Category Archives: biblical studies

The Year of the Lord’s Favor: Third Sunday after Epiphany, Year C

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The Year of the Lord’s Favor

Grace Church

Epiphany 3, 2010

January 24, 2010

Today’s lessons are all about great preaching. The lesson from Nehemiah is one we rarely hear; indeed, it comes from a book that is read only rarely in the three-year lectionary cycle. And since this is an Episcopal Church, probably none of you, unless you were raised in a different Christian tradition, could even find it in the bible. Still, it’s a great story, and an important one for the history of Judaism, and for the history of scripture itself.

For scholars think that this story captures one of the key moments in the development of the Hebrew Bible, the Torah. As I’ve mentioned before,  Babylon conquered the Kingdom of Judah and carried off the political and religious elite of that kingdom to exile in Babylon. Now in the ancient world, when you were conquered by another people, that pretty much proved that not only were they more powerful than you, but their gods were more powerful than yours, too. So most conquered peoples came to accept the religious superiority of their conquerors, along with the military and political superiority.

That didn’t happen to the exiles in Babylon. Instead, they began to rethink their theology, their faith, and sought a way to fit their experience into a new understanding of who God was. Along with that, they compiled and organized texts. Some they wrote in Babylon; others they brought with them. It was in exile in Babylon that most scholars believe much of the Hebrew Bible came to take something of the form we have today.

When they were released from exile, many returned to Jerusalem; among them Ezra and Nehemiah. They brought with them their new theological understanding, and these new scriptures. In today’s lesson from Nehemiah, we hear Ezra reading that text to the assembly of people. It took all morning, and he didn’t just read; he also interpreted the text.

The gospel story relates Luke’s version of Jesus’ first public sermon. Jesus has just been tempted in the wilderness and Luke reports that “filled with the power of the Spirit” Jesus begins his public ministry, a preaching tour through the synagogues of Galilee. Eventually, he finds his way back home in Nazareth. When he gets there, his reputation seems to have preceded him. He goes to the synagogue on the Sabbath (Luke tells us it was his custom, signaling to the reader that yes, Jesus is a good Jewish boy) and as is not unheard of for local boys made good; he is asked to perform. We can imagine that there’s quite a crowd in attendance; people want to know what the fuss is about, they’ve heard about Jesus’ activity in Capernaum and the other towns of Galilee.

So Jesus stands up, reads from the Torah, and sits down to interpret it. The text he reads is itself dramatic: “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free. To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Now there’s a puzzle here. In the first place, this quotation is a combination of several verses from Isaiah 61 and 58 so we don’t know if the formula as it stands goes back to Luke or to Jesus himself, but it certainly wouldn’t have been a logical reading from scripture in the synagogue. The second thing that’s interesting is what it leaves out. The verse that reads “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” continues in Isaiah, with another phrase, “and the day of vengeance of our God.” So Luke, or Jesus, leaves out a prophecy of gloom, doom, and destruction. Instead, it’s a message full of hope and promise.

Luke puts this story at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry to tell us something very important about Jesus. It’s a summary of the key themes of Jesus ministry. We can see how important it is for Luke by recognizing how he has changed the story from the versions in Mark and Matthew. In both of those gospels, the visit to the synagogue in Nazareth comes after a significant portion of Jesus’ ministry. Both gospels put it after big chunks of Jesus’ teaching and a number of his healings. For them, it is only a story about Jesus’ rejection in his hometown. They don’t tell us anything about what Jesus said. By placing it here, by putting these words in Jesus’ mouth, Luke is telling us to pay attention—this is what Jesus is all about.

So Jesus reads these verses, then he sits down and tells the congregation, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” The people are amazed by the power of his words. There are several fascinating things about this text. In the first place, we see Jesus behaving like he’s supposed to do. He’s a good Jewish boy, he goes to synagogue on the Sabbath, he knows his scripture. But then, when he begins to speak, he blows away people’s expectations. Perhaps the congregation was expecting to hear how all this might happen when the Messiah comes. Instead, Jesus tells them, it’s happening right now!

Another key element of the text is the importance of the spirit. It’s something Luke stresses throughout his gospel, and I’m sure we’ll have more to say about it as we go through the gospel this year in the lectionary. Today’s reading begins, and Jesus, filled with the power of the spirit. And of course, the words Jesus reads from Isaiah begin with the phrase, the Spirit of God is upon me…” So, Jesus filled with the spirit, proclaims the year of God’s favor, preaches good news to the poor, recovery of sight to the blind, proclaims release for captives, and freedom for the oppressed.

To put it into contemporary language—this is Jesus’ mission statement according to Luke. He makes this clear later in the gospel when the John the Baptizer, now in prison, has gotten word of Jesus’ activity. He sends two of his disciples to Jesus to ask him if he is the Messiah or if they are to wait for another. Jesus response to them, and to John is “Go tell John what you have seen, the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the poor have good news preached to them.”

Jesus’ mission statement, but is it ours? I suspect that, just as in the case of the wedding at Cana, where our usual focus is on the miracle, here, we want to see Jesus’ words as relating only to him, and to his miraculous powers. But we’re not so easily left off the hook. If we follow Luke’s gospel, and then read in the book of Acts, which is the second half of Luke’s story, we see the same emphases being stressed. In Acts, the disciples, filled with the Holy Spirit, do amazing things, like give sight to the blind and set the oppressed free.

Ezra and Nehemiah came back from exile in Babylon with a vision for what God’s people might become. Jesus came back from the wilderness with a vision for his public ministry.

In the coming weeks and months, we will be talking a great deal about what the future holds for Grace Church. During the vestry retreat last weekend, we spent a lot of time talking about Grace’s present and future. We analyzed our strengths and weaknesses as a parish—what we do well, and what we don’t do so well. We looked at the challenges that face us, and the opportunities that we haven’t fully exploited. We also shared what we hoped Grace might look like in five years. All of this is part of a process that will help us clarify what our ministry and mission is and should be in this place. In the coming weeks, we will begin to share our work with the parish, and invite all of you to reflect on and contribute to this effort.

But however we articulate our own mission and ministry, the standard by which we must judge it is the Gospel. And it’s not inappropriate that we use this passage as our guide. Is this the year of the Lord’s favor? How are we going to bring good news to the poor? Help the blind to see, the lame to walk, the oppressed go free? Do our ministries match up to that job description? If not, why not?

What might it mean to grab hold of Luke’s vision of Jesus’ ministry, for ourselves, for our church and our community? What difference might that make? Oh, I know there are all kinds of things that get in the way. We lack the funds, the time, the commitment, the people, there’s so much else to do.

I know it’s daunting. The needs are so great and we are so few, but my friends, that’s what it’s about. We come to church to be nourished, to be filled, to find spiritual growth and we do, in the fellowship, in the proclamation, and in the celebration of the Eucharist. But we need to remember that we are nourished at the table not only for our sake, but for the sake of the world and for the sake of Christ. We often leave our worship with the dismissal—let us go forth rejoicing in the power of the spirit. Like Jesus, filled with the power of the spirit, let us become a people of vision, empowered to do great things!

An embarrassment of riches

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There are times when the lectionary seems not to provide anything on which to preach; none of the readings have any meat, or seem to speak to the current situation. Other times, I can imagine numerous sermons, all of them quite different, emerging from the readings. Sometimes, there are profound connections among the texts. The latter was true in the Book of Common Prayer lectionary, which selected texts from the Hebrew Bible based on their connection with the Gospel.

The lessons for the Third Sunday after Epiphany in Year C offer an embarrassment of riches. Here are the texts. The text from Nehemia tells the story of Ezra reading the book of the Law to the assembled congregation in Jerusalem. It is set after the exile, and most scholars see this as evidence that the Torah (the Pentateuch) was compiled in exile in Babylon and brought back to Jerusalem after the exile ended.

The lesson from I Corinthians continues Paul’s discussion from chapter 12 of the body of Christ and that marvelous imagery of “we are all members of one body.” It’s important to note that he doesn’t assert that Jesus Christ is the head and we are the members. Rather, we are all members of the same body, none of us having priority. But he goes further. When discussing order in community, Paul asserts that it is gifts of the spirit that need to be ordered, not offices in the church. The editors leave out the end of verse 31: “but let me show you a better way.” That is Paul’s transition to chapter 13, in which he extols love as the greatest of all gifts, binding the community together across its diversity of gifts.

The gospel is Luke’s version of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. I know that will be the focus of my sermon, but the question is how, and if , I will be able to weave the other texts into this. We’ll see. Check back on Sunday.

These are marvelous texts for the beginning of a new year, and the (relative) beginning of a new ministry. They challenge us to think about our mission, our call, and our responsibility.

Surprised by Scripture

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I suppose that by now I should be used to it and even expect it–reading a passage of scripture and being completely surprised by language, concepts, or themes that I hadn’t noticed before.

It happened today while I was reading the text appointed for the Eucharist for the Wednesday in the third week of Advent. The reading came from Isaiah 45, which is a passage I assigned when I taught Intro to Bible. I used it in that context to point out the exilic context of Second Isaiah. It is clearly set during the Babylonian exile; the author is expecting the defeat of Babylon by the Persian Empire led by Cyrus. The chapter begins:

Thus says the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, …
I will give you the treasures of darkness
and riches hidden in secret places,
so that you may know that it is I, the Lord,
the God of Israel, who call you by your name.
4For the sake of my servant Jacob,
and Israel my chosen,
I call you by your name,
I surname you, though you do not know me.
5I am the Lord, and there is no other;
besides me there is no god.
I arm you, though you do not know me,
6so that they may know, from the rising of the sun
and from the west, that there is no one besides me;
I am the Lord, and there is no other.
7I form light and create darkness,
I make weal and create woe;
I the Lord do all these things.

There are two very important ideas here; the first that Cyrus is called the anointed, language used of Davidic kings and prophets, but never of non-Israelites; and second, that God is responsible for everything “I make weal and create woe.” This is a clear sign of the development of monotheism.

But what surprised and fascinated me in the text was something else:

18For thus says the Lord,
who created the heavens
(he is God!),
who formed the earth and made it
(he established it;
he did not create it a chaos,
he formed it to be inhabited!):
I am the Lord, and there is no other.
19I did not speak in secret,
in a land of darkness;
I did not say to the offspring of Jacob,
‘Seek me in chaos.’
I the Lord speak the truth,
I declare what is right.

This is obviously a polemic directed against Babylonian notions of divinity and creation. It’s even rather woodenly so, at least in the NRSV’s translation, with the use of parentheses. It draws a sharp distinction between the orderly way in which Yahweh creates and what must have been the author’s understanding of Babylonian creation myths.

Of course the priestly account of creation (Gen 1) shows God creating out of chaos. Creation in Genesis 1 is all about order, dividing light from darkness, day from night, dry land from sea, and this idea reverberates in this passage from Genesis.

The tension between order and chaos is a very human one and we tend to oscillate between two extremes. I remember a roommate whose mantra was regularly, “I’ve got to get my life in order.” It was something he said in the midst of the chaos of unkempt hair and clothes, a room that was littered with papers, books, and dirty clothes.

Some final thoughts on the Letter to the Hebrews

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I did little more than make an occasional mention of the readings from the Letter to the Hebrews as we read from it these past weeks. That’s a shame because it is a rich homiletical resource, full of theological and ethical material. In fact, it’s not a letter at all. The epistolary material is tacked on at the end. Instead, it is exhortation, a sermon. It is anonymous, although the tradition attributed to Paul from a very early point, but careful readers throughout history knew Paul didn’t write it. It’s very different in style, language, and viewpoint. And it was probably written in the latter part of the first century; couldn’t have been later than that, because second century Christian texts seem to reflect its ideas.

The Letter to the Hebrews is important to both the theological and liturgical traditions of the Church, with its emphasis on Christ as High Priest, offering himself as sacrifice. One thing that has interested me as I read and listened this fall is the question of the connection between the letter and the destruction of the temple. It’s easy to interpret Hebrews as supersessionist; that is to say, that Christianity replaces (supercedes Judaism). But if the temple sacrifice to which Hebrews refers has ended with the destruction of the temple, then it could be read as an attempt to make sense of the lack of sacrifice in a new historical context. No doubt biblical scholars have lavished hundreds of pages on this question, which I’ve obviously not read, but I do think one can construe the discussion of temple sacrifice as something that has taken place in the past and takes place no longer; thus it requires some sort of symbolic meaning.

Even though I’m an Episcopalian and a priest, I’m not particularly comfortable with the use of language of “sacrifice” in the liturgy, even if it is muted, and often reinterpreted (“we offer you our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving”). I’ve mentioned before that the Latin roots of the word literally “to make holy” which carries a very different sense than our contemporary meaning of sacrifice. Well, perhaps I will have the opportunity to preach on Hebrews in the three years, if not before.

The Book of Ruth

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It’s a pity that last Sunday was All Saints’ because we missed the chance to hear the first reading in the lectionary cycle from the Bok of Ruth. This week’s proper (27) provides a brief synopsis of the denouement, of Ruth’s marriage to Boaz and of their son Obed, who would become King David’s grandfather.

Ruth is a wonderful piece of literature, a short story, or novella, full of drama and written with great skill. Scholars debate when it was written. There are those who argue for the monarchic period because it provides David with a genealogy and because it bears considerable similarity to the Book of Judges, which is when the story takes place. Other scholars argue for a post-exilic origin. Their rationale is that it seems to challenge the post-exilic opposition to intermarriage. And it does spectacularly by giving David a foreign great-grandmother.

It seems to me the provenance is unimportant. What is important is what it tells us about the author’s values. Yes, marriage between Jews (Israelites) and non-Jews is acceptable, but more important still is the treatment of those foreigners, and of widows, the marginalized. Naomi and Ruth are left homeless, without a safety net, but Jewish law provides them with one–the opportunity to glean what hasn’t been harvested from the fields, and the obligation of male relatives to take care of widows.

There is a strong patriarchal bent to the story. Levirate marriage (the requirement that a brother must marry his brother’s childless widow, in order that the family name might be preserved) is predicated on the priority of males, and the notion that a wife is in some sense property. But perhaps in the ancient near east, the alternative was even worse. A widow, who was brought into her husband’s family, could be turned out of that family if she had no sons, and might not be welcomed back by her parents and siblings.

Levirate marriage is alluded to in the gospels as well, in fact in Mark 12:18-27, the Sadducees pose a question of Jesus that presupposes Levirate marriage although it in fact is challenging Jesus about the resurrection of the dead.

A conservative translation of the Bible

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I’m not making this up. It’s priceless.

Read the whole article, but note the examples cited.

One is a complaint about replacing words that have lost their meaning: “Word” in the opening verses of the Gospel of John;  suggested alternative is “truth.” Now “word” isn’t the best translation for “logos” but it’s pretty darn close and this would fly in the face of nearly 2000 years of Christian theology. What’s “conservative” about that?

Another suggestion: replace “socialistic” words like “laborer.”

It’s mind-boggling and perverse. The authors of the article complain about “liberal” scholars who take liberties with the text, but they themselves see no reason to offer a translation that is close to the original languages.

Job

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On Sunday, we will begin reading from Job, the first of four readings. Job is among the most interesting books of the Bible and the most challenging theologically. It’s a curious work, in part because of its structure. The folktale of a pious man Job, who was tested by the Satan, lost everything, suffered bodily, but persevered and in the end was rewarded for his steadfastness, brackets poetry of great intensity and deep theological reflection. The text is among the most difficult of the books of the Hebrew Bible to reconstruct and translate.

Job is often misunderstood in the Christian tradition. The Letter of James writes of “the patience of Job” which is misleading at best. It’s a mistranslation of a word that is better rendered as “steadfastness.” Of course, Job is anything but patient. The book raises the difficult question of theodicy, why do bad things happen to good people. Essentially, Job puts God on trial, demanding an explanation for all that has befallen him. I will have more to say about this.

The Book of Esther

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On Sunday, we read from the Book of Esther, the only such reading in the three-year lectionary cycle. It is a story set in the Persian period, something of a folktale. The book exists in a number of versions–the Hebrew dates from the 4th century BCE, and there is contemporaneous Greek version that is considerably shorter than the Hebrew. Over the centuries, the book continued to change, so that a later Greek version, the one canonized by the Eastern Orthodox, is about a third longer than the original.

Apparently, The Book of Esther was wildly popular among Jews in the second temple period but the religious authorities were much more suspicious of it. It was canonized in the Hebrew Bible only in the first century CE. It became important in Judaism as the basis for the festival of Purim, which takes place in the month of Adar (February/March).

What puzzles me is why it is included in the lectionary here, and why the editors of the Revised Common Lectionary abridged the story in the way it appears. It is a tale of the cunning salvation of the Jewish people from an evil enemy. So far, so good. But the tale is also overflowing with violence, something our reading on Sunday passed over in silence. In many ways, the story of Esther and Mordechai, two faithful Jews who thrive at a foreign court, is parallel to the story of Joseph in Genesis 37-50. I suspect that a significant part of the reason for the appearance of Esther in the lectionary has to do with the desire of the lectionary editors to include stories about women.

In the Bob Jones University Art Gallery, hangs a marvelous painting of Queen Vashti by Edward Long.

Curiosity and Wisdom

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Given the topic of my sermon this morning, I came across this discussion by Stanley Fish of curiosity. Taking off from a recent speech by James Leach, the Director of the National Humanities Administration, Fish asks whether curiosity has positive religious connotations, whether it is a virtue or a vice.

Oddly, he begins with Adam instead of Eve. Genesis 3 states quite clearly that Adam wasn’t involved: “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate” (Genesis 3:6, NRSV).

“The tree was desired to be desired to make one wise.” There is of course in the biblical (and the Christian) tradition that denigrates the quest for wisdom, but there is also, as I said in my sermon, a strand that views wisdom as a way of approaching God

Notes on the lectionary

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Early in the summer, our lessons from the Hebrew Bible focused on the early history of the Israelite monarchy. We heard of the selection of Saul as King, then of his fall and replacement by David. We also heard snippets of the story of Solomon, his ascent to the throne and the building of the temple.

In recent weeks, we had the only reading from the Song of Solomon that appears in the three-year lectionary cycle. And now we have several selections from the book of Proverbs. Both of these books were traditionally attributed to Solomon, because of his reputation as the wisest of kings. Contemporary research has tended to discount his authorship, on linguistic and historical grounds. Proverbs belongs to Wisdom literature, which appears throughout the Ancient Near East. In fact, a large section of Proverbs (22:17-24:22) is very closely related to the Egyptian Instruction of Amenenope. Wisdom literature is characterized by its approach to the world. It seeks to provide the reader with a way of approaching life. Most striking is the almost complete absence of any reference to sacred traditions and history–the Exodus, covenant, etc.

Our Epistle readings come from the Letter of James. We will continue hearing throughout the month of September. Although it probably achieved its final form late in the first century, its core may indeed derive from James, who was a leader of the church in Jerusalem in the first decades after Jesus’ death and resurrection. Its emphasis is that of Jewish Christianity, a high value on ethical action and much moral advice. Perhaps the most notorious comment on the letter in the History of Christianity was Martin Luther’s judgment that it is a “straw gospel.”