Tag Archives: discipleship

Sunday, March 13th

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FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT

Isaiah 43:16-21
Psalm 126
Philippians 3:4b-14
John 12:1-8

Prayer of the Day: Creator God, you prepare a new way in the wilderness, and your grace waters our desert. Open our hearts to be transformed by the new thing you are doing, that our lives may proclaim the extravagance of your love given to all through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“He that goes forth weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.” Psalm 127:6

Planting is an inherently hopeful task. A fruitful harvest requires the back breaking work of sowing, but no amount of such work guarantees it. Any number of natural occurrences beyond a farmer’s control can thwart a successful crop. As Jesus points out, at the end of the day, a farmer can only plant in hope and wait with anticipation for the miracle of growth beyond human control or comprehension. Mark 4:26-29. Perhaps that is why planting and harvesting are such apt metaphors for the Kingdom of God. Disciples of Jesus are invited to proclaim the kingdom, live the virtues of the kingdom and perhaps die for the kingdom. But as Martin Luther reminds us, the kingdom comes without our prayers-or anything else we can do. We cannot hasten or impede it.

Subsistence farmers who live just one bad harvest away from starvation understand only too well how dependent we are on the biosphere around us. Those of us who get our food packaged, processed and neatly cut from the shelves of retailers lose sight of our connection to the land. We are too full of 19th Century hubris, imagining that the natural world is a soulless ball of resources that can be managed as easily as a warehouse full of merchandise. I believe that this sense of detachment is largely responsible for numbing us to the threat of global warming, the increase of toxins in our food and the alarming rate of worldwide deforestation. We cannot help but believe there will be some sort of technological fix to all of this that will save us from the consequences of our fanatical consumption.

I find the same kind of denial within the church-or at least my American protestant section of it. From the national denominational level down to individual congregations, we are turning to consultants, adopting the failed transformational techniques of the corporate world and grasping every straw that promises to turn around our decade’s long slide into membership decline. We keep telling ourselves that there must be some technique out there that will work for us, some way to reach these millennials, some marketing strategy that will appeal to young families and draw them into the church. So we sharpen up our websites, redesign our sanctuaries and pep up our worship services in hopes that this will make us more attractive to contemporary culture. Now I am not adverse to new ideas, innovative programming or new worship styles. I am just not convinced any of that gets to the root of our dilemma. The issue may not be between the church and the rest of the world at all. It may very well be and issue between God and the church. Perhaps we are in the midst of what the prophet Amos calls a “famine of hearing the words of the Lord.” Amos 8:11-12. Maybe we are in a season of drought during which nothing will grow-and there isn’t a thing we can do about it.

Last week I learned that Youth Encounter (formerly Lutheran Youth Encounter) is closing its doors bringing to an end half century of ministry. The news hit me on a visceral level. Throughout my high school years I attended Youth Congresses sponsored by Youth Encounter where my faith was formed and deepened. I met some of the best friends I have ever had through its programs, young people who, like me, were hungry for more than a Sunday morning religion. Youth Encounter enabled me to experience full participation in the church’s ministry in a way that my denomination’s programs did not. I am not sure whether I would be in ministry today if I had not had not come under the influence of Youth Encounter. It’s demise is a great loss to the church.

It is tempting to respond with anger and frustration. I could retire if I got a nickel for every time I’ve heard someone say, “What’s wrong with kids these days?” Or, “People just don’t care anymore” or “our country has abandoned religion,” or (my favorite) “there is a war being waged on Christianity.” Such anger is unproductive for two reasons. In the first place, it is hard to attract people with whom you are angry. You don’t sell more lemonade by insulting everyone who walks away from your stand without buying any. Moreover, if what I am suggesting is true, such anger is misplaced. God, not our godless culture, is to blame for this drought. If we want to see things change, we need to stop complaining about the world into which we have been sent and get right with the God who sends us there.

There is more than a silver lining in all of this. The people of God have seen such times of spiritual famine before. I have already cited the words of the prophet Amos as an example. We read also that in the years of Samuel’s childhood “the word of the Lord was rare.” I Samuel 3:1. The prayer of the Psalmist might very well be the prayer of the American protestant churches today:

“We do not see our signs;
there is no longer any prophet,
and there is none among us who
knows how long.”   Psalm 74:9

Such prayers can be made only by a people convinced that the answer to “how long?” is not “forever.” If the church really is going through a collective “dark night of the soul,” we can take comfort in the knowledge that numerous prophets, saints and martyrs have passed through that darkness before us. So also have the people of God as a whole. The key to getting through all this is recognizing it for what it is. This is nighttime and we cannot make the sun come up. We need to master the art of being at home in the darkness. We must get used to the idea that faithful attention to the work of worship, witness and service might not yield visible results. We must resist the siren song of false prophets promising us short cuts through the woods, easy solutions and painless growth. We must come to grips with Jesus’ warning that trying to save ourselves is the surest way to lose everything. By contrast, a willingness to die is the only way to resurrection. We must endure the drought with weeping and faithful planting, knowing that in God’s time (not that of our own choosing) the harvest will come and we will “come home with shouts of joy, bringing [our] sheaves with [us.]”

Here is a poem about planting in the holy anticipation of resurrection.

Planting Peas
By Linda M. Hasselstrom

It’s not spring yet, but I can’t
wait anymore. I get the hoe,
pull back the snow from the old
furrows, expose the rich dark earth.
I bare my hand and dole out shriveled peas,
one by one.

I see my grandmother’s hand,
doing just this, dropping peas
into gray gumbo that clings like clay.
This moist earth is rich and dark
as chocolate cake.

Her hands cradle
baby chicks; she finds kittens in the loft
and hands them down to me, safe beside
the ladder leading up to darkness.

I miss
her smile, her blue eyes, her biscuits and gravy,
but mostly her hands.
I push a pea into the earth,
feel her hands pushing me back. She’ll come in May,
she says, in long straight rows,
dancing in light green dresses.

©1984 by Linda M. Hasselstrom; Hasselstrom lives in South Dakota. Her thirteen books reflect more than fifty years of ranching and her concern for the wildlife and plants sharing the grasslands with cattle. Her most recent book of poems, written with Twyla Hansen, is Dirt Songs, (The Backwaters Press, 2011).  You can learn more about Linda M. Hasselstrom and read more of her poetry at her website.

Isaiah 43:16-21

These words of the prophet are addressed to the Jews living in exile at Babylon. For a fuller account of this prophet’s work and its relationship to the rest of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, see my post of Sunday, December 13, 2015. The prophet sees in the conquest of Babylon by Persia an act of God creating an opportunity for the exiles to return home to Palestine. Though the prophet admonishes the people “remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old” (vs. 18), he or she is not suggesting that Israel forget her history. Rather, s/he is challenging Israel to understand her history in a new way. The Exodus, God’s liberation of Israel from Egypt, is not just an inspiring tale from Israel’s distant past. It is a prism though which Israel is challenged to look toward the future. If only the imagination of this people can grasp it, God is enacting another exodus for Israel. This time God is liberating Israel from Babylon. Just as God led Israel through the Red Sea on dry ground, so now God will lead Israel through what is now the Iraqi desert by a miraculous path of well watered garden. Vs. 19. Israel, the people God formed for himself, will give praise to their God as they make their triumphal journey home. Vs. 21. Even the animals will find shade and nourishment in this marvelous highway through the wilderness and will honor Israel’s God. Vs. 20.

“Thus says the Lord.” Vs. 16. This is a stereotypical formula for the making of a proclamation. Middle Eastern monarchs would make their decrees known by sending a messenger on their behalf who would proclaim in a public place: “Thus says the king!” The decree, order or declaration of the king would follow. Israel’s prophets often used the same formula when introducing a word from God.

“…who makes a path through the mighty waters, who brings forth the chariot and horse, army and warrior; they lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick.” Vss. 16-17. While evoking images of the Exodus from Egypt, this sentence also reflects the overwhelming victories of Persia against Babylon. The prophet is intentionally using language that draws parallels between these two events in order to help his people “perceive” the new thing that God is doing for them.

“Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” vs. 19. Evidently, the people do not perceive. Israel has been dominated by Egypt, Assyria and Babylon. Now Persia is getting the upper hand. But so what? This only means that we have a new master oppressing us. Unless you are the lead dog, the view never changes. But this is not just a change of administration. Cyrus, the emperor of Persia, is promoting a different agenda. In 1878 a clay cylinder typically used for the inscription of royal decrees was discovered at the site of ancient Babylon.  Now housed in the British Museum, the cylinder describes in Akkadian cuneiform, in Cyrus’ own words, his conquest of Babylon in 539 BCE and his subsequent humane treatment of his conquered subjects. the Cyrus Cylinder, alongside the Biblical and other historical statements, seems to substantiate the idea that Cyrus not only allowed many of the nations he conquered to practice their various religious beliefs, but even assisted captive peoples, including the Jews, to return to their lands of origin. This support was not only political but even financial – as he gave grants both from the Imperial treasury and also from his own personal fortune. The prophet recognizes in this development a golden opportunity for the exiles to return to Jerusalem and renew their commitment to living the covenant with Yahweh. The question is, will the exiles perceive this new thing God’s doing? To be sure, Cyrus had his own self-interested reasons for promoting this policy. But the prophet knows that God, not Cyrus, is the driving force behind history. God is using Cyrus to open a way of return for Israel to the land promised to her ancestors. “Can’t you see the opportunity here?” says the prophet. “Don’t you see God’s hand in this? We are experiencing a new Exodus miracle!”

This lesson challenges us to read the Bible, not as a book of ancient tales from long ago, but to understand it as the lens thorough which we are to see and interpret our present circumstances and our future hope. Albert Einstein is reputed to have said that, for the advancement of science, imagination is more important than knowledge. That is also the case for interpreting the Bible. Faithful imagination is the reason why a store front preacher with a seventh grade education can inspire a congregation of desperately poor people with vivid images of salvation, hope and liberation while a learned Reverend Doctor with an Ivy League degree can put you to sleep. Don’t misunderstand me. I am thankful for the theological education I received from seminary and find it enormously valuable in understanding the sense of the biblical texts. Yet I must also say that too often in my seminary career we tended to treat the Bible as a dead relic from the past that we needed somehow to “make relevant” to the modern world. The idea that we needed to learn from the Bible what is relevant and how to understand the world seldom occurred to us. But that is precisely how believers approach the Bible-with reverent imagination. Not until we can imagine ourselves as the people of the Exodus can we begin to see God creating new opportunities in our lives for faithful witness and service. Not until we enter imaginatively into the gospel narratives can we hear God calling us away from what holds us captive. Jesus has promised to be with us to the close of the age, but it takes a faithful imagination to perceive him in our midst. The preaching of the prophet in this Sunday’s lesson gives us a vivid example of the power of imagination.

Psalm 126

This psalm served as inspiration for the revered hymn, “Bringing in the Sheaves.” The lyrics for the hymn, printed below, were composed in 1874 by Knowles Shaw.

Sowing in the morning, sowing seeds of kindness,
Sowing in the noontide and the dewy eve;
Waiting for the harvest, and the time of reaping,
We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.
 
Refrain:
Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves,
We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves,
Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves,
We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.

Sowing in the sunshine, sowing in the shadows,
Fearing neither clouds nor winter’s chilling breeze;
By and by the harvest, and the labor ended,
We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.
Refrain

Going forth with weeping, sowing for the Master,
Though the loss sustained our spirit often grieves;
When our weeping’s over, He will bid us welcome,
We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.
Refrain

I bring this piece of trivia to your attention because it provides us with a splendid illustration of biblical imagination discussed under the heading of our lesson from Isaiah. Through his identification with the struggles of the returning exiles striving against numerous difficulties to rebuild their ruined land, Shaw gives meaning to the lives of Christian believers striving, sometimes with little evidence of progress, to live out their discipleship.

The psalm begins with the words “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream.” vs. 1. An alternative reading is “When the Lord brought back those who returned to Zion, we were like those who dream.” If the latter reading is adopted, then “those who returned to Zion” are almost certainly the Babylonian exiles. As noted above, this return was made possible by the edict of Cyrus the Great, emperor of Persia who conquered Babylon. Cyrus decreed that all peoples taken into exile by Babylon, including the Jews, would be permitted to return to their homelands. Such an opportunity would indeed seem like a dream come true. Yet there were also serious obstacles in the way of returning to Palestine. The journey home through what is now the Iraqi desert was itself a perilous trip. Upon return, the Jews found a ruined city and hostile peoples who had come to inhabit the homeland. Rebuilding would be a long and difficult task. Hence, the psalmist prays “Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like the watercourses in the Negeb!” vs. 4. The “Negeb” is a hilly desert region of southern Israel. Water courses there are seasonal, being dry for most of the year but brought to life in the rainy season to revive dormant vegetation. So the psalmist hopes that God will likewise restore and nurture the community of Israel in the land to which she returns. The final verses of the psalm reflect the hope that, just as a bountiful harvest follows the toil of planting, so the sacrifice, hard work and risks taken by the returning exiles will be rewarded with the rebirth of a thriving community.

The psalm concludes with this promise: “He who goes fourth weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing in his sheaves with him.” Vs. 6. This could well be a proverb similar to the many found in the Book of Proverbs or it could be an oracle spoken by a priest in response to the congregation’s prayer for restoration. In either case, the image of planting what appears to be a lifeless seed just as one would bury the dead in the hope of new life at harvest is a powerful exercise of imaginative preaching! It calls to mind Jesus’ parable employing the same idea. See Mark 4:26-29.

Philippians 3:4b-14

To repeat briefly what I have said about Paul’s Letter to the Philippians in the past, this is not one letter but three.

Phil A = Phil 4:10-20 (a short “Note of Thanksgiving” for monetary gifts Paul received from the Philippians)

Phil B = Phil 1:1 – 3:1; 4:4-7; (a “Letter of Friendship” written from prison, probably in Ephesus)

Phil C = Phil 3:2 – 4:3; 4:8-9; 4:21-23 (a stern warning against the rival missionaries who require the circumcision of Gentiles)

This Sunday’s reading comes from the third letter warning the Philippians to beware of the teachings of rival missionaries who were evidently teaching gentile Christians in Paul’s congregations that they needed circumcision in order to be full members of the church. In years past, scholars referred to these folks as “Judaizers,” but that name is somewhat misleading. The false missionaries with which Paul was contending were probably not Jews at all. Most likely, they were local people, probably gentiles who had received circumcision and took pride in the depth of commitment it demonstrated. Paul responds by pointing out that if such things as circumcision were really a source of pride, he could make a much stronger case on his own behalf than his adversaries. In verses 4-6, Paul points out that he has a real Jewish ancestry that he can trace; circumcision done strictly in accordance with the law and a first rate Hebrew education. But of all this St. Paul says, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”

Understand that there is more going on here than a fight over circumcision. In fact, circumcision is not the real issue here. The problem for Paul is that his opponents measure their worth in the eyes of God on the basis of their religious accomplishments. Paul maintains that “righteousness” depends on faith, more specifically, faith in Jesus. In this secular age where “organized religion” (so called) is in steep decline, it is hard to find many people who are striving to be righteous in the sight of God. But there is no shortage of people who are striving to achieve some measure of self worth. I am not talking only about folks striving for the American dream of a six figure income, home ownership and a comfortable retirement. I am also speaking of many of my colleagues over the years that have entered the service of the church under the mistaken notion that they are choosing a “higher calling.” There is no higher calling than baptism into Jesus Christ. From there on out, it’s all downhill. I have likewise known a good many folks who have told me that they are serving the church because “I want to make a difference,” presumably for good. At first blush, this sounds quite admirable. Yet the “I” in that claim is a little troubling. Could the translation be, “I want to be important?” or “I want to count for something?”

The fact of the matter is that Jesus does not call us to make a difference. It is not our job to change the world. As our Catechism tells us, “The Kingdom of God comes without our prayers,” and I would add, without our hard work, sacrifice and dedication. We are witnesses to the Kingdom, not its architects and engineers. That means we might spend our lives doing work that doesn’t make a difference-at least not one we can see. We might die before the harvest and when it comes, nobody will remember that we did the planting. Indeed, the harvest itself might not be appreciated. Faithfulness does not always produce growing churches, successful programs and revenue for the home office. So to people who have told me they are considering service in the church (including my own daughter), I warn them that they might very well come to the end of their ministry with their congregations, their colleagues and the denominational authorities viewing them as having failed. If you have a problem with that, you belong in some other calling.

No one knew better than Paul how tenuous are achievements in ministry and how easily each hard won gain can be lost. Paul knew that in the end, regardless of who plants and who waters, God alone gives the growth. So his focus is not on the success of his work, but on knowing Jesus and the power of his resurrection. Jesus, after all, was the quintessential failure. His ministry ended in a shameful death by public execution. His closest followers failed to understand him and they deserted him when he needed them most. But Jesus was faithful to God’s purpose for him and obedient to God’s reign-even when that obedience didn’t seem to be accomplishing anything. It is precisely that kind of faith in God’s promise to bring to completion what we cannot even properly begin that Paul is striving for. Such “striving” is nothing other than what should be happening whenever we take part in the order of confession and forgiveness. It involves letting go of what is past-both the painful memories of failure and the coveted memories of success. Failure, after all, might well prove to be a monumental triumph in the grand scheme of things. Similarly, the success in which we take such pride might prove over the long haul to have been negligible or even counter-productive. The only sure thing here is God’s promise and demonstrated determination to raise up from our shattered and imperfect lives something new and truly beautiful.

John 12:1-8

Matthew, Mark and Luke each have Jesus anointed by a woman although the timing and details differ. It is significant that John has Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus anointing Jesus. In John’s gospel, it was the raising of Lazarus from death that convinced the chief priest that Jesus would have to be killed to avoid trouble with Rome. John 11:45-53. It was arguably for Mary’s sake that Jesus raised Lazarus. Unlike her sister Martha, Mary cannot bring herself to confess belief in the resurrection from death. It was, again, arguably, her lack of faith that brought Jesus to tears at John 11:35. In any event, one cannot help but wonder whether Mary understood at some level that Jesus’ great act of love toward her and her sister would prove to be Jesus’ undoing.

So let’s start by acknowledging that Judas’ motives here were not as pure as the driven snow. Still and all, isn’t he right? In a society where malnourished children are surviving day to day on discarded scraps, how can you justify using ointment that would fetch three hundred denarii for a foot massage? Bear in mind that a denarius constituted about one day’s pay for a manual laborer. That is a lot of meals for a lot of hungry people.  Judas could cite any number of passages from the Hebrew Scriptures supporting his claim that the ointment should rightly have been sold for the support of the poor. For example, the prophet Amos castigates the aristocracy of Israel because they “anoint themselves with the finest oils, but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph.”Amos 6:6. There are many other such instances in which the prophets make clear God’s priority for care of the poor over opulent living and even proper worship. It seems that Judas is on pretty solid ground here.

So let me respond with a story that I once heard as a sermon illustration. I can’t remember anymore the preacher I got it from and have no idea whether it really happened. In any event, there was a parish in an impoverished neighborhood that decided to take seriously Jesus’ injunction to feed the hungry. So the social ministries committee appointed a young woman to oversee this work and she planned a Thanksgiving Day meal for the poor and homeless families in the community. Knowing how hard life is out on the street and in the grip of poverty, she decided to give her guests at least one night of fine dining in a family style setting. She bought white table linens, rented fine china with real silverware, catered a meal with one of the most renowned restaurants in the area and, to top it off, she hired a string quartet to provide music. The guests were overwhelmed. One fellow said, “I’ve been treated like a tramp for so long, I forgot what it was like to be treated like a man.” Another woman who came with two small children in tow remarked, “This is the first time in I don’t know how long that I felt like I was really welcome.”

On the Monday after Thanksgiving an emergency meeting of the church council was called and the young woman was summoned to appear. The council members were livid. “How could you so irresponsibly and thoughtlessly squander the resources of this church?” bellowed the president. “You could have fed all of those people for a fraction of the cost and still have had a substantial budget for the days ahead!” The good president had a point-as did Judas. It would have been cheaper and more efficient to serve the people processed turkey on paper plates with plastic silverware. They didn’t need table cloths. Music could have been provided via a boom box.  But that really misses the point. Jesus does not simply feed the poor. He invites them to the messianic banquet. The poor are not a demographic. They are not faceless numbers on a spread sheet or social problems needing to be solved. They are people for whom Jesus has a special interest, people who are gifted and highly valued. You don’t feed God’s special children rubber turkey and you don’t anoint Jesus with cheap perfume.

Judas’ problem is that he fails to comprehend the economy of God. He is caught up in the belief that the world is a shrinking pie. There is only so much to go around. Generosity toward one cannot but impoverish another. Judas would do well to recall the abundance of wine at the Wedding in Cana and the five thousand fed with a few loaves and fishes. Where God is recognized as the One whose generosity is without limit, there can be no limit on the generosity of God’s people. Mary is anointing Jesus for burial. Her act is one of profound love and generosity beyond what she can fully appreciate. You cannot so honor Jesus without honoring the poor for whom he lived and died. Standing with Jesus is acknowledging the full humanity and value of the poor in the fullest possible measure. Judas did not grasp that because he could not see beyond his balance sheet. His chief crime here is neither greed nor theft. Judas’ worst crime is his lack of imagination. That brings us full circle to where we began with Isaiah. Commitment to mission is good. Bible knowledge is good. Theological education is good. But without imagination, all are worthless.

Sunday, March 6th

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Fourth Sunday in Lent

Joshua 5:9-12
Psalm 32 
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

Prayer of the Day: God of compassion, you welcome the wayward, and you embrace us all with your mercy. By our baptism clothe us with garments of your grace, and feed us at the table of your love, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Probably from the time I first gave Jesus’ parable of the “Prodigal Son” more than a superficial glance, my sympathies lay with the elder son. I know this kid who grew up under the storm clouds of conflict between his parents and his rebellious sibling. I know the compulsion he felt to ease his parents’ heartbreak by being good enough to make up for the pain his brother’s selfish conduct was causing. I understand his deep desire to smooth things over and make peace in the family. I know the burden of guilt he carried for having failed at this hopeless task. I know well the nights he cried himself to sleep and, if he could have articulated his pain, might have said, “Daddy, I know my problems are not as great as my brother’s, I know my sins are not as weighty as his. But I hurt too. I am also afraid and insecure. I need your understanding and forgiveness. Forgive me, but I sometimes wish your heart would break for me too. You yearn for the son you have lost-but this son is still with you and needs you too.”  The prodigal son learned some hard lessons in the far country. But the elder son’s journey on the home front wasn’t a cake walk either.

If we resist the temptation to place this familiar parable of Jesus into the straight jacket of a simplistic morality play or reduce it to mere illustrative scaffolding for some abstract theology of grace, the story can lead us into a deeper understanding of family, faith and salvation. Now that I have become a father myself, it’s easier for me to understand the anguish of the father in Jesus’ parable. We love our children, to be sure. Yet their needs exceed everything we have to give them. We yearn to save them from the mistakes we have made in life and arm them with the hard won knowledge we have gained through life experience. But the wisdom we have to share comes across as irrelevant, pedantic and judgmental. We want desperately to support our children with our love, but a growing child is a moving target. Just when it seems we have this parenting thing down pat, the kids enter into another stage of their development and all bets are off. We can never love our children enough in the right way at the right time.

Consequently, the results of our parenting are always mixed. Under the best of circumstances, our relationship with our parents is nuanced, conflicted and ambiguous. Love and admiration mix with resentment and disappointment. Thankfulness is laced with blame. Perhaps we can never do more than love our children the best we can, keep our doors ever open to them and continue urging them “to come home,” whether that means actually returning to the homestead or being reconciled with each other through repentance and forgiveness. That, in any event, is where Jesus’ parable leaves us.

There is a reason why the scriptures employ parenthood (not fatherhood exclusively!) as the strongest metaphor for God’s covenant relationship with Israel and with the church. That relationship, too, is laden with ambiguity and unreconciled conflict. Nowhere is the ambivalence in our relationship to God more evident than in the Psalms, that treasury of prayer found at the heart of the Bible. There, as in the parable, we find the whole spectrum of parent/child sentiment from profound love, pride and thankfulness to rage, blame and resentment. Yet the very fact that the covenantal dialogue continues throughout the darkest of times testifies to God’s dogged determination to keep that covenant alive and bring its promises to fruition. The father’s pleading prefigures Jesus’ weeping over Jerusalem. The cross is finally the price God willingly pays to keep the covenantal line from going dead and hold together the fraying bonds of God’s covenant family.

At the end of the parable, we find the father pleading with his elder son to join the festive celebration for prodigal’s return. He offers the boy his very self and all he has. Still, it is not enough. Nor is it clear that his lavish welcome for the returning prodigal succeeded in turning that boy’s heart to obedience and humility. For all we know, the prodigal son might have been off the very next day to another far country for more riotous living. Like last Sunday’s parable of the fig tree, this story leaves a lot of loose ends for us to ponder. But that, after all, is the purpose of parables.

Here is a poem about parenthood by Langston Hughes. Perhaps you too can hear in this an echo of the God who urges us never to despair of his covenant love.

Mother to Son

Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So, boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps.
‘Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now—
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

Source: The Weary Blues, by Langston Hughes (c. 1926 by Alfred A. Knopf, pub. by Random House, LLC). Langston Hughes was an important African American voice in the “Harlem Renaissance” of the 1920s. Though well-educated and widely traveled, Hughes’ poetry never strayed far from his roots in the African American community. Early in his career, Hughes’ work was criticized by some African American intellectuals for portraying what they viewed as an unflattering representation of back life. In a response to these critics, Hughes replied, “I didn’t know the upper class Negroes well enough to write much about them. I knew only the people I had grown up with, and they weren’t people whose shoes were always shined, who had been to Harvard, or who had heard of Bach. But they seemed to me good people, too.”  Today Langston Hughes is recognized globally as a towering literary figure of the 20th Century. You can read more about Hughes and discover more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website (from which the above quote is taken).

Joshua 5:9-12

Sunday’s reading from the book of Joshua marks a significant transition in the story of Israel. Moses, the man who led Israel through the wilderness for forty years is dead. Israel’s nomadic existence is ended. No longer will she eat bread from the hand of God and water from miraculous springs. She will now get her bread from the good earth God has given to her-and therein lurks the next temptation. Israel has no experience with agriculture. Though the God of Israel is clearly competent when it comes to leading nomads through the wilderness, what does he know about farming? Can Israel manage to transform herself from a nomadic society into an agricultural society without losing her soul to the Canaanite gods of fertility?

Israel’s new Canaanite neighbors’ entire culture is founded on farming and fertility. Where religion permeates all of life, it is nearly impossible to separate the mechanics of planting, growing and harvesting from the mythical underpinnings and cultic practices that accompany these tasks. It was hard for Israel to download this new agricultural app from the surrounding culture without importing the designer’s malware into her spiritual hard drive. The tales recounted in the much older book of Judges suggest that Israel’s transition was a rocky one. The conquest narrative in the book of Joshua reflects the gravity of the issues involved and the stark choices Israel must face every time she finds herself in a new cultural context-whether that be Canaanite, Babylonian, Persian, Roman or American.

I sometimes wonder whether the internet and the cornucopia of communication options it makes available does not pose some of the same threats for the church that Israel faced in the land of Canaan. I have heard terms like “virtual church” and “liquid church” tossed around in some circles. Online discussion groups consisting of faceless monikers and online IDs can sometimes approach a sort of closeness that resembles intimacy. Yet how, I wonder, can intimacy exist in such a medium where you cannot even be sure that the people you are communicating with really exist? More to the point, how can a church professing to be the Body of Christ, claiming that the Word of God became flesh and asserting that the body and blood of Christ are truly present in bread and wine exist in a virtual universe? How do you share the peace of God in a chat room?

Of course, I recognize the irony involved in posing these questions on an internet blog. Obviously, I am not a Luddite rejecting all things digital. The internet brings together people and perspectives that might not otherwise meet. Online discussions may lack the warmth and humanity of a face to face discussion. Still, they enable persons who might otherwise lack time or mobility to engage in conversation with others about things that matter. Moreover, I tend to think online discussions give introverted persons who usually get shouted down and talked over in face to face meetings a better shot at being heard. This blog, Trinity’s Facebook presence and our webpage provide valuable links to folks we might not otherwise reach. Still, I am fully aware that whatever else I might be doing here, it is not church. The folks who regularly interact with me on these posts might arguably be classified in some sense as a community, but they are not the Body of Christ. For that you need to be physically present at 167 Palisade Avenue on Sunday at 9:00 a.m.

For some good background information on the book of Joshua, see the Summary Article by Kathryn Schifferdecker, Associate Professor of Old Testament at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, M.N. on enterthebible.org.

Psalm 32

This is one of the seven “penitential psalms” so classified in the commentary of Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator written in the 6th century C.E. (The others being Psalms 6, 38, 51, 102, 130 and 143). Not surprisingly, it was a favorite of Augustine and Luther. The psalmist speaks eloquently about the joy and relief found in forgiveness of sin and the futility of denial and self justification. The psalmist does not disclose the nature of his or her sins, but indicates that it was some illness that brought him or her to an acknowledgement of sin and the need for confession. There is no question but that guilt induced stress can bring about illness, but it is far more likely in this case that the psalmist’s illness was the catalyst for guilt. Sickness was almost universally understood in ancient cultures as an affliction from God intended to punish sin. As such, its onset naturally drove the psalmist to introspection and self examination.

In this case, the psalmist’s self examination led to the discovery of sin that the psalmist had been trying to hide from God and perhaps even from the psalmist’s own self. In the confession and acknowledgement of sin, the psalmist found healing and relief. The psalmist therefore instructs fellow worshipers not take the path of sin and self deception that leads to illness and misfortune, but to “come clean” with God and cry out for deliverance. Mulish stubbornness will only lead to grief. As Augustine puts it, “much is he scourged, who, confessing not his sins to God, would be his own ruler.” Moreover, “it is right to be subject unto [God], that so you may be placed above all things beside.”  Augustine’s Commentary of Psalm 32 published in The Nicine and Post Nicine Fathers, Vol 8, (Erdmans, 1979) p. 71.

This advice is good as far as it goes, but the psalmist’s experience, valid and instructive though it may be, must not be elevated to a universal principle. As the case of Job illustrates, illness is not always the result of sin. The preacher from Ecclesiastes points out that in many cases justice and right do not prevail and all seems like “vanity.”  As last week’s gospel makes clear, sometimes tragedy happens for no apparent reason. There are psalms to address these circumstances as well. See, e.g. Psalm 39.

2 Corinthians 5:16-21

A few introductory words about the Second Letter of Paul to the Corinthians are in order. The church in Corinth, you may recall from previous weeks, was a congregation only Paul could love. See post for Sunday, January 17th Paul’s first letter makes clear just how divided, conflicted and scandal ridden this church was. Paul evidently made a visit to the church in Corinth after writing his first letter. This visit was “painful” and did not result in any reconciliation of differences between the apostle and his congregation. Rather than attempting another visit that he feared would also be unsuccessful, Paul wrote a “letter of tears” to Corinth sent by the hand of Titus. II Corinthians 2:1-13; II Corinthians 7: 5-16. Fearing the effects of this severe letter, Paul left Troas in Asia Minor where he had begun a successful mission and returned to Macedonia in search of Titus. Paul rejoined Titus in Macedonia and was greatly relieved to learn that the Corinthians had indeed responded favorably to his “severe” letter with a change of heart toward him. Paul wrote his second letter to express his gratitude to the Corinthians and to encourage them in their faith.

For centuries biblical scholars have puzzled over the abrupt change in tone between II Corinthians 1-9 and II Corinthians 10-13. Most scholars now agree that these two sections represent different letters, though both authored by Paul. To further complicate matters, there is a fragment at II Corinthians 6:14-7:1 that seems to have no bearing on what precedes or follows suggesting that we might have part of a third letter in the mix. Some scholars believe that chapters 10-13 constitute all or part of Paul’s “letter of tears” while chapters 1-9 constitute a letter of thanksgiving written in response to Titus’ favorable report. Enslin, Morton Scott, Christian Beginnings, (c. 1938 by Westminster Press) pp. 254-261; Filson, Floyd V., “Introduction and Exegesis,” The Interpreter’s Bible, 10th Ed. (c. 1953 by Abingdon Press). If that is in fact the case, the reading for this Sunday comes from Paul’s letter of thanksgiving. As appealing as this hypothesis might seem at first blush, there are substantial grounds for dating the material found in chapters 10-13 after rather than before the composition of chapters 1-9. Furnish, Victor Paul, II Corinthians, The Anchor Bible, Vol. 32A, (c. 1984 by Doubleday & Company, Inc.) p. 38-41. Accordingly, chapters 10-13 most likely are not Paul’s tearful letter.

“From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view.” To fully understand the import of this sentence, you need to back up and read verses II Corinthians 5:14-15: “For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them.” To regard no one from a human point of view is to regard everyone from God’s viewpoint-as people for whom Christ died. Consequently, I believe when we read that “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation,” or, as some translators put it, “when anyone is in Christ-new creation,” Paul is not talking only about some inward individual spiritual renewal. We are talking about a radical reorientation in terms of how we see the world and the people in it. Because Christ has died, all have died. Because all have died, all are reconciled. It is the task of the church to live as an embassy of God modeling and proclaiming the reconciliation accomplished in Jesus.

From a human point of view, our enemies are defined for us by the U.S. Department of State. Our interests are defined by national borders and international treaties. Our neighbors are defined by accidents of geography, demography and history. But from the perspective of God in Christ, these are distinctions without a substantive difference. The starting point for viewing every individual is the conviction that such individual is reconciled to God in Christ. Whether he or she knows it is entirely beside the point. We know it and that knowledge shapes our thoughts and actions. The implications of this text are subversive to say the least. Reconciliation is a fine objective-as long as it applies only to neighbors with nothing between them but white picket fences. Take it into the arena of geopolitics and you could get yourself crucified.

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

I have expressed my reflections on the gospel lesson above. Here are some interesting points that may or may not influence your understanding of the story.

A father could dispose of his property in one of two ways: 1) by a will that is probated after his death; or 2) by a gift made during his lifetime. Though there is no specific provision for disposition of an estate prior to the testator’s death in the Old Testament, there is some evidence that the practice existed even if discouraged. The book of Sirach written in the early 2nd Century B.C.E. contains the following admonition:

“To son or wife, to brother or friend, do not give power over yourself, as long as you live; and do not give your property to another, in case you change your mind and must ask for it. While you are still alive and have breath in you, do not let anyone take your place. For it is better that your children should ask from you than that you should look to the hand of your children. Excel in all that you do; bring no stain upon your honor. At the time when you end the days of your life, in the hour of death, distribute your inheritance.” Sirach 33:19-23.

In any event, it would be highly irregular, to say nothing of presumptuous, for a younger son to initiate the settlement of his father’s estate with his living father. The parable tells us nothing of the son’s motives in making such an unusual request or those of the father in acquiescing. At first blush, it might appear as though in “dividing his living between them” the father had made a complete disposition of his estate between his two sons. But it is obvious from the balance of the story that, at the very least, he maintained control over his property. His gifts to the returning prodigal, slaughter of the “fatted calf” and preparation of the lavish celebration all indicate that the balance of the estate remained under the father’s control.

The degree of the younger son’s reinstatement is a matter of dispute. Some commentators see in the provision of the robe and the ring an echo of Pharaoh’s elevation of Joseph, the implication being that the younger son was being included once again in the father’s inheritance. Jeremias, Joachim, The Parables of Jesus, (c. 1971 by SCM Press) p. 130; Marshall, I. Howard., The Gospel according to Luke, New International Greek Testament Commentary (c. 1978 by Paternoster Press, Ltd.) pp. 610-611. I think that is something of a stretch. The father assures his older son at the end of the parable that “all that is mine is yours.” Vs. 31. In view of this assurance, the only conceivable complaint the older son might have is that the lavish party for his brother was diminishing his future inheritance. I am not convinced that the legal framework of the transactions in the parable can be reconstructed or that doing so would give us any clearer picture of what is going on. Like the ungrateful guests who refused the lavish wedding invitation (Luke 14:16-24), the circumstances of this parable appear to be exaggerated for literary effect. No one could imagine a son so blatantly disrespectful and imprudent. Nor could anyone imagine a father forgiving and receiving back such a son, much less with so lavish a reception. Against this seeming madness, the elder son’s protests come across as the single voice of sanity.

The one constant in this parable is the father whose love pursues in unrestrained measure both of his wayward sons. The lavish party is given not because the younger son deserves it, but because he needs it. The elder son must learn that his father’s love for him cannot be earned but only received as the free gift genuine love always is. We cannot know how these two sons will respond to their father’s love, but it is clear that their father is determination to continue loving both his sons, come what may.

Sunday, February 28th

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THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT

Isaiah 55:1-9
Psalm 63:1-8
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
Luke 13:1-9

Prayer of the Day: Eternal God, your kingdom has broken into our troubled world through the life, death, and resurrection of your Son. Help us to hear your word and obey it, and bring your saving love to fruition in our lives through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Young lives tragically and undeservedly cut short. A life mercifully and undeservedly spared. This Sunday’s gospel places these very different outcomes in stark contrast. The story about the eighteen killed by the collapse of a tower has a contemporary ring to it. Only last week a crane in New York City fell from the top of a building killing instantly a man sitting in his car below. Also last week a dislodged manhole cover somehow became airborne and crashed through the windshield of an SUV killing the driver, an art teacher. It is not clear why Pilate killed the Galileans in our reading. It is possible they were involved in an insurrection of some sort, but they were most likely innocent victims selected for slaughter at random “to send a message” to any would be insurrectionists. Maybe, like so many killed in Syria and Iraq these days, they were simply caught in the crossfire of someone else’s fight. Acts of terror against innocent civilians are hardly novel these days.

Events like these send chills down the spine. They bring home to us how frail and vulnerable we all are. It takes only one defective screw, a second’s inattention, an unanticipated change in weather patterns to cut off a bright and promising future for an unsuspecting victim. It takes years of dedication, patience, sacrifice and anguish to raise a child. It takes only the pull of a trigger erase all of that. When we read about these horrific events, we can’t help thinking, “That could have been me or someone I love!”

Blaming the victims comes naturally. We take a perverse comfort in believing that the victims were somehow at fault for what befell them. After all, if I can identify some error, moral infraction or misjudgment on their part, it is easier for me to convince myself that I can avoid their fate. I just have to exercise more care than they did, stay off the route they were driving, or refrain from the sinful conduct I believe brought down upon them the wrath of God. I can fool myself into thinking that I am in control of my life and safe from the randomness with which death and destruction so often strike.

Jesus dispels that notion altogether. Are the victims of accident and violence any more deserving of death than those who lived to tell about it? “I tell you, No,” says Jesus, but he goes on to say that “unless you repent you will all likewise perish.” What does Jesus mean by that? I doubt he meant that repentance shields one from a violent death. Jesus has already made it clear that repentance and faith take us on the path of the cross. Discipleship makes a violent end more rather than less likely. I believe the explanation lies hidden in Jesus’ parable of the fig tree that follows.

Unlike the seemingly hapless victims in the daily news-both in Jesus’ day and our own-the fig tree has earned the judgment of destruction passed by the owner of the vineyard. In a semi-arid climate where cultivatable land is limited, it is difficult to justify allowing an unproductive tree to go on using up valuable soil. Yet as unexpected and cruel as was the fate of the victims we read about earlier, equally unexpected and undeserved is the owner’s act of mercy sparing the fig tree. At the request of the vinedresser, the tree is given a year’s reprieve. That is where the parable ends and we are left with a huge question. Will the tree use wisely and well the year of grace it has been given? Will it respond to the care and attention of the vinedresser? We might find it strange that Jesus imposes such heavy moral and spiritual responsibility on a plant. But bear in mind that Israel is frequently compared to a vine, a branch or a tree throughout the scriptures. Anyone listening to this parable would have known that Jesus is addressing his people Israel and, by extension, us.

Almost two weeks ago many of us received ashes on our foreheads in the sign of the cross. These ashes are a graphic reminder that we are indeed dust and will, sooner or later, return to dust. Death is God’s judgment upon us and there is no getting around it. The question is not how soon or late that judgment overtakes us, but whether we meet it confident that the life we must now surrender has borne fruit for the kingdom of heaven. Or as Paul would put it, have we built on the foundation which is Christ with gold, silver and precious stones, or have we contributed only hay, stubble and chaff that will not withstand the fire of judgment? I Corinthians 3:10-15.

How, then, shall we live? It is tempting to begin filling up our remaining days with good intentions. I will buy only Free Trade coffee; I will increase my giving to the church and to the poor; I will be more “intentional” (whatever that means) in working for justice and equality. All of those objectives are noble. But true discipleship begins with being rather than doing. Only a good tree is capable of bearing good fruit. Thus, before we can begin to do anything fruitful, we must be the kind of tree Jesus is looking for. We must become creatures capable of living joyfully, thankfully and obediently within the limits of our human mortality.

Our death denying culture hides its dying members away in institutions, sells all manner of cosmetics to hide the effects of aging, celebrates youth and encourages retirees to revert in their “golden years” to a self-absorbed, adolescent lifestyle. But disciples of Jesus are called to embrace with thanksgiving life in all its manifold stages. Disciples are challenged to receive each day as one that the Lord has made and offers as a gift. They are mindful that the number of such days is finite, that tomorrow is not a foregone conclusion and that health, strength and length of days is guaranteed to no one. But that only makes today all the more precious. It is out of such faithful gratitude that generosity flows. Generosity gives birth to compassion and compassion fuels zeal for justice, righteousness and reconciliation.

Here is a poem by New Hampshire poet laurite, Jane Kenyon, a woman whose struggle with depression and chronic illness taught her the art of living thankfully, generously and compassionately.

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.

Source: Constance, Graywolf Press, 1993 (c. Jane Kenyon). Jane Kenyon was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She attended the University of Michigan in her hometown and completed her master’s degree there in 1972. It was there also that she met her husband, the poet Donald Hall, who taught there. Kenyon moved with Hall to Eagle Pond Farm, in New Hampshire where she lived until her untimely death in 1995 at age 47. You can read more of Jane Kenyon’s poetry and find out more about her at the Poetry Foundation Website.

Isaiah 55:1-9

For a brief but thorough overview of the book of Isaiah, see the Summary Article by  Fred Gaiser, Professor of Old Testament at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN published at enterthebible.org. Here it is enough to say that these words were spoken by the prophet to the Judean exiles living in Babylon. The conquest of Babylon by Cyrus the Persian opened up the possibility for the exiles to return to their homeland in Palestine. The prophet sees in this development the hand of God at work creating a new future for Judah. The exiles are naturally skeptical. Most have built new lives for themselves in the foreign land. Those born in Babylon know of Israel only through the legends and stories told by their elders. The prophet’s task is to make his fellow exiles see the glorious new future God is offering them. To that end, the prophet employs some of the most beautiful poetic language in the scriptures. He compares the opportunity for return from Babylon to the Exodus from Egypt. He promises that, just as God provided miraculous protection and provision for the Israelites as they traveled through the wilderness from Egypt to the land of Canaan, so God will shelter and protect the exiles as they travel once again to that promised land from captivity in Babylon.

In our lesson for today, God speaks as though he were a street vendor or a carnival barker inviting all those passing by to “come.” The remarkable thing here is that the voice of the Lord goes on to announce that the goods are free. “He who has no money, come, buy and eat.” Verse 1. The banquet is a frequent metaphor for the new life God offers Israel. The point is clear. God is giving a banquet for which there is no admission charge. Only a fool would turn away from such an opportunity! Yet that is precisely the choice Israel will have made should she ignore the opportunity for return to the land promised to her ancestors. This is reminiscent of Jesus’ parable of the ungrateful guests invited to the wedding feast. (Matthew 22:1-14; Luke 14:15-24). The reference to milk and wine, foods associated with richness, seems to echo the image of Palestine as the land of “milk and honey.” Deuteronomy 26:9.

This is the only passage in the writings of “Second Isaiah” (Isaiah 40-55) in which King David is mentioned. The prophet is far more interested in the messianic role of Israel as a whole than in any of her leaders. Yet he or she can hardly ignore so prominent a theme in Israel’s faith and history as God’s covenant with David: “Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me; your throne shall be established forever.” II Samuel 7:16. Yet what hope can this promise offer now that the line of David has been extinguished? As the prophet sees it, the covenant with David is now extended to all the people. God’s “steadfast love” for David is now embodied in an “everlasting covenant” with all Israel. Vs. 3. It should be noted also that Israel has been given as “a covenant to the people, a light to the nations…” Isaiah 42:6. Thus, God opens up the Davidic covenant to the whole of Israel so that Israel might become a channel of God’s salvation to all the nations of the world.

“‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways,’ says the Lord.” This verse summarizes well a recurring theme throughout Second Isaiah: That God is God and we are not. One of the more subtle forms of idolatry is the assumption that God’s ways are our ways. Though the so called “Christian Right” has been justly criticized for linking godliness and morality to a narrowly defined set of white, middle class cultural biases, I think that we mainline protestant types are often far too certain about what “social justice” ought to look like and far too eager to identify the will of God with our own partisan projects and agendas. Conservatives should be weary of assuming they know what God desires to conserve. Progressives should be equally weary of assuming they know which way God is progressing. What a hoot it would be to find out at the close of the age that nothing we thought was historic, significant and earth shaking, nothing we have given our lives to achieve ever really mattered. How rich it would be to learn that the real history was taking place in some corner of the earth we never even thought to look-like a stable in Bethlehem.

Psalm 63:1-8

The reference in verse 11 to “the king” rejoicing in God (not included in our reading) and the psalmist’s having “looked upon [God] in the sanctuary” suggest that this psalm was probably composed before the Babylonian Exile and during the reign of the Davidic kings over the Judean monarchy. The longing for God’s presence expressed in verse 1 through the metaphors of hunger and thirst of a person lost in the wilderness are artfully contrasted with the images of feasting on “marrow” and “fat” in verse 5. The psalmist’s need for God is as critical as reliance on food and water. This need is satisfied through praise and thanksgiving in God’s sanctuary. The psalmist has experienced God’s help and protection throughout his/her life and so “clings” to God. Vs. 8. God’s steadfast love (“chesed” in Hebrew) is better than life itself. Vs. 3.

From a strictly liturgical perspective, it is hard to sanction this wanton show of gluttony during Lent, even though we know it is expressed only in a metaphorical sense.  Yet on further reflection, is it not appropriate to ask during this season of repentance whether in fact we actually experience this sort of hunger for God’s presence? If we do not, then perhaps, like the audience of the prophet in our first lesson, we are spending “[]our money for that which is not bread and []our labor for that which does not satisfy.” Isaiah 55:2. Our appetites need instruction. We need to learn to yearn for and crave the things that will sustain us. We need to learn to pray well. For that purpose, I can find no better teachers than the psalmists. I have said it before. I will say it again. Two psalms per day, one in the morning and one at night. There is no surer way to a rich and satisfying life of prayer.

1 Corinthians 10:1-13

Few sections of the Hebrew Scriptures have been as instructive for the church as the forty years of Israel’s wilderness wandering recounted from the middle of Exodus to the end of Deuteronomy. This period between Israel’s deliverance from Egypt and her entry into the Promised Land was a fertile source of instruction, admonition and encouragement for the early church living between the inauguration of God’s kingdom through the ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus and the promise of his coming again in glory. Disciples of Jesus, who remember with thanksgiving the “exodus” accomplished by Jesus in Jerusalem and look forward in anticipation to his return in glory, naturally identify with the Israelites at this period in their history. During these “in between” years Israel was totally dependent upon her God for food, water and protection from enemies. She was tested, tried and prepped for her entry into and occupation of Canaan.

In our reading Paul calls upon the church at Corinth to understand her own day to day existence as a time of testing and sanctification. She needs to understand that her sins of divisiveness, rebellion and lack of love (See post for Sunday, January 31, 2016 ) will produce dire consequences for her. Nevertheless, the Corinthians must also keep in mind that God’s judgment is to be understood as another side of God’s mercy. God wounds in order to heal; God judges in order to induce repentance; God’s wrath is born of God’s zealous passion for the salvation of God’s people. For this reason, Paul asserts that “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man…” vs. 13. Temptation here is not to be understood as a personal affliction. Paul is speaking here to the church. The temptations afflicting the Corinthian church are those that threaten her oneness in Christ and lure her into the quagmire of destructive conflict, class distinctions and partisan divisions. Just as God forged a group of escaped slaves into a mighty nation in the furnace of wilderness wandering, so the Spirit of God is shaping the Corinthian church, a fractured and divided community, into the Body of Christ where all work as one. The take away: sanctification is a slow, painful and difficult process. Left to ourselves, we are tempted to abandon it. Thankfully, God can be trusted to complete the job of transforming the church into the image of Jesus.

Luke 13:1-9

The two incidents referenced here, Pilate’s killing of an unspecified number of Galileans and the death of eighteen people in the collapse of a tower, are not referenced in any other historical source. That is not surprising. Violent and repressive measures were the modus operendi of the occupying Roman forces. The death of a few Galileans would hardly have been front page news. These Galileans were most likely put to death in Jerusalem during Passover. This is the only occasion on which lay people would be sacrificing their own animals. Longing for independence and resentment at Rome ran high during Passover. For this reason, Pilate made a point of being present in Jerusalem during the feast with additional troops to maintain order. That, of course, only added to the resentment of the people. It is easy to see how violent conflicts between Pilate’s troops and the Passover pilgrims might erupt.

The incident Jesus brought up involving the fall of the tower also appears to have been a relatively minor occurrence. “Silome” was a name given to the reservoir associated with the water supply in Jerusalem fed by the spring of Gihon. The spring was the main source of water for the city. It is referenced in Psalm 46. An aqueduct built during the Bronze Age brought the waters of the spring into the city. According to the Biblical account, it was through this aqueduct or one like it that David and his army were able to invade and conquer Jerusalem without breaching its walls. II Samuel 5:6-10. Interestingly, Pilate oversaw the construction of an aqueduct designed to improve the water supply system for the city. While it is possible that the fall of the tower to which Jesus referred had something to do with this project, there is no positive evidence on that score.

The implication here is that the people bringing to Jesus news of the unfortunate victims of Pilate’s wrath believed those victims were responsible for their plight by reason of their sins. Jesus does not specifically refute them on this point, but states that the Galileans were no more sinful than anyone else. Consequently, these people should not be focusing on what the Galileans may or may not have done, but rather upon turning from their own sin lest they meet the same fate. The same point is made with respect to the victims of the tower collapse. People should not be asking why these eighteen people died, but recognize instead God’s mercy in the very fact that they are still alive and still able to repent.

The parable of the unfruitful fig tree follows. Like this tree that has taken up good soil for three years without producing fruit, Jesus points out that the folks he is addressing are living similarly unfruitful lives. Like the butchered Galileans and the victims of the tower collapse, they deserve God’s punishment. But the ax has not fallen-yet. God has graciously given them time. The question is, how will they use it?

This parable of the fig tree is intriguing. It is tempting to interpret it allegorically with God being the owner of the vineyard and the vinedresser Jesus interceding on our behalf for mercy. But that does not work for a number of reasons. God clearly does not wish for the destruction of anyone. Even when God threatens judgment, it is with the hope that those who are so threatened will turn and repent. The owner of the vineyard is making no such threat and seems to have no hope for the tree. This is simply a business decision. The tree is an investment that has failed for three years to yield a return. It is time to pull the plug and invest elsewhere. The vinedresser’s motives are unclear. Perhaps he sees more potential in the tree than does the owner. In any event, the vinedresser is convinced he can get fruit out of the tree and tries to convince the owner to give him one more year.

As I see it, the parable has but one purpose: to illustrate the point Jesus has made with respect to the two tragedies discussed in the previous section. Fruitless as we are, we have lived to see another day. That is sheer grace. We have done nothing to earn this new day and have no guarantee that we will see another. Note well that we never hear the owner’s response to the vinedresser’s plea for more time. We would like to think that the owner said, “Fine. You think you can make this tree produce some figs? You have one year and one year only. Knock yourself out.” But it is just as likely that he said, “You have to be kidding! Three years this tree has produced nothing. What do you think will be different about year four? Cut it down!” Given that, undeservedly and inexplicably, we have been freely given this day, this hour, this minute-what are we going to do about it?

Sunday, February 21st

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SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18
Psalm 27
Philippians 3:17–4:1
Luke 13:31-35

Prayer of the Day: God of the covenant, in the mystery of the cross you promise everlasting life to the world. Gather all peoples into your arms, and shelter us with your mercy, that we may rejoice in the life we share in your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often I would have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you would not! Behold, your house is forsaken.” Luke 13:35.

Jesus takes no delight in pronouncing Jerusalem’s doom. He does not speak here as an angry firebrand, a zealot for justice burning with contempt for oppression and tyranny. Jesus does not speak as one throwing his life defiantly against the Roman military machine. His mood is sad more than it is angry; heartbroken more than outraged; tired more than inspired. He is a man resigned to a violent death at the hands of his own people for the sake of a new age he will not live to see. Nevertheless, he takes the next step in his journey to Jerusalem toward which he “set his face” back in Chapter 9. Luke 9:51. Jesus displays a grim determination to complete this race in which he is hopelessly behind and cannot hope to win. Compassion is the driving force for Jesus. Jesus loves the city of Jerusalem and all that it symbolizes throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. His compassion survives where his vision has grown dim and the kingdom he longs for seems further away than ever.

I have often wondered how it is that some people are able to work in conditions of human suffering that defy description-such as refugee camps throughout northern Africa and the Middle East-for years on end without burning out. I wonder too why some pastors burn out of parish ministry within their first five years while others continue to grow in their faith and thrive in their work, even when the work itself is less than successful. I suspect that the common denominator for those with staying power is compassion. When someone you love deeply becomes ill, you keep on caring for them no matter how hard it gets, no matter sick they get and regardless whether there is any likelihood they will ever recover. In just that way Jesus loved the city of Jerusalem and its people ground under the heels of poverty, sickness and injustice.

I am afraid that much of what we do in the church grows out of a commitment to abstract principles of justice, equality and social progress that find expression in programmatic activity. Though well-intentioned, much of this work can result in distancing ourselves from the people we seek to assist. In his book, Toxic Charity, Robert D. Lupton shows how good-intentioned Christians are actually harming the people they are trying to help. Too many efforts to help the poor actually make the poor feel judged, looked down upon, only worthy of charity and handouts. The tendency is to see these people as “social problems” that need to be fixed rather than valued persons deserving honor, respect and friendship. Lupton, Robert D., Toxic Charity, (c. 2011 by Robert D. Lupton, pub. by HarperCollins Publishers).  Whereas Jesus ate with sinners and outcasts, calling them to be his disciples, our programs tend rather to remain a safe distance from these folks, handing them care packages and sending them on their way. While there are some very notable exceptions to these antiseptic procedures, they are unfortunately the exception rather than the rule.

Instead of trying to raise people up to a standard of success and social acceptability where it becomes possible to include them in our community, we need to enter into their world with an openness to being transformed. That is the only way to become transformative. Transformation is a slow and tedious process. It is not for impatient people who crave results. It is not for problem solvers who are bent on finding a “fix.” The only people that can survive discipleship burnout are those whose love for the people they serve simply won’t let them quit.

Here’s a heart break a poem that I think expresses something of the compassion Jesus felt for the people of Jerusalem and the compassion to which he calls his disciples.

Harlem Shadows

I hear the halting footsteps of a lass
In Negro Harlem when the night lets fall
its veil. I see the shapes of girls who pass
To bend and barter at desire’s call.
Ah, little dark girls who in slippered feet
Go prowling through the night from street to street!

Through the long night until the silver break
Of day the little gray feet know no rest;
Through the lone night until the last snow-flake
Has dropped from heaven upon the earth’s white breast,
The dusky, half-clad girls of tired feet
Are trudging, thinly shod, from street to street.

Ah, stern harsh world, that in the wretched way
Of poverty, dishonor and disgrace,
Has pushed the timid little feet of clay,
The sacred brown feet of my fallen race!
Ah, heart of me, the weary, weary feet
In Harlem wandering from street to street.

By Claude McKay

Source: Harlem Shadows, Poems by Claude McKay (c. 1992 by Harcourt, Brace and Company). Claude McKay was born in Sunny Ville, Jamaica, in 1889. He was a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance movememt of the 1920s. His work ranges from verse celebrating peasant life in Jamaica to poems challenging white dominance in the United States. You can find out more about the life and literature of Claude McKay on the Poetry Foundation Website.

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18

Why would a man take a bunch of animals, cut them in half and make a path through the two halves of each of the bloody carcasses? In order to answer this question, we need to take a trip back in time to the Bronze Age. Society is made up of city states that owe their allegiance to larger kingdoms that in time will become the empires of the Iron Age. Obviously, such alliances are not agreements between equals. The ruler of a smaller state received a promise of non-aggression from the larger kingdom in return for payment of tribute and a pledge of military support if required. If this sounds rather like a protection racket, it is because that is essentially what the agreements were. These lopsided alliances were sealed by covenant ceremonies in which numerous animals were slain and cut in two. The subject king would then swear absolute allegiance, promise tribute and pledge military support to the dominant king. The dominant king would then force the subject king to walk on the bloody path between the severed animal parts. It was supposed to produce the same effect as the horse head next to which Jack Woltz woke up in the movie, The Godfather. “See these hacked up animals little king? This is what happens to little kings that try to cross the Big King? Any questions?”

In Sunday’s lesson from Genesis, God stands the whole notion of covenant making on its head. Abraham asked God “how am I to know that I shall possess [the land of Canaan]?” God’s response is to make a covenant with Abraham. Usually, it is the weaker, vassal king who seeks covenant protection from the dominant king. But here God is the one seeking a covenant with Abraham. In near eastern politics, the weaker king is the one who makes all the promises. In this case, God is the one who makes an oath to Abraham. Instead of forcing Abraham to walk between the mangled carcasses, God passes along the bloody path saying, in effect, “Abraham, if I fail to keep my promise to give you a child, a land and a blessing, may I be hacked in pieces like these animals.”

This remarkable story illustrates what one of my seminary professors, Fred Gaiser, once said: “The Old Testament tends toward incarnation.” The New Testament witness is that the Word of God became flesh, that is, became vulnerable to the rending and slaughter experienced by the sacrificial animals used in the covenant ceremony. In fact, we can go further and say that God’s flesh was torn apart, God’s heart was broken and that this rending of God’s flesh was the cost of God’s faithfulness to the covenant. So understood, it is possible to recognize the cross in this strange and wonderful tale from dawn of history.

Psalm 27

The scholarly consensus seems to be that this psalm actually consists of two psalms, the first being a prayer of trust not unlike Psalm 23 including verses 1-6. The second is a lament consisting of verses 7-14. Rogerson, J.W. & McKay, J.W., Psalms 1-50, The Cambridge Bible Commentary (c. 1977 by Cambridge University Press) p. 121. However that might be, I still believe the psalm fits together nicely as a unit. It is precisely because the psalmist has such great confidence in God’s willingness and power to give protection that the psalmist feels free to cry out for that very protection in times of danger. Though as previously noted the commentators characterize verses 7-14 as a lament, it concludes with an affirmation of confidence in God’s anticipated salvation and an admonition to “be strong, and let your heart take courage; yea, wait for the Lord.” Vs. 14.

Two things are noteworthy. First, this psalm is focused on dangers posed by enemies. By enemies the psalmist does not mean people who are merely disagreeable or less than friendly. These are people who “breathe out violence.” Vs. 12. The psalmist’s response to these enemies is prayer. He or she does not strap on a six shooter with the intent of “taking care of business.” Instead, s/he calls upon the Lord to deal with the enemy. This is the characteristic approach of the psalms. Even when the psalmist expresses a distinct desire to see the enemy punished in very violent and graphic terms, the psalmist leaves the business of retribution to God. That, of course, is precisely in line with what Jesus teaches his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount.

Second, the last verse of the psalm is very telling. The psalmist encourages his hearers to “wait for the Lord.” Vs. 14. The odd thing about the psalms is that, although they are prayers addressed to God, they often contain admonitions from God in the psalmists’ mouths. Sometimes the psalmists seem to be conscious of an audience listening in on their prayers. God hardly needs to be reminded to “wait on the Lord.”  Biblical prayer is a dialogical process. The psalmists’ outpouring of prayer to God is only one side. God responds to the psalmists. Sometimes these responses are oracles delivered by a prophet or priest that have become imbedded in the psalm. See, e.g., Psalm 60:6-12. Often these prayers are sung as praises by the psalmist in corporate worship where they give encouragement to the assembly. See Psalm 27:6. For Israel, prayer was never an entirely personal matter. The confidence of this psalmist is drawn as much from God’s faithfulness to Israel throughout history as from his or her own experience. So also, the psalmists’ personal struggles become a public arena for God to demonstrate his compassion and salvation to Israel.

Philippians 3:17–4:1

To repeat briefly what I have said about Paul’s Letter to the Philippians in the past, this is not one letter but three.

Phil A = Phil 4:10-20   (a short “Note of Thanksgiving” for monetary gifts Paul received from the Philippians)

Phil B = Phil 1:1 – 3:1; 4:4-7; (a “Letter of Friendship” written from prison, probably in Ephesus)

Phil C = Phil 3:2 – 4:3; 4:8-9; 4:21-23   (a stern warning against the rival missionaries who require the circumcision of Gentiles)

This Sunday’s reading comes from the third letter warning the Philippians to beware of the teachings of rival missionaries who were evidently teaching gentile Christians in Paul’s congregations that they needed circumcision in order to be full members of the church. In years past, scholars referred to these folks as “Judaizers,” but that name is somewhat misleading. The false missionaries with which Paul was contending were probably not Jews at all. Most likely, they were local people, probably gentiles who had received circumcision and took pride in the depth of commitment it demonstrated. Paul responds by pointing out that if such things as circumcision were really a source of pride, he could make a much stronger case on his own behalf than his adversaries. In verses 4-6 of chapter 3, Paul points out that he has a real Jewish ancestry that he can trace; circumcision done strictly in accordance with the law and a first rate Hebrew education. But of all this St. Paul says, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”

Knowing all of this makes it a little easier to stomach Paul’s call to imitate him. Paul is not just being a pompoms ass here (though I suspect that he could be just that at times). It isn’t his moral example or his sterling character that Paul calls us to imitate. Rather, he calls us to imitate his indifference to racial identity, cultural status and religious achievement. You don’t come into the church through your success in living as an observant Jew anymore than you win God’s love by living as an observant Lutheran. You come into the church by Jesus’ invitation. Everything else you bring with you is just excess baggage.

Luke 13:31-35

This encounter of Jesus with the Pharisees needs to be placed in the larger context of Luke’s story about Jesus. Recall how two Sundays ago Jesus stood with Moses and Elijah discussing the “Exodus” he was to accomplish at Jerusalem. From that point on, it was clear that something big was about to occur in the Holy City. So when we read in Luke 9:51 that Jesus “set his face to go to Jerusalem,” it is clear that the time is at hand. From here on out, everything that occurs is leading up to the final confrontation that we know is approaching with every step Jesus takes toward his goal.

The Pharisees warn Jesus that Herod Antipas is seeking his life and urge him to flee. We do not know their motivation. Though the Pharisees were often hostile toward Jesus, this was not always the case in Luke’s gospel. In fact, in the very next chapter Jesus is invited to dinner at the home of a very prominent Pharisee. Moreover, the Pharisees had no great love for Herod. However much they might have disagreed with Jesus over any number of issues, Jesus was still a Jew that cared deeply about the Torah. Herod was a thug and a bully appointed by Rome who cared little about anything beyond his own comfort. As between the two, it is likely that the Pharisees would have sympathized with Jesus.

Of course, it is also possible that the Pharisees were trying to intimidate Jesus. Perhaps they felt that raising the specter of Herod might frighten him away from Judea and back into the more remote parts of Galilee where he would be someone else’s problem. In either case, Jesus will not be deterred from the course he set out in chapter 9. So far from fleeing, Jesus sends the Pharisees back to Herod with his travel itinerary.

Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem is one of the most moving passages in the gospels. We seldom get a glance into the head of Jesus. It seems to me that all four gospel writers are intent on preventing us from doing that. We are almost never told how Jesus felt or what his thoughts were about the things taking place around him. This passage marks one of the rare exceptions to that rule. Unlike the account in Matthew, Luke does not tell us that Jesus wept over the city. Nevertheless, his lament is filled with compassion. Jesus is resigned, it seems, to failure. The city that kills the prophets and stones the messengers sent to it will deal likewise with Jesus. Its people will not be gathered together by Jesus. Jesus is going to die without seeing the consummation of the reign of God to which he has given his life.

New Testament scholars are in virtual agreement that the Gospel of Luke was composed anywhere from fifteen to thirty years after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple by Rome in 70 C.E. Many of them are also inclined to view this saying less as a reflection of Jesus’ sentiments upon his arrival in the city toward the close of his ministry and more as the early church’s effort to provide a theological explanation for the Temple’s destruction. No doubt Luke’s telling of the story is colored by the church’s experience of historical events that followed the ministry of Jesus. That said, I don’t think it is possible to divorce Jesus from his dire judgment upon the Holy City. All four gospels contain Jesus’ words of judgment against the Temple and its corrupt leadership. One of the more serious charges leveled against Jesus at his trial was his alleged claim that he would “destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days…build another temple not made with hands.” Mark 14:58. Furthermore, Jesus was not the first prophet to pronounce a judgment of destruction against Jerusalem. Jeremiah and Micah similarly warned that, however much God might treasure the Temple and the city of David, neither could be used as a shield against God’s punishment for injustice and unrighteousness.  Jeremiah 12:7; Jeremiah 22:5; Micah 3:9-12. The judgment against the Holy city brought about in Jeremiah’s time by the Babylonian invasion served as a solemn warning for all subsequent generations. It is hardly surprising that Jesus should draw upon this prophetic tradition in speaking to the Jerusalem of his day.

Jesus’ statement, “How often I would have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood,” calls to mind a host of images from the Hebrew Scriptures. See e.g., Deuteronomy 32:11; Psalm 17:8; Psalm 36:7;Psalm 57:1; Psalm 91:4; Ruth 2:12. The shelter Jesus promises affords the kind of protection proclaimed in Psalm 27, our Psalm for this Sunday. Jesus makes it clear to us that he knows he is walking into a conflict that will claim his life. He does so with the confidence that God will see to the completion of what his “Exodus” in Jerusalem will begin and that the people will one day cry out, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”

 

Sunday, February 14th

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FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT

Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16
Romans 10:8b-13
Luke 4:1-13

Prayer of the Day: O Lord God, you led your people through the wilderness and brought them to the promised land. Guide us now, so that, following your Son, we may walk safely through the wilderness of this world toward the life you alone can give, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

For most of my life I never really understood the first temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. Aside from the fact that the suggestion came from the mouth of the devil, why would it be inappropriate for Jesus to turn stones into bread? If Jesus can turn water into wine in order to rescue a wedding feast, surely there can be nothing wrong with his turning a few stones into bread, especially where, as here, he finds himself in the middle of nowhere on the verge of starvation. The solution to this quandary is so obvious that it’s hard to imagine how I managed to miss it all these years. Jesus was in the midst of a fast. For that reason alone his use of miraculous power to produce bread and so satisfy his hunger would have been a faithless act of disobedience.

Fasting is unintelligible in our fast food culture. We know only one solution for our cravings, namely, to satisfy them as soon as possible.  Our economy grows by feeding insatiable consumer appetites created by artful advertising. The engine of late stage capitalism is driven by our hunger for new products and the conviction that our happiness depends on satisfying it. Fasting is therefore a dangerously subversive act. If all who identify as Christian began practicing this Lenten discipline, they would pose a far greater threat to the American way of life than a hand full of Muslim extremists. If Christians began en masse saying “no” to consumerism and insisting that we live instead by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God, they would bring our economic growth to a screeching halt. While that might not be a welcome development for Wall Street, for the rest of us it could pave the way for the emergence of a new economy based on human need rather than corporate greed.

But fasting requires patience-a virtue that is not in the American DNA. There is nothing we Americans hate more than being told we have to wait. There is nothing that enrages us more than to be told that our problems are difficult and complex, that they will require years of hard work and sacrifice to address. Our blood boils over into road rage when traffic grinds to a halt. We don’t take well to being told we can’t get to where we are going or can’t have what we want right now. Violence is only the end stage manifestation of chronic impatience.

Nobody is more skilled at exploiting our impatience than the devil. For that reason, I suspect that the devil’s first temptation was his deadliest. At first blush, it would seem a small thing for Jesus to end his fast a tad early. Who will it hurt? Besides, forty days is plenty long enough. Would Jesus have changed the course of history by ending his fast a day or two earlier than planned? Though a day or two one way or the other might seem small in the grand scheme of things, there may be more at stake here than meets the eye. After all, if Jesus can be induced to end his fast prematurely, he almost certainly can be induced to abandon the long road to the cross and embrace the quicker and easier methods of kingdom building employed by the nations of the world. Military actions get measureable results a whole lot faster than the painstaking work of reconciliation and peacemaking. If Jesus cannot put off a meal, he most likely lacks the patience to wait for God’s vindication of his humble life of service and his shameful death. If Jesus cannot wait for God to provide his daily bread, he will surely lose patience with God’s slow pace of redeeming creation. Maybe Jesus will run out of patience altogether and try forcing God’s hand through some foolish, suicidal act of desperation-like throwing himself from the highest point of the temple in Jerusalem. The devil is betting that Jesus will prove to be as impatient as the rest of us. He is hoping that, like us, Jesus will be willing to cut corners, take short cuts and focus on the ends to the exclusion of the means.

Impatience is at the heart of my own struggles in pastoral leadership. It is tempting to marshal influential members of the congregation in support of my initiatives. That way I can steam roll them through the council and present them to the congregation in a neat little package. With little time to consider them, discuss them and evaluate them, it is more than likely my proposals will sail through without objection. Why is this temptation so strong? Why am I afraid of taking the slow, clunky and time consuming way of consensus building? Is it because I lust after evidence of progress my eyes can see? Is it because I fear that my plans will be shot down if I open them up to full discussion? Why do I fear having my ideas rejected? Is it because I fear appearing to be a weak and ineffective leader? Is it because I don’t believe that the Spirit of God is at work in the midst of the church accomplishing God’s purpose? Or is it because I am just too impatient to wait for the mind of Christ to be formed in the church?

Lent is time for cultivating the virtue of patience. It is a time for learning to distinguish the genuine hunger of our souls from the appetites of the flesh urging us to buy the latest digital gadget, raid the refrigerator just because it is there and drive our cars as though they were weapons. Lent is a time for remembering that peacemaking and reconciliation, like mastering a language or learning to play a musical instrument or doing anything else worthwhile, is slow, difficult and sometimes painful work. The devil would have us believe that it is too slow, too difficult and ultimately ineffective. There is a faster, easier and more efficient way to get what you need. Our impatient hearts would like very much to believe that. But like everything else the devil tells us, it’s a lie. The devil’s promised short cuts only lead us into a wilderness of cravings for things that appeal to our appetites but cannot feed our souls. Only the words that come from the mouth of the Lord can give us life.

If we can sit still long enough to hear it, there is good news in all of this. God will see to the coming of God’s reign in God’s own good time. We are relieved of the anxiety, worry, anger and frustration that comes of thinking it somehow depends on us. To live patiently means recognizing that your life will always be somewhat out of step with the surrounding culture. It means embracing a hunger for righteousness and justice that likely will not be satisfied in your lifetime. It means choosing the slow, winding path of reconciliation and peacemaking over the smooth and seemly straightforward way of coercion, intimidation and violence to get things done. Patience is life under the cross anticipating the Easter sunrise.

Here’s a poem about living patiently by Sir Thomas Wyatt.

Patience, Though I Have Not

Patience, though I have not
The thing that I require,
I must of force, God wot,
Forbear my most desire;
For no ways can I find
To sail against the wind.

Patience, do what they will
To work me woe or spite,
I shall content me still
To think both day and night,
To think and hold my peace,
Since there is no redress.

Patience, withouten blame,
For I offended nought;
I know they know the same,
Though they have changed their thought.
Was ever thought so moved
To hate that it hath loved?

Patience of all my harm,
For fortune is my foe;
Patience must be the charm
To heal me of my woe:
Patience without offence
Is a painful patience.

This poem is in the public domain. Sir Thomas Wyatt was born in 1503 at Allington Castle in Kent, England. He worked in the court of Henry VIII and served as ambassador to France and Italy. During his travels, he came to appreciate several forms of poetry that he later adapted and employed in the English language. He is credited with having introduced the sonnet into English literature. You can read more about Sir Thomas Wyatt at the Academy of American Poets website.

Deuteronomy 26:1-11

This is the passage that I love to refer to as the “First Thanksgiving.” Moses is addressing the children of Israel as they stand at the threshold of the Promised Land. The refrain “remember” has been reverberating throughout the previous chapters and it will be heard in the succeeding ones as well. Forgetfulness is the greatest danger Israel faces as she begins to settle into the land of Canaan.  There is a very real possibility that the lessons learned throughout the years of wilderness wandering will be lost once the people are in possession of productive land. “Take heed lest you forget the Lord your God.” Deuteronomy 8:11. “Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth’” Deuteronomy 8:17. Moses knows that the most potent antidote to arrogance and greed is memory. Therefore, he outlines a liturgy for the Israelites to recite at each presentation of “first fruits” from the annual harvest. Vs. 2. You might call it a sort of “creed.”

The Israelites are to recite their history. They are to remember that they were sojourners, “few in number.” Vs. 5. They are to recall that “the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us; and laid upon us hard bondage.” Vs. 6. They are to remember how “we cried to the Lord the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression.” Vs. 7. This is significant because God would have Israel know that she was not delivered from bondage merely to become another Egypt. Unlike Egypt, Israel is to “Love the sojourner therefore; for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.” Deuteronomy 10:19. “Justice and only justice you shall follow, that you may live and inherit the land which the Lord your God gives you.” Deuteronomy 16:20. “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 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.

In the final verses of this reading, Israel is commanded to “rejoice in all the good which the Lord your God has given you and to your house…” vs. 11. The opposite of faith is not doubt, but ungratefulness. When you start thinking that everything you have is the fruit of your own toil, you start to resent having to help out a poor neighbor. “I worked for it. It’s mine to do with as I please.” You also start to worry about losing what you have. “After all, if everything I have has been achieved by my own efforts, what will happen when my efforts fail? Where will my daily bread come from when I can no longer extract it from the ground by the sweat of my own brow? Can I afford to offer up the first fruits when I don’t know what tomorrow will bring? Can I afford to lend a hand to my neighbor when I might not even have enough for my own needs?” This is the kind of worry, anxiety and fear that always comes of imagining that ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’ That, by the way, is why Jesus would not take the devil’s challenge to prove that he is God’s Son by making bread for himself out of stones. It is precisely because one is a child of God that he or she need not resort to such measures. Faith knows that “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. God did not create a world of scarcity filled with desperate creatures fighting for an ever smaller slice of a shrinking pie. This is how the devil would have us view the world. Jesus recognizes the devil’s world view for what it is-a lie.

Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16

We get the devil’s spin on this psalm from our gospel lesson (Luke 4:9-12).  Unfortunately, this prayer extolling the protective love of God for those who trust in him is open to just such a demonic distortion. There is no shortage of religion in book stores, on the airwaves and pulsing through the internet promising that the right kind of faith in God insulates a person from suffering. The Prayer of Jabez bv Bruce Wilkinson is a prime example. Though I am probably guilty of oversimplifying Mr. Wilkinson’s argument, his basic claim is that extraordinary blessings flow from praying the prayer of a biblical character mentioned briefly in the book of I Chronicles by the name of Jabez. The entire scriptural basis for this assertion is I Chronicles 4:9-10: “Jabez was more honorable than his brothers. His mother had named him Jabez, saying, ‘I gave birth to him in pain.’ Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, saying, ‘Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain.’ And God granted his request.”

This snippet of narrative comes in the midst of a lengthy chronology with no supporting context. Jabez’ mother gave birth to him in pain. I am not sure what this means as childbirth typically does not happen without some pain for Mom. Perhaps this was a particularly difficult delivery. All we know about Jabez himself is that he was more honorable than his brothers. But since we don’t know his brothers, this assessment is hard to evaluate. Is this like being the smartest of the Three Stooges? Jabez prays that his territory will be enlarged so that he will be protected from pain-a seeming non sequitur. I must confess that I really don’t know quite what to make of Jabez, but I think I will continue to get my instruction on prayer from Jesus.

But I digress. The point here is that we should not let the devil snooker us the way he did Mr. Wilkinson. This psalm is not telling us that faith in God is a magical antidote to life’s slings and arrows. If you read the psalm carefully from the beginning, you will discover that it was composed by one who has been a soldier in combat, lived through epidemics and faced mortal enemies. The psalmist knows that the dangers out there in the world are very real and that life is not a cake walk. You might well prevail over lions and adders, but that does not mean you will come through without any scratches. The Lord promises, “I will be with him in trouble,” which can only mean that trouble will come the psalmist’s way. Vs. 15. This psalm, then, must be interpreted not as the promise of a magic charm (the devil’s exegesis), but as a word of assurance that God’s redemptive purpose is at work in the lives of all who place their ultimate trust in God’s promises. As such, it is a word of profound comfort.

You will note that from verse 14 on the voice changes. In the previous verses the speaker appears to be that of the psalmist. But the last three verses are words of God declaring a promise of protection to those who know and trust in him. It is possible that this last section of the psalm constitutes an oracle proclaimed by a temple priest or prophet to the psalmist as s/he was seeking assurance in time of trouble and that the previous verses were inspired by the psalmist’s experiencing the fulfillment of these words of promise in his or her own life. Rogerson, J.W. and McKay, J.W., Psalms 51-100, The Cambridge Bible Commentary (c. 1977 by Cambridge University Press) pp. 203-204.

Romans 10:8b-13

In this chapter Paul is dealing with what I believe is the foremost concern of his heart, namely, the relationship between Israel and the church. I cannot overemphasize how important it is for us to recognize that Paul’s letters were written long before Christianity existed as a religion separate from Judaism. Throughout Paul’s lifetime, the church was a movement within Judaism asserting that Jesus of Nazareth was the longed for messiah foretold in the Hebrew Scriptures. In this letter to the church in Rome Paul is arguing on two fronts. Over against his Jewish critics, Paul asserts that Israel’s messiah is not for Israel alone. As Paul rightly points out, Israel is called to be a light to the nations pointing to the reign of Israel’s God over all creation. It follows, then, that the salvation offered through Israel’s messiah must be available to the gentiles as well. While Paul’s critics would probably agree with him to this extent, they parted company with Paul’s assertion that the gentiles could be received as covenant partners with Israel’s God without effectively becoming Jews. As a practical matter, to be included among God’s covenant people, gentiles would need to undergo circumcision and to observe all mandatory Jewish ritual and dietary laws. Paul maintains, however, that the gentiles come into the covenant as gentiles through baptism into Jesus Christ. This is so because the covenant stretching back to Abraham is based not on circumcision or ritual obedience, but on faith in God’s promises.

Over against the gentile members of the church in Rome, Paul is careful to remind them that they are “wild olive branches” that have been grafted into the vine that is Israel. Romans 11:13-24. They must therefore never look with contempt upon the people of Israel-even those who do not acknowledge Jesus as messiah. They are not to imagine that God has rejected Israel. Romans 11:1 To the contrary, “the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable.” Romans 11:29. You can reject God, but you cannot make God reject you. All of this is important for understanding the lesson for this Sunday. The emphasis is on the power of the “word [that] is very near you, on your lips and in your heart (that is, the word of faith which we preach).” Vs. 8. This, in turn, is a citation from Deuteronomy 30:11-14. Free will has nothing to do with salvation. Belief in Jesus is the fruit of the Spirit working through the word of God. It is not a decision we make on our own. As Paul states earlier in chapter eight, “For those whom [God] foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son…” Romans 8:29. Consequently, one need not fret over whether and to what degree one “truly believes” or “sincerely confesses” Jesus as Lord. As we read a few verses later, “faith comes through what is heard, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ.” Romans 10:17. If the word is there, it will take care of the rest.

Luke 4:1-13

We have touched on the first and last temptations of Jesus in our discussions of the prior lessons. So let’s focus on the middle one. “And the devil took him up, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and said to him, ‘To you I will give all this authority and their glory; for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. If you, then, will worship me, it shall be yours.’” Vss. 5-8. You have to wonder why, if the devil really possesses such authority, he is willing to give it up. Perhaps he is lying. Maybe the devil does not really have the goods he promises to deliver. That is possible. The devil’s proclivity for falsehood is well known. More likely, however, the devil realizes that the power he is offering Jesus doesn’t really amount to much. Raw power is useful for subduing the world, but it is not particularly effective in ruling it. There has never been an empire able to hang onto its vast holdings forever. Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome eventually collapsed under the weight of their oppressive governmental machinery. In our own day we have seen the evaporation of the British Empire and the implosion of the Soviet Union. Our own nation, the United States, has learned through blood shed in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan the limits of military power in trying to secure the peace and safety for which we yearn.

Still and all, the power of the sword entices us. It is easy to imagine that, in the right hands, such power can be used for good. Of course, just as you cannot make an omelet without cracking a few eggs, you can’t rule an empire without cracking a few heads. Collateral damage is the clinical word for the death and disfigurement of innocents that get caught in the crossfire from the shootout at the OK Corral. Tragic, to be sure, but it is a small price to pay for freedom, democracy, justice, peace, liberation or whatever noble objective you are trying to achieve. The ends justify the means. And even if they don’t, at the very least, by seizing the devil’s offer, Jesus would have prevented the power of the sword from falling into the wrong hands. Wouldn’t you rather have Jesus as emperor than Nero? Isn’t it better that nuclear weapons remain firmly in the hands of decent people than fall into the hands of terrorists or criminals? If you don’t take hold of the power Satan offers, there are plenty of scary people out there who will. It is all well and good to sing, “I’m gonna lay down my sword and shield, down by the river side,” but shouldn’t you be a little bit concerned about who might pick them up?

Of course, there is a price to be paid here. You can’t get the devil’s goods without paying the devil his due. The price of imperial power is the worship of Satan. That is where the power of the sword always leads us. Jesus knows that the ends never justify the means. How can they when we don’t even know what the ends are? We seldom, if ever, know what the outcome of our simplest actions will be. The be..Wfrequently frequentlydespite our best intentions. We often do not foresee the long term consequences of decisions that seemed right and sensible at the time are often far different from what we anticipated. We simply do not control nor can we foresee the ends of our actions. The means are all that we do understand and control. Jesus tells us that the means are all important and that they will shape the ends of everything we do.

Jesus is not interested in the power of the sword because he knows that it cannot deliver the reign of God he comes to initiate. Jesus is not interested in winning battles. He is interested in winning hearts. Jesus will die for the kingdom of God, but he will not kill for it. Jesus does not want “every knee to bend and every tongue confess” him as Lord only because they fear that they will get a rifle butt in the teeth if they don’t. Jesus will spend whatever time it takes to win every last heart to faith and obedience. Victory will be painfully slow in coming. Reconciliation takes a lot more work, patience, sacrifice and time than a blitzkrieg campaign of shock and awe. Reconciliation, however, is the way of Jesus. There are no shortcuts to the reign of God.

 

Sunday, February 7th

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TRANSFIGURATION OF OUR LORD

Exodus 34:29–35
Psalm 99
2 Corinthians 3:12—4:2
Luke 9:28–36

PRAYER OF THE DAY: Holy God, mighty and immortal, you are beyond our knowing, yet we see your glory in the face of Jesus Christ. Transform us into the likeness of your Son, who renewed our humanity so that we may share in his divinity, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Just about the time I think I have Jesus figured out, I discover I don’t. That, more than anything else, gives me hope that I am still Jesus’ disciple. Anyone who thinks s/he has Jesus figured out surely has stopped listening to him. Everyone who pays attention to Jesus understands that the more you get to know Jesus, the more you realize you have to learn. Our gospel lesson for Transfiguration reminds us emphatically that God would have us listen to Jesus, because that is the only way we are ever going to know anything about God, about ourselves, where we are in the grand scheme of things and wither we are going.

Listening to Jesus is a lifelong assignment quite different from learning the rudimentary doctrines of the Christian Faith. Catechetical instruction does not end with our mastering a finite collection of doctrines, teachings and traditions. Though important, doctrine, theology and faith practices merely give us the language we need to grow into our living relationship with the Crucified and Resurrected Lord. They equip us with the language, images and conceptual tools we need to hear the voice of Jesus.

Jesus came to deconstruct all our humanly pre-conceived notions about God. As Mark Twain once remarked, “It ain’t what people don’t know that’s so dangerous; it’s what they do know that ain’t so.” There is plenty said by preachers, politicians and pundits these days about who God is, what God wants and how God acts that isn’t so. I don’t have to name any names to make the point that what people are led to believe about God can lead to monstrous images of God. For the sake of gods masquerading as the God of the Bible we have conducted holy wars, executed people for witchcraft, practiced racial segregation, murdered and socially ostracized sexual minorities, subjugated women and abused children.

It is all too easy, I think, for those of us in the mainline protestant traditions, who claim to have moved beyond some of the more blatant manifestations of these sins, to point the finger at the likes of Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell, Jr. who are still breathing words of hate and intolerance in the name of God. We had best be careful with our stone throwing, because our distance from them is more rhetorical than real. As much as we rail against racism, our churches are still the most segregated institutions in America today. Though we have been ordaining women as ministers for decades and can even boast a few women bishops, the glass ceiling is still alive and well throughout the church at large. We may have come a long way in recent years toward welcoming gay, lesbian and transgendered people in theory, but in practice our churches still harbor more than a little fear, hostility and bigotry against them. At some level, it seems that we have yet to free ourselves from the angry, intolerant, moralistic monster we have created in our own image and made god.

Or perhaps our struggle is not so much to free ourselves from a false notion of God as it is to believe in the true vision Jesus opens up for us. At the end of our gospel reading, the disciples are left with no bright light, booming voice or all-encompassing cloud. Moses and Elijah have vanished. Jesus alone remains with them-and that is all the God there is. No wonder the disciples kept silent about this event. How can you comfort a frightened child with a God who is only human, who will not invoke protective angelic armies, who will not shield his disciples from the cross he must bear, who warns them that the only glory worth having is in siding with the hungry, the sinful, the outcast, the sick, the condemned criminal and the outsider-the last folks you’re likely to find sitting next to you in the pew on Sunday. How much comfort and security are you going to find with this God who calls you into a way of living that is likely to get you killed? How can you trust a God who is not in control? The god who sits in front of the instrument panel making everything happen on earth is a mirage. He does not exist. The only real God is the one whose heart breaks on the cross, but still keeps loving and forgiving; the God who came to win hearts by the power of his Word rather than to win wars by the might of his armies. This alone is God. Listen to him.

When we listen to Jesus, he helps us re-imagine God-not as the mere projection of our own prejudices and our need for security-but as the one who slowly, patiently and gently draws the universe into reconciliation and invites us to participate in that good work. When we listen to Jesus, we discover, not the god made in our own image, but the God who transforms us into God’s image.

Here’s a poem by Brook Emery about re-imagining God.

Monster [It’s possible I misconstrued you]

It’s possible I misconstrued you,

laid too much emphasis on the uniqueness of a birth,
failed to acknowledge circumstance could corrupt, sustain;
I indulged myself in accusations against an absolute.

I don’t believe what I then believed. You are not responsible

for Leibniz or the Lisbon quake, for the twenty-six-eyed
and sixty-arsed box jellyfish, that the cosmos
is shaped like a soccer ball; or for the dosido
of right and wrong around the garden bed.

You are not the monster I thought you were,

not by definition or necessity the one immutable.
You are a creator caught in a creator’s net, in fact
a creature. Every horror has its own pathology,

the disease infects the flock. Prey present as predators,
the malefactors replicate even as the angels
experiment with cures. Each encounter pulls against reductive story,
says I will not, I am just (an instant, an instance),

and reference skews on maps not drawn to scale.

I know saintliness exists. It’s all around me.
My next door neighbours in their simple modesty,
the lady down the street who is always
helping someone older than herself. Even the slow
judicial process conceives it natural to be better
than we are. I’m trying to shoo the gloomy birds away

but crows repeat about me on the lawn; and the vulture
and the kite, the cuckoo and the owl: should I have given up the ghost
when I was drawn from the womb?

By Brook Emery

Source: Uncommon Light, Five Islands Press, 2007 (c. 2007 by Brook Emery). Brook Emery is an Australian poet and high school teacher born in 1949. His poems integrate philosophy, science, and psychology. You can find out more about Emery and his many poetic works at the Poetry Foundation website.

Exodus 34:29–35

Chapter 34 of Exodus forms the climax of a narrative section beginning with Exodus 32 relating the story of idolatry with the golden calf and  Moses’ smashing of the original two tablets of the law. In Exodus 33, Moses intercedes with God and achieves a healing of the breach of covenant occasioned by Israel’s idolatrous conduct. Exodus 34 recounts the restoration of the covenant terms. Notably, Moses himself cuts these tablets and inscribes the law upon them whereas the first tablets were inscribed “by the finger of God.” Exodus 31:18. Professor Childs seems to think that this is simply a distinction without a difference. Childs, Brevard S., The Book of Exodus, The Old Testament Library (c. 1974 by Brevard S. Childs, pub. by The Westminster Press) p 611. I am not so sure about that. I suspect that the narrator means to tell us that this episode of unfaithfulness on Israel’s part, which later became a paradigm of prophetic preaching in the 8th and 9th Centuries B.C.E., has done some long term, if not permanent damage to the covenant relationship.

Moses has just come down from the top of Mt. Sinai. He has been up there for forty days fasting and writing the terms of the renewed covenant onto the two stone tablets. He is quite unaware that he has been noticeably changed, so much so that the children of Israel are afraid of him. This is a mystery, of course. I doubt we will ever understand exactly what happened to Moses at Sinai, but perhaps there are some analogies in our own experiences that give us a glimpse. I remember the return home of each one of my three children from their first semester at college. They were changed. They had been exposed to new ideas and values different from the ones with which they grew up. They had experienced a measure of independence that had given them a new sense of confidence. They thought about and responded to me in new and often critical ways that often made me just a little uncomfortable. They were still the same kids they were when I left them at the dormitory-but they were also different. I knew that if I was going to continue having a meaningful relationship with them, I had to start relating to them differently. Things between us would be different from now on. Good, but different.

How much more changed a man must be after a face to face encounter with the God of Israel! Moses was returning after having received the Torah, the commandments and ordinances that would assist Israel in living into nationhood as the chosen people of God. He had seen the shape of holiness. That is not the sort of experience you can share in a brief press release. Neither can you undergo such an experience and expect to come back the same person. It will take some time for Moses to unpack everything he brought with him from the top of Mt. Sinai and it will take some time for the people to digest it.

We all have life changing experiences that shape who we are. Some of them shape us for the better. Others can leave us wounded and scarred. Life is such that you cannot control the experiences you are going have. But you can put yourself in a place where you are assured that God’s Word will be a powerful and transformative experience in your life. You can make time with the scriptures a part of every day. You can make prayer a daily practice. You can worship with your sisters and brothers gathered around the preaching of God’s Word and the Eucharistic meal. I cannot promise that you will come away from church with your face glowing; but you can be sure that your heart is being transformed by the working of God’s Spirit.

It should also be noted that St. Paul cites this story in his Second Letter to the church at Corinth. II Corinthians 3:7-18. For Paul, the veil over Moses’ face symbolizes the obstruction to a correct understanding of Moses that can only be removed by faith in Jesus Christ.

Psalm 99

This psalm appears to be constructed in three sections, each ending with the refrain “Holy is he [God].” See vss. 5, 7 & 9. Like psalms 93 and 97, this psalm acclaims God as king over all the earth. The fact that these psalms make no mention of the kings of Israel or Judah suggests that they were composed after the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem ending the line of Davidic kings. To a vanquished people in a world filled with unjust and tyrannical kings, this psalm boldly proclaims that the only true King is the Lord. This King is a “lover of justice,” has “established equity” and has “executed justice and righteousness in Jacob.” Vs. 4. Naturally, then, the peoples and their unjust rulers tremble when confronted with the reality of God’s kingship. Vs. 1.

The “cherubim” (Vs. 1) were winged bull like creatures with lion heads. Dahlberg, B.T., “Angel,” The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, Vol. 1, (c. 1962 by Abingdon Press) pp. 131-132. Two of these fabulous beasts were carved at the top of the Ark of the Covenant over which the God of Israel was thought to be enthroned. Exodus 25: 18-20; Exodus 37:6-9; Numbers 7:89; I Samuel 4:4; I Kings 6:23-28; I Kings 8:6-7. If this reference is to the Ark, it is possible that the psalm is of much earlier origin than generally thought, dating back to the early period of the monarchy when the Ark was still in Israel’s possession. But the term “cherubim” is also used to personify storm clouds and thunder storms. Therefore, its use here is not inconsistent with a composition date for this psalm after the Babylonian conquest.

The mention of Moses, Aaron and Samuel, prominent men of faith who lived and ministered before the rise of the monarchy in Israel, further suggests that this psalm is post-exilic. Vs. 6. Having seen generations of kings fall short of what righteousness and justice demand, Israel was now convinced that God alone deserved the title “king.” Though their actions had an undeniable political dimension, the chief role of the three figures named in this psalm was priestly and intercessory. Aaron was the founding figure of cultic practice in Israel. Moses’ intercessions frequently came between Israel and God’s wrath at her disobedience. So also Samuel interceded on Israel’s behalf on numerous occasions. Yet while the psalmist affirms the role and legitimacy of Israel’s priestly establishment and the sacrificial worship over which it presides, this worship is only effective because “thou wast a forgiving God to them.” Vs. 8. The sovereignty and power of God, though manifested in storms and earthquakes, is chiefly expressed in God’s zeal for justice and readiness to show mercy.

2 Corinthians 3:12—4:2

A few words about Paul’s Second letter to the Corinthian church are in order. Paul evidently made a visit to the church in Corinth after writing I Corinthians. This visit was “painful” and did not result in any reconciliation of differences between the apostle and his congregation. Rather than attempting another visit that he feared would also be unsuccessful, Paul wrote a “letter of tears” to Corinth sent by the hand of Titus. Fearing the effects of this severe letter, Paul left Troas in Asia Minor where he had begun a successful mission and returned to Macedonia in search of Titus. Paul rejoined Titus in Macedonia and was greatly relieved to learn that the Corinthians had indeed responded favorably to his “severe” letter with a change of heart toward him. Paul wrote II Corinthians expressing his gratitude to the congregation and to encourage it in its faith.

For centuries biblical scholars have puzzled over the abrupt change in tone between II Corinthians 1-9 and II Corinthians 10-13. Most scholars now agree that these two sections represent different letters, though both authored by Paul, chapters 1-9 constituting the earlier letter and chapters 10-13 forming a later message. Furnish, Victor Paul, II Corinthians, The Anchor Bible Commentaries, (c. 1984 by Doubleday & Company, Inc.) p. 41. Some scholars maintain, however, that chapters 10-13 constitute all or part of Paul’s “letter of tears” while chapters 1-9 constitute a subsequent letter of thanksgiving written in response to Titus’ favorable report. Ibid p. 37.

Paul is here interpreting the lesson from Exodus discussed above. You will recall that Moses’ face glowed following his descent from Mt. Sinai with the tablets of the law. This change in Moses frightened the people and so Moses wore a veil when addressing the people. When Moses spoke with God, he removed the veil. Paul compares this veil on Moses’ face to the veil he contends prevents some of his fellow Jews from recognizing Jesus as God’s messiah. The metaphor is difficult because Moses’ veil was not designed to hinder the people from seeing or hearing him, but rather to protect them from the radiance of God’s glory by which they felt threatened.  Moses, not the people, takes cover under the veil. Consequently, we need to focus not so much on the people as on Moses. When Moses turns to speak with the Lord, the veil is removed. The glory of God is allowed to permeate Moses and he is transfigured with light. But when Moses turns away from the Lord, he must put on the veil.

According to Paul, Moses is rightly understood and seen only when he is face to face with God. He is no longer a mediator between God and Israel. Now God has shown directly into the hearts of his people “to give the light of knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” II Corinthians 4:6. Thus, only in Jesus Christ are the Hebrew Scriptures fully understood. “And we all,” says Paul, “with unveiled face [like Moses], beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed [like Moses] into his likeness from one degree of glory to another.” II Corinthians 3:18. What could previously be seen only through the veiled face of Moses can now be seen directly in Jesus. The same transformative power that filled Moses with light now shines through Jesus in the church.

Luke 9:28–36

Luke tells the transfiguration story a little differently than do Mark and Matthew who also report this amazing event. In Luke, the disciples are “weighted down” with sleep, but may not have actually fallen asleep. Vs. 32. Luke tells us not only that Jesus was conversing with Moses and Elijah, but also what they were talking about. They were speaking of the “departure” that Jesus was to accomplish at Jerusalem. Vs. 31. It is highly significant that the Greek word Luke uses for “departure” is the same one the Greek Old Testament uses for the title of the second book of the Bible, “Exodus.” The Exodus, of course, is the foundational and most significant saving act of God in the Hebrew Scriptures. Thus, Luke wishes to make absolutely clear that God is about to accomplish through Jesus’ suffering and death a new Exodus, a new saving event. The presence of Moses, the giver of the law, along with Elijah, the greatest of all prophets, indicates that this new Exodus to occur in Jerusalem, the City of David, will fulfill the whole of the Hebrew Scriptures. So when we arrive at verse 51 in which Jesus “set his face to go to Jerusalem,” we know that a critical turning point in the narrative has arrived. Jesus is now zeroing in on his primary objective.

The cloud enveloping the mountain top cannot help but bring to mind God’s appearance in the cloud over Mt. Sinai-the place from which Moses returned glowing with divine glory. Quite understandably, the disciples are afraid of the overshadowing cloud. So, too, the voice from the cloud is reminiscent of the voice thundering from Sinai so terrifying the people of Israel that they begged Moses to implore God no longer to speak directly to them. Exodus 20:18-20. Of course, it is also possible to see in this event a reflection of Elijah’s encounter with God on the holy mountain in the 19th Chapter of 1 Kings. There, too, the prophet encountered a powerful wind storm, an earthquake and a terrifying fire. In this case, however, God’s word was not found in any of these impressive natural events. Instead, God was heard in a “still small voice” or, as some translators have rendered it, “a sound of sheer silence.” I Kings 19:12.

I am intrigued by the possible link to the Elijah story because it alters my Sunday School impression of that voice from the cloud as deep, commanding and terrifying. Although the disciples are frightened as they enter the cloud, there is no indication that the voice from the cloud had a similar effect. Luke does not have the disciples falling on their faces in fear as do Mark and Matthew. Thus, I wonder whether my image of this event has not been colored more by Cecil B. DeMille than careful reading of the text. How does the voice of God really sound? How did the disciples perceive it? Would we know the voice of God even if we heard it? How does this question shape our perception of Jesus as God’s Son?

The marvelous thing about this story is its incomprehensibility. It raises more questions than it answers and reminds us that however much we may think we know about Jesus, we are not close to knowing him fully yet.

 

Sunday, January 31st

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Fourth Sunday after Epiphany

Jeremiah 1:4-10
Psalm 71:1-6
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Luke 4:21-30

Prayer of the Day: Almighty and ever-living God, increase in us the gifts of faith, hope, and love; and that we may obtain what you promise, make us love what you command, through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

In our first lesson God sends a reluctant young Jeremiah to “pluck up and to break down” great nations and to “build and to plant” the seeds of a new covenant. For accomplishing this daunting assignment, he will have nothing more than the words God is giving him to speak. That should not strike us as remarkable. Words are powerful weapons. They incite revolutions, foment rebellion and inspire societal transformation that topples kingdoms and dissolves empires. The words of Dr. Martin Luther King ignited a movement that brought institutional segregation to an end. It was largely the influence of new ideas expressed in the words of dissent that moved the peoples of eastern Europe to end the regimes that held them captive for half a century. But words are also instrumental in holding together the status quo, giving ideological justification to oppression and sanctifying violence. Sinister racist sentiments, once expressed in ugly epitaphs we no longer tolerate, still wrap themselves around seemingly benign slogans such as “state’s rights,” “America first,” “make America great again” and the relentless rant against “political correctness.” Words can ruin friendships, destroy reputations and undermine a community’s confidence in its leaders. Words can be either allies or enemies of the truth. In times of violence and injustice, the prophet’s task is to marshal words in defense of truthful speech.

Jeremiah lived through the destruction of his nation. He witnessed the violence, cruelty and oppression that preceded Jerusalem’s destruction and that followed in its wake. There was no shortage of prophets in Jeremiah’s time. Most of them were prophesying victory, peace and safety for the people of Judah as the storm clouds of war with Babylon gathered on the horizon. Hananiah, Jeremiah’s prophetic nemesis, assured the people that they had nothing to fear from Babylon, that God would break that oppressive empire’s yolk and restore the kingdom of Judah to its glory days. Hananiah’s promises were spoken in the covenant language of scripture. More than a century before the prophet Isaiah had foretold an age of peace and prosperity brought about by the glory of the Lord. In Isaiah’s age, God had in fact broken the Assyrian army at the gates of Jerusalem sparing the city, the temple and the line of David. Why should the people doubt that God would do the same for Israel once again? Why continue to endure Babylonian domination? Why not stand up defiantly against the tyrant and trust in God’s promises to deliver Zion holy city and defend the temple?

Jeremiah understood that Hananiah was employing the language of scriptural truth to prophesy lies. He knew that Babylon was not the greatest threat to Israel’s existence and that victory on the battle field would not amount to salvation. Israel’s fixation on preserving the temple, the institution of the Davidic monarchy and her territorial sovereignty prevented her from recognizing her deepest need. Israel’s problem was that, as currently constituted, she had ceased altogether to be the faithful covenant partner God desired. Faith in God’s goodness had gradually degenerated into a sense of entitlement, a deluded belief that God was somehow obliged to save Israel’s beloved institutions no matter how unjust, oppressive and idolatrous she had become. What Israel was so desperately trying to save were the very things destroying her soul. The nation of Israel had to die so that the people of Israel could be reborn. God was taking away the hallmarks of Israel’s identity because that identity had become so monstrously distorted. Moreover, God had something far more precious to give Israel than what she was about to lose. That is why Jeremiah insisted that there would be no miraculous rescue this time. There was no getting around God’s judgment, but there would be a way through it to the dawn of a new day. But this good news had to be heard as bad news before it could be received as good.

In this war of words between the two prophets, Hananiah was the winner-at least in the short term. The king and the religious establishment put their trust in an ill-fated insurrection against Babylon inspired by Hananiah’s promise of divine assistance. Jeremiah suffered mob violence, religious persecution and imprisonment for the word he was compelled to speak. Yet the Bible contains not the book of Hananiah, but the oracles of Jeremiah. It was finally the words of the true and faithful prophet that enabled the exiled Jews to make sense of the terrible judgment that had befallen them and to recognize in that judgment the compassion of a God who loved them too much to allow them to continue in their faithless and self-destructive ways. Both Hananiah and Jeremiah spoke the words of scripture. But only Jeremiah spoke the Word of God.

Words, metaphors, similes, and figures of speech in the hands of false prophets, demagogues and hate groups are lethal weapons of destruction. This is particularly true where the words in question are taken from the Bible. But in the mouth of a prophet, words pluck up and tear down evil principalities and powers while planting and building up the gentle reign of God. Ours is the God who is not merely as good as his word. John’s gospel tells us that God is God’s Word. Our God is the God who speaks the universe into existence. Our God meets us in the medium of human speech. For that reason, language is holy. Every prophet knows (as does every poet) that words must be handled with discernment, reverence, wonder and awe.

Here are the words of poet Eavan Boland who, like Jeremiah, prophesied in a time of violence.

Writing in a Time of Violence

In my last year in College
I set out
to write an essay on
the Art o Rhetoric. I had yet to find

the country already lost to me
in song and figure as I scribbled down
names for sweet euphony
and safe digression.

And when I came to the word insinuate
I saw that language could writhe and creep
and the lore of snakes
which I had learned as a child not to fear-
because the Saint had sent them out of Ireland-
came nearer.

Chiasmus, Litols, Periphrasis Old
indices and agents of persuasion. How
I remember them in that room where
a girl is writing at a desk with
dusk already in
the streets outside. I can see her. I could say to her-

we will live, we have lived
where language is concealed. It is perilous.
We will be—we have been—citizens
of its hiding place. But it is too late

to shut the book of satin phrases,
to refuse to enter
an evening bitter with peat smoke,
where newspaper sellers shout headlines
and friends call out their farewells in
a city of whispers
and interiors where

the dear vowels
Irish Ireland ours are
absorbed into Autumn air,
are out of earshot in the distances
we are stepping into where we never

imagine words such as hate
and territory and the like—unbanished still
as they always would be—wait
and are waiting under
beautiful speech. To strike.

By Eavan Boland. Source: Poems in a Time of Violence, (c. 1994 by Eavan Boland, pub. by W.W. Norton Company, Inc.). Eavan Boland was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1944. She spent her girlhood in London and New York, returning to Ireland to attend secondary school in Killiney and college at Trinity College in Dublin. Boland’s poetry explores the complex experience of women in Irish history and culture, challenging traditional conceptions of womanhood and offering fresh perspectives on their roles. You can learn more about Eavan Boland and read more of her poetry on the Poetry Foundation website.

Jeremiah 1:4-10

For an excellent overview of the Book of Jeremiah, see the article by Professor Terrence Fretheim of Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN at enterthebible.org. In this Sunday’s lesson, the prophet Jeremiah receives his call from the Lord. It is hard to pinpoint the precise timing of Jeremiah’s call. The opening lines of the book state that Jeremiah’s prophetic career began in the thirteenth year of the reign of King Josiah of Judah. Yet there is no reference in Jeremiah’s preaching to the extensive campaign against idolatry undertaken by this king that would surely have been favored by Jeremiah or to the king’s untimely death. This has led scholars to suspect that Jeremiah’s call may actually have taken place during the reign of Josiah’s successors. Some scholars have suggested that Jeremiah perceived his first basic encounter and call from God to have occurred before he was “formed in the womb.” Thus, the thirteenth year of Josiah’s reign may have been the prophet’s birthday where God “consecrated” him. His call might therefore have taken place after Josiah’s death. See Holladay, William M., “The Years of Jeremiah’s Preaching,” Interpretation, Vol. 37, No. 2 (April 1983) pp. 146-159.

More important than the precise date of Jeremiah’s call is the general historical context. It was the beginning of the age of empires. Assyria had dominated the middle east for nearly a century. When its power began to wane, young Josiah stepped into the power vacuum expanding the borders of his country further than at any time since the days of David and Solomon. He also launched a campaign to purge Israel of all pagan influences and restore the proper worship of Israel’s God. The king’s political success and his religious reforms proved short lived. Josiah lost his life opposing Egypt’s failed attempt to prop up what was left of Assyria now under siege from the rising Babylonian empire. Judah once again became a mere vassal of an imperial power, this time Egypt. In less than a year, she would be under the king of Babylon. Thus, Jeremiah was born into a turbulent era of transition. The age of city states and petty regional kingdoms was coming to an end. The age of empires had begun.

Prophets are often characterized as idealistic dreamers out of touch with geopolitical realities. Reliance upon the Lord is a pious, but unhelpful piece of advice to the king of a tiny nation caught between multiple superpowers. But Jeremiah was no novice when it came to analysis of political realities. Better than any of the kings to whom he prophesied, Jeremiah could see clearly that the world was changing. He understood the difficult truth that Israel’s rulers could not comprehend: that there was no future for Judah as an independent kingdom under the line of David. Trying to restore the glories of that kingdom in the present age was a sure recipe for disaster. If you have read the entire book of Jeremiah, then you know that his message was rejected by the Judean leadership which was hell bent on winning independence for Judah from Babylon. Jeremiah saw this stubborn determination to pursue a hopelessly impossible dream as a rejection of Israel’s God and a lack of trust in God’s ability to deliver to Judah a new and better day.

“Before you were in the womb I knew you.” Vs. 5. We should not get too caught up in speculation about God’s foreknowledge and how much of Jeremiah’s life was “predestined.” The emphasis should be placed on the words, “I knew you.” The Hebrew word for “know” used here denotes a particularly intimate sort of knowledge. The indication here is that Jeremiah is to be more than a message boy. His career will be one of intimacy with the God who called him from the womb. This relationship between the Lord and his messenger is in some respects analogous to a marriage. If you read on in this marvelous book you will discover that this “marriage” was frequently rocky. Jeremiah sometimes complained bitterly that God had let him down, deceived him and left him to the mercy of his enemies. Jeremiah 20:7-12. God was often less than gentle in responding to Jeremiah. Jeremiah 15:15-21. But that only underscores the freedom Jeremiah felt to express his deepest sentiments to the God whose word consumed his entire being.

“Ah, Lord God! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth.” Vs. 6.  One thing most prophets seem to have in common is low self-esteem. Jeremiah thinks he is too young and inexperienced. Moses felt he was not sufficiently articulate. Isaiah thought he was too sinful. Amos would not even accept the title of prophet. These are not the kind of extraverted, can do, positive thinking types that denominational leadership seeks for “mission developers.” It seems that genuine prophets come by their calling only reluctantly.

Psalm 71:1-6

This psalm is remarkably similar to Psalm 31. It also contains phrases and expressions that are nearly identical to other psalms. Consequently, some scholars have speculated that Psalm 71 is of more recent composition, having borrowed from these older psalms. Rogerson, J.W. and McKay, J.W., Psalms 51-100, The Cambridge Bible Commentary (c. 1977 by Cambridge University Press) p. 106. That reasoning is not entirely convincing to me, however. There is no reference to any historical event that would allow us to date this psalm. Therefore, it seems just as likely to me that Psalm 31 and the other psalms borrowed from Psalm 71 which could as easily be the more ancient. I know. Who cares?

The personal details in this psalm are remarkable. If you read the psalm in its entirety, you will discover that the psalmist is an old man or woman. His or her “strength is spent.” Vs. 9. Yet the psalmist is beset by enemies who see his or her weakness as evidence that “God has forsaken him” and that it is therefore safe to “size him” for “there is none to deliver him.”  vs. 11. (I should explain here that the use of gender in the Hebrew language is not heavily tied to the male/female dichotomy. Consequently, we cannot draw any conclusions about the psalmist’s sex from the fact that the English translators have consistently rendered the pronouns in this psalm masculine.) Though understandably concerned, the psalmist does not come to this crisis with a blank slate. The psalmist has experienced God’s salvation throughout his or her life. Because God has a track record of faithfulness, the psalmist is confident that, “Thou who hast made me see many sore troubles wilt revive me again; from the depths of the earth thou wilt bring me up again.” Vs. 20.

Once again, this prayer illustrates the breadth of human experience found in the psalms running the gambit from youthful insecurity in the face of life’s complexities to the struggles of aging and confronting death. I cannot emphasize how important it is to make these psalms your friends. The earlier in life you do that, the greater the source of comfort, strength and wisdom they will become.

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

This is one of those texts known even to people who have never picked up a Bible. Just as the Twenty Third Psalm is a staple at every funeral, the Thirteenth Chapter of Corinthians is nearly universal at every Christian wedding. Though much of what Paul has to say in this chapter is applicable to marriage, that is not what was on Paul’s mind as he wrote these words. Recall that Paul is in the midst of a letter addressed to a divided and fractious church. In last Sunday’s lesson, Paul pointed out that the Church, even the sorely divided Corinthian church, is the Body of Christ. That means that we are all individually members of that church. We do not think or conduct ourselves as autonomous individuals. We harmonize our lives to the needs of the Body of which we are part.

Clearly, the congregation in Corinth was a long way from that kind of harmonious living-as is every church to which I have ever belonged. But Paul insists that his view of the church is not just an impossible utopian ideal. Nor is it merely an aspiration. The flesh and blood church of today with all its warts, short comings and sins is the Body of Christ. I repeat: this is not just a metaphor. Paul really means to say that the church is Christ’s resurrected Body. It is a broken and wounded Body, to be sure, but it is nevertheless a Body animated by God’s Holy Spirit. Though ever dying, it is always being called back to life again. It is always in the process of healing. How, then, do sinful and self-centered men and woman live together as one Body? That is “the more excellent way” to which Paul referred at the end of Chapter 12 last week and discusses in Chapter 13 this week.

Though written in highly polished prose bordering on poetry, this chapter speaks of a love that is anything but gushy and sentimental. “Love is patient.” Vs. 4. That means accepting the fact that the church is made up of people that are broken and, more importantly, that I cannot fix them. Still, I have to love them anyway even though they probably will never change to my liking. “Love is not jealous or boastful.” Vs. 4. That is to say, it often goes unrequited and that has to be OK. I may never be properly thanked for what I do to build up the Body or appreciated for all the sacrifices I make. But if that’s a problem for me, then my love is not the sort that Paul is talking about. “Love does not insist on its own way.” Vs. 5. Not even when I happen to be right; not even when it is a matter of principle; not even when every thinking person would have to agree that my way is really the only way forward. That is sometimes a bitter pill to swallow. When you have a vision for mission or a dream for your church’s future that seems heaven sent, it is hard to hear the rest of the Body tell you that they cannot see it or do not share it. It is at just such times that I am most strongly tempted to abandon the way of love and resort to more coercive political tactics.

“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” Vs. 7.  There was once a young pastor fresh out of seminary assigned to a difficult congregation. No matter what the young pastor did, someone in the congregation found fault with him. After one particularly discouraging day, Jesus came by to visit him. The pastor was overjoyed to see Jesus and began immediately to pour out his troubles to the Lord. Jesus listened patiently, nodding his head and giving the young pastor a knowing smile. “Yes,” said Jesus. “A pastor’s first parish can be a difficult challenge. I remember my first church. There were only twelve members. Not one of them ever understood a single sermon I ever preached. All they could ever talk about was who should be in charge and who was the greatest. The treasurer was constantly pilfering church funds for his own use and then he had the nerve to turn me into the authorities for just thirty pieces of silver. My congregational president, who promised to stand by me to the end, told everyone after I was arrested that he didn’t even know me. The rest of my congregation deserted me and left me hanging on a cross. But enough about me. You were telling me about the problems in your congregation.”

Though this story involves a pastor, it applies as well to anyone who takes discipleship and service in the church seriously. The church is not the place to come for coddling. It is where you go to be transformed into the image of Christ. It is the place you go to be built up into the Body of Christ. Love is the cement that holds a church together. Forgiveness is the tar that patches up the breaches in its walls. The church is not a gathering of people who are a moral cut above the rest. We are flawed and broken people who cannot heal ourselves, but who believe that the Holy Spirit working in our midst can bind us together and make of us more than we could ever have been on our own. Rev. Lester Peter, the pastor who ordained me, said in his sermon on that occasion: “Peter, you will meet in your ministry the kindest, most selfless and generous people the world has ever known. You will also meet the orneriest, most stubborn and unforgiving people the world has ever known. And here is the hardest part-they will be the same people.” That has proven true. I have my share of scars from living in the church. But I have far more memories of witnessing acts of extraordinary generosity, hospitality, forgiveness, extraordinary courage and faithfulness in the many churches it has been my privilege to serve. There is no question that churches fall short of their calling. They can be selfish, petty and narrow minded. Even so, the Spirit of God is at work in their midst pushing them beyond themselves, working miracles within them and accomplishing great things through them.

Luke 4:21-30

Most of what I have to say about this passage I said in last week’s post. I do not believe it is possible to understand fully Jesus’ proclamation from the prophet Isaiah in the synagogue of Nazareth without reading what follows in this week’s lesson. I would only add that Jesus employs scripture here in precisely the way I believe preachers should. Recall that last week Jesus boldly proclaimed how Isaiah’s declaration of salvation for the poor, oppressed and blind was being fulfilled through his mission. In this week’s lesson, he appeals to two very well known stories in the Hebrew Scriptures to shed light upon Nazareth’s rejection of his mission. This is not the first time Israel has rejected a prophet sent to her. Elijah and Elisha both were persecuted by Israel’s royal establishment and lived part of their lives as fugitives. But their rejection, so far from thwarting their ministry, resulted in expanding the scope of their work beyond Israel’s borders. The widow who showed mercy on Elijah during his exile and Naaman the Syrian general who came to Elisha for healing experienced the salvation of Israel’s God. Consequently, God’s name was praised among the gentiles. So too, Nazareth’s rejection of Jesus will only further his mission and propel his saving acts further into the heart of Israel. In the same way, the persecution of the church in Jerusalem will spread the preaching of the gospel by the church into new territories. Acts 8:1-4.

 

Sunday, January 24th

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THIRD SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
Psalm 19
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a
Luke 4:14-21

PRAYER OF THE DAY: Blessed Lord God, you have caused the holy scriptures to be written for the nourishment of your people. Grant that we may hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that, comforted by your promises, we may embrace and forever hold fast to the hope of eternal life, through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Our first lesson from Nehemiah takes us back to the beginning of the 5th Century and to the Water Gate at the north end of the newly reconstructed city of Jerusalem. Against all odds and under the able leadership of Nehemiah and Ezra, both the temple and the holy city were rebuilt from the rubble to which they had been reduced by the Babylonian invaders in 587 B.C.E. Now, almost a century later, the temple has been rebuilt and the walls of the city restored. As she has done so many times before, Israel gathers as a community to recommit herself to the covenant with her God. Ezra the scribe, prophet, preacher and priest, regarded in some Jewish traditions as a second Moses, mounts his pulpit to read from the Book of Torah, the Pentateuch, the Five Books of Moses. The people rise as Ezra opens up the book and he blesses them. Then the scribe reads the law to the people and the Levites “help the people understand the law.” Nehemiah 8:7.

Why would the people need an explanation of the law from the Levites? Perhaps for the same reason the church needs clergy. The temple cult had not been practiced for at least seventy years. Much of the Torah and its cultic practices presuppose the temple in Jerusalem and life in the promised land. To these returned exiles, who had lived most of their lives away from that land and without the temple, the ancient laws of Moses probably sounded about as foreign as the ways of Babylon seemed to the prior generation. Scholars also point out that the Hebrew language in which the Torah was written had long since been supplanted by Aramaic as the common tongue of the Jews. Consequently, it might have been necessary for the Levites to translate Ezra’s reading from Hebrew into Aramaic for the common people.

I think there might also be a third explanation. I offer it as a supplement rather than an alternative to either of the two above theories. It seems the people were caught up in a blue funk. Their return to the land of promise was not accompanied by the miraculous creation of a wooded highway through the desert promised by the prophet of Isaiah 40-55. Nor did the rebuilding of the temple usher in the messianic age of prosperity for Israel as the prophets Zechariah and Haggai had foretold. The new Jerusalem turned out not to be the capital of a restored Israelite kingdom rivaling the golden age of David and Solomon. It was merely the governmental seat for one of many regions occupied by the Persian Empire. The new temple was but a poor shadow of the one built under Solomon. Yet for all of that, Israel was still God’s people with whom God was abiding and through whom God was shining God’s light into the world. God was still with Israel and that should have been a source of joy. Such “joy of the Lord” at the very heart of the scriptures, says Ezra, is Israel’s strength. It is the “J” says our poet, Stuart Kestenbaum, that helps “us walk in a new way into this forest of language, where all the letters are beginning to speak, finding each other in just the right combination to be understood.” Perhaps the Levites were needed to help the people discover the ‘J” unlocking the ancient words of the covenant. Maybe their task was to remind the people that these words carried not merely judgment upon their unfaithfulness, but also joy in the certainty that, though Israel may have broken her end of the covenant, God remains ever faithful to God’s end.

While joy and lament might be at opposite ends of the emotional spectrum, they are not mutually exclusive. A good friend and colleague of mine once reminded me that one of the miraculous attributes of humanity is its capacity to experience both joy and profound sorrow at the same time. I see that at so many of the funerals I have done over the years. At nearly every wake you can find people sobbing uncontrollably one minute and laughing hysterically at some endearing story from the life of the departed loved one the next. In the midst of all that sorrow and grief, occasions for thanksgiving are found, friendships are renewed, wrongs forgiven and family bonds strengthened.

Joy and sorrow pop up side by side throughout the Bible. God rejoices in a good world filled with good creatures, yet is so sorrowful over human violence that God comes close to destroying it. Human beings labor under the curse of sin, but God continues to bless and promise. Jesus calls his disciples blessed even as he invites them to follow him in the way of the cross. Jesus was not afraid of suffering, but neither was he morbidly obsessed with it. For Jesus, suffering is simply the cost of joy found in living wholly for God and for neighbor. Discipleship does not promise us the shallow and illusive shadow this world calls “happiness,” an ephemeral condition that depends entirely on one’s changeable outward circumstances. Joy runs far deeper than that. To be joyful is to know that the way of Jesus is the grain of the universe, the future of humanity and the life we will someday share under the gentle reign of God. Joy is found in knowing that God is at work forming in us the mind of Christ. Joy is finally what draws people to the reign of God. Every vibrant, healthy church I have ever encountered (and I have encountered many) is a place of joy, a place where the “J” of the biblical narrative rises up front and center. It is a community of faith where the Bible is rightly interpreted as God’s joyful good news that all things are being reconciled in Christ Jesus. Truly, this joy of the Lord is our strength.

Here is poet Stuart Kestenbaum’s prayer for joy.

Prayer for Joy

What was it we wanted
to say anyhow, like today
when there were all the letters
in my alphabet soup and suddenly
the ‘j’ rises to the surface.
The ‘j’, a letter that might be
great for Scrabble, but not really
used for much else, unless
we need to jump for joy,
and then all of a sudden
it’s there and ready to
help us soar and to open up
our hearts at the same time,
this simple line with a curved bottom,
an upside down cane that helps
us walk in a new way into this
forest of language, where all the letters
are beginning to speak,
finding each other in just
the right combination
to be understood.

c. 2014 by Stuart Kestenbaum. Source: Only Now,(Deerbrook Editions, 2014). In addition to the above mentioned work, Stuart Kestenbaum is the author of Prayers & Run-on Sentences (Deerbook Editions, 2007). He also served as director of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts on Deer Isle, Maine for twenty-seven years. More of his poems can be found on the Poetry Foundation Webiste.

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
The book of Nehemiah and the book of Ezra (which precedes Nehemiah) are actually one book in the Hebrew Bible. Together they constitute our major source of information about the period following the return of the Jews from exile in Babylon. Talmon, Shemaryahu, “Ezra and Nehemiah,” The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, Supplementary Vol. (c. 1976 by Abingdon) p. 317. Together these books testify to the resurrection of Judaism for which the backdrop is narrated in First and Second Chronicles. The chronologies in all four books serve to establish the historical ties between Solomon’s temple cult and the rebuilt post exilic temple.

While Ezra, a renowned scribe, is credited with organizing the rebuilding of the temple, Nehemiah, a Jewish governor appointed by the Persian royal court, was chiefly responsible for rebuilding the ruined city of Jerusalem. Together these books tell the inspiring story of a broken people struggling to rebuild their community and live obediently under the covenant with their God in drastically changed circumstances. Our lesson comes at the completion of the wall around Jerusalem and the settlement of the exiles therein. Ezra the scribe calls the people together for a reading of the “law of Moses.” Vs. 1. Though it is probable that the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures or “Pentateuch” is referenced here, it is not at all clear that the version Ezra/Nehemiah was working with is the same one we have today. Citations found later in chapter 8 do not appear in any of the five books we know as the Pentateuch.

The peoples’ response to this lengthy reading is lamentation and weeping.vs.9.  It is hard to know exactly what was on their mind, but we know that Nehemiah himself wept bitterly at the beginning of the section of this book bearing his name. Nehemiah 1:4. He was weeping over the ruination of Jerusalem and the plight of the returning exiles eeking out an existence in that ravished land. Nehemiah 1:1-3. He recognized, too, that this sorry state was in no small part the consequences of Israel’s sins against her covenant with her God. See Nehemiah 1:4-11. Perhaps the people were weeping for some of the same reasons. They had experienced the ruin of their great nation and it was clear that neither the rebuilt temple nor the reassembled community would rise to the level of Israelite greatness known under the kings of David’s royal line. At first blush, it appears that the best the exiles can hope for is a diminished future as a subject province in the Persian Empire.

Lament is that space between what is and what ought to be-so says Rev. Stephen P. Bouman, former pastor of this congregation and prominent leader in our church. I agree, but must add that sometimes our laments run amok because we don’t always know so well “what ought to be.” As you know, I see a lot of parallels between the post-exilic Jews trying to rebuild their community and the mainline protestant churches (ELCA being one of these) trying to adjust to a post-Christian era. We spend a lot of time mourning all that we have lost. That is not necessarily inappropriate because we have lost a lot that was precious. I am old enough to remember a time when nearly all my friends went to church somewhere. I remember when even small churches like the ones in which I grew up had a youth group numbering between twenty and thirty kids. I have distinct memories of our Sunday School Christmas pageant that involved intense rehearsals of the nativity play conducted each year with near military precision. Growing up in a Christian community with a strong sense of the importance of church, discipleship and witness formed me into the person I am today.

My own children did not come of age in quite the same intense cultural atmosphere of commitment to and involvement in church life. My daughter once remarked to me after a semester of college how “weird” it seemed to everyone she knew that our family went to church every Sunday. Worship is no longer deemed an essential component of the week. It is now an optional activity that some folks practice occasionally and only “weird” people do consistently. My grandchildren will likely grow up in a culture where worship on Sunday is altogether odd. That saddens me.

But lament does not lead to healing if its focus remains solely what has been lost. Nehemiah recognizes that Israel’s past, though glorious in retrospect, was not always characterized by faithfulness to God. Wealth and prosperity bred corruption, idolatry and oppression of the poor. Forgetting that she was once an enslaved people oppressed by the Empire of Egypt, Israel became something of an empire in her own right dominating surrounding nations and even enslaving and impoverishing her own people. The extensive network of statutes in the laws of Moses protecting the poor, the widow and the orphan were largely forgotten. The lure of wealth drew Israel’s ruling class to commercial treaties and military alliances with foreign nations whose false gods and false values soon displaced God’s passion for justice. Perhaps the good old days were not quite so good in God’s eyes.

I think we need to bring Nehemiah’s spirit of searching inquiry to our own laments over the state of our churches. The days of protestant denominational growth surely look like good times to us. Churches were full; financial support was seldom lacking and the Sunday School rooms were packed like subway cars during rush hour. What was not to like? But I am not so sure that these good years were quite so good in God’s eyes. The church in which I was baptized sat on a street with at least a dozen other churches within a half mile of each other (one of which was another Lutheran congregation). I never set foot in any of them and I doubt their members often passed our threshold either. We didn’t need them. Neither did we see any need to express unity in the Body of Christ. We were cocky and confident that our Lutheran brand of Christian faith (actually, our particular flavor of the Lutheran brand) was the best if not the only doctrinally correct form of church. We didn’t want to dilute our doctrinal purity by getting too close to our theologically confused neighbors. We gladly supported missionaries to Africa, but no one would ever have dreamed of extending a worship invitation to the African Americans in the neighborhood just north of us. “They have their own churches,” I remember people saying. It didn’t bother us that our church was just as segregated as the rest of the country in those days. In fact, segregation in general didn’t bother us much. I think God had at least as many reasons for cutting us down to size as for sending Israel into exile.

So maybe we need to expand our understanding of lament to include “that place between where we wish we were and where God needs for us to be.” Through the pain of conquest and exile, Israel learned that faithfulness, not greatness is what God desires. Is God trying to teach the church a similar lesson? Have we learned yet to lament properly? If our sorrow is only yearning for the past, then we have not learned anything. If our quest for change and renewal is nothing more than gimmicky strategies to increase sufficient membership and revenues to keep the ELCA machinery and its institutions running, then our lament has not yet matured into genuine repentance and openness to God’s future. As much “change, transformation and renewal” language as I hear coming down from denominational leadership, a lot of it seems to focus on saving the institution rather than transforming our vision. Much of what passes for “mission strategies” looks to me like the same failed marketing strategies that consultants have been peddling to the business community for decades. (It has been said many times that a consultant is the last straw grasped by a company with one foot in bankruptcy court and the other on a banana peel.)

I could be wrong, but I have a feeling that God is not looking for a powerful church exercising political muscle in the halls of Congress, capturing the attention of the media with its liturgical pomp & circumstance and running dozens of agencies doing every conceivable sort of good. As wonderful as our denominational agencies are and as much good as they do, maybe God does not need them. Rather than an expression of faithful obedience to God’s call, perhaps our desperate efforts to preserve our structures speak more to our own need to prove to ourselves that we are, after all, important. Maybe God needs a church so poor that it has nothing but the Word to depend on. Perhaps a small, broken and scattered church made up of the weak, the foolish, the low and the despised is a more faithful witness to Jesus than the larger, stronger and influential church we are trying so hard to preserve.  But that’s just me and St. Paul. What do we know?

In any event, there is a good word for us here whenever we are ready to hear it. God is not done with us. God has a future for the church of Jesus. It might not be the future we envision or the one we would choose if we could choose. But because God is good, we can be sure that it is the best future for us-and the world to which we have been called to bear witness.

Psalm 19

This wisdom psalm is a favorite of mine. Many commentators suggest that it is actually two psalms, verses 1-6 being a hymn praising God’s glory revealed in nature and verses 7-14 being a prayer which, like the lengthy Psalm 119, praises God’s law. Anderson, Bernhard W., Out of the Depths: The Psalms Speak for us Today, (c. 1983 by Bernhard, W. Anderson, pub. by The Westminster Press) pp. 145-148.  I am not convinced that we are dealing with two psalms here. Both sections praise God’s glory, the first as it is revealed in the created universe and the second as it is revealed to the human heart in God’s laws. Quite possibly, the psalmist did make use of two different poetic fragments to construct this poem. Nevertheless, I believe that a single author skillfully brought these two strands together weaving them into a single theme of praise for God’s glory. So also J.W. Rogerson and J.W. McKay, Psalms 1-50, The Cambridge Bible Commentary  (c. 1977 by Cambridge University Press) p. 86.

We need to exercise care here in our understanding of the words translated from Hebrew as “law” and “precept.” Law or “Torah” is more than a collection of rules and regulations. For Israel, Torah is the shape Israel’s life is intended to take under covenant with the Lord her God. Torah is not an end in itself, but the invitation to a collection of practices that train the heart to perceive God’s voice. Mechanical obedience is not enough to “keep back thy servant from presumptuous sins.” Vs. 13. The psalmist must pray for God to “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight.” Vs. 14. The scriptures are not an end in themselves. They were given so that through them we might be drawn into a closer relationship with our God.

1 Corinthians 12:12-31

Paul is continuing a discussion he started at the beginning of this chapter last week. (See post for Sunday, January 17, 2016). To this congregation filled with persons insisting that their own gifts or offices in the church confer upon them a superior status, Paul points out how ludicrous their bickering really is. As I pointed out last week, Paul’s reference to the church as the Body of Christ is not a metaphor. The church really is Christ’s resurrected Body of which we are all members. That being the case, it will not do for the various members of the Body to seek either control or autonomy. Disembodied eyes, ears or hands would be useless for any purpose even if they could survive apart from the rest of the body. The health of the body, and therefore the health of each of its members, requires that all bodily parts function harmoniously in the service of the whole body.

Now you might argue that no church you have ever seen actually functions like a body. You would probably be correct. Certainly the church in Corinth was a long way from anything like a body. Nevertheless, Paul says in verse 27, “Now you are the Body of Christ.” That is because God did not merely take on flesh, but “sinful flesh.” It is God’s intent to indwell less than perfect communities like the congregation in Corinth and like the church at 167 Palisade Avenue where I serve. We are the workshop of the Holy Spirit. God is in our midst shaping us into the kind of people who one day will live as members of a single body. God does that by placing us into communities of people who hurt our feelings, break their promises and disappoint us. How else will we ever learn to forgive as we have been forgiven? How else will we ever learn to preach and to practice reconciliation? The church is not the place you go to get away from it all. If you want to be coddled and pampered, go to the spa. If you want to be sanctified and made holy, go to church.

Luke 4:14-21

According to commentator I. Howard Marshall, this passage is the oldest known account of a synagogue service. Based on ancient documentation preserved from other sources, we have a basic idea of how such worship services were conducted. See Commentary on Luke, I. Howard Marshall (Paternoster Press, Ltd., c. 1978), p. 181. Typically, such services began with public confession of the Shema (“Hear O Israel, the Lord your God. The Lord is one.” Deuteronomy 6:4-9). Thereafter came a series of prayers followed by the readings of scripture. A passage from the Pentateuch (first five books of the Bible) was read by several members of the congregation in turn. There was a lesson from the prophets followed by yet another prayer. Next came the sermon if there was someone in the synagogue competent to give one. The service then closed with prayer. It is not known exactly how universal this format was in Jesus day, much less whether it was used at the particular service described in our lesson. But it could explain why the scroll of the book of Isaiah was handed to Jesus. Moreover, given that Jesus had already gained a reputation as a teacher in other parts, it would not be unusual for some to accept him as a teacher in the synagogue at Nazareth. Equally as well, it would not be unusual for others to question his credentials in view of his evident lack of formal rabbinic training.

The scripture Jesus read in the synagogue is from “Third Isaiah.” See post from Epiphany of our Lord, January 3, 2013. This prophet addressed the exiles returning from Babylon to their homeland in Palestine as they struggled to rebuild their community. This community was indeed poor, captive and blind to any hope for its future. The prophet announces that God has anointed him/her to bring the good news of liberation to these people. Bear in mind that this is a community that has already experienced the failure of a previous prophet’s vision of a glorious return from exile on a garden like pathway through the desert. If they were skeptical of yet another prophet proclaiming yet another such liberation, you can imagine how the congregation at Nazareth some five centuries later must have reacted when Jesus told them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Some folks must have groaned, “Oh pleeease! Not again!” Others evidently were sufficiently impressed with Jesus to give him a hearing. But everything seems to go south when Jesus makes the point that it was also to gentiles, not just good Jewish folk, that the prophets Elijah and Elisha touched with healing hands. The hostile reaction of the crowd to this message prefigures both Jesus’ rejection by the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem and the rejection of the church’s preaching in many (but not all) synagogues throughout the Roman Empire seen in Luke’s sequel, the Book of Acts.

The remarkable thing about this passage is Jesus’ reading of the scripture from Isaiah. He tells his audience not that the scripture will soon be fulfilled, as did the prophet who uttered it, but that it has been fulfilled. The reign of God has begun with the anointing of Jesus for his mission. The opposition to this message, however, is a clear indicator that this new reign of God takes the shape of the cross in a world bound and determined to reject it.

Sunday, January 17th

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SECOND SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY

Isaiah 62:1-5
Psalm 36:50
I Corinthians 12:1-11
John 2:1-11

Prayer of the Day: Lord God, source of every blessing, you showed forth your glory and led many to faith by the works of your Son, who brought gladness and salvation to his people. Transform us by the Spirit of his love, that we may find our life together in him, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

There is plenty to ponder in John’s marvelous story about Jesus and the wedding feast at Cana. Some of that is discussed below. But what strikes me more than anything else about this tale is its sheer abundance. John tells us that the six stone jars the servants filled with water, ultimately becoming wine, contained between twenty and thirty gallons. So we are talking between 120 and 180 gallons of wine. And this is not Gallo or Manischewitz. Think Richebourg Grand Cru. I cannot imagine a small Galilean wedding party making a dent in such a huge reservoir of wine.

Jesus seems to be all about abundance in John’s gospel. Where the wine seems to have run out, Jesus comes through with an abundance of wine that is better than the best. Jesus feeds five thousand people in the wilderness with just a few loaves-and there are leftovers. He promises the woman of Samaria enough water to last for all eternity. He offers abundant life. His own life is so full of life-giving wonders that the world itself could never contain the books it would take to tell of them all. The blessed “generosity of numbers” celebrated in Mary Cornish’s poetry is not lost on John the Evangelist.

The gospel of God’s unlimited generosity stands in stark contrast to the constant moaning we hear in the public square these days about the urgent need to eliminate deficits, practice austerity and exercise fiscal restraint. Now I am not opposed to any of that in principle. There is no virtue in waste or extravagance. We would all do well to reign in our insatiable consumer appetites. But it seems to me that the call for fiscal restraint is often issued to those who have the least to restrain. Austerity is more often imposed than practiced in our society and the burden of reducing deficits is usually placed on the backs of those least able to bear it. In this age of unprecedented wealth, we somehow cannot afford to pay a living wage to the people who prepare and serve food for those of us who can afford the luxury of dinning out. Much of the anti-immigrant rhetoric we are hearing these days seems rooted in a fear that there is not enough to be had in this country for everyone as it is. The life boat is already full. In this zero sum game, anybody else’s gain is necessarily my loss. The pie is shrinking. Admitting more to the table will only hasten its inevitable disappearance.

By contrast, Jesus promises abundance for all. The specter of scarcity driving so much of our politics, poisoning our relationships with our neighbors and killing our capacity for compassion has no place in God’s reign of abundance. God’s table is never bare, nor is it lacking in space for any who come hungry and thirsty. Disciples of Jesus know that generosity looks not to the limits of our own resources, but to the limitless promises of God to provide all that we need and so much more. The disciples saw more in the miracle at Cana than a magic trick. They recognized the dawn of the messianic age; the in-breaking of abundant and eternal life. They got “a foretaste of the feast to come” where the best wine just keeps on flowing.

Here’s the poem by Mary Cornish I alluded to above.

Numbers

I like the generosity of numbers.
The way, for example,
they are willing to count
anything or anyone:
two pickles, one door to the room,
eight dancers dressed as swans.

I like the domesticity of addition—
add two cups of milk and stir—
the sense of plenty: six plums
on the ground, three more
falling from the tree.

And multiplication’s school
of fish times fish,
whose silver bodies breed
beneath the shadow
of a boat.

Even subtraction is never loss,
just addition somewhere else:
five sparrows take away two,
the two in someone else’s
garden now.

There’s an amplitude to long division,
as it opens Chinese take-out
box by paper box,
inside every folded cookie
a new fortune.

And I never fail to be surprised
by the gift of an odd remainder,
footloose at the end:
forty-seven divided by eleven equals four,
with three remaining.

Three boys beyond their mother’s call,
two Italians off to the sea,
one sock that isn’t anywhere you look.

Source: Red Studio, (c. 2007 by Mary Cornish). Mary Cornish is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow. She lives in Bellingham, Washington, where she teaches creative writing at Western Washington University. In addition to her poetry, Cornish has written and illustrated a number of children’s books. I encourage you to read more about Cornish and her work at the website for the Poetry Foundation.

Isaiah 62:1-5

This reading comes to us from the third section of the book of Isaiah. (For a more thorough background on the Book of Isaiah generally, see my post for Sunday, January 3rd, Epiphany of our Lord;  See also the article of Professor Fred Gaiser of Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota at enterthebible.org. The prophet is speaking to the dispirited band of Jews who answered the call to return from their exile in Babylon and rebuild the ruined city of Jerusalem and its temple. These returning exiles no doubt left Babylon in high hopes of accomplishing their task of reconstruction in short order. The land to which they returned, however, was inhabited by peoples who now considered it their home and did not desire to see Jerusalem rebuilt. The odds of these returning settlers achieving their grand plans were long at best. Decades after the Jews began to return to Palestine, the city of Jerusalem was still in ruins and rebuilding of the temple had been abandoned even before the foundation had been completed.

So you can see why the prophet’s grand vision of Jerusalem as “a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord and a royal diadem in the hand of your God” hardly comported with the reality experienced by his or her audience. Of course I do not know how this prophet was received, but I suspect that this preaching might have generated some hostility. After all, it was another prophet, the second Isaiah, whose preaching motivated these people to leave what was now their home in Babylon and return to Palestine, a land that most of them knew only from the stories of their elders. The miraculous “highway through the wilderness” promised by second Isaiah did not materialize. The reconstruction of Jerusalem and the temple proved enormously more difficult and complex than they had expected. They had exchanged the relative security of their Babylonian community in exile for an environment of hardship, danger and disappointment.  That is what comes of listening to prophets.

In many respects, this is the life of prophets in every age. These are people of vision speaking of realities that do not yet appear. Sometimes, like Jeremiah, the prophet must speak hard and fearful truths that people do not want to see. Other times the prophet is called upon to speak words of promise to a people whose hopes have been crushed to many times to trust words of comfort and glad tidings. Obviously, our prophet fits into the latter category. He or she is preaching to a people who have forgotten how to hope and who no longer believe that they have a future.

Were the words of this prophet fulfilled? In some respects, we have to say yes. The fact that Jerusalem and the temple were rebuilt is testimony to the effectiveness of the prophet’s ministry. But in another sense, the prophecy remains unfulfilled. The temple that was rebuilt under Ezra and Nehemiah did not match the splendor of Solomon’s temple which it was meant to replace. Ezra 3:10-13. Jerusalem remains to this day, not the center of peace and justice for which the prophet hoped, but a flashpoint for conflict and violence. So we might be tempted to say that the prophet’s critics were right and that his or her visions were merely pipe dreams. But, as my grandfather would have said, “Day’s not over yet.” John of Patmos reminds us that the new Jerusalem where God will dwell among human beings is yet to come. Revelation 21:1-22:5. Moreover, as I said in my post for Sunday, January 3rd Epiphany of our Lord, God may yet have a saving and redeeming role for the brick and mortar Jerusalem that stands in Palestine today.

Psalm 36:5-10

This psalm of trust has been the victim of censorship by the lectionary police. Therefore, I am giving you the whole psalm to read so that you can appreciate what is really going on here. The psalm begins with a graphic description of evil people who, confident that they need not fear any consequences of their evil behavior, boldly concoct ever more mischief. Perhaps the folks who gave us the lectionary felt that we should not dwell upon evil people and the harm they do, but rather focus on the faithfulness of God that is extolled throughout verses 5-10. “Accentuate the positive” as the song goes. But in so doing, I think we lose the thrust of what the psalmist is telling us.

Let’s begin with the obvious. There are wicked people in the world. I am not talking about people who make snide remarks about your potato salad at the church supper or your neighbor who lets her dog do his business at the edge of your yard and doesn’t bother to clean it up. These folks are thoughtless and rude, but not evil. I am talking Osama Bin Laden evil here. I am talking about the one who “in his bed plots how best to do mischief-” (see vs. 4) like shooting down school children with semi-automatic rifles. How does one deal with evil like that?

According to NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun.” Well, the psalmist does not agree. “You [God] save humans and animals alike.” “All people take refuge in the shadow of your wings…for with you is the fountain of life.” The psalmist makes it clear that God’s “righteousness is like the mighty mountains” and God’s “judgments are like the great deep.” It is not for human beings to take judgment into their own hands and determine who must be punished, who must live and who must die. The “good guys” according to this psalm are those who do not carry weapons or trust in them but rely wholly upon God. That is why the prayer concludes with verses 11-12 (also conveniently omitted) in which the psalmist asks for God’s protection against the wicked.

Once again, this prayer strikes a dissonant chord in our culture of violence that has been indoctrinated by westerns and police dramas in which the underlying message is exactly that of Mr. LaPierre: the only way to stop violence is with more violence; the answer to gun violence in our schools is more guns in school, etc. The church’s story is altogether different. Our hero is the man who warns us that all who take the sword (good guys and bad guys alike) perish by the sword. Our role model is the man who refused to retaliate or exercise the right of self defense when confronted with deadly force. This is why, once again, I recommend two psalms each day just like vitamins, one in the morning and one at night. They help to immunize us against cultural programming and form in us the mind of Christ.

I Corinthians 12:1-11

The church at Corinth was a congregation only the Apostle Paul could love. It had every conceivable problem a church could have. It had divisive factions; power struggles; sex scandals; doctrinal disputes; arguments over worship practices; and, of course, money issues. Yet remarkably, Paul can say to this messed up, dysfunctional congregation, “Now you are the Body of Christ.” I Corinthians 12:27. He does not say, “You should be the Body of Christ!” or “You could be the Body of Christ if you would just get your act together!” No, Paul is emphatic that the church at Corinth is the Body of Christ even now, with all its warts and blemishes. This is no metaphor.  Paul means for the church to understand that it is Jesus’ resurrected Body. Nothing Paul says makes any sense until you get that.

In this Sunday’s lesson the issue is spiritual gifts. First off, understand that Paul is not using the term “spiritual” in the wishy washy new age sense that we so often hear it today-i.e., “I’m spiritual, but not religious.” (Whatever that means.) When Paul speaks of the spiritual, he is speaking explicitly about the Spirit of Jesus. That Spirit can be experienced only through the intimate knowing of Jesus. Jesus is known through communion with his Body, the church. Thus, it is impossible to speak of obedience to Jesus apart from communion with his Body. The church is the Body of Jesus precisely because it is animated by the Spirit of Jesus. Therefore, every ethical decision, every doctrinal teaching, every matter of church administration, every aspect of worship boils down to what does or does not build up the unity and health of Christ’s Body.

So now we come down to the specific issue at hand: “spiritual gifts” or gifts given to individual members of the Body of Christ for the building up of that Body. There is no hierarchy in the church for Paul. The issue is never “who is in charge.” Jesus is the Head of the church. He alone is in charge. The rest of us are all members of the Body.  A little finger might not seem to be particularly important-until it gets slammed in the car door. Suddenly, the least important part of the body is commanding center stage! So also in the Body of Christ, the prominence of any person’s gift at any particular time depends upon what is happening. When determining the short term management of a large monetary gift to the church, someone with administrative skill in managing funds is critical. Such persons know how to transfer property quickly, efficiently and without loss to a place where it can appreciate in value as the church decides how to use it. However, when it comes to long range management of these funds, different gifts are required. The mission of the church is not to maximize income on its investments, but to use its resources to build up the Body of Christ and witness to the reign of God. To make faithful use of the church’s resources to these ends, the gift of prophetic vision is required. The gift of discernment is necessary also to evaluate such visions and find within them the call and command of Jesus. When all members of the church work together using their unique gifts to build up the Body of Christ, the gifts complement each other.

Unfortunately, such harmony was not the prevailing mood at Corinth. Certain individuals were convinced that their gifts conferred upon them greater status and authority. They were using their gifts and abilities to advance their own interests instead of building up the church. So Paul begins in these verses an extended discussion about the proper use of the gifts the Holy Spirit gives to each of member of the Body of Christ. In the first place, all members of the Body are gifted and their gifts are necessary to the proper functioning of that Body. So the church must constantly ask itself whether it is recognizing the gifts among its members. Second, it matters not which gift a person has, but how the gift is used. Paul makes it clear that all gifts must be used for the common good of the whole church. In the example of the monetary gift, a short term manager who loses sight of the big picture and is concerned only with maximizing returns on investment rather than growing the ministry of the church is no longer serving the Body. So also the visionary with great plans for the church’s resources who is unwilling to submit his or her vision to the ministry of discernment within the Body is no longer building up the Body. Third, there is no hierarchy of gifts.  Hierarchy is antithetical to the well-being of the church.

John 2:1-11

This makes for a delightful story, simple in the telling yet layered and textured. Jesus and his family are invited to a wedding feast. This is no small thing. A wedding is about the closest thing to a holiday little Galilean towns ever know.  One of the town’s few animals will be slaughtered and roasted. Wine will be served in abundance. For once everyone will eat and drink freely-as though they were wealthy. There will be singing, dancing and joy. Weddings provide an island of sheer jubilation in this ocean of back-breaking work, grinding poverty and ever-present hunger that the common people of Galilee know as life. Small wonder, then, that Jesus frequently used the image of the wedding feast to describe the reign of God. It is a time when sorrows are forgotten; tears wiped away; food, wine and dancing can be had in abundance. Wedding feasts are a sign of what God intends for human life. A wedding is a defiant “no” to what is and a yearning expression of hope for what might be. So I believe that Jesus’ quiet miracle for the preservation of a wedding feast is a more profound sign than might first appear.

Jesus’ mother (John never refers to her as Mary) calls to Jesus’ attention the situation with the wine. “What is that to us?” Jesus responds. That strikes me as a reasonable response. This is not their wedding and, as far as we know, Jesus and his mother had no part in planning it. Let the family of the bride worry about the state of the wine. Jesus’ mother does not argue the point. She simply instructs the servants with whom she has been conversing to follow Jesus’ directions. Mom seems determined to get her son involved, seemingly confident that he can be of assistance. I would very much like to know what was in Mary’s mind. What was she expecting of Jesus? A miracle? This would seem unlikely. As far as we know from John’s perspective, Jesus has never before performed any miracles. Nevertheless, Mary feels that it is important for Jesus know that the wine has run short and she seems certain that he will be able to do something about it.

The stone jars for use in purification were, in all likelihood, provided for the benefit of the guests containing water “intended to make the participating guests worthy by ritual lustration, to share in the solemnities of the marriage feast.” Marsh, John, Saint John, The Pelican New Testament Commentaries (c. 1968 by John Marsh, pub. by Penguin Books, Ltd.) p. 145. As the feast was already underway, the water in the jars had been used up so that the jars were now empty. Marsh goes on to suggest that the number six (one less than the perfect number of seven) suggests the inadequacy of Judaism’s religious practices. Professor Raymond Brown, however, finds this reading somewhat far-fetched and I tend to agree with him. Brown, Raymond E., The Gospel of John I-XII, The Anchor Bible, Vol, 29 (c. 1966 by Doubleday) p. 100. That they were designated for purification, however, emphasizes the life giving potency of the sign for all who see it and believe. Moreover, the Hebrew Scriptures frequently speak of the messianic kingdom as a place where wine flows freely and abundantly. See, e.g., Amos 9:13-14; Hosea 14:7; Jeremiah 31:12.

The primary focus, however, should be on what John tells us about the purpose and effect of this miracle, namely, that through this act Jesus’ glory was revealed and his disciples believed in him. Apparently, this miracle was not for public consumption. Nobody, save Jesus and the servants on duty at the wedding, knew how there suddenly came to be such an abundance of such very fine wine. From all I can tell, neither the wedding planner nor the newly married couple was aware that the celebration was in jeopardy or that Jesus had saved it. The disciples knew, however, and that seems to be the whole point. Jesus would have his disciples know that he has come to make sure the wedding feast of the Lamb continues. So also should every joyous wedding feast that is a “foretaste of the feast to come.” No wedding feast will die of privation on Jesus’ watch.

Sunday, December 13th

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THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT

Zephaniah 3:14-20
Isaiah 12:2-6
Philippians 4:4-7
Luke 3:7-18

PRAYER OF THE DAY: Stir up the wills of your faithful people, Lord God, and open our ears to the preaching of John, that, rejoicing in your salvation, we may bring forth the fruits of repentance; through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

John the Baptist is an enigmatic figure in the New Testament. I read a commentator recently who lamented the fact that we have lost the “historical” John in the mists of history and all that remains of him is the gospel portrayal of a literary character whose only role is to magnify the ministry of Jesus. Would that we were all so “lost!” Would that all of us disciples could die so thoroughly to self that others see in us only Jesus magnified. Would that we were a people whose lives are a total mystery apart from Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. We are never more real than when our lives are lived out of our relationship with Jesus. That beats the hell out of whatever “historical” existence there might be for us.

In last Sunday’s gospel John announced the Lord’s coming and urged us, in the words of Isaiah the prophet, to “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” Luke 3:4. This Sunday he tells us concretely what that looks like. In response to John’s bold proclamation that the reign of God is immanent, the people begin to ask “what shall we do?” vss. 10; 12; and 14. The answer is starkly simple. Live now as though God’s reign has already come. Share your food and clothing. Stop exploiting your career and social standing to enrich yourself at the expense of others. This is not just whinny exhortation or even a cry for social justice. It is the good news of the arrival of God’s reign. Vs. 18. One either believes John and begins orientating one’s life toward the priorities and patterns of the world to come; or one rejects John’s good news and continues living under the old order of hierarchy, patriarchy, class distinctions and violent oppression.

Advent is that one time during the church year when the radical nature of the good news threatens to break through all of our ecclesiastical efforts to domesticate it. I have listened ad nauseam to theologians in my own Lutheran tradition harp on the paradoxical relationship between the “already” and the “not yet” in the reign of God proclaimed by Jesus. What irks me is not so much their pointing out the tension between these two seemingly contradictory assertions concerning the kingdom. That is real enough. My objection is that we Lutherans have always laid far too much emphasis on the “not yet.” Announcing the “already” rattles us. We are suspicious of the unexpected and disruptive. Revolution terrifies us. Being American protestant ever white and ever polite progressives, we prefer gradual, evolutionary, incremental change. The Sermon on the Mount is fine as long as it can safely be understood as an unattainable ideal designed to drive us to the despair of ever attaining it and to send us fleeing to the throne of grace for a dispensation from it. Or we can tolerate it as God’s expressed intention for life in the “not yet” side of things, but certainly not applicable to the “real world” as we now experience it. For now, we must be satisfied with modest tweaks to late stage capitalism and a kinder, gentler nationalism because the sort of world in which the Sermon on the Mount can actually be practiced is “not yet.”

John the Baptist doesn’t see it that way. For him, there is no “not yet.” It’s “already,” period. Why else would you empty your closet to clothe a stranger or raid your refrigerator to feed somebody you don’t even know? Why would a wealthy tax collector or a soldier of the king begin to doubt the legitimacy of their life’s work? Only because the “already” is eclipsing the “not yet.” John’s preaching made the impending reign of God more real to his hearers than the world driven by survival of the fittest. John is living in the “already.” Let the “not yet” be damned.

The “already” is meant to be lived in the midst of the “not yet.” To be sure, “already” takes the shape of the cross as long as it is still “not yet.” To a world thoroughly conformed to the “not yet,” the lives of those living in the “already” are something of a mystery. They seem impractical, ineffective and nonsensical. Yet if you are convinced that God’s reign is immanent and has indeed already broken into the present moment, conforming your heart and behavior to that reality is about the most pragmatic step you can take.

Here is a poem by Wendell Berry that captures what I think it must be like to live the “already” in the heart of the “not yet.”

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.

Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute.
Love the Lord.

Love the world.
Work for nothing.

Take all that you have and be poor.

Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace
the flag.
Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.

Give your approval to all you cannot
understand.
Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.

Invest in the millenium.
Plant sequoias.

Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.

Call that profit.
Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.

Listen to carrion — put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.

Expect the end of the world.
Laugh.

Laughter is immeasurable.
Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.

So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.

Lie down in the shade.
Rest your head
in her lap.
Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it.
Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go.

Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.

Practice resurrection.

From The Mad Farmer Poems, (c. 2008 by Wendell Berry). Wendell Berry is a poet, novelist, farmer and environmental activist. You can read more about him and his many works at the Poetry Foundation website.

Zephaniah 3:14-20

The book of Zephaniah is one of the twelve Minor Prophets. They are so called not because they are any less important than Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel (Major Prophets), but because these prophetic collections are much smaller. Zephaniah is only three chapters long. The name, “Zephaniah” means “Yahweh

Hides” or “Yahweh is concealed.” “Sophonias (Zephaniah),” Catholic Encyclopedia (c. 2012 by Kevin Knight). In the opening verses, Zephaniah’s ancestry is traced through Hezekiah. Zephaniah 1:1. It is not known whether this reference is to King Hezekiah who reigned over Judah between 715 B.C.E. and 687 B.C.E.  Hezekiah was one of the few kings that gets a favorable rating from the books of Kings and Chronicles. The prophets Isaiah and Micah both were active during his reign and it seems that he was somewhat receptive to their preaching. According to the opening verses of the book, Zephaniah’s preaching took place during the reign of King Josiah from 640 B.C.E. through 609 B.C.E. It is therefore possible that Zephaniah could have been sired by Hezekiah through one of his concubines. On the other hand, because Hezekiah was such a well-regarded king, it would not be unusual for the name to become popular. The Hezekiah named as Zephaniah’s father is not identified as a king or given any royal appellation. Consequently, Zephaniah’s royal lineage is not a foregone conclusion.

It is also thought that Zephaniah’s prophetic ministry must have come prior to the reforms introduced by King Josiah ten years into his reign that are reported in II King 23:4-25. Zephaniah criticized severely the idolatrous worship of Baal and Asherah in Jerusalem, all traces of which Josiah rooted out of the city in the course of his restoration and purification of worship at the Temple. Zephaniah 1:4-6. Zephaniah was also unsparing in his criticism of “the officials and the king’s sons.” Zephaniah 1:8. It seems unlikely that he would have leveled such criticisms during a period of time when the King was implementing the very reforms Zephaniah was demanding. Thus, it is likely that the prophecies we have from the prophet Zephaniah date from between 640 B.C.E and 630 B.C.E., the first decade of Josiah’s reign prior to the institution of his reforms.

The book can be divided into three sections corresponding to its three chapters. The first chapter focuses chiefly on the corruption of the royal court and priesthood in Jerusalem. Zephaniah threatens the nation with divinely wrought destruction for its sins. In the second chapter the prophet expands the threat of judgment to Israel’s enemies. The third chapter begins with what appears to be further indictments against Judah, but the prophet’s tone changes abruptly after chapter five. Beginning with Zephaniah 3:6, the prophet begins to prophecy judgment against “the nations,” and words of comfort directed to Jerusalem. This is the section from which our lesson for Sunday is taken. The prophet promises that God will rescue Judah, restore her fortunes and defeat her enemies. Instead of bringing a judgment of destruction, God now declares a removal of destruction. Some scholars have explained this abrupt change by attributing these verses to a prophet other than Zephaniah who preached during or shortly after the period of the Babylonian Exile. Montague, George T., Zephaniah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Lamentations and Obadiah, Old Testament Reading Guide (c. 1961 by Confraternity of Christian Doctrine) pp. 22-23. This is quite possible. Like other prophetic books, Zephaniah is a compilation of prophetic utterances given at different times under different circumstances. As was the case with both Isaiah and Jeremiah, it is possible that the work of one of Zephaniah’s disciples or an editor might have found its way into the book. But I am doubtful for the following reasons: First, there is there is no mention of Jerusalem’s destruction, Babylon, the Exile or the return from exile. Second, the theme of the nations being cleansed and united by the glory of God shining forth from Jerusalem is part and parcel of the earlier prophecies of Isaiah. This week’s lesson reflects these same themes that are entirely consistent with the earlier prophetic tradition of Isaiah and so fit into Zephaniah’s period of ministry in the late seventh century.

God’s promise to “live in the midst [of the people]” reflects the longing of Advent. Like Israel, the church is a people formed by its longing for God’s reign. We struggle between the reality in which we live on the one hand that is characterized by violence, injustice and cruelty and on the other hand an alternate reality proclaimed to us by the scriptures in which God’s will is done on earth as in heaven. For us the latter reality is the more real and compelling even though we cannot see it yet.

Isaiah 12:2-6

As I have pointed out before, the book of the prophet Isaiah is regarded by most Hebrew Scripture scholars to be the work of three different prophets. Chapters of Isaiah 1-39 are attributed in the main to Isaiah the prophet who lived and prophesied in the 8th Century during the reigns of Judean kings Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah. Chapters of Isaiah 40-55 are attributed to a prophet who preached toward the end of the Babylonian exile of the Jews, declaring to them God’s forgiveness and God’s promise to lead them back from exile to their homeland in Palestine. Chapters of Isaiah 56-66 are the words of a prophet addressing the Jews who in fact returned to Palestine and were struggling to rebuild their community under difficult circumstances. But this neat three part division is still a little too simplistic. All three prophetic collections underwent editing, revisions and additions in the course of composition. Consequently, there are many sections of First Isaiah (Isaiah 1-39) that probably belong to a prophet of a much later time. So it appears that the words from our lesson, which fall within the chapters attributed to First Isaiah of the 8th Century, are more likely from a later time. Most likely, they were placed by the editor as a poetic doxology to the collection of prophetic utterances by Isaiah in the first eleven chapters of the book. Rolf Jacobson, Professor of Old Testament from Luther Seminary in St. Paul, M.N. attributes these verses to the prophet who gave us Second Isaiah (Isaiah 40-55). See Commentary on Workingpreacher.org. I believe they also fit into the context of disillusionment and despair following the return from exile addressed by Third Isaiah (Isaiah 56-66). There does not appear to be enough in terms of historical references to date it with any certainty. The call to praise God and acknowledge God as savior is naturally appropriate for Advent which looks back to Jesus who came and forward to the Christ who is to come.

Philippians 4:4-7

As I pointed out last week, the letter to the Philippians is not one, but actually three different letters sent by Paul to the church at Phillipi at different times. These letters were collected together and over time became integrated as a single document. The three letters in their likely chronological order are as follows:

  • Phil A = Phil 4:10-20 (a short “Note of Thanksgiving” for monetary gifts Paul received from the Philippians)
  • Phil B = Phil 1:1 – 3:1; 4:4-7; (a “Letter of Friendship” written from prison, probably in Ephesus)
  • Phil C = Phil 3:2 – 4:3; 4:8-9; 4:21-23 (a stern warning against rival missionaries who require the circumcision of Gentiles)

See the post for Sunday, December 6, 2015 for more particulars on this letter.

As was the case last week, so this week the reading is from the second of these three letters and constitutes its conclusion. Paul reminds the Philippian church that the Lord is near and encourages them to rejoice. Once again, it needs to be emphasized that for followers of Jesus the announcement that “The Lord is at hand” (Vs. 5) does not conjure up images of terror, divine wrath and damnation. It elicits rejoicing. Advent is above all a season of joy. We do not face the future with dread. We look to tomorrow with hope, but not out of some blind optimism that everything will work out in the end. No, our hope is grounded in the promise of Jesus’ return to reign in gentleness and peace.

Luke 3:7-18

Last week’s lesson introduced John as the voice crying, “in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord.” This week, we come face to face with John the preacher. Luke’s account of John’s preaching differs significantly from the Gospel of Matthew in one respect. In Matthew, John addresses only the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism with the scathing words: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” In Luke, this stinging rebuke is directed at the “multitudes that came to be baptized.” Vs. 7. We don’t know much about John’s audience. Luke does not tell us who was among the multitudes. We learn a few verses later, however, that there were soldiers and tax collectors among them. We can safely assume that the folks who sought John out and came to receive his baptism were looking for a renewed Israel, perhaps along the lines of Zephaniah’s vision. That would have involved an end to corruption within the priesthood and worship in the Temple-just as rampant in John’s day as in that of Zephaniah. They might also have been looking for restoration of Israel as a great kingdom. Or they may have expected some miraculous transformation of the present world into a world in which Israel would be glorified rather than downtrodden. Again, this last expectation would have been consistent with the hope expressed in our reading from Zephaniah. But whatever they were expecting, John makes clear to them that the change they are hoping for must begin with them. Submitting to John’s baptism without repentance would be an empty and futile ritual exercise. It is not enough to be a descendent of Abraham (or a confirmed Lutheran). It is fruits, not roots that matter.

Understandably, the people respond, “Well then, what are we to do? What are these fruits you are talking about?” John does not have to look far for an answer. His reply concerning the fruits of repentance is squarely within the framework of prophetic tradition. See, e.g. Isaiah 58:1-9:

Shout out, do not hold back!
Lift up your voice like a trumpet!
Announce to my people their rebellion,
to the house of Jacob their sins.
Yet day after day they seek me
and delight to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness
and did not forsake the ordinance of their God;
they ask of me righteous judgments,
they delight to draw near to God.
“Why do we fast, but you do not see?
Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?”
Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day,
and oppress all your workers.
Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
and to strike with a wicked fist.
Such fasting as you do today
will not make your voice heard on high.
Is such the fast that I choose,
a day to humble oneself?
Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush,
and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?
Will you call this a fast,
a day acceptable to the LORD?
Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.
Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.

Repentance that is all about ritual formalities like fasting, wearing of sackcloth and ashes falls far short of what the Lord requires. Repentance is turning back to the Lord and one cannot do that without turning toward the sister or brother in need. One of the most ancient and urgent commands in the Mosaic law is that “You shall open wide your hand to the poor in the land.”  Deuteronomy 15:11.

The temptation here is to jump too quickly from John’s admonitions here to a more generalized charity that reduces the poor to an abstraction. Note well that both the prophetic passage from Isaiah and John’s preaching is directed toward Israel, not the world at large. These proclamations make sense only to people living in a covenant relationship with the God of Israel such as Israel itself or disciples of Jesus who are united with that God through baptism. This is particularly important for us American Christians to keep in mind as we frequently confuse America with the people of God. The Bible was written to shape the life of the church, not to reform the structures of American society. Furthermore, the sharing that John speaks about is to take place within the frame work of a covenant people called out of the rest of the world to be a “light to the nations.” So the “poor” here are not the starving masses, but the fellow in the next pew who lost his job and cannot afford coats for his kids. John is not asking us to immerse ourselves in the war against poverty. He just wants the extra coat in our closet for the brother without one.

I might be criticized here for lack of a social conscience. One irate person who heard me make this point responded, “Don’t you think Christians should be concerned about social justice?” My response was that I think everyone should be concerned about social justice whether they are Christians or not. But social justice is not enough. Jesus did not merely feed the hungry. He invited them to the messianic banquet. Jesus did not simply make donations for the care of lepers. He touched them. The prophet Isaiah did not call upon Israel to build homeless shelters. He told them to “bring the homeless into your house.” There are disciples of Jesus who do just that. I know, for example, of families that have taken on several foster children, some of them with serious emotional problems and physical disabilities, all in an effort to provide for them a secure and loving home. One example of precisely this thing is Reba Place Fellowship in Evanston, Illinois. This is an intentional Christian community dedicated to “freely sharing life and resources with one another and with our neighbors in order to demonstrate God’s peace and justice in the world.” I encourage you to check out their website.

I have been told repeatedly that, while these individual efforts are commendable, the problems of homelessness and poverty are systemic and that we need systemic reform of one sort or another to solve them. That might well be true, but so is the converse. Systemic change will never overcome poverty as long as we continue to view the poor as social problems to be solved rather than as sisters and brothers precious both to God and to us. The church is called to be a community where the poor are welcomed as valued partners rather than tolerated as burdens. Let me add here that I think we could be and should be doing a far better job with this. That is one reason why we need to hear John’s preaching so much.

How, then, does John prepare the way of the Lord? Our lesson concludes, noting that “With these and many other exhortations, [John] preached good news to the people.” But in what sense is this good news? John tells us of this “coming one” that “his winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” This is an unsettling image, but maybe that is the point. Can you really expect to be baptized with fire and not get burned? If repentance is about a radical change of direction, it stands to reason that some things are going to have to be left behind-like the notion that you can ride into the kingdom of God on the proper pedigree. Some things must be given up-like the extra food in the pantry and the extra coats in the closet. But the promise of health is well worth the pain of the cure. The judgment John proclaims is not one of doom, but of promise. The unquenchable fire is for purifying, refining and renewing-not for destroying. That flame is lit each time Jesus calls another disciple to follow him. Throughout the way that leads finally to the cross, that flame burns to strengthen, purify and refine the new creation.

I think a word or two should be said also about John’s words to the soldiers and the tax collectors. In all likelihood, the soldiers belonged to Herod Antipas who ruled Galilee under leave from Rome. Ellis, Earl E., The Gospel of Luke, The New Century Bible Commentary (c. 1974 by Marshall, Morgan & Scott) p. 90. We should not think of these folks as disciplined members of an armed service doing a patriotic duty for the good of their country under a strict code of military ethics. These “soldiers” to which Luke refers, were more like armed thugs hired to protect a local warlord. Their wages were meager, but that did not matter because they had a license to take whatever they wished from the local population to supplement their income. Caird, G.B., Saint Luke, The Pelican New Testament Commentaries (c. 1963 by G.B. Caird, pub. by Penguin Books, Ltd.) p. 73. The tax collectors were not civil servants. They were free agents who, through payment, patronage or some other means obtained the right to collect taxes for Rome within a given geographical area. They were told generally the amount they needed to collect for Rome and whatever else they could manage to extort was their living. Schweizer, Eduard, The Good News According to Luke (c. 1984 by John Knox Press) p. 73. The tax collectors most frequently encountered by Jesus, and probably John as well, were at the very bottom of the food chain. They were Jews recruited by regional tax collectors to do the dirty work of extracting revenue from their neighbors. Naturally, they also had to make a living and so collected a premium of their own. Thus, one must wonder how John could expect a soldier of Herod to make do with his wages or a tax collector to extract no more than what his principal required. In both cases, obedience would result in poverty.

Some scholars have suggested that Luke, who was writing in a time long after these events took place, was projecting into the story a more respectable means of taxation and a more developed military ethic than existed in the time of Jesus. In other words, we have an anachronism. I don’t find this explanation convincing. Luke consistently takes a very radical view of discipleship throughout his gospel. Sometimes the shape of discipleship is poverty, persecution and even death. I believe therefore that John knew full well that he was calling the soldiers and the tax collectors to a life that would put them at odds with their professions and their loyalties. But, once again, like the priceless pearl or the treasure in the field, the reign of God is worth letting go of everything else to pursue. Along with the rest of the multitude, the soldiers and tax collectors are promised a baptism with the Holy Spirit and with fire.