Tag Archives: Psalms

Sunday, May 29th

May 24, 2016UncategorizedBabylonian Exile, Bible, Church, Covenant, David, faith, Galatians, gay and lesbian, gospel, Holy Spirit, idolatry, Jerusalem, Jerusalem Temple, Lectionary, Luke, Psalms, Religion, Saint Paul, Sunday Lessons, Templerevolsen

Second Sunday after Pentecost

1 Kings 8:22-23, 41-43
Psalm 96:1-9
Galatians 1:1-12
Luke 7:1-10

Prayer of the Day: Merciful Lord God, we do not presume to come before you trusting in our own righteousness, but in your great and abundant mercies. Revive our faith, we pray; heal our bodies, and mend our communities, that we may evermore dwell in your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

The story of the Temple’s dedication under Solomon seems out of sync with where we are today as mainline American Christians. For the most part, we are no longer in the business of erecting temples with spires disappearing into the heavens. We don’t build sanctuaries with towering stain glass murals or high altars bearing brass candle sticks at the top of marble staircases. Most of our temples from prior years are in a sad state of disrepair. Standing as they often do at the center of metropolitan life, they are melancholy reminders of bygone days when church councils were dominated by powerful political leaders and captains of industry. Though the names of wealthy donors’ still adorn heavy oak pews, sterling silver communion ware and ornately designed baptismal fonts within the walls of these aging sanctuaries, the peeling paint, faded linens and worn carpets illuminate their current financial distress. Most of these churches house a fraction of the worshipers that once filled their pews several times each Sunday in the heyday of protestant cultural dominance. More and more of these fine old houses of worship are being taken over by museums, acting companies and orchestral groups. In the present age, our church is desperately seeking gracefully to divest itself of these capital draining structures to feed its ailing and equally antiquated institutions with the proceeds.

Though we may not be erecting temples anymore, I am not sure we have gotten over our fixation on the ones we still have. I have observed that congregations finding themselves in financial difficulty will reduce their pastoral ministry to part time, let their musicians go and cut back on their programing to remain viable. But they will not fold until they reach the point at which they can no longer maintain their building. As goes the building, so goes the church. The remarkable thing about Israel is that, unlike so many of our protestant congregations, it survived the destruction of its temple. During their exile in Babylon, the people of Israel learned that they could still be God’s faithful covenant community without the line of Davidic kings, without the promised land and without the temple. Ironically, it was during this very period of exile that Israel finally began to understand herself as a people elected, not for special privilege, but as a servant people whose faithful life under covenant with her God brings light to the nations “in order that all the peoples of the earth my know [God’s] name and fear [God] as do [God’s] people Israel.” I Kings 8:43.

Maybe we American mainliners are finally in a position to discover that we can be the church faithfully without the support of the dominant culture, without powerful people in high places and without the support of wealthy donors. Maybe we are about to learn that our buildings, institutions and traditions are not as essential as we always assumed. Perhaps we will learn once again that the only material things a church ever needs are a Bible, a little water, a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine. A community so constituted would provide a salutary witness to this nation whose economy runs on unsustainable consumer greed and whose moral, social and economic infrastructure is itself in decline. God does not need temples to house God’s name, but only two or three gathered in Jesus’ name. It may just be that a chastened, humbled and broken church will once again become God’s lamp shining through the darkness of a dying empire to a better hope.

Here’s a poem by Richard Hugo about life in a declining city. If you listen carefully, you will discover that the church remains a part-and, let us pray, a hopeful part-of this landscape of decay.

Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg

You might come here Sunday on a whim.
Say your life broke down. The last good kiss
you had was years ago. You walk these streets
laid out by the insane, past hotels
that didn’t last, bars that did, the tortured try
of local drivers to accelerate their lives.
Only churches are kept up. The jail
turned 70 this year. The only prisoner
is always in, not knowing what he’s done.

The principal supporting business now
is rage. Hatred of the various grays
the mountain sends, hatred of the mill,
The Silver Bill repeal, the best liked girls
who leave each year for Butte. One good
restaurant and bars can’t wipe the boredom out.
The 1907 boom, eight going silver mines,
a dance floor built on springs—
all memory resolves itself in gaze,
in panoramic green you know the cattle eat
or two stacks high above the town,
two dead kilns, the huge mill in collapse
for fifty years that won’t fall finally down.

Isn’t this your life? That ancient kiss
still burning out your eyes? Isn’t this defeat
so accurate, the church bell simply seems
a pure announcement: ring and no one comes?
Don’t empty houses ring? Are magnesium
and scorn sufficient to support a town,
not just Philipsburg, but towns
of towering blondes, good jazz and booze
the world will never let you have
until the town you came from dies inside?

Say no to yourself. The old man, twenty
when the jail was built, still laughs
although his lips collapse. Someday soon,
he says, I’ll go to sleep and not wake up.
You tell him no. You’re talking to yourself.
The car that brought you here still runs.
The money you buy lunch with,
no matter where it’s mined, is silver
and the girl who serves your food
is slender and her red hair lights the wall.

Source: Making Certain It Goes On: The Collected Poems of Richard Hugo (c. 1984 by W. W. Norton and Company Inc.) Richard Hugo, 1923-1982, was born Richard Hogan in Seattle, Washington. He was raised by his mother’s parents after his father left the family. In 1942 he changed his name to Richard Hugo, taking his stepfather’s surname. He served in World War II as a bombardier in the Mediterranean. He left the service in 1945 after flying 35 combat missions and reaching the rank of first lieutenant. Hugo received his B.A. in 1948 and his M.A. in 1952 in Creative Writing from the University of Washington. His poems evoke a powerful sense of place, addressing universal existential themes he finds inherent in the minute details of particular locals. You can read more about Richard Hugo and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

1 Kings 8:22-23, 41-43

First, an introductory note on the Book of I Kings (which originally was joined with II Kings in a single volume). This book is the product of several sources that are now lost to us. These include the Book of the Chronicles of King Solomon (I Kings 11:41); the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel (I Kings 14:19); the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah (I Kings 14:29); stories of kings and prophets; and Temple archives. Material from these sources has been woven into a narrative framework by two authors/editors. The first author takes the story to the death of King Josiah in 609 B.C.E. The second author wrote about 550 B.C.E. during the Babylonian Exile. S/he continues the story up to the final defeat and destruction of Judah by the Babylonians, adding his or her own editorial amendments to the earlier sections of the book.

This reading for this Sunday contains segments from the prayer of King Solomon at the dedication of the Temple. Verses 41-43 were probably editorial touches added by the second author who wrote during the Exile. Solomon’s reference to persons from far countries coming to worship in Jerusalem because “they shall hear of thy great name, and thy mighty hand, and of thy outstretched arm…” reflects the influence of exilic prophets like Second Isaiah. Isaiah 40-55. It is perhaps the inspiration for the post exilic Third Isaiah’s (Isaiah 56-66) declaration that God will bring faithful foreigners into Zion to minister in what will become “a house of prayer for all peoples.” Isaiah 56:7. This, in turn, was likely the basis for Jesus’ rebuke at the cleansing of the Temple in the Gospel of Mark: “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations.’” Mark 11:17.

These biblical strains represent a remarkable openness to inclusion of the nations within the blessings of covenantal life enjoyed by Israel. They stand in contrast to and in creative tension with those texts calling upon Israel to separate and distinguish herself from the surrounding cultures. Both biblical admonitions are essential. Israel is called to be a different and distinct sort of people precisely because she is to represent God’s alternative to the destructive and violent ways of the other nations. For that reason, Israel must retain her essential character shaped by her covenantal relationship with her God. She is to embody God’s invitation to a better way. This challenge is echoed in St. Paul’s admonition to the church at Rome: “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Romans 12:2.

Psalm 96:1-9

This psalm is included as part of a hymn commissioned by David to celebrate the entry of the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem, his newly established capital. (See I Chronicles 16:23-33) Scholars do not agree on whether this psalm was composed originally for this occasion. The psalm bears some resemblance to enthronement liturgies used to celebrate the crowning of a new Judean king. As I Chronicles was composed rather late in Israel’s history (after the Exile), it is likely that its author appropriated this psalm into his/her work. Of course, it is also possible that the psalm did in fact have its origin in the annual commemoration of the Ark’s arrival in Jerusalem so that the author of I Chronicles was simply placing the psalm back into its historical context. In either case, the psalm calls upon the nations to acknowledge Israel’s God as God over all the earth.

The psalm calls for a “new song,” reminding us that Israel’s God is forever doing a “new thing” requiring a fresh expression of praise. It is for this reason that worship must never become mired in the past. Old familiar hymns are fine. But if that is all you ever sing, then you need to ask yourself whether you are properly giving thanks to God for all that is happening in your life today and whether your heart is properly hopeful for the future God promises.

“The gods of the nations are idols.” If God is God, everything else is not God. An idol is therefore anything that claims to be God or which demands worship, praise and obedience that can only rightfully be demanded by God. The reference in the psalm is obviously to the national gods of rival nations, but idolatry can as well attach to nationalist pride, wealth, political power, human leaders or anything else to which people pay godlike homage.

“Ascribe to the Lord, O families of the peoples…” The psalmist calls upon all nations to worship Israel’s God whose justice and mercy belong to them also. In this hymn Israel is putting into practice her calling to be a light to the nations of the world by calling them to join with all creation in praise of the one true God. This is the way of blessing for all of creation.

Galatians 1:1-12

Paul is madder than a hornet. Someone in his congregation is hocking a gospel other than the good news about Jesus. Jesus might be part of it. His name and even his teachings might figure into it. But according to Paul, the good news is Jesus alone-never Jesus plus something else. In this case, the “something else” was circumcision. These rival teachers were insisting that baptism into Jesus Christ and faith in his promises was not enough. To be a true member of the church, one had to be circumcised and become observant of certain Jewish traditions. Now there is nothing wrong with Jewish disciples observing Jewish traditions. Paul did as much himself. The problem arises when these traditions are elevated to the level of requirements for inclusion in the Body of Christ. This is poison.

I don’t believe that many of our churches explicitly teach “other gospels,” but I suspect that we sometimes practice them without realizing what we are doing. For example, although the pressure to dress in your “Sunday best” for church is on the wane, we still look askance at particularly shabby clothing. Parents of small children too often discover that their welcome in congregations of predominantly elderly people is less than enthusiastic and implicitly conditioned on the good behavior of their offspring. Most of our congregations are not consciously racist, but it is painfully evident from the statistics that people of color frequently do not feel welcome in our midst. Of course, we are just arriving at the point of welcoming gay, lesbian and transgendered persons. From Paul’s perspective, these are all matters requiring us to ask whether we are witnessing in word and deed to the good news about Jesus.

Author and consultant Stephen Richards Covey reminds us that “the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” Paul recognized that, for the church, the main thing is Jesus. As much as Paul valued the unity of the church, he was willing to risk division when the good news about Jesus was in danger of being obscured by lesser concerns. Like Martin Luther fifteen centuries later, Paul would rather have a church divided over the gospel than united under anything less. Anything less than Jesus is too little and anything more than Jesus is too much. To be a church of the reformation is to be forever asking ourselves whether we are successfully keeping “the main thing the main thing.” The critical question always boils down to this: “Are we keeping Jesus at the center?”

Luke 7:1-10

This story comes immediately upon the heels of Jesus’ “Sermon on the Plain” at Luke 6:17-44, the counterpart to Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount” in Matthew 5-7. Jesus’ teaching about God’s love for the poor, hungry and sorrowful, his words about love and forgiveness of enemies and his admonitions against judging others are soon to be illustrated in a series of miracles and acts of compassion. Jesus’ healing of the military officer’s slave is the first such illustration of his teaching. It is noteworthy that the officer, upon hearing that Jesus has agreed to come to his home, now sends messengers to dissuade him from actually appearing. Perhaps he knew that Jesus’ entry into his home and acceptance of his hospitality would amount to a scandal. Maybe he wanted to spare Jesus the social and religious condemnation that would surely follow. In any event, this gentile’s faithful appeal to Jesus for help and Jesus’ willingness to visit him foreshadows the encounter between Peter and Cornelius in Acts 10. Luke is already preparing his readers for the mission of the church to the gentiles, the story that will be told in the Book of Acts.

The irony here is that a Roman operative commanding occupation troops and who has never met Jesus respects his authority, whereas the Jewish leadership will be forever questioning and challenging that authority throughout the rest of the gospel. Once again, Luke is foreshadowing the conflict between some in the Jewish leadership and the Apostle Paul as he preaches the good news of Jesus to the gentiles. The receptiveness of the gentile outsiders will be juxtaposed to the unbelief and rejection of the Jewish leadership. Still, throughout both the gospel and in the Book of Acts, the Jewish populous is generally well disposed toward Jesus and his disciples. Moreover, the leadership is not altogether united in opposition to Jesus. The Pharisees in particular often seem sympathetic or at least open to Jesus’ message throughout his ministry. They show him hospitality on a number of occasions (Luke 7:36; Luke 11:37; Luke 14:1) and warn him of impending danger. Luke 13:31. The Pharisees also take Paul’s side when he is on trial before the Jerusalem council after his arrest in the Temple. Acts 23:6-10. We also read that “a great many of the priests” in Jerusalem “were obedient to the faith.”Acts 6:7. Thus, although Luke focuses his gospel on the mission to the gentiles more than any of the other three gospels, he wishes also to emphasize the receptiveness of the Jewish people to the good news of Jesus Christ. One never knows where faith will be found.

Since Galilee did not become a Roman province until 44 A.C.E., it is probable that this officer served under Herod Antipas rather than within the command structure of the Roman army. As such, he would be in a better position to gain an understanding and appreciation of Jewish religion and customs. Nevertheless, as Capernaum was a border town, custom guards under direct Roman command were also present. Thus, the commander in this story might have been among them. E. Earle Ellis, The Gospel of Luke, (c. 1983, Marshall, Morgan & Scott) p. 117. The existence of gentile admirers of Jewish religion has been noted by other literary sources demonstrating the plausibility of this encounter.

The Spirit of God creates readiness for the good news of Jesus. This story challenges the church to look beyond its walls and beyond the “likely prospects for evangelism” to places and people where faith might already be brewing. Strategizing for mission is not necessarily a bad thing. Still and all, the best strategy is one that is open to the surprising appearance of faith in the last place you would expect to find it.

Sunday, May 22nd

May 18, 2016UncategorizedBible, Church, Covenant, discipleship, doctrine, doctrine of the Trinity, faith, gospel, Holy Spirit, Holy Trinity, Lectionary, prayer, Psalms, Religion, Saint John, Saint Paul, Sunday Lessons, theology, violence, wisdom, Wisdom Literaturerevolsen

The Holy Trinity

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
Psalm 8
Romans 5:1-5
John 16:12-15

Prayer of the Day: Almighty Creator and ever-living God: we worship your glory, eternal Three-in-One, and we praise your power, majestic One-in-Three. Keep us steadfast in this faith, defend us in all adversity, and bring us at last into your presence, where you live in endless joy and love, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“Does any of this stuff matter anymore?” That question was raised by a lay theology student in a class I was teaching on basic Christian Doctrine during a discussion of the Holy Trinity. This individual was not alone in her sentiments. More than a few of my congregants and even some of my colleagues question whether the assertions hammered out in the church councils and given expression in the Ecumenical Creeds still matter. “All that matters is that we follow Jesus.” This student went on to say.

In a way, I agree with her. Following Jesus is everything. Preaching, Bible Study and catechesis are not worth spit if they don’t lead us deeper into worship and discipleship. In a world threatened by war, famine, ecological destruction and gross injustice, how can we justify time spent obsessing over abstract doctrines of God? One colleague of mine jokes that you can question the Nicene Creed with impunity in my denomination, but God forbid you should be caught serving bottled water at a church event or using the wrong pronoun for the deity. We mainliners are not alone in this indifference to doctrinal precision. Christians who characterize themselves as “conservative evangelicals” seem far more interested these days in defining marriage, regulating sexuality, policing public lavatories and keeping “god” in the Pledge of Allegiance than defending central tenants of the faith set forth in the creeds. If John Shelby Spong and Franklin Graham seem to agree on anything, it is that doctrines like the Trinity are not particularly important to Christian faith and life.

Saint Augustine would take issue with us on that score. Augustine was no ivory tower theologian. He was about as immersed in his own contemporary culture as a person can be. He had lived his life under numerous doctrines about the nature of God and learned from bitter experience that it makes a huge difference what we say and believe about God. This is so precisely because the heart of the creator determines the shape of creation and dictates how we treat the earth and our fellow creatures both human and non-human. Christians confess that God created the world “ex nihilo,” that is, out of nothing. Strictly speaking, that is true, but in a larger sense we must say that God created the world out of love. The world exists not to meet some divine need. God was not lonely. It is because God is not a monad having only God’s single self to love that the world is not simply God’s ant farm. Because the love of God the Father has always had an object distinct yet within God’s self, namely, the Son, and because the love between Father and Son is a spiritual projection of God’s self, “the universe of space and time did not arise by chance, but the Three in love and hope, made room within their dance.” “Come Join the Dance of Trinity,” by Richard Leach, Evangelical Lutheran Worship, # 412.

Augustine’s Trinitarian arguments have often been criticized as mere word games. Yet I believe that there is a substantive basis for his insistence on the necessity of God’s being Triune. If God were merely one, could it still be said that God’s nature and character is love? Without an object, love can only be self directed-which is not genuine love at all. Consequently, if God were one and not Triune, love could not have preexisted creation as it would have had no object. The essence of God would then have to have been something other than love. Rather than God’s very being, love would be only an acquired divine attribute, a creature of God’s making rather than the essence of who God is.

Because God is Triune, love, faithfulness, obedience, friendship and community are eternal. They pre-existed creation in the being of the Triune God. That is why they require our witness, but never our defense. God’s will must be done and God’s kingdom must come because the forces resisting it are not within God and thus not eternal. Sin has no staying power. Evil cannot go the distance. Violence cannot silence the Word. Death cannot keep Jesus in the grave. Our hope for a new heaven and a new earth, says Augustine, is based on the conviction that the essence of the Triune God is love between the persons of the Trinity, love that God desires to share with all humankind. If God were less than Triune, God would be other than love and love would be less than eternal. If love matters to you, the Trinity should matter too.

Here’s a poem by Ariana Reines that speaks of love as a disruptive force that just “is.” I think Augustine would agree.

[Love]

Is an interruption or an aberration, a force in opposition to the ultimate inertia
of the universe,

Wrote Marguerite Duras.

Whether or not it is worth it it occurs. Whether or not it is to be believed it is.

The wind moves us without a frond being needed to be held by a slave girl.

The rudiments of sentences are ancient without a mouth needing to remember
what it is losing as it lets those words out, something eviller than what they
even mean right now, something too evil to be known right now

Or ever.

I feel sure that even the most culpable people have other qualities secreted
away

Adjusting their garments in light of fate

He turned his head upward, he looked up the white wall. The light from the
lamp could be light coming from a great distance, it could be a great distance
away, and the wall could be snow it is so beautiful, he said. His head looking
up the wall, his eyes looking up it, he said, that nail in the wall could also be
beautiful, for so far away.

Source: Mercury, (c. 2011 by Ariana Reines, pub. by Fence Books). Ariana Reines was born in Salem, Massachusetts. She is a poet, playwright and translator. She has taught at Columbia University and the European Graduate School. In 2009 Reines was the Roberta C. Holloway Lecturer in Poetry at the University of California-Berkeley, the youngest poet to ever to have held that distinctive position. She is deeply committed to humanitarian causes and has often traveled to Haiti to take part in relief efforts there. You can read more about Ariana Reines and sample more of her poetry at the Poetry Foundation Website.

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31

I am not at all sure why this reading is included among the Holy Trinity lessons. It just happens to be one of the texts that the Arian heretics cited in support of their claim that the Son was a creature (albeit an exalted one) and in no sense true God. In this particular text, wisdom is not a pre-existent divine being distinct from God, but an aspect or characteristic of God who is poetically endowed with speech. Thus, it is largely irrelevant to the dispute between the Arians and the Orthodox Trinitarian believers. Still, it is a wonderful text testifying to the beauty and order of creation and the glory of its Creator.

The Book of Proverbs is a collection of poems and short sayings dating from as early as the tenth century B.C.E. to as late as the fourth century B.C.E. Unlike the Psalms which are for the most part expressions of prayer, praise, and lament within the context of worship, Proverbs is concerned with universal and pragmatic “wisdom” and the means by which it is acquired. Though clearly influenced by Egyptian and Mesopotamian wisdom literature, Israel’s understanding of wisdom has its own unique flavor. Though it shares with these foreign sources a humanistic focus on reasoned inquiry into the natural world, Israelite wisdom identifies the divine will and purpose as the ultimate human good wisdom reveals. Truth acquired through reason is open to the whole of humanity. Still, for Israel wisdom is subordinate to Israel’s God. It functions within the context of Israel’s covenants and the Torah.

In view of all this, it is not surprising that the particular poem in this week’s lesson affirms that wisdom, as wonderful as she is and though accessible to all willing to submit to her instruction, is nevertheless God’s creation. The human mind can do no more than appropriate what already exists by virtue of God’s creative activity at the dawn of time. Wisdom therefore necessarily takes the shape of Torah. It is not that Israel forsakes reasoned inquiry for blind adherence to law. Nor can it be said that Israel’s keen spirit of inquiry runs contrary to Torah obedience. Rather, Torah both shaped Israel’s questions of the natural world and informed her conclusions. Perhaps the clearest case of incorporation of wisdom into Torah is found in the very lengthy Psalm 119. Though the psalmist praises Torah as the source of all wisdom, it is obvious his/her own wisdom has been forged in the furnace of experience where Torah meets the challenges of everyday life.

Psalm 8

This psalm is one that biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann classifies a song of orientation. As such, it expresses “a confident, serene settlement of faith issues.” Brueggemann, Walter, The Message of the Psalms, Augsburg Publishing House (c. 1984) p. 25. It is further classified by the majority of Old Testament scholars as a “creation” psalm glorifying God for making and sustaining an orderly and reliable world in which season follows upon season, harvest upon harvest and the cycles of birth, maturation, old age and death are blessed with the gracious presence of the Lord.

The psalm points specifically to the place of human beings in the created order. Though the psalmist does not focus on human frailty and mortality, s/he is clearly aware of it when asking “what are human beings and their descendants that you care for them?” vs. 4. In comparison with God’s other works, the sun, the moon and the stars which are for all practical purposes immortal, human beings with their moribund existence and their short, fragile lives hardly seem to register. Yet the psalmist recognizes that God is uniquely concerned with human beings, that they are little lower than the angels in his estimation and that they have been appointed to rule over the earth and its creatures.

It is important to understand that “dominion” over the earth given human beings is to be exercised as an extension of God’s reign over creation. Thus, the words of last week’s psalm should be ringing in our ears: “All of [the creatures of the earth]look to you to give them their food in due season. You give it to them; they gather it; you open your hand, and they are filled with good things.” Psalm 104:27-29. Dominion is not given to human beings for exploitation of the earth and its resources. Human beings rule as stewards who must give account for the care they have exercised in managing God’s good earth. Ecology is very much a biblical value!

Stylistically, the psalm is carefully crafted to reflect in its composition the same good order manifest throughout God’s creation. It begins and ends with the same refrain: “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth!” The psalm begins with people, even infants, glorifying God for the majesty of the heavens. Then the psalm turns to God’s glorification of human beings, small though they may be, in making them rulers over the earth and sea.

Romans 5:1-5

For Paul, the Holy Spirit is the animating force for the church which he regards as the Body of the resurrected Christ. As such, the Spirit’s primary concern is the health of that Body. Gifts of the Spirit given individually to members of the church are intended to “build up” the Body of Christ. Thus, it matters not at all which particular gift one has, but how one uses his or her gift. Whether one speaks in other tongues, prophesies, works miracles or exercises leadership, the net result must be that the church is strengthened. If leadership divides and alienates rather than unites or if miracles draw attention to the miracle worker rather than to the mercy of God in Christ, then these gifts become tools of Satan to break down the Body. Paul lays out all of this very succinctly inI Corinthians 12. Put differently, spiritual gifts must be exercised under the gentle reign of love. Of all the manifestations of the Spirit within the church, “the greatest of these is love” I Corinthians 13:13. That should help us understand what Paul is saying here in Romans.

“God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.” Vs. 5. Recall Augustine’s assertion that the Trinitarian character of God is revealed in the love between the Father and the Son which is the Holy Spirit. Genuine love, however, is not exclusive. It “overflows” the bounds of the relationships that give rise to it. Perhaps that is what we mean when we confess in the Nicene Creed that the Holy Spirit “proceeds” from the Father and the Son. Love is ever seeking new objects. It is precisely because the one God is also three and because the relationship between the three is characterized by their mutual love and because love by its very nature makes room for the other, the Spirit of God, which is love, broods over the waters at the dawn of time seeking that other. The Word beckons the other into being and the Father blesses what comes to be. Again, this is not to say that the universe was the work of a committee. Rather, creation is a singular act of the Triune God which bears the stamp of that God’s innermost Trinitarian being.

It is perhaps clearer now why Jesus could say that the two greatest commandments are first to love God with all the heart, mind, soul and strength, and next to love one’s neighbor as oneself. Such love is grounded in the innermost being of God.

John 16:12-15

In this tightly packed paragraph from John, Jesus speaks of the interaction between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of truth will be given to the disciples and will lead them into “all the truth.” Yet the Spirit speaks not on its own authority, but on the authority of the Father. However, the Spirit imparts “truth” to the disciples by “taking what is mine [Jesus’) and declaring it to you.” The disciples are recipients of the Spirit who comes from the Father and whose sole job is to impart Jesus to them. Once again, the sending of the Spirit is a unitary act of the one Triune God by which the disciples are drawn into the heart of God’s Trinitarian life of mutual love. Not surprisingly, this section of John was a favorite of our friend Augustine (on whom I have perhaps gone a little heavier than I should have!).

Sunday, May 15th

May 9, 2016UncategorizedBabylonian Exile, Baptism, Bible, Book of Acts, Book of Revelation, Book of Romans, Church, Covenant, discipleship, Exodus, faith, gospel, grace, Holy Spirit, john of patmos, Lectionary, Loretta Roche, Luke, peace, Pentecost, poems, preaching, Psalms, racism, Religion, Saint Paul, Sunday Lessons, theologyrevolsen

Day of Pentecost

Acts 2:1–21
Psalm 104:24–34, 35b
Romans 8:14–17
John 14:8–17

Prayer of the Day: God our creator, the resurrection of your Son offers life to all the peoples of earth. By your Holy Spirit, kindle in us the fire of your love, empowering our lives for service and our tongues for praise, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“The peace of God it is not peace, but strife closed in the sod,
Yet let us pray for just one thing—the marvelous peace of God.”

Final verse of the hymn, They Cast their Nets in Galilee, by William Alexander Percy (1885-1942).

Jesus promised his disciples peace-but not peace such as the world gives. The peace of God is not an uneasy co-existence; a tacit agreement to avoid discussion of volatile issues; a light healing of deep wounds festering under the surface. If it is possible to disturb the peace by speaking the truth, then it isn’t true peace. It is not the peace of God.

This last weekend I attended the assembly of my Lutheran church’s New Jersey Synod where we attempted to engage in conversation about race and the continuing scourge of racism. That this conversation is necessary is evidenced by my church’s unenviable status as one of the most thoroughly segregated denominations in the United States. Yet having such a conversation is difficult, painful and frustrating in large part because so many of us who identify as white are simply blind to the reality of systemic racism and its insidious influence on every aspect of life. After all, we ended segregation in the 60s. We have both elected and re-elected an African American president by substantial electoral and popular majorities. The era of Jim Crow is over. How bad can things be?

Pretty bad. We still find state and municipal police departments in which blatantly racist e-mails are regularly exchanged. The disproportional rate of incarceration for black males remains high and a distinguished fraternity fosters a culture encouraging derisive songs about excluding black Americans complete with racial epitaphs and allusions to lynching. No doubt, we have made progress toward racial equality since the 1960s, but we have still got a long way to go. The continuing presence of racism understandably makes people of color angry and impatient. We white folk react with fear and defensiveness. Though I think we had some good dialogue, things sometimes got a little ugly.

It is tempting to avoid difficult discussions about race, human sexuality, immigration and poverty. That would yield for us “peace such as the world gives.” But again, that is not true peace. It does not comport with Paul’s insistence that through baptism we are all united as one people through Christ. Such peace as the world gives runs contrary to John of Patmos’ vision of a multitude “from all tribes and peoples and tongues standing before the throne and before the Lamb.” For that reason, the church must reject the false peace offered by the powers and principalities that would maintain the status quo. We cannot settle for a church that imports into its assemblies and polity the sinful pretenses that divide humanity. Racism is an attack upon the very core of the gospel. It is sin. The church of Christ does not ignore sin or turn a blind eye to it. It confesses sin, repents and opens itself to newness of life.

The peace of God does not come cheap. It inevitably upsets our settled existence and disturbs the peace imposed by the worldly powers that be. In a recent book Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann explains how the Hebrew scriptures narrate ancient Israel’s ongoing encounter with a profound and uncontrollable reality experienced through her relationship with her surprising and ever innovative God. Brueggemann, Walter, An Unsettling God, (c. 2009 Fortress Press) pp. 3-4. Much the same thing can be said about the Book of Acts in which the Holy Spirit always seems to be a few steps ahead of a church that is frantically trying to keep up. I doubt the small group praying for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit the night before Pentecost had any idea that they would be deluged by three thousand new believers of different cultural backgrounds, different languages and different worship traditions. Even so, these new believers were at least united by their common Judaism. But while the church was still reeling from its Pentecost growth spurt, Philip began speaking the good news to the hated Samaritans and Peter took the unthinkable step of baptizing a family of gentiles. I expect that for many in the church, this was all just too much change too fast.

We see in the Book of Acts indications of how the church’s unity was strained with conflict as a result of its inclusiveness. Almost from the beginning it appears that there was some rivalry and tension between the Greek and Palestinian Jews over the distribution of food among their respective dependent widows. Acts 6:1-6. We have seen how Peter got himself into hot water by baptizing a family of gentiles without proper authorization. Paul’s ministry, though formally approved by the Jerusalem council, seems to have remained controversial among a number of traditionalists. You don’t get growth without growing pains.

The peace of God is won not through avoiding conflict, but by taking it head on. There is no way to a new heaven and a new earth except through the hard work of repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation. That is why the Spirit of God comes, not to smooth things over, but to stir things up. Pentecost is, among other things, a reminder that God never intended for the church to be static and changeless. To follow Jesus is to be transformed into a people capable of living in the peace of God. Here’s a poem by Loretta Roche on the severe mercy of the Spirit that drives us toward repentance, faith and renewal.

Spirit

I have no comforting to bring you;
Mine is no cool sweet balm to lend
For a wound that aches, or a mind that darkens.
I am not one to be called a friend.

For when your hands are scarred and broken
From shaping stony words to a song,
Cutting a meaning from glossy marble,
My voice will bite like an iron prong.

And I will sting you when you falter
With a word bitter as driving snow;
I have not lost the way of twisting
That whip I used to have—you know?

No one can silence me with weeping;
You cannot hush my voice with prayers.
When you would seek out a room of refuge
I shall be waiting on the stairs.

You shall not rest while I am near you-
Mine is a will that does not bend.
I have no comforting to bring you,
And you will hate me to the end.

Source: Poetry Magazine (April 1925) published by Poetry Foundation. For other poems by Loretta Roche See the Virginia Spring Quarterly (Fall 1926).

Acts 2:1–21

In the Book of Acts, Luke continues the story begun in his gospel. Recall from our discussion of the Transfiguration that Luke likens Jesus’ coming suffering, death and resurrection in Jerusalem to another “Exodus,” that is, a saving event on a par with Israel’s deliverance from Egypt. See Post for February 7, 2016. Throughout his telling of the story, Luke has sought to demonstrate a history of salvation in the ministry of Jesus and its continuation through the church. This history is told against the backdrop of the Roman Empire that has been lurking in the background from the beginning. The empire takes an interest in Jesus during his ministry in Galilee and moves to crush him as he makes his very determined last trip to Jerusalem. Luke means to show us that history is made not in the capital of Rome, but in the backwaters of the empire where a homeless couple gives birth to an infant in a barn. The word of God comes not to the Temple in Jerusalem, but to a ragged prophet in the wilderness of Judea. God’s glory is revealed not within the Holy of Holies, but outside the city on a hill overlooking a garbage dump where the vilest of criminals are executed. Caesar is not Lord. Jesus is.

The second chapter of Acts takes us to the next episode of Luke’s salvation history, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples. Pentecost or “Feast of Booths” was intended as a reminiscence of the fragile dwellings in which the Israelites lived during their 40 years of travel through the desert after the Exodus from slavery in Egypt. According to the prophet Zechariah, this feast of booths will become a universal festival in the last days during which all the nations will make pilgrimages annually to Jerusalem in celebration. Zechariah 14:16-19. The gathering of many Diaspora Jews in Jerusalem and their receptiveness to the disciple’s preaching indicates that the long awaited messianic age has arrived.

Some scholars have pointed out that later rabbinic teachers understood Pentecost not merely as a harvest festival or reminiscence of the wilderness wanderings, but a commemoration of God’s appearance to Israel upon Sinai and the giving of the law through Moses. Gaster, Theodore H., Festivals of the Jewish Year, (c. New York: Morrow, 1952) cited by Juel, Donald, Luke Acts-The Promise of History, (John Knox Press, c 1983) p. 58. Thus, if Jesus’ ministry culminating in Jerusalem was God’s new Exodus, Pentecost corresponds to God’s descent to Israel on Mount Sinai. The mighty wind and flame reported in Luke bring to mind the Sinai appearance accompanied by fire and storm. The speaking of the disciples in multiple languages corresponds to rabbinic legends claiming that the law given to Moses was miraculously translated into every language under heaven. See Juel, supra citing Lake, Kirsopp, “The Gift of the Spirit on the Day of Pentecost,” Beginnings of Christianity,5:114-16.

Pentecost was understood by some Jewish writers as a commemoration of the renewal of God’s covenant with the earth made through Noah. See Jubilees 6:17-18. Such awareness on Luke’s part is entirely consistent with the universal appeal of his gospel. It is also tempting to read the Pentecost story as the undoing of the confusion of tongues imposed by God as a judgment upon the nations at the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11:1-9. I don’t believe that it is necessary to select any of these interpretations of the Pentecost event over all of the others. Luke is not building a ridged typology tying the Church’s story to that of Israel. Rather, he is alluding to episodes in the Hebrew Scriptures that illuminate the new thing God is doing through Jesus. Pentecost can therefore be seen as a new revelation from God poured out upon the disciples and spilling over into the languages of all nations. It can be understood as a revocation of God’s judgment of confusion upon a rebellious people bent on storming heaven. It is a new event in which God “storms” into the life of the world. Or Pentecost can be seen as an allusion to the coming of the messianic age through the ingathering of God’s people. Whichever emphasis one might wish to give this story, Luke means for us to recognize in it the mission of the church that will take the disciples to “the ends of the earth.”

One final note: the folks gathered here are all “devout Jews.” Though they come from Jewish communities throughout the Mediterranean world and speak the languages of the places in which they live, they are nonetheless people of Israel. Inclusion of the Gentiles, though hinted at throughout Luke’s gospel, is not yet on the church’s agenda. Nevertheless, it can be said that the mission to the Gentiles can be seen in embryonic form among these diverse Jews through the languages and cultures they have internalized.

Psalm 104:24–34, 35b

This psalm is a remarkable hymn to God, the Creator. Its focus on God’s sovereignty over the earth, sea and sky reflects a date after the Babylonian Exile where Israel was exposed to and tempted by the creation myths from the religion of her Chaldean captors. The Babylonian Enûma Eliš saga relates how the earth was created out of a civil war between the gods and how humans were created from the divine blood shed in that conflict for the purpose of serving the victorious gods. By contrast, this psalm describes creation as the sovereign act of the one God whose merciful and compassionate care ensures stability and sustenance for all creatures. There is no hint of conflict or struggle in the act of creation. Wind and flame are God’s “ministers” (the same word used for “angels”). Vs 4. The feared sea monster, Leviathan, understood in near eastern mythology to be a fearsome and threatening divine agent, is not a rival god or even God’s enemy in the biblical view of things. It is merely another of God’s creatures in which God takes delight. Vss. 25-26. Everything that lives depends upon God’s Spirit, without which there is no existence. That Spirit is capable not only of giving life, but also restoring it. vs. 30.

This psalm has theological affinities with the creation story in Genesis 1:1-2:3, also composed during the period of Israel’s exile. Here, too, everything is brought into existence by the sovereign word of God that declares everything made to be “good.” Human beings are created not from the blood of conflict, but from the dust of the earth and in God’s image. They have not been made to serve as a race of slaves, but to be fruitful, multiply and rule over the good world God has made. The sun, moon and stars are not magical entities whose movements and alignments control the fate of people and nations. Rather, they are luminaries created to provide light for the benefit of God’s creatures. This is not a world of haunted horrors in which humans are at best slaves and at worst collateral damage in an ongoing struggle between gods and demons. It is a good world ruled by a generous and compassionate Creator.

While Babylonian religion has long since faded into the dead zone of history, I still believe that in this so called “post-modern” era we are confronted with a secularized paganism. Babylonian religion portrayed a world ruled by warring gods, each having its own sphere of influence and all of which needed to be placated by human beings living at their mercy. So also I believe for us contemporaries, the world seems a soulless place at the mercy of economic currents, military struggles and social expectations exercising tyrannical power over us. Humans are viewed as “cheap labor,” “voting blocks,” “collateral damage,” “demographic groups,” and categorized by other dehumanizing labels. The earth is viewed as a ball of resources to be used up freely and without limitation by anyone having the power to control and exploit them. This psalm still testifies to the holiness of the earth as God’s beloved creation, not the battlefield for warring national, commercial and tribal interests. Unlike the Babylonian vision, the world is not a house haunted by warring demons. Neither is it a dead and soulless planet governed by political, social and economic determinism or the currents of random historical accidents.

Romans 8:14–17

For my take on Paul’s letter to the Romans generally, see my post of Sunday, February 14, 2016. Here Paul is contrasting the life of faith in Jesus Christ with the life of bondage under “law.” It is critical to understand here that Paul is not speaking of law as “Torah,” or the totality of God’s covenant relationship with Israel. It cannot be overemphasized that Israel’s covenant with God was emphatically based upon God’s mercy, compassion and grace. Paul is using the term “law” to characterize the quality of one’s relationship with God apart from grace. If the Torah is understood not as God’s gift, but rather a tool by which to win God’s approval or a source for boasting of one’s special status before God, it leads only to death and condemnation. For both Jewish and Gentile believers, adoption as God’s people is based on God’s election and God’s mercy alone.

In sum, “law” as Paul uses it here represents an attitude of entitlement before God based on one’s lineage or accomplishments. Even the good news of Jesus Christ can become “law” if it is preached as a demand, requirement or condition of God’s mercy, i.e., “You have to believe in Jesus to be saved.” Such preaching makes faith a condition that we must satisfy to placate God rather than a gift of the Holy Spirit that sets us free from the need for such placation. Faith is not a condition of salvation, but the thankful response of a forgiven heart to the good news about what Jesus has done for it. For Paul, faith comes through the preaching of the good news about Jesus and is inseparable from that preaching. Romans 10:5-17. Life in the Spirit of God is the very antithesis of life in bondage to “law,” however conceived. The requirement to “measure up,” is gone. The struggle is no longer to become worthy of adoption as God’s children, but rather to conform our lives to the ways of the holy people God has already declared us to be.

John 14:8–17

There is a lot going on in these verses obscured by the fact that we are getting only a snippet of a much longer discourse. To highlight the essentials, Jesus responds to Philip’s request that Jesus “show us the Father” by telling him that he has already seen as much of the Father as ever will be seen. God is Jesus. But take care that while we can say that God is Jesus, we cannot use that statement interchangeably with the false statement, “Jesus is God.” The reason this latter statement is untrue follows from John’s declaration in the first chapter of his gospel: “No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.” John 1:18. To say that Jesus is God is to imply that we already know who God is and that we recognize the Godly characteristics we spot in Jesus. This makes of Jesus nothing more than a mask of God or a clever disguise. Jesus obscures rather than reveals God.

John would have us know that we know nothing of the Father apart from the Son. It is only because God becomes flesh (not disguises himself as flesh or pretends to be flesh) that people otherwise incapable of seeing God actually do see God. It is for that reason that the bulk of our creeds is devoted to articulating our faith in Jesus. We know nothing of the Father other than as the Father of Jesus Christ. Similarly, we know nothing of the Spirit apart from that which proceeds from the Father and the Son. It is the job of the Holy Spirit to glorify Jesus and take what belongs to Jesus and declare it to the church. John 16:14-15.

It is not entirely clear what Philip’s expectations were when he asked that Jesus “show” him the Father. He might have had in mind the appearance of God on Mt. Sinai in smoke, thunder and fire. Or perhaps he was expecting some prophetic vision as experienced by Isaiah or Ezekiel. In either case, Jesus gives him more than he has requested. For truly seeing and knowing God involves more than witnessing marvels and seeing visions. Knowing God involves the sort of intimacy Jesus experiences with his disciples and the love he has consistently shown them-even “to the end.” John 13:1-17. Because God is Jesus and the Spirit of God proceeds from Jesus and the Father, Jesus’ “going away” does not constitute “abandonment.” Indeed, Jesus will henceforth be more intimately present to his disciples and their understanding of him clearer precisely because they will soon be indwelt by his Spirit. Jesus will be “in” them just as the Father is “in” him. John 17:20-21.

I will have more to say about the Holy Trinity next week. Suffice it to say, though, that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit is a Trinitarian event that makes sense only as an act of the Triune God.

Sunday, May 8th

May 2, 2016UncategorizedBible, Book of Acts, Church, Covenant, Daniel Berrigan, Easter, faith, gospel, Holy Spirit, idolatry, Jerusalem, Lectionary, Luke, peace, poetry, prayer, Psalms, Religion, Saint John, Sunday Lessons, theology, violencerevolsen

SEVENTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

Acts 16:16-34
Psalm 97
Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21
John 17:20-26

PRAYER OF THE DAY: O God, form the minds of your faithful people into your one will. Make us love what you command and desire what you promise, that, amid all the changes of this world, our hearts may be fixed where true joy is found, your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Last week a powerful prophetic and poetic voice went silent. Jesuit Fr. Daniel Berrigan died Saturday, April 30^th of natural causes at a Jesuit health care facility in the Bronx. He was 94 years old. Berrigan was born May 9, 1921, in Virginia, Minnesota. He entered the Jesuit novitiate at St. Andrew-on-the-Hudson, New York in August 1939 and graduated in 1946. Thereafter, he entered the Jesuit’s Woodstock College in Baltimore graduating in 1952. He was ordained the same year and appointed professor of New Testament studies at Le Moyne College in Syracuse in 1957.

Daniel Berrigan is remembered by most people for his anti-war activities during the Vietnam era. He spent two years in prison for destroying draft records, damaging nuclear war heads and leading other acts of civil disobedience. He also joined with other prominent religious figures like Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to found Clergy and Laity Against the War in Vietnam. In February of 1968 he traveled to North Vietnam and returned with three American prisoners of war he convinced the North Vietnamese to release.

Berrigan was not an ideological leftist. He opposed abortion as adamantly as he resisted the Vietnam War. In 1992 he was arrested in Rochester, New York while protesting in front of a Planned Parenthood facility. Needless to say, he received no little criticism from the left for taking this position. For Berrigan, however, opposition to abortion followed as naturally as opposition to war from his over-all commitment to peace and resistance to violence. He was a longtime endorser of the “consistent life ethic,” and he served on the advisory board of Consistent Life, an organization that describes itself as “committed to the protection of life, which is threatened in today’s world by war, abortion, poverty, racism, capital punishment and euthanasia.” See “Daniel Berrigan, priest, prisoner, anti-war crusader, dies” National Catholic Reporter May 2, 2016.

I remember Daniel Berrigan chiefly as a poet and a prophet of peace and reconciliation. Berrigan published more than fifty books of poetry, essays, journals and commentaries on the scriptures. He had a gift for recognizing the sacred in what most of us would view as profane-perhaps even obscene. He was able to see the face of Jesus in all people and especially in those we often fear to look upon. Here is a poem by Daniel Berrigan. May he rest in peace and may eternal light shine upon him.

The Face of Christ

The tragic beauty of the face of Christ
Shines in the face of man;

The abandoned old live on
in shabby rooms, far from comfort.
Outside,
din and purpose, the world, a fiery animal
reined in by youth. Within
a pallid tiring heart
shuffles about its dwelling.

Nothing, so little, comes of life’s promise.
0f broken men, despised minds
what does one make-
a roadside show, a graveyard of the heart?

Christ, fowler of street and hedgerow
cripples, the distempered old
-eyes blind as woodknots,
tongues tight as immigrants’-all
taken in His gospel net,
the hue and cry of existence.

Heaven, of such imperfection,
wary, ravaged, wild?

Yes. Compel them in.

Source: Berrigan, Daniel, Selected & New Poems (c. 1973 by Daniel Berrigan, pub. by Doubleday & Company, Inc.) p. 80. You can read more about Daniel Berrigan and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

A discussion of the appointed texts for the Seventh Sunday of Easter follows. For those of you who might, like Trinity, be celebrating the Ascension of our Lord, I invite you to re-visit my Post of Sunday, May 12, 2013 where the appropriate lessons are discussed.

Acts 16:16-34

This marvelous story from Acts poses numerous problems for us moderns. Demons and demon possession don’t fit seamlessly into our 19^th Century world view. Then again, our 19^th Century world view is coming under increasing strain in this 21^st Century that is calling into question the mind’s capacity to conduct the sort of objective inquiry capable of yielding the scientific certainty we all thought the empirical method could give us. So instead of falling all over ourselves to find “rational” explanations for seemingly miraculous events narrated in the Bible, perhaps we should allow the scriptures to school us on the limits of human understanding and open to us portholes into a universe far too marvelous to fit into our constrictive rational constructs. I am not suggesting, of course, that we can or should return to the 1^st Century way of looking at things. What I do suggest is that, contrary to our progressive prejudices, chronological progression does not equate with growth in wisdom, understanding and insight. I maintain that the past contains as many important insights that we are prone to forget as it does errors we have properly rejected.

Rather than seeking to reconcile the biblical narrative with 19^th Century rationalism, we should be challenging this failing conceptual model with deeper understandings of reality. Walter Wink seeks to do just that in his book, The Powers that Be (c. 1998 by Augsburg Fortress). Referencing the Hebrew Scriptures, Wink points out how nations, cities and individuals were believed to have had angels representing them. The same concept appears in the Book of Revelation in which each of the seven churches in Asia Minor is said to have its own angel. Revelation 2-3. Just as at the heart of every individual there are motivating values, goals and priorities, so also at the heart of every church, corporation, government and social organization there is an ethos, a personality of sorts that guides the decision making process and conduct of their members. This “angel” falls and becomes “demonic” when an institution, such as a government, turns away from its divine vocation to provide for the wellbeing of its citizens and becomes merely self-serving and self-perpetuating.

John Dominic Crossan addresses the phenomenon of demon possession in his book, The Historical Jesus (c. 1991 by John Dominic Crossan, pub. by Harper Collins). Crossan describes individual demonic possession in Jesus’ day as a microcosm of Rome’s occupation and domination of the Holy Land:

“Think, now, of demonic possession. George Nickelsburg, speaking of the Book of the Similitudes/Parables of Enoch in I Enoch 37-71, a work that dates ‘around the turn of the eara,’ he says that ‘on the one side are God, the heavenly entourage, the agents of judgment…and God’s people…On the other are the chief demon Azazel, his angels, and the kings and the mighty…[who] would have their counterparts among the Roman generals, governors, triumvirs, and monarchs whose activities in Judea are well documented sources. The author might also have had in mind the late Hasmoneans and the Herods’…. For this representation…Roman imperialism meant that God’s people were possessed by demons on the social level. Notice, by the way, the somewhat schizophrenic implications of demonic control: it indicates a power admittedly greater than oneself, admittedly ‘inside’ oneself, but that one declares to be evil and therefore beyond any collusion or cooperation.” Ibid. at 313-314 (citations omitted).

In order to survive, the occupied peoples must to some degree internalize the practices, values and ethos of their occupiers. But in so doing, they bring into their very psyches the oppressive conditions that threaten them externally. Is it any wonder that individuals in these circumstances crack under the strain? Is it any wonder that they experience the occupier of their homeland as an occupier of their minds and hearts as well? And should it come as any surprise that this hostile occupier so internalized takes on a life of its own and becomes a separate entity within?

Let’s apply these insights to our lesson from Acts. The woman in the story is first introduced to us as a slave. That is enough to tell us that her life is not her own. She is the property of her masters who view her as a source of revenue. It is not clear why she was following Paul about. Was she doing that of her own accord? Were her masters encouraging her to do so in hopes that Paul would compensate them for giving credibility to his preaching? We can only speculate on that score. It is clear, however, that once the demon’s grip on the woman was broken, her value to her masters was gone. What is broken here is a relationship governed by economic exploitation and oppression. The woman is no longer a mere “revenue producer,” as the corporate world often terms and values its employees. Therefore, in their eyes, she is worthless.

The slave relationship as described in this narrative is uncomfortably close to those governing our own social and economic realities. I have described in previous posts the tendency of our educational system to produce units of value for the labor market rather than well rounded citizens capable of full participation in public life. Our nomenclature is littered with language suggesting that one’s “net worth” is the sum of his/her assets less liabilities. What one is worth is often equated with one’s earning capacity. What cannot be measured in dollars is, like the nameless woman in our lesson, without value.

Paul’s offense, then, was far more than a simple crime against property. It was an assault on the entire Imperial/Patriarchal hierarchy that defined who one was, how much one was worth and to whom one answered. “These men…” the woman’s owners told the local magistrates, “advocate customs which it is not lawful for us Romans to accept or practice.” Vs. 20. Not surprisingly, the authorities react with outrage, beating both Paul and his companion Silas and throwing them into prison. We are left to wonder what ever happened to the woman set free from the spirit of divination that held her in bondage. How, if at all, did that change the nature of her legal bondage? How did the rest of her life unfold?

Paul and Silas find themselves in prison where, as they would otherwise, they worshiped and gave thanks to God. An earthquake breaks open the doors of the prison and the guard in charge naturally assumes that Paul and Silas, along with the rest of the prisoners have taken the opportunity to flee. His determination to slay himself with his own sword is understandable. His Roman superiors would not have taken his dereliction of duty lightly and would likely have designed a much more unpleasant demise for him. He is relieved to learn, however, that the prisoners have not fled and turns to Paul and Silas with the question: “What must I do to be saved?” Vs. 30. It is hard to say whether the guard was moved by his prisoners’ songs and praises or their refusal to flee when given the opportunity. Needless to say, something about Paul and Silas impressed him deeply so that he turned to them in this moment of anxiety.

The salvation of the guard and his household further illustrates Luke’s literary purpose of narrating the spread of the good news of Jesus Christ through everything that happens to the apostles, even their misfortunes. Just as I would like to know more about the woman liberated from demonic possession, so also I wish I knew more about the other prisoners incarcerated along with Paul and Silas. Why did they not flee when the earthquake afforded them the opportunity of escape? Were they moved in any significant way by what they heard and witnessed? Again, these loose ends are left for us to ponder.

Psalm 97

This is a psalm of praise which asks nothing of God. It begins with an acknowledgement that “The Lord reigns.” Vs. 1. This simple statement is a shot across the bow to all claims of national sovereignty. The earth belongs to the Lord and all other claims of ownership are relative and subordinate to God’s final authority. Even the Promised Land was given to Israel only in trust and subject to revocation. Clouds, mist and thick darkness evoke memories of the cloud that led the people of Israel through the wilderness as well as God’s appearances on Mt. Sinai. Vs.2. Fire is also a purifying force that burns away Israel’s enemies, but might also be employed to purge Israel itself. Vs. 3. Lightning, thunder and earthquake are all images used throughout the psalms to symbolize the coming of God. See, e.g., Psalm 18:6-15; Psalm 68:7-10; Psalm 144:5-6.

There is some rich irony here. The heavens are said to proclaim God’s righteousness, whereas human worshipers of images made of these created glories have not the understanding to do the same. Vss. 6-7. Zion and all of Judah do hear in the terrifying phenomenon of nature the voice of the Lord and rejoice in his just reign over all the earth. Vs. 8. In her early history, Israel did not necessarily deny the existence of other gods. Nevertheless, if such gods there be, they must necessarily be subject to the God of Israel who reigns over all the earth. Vs. 9.

Verses 10-11 illustrate that this God who reigns over the earth is not indifferent to the conduct of his human creatures. God is not a neutral observer of history. This God takes sides and, specifically, God takes the side of the righteous against evildoers. Righteousness, of course, is measured in terms of God’s covenant relationship with Israel, the ones who give thanks to his holy name. vs. 12. Nevertheless, as the prophets and other psalms illustrate, Israel’s faithfulness to the covenant is a light to all the nations of the world and a revelation of God’s gracious will for all creation.

Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21

This lesson represents perhaps the most egregious act of textual butchery, literary dishonesty and ecclesiastical deceit ever practiced by the lectionary goons. Before proceeding further, please read the unedited, unsanitized, uncut and unpolished version actually given to us in the text. Revelation 22:12-21. As you can see, the troublesome fact that the “dogs and sorcerers and fornicators and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves falsehood” have been excluded from the new Jerusalem has been conveniently hidden away out of sight. Vs.15. It is also highly ironic that the lectionary makers have seen fit to omit the very verses warning against omitting anything from the Book of Revelation. Vss. 18-19. Is it possible to treat the scriptures with any more contempt?

Well, now that I have had a chance to vent my spleen, let me say that this section of Revelation is a fitting climax to the book as a whole. The drama began in the throne room of God and the Lamb where the Lamb alone was found worthy to open the sacred scroll revealing God’s redemptive purpose for creation. Now we see the Holy City in which God and the Lamb reign-no longer in heaven above, but on earth and among human beings. “I will be their God and they will be my people,” the refrain ringing throughout the prophets and amplified in John’s gospel, has now come to pass.

Yet, as the scurrilously omitted passages show us, the new heaven and the new earth do not come about without a cleansing. Not all that now is will be part of the new age to come. Perhaps not all people will be part of the new creation. Jesus leaves open the possibility that one can become so thoroughly disfigured by sin that the image of God is no longer visible. “I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers.” Matthew 7:23. We ignore Jesus at our very great peril. Of course, we are not in a position to determine who is beyond redemption. Only Jesus can make that call. For our part, we must assume that all people are capable of salvation, all people are deserving of mercy, all people are worthy of an opportunity for repentance. Moreover, it is worth remembering that the line between good and evil runs not between nations, races, clans or individuals but through the middle of every human heart. For “the time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God,” St. Peter tells us. I Peter 4:17. So how much of our lives are being lived eternally, that is, in love for God and our neighbor? Are we accustoming our eyes to the light of the Lamb now so that it will not blind us when it breaks through in all its fullness? How much of who you have been and what you have done today is worth preserving for eternity?

John 17:20-26

What we have in this lesson is only a snippet of Jesus’ final prayer with his disciples wrapping up the “farewell discourses” and leading into the passion narrative to follow. Here Jesus weaves together into a single poetic fabric the Christological claims he has been making for himself throughout the gospel. Today’s reading seems to address the objection raised by the good Judas in chapter 15, namely, if Jesus really is the Savior of the world, why is he revealing himself only to a select few? John 15: 22. Jesus makes clear that his final prayer is not merely for the twelve, but for all who will believe in him through their preaching. Vs. 20. Jesus says essentially that he is praying that the love between Father and Son that has existed from eternity might bind the disciples together just as it unites the Trinity. Such love manifest among the disciples and poured out upon the world glorifies God. The reality of God living in the midst of God’s people under the gentle reign of the Lamb proclaimed in the Book of Revelation is fulfilled in some measure in the church.

Jesus prays that his church may become “perfectly one.” Vs. 23. But this oneness is perfect only in a qualified sense. Truly perfect oneness will only be achieved when the world itself is drawn into the Trinitarian love that is God. It is for the world, broken and hostile to God as it is, that the Son has been sent. The Son’s love for the world is precisely what overcomes the hostility of the world. It is for this reason that Jesus concludes his prayer with a plea to his heavenly Father “that the love with which thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.” Vs. 26.

Although this is not an Ascension Day text, it might fruitfully be used as such. The trouble with the feast of the Ascension is that we often turn it into Jesus’ going away party. It is anything but that! God’s right hand is not somewhere deep in space. It is at work in the heart of creation. To say that Jesus has ascended to the right hand of the Father is to say that he is more intensely present to us than ever before. As the hymn tells us, “Christ is alive, no longer bound to distant years in Palestine, but saving, healing, here and now, and touching every place and time.” ‘Christ is Alive! Let Christians Sing,” Text Brian A. Wren, Music T. Williams published in Lutheran Evangelical Worship, # 389.

Sunday, April 24th

April 18, 2016Uncategorizedabomination, Bible, Book of Acts, Book of Revelation, Church, eternal life, faith, gospel, gun violence, Holy Spirit, idolatry, Jerusalem, Lectionary, poverty, preaching, Psalms, Religion, resurrection, Saint John, Sunday Lessons, theology, violence against children, Wrath of Godrevolsen

Fifth Sunday of Easter

Acts 11:1-18
Psalm 148
Revelation 21:1-6
John 13:31-35

Prayer of the Day: O Lord God, you teach us that without love, our actions gain nothing. Pour into our hearts your most excellent gift of love, that, made alive by your Spirit, we may know goodness and peace, through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another.” John 15:17

The opposite of love is not hatred, but indifference. The mayor and leaders in Flint, Michigan did not set about with malice in their hearts to poison the children of that broken city. They did not intend for anyone to get hurt. They only wanted to find a cheap and easy solution to an expensive problem. They wanted to balance the budget. I expect they probably knew in the back of their minds that there was a risk involved with drawing the city’s drinking water from the Flint River. Perhaps they were even warned of the dangers by civil engineers and environmental specialists who knew better. But they didn’t care enough to investigate the dangers or plan for the potential consequences of their actions. They had eyes only for the bottom line. Red ink on the town’s financials was more troubling to them than the red blood of Flint’s households.

Indifference kills more of us than malice. We die at the hands of drivers who know they are too inebriated to drive but don’t want to shell out money for a cab. We die at the hands of drivers who can’t be bothered to pull off the road before responding to a text message. Our children die because the gun industry will have its profits and it is the price we will gladly pay to preserve our precious Second Amendment rights. We die because our consumptive way of life poisons our water, fouls our air and destroys the ecosystem that sustains us. Even when human lives are taken by evil people with malicious intent, it is often because the rest of us lack the desire, the will and the courage to stop them. As writer and philosopher Edmond Burke points out, “all that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing.”

Indifference takes a terrible toll on our souls as well. If St. Augustine is to be believed (and I think he is), we were created to love God. The only true temple God has is the flesh in which his Word is revealed. The only way love for God can be practiced is through our love for the neighbor made in God’s image. That is why John tells us in his letter that if we claim to love God yet harbor hatred for any of God’s human children, we are liars. I John 4:20. Whatever we worship when we come to God with cold and indifferent hearts, it is not God. Whatever we are calling “God”-even if we name it Jesus-it is not God. It is instead merely a reflection of our own twisted and depraved selves, an idol. Idols are not God, but they have the power to shape us into their own lifeless images if we allow them to become gods for us. That is the terrible fate from which Jesus came to deliver us.

Jesus came to make us angry with the wrath of God. For some people in this new age culture of blissful tolerance, an angry God is offensive. As one clergy person recently told me, “anger is unworthy of God.” (This from a preacher? God help us all.) But if God is not angry over the needless poisoning of Flint’s children; if God is not angry that a third of us live in comfort while two thirds struggle to stay alive; if God is not angry over the unnecessary police shootings of young black men; then I can only conclude that God doesn’t much care about us. But God is not indifferent. Anger is the shape love takes toward wayward children bent on following their own self-destructive paths. God’s anger, however, does not translate into revenge, retribution or punishment. God’s anger translates into a stubborn and patient determination to break our hard hearts, shock us into seeing the world the way God sees it-and weeping. Jesus came to save us from our indifference, to help us weep over the destruction we have wrought upon ourselves and one another, to make us truly human. He came that we might become a people capable of love.

Here’s a poem by James Wright that captures precisely our predicament-and suggests its cure.

Three Stanzas from Goethe

That man standing there, who is he?
His path lost in the thicket,
Behind him the bushes
Lash back together,
The grass rises again,
The waste devours him.

Oh, who will heal the sufferings
Of the man whose balm turned poison?
Who drank nothing
But hatred of men from love’s abundance?
Once despised, now a despiser,
He kills his own life
The precious secret,
The self-seeker finds nothing.

Oh, Father of Love,
If your psaltery holds one tone
That his ear still might echo,
Then quicken his heart!
Open his eyes, shut off by clouds
From the thousand fountains
So near him, dying of thirst
In his own heart.

Source: Wright, James, The Branch Will Not Break, (c. 1963 by James Wright, pub by Wesleyan University Press) p. 14. James Wright was born in Martins Ferry, Ohio in 1927. In addition to his own work, Wright is also well known for his translations of Spanish poets. In 1972 he received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. He died in 1980. This poem actually consists of three stanzas Wright translated from Goethe’s poem, “Harzreise im Winter.” You can learn more about James Wright and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

Acts 11:1-18

Peter has a few problems on his hands. For starters he woke up from a terrible dream in which God was commanding him to eat a whole bed sheet full of disgusting animals including reptiles. This is more than just disgusting. It is downright wrong. Leviticus 11 makes very clear to Israel that the eating of such animals as appeared to Peter in that sheet was an “abomination.” As a matter of fact, even touching one of these animals renders a person unclean for the rest of the day! What do you make of such a dream? Could this possibly have been the voice of the Lord? Or was it the voice of the devil tempting Peter? Before Peter has a chance to reflect much on his dream, three men arrive at the house where he is staying. They were sent by Cornelius, a Roman Centurion. They inform Peter that Cornelius would like to see him and request that he come with them to Caesarea. I cannot imagine that Peter was thrilled about all of this. When the commander of the occupation force wants to see you in his office, it’s usually not a good thing. Yet the Spirit of God urges Peter to go along and he does.

Arriving at the home of Cornelius, Peter discovers that he is not going to be imprisoned or interrogated. He is instead invited to dinner. In fact, the whole household of Cornelius is present to hear what Peter has to say about Jesus. Eating unclean food is bad enough. Eating it in the home of a Gentile is unthinkable. Everything Peter ever knew and believed about the Scriptures told him that he really ought to get up, tell these folks he had nothing to say to them and excuse himself. But something much deeper in Peter’s heart was telling him to accept the hospitality of Cornelius and his family and to preach the gospel to them. That “something,” was the Spirit of God. Before Peter finishes his sermon, the Spirit of God fills Cornelius and his family just as it did the disciples at Pentecost. I don’t think Peter had worked out all the theological implications of what had happened or what he did next. But when you see the Spirit of God calling someone to faith-how can you not baptize?

Next thing you know, Peter is in hot water with the Synod. “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” he is asked. I expect that the Jerusalem leadership probably pointed out to Peter that his actions were contrary to the guidelines, procedures and requirements for mission and ministry. Though perhaps we might someday consider bringing the gospel to the Gentiles, such a step will constitute a substantial departure from the church’s understanding and practice. Such a profound change should not be made prior to rigorous study, theological reflection and deliberation. The proper procedure would have been to submit the question via resolution to the general assembly which would probably commission a task force to issue a report. After a five year study of the issue, the assembly would then be in a position to make a reasoned and comprehensive decision on whether such a policy change is warranted and, if so, how it should be implemented. That is how we Lutherans do things. If we had been in charge back then, this whole Cornelius affair would never have happened. Thank God we weren’t in charge-and still are not.

Throughout the Book of Acts, the Spirit seems always to be a few steps ahead of the church which is frantically racing to keep up. Things are happening so fast and furiously that the Apostles find themselves confused, bewildered and anxious about the direction of the church. So for people today who complain that the church isn’t what it used to be, that it is changing too fast and it’s not the church they grew up in, I have just four words: Get used to it. The Acts of the Apostles, this marvelous story about the early church, reminds us that we don’t control the mission, ministry or future direction of the church. It turns out that God seems to be active in the places we least expect. Faith is born among the folks you would least expect to be receptive. About all we can ever say about the shape of the church in the future is that it will certainly not be what we expect.

This story also tells us something about the authority of the Bible. Peter appeared to be on solid scriptural ground with his scruples about socializing among, eating with and finally baptizing Gentiles. Turns out he was wrong. That should be a lesson for all of us who are so cock sure we know what the Bible requires. “The Bible is inerrant!” said a fellow from the church in which I was raised as he brought his fist down on the book. Perhaps so, but its interpreters are fallible human beings. All you need to do is google the word “Bible” and you will discover some of the wildest, wackiest and witless notions ever expressed by people who think they have the Bible figured out. So it is quite possible to get the Bible wrong and the church has done that on many occasions. That is why we had the Reformation. That is also why the church’s understanding and interpretation of the Scriptures is always evolving, changing and growing in new directions. That is why Jesus promised his disciples that “when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.” John 16:13. Because we don’t have all the truth, we are prone to misread and misinterpret the Scriptures in myopic, self-serving ways. We need the Spirit to poke and prod us into taking a new look at the Bible, questioning our assumptions about what it means and listening to people who might read it altogether differently than we do.

Finally, we need the whole church to read the Bible properly. Though Peter was right to heed the voice of the Spirit when he found himself in the household of Cornelius, the extension of the church’s mission to the Gentiles was, in the end, a product of deliberations by the whole church. At the Holy Spirit’s prompting, Peter responded faithfully to the opportunity before him to share the gospel. But he did not simply dismiss the rest of the church or move forward with the mission to the Gentiles autonomously. Instead, he took the initiative to go up to Jerusalem in order to explain and defend his actions. He laid out his case for the Gentile mission before the church for its discernment and judgment. I expect that there was some spirited debate and Scriptural arguments put forth by all sides of the issue. In the end, Peter was able to persuade the church to move in the direction the Spirit led him at the home of Cornelius. That is how it should be.

Psalm 148

This psalm is beautifully structured. It begins and ends with an expression of praise: Hallelujah or “Praise YAHWEH.” The injunctions to praise begin with the heavens, the angels, the sun, moon and stars descending to the earth and its creatures. The forces of nature, geographical features (mountains and hills) and plant life all are called to join in the choir of praise to God. All people from mighty kings, to slave girls to small children are drawn into this cosmic hymn of praise to the Creator. Finally, the call to praise is directed to “the people of Israel who are near to him.” The perfect symmetry of this psalm is further illustrated by its final focus on this one particular people who, though at the narrowest end of the spectrum, are nonetheless “near” to the almighty Creator God.

This psalm is pure praise. It seeks nothing from God. It is not offered up in thanksgiving for any particular act of goodness or salvation on God’s part. The psalmist praises God because that is what creatures, all creatures, even “inanimate” creatures do. It is what we are created for according the Westminster Shorter Catechism. The longer I live, the more I am convinced that this might well be so and that perhaps a major source of our misery stems from our failure to understand it. The universe was spoken into existence by God and so its very existence is an act of praise. Praise is therefore nothing other than going with the grain of the universe. It is recognizing that joy is found only as we learn to sing our little piece in tune with the rest of the choir. Only then does our voice amount to anything worth listening to. If we were not so terribly absorbed in pursuing whatever it is we think will make us happy and accomplishing what we believe to be important and establishing our own legacy, we might not mind so much that we are after all “grass that withers and flowers that fade.”

Revelation 21:1-6

This passage begins a lengthy portrayal of the new creation brought about by the victory of the Lamb. Once again, it bears repeating that this victory will come about not through violent conquest in the manner of the “beast,” but through the faithful obedience of the saints in the face of hardship and persecution. There will be continuity between the new creation and the old. God does not destroy the work of his hands. He “makes it new.” This parallels Paul’s thinking about the resurrection in I Corinthians 15:35-50 where he explains the relationship between the mortal body and the resurrected body by analogy to the relationship between the seed and the full grown plant. While there is continuity, the plant is nevertheless far more than the seed. Note also that the saints do not go up to the new Jerusalem. The new Jerusalem comes down to them.

Jerusalem as the beloved of God is a recurring image throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. There is a rich prophetic tradition foretelling God’s salvation coming forth from this holy city. The most notable is Isaiah 2:1-4. There the prophet declares that “out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” Once again, God’s reign in Zion is not one of violence and conquest. It is a reign of law and justice. There will be no further need for weapons as the Lord will judge between nations. The nations themselves “shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.” Psalm 87 is yet another instance in which Zion is lifted up as a unifying symbol for all peoples of the world. So also in Revelation Jerusalem is again at the center of God’s saving work “prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” Revelation 21:2.

“Behold, the dwelling of God is with men.” Again, the term used for “dwelling” is the same root used in John 1:14where the evangelist says, “the word became flesh and lived among us.” Literally translated, the verb translated “live with” or “dwell with” means to “tent with” or “tabernacle with” or “camp among.” This language once again evokes the memory of God’s presence for Israel in the tent of meeting that accompanied her throughout her journey from Egypt to the land of Canaan. It is more than this, however. As you can discover by reading on to the 22^nd chapter of Revelation, there is a description of a rebuilt Temple in the midst of Jerusalem from which flow the river of the water of life. This, in turn, echoes Ezekiel’s vision of the restored temple in Ezekiel 47. In this vision also a river flows from the gates of the temple throughout the land of Israel refreshing, restoring and making fruitful areas formerly arid and dry. These verses also allude to the declaration made by Second Isaiah to the disheartened exiles in Babylon: “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” Isaiah 43: 18-19.

John of Patmos is weaving all of these images from the Hebrew Scriptures into his lyrical portrayal of the Lamb’s victory in which the struggling churches of Asia Minor will share. This lesson is yet another illustration of how critical the Hebrew Scriptures are for understanding the New Testament. Reading the New Testament without knowing the Hebrew Scriptures is like getting the punch line without the joke.

John 13:31-35

Much of what I have to say about this lesson is already in my introductory remarks. Here are a few additional things worth noting. The reading begins with Jesus declaring: “Now is the Son of Man glorified and in him God is glorified.” vs. 31. It is important to note that just prior to this Judas slipped away to betray Jesus into the hands of his enemies. Thus, the glorification of which Jesus speaks is his betrayal and crucifixion. It is glorification because it reflects the depth of Jesus’ love for his disciples and God’s love for the world. On the cross, the world will see the heart of God breaking for humanity.

The “new commandment” calling the disciples to love one another does not appear to be new. The Hebrew Scriptures admonished the people of Israel to “love your neighbor as yourself.” Leviticus 19:18. The commandment is nevertheless “new” insofar as the paradigm of love is the cross. Thus, it is no longer enough to love your neighbor as yourself only, but to love as God in Christ loves you. This is higher intensity love that is not possible for the disciples unless they continue to abide in Jesus. For reasons previously discussed, I believe that practicing such love is the principal reason for the church’s existence. It is through such love that all people will know that we are Jesus’ disciples and that God sends Jesus not to condemn the world, but that the world may have life through him.

Sunday, April 17th

April 11, 2016UncategorizedBook of Acts, Book of Revelation, discipleship, Easter, faith, Good Shepherd, gospel, Holy Spirit, justice, Lectionary, peace, Persecution, prayer, Psalms, Religion, resurrection, Robert Frost, Saint John, Saint Mark, Sunday Lessons, theologyrevolsen

Fourth Sunday of Easter

Acts 9:36-43
Psalm 23
Revelation 7:9-17
John 10:22-30

Prayer of the Day: O God of peace, you brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus Christ, the great shepherd of the sheep. By the blood of your eternal covenant, make us complete in everything good that we may do your will, and work among us all that is well-pleasing in your sight, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Aside from the Lord’s Prayer, the Twenty-Third Psalm is probably the one and only Bible passage nearly everyone recognizes. As such, it is enormously helpful to me in doing funerals for people with families that probably haven’t darkened the door of a church since baptism. It provides some familiar ground between us on which to meet. The Twenty-Third is also a favorite of long time believers who recognize in its lyrical verse the image of their Savior, Jesus Christ. Most Hebrew Scripture scholars classify it as a “psalm of trust.” I wonder, though, is Psalm 23 really only a psalm of trust, just a word of comfort and assurance for people going through bad times? Is there another way to read this remarkable hymn?

What if we were to read the Twenty-Third Psalm as a poem of resistance, a bold declaration of loyalty to the Lord over against all other would-be shepherds? Saying “The Lord is my Shepherd” implies that, while I might take counsel or advice from a friend or recognize the authority of a teacher, pastor or government official, none but Jesus may shepherd me. A disciple of Jesus makes the bold declaration that his/her sole shepherd is the Lord Jesus Christ. If we are serious about that declaration, we can be sure that it will put us on a collision course with a world governed by other shepherds. Frequently, we meet forks in the road where it becomes necessary to decide who is to be followed. To follow Jesus is to reject the call of a thousand other false shepherds who have little interest in the sheep and who promise shortcuts along the more attractive path of least resistance. Sometimes following Jesus means telling the powers and principalities in high places that “we must obey God rather than human authority.” Sometimes it means creating a socially awkward moment when you have to tell your house guest that a racist joke is not welcome in your home. Sometimes the cost of faithfulness to Jesus results in one’s losing career, business and financial opportunities or alienating family and friends. Following the Good Shepherd might cost you your life.

It might seem a little demeaning for a fiercely individualistic people like us to admit that we either have or need a shepherd, but the Bible tells us that independence is not an option. We were created to find our rest, our peace and our reason for being in God. If we will not have the Lord as our Shepherd, something or someone else will slide in to fill the void. Something else will dictate how we live. What’s more, that something will always disappoint us in the end. I wish I could tell you how many parents feel betrayed, empty and lonely when the children to whom they have devoted their lives grow up and no longer need them. How many people do you know that retire from their jobs only to discover that they have been so busy at work that they have never had time to imagine what life will look like when the work is all done? You have a shepherd. The only question is, who is it?

Understand that the shepherd/sheep metaphor will not allow for sentimentality. Sheep are not cuddly little pets. They are farm animals destined to be sheered and perhaps slaughtered. They are kept safe and sound not for their own benefit, but for the benefit of the shepherd for whom they must one day suffer and die. So it is that our lives do not belong to us. Life and death are given so that in both we may glorify God and bear witness to Jesus. “Whoever would come after me, let him take up his cross daily and follow.” “Where I am, there will my servant be also.” Just as the Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep, so the sheep are to live-and perhaps die-for the Shepherd.

Well, if that’s the case, why would anyone follow Jesus? The answer is that Jesus alone knows where the green pastures and still waters are. Jesus alone knows the way through the valley of the shadow into the light of the resurrection. Jesus alone can open our hearts to the love which the Father shares with the Son-love that is strong enough to survive even death, love that is able to bind together all the broken pieces of our world, love that can make us genuinely human. You inevitably will have a shepherd. So let him be the one who knows where he is going; the one that can save you from yourself and ensure that you take the right fork in the road-because it might make all the difference.

Here’s a poem by Robert Frost about just such a fork in the road:

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Source: The Poetry of Robert Frost, (c. 1969 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.) p. 105. Born in 1874, Robert Frost held various jobs throughout his college years. He was a worker at a Massachusetts mill, a cobbler, an editor of a small town newspaper, a schoolteacher and a farmer. By 1915, Frost’s literary acclaim was firmly established. On his seventy-fifth birthday, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution in his honor. The State of Vermont named a mountain after him and he was given the unprecedented honor of being asked to read a poem at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961. Through the lens of rural life in New England, Frost’s poetry ponders the metaphysical depths. His poems paint lyrical portraits of natural beauty, though ever haunted by shadow and decay. You can learn more about Robert Frost and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

Acts 9:36-43

In this brief account, Peter raises a woman from death. Luke uses this miracle story to draw parallels between the ministry of Jesus and that of the church through which the Spirit continues Jesus’ life giving mission. Ludemann, Gerd, Early Christianity According to the Traditions in Acts, (c. 1989 by Fortress Press) p. 122. Luke’s gospel contains two other such miracles performed by Jesus. (Raising Jairus’ Daughter, Luke 8:40-56; Raising the Widow of Nain; Luke 7:11-17). Some commentators suggest that “Tabitha,” the name of the woman raised from death, is intended to echo the command given by Jesus in Aramaic, “talitha cum” (little girl arise), to the daughter of Jairus in Mark 5:41. Id. at 122 citing Wellhausen, Julius, Kritische Analyse der Apostelgeschichte, AGG.PH 15.2, Berlin 1914) p. 121. Though such a literary allusion would be consistent with Luke’s aim of demonstrating the healing presence of Jesus in the ministry of the church, I think it’s a bit of a stretch. If Luke had intended to make such a connection, he would surely have let Mark’s Aramaic rendition of Jesus’ command stand in his telling of the story. As it is, he translates the command into Greek. It should be emphasized that these raising events do not constitute “resurrection” in the same sense that Jesus experienced it. Tabitha will eventually die again as did Lazarus, the widow of Nain and the daughter of Jairus. Like Jesus’ healing miracles, the raising events constitute not final liberation from death, but only a brief reprieve.

Furthermore, the miracles are never ends in themselves. Peter’s response here is to the distress of the church in Jappa which has lost a valued minister. Tabitha has been raised up to continue her life of good works for the sake of the church and its mission. Juel, Donald, Luke Acts: The Promise of History, (c. 1983 by John Knox Press) p. 93. As the case of Stephen demonstrates, sometimes the mission of the church is served by a saint’s faithful death. Thus, miracles of healing are not doled out as rewards for faithfulness, answers to earnest prayer or any other effort on our part. They are gifts to sustain the life of the church, inspire faith and demonstrate God’s compassion.

There are a number of parallels between this story and that of Elisha’s raising the son of the Shunammite woman in II Kings 4:8-37. In both cases, the deceased were placed in upper rooms. As Elisha was alone in prayer with the corpse, so also Peter puts everyone else outside and prays alone in the room with Tabitha’s body. If these similarities between the two stories are anything more than coincidence, then Luke is once again making the point that the restorative power of God at work in the prophets and coming to full bloom in the work of the Messiah continues in the life of the church.

It is noteworthy that Peter lodges with Simon the “tanner.” Vs. 43. Jewish law regarded this line of work as defiling. Thus, Simon would have been an outcast in polite Jewish society. Peter seems to have no problem accepting Simon’s hospitality, though as we will see in next week’s lesson, he has considerable scruples over dining with Gentiles. Luke is therefore setting the stage for the upcoming story of the conversion of the Gentile, Cornelius. This will be the next chapter in the church’s story of breaking down religious and cultural barriers. Luke wants to demonstrate that welcoming the Gentiles into the church is simply a logical extension of Jesus’ welcoming outcasts among his own people.

Psalm 23

Professor Walter Brueggeman has said that commenting on the 23^rd Psalm is almost pretentious. As my opening remarks demonstrate, however, that has not stopped me from trying. Nonetheless, given the frequency with which this psalm appears in the lectionary, I am fairly sure that I have said about everything else I have to say at my posts for Sunday, July 19, 2016, Sunday, April 26, 2015,Sunday, October 12, 2014, Sunday, May 11, 2014, Sunday, March 30, 2014, Sunday, April 21, 2013 andSunday, July 22, 2012. That, of course, does not mean that there is no more to be said. I encourage you to read the commentary by Kelly J. Murphy, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Central Michigan University, the commentary by James K. Mead, Associate Professor of Religion at Northwestern College, Orange City, IA and the commentary by Joel LeMon, Associate Professor of Old Testament at Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, all on workingpreacher.org. This article discusses the “shepherd” metaphor employed in the 23^rd Psalm and elsewhere. Finally, Augustine’s profound reflections on this psalm in his commentary are well worth rereading.

Revelation 7:9-17

For my views on the imagery of the Lamb who was slain, see the posts from Sunday, April 3, 2016 and April 10, 2016. What I find interesting here is the paradoxical statement in verse 17: “For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd and he will guide them to springs of living water; and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” This hymn echoes and may be inspired by imagery from Psalm 23. Oddly, Christ is characterized as both lamb and shepherd. The apparent inconsistency is overcome, however, if we accept the proposal of commentator Raymond Brown that, while composed by different authors, Revelation and the Gospel and letters of John share a related theological tradition. Brown, Raymond E., The Community of the Beloved Disciple, (c. 1979 by Raymond E. Brown, S.S., pub. by Paulist Press) p. 6. Recall that in John 17 Jesus prays not only that his disciples may be one, but “as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us…” John 17:21. The “Lamb of God” that takes away the sin of the world now indwells his disciples in the unity of the Spirit and is also the Shepherd.

“Salvation belongs to our God who sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb!” vs. 10. The term, “salvation” or “soteria” in Greek might better be translated “vindication” or “victory.” Kelly, Balmer H., “Revelation 7:9-17, Interpretation, Vol. XL, no. 3, July 1986, p. 291. It is not that God is acclaimed as saved. Rather, the ways of God and God’s suffering love so perfectly expressed in the faithful ministry and obedient death of the Lamb are now vindicated as are those whose lives have been forfeited through their faithful following of the Lamb. “The tribulation” (vs. 14) out of which the “host dressed in white” (vs. 9) has emerged is the persecution actually experienced by the seven churches in Asia Minor addressed in the messages of Revelation 1-2. The beleaguered churches are encouraged to persist in their faithful obedience to Jesus and assured that their journey’s end will be the fuller presence of God. The promise that God will “shelter them with his presence” literally translates as: “spread his tabernacle over them.” Vs. 15. The tabernacle, sometimes referred to as the “tent of meeting” in the Hebrew Scriptures, accompanied the children of Israel throughout their forty years of wandering in the wilderness between Egypt and Canaan. The verbal form of this word “tabernacle” is used in the first chapter of John’s gospel where the apostle tells us that “the Word became flesh and lived among us.” John 1:14 “Lived among us” literally translated is “tabernacled among us” or “pitched his tent among us.”

It is unfortunate that the Book of Revelation historically has been a tool of apocalyptic terrorists seeking to sow seeds of fear, foreboding and doom. That was the last thing on the mind of its author, John of Patmos. I believe Balmer, supra, sums it up well: “Revelation 7:9-17 is therefore, an unalloyed ‘gospel,’ a seeing and hearing of the final justification of Christian hope. If it is to be part of the church’s proclamation, then, especially in Eastertide, it ought to be proclaimed without ‘if’ and ‘perhaps.’ Similarly, it will not do merely to hold out before persons tempted to despair only a future prospect, coupled with the advice to live out the times in between in chronological waiting. The strength of the biblical hope is that it focuses on what is real rather than simply on what will be. Triumph will be because it is the fundamental truth of human life corresponding to the truth of God. Although apocalyptic enthusiasts have frequently reduced the images of Revelation to a time-conditioned calendar, the author surely meant to give the church a vision of God’s victorious vindication always ready to break upon the human scene, so that in the Apocalypse, perhaps more strongly than anywhere else, it is a case of the future determining and creating the present.” p. 294 (emphases in the original).

This is a powerful message of hope to a church facing extinction under the oppressive weight of imperial persecution. It is similarly comforting to both churches and individuals close to dying and whose faithfulness to Jesus seems futile and ineffective. The Lamb whose faithfulness unto death defeated death shares his resurrection with the saints even as they share his suffering and death. The beast may inflict mortal wounds. But the Lamb bestows immortal and healing love. The last word belongs to the Lamb.

John 10:22-30

The Gospel of John introduces Jesus as God’s Word made flesh. Like a snowball rolling down hill, our understanding of Jesus picks up deeper and more nuanced meaning as we proceed through the narrative. Every sentence in this Gospel carries another clue to Jesus’ identity. The Feast of Dedication commemorated the cleansing and re-dedication of the Temple in Jerusalem by Judas Maccabeus in 164 B.C.E. following its desecration by Antiochus Epiphanes. Jesus previously conducted his own cleansing of the Temple in John 2:13-22. Rather than rededicating it, however, Jesus declared that his body constituted the new temple “not built with hands.” See John 2:13-22. Jesus’ reappearance in the Temple once again points us back to this clue paving the way to a new revelation about to unfold in the dialogue that follows.

Jesus’ opponents pose a very specific question to him: “Are you the Christ?” While there certainly was a wide range of expectation regarding the role of Israel’s messiah, what he would accomplish and how he would get it done, there was no ambiguity in the question itself. Jesus either believes he is the messiah or he does not. So which is it? While Jesus may seem evasive in his response, he is actually prodding his questioners to ask a better question: I have already told you who I am. You already know enough to make your judgment about me. Do you really think my answering your question one way or another will change anything I have already said or add to what you already know? The word ‘Christ’ or ‘Messiah’ is just a word. Look at my works. They speak to who I am. Vs. 25. (Highly paraphrased).

“My sheep hear my voice.” The shepherd’s sheep recognize the voice of the shepherd. Jesus has previously made this point in John 10:1-6. The sheep cannot be lured away by the voice of anyone but the true shepherd. The converse is also true. Sheep that do not belong to the shepherd will not heed the shepherd’s voice. So this is not a matter of obtuseness on the part of Jesus’ opponents. Their inability to “hear” Jesus’ voice stems rather from a lack of trust. The sheep heed the voice of the shepherd precisely because the shepherd has proved trustworthy and true. Paradoxically, Jesus’ opponents cannot hear him because they do not trust him. Yet they will never learn to trust him unless they heed his voice. Their situation might seem hopeless but it isn’t. These folks are not of Jesus’ fold now. But Jesus says of them: “I have other sheep, that are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will heed my voice. So there shall be one flock and one shepherd.” John 10:16. Jesus has yet more work to do. He will be glorified in his final great work on the cross through which he will “draw all people to myself.” John 12:32. As the lesson from Revelation makes clear in its own poetic way, so also the Gospel lesson assures us that the Crucified Lamb will prevail in the end through faithful, patient, suffering love.

Sunday, April 10th

April 4, 2016Uncategorizedapocalypse, Babylon, Bonhoeffer, Book of Acts, Book of Revelation, Church, David, discipleship, Easter, empire, faith, gospel, Harper Lee, Holy Spirit, idolatry, john of patmos, justice, Lectionary, peace, Persecution, poor, Psalms, racism, resurrection, Roman Empire, Saint Paul, Sunday Lessons, the beast, theology, violencerevolsen

THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER

Acts 9:1-6
Psalm 30
Revelation 5:11-14
John 21:1-19

Prayer of the Day: Eternal and all-merciful God, with all the angels and all the saints we laud your majesty and might. By the resurrection of your Son, show yourself to us and inspire us to follow Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

What determines whether a person grows up to be a Gandhi or a Hitler? Is it genetic? Are familial forces, social conditions or peer associations responsible? Is it a combination of all these things? Do people ever really change? Does one ever become so thoroughly evil that s/he is beyond redemption? Does one ever reach a point where s/he is beyond corruption? Those were some of the questions that came to mind as I read the recently published novel of Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman.

I should start by saying that one of the most formative movies I ever watched was To Kill a Mocking Bird, based on Lee’s first novel by that name. It was one of Gregory Peck’s greatest performances. As most of you no doubt recall, this was the story of Atticus Finch, Esq., a small town lawyer in the fictitious town of Maycomb, Alabama. Defying the racist conventions of Southern culture in the 1930s, Atticus defended a young black man against doubtful allegations that he had raped a white woman. I was so taken with the movie that I checked the book out of the school library (a rare occurrence for me in my middle school years). I read it again about ten years ago and discovered that it still held the same bittersweet mixture of gentle beauty, brutality, passion and wisdom. We see the story unfolding through the eyes of Atticus’ little daughter, Jean Louise Finch a/k/a “Scout.” The picture of Atticus Finch emerging from the narrative is one of a humble, though self-assured attorney. He is sure of his convictions and unafraid to stand on them, yet tolerant and respectful of even his most hostile critics. His gentle courage is nowhere better illustrated than on the night he places himself between his imprisoned client and an angry lynch mob. With Scout at his side, he disarms the gang with an appeal to their common humanity. Though ultimately unsuccessful at trial, Finch’s fearless and uncompromising commitment to justice is itself a kind of victory.

Watchman takes place two decades later. Jean Louise is now an adult residing in New York City. When the narrative begins, she is returning home for a visit with her father. Viewing her home town through the eyes of an adult having experienced the broader cultural landscape, she begins to recognize the insidious poison of racism that has always been present in the community. She learns that her father’s willingness to represent black criminal defendants has more to do with keeping such cases away from the NAACP than seeking justice. The final blow comes when Jean Louise witnesses her father presiding at a meeting of the Citizen’s Council featuring a speaker extoling the virtues of segregation and the dangers of interracial coupling. Along with Jean Louise, we learn that Atticus Finch is not the heroic figure we thought he was.

It is always disturbing when your hero gets knocked off his pedestal. It is all the more disturbing for those of us who identify as progressives. Nothing calls progressivism into question quite like regression. We would all like to think that gains made toward justice and equality are permanent and cannot be erased by history. In reality, however, we forget the hard lessons learned from episodes of genocide. We forget the sacrifices made to achieve justice and peace and revert to the same old behaviors that always lead us into trouble. So it is on a personal level as well. Just as a person can grow and mature, so s/he can also revert to infantile behavior. Atticus Finch would not be the first person I ever met who cynically abandoned values and principles once held dear. To achieve great heights is less than half the battle. Holding them is what poses the greatest challenge.

Did Atticus Finch change? Did he fall from the lofty heights of his convictions? That is one possibility. After all, back in the 1930s white privilege was firmly entrenched. One could stoop down to help a person of color as an act of noble compassion without challenging the systemic inequality upholding that privilege. Two and a half decades later the landscape had changed. African Americans were not asking for favors. They were demanding their rights. They were fighting for an end to systemic racism and white privilege. The objects of Atticus’ pity were now challenging his entitlements. Like many other white folk, I suspect Atticus felt threatened. When people feel threatened they become hostile. Fear causes us to revert to the most primitive types of human conduct.

Then too, we learn that Atticus has come down with rheumatoid arthritis in his old age. Pain and disability can do strange things to us. They make us feel vulnerable, dependent and resentful. Pain robs us of sleep and depletes our energy. It can push us into self-obsession and self-pity. Pain medication can alter our judgments and skew our perceptions. All of these things could well have contributed to Atticus’ seeming change of heart.

Though Watchman reads like a sequel to Mocking Bird, Lee actually wrote it before Mocking Bird and submitted it for publication. Only after Watchman had been rejected did Lee write Mocking Bird. Sadly, Harper Lee passed away early this year and so we will never hear her take on the two natures of Atticus Finch. Is the Atticus Jean Louise comes to see in Watchman a truer version of the father she idolized as a child? Or is the Atticus of Mocking Bird Lee’s more reflective and nuanced version of the stereotypical southern racist we meet in Watchman? I suspect Lee might tell us that he is both and neither. At the end of the day, each individual is a complex mixture of genetic traits, inherited beliefs, learned behaviors, desires, passions and memories. One seldom knows whether s/he is a hero, coward, racist or not until the moment of trial comes. Much may depend upon when and where in life’s journey the challenge arises. It is dangerous to presume too much or to judge too harshly-particularly for those of us who have not yet been put to the test. We can only pray, “Save us from the time of trial.”

Our second lesson from the Book of Acts also tells of a profound transformation of character. We read how Saul, persecutor of the church, became Paul the Apostle of Jesus Christ. Paul’s story is as important as anything he ever wrote because it affirms that yes, indeed, people are capable of change. Or, more accurately put, God is capable of changing human beings. It doesn’t always happen in a flash and it is probably never complete this side of the grave. There is plenty of evidence in his letters to suggest that Paul’s transformation was a work in progress. Paul frequently lashes out in anger, sometimes wallows in self-pity and often employs what can fairly be called manipulative tactics to get his churches to do what he thinks they should. Yet at the same time, Paul displays a remarkable self-awareness of his “foolishness.” He knows only too well his own weakness and the strength of Christ which alone is sufficient to compensate for it. He knows that he has yet to experience fully the power of Jesus’ resurrection, yet forgetting what is behind and striving for what lies ahead, he pushes forward to make that precious gift his own.

Every life is something of a mystery. The totality of who we are cannot be known until such time as Christ is all in all and we know as we are known. Here is a poem by teacher and pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer composed during his imprisonment touching on that point.

Who am I?

Who am I? They often tell me
I stepped from my cell’s confinement
calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
like a Squire from his country-house.

Who am I? They often tell me
I used to speak to my warders
freely and friendly and clearly,
as though it were mine to command.

Who am I? They also tell me
I bore the days of misfortune
equally, smilingly, proudly,
like one accustomed to win.

Am I then really all that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I myself know of myself?
Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
struggling for breath, as though hands were
compressing my throat,
yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness,
tossing in expectation of great events,
powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
faint, and ready to say farewell to it all?

Who am I? This or the other?
Am I one person to-day and to-morrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
and before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army,
fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?

Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, 0 God, I am Thine!

Source: Letters and Papers from Prison, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer (c. 1953 by SCM Press). Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born in 1906. He studied theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York City and at Berlin University where he became a professor of systematic theology. At the outbreak of World War II, Bonhoeffer was on a lecturing tour in the United States. Against the advice of his friends and colleagues, he answered the call to return to Germany and lead the Confessing Church in its opposition to National Socialism. Bonhoeffer was arrested in 1943 and imprisoned at Buchenwald. He was subsequently transferred to Flossenburg prison where he was hanged by the Gestapo just days before the end of the war. To learn more about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, his books and poems check out this website.

Acts 9:1-6

This story fascinates me. It seems that Saul (later to be called Paul) has just made a U Turn in his fundamental beliefs and self-understanding. From this day forward, he takes his orders from Jesus-a man he presumed dead and whose followers he has been busy exterminating. I am captivated by this story because I cannot say that I have ever had such an experience. My mind changes slowly. It changes direction like an aircraft carrier: in small increments that seem inconsequential at the time but ultimately alter my direction in significant ways. When I read my journal entries of thirty years ago I can see that I have changed my mind about a great many things, though I would be hard put to say exactly when that happened. I am not even sure there ever was a conscious turning point. I expect that conversations with family and friends, reading and study along with my life experiences have worked together in gradually shaping and re-shaping my outlook over the years. I hope that worship, preaching and prayer have also played a significant role. That seems to be the way most of us are formed most of the time.

But not always. There are “Damascus Road” moments that can turn you around. Perhaps one contemporary example is Senator Robert Portman, a conservative legislator representing Ohio who embraced marriage equality upon learning that his son was gay. I suppose there is reason to question the sincerity of the senator’s conversion, which many have dismissed as a classic political “flip-flop.” It is a little suspicious that this politician should have experienced his change of heart just following the release of poll numbers showing a clear majority of Americans favoring marriage equality. Still, I tend to believe that Portman’s turnabout was genuine. Discovering that your own son is among the folks you have been trying to exclude as inherently immoral cannot be too different from Paul’s discovery that the Jesus he was striving to destroy was actually the God he worshipped.

In approaching this text it might be helpful to begin listing some of the strongest convictions you hold. Then ask yourself what it would take to change your mind. What could make you see things differently? If you are convinced that your beliefs and opinions are so solidly based that nothing could change them, I would caution you with my mother’s oft repeated dictum: “There is no mind as weak as that mind which is too strong to change.” We will come up against this question of conversion again in next week’s lesson from Acts where Peter is confronted with what he probably assumed was not possible: faith among pagans.

Psalm 30

The title of this psalm is a little confusing. It reads: “A Psalm of David. A Song at the dedication of the Temple.” In the first place, the Temple was built by Solomon after David had died. If David wrote this psalm, it would not likely have been for the dedication of a building constructed well after his death. I should add, though, that Davidic authorship is not altogether impossible. According to the book of I Chronicles, David was heavily involved in planning for the erection of the Temple even though he took no part in actually building it. Thus, he could conceivably have composed psalms in anticipation of its dedication. This seems unlikely, however. A further difficulty is that the psalm itself is a personal prayer of thanksgiving for salvation. It does not even mention the Temple. One commentator suggests that the psalm, though composed much earlier, might have been used at the re-dedication of the Temple following its cleansing by Judas Maccabaeus in 164 B.C.E. (celebrated today as Hanukkah). J.W. Rogerson and J.W. McKay, The Cambridge Bible Commentary, Psalms 1-50 (Cambridge University Press, c. 1977), p. 133. That would explain the title linking the psalm to the Temple. The attribution of the psalm to David was likely a separate and much older title. It should be noted that the Hebrew preposition le translated as “by” in the Davidic title can also mean “to” or “in the manner of” or perhaps “in the tradition of.” Thus, actual Davidic authorship is not necessarily implied.

This psalm is one that Professor of Old Testament, Walter Brueggemann would probably classify as a “psalm of reorientation.” Brueggemann divides the psalms into three categories: Psalms of orientation, psalms of disorientation and psalms of re-orientation. I believe that is a helpful distinction because at any given time in our lives we find ourselves orientated, disorientated or re-orientated. There are times when all seems well with the world. The job is exciting and filled with opportunities for advancement. Marriage is filled with intimacy, spontaneity and delight. The kids are getting good grades and behaving themselves. There is not a cloud in the sky. A psalm of orientation, of praise and thanksgiving for God’s faithfulness and goodness is appropriate.

Then tragedy strikes. The company you work for goes out of business. A spouse proves unfaithful. One of the kids gets sick-really sick. Or that routine X-ray exposes something very wrong going on under the skin. That picture perfect life is thrown into disarray. The darkness seems impenetrable. At times like these, psalms of disorientation give expression to our feelings of panic and abandonment. A good example is Psalm 39 which concludes with a prayer that God would “look away from me, that I may know gladness, before I depart and be no more.” Yet even though the psalmist seems to have given up on God, the psalmist is nonetheless still speaking to God!

Psalms of re-orientation, such as Psalm 30, are songs of those who have fallen from a secure and well oriented life into disorientation, but have experienced the salvation of a God who has led them out of the darkness and re-orientated their lives. The journey has not been easy, nor does it bring them back to where they were before. Re-orientated people have been changed forever by their trek through the darkness. They now know just how dark and terrifying life can be. But they also know just how faithful and steadfast is the God who continues to lead them even as they pass through the valley of the shadow. See The Message of the Psalms, Brueggemann, Walter (Augsburg Publishing House, c 1984).

It seems that the psalmist was experiencing threats from his enemies as well as sickness. This psalm does not explain what caused the psalmist’s suffering. Nor does it suggest that the psalmist is somehow at fault or that his or her suffering is part of some greater plan. Sometimes suffering just is. There is no explanation for it, but one thing is clear. The psalmist knows that God has not deserted him or her throughout the dark times. God has been present all along the difficult journey from darkness into light. It is important to understand that this journey does not take the psalmist back to “the way things were.” Often, there is no going back. The scars of surgery remain even after a full recovery. Life after divorce can be filled with love, life and hope-but it does not restore the relationship that was lost. The psalmist recognizes in resolution of his or her trials the saving hand of God. Thanksgiving is the only conceivable response.

Revelation 5:11-14

For the next few weeks the lectionary will be treating us to some excerpts from the Book of Revelation. I have noticed that this book has an unholy appeal to all sorts of people for all kinds of reasons. Whenever I offer a Bible Study course on Revelation, the initial response is usually enthusiastic. But after the first session, when it becomes clear that I am not going to predict the date of the world’s end or reveal the identity of the antichrist (who is not even mentioned in the book), interest soon wanes. That is unfortunate because I believe John of Patmos, the putative author of Revelation, has a lot to say. Also unfortunate is the absence of Revelation 2-3 from the common lectionary. These chapters consist of prophetic/angelic messages to seven churches in Asia Minor (modern day Turkey), the audience to which the book is addressed. Though delivered in graphic symbols, metaphors and occasional numerical code, these “letters to the seven churches” give us a piercing glimpse into the life of these fledgling congregations as they sought to live out their faith under the shadow of the Roman Empire.

Though imprisoned more than once and most likely executed by the Roman government, Paul still saw the empire as the instrument of God’s judgment on wickedness (whether knowingly or not). It was “the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer.” Romans 13:4. John of Patmos held no such sanguine view of Rome. He saw the empire as a “beast” that “utters blasphemies against God,” “makes war on the saints,” and causes “all who dwell on the earth” to worship it. Revelation 13:5-9. Roman society, epitomized by its capital, is a modern “Babylon.” The nations have “drunk the wine of her impure passion,” “the merchants of the earth have grown rich with the wealth of her wantonness.” Revelation 18:1-3. Paul’s church lived uneasily in the shadow of a menacing, though mostly indifferent government. John’s church was engaged in a life and death struggle with an empire that was unequivocally hostile.

The world dominating beast of which John of Patmos speaks in Revelation was personified as an emperor of Rome. Scholars are divided over whether John was referring to a specific emperor at the end of the first century. Most seem to take this view, though some hold out for an earlier composition of Revelation maintaining that the “beast” refers rather to a future emperor expected to emerge from the chaos and civil war convulsing the empire following the death of Nero in 68 C.E. If John was referring to an actual emperor, the most likely candidate is Domitian who reigned from 81 C.E. to 96 C.E. Previous Roman emperors were inducted into the Roman pantheon of divinities upon their death. This ceremony amounted to the civil bestowal of an honorary title. It had practically no religious significance. The emperor Claudius was known to have joked, when asked how he was feeling on a particularly bad day, “I feel as though I am about to become a god.” For Domitian, however, godhood was no laughing matter. He bestowed the title “Lord and God” upon himself during his own lifetime. Ceremonial feasts where held in his honor at patriotic observances in which participation, from the perspective of Jews and Christians, amounted to idolatry.

John’s lurid images of cruelty, oppression and destruction of the earth set forth in Revelation accurately depict life under Roman occupation and more particularly, life for the churches in Asia Minor at the end of the first century. Governmental persecution of the church, though not wide spread or focused at this time, was a common enough occurrence for disciples of Jesus who refused to acknowledge Caesar as “Lord,” a title they reserved for Christ alone. Exclusion from economic and professional opportunities was often the price of worshiping Christ alone. Christians were not the only ones to experience Rome’s oppression. It is not only for the death of the prophets and saints, but for “all who have been slain on the earth” that Rome (code named “Babylon”) and the beast come to judgment in Revelation Chapter 18. Significantly, all those who profited socially, politically and commercially from Rome’s unjust reign share in its judgment. Revelation 18:11-20.

In seeking to hear Revelation as a word of God to the church of our time, we need to ask ourselves where and how we experience “empire” today. Jorge Rieger’s fine book, Christ and Empire, (AugsburgFortress, c. 2007) is helpful to us here:

“Empire, in sum, has to do with massive concentrations of power that permeate all aspects of life and that cannot be controlled by any one actor alone. This is one of the basic marks of empire throughout history. Empire seeks to extend its control as far as possible; not only geographically, politically, and economically-these factors are commonly recognized-but also intellectually, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, culturally and religiously.” pp. 2-3.

Conceived of in this way, it is clear that imperial power is not confined exclusively or even primarily to governmental institutions. Indeed, when I think of the institutions that directly affect my daily life-my credit card company, my bank, my health insurer-I realize that I am governed far more extensively by the so-called “private sector” than by any governmental unit. Furthermore, the constitutional protections preventing the government from invading my privacy, confiscating my property and restricting my freedom of expression are of little use to me in negotiating the workplace, dealing with the intrusive demands of my lender or resolving disputed claims with my insurers. Such rights as I have against these entities are determined by contractual agreements that were not negotiated in any real sense. Credit, banking services and insurance are offered to me on the companies’ terms and on a take it or leave it basis. The power of these entities to deprive me of my livelihood, deny me needed medical help or re-possess my home is far more disturbing to me than some abstract fear of the government getting into my computer to peek at pictures of my grandchildren or critique my taste in poetry.

More disturbing than the raw power exercised by corporate commercial entities is their subtle promotion of materialistic greed. At its best, the American Dream represents a society in which all members have the opportunity to thrive and build lives for themselves of value and significance. There is no guarantee of success, whatever that might mean, but there are opportunities for success and no penalty for failure beyond personal disappointment and loss. As promoted by corporate imperialism, however, the American Dream has become narrowly focused on accumulation. Business has become increasingly focused on short term profit. Wealth has been confused with money. Consumption has been misconstrued as prosperity. Greed is the engine of this demonic economy that fouls our drinking water, pollutes our air, exploits human labor, increases economic inequality, breaks up productive businesses for short term corporate gain, destroys jobs and, after all that, leaves us as restless, anxious and empty as ever. We have bought into a dream that is fast becoming a nightmare.

For those of us doing reasonably well under the imperial reign of corporate America, it might be hard to recognize in it the beast of Revelation. Like the church in Laodicia, we might be thinking to ourselves, “What beast? Things aren’t so bad.” “I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing.” Like that complacent congregation, we might not recognize the “wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked” state to which our souls have fallen. Revelation 3:17. We need to see empire not through the eyes of the “merchants of the earth [who] have grown rich with the wealth of her wantonness,” but through the eyes of “all who have been slain [by her] on earth.” Revelation 18:3; Revelation 18:24. If we do that, we will discover that the beast of empire is alive and well today exercising its murderous power not only through dictators that starve their people to feed their military machines, but also in corporations that exploit labor, corrupt governments and destroy the environment for the sake of profit. The victims of the beast live in squalid refugee camps having fled the carnage of conflicts they wanted no part of. They are children employed at near starvation wages by manufacturers whose CEOs have made the cold (and heartless) determination that such “out sourcing” best serves the bottom line. They are the wounded men, grieving mothers and dead children who had the misfortune to be in the way of a drone attack-the folks we speak of in unfeeling clinical terms as “collateral damage.” Those of you old enough to remember the comic strip Pogo may also recall the lead character’s immortal line: “We have met the enemy and he is us.” So also I think we can say that we have met “the beast” and he is us. Today’s nation states, military alliances and commercial entities (all of them) share in some measure the toxic nature of the imperial beast.

In order to appreciate the full impact of this lesson, you need to read from the beginning of Chapter 4. See Revelation 4:1-5:10. John of Patmos is summoned to the throne room of God almighty. The throne of God is surrounded by 24 elders and four angelic creatures all singing praises to God. There is no description of God, but in God’s right hand is a scroll sealed with seven seals. An angel cries out, “Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?” No one responds to this question and John is greatly distressed to learn that there is nobody in heaven or on earth able to open the scroll. But then one of the elders says to John, “Weep not; lo, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.” Now comes the drum roll. What will he look like, this Lion, this Davidic King who dares to break the seals and open the scroll? We expect Arnold Schwarzenegger to strut out onto the stage, bulging with muscle, armed to the teeth. But when we look up we see-a lamb! A lamb that has been slain, no less. Seriously? This is the Lion of Judah? This is the Root of David?

At this point the angelic creatures and the elders break into their song: “Worthy art thou to take the scroll and open its seals, for thou wast slain and by thy blood didst ransom people for God from every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and hast made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on earth.” Vss 9-10. In the lurid imagery that follows, John pictures for us the war of the lamb. This matchup between a leopard like beast with seven heads, ten horns, feet like a bear and mouth like a lion on the one hand, and a lamb on the other seems terribly one sided. The lamb doesn’t appear to stand much of a chance. Yet John would have us know that God is on the side of the lamb whose suffering love for humanity braves even death.

This lesson is filled with images similar to many found in the Book of Daniel, another apocalyptic work. Daniel 7:9-10 relates the prophet’s vision of descending thrones upon which sat “one that was ancient of days.” “Ten thousand times ten thousands stood before him.” “The books were opened.” Dominion is given to “one like a son of man.” Some scholars suggest that John may have drawn his vision from that related in Daniel Chapter 7. Though possible, it seems unlikely to me. There is little in the way of actual textual similarity. There is virtually no correspondence between the two visions other than the assurance that the enemies of God’s people ultimately will be defeated by divine agency, a theme common to nearly all apocalyptic literature. John’s vision also bears similarity to divine appearances in Isaiah 6 and Ezekiel 1-2.

As I pointed out, the letters to the seven churches in Asia Minor in Revelation 2-3 are critical to understanding what John of Patmos is trying to accomplish with his work. Just as the lamb seems an unlikely champion against the beast, so the crucified Lamb of God and his beleaguered and persecuted followers’ struggle against the empire looks hopeless. John strives to assure the churches of Asia Minor that their struggles to remain faithful are not futile, but are of cosmic significance. The cross is mightier than the sword. Love is stronger than violence and will prevail in the end.

Though much speculation generated by the Book of Revelation focuses on the identity of “the beast,” this wonderful book is not all about “the beast.” It is about the “Lamb who was slain.” It is not about the destruction of the earth, but its salvation and renewal. Most importantly, Revelation is not a war movie or a spaghetti western in which the forces of good out gun the forces of evil. Understand that the final victory of God over evil does not come through an exercise of divine violence. Throughout the Book of Revelation, the powers of the empire are portrayed as fearsome beasts, dragons and warriors. But God’s son and God’s people are always portrayed as peaceful, vulnerable and weak. Israel is portrayed as a woman giving birth under the watch of a fearsome dragon waiting to devour her child. Revelation 12:1-6. The conqueror, the lion of Judah, God’s Messiah turns out to be, of all things, a lamb. Revelation 5:1-5. Not only so, but a lamb that was slain! When Christ returns to claim his kingdom, his title is “the Word of God,” and he slays his enemies with the sword that “comes out of his mouth.” Revelation 19:11-16. Just as the world began with God speaking it into existence, so by that same life giving (not death dealing) Word the world will be brought under God’s gentle reign. God triumphs through winning hearts, not battles. Thus, the churches in Asia Minor are comforted with the knowledge that by their faithful obedience to Jesus’ commands, their love for one another, their forgiveness of their enemies and their peaceful witness they are waging God’s battle against the powers of empire. This battle is fought not with weapons of war, but with the weapons of prayer, forgiveness and love for the neighbor-even the hostile one. The struggling churches are assured that the suffering love of God is mightier and more enduring than the violence of empire. Caesar and his legions might look impressive today, but the smart money is on the Lamb.

John 21:1-19

Of all the four gospels, I find the ending of John’s gospel to be the most satisfying. Unlike Luke, Jesus does not ascend into heaven and direct the disciples to wait for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Unlike Matthew, Jesus does not send his disciples out with a promise of his presence. We are not left wondering whether or how the disciples will ever hook up again with the resurrected Christ as in Mark. John’s ascension takes place at Golgotha where Jesus is “lifted up.” The outpouring of the Holy Spirit coincides with Jesus’ resurrection. Remarkably, the Gospel of John ends the way the other gospels begin: with the disciples leaving their fishing nets and boats behind to follow Jesus. Jesus’ last words in the gospel are, “follow me.”

John’s gospel challenges us to take seriously the presence of Jesus in the Church. I think this is the underpinning for our Lutheran insistence on the real presence of Christ which is not limited to the sacraments. We confess in the Nicene Creed our belief in the “One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.” If that only means that there exists an organization called the church, we would hardly need to include it as an article of faith any more than we would need to confess that the sky is blue. But to say that the church is one just as Jesus is one with the Father; that the church is a holy people; that the church is catholic embracing all nations and true to the apostolic witness that birthed it-that is another thing altogether. It is not always evident that the church as we experience it is any of these things. Yet our confession is that the church, flesh and blood congregations with all of their shortcomings, failures and imperfections constitutes the Body of the Resurrected Christ. That calls for a leap of faith! It also challenges us to think deeply about how we make our unity, holiness, catholicity and apostolic teaching more visible.

I think this appearance must have happened on a Monday. I don’t have an ounce of biblical support for that assertion, but it sure has the feel of going back to work at the beginning of another week. Commentators believe that this third appearance of Jesus to his disciples in John is a later addition to the gospel. They suggest that this story comes from a different version of events similar to the sequence in Matthew. The disciples, scattered after Jesus’ crucifixion, flee to Galilee (or go there to meet him upon instructions from Jesus to the women) and there try to pick up their old lives. In so doing, they encounter the resurrected Christ who calls them back to a life of discipleship. However this might be, there is no question but that the disciples have turned their attention back to the more mundane yet urgent needs for survival. They turn back to what they know, namely, fishing. Yet they toil through the night taking nothing, echoing Jesus’ warning that “apart from me you can do nothing.” John 15:5. Not until Jesus instructs them to cast their net out on the right side of the boat do they find success, and that beyond expectation. It is at this point that the beloved disciple recognizes Jesus.

Meals occupy a significant place in the ministry of Jesus (and throughout the whole Bible for that matter). Jesus feeds five thousand hungry people; Jesus eats with outcasts and sinners-as well as wealthy religious leaders. Jesus’ last evening with his disciples was a meal and Jesus makes a point of sharing food with them after his resurrection. Jesus frequently uses the image of a banquet to describe the kingdom of God. So it is not surprising that he invites his disciples to breakfast on the shore and that it is within this context that Jesus reconciles himself to Peter.

The interchange between Jesus and Peter is moving and illustrative of Jesus’ way with his disciples. Ours is the Lord of the second chance-and the third and the fourth. But what I find remarkable here is Peter’s commission: “Feed my sheep.” There has been much debate over the centuries about what that means and what significance it has for how we understand apostolic succession. Without entering these treacherous waters, let me just say that what I find most intriguing is the content of the command. If Peter is being given a special task here, it does not seem to have anything to do with leading, oversight or primacy. His job is not to shepherd the sheep, but simply to feed them.

At the recent ELCA Youth Gathering, one of my young people elbowed me just as then Bishop Mark Hanson was being introduced as “shepherd of the sheep.” “What happened to Jesus” she said. “Did he retire?” This clever if less than reverent comment reflects the basis for my discomfort with the term “pastor” which means shepherd. I am only too aware of the fact that I do not know where the green pastures or the still waters are. Like everyone else, I have to rely upon the Good Shepherd’s leading for that. At best, I am just the sheep dog that tries to keep the herd together or the farm hand in charge of seeing to it that the sheep are fed. Like my namesake, I can only lead by following.

Sunday, April 3rd

March 28, 2016UncategorizedBook of Acts, Book of Revelation, Church, discipleship, faith, gospel, gun violence, Holy Spirit, Jerusalem, john of patmos, justice, Lectionary, miracle, peace, preaching, Psalms, Religion, resurrection, Saint John, Saint Thomas, unbeliefrevolsen

SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER

Acts 5:27-32
Psalm 118:14-29
Revelation 1:4-8
John 20:19-31

Prayer of the Day: O God of life, you reach out to us amid our fears with the wounded hands of your risen Son. By your Spirit’s breath revive our faith in your mercy, and strengthen us to be the body of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Sometimes a single word, act or decision comes to define us. Benedict Arnold’s act of betrayal rendered his name synonymous with treason. So, too, the once noble name of Judas has been forever tainted by its owner’s single act of treachery. Thomas’ name did not fare quite so poorly, though it cannot seem to shake the prefix “doubting” in common parlance. That is unfortunate because Thomas was not a doubter. He was not sitting on the fence with respect to the resurrection. He was an unbeliever. He flat out rejected the testimony of the rest of the disciples. “Not buying it,” he says. “Not until I see it myself.”

I have heard more sermons than I can count misinterpreting poor Thomas as well as Jesus’ response to him. We tend to project into this story our own 21^st Century difficulties of reconciling Jesus’ resurrection with modern biological science. We assume that Thomas shared the same incredulity we do when we hear that Jesus died and was raised from death. How could such a thing happen? That, however, was not Thomas’ problem. Few people in the 1^st Century doubted that God or the gods could raise a person from death. The question for Thomas was not “How?” but “Why?” In ancient myths, legends and religious lore immortality was earned through acts of heroism or works of power. For example, the emperor Augustus Caesar was said to have been taken up into heaven and deified upon his death. And why not? He was responsible for establishing Rome’s rule over the Mediterranean world, the pax romana. But why would the God of Israel-or any god for that matter-raise Jesus? After Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, things rapidly went south. He alienated the religious leadership, failed to liberate Jerusalem from oppression or even establish a sustainable movement. His life ended in a shameful and humiliating execution. His followers, who never more than half understood him, fled and left him to his fate. Jesus’ life was, by any reasonable measure, a failure.

Thomas’ unbelief arises not from his inability to entertain the possibility of a miracle, but from his failure to comprehend the depth of the Father’s love for the Son and the Son’s love for the world. Very tellingly, Thomas insists that he must see the very wounds of the cross on Jesus’ Body. More tellingly still, Jesus invites Thomas to touch these very wounds. Therein lies the key to understanding this encounter. Thomas is confronted by a God with a Body-a Body that suffers, bleeds and feels pain. Though risen and glorified, Jesus nevertheless bears the wounds of the world. God is very much in, with and under our creaturely existence experiencing at every level of creation its death and passing away. The Incarnation was not a temporary state. God’s becoming human, the Word’s becoming flesh was a decisive one way transaction. God is and always will remain human. God’s voice will forever be heard in the cries of the oppressed, the hunger of the poor and the loneliness of the outcast. God’s grief-and joy-will forever be found in the fragile bursts of life on this planet that flare up, burn brightly for an instant and fade.

The miracle that is Jesus’ resurrection does not consist chiefly in the fact that God raised Jesus from death. It consists rather in the fact that God raised Jesus from death, the man who lived obediently to God, passionately loving to the end the world God sent him to save. God raised not the warrior, but the one who would not invoke God’s power to defeat his enemies or allow his friends to raise the sword in his defense. God raised the one who trusted God, even when it seemed to all the world and even to him that God had abandoned him. This is the one Thomas finally acknowledges as “My Lord and my God.”

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter much whether there is a God or whether God is able to raise the dead if that God resides somewhere beyond the blue managing the universe by remote control. Only a God so invested in the world he made that he suffers with it, bleeds into it and dies for it can make a difference. Only a God whose love throbs in every molecule, holding the world together against the destructive forces that threaten to rip it apart can save us. Here is a poem by Pattiann Rogers that seems to know something of this God Thomas discovered in Jesus.

where god’s grief appears

in the bobbing of the waterthrush, in the trotting
of the wild boar, in the stiff-legged jogging
of the nine-banded armadillo, the sideways

darting of the desert cottontail
and the drumming
hind feet of kangaroo rats, in flight
of the blue throat across the Bering Sea,

the floating of the purples sea snail in its raft

of mucous bubbles, the pouncing of coyote, the springing
leap of springbok and springtail,

the green gangly ascending of treefrog, the burrowing

of the two-gilled bloodworm and the scrambling of the flightless
tiger beetle, present in the scarlet blooming forth

of claret cup cacti,

in the creeping morning glory and the winding
of kinnickinnick, present
in the gripping of coon oysters to sea whips and to each other,

in the wind drifting the seed of cotton grass, carrying
the keys of white ash, the rolling

of tumbleweed, the sailing of white-tailed kite,
the gliding of crystal spider on its glassy strand, found
in the falling of golden persimmons,

the dropping of butternuts, pecans, the rooting

of the fragrant roseroot, in the changing colors of the luring
sargassum fish, the balancing upside down
of the trumpet fish among sea feathers, in the water-skating
of the stilt spider, the soaring of flying fish,
in the climbing, the tumbling, the swinging,

the pirouetting, the vaulting…in light in living

motion everywhere it appears, as offering, as evidence,
as recompense.

Source: generations by Pattian Rogers (c. 2004 by Pattian Rogers, pub. by Penguin Books). Pattiann Rogers was born in Joplin, Missouri. She attended the University of Missouri and earned her master’s degree from the University of Houston. She has been awarded two National Endowment for the Arts grants, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Lannan Poetry Fellowship. She also won Poetry’s Tietjens and Bess Hokin Prizes, the Roethke Prize from Poetry Northwest and the Strousse Award. You can read more of Pattiann Rogers’ poems at the Poetry Foundation website.

Acts 5:27-32

Peter and his fellow apostles are in trouble again. At their last hearing, they were warned not to teach, preach or heal in the name of Jesus. Note well that the prohibition is not against teaching, preaching or healing generally. Some years ago a colleague of mine told me about how the churches in her city were hosting a statewide breakfast program for low income children. To qualify for participation in the program, churches were compelled to cover up or remove all religious images such as icons, crosses and statues. This was necessary, she explained, to avoid running afoul of the First Amendment prohibition against government establishment of religion. My colleague did not seem to have any problem with the conditions for her church’s involvement in the program. From her perspective, the important thing was that the kids were getting breakfast. If covering or removing images of Jesus was the price to be paid for cooperation in a venture that was surely in the spirit of Jesus, it was well worth the cost.

Is that really the case? Were the apostles being stubborn and pig headed? Why not continue the good work of teaching, healing and caring for the poor without bringing up Jesus? Does it matter whether the church is publically associated with Jesus in its work? Is the public proclamation of Jesus indispensable to doing God’s will in the world? Can you do works in Jesus’ name without mentioning that name? As long as you are doing what Jesus requires, why does it matter whose name is on the final product?

At the risk of sounding ruthlessly sectarian, I believe that the name of Jesus is indispensible to the church’s mission. Thus, were I in the place of my colleague, I would with great sorrow let the breakfast hosting opportunity go. To those who would fault me for my seeming lack of concern for hungry children, I would reply that children do not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Words and actions are not as easily separable as we moderns imagine. In fact, if you take the Gospel of John at all seriously, Word and action are entirely inseparable. That is the reason why Peter and John could say last week that “we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.” Acts 4:20. The proclamation of Jesus simply was not negotiable. The apostles’ actions were grounded in the Word they were preaching. We call that Incarnation.

As an attorney, I understand and respect the legitimate concern of the government to avoid entanglement between state services and the promotion of religion. I also understand that the circumstances in which my colleague found herself were vastly different from those of the apostles. In her case, she was working with a friendly government to achieve a common humanitarian objective. The apostles were struggling to be faithful under the weight of persecution by a hostile government. Yet whether the state employs threats of violence, entices us with promises or appeals to us on the basis of the common good to abandon Jesus, the net effect is the same. As church, we are not motivated by some vague notion of the common good (which is always less “common” and frequently less “good” than is claimed). The church lives and acts out of its relationship to Jesus and its call to bear witness to God’s salvation in his name. Apart from that relationship, we are no longer the church.

Psalm 118:14-29

The psalm for this week is a continuation of the same one used for Easter Sunday. I therefore refer you to my comments from my post of Sunday, March 27, 2016.

Revelation 1:4-8

These verses serve as an introduction to a series of messages addressed to the “seven churches that are in Asia.” The reference here is actually to Asia Minor, what is now modern day Turkey. The seven churches are later identified as those of Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea. The number of “seven” is symbolic of completeness or perfection and therefore may be a literary device. Thus, it could well be that the letters were meant for general circulation as a group throughout Asia Minor rather than individually addressed to the seven specific churches mentioned and that the matters discussed with these congregations were actually issues common to most or all of the churches in the area.

Much speculation has been given to what the “seven spirits” of God represent. Again, the symbolic meaning suggested by use of the number “seven” implies that John is simply referring to the manifold energies of the one Spirit of God. It is also possible that the “spirits” are simply another designation of the “angels” of each of the seven churches referenced throughout the balance of chapter 1 and chapter 2 of Revelation. Some ancient commentators have identified the seven spirits with the seven aspects of the Spirit to be conferred upon the “shoot from the stump of Jesse” referenced in Isaiah 11:2. Frankly, I think this latter interpretation is a bit of a stretch.

The reference to the Son of Man coming in the clouds echoes Jesus’ testimony before the Sanhedrin. Mark 14:62; Matthew 26:64 and Luke 22:69. These passages, in turn, point back to Daniel 7:13. Also referenced in this verse is Zechariah 12:10. The alpha and omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet respectively; hence, the Lord God is the beginning and end of all things, “the one who is, who was and who is to come.” Vs. 4.

This introduction sets the stage for John of Patmos to deliver the message of his widely misunderstood and woefully misinterpreted book of Revelation. He seeks to impress upon the churches of Asia Minor that their struggles to live faithfully are of cosmic importance and eternal significance. He accomplishes this objective by projecting those struggles upon the screen of apocalyptic drama in which good and evil engage each other as fantastic beasts, angels and spirits. These characters are pregnant with symbolic meanings, many of which are now lost to us. Still, the rich poetry of Revelation has always been and continues to be a rich fountain for inspired and hopeful preaching. The refrain of this book, sounded in so many different keys, is the promise that God’s gentle reign will be implemented not through the violent ways of human empire, but through the patient and persistent love of God manifest in the crucified Lamb of God.

John 20:19-31

Something is different about Jesus after his resurrection. He appears, disappears, and is able come into a room that has been locked up tight without breaking down the door. Yet he is no mere spirit. You can touch him. He still bears the wounds of the cross and this is important. As noted in my introductory comments, incarnation is irreversible. Jesus became human and remains so. God, having become flesh, will never shed his humanity. The body of Jesus was not just a clever disguise. Jesus’ body is Jesus. The resurrected Christ is still wounded and bleeding, still suffers the pain of a broken humanity and continues to struggle toward the promised reign of God. Now, however, it is clear that not even death can extinguish God’s incarnate love.

John’s Pentecost occurs on the day of resurrection. Jesus breathes on his disciples the Holy Spirit and commissions them to go forth even as he was sent forth from the Father. The life of the disciples is to be a continuation of Jesus’ ministry. As Jesus embodied the Word of God, so they are to embody that same Word now through the power of the Holy Spirit. What Jesus prayed for in Chapter 17 is now being implemented. Jesus will be in his disciples just as he is in the Father. By the agency of the Holy Spirit they will be made one and by their love for one another the love of God will be made known to the world.

“If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” Vs. 23. Exactly what does this mean? This verse has always been associated with the “office of the keys,” the peculiar power of the church “to forgive the sins of penitent sinners, but to retain the sins of the impenitent as long as they do not repent.” LSC, Part V. But is that really what John had in mind here? In my view, the context makes that interpretation extremely doubtful. The focus is not upon the internal workings of the community of disciples but upon the disciples’ mission to the world. Undoubtedly, the two are related in this gospel. It is through the disciples’ love for one another that they will be identified as followers of Jesus. John 13:35. But the principal emphasis is on the disciples’ witness to the world, not to their relationship with one another. So what can it mean to “retain” sins?

I believe that John is emphasizing the importance of the commission that Jesus has just given to his disciples. It is through them that the life giving Word of forgiveness is to be made known to the world. It is “in” them that the Spirit now resides. If the disciples of Jesus do not make known God’s forgiveness of sin, the world will remain in the grip of sin. Those sins will be retained. But if the Word is spoken, it will be accompanied by the Spirit of God that inspires faith and breaks the bondage of sin. I believe that is what commentator Raymond Brown is saying in the following quote:

“In summary, we doubt that there is sufficient evidence to confirm the power of forgiving and holding of sin, granted in John 20:23 to a specific exercise of power in the Christian community, whether that be admission to Baptism or forgiveness in Penance. These are but partial manifestations of a much larger power, namely, the power to isolate, repel, and negate evil and sin, a power given to Jesus in his mission by the Father and given in turn by Jesus through the Spirit to those whom he commissions. It is an effective, not merely declaratory, power against sin, a power that touches new and old followers of Christ, a power that challenges those who refuse to believe. John does not tell us how or by whom this power was exercised in the community for whom he wrote, but the very fact that he mentions it shows that it was exercised.” The Gospel According to John, XIII-XX1, Raymond E. Brown, The Anchor Bible, Vol. 29a, (Doubleday, c. 1970) p. 1044.

Poor Thomas gets a regular drubbing whenever this lesson comes up. I say it is time to give Thomas a break. For the last two millennia he has had to live with the shameful moniker “Doubting Thomas” even though he sought nothing more in the way of proof for the resurrection than the other disciples had already received. I think that too much emphasis has been placed on Thomas’ faith or the lack thereof and too little upon the wounds in the Body of Christ that demonstrate God’s continued suffering love for a rebellious world. This will likely be the focus of my sermon if I wind up preaching on this text.

Sunday, March 27th

March 21, 2016UncategorizedBabylonian Exile, Baptism, Bible, Church, Death and Dying, discipleship, Easter, Exodus, faith, funerals, gospel, idolatry, Isaiah, John Updike, justice, Lectionary, Luke, miracle, poor, poverty, preaching, Psalms, Religion, resurrection, Saint Paul, Sunday Lessons, theologyrevolsen

EASTER SUNDAY

Acts 10:34-43
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
1 Corinthians 15:19-26
Luke 24:1-12

Prayer of the Day: O God, you gave your only Son to suffer death on the cross for our redemption, and by his glorious resurrection you delivered us from the power of death. Make us die every day to sin, that we may live with him forever in the joy of the resurrection, through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages…”

John Updike on the Resurrection of Jesus

Modern American mainline Protestants like me are embarrassed by miracles. Often we fall all over ourselves trying to assure our detractors that we don’t really believe in them anymore and that one need not accept them in order to be Christian. We seem always to be asking, “What’s the Least I Can Believe and Still Be a Christian?” That is actually the title of a book written by Martin Thielen. The book evolved from Thielen’s friendship with a self-identified atheist who, over time, became increasingly open to faith and finally posed the question that became the title. The first half of Thielen’s book identifies ten notions that Christians do not need to accept. These include the claim that God causes cancer, that the theory of evolution must be rejected, that women must be subject to men and that God is indifferent to ecology. If these notions were all that stood between atheists and faith in Jesus, then the scandal of the gospel would be just a PR problem. The church has bad actors and bad theologians in her midst who have muddled the message. If we can just make the atheist understand who Jesus really is and what he is really about, the atheist will recognize that we don’t confess the god s/he has rejected. Conversion is just a few conversations away.

To be fair, Thielen’s book does an admirable job of dispelling inaccurate notions about Christianity and clarifying what is central to Christian teaching for those harboring hostility toward the church. Similarly, Marcus Borg, a teacher and theologian I greatly respect and who died this last year, argued in one of his books that Christianity is losing members and influence because its preaching and teaching are mired in antiquated language and a world view that no longer makes sense to Twenty-First Century people. There is a good deal of truth in what Borg and Thielen have to say. The Bible’s cosmology is impossible to reconcile with the universe we have come to understand through the discoveries of the various sciences. If being Christian requires us to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to all that science has taught us, then its detractors rightly contend that faith is untenable for anyone with a brain.

But does the answer lie in reducing biblical language to mere metaphors that do not challenge our understanding of the way things are or coax our imagination into the realm of the seemingly impossible? Professor Borg seems to think so. “Heaven” and “eternal life” are two of the concepts Borg finds unintelligible to modern thought. They are therefore in need of harmonization with our Twenty-first Century world view. Words like “heaven” and “eternal life” must be interpreted metaphorically as God’s hopeful outlook for humanity’s future as a whole rather than promises of individual immortality. Borg declares that he has no need for the promise of personal resurrection from death and that “We die into God…that is all I need to know.” Speaking Christian, Borg, Marcus, (c. 2011 by HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.) p. 201.

Is that really enough, though? One of the characters in John Updike’s very first novel, The Poorhouse Fair, felt much the same way as Professor Borg on the matter of eternal life. Updike’s story takes place in a state run home for the destitute elderly overseen by prefect Stephen Conner. Conner is a product of the New Deal. He believes in the inevitability of human progress through social evolution and the perfection of governmental institutions. Conner becomes engaged in a conversation among the residents about the afterlife. He shares his vision of “heaven on earth” formed in a future society where illness is overcome by advanced medicine; pollution eliminated through harnessing of atomic power; and oppression defeated through the spread of democracy. Mrs. Mortis, one of the residents, asks him whether this heaven on earth will come soon enough for her to see it. Conner responds: “Not personally perhaps. But for your children, your grandchildren.”

“But not for ourselves?”

“No.” The word hung huge in the living room, the “o” a hole that let in the cold of the void.

“Well, then,” Mrs. Mortis spryly said, “to hell with it.”

Updike, John, The Poorhouse Fair, (c. 1958 by John Updike, pub. by Random House, Inc.)

I side with Mrs. Mortis over against Professor Borg and Mr. Conner. So, it seems, does Saint Paul who declares that “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” I Corinthians 15:19. It seems Jesus’ declaration that God is God of the living and that all live to him (Mark 12:26-27) can only mean that “dying into God,” is at the same time being “united with Jesus in a resurrection like his.” Romans 6:5. The New Testament promise of eternal life includes the assurance that all who live under God’s reign in this age beneath the sign of the cross will share in its consummation in the age to come. That means bodily existence in a renewed and reconciled world. What does that look like? The New Testament gives us neither the specificity my literalist friends require, nor the neat rational fit with our modern scientific sensibilities that my more liberal friends seem to need.

Dispelling misunderstandings about the Christian faith is a worthy undertaking. So also are efforts to express our biblical faith in fresh and compelling ways. I doubt, however, that reducing the imponderables in the Bible and the Creeds to metaphors brings atheists or any of the rest of us closer to faith in Jesus. Having less to believe might seem to make faith a lot easier. But faith is not supposed to get any easier. The truth is, the more you learn about the God of the Bible and what that God demands of you, the more you are called upon to believe. The deeper you are drawn into the mystery of God, the more problematic your life in this world becomes. The more the mind of Christ is formed within you, the deeper the contradictions between what you see and what you believe. If you follow Jesus to the end, you will be reduced to walking by faith and not by sight. II Corinthians 5:7. Perhaps we moderns have gotten things backwards with our insistence on understanding what we are called upon to believe. Maybe Augustine had it right when he taught us that we must believe in order to understand.

Here is the complete poem by John Updike cited in part above:

Seven Stanzas at Easter

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that–pierced–died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

Source, Updike, John, Collected Poems, (c. 1993 by John Updike, pub. by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.). John Updike (1932-2009) was a prolific American author and poet. He grew up in Shillington, Pennsylvania. His early poems and fiction are grounded in the gritty industrial and cultural environment of the rust belt. His awards include the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, the American Book Award for fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award for both fiction and criticism. You can learn more about John Updike and read more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

Acts 10:34-43

Unfortunately, the context is not discernible from the section of text we have in this lesson. Peter’s sermon here is part of a larger narrative in which the disciple is confronted with his prejudices, smallness of heart and the grand sweep of God’s good news in Jesus that reaches across national borders and ethnic divides to include all who respond to that news in faith. On another day, I might preach a sermon on what I believe to be one of the most damaging idolatries of our age, namely, nationalism. One way to ask the question “Who is your God?” is to ask “What are you willing to die for?” I find it very telling that in this country many of us will proudly send our children to die in our nation’s wars, but often object to taking them out of a sports program for church on Sunday. I recently heard a Christian preacher declare at a civil ceremony, “We may be Christians, we may be Jews or we may be Muslims. But the important thing is, whatever our religious differences might be, we are all Americans.” Understand that nobody believes more firmly than I do that disciples of Jesus should live peacefully with everyone of every faith. I also have a profound respect and appreciation for the cultural and religious contributions of faithful Jews and Muslims to American society. But is it really the case that our commitment to the United States of America is deeper and more fundamental than our baptism into Jesus Christ? If God shows no partiality among nations, how can we? Do I love my country? Of course! There is nowhere else I would rather live than in the United States of America. But I love Jesus and his church more. So if and when it comes to choosing between duty to country and loyalty to Jesus, “We must obey God rather than human authority.” Acts 5:29.

As I said, though, that sermon is for another day. The focus of this lesson is necessarily dictated by its placement in the liturgical calendar. This is Easter, the queen of seasons. So I am looking at this text today through the lens of the resurrection of Jesus. Notice that in this sermon Peter welds the faithful life of Jesus to his death. Jesus died precisely because the life he lived led him into conflict with the powers that be. Moreover, he died a shameful death; the death of a criminal. Yet God raised Jesus from death. Understand the emphasis here. The remarkable thing is not that God raised Jesus from death, but that God raised Jesus from death. Unlike us moderns who struggle with the very concept of resurrection, the people of Jesus’ day had no doubt that God could raise a person from death. A miraculous resurrection would not have strained credibility in the ancient world. What proved to be such a scandal and cause of incredulity for the gospel message was the claim that God would bestow such a favor on a man whose life and career had ended in failure and shame. If you accept the proposition that God raised the one who spent his life associating with sinners, the unclean, the sick and the outcast only to die naked on an implement of torture, then you have to reconsider everything you think you know about God and divine power and salvation. The nature of God’s reign over creation is not demonstrated by the fact that God raised the dead, but by who God raised from the dead. If God had raised Augustus Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, General Patten or President Kennedy we could then go on believing in a God who reigns more or less like any other human ruler-but with more clout. God, however, raised Jesus whose life was spent serving the least of all people and who was put to death under the laws of the empire. God is not Caesar on steroids. God is Jesus, the crucified one.

Luke (who also wrote the Book of Acts) makes a point of letting his audience know through Peter’s sermon that Jesus ate and drank with his disciples after the resurrection. Vs. 41. Eating and drinking is a big part of Jesus’ ministry (and the whole Bible for that matter). Jesus fed crowds of hungry people. He broke bread both in dens of iniquity among notorious sinners and in the homes of respected religious leaders. His last meal with his disciples forms the heart of the church’s worship. The consummation of God’s reign is frequently described by Jesus as a banquet. Though food is a rich metaphor in Jesus’ teaching and ministry, it is never just that. Starvation resulting from barbaric inequality was a brutal fact of life for the world in which Jesus lived. 97% of the wealth was owned or controlled by 5% of the population leaving the remaining 95% of the population to survive on the remaining 3%. This stark reality is the subject matter addressed in Jesus’ parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Luke 16:19-31.

Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24

This psalm contains many verses that are quoted or alluded to in the New Testament. Because the psalmist switches from singular to plural, addressing God at one point, the assembled worshipers at another while some passages seem to be addressed by God to the psalmist, many Old Testament scholars believe this hymn to be a compilation of several different works. Verse 14, “The Lord is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation,” is nearly identical to Exodus 15:2 which, in turn, is taken from the Song of Moses celebrating Israel’s salvation from Egypt’s armies at the Red Sea. Exodus 15:1-18. Whether the psalm commemorates the victory of one of Judah’s kings in battle or a procession bearing the Ark of the Covenant into the temple and regardless of when it reached its final form, fragments of this hymn have ancient roots in Israel’s worship pre-dating the Babylonian Exile.

The Exodus clearly stands at the heart of Israel’s worship and history. It was the paradigm for God’s saving acts. As we have seen throughout Second Isaiah (Isaiah 40-55), God’s victory for Israel at the Red Sea and God’s guidance and protection as Israel made her way through the wilderness to the promised land provided a rich supply of images for prophets seeking to encourage the people in their darkest hours. Not surprisingly, then, Luke refers to Jesus’ passion in Jerusalem as his “Exodus.” See Luke 9:28-36. The context given for the last supper in Matthew, Mark and Luke is the Passover meal commemorating the Exodus. So the selection of this psalm for use in celebrating the Easter Eucharist is appropriate.

1 Corinthians 15:19-26

This text is but one small part of Paul’s extended discussion of the resurrection throughout the whole of I Corinthians 15. I encourage you to read it in its entirety. Here Paul makes the very important point that Jesus’ resurrection is not simply his own, but the beginning of a general resurrection of the dead in which all believers participate even now. Jesus is the “first fruits” of the dead whose resurrection follows. The end comes when Christ “delivers up the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and every power.” Vs. 24. This is precisely the claim that ultimately got disciples of Jesus into big trouble with the Roman Empire. As far as Caesar was concerned, there was only one kingdom and that was Rome. Suggesting that there might be another kingdom to which allegiance was owed could get you nailed to a cross. Asserting that all other kingdoms, including Rome, must finally be brought under the reign of such other kingdom was a direct shot across the imperial bow. These letters of Paul were considered subversive material in the First Century and would be equally so in the Twenty-first Century-if we really paid attention to what Paul is saying.

A word or two should be said about the destruction of death. This is not a distant hope to be fulfilled only in the indefinite future. Death is destroyed even now-if we understand that it is not the last word. I must say that one of the greatest disappointments I have experienced throughout my life in the church is our inordinate fear death. I cannot honestly say that I have found in the church any less denial of death, inability to discuss death or acceptance of death than in the public at large. Now I am not suggesting that death should be treated lightly or that anxiety about dying is unnatural or suggests a lack of faith. But I do believe that disciples of Jesus ought to know how to die. Like all other disciplines, the art of dying well is learned and practiced in a community of faith. The church should be a place where a person can discuss the deterioration of health, life threatening sickness and the effects of chronic pain in comfort and without awkwardness. We should all be assured that no one of us has to die alone. People in hospice should be comforted by visitors who read psalms to them, pray over them or simply sit at their bedside. A disciple’s funeral should be in the sanctuary where s/he worshiped. The casket should stand in the presence of the baptismal font and be surrounded by the symbols of faith. The Lord’s Supper should be celebrated as a testament both to our resurrection hope and the communion of saints that even now transcends the grave. The church should then accompany the casket to the cemetery where the body is placed in the earth like a seed awaiting the life giving Spring of the resurrection. None of this makes death pleasant. But, as Paul tells us, it can take the sting out of it. I Corinthians 15:54-58.

Luke 24:1-12

Archaeological research has revealed that burial in First Century Palestine consisted of two steps. The body was placed into a shelf like compartment cut into stone. For the rural poor, these compartments were made in the soft rock of cliffs and hillsides. Families that could afford it purchased space in burial caves. These caverns occurred naturally or were excavated. They typically contained many such compartments. The body would be wrapped, anointed with spices to alleviate the stench of decay and placed in a compartment. Sometimes a slab of lime would be placed over the mouth of the compartment. After a period of years, the body would decay. When only the bones remained, these would be collected and placed in a large jar made of stone or clay called an “ossuary.” The name of the deceased would be inscribed on the jar which would then be placed in another part of the burial cave. Because the Sabbath began on Friday at sunset on the day of Jesus crucifixion, the women were unable to apply the customary spices to Jesus’ body until after Saturday. That explains why they came as early as possible on Sunday. This entire process and the archeological research through which it has come to us are discussed at length in a fascinating book jointly authored by John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed entitled Excavating Jesus, (HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., c. 2001).

The men appearing to the women at the tomb on Easter morning are introduced into the narrative with the words, “Behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel…” vs. 4. It may be that Luke is drawing a parallel here between the resurrection and the transfiguration story where we are told that, as Jesus was praying, “the appearance of his countenance was altered, and his raiment became dazzling white. And behold, two men talked with him, Moses and Elijah who appeared in glory and spoke of his “departure” (literally, “exodus”). That great act of salvation Moses and Elijah foretold on the Mountain of Transfiguration has now come to pass in Jesus’ resurrection.

The two men repeat to the women the same message Jesus has been giving his disciples since Chapter 9 of Luke: “The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and on the third day rise.” Vs. 7. It is hard to gage the extent to which the women understand this message which has eluded the rest of the disciples throughout the narrative. In the Gospel of Mark, the women flee from the tomb in terror without telling anyone about what they had seen. According to Luke, the women make their report to the rest of the disciples only to be met with skepticism. The gospel narrative then adds in the final verse (vs. 12) that Peter went out to the tomb, looked in, saw the linen burial wrappings and returned home puzzled over what had taken place. Some of the earliest New Testament manuscripts do not contain verse 12 and the old Revised Standard Version omits it from the text referencing it only in a footnote. Whether or not we include the verse, however, the narrative theme does not change. The empty tomb, even when augmented by the announcement of the two men in dazzling apparel, is not sufficient to evoke understanding, much less belief.

The women and, if we accept vs. 12 as part of the text, Peter are looking for Jesus in all the wrong places. They are seeking the living and resurrected one among the dead. It is hard to be too critical of them. The promise of resurrection is pretty radical and difficult to grasp. At my first council meeting at my first congregation someone asked me, “Pastor, what do you think we can do to get all of our former members to come back to church?” We took a good hour or more going through the membership directory to determine just who these “old members” were. At the end of this exercise, it was pretty clear that getting the old members back would require kidnapping expeditions into the Sunbelt or grave robbery. I then launched into my standard speech about how the days of Lutherans coming into the neighborhood looking for a church to join were over and that if we were going to grow, we would need to start doing what Jesus has always told us to do-make disciples of all nations. We would need to start deepening our own discipleship and sense of call so that we could reach our neighborhood with the gospel. This we could do because the resurrected Christ has promised to be with us until the end of the age. When I was finished, the same council member said, “OK, well that’s interesting. But I was really wondering what we could do to get some of our former members to come back.” At this point I would have been ripping my hair out if I had had any. But I learned a valuable lesson just the same. People tend not to hear until they are ready to hear. That means we have to move according to the Holy Spirit’s schedule faithfully witnessing to the good news of the resurrection until, by that gracious Spirit’s work, it finally sinks in.

The disciples finally will believe the good news of Jesus’ resurrection. They will discover that, while the days of having Jesus among them as their teacher in the time of his ministry are over, Jesus will still be with them in a more profoundly intimate way. Jesus will now lead his church through the outpouring of his Spirit. For that chapter, you need to read the Book of Acts. For now, though, the disciples remain too shell shocked from the crucifixion and the bitter memory of their failures to recognize that a new day is dawning.

Sunday, March 20th

March 14, 2016UncategorizedBible, crucifixion, discipleship, Exodus, faith, gospel, Hunger Games, Isaiah, Jerusalem, justice, Lectionary, Luke, lynching, Palm Sunday, Passion Narrative, peace, Psalms, racism, Religion, resurrection, Sunday Lessons, Sunday of the Passion, Survivor, theology, violencerevolsen

Palm Sunday/Sunday of the Passion

Luke 19:28-40
Isaiah 50:4–9a
Psalm 31:9–16
Philippians 2:5–11
Luke 22:14–23:56

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.

Last year, at the urging of one of my children, I watched the first of three movies based on Suzanne Collins’ trilogy, The Hunger Games. For those of you who might not have seen the movies or read the books, the story takes place in a future dystopia ruled by a repressive dictator. What used to be North America has been divided into twelve districts. Every year, one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen from each of the districts are selected by lottery to participate in the “Hunger Games.” The children are compelled to fight to the death in a vast arena for the entertainment of the masses, who see it televised in living color. There can be only one victor, namely, the last child standing. During the contest, alliances between the contestants are formed which are, of necessity, temporary. Stealth, dishonesty and deceit are as essential to victory as brute strength. The narrative traces the fortunes of Katniss Everdeen, a Hunger Games contestant from the poorest district of the empire. To be honest, I didn’t much care for the movie. The acting was only fair and the premise seemed somewhat less than credible.

This week, however, I happened to catch an episode of Survivor that made the premise of Hunger Games a good deal more credible. For those of you who, like me, watch television only rarely, Survivor is a “reality” show in which contestants are divided into “tribes” and placed in a wilderness setting. They compete with one another in grueling athletic type contests. The losing tribe must vote one of its members off the show. As with Hunger Games, there can be only one winner. Thus, alliances between the contestants are, of necessity, temporary. Stealth, dishonesty and deceit are as essential to victory as brute strength. Like Hunger Games, the contest is broadcast on television for our entertainment.

The correlation is not perfect. Unlike Hunger Games, the contestants in Survivor are not selected randomly or against their will. I have no doubt they worked hard to land a coveted spot in this reality series that probably will reward them all in some way, even if they do not manage to win the game. Still, I am not sure that reflects any more positively on a people entertained by such sport. In this week’s episode, the tribes competed in a grueling contest under extreme heat. Three of the contestants were overtaken with sun stroke, one so severely that he had to be evacuated by helicopter and removed from the show. Is this the sort of blood sport we find entertaining? Are we really so titillated by watching people lie, deceive, betray and trick one another with falsehoods? Perhaps the difference between Collins’ dystopia and our contemporary culture is only a matter of degree. Like the Roman audiences drawn to the Colosseum where gladiators fought to the death; like crowds who just a century ago gathered in our town squares for the spectacle of public executions; or mobs cheering at a lynching, we are perversely entertained by violence, cruelty and the suffering of others. If Survivor has no other socially redeeming value, it does at least force us to acknowledge that, beneath our civilized veneer, we are a violent people. Violence excites and stimulates us.

The Passion Narrative unmasks our pretentions about ourselves. If we are honest, we can find ourselves in the story of Jesus’ crucifixion, which author and theologian James H. Cone aptly characterizes a communal act of savagery akin to lynching. Cone, James H., The Cross and the Lynching Tree, (c. 2011 by James H. Cone, pub. by Orbis Books). For those of us firmly entrenched in the cultural structures of white privilege, viewing the cross through the lens of this peculiarly American atrocity brings its hard word into sharp focus. We are the perpetrators seeking Jesus’ death to protect our interests in the status quo. We are Jesus’ fellow countrymen orchestrating his death to keep peace with the overlords of the dominant culture. We are the executioners carrying out the death sentence using the poor excuse that we are simply following orders. We are the spectators secretly relishing the victim’s suffering, snickering cruelly at the expression on his face as, thinking he is about to receive water for his fierce thirst, he gulps down a swallow of vinegar instead. We are the people of conscience who know that a travesty of justice is occurring under our noses, yet remain silent and do nothing for fear of the consequences. To the question posed by that old spiritual, “Where you there when they crucified my Lord?” the answer is a resounding “Yes.” We were-we are there.

I don’t preach on the Passion Narrative anymore. What is left to say about a story in which there are no heroes and we all find our place as perpetrators, enablers, cowards and not-so-innocent bystanders? Any response on our part likely would be just a vain effort to remove ourselves from the narrative and escape its judgment on our lives. So we listen to the story, accept its verdict upon us and leave the church in silence. The next word can only be spoken by the resurrected Lord.

Here is a poem by Claude McKay for which there is likewise no worthy spoken response.

The Lynching

His spirit is smoke ascended to high heaven.
His father, by the cruelest way of pain,
Had bidden him to his bosom once again;
The awful sin remained still unforgiven.
All night a bright and solitary star
(Perchance the one that ever guided him,
Yet gave him up at last to Fate’s wild whim)
Hung pitifully o’er the swinging char.
Day dawned, and soon the mixed crowds came to view
The ghastly body swaying in the sun:
The women thronged to look, but never a one
Showed sorrow in her eyes of steely blue;
And little lads, lynchers that were to be,
Danced round the dreadful thing in fiendish glee.

Source: Harlem Shadows: Poetry of Claude McKay, (c. 1922 by Harcourt, Brace & Company, Inc.) Claude McKay, born Festus Claudius McKay, was a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance. His poetry celebrated peasant life in Jamaica, challenged white supremacy in America and lifted up the struggles of black men and women struggling to live their lives with dignity in a racist culture. You can learn more about Claude McKay and read more of his poetry on the Poetry Foundation Website.

Luke 19:28-40

According to one commentator, it was common for animals to be kept in front of inns and places of lodging near Jerusalem during festivals such as Passover. Travelers lodging therein could use them for trips back and forth from the city. J.D.M. Derret, Law in the New Testament, London, 1970, p. 241-253. Though such use would naturally be restricted to guests, it would not be unusual for an exception to be made for a well known visiting rabbi. Neither would it have been unusual to observe a rabbi riding his donkey into Jerusalem at Passover followed by his disciples. They would have blended in naturally with the other pilgrims travelling to Jerusalem and rejoicing to see the outline of the Temple in the distance. It was the specific song of praise from Jesus’ disciples that appears to have attracted the attention of the Pharisees in the multitude. The Pharisees could well have been as concerned about their own safety as they were affronted by the disciples’ claims about Jesus. The Roman occupation force in Jerusalem was always beefed up and on high alert during Passover season for any sign of anti-imperial sentiment. The spectacle of a man acclaimed as king riding into Jerusalem, if only on a borrowed donkey, could easily bring down the full punitive wrath of Rome.

The phrase, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord” (vs. 38) was a common greeting exchanged between pilgrims journeying to Jerusalem for Passover and other festivals. However, as used in the Psalm from which it appears to have been taken, the phrase is a greeting addressed by the priest to worshipers entering the temple in the Jerusalem of the Judean Davidic monarchy. Luke inserts the word “king” into the phrase giving to the song the flavor of a coronation liturgy. Of course, this begs the question: what sort of king will Jesus be? That question was posed in an oblique way to Jesus in the temptation narrative where the devil promised Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. The question will be brought into sharper focus when Jesus is brought before Pilate charged with claiming to be a king. Herod, after examining Jesus, sends him back to Pilate dressed in kingly apparel. Though intended as a joke, Herod unwittingly affirms what is in fact God’s verdict on Jesus. The matter of Jesus’ kingship and the nature of his reign will be illuminated further through the interchange between the criminals crucified with Jesus.

The praise of the disciples for Jesus as he enters Jerusalem echoes the angels’ song to the shepherds upon his entry into the world. Praise is always the response of the cosmos to Jesus and it is futile to try stifling it. Even if Jesus were to silence his disciples, “the very stones would cry out.” Vs. 40. Stones were frequently called upon in the Hebrew Scriptures to witness oaths, treaties and saving acts of God. See Genesis 31:43-50; Joshua 4:1-7. Here Jesus takes the image one step further and declares not merely that the stones shall witness what is happening but even testify to it.

We know from the transfiguration story in Luke 9:28-36 that Jesus will bring about a salvation event on a scale equal to the Exodus of Israel from Egypt. As we have seen since Luke 9:51, Jesus’ destiny has been sealed since he “set his face to go to Jerusalem.” His final conflict is at hand. Jesus will now engage Satan, whose power is inherent in the religious establishment and the empire to which it is enslaved. It is only natural that Jesus’ disciples should be rejoicing at this moment. But as we will soon see, their rejoicing is to be short lived. The salvation Jesus promises will turn out to be something entirely other than what they expect. His coronation will occur in a most unlikely manner.

Isaiah 50:4–9a

This is the third of four “servant songs” found in what has come to be called “Second Isaiah.” See article by Professor Fred Gaiser at enterthebible.org. The other three are found at Isaiah 42:1–9, Isaiah 49:1-6 and Isaiah 52:13-53:12. Who is the “servant”? What is the cause of his suffering and how does that suffering benefit the servant? Israel? The world? Is the servant the exiled remnant of Israel? The prophet? Some other individual? Old Testament scholars have debated these questions for over a century. I am not sure the answer to these questions has to be a strict either/or. The prophet’s rejection and suffering at the hands of his/her fellow Israelites could well be a reflection of Israel’s rejection and suffering among the nations of the world. The prophet’s life may be a parabolic symbol of what Israel’s life as a people was intended to be and still might be.

The verse that strikes me this time around is vs. 4: “The Lord God has given me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with a word him that is weary.” That is truly a gift! I wish I had it. I see a lot of weariness around these days. Every week I meet people weary of looking for work; people who are weary with the work they have; people weary of maintaining a home that requires more strength and energy than they can give; people weary of being the shoulder everyone cries on; people weary of being the only one who volunteers for the jobs that have to get done so that worship can happen each Sunday or the school play will come together or the July 4^th celebration can take place. I see too many good people carrying too many burdens with too little thanks. How I wish I could find words to strengthen their weary limbs and lift their weary spirits! How I wish I could preach life into dead bones like the prophet Ezekiel!

The prophet of Second Isaiah does just that. If you are ever down and out and ready to give up, read Isaiah 40-55. If that doesn’t lift your spirit, I don’t know what will. You don’t have to understand the historical context or the intricacies of Hebrew poetry to be carried away by the lyrical waves of joy and hope in these ancient songs composed for a people with seemingly nothing left to hope for. Yet people can be resistant even to good news. In fact, good news sometimes meets the stiffest resistance of all. Let’s face it, self-pity feels kind of good. There is a part of us that loves to wallow in our hurt and lick our unjustly inflicted wounds. It takes an effort to stop brooding over the good times that are past and reach out for “the new thing” God is doing. Many of the Jews living in Babylon after the destruction of Jerusalem wanted the old days back again and, because they could not have that wish granted, they were not interested in anything new. How many churches don’t we know that take just that attitude! There is nothing quite so annoying when you are enjoying a good wallow in your sorrows as a prophet who comes around, kicks you in the pants and tells you to grow up, take some responsibility for yourself and open your eyes to the new thing God is doing right under your nose. It makes you want to slap his face and pull out his beard!

The prophetic writings in Second Isaiah provide just the right combination of carrot and stick. The prophet alternately paints vivid and compelling lyrical images of God’s faithfulness and acts of salvation on the one hand while all the time prodding us to abandon our silly wallowing in self-pity. Next to the psalms, Second Isaiah is about my favorite book in the Hebrew Scriptures.

Psalm 31:9–16

I cannot find a better description of this psalm than the one given by Arthur Weiser:

“The psalm does not exhibit a logically constructed thought-sequence; on the contrary, the development of its thoughts is determined by the psychology and logic of the life of prayer and, in a manner that is true to life, reflects the vivid movement of the emotions, moods and thoughts of a soul which in its distress seeks and finds its support in God. Here we gain an insight into the extent of God’s love-by the fact that the worshipper in spite of all the stereotyped forms to which he is tied can plainly and frankly confess the spontaneous emotions that stir his heart in his distress, the constant change of his fluctuating feelings; by the fact that the worshipper is allowed to come into the presence of God without hiding anything from him, and, guided in his prayer by an invisible hand, may gradually proceed from fear and trembling, as reflected in his urgent petitions, to comfort and strength, which are granted him in abundance as a result of his surrender to God’s hidden goodness.”

Weiser, Arthur, The Psalms, A Commentary, S.C.M. Press, Ltd., c. 1962, pp 275-276.

“Stereotypical forms” might seem antithetical to spontaneity in prayer. Yet I know from experience that when “my strength fails because of my misery,” spontaneity and creativity are not close to the surface of my thinking. That is why we need to be schooled in the language of prayer. It is also why we need to accumulate an arsenal of prayer petitions in the depths of our souls so that when life hits you so hard that you cannot pray, the Holy Spirit has a good supply of prayer formulas to work with. So once again, my standard advice to people of all ages:Two psalms each day, one in the morning and one at night.

In addition to life-long suffering, the nature of which we can only guess at, the psalmist is surrounded by hostile people. Vss 11 & 13. His or her adversaries take a perverse delight in the psalmist’s pain. The psalmist’s acquaintances avoid him or her. That might not be due to malice, but merely because many people simply feel awkward and at a loss for words when confronted by someone obviously in the throes of grief and suffering. Still, avoidance adds to the psalmist’s sense of isolation.

The psalmist nevertheless finds comfort in the assurance that, though human companionship has failed him or her, God has nevertheless been faithful. Vs 14. The remarkable thing here is that there appears to be no evidence of deliverance from suffering. The psalmist is still in need of protection from enemies and healing from whatever ails him or her. Yet the psalmist is confident in placing his or her life in God’s hands.

This is a psalm for the aging who face the loss of hearing, memory and mobility. It is a psalm for people with chronic illness for which there is not yet any cure. It is a psalm for those struggling under financial burdens to which there seem to be no end. Even when there is no light at the end of the tunnel, there is the presence of a merciful God. For the psalmist, that is enough to get through the day.

Philippians 2:5–11

For a general outline of Paul’s letter (or letters) to the Philippians, see my post of Sunday, March 13th.

Many New Testament scholars believe that these verses constitute stanzas from an ancient Christian hymn based on the “servant song” motifs in Second Isaiah. Silvs, Moises, “Philippians,” published in Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, Edited by G.K. Beale and D.A Carson (c. 2007) p. 837. While the dependence on Isaiah is debatable, it is clear that the fragment is a hymn or liturgy of Christian origin that Paul is quoting to make his point. The passage therefore confirms that, from very early on in the life of the church (50-60 C.E.), disciples of Jesus understood their Lord to be “in the form of God” (vs.6) and that he took “the form of a servant.” Vs. 7. If not worked out in dogmatic detail, the seeds of the doctrine of incarnation are clearly present here. Paul urges the Philippian church to “have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus.” Vs. 5. This is more than simply having knowledge “about” Jesus. As we have seen in Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, his denotation of the Church as the Body of Christ is not a metaphor. According to Paul, the church is literally the Body of the resurrected Christ. It is the organism through which Jesus lives and breathes and embraces the world. In order for a community to be the Body of Christ, it must be guided by the mind of Christ.

This lesson is a reminder that there is no such thing as an individual believer. Whoever says, “I am a Christian but I don’t belong to any particular church” is making about as much sense as a man who says “I’m married but I don’t have any particular wife.” If you are not a member of a worshiping community nourished by the Word of God and fed with the Body and Blood of the Lord, you might still be a swell person, but you are not a disciple of Jesus. If you find that offensive, take it up with Jesus and Paul. I am just the messenger.

The mind of Christ is formed in communities of people who must learn again and again to forgive one another, accept one another’s shortcomings and discover through trial and error where the Spirit of God is leading them. That is how you become a new creation. You can’t do it alone. You need the Spirit of God and the Spirit of God is not blowing in the wind. The Spirit of God dwells within the Body of Christ-with all its warts and imperfections. That is where you need to be if you would follow Jesus.

The passage concludes with the affirmation that “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Vs. 11. Taken out of its context, one might draw the conclusion that this verse implies force or the threat of force to compel obedience to Jesus. But Paul (or the hymn he cites) makes clear that Jesus wins obedience not through a demonstration of “shock and awe,” but by emptying himself, that is, pouring out his life in winning our hearts for his kingdom. This is the “weakness of God,” to which Paul refers in I Corinthians 1:18-31 that is mightier than any human strength.

Luke 22:14–23:56

As I said in my introductory remarks, I never preach on the Passion Narrative. It preaches itself. What can you add once Jesus has breathed his last? Still, there are some fascinating things about Luke’s passion narrative that are worth noting. Luke alone relates a conversation in which Jesus warns his disciples that conditions are about to change for them. Whereas before they could travel with only the essentials and lack nothing, now the disciples must travel with purse and bag. Luke 22:35-38. Because, as the prophet Isaiah predicted, Jesus will be “reckoned with transgressors” (Isaiah 53:12), the disciples must be prepared to live as criminals. Jesus goes on to say, “let him who has no sword sell his mantle and buy one.” Luke 22:36. The disciples respond by pointing out that they have two swords to which Jesus replies cryptically, “It is enough.” Luke 22:38. New Testament scholars argue about what all this means. Some scholars maintain that this interchange is a remembered conversation between Jesus and his disciples that has been repressed in the other gospels. They further suggest that Jesus believed the new age would break through at his arrest initiating the final eschatological battle. Obviously, Jesus was mistaken; hence, the absence of this conversation in the other gospels. Luke, it is argued, tries to smooth over this embarrassing remark by Jesus through turning it into a metaphor that the disciples fail to understand.

Though the passage is a difficult one, I find it hard to believe that Jesus ever counseled his disciples to take up arms. Such a statement would fly in the face of all Jesus’ teachings throughout the gospels, including Luke. See Luke 6:27-31. Moreover, it would be contrary to the church’s uniform teaching of pacifism that remained unchallenged for the first three centuries of its life. Furthermore, the recommendation to take up arms is sharply contrary to the passage from Isaiah 53 to which Jesus refers. There, the prophet says of the servant of the Lord that in response to persecution, “he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and a sheep that before its shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth.” Isaiah 53:7. The servant went obediently to suffering and, though treated as a criminal, he clearly did not act like one. Because this passage is cited by Jesus to reflect the trajectory of his own ministry, it is unlikely that Jesus would ask his disciples to arm themselves for his or their own protection.

Only Luke relates Jesus’ interaction with the criminals who were crucified with him. The mockery of the one criminal is consistent with Mark and Matthew, but Luke alone tells us about the repentant criminal who asks to be remembered by Jesus. Jesus promises that “this very day you will be with me in paradise.” Luke 23:43. This is one of only three uses of the word “paradise” in the New Testament.

“Paradise is a Persian word, meaning park or garden, which was taken over, first into Greek, then into Hebrew. In the Septuagint it was used to translate ‘the Garden of Eden.” Then, because of the belief that the day of God would bring a restoration of primeval bliss, Paradise became the name of the future home of the righteous. Finally, this earthly Paradise was distinguished from the heavenly one, of which the Garden of Eden was only an earthly copy. Jewish beliefs about the afterlife were too multifarious to be reduced to a single consistent pattern. At first it was held that the dead waited in the sleep of death in Sheol, the universal graveyard, until the general resurrection and judgment. But later, alongside of this earlier hope, and never quite replacing it, there grew up another belief that the souls of the righteous went at death immediately to heaven.” Caird, G.B., Saint Luke, The Pelican New Testament Commentaries (c. 1963 by G.B. Caird, pub. by Penguin Books, Ltd.) p. 252.

The other two uses of this word are by Paul in II Corinthians 12:4 and John of Patmos in Revelation 2:7. The rare use of this term led to much speculation in the early church over whether “paradise” was a synonym for “heaven” or something altogether different. Irenaeus, a bishop of the Second Century, wrote about degrees of eternal bliss in which distinctions are made between “heaven” and earthly paradise. Against the Heresies, Book 5, Ch. 36, para. 1 The former was for those deemed worthy of higher recognition, such as martyrs. The latter was for all the other believers. Similarly, Origen, a Second Century Christian scholar and teacher of Alexandria, taught that paradise was a place for the souls of the righteous to train for entry into heaven. De Principiis (Book II), Ch.1 Most scholars today view Jesus’ remark as affirming his solidarity with the condemned man and promising that he will share in the new age Jesus has come to proclaim. Marshall, Howard I., Commentary on Luke, New International Greek Testament Commentary (c. 1978 The Paternoster Press, Ltd.) pp. 870-873; Schweizer, Eduard, The Good News According to Luke, (c. 1984 by John Knox Press) p. 361; Ellis, Earle E., The Gospel of Luke, The New Century Bible Commentary (c. 1974 by Marshall, Morgan & Scott) p. 269. Some, however, maintain that Jesus’ promise reflects the commonly held belief that the saints and martyrs entered paradise immediately upon death. Caird, supra. In either case, such a promise made to a man dying the death of a condemned criminal is remarkable.

Other material unique to Luke is Jesus’ prayer for the forgiveness of his tormentors (Luke 23:34); Jesus’ warning to the women weeping for him that they ought rather to weep for themselves (Luke 23:26-31); and Jesus’ final words: “Father, into thy hands I commit my Spirit.” Luke 23:46.

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Palm Sunday/Sunday of the Passion

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