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Proper 7C
Zechariah 12:8-10
Psalm 63:1-8
Galatians 3:23-29
Luke 9:18-24

Paul’s letter to the Galatians presents such a clear and unvarnished picture of an early christian community. It’s nice to know they fought even back then. Last week’s reading shows us Paul and Peter in open conflict, and by Paul’s account, never to speak again. Very different from the picture Luke presents in Acts. And they are arguing over the extent of the church’s radical hospitality. Same issue we are arguing about today.

In his week’s reading, Paul tells the Galatians to grow up. They have put on Christ, just like a Roman youth puts on the toga. Now, the paidagogus (tutor) is no longer following the youth around, so things could get wild. But Paul says that justification and maturity comes not through the workings of the law (following the rules of a grown up), but through faithfulness. Now that you are grown-ups, act like grown ups, even if the paidagogus isn’t around to catch you misbehaving. What is stunning in this reading is who puts on the toga: Jew and Greek, slave and free, man and woman. All of these differences, according to Paul, are socially constructed and so can be deconstructed. Jew and Greek, slave and free, we get. But male and female as socially constructed? That’s harder to comprehend. Paul sees that it can be undone. What else can be undone?

Luke places Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Christ immediately on the heels of the Feeding of the Five Thousand, which functions as a type of the community’s radical hospitality. Demoniacs, dead girls, womem with flows of blood — all of them are seated for the meal of bread and fish, the eschatological banquet.

So, who is this Jesus who feeds these crowds? Is he Elijah, returned to usher in the messianic age? An ancient prophet, restoring the kingdom? None of these. He is the Christ of God, and the Son of Man, rolled into one. He is the eschatological figure. But whoever would follow, must take up the cross daily. Mark’s Jesus prepares his disciples to suffer knowing that the eschatological age is coming soon. The Son of Man is about to come on the clouds of glory. Any day now. Luke knows better. The eschatological Son of Man must suffer, and the end is not coming. The disciple must be prepared to suffer daily. That’s just the way things are. Some of those standing in Jesus’ presence have seen the end arrive, and this is what it looks like.

There will not come a time when everything is set to rights. It won’t come by everyone following the rules, but everyone coming to the table. Life is messy and is going to stay messy. We have the vision of the restoration of Jerusalem, but it’s a vision, something we can aim at, but never arrive at. This mess we’re in now, this is what it looks like. We have to be prepared to follow Jesus even without expecting him to come and set it all to rights. Whoever would be my disciple must deny self and take up the cross daily and follow me.

Proper 6C
2 Samuel 11:26-12:10, 13-15
Psalm 32:1-8
Galatians 211-20
Luke 7:36-50

I only regret that I’m not preaching this week. So much good stuff here.

Uriah was Hittite. Was Bathsheba? Hittites consitituted one of those groups with whom true Israelites were not supposed to intermarry (see Ezra 9). Did David think he could take Bathsheba from Uriah because Uriah was Hittite? Interesting how it’s always the women whose bodies mark the boundaries between inside and outside. Bathesheba has no voice in this whole episode.

Galatians — one of the most unvarnished pictures of the early history of the christian movement. Peter and Paul fight, never to speak again. Again, it’s all about boundaries.

Luke. How did this woman get to the feast? The NRSV does an awful job of translating. Verse 37 says something like, “And look, there was a certain woman in the city who was a sinner. And when she recognized that he was reclining in the house off the Pharisee, she brough out an alabaster jar of myrrh.” She’s already at the party. She recognizes Jesus.

She wipes Jesus’ feet with the hair of her head. Her hair is down. She is a courtesan, part of the entertainment for the guests at Simon’s banquet. It’s not shocking to Simon that she’s there (he hired her), but shocking that Jesus, a prophet, would let a courtesan touch him.

Jesus says to Simon, after his little lesson about being forgiven and loving, “Do you see this woman?” The answer is “No.” Simon sees the entertainment. He sees a sinner. Jesus reverses the logic of his earlier story and says that her many sins have been forgiven because she has loved much. Or implies that her sins were forgiven before this encounter. In any event, she has been more hospitable than Simon. Jesus does not upbraid Simon for hiring entertainment. He simply lets the woman go in peace.

Proper 5C
1 Kings 17:17-24
Psalm 30
Galatians 1:11-24
Luke 7:11-17

I wonder how many times I have preached on this set of propers? I would guess at a minimum five times. And never before now have I noticed that this is the first appearance of Elijah in the narrative history told by the deuteronomists. In 1 Kings 16:29, the historians introduce Ahab, King of Israel, that most wicked of kings. “It was not enough for him to imitate the sins of Jereboam, son of Nebat. He even married Jezebel, daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Sidonians.” He erected an altar to Baal in a temple he built for Baal in Samaria.

Baal, of course, was the storm god, who provided rain, and made life on earth possible. Ahab sets up a temple and an altar to the god of prosperity and fertility, to the god of success.
Elijah appears on the scene in 1 Kings 17:1 with absolutely no introduction — we have no idea who this character is. He simply appears before Ahab and says, “As the Lord, the God of Israel, whom I serve, lives, during these years there shall be no dew or rain except at my word.” Elijah trumps Baal. God then instructs him to flee (no wonder, after making such a claim). Ravens, dirty scavenger birds, provide him bread and meat twice a day out to the east of the Jordan, where Israel wandered in the wilderness. He drinks from the wadi Cherith until it dries up.

Then God instructs him to go to Zarephath of the Sidonians, exactly where Jezebel has come from, where a widow will provide for him. He meets the widow at the gate of the town and asks for water. She is ready to oblige. He asks also for a little bread. She is collecting sticks to bake her last bit of meal, so she and her son may eat it before they die. Elijah tells her the meal will not fail, nor the oil run out until there is rain. After a period of time (Elijah is apparently living in her guest room), her son falls ill and dies. She imprecates Elijah and asks why he has remembered her sins before God. Elijah takes the child to his room and prays to God for his recovery. The child comes to life, and Elijah gives him to his mother. She recognizes that Elijah is a man of God, and the word of the Lord comes from his mouth.

What a great contrast to begin the story of Ahab and Elijah. At the prompting of a Sidonian princess, Ahab builds an altar to the god of propserity and fertility, who promptly forsakes Ahab. Elijah turns for his support to a Sidonian widow who has nothing.

Luke clearly knows this story and refers to it in his account of Jesus raising the son of the widow of Nain. He meets the crowd at the gate of the town, he gives the man to his mother. The crowd responds with an acclamation about a great prophet and the word of truth. In Jesus’ inaugural sermon in the synagogue at Capernaum (Luke 4), he referred to Elijah going only to a widow of Zarephath, not to any in Israel. Herod, the king of the Judeans, is not where God is at work, but among the nobodies outside of the usual boundaries of Israel.

In what ways do we set up an altar to the god of success? Easy to look at the prosperity gospel people and point the finger, but I suspect we do as well. What do we sacrifice for success at work? for social standing? Hiel, the Bethelite, we are told after being introduced to Ahab, rebuilt the walls and gates of Jericho, sacrificing his oldest and his youngest son into the works. It’s scary to think about what we sacrifice our children to. Jesus stops the bier of a dead man, his widowed mother’s only son, her only support, and says to him, Young man, be resurrected. How did she end up a widow? The word of God resides with the widows, the families whose children have died, who can point out the flaws in our values.

Easter 4C
Acts 13:15-16, 26-39
Psalm 100
Revelation 7:9-17
John 10:22-30

Sorry I’ve been absent from this blog for a few weeks: Holy Week, Easter, and then just inertia conspired to keep me away.

This week’s readings are supposed to fit in with the theme of “Good Shepherd” Sunday (Fourth of Easter). The reading from John mentions the shepherd imagery tangentially, but that’s about it.

This story in John’s Gospel is taking place on Hannukah, the feast of the re-dedication of the Temple after Antiochus’ desecration and the Maccabees’ success in re-capturing Jerusalem. This is the only time in John’s Gospel when Jesus is in Jerusalem for this feast. That means we need to pay attention to the setting. The “Judeans” (whoever they are), ask Jesus, “How long will you take away our souls? Tell us plainly, are you the Messiah?” Given the context, this is a hugely charged question. Will you be reclaiming the Temple, like Judas Maccabeus? Given that the Temple had already been destroyed when John’s Gospel took its final shape, the question must mean something more than just its political overtones in the narrative.

Jesus speaks of replacing the Temple several times in John’s Gospel. This question them means, “Are you now they way in which we encounter God?” Of course, only a member of John’s community could understand it this way. And to a member of John’s community, the answer is so obvious as to not need stating. So Jesus doesn’t answer the question. He replies, “I’ve already told you and you didn’t trust me.” The works that Jesus does witness that he and the Father are in union. Those whom God has given Jesus can never be snatched away, either from Jesus or from God.

But the encounter with God will be different than previously. The God encounter will no longer ensure the political continuity of a people, whether Jewish or Roman. God is present in discourse with Jesus. Even the passage from Revelation begins to change John’s vision of the divine presence. In the throne room of God, worship of God and the lamb looks suspiciously like Emperor worship. Jesus (the lamb) is the true emperor, not Caesar. John the Evangelist would rather have turned the concept of glory on its head, than ascribe the kind of Glory the revealed does to Jesus.

Pastorally, that means we encounter God not in the reversal of our misfortune (like the Revelation expects), but precisely in the midst of it. John’s community has been thrown out of the synagogue, and set adrift in the world. But precisely there, Jesus is the gate to the sheepfold, and the shepherd. In our gathering, our recognition of one another, we hear the Shepherd’s voice. It’s easy to see how some could take John’s Gospel and turn it into a world-denying gnosticism, a retreat behind the walls of the sheepfold, but John assures that the Shepherd leads us out as well as in, and that outside, we find good pasture. The world, as it is, is good. The Logos dwells among us, in the flesh. Expect no reversal, but instead find glory now.

Lent 5C

Isaiah 43:16-21
Psalm 126
Philippians 3:8-14
Luke 20:9-19

The General Convention of the Episcopal Church in 2006 authorized a change from the Prayer Book Lectionary to the Revised Common Lectionary to be effected by Advent 1 2007. There are times I wish we had switched earlier. This is one of those times. The parable of the tenants and the vineyard is one of those episodes that could be dropped from the canon.

The passage from Isaiah is perfectly lovely. The prophet is imagining the return from exile as a new Exodus. Just as God made a path for God’s people through the mighty waters as they came out of Egypt, so will God do equally great things to bring them back from exile. This idea has to be set securely alongside the passage from Luke. We must remember that God’s promises are never null.

The parable of the tenants and the vineyard refers the reader back to Isaiah 5. In Isaiah 5, the prophet sings a song of his beloved and his vineyard. God (the beloved) has planted a vineyard on Mt Zion. He has cleared it of stones, built a tower in it, dug a wine press in it, built a wall around it, and then has come looking for fruit but finds only wild grapes. God has come looking for righteousness and find bloodshed. The prophet goes on to say that the vineyard is Jerusalem and Judah. God will tear down the wall around his vineyard, let it go to weed and give it over to grazing, because of its unfruitfulness. Clearly the prophet is struggling to understand Jerusalem’s impending doom.

In Luke’s variation (taken almost completely from Mark), God sends servants (prophets) to God’s vineyard (Jerusalem). The tenants mistreat some and kill others. Finally, God sends God’s son — surely they will respect God’s son and give God some of the fruit. Of course, they don’t. The decide that if they kill the son, the vineyard will be theirs, so they throw him out of vineyard and kill him. Therefore, we are told, God will kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others. The vineyard is no longer Jerusalem, but the promises given to God’s people, which have now been taken from Jews and given to Christians (according to the parable). We have shifted from punishing an unfruitful vineyard, to killing tenants and giving the vineyard to others.

It is hard to know how to treat this parable, other than simply to argue against it. Maybe our response as Christians is to give the vineyard back — to tell God we don’t want it on these conditions. Maybe our response is to cultivate another vineyard cleared by our own labor. At any event, we ought to be giving the fruit away, just as fast as it grows, perhaps inviting all to share the wine it produces.

The Revised Common Lectionary has John’s account of Mary anointing Jesus’ feet. I’ll look forward to preaching on that three years from now.

Lent 4C

Joshua 4:19-24; 5:9-12

Psalm 34:1-8

2 Corinthians 5:17-21

Luke 15:11-32

In my research, I have noticed with interest how often stories of water crossing are linked with stories of meals. Here in a covenant renewal ceremony narrated in Joshua, we have the crossing of the Jordan linked with the first celebration of the Passover in the new land. It is perhaps a little surprising that the body of water crossed is the Jordan and not the Red Sea, but the haggadic nature of the tale is unmistakable: when your children ask in times to come “What is the meaning of these twelve stones?” you will tell them. . . I wonder if baptism in the Jordan (cum John the Baptist) signaled the arrival of the eschatological feast (they ate the produce of the land and the manna ceased)?

In Luke, we have our favorite story, but I suspect more people identify with the older brother than with the younger. When he comes in from the fields, he hears symphonies and choruses, music of Greek comedies and tragedies (worship). Gentile Christians are enjoying a party with the father. He refuses to enter. Luke leaves the story unresolved: does he at last come to the feast, or not? The only way to miss the party is our own refusal to enter.

Lent 3C

Exodus 3:1-15

Psalm 103:1-11

1 Corinthians 10:1-13

Luke 13:1-9

Again, we find in our reading from Luke what looks like at first a mish-mash of sayings: The pair of sayings about those who suffer — those whose blood Pilate mixed with their sacrifices, and those on whom the tower of Siloam fell. Luke has Jesus ask his hearers if they think these were any more sinful than other Galileans or residents of Jerusalem. The expected answer is no. And the moral is, if you don’t repent, you likewise will perish. And then comes the marvelous little parable of the fig tree. Three years the owner of the vineyard has been looking for fruit. He tells the farmer to cut it down. No, he replies, wait one more year. I’ll dig in some manure, and then if it doesn’t bear fruit next year, cut it down.

This story has echoes of the preaching of John the Baptist: Bear fruit worthy of repentance (Luke 3:8), and even now the axe is laid at the root of the tree (Luke 3:9). In between these verses, John warns the crowd not to rely on the claim of Abraham as ancestor. Any tree not bearing fruit worthy of repentance will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

In Mark’s Gospel, we meet the fig tree as Jesus is making his way into Jerusalem. Jesus curses the tree because it has no fruit (Mark 11:12). While in Jerusalem, he cleanses the Temple. On his way back out, the disciples see the fig tree, withered (Mark 11:20). Mark is using the device of intercalation, to have the center story interpret the story split in two. The fig tree is Israel, or the Jerusalem Temple religion, and it is fruitless, and therefore cursed and withered. Recall Isaiah 5.

Luke does not bear the same animus toward the Temple as Mark does, and so has no need to have Jesus curse its existence. Luke moves the fig tree story away from the last week in Jerusalem, and turns it into this parable. In this context then, Luke is suggesting God’s patience with the Judaism of his day — let’s see what happens. Place after the two stories above, it suggests that Luke is saying to Christians, “Do you think the residents of Jerusalem, the adherents of Judaism, were worse sinners than you? Unless you repent. . .” This would be a huge shift from Mark’s understanding of Judaism, much more in line with Paul’s effort to include both strands within God’s saving plan.

The reading from 1 Corinthians would suggest much the same. If you think you are standing, watch out. This pericope is included in an argument about not partaking of the table of idols. Paul’s better off congregants wanted to continue in the social and political life of their city by accepting invitations to banquets and temples. Paul urges them not to, out of consideration for their brothers and sisters whose conscience this practice bothers. Yes, it will be hard to forgo this life, but no test you have been given is beyond humans.

Moses doesn’t want to be given the test either of working to establish a new social identity (taking the people out of Egypt). Send someone else, he says. No dice. We may think we want a burning bush experience, but the cost is high.