"Real churches have - or should have - real conflicts. The only real harm that will come to a church community is to refuse to deal with conflicts. Conflicts do not kill churches. Refusing to deal with conflict kills churches."
Holy Textures, Understanding the Bible in its own time and ours, Matthew 18:15-20, David Ewart, 2011.
"Christian ethicist Stanley Hauerwas has made the important connection that we can learn a lot about the Christian practice of forgiveness from the character Ian Bedloe in Anne Taylor's novel Saint Maybe."
"Costly Truth, Costly Forgiveness," Carl Gregg, Patheos, 2011.
General Resources for Sunday's Lessons from Textweek.com
Prayer
God of unity and peace, your Son has taught us that where two or three are gathered in his name, he is present in their midst, and you will grant their request. Grant us a new heart to presume the goodness of every brother and sister, and a spirit sensitive to the burdens each of them bears, that by loving our neighbour as ourselves, we may bear witness to that love which is the fulfilling of the law. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, 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 A, Peter J. Scagnelli, LTP, 1992.
Oremus Online NRSV Gospel Text
Resources for Sunday's Gospel
This passage is about God's kindness; the fact that so many of us will read and preach on the complex measure this passage offers, as a rule, may indicate more our own boundary-less and unaccountable culture than God's graceful intent.
The sinner is repeatedly offered opportunities to repent. The one who is transgressed against too must forgive the offender. The hardness of Jesus' rule is that those who follow him must be known as those who ignore - beyond all measure.
It is apparent in the passage that the reason for such a boundless grace is the grace of God himself. We are to forgive as we are forgiven by God. We are to love as God has loved us.
Perhaps the problem is that as we have become less accountable for our actions toward others, our hostile words, our uncaring for our neighbours, our lack of generosity, our lack of forgiveness, our lack of love for our enemies...we feel like we really don't need too much forgiving.
When we are righteous all on our own, not by action but by hiding our actionsty and true natures, wy don't need much forgiveness or love from God.
The reality is that Jesus offers us a vision of the kingdom which seeks continuously to re-reincorporate the lost. The mission of God is clear: in forgiveness and in all things, to bring back into the fold those who are lost. Restoration, recreation, and transformation of all people is the ultimate work of the mission of Jesus Christ.
We are challenged as a church to make this our primary work. What would the world be like if every church in the Episcopal Church understood that it existed for those who were not there on Sunday morning and that their work was to present the love and forgiveness of God so that individuals would be drawn into a relationship with Jesus and Jesus' church?
For Matthew, ex-communication, removal from the community is not a communal action but a result of self-imposed actions.
Life in community is to be organized by those who are the "meek and merciful" and "who know that they are the unworthy recipients of God's constant mercy and forgiveness." (Allison/Davies, Matthew, 804)
So, it is that ultimate removal from the community is a tragic event, and those who commit such actions will be bound to themselves. Are we able to lose ourselves in heaven by living lives of forgiveness?
The real challenge this week is to preach on this passage. The rules and boundaries of community and the community rule of forgiveness are not often preached. The idea that we walk by God's grace and, therefore, we should rest upon such grace before seeking to hold resentment against others is a message many need to hear.
This 12-step process of Alanon and AA is a process that provides a tremendous sense of God's grace. As a reconciliation tool, the steps help the disciple or follower of Jesus understand that most of the resentments we carry around in our hearts are caused not by others but by our own behaviours. What we lose and bind always depends on us - not someone else.
I am struck by the idea that what Jesus seems so easy to seize upon in this passage is that if a community is wholly focused on the sins of others, it will rarely be a community of integrity because it cannot see the evil rampant within and this will frustrate the work of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
"In this brief but prosperous passage, Paul tells us that as Christians, we are all 'morning people.' The time is just before dawn, the sky is brightening, the alarm is ringing, and day is at hand. It is time to rouse our minds from slumber, be alert to what God is doing in the world, and live according to God's coming salvation."
Prayer
God of unity and peace, your Son has taught us that where two or three are gathered in his name, he is present in their midst, and you will grant their request. Grant us a new heart to presume the goodness of every brother and sister, and a spirit sensitive to the burdens each of them bears, that by loving our neighbour as ourselves, we may bear witness to that love which is the fulfilling of the law. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, 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 A, Peter J. Scagnelli, LTP, 1992.
Some Thoughts on Matthew 18:15-20
Resources for Sunday's Gospel
This passage is about God's kindness; the fact that so many of us will read and preach on the complex measure this passage offers, as a rule, may indicate more our own boundary-less and unaccountable culture than God's graceful intent.
The sinner is repeatedly offered opportunities to repent. The one who is transgressed against too must forgive the offender. The hardness of Jesus' rule is that those who follow him must be known as those who ignore - beyond all measure.
It is apparent in the passage that the reason for such a boundless grace is the grace of God himself. We are to forgive as we are forgiven by God. We are to love as God has loved us.
Perhaps the problem is that as we have become less accountable for our actions toward others, our hostile words, our uncaring for our neighbours, our lack of generosity, our lack of forgiveness, our lack of love for our enemies...we feel like we really don't need too much forgiving.
When we are righteous all on our own, not by action but by hiding our actionsty and true natures, wy don't need much forgiveness or love from God.
The reality is that Jesus offers us a vision of the kingdom which seeks continuously to re-reincorporate the lost. The mission of God is clear: in forgiveness and in all things, to bring back into the fold those who are lost. Restoration, recreation, and transformation of all people is the ultimate work of the mission of Jesus Christ.
We are challenged as a church to make this our primary work. What would the world be like if every church in the Episcopal Church understood that it existed for those who were not there on Sunday morning and that their work was to present the love and forgiveness of God so that individuals would be drawn into a relationship with Jesus and Jesus' church?
For Matthew, ex-communication, removal from the community is not a communal action but a result of self-imposed actions.
Life in community is to be organized by those who are the "meek and merciful" and "who know that they are the unworthy recipients of God's constant mercy and forgiveness." (Allison/Davies, Matthew, 804)
So, it is that ultimate removal from the community is a tragic event, and those who commit such actions will be bound to themselves. Are we able to lose ourselves in heaven by living lives of forgiveness?
The real challenge this week is to preach on this passage. The rules and boundaries of community and the community rule of forgiveness are not often preached. The idea that we walk by God's grace and, therefore, we should rest upon such grace before seeking to hold resentment against others is a message many need to hear.
This 12-step process of Alanon and AA is a process that provides a tremendous sense of God's grace. As a reconciliation tool, the steps help the disciple or follower of Jesus understand that most of the resentments we carry around in our hearts are caused not by others but by our own behaviours. What we lose and bind always depends on us - not someone else.
I am struck by the idea that what Jesus seems so easy to seize upon in this passage is that if a community is wholly focused on the sins of others, it will rarely be a community of integrity because it cannot see the evil rampant within and this will frustrate the work of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
"In this brief but prosperous passage, Paul tells us that as Christians, we are all 'morning people.' The time is just before dawn, the sky is brightening, the alarm is ringing, and day is at hand. It is time to rouse our minds from slumber, be alert to what God is doing in the world, and live according to God's coming salvation."
Commentary, Romans 13:11-14 (Advent 1A), Susan Eastman, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2007.
"Love is bigger than all the observances and the commandments."
First Thoughts on Year A Epistle Passages in the Lectionary," Advent 1, William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.
First Thoughts on Year A Epistle Passages in the Lectionary," Advent 1, William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.
"For preachers, this text is significant. It lifts up the importance of love as the law's fulfilment. Yet, simultaneously, it refuses to set up love as a big, shadowy "ought." Instead, it sets love firmly in the light, God's dawning light of the new aeon. In other words, we don't love cause we should love. Rather, we love because God's ever-lovin''' day is about to dawn."
Advent 1A and Proper 18A, David S. Jacobsen, Waterloo Lutheran Seminary, Preaching Apocalyptic Texts: Year A, Resources for Pastors Who Want to 'Preach in the New Creation'.
Advent 1A and Proper 18A, David S. Jacobsen, Waterloo Lutheran Seminary, Preaching Apocalyptic Texts: Year A, Resources for Pastors Who Want to 'Preach in the New Creation'.
This passage also appears in Advent year A, and there it a theme of preparation. In this passage, Paul continues his focus on love. Followers of Jesus love others; in so doing, they mimic the ministry of Jesus and the work of God. In loving others, they also fulfil God's law.
Paul offers an apparent view that not loving another will lead to adultery, murder, theft, and covetousness.
Love others - this is the highest rule and the highest goal.
Adeptly, he has moved from discussing what is owed to the authorities to what is owed to one another - which is love. (Joseph Fitzmeyer, Romans, 677) Deeds are the way that a Pauline faith is lived. Love lived creates the framework for all other questions about the law and quickly moves Paul from legality to grace in future discussions (Fitzmeyer, 677; Gal 5:6)
To understand Paul's treatment of love, you must go to 1 Corinthians 13. In Paul's economic discourse of love, we discover the following. All other gifts are worthless without love. Love is patient and kind, not jealous, not arrogant, not rude, does not seek its own interest, is not irritated, does not reckon things wrong, does not delight in wrongdoing, rejoices in truth, puts up with all things, believes all things, and never fails. Love lasts and is superior to all other things. All of which is summed up in verse 13: Faith, hope, and love remain these three, but the greatest is love.
Paul then concludes his reflection on love in Romans with urgency. Now that you have become a believer, you can see this is true. There is urgency, and we must be about this work immediately. Let us live and love in the morning, putting away the behaviours that will cloud and deform this love: drunkenness, debauchery, licentiousness, quarrelling and jealousy.
Let us instead do what Jesus Christ does and love.
Paul offers an apparent view that not loving another will lead to adultery, murder, theft, and covetousness.
Love others - this is the highest rule and the highest goal.
Adeptly, he has moved from discussing what is owed to the authorities to what is owed to one another - which is love. (Joseph Fitzmeyer, Romans, 677) Deeds are the way that a Pauline faith is lived. Love lived creates the framework for all other questions about the law and quickly moves Paul from legality to grace in future discussions (Fitzmeyer, 677; Gal 5:6)
To understand Paul's treatment of love, you must go to 1 Corinthians 13. In Paul's economic discourse of love, we discover the following. All other gifts are worthless without love. Love is patient and kind, not jealous, not arrogant, not rude, does not seek its own interest, is not irritated, does not reckon things wrong, does not delight in wrongdoing, rejoices in truth, puts up with all things, believes all things, and never fails. Love lasts and is superior to all other things. All of which is summed up in verse 13: Faith, hope, and love remain these three, but the greatest is love.
Paul then concludes his reflection on love in Romans with urgency. Now that you have become a believer, you can see this is true. There is urgency, and we must be about this work immediately. Let us live and love in the morning, putting away the behaviours that will cloud and deform this love: drunkenness, debauchery, licentiousness, quarrelling and jealousy.
Let us instead do what Jesus Christ does and love.
Some Thoughts on Exodus 12:1-14
"Foot washing in the Middle East during the time of Jesus was an essential and very menial act, usually performed by the meanest slaves."
"Celebrating What?" John C. Holbert, Opening the Old Testament, 2013.
"Palm/Passion Sunday is less a day for preaching and more a day when preachers can allow extended gospel readings to set the tone for those who will be worshipping together throughout Holy Week and to rehearse the drama of Holy Week for those who will not gather with the worshipping community again until Easter Sunday."
Commentary, Exodus 12:1-4 [5-10] 11-14, Mark S. Gignilliat, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.
"Our Eucharist catches us on the fly between Saturday and Monday. Our stay at the table is short-term. We are soon returning to our daily life, living out our freedom for others."
Commentary, Exodus 12:1-14, Ralph W. Klein, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2011.
The passage appointed for the Maundy Thursday liturgy is about the Passover. That moment when the people of Israel consume a goat and mark their doors to be spared from the last and terrible slaughter of Egyptians. Stanley Hauerwas once said, "God is getting over God's tendency to violence." Regardless of how you read this horrific story, it is paramount for following this last of the plagues; the Egyptians allow the people of God to go free. By the blood of the sacrifice, painted upon their door mantle, they are freed…they are delivered…they are passed over by death and have life; they pass over from slavery into freedom. The " Passover " story "adds another meaning, too.
Now, there are two critical arguments here. The Gospel narratives place Jesus’ last supper and death near the time of Passover. The first argument (and I fear has won out in our present time) is that Jesus’ last supper was the remembrance meal of the Passover called the Seder. This is celebrated by many religious Jews today. J. Jeremias, in his text The Eucharistic Words of Jesus, 1966, has influenced a generation of people that this is the case. The argument is based upon a “conjecture" in "the text that an older Palestinian calendar for Passover is now lost. However, this cannot be found anywhere or explicitly referenced.
TClearly, the New Testament authors saw Jesus’ death and resurrection as a metaphor for the Passover. The Passover, if you will, prefigured the resurrection of Jesus. This emerges theologically in the middle of the second century in the work of Irenaeus of Lyons.
However, there is a second case made for a different root for the liturgy we now recognize as the Eucharist, and that, in fact, Jesus’ last supper was not the Seder but the Chabûrah or Feast of Friends. C. Kucharek on the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom and L. Mitchell's Mitchell'seaning of Ritual track the Chabûrah as a significant link in the tradition. Their research taps into the ancient texts of The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles and The Didache - two early Christian texts. The most prominent proponent of this tradition in the Episcopal Church is our very own Gregory Dix, who, in The Shape of Liturgy, places Jesus’ last supper before Passover. And that the Chabûrah was a feast kept between rabbis and their followers. (I take all of this from my longtime friendship with Richard Fabian and his work on liturgy and the Eucharist at St. Gregory of Nyssa.)
I say all this because people will quickly draw a direct lineage between the Seder, Jesus’ lastJesus'r with his disciples, and the modern-day Eucharist. What seems important is that rather than appropriating a perfect liturgy of our religious ancestors, we might see that what Jesus did in his feast with friends was an essential breaking of the specialized meal for the spiritual to a dinner for all people. Friends here are redefined not by those given any particular religion by birth or by nurture of family. Friends, instead, are those whom God loves in Christ Jesus. Friends are those bound by love and for whom new families are structured out of their participation in a table meant for everyone and not a few. This is accentuated when we take into account the nature of customary seating. Jesus was most definitely killed for eating with sinners. At the final supper, he sits with John on one side and Judas on the other – my friend John Peterson is quick to point out. Jesus places his most excellent follower – the one he loved and his most significant detractor on both his left and right.
We see something exciting if we keep this in mind and return to the text and how it is used in the New Testament. While there is a reference to the looming Passover, there is no direct reference to this passage. This passage, the Passover passage, is used differently.
Luke refers to the text as a charge to Jesus’ call 'to be ready.' In Luke 12, Jesus tells them to be prepared. His time is approaching when he will no longer be with them, and they must be qualified and be on the move. (Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels, 203) Again, Luke seems to nod in the direction of our passage from Exodus when, in Acts, the tradition of Jesus is vital and not courses of laws, including but not limited to keeping the Passover. (Hays, 220) Finally, in John’s Gospel, John's name is called the “book of si" ns,” the idea "that Jesus’ legsJesus'not broken like the pure lamb was seen as a sign of the sacrifice.
We can spend a lot of time on the kind of food served at the meal or the meaning of the meal itself. When we do so, we miss, most often, that it is not the meal nor the lamb that was slain in Egypt that is our deliverance. Instead, all of those stories prefigure the unique person of Jesus, who will be our final deliverance. God in Christ Jesus shall bring all of us to the table of friends (where both the good and the bad shall be seated), and from the table, we shall all go united in Love with haste into the world to proclaim a story of deliverance. We are delivered. We know the work of Jesus because we know the old story of God’s redeeming God's people from death into life, from slavery into freedom.
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