First Sunday in Lent Year C, March 6, 2022

Prayer

Through all their desert wanderings, O Lord our God, you led our ancestors from toil and oppression to a land of milk and honey.  Through forty days in the wilderness, the Spirit led your Son from the devil’s testing to victory as your servant.  Lead us through these forty days of Lent and make that victory of Christ’s our own, till at the font of living water the elect find new birth, the penitent find pardon, and all rejoice to serve you alone. 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 4:1-3

"I don’t think that a sermon on temptation needs to be either titillating or boring to be helpful. Rather, I think it needs to be both honest and realistic. In fact, I think that kind of sermon on temptation might be just the thing a lot of our people need and want to hear."

"Trust and Temptation," David Lose, Dear Working Preacher, 2013.

"Wilderness was the wild place, the waiting place, the place of preparation. It also connected then, as it does now, to very basic spirituality: a place to grapple with God, a place to learn dependence on nature and its provisions, a place of extremes or contrasts, of wild beasts and desert. It is the Lenten space par excellence."

"First Thoughts on Year C Gospel Passages in the Lectionary," Lent 1, William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.

Oremus Online NRSV Gospel Text



On the first Sunday of Lent we return to chapters which came before our Epiphany readings.  This Sunday we go back in time to the chapter just following the Baptism when Jesus is led by the Holy Spirit into the desert. This pattern of reading the Gospel works well for our liturgical year, and helps to bring the modern Christian journey through Lent into perspective alongside the journey of Jesus in the desert.  Sometimes it isn't very helpful as far as the narrative is concerned.

In Luke's Gospel we are clear that it is the Holy Spirit who is the one who is leading Jesus from the moment of baptism throughout his ministry. Jesus is God’s son specifically and this “’sonship’ is mediated by the Holy Spirit.” (LTJ, Luke, 72)

Jesus is led then as God’s son into the desert, full of the Holy Spirit. He is led there specifically to be tested.  In the desert we find that it is Job’s tester who comes to Jesus, a little different personality than in the other two Gospels. This devil will offer much in a land without much. The idea is that here the devil is offering a different world to Jesus, a different reign. This reign is one filled with demons and minions. To many the “wilderness” is a place full of demons.  The reign the devil offers is not only contrary to but working against the reign of God. The testing begins long after Jesus becomes hungry. He is dwelling within this counter kingdom where scarcity rules.

He dwells there for forty days which is a holy number.  In Exodus 34:38, Moses was on Mount Sinai for forty days; In 1 Kings 19:8, Elijah spent forty days on the journey to Mount Horeb. According to the northern tradition (in Deuteronomy 9) , Moses received the Law there, rather than on Mount Sinai, the location in the southern tradition. In Deuteronomy 9:9, Moses says “I remained on the mountain forty days and forty nights; I neither ate bread nor drank water.” “Forty days” appears many times in the Old Testament meaning a significant period of time. Recall also that Jonah predicted that Nineveh would be destroyed after “forty days” if the citizens did not repent.

This is an interesting tie-in for the discipleship journey. We, as disciples, live in a world tempted daily by the demons and minions of this counter-kingdom. When we live in the world we are hungry and find little sustenance. When we leave the life lived within the reign of God we will be tempted and it will be like a desert with living water ever more scarce and our own thirst and hunger increasing.

Jesus is first tempted to turn stones to bread. I am reminded first of all of John the Baptist’s words that God can raise up sons and daughters of Abraham from these stones, stones may be living, stones may gush forth with water. But Jesus is tempted here with the opportunity to use his “sonship” powers to try and sustain life in the “counter-kingdom.” (LTJ, Luke, 74)

Jesus responds by reminding the devil and us who are traveling along this desert journey with him that we do not live on bread alone. (Deuteronomy 8:3.) The message Jesus offers in not unique and yet it is always timely. We enter into this time of year to help us intentionally remember that we depend upon the bounty and grace of God for all that we have. This was the lesson taught to Abraham, to Joseph, to Moses, to all the prophets, kings, and holy people of God. As humans it is so very easy to believe that if we just have this or if we simply could have that our lives would be so much better off than they are today. We so easily forget in our hunger brought about in a world of scarcity that God’s love and providence is already there to be consumed.

The devil then shows Jesus all of the kingdoms throughout the empire and says that he can have them if he will but prostrate himself. In Luke’s Gospel this is more than bowing before the devil, acknowledging his power and reign over the counter-kingdom. It is worship he desires.

As I reflect on this passage it reminds me of all the false hopes of prosperity that are offered on late night infomercials. The promise looks good and it is inviting. The promise of the counter-kingdom is subtle and you and I buy into it pretty easily. “If I just had this or that,” we might say to ourselves. Just recently I read an article talking about the unfulfilled hope promised by technology. Jesus’ response is to reorient the conversation towards God. Jesus reminds the devil of the words of the Sh’ma: there is only one God of Israel and him we shall worship.

The first two temptations not having worked, the devil takes Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem. The devil offers a few quotes and invites Jesus to test his father. Surely the angels would save Jesus from stubbing his toe. Jesus of course “exhausts” the devil with his focus on the reign of God and his unbending mission to bring it to fruition. At the end of the day it is the tester of Job and Jesus who looses faith and withdraws.

Luke includes this phrase, “withdrew from him for a time.” The tempter will play an important role towards the end of Jesus’ mission. While the ruler of the counter-kingdom is quiet for most of the Lukan gospel, his minions are not. Luke Timothy Johnson tells us we should not pretend that the clash of the reign of God and the counter-kingdom of the world is over by any stretch of the imagination.

As we come to the end of this passage and I reflect on possible messages for the first Sunday in Lent, there are the obvious themes of desert and testing. There also emerges a theme on the faithfulness of Jesus to bring in the reign of God. Perhaps in our beginning of Lent we might not simply see our journey with Jesus in a desert or wilderness as a time to grow close to God, but rather a time to test our faith in God by stepping boldly forward into ministry and mission. Can we be driven into Lent by the Holy Spirit for the sake of the reign of God and see what it is that we discover along our own journey to Jerusalem? Can we fast, and pray, and be reconciled to the lordship of Christ in our lives?

Some Thoughts on Romans 10:8-13

"Few congregations today face the precise questions that challenged Paul's churches. Even so, there remain significant issues that divide believers from one another."
Commentary, Romans 10:5-15, Audrey West, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2016.

"Resurrection itself is an overcoming of shame -- the shame of crucifixion in particular, but also overcoming the more general shame that God did not act to save God's faithful servant from death."
Commentary, Romans 10:5-15, J.R. Daniel Kirtk, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2014.

"God's salvation is available to all. This is a bold statement. We err if we hear it as anthropology, as a claim that all people are about the same, or as a maxim that "a person's a person, no matter how small" (that's not Paul, but Horton Hears a Who!). Rather, Paul makes a statement about God: God has made salvation near to all."
Commentary, Romans 10:5-15, Matt Skinner, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2011.

Oremus Online NRSV Epistle Text

Paul

In this lesson Paul substitutes the word for Torah with the word Christ.  Therefore what we are presented with is the transformation of living the law transformed into the Gospel of living out the Christ like heart.

We have a unique proclamation of Good News about Salvation and of Christ and his resurrection.  We cannot underestimate the reality that Paul's view that God's grace, mercy, and salvation preceded virtue was a radical notion.  The reversal of the economic nature of faith was powerful to the first century ears.  Today, most of us still live within a predominately exchange based faith practice; though a more subtle one.  We trade on "right belief" today or "right worship."  Paul's message is very important for us to hear.

Paul tells us that the Holy Spirit is working God's purpose out in the world.  God as Holy Spirit is a spirit of love and grace which is breathing life into people.  They are receiving grace and this grace brings with it a deliverance from the old ways.  Shame is not God's way, though it was the way of the law.  We are freed now into a new life which makes all things and all people new.

This God is a generous God and Christ sees no distinction in the human family when he looks upon us with the eyes of grace.  Paul says it is no longer about marking the boxes and checking off your list of achievements.  Instead God has saved us.   Paul writes:

For, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”

This is good news indeed and having heard it, we proclaim it, and we choose to live and be differently. We choose then to live out of our freedom and liberty a grace filled and virtuous life.  This is the new economy of faith, traded on grace and forgiveness from God to us and to all others.  Moreover, an opportunity to live life empowered by the Holy Spirit to give thanks for this salvation and to offer it to others; all the wile attempting a virtuous life of love.

Some Thoughts on Deuteronomy 26:1-11

"The book of Deuteronomy records the orations Moses declared to the Israelites on the last day of his

Offering of the First Fruits (בִּכּוּרִים, bikkurim)
(illustration from a Bible card published
between 1896 and 1913 by the
Providence Lithograph Company)
Thanks Wiki!

life."

Commentary, Deuteronomy 26:1-11, William Yarchin, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2016.

"It is the will of God, that we should be chearful not only in our attendance upon his holy ordinances, but in our enjoyment of the gifts of his providence. Whatever good thing God gives us, we should make the most comfortable use of it we can, still tracing the streams to the fountain of all consolation."
From John Wesley's Notes.

"Signifying that God does not give us goods for ourselves only, but to be used also by those who are committed to our charge."
From the John Calvin's Geneva Notes.

Clearly, not all identities are the same. Characteristic of Jewish identities and others inspired by the Hebrew Bible are what Dan McAdams calls “the redemptive self.” (Yuval Harari, 1 Lessons for the 21st Century (London, Jonathan Cape, 2018) People with this kind of identity, he says, “shape their lives into a narrative about how a gifted hero encounters the suffering of others as a child, develops strong moral convictions as an adolescent, and moves steadily upward and onward in the adult years, confident that negative experiences will ultimately be redeemed.” More than other kinds of life story, the redemptive self embodies the “belief that bad things can be overcome and affirms the narrator’s commitment to building a better world.”

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks from The Story We Tell (Ki Tavo 5778) 

Oremus Online NRSV Text

We are at the edge of the promised land. Here in this book we have God's teaching about what it will mean to be a people who dwell with God.

God has provided Moses, the greatest of prophets, with words of instruction on the liturgies, life, and community that is to be formed in the new land in which they are to dwell.

The passage is about first fruits. We most likely have an actual liturgy presented in the text. The prayers may be some of the oldest in the whole of the testament. And, it is a description of a national festival. Both the people of Israel and their pagan neighbors are to do this as a thanksgiving. The liturgy follows:

1. You take first fruits as an offering to God
2. put it in a basket
3. Go to the sacred place where God dwells
4. go to the priest who is serving at the time
5. say the following opening words, “Today I declare to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our ancestors to give us.”
6. Then the priest will take the basket from you and set it at the altar
7. Then you will say, “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. 6When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me.”
8. Then you will "set down" and "bow" before God

This is an amazing piece of scripture. It actually is a passage that gives us liturgy - words and actions. It tells us of an actual thing that happened....people who lived in proximity to Jerusalem would bring fresh fruit...others dried fruit. This was a great ingathering for Jerusalem. Rabbi Sacks tells us:

Those who lived near Jerusalem would bring fresh figs and grapes. Those who lived far away would bring dried figs and raisins. An ox would walk ahead of them, its horns plated with gold and its head decorated with an olive wreath. Someone would play a flute. When they came close to Jerusalem they would send a messenger ahead to announce their arrival and they would start to adorn their first-fruits. Governors and officials of the city would come out to greet them and the artisans would stop their work and call out, “Our brothers from such-and-such a place: come in peace!” 

The flute would continue playing until the procession reached the Temple Mount. There, they would each place their basket of fruit on their shoulder – the Mishnah says that even King Agrippa would do so – and carry it to the Temple forecourt. There the Levites would sing (Psalm 30:2), “I will praise you, God, for you have raised me up and not let my enemies rejoice over me.” 

The scene, as groups converged on the Temple from all parts of Israel, must have been vivid and unforgettable. However, the most important part of the ceremony lay in what happened next. With the baskets still on their shoulders the arrivals would say, “I declare today to the Lord your God that I have come to the land that the Lord swore to our ancestors to give us.” Each would then hold their basket by the rim, the Cohen would place his hand under it and ceremoniously wave it, and the bringer of the fruit would say the following passage, whose text is set out in our parsha... Rabbi Jonathan Sacks from The Story We Tell (Ki Tavo 5778)

The passage talks about liturgy, stewardship, and the nature of the relationship between God and God's people. It was Murray Newman's, my Old Testament professor, favorite text.

I imagine that many people will jump the gun and talk about stewardship if they preach on this text. And, it is about that. It is truly about giving thanks to God who is provider and a deliverer. However, I believe there is more here than that.

But I think the foundation of the passage may not be in the liturgy and stewardship of the narrative. Instead, the deep meaning of the passage is actually found in the words of the prayer that is to be said at the time of the offering - the parsha. (Deut. 26:5-10) That is, "“A wandering Aramean was my ancestor....etc, etc. Here I turn to Rabbi Sacks to help us to pull from the text 5 essential themes.

First, the people of Israel are the first to experience and tell the  story of God. In particular that this God is a God beyond and in the midst of history - and in particularly in the midst of a particular people. Moreover, the people of Israel in their experience, and through the text, reveal to us that the story of history is an overarching theme of God's making. In particular this theme is one of redemption: beginning with suffering; freedom of the people by God's delivering hand; the drama of a people trying to live with god; and finally a homecoming. This story is to be one that moves in this very passage from an account to internal memory. It is to be internalized. He writes, "Those who stood in the Temple saying those words were declaring: this is my story. In bringing these fruits from this land, I and my family are part of it." (Ibid.)

Finally, this is all about identity. More than history, more than narrative, and memory...this is ultimately about being and becoming. Sacks suggests, "History is an answer to the question, “What happened?” Memory is an answer to the question, “Who am I?” (Ibid.)

He gives this example, "In Alzheimer’s Disease, when you lose your memory, you lose your identity. The same is true of a nation as a whole. (David Andress, Cultural Dementia, subtitled How the West Has Lost its History and Risks Losing Everything Else (London, Head of Zeus, 2018) When we tell the story of our people’s past, we renew our identity. We have a context in which we can understand who we are in the present and what we must do to hand on our identity to the future." (Sacks, Ibid.)

As we bring all of this forward into our Christian context we understand then that what we do liturgically, like this prayer, reminds us of God in Christ' Jesus work of redemption. And, that this was the high water mark of what God has done all along. We understand that we are not participating in something that we are disconnected from. We are not merely receiving something. What we do in the liturgy is something more. We are actually claiming ourselves as a particular people, with a particular God, in whose particular narrative we participate. We are internalizing God's story.

What we do each week (not unlike what the people are instructed to do and have done for millennia) is of "immense consequence". We are telling a "collective story" of who God is and how we participate in God's story. It in fact rejects all forms of principalities and powers...it rejects all the "normal bases of identity: political power, shared territory or a shared language of everyday speech." (Ibid.)

All characteristics, all identities, all nations are not the same thing. The American narrative is as Dan McAdams explains it above in the quotation section. Christianity moves beyond the hero and demigod's triumph over evil or circumstance. We instead understand that God has acted and is acting in the midst of our lives today. God in Christ Jesus is not simply a symbolic hero of such triumphs as the wandering Aramean and God. Christ is the God, the alpha and omega of history, who makes us God's people and redeems us (not merely from the authorities and powers of this world) from the sibling rivalry that infects all human relationships - the sin of the world. The Gospel is rooted here in this story of the first fruits for it is a historic memory of God's action that is raised to a greater enterprise in Jesus. For through God in Christ all of creation is redeemed, not just a people. In God in Christ Jesus we become the first fruits of God's salvific act upon the cross. Christ is the one who offers the sacrifice and raises us to God making all of us an offering to the most high God. This is our story, this is our God, and we are the people of his hand - the sheep of his fold.

Seventh Sunday after Epiphany - February 20, 2022

Prayer

Lord, help me not to be too quick to assume my enemy is a savage just because he is my enemy. Perhaps he is your enemy because he thinks I am a savage. Or perhaps he is afraid of me because he feels that I are afraid of him. And perhaps if he believed I were capable of loving him he would no longer be my enemy. Lord, help me not to be too quick to assume my enemy is a savage just because he is my enemy.

Lord, help me not to be too quick to assume that my enemy is an enemy of God just because he is my enemy. Perhaps he is my enemy precisely because he can find nothing in me that gives glory to God. Perhaps he fears me because he can find nothing in me of God's love and God's kindness and God's patience and mercy and understanding of the weaknesses of men. Lord, help me not to be too quick to assume that my enemy is an enemy of God just because he is my enemy.

Lord, help me not to be too quick to condemn the man who no longer believes in God, for it is perhaps my own coldness and avarice, my mediocrity and materialism, my sensuality and selfishness that have killed his faith. Lord, help me not to be too quick to condemn the man who no longer believes in God. Amen

Prayer adapted from Thomas Merton, from  New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1961).


Luke 6:27-38

"Jesus? life is the best exposition of his teaching: self giving love even in utmost adversity generates life for oneself and for others. It is participation in God?s life."
"First Thoughts on Year C Gospel Passages in the Lectionary: Epiphany 7,"William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia, 2001.

"The word used here for love, agape in Greek, does NOT mean romantic love, liking, or even friendship. What it does mean is whole-hearted, unreserved, unconditional desire for the well-being of the other. Expecting nothing in return."
Holy Textures, Understanding the Bible in its own time and in ours, Luke 6:27-38, David Ewart, 2013.


"Jensen (Preaching Luke's Gospel) offers this possible conclusion to a sermon on this text: Jesus' word for us today is: "I call you to live your lives out of an alternative vision of reality. I call you to live your lives as lives that reverse the values of this culture. I call you to love your enemy; turn the other cheek; give your possessions to those in need and judge not the lives of others. Be merciful even as I am merciful. I have come to nourish your entire life with my mercy. I have come to empower you with mercy in order that you may, indeed, live a new kind of life in this world." [p. 82]"
Exegetical Notes by Brian Stoffregen at CrossMarks Christian Resources.

Do not think that you can show your love for Christ by hating those who seem to be his enemies on earth... Suppose they really do hate him: nevertheless he loves them, and you cannot be united with him unless you love them too.

If you hate the enemies of the Church instead of loving them, you too will run the risk of becoming an enemy of the Church, and of Christ; for he said: Love your enemies, and he also said: He that is not with me is against me. Therefore if you do not side with Christ by loving those that he loves, you are against him.

But Christ loves all people. Christ died for all people. And Christ said there was no greater love than that a man should lay down his life for his friend.

Thomas Merton, from  New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1961).

Oremus Online NRSV Text

We have just read the sermon on the mount, the admonitions that followed, the calling of the disciples to be about the work of bringing justice to the world by serving the poor, hungry, sorrow filled, and those who are hated.

It is as if he turns to the crowd now, and makes a larger pronouncement. He suggests that justice will not be brought about in the world's terms. In other words, justice will not be brought by a revolution of the poor who violently overthrow those in authority and in power. This is not a worldly tale of a new kingdom stomping out a worldly one and then taking its place in the seats of power. (The disciples will talk about this often.) No. This is a wholly other kind of revolution.

It is one where violence is met by peace. He calls people to bless and pray for those who hate, despise, or persecute. He invites people to give their shirt and their coat to those who ask or take from them.

He reminds them that even the sinners are merciful to those whom they like. So, the Gospel is going to be different. It is about loving those who are enemies, forgiving those who persecute us and cause us harm, and caring for those who do us evil.

This is not a "doing good" or "being good" word from Jesus as an economic exchange. It is not about being nice so others will in turn be nice to you.

Walter Wink in his book Engaging the Powers does an excellent job of pulling apart the social context of this passage. He explains that turning the other cheek requires a second blow with a soiled hand. There is a particular shame code at work here and by so doing the person who strikes the second blow is revealed as having defiled the other. Likewise, to give away all your clothing is to be naked. It was forbidden to do this and Jesus is revealing that it is an unjust demand that bring's shame upon the person who takes your clothing. Wink and others talk a bit more about Matthew's version as Jesus is specific about the cheek and adds an invitation to walk an extra mile. This by the way requires just payment for inscription and puts the soldier who requires it in the debtor's seat. Much is written about these non violent invitations to resist. Furthermore, there is a good bit of debate as to Jesus' intended audience and outcome. Is this about communal/village life? Or, is this revolutionary engagement with the powers and authorities. It may indeed be both.

We need though to remember. This is not a bold new code being ascribed by Jesus to those who follow God or who follow him. No, in fact he is inviting the people to remember the conditions prescribed in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. (See Leviticus 18-20) These are attitudes and requirements of love and mercy and forgiveness that reveal God's Holy people to be God's people. This is part of what differentiates them from others they will come to meet in the promised land. In fact the call to care for a stranger or sojourner in their land is an opportunity to reveal how different God's people are. See Leviticus 19 or Proverbs 25:21-22 to understand that God's people are a particular kind of people who are known for their hospitality, their kindness, and care - even to their enemies. What Jesus does is to continue God's teachings and to call people back into covenant with God.

Moreover, Jesus expands this beyond the communal life of first century religious life. Here is where I think it gets interesting. Jesus not only calls the religious to follow these prescriptions but to do so with those who are different, who do not believe, who have many gods, who are unclean, and who are outside of the religious theological sphere that breathes a rarified air of insulation. Jesus is inviting the whole of the world to be reshaped by this invitation. God's people, in Jesus' imagination, are all of the people...not just the faithful religious who can trace their ancestry back.

Furthermore, this is a key Gospel paradox and no mere peaceful protest, or communal ethic. Think for a moment with me. Jesus will in his punishment, trial, way of the cross, and death upon the cross live out all of these invitations. In so doing, then the cross adheres to itself, with Jesus firmly planted upon it, the sin and shame of the world. He is stricken, his clothes are taken, he is required to walk, he persecuted. And, in the end he gathers in the shame by saying, "Father forgive them." Upon the cross the shame of the world and society (which operates contrary to God's garden imaginary where love of enemies is standard) is taken up with Jesus on the cross, and buried down in the grave with Jesus.

To believe that this is merely a code of ethics or a way of following Jesus is to miss the deep theology that is essential in this secular age - God is acting here. God will do these things in the person of Jesus. And, God acts through us when we do these things. 

1 Corinthians 15:35-40

"Does it make any sense at all to speak of future hope if it is not embodied and social? Paul would be very uncomfortable with the popular Christian tendency to reduce future hope to the belief that our souls (whatever they are) go to heaven and that is all there is to it."
"First Thoughts on Passages on Year C Epistle Passages in the Lectionary: Epiphany 6," William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.


"There is a vast gap between a proclamation and an experience. This difference is not notable for the one doing the proclaiming, but is for the one being proclaimed to."
Kairos CoMotion Lectionary Discussion, 1 Corinthians 15:12-22, Wesley White. "A place of conversation regarding Progressive Christianity."

Oremus Online NRSV Text

We continue reading from Paul's letter to the Corinthians. In our passage today we have some deep theology. Paul says, "Christ has been raised from the dead ... so all will be made alive in Christ" (15:20-23) when he comes again. Paul explores this theme with a series of analogies from nature (15:36-38):

• seeds need to die in order to have life;
• they change their state following burial:
• plants have different bodies from seeds;
• God chooses the body of a plant;
• seeds look alike but are changed into a variety of plants.

This of course does not meet the basic understanding of horticulture today. But, nevertheless Paul is trying to make a point.

Paul then concludes with this analysis: "Not all flesh is alike, but there is one flesh for human beings, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one thing, and that of the earthly is another."(39-40)

In Stanley Hauerwas' booke Sanctify Them in the Truth, he introduces us to the work of Dale Martin. Martin has a great book work a read: The Corinthian Body, (Yale Press, 1995). Martin's contribution to the understanding of Paul is that he reminds us that the Corinthians and Paul had a very different understanding of the body. Today we have a kind of dualist understanding (Cartisian in nature). Descartes helped us moderns separate the soul from the body. That would not be Paul's understanding.

For Paul and the Corinthians the soul and body were mixed up and porous. This has a particular meaning in our context of Paul's discussion in this chapter about the resurrection. Paul understood, and was trying to explain to his readers, that Christ's resurrection means that Christians will be resurrected. Baptism, for Paul, has inextricably connected the body of the Christian with the body of Christ. What is at stake is not simply the pollution of the body...but about hierarchy.

Remember, in Corinth there is a whole issue about eating together and the hierarchical norms of the society in which the Corinthian Christians are living. Christ undoes this hierarchy. And, for Paul, to attempt to add a hierarchy into the body of Christ and its relationship with all other Christians is particularly dangerous. (Martin, Corinthian, 131.)

So, we must be careful here as Paul begins to speak about the body as a seed. We cannot read, or transfer, what Paul is doing here into a sphere of metaphor. There is a very real and physical connection of bodies within Christian community....and between the baptized and the Christ. All worldly, secular, and societal hierarchies are destroyed by Paul in his argument about the body. Martin helps us understand that Paul's writing seeks to undermine the class aesthetics of Corinth.

To introduce class hierarchy into the body is not a mere aesthetic invasion for Paul. Instead it is an actual illness. It pollutes the body of Christ. Paul is speaking in Corinthians as if the body is being invaded by a disease. Stanley Hauerwas reminds us that we must get physical when we read Paul. He believed that much was at stake here.

Hauerwas in his sermon "On Not Holding On or Witnessing the Resurrection" writes:

....like the disciples, we would like to think that resurrection does not mean our world has been turned upside down. We would like to celebrate Jesus' "resurrection" and go on living within the presupposition and habits that sustain our lives. That is why we are tempted to try to "explain" the resurrection. Our explanations are the way we...try to "hold on" to Jesus.

He then reminds us that the resurrection cannot be explained. He writes, "That Jesus is the one raised form the dead does not require explanation. Rather Jesus raised requires witnesses." (Hauerwas, Sanctify, 274.)

This all seems a bit important as we lean into Paul's discussion of seeds. Why? Because Paul is NOT saying resurrection is like a seed...or, resurrection and seeds have a lot in common. Paul is actually saying we cannot understand the resurrection...bodies are different. God raises Jesus and in so doing raises us. Paul offers a witness here. He is really saying...Jesus died. God raised Jesus. You will die. God will raise you because you are baptized in Jesus. Seeds and stuff work in a lot of different ways. The resurrection of the body works because God raised Jesus.

Moreover, because all of this is within the framework of the eucharistic meal...when we eat and drink together we are doing so with the resurrected Lord. And, at this table the baptized eat and drink together and all manner of hierarchy and worlds are broken down. This is a peaceable table and the social forms don't have a place here. In fact, to do so, means that we pollute the whole body of the faithful.

Genesis 45:1-15

It is one of the great questions we naturally ask each time we read the story of Joseph. Why did he not, at some time during their twenty-two year separation, send word to his father that he was alive? 
Vayigash - 5779 , Genesis 45:1-15, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. "Does My Father Love Me?"

The episode is moving in itself, but it also resolves one of the central questions of the book of Genesis – sibling rivalry: Cain and Abel, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers. Can brothers live peaceably with one another? This question is fundamental to the biblical drama of redemption, for if brothers cannot live together, how can nations? And if nations cannot live together, how can the human world survive?

Vayechi - 5779, Genesis 45:5, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. "The Future of the Past"

Oremus Online NRSV Text

Now, hopefully you remember the story of Joseph and the technicolor dream coat. Here in our passage today is the great reunion of brothers.

In our Christian tradition, as with our faith ancestors – the people of Israel, words have more than meaning - words have power.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote when reflecting on our passage from Genesis,

“Judaism is a religion of holy words, and one of the themes of Genesis as a whole is the power of speech to create, mislead, harm or heal. From Cain and Abel to Joseph and his brothers [remember the story from the beginning? The brothers “They hated him Joseph and could not speak peaceably to him”] Sacks continues, “we are shown how, when words fail, violence begins.”[i]

Words have power to create, mislead, harm or heal.

The words of the brothers have harmed Joseph and his relationship with his father. The words of the brothers have harmed their own relationship with their father. The words that Joseph speaks to himself harm his relationship with his father.

There are many things that have happened between all parties involved in this sordid brotherly competition for a father’s love. This sibling rivalry between the brothers and Joseph has a lineage that raises its ugly head in the relationship between Jacob and Esau all of which perpetuate the relationship of Cain and Abel.

So it is that the book of Genesis ends as it began – in sibling rivalry.

A notorious highway robber turned celebrated third-century sage, Rabbi Resh Lakish, suggests there are two concepts of the past at work here. The first is what happened – the history, the events, and in the case of Joseph and his brothers…the violence. This would be the throwing Joseph in the pit, the selling of him into slavery, the lying to Jacob about his death. That is something we cannot change suggests Lakish.

The second concept of the past is significance, the meaning, of what happened. That is something we can change.[ii]

Here we might see in our passage the forgiveness of Joseph towards his brothers.

It is on this second concept that the power of words makes a transformative difference.

Joseph has just heard that his father is alive and that he loves Joseph and mourns his loss… something that Joseph did not think was true. These words are the words that turn Joseph’s heart. And, he then reveals himself.

It is out of Joseph’s mouth that we hear how God has changed the violence of his brother’s actions into a means of their family’s salvation.

He then encourages them to let go of their guilt, to claim their deliverance, to hear his forgiveness, and to come and be reconciled and live with him in Egypt in the land of Goshen. Joseph’s words have power, and they transform the actions of the past. Just as God’s Word has power to heal and mend, forgive and give mercy…so too Joseph’s words.

Our modern societal narrative, not unlike Greek and Roman myths, encourage brothers and sisters to consume one another. They make no improvement upon Cain and Abel but instead reward the victor for his violent sacrifice of the other.

Instead, our scripture reveals that human words do in fact, as God’s, have the power to mend and restore. Joseph’s final words at the end of Genesis redeem all that has transpired.

The narrative of God’s work in the life of Joseph and his brothers, in reversing the legacy sibling rivalry, reveals nothing less than the power of the living word present from the time of creation.

In Joseph’s actions we see the one who loves his enemies, the one who loves those who hate, who blesses the ones who curses, who gives abundantly of his own to those who took everything from him. He does not condemn but instead forgives. He does not judge and exclude but instead uplifts and restores into community and relationship that which was broken.

We see then that Jesus’ own invitation to love our enemies is nothing less than the continued work of restoration of God’s garden social imaginary (God’s kingdom); which from the foundation of the world wore the scar of brother against brother, and sister against sister.

Moreover, that as Rabbi Lakish says, what we see in the end of Genesis is not merely the power of words but the power of the living God’s words and actions in those of Joseph, his brothers, and his father – Jacob. Here Lakish suggests, we see the history of events transformed into the story of God and God’s people.

The scripture here then is not merely a story about brothers, nor a history of a people, nor a moral example of how to live in community. Instead it is all these things and more.

It reveals the very nature of God, not by (as George Lindbeck suggests) creating an epistemological tale about God’s nature but by showing God’s interaction with the characters of God’s narrative.[iii]

If we see this story as merely a story about a people, or an Old Testament pericope to be examined in context, we miss the fact that it is an essential part of reveling the very nature of God’s reconciling action… A reconciling action which seeks the restoration of what was lost in a field when one brother killed another out of jealousy, desire, perceived slight and shame…

Here in Jacob’s love for Joseph and the brothers, Joseph for Benjamin, and the brothers for each other…we see the revelation of God who wishes us to know of his love…and his invitation to embrace the power of words to create, mend, and heal.

With this in mind we receive Jesus’ invitation to be a different kind of person not as moral imperative but as an invitation to participate in God’s very story. To allow God’s being to be the power in the words and actions of our own lives. In Luke’s Gospel chapter 6, we are literally being invited to take our part as characters in God’s narrative unfolding.

And, to speak and act as Joseph did – with love, forgiveness, mercy, and generosity upon our lips.

This too is at the core of community, and God’s social imaginary, that in the face of scarcity (as in the lean years of Egypt) we like Joseph discover our need for another. And that in receiving the other we in turn participate in the very nature of the “gratuitus God”. (Something John Milbank points out in his reading of Paul’s letter to the Romans.) We are not a moral community who just happen to be Christian. No. We are more.[iv]

The power of the living word working in the story of Joseph transforms his dependence upon the state power he has earned and places him firmly rooted in confidence of God’s love – specifically familial and brotherly love – in this case.

The living word has power to mend and heal and create. It has power to reconcile. It has power to change history and to create new meaning. The living word has power, even in our time to overcome the sibling rivalry promulgated by powers, authorities, and political allegiances. The living word in our time has power to change the history of the past and present, and to create a wholly different future.

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[i] Rabvbi Sacks http://rabbisacks.org/father-love-vayigash-5779/

[ii] Rabbi Jonathan Sacks Sacks http://rabbisacks.org/father-love-vayigash-5779/

[iii] George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine, 121.

[iv] John Milbank, The Word Made Strange, 231.

Excerpt from my new book in January 2020: Citizen

Jesus expresses his alternative narrative in works of healing and through engagement with the community and its leaders. He also creates a new community with different types of citizens. As if to live into what theologian and priest Sam Wells called “The Nazareth Manifesto,” Jesus cast a vision for this community. Jesus did not merely say nice things about the poor and feed them, he lived as a poor itinerant preacher dependent upon the hospitality of those who saw him as a homeless stranger.[i] The new community was imagined as one that was to be present in the lives of people. The Gospel was not simply an idea to be preached, but a life to be lived in and amongst people. The manifesto of Jesus offered a vision of life lived with the hungry, with the imprisoned, and with the lost and least. Christ as the incarnate one of God is himself living out this manifesto even as he offers it as kind of new Sinai revelation. Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount articulates such a vision (Luke 6; Matt. 5). Jesus’ teaching from the mount is a rehearsal of God’s visit with God’s people in the wilderness.

Also...

Rabbi Sacks in the Ebor Lectures, delivered in 2011, reminds us that these ten words are a principled foundation for healthy society. He writes that there is a difference between a social and political contract and a covenant. The ten commandments are covenant words, not social and political contract words. Contracts outline the boundaries of “advantage” while these words establish a relationship of loyalty and precedence. The contract becomes a higher authority to which I am bound to settle any future disputes. The covenant rests upon the relationship of a higher authority that transforms all other relationships in my life. The nation state and its citizens are governed by a social contract. The covenant established in the ten commandments orients people to each other and to God at a deeper level than that.[ii]

The Christian citizen is a member of a higher society than their nation state. The commandments remind us that we are not mere Americans. We cannot simply be patriots. We are citizens of a higher kingdom. We relate to God in such a way that we are marked and the way we live in our particular society is transformed. I can be a dual citizen as long as I remember and return often to the character of my relationship rooted in God.

We are to be virtuous citizens of God’s kingdom not only on Sundays, not only within the walls of our homes; but also in the political and social spaces of our community. Global and national society only works if we have character enough to care for one another across the boundaries of states or beyond the scope of our individual rights. I may have the legal right to leave you out in the cold, but as a person in a covenant with God, I have a different responsibility. Society is judged by a people who live according to a higher rule, who live differently within its midst.

God, at Mount Sinai, with neighboring tribal powers and monarchial principalities all around, created a wilderness society that forms and reforms as it makes its way in the world. However, the creation of that first new wilderness society got off to a rocky start. After the revelation of the commandments in Exodus, God invited Moses back up the mountain. (Exodus 32:14) Moses was delayed in coming back down because he got lost with God for a while. He was gone for a very long time. In fact, some translations imply it was an excruciatingly long time. In the absence of leadership and their conduit to God, they made an idol. God got upset at their idolatry. Moses got angry and smashed the tablets with the Ten Commandments. Aaron offered a lame excuse and blamed the people, scapegoating them for his failure of judgment. I have always assumed that this story is about totems for idol worship, maybe because I was so affected by the Cecil B. DeMille movie The Ten Commandments. I assumed that the Israelites chose another god - the golden calf. After all, Aaron does say, “Here is your god!”

The eleventh-century Rabbi Abraham Ben Meir Ibn Ezra anticipated my confusion. He taught that the idol was not made to take God’s place, but Moses’. The idol was to be the means by which people could commune with God, in the absence of a leader. What we know is that everyone has access to God with or without a leader. Sometimes we get into trouble because we think very highly of ourselves. But in the case of the Israelites, their idolatry sprung from feeling very small in the shadow of Sinai.[iii] Rabbi Sacks puts it eloquently, “Every Jew is an equal citizen of the republic of faith because every Jew has access to its constitutional document, the Torah.[iv] In this moment, the golden calf moment, the people did not understand that God was personally in relationship with them. God brought them out of Egypt in order that they might be free and continue to be a blessed people and a blessing to the world around them. God did not need any go-betweens, not Moses and not golden calves. They were to be this kind of society together.

The story of the golden calf is about the human tendency to believe that human-made items can mediate our fear, anxiety, sense of lost-ness, despair, and hopelessness by settling our disputes and bring about right judgments. We hope golden calves will bring about right government and care for the poor and needy. Humans put their trust in just about every kind of political golden calf you can think of. The golden calf is a way of ditching our responsibility. We create institutions and governments to be our go-betweens. This moves our responsibility to the golden calf organization(s) and removes our responsibility for the outcomes. This is how we are able to say the government did this or that – as if we are not our government.

The laws and politics of America and of any nation are a golden calf. Humanity’s understanding of truth by means of reason, our best attempts to create just law, political parties, presidents, and even nations come and go. There will always be golden calves to believe in and put our trust in. The Christian citizen is called to a different kind of relational politics that suggest very different outcomes. While we are obligated to obey the laws of our society, Christian citizenship is really the only means to a different sort of world. Reliance on golden calves will not be enough.

Golden calf organizations always function by means of a social contract,[v] which serve as the foundation for a network of formal and informal laws, statutes, constitutions, and treaties. These forms of social contracts help to protect, build commerce, enable travel, and order life when large groups of people live together. Most people talk about the need for social virtues in each of these types of contracted nation-states in order to bring about the very best societies possible.[vi] When we discuss Christian citizenship within the sphere of the nation, we are speaking primarily about a different  posture towards the social contractual relationships of the wider community. I want to be clear here. Our Christian belief and practice should have a real impact on how we conduct ourselves as Americans. Our covenanted relationship as Christian citizens impacts our contractual relationship(s) with the state and the informal relationships with our fellow citizens and neighbors.

The difference between Christian and nonchristian ways of being American ought to come down to compassion. Compassion is a fundamental virtue,  rooted throughout the scripture and especially in the Old Testament as hesed.[vii] As Christian citizens in a covenant relationship with God, we receive compassion from God, and we are to have compassion and live compassionate lives with kin, strangers, and neighbors alike. This is not a contract. For the Christian citizen compassion is a governing virtue of life lived by citizens in God’s reign.[viii] All relationships are read through a cruciform lens. The passion of Christ is compassion incarnated and enacted for all people.

Our work of covenanted compassion is entangled with another word with this other word emunah or faithfulness. For the Christian citizen the work of governing is about living out a commitment to relationships with others. Our faithfulness or emunah propels compassion forward, and gives all of our public relations a quality of familial faithfulness. Familial faithfulness is the second governing virtue of Christian citizenship. Rabbi Sacks describes it as an “internalized sense of identity, kinship, loyalty, obligation, responsibility, and reciprocity.”[ix] The sole purpose of government is to make us into a society that works. The Christian citizen has a greater vocation. The Christian citizen understands this tradition of familial faithfulness as a unity and relational obligation between kin, neighbor, and stranger. It has a universal quality to it. The Christian citizen is drawn into compassionate relationships outside of the natural and even governed boundaries because the compassion of Christ unites all people family, friends, neighbors and strangers into one faithful familial relationship.  

We as Christians are baptized into the reign of God, and we are made citizens by Christ’s work. Christ is really doing what God has been doing all along, making us God’s people. We are unified by a God who desires relationship with us, and we are people who believe God makes a covenant with us. The scripture is filled with these covenants. All of them are really of one kind in which God invites us to be a community of blessing to the world rooted in both hesed and emunah – in both compassion and faithfulness.

To fully grasp the meaning of the commandments given to Moses in order to actualize God’s garden social imaginary we must hold together the active words of compassion and faithfulness as we engage the other ten words. As we speak about Christian citizenship in the reign of God, we are speaking about covenant, compassion, and faithfulness to our kin, the neighbor, and the stranger.  

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[i] The Rev. Sam Wells is the first person I know of who used the term “Nazareth Manifesto” in his essay by the same name. Wells offers that Jesus did not simply offer a word of release for the captives and food for the poor, Jesus seeks to be with the people in their hunger and imprisonment. Sam Wells, “Nazareth Manifesto,” Vagt Lecture: The Nazareth Manifesto, April 27, 2008, https://web.duke.edu/kenanethics/NazarethManifesto_SamWells.pdf.

[ii] Sacks wrote, “A contract is about advantage, a covenant is about loyalty… A contract is about interests, a covenant is about identity, about belonging to something bigger than me. From a contract, I gain, but from a covenant, I am transformed. I am no longer the person I once was, but am part of something larger than I once was. Thus, a social contract creates a State, but a covenant creates society." Jonathan Sacks, "Biblical Insights into the Good Society (Ebor Lecture 2011)," Rabbi Sacks, October 02, 2013, accessed July 29, 2018, http://rabbisacks.org/biblical-insights-into-the-good-society-ebor-lecture-2012/.

[iii] I discovered this interpretation in an article by Rabbi Josh Gerstein, who also quoted Rabbi J. B. Soloveitchik, one of the great twentieth-century Jewish thinkers, who wrote:

They felt that they themselves did not have access to the Almighty. Only somebody of great charisma and ability could have access to him. The people sinned because they were perplexed. Moses has been gone for a long time. . . . They did not understand that, while Moses was the greatest of all prophets and the greatest of all men, every Jew has access to God. . . . Sometimes it is a sense of one’s greatness that causes sin; sometimes it is a sense of one’s smallness. It is possible that the story of the golden calf actually is a reference to a dispute between the later northern and southern kingdoms. See 1 Kings 12:28–30. More than revealing that Israel has one God, the story might reveal that Israel has one place of worship and one kingdom vs a divided one. The theology here is good even if it is a historic controversy in narrative form. See Josh Gerstein, “Revisiting the Sin of the Golden Calf,” Algemeiner.com, March 16, 2017, https://www.algemeiner.com/2017/03/16/revisiting-the-sin-of-the-golden-calf/. See also Joseph B. Soltoveitchik’s Vision and Leadership (Brooklyn, NY: KTAV Publishing House, 2012) 131.

[iv] Jonathan Sacks, Radical Then, Radical Now: On Being Jewish (Bloomsbury, 2013) 129.

[v] Drawing on the work of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in his book The Politics of Hope, we understand that there are always two ideas floating around when we speak about citizenship in the wider community (town, city, nation, globally).

[vi] Jonathan Sacks, The Politics of Hope (London: Vintage, 2000), 64.

[vii] Sacks, Hope, 63.

[viii] Daniel Elazar, a leading political scientist and specialist in the study of federalism, political culture, and the Jewish political tradition, writes that such a life “expresses the idea that people can freely create communities and polities, peoples and publics, and civil society itself through such morally grounded and sustained compacts (whether religious or otherwise in impetus), establishing thereby enduring partnerships.” Daniel Judah. Elazar, People and Polity: The Organizational Dynamics of World Jewry (Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1989), 19.

[ix] Sacks, Hope, 63-64.