Prayer
O God, you reveal the signs of your presence among us in the church, in the liturgy and in our brothers and sisters. Let no word of yours ever fall by the wayside or be rendered ineffective through our indifference or neglect. Rather, make us quick to recognize your saving plan whenever we encounter it, and keep us ready always to serve as prophets and apostles of your kingdom. 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 B, Peter J. Scagnelli, LTP, 1992.
From Prayers for Sunday and Seasons, Year B, Peter J. Scagnelli, LTP, 1992.
Some Thoughts on John 1:43-51
"But let the humble, gentle, patient love of all mankind, be fixed on its right foundation, namely, the love of God springing from faith, from a full conviction that God hath given his only Son to die for my sins; and then the whole will resolve into that grand conclusion, worthy of all men to be received: 'Neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but faith that worketh by love.'"
An Israelite Indeed (John 1:47). Sermon by John Wesley.
"Adeste fidelis. That is the only answer I know for people who want to find out whether or not this is true. Come all ye faithful, and all ye who would like to be faithful if only you could, all ye who walk in darkness and hunger for light. Have faith enough, hope enough, despair enough, foolishness enough at least to draw near to see for yourselves."
"Come and See,""Nathaniel," sermon discussion from Frederick Buechner, Frederick Buechner Blog.
"What can we do to alleviate some of those fears that may well keep our neighbors and friends from ‘coming to see Jesus’ for themselves?"
"It Seems Like It Should Be So Simple...So Why Isn't It?" Janet H. Hunt, Dancing with the Word, 2012.
This week we shift across to one of our Johanine readings for the year. The passages in John's Gospel, according to most scholars, follow a carefully crafted narrative that steers people away from the proclamation of John the Baptist and towards the revelation of Jesus.
The passage also refers to the calling of the two disciples. In reading the whole account, you can see that they bear witness to Jesus as the Messiah - the "Son of Man." In this theme, we have the notion of the promised king of Israel being presented in the holy titles being used. At the same time the competing notion that such a vision of Jesus' ministry is all too narrow.
Another theme has to do with the calling of the disciples. The image of Philip and Nathaniel who being seen by Jesus, were called by him, and then the blessings of life as they do so. Moreover, their own witness to Jesus as the "Son of Man." Seeing and proclaiming who he is and revealing to the world that this is the one to come and see.
Now what has most intrigued me about this passage comes from Raymond Brown's text on John (vol 1, 59ff). And those are the images that are linked to this story from ancient Israel's story. Brown illustrates well, I think that Jesus in the story is connected to the image of Jacob's ladder (shekinah), the image of the divine chariot (merkabah) of Ezekiel, Bethel itself, or the rock (the first rock God created upon which Jacob laid his head). What a wonderful set of traditions, none of which in and of themselves are completely convincing scholastically. Nevertheless, I love them!
What really resonates with me as I hold in tension the symbols floating in the text and the movement away from John the Baptist combined with the "seeing" imagery of Philip and Nathaniel is that we have quite a wonderful passage about Jesus as the centre of Christian life and discipleship. Jesus is central, and he is out in the world for us to see.
What I thought is that we preachers spend a lot of time telling folks we don't see Jesus. Think about that for a moment. We tell them we don't see Jesus in their actions, in their spending, in their lives. We don't see Jesus in the church. We don't see Jesus in the world. We don't see Jesus here, and we don't see Jesus there. Think about the last 10 sermons you gave, and I wonder how many of them spent time telling people how we don't see Jesus.
In fact, I wonder if the amount of preaching about not seeing Jesus in people's lives has to do with the number of people who don't want to listen to us preach about not seeing Jesus and so don't come to church.
What if this Sunday, we actually told our Episcopalians and those who might be visiting with us that we see Jesus? We see Jesus in them. We see Jesus in their lives and in their stories. We see Jesus out in the world. What if we made a concerted effort this Sunday to not give "Bad News" and we tried to avoid telling people how we don't see Jesus? What if this Sunday we gave them "Good News?"
What if this Sunday, we preachers were solidly about seeing Jesus Christ out in the world? If we, like Philip and Nathaniel, were able to tell our neighbours, brothers, sisters, and fellow churchgoers that we see Jesus and we want them to see Jesus too?
It would be news if we and our churchgoers went looking for Jesus in the world and found him in places, images, and things like rocks and said, "Look here is God out in the world. Here is how God connects us. We call this connection to the most high God - Jesus." Generous and holy naming would become our work out in the world, and people would hear from us a new story, perhaps a story they have been longing to hear.
Our work as evangelists is not sitting around waiting for people to come into our churches and ask us to show them Jesus, then, in some theological discourse via negativa, telling them where we don't see Jesus. Or even worse, preaching to them about how they aren't doing it right and how we don't see Jesus at all in their lives and in the world.
Our work is to go out and generously listen, generously name Jesus in the lives of others, and generously invite people to come and see the good news as proclaimed in our Episcopal Church.
I wonder if we might together, as preachers and parishioners, promise that for the next month, we are going to take on as our Epiphany discipline the work of seeing and announcing Jesus to those around us and that we would do that with positive and affirming statements.
Some Thoughts on 1 Corinthians 6:12-20
"Paul stresses that the believer in Christ also belongs to that same Lord. There is no such thing as being one's own. Each of us has commitments that bind us to other persons or ways of thinking and living."
Commentary, 1 Corinthians 6:12-20, Arland J. Hultgren, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2009.
"...Paul regularly shifts our focus from morality to relationships, just as he shifts our focus from law to freedom. But his notion of freedom is wise to issues of power and confronts the splitting and compartmentalization which refuses to let God be God and love be love in everything."
"First Thoughts on Passages on Year B Epistle Passages in the Lectionary: Epiphany 2," William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.
This is a very important passage in the discussion of Grace. Basically, Paul's take is, simply put, that: “All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are beneficial. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything.
Rowan Williams once told me: "We don't experiment with our bodies."
Certainly, Paul is not speaking to our particular issues and culture wars. Paul is speaking specifically to Corinth - which was not a healthy place. It was a Licentious place.
They perhaps have embraced freedom too much. It isn't that we aren't free, but not all things are good for the body or good for the community. As one fellow blogger, Chris Haslaam, put it: "He quotes a slogan from his opponents: 'All things are lawful for me'. (They are saying I can do anything I like.) He does not disagree - for Christian living does not depend on observing a set of rules, but on God who accepts even those who break his laws – but he adds a qualification: some things may not be 'beneficial' for the person or in the community."
The issue for Paul is when the individual is enslaved by their indulgence. Christian Liberty is not a license to destroy one's body or another's. It is not to be disruptive or destroy a community for the sake of your own beliefs.
The key here for everyone to hear is that when we are too focused on our will, our want, and our desire, we are taking our focus away from God.
We are not only in a spiritual relationship with God but also a physical one. Overeating, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, sexual abuse, in fact, any abuse of the body (though it will be remade in the resurrection) is a divide/chasm created between God and ourselves.
We are not separate bodies and then separate spirits - we are intermingled, entwined. Our lives are as well. There is no secular and profane but instead a great connection of all things - and that connection is intimately tied to God too.
I believe all of us would agree that Paul's understanding of how the body works is a bit outdated. We know more about how we work, how our bodies get their shape, and how they go together with other bodies. We have new thoughts about what a person is and how that person is truly connected to the body and spirit/psyche.
None of this new thinking, which is important and VERY different from 1st-century understanding of biology and psychology, lessens Paul's clarity about how while we are free because of God's Grace, our freedom is not always good for us.
I think the preacher this week has an opportunity to reclaim this passage from the sexual debates and cultural debates of our time and talk about how to re-engage a spirituality that includes the body.
Rowan Williams once told me: "We don't experiment with our bodies."
Certainly, Paul is not speaking to our particular issues and culture wars. Paul is speaking specifically to Corinth - which was not a healthy place. It was a Licentious place.
They perhaps have embraced freedom too much. It isn't that we aren't free, but not all things are good for the body or good for the community. As one fellow blogger, Chris Haslaam, put it: "He quotes a slogan from his opponents: 'All things are lawful for me'. (They are saying I can do anything I like.) He does not disagree - for Christian living does not depend on observing a set of rules, but on God who accepts even those who break his laws – but he adds a qualification: some things may not be 'beneficial' for the person or in the community."
The issue for Paul is when the individual is enslaved by their indulgence. Christian Liberty is not a license to destroy one's body or another's. It is not to be disruptive or destroy a community for the sake of your own beliefs.
The key here for everyone to hear is that when we are too focused on our will, our want, and our desire, we are taking our focus away from God.
We are not only in a spiritual relationship with God but also a physical one. Overeating, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, sexual abuse, in fact, any abuse of the body (though it will be remade in the resurrection) is a divide/chasm created between God and ourselves.
We are not separate bodies and then separate spirits - we are intermingled, entwined. Our lives are as well. There is no secular and profane but instead a great connection of all things - and that connection is intimately tied to God too.
I believe all of us would agree that Paul's understanding of how the body works is a bit outdated. We know more about how we work, how our bodies get their shape, and how they go together with other bodies. We have new thoughts about what a person is and how that person is truly connected to the body and spirit/psyche.
None of this new thinking, which is important and VERY different from 1st-century understanding of biology and psychology, lessens Paul's clarity about how while we are free because of God's Grace, our freedom is not always good for us.
I think the preacher this week has an opportunity to reclaim this passage from the sexual debates and cultural debates of our time and talk about how to re-engage a spirituality that includes the body.
Some Thoughts on 1 Samuel 3:1-10
"The Lord was with Samuel, but somehow, this divine appointment does not at all diminish the totality of the human experience."
Commentary, 1 Samuel 3:1-10, Roger Nam, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2015.
"From the very beginning, God has been fully present to everyone and everything in this world. And God is still with us because the Spirit of God still "hovers" and "resonates" over and around and in us all."
"Sacred Space," Alan Brehm, The Waking Dreamer.
Let us think through the passage from a missional perspective and try to envision a word for God's church.
In a time when we flounder as a religion, it is hard to hear the word of the Lord. It becomes stale. It is a tradition of the dead instead of the living tradition. (3.1) Remember, Jaroslav Pelikan, wrote, “Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. And, I suppose I should add, it is traditionalism that gives tradition such a bad name.” (The Vindication of Tradition: The 1983 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities) At such times it is hard for the people stuck to see, our eyesight, our vision, dims. (3.2) Yet God is present, and people are listening. Typically, they are different, younger, and eager. (3.3)
Note that we know quite clearly that part of what is happening is that Eli's sons are keeping the best of the offerings for themselves and not passing that along to God and to the poor. (Verse 3:13 is coming.) "For I have told him that I am about to punish his house forever, for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them. 14 Therefore, I swear to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli’s house shall not be expiated by sacrifice or offering forever.”
People who hear God's calling in times like this can easily get everything confused, believing that it is the ancient tradition and religion that is calling. So, we go, and we say...here we are. But the tradition says clearly: we did not call you. We are resting in our traditionalism. (3.4-3.8) The traditionalists sometimes have to be awakened several times by the visions and hearings of the young in order to truly realize - God is not dead. In fact, God has come calling. And, when the tradition like Eli awakes it is awakened and listens carefully.
Eli tells Samuel to listen - and he does so respectfully. He will then speak the words to Eli and offer the vision that God has spoken. Eli receives the news faithfully. "So Samuel told him everything and hid nothing from him. Then he said, “It is the Lord; let him do what seems good to him.” (3:18). We are told, now that Samuel has figured out how to listen anew, that the word is with him and "none of it falls to the ground."
It will be Samuel's work to give voice to the people's cry for help and to God's desire to comfort. He will preach against systems that abuse the weak. And, when God gives in to the monarchy, he will remind the monarchy that it is their work, indeed their calling, to seek the good of the people in his care and to help God care for the weak, powerless, and hungry.
Callie Plunket-Brewton, who is a Campus Minister at the University of North Alabama, wrote:
Just as the call of Samuel sets the tone for his prophetic career and foreshadows the oracles he will deliver against the human leaders of the people, the song of Hannah represents the central focus of YHWH's leadership of the people: concern for the poor and powerless, and judgment of those who prey on the vulnerable and abuse their power.Samuel received a vision about religion that revealed to him that it nor the powers of this world may take advantage of the poor. Ageing religions, ageing monarchies, and ageing governments lose sight that they are merely tools and vessels with the opportunity to do good. They have the power and authority to serve the weakest. So often, they chose systems of death and corruption over the other. So often, they lose sight of the reign of God. Sometimes, religions and principalities, need new prophets to help them here.
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