Finding the Lessons

I try to post well in advance of the upcoming Sunday.

You will want to scroll down to find the bible study for the lessons closest to the upcoming Sunday.

The blog will be labeled with proper, liturgical date, and calendar date.

You can open the monthly calendar to the left and find the readings in order.

You can also search below by entering the liturgical date, scripture, or proper. This will pull up all previous posts.

Enjoy.

Search This Blog by Proper and Year (ie: Proper 8B or Christmas C or Advent 1A)

Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Proper 6C / Ordinary 11C / Pentecost +4

Quotes That Make Me Think


"Let the candour with which our Lord accepted this invitation, and his gentleness and prudence at this ensnaring entertainment, teach us to mingle the wisdom of the serpent, with the innocence and sweetness of the dove. Let us neither absolutely refuse all favours, nor resent all neglects, from those whose friendship is at best very doubtful, and their intimacy by no means safe."

From Wesley's Notes. John Wesley (1703-1791).

"But is forgiveness really everything? Can it possibly be worth that much? Consider: forgiveness at heart is the restoration of relationship. It is releasing any claim on someone else for some past injury or offense. That's why the analogy to a debt works so well. Forgiveness cancels relational debt and opens up the future. Which is why it's so important, so valuable."

"Forgiveness and Gratitude," David Lose, Dear Working Preacher, 2013.

General Resources for Sunday's Lessons from Textweek.com

Prayer
Your mercies, O God, cannot be counted, nor do you tire of offering us forgiveness. Grant us, then, a heart both faithful and repentant, ready to respond to your great love, so that along all the pathways of life, and to everyone far and wide, we may be able to proclaim the gospel’s message of reconciliation and peace. 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 C, Peter J. Scagnelli, LTP, 1992.


Some Thoughts on Luke 7:36-8:3

Oremus Online NRSV Gospel Text

Resources for Sunday's Gospel

This week we have a lesson that teaches us about hospitality and forgiveness in the reign of God.


We have a dinner party in the home of one of the Pharisees where guests are eating Hellenistic style -- laying back. One can imagine that they were probably laying back on pillows and or couches. Most likely, they would have been facing one another and the table with their feet tucked behind them, making them accessible to the woman. (Luke Timothy Johnson, Luke, 127)

The woman is obviously known as a sinner and her reason for being present is unknown. We might recall the anointing of Jesus in the readings prior to Easter. Here in Luke, this lesson carries none of the same imagery regarding the oil being similar to oils used at burial or that it is expensive oil. This is important so as not to confuse the two stories. Here, Jesus is teaching carefully about the everyday work of living in the reign of God.

I love the next verse. It is as if our narrator is playing or joking with us -- jabbing at the Pharisee. The Pharisee says, “If this fellow were a prophet he would know who and what kind of woman it is who touches him, that she is a sinner.” Jesus of course is a prophet; we have been reading about his prophetic powers in the chapters that precede this one. So we are on the inside and know the Pharisee is wrong. Moreover, we see that Jesus does know her heart and in fact also knows the Pharisee.

Jesus begins and he is quickly cut off by his host who jabs a little himself by cynically saying, “Teacher speak.” Jesus gives us a parable.

Jesus’ parable causes us and his host to think. Who loves the moneylender more? The one who is forgiven a little or a lot?

Luke Timothy Johnson points out that this is a gracious act and that the forgiveness of debt is seen as a gift. The word used for love means gratitude. So a debt is owed, a gift of forgiveness is made, and there is gratitude. (LTJ, Luke, 127)

Jesus then uses the opportunity, having revealed the woman’s gratefulness for her Lord’s forgiveness, to highlight the lack of hospitality by Simon. Yikes! 

Jesus uses the phrase, “you did not give to me,” each time he challenges Simon. Simon did not give water for cleansing, a kiss of greeting or oil for anointing. Johnson writes, “by the logic of the parable, the woman’s actions showed her state of forgiveness. Simon’s refusal, likewise, indicates a lack of forgiveness. There is the edge.” (127)

The woman has reacted with great gratitude because her sins were forgiven and the manner in which she illustrates her gratitude shows, not the reason for the forgiveness but, the level of the forgiveness that was received. God has forgiven her much. One can see this by her expression of faith and gratitude.

Jesus then says, “Your faith has saved you, go in peace.” Johnson points out that this is the first time that faith and the act of saving have been put together. Peace comes to the one who lives in the reign of God, forgiven and free. (128)

Luke Timothy Johnson writes:

“In 7:29-30, the people were divided between sinners and tax-agents who accepted prophets and justified God, and the lawyers and the Pharisees who rejected prophets and also God’s plan. In 7:34, furthermore, Jesus was pilloried as a “friend of sinners” and one who “ate and drank.” Here we find him eating and drinking at table, showing himself a friend to a sinner, who in turn accepts him as a prophet, while the Pharisee rejects him. The ending of this story, in turn, prepares for the next development, in which Luke will show more fully how ‘faith saves.’”

As I sit and write and reflect on preaching this weekend, I wonder how I am in different situations, not unlike the different people in the Gospel story.

How often do I act like Simon, oblivious to my own behavior, while very clear and willing to speak out about another person’s behavior?

How often am I like or unlike Jesus, willing to stand up to the power in the room and offer kindness and hospitality to someone so clearly outside the normal social construct of our own time?

How often do I give back to God a level of gratitude commensurate with my feelings of grace and provision? In other words, do I return to God in keeping with my feelings of forgiveness by God? Or, do I give back based on what I feel I am able to give?

Lest we get to driven here with actions and rules let us go a bit deeper. Robert Farrar Capon, in Kingdom, Grace, Judgement, says that part of this is to understand that we do not deserve the gift of God's presence to begin with, it is gift. When it is given, along with grace and love, then we are to keep it circulating. We are to share it not hoard it or keep others out. We are not to keep our risk low or protect it. And, we are to understand that it isn't all in some way a reward for good and perfect behavior. (422)

Jesus in a very real way is saying to Simon, don't you see, you are a loser. You just don't know it. This woman knows it and is responding.There seem to be four pretty powerful themes this week: lostness, forgiveness, hospitality and stewardship. Each has the power to inspire for the community gathered in a counter-cultural way of responding and being in relationship with God.



Some Thoughts on Galatians 2:15-21


Resources for Sunday's Epistle

Paul is getting into it this week!  Our lesson begins with Paul describing how he has entered the discourse with Cephas.  The argument is over eating with the Gentiles who are not circumcised.  Paul pointing out that this only became a problem after some false teaching made its way into the community.

Paul's believes that they are not acting "consistently with the gospel."  He points out their hypocrisy with this phrase: “If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?”

Paul then reorients them to the Gospel:  justification by ourselves is not possible but it is possible in Christ.  Paul writes, "...yet we know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law."

We place our trust in Christ's faith.  It is God's act of rectification, God's love, God's mercy, God's faith upon which we place our trust.  Paul writes: "...the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God."

Paul challenges us to not make a new law.  He challenges the Galatians to not make a new low to build up where the old law was torn down by the cross and resurrection of God in Christ Jesus.

I wonder what kinds of laws we have created informally and formally within our church that keep out the sinners - the friends of Jesus?  We might well take Paul's challenging words to us as a question of what is essential to follow Jesus? Vs. What have we made essential to be a Christian?

Some Thoughts on 1 Kings 21:1-21

Oremus Online NRSV OT Text

Resources for Sunday's OT Lesson

The story this week is a story about how the central Southern Kingdom of Israel is being led by a murderous king and his wife. King Ahab who was a mighty king of Israel takes a vineyard he covets from Naboth. The story tells us of how Ahab and his wife Jezebel plot with leaders beneath Naboth to have him stoned. They do so after a letter writing campaign. Then Ahab takes over the vineyard.

Elijah is sent to him by God to tell him that because of this wickedness that he will die a horrible death. Which in fact he does according to historical records outside of the biblical text - thus bringing Elijah's prophecy to fruition.

One of the things the first hearers of this tale would have known is that this vineyard is located not simply next to a palace but next to Ahab's most powerful chariot/military installations. This is not simply a whim for a vineyard. This is an act of conspiracy aimed at a coup resulting in strengthening his military power at the cost of the death of a just man.

There are two things of interest here. The first is that the story is placed in the scripture itself because of the important role it plays in the overall history of the people of Israel. It is there because of the essential theological understanding that the kings of Israel are always given their power from God and that God will take away their power if they are not just. The question that is posed to Ahab in the scripture is wether or not he "fulfills or fails" his role. The redactor who placed these passages in the great story arc of Israel judge all the kings based upon the great king, in fact their king, David. Here then is Ahab's judgement. ( Van Rad, Old Testament, vol 1, 344)

There is a second underlying conversation going on though. One that may be particularly important for the reader of the gospels. The Sinai prophet tradition, in which Elijah is schooled, is one that is very clear that there is to be no other God but the God of Mount Sinai. The covenant that this God has with God's people is of the highest regard. Rather than the judgement of Ahab being wrote through the eyes of the Davidic kingdom and its authors/redactors, the judgement comes from Sinai.

Here what is essential to understand is the very rejection, in the Sinai tradition, of kingship. In the Sinai tradition there could be no suzerainty. Suzerainty is a political relationship by which the local people of a nation may have autonomy while remaining a part of the occupying power and subservient to it. The Sinai perspective was that the centralized power of both state and religion on Mount Zion was to set up a different king in the place of God, and to place a different set of disciplines around their inherited faith than that which was received in the desert. It is clear that this tradition continued. 

While the vast majority of the scripture of the Old Testament reveals a strong and powerful Sinai tradition, it is also clear that the redactors have attempted to answer the Sinai concerns. They allow for the kinship and suzerainty of a Davidic monarchy under the power of god. But we see when we look close in Deuteronomy 17-18 that the Mosaic covenant, the Sinai prophetic tradition, and the rule of God will continue. The redactors hold that the king will be accountable to God, to Sinai, and to Sinai's prophets. They write in Deuteronomy 18.15ff, "The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you shall heed such a prophet. This is what you requested of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said: 'If I hear the voice of the Lord my God any more, or ever again see this great fire, I will die.' Then the Lord replied to me: 'They are right in what they have said. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their own people; I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet, who shall speak to them everything that I command. Anyone who does not heed the words that the prophet shall speak in my name, I myself will hold accountable." The prophets Elijah and Elisha turned their gaze to exactly this work. ( Jon D. Levenson, Sinai & Zion, 191.) 

I say all of this because what seems very essential to understand is that from Elijah's perspective Ahab is no representative of Israel. The nation state can never supplant the relationship of God and humanity. Power will always be judged as oppressive and a culture of death. Over and against this is the story of God's work with the widow for instance, or any of the ways in which God serves and cares for the poor, the lost, and the least. 

It is typical for us to simply say, "Ahab was a bad king." This is in fact what the powers so very focused on the reign of David want us to see. But what Elijah is really saying is power is corrupt and Ahab, like all other powers of this world is corrupt and will in the end use death as its leverage for more power and authority.
   

Monday, May 30, 2016

Proper 5C / Ordinary 10C / Pentecost +3

Quotes That Make Me Think

"And as Luke systematically connects the church's ministry to Jesus' own mission, we have the evangelist's mandate to exhort our churches to embrace compassionate ministry to the poor in Jesus' name."

Commentary, Luke 7:11-17, Jeannine K. Brown, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2013

"Jesus isn't so easily boiled down. You can't take the breadth, length, height, and depth of the power that created the earth and everything in it, and the love that suffered death on the cross, and capture it in a tagline or a bumper sticker."

"No Formulas," Rick Morley, 2013.

General Resources for Sunday's Lessons

Prayer
Lord God, ever attentive to the cry of the lowly, you sent Jesus among us as the prophet of your compassion, with healing in his touch and power in his word.  Raised up by this Savior from the death of our sins, may we glorify you and share with all your gift of life restored.  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 C, Peter J. Scagnelli, LTP, 1992.


Some Thoughts on Luke 7:11-17

Oremus Online NRSV Gospel Text

Resources for Sunday's Gospel

Our passage this Sunday follows the passage of Jesus and the Centurion; and the healing of the Centurion's slave.  Not unlike the the passage last week, this too is focused on the prophetic ministry of Jesus.  In fact in reading them they should most often be taken together.

This week we take the raising of the son of a widow from the dead as proof of Jesus' prophetic powers.  It reminds us of the miracle of Elijah in 1 Kings 17.  Jesus raises this young man right out of the coffin.  And...he begins to speak.  Perhaps a foretaste of the work of proclamation for those who receive the blessings of God and the coming tongues of fire.

Jesus is proclaiming good news and restoration. This story like the one before shows that Jesus is more than a man of words.  He also one of action. Indeed we see this in the words of the people:  "A prophet has been raised up among us!... God has visited his people!"

After a generation of prophecy by the Church I am interested in the fact that the people around us do not respond to our efforts with shouts of acclamation.  "Look the church has been raised up among us!  God has visited his people through the church!"   Instead there is rejection.

I ask are we perhaps missing the work or prophecy?  Prophecy is not an angry voice or a raised fist against the machine.  Prophecy in Luke is about offering in word the Good News of Salvation to the people (spiritual and physical food for the hungry) and by actually giving them something to eat. It is to say that those who mourn will find joy in the morning and then to actually raise a widow's son from the dead.

Prophecy as a gospel act is to raise the dead, spend time with those society sees as of no value, and to feed the hungry with good things. This is a prophecy which does such good works that the society is then judged by the works themselves and not the voice of an angry people who echo the culture's means of toppling power.


Some Thoughts on Galatians 1:11-24


Resources for Sunday's Epistle


As we well know the Galatian communion has some trouble. It has some competition regarding who to believe and what is true.

Paul wants them to believe again as when they first received the Gospel. He wants them to realize that regardless of their divisions there is hope in the Gospel and mission work to do. In order to inspire them he tells his own story of conversion. He tells them of how he was changed and transformed. I cannot believe that he does this for any other reason than to inspire the Galatians to remember when they first heard the Gospel for the first time.

Paul says to them see this God whom I believe in is on the side of Jesus. This God chooses the law condemned Jesus and so he is the Christ of God, the Messiah of the one true God. This is the revelation that has come to him. And, it is a revelation that holds within itself the truth of grace for all those who are condemned by the very same law.

This is not a condemnation of the past or of his inherited faith but rather it is a celebration of the new thing that God is doing through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Paul wants those who call the Galatian church their spiritual home to see that it was this powerful message of Grace that first inspired them. It was this message of God in Christ Jesus that drew them together and drew them into relationship with Paul himself.

Moreover, that as in Judea, the faith of Paul itself is a miraculous sign of the change that even now has hold of creation. Paul a servant of the law is transformed into the servant of grace.

I think what I love the most about this passage is the manner in which Paul is urging faith and belief by sharing his own experience of faith. This is a good model of evangelism. Paul shares his story of faith and transformation as a sign of the Gospel itself. It encourages those who chose to follow this Christ to share not rational arguments, or beat people over the head with the bible, but instead to realize that the most powerful tool of evangelism is simply telling the story of grace and how it has changed our life.

Some Thoughts on 1 Kings 17:8-24


Resources for Sunday's OT Lesson



This is the story of Elijah and the Widow of Zarephath. Elijah comes to the widow to stay there. He is commanded to go by God. While staying in her home there is not enough food. But Elijah tells her to have faith and the food they have is multiplied. While there the widow's son dies. Elijah prays over the son and he lives. 

In both cases the woman is upset because she has not enough. She is upset because having such a great prophet in her house has arisen her understanding of her own low station. This again comes out as the boy dies. She tells him that her sins have brought this upon her. Furthermore, she is a widow. This means she has no station and more than likely she is completely dependent upon the people of the area, the tribal leaders. 

To make this more interesting, the land of Zarephath was north of where the tribe of Asher settled and east of where the tribe of Dan. It was a land predominately made up of Phoenicians and Canaanites. So like Jesus who flees to Egypt, or spends 40 days in the desert, or the mission to the Gentiles our story has a particular flair for taking place in an uncharted territory where the people of Israel are not present. In other words God and God's deliverance and power comes to rest on people who are foreigners to Israel. And, in doing so one of God's own, Elijah, is cared for as well. He must depend upon the kindness of God and of this widow.

This is a gospel story. She, like so many widows in the scripture, is one of the least of God's people. She is considered of no value. Not only because she is widow, but most likely not of Israel. So she is an extreme outsider. Yet it is exactly to them that God comes, in this story in the presence of one of the greatest prophets of Israel. God comes and provides. God comes and raises the dead.

The God of Israel is a God of the widow and the child, of those who have none, and those who are not worthy. It is exactly to the lost and the least (Robert Farrar Capon's term from Kingdom, Grace, and Judgement) that this God comes. 

And, though the least of God's people have nothing, and are lost in suffering and death, this God is present and acts. This is the God who freed the people of Israel out of bondage. In the book of Kings this God continues to act in the affairs of mortals - acting exactly for the those who are imprisoned by loss, hunger, scarcity, brokenness, and are of no value to society.