Category Archives: lectionary

Why are you afraid? Lectionary Reflections on Proper 7, year B

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This week’s readings.

Two familiar stories this week: David and Goliath and Jesus calming the storm. In spite of their familiarity, strange things lurk in them. In the story from Samuel, it is Goliath himself who is strange (Samuel Giere, on workingpreacher.org, links Goliath to those other strange beings, the Nephilim, mentioned in Genesis 6 and elsewhere in the Biblical tradition). His height and power frighten the Israelites but David saves the day.

The gospel story picks up where last week’s reading ended. After Jesus spends the day teaching the crowd (the series of parables recorded in Mark 3), Jesus tells his disciples that they will cross the lake. As they do so, a sudden storm comes up, threatening the boat, while Jesus sleeps peacefully. The disciples waken Jesus, he calms the storm, and they continue to the other side.

Mark’s telling of this story draws parallels to other stories in the gospel. He writes that Jesus “rebuked” the storm, suggestive language that calls to mind Jesus’ exorcisms. At several points in Mark, the disciples are said to be full of fear, and there remains a sense of fear, or at least awe, at the very end, when they ask, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

We may occasionally fear the sorts of things mentioned in these stories–an encounter with a much more powerful adversary, or an experience with a hurricane, tornado, or blizzard that makes us fear for our lives. But we also live with other fears, and sometimes they are much more profound, and more debilitating than the fear we experience from a storm. In the latter case, adrenaline rushes help to see us through.

But what about those other great fears–the fear of economic insecurity, unemployment, loneliness? David announced that his victory over Goliath would prove God’s power, and so it did. But who will announce to the world, or to us, that our faith in God can conquer our fears? Jesus said, “Peace, be still” as he calmed the storm. Those ought to be words of comfort to us as well, when our minds and hearts race as we fear for our lives, livelihoods, and futures.

He was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome–Lectionary Reflections on Proper 6, year B

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This week’s readings.

The reading from I Samuel jumps us ahead in the story from Saul’s selection as king of Israel to the anointing of David as his successor. Our reading includes Yahweh telling Samuel that God had rejected Saul as king. Two explanations are given in earlier chapters. In each, Saul disobeyed God. The first time was when he offered sacrifices and went into battle without waiting for Samuel to arrive. The second was when he disobeyed God and did not “utterly destroy” the Amalekites after defeating them, instead he spared their king and the livestock.

On one level, both reasons for the rejection of Saul seem arbitrary. Samuel had promised Saul he would come to the military camp in seven days, and Saul was worried that the troops he had mustered would leave if they didn’t act quickly. In the second, sparing the livestock seems a logical act of war booty. Nonetheless, Saul was rejected, and David was anointed in his place.

David’s qualifications for the job? “Now he was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome.” If that seems arbitrary, too, Saul’s own qualifications seem equally sketchy: “There was not a man among the people of Israel more handsome than he; he stood head and shoulders above everyone else” (I Sam. 9:2).

Last week, we saw the Israelites rejecting God’s direct rule of them. This week we see God, somewhat arbitrarily, rejecting Saul as king and choosing David instead. And given their histories, God’s rejection of Saul for disobeying commands seems lame in comparison to some of the things David did–killing the husband of Bathsheba comes to mind.

On one level, these stories are told in this way to provide legitimacy for the Davidic monarchy (which had its origins in a revolt led by David against Saul). Nations tell such stories about themselves, so do dynasties.

Are there lessons for us here? I’m not sure. Perhaps cautionary tales. We might want to consider the stories we tell ourselves about our nation’s past and present.  We might also want to consider in this lengthy election season why we choose the leaders we have. Is our electoral process any more sane and rational than choosing a king on the basis of his height or good looks (Oh, sorry, I forgot).

Give us a King! Lectionary reflections on Proper 5, Year B (June 10, 2012)

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This week’s readings.

I’m not sure what divine irony (or is it the Holy Spirit?) put the Wisconsin Recall election during the week when we will read the story of Israel’s demanding that God give them a king. Our reading from the Hebrew Bible comes from I Samuel 8 and it depicts the deep ambivalence over monarchy that is at the heart of the biblical text.

On the one hand, the problems with direct divine rulership or prophetic leadership are clear. The book of Judges ends with an ominous verse: “In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes.” Judges depicts a descending cycle of anarchy as the tribes of Israel fail to follow God. Samuel picks up the story. While he is portrayed as a gifted prophet, priest, military leader, and judge, his sons (just as Eli’s sons before him) do not follow in his footsteps. As Samuel ages, problems again come to the fore.

The people’s response is to demand a king, like the nations around them. Ultimately, there will be a ruler and a dynasty that is considered to have divine legitimacy and divine favor (the Davidic monarchy). Later generations will look back on David and Solomon as great and wise rulers, and their reigns as a golden age but at the same time, there will arise in conjunction with the monarchy, the institution of Hebrew prophecy that will call kings and people to justice and to obedience to Torah.

That ambivalence is present in this week’s reading. The demand for kingship is a rejection of divine kingship. Of equal importance are the implications for society of a monarchy:

“These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; [and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers.] He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the LORD will not answer you in that day.”

One could draw all sorts of lessons from this text for our political situation–both on the state and the national level. What strikes me, however, is the desire for someone to provide easy answers, to solve deep and lasting problems with a sword or legislation. The problems for Israel were deeper than the leadership at the top. Indeed, one could argue that the concluding verse from Judges, is not so much an indictment of political leadership as it is a comment on society as a whole: “all the people did what was right in their own eyes.” In other words, it may be that it was the people’s refusal to follow Torah that was at the heart of the matter.

Will a change in leadership on either the state or national level solve the deep problems that plague our society? Will change (or staying the course, for that matter) lead to greater justice and equity? Are we like the Israelites, who demanded a simple solution to complex problems?

 

Trinity Sunday, Year B–lectionary reflections

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This week’s readings are here.

As I was listening to the reading from I John 5 (9-13) on the Sixth Sunday of Easter, it struck me that the lectionary had passed over I John 5:7-8 which is included only in a footnote in the NRSV). In so doing, the lectionary editors passed over one of the most controversial texts in the History of Christianity: the so-called Johannine Comma. They read:

There are three that testify in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one. 8And there are three that testify on earth:

The great Humanist Erasmus ignited the controversy when he published his new Greek New Testament in 1516 with his Latin translation on the opposite page. It was based on a comparison of the best available manuscripts and concluded that these verses were a relatively late addition to the text. He was attacked by many who thought that he was altering the Word of God. In response, Erasmus said that if anyone could find a Greek manuscript that included the verses, he would restore them in his next edition of the text. One such manuscript was miraculously discovered and in 1522, Erasmus’ third edition of the text restored the verses (although he continued to doubt their authenticity).

I bring this up because this coming Sunday is Trinity Sunday, when we focus on the doctrine of the Trinity. We do this even though the Trinity is not attested in Holy Scripture (the word “Trinity” nowhere appears) and the doctrine is a development from scripture and from early Christian reflection on the nature of God.

Our texts this week offer several insights into the divine nature. In the familiar and awe-inspiring passage from Isaiah 6:1-8, we read of Isaiah’s vision of God, an image so immense that the hem of God’s robe fills the temple. Surrounded by seraphim who sing the Sanctus, Isaiah is confronted with God’s majesty and his own frailty and humanity.

In the lesson from Romans 8, a passage earlier in the chapter from which we read on Pentecost, Paul affirms the Holy Spirit’s connection with us. As God’s children, we are adopted, and through the Spirit our cry of Abba, Father, is the cry of a child for a parent. But adoption doesn’t mean any less of a relationship–we are children of God, just as Jesus Christ is the Son of God. We are heirs with Christ. This profound relationship that is ours through Christ is similar to the relationship that inheres in the Trinity, which is why it is included in our readings today.

The Trinity is a difficult concept to understand, and difficult to discuss. In these two readings we see two aspects of the Divine nature–the divine transcendence and otherness of Isaiah’s vision of God in the temple, and God’s immanence, God’s presence in us through the Spirit.

The Trinity is central to the Christian understanding and experience of God, perhaps most importantly in the idea that at the heart of God’s nature is relationship, relationship among Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and that because we are created in God’s image, we are created in relationship with God, and created for relationship with others.

What a friend we have in Jesus–Lectionary Reflections for the 6th Sunday of Easter, Year B

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This week’s readings are here.

“What a friend we have in Jesus
All our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry
Everything to God in prayer.”

This familiar hymn from my child (text by Joseph Scriven) always comes to mind when I think of Jesus as “friend.” The promise of friendship here is that of protector and shield, someone to turn to when times get tough and when you’re rejected by those around you. It’s full of the piety of nineteenth century Evangelicalism and I remember how total my reaction against it was as I was growing up. The hymn emphasizes human frailty, sin, and weakness, and depicts Jesus as someone who

Jesus as friend evokes all of those images of someone like oneself but stronger; someone whose love persists in spite of whatever I might do. I also find it somewhat problematic to think of God in terms such as friend–after all, the intimacy implied in the term seems to bring God down to an all-too-human level.

So I find thinking of Jesus as friend deeply problematic. This week’s gospel reading challenges us to rethink that imagery, what it means and how we use. It’s not that John 15 provides biblical warrant for “What a friend we have in Jesus;” rather, it articulates a much deeper understanding of that relationship.

In a culture where “friending” and “unfriending” can be as casual as it is on facebook, recapturing the appropriate meaning of friendship can be a powerful theological, and ecclesial obligation. What greater contrast to facebook is there than:

“No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

The gospel of John sees a developing relationship between Jesus and his followers, from master and servant, teacher and disciple, to friend. The intimacy of the relationship implied in that simple, common term, is much more than a facebook friendship or even the relationship of two people who have grown up together or gone to school together. It is the intimacy of love; again, of abiding in one another. It is the intimacy of the Trinity–the inter-relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

It is also the intimacy of the Last Supper, when the Beloved Disciple reclined next to Jesus, when Jesus took up towel and basin, and washed his disciples’ feet, when he told them, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love each other as I have loved you.” It is the intimacy of John’s gospel, the intimacy of John 13:1 “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”

The friendship of Jesus is not the easy breezy relationship with someone who you like to have a beer with. Jesus’ friendship, his love, culminated in the cross. Our friendship, our love for Jesus, calls us to lay down our lives as well, for him and for the love of the world.

How can I [understand] unless someone guides me? Reflections on the Lectionary for the Fifth Sunday of Easter

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This week’s readings are here.

The Acts reading (Acts 8:26-40), the story of Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch, is one of the great stories in scripture. Philip is one of the men who was selected as a deacon to serve the hellenistic community (his name is of Greek origin). He had gone to Samaria, where his preaching met with great success (Acts 8: 4-8), but now an angel of the Lord takes him away into the wilderness. Here he comes upon an Ethiopian official who has been in Jerusalem to worship. As a Gentile, he was an outsider, but as a eunuch he could not participate in temple worship. He is reading from Isaiah, but can’t understand it. Philip helps him, and suddenly, miraculously, they come upon some water in the wilderness, and the eunuch asks, “What prevents me from being baptized?”

This is one of a series of conversion stories in Acts (Paul, Cornelius the centurion follow this one) in which the Holy Spirit works to transform individuals and also to transform the community of those who follow Jesus Christ. The group of disciples, Galileean followers of Jesus, is expanding to include members from other religious and ethnic groups and in so doing, the commandment to spread the gospel to all the nations is already being fulfilled.

But there’s more. What prevented the eunuch from being baptized? Well, all of the Jewish laws of purity did. As a eunuch, he was by definition outside the holy community; he could not approach the altar or even enter the temple (Deuteronomy 23:1). But nothing prevented him from being baptized, and so Philip did.

There are at least two important issues raised by this text. The first, of course, is that of inclusion. We see hear the expansion of the Gospel, and of the Christian community far beyond its original Jewish and Jerusalem setting. Philip, a Greek or at least Hellenist, preaches first in Samaria, then converts an Ethiopian eunuch–it’s difficult to imagine a figure more exotic, more other, more non-Jewish than that.

But there’s another theme that I find equally compelling. The eunuch is reading scripture and can make no sense of it. He needs help, and Philip provides or explains it to him. We often assume that the sense of scripture is clear, indisputable, and available to anyone who can read, or can hear it being read. But it’s not. Reading and interpreting scripture requires the help of others, of a tradition, of a community in which that scripture is a living organism, and in which the community wrestles with its meaning in a particular historical and cultural context. Philip helped the eunuch understand, and by understanding, the eunuch came to request baptism.

My Lord and My God: Lectionary reflections for the Second Sunday of Easter

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This Sunday’s readings are here. My sermon on this gospel text from last year is here.

One of the things that intrigues me about this reading, especially given what I had to say about Mary Magdalene on Sunday, is the contrast between Mary and Thomas. As I’ve mentioned before, very often characters in John’s gospel symbolize or stand for whole groups of people–Nicodemus is the Jew attracted to Jesus but unwilling to make a public commitment; the Samaritan woman perhaps representing the response to the Gospel among the Samaritan community, the beloved disciple perhaps the community in which the gospel is written. So, what about Thomas?

There’s long been speculation in the scholarly community about links between the Gospel of John and gnosticism. Given the key role of Thomas in two places in John, and the existence of a “gnostic” Gospel of Thomas, the theory that Thomas somehow stands for gnostic Christians is almost irresistible. He desires knowledge, asking Jesus, “How can we know the way?” (Jn 14:5) and here he doubts the bodily resurrection, demanding not only to see, but to touch Jesus.

Both Mary Magdalene and Thomas see the Risen Christ. Thomas had asked to see and touch him. Jesus shows him his wounds, and invites him to touch them, but Thomas does not. By contrast, Jesus warned Mary not to touch him; it might more literally mean, “Don’t hold on to me.” But the two made a similar confession: Mary says “I have seen the Lord.” Thomas says, “My Lord and my God!”

In these encounters sight is inadequate. Mary at first doesn’t recognize Jesus. The disciples rejoice after they see his wounds; they were fearful before. And Jesus himself warns them and us, that sight is inadequate, “You have seen and believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” True, deep, lasting faith in the Gospel of John, comes not from seeing the Risen Christ, still less from seeing a miracle or sign. It comes from a relationship with the Risen Christ, an encounter, in which he knows and names us, and we know him (“My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.” Jn 10:27).

 

Monday in Holy Week: The Anointing

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The Gospel for Monday in Holy Week is John 12:1-11. John’s version of the story of the Anointing, it differs in significant ways from the story told in Mark’s gospel and read as part of the Passion Narrative in yesterday’s services. In both gospels, the story takes place in Bethany, but John puts it in the home of Lazarus, Mary, and Martha, while according to Mark it is in the home of Simon the Leper. John identifies the woman who anoints Jesus as Mary, the sister of Lazarus and Martha, while in Mark she remains anonymous, though Jesus says of her: “wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.” Even the timing is off. In Mark, it takes place two days before the Passover; in John six. In Mark, she anoints his head; in John his feet.

Each author shapes the story to his purposes (for contrast compare the version in Luke 7:36-50). But in spite of those differences, Mark and John interpret the story similarly. For both, her act of anointing is connected with Jesus’ burial. As I read, and then listened to the Passion Narrative yesterday, I was struck again by the importance of the women in Mark’s story. Here is one, ministering to Jesus, foreshadowing his death and burial. At the cross, women looked on from afar. Mark says that “These used to follow him and provided for him when he was in Galilee; and there were many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem.”

Again, at the burial. Mary Magdalene and and Mary the mother of Joses looked on.

The dramatic act of anointing of Jesus captures our imagination as it captured the imagination of the gospel writers. We want to fill the story out, give it some deeper meaning. So Luke’s identification of the woman as a sinner ultimately led to the tradition’s identification of this woman as Mary Magdalene, the repentant prostitute. But in Mark’s story, there’s none of that. And in John, it is Mary of Bethany, one of Jesus’ closest and dearest friends.

As powerful as the notion of a repentant sinner anointing Jesus, I find the idea of a female disciple, a follower of Jesus doing the anointing even more compelling. Those women disciples in Mark continued to follow Jesus to the cross and to his burial and were witnesses of the empty tomb.

Holy Week invites us to enter into the drama of Jesus’ last days. We do it on Palm Sunday as we wave our palms and shout “Hosanna.” We do it as we listen to the story of the passion and take part as members of the crowd. We do it day by day, as we remember the last week of Jesus’ life, re-enact the first Eucharist and the footwashing, the crucifixion and burial.

The story and its re-enactment invites us to enter into it, to take our place in the story. But it also asks us how we will participate, which roles we will take on. Will we flee and abandon Jesus like the twelve and the young man who ran away naked? Will we watch from afar as Jesus dies and is buried? Will we take our place at Jesus’ feet, anointing them for burial today, and washing them on Maundy Thursday? Where will we stand? Where will we walk? Where will we kneel?

We wish to see Jesus–notes toward a homily for Lent 5, year B

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I didn’t write a sermon this week, but I did celebrate the 5:00 St. Francis House Eucharist this evening, so I had to come up with something to say. As I thought about today’s gospel, I was intrigued by the question of encountering Jesus in the text. Greeks come to Philip and say, “We wish to see Jesus.” Philip goes to Andrew, and together, the two of them go to Jesus. There’s no word whether the Greeks accompanied them, and if Jesus’ words offer any clue, it would seem that they are not among those whom Jesus addresses. They leave the scene, or the drama leaves them behind. They do not “see Jesus.”

A little later, a voice comes from heaven and says, “I have glorified you and I will glorify you again.” It’s not clear who understands these words. For some in the crowd, it sounds like thunder. Others think an angel is speaking to Jesus. Presumably Jesus (and the gospel writer?) hear and understand the voice.

Think about it. The Greeks don’t see Jesus; onlookers don’t hear or comprehend the voice from heaven. Efforts to make sense of Jesus fail. Efforts to see, hear, even know Jesus, fail.

The passage concludes on a different note. It’s the verse I quoted in my sermon last week: “And when I am lifted up, I will draw all people to myself.” Even if our efforts fail, Jesus beckons us, pulls us toward him, draws us to him. Whatever our efforts, it’s Jesus’ power, drawing us, drawing all of humanity to him, that makes the difference.

I doubt that’s anything close to what the gospel writer had in mind with this passage, but the contrast is quite dramatic.

I suspect there’s a pretty powerful sermon in here. Too bad it will have to wait until 2015.

“I will draw all people to myself:” Lectionary Reflections for the Fifth Sunday in Lent,Year B

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This week’s readings.

This week’s gospel is John 12:20-33. It is fascinating both for the role it plays in John’s overall gospel and for its relationship to the synoptic (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) tradition. 12:25 “Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life” is one of the very few times in the Gospel of John where Jesus says something that is almost identical to a saying recorded in the synoptics (Mark 8:34).

Curiously, a few verses later, Jesus seems to contradict directly the synoptic tradition. In v. 27, he says, “Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—’Father, save me from this hour?’ No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.” In Gethsemane, Jesus prays that God will spare him what is coming (“Remove this cup from me” Mk 14:36). There is no scene set in Gethsemane in the Gospel of John. In John’s understanding of Jesus, he knows exactly what is happening to him, why it is happening, and has no fears or uncertainties about that. John’s Jesus is in charge of events, not a victim; Mark’s Jesus is very human, as we will see in the next week.

We often want to choose between one or the other portrayal. Some of us prefer a very human Jesus with whom we can connect, whose human suffering is not so different from our own pain and struggles. Others of us prefer the notion of a Jesus who stands above it all, powerful, divine. In fact, we needn’t choose. Our faith proclaims that Jesus Christ is fully human and fully divine.

John’s portrayal of Jesus offers us a great deal to ponder. I quoted 12: 32 in my sermon yesterday, and a portion of it appears in the title of this post. This idea, that Jesus welcomes and embraces all humanity on the cross is an evocative image of inclusive salvation. In a time when Christianity seems to be a profoundly divisive force in society and culture, the idea that Jesus Christ appeals to all, welcomes all, whatever their race, ethnicity (this is said in the presence of Greeks), and religion, is very appealing.