Tag Archives: Jeremiah

Sunday, January 4th

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SECOND SUNDAY OF CHRISTMAS

Jeremiah 31:7-14
Psalm 147:12-20
Ephesians 1:3-14
John 1:1-18

PRAYER OF THE DAY: Almighty God, you have filled all the earth with the light of your incarnate Word. By your grace empower us to reflect your light in all that we do, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Although I will be preaching from the texts for the Second Sunday of Christmas, we will be observing the Epiphany of our Lord at Trinity on Sunday, January 4th. I believe the gospel lesson is particularly appropriate for the day. The word “epiphany” comes from the Greek verb,” epiphanein,” to “reveal” or “make manifest.” That is precisely what John’s gospel does with Jesus. John unwraps Jesus slowly, deliberately and with great tenderness as one might unwrap a precious gift. He describes Jesus as “the light of men,” telling us that the “light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

The light ought to bring us joy. I don’t know about you, but I derive a good bit of comfort knowing that the shortest day of the year is behind us and that, from here on out, the days will be getting longer and the nights shorter. While I have never been diagnosed with seasonal affective disorder, I know that I thrive on light. For me, the worst part of losing our power after Hurricane Sandy was the darkness. Even during the day it seemed we were always moving about in semi-darkness. Nothing was more maddening than reactively flipping on the light switch to no avail. What a delight it was when the power came back flooding the house with light!

But John tells us that the world is less than thrilled with the light of Jesus. “He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not. He came to his own home, and his own people received him not.” Why would anyone shun the light? The answer comes to us later in the gospel when John tells us: “And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” The problem with light is that it reveals everything-even the stuff we prefer not to see. I would rather not know what my country does to people in musty dungeons far “off the grid” in the name of fighting terrorism. I would prefer not to know who made the items I buy, or under what sort of working conditions they were made or how the workers making them were compensated. I would rather not believe that racism pervades the culture in which I live, making me blind to the injustice and pain experienced by people of color in my land. But the truth cannot be had piecemeal. It’s an all or nothing proposition. The light illuminates all things indiscriminately, good, bad and ugly.

Still, for all the pain, embarrassment and discomfort the light can bring, it is nevertheless “life.” So says John the Evangelist. To those who receive Jesus, to all who are willing to be instructed by him, exposed by him and transformed by him, “he gives power to become the children of God.” Knowing Jesus is knowing the heart of God whose desire is not our destruction, but our salvation. That gives us the courage we need to see ourselves and our world, not as we fancy them to be, but as they truly are. Knowing Jesus also reveals to us all that our world can and will be. It may take our eyes some time to adjust to the light, accustomed as they are to the darkness. Indeed, our initial reaction to the light might very well be to avert our gaze, cover our eyes and remain in the darkness. But, in the words of the hymn: “Morning dispels, gently compels, and we’re drawn to the light of God.” “Drawn to the Light,” John C. Ylvisaker, Evangelical Lutheran Worship, # 593. May it be so!

Jeremiah 31:7-14

Our lesson is taken from Jeremiah’s “Book of Consolation,” consisting of Jeremiah 30:1-31:40. These oracles are thought to have been collected by Jeremiah’s scribe, Baruch, and reflect the period between 622 B.C.E. and 609 B.C.E. During this period the Southern Kingdom of Judah was under the reign of King Josiah who, during the collapse of the Assyrian Empire, manage to restore Judah to independence and to a measure of national prominence. Under his leadership, Judah was able to annex much of the land once occupied by the Northern Kingdom of Israel that had been destroyed and occupied by Assyria in 622 B.C.E. Jeremiah was probably a young man or perhaps just a boy when the Northern Kingdom fell. He laments that calamity with these memorable lines: “A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more.” Jeremiah 31:15. Rachel, of course, was the second wife of Jacob and the mother of Joseph. The northern tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh trace their lineage through Rachel and Joseph. Matthew’s gospel cites to this verse to express the grief of Bethlehem over the slaughter of its male children by Herod the Great. Matthew 2:18.

This section of Jeremiah, unlike so much of his work, reflects the joy and comfort available to the “remnant” from the Northern Kingdom now that they have been liberated from the yolk of Assyria. The Assyrians carried many of the Israelites of the Northern Kingdom into Exile throughout their empire. II Kings 17:1-6. Jeremiah voices an expectation that the new state of affairs brought about through Josiah’s annexation of what was once Israel will allow these exiles to return home. Vss. 10-11.

Jeremiah is clear that the northern tribes have no one but themselves to blame for their fate. The Assyrian conquest came upon Israel “because your guilt is great, because your sins are flagrant.” For this reason, God dealt her “the blow of an enemy.” Vs. 14. Yet even God’s punishment is an act of mercy designed to bring about repentance and faith. Thus, Israel ought not to complain that her “hurt is incurable.” Vs. 12. “For I will restore health to you,” says the Lord, “and your wounds I will heal.” Vs. 17. Assyria ought not to think that, because its military oppression has served as God’s instrument of discipline, it will suffer no consequences for its ruthlessness. This brutal empire will soon get a taste of its own medicine. God assures the oppressed northerners that “all who devour you shall be devoured, and all your foes, every one of them, shall go into captivity; those who despoil you shall become a spoil, and all who prey on you I will make a prey.” Vs. 16. That is precisely what occurred in 626 B.C.E. when the Babylonian general, Nabaplausur, took Assyria’s capital city, Nineveh.

The resulting relief given to Judah and other smaller countries of the Middle East was short lived. Recognizing the destabilizing threat posed by the rise of Babylon, Egypt’s Pharaoh Neco led his army north in order to prop up what remained of the Assyrian forces. According to the account in II Kings, Neco had no interest in engaging Judah but, for reasons best known to himself, King Josiah felt it necessary to confront the Egyptian army. The battle ended badly for Judah with the death of King Josiah and loss of independence to Egyptian vassalage. II Kings 23:29-30. According to II Chronicles 35:25, Jeremiah uttered a lament for this fallen king. No such oracle can be found, however, in the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah itself. Though it is quite possible that Jeremiah supported the religious reforms introduced by Josiah according to II Kings 23, it is likely that he felt they did not go far enough. In his preaching Jeremiah called for a change of heart commensurate with ritual practice. Torah was to be inscribed upon the hearts of the people under a new covenant. Jeremiah 31:31-34.

Jeremiah’s hope for the enslaved and exiled northern tribes did not come to fruition in his life time. Indeed, he lived to see also the conquest and exile of his own nation of Judah. Yet the people of Israel continued to find hope and direction from Jeremiah’s words and do so to this very day. Faithful readers of the scriptures know that prophecies are often fulfilled in ways greater and more wonderful than the biblical authors themselves could have imagined. The new heaven and the new earth foreshadowed in Jesus’ resurrection is quite beyond our own grasp. To the extent the scriptural witnesses can speak of the new creation at all, they must resort to parables, poems and apocalyptic imagery. Prophesy is designed, not to foretell the future, but to enlarge our imaginations so that we can recognize in the future the redemptive intent of our God.

Psalm 147:12-20

As I find it altogether impossible to appreciate the verses making up Sunday’s lesson without taking Psalm 147 in its entirety, I will do so. I encourage you to read the whole psalm as well. Like the group of praise psalms to which it belongs consisting of Psalms 146-150, this psalm begins with the words, “Praise the LORD!” Or “Hallelujah” as pronounced in the Hebrew. Vs. 1

“How good it is” “Kee Tov.” An exclamation that is likewise used throughout the Psalms to express what is “good,” “right,” or “fitting.” E.g., “O give thanks unto the LORD, for He is good” Psalm 136:1; “O give thanks unto the LORD; for He is good; for His mercy endureth forever” Psalm 106:1.

“The LORD builds up Jerusalem; he gathers the outcasts of Israel.” Vs. 2. This verse pinpoints the composition of the psalm to Israel’s post-exilic period, probably between 510 B.C.E. and 400 B.C.E. After the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple in 587 B.C.E., the leading citizens of the Southern Kingdom of Judah were carried away into Babylon where they lived as forced immigrants for nearly 70 years. Israel’s longing and hope for return from exile never died, however. In 539 B.C.E. Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon. Cyrus, who lived from 580 B.C.E.-529 B.C.E., was the first Achaemenian Emperor of Persia. He issued a decree providing, among other things, that Babylon’s captive peoples were free to return to their homelands to restore their shrines and worship traditions. Inscribed on a clay cylinder, it has come to be known as the first declaration of Human Rights. This artifact is in the custody of the British Museum. A replica is also on display at the United Nations in New York. Known as “The Kurash Prism,” this decree reads as follows:

“I am Kurash [ “Cyrus” ], King of the World, Great King, Legitimate King, King of Babilani, King of Kiengir and Akkade, King of the four rims of the earth, Son of Kanbujiya, Great King, King of Hakhamanish, Grandson of Kurash, Great king, King of Hakhamanish, descendant of Chishpish, Great king, King of Hakhamanish, of a family which always exercised kingship; whose rule Bel and Nebo love, whom they want as king to please their hearts. When I entered Babilani as a friend and when I established the seat of the government in the palace of the ruler under jubilation and rejoicing, Marduk, the great lord, induced the magnanimous inhabitants of Babilani to love me, and I was daily endeavoring to worship him…. As to the region from as far as Assura and Susa, Akkade, Eshnunna, the towns Zamban, Me-turnu, Der as well as the region of the Gutians, I returned to these sacred cities on the other side of the Tigris the sanctuaries of which have been ruins for a long time, the images which used to live therein and established for them permanent sanctuaries. I also gathered all their former inhabitants and returned them to their habitations. Furthermore, I resettled upon the command of Marduk, the great lord, all the gods of Kiengir and Akkade whom Nabonidus had brought into Babilani to the anger of the lord of the gods, unharmed, in their former temples, the places which make them happy.” Internet Ancient History Sourcebook.

“He heals the broken-hearted, and binds up their wounds.” Vs. 3. This is a particularly moving verse and a source of great comfort to people in all kinds of circumstances. Though this psalm is one of praise glorifying God for all the great things God has done, the psalmist is mindful that songs of praise arise from deliverance out of circumstances of dire need. The psalmist who composed this beautiful hymn of praise celebrating a keen awareness of God’s presence is also mindful that we sometimes experience God’s seeming absence. S/he has also had occasion to pray, “Out of the depths have I called Thee, O LORD.” Psalm 130:1.

“Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure.” Vs. 5. Compare and contrast this affirmation to that of Cyrus in the Prisim. It is the God of Israel who makes the stars in the sky. This God’s understanding and power are beyond measure-unlike the gods to which Cyrus refers whose power is limited to their geographic domains. We see again the contrast between ancient Mid Eastern religion and that of Israel in verse 6. Cyrus feels that he must return the images of all of the god’s held in Babylon to their rightful temples in order to placate them and earn success. Little does he know that his success was ordained by Israel’s God long before he arrived in Babylon! See Isaiah 45:1-3. Moreover, it is not by placating God, whether by sacrifices or obedience to the law, that the earth produces food for people and animals. God does this of his own volition, regardless of what people do or do not do. Vss. 8-9. “[God’s] delight is not in the strength of a horse, nor his pleasure in the legs of a man; but the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love.” Vss. 10-11. By contrast, the Prism reflects a belief that divine favor is manifested in military victory and that power and prosperity are signs of divine favor. But that is not the case. God’s favor is found in his mercy toward those who humbly rely upon his promises and look to him for all their needs.

Our lesson, consisting of verses 12-20, declares that God’s greatest work does not lie in any of his marvelous doings in nature, but in his relationship with Israel which has been blessed by God’s commandments and statutes. This is what distinguishes Israel among the peoples. As Israel learned through bitter experience, neither her land, her temple nor her king were essential to her existence as a people. Israel lost all of these things in the Babylonian conquest. What Israel did not lose and can never lose are God’s covenant promises to her and God’s declaration that Israel will forever be his people. God remains faithful to his promises even when God’s chosen people depart form theirs. So it continues to be. The word and promise spoken to us in our baptisms is irrevocable. The psalm appropriately ends exactly as it began: “Hallelujah”

Ephesians 1:3-14

In the lesson for today from the Letter to the Ephesians, the writer articulates an unmistakable belief in predestination. It is critical, however, to understand this teaching within the total context of the letter. “With all wisdom and insight [God] has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” Vss. 8-10. Consequently, the church is not the select few that God has graciously decided to snatch from the deck of a sinking ship. God’s concern is not merely with particular passengers, but with the entire ship. Thus, to be predestined for faith in Jesus is not to be elevated to a position of special privilege. It is instead a commission to witness and embody the plan God has for all people. Thus, the church is the first fruits of and a testimony to God’s plan to “gather up all things in heaven and on earth.” Vs. 10.

I believe that this is particularly pertinent to the observation of Epiphany during which we are compelled to recognize how, as non-Jewish believers, we come into the covenant relationship God has with Israel by Jesus’ gracious invitation. We are not here by right. That has recently come to shape the way I express hospitality toward visitors to my congregation whose relationship to Christ, faith and the church are tenuous at best. At our Christmas Eve Eucharist, my daughter Emily preached a first rate sermon using the example of children’s Christmas pageants in order to illustrate our desire for participation in the drama of the Nativity. This worship service, I should say, was an outreach experiment designed to appeal to families with small children in our community. I was pleased to see that at least half the participants were folks I had never seen before.

When it came time for Holy Communion, a couple of these families came forward to receive. I handed the host to a woman followed by two children. “I’m not sure we should be here,” she said. “We are not baptized or anything.” I always wondered what I would do in a circumstance like this. After all, I have always been taught and believed that Baptism is the door by which we are born into the church and Eucharist is the feast of the baptized. But here was an unbaptized person who had just heard and was accepting our invitation to participate in the mystery of the Incarnation. What else could I say but what I said? “Yes, you should be here. This is still Christ’s Body given for you.” To say anything less would have been to place a stumbling block in the way of Christ. I am currently working on re-writing the invitation to the Lord’s Table used in our worship bulletin.

John 1:1-18

“When you collect marine animals there are certain flat worms so delicate that they are almost impossible to catch whole for they will break and tatter under the touch. You must let them ooze and crawl of their own will onto a knife blade and lift them gently into your bottle of sea water. And perhaps that might be the way to write this book-to open the page and let the stories crawl in by themselves.” John Steinbeck from his novel, Cannery Row.

I think that is perhaps the best way to describe how John writes his gospel. Rather than relating the story of Jesus’ birth, John gives us a poem about the miracle of the Incarnation filled with many opposite, contrasting and complementary images that will be developed and brought into sharper focus throughout the following narrative. Light and darkness; being and nothingness; knowledge and ignorance; belief and unbelief; birth from flesh and birth from God. All of these images and terms will find further expression and deeper meaning as the story of Jesus unfolds. For now, though, they swim about together in the rich primordial soil of John’s imaginative lyrics. We must wait for them to ooze out and show themselves for what they truly are.

John begins with the declaration that the Word was both with God in the beginning and was God. This is entirely consistent with the Hebrew Scriptures which speak of God’s Word as “coming” and “accomplishing.” See, e.g., Jeremiah 1:2; Isaiah 55:11. God is not merely as good as God’s Word. God is God’s Word. Yet even though the same as God, the Word is somehow distinguishable from God. So far, I think, our Jewish and Muslim sisters and brothers might agree with John.

But then John goes on to tell us something remarkable. “The Word became flesh.” The Word became a human person such that the invisible God is now visible. Here, I believe, is where the church’s confession parts company with our Abrahamic sisters and brothers. If we are going to say that God has a Son, it seems to follow inevitably that there must be at least two gods. Yet John (along with the rest of the New Testament writers) maintains that God is one. The church has struggled with this enormously counterintuitive confession from the onset, rejecting numerous more plausible alternative understandings. At the heart of the Incarnation stands this one scandalous truth: God is visible and God is human. The Incarnation was not a temporary state into which God entered for a single lifetime. It was not merely a clever disguise. In Jesus, God became irrevocably human and remains so. That is why John can say in his First Letter, “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.” I John 4:20.

The inescapable conclusion is that to rend the flesh of another human being is to rend the flesh of God. To ridicule, excoriate or insult another human being is to blaspheme God. God cannot be harmed or insulted by the removal of a crèche or a cross from public lands, disrespect for the Bible or desecration of a sanctuary. Only by harming the persons created to bear God’s image and for whom the Son of God died can God’s self be injured. When that becomes clear, it is equally clear by how far much of what passes for Christianity these days misses the mark. Something is seriously out of whack when we grieve more over the removal of humanly designed plastic figures of Jesus from the park than we do for the homeless people created by God in God’s image who are still sleeping there.

One of the most significant words in this section is that word “dwelt” or “lived” as the New Revised Standard Version has it. Vs. 14. Both translations fall short of the actual Greek word “skaiano” which means literally to “tent with” or “tabernacle with.” The word conjures up images of the tent of presence in which God dwelt among the people of Israel on their journey to the Promised Land. This powerful image of Jesus as God’s presence gets lost in the English translation!

There is far more that could be said about this section of John. Nearly every word in John’s gospel is freighted with meaning that accumulates like the mass of a snowball rolling downhill. For those of us who will be observing the Feast of Epiphany on Sunday, the contrast between light and darkness is particularly meaningful.

Sunday, December 21st

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FOURTH SUNDAY OF ADVENT

2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16
Psalm 89:1-4, 19-26
Romans 16:25-27
Luke 1:26-38

PRAYER OF THE DAY: Stir up your power, Lord Christ, and come. With your abundant grace and might, free us from the sin that would obstruct your mercy, that willingly we may bear your redeeming love to all the world, for you live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Mary’s pregnancy complicates the Christian faith. It would be much simpler to explain ourselves if only we could say that God adopted Jesus in view of his exemplary faith; or that Jesus was simply a visible manifestation of the invisible God and not a separate individual person; or that Jesus is a human being in whom the consciousness of God’s will reached its highest level. Voices within the church have put forth these very teachings in the past. They continue to linger in some quarters today. That isn’t surprising. Trying to explain how God brings about a pregnancy that produces a fully human person who is God’s Son and also God’s self stretches human capacity for reasoning to the breaking point. Yet the church has consistently returned to its seemingly untenable confession that Jesus is the Father’s only begotten Son, incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, thereby rejecting all of the more conceptually palatable understandings of Jesus.

The doctrine of the Incarnation is a messy affair. So are pregnancies generally. Even so-called “planned pregnancies” are disruptive, bringing about fundamental changes in relationships, lifestyles and expectations. No one can foresee the consequences of a new life being inserted into a family, a community or the world. I doubt Mary had a clue about what she was letting herself in for when she replied to the angel Gabriel, “Let it be to me according to your word.” Neither did my wife and me when we got married with the expectation of having children. We learned, as did Mary, that having a baby is a messy and complicated business. We learned that nothing turns out the way you expect. We began with the notion that it was our job to shape our children as they grew and discovered that they wound up shaping us. And ours were planned pregnancies-more or less.

Mary’s was an unplanned pregnancy-at least from her perspective. Yet from God’s perspective, there is no such thing as an unplanned pregnancy. That is the essence of the gospel. God infuses life into places that are not looking for it, don’t want it and frequently reject it. God appears in the darkest corners where he is unlooked for, unwanted and frequently rejected. Through the miracle of the Incarnation, the life of God is inextricably woven into the fabric of human existence to such an extent that we cannot speak of God other than as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. We cannot speak of the Holy Spirit other than that Spirit which proceeds from the Father and the Son.

Our lives would be lot less complicated if God did not insist on entering into them so fully and completely. Mary understood that opening herself to the Spirit of God was likely to turn her orderly existence upside down. She also understood that her orderly existence could not compare with the new heaven and the new earth soon to be implanted in her womb. So Mary said yes to God; yes to messiness; yes to loss of control and yes to a new tomorrow. You might quite properly call Advent an invitation to join Mary in saying “yes to the mess.”

2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16

Israel was ever ambivalent about the institution of monarchy. The Hebrew Scriptures at times extol the monarchy as God’s instrument of justice and peace. As God’s representative, the king “delivers the needy when he calls, the poor and him who has no helper. He has pity on the weak and the needy, and saves the lives of the needy.” Psalm 72:12-13. The prophets took a more critical view of kingship in Israel. Ezekiel criticize the kings of Israel and Judah for looking after their own interests and allowing the “sheep” to be scattered and lost. Ezekiel 34:1-10. So, too, Jeremiah railed against these “shepherds” of Israel whose self-serving ways brought about the destruction of the flock. Jeremiah 23:1-4.

These two divergent views of the monarchy in Israel are woven together throughout the narratives of I & II Samuel. The pro-monarchy view comes to us from an early source probably compiled during the reign of Solomon, David’s son. This writer regards the establishment of kingship in Israel as divinely ordained for Israel’s salvation. Anyone who lived to see the rise of the Israelite empire from a loose confederacy of divided tribes oppressed by the militarily superior Philistines could not fail to be impressed by David, the architect of this great achievement. For the first time ever Israel lived within secure borders. Trade and commerce flourished under the protection of the new central government. Israel was beginning to be recognized as a power to be reckoned with among the other nations. Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that the monarchy was seen as an instrument of God’s blessing and salvation.

The later source was likely composed during the latter days of the Judean monarchy between 750 B.C.E. and 650 B.C.E. This author views Samuel as the true and greatest ruler of Israel. S/He views the monarchy as a sinful rejection of God’s rule over Israel. By this time, Israel had experienced civil war and the succession of ten of its twelve tribes from the house of David. Injustice, corruption and idolatry turned out to be the price of commercial success and military power under monarchy. The prophets gave voice to God’s displeasure with Israel’s kings and to the cries of those crushed under their oppressive yolk. Samuel’s warnings against the consequences of monarchy had come true with a vengeance. I Samuel 8:10-18. Nevertheless, this subsequent writer still views David in a positive light in spite of his having been elected to a disfavored institution.

Most scholars agree that II Samuel 7:1-29 is a late theological commentary inserted into the early source intended to explain why David was not chosen to build the temple in Jerusalem. That purpose is not readily discernable from our reading because verses 12-15 have been omitted. These verses make clear that God has chosen David’s heir to build the temple. I believe that this section also serves to clarify the nature of the Davidic covenant as subordinate to God’s covenant with all Israel at Sinai. Though God’s promise to preserve faithfully the line of David is repeated here, the prophet Nathan warns that iniquity on the part of David’s descendants will meet with punishment. Vss. 14-15.

The key to this interchange between the word of the Lord, delivered through Nathan, and David is found in the various meanings of the Hebrew word for “house.” Initially, David intends to build a “house” for the Ark of the Covenant. So used, the term means “shrine” or “temple.” God responds by promising to build David a “house,” clearly meaning a dynasty. If you were to read on to verses 18-20, you would discover that the same term is used again to describe family status, i.e., “Who am I, Lord God, and what is my house that thou hast brought me thus far?” Vs. 18. This is clearly a reference to the former insignificance of the family of Jesse and David’s status as the youngest of Jesse’s sons. The different shades of meaning for this one word serve to illuminate the depth and complexity of the Davidic covenant and the significance of the temple. Both are subordinate to the Sinai covenant and flow from the faithfulness of God to Israel expressed in that covenant. The temple is not to be a shrine to the Ark, but the place where God’s name dwells. Vs. 13. Though established “forever,” the dynasty of David is answerable to Torah and subject to God’s punishment for violating it. Vss 13-14.

This scripture invites us to contemplate our response to expectations that fail to materialize. It is evident that the line of David did in fact come to an end following the Babylonian conquest of 587 B.C.E. Either God’s promise failed or its fulfilment lies beyond the scope of the Judean monarchy. Second Isaiah deals with this problem by suggesting that God’s “steadfast, sure love for David” now embraces all Israel rather than any one individual descendent of David. Isaiah 55:3-5. Later Judaism saw in the Davidic covenant the promise of a messianic deliverer. This hope, in all of its many permutations, was very much alive in Jesus’ day. Jesus himself appears to have invited his hearers to consider in what sense the promised messiah could be considered “the son of David.” See Mark 12:35-40; Matthew 22:41-46; Luke 20:41-44. So also, both Judaism as a whole and the early church struggled with the meaning of the temple’s destruction by Rome in 70 C.E. As I have often said before, I believe the Letter to the Hebrews is in large part a response to this crisis.

Promise/fulfilment is a common theme throughout the Advent season. Now as throughout history, the people of God are called upon to discern how the ancient promises are working themselves out in our midst. For Christians, the challenge is to discover the layers of meaning and the richness given to the gospel narratives by the Hebrew Scriptures out of which they grew. Care must be taken, however, to respect the witness to these scriptures given by the Jewish people in all ages. There is no place for a theology of supersessionism in which Christianity is seen to “replace” or “supersede” Judaism. As Paul points out in the latter half of his Letter to the Romans, both Israel and the church play a critical role in God’s redemptive purpose for the world.

Psalm 89:1-4, 19-26

Although it focuses on the rise of the Davidic monarchy as God’s saving act, the psalm begins with an acknowledgement that the true sovereign of all the earth is God. Vss. 1-2. God makes a “covenant” with David. Vs. 3. A covenant is more than a mere contract. In the ancient near east, covenants were usually made between kings-and generally not between equals. It was common for a dominant king to enter into a covenant with the king of a subservient nation. Under the terms of the covenant, the stronger king would promise to provide military protection from common enemies (and a promise that he himself would not attack!). In return, the weaker king would pay tribute and promise undivided allegiance to the stronger king. The weaker king would often give his daughters in marriage to the stronger. (The fact that one’s daughter is at the mercy of a foreign king would naturally make one think twice about commencing hostilities!).

In the covenant with David, God is the dominant partner. Yet, oddly enough, God promises both protection and eternal faithfulness. God’s love for and support of David is not contingent on David’s past accomplishments or on his promise to be loyal to the Lord. It is a one way covenant in which all of the promises flow from God to David and his line.

Although the image of parenthood is used (vs. 26), David is every inch a human being and there is no suggestion that his being anointed king confers divinity on him. This is one feature setting the Israelite concept of kingship apart from Canaanite ideas. There is no suggestion in this psalm that David is chosen on the basis of merit. Nothing is said about David’s character or his good deeds that might have led God to select him as a covenant partner and king over Israel. We hear plenty, though, about the character of God and God’s determination to stand by the promises made to David. Vss. 20-24. Once again, being king does not set one above the commandments of God. If anything, the king has a greater responsibility to observe justice and righteousness. He stands in God’s place as the representative of God. As such, his failures are not merely his own. They have an impact on the nation for which he is responsible. As Jesus was wont to say, “To whom much is given, much is expected.” Luke 12:48.

If you were to read the Psalm 89 in its entirety (which I always recommend) you would discover that the psalm’s tone changes abruptly from a mood of praise to bitter lament at verse 38. Obviously, the situation in which the king now finds himself does not evidence the protection and success promised to the line of David in the “vision” discussed in the earlier part. Vss. 19-26. We do not know the precise historical setting of this psalm. Because the prayer is by or for a king currently (though tenuously) on the throne, it is safe to assume that it was written before the Davidic dynasty came to an end in 587 B.C.E. with the second Babylonian invasion. The prayer might reflect the desperate situation in which David found himself during the rebellion of his son, Absalom. Or it might reflect the invasion by Egypt during the reign of Solomon’s son, Rehoboam. It could have been composed after the tragic death of the young King Josiah at the hands of Pharaoh Neco or the siege of Jerusalem under Zedekiah. Whatever the historical setting, it must have been a very traumatic and faith shaking experience for Israel to see the Lord’s anointed, the heir of David, God’s covenant partner so thoroughly defeated. What could this mean? Had God abandoned the covenant? Had the Lord forgotten all the promises made to David? Where was God’s salvation in this time of need?

The mood of the disciples must have been very similar when they saw their Lord nailed to the tree and crying out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Yet just when it seemed that God could not be further away from them, God had drawn near in the most profound way possible. Jesus’ death and resurrection bring to crescendo Israel’s stubborn belief that, however dark the hour, God is at work in history. It is often when we find ourselves with the sea in front of us and a hostile army at our heels-or at the tomb where our last, best hope seems dead and buried-that God works salvation.

Romans 16:25-27

This is the conclusion to Paul’s Letter to the Romans in which he has gone to great lengths explaining in some detail how “the revelation of the mystery which was kept secret for long ages but is now disclosed and through the prophetic writings is made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith…” vss. 25-26. This snippet plays nicely into the prophecy/fulfillment theme of Advent, but I cannot imagine how one could preach on it without reaching back into the body of Romans and reconstructing Paul’s argument. Such a project is far too big for any one sermon and best saved for periods in the church year where consecutive readings from the Letter to the Romans are featured in the lectionary. This last summer would have been a good time for that.

Luke 1:26-38

Luke’s telling of the nativity narrative is strikingly different from that of Matthew in several respects. Whereas in Matthew Joseph is the recipient of angelic revelation, in Luke he is altogether absent from the scene until the trip to Bethlehem. In Matthew’s gospel, the angel’s messages come through dreams. Luke has the angel Gabriel addressing Zachariah and Mary directly. Derived from the Hebrew words “Gavar” meaning “strong man” and “el,” a word for God, the name Gabriel is best translated “God has shown himself mighty.” Brueggemann, Walter, “Gabriel,” The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, Vol. 2 (c. 1962 by Abington Press) p. 332. Gabriel first appears in Daniel explaining to the prophet a vision of the end that he has just seen. Daniel 8:15-17. See also Daniel 9:21. Though not otherwise mentioned in the canonical Hebrew Scriptures, Gabriel is frequently portrayed as God’s agent of revelation, punishment and salvation throughout later Jewish writings such as the Books of Enoch. It is important to understand that in Hebraic thought, God is fully present in the person of God’s messenger. Ibid, p. 333.

The impact of Gabriel’s message is very much muted by the later church’s fixation on the “immaculate conception” and our 19th Century prejudice against that which does not fit our empirical world view. Few people in the 1st Century B.C.E. doubted that God (or a god) could bring about a pregnancy miraculously. The remarkable thing here is that Gabriel, God’s chief messenger, should be sent 1) to a woman; 2) to an insignificant town in Galilee; 3) to announce that God’s messiah and David’s heir was to be born to this woman of no particular standing. Luke goes out of his way to let us know that he is well aware of contemporary events and the way in which history appears to be unfolding through the likes of Herod the Great and Caesar Augustus. Yet he would have us know that the true history, the history that matters, the history God is making will unfold not in Jerusalem or Rome, but in the small hamlet of Nazareth. The hope of Israel and the whole world will be born to a homeless couple in a drafty animal shelter. That is the miracle at which Luke would have us marvel.

What, then, shall we say of the “virgin birth”? Though not as pronounced as in Matthew’s gospel, one point seems to be that Jesus’ conception and birth is at the initiation of God and independent from requirements of lineage, status and blood. Something new and different is taking place with the birth of Jesus. How does God initiate that birth? Luke tells Mary, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.” Vs. 35. Perhaps the church would have been wise simply to leave it there. Who can explain the workings of the Holy Spirit? We know that the Spirit can work through events that appear to unfold naturally and in accord with what we understand about the processes of nature. Yet the Spirit also introduces novelty that strains our credibility, exceeds our expectations and challenges our imaginative abilities. Who can say how the Spirit worked in this instance? Does it really matter?

It may not have mattered to the first readers of Luke’s gospel, but it became an important question for the church in later years as she struggled to make the gospel intelligible to Mediterranean culture while remaining faithful to her biblical roots. Without rehashing the first six centuries of the church’s history, it is fair to say that the confession of Jesus as the Son of God born of the virgin Mary was part and parcel of the church’s insistence that Jesus was no less human than he was divine; that God as creator took naturally to human flesh created in God’s image; that the Incarnate Word has plumbed the depths of all that it is to be human. At the end of the day, the Incarnation is a mystery that can be contemplated, worshiped and believed, but never fully understood. We cannot insist on any particular metaphysical understanding of virginal conception because this says more than the biblical witness tells us. Neither can we dogmatically maintain that the birth of Jesus must have occurred under purely “natural” circumstances as we think we understand them. Assertion of either position says both too much and too little.

Gabriel’s assurance that “with God nothing will be impossible” and Mary’s response, “let it be to me according to your word” fitly summarize the import of this lesson. To be fully open to God requires belief in God’s willingness and ability to do all things-even the seemingly impossible. Advent beckons us to just such radical openness. It challenges us to suspend our judgments about who we think God is, who our neighbor really is and what are the possibilities for the future, both ours and the world’s. During this holy season we are challenged to expect the impossible!

Sunday, October 26th

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REFORMATION SUNDAY

Jeremiah 31:31-34
Psalm 46
Romans 3:19-28
John 8:31-36

Prayer of the Day: Almighty God, gracious Lord, we thank you that your Holy Spirit renews the church in every age. Pour out your Holy Spirit on your faithful people. Keep them steadfast in your word, protect and comfort them in times of trial, defend them against all enemies of the gospel, and bestow on the church your saving peace, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“God is not afraid of change.” Pope Francis

True. You might even say that God is change. In his book, An Unsettling God, (c. 2009 Fortress Press), Walter Brueggemann points out that God’s relationship with his people is dialogical. It is an ongoing conversation into which God is forever injecting novelty. God is the enemy of all things dead and static. God is the wind churning up the waters at the dawn of time; the voice calling Abram to leave the comfortable and familiar to venture out into the unknown; the cry of Moses toppling imperial hierarchy so that the Hebrew slaves may be free; the words of the prophets shaking up the status quo; the power that breaks the silence of the tomb by raising Jesus from death. God is not opposed to change. God delights in it.

The church, by contrast, is often terrified of change. My last two continuing education seminars both dealt with the topic of change and how to lead congregations through it. I need all the wisdom I can get on that point. I find that a great many of our folks look to the church as the one constant in their lives, the one place that remains the same, the one immovable rock in the midst of constant turmoil. Many friends who have left the church recently over our denomination’s decision to welcome and bless the relationships of gay, lesbian and transgendered persons complain to me that “My church has left me behind.”

In one respect, my friends are right. The church has moved. That is not unusual, however. The Bible tells us that God is a moving target. The Word of God is not a collection of books containing timeless truths, but a living person calling us to follow him in ever new directions. Heresy consists not only in the embrace of new ideas contrary to the good news of Jesus Christ, but also in clinging too long to ideas that have proven to be wrong. So yes, the church has moved away from where it was. We have acknowledged that for centuries we were wrong about a great many matters related to human sexuality. We call such movement “repentance.” We must keep moving away from what we have been in order to become all that God would have us be.

In yet another respect, my defecting friends are mistaken. I need constantly to remind them that neither the Lutheran Church nor any other expression of Christ’s Body is “your” church. The church belongs to Jesus Christ. The reign of God is not a democracy. No matter how long you have been a member of the church, no matter how much you have given to it or worked for it or sacrificed for it, you still have no ownership rights in it. At the end of the day, the church belongs to God and serves as God’s messenger of reconciliation for the world. As everyone who follows this blog knows, I have my own share of frustrations with the church. Nevertheless, I know that the Spirit of God is at work forming exactly the kind of church God needs. That may or may not comport with the kind of church I want or expect.

Brueggemann’s notion of the “unsettling God” is threatening because churches (including churches of the Reformation!) are nothing if not settled. Congregations resist changes required to welcome people living in their communities. Denominational leaders insist on imposing cookie cutter constitutions that no longer work for many congregations in diverse settings. We have a tendency to imbue our hierarchical structures with ontological significance, making change all the more difficult to achieve. We attach undue importance to agencies, programs and task forces in which careers, ambitions and egos are heavily invested. The changes we need will be painful for all of us. That is why I think that, in our heart of hearts, we sometimes secretly wish that God would just shut up. We have a penchant for placing periods where God has only put comas. But God will not be silenced. As Pope Francis reminds us, God has more unsettling things to say to us. Reformation isn’t over yet.

Jeremiah 31:31-34

For a brief but excellent summary of the Book of Jeremiah see the article by Terence E. Fretheim, Elva B. Lovell Professor of Old Testament at enterthebible.org.

Recall that Jeremiah prophesied immediately before and for some time after the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple by the Babylonians in 587 B.C.E. The new covenant of which Jeremiah speaks does not differ formally from the old. The “law” or “Torah” which God promises to write upon the hearts of God’s people is the law delivered to Israel at Sinai. The problem is not with the law but with the people who failed to internalize it and therefore observed it only in the breech. For example, during the reign of Judah’s last king, Zedekiah, the Babylonian armies advanced and captured all but two of Judah’s fortified cities. Jeremiah 34:7. Hoping to placate God and induce the Lord to save Judah from conquest, Zedekiah persuaded the people to do away with a longstanding practice of enslaving their impoverished fellow Hebrews beyond the six year limit on servitude established under Torah (Exodus 21:2-6). See Jeremiah 34:6-10. Shortly thereafter, Hophra, Pharaoh of Egypt, marched north to attack the Babylonian forces in Palestine. Babylon was forced to raise the siege against Jerusalem and draw its troops down to repel the Egyptian forces. When it seemed as though the Babylonian threat had receded, Zedekiah revoked the decree freeing the slaves and reinstated the lawless practice of indefinite servitude. Jeremiah 34:11. Jeremiah warned Zedekiah that this blatant act of hypocrisy would not go unpunished, that the Babylonian army would return and that there would be no escape from destruction. Jeremiah 34:17-22.

This particular oracle in Sunday’s lesson is regarded by most scholars as coming from Jeremiah’s post 587 prophesies. Jerusalem was in ruins and a substantial part of the population had been deported to Babylon (modern day Iraq). There seemed to be no future for Judah. Yet here Jeremiah, the very prophet who refused to offer Judah’s leaders even a sliver of hope for deliverance from Babylon, now speaks to the sorry remnant of the people about a new beginning. Such words could not be heard by Judah before the destruction of Jerusalem because her leaders were too intent on preserving the old covenant that had been irretrievably broken. Judah was hoping that salvation would come in the form of a Babylonian defeat, that somehow the line of David would be preserved, that the Holy City and the temple of Solomon would be spared from destruction. But that would not have been salvation. For a nation that had so thoroughly strayed from her covenant with her God, salvation for her institutions would only have enabled her to stray further. A miraculous deliverance from Babylon would have saved Judah’s national independence, her architectural treasures and her royal lineage. But it would have damned her soul. Salvation lay not in preserving Judah and her institutions, but in the new heart God would form in his people after all these things had been taken away. Judah would never again be the glorious nation she was; but through the new covenant Jeremiah promises, Judah would become precisely the nation God needed.

Jeremiah has been dubbed the prophet of doom. Yet the more I read him, the more convinced I am that he has gotten a bum rap. Jeremiah does have good news for his people. The problem, though, is that the people are not ready to hear it. They cannot see the glorious future God is offering them because they are fixated on preserving the past. As far as they are concerned, there can be no future other than a return to the past. A future without the throne of David, the temple in Jerusalem and the land of Israel is no future at all. Loss of these three pillars of Judah’s identity constituted only the end. The people of Judah had neither the language nor the conceptual tools to imagine life beyond that end. Their minds could not process the vision of a radically new existence as God’s people under a radically new covenant.

I am convinced that our protestant churches in the United States suffer from the same malady that affected the people of Judah in Jeremiah’s time. God has moved beyond the past. Our church is still hopelessly stuck in it. I have encountered Jeremiah’s dilemma over and over again when trying to speak with church leaders about the promise of God’s future for the church in America. I always preface my remarks with what has become for me a mantra: “These are exciting days in which to be the church.” Yet I find that when I share that excitement, the response often ranges from sadness, to fear, to outright rage. The good news is heard as bad. Very often I find that when congregations say they want to grow, thrive and do new ministries, what they are really seeking is some way to rebuild the glories of the past. They want the pews filled again, a robust Sunday school and a church basement filled with teenagers playing twister. When I try to tell them that the church they are seeking is dead and never coming back-they are far too fearful/sad/angry to hear the good news, namely, that God has something better in mind. What is true of congregations individually is just as true of my denomination as a whole. Our leaders’ response to several years of decline and loss of support? A capital fund drive. If successful this effort, along with the assets collected from more and more closing congregations, will keep the denominational machinery going long after our congregations are nearly depopulated!

To be fair, this is not altogether about self-preservation. My congregation does some fine ministry in our community that would be missed should the church fold. So also, my denomination’s institutions do many important things for the whole of society. They feed the hungry; shelter the homeless; care for refugees; provide disaster relief; educate and advocate for justice and peace. The world will be decidedly poorer in the event my church’s corporate ministries cease to exist. Yet I must emphasize that one very important reason for their present peril is our failure to make our congregations communities capable of forming saints with hearts for the hungry, poor, oppressed and homeless. Instead of welcoming the stranger into our midst, we have created professional agencies to “address their needs.” We have cultivated a “check book charity” that allows congregations to buy off their “social consciences” without ever having to get their hands dirty. I think that John Tetzel would have approved the logic at work here. Indulgences financing social programs rather than building projects might be more palatable to our progressive tastes. But at the end of the day, the result is the same. Sanctification for sale. Genuine gospel mission cannot long maintain itself on such a flimsy foundation.

As Jeremiah saw it, the kingdom of David was beyond redemption. The faithlessness of the people could not be addressed by changing or reforming Judah’s existing institutions. Change must come at the very deepest level: within the heart. Salvation is still possible for Judah, but it lies on the far side of judgment. The good news has to be heard as bad news before it can be received as good. So, too, I often wonder whether Jesus’ promise that whoever loses life for the sake of the gospel will find it sounds like unmitigated bad news because we can’t quite get over the “loss” piece. We lack the capacity to imagine church without our individual congregations and their sanctuaries, seminaries, professional clergy and the recognition we have known in society at large. It is for that reason I continue to hold up Church of the Sojourners, Reba Place Fellowship and Koinonia Farm as alternatives to what we have come to understand as church. I don’t suggest that these communities can be emulated by all our congregations or that they provide us with any sort of blueprint for tomorrow’s church. They do, however, challenge our assumptions about what it means to be church in the 21st Century and what is required to be faithful disciples of Jesus and, perhaps just as importantly, what is not. Like Jesus’ parables, these communities stimulate our imaginations and give us concrete images with which to envision God’s future.

The promise “I will be their God and they shall be my people” encapsulates at the deepest level God’s final (eschatological) intent for humanity. Vs. 33. The same refrain echoes throughout the book of the prophet Ezekiel (Ezekiel 11:20; Ezekiel 14:11; Ezekiel 36:28) and appears again in the concluding chapters of Revelation. Revelation 21:1-4. Under this new covenant, it will no longer be necessary to instruct people in Torah because Torah, the very shape of obedience to God, will be wholly internalized. If you ask me what such a community looks like, I cite once again the powerful example of the Amish community following the Nickel Mine tragedy. In extending forgiveness to the murderer of their children and offering support to his family, the Amish demonstrated to a sick, violent and gun wielding culture what the kingdom of Christ looks like. This response speaks louder than all the preachy-screechy moralistic social statements ever issued by all the rest of us more mainline, official and established churches. Here, for a brief instant, it was possible to see at work hearts upon which God’s words have been inscribed.

Psalm 46

This psalm is associated with the protestant Reformation generally and Martin Luther’s hymn, “A Mighty Fortress is our God” in particular. Structurally, the hymn is made up of three sections punctuated twice by the refrain: “The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge/fortress.” Vss 7 & 11. Each section is followed with the term “selah.” This word is found throughout the Psalms and also in the book of Habakkuk (Habakkuk 3:3; Habakkuk 3:9; Habakkuk 3:13). It is most likely an instruction to musicians or worship leaders for use in liturgical performances. The exact meaning has been debated among rabbinic scholars since the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek around 270 B.C.E. This suggests that whatever function the term served had ceased even then.

In the first section the psalmist declares confidence in God’s protection in the midst of an unstable world. Earthquakes, storms and floods were terrifying events often attributed to angry deities. The psalmist does not speculate on causation here, but confidently asserts that the God of Jacob can be trusted to provide security and protection even in the midst of these frightening natural phenomena.

The psalmist turns his/her attention in the second section to the city of Jerusalem which, though not mentioned by name, can hardly be any other than the “city of God,” “the holy habitation of the Most High.” Vs. 4. The “river” that makes glad the city of God might be the Gihon Spring, the main source of water for ancient Jerusalem. It was this water source that made human settlement there possible. The Gihon was used not only for drinking water, but also for irrigation of gardens in the adjacent Kidron Valley which, in turn, was a source of food for the city. Of course, the prophet Ezekiel relates a vision in which a miraculous river flows out of the restored temple in Jerusalem to give life to desert areas in Palestine. Ezekiel 47:1-14.  Similarly, John of Patmos describes “a river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.” Revelation 22: 1-2. God’s presence in the midst of the city recalls the promise of Jeremiah that “I will be their God and they will be my people.” Jeremiah 31:33.

As a relatively small nation existing in a violent and dangerous geopolitical neighborhood, Israel was no stranger to “raging” nations and unstable kingdoms. Vs. 6. But the psalmist will not be rattled by these dangers. S/he knows that the Holy City is under the protection of the Holy One of Israel. It is not the nations or their rulers who determine the course of history. The God of Jacob is the one whose voice “melts” the earth. So Isaiah would try in vain to convince King Ahaz to be still and wait for God’s salvation from his enemies rather than allying himself with the empire of Assyria-which would be his nation’s undoing. Isaiah 7:1-8:8.

In the third section, the focus is upon the violent geopolitical scene. The God of Israel is no friend of war. To the contrary, “he makes wars to cease to the end of the earth.” Vs.  9. Moreover, he destroys the weapons of war. He does not call upon Israel to deal violently with the nations of the earth. The psalmist assures us that God can handle that job without us. God says instead, “Be still and know that I am God.” Vs. 10. When confronted with violent enemies (as Israel frequently was), the people are called upon to put their trust in the God of Jacob who is the one and only reliable refuge. In a culture indoctrinated with the belief that “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” the contrary witness of this ancient psalm is critical.

Romans 3:19-28

Paul’s letter to the Romans is the only one in which he makes a sustained theological argument from start to finish. For that reason alone, it is impossible to interpret any single passage in isolation from the whole work. As I have said in prior posts, I believe that Paul’s primary concern is expressed in Romans 9-11. In that section, Paul discusses the destiny of Israel in God’s saving work through Jesus Christ. It is not Paul’s intent to discredit his people or their faith. Rather, he is making the argument that through Jesus the covenant promises formerly extended exclusively to Israel are now offered to the gentiles as well. Though some in Israel (most as it ultimately turned out) do not accept Jesus as messiah, it does not follow that God has rejected Israel. “For the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable.” Romans 11:29. Paul points out that Israel’s rejection of Jesus as Messiah has occasioned the inclusion of the gentiles into the covenant promises. “A hardening,” says Paul, “has come over part of Israel until the full number of the gentiles come in.” Romans 11:25. I must confess that I don’t quite understand how Israel’s rejection of Jesus as messiah makes it any easier for the gentiles to believe. Nevertheless, Paul sees some connection here and, in any event, Israel’s salvation (which is assured) is inextricably bound up with the salvation of the gentiles. According to Paul, Israel and the church are both essential players in God’s redemptive purpose for creation.

With all of this in mind, let’s turn to our lesson for Sunday. Paul points out that “the law” speaks to those under the law so that every mouth will be stopped and the whole world held accountable to God. Vs. 19. Here it is essential to distinguish between “Torah” and “law” as Paul uses it. Torah was always understood and accepted by Israel as a gift. The commandments, even those governing the smallest details of dietary and hygienic practice, were not intended to be oppressive and controlling. They were designed to make every aspect of living, however humble and mundane, a reminder of the covenant through which Israel was privileged to be joined with her God. As such, observance of Torah was a joy, not a burden.

Nevertheless, when observance of Torah is misconstrued and understood not as a gift, but rather a means or method of pleasing God or winning God’s favor, it becomes a burden. The focus is no longer on God’s grace in giving the Torah, but upon my success in keeping it. When that happens, the gift of Torah becomes the curse of “law.” Law always accuses. Think about it: no matter how well you do on the exam, isn’t it usually the case that you come away feeling that you could have done just a little better? Try as we do to be good parents, I have never met one that didn’t feel he or she failed his or her children in some respect. How can you ever be sure that you have done enough? The fear of people in Luther’s day was that God would not be satisfied with their repentance, their confession of sin and their efforts to amend their lives. In a secular culture such as ours, we might not fear eternal damnation quite so much. But we find ourselves enslaved nonetheless to our fears of social rejection and anxiety over failure to meet societal standards of beauty and success. That is why we have young girls starving themselves to death because they cannot measure up to what teen magazines tell them is beautiful. It is also why men become depressed, violent and prone to addiction during prolonged periods of unemployment-a real man earns his own living and pays his own way. We may be a good deal less religious than we were in Luther’s day, but we are no less in bondage to “law.”

Verse 21 contains one of the most critical “buts” in the Bible. “But now,” Paul says, “the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law…” So just as all are judged guilty under the law, so all are justified by God through Jesus Christ as a gift. Henceforth, being right with God is no longer a goal to be achieved through obedience to rules of one kind or another. It is a gift promised by God. Our obedience is no longer an onerous effort to win God’s favor but a thankful response to the favor God freely gives us. That is as true for Jews as it is for Gentiles as Paul will go on to point out in Romans 4. Abraham, after all, was called and responded in faith while he was still essentially a gentile, being uncircumcised and without the Law of Moses. Jews are therefore children of promise who owe their status as God’s people to God’s free election. They did not earn their covenant status through obedience to the law and therefore have no grounds to exclude the gentiles from God’s call to them through Jesus into that same covenant relationship. Importantly, Paul makes the converse argument in Romans 9-11, namely, that gentiles are in no position to judge or exclude the Jews from covenant grace, not even those who do not believe in Jesus. Their status as covenant people does not rest on their obedience or disobedience, but on God’s irrevocable call.

John 8:31-36

Our reading is part of a much larger exchange beginning at John 7:1 where Jesus declines his brothers’ invitation to accompany them to the Feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem, but later comes on his own slipping into Jerusalem unnoticed. John 7:1-13.  In the midst of the feast, Jesus goes up to the Temple and begins teaching the people. At first, the people do not seem to recognize Jesus. They can see that he is a common person of the type usually untrained in the finer points of Torah. But there is no question that Jesus is, in fact, learned in the law and they marvel at his teaching. When it becomes clear that this strange man is none other than Jesus of Nazareth, the chief priests send officers to arrest him. But instead of bringing Jesus in and booking him, they return amazed and overawed by what they have heard. Exasperated, the chief priests ask the officers why they have not arrested Jesus as ordered. They can only reply, “No one ever spoke like this man!” John 7:46. The chief priests then vilify the officers and the crowds, cursing them for their ignorance of the law. But Nicodemus, a member of the council, cautions the chief priests against pre-judging Jesus’ case before hearing him-only to be rebuffed. (We meet Nicodemus early on in John’s gospel at chapter 3 when he comes to see Jesus under cover of darkness. John 3:1-21. We will meet Nicodemus again following Jesus’ crucifixion as he comes with Joseph of Arimathea to bury the body of Jesus. John 19:38-42).

The narrative is interrupted by the story of the woman caught in adultery, a story that probably was not originally part of John’s gospel. John 8:1-11. Then Jesus’ discourse begun at the last day of the feast picks up where it left off in John 7:37 ff. Though the opposition continues, Jesus is gaining some support. We read that as he spoke, many believed in him. John 8:30.  But success is short lived. Our reading picks up just where Jesus turns his focus upon these new believing supporters and tells them, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” Vss. 31-33. Clearly, this remark rubbed them the wrong way. “Just what do you mean by that? We are Abraham’s descendants and we have never been in bondage to anyone. How can you promise to set us free?” Vs. 33. Clearly, Jesus’ newfound supporters are experiencing a “senior moment.” Have they really forgotten the four hundred years their ancestors spent as slaves in Egypt? Have the forgotten the Babylonian Exile? Israel has in fact known bondage under the whip of foreign masters and beneath the tyranny of many of her own leaders. But the greatest tyrant is not Egypt or Babylonia or Rome. The greatest bondage is slavery to sin.

John speaks of sin almost exclusively in connection with each person’s response to Jesus. It is not that people are sinless before they encounter Jesus. Rather, their encounter with Jesus reveals their sin and confronts them with the choice of remaining in sin or being set free from sin. It is precisely because Jesus’ opponents both see and claim to understand him that their guilt is established. John 9:39-41.  To know and be set free by the truth is to know Jesus. This knowledge does not consist of propositions about Jesus. To know the truth about Jesus is to know Jesus-just as you know a loved one. That sort of knowledge requires the cultivation of a relationship that grows over time and, as all of us who experience friendship know, is never fully complete. We are always learning more about the people we love and think we know so well. How much more so with Jesus, whose life is the eternal life of the Father?

I believe much of the membership loss among American mainline protestant churches may be a direct result of our misunderstanding of what it means to know and to teach the truth. We have modeled our Christian education programs along the lines of public schools. Sunday school involved teaching kids stories and rudimentary doctrines about Jesus. That, however, is not how Jesus taught his disciples. Rather than inviting them to come to his seminars, Jesus called people to become fishers for people. He taught them by involving them in his ministry, sharing his meals with them and taking them with him on the road. By contrast, we confirm kids in the spring time (when graduation commencements occur) and very often figure that we have done our job. These kids have been taught the truth and when they are old enough, we can include them in the church’s ministry. Trouble is, when that time finally comes, they are already long gone. And why not? They got whatever truth they needed to get in the system. The rest is just a refresher course and who needs one of those every single week?

In sum, we have not done a very good job of teaching people who have come through our congregations that discipleship, not membership is the end point; that growing intimacy with Jesus, not just a boat load of facts about him is what constitutes true discipleship. Perhaps the next reformation can address this shortcoming.

Sunday, September 21st

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FIFTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Jonah 3:10—4:11
Psalm 145:1–8
Philippians 1:21–30
Matthew 20:1–16

PRAYER OF THE DAY: Almighty and eternal God, you show perpetual loving kindness to us your servants. Because we cannot rely on our own abilities, grant us your merciful judgment, and train us to embody the generosity of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“The Lord is gracious and merciful; slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” This confession is a common refrain throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. It is prominent in our Lenten liturgies. It is good news-the good news-that God is gracious, merciful and loving. Comforting it is to know that God’s love is steadfast; that God’s mercy is infinite; and that God is slow to anger. Even God’s anger arises out of God’s passionate love for us.

But it seems as though some folks wish that God were not quite so loving. I remember well a dear woman, I will call her Marcia, from a church I served years ago saying to me, “Yes, pastor, God is loving.” But she was quick to point out that “God hates sin! You’re not saying that we can do whatever we want and God will just ignore it, are you? There comes a point where God will not tolerate sin anymore if we just keep doing it.” Marcia had a couple of good points. True enough, God does hate sin and God does punish it. But why is God so opposed to sin? According to Marcia, it is because God is righteous, because God cannot tolerate a violation of his holy law, because justice requires that every sin be punished. That, according to Marcia, was the reason for the cross. God punished our sin in Jesus. Through faith in Jesus, we escape the punishment we deserve. Of course, if we reject Jesus and refuse the pardon he offers, then God has no choice other than to punish us fully and fairly for our sin.

Marcia’s god was fair and presided over a universe that was fair as well. People get what they deserve, if not in this life then surely in the next. On the surface, that is very appealing. Why shouldn’t life be fair? Why shouldn’t we be rewarded for righteous behavior and punished for wickedness? How can God rule justly if he forgives willy-nilly and punishes only sporadically? Who will take sin seriously or try to be righteous if there are no rewards or punishments?

Marcia was not altogether wrong. Both the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament speak of God’s wrath and God’s judgment. While that might offend our middle class protestant, slightly left of center, ever polite and ever white notions about properly progressive religion, it’s biblical. Marcia was altogether right about God hating sin. She was dead wrong, however, about God’s reason for hating it. God hates sin not because it violates his precious rules or upsets the moral balance of the universe, but because sin injures God’s creatures and ruins God’s creation. God punishes sin not to satisfy some abstract notion of perfect justice, but to curb our most self-destructive impulses. God’s judgment is gracious in that it saves us from ourselves. It is but another expression of God’s love, albeit tough love.

Our lessons for this week introduce us to a prophet and some day laborers whose belief in God and God’s justice are very much like Marcia’s. They believe that both God and life should be fair. Jonah is miffed at God for failing to punish the wicked city of Nineveh. The laborers in Jesus’ parable are angry at their boss for paying a full day’s wage to their co-workers who labored for only an hour. What they and we must learn is that God is far more concerned about mercy than fairness. So, too, divine justice is more about reconciliation than adjudicating disputes.

Jonah 3:10—4:11

The book of Jonah differs from all the other prophetic books. Rather than containing the oracles of a prophet, this book tells the story of a prophet. It reads very much like a short story. It is also different in that the prophetic focus is not upon Israel, but upon Nineveh, the capital of Israel’s archenemy, Assyria. That is where the problem lies as far as the prophet is concerned. Jonah would far rather be declaring gleefully Assyria’s doom to his fellow Israelites than bringing a warning to the doomed nation. Assyria, after all, was responsible for the downfall and destruction of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. The Southern Kingdom of Judah only narrowly escaped the same fate. Jonah, like the rest of Israel, wanted nothing more than to see God’s judgment fall with full force on this cruel empire. So Jonah does everything in his power to ensure the failure of his mission to the Assyrian capital of Nineveh.

First, Jonah tries to run away from his commission. Rather than traveling to Nineveh, he gets on a boat heading in the opposite direction. God catches up with Jonah, however and sends a storm that threatens to swamp the ship. Everyone on the boat begins praying frantically to his god, except Jonah who is fast asleep in the hold. Jonah is not on speaking terms with his God. The sailors wake Jonah and implore him to pray to his God for rescue, but instead Jonah suggests that they throw him overboard. He would rather drown than prophesy to Nineveh. But Jonah’s attempt at suicide fails. God is not letting him off the hook that easily. God sends a great fish to swallow Jonah and there he remains, in the belly of the fish, for three days. After giving Jonah adequate time to reflect, the fish vomits Jonah up on shore. God repeats the original command: Go at once to Nineveh.

Knowing that he can never escape from God, Jonah goes reluctantly to Nineveh and preaches the shortest and most uninformative sermon ever given by a prophet. The message? “Forty days more and Nineveh will be overthrown.” Jonah 3:4. That’s it. Jonah does not tell the people of Nineveh why they are being overthrown, who is going to overthrow them or whether there is anything they can do to prevent the overthrow. Yet this half-hearted and incomplete sermon brings about a remarkable effect. “And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone great and small put on sackcloth.” Jonah 3:5. Not only that, but “when the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.” Jonah 3:6. Even the animals repented with fasting! Jonah 3:7-8. “Who knows?” remarked the king. “God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.” Jonah 3:9. God does indeed hear the penitent cries from the people of Nineveh and God changes his mind. God spares the city from destruction.

This is just what Jonah had feared and what he had done everything possible to prevent. “I knew it!” cries the exasperated prophet. “Is this not what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning: for I knew that you were a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.” Jonah 4:2. Jonah knows his Torah well. This confession of God as merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love is found throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. See, e.g, Exodus 34:6; Numbers 14:18; Nehemiah 9:17; Psalm 145:8 and Psalm 103:8. Indeed, it is with these very words that God reveals to Moses his innermost being. Exodus 34:6-7. But Jonah does not seem to want a God who is merciful and slow to anger. He wants a God that is fair. Assyria is guilty of unspeakable acts of war, oppression and cruelty. It is only fair that God visit upon Assyria what the empire has inflicted on Israel. An eleventh hour show of repentance should not be enough to win Nineveh a reprieve from justice.

God proves to be as patient and forgiving toward his stubborn prophet as he is toward the wicked city of Nineveh. God employs an object lesson. He causes a plant to grow up giving the sulking prophet shade. Then, a day later, God sends a worm causing the plant to wither and die. Now Jonah is livid. Bad enough that God should make a fool of him by calling off the judgment he had predicted. Now it appears that God means to give him sunstroke as well. Then God makes his point: “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?” Jonah 4:11. That is how the book ends-with God’s question. We never hear Jonah’s answer and perhaps that is intentional. The question is really directed at us. What sort of God do we worship? Is God chiefly concerned with abstract notions of justice, with punishing sin and rewarding good behavior? Or is God more concerned with the well-being of people? Does God hate sin because it offends against his precious laws? Or does God hate sin because it harms his creatures?

For numerous reasons, most scholars date this book in the post exilic period following 539 B.C.E. While the destruction of the Northern Kingdom of Israel by Assyria was a more distant memory, Judah’s destruction at the hands of the Babylonians was a fresh and painful recollection. To be sure, Jeremiah and Ezekiel had explained these catastrophes as consequences of Israel’s breach of covenant faithfulness to God. But even so, Israel’s less than perfect obedience was surely light years closer to righteousness than the brutal and oppressive ways of Assyria and Babylonia. If Israel was justly punished for her sin, is it too much to expect that these empires also should face judgment?

The Book of Jonah shifts the focus of this discussion from fairness to mercy. God does not inflict judgment merely settle scores or maintain some sort of moral balance. God punishes in order to heal. Thus, whether God punishes sin or decides to refrain from punishment has nothing to do with fairness. It is finally a question of what will bring about a change of heart, healing and ways that are life giving. If repentance can be achieved without punishment, God abstains from exercising the rod-even if that seems unfair. Likewise, God will inflict whatever hardships are necessary to bring his people to the point of recognizing their self-destructive ways and their need for him-whether the punishment is commensurate with the crime or not. But God’s concern is always for the well-being of his people both within and outside of his covenant with Israel.

“All of this points in the direction of the fact that God’s will for his world is salvation and not destruction. He will do all within his power to see that salvation comes rather than destruction. God’s love and mercy always have priority over his anger (see Psalm 30:3). He wishes life for his creatures rather than death (see Ezekiel 18:23, 32). Fretheim, Terence E., The Message of Jonah, (c. 1977 Augsburg Publishing House) p. 130.

Psalm 145:1–8

This psalm is a hymn in acrostic form. Every verse begins with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Acrostic poems usually do not develop ideas but consist rather of loosely connected statements. The technique aids in memorization, but also conveys the message that the whole of the topic is being addressed “from A-Z.” Other psalms in the acrostic family are Psalm 119; Psalm 9; Psalm 10; Psalm 25; Psalm 34; Psalm 37; Psalm 111; and Psalm 112. As always, I encourage you to read Psalm 145 in its entirety.

Formally, this is a psalm of praise, probably from the period after the Babylonian Exile. God alone is acknowledged as “king” rather than any ruler of the Davidic line. Vs. 1. Professor Walter Brueggemann classifies this psalm as a “song of creation,” a subcategory of his “psalms of orientation,” namely, psalms that “express a confident, serene settlement of faith issues.” Brueggemann, Walter, The Message of the Psalms, (c. 1984 Augsburg Publishing House) p. 25. Psalm 145 expresses Israel’s “joyous and grateful confidence in the Creator.” Id. at 28. There is no thematic development in this psalm. It is, as Brueggeman points out, “static in form, articulating what is enduringly true of the world.” Id. at 28-29. The range of praise stretches from the first person to the intergenerational “we” of the worshiping community.

“The Lord is gracious and merciful; slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” Vs. 8.This refrain is found throughout the Hebrew Scriptures as pointed out in my observations concerning our first lesson, where we encounter it in the context of irony. Jonah 4:2 It is because God is so gracious and merciful that Israel felt free to address God in prayer, even-indeed, especially-when she knew that she had fallen short of her covenant obligations. Placed as it is in contrast to Jonah’s citation of this ancient confession, the psalm invites us to ponder what it means to have a God whose principle attributes are graciousness, mercy, and steadfast love. Such a divine disposition is comforting when applied to ourselves but, as the lesson from Jonah illustrates, not quite so palatable when applied to our enemies. Are we prepared to accept God’s graciousness and mercy extended toward Al Qaeda or to ISIS? Or does the very idea throw us into a Jonah snit?

Philippians 1:21–30

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 Letter of Friendship Paul wrote while imprisoned. Paul is mindful that his imprisonment might well end with his being sentenced to death. Though hopeful that he will finally be released and allowed to continue his ministry, Paul does not fear death. For whether through his future ministry or through his faithful acceptance of death for the sake of the gospel, whether short or long, Paul’s life will bear witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Philippians 1:19-20. Paul prefers deliverance from prison to martyrdom, but this is not because he fears death. Indeed, he views death in Christ as “gain.” Vs. 21. Paul wishes to live that he may continue his ministry to the church in Philippi and to his other congregations. Vs. 25-26.

Paul urges the Philippian believers to let their manner of life “be worthy of the gospel of Christ.” Vs. 27. To give content to this admonition, we need to read further both in Philippians and in the other letters of Paul. The church, as the Body of Christ, is to live a counter-cultural existence in which “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female.” Galatians 3:28. In the midst of the hierarchical and stratified culture of Rome, such a community constituted a subversive challenge. The church was, as Paul aptly pointed out, an “omen to them of their destruction.” Vs. 28. The church can therefore expect opposition. Faith in Jesus naturally entails “suffering” for his sake and participation with Paul in his own conflict with the empire. Vss. 29-30.

Paul’s sentiments and the struggles of his Philippian congregation are hard to grasp in a culture where the church fits neatly into the Americana landscape. Even as Christianity fades from popular culture and the church’s influence recedes, we do not face anything like persecution. Yes, I know about Fox’s reporting on the so-called “war on Christianity.” But if you really think that barring a crèche from the town square during the holiday season amounts to persecution, you need to talk to Christians in Egypt, Pakistan and Iraq. They will tell you what real persecution looks like. What we actually are experiencing is the beginning of marginalization. Given our substantial loss of membership, participation and support, we mainliners no longer represent a significant demographic group. We are fast becoming a minority. But then again, perhaps we always were a minority. Maybe the cultural support churches received in the past and the social expectation for church membership and participation characteristic of earlier times falsely inflated our numbers. It could be that, despite the loss of members, the church has more disciples today than ever before. I have no idea whether that is so or how one would go about finding out one way or the other. But I digress.

I believe that a careful reading of Paul’s letters in our present context compels a change of subject. Rather than trying to reverse membership loss to save our institutions, we need to be talking about becoming and making disciples. Rather than wracking our brains trying to figure out how to get people to go to church, we need to start talking about how we can better be the church. It’s high time that we become an “omen” once again.

Matthew 20:1–16

The parable reflects the gritty realities of life in Palestine and, sadly, many places in our own country. Labor is cheap and it’s a buyer’s market. Men and women stand in groups at the market place in Galilean towns or in front of the Shoprite in Union City hoping to get work for the day. The work day in Palestine lasted from sunrise to sunset. The daily wage, a denarius, was set by rabbinic custom and tradition. Schweizer, Eduard, The Good News According to Matthew, (c. 1975 John Knox Press) P. 392. The requirement that payment be made at the end of the day is rooted in Torah. Deuteronomy 24:15. “Vineyard” is a frequent metaphor for Israel throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. See, e.g., Isaiah 5:1-7; Psalm 80:8-9.

It is important to understand that this parable follows Jesus’ teaching concerning lifelong fidelity in marriage (Matthew 19:1-9); the call of some to forego marriage for the sake of the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 19:10-12); Jesus’ declaration that children, who the disciples found to be a distraction, are the proper heirs of the kingdom (Matthew 19:13-15); the story about the man whose riches prevented him from following Jesus in the way of the kingdom (Matthew 19:16-22); and Jesus’ words on the cost and rewards of the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 19:23-30). Matthew’s use of the vineyard here suggests that he is giving us a snapshot of what life in the kingdom looks like-if only we have eyes to see it.

The hiring of the first laborers at dawn for a day’s wage is hardly unusual. It would not be unusual either to hire additional laborers later in the day if, for example, the rainy season were drawing near with its potential for cooler weather and even frost. Hiring workers an hour before sunset simply is not credible. Yet that appears to be the point. The owner of the vineyard is not looking at this venture from a purely business like, self-interested perspective. He is looking to the needs of the laborers. At an hour from quitting time, he discovers that there are still laborers standing idle in the marketplace. It seems odd that the owner of the vineyard would ask these unemployed laborers why they are idle. Isn’t that like asking an unemployed factory worker why he isn’t at work? The answer seems obvious, yet the owner seeks an answer from these unfortunate individuals just the same. When the would-be laborers tell him that they are idle because they have not been hired, the owner promptly hires them and sends them out.

While it might seem strange that the owner of the vineyard should pay the last workers before the first, this order of events is critical to the parable. Had the first hired been the first paid, they would each have taken their denarius and gone home contented. As the owner later points out, they received the benefit of their bargain. They are taking home a living wage for a day’s work. Their wages seem disagreeable to them only because they have witnessed payment of the same amount made to those hired last. For this reason only their wages look small and miserly. In reality, the first hired are offended not so much by their own pay as by the owner’s generous treatment of those workers that, in their view, had not earned it. This is the “Jonah” complaint in an economic context.

The owner’s strange management of labor in his vineyard is in fact how the kingdom of heaven operates. Fruitful labor for a living wage is available for all who seek it. To put it into the language of the Lord’s Prayer, daily bread is provided for all. The problem is that people want more than daily bread. That is why it is so hard for the rich to enter into the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 19:23-26. They want and expect more than daily bread. For the rich, a heavenly kingdom where all have enough to see them through each day-and no more-would be a hellish existence. So who is included among these “rich”? Who are the laborers who feel cheated? All of us, I suppose, who have more than what we need to live on today and remain unsatisfied. I believe one reason that the specter of socialism is bandied about to such great effect by political leaders has to do with our deep sense of entitlement to the fruits of our labor. I am entitled to the value of my labor (which always seems undervalued by my employer!) and nobody is entitled to anything that has not been earned. Though public assistance is hardly a significant piece of our tax burden, we still seem hell bent on cutting it because there is something deep inside us that cannot abide a person getting what they have not “earned.”

We are also uncomfortable with this parable because it challenges the gospel of wealth that permeates our culture. America is the land of opportunity, we believe, where anyone with enough determination and grit can get rich. In fact, the gap between rich and poor is growing in our land as it is globally. Those folks who are working two or three minimum wage jobs just to make ends meet would find it hard to believe that they are not working hard enough. But the problem is not merely that the American dream isn’t working. The larger problem is that, even if it did work, our lives would still be running amuck. Pursuit of wealth is a stubborn refusal to acknowledge that we do not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. It selfishly demands more than God promises and winds up settling for much less. It rests on the false assumption that the world is a shrinking pie and my well-being depends on grabbing the biggest piece and guarding it jealously.

The parable of the vineyard, in addition to exposing our selfish, thankless and proud imaginings, also points to an alternative economics. It testifies to the possibility of an economy that maximizes human well-being rather than financial gain; gives priority to the needs of all rather than the luxuries of the few; harvests the fruits of the earth rather than exploiting and poisoning them.

Before leaving this parable, I want to share an additional take on it from Professor Stanley Hauerwas: “It is particularly important for Gentile Christians to remember that as heirs of the promise to Israel we are the last hired. The decisive commentary on Jesus’ parable of the vineyard is Paul’s understanding of God’s faithfulness to Israel developed in Romans 9-11. Paul writes to the Gentile Christians to insist that God’s promise to Israel remains in effect. Israel has stumbled on the stumbling block that is Jesus, but it has done so that salvation may come to the Gentiles (11:11-12). Accordingly, no account of the church, of those last hired, can ever be intelligible without the story of Israel, and those who are the inheritors of that story, the Jews.” Hauerwas, Stanley, Matthew, Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (c. 2006 by Stanley Hauerwas, pub. by Brozos Press) p. 176.

Sunday, September 7th

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THIRTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Ezekiel 33:7–11
Psalm 119:33–40
Romans 13:8–14
Matthew 18:15–20

PRAYER OF THE DAY: O Lord God, enliven and preserve your church with your perpetual mercy. Without your help, we mortals will fail; remove far from us everything that is harmful, and lead us toward all that gives life and salvation, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

I can’t remember witnessing or even hearing about an excommunication taking place in any of the churches in which I grew up-unless you include under that rubric periodic removal from the membership rolls folks who moved out of town without bothering to transfer their membership. We knew there was sin in our midst. My mother used to talk about a small, quiet and anxious woman I will call Molly. She frequently came to church with bruises on her face and neck. When asked about her injuries Molly would blush, look down and try to joke about how clumsy she was. Of course, everyone strongly suspected abuse. But back in the late fifties and early sixties, that was considered a private family matter. So too with a garrulous doctor who belonged to our church. It was clear to everyone on any given Sunday that he had come to church on the strength of a hearty liquid breakfast. Nevertheless, because he was retired from practice, we didn’t have to concern ourselves with the effect his drinking might have on his patients. The doctor’s drinking was his own personal business. We knew that he had recently lost his wife and had experienced many other difficulties throughout his life. Who were we to judge?

To be fair, the extent and severity of problems like domestic violence and substance abuse were not as fully appreciated back in the 50s and 60s. Pastors and lay leaders were not well trained to spot such problems and the resources available today for dealing with them did not exist back then. Still, it seems to me that Matthew’s declaration of God’s concern that none of his “little ones” be lost and Paul’s insistence that disciples of Jesus owe one another a debt of love ought to have moved us to intervene.

In all my thirty plus years of ministry I have never been involved in the excommunication of anyone, but I have witnessed any number of self-excommunications from the churches to which I have belonged. Or perhaps I should say that my churches have been excommunicated by their members on numerous occasions. These excommunications have been triggered by matters as weighty as doctrinal disagreements and as petty as changes to the arrangement of furniture in narthex. But it always involves individuals getting upset with the church and leaving or, in ecclesiological terminology, breaking communion with the Body of Christ.

I doubt that most people who leave the church in this way view their action as self-excommunication. The church in our culture is only one more provider of services to a consumer society. If you don’t like the variety of goods or the prices at Walmart, there is always K-Mart. Churches are viewed in much the same way. There is one on every corner and they are all competing for a shrinking supply of members. It’s a buyer’s market. It makes sense to go where you get the biggest bang for your buck.

I can’t help wondering whether the church’s reluctance to exercise church discipline and the readiness of its members to self-excommunicate are not rooted in the same malady. Because we do not understand our churches as the Body of Christ, we are not sufficiently concerned with the brokenness of our individual members. For that same reason, we see no adverse implications in separating ourselves from the Body of which we are a part. We view it all as a matter of individual choice based on personal preferences. I think that both Paul and Matthew would be horrified by this state of numbness at which we have arrived. As the Body of Christ, the church should feel pain when its individual members are hurting. Similarly, it ought to hurt a member of that church like hell when s/he severs him/herself from the rest of the Body-unless, of course, we are simply dealing with a corpse.

The lessons for this week paint a portrait of the people of God as a living Body. It is an imperfect Body, yet it is always in the process of growing up into the image of its Head. It is a wounded Body, yet always in the process of reconciliation and healing. This Body often fails to live up to its identity. It struggles with sin, selfishness and failure. This Body is often afflicted with suffering, pain and sadness. But this Body is nevertheless alive. It is never numb or indifferent. May the Spirit of God continue to breathe life into that Body of him whom God the Father raised from death!

Ezekiel 33:7–11

Though a prophet and critic of Judah’s cultic and religious practices, Ezekiel appears to have been of priestly lineage being intimately connected to the temple in Jerusalem and its worship. Ezekiel’s eccentric behavior, lurid visions and obscene imagery have discomforted both his Jewish and Christian interpreters. According to some Jewish traditions, the study of Ezekiel’s prophecies was restricted to men over the age of thirty. Ezekiel was a contemporary of Jeremiah. But whereas Jeremiah’s ministry took place in Jerusalem during and immediately after its final conquest and destruction by the Babylonians in 587 B.C.E., Ezekiel preached among the exiles deported to Babylon ten years earlier in 597 B.C.E. Like Jeremiah, Ezekiel viewed Jerusalem’s destruction as God’s judgment for her unfaithfulness. Judgment, however, is not Ezekiel’s final word. The book of his oracles ends with a glorious vision of a restored Jerusalem and a new temple from which rivers of healing water transform the land of Israel into an Eden like paradise. The parallels between this vision (Ezekiel 40-48) and that of John of Patmos in Revelation 21-22 suggest inspiration of the latter by the former. For further general information on the Book of Ezekiel, see Summary Article by Dr. Alan Padgett, Professor of Systematic Theology at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, MN on enterthebible.org.

The image of the prophet as “watchman” or “sentinel” is a common one. Vs. 7. Cf. Isaiah 21:6; Jeremiah 6:17. For a walled city located near a hostile frontier, the sentinel served as an early warning system. The fate of the city might well depend on the sentinel’s ability to detect and warn the city’s defenders of an approaching enemy. His failure to sound the alarm might seal the city’s doom. So also the prophet bears a heavy responsibility for warning the people about the consequences of their sinful and self-destructive behavior. As grave as the people’s sin would be the prophet’s failure to denounce it in their hearing.

Verses 10-11 indicate that the people have gotten the message loud and clear. “Our transgressions and our sins are upon us, and we waste away because of them; how then can we live?” vs. 10. This is no vain question. We all know there are sins that leave lasting scars upon us and others. Sometimes a relationship is so deeply wounded by unfaithfulness and betrayal that it can never be healed. Yet that is not the case for Israel and her covenant relationship with her God. The door is open for Israel’s return. This section of Ezekiel, then, prepares the way for the promises and visions that will be the burden of the last part of the book. Jenson, Robert, W., Ezekiel, Brozos Theological Commentary on the Bible (c. 2009 by Robert W. Jenson, pub. by Brazos Press) p. 254.

God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. Vs. 11. Yet so much of our cinematic entertainment is grounded in just such pleasure. That is so, I believe, because cinematic art is capable of flattening and simplifying our universe in such a way as to eliminate moral ambiguity. On the screen, evil people are so thoroughly evil and devoid of humanity that their destruction hardly counts even as justifiable homicide. Conflicts lack the historical baggage, cultural subtleties and ethical conundrums plaguing non-virtual, flesh and blood confrontations between individuals, groups and nations. One might argue that, while this is all true, we are dealing here with entertainment. Of course the real world is too varied and complex to fit into a two hour movie. The stage can never replicate life, but only show us a glimmer of it. Yet, be that as it may, when a popular genre generates repeatedly and consistently stories of conflict that admit of no other solution than violence, it can easily start to color the way we process the real world. Worse still, it can distort our view of the scriptures and the character of our God.

John Correia, preacher at an Arizona church, said in a recent article: “What fuels my passion for guns and self defense? First and foremost my Christian faith.” Read the entire article if you wish. Believe me, you can’t make this stuff up. He goes on to say, “I wish everyone got along, I wish that everybody was nice, but they’re not. And until we get into that perfect world where Jesus comes again, we need to be able to protect ourselves and in Luke 22:36 I believe Jesus said ‘let the one who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one.’” Though Jesus did say that, he went on to rebuke his disciples when they took him literally as did Pastor Correia. Luke 22:38. Moreover, rather than allow his disciples to use their swords in self defense or in his own defense, Jesus told them to cease fighting immediately and even healed the man they had injured. Luke 22:49-51. If that passage is the best defense the good pastor can put up in support of righteous gun violence, he is firing blanks. It would appear that his Bible is missing a few key chapters-such as the Sermon on the Mount. Pastor Correia is said to have remarked that the only way he would ever willingly give up his firearms was if Jesus personally told him to do so. Well, Jesus said, “Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.” Matthew 26:52. Seems clear enough to me.

But I digress. The point here is that, once we adopt a world view in which good and evil are neatly divided and the only possible resolution to conflict is violence, we are likely to ignore or simply lose our ability to hear the voice of Jesus in the scriptures. Instead of conforming our lives to the scriptures as interpreted by the cross, we trivialize the cross, treat it as a special case that applied only once and only to Jesus and order our lives by the lights of John Wayne, Chuck Norris or some more moderate philosophy of “realism.” The God of Israel would have us know that this is not how he does business, nor is it the way he would have his people behave. God would have us deal as patiently and forgivingly with our enemies as God dealt with us “while we were enemies” of God. See Romans 5:10.

Psalm 119:33–40

Though characterized as a “wisdom” psalm by most scholars, Psalm 119 has elements of praise as well as lament. Old Testament Professor, Artur Weiser gives this psalm a rather short and dismissive evaluation: “This psalm, the most comprehensive of all the psalms, is a particularly artificial product of religious poetry. It shares with Psalms 9, 10, 111 and others the formal feature of the alphabetic acrostic, with the difference, however, that here the initial letter remains the same for each of the eight lines of a section. In accordance with the number of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet twenty-two such ‘poems’ are joined together; these, however, neither show a consistent thought-sequence one with another nor represent units complete in themselves. This formal external character of the psalm stifles its subject-matter. The psalm is a many-coloured mosaic of thoughts which are often repeated in wearisome fashion…” Weiser, Artur, The Psalms, A Commentary, The Old Testament Library (c. 1962 S.C.M. Press, Ltd.) p. 739.

I think the good professor’s cursory treatment is unwarranted. Though admittedly lacking in chronologically progressive order, the psalm revolves constantly around the Torah experienced by the psalmist as reliable guide, faithful companion, relentless judge, purifying fire and source of endless joy. It has a way of drawing the reader into deeper contemplation that is anything but “wearisome.” I think that Brueggeman rightly recognizes this psalm as “a massive intellectual achievement” through which the psalmist affirms that the Torah meets us at every stage of life addressing every human experience from “A to Z,” or more precisely “alpeh to tav.” Brueggeman, opcit. p. 40.

Much is lost in translation through the rendering of “Torah” as “law.” Torah is far more than a dry set of laws, statutes and ordinances. For Israel, Torah was the shape of the covenant; “the mode of God’s life giving presence.” Ibid. It was “a launching pad form which to mount an ongoing conversation with God through daily experience.” Ibid. p. 41. Still, “[i]t is Yahweh who is the portion of the speaker (v. 57), not the Torah nor one’s keeping of the Torah.” Ibid. The psalm finally recognizes that Torah is the medium through which prayer is made possible. As a rabbi friend once remarked, “the Torah is the rope in an extended tug-of-war. We continue to pull on it because we firmly believe there is One on the other end with whom we are in constant tension.”

This particular section of the psalm reminds us that God’s Torah is not something that can be learned by rote, such as the atomic chart or an algebraic equation. Torah must be “taught” by God. It goes hand in hand with prayer, study and ever faithful efforts to live into it. Just as Torah shapes the faithful believer’s life and conduct, so the believer’s life experience deepens his/her understanding of the Torah. So the psalmist implores God, “Give me understanding, that I may keep thy law and observe it with my whole heart.” Vs. 34. Torah obedience does not come naturally. Thus, the psalmist prays that God will “incline my heart to thy testimonies…” vs. 36. For the psalmist, Torah is not a collection of rules and statutes. Its provisions are the handles that prayer grasps in engaging God. Thus, the psalmist “long[s] for thy precepts…” for they lead to a vision of God’s righteousness that gives the psalmist life.” Vs. 40. Again, the Torah is not an end in itself. It points the faithful to the heart of Israel’s God where true righteousness and wisdom are found.

Romans 13:8–14

The term “owe no one anything” is a conventional expression for freedom from both monetary and social obligation. Jewett, Robert, Romans, a Commentary, Hermeneia-A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible (c. 2007 Fortress Press) p. 805. This admonition, deeply rooted as it is in Paul’s concept of the Church as Christ’s Body, is more than mere practical advice. As noted in my post for Sunday August 31st, the Roman Empire was a hierarchical society held together by networks of patronage and social obligation with the emperor seated at the apex. Caesar was Lord. The church, however, recognized not Caesar but Jesus as Lord. The social order dictating the terms under which the disciple lived was not that of the empire, but that of the church. Discipleship, then, was radically counter-cultural and deeply subversive.

Again, some commentators have criticized Paul for being too parochial here in focusing the love command upon the church community rather than all humankind. Such criticism, however, presupposes a Constantinian ecclesiology in which an institutional church serves as the moral conscience of a largely Christian society. That same outlook still serves as the unquestioned underpinning both for liberal Protestantism’s social advocacy and right wing Evangelical social conservative initiatives. Each in their own way are attempting to “Christianize” America. Only their platforms differ. Paul, by contrast, understood the church not as an instrument to bring about a kinder, gentler empire, but as a radical alternative to Rome.

It should come as no surprise to anyone reading this blog with any consistently that I favor serious rethinking of our ecclesiology and mission as we find ourselves in the post-modern, post-Constantinian context. The conversations we need to be having revolve not over which legislative initiatives to support, but how we live together as church in a way that mirrors the kingdom of heaven. Religion that does no more than help people cope with the dehumanizing conditions of life under late stage capitalism is not worth spit. A church richly deserves extinction if does no more than issue preachy-screechy social statements, mobilize its membership to support legislative tweaks to a brutally oppressive and unsustainable economic system while asking/offering no more to its members than an hour on Sunday with a tithe.

Will churches modeling the counter-cultural example of Paul’s congregations or the community described in the Book of Acts “change the world?” Well, they will not bring in the kingdom of heaven. At best, they can only witness to it. But if we can simply plant the idea in peoples’ heads that there is an alternative to a life of wage slavery so soul numbing and stressful that you need four weeks of vacation just to cope with it, if we demonstrate that medical care need not be controlled by profit driven corporations and administered by strangers in an alien environment, if we can build communities where security is not dependent upon the dubious integrity of insurers and investment bankers, but grounded in networks of caring relationships, who knows? The church might once again turn the world upside down.

Love fulfills the law. Vs. 10. As indicated in the previous paragraph, “love” is not an abstract principle for Paul. “No, the appropriate social context of the love ethic in this section is the small Christian congregations in Rome, and, more concretely, the love feasts and sacramental celebrations in which members shared their resources. Pervo, Richard I, “Panta Koina: the Feeding Stories in the Light of Economic Data and Social Practice” published in Religious Propaganda and Missionary Competition in the New Testament Word: Essays Honoring Dieter Georgi (c. 1994 Nov/TSup 74 Leiden: Brill) p. 192, cited in Jewett, supra, at 807. It is with this understanding in mind that we interpret Paul’s admonition to the church in Corinth concerning its failure to “discern the Body” in its Eucharistic celebrations. Where each person “goes ahead with his own meal, and one is hungry and another drunk” (I Corinthians 11:21), the community is not living as a Body in which the needs of each part are honored and provided for. See I Corinthians 12:12-31. There is no distinction between Eucharistic sharing and “social ministry.” Sharing of resources to ensure the well-being of all is no more an act of “charity” than is the heart’s pumping of blood to the rest of the body. Love is the concrete act of having all things in common. That does not necessarily imply communal living or “common purse” communities. Conventions governing property ownership vary from age to age and culture to culture. At a bare minimum, however, the church must see to it that the basic needs for food, shelter and healing are met for all its members. To do less than this is to fail to discern the Body.

Matthew 18:15–20

This passage is cited in just about every congregational constitution I have ever read, usually under the rubrics of “church discipline.” A similar procedure is alluded to by Paul in II Corinthians 13:1. Unfortunately, the passage has frequently been interpreted as a provision to protect the purity of the church. Nothing could be further from Matthew’s intent. In fact, the concern here is for the erring sister or brother. Precisely because Jesus declares “it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost” (Matthew 18:14) that every effort must be made to prevent conduct rupturing the community and alienating its members. For this reason, sin must first be addressed individually by the one perceiving it with an eye toward reconciliation/repentance. Only when this step fails is it permissible to bring other individuals into the matter. Where reconciliation cannot be achieved with the assistance of two or three additional persons, the matter must then be brought before the church for resolution. Severance of ties between the sinner and the community is a measure of last resort. Moreover, even this drastic step of treating the sinner as a tax collector has in view the objective of winning the estranged member back to the community. Outcasts and tax collectors are not lost causes, but special objects of Jesus’ mercy and compassion. See also, I Corinthians 5:5; II Corinthians 2:5-7.

A further practical caution is in order here. Not every annoying habit, inconsiderate act or careless utterance by someone in the congregation merits this disciplinary procedure. Unless sin rises to the level at which it threatens to rupture the unity of the church or alienate one of its members, it should be borne with patience, understanding and forgiveness. The church was never intended to be a community of the perfect, but rather a congregation of sinners being perfected by the faithful practice of living together under a love that “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” I Corinthians 13:7.

Sunday, August 31st

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TWELFTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Jeremiah 15:15–21
Psalm 26:1–8
Romans 12:9–21
Matthew 16:21–28

PRAYER OF THE DAY: O God, we thank you for your Son, who chose the path of suffering for the sake of the world. Humble us by his example, point us to the path of obedience, and give us strength to follow your commands, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

Last week it seemed as though Peter finally got it right. When Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter blurted out, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” Jesus blesses Peter and says to him, “You are Peter and on this rock I will build my church.” It is gratifying to see that Peter finally has Jesus figured out. We have seen Peter fail to understand Jesus’ parables. We have seen him sink into a sea of doubt. But now at last he has got it right.

But this week we discover that, no, he doesn’t have it right. When Jesus begins speaking about his immanent suffering and death, Peter balks. “Don’t talk like that Jesus! I know there are some powerful people that don’t like you. But you’ve got us. You have the support of the crowds. Let’s not have any more negativity! Let’s be positive here! If you can dream it, you can do it!” His encouragement earns him only a stern rebuke from Jesus. Peter the church’s foundation stone has become Peter the stumbling block to Jesus’ ministry!

But let’s not be too hard on Peter. After all, the church has been struggling for the last two millennia to get Jesus right and often we have not been any more successful than Peter. Let’s face it, the cross is a hard word. Part of it we understand well enough. We know that whoever seeks to save life will lose it. We just don’t like hearing it and we don’t want to believe it. So we exercise, take vitamins and eat organic to lengthen our life spans. The cosmetic industry sells us creams, lotions and surgical procedures to erase the evidence of aging and preserve the illusion of youth. Yet even as we put our money down for this snake oil, we know in our heart of hearts that we are only fooling ourselves. Efforts to preserve life indefinitely are doomed.

But Jesus has something else to tell us, something we would not otherwise know. He tells us that all who lose their lives for him will save them. That is an important word for much of the church in this country that is scared to death of dying. Churches don’t want to die any more than individuals. My first reaction to the very thought that my congregation might fold or that the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America might not reach the end of the century is much the same as Peter’s reaction to Jesus. “God forbid!” But the very good news for our church is that God is the author of our demise. That is good because God wounds in order to heal; kills in order to make alive; crucifies in order to resurrect. Neither survival nor sustainability is part of the discipleship package. Jesus does not promise that his church will survive. He promises much more than that. He promises that his church will be resurrected. Death is exactly where Jesus calls us to be. When we forget that, we just get in our own way and become a hindrance to the church’s mission. But when we remember that the tomb is empty and the one who broke it open from the inside is with us to the close of the age, dying is not such a big deal.

So next time somebody asks you whether you think the church is dying, respond: “Well of course it is. How else will it ever be resurrected?”

Jeremiah 15:15–21

This passage is the second of six personal prayers of lament uttered by the prophet Jeremiah in the course of his ministry. The others are Jeremiah 11:18-12:6; Jeremiah 17:14-18; Jeremiah 18:18-23; Jeremiah 20:7-13; and Jeremiah 20:14-18. These prayers are similar to the psalms of lament and contain much of the rich phraseology and imagery commonly employed by Israel in her liturgical/devotional life. The prayer is divided into two sections. In the first, Jeremiah addresses God. Vss. 15-18. In the second, God responds to Jeremiah’s complaints. Vss. 19-21. Jeremiah’s prayer begins with a plea for vengeance against his enemies. Professor Thomas Raitt says of this prayer and Jeremiah’s personal laments generally:

“Jeremiah’s so-called ‘laments’ are, at worst, sub-Christian expressions of vengeance, self-righteousness and bitterness about the sacrifices involved in filling the prophetic vocation. At their best these [laments] show that being a messenger of God’s word is a difficult calling and that often the last thing people want to hear is the truth, even from God, about their specific time and situation (which is precisely why prophets are not without honor except in their own country).” Raitt, Thomas M., Jeremiah in the Lectionary, Interpretation, Vol.37, April 1983 (c. 1983 Union Theological Seminary in Virginia) p. 161.

Jeremiah’s prayer certainly does illustrate the challenges of the prophetic vocation, but is it really “sub-Christian?” I must confess that I have always had difficulty with prayers for vengeance in the Bible, of which this is only one. Forgiveness and reconciliation are so central for Christian theology and practice that there seems to be no room for expressions of vengeance. But my pious unease is probably related more to my status and privilege than to any legitimate theological objection. I have never been raped or sexually molested. My children have not been murdered either by crazed fanatics in the service of their sick understanding of God’s will or by any respected, hardworking, church going Pentagon employee sitting in a cubicle orchestrating a drone attack in which my loved ones turn out to be “collateral damage.” I have never been driven out of my home by violence and forced to flee across the border into a foreign nation that does not want me. In short, I have not experienced the depth of human cruelty and oppression that gives birth to these laments. It is not surprising, then, that they do not come naturally to my lips.

It is important to keep in focus the fact that the psalmists’ pleas for vengeance are directed toward God. In praying for vengeance, they are confessing implicitly that retribution is the sole prerogative of God. God alone knows the hearts of human beings, what are their motivations and the external circumstances that often determine their actions. Too often, our perceptions of justice are warped by the pain of our own injuries and our personal need for “pay back.” We tend to focus narrowly on the perpetrator of a crime. But are not the parents who abused and neglected him equally responsible? What about his teachers who noticed bruises in odd places but remained silent? What about the neighbors who heard through the apartment walls the noise of abuse and his cries of pain and simply turned up the TV set because, after all, it was not their business. We can further expand this web of responsibility to include an entire nation whose priorities favor tax cuts to programs designed to assist families and children at risk. When it comes to dishing out retribution, there is never an end point. That is why Paul admonishes us in today’s lesson from Romans to leave this issue in God’s hands where it belongs.

German pastor, theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer maintains that the biblical prayers for vengeance must remain within our use of the psalter. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, Psalms, Prayer Book of the Bible, (c. 1974 Augsburg Publishing House). He goes on to point out, however, that our prayers against the “enemy” are to some degree addressed against ourselves as well. As sinners, we are our own worst enemies. When we pray for God to intervene and adjudicate between ourselves and our enemies, we can never fully understand what we are asking for. God sees our enmity in a different light and without the blind spots that come with the white hot rage of injury. The justice we get in answer to our prayers might not look anything like our expectations for a just outcome.

While forgiveness and reconciliation are at the core of the good news about Jesus, they are the end result of a process. If forgiveness is to have any meaning, the injuries inflicted by my enemy (and upon him/her as well) need to be fully acknowledged. Lament affords us the opportunity to lay out our wounds, our hurts and the resulting anger in the presence of God. If reconciliation is to be genuine, the mutually destructive relationship between my enemy and myself must be altered. Master and slave are not truly reconciled if, at the end of the process, they remain master and slave. New creation necessarily means the death of the old-which will not go down willingly. Forgiveness, healing and reconciliation take time, patience and, above all, grace.

Jeremiah is unsparing in his criticism of the Lord he feels has abandoned him. “Yet,” as one commentator points out, “there is a contradictory character to this prayer, for even when doubting God’s care, it is to God that Jeremiah turns. God called him to be a prophet, and God’s service had been Jeremiah’s “joy” and “delight” as well as his pain and anguish. The prayer reflects a man who even in his deepest doubts about God’s care still knows that he is absolutely dependent upon God. God will be his undoing if God has really abandoned him; but God is also his only hope and to him he must return.” Bracke, John M., Jeremiah 15:15-21, Interpretation, Vol.37, April 1983 (c. 1983 Union Theological Seminary in Virginia) p. 175. One of the marvelous capacities of our human constitution is the ability to entertain two mutually conflicting ideas, two very opposite emotions and hope in the pit of despair. Even the psalmist who cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” makes this complaint to the very God whose absence s/he now experiences!

If Jeremiah had been expecting the gentle comfort of one trained in Clinical Pastoral Education, he would have been sorely disappointed. I doubt he had such expectations and, in any event, comfort is not the medicine Jeremiah receives. It is not God who has abandoned Jeremiah, but Jeremiah who has abandoned his God. After all, Jeremiah has been chiding his people for their own unfaithfulness; for their failure to trust God in the face of the Babylonian threat; for seeking salvation from foreign alliances rather than putting their faith in the Lord. Is his own personal danger and suffering any worse than what he is calling his own people to risk and to endure? If God has proved a “deceitful brook” to Jeremiah, has not Jeremiah been preaching deceit to his people? God will continue to be with Jeremiah to deliver him. But Jeremiah cannot expect to escape the judgment he proclaims for his people. That goes with the territory of the prophetic vocation.

These are hard words for leaders of God’s people ministering in hard times. We all know that the church can be awfully hard on the people that serve her. I have been lied too, betrayed, criticized behind my back and hurt by people in the church. Fortunately, these experiences have been only small islands of unpleasantness in an otherwise deep and expansive ocean of love, support and partnership. For the most part, even people with whom I have had deep disagreements remained supportive, caring and faithful to the gospel. My worst day in parish ministry was a romp in the park compared to Jeremiah’s experiences. Jeremiah serves to remind us all that we are calling the world to take up the cross and follow Jesus. That means taking it up ourselves. We cannot get out of being crucified with Christ, but the operative word here is with. Jesus does not call us to anything through which he has not already made a path.

Psalm 26:1–8

Some commentators view this psalm as the plea for God’s intervention on behalf of one involved in a legal dispute soon to be adjudicated. Rogerson, J.W. and McKay, J.W., Psalms 1-50, The Cambridge Bible Commentary, (c. 1977 Cambridge University Press) p. 117. Such a circumstances might have given birth to the stereotypical phraseology in the psalm, but the prayer seems to have a broader application as it now stands. Though likely composed as an individual lament prior to the Babylonian Exile in 587 B.C.E., it has been edited to meet the worship needs of the whole worshiping community. Such is the case with many of the personal psalms.

It takes a lot of chutzpa to pray this psalm. Who among us could declare in the presence of God that we “have trusted in the Lord without wavering?” Vs. 1. How many of us would invite God “to prove” and “try us,” to “test [our] heart[s] and mind[s]”? Vs. 2. Yet it seems to me that if we read these two verses as intimately linked to the rest of this prayer for vindication against enemies, they constitute an invitation to humility. Indeed, if we are going to pray for vindication against our enemies, then we must also pray that God will try our own hearts and minds, put us to the proof and bring our motives to light. For in reality, there is no such thing as a one sided conflict. Good and evil are never cleanly divided along the lines of combat drawn between human warring factions. Yet, as I argued in my post for July 20th, we Americans have a strong tendency to view conflict in precisely this fashion. That is why our politics is so dysfunctional. After all, how can you compromise with a party whose agenda is the destruction of American society as we know it? There can be no negotiation or settlement with evil, but only eradication.

Too often, the same is true for interpersonal conflict. We tend to demonize those with whom we differ, attribute to them the worst of motives and dismiss any possibility that they could actually have a meritorious point of view. They owe us an apology and until we get it, hostilities continue. The psalmist entertains no such simple minded illusions. S/he prays not merely that God’s judgment will fall upon his/her adversaries, but that it will penetrate his/her heart of hearts as well. From the psalmist’s standpoint (as from our own!), it may very well seem that s/he has taken the high road, that s/he has avoided “the company of evildoers” (Vs. 5) and “washed [his/her] hands in innocence.” Vs. 6. But in reality, s/he knows that there are in his/her own heart motives that are unseen and assumptions about the enemy that blind him/her to the big picture resulting in vast potential for misinterpreting the meaning of words and the significance of actions. Though the psalmist cannot see it now, s/he knows that when disputes are submitted to God with an honest prayer for vindication, the one seeking such relief must be prepared to discover his/her own complicity in that dispute and be prepared to accept full responsibility. Perhaps that is why the psalmist also prays that God “sweep me not away with sinners.” Vs. 9 (not in our reading). For “if thou, O Lord, shouldst mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand?” Psalm 130:3.

More, however, needs to be said. Dietrich Bonhoeffer once remarked that: “The notion that we can never suffer innocently so long as within us there still hides some kind of defect is a thoroughly unbiblical and demoralizing thought.” Godsey, John D., The Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (c. 1960 Westminster Press) p. 191. We can hardly fault a child in any way for injuries suffered at the hands of an abusive parent. Yet even in what appears to be a clear case of one-sided aggression, the aggressor is a complex individual whose motives, words and actions are the product of a lifetime of experiences that likely include victimization. As evil as his/her acts clearly are, the actor can never be written off as beyond redemption-at least not by us. Thus, while it is quite possible to suffer innocently, it does not follow that the full weight of guilt and retribution can be focused on the most visible perpetrator of the wrong.

As always, I encourage reading of Psalm 26 in its entirety.

Romans 12:9–21

The admonitions in verses 9-13 can sound almost pedestrian when they are read in isolation. Have genuine love. Hold to what is good. Show honor and zeal. Be hopeful, patient, prayerful and generous. Well, Duh!!! How else would a disciple of Jesus behave? It is critical therefore to read these admonitions in light of Paul’s earlier call for the Roman believers to present their bodies as sacrifices for God and to be transformed by the renewal of their minds through the gospel rather than conformed to the world around them. Romans 12:1-2. The “world” of which Paul speaks is the world of the Roman Empire, a hierarchical society in which everyone from the emperor to the galley slave had his or her fixed position. Honor was due from the lesser to the greater. As one commentator points out:

“J.E. Lendon has shown that a relatively small number of officials ruled the vast empire, using a combination of force, propaganda, and patronage that was held together by ‘the workings of honour and pride,’ which provided ‘the underpinnings of loyalty and gratitude for benefactors’ that made the empire functional. Although the threat of force and the desire for gain where always present, ‘the duty to “honour” or respect officials, whether local, imperial, or the emperor himself, is vastly more prominent in ancient writings than the duty to obey…’ The subject paid ‘honour’ to his rulers as individuals deserving of it in themselves, and, in turn, the rulers are seen to relate to their subjects by ‘honouring’ them. Subject and official were linked by a great network of honouring, and obedience was an aspect of that honouring…This background is essential for understanding the argument of Romans, which employs honor categories from beginning to end. Lendon observes: ‘Honour was a filter through which the whole world was viewed, a deep structure of the Graeco-Roman mind…Everything, every person, could be valued in terms of honour.’ At the peak of this pyramid of honor stood the emperor, who claimed to renounce honors while gathering them all to himself. Beneath him the intense competition for superiority in honor continued unabated on all levels of society.” Jewett, Robert, Romans-A Commentary, Harmenia-A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible (c. 2007 by Fortress Press) p. 49 citing Lendon, J.E., Empire of Honour: The Art of Government in the Roman World (c. 1997 by Oxford: Clarendon) pp. 289-292.

Paul turns this “pyramid of honor” on its head. Rather than compete with one another in the accumulation of honor, disciples of Jesus are challenged to “out do one another in showing honor.” Vs. 10. Within the church, the structures of honor and patronage holding the Roman Empire together dissolve. That explains why the church was accused (and rightly so) of “turning the world upside down.” Acts 17:6. It also demonstrates why Paul’s letter to Philemon is probably one of the most revolutionary documents ever written. Paul’s insistence that Philemon welcome back his runaway slave, Onesimus, as a brother struck at the very foundations of Roman society. While some of our aging commentators left over from the 1960s fault Paul for being less than fully socially conscious because he was not out demonstrating in the streets of Rome against slavery, I cannot help but note that the churches they represent are often just as segregated today as was Selma, Alabama in the 60s. It just goes to prove Mark Twain’s adage, “To be good is noble. To teach someone else to be good is more noble still-and a lot less trouble.” Paul’s opposition to slavery was written into his practice-not merely on a cardboard sign. His church struck at slavery by ending it within a counter-cultural community valuing all persons, regardless of their societal status, as equally members of the Body of Christ.

Verses 14-21 echo Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 5:38-48. At first blush, they might seem to conflict with the sentiments expressed by Jeremiah and the psalmist in our previous lessons. That is not the case, however. Like the psalmist and the prophet, Paul urges the Roman church to leave vengeance and retributive justice in the hands of God. It might well be that one’s enemy is deserving of punishment. But that is not the disciple’s concern. The disciple of Jesus is called upon to love the enemy, pray for the enemy and show kindness to the enemy whether deserving or not. By assuming God’s prerogative and seeking retribution, one is overcome by evil. Again and again we have learned that by fighting evil with evil’s own tools of violence and hateful rhetoric, we are conformed to the very image of that which we despise. Rather than be so conformed, Paul urges us to be transformed by the renewal of your minds. Romans 12:1-2.

Matthew 16:21–28

At this point in Matthew’s gospel, the focus turns toward Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem. Each of the subsequent transitional sections will remind us of that destination. Matthew 16:21; Matthew 17:22; Matthew 19:1; Matthew 20:17). Here Jesus reveals to his disciples for the first time that this journey will lead to his rejection by the religious authorities and his suffering and death. Vs. 21. Peter once again personifies what must have been the response of all the disciples: “God forbid!” Vs. 22. (Ironic, isn’t it, that this “rock,” upon which Jesus said in last Sunday’s lesson that the church would be built, has so soon after become a rock of “stumbling” to Jesus!) We now learn that Peter’s bold confession of Jesus as both Israel’s Messiah and the Son of the living God, through accurate, is still unformed. He cannot reconcile the glorification of Jesus with the cross. He is not the only one. I have repeatedly been asked about verse 28 in which Jesus tells his disciples that they will not see death before they witness his coming in glory. “Pastor,” they ask me, “How can that be true? We have still not seen Jesus coming in glory.”

Of course, Jesus did come in glory. Our problem is that we don’t understand what glory is any more than we understand what power is. God is nowhere more thoroughly glorified than on the cross where the depth of God’s love for all creation is made known. God is nowhere more powerful than on the cross where even the crucifixion of his Son cannot entice God to turn against us in anger. God’s love is stronger than our sin. The cross, says St. Paul, is the wisdom of God and the power of God. I Corinthians 1:18-25. For Matthew, it is the coming of Jesus in glory. That is a bitter pill to swallow for those of us looking for a kick ass savior who will appear at the end of time to whoop the anti-christ and impose his reign in the manner of a Caesar on steroids. That is not going to happen. It is not going to happen because that is not the way God triumphs over evil. God overcomes evil in the same way Paul calls upon his churches to overcome evil: by loving our enemies, doing good to them and praying for them. That will probably take a long time. But God is in no hurry. Neither should we be.

The term “taking up the cross” has become a hackneyed phrase in our common parlance. Typically, it is a synonym for taking one’s own share of hardships that go with living. Suffering becomes a good in its own right, an end in itself, an opportunity to practice patience and self-denial. These are both fine virtues and to the extent one uses suffering to that end, all well and good. But this understanding has nothing to do with taking up the cross. As pointed out by John Howard Yoder, “The cross of Calvary was not a difficult family situation, not a frustration of visions of personal fulfillment, a crushing debt or a nagging in-law; it was the political, legally to be expected result of a moral clash with the powers ruling [Jesus’] society.” Yoder, John Howard, The Politics of Jesus, (c. 1972 by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.) p. 129. The cross in Jesus’ day was not a metaphor or a symbol of anything else. It was the means by which Rome put down anyone confessing a lord other than Caesar. Following Jesus means risking execution.

Yet it is precisely in risking all for Jesus that true life is discovered. Until one is ready to die, there is no prospect for life. The church is called upon to risk all-to risk dying. That is a hard word to speak to a church that is obsessed with survival. Though we talk incessantly about “change” and the “need for change” and the benefits of “change,” the change we often promote is geared chiefly to preserve ourselves. That is understandable. It is easy enough to speak abstractly about the end of the established church in the post Constantinian era. That reality, however, means the loss of some very good social ministries built with the blood, sweat and tears of people whose careers have been defined by them. It means the loss of jobs and the end of career opportunities. On the congregational level it means the loss of century old sanctuaries with brass plates on every piece of furniture memorializing a loved one. It means the loss of cemeteries where generations of families have been laid to rest. It means the end of a multitude of voices singing those dear old hymns to the accompaniment of a majestic pipe organ. That is what the death of “church as we know it” will mean. By way of full disclosure, I have a daughter who is preparing for a career in parish ministry. So although I am close enough to retirement to have gotten my own share out of the Constantinian church, I am hardly a detached observer.

Matthew tells us, however, that we have nothing to fear from death once we recognize that “dying” is the place to which Jesus calls us. We hardly need Jesus to tell us that, no matter how frantically we try to preserve our lives, we are going to lose them in the end. It is the other side of the equation that spells the good news Jesus alone can bring, namely, that by losing one’s life, one gains it. There are, as I said in last week’s post, many new and lively manifestations of “church” in our midst. I do not suggest that any of these models can simply be copied. That, too, is a recipe for failure. But they testify to what is possible when we stop fretting about survival and focus instead on being faithful disciples of Jesus. If God is taking the church we have known and loved away from us, it is because God has something better to give us. Once our hands are free from vainly trying to hang on to what is being lost, we will be free to receive the new thing God is doing in our midst.

Sunday, August 24th

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ELEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Isaiah 51:1–6
Psalm 138
Romans 12:1–8
Matthew 16:13–20

PRAYER OF THE DAY: O God, with all your faithful followers of every age, we praise you, the rock of our life. Be our strong foundation and form us into the body of your Son, that we may gladly minister to all the world, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

This is an exciting time in which to be the church. Many who hear me say this might think me mad. After all, prospects for the mainline church in which I grew up have never looked grimmer. Lutherans are old. At 58, I still feel like a kid in the congregation I serve. We are not reaching people 30 and younger. There is no mystery as to why this is so. Most of our members grew up in an age when everyone went to church because it was the thing to do. No one questioned Sunday worship any more than they would have questioned saluting the flag or brushing their teeth. It’s just what we all did. Even those of us who didn’t worship and saw no earthy reason for it usually lied and said we did. After all, going to church on Sunday was part and parcel of being a good citizen.

Those days are gone and that is a problem for us. It is a problem because most of our current members cannot explain to a rational adult why he or she should give up a leisurely Sunday morning with coffee, a bagel and the paper to attend a worship service. Especially is this so when that person is unfamiliar with the church generally and a stranger to the congregation in particular. “Why,” such stranger might ask, “would I go to a place where nobody knows me just to take part in a complicated ritual that I don’t understand and then have somebody stick a plate under my nose asking me for money? Look, I know you love your church. I know you hate to see it die. I know you want me to join and give you some “new blood” and financial support. But your church’s need is not my problem. I don’t ask you to help me pay my rent. Don’t expect me to help you keep your church afloat.”

And that’s not the worst of it. Our church has not endeared itself to younger people over the decades. In 2011 the Barna Group released results of a study focusing on young people and the church with some very troubling news. One characteristic of teens and young adults is their exposure to numerous ideas and world views outside the parameters of family, church and community. These young people are looking for ways to make sense of this data overload. But they are not looking to the church. That is because they view the church as narrow minded, fear driven and closed to anything new. In particular, young people view the church as antagonistic to science. For this reason, young people often characterize the church as shallow, detached from reality and mired in traditions no longer relevant to their lives.

Perhaps the biggest disconnect between the church and young people is the church’s preoccupation with sexual issues and its tendency to resolve those issues by appealing to a ridged, rule based morality impervious to questioning and dialogue. Frankly, congregations that insist on excluding or treating as second class members people who are gay, lesbian or transgendered might just as well kiss the upcoming generation good-by. I am thankful that my own church, at the denominational level anyway, has finally made unequivocally clear that all such persons are welcomed as fully and completely as any other person called by the Holy Spirit into the Church of Christ. I am thankful that I no longer have to endure the embarrassment of explaining to my own children why their friends are not welcome in the church I serve and represent as a pastor. For congregations and individuals who are “not there yet” I have but three words: get over it.

So given all this bad news for my church, how can I possibly believe that this is a great time to be the church? I say that because there are marvelous movements of Spirit led revival and faith to be found all over the country. Church is coming alive in many new ways as people called by the Spirit form intentional communities designed for the living out of discipleship. Throughout the whole people of God in this country there is a developing understanding of church as who you are rather than where you go. At house churches, intentional communities and re-awakened parishes in every state young people are discovering a faith that is not just an add-on to their already busy and overcommitted lives, but a thriving reality at the very center of their lives. Rather than simply offering help for coping with life as it is, these new communities are inviting people to follow Jesus into alternative lifestyles that are faithful, sustainable and life-giving. I discuss some of those movements in my comments on our lesson from Isaiah. They are small, scattered and idiosyncratic. Yet I think they may very well be the seed of the church for the 21st Century.

In the midst of mainline decline and collapse, the ancient words of the prophet can yet be heard: “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” Isaiah 43:19. Yes, this is a wonderful time in which to be the church!

Isaiah 51:1–6

This reading is taken from the second section of the Book of Isaiah (Isaiah 40-55) authored in the main by an anonymous prophet speaking a message of salvation to the Jewish exiles living in Babylon during the 6th Century B.C.E. His was the task of alerting his fellow exiles to the new opportunity created for them to return home to Palestine opened up by Persia’s conquest of Babylon. On the one hand, the prophet makes a joyous declaration of salvation for Israel and announces the potential for a new start. On the other hand, the prophet makes clear that God is doing with Israel something entirely new. This will not be a return to “the good old days” when Israel was a powerful and independent people under the descendants of David. That, according to the prophet, “is too light a thing” for the people of God. Israel and the servant prophet are to be given “as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” Isaiah 49:6. For more specifics on the Book of Isaiah generally, See Summary Article by Fred Gaiser, Professor of Old Testament, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN.

Following several other commentators, Professor Claus Westermann holds that this section of the text has become disordered in the course of transmission. He would reconstruct it, working the verses from our reading into various surrounding sections of text. The finished product reads as follows:

[Isaiah 51:1a] Listen to me, you that pursue righteousness, you that seek the Lord.[Isaiah 50:10-11] Who among you fears the Lord  and obeys the voice of his servant, who walks in darkness and has no light, yet trusts in the name of the Lord and relies upon his God? But all of you are kindlers of fire, lighters of firebrands. Walk in the flame of your fire, and among the brands that you have kindled! This is what you shall have from my hand: you shall lie down in torment.

[Isaiah 51:4-6] Listen to me, my people, and give heed to me, my nation; for a teaching will go out from me, and my justice for a light to the peoples. I will bring near my deliverance swiftly, my salvation has gone out and my arms will rule the peoples; the coastlands wait for me, and for my arm they hope. Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look at the earth beneath; for the heavens will vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment, and those who live on it will die like gnats; but my salvation will be forever, and my deliverance will never be ended.

[Isaiah 51:7a] Listen to me, you who know righteousness, you people who have my teaching in your hearts; [Isaiah 51:1] Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for he was but one when I called him, but I blessed him and made him many. [Isaiah 51:7b-8] do not fear the reproach of others, and do not be dismayed when they revile you. For the moth will eat them up like a garment, and the worm will eat them like wool; but my deliverance will be forever, and my salvation to all generations.

Westermann, Claus, Isaiah 40-66, The Old Testament Library (c. 1969 SCM Press Ltd.) pp 232-234. This arrangement has the virtue of solving several other perceived problems with other sections of the Isaiah text, forging them, along with fragments of our lesson, into a nicely balanced three strophe poem. With all due respect to Professor Westermann, I am suspicious of employing any interpretive tool, including form criticism, for no better purpose than to make the text more “intelligible.” Just because something is difficult to understand does not mean that it is void of meaning. Perhaps the language is obscure because the matter at hand lies at the border of mystery. If that is the case, deconstructing the language is probably the last thing you want to do. Furthermore, it is to my thinking entirely unjustifiable to break up a passage that makes perfectly good sense standing alone in order to solve problems elsewhere in the text. Accordingly, I will take the lesson as we have it.

“You who pursue deliverance” in verse 1 refers to the Babylonian exiles. Just as the Israelite slaves cried out for deliverance in Egypt, so now the exiles seek deliverance from their captivity. The prophet chooses his words carefully to evoke precisely this parallel. Throughout his/her oracles, Second Isaiah likens the return from exile to Israel’s exodus from Egypt. E.g. Isaiah 43:1-7; Isaiah 43:15-17. But in the next verse, the prophet reaches back even further in Israel’s history to the age of the matriarchs and patriarchs. “Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for when he was but one I called him, and blessed him and made him many.” Vs. 2. This is the only verse in the Hebrew Scriptures outside of Genesis referencing Sarah. Second Isaiah is filled with feminine metaphors for God’s faithfulness to Israel. Isaiah 42:14; Isaiah 46:3; Isaiah 49:1, 5, 15; Isaiah 54:1. Thus, it is not surprising that s/he should include Sarah along with Abraham in this instance.

The prophet is addressing the group of exiles that have been receptive to his/her call to make the journey back to Palestine from Babylon. In all probability, this was a small congregation. Yet the prophet is not dismayed by the meager response of the people to his/her challenge. After all, when God called Abraham and Sarah, they were but two individuals. Moreover, we also know that they were childless and past child bearing age. The prospects for fulfilment of the promise that their descendants would outnumber the stars seemed remote, to put it mildly. Yet just as God raised up the people of Israel from this unpromising beginning, so God will make of this little band of exiles a new people in that ancient land promised to Abraham and Sarah so long ago. With God, size doesn’t matter, but only faithfulness.

In verses 4-5 the prophet promises that God’s “deliverance draws near speedily.” Significantly, however, that salvation is described as “a law” going forth from God. The word for law here is “Torah,” a term that means so much more than our word “law.” Torah is “teaching,” a constellation of faithful disciplines and precepts, the study and practice of which leads to wisdom, understanding and communion with the God of Israel. See Psalm 119. It is through the faithful obedience of Israel to Torah in the land of promise that God’s salvation will be made known to the ends of the earth. Simply by being God’s people, Israel will forward God’s salvation.

I believe that the church in America is only beginning to discover (or re-discover?) the insight revealed in Second Isaiah and more specifically throughout the new Testament, namely, that the proper mission of the church is first and foremost being the church. We are moving away from a 1950s and 1960s vision of the church as a union of faithful congregations supporting mission and ministry done by professionals and specialized agencies. No one is looking anymore for a church that will give them spiritual resources to cope with the demands of 21st Century life. Churches still selling this useless snake oil are in decline-and deservedly so. The new model of church where I see most energy, creativity and enthusiasm for ministry is among intentional communities of faith that embody an alternative to life under late stage capitalism dictated by the schedules of public school activities, the demands of the work place/profession and that illusive nirvana, “financial security.”

For example, Church of the Sojourners in San Francisco, California seeks to respond to Christ’s call by living together family-style, sharing their homes, resources and friendship. Though not maintaining that their lifestyle is absolutely required for committed discipleship, the Sojourners find that such common living provides them with numerous daily opportunities for forgiveness, humility, service, gratitude, worship, prayer, and other practicalities of sainthood, thereby helping them to grow into “the full measure of the stature of Christ.” So too, Reba Place Fellowship began in 1957 as three people sharing life and possessions in one house just north of Chicago. Since then, it has grown into several communities.  Today members of Reba live in an urban “village” in Evanston, and in its communal offshoot in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago.  Both branches have a mix of apartment buildings, single family houses, and commercial buildings sheltering a variety of cooperative ventures. Perhaps the most fascinating and exciting example of this model is Koinonia Farm. Established in 1942 by Clarence and Florence Jordan and Martin and Mabel England, Koininia is a Christian community located in Americus, Georgia. Sharing a life of prayer, work, study, service and fellowship, residents seek to embody peacemaking, sustainability, and radical sharing.

The above communities are few and far between, but they are growing and inspiring the development of other such communities. Hewn as they are from the rock of faithful patriarchs, matriarchs, prophets and apostles, I have no doubt that God will use them mightily to carry on the church’s mission into the future. As for the rest of us, “the kingdom of God will come without our prayers” or anything else we have to offer. So says our Catechism. But I pray that it may come also among us mainliners; that we will rediscover our radical roots in the cross and resurrection of Jesus; that we will find ourselves “in that number when the saints go marching in” rather than sitting on the curb watching the parade go by.

Psalm 138

Though it begins as a psalm of pure praise, verses 3 and 7 reveal that the psalmist is giving thanks for deliverance from enemies. Some commentators claim that the psalmist’s declaration of praise “before the gods” dates this psalm somewhere in Israel’s pre-exilic history in which the reality of gods other than Yahweh was assumed, though their power and status was inferior to that of Israel’s God. But in the post exile work of Second Isaiah (Isaiah 40-55) , the prophet calls these foreign gods to account before Yahweh only to show that they are in fact not gods at all. Isaiah 41:21-24. The psalmist’s assertion that “All the kings of the earth shall praise thee, O Lord, for they have heard the words of thy mouth; and they shall sing of the ways of the Lord” echo the same theme found throughout Second Isaiah. See, e.g., Isaiah 49:7, 22; Isaiah 55:4-5. Consequently, I do not believe that any conclusions about dating can be drawn from this phrase.

The psalmist boldly declares that, though s/he walks “in the midst of trouble, thou dost preserve my life.” Vs. 7. Taken alone, this verse might be understood to mean that God will shield the psalmist from all adversity giving him or her a charmed life. But God promises nothing of the kind and the psalmist is well aware of that. The psalmist knows that his/her life is wholly God’s possession. As such, it finds fulfillment in God’s purposes, not the hopes, dreams and expectations of the psalmist. Hence, the declaration of faith in the final verse: “The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me; your steadfast love, O Lord, endures forever. Do not forsake the work of your hands.” Vs. 8. This prayer that God will establish God’s purpose for one’s life is the very soul of humility. Far too much of life is spent trying to prove to ourselves and to everybody else that we count for something. It is unbearable to think that we might be only a pawn on the chessboard of life, the understudy for a minor character in an off, off Broadway play who never makes it to the stage. Unbearable, that is, until you finally realize that “though the Lord is high, he regards the lowly.” Vs. 6. God does not measure accomplishments (which often turn out to be less impressive than we imagine them to be), but faithfulness. When we are finally able to recognize that our marriages, our children, our careers and everything else is God’s project to be employed solely for God’s purposes, life becomes fun again. We are no longer under pressure to “make it come out right.” We don’t need to fret about whether we are accomplishing anything “significant” or “important.” Instead, it is possible to enjoy and take a measure of satisfaction in doing what is given us well, resting in the knowledge that however insignificant, unimportant or unsuccessful our tasks may seem, they are precisely what God needs for God’s own purposes.

Romans 12:1–8

Verses 3-8 deserve special attention because they distill in concrete practice what Paul has been speaking about for the last eleven chapters. Because all are under the sway of sin and all are liberated by God’s gracious act of mercy in Jesus Christ, no one is in any position to boast over against any other fellow disciple. In light of this reality, “sober judgment” leads to but one conclusion: we are no longer individuals with conflicting rights to be carefully balanced and adjudicated to maintain justice and peace within our community. We are members of one body belonging to Jesus and existing to serve him as head. Accordingly, whatever our gifts may be, they are precisely what the Body needs and are to be exercised in his service.

This vision of community is seldom reflected in our churches which, both on the congregational and denominational levels, operate under corporate, hierarchical models. I follow (at a distance) a Facebook page for Lutheran clergy and have discovered that issues of “power” and “who is in charge” come up with depressing regularity. Resort to the congregational constitution seems to be the default strategy for resolving conflict. I am so weary of congregations complaining that their rights have been violated and denominational leaders complaining that their authority is not sufficiently respected. I can hear the exasperated and unheeded voice of St. Paul in the distance: “Do not be conformed to the world…” vs. 2.

“Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” Vs. 2. One reason we fear terrorists so much is that we know they have no fear of death. How do you fight an enemy that is not afraid to die? A man willing to sacrifice his body by strapping on a bomb and blowing himself up to take out the enemy is not likely to be detoured by the death penalty! That, too, is why the Roman Empire was so fearful of the church. Disciples of Jesus didn’t cower when threatened with death. They could not be intimidated by torture. They turned the cross, Rome’s chief symbol of terror, into a sign of victory! The more forcefully Rome employed its imperial might against the church, the more obvious its impotence became. The shock and awe strategy failed spectacularly as the blood of the martyrs became the seed of the church. If only Christians had the faith of terrorists! If only disciples of Jesus were as ready to sacrifice their lives in the service of the poor, in reconciliation of enemies and in practicing radical hospitality to the homeless as terrorists are ready to die in battle!

Matthew 16:13–20

The focus on Jesus’ Messianic identity, which began at Matthew 13:54 where Jesus is rejected in his home country, comes to its climax in our lesson for Sunday where Peter makes his confession: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Vs. 16. Jesus asks his disciples who they believe “the Son of man” to be. The disciples’ response indicates that they must understand Jesus to be speaking of himself in the use of this term. They note that some think Jesus is a resurrected John the Baptist. Herod has already expressed this belief. Matthew 14:2. They also point out that others believe Jesus to be Elijah, whose possible return was left open by his assumption into the heavens. II Kings 2:9-12. By the time of the prophet Malachi, the return of the prophet Elijah was a standard expectation. Malachi 4:5-6. Jeremiah is mentioned, principally as a representative of the latter prophets believed to have returned under Jesus’ identity. Perhaps this is because Jeremiah, more than any other Hebrew prophet, experienced consistent persecution and rejection. In any event, these persons all serve in a negative manner to specify for the reader who Jesus is not.

Unlike the response given by Peter in Mark, Matthew has Peter confessing Jesus not merely as Israel’s long awaited Messiah, but as the Son of the living God. Vs. 16. This statement is not the fruit of Peter’s own deductive reasoning. It comes to him by revelation. Vs. 17. Peter’s confession answers the question of Jesus’ fellow countrymen in Matthew 13:54 (“Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works?”).

The Greek word “Christos” is used for the Hebrew term “Meshioch” transliterated “Messiah.” It means “anointed one,” frequently referring to a king, though it was also used to designate the patriarchs, a prophet or a priest. (See Psalm 105:15; I Kings 19:16; Psalm 133:2). By the 1st Century, the term was commonly used to denote a successor of King David who was expected to restore the fortunes of Israel, though this was by no means the exclusive expression of messianic hope. Thus, while Peter’s confession of Jesus as Messiah is correct, the nature of Jesus’ messiahship will not become clear until after his suffering, death and resurrection.

“Son of God” is a term used for Israel’s kings as evidenced by the enthronement hymn, Psalm 2. “You are my son, today I have begotten you.” Psalm 2:7. As will become evident in Matthew’s Transfiguration account, the term means much more than this as applied to Jesus. Matthew 17:1-8. Here, too, Matthew will unpack the full meaning of this title in the action to come.

Many trees have been felled and much ink spilt over the interpretation of verses 18-21. Just as the Roman church has insisted that Jesus’ declaration: “you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church” establishes the primacy of Peter and the doctrine of apostolic succession, so protestants have for the most part maintained that the “rock” upon which the church is built is Peter’s confession of Jesus, not Peter himself. The passage does not fully support either position. It is clear from the word play at work “Petros” (Peter) and “petra” (rock) that Jesus is referring to Peter himself as in some way foundational for the church. Yet Matthew, like Mark, employs Peter as the spokesperson for the rest of the disciples. So, just as his remarks to Jesus represent the questions of the twelve, Jesus’ response must also be seen as directed to all of them. The church, then, is founded upon the witness of the Apostles; however, the case for the primacy of Peter among them is wanting in my opinion. This passage is silent about matters of apostolic succession. That is not to say a biblical case cannot be made in its favor, but only that one who would make it must look elsewhere in the scriptures for support. I think that commentator John Nolland sums it up best:

“The attempt to draw form Mt. 16:18 conclusions as to whether Peter has successors is doomed to failure. It is to press the imagery too hard to assign an exclusive foundational role to Peter. Peter has the privilege of being named in this role, but others participated with him in all that he did and was. In addition, in every new situation there will be those who play a foundational role for Jesus’ building of his church. But sharing the role produces too many partners and successors. On the other hand, the apostles are clearly called upon to play an unrepeatable role, and Peter clearly has some kind of primacy among them. Here there is a genuine claim to exclusivity, but not one that allows any specific place for a successor. But this is not to say that this tradition about Peter should not have inspired the church to focus on its fidelity to the foundations of the faith in terms of a Peter figure from generation to generation.”Nolland, John, The Gospel of Matthew, The New International Greek Testament Commentary (c. 2005 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.) p. 670.

Matthew is the only gospel that uses the term “ekklasia,” the Greek word our English Bibles translate as “church.” The word means “gathered group” or “assembly.” Matthew’s understanding of the church is fleshed out in the Sermon on the Mount as well as Matthew 23:1-12. Thus, whatever leadership role is given to the twelve in this passage must be exercised in a way consistent with this vision. One of Jesus’ chief criticisms of the religious leaders in his day is set forth in Matthew 23:13: “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because you shut the kingdom of heaven against men…” The keys to the kingdom are given to Peter precisely so that the kingdom may be opened to all people. Thus, however one might interpret the power to “bind” and “lose” given to Peter in verse 19, it cannot be understood as license to blockade the kingdom. Even when the church finds it necessary to excommunicate and treat a former member as a “gentile and a tax collector” (Matthew 18:17), one must keep in mind the manner in which Jesus consistently reached out to gentiles and tax collectors. To excommunicate a member is therefore to assume enhanced responsibility and concern for that member.

Sunday, June 29th

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THIRD SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Jeremiah 28:5–9
Psalm 89:1–4, 15–18
Romans 6:12–23
Matthew 10:40–42

PRAYER OF THE DAY: O God, you direct our lives by your grace, and your words of justice and mercy reshape the world. Mold us into a people who welcome your word and serve one another, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

Though we will be observing the third Sunday after Pentecost at Trinity this coming Sunday, I note that the feast of St. Peter and St. Paul falls on the same day. Because the gospels and the Book of Acts are not biographies, it is impossible to construct anything like a historical chronology of their respective lives. We are told that Peter was a Galilean fishermen. As such, he would have been from humble origins, but by no means the poorest of the poor. Peter was one of the Twelve disciples chosen by Jesus to share most intimately in his ministry. In Matthew, Mark and Luke he is portrayed as the spokesperson for the disciples, voicing questions likely on the minds of both his fellow disciples and the reader of the gospels. All of the gospels confirm that Peter denied knowing Jesus after Jesus was arrested and brought before the high priest. He appears in the Book of Acts, once again serving as the spokesperson for the disciples on the day of Pentecost. Some gospel passages suggest that Jesus conferred upon Peter a degree of leadership among the Twelve, but the nature of such primacy, if it even existed, is difficult to ascertain.

Paul, by contrast, never met Jesus during the years of his ministry in Palestine. He appears to have been a diaspora Jew born in Tarsus, a historic city in south-central Turkey. He was fluent in Aramaic, Greek and possibly Hebrew as well. According to the Book of Acts, Paul was educated in the Pharisaic tradition. He was, by his own admission, an enemy and a persecutor of the church in its early years. But he encountered the resurrected Christ and underwent a dramatic conversion while on his way from Jerusalem to Damascus where he had intended to arrest and prosecute followers of Jesus. Through Paul’s missionary activity the good news of Jesus was carried throughout Greece, Macedonia and Asia Minor to diaspora Jews and to gentiles. According to tradition, both Paul and Peter were put to death by the Roman government.

In many respects, the most remarkable things we know about these two men are their flaws. The New Testament does not airbrush the saints. Peter’s cowardice in the courtyard of the high priest is given no moderating spin in the gospels. His failure to grasp the scope of the gospel is evident throughout the New Testament. Even after Jesus’ resurrection and the miracle of Pentecost, Peter had difficulty seeing past his own ethnic cultural conditioning. That appears to have been the issue that brought him into conflict with Paul according to Paul’s letter to the Galatians.

Paul was equally flawed, though in different ways. The deep seated anger and narrow mindedness that led him initially to persecute the church did not simply evaporate after baptism. While Paul could be generous, compassionate and understanding of human shortcomings, he could also be ruthless in criticizing his opponents, sarcastic when writing to his congregations and just a tad self-pitying in the face of opposition. His letters bear that out, particularly his second letter to the church in Corinth.

Finally, the testimony of both men is flawed in that they are men. I don’t mean to say that they should personally be penalized for their gender or blamed for the fact that the New Testament cannon was not more inclusive. I seriously doubt that either Peter or Paul ever dreamed that there even would be a New Testament, much less that their words would be part of it! The point is, their witness is lacking the richness, harmony and depth it might have had if only their voices had been joined by the likes of Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Prisca, Persis, Phoebe, Lydia and countless others whose names are lost to history, but known to our Lord.

Like all literary works, the Bible is a product of its times. The ugly realities of imperial oppression, slavery and patriarchy are all too evident and they have often distorted the preaching and teaching of the church. Still, they have not been able to suppress the persistent witness to a larger vision breaking through the seams of the text. The Hebrew Scriptures are filled with stories of women who, notwithstanding the cultural, religious and political impediments in their way, nevertheless found opportunities to shape the destiny of Israel in redemptive and life giving ways. Some of them are noted in the lengthy genealogy at the beginning of Matthew’s gospel (leading me to wonder whether that gospel was not actually composed by a woman who is subtly letting us know, “Hey, we’re here too, you know!”). The gospels faithfully preserve the fact that women were the first witnesses to the resurrected Christ (though women were legally disqualified from giving testimony in court under First Century Jewish law). Paul acknowledges women as his fellow apostles. That my church (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) is currently led by a seasoned pastor who happens also to be a woman testifies to the potency of these latent witnesses.

At the end of the day, we love and cherish the Bible, not because it is a perfect book or because it was written in some supernatural way or because it answers all of life’s pressing questions. We love the Bible because it has proven over two millennia to be a faithful and reliable testament to the God of Israel who is the Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Like the imperfect saints who first preached the gospel, the Bible is likewise an earthen vessel bearing precious good news about the God who sent his only begotten Son into the world, not to condemn the world or enslave it, but that the world might have life.

Jeremiah 28:5–9

Today’s lesson comes from a larger drama in the Book of Jeremiah that could be given the title, “The Dueling Prophets.” Unfortunately, you only get a little snippet of it in the reading. It all begins with God commanding Jeremiah to proclaim to the people of Judah that God is about to bring the Kingdom of David and the Temple to an end by the hand of the King of Babylon whose armies are even now advancing upon Jerusalem. To make the point, Jeremiah is told to wear a yolk over his shoulders, the kind used for oxen. It is God who brings the yolk of Babylonian bondage upon Judah. To resist Babylon is to resist God. Jeremiah 27:1-11. You can imagine how that must have gone over. How would you like to be sent out to meet the Fourth of July parade with a yolk on your neck to tell everyone that God is about give victory in the war on terror to Al Qaeda?

The drama unfolds in Jerusalem where the prophet Hananiah is rallying the people of the city behind the flag. “Salvation is on the way! The Lord is coming to the aid of his people just like he always has in the past! The Lord is coming to rescue Jerusalem! The Lord is coming to save his people! The Lord is coming to whoop those “Babliofascists,” that terrorist scum and give victory to Israel! Within two years we are going to see all the treasures taken from us by the Babylonians returned. We are going to see freedom! We are going to see peace! Do I hear an ‘Amen.’?” (Paraphrase of Jeremiah 28:1-4) “Amen” shouts a voice from the midst of the cheering crowd. Everyone turns to see the prophet Jeremiah-wearing his yolk. “Amen!” shouts Jeremiah. “I hope you are right Hananiah. I hope everything you say comes true. Nothing would make me happier than to be dead wrong about everything I have said. But this is much bigger than you and me, Hananiah. This is much more important than who is right and who is wrong. The question here is, ‘What is the word of the Lord for us this day?’ Don’t forget,” says Jeremiah to Hananiah, “there have been prophets before you and me. Not all of them prophesied salvation. Some foretold disaster and destruction. Remember Elijah, remember Amos, remember Micah who once prophesied that this very city would be laid bare as a mown field. Time will tell what the word of the Lord is, who proclaimed it and who received it faithfully.” (Paraphrase of Vss. 5-9). So ends the lectionary reading, but not the story. Next Hananiah, in a dramatic and brilliant show of oratory, jumps down from the podium, breaks in two the yolk off of Jeremiah’s neck and cries out, “So shall the Lord break the yolk of Babylon from the neck of his people.” Jeremiah 28:10-11. The crowd roars its approval and Jeremiah goes his way. He lost the duel.

It is easy for us two and one half millennia later to recognize Jeremiah as the genuine prophet. But what if instead of being here today, you were among that crowd in Jerusalem at the outbreak of war? Who would you believe? Both prophets have biblical precedent on their side. Hananiah could point to the Assyrian invasion of only a century before. Sennacherib, emperor of Assyria swept down and conquered every nation in Palestine, and most of Judah. Only Jerusalem remained standing-with what was left of Judah’s defeated army cowering behind its walls. God sent an angel of the Lord to slay the Assyrian army during the night and Sennacherib was forced to retreat. Jerusalem was saved against all odds. See II Kings 18:13-19:37. If God could do it then, God can do it now.

Jeremiah, on the other hand, could point to the time of the Judges when the Israelite army, facing an attack by the Philistines, went to the Tabernacle at Shiloh and took the Ark of the Covenant, thinking that God would never let them be defeated if it meant that the Ark would be captured. But God is not one to be manipulated by lucky charms. God handed Israel a defeat and, in fact, permitted the Ark to be taken captive. I Samuel 4. So also, argued Jeremiah, don’t think you can oppress the poor among you, worship idols, ignore the commandments and then go running into the Temple like a band of fugitives from justice to escape the consequences of your deeds. God values holy hearts over holy places. God did not spare the Tabernacle in Shiloh, God will not spare the Temple in Jerusalem either.

So we have two prophets. Both are speaking in the name of the God of Israel. Both have a word consistent with the Bible, but each has a very different message. How can we know which one is speaking the word of the Lord for this people at this time? I wish I had an easy answer for that one, but I don’t. I am not aware of any definitive test that will distinguish between true prophecy and false prophecy. But here are a few observations that might help. First, prophecy is not all about the future. Rather, it is a word that helps us understand what is taking place here and now. For the people of Jeremiah’s time, the big event was the Babylonian invasion. What does it mean? How would God have us respond? What is God’s word to us now? Which scripture speaks to this circumstance?

Second, true prophecy is tempered by humility. If you read further into the story you will find Jeremiah confronting Hananiah again-not in public this time but alone. “And the prophet Jeremiah said to the prophet Hananiah, ‘Listen, Hananiah, the Lord has not sent you, and you made this people trust in a lie. Therefore thus says the Lord: I am going to send you off the face of the earth. Within this year you will be dead, because you have spoken rebellion against the Lord.’” Jeremiah 28:15-16. I don’t know what to make of that except this: You better be careful what you say after the words, “Thus sayeth the Lord.”

Feminist reformer Susan B. Anthony once said, “I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.” I think Ms. Anthony is onto something here. I am afraid we are far too confident these days in our beliefs about what God wills, what God is for and what God is against. That goes as much for mainline “advocacy” as it does for right wing efforts to make government strengthen and preserve family values. If Roberta Combs’ Jesus looks suspiciously similar to Ronald Regan, ours sometimes bears an uncanny resemblance to Fritz Mondale. When I see churches and individual congregations neatly split along the lines of “red” and “blue,” it is hard not to conclude that we have become proxies in the so called “culture wars” and that our ministries are driven less by theological conviction than ideological prejudices.

That is the difference between Jeremiah and Hananiah. Jeremiah was prepared to admit that he might after all be mistaken, that he might have misunderstood God’s word and that he might need to listen more closely to that word. By contrast, Hananiah knew he was right, was sure he had the truth and therefore felt entirely justified in shouting Jeremiah down. Arrogance is the surest mark both of a weak mind and a false prophet.

Psalm 89:1–4, 15–18

This is a royal psalm celebrating God’s salvation as mediated through God’s covenant with David. As always, I urge you to read Psalm 89 in its entirety. Although it celebrates God’s covenant with David as God’s saving act, the psalm acknowledges that the true sovereign of all the earth is God Himself. Vs. 18. God makes a “covenant” with David. A covenant is more than a mere contract. In the ancient near east, covenants were usually made between kings-and generally not between equals. It was common for a dominant king to enter into a covenant with the king of a subservient nation. Under the terms of the covenant, the stronger king would promise to provide military protection from common enemies (and a promise that he himself would not attack!). In return, the weaker king would pay tribute and promise undivided allegiance to the stronger king. The weaker king would often give his daughters in marriage to the stronger. (The fact that one’s daughter is at the mercy of a foreign king would naturally make one think twice about commencing hostilities!).

In the covenant with David, God is clearly the dominant partner. Yet, oddly enough, God promises both protection and eternal faithfulness. God’s love for and support of David is not contingent on David’s past accomplishments or on his promise to be loyal to the Lord. This is a one way covenant in which all of the promises flow from the God of Israel to David and his line.

The Davidic covenant was not universally recognized in Israel as was the covenant made at Sinai. Sinai was definitive both for the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah. Both kingdoms drew from the traditions growing out of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs, the Exodus, the Wilderness Wanderings and the Conquest of Canaan. The David tradition belonged uniquely to the Southern Kingdom of Judah that was ruled by one of David’s descendants from its inception around 1000 B.C.E. until Judah’s final destruction in 587 B.C.E. For Judah, the rise of the Davidic Monarchy represented another of God’s saving acts, solidifying the twelve tribes and uniting them against their many enemies. Chief among these foes were the Philistine peoples whose professional armies and superior Iron Age technology gave them a significant military advantage over the loose confederation of Israelite tribes and their largely volunteer defenders. David’s political skills and his use of mercenaries to lead his armies transformed Israel into a formidable nation state.

But Israel’s view of the Davidic Monarchy was always conflicted. Doubts about the advisability of monarchy in general are reflected in I Samuel 8 where Samuel warns the people that the security promised through the reign of a king will come at the cost of taxation, oppression and military conscription. These very evils came to fruition under the monarchy and were severely denounced by the prophets. Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures we find denunciations of the monarchy and its abuses alongside expressions of hope for a messianic descendent of David capable of delivering Israel from her enemies and ruling justly. This hope was burning with white hot fervor during the First Century in which Jesus lived and ministered. Nevertheless, beliefs about where the messiah would come from, what he would do to liberate Israel, how, when and where he would go about doing it were varied and conflicting. Not surprisingly, Jesus appeared reluctant to claim that title. Doing so would have invited a host of misunderstandings about his mission and ministry.

Romans 6:12–23

For my general reflections on the book of Romans and the introduction to this chapter, see last week’s post of June 22nd. In Sunday’s reading Paul picks up where he left off last week. Again, he poses the rhetorical questions: “What then? Are we to sin because we are not under the law but under grace?” vs. 15. As discussed last week, this conclusion follows only if we assume that sin is the mere breaking of law and that successfully following the law amounts to righteousness. As Paul has already pointed out, that assumption is altogether wrong. Sin is not a matter principally of wrong behavior, but of the self-centered orientation of the heart. Because we are incurably self-centered, we wind up bending the law to serve our own selfish objectives even when we keep it to the letter. This is what it means to be in bondage to sin.

Here we come up against the much maligned and misunderstood doctrine of the “bondage of the will.” Nowhere is the brutal reality of this bondage better portrayed than in Martin Luther’s book by that name. To sin or not to sin is not a choice. Sin is the bondage into which we are born. We can no more decide to be free from sin than we can decide no longer to be bound by the law of gravity. Just so, we cannot will ourselves to be obedient or faithful to God. Luther does not mean to say that we are altogether without the ability to make choices. We can, in fact, choose to marry or remain single; to study chemistry or pursue a law degree; put on the plain tie or the striped one. Indeed, we might even choose to put an end to war, eliminate hunger or stem the tide of pollution. Ironically, folks who chafe most insistently at the notion that we are unable to will obedience to God are usually the first to complain that ending war, hunger and carbon emissions are hugely complicated tasks, fraught with opposing political/economic interests and altogether “utopian.” Yet this world with all of its conflicts and challenges is precisely the arena in which the human will is free and enjoined to act. A clearer testament to the fall into sin you could not ask for: Human freedom extends to every corner of the garden but one-and that is exactly the corner in which human nature insists on exercising it to the neglect of everything else!

So, too, Paul points out that human freedom with respect to God is illusory. We are slaves either of God or sin and, of course, a slave is not free to choose its master! Nothing will change unless God acts to alter our bondage under sin. God has done just that in Jesus. In Jesus God puts an end to our bondage under sin and exercises mastery over us. Our legal status has changed fundamentally. We no longer owe anything to sin, but everything to God. This is not simply metaphysical slight-of-hand, a magic number for X that causes the algebraic equation to work out. Sin is inability to trust God and let God be God. God’s righteousness is God’s irrevocable determination to redeem creation and win back the trust of our unbelieving hearts. This righteousness, this determination of God to remain faithful to the covenant promises made to Israel for the sake of the world is not cheap. It comes at a great cost to God. It is because and only because God is faithful to the point of the cross that faith on our side is possible. Faith comes not from any decision on our part to be faithful, but from the wonderful proclamation that God is faithful. Nothing short of this good news of God’s righteousness, God’s determination to save-no matter the cost-can turn our suspicious and distrustful hearts toward faithful obedience.

Paul therefore never conceives of freedom in the abstract. Freedom is not an end in itself, nor can it be. As between God and sin, one of them must be our master. Sin is a ruthless master whose wages are death, but Jesus is a gentle master who gives life-not as a wage, but as a free gift. Vs. 23. In Christ we are thus set free “from” bondage to sin “for” bondage to God in Christ Jesus. Freedom, then, is not the liberty to do whatever one desires, but the power to do that which is good and life giving. Freedom to sin is therefore an oxymoron. Such “freedom” is in reality the worst kind of bondage, leading invariably to death. Vss. 20-21.

Matthew 10:40–42

This brief reading constitutes Jesus’ final words to his disciples before they embark on their mission of preaching, healing and casting out demons throughout Israel. Jesus impresses upon them the profound importance of their task. They are all of Jesus that many people will ever see. Acceptance of Jesus comes through acceptance of the disciples and their ministry. That is profoundly unsettling when one considers the degree to which the church persistently falls short of the community Jesus calls it to be. If the disciples had been exemplary saints with near superhuman goodness, we might despair of our own mission. But in all four of the gospels, we find disciples that mostly fail to comprehend the kingdom Jesus proclaims, mostly fail to be faithful precisely when faithfulness is critical and mostly fail to be the community united in love to which Jesus calls them. The church is at best a poor likeness of its Lord. Yet Jesus seems confident that his half-wit disciples will get it right. Ever so slightly more often than not, it seems they do.

The reading is also a reminder that the disciples’ mission depends upon the hospitality of those to whom they are sent. There is something beautiful about this arrangement. The mission of the disciples is not a one way transaction: “We are here to bring you the gospel. We are the helpers, you are the helped.” The disciples come to their audience with the most basic of needs; food and shelter. Just as they will call upon the villages to whom they have been sent to trust their proclamation of the kingdom and accept its gifts of healing and exorcism, so they must rely upon the kindness and generosity of their hearers. Naturally, then, the rewards of this mission also flow both ways. Not only are the disciples blessed, but also those who support them in their good work. Vs. 42.

This text is also a reminder to me of the hospitality I experience each day of my life. Every week between 25 and 40 people gather to listen to me talk. How many friends do you have who would put up with that? That people are willing to give us pastors an hour of their time to listen is already a huge act of hospitality. Moreover, I am surrounded by people who give of their time, their incomes and their prayers to ensure that the work I do goes on. After almost six years, these folks know my shortcomings, my flaws and my failures. Yet hardly a day goes by without a word of encouragement, a prayer for support or some random act of kindness. Yes, I know how difficult life in the church can be and I spoke about that last week. I know all about “clergy killers” and “alligators.” Some days we need to take more than our share of aggression. “Into each life some rain must fall.” But let’s not choke to death on the camel while trying to strain out the gnat. We preachers have received an enormous helping of hospitality from the people we serve. They are deserving of our thanks and recognition.

Sunday, June 22nd

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SECOND SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Jeremiah 20:7–13
Psalm 69:7–18
Romans 6:1b–11
Matthew 10:24–39

PRAYER OF THE DAY: Teach us, good Lord God, to serve you as you deserve, to give and not to count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds, to toil and not to seek for rest, to labor and not to ask for reward, except that of knowing that we do your will, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

Let’s be honest. Whether we are pastors, congregational leaders or merely solid members of the church, we have been wounded by the church at some point in our lives. Somebody has broken a confidence and shared information about us or a loved one that was not intended for public consumption. A particular group of people with an agenda has undermined our leadership by working behind the scenes fostering opposition to our plans and proposals. We have heard words of judgment, condemnation and criticism when we most needed a word of grace. We have been bullied and intimidated by alpha males who can find no other place than the church to prove their manhood. We have had to hear self-righteous church ladies’ scold us for the antics of our children during the service. So even though nobody has ever beaten me up and left me in the stocks overnight, I can sort of understand how Jeremiah felt when he uttered the prayer we find in our first reading for this coming Sunday.

Jeremiah does not pull any punches with his prayer. He lays it all on the line. He is mad as hell! He is angry with God for leading him into a ministry that has proved to be just one failure after another. He is angry with his congregation for its rejection of his preaching, its opposition to his mission and its violence against his person. He is ready to throw in the towel and call it quits-except that he can’t.

“If I were to say, ‘I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name, there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in and I cannot.”

Jeremiah 20:9. It seems Jeremiah simply can’t help himself. He has to preach.

The first bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Rev. Herbert Chilstrom, once told a group of college students considering pastoral ministry, “Don’t become a pastor unless you just can’t help it.” Jeremiah seems to fit that profile to a tee. He is captive to the word of the Lord. As much as he might like to abandon his calling (and who wouldn’t after spending a night in the stocks?) he cannot bring himself to do it. As bishops, pastors and church leaders of all kinds know, proclaiming the word of the Lord is sometimes a thankless task. You sometimes have to tell people things they would rather not hear. You can count on being misunderstood, misinterpreted and misrepresented. It goes with the territory. Discipleship is a risky business. Follow Jesus and you might lose a few friends. You might lose your job. You might get the crap beaten out of you. You might get nailed to a cross. A prophet who understands all of that, but still just can’t keep his/her mouth shut is the real deal.

Jeremiah 20:7–13

The Book of Jeremiah stands out from the other prophetic books in this respect, namely, that it presents us with a rough chronology of the prophet’s career and a deep look into his soul. In brief outline, Jeremiah received his call at the beginning of what turned out to be the twilight years of the Davidic kingdom in Judah. He was most likely born at some point during the reign of King Josiah from 640 B.C.E. to 609 B.C.E. Josiah presided over Judah’s brief return to independence and power. This revival took place shortly after the dominant Assyrian Empire experienced military setbacks causing it to lose its hold over Palestine. Under Josiah’s leadership, Judah seized this window of opportunity to reassert her power, not only over her original territory, but also throughout what had been the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Josiah, then, was presiding over a kingdom comparable to that of David and Solomon.

Like nature, geopolitics abhors a vacuum. Beginning in 609 B.C.E. events moved quickly for the nation of Judah. Josiah was killed when he attempted to block the Egyptian army from joining up with the remnant of Assyrian forces struggling against Babylonia, the new rising imperial star of the Near East. Evidently, he feared a resurgence of Judah’s old foe, Assyria, more than any threat Babylon might pose. Josiah’s son Jehoahaz succeeded him, but ruled only three months. The victorious Egyptians took Jehoahaz captive, brought him back to Egypt and placed his brother Jehoiakim on the throne as their vassal. As it turned out, Babylon, not Egypt or Assyria, would prove the greater danger for Judah. The Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar ultimately defeated the joint Egyptian and Assyrian forces at Carchemish ending Egyptian sovereignty over Palestine. Recognizing that discretion is the better part of valor (initially at least), Jehoiakim surrendered to the Babylonian force and became a puppet of that empire.

After three years of Babylonian vassalage, Jehoiakim (or his advisors) decided that Judah had had enough. He rebelled against the Babylonian empire. Perhaps he thought that his overlords were preoccupied with weightier matters and could not spare the military resources required to subjugate his small kingdom. He was wrong. The Babylonian response was quick and brutal. Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem and was on the point of crushing it when Jehoiakim died. His son, Jehoiachin, took the throne immediately thereafter and promptly surrendered himself to the Babylonians. Nebuchadnezzar took the king and his family as prisoners back to Babylon along with the king’s military leaders, his advisors and all the smiths and craftspeople in the land. He also removed everything of value from the temple in Jerusalem. Nevertheless, Nebuchadnezzar spared the city of Jerusalem and placed on the throne of David Jehoiachin’s uncle, Zedekiah, to govern the kingdom as Babylon’s vassal.

One might think that Zedekiah would have learned a thing or two from observing the rash actions of his brother and their dire consequences. But there was no learning curve for the house of David. Almost immediately Zedekiah began to plot with Egypt and other Palestinian nations against the reign of Babylon. His ill-fated rebellion ended in 587 B.C.E. during the eleventh year of his reign. The Babylonians besieged the city of Jerusalem. The king was captured when attempting to escape the city and flee to Egypt. After being forced to witness the execution of his sons, Zedekiah was blinded and taken prisoner to Babylon where he died. Jerusalem was sacked, the city walls broken down and the temple destroyed. Another substantial number of persons were taken prisoner and deported to Babylon.

It was during these tumultuous times that Jeremiah prophesied to his people. He had the unenviable job of proclaiming the end of Judah’s existence as the kingdom of David in the land of Canaan. Babylon was God’s agent of judgment and would prevail over Judah and Jerusalem. Resistance was not only futile, but constituted rebellion against the Lord. There would be no miraculous rescue this time. Like all prophets, Jeremiah carried a message of salvation and the promise of a new beginning. But salvation lay on the other side of judgment. There would be no way around exile. Jeremiah knew, though, that faith could find a way through it.

Scholars have debated the dating of Jeremiah’s call to prophesy, the timing of his oracles and utterances as well as the approximate date of his birth. Generally speaking, there remains a scholarly tradition that regards the early part of the Book of Jeremiah as coming from him and credits the narrative sections with being historically reliable-though commentators differ on the history they reflect! More recent biblical study pays more attention to the process of the book’s formation and assumes that the person of Jeremiah set forth therein is a literary product of post-exilic scribes piecing together preserved oracles, narrative traditions and anecdotes in ways meaningful to the post-exilic community. I am no more interested in the historical Jeremiah than I am in the so called “historical Jesus.” I tend to agree, however, with the observation of Walter Brueggemann that it is “probable that the person, memory, and impact of Jeremiah were so powerful and enduring that personal reality presided over and shaped the imaginative reconstruction.” Brueggemann, Walter, “The Book of Jeremiah,” Interpretation, Vol 37, #2, April 1983, pp. 131-132.

The prayer of Jeremiah found in our reading for Sunday has been labeled one of his many “confessions,” the others being Jeremiah 11:18-12:6; Jeremiah 15:10-21; and Jeremiah 17:12-18. This literary characterization is inaccurate and needlessly confusing. What we actually have here is a classic lament. Prayers of this type are found throughout the Psalms, e.g., Psalm 3; Psalm 4; Psalm 5; Psalm 22. The lament, as I have noted before, is not just a lot of “bitching and moaning.” It is a complaint made to God by God’s covenant partner, Israel. The Psalms are altogether unintelligible unless that covenant relationship is presupposed. It is precisely because God has made promises to Israel that Israel may be so bold as to demand that God keep those promises and even challenge God when it seems as though God has failed to live up to the terms of the covenant. This has nothing to do with the general and woefully tiresome whine, “How come God let’s bad things happen to good people?” To that puerile inquiry one could easily respond, “What obligation does God have to get involved with anyone’s individual woes?” But Israel is not just “anyone,” and God is not simply “the supreme being.” God is the one who liberated Israel from slavery and promised her a land, a people and a blessing. The lament arises not out of any foggy notion that God is somehow ethically obliged to reward good behavior and punish bad. It springs from the terms of a covenant under which God has agreed to be bound to this people Israel.

That said, we need to focus on Jeremiah’s call in which God promises, “I am with you to deliver you.” Jeremiah 1:8. In obedience to that call and in reliance upon God’s promise to deliver him, Jeremiah preached in the courts of Jerusalem’s temple the message of judgment he had been given. Jeremiah 19:14-15. If you were to read the verses immediately preceding our lesson, you would discover that Jeremiah received for his trouble a severe beating and a night in the stocks. Jeremiah 20:1-6. So now Jeremiah understandably wants to know where God’s promised deliverance was when he needed it! Like most of the laments found in the psalms, Jeremiah’s complaint is accompanied by affirmations of God’s faithfulness. In a strange way, the prophet’s complaint of abandonment and even betrayal reflect his confidence in God’s faithfulness. Jeremiah is convinced that his status as a covenant partner entitles him not only to a hearing, but ultimately to vindication. “In response to Yahweh’s questionable reliability, both the confessions and the biography show Jeremiah enacting a Joban steadfastness in which doubt and patience define one another and in which even the momentary wish for non-existence is but the dark coloration of the light of faith and unquenchable vocation.” Janzen, Gerald J., “Jeremiah 20:7-18,” Interpretation, Vol 37, #2, April 1983, p. 180.

Psalm 69:7–18

This is the second most frequently quoted psalm in the New Testament (the first being Psalm 22). Like the prayer of Jeremiah in our first lesson, this psalm is a lament in which the individual pours out his/her complaint and plea for deliverance to the Lord. It bears repeating that the context for such prayer is the intimate covenant relationship between Israel and her God which makes prayer possible.

It is impossible to determine the date and historical context of the psalm. Given that “zeal for [God’s] house” has consumed the psalmist (vs. 9), we might infer that it was composed prior to the temple’s destruction in 587 B.C.E. or after its reconstruction which began in 520 B.C.E. and was completed in 515 B.C.E. It seems just as likely to me, however, that composition took place during the period before construction began. We know that the first returning exiles faced opposition from the local peoples to their plans for reconstruction of the temple, that reconstruction was a long time in coming and that prophetic encouragement was required to get the job done. A person zealous in promoting the temple project might well have met with opposition from folks less committed to the task or merely preoccupied with survival. In any event, the hostility experienced by the psalmist appears to arise from his or her faithfulness to the temple as the place where God’s name dwells. This verse is quoted at John 2:17 to explain Jesus’ cleansing of the temple in Jerusalem.

The opposition faced by the psalmist is intense. “I am the talk of those who sit in the gate.” Vs. 12. This individual is the subject of cruel gossip and public ridicule. Even the drunks make fun of him/her. Hostility cuts deep into the psalmist’s immediate family relationships. Vs. 8. In a culture where one’s identity is bound up with family and clan, such abandonment amounts to an existential crisis. Who is a person when s/he is no longer part of the family that bore him/her, named him/her and serves to identify him/her to the community at large? Such a person has only the God who regards with tender care the orphan, the widow and the stranger. Only in Israel, where the most fragile and vulnerable are of special concern to the God of the covenant, could a prayer such as this be made with confidence.

“Answer me, O Lord.” Vs. 16. The most intolerable aspect of the psalmist’s suffering is that s/he has cried out incessantly to God, but God has not yet responded with deliverance. In desperation, the psalmist pleads, “Turn to me.” Vs. 16. This is reminiscent of days long ago when my son, then only two or three, used to grab my head and turn my face toward his when I was on the phone or otherwise engaged in conversation and he needed my immediate attention. So the psalmist pleads: “hide not thy face from thy servant.” Vs. 17. S/he desperately needs face time with God and s/he is not afraid to demand it!

“Redemption” is a technical word in Hebrew referring to one who redeems or restores property for another by payment of a debt or satisfaction of a lien. Rogerson, J.W. and McKay, J.W., Psalms 51-100, The Cambridge Bible Commentary (c. 1977 Cambridge University Press) p. 97. The plea “redeem me” might therefore be translated, “Do your duty by me.” Ibid. Again, the psalmist can make this bold demand only because of the intimate covenant relationship binding Israel to her God.

Romans 6:1b–11

I will be preaching regularly on the Romans texts that we will be encountering throughout the summer. Thus, a few introductory remarks are in order. Unlike Paul’s other letters, this one is not directed to a church that Paul founded or with which he had developed a pastoral relationship. From all we know, it seems clear that Paul has never visited the church in Rome. He does, however, appear to known many of the apostles, leaders and missionaries currently in Rome. What purpose, then, does Paul have for writing this letter? Some commentators suggest that he was simply writing the letter to introduce himself before coming in person. That, however, would seem to be unnecessary given the number of people well known to him already present and active in Rome. Others maintain that Paul’s intent was to generate support for his intended mission to Spain. There is some support for this view in Romans 15:24 and Romans 15:28. However, these two verses appear to me a slim reed upon which to divine Paul’s motives. Paul knew very well how to ask for money for his missions and he was not afraid to be blunt. E.g., I Corinthians 16:1-4. If this were a stewardship letter, I think it would be impossible to miss the point!

As I have said in prior posts, I believe that Paul’s primary concern is expressed in Romans 9-11. In that section, Paul discusses the destiny of Israel in God’s saving work through Jesus Christ. It is not Paul’s intent to discredit his people or their faith. Rather, he is making the argument that through Jesus the covenant promises formerly extended exclusively to Israel are now offered to the gentiles as well. Though some in Israel (most as it ultimately turned out) do not accept Jesus as messiah, it does not follow that God has rejected Israel. “For the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable.” Romans 11:29. Paul points out that Israel’s rejection of Jesus as Messiah has occasioned the inclusion of the gentiles into the covenant promises. “A hardening,” says Paul, “has come over part of Israel until the full number of the gentiles come in.” Romans 11:25. I must confess that I don’t quite understand how Israel’s rejection of Jesus as messiah makes it any easier for the gentiles to believe. Nevertheless, Paul sees some connection here and, in any event, Israel’s salvation (which is assured) is inextricably bound up with the salvation of the gentiles. According to Paul, Israel and the church are both essential players in God’s redemptive purpose for creation. I believe that Paul’s letter to the church in Rome was written to make that very point to a church in danger of splitting apart along a Jewish/gentile fault line.

Martin Luther says of Paul’s Letter to the Romans: “The sum and substance of this letter is: to pull down, to pluck up, and to destroy all wisdom and righteousness of the flesh (i.e., of whatever importance they may be in the sight of men and even in our own eyes), no matter how heartily and sincerely they may be practiced, and to affirm, establish, and make large the reality of sin (however unconscious we may be of its existence).” Luther, Martin, Lectures on Romans, The Library of Christian Classics (c. 1962 L. Jenkins, pub. The Westminster Press) p. 3. That certainly describes the way in which Paul begins his letter. In Romans 1 Paul lambasts the gentile culture of Rome for its gross immorality. In chapter two, we discover that this critique of the gentiles was but a sucker punch. The knockout blow comes in Romans 2:1 when Paul turns to his real audience, the Roman church, and says, “Therefore you have no excuse, O man, whoever you are, when you judge another; for in passing judgment upon him you condemn yourself, because you, the judge are doing the same things.” I suspect that the readers are remarking at this point, “You can’t be serious, Paul! We don’t take part in any of those horrid, immoral practices!”

Paul is serious, though, and he is setting the stage for his argument in the chapters to come that sin is far deeper, more complicated and pervasive than his readers imagine. He is out to demonstrate to them that their supposed righteousness and moral superiority over the gentile culture they excoriate is an illusion. Sin is not a matter of living up to moral standards. It is a matter of the human heart being so hopelessly turned in upon itself and away from God that it cannot possibly obey God. The good news of Jesus Christ is not about reforming sinners. It is about crucifying and raising them up as new people. That, I believe is the theological core of Paul’s letter.

In chapters 3-5 Paul argued that the believer in Jesus lives by faith rather than by human accomplishment through obedience to the law. Now Paul begins to speak of how the believer lives by faith. As he so often does, Paul begins with a rhetorical question: “Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?” Vs. 1. The question is a serious one as Lutherans like myself know well. Nothing has bedeviled us more than trying to explain how and why good works still matter even though they bring us no closer to God, cannot atone for sin and are so thoroughly contaminated by our selfish motives that they frequently bring about more evil than good. We have attempted to address this question under the rubric of “the priesthood of all believers.” In our tradition, all believers have a “calling” or “vocation.” For some of us, that calling is an ecclesiastical one. We are pastors, associates in ministry, church musicians, bishops, etc. For most of us, however, our callings are lived out in the secular world, though because the world is the arena of God’s action, we ought not to call it “secular.” God has two hands, the right hand being the church through which God brings sinners to saving faith in Jesus Christ. God’s left had works in the world through the orders of government, family and trade to ensure a semblance of order so that human life can thrive and the church can do its work. Therefore, if I am a pastor I must exercise my calling through attendance to preaching, the administration of the sacraments and pastoral care. If I am a lawyer, my calling is to represent my clients to the best of my ability so that the system of justice will function as effectively as it can be expected to do in a sinful world. If I am an engineer, I must use my skills to ensure that airplanes, elevators and ski lifts are well constructed and maintained for the good of all who use them. If I am an executioner, I must practice my craft with skill so that I do not botch things up as recently happened in Nebraska and wind up causing excessive pain for the people I kill.

In addition to ensuring that the reader is still awake, that last example was intended to bring into sharp relief a problem I have with our Lutheran view of the “priesthood of all believers.” It rests on the assumption that human institutions as we find them are ordained by God to achieve justice. To be sure, we do not claim that these institutions are perfect, but that is all the more reason for disciples of Jesus to engage with them. By our faithful participation in government, work and family, we become the leaven that raises the loaf. So goes the argument, but I am not convinced. As observed by Robert Brimlow:

“Of course, many of us believe the myth the churches help perpetuate that the common good will be advanced by our work as teachers, physicians, lawyers and managers. But the reality is that physicians need to spend more time answering to HMO’s and guarding costs than to patients’ needs. And lawyers need to increase their billable hours to 100 or 150 per week to cover office expenses and partners’ profits, leaving less time for family and community. And managers either worry about being downsized themselves or need to downsize others in a vicious game of productivity and survival. And teachers must adapt to increased class size, standardized curricula and standardized tests as a means of assessing their students and their own teaching effectiveness. And at the college and university level, more classes need to be taught to enable others to enter the professional ranks, as though the world really needs more plastic surgeons, corporate lawyers and professors of philosophy.” Brimlow, Robert, Paganism and the Professions, (c. 2002, The Ekklesia Project), p. 8.

It is difficult to see your job as a divine calling when deep inside you wonder whether that job is even necessary, whether it is not actually inflicting harm on people and whether the cost of advancing or even just hanging onto your job requires conduct altogether inconsistent with following Jesus. So far from being a transformative presence, disciples of Jesus are typically transformed by their work environments and their societal roles. The job, the school, the community dictate how time, money and attention are focused. Anyone involved in the church knows how hard we must struggle to extract time for worship, corporate prayer and instruction in discipleship from these competing interests. The understanding of the church as a community that empowers disciples to carry out their vocations in the world is another one of those ecclesiastical dogmas that sounds better in theory than it has ever worked out in practice.

Paul suggests a different answer to his question about how we should live by faith. He points out that we have been baptized into Christ’s death and so united with him. It is important that we do not lose sight of Paul’s understanding of the church as Christ’s Body. Baptism and incorporation into the church are one and the same thing. This text must be read with I Corinthians 12 in mind. To be united with Christ is to be grafted into a new community whose loyalty to Jesus transcends the ties of race, soil and blood. Even the sacred bonds of family are superseded by the unity of Christ’s Body. So far from being the cheerleader for individuals trying to live out their Christian faith by participation in a dehumanizing culture, the church constitutes an alternative culture, a radically different way of being human. The church is a community of persons of diverse backgrounds and formerly conflicting loyalties that have been renounced for the sake of loyalty to Christ. Paul will spell out specifically what this alternative lifestyle looks like in Romans 12-15. For our purposes today, it is enough to point out that Paul understands the church to be both the Body of Christ through which God is reconciling the world and the furnace in which sinners are transformed into saints by the work of the Holy Spirit. Church is not some place you go to be rejuvenated for the more important tasks that lie ahead on Monday. The church is what you are 24/7. That assertion raises questions too numerous and complex to tackle on a single post!

Matthew 10:24–39

These uncompromising words of Jesus complement the reading from Romans by spelling out the consequences likely to occur for those united in Christ’s death by baptism. The context is Jesus’ commissioning of the Twelve Disciples to proclaim the nearness of the Kingdom of Heaven. Matthew 10:5-15. A disciple is not above his Master and so the Twelve can anticipate rejection, opposition and persecution. Their activity will generate hostility within their own families such that the disciple’s most ardent foes will be members of his/her own household. Loyalty to Jesus and the kingdom he proclaims must take precedence over the closest and most intimate national, social and family ties. In the Kingdom of Heaven, water is thicker than blood. Baptism is what finally defines who we are and who is our family.

“A disciple is not above his teacher.” Vs. 24. Literally translated, a disciple (mathatas) is “one who learns.” But merely hearing Jesus’ teach as he did in the synagogues would not in itself amount to discipleship as understood by Matthew. The word generally points to an allegiance to a particular teacher and involves following, living with and sharing the pattern of life practiced by the teacher. Nolland, John, The Gospel of Matthew, The New International Greek Testament Commentary, (c. 2005 by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.) p. 191. Thus, the disciple must be prepared to share the adversities and hardships that accompany the teacher’s way of life. For disciples of Jesus, this means embracing the cross. So too, because Jesus is the church’s only “teacher” (Matthew 23:8) and because that teacher is with the church “to the close of the age” (Matthew 28:20), discipleship remains a matter of following Jesus. It is never a simply a matter of absorbing knowledge, but rather a lifetime of practicing the art of obedience to Jesus in communities where “little faith” becomes mature faith through mutual accountability and mutual forgiveness.

Just as Jesus’ works are attributed to “Beelzeboul,” so also the mission of the disciples will be discredited. The word “Beelzeboul” is a transliteration into Greek of the name for a Canaanite god, meaning “Baal, the Prince.” Over time the term became synonymous with “Satan.” Identification of your adversary with a symbol of evil is a cheap and easy way to discredit him or her without having to deal seriously with the adversary’s arguments. How often haven’t we heard politicians of all persuasions compare their opponents to Hitler? The inflammatory power unleashed by invocation of what we all know to be sheer evil is intended to distract the audience from the weakness and incoherence of the speaker’s own position. At least that is the theory. I suspect Jesus’ opponents had similar intentions when they asserted that “He casts out demons by the prince of demons.” Matthew 9:34.

“And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” Vs. 28. The word “soul” is the English word used for the Greek word “psyche.” While there probably is no better word than “soul” available in our language, it is nevertheless misleading given all the baggage that comes along with it. Judaism in Jesus’ day knew nothing of a disembodied soul. The soul is more the essence of the whole person than an ontologically separable component of that person. Ibid, p. 436. Thus, the point is not that the soul somehow survives death, but that God has control of the whole person, body and soul, even beyond the grave. The message is one of comfort, not threat. For Jesus goes on to assure his disciples that the God who knows the fate of each sparrow also knows and values each of them intimately. Vs. 31.

‘Geehnna” is the Greek word translated as “hell” or “hades” in our English bibles. It is actually a transliteration into Greek from the Hebrew proper name, “Geh Hin·nom” or “Valley of Hinnom,” This was a ravine located south west of Jerusalem. According to the Hebrew Scriptures, the Judean Kings, Ahaz and Manasseh, offered human sacrifices there. II Chronicles 28:1-3; II Chronicles 33:1-6. The prophet Jeremiah warned that this valley would become a burial place for corpses left from the catastrophic judgment God was soon to bring upon Jerusalem and Judah. Jeremiah 7:31-35. The term is therefore more properly understood as a figure of speech than reference to an actual place.

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Vs. 34. This is a verse no Sunday School kid was ever forced to memorize. I doubt you will ever see it embroidered on any wall hanging. I have never seen it on a bumper sticker or refrigerator magnet. What follows is even more problematic, particularly for those who look to Jesus as the defender of “family values.” “For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s foes will be those of his own household.” Vs. 35. So much for “family values.” Once again, family is defined not by ties of blood but through union with Jesus, a union that might well fragment all other ties.

This is a difficult text for us mainline churches who have always assumed that our job was to fortify societal bonds, strengthen the community and shore up social institutions like marriage, the so called traditional family and the PTA. Subconsciously or consciously, we are still trying to play that role. But our problem is that the world has now figured out that it can stand up just fine without our support. We have been downsized, laid off, pink slipped, informed that our services are no longer required. Yet like the fired middle manager in a state of denial, we continue leaving the house each day, briefcase in hand, only to be repeatedly bewildered when we arrive at the office and discover that we no longer have a cubicle, or assignments waiting for us or a parking space in the garage. We mainliners have been sidelined.

We can react to this crisis by continuing to show up at the office, hanging around the water cooler attempting to fit in, trying to look useful, hoping against hope that the boss will find some reason to re-hire us. That often appears to be the mainline strategy-if you can call it that. Or we can recognize that getting fired was probably the best thing that could have happened to the church. The old job of propping up civilization’s moral underpinnings stank and we were never good at it anyway. So let’s re-think what it means to be “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people.” I Peter 2:9. If we allowed our baptism to shape our vocations rather than attempting vainly to fit our baptismal identity into the functions defined for us by society, I suspect that there might soon be a lot of unemployed believers. I anticipate that this might well generate a good deal of strife and tension within families as the resulting impact on accustomed lifestyles begins to make itself felt. When we begin to make known in concrete ways to our neighbors that loyalty to our baptized sisters and brothers in nations hostile to the U.S. takes precedence over the loyalty of American citizenship, I don’t doubt that the persecution of which Jesus speaks will cease to be figment only of our past heritage. Martyrdom might once again become the norm rather than the exception for believers and so also the joy and excitement that come with being a witness to the dawn of a new age. Being church is a lot harder than merely going to church, but it’s also a lot more fun.

Sunday, April 13th

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SUNDAY OF THE PASSION/PALM SUNDAY

Isaiah 50:4-9a
Psalm 31:9-16
Philippians 2:5-11
Matthew 26:14—27:66

PRAYER OF THE DAY: Everlasting God, in your endless love for the human race you sent our Lord Jesus Christ to take on our nature and to suffer death on the cross. In your mercy enable us to share in his obedience to your will and in the glorious victory of his resurrection, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

How can the crowds that cheered Jesus and acclaimed him their Messiah on Palm Sunday be crying out for his death by the end of the week? That is the Holy Week question that has always haunted me. Biblical scholars resorting to historical critical methods have sought in various ways to explain this difficulty away. One such explanation is that there were two crowds, each made up of altogether different groups. The crowd agitating for Jesus death was a discrete and much smaller group brought together by the temple authorities to influence Pilate. The general public, “the people,” were always on the side of Jesus. That might all be plausible, but we don’t send people to prison on the basis of plausible evidence and we shouldn’t re-write the scriptures on such flimsy speculation either. However sensible and appealing this speculative version of events might be, it is not how the gospels tell the story. Faithfulness requires that we struggle with the imponderables rather than attempting to explain them away.

In Matthew’s gospel, the “crowds” (Greek “oxoloi”) are a distinct character along with the disciples, the Pharisees, the Chief Priests and Pilate. They are present at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Matthew 4:25. They are astonished at his teaching, recognizing in him the voice of authority. Matthew 7:28-29. The crowds follow Jesus throughout his Galilean ministry. Matthew 8:1; Matthew 8:18; Matthew 9:33; Matthew 12:23; Matthew 13:2; Matthew 14:13; Matthew 15:10; Matthew 17:14; Matthew 19:1-2; and Matthew 20:29. The crowds are present as Jesus enters Jerusalem on Palm Sunday cheering him as the “Son of David” and spreading their clothing in his path. Matthew 21:6-11. Throughout his teaching in the temple of Jerusalem, the crowds form a kind of “human shield” about Jesus preventing the authorities from arresting him. Matthew 22:45-46. They continue to be astonished at his teaching. Matthew 22:33. Jesus’ last address to the crowds in the gospel of Matthew is a vitriolic denunciation of the oppressive religious leadership and a challenge for his disciples to live out their faith in service and humility.

When next the crowds appear, it is with the officers of the Chief Priests who come to arrest Jesus. Matthew 26:47. Jesus confronts both the officers and the crowds concerning their perceived need to employ violence against him. They have been listening to him teach them in the temple for days, but took no action. Why here? Why now? Matthew 26:55. The crowds are absent throughout Jesus’ trial before the religious authorities, but reappear again after Jesus’ hearing with Pilate. Pilate, hoping that Jesus will prove more popular than the notorious Barabbas, offers him to the crowds as a candidate for amnesty. Matthew 27:15-18. But the Chief Priests have been busy lobbying for Barabbas who ultimately becomes “the people’s choice.” Matthew 27:21. The crowds will have Jesus crucified and his blood upon them and their descendants. Matthew 27:24-25.

We must be mindful about the danger of anti-Semitism here. We cannot use the term “crowds” interchangeably with “Jews.” Though the crowds in Matthew’s gospel were obviously made up of Jews, so also were the twelve disciples, to say nothing of Jesus himself. The crowds are no different from any other character in the gospel. They are amazed and overawed by Jesus. They are puzzled and confused by Jesus. Ultimately, they are disappointed with Jesus and, like his disciples, abandon him to his death. The crowds, as I said, constitute a unique character and actor in the gospel. Their hopes, their expectations, their faith and fickleness have much to teach us.

We know from our own experience that crowds have short memories. They sweep new leaders into power hoping for a better life. But if these new leaders cannot deliver bread and butter results in a timely fashion, the horrors of the old regime are fast forgotten and the crowds are back out in the street, perhaps even calling for the return of their former leaders. Crowds are not very good at thinking things through, particularly when they are angry. An angry mob believes somebody is to blame for its discontent and that somebody has to pay. Mob anger needs a scapegoat, and just about any target will do, whether it be Jews, immigrants, racial minorities or sexual minorities. Crowds are capable of unspeakable crimes that their individual members probably would not commit on their own. Lynching, looting, rioting and gang violence all occur when crowds are whipped up into a frenzy of anger and given a target for that anger.

There was plenty of anger and a lot of fear around in 1st Century Palestine. Jesus’ enemies knew how to exploit it and they did. We don’t have the benefit of knowing exactly what the Chief Priests said to turn the crowds against Jesus. But I am guessing they used the same time honored tactics that demagogues always use. “Jesus is undermining public morals and ‘family values.’ Jesus is spreading false doctrine and undermining our traditional faith. Jesus is corrupting the young and impressionable. Jesus is associated with a known domestic terrorist (Simon the Zealot). Jesus keeps company with people of questionable morals (“sinful” woman). Jesus is an affront to God’s moral order and that is why we have bloody clashes with Rome; that is why towers fall on people and why we have blindness and sickness among us. God is punishing us for tolerating the likes of Jesus and his degenerate teachings!”

There is nothing mysterious in the crowd’s change of mood between Palm Sunday and Good Friday. It’s what crowds do. Paul reminds us in our second lesson for Sunday that followers of Jesus are not a crowd. We are members of a Body guided by the “mind of Christ.” One of the “ways of sin that draw us from God” denounced in our baptismal vows is the pull of the crowd. We dare not let the voices of nationalistic fervor; the righteous indignation of public opinion or the mob instinct for scapegoating shout down the voice of Jesus. So the next time you hear public outcries against anyone, whether s/he be a defendant in a high profile criminal case; an illegal immigrant; or a member of a racial, sexual or religious minority; remember that we worship a messiah who was the victim of mob violence. Remember that the more we are shaped by the rage of the crowd, the more we are drawn away from the transforming power of Jesus.

Isaiah 50:4-9a

This reading is taken from the second section of the Book of Isaiah (Isaiah 40-55) authored in the main by an anonymous prophet speaking a message of salvation to the Jewish exiles living in Babylon during the 6th Century B.C.E. His was the task of alerting his fellow exiles to the new opportunity created for them to return home to Palestine opened up by Persia’s conquest of Babylon. On the one hand, the prophet makes a joyous declaration of salvation for Israel and announces the potential for a new start. On the other hand, the prophet makes clear that God is doing with Israel something entirely new. This will not be a return to “the good old days” when Israel was a powerful and independent people under the descendants of David. That, according to the prophet, “is too light a thing” for the people of God. Israel and the servant prophet are to be given “as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” Isaiah 49:6. For more specifics on the Book of Isaiah generally, See Summary Article by Fred Gaiser, Professor of Old Testament, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN.

Sunday’s reading is a passage from the third of Isaiah’s four “servant songs.” The other three are found at Isaiah 42:1–9, Isaiah 49:1-6 and Isaiah 52:13-53:12. According to biblical commentator Claus Westermann, these songs represent a special strand within section two of Isaiah. Westermann, Claus, Isaiah 40-66, The Old Testament Library (c. SCM Press, Ltd. 1969) p.  92. Scholars hold differing views on the identity of the “servant” in these songs. Some view the servant as an individual, perhaps the prophet him/herself. Others maintain that the servant is the people of Israel whose covenant life in the restored Jerusalem will enlighten the nations. Christians from very early on have seen reflected in these verses the ministry of Jesus. It seems to me that all of these interpretations are valid in some measure. Clearly, the prophet himself/herself understood that s/he was announcing an act of God that would be revelatory for all peoples. So too Israel always had an awareness that her existence was in part a demonstration of God’s glory to the world though, like the church, she tended to forget that aspect of her calling at times. The church likewise confessed from the outset that Jesus’ lordship was defined in terms of the hopes and expectations set forth in the Hebrew Scriptures. Just as the faithful service of the prophet was a model for Israel’s servant role among the nations, so the church is a continuation of Jesus’ faithful ministry. In sum, these differing interpretations enrich rather than contradict one another.

Though tidings of a new beginning might at first blush sound like good news, it is likely that many of the exiles did not hear it that way. Life in cosmopolitan Babylon may not have seemed much like captivity to the second generation of Jews who had purchased land, begun businesses or secured important posts in the Babylonian government. Giving up the security of a settled existence for a dangerous trip back to a ruined land must have seemed like madness to them. No doubt they resented and perhaps feared this prophet whose preaching enticed members of the community away from their homes and families to embark on such a misguided adventure. Not surprisingly, the prophet met with resistance that included violence (smiting, spitting and pulling out the beard). Vs. 6. The prophet is undismayed by this abuse, confident that his commission is from the God of Israel. Vss. 7-9.

Westermann notes that “[t]he special characteristic of the prophetic office is the very fact that the prophet wakens his ear ‘morning by morning,’ and must continually allow it to be opened by God, in order to have ‘an answer to give to the weary.’” Ibid. p. 229. Perhaps this is what John the evangelist had in mind when he quotes Jesus as saying: “My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me.” John 7:16. The incarnation, then, fuses the prophet and the Word as one. Not surprisingly, then, the rejection of that Word by a sinful world, as occurred most definitively in the passion narrative, takes the form of lethal violence.

Westermann believes these passages from Isaiah to be “truly revolutionary in their importance” because they express the servant’s acceptance of his/her persecution as an affliction intended by God as the fulfillment of his/her prophetic mission. Ibid. p. 231. Though the psalmists and the prophets, most notably Jeremiah, struggle with seemingly unmerited persecution which they hope to see redressed through retribution of some kind, the servant seeks not retribution but vindication. Israel’s final salvation, not her just punishment, will demonstrate that the servant’s suffering is not evidence of God’s rejection, but of the prophet’s faithfulness.

I agree with Westermann’s reading of this text, though I am not convinced that it is quite as revolutionary as he supposes. While the prophets could be caustic in their prayers for retribution against their enemies and unsparing in their proclamations of judgment, they never lost sight of their solidarity with Israel. Even the socially ostracized Jeremiah could weep bitterly over the fate of his people-however justly deserved it might be. Jeremiah 9:1. Isaiah recognizes that he is “a man of unclean lips, and dwells in the midst of a people of unclean lips.” Isaiah 6:5. As withering as Amos’ judgments against Israel were, he prayed fervently that the people might be spared the worst of God’s wrath. Amos 7:1-6. In sum, the prophets always understood God’s judgment as an instrument of healing and salvation. Similarly, they must have understood at some level that their persecutions were part and parcel of their callings.

These observations tie naturally into the passion narrative that will occupy center stage this coming Sunday. The persecuted and rejected prophetic word, now become flesh, is vindicated and triumphs not through an act of counter-violence, but through God’s patient determination to keep on speaking the gracious invitation to forgiveness, reconciliation and peace in the face of that rejection. God’s power is God’s patience.

Psalm 31:9-16

This is a psalm of lament, one of the most common types found in the Psalter. As noted in last week’s post, the essential elements of its type are:

  1. Initial Appeal to Yahweh, vss. 1-2.
  2. Portrayal of inward distress, vss. 3-4
  3. Expression of confidence, vss. 5-6
  4. Witness of praise to the community, vss. 7-8.

See Anderson, Bernard W., Out of the Depths, The Psalms Speak for us Today, (c. 1983 by Bernard W. Anderson, pub. by The Westminster Press) p. 97. If some elements are missing in this week’s reading, it is because the lectionary has truncated the psalm, probably in the interest of fitting the readings onto the commercially prescribed bulletin inserts. Moreover, the psalms are prayers formed in the furnace of human experience. As such, they do not always fit neatly into the scholarly categories of literary forms floating about like Platonic prototypes in the scholastic ether. In any event, it is puzzling to me that the lectionary did not begin the reading early enough at least to incorporate verse 5, “Into thy hand I commit my spirit.” Psalm 31:5. That would have been a good tie in to the passion narrative, albeit John’s rather than Matthew’s.

Verses 9-13 are particularly striking. The psalmist complains that he is surrounded by enemies, people who whisper behind his back and seek his destruction. We might wonder about the mental health of someone who makes such complaints. Folks who imagine that the world is conspiring against them generally overrate their importance and exaggerate the hostility of those around them. I was recently asked by a traveling companion who noticed my Ezee Pass, “Doesn’t it bother you that the government knows where you are going and when?” I don’t remember what my precise response was, but the truth is I would be flattered to learn that the government or anyone else deemed my little life important enough to merit observation.

That being said, we all tend to be a little paranoid when we are feeling sick, weak and vulnerable. The aged and infirm naturally fear well-meaning relatives and friends who take it upon themselves to make important decisions for them without their input. When rumors of layoffs begin to make their way through the workplace it is natural to look for indications in the way people talk to you and act around you suggesting that you might be on the “to go” list. When something deeply hurtful, deeply personal and deeply embarrassing occurs in your life, it is not unusual to begin wondering whether the person you are speaking with knows all about it and what he or she might be thinking. Whether real or imagined, human malice is an experienced reality and one that the psalmist rightly lays before the Lord.

In addition to the affronts of his enemies, the psalmist is clearly disappointed in the friends s/he feels have deserted him or her. Vs. 12. Again, this desertion may or may not actually be real or malicious. When we are hurting, human companionship alone seldom fulfils all of our needs. We are all aware that there are some people who feel neglected and slighted no matter how often you visit or call. As important as friendship is and as valuable as it can be in difficult times, it is no substitute for faith in God’s promises. Perhaps it is because we lean too heavily on our human relationships, looking to them for the healing only God can offer, that they fail us. Marriages, friendships and family simply collapse under the weight of our unrealistic expectations. Again, the psalmist quite properly turns his or her hope toward God, the one companion whose promises never fail. When that adjustment is made, a return to healthy human companionship is again possible.

Philippians 2:5-11

There is near scholarly consensus that Paul is citing in this passage an ancient Christian hymn of Palestinian origins possibly alluding to the “servant” figure form Second Isaiah discussed under the heading of our first lesson. It fits perfectly Paul’s articulation of his theology of the cross in I Corinthians 1:18-4:20 and his discussion of the church as the Body of Christ in I Corinthians 12:1-14:40. As the “Body of Christ,” the church must have the “mind of Christ.” Vs. 5. So far from aspiring to godhood (the sin of Adam and Eve), Jesus willingly took the form of a servant, living joyfully, trustingly and obediently within the limits of his humanity. Vss. 6-9. The Greek word for “servant” (doulos) is literally translated “slave.” It is the word Jesus used when he told his disciples that the greatest among them must be the servant/slave of all. Mark 10:44.

In a sinful world, a life so lived draws hostility and hatred. Jesus’ death on the cross was therefore the expected outcome of his obedient life. It is in precisely this sense that Jesus’ death was necessary. To put it in the most cynical way, “that’s what happens to nice guys.” But such cynicism is silenced by God’s resurrection of Jesus from death. Vs. 9. The upside down kingdom for which Jesus lived and died is real. The powers that put him to death are transitory and doomed to pass away. It is to Jesus, not to Caesar or any other nation or flag that all the universe will one day kneel. Vss 10-11. Disciples are called to live in the certain knowledge of that reality now.

Matthew 26:14—27:66

There is far more material in Matthew’s passion narrative than I can hope to consider in this post. Furthermore, I am not sure scrutinizing the text is at all helpful here. I do not believe I have ever attempted to preach on the passion itself. After hearing it read, silence seems to be the only natural and appropriate response. Instead of reading commentaries, I believe the best preparation for the Sunday of the Passion is to set aside a few hours and listen to J.S. Bach’s Saint Matthew’s Passion. That said, a few things about Matthew’s passion narrative are noteworthy. Of particular interest are those episodes unique to Matthew’s version of Jesus’ arrest, trial and crucifixion.

Matthew alone tells us that Judas, after realizing that his betrayal of Jesus will end in Jesus’ crucifixion, regrets his treachery. Matthew alone tells us that Judas returned his ill-gotten silver and subsequently committed suicide. Matthew 27:3-10. Mark and John tell us nothing of Judas after his act of betrayal. Luke refers to Judas’ death only in an obscure passage from Acts. Acts 1:18-19. Wherever Matthew obtained this information, it fits nicely into the “fulfillment of prophesy” theme running through his gospel. Matthew has referred to Judas on several occasions as a “paradidous” or “one who hands over” or “betrayer” according to the RSV. See Matthew 10:4; Matthew 26:25; Matthew 26:46 and Matthew 26:48. Now Judas takes that name upon his own lips and so labels himself. “I have sinned in ‘betraying’ innocent blood.” Matthew 27:4.

The chief priests initially refuse to accept the money but obviously cannot return it to Judas once he is dead. Because the funds constitute “blood money,” they are unfit for the temple’s general treasury. Scholars debate the scriptural origin of this supposed prohibition. Some believe it to have been a rabbinic interpretation of Deuteronomy 23:18 forbidding payment of a vow by any Israelite from the wages of a prostitute. This seems a stretch to me. Judas was not seeking to pay any religious obligation when he returned the thirty pieces of silver, nor were the priests who received it. Moreover, the wages of a prostitute do not involve the shedding of blood. Finally, there is no actual rabbinic interpretation of this text that comes close to a specific prohibition against the receipt of blood monies. Others have focused on I Chronicles 22:8-9 in which the Lord forbids David from constructing the temple in Jerusalem because he has “shed much blood and…waged great wars.” While a rabbinic gloss on this text extending the prohibition against David’s construction of the temple to the deposit of blood money into the treasury is logical, it likewise lacks support in any known rabbinic literature.

Whatever may be the case with respect to laws governing deposits into the temple treasury, Matthew employs this episode to demonstrate once again that what happens to Jesus fulfills the scriptures. His citation to Jeremiah appears to be a conflation of three texts: Zechariah 11:12-13; Jeremiah 18:1-3; Jeremiah 32:6-13. Perhaps the more significant of these is the third. Jeremiah relates how God instructed him to purchase a field from his uncle at the height of the siege of Jerusalem by the Babylonian army. This was obviously a foolish short term investment, given that all the land would soon be under the control of Babylon and the people deported. But the prophet is not thinking short term. He looks to the day when the land will again be re-inhabited by his people and at peace. This seemingly senseless business transaction reflects the prophet’s faith in God’s promise to bring Israel back from exile and restore to her the land of promise. In reverse literary symmetry, the chief priests conduct what seems to them an imminently practical transaction that turns out to be the prophetic fulfillment of Jesus’ messianic destiny.

The other episode unique to Matthew’s passion narrative occurs in Matthew 27:51-52. Immediately following Jesus’ death on the cross, the curtain of the temple is torn in two from top to bottom. Vs. 51. In this much, Matthew is consistent with Mark (Mark 15:38) and Luke (Luke 23:45). But Matthew goes on to describe a great earthquake that opened up the tombs housing many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep, but were raised and entered Jerusalem following Jesus’ resurrection. Matthew 27:51-53. Eduard Schweizer believes that a textual corruption or inept editing is responsible for the testimony that the resurrected saints were not seen in Jerusalem until after Jesus’ resurrection. Schweizer, Eduard, The Good News According to Matthew, (c. 1975, John Knox Press) p. 516. He maintains that the narrative makes sense only if we understand the appearance of the saints to have taken place on the day of Jesus’ death.

I will admit that the text as it stands makes for an awkward sequence of events in the passion story. Moreover, if the appearance of the saints did take place after Jesus’ resurrection, it would fit more naturally into the resurrection account in Matthew 28. Still and all, I am not thoroughly convinced. Jewish belief in the resurrection (among those who did so believe) understood that resurrection to be a general one. All the dead would be raised and judged together. See Daniel 12:1-3. There was no understanding, so far as I know, of individuals being resurrected (as opposed to simply being raised like Lazarus in last week’s gospel). Consequently, Jesus’ resurrection could only be understood in Jewish thought as the first fruits of the general resurrection. That is clearly how Saint Paul understands the resurrection. (See I Corinthians 15). The appearance of the departed saints (“righteous ones” or “Zadiq” in Hebrew) at the time of Jesus’ rising therefore substantiates Jesus’ resurrection as the resurrection.

If you are hell bent on preaching the passion, these are two sections you might consider focusing on. Still, my advice remains: Don’t do it. The passion preaches itself. Let the story be told. Let the mysteries, the imponderables and the questions hang in the air. The Son of God has uttered his last words. What can we possibly add?