A Preacher’s Ponderings

11 August 2013
Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 14C (RCL)
Isaiah 1:1, 10-20
Psalm 50:1-8, 23-24
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
Luke 12:32-40

Isaiah dives right in to his prophecy against the people. In the verses we leave out, speaking for God, the prophet laments that God’s children don’t recognize their parent. But at least, says the prophets, God has not left us quite as desolate as Sodom. Jerusalem still exists like a hut in a vineyard. And then come the verses we have in our reading. Interestingly, the sins of Sodom, to which the prophet compares the sins of Jerusalem, have more to do with injustice, with a failure to redress the wrongs done to the widow and orphan, than with the sins we usually associate with Sodom. All of our religious worship Continue reading “Incorruptible purses”

28 July 2013
Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 12 C (RCL)
Hosea 1:2-10
Psalm 85
Colossians 2:6-19
Luke 11:1-13

In the RCL, we have been working our way through a sort of history of the divided kingdoms in the Old Testament readings of Year C. We have been reading the minor prophets for the last couple of weeks. Amos was a southern prophet who went north to Bethel and spoke against the excesses of the wealthy. Hosea is, by all appearances, a northern prophet who inveighs against the polytheism of the north. It would be unfair to say that a pure YHWHism had become infected with the worship of the Canaanite gods, but more accurate to say that Hosea was out there on the leading edge of monotheism, trying to direct the religion of Israel toward a pure YHWHism. The fertility cults of the whole Canaanite region were found equally in Israelite (and probably Judahite) religion, but as the disaster of political collapse approached, the prophets of YHWH began to insist on a pure monotheism.

YHWH tells Hosea to take a promiscuous wife Continue reading “Who’s shameless?”

21 July 2013
Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 11C (RCL)
Amos 8:1-12
Psalm 52
Colossians 1:15-28
Luke 10:38-42

Amos is generally agreed to be the first prophetic book in the Bible, and as such one of the earliest written biblical works to come to us in its original form. Amos is a thoroughly pessimistic work — there isn’t a lot of hope in its prophecies. Amos, a peasant from the southern kingdom, came north to call Israel to judgment. The crime seems to be the exploitation of the poor (and not just by the rich, but even the poor preying on the poor). The merchants in this passage can hardly wait for the sabbath to be over, so they can get back to their cheating. Apparently, the rich would extend credit to the poor, and then take their land when they couldn’t pay (selling the poor for a pair of sandals — sandals being the exchanged in the exchange of land — cf Ruth 4:7). A friend managed a rural Walmart Continue reading “Poor Martha”

30 June 2013
Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 8C (RCL)
2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14
Psalm 77:1-2,11-20
Galatians 5:1, 13-25
Luke 9:51-62

After Elijah heard the sound of silence on the mountain of the Lord, God told him to return by way of the wilderness of Damascus, and to anoint Hazael King of Aram, Jehu King of Israel and Elisha as prophet in his place. Whoever, says God, Hazael doesn’t kill, Jehu will kill, and whoever Jehu doesn’t kill, Elisha will kill, until only 7000 remain in Israel who have not bowed the knee to Ba’al. Not a happy errand. No wonder, then, that Elijah doesn’t complete his errand. He throws his mantle over Elisha, and leaves it to Elisha to anoint Hazael and Jehu.

At his first encounter with Elisha, Elijah throws his mantle on him, and invites to come follow. Elisha responds, “First, let me go and kiss my father and mother.” Elijah replies, “What have I to do with you?” — do what you want. Elisha does not return to kiss his father and mother, but slaughters the yoke of oxen he is plowing with, and cooks them over the equipment he was using. He has just done away with all the capital he had in the world. He now has no choice but to follow Elijah Continue reading “By stages”

16 May 2013
Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 6C (RCL)
1 Kings 21:1-21a
Psalm 5:1-8
Galatians 2:15-21
Luke 7:36 – 8:3

With the reading from Kings this week, we get to the heart of Ahab’s sins. The worship of other gods (Ba’al and Asherah) lead directly into economic conflict. Ba’al and Asherah guarantee fertility, but they are also not connected to the land in the same way YHWH is. Ahab, taking the role of a monarch, tries to buy Naboth’s land. Naboth understands that the sell his land is to lose his presence on the land, and therefore his presence to YHWH, or to say it another way, his stake in God’s covenant with the people.

Jezebel, coming from Sidon Continue reading “Canceled debts”

2 June 2013
Second Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 4C (RCL)
1 Kings 18:20-39
Psalm 96
Galatians 1:1-12
Luke 7:1-10

Welcome to ordinary time. The readings from Scripture for this Sunday seem unconnected (and any connection will be accidental) since we are reading from different books “in course.” For the Old Testament, we are reading stories from the Elijah/Elisha cycle. For the epistle, we are reading Galatians in course, and in the Gospel, we are plowing our way through Luke for much of the rest of the year.

The Elijah cycle is a tradition that comes from the northern kingdom (Israel) after the separation from Judah, and is anti-monarchical. The contest with the prophets of Baal sets out the great conflict in the northern kingdom between YHWH, a God of a wandering people under Moses, and the agricultural gods of Caanan. Agricultural gods need to guarantee fertility Continue reading “Such faithfulness”

26 May 2013
Trinity Sunday
Trinity C (RCL)
Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
Psalm 8
Romans 5:1-5
John 16:12-15

The joke goes that the curate always gets to preach Trinity Sunday, not because the rector wants to test his or her orthodoxy, but because the rector doesn’t want to have to preach the Trinity. Having no curate . . . In fact, however, I enjoy preaching the Trinity. Not sure if parishioners enjoy hearing, however.

The difficulty is that we modern western Europeans tend to identify person and individual. We have no definition of person that takes account of relational context. We define person, for purposes of economic and social theory, as the self-interested individual. Governments Continue reading “Delight”

19 May 2013
The Feast of Pentecost
Pentecost C (RCL)
Acts 2:1-21
Psalm 104:25-35, 37
Romans 8:14-17
John 14:8-17

Each of the biblical authors who deals with the Spirit of God seems to have a different understanding of that Spirit. That makes our lessons for this Sunday not seem to hang together very well. However, Pentecost is one of those days especially appropriate for Baptism or the renewal of baptismal vows. In that regard, we can see the agency of the Spirit in establishing the church.

In the reading from Acts Continue reading “Spirit-ed identity”

12 May 2013
Seventh Sunday of Easter
Easter 7C (RCL)
Acts 16:16-34
Psalm 97
Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21
John 17:20-26

This is the Sunday between Ascension and Pentecost, so in some regard, the focus is on the upcoming gift of the Spirit. In the readings for this Sunday, the focus is pretty oblique.

The reading from Acts seems almost novelistic in the way it relates the story of release of Paul and Silas from prison. I find allusions to the tomb (the innermost chamber of the prison, the stocks) and the resurrection (the earthquake), and it certainly fits with Luke’s narrative purpose to show the apostles recapitulating the ministry of Jesus. But I think the point almost slips past us because of our familiarity with the language.

The slave girl, we are told, had the spirit of a python Continue reading “Shaking the foundations”

5 May 2013
Sixth Sunday of Easter
Easter 6C (RCL)
Acts 16:9-15
Psalm 67
Revelation 21:10, 22 — 22:5
John 14: 23-29

In all of this conversation in John’s Gospel, in which Jesus has said he is going away and we cannot come, but he is going to prepare a place, and will take us to himself so that where he is we might also be, it would be understandable if the disciples (and we) got a little confused. At 14:19, Jesus says that in a little while, the world will no longer see him, but we will, “because I live and you live.” So, Judas, not Iscariot, asks, “How is it that you are about to reveal yourself to us and not to the world?”

If we remember that John’s community Continue reading “Where we’re going”