Category: Lectionary

Proper 22C
Habakkuk 1:1-13, 2:1-4
Psalm 37:3-10
2 Timothy 1:1-14
Luke 17:5-10

We are all now thoroughly aware that there is a “crisis” in the Anglican Communion. People on all sides of the issue are saying, with Habakkuk, “How long, O Lord?” The language of crisis is a way of selling newspapers, or of driving political wedges. I am not convinced there is a crisis.

Several years ago, Archbishop Ndungane visited our diocese. The Offices of the Bishop sent out an email that Ndungane was available to preach on a certain Sunday. No one responded, so they sent out the note again. By now, it was late in the game, so I responded. We had little time to prepare a reception (we did put something on) or a special liturgy. I remember meeting the Archbishop on the side walk, and nervously asking if he wanted to preside at Eucharist, as it is always a bishop’s prerogative to preside at table. He thanked me, but allowed that he would rather just preach and then be in the congregation as it were. He had only brought office vestments.

I recall being all thumbs at the altar (an Archbishop sitting over there at the sedilia!), but getting through. Somehow, I managed not to drop the host as I communicated him. Between services, we had an adult forum. Gene Robinson had just been consecrated, and several people asked the Archbishop if communion would break. He paused for a minute, and then said, “Your Rector and I are in communion. I have just taken communion from him. Nothing can change that.” No crisis here. Whatever others might do, communion is made up of such simple acts.

Jesus reminds the apostles that they are servants. Faith is as much about loyalty and doing what we owe to do, as it is about feeling or thinking. The difficulty comes in trying to remain loyal to all our brothers and sisters. Now, we plead, “Lord, increase our faith!” Habakkuk assures us that vision is coming. It may be delayed, but come it will. The righteous will live by their loyalty in the meantime. It may be hard and thankless work to live that way, but the language of crisis only divides.

September 23
Proper 20C
Amos 8:4-12
Psalm 138
1 Timothy 2:1-8
Luke 16:1-13

This parable has troubled interpreters almost since it was written. Jesus seems to be commending dishonesty. How can the master praise his steward for giving away his wealth, the very thing for which he was accused in the first place?

Bruce Malina and Richard Rorbaugh have written A Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels. They suggest that the owners debtor are tenant farmers, and the size of the debts suggests whole villages are involved. When the steward forgave a portion of the debt, the tenants would have been overwhelmed by the owner’s generosity. The owner now looks good, the tenants can pay — it’s a win/win situation. That helps the story make a little more sense.

But the moral still puzzles. Which of us haven’t told our kids or hear when we were little, receiving our allowance, “If you are careful with a little, you learn to be careful with much.”? I can even understand, “If you are not faithful with unrighteous wealth, how can you be faithful with what is true?” But what puzzles is, “If you are not faithful with what is another’s, who will give you your own?” That’s just backward from what we would expect: if your not faithful with your own, who will entrust you with what is theirs?

It implies that what I have now is not my own, and that my own will be much better than what I have now, and given to me by others. The owner receives honor from the villagers when his steward clears their debts. They give him what is his. The grain and oil were not his in the first place. They receive the grain and oil from him. What is mine? The only things that are inalienably mine are given to me by others: love, honor, joy. Anything I think I own belongs to someone else.

Proper 14C
Genesis 15:1-6
Psalm 33:12-15, 18-22
Hebrews 11:1-16
Luke 12:32-40

In the Genesis reading, Abram again argues with God. The New American Bible translates Abram’s response to God’s promise as something like, “What good are your gifts to me, since I have no heir?” God has just promised Abram the spoils of war (Do not fear, I am your shield. Your reward shall be great). Abram wonders what good that will do him.

Abram understands a basic truth about material wealth. It does the owner no good if he or she can’t share it. Only when used as a gift will wealth increase one’s status in a community. That was the problem with man whose fields produced so richly in Luke’s story last week. He wanted to hoard all his wealth in his barns. Even though Abram understands that wealth must be shared, nevertheless he doubts God’s ability to provide good. I wonder how often we do the same thing: say to God, “What good is all this you have given me, since . . .” Fill in the blank. We tend to set conditions on God’s goodness. None of the rest of God’s grace matters, because that one thing we hope for isn’t so. We see the one thing wrong among all that is right.

God responds to Abram in a surprising way. Go outside and look at the stars. God’s goodness is as sure and as vast as the stars. Essentially God says to Abram, “Get yourself out of the center of the picture, and you’ll see the goodness around you.”

The passage from Hebrews says the same thing. All these people had faith and looked for a city with foundations. They looked for the community of God. We never get to that city, but we always look for it.

The passage from Luke is a real mish mash. It seems to be grouped around the ideas of treasure, delay and thieves, following after the man who built bigger barns and exhortations not to worry. Heavenly treasure is material wealth used as gift. When it circulates, it builds up a balance of exchange as gift. It connects us in a network of mutual indebtedness. Nothing can corrupt that. In that network of relationships, the master is not shamed to serve the slave. The return of the master from his wedding feast, serving his slave is a picture of the reversal of the eschatological banquet. That’s the city our forebears anticipated. That’s the network we build in which we store heavenly treasure.

Proper 12C
Genesis 18:20-33
Psalm 138
Colossians 2:6-15
Luke 11:1-13

I can’t help but smile when reading this passage from Genesis. Abraham certainly takes his life in his hands when he argues with God about how many righteous would be needed to save Sodom from destruction. It’s a dangerous thing to confront God — even more dangerous to question God’s actions. “Oh, do not let my lord be angry if I speak just this once more. What if ten are found there?” The story ends with God going on God’s way, and Abraham returning to his place. He had certainly gotten out of it! It’s wonderful irony.

But there is more at stake here than just Abraham chutzpah. God has just promised to Abaraham and Sarah a son, through whom Abraham will become the father of a great nation, so that all the nations will bless themselves in Abraham. God has singled Abraham out, “that he may instruct his children and his posterity to keep the way of the LORD by doing what is just and right” (v 19). Through Abraham, the nations are to learn the way of the LORD. When Abraham argues that God should not sweep away the righteous with the unrighteous, he says to God, “Far be it from you to do such a thing. Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?” Abraham instructs God on God’s way.

The story would have particular poignance before and after the fall of Jerusalem. Surely Sodom must have been a wicked place, if God could not find ten righteous there. Sodom was used as a warning for Jerusalem — just as Sodom failed to guard the orphan and widow, so Jerusalem (see Isaiah 1). Jerusalem must have been wicked, if God could not save it for the sake of the righteous in it.

Abraham has been chosen by God to instruct the nations in the ways of God. Two things then are incumbent on Abraham: to instruct his posterity, and to get involved in situations of unrighteousness. God’s chosen has to argue with God about what is just and what is not. So also for us.

Then, Luke’s teaching on prayer. The Lord’s Prayer in Luke is stripped to its essentials. No Kingdom, power and glory. No “who art in heaven.” No “thy will be done.” Just, “Father, let your name be revered, let your kingdom come. Give us daily the just sufficient bread. Forgive us our sins just as we are forgiving those indebted to us. Don’t let us be put to the test.”

The wonderful little story following is truly complex. There are three actors. The man whose friend comes to him off the road. The friend who comes off the road, and the sleeper. All three are shamed. What on earth is someone doing out one the road in the middle of the night? Things can’t be good for him. He has to resort to his friend in the middle of the night. This is shame. The friend does not have what he needs to welcome his friend. This is shame. He goes to his friend and bangs on the door. The friend, even if he won’t be raised up to give what is needed because his friend (note the ambiguity about who is whose friend), yet, because of his shamelessness he will get up and give whatever is needed. Whose shamelessness? The knocker’s or the sleeper’s? The Greek translates both ways. “Because he would be ashamed not to,” or “Because he was not ashamed to ask.”

A situation has arisen in a little village in which failure to respond brings shame on all three actors. A simple response, the loan of three loafs – bread just sufficient enough for the day, will instead bring honor for all, even though it is inconvenient. Just like Abraham, the sleeper has to get involved in situations of injustice. If we are going to pray, we have to be ready to get involved as well.

The next sayings are all that some people will hear on Sunday morning. “Ask, and it will be given to you.” So patently untrue. It does, however, beg the question, “Ask for what?” If the knocker in the story had asked for a sumptuous meal, it would have brought shame all around, because no one could provide it. If we ask for a million bucks (how many people pray to win the lottery?), it brings shame, because if we don’t get it, God has failed, and if we do, we have friends emerging from the woodwork. We become inhospitable, like Sodom. And ask whom? The story shows prayer working within a little community of three. We pray in community, not in isolation.

So, refer back up to the prayer Jesus has just taught. We ask for three things. Just enough bread for the day, forgiveness so we can release from debt those who owe us, and not to be tempted (to ask for more?). If you knew that a single wish would be granted, without fail, what would you ask for? Anything beyond today’s bread gets you in trouble. These are the ways of God we are called to teach.

Proper 11C
Genesis 18:1-10a
Psalm 15
Colossians 1:21-29
Luke 10:38-42

This Gospel story and the story of the workers in the vineyard who all get paid the same despite how long they worked generate more heat than any others. Why would Jesus chide Martha, who is working to put a meal before him?

I have heard sermons about the active versus the contemplative life preached on the story of Mary and Martha (favoring, of course, the contemplative life). Every woman who has ever served on the altar guild, or put on a parish brunch for the day the bishop visited, who washed dishes while everyone else enjoyed conversation, feels immediately put down by this story. Somebody has got to do that stuff. So, why is Jesus upset?

There are several things worth noting about the story. First, and so obvious that we miss it altogether, is that Mary is a woman. It would have been at least as shocking to Luke’s first readers that Mary is sitting at Jesus’ feet as would have been Jesus’ rebuke of Martha. Women did not sit at the feet of a teacher. Perhaps the point of the story is that women can be disciples in Jesus’ circle.

Secondly, I wonder to what extent this story reflects the struggle between the itinerant missionaries of early Christianity and the settled householders. Clearly, in the Didache, there are rules for how long a missionary can stay (and they must never ask for money!), and what a householder’s obligations are. If this story reflects that controversy, then surprisingly enough, we have women in both roles — Mary as Jesus’ traveling companion and Martha as a householder.

Finally, the NRSV translates verse 41 as “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things.” The Greek word translated “distracted” is thorubaze. A quick trip to Liddel and Scott reveals that everywhere except the New Testament (and the word is used to mean “distracted” only at this verse — pretty thin evidence for this meaning), it means to raise a public outcry, to cause a tumult or uproar. Perhaps this verse ought to be translated, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and raise a fuss about many things.” I wonder if the story might suggest that whatever part we have chosen, we should not worry about what others have chosen. If you can’t stand a dirty kitchen and choose to clean it, don’t fuss that others don’t.

The story of Abraham and Sarah is also surprising. It is narrated in so few verses, but clearly took a great deal of time. Abraham says to Sarah, quickly take three measures of flour (the best), knead it and make cakes. How long does that take — you’ve got to heat the oven and all the rest of it. Abraham tells a servant to kill a calf and prepare it. How long does that take? And how many people will it serve? Clearly this is not a meal just for the three men, but Abraham’s whole household (herders, servants, etc) will eat. If Abraham is sitting in his tent at the heat of the day (1:00 pm?), when will this meal be ready? 5:00 is pushing it. By the time the men go on to Sodom, it must be late in the evening. And according to the narrator, Abraham doesn’t even know who these guys are. It would have been great shame to him not to entertain them. It is great honor to entertain them this lavishly. I wonder what would happen if we treated visitors to church like that?

Proper 10C
Deuteronomy 30:9-14
Psalm 25:3-9
Colossians 1:1-14
Luke 10:25-37

This will be a short post, as I am just back from vacation.

The Gospel reading this week is the story of the Good Samaritan. As so often happens, this story has been misnamed. The main character (the only one who shows up in each episode) is the man among the robbers. We are supposed to identify with the main character, not the the minor character. Who is my neighbor? The person I can’t stand who helps me out when I’ve been beaten. Go and do likewise. What does that mean in this context? Accept help from those I can’t stand? Offer aid to those who can’t stand me? I suppose both.

Both, however, presuppose a situation in which I rub elbows with people I can’t stand. What was that Samaritan doing on his way to or from Jerusalem, anyway? Luke doesn’t answer THAT question. Gated communities are meant to keep out those we can’t stand, but the phrase becomes an oxymoron. It’s no longer a community if the Samaritans aren’t there. The moral of the story is that community is only possible when I’m put in a position of swallowing my pride to accept help; otherwise I go on believing I’m fine without you, thank you very much.

So, loving neighbor as self requires being willing to accept help. That’s the hard part.

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.