel. They, too, needed to be reminded to abandon their false gods. See, e.g. Genesis 35:1-4.

If you read one verse further, you will discover that Joshua is well aware of the new danger facing Israel. He is skeptical of his fellow countrymen’s ability to meet the challenge of living as God’s covenant people in the land which God has given them. Vs. 19. He can see all too well how easily the lessons learned in the wilderness, where God fed Israel each day her daily bread, could be lost now that Israel had inherited a good land capable of sustaining her. He understood how persuasive would be the appeal of Canaanite religion to a people desperate to ensure a good harvest. In time, the saving acts of God, so fresh in the minds of Joshua’s generation, might seem “irrelevant” to the generations yet to come.

Memory seems to be a key factor here. Still fresh in Israel’s memory are the saving acts of God that liberated her from slavery in Egypt and God’s provision for all of her needs as she traveled through the wilderness. Vss. 16-17. Perhaps that explains why “Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua; and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua and had known all the work which the Lord did for Israel.” Joshua 24:31. But when memory fades, so does faithfulness. Something is lost when events pass out of living memory. It takes deliberate effort for subsequent generations to own and appropriate the lived experiences of the past. That is why Israel built into her planting, cultivating and harvesting celebrations recitals of God’s saving acts toward the patriarchs and matriarchs, toward their enslaved descendants and toward the wandering clans as they made their way to the Promised Land. It was critical that Israel’s heart be shaped by memories of God’s faithfulness to her if she was to resist the allure of Canaanite religion and culture.

Times of transition often wreak havoc upon one’s faith. Statistics demonstrate that, of those persons who leave the church, a significant number is made up of people who have moved from one community to another. Moving is a stressful and demanding process. So is the process of finding a new church home. Many reasons are given by people who have moved for neglecting worship. Lack of time and energy is one factor. Getting settled into a new home is a chore in itself. Finding a good pediatrician for the kids and getting them registered for school takes time. Changing your driver’s license, auto registration, voting registration and opening bank accounts all take their toll. Looking for a job in a new community is a full time job in itself. All of this is taxing on the psyche. For those who have made an effort to find a church, many are disappointed because the churches they visit seem less than friendly, or don’t have the programs they are looking for or “just aren’t the same as our old church.” Whatever the reasons, often the first thing people shed when they settle into a new community is their faith. So Joshua was justified in his concern that, with all the demands of settling the land of Canaan, worship of the faithful God Israel had come to know in the wilderness might fall to the bottom of the priority list.

In some respects, each new day is another entry into the Promised Land. One never knows what any given day will bring, but we believe that “it is the day the Lord has made.” Psalm 118:24. There are always the routine and anticipated aspects of the day. Sometimes it seems as though that is all there is. Yet even in the most ordinary humdrum day there usually is some element of the unexpected: the card from that friend you have not heard from in years; the call from your child’s teacher suggesting a conference; the guy in the smelly sweatshirt that approaches you asking for money as you are coming out of the grocery store. These circumstances often present us with the same choice Joshua presented to the children of Israel as they prepared to settle into Canaan: will you serve the Lord your God or some other “god”? If we are attentive, we can hear Joshua’s voice throughout our day asking us, “Choose this day whom you will serve.” Vs. 15.

Psalm 34:15-22

The psalm for Sunday is the third and last section of Psalm 34, which we have been reading for the last two weeks. My comments on the content, style and form of this psalm are found in my post for Sunday, August 9, 2015 and my post for Sunday, August 16, 2015. I would only add as a point of interest that verse 20 is prominently cited in the Gospel of John.

“Since it was the day of Preparation, the Jews did not want the bodies left on the cross during the sabbath, especially because that sabbath was a day of great solemnity. So they asked Pilate to have the legs of the crucified men broken and the bodies removed. Then the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who had been crucified with him. But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. Instead, one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once blood and water came out. (He who saw this has testified so that you also may believe. His testimony is true, and he knows that he tells the truth.) These things occurred so that the scripture might be fulfilled, ‘None of his bones shall be broken.’ And again another passage of scripture says, ‘They will look on the one whom they have pierced.’”

John 19:31-37. For further perspective on this psalm, you might want to read the commentary of Henry Langknecht, Professor of Homiletics at Trinity Seminary in Columbus, Ohio. This can be found at Workingpreacher.org.

Ephesians 6:10-20

In this remarkable passage Paul encourages us to “be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.” Vs. 10. He then proceeds to turn everything we think we know about strength on its head. “For we are not contending against flesh and blood” says Paul. Vs. 12. But there are many forces in our culture telling us that our struggle is against flesh and blood. It is against liberals and socialists; against conservatives and right wingers; it is against illegal immigrants; it is against terrorists and criminals. The devil is constantly trying to convince us through a huge array of ideologies that the world can neatly be divided into good people and evil people. As long as you are on the side of good, it is acceptable to employ violence to achieve justice and defend “our” way of life whoever “we” may be. The devil would have us believe that “God is on our side” and that he, the devil, is on the side of our enemies. Of course, the devil does not take sides in human conflict. He has no stake in who controls the world or which nation triumphs over all others. As long as people are hating and killing each other, it matters not who “wins.” As far as the devil is concerned, wherever there is war he is the winner.

Saint Paul recognizes, however, that our real fight is “against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” Vs. 12. In truth, the line between good and evil does not run along national, racial, religious or ethnic lines. The line between good and evil runs through the middle of every human heart and that is where we need to begin engaging it. We are urged to put on “the whole armor of God.” Vs. 11. Paul then uses a host of extremely militaristic images of armor and weaponry to describe the spiritual resources given to the church for its struggle against evil. Vss. 14-17. This remarkable contrast is designed to emphasize the gentle means by which God overcomes the powers of wickedness that know only violence and coercion. The only body armor the disciple of Jesus has is truth, righteousness and peace. The only shield a disciple has to withstand the violent forces of evil is faith in God’s promises. The only protection from a mortal head wound is the salvation wrought in Jesus Christ. This is the armor with which disciples of Jesus were called upon to meet the brutality of a hostile empire with armies, weapons and torture implements at its disposal. The only offensive weapons disciples of Jesus have are prayer and the Holy Spirit. Vs. 18.

So where are the principalities and powers, the hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places today? I suggest that many of them are found in the same places they were dwelling in the days of the New Testament church. They are found in the machinery of empire, the jealous sovereignty of nation states insisting that their own national interests trump global concerns for the wellbeing of all. When the “world rulers of this present age” insist that we must kill our neighbors in direct contradiction to Jesus’ call to love even our enemies and to resist not one who is evil, then we should be hearing the voice of Joshua from our Old Testament lesson crying out, “Choose this day who you will serve.” For too long, I believe, the church has sided with the principalities and powers in exchange for public support and respectability. For too long churches have confused the interests of the Kingdom of God with the interests of whichever nation they happen to reside in. The cry of “God and country” has too often muffled Joshua’s cry of either/or.

I also believe that the principalities and powers often worm their way into the life of the church. A church that values doing worship “right” over worshiping Jesus well has succumbed to the powers. A church that values maintaining its traditions over welcoming its community and allowing the Spirit to transform it has come under the influence of the principalities. A church that values survival over mission is a church that is run by the rulers of this present age. A church that values its reputation over faithful witness to the scandalous and controversial good news about Jesus Christ is a church that has lost its armor and has become fearful of taking a stand for its Lord.

Thanks be to God that in Jesus Christ we are well armed. The power of truthful speech unmasks the powers of evil urging us toward violence and hate. The good news of God’s reconciliation in Christ gives us all the ammunition we need to wage peace. Righteousness and integrity guard us from temptation, threats and intimidation. Faith, the conviction that God has already accomplished all things needful for the salvation of the world in Jesus Christ, gives us courage to endure the seeming failure of our own faithful efforts. We know that Christ promises to complete what we can only begin. Finally, through prayer and the work of God’s Spirit within us we exercise the very power that raised Jesus from death. No more potent weapon exists or is needed for the advance of God’s Kingdom.

John 6:56-69

Last week it was the crowd and Jesus’ critics who mumbled and complained because Jesus said in very graphic terms that he was the bread of life and that having life meant eating his flesh and drinking his blood. This week it is Jesus’ own disciples who are doing the complaining. Many of them, after hearing these words from Jesus, no longer followed him. vs. 66. But I have to ask, were they ever really following him to begin with? These disciples may have cheered as Jesus cleansed the Temple and rid it of corruption and commercialism. They were thrilled to receive their fill of bread in the wilderness. If this is what Jesus is doing, what’s not to like? Now, however, Jesus offers them more. He offers them his very self. But these disciples do not want anything more. They do not want Jesus. They want all the good things they think Jesus can give them. They want to be disciples of Jesus, but on their own terms. To internalize Jesus, to be sustained by him alone and to be transformed by Jesus is more than what they bargained for. They wanted Jesus to transform their unhappy circumstances, but they had no intention of letting him change them. These disciples were prepared to be admirers of Jesus, supporters of Jesus and even followers of Jesus-up to a point. But when Jesus makes it clear to them that salvation lies precisely in going beyond that point, they want nothing further to do with him.

Let’s be clear. It is not that Jesus is demanding a higher morality, a higher level of devotion or a higher level of spiritual awareness from his disciples. Jesus has already said that the only work God requires is that we trust in him. Trusting Jesus means believing Jesus when he tells us that what he has to give us is what we truly need. Jesus offers to abide in us. Abiding in Jesus means being absorbed into Jesus, transformed into the likeness of Jesus and drawn into the mission of Jesus. We don’t accomplish that on our own. Jesus offers it to us as a gift. But therein is the rub: too often we just don’t want this gift. We don’t want to internalize Jesus. We want Jesus at a distance. We want him to be there as a shoulder to cry on, a gentle presence to give us peace, a savior who is there in times of trouble, but decent enough to stay out of our way when times are good. We want a Jesus who will defend our homes and protect our soldiers, but not the Jesus who prepares a table for us in the presence of our enemies and then calls upon us to invite those enemies to the feast. We want a Jesus who will change our unpleasant circumstances, but not a Jesus who wants to change our hearts and minds. As the Gospel of John has already indicated: “this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.” John 3:19.

Jesus lost some disciples that day and he seems not to have been too worried about it. There are some kinds of followers Jesus does not need. Among them are those who are tagging along only for what they can get out of discipleship. There is a great deal of concern expressed these days about the decline in church membership among protestant denominations such my own Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Some folks are blaming the national church for its stances on controversial subjects. Others blame the synods for their lack of leadership. Many blame pastors for failing to speak effectively to the younger generations. We pastors, for our part, point the finger at our congregations for their lack of commitment and support. That is all counterproductive. Fixing blame for the sinking of the Titanic would not have kept it from going down and certainly will not bring it back up from the bottom of the sea. Moreover, I am beginning to wonder whether anyone is to blame or whether anything blameworthy is being done. Maybe the membership of the church is shrinking because its capacity for true discipleship is growing. Maybe we are driving people out of the church precisely because more of us are internalizing Jesus. When a church takes seriously its duty to show hospitality to the stranger regardless of the stranger’s legal status; when the church opens its doors to people who dirty its carpets, disrupt the flow of its worship and tarnish its reputation, very often long time members respond as did many of Jesus disciples in our Gospel lesson: “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” Vs. vs. 60.

These days I am hearing an ever more urgent call for some strategy, some new change of direction, some marketing ploy that will “turn the church around.” If by that we mean turning away from sin and turning toward Jesus and the new life he offers, then I am all for it. But if “turning the church around,” means only that we grow our membership by whatever means available and increase our income so that we can preserve our denominational institutions, I am not sure I want in on that. Maybe Jesus does not need a church that owns real estate in every town. Maybe Jesus does not need a guild of professional clergy represented in every congregation. Maybe Jesus does not need bishops who travel the world to address heads of state and numerous programs addressing every conceivable human need. Maybe all Jesus needs is a little band of sheep that hear his call and follow him. Perhaps a poor, small, broken church living faithfully at the margins with no social influence or political power is a more faithful witness to the resurrected Christ than a large, thriving corporate church. It may be that we are not dying, but only getting pruned. (See John 15:1-2). I don’t pretend to know God’s grand plan for the church in the twenty-first century. I do not even know what God’s plans are for the ELCA of which I am a part. I am convinced, however, that we need to be open to the possibility that our view of what our church needs might be vastly different from what God is doing with us. We may fear that we are getting too small, but from God’s perspective we may still be too big.

In sum, following Jesus is no sure way to success, institutional or otherwise. But then again, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Vs. 68. That alone is why we follow Jesus. Jesus knows what matters eternally and tells us in no uncertain terms that we matter eternally to him. Jesus loves us too much to let us waste our lives pursuing bread that cannot feed us, chasing success in projects that don’t matter and satisfaction in pleasures that do not last.

Sunday, August 16th

August 10, 2015UncategorizedChurch, Common Core Curriculum, discipleship, Education, Holy Spirit, Home Schooling, late stage capitalism, Letter to the Ephesians, prayer, Proverbs, public education, Saint John, Saint Paul, Solomon, Sunday Lessons, theology, violence against children, wisdom, Wisdom Literaturerevolsen

TWELFTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Proverbs 9:1-6
Psalm 34:9-14
Ephesians 5:15-20
John 6:51-58

PRAYER OF THE DAY: Ever-loving God, your Son gives himself as living bread for the life of the world. Fill us with such a knowledge of his presence that we may be strengthened and sustained by his risen life to serve you continually, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

I have never been a fan of “home schooling.” That is partly because I believe one important objective of education is training children to live in and take responsibility for the larger society. Public schools are and should be places where children are confronted with people expressing ideas, holding opinions and practicing beliefs that are different from their own precisely because ours is a nation founded on the belief that such differing folk can nevertheless work together for the common good. I must also confess that my skepticism toward home schooling has been reinforced by many of its proponents whose fear, loathing and distrust of the larger society, often supported by outlandish conspiracy theories, sometimes borders on paranoia. The belief that our public schools are the agents of some nefarious plot to undermine religion, family values and promote moral anarchy strikes me as, well, a little crazy. What sort of child emerges from an isolated family unit where s/he is taught to fear and distrust the civil institutions that make our common life as a people possible?

Yet some recent reflections shared by home schooler Paisley Hillegeist in a recent issue of Plough Quarterly have given me pause. Ms. Hillegeist is no conspiracy theorist, nor does she view the public school system as the dark side of the force. She is, however, concerned about the carnivorous environment existing in middle and high schools. Bullying, drug abuse, sexual exploitation are recurring problems within the student population that she feels the schools are finding difficult to address effectively. These concerns, however, are not the primary reasons for Ms. Hillegeist’s decision to home school her children. She points out that she is able to shape her curriculum to the needs of her children in a way that would be nearly impossible in a class of thirty students. She is able to integrate the disciplines of prayer, worship and service into the children’s daily routine. Moreover, academic learning can be integrated with daily life. “We learn life skills together. How do you balance a checkbook? Mail a package? Do the laundry? Shop for the best deals? Build a chicken coop? Butcher turkeys? All this is part of our classroom.” “Why I Homeschool,” Plough Quarterly, Winter 2015, No. 3 (c. 2014 by Plough Publishing House) p. 35. Most impressive, however, is Ms. Hillegeist’s insistence that “character comes first.” Ibid. More important than what her children may end up doing in life is who they become. “I believe with all my heart,” she says, “that the most powerful good I can bring to my community is to raise my own kids in the way that will best help them to become the men and women that God has created them to be.” Ibid. Education is not all about knowledge. It is chiefly about wisdom.

That, I believe, is what our modern approaches to education so often lack. Our assumption seems to be that education serves the needs of the labor market which, in turn, serves the profit generating, corporate interests of Wall Street. Nothing illustrates this trend better than the so called “Common Core Initiative.” According to its website:

“State education chiefs and governors in 48 states came together to develop the Common Core, a set of clear college- and career-ready standards for kindergarten through 12th grade in English language arts/literacy and mathematics. Today, 43 states have voluntarily adopted and are working to implement the standards, which are designed to ensure that students graduating from high school are prepared to take credit bearing introductory courses in two- or four-year college programs or enter the workforce.”

It is important to add that, despite any flowery policy language to the contrary, the two or four year college programs are likewise designed to integrate their graduates into the workforce, albeit at a higher level. Education is all market driven. It consists in cramming the heads of young people full of knowledge that will make them profitable. That is why programs like music and art are always the first to hit the cutting room floor when public school revenue drops. Multinational corporations can hardly expect to turn a profit through county libraries, municipal orchestras or community theater. Unless you are a child prodigy, you might as well not bother pursuing an education in the fine arts. There is no market for that sort of thing. Is it any wonder, then, that kids fail to empathize with each other when they are treated like machine parts? Is it any wonder that they deaden the pain of suppressing their humanity with illicit drugs? Can you blame them for making self-destructive decisions when they are supplied with knowledge, but left unschooled in wisdom?

The scripture lessons for this week have much to say about wisdom. Our lesson from the Book of Proverbs invites us to feed ourselves with wisdom. The psalmist encourages us to pursue the wise practices of truthfulness and peacemaking. Paul urges us to walk wisely through a world in bondage to folly on the strength of prayer and song. Jesus is the very embodiment of wisdom calling us to internalize him by “eating his flesh” and “drinking his blood.”

Wisdom should never be confused with mere knowledge. Knowledge gives us power over things. Wisdom gives us power over ourselves. The same body of knowledge can enable us to make either vaccines or biological weapons. Wisdom teaches us to place knowledge in the service of life. Wisdom concerns not so much what we learn as how we are shaped by our learning. The mere acquisition of knowledge is not genuine education. Our children are not machines for programming to meet the needs of the labor market. They are unique children of God whose lives unfold like blossoms. Education seeks to nourish and strengthen them as they seek the mystery that is God’s purpose for them. I applaud Ms. Hillegeist for having the courage to say “no” to the dehumanizing and abusive values of late stage capitalism and having the courage to educate her children into character so that they might become wise as well as knowledgeable. That’s a gutsy choice that I admire-even if I cannot follow it in good conscience.

I am still not a supporter of home schooling. Though Ms. Hillegeist’s words and example have raised important questions and illuminated much that is wrong with our educational institutions in this country, I am not convinced that home schooling is the answer. My responsibility for education does not end with my own children and I cannot properly educate my children on my own. Love her or hate her, Hillary Clinton got it right on this point: it takes a village to raise a child. Together, we must all learn to educate our children to live wisely and well as they pursue the common good. To that end, can we as parents and teachers take back the education of our children? Can we make education serve our children rather than the needs of the market? Can we create space for interaction between the classroom, the family and the faith community? Can we educate children to become wise and compassionate as well as knowledgeable?

Proverbs 9:1-6

The Book of Proverbs, along with Job, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs and several of the Psalms constitutes a collection of works biblical scholars often refer to as “wisdom literature.” “Wisdom,” loosely defined, is insight gained through life experience often expressed in short proverbial sayings. One such example is Proverbs 10:2, “Treasures gained by wickedness do not profit, but righteousness delivers from death.” This is true as far as it goes. How many wealthy and powerful people have been brought down by an insatiable desire for wealth that knows no moral or ethical boundaries! But is it always the case that ill-gotten gain leads to ruin? Is righteousness always rewarded? It didn’t turn out that way for Job. Furthermore, the “preacher” in Ecclesiastes has this to say: “There is an evil which I have seen under the sun, and it lies heavy upon men: a man to whom God gives wealth, possessions, and honor so that he lacks nothing of all that he desires, yet God does not give him power to enjoy them, but a stranger enjoys them; this is vanity; it is a sore affliction.” Ecclesiastes 6:1-2. So which is true? Is it the proverb or the observation of the preacher?

The answer is that both utterances are true as far as they go, and they only go as far as the experiences of the people who make them. Human wisdom, though valuable and worth pursuing, is nevertheless incomplete, partial and subject to modification. It is true that righteousness and integrity can bring you respect and a good name in the community. But sometimes the cost of doing the right thing is the loss of friendship, respect and social standing. Wickedness often is its own punishment, but we also know of people who inflict all manner of pain on others and are never brought to justice. That is why it is best to take these utterances of human wisdom not as moral laws governing the universe, but as the experiences of individuals who have lived their lives in pursuit of understanding. Wisdom literature invites us to step into the shoes of people who have lived life under numerous circumstances and have each come to view it from their own perspectives. Think of wisdom sayings as portholes into reality. Because they are unique and different from our own perspectives, they enrich our understanding. Yet we dare not forget that, like all human perspectives, these sayings are limited to the experience of one individual. They do not take in all of reality. So it should not surprise us to find different and even conflicting expressions of learned wisdom. Biblical wisdom does not fit neatly into a unified system because, as the product of human experience, it is necessarily incomplete.

The Book of Proverbs is made up of four distinct collections of sayings. Book I (Proverbs 1:1-9:18) consists of extended discourses of warning and admonition that encourage the hearer to live piously, ethically and prudently. In two of these poems, wisdom is personified as a wise and beautiful woman. Proverbs 1:20-33 and Proverbs 8:1-36. Wisdom is similarly personified in today’s reading taken from this first book. Our lessson is part of a larger poem contrasting wisdom with folly. Proverbs 9:1-18.

Books II (Proverbs 10:1-22:16) and IV (Proverbs 25:1-29:7) are both attributed to King Solomon. They contain collections of maxims dealing mostly with virtues, vices and their consequences. Attribution to Solomon does not necessarily imply authorship. The identification might simply reflect the author’s/editor’s tribute to Solomon’s legendary wisdom. That said, I am not ready to dismiss the potential contribution of Solomon to either of these two books. Wisdom literature reaches “back into the earliest stages of Israel’s existence.” Crenshaw, J.L., Wisdom in the Old Testament, Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, Supplementary Volume, (c.1976, Abingdon). It was during the reign of Solomon that the Israelite monarchy reached the height of its international prominence. Solomon made treaties with Egypt and the Phoenician kingdoms, transacting commerce and forming military compacts. Cultural exchanges would have followed naturally and thus exposure to wisdom literature from these sources. The authors/editors of Proverbs may well have had access to collections of sayings from this ancient and illustrious period.

Book III (Proverbs 22:17-24:34; Proverbs 24:23-34; Proverbs 30:1-31:31) is a series of exhortations of Egyptian sages probably modeled on an ancient book of Egyptian wisdom entitled “The Instruction of Amen-em-ope.” These sayings may date back to the time of David and Solomon and so could have come into the hands of royal scribes through the cultural exchanges with Egypt previously discussed. The final editor fused all four of these books into one, attributing them all to Solomon. Proverbs 1:1. For more on this marvelous book of the Bible, see Summary Article by James Limburg, Professor Emeritus of Old Testament at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, M.N.

In our lesson we read that wisdom has “slaughtered her beasts, she has mixed wine, she has sent out her maids to call from the highest places, ‘Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!’ To him who is without sense, ‘Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed.’” Vss. 4-5. Perhaps Jesus had this saying in mind when he told his parable of the unresponsive guests invited to the wedding feast. Matthew 22:1-10; Luke 14:15-24. To turn away from wisdom’s feast of learning is foolish. How much more so to snub an invitation to the messianic banquet! The reading also underscores the importance of eating that is far from simply metaphorical. Most people in the ancient near east were always just a bad harvest away from starvation. Eating well is a mark of wellbeing as Jesus’ discourse throughout chapter 6 has been demonstrating.

“Leave simpleness and live and walk in the way of insight.” Vs. 6. Simplicity is often portrayed as a virtue: “Tis a gift to be simple, tis a gift to be free…” says the old Shaker hymn. But there is a dangerous simplicity that seeks to eliminate all nuance and ambiguity. There is a simplicity that prefers clearly drawn lines between good and evil, right and wrong, friend and enemy, insider and outsider. The dangerous polarization we are witnessing in our civil discourse these days is a good example of where such simplicity leads us. Insight recognizes the shades of gray inhabiting the vast no-man’s land between the lines of combat. Insight makes us mindful of our limitations, blind spots and inherited prejudices that distort our thinking. Insight understands that every event, every conflict and every spoken word is seen, heard and processed differently by each individual person. Insight knows that listening is the most important communication skill we will ever develop.

Psalm 34:9-14

These verses constitute the second half of the psalm from last Sunday. For my observations on the psalmist’s style and the psalm’s literary characteristics, see the post for Sunday, August 9, 2015.

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” says the psalmist in Psalm 111:10. Not surprisingly, then, the psalmist in our psalm for this Sunday calls us to learn the fear of the Lord. Vs. 11. “What man is there who desires life, and covets many days, that he may enjoy good?…Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it.” Vss. 12-13. Does good conduct lead to a long and satisfying life? Often, but not always. Again, this is the experience of the psalmist. It is also my own experience. Let me be clear about this. I have not always been so very successful in departing from evil and doing good or seeking peace. But when I am, I discover that life is better. I am much happier when I am not pursuing a zero sum game, win at all costs strategy, but looking instead beyond the immediate conflicts I have with people to the people themselves and working toward building relationships of trust. That makes it possible to find win/wins solutions.

Still, in all honesty, that has not always been my experience. Sometimes people take advantage of my trust and return my offer of friendship with hostility. The psalmist appears to have had similar experiences. He or she goes on to say in verses not included in our reading, “Many are the afflictions of the righteous…” Vs. 19. Clearly, righteousness does not immunize one against the slings and arrows of living in a world filled with cruelty and injustice. Indeed, righteous conduct sometimes invites hostility. The righteous are sometimes “brokenhearted” and “crushed in spirit.” Vs. 18. Nevertheless, the psalmist reminds us that even at these times “the Lord is near.” Vs. 18.

How is it possible to keep one’s tongue from evil and one’s lips from speaking deceit? Vss. 13. This warning echoes Paul’s admonition from Ephesians last week to put aside all falsehood and speak the truth. Ephesians 4:25. There is much deceit taking place, not the least of it within ourselves. We have an enormous capacity for self-justification, blaming, scapegoating and excuse making that colors the way we understand everything and everyone around us. This is why we need to be in a community dedicated to speaking truthfully. We need each other to overcome our own self-deception. Unless that is happening, we cannot hope to speak convincingly to the world around us.

Ephesians 5:15-20

Once again, I refer you to my post of Sunday, July 12, 2015 for general comments about the Letter to the Ephesians. In our lesson for this Sunday, Paul admonishes us to “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil.” Vs. 15. This usage of “walk” is found throughout Ephesians. In Ephesians 2:2 Paul reminds his readers that, prior to their baptism into Christ, they “walked” in sin following the course of this world (N.B. NRSV translates “walked” as “lived”). But now, as Christ’s workmanship, they “walk” in the “good works” for which they were created. Ephesians 2:10. In chapter 5 we find the admonition to walk at three points. First Paul urges us to “walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us.” Ephesians 5:2. (Again, NRSV uses “live” instead of “walk”). Next, Paul tells his readers that, having been brought out of darkness into the light, they must walk as “children of the light.” Ephesians 5:8. (Again, NRSV renders “walk” as “live”). So in today’s lesson we are urged to walk as “wise” people. Vs. 15. (Ever consistently if not aptly, NRSV employs “live”).

I am not ordinarily disposed to quibble with the NRSV. It is by far one of the most accurate and readable translations of the Scriptures available in the English language. But in rendering the Greek word “walk” or “peripdateo” as simply to “live,” the translators have done us a disservice. The Greek carries with it the sense of “walking after” taken from the ancient practice of instruction under which young persons studying with a particular teacher followed after that teacher. Paul intersperses this expression with “sit” (Ephesians 1:20; Ephesians 2:6) which in Hebrew usage is also a posture of learning. E.g., Luke 10:39; Acts 8:31. For Paul in Ephesians (in the Scriptures as a whole, for that matter), wisdom is not understood as knowledge to be obtained, but as a habit of the heart to be learned, practiced and grown into. It is not merely absorbed into memory from the written page, but taught through the example of a mentor whose living relationship to his/her disciple gives shape to his/her teaching.

So too, Paul urges us to “understand what the will of the Lord is.” Vs. 17. That is a tall order. It isn’t that I don’t know generally what God requires. The problem arises when I try to understand what God requires of me in the minutia of my day to day life. If God is not active there, then God’s will is largely irrelevant. Oddly enough, we are not given much guidance here. We are warned against drunkenness-that clearly will not get us to an understanding of God’s will for us. Vs. 18. But when it comes specifically to figuring out God’s will, we are told simply to be filled with the Holy Spirit-and to sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Vss. 18-19. Yet maybe the apostle is on to something here. There is nothing like singing to create a sense of community and shared vision. Other than the national anthem sung at sports events, I cannot think of any situation in our culture except worship where people still sing together. There is something about singing that opens a person’s imagination to a broader view of things. A hymn is sort of like a snowball. The more you sing it at different times and places in your life, the more meaning it accumulates. I suspect that for all of us there is a hymn that makes us tear up, a song that helps us visualize the mysteries of faith that escape conceptualization. I think that the practice of singing our faith together helps us to internalize that faith and so also create space for the Spirit of God to begin working out God’s intent for us. We don’t begin by trying to figure out God’s will and then trying to do it. Rather, we begin with worship. Gradually, we begin to recognize God’s will unfolding in our lives after it has seeped into our bones through the practices of worship, singing, prayer, generosity and hospitality.

John 6:51-58

I have to confess that my initial reaction to this section of John is, “Yuck!” The image of someone eating flesh and drinking blood, even when understood metaphorically, is distasteful to put it mildly. And clearly, Jesus is not speaking metaphorically. This conversation started out with Jesus providing bread to five thousand people who proceeded to eat, chew and swallow it. Jesus then identifies himself as the bread of life, that which sustains human existence. But lest we get too comfortable with this assertion as a benign figure of speech, Jesus drives it home with some very graphic language: “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you…” Vs. 53. The bread of life Jesus offers comes at the cost of his own death at the very hands of those he came to feed. Moreover, the way to eternal life is through sharing in Jesus’ suffering and death. The crowd which initially sought Jesus with enthusiasm thinking that they had found an ATM with a limitless supply of bread, now begins to turn on Jesus. How can Jesus’ flesh satisfy their hunger? How can his blood satisfy their thirst? Vs. 52. They want desperately to turn the conversation back to plain old bread. But Jesus will not let them off the hook. “The bread you are seeking,” says Jesus, “won’t satisfy your hunger.” Even the manna God provided for Israel in the wilderness could not satisfy the peoples’ deepest need. John 6:49. What the people needed and what we need is a restored relationship with our Heavenly Father. Reconciliation requires risk, sacrifice and even loss of life. Not surprisingly, Jesus paid with his life for the reconciliation he offers our troubled and warring world. The early Christian martyrs knew that witnessing to the reconciliation achieved in Jesus leads to persecution. The price of pursuing peace and reconciliation was death for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This living bread, so freely and generously shared with us, comes at a terrible cost.

It is also worth noting that, for John, eternal life is more than just living forever and it does not begin sometime in the distant future. Living eternally means doing the things that matter eternally. That is what Jesus’ “signs” are all about. Jesus shares his bread with a hungry crowd; Jesus provides wine in abundance for a peasant wedding; Jesus speaks with a Samaritan woman-a bitter enemy of his people; Jesus heals a cripple who is living on the fringe of the fringe; Jesus opens the eyes of a man born blind and deemed under the curse of God. These are signs not because they are miracles, but because they show the miraculous power of God turning toward the poor, the outcast and the rejected. What matters eternally is how we treat those deemed the least of all people.

These verses resonate, I believe, with our Lutheran insistence that the Eucharistic bread and wine are not figuratively, metaphorically or symbolically Christ’s Body, but truly and actually the Body and Blood of Christ. This is so because unless the resurrected Christ is present, there is no Church. But because the bread and wine on our altar is the Body and Blood of Christ and because we are what we eat, the congregation eating this food is likewise the Body of the Resurrected Christ in the world today. I have always found it interesting that John’s gospel does not end with Jesus sending his disciples out to proclaim the gospel or with Jesus ascending to the right hand of God. John’s gospel ends the way the other gospels begin: with the disciples leaving their nets and their boat to follow after Jesus. The last words spoken by Jesus to his disciples in the Gospel of John are “follow me.” John 21:19. It is as though John simply cannot conceive of the church without the presence of its resurrected Lord.

Sunday, August 9th

August 3, 2015UncategorizedBible, bread of heaven, Church, discipleship, eternal life, faith, gospel, gun violence, holiness, Holy Spirit, justice, Lectionary, Letter to the Ephesians, poverty, prayer, preaching, Psalms, racism, Religion, Saint John, Saint Paul, secularism, Sunday Lessons, theology, violencerevolsen

ELEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

1 Kings 19:4-8
Psalm 34:1-8
Ephesians 4:25—5:2
John 6:35, 41-51

PRAYER OF THE DAY: Gracious God, your blessed Son came down from heaven to be the true bread that gives life to the world. Give us this bread always, that he may live in us and we in him, and that, strengthened by this food, we may live as his body in the world, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

I heard a sermon not too long ago in which the preacher relayed an illustrative anecdote I can still recall-a rarity in preaching. He told us about how he was seated next to a fellow on a flight out of Chicago who immediately noticed his clerical collar, pegged him accurately as a minister and began ragging on the church. The church is full of hypocrites, the church is judgmental, the church only cares about its members, etc., etc. The preacher replied, “Yes, and you don’t know the half of it. As an insider, I can tell you it is worse than what you think. But let me tell you about the wonderful God who loves these judgmental, hypocritical and selfish people!”

Though clever, I think that response was a bit disingenuous. This week our psalmist invites us to “taste and see that the Lord is good.” According to the Letter to the Ephesians, the church exists solely to make that appeal to the world through its existence as a counter-cultural community. It is within the Body of Christ that God’s good gifts and God’s good intent for all creation are revealed. It is within the church that the Bread of Heaven is made available and life grounded in what is eternal can be glimpsed. If Jesus isn’t making a difference in the lives of people who follow him, then why should anyone else bother with him? If the church merely reflects the same secular values as everyone else, the same racial segregation found in our schools and neighborhoods, the same preoccupation with meeting budgets, maintaining property and raising money as any other civic organization, why even waste time visiting?

Let’s be clear about one thing. The church is a holy people, but holiness is not to be equated with moral superiority. To be holy literally means to be “set apart” for a unique purpose. A saint is rather like a recovering alcoholic and the church is in many respects similar to an AA meeting. We are people who recognize our addiction to an unsustainable consumer lifestyle supported by a ruthlessly destructive and inequitable economy. We are a people struggling against an ingrained belief in the necessity of violence to preserve peace. We are a people striving to be honest about our mortality, our limitations, our prejudices and the destructive consequences of our sins, all within a society that is constantly lying to us about these things. By the grace of God, we have been set free to pursue life within a culture of death. We have received the gift of sobriety and we need support from one another to hang on to it. When Paul tells us “through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places (Ephesians 3:10), he means to say that the church exists to let the world know that “it doesn’t have to be this way.” There is another way to be human.

Too often, the church offers tranquilizers instead of transformation. Your “vocation” is your job, however demeaning, ethically dubious or brutally exploitive it may be. The church peddles a therapeutic gospel helping you to deal with your circumstances in an inhumane world rather than delivering a bold proclamation causing you to long for the kingdom of heaven. As one worshiper put it recently, “church helps me get through the week.” Valium does the same thing, more or less. But is a spiritual coping mechanism the best we have to offer? Is that worth sacrificing a leisurely Sunday morning with a fresh bagel, cream cheese and the New York Times? Our lessons for this week seem to be saying, “Come on, people of God. We are better than this.”

1 Kings 19:4-8

Once again, the lectionary in its wisdom has given us an indecipherable fragment of a much larger story. The time was the ninth century B.C.E. The place was the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Unlike the Southern Kingdom of Judah where the Davidic dynasty reigned over a more or less stable monarchy, Israel was governed by a series of dynasties succeeding each other through coups and violent revolutions. The King in Elijah’s day was Ahab, but the power behind the throne was his Phoenician wife, Jezebel. Jezebel was determined to uproot the worship of Israel’s God and replace it with the worship of her own god, Baal. Under the queen’s orders, the altars of the Lord were being destroyed and the priests of the Lord were being executed. Elijah was sent with a word for the King: “As the God of Israel lives before whom I stand, there will be neither rain nor dew for three years except by my word.” I Kings 17:1. When the drought came as Elijah warned, the King was determined to kill Elijah. Elijah spent the next three years of his life as a fugitive, hiding in the wilderness and living in exile. When the three years had ended, Elijah appeared to Ahab once again with a proposition. “Tell you what, your highness: you and your prophets of Baal build an altar to your god with an offering on it. I will build and altar to the Lord. The God who answers by consuming his offering with fire is God indeed.” Ahab accepted the offer. The story of the dueling gods is a gripping tale that you need to read in its entirety. (I Kings 18:1-40). For our purposes, it is enough to note that the Lord answered Elijah’s call with fire. Baal was a no show. After this demonstration, Ahab appears to have been convinced that the Lord was indeed Israel’s God. Jezebel, not so much. When the queen learned of the outcome of the contest, her determination to kill Elijah hardened into a campaign against him. Poor Elijah was on the run once again. That is where we find him in our lesson for Sunday.

Elijah “went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a broom tree; and he asked that he might die.” Vs. 4. Can you blame him? Three years living as a fugitive until finally he can get a hearing before the king. After such a spectacular demonstration of God’s lordship over Baal, you would think the issue had been settled once and for all. Instead, this remarkable sign only hardens the opposition to Elijah and the God he proclaims. Everything he has done seems to have been for naught. His whole life seems to have been wasted. This is midlife crisis on steroids! We are then told that Elijah was “touched by an angel.” But the angel has no message of hope, no promise of better things to come and no clear direction for him. The angel, however, does provide what Elijah needs most at the moment: food to continue his journey-wherever that might lead. The bread does not change Elijah’s desperate situation, but it gives him strength to go another forty miles. Vss. 6-8. And that is the end of the story.

OK. That is not the end of the story, but it does constitute the end of our reading. I encourage you to read on to find out what else happened. I Kings 19:9-21. Initially, I was somewhat miffed that the lectionary did not give us that story here or in the weeks to come. Yet I am beginning to think that maybe the lectionary folks actually got it right this time. I have to say that the angels that have appeared in my life seldom came with solutions to all of my problems. Most of the time, they have given me just enough of what I needed to take the next step. I think of my brother-in-law Bill, who spent three days with me at University of Washington Medical Center when my wife was gravely ill. Or I recall the court officer who once clapped me on the shoulder as I stood in the Union County Courthouse rotunda during a break in a difficult trial and said to me, “You look like you got the weight of the world on your shoulders. You ought to know your shoulders ain’t big enough for that. You got to let the Lord Jesus take that load off you.” These angels did not take away the challenges I faced or remove the obstacles in front of me. But they gave me just enough encouragement to take a few steps more. I think that is very often how God’s assistance comes to us. We don’t get what we pray for. We don’t get what we want. We get what we need and sometimes just barely that.

Psalm 34:1-8

This is a psalm of thanksgiving for deliverance from unspecified distress. The psalmist recognizes in his or her deliverance from harm and danger the saving work of God. This is one of the “acrostic” psalms, meaning that each new verse begins with the next letter in order of the Hebrew Alphabet. See my post for Sunday, July 26, 2015 for more on this poetic technique. As always, I encourage you to read Psalm 34 in its entirety.

Use of the acrostic form suggests to me that the psalm is more likely a mature reflection upon events in the past than a spontaneous expression of praise for something that just occurred. Perhaps I take this view because most of the saving acts of God I have experienced I see only in the rear view mirror. That is to say, looking back on my life I can recognize the work of the Holy Spirit in bringing me to the place where I stand today. But I am not one of those persons who experience the guidance of the Spirit in the present tense. I have never made a choice in my life that I felt certain was inspired, willed or directed by God. Instead, I have stumbled blindly along through the darkness only to discover much later that Jesus has been with me in the darkness and has somehow gotten me to where I needed to be. And this despite my having taken the wrong course, made the wrong decisions and pursued the wrong dreams.

As I noted last week, prayer is a fluid sort of thing in Hebrew worship. This psalm is an individual confession and testimony of faith addressed to the worshiping congregation. Though not spoken directly to God, it is nevertheless a prayer in the sense that it gives glory to God and expresses the psalmist’s heartfelt thanks for God’s deliverance. At the same time, it is offered to strengthen the confidence of the worshiping community in God’s willingness and ability to save. The psalmist invites the congregation to join him/her in magnifying the Lord and exalting the Lord’s name. vs. 3.

The psalmist invites us to “taste and see that the Lord is good.” Vs. 8. This invitation ties in well with the gospel lessons for both this week and last in which Jesus tells the crowds who came seeking him that he, himself, is the bread of life. This offer to “taste” makes clear that faith is neither an intellectual exercise nor an emotional attachment. Faith takes the shape of “eating” and sustaining oneself on the promises of the Lord. It is life lived out of a relationship of trust and confidence in God’s promises to provide all things necessary.

Ephesians 4:25—5:2

For my general comments about the Letter to the Ephesians, see my post of Sunday, July 12, 2015. This letter has much to say about the centrality of the church in God’s redemptive intent for the world. Having discussed the church’s role in the earlier chapters, Paul now turns to life as it must be lived within the church.

“Therefore put away falsehood, let everyone speak the truth with his neighbor.” Vs. 25. I believe it was Dr. Stanley Hauerwas who commented that this verse just about sums up the whole of Christian ethics. Clearly, truthfulness is at the center of life in Christ. There is no better testimony to the importance of truthfulness than the New Testament. The gospels do not tell the story of a strong church led by heroic personalities. They are unsparing in their portrayal of Jesus’ disciples as flawed and broken people who, each in their own way, failed their Master in his greatest hour of need. The epistles reveal a church divided by bickering, power struggles and disputes over doctrine, practice and morals. We tell these stories on ourselves not because they make us look good (they don’t) or because we are trying to conceal the skeletons in our closets (the skeletons are on full display in the living room), but because they tell the truth about us who follow Jesus. We are broken people in need of judgment, forgiveness and healing. Like recovering alcoholics, we need each other to help us remain sober. Nothing threatens our sobriety more than lies, secrecy and self-deception.

Sometimes I think the church fails to speak truth to the world in a straightforward and convincing way because we have failed to speak it effectively among ourselves. Though nearly every Christian denomination has issued numerous statements condemning racism, Sunday morning remains the most segregated hour in the United States. Sad to say, my own Lutheran denomination ranks disgracefully low when it comes to racial and cultural diversity. See The Most and Least Racially Diverse U.S. Religious Groups. This reality has taken on renewed urgency in light of the recent string of killings by police officers of black men and the racially motivated murder of African American worshipers at Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. We cannot continue pretending that the systemic racism permeating our culture does not also penetrate our church. Racism is a grievous wound to the Body of Christ desperately in need of healing. Healing cannot happen without a frank diagnosis delivered through truthful speech.

“Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor doing honest work with his hands, that he may be able to give to those in need.” Vs. 28. That might seem a tad obvious. Should a disciple of Jesus even need to be told not to steal? Perhaps, though, the issue is more subtle. The thief is enjoined to labor at “honest work” and to do so “with his hands.” Thievery is hardly limited to pick-pockets and check kiters. The greatest degree of theft in our culture is entirely legal. The Wall Street barons whose wantonly reckless and willfully deceptive practices drove our nation into recession went largely unprosecuted. It is standard practice for disability insurers to employ harassment, threats and endless paperwork against claimants they know are often too sick to persevere in the process. As an attorney, I often wondered whether assisting property and liability insurance carriers in avoiding payment of claims was “honest” and productive work. I wonder, too, whether the production of inherently lethal products, such as hand guns, constitutes work that can be done by a follower of Jesus. Though Christian faith of some sort seems like a prerequisite for election to the nation’s highest office, I wonder how one can claim Jesus as Lord while carrying on his/her person the codes for activating thermonuclear weapons capable of destroying entire cities.

Maybe it is time for disciples of Jesus to consider whether there are not professions or jobs with particular commercial interests that are incompatible with faith in Jesus. Perhaps we should reflect on what constitutes “honest” work. In my own Lutheran tradition, we seek to help people see their work as “vocation.” But does Jesus call us to produce or maintain weapons of mass destruction? Does Jesus call us to labor for firms whose sole purpose is to maximize profit, even at the expense of human welfare, the environment and global peace? Too often, I think, there is a vast disconnect between what we say about the sanctity of work and the way it is experienced by far too many people. Perhaps Paul is challenging us to ensure that our work is, in fact, honest, productive and contributory to human well-being.

“Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for edifying.” Vs. 29. Edifying speech is pretty much my job as a parish pastor. Over the years I have gotten pretty good at it-when I am on duty. When I am home with my family, among friends or with fellow clergy, not so much. Of course, we all need to “vent” once in a while. But I tend to think that we do that entirely too much in our culture and more than we should in the church. Edifying speech aims at building up the Body of Christ. As noted in the previous paragraphs, edification requires truthfulness and the truth is often painful. Yet the end game for all speech is to “import grace to those who hear.” Vs. 29. To that end, “bitterness,” “wrath,” “anger,” “slander” and “malice” are to be excluded. Vs. 31. Moreover, the truth is never merely the sum of the facts. It is always to be spoken with kindness. Vs. 32. Within the Body of Christ, the posture toward a fellow believer is that of Christ himself-infinite forgiveness.

All of this should give us some insight into what Paul means when he challenges us to be “imitators of God”? Vs. 5:1. Usually, when we accuse someone of “playing God,” we mean that this person is exercising authority he or she does not have. Or perhaps we mean that such a person is overreaching his or her limits and making decisions that affect the lives of people who have no input or say in those decisions. That figure of speech betrays a profound misunderstanding of the God who is revealed in Jesus Christ. The God and Father of Jesus Christ does not exercise overbearing power, but walks among us as the man who gave his life for the sake of others, suffering death rather than defending himself with violence. If we would truly “play God,” the proper model is not the CEO, but Jesus.

The most remarkable aspect of this letter to the Ephesians is its refusal to distinguish between the church’s inner life and its cosmic mission. According to Paul’s thought as expounded in this treatise, they are one and the same:

“Ephesians is supremely concerned about the unity of the Church. The writer exhorts the Church to maintain the unity it already possesses and stresses that the essential ingredient for achieving the harmony of unity in diversity is love (4:1-16). For him, the quality of the Church’s corporate life has everything to do with fulfilling its role in the world. As it embodies the unity it already possesses, the Church fulfills its calling to be the paradigm of the cosmic unity which is the goal of the salvation God provides in Christ (cf. 1:10). This role of the Church is outlined in 3:9, 10, where its existence is seen as God’s announcement to the principalities and authorities in the heavenly realms that he is going to make good on his multifaceted and wise plan for cosmic unity. Because the Church is the one new humanity in place of two (2:15), the one body (2:16; 4:4), it can be depicted as providing the powers with a tangible reminder that their authority has been decisively broken and that everything is going to be united in Christ.” Lincoln, Andrew T., Ephesians, World Biblical Commentary (c. 1990 by Word, Incorporated) p. xciv.

John 6:35, 41-51

The gospel lesson continues the dialogues set in motion by Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand at the beginning of chapter 6. Last week Jesus explained to the crowd that came seeking him after the feeding that he, himself, is the bread of life; the bread which comes down from heaven. Now the crowd begins to murmur. No doubt John would have us recall the murmuring of the children of Israel in the wilderness when they were hungry. For reasons that escape my simple mind, the makers of the lectionary have chosen to exclude verses 36-40. That is a shame because simple-minded people like me need those verses to get the full impact of what follows. So, for my fellow simpletons, here are the missing verses:

“But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me; and him who comes to me I will not cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me; and this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that every one who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.” John 6:36-40.

Now you can see why the crowd was murmuring. What is this mad man talking about? He didn’t come down from heaven! He came up from Nazareth. We know his family. We know the neighborhood where he grew up; the school he went to and the girls he dated. Where does he get off telling us that he came down from heaven? This is actually a very important question. Jesus’ answer is about to turn everything we think we know about God, heaven and eternal life on its head. In the first place, asking how Jesus could possibly be the Son of God is altogether the wrong question. It is wrongheaded because it assumes we know who God is apart from Jesus, his Son. It assumes that we can somehow find our own way to the Father. It assumes that we come to know God by being taught about God rather than being taught by God. It is through trusting in Jesus that God is made known. It is through fellowship with Jesus that the Father draws us to himself. You don’t start with your understanding of who God is to figure out what to think about Jesus. You begin with Jesus who draws you into knowledge of the Father.

John is also unapologetic about Jesus’ obvious human origins. Yes, Jesus is a flesh and blood person that can be touched. He is the living bread that can be “eaten.” That will be the topic of next week’s gospel. That is the way in which the Father draws us to himself. Whoever believes in Jesus both knows the Father and has eternal life. Note well the present tense, “has.” This is not the promise of some future blessed state. Life that is eternal begins now for all who believe. To live eternally is to live out of trust in Jesus doing those things that matter eternally. Unfortunately, we in the church have not always fully appreciated this present sense meaning of eternal life. We have tended to think of eternal life as synonymous with “after life,” or some notion of “heaven” as a strictly future reality. But Jesus would have us know that discipleship is not about passively waiting for eternal life as we sweat our way through this vale of tears. Discipleship is acknowledging that new life is ours today; the kingdom of God is now; and life that is eternal is life lived in fellowship with Jesus.

The humanity of Jesus was a barrier to the crowds’ acceptance of his claim to be the bread from heaven. But if the idea of God in the midst of dirty diapers, adolescent crushes, soil and the sweat of hard labor is difficult to swallow, that only demonstrates how much we have to learn from Jesus about God, about heaven and about eternal life.

Sunday, August 2nd

July 27, 2015UncategorizedBible, bread of heaven, Church, Covenant, David, discipleship, Exodus, faith, gospel, Gospel of John, Jerusalem, law and gospel, Lectionary, Letter to the Ephesians, mana, Moses, prayer, Psalms, Religion, Saint John, Saint Paul, theology, Wilderness Wanderingsrevolsen

TENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15
Psalm 78:23-29
Ephesians 4:1-16
John 6:24-35

PRAYER OF THE DAY: O God, eternal goodness, immeasurable love, you place your gifts before us; we eat and are satisfied. Fill us and this world in all its need with the life that comes only from you, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

John’s gospel doesn’t spoon feed us the good news. Instead, we are given signs, metaphors, images and symbols that don’t always fit neatly together into a coherent whole. Reading this gospel is hard work. This week’s lesson tells us that Jesus is the “bread come down from heaven.” Unlike ordinary bread, it is not obtained by human labor. It is a free gift. The “work” God requires of us is to believe in Jesus. But is that really “work”? The language Jesus is using here does not set well with my Lutheran upbringing. From Sunday School through seminary I have been taught never to mention “faith” and “works” in the same breath. Yet Jesus seems to be doing just that. He is telling us that the bread which comes down from heaven is more than a simple handout. Receiving it gratefully is the work God requires of us.

Perhaps it is best to think of the bread from heaven as a precious gift that nevertheless demands much. It is not simply a cash gift that can be spent in any way the recipient pleases. Receiving the bread from heaven is more like being given a very fine violin. As a gift, it is obviously free. Yet such a gift clearly demands much of the recipient. If a violin is going to be of any use to me, I must learn to play it. Unless I happen to be one of those rare musical prodigies capable of picking up an instrument cold and making music, I will probably need years of instruction and hours upon hours of practice before I am merely proficient. If I want to become more than proficient, if I want to become a performance level violinist, I am looking at a lifetime commitment that will require much sacrifice and dedication to the instrument.

It is not surprising to me that relatively few people become accomplished musicians. Though I am not a musician myself, I have them in my family and among my friends. They know how much time goes into learning scales, practicing arpeggios and learning to read music-all of which comes before you can begin making music. They know the frustration of being stuck at a plateau in development beyond which it seems impossible to advance. They also know that every advance must be maintained by relentless practice. There is no such thing as a vacation from the instrument. Nevertheless, they tell me that making music is their greatest joy.

I believe the gift that is Jesus is a little like that. God offers us through him a restored relationship, friendship with God’s self. Friendship is not built over night. It takes time. Friendship requires a lot of energy, forgiveness, growth and patience. Friendship changes you in ways you cannot predict. Friendship is risky. You can never know the price you might have to pay for loyalty, faithfulness and love for your friend. Jesus called his disciples friends. John 15:14-15. That is a marvelous gift that demands much of us. Perhaps that is what Paul means when he urges us to “lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called.” Ephesians 4:1. Maybe that is just another way of telling us to live fully and completely out of our friendship with Jesus. There is no other way to receive such a free, precious and wildly extravagant gift.

Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15

Less than two months into their new found freedom brought about by God’s marvelous, liberating miracle at the Red Sea, Israel is in a deep funk. The people are learning that freedom is in many respects more difficult than slavery. The slave knows that the master will feed him/her for no other reason than that a slave must eat to live and live to work. A slave has few weighty decisions to make. The master makes all the decisions. A slave does not have to wonder about what tomorrow will bring. The following day brings more of the same. Cruel, burdensome and oppressive, to be sure, but at least it is predictable. By contrast, the wilderness (and freedom) is highly unpredictable. You can’t assume that you are going to find enough water to sustain your community ten miles down the road. No master will be there to give you your rations. In the wilderness, you have no choice but to place your trust in the God who brought you there.

The people of Israel were hungry. As we all know, hunger can bring out the worst in us. Such was the case for Israel. It seems the people caught a bad case of “good old days” disease. They began reminiscing about the days back in Egypt where at least they had food. “Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate bread to the full,” they complain. Vs. 3. I doubt that, as slaves, they really were that well fed. But that is how it is when you look back at the past through rose colored glasses. Everything was better back then. The church was so full we had to set up chairs in the aisles to accommodate everyone. The Sunday School was filled with kids-and they behaved themselves better and had more respect than kids these days. Neighborhoods were friendlier. City streets were safer. Food tasted better. On and on it goes. Was the past really all that wonderful? Of course not! The Israelites were slaves. Had they forgotten so soon what it was like to be treated like cattle? Evidently, they had forgotten and that should not surprise us overly much. Good old days disease is as much a part of our age as it was in Biblical times. As Barbra Streisand sang in the movie, The Way We Were,

Memories, may be beautiful and yet
What’s too painful to remember
We simply choose to forget

That is the problem with the “good old days.” Our selective memories make the past seem a lot rosier than it really was. We fall into the trap of measuring the present against a past that is no more real than the Emerald City of Oz.

Furthermore, “good old days” disease represents more than just delusional thinking. It constitutes rebellion against our God. “This is the day which the Lord has made,” says the Psalm. “Let us rejoice and be glad in it.” Psalm 118:24. Who are we to throw the gift of today back in God’s face and tell God it isn’t good enough? Who are we to reject the time and place where God now places us and sit pouting because our memories of some other time and place seem better? God calls us to a new day. Our stubborn insistence on remaining in the old one needs to be named for what it is: sin.

That said, the journey from slavery into freedom is long and difficult. The people of Israel spent forty years in the wilderness on the way to Canaan. The way was slow and fraught with dangers. Sometimes it seemed as though they were not making any progress. Sometimes they appeared to be going nowhere. Often it seemed that they were losing ground. The life of discipleship to which Jesus calls us is no different. Perhaps that is why Paul and other New Testament writers employed the stories of Israel’s wilderness wandering as metaphors for that life. It is hard to believe that Jesus is leading us into a new creation when our bodies increasingly show their age, our energy level isn’t what it used to be and it seems as though the best years of our lives are behind us. It is hard to believe that Jesus is leading his church for the sake of the world when that church looks increasingly fractured, divided and marginalized. It is precisely when the going gets rough, when we see no evidence of progress and there seems to be no end in sight that the temptation to look back is strongest. But the scriptures warn repeatedly that there is nothing for us in the past and that the only way given to us is forward.

Of course, the good news here is that God can be trusted to provide for our needs along the way. Our needs may not be the same as our wants. Perhaps quail is not what Israel would have chosen from a more varied menu. The manna may have been sweet as honey, but even the bread of angels can become tiresome after forty years. Yet it was enough to sustain Israel throughout her journey and that is what Jesus promises as well. As the gospel for this Sunday points out, Jesus is our “bread from heaven” that sustains us.

Psalm 78:23-29

Our psalm for this Sunday is but a snippet from a much longer saga reciting Israel’s history from the Exodus to the rise of King David. As always, I encourage you to read Psalm 78 in its entirety.

This is one of the historical psalms in the psalter. It is similar in form and structure to Psalm 105 and Psalm 106 of the same genre. Historical psalms were employed by Israel chiefly in her commemorative celebrations, i.e., Passover, Day of Atonement, Feast of Booths, etc. They celebrate the acts pivotal to Israel’s self-understanding. Accordingly, the historical psalms also serve a didactic (teaching) purpose. In learning these psalms, each new generation internalized the great acts through which God displayed salvation to Israel and made her the unique nation she was.

The faith of Israel was unique in the ancient near east. The Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Phoenicians and Israel’s Canaanite neighbors saw the power of the divine chiefly in the realm of nature. Thus, their religion was built around the natural cycles of birth and death, seedtime and harvest, summer and winter. Their worship revolved around mythical themes of creation, the interaction of the gods behind the cosmic forces of death and life at work in the change of seasons. By contrast, Israel experienced the salvation of her God through God’s mighty acts in her history. Though Israel also recognized the cyclical processes of nature critical to agricultural existence, her worship gave meaning to these cycles through recitation of historical events taking place not in some distant mythical past, but in the realm of human events. Israel celebrated her deliverance from Egypt, the conquest of the land of Canaan, the establishment of the royal house of David and the dedication of the Temple in Jerusalem. Her worship and world view were anchored in these historical watersheds rather than in cosmic battles between the gods at the dawn of time.

The section of this lengthy psalm constituting our reading echoes in poetic form the lesson from Exodus. The story is not all sweetness and light as one might suppose from reading only the verses given us by the lectionary. Verses 17-22 point out that the gracious outpouring of mana and quail comes in spite of some serious provocation:

Yet they sinned still more against him,
rebelling against the Most High in the desert.
They tested God in their heart
by demanding the food they craved.
They spoke against God, saying,
‘Can God spread a table in the wilderness?
Even though he struck the rock so that water gushed out
and torrents overflowed, can he also give bread,
or provide meat for his people?’

Furthermore, God’s carrot is accompanied by a stick:

But before they had satisfied their craving,
while the food was still in their mouths,
the anger of God rose against them
and he killed the strongest of them,
and laid low the flower of Israel.

Vss. 30-31. Once again, the lectionary folks are doing their best to spare our left leaning, mainline protestant, upper middle class, ever white and ever polite sensibilities by excising all references suggesting that God might be something other than the gray-bearded slightly senile, over-indulgent grandfather that can be inoffensively slipped into our cultural landscape without disrupting the architectural skyline. Obviously, there is a serious disconnect between the God of the scriptures and the inoffensive god we would like to believe in who, like elevator music, fills in the uncomfortable silences but otherwise remains in the background. No wonder church attendance in mainline denominations is in decline. In fact, it is a wonder that anyone still comes! Just as nobody would waste time and money for a concert performance of background music pipped in over a third rate sound system, it is hard to imagine how anyone could become the least bit interested in such a boring god.

The psalm makes the point that God’s love for Israel (and the church, too, for that matter) is not a philosophical disposition shorn of all passion and feeling. The God of Israel’s love is passionate, jealous and intense. Anyone who has ever been in love knows how close anger lies at hand. Nobody can hurt us as deeply as those we love. God’s anger against us is the measure of God’s love for us. The sad reality is that God’s acts of mercy and kindness are too quickly forgotten. Too often we approach God with a sense of entitlement rather than gratitude and trust. Our demands take precedence over God’s commands. Our prayers resemble letters to Santa Clause, filled with our own self-centered demands. Yet God’s passionate love for us never grows cold. Even God’s judgment is designed to melt our cold hearts and re-ignite our trust. This psalm “makes evident how closely God’s grace and his judgment are related to each other.” Weiser, Artur, The Psalms, The Old Testament Commentary (c. 1962 S.C.M. Press, Ltd.) p. 541.

The historical recitation in Psalm 78 culminates with God’s selection of David as Israel’s king.

[God] chose his servant David,
and took him from the sheepfolds;
from tending the nursing ewes
he brought him to be the shepherd of his people Jacob,
of Israel, his inheritance.
With upright heart he tended them,
and guided them with skillful hand.

The rise of the monarchy in Israel was surrounded by controversy. The prophet and judge, Samuel, was appalled when the people demanded appointment of a king to rule over them so that they might “be like the other nations.” I Samuel 8:4-5. After all, God called Israel to be unlike the other nations. In a culture that regarded kings as equal to gods, only the Lord was worthy of the title “king.” Much of the prophetic tradition in Israel remained critical of the monarchy and saw it as a betrayal of all that Israel was called to be. Nevertheless, there is also in the Hebrew Scriptures an express belief that God’s covenant with David and the rise of his Kingdom was a saving event to be celebrated with thanksgiving. Psalm 78 is an example of this pro-monarchy sentiment.

We saw an echo of this pro-monarchy enthusiasm in last Sunday’s gospel when the crowd of five thousand, having eaten their fill of the loaves and fishes Jesus blessed, sought to take him and make him king by force. Clearly, Jesus must be the one sent by God to shepherd his people Israel. Had he not, as the psalm says, “rained down on them manna to eat, and gave them the grain of heaven”? Vs. 24. Yet Jesus seems intent on not becoming a king like David-or at least the kind of king the people were seeking. That becomes clear as Jesus speaks in this Sunday’s gospel about the true bread from heaven he has come to offer.

Ephesians 4:1-16

For my general comments on the Letter to the Ephesians, see my post of Sunday, July 12, 2015. At this point in the letter, Paul turns to a description of what life in Christ looks like. The remarkable thing about this text describing life in the church is the total lack of hierarchy. In virtually every other organization, be it social, political or religious, the key question always comes down to “Who is in charge?” In the Body of Christ, however, the key issue is “What is your gift?” “There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism and one God and Father of us all.” Vs. 5. Though the church is made up of individual members, each has his or her own “gift.” The gifts, however they may differ from one another, have one purpose: “to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Vs. 3.

Much scholarly debate has swirled around the enumeration of these gifts in verse 11. Some interpreters maintain that the apostles, evangelists, teachers and pastors represent offices in the church. Others maintain that these reflect natural gifts recognized by the community and exercised by individuals in non-structured communities. Lincoln, Andrew T., Ephesians, Word Biblical Commentary (c. 1990 by Word Incorporated) p. 233; Fischer, K.M., Tendenz und Absicht des Ephersbriefs, (c. 1973 by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht) pp. 21-39. Whichever the case may be, it is clear that the gifts are not intended to enhance the recipient, but to strengthen the unity of the church. Vss. 15-16. So what matters is not who has which gift, but how the gift is used. A pastor that pushes through an educational program that interests him or her, but does not meet the needs of the church is not rightly exercising the gift of ministry. A council officer that manages to get a new addition to the church building erected, but in doing so causes dissent and division throughout the congregation might be improving upon the structure of a building, but he or she is not “building up the Body of Christ.” Vs. 12. That does not mean, of course, that we all walk on egg shells and do nothing for fear of offending anyone. Sometimes uncomfortable truths need to be spoken. Often the mission of the church must take precedent over deeply valued traditions in the congregation. Correction and reproof is part and parcel of living together in love. The church will necessarily deal with divisive and controversial topics. But unlike the rest of the world where the most powerful personality prevails and issues are often settled by a simple up or down vote, we are a community determined to take whatever time is needed to arrive at a resolution and course of action that everyone can live with-even if it means sacrificing “progress.” Getting together is more important than getting ahead. For that sort of living, we need a lot of lowliness, forbearance, patience and meekness. Vs. 2.

More than any other epistle in the Pauline corpus, Ephesians highlights the cosmic purpose of the church as a sign of God’s intent to unite not merely Jews and Gentiles, but “to fill all things” with Christ. Vs. 10. “God gives Christ as head over all to the Church and it becomes his instrument in carrying out his purpose for the cosmos. The readers are to see themselves as part of this Church which has a universal role and which is to be a pledge of the universe’s ultimate unity in Christ.” Lincoln, supra at 248. In a religious landscape increasingly dominated by “personal salvation,” individual pseudo-psychological “self-help” and individual “spirituality,” Ephesians sounds a countercultural call to lose the self in a corporate life of discipleship that isn’t all about “me.” The church’s calling is to continue corporately the life Jesus lives in the world, embracing all of the hostility such life invariably provokes.

John 6:24-35

As you may recall from last week’s gospel, Jesus had to withdraw from the crowd of five thousand he had just fed as they were seeking to take him by force and make him king. The disciples set out for the other side of the Sea of Galilee that same evening. Jesus later rejoined them in their boat on the Sea and they arrived in Capernaum. Some of the five thousand pursued Jesus and found him there on the other side of the Sea. Now they are curious as to how Jesus was able to get himself across the sea without a boat, but Jesus cuts right to the chase. “You are here because you ate your fill. Not because you saw signs.” Vs. 26. Of course, the people had, in fact, seen a remarkable sign. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they witnessed a miracle only. They do not understand that the feeding was a sign; that the drama unfolding in the wilderness of Galilee was intended to reflect the wilderness of Sinai where the children of Israel wandered for forty years depending on the Lord for each day’s sustenance. The fact that they demand from Jesus a sign as proof of his claims demonstrates how thoroughly they have missed the meaning of what they experienced in the wilderness. They were looking for a way out of the wilderness to restored national power and prosperity. Jesus offers them a restored relationship with the Lord who promises to give them abundant life in the midst of the wilderness. That is the true bread that comes down from heaven.

It is obvious that the crowed has misunderstood the story related in our first lesson from the Book of Exodus. The people credit Moses with providing their ancestors with bread in the wilderness and they hope that Jesus will do the same. But Jesus points out that it was not Moses, but the Lord who provided for the children of Israel. Faith in Moses or any other human leader is misplaced. Furthermore, fixation on things like bread that ensure mere survival is insufficient. One does not live by bread alone. Life that is abundant and eternal flows from a vital relationship of trust in the God who alone can give us such life.

So what is this “bread” that comes down from heaven? It is Jesus, plain and simple. There is no “work” demanded by God as a price for this bread. It has already been freely given and now stands in the questioners’ very presence. The “work,” such that it is, amounts simply to “believing in the one God sent.” Vs. 29. Belief, of course, is not mere ascent to a theological proposition. To believe in Jesus is to trust Jesus; to live out of a relationship of faith in his promises. But this is God’s work, not our own. God wins our trust and strengthens our faith by consistently demonstrating his own faithfulness to us.

This is one of many instances throughout John’s gospel in which Jesus uses the “I am” construction (in Greek, “Ego eimie”). This “I am” of Jesus echoes the “I am” spoken to Moses in response to his inquiry about God’s name. God replies “I am that I am” or, as some translators put it, “I will be who I will be.” Exodus 3:13-15. This statement is less an ontological assertion about God than it is a declaration that God demonstrates who God is by God’s acts of faithfulness to the covenant with Israel as shown by what follows immediately thereafter. God instructs Moses: “Go and assemble the elders of Israel, and say to them, ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, has appeared to me, saying: I have given heed to you and to what has been done to you in Egypt. I declare that I will bring you up out of the misery of Egypt, to the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, a land flowing with milk and honey.’” Exodus 3:16-17. So too, the full significance of the “I am” Jesus pronounces will become clear only when he completes the work his Father has sent him to do. Not until he is “lifted up” will Jesus’ glory as the only Son of the Father be made known. John 12:27-36.

Sunday, July 26th

July 20, 2015UncategorizedBible, Church, discipleship, empire, faith, gospel, hunger, idolatry, intentional communities, justice, late stage capitalism, Lectionary, non-violence, peace, poor, poverty, Psalms, public witness, radical discipleship, Religion, resurrection, Saint John, Saint Paul, starvation, Sunday Lessons, theology, violence, warrevolsen

NINTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

2 Kings 4:42-44
Psalm 145:10-18
Ephesians 3:14-21
John 6:1-21

PRAYER OF THE DAY: Gracious God, you have placed within the hearts of all your children a longing for your word and a hunger for your truth. Grant that we may know your Son to be the true bread of heaven and share this bread with all the world, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

John’s account of Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand differs from that of Matthew, Mark and Luke in several respects. Perhaps the most significant detail we learn from John is that the people Jesus fed in such a remarkable way responded by trying to seize him by force and make him king. And why not? Jesus would likely make a great king, wouldn’t he?

Yes and no. Jesus understood only too well the nature and pitfalls of empire. He was well aware of the criticism leveled by the prophet Jeremiah against the kings of Judah reflected in our lesson for this Sunday. But he was not about to identify with the “righteous Branch” from the line of David for which Jeremiah longed. Jesus understood that the flaw lay not merely in the character of Judah’s kings, but in the monarchical system itself. A king’s integrity cannot transform the imperial machinery of injustice into the gentle reign of God. A government that rules through coercion backed by violence cannot bring forth justice and peace-even in the hands of a good ruler. That is why Jesus would not be king, would not permit his disciples to raise the sword in his defense, would not invoke angelic power to deliver him from arrest and execution. In so doing, he would only have become another tyrant. Under the reign of Jesus, we might have seen, relatively speaking, a “kinder, gentler” empire. But it would nevertheless still have been the same oppressive and dehumanizing governmental machinery that runs on war, exploitation and blood.

Yet in the proper sense, Jesus is a king. When Jesus informed Pilate that “my kingdom is not of this world,” he did not mean to say that his was a kingdom of the afterlife or of inward spiritual perfection. He said rather that his kingdom does not operate under the same violent ideology of empire that props up the nations of the world. If it were such a kingdom, then of course, Jesus’ disciples would be expected to take up the sword in his defense. Pilate simply cannot comprehend how Jesus can be so indifferent to his power. “Don’t you know,” he fumes, “that I have power to release you, and to crucify you?” John 19:10. The threat of violence is the only weapon in Pilate’s quiver. When it fails to intimidate Jesus, Pilate suddenly finds himself powerless and he knows it. Rome is face to face with the ruler of a kingdom it cannot defeat. The empire crumbles when nobody takes its threats seriously anymore.

It is hardly the case that Jesus is indifferent to actual, physical hunger. He recognizes, however, that the machinery of empire cannot finally redress injustice, oppression and violence that cause hunger among the greater part of humanity. The systemically evil empire cannot be reformed. Nor will it do to sweep it away with violence, thereby sowing seeds for the rise of a similar imperial regime. The allure of empire can only be dismantled by the creation of a new regime in its midst unmasking it with truthful speech and refuting its claim to allegiance by its existence as a peaceful and just community allied solely with God’s just reign. Empire is undone when the church begins to live as though Jesus really did rise from death and that his resurrection makes a difference.

This story, as John tells it, has radical implications for a consumer culture with an economy driven by greed, where economic growth is measured in terms of corporate profitability while the availability of good jobs with benefits evaporates, wages decline and working hours increase. “Food insecurity,” which is a euphemism for malnutrition and hunger, is increasingly prevalent in our country even as the market indicators reach historically high levels. Stimulating this perverse economy will do nothing to bring about bread for all. It is time we all stop pretending that it will and recognize that a radical reversal must take place in order for all to eat. The Bible has a term for such a reversal: repentance.

Repentance is, to be sure, a change of heart. But a genuine change of heart cannot help but have societal ramifications. The call here is for a church that identifies with the hungry, not merely to solicit their votes in a campaign to reform the empire, but to enlist them as partners in dismantling the machinery of oppression. While it is hard to imagine a church such as mine, that is so far removed from the realities of hunger, engaging the hungry in such a way, imagination is precisely what we need. Faithful, prophetic imagination is to the church what the sword is to the empire-the weapon of choice.

2 Kings 4:42-44

This short story is one of many about Elisha and his miraculous works found in Chapter 4 of the Second Book of Kings. Elisha, you may recall, was the prophetic successor to Elijah who was taken up into heaven by a chariot of fire. He was a member and perhaps the leader of an obscure group identified in Second Kings only as “the sons of the prophets.” According to Professor Gerhard Von Rad, these groups constituted separate communities within the framework of Israelite society closely associated with local sanctuaries. Von Rad, Gerhard, Old Testament Theology, Vol. II, (c. 1960 by Oliver & Boyd) p. 26. Members of these groups were likely drawn from a very low economic and social stratum in the population lacking both power and status. Ibid. They seem to have lived together in communities. Von Rad further states that “[w]e are probably right in thinking that these bands of prophets were almost the last representatives of pure Jahwism and its divine law” in a society increasingly dominated by Canaanite religion and culture. Ibid 26-27. They were married, had children and apparently held property and so should not be understood as a monastic order of any kind. Over time, as kings in Israel and Judah favoring the traditional faith of Israel came to power, the sons of the prophets evolved into a professional guild of persons with the unique ability to speak on God’s behalf. By the time of the prophet Amos, the guild appears to have become little more than the mouthpiece of the monarchy of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Hence, Amos specifically denies being the son of a prophet. See Amos 7:14-15.

Based on what proceeds in II Kings 4:38, we know that this story takes place during a famine. A man comes to Elisha with a “first fruits offering.” Exodus 23:14-19. We do not know precisely why this offering was made under these circumstances. There is no statutory requirement in the Pentateuch for first fruits offerings to be presented to prophetic communities. As the sons of the prophets were frequently associated with shrines, however, it would not be unusual for them to take on priestly duties as well. Elisha orders his servant to share the offering (twenty loaves of bread and a sack of grain) with the rest of the sons of the prophets numbering about one hundred. The servant, quite understandably, balks at the notion. After all, the offering is not large enough to feed the whole community. It is better that the community’s leader, Elisha, be spared than that he perish from starvation along with the entire community. Elisha is confident, however, that there will be enough for the community and to spare. This confidence is based on a word he has received from the Lord to that effect. Vs. 43. Like Jesus, Elisha focuses not on the magnitude of the hunger or the scarcity of his resources, but on the promise of the Lord to provide. Once again, this story challenges us to join the psalmist’s affirmation that God can indeed be trusted to provide for every living thing.

Psalm 145:10-18

This is one of the “acrostic” psalms, the others being Psalm 119; Psalm 9; Psalm 10; Psalm 34; Psalm 37; Psalm 111; Psalm 112; and Psalm 25. Each new verse begins with the next letter in order of the Hebrew Alphabet. An English example might look like this:

Awesome is our God and Creator.

Breathtaking are God’s mighty works.

Clearly, the Lord is God and there is no other.

And so on down to letter Z. This kind of composition assists in memorization which, in a pre-literate society, is the primary means of passing down music and literature.

The psalm as a whole extols the character of God as both compassionate and mighty. It is both an expression of praise to God as well as a confessional statement made to the people of God declaring God’s goodness to all of Creation. Prayer is fluid in the Psalms. Often the same psalm will address God, the worshiping community, the whole of creation and the psalmist himself/herself within the same prayer. Note that although the people of the covenant are in the best position to recognize and witness to this God, they are not the only beneficiaries of God’s compassion. God is receptive to all who call upon him. vs. 18. The entire earth is God’s concern.

We can see in vs 15 an echo of the petition from the Lord’s Prayer, “Give us this day or daily bread.” “The eyes of all look to thee, and thou givest them their food in due season. Thou openest thy hand, thou satisfiest the desire of every living thing.” Psalm 145: 15-16. It is just because sustenance comes from the hand of God that we can be content with this day’s bread without worrying about tomorrow. The assurance and confidence in God’s willingness and promise to meet our needs ties in very nicely with the feeding of the five thousand and the discourse that follows throughout John Chapter 6.

Ephesians 3:14-21

“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.” Vss. 14-15. There is a play on words here that gets lost in the translation. The Greek word for “father,” “pater” is the root for “patria” which means “country” or “father land.” The significance of this claim would not have been lost to folks living under the yoke of Rome which claimed to be the father of all peoples. This is a question of “Who’s your daddy?” aimed directly at Caesar. Disciples of Jesus owe their ultimate allegiance only to their Master. Nationalistic loyalties cannot be permitted to fracture the unity of Christ’s Body in which there are no national, racial, tribal or cultural divisions.

When Paul speaks here of “power,” it is always the power of the Spirit that is grounded in love. Urging his listeners to “put on the whole armor of God,” Paul turns this militaristic image on its head by identifying the church’s weaponry as truth, righteousness, peace, faith and prayer. Ephesians 6:10-20. He prays that “Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.” Vs. 17. It is through being “in Christ,” that one becomes grounded in love; for Christ Jesus is God’s concrete expression of love.

Perhaps more than any of the other Pauline letters, Ephesians pictures the church as a counter-cultural community whose worship and practices place it on a collision course with the priorities of the Roman Empire. Though it takes different forms, empire is very much alive and well today. Multi-national corporate interests that manipulate governments with their vast resources, educational institutions that promote a violent sports culture, the glamour industry that denigrates the bodies of young girls and the banking industry that holds our economy hostage to its interests are all examples of imperial power. Because we owe our jobs, financial security and education to these entities, we find it hard to resist having our lifestyles dictated by them. Nonetheless, as I have previously noted, there are a growing number of intentional communities seeking to give expression to such radical discipleship. See my post of Sunday, November 23, 2014.

John 6:1-21

In John’s gospel, Jesus’ miracles always trigger questions/dialogue/confrontation spinning out lengthy discourses by Jesus. This story about Jesus’ feeding of five thousand people serves as an opener for a lengthy discourse he is about to have with his disciples, the crowds and his opponents. The dialogue is rich with sacramental imagery. Just as Jesus drew a distinction in his dialogue with the Samaritan woman between regular water and living water (John 4:7-15), so in the chapters to come Jesus will distinguish between bread that is merely “food which perishes” and “food that endures to eternal life.” John 6:27. Jesus finally discloses to his conversation partners that he himself is “the bread which came down from heaven” and that whoever “eats of this bread…will live forever.” John 6:51. At the end of this discourse, many of Jesus’ disciples desert him.

Unique to John’s telling of the story is an unnamed youth. He appears on the scene just as the disciples are facing what they view as a crisis. Five thousand people have been with Jesus for a long time out in the wilderness. They are hungry and we all know that hungry masses can easily turn violent. Buying food for all these people is not an option. Even if the disciples could have scared up two hundred denaii and there had been a deli nearby, the likelihood that it would have food on hand to serve five thousand is slim.

At this point, Andrew brings the young boy’s tendered lunch to the attention of Jesus. We don’t actually know whether the boy offered his lunch or whether Andrew commandeered it. The lesson does not tell us one way or the other, but it would be just like a kid to do something like putting up his lunch under these circumstances. A kid doesn’t understand that what little he has in his lunch box cannot possibly make a dent in the hunger of five thousand people. When he becomes a man, he will understand that there is only so much to go around; that if people are hungry it’s their problem, not his; that the best chance you have of survival is to hang on to what you have got and defend it with all means necessary. But at this point, he is just a kid. He doesn’t understand “the real world.” The only thing he does understand is that Jesus wants to feed this hungry crowd. He believes Jesus can do it and that he has something to offer that Jesus can use. Small wonder, then, that Jesus tells us “unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 18:3. The first step to becoming a disciple of Jesus is unlearning all the lessons of adulthood.

After feeding the five thousand, Jesus must beat a hasty retreat to avoid being taken by force and made king. Vs. 15. At the end of the chapter, Jesus will be deserted not only by this crowd who would have made him king, but also by most of his own disciples. This discourse is therefore a microcosm of the gospel narrative set forth at the outset: “He came to his own home, and his own people received him not. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become the children of God…” John 1:11-12.

For reasons that are not clear from the text, the disciples got into their boat and embarked without Jesus. Was this because they had become separated from Jesus in the hubbub ensuing as the crowd tried to acclaim him king? Or, sensing the danger that might result from the crowd’s coronation of Jesus, did the disciples simply flee and abandon him? In either case, they were relieved to discover that the approaching figure was none other than Jesus. On their own, the disciples appear to have been struggling against the sea. But on taking Jesus into the boat, they discover that they have arrived at their destination. This is, I believe, one of the many instances in which John wishes to make clear that “apart from me [Jesus], you can do nothing.” John 15:5. As I have often pointed out before, John’s gospel ends not with Jesus ascending to the right had of the Father or with Jesus sending the disciples out, but with Jesus calling his disciples to follow him. John 21:15-23. John cannot imagine the church without the presence of Jesus in its midst leading it forward.

Sunday, July 19th

July 13, 2015UncategorizedBabylonian Exile, Bible, Church, Covenant, discipleship, faith, faith formation, Good Shepherd, Holy Spirit, Jeremiah, justice, Lectionary, peace, Persecution, poor, poverty, prayer, preaching, Psalms, Religion, Saint Paul, Sunday Lessons, teenagers, violence, youthrevolsen

EIGHTH SUNDY AFTER PENTECOST

Jeremiah 23:1-6
Psalm 23
Ephesians 2:11-22
Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

PRAYER OF THE DAY: O God, powerful and compassionate, you shepherd your people, faithfully feeding and protecting us. Heal each of us, and make us a whole people, that we may embody the justice and peace of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“…they were like sheep without a shepherd…” Mark 6:34.

The greatest difficulty with this metaphor is our inability and/or unwillingness to see ourselves as sheep. I would prefer to think of myself less as a heard animal and more like a common house cat. I go where I choose, hang around as long as I get fed and leave for better digs when the opportunity presents itself. My own life story, as I frequently narrate it, contains more than a few first person singular pronouns. This is “my” story of the choices “I” made that make “me” who “I” am.

The truth is, I am a product of a mother who was reading Bible stories and praying with me from as far back as I can remember. I was shaped by the elder siblings I sought to emulate. I was indoctrinated by the hymns I sang in my home church year after year and, though probably in a subliminal way, by hundreds of sermons preached in my hearing. Though the church of my childhood was less than prophetic in naming the sin of racism, it was nevertheless a community in which racial slurs and demeaning stereotypes were not tolerated. It was a place where a kid my age who in those days was labeled “retarded” could find full acceptance and a refuge from the merciless teasing and bulling he faced every day at school. Though far from perfect, my church was enough like the Body of Christ to form in my heart a belief in Christ and a vision the reign of God he proclaims. It was a flock of the Good Shepherd.

Of course, there were other forces shaping me as well. I had peers whose influence drew me in ways contrary to the reign of Christ. I listened to music that glorified drug abuse, promiscuous sex and violence. I attended schools where athletic achievement was celebrated more than learning, popularity more than character and physical beauty more than virtue. Nationalism/Patriotism elevated the flag over the cross, often confusing and conflating faithful discipleship with good citizenship. Furthermore, for all the talk about how political discourse has become so angry, polarized and uncivil in our day, I can’t say that it’s any worse than in my own youth back in the sixties when politicians called each other communists and the generations mutually excoriated each other with dehumanizing caricatures. There were plenty of shepherds out there besides the Good Shepherd seeking to direct me, promising to lead me to the good pastures and quiet waters along easier paths eschewing the cross. That I have remained within the flock of the Good Shepherd is more a testimony to the might of the Spirit of that Good Shepherd working through the means of grace and the care of a faithful community than any decision I have ever made in my life.

I try to keep that in mind when I preach to a people whose televisions and radios broadcast hate speech almost 24/7 into their homes. I try to remember that when I confront a confirmation class that finds Katy Perry infinitely more interesting and inspiring than a 60 year old bald guy with a seminary education. I try remember how the Spirit continues to work through the church with all its faults as I critically examine my own life and realize that, if Christianity ever became an outlawed religion, the prosecutor might have a difficult time amassing evidence sufficient to convict me. I will also work too keep before me the testimonies of faith I heard last week by children, teenagers and young adults at the Ekklesia Project Gathering discussed further below. They are proof enough that the Good Shepherd knows his own and calls, gathers and enlightens them. The Church is in Jesus’ care and it’s going to be just fine.

Jeremiah 23:1-6

The prophet Jeremiah’s ministry took place during the last dark days of the Kingdom of Judah-as did that of Ezekiel (see my post for Sunday, July 5, 2015). The little kingdom emerged from Assyrian domination around 640 B.C.E. under the able leadership of King Josiah, who gained a large measure of power and independence for his country. Under his reign Judah’s territorial control spread beyond even the borders of the united Kingdom of David and Solomon. See Bright, John, A History of Israel, Second Edition (c. 1972 by Westminster Press) pp. 321-322. But that good fortune was not to last. Egypt and Babylonia soon rose up to fill the power vacuum left after Assyria’s fall. Josiah was slain in a fruitless battle with Egyptian forces on their way to join the remnant of the Assyrian army in a last desperate stand against Babylon. The victorious Pharaoh Neco placed one of Josiah’s sons, Jehoiakim, on the throne as his vassal. Ibid 324-325. Shortly thereafter, in 605 B.C.E., the Babylonian empire under Nebuchadnezzer soundly defeated Egypt in the battle of Carchemish and began advancing into Palestine. Ibid. Seeing the impressive string of victories won by the Babylonian army against Judah’s neighbbors, Jehoiakim reluctantly switched his allegiance to Nebuchadnezzer.

Jehoiakim’s allegiance to Babylon was not to last. A victory of sorts by the retreating Egypt army against the Babylonian forces late in 601 B.C.E. led Jehoiakim to believe that the Babylonian invasion had reached its high water mark and would soon run out of steam. The future, he felt, lay with Egypt. So Jehoiakim switched sides once again, rebelling against Babylon. Ibid 326. This rash decision sealed Judah’s fate. Babylon was far from out of steam. Nebuchadnezzer advanced against Judah in 597. Jehoiakim had the good sense to die before Babylon laid siege to Jerusalem. His eighteen year old son, Jehoiachin ascended to the throne and ruled all of three months before the Babylonians forced Judah’s surrender and placed an uncle of the king, Zedekiah, on the throne. Ibid.

Zedekiah, was a weak and indecisive ruler easily swayed by his advisors who were intent on restoring Judah to its former glory under King David. Under their influence, the king engaged in a diplomatic strategy of playing his Babylonian master off against Egypt. This was a dangerous game that Zedekiah ultimately lost. In reliance upon a promise of support from Egypt, Zedekiah led his nation in revolt against Babylonian domination. Egyptian support never came and Jerusalem was surrounded and subjected to a brutal siege that ended with its destruction in 587 B.C.E. Ibid 328-321.

This is the context in which we read Jeremiah’s criticism of the “shepherds” of Israel, that is, her rulers. Jeremiah’s critique rests upon a tradition that saw the Davidic monarchy as the champion of justice, the protector of the poor and oppressed. E.g. Psalm 72. Yet in a hopeless effort to achieve national glory, the king and his minions disregarded the covenant at the heart of Judah’s existence. Judah’s kings took to worshiping the gods of other nations and relying upon international military alliances rather than on the Lord their God. The people of Judah suffered the horrific consequences of Judah’s misguided and self-serving political agendas. They were killed in the crossfire of war, driven into exile and impoverished as a result of the Babylonian reprisals. Rather than protecting and caring for the sheep, the leaders disregarded their welfare, exploited and scattered them among the nations. Yet the prophecy ends with a word of promise. God finally will raise up from the line of David a “righteous branch.” Vs. 5. Jeremiah continues to hope for a faithful descendent of David who, like David himself, will rule Judah with an eye toward caring for the sheep.

This lesson comes to us at the dawn of yet another a presidential contest promising to be contentious and divisive. It is appropriate to ask what our would be “shepherds” are doing to unite and care for the flock. Does winning the election trump leadership? Is purely selfish political ambition driving those who would be our shepherds? Judah’s rulers were intent on restoring the former glory of Judah under David and Solomon. That vision was entirely unrealistic under the current political circumstances. Moreover, Jeremiah would have his people know that what they regarded as the “good old days,” were in God’s view a dismal failure in terms of covenant faithfulness. Therefore, Jeremiah had the task of telling his people that God would not support the nationalistic aspirations of its faithless rulers and their diplomatic duplicity. God sought faithfulness, trust and obedience-qualities for which Judah’s rulers with their realpolitik had little use.

Ultimately, Judah’s shepherds were responsible for misleading the people with a false hope. They promised glory without obedience; greatness without faithfulness; prosperity without sacrifice. I might be on dangerous ground here, but I am convinced that all the presidential hopefuls thus far are guilty of the same sin. I also feel compelled to add that we, the people, share responsibility for their propagation of false hope. What we need are leaders that tell us the truth: that we face a crisis of malnutrition, poor schools and declining public infrastructure; that the gap between rich and poor is growing at an alarming rate; that more and more of our citizens are falling below the poverty line; that our disproportionate consumption of the earth’s resources is not sustainable. Further we need leaders who tell us that all of these problems are difficult and complex. Addressing them effectively will require sacrifice, hard work and profound changes in our lifestyles.

But that is a message nobody wants to hear and we are not likely to elect a leader who brings us such unwelcome tidings. Instead, we elect leaders who tell us what we want to hear: that the solutions are simple and require nothing from us. We vote for people who tell us that we can have prosperity, security and peace without paying a penny more in taxes, without enduring any risk and without sacrificing an ounce of comfort. Of course, soon after putting these people in office it becomes clear to us that we have not elected the messiah, but another human being who cannot possibly keep the promises that had to be made to win the election. So when the next election rolls around, we angrily kick the false god we have made off the pedestal on which we placed it and set up another one in its place. I don’t see this deadly cycle ending until we finally face up to the truth. Our problems cannot be regulated out of existence nor will they miraculously disappear if only we let the free hand of the market economy do its magic. As long as we continue to believe in lies, we will continue to elect liars.

I don’t have any suggestions for fixing the political system in Washington (or Bergen County either, for that matter). All I can do is point to the righteous branch Jeremiah spoke of. He does not come to us with promises of easy fixes and miraculous cures. Rather, he calls us to the slow work of witnessing to God’s Kingdom and following him in a common life of service to one another. I have always been convinced that the one and only thing the church has to offer the world is a vision of God’s alternative for living together. Jesus did not preach easy solutions. To the contrary, “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” Mark 10:25. “Strive to enter by the narrow door.” Luke 13:24. “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” Mark 8:34. I doubt Jesus could ever get himself elected to public office, but that is not a thing to which Jesus aspired. The reign of God is made known not in the seats of empire or the halls of congress, but in communities that spring from the righteous branch where “the least” of all people are valued the most, where the truth is spoken in love, where daily bread is enough and where the offer of hospitality is made to all people all the time. That is where the truth that sets us free is enacted. That is where the light from God’s future breaks into the darkness of the present age.

Psalm 23

Professor Walter Brueggeman has said that commenting on the 23^rd Psalm is almost pretentious. That has not stopped me from trying, however. Nonetheless, given the frequency with which this psalm appears in the lectionary, I am fairly sure that I have said about everything I have to say at my posts for Sunday, April 26, 2015, Sunday, October 12, 2014, Sunday, May 11, 2014, Sunday, March 30, 2014, Sunday, April 21, 2013 and Sunday, July 22, 2012. That, of course, does not mean that there is no more to be said. I encourage you to read the commentary by James K. Mead, Associate Professor of Religion at Northwestern College, Orange City, IA and the commentary by Joel LeMon, Associate Professor of Old Testament at Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, both on workingpreacher.org. I would also recommend The Shepherd Who Feeds Us by Debra Dean Murphy at ekklesiaproject.org. This article discusses the “shepherd” metaphor employed in the 23^rd Psalm and elsewhere. Finally, Augustine’s profound reflections on this psalm in his commentary are well worth rereading.

I will say that my thinking about this psalm has been influenced by my participation last week in the Ekklesia Project Gathering in Chicago at which believers of all Christian traditions came together to reflect on faith formation for young people in our respective communities. We heard some very moving testimony from young people whose lives have been meaningfully shaped by learning the art of discipleship in their churches. We were also made painfully aware of how our church is, to a very large degree, failing in that crucial task. What I took away from this gathering is the conviction that we seem to have a problem reaching younger people because Jesus has so much difficulty reaching us. We are called to a life of radical discipleship reflecting the countercultural claims of God’s reign of justice and peace in a violent and oppressive world. But young people (all people for that matter) have a difficult time seeing among us anything different from the rest of the world. To a large degree, we are still operating as though the nation depended upon us to provide religious grounding and ideological support for the American way of life. We have yet to digest the fact that the Empire no longer needs or wants our services. Once we get that new reality into our heads, we will be free to do what Jesus has always urged us to do: become and make disciples shaped by a desire for God’s reign.

Ephesians 2:11-22

This text is a poignant reminder that we in the church are, as St. Paul puts it in his Letter to the Romans, “wild olive shoots” that were grafted into the cultivated olive garden of Israel. Romans 11:17-24. This reminder is important because historically there has been a lot of bad theology out there suggesting that somehow the church has replaced Israel as God’s chosen people. This understanding is further exacerbated by our reference to the Hebrew Scriptures as the “Old Testament.” This might suggest that the covenant with Israel is obsolete, that Old Testament history is a story of failure that had to be corrected and replaced by the New Testament. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. The God and Father of Jesus Christ is the God of the Hebrew Scriptures. The God who raised Jesus from death is the same God that brought Israel up out of the land of Egypt and into the promised land. The covenant, it must be emphasized, was with Abraham and Sarah and their descendants. We gentiles come into the picture for one reason and one reason only: Jesus, the messiah of Israel, invites us in. As Paul makes very clear in his letter to the Romans, God has not revoked the covenant promises made to Israel. Israel still is God’s people and no less so merely because in God’s mercy the benefits of those promises have been extended to us gentiles through Jesus.

Of course, this passage also emphasizes once again that the flesh and blood church, the communion of saints, is the place where God’s saving work in Jesus Christ is made manifest. It is in the church that the mystery of God’s intent for all creation is revealed. Paul places great significance upon the church in this letter. As one very profound observation has it, “Paul’s revolutionary idea in Ephesians is the central idea not just of Ephesians but of the whole New Testament-in fact, of the whole of the Bible. The idea is that God is gathering together groups of people to love God, to love one another, to die to self, to become one. When you think about it, the Bible is about little more than God’s gathering a loving, united people to himself.” Alexander, John F., Being Church, (c. 2012 by John Alexander, pub. by Cascade Books) pp. 19-20. But it is also important to add that “These groups don’t exist for themselves, so they can feel warm and fuzzy. They have a purpose. And that purpose is to gather the whole world into groups that are in unity with God and therefore one another.” Ibid 20. And the purpose of that is to “make all men see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things; that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places.” Ephesians 3:9-10.

Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

Nothing infuriates me more than when the lectionary people take their unholy pruning shears to the scriptures and begin cutting and pasting together a reading made up of selective verses. That is exactly what has been done here. Between verses 34 and 53 we have Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand and his appearing to the disciples in the midst of the Sea of Galilee walking on the water. I suppose this was done because we will be hearing John’s account of the feeding in next week’s gospel. I can understand why one would not want to place these two parallel stories back to back. Still, it seems to me that it would have been better to select another Markan reading that would not have required such brutal surgery. That said, the lesson is what it is. So I will take it as it comes, though I cannot ignore the feeding of the five thousand or the encounter on the Sea of Galilee as they both have an impact on the meaning of the text.

It is highly significant that the sixth chapter of Mark begins with Jesus’ rejection at Nazareth and is followed by his sending out the Twelve to preach and heal. This mission activity appears to have alerted Herod Antipas to the Jesus movement and he is convinced that his old nemesis, John the Baptizer, has been raised. Our text for Sunday begins with the disciples returning from their mission and what appears to be a retreat for debriefing. Jesus and his disciples go out to a “lonely place” only to find that the crowds have gotten there ahead of them. Jesus finds the people much the way Jeremiah found them six centuries earlier-like sheep without a shepherd. It is significant that, just as the disciples relied upon the hospitality of the towns they visited in their mission, so now the crowd is hungry and in need of hospitality. The disciples suggest sending the people away to fend for themselves, but Jesus insists that they be shown the same hospitality the disciples were shown on their mission trip. Five loaves and two fish seem inadequate for such an undertaking but, when placed in Jesus’ hands, they turn out to be more than enough. The reading ends as it began-with crowds of people seeking Jesus.

More than anything else, these verses illustrate for us what it means to be a follower of Jesus. At the very center of discipleship is hospitality-the willingness to make space, share necessities and take time for the neighbor. That is not so difficult when it comes to welcoming neighbors I know and love. I always enjoy having people from my congregation drop in and see me when I am in the office. I look forward to visiting the people to whom I am pastor. I am less sanguine about the fellow in the ragged, stinking clothes who shows up ten minutes before Easter Sunday Eucharist is about to begin with a problem that needs my immediate attention and, of course, it is a problem that only cold, hard cash can solve. So, too, there are times when I am just not up to hospitality. Spending weeks on the road meeting, greeting, healing, exorcising demons from, caring for and lodging with people all over Galilee has got to take its toll. After all that, having to confront a hungry, needy crowd of thousands pushes the envelope to the limit. This is a poor introvert’s nightmare. Left to themselves, the disciples would have been overwhelmed. But they were not left to themselves. Just as a few loaves and fish in the hands of Jesus feeds over five thousand, so Jesus enables his disciples to stand with him as shepherd to this crowd of lost and directionless people.

In small churches like my own, radical hospitality is a challenge. We seem ill equipped to meet the very big challenges in our community. We fear that, if we were to take the steps we need to take in order to make all people feel welcome, we would be crushed under the weight of their need. Yet I think that behind this fear lies a dangerous misperception. We tend to think of ourselves as the helpers, saviors, givers. On the other side of the counter are the needy, the receivers, the “helped.” In fact, we are in as much need as those we invite and those we would “help” have gifts of their own to offer. Moreover, we are not hosts to a sea of demanding guests. Jesus is the host. Like the disciples, we are household servants as dependent upon Jesus as the guests. Our confidence arises from the conviction that Jesus always has matters well in hand, however chaotic they might seem.

Sunday, July 12th

July 6, 2015UncategorizedAmos, Church, Covenant, David, discipleship, economic injustice, economic justice, faith, gospel, Letter to the Ephesians, poor, poverty, preaching, prophecy, prophetic preaching, Psalms, Religion, Saint Mark, Saint Paul, Sunday Lessons, theologyrevolsen

SEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Amos 7:7-15
Psalm 85:8-13
Ephesians 1:3-14
Mark 6:14-29

PRAYER OF THE DAY: O God, from you come all holy desires, all good counsels, and all just works. Give to us, your servants, that peace which the world cannot give, that our hearts may be set to obey your commandments; and also that we, being defended from the fear of our enemies, may live in peace and quietness, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

While cleaning out one of the many closets in our sanctuary in anticipation of renovation work, I came across an old German Bible dated 1874. It was so very old and decrepit that it nearly came apart in my hands. Stuck in between the pages was the text of a sermon. Unlike the Bible, the sermon was written in English and was typed on yellowed paper with written interlineations, now barely legible. The text was the 10^th chapter of St. John’s Gospel, Jesus’ “Good Shepherd” dissertation. The preacher spoke about the love of a shepherd for his sheep, the shepherd’s intimate knowledge of the sheep and the shepherd’s commitment to protect the sheep even at the cost of his own life. That, said the preacher, is how Jesus leads, feeds, cherishes and protects his church. The preacher did not sign his work. He probably felt no need for that. Sermons, after all, are like news articles. They are timely and helpful the day they roll off the press. The next day somebody is wrapping fish in them. But the odd thing about this sermon was its timelessness. There was nothing in the sermon, no illustration, no example, nothing to give me a single clue about what was going on in the world at the time. This sermon could be preached as easily next Sunday as when it was originally delivered-however many years ago that might have been.

This anonymous sermon from the past lacked a prophetic dimension. Prophecy is not content simply to tell the “Old, Old Story of Jesus and his love.” Prophetic speech names the demons of our time that possess us, illuminates the shape sin takes within the power structures that enslave, impoverish and dehumanize us. Prophetic speech cracks open our imaginations so that our eyes can see the coming of God’s reign in the world around us. The objective of prophetic preaching is to introduce into our lives the crucified and resurrected Lord who calls us to follow him.

Prophetic speech is risky. John the Baptist lost his head over prophesy. Though our lesson tells us that King Herod heard John gladly, he was not prepared to risk his kingdom or the respect of his party guests to venture deeper into the mysteries John proclaimed. He had too much to lose. As theologian and teacher, Gerald O. West once said, “Sometimes the good news has to be heard as bad news before it can be received as good.” For those of us deeply invested in the way things are and comfortable with the status quo, the announcement “behold, I make all things new” sounds threatening. I hear alarm bells going off causing me to wonder: what am I about to lose? As long as I cannot see beyond all that I might lose, I will remain blind to what God is trying to give me. It is the task of prophetic speech to tell the Old, Old Story in ways that both show up the shallowness of our ways of living and, more importantly, give us a vision of the better hope God has for us in Jesus.

Amos 7:7-15

Amos is a cranky prophet with several strikes against him. For one thing, it doesn’t help that he is a foreigner. Though a resident of Tekoa in the Southern Kingdom of Judah, Amos was called and sent to preach to the people of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Furthermore, he was not connected with any recognized prophetic school or movement. He was, in his own words, “a herdsman and dresser of sycamore trees.” vs. 14. This is could be taken to mean that Amos was a laborer in the vineyards and herder of animals for a land owning farmer. It might also mean that Amos was a land owning farmer himself. But whether his origins were humble or privileged, Amos identified unequivocally with the poor in the land.

In the days of Amos, Israel was experiencing a period of military might, economic prosperity and religious revival under its powerful and successful King, Jeroboam II. II Kings 14:23-29. Happy days were here again and the people were convinced that the prosperity they enjoyed was proof of God’s favor. God was blessing Israel. The nation’s mood is aptly expressed by Professor John Bright:

“…one senses that Israel’s mood, rotten though she was, was one of optimism. This was evoked partly by pride in the nation’s strength and by the momentarily unclouded international horizon, but partly be confidence in the promises of Yahweh. The truth is that an inner perversion of Israel’s faith had taken place. The gracious acts of Yahweh toward Israel were doubtless assiduously recited in the cult, and her covenant with him periodically reaffirmed; but it appears (Amos 3:1 f; 9:7) that this was taken as earnest of Yahweh’s protection of the nation for all time to come, the obligation imposed by Yahewh’s favor (Amos 2:9-12), and by the covenant stipulations having been largely forgotten. Indeed, it seems that a perverted recollection of the patriarchal covenant, which consisted in Yahweh’s unconditional promises for the future, had virtually overlaied the Sinaitic covenant in the popular mind. Covenant obligation, in so far as it had not lost meaning altogether, was conceived as a purely cultic matter, the demands of which could be met-and in Israel’s view were met-by elaborate ritual and lavish support of the national shrines.” Bright, John, A History of Israel, (c. Westminster Press) p. 243.

Amos had a difficult message for Israel: God was not happy with Israel. Specifically, God was angry at Israel’s upper class.

Hear this, you that trample on the needy,
and bring to ruin the poor of the land,
saying, ‘When will the new moon be over
so that we may sell grain; and the sabbath,
so that we may offer wheat for sale?
We will make the ephah small and the shekel great,
and practise deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver
and the needy for a pair of sandals,
and selling the sweepings of the wheat.’
The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob:
Surely I will never forget any of their deeds.

Amos 8:4-7

Moreover, God was about to bring the reign of Jeroboam and Israel’s era of prosperity and success to a devastating end. Do you remember Rev. Jeremiah Wright? His sermons were publicized in connection with the first presidential campaign of Barack Obama. Particular attention was given to a sermon in which Wright said: “No, no, no, not God Bless America. God damn America.” If you can recall some of the rabid and vitriolic public response to these words, you can well imagine how Israel responded to Amos when he stood up in the national sanctuary at Bethel to announce that “the high places of Israel shall be made desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste, and [God] will raise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.” Amos 7:9. Small wonder that Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, removed Amos from the clergy roster. It is hardly surprising that Amos was banished to the much smaller “Judah Synod.” As Amaziah observed, “the land is not able to bear [Amos’] words.” Vs. 10.

Listen closely, to Amaziah’s words in reply to Amos: “Never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king’s sanctuary, and it is the temple of the kingdom”. Vs. 13. Seriously? Is the sanctuary really the property of the Kingdom and is God nothing more than the king’s humble tenant? It seems that Amaziah’s only concern is with the honor of the King and respect for the kingdom. He is fiercely patriotic, but not one wit faithful. Amaziah is deeply concerned with the political ramifications of Amos’ preaching, but it never occurs to him to ask whether that preaching might actually be true. True or not, it is unpatriotic, dangerous, offensive and upsetting. That is reason enough for snuffing it out. As far as Amaziah is concerned, Amos is a national security risk and the best way to get rid of him is to strip him of his official clergy status and send him into exile. But Amos will not so easily fade away. He is not the least bit ruffled by his removal from the clergy roster. “I am no prophet,” he says. Vs. 14. He needs no official credentials. Unlike Amaziah, Amos is not the king’s patsy. He belongs to the God who sent him to preach-and preach he will!

I have thought about these words often as we at Trinity begin renovation of our own sanctuary. The first question we need to begin asking ourselves is whether it really is our sanctuary. I suppose that from Amaziah’s point of view, Trinity’s sanctuary belongs to Trinity’s members. We built it. Our offerings support it. We should have the final say in what it looks like, how it is used and what goes on there. From a worldly standpoint, it is hard to argue with this logic. But as Paul would remind us, we don’t view matters from a worldly perspective. We view all things from the standpoint of our call to follow Jesus. No, the sanctuary is not ours to do with as we please to meet our own personal needs. It is a tool given us to serve Jesus in this neighborhood in which we are placed. So the questions we always need to be asking are: 1) How can we transform our sanctuary in ways that will reflect to the rest of the neighborhood the welcome extended to all people in Christ Jesus? 2) How can we make our sanctuary a tool for reconciling conflict, overcoming injustice and building peace in our community? 3) What is God calling us to in this community and how can we use our sanctuary to answer that call? We cannot afford to forget who belongs to whom.

Psalm 85:8-13

This is a psalm of lament. For my general comments on psalms of this kind, see my post of April 19, 2015. If you read this prayer from the beginning (as I recommend) you will discover that it begins with an affirmation of God’s faithfulness to Israel in the past. This is critical to understanding what is going on here. Though it is hard to discern the specifics, it is obvious that this prayer was composed during a turbulent time in Israel’s history. Times are hard and the psalmist acknowledges that this is due in no small part to God’s displeasure with Israel. Yet the psalmist can pray confidently because he or she has a recollection of occasions in the past where God has turned from anger to compassion. See vss. 1-3. The psalm concludes with a confident affirmation of the psalmist’s belief that God will intervene to save once again as God has always done in the past. Vss. 8-13. This affirmation constitutes the reading for this week.

Remarkable about this prayer is the certainty on the part of the psalmist that steadfast love, faithfulness, peace, righteousness and goodness constitute the future of God’s people. As the earlier verses of the psalm make clear, these words are spoken out of a context of despair. The psalmist has lived through a long period of darkness and there is no light at the end of the tunnel. His or her hope arises from memory. The psalmist remembers the faithfulness of God to Israel in dark times past. These memories sustain him/her in the present darkness and open a porthole into a brighter hope.

Memory is important. I have heard stories all my life of deathbed conversions, but I have never seen one myself and rather doubt that they happen with much frequency. I say that because I believe faith is a habit of the heart. Trust in someone develops over years and many experiences of discovering that the someone you trust is in fact trustworthy. If the Lord has been your shepherd leading you through the traumas of adolescence, the challenges of establishing yourself in the world of work, the anguish of family life and the uncertainties that accompany growing older, then it is not such a stretch to believe that the Lord who has taken you so far will accompany you also through the last frontier. Faith like this cannot be learned in a crash course. So let us build these sustaining memories now by attending to worship, prayer, giving, service and daily meditation on the scriptures.

Ephesians 1:3-14

A word or two about Ephesians. According to the opening verses, the book is a letter written by the Apostle Paul to the church at Ephesus. Although the piece certainly contains many images and concepts that can be traced to Paul, it is the consensus of most New Testament Scholars that Paul did not author the letter. See, e.g., Lincoln, Andrew T., Ephesians, Word Biblical Commentary, (c. 1990 by Word, Incorporated) p. lx-lxxiii. It should be noted that some very prominent modern scholars are calling into question the majority opinion with solid arguments for Pauline authorship. Nevertheless, I remain persuaded that the Letter to the Ephesians is most likely the work of a disciple or associate of Paul composed decades after the apostle’s death. Still, I will continue to refer to the author as “Paul.” This is partly a matter of grammatical ease. It is much easier to say “Paul writes” than to say repeatedly “the author of the Letter to the Ephesians writes.” I also feel that, whether or not authored by Paul, the Letter to the Ephesians contains enough of Paul’s thought and influence to merit its attribution to him.

The book of Ephesians was most likely composed somewhere between 85 and 90 A.D. toward the end of the first Christian Century. The apostles had all died, but the world kept right on turning without missing a beat. The second generation of believers faced ever changing circumstances, increased opposition and challenges by religious claims and concepts from outside Judaism. How would this new generation deal with these matters without the guidance of the apostles? That is, in large part, what the letter to the Ephesians seeks to address. Using the “Body of Christ” image so central to Paul’s teaching, the author admonishes his audience to “lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called.” Ephesians 4:1. Followers of Jesus are to live a life of love for one another in the unity of the Spirit. Ephesians 4:3. As they make their long journey through time, they must bear witness to the good news of Jesus Christ by lives lived in striking contrast to the surrounding culture governed by rulers, authorities, “principalities and powers, hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” Ephesians 6:12-13. They must support themselves with honest work, speak truthfully to one another and conduct themselves in a manner that glorifies the God by whom they have been called. Ephesians 4:17-32. The Church is a people called to “be imitators of God,” “to walk in love” as Christ loved them and gave Himself for them. Ephesians 5:1-2.

The opening verses of Ephesians that make up our lesson take the form of an extended Hebrew blessing typically beginning with the words, “Blessed are you, O Lord…” We can hear echoes of Solomon’s prayer in I Kings 8:14-61 and also of Zechariah’s prayer in Luke 1:67-79. The likeness of these verses to Hebrew prayers of blessing has led some scholars to believe that they were taken from an ancient liturgy employed in the early church’s worship. In the original Greek, our reading consists of one long sentence stretching itself out “by means of clauses, participial constructions, and the piling up of prepositional phrases and synonyms.” Lincoln, supra, at 11. This, too, suggests some liturgical connection. This language that requires several re-readings to grasp might well fly easily into the heart and mind on the wings of music. Numerous attempts have been made by New Testament scholars to isolate a particular hymn or liturgy within these verses. See Lincoln, supra, at 13-19. While fascinating, I find these efforts highly dependent on the speculative assumptions of their proponents. Whatever liturgical material may have been employed in crafting the Letter to the Ephesians and however the letter might have been employed liturgically in its present form, it is not likely a cut and paste collogue of separate liturgical pieces. It is, rather, a unified, hymn like tribute to the good news about Jesus that breaks down the dividing walls of national/cultural/racial loyalties uniting all people as one Body in Christ.

Paul articulates here an unmistakable belief in predestination. It is critical, however, to understand this teaching within the total context of the letter. “With all wisdom and insight [God] has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” Vss. 8-10. Consequently, the church is not the select few that God has graciously decided to snatch from the deck of a sinking ship. Rather, the church is the first fruits and a testimony to God’s plan to “gather up all things in heaven and on earth.” To be chosen is therefore not a position of special privilege, but a commission to witness and embody the plan God has for all people.

Mark 6:14-29

John got himself in trouble for criticizing Herod Antipas (not to be confused with his father, Herod the Great who ordered the murder of the children of Bethlehem in an effort to kill the Christ child). There were plenty of reasons for criticizing Herod whose ruthlessness matched that of his father. Perhaps John addressed these misdeeds also, but the issue that got him into hot water was a family matter. Herod divorced his first wife Phasaelis, the daughter of King Aretas IV of Nabatea in favor of Herodias, who had formerly been married to his brother, Philip.

In this day and age, one might remark, “So who cares?” Granted, the Monica Lewinski affair reflected poorly on then President Bill Clinton. But when all is said and done, was it a matter that merited a congressional investigation, an impeachment vote and so much prime time TV? Evidently, most Americans think not. Clinton is still enormously popular with a broad section of the populous. But Herod is not the president of the United States. He has laid claim to the title of “king” over God’s chosen people, a claim based on the authority of Rome. The politics here is hard to miss. By giving Israel (or Galilee at any rate) her own king, Rome appears to be affording her a measure of independence and autonomy. Nothing could be further from the truth. Herod was neither a true Jew nor was he acclaimed king by the Jewish people. He was a stooge appointed by the Roman government to extract tax revenue and keep anti-Roman sentiment under control. The king of Israel, as David learned the hard way, is not only subject to the Torah but responsible for implementing Torah justice.

For he delivers the needy when they call,
the poor and those who have no helper.
He has pity on the weak and the needy,
and saves the lives of the needy.
From oppression and violence he redeems their life;
and precious is their blood in his sight.

Psalm 72:12-14.

Obviously, Herod’s marital infraction, similar in some respects to David’s, demonstrates a contempt for Torah. Though in our own minds it might not seem to rise to the level of importance we would place on justice for the poor and needy, a wanton violation of Torah in one point is a violation of the whole Torah. John’s condemnation therefore touches not merely the king’s character, but his lack of royal legitimacy. He is no king in the line of David and John has made that perfectly clear.

As it turns out, this illicit marriage played a huge role in the escalating conflict between Herod and his former father-in-law, Aretas. That dispute finally blew up into a military confrontation that went badly for Herod and the people he ruled. The sordid affair was not a strictly personal matter and, truth be told, no marriage is. While marriages today are typically not part and parcel of international treaties, they do involve families, friends, and frequently produce children. That is why who sleeps with whom is never a purely private matter, despite the insistence of many folks to the contrary. Marriage has ripple effects among large circles of people. So also does divorce. John understood that very well. There is no such thing as “purely individual and private.”

Note that when Herod hears about Jesus, his conclusion is that John the Baptist has been raised. Vs. 14. In a sense, he is right. The same God that spoke through John is now speaking again through God’s Son. Herod’s attempt to silence John’s voice, first through imprisonment and then through execution, has failed. With the advent of Jesus, John is back in spades. Herod is rightfully fearful. Herod was always fearful of John. Vs. 20. Having him in jail was like holding a hot potato. Herod knew John to be a righteous man and was afraid to kill him. Yet at the same time he was afraid to let him go, knowing that John’s words were as dangerous to his kingdom as those of Amos to the kingdom of Jeroboam II. Finally, the king’s pride trumps his fear and he has John executed to save face in front of his guests.

It is also interesting to note that John’s disciples came forward to give their master a proper burial. Vs. 29. Jesus’ twelve disciples will do no such thing. Only the women will visit Jesus’ tomb and then only after his burial.

Sunday, June 28th

June 23, 2015UncategorizedBabylonian Exile, Baptism, Bible, Charleston Shooting, Church, discipleship, faith, gospel, gun violence, II Corinthians, justice, Lamentations, Lectionary, Persecution, prayer, Psalms, racism, Saint Paul, Sunday Lessons, theology, violencerevolsen

FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Lamentations 3:22-33
Psalm 30
2 Corinthians 8:7-15
Mark 5:21-43

PRAYER OF THE DAY: Almighty and merciful God, we implore you to hear the prayers of your people. Be our strong defense against all harm and danger, that we may live and grow in faith and hope, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

Mourning and lament are part and parcel of our lessons for Sunday. Our first lesson comes to us from a book bearing the very name of lament. Our psalm speaks of joyous deliverance from mourning and sorrow. In the gospel lesson Jesus enters into the sorrow of a bereaved family. Not until you are immersed in anguish of this kind is it possible to appreciate the comfort and salvation Jesus brings. But mourning and lamentation are not a part of our national DNA. In reflecting on the mindset of the church in North America and its tendency to neglect in its worship the biblical Psalms of lament, Professor of Old Testament, Walter Brueggemann observes, “It is a curious fact that the church has, by and large, continued to sing songs of orientation in a world increasingly experienced as disoriented.” Brueggemann, Walter, The Message of the Psalms, Augsburg Old Testament Studies (c. 1984 by Augsburg Publishing House) p. 51. In his view, “the reason for such relentless affirmation of orientation seems to come, not from faith, but from wishful optimism of our culture.” Ibid. Our relentless cheerfulness is, in fact, an exercise in denial.

Nowhere is such denial more evident than in our society’s failure to acknowledge and come to grips with the reality of racism. One would think that after Walter Scott had been shot eight times in the back while fleeing a police officer in Charleston; after seventeen year old Justus Howell had similarly been shot in the back by police in Chicago just three hours later; after Freddy Gray of Baltimore had been beaten to death in police custody; after Eric Garner had been killed in a police chokehold; after Trayvon Martin had been shot to death by a vigilante; and after unarmed Michael Brown was shot multiple times by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri; after all of that we should all be connecting the dots. But there continues to be a significant sector of society in stark denial. Radio commentator Rush Limbaugh addressing the Brown shooting blamed not racism, but the media for “perpetuat[ing] myths in Ferguson because what happened is not common, it does not happen all the time, and yet this story is being covered and treated by everybody involved as though it goes on so much that we’ve had our fill of it… the only problem is it isn’t happening; it is irregular when this happens. It does not happen.” In much the same vein, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani insists that black men are killed by white police officers not because they are black, but because they are inherently more violent. Really folks, this is not about race. We’re over all that.

Frankly, I thought that argument was put to rest once and for all last week when white supremacist Dylann Roof walked into an historic black church with links to African Americans’ struggle for freedom predating the Civil War and shot dead nine African American worshipers making clear his intent to ignite a race war. Racism does not get any more explicit than that. Yet incredibly, Fox News expressed doubts about the racial motives of the shooter as well as the characterization of the shooting as a hate crime, suggesting instead that the killing was more properly understood as another battle in the so called “war on Christianity.” See my post of Sunday, May 31, 2015. The Wall Street Journal ran an article confidently stating that “the U.S., notably the South, has moved forward to replace the system that enabled racist killings like those in the Birmingham church [of 1963].” Finally, in what can only be described as a bizarre article and subsequent interview, Fox contributor Erick Erickson blamed Caitlyn Jenner for the violence in Charleston. “A society that looks at a 65 year old male Olympian and, with a straight face, declares him a her and ‘a new normal’ cannot have a conversation about mental health or evil because that society no longer distinguishes normal from crazy and evil from good,” he wrote. Don’t bother trying to re-read it. It won’t make any more sense the second time through. It will just make your head hurt.

If there is any value to repeating the above denials, it lies only in exposing their emptiness. Clearly, for anyone willing to acknowledge the facts, it is evident that our nation is mired in systemic racism of epic proportions. While the Charleston shooter was admittedly a fringe character, he was enabled, encouraged and incited by cultural enclaves in which racist epitaphs, stereotypes and jokes permeate routine conversation. Revelations from the recent investigation of the Ferguson, Missouri police force in the wake of the Brown shooting demonstrate that these enclaves are not limited to isolated bars, gangs or extremist political groups. They are ensconced in state, local and federal government as well as business and civic organizations. Racism is very much alive and well in the United States this Twenty-First Century.

To be fair, Fox News was not entirely wrong in calling the shooting at Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston an attack on Christianity. It was just that. As disciples of Jesus, we confess that through baptism into Jesus Christ, we are reconciled to God and enlisted in Christ’s mission of reconciliation. The good news of Jesus Christ destroys all divisive barriers between “Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female” and of course black and white. Racism is nothing less than a sinful attempt to maintain and fortify those divisive walls that Jesus died to abolish. As such, it is a direct assault on the Gospel.

Lamentations 3:22-33

A word or two about the book of Lamentations is in order. It is not a book we hear from very often in the ordinary course of our Sunday readings. Because it does not contain any stories, it does not often find its way into our Sunday School curriculum. It is a short book that you can easily overlook when casually paging though the Bible. So it is entirely possible that you have never heard of the Book of Lamentations. For a brief but thorough overview of this book, see the Summary Article by Richard W. Nysse, Professor of Old Testament, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN on enterthebible.org.

As the name suggests, this book is a collection of laments, that is, prayers in which the Jewish people pour out their sorrow and pain to God. There are many such prayers found in the Psalms as well. Generally speaking, they follow a common format:

Initial Appeal to Yahweh, vs. 1.
Portrayal of inward distress, vs. 2
Expression of confidence, vss. 3.
Witness of praise to the community, vss. 4-8.

See Anderson, Bernard W., Out of the Depths, The Psalms Speak for us Today, (c. 1983 by Bernard W. Anderson, pub. by The Westminster Press) p. 97. Sometimes, however, laments do not progress beyond the second point, namely, the prayer expressing inward distress. See, e.g., Psalm39, which concludes with a mournful plea for God to “turn your gaze away from me, that I may smile again, before I depart and am no more.” The journey from despair to hope is a long one, often involving a lengthy trek through the darkness before one encounters any signs of light.

The laments in Lamentations express the grief of the Jewish people over the Babylonian invasion of Judah in 587 B.C.E. which resulted in the sack of Jerusalem, the destruction of the Temple and the deportation of a substantial number of Jews to Babylon. It is hard for us to get our heads around the scope of that catastrophe and what it meant to Israel. I suspect that the Somali refugees struggling to survive in refugee camps throughout the Horn of Africa could probably relate better to the following:

My eyes will flow without ceasing, without respite,
until the Lord from heaven looks down and sees.
My eyes cause me grief at the fate of all the young women in my city.
Those who were my enemies without cause have hunted me like a bird;
they flung me alive into a pit and hurled stones on me;
water closed over my head; I said, ‘I am lost.’

Lamentations 3:40-54

Lamenting or giving expression to grief is not part of my northern European constitution. I came from a community in which grief was met with stoic aplomb. My childhood memories of funerals I attended with my folks include hearing remarks such as “She is so brave!” or “He is holding up so well” spoken in hushed tones of admiration and respect. Of course, we were understanding when a widower got a little choked up at the wake and we were forgiving when a widow got a little teary at the last closing of the casket. But bursting into tears, whaling and lamenting would definitely have been considered in poor taste. Worse, it would have been interpreted as a lack of faith in the promise of the resurrection. I don’t suggest for a minute that this is a healthy way to approach grief. But healthy or not, it is the way in which I was acculturated.

By contrast, biblical psalms and prayers of lament acknowledge the reality of what Professor Walter Brueggemann calls “disorientation.” These laments insist “that the world must be experienced as it really is and not in some pretended way.” They also insist that all “experiences of disorder are a proper subject for discourse with God.” Brueggemann, Walter, The Message of the Psalms, Augsburg Old Testament Studies (c. 1984 by Augsburg Publishing House) p. 52.

Again, it is hard for typical white, middle American protestants like me to imagine living through a catastrophe such as the Babylonian conquest of Judah. Yet there are plenty of personal tragedies so deep, so painful and so life altering that it seems there is no way back. Dissolution of a marriage comes to mind as a good example of disorientating trauma. When all the hopes and expectations you had for a life together go up in smoke, you know there is no going back. You know things will never be the same again, nor will the future you anticipated materialize. You don’t know when the raw pain will end or when life will get back to normal or even what normal will look like should you ever get there. Indeed, life never returns to normal if “normal” means the way things used to be. But you might discover in your grief ever deeper levels of family, friendship and support that allow you to heal, grow and find new opportunities for love.

People who have been through periods of disorientation can never again sing the old songs from the season of well-being in quite the same way. They have learned how much life can hurt. But that is not all they have learned. They have come to recognize that God was indeed present even when God seemed most absent. Re-oriented people no longer expect to be spared from all suffering and disorientation, but they are firmly convinced that, come what may, God will always be with them. See, Brueggemann, Walter, The Message of the Psalms, (c. 1984 Augsburg Publishing House) p. 19.

It is out of such confidence in God’s abiding presence and faithfulness that Israel found the courage to hope when there seemed to be no rational basis for hope. I get the feeling that the author of this text is asserting just such confidence, reciting a tried and true confession of God’s faithfulness even though s/he is not entirely convinced by it. But the question is not whether one believes or not. The question is whether one wants to believe. And if you want to believe God’s promises, then the best thing you can do is “go through the motions,” act as though you actually do believe. Pull yourself out of bed and drag yourself to church even though you don’t feel like singing, praying, making conversation with anyone or, worst of all, listening to another sermon. When church is the last place you want to be, that is probably when you need it most.

Psalm 30

This is a psalm of thanksgiving for deliverance. It is impossible to determine precisely the danger or threat from which the psalmist has been delivered. It is possible that the psalmist is a warrior giving thanks for deliverance from death in battle. Vs. 1. It is also possible that the psalmist is thanking God for recovery from illness. Vs. 2. In either case, the psalmist is deeply thankful for God’s mercy which lasts forever and triumphs over God’s anger that is only momentary. Vs. 5.

The psalmist acknowledges that, prior to his/her troubles, s/he had become cocky and complacent. “As for me, I said in my prosperity, ‘I shall never be moved.’” Vs. 6. It is perhaps this very pride and presumptiveness that led to trouble for the psalmist. Prosperity and ease can create a false sense of security and invulnerability. When all is well and everything seems stable and secure, it is easy to forget how fragile a thing life is. Just one second of inattention to the road by me or someone else can tragically alter the course of my life forever. If that tiny spot on the X-ray is what I fear, then it does not matter how successful I have been, how much I have stashed away in my savings or how carefully I have planned my retirement. Suddenly, it becomes very clear just how dependent I am for life upon the God who gave it to me and who will sooner or later require it from me again.

The psalmist describes how s/he cried out to God for deliverance. Vs. 8. Then s/he aims what appears to be a rather presumptuous rhetorical at God: “What profit is there in my death, if I go down to the Pit? Will the dust praise you? Will it tell of your faithfulness?” Vs. 9. Seriously? Does this individual really believe that God needs his or her praise and testimony so much that God simply cannot afford to let him or her die? I suppose that is one way of looking at these words. Of course, there is another take on this as well. We are, after all, created to give praise to our Creator. Perhaps the psalmist is merely pointing out to God that s/he has learned his or her lesson. Meaning and security are not found in prosperity, however impressive it might be. Human fulfillment and joy cannot be found apart from faithful reliance upon God and a life of praise directed to God.

Verses 11-12 conclude the psalm with thanksgiving to God for reversing the psalmist’s fortunes. Having turned the psalmist’s “mourning into dancing” and having “loosed” the psalmist’s “sackcloth and girded [him/her] with gladness,” God has liberated the psalmist to do that for which s/he was created: giving thanks to God forever. Vs. 12.

This psalm is a striking contrast to the lament in Lamentations. Here we have a person who has come up from the depths, out of the quagmire of despair and back into the light. Whether the psalmist’s problem was sickness, enemies or a combination of both, it is now behind him/her. Still, verses 4-5 of the psalm are remarkably similar to Lamentations 3:31-33. Both psalms emphasize that, in the long run, God can be trusted; that however dark the situation may be, God’s salvation ultimately will see one through. The circumstances, however, are wildly different. The author of the Lamentations psalm prays these words of affirmation in hope while surrounded by impenetrable darkness. The psalmist here prays in the confidence of having seen the faithfulness of God proven in his/her own life experience. The people of God are at all times in both places and everywhere in between. That is why the psalms form such a large part of my devotional life. They speak from so many different levels of human experience that there is bound to be one that fits.

2 Corinthians 8:7-15

Again, I find myself wondering “what were they thinking?” as I try to figure out how the folks who put together our readings decided to begin and end where they do. What is this “gracious work” Paul is referring too in vs. 7? Read the previous verses and it will become clear that Paul is taking up a collection from the Corinthian church. Most likely, this refers to an offering for the churches in Judea that were experiencing economic difficulties. (Galatians 2:1-10; I Corinthians 16:1-4; Romans 15:25-27). This passage reflects the catholicity of the early church-a community that transcends cultural, regional and national borders. It is this catholicity that made the church such a fearful enemy of the Roman Empire. Nation states typically feel threatened by groups within their borders holding a loyalty higher than national allegiance. Such groups are deemed inconvenient at best and dangerous at worst. That the protestant churches in America typically do not feel such cultural distrust and national persecution is not, as many suggest, a tribute to American tolerance. Rather, it is an indication of how deeply complicit we have become in protecting the interests of the nation state. A disciple of Jesus cannot be on board with an “America First” policy. A disciple must always “seek first the Kingdom of God” and the well-being of its citizens in whatever nation state they may be living.

In the same manner, congregations, such as the church in Corinth, cannot adopt a parochial view of ministry. The whole church is one body and all parts either flourish or fail together. Thus, the Corinthian church, which is evidently a wealthier congregation, must, for its own well-being and that of the whole church, use its surplus to meet the needs of the churches experiencing privation. For Paul, though, the issue is more than a matter of simple fairness. This tangible expression of service to and support of the Jerusalem church by Paul’s gentile congregations illustrates concretely Paul’s understanding of the church as a community of the baptized in which there is neither Jew nor Greek.” Galatians 3:28. The offering signals a new era in which God in Christ has come to “reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end.” Ephesians 2:16.

To get the full gist of what St. Paul is saying, you really need to read the full section at II Corinthians 8-9 in its entirety.

Mark 5:21-43

This is an aggravating story. Jairus’ daughter is at the point of death. This is a 911 call and Jesus is treating it as though it were an invitation to an open house. There is no need for him to terry on the way. The woman with a discharge of blood had already been healed and was on her merry way. Why waste precious time stopping to call her out, publically embarrass her and so further endanger the life of Jarius’ daughter? I suppose that raising a dead child is more impressive than healing a sick one. But since Jesus ultimately kept the whole affair a secret, that motivation does not seem likely. Even in Mark’s fast paced gospel narrative, Jesus will not be rushed. He does not permit events to dictate what he says, what he does or where he goes. What happened to this woman was important. The crowd, the disciples and Jarius need to know about her healing and to hear Jesus’ word to her.

Jarius, it should be noted, was a ruler of the synagogue. As such, he may have supervised worship services. Clearly, however, he held a position of honor and leadership in the Jewish community. Nineham, D.E., Saint Mark, The Pelican New Testament Commentaries (c. 1963 D.E. Nineham, pub. by Penguin Books, Ltd.) p. 157; Taylor, Vincent, The Gospel According to St. Mark, Thornapple Commentaries (c. 1966 by Vincent Taylor, pub. by Baker Book House) p. 287; Cranfield, C.E.B., The Gospel According to St. Mark, Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary (c. 1959 Cambridge University Press) p. 183. He would have been responsible for upholding religious standards in the community, including those governing ritual purity.

The woman with the perpetual menstrual bleeding would have been unclean by definition-and perpetually so. Leviticus 15:25-28. She would have been forbidden to touch anyone or anything that might come into contact with someone else, as this would render them unclean. Leviticus 15: 26-27. Clearly, she should not have been about in a tightly packed crowd like the one following Jesus. Furthermore, a woman’s intentionally touching the clothing of a strange man was at best a breach of propriety and etiquette. To do so while ritually unclean was an egregious breach of Mosaic Law. As a ruler of the synagogue, Jairus could hardly have been expected to approve of the woman’s conduct. For her part, the woman appears to harbor a superstitious belief common in the ancient near east (and evident in the scriptures as well) that holy men generate impersonal healing power. She hoped to be healed by Jesus without ever being noticed by him.

Jesus will not have this woman believe that she has escaped his notice. She is important and she needs to know that. Moreover, Jairus needs to know that she is important as well. It is no accident that Jesus calls this woman “daughter.” Vs. 34. It is as though Jesus were saying, “Look, Jairus. I am about to exercise compassion for your little daughter. I expect you to do the same for mine.” Just as Jesus will touch the unclean body of Jairus’ daughter, so Jairus must be open to the touch of others regarded as “unclean.”

“Talitha cumi” which means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise.” Vs. 41. This is one of the very few words of Jesus we have in the New Testament. It is a transliteration of the Aramaic tongue in which Jesus spoke. Recall that the gospels are all written in Greek and thus represent a translation of Jesus into a language he did not speak. Thus, even when we read directly the original gospel texts, we are dealing with a translation and thus an interpretation.

There is a symmetrical contrast in these two healings. The woman who sought healing in secrecy is brought out into the open. The synagogue ruler, who has Jesus coming to his home accompanied by the crowd to a house filled with mourners, receives his miracle in secret-and is enjoined to keep it that way. The interplay between secrecy and revelation running through the gospel of Mark is very much in evidence here. So, too, this contrast between what is clean and what is deemed unclean will be developed further throughout the following chapters of Mark. Whereas Jesus’ opponents shun the “unclean” fearing contamination, Jesus touches the unclean and renders it clean.

Sunday, June 21st

June 15, 2015UncategorizedBabylonian Exile, Bible, Book of Job, Church, Covenant, faith, gospel, human suffering, Janet Kenyon, justice, Lectionary, poems, poetry, prayer, preaching, Psalms, Religion, Robert Frost, Saint Paul, Satan, satire, Sunday Lessons, temptation, theologyrevolsen

FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Job 38:1-11
Psalm 107:1-3, 23-32
2 Corinthians 6:1-13
Mark 4:35-41

PRAYER OF THE DAY: O God of creation, eternal majesty, you preside over land and sea, sunshine and storm. By your strength pilot us, by your power preserve us, by your wisdom instruct us, and by your hand protect us, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

Perhaps it is because my reflections this week happen to have been influenced by the works of two very profound poetic works. Or maybe I am impressed with how deeply the scriptural narratives this week are rooted in the poetry of the psalms and prophets. Whatever the reason, I have been thinking a great deal about poetry, its influence on us and the value (or lack thereof) that our contemporary culture places on it.

I was introduced to poetry in the same way that I suspect most of you were: through music. The choruses I learned in Sunday School, the hymns shaping worship in my church and the songs I sang in school and at civic ceremonies gave me an appreciation for the power of words wrapped in music. It is difficult for the most hardened cynic to remain unmoved while standing among a crowd of people singing The Battle Hymn of the Republic.

My introduction to the naked word of poetry came largely through my sophomore high school honors English class with Mrs. Boyer. She began our unit on poetry by pointing out that poetic works are looked upon with suspicion and suppressed in many countries throughout the world. “But of course,” she added, “that is not true of our own country. Poets here are free to write and publish as they wish.” Then she added with a wry smile, “The state department knows very well that nobody in this country reads poetry anyway.” Turns out she was right. Even poets are not necessarily readers of poetry. It is my understanding that the Poetry Foundation’s publication, Poetry, has more contributors than subscribers! Mrs. Boyer was determined to do everything in her power to change our cultural disinterest in poetry. To her credit, I can still recite The Road not Taken and Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost as well as Mark Anthony’s funeral oration from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

To be honest, my relationship with poetry over the years has been an on and off sort of thing. I was glad to be done with the poetry unit in Mrs. Boyer’s class. I figured that I had probably had about as much exposure to poetry as a normal person needs. But in my senior year I discovered the Psalms-quite by accident as it happened. Being in study hall with no desire to study, I happened to notice a paperback book containing the Psalms someone had left in the rack under my desk. I picked it up and began reading. There began a practice that I maintain to this day: two psalms per day, one in the morning and one at night. Just like vitamins. I discovered T.S. Elliot in college and got re-acquainted with Robert Frost in seminary. As a classics major, I could hardly avoid Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, Aeschylus, Virgil, Ovid, Juvenile and all the other usual suspects.

After graduation from seminary, I lost contact with these and other poets just as I did with most of my classmates. There was no animosity involved. It is just that our lives wound up going in different directions. My life did not intersect again in any significant way with poetry until the end of the 1990s. At that point, I began writing my own poems. I cannot say what drove me to it. There was a great deal of uncertainty during that period of my life. I was struggling professionally in my law practice, dealing with the chronic illness of my wife and wondering how (if at all) I would ever get my children through college. Poetry gave me back my imagination, enabling me to see beyond the dead end I had made for myself. I found that writing poetry allowed me to enter into and view my life from a different perspective. It also made me sensitive to the rich texture of existence that can so easily be overlooked when you are working twelve hours per day at a job that requires intense focus on detail. Nothing I wrote was worth publishing nor was it so intended. Its value lay chiefly in the spiritual support it gave me at a low time in my life and the appreciation I developed for the difficulty of the poetic task.

I don’t write poetry anymore and (apart from the Psalms) I read it only infrequently. Reading poetry is hard work. The disciplined concentration it demands does not develop naturally in our tweety, texty, brief memo, “get to the point already” culture. I think, however, that such disciplined and imaginative concentration is precisely what we need. The lessons for this week invite us to engage in poetic imagination. The poetry of Job challenges us to look past our simplistic assumptions about God, morality and the universe. The Psalm gives poetic expression to God’s acts of salvation experienced by seafaring merchants caught in a violent storm. Paul cites the bold poetry of Isaiah to encourage the church at Corinth in its common mission with him. Finally, Mark suggests that a hint to Jesus’ true identity might be wrapped up in the poetic testimony of our Psalm. Each of these poetic threads is leading us down the path of discovery. Let us follow them with awe, reverence and openness to the power of imagination.

Job 38:1-11

“Stay away from the Book of Job,” my preaching professor told me in seminary, “unless you are prepared to go the distance.” What he meant, I think, is that preaching Job honestly requires us to deal with the whole messy, troublesome story. And this story is plenty messy and troublesome.

Job, you may recall, was a righteous man. So righteous was he that he not only took care to avoid sin himself, but offered sacrifices on behalf of his children to atone for any sins they might have committed. Job 1:1-5. God rewarded Job’s righteousness with a beautiful wife, wonderful children and fabulous wealth. “Now there was a day,” we read,” when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord and Satan also was among them.” Job 1:6. The NRSV translates “sons of God” as “heavenly beings” which, though making the text properly inclusive, says more than we actually know. It is presumed that we know who Satan is, though we might wonder at how he manages to slip in and out of God’s court with such freedom. Though clearly adversarial, Satan’s relationship with God seems almost collegial. Their rivalry resembles more the philosophical jousting typical among professors within the same university faculty than cosmic conflict between mortal enemies.

God, it seems, is a humanist convinced that human nature is capable of righteousness and moral progress. Satan, by contrast, is a hardened cynic. To him, human beings are a bundle of nerve endings. They do whatever they do to avoid pain and obtain pleasure. The specimen Job seems to prove God’s position and God cannot help but rub this in a little. “How ‘bout that Job, Heh? Blameless, upright, not an evil bone in his body! Now tell me Satan, doesn’t the existence of a man like that put the lie to your pessimistic outlook on the human race?”

“Righteous, yes. I’ll give you that.” Says Satan. “Of course, he’s got good reason to be righteous, doesn’t he? You reward him well enough for it. Pay me like you pay him and I’ll be righteous too!”

“What are you suggesting?” God inquires, a little uncertainly.

“Oh, just this,” says Satan. Job is righteous because he knows it pays to be righteous. But take away all the goodies, rob him of his wealth, introduce a little tragedy into his life and he will turn on you in a New York minute.” This, by the way is strikingly similar to the tactic the serpent used on Eve in the Garden of Eden. “Can God really be trusted to do right by you? Are the commands he gives you really for your own good? Or is God holding something back? Is there something God wants to keep all to God’s self?” Just as the serpent undermined humanity’s trust in its Creator, so now Satan seeks to undermine God’s confidence in God’s creature. Like Eve, God takes the bait-hook, line and sinker. God gives Satan leave to take everything from Job but his life and health.

If Satan thought he would score an easy philosophical victory here, he was wrong. Job lost his wealth and his children in one fell swoop. Though urged by his wife to curse God and die, Job replies: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I return; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” Job 1:21. Now God can hardly contain himself: “Have you considered my servant Job…he still holds fast his integrity, although you moved me against him, to destroy him without cause.” Job 2:3. In what God thinks is a victory speech, God has unwittingly conceded defeat. God admits that Satan has “moved” God against his faithful creature. That has been Satan’s game plan all along.

Satan has more dirty work to do, however. “Well,” says Satan, “I must admit that your Job held up much better than I expected. But every man has his price. Job still has his health. Break his body, render him incontinent, deform his appearance and afflict him with chronic pain and he will crack. A human being is but a bundle of nerve endings. Let’s see how well he pronounces blessings when those nerve endings start to hurt.” Once again, God takes the bait and Job is afflicted with bodily sores that disfigure him. At this point, Satan drops out of the story and is heard from no more. God is also off stage until the very end of the drama. In the meantime, Job receives a visit from three friends who come to comfort and advise him.

Job can see no reason for his suffering or the failure of God to respond to his cries for vindication. His friends, however, know full well what the problem is. Job is being punished for his sin. That is the only explanation there can be if we accept as true the theology of Psalm 1, which teaches us that the righteous one “is like a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in its season,” who prospers in all that he does; whereas the wicked “are like chaff which the wind drives away.” If Job is perishing, it can only be because of some evil he has done. Any other conclusion ascribes injustice to God-which is blasphemy. Naturally, the friends’ theology of God constricts their ability to speak a life giving and comforting word to Job. Job’s insistence upon his innocence only threatens the friends’ deeply held beliefs about how God’s justice works to reward the righteous and punish the wicked. Their lengthy poetic argument with Job on this point proceeds for thirty-four dreary chapters, becoming more vitriolic with every verse. The friends seem to be more concerned with defending God’s honor than comforting poor Job. Job increasingly ignores his friends’ arguments and directs his speech to the God who does not answer. Finally, just as the argument seems mercifully to have ground to a halt, one more friend steps out of the shadows to put in his two cents worth. In fact, he puts in more than two cents worth of pedantic blather, lecturing poor Job for six more chapters on his pride and impiety.

Then God speaks, and that is where our lesson for Sunday comes in. God bypasses the friends and speaks directly to Job, peppering him with rhetorical questions that Job cannot possibly be expected to answer. The point seems to be that creation is such a terrible, fearful, beautiful and awesome mystery that no mortal can comprehend it. Human life in all of its complexities cannot be boiled down to simplistic rules of moral cause and effect. The reasons for beauty, terror, joy and despair defy rational explanation. It should be enough to know that the creation is a wondrous place filled with potential for human joy and fulfilment as well as human tragedy. It is not for Job to complain that God did not make the world differently or that God could have made it better.

All of that might fly well enough if only Job’s suffering really were inexplicable. But it’s not. We already know that Job’s suffering has nothing to do with mysteries too deep for human understanding. The reader understands only too well why Job has been so cruelly afflicted. God was induced by Satan to brutalize Job in order to make a point. Worse than that, it is obvious that God is not coming clean with Job. God has Job believing that his suffering lies hidden in mysteries too great for his understanding. In the end, God restores Job’s wealth and gives him more children. The inadequacy of such a remedy is clear enough to every parent who has lost a child and been told by some well-meaning friend, “Well, thank God you’re young enough to have more children.” Children are not fungible goods. So the Book of Job ends as it began-with a lot of very troubling issues.

I have a feeling some folks might be taking offense at my treatment of this great book. In my own defense I can only say that I have chased commentators, preachers and linguists from hell to breakfast looking for a way to derive a positive message from Job. But the only way I have found to make peace with the book is to interpret it as satire from beginning to end. It is, I believe, a cautionary tale about religion run amok. “This,” says the anonymous author(s) of Job, “is what you get from a religion of moral causation, a religion that interprets all events as rewards or punishments for human behavior. (Are you listening Pat Robertson, Frank Graham and Assemblywoman Shannon Grove?) You wind up with people like Job who can find no comfort in their faith. You wind up with people like Job’s friends whose religion can provide no healing or life giving word to those who suffer. You wind up with a god who is unworthy of Job’s worship and trust.

The latter observation is aptly expressed in Robert Frost’s play Mask of Reason, which is based on the Book of Job. The drama takes place years after the events related in the Bible have transpired. God pays a visit to Job and his wife and Job poses the question: “Now after all these years You might indulge me. Why did You hurt me so? I am reduced to asking flatly for the reason-outright.”

God responds: “I was showing off to the Devil, Job, as set forth in Chapters One and Two. Do you mind?”

“No, No. I musn’t,” Job Replies. “Twas human of You. I expected more than I could understand and what I get is almost less than I can understand.”

Mask of Reason, lines 207-269; lines 327-233 printed in Frost, Robert, The Poetry of Robert Frost (c. 1969 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston) pp. 473-390.

If there is a positive word in this book, it finds expression in the character of Job. Though Satan succeeded well in turning God against God’s creature, he failed to turn Job from his faith in his Creator. So the question posed by the Book of Job is this: “Is there a God out there worthy of Job’s steadfast trust and confidence?” The book does a fine job of telling us what such a god is not. We must look beyond that book for a portrait of who that God is.

Psalm 107:1-3, 23-32

This is a psalm of praise. Verse 22 suggests that it was sung by the faith community before a sacrifice of thanksgiving. That the worshipers are “gathered from the lands, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south” (Vs. 3) suggests that this psalm was composed after the Babylonian Exile and the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem. Though some of the exiled Jews returned home to Palestine, most of the Jewish population remained scattered throughout the Mediterranean world, making pilgrimages to Jerusalem on high holy days. Such pilgrim journeys were fraught with dangers, escape from which was one of many occasions for thanksgiving.

Our lesson begins at verse 23 and relates the adventures of sea going merchants (who might also have been pilgrims). In addition to being a powerful metaphor for the primordial chaos that reigned prior to creation (Genesis 1:2), the sea was also a very tangible source of terror for the Israelite people. How many Jewish sea captains do you read about in the Hebrew Scriptures? Jonah is the only Hebrew scriptural character known to have gone to sea-and it did not turn out well for him. Yet even the terrifying power of the sea is subject to the voice of Israel’s God.

“Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress; he made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed.” Vss. 27-28. These words parallel the cries of the terrified disciples in our gospel lesson and the Psalm as a whole implies the answer to their question: “Who, then, is this, that even the wind and sea obey him?” Mark 4:41. Of course, for the pilgrims in the Psalm standing safely within the confines of the temple courts, escape from the dangers of the sea seemed no less miraculous and God driven.

These are the testimonies of persons who have experienced in a graphic way God’s saving intervention. That God does not always so act and that there are also ships full of people that go down does not dull the effect of their faithful witness. Rather, it underscores the gracious nature of God’s salvation which is neither earned, deserved, nor can it be expected as a matter of course. People who have experienced God’s salvation from death understand that each morning is a gift of one more day in a finite lifetime. Such humble thankfulness is well expressed in a poem by the late Jane Kenyon:

Otherwise

I got out of bed on
two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.

At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.

Jane Kenyon from Constance (1993)

Moreover, such salvation experiences are not to be understood as special favors reflecting God’s preference for one person over another. Instead, they are occasions for God’s mercy and steadfast love to be manifested to the world. Hence, the command: “Let them extol him in the congregation of the people, and praise him in the assembly of the elders.” Vs. 22.

2 Corinthians 6:1-13

Paul has just finished a very fine articulation of his apostolic mission set forth in II Corinthians 5:16-21. He describes himself as an “ambassador” for Christ; God making God’s appeal for reconciliation through Paul’s ministry. In the name of Christ, then, Paul appeals to the Corinthian church “not to accept the grace of God in vain.” That is, let not the grace of God be without effect. Furnish, Victor Paul, II Corinthians, The Anchor Bible Commentary (c. 1984 by Doubleday & Company, Inc.) p. 341. Quoting Isaiah 49:8, Paul urges his readers to respond faithfully now, for time is of the essence. Vs. 2.

Verse 3 seems to be an abrupt transition. Paul has been speaking of his apostolic mission to the world, but now seems fixated once again upon his detractors’ rejection of his apostleship. Some commentators suggest that the material in II Corinthians 6:14-7:1 belongs immediately after vs. 2 rather than after verse 13. Ibid. 353. There is no question that this material seems wildly out of place where it now is and that II Corinthians 7:2 follows naturally after verse 13 in our lesson. But the transposed section does not seem to fit any more naturally between verses 2 and 3 than it does after verse 13. Accord, Furnish, supra. For my part, I am doubtful that II Corinthians 6:14-7:1 is even genuinely Pauline. It seems to contradict entirely the advice given in I Corinthians 7:12-16. If, however, one enlarges the focus to include the whole of Chapter 5, it becomes evident that Paul is simply circling back to the defense of his apostleship begun at II Corinthians 5:11-15. He points out that his credentials are the hardships he has embraced and the sacrifices he has gladly made for the sake of Christ’s reconciling mission. Vss. 4-10. Paul argues that he has done everything possible to earn the trust of the Corinthian church and asks that, as he has opened his heart to them, they similarly open their heart to him.

This passage illustrates how the greatest asset any church leader has is his/her integrity. A pastor that tithes need not apologize for asking the same from his/her congregation. A trustee that takes up the rake need not be bashful in calling upon the rest of the congregation to pitch in with the spring cleaning to avoid the expense of landscaping bills. Nothing takes the wind out of criticism quite as effectively as honesty, transparency and reliability.

Mark 4:35-41

In this gospel lesson Mark continues pressing the $64,000 question: “Who is Jesus?” Of course, those of us reading the gospel already know who Jesus is because the gospel begins in Mark 1:1 by telling us that this is the story of Jesus, the Son of God, the Messiah. Jesus knows who he is because the voice from heaven spoke to him at his baptism saying, “You are my beloved Son.” Mark 1:11. The demons know that Jesus is the Son of God and Jesus has to tell them to keep quiet about his identity. Mark 1:23-25. The only people who don’t seem to be getting it are the disciples.

Mark’s telling of this story is rich in allusions to the Hebrew Scriptures suggesting that Jesus is something more than a mere teacher. Indeed, as will later be demonstrated on the Mountain of Transfiguration, he is more even than Israel’s Messiah. The ability to control the sea and subdue storms was regarded as divine. Psalm 89:8-9; Psalm 93:1-4; Psalm 106:8-9; Psalm 107:28-29; and Isaiah 51:9-10. Additionally, the image of “the waters” was a common metaphor for the powers of evil and the trials of the righteous. Psalm 69:1-2; Psalm 18:16. Finally, in the mist of such tribulation, the faithful are called upon to express confidence in God’s power to save and deliver. Isaiah 43:2; Psalm 46:1-3; and Psalm 65:5. It should also be noted that the ability to sleep peacefully, as Jesus is evidently doing, is a sign of trust in the protective power of God. Proverbs 3:23-24; Psalm 4:8; Psalm 3:5; and Job 11:8-19. Jesus’ posture of trust evidenced by his sleeping is therefore a potent contrast to the agitation of the disciples. For a fuller discussion of these Hebrew scriptural echoes, see Nineham, D.E., Saint Mark, The Pelican New Testament Commentaries (c. 1963 by D.E. Nineham, pub. by Penguin Books, Ltd.) pp. 146-148.

It is tempting to criticize the disciples for being such dolts. Particularly after they make the remark, “Who is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” vs. 41. Unwittingly perhaps, they are practically quoting from this week’s Psalm. Had they realized what they were saying, they would not have had to ask their question. Yet the problem here is deeper than mere failure to connect the scriptural dots. Surely the people to whom Mark’s gospel is addressed, like us, know that Jesus is the Son of God. The question is, does that knowledge make any difference to them or us? Though we confess that Jesus is the Son of God, is he the first one to whom we turn in the midst of a raging storm? Or do we call out to him only when our strength, our wits and our resources have all failed us and the boat is half swamped? In these troubled and fearful times, we can still hear Jesus speaking to us, “Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?” vs. 40.

Peter's Outer Cape Portico

A place where prophets, apostles and poets meet in the lessons for each Sunday of the church year

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