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?

Wherever You Are

Luke 5:1-3, 11b-32.

In 1993, sociologist of religion Marsha G. Witten published All Is Forgiven: The Secular Message in American Protestantism. She wanted to know how American Protestantism was responding to the increasingly privatized, pluralistic and rationalistic society of the 1980s, and she investigated this question by soliciting and analyzing sermons from Southern Baptists and Presbyterians preached between 1986 and 1988. The text on which she asked for sermons was the parable of the Prodigal Son.

Some reviewers of Witten's work—as well was Witten herself—wonder whether the text choice itself colored her findings. This is a story of unconditional forgiveness, after all. Even so, Witten reports finding a "daddy" God, a blunting of the scandal of sin, and an individualized experience of forgiveness. In her conclusion, she asks these questions:

1. "What … of the immensely potent Protestant doctrine of grace, which appears eviscerated in much of the speech as speakers fail to acknowledge notions of human depravity and separation from a transcendent God?
2. "What of the ability of religious speech to deal with concerns of theodicy, if it declines to contend with issues of human suffering and evil?
3. "What of the the possibilities for creating and sustaining stable, binding communities of faith, if incentives to congregation are based purely on mutable perceptions of self-interest?

"If it loses these features and capacities, I think, Protestantism loses it essential identity" (All Is Forgiven, 140).

Borrowing from Witten's conclusions, I am fashioning a challenge for those who are thinking of preaching on Luke 15 this Sunday. Are there elements in this text—or elsewhere in our tradition—that make it possible to be faithful to Jesus' story here and still (1) take sin and its relationship-breaking, pain-inflicting consequences seriously and (2) proclaim that forgiveness is never an isolated, individual experience, but instead is precisely the only reality that eliminates isolation and makes true community possible?

Here's a start.

When we were tired of being "It" in Hide and Seek and having no luck finding the hidden ones, we would yell, "Come out, come out, wherever you are!" I thought of this phrase in connection with the way the father of the parable responds to both of his sons. Maybe the goal of the father's love is not that the younger son will see the error of his ways and find his way home (that's important, but not the goal here), or that the father will see him in the distance and run to him in joy (important too, but the story is not over yet). Instead, the climax of the story is something not in the story yet at all: the climax of the story is the community that will be formed when the two brothers are together again. Anything less than this is just same old, same old: little brother, isolated from big brother, thoughtlessly partying while big brother feels isolated by his own sense of responsibility and all the work that needs to be done. This outcome to the story is the theological equivalent of little bro saying, "I like to sin. God likes to forgive. What could be better?" which is (you heard it here first) not the gospel.

God hates sin so much not because God is a peevish scorekeeper, but because sin harms those that God loves: namely, you and your neighbor. It is testimony to just how devastating little brother's actions have been that the father needs to find the older son and try to convince him that reconciliation does not mean, "No harm, no foul" and that the old, unfair relationship between the brothers is not the only possible future for the two. Little bro's sin started a long time before he spent all that money in "dissolute living." He made a hash of his relationship with his brother, and he let his father know he couldn't wait for the old man to kick before he got his mitts on the inheritance.

What makes reconciliation between brothers possible? The father says to the older son, "This brother of yours was dead and has come to life" (Luke 15:32). The past is not the only factor shaping the future of the two brothers. That could be a definition of forgiveness: the past does not have all the power in this relationship. If the past were defining things, little brother would still be dead to his family and maybe not so far from really dead from starvation or HIV or the violence that so often accompanies life in the fast lane.  The father says to the older son, "We have a different present and future than anything in the past has led us to expect, one in which we are all together without the old patterns of harm inflicted and endured over and over. This is the reason for the party."

Repent or Perish

3 Lent C (2004)
Luke 13:1-9

Preaching Through the Christian Year is exceptionally good on this week's gospel reading. I can't present the whole 900 words of the piece here since it's copyrighted, but if you have the book, take a look at pp. 152-53. If you don't have the book, read on. I'll steal most of my points here from the piece!

Urgency

Those who were killed and then whose bodies were desecrated by Pilate, as well as those on whom the tower fell, are not as much examples of divine retribution from which to derive comfort ("Whew! At least I know I'm not sinful enough for something like that to happen to me.") as they are lessons on how all of us are living on borrowed time. From Jesus: "Unless you repent, you will all perish as they did" (Luke 13:3).

By the way, I haven't read this anywhere, but it occurs to me that 13:10-17 is also connected to the urgency spoken of in 13:1-9. Jesus heals on the Sabbath for the same reason that you give a donkey water on the sabbath: there isn't time to wait!

Repentance

Preaching Through the Christian Year calls repentance, "a turning from sin and a reformation of action and attitude" (152). Lutherans love to talk about reformation, but when we do we are usually talking about someone or something else, a legalistic medieval Catholicism, or an old-fashioned traditional style of music in worship. Is there anything closer to home that needs reformation in your life, or the lives of people you (if you are a preacher) will be preaching to?

In October of 2002, OT Professor Fred Gaiser preached a sermon at Luther Seminary chapel on Isaiah 5 (sermon video here). The sermon's refrain was, "Come home. Come home. There's death where you've chosen to roam." Retribution is out as a way of explaining (1) natural disaster like the tower falling, or (2) man's inhumanity to man, as evidenced by Pilate. But that does not mean repentance is out too!

Why Them? Why Us? Why Me?

Jesus rejects retribution and yet calls for repentance. The fact that some of us (I speak for myself here) find our brains taxed when we try to hold these two thoughts together may indicate just how tied into retribution we still are. "If punishment is not directly related to sin, then—explain it to me again—why should I repent?" Luke might say simply, "It is necessary." The authors of Preaching Through the Christian Year engage the question this way:

“ ” “ ”

The question, Why this to these particular people? is as old as the human race. The Book of Job, Psalm 37, and Psalm 73 ask the question. The disciples asked Jesus, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" The question assumed that there was a direct correlation between sin and suffering. To those disciples (John 9:3) and in today's lection Jesus denied that direct correlation. But still the idea persists: illness, poverty, disease, loneliness, and death are the punishment for sins known or unknown. For Christians, the fatal blow to the idea that suffering and death are the lot of the guilty came at Golgotha. The One without sin suffered and died on the cross; some present took that as proof that he was not the Son of God (Matt. 27:39-43). But Jesus' disciples are forever freed from the ancient notion that prosperity and good health are evidence of divine favor, whereas poverty and suffering are clear sings of divine wrath…. Jesus rejects such attempts at calculation, not simply because they are futile, but because they direct attention from the primary issue—the obligation of every person to live in penitence and trust before God without linking one's loyalty to God to life's sorrows or joys. All are to repent or perish. Source: Fred Craddock, et al., Preaching Through the Christian Year C (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1994), 152-3.

Wide Open Are Your Arms

2 Lent C
Luke 13:31-35

A thought experiment: read through the gospel text substituting the name of your town for "Jerusalem" wherever it appears. (You could try "Washington" too, but the US government feels so distant from most of us that it might not have the desired effect.) Does anything about that reading ring true?

In her commentary on Luke, Sharon Ringe writes, "When God's gracious will is thwarted by human refusal to accept it, Jesus' proclamation turns into lament" (192). True. We can see that lament in the story we'll be tracing throughout Lent. Humans reject things like "casting out demons and performing cures" (Luke 13:32) as well as the rest of what Jesus has to do and say. And we misread the story if it only functions to blame someone else for that rejection ("those stubborn, corrupt Jewish leaders" or "that fox, Herod and all establishment power like him" or "those mindless crowds, fueled solely by emotion, who could say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord' one day and 'Crucify him!' the next").

This is one time when we are not hearing the story correctly if we hear in it only someone else's problem. Biblical scholars usually want us all to remember that the scriptures are not just God's word to us, but to all people across centuries. "It's not always about you" is a good reminder for all sorts of things in our lives, Bible-reading included. Yet so-called critical distance with this text creates the problem of blaming someone else for the rejection of God's own servant, Jesus. The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins writes, "Christ plays in ten thousand places, / Lovely in limbs and lovely in eyes not his / To the Father through the features of men's faces" (here's the whole poem). If this is true, then perhaps those ten thousand Christs are traveling to ten thousand Jerusalems and hoping to gather their inhabitants the way a hen gathers her chicks.

It might not work to preach this, of course. (I'm reminded of former colleague Steve Ramp's comment that sometimes you just have to say about a sermon idea, "That dog won't hunt.") The twin dangers of "prophetic preaching" are that (1) the preacher looks like a self-righteous know-it-all and (2) the hearers are not inspired to repentance but just to annoyance, or to a vague feeling of guilt that lasts only long enough to spoil an otherwise perfectly good brunch. Still, I like the idea of working on the question, "Where/how is Jesus trying to gather us closer to him, and where/how are we scurrying out from under those wings and off to danger?" Borrowing some guiding words from the work of Concordia Seminary Homiletics Professor Richard Caemmerer, a sermon like this might make these points:

Goal: to find rest under those wings.
Malady: whatever keeps us scurrying about.
Means: Christ's open arms, widening to gather chicks rather than closing in protect himself. (Maybe Luke's preoccupation with Jerusalem in the gospel and Acts is a way of saying that Jesus is not willing to take "No" for an answer on this gathering thing.)

By the way, the connection between a hen's open wings and the open arms posture of crucifixion is made in a Christian Century piece by Barbara Brown Taylor. Probably six years ago now, she wrote about how a hen's heart and other vital organs are completely exposed to the fox when her wings are open. This is the posture Jesus takes figuratively, even as he is warned about "that fox," Herod. He will eventually take such a posture literally, arms wide open to gather all people to himself.

Glory, Kingdom, Power

First Sunday of Lent
Luke 4:1-13

I saw Mel Gibson's movie this week. Today's text is an example of why I like the book so much better than any movie I have seen about its subject. First of all, in the book, the devil is not some skinny boy-toy with a black hood and worms going up his nose. (What the heck was that?) But I'll write about the movie elsewhere.

Here's a character study of the devil, courtesy of Luke's temptation account:

The Devil & His Temptations

1. He arrives when Jesus is hungry, with an idea for how to get food. If this were all we knew about the devil, we could imagine him as anyone's mother or grandmother. "Look, you gotta eat." Or, more diabolically, those people who keep trying to convince us that we need three-course meals at Applebee's, or something from the late night menu at Wendy's. Put more into yourself, more fatty foods, more purchases, more horsepower, more.

2. In Jesus Christ Superstar, Simon the Zealot shares this advice with Jesus as they both look over the crowd Jesus has gathered.

There must be over fifty thousand
Screaming love and more for you.
And everyone of fifty thousand
Would do whatever you asked them to.
Keep them yelling their devotion,
But add a touch of hate at Rome.
You will rise to a greater power.
We will win ourselves a home.
You'll get the power and the glory
For ever and ever and ever
You'll get the power and the glory
For ever and ever and ever
You'll get the power and the glory
For ever and ever and ever
You'll get the power and the glory
For ever and ever and ever
Forever Amen! Amen! Amen!

"Add a touch of hate at Rome. You will rise to a greater power. We will win ourselves a home." The devil makes a similar pitch to Jesus. All the kingdoms of the world are his; he can give them to whomever he chooses. He offers a name, a place, enough power that no one can hurt you again, whether you are a peasant in an occupied state, or a kid ridiculed at school, or someone the boss calls stupid. The devil knows kingdom, power, glory.

Or does he? Hearing Simon's advice, Jesus replies,

Neither you, Simon, nor the fifty thousand,
Nor the Romans, nor the Jews,
Nor Judas, nor the twelve
Nor the priests, nor the scribes,
Nor doomed Jerusalem itself
Understand what power is,
Understand what glory is,
Understand at all,
Understand at all.
If you knew all that I knew, my poor Jerusalem,
You'd see the truth, but you close your eyes.
But you close your eyes.
While you live, your troubles are many, poor Jerusalem.
To conquer death, you only have to die.
You only have to die.

3. Like all others who are preoccupied with God, the devil can quote scripture to his purpose. Neither acquisition, nor power, nor even piety can provide a safe haven from the evil one. In this text, the devil quotes what has become a favorite funeral hymn (though for some reason, not a favorite of mine). "God can bail you out of anything," the devil tells Jesus. Jesus does not dispute this, but merely says, "Just because God can bail me out of anything, that doesn't mean I should make it necessary," or words to that effect.

From the Devil to Jesus

1. Jesus loves to eat. He especially loves to eat in Luke's gospel, if the number of table scenes is any indication. But "life is more than food and the body more than clothing" (Luke 2:23). Refusing the first temptation is a way that Jesus says, "My life will point to the truth of the "more" that life is than bread alone.

2. Kingdom, power, glory: Whose are these? What do they look like? When Jesus moves from the temptation to his ministry beyond the wilderness, what will he teach about these?

• Kingdom | That "it is among you" (Luke 17:21) and that "it is God's good pleasure to give you the kingdom" (Luke 12:32).
• Power | That the "power from on high" (Luke 24:49) that clothes Jesus' little band of disciples will give them the courage not to take up arms against Rome, but to be witnesses of Jesus' kingdom, power and glory "to the ends of the earth."
• Glory | That there is more glory in a day lily than in Solomon or any of the rest of us all dolled up (cf. Luke 12:27).

3. As much as Jesus loves to eat, he also loves to pray, especially in Luke's gospel. Piety is not the problem. Jesus will give his disciples parables about prayer. He will teach them the Lord's prayer. He will ask them to stay away and pray. Nonetheless, he will not cast himself down from the pinnacle of the temple and hope for the best. Quoting scripture and praying is not a complicated way of ringing for a cosmic bellhop. It is a way of being in a relationship with One whom we do not need to "put to the test."

Another Transfiguration Post

Well, sports fans, I'm not going to get my "listening" entry done here. It's turning out to be a moralistic endeavor (as in, "Let's all try to 'Listen to him' rather than blathering like Peter." Good grief!), and I'm not preaching this week, and there's too much going on for me to work more on this and it's Friday anyway so most of you probably have your Transfiguration work done.

Am I playing with enough excuses there?

Here are a few paragraphs I really liked from a Pilgrim reader who prefers to remain anonymous. (I'm very lucky to get emails like this regularly—you guys are great!) Remember, you can always post comments under names like "BrilliantOne" or "Elvis." Here are my friend's comments:

“ ” “ ”

Rattling around in my head has been the thought that in the Transfiguration we get a glimpse of the past, present and future.  The present, Jesus in conversation with the past, who then leaves to accomplish the future of God's people.  The thought does not get much past the rattling around. I am likely to play with the idea that this an aha moment for the Peter James and John.  They are fully aware for a moment of who Jesus is and what is about to happen, one of those overwhelming moments of clarity.  A moment that is both exhilirating and terrifying.  Our reaction to those moments, I think most often is to attempt to memorialize the moment somehow. Luke provides the corrective to trying to box in the Holy moments with the next story.  We are back in the muck.  The kingdom is in our life in this moment. —Pilgrim Reader from Iowa.

Miscellaneous Thoughts - Transfiguration

Transfiguration Sunday
Luke 9:28-36 [37-43]

Peter, Beloved Bumbler

In the most recent issue of "Connecting," the Southwestern MN Synod (ELCA) newsletter, Synod Minister Stephanie Frey has some nice material on Peter and "b" words, like bumbling and blathering. I can't find my copy at the moment (why are there papers all over my house?), but if you're in the SW MN synod and you get the newsletter, check it out.  I wish I could find mine to quote from liberally here.

"Ladies and gentlemen, Jesus is about to leave the building."

Most of my thinking on this text has not been done trying to pull Luke 9:28-36 together with 9:37-43, but one thing did occur to me. One connection between these two bits of text seems to be Jesus' "departure" (exodus in Greek—nifty, eh?) in v. 31 and Jesus' complaining, "How much longer must I be with you and bear with you?" in v. 41. Twice we hear, more or less, that he's on his way "outta here." It comes up one more time in this chapter, in v. 51: "When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem." Like I said, outta here.

Listening

I'm drawn to the contrast between talking and listening in this story. I'm going to work on this idea tonight and see if I come up with something to post.

Riches in the Rule of God

Luke 6:17-26

Almost everyone I know prefers the gospel of Luke to the gospel of Matthew. I teach Matthew, and I love it, but even I recognize that Matthew ruins some good stories, like when he tells everyone that the synagogue ruler's daughter is dead before Jesus even starts off to see her (Mt. 9:18-26; cf. Luke 8:40-56), or when he omits all the great details about the demoniac among the tombs (Mt. 8:28-9:1; cf. Mark 4:35-41).

People who love Luke tell me that this is the gospel of the little people (not least of all Zacchaeus), the gospel with all those great lyrics: Zechariah's Benedictus, Mary's Magnificat, Simeon's Nunc Dimittis, the gospel that most explicitly lifts up the ministry of women and most eloquently records Jesus' care for the poor.

Yet if I were preaching this week, here on Thursday afternoon I would be missing Matthew and his version of the Beatitudes. Even though Matthew's version, like Luke's, can function to accuse rather than just comfort, it is easy to get lost in Matthew's poetry. In Matthew, Jesus talks about the meek, the pure in heart, the poor in spirit. It is possible (even though probably wrong) to see these all as emotional states, and so to miss the way they bear upon relationships with and responsibilities to other people.

If you have a synopsis of the four gospels, dig it out and do a side-by-side comparison of Matthew and Luke here. (You can make your own synopsis online at a site called The Five Gospel Parallels. Find the text you want to compare in one gospel. Then click the little Bible above the pericope's title, and the texts that have a parallel to the one you clicked magically move to that parallel!)

Look at Matthew's list of blessings next to Luke's.

Blessed are...	Matthew	Luke
	the poor in spirit	you poor
	those who mourn	you who weep now
	the meek	--
	those who hunger and thirst for righteousness	you who hunger now
	those who are merciful	--
	the pure in heart	--
	the peacemakers	--
	those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake	--
	you when others revile you...	when others hate you...
Woe to you...	--	that are rich
	--	that are full now
	--	that laugh now
	--	when all speak well of you...

You can find woes in Matthew (cf. chapter 23), but not mixed in the list of beatitudes. And you can find concern about the poor in Matthew (cf. 25:31-46), but "poor in spirit" and "hunger and thirst for righteousness" do not as easily lead in that direction as Luke's version.

So how to preach Luke's version? Some thoughts:

The folly of the "We're so rich" cliche.
It does no good and can do harm for North American ministers to tell their congregations, "Just by virtue of being here today, you are among the very richest people in the world." Why don't I like this?

1. It's not news. Those of us that this comment accurately describes know this about ourselves. Your saying it just inspires a weird kind of dead-end guilt. Can we help it that we are in North America? Are you asking us to go live somewhere else? Or are we just supposed to feel guilty so you can feel important and needed by announcing forgiveness to us? Or do you want us to do something about being "among the richest people in the world" and if so, what?
2. Someone in your congregation is probably really hungry, perhaps really poor. They will feel "invisible as usual" as you speak. You have projected your middle class status on everyone there and are blind to people like the elder who really does choose between buying food or medicine, or the child in a home so dysfunctional or poor that supper is routinely a bowl of Fruit Loops. Not everyone has your problems.

Reversal of fortune
The point of the text is not that Jesus loves to hate rich people. The point of this text is that, "The times, they are a changin'." The mighty will be cast down and the lowly lifted up. (Hmm... we've heard that somewhere before.) So a way into preaching this text might be to consider what are those things that change about our lives as a result of life in the Rule of God. The values here are upside down: "woe to you when all speak well of you..." and so on. Are there real, upside down stories or experiences you see close to home?

For those of us who have (like Mrs. Turpin and Claud in Flannery O'Connor's short story, "Revelation") "a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right," and want things to stay that way, Jesus does not give us much comfort. Things are changing. Yet I wouldn't be a preacher of the gospel unless I believed that what the Rule of God offers—this reversal of fortune that Jesus announces and over which he presides—is better than anything any of us will lose as a result of a change of administration. In Acts, we hear that the apostles, for a while at least, offer evidence of their trust in this conviction by living it out in the way that scares Americans the most: they hold their goods in common and share as one another have need. I wonder, what did they know about the riches of Rule of God that we do not know?

Regular People as Disciples

Luke 5:1-11

In his commentary on Acts in the Interpretation series, Will Willimon comments that Peter, quoting Joel in Acts 2, is not talking just about God raising up individual prophets, but rather about God forming a prophetic community. Old and young, men and women, servants as well as those served—all of these receive the Holy Spirit in the last days. Reading Luke 5:1-11, it occurs to me that the Holy Spirit doesn't wait until Acts to get going on this prophetic community development project.

Peter is a useful model for discipleship precisely because he is a regular guy. What do I mean by regular?

1. He's by the shore washing out nets. They guy works for a living.
2. He had a bad day (or night, actually) at work. Once in a while that happens to just about everyone.
3. He talks frankly to Jesus. Yes, he uses an honorific title ("master" in the NRSV), but you can hear the resistance to Jesus' words in his reply to the suggestion that he try fishing again. He's not afraid to say to Jesus, "This sounds like a bad idea to me."
4. He knows he's way out of his league when he realizes that Jesus has at his disposal the power of God. No false modesty here, just the realization that, "I am a sinner."

The epiphany in the text for me is not so much the great catch of fish (though that is impressive), but rather Jesus' catch of Peter and the implications of that catch for who else Jesus is interested in catching for membership in his prophetic community.

1. Jesus is not put off by Peter's initial resistance to the idea of putting the nets down again. Apparently we don't have to hide our true opinion of Jesus' ideas from Jesus himself.
2. Jesus is not put off either by Peter's sinfulness or Peter's acknowledgement of the same. Likewise, we don't have to hide our true opinion of ourselves from Jesus.
3. By calling Peter, Jesus is about something bigger than just affirming Peter (not that there's anything wrong with that). :-) The reason for the call is not to say to Peter, "Buck up, little buddy, you're not so bad," but rather, "Stop being afraid now. We have work to do."

The crowds are as overwhelming as all those fish in the nets. The reason for the call of disciples is that people need the power of God and the Word of God that Jesus is offering, and in order to catch people with these things, Jesus needs help. The best thing that Peter teaches us about discipleship is that a regular guy does not cease to be a regular guy just because he is called to follow Jesus. Jesus is not putting together a group of fellow superstars who can sing, "When we all retire, we will write the gospels, so they'll all talk about us when we've died." Jesus is putting together a prophetic community, a group of people who will live the gospel so that others can hear it and see it. To do that, he will need all the regular people he can find.

On Staying Put - Or Not

Luke 4:21-30

Once again, Paul Palumbo and I talked about the gospel text this week by phone. He asked, "What did Jesus do?" (Now there's a bracelet idea....) What did Jesus do to torque the hometown crowd sooooo out of shape? "They were filled with rage," Luke says, and they tried to kill him. What was so upsetting?

We agreed that the standard reading of the text is that Jesus says, "This work of God toward healing, binding up broken-hearted, releasing captives, etc. is not just for Israel," and upon hearing that "Our God is an awesome God," big enough for good deeds to outsiders, the Nazareth congregation gets ugly.

"Maybe," Paul said, but he was unsatisfied with that reading. Was it really such new and upsetting information that God is paying attention to others? This is a theme throughout the Law and the Prophets. Would a "God is gonna share the love" speech really get Jesus in that much trouble?

It's a good point. So, if the scandal is not a generous and inclusive God, what is it?

I wonder if the scandal doesn't have something to do with the people wanting Jesus to keep the work local in a different way. "Don't let the buffalo roam," the billboards used to say in Jamestown, North Dakota, encouraging us to shop locally and support local businesses. Maybe the people want Jesus to establish himself at home, to set up shop there, to give something back. They like it when he is reading and speaking in the synagogue. The young rabbi could establish himself right at home.

Instead, he makes it clear that he will just keep moving on, and he also makes it clear that in doing so, he is following God's lead from the old days. I once heard a speaker talk about how Luke does not use verbs that have to do with status or with being established (relatives of ) in favorable contexts. Rather, being "on the way" is Luke's metaphor for the Christian life. Of course, not every impulse toward restlessness is an impulse to be a better Christian. For this reason, parts of the Christian tradition have put a high value on stability. Yet Jesus doesn't. Jesus "the same yesterday, today and forever?" I don't know how the writer of Hebrews meant it, but if we're talking about Jesus, we have to say, "For Jesus to 'stay the same' is to say that he will stay on the move. To stay with him will mean joining him on the road rather than coming back to a place where he has established himself, or a place where he will establish us, "setting us up" in a manner to which we could become accustomed. No such promises have been made, not to the people in the Nazareth synagogue, and not to us.

Finite Bearing the Infinite

Luke 4:14-21

I found out that the church I'm preaching at on Sunday is reading the Third Sunday after the Epiphany texts. Here are my preliminary thoughts about the gospel text. As you can see, I'm pondering what it means (and how it is true today) that "the finite is capable of bearing the infinite."

1. The gifts of God present in the common life of small town neighbors. When Jesus stands up and reads, then sits down and preaches, he is showing the people one of their own, anointed for God's work. There is a regular, everydayness to this. It was his custom to go to the synagogue; it was perhaps even his custom to read and speak about the text. He is "one of us." The finite is capable of bearing the infinite. But how do you know you're looking at the real deal? The people of Nazareth couldn't be sure, and were finally scandalized by the idea of such a familiar one making a claim like the one in Isaiah for himself. What are we missing because it is too familiar?
   
2. What "messiah" means. What will God's anointed one do? How do you know you're looking at the real deal? When John the Baptist sends the question to Jesus in Luke 7, Jesus replies to the messengers, "Go and tell John what you see and hear: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them." From the start here in Nazareth, this is the substance of what Jesus says his ministry is about: good news to the poor, recovery of sight to the blind, freedom for the oppressed, an announcement of the acceptable year of the Lord. Where do we see this taking place today? Are we a part of it?
   
3. Expectations. Already word has spread. The people in Nazareth are eager to receive something from their weekly religious pilgrimage, just as everyone is who listens to a preacher today. All eyes are fixed, expectantly, on Jesus. What will they see in him? What will they hear in his message? Will he tell them that the Isaiah text (a) pleasant nostalgia about the past work of God to bring the exiles home, or (b) pie in the sky, a far-out promise to be fulfilled by God in heaven? No. Jesus rejects both of these readings and offers an alternative: Today. Today, with all its ambiguity, all its expectations, disappointments and compromises. Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. Again, the finite is capable of bearing the infinite.

What do you think? Comment here on how you see this scripture fulfilled today where you live. Can we bear witness to present-day work of the Holy Spirit to make Jesus known as the one who announces freedom, good news and the acceptable year of the Lord? What sorts of things would we point to if we needed to make an argument that Jesus' word about what is happening "today" is just as true on Sunday morning as it was on that Sabbath day in Nazareth when he spoke?

I have one idea so far. I spent a few days last week at Concordia College. Concordia's purpose statement is this: "to influence the affairs of the world by sending into society thoughtful and informed men and women dedicated to the Christian life." I'm sure that Concordia has all the usual challenges that institutions face trying to live up to their own mission statements. Even so, something very good is going on there. Hundreds of kids came to the Wednesday night Communion service. The dozen or so kids who attended a Bible study the night before struck me as both "thoughtful and informed" already, as well as intellectually curious and pious at the same time.  Wherever they end up in society, they will be there as people who recognize the lordship of one who was anointed to turn the values of imperial society upside down (good news to the poor, freedom for those oppressed, jubilee ethics and economics, and more). It seemed to me that the Holy Spirit was well on its way to fulfilling scripture again, there in the lives of 18-22 year-olds, and, by allowing me to witness it, in my life too.

Conversion of Paul

Luke 21:10-19 (Gospel for Conversion of Paul, Jan. 25)

Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

In the gospel of Luke, we are right in between Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem and the plotting that will lead directly to his death. Things are going well for the country cousin in the big city, so far.

• He has entered the city to shouts of "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord" (Luke 19:38).
• He has thrown sellers out of the temple while the people "were spellbound by what they heard" and so the chief priest, scribes and leaders of the people were unable to reach Jesus to stop him (Luke 19:47f.)
• He has fielded questions from scribes, elders and Sadducees until finally, "they no longer dared to ask him another question" (Luke 20:40).

Into this context of victory after victory comes the disciples wonder about the beautiful stones of the temple and gifts there dedicated to God. Jesus replies to them that "not one stone will be left upon another..." and within a few verses is speaking the words of this Sunday's gospel reading.  The juxtaposition of victory and persecution occupies Luke in Acts also, and apparently follows Paul throughout his ministry.

Don't Worry, Be Unprepared

Jesus lets the disciples know what will face them (persecutions by family, etc.), and says, "This will give you an opportunity to testify" and then, "Make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict." Paul says in Philippians 1 that his imprisonment has actually served to advance the gospel. It has been an opportunity to testify. Some "backwards" is being embraced here. Those things that would seem to bring embarrassment or shame to the early Christians end up being things that make it possible for people to talk about Jesus.

So why would Jesus tell the disciples about what is going to happen to them if they are not supposed to prepare anyway? Maybe everyone gets this "heads up" here in the gospel so they will (1) recognize what is happening to Jesus (he is just about to be dragged before one particular governor) and (2) so they will be able to say, "Jesus said there would be days like this," when persecution happens to them and, like Paul in jail, figure out where the chance for testimony is.

Things that Make You Go "Hmm..."

I have no idea why this text includes both the observation that, "they will put some of you to death" (v. 16) and "not a hair of your head will perish" (v. 18). Click on "comments" and write up your idea for us on this if you can figure out how these verses work together.

The Baptism of Jesus

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22.

Most of the sermons I have heard on the Baptism of Jesus are really about Christian baptism and its benefits. There's nothing wrong with preaching on baptism and its benefits, yet I suggest a thought experiment: what if you, O preacher, located yourself and your hearers somewhere else in this story besides in the Jordan with Jesus? Here are a couple of options.

Among those watching

What would it be like, for instance, to see ourselves as witnesses to the descent of the Holy Spirit as a dove, or as those who hear the voice from heaven? From that vantage point, what do you see/hear/think/feel? Is this what you have been waiting for (remember Luke's mention of people "filled with expectation")?

• You notice that Jesus is praying. A voice from heaven and a voice from earth are in conversation with each other. (This will continue to be true of Jesus and God, especially in Luke's gospel [5:11; 6:12; 9:18; 9:28-29; 11:1; 22:32, 39, 46; 23:34, 46].)
• You notice that he's affiliated with John the Baptist, that feisty, courageous and now imprisoned man who dares to speak truth to the likes of you and the likes of Herod.
• You notice that whatever is happening is public: the Holy Spirit is visible (which must be what "bodily" means) in the form of a dove, and the voice is audible. It is not just for Jesus, or a cozy connection meant only for Jesus and God. It is for something that will get bigger as the gospel goes on (starting when Jesus himself explains in chapter 4 why the Holy Spirit is upon him.)

John the Baptist

In other gospels, John interacts with Jesus "on stage." Here, John is shut up in prison before we hear about Jesus' baptism. It probably does not fit with the spirit of the text to make John the Baptist the one from whose perspective we see this story. He is, after all, trying to de-emphasize himself and point always to Jesus. Even so, what might John see in the baptism of Jesus?

• He had expected the "Holy Spirit and fire." Yet here the Holy Spirit does not take the form of fire, but the form of a dove.
• Jesus aligns himself with those who are receiving a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. The curious thing about Jesus at his baptism is not what is exceptional about him, but rather the way he joins and blends in with the crowd. Incarnation means incarnation in the people of Israel, too, not just incarnation in a human body, devoid of a community and its sinfulness and repentance.
• Jesus' ability to "blend" and the fact of the durable power of the world's Herods makes it hard sometimes to know if he's really the one. The complexity of John's feeling about Jesus is probably best summed up in the message he sends Jesus from prison, "Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?"

The challenge of this text is to preach Jesus, rather than preaching to people about how "your baptism makes you a child of God." (For the record, it seems to me we are all children of God by virtue of our having been created by the Creator God. Baptism joins us to Christ, and functions to make us God's reborn children, but that does not mean that we were born children of anyone but God in the first place. In as much as the Lutheran Book of Worship liturgy obscures this, it is IMHO* wrong.)

Looking closely at Jesus' baptism and at the role the Holy Spirit plays in his ministry (a concordance search on the Holy Spirit in Luke is a good place to start) also spares us from turning a sermon on baptism into something that could function as a commercial for "cotton: the fabric of our lives."  Our talk of baptism can get sentimental very quickly. Baptism is not just meant for the relieving of the individual's tortured conscience or making us feel collectively warm about the "family of God." There's fire to be walked through in this life, truth to be spoken to power and healing to be offered to the whole creation. It is for such things as these that God has given us baptism, with its gift of God's Holy Spirit, living and active in Jesus' life and in ours.

*IMHO = "in my humble opinion."

Magnifying the Lord

Luke 1:39-45 (46-55)

Here are a few miscellaneous comments on the story of Mary & Elizabeth & their baby boys.

Willimon and the stuff that's really hard to believe.

My favorite comment on Luke 1 comes from Will Willimon. He tells the story of a college student talking to him about how the virgin birth was just too incredible to believe. Willimon responded, "You think that's incredible, come back next week. Then, we will tell you that 'God has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly.' We'll talk about the hungry having enough to eat and the rich being sent away empty. The virgin birth? If you think you have trouble with the Christian faith now, just wait. The virgin birth is just a little miracle; the really incredible stuff is coming next week."

Place, Time and Luke the Storyteller

Reading the first verse of this text ("In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country...") reminded me of the opening lines of Luke's introduction of John the Baptist (Luke 3:1ff.), except that it's not the emperor, the governor and the regions over which Herod and his family reign that Luke mentions here. Instead, we see the hill country of Judea and hear from an old woman and a girl. Could it be that already in the introduction, the mighty are cast down? They are, in fact, nowhere to be seen in this moment.

Singing the Story

Preaching through the Christian Year has a couple of very nice quotes springing from the fact that our gospel this week is a song. Here they are:

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"If there are Sundays when the church senses that the Scripture readings are distant from the life and mood of the congregation, today is not one of them. As music and song fill the Advent Season, so has Luke chosen to sing rather than explain or prove or exhort in our Gospel lection…. "In movement, Mary's song makes an easy transition from the remarkable act of God to and through Mary to the remarkable act of God by which all the oppressed, poor, and hungry of the world will be blessed …. [S]o confident is the singer's faith that God's justice and grace will prevail that the expression of hope is cast in the past tense. Mary sings as though what shall be is already true. In this trust, God's servants continue to sing" (Preaching through the Christian Year C, 25).

On Fire & Expectation

Luke 3:7-18

I remembered this sermon when I read the gospel text for this week. I preached it at a Holy Communion service in Luther Seminary chapel during Advent of 2000. --mh

Title: What Part of "Fire" Don't You Understand?

I have been trying to imagine John the Baptist presiding at a seeker service. I imagine him saying, “Welcome to worship this morning. And if this is your first time worshipping here along the banks of the Jordan, we would extend a special welcome to you. We're glad you're here.”

By the way, I have no explanation for why I hear John saying all this in a North Carolina accent. Of course, both the speech and the accent are pure fantasy on my part. Nothing even remotely like this ever appears in accounts of John's ministry. The only sermon we have from him begins not with a welcome, but with an attack: To the crowds coming for baptism, John says, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”

If is as if you were visiting a congregation one Sunday, and in the narthex, before the service, a man walks up to greet you. You expect, “Won't you sign our guest book?” but instead you hear, “What rock did you slither out from under?”

Thank Edges for God

Luke 3:1-6

Early in The Dark Interval, John Dominic Crossan explains the difference between myth, which creates an understandable worldview, and parable, which subverts the understandable and expected. Parable exists at the edge of the way we know the world to be. It is familiar enough that we can grasp it, but unfamiliar enough to change everything when we do. Crossan says that God is in this overturning of our expectations and he writes that the point is not so much to say, "Thank God for edges," as "Thank edges for God." It is at the edges of known and unknown that God is revealed.

It's the edges in the gospel text that caught my eye. We start in the center—or centers—of political power: the emperor, the governor, high priests, Rome, Jerusalem, etc. All the usual suspects are present. But then there is a move to the edges: we're in the wilderness, beside a river. It may not be news to you, but the contrast in the text between the long descriptions of the high and mighty in 3:1-2a and then "John son of Zechariah in the wilderness" in v. 2b is still way cool. The Roman emperor, the governor, various mid-level bureaucrats, and even a couple of high priests become window dressing, backdrop, blur. Meanwhile, the focus comes to rest on the word of God coming to John and John speaking it, not in the temple, or Jerusalem, or Rome, but down at the edge of the river.

If God were to make God's self known from the edges where you live or work, what would it look like? A friend of mine was busted on his second day of work in a new place when a female coworker mentioned to him that he always looked at their male colleague when he spoke, never at her. My friend had unconsciously figured out where the power was likely to be. He was angling toward the center, focused on the power. Who do you look at for direction, approval or a share of power?

More importantly, if we're trying to find the edge that could reveal God, who do you not look at? From what or whom do you avert your eye? Maybe the homeless man at the edge of the freeway off ramp is an example. Remember that the point of the exercise is not to look at the man and his "will work for food" sign in order to see how you (from the center) can help him (at the edge), but to look at him in order to see what he knows about God that you do not know. "Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight his path." What does this man know about the Lord and his path that cannot be seen except from the edge where he stands? Standing there with him for a while could be a place to start to answer that question. Asking him what he sees and hears there could help too.

Maybe there is someplace else, or lots of other places, you would define as the edge instead of the center of power. Stand there, if you can, listening for what the word of God sounds like from that place. You might hear something that will preach.