Pilgrim Preaching

On Rendering

24 Pentecost A | Matthew 22:15-22
October 16, 2005

Probably nine years ago, I heard this line in a sermon by Paul Palumbo: "Having been rendered to Caesar, Jesus renders us into the very heart of God." I wrote it down on the back of a bulletin. This week I finally had an opportunity to use it. That sermon, preached in the Luther Seminary chapel, follows.

Chapel sermons are strange for several reasons (the congregation members are all connected to a theological seminary; one is preaching before one's students, teachers and colleagues; the sermon is supposed to be about 8 minutes long!). I thought I had to throw out a few good things this time so here are some notes that wouldn't work in the sermon I preached but might work somewhere else.

1. Is it lawful? This question is posed to Jesus here but other occurrences of the question/issue are really interesting. Among the places it shows up in Matthew are (a) when Jesus' disciples are plucking grain on the Sabbath, and (b) when Jesus is about to heal someone on the Sabbath, and (c) when Judas throws the money back at the temple authorities after he repents of betraying Jesus. That last discussion of whether something is "lawful" struck me as a great tie between this text and the cross, but I couldn't get it to fit in my sermon.
2. Where do we fit in the story? In the sermon, I put the congregation in the position of Jesus, asking them to answer the question, "Is it lawful to pay taxes…?" from the perspective of a teacher, student or staff member at the seminary. It would be a different sermon if the congregation were asked to identify with, say, the questioners. Is there a way that we fuss about theological questions precisely so we do not have to face the real question about who Jesus is and how he challenges Caesar's authority?

One more comment about my experience of this text. I am just about the farthest thing imaginable from a prophetic preacher. I am a great fan of direct deposit and tenure. I like the prayer in Compline that says, "The Lord Almighty grant us a quiet night, and peace at the last." Mostly I like paying my taxes and being left alone. I don't naturally take to agitating or being agitated. Yet it seems to me that the powers and principalities really do make a play for all of us, and I wanted to announce to my hearers, "You do not belong to them." After I did that, I got a lot of feedback about how the sermon was courageous. Is it an "edgy" thing to call American an empire? I didn't think so, but I heard enough of those sorts of comments that I'm curious how a parallel between America and Rome might play in the preaching contexts of my readers.

Here's the sermon.

The Tension of Discipleship

14 and 15 Pentecost | Matthew 16:13ff.

I wrote a short sermon for the ELCA Convocation of Teaching Theologians on the Luther Seminary campus this week. I couldn't keep from talking about the fact that just after Peter's confession, Jesus starts talking about his death--so this might be fodder for 14 Pentecost or 15 Pentecost texts.

More than in any other gospel, in the gospel of Matthew, Jesus is a teacher and a trainer of teachers. We get long exegetical lectures from Jesus in Matthew—“you have heard it said… but I say to you….” There are handfuls of parables piled one on top of the other, and even a few private tutoring sessions between the Teacher and his disciples. The disciples are somewhat better students here than they seem to be according to Mark. Their scholarship—or something—is good enough in Matthew that by the end of the book, they receive a call to teach. “Go and make disciples of all nations,” Jesus instructs them, “baptizing them … and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you.”

Even so, it sounds like Jesus starts out today's lesson with rather low expectations of his class.

Letter to a Canaanite Woman

13 Pentecost A | Matthew 15:21-28

(Last fall, I preached this sermon at a Luther Seminary chapel service. I adapted it from an earlier post I made here.)

Dear Canaanite Sister,

You go girl! I've never seen anyone talk to Jesus like that. And this from someone who so clearly does not belong. No one has called anyone a Canaanite for centuries. You are a foreigner—or you would be a foreigner if it were not your home turf that Jesus had wandered into. What's more, you are a Canaanite woman in the middle of a group of Jewish men. You are so out of place and so out of time and so exactly where your daughter needs you to be.

I heard you first, before I saw you. You were screaming, crying, crying out, wailing in that Emergency Room that doubles as a road through Tyre and Sidon . So completely foreign it all was. What were you doing there? What was Jesus doing there? You would tell him what he was doing. "Have mercy on me, Son of David," you said. "My daughter… my daughter is tormented by a demon."

You were screaming when you said this, hysterical we would say. It was hard to hear, harder to watch. You followed those men, still crying after them. The disciples wondered if the demon didn't have hold of you, too. You kept shouting. They asked Jesus to dismiss you. He ignored them. But he ignored you too, and some of us who know him found his silence even more disturbing than your cries.

Then he spoke, and things got worse. "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel ," he said. At that point, had I been you, I would have gotten angry. "Sent only to Israel, huh? Then what the hell are you doing in Tyre? Need a map, Mister Omniscient Son of God?"

Did you teach the Teacher? "Lord, help me," you said, instead of fussing about just who was lost and who was out of place. To which you heard, "It is not fair to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs."

You were kneeling when he said this, existing low where it is possible to smell exactly what the Rottweiler had for lunch. Had you fallen at his feet just to stop him in his tracks? Maybe, but your kneeling looked like the posture of worship. It looked like you were praying when he said you were a dog. And heaven knows, “Lord help me!” is a prayer.

"It is not fair to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs." We still cannot quite believe our Jesus said this. We are so embarrassed that Jesus would call anyone a dog, and we are so nonchalant about God keeping promises to God's children—unless, of course, we are the children of God to whom the promises were made. But when Jesus spoke of the children and their bread, he was not talking about most of us any more than he was talking about you. You knelt before him, and he as much as said, “You are right where you belong, dog.”

I wonder if it was not your place below the action that told you what to say next. "Yes Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." I'm down here, Lord, with the dogs, looking for just a little. A little… “My daughter…. Have mercy…. Crumbs."

Did you teach the Teacher? I think you did. Because of you and your fierce need, God's own Son himself came to see his life's work as bigger than before. What he had not thought to look for in anyone like you, he saw: faith. He saw your tenacious conviction that he could help, and amazed, he did.

I have thought that fear makes it impossible to imagine things. "Perfect fear casts out all imagination," I have thought. But you were afraid—you must have been afraid of the demon and of your daughter's suffering and afraid of all those foreign men and all their insults. You must have been afraid, yet you could see a new thing—healing—at the same time. “Woman,” Jesus said (choosing, finally, a better name than dog), “Great is your faith.” You imagined healing before it happened and you showed it to the Healer.

Walking by faith, crying out by faith, kneeling and talking back to God by faith like that, what might we see?

•  Can faith declare God's work for us in places where we don't belong?

•  Will faith point us, with you, to that stranger on the road—out of place himself—who certainly can help?

•  Will it break for us the loaf that is enough for children and for dogs.

•  Might your story help us grasp these things even when we're terrified?

You taught the Teacher. What will you teach us?

Duh-scipling

10 Pentecost A | Matthew 13:1-9; 18-23

Have you ever tried over and over to log into a web site, only to read the directions one more time and see that you have been entering your data (again and again) in the wrong spot? Or have you found yourself unable to make any sense of a set of driving directions—and then you discover you have the wrong starting point in mind? A few years ago, the word "duh" made it into American English vernacular for just such moments.

My single exegetical insight into this week's gospel text has to do with understanding. In Matthew, when Jesus is explaining the parable of the sower, he talks about understanding the word:

"When anyone hears the word about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches what was sown in his heart; this is the seed sown along the path" (Matt 13:19, NET).

"But as for the seed sown on good soil, this is the person who hears the word and understands. He bears fruit, yielding a hundred, sixty, or thirty times what was sown" (Matt 13:23, NET).

Neither Mark nor Luke records an explanation from Jesus that says anything about understanding the word. "Getting it" is a preoccupation only for Matthew. Matthew would have liked Philip's question to the Ethiopian eunuch as Philip caught up to his chariot: "Do you understand what you are reading?" (Acts 8:30).

By this point in Jesus' ministry, people watching and listening to him have all sorts of data about him. They have heard the Sermon on the Mount, his Dream Speech of life in the Rule of God. They have seen healings, even one reported at a distance—and that of a Roman centurion's slave. The disciples have witnessed the stilling of the storm. Pharisees have witnessed him eating with sinners. Crowds of people have heard him pronounce the forgiveness of sins and seen him heal on the Sabbath.

"Do you understand what you are reading?" Do the witnesses understand what they are seeing? Here are a few reactions to Jesus reported just before and after the parable of the sower:

• The Pharisees conclude that it is by the ruler of demons that Jesus casts out demons (Matt 12:24).
• Some of the scribes and Pharisees ask for a sign (Have they been seeing nothing for the last 8 chapters?) (Matt 12:38).
• Jesus' family is a little anxious, trying to get word to him (Matt 13:46ff).
• The hometown crowd takes offense at him (Matt 13:57).

It's as if we are halfway through the semester and just about everyone has failed the midterm. Do you understand? Does anyone understand what they are seeing? In another context, the apostle Paul calls Jesus the wisdom of God and then says, "None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory" (1 Cor 2:8).

Jesus responds to this lack of understanding by  s p e a k i n g  v e r y  s l o w l y to the duh-sciples. "Hear, then, the parable of the sower," he says before he explains the parable to them. "Let me draw you a picture. Is a parable too artistic of a medium for you? How about an allegory then? Let's try one-for-one correspondence. I'm not really talking about seeds here; I'm talking about the word of the kingdom of God."

In Mark's version, Jesus quotes Isaiah as a way of saying that he is speaking in parables in order to hide the secrets of the kingdom, as if the parables were a kind of inside-baseball for the disciples only. Yet in all the synoptics—Mark included—Jesus keeps at his audience. "Do you understand? Well, then, let me explain it again." He is sometimes an impatient teacher (cf. Matt 16:9 and Mark 8:17), but he is ever the teacher.

What is Jesus trying to teach? For starters, he is teaching that in the midst of rulers of this age from Herod the Great to Pontius Pilate roiling at the news, still, "the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Matt 4:17; cf. 13:20). He is teaching that persecutions are not to be feared and that persecution or no, "you are of more value than many sparrows" (Matt 10:26-31; cf. 13:21). He is teaching that "life is more than food, and the body more than clothing" (Matt 6:25; cf. 13:22).

And he keeps teaching. This Teacher bears a striking family resemblance to the loquacious One who called worlds into being with the Word and just keeps on talking through the prophets, the scriptures and even your voice and mine. Throughout the gospel, the Word made flesh keeps teaching with his speech and actions. He himself is seed cast abroad on the earth, sent by the Sower whose word does not return void but accomplishes what was intended for it. Thorns, the rulers of this age, dry and hardened minds and hearts: all sorts of things threaten this good seed and its seedlings. Still, it bears fruit.

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.

Do we have to tell that story?

15th Sunday after Pentecost
Exodus 32:7-14

The small snippet of Exodus here is probably pretty easy to preach on. God sees sin, is incensed by it, but willing to listen to reason and repent of plans for destruction when Moses brings up the fact that a promise was made. Reading the rest of this section of Exodus (chapters 32-34), however, is really hard. Some of the hard stuff:

1. The religious professional Aaron goes along to get along, melting down gold, declaring a festival and generally just keeping the people happy until he can hand off the congregation to the senior pastor again. When called to account, he says first, "You know how evil these people are" (32:22) and then about the idol he says, "I threw [their gold] into the fire and out came this calf" (32:24). Way to take responsibility, Aaron.
   
2. Moses is a nice guy in the lectionary piece, but then when he gets to the foot of the mountain, he exercises the very wrath that God was able (for the moment at least) to repent of. He incites a civil war, ordering those who are "on the Lord's side" to "Put your sword on your side, each of you! Go back and forth from gate to gate throughout the camp, and each of you kill your brother, your friend, and your neighbor" (32:27).
   
3. God does repent of the impulse to wipe out the Israelites, and God renews the covenant in chapter 34, but on the way to that renewal, God still "shares the wrath" a bit. The Lord says, "Whoever has sinned against me I will blot out of my book" (32:33) and to keep that promise, the Lord sends another plague (32:35), not on the Egyptians this time, but on his own people.

I know I wouldn't have done any better as a leader—or perhaps even as a follower—on that way-too-long family camping trip in the wilderness, yet these details of the story are still really hard to read. I might just avert my eye from these parts of the story, but then I remember something Diane Jacobson has said about the Old Testament: how odd it was for the Jews to keep telling stories that showed their screw-ups in living color. Grafted into Israel, we have joined a people who have practice telling the unvarnished truth about ourselves, our leaders and even our not-always-easy-going God.

God Pause Commercial

15th Sunday after Pentecost
Exodus 32:7-14

Pr. Bill Waxenberg has written a very nice God Pause devotion on the subject of God repenting. To find it, look for the Pause dated 9/6/04. If you like, you can also sign up on this page to get a God pause via email daily.

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.

The Death of One World and the Advent of Another

Galatians 3:23-29

In a 1985 article in New Testament Studies, J. Louis Martyn writes about Gal. 3:27-28, "There was a world whose fundamental structures were certain pairs of opposites:

circumcision / uncircumcision
Jew / Gentile
slave / freeman
male / female.

"Thales, Socrates, and Plato—not to mention the later Rabbi Judah—finding themselves in such a world, may give thanks that they exist on the preferable side of the divide. Those who have been baptized into Christ, however, know that, in Christ, that world does not any longer have real existence" (New Testament Studies 31 [Jl 1985] : 415).

Christ does not transfer us to the preferable side of the divide. Christ breaks down the dividing wall (Eph. 2:14). Martyn summarizes the message of Galatians by saying, "Perhaps… Paul is telling the Galatians that the whole of his epistle is not about the better of two mystagogues, or even about the better of two ways, and certainly not about the failure of Judaism. He is saying, rather, that the letter is about the death of one world, and the advent of another" (414).

Monday I heard part of a Talk of the Nation segment on a book called Status Anxiety. The author's subject is the need that humans feel to be loved, not just by a partner or family member, but by "the world," and his book details the resources that philosophy and art offer to combat feelings of low status or inadequacy. But what if the whole status search itself "no longer has any real existence?" The very hardest thing about graduate school for me was the feeling of always coming up short—everything confirmed my low status, from thinking of a witty, apropos remark long after some lunch conversation was over to recognizing the flaws in one of my papers upon rereading it a semester later. Status anxiety was the name of the game, and scores in the game were everything! Could I even have heard it if someone had said to me, "Sure you need to apply yourself to this work; it will be good if you are a competent student and a competent teacher someday, but it is only good because your neighbor needs your work to be done well. As for your status, the only status you have is as 'Abraham's offspring, an heir according to the promise' (Gal. 3:29)? Would that message have changed anything about the way I did my work and the way I worked together with others?

Having been gone from an academic setting for a year, I have returned to see more clearly (at least for a few weeks until I re-assimilate) the way we divide ourselves up around here:

tenured / untenured
MA / MDiv
faculty / staff
Lutheran / not-Lutheran.

At this point, if you are Lutheran you may be thinking, "But wait a minute, you're forgetting Luther's 'Two Kingdoms' doctrine. Distinctions like these exist in the 'kingdom on the left,' and are necessary for our work, but of course they have nothing to do with our salvation." OK, but then if these distinctions matter in such a limited way, why are we so invested in them? Why, in your context, does it matter if someone is an associate pastor or a co-pastor? Or why does it matter what car someone drives, or what neighborhood they live in? Most of us grace-centered Christians get confused on this point: we know that our worth comes solely from Christ and our being in Christ, but then we act like all sorts of other things matter tremendously. We judge ourselves, and often we judge others, based on a host of status markers like education, income, industriousness, restaurant tastes, table manners—whatever. We find ways to set up structures like those of the old age over and over again.

To this, Paul says, "It's over." You can diddle around in that world if you like, but you do so at the risk of becoming enslaved once again to "elemental spirits of the world" (Gal. 4:3), that is, to the binary structures on which the old world was built. Do you really want to play that game? There's no future there and certainly no freedom. You'll always be measuring where you stand and worrying about losing status. You'll lose sight of your neighbor as a neighbor and see him only as a competitor for your rung on the ladder. And all this will be for naught because that old world of opposites "No longer has any real existence" anyway! For freedom Christ has set you free from those divisions and from the search for status they imply. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

The Spirit of Our Lord

Pentecost C
Acts 2:1-21
Romans 8:14-17
John 14:8-17 (25-27)

The Lutheran Book of Worship liturgy has a phrase that sounds canonical to me, except I haven't been able to find it in the Bible. One of the eucharistic prayers contains these words: "Send now, we pray, your Holy Spirit, the spirit of our Lord and of his resurrection, that we who receive the Lord's body and blood may live to the praise of your glory and receive our intheritance with all your saints in light." It's that phrase, "the spirit of our Lord and of his resurrection," that I like so much. I still half expect someday to find it in tucked away a Pauline letter.

A thought experiment for this week: How does it change things to say "the Spirit of Jesus" every place where "Spirit" is in this week's texts? I may be playing fast and loose with the finer points of Trinitarian theology here, but I am trying the experiment as a way of reminding myself that the Spirit is one with the Father and the Son. If Jesus can say, "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9), is it not also true that whoever has seen Jesus has seen the Spirit?

We have all heard people refer to themselves as "spiritual but not religious." The phrase means different things to different speakers. Mostly I think it means, "I don't want to 'sign on the dotted line' of a denomination with all its doctrines and rules, but I do want to connect with something beyond what I can see and something beyond what makes a capitalist, materialist world go around." If this is the case, then I'm all for being spiritual. Yet when Christians talk about the Spirit, we mean nothing more or less than "the Spirit of our Lord and of his resurrection." For Christians, to be "spiritual" is to be connected to Jesus, who has shown us the Father, or to put it another way, who has "made God known" (John 1:18) to us.

So when we discern or "test the spirits" (1 John 4:1), we do so by measuring what they say about Jesus. The scandal of particularity—that God is fully present in one Jew living in 1st century Palestine—continues as the Spirit becomes our link with God. Pentecost celebrates a particular Spirit made manifest in the world and in the church. Not just spirit or spiritual experience in general will do here. On Pentecost, we mark the coming of the Spirit of our Lord. We celebrate that those things we know from Jesus' biography—a fierce refusal to compromise with the world's other powers, the free offering of love, healing and forgiveness to all kinds of people, the willingness to suffer for the good of others—all these things are still available to us because Jesus is still available to us, through his Spirit.

Breathe!

Pentecost Sunday A (2005)
John 20:19-23
Back of the Bulletin

The disciples are scared. Might those who plotted their Lord's death come next for his followers?

Faith, Hope & Love in Hebrews

Daniel 12:1-3 | Hebrews 10:11-25 | Mark 13:1-8

After September 11, 2001, there was a lot of talk about how freaked out Americans felt, as if safety and freedom from terrors produced by hate and evil were our birthright, and only people of other countries were expected to live knowing that their lives could be disrupted or ended by disaster at any moment. From the texts this week, Christians know something that was new information to the average American as a result of Sept. 11. All sorts of bad things happen to good and not-so-good people, and—oh, yeah—basically things will get worse before they get better.

Bookended by messages of coming tribulation and redemption is the second lesson. I like the way it speaks of the finished work of Christ, even as it exhorts us about how to spend the time between now and the Day (v. 25). "But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, 'he sat down at the right hand of God'"(v. 12). Jesus finishes a good day's work and then takes a load off. (Imagine God saying, "Pull up a chair there, Son, and tell me what's new.")

That finished, once-for-all work of Christ is the context for the rest of the lesson and the context for the waiting that the other lessons talk about. "When will these things be? What will be the signs?" the disciples want to know from Jesus. Reading Hebrews, however, I'm tempted to say that we have the only sign we need: "Jesus was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification" (Rom 4:24). From now on, our lives—even though they are as risky and vulnerable as his was to injustice and terror—are bound up with the new life he has at the right hand of God.

So… (and the "so…" is where the author of Hebrews is headed):

1. Let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith,
2. Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, and
3. Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds (vv. 22-24)

Preaching the text gets difficult here if we're not going to fall into what Rick Lischer calls "salad bar theology" ('let us...' this and 'let us' that). The news of Christ's work for all is loud and clear in the text. Yet how do we hear/preach the exhortations in vv. 22-24 without making it sound like the work of Christ was not enough, that is, that we have to approach, hold fast, or consider as the writer tells us, in order to make Christ's work effective? That message would be all wrong. Christ's work does not depend on us. It's done. He's sitting down. There's probably a glass of sweet tea or a beer at his elbow. What part of "Happy Hour" don't you understand? The work is done, done, done.

So… if I were preaching this text, I would probably never say "let us." I would, however, try to preach that "done" news so clearly that people knew by the end of the sermon that they could approach in faith, hold fast to their hope and show love to others: the work that Christ has finished has made all that faith, hope and love possible for us.

Secret Ambition

Mark 10:35-45

I notice some dueling ambitions in this week's gospel reading.

The Ambition of the Brothers
First, there is the ambition of James and John: "Teacher, we want you to do whatever we ask of you," and then the request to sit at the right and left of Jesus in his kingdom. In the Matthean parallel to Mark 10:23-31, Jesus actually talks about the disciples joining him on thrones to judge the twelve tribes of Israel. (This is pericope #255 if you have an Aland Synopsis of the Four Gospels and you want to compare Matt and Mark.) Jesus says, "Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man is seated on the throne of his glory, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold, and will inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first" (Matt 19:28-30).

In that context, the request of James and John makes more sense (not that Matthew takes this 21st century editor's advice and puts the request right after Jesus' throne speech—he doesn't). The ambition of the brothers is not just to have thrones, but to be seated close to the center of things, "one at your right and one at your left...."

Now the only other reference in Mark to anyone on the right and left of Jesus happens in the passion narrative: "And with him they crucified two bandits, one on his right and one on his left" (Mark 15:27). Asking for places at the right and left of Jesus in his glory is a dangerous prospect, especially here, on the way to Jerusalem, after Jesus has—with plain speech and repeated announcements—identified his destiny with the cross. Jesus tries to tell James and John of the danger when he says, "Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink?" They don't get it. They don't understand.

The Ambition of the Ten
Second, there is the ambition of the ten. At least it seems to be ambition that Jesus responds to. The ten are indignant at James and John when they hear that the two brothers have already put in their bid for the best seats in the new rule of God. From the teaching that Jesus gives the twelve (about the gentiles "lording it over" one another), we can infer that the ten were just as interested in rank and place as the two who had just asked Jesus for the best cabinet posts.

The ten, like James and John seem eager for place, status, seats on thrones. How "established" that sounds. I once heard Will Willimon point out that in Acts, verbs for staying put (histēmi and related words) do not often occur in a favorable light. People with "place" are contrasted with people "on the way." The contrast here in Mark is the same. Jesus is on the way to Jerusalem. The disciples want to sit down—in high places of honor.

The Ambition of Jesus
Jesus has a different ambition, for himself and for the twelve. Jesus' ambition for himself is this, "The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many." Years ago, Michael W. Smith had a hit song and video called, "Secret Ambition." (The video, by the way, has just been re-released on a bonus DVD in Smith's recent album, The Second Decade). Here's the chorus:

“ ”

Nobody knew His secret ambition Nobody knew His claim to fame He broke the old rules steeped in tradition He tore the Holy Veil away Questioning those in powerful position Running to those who called His name (But) Nobody knew His secret ambition Was to give His life away. Michael W. Smith, "Secret Ambition" on I 2 Eye © 1989.

Jesus' ambition was "to give his life away."

Secret Ambition
And truly, this ambition does seem to remain a secret to the disciples. People speculate in all directions about the so-called messianic secret in Mark: why does Jesus tell people to be quiet after he heals them? Here I see a different kind of messianic secret: Jesus' messianic ambition seems to be a secret from the very ones who are following him and who are taken aside for private teaching at every turn. Why do the disciples fail so spectacularly to see what Jesus is telling them so plainly? How is it that the nature of his messianic work is a secret from them, even though he's been speaking of almost nothing else for three chapters?

To ask this question is to notice that we are not really in the position of the disciples in this story. We are in the position of people who can see the disciples getting it wrong. As you read this text, you know something the disciples could not comprehend: Jesus aimed to give his life away in order to reconcile the whole world to God. He was ransoming the disciples who remained so in the dark about his mission, ransoming those crucified at his right and left, ransoming the ones who had manipulated systems of justice to bring about his unjust death.

What does that ransom free you from? What does it free you for?

Seeking

Amos 5:4-7; 10-15
Mark 10:17-31

I wonder if it would be OK to read two extra verses for the OT lesson. The lectionary begins at 5:6. If we start at 5:4, we get additional occurrences of the word, "seek" in the reading that help explain v. 6 and v. 14:

"For thus says the Lord to the house of Israel: Seek me and live; but do not seek Bethel..." (5:4)

"Seek the Lord and live, or he will break out against the house of Joseph like fire..." (5:6)

"Seek good and not evil, that you may live; and so the Lord, the God of hosts will be with you..." (5:14).

About Bethel: "Not one stone will be left standing on another."

What about that "do not seek Bethel..." in 5:4? What is the alternative to seeking God? In the Harper Collins Study Bible, Gene M. Tucker writes, "Seeking the Lord is contrasted with making pilgrimages to the famous religious centers at Bethel, Gilgal, and Beer-sheba, which are destined for exile and destruction" (p 1362). Ouch. Even religious activity can be beside the point and disconnected from seeking the Lord.

In 1981, I sat in the Riverside Church and listened to the Rev. Will Campbell preach. He is a white Baptist preacher who had been active in the Civil Rights movement. (Brother to a Dragonfly is his autobiography and memoir of some of that time.) I don't remember the text Will was preaching; it might have been this week's gospel (Mark 10:17-31). I was 19 years old and passionately interested in changing the world for the better.  I took a bus and the subway every week from my dorm room in Brooklyn to the Riverside Church because William Sloane Coffin's preaching indicated to me that these people were interested in changing the world for the better too.

This is what I remember of Will Campbell's sermon that Sunday. He looked out on that Upper West Side congregation dressed so well and sitting in the gothic cathedral that Rockefeller money built, and he said, "You have invited me here today to talk to you about ending racism, but I think what you actually want me to tell you is how you can end racism and keep all of this. [He gestured to the sanctuary and everything around him.] I am afraid I don't have an answer for you."

I remember nothing else of the sermon. Did the preacher get out of that corner he had painted himself into? Within the allotted time for the sermon, did he leave us with hope for "incremental change," or something? I don't remember, but I have never forgotten that lone comment from the sermon.  It seemed to me that he was saying, "You all want something you can't have: justice not rolling down like waters, but justice practiced 'in moderation.'"

"Seek me and live."

I love it that these words are in the mouth of God in v. 4. It reminds me of the picture of God in Is. 65:1 ("I was ready to be sought out by those who did not ask, to be found by those who did not seek me. I said, 'Here I am, here I am,' to a nation that did not call on my name.") God sounds like a child playing "Hide and Seek" who is bored sitting alone and wants to be found. Sadly, the other kids aren't interested. The difference, of course, is that the stakes for this game are way higher: "Seek me and live." Read: there's death where you've chosen to roam.

"There's death where you've chosen to roam."

Almost exactly a year ago, my Old Testament colleague Fred Gaiser preached a sermon on Is. 5:1-7, titled, "Love Song for the Vineyard." Here's the video as a Windows media file.  It takes about 20 seconds on my computer for the Windows Media Player to open up, but it's worth the wait. The text and sermon begin at about 5:00 minutes into the file. It remains one of my favorite sermons of all time, an example of prophetic preaching accomplished standing under the word and with tears in one's eyes, rather than any eagerness to see one's addressees incinerated, which often seems to be the way of present-day pulpit prophets.  If you're feeling called to preach the law this week (and the texts could well inspire a bold statement of the law), watch Fred's way with law and gospel here.

Jesus & Divorce

Mark 10:1-16

Here are some thoughts that Paul Palumbo and I came up with this afternoon:

This is only a test....

Maybe it means something that this is a test for Jesus (verse 2). Is the real conversation that the Pharisees want to have about divorce, or about something else?

A man shall leave...

Paul wondered if humans beings got this wrong from the get go. That is, maybe a man is supposed to leave his family (as it says in Genesis and here), so if we give anyone "away" at weddings, it should be the groom rather than the bride. Maybe there was a word here to help us break apart patriarchy (or alleviate testosterone poisoning--Paul's words, not mine), and we missed it.

One flesh...

We agreed that this really happens, hence the great pain around the end of a marriage, no matter what the circumstances. There's a gaping hole, a lot of blood lost, and a big scar--which pop psychologists might prefer to call "baggage" but which is probably more accurately referred to as scar tissue.

Healing Jesus...

All the talk of tearing flesh from flesh made me think about what Jesus has done in relationship to disfigured people so far in the gospel:

• He cleanses a leper (1:40-45).
• He forgives the sins of a paralytic and gives him back his legs (2:1-12).
• He restores the man with the whithered hand (3:1-5).
• He feels power go forth from him when a woman with a hemorrhage touches him for healing, and
• He takes hold of a corpse's hand to raise a dead little girl to life again (5:21-43).
• He heals the Syrophoenician woman's daughter from a distance.
• He puts his fingers in a deaf man's ears and on the man's tongue to give him hearing and speech (7:31-37).
• He puts spit on the eyes of a blind man, then tries again in order to get the healing right (8:22-26).
• He takes a boy with an unclean spirit by the hand and heals him (9:14-28)

I'm struck by how "in the flesh" all of these activities are. Jesus is a body, healing other bodies. If Jesus can do all these things, surely he can also heal the flesh-from-flesh wound that divorce is.

Private teaching to the disciples...

I don't have any idea what to make of vv. 10-12. We have probably all heard sermons that tell us how "radically egalitarian" this is, since traditionally only men could be the victims of a woman's adultery, not the other way around. Ho hum. I take no comfort in an even-handed statement of all remarriage as adultery. And frankly, the New Testament witness elsewhere offers no similar blanket statements, but seems instead interested in working out exceptions to the rule (cf. the parallel text in Matthew, and Paul's thoughts on the topic in 1 Cor. 7).

Being Church

James 5:13-20

Is there any congregation in the whole Christian church on earth that you don't have to leave when you are having a problem that you can't hide? Think about the people who have disappeared in the last six months from the pews you know best. What's going on? Illness? Job loss? Divorce? Hardly anyone leaves church because things are going well for them.

And to those of us still in the pews, have you ever heard yourself lying when asked at church how things are after your recent loss, or how you're holding up while someone close to you looks for a job, or how your kids are doing? What would it take for Christians to tell the truth to each other?

James envisions a community of people who can do just that. If we had started this reading just one verse sooner, we would hear James say, "Let your 'Yes' be yes and your 'No' be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation." It's a call to the simplest (not to say easiest) truth telling.

In the rest of the reading, his examples of truth telling in difficult times point to a community that gathers around a hurting member, rather than isolating that one, or settling for them isolating themselves.

Sickness
If someone is sick, that person calls together the elders of the church to anoint and pray. As Luke Timothy Johnson puts it, "James empowers the sick themselves with regard to the assembly" (New Interpreter's Bible 12:222). The sick person receives the authority to summon the others. The one who (in most if not all of our churches) has had to put on a game face and be strong at church, or who has stopped going to church altogether because the pain is too great or concealing it is too hard, calls the elders and tells them where the community is needed to gather. Isolation (initiated either by the individual or the community) may seem more natural to us, but James provides a rubric for the opposite to take place. The hurting person and the rest of the community are in solidarity against whatever is causing hurt.

Sin
Sometimes the cause of hurt is not sickness but sin. How much harder it is to tell the truth about this at church! James paints the picture of a community that gathers to pray and to tell the truth. "Confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed" (James 5:16).

A July 28, 2003, ELCA News Release included this story about one of the evenings at the Lutheran Youth Organization (LYO) meeting that took place this summer:

“ ” “ ” “ ” “ ”

COMMUNITY TIME     At the July 22 business session Leota Thomas-Breitfeld, St. Paul, Minn., LYO president, informed delegates about a "racist" remark allegedly made by a member of the LYO delegation.  Breitfeld said the remark was heard by several other delegates seated nearby.    She called for a "community lock down," asking adult counselors and advisors to account for delegates and instructed all to remain in the room until the delegate who made the remark came forth.  Members of the convention prayed together, shared personal reflections and encouraged the delegate who made the remark to come forward.    Breitfeld told the convention that "this is a community problem" that must be dealt with together.  She reminded delegates that the LYO is an "inclusive" organization committed to diversity.    In an interview with the ELCA News Service, Jon L. Vehar, Albuquerque, N.M., LYO vice president, said, "The significance of the LYO convention was that we took a comment made by one member, hurtful to the community, and dealt with it as a community.  As a result of the process and as an organization that gathers in the name of Christ, it became an incredible learning experience for all involved."    Delegates remained in their seats for more than hour before recessing for the evening.  The delegate who allegedly made the remark did not come forth.  A dance scheduled for the evening was cancelled. ELCA News Service, July 28, 2003.

I think the LYO meeting tried to do the right thing, but there was also something missing. (And "lock-down" was probably the wrong choice of metaphors.) What might have made it possible for the person who made the remark to come forward? "Confess your sins to one another," James says. What is missing in our communities that makes this next to impossible? How long did it take for someone at the top of the Catholic hierarchy in Boston to say, "I'm sorry" to those who, as children, had been sexually assaulted by priests? Yet until someone can speak a truth like that—confessing sin—the word "community" does not really describe any group of frightened, isolated individuals gathering in the same room.

What might make it possible for our communities to tell the truth about sickness and sin, and to pray fervently for the healing of both? To answer that question, I went looking for what James has to say about Jesus. The letter of James hardly mentions Jesus by name.  After the first verse ("James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ"), the letter names Jesus only one other time: "My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ?" (2:1). Though James says little specifically about Jesus, central to James' understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ is the conviction that there is no place for partiality in the community that bears Christ's name (cf. 3:17). The ground really is level at the foot of the cross. 

If I were preaching this text (and I think I will be), I would speak the news of that level ground—and the self-giving of Christ to all of us standing there—as the means to true community. James contrasts life in the world and life "in Christ" (to borrow a Pauline way of putting it) as clearly as any New Testament author. The contrast could well make it into my sermon. In other places in our lives, like work (with its evaluations, bonuses and pink slips), or school (with its report cards, team rosters and standardized tests), we are constantly being ranked. Partiality is the name of the game. Life in Christ is different. Someone needs prayer: we pray. Someone is cheerful: we sing. Someone wanders away into sin: we go toward them, not away from them, in order to bring them back. This is James' vision of congregational life, made possible by the lack of partiality shown by Christ: from Christ and in Christ, we know that all of us are both "standin' in the need of prayer" and greatly beloved by God.

Mama God

Numbers 11:4-30

This is one of those stories that implies, at least for a moment, that God may be compared to somebody's mama. Moses says (with some editorial italics here), "Did I conceive all this people?  Did I give birth to them, that you should say to me, 'Carry them in your bosom, as a nurse carries a sucking child,' to the land that you promised on oath to their ancestors?" (Num. 11:12). I imagine Moses saying, "Look, these are your babies, God! You feed them and carry them all the way to the promised land if you want them there! As for me, I would be better off DEAD!" Ok, so it's been a long day at work for our pal, Moses. Or—maybe better—he's just been left home alone with the kids too long.

Losing it on a road trip

Numbers 11

God is just plain peevish in these wilderness wanderings sometimes. I understand that the people are whining, and that it is no small thing to say to one's liberator, "We wish we were still slaves!" but doesn't someone have to be the grown up? The LORD'S behavior in Num. 11:1 (incineration), speech in 11:18-20 ("You want meat? I'll give you meat!"), and action in 11:34 (not just tiresome quail but a plague) remind me of this New Yorker cartoon, drawn by Roz Chast and published July 13, 1998.

Sinners & the NIV

Matthew 9:9-13

Here, for your viewing pleasure, are the NIV and NRSV, translating Matthew 9:10-13.

NIV

NRSV

While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew's house, many tax collectors and "sinners" came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and 'sinners'?" On hearing this, Jesus said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."

And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples.When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?" But when he heard this, he said, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners."

What is up with the scare quotes around "sinners" in the NIV (vv. 10 and 11)?  Are the translators afraid to leave us with the impression that Jesus was actually fraternizing with real sinners?  I wonder why they don't quote Jesus, just a few verses before this text, saying to the paralyzed man, "Your 'sins' are forgiven" (Mt. 9:5), or saying, "I have not come to call the righteous, but 'sinners.'"  Imagine the made-for-TV movie:  As Jesus walks around teaching, he forms quotes in the air with his fingers. "Take up your 'cross' and follow me."  "Unless you become like a 'child,' you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven." 

The more charitable explanation is that the NIV translators were trying to say to us, "Of course we're all sinners.  When the opponents of Jesus said the word, "sinners," they didn't mean your average sinners. They meant notorious sinners, and to communicate that, we need quotation marks." (Even so, it seems a little "silly" to me.)

Forming Community with a Word

Matthew 9:9-13

Tom Long's Matthew commentary is very good on this week's text.  Here's a sample. 

Long comments that we might like to know what internal or psychological motivation Matthew had for just walking away from his job and following Jesus, but the story does not give us a window into Matthew's heart, soul, or psychology. Instead:

“ ” “ ”

"The main point of this story is not to speculate about what is happening inside Matthew; it is to perceive what is happening outside through Jesus.  His words 'Follow me' are powerful and accomplish their mission simply by being spoken.  Jesus, who healed a paralyzed servant with a word, calmed the raging winds with a word, sent howling demons hurtling into squealing swine with a word, and rolled back the tidal wave of human sin with a word, now begins to form a community, a church, with a word." ©Thomas G. Long, Matthew. Westminster Bible Companion (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1997), 103-04.

Isn't that great?  With a little time, I think I could morph those three sentences into a whole sermon!

Start Seeing Jesus

Mark 9:30-37 - Text for September 21, 2003

I wrote a couple of "Living by the Word" segments for the Christian Century on texts for this month. They called this one "Seeing Things." Thank you to The Christian Century for making these segments available online in time for us to use them!

Could it be that the disciples, with all their talk about greatness, were trying only to measure who was best at following Jesus? And would this be so bad, if it were what they were really up to? They may not be such easy marks for ridicule ("They just don't get it!") as we sometimes think. Maybe they were measuring who was the farthest along on the imitatio Christi path. It could be they just had their eyes on that Alpha Master, Jesus, and were only interested in imitating him better than anyone else in the group.

So maybe their motives are good. Yet, regardless of whether they were competing with each other for a type of greatness that did or did not have Jesus as its model, the surprise in the story is that Jesus takes himself out of their line of vision, and puts in front of their eyes, instead, a child. He stands a child in their midst, someone they would never think to look at, let alone look to for a window on true discipleship.