Pilgrim Preaching

Books for the Year of Luke

As we approach Year C in the Revised Common Lectionary, I'm beginning to look more closely at a couple of books on Luke.

The first is from Luther Seminary graduate and Augustana College professor Richard Swanson, who has published two similar books, Provoking the Gospel of Mark (2005) and Provoking the Gospel of Luke (2006). Both of them are subtitled, "A Storyteller's Commentary," and they both focus on lectionary texts.

There is a DVD in each book that demonstrates the kind of ensemble storytelling that Swanson writes about in his Provoking the Gospel: Methods to Embody Biblical Storytelling through Drama. (Here is a review.) On the DVD, we see Augustana students acting out portions of the gospel as the group figures out together how best to embody the text in order to tell its story. The Provoking the Gospel Project web site has more information about the project, performances, and workshops.

The book on Luke includes commentary-like material from Swanson on each pericope in the lectionary as well as ideas for "provoking the story" with drama in one's own context. Swanson's books are not really lectionary commentaries in any traditional sense. They do not give as much historical background on a text as a good study Bible's notes would, but that's fine. Why duplicate the Harper Collins Study Bible notes? What Swanson does offer for almost every lection is a story you can't get out of your head all week, or an insight into a detail of the text you had not noticed before. I find the books to be good at "breaking open" texts I've preached on or listened to—or both—for years.

The other book I'm reading more these days is Sharon Ringe's commentary on the Gospel of Luke (Westminster/John Knox, 1995). In the Westminster Bible Companion series, this commentary is non-technical but still careful and worth spending time with when one is preaching a text from Luke. As an exegete, Ringe is concerned with hearing voices in the tradition that have been silenced in the past, or that have gone unnoticed. Some of the readings may seem a little too ideologically driven for those not captivated by feminist or liberation hermeneutics. On the other hand, I usually find even the more ideological interpretations plausible and a good corrective to reading without noticing the way my own social location creates its own hermeneutical lens.

Seeing Healing

19th Sunday after Pentecost
Luke 17:11-19

My colleague, Old Testament professor Fred Gaiser, is just finishing a book on healing and the Bible to be published by Baker. I found a sermon of his on the web that shows some of the themes he sees in various healing texts. The sermon is on Luke 17:11-19.

Fred makes several points about what the tenth leper gets and how that multi-faceted healing is available to God's people today. His first point is that the healed one who returns does so because he sees God at work in the world. Here's an excerpt:

“ ”

So, unlike the others, he had to return. The others could go and do whatever. This man could not. Having seen, he had to return and praise God. He had to throw himself at Jesus’ feet in thanksgiving. The "had to" is real. The experience is so overwhelming, so life changing, so joyful, it must be shared. "Which of you," asked Jesus, "if you found the lost coin, the lost treasure, the lost son, the lost sheep, would not tell the neighbors?" Wow, did I ever see a great movie! Look, there’s a rainbow! My cancer is in remission! Some things, if they are seen, simply have to be told. So it is with our friend in the story. Copyright © Frederick J. Gaiser, 2001. Used by permission.

You can find the whole sermon on the St. Anthony Park Lutheran Church web site.

Fred's article, "'Your Faith Has Made You Well": Healing and Salvation in Luke 17:11-19," Word & World 16 (1996): 291-301, is also available on the web (this one is a .pdf file).

Gates and Tables

17th Sunday after Pentecost
Luke 16:19-31

Probably what we like least about this text is the implication that someone could end up in a place of torment while someone else gets a significantly better deal. The unfairness of the imaginary afterlife scene is more troubling to most of us than the evidence we see of the unfairness of real everyday life. We are inured to the unfairness of the feasting rich man and hungry beggar separated by a gate. We know it is not right, but we also know how "complex" the issues of wealth, poverty, class, employment, etc. are. Observing scenes like those on both sides of the rich man's gate, few of us can see any way into an alternative scene.

I listened to three M. Div. seniors preach this text yesterday. They were all at pains to tell their hearers that God had made a decision on their behalf that precluded their spending time in Hades and torment. "Jesus has paid the price," came the word. "Your sins are forgiven, and therefore, you will not spend any time hoping for a little water to cool your tongue." (No one said it with quite this force, but I think they would agree that that was where each sermon was headed.)

My students are not the only ones who want to get out from under this text and help others to do the same. The Old Testament gets heat for, among other things, texts of mass murder ordained by God (cf. Do We Have to Tell that Story?), but the New Testament has a few texts of terror too. This is one of them. A man who lived well in life spends eternity in flames. He ignored Moses and the prophets—or at least he failed to learn the right lessons from them—and at death he is flat out of luck. What's more, when this fellow shows compassion for his brothers, begging for something to be done to spare them from his fate, father Abraham refuses.

It is an intense text. Jesus is really mad about something. It would be good if we could figure out what. After the parable of the dishonest manager and before the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, Luke offers this comment: "The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all this, and they ridiculed him [Jesus]. So he said to them, 'You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of others; but God knows your hearts; for what is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of God'" (Luke 16:14). Ouch! How could we get things so backwards? Most readers of this commentary will likely know from the inside what Jesus was accusing the Pharisees of: we love—perhaps we also fear and trust—money. We may even fear, love and trust it above all things. Look what it can do: it provides not just food, clothing and shelter, but also vacations, health care, education, small and large toys, respect, access to beautiful and important people, fine linen and sumptuous feasts—just about all we need from day to day. We love what it offers.

The price we all pay for such love is an ever-widening and firmly fixed chasm that divides sisters and brothers—children of God—from each other. What we have or have not comes to define us to ourselves and to others. God sees as abomination these very distinctions that we prize precisely because God's gift is the reconciliation of brothers and sisters to each other and to himself while money's gift is a class-ificiation of us all that tears us apart.

None of this is new information with Jesus. By the time Jesus told the story, Moses and the prophets were well known for the same message. So when the rich man asks for a messenger to warn his brothers, Abraham refuses. "If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even in someone rises from the dead" (Luke 16:31).

The reading for Sunday ends there. The story does not. Lucky for us, God had more hope about these things than father Abraham did. God raises Jesus from the dead, and the first thing the risen Jesus does is to join a couple of his friends on the road. Beginning with Moses and the prophets, he interprets to his friends things about himself and about a God who wants an end to idolatry and a reunion with humankind enough to give up—and raise up—his Son to make it happen. Jesus opens the scriptures to the couple walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus, and then he blesses and breaks bread with them (Luke 24:13-35). It is something between a sumptuous feast and a plate of leftovers for the beggar. Gates and chasms are noticeably absent from the scene. Jesus is with them; seeing him alive, they can begin to see the redemption of Israel and the nations for which they had hoped and which they had thought was lost. It is an alternative scene to those Jesus paints in the parable. In this scene, there is something so much greater than money to fear, love and trust. Here is a stranger, recognized to be Jesus of Nazareth, risen from the dead and creating around himself a community that together reads, walks, blesses, eats, and proclaims the news, "We have seen the Lord."

God's Business Sense

16th Sunday after Pentecost
Luke 16:1-13

Thanks to my friend Paul Palumbo, I have an idea for a sermon on the parable assigned for Sunday. Most of what is here was gleaned from a phone conversation this afternoon.

The parables of the Prodigal Son and the Dishonest Steward have several things in common:

1. Both main characters squander wealth. The word is exactly the same in each story. (It's only other use in Luke is when Mary says that the Lord has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.)
2. Both main characters use an internal dialog to narrate their own strategy for getting out of trouble: "I know what I'll do…"
3. Both main characters seek to be welcomed home.
4. Both main characters receive unexpected regard from the alpha dude in the story (father/master).

I think the welcome home theme might have some preaching potential. Maybe Jesus is saying, "Look, even the children of this world understand forgiveness (as in the forgiveness of part of the debts owed to the master). Why aren't you disciples getting it?" A father understands welcoming his son home; business partners understand welcoming one of their own into their home. Folks outside the light get this. How much more should it be clear to us religious insiders (like disciples and Pharisees) that regardless of whether the welcome everyone receives is fair, the house is open and there's an extra place at the table.

At table with Zacchaeus, Jesus says, "For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost" (Luke 19:10). The prodigal and the manager are both squandering their resources. Jesus is doing the opposite. He is gathering up lost human resources. That gathering is his reason for coming, his reason for being. God is a shrewd enough householder not to write off the losses but rather to seek always to gather them all back under the same roof. It's just good for business (according to the parable of the Steward). It's also good for family (according to the parable of the Prodigal).

Care and Joy

15th Sunday after Pentecost
Luke 15:1-10

There is an odd pair of emotions in this reading: great care and great joy. The shepherd and the woman both show that careful attention to detail that is also known as hard work. Think of all that hiking over hills, the scrambling down creek banks and climbing through brambles: all in search of a sheep that could have nibbled itself into trouble a thousand different ways. Or think of all that housework! Sweeping, moving furniture, rearranging clutter, crawling around on the floor. Often this kind of physical labor coupled with careful attention to detail can lead to grumpiness. We can live our whole lives this way, always diligently searching for lost items and responsibly returning them to their correct location: a place for everything and everything in its place.

Are we having fun yet?

That everything-in-its-place kind of responsibility is not what these searches are about. Instead, the search of the shephard and the woman are all about joy, a joy that overflows into the cheerful disarray of a celebration. Friends and neighbors celebrate. Care and joy flow out of the same person, and it all ends in a party.

We are beginning a new school year at Luther Seminary. Committee meetings have started for faculty. Students are buying books and organizing their calendars around the due dates of assignments. Classes begin for all of us this week. There is a temptation in this work for carefulness to lead to grumpiness. "Why is that teacher/student being so irresponsible, or so high-maintenance, or so…well…lost? Why do I always have to be the responsible one?"

In the midst of this drift toward surliness, we get three pictures of joy on the other side of care: (1) the joy of the shepherd, (2) the joy of the woman, and (3) the joy of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.

Sabbath Freedom

Proper 16
12 Sunday after Pentecost (C)

Isaiah 58:9b-14
Luke 13:10-17

In a sermon a few weeks ago, one of my pastors said that maybe the reason so many of us are too tired to get anything done is that we are so bad at sabbath-keeping. Keeping the sabbath—living as if six days were enough each week for work (cf. Exodus 20:8-11)—would ironically free us from that deep weariness that sets in after too many days or weeks of trying to fit just a little more into the time allotted. "Rest," my pastor seemed to be saying, "Rest, or face the dual realities of exhaustion and diminished returns for all your work anyway."

It was one of those offhand comments in a sermon that sticks with hearers. I thought of it again when reading Is. 58:13-14. "If you refrain from trampling the sabbath, from pursuing your own interests on my holy day; if you call the sabbath a delight and the holy day of the LORD honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs; then you shall take delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken."

Things are not going so well for the returned exiles, and in Is. 58, they want to know why. They are fasting (vv. 58:3) but the Lord seems not to be noticing. God points out to the people that they fast and pursue their own interests (quarreling, fighting, oppressing others) at the same time which gives the lie to their penitential fast. Instead, a fast is for loosing the bonds of injustice (58:6). It is for satisfying the needs of the afflicted (58:10). In response, the Lord will satisfy the people's needs in the parched places (58:11).

When we use every day as just one more day for all the work that we have promised to do, with no sabbath in sight, we are implying that we do not quite trust God to satisfy our needs or anyone else's in the parched places. We need to satisfy our needs—and if we are "helping professionals," everyone else's needs too—without God. "Look, if I stop pushing the world will stop spinning. My class won't be as good as it would be with more prep, or my dishes will pile up in the sink, or the bills won't get paid, or …."

People in the ministry are particularly vulnerable to the temptation to trample the sabbath while telling ourselves that because so much of what we are doing is the Lord's work, it's ok—maybe it's even necessary—to treat every day like every other day. We use texts like the Gospel reading for this week to argue our point. In Luke 13, the leader of the synagogue tells the crowd that the six days for work are the days when they should look for healing. "Boy, was he wrong," we say. Jesus healed on the sabbath, thereby opening the door for religious leaders and rank-and-file Christians alike to work 'til we drop. Right?

Wrong. This way of working has us bent double with care, worry and fear. "If I stop pushing, the world will stop spinning." What torture that is! And what idolatry! Unable to focus on anything but the patch of dirt at our feet, we have lost sight both of our limitations and of God's power for satisfying needs. This is wrong, and it is killing us.

Jesus calls the bent woman over to him, speaks to her and then touches her so she is able to (1) stand upright and (2) praise God. "Jesus is challenging the dominion of Satan," David Tiede writes (Luke [Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1988] 251), and for that the crowd rejoices.

Am I turning this text on its head? I am using a sabbath controversy story to preach against treating the sabbath as just another day. Jesus heals on the sabbath, yes. However, when Jesus heals the woman, he is not offering a model for seven-day-a-week ministry. In her commentary on Luke, Sharon Ringe says of this text, "The core question is not whether to keep the sabbath, but rather how to keep it" (187). There is no "Go and do likewise," at the end of the story, no "You have heard it said… but I say to you" here or elsewhere with respect to sabbath law. Instead, this story ends with the woman praising God and the entire crowd rejoicing at the wonderful things Jesus is doing. What great sabbath activity: prayer, praise and thanksgiving!

When he heals the bent-over woman, Jesus is challenging the dominion of Satan. In his ministry, death and resurrection, Jesus challenges the dominion of Satan over everyone who is buckling under the power of sin in any form, even the form that tempts us to break the Third (and by implication the First) Commandment, the form of sin that says we must work seven days a week, that we cannot trust God to keep the world spinning and to keep the evil one at bay but must manage such things ourselves.

We and the people to whom we preach have much more in common with the bent-over woman than with the one who heals her. Read alongside that woman this week. Figure out what power holds you with her "captive to restricted movement, to the inability to meet another person face-to-face, and to a world defined by the piece of ground around [your] own toes or looked at always on a slant" (Ringe, 187). It is that power which Jesus defeats when he unbinds the woman and all those likewise bound.

Bringing the Party Home

Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
Genesis 15:1-6
Luke 11:1-13

The Gospel text sounds like two lessons for the price of one. The first half of the text, I think I understand. It is addressed to anyone who has ever sorted a stack of bills into two piles: those to pay now, and those to put off paying for a little longer. "Do not worry about your life," Jesus says, "what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing." The first half of this text is for anyone who has ever priced a security system or hired an exterminator. "Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys."

The Neighbor is Near You

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

Deuteronomy 30:9-14
Luke 10:25-37

The lawyer wants to know, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" The fact that it is a lawyer of Israel asking the question is evidence for the truism that we all teach what we need to learn. Moses, the lawgiver himself, had said back in Deuteronomy that the law was all about life:

"See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the LORD your God, walking in his ways, and observing his commandments, decrees, and ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you do not hear, but are led astray to bow down to other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall perish; you shall not live long in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess" (Deut. 30:15-18).

"What must I do to inherit eternal life?" the lawyer asks. Jesus goes to Moses for his reply to the Moses-expert's question: "What does it say in the law?" And after the lawyer summarizes the law correctly, Jesus echoes Moses, "Do this and you will live" (Luke 10:28; cf. Deut. 30:19).

But experts know that their texts are not as straightforward as the amateurs think, and the Moses-expert is no exception. "Look, you can't just answer a question about eternal life with notes on a 3" x 5" card. The law is hard, hard to do and hard to exegete. It takes years of study to read it. It is high above us, and distant in time from us. Let's unpack this great commandment a little. Who is my neighbor?"

Is the law hard? Is it in heaven, that someone needs to go up and get it for us, so that we can hear and observe it? Is it beyond the sea that someone needs to get it so that we may hear and observe it? Jesus gives the lawyer something to hear and observe (cf. Deut. 30:12-14 [NRSV]).

What Jesus offers is not far away. It is the common event of a mugging and the also common events of indifference to suffering on the one hand and mercy in response to need on the other. The story is as close as the fear we feel when someone approaches us on a dark sidewalk at night, as near to us as the people we can walk past without noticing, as familiar as the smell and feel of a Band-Aid on torn skin.

"Who is my neighbor?" the lawyer wants to know, and so do I. I also want to know, how do I love my neighbor as myself? What about fostering dependency in the neighbor, or wearing myself out or just putting Band-Aids on wounds that need so much more?

Surely someone should call a meeting of the county commissioners and get some lights put on that stretch of highway between Jerusalem and Jericho. Until the work is done, we could organize escorts, too. The bandits could be trained for honest work. Of course, all of this means that some of us run the risk of compassion fatigue and will have to read and write more books on self-care. But look.... For mercy's sake, look in the ditch. There is someone hurt. Do something. Do what that home-raising from Moses taught you, namely, show the kind of mercy that means rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands dirty. Do this, and the guy in the ditch will have a chance at life. Do this, and you will live too.

Sometimes our theological reflections on how hard the law is or how far from our capacity, as well as our political reflections on how hopeless it is to try to change the system, function as a sophisticated parlor game to keep us occupied while we are avoiding actually doing anything for anyone. If thinking globally paralyzes you or only functions as a training program in mental gymnastics, then, as Wendell Berry is supposed to have said, "Think locally; act locally." The word is local, as local as that fellow in the ditch or the rabbi who told his story. "The word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe" (Deut. 30:14; cf. Rom. 10:8).

What Jesus Sees

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 14
Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

In an article from the 50th anniversary issue of Interpretation, Richard Lischer offers this comment on Luke 10. You can access the whole article online by going to www.interpretation.org. They offer a free seven-day trial of their online journal, which includes access to back issues. They also offer deals on print and online subscriptions.

Here is an excerpt from Lischer's article. He is contrasting preaching with other kinds of speech in modern western culture.

“ ” “ ” “ ”

"In a culture obsessed with self-improvement, preaching speaks an eschatological word. It announces God’s open future that has broken into time in Jesus Christ. … "The sermon participates in something larger than improvement, the reality of which is hard to put into words and whose end cannot be seen. In Luke 10 after Jesus sends out the Seventy, they return with glowing reports of their success. The Lord replies in an eschatological non sequitur, 'I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.' What we see in our parishes is improvements and setbacks; he sees on our behalf what is the beginning of a whole new age (pp. 178-9)." Richard A. Lischer, "The Interrupted Sermon," © Interpretation 50 (1996) : 169-81.

Lischer's word is great for weary pastors. I wonder, too, if it isn't transferable to anyone who is weary of seeing nothing more dramatic than improvements and setbacks in work, family, self, etc. Perhaps it works to say that Jesus sees the beginning of a whole new age in our lives together as well as our congregational life together? If that is true, and if preaching is indeed the strange language that communicates the transformed future that has broken into time in Jesus Christ, then preaching could also be described as the proclamation of what Jesus sees.

In this Sunday's text, Jesus sees all sorts of things. He sees:

• A plentiful harvest & the need for workers.
• A sense of urgency about the task (no purse, bag, sandals or dawdling allowed), but urgency without restlessness ("remain in the same house…") or the need to "trade up" to more important people or better accommodations.
• A future for the apostles that includes both welcome and rejection.
• Occasions for each of these widely varied tasks: sharing peace, announcing the kingdom and shaking the dust off your sandals.

Finally, Jesus sees that his disciples' names are "written in heaven." Dudes, you're in. Or, as Paul might say, "We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed." As Satan fell from heaven like lightning, so the likes of Jesus' disciples then and now will be raised from the dead and find our names written in heaven. This means that no matter whether we do "official ministry" or something else as our harvest field work, responses to our work are only responses to our work. Apart from whether the response of those we meet in the harvest is welcome or rejection—or most likely some of each—what Jesus sees on our behalf is God's welcome to us ("Rejoice that your names are written in heaven"), and that welcome is the source and goal of true and lasting joy.

Passion Sunday

Luke's Triumphal (?) Entry

Luke 19:28-40

I am probably a redaction critic at heart, by which I mean that I have the most fun with the scriptures when I am looking at how one author has changed (or edited, or if you like, redacted) another's work. Take, for instance, what we call "the triumphal entry" into Jerusalem. The texts are Matt 21:1-9, Mark 1:-10, Luke 19:28-40 and John 12:12-19. It's pericope #269 if you have an Aland synopsis; if you want to make your own synopsis of the gospels on this or another text, check out The Five Gospel Parallels. With the help of Preaching through the Christian Year C (PCY), here's a short list of things that set Luke's version of the story apart from the way most of us are used to thinking of the story.

1. We have heard Jerusalem mentioned a few times in Luke, most often in connection with Jesus having "set his face" to go there. Now he's there. After his entry into the city, he will weep over it (Luke 19:41ff). This scene, #270 in your synopsis, is unique to Luke.
2. There are no "Hosannas" and no one is trimming palm branches and laying them in Jesus' path. The PCY authors comment, "Because those [displays] belonged commonly to nationalistic demonstration and parades, perhaps Luke wants this event to carry no such implication" (166). In any case, it is a quieter scene than the one I have running through my mind on Palm Sunday.
3. The disciples are the main audience for Jesus' entry, rather than a festival crowd of adoring fans. Matthew and Mark talk about a large crowd in the city for Passover watching this "triumphal entry." John speaks of a crowd, too, who have gathered to see the one who raised Lazarus from the dead. By contrast, Luke says Jesus is received by his disciples (see esp. Luke 19:35-37). This "is not the group, says Luke, that later called for Jesus' crucifixion. To be sure, Jesus' followers did not understand him or the nature of his messiahship, but neither are they persons who sing praise and scream death within the same week" (PCY, 166). (Hmm... there goes at least one sermon I've preached a time or two, not to mention some memorable hymn texts.)
4. Luke makes no reference in this scene to David or Davidic images of the messiah. Maybe this is Luke's intentional soft-pedaling of the political implications of Jesus' ministry ("Really, we're not a threat to the status quo!"), maybe not. Either way, if we think of the triumphal entry and think, "The people turned on Jesus because they wanted a political messiah king and he wasn't one," we have to look somewhere else besides Luke's account of things to conclude that is what people wanted.

Preaching and Redaction Criticism

So, this is interesting stuff. Will it preach? If so, how?

I hesitate in any sermon to say things like, "Luke's Jesus says _____." Or "In Luke, there are no palm branches." The first makes it sound like there are/were four (at least) Jesuses, as if each evangelist had his own personal pet named Jesus. Just "Jesus says _____" is enough. As for pointing out differences in the gospel accounts within a sermon, I have heard this done well a few times, but I try not to make a habit of it. Why? (1) It can make Bible reading into a parlor game. We're playing "Where's Waldo?" by another name ("Where are the palm branches?"). (2) It emphasizes the gospel writers at the expense of their message; we start caring more about Luke than about Jesus and what happened in the text.

So the short answer is, "No, this stuff won't preach," or "Preaching this stuff will make you sound bookish, out of touch and concerned about something besides the 'one thing needful'." However, read on.

I would not try to build a sermon around the insights provided by our redaction critical dive into Luke 19, but I would use them to get the tone of the day right. By "right" I mean that when the text is from Luke's gospel, I would try to have the sermon and service feel subdued yet hopeful, rather than "triumphal" and characterized by "Cameron craziness." (Cameron is the name of Duke's basketball arena.) I would not announce my findings or intentions to people ("Welcome to worship. Today our service will be subdued yet hopeful."). I would just try to craft something like that, and I would know to craft something like that because I had done a little redaction criticism as I studied the Gospel text.

Ain't biblical studies grand?