Author: appadmin

1 May 2011
Second Sunday of Easter
Easter 2A (RCL)
Acts 2:14a, 22-32
Psalm 16
1 Peter 1:3-9
John 20:19-31

Our translations of the Bible have perpetrated a big misunderstanding of the story of Thomas. After Jesus has invited Thomas to touch his hands and side, he says to him (in the NRSV), “Do not doubt, but believe.” What Jesus says in the Greek is, “Do not be untrusty, but trusty.” We have come to see doubt as the opposite of faith. This story makes it clear that fear and faith are opposites.

The disciples meet on the evening after Mary Magdalene has encountered the risen Jesus. They lock the doors, “for fear of the Jews.” Continue reading “Be trusty”

10 April 2011
Fifth Sunday in Lent
Lent 5A (RCL)
Ezekiel 37:1-14
Psalm 130
Romans 8:6-11
John 11:1-45

This week’s Gospel lesson is sorta the reverse of last week’s. In last week’s reading, Jesus dropped out of the story after healing the blind man (who never asked to be healed!), until the very end, when he meets up with the blind man again. Most of the action took place between the blind man and various interlocutors. In this week’s lesson, Lazarus doesn’t even enter the story until he comes out of the tomb. Jesus is front and center here.

So, why is that? In the story of the blind man, he helped others see what is important in the relationship to Jesus, where truth is. He takes on the “ego eimi” for himself (Jesus doesn’t say it in that whole miracle — only refers to himself in the third person). So, people entering the Johannine community receive their sight, and become one with Jesus (I and the Father, etc.).

The Lazarus story appears to answer a question about what the resurrected life looks like. It does not look like Lazarus, a resuscitated corpse. Lazarus comes out of the tomb, still wrapped in his burial shroud. When the disciples arrive at Jesus’ tomb, the shroud is lying off to one side, neatly folded up. Jesus appears to Mary under the form of a stranger. So, the resurrected life is something we encounter in the everyday.

Hmm. Jesus delays before coming to heal Lazarus — John’s ironic way of poking fun at other christian communities bothered by the delay of the Parousia?

27 March 2011
Third Sunday in Lent
Lent 3A (RCL)
Exodus 17:1-7
Psalm 95
Romans 5:1-11
John 4:5-42

The Gospel reading is very rich. At the level of narrative, it works well: a woman, out at the well at noon, not the usual time for women go to the well — indicates her shame (five husbands, etc.), yet Jesus is willing to speak with her, and ask her for a drink. Of course, I don’t like the way the story (at the level of narrative) ends — we no longer believe because of what you said, but we have heard for ourselves. Dissing the woman once more.

But Continue reading “Drinking the spirit”

20 March 2011
Second Sunday in Lent
Lent 2A (RCL)

Genesis 12:1-4a
Psalm 121
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
John 3:1-17

The passage from Genesis is cryptically short. If I were Abraham, I might ask God to stop showing up in my life: promises and challenges go together. God tells Abram to leave his country, his kindred, and his father’s house and go to a land that God will show him. There is no destination laid out before hand, no Google map. Just go. Continue reading “Movin’ on”

13 March 2011
First Sunday in Lent
Lent 1A (RCL)
Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7
Psalm 32
Romans 5:12-19
Matthew 4:1-11

God put the human being in the garden to till and tend it. The human being desired the knowledge of good and evil. We want to sit in judgment on God’s world, deciding what is good and what is bad. Interesting, since God had already declared everything God had made to be good. So, on what criteria do humans judge things to be evil? We decide things on our own criteria, rather than the mind of God. Because of that, we got kicked out of the garden, and for ever after have to earn out bread by the sweat of our brow. I suppose one could read this as a coming-of-age story. When we get old enough to know the difference between right and wrong, we learn we are going to die, and are going to have to work.

When Satan tempts Jesus, he tells him to turn a stone into bread: to short circuit the process of tilling and tending the garden. We humans get impatient. We want to solve our problems by magic: by new technology, by power, by the knowledge of good and evil. Jesus refuses to fix things by a shortcut. Later, when he feeds the 5000 and the 4000, he uses resources at hand, rather than turning stones to bread. He also refuses to test God with a show of power, and refuses world domination. He opts for the patient tending of God’s creation.

God has declared the whole creation good. We are called to tend to the good in creation, patiently to draw forth the goodness already here, to bring out the best in others, to help them meet their own needs. God has asked us to tend to the divine in the world, not to pass judgment on it.

6 March 2011
Last Sunday after Epiphany
Last Epiphany A (RCL)
Exodus 24:12-18
Psalm 2
2 Peter 1:16-21
Matthew 17:1-9

It’s too bad we’re not reading a passage a little earlier in 2 Peter. 2 Peter 1:3-7 reads, “His divine power has bestowed on us everything that makes for life and devotion, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and power. Through these, he has bestowed on us the precious and great promises, so that through them you may come to share in the divine nature, after escaping from the corruption that is in the world because of evil desire. For this very reason, Continue reading “Shining with God’s glory”

27 February 2011
Eighth Sunday after Epiphany
Epiphany 8A (RCL)
Isaiah 49:8-16a
Psalm 131
1 Corinthians 4:1-5
Matthew 6:24-34

Paul has been scolding his Corinthian community for partisanship. Some of them have chosen Apollos as their champion, some Paul, some Cephas. I suspect there are Jew/Gentile issues behind these choices. Paul as the apostle to the Gentiles, Cephas as having withdrawn from the Gentile mission (in Antioch) and practicing “judaizing.” I don’t know what camp Apollos represented, but it’s a good Greek name. You can almost hear the arguments in Corinth about whether we ought to observe the law, have complete freedom from it, or somewhere in the middle.

Then, as we get to chapter 4, Paul tells us that a person ought to think of the leaders as servants of Christ and as stewards of the mysteries of God. Continue reading “Stewards of the mysteries”

20 February 2011
Seventh Sunday after Epiphany
Epiphany 7A (RCL)
Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18
Psalm 119:33-40
1 Corinthians 3:10-11, 16-23
Matthew 5:38-48

The Book of Leviticus is one of the most puzzling in the Bible. All these rules about what kind of animals can be sacrificed, and how, and for what circumstances. If you house has leprosy, you have to offer a particular form of sacrifice (we wonder what it means for a house to have leprosy — mildew?). But, when Jewish children are learning to read Hebrew, the first book they read is Leviticus. For them, it is about God’s love affair with the world. Really? Ruminant animals with cloven hooves are good to eat, but ruminants without cloven feet or cloven footed animals not ruminant (like pigs) Continue reading “Be perfect?”