Prayer
God our Savior, from the ends of the earth you gather the weak and the lowly. You make them a great and glad multitude, refreshed and renewed at your hand. Throwing off the burden of sin, they run to the Teacher for healing. Let the faith Christ bestows restore to the church this vision of the gathering that embraces the weary and wounded of this world. We ask this through Christ, with whom you have raised us up in baptism, the Lord who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever. Amen.
From Prayers for Sunday and Seasons, Year B, Peter J. Scagnelli, LTP, 1992.
Some Thoughts on Mark 10:46-52
"...what would you do if failure didn't matter? What would you endeavor, dare, or try? What mission would you attempt, what venture would you risk, what great deed would you undertake?"
"Bartimaeus, Luther, and the Failed Reformation," David Lose, Working Preacher, 2012.
"How do we retell the story without sidelining blind people today? That is easier said than done. If we play up the miraculous we heighten the pain where healing is not happening and may be impossible. Piety can easily race by in the euphoria of symbolism and the only abiding message is; we are irrelevant and you are irrelevant."
"First Thoughts on Year B Gospel Passages in the Lectionary," Pentecost 22, William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.
"If your prayer isn't answered, this may tell you more about you and your prayer than it does about God. If God doesn't seem to be giving you what you ask, maybe he's giving you something else."
"Bartimaeus," sermon discussion from Frederick Buechner, Frederick Buechner Blog.
Jesus has been teaching that the society of the kingdom of God is one marked by servanthood rather than rank or power. He has prophesied that his own life will end as the suffering servant and that he will be raised. He has offered a vision of a new world; a recreated world.
Jesus has also offered an understanding of discipleship which is one in which the follower leaves the comfort of life in order to help the lives of those who are comfortless.
So it is that we come to the roadside outside Jericho. This passage is filled with drama and symbolism.
Jesus makes his way in the business of a crowd towards Jerusalem; always with his face set like a flint to the cross. And from the margins, from the edge of this mission, comes the cry of the blind man. He is at first hushed by those around Jesus. This is a reminder of how easy it is while trying to be faithful to be deaf to those on the edge who faith is intended to help. How blind the crowd of Jesus followers is to the cries from the edge. And, I imagine them hushing him again, and saying, "We are too busy following Jesus." So it is the blindness of the followers of Jesus that is revealed as Bartimaeus' sight ever sharpens.
Bartimaeus knows all that is happening and in the story and he cries out. Sometimes I think in the midst of life we are unaware of just how aware those on the margin are - prophetically aware. This hit me squarely as I read through Joel Marcus' textual exegesis and he offered this from a boot entitle Memory; about the holocaust:
The uncanny effect of this sort of blind sight is evoked by Douglas' description of a Holocaust survivor who wore dark glasses during her testimony at Adolf Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem: "She appeared, then, to be blind (though she was not), an impression made all the more striking as the dramatic force of her testimony found focus in the words 'I saw everything.'" (Joel Marcus, Mark, vol 2, 763)
As the passing diorama makes its way, Bartimaeus shouts ever louder. Jesus stops, invites his petition, and then heals him. The response to this event is the throwing off of his clothes, the clarity of sight about the world around him, and then Bartimaeus follows.
Joel Marcus and others remind us that the passage is very much linked to early baptismal rites. For example this one from Marcus' commentary.
We should be careful first not to punish our own crowd that will sit before us as preachers this weekend. We should remember they too are there like Bartimaeus, on the fringe of society, doing something most people will not do this week's end - go to church. They are there calling out for a bit of grace and mercy and kindness. They are calling out for love.
The preacher has a dual-task this week's end, both to stop as Jesus did, and remind the blind of his love for them. To stop and pause for a moment so that their sight might be restored and so they can follow along the way. That they might cast off their clothes that bind them, so that they may enter the crowd of life and along the way help others to see as well.
The passage reminds me that the Christian Church is not a society of the wealthy who redistribute their wealth for the sake of the poor, but a community of blind people seeking clarity of sight so that we might in turn help our brothers and sisters see.
Joel Marcus and others remind us that the passage is very much linked to early baptismal rites. For example this one from Marcus' commentary.
Baptizand: "Have mercy on me!"So in our passage today we are given wonderful new ways of seeing ourselves and our following. We are able to see the world of servanthood to the comfortless. We are to interpret our own faith journey in light of being given sight to see and to follow. We are given an encouraging word to cast off our clothes, to move from the edge into the center of the stage, and to participate in the new ways of this strange emerging kingdom of God.
Deacon, in the role of Jesus to the congregation: "Call him."
Congregation: "Be brave, get up, he's calling you."
Baptizand removes his clothes and approaches the deacon.
Deacon to Baptizand: "What do you want me to do?"
Baptizand: "I want to be illuminated."
Deacon, baptizing him: "Your faith has saved you."
(Mark, vol 2, 765)
We should be careful first not to punish our own crowd that will sit before us as preachers this weekend. We should remember they too are there like Bartimaeus, on the fringe of society, doing something most people will not do this week's end - go to church. They are there calling out for a bit of grace and mercy and kindness. They are calling out for love.
The preacher has a dual-task this week's end, both to stop as Jesus did, and remind the blind of his love for them. To stop and pause for a moment so that their sight might be restored and so they can follow along the way. That they might cast off their clothes that bind them, so that they may enter the crowd of life and along the way help others to see as well.
The passage reminds me that the Christian Church is not a society of the wealthy who redistribute their wealth for the sake of the poor, but a community of blind people seeking clarity of sight so that we might in turn help our brothers and sisters see.
Epistle Hebrews 7:23-28
"While of major interest in the first century, most Christians today do not think much about the nature of the priesthood. Amidst this comparison, however, the author makes some very important statements about how Jesus accomplished human salvation."
Commentary, Hebrews 7:23-28, Scott Shauf, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.
"He died once; he intercedes perpetually."
From Wesley's Notes.
Jesus is the new high priest and the author here reiterates this work in case the reader/hearer did not understand the first time. So it is that we are told (as if from a different vantage point) that Jesus is able to provide this once for all intercession on our behalf. The cross of Christ is a one-time victory for all sin and not a rehearsal each time there is sin. Christ is not continually offering Christ's self for humanity but instead, this one-time defeat and victory over sin and death is a "sufficient sacrifice once offered" as our prayer book liturgy reminds us.
This one-time offering is therefore also a better offering than human priesthood and a new and better covenant than the many old ones. For here in this new covenant, we are redeemed forever and marked as Christ's own.
Furthermore, this offering is perfect(ed) in that it is God's offering instead of our own human offering. It is God's offering and of such a quality that it is everlasting.
Sometimes, I think our faith is tested not by our belief that God reached across the cosmos to embrace us and has forever mended the gulf between us but that such an occurrence and work of Jesus is forever. I think we sometimes lack the belief that Christ is victorious. So we might say that we know that Christ is our intermediary, our great high priest, but we should get to work saving ourselves just in case.
In this lack of faith in Christ's sufficient work on our behalf, we return to an old law. In this old law we are the priest who is completely imprisoned by our sin, brokenness, and fallen-shortness of the kingdom. Here we must continually offer new sacrifices trying to live into some ideal. Here we attempt to acquire a list of qualities that we might repeatedly purify ourselves. Each of our sacrifices, like the sacrifices of the religious priesthood of Jesus' own day, were made over and over again for the sake of salvation.
The high priesthood of Christ is once and for all, there is no more sinful economic exchange required on our part.
"What can Job possibly say to God after hearing God finally speak?"
Commentary, Job 42:1-6, 10-17, Karla Suomala, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2015.
Like many folks the ending of The Book of Job is disappointing. Like a poorly crafted "happy ending," the book falls short of bringing the complexity of the book into a good theological finish. The end is a kind of, almost sickly sweet, hands in the air, kind of "oh well" to the whole affair. Good faithful people who have had to deal with terror in their lives will find that the passage has very few life-giving words to take with them after the sermon is said and done.
Therefore, I want to make the case that the redactionist poor theology who crafted the passage (on one of their better days) must not have the last word.
While the God we worship, who comes near in Jesus, is the God of the Whirlwind, this God cannot make humanity do God's will without taking away free will. [The paragraphs that follow are based upon Girard's work. An Excerpt from René Girard's Job: The Victim of His People (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987), pages 154-168.]
Not only would the God of the Whirlwind be without the freedom to love but this God would become the God of the persecutors! To force human goodness would require God of the victims to become God who victimizes. There are plenty who claim a persecuting God and such a God is often promoted by those who know best and themselves would be the persecuting God.
Job himself has well made the case that this is true. The book itself highlights how his frenemies are exactly the persecutors who worship the persecuting God. God reminds us in this last passage that they have this quite wrong. Job's friends suggest that Job is attacking God. Job's friends are present with us today and would suggest that a God who does not persecute leads to atheism (Ibid.) René Girard writes:
Violence, persecution, scapegoating, cancer, sickness, starvation, accidents, and all the other terrible parts of human life are very real. The persecuting lesser gods and their followers are quick to show how the blessings and the curses are God's. They forget not only Jesus' teaching from Luke 13, but Jesus' teaching in John 9:2-3: "Neither he nor his parents sinned . . . he was born blind so that the works of God might be displayed in him". (Ibid.)
Girard writes:
His very life in this world reveals as Girard points out, that "they are dedicating themselves to the scandal by their desires that are crisscrossed and thwarted by imitation." (Ibid.)
It would be easy to take the last words of Job and make them about abundance in this world and wealth. But I think a bit of Gospel redaction enables us to preach that what God gives the Job-like victim is companionship in suffering and in victimhood. God gives mercy and forgiveness plenty. And, God gives life everlasting. These truly are gifts greater than what Job started with at the beginning!
Commentary, Jeremiah 31:31-34, Amy Erickson, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.
The covenant intends that people not work against one another but rather that they see one another face to face and see God face to face. Again a radical message says that God will forget all their sin.
For Christians, this is the very mission of God in Christ Jesus. That God in Christ comes and is incarnate such that they meet God face to face, and can no longer look at each other without seeing the face of God looking back. That God in Christ will be the very law himself. We are to understand that the highest law shall be the writing of commandments and actions by Jesus himself. Humanity will know, both by sight and by relationship and by story/witness God. The living word shall come and be part of the community and with him he shall bring forgiveness of every iniquity.
While we may wonder why Jeremiah remains in the scripture because of his obvious entanglement with the Babylonian court, what we see is that his words prophesy a new faith. The first Christians, without a New Testament, understood their work as community and the person of Jesus Christ as revealed in the prophecy of Jeremiah.
Sermons Preached on these Passages
Some Thoughts on Job 42:1-17
Commentary, Job 42:1-6, 10-17, Karla Suomala, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2015.
"The only hope for a truly 'happy ending' for us all is that we truly do serve a God of all grace who is rich in mercy and compassion and kindness."
The Center for Excellence in Preaching commentary and sermon illustrations, Scott Hoezee, 2015.
"The resolution to the crisis of injustice in our world is found neither in giving up on God nor in the simplistic presumption that God won't let bad things happen to good people It is found in continuing to believe that God will never abandon you or me or anyone in this world, especially in the midst of suffering."
"Where Is Justice?" Alan Brehm, The Waking Dreamer, 2015.
The Center for Excellence in Preaching commentary and sermon illustrations, Scott Hoezee, 2015.
"The resolution to the crisis of injustice in our world is found neither in giving up on God nor in the simplistic presumption that God won't let bad things happen to good people It is found in continuing to believe that God will never abandon you or me or anyone in this world, especially in the midst of suffering."
"Where Is Justice?" Alan Brehm, The Waking Dreamer, 2015.
"This epilogue to the book of Job is, for many readers, hard to accept."Commentary, Job 42:1-6, 10-17, Kathryn Schifferdecker, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.
"In one sense I find the epilogue disappointing because it appears to support the idea that the righteous come out alright in the end and the wicked are punished. Job is rewarded for being faithful. Some scholars try to put an interpretation which says it was a free gift of God and not a reward. This is a bit difficult to sustain in light of the context."
Job 42:1-17, Pentecost 21, Commentary, Background, Insights from Literary Structure, Theological Message, Ways to Present the Text. Anna Grant-Henderson, Uniting Church in Australia.
Job 42:1-17, Pentecost 21, Commentary, Background, Insights from Literary Structure, Theological Message, Ways to Present the Text. Anna Grant-Henderson, Uniting Church in Australia.
"I've always appreciated how the Lutherans of the Reformation made this point. They distinguished between earthly "security" (securitas), a presumption that no one should expect as an entitlement or reward for faith, and "certitude" (certitudo), the unfailing promise of God's presence whatever comes your way."
"The Story of Job: Personal Disaster Reveals Genuine Faith," The Journey with Jesus: Notes to Myself, Daniel B. Clendenin, Journey with Jesus Foundation, 2009. 2006 reflection.
Like many folks the ending of The Book of Job is disappointing. Like a poorly crafted "happy ending," the book falls short of bringing the complexity of the book into a good theological finish. The end is a kind of, almost sickly sweet, hands in the air, kind of "oh well" to the whole affair. Good faithful people who have had to deal with terror in their lives will find that the passage has very few life-giving words to take with them after the sermon is said and done.
Therefore, I want to make the case that the redactionist poor theology who crafted the passage (on one of their better days) must not have the last word.
While the God we worship, who comes near in Jesus, is the God of the Whirlwind, this God cannot make humanity do God's will without taking away free will. [The paragraphs that follow are based upon Girard's work. An Excerpt from René Girard's Job: The Victim of His People (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987), pages 154-168.]
Not only would the God of the Whirlwind be without the freedom to love but this God would become the God of the persecutors! To force human goodness would require God of the victims to become God who victimizes. There are plenty who claim a persecuting God and such a God is often promoted by those who know best and themselves would be the persecuting God.
Job himself has well made the case that this is true. The book itself highlights how his frenemies are exactly the persecutors who worship the persecuting God. God reminds us in this last passage that they have this quite wrong. Job's friends suggest that Job is attacking God. Job's friends are present with us today and would suggest that a God who does not persecute leads to atheism (Ibid.) René Girard writes:
When Job proves that justice does not hold sway in the world, when he says that the sort of retribution Eliphaz implies does not exist for most men, he thinks he is attacking the very concept of God. But in the Gospels, Jesus very explicitly claims as his own all Job's criticisms of retribution.Remember Jesus deals with this in Luke 13:1-5. And, Jesus says:
"Do you suppose these Galileans who suffered like that were greater sinners than any other Galileans? They were not, I tell you. No; but unless you repent you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen on whom the tower at Siloam fell and killed them? Do you suppose that they were more guilty than all the other people living in Jerusalem? They were not, I tell you. No; but unless you repent you will all perish as they did."There are plenty of Christians who wish to contradict Jesus and Job and take up the case and view promulgated by Eliphaz and Job's friends. (Ibid.)
Violence, persecution, scapegoating, cancer, sickness, starvation, accidents, and all the other terrible parts of human life are very real. The persecuting lesser gods and their followers are quick to show how the blessings and the curses are God's. They forget not only Jesus' teaching from Luke 13, but Jesus' teaching in John 9:2-3: "Neither he nor his parents sinned . . . he was born blind so that the works of God might be displayed in him". (Ibid.)
Girard writes:
All the parables have much the same meaning. God always plays the role of the absent master, the owner who has gone on a long journey. He leaves the field free for his servants, who prove themselves either faithful or unfaithful, efficient or timid. He does not allow the wheat to be separated from the tares, even to encourage the growth of good grain, whereas Aeschylus does the reverse. God makes his sun shine and his rain fall on the just as well as on the unjust. He does not arbitrate the quarrels of brothers. He knows what human justice is. (Ibid.)The persecuting demigods and their followers may quickly point out that this all seems to be a lazy God. This God of the victims is a God who simply lets the people suffer. (Ibid.) But we should quickly say, as a Gospel people, this God is the God who gives his very self for the life of the world. This is the God who gives all that humanity may have life and have it abundantly. This is the God who becomes a true victim in order to share victimhood and redeem it. This true God does not let persecution, violence and death have the last word.
His very life in this world reveals as Girard points out, that "they are dedicating themselves to the scandal by their desires that are crisscrossed and thwarted by imitation." (Ibid.)
It would be easy to take the last words of Job and make them about abundance in this world and wealth. But I think a bit of Gospel redaction enables us to preach that what God gives the Job-like victim is companionship in suffering and in victimhood. God gives mercy and forgiveness plenty. And, God gives life everlasting. These truly are gifts greater than what Job started with at the beginning!
Some Thoughts on Jeremiah 31:27-34
"Lent is a time for honesty that may disrupt the illusion of well-being that is fostered by the advocates of indulgent privilege and strident exceptionalism that disregards the facts on the ground. Against such ideological self-sufficiency, the prophetic tradition speaks of the brokenness of the covenant that makes healthy life possible."
"Ferguson and Forgiveness," Walter Bruegemann, ON Scripture, Odyssey Networks, 2015. Video: Race in America.
"Ferguson and Forgiveness," Walter Bruegemann, ON Scripture, Odyssey Networks, 2015. Video: Race in America.
"Hope for the future in Jeremiah involves the same divine message known from Sinai, 'I will be their God and they will be my people' (verse 33); but this time, that covenant relationship will be the defining mark of each person rather than something that must be learned."
Commentary, Jeremiah 31:31-34, Amy Erickson, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.
We just had this passage this last summer - so if you didn't preach on it you get a second chance. It will appear again this coming year.
Jeremiah continues his prophecy saying that God will bring about a bounteous future. God has not stayed the hand of those who have undone the power of Israel as a civilization rooted in the authority of this world. Remember it was Israel's political and religious machinations that brought it down. Yet, God will in the days to come bring about a resurrection from the death they brought on themselves. God will bring about life from their rubble.
Jeremiah continues his prophecy saying that God will bring about a bounteous future. God has not stayed the hand of those who have undone the power of Israel as a civilization rooted in the authority of this world. Remember it was Israel's political and religious machinations that brought it down. Yet, God will in the days to come bring about a resurrection from the death they brought on themselves. God will bring about life from their rubble.
While the people have suffered and have been deported this will not be the final word. Out of lostness, leastness, and death, God brings about life. From the children whose teeth are set on edge to those who at sour fruit, God will bring about a bounteous feast and plenty for the children. Jeremiah prophesies:
"The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” But all shall die for their own sins; the teeth of everyone who eats sour grapes shall be set on edge. The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.
God promises a new covenant - a new relationship. Christians understand this prophecy to be about the promise of God to deliver all people. The temple's politics intermixed with the state, the civil war between tribes (between the northern and southern kingdoms) has undone the original covenant that was made with God. They forgot who delivered them out of Egypt and so they thought they were responsible for delivering themselves. They forgot who fed them in the wilderness and thought that it was by their own hands that they had wealth. They forgot that God brought water from the rock and thought instead that their future and the future of their kingdoms would flow from their own power.
God speaks through Jeremiah and he writes:
But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.Walter Brueggeman calls this part of the prophetic book of Jeremiah "the book of comfort." God is watching and planting and build the new community of hope. While we may well remember the proverb that the parent's sins are visited upon the children (even Jesus quotes this), we see in the passage that the people have an opportunity to begin again. The proverb is "null and void" says Brueggeman. All exiles have the possibility of the new. (Brueggeman, Jeremiah: Exile and Homecoming, 504)
The covenant intends that people not work against one another but rather that they see one another face to face and see God face to face. Again a radical message says that God will forget all their sin.
For Christians, this is the very mission of God in Christ Jesus. That God in Christ comes and is incarnate such that they meet God face to face, and can no longer look at each other without seeing the face of God looking back. That God in Christ will be the very law himself. We are to understand that the highest law shall be the writing of commandments and actions by Jesus himself. Humanity will know, both by sight and by relationship and by story/witness God. The living word shall come and be part of the community and with him he shall bring forgiveness of every iniquity.
While we may wonder why Jeremiah remains in the scripture because of his obvious entanglement with the Babylonian court, what we see is that his words prophesy a new faith. The first Christians, without a New Testament, understood their work as community and the person of Jesus Christ as revealed in the prophecy of Jeremiah.
Sermons Preached on these Passages
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