A grain of wheat

Fifth Sunday in Lent; 17 March 2024; Lent 4B (RCL); Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 51:1-13; Hebrews 5:5-10; John 12:20-33.

I believe this is one of the central passages of John’s Gospel, and key to interpreting the whole. John loves the device I call parenthesis. He opens the device with a parenthesis (like Jesus addressing the plural you telling us that we will see visions of angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man) and then keeps us in suspense until he closes it (with Mary’s vision of angels in the empty tomb). Here, John open the parenthesis with the mention of “certain Greeks,” and then leaves us in suspense, and never closes it.

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What sign?

Third Sunday in Lent; 3 March 2024; Lent 3B (RCL); Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 1: 18-25; John 2:13-22.

In the OT reading for this Sunday, we get the third in a series of covenants: Noah, Abram/Abraham, and now Moses, with the Ten Commandments. In the previous two covenants, God gave a sign of the covenant: with Noah, the bow in the clouds; with Abraham, circumcision (though we stopped short of those verses). Likewise in this Sunday’s reading, we stop short of the sign of the covenant: the two tablets of stone. Typically, in Christian iconography, we imagine five commandments on each stone: likely, all ten commandments were on both stones, one to be set up for the people to see, and one to be set up in the presence of God (in the ark of the covenant), so that both parties had a copy.

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Profit and loss

Second Sunday in Lent; 25 February 2024; Lent 2B (RCL); Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16; Psalm 22:22-30; Romans 4:13-25; Mark 8:31-38.

In our Old Testament readings this Lent, we seem to be on a march through stories of various covenants between God and God’s creation. Last week, it was the covenant with Noah and all living creatures of all flesh on the earth. This week, it is a restatement, or renewal, or revision of the covenant between God and Abram, first established in Genesis 15. Here God renames Abraham, and in verses we don’t read, requires circumcision. Abram means something like revered ancestor. Abraham something like ancestor of many nations (or so the narrative tells us). This will happen through Sarai, now Sarah, not through Hagar.

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Angels and wild beasts

First Sunday in Lent; 18 February 2024; Lent 1B (RCL); Genesis 9:8-17; Psalm 25:1-9; 1 Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:9-15.

We always hear the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness on the First Sunday in Lent. Mark’s account is the shortest and most cryptic. All we’re told is that the Spirit drove him into the wilderness, and he was there for 40 days, tempted by Satan, and he was with the wild beasts, and the angels waited on him. The forty days, of course, recalls the forty years that Israel wandered in the wilderness, but also Elijah’s journey to Horeb after his contest with the prophets of Ba’al (1 Kings 18-19).

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Christification

Last Sunday after Epiphany; 11 February 2024; Last Epiphany B (RCL); 2 Kings 2:1-12; Psalm 50:1-6; 2 Corinthians 4:3-6; Mark 9:2-9.

I entertain a theory, for which I have little evidence, that one of the primary uses of the Gospels in the early church was as “training manuals” or formation material for the newly baptized. Catechumens were dismissed after the liturgy of the word, and before the reading of the Gospel and sermon, and so would be unfamiliar with the Gospel prior to baptism. I believe that during the long vigil before baptism, in addition to readings from the Old Testament, the baptisands would likely hear whichever Gospel their community used, read from cover to cover.

Think of the emotional impact such a hearing would have on those waiting to enter the water, who had been in training for weeks, and possibly months or years. The Gospels would sound very different in such a context than we are used to hearing them. The baptisands would be invited to hear themselves in the story as they made their way to their own paschal mystery, their own death and resurrection in the waters of baptism.

The voice from heaven comes to Jesus, both at his baptism and at his transfiguration on the holy mountain. Baptisands would be awaiting their own adoption as children of God through the Spirit in baptism (see Romans 6-8). This voice would be speaking to them, and they would understand that baptism was their own transfiguration into glory. In the last thirty to forty years, the western church has begun to recover the doctrine of deification (it was never really lost, just not emphasized; the Wesleys, among others, kept it alive in the idea of sanctification).

The goal or purpose of the Christian life is to be conformed to Christ, to be Christified or deified. We are to become by grace what Christ is by nature, both human and divine. The story of the Transfiguration is placed in the Gospel accounts where it is (prior to Jesus turning toward his passion in Jerusalem) as part of the formational purpose of the Gospels, to remind the baptisands of the journey they are beginning, and its outcome. It is this transfigured Christ who walks toward Jerusalem, just as those to be transfigured in baptism will walk again into their lives in this world, but with the purpose of the deification of the whole creation (Romans 8).

While we speak of Lent as a season of preparation for baptism, we tend not to think of Lent as preparing us for transfiguration, for Christification or deification, but that would have been the purpose of catechetical preparation in the ancient church. Lent is not just preparation for Easter, but eschatological preparation as well.

More demons

Fifth Sunday after Epiphany; 4 February 2024; Epiphany 5B (RCL); Isaiah 40:21-31; Psalm 147:1-12, 21c; 1 Corinthians 9:16-23; Mark 1:29-39.

The first actual healing (not exorcism) in Mark’s Gospel is the healing of Simon’s mother-in-law. It is four sentences long. Mark relates it almost as a throw-away — no theological reflection on the episode; just, oh, by the way. We may cringe at the ending, that she immediately began to serve them, but I think Mark is making the point that she was re-integrated into her proper place and honor within the community of Simon’s household. We never even learn her name.

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Idols and demons

Fourth Sunday after Epiphany; 28 January 2024; Epiphany 4B (RCL); Deuteronomy 18:15-20; Psalm 111; 1 Corinthians 8:1-13; Mark 1:21-28.

Burton Mack points out that Jesus’ first public act in Mark’s Gospel is the exorcism of a demon from a man in the synagogue. This sets up the struggle between Jesus and the synagogue at the very outset of the Gospel, and shows Jesus as a man of power, more effective than the power of the synagogue. This might have been good for propaganda in the ancient world, but tragic ever since.

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Decision

Third Sunday after Epiphany; 21 January 2024; Epiphany 3B (RCL); Jonah 3:1-5, 10, Psalm 62:6-14; 1 Corinthians 7:29-31; Mark 1:14-20.

The first thing I noticed about the readings for this week is that they are all short. And abrupt. Jonah’s sermon in Nineveh has to be the shortest, most successful sermon in historical record — eight words long, and the whole city repents and sits in sackcloth and ashes. Jesus calls Andrew and Simon, James and John, and without question, they leave their nets and fishing, and follow — abruptly. Paul tells us the time is short, and certainly the people in the other readings seem to have heard that message. Act now.

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Angels of God

Second Sunday after Epiphany; 14 January 2024; Epiphany 2B (RCL); 1 Samuel 3:1-10; Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17; 1 Corinthians 6:12-20; John 1:43-51.

What a mish-mosh of readings for this week. I suppose the 1 Samuel and the Gospel both address the issue of the call of God, but the 1 Corinthians sticks out uncomfortably like a sore thumb. I’ve chosen to leave off the optional verses of the 1 Samuel reading, so as not to have to explain the crimes of Eli’s sons, although the whole story does give insight into the role of the priesthood in the religion of ancient Israel. On the other hand, the passage from John’s Gospel is an important set-up for the outcome of the Gospel.

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Baptized in the Spirit

First Sunday after Epiphany; 7 January 2024; Epiphany 1B (RCL); Genesis 1:1-5; Psalm 29; Acts 19:1-7; Mark 1:4-11.

I’ve always had a hard time figuring out what the authors of the New Testament meant by the phrase, “the Holy Spirit.” Part of that difficulty comes from the fact that sometimes it appears with the definite article, and often without it. With the definite article, the phrase refers to some specific thing; without it, to what exactly? perhaps a quality, or some ‘stuff.’ Equally confusing is the word being translated “Spirit” – pneuma, which can also mean (always mean?) “breath.” We recognize this as the root for many words in English having to do with the lungs.

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