Tag Archives: Sunday Lessons

Sunday, December 4th

November 28, 2016UncategorizedAbraham, Bible, Church, Covenant, David, faith, gospel, gun violence, idolatry, Isaiah, justice, Lectionary, St. Matthew, Sunday Lessons, theology, violencerevolsen

Second Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 11:1–10
Psalm 72:1–7, 18–19
Romans 15:4–13
Matthew 3:1–12

Prayer of the Day: Stir up our hearts, Lord God, to prepare the way of your only Son. By his coming nurture our growth as people of repentance and peace; through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

The prophet Isaiah was not a fortune teller. Neither was he a dreamy, starry eyed idealist musing on utopian ideals. He was an astute observer of the geopolitical climate of the 8^th Century B.C.E. He saw with clarity what Judah’s kings and princes failed to perceive. The world was changing. The age of small, petty kingdoms like Judah was drawing to a close. The future belonged to imperial superpowers like Assyria, Babylon and Egypt. The old policies, strategies and alliances that seemed to have served Judah well in the past were no longer working in this new age. Judah’s “business as usual” approach to the conduct of its commercial and political affairs was destined to lead the nation into disaster. For king and people, this was a fearful time. They could sense vaguely the storm brewing on the horizon, but had no clear understanding of what it was or how to meet it. There was no going back to the good old days and no obvious way forward. This was an age plagued by doubt, perplexity and fear-the perfect culture for growing the dangerous virus of messianic longing, the desire for a leader that can be trusted.

Fear makes us stupid. It can drive an otherwise thoughtful and intelligent person to make irrational decisions and bad choices. I have seen doctors and medical professionals turn to miracle vitamins peddled by late night TV infomercials when confronted with a menacing diagnosis. I have seen people who have spent a lifetime scoffing at organized religion and ridiculing those who follow it turn to palm readers, psychics and tarot cards when their loved ones are in peril. The heart wants desperately to believe in a comforting lie even though the brain knows better.

That is why fear responds so eagerly to an authoritative voice offering simple solutions for complex problems, fixating blame for all one’s ills on a convenient scapegoat and promising protection-all in exchange for loyalty that fearful people are often only too glad to give. Fear is the engine of populism, nationalism and lynch mobs. Fear grasps the outstretched hand of a strong man like a drowning cat latching onto anything within reach. Fear will make people trust and obey anyone who seems able to deliver the safety and security for which they long, no matter how implausible their promises appear in the light of reason. Frightened people are easily manipulated into doing frightening things. False messiahs understand this. They are masters at manipulating fear. It is not for nothing that Jesus warned us in last week’s gospel to beware of people who come to us in times of great calamity seeking a following and claiming “I am the one.”

The messiah promised by Isaiah does not appeal to our fear. Instead, he inspires hope. This messiah promises justice and righteousness for the nations-not vengeance against them. This messiah smites the earth, not with the sword, but with the “rod of his mouth,” that is, his words. This messiah promises, not the destruction of enemies, but their reconciliation. There will be peace, says the prophet, when the earth is “full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” Arguments, not armies will finally win us peace. Reconciliation, not victory, will bring an end to the predatory relationship between peoples and the nation states that set them one against another. Security is found not in the building of walls, but in knocking them down. When God is feared, all that is less than God loses its power to terrify and intimidate. In the absence of fear, tyrants and demagogues lose their power; borders blur into nothingness and walls come tumbling down.

This is a bold confession: that what no army, no empire, no leader has ever been able to accomplish, God’s messiah will bring about with his voice, with his appeal to our hearts. The word, the Word Incarnate, the Word of God spoken by frail human tongues is mightier than the sword of the tyrant. Here’s a poem by Robert Graves about the divine power of words that might just resonate with the prophet Isaiah or perhaps even John the Evangelist.

The God Called Poetry

Now I begin to know at last,
These nights when I sit down to rhyme,
The form and measure of that vast
God we call Poetry, he who stoops
And leaps me through his paper hoops
A little higher every time.

Tempts me to think I’ll grow a proper
Singing cricket or grass-hopper
Making prodigious jumps in air
While shaken crowds about me stare
Aghast, and I sing, growing bolder
To fly up on my master’s shoulder
Rustling the thick stands of his hair.

He is older than the seas,
Older than the plains and hills,
And older than the light that spills
From the sun’s hot wheel on these.
He wakes the gale that tears your trees,
He sings to you from window sills.

At you he roars, or he will coo,
He shouts and screams when hell is hot,
Riding on the shell and shot.
He smites you down, he succours you,
And where you seek him, he is not.

To-day I see he has two heads
Like Janus—calm, benignant, this;
That, grim and scowling: his beard spreads
From chin to chin: this god has power
Immeasurable at every hour:
He first taight lovers how to kiss,
He brings down sunshine after shower,
Thunder and hate are his also,
He is YES and he is NO.

The black beard spoke and said to me,
‘Human fraility though you be,
Yet shout and crack your whip, be harsh!
They’ll obey you in the end:
Hill and field, river and marsh
Shall obey you, hop and skip
At the terrour of your whip,
To your gales of anger bend.’

The pale beard spoke and said in turn
‘True: a prize goes to the stern,
But sing and laugh and easily run
Through the wide airs of my plain,
Bathe in my waters, drink my sun,
And draw my creatures with soft song;
They shall follow you along
Graciously with no doubt or pain.’

Then speaking from his double head
The glorious fearful monster said
‘I am YES and I am NO,
Black as pitch and white as snow,
Love me, hate me, reconcile
Hate with love, perfect with vile,
So equal justice shall be done
And life shared between moon and sun.
Nature for you shall curse or smile:
A poet you shall be, my son.’

Robert Graves (1895-1985) was an English poet, novelist, critic and classicist. He produced more than 140 works. Graves received his early education at a series of six preparatory schools during which time he became a proficient boxer as well as a poet. At the outbreak of the First World War, Graves enlisted almost immediately and served with distinction, though his career as a soldier was hampered by the German elements in his name and a persistent (though unfounded) rumor that he had German sympathies and was a spy. His personal life was tumultuous. His first marriage ended in divorce. The business he undertook following the war failed leaving him destitute. Still, Graves continued to write and gradually gained recognition in his native England and abroad. You can learn more about Robert Graves and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation Website.

Isaiah 11:1–10

Though obviously connected with verses 1-9 by references to Jesse, the father of David, most scholars view verse 10 as part of a unit separate from these preceding verses. See, e.g., Mauchline, John Isaiah 1-39, (c 1962 SCM Press, Ltd.) p. 129. Verses 1-9 speak to the character of the promised Davidic king whereas verse 10 and following speak of his role in gathering together the exiles of Israel. In my view, adding verse 10 onto the end of the reading detracts from its powerful conclusion in verse 9: “for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”

Isaiah 7:14 speaks of the birth of Emmanuel. Isaiah 9:6-7 describes a child born to bear the weight of governance on his shoulders and who is given several names descriptive of his attributes. This Sunday’s reading form Isaiah 11 must be considered in connection with these verses. There is some dispute over whether the new branch representing the messianic king grows merely from the line of David or whether use of the word “stump” suggests a tree that has been cut down. If the latter is the case, one would assume that the utterance took place during a time of national disaster threatening the existence of the Davidic line. Consequently, some commentators date this oracle in the post-exilic era attributing it to a prophet other than Isaiah. I am not convinced that the language is clear enough to make a firm determination. Moreover, even assuming that the stump denotes a denuded kingdom, such a condition also matches the state of affairs existing in the aftermath of the ruinous raid by Assyrian Emperor Sennacherib in 701 B.C.E. That invasion nearly obliterated the kingdom of Judah. However one might date the oracle, though, the prophet obviously looks for God to act through a descendent from the line of David.

The Spirit of God will rest upon the savior king. In the Hebrew Scriptures, the Spirit signifies God’s energy, vitality and life force which can be communicated to human beings. It can express itself in skill (Exodus 31:3; Exodus 35:31), wisdom (Genesis 41:38), courage (Judges 6:34) or prophetic insight (Numbers 11:25-30). The Spirit’s involvement here is not unlike Paul’s view of the one Spirit conferring numerous gifts upon the church. I Corinthians 12:4-11. Verse 2, declaring that upon this leader shall rest “the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord” is prominently featured in our baptismal liturgy as well as the confirmation and ordination rites. At first blush, it might sound odd to hear that the messianic savior’s “delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.” Delight and fear are not words I am used to hearing in such close proximity. Nonetheless, any intimate relationship that does not have an element of awe, wonder and, yes, fear in it probably isn’t worth having.

Verses 4-6 are critical in my view because they undermine the “myth of redemptive violence” that has gained nearly creedal status in mainline Christianity. Note well that when this king “smites” the earth he does so with “the rod of his mouth.” When he slays the wicked, he does it with “the breath of his lips.” God exercises his reign through speech-through the Word and Spirit-not through violent and coercive means. This shoot from the stump of Jesse is not simply a kinder, gentler Caesar on steroids. There is a reason why Jesus would not accept the political power and glory of the world’s kingdoms when offered to him on a silver platter. There is a reason for the observation that when the church seeks to shape history by seizing the levers of power, the world seldom gets any better but the church always becomes worse. Coercion, whether it comes in the form of naked military power or in the more subtle guise of a “political solution,” cannot bring about the state of affairs God desires. Only the Spirit working through the relentless proclamation of the Word can bring about the peaceable kingdom. Not until the earth is “full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” can Isaiah’s vision become reality.

Obviously, the state of harmony among living creatures is contrary to everything we know about ecology and animal physiology. Clearly, one ought not to take these images as literal truth. Isaiah’s point is that the fear and hostility experienced by human beings from destructive carnivorous animals will end as the savior king’s reign extends even into the realm of nature. It is easy to lose sight of this point living as we do in a world where such animals have far more to fear from us than we need fear them! Still and all, this vision testifies to God’s end (telos) for creation that shatters all expectations based on our current understanding of the universe and its ways. Thus, we ought not to castrate Isaiah by turning his marvelous visions into mere metaphors of social progress. Such sermonic slop is hardly worth giving up a pleasant Sunday morning with the New York Times, a fresh bagel with cream cheese and a good cup of coffee.

Psalm 72:1–7, 18–19

This is a royal psalm probably used either for coronation ceremonies or the annual commemoration of God’s covenant with the line of David. The prayer has many similarities with those of Israel’s neighbors. For example, a hymn celebrating the accession of the Egyptian monarch, Ramses IV sometime around 1160 B.C.E. reads:

They who were hungry are sated and gay;
They who were thirsty are drunken.
They who were naked are clothed in fine linen;
They who were dirty are clad in white.
They who were in prison are set free;
They who were fettered are in joy.
The troublemakers in this land have become peaceful.

Pritchard, J.B. Ancient Near Eastern Texts, p. 379 cited in Rogerson,, J.W. and McKay, J.W., Psalms 51-100,The Cambridge Bible Commentary, (c 1977 Cambridge University Press) p. 113. The difference, of course, is that for Israel, the blessings arising out of the king’s rule are not merely incidental to strong leadership, but flow directly from faithfulness to the Davidic covenant making the king an agent of God’s justice. Consequently, justice for the poor, the widow and the orphan are the king’s particular concern. As the prophets point out, few if any of David’s descendents lived up to their covenant obligations. Even David himself sometimes fell short. Disappointment in Israel’s monarchy led the people of God to wonder whether any human agent is up to the task of doing justice and practicing righteousness. But perhaps that is the wrong question. Jesus’ messianic mission questions not the ability of human beings to rule justly, but the political structures, methods and strategies by which they attempt to do justice. Jesus’ faithful life, obedient death and glorious resurrection demonstrate, among other things, that violence does not work. Ever. Not even when it is used to achieve a greater good.

In its usual concern for protecting the sensibilities of graying, white, upper middle class, slightly left of center protestants, the lectionary has excised a chunk of this psalm in which the psalmist prays for the expansion of the king’s reign over “all” the nations. If you wish, you can read it here. Evidently the editors did not feel the expression of such imperialistic ambitions appropriate for worship. If you ask me, though, it is no more offensive than singing “Jesus shall reign where ‘er the sun, doth its successive journeys run.” If Jesus is who we say he is, then the song is perfectly appropriate. So, I would argue, is the middle of this psalm. Again, the question we must bring to this psalm is: “What sort of king are we talking about and what sort of reign does he exercise?” Regardless of what the psalmist or the worshipers who first sang this song may have thought, for those of us reading the scriptures through the lens of the cross this is a king that smites the world with his life giving speech, slays the wicked by convicting them through Word and Spirit and extends his rule over the nations by welcoming them into covenant. Our reading from Romans illustrates that very point.

Romans 15:4–13

Though this brief passage from Paul’s letter to the Romans seems to have been lifted out of the text with no thought to context, it nevertheless contains several verses well worth talking about. Verse 4 speaks about the purpose of the scriptures-which is to give us hope and encouragement. Yet how often haven’t we seen the scriptures used to judge, condemn, exclude and criticize? Instead of encouraging us to live in harmony, scriptural preaching has often been used to disrupt harmony, widen fault lines within the church and promote schism. There are volumes to be said on this score alone.

Hope is a recurring theme throughout this reading. It is said to be the focus of the scriptural witness. Vs 4. The messianic shoot from the root of Jesse is said to be the hope of the gentiles. Vs. 12. The reading concludes with Paul’s prayer that the Roman church “may abound in hope.” Vs. 13. This is certainly an appropriate topic for Advent!

Verse 7 is also a great starting point for speaking about hospitality. “Welcome one another, therefore, as Christ has welcomed you.” That would seem to exclude just about every rationale thinkable for denying entry into the church of Christ. Paul is often faulted for his lack of emphasis on Jesus’ life and teachings, but behind his instructions and admonitions to his churches you can find every parable Jesus ever spoke along with the Sermon on the Mount.

Matthew 3:1–12

John the Baptist often gets a bum rap in biblical art. Frequently, he is portrayed as an angry sourpuss threatening his hearers with the wrath of God. He actually does that when the Pharisees and Sadducees come on the scene. But his preaching to the general public begins with a call to repentance framed in the context of Isaiah 40 which opens with the words, “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.” Isaiah 40:1. The voice crying out for preparation of a way in the wilderness from Isaiah 40:3 is one of ecstatic joy. Repentance, therefore, is not to be understood as the woeful, breast beating, and self punishing sort of exercise that twisted medieval piety has made of it. Rather, it is a joyful turning away from self destructive attitudes and behavior toward new possibilities opened up by the intervention of a gracious and loving God. So forget the John you met in all those 1960s Sunday school leaflets. Matthew’s John laughs out loud and smiles.

More than any of the other gospel writers, Matthew makes clear the connection between the ministry of John the Baptist and Malachi’s prediction of Elijah’s return. See Malachi 4:5-6; Matthew 17:12. Nevertheless, just as I do not believe Matthew ties Jesus exclusively to any one particular Hebrew scriptural character, so also I think it is probably not a good idea to make too much of Matthew’s identification of John with Elijah. Just as his allusions to parallels between Jesus and Moses, Joshua, Elijah and the ancient people of Israel serve to illuminate Jesus’ identity from as many angles as possible, so too I think that the comparison between John and Elijah serves more to explain his prophetic ministry than to fit him into the framework of a master plot. See my post for Sunday, November 27^th.

Why would the Pharisees and Sadducees be coming to John for baptism? That seems out of character from what we learn of them in the chapters to come. It is possible that this is merely a literary device designed to introduce us to the hypocrisy of these representatives of Judaism. Yet the gospels seem to agree that John was widely respected by the general public, so much so that the leaders were afraid to criticize him in the presence of the people. See Matthew 21:23-27; Mark 11:27-33; Luke 20:1-8. It is therefore possible that members of these two groups were drawn to John’s preaching and perhaps even sought his baptism. Their lives, however, were not transformed so as to produce fruit befitting repentance.

John’s ire against the Pharisees and Sadducees seems to be directed principally at their insistence (mutually antagonistic) that they represent the “true” Israel. In point of fact, God doesn’t care about “roots” (upon which the ax of God’s wrath will soon fall) but for “fruits,” that is, the quality of a life transformed in anticipation of the Kingdom of heaven. It is hard to know whether the lectionary makers saw the irony in juxtaposing Isaiah’s focus on the “root of Jesse” as an image of hope and John’s dismissal of rootedness even in the expansive line of Abraham. So what is it preacher? Roots or fruits?

Is it possible that in all this talk of making children of Abraham from stones, Matthew (or his source) is alluding to Isaiah 51:1-12? There the prophet invites his discouraged post-exilic hearers to “look to the rock from which you were hewn and the quarry from which you were digged. Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for when he was but one I called him and blessed him and made him many.” Isaiah 51:1-2. Clearly, God remains faithful to Israel and her people. But God’s faithfulness should not be taken for granted. Just as God made of the aged Abraham and his barren wife a great people, so God can “hew” another people from barren stone should the need arise. See Nolland, John, The Gospel of Matthew, The New International Greek Text Commentary (c. 2005 William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.) p. 144-45. Such an allusion is quite possible and would further emphasize Matthew’s insistence on repentance and transformation in anticipation of the coming kingdom over any claim of pedigree.

Matthew ties John’s ministry closely to Jesus. Their respective messages are identical: repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Matthew 3:2 and Matthew 4:17. Nevertheless, their respective roles are as different as night and day. For Matthew, John is a transitional figure. He represents the end of the line of Israel’s faithful prophets. As such, he is worthy of honor and recognition. But his mission consists in making way for Jesus whose coming initiates the new age of the Kingdom of Heaven. The least among the children of this new age is therefore even greater than John. Matthew 11:11-15.

Sunday, November 27th

November 21, 2016UncategorizedBabylonian Exile, Church, discipleship, gospel, Isaiah, Jerusalem, justice, Lectionary, Paul's Letter to the Romans, peace, Persecution, Psalms, Religion, resurrection, Saint Paul, St. Matthew, Sunday Lessons, theology, violence, warrevolsen

First Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 2:1–5
Psalm 122
Romans 13:11–14
Matthew 24:36–44

Prayer of the Day: Stir up your power, Lord Christ, and come. By your merciful protection save us from the threatening dangers of our sins, and enlighten our walk in the way of your salvation, for you live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

“Salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed.” Romans 13:11.

At first blush, this isn’t particularly encouraging. These words of Paul were written in the middle of the First Century to a church that could not have existed much longer than a couple of decades. A couple of millennia later we hear this message and wonder what Paul could possibly have meant when he told the Christians of Rome that “the night is far gone” and “the day is at hand.” The stock answer given by a lot of New Testament scholars back in my seminary days was that Paul, like all First Century believers, expected the return of Jesus in his own lifetime. Neither he nor any of the other early believers suspected that the return of Jesus in glory might be “delayed” for a century, to say nothing of over two thousand years and counting. That explanation allows us to dismiss much of the New Testament’s ethical teachings on grounds that they are “eschatological” in nature. The Sermon on the Mount, Paul’s love ethic and the communal existence we read about in the Book of Acts must be understood as hastily drawn, interim guidelines for a community that did not believe it would be living in the present age for very long. Clearly, communal living, non-violence and renunciation of wealth are not practices that can be the defining values for a community desiring to maintain itself over the historical long run. At best, they reflect ideals for which monks and nuns might aspire, but which we who must live in the “real world” find unhelpful. So we can safely dispose with the New Testament and look elsewhere for ethical guidance.

As I have said in prior posts, I find this reading of the New Testament unpersuasive. While none of us can see into Saint Paul’s brain, I strongly suspect that his view of Jesus’ return in glory was a good deal more nuanced than these scholars allow. Though convinced of the imminent reality of Christ’s return in glory, the final judgment and the resurrection of the dead, Paul’s primary focus is always very much on the present state of things. The moral practices of his churches are anything but an afterthought. His is an ethic for a church living in the darkness of this present age in which the works of darkness abound in the surrounding culture. Paul’s call for militant resistance to the darkness with the “armor of light” underscores his confidence that the inbreaking of God’s kingdom is as sure as the dawn. How near or far away the sunrise might be in chronological time is irrelevant. For the disciple of Jesus, the hour is always late. Morning is already on the horizon. The light is already breaking into the world and the time for waking up and getting on with life in God’s resurrection kingdom is now. This, according to Paul, is the “real world.”

Paul has no interest in faith that accommodates the darkness. He doesn’t preach a gospel that helps us “cope” with the realities of our world. That’s why we have valium and TV. The status quo is not to be endured, but resisted. Paul has no use for a faith that is hardly worth pulling the kids out of soccer practice to learn. If the church doesn’t preach something worth your life’s devotion, then it should not be wasting an hour of your time on Sunday either. If the lives of Christians are not noticeably different from those of everyone else, what’s the point of joining the church? There are plenty of other places with good coffee, friendly people and entertaining things to do-and nobody will stick a plate under your nose. A church that fits nicely into its community is not worth the oxygen it uses up. It has gotten so comfortable living in the dark that it thinks it belongs there. When the light of God’s kingdom breaks in, such churches find themselves blinded and frantically shuttering their eyes just like everyone else.

Paul boldly proclaims a brand new reality-something that is worth living for and, if necessary, dying for. Paul calls us to re-orientate our focus. We look in vain toward the western horizon, trying desperately to find light and hope in the ever diminishing glow of the vanishing day. Instead, we need to face the darkness squarely with the confident belief that our salvation comes from the dawn whose light cannot yet be seen, but whose coming is as certain as yesterday’s end. We are challenged to be communities living in the darkness as though in broad daylight; people shaping our lives as though we lived now in the nearer presence of our Lord. We are challenged to become the kind of communities we long for and that, by virtue of Jesus’ resurrection, we confidently anticipate. In the face of so much doom saying, the Advent scriptures insist that the night in which we now live must inevitably give way to a new day.

What does such an Advent community look like in a fragmented society such as ours? What does church look like in neighborhoods filled with strangers who commute hours to their place of work and socialize principally with clients and coworkers? What does Jesus’ call to discipleship mean for people increasingly enslaved by the demands of employers, financial institutions to which they are indebted and the anxieties of unemployment, loss of medical insurance and everything that follows in the wake of such losses?

Perhaps the most important contribution the church has to offer is that of simply being the church. What made the church an object of awe in the New Testament was its members’ commitment to one another. There was not among them any that were in need, Luke tells us in the Book of Acts. This was a community that said to a world under imperial oppression, military occupation and slavery, “It doesn’t have to be this way.” Hunger is not inevitable. Class distinctions are not absolute. Race is not a defining human characteristic. Conflict need not lead to violence. This community is living proof of that. This is a demo plot for the reign of Christ. Not surprisingly, a lot of people who witnessed all this wanted in. In the New Testament church, your fellow disciples had your back. That was important because discipleship was dangerous. Taken seriously, it still is. And it’s costly. It takes guts for a congregation to pledge that none of its members will ever go without a roof over his head, the medical care she needs or food on the table. It takes courage to give sacrificially to help a sister or brother in time of need trusting that the community will be there for you when your time of need comes. It’s risky to open your doors to strangers. Societies that specialize in building walls between peoples (real and metaphorical) don’t like seeing them knocked down. But that is precisely what the kingdom of heaven does.

There is a danger, Saint Paul knew, of becoming too comfortable with the darkness, too much at home in a world that is in rebellion against its Creator. Here’s a poem by Ilya Kaminsky about such false and deceptive comfort.

We Lived Happily During the War

And when they bombed other people’s houses, we

protested
but not enough, we opposed them but not

enough. I was
in my bed, around my bed America

was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.

I took a chair outside and watched the sun.

In the sixth month
of a disastrous reign in the house of money

in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,
our great country of money, we (forgive us)

lived happily during the war.

Ilya Kaminsky was born in 1977 in the former Soviet Union city of Odessa. His family was granted political asylum by the United States in 1993 and they settled in Rochester, New York. Kaminsky earn a BA in political science at Georgetown University and a JD at the University of California’s Hastings College of Law. He is a recipient of the Whiting Writers’ Award, the Milton Center’s Award for Excellence in Writing, the Florence Kahn Memorial Award, Poetry magazine’s Levinson Prize as well as their Ruth Lilly Fellowship, Philips Exeter Academy’s George Bennett Fellowship, and a Lannan Foundation fellowship. You can learn more about Ilya Kaminsky and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

Isaiah 2:1–5

The introductory comment at verse 1 indicates that this chapter begins a collection of sayings associated with the prophet Isaiah that once constituted an independent collection. The material from our lesson was therefore not joined to the rest of what we now know as the Book of Isaiah until a later time. The prophesies introduced by this opening line probably extend at least until Isaiah 4:6 and may also include Isaiah 5:1-7; Isaiah 5:8-24; Isaiah 10:1-4; Isaiah 9:8-21; Isaiah 5:25, 26-30. Kaiser, Otto, Isaiah 1-12, A Commentary, The Old Testament Library (c. 1972 SCM Press Ltd.) p. 23.

Verses 2-5 are also found in Micah 4:1-4. This could mean that one prophet was relying upon the other, but the more probable explanation is that this oracle of salvation grew out of ancient Israelite cultic worship traditions from which both prophets drew. Kaiser, supra goes so far as to suggest that the saying was introduced into the works of both prophets by a later editor in the post-exilic period. Placement of such a liturgical expression of hope from pre-exilic times into the collected oracles of these pre-exilic prophets strengthened the prophetic witness and encouraged the post-exilic community in its struggle to understand its new role as God’s people in their changed circumstances.

Be that as it may, the saying in its present context (which is the only one that really interests me) juxtaposes in stark contrast the future declared by Israel’s God against the present reality of impending and actual war. In the midst of this violent geopolitical neighborhood where imperial superpowers vie for control and the smaller players seek to survive by playing one such empire off against the next through ever shifting alliances, the little nation of Judah is called to be something other than one more petty kingdom thrown into the mix. “The mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains” says the prophet. Isaiah 2:2. Yet what exalts Judah is not her military might or her commercial power, but her Torah. Her covenant wisdom, not her sword will bring all nations under the righteous reign of Israel’s God. When the treasure of Torah is opened up to the nations, they will seek it eagerly and submit their disputes to God’s judgment there under. When perfect justice is so established, weapons will become obsolete. Resources dedicated to producing them can now be put to more productive use. Verse 5 concludes with a plea for Judah to begin doing now what she and all other nations must inevitably do in the end: walk in the light of the Lord. God’s people are called to live in God’s future now.

This passage presents a bold challenge to all of us in mainline churches that have reliably and often uncritically supported military action, assuming it to be a necessary accessory to the “kingdom of God’s left hand” (To use a peculiarly Lutheran term). Though we generally subscribe to the “just war doctrine,” we seldom apply its criterion vigorously when the prospect of military conflict ensues. More often than not, we issue preachy/screechy denominational statements for public consumption, stand on the sidelines and allow political and military leaders to make all the decisions based largely on “national interests,” which, by the way, do not justify military action according to just war doctrine. How might we begin “walking in the light of the Lord” in the midst of this very violent global village? In a society where trading sound bites and exchanging rhetorical barbs from across entrenched ideological battle lines passes for dialogue, how do communities of faith bear witness to a better way of conversing with one another about important issues? How do churches reflect to the world an alternative way of living together?

Psalm 122

This psalm is part of a collection within the Psalter designated “Songs of Ascent.” (Psalms 120-134) While the precise meaning of this title is unknown, it is probable that these psalms were used on the occasion of pilgrimages to Jerusalem by Diaspora Jews visiting the second temple built following the return from Babylonian Exile. It is important to keep in mind, however, that although these psalms were compiled into this collection following the Babylonian Exile, the psalms themselves or portions of them might well belong to a much earlier period.

The psalmist expresses devotion to and longing for Jerusalem. Verse 1 suggests that the pilgrim is overcome with awe upon arriving at the holy city and standing within its gates. Though probably used by post-exilic pilgrims visiting Jerusalem, these verses might well date back to the monarchic period of Judah when the kingdom of David was still intact. The psalmist refers to Jerusalem as the place where all the tribes come together. Vs. 4. Though th

is was surely the case during the reigns of David and Solomon, it is not clear whether and to what extent this practice was continued by the northern ten tribes after the kingdom was divided into Israel in the north and Judah in the south. The phrase may therefore indicate early composition between 1000 B.C.E. to 900 B.C.E. during the united monarchy. On the other hand, the reference might well be symbolic, reflecting the unifying function of Jerusalem for Diaspora Jews following the return from exile in 530 B.C.E.

Verse 6 seems to be a word play on “Jerusalem,” the shorter form of which is “Salem,” and “peace” which in Hebrew is “Shalom.” Thus, “Pray for the shalom of Jerusalem.” The term shalom means more than mere absence of conflict. It denotes wholeness, health and wellbeing. As I have often said before, I am not a big fan of interfaith dialogue as it seldom produces anything more than generalities and platitudes you can get at your local Hallmark store. However, I believe that Jews, Muslims and Christians might have a fruitful discussion about what the city of Jerusalem means in each of their respective traditions and how, working together, we might make it a place of peace.

Romans 13:11–14

This snippet from Paul’s letter to the Romans comes in the middle of some admonitions delivered to the Roman church. Paul has completed in Chapter 11 his lengthy discussion of Israel’s and the church’s role in God’s plan of redemption. Now he turns to practical pastoral concerns. Paul speaks more generally here than in his other letters, probably because this is a congregation Paul did not start and has never personally visited. Nevertheless, he appears to know several of the persons involved with the congregation at Rome, most notably Prisca (Priscilla) and Aquila who assisted him in founding the church at Corinth. Acts 18:1-4.

Paul begins by urging the Roman believers to “present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.” Romans 12:1. He then warns them not to be conformed to the surrounding culture, but “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. These verses reflect the practical outcome of Paul’s understanding of church as the presence of and witness to the resurrected Christ in the midst of the world. The church’s life is to reflect God’s future, an alternative to the carnivorous culture of death that is the Roman Empire. Just as Jesus’ body was broken on the cross, the resurrected Body of Christ can expect resistance and opposition to its way of being in the world. Thus, the sacrifice Paul calls for here is not an afternoon of raking leaves out of the church parking lot. Being the church is a dangerous profession.

In the reading for today Paul urges the Roman congregation to “stay awake” and be alert, for “salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed.” Romans 13:11. That theme is echoed in our gospel lesson from Matthew. The phrase that caught my eye in this reading was Paul’s call to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ.” Having had three of my kids in the high school band, I know firsthand the transformative effect of a uniform. The band uniform was a reminder to my children and their fellow band members that they were not just another bunch of high school kids. They were members of an organization that made certain demands on them, set them apart from the rest of the community and called them to a higher standard of conduct. They acted much differently when in uniform.

A uniform also raises expectations from outsiders. If fire breaks out in a building, you wouldn’t blame anyone for trying to get out-unless the person is wearing the gear of a fire fighter. You expect fire fighters to act differently in the face of a fire. You expect them to enter into the zone of danger. They are not supposed to run away from it. Similarly, when one puts on Christ one assumes the calling of a disciple of Jesus. As Jesus offered himself up as a living sacrifice, so his disciples are called to place themselves in harm’s way if necessary for the sake of God’s Kingdom.

Matthew 24:36–44

With the dawn of a new church year, we say farewell to Luke and embark on the gospel narrative given to us by Matthew. Though most scholars date both Matthew and Luke sometime after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 A.C.E., recent scholarship has questioned this dating. For example, John Noland, academic dean and lecturer in New Testament studies at Trinity College in Bristol, England believes that Matthew wrote his Gospel before the Jewish War that lead to the fall of Jerusalem. Noland, John, The Gospel of Matthew, The New International Greek Testament Commentary (c. 2005 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.) p. 12. Noland notes that scholars dating the gospel after the Jewish War point to Matthew 22:7; Matthew 23:36-38 and Matthew 24:2 as reflecting memories of this traumatic event. However, given the strained political atmosphere of resentment toward Rome and the frequent and reckless insurgencies against Roman rule throughout the first century, it would not have been surprising that an astute observer like Jesus should have foreseen Jerusalem’s destruction as did Jeremiah in the years immediately before 587 B.C.E. Noland shares with most scholars the view that Matthew was dependent upon the Gospel of Mark and source material also available to Luke in constructing his own gospel. This means, of course, that both Mark and the source common to Matthew and Luke were also composed significantly earlier than most scholars assume. Consequently, the source material utilized by the gospel writers likely emerged during the life time of eye witness to Jesus life and ministry. It is conceivable also that the writers themselves were witnesses. If this is the case, we lose the historical gap between the gospel witness and the so called “Jesus of history.” While I still lean toward the majority view that Matthew post dates the Jewish War, I am keeping an open mind.

Matthew makes more specific citations to the Hebrew Scriptures than any of the other three gospels. This has led most scholars to conclude that his gospel is written for a Jewish Christian audience. Though the location of Matthew’s community cannot be determined with certainty, the prevailing view among New Testament scholars is that the community was located at Antioch in modern day Syria. Noland, supra, at 18. Though numerous attempts have been made to discern efforts on Matthew’s part to parallel his narrative of Jesus with Moses, the patriarchs or the people of Israel as a whole, none of them seem to hold up with any consistency. In my own humble opinion, Matthew was not attempting such a ridged comparison with any one particular Hebrew Scriptural narrative. Instead, he was intent on drenching his story of Jesus in Hebrew prophecy, employing numerous Old Testament parallels, citations and images in order to enrich Jesus’ portrait. Matthew portrays Jesus as a new Moses; a prophet in the tradition of Elijah; and a royal heir to the throne of David. In the end, though, none of these images is fully capable of containing him. Like the new wine poured into old wine skins, Jesus bursts through even the most powerful, eloquent and beautiful messianic images showing himself finally to be God’s only beloved Son.

There are many gospel events narrated only in the Gospel of Matthew. The coming of the Magi to the infant Jesus by the guidance of the star in the east which triggered the tragic slaughter of the innocents is found only in Matthew. Matthew alone has Jesus and his family sojourning in Egypt. Parables unique to Matthew include the story of the workers in the vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16); the story of the wise and foolish maidens (Matthew 25:1-13); and the account of the last judgment (Matthew 25:31-46). As we will see, these stories and parables help us understand Matthew’s particular focus as his witness to Jesus unfolds.

The gospel reading for Sunday calls upon the disciples to be prepared. I think that is the sum total of the message here. But for us that is frequently too little and too much. It is too little in the sense that we look for more to do than simply wait and hope. Literalist readers of the scripture turn the strange passages about those who are taken and those who are left in every which direction in an effort to figure out how and when the end of the world will come. Moreover, as Stanley Hauerwas points out, liberal progressive readers who have no use for mapping out the end times nevertheless assume that disciples of Jesus are capable of discerning the God intended direction history should take and use every means available to turn it in that direction. Hauerwas, Stanley, Matthew, Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (c. 2006 by Stanley Hauerwas, Brozos Press) p. 204. In both cases, these readers are chasing the voices of false prophets claiming to know more than they do. The siren call of the false prophets would lure us away from following Jesus into a fruitless attempt to ferret out information that the Father has specifically withheld from us or goad us into a misguided seizure of the levers of political power in order to “make history come out right.”

“Both temptations-to employ Jesus’ apocalyptic imagery to predict the end time or to discern the movement of history-betray the character of Jesus’ training of his disciples. He is trying to teach them how they must live in the light of his coming. The dramatic character of apocalyptic language should help the disciples understand the challenge he presents to them. We, along with the disciples, make a disastrous mistake, however, if we allow our imaginations to be possessed by the images of apocalypse rather than by the one on whom these images are meant to focus our attention-that is, Jesus.” Hauerwas, supra, p. 205.

Verses 40-41 in which Jesus speaks of two men working in the field and two women grinding at the mill at the coming of the son of man, one of each being “taken” and the other “left,” figure prominently in the Left Behind novels by Tim Lehaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. Because I don’t believe in the “rapture,” I naturally do not believe that these verses have anything to do with that fanciful event. Standing alone, it is not even obvious from these verses whether it is more desirable to be taken than left behind. However, in the context of the previous discussion about Noah’s salvation through the Ark and Lot’s rescue from Sodom’s destruction, it seems likely to me that being “taken” is equivalent to salvation on the day of the Son of Man. The wise maidens whose faithful watching resulted in their being received into the wedding celebration is instructive as is the judgment in favor of all who practiced compassion toward their vulnerable neighbors and so found a welcome from the Son at the last day. (Matthew 25:1-13 and Matthew 25:31-46).

Sunday, November 20th

November 14, 2016UncategorizedBible, Christ the King Sunday, Church, Covenant, David, discipleship, Election 2016, faith, gay and lesbian, Holy Spirit, idolatry, Jeremiah, justice, Lectionary, Luke, peace, racism, Religion, Saint Paul, sexism, Sunday Lessons, theology, violence, warrevolsen

Christ the King

Jeremiah 23:1–6
Psalm 46
Colossians 1:11–20
Luke 23:33–43

Prayer of the Day: O God, our true life, to serve you is freedom, and to know you is unending joy. We worship you, we glorify you, we give thanks to you for your great glory. Abide with us, reign in us, and make this world into a fit habitation for your divine majesty, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

The critical question we face on this Sunday of Christ the King is posed in a hymn we often sing on that occasion: “O Christ, What Can it Mean for Us to Claim you as our King?” What indeed can it mean for us to claim as the ultimate authority in our lives the one who associated with the outcast, befriended the outlaw, blessed the poor, welcomed the outsider and chose death over violence?

The recent uptick in racial violence poses this question in a particularly pointed way to those of us who identify as white. On the Wednesday following election day, numerous acts of racist and sexist aggression occurred throughout the United States. Two male Babson College students drove a pickup truck waving a Donald Trump flag through the campus of Wellesley College where my daughter and other Wellesley alumnae had gathered for an election watch party. The truck cruised in front of Harambee House, a meeting place for students of color, as the two shouted racist and sexist insults and spit in the direction of Wellesley Students. In South Philadelphia the words “Seig Heil 2016,” were spray painted across a storefront window along with a swastika. In Wellsville, New York, a softball dugout at a local park was reportedly defaced with the words “Make America White Again” and a swastika. In the Minneapolis suburb of Maple Grove, students at the local high school were greeted on Wednesday morning with the words, “Whites Only” along with a string of obscene and racist remarks I will not dignify by repeating. And in York, Pennsylvania, students were filmed chanting “white power” while parading through the halls at a local high school. That was all in just one single day.

Racism has been endemic to American culture since the days of our founding. To the credit of many of our leaders, black, white, Asian, Latino and others, we have eradicated the most overt forms it has taken. But racial injustice has continued to operate under the radar of our laws and policies. I doubt it is any worse today than in prior decades, but I do believe the fierce campaign rhetoric from this election cycle has unleashed the beast. Racial slurs and sexist insults, that for long years were never spoken in polite company, have been dragged up from the sewers and brought back into mainline discourse. We have sent a message to many of our young people that it is OK, even “cool” to be racist again.

Over the last week I have heard a lot of admonitions to let by bygones be bygones, accept the result of the election and move on. That actually sounds pretty good to me. I would like nothing more than to erase all memory of this last campaign from my hard drive and start fresh! I’m not a sore loser. One of my first official pastoral acts on Wednesday morning after election day was to pray for President Elect, Donald Trump. I wish him and the new administration well. But I am fearful for the well-being of my friends who are people of color. I am fearful for my loved ones who are lesbian, gay and transgendered. I am worried about the growing number of folks who seem to think it is now OK to threaten, insult and humiliate them. I can accept the result of the election, but I will never accept a culture in which people of color, sexual minorities and women must live in fear. Whatever other political differences we might have, I hope we can say that we are agreed on that.

As church, we confess that all human beings share one ancestor and all are called to redemption through one baptism into the one Body of Christ. Because this baptismal oneness is at the heart of the scriptures, the creeds and our confessions, we can’t simply sweep the scandal of racial injustice under the rug. Neither can we remain silent when the most vulnerable among us are targets of terror and intimidation. What is being done to our sisters and brothers throughout the country is being done to Jesus, our King. When we overcome our spiritual neuropathy, when we understand that we truly are one body and that the health of the whole depends on the health of each part, then we will realize that what is being done to our sisters and brothers is being done to ourselves as well. Because we claim Jesus as our king, we can be nowhere else but at the side of all who are now feeling the sting of discrimination, bullying and intimidation.

Here’s a poem by Langston Hughes. May we all learn to see the world through his eyes and with his clarity!

I Look at the World

I look at the world
From awakening eyes in a black face—
And this is what I see:
This fenced-off narrow space
Assigned to me.

I look then at the silly walls
Through dark eyes in a dark face—
And this is what I know:
That all these walls oppression builds
Will have to go!

I look at my own body
With eyes no longer blind—
And I see that my own hands can make
The world that’s in my mind.
Then let us hurry, comrades,
The road to find.

Source: Poetry Magazine (January 2009) Langston Hughes was an important African American voice in the “Harlem Renaissance” of the 1920s. Though well-educated and widely traveled, Hughes’ poetry never strayed far from his roots in the African American community. Early in his career, Hughes’ work was criticized by some African American intellectuals for portraying what they viewed as an unflattering representation of back life. In a response to these critics, Hughes replied, “I didn’t know the upper class Negroes well enough to write much about them. I knew only the people I had grown up with, and they weren’t people whose shoes were always shined, who had been to Harvard, or who had heard of Bach. But they seemed to me good people, too.” Today Langston Hughes is recognized globally as a towering literary figure of the 20^th Century. You can read more about Hughes and discover more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website (from which the above quote is taken).

Jeremiah 23:1–6

Jeremiah pulls no punches here. He faults Judah’s kings, her “shepherds,” for recklessly leading the nation into a ruinous war with Babylon that resulted in the destruction of Jerusalem, the exile of a substantial number of Jews and the scattering of the remainder of the people into distant lands. His criticism of these rulers, however, goes far beyond the obvious failure of their geopolitical policies. By referring to them as “shepherds,” Jeremiah is reminding his hearers that kingship in Israel was never intended to be a position of privilege. At the coronation of a Judean king, the people prayed:

Give the king your justice, O God,
and your righteousness to a king’s son.
² May he judge your people with righteousness,
and your poor with justice.
³ May the mountains yield prosperity for the people,
and the hills, in righteousness.
⁴ May he defend the cause of the poor of the people,
give deliverance to the needy,
and crush the oppressor.

Psalm 72:1-4. The king was to be the agent of God’s justice and compassion in Israel. The wellbeing of the people, particularly the most vulnerable members of society, was to be the king’s chief concern. King Zedekiah’s decision to release Judah’s slaves in accord with the provisions of the Torah in the face of imminent military invasion and his calculated revocation of that ruling when the threat seemed to recede demonstrates just how callus and dismissive the rulers of Jeremiah’s time had become to the responsibilities of kingship. See post from October 27, 2013. In response, God declares through the mouth of Jeremiah that he himself will take kingship into his own hands. God will gather the remnants of Judah from all the nations to which they have fled or been carried away in exile. God will lead them back to their land and shepherd them with justice and compassion. It seems here as though God were saying, “If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.”

But then in verse 5 the Lord declares through his prophet that he will raise up a “righteous Branch” for David who will deal wisely and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. This seems contrary to the previous declaration in which God appears to have given up altogether on the line of David and human kingship. It is possible that this oracle comes from an earlier period in Jeremiah’s career when he may still have hoped for a righteous king to emerge from David’s line. The passage might also be from a subsequent editor who held such a hope. However that might be, the canonical testimony is that kingship over God’s people is rooted in God’s reign over all of creation. That reign is characterized by care for the land, compassion for God’s people and faithfulness to God’s covenant. That no human ruler has ever come close to exercising such a gentle and peaceful reign suggests that the good life God intends for creation cannot be implemented by political means.

It has been said that “war is not merely an act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse carried on with other means.” Carl von Clausewitz, On War. The converse is also true, namely, that politics is war by other means. It is after all through political arrangements, international treaties and multi-national commercial agreements that the dominance of the wealthier nations over the vast majority of poverty stricken peoples is maintained. The political structures that enforce grinding poverty, starvation and oppression are no less violent than terrorist attacks. Economic sanctions inflicting hunger and poverty on populations having little or no control over the governments these sanctions were intended to punish are acts of violence as devastating as any bombing raid. Most often, differences between the “military” and the “political” solution to a conflict are merely definitional. Violence is always the common denominator.

It is not for nothing, therefore, that Jesus refused to take hold of the levers of political power when they were handed to him on a silver platter by the devil. It is not for nothing that Jesus taught his disciples that the use of violence, whether offensively or defensively, is not an option for them. It is not for nothing that Jesus would not allow his disciples to use violence to defend him from crucifixion and that he also refused to invoke violent divine intervention against his enemies. It is not for nothing that God responded to the murder of his only begotten Son not with vengeance, but by raising him up and offering him to us again. Absolute renunciation of violence is not just the fringe position of a few Christians at the margins of orthodoxy. It stands at the heart of the New Testament witness to Jesus. If Jesus is our king, we can have no truck with violence whether on the battlefield or in the halls of congress.

Is politics therefore to be avoided totally? I don’t believe so. Every community needs order and disciples of Jesus benefit no less from the protections afforded, the benefits offered and the security ensured by government. Accordingly, disciples are obligated to share in the responsibility for maintaining the health and proper functioning of governmental institutions through political involvement. But like all good gifts, politics becomes toxic when it is used for selfish and self-serving ends. It becomes demonic when it usurps the reign of God. The idolatries of nationalism, imperialism and colonialism stem from divinizing nation, race, tribe or ideology.

Psalm 46

See my post from October 27, 2013 on which this psalm was one of the appointed lessons. I will only add here that verse 9 emphasizes God’s emphatic commitment to “make all wars cease to the end of the earth.”

Colossians 1:11–20

For an excellent introduction to this epistle, see the Summary Article by Paul S. Berge, Emeritus Professor of New Testament on enterthebible.org. Of particular interest in this reading are verses 15-20. These passages are believed by most scholars to consist of an ancient Christian hymn to Christ that was incorporated into the letter by the author. As such, they demonstrate that from very early on the church understood Jesus’ life, death and resurrection to be an event of cosmic proportions with ramifications for the whole creation. The opening stanza of the hymn proclaims Jesus as “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.” Vs. 15. Yet he is also “the head of the body, the church…” vs. 18. Consequently, the church is the concrete expression of the presence of God in and for the world. This is a remarkable claim made for a teacher from an obscure town who was ultimately rejected by the leaders of his people, deserted by all of his followers and put to a cruel, shameful death by a Roman governor.

The cosmic scope of Jesus’ ministry is reflected in the claim that through him God “reconciled to himself all things, whether on earth or heaven, making peace through the blood of his cross.” Vs. 20. The resurrection of Jesus is therefore not merely the hope of individual believers. It is the destiny of all creation of which the church is but the first fruits. This bold assertion refutes the limited, non-biblical notion of salvation as a rescue operation to save as many souls as possible from a sinking ship. Clearly, God is determined to save the entire ship! That is what makes the gospel good news not only for disciples of Jesus, but for all creation.

The temptation, of course, is to “spiritualize” this passage. Paul does not wish for us to view our “inheritance of the saints in light” as a future event. These riches belong to us even now and should shape the way we live our lives and the way we handle our wealth. If the world remains unreconciled to God; if we are a people without a heavenly Father who promises to provide for all our needs; if the world is a place of ever diminishing resources-then the only sensible thing to do is grab as much of the pie as you can now before it disappears altogether. This is the survivalist mentality. If the reign of God has any meaning to such people, it is in the distant future, after death, in the sweet by and by. That is all well and good. But I have to live now.

Paul’s point, however, is that the inheritance of the saints in light is now. The fullness of God is present now in the community of faith, a community that is called to live now under the jurisdiction of God’s reign of abundance and peace. How else will the creation learn that reconciliation has been accomplished? How else will the world know that there is an alternative to our death spiral of endless consumer greed for more stuff and ruthless commercial exploitation of the earth to feed it? Unless the Body of Christ practices confidence in God’s reconciling power and the generosity it inspires, how will the world ever understand what human life is supposed to look like? How will people come to believe that the future of creation is resurrection rather than apocalyptic demise unless they see the reality of resurrection faith lived out by Jesus’ disciples?

Luke 23:33–43

This passage seems to put to bed once and for all any claim Jesus might have to kingship. His death is one reserved for insurrectionists, terrorists and those guilty of the most heinous crimes. Pilate inscribes over the cross the title “King of the Jews” so that everyone will understand that before you go claiming to be a king, you had better make sure you really are one. In Mark and Matthew Jesus is mocked by all who pass by. In Luke’s gospel, however, a crowd of people including many women accompany Jesus to the cross with weeping and lamentation. Luke 23:27. The Jewish leaders mock and deride Jesus, but the crowds merely stand by silently witnessing the crucifixion. Vs. 35. Though all of the gospels report that Jesus was crucified along with two other criminals, only Luke relates the story of the criminal who sought recognition in Jesus’ coming kingdom. He alone seems to recognize Jesus’ kingship, a subject of mockery for the Roman soldiers and the Jewish leaders. Though sympathetic, it is not at all clear that the crowds recognize Jesus as anything more than a righteous teacher suffering an undeserved fate.

Luke’s account of Jesus’ crucifixion turns our notion of kingship on its head. It is clear now that the reign of God is taking a very different form than we might have expected. Jesus is certainly not a king under any existing model of kingship. He has no army, nor royal court, no power to compel obedience. His might-and the might of God as well-consist in just this: that Jesus is able to continue loving his enemies in the face of the most virulent hatred. Just as he refused to accept his disciples’ efforts to defend him with the sword or to invoke divine power in his own defense in the Garden of Gethsemane, so now he will not rain down curses at his enemies from the cross. His only words are words of forgiveness. God will not be sucked into the vortex of retribution. That is God’s power. “For not with swords loud clashing, nor roll of stirring drums, but deeds of love and mercy the heavenly kingdom comes.” “Lead on, O King Eternal,” Lutheran Book of Worship, # 495.

What exactly did Jesus mean when he told the bandit crucified with him on the cross: “Today you will be with me in paradise?” According to the understanding of death in the Hebrew Scriptures, the end of life is the end of everything; body soul, spirit and whatever else might constitute a human person. Sheol, the abode of the dead, was not viewed as a continuation of life after death. Rather, it was a sort of universal grave yard of unknowing. In the much later apocalyptic writings like Daniel, we find a growing belief in the resurrection of the dead. Nevertheless, the dead are truly and completely dead. If they are raised to life again, it is only because God exercises his prerogative to breathe life back into the lifeless dust all flesh is destined to become.

By the dawn of the first century when Jesus’ ministry took place, Jewish beliefs about death and the afterlife were diverse and complex. The Sadducees, as we saw last week, rejected altogether the resurrection of the dead or any form of human existence after death. The Pharisees, by contrast acknowledged the resurrection of the dead. Some of them at some point also believed in a paradise for the souls of the righteous awaiting the resurrection. According to at least one commentator I have read, this post-biblical understanding of paradise was behind Jesus’ promise to the bandit crucified with him. Caird, G.B. The Gospel of Saint Luke, The pelican New Testament Commentaries (c. G.B. Caird, 1963, Penguin Books, Ltd.) p. 253.

I don’t buy it. The scriptures use a host of metaphors and images when speaking about death and resurrection (how else can you speak of such things?). It is dangerous to draw metaphysical conclusions from parabolic speech. The Greek word translated “paradise” in this passage merely means “garden.” It was employed by the Greek translation of the Old Testament scriptures to describe the Garden of Eden. As such, it was also used as a metaphor for the restored creation under the reign of God. Jesus’ promise, then, was that the crucified criminal would share in the reign of God which was breaking through even now under the sign of the cross. There is no attempt here to explicate the metaphysical implications of all this (assuming there are such).

Sunday, November 6th

October 31, 2016UncategorizedAll Saints Day, apocalyptic literature, Bible, Book of Acts, Book of Daniel, discipleship, faith, gospel, Holy Spirit, Lectionary, Letter to the Ephesians, Luke, peace, Persecution, Psalms, Religion, Saint Paul, Sunday Lessons, theology, warrevolsen

All Saints Day

Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18
Psalm 149
Ephesians 1:11-23
Luke 6:20-31

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

All Saints Day is the church’s Veteran’s Day, a time for honoring the memory of all whose lives have illuminated for us the way of the cross and the shape of faithful discipleship in every age. Special attention is given to the martyrs, those whose witness to Jesus required the loss of their lives. The first of these known to us was the deacon, Stephen, who died at the hands of an angry mob. His story is recounted in the Book of Acts. Acts 6-7. One thing always puzzled me about that story. Stephen was one of seven disciples elected to oversee food assistance to destitute widows. How did he go from running a soup kitchen to being at the epicenter of a violent controversy?

I don’t think becoming the first Christian martyr was Stephen’s goal in life. I suspect he would have been perfectly happy to spend his life in anonymity caring for the poor. But caring for the poor can get you into deep trouble. St. Lawrence of Rome, another deacon charged with care of the poor in his city, caught the attention of a Roman prefect. Having witnessed the very generous giving by the church to the poor in Rome, the prefect imagined that the church must have in its possession a huge store of wealth. He ordered Lawrence to turn over to him the treasures of the church. Lawrence promised to do just that within three days. He gathered together a large crowd of the poor, crippled and destitute people under the church’s care and presented them to the prefect three days later declaring, “Behold the treasure of the church!” The prefect was not amused. He had Lawrence burned alive.

This is no coincidence. Hatred of the poor is endemic to most cultures. In our own country we try to pretend that the poor don’t exist. We shut them out of our gated communities, we put impassible distances between them and our suburbs and we employ vagrancy laws enabling the police to clear them out of places where their presence might disturb shoppers, theater patrons and tourists. The poor are unwelcome reminders of our nation’s failures, a challenge to the “American Dream” in which we want so desperately to believe. Because the presence of the poor challenges all that we would like to believe about ourselves, we react to them with hostility. We blame them for their predicament. They are lazy, shiftless, dishonest and unmotivated. The benefits that keep them alive are a burden on the rest of us honest, hardworking citizens. That’s not fair! Besides, helping the poor only destroys what little incentive they might still have to better themselves. Charity is “toxic.” The kindest thing you can do for the poor is to take them off the dole and force them to fend for themselves.

There is some truth to that notion of “toxic charity” as I noted in my post for Sunday, February 21, 2016. My concern there, however, had less to do with destroying the incentive of poor people to better themselves and more with how misguided efforts to help them reinforce our stereotypes of poor people and cause those we help to feel judged rather than loved and valued. Such charity is indeed toxic, both for the church and those we seek to help. Yet when I hear the well-heeled beneficiaries of white privilege complain about toxic charity, it sounds a lot more like a rationale for selfishness, self-righteousness and greed than a serious response to poverty. It also demonstrates a glaring ignorance of poverty and its causes. Though I have worked all my adult life and put in far more than a forty-hour week more than half that time, I have never worked as hard as the homeless people I have met over the years in their struggle to survive day by day. I have thankfully never suffered from addiction, depression or chronic illness. If I had, however, I would have been surrounded by family and friends who would have been there to see that I got the treatment I needed and the care I required. Without that network, you are always just one stroke, one drink, one bad decision, one accident away from poverty and perhaps homelessness.

Are there poor people who game the system? Sure. But are they gamming the system any more than corporations that get huge tax breaks, ostensibly to invest in American production and generate American jobs, but invest their savings in foreign stocks instead? Are the poor gamming the system any more than real estate tycoons who repeatedly use bankruptcy laws to escape their contractual obligations, avoid their just debts and stiff their workers? Are the poor gamming the system any more than the vast majority of us who are willing to let a sub-class of warriors die fighting wars we have nearly forgotten about? If we cannot see these great logs of selfish exploitation in our own eyes, how dare we presume to take the speck out of the eye of one who is merely trying to get through another day?

In our gospel lesson Jesus proclaims that the poor are blessed. He is speaking, of course, to his disciples. Jesus presumes that his followers, if they are not poor themselves, are nevertheless solidly aligned with the poor. Jesus does not glorify poverty. The poor are not blessed because they are poor, but because the kingdom of God belongs to them. To be on the side of the poor is to be on the side of God. To oppose the poor is to war against God. It’s as simple as that. The saints of God know that the poor are on the winning side of history. We ignore their cries for justice at our peril

Here’s a poem by Robert Southey reflecting those plaintive cries to a society that has nearly lost its ability to hear.

The Complaints of the Poor

And wherefore do the Poor complain?
The rich man asked of me,—
Come walk abroad with me, I said
And I will answer thee.

Twas evening and the frozen streets
Were cheerless to behold,
And we were wrapt and coated well,
And yet we were a-cold.

We met an old bare-headed man,
His locks were few and white,
I ask’d him what he did abroad
In that cold winter’s night:

‘Twas bitter keen indeed, he said,
But at home no fire had he,
And therefore, he had come abroad
To ask for charity.

We met a young bare-footed child,
And she begg’d loud and bold,
I ask’d her what she did abroad
When the wind it blew so cold;

She said her father was at home
And he lay sick a-bed,
And therefore was it she was sent
Abroad to beg for bread.

We saw a woman sitting down
Upon a stone to rest,
She had a baby at her back
And another at her breast;

I ask’d her why she loiter’d there
When the wind it was so chill;
She turn’d her head and bade the child
That scream’d behind be still.

She told us that her husband served
A soldier, far away,
And therefore to her parish she
Was begging back her way.

We met a girl; her dress was loose
And sunken was her eye,
Who with the wanton’s hollow voice
Address’d the passers by;

I ask’d her what there was in guilt
That could her heart allure
To shame, disease, and late remorse?
She answer’d, she was poor.

I turn’d me to the rich man then
For silently stood he,
You ask’d me why the Poor complain,
And these have answer’d thee.

Source: this poem is in the public domain. Robert Southey (1774–1843) was born in Bristol, England. He spent much of his childhood living under the watchful discipline of a stern aunt and in boarding schools that were hardly less vigorous in their enforcement of discipline. He was an avid reader of classic poets like Shakespeare and Milton. While at Westminster public school he wrote a satirical article on corporal punishment. The administration was not amused. He was promptly expelled. This anti-authoritarian streak continued into his adult life as he became an avid supporter of the French Revolution. In addition to his many poems, Southey produced plays, essays and historical sagas. You can find out more about Robert Southey and read more of his poems at the Poetry Foundation website.

Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18

There is no getting around it: the Book of Daniel is a strange piece of literature. It is usually classified “apocalyptic” as is the Book of Revelation. Both of these books employ lurid images of fabulous beasts and cosmic disasters to make sense out of the authors’ experiences of severe persecution and suffering. In the case of Daniel, the crisis is the oppression of the Jews under the Macedonian tyrant, Antiochus Epiphanes whose short but brutal reign lasted from 167-164 B.C.E. Antiochus was determined to spread Greek culture to his conquered territories and to that end tried to stamp out all distinctively Jewish practices. He compelled his Jewish henchmen to eat pork-strictly forbidden under Mosaic Law-and threatened with torture and death those who refused. Antiochus considered himself a god and was thought to be mad by many of his contemporaries. Antiochus’ most offensive act was his desecration of the Temple in Jerusalem with an altar to Zeus upon which he sacrificed pigs. Though many Jews resisted to the point of martyrdom efforts to turn them from their faith, others were more inclined to submit to or even collaborate with Antiochus.

The early chapters of the Book of Daniel tell the tale of its namesake, a young Jew by the name of Daniel taken captive and deported three hundred years earlier by the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar. This is Daniel of lions’ den fame. Stories about Daniel’s faithfulness in the face of persecution under King Nebuchadnezzar and later under the Persian rulers are retold in the new context in order to give comfort and encouragement to Jews struggling to remain faithful under the reign of Antiochus. It is as though the author were saying, “Look people, we have been through this before. We can get through it again.” The latter chapters contain apocalyptic material that, like Revelation, has given rise to no end of speculation over what it might have to say about when the world will end. That concern, however, was far from the mind of the author of Daniel. His concern was with the present suffering of his people and sustaining them as they waited for a better day.

Our text for this Sunday comes at the very beginning of the apocalyptic section of the book. Daniel is visited by “visions in the night” during which he observes four great beasts coming up out of the sea. At this juncture, the lectionary takes a flying leap over the graphic descriptions of each of the beasts. That is unfortunate because we need to meet them in order to understand the promises made to Daniel at the end of our reading. I therefore invite you to read verses 4-14 before proceeding any further. The first beast is described as a lion with eagles’ wings and is identified by most Hebrew Scripture scholars with the Babylonian Empire which destroyed Jerusalem and took many of the Jews into exile in 587 B.C.E. Vs. 4 The second beast, a bear with three ribs in its mouth, is identified with the empire of the Medes. Vs. 5 The third beast is a winged leopard corresponding to the Persian Empire under Cyrus who, as you may recall, conquered the Babylonians and permitted the Jews to return from exile in Babylon to their homeland in Palestine. Vs. 6 The fourth beast is nothing like any living animal. More vicious and destructive than the beasts before it, this animal has iron teeth and ten horns. Vs. 7. It represents the Greek Empire founded by Alexander the Great. The ten horns represent ten rulers who succeeded Alexander, ruling various parts of his empire. The little horn speaking “great things” is our friend Antiochus.

Also omitted from our reading are the “planting of thrones” and the descent of the “Ancient of Days” and his host of thousands. Before him “books” are opened and judgment is passed upon the nations. The fourth beast is destroyed and consigned to flames, but the remaining kingdoms are merely deprived of their jurisdiction. At this point “one like a son of man” is given dominion over all the nations of the earth. His kingdom, we are told, will not pass away. Now we are finally in a position to understand the full import of the words spoken to Daniel by one of the heavenly host: “These four great beasts are four kings who shall arise out of the earth. But the saints of the Most High shall receive the kingdom forever, forever and ever.” Vss 17-18. It might now appear that the “saints” or faithful Jews are helpless pawns in the struggle between these great empires. But appearances can be deceiving. In the end, it is not any one of the kingdoms asserting power over the earth that will prevail. The kingdom of the Most High will finally rule the peoples of all nations and tongues through the agency of his messiah.

The sixty-four thousand dollar question is: Who determines the outcome of history? From a modernist point of view, history is the confluence of innumerable currents that can be influenced for better or worse by human activity. The Book of Daniel offers us a radically different outlook. According to Daniel, history is God’s project from beginning to end. The kingdom of God comes in its own good time without any help from us, thanks just the same. The people of God can live an anticipatory counter-cultural existence of humble obedience under that reign even now and so bear witness to it. But they cannot hasten its coming anymore than the kingdom’s adversaries can prevent it.

That said, witness is important and faithfulness invariably leads to conflict with the surrounding culture. The fiery ordeal faced by the people addressed in the Book of Daniel is hard for most of us to imagine. Yet in more subtle ways, I believe that disciples of Jesus are faced with decisions that require them to take a stand for or against Jesus. Even in a society where being a disciple of Jesus is not against the law, following Jesus still means taking up the cross. The good news here is that persecution, failure and even death do not constitute the end of the game. God promises to work redemption through what we perceive to be futile gestures of faithfulness in a wicked and ruthless world. So too, our gospel lesson points out that lives spent struggling against starvation, poverty and injustice for Jesus’ sake will not have been wasted.

Psalm 149

Most biblical scholars date this psalm on the later side, most likely during the period of Greek dominance over Palestine discussed under the reading from Daniel. The psalm is distinct from most other psalms in one important respect. Although many psalms cry out to God for vengeance against enemies, the psalmists do not undertake vengeance on their own or seek to execute retributive justice on God’s behalf. Psalm 149, however, prays concerning the faithful, “Let the high praises of God be in their throats and two-edged swords in their hands, to wreak vengeance on the nations and chastisement on the peoples, to bind their kings with chains and their nobles with fetters of iron, to execute on them the judgment written decreed.” Vss. 6-9. There is no question here that the people of Israel are being called to take part in executing God’s judgment against the nations of the world that do not acknowledge him. More troubling still is the interpretive history of this psalm. It was used as a battle cry by Roman Catholic princes during the Thirty-Years War and also by the radical Anabaptist, Thomas Munzer, in his violent crusades.

What then can we say about this psalm? First, the psalm is entirely consistent with Israel’s conviction (and that of the church as well) that God is one and admits of no rival. Judgment is always the flip side of salvation, but only God is competent to judge. With this the psalmist is in agreement. Although Israel is called upon to execute judgment, the judgment to be enforced is that which is “decreed.” Vs. 9. Until such time as God makes clear to his people precisely what is just and how his justice is to be implemented, Israel must refrain from taking action against those “judged.”

Second, as the First Letter of Peter reminds us, “the time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God…” I Peter 4:17. Just as the line between good and evil runs through the middle of every human heart, so every heart must undergo judgment. No one can claim to be entirely on the side of God such that there need be no reckoning with sin. It appears, then, that the execution of judgment to which Israel is summoned in Psalm 149is an eschatological event, that is to say, it points to a time when righteousness, wickedness and justice are made to stand out in unmistakable clarity. For disciples of Jesus, such a time cannot come until the revealing of the Son of Man.

Third, disciples of Jesus read this psalm the way they read all of Scripture: through the lens of Jesus. After all, we are not baptized into the name of Joshua son of Nun but into the name of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus was never shy about telling his disciples when to go beyond the written word in obedience to God. Thus, the Scriptures limit retribution to exacting from the wrongdoer only the price of his wrong. If someone knocks out your tooth, you don’t chop off his heard or burn down his house or murder his family. You get the value of a tooth, no more and no less. But Jesus tells his disciples that they must go further than the Hebrew Scriptures. They are not to seek retribution of any kind. They are to turn the other cheek when stricken and forgive up to seventy times seventy in any given day.

Finally, in both the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament, God’s judgment comes chiefly through God’s word. When the prophet describes the reign of God’s messianic king, he declares that he “shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall slay the wicked.” Isaiah 11:4. When John of Patmos describes how Christ appears to exercise his reign at the close of the age, he tells us that “From his mouth issues a sharp sword with which to smite the nations…” Revelation 19:15. In short, God does not employ violence to implement his reign. He speaks his Incarnate Word and sends fourth his Holy Spirit to transform hearts and minds. Thus, however Israel may have once interpreted the injunctions in Psalm 149, disciples of Jesus must interpret them consistent with Jesus’ call to confront an evil and unbelieving world with God’s offer of compassion, forgiveness and the promise of a new creation. The two edge sword we wield must be the sword of the Spirit.

The problematic sections of this psalm should not obscure the overall theme which is a call to praise God with melody, musical instruments and even dancing. Worship is supposed to be joyful, exuberant and strenuous. We Lutherans could use more than a little of that in our worship practices!

Ephesians 1:11-23

For an excellent summary of Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, see the article of Mary Hinkle Shore, Associate Professor of New Testament on enterthebible.org.

Verses 15-23 constitute one very long sentence in the original Greek text. The old RSV preserves that sentence structure in its translation to the consternation of anyone who has ever tried to unpack these important passages. Thankfully for this Sunday’s readers, the New RSV has broken the reading down into several sentences. For all who have the patience to work through them, these verses provide a beautiful articulation of the Christian hope encompassing life here and now in the Body of Christ and life as it is folded into the “glorious inheritance of the saints” with Christ in the “heavenly places.”

There are more sermons in these verses than any preacher could exhaust in a lifetime. The particular verses that caught my eye this time around are the last two, vss. 22-23, pointing out that the church, Christ’s Body, is the “fullness of him who fills all in all.” It is mindboggling, albeit true, that each little congregation gathered around the Word and Sacrament is the fullness of Christ. It is Paul’s prayer that his hearers will come to understand the hope to which they have been called and the wealth of their inheritance. Though it does not appear that Paul himself was the author of this epistle* and we know little about the congregation or congregations to which it is addressed, it seems evident that the audience is predominantly gentile. Thus, Paul wishes to impress upon his hearers the deep and profound treasures of the covenant into which they have been brought by invitation through Christ Jesus.

Although Paul makes only scant use of the Hebrew Scriptures in Ephesians (another reason why most scholars tend to think the target audience was principally gentile), there are many echoes of Old Testament texts throughout the letter and in Sunday’s reading in particular. Verse 22, where Paul remarks that God has “put all things under his [Christ’s) feet,” reflects the language of Psalm 110:1 and Psalm 8:6. Thielman, Frank S., Ephesians published in Beale, G.K. & Carson, D.A., Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (c. 2007 G.K. Beale & D.A. Carson, Baker Press) p 815. Psalm 110 is likely a coronation hymn for Judean kings and so it is not surprising that Paul should allude to it in speaking of Jesus’ elevation to God’s right hand. That Jews in the first century gave the psalm a messianic interpretation is suggested by the use Jesus made of it in his disputation with his adversaries. See, e.g., Mark 12:35-37. Clearly, early Christians interpreted the psalm in this way. Hays, R.B., Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul, (c. 1989 Yale Press) 163-66. Similarly, Psalm 8 speaks in poetic terms of human domination over creation. Jewish interpreters of the Second Temple period believed that Adam’s right to rule the world had been transferred to Israel and that God would one day give to the righteous remnant of his people the glory of Adam. Thielman, supra, p 816. Paul also spoke of Christ as a “new” Adam in his letter to the Romans. Romans 5:12-21. As such, Christ is entitled to reign not merely over the earth, but may properly be placed “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion.” Vs. 21.

*I will nevertheless continue to refer to the author as “Paul.” Though perhaps not the actual author, his thought pervades the letter. Besides, it is a lot less awkward than referring repeatedly to “the author.”

Luke 6:20-31

This excerpt from Luke’s “Sermon on the Plain” has some striking similarities to the “Sermon on the Mount” as presented in the Gospel of Matthew. See Matthew 5-7. It is generally accepted that both sermons are drawn from the same basic written tradition commonly called “Q.” But there are also significant differences and it is not clear whether these differences stem from variations in the source material or the editing of the gospel writers. In my own opinion, it is likely a matter of both/and rather than either/or. Clearly, some editing on the part of the gospel writers is at work. In Matthew, Jesus speaks from the mountain top evoking the image of Moses while going beyond Moses in many of his teachings. Luke’s Sermon is spoken on level ground. There appear to be three groups present: The twelve apostles Jesus selected just previously in vss. 12-16; “a great crowd of his disciples;” and “a great multitude of people.” In both cases, Jesus’ teachings are directed specifically at his disciples-not to the general public. Whereas Matthew contains more “beatitudes” than does Luke (Matthew 5:3-11), Luke includes four “Woes” not found in Matthew. Vss. 24-26.

It is important to emphasize that Jesus is speaking chiefly to his disciples here. Jesus does not make a virtue of poverty. There is no blessing in starvation. But for all who become impoverished for the sake of following Jesus and living for God’s reign, there are blessings that outweigh the woes of poverty. Similarly, weeping induced by suffering for the sake of Jesus and the reign of God he proclaims will likewise be outshone by the joy of experiencing God’s reign. So too, all who prefer wealth, comfort and security over Jesus’ invitation into the reign of God will someday understand the opportunity they threw away. They will have good reason to weep and hunger for that precious lost chance.

New Testament scholar Joachim Jeremias argues forcefully that the Sermon on the Plain/Mount was the body of an early catechism for Christian ethical training. Jeremias, J., The Sermon on the Mount, (c. London, 1961) pp 30-35 cited in Ellis, Earle E., The Gospel of Luke, The New Century Bible Commentary (c. 1974 Marshall, Morgan & Scott) p. 111. The commands given in the sermon presuppose an understanding of the gospel and merely spell out the shape obedience to that gospel must take. The kingdom’s coming is God’s doing and, as such, an act of sheer grace. The challenge for the children of the kingdom is to live now under that gentle reign. By so doing, they ensure that when the kingdom comes it will be welcomed joyfully as salvation rather than met with fear as judgment. As another commentator puts it:

“The sermon [on the Plain] is a description of the life of the new Israel, which is also life in the kingdom of God. In its fullness the kingdom belongs to the End, when God’s purposes are complete, and so throughout the Beatitudes there runs a contrast between the conditions of the present and the conditions of the future. But the good news which Jesus proclaimed was that the kingdom was already breaking in upon the present, so that men could here and now begin to enter into ultimate blessedness. Thus the Beatitudes were not merely a promise but an invitation.” Caird, G.B. Saint Luke, The Pelican New Testament Commentaries (c. G.B. Caird 1963 pub. Penguin Books, Ltd.) p. 102.

The call to love enemies, throw blessings at curses and forswear all resort to violence and coercion form the radical core of discipleship. These words are not meant to apply only to folks with nothing between them but white picket fences. These are not ethics only for church picnics and potluck suppers. The enemies Jesus calls us to love are not simply obnoxious neighbors, rude checkout clerks or inconsiderate drivers. Enemies are people that hate us and would kill us if they could. Jesus’ enemies tortured him to death. He died praying for their forgiveness-just as he teaches us to do here. Never does Jesus act violently, teach violence or condone violence under any circumstance. Over the last several years I have become convinced that non-violence is at the core of the gospel and that Christian support for state sponsored killing (euphemistically called “military action”) and the mainline church’s reluctance to condemn it constitutes a stark betrayal of the gospel. I think it is high time that my own denomination in particular take a serious look at the faithful and courageous Anabaptist witness to peace throughout the ages. It is time to re-evaluate our centuries old adherence to “just war” doctrines.

Sunday, October 30th

October 24, 2016UncategorizedBabylonian Exile, Bible, Church, Covenant, discipleship, Exodus, faith, gospel, gun violence, idolatry, Isaiah, justice, Lectionary, Luke, Money, Persecution, poverty, prayer, Psalms, Religion, Saint Paul, Sunday Lessons, theology, Zacchaeusrevolsen

TWENTY-FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Isaiah 1:10-18
Psalm 32:1-7
2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12
Luke 19:1-10

PRAYER OF THE DAY: Merciful God, gracious and benevolent, through your Son you invite all the world to a meal of mercy. Grant that we may eagerly follow his call, and bring us with all your saints into your life of justice and joy, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

In William Saroyan’s play, The Time of Your Life, protagonist “Joe” tells Tom, his young assistant and admirer, that he prefers to keep his wealth out of his own sight and management so that he doesn’t have to see the way it is hurting people. Perhaps Zacchaeus felt the same way. After all, he was a chief tax collector which meant that the dirty work of extorting from his own people the tax required by Rome, his own premium and that of his underlings was the job of his subordinates. He told them what he needed to get out of each individual and they got it for him. Zacchaeus didn’t have to see the arm twisting and the knee capping. He didn’t have to hear the desperate pleas of destitute farmers asking only to be left with enough to feed their families for one more day. No doubt he knew that the money coming into him was tainted with fraud, extortion and violence. But he also knew that life isn’t fair and only a fool expects it to be that way. Zacchaeus knew that, if he were to step out of his lucrative position, there would be plenty of others glad to step in. He knew he could not make the world one wit better by standing on principle, but in so doing, he obviously would make things a great deal worse for himself. So it made good sense simply to enjoy his wealth and not think too much about where it came from.

I don’t know that my own situation is much different. I don’t directly exploit, injure or discriminate against anyone else. But the lifestyle to which I have grown accustomed is clearly a burden on the planet. I know that the colonial ambitions of my ancestors produced a world order that perpetuates systemic poverty and injustice from which, as a white American male, I have benefited greatly. The funds held in my retirement account are invested in hundreds of companies. I hope they produce valuable goods and services, I hope they pay their employees a living wage and I hope they provide reasonable benefits for all their workers. I hope they do not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation or nationality. I hope they deal fairly and honestly with their contractors. I hope they do not pollute the rivers, lakes and oceans or deplete the forests. But I don’t know if all this is true, nor do I know how to find out. Yes, I have heard of socially responsible investment funds and have even invested in a few of these, but my review does not give me the assurances my conscience really needs.

The most troubling aspect of this story from our gospel is that we really don’t know how it ends. I would love to know how Zacchaeus lived his life going forward. How much did he have left after giving half his wealth to the poor and then paying back all the people he had defrauded over the years? How could he continue in his profession after encountering Jesus and hearing the good news of God’s reign? We don’t get answers to those questions and I suppose that is because the answers cannot be found in any book. They must be lived out in our lives. That is what makes the Bible such a difficult book to read. You start out reading what you think will be a story about a man who lived over two-thousand years ago, only to discover that the story is actually about you.

Here’s a poem by Peter Balakian giving us a glimpse into the other half of our world that those of us who live in peace, security and comfort would rather forget.

Slum Drummers, Nairobi

What were we watching on the tube under mildewed ceilings in Eastlands?
A Kenyan guy shaking a rattle made from a can
while another guy in the band was talking to the queen

about making sound out of anything? The queen smiled.
The Jubilee receiving line filed through.

We shimmied past tin shacks selling wigs and bananas, coke and goat lungs;

the tine of a kalimba kissed my face. My face kissed the blue plastic of
a soda bottle sliding down a hill of glass.

I paid the gang leaders for protection
and we walked into the hills of airplane garbage,

black and blue plastic bags glowing in the sun spray over the heads
of the marabou stalking the mounds with their knife-blade beaks.

Stevie Wonder and Elton John moved through the Jubilee line.
Prince Charles thanked God for the weather as the camera cut
to fireworks spewing over Hyde Park and then to an image of Nairobi
and the Slum Drummers picking metal out of the collages of garbage.

My jeans were charred from the tin-can fires,
and the grilling pig guts when some men looked up from scraps of wire—

and you went back and forth with them in Swahili before they offered us
some sizzling fat, before we thanked them with our coy smiles and moved on
with Michael who took us

down a maze of alleyways where tin shacks were floating
on polymers and nitrogen and a dozen pigs from nowhere snouted the garbage.

You were saying “Dad”—when a marabou-hacked bag shot some shit
on our shoes—“Dad, kinship roles are always changing”—

when a woman asked us for a few shillings and salt
for her soup. Salt? Did I hear her right? Or was it Swahili
for something else? And through the sooty wind of charcoal fires

and creaking rusty tin you were saying, “Hannah Arendt called Swahili
a degraded language of former slave holders.”

In the soot of my head—I was listening—
and Michael was asking for more shillings for the gang guys

who were “a little fucked up,” he said, “but needed help”—
and when I turned around the heads of chickens

were twitching, the feathers fluttering down on oozing sludge;
“Arendt called it a nineteenth century kind of no language,”

you were saying, “spoken”—as we were jolted
by a marabou eating a shoe—“spoken—by the Arab ivory and slave caravans.”

Out of bottles, cans, pipes, mangled wire—the Slum Drummers
twisted and hacked, joined and seamed their heaven

into the black plastic ghost of a mashed pot.
Pure tones blew from the vibrato holes

like wind through Makadara
where the breath of God flew through sewage pipes.

I heard in a tubophone the resurrection
of ten men rising out of coal and pig snouts

into the blue Kenyan sky where a marabou

swallowed a purse—and a woman’s conga
was parting at the seams above boiling soup cans.

Down a slope of stinking plastic you kept on about Arendt—
“a hybrid mixture of Bantu with enormous Arab borrowings”

I could say poa poa sawa sawa karibu.

We could make a kalimba out of a smashed pot
and pour beans into a can and shake it for the queen.

Yesterday in the soundless savannah the wildebeests and zebras
seemed to float through the green-gold grass toward Tanzania.

We could hear a lion breathe; we could hear wind through tusks.

On TV the guys were grinning into metal go-go drums;
hammering twisted sewage pipes and cut wire like sailors from Mombasa—
harder nailed than da Gama’s voyage down the Arab trade coast—

So, where are we—in a slum of no language?
Walking through steam shovels of light, breaking over
mounds of metal as if the sky were just blue plastic?

Isn’t English just a compost heap of devouring grammar,
joined, hacked, bruised words, rotting on themselves?

I keep following you, daughter of scrutiny, into plastic fields of carrion

between sight and site, vision not visionary, pig guts on the grill,

trying to keep balance
between streams of sewage and the sky,

as you keep hacking, Sophia, at the de-centered,
the burning text, anthropology’s shakedown.

A marabou just knifed the arm of a woman picking
bottles out of plastic bags.

A rooster crows from under a pile
of galvanized tin as if it were morning on a farm.

Source: Balakian, Peter, Ozone Journal (c. 2015 by The University of Chicago Press). Peter Balakian was born in 1951. He is the author of several collections of poetry and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. He grew up in Tenafly, New Jersey. Much of his poetry and prose reflect his deep interest in his Armenian ancestry and, in particular, his family’s experiences during the Armenian Genocide at the dawn of the Twentieth Century. You can find out more about Peter Balakian and read more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

Isaiah 1:10-18

As I have pointed out before, the book of the prophet Isaiah is regarded by most Hebrew Scripture scholars to be the work of three different prophets. Chapters of Isaiah 1-39 are attributed in the main to Isaiah the prophet who lived and prophesied in the 8^th Century B.C.E. during the reigns of Judean kings Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah. Chapters of Isaiah 40-55 are attributed to a prophet who preached toward the end of the Babylonian exile of the Jews, declaring to them God’s forgiveness and God’s promise to lead them back from exile to their homeland in Palestine. Chapters of Isaiah 56-66 are the words of a prophet addressing the Jews who in fact returned to Palestine and were struggling to rebuild their community under difficult circumstances. But this neat three part division is still a little too simplistic. All three prophetic collections underwent editing, revisions and additions in the course of composition. Consequently, there are many sections of First Isaiah (Isaiah 1-39) that probably belong to a prophet of a much later time. It is nearly undisputed, however, that the verses from Sunday’s lesson are the work of the Isaiah of the 8^th Century B.C.E.

Verses 10-18 are part of a collection of separate and distinct prophetic oracles making up the first chapter of the Book of Isaiah. They probably were spoken on different occasions. Each of these oracles follows the outline of a legal proceeding containing a summons, an indictment and a final word of comfort or hope. Mauchline, John, Isaiah 1-39, Torch Bible Paperbacks (c. 1962 SCM Press, Ltd) p. 44. According to Mauchline, supra, Verses 10-17 make up a distinct section criticizing Israel for her immorality, castigating her for the emptiness and hypocrisy of her worship and calling her to cleanse herself from unfaithfulness. Id. at 45. Verse 18 opens with yet another summons directed more specifically to Jerusalem. Id. See also Kaiser, Otto, Isaiah 1-12, The Old Testament Library (c. 1972 by SCM Press Ltd) p. 13. Taken together, this first chapter of Isaiah is a fitting introduction to the heart of the prophet’s message, namely, that covenant faithfulness requires zeal for doing justice. Without that, worship, sacrifices and holy day observances are worse than hollow and meaningless. They are rituals that God “hates.” Vs. 14.

These oracles probably relate to the early part of Isaiah’s ministry during the relatively peaceful reign of Jotham, son of Uzziah. Riding the legacy of wealth and power built under the leadership of Uzziah, the people and their leaders were enjoying a false sense of security. The rise of Assyria to the north would soon destabilize the region and shake up the matrix of alliances that had sheltered Judah from fierce international conflicts thus far. Isaiah saw the threat coming and recognized it as God’s long overdue judgment on a people who had failed to live up to their obligations under the covenant. Nevertheless, there is still time: “Come now, let us argue it out, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.” Vs. 18.

Sodom and Gomorrah are, of course, the epitome of evil in Hebrew Scriptural tradition. According to the prophet Ezekiel, these evil cities “had pride, surfeit of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.” Ezekiel 16:49. Their people also displayed a shocking lack of hospitality and aggression toward helpless sojourners passing through their territory. Genesis 19:1-29. Like them, the aristocracy of Judah in Isaiah’s day was “crushing” the people and “grinding the face of the poor.” Isaiah 3:15. The covenant clearly required better of Israel. Concerning the poor, “You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor in the land.” Deuteronomy 15:11. As for the resident alien, “when a stranger sojourns in your land, you shall not do him wrong. The stranger who sojourns with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself.” Leviticus 19:33-34. Failure to observe these commands to establish justice for the poor and the stranger cannot be cured by fastidious attention to worship and liturgy. Indeed, such worship is deemed an “abomination.” Vs. 13.

Isaiah does not reject temple worship as such. When properly grounded in the Exodus narrative, in which God liberates slaves of the Egyptian Empire to make of them an entirely different kind of community based on justice and compassion, the sacrifices, holy day observances and liturgical rites serve to call Israel back to her identity and mission. But when worship becomes detached from its moorings in salvation history and appropriated for the purpose of legitimating an oppressive hierarchical status quo, it becomes worse than empty and hypocritical. It is not an overstatement to call such worship idolatrous-even when performed with perfect liturgical precision.

Psalm 32

This is one of the seven “penitential psalms” so classified in the commentary of Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator written in the 6^th century C.E. (These include Psalms 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130 and 143). Not surprisingly, it was a favorite of Augustine and Luther. The psalmist speaks eloquently about the joy and relief found in forgiveness of sin and the futility of denial and self-justification. The psalmist does not disclose the nature of his or her sins, but indicates that it was some illness that brought him or her to an acknowledgement of sin and the need for confession. There is no question but that guilt induced stress can bring about illness, but it is far more likely in this case that the psalmist’s illness was the catalyst for guilt. Sickness was almost universally understood in ancient cultures as an affliction from God intended to punish sin. As such, its onset naturally drove the psalmist to introspection and self-examination.

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

In our modern culture we do not ordinarily associate illness with transgression. Still, I would not be too dismissive of this insight. Sometimes sickness is the result of our sinful lifestyles. It is well known that we are working longer hours these days under more stressful conditions. For many people in our country, this isn’t a choice. When you are at the minimum wage level, you need multiple incomes from two or three jobs just to put food on the table and keep a roof over your family. But for many of us, I believe that our frantic work ethic is more about maintaining a particular lifestyle. I have told the story many times of a fellow attorney who suffered a heart attack at the ripe old age of forty-one telling me, “This is what I get for spending my life doing work I hate to earn money I don’t need to buy stuff I don’t want to impress people I don’t like for reasons that don’t matter.” Eating habits, lack of exercise, smoking and many other unwise life choices can also contribute to illness.

So the psalmist’s advice is good as far as it goes, but his/her experience, valid and instructive though it may be, must not be elevated to a universal principle. As the case of Job illustrates, illness is not always the result of sin. The preacher from Ecclesiastes points out that in many cases justice and right do not prevail and all seems like “vanity.” Ecclesiastes 4:1-7. Sometimes tragedy happens for no apparent reason. There are psalms to address these circumstances as well. See, e.g. Psalm 39.

Aside from all questions arising from the psalmist’s views on the causal relationship between his/her sickness and his/her sin, the psalm makes the very important point that honesty, integrity and transparency lead us to a healthy and life-giving existence. The narratives we believe about ourselves invariably cast us as heroes or innocent victims. This stories we tell on ourselves can blind us to faults that undermine relationships, blind us to opportunities and lead us into self-destructive behavior. It takes personal courage and honest friendships strong enough to bear truthful speech in order to maintain spiritual health which, in turn, is often key to one’s overall well-being.

2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12

The relationship between the form and substance of II Thessalonians and 1 Thessalonians has led most commentators to believe that II Thessalonians was composed by a Christian leader writing to a later generation in the name of Paul and his colleagues. However that might be, this second letter echoes Paul’s admonitions to the Thessalonians in the first letter not to concern themselves with “times” and “seasons” for the triumphal return of Christ. I Thessalonians 5:1-11. You might also want to read the summary article on enterthebible.org by Matt Skinner, Associate Professor of New Testament at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN., for additional background.

As it appears in the lectionary, this short reading has Paul expressing his thankfulness for and pride in the church at Thessalonica while praying that the congregation will become what in Christ it already is: a people set aside to glorify the name of Jesus. Vs. 12. Once again, the lectionary people have insulted our intelligence (to say nothing of having perverted the scripture!) by excising from the reading material offensive to mainline, slightly left of center, white and ever polite protestants. Am I being a little too hard on these good folks? I invite you to read the censored material at II Thessalonians 1:5-10 and make your own judgment. If you think Hillary’s deleted e-mails are a big deal, this will really make you flip. I am sometimes tempted to spend a year of the liturgical cycle preaching on all the sections of scripture that have been deleted from the common lectionary. Perhaps I will call it the year of the Wiki Leak’s dump.

Paul’s actual message here is a good deal less benign. He tells us that “indeed God deems it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you” and “that when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance upon those who do not know God and upon those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus…they shall suffer the punishment of eternal destruction and exclusion from the presence of the Lord.” Vss. 6-9. Is this language consistent with the declaration of a church that insists that there is a place here for everyone? Actually, I think it is. Perhaps the kingdom Christ proclaims is the only community in which there is a place for everyone. But it isn’t clear that everyone is eager to take their place in that kingdom. In fact, I suspect that a kingdom in which you are promised only your bread for today and where the greatest of all are the least of all does not appeal to a good many folks. I think there are a lot of people who might recoil from a world in which their medals of honor no longer hold any significance, where nobody remembers all the fine buildings with their names on them; where no one has ever heard of their school or cares about their class rank. World renowned artists, theologians, musicians, business people and political leaders might find it distasteful to be ranked beneath a nursery school teacher who receives and cares for children to make ends meet. I suspect that for many such people, the kingdom of God might be pure hell!

I have often questioned the line in one of our liturgical offertory pieces in which we pray that God would “gather the hopes and dreams of all and unite them with the prayers we offer.” I think there are a lot of our hopes and dreams that have no place under the gentle reign of God. Hope for the continuance of white male privilege is one that needs to die. Dreams for unlimited accumulation of wealth and power for one’s nation or for oneself are incompatible with God’s reign. Indeed, I venture to say that most of our hopes and dreams, even (perhaps especially) the ones we deem holy, selfless and pure, probably need to be crucified before the kingdom can come in its fullness. Salvation for us is not God’s giving us all that we long for. That would be a little like giving a gift certificate from Total Wine to an alcoholic. We must be taught to long for that which is true, beautiful and good. We need to become the sort of people who will recognize the reign of God when it comes as heaven rather than experiencing it as hell.

Luke 19:1-10

Zacchaeus, we are told, was a chief tax collector and rich. He was not the sort of tax collector with whom Jesus frequently socialized. Tax collection in Palestine was accomplished by way of a pyramid scheme of extortion. The Roman overlords informed their Jewish agents what needed to be collected and left them to extort whatever profits they could as their compensation. Bamberger, B.J. “Tax Collector,” The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, Vol. 4 (c. 1962 by Abingdon Press) p. 522. As a chief tax collector, we may presume that Zacchaeus had a ground crew of agents who actually did the dirty work of squeezing money out of merchants and farmers. Marshall, Howard, I., Commentary on Luke, New International Greek Testament Commentary (c. 1978 by Paternoster Press, Ltd.) p. 696. They also had to extract their own fee over and above what Zacchaeus directed them to collect. That may explain why Zacchaeus is not in a position to say by how much he defrauded anyone. Vs. 8.

The name “Zacchaeus” is an abbreviated form of Zachariah meaning “righteous one.” Id. Not much significance should be attached to this in my opinion. There is no obvious literary pairing with Zachariah the father of John the Baptist or the prophet by that name in the Hebrew Scriptures. If there is any symbolic meaning here it might simply be Luke’s effort at irony. Zacchaeus would have been deemed among the least righteous in the Jewish community of Jesus’ day, yet by his response to Jesus he is shown to be an example of the compassionate righteousness preached both by Jesus and John the Baptist.

Given what we know about tax collectors and the way they operate, it is hardly surprising that the people should hate Zacchaeus and resent the wealth he has obtained at their expense by collaborating with their Roman oppressors. As we have seen numerous times before, Jesus’ practice of sharing meal fellowship with tax collectors draws the ire of his critics. This, however, is a particularly grievous circumstance. One might find a degree of pity for the ground level tax collector whose earnings were likely modest-just as we might understand the addict who, in desperation, turns to dealing in order to support his habit. Zacchaeus, however, stands near the top of the food chain. He does not merely make his living by exploiting his own people. He gets rich from it!

Zacchaeus responds to Jesus’ self-invitation with lavish hospitality and astounding generosity. Not only does he give half of his wealth to the poor, but he dedicates the remaining half to compensating all whom he may have defrauded. Vs. 8. That raises all kinds of questions for us. How do you measure the amount of compensation due victims of a profession that is by its nature little more than extortion? Moreover, what will Zacchaeus do with his life going forward? Will he remain in his position but collect no premium for himself? It is hard to understand how he could do that while continuing to pay his bills and keeping his agents happy. Will he abandon his unclean profession altogether and get an honest job? In his usual irritating way, Jesus leaves us to struggle with these difficult questions.

Sunday, October 23rd

October 17, 2016UncategorizedBabylonian Exile, Bible, Book of Acts, bullying, Church, Covenant, discipleship, faith, gospel, II Timothy, Jeremiah, Jerusalem, justice, Lectionary, Luke, prayer, Psalms, Saint Paul, Sunday Lessons, theology, Timothy, violence, violence against childrenrevolsen

Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost

Jeremiah 14:7-10, 19-22
Psalm 84:1-7
2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18
Luke 18:9-14

Prayer of the Day: O Lord God, tireless guardian of your people, you are always ready to hear our cries. Teach us to rely day and night on your care. Inspire us to seek your enduring justice for all this suffering world, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

Last week the long-standing tradition of electing a homecoming King and Queen at Rumson-Fair Haven High School was cancelled. The reason? The tradition was being used by the student body for “mass bullying.” It appears that that the students were planning to elect a couple of their classmates whose selection would be so unlikely that it would elicit mocking when they were announced. This is bullying on a grand scale! I have never seen anything like it and I have seen a lot of bullying. As a matter of fact, I was on the receiving end of it throughout my childhood and during my middle school years.

Most of the bullies I encountered were not the popular kids-athletes, cheerleaders, etc. They were usually pretty far down on the food chain of that carnivorous jungle called middle school. Bullying was the means these kids used to lift themselves a shade above the bottom. If they couldn’t win respect, they would settle for fear. If they couldn’t make it into the circle of popularity, they could win some attention and recognition from that coveted inner circle by providing a little entertainment. And what is more entertaining than mocking and humiliating someone else? Most kids in my school would never force a kid to push a penny across the floor with his nose or play catch with another unfortunate using a balloon filled with urine. But they were delighted to watch someone else do the dirty work.

Our teachers and administrators were not blind to the problem of bullying. They tried to help. I was part of a counseling group, a small class made up of kids who were bullied. Mr. Carlson, the boy’s adviser, tried to build self-esteem in us, tried to help us think of ways to stand up for ourselves. Though well meaning, this counseling only reinforced our belief that there was something wrong with us, that there was something that made kids want to pick on us, that our being bullied was in some way our own fault. In reality, of course, it was not our fault. Being over-weight, having acne, wearing braces, or lacking athletic skill should not be looked upon as an invitation to aggression putting one on the defensive. Victims of bullying do not need coping skills. What we needed-what everyone needed to be a healthy community-was an overhaul of our school culture, a culture that tolerated and even applauded aggression against the vulnerable.

Jesus understood the need for such a cultural overhaul. Throughout the Gospel of Luke Jesus proclaims a “great reversal.” John spoke of the mountains being leveled and the valleys lifted up. Mary sang of a day when the mighty would be brought low and the poor exalted. At the conclusion of his parable about the tax collector and the Pharisee in this Sunday’s gospel lesson, Jesus repeats that refrain, warning us that all who exalt themselves will be humbled while those who humble themselves will be exalted. The Pharisee in this parable is a kind of spiritual bully. He lifted himself up at the expense of the hated tax collector. He felt he was righteous because he was “not like other people,” particularly, “this tax collector.” Nobody wants to be at the bottom of the social/political/religious ladder. And the one sure fire way to prove you are not at the bottom is to demonstrate that there is someone beneath you.

Racism is the ultimate and most ugly expression of bullying. The few hardcore racists I have met in life (thankfully, few) are generally folks for whom life has not gone particularly well. They have gone through bitter divorces, lost their jobs, and watched as the America they once knew disintegrated in front of them. Their “whiteness” was their only claim to superiority-the one fact they could point to in order to show that they were not at the absolute bottom. At least that’s how it was until African Americans began to appear in jobs that paid even higher than the ones they lost, started showing up on TV more frequently in lead roles and then, of all things, occupied the White House! These folks feel cheated, as though their last shred of dignity has been stripped away. They shout the “N” word without much provocation, blame African Americans for ruining America and find them somehow responsible for all their personal woes and unhappiness.

Don’t think that these miserable creatures are harmless. As I said, they are few, but unfortunately, those of us who tolerate them, encourage them and exploit their dissatisfaction for political gain are far, far too many. Left unchecked, racist bullying by fringe individuals infects larger populations. When it suddenly becomes OK to propagate racist propaganda, use racial epitaphs and to subtly employ mass media to reinforce racial stereotypes, you can be sure that racist violence will not be far behind. Like a weed, it only takes a little neglect for bullying to thrive and take over an entire culture. Rumson High School is living proof of that and, sadly, so is the spike in racist rhetoric spurred on by the current state of our political discourse.

Jesus knows that bullying-all kinds of bullying-is a systemic disease inherent in our hierarchical culture. For as long as we need to derive our sense of self and self-worth by the level assigned to us based on our earning potential, body type, race, gender, sexual orientation or identity, we will always be looking down with contempt at those we deem below us and up with envy at those we think superior. Nothing short of the great reversal Jesus proclaims can free us from the hierarchical culture in which we have imprisoned ourselves and the systemic oppression infecting it.

On this link you will find a poem written by a teenager that will break your heart.

Jeremiah 14:7-10, 19-22

For my general comments on the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah, see my post of Sunday, August 14^th. You might also want to check out the Summary Article by Terence E. Fretheim, professor of Old Testament at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota posted on enterthebible.org.

The lectionary has wisely omitted verses 11-18 as this section of prose seems to have been interpolated from another set of writings that pertain more to current political and military conditions than to the drought prompting Jeremiah’s message reflected in the balance of the lesson. Less than wisely, it has omitted verses 1-14 providing us with the lesson’s context.

The occasion for these words of the prophet Jeremiah appears to have been a catastrophic drought. Jeremiah 14:1. In verses 2-6, the prophet describes the effects of the drought on everyone from wealthy nobles down to the wild animals in the wilderness. Our lesson begins with a lament of the people in response to the calamity. The people confess their guilt, yet call upon God to act “for thy name’s sake.” Vs. 7. They argue that, sinful as Israel might be, Israel’s God is nevertheless faithful. That is the basis of their plea for help. God’s role as Israel’s savior is God’s very essence-at least insofar as God has ever made himself known. Vs. 8. It is therefore unseemly for God to act as a “stranger” toward Israel and as one unable or unwilling to save. Vss. 8-9.

God responds in verse 10. God has not abandoned Israel. To the contrary, God is visiting Israel with punishment for its inclination to “wander” from the terms of the covenant. While this response is probably not the one for which the people were hoping, it nevertheless makes clear that God has not given up or abandoned Israel. God’s judgment is given in hope of turning Israel from its wandering ways and back to covenant faithfulness. You wouldn’t bother disciplining a child upon whom you had given up. Thus, the proclamation of judgment is actually good news, though here as in many other instances, the good news has to be experienced as bad news before it can be heard as good.

In verses 19-22 the people offer a re-joinder lament assailing God with rhetorical questions: Has God utterly rejected Judah? Does God loath Zion? The failure of God to supply relief seems to indicate that this might well be so. Again, the people confess their wickedness and appeal to God’s faithfulness which, in their view, should not be diminished by their sin.

Verse 22 suggests an echo of the rivalry between YAHWEH the God of Israel and the Canaanite deity, Ba’al in the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Ba’al was a nature deity credited with bringing the spring rains. As Israel transitioned from a nomadic existence into an agricultural society, the temptation to worship Ba’al was strong. After all, religious ritual was inextricable from agricultural techniques in the ancient world. It was difficult to download the Canaanite agricultural app without infecting the covenant people with a lot of religious malware. Here the people confess that the God of Israel and not that of any other nation is the bringer of rain and the only God capable of ending the drought, a lesson learned two centuries under the ministry of Elijah at Mt. Carmel. I Kings 18:17-46.

Interestingly, the people get the last word in this dialogical prayer. We are left with a God who has said in no uncertain terms that judgment has been entered and the appropriate sentence passed. There is no avenue of appeal. Nevertheless, the people do appeal the judgment and continue to cry out for God’s mercy-not because they believe the verdict to be unfair or the punishment too harsh-but because they know that God is merciful. A death sentence for Israel would mean that God has given up on the ancient covenant with Israel. It is precisely because they know God is incapable of breaking faith with them that the people of Israel continue to believe that God will even now be merciful and bring them the relief they seek.

Psalm 84:1-7

This psalm is likely a song composed by or for Jews making pilgrimages to the temple in Jerusalem on high feast days similar to the “songs of ascent” found at Psalms 120-134. Weiser, Artur, The Psalms, (c. 1962 b S.C.M. Press, Ltd.) p. 565-566. The vivid description of the pilgrims’ travels through the wilderness on their approach to Mt. Zion suggests to me a post-exhilic time when many Jews continued to live in lands far removed from Palestine. Vs. 5-7. Though separated from the holy city by miles, foreign borders and dangerous terrain, still “the highways to Zion” are indelibly etched into the hearts of these Jews from distant lands. Vs. 5.

Particularly moving is the physicality of the psalmist’s expression of longing for the temple. S/he “faints,” his/her “heart and flesh sing for joy.” Vs. 1. The psalmist expresses envy for the lowly sparrow privileged to nest within the sanctuary and raise her young within sight of the very holy of holies. Vs. 3. How much more blessed are the priests, singers and temple officials whose lives are dedicated to temple worship and who dwell perpetually within the temple courts! Vs. 4.

The location of the valley of Baca referenced in verse 6 is unknown. Earlier versions render it “the valley of weeping” based on the Latin Vulgate. It has been argued in favor of this translation that the name is associated with the Hebrew word “bakah,” meaning “to weep.” Other commentators suggest that the word Baca is derived from a word meaning “balsam tree.” Rogerson, J.W. and McKay, J.W., Psalms 51-100, (c. 1977 by Cambridge University Press) p. 171. Evidently, the balsam tree grows in arid places where rain is infrequent or seasonal. In addition to the speculative nature of the grammatical connection, it does not appear that these trees were found in the geographical area of Palestine. Ibid. Nevertheless, the context tells us that the Baca Valley is obviously a place through which pilgrims passed on their way to Jerusalem. The rainy season frequently filled natural crevices in the Palestinian wilderness with water and gave life to otherwise dry stream beds. Such “pools” were a godsend for travelers and their animals.

“They go from strength to strength” (vs. 7) or, as the New English Bible translates it, “from the outer wall to inner.” If this latter translation is given credence, then the reference might be to the pilgrim’s passage through the fortifications of Jerusalem or through the successive courts of the temple. If the NRSV version is accepted, the reference might be to the strength drawn by the pilgrims from the refreshing pools of water referenced in verse 6 or merely from the growing anticipation of worship at the temple increasing with each step toward Jerusalem.

Sadly, the lectionary amputates the concluding strophes of this wonderful hymn that declares the blessedness of being in God’s presence at the temple for worship and living one’s life with a profound sense of that presence wherever one might be. As always, I encourage you to read Psalm 84 in its entirety.

For disciples of Jesus, the temple is Jesus himself. What, then, are the highways to our Zion? I would suggest that the scriptures are the means of approaching Jesus. We read them, we preach on them, but have the scriptures become engraved in our hearts? Do we long for the Lord’s Table and the communion of saints in the same way those ancient pilgrims longed for the temple of the Lord and braved difficult and dangerous journeys to get there?

2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18

For my views on authorship of this and the other two pastoral epistles (I Timothy and Titus), see my post on the lessons from Sunday, September 11^th.

Probably in an effort to abbreviate the reading, the lectionary omits verses 9-15. That is unfortunate because we learn in verse 9 the chief reason for Paul’s writing this letter. Paul is urging Timothy to come to him. All his companions have left him during his time of imprisonment except Luke. Even commentators convinced that II Timothy was not in the main authored by Paul concede that these intensely personal verses with all of their vivid details have the ring of Pauline authenticity. Interestingly, Paul requests that Timothy bring with him a disciple named “Mark.” Was this the same person as “John Mark” mentioned in Acts 15:36-41? According to the Book of Acts, the mission partnership between Paul and Barnabas broke up due to a dispute over whether John Mark should accompany them on their next mission trip. Paul was adamantly opposed to bringing John Mark as he appears to have abandoned them during the prior journey. Did Paul have a change of heart toward Mark? Or did Mark distinguish himself in some way that caused Paul to see him in a different light? Or is the Mark of II Timothy an altogether different person? Paul also asks Timothy to bring with him “the cloak I left with Carpus at Troas” along with “the books and above all the parchments.” Again, it is difficult to believe that such mundane details are the product of any literary design.

“At my first defense no one took my part; all deserted me.” Vs. 16. It is hard to know when this “defense” took place. Was it when Paul was arrested in Jerusalem? Acts 21:17-40. Or does this refer to a hearing in Rome at which Paul was condemned to death? It is difficult to determine the author’s chronology here, but Paul’s generous response to those who abandoned him reflects the same attitude expressed in Philippians toward those who exploited Paul’s imprisonment to further their own agendas. Philippians 1:15-18.

Paul concludes with a firm expression of his confident faith in God’s ability to rescue him from every evil and preserve him for God’s heavily kingdom. Vs. 18. This cannot be taken as assurance that Paul will come through his current imprisonment unscathed. To the contrary, Paul has already expressed his view that he was “on the point of being sacrificed” and that the time for his “departure” had come. Vs. 6. His hope of salvation lies in the resurrection, life that God will bestow upon him beyond his upcoming execution. This same life, says Paul, belongs to all “who have loved [Jesus’] appearing.” Vs. 8. Accordingly, life in Jesus is eternal not merely because it does not end with death, but because it is invested in those things which are eternal: Faith, hope and, the greatest of all, love. I Corinthians 13:13.

Luke 18:9-14

“God, I thank thee that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers…” Thus far, the Pharisee’s prayer is not far different than what we find in the Psalms. For example, the psalmist prays in the 101^st Psalm:

I will walk with integrity of heart
within my house;
I will not set before my eyes
anything that is base.
I hate the work of those who fall away;
it shall not cling to me.
Perverseness of heart shall be far from me;
I will know nothing of evil.
One who secretly slanders a neighbour
I will destroy.
A haughty look and an arrogant heart
I will not tolerate.

It is good to live righteously and to be thankful for the opportunity to be righteous. I am thankful that I don’t have a criminal record. Nevertheless, I am mindful of the fact that my blameless reputation (relatively speaking!) is due in no small part to the fact that I have never been tempted to rob or steal to keep my family from starving to death. I have never been tempted to employ violence to save my life. All of this is the result of having lived a blessed life surrounded by caring family, friends and church. Frankly, I cannot say what sort of person I would have become had I not lived in such a blessed state.

There is something very wrong, however, with the Pharisee’s prayer. Jesus tells us right off the bat that the Pharisee “prayed with himself.” Vs. 11. Whether he knew it or not, this man was addressing not God, but his own need for self-affirmation. His prayer has no thankfulness in it. Instead, there is smugness and self-satisfaction. He does not leave the temple justified because he did not seek to be so in the eyes of God. Rather, he sought justification by comparison with others. The only way he could raise himself up, was by bringing the tax collector down.

Human communities tend toward hierarchy. It is important that we all know our place. The place society assigns to us is generally a measure of our worth. We can all probably recall the seating arrangements in the high school lunch room. Tables ranged from the “cool table,” athletes, cheerleaders and the generally good looking, down to the “nerd table” where yours truly sat with the other kids who had bad acne, braces on their teeth, fat rather than muscle and a lack of athletic prowess. And, as I indicated above, there were bullies. As I recall, bullies typically did not come from the “cool” table. They were much closer to us nerds on the social hierarchy. They just had a harder time accepting it. So by terrifying, intimidating and bullying the rest of us, they felt they were lifting themselves a bit closer to the top of the social ladder. It was all about self-justification. The Pharisee in Jesus’ parable was a spiritual bully attempting to exalt himself by denigrating the tax collector.

The language Jesus uses in introducing this parable is reflected in the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel: “Though I say to the righteous that he shall surely live, yet if he trusts in his righteousness and commits iniquity, none of his righteous deeds shall be remembered; but in the iniquity that he has committed he shall die.” Ezekiel 33:13. See Fitzmyer, J.A., The Gospel According to Luke, (c. 1985 by Doubleday) p. 1185 cited in Beale, G.K. and Carson, D.A., Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, (c. 2007 by G.K. Beal & D.A. Carson, pub. by Baker Publishing Group) p. 349. The point here is that good deeds today cannot be banked against iniquity the next. Each moment presents the choice between good and evil and true righteousness chooses the good consistently. So, too, fasting, prayer and tithing, commendable as these practices are, count for nothing when one neglects the great commandment to love God with all the heart and the neighbor as oneself.

The prayer posture of the tax collector, who would not even raise his head, echoes that of Ezra the scribe who, when he learned of the many mixed marriages between the returning Jewish exiles and foreign women, cried out, “O my God, I am too ashamed and embarrassed to lift my face to you, my God, for our iniquities have risen higher than our heads, and our guilt has mounted up to heaven.” Ezra 9:6. There is rich irony in that the notorious sinner prays in the manner of Ezra, second only to Moses in renown as a teacher and interpreter of the Torah!

The exaltation of the lowly and the humiliation of the proud and powerful is a recurring refrain throughout the gospel of Luke. It is sounded first in the song of Mary. Luke 1:51-53 and is repeated here to make clear the meaning of the parable. The great reversal is coming. Whether one welcomes this event as salvation or fears it as judgment depends on one’s posture toward Jesus and his proclamation of God’s impending reign. Of course, the same theme is repeated throughout the Hebrew Scriptures as well. See, e.g., Psalm 107:39-43.

Sunday, October 9th

October 3, 2016UncategorizedBaptism, Bible, Book of Acts, Church, discipleship, Elisha, faith, gospel, healing, Holy Spirit, Jerusalem, Lectionary, leper, leprosy, Luke, miracle, prayer, Psalms, Religion, resurrection, Saint Paul, Samaritan, Sunday Lessons, theologyrevolsen

Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost

2 Kings 5:1–3, 7–15c
Psalm 111
2 Timothy 2:8–15
Luke 17:11–19

Prayer of the Day: Almighty and most merciful God, your bountiful goodness fills all creation. Keep us safe from all that may hurt us, that, whole and well in body and spirit, we may with grateful hearts accomplish all that you would have us do, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

You wouldn’t expect to find a Samaritan in the company nine Jews in 1^st Century Palestine. As pointed out in my remarks on the gospel, there was little love between these peoples who had been fighting a one thousand year old feud over which of them was the true Israel. There is no war quite as bloody, barbaric and long lasting as those fought between brothers. The horrific brutality of Christians to Jews in Europe; the years of bloodshed between Irish Catholics and Irish protestants and the ongoing violence between Sunni and Shia Muslims all serve to illustrate the point.

There are events in the lives of people, however, that can eclipse even the most deep seated prejudices. Leprosy is one of them. Biblical scholars, historians and endocrinologists all agree that, in most cases, the skin diseases diagnosed as leprosy in the ancient world most likely were not the dreaded “Hanson’s Disease” we have come to know by that name. Still, perception is everything. If the community deems you a leper, a danger to the community, a person whose presence is intolerable, then your life in that community is over. Like a convicted sexual predator, you are banned to the outskirts of civil society, branded with a name that makes you an object of loathing and dread. You are forced to live a marginal existence. When life as you know it is threatened with extinction or radically altered, all the things you once thought of as important lose their significance. The label “Jew” or “Samaritan” no longer has any meaning once you have been thoroughly excluded from participation in either society. And if the man or woman living in the hovel next to you can offer some comfort and companionship, then who cares whether s/he once was a member of a group that your group hated-before it started hating you?

Fifteen years ago the vacation I was taking with my family in Washington State took an unexpected turn when my wife lost consciousness and was taken by helicopter to the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle. I can remember as if it were yesterday the second morning into my wife’s coma. I recall how I sat at her bedside not knowing whether she would awake and, if she ever did, whether she would ever see, speak or even be able to perceive my presence. At that time, I understood with a clarity I never had before just how trivial were all the worries, cares, concerns and ambitions that drove me. I would gladly have thrown away every dime I ever made to have just one more minute with my beloved-if only to say a proper good-by. I could see so clearly how much of my life had been wasted and how much I stood to lose.

At that moment, the social, political and theological issues that always got me so worked up were revealed as trivial. Suddenly, it didn’t matter that the one person who had the time to sit with me and pray happened to be a Mormon. He took the time to be with me when no other chaplain or local minister of any faith (including my own Lutheran denomination) could be bothered. So also, I doubt the lepers in our gospel cared one wit that Jesus was being pursued by the civil authorities, that he had been branded a false teacher by the religious establishment or that he had a reputation for associating with the wrong sort of people. Nor do I believe it mattered much to the Samaritan that Jesus happened to be a Jew. Jesus was someone they all instinctively knew would receive them. That was enough.

All ten lepers were the recipients of Jesus’ miraculous healing. We know that the Samaritan returned to Jesus to give thanks. I can understand that. I can remember with equal clarity the morning my wife came out of her coma, the elation I felt at hearing her voice and seeing the light back in her eyes. I remember the walk I took outside UWMC after she had drifted off to sleep. I strolled along the canal between Lakes Washington and Union. A rain shower had just passed and there was a spectacular rainbow over Husky Stadium. I didn’t need the rainbow to tell me that I had been the recipient of a miracle, but it was a nice touch.

I don’t want to take anything away from the fine medical care my wife received from the doctors and nurses at UWMC to whom I give credit for my wife’s recovery. Miracles do not equate with magic. It is not as though God intervenes to suspend the workings of the natural world in order to produce an otherwise inexplicable outcome. It is more the case that, because God is always working in, with and under the processes of the natural world, events occur that are unexpected, surprising and life-giving. I don’t know, nor do I need to know where human agency ends and divine agency begins. I suspect that there probably is no neat line of demarcation. In any event, I know that I was the recipient of a miracle, an undeserved gift that has lasted longer than I ever dared hope. I have resolved to live in the thankfulness of that moment, to recognize that each new day of my marriage is another undeserved extension of a life that might well have ended. I have resolved to keep in view the things that matter, and that has made these latter years of my life the sweetest.

Then, too, I can also relate to the nine lepers who did not return to give thanks. It is hard to maintain indefinitely the wonder, awe and gratitude one experiences in the presence of a miracle. It doesn’t take long for all the old anxieties, hostilities and doubts to worm their way back into your brain. If anyone ever had reason to trust God, it has to be me, but I still find myself worrying about all the things I once learned do not matter. I still catch myself worrying about money, health, work, the future-all those things that I know are in the hands of a God who loves me with an everlasting love. Furthermore, once the threat of death or loss has been removed, it is easy to forget how fragile you are, how deeply dependent you are on God’s grace and how precious is every single moment that you go on living. It is easy simply to slip back into the old ways of thinking, planning and acting-as though no miracle had ever occurred.

I have no doubt that the nine lepers who went on their merry way were already stressing about how they would re-establish themselves in society and how they would explain their healing to the priest. I expect they probably decided it would not be a good idea to mention Jesus’ role in the affair. After all, wasn’t Jesus being watched by the Roman authorities? Hadn’t the religious leaders declared him to be a false teacher? Wasn’t it common knowledge that Jesus kept unsavory company and that one of his disciples was actually a known terrorist? Best to keep quiet about him! Moreover, if the nine even noticed that their Samaritan companion was no longer with them, I am guessing they were relieved. If you want to get a certification of cleansing from a Jewish priest, the last thing you want is to have a filthy Samaritan trailing along behind you.

So with whom do I truly identify? The thankful Samaritan or the nine? If I am honest, I have to say that I identify with both. I struggle to live in gratitude, but often find myself slipping back into anxiety, resentment and envy. I don’t know whether my soul is reflected more in the one than in the nine. Maybe that is what we are supposed to be struggling with. Jesus’ parables typically do not answer the questions we ask. Instead, they prompt us to ask better questions. We are all recipients of the miracle of Jesus’ obedient life, faithful death and glorious resurrection. We have been given a life we had no right to expect and don’t deserve. So what are we going to do with it?

The movie Saving Private Ryan tells the story of a group of soldiers sent to save paratrooper Private James Ryan, the last son of a widowed mother. Ryan’s brothers were all killed in action during the Normandy invasion and Ryan was lost and missing in action. Through the efforts of these soldiers, all of whom die in the course of carrying out their mission, Ryan’s life is saved. The movie ends at some point in the future when Ryan returns to Normandy and visits the graves of his rescuers. As he stands before the headstones, he asks, “Was I worth it?” I think perhaps that is the only appropriate response there can be to a miracle, particularly the miracle of our baptism into Jesus Christ. Clearly, God has determined that we are worth the life of his Son. There is no need to earn such a miracle and no way whatsoever to repay it. We can only live such life as we are given, however long or short it may be, in holy gratitude, striving to make out of every minute something worth preserving for eternity.

Here’s a poem by Thomas Randolph about living gratefully.

He Lives Long Who Lives Well.

Wouldest thou live long? The only means are
These-
‘Bove Galen’s diet, or Hippocrates’
Strive to live well; tread in the upright ways,
And rather count thy actions than thy days;
Then thou hast lived enough amongst us here,
For every day well spent I count a year.
Live will, and then, how soon soe’er thou die,
Thou art of age to claim eternity.
But he that outlives Nestor, and appears
To have passed the date of gray Methuselah’s years,
If he his life to sloth and sin doth give,
I say he only was-he did not live.

Thomas Randolph was born in 1605 at Newnham, Northamptonshire, near Daventry, England. He was admitted in 1618 as a King’s Scholar to the College of St. Peter, better known as Westminster School and then Trinity College, Cambridge in 1624 at the age of 18. He earned at both schools a reputation for English and Latin verse. He was awarded his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1628, then Master of Arts in 1631. Randolph died at 1635 at the age of just 29. You can find out more about Thomas Randolph at this link from Encyclopedia Britannica.

2 Kings 5:1–3, 7–15c

Unless you want everyone in the congregation wondering where the “letter” came from in this lesson and how the King of Israel got involved, you need to read the entire text rather than the gutted version given to us by the lectionary hacks. See II Kings 5:1-15.

This is one of the most engaging stories of the Hebrew Scriptures. It comes to us from a collection of episodes in the lives of Elijah and Elisha whose prophetic ministries were directed to the Northern Kingdom of Israel. The story begins in the home of Naaman, a highly respected general and war hero in the army of Israel’s arch enemy, Syria (also known as Aram). Yet mighty and powerful as he is, Naaman cannot protect himself from disease, specifically leprosy. It should be noted that the biblical word for leprosy covered a multitude of skin diseases, not all of which were lethal or contagious. Nonetheless, they were treated as such in Israel and probably also in Syria. So the mighty Naaman is brought down not by the sword of his enemies but by a disease that likely renders him a social outcast.

It seems that something got lost in translation between the Israelite slave girl who spoke of Israel’s amazing prophet to Naaman’s wife; Naaman’s wife who then relayed this information to Naaman; Naaman’s request to his master the King of Syria for a letter of introduction to Israel’s king and the letter from Syria’s King to the King of Israel. Reading the letter from Syria, the King of Israel believes that he himself is being asked to heal Naaman’s leprosy. He knows, of course, that miracles are far above his pay grade and assumes that Syria is seeking a pretext for aggression. This whole misunderstanding nearly precipitates an international crisis. It strikes me that all of this could have been avoided if only Naaman had spoken to the slave girl himself and gotten his facts straight, but it does not appear that he did. Perhaps he felt that it was beneath the dignity of an officer and national hero to speak with “the help.”

Fortunately, Elisha hears of the looming threat of war and intercedes. He instructs the King of Israel to send Naaman to him. No doubt relieved, the King does just that. Now if Naaman was expecting a hero’s welcome, he was to be sorely disappointed. Elsha does not even come out to meet him. He sends his servant to deliver the instructions for healing: “Go and wash seven times in the Jordan.” This insult is too much for Naaman to bear. What sort of prophet sends a servant to greet a decorated war hero? What possible good can it possibly do to wallow in the muddy waters of the Jordan River? Naaman leaves in a huff, but once again, the slaves save the day. They point out to their master that nothing is to be lost in heeding the prophet’s words. Certainly, if the prophet had demanded some exorbitant fee he would gladly have paid it to be rid of his leprosy. How much more when the price is only a bath! Their sound reasoning prevails. Naaman bathes in the Jordan seven times as instructed and his skin is as healthy and fresh as a child’s. Naaman returns to Elisha with thanksgiving and declares: “Behold, I know that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel.” II Kings 5:15.

Naaman has learned a few things about this God of Israel. First, God heals the whole person. Naaman would have preferred to receive his healing without any further contact with the God of Israel. But the prophet makes clear to him that miracles are not magic. God acts through the dynamic of his word that engages the hearer, calling him or her into relationship with God’s self. Healing comes through faith active in obedience to that word. Second, Naaman learns that God’s wisdom and healing is not necessarily imparted through Kings and court prophets. Throughout this story God has used slaves to educate the mighty Naaman. One has to wonder whether that will make a difference in the way Naaman relates to his Israelite slave girl upon his return. Finally, Naaman learns humility. Bathing in the muddy Jordan, like conversing with servants, constituted a large piece of humble pie for a man accustomed to having his bathwater drawn from the pristine waters of Syria by slaves. Indeed, depending upon the time of year this story took place, Naaman might have been required to stoop or perhaps even lie down on the mucky river bottom to immerse himself. Yet that was precisely what he needed to cure the sickness he didn’t even know that he had: arrogance. If you read on in the story you will learn that Naaman specifically requested a load of dirt to take home from the land of Israel to remind him of the God he had learned to worship. Now he is only too glad for the muck he once spurned!

Psalm 111

As was the case for last week’s psalm, this psalm is an acrostic poem, meaning that each strophe begins with a new letter of the Hebrew alphabet in sequential order. It is possible that this psalm is related to Psalm 112, also an acrostic poem. Whereas the theme of Psalm 111 is the goodness and faithfulness of the Lord, Psalm 112speaks of the blessedness of the person who fears and trusts in the Lord. Given the acrostic form, most scholars date this psalm on the later side, after the Babylonian Exile.

The psalm makes clear that the greatness of God is made known in God’s works. Though the Exodus, wilderness wanderings, conquest of Canaan and the return from exile are not specifically referenced, they were doubtlessly in the mind of the psalmist as s/he proclaimed the redemption of God’s people. Vs. 9. The giving of the law appears to be the paramount act of salvation in the psalmist’s mind. The statutes of the Lord are “trustworthy…established forever and ever. Vs. 8. It was, after all, the Torah that preserved Israel’s identity throughout the long years of Babylonian captivity and kept alive the hope that finally inspired her return and the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the temple.

The most memorable and familiar verse is the final one: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Vs. 10. Fear of God is a distasteful notion to us moderns who prefer a deity similar to a white, upper middle class, slightly left of center dad of the Ward Clever variety. But the Bible testifies to a God who is sometimes scary and not always very nice (though the lectionary folks do their best to shave off his rough edges with their incessant editing). Fear is usually the first emotion biblical characters express when face to face with God or one of God’s angelic messengers. So anyone who has no apprehension about encountering God is probably downright foolhardy.

Frankly, I think that if we feared God more, we might fear a lot of other things less. Worshipers of Israel’s God should know that instead of fretting over what the deficit will do to us if we commit ourselves to providing everyone with sufficient housing, food and medical care, we ought to be concerned about what God might do to us if we don’t. If the good people on Capital Hill believed that on the last day God will confront all nations and peoples through the eyes of everyone they could have clothed, fed, befriended and cared for, I think the current standoff would end in a New York minute. The fact that most of these folks self identify as Christians shows just how poor a job their churches have done by failing to teach them that what they do and the decisions they make matter-eternally so.

2 Timothy 2:8–15

For my views on authorship of this and the other two pastoral epistles (I Timothy and Titus), see my post on the lessons from Sunday, September, 11th.

The Apostle has been encouraging Timothy “to be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus,” employing the images of a soldier serving his superiors faithfully and that of an athlete competing for a prize. II Timothy 2:1-7. Now he urges him to focus on the good news of Jesus and to “avoid disputing about words.” Vs. 14. In support of his encouragement, Paul cites a “sure saying” in verses 12-13 that might well be part of an early Christian hymn or creedal statement. The lack of parallelism in verses 12 and 13 is puzzling. In the prior verse, we are warned that if we deny Christ, he will deny us. Then in 13 we are told that if we are faithless, Christ nevertheless remains faithful. Though poetically inept, the sense is nevertheless coherent. Our denial of Christ before the watching world leaves Christ little choice but to deny us publicly as well. Nevertheless, even though our faithless conduct results in destroying our witness to Jesus and Jesus’ opportunity to support us in that witness, such faithlessness does extinguish Christ’s faithfulness to us. God remains true to God’s promises even when we are less than faithful to promises we have made to God. As Paul points out in Romans, “the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable.” Romans 11:29.

Again, we get a sense of Paul’s concern that the gospel he has spent his life proclaiming be rightly understood and preserved for the next generation. He knows, of course, that it is not enough merely to transmit verbatim his own preaching. The word of truth must be “rightly handl[ed]” vs. 15. Timothy will confront new challenges that are impossible for his mentor to anticipate and so provide advice. He must therefore rely upon Timothy to speak the gospel in fresh and compelling ways that nevertheless preserve its integrity. As argued in last week’s post, this is a challenge for the church in every generation.

Luke 17:11–19

The thankful leper in our gospel lesson suffers from a double whammy. Not only is he a leper, but he is also a hated Samaritan. By the way, just who are the Samaritans? Where did they come from? Why were they so hated by the Jews? Those are all good questions. Let’s see if we can parse out some answers.

Recall that the Northern Kingdom of Israel was invaded and destroyed by the Assyrians in 722 B.C.E., more than a century before Judah fell to the Babylonians. Though many Israelites were displaced as a result, a substantial number remained in the land. Recall also that at the time of the Babylonian destruction of Judah and the fall of Jerusalem in 587 B.C.E., only the upper classes in Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem were carried away into exile. Thus, many and perhaps most of the people constituting the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah remained in Palestine and continued to worship there. Among them was an ethnic group claiming descent from the Northern Israelite tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh as well as from the priestly tribe of Levi. These folks claimed to be a remnant of the Northern Kingdom which had its capital in Samaria (hence, the name “Samaritan”). They had their own temple on Mount Gerizim. This mountain is sacred to the Samaritans who regard it, rather than Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, as the location chosen by God for a holy temple. When some of the exiles from Judah (now properly called “Jews”) returned from Babylon to Palestine in order to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple, they met with hostility and resistance from the Samaritans and other inhabitants of the land. Both Jews and Samaritans regarded themselves exclusively as the one true Israel. The depth of Jewish animosity toward Samaritans is reflected in at least one daily prayer used in some synagogues pleading for God to ensure that Samaritans not enter into eternal life. Ellis, E. Earle, The Gospel of Luke, The New Century Bible Commentary, (c. 1974 Marshall, Morgan & Scott) p. 151 citing Oesterley, W.O.E., The Gospel Parallels in the Light of their Jewish Background, New York, 1936, p. 162. Of course, the Samaritans were equally ill disposed toward Jews. As we have seen, Jesus’ decision to visit Jerusalem previously alienated him from the Samaritan population. Luke 9:51-56. Consequently, this Samaritan’s willingness to approach Jesus was already an act of faith.

Jesus commanded the ten lepers seeking his aid to “show themselves to the priest” who alone had the authority to declare them clean. Vs. 14. Upon receiving this declaration, they would presumably have presented the appropriate offering for their healing. Leviticus 14:1-20. The Samaritan, however, had no priest to whom he could go, unless we assume that he was headed for the Samaritan place of worship at Mt. Gerizim. It is unlikely that a priest of the Jewish temple establishment would have examined a Samaritan, much less declared him clean. Thus, once cleansed, he had nowhere to go in order to give thanks but to Jesus. That was also true for the nine presumably Jewish lepers, but they failed to recognize the one to whom thanks was due.

This text is used routinely at Thanksgiving worship to emphasize the need to give thanks; however, there is no indication that the nine lepers were unthankful. They may well have made an offering of thanksgiving at the Temple in Jerusalem. Their failure was thus not a lack of thankfulness, but a lack of perception. They were going to the wrong place to give thanks.

There is an obvious parallel between this text and our lesson from II Kings. Like the Samaritan, Naaman was both a leper and a foreigner hostile to Israel. Both men experienced the salvation of Israel’s God and became worshipers. Thus, God’s call and salvation extend beyond Israel to all peoples. Jesus made this very same point in his sermon at the synagogue of Nazareth in the initial chapters of Luke’s gospel. See Luke 4:16-30. This story therefore prefigures the mission to the gentiles Luke will take up more fully in the Book of Acts.

Sunday, October 2nd

September 26, 2016UncategorizedBabylonian Exile, Baptism, Bible, Church, Covenant, discipleship, faith, gospel, gun violence, Habakkuk, Holy Spirit, idolatry, justice, Lectionary, Luke, peace, Psalms, Religion, Saint Paul, Shaker, Sunday Lessons, theology, violence, warrevolsen

Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost

Habakkuk 1:1–4; 2:1–4
Psalm 37:1–9
2 Timothy 1:1–14
Luke 17:5–10

Prayer of the Day: Benevolent, merciful God: When we are empty, fill us. When we are weak in faith, strengthen us. When we are cold in love, warm us, that with fervor we may love our neighbors and serve them for the sake of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

I spent Saturday of last week touring the site of the historic Shaker Village in Hancock, Massachusetts. The settlement disbanded in 1960 and sold its property to the Shaker Village Museum, a company formed for the purpose of maintaining the site and educating the public about the Shaker’s traditions, crafts and musical/artistic contributions. At this point, the compound consists of a few remaining and several reconstructed buildings that once housed one of the most fascinating Christian movements ever to take root on American soil.

The Shaker movement began in Manchester, England in the mid 18^th Century under the name, United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Coming. It was a break off from the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) led by Ann Lee, in whose person, teachings and example the Shakers believed Christ’s second coming had been realized. She was called “Mother Ann Lee” by her followers. The term “Shaker” was originally a derisive label given to the group by outsiders who observed the trembling, shaking and whirling of their esthetic dancing in worship. Like other religious minorities in England, the Shakers experienced ridicule, suspicion and persecution.

In 1774, Mother Ann Lee led eight Shaker converts to resettle in America in hopes of building a community based on their religious tenets. Shakers practiced strict communalism, sharing all property for the common good. They believed in and practiced racial and gender equality. Like the Quakers, Mennonites and Amish, Shakers were pacifists. Unlike these groups, however, the Shakers practiced strict celibacy-even between spouses. Contemporary folks harboring shallow, vacuous and simplistic 21^st Century progressive Protestant prejudices are likely to dismiss this last aspect of Shaker belief as “body hatred,” “repression” or some form of sexism. But in a world where women were often treated as little better than male possessions and sexuality was routinely expressed through relationships of male domination, the practice of celibacy was part and parcel of the Shaker’s commitment to radical gender equality. They were dedicated to creating a “Heaven on Earth” in the midst of a violent, oppressive and corrupt world and that meant a community in which “there is neither male nor female.” Galatians 3:28. The total Shaker population peaked in the mid-19th century at which point there were an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 Shakers living in nineteen communities throughout the United States. Today there is only one Shaker community of three believers located at Sabbathday Lake in Maine.

Though all but extinct as a current movement, the Shakers’ historical witness continues to challenge the existing social, religious, and economic orders within our nation. The present electoral contest has exposed once again the ugly underbelly of racism, sexism and xenophobia that seem in every age to rise up and threaten the ideals on which our republic was founded. Thus, the Shaker witness is as timely now as ever. The alternative culture created and lived by the Shakers testifies to the reality of God’s kingdom and speaks a stubborn “no” to the normative role of hierarchy, coercion and violence in the rest of society. The Shakers also made important contributions to American culture in the areas of art, design, science, architecture, craftsmanship, business, music, education, government, medicine, agriculture, and commerce. As I viewed the carefully crafted furniture, innovative machinery and ingeniously designed buildings made by this now defunct community, I could not help but be impressed with the creative power, energy and devotion evident in the remains of the compound. This was clearly a people for whom the presence of Jesus Christ was a reality greater than all of the social, political and historical currents sweeping the rest of America into its destiny.

Of course, the Shaker movement was not able to perpetuate itself much beyond the first generation. The white hot devotion of its founders did not translate into practices capable of nurturing and sustaining the community indefinitely. Historians cite numerous reasons for the demise of the Shaker movement such as the rule of celibacy and the flood of cheap furniture injected into the market as a result of the industrial revolution. I don’t find either of these arguments persuasive. While the practice of absolute celibacy clearly didn’t help the Shaker’s evangelistic efforts, I don’t believe it was principally responsible for the group’s ultimate demise. After all, quite a number of monastic orders have been around for over a millennium and are still going strong. Contrary to our modernistic assumptions, it’s quite possible to live well and happily without sex. I also doubt that the industrial revolution had much to do with it. While it is likely that the abundance of less expansive, mass produced goods made it difficult for the Shaker communities to sustain themselves through selling their hand made products, I have no doubt that a community capable of thriving under political oppression and violent persecution could have discovered any number of ways to overcome a mere economic setback. More likely than not, the movement was undone by a gradual loss of faith in its core convictions. The difficulties of living in community and the lure of the outside world become problematic only when the community in question begins to doubt the basis of its existence and loses the certainty of belief in its founding vision. Only then does community life become oppressive and the commitments that hold it together begin to appear burdensome, senseless and limiting.

The history of the Shaker movement is of more than academic interest to me. As a lifelong member of a denomination that often appears to be going the way of the Shakers, I find myself wondering whether the glue that holds my church together is strong enough to carry us into the next generation. What is that glue anyway? Some critics argue that it is simply cultural traditions imported from northern Europe, in my case, from Norway. As our connection to our cultural roots fades, so does the church. That is partly true. Being a fourth generation American of Norwegian stock, I don’t consider myself any more Norwegian than Mandarin. Still, I know the “feel” of Norwegian Lutheran piety. When I was in my 20s, you could still find a disproportionate number of heavy Scandinavian sweaters in our congregations on any given cool, autumn Sunday. There were Ole and Lena jokes and those sugar cookies, names of which I never could pronounce. Nevertheless, there was also in, with and under that cultural packaging a particular piety, a set of practices and a language articulating a unique faith vision.

Of course, faith in Jesus Christ is no more tied to Norwegian cookies than to Shaker chairs. But if the miracle of the Incarnation teaches us anything, it is that faith in Jesus is never a disembodied principle. It cannot be abstracted from the body of believers which it animates. Without Israel and without the church, the Bible would be little more than an historical curiosity like the Egyptian Book of the Dead. It would be of interest to archeologists and historians of religion, but of no practical importance to the rest of us. Inevitably, the Body of Christ is incarnate in some culture and clothed in some cultural tradition. So the question is, how do you throw out the bathwater without losing the baby? Anybody who has ever bathed one knows that a wet baby is a slippery little eel!

It seems that St. Paul shares my concerns. I sense in his words from II Timothy some anxiety for the future of faith. Later on in that letter Paul warns Timothy to beware of a future in which people will “hold[…] the form of religion but deny[…] the power of it.” II Timothy 3:5. It is all well and good that Timothy has been instructed in the faith by his mother and grandmother. But Paul knows that this young pastor cannot possibly drive his ministry on the fumes of the prior generations’ zeal. So he urges Timothy to “rekindle the gift of God” within him. II Timothy 1:6. He admonishes him to “follow the pattern of the sound words which you have heard from me, in faith and love which are in Jesus Christ.” II Timothy 1:13. Timothy needs nothing less than the same immediacy of Jesus’ presence as Paul and the rest of the apostles knew. Without that living vine growing into each succeeding generation, the branches are dead.

So how are we to “rekindle the gift of God” within us? What would such a rekindling look like? Some religious traditions would call what Paul describes here as “re-commitment,” Others would call it “revival.” Still others refer to it as “baptism in the Holy Spirit.” One thing is certain: we cannot rekindle faith by trying to preserve or re-create the cultural/religious traditions of the past any more than building a Shaker museum can revive that once vibrant movement. Our hope lies rather in trusting the Holy Spirit to lead the church, believing that the Spirit is given to us freely and that the Spirit will “rekindle” our faith through the means of grace. Our hope is expressed in passing the baton of ministry on to a new generation of believers. Our hope is grounded in Jesus’ promise to be with his church until the end of the age. For that reason, I am confident that there always will be a church. I don’t know exactly what it will look like one hundred years after I am dead and gone. I am not sure that any congregation in it will bear the name Lutheran or that I would recognize any of the hymns it will be singing. Nonetheless, I am confident that it will be exactly the church God needs. That is all I need to know.

Here are two poems by Shaker Phoebe Ann Buckingham reflecting on the passage of time, loyalty to the faith community and a longing to grow in holiness.

January 1, 1837

I am determined to be more faithful
In this year which is now begun.
That I may gain a heavenly treasure
Which will fit me for the world to come.

January 1, 1867

Behold the New Year now has come
O may it prove a prosperous one.
May everyone that now is here
Remain to greet another year.
How many changes time does bring.
Some painful and some happy things.
Within the year that now is past
Many to us have breathed their last.
Some to a happier land have fled
Others in thorns have made their bed,
Left home and friends and all for what—
The lowest pleasures the earth has got.

Source: Website for the Shaker Heritage Society of Albany, New York. Phoebe Ann Buckingham was a member of the Watervleit Shaker Community. Like many Shakers, she kept a diary in which she wrote a number of short poems.

Habakkuk 1:1–4; 2:1–4

The prophet Habakkuk lived and preached during the Babylonian period of domination over the Southern Kingdom of Judah. We know very little about him. Though a prophet by the name of Habakkuk appears in the apocryphal book of Bel and the Dragon, it is unlikely that there is any historical or even literary connection. Moreover, the prophet’s work appears to be a compilation of materials from different periods in Israel’s history, but which share a common theme. Thus, the prophet might be more an “editorial artist” than an original preacher.

Though the notes in my study Bible identify Habakkuk’s theme as “theodicy,” or “justifying the ways of God,” I don’t believe that is really the prophet’s concern here. This is not a dissertation on “the problem of human suffering.” It is, as I said before, a passionate plea from a person of faith calling upon his God to honor the covenant promises made to Israel. The common lectionary has again done a fine hack job on this text, omitting the sections that help us place the words of Habakkuk in context. In verses 5-11 we read of how the prophet attributes to God the raising up of the “Chaldeans,” another term for the Babylonians.

Look at the nations, and see!
Be astonished! Be astounded!
For a work is being done in your days
that you would not believe if you were told.

For I am rousing the Chaldeans,
that fierce and impetuous nation,
who march through the breadth of the earth
to seize dwellings not their own.

Dread and fearsome are they;
their justice and dignity proceed from themselves.

Their horses are swifter than leopards,
more menacing than wolves at dusk;
their horses charge.
Their horsemen come from far away;
they fly like an eagle swift to devour.

They all come for violence,
with faces pressing^* forward;
they gather captives like sand.

At kings they scoff,
and of rulers they make sport.
They laugh at every fortress,
and heap up earth to take it.

Then they sweep by like the wind;
they transgress and become guilty;
their own might is their god!

Habakkuk 1:5-11. After describing the violence, cruelty and injustice of the Babylonian invaders, Habakkuk appeals to the Lord:

Are you not from of old,
O Lord my God, my Holy One?
You shall not die.
O Lord, you have marked them for judgement;
and you, O Rock, have established them for punishment.

Your eyes are too pure to behold evil,
and you cannot look on wrongdoing;
why do you look on the treacherous,
and are silent when the wicked swallow
those more righteous than they?

You have made people like the fish of the sea,
like crawling things that have no ruler.

Habakkuk 1:12-14.

God’s answer finally comes in the second chapter. “Look at the proud! Their spirit is not right in them, but the righteous live by their faith.” Habakkuk 2:4. Contrary to Habakkuk’s hopes, this time of trouble, violence and injustice is to continue for an indefinite though surely finite period. Until relief in the form of God’s salvation comes-and it will come-the just must live by faith. That is, they must continue to live justly in an unjust world whether their justice and righteousness bear fruit or not. Faithfulness, not tangible success, is required.

This is a hard word for our culture which is used to seeing conflicts resolved within the space of an hour, less the commercials. But life is not like TV. It plods from one unresolved conflict to the next. Most likely, we will not see the fulfillment of all our hopes within our lifetimes. We will likely die without ever seeing the fruits of our acts of mercy and kindness. But that does not matter. “For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay.” Habakkuk 2:3.

Psalm 37:1–9

This psalm is one of the acrostic psalms, meaning that the first word of the first strophe begins with the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet. The first word of the second strophe begins with the second letter and so on through the alphabet. In addition to assisting a new reader in learning her ABCs, this style of composition assists in memorization of the psalm. Memorization is critical in a culture where the vast majority lack reading skills and books are readily available only to priests.

The psalm reads more like a collection of wisdom proverbs, such as found in the Book of Proverbs, than a hymn or a prayer. The unifying theme is trust in God and in God’s providential rule. Throughout the psalm we find assurances that God ultimately rewards faithful behavior and punishes wickedness though, as Habakkuk also had to learn, such justice is not always executed as swiftly and clearly as we might hope. So the psalmist warns his hearers: “Do not fret because of the wicked; do not be envious of wrongdoers…” Psalm 37:1. Given the style and content of the psalm, most scholars date its composition as having taken place relatively later in Israel’s history, probably after the Babylonian Exile.

This psalm calls for patience in the face of wrongdoing and confidence in God to accomplish justice. The psalmist warns against “stewing” over the seeming success of the wicked and becoming cynical about life. Rather than obsessing over whether the wicked are properly punished, the righteous person should focus upon his own conduct, committing his way to the Lord. Vs. 5. The righteous person need not take matters of justice into his or her own hands. God, who sees all hearts and knows all circumstances, is in a much better position to determine what is actually just and how justice should be carried out.

Of course, this confidence in divine justice is easier to maintain in times of relative peace and stability where a semblance of justice has a chance of prevailing. Habakkuk, who lived in the shadow of war and societal breakdown, found it far more difficult to take the confident view expressed by the psalmist. Once again, we do well to remember that wisdom sayings such as those found in the psalm offer us a porthole view into reality which may well be true and insightful as far as it goes. Still, a porthole’s view is limited and there are other portholes through which the world must be examined if we are to arrive at a balanced understanding. Wisdom literature invites us to glimpse the world through as many portholes as possible.

2 Timothy 1:1–14

For my views on authorship of this and the other two pastoral epistles (I Timothy and Titus), see my post of Sunday, September 11^th.

This second letter addressed to Timothy from the Apostle Paul, now imprisoned at Rome, is an admonition for Timothy to stand firm against a number of false teachings that have crept into the church. The primary purpose of the letter, however, appears to be that of summoning Timothy to come and assist Paul in his imprisonment. II Timothy 4:9-13. At first blush, it appears that Timothy was a third generation Christian whose grandmother and mother were also believers. It is just as likely, though, that both mother and grandmother were converted at the same time through missionaries at Lystra. Perhaps Timothy was also baptized at that time or shortly thereafter. In any case, the letter reflects a level of intimacy between the Apostle and his fellow worker.

There is a reference here to the “laying on of hands” conferring a “gift” which Timothy is encouraged to “rekindle.” Vs. 6. Is this a reference to ordination? Or is it an aspect of the baptismal rite? There is support for either proposition, but not enough evidence to make decisive assertions. Like the other pastorals, this letter affirms the good news of salvation through grace in Jesus Christ apart from works. Vs. 9.

Timothy is encouraged to guard the good treasure that has been entrusted to him. That good treasure is “the sound teaching” Timothy has received from Paul. Clearly, the Apostle is concerned that the gospel is in danger of distortion or loss. We can see here a challenge that will confront the church in every age: How to preserve the integrity of the good news from generation to generation while at the same time addressing it to the ever changing circumstances of the world for which it is sent. Obviously, there is a risk involved whenever we seek to make Jesus known to an ever changing cultural context. The temptation is to make Jesus attractive, appealing and likable. The consequence is a portrait of Jesus created in our own image and likeness, a Jesus that fits nicely into our societal routine, but never gets in the way, never challenges us or calls us to repentance. In short, we run the risk of idolatry.

But there is also danger in trying to preserve the proclamation of Jesus by enshrining him in unbending theological orthodoxy or “timeless” liturgical practices. Sometimes heresy takes the form of correct expressions of the truth that have been held onto for too long. The words may not change, but their meanings do. The language of our faith can easily get hijacked, twisted around and used to express all manner of false and misleading notions if we are not vigilant about reexamining and reinterpreting it faithfully to each age. For example, scholars have noted that the word “faith” as used in this letter to Timothy often refers to a body of teaching rather than simple trust in God’s promises as used by Paul in letters such as Romans and Galatians. Whether Paul in his later years saw the need to expand his working definition of the term “faith” to meet the needs and concerns of the church or whether a disciple of Paul writing in Paul’s name expanded on the term, the same point is illustrated. The church’s teaching must be as flexible as the culture to which it speaks while remaining faithfully anchored in the apostolic witness to Jesus.

Luke 17:5–10

The disciples got it half right. When you need faith, Jesus is where you go. Their problem is that they did not understand faith. They assumed that faith is like a muscle; something you are born with and need to develop. They were looking for a spiritual exercise regimen (or more likely a shot of faith enhancing steroids) to improve their inborn faith. But faith is not a virtue or a human quality with which we are born or can produce in ourselves. It is a gift. As such, it is never a matter of “more or less.” It is like being pregnant. You are or are not. The same is true for faith. You have it or you don’t. Furthermore, if you have it, that is only because the Holy Spirit has given birth to it and brought it to fruition in your heart. The disciples do not need more faith. They need faith, period.

Faith is no longer faith when it becomes a work, a condition we need to satisfy before God will accept us. The worst advice you can give someone plagued by doubt is to say, “Just have faith.” That is like telling a starving child in Somalia, “You really should eat more!” The good news about Jesus is not that our faith saves us, but that God’s faithfulness saves faithless people like us. When that word is proclaimed in its fullness, faith follows. Strange as it may seem, faith begins at just the point where we realize we don’t have it and cannot ever hope to generate it on our own.

The parable about the servants is simply the flip side of faith. Recognizing that faith is a gift and that whatever is done from faith is finally God’s own work removes all grounds for “boasting,” as Saint Paul would say. Romans 3:27-29. For Luke, faith is never merely conceptual. John the Baptist made clear in his preaching that repentance involved bread and butter compassion, such as sharing food and clothing with neighbors in need, dealing honestly and fairly in a culture of greed and exploitation. Luke 3:10-14. Discipleship described in Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain is the shape of faith. Yet precisely because faith is a gift, the “fruits” of repentance and the “works” of faith are not the works of the disciple. They are solely the works of the Holy Spirit and, as such, they do not earn the disciple any right to praise or recognition. The most that can ever be said of a disciple is that, through the work of the Holy Spirit, s/he has become what God the Father created him or her to be from the beginning.

This lesson is a needed corrective for a culture obsessed with self-esteem. Don’t misunderstand me. I am not suggesting that we ought to be self-haters or become obsessed with our unworthiness. I do believe, nonetheless, that there is just as great a danger in becoming overly obsessed with having our accomplishments valued and recognized. I wonder, when did it become mandatory that everyone be “special”? When did we decide that “average” is not good enough? When did we get this idea that we are supposed to “amount to something,” and that the something to which we must amount is necessarily a cut above everyone else: a high GPA, prestigious college, six figure salary, seven figure home and children who achieve even higher in these categories? When did it become necessary to celebrate graduation from middle school, grade school and even kindergarten? This need to succeed and, more than that, have our success recognized starts to smell a lot like the religion of salvation by good works against which Paul and Martin Luther preached. It is a secularized version of “works righteousness” focused on proving my self-worth to myself alone. Whether religious or secular, a life turned in upon itself leads just as surely to emptiness and despair.

Luke’s gospel would have us know that there is no reward in seeking self-esteem through recognition-whether it be through rigorous religious observance or social/financial success. God does not value either sort of achievement. Instead, God values trust in his promises, faithful obedience to his reign and love for the neighbor. These practices might not win you any recognition, but that does not matter. Disciples know that they are not entitled to recognition anyway. They discover instead the joy and freedom of living life without the need for recognition from any quarter.

Sunday, September 25th

September 19, 2016UncategorizedAmerican Dream, Babylonian Exile, Bible, Church, contentment, faith, gospel, Gospel of Luke, I Timothy, justice, Lectionary, Luke, poor, poverty, prayer, Psalms, Religion, resurrection, Saint Francis, Saint Paul, Sunday Lessons, temptation, theology, Walt Whitman, Wealthrevolsen

Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Amos 6:1a, 4–7
Psalm 146
1 Timothy 6:6–19
Luke 16:19–31

Prayer of the Day: O God, rich in mercy, you look with compassion on this troubled world. Feed us with your grace, and grant us the treasure that comes only from you, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“If we have food and clothing,” Saint Paul tells us, “we will be content with these.” I Timothy 6:8. That ought to be enough and it is enough for the ravens and for the grass of the fields. Hording is a peculiarly human behavior. Animals typically do not overeat, nor do they hunt other species to extinction. If they have any concept of tomorrow at all, it doesn’t figure into their behavior today. Animals seem to have a primal instinct leading them to be content when there is food at hand, water nearby and no predators on the horizon. Along with godliness, says Paul, such “contentment” is “great gain.” I Timothy 6:6.

There are people, though few in number, who find such contentment. Saint Paul was one of them. “I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need.” Philippians 4:11-12. Saint Francis of Assisi was another such person. He also rejoiced in living day-to-day, receiving charity shamelessly and thankfully when in want, but giving cheerfully and generously when blessed with abundance. So, too, there continue to be Anabaptist communities like the Amish, monastic fellowships and other intentional Christian groups that find contentment in living simply and gently on the land, rejecting the American creed of contentment through accumulation and consumption. These witnesses testify to the better life God is able to give us-if only we can empty our hands to receive it.

Here is a poem by Walt Whitman reflecting contentment.

Song of the Open Road
1
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.

The earth, that is sufficient,
I do not want the constellations any nearer,
I know they are very well where they are,
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.

(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,
I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go,
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,
I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return.)

2
You road I enter upon and look around, I believe you are not all that is here,
I believe that much unseen is also here.

Here the profound lesson of reception, nor preference nor denial,
The black with his woolly head, the felon, the diseas’d, the illiterate person, are not denied;
The birth, the hasting after the physician, the beggar’s tramp, the drunkard’s stagger, the laughing party of mechanics,
The escaped youth, the rich person’s carriage, the fop, the eloping couple,

The early market-man, the hearse, the moving of furniture into the town, the return back from the town,
They pass, I also pass, any thing passes, none can be interdicted,
None but are accepted, none but shall be dear to me.

3
You air that serves me with breath to speak!
You objects that call from diffusion my meanings and give them shape!
You light that wraps me and all things in delicate equable showers!
You paths worn in the irregular hollows by the roadsides!
I believe you are latent with unseen existences, you are so dear to me.

You flagg’d walks of the cities! you strong curbs at the edges!
You ferries! you planks and posts of wharves! you timber-lined sides! you distant ships!

You rows of houses! you window-pierc’d façades! you roofs!
You porches and entrances! you copings and iron guards!
You windows whose transparent shells might expose so much!
You doors and ascending steps! you arches!
You gray stones of interminable pavements! you trodden crossings!
From all that has touch’d you I believe you have imparted to yourselves, and now would impart the same secretly to me,
From the living and the dead you have peopled your impassive surfaces, and the spirits thereof would be evident and amicable with me.

4
The earth expanding right hand and left hand,
The picture alive, every part in its best light,
The music falling in where it is wanted, and stopping where it is not wanted,
The cheerful voice of the public road, the gay fresh sentiment of the road.

O highway I travel, do you say to me Do not leave me?
Do you say Venture not—if you leave me you are lost?
Do you say I am already prepared, I am well-beaten and undenied, adhere to me?

O public road, I say back I am not afraid to leave you, yet I love you,
You express me better than I can express myself,
You shall be more to me than my poem.

I think heroic deeds were all conceiv’d in the open air, and all free poems also,
I think I could stop here myself and do miracles,
I think whatever I shall meet on the road I shall like, and whoever beholds me shall like me,
I think whoever I see must be happy.

5
From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines,
Going where I list, my own master total and absolute,
Listening to others, considering well what they say,
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
Gently,but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.
I inhale great draughts of space,
The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine.

I am larger, better than I thought,
I did not know I held so much goodness.

All seems beautiful to me,
I can repeat over to men and women You have done such good to me I would do the same to you,
I will recruit for myself and you as I go,
I will scatter myself among men and women as I go,
I will toss a new gladness and roughness among them,
Whoever denies me it shall not trouble me,
Whoever accepts me he or she shall be blessed and shall bless me.

6
Now if a thousand perfect men were to appear it would not amaze me,
Now if a thousand beautiful forms of women appear’d it would not astonish me.

Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons,
It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.

Here a great personal deed has room,
(Such a deed seizes upon the hearts of the whole race of men,
Its effusion of strength and will overwhelms law and mocks all authority and all argument against it.)

Here is the test of wisdom,
Wisdom is not finally tested in schools,
Wisdom cannot be pass’d from one having it to another not having it,
Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof,
Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content,
Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the excellence of things;
Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes it out of the soul.

Now I re-examine philosophies and religions,
They may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet not prove at all under the spacious clouds and along the landscape and flowing currents.

Here is realization,
Here is a man tallied—he realizes here what he has in him,
The past, the future, majesty, love—if they are vacant of you, you are vacant of them.

Only the kernel of every object nourishes;
Where is he who tears off the husks for you and me?
Where is he that undoes stratagems and envelopes for you and me?

Here is adhesiveness, it is not previously fashion’d, it is apropos;
Do you know what it is as you pass to be loved by strangers?
Do you know the talk of those turning eye-balls?

7
Here is the efflux of the soul,
The efflux of the soul comes from within through embower’d gates, ever provoking questions,
These yearnings why are they? these thoughts in the darkness why are they?
Why are there men and women that while they are nigh me the sunlight expands my blood?
Why when they leave me do my pennants of joy sink flat and lank?
Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?
(I think they hang there winter and summer on those trees and always drop fruit as I pass;)
What is it I interchange so suddenly with strangers?
What with some driver as I ride on the seat by his side?
What with some fisherman drawing his seine by the shore as I walk by and pause?
What gives me to be free to a woman’s and man’s good-will? what gives them to be free to mine?

8
The efflux of the soul is happiness, here is happiness,
I think it pervades the open air, waiting at all times,
Now it flows unto us, we are rightly charged.

Here rises the fluid and attaching character,
The fluid and attaching character is the freshness and sweetness of man and woman,
(The herbs of the morning sprout no fresher and sweeter every day out of the roots of themselves, than it sprouts fresh and sweet continually out of itself.)

Toward the fluid and attaching character exudes the sweat of the love of young and old,
From it falls distill’d the charm that mocks beauty and attainments,
Toward it heaves the shuddering longing ache of contact.

9
Allons! whoever you are come travel with me!
Traveling with me you find what never tires.

The earth never tires,
The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first, Nature is rude and incomprehensible at first,
Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well envelop’d,
I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell.

Allons! we must not stop here,
However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this dwelling we cannot remain here,
However shelter’d this port and however calm these waters we must not anchor here,
However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us we are permitted to receive it but a little while.

10
Allons! the inducements shall be greater,
We will sail pathless and wild seas,
We will go where winds blow, waves dash, and the Yankee clipper speeds by under full sail.

Allons! with power, liberty, the earth, the elements,
Health, defiance, gayety, self-esteem, curiosity;
Allons! from all formules!
From your formules, O bat-eyed and materialistic priests.

The stale cadaver blocks up the passage—the burial waits no longer.

Allons! yet take warning!
He traveling with me needs the best blood, thews, endurance,
None may come to the trial till he or she bring courage and health,
Come not here if you have already spent the best of yourself,
Only those may come who come in sweet and determin’d bodies,
No diseas’d person, no rum-drinker or venereal taint is permitted here.

(I and mine do not convince by arguments, similes, rhymes,
We convince by our presence.)

11
Listen! I will be honest with you,
I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes,
These are the days that must happen to you:
You shall not heap up what is call’d riches,
You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve,
You but arrive at the city to which you were destin’d, you hardly settle yourself to satisfaction before you are call’d by an irresistible call to depart,
You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those who remain behind you,
What beckonings of love you receive you shall only answer with passionate kisses of parting,
You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reach’d hands toward you.

12
Allons! after the great Companions, and to belong to them!
They too are on the road—they are the swift and majestic men—they are the greatest women,
Enjoyers of calms of seas and storms of seas,
Sailors of many a ship, walkers of many a mile of land,
Habituès of many distant countries, habituès of far-distant dwellings,
Trusters of men and women, observers of cities, solitary toilers,
Pausers and contemplators of tufts, blossoms, shells of the shore,
Dancers at wedding-dances, kissers of brides, tender helpers of children, bearers of children,
Soldiers of revolts, standers by gaping graves, lowerers-down of coffins,
Journeyers over consecutive seasons, over the years, the curious years each emerging from that which preceded it,
Journeyers as with companions, namely their own diverse phases,
Forth-steppers from the latent unrealized baby-days,
Journeyers gayly with their own youth, journeyers with their bearded and well-grain’d manhood,
Journeyers with their womanhood, ample, unsurpass’d, content,
Journeyers with their own sublime old age of manhood or womanhood,
Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe,
Old age, flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.

13
Allons! to that which is endless as it was beginningless,
To undergo much, tramps of days, rests of nights,
To merge all in the travel they tend to, and the days and nights they tend to,
Again to merge them in the start of superior journeys,
To see nothing anywhere but what you may reach it and pass it,
To conceive no time, however distant, but what you may reach it and pass it,
To look up or down no road but it stretches and waits for you, however long but it stretches and waits for you,
To see no being, not God’s or any, but you also go thither,
To see no possession but you may possess it, enjoying all without labor or purchase, abstracting the feast yet not abstracting one particle of it,
To take the best of the farmer’s farm and the rich man’s elegant villa, and the chaste blessings of the well-married couple, and the fruits of orchards and flowers of gardens,
To take to your use out of the compact cities as you pass through,
To carry buildings and streets with you afterward wherever you go,
To gather the minds of men out of their brains as you encounter them, to gather the love out of their hearts,
To take your lovers on the road with you, for all that you leave them behind you,
To know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as roads for traveling souls.

All parts away for the progress of souls,
All religion, all solid things, arts, governments—all that was or is apparent upon this globe or any globe, falls into niches and corners before the procession of souls along the grand roads of the universe.

Of the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand roads of the universe, all other progress is the needed emblem and sustenance.

Forever alive, forever forward,
Stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled, mad, turbulent, feeble, dissatisfied,
Desperate, proud, fond, sick, accepted by men, rejected by men,
They go! they go! I know that they go, but I know not where they go,
But I know that they go toward the best—toward something great.

Whoever you are, come forth! or man or woman come forth!
You must not stay sleeping and dallying there in the house, though you built it, or though it has been built for you.

Out of the dark confinement! out from behind the screen!
It is useless to protest, I know all and expose it.

Behold through you as bad as the rest,
Through the laughter, dancing, dining, supping, of people,
Inside of dresses and ornaments, inside of those wash’d and trimm’d faces,
Behold a secret silent loathing and despair.

No husband, no wife, no friend, trusted to hear the confession,
Another self, a duplicate of every one, skulking and hiding it goes,
Formless and wordless through the streets of the cities, polite and bland in the parlors,
In the cars of railroads, in steamboats, in the public assembly,
Home to the houses of men and women, at the table, in the bedroom, everywhere,
Smartly attired, countenance smiling, form upright, death under the breast-bones, hell under the skull-bones,
Under the broadcloth and gloves, under the ribbons and artificial flowers,
Keeping fair with the customs, speaking not a syllable of itself,
Speaking of any thing else but never of itself.

14
Allons! through struggles and wars!
The goal that was named cannot be countermanded.

Have the past struggles succeeded?
What has succeeded? yourself? your nation? Nature?
Now understand me well—it is provided in the essence of things that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary.

My call is the call of battle, I nourish active rebellion,
He going with me must go well arm’d,
He going with me goes often with spare diet, poverty, angry enemies, desertions.

15
Allons! the road is before us!
It is safe—I have tried it—my own feet have tried it well—be not detain’d!

Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the shelf unopen’d!
Let the tools remain in the workshop! let the money remain unearn’d!
Let the school stand! mind not the cry of the teacher!
Let the preacher preach in his pulpit! let the lawyer plead in the court, and the judge expound the law.

Camerado, I give you my hand!
I give you my love more precious than money,
I give you myself before preaching or law;
Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

Source: Complete Poetry and Selected Prose by Walt Whitman, (c. 1959 by Miller, James E., Jr., pub. by Houghton Mifflin Company). No poet captures the essence of what is genuinely American quite as comprehensively as Walt Whitman. Born 1819 in Huntington, Long Island, Whitman worked alternately as a journalist, government clerk and as a volunteer nurse during the American Civil War. He traveled widely throughout the United States giving expression to his zeal for democracy, nature, love and friendship. Though admired by such contemporaries as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Algernon Charles Swinburne, it was not until after his death in 1892 that he received wide acclaim in the United States. You can read more about Walt Whitman and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.

Amos 6:1a, 4–7

For some background on Amos the prophet, see my post for Sunday, September 18th. Amos is continuing his criticism of Israel’s commercial class here. Once again, I cannot understand why the common lectionary omits verses 2-3 of chapter 6. In them Amos invites his listeners to take a field trip to three cities, Calneh, Hamath and Gath. The location of Calneh is uncertain. Hamath was at the northernmost border of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. It was under the control of Israel’s King Jeroboam II in Amos’ time, but it appears to have been subject to attack and conquest throughout the lengthy struggle between Israel and its arch enemy, Syria. We know that Gath was destroyed by Hazael, King of Syria a century before Amos in about 850 B.C.E. The point here seems to be that God knows how to punish nations for their wickedness. What happened to these cities can as easily happen to Israel. Indeed, the fact that Israel has been chosen as God’s covenant partner makes her subject to a higher standard of righteousness. Consequently, God’s judgment is all the more likely for Israel and will be all the more severe.

The prophet is unsparing in his criticism of Israel’s ruling class for its decadence, opulence and callous disregard for the wellbeing of the people of Israel. Interestingly, Zion is also mentioned here, unusual since the audience is from the Northern Kingdom of Israel rather than the Southern Kingdom of Judah whose capital is Jerusalem (Zion). Amos 6:1. Some scholars suggest that this might be the work of a subsequent editor seeking to make the prophet’s oracle relevant to Judah at a later time. Though possible, it is more likely that Amos himself included his homeland within the sweep of God’s judgment just as he did in chapter 2. Amos 2:4-5. The complete and unfeeling exploitation of the poor by the commercial class in Israel is sure to bring down God’s judgment. Amos warns that these “first” among the people of Israel will be the “first” to go into exile. Amos 6:7.

Psalm 146

This is a psalm of praise celebrating the sovereignty of Israel’s God. Like the remaining psalms in the Psalter (Psalm 147-Psalm 150) the hymn begins and ends with the exclamation, “hallelujah” which is Hebrew for “Praise Yahweh!” More than likely, this psalm comes rather late in Israel’s history. There is no mention of the line of David or any hint of the monarchy in Israel. After a half millennia of disappointing kings whose leadership ultimately led to the destruction of Solomon’s temple, the siege of Jerusalem and the loss of the promised land, Israel was in no mood to put her trust in yet another royal figure:

Do not put your trust in princes,
in mortals, in whom there is no help.
⁴ When their breath departs, they return to the earth;
on that very day their plans perish.

Vss. 3-4. Instead, Israel is encouraged to put her trust in God. God is the one ruler who “sets the prisoners free.” Only “the Lord opens the eyes of the blind…lifts up those who are bowed down…” and “loves the righteous.”vss.7-9. The only king worthy of our trust is the God of Israel.

The psalm concludes with the bold affirmation that the Lord will reign forever. The implication is that God has been reigning throughout history in spite of some severe setbacks for Israel and despite her precarious existence under foreign domination and occupation. This confidence is rooted in Israel’s past experience of God’s salvation for the poor and downtrodden in the Exodus, wilderness wanderings and the conquest of the land of Canaan. The return from Exile might also be in view here. But it must also be said that Israel’s faith is future oriented. There is reflected here a hope, expectation and longing for the “Day of the Lord” when perfect justice and righteousness will be established.

1 Timothy 6:6–19

My son-in-law refers to the lottery as “a tax on stupidity.” He is right. Who would buy stock in a company if the odds against growth were one in 175 million and the odds in favor of losing your principal investment were the same? You might just as well throw your money over the bridge. You would have to be insane to make such an investment, but millions of people do just that every time they purchase a lottery ticket. Most of us know this. So why are lottery tickets such hot items?

A lottery ticket is, as the advertisements correctly call it, “a ticket to a dream.” Somebody has to win. Why not me? And if by chance I won-just imagine! I have to confess that I have often been tempted to purchase a ticket in spite of my understanding of the odds against me. Winning would certainly seem to solve a lot of my problems. Naturally, I have friends and family under financial burdens whom I would be in a position to help (and I expect I would discover family I never knew I had!). And, Oh yes! The church: how could I forget? Beyond the loss of a dollar or two, is there any downside in buying this ticket to a dream?

I think Paul nails it when he tells us flat out: “those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.” I Timothy 6:9. Why are we so eager to be rich? In my own case, the chief draw is autonomy. If I were independently wealthy, I would not be answerable to anyone. Nobody could tell me when I need to be at work. I would not be dependent upon any bank or mortgage company. I could live my life on my own terms. But wasn’t that precisely why Adam and Eve found the fruit on the tree of knowledge so very attractive? The serpent promised them that the fruit would make them “like God” and enable them to choose for themselves what is good; to live their lives on their own terms.

I have a feeling that the serpent is lurking very near the convenience stores where lottery tickets are sold whispering his same old lies. And they are lies. Truth is, money does not make me autonomous anymore than princes can offer me salvation. What money can do is make me forget how rich I really am. Yes, I am rich precisely because I am surrounded by loving people upon whom I can depend. My family is such a close and loving one because we have always had to depend upon each other and have therefore learned to care so deeply for each other. I am rich because I have received through the testimony of two millennia of saints a faith in a God whose love for me braved even the cross. Because life has taught me again and again that I am not autonomous, I have learned dependence upon and trust in this God who has never failed me. I have learned that true security comes from belonging to a community of mutually caring people living together as a single body-the Body of Christ. Giving up all of that is the true cost of a lottery ticket. Investing in one is therefore even more stupid than the math suggests.

For good reason, then, Paul advises Timothy to shun the quest for wealth and pursue instead “righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness.” I Timothy 6:11. Again, these virtues are not developed in people who are autonomous or imagine themselves to be so. They are developed among people who know themselves to be dependent upon a gracious and compassionate God who shares his very self with them and invites them to do the same for each other.

Luke 16:19–31

A few things are worth noting right of the bat. First, note that Lazarus is the character in this story who is given a name. The rich man has no name. That already tells you something about where Jesus’ concern lies. The poor, starving masses have a name and a face. The rich man, for all his wealth and power, is nearly invisible. It is usually just the other way around, isn’t it? In our culture, the poor, the sick and the dying are kept mercifully out of our sight. The parable mirrors testimony to God’s compassionate care for the downtrodden reflected in last Sunday’s psalm:

Who is like the Lord our God,
who is seated on high,
who looks far down
on the heavens and the earth?
He raises the poor from the dust,
and lifts the needy from the ash heap,

to make them sit with princes,
with the princes of his people.

He gives the barren woman a home,
making her the joyous mother of children.
Praise the Lord!

Psalm 113:5-9. When the transcendent God stoops to look down upon the earth, he sees the poor, the needy and the childless-people that usually are invisible to us. God doesn’t seem much interested in what the kings, princes, presidents and prime ministers are up to.

Second, Jesus tells us nothing about the character of either of the two men in his parable. For all we know, the rich man might have been a regular worshiper at synagogue each Sabbath. He may have been a generous contributor to charity. He may have been a loving husband and a dedicated parent. We cannot assume that he was greedy, miserly or cold hearted. He may have passed by Lazarus without making eye contact, but honestly, who of us has not at some point in our lives done that very same thing on our way to the train or the bus in Times Square or some other place where the wretched of the earth come to beg? As for Lazarus, we know nothing of his character either. He might have been a good, honest and hardworking man just down on his luck. But he might also have been a scoundrel whose irresponsible lifestyle brought him to his sorry state. Can you blame the rich man for not giving him a hand out? How would the guy know whether his generosity will go simply to buying alcohol or drugs? How could he be sure that his well-intended efforts to help would only destroy Lazarus’ last ounce of incentive to better himself? Jesus does not tell us one way or the other. It does not matter to Jesus and it should not matter to us. The Scriptures do not limit the command to care for the poor with any provisos such as that the poor be “deserving.”

Third, this is not a parable about God punishing rich people for failing to care for the poor. God is not even in this parable and God is not responsible for that gap between Hades where the rich man finds himself and the bosom of Abraham were Lazarus resides. The rich man built that gap all by himself. It grew wider every time the rich man drove up to his estate and turned his gaze away from Lazarus as his limo with the tinted glass pulled through the gate. The gap grew larger whenever the rich man switched TV channels to avoid the disturbing images of starving children on the news. The gap widened as the rich man invested ever more of his wealth into shoring up the security fence and the alarm system around his property. When the rich man arrives at the afterlife, he discovers that the gap he erected between Lazarus and himself is still there. The only difference is that the great reversal has occurred. Lazarus is now the honored guest at the messianic banquet and the rich man is on the outside begging for scraps.

Now the saddest thing about this parable is that there is no learning curve. The rich man is still under the illusion that he is somebody important. He thinks he can hobnob with Father Abraham and extract favors from him. He doesn’t even deign to speak directly to Lazarus. Instead, he asks Abraham to “send that boy there-what’s his name? Lazarus? (As though it matters!) Send that boy to fetch me a drink.” Abraham has to point out to the rich man that things have changed. The reversal has come, just as the prophets warned. But the rich man still doesn’t get it. He still thinks nothing has changed. He still thinks he is in a position to order Lazarus about like a servant, only now he wants Lazarus to warn his brothers to repent before they also come to his “place of torment.” Abraham replies that the rich man’s brothers have all the warning they need. They have Moses and the prophets. They need only listen. “No, father Abraham,” he protests. “But if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.”

It is hard to miss the irony here. Of course, we know that someone has come back from the dead, but the gap between the rich and the poor continues to grow. So what will it take to wake us up? What will it take to convince us that by ignoring the cries of the poor we are building our prison in Hades? God has sent his Son to wake us up from our deathly sleep and after we rejected even him, God raised him up and gave him back to us again. God continues to raise up Jesus for us. If that does not melt our hearts, what will?

Sunday, September 18, 2016

September 12, 2016UncategorizedAmos, Bible, Book of Acts, Church, David, faith, gospel, Holy Spirit, idolatry, justice, Lectionary, Luke, mammon, peace, Persecution, poverty, Religion, Saint Paul, Sunday Lessons, theologyrevolsen

Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Amos 8:4–7
Psalm 113
1 Timothy 2:1–7
Luke 16:1–13

Prayer of the Day: God among us, we gather in the name of your Son to learn love for one another. Keep our feet from evil paths. Turn our minds to your wisdom and our hearts to the grace revealed in your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“You cannot serve God and mammon.” Luke 16:13

Most of us do just that. If we are not laboring to pay off mortgages, car loans and credit card debt we are striving to improve our standards of living in pursuit of a better life. As I have often pointed out, our economy is driven by the desire for increased wealth. In his book, The Wealth of Nations, philosopher/economist Adam Smith argued for a global free market economy based on the premise that the human tendency to pursue one’s own self-interest leads invariably to greater prosperity and economic growth for all. That may be so. I leave to economists the job of hashing out the validity of Smith’s assertions. I am more interested in the moral dimensions of his philosophy.

The concern of both Jesus and Amos is the effect self-interested pursuit of wealth has on the soul. Amos points out to the people of Israel how their pursuit of wealth has hardened their hearts toward the poor of the land and led them to abandon the terms of the covenant with their God. Only grudgingly do they cease from their commercial activity on the Sabbath. Amos 8:5. In blatant disregard of God’s command to leave the gleanings of the harvest for the poor, the commercial class is eager to “sell the refuse of the wheat.” Human beings are reduced to units of labor that can be bought and sold like commodities. Amos 8:6. The self-interested pursuit of wealth has made Israel “rich in things but poor in soul,” as the hymn says. Jesus therefore speaks a stark and unwelcome truth to societies like that of 8^th Century B.C.E. Israel and 21^st Century C.E. America that make pursuit of wealth the driving cultural force: “You cannot serve God and mammon.”

I believe that we in the church of Jesus Christ need to have some honest conversations about money, possessions and wealth and how they are shaping our priorities and the decisions we make about the way we live our lives. The early church had no compunctions about addressing the dangers of wealth and the inappropriate use of money. The story of Ananias and Sapphira makes the point very graphically. Luke tells us in the Book of Acts that “the company of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had everything in common.” Acts 4:32. He goes on to tell of how Barnabas sold a field which belonged to him and gave the full amount of the proceeds to the Apostles for the benefit of the church. Acts 4:36. But when Ananias and his wife, Sapphira, sold their land, they brought only a portion of the proceeds to the Apostles, representing that they had, like Barnabas, made an offering of the whole. When the Apostle Peter confronted them with their dishonesty, they were both stricken dead. I urge you to read the entire story in Acts 5:1-11. You won’t ever hear it from the lectionary. The message is clear. Greed kills. Self-interested pursuit of wealth does not lead to a better life. More is not better when it comes to money.

I am not suggesting that the early church was a communist utopia. The members of the church clearly had possessions and I suspect that some had more than others. But they all understood that possession is not the same as ownership. They all understood that “the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.” Psalm 24.1. What we possess is held in trust for the God who calls us to love our neighbor and care for creation. We came into the world with only our birthday suits and we will leave it with less than that. How we spend each penny in between is a matter of life and death. The question is not whether you have money or how much you have. The question is whether you are spending it, much or little, to invest in the things that are eternal, the things that matter to God, or whether you are simply enriching yourself in a vain effort to find happiness, security and a measure of fulfillment. Do you think of the money in your wallet, checking account or IRA as yours? Or is it a loan given you by the Lord to do God’s work in the world?

We mainline, middle class, ever white and ever polite progressive protestants are a little embarrassed by the outbreak of God’s wrath against Ananias and Sapphira. Yet perhaps the Lord’s swift action there was a kind of mercy. This couple did not live long enough to develop the stress conditions leading to heart attack, stroke and addiction so common among people caught up in the pursuit of the elusive American Dream. They did not live to discover how useless money is when you are standing over the casket of a loved one or how easily the love of money leads you to cross lines that you will regret for the rest of your life. Greed usually kills us gradually, awakening in our hearts a thirst that can never be satisfied, hardening our hearts against our neighbors and filling us with suspicion against our dear ones we suspect of scheming to get hold of our wealth. Mammon is a cruel and jealous master.

We need to recognize and name the false god, mammon. We need to shine the light of truth on the dangers of an unsustainable, greed driven economy that is increasingly dehumanizing.us and poisoning our planet. Jesus calls us to a way of living that is radically different from the self-interested pursuit of wealth. He calls us to learn, as the birds of the air and the lilies of the field already know, that all we need and more comes from the hand of a generous God. Disciples of Jesus know that the world is not a shrinking pie and that we don’t need to be obsessed with getting and keeping our piece. God has no interest in getting from us a share of what is ours. God wants us. When we finally figure out that, because we belong to God and everything we possess belongs to God, we have all we need, then we can start truly living.

Here’s poem by William Wordsworth about life wasted in “getting and spending.”

The World is Too Much with Us.

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

Source: William Wordsworth: Selected Poems (c. 2004 by Penguin Books). This poem is in the public domain. William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was born in Cockermouth, Cumberland in England. He made his debut as a writer in 1787 publishing a sonnet in The European Magazine. In the same year he began attending St John’s College, Cambridge. There he received his BA degree. Wordsworth traveled widely throughout Europe and was particularly drawn to places of natural beauty. Though an ardent supporter of the French Revolution, he was first and foremost a poet drawing his inspiration chiefly from the natural world. Wordsworth was Britain’s Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death. You can read more about William Wordsworth at the Poetry Foundation website and sample more of his poetry.

Amos 8:4–7

Amos was a prophet from the Southern Kingdom of Judah, but the preaching we have from him comes to us from his ministry in the Northern Kingdom of Israel. After the death of King Solomon, the small empire King David had built split into two separate nations. Judah, consisting of the tribes of Benjamin and Judah, continued under the reign of the house of David until its final destruction by Babylon in 587 B.C.E. Israel, consisting of the remaining ten tribes, was less politically stable. It was ruled by a succession of royal families succeeding one another through violent coups. The Kingdom of Israel was destroyed by the Assyrians in 723 B.C.E. Amos came on the scene during the long and prosperous reign of Jeroboam II beginning in about 782 B.C.E. Little is known about Amos. He describes himself as “a herdsman and dresser of sycamore trees,” which could mean that he was a wealthy land owner or that he was merely a servant on someone else’s estate. Amos 7:14. In any event, Amos makes it clear that he has no prophetic credentials other than his call from the Lord to preach, not to his own people of Judah, but to the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Amos 7:15. By this point, the struggle in Israel between the worship of Yahweh and the cult of the Ba’als was all but over. A decisive death blow had been struck against the priesthood and temple of Ba’al by King Jehu two generations before. After taking power through a bloody revolution, Jehu killed Queen Jezebel, the widow of King Ahab and the chief patron of Ba’al. He then extinguished the entire line of Ahab. By the time Jeroboam II took the throne, worship of the Lord had become the religion of the Northern Kingdom once again. Peace, prosperity and religious revival seemed to demonstrate God’s pleasure with Israel.

But that is not the way Amos saw it. Peace and prosperity had come at a terrible price. The new commercial economy that brought so much prosperity to the commercial classes in the urban areas led to oppression and impoverishment for the rural masses. Property that under Israelite tribal law was held in perpetuity by family clans was now open for purchase or seizure. Statutes limiting the power of creditors over debtors were disregarded. The “safety net” for the poor consisting of “gleaning rights” was likewise ignored by farming interests that routinely soled “the sweepings of the wheat.” Amos 8:6.

Amos criticized the religion of Israel as empty, false and hypocritical. Religious observances, however faithfully performed and liturgically correct, are worthless unless accompanied by justice and compassion. Speaking on behalf of the Lord, Amos has this to say concerning the worship of Israel:

I hate, I despise your festivals,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer me your burnt-offerings and grain-offerings,
I will not accept them;
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
I will not look upon.
Take away from me the noise of your songs;
I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Amos 6:21-24. Not surprisingly, Amos’ preaching came to the attention of the Israelite authorities. Amaziah, the high priest of Bethel, informed King Jeroboam about Amos’ preaching, saying to him “the land is not able to bear all his words.” Amos 7:10. Shortly thereafter, Amaziah ordered Amos to return to Judah and never again preach at Israel’s sanctuary at Bethel. Amos 7:12-13.

What application does this have today? I dealt with one societal issue in my opening remarks, but find it necessary to repeat the point I made last week with respect to application of biblical texts to the contemporary scene. Amos is not speaking to the world at large on the basis of human rights, natural law or some universally recognized concept of justice. He is speaking specifically to Israel as God’s covenant people convicting her of violating the terms of her covenant obligations. That is precisely why we cannot go marching up to Wall Street quoting Amos and insisting that Wall Street has broken the covenant. Wall Street would quite understandably reply, “What covenant?” Neither AIG, nor Bank of America nor J.P. Morgan Chase is God’s chosen people. The United States is not God’s people. The words of Amos are thus directed toward Israel and, through its baptismal covenant in Jesus Christ, to the church.

That said, there are obviously both Jews and Christians who live in the United States, have obligations to the United States and owe loyalties to the United States. So what happens in the United States cannot be a matter of indifference. Disciples of Jesus are called upon specifically not to conform to the surrounding culture, but to be transformed by the renewal of their minds that they may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. Romans 12:2. That means it is not our aim to transform society or “change the world” or “make a difference.” Our call is to live faithfully and counter-culturally as the Body of Christ in whatever context we find ourselves. That, of course, might very well turn out to be transformative bringing about significant change that makes an important difference. But whether faithfulness to Jesus does or does not bring about change or the change we hope for and expect is not our concern.

Psalm 113

This psalm is remarkable in its juxtaposition of God’s overwhelming power and transcendence against God’s intimate concern for the “weak,” the “poor” and the “childless.” Verses 4-6 glorify Israel’s God as sovereign over nature and history, exalted over the nations and even far above the heavens. Yet the greatness and magnitude of God are manifested not chiefly in his transcendence, but in his imminence, and particularly in his concern for the lowly. God is glorified in the exaltation of the weak, the salvation of the helpless and the deliverance of the childless from the curse of barrenness. God’s special concern with the weak and the powerless is grounded in Israel’s experience of God’s salvation in the Exodus and is reflected throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. God’s compassion for the childless woman echoes the experiences of numerous women of the Hebrew Bible, including Sarah, Rebecca and Hannah to mention a few. This theme is given expression in Luke’s gospel through Elizabeth, the aged and barren wife of Zechariah to whom John the Baptist was born.

This psalm is the first of a collection (Psalm 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118) labeled “Hallel.” These psalms are essentially expressions of thanksgiving and joy for divine redemption. In later Jewish liturgical practice they were sung for feasts of pilgrimage at Passover, Weeks, Tabernacles, New Moon and the Dedication of the Temple. It is nearly impossible to determine the original setting of Psalm 113 or its original connection, if any, to the other Hallel psalms. The archaic Hebrew expressions found throughout the hymn suggest that it may have ancient roots in the monarchical period of Israel’s history prior to the Babylonian Exile.

1 Timothy 2:1–7

“First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings should be made for everyone…” So begins the lesson. Just as Jesus is the mediator between God and humanity, so the church is the mediator between Christ and the world. When you think about it, the chief social function of bodies is mediation. What do I mean when I say, “I know Janet”? Most likely it means that, among other things, I can recognize her face, describe her features and identify body language unique to her. I must qualify this with the word “likely” because the digital age has made it possible for relationships to develop on line without the parties thereto ever meeting face to face. I have a few of those relationships myself. Yet even for these people I have developed mental “pictures.” I know full well that these people probably do not look anything at all like my mental pictures of them. Still, I cannot help myself. I think this involuntary imaginative reflex of mine just goes to show how impossible it is to conceive a disembodied person. That is also why the church confesses “the resurrection of the body” and not the immortality of the soul. Bodies with eyes, ears, noses and mouths are the way persons engage one another. That is why the Word became flesh.

So the Body of Christ mediates God to the world just as Jesus’ bodily presence mediates God to the Church. Precisely because God “desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (I Timothy 2:4), the church is to pray for all people without exception. Accordingly, the Kyrie begins with the words, “For the peace of the whole world, for the well being of the church of God and for all people, let us pray to the Lord” (emphasis supplied). Just as the focus of prayer is not confined to those within the church alone, it is not withheld from any nation, tribe or clan even if some of these folks are considered enemies of our own nation or even the church. Thus, prayer is to be made for “kings and all who are in high positions.” Note well that the first century authorities were not particularly well disposed toward the church. To the contrary, they were suspicious of the church and prone to hinder its mission-and that was on good days. Persecution of the church, though not systematic or wide spread at this point, was not infrequent. Nevertheless, Paul understands that however flawed and corrupt government might be, it makes possible the living of a “quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.” I Timothy 2:2.

All of this is consistent with Paul’s teaching in Romans 13 where he writes: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval; for it is God’s servant for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain! It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be subject, not only because of wrath but also because of conscience. For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, busy with this very thing. Pay to all what is due to them—taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due.” Romans 13:1-7. I hasten to add, however, that I think protestants and Lutherans in particular have loaded far too much freight on these verses. The terms “instituted” and “appointed” appear to suggest that God has ordained whatever government happens to be in power and that, therefore, disobedience to government constitutes rebellion against God. But that does not follow.

The Greek words used in Romans for “instituted” and “appointed” actually mean more to “order,” “direct” or “arrange.” Thus, God did not ordain the Roman Empire, but God does order, arrange and direct it to do God’s bidding and accomplish God’s purposes. In the same way, God directed Assyria and Babylonia to bring about his judgment upon Israel and arranged for Persia under Cyrus to enable Israel’s return from exile. To say that God makes use of governments (without their knowledge or approval) is quite different from saying that the structures of power that exist were ordained by God and therefore cannot be resisted. Paul’s point, therefore, is not that obedience to government is obedience to God, but that faithful disciples who conduct themselves righteously need not fear the authorities. They are God’s tools whether they want to be such or not. Even if they act unjustly and persecute the people of God, God can be trusted to turn even this conduct to his own good purposes. Consequently, no argument can be made here to support the proposition that God wills for there to be nation states, governments or empires. Neither can this verse bear the weight of that uniquely Lutheran concoction, “The Two Kingdom’s Doctrine.” But don’t get me started on that.

Verse 5 contains what appears to be a fragment of early Christian creedal teaching:

⁵For there is one God;
there is also one mediator between God and humankind,
Christ Jesus, himself human,
⁶ who gave himself a ransom for all.

The term “mediator” is not used anywhere else by Paul in this or any of his writings. Yet if this is indeed a citation to some other fragment of church teaching, it is hardly surprising that it differs from Paul’s own way of expressing the faith in linguistics and vocabulary. Paul seems to be citing this saying in support of his appeal for prayer directed to all people and reflecting God’s desire that “all people be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.” I Timothy 2:4. One God-One Mediator-One ransom for all.

Luke 16:1–13

This parable has famously (or infamously) been labeled the “Dishonest Steward.” I am not convinced that this fellow in Jesus’ story was dishonest. The parable begins with a “rich man” who had a steward. According to most commentaries, the “rich man” was an absentee landlord letting out his property to tenant farmers. The “steward” was a “property manager” in charge of supervising the tenants and selling the landlord’s share of the produce. Such arrangements were apparently common in first century Galilee. See Marshall, I. Howard, The Gospel of Luke: A Commentary on the Greek Text, The New International Greek Testament Commentary (c. 1978 Paternoster Press, Ltd.) p. 617 citing Grundmann, W. Das Evangelien nach Lukas (Theologischer Handkommentar zum NT, Berlin 1966) p. 317. The charges brought against the steward involved waste and mismanagement. Such conduct surely evidences carelessness or incompetence, but it does not imply dishonesty. Moreover, we cannot even be sure these charges are true. The allegations of misfeasance against the steward came from third parties that are not even identified and we never hear that the steward was even given a fair opportunity to contest them. In today’s corporate world, heads must roll when mistakes are made and they are often not the heads of those actually responsible. That could well have been the case here.

The steward finds himself in an untenable position. In our culture of unemployment benefits, disability payments and the like, we might be tempted to roll our eyes a bit when the steward reflects: “What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg.” Luke 16:3. This is no laughing matter, however. Day laborers were paid a mere denarius per day in Galilee. SeeMatthew 20:1-16. The work was brutally difficult, dangerous and not always available. Ibid. Begging was also difficult work and paid a good deal less than labor. Either profession would have been the death sentence for a man of delicate physical constitution.

So here is where the story gets interesting. The steward calls in his master’s debtors and reduces their bills. On the face of it, this appears to be dishonest and it might well be. But if that is the case, why would the master praise his erstwhile steward for defrauding him? That makes no sense. Of course, Jesus’ parables sometimes are counter intuitive. Only last week Jesus told the parable of a shepherd who left 99 sheep alone and unprotected in the wilderness to go searching for one lost lamb. But that was to show how God’s valuation of those persons we have written off is entirely different than our own shallow cost/benefit analysis. There was a point to the implausibility of the parable. It does not seem to me that there is any such literary purpose for the master’s improbable response to getting fleeced by a disgruntled employee.

The most plausible explanation I have found was given by two commentators who suggest that the amount of each debt written off by the steward was his own commission for collecting the debt, not money that was owed the master. Findlay, J.A., Luke, The Abingdon Bible Commentary (c. 1929 Nashville/New York) p. 1049; Fitzmyer, J.A. Essays on the Semitic Background of the New Testament, (c. 1971, London) pp. 161-184 cited in Marshall, I. Howard, The Gospel of Luke: A Commentary on the Greek Text, The New International Greek Testament Commentary (c. 1978 Paternoster Press, Ltd.) p. 615. If that is in fact what happened, the master would have no cause to complain and might indeed admire the shrewdness of his former steward for using his last commission to create a “golden parachute” for himself.

In either case, Jesus commends this fellow because he understands that he is now in a position where his money will be of very limited use to him. What he needs now more than anything else is friends. He recognizes that his future does not lie with his master or any of the master’s rich friends who no doubt know of his dismissal and are unlikely to hire him to a position of responsibility. Any future he has is with his master’s debtors, the folks he was accustomed to exploiting. For him, the “great reversal” that Mary sings about in the Magnificat is unfolding in his own life. The rich, of which he used to be one, have been cast down. The future belongs to the hungry soon to be filled. This fellow understands that the future belongs to them and that he had better make sure he is among them. To that end, he employs his last commission. He does exactly what the rich young ruler should have done in Luke 18:18-30.

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