Category: Lectionary

20 September 2009
Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 20B (RCL)
Proverbs 31:10-31
Psalm 1
James 3:13 — 4:3, 7-8a
Mark 9:30-37

The good wife, who can find? This reading could easily give a woman a real sense of inadequacy. Certainly, we have seen enough of the do-it-all woman, who has to work, be a wife, raise kids, and often enough without significant help from her spouse. First of all, it is important to note that the ideal wife in this passage from Proverbs is from the upper classes: in v. 15, she provides tasks for her servant girls; she also has enough money to buy a field on her own.
But far more important to understanding this passage is to recognize that it is written for young men, from the upper classes, who are being trained to take their place in the king’s household. Throughout the book, they have been warned about “wiley” women, who, if they allow it, will seduce them away from their standing. It would be easy to come away with a “blame the woman” attitude from Proverbs, but this is the closing poem. If a man remains faithful to his good wife, she will do him great good and not harm.
I also love the way it turns the question of where wisdom resides on its head. These young men are going to sit at the king’s table and give him advice. But wisdom, personified in the good wife, is not to be found there, but at home. The holy life will be lived at home!

James has one line this time that make the reading worth it: you want and do not have, so you commit murder. How many people in the pews will “Oh, really!?” None of us have commited murder. But, it’s shocking enough to make you think. We want oil, and so what happens? You can trace out the questions.

Mark similarly turns around the question of where power resides. After predicting the passion, which the disciples still don’t get, Jesus has to ask the disciples what they were arguing about. They were arguing about who is the greatest — presumably when he comes in glory. Where will power be? Whoever wants to be greatest must be minister of all — both represent all, and wait on all — it’s a great word in Greek. And then Jesus takes a child and says essentially, this is God’s ambassador. What is the point of power in community? Is it not about protecting the community, guarding the fringes? Who could be more at the edge of community, more powerless, than a child not yet gendered? And, if the community is to survive, this child must survive. Power in the church should be about bringing the edges in, not figuring out where the center is. The holy life is not found at the king’s table, but where we live.

6 September 2009
Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 18B (RCL)
Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23
Psalm 125
James 2:1-17
Mark 7:24-37

Some sermons just write themselves. In church on Sunday, I explained the new hands-on, face-to-face ministry cards. On the front, people are invited to write whatever hof2f ministry they have been involved in during the last week, and on the back, reflect on how this has changed them. They then place the cards in the offering baskets.

Jesus engaged in a little hof2f ministry this week, and it changed him. He “resurrected” and went to the region of Tyre, Mark tells us. There, he stayed in a house, and didn’t want anyone to know. I’ll say, he didn’t want anyone to know — he was staying in the house of a Gentile, I would guess. Hard to do for a Jew (if Jesus was in fact a Jew). But a pesky woman found out about it, and came to him with a request that he heal her daughter. Jesus essentially calls her a dog, and she replies by wondering if he is so cruel as to sweep up the crumbs under the children’s table, just so the dogs can’t eat. She turns his insult back on him. And Jesus’ heart is changed.

This healing happens between the second sea crossing (the walking on water — clearly a resurrection appearance) and the feeding of the 4000. The healings between these miracles happen in Gentile territory. So, this time, baptism and eucharist are bringing Gentiles to the table! The shift wasn’t easy for the community. They told their story in the story of Jesus needing to be confronted in order to change his mind. I wonder why it is that we think God made up his mind once and for all, and gave us a complete set of instructions in the Bible, when in the bible itself we have stories of God changing God’s own mind.

I also love the lesson from Proverbs. At issue is what will count as “goods” in Wisdom’s community. A good name (relational identity) will count for more than silver or gold (market economy). We are made who we are, and given value, by our relationships, rather than by what we can achieve alone.

James says essentially the same thing. The first sentence should really read, “Do you, brothers and sisters, by your acts of favoritism, really trust in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ?” The issue is trust, not belief. If we show favoritism, if we want to get next to money and power, then we don’t trust Jesus, and whatever it is that Jesus offers, namely the kingdom. God has chosen the poor in the world to be rich in trust, and heirs of the kingdom, says James. What counts as a “good”? Relationship, Kingdom, not gold or silver.

But, also, of course, gold and silver used in community. What good does it do to say to your brother or sister, “go in peace, keep warm and eat your fill,” if you don’t supply their needs? The kingdom has to be real here and now, also. What counts as a good? Hard question to answer.

30 August 2009
Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 17B (RCL)
Song of Solomon 2:8-13
Psalm 45:1-2, 7-10
James 1:17-27
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

On Sunday past, I asked folks to write on a 3×5 card whatever ministry they had done in the last week, and place it in the offering basket. They could put their names on the card, or not, as they desired. After service, several people told me they didn’t put anything in the basket, because it felt like “blowing their own horn.” Christians aren’t supposed to do that, I guess. I’m going to push back this week. I intend to ask if putting money in the basket is “blowing our own horn” (the more I put in the more I make, right?). Since the cards can be anonymous, this is about offering: what do we offer? I want to learn how folks understand their Christian faith.

James tells us to be doers of the word and not hearers only, and that faith without works is dead. Martin Luther famously did not like the Epistle of James, because it seemed to favor a “works righteousness” rather than pure grace. The Song of Solomon is a love poem, and can be read that way pretty simply. It has often been read as an allegory of the love of God for the community or for the soul. Anyone knows that a marriage or partnership can’t be based on pure grace. Yes, it is pure grace that my spouse or partner loves me, even given all the things I’ve done, but if I don’t respond in kind, and show it, what good is that? The reading from Mark’s gospel also seems to imply that outward deeds reflect inward realities, and inward realitites can be shaped by outward deeds. The trick is getting the inside to match the outside, or one might say, the inside and outside are going to match, no matter what. Change one, change the other.

This Sunday, we have three baptisms. It is easy to talk about the love of God when we are baptizing infants and young children, but they do have a way of growing up. The love between God and the Christian must mature as the Christian matures, just like we can assume the love between the two lovers in the Song of Solomon must mature.

So, what is our resistance to writing down on a card the ministries we have engaged in? We want to keep the inside inside. Certainly, we don’t want to brag, and that is good, but if I kept my love of my spouse to myself, what good would that do? The exercise make us think about what we are offering, how our vocation as Christians encompasses our whole lives, and that it continues week by week.

23 August 2009
Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 16B (RCL)
1 Kings 8:1, 6, 10, 22-30, 41-43
Psalm 84
Ephesians 6:10-20
John 6:56-69

[That’s one of the five questions, by the way]. These are rich lessons this week. How to distill from them a sermon?

Solomon pulls off a daring shift in theology. Up until Solomon, God had been a god of war. The ark lived in a tent, always ready to decamp to the battlefield. The Tent of Meeting was always at the center of the “camp.” The poles made it possible to carry it out to battle, and the story surely shows it being used this way. Now, all of sudden, we pray to God at the Temple during drought, famine, plague and the like. The ark is settled permanently. It no longer goes out to battle. That’s a huge shift.

Ephesians certainly captures the imagery of war: the whole armor of God. But, our struggle is with cosmic forces, not armies. So, does the author of Ephesians imagine an ark-like presence of God within a mobilized community? We are to fight the “cosmocrators” of the world, a reference to the Caesars of the world. Certainly subversive.

And more bread and wine. John tells us that whoever drinks the blood of the Human Being has life. Jesus dwells in that one, and that one in Jesus, just as the living father sent him, and he lives through the father, so that one will live through Jesus. Startling language in several regards. First, just the cannibalistic aspect is shocking. But beyond that, the blood: The institution of sacrifice as described in Leviticus prevents the use of blood. Blood belongs to the deity, because blood is life, and all life, all life is God’s. So, we are to drink the blood (the life) of the deity. So, we are the deity.

After changing water in to wine, John reports no long discourse of Jesus. All the other “signs” in John’s Gospel get a discourse. This one, instead, is followed by the Temple Act. Jesus, when asked by what authority he does these things, says, “Destroy this Temple and I will rebuild it in three days.” Jesus’ body replaces the Temple. John’s community replaces the altar, where the blood is poured. Note that the sign of water to wine takes place at Capernaum, and we are told Jesus delivers this discourse teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum.

The community, then, is the presence of God in the world, both for battle against the forces of evil, and for prayer at the Temple. Solomon invokes God’s name over the Temple, so that when people pray at the Temple, God will hear in heaven. If we are the altar, then when people entreat us, God hears in heaven (or in our midst). That’s an awesome responsibility. What we bring to God is what gets brought to God.

16 August 2009
Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 15B (RCL)
1 Kings 2:10-12; 3:3-14
Psalm 111
Ephesians 5:15-20
John 6:51-58

What are we to make of Solomon? We are told that he walked in the statutes of his father David, and God assures Solomon that if he walks in God’s ways as did David, God will be with him. David walked in God’s ways?! We are told Solomon loved the Lord, only he sacrificed at the high places, habitually offering thousands of burnt offerings at the high place of Gibeon. In later times, offering at the high places would be seen as one of the worst possible sins. So, did Solomon love God or not? It must be that at the time of Solomon, offering at the high places was not seen as a sin. It was something read back into history by the post-Exilic editors, as a way of explaining why bad things happened. As long as we are large and in charge, we tend to think God is with us. It’s only when things go south that we start to wonder where we messed up. So, in his day, Solomon was a good king.

The Ephesians passage has to do with conduct at banquets: don’t get drunk, and don’t employ outside entertainment (flute girls, for example). Sing spiritual songs yourselves. These would have been very modest and moderate banquets.

And then, Jesus in John: Whoever does not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood has no life. The word that Jesus uses for “eat” in this passage is the Greek trogein. It means to gnaw. A hole gnawed by a mouse is called a trogle and one who creeps into such a hole a troglodyte. The imagery is graphic. We are to gnaw on Jesus’ flesh the way a mouse gnaws on wood. And drink his blood — a horror for any Jew. Drinking blood was forbidden, because the life of an animal was in the blood, and life belonged to God. So, we are not to eat Jesus just as food, but to ingest his very life, which belongs to God. And, it’s not just simple swallowing, but gnawing.

Maybe eating Jesus doesn’t happen quickly or easily. Maybe we have to work at it. It’s not just swallowing a wafer, but changing a way of life. If we, collectively, are the body of Christ, then perhaps individually, we are particles of flesh. We are being instructed to ruminate on each others’ lives. Savor them, extract every bit of life we can from them. The people who frustrate me, what can I learn by ruminating on their lives? Can I learn to appreciate them by gnawing on them? What makes them who they are?

In the recent debate of health care, we seem to have lost the ability to listen and hear. Those shouters at town hall meetings, what are they afraid of? What would we learn if we chewed on their lives for a while? Do we savor the lives of those without health care? If we took their lives into ours, what would change?

26 July 2009
Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 12B (RCL)
2 Samuel 11:1-15
Psalm 14
Ephesians 3:14-21
John 6:1-21

Short blog entry this week. Out of the office Monday and Tuesday, and slow catching up on everything.

David (as Nathan’s parable will tell us next week) had more than enough of just about everything. But he wanted more . . . (In the spring of the year, when kings go out to battle — occupational hazard for kings to want more). Got him in big trouble. Interesting how Bathsheba’s two word speech had the power to bring the most powerful man in the kingdom to a halt (I’m pregnant).

The young boy in the gospel story on the other hand, had enough (and truth be told, probably more than enough for one lunch — I don’t know how big a loaf was, but five would surely have fed him and several others), but was willing to share. David saw his superabundance as scarcity. The kid saw his “just enough” as abundance. The results tell.

The people try to take Jesus by force to make him king (whose occupational hazard is to want more) so they could have more, but he goes up the mountain. The miracle is not the feeding, but the “enough-ness” of a humble offering.

19 July 2009
Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 11B (RCL)
2 Samuel 7:1-14a
Psalm 89:20-37
Ephesians 2:11-22
Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

David, firmly installed as king of Israel and Judah, living in his own palace in the city of Jerusalem, which he won by conquest from the Jebusites (so it belongs neither to Israel nor Judah) and having brought the ark to his city, want to build a fine house for the ark. Such a temple would signal the permanence of the cult as well as the permanence of the kingship. David would have divine imprimatur for his reign. But God declines. God is used to living in tents. Instead, God will build David a house, establish a dynasty. The ark went to war with the northern tribes (recall the scene at Jericho), and so it belonged in a tent. David was a military leader — kept a standing army. The combined kingdom would never be quite secure in David’s lifetime, but only in Solomon’s, and then only for his lifetime.

I don’t like the military metaphor, but this story is a reminder that we don’t live in a stable kingdom. The reign Jesus proclaimed has not been established. We still live “in tents”, working to bring it about. But the story also reminds us that we don’t bring it about, we don’t build the house. God does. We’re in the vanguard.

Jesus sent out the 12, two by two, with staff in hand, no bread, no bag, no extra coat, with power over unclean spirits. They were to accept the hospitality of those who would give it, heal the sick, and preach repentence. By plopping the story of Herod’s court, and the beheading of John down in the middle of this story, Mark is asking, “Which is the Kingdom? Herod, or the twelve?” They were out there doing “hands-on, face-to-face” ministry, welcoming the sick, the demon possessed, the broken to a table they didn’t set, and saying, “this is the kingdom, not Herod’s court.” When they return, they tell Jesus everything they’ve done. And, even though we skip it in this week’s Gospel reading, Jesus has them feed the multitude in the desert. They are on their way to the promised land.

The author of Ephesians talks about Jesus, in his death, tearing down the dividing wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile. Through his blood, both groups are adopted as children of God. And then built into a house for God’s presence. Those crazy christians are making stunning claims for their worship — this is where the God of all creation is present to that creation. This is the house God has built. But any “us and them” means the house isn’t finished yet — there is still a wall to come down.

Our General Convention continued the hard work of tearing down walls this past week. Resolution D025, while insisting that we want to continue as part of the Anglican communion, and acknowledging that not all of our Anglican partners, nor even all of us quite get it yet, said that the call to ordained ministry is a mystery, and God may well call gays and lesbians to all orders, and our discernment process will be governed by our own Canons. It may seem like the whole structure will totter if we tear down that wall (the rest of the communion may think we are ‘walking apart’), but we have to remember, God builds the house. Our task is to get as many people into it as we can.

July 12, 2009
Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 10B (RCL)2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19
Psalm 24
Ephesians 1:3-14
Mark 6:14-29

These are tough readings to preach. We have dancing, partying, beheading, and if we read the verses left out of the OT lesson, God breaking out against poor Uzzah for steadying the ark. And then the introduction to the letter to the Ephesians, which in Greek is a single sentence. Hmmm.

The 2 Samuel reading seems to me to be about David co-opting the Ark, which belonged to the Northern tribes (all the shrines to date had been in the north), and bringing it to his own city. David was a southerner (of the tribe of Benjamin), and so the tribes of the north wouldn’t necessarily have felt any kinship with him. It’s a marriage of convenience — Saul left no progeny. So David throws an amazing party. The purpose of sacrifice is to establish kinship: who gets meat structures the kinship unit, from family to nation. The stunning thing in this story is that David distributes meat, along with cake and raisins, directly to all the women of Israel. Women only got meat in sacrifice through their men: their fathers if they were not married, their husbands if they were. David, who is dancing so vigorously as to expose himself to the crowd, is essentially marrying all the women of Israel (exposing one’s nakedness to is a euphemism for having sex with). No wonder Michal despised him. And of course, he couldn’t have sex with Michal and run the risk of fathering a grandson of Saul, a stronger claimant to the throne of Israel than himself. And he is essentially adopting all the men, by providing meat to them. An ox and a fatling every six steps is going to be a lot of meat. And of course, God shares in it, since some of the oxen are made into whole smoke offerings. The two kingdoms are united in the person of David by the strategem of his adopting/marrying Israel through sacrifice. Now I begin to see where Paul gets the image of God adopting us a children through Christ’s sacrifice.

Psalm 24 could well have been written for just such an occasion as returning the Ark to Jerusalem after triumph in war.

Ephesians gives us the introduction to a speech, that in weeks to come will talk about uniting Jew and Gentile in one family. Too bad this weeks reading isn’t a little clearer.

And then what to do with Herod’s party? Only courtesans (prostitutes) danced at parties, so one wonders if the point of the story is just to show the utter depravity of Herod’s household. The story gets sandwiched in between Jesus’ sending of the 12 with power over unclean spirits, and their return and report of all they have done. Mark uses the sandwich (called intercalation) to interpret the two stories. So is this kind of depravity the unclean spiritual power over which the disciples have power? The twelve are establishing a kingdom based on healing and a shared meal, rather than a kingdom based on brutality and depravity. How do we do that today? Not any easier now than then.

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 9B (RCL)
2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10
Psalm 48
2 Corinthians 12:2-10
Mark 6:1-13

I’m always suspicious when the designers of a lectionary leave verses out of a reading. In 2 Samuel 5:6-8, David has his soldiers go up the water channel of Jerusalem and attack the lame and the blind (the Jebusites had thought their stronghold so defensible that even the lame and the blind could keep David out). Not a very attractive picture of the new King. There is a strong anti-monarchical strand of tradition included in the books of Samuel; the people reject God as their king when they ask for Saul as king. I wonder if David was too revered for the author of that strand of tradition to come right out against David as a bad king, but we get little tidbits like this to remind us how wicked monarchy is in general. The kings are supposed to protect the lame and blind, and here is David attacking them (admittedly the lame and the blind of the enemy).

In the passage from Mark’s Gospel, Jesus, having discovered his own powerlessness in his home town, begins to send out the twelve with power over demons. It is the beginning of an ongoing process — he doesn’t send them out just once, but begins to send them out. He does not tell them what to preach; only gives them power over unclean spirits. And then gives them a set of negative instructions; take no purse, no coin, no extra shirt. They do get to carry a staff. The requirements for being a disciple of Jesus are even more stringent that for being a cynic. Cynics could carry the stick, for warding off blows and dogs, but also could carry a pouch for keeping the next day’s food they had begged. Jesus’ disciples can only beg food for this day. They are totally dependent on the hospitality of those who will take them in.

We are told the disciples proclaim that people should repent. Jesus didn’t tell them to say that. They cast out demons and healed the sick. These are all the signs of the Kingdom. Jesus begins his proclamation, “Repent. The Kingdom is at hand,” and then casts out a demon. Then Peter’s mother-in-law feeds him. The Kingdom is precisely exorcism in exchange for hospitality. If demon-possession is a social dislocation experienced personally (oppression, e.g.), then somehow the act of giving hopsitality overcomes it. If Roman oppression had rended people marginal, then giving hospitality to these raggedy disciples empowered folks. This, says Jesus, is what the true empire looks like. The Cynics claimed to be living in the kingdom, because no emperor had power over them, but it was a very lonely kingdom, outside the social structures. Jesus’ disciples were building a new social structure that rescued people from isolation. But the heralds of that new empire had to accept their own powerlessness in order to proclaim the power of that new empire. They couldn’t even beg food for the next day, but only bread for today. How unlike David.

I wonder what demons need exorcising these days. Certainly, in this current economic climate, a loss of buying power might be experienced personally and even somatically (tight shoulders worrying about paying the bills). I know folks who feel like the world has changed so rapidly, that they can’t keep up with it, and get grumpy. But, what Mark suggests is counterintuive. We want to fix the problem, pay the bills, get folks into jobs. Mark has Jesus tell us to stay in their houses and accept their hospitality.

Paul suggest that power is brought to completion in weakness. Maybe we have to accept our need of others, even those who apparently have nothing to offer, in order to accomplish anything. Paul could boast of his own revelations and insights, but suggests that the Corinthians only look at what gets done through him. What are we doing?

Second Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 6B (RCL)
1 Samuel 15:34 — 16:13
Psalm 20
2 Corinthians 5:6-17
Mark 4:26-34

The fourth chapter of Mark’s Gospel has always bothered me. The sower who goes out to sow at the beginning seems to me to be a particularly sloppy farmer — some of the seed falls along the foot path, some in stony ground, some in the thorns and only some in good soil. Was he not watching what he was doing? Did he not prepare the soil beforehand (remove rocks, dig up thorns)? Then, Jesus explains the parable to his disciples and explains the purpose of the parables: “so that they (those outside his inner circle) may look and see, but not know; hear and listen but not understand; in order that they may not be converted and forgiven.” (quoting Isaiah 6:9). A mission whose purpose is failure.

Then we have this parable. The sower sows, and then does nothing, goes to sleep, wakes up, and the grain grows. Most farmers I know irrigate, cultivate — there is plenty to do while the grain is growing. And then the idiot sows mustard seed on the ground. No one is his right mind sows mustard seed. It’s an aggressive weed. But here at last is the hint. The mustard becomes the largest of the garden herbs, with strong branches (says the gospel writer, but I’ve not seen mustard like that) so that the birds of the heavens may make their nests in its shade. That’s a quote of Psalm 104:12, and an allusion to Ezekiel 17:23, 31:6 and Daniel 4:9, 18. In those passages, the cedar or the cypress in which the birds of the air make their nests stands for the kingdom of Egypt, of Nebuchadnezzar, and for the kingdom which God will establish on the return of the Exiles from Babylon. The trees of Egypt and Nebuchadnezzar, whose tops reach above the clouds will be cut down, but the sapling that God brings back from Babylon will grow strong.

So, the mustard bush, a scrappy aggressive weed, which no one wants, has supplanted the cedar. God’s kingdom is no longer imagined as a majestic tree, but a scrappy weed, living at the edges of the field, in the ditches and along the roadways. The kingdom flies below radar. No wonder the farmer doesn’t cultivate. We’re not aiming here at the standard definitions. This thing is going to have to catch on by itself. All we can do is live in it, and hope people get it.

God does sorta the same thing with David. The people had wanted a king, just like the other nations around them. God reluctantly gave them Saul, and set him up to be a bad king, so they would figure out what they had asked for. Then, when the time came to replace Saul, he opts for David, the youngest, out if the fields with the sheep. Or Paul, who boasts to the Corinthians of his weakness.

The kingdom of God is not judged according to the world’s standards. When we, as the church, look to succeed, whatever that may mean, we’ve departed the path. The farmer in Mark 4 displays an absolute lack of interest in results. Those are in God’s hands. Some seed produces 30-fold, some 60-fold and some 100-fold, but we’re never told how the farmer reacted. A frightening thing in this economic downturn, when it is really easy to be anxious about budgets — will we have enough; while the farmer is busy throwing seed here, there and everywhere, and then not worrying about it.

What are we to do? Especially when we think we can begin to feel the bottom of the seed bag?