Proper 5A, June 11, 2023

 Prayer

O God, open our eyes to see your hand at work in the world and that it is from you that all good proceeds. Enliven us with the beauty of hard things that we might by your inspiration, see our actions in light of Jesus' own ministry among us. Send your Holy Spirit that we might have your grace when we fail and enough mercy to try again. Amen.

Some Thoughts on Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

"God's perfection is shown most fully not in flaws noted and shut out or scores kept and settled, but in extravagant embrace of flawed people and the end of all scorekeeping."                                                        

Dylan's Lectionary Blog, Proper 5A. Biblical Scholar Sarah Dylan Breuer looks at readings for the coming Sunday in the lectionary of the Episcopal Church.

"If you stop and really think about, the most difficult 'miracle' in today's text is not the raising of the girl from death, nor the healing of the woman who had been bleeding for 12 years. The most difficult healing was including the despised tax collector Matthew back into community. Don't believe it? Try thinking of a person your community despises and invite them to church with you. 

"Holy Textures, Understanding the Bible in its own time and in ours, Matthew 9:9-26, David Ewart, 2011

Oremus Online NRSV Gospel Text

We have three healing narratives in this text with the addition of fasting. In 9:9-13, the author parallels Mark's gospel almost exactly with the addition of the inclusion of "I desire mercy." This is important given the additional texts we have appointed for this Sunday.

I hold it out as a sign of Matthew's assistance that Jesus was in line with the ancient prophetic tradition of Hosea, Micah, Amos and Isaiah. It also shows that Matthew is in line with the Pauline theology of grace found within Romans. 

This then leads into vs 14-17 regarding fasting. There is a celebration when one lamb is found, one sinner who becomes a follower, one who was left out who is now part of the whole. There may be times for fasting - to be sure. But the daily life of grace lived as mercy to others is a life of celebration. 

Some may interpret the new wineskins as the Gospel, but this is not the meaning IF we accept Jesus' continuation of the work God began in the beginning and intends to continue to the end. It also relieves us from having to deal with other questions brought up by a different interpretation and keeps us from the ease of not reading the Old Testament or, worse - an antisemitic reading of it. This then casts the reading differently: we are the wineskins. We cannot try to be followers of this God and Christ if we keep living in the old ways. The tax collector is changed by the grace of God, he is no longer the old wineskin but is made new. The same with clothes; we might hear remember the message of the kingdom and the wedding. We cannot hear the gospel and keep being the same ole person, same ole clothes, same ole wineskin. A person like Matthew is healed and made new by the invitation. He is set out to become his truer self, not in the person of a remade Matthew, but a Matthew who now finds his true identity in Christ.

Due to the layout of Mark's narrative, the stories of the healings are written into place to show a direct attack by Jesus upon old systems of state, society, and religion. (See Mark 5:21-43) Here then, we have a slightly different message if we read it through the eyes of Christ's intent to show that true humanity is found in our mercy and not in our sacrifices. 

What we see with the daughter who is sleeping (and will see with the haemorrhaging woman) is Jesus acting mercifully. He is actively showing his disciples what their ministry of mercy is to look like. Remember, in Matthew, we are heading towards the sending out of the disciples in this section. Jesus will tell them in 10:7, "As you go, proclaim the good news, 'The kingdom of heaven has come near.' Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons."

Some Thoughts on Romans 4:13-25

"The law has always been a means of pointing the way toward God, an instrument that helps us to know and do the divine will. As such it is meant to liberate. But when the means is mistaken for an end in itself, the consequence can be a state of spiritual confusion in which all hope is obscured."
Commentary, Romans 4:13-25, Daniel G. Deffenbaugh, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.

"To this day, any time we are tempted to limit God to the size of our purposes or to doubt the breadth of God's generosity or the surprising power of God's activity we can return to Romans 4 as an astonishing elaboration of the familiar but life-changing claim: God is great; God is good."

Commentary, Romans 4:13-25 (Pentecost 4), David Bartlett, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2008.

"Similar struggles emerge today when people ponder whether there can be such faith in God without the culturally specific reference to Christianity."

"First Thoughts on Passages on Year B Epistle Passages in the Lectionary: Lent 2," William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.

Oremus Online NRSV Epistle Text 

Abraham is, for Paul, an archetype of faithfulness. However, Paul does not believe that Abraham was blessed because of what he did - kept the law (even though it had not been given to Moses yet), was the father of Israel, and did all that God asked (left home, was willing to sacrifice his son). At the time that Paul wrote this, Abraham was seen as an example of a person who kept all the laws. He was considered God's greatest law keeper. Paul is crafty in turning this argument.

Paul believes that faith is something larger than keeping the law. Faith is attached to God's gift, God's promise. 

Paul understands full well the human condition to be unable to achieve perfection. If faith and God's promise are dependent upon some kind of contract - covenant - then we are all in big trouble. God loves us because God has created us worthy of God's love. God gives us grace because we are made worthy of forgiveness through the work of Jesus Christ. Grace is given free to everyone everywhere and is not dependent upon keeping the Mosaic law. 

So, Abraham becomes the father of the Christian faith - not because he kept a law - but because he believed in God's promise; he hoped in God's promise. Here, Paul reorients faith not in keeping the law or doing good and right things but in believing in God's promise. So it is with us. We will never be perfect. We will never keep the law. We may respond to God's love and grace by choosing how to live differently - this is true. But we receive God's promise, God's love, and God's mercy freely. And our faith is our response to that promise.

We must preach and help people understand that faith is about believing in the promise and not achieving some unachievable standard of perfection.

Note: This is also a text used on Lent 2B.

Track I

Some Thoughts on Genesis 12:1-9

"'What really matters is not whether Abraham is good or bad or cowardly or heroic, but that God pursues His design for the welfare of the human family with people like that -- in other words, people like us.' - Lewis Smedes."
"Call and Promise," program highlights, discussion & reflection questions and more from the Bill Moyers PBS series Genesis: A Living Conversation.


"'Vocation' is distorted by two disastrous misunderstandings: a secularized idea of 'career' and a monastic concept of the religious life."
"The Meaning of Vocation," A.J. Conyers, (other resources at) "Vocation," Christian Reflection, The Center for Christian Ethics at Baylor University, 2004.


"God tells Abram to leave the comforts of home and go out to repair himself--and the entire world.""Birth of a Covenant," Torah Commentary by Rabbi Shai Held. BeliefNet.

Oremus Online NRSV Text


Whole books could be written that detail the various invitations God made to this or that person in the Old Testament. There are the creation stories and God's invitation to Adam and Eve to work in the Garden. There is the calling of Noah to restart creation. Abram (Abraham) and Sarai (Sarah) are called to leave the land of Ur of the Chaldeans--the beginning of generations of God’s people. There are the judges and the prophets. Jacob is called and renamed. There are women: Miriam--a leader who brings Israel out of slavery in Egypt with Moses; Deborah--a judge of Israel; Huldah--a prophetess who helped Josiah; Ruth and Naomi; and Esther--the Queen of Persia, to name a few. The sheer number of called people is too many to number, but we will examine a few of these crucial stories.

This lesson is about Abraham and Sarah, originally called Abram and Sarai and renamed for their faithfulness. In many ways the story of their calling begins the narrative of God's people. Abraham and Sarah were frequently cited by the early Church as examples of God's expansive promise to all people. God said, "Go," and all of their worldly plans were set aside as they left their homeland for God's wilderness. Their lives were disrupted by God's invitation and their response. Theologian Walter Brueggemann says, Abraham

. . . is caught up in a world of discourse and possibility about which he knew nothing until addressed, a world of discourse and possibility totally saturated with God's good promises for him and for the world through him. (Genesis 12:1) God’s call propels Abraham into a reality that refigures his life and removes him from any purpose or agenda he may have entertained for himself before that moment.[i]

Abraham and Sarah offered themselves faithfully to the journey and became a blessing to the world.

God’s invitations are very persuasive. Through visions, voice, and the advice and counsel of friends, God invites God's people to go. The specific circumstances of this going vary across different contexts, but there is always a purpose behind God's invitation to go. People are always being sent. There is a hinge here in the language--a double meaning: going and being sent are about both the invitation and the purpose.

For instance, God called Abraham and Sarah to become a people that bless the world, which is a habit of God throughout all of scripture. Faithfulness is the act of accepting the invitation and opening oneself to becoming the blessing. Those whom God invites, God also blesses in order that they might bless others. God said to Abraham and Sarah, "By you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." (Genesis 12:3). Their promised family would outnumber the stars of Abraham's counting and be a blessing to the world. Brueggemann ponders the meaning of this blessing and says, "'Blessing' is not a religious or moral phenomenon in the world" it is a "characteristic feature of creation that is fruitful and productive."[iv]

Creation was separated from God because its communal structures were organized around itself as opposed to God. These inwardly focused structures perpetuated mimesis, a repetition of the violence that created a dark shadow over the kingdom of God. Abraham and Sarah were called to show how the human community could be different. God made a point of rejecting religious violence by refusing Abraham's offer of Isaac as a sacrifice. God undid the human drive to sanctify murder. God was interested in a shalom that broke the repetitive, violent cycle of Cain and Abel. Abraham and Sarah's call was to heal the violence that separated humanity from God. Yet, the feud continues, and so does the division between God and humanity.

Even with all of religion’s great gifts to society, we must acknowledge that disunity and tribal grievances still exist. God continues to invite us to go as peace bearers and we continue, often, to reject the invitation. It is religion that calls for the sacrifice of Jesus. His is one name among the many who have been scapegoated for the sake of political and religious peace. Religions have a propensity to scapegoat others. 

God's invitation to Abraham and Sarah was an invitation beyond this history of sacrifice. God went further and sent the peace bearers to dwell in the midst of the other.

The relationship between Abraham and God is typological of God’s relationship with all whom God invites into mission. Abraham was invited to be in community with God and to take that community on the road. God’s call removes us from the realm of self-definition: we begin to define ourselves as creatures in relationship with our Creator. This movement dissolves the idea of the "other,” for the only true other is God. We no longer divide the human community into friends and others. Instead, there are only friends along the way. When we obey God’s call to go, there are no strangers or aliens. Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks writes that our invitation to journey with God means confessing and rejecting the notion that,

. . . for there to be an ‘us’ there must be a ‘them,’ the people not like us. Humanity is divided into friends and strangers, brothers and others. The people not like us become the screen onto which we project our fears. They are seen as threatening, hostile, demonic. Identity involves exclusion which leads to violence.[v]

To journey as Abraham and Sarah did is to reject our inclination to protect ourselves by force. In their going--in our going--we embrace our vulnerability and forsake our tribe in order to journey with God and God’s tribe, pronouncing God’s blessing upon the world. Brueggemann says, "Abraham is called to exist so that the general condition of curse in the world is turned to a general condition of blessing, life, and well-being. Israel's mission is to mend the world in all its parts." God's people are to be a blessing in the world. God intends the world to be "generous, abundant, and fruitful, effecting generative fertility, material abundance and worldly prosperity-- shalom in the broadest scope."[vi]

The importance of being a people bringing about peace and blessing in the world is affirmed in the teaching of the early Church. 

Paul used God's call to Abraham and Sarah and their blessing as a paradigm of the expanding mission of God. Paul read the blessing and invitation of God as being fulfilled in the great expansion of grace to all people regardless of ethnicity, gender, and social class. (Galatians 3:8) God will not be limited to a religious or ethnic "us vs. them" but instead imagines a kingdom where we are all beloved of God. This kingdom is founded upon the rejection of violence for the sake of nation and faith in favour of shalom for God. Our presence and participation in God’s creation is our invitation into the community of blessing – this community of shalom. We are rooted in it by our very nature. The mission is not about nation-states or making people members of religious institutions; the mission is a journey into a new community of being.

This is an excerpt from my book Vocãtiõ which is about our vocation as creatures of God.

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[i] Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, 122.

[ii] Brueggemann, 123.

[iii] The Roman Catholic document the Lineamenta, n15, defines vocation in this way: “Vocation is broader than mission because it is composed of both a call to communion and a call to mission. Communio is the fundamental aspect destined to endure forever. Mission, on the other hand, is a consequence of this call and is limited to an earthly existence.” Kenyan B. Osborne, Ministry: Lay Ministry in the Roman Catholic Church, Its History and Theology (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 2003) 597.

[iv] Brueggemann, 125.

[v] Jonathan Sacks, "Bereishit (5769) - Violence in the Name of G-d," Office of Rabbi Sacks, 04 Apr. 2016, Web. 19 July 2017. <http://rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation-5769-bereishit-violence-in-the-name-of-g-d/>.

[vi] Brueggemann, 125. This is how Gideon experiences God, as pure peace, shalom. Gideon was one of Israel’s judges and built an altar and called it, “The Lord is Peace.” (Judges 6:24) God's work is this shalom, and God calls upon God's people to enact it by going. 

Track II

Some Thoughts on Hosea 5:15-6:6

"Following the devastation of the previous verses, 5:15 is a word from God that introduces the response from Israel in 6:1-3."

Commentary, Hosea 5:15-6:6, Terence E. Fretheim, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2008.

"For Matthew the difference between Jesus and his adversaries is based on Hosea 6:6: Whose observance of the law is characterized by the steadfast love that God desires from Israel and whose not?"

"Learning What Righteousness Means: Hosea 6:6 and the Ethic of Mercy in Matthew's Gospel," Mary Hinkle, Word & World, 1998.

Oremus Online NRSV First Lesson 

A word to begin with from Jonathan Sacks as we take up the "prophet of doom" Hosea:

Judaism is not a recipe for blandness or bliss. It is not a guarantee that you will be spared heartache and pain. It is not what the Stoics sought, apatheia, a life undisturbed by passion. Nor is it a path to nirvana, stilling the fires of feeling by extinguishing the self. These things have a spiritual beauty of their own, and their counterparts can be found in the more mystical strands of Judaism. But they are not the world of the heroes and heroines of Tanach.

Why so? Because Judaism is a faith for those who seek to change the world. That is unusual in the history of faith. Most religions are about accepting the world the way it is. Judaism is a protest against the world that is in the name of the world that ought to be. To be a Jew is to seek to make a difference, to change lives for the better, to heal some of the scars of our fractured world. But people don’t like change. That’s why Moses, David, Elijah, and Jeremiah found life so hard.

Hosea may be considered the prophet of doom, but in the Talmud, he is the greatest of prophets of his generation, including Isaiah, Amos, and Micah! He was the oldest of them. The hard prophetic work is laid out in the previous verses. Here though, Hosea writes beautifully:

‘Come, let us return to the Lord; for it is he who has torn, and he will heal us; he has struck down, and he will bind us up. After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him. Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord; his appearing is as sure as the dawn; he will come to us like the showers, like the spring rains that water the earth.’ What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes away early. Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets, I have killed them by the words of my mouth, and my judgment goes forth as the light. For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”

He pronounces healing, and binding up, revival, rising to life again, mercy like showers and spring rains, and love. Then he is straightforward: the God we worship desires to love and not sacrifice, wisdom and not burnt offerings.

One of the things that I have found very hard to deal with is my inherited Christian understanding of the singular importance of sacrifice in Judaism as opposed to a Jewish understanding of its place in the ancient Torah, tradition, and post-second Temple.

The Torah presents issues regarding the interpretation of animal sacrifices in a tradition that has lasted over 2 thousand years without a Temple. The second issue presented in today's text, but in almost every prophetic text and securely rooted within the Sinai tradition, is the sceptical nature of such sacrifices.  (See my work on Sinai tradition in The Jesus Heist) The concern by the prophets is the abuse of such sacrifices to relieve the burden of sin while they continued to "oppress and exploit their fellow human beings," wrote Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. The Jewish tradition DOES NOT hold that a generous sacrifice to God will secure God's forgiveness of "crimes and misdemeanours". Sacks writes, "This is an idea radically incompatible with Judaism." (Ibid)

What is important is that we are inheritors as Christians of this Sinai and prophetic tradition because Jesus was in that same line. He, like Hosea, saw monarchy and sacrifices as the least characteristic act within Judaism. Remember, as Sacks says, "Every ancient religion in those days, every cult and sect, had its altars and sacrifices." (Ibid) In this way, Jesus and even the book of Acts or Hebrews may be seen as in line with Hosea and other prophets and the Sinai tradition. For here is the echo of ancient Judaism (picked up as part of the sacrificial understanding of faithfulness post the fall of the second Temple). This is prayer, study, and charity (charitable action: see tzedakah). Think of  Hosea here: God desires love, not sacrifice. Think of his peer Micah: What does God require of thee: "O mortal, what is good, and what the Lord requires of you: Only to do justice and to love goodness, and to walk humbly with your God." (Micah 6:8)

In this text, we learn:

a) it is not out of line with Christian teachings

b) Jesus is continuing the tradition of this teaching

c) we as Christians, like our siblings in the Abrahamic traditions are invited to make our life a sacrifice to God by love of God, prayer, study, and by sharing what we have/doing good works.