Prayer
Cultivate your church, we pray, enriching it always with new shoots so that, grafted onto Christ, the true Vine, the community of your people may bear fruit in abundance and produce a rich harvest for eternal life. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.
From Prayers for Sunday and Seasons, Year A, Peter J. Scagnelli, LTP, 1992.
From Prayers for Sunday and Seasons, Year A, Peter J. Scagnelli, LTP, 1992.
Some Thoughts on Matthew 21:33-46
"Martin Luther once said that sometimes you have to squeeze a biblical passage until it leaks the gospel. This is one of those weeks, I think, when with equal measures of patience and faithful pressure, we can give witness to the God made most clear to us in Jesus."
"Crazy Love (a.k.a. Preaching Matthew against Matthew)," David Lose, Dear Working Preacher, 2011.
"This parable does not use the story to set forth the surprising nature and qualities of God's reign, as do so many others in the Gospels. Its focus is rather on the futility of debates about, and maintenance programs for, the institutions of this age."
Commentary, Matthew 21:33-46, Sharon H. Ringe, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2011.
"Martin Luther once said that sometimes you have to squeeze a biblical passage until it leaks the gospel. This is one of those weeks, I think, when with equal measures of patience and faithful pressure, we can give witness to the God made most clear to us in Jesus."
"Crazy Love (a.k.a. Preaching Matthew against Matthew)," David Lose, Dear Working Preacher, 2011.
"This parable does not use the story to set forth the surprising nature and qualities of God's reign, as do so many others in the Gospels. Its focus is rather on the futility of debates about, and maintenance programs for, the institutions of this age."
Commentary, Matthew 21:33-46, Sharon H. Ringe, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2011.
I cannot read the passage appointed for this Sunday without thinking of the vineyard in Isaiah (5:1-7). I can imagine that it might have been the same for those with whom Matthew's community is in conflict.
The Parable is pretty clear. It is harvest time. The landowner sends slaves who beat and mistreat the messenger. He then sends his son, who is killed. The tenants hope to inherit the land and the harvest for themselves.
We are mindful as our Eucharistic prayer reminds us that the prophets have come over and over to gather God's people to show us the way. And God eventually sends his son. "How long," Jesus says, "have I wanted to gather you under my wing like a hen gathers her own young."
We know this passage is part of the building tensions between the Jesus movement and the Pharisee movement in the post-temple era. In the Gospel story, we see this tension echoes the tension between Jesus and the authorities. The passage also offers a theology for why the Jesu movement broke away from its Abrahamic parent.
I think the passage challenges the modern church in several ways. The first is to recognize that the missionary message of Matthew tells us that Jesus, as risen Lord continues an eternal return to save the world through the proclamation and actions of his followers.
I think the second way we are challenged is that we typically put ourselves in the place of Jesus and the prophets. I think that we would be radically challenged to think about our mission if we were to recognize that, more often than not, when we are at our worst, we are the tenants! When we try to invent the church in our own image, we truly close the doors to Jesus and the prophets. We also close the doors to the mission.
So when we read this, might we be challenged to see a mission which embraces the prophets and the son who offers us a role in the harvest of God.
Some Thoughts on Philippians 3:4-14
"Without throwing away his own religion Paul, nevertheless, throws away a theology which had made him important and given him great status. In its place he embraces Christ and Christ's way."
"First Thoughts on Year A Epistle Passages in the Lectionary," Pentecost 16, William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.
"The season of Lent, with its inexorable movement towards the cross, offers us an opportunity to reflect on our journey through life, from the cradle to grave."
Commentary, Philippians 3:4b-14 (Lent 5C), Holly Hearon, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2010.
We continue reading from Paul's letter to the Philippians. He is concerned that there are those within the community at Philippi who want to make the gentile Christians adhere to the Jewish law. So, Paul warns them and cautions them. He tells them that the law and the law of circumcision in particular, is not what God requires of them. Rather, Paul offers a vision of a spiritual life where the heart is changed and transformed, circumcised, and marked as God's own. Paul is clear - we do not have to mark our flesh to know that we are God's.
We then get a rare glimpse into Paul's own spiritual pilgrimage. He talks about his early life as a good and faithful Jew. He was a member of the tribe of Benjamin, and everyone knows this is a special tribe within the family of tribes. So it is that Paul kept the law, including circumcision and many other requirements. To be a Benjaminite was and is to be set aside as one of God's favourites and it requires a holy and attentive life lived under Jewish law. He calls himself a Pharisee - a sect within Judaism that kept the law strictly and was an inner reform movement of great power at the time of Jesus. They were especially strict around the laws of cleanliness and those that had to do with common meals. Paul tells them that he is a good Jew. He is honest, though and tells them that he was a persecutor of those involved in the competing Jewish reform movement of followers of Jesus. Paul was zealous and believed this Jesus movement must be wiped out. Then we know that there was an experience.
Paul talks very little about his experience. Yet here in Philippians, he offers some reflection. He writes that Christ helped him to understand that his way, the way of the Jewish law and the religious leaders of his day, was not the best way to know God. Paul tells the Philippians that getting caught up in the midst of the law actually makes it more difficult to see how much God loves us. The law, Paul invites his readers to understand, hides the fact that God gives us grace freely. Paul tells them that once he had a glimpse of this powerful God of love, he cast aside the law in order to see more clearly and to gain all that God in Christ Jesus offers.
Paul tells them he wants to know Christ, who is alive and resurrected and even now pouring out his spirit upon his people. Paul seeks oneness with God. He wishes to share Christ's sufferings and to participate in the cross in order that he may truly die the old way and be reborn as a new being - one eternally united with God. This is something Paul has a spiritual hunger for and desires completely. Paul believes his life's journey from this point forward will be a continuing discovery of the meaning of Christ's resurrection and that as he progresses, he will be remade. Paul says God has chosen him - made me his own - this is a very personal revelation and a very personal God. The God Paul is describing has a very different and real quality separate from the qualities of God Paul had known when he was under the law.
We then get a wonderful image of the race and the runner. Paul, in his journey from Benjaminite to faithful God-fearer and Jesus follower, hopes that his lifelong pilgrimage will bring him to the foot of God's throne in order to receive the laurel, the wreath, the mantel and prize of the heavenly kingdom. May he so run the race that he shall be rewarded with unity which God desires to give and Paul hopes to receive.
This is a truly exquisite part of the scriptures. It is an insight into the personal spiritual life of Paul. It is one of the few truly reflective pieces of scripture which gives us a vision of the early pilgrim life of a follower of Jesus. I think what strikes me most is that it resonates with my story; it resonates with the story of so many people who seek God - a living God. I hope as a preacher, you will seek to tell the pilgrim story, your story, Paul's story, and invite others to reflect upon their own journey with the living God. Tell of how everything else you put your trust in obscures and hides the living God. Invite them to imagine the longing and yearning for that living God and highlight within their own journeys God's reaching out and invitation to receive the laurel at the end of a race well run to the very end and to the very foot of the throne of Grace.
"Yet their uniqueness is not straightforward. As moral principles, they were mostly not new. Almost all societies have laws against murder, robbery and false testimony. There is some originality in the fact that they are apodictic, that is, simple statements of 'You shall not,' as opposed to the casuistic form, 'If … then.' But they are only ten among a much larger body of 613 commandments. Nor are they even described by the Torah itself as 'ten commandments.' The Torah calls them the aseret ha-devarim, that is, “ten utterances.” Hence the Greek translation, Decalogue, meaning, 'ten words.'"
Some
Thoughts on Exodus 20:1-20
"Non-Virtual Faith," Alan Brehm, The Waking Dreamer, 2015.
"The Decalogue, when viewed as a part of this series of tests that were to shape the people's identity, is thus not only a series of laws but a fertile ground from which blessings and health and prosperity can grow from God."
Commentary, Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20, Callie Plunket-Brewton, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2014.
Today’s Old Testament reading is the Ten Commandments. The work for the people of Israel, and for the people who claim to follow Jesus today, was to learn to “love as God loved and loves” wrote Stanley Hauerwas in The Peaceable Kingdom (78).
What is interesting and somewhat important for us today is to, on the one hand, lean into this deep meaning offered by the passage and elucidated by Hauerwas and, at the same time, reject the Constantinian and Enlightenment/Reformed diversions from the story. Hauerwas defines these typical approaches to taking out the gospel in such passages in this way. The impact upon our reading, preaching, belief and practice is shaped by a “Constantinianism” that offers “the conviction that Christianity is about being religious in a general and diffuse sense.” Meanwhile, the Enlightenment/Reformation “makes Christians into apologists to and for the modern world. (See Hauerwas, Scripture and Ethics, 111). Moreover, he cautions us to not make this about “advice” or about how to live in particular “circumstances”. In other words, the Ten Commandments are not an ethical prescription to be filled by the loyal disciple, but instead, they are about a kind of community that is seeking to live into the blessings and grace of God.
For the Christian who lives between Constantine and the Reformation, we find it all too easy to embrace the scripture as a list of moral imperatives – a biblical ethic. Again, Hauerwas, “The problem of revelation aside, however, the view that the Bible contains a revealed morality that can be applied directly by the individual agent, perhaps with some help from the biblical critic, flounders when considering the status of individual commands.” (71) When we do this, it is all too easy to dismiss their meaning. What I am getting at is that the nature of the community seeking to respond to God’s freedom is essential, the tradition of handing along that response and then the response to Jesus’ ministry is essential. What this helps us to understand is that our own response is not one of a person alone. Christians inherit a tradition wherein the biblical story is part of a very real community that stretches over millennia and arcs towards the end of time. Moreover, the ethic of such a community is one defined by holding community, tradition, and scripture in hand. Scripture, in this way, becomes, as Hauerwas offers, “revealed reality” instead of “revealed morality”. (72) This then leads us to virtues – which is the Christian manner of approach.
So it is that when we return to the Old Testament and read the commandments, we are able to hear them in a different manner. We may, instead of hearing a list hear the virtues. The community today is invited to seek to learn to love as God loves. In this way, then we see a community attempting to live out that learning. We might do well to return to our own Book of Common Prayer to read our approach in just such a context.
We are not simply people after peace and justice, but we are people who are deeply rooted in a tradition that seeks to tell our story through virtuous action. We know God’s will for us and for creation. We know what we are to do... We are to be virtuous citizens not only on Sundays, not only within the walls of our homes; we are to be virtuous citizens at work in the political and social environs of our community. And, when we don’t follow these commandments, we are to repent and return to the Lord and begin the work again.
What is interesting and somewhat important for us today is to, on the one hand, lean into this deep meaning offered by the passage and elucidated by Hauerwas and, at the same time, reject the Constantinian and Enlightenment/Reformed diversions from the story. Hauerwas defines these typical approaches to taking out the gospel in such passages in this way. The impact upon our reading, preaching, belief and practice is shaped by a “Constantinianism” that offers “the conviction that Christianity is about being religious in a general and diffuse sense.” Meanwhile, the Enlightenment/Reformation “makes Christians into apologists to and for the modern world. (See Hauerwas, Scripture and Ethics, 111). Moreover, he cautions us to not make this about “advice” or about how to live in particular “circumstances”. In other words, the Ten Commandments are not an ethical prescription to be filled by the loyal disciple, but instead, they are about a kind of community that is seeking to live into the blessings and grace of God.
For the Christian who lives between Constantine and the Reformation, we find it all too easy to embrace the scripture as a list of moral imperatives – a biblical ethic. Again, Hauerwas, “The problem of revelation aside, however, the view that the Bible contains a revealed morality that can be applied directly by the individual agent, perhaps with some help from the biblical critic, flounders when considering the status of individual commands.” (71) When we do this, it is all too easy to dismiss their meaning. What I am getting at is that the nature of the community seeking to respond to God’s freedom is essential, the tradition of handing along that response and then the response to Jesus’ ministry is essential. What this helps us to understand is that our own response is not one of a person alone. Christians inherit a tradition wherein the biblical story is part of a very real community that stretches over millennia and arcs towards the end of time. Moreover, the ethic of such a community is one defined by holding community, tradition, and scripture in hand. Scripture, in this way, becomes, as Hauerwas offers, “revealed reality” instead of “revealed morality”. (72) This then leads us to virtues – which is the Christian manner of approach.
So it is that when we return to the Old Testament and read the commandments, we are able to hear them in a different manner. We may, instead of hearing a list hear the virtues. The community today is invited to seek to learn to love as God loves. In this way, then we see a community attempting to live out that learning. We might do well to return to our own Book of Common Prayer to read our approach in just such a context.
Q. What do we learn from these commandments?
A. We learn two things: our duty to God, and our duty to our neighbors.
Q. What is our duty to God?
A. Our duty is to believe and trust in God;I. To love and obey God and to bring others to know him;Q. What is our duty to our neighbors?
II. To put nothing in the place of God;
III. To show God respect in thought, word, and deed;
IV. And to set aside regular times for worship, prayer, and the study of God’s ways.
A. Our duty to our neighbors is to love them as ourselves, and to do to other people as we wish them to do to us;V. To love, honor, and help our parents andfamily; to honor those in authority, and to meettheir just demands;Q. What is the purpose of the Ten Commandments?
VI. To show respect for the life God has given us; to work and pray for peace; to bear no malice, prejudice, or hatred in our hearts; and to be kind to all the creatures of God;
VII. To use all our bodily desires as God intended;
VIII. To be honest and fair in our dealings; to seek justice, freedom, and the necessities of life for all people; and to use our talents and possessions as ones who must answer for them to God;
IX. To speak the truth, and not to mislead others by our silence;
X. To resist temptations to envy, greed, and jealousy; to rejoice in other people’s gifts and graces; and to do our duty for the love of God, who has called us into fellowship with him.
A. The Ten Commandments were given to define our relationship with God and our neighbors.
Q. Since we do not fully obey them, are they useful at all?
A. Since we do not fully obey them, we see more clearly our sin and our need for redemption.
We are not simply people after peace and justice, but we are people who are deeply rooted in a tradition that seeks to tell our story through virtuous action. We know God’s will for us and for creation. We know what we are to do... We are to be virtuous citizens not only on Sundays, not only within the walls of our homes; we are to be virtuous citizens at work in the political and social environs of our community. And, when we don’t follow these commandments, we are to repent and return to the Lord and begin the work again.
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