Tag Archives: Gospel of Luke

Bad Girls of the Bible–Well, No! Lectionary Reflections on Proper 6, Year C

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This week’s readings are here. My sermon from 2010 on these texts is here.

In our readings this week, we encounter three women. One, Jezebel, is clearly understood to be evil. She has already encouraged her husband, King Ahab of Israel, to worship and promote Baal. Now she subverts justice and orchestrates the murder of  the owner of a vineyard simply because Ahab covets the property.

In the alternative reading from the Hebrew Bible, from the track we will be following this summer and fall, we hear the end of the story of David’s rape of Bathsheba and his murder of her husband and of Nathan’s prophetic judgment against David and his house.

And the gospel story is Luke’s account of Jesus’ anointing. An unnamed woman, a sinner, interrupts the dinner at Simon’s house, anoints Jesus’ feet with oil, and wipes them with her hair. After Jesus’ host Simon questions her actions, Jesus tells a parable that sheds light on what she has done. He concludes by saying, “Her sins are forgiven,” and tells her, “Go, your faith has saved you.”

The lectionary’s coupling of the David/Bathsheba story with the anointing presupposes us to imagine that the woman’s sin was sexual. That inclination is strengthened by the highly sexualized act of wiping Jesus’ feet with her hair. The tradition has named this woman Mary Magdalene (although Luke makes no such connection) and has also generally understood her to be a prostitute. But leaping to that conclusion is going much further than the text permits. There are lots of sins that aren’t sexual and we ought to remember that in 1st century Judaism, “sin” meant breaking Torah, which could have been any of the 613 commandments listed by the later rabbis.

There’s something even more curious in the text. The way the gospel writer describes her suggests that something else might be going on. As one commentator translates it, “a certain woman was in the city a sinner.” The word order seems to imply that she was regarded in the city as a sinner. That is to say, we cannot be certain that she is a sinner. All we know is that the city thinks she’s a sinner. This might help to explain Simon’s internal response to the woman’s actions. He wonders why Jesus doesn’t know that she’s a sinner. Her sins are or were not obvious. And the verb tenses suggest that whatever her sins might have been, she is no longer sinning; she has been forgiven already. Her actions in anointing Jesus are expressive of the her love and gratitude at having been forgiven of her sins.

Jesus said to Simon, “Do you see this woman?” Simon saw a sinner; Jesus saw a forgiven and loving woman, a disciple. Is that what we see, a woman who, like the women Luke mentions in the first verses of chapter 8, women who followed Jesus alongside the twelve and the other disciples, women who ministered to him and the others out of their resources?

 

God’s Intrusive Grace: A Homily for Proper 6, Year C

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What is a prophet? It’s often difficult for me to imagine how ordinary churchgoers conceive or understand such central ideas to the biblical story and Christianity as that of prophecy. My guess is that what comes to mind first for many of you is the image of someone who predicts the future, whether that’s a conservative Christian warning us of the imminent return of Jesus Christ, or of a Hebrew prophet proclaiming the coming of the Messiah. Others of you may have in mind a leader or activist for social justice—a Martin Luther King Jr., for example.

Our readings bring us smack up against the idea and reality of prophet, and of its important for the story of the Hebrew Bible and the story of Jesus. At the end of today’s gospel, the people proclaim, “A great prophet has risen among us!” and “God has looked favorably upon his people.” Even casual attention to the readings this morning should see the obvious connection between the gospel story and the story of Elijah we heard read from I Kings.

We heard last week the great story of the contest between Elijah and the prophets of Baal. Elijah presents us with something of a conundrum because we don’t see him doing a lot of the sort of prophecy that’s preserved in books like Isaiah and Amos. We see him railing against King Ahab of Israel’s worship of Baal and his support of Baal’s cult but for the most part, we see him doing the sort of mighty works he did in last week’s reading, calling down fire from heaven to consume the altar. Earlier in this chapter, he has been visiting this same widow and her son. It’s during a drought and Elijah discovers that they have enough oil and meal to make bread for one day. Miraculously, the provisions last while Elijah stays with them, so they do not die of hunger.

But now, in today’s story, the widow’s son has fallen ill, so ill that he seems not to have breath in him (note that it doesn’t say he died). Elijah brings him back to life, and the widow proclaims Elijah a man of God.

In the portion from the Gospel of Luke we heard, we have what is a perfect bookend to the Elijah story. Both occur in the same geographical area; both involve widows. Elijah’s resuscitation of the widow’s son is undoubtedly behind the way Luke shapes his story so that his readers can see the connection between Jesus and Elijah, indeed between Jesus and all of the Hebrew prophetic tradition.

From the outset of Jesus’ ministry, Luke has stressed Jesus’ ties to the prophetic traditions. At his first public sermon, Jesus reads from Isaiah,

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because 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 favour.’

After reading these words, Jesus says, “today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. The statement at the end of the story, that God has looked favorably on God’s people, is a clear reminder of what Jesus

Jesus is not just a prophet, either for Luke or for us; and while Luke amplifies the resonances between Jesus and the prophets, he also distinguishes clearly between them. It is here, for the first time in the gospel, that Luke refers to Jesus as Lord. For his readers, that title would have hearkened back to the Hebrew Bible’s use of Lord to refer to God, but it would also have reminded them of the emperor’s title.

Both of those echoes suggest power and might, but Luke rejects implication. After referring to Jesus as Lord, Luke continues, “and he had compassion on her, literally “he was moved in his guts.” Luke is telling us that Jesus’ Lord-ship is recognized not with the trappings of power, wealth, and grandeur, but in his ministry among the lowly and downtrodden. Jesus is recognized as Lord by his compassion and mercy.

Jesus came to the village of Nain, walking with his disciples. As they arrived, they encountered another procession, a burial procession, as a widow led her friends and neighbors out to bury her son. In fact, think about it a moment. You’re in the midst of deep grief. It’s not just that a loved one has died, though that is an immeasurable loss. Luke mentions that this is the woman’s only son, which means that without either husband or son, this woman is probably left destitute, with no support system. In the midst of this burial procession, a stranger bursts in, interrupting, stopping the inevitable walk toward the cemetery.

Luke makes clear that Jesus’ attention is on the widow, not on the dead son. Three times in a single verse he uses the feminine pronoun:

“When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, “Do not weep.” And after Jesus brings the man back to life, Luke says that “he gave him to his mother.” So the focus in this story is less on the raising of the dead son, than on  Jesus’ compassion for the man’s mother.

The extraordinary had come into her life, visiting death upon her and confronting her with an uncertain and challenging future. But Jesus intervened in that procession and in that future, bringing something completely new and unexpected, restoring life and hope to her son and to her.

I’m struck by all of the ways in which we are in places similar to that in which the widow of Nain found herself. Many of us face such uncertainty in our personal lives. For some of us, like the widow, our grief and pain is quite real. Many others of us look ahead into challenging and uncertain futures. We worry about what the next stage of our life will bring. Some of us are focused on larger questions facing this congregation—questions related to the proposed master plan and our future ministry and mission. Some of us are struggling with the Bishop’s letter on same sex blessings, on what that might mean for ourselves or for our loved ones. Some of us are thinking about the widow of Nain, and of widows and orphans in our society, and the collapsing safety net that threatens their futures and their well-being.

We may be so focused on some or all of these questions and concerns, so focused on the mourning processions, real or figurative, in which we are walking, that we fail to see the prophet walking towards us. We don’t notice him stopping the procession, putting his hand on our griefs and worries; we don’t notice the compassion as he reaches out to us. We may not welcome that interruption. It may only be an annoyance.

But here he comes, stopping the procession, stopping us. And here he is stopping us short wherever we are, with the promise of new life and grace. God’s grace intrudes, breaking into our worries and concerns, our grief and our pain, restoring us to life, bringing us new hope and grace. Wherever we are this morning, in our struggles, in our journeys, in our pain and fear, may God’s grace come to us, enliven and restore us, that we too might be able to say “God has looked favorably on God’s people.”

You are God’s Beloved Child: A Sermon for the Baptism of Our Lord, 2013

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The Sunday after the Epiphany is always the Baptism of our Lord. On this Sunday, we hear the story of Jesus’ baptism according to one of the gospels. It’s also a day when we often celebrate baptisms. Unfortunately, due to a combination of circumstances, we aren’t baptizing anyone at Grace today. But the lessons still give us an opportunity to reflect on baptism—what it means, why we do it, and how we can claim it as central to our lives as Christians. Continue reading →

So what is baptism, anyway? Lectionary Reflections for January 13, 2013

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This week’s readings (The Baptism of Our Lord) are here.

The readings for the first Sunday after the Epiphany always focus on Jesus’ baptism but in year C, the lectionary raises all sorts of questions for a close reader of the texts. The brief selection from Acts 8 seems to suggest that baptism with water is not adequate (a reading reinforced by the Pentecostal tradition that asserts the importance of baptism with the Holy Spirit). The gospel reading only tells part of the story and leaves out the most interesting details in Luke’s account of Jesus’ baptism. Taken together, these two readings should encourage us to ask about the meaning of baptism, both for Luke (the author of both the gospel and Acts) and in the twenty-first century.

Context is always important for understanding the text, so to extract the brief lection from Acts 8 is confusing and misleading. The chapter begins with Philip fleeing Jerusalem for Samaria, where he preaches the gospel and baptizes a large number of people. The twelve heard about this success and sent a couple of representatives to Samaria to check it out. One particular person is mentioned, the magician Simon, who is also baptized. After Peter and John lay hands on the newly baptized and they receive the Holy Spirit, Simon offers them money to do the same for him (hence the term simony which refers to the sin of purchasing church offices). There’s a great deal that’s curious in this brief episode but perhaps most important in the context of the lectionary regards the significance of the Holy Spirit in all of this. Pentecostal interpretation notwithstanding,  “signs and miracles” were taking place in Samaria before the arrival of the apostles (and the Holy Spirit).

The gospel reading only deepens the mystery surrounding baptism for in Luke’s account, we don’t actually see the baptism taking place. There is no mention of John baptizing Jesus and the lectionary omits the verses that suggest John was already in prison when Jesus was baptized. Early in chapter 3, Luke writes that John proclaimed a baptism for the forgiveness of sins, but Luke records no conversation between John and Jesus that would help a reader understand why Jesus was baptized.

The readings invite questions about baptism. No doubt, many people have a different set of questions about the sacrament of baptism than those raised by the readings. It has been a matter of deep division within Christianity over the centuries and its meaning in our current cultural context is being debated as well. The Episcopal Church is debating the relationship between baptism and the Eucharist, for example (a conversation I’ve followed at least sporadically here).

As David Lohse points out in his column this week, sermons about the meaning of the sacrament might be especially appropriate now.

 

 

The Tender Compassion of our God: Lectionary Reflections for Advent 2, Year C

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This week’s readings are here.

The Psalm this week comes from Luke’s Gospel (1:68-79). It is one of several songs or hymns that Luke records in his nativity scene (among the others are the Song of Simeon and Mary’s Magnificat). New Testament scholars suppose that Luke was drawing on hymns being sung by early Christians in his community when he wrote the gospel but in their current form they reflect his literary genius and overarching theological concerns.

Although we say, sing, or hear a psalm in every Eucharist, it probably doesn’t dawn on most of us that the Psalter is a hymnal; that when we say the psalms we are joining our voices with those of Christians from the two millennia before us as well as with the Jewish community of today and previous generations.

The Song of Zechariah is replete with the language and imagery of the Hebrew Bible and the Psalms. In fact, like the other Lucan canticles, one can find in Hebrew scripture parallels for almost every word, phrase, or image. But it goes beyond a simple parroting of earlier language and imagery. In its current form, the canticle connects earlier scripture and prophecy with the current moment. The first section refers to David and thus draws our attention to the prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible. The second section refers to Abraham and thus refers us to Torah, the Law. Here we have the Law and the Prophets pointing the way forward to the present moment and the coming of the Messiah. The same thing is true in Luke’s description of Zechariah and Elizabeth which resonates powerfully with both Abraham and Sarah and Elkanah and Hannah. Both were barren couples.

To sing, say, or reflect on this hymn in Advent is to place ourselves in the middle of the season’s expectant hope. Our words echo the words of ancient Hebrews and first-century Jewish Christians. With them, we proclaim our faith in God’s promises; we look forward to our salvation. And we can sing from the position of Zechariah, who with the birth of his son knows that “in the tender compassion of our God, the dawn from on high shalll break upon us.”

One of the miracles of Advent is that for a few brief weeks, all of salvation history, the story of God’s reaching out to us, is collapsed into our lives, into the darkening days of December. Through our prayers and worship, we unite with the voices, the hopes and faith of countless generations, in awaiting the coming of the Savior. God’s tender compassion comes to us as it has to the generations before us and will continue to come for generations to come.

Of course, Luke was writing his gospel decades after the events he was describing. He may have been writing decades after the destruction of the temple in 70 CE (some scholars think Luke was written in the 120s). He, his readers, and the community of Christians among whom he worshiped were singing hymns of hope and faith that were not reflected by the reality in which they lived. The Savior in whom they believed had not materially changed their situation. They were as poor and oppressed as ever. But still they could sing that God had raised up a mighty Savior; promised forgiveness of sins, and guided their feet into the way of peace. And this Sunday, so will we. I pray we believe it.