Proper 22A, October 8, 2023

Prayer

Cultivate your church, we pray, enriching it always with new shoots so that, grafted onto Christ, the true Vine, the community of your people may bear fruit in abundance and produce a rich harvest for eternal life. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.

From Prayers for Sunday and Seasons, Year A, Peter J. Scagnelli, LTP, 1992.

Some Thoughts on Matthew 21:33-46


"Martin Luther once said that sometimes you have to squeeze a biblical passage until it leaks the gospel. This is one of those weeks, I think, when with equal measures of patience and faithful pressure, we can give witness to the God made most clear to us in Jesus."
"Crazy Love (a.k.a. Preaching Matthew against Matthew)," David Lose, Dear Working Preacher, 2011.

"This parable does not use the story to set forth the surprising nature and qualities of God's reign, as do so many others in the Gospels. Its focus is rather on the futility of debates about, and maintenance programs for, the institutions of this age."
Commentary, Matthew 21:33-46, Sharon H. Ringe, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2011.

Oremus Online NRSV Gospel Text


I cannot read the passage appointed for this Sunday without thinking of the vineyard in Isaiah (5:1-7). I can imagine that it might have been the same for those with whom Matthew's community is in conflict.

The Parable is pretty clear. It is harvest time. The landowner sends slaves who beat and mistreat the messenger. He then sends his son, who is killed. The tenants hope to inherit the land and the harvest for themselves.

We are mindful as our Eucharistic prayer reminds us that the prophets have come over and over to gather God's people to show us the way. And God eventually sends his son. "How long," Jesus says, "have I wanted to gather you under my wing like a hen gathers her own young."

We know this passage is part of the building tensions between the Jesus movement and the Pharisee movement in the post-temple era. In the Gospel story, we see this tension echoes the tension between Jesus and the authorities. The passage also offers a theology for why the Jesu movement broke away from its Abrahamic parent.

I think the passage challenges the modern church in several ways. The first is to recognize that the missionary message of Matthew tells us that Jesus, as risen Lord continues an eternal return to save the world through the proclamation and actions of his followers.

I think the second way we are challenged is that we typically put ourselves in the place of Jesus and the prophets. I think that we would be radically challenged to think about our mission if we were to recognize that, more often than not, when we are at our worst, we are the tenants! When we try to invent the church in our own image, we truly close the doors to Jesus and the prophets. We also close the doors to the mission.

So when we read this, might we be challenged to see a mission which embraces the prophets and the son who offers us a role in the harvest of God.

Some Thoughts on Philippians 3:4-14

"Without throwing away his own religion Paul, nevertheless, throws away a theology which had made him important and given him great status. In its place he embraces Christ and Christ's way."
"First Thoughts on Year A Epistle Passages in the Lectionary," Pentecost 16, William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.

"The season of Lent, with its inexorable movement towards the cross, offers us an opportunity to reflect on our journey through life, from the cradle to grave."
Commentary, Philippians 3:4b-14 (Lent 5C), Holly Hearon, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2010.

Oremus Online NRSV Epistle Text 

We continue reading from Paul's letter to the Philippians.  He is concerned that there are those within the community at Philippi who want to make the gentile Christians adhere to the Jewish law. So, Paul warns them and cautions them. He tells them that the law and the law of circumcision in particular, is not what God requires of them. Rather, Paul offers a vision of a spiritual life where the heart is changed and transformed, circumcised, and marked as God's own.  Paul is clear - we do not have to mark our flesh to know that we are God's.

We then get a rare glimpse into Paul's own spiritual pilgrimage.  He talks about his early life as a good and faithful Jew.  He was a member of the tribe of Benjamin, and everyone knows this is a special tribe within the family of tribes. So it is that Paul kept the law, including circumcision and many other requirements.  To be a Benjaminite was and is to be set aside as one of God's favourites and it requires a holy and attentive life lived under Jewish law.  He calls himself a Pharisee - a sect within Judaism that kept the law strictly and was an inner reform movement of great power at the time of Jesus. They were especially strict around the laws of cleanliness and those that had to do with common meals.  Paul tells them that he is a good Jew. He is honest, though and tells them that he was a persecutor of those involved in the competing Jewish reform movement of followers of Jesus. Paul was zealous and believed this Jesus movement must be wiped out. Then we know that there was an experience.

Paul talks very little about his experience. Yet here in Philippians, he offers some reflection. He writes that Christ helped him to understand that his way, the way of the Jewish law and the religious leaders of his day, was not the best way to know God.  Paul tells the Philippians that getting caught up in the midst of the law actually makes it more difficult to see how much God loves us. The law, Paul invites his readers to understand, hides the fact that God gives us grace freely.  Paul tells them that once he had a glimpse of this powerful God of love, he cast aside the law in order to see more clearly and to gain all that God in Christ Jesus offers.

Paul tells them he wants to know Christ, who is alive and resurrected and even now pouring out his spirit upon his people.  Paul seeks oneness with God.  He wishes to share Christ's sufferings and to participate in the cross in order that he may truly die the old way and be reborn as a new being - one eternally united with God.  This is something Paul has a spiritual hunger for and desires completely.  Paul believes his life's journey from this point forward will be a continuing discovery of the meaning of Christ's resurrection and that as he progresses, he will be remade. Paul says God has chosen him - made me his own - this is a very personal revelation and a very personal God. The God Paul is describing has a very different and real quality separate from the qualities of God Paul had known when he was under the law.

We then get a wonderful image of the race and the runner.  Paul, in his journey from Benjaminite to faithful God-fearer and Jesus follower, hopes that his lifelong pilgrimage will bring him to the foot of God's throne in order to receive the laurel, the wreath, the mantel and prize of the heavenly kingdom. May he so run the race that he shall be rewarded with unity which God desires to give and Paul hopes to receive.

This is a truly exquisite part of the scriptures. It is an insight into the personal spiritual life of Paul. It is one of the few truly reflective pieces of scripture which gives us a vision of the early pilgrim life of a follower of Jesus.  I think what strikes me most is that it resonates with my story; it resonates with the story of so many people who seek God - a living God.  I hope as a preacher, you will seek to tell the pilgrim story, your story, Paul's story, and invite others to reflect upon their own journey with the living God.  Tell of how everything else you put your trust in obscures and hides the living God. Invite them to imagine the longing and yearning for that living God and highlight within their own journeys God's reaching out and invitation to receive the laurel at the end of a race well run to the very end and to the very foot of the throne of Grace.

Some Thoughts on Exodus 20:1-20

"Yet their uniqueness is not straightforward. As moral principles, they were mostly not new. Almost all societies have laws against murder, robbery and false testimony. There is some originality in the fact that they are apodictic, that is, simple statements of 'You shall not,' as opposed to the casuistic form, 'If … then.' But they are only ten among a much larger body of 613 commandments. Nor are they even described by the Torah itself as 'ten commandments.' The Torah calls them the aseret ha-devarim, that is, “ten utterances.” Hence the Greek translation, Decalogue, meaning, 'ten words.'"

The Structure of the Good Society (Yitro 5775) Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

"The directions for living we find in the commandments are intended to be put into practice in real life to make that life more whole, more peaceful, more joyful. When we live this way, we are allowing the life and love of God to flow through us, healing the broken and wounded world around us."

"Non-Virtual Faith," Alan Brehm, The Waking Dreamer, 2015.

"The Decalogue, when viewed as a part of this series of tests that were to shape the people's identity, is thus not only a series of laws but a fertile ground from which blessings and health and prosperity can grow from God."

Commentary, Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20, Callie Plunket-Brewton, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2014.

Oremus Online NRSV First Reading 

Today’s Old Testament reading is the Ten Commandments. The work for the people of Israel, and for the people who claim to follow Jesus today, was to learn to “love as God loved and loves” wrote Stanley Hauerwas in The Peaceable Kingdom (78).

What is interesting and somewhat important for us today is to, on the one hand, lean into this deep meaning offered by the passage and elucidated by Hauerwas and, at the same time, reject the Constantinian and Enlightenment/Reformed diversions from the story. Hauerwas defines these typical approaches to taking out the gospel in such passages in this way. The impact upon our reading, preaching, belief and practice is shaped by a “Constantinianism” that offers “the conviction that Christianity is about being religious in a general and diffuse sense.” Meanwhile, the Enlightenment/Reformation “makes Christians into apologists to and for the modern world. (See Hauerwas, Scripture and Ethics, 111). Moreover, he cautions us to not make this about “advice” or about how to live in particular “circumstances”. In other words, the Ten Commandments are not an ethical prescription to be filled by the loyal disciple, but instead, they are about a kind of community that is seeking to live into the blessings and grace of God.

For the Christian who lives between Constantine and the Reformation, we find it all too easy to embrace the scripture as a list of moral imperatives – a biblical ethic. Again, Hauerwas, “The problem of revelation aside, however, the view that the Bible contains a revealed morality that can be applied directly by the individual agent, perhaps with some help from the biblical critic, flounders when considering the status of individual commands.” (71) When we do this, it is all too easy to dismiss their meaning. What I am getting at is that the nature of the community seeking to respond to God’s freedom is essential, the tradition of handing along that response and then the response to Jesus’ ministry is essential. What this helps us to understand is that our own response is not one of a person alone. Christians inherit a tradition wherein the biblical story is part of a very real community that stretches over millennia and arcs towards the end of time. Moreover, the ethic of such a community is one defined by holding community, tradition, and scripture in hand. Scripture, in this way, becomes, as Hauerwas offers, “revealed reality” instead of “revealed morality”. (72) This then leads us to virtues – which is the Christian manner of approach.

So it is that when we return to the Old Testament and read the commandments, we are able to hear them in a different manner. We may, instead of hearing a list hear the virtues. The community today is invited to seek to learn to love as God loves. In this way, then we see a community attempting to live out that learning. We might do well to return to our own Book of Common Prayer to read our approach in just such a context.

Q. What do we learn from these commandments?
A. We learn two things: our duty to God, and our duty to our neighbors. 

Q. What is our duty to God?
A. Our duty is to believe and trust in God;

I. To love and obey God and to bring others to know him;
II. To put nothing in the place of God;
III. To show God respect in thought, word, and deed;
IV. And to set aside regular times for worship, prayer, and the study of God’s ways.

Q. What is our duty to our neighbors?
A. Our duty to our neighbors is to love them as ourselves, and to do to other people as we wish them to do to us;

V. To love, honor, and help our parents andfamily; to honor those in authority, and to meettheir just demands;
VI. To show respect for the life God has given us; to work and pray for peace; to bear no malice, prejudice, or hatred in our hearts; and to be kind to all the creatures of God;
VII. To use all our bodily desires as God intended;
VIII. To be honest and fair in our dealings; to seek justice, freedom, and the necessities of life for all people; and to use our talents and possessions as ones who must answer for them to God;
IX. To speak the truth, and not to mislead others by our silence;
X. To resist temptations to envy, greed, and jealousy; to rejoice in other people’s gifts and graces; and to do our duty for the love of God, who has called us into fellowship with him.

Q. What is the purpose of the Ten Commandments?
A. The Ten Commandments were given to define our relationship with God and our neighbors. 

Q. Since we do not fully obey them, are they useful at all?
A. Since we do not fully obey them, we see more clearly our sin and our need for redemption.

We are not simply people after peace and justice, but we are people who are deeply rooted in a tradition that seeks to tell our story through virtuous action. We know God’s will for us and for creation. We know what we are to do... We are to be virtuous citizens not only on Sundays, not only within the walls of our homes; we are to be virtuous citizens at work in the political and social environs of our community. And, when we don’t follow these commandments, we are to repent and return to the Lord and begin the work again.

Proper 21A October 1, 2023

Prayer

Let your Spirit make our hearts docile to the challenge of your word, and let the same mind be in us that was in Christ Jesus: may we walk the path of obedience and sacrifice, finding in the self-emptying love of the cross, the way to exaltation and glory at your side. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.

From Prayers for Sunday and Seasons, Year A, Peter J. Scagnelli, LTP, 1992.

Some Thoughts on Matthew 21:23-32

Oremus Online NRSV Gospel Text

"It is odd that we still find so many people inside the church who have a greater problem moving with compassion for change in society than many outside the church. They seem bent on protecting God."
"First Thoughts on Year A Gospel Passages in the Lectionary," Pentecost 15, William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.

"I'm wondering if it is God who comes and does things that threaten and shatter our understandings of God; and that it is the demonic who wants us to maintain the status quo about God -- which will normally be too narrow an understanding of the God whose ways are far beyond our own."
Exegetical Notes by Brian P. Stoffregen at CrossMarks.

"Voltaire quipped that we ought to judge a person by his questions rather than his answers."

Commentary, Matthew 21:23-32, Karl Jacobson, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2011.

This Sunday, we have the parable of the two sons. The first son is the one who "I will not go," but later changes his mind and goes. The second son is the one who says he will go but does not go. This is followed by the polemical question to the authorities: Which one of the two does the will of the father? They, of course, say that the first son, in the end, does the will of the father. For the reader, or especially the one who heard this in Matthew's community, there is an aha moment in which we see clearly that the authorities are agreeing with behaviour that is not like their own.

As we reflect on the passage, it is helpful to remember that after the fall of the temple in Jerusalem, there were really two strands of competing Judaism left. As one scholar pointed out, the Pharisees really are the ancestors of our modern-day friends, while the Jesus movement would be the second great Jewish strand that has woven its way through history. From an early time, Christians understood this passage as a defining one about who that Christian movement was and is. As the ancient bishop and teacher Chrysostom wrote: the Christian is the one represented by the son who at any hour turns and chooses to do the will of the father, to go out into the vineyard and work. The Christian is the son who is the missionary.

But I think there is a deeper message that Jesus is offering. While Chrysostom is right on the one hand, and certainly the history of the Matthean community and the history of Christianity bears out, at the very least, this determined differentiation...there is more. We must stand back. We must now, knowing the context, step back and allow the Gospel text to speak into our context.

The very powerful message is the Gospel message (one that is perhaps more disturbing and challenging than the contextual one). This Gospel message offers the news that it is never too late to follow Jesus and become a missionary worker in the vineyard. God will embrace the son who turns and chooses in the end, no matter what they have been doing, to become a member of the community. Do we not rejoice in the finding of the one over the salvation of the many. It isn't an either-or but a both-and vision of the kingdom.

Yes, there are people in our community who sin knowingly. We are human. We know we promise that we will strive for kingdom behaviour, and we know we will fail. After all, our baptismal covenant says that "when" we sin, we will return. Christians know we are not perfect. But we as Christians also rejoice when the sons and daughters of God who have led life without, who have led life saying "no," turn and join the other workers in the field. We, the church, exist for those who do not yet belong. We exist so that the vineyard is ready for the latecomer and for the newcomer.

As Mrs. Augusta Irving, the elementary school teacher who struck the fear of God into me most days, used to say, "Andy, better late than never." Yes indeed, Mrs. Irving...you have spoken the Gospel..."Better late than never."

Some Thoughts on Philippians 2:1-13

Oremus Online NRSV Epistle Text 

"Like Timothy and like Paul's audience, leaders and members of our own congregations are called to imitate Jesus by refusing to insist on their own prerogatives or status, whatever they may be, and serving others in humility."
Commentary, Philippians 2:5-11, Elisabeth Shively, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2013.

"What's in a name? From a biblical perspective -- everything!"
Commentary, Philippians 2:5-11, Elisabeth Johnson, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.

Paul, in this passage, uses a first-century Christian hymn (possibly even one they would have known) to urge the members of the community at Philippi to have the same mind as Christ. That means that they are to seek to not insist on their own way or their own rights (determined by their social status), but they are to become lower than their stations. Like God in Christ Jesus, they are to seek to become powerless and to serve.

Paul invites them to not be better than the other - this is not, after all, a quality that Christ illustrated.

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, 6who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, 7but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form,8he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross. 9Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, 10so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,11and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

It is serving the one that is great. It is in taking the lower seat that you shall be known. It is in washing feet and loving each other regardless of station. It is feeding the poor who have no right to be fed and healing the sick who have not fulfilled the law. It is in eating with those who are not worthy to be eaten with. It is in loving those whom you would not dare to love.  These are the qualities by which you will be known as a follower of Jesus.

This is the work of Christ that they are to continue in the world.  

People will talk about a lot of reasons why our church is failing.  They will ponder the reasons why we are shrinking in numbers.  I think in the end, it is because we don't do these things very well.  

We do not have the same mind as Christ Jesus and are unwilling to become low. We actually regard equality with God as something to be exploited and lorded over those whom we do not believe deserve such equality.  We are unwilling to empty ourselves. We will not serve God or his mission over our own needs and desires.  We are quick to take the highest seat. We are not eager to wash each other's feet - especially not the feet of the poor. We are unwilling to hold back or deny ourselves. We will not sit with those unlike us.  We will not dine with those we don't agree with. We will not be seen with those who are not like us. We are wholly unwilling to do the hard and difficult work of following Jesus as Jesus has invited us to follow.

Perhaps this is why Paul has us squarely figured out.  The truth is like the Philippians what is so bad about our church. It is a comfortable place for comfortable people, comfortable in our going out and our coming in.  Yet Paul may have us figured out...comfortable is not a whole lot like the ministry and character of God in Christ Jesus.

Some Thoughts on Exodus 17:1-7

Oremus Online NRSV First Text 

The people of Israel are wandering in the wilderness. They grumble, and they camp here and there. They quarrel with each other and God. And they want something to drink. So, Moses went to Horeb and struck the rock, and water flowed from it. Moses renamed the place not for God’s providence of water but for the people’s quarrelling and testing of God.

This passage is referred to in the Gospel of Matthew 4:1-11 when the Devil tempts Jesus. Jesus’ reply is that God is not to be tested. This relies on Deuteronomy’s and Number’s account of today’s passage. See, in particular, Deuteronomy 6:16. 

The religious leaders of the day have put God to the test by asserting themselves into the powers and principalities of this world. They have put God to the test by actually doing the things the devil tempts Jesus with. They have sought to be part of the powers, they have sought to feed their greed, and they have claimed God’s sovereignty over their actions. Jesus rebukes this way of being in the world, and he rebukes the devil in Matthew. He rebukes this way of being by reminding us that God is not pleased with this “self-assertion” or “self-enrichment”.

The Sinai God invites instead a different way of being in the world, one that is about neighbourliness. The Sinai God invites love and love of neighbour as the highest commandments. God in Christ Jesus fulfils such with his own obedience in the face of powers, principalities, wealth, and self-protection. Instead, Jesus shows his obedience to the Sinai God of Moses by keeping the commandments, loving others, and being obedient. God in Christ Jesus reveals a complete dependence upon God.

As John reminds us, everlasting water, which quenches all kinds of thirst, will be given by God through Jesus (the one through whom all waters spring).

Shall we grumble and quarrel, or shall we be obedient to the command to love each other and love God by doing so? Jesus, in the end, shows the way through the wilderness in a manner that is foreign to the humanity that confronts Moses.

Proper 20A, September 24, 2023

Prayer

Open our hearts to the wisdom of your Son, that, without concern for the cost of discipleship or the reward of our labors, we may grasp how incomparable the honor of working in your vineyard from morning until night. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.

From Prayers for Sunday and Seasons, Year A, Peter J. Scagnelli, LTP, 1992.

Some Thoughts on Matthew 20:1-16

"The scandal of this parable is that we are all equal recipients of God's gifts. The scandal of our faith is that we are often covetous and jealous when God's gifts of forgiveness and life are given to other in equal measure."
Commentary, Matthew 20:1-16, Karl Jacobson, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2011.

"In the end, it’s not about unfair payments. At the parable’s conclusion, the full-day workers don’t moan that they have been cheated. They complain instead to the landowner, You have made them [the one-hour workers] equal to us."
ON Scripture, Matthew L. Skinner. Commentary and association with current news events, links and videos.

Oremus Online NRSV Gospel Text


This passage naturally offers some important wisdom for life in community that is mission oriented; or strives to be mission oriented.

1. One shall not presume and boast about the judgement and one's election among the first. In other words sitting in that pew for twenty years doesn't make it yours.
2. It reminds us the last shall be first, and the first last (illustrating 19:16ff).  Or, one might think twice before complaining that the priest is spending too much time with new members.
3. We must realize that the newcomers are equally welcome to voice their opinions.

I don't think we can fully separate the text from the notion that the gentile mission was affecting the inherited faith of the church.  The people that Jesus reached out to during his ministry and the people the apostles reached out to were very different from the people who had long awaited the Messiah.

This Sunday there will be a lot of different sermons on this text.  And, I believe that it is safe to say most will be focused on the established church's need to make room.

As insiders we naturally want to interpret the message to the other insiders.

I want to offer that the real grace of the passage is that it isn't meant to be (in my opinion) a polemical argument against those already at work in the field. It is quite the contrary.

Jesus' message is one of grace to those who come late.

Jesus is talking not to the establishment but the newcomers.

We would do well to remember this when preaching.

Truth is most people feel like they are the latecomers, they are not good enough, they have done something so wrong that even though they dared walk in the church on this particular day it won't do any good because they are doomed.

Most people don't feel they are good enough to receive the grace of God and that is precisely the message of the cross. No one can do anything to win it!  We have all come late!

We are truly challenged by this somewhat Matthean Paulinism.  "As Isaac the Syrian provocatively put it, 'How can you call God just when you come across the Scriptural passage on the wage given to the workers? (Asc. hom. 51)'"  As insiders we just can't shake our desire to truly be about works. (Allison/Davies, Matthew, vol 3, 77)

Allison and Davies write: "Hence the less deserving may receive as much as the more deserving.  Like the Spirit, the divine grace blows where it wills.  That destroys all human reckoning and therefore all Christian presumption....hope should never become self-satisfaction. (Ibid)

I agree with my fellow semi-pelagians we cannot completely lift this out of context for Matthew has plenty to say about how Christians behave in the vineyard.  But I wold remind us all that is in response to the grace of God; it is not in order to receive the grace of God.

BUT it is clear that there is tremendous good news this week in the Gospel: Nobody ever comes late! We are all just arriving right on time.

Some Thoughts on Philippians 1:20-30

Oremus Online NRSV Epistle Text 

This is one of the most positive letters that Paul writes. He is in prison and encouraging the Philippians to read and know about the mission of the Gospel.  He tells them of how he has spread the Gospel to his captors and they are sharing in the Good News.  

He appears worried about his potential death and knows that Christ has not yet returned, and he will not be likely to see him. He understands that the mission of Christ must go on and that the spreading of the faith is essential - even without him.  We can almost feel his emotions as he ponders his fate. He is hopeful for both his life with Christ after death and the life of the faithful after his leaving.

God has really done a number on Paul, he understands his whole life and the very meaning of creation now through the lens of a living Christ.  He believes that while he is one with Christ in this world in the next that unity will be solidified.  For his life he has understood that he was to be a laborer in the vineyard. Even though he was not one of the original followers he has understood his work no less essential and his preaching of Christ as the fullness of his call.

He is hopeful that he will be with the Christians for a while longer so that he may continue the progress of the kingdom in which he has a share.  Regardless of whether he is with them or not he holds them up to a high practice of living a life of Christ. He tells them to live in community and to reflect to one another and the world the servant-hood of Christ. they are to be strong in their faith. They are to be bound together and not divided.  They are to work together and be of one mind in their faith.  

These are difficult times but he encourages them to be united in their cause.  Speaking from prison where he himself is jailed because of his faith he tells them not to be discouraged by those who will challenge them.  They should be strong in their faith and be sure of their own inheritance of the kingdom of God. Like Paul and like Christ though they may suffer they are suffering in community with others. It is a much greater thing to persevere and to be supportive on one another with the assurances that come from God and God's love for them.  

If they will labor on like Paul still others will come to know Christ through their witness.

What strikes me in particular is how at every turn Paul is attempting to make a witness of Christ's love, of Christ's forgiveness, of Christ's relationship with those who may cause suffering and persecution. He himself is undaunted in trying to tell the story of Good News to his captors and in turn helps them receive Christ. To those in Philippi he encourages them to make a witness to those who harass them.  This behavior is the opposite of how we deal with those who are against us today.  

If someone is against us we wail back, we seek their demise, we seek to win by power and control. We do not become week or as a servant so that they may hear and be converted.  We do the opposite of what Paul intends in making a witness. It reminds me that there is a great deal of courage needed when we seek to be like Christ and become lower than  we believe we should be in order to serve the very people who may in the end be our undoing. That is quite a very different model of Christianity that the one we typically model in our contemporary society.

Some Thoughts on Exodus 16:2-15

Oremus Online NRSV First Text 

The passage for this Sunday from Exodus is the story of the manna and quail in the wilderness. It is about God’s providence for the hungry. It is about God’s listening ear and God’s intervention in the world.

The passage appears in John’s Gospel and is an allusion along with other Exodus mentions that correlate the ministry of Jesus with the work of Moses. Scholar Richard Hays in Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels, p. 291, makes the comment that while the author of John’s Gospel does use the references there is no particular explanation but rather that the reader is supposed to understand the significance. The Passover of Israel is a common theme mentioned four times throughout the Gospel as it makes its way towards the Last Supper.

Left to our own devices we might see that at the minimum the Gospel is revealing in the work of Jesus the themes of God from the history of Israel. Jesus’ own ministry is defined in similar spiritual terms as that of Moses. Jesus’ feeding of the 5,000 is connected then to the manna and quail from heaven. Here what we can say is that God in Christ Jesus is doing and working out God’s purposes just as God did so with Moses. God hears God’s people crying and God frees them, feeds them, and delivers them. 

It is not simply that Jesus mimics what came before in the history of Israel but that the arc of salvation stretches backwards just as it stretches forwards. The very nature of God is to care, deliver, and provide for God’s people. In this way the work of God in Christ Jesus is not unique but part of the continuing and emerging story of the relationship between God and God’s creation.

Furthermore, what John’s Gospel does tell us is that while it is similar work it is also different. Jesus is not another Moses, or doing similar work, but in line with God’s eternal work. The difference is important though. That difference is that while the manna and quail in the wilderness was temporary and perished the work of the Christ will be eternal.

Proper 19A September 17, 2023

Prayer

Create in us a new heart, formed in the image of your Son, a heart strong enough to bear every wound and gentle enough to forgive each offence, that the world may see how your people love one another and remember how much you love all you have made. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever. Amen.

From Prayers for Sunday and Seasons, Year A, Peter J. Scagnelli, LTP, 1992.

Some Thoughts on Matthew 18:21-35

"Forgiveness in the Gospel of Matthew is not only relational, it is reciprocal and reliant." Commentary, Matthew 18:21-35, Karl Jacobson, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2011.

"The reduction of the gospel to forgiveness of sins misses the point of the gospel, which is about making people whole."
First Thoughts on Year A Gospel Passages in the Lectionary," Pentecost 13, William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.

Oremus Online NRSV Gospel Text



William Loader writes:

The amount owed is huge, larger than the estimates of the value of whole economies. Try doing the arithmetic. A talent is around 6000 denarii; a denarius is a day's living wage. It is an absurd figure, so unreal, as to distract the hearer from the literal meaning to the point being made behind the story. God's forgiveness is also massive. 'Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors' is the literal translation of the standard Lord's Prayer as found in Matthew 6:12. Releasing debt was a common image for forgiveness. The rogue in Luke 16:1-7 who went out and forgave his master's debtors may be Jesus' parody on himself: he declared God's generosity and was declared a rogue servant who acted without recognised authority. The saying in 18:21-22 is also making its point by exaggeration: 77 times!

There are really three ideas that strike me about this passage. The first is this notion that the forgiveness of God is abundant. I am mindful that the custom of this time was to collect or sell the person into slavery and that we cannot miss the notion that God's abundant grace instead of slavery is one profound message of this parable.

The second idea that comes to me is that we cannot read this passage without thinking of the course from Genesis, where Lamech wants revenge seventy times seven. (Genesis 4)  In this passage, we see the violence that corrupted the ancient Hebrew family before the great flood. We are told that Lamech boasts that he has slain a young man for a seemingly minor offence. He reminds his wives that the Lord had pronounced that anyone slaying Cain in vengeance for his killing of Abel would be punished sevenfold. Lamech thinks that if anyone should try to slay him in vengeance, there will be a 77-fold revenge. We are not told that this proposed revenge is of the Lord, so we must assume that it would be at the hands of Lamech's sons, family, clan, or tribe. So it would appear that we have here an example of what so often is the case in tribal or clan warfare: the supposedly "injured" party wants revenge many times.

This is a powerfully true story, and we can all think of times in our lives when we have taken offence or been angered into wanting such action on our behalf. It speaks to our most basic instinct as creatures. And it is why Jesus' statements about forgiving others are so powerful. We can certainly talk about the Grace of God and how we are exonerated from our sins and slavery to them. Yet, the more difficult part of the passage is the most obvious. We are to act with others as God has worked with us. We must be as magnanimous a forgiving agent as Jesus Christ was upon his cross: "Forgive them for they know not what they do."

This third idea strikes me and brings me up relatively short. As one reads this chapter, what becomes clear is that Jesus in Matthew's Gospel seems relatively unconcerned with the individuals who transgress and more focused upon the person trying to live in the way of Jesus. Be humble, Jesus tells us. Do not despise others. Refrain from allowing anyone to be lost or to stumble. Seek after the one who walks away. If another person sins against you, go and be reconciled with them. You go and find them. Take others and find them. Go out and find them. Be careful what slavery you cast on others, as it will bind you. Receive the forgiveness of debt and likewise forgive others.

Allison and Davies write in their Matthean work (vol II, 804):

...Jesus demands forgiveness without measure. The motivation for such unbounded generosity is imitation of the Father in heaven.  As he has forgiven undeserving Christans, so must they likewise forgive others, "Freely you have received, freely give."  The appropriate attitude towards a wayward brother is like that of a shepherd seeking a stray sheep.  The shepherd does not want to punish the stray but bring it back to the fold. 

You and I are to be like the shepherd in the parable; as our Lord Jesus, we seek out those who offend, sin or hurt us. We are to be as forgiving and as loving as our Lord is.

This is a harsh lesson. Over the last decade, 70% have dealt with conflict in churches. Much of that conflict has caused people to leave, and much of that conflict has sought to excommunicate the "other." As a church, we have not modelled with one another what Christ modelled for us, nor what we pray, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespassed against us." As a family of God, we have modelled and shown the world that we do not live by the code we claim. We have not forgiven as freely as we have received. We have not reconciled as willingly as we have been reconciled. We have not gone after our brother and sisters who have left with the same determination as a shepherd who has left his 99.

What must we do? What must the church do?

We must do as Isaiah dreams in chapter two:

He shall judge between the nations,
and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning-hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.

The real issue is that we as humans want to be the judge, do the arbitrating, and wield the sword of sentencing one another to the outer darkness.

It is difficult because forgiveness requires embracing the other who is most repugnant to you. The fact is that regardless of whether you study meditation or the 12 steps, or you study psychology or the bible, you find that healing means most often coming to terms with the fact that the one you resent actually mirrors your own most despised part. In other words, you must forgive yourself and be reconciled with the details of yourself that are most grotesque to you to make space to ignore the other.

I pray that, as a church, we might actually do this work. I would love to see a day when we, as a church, put down our swords and various kinds and again turned to ploughing and pruning the missionary field. This will make a tremendous, conscious, and prayerful effort on our part to turn to brothers and sisters who, in the heat of argument, have wounded us to the heart and truly forgive us to move forward into the mission field together.

Some Thoughts on Romans 14:1-12

"Paul provides three reasons for the advice to bear with those who think and act differently from oneself on matters of belief and practice."
Commentary, Romans 14:1-12, Mary Hinkle Shore, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2011.

"This section of Romans makes it clear that divisions in the church go back to the earliest churches."
Commentary, Romans 14:1-12, Mark Reasoner, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2008.

"Paul's flexibility is rooted in his vision of Christ."

"First Thoughts on Year A Epistle Passages in the Lectionary," Pentecost 13, William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia

Oremus Online NRSV Epistle Text 

I need this passage today. I was just on Facebook and reading as conservative Christians harp on how unChristian the liberal Christians are and then reading the post below it from a liberal Christian harping on how unChristian the conservative Christians are...  We spend much time on this, pointing fingers back and forth and arguing over our little piece of Christian pie. We have all figured it out and intend to tell the others how they don't. In my opinion, this is poor modelling for the Christian community and takes our minds off the more complex work of being missionaries of God's love in the world.

I am grateful to get to Paul's lesson in Romans. It reminds me that we are not the first church to have problems or people intent on tearing each other down. It reminds me that people in the church have been arguing with one another since the two disciples argued over who would sit next to Jesus.  

Here is what Paul has to say about conflicts.  

Those who are weak in faith will make their habit of focusing on things that are not about God's mission of love, mercy, and forgiveness. The powerless in belief will focus their attention on others and place themselves in the judgment seat of God. They will be about the work of minutia and non-essentials. Those who are strong in their faith will focus on God's purposes.

He writes:

2Some believe in eating anything, while the weak eat only vegetables. 3Those who eat must not despise those who abstain, and those who abstain must not pass judgment on those who eat; for God has welcomed them. 4Who are you to pass judgment on servants of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand.5Some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be alike. Let all be fully convinced in their own minds. 6Those who observe the day, observe it in honor of the Lord. Also those who eat, eat in honor of the Lord, since they give thanks to God; while those who abstain, abstain in honor of the Lord and give thanks to God.

He then basically says...so what business is it of yours?

Chris Haslaam reminds me of this particular bit of wisdom, which comes in the form of context which is known to Paul's readers:

In Roman society, it was considered ill-mannered to “pass judgement” (v. 4) on the conduct of another master’s servant; he was answerable to his “own lord” or master. Similarly, each Christian is answerable to “the Lord” and should not be criticized.

What is important is that you are responsible for your convictions and answerable for the living and the dying that is your work. You are not to judge others, their conduct, or how they worship. You will be accountable to God. They will be responsible to God.

Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. 11For it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God.” 12So then, each of us will be accountable to God.

Moreover, we should not do anything that might harm another person's faith. Paul writes that we should focus on the best things and "pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding."

All followers of God in Christ Jesus are to live in a manner consistent with one's conscience to be in a relationship with God. Your faith is yours alone and not dependent upon anybody else. The person who is weak in faith believes that how other lives or moves or has their being affects them. One is never made righteous by being better than someone else or demeaning another human being. That was the point of Jesus' confrontation with the religious leaders of the day.

Our mission initiatives would be more robust and see great results if we all started judging less and welcoming the other more.

Some Thoughts on Exodus 14:10-15:21

"In silence and contemplation, we rest from all of our human striving and division and touch the deeper current of truth that runs underneath everything else, the truth that all things have already been reconciled in Christ."

"Make a Joyful Silence," Ruth Haley Barton, Sojourners, 2009. "Words about Silence," Key contemplative Spirituality terms, Sojourners, 2009.

"A people enslaved for generations can only face freedom one step at a time."
"Gradual Freedom," Torah Commentary by Wendy Amsellem. Beliefnet.


"Despite being pressed by the weight of slavery on every side, we celebrate that our spirits were not crushed."
Commentary, Exodus 15:20-21, Yolanda Pierce, The African American Lectionary, 2009.


"The God seen in this passage is a powerful god that controls the waves of the sea. This God is stronger than the gods of their oppressors—why should the Babylonians' gods be any different?"
Commentary, Exodus 14:19-31 | Aimee Niles | A Plain Account, 2017.

"In your preaching, show your congregation the dry land they are walking on. Show them what place it has in God's creation. Show them the signs of ruin and devastation..."

Commentary, Exodus 14:19-31, Anathea Portier-Young, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2014.

Oremus Online NRSV Text 

We have seen Charlton Heston and others re-enact the grand event at the shore of the Red Sea. There are religious jokes about the parting of the Sea of Reeds. Episcopalians have spent hours rehearsing the drama at the Red Sea. We have done so in Sunday School, vacation Bible schools, and summer camp. It is part of our Easter Vigil service in the Episcopal Church's Book of Common Prayer 1979. I had to memorize Miriam's song in Hebrew when I attended seminary. It was a rite of passage for my beloved Old Testament professor, Dr. Murray Newman. It is deeply woven into our baptismal theology and liturgy. In the Jewish tradition, it is recited during the daily morning service and said after the Shema. This passage appointed for today is essential.

 

As you probably know, scholars today think they crossed the Sea of Reeds (known for its papyrus production), which lies north of the Red Sea. The narrative we have of the event is rendered by two authors. One sees the light of God's nostrils blowing aside the waters. (Exodus 14: 22, 28-29) The second reveals that the wind (thanks to God) drove the waters back overnight. (Exodus 14: 21) One requires the suspension of the laws of nature, and the other requires honouring God for the action of the wind.

 

People have been trying to reveal how this happened for many years. Cambridge University physicist Colin Humphreys wrote in The Miracles of Exodus (2003):

"Wind tides are well known to oceanographers. For example, a strong wind blowing along Lake Erie, one of the Great Lakes, has produced water elevation differences of as much as sixteen feet between Toledo, Ohio, on the west, and Buffalo, New York, on the east . . . There are reports that Napoleon was almost killed by a "sudden high tide" while crossing shallow water near the head of the Gulf of Suez." (pp. 247-48, As cited in Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, "Beshallach (5770) – Miracles" https://rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation-5770-beshallach-miracles/ January 30, 2010.)

 

I find the whole thing fascinating. However, I believe the discussion about where it happened, if it happened, and how it happened are merely two-way observable spacio-temporal questions that are not useful to us if we wish to get to the bottom of God's narrative and its meaning. So, especially as we preach this, there are two critical points to be made here that move us past the typical questions of observable scientific truth and into a discussion about scriptural and theological truth.

 

The first truth is this: In God's narrative, we learn that often, our power is not in our exceptional nature but in our apparent weakness. We see this echoed in other stories like David and Goliath (where the smaller David wins the fight) or in the case of the prophet Balaam (who discovers his donkey is a better prophet than he). This is true because the Egyptian strength is in their chariot, which proves their weakness. Likewise, the disadvantage of being on foot is the strength in getting away.

 

Rabbi Sacks writes, "To put it another way, a miracle is not necessarily something that suspends natural law. It is, rather, an event for which there may be a natural explanation, but which – happening when, where and how it did – evokes wonder, such that even the most hardened sceptic senses that God has intervened in history. The weak are saved; those in danger are delivered. More significant still is the moral message such an event conveys: that hubris is punished by nemesis, that the proud are humbled and the humble given pride, that there is justice in history, often hidden but sometimes gloriously revealed…. The genius of the biblical narrative of the crossing of the Reed Sea is that it does not resolve the issue one way or another. It gives us both perspectives." (Ibid.)

 

This triumph is also a paradigm of Jesus' own victory. Out of Jesus' greatest weakness, his human death comes his and our most significant victory.

 

This leads to the second thought of importance. We understand that Christ is continuing the work that God has always done – freeing people from bondage. Our Episcopal baptismal prayer reads:

 

"Through it, you led the children of Israel out of their bondage in Egypt into the land of promise. In it, your Son Jesus received the baptism of John and was anointed by the Holy Spirit as the Messiah, the Christ, to lead us, through his death and resurrection, from the bondage of sin into everlasting life." (BCP 1979, p. 306)

 

The power of the image is that it foreshadows Christ's cross, death, and resurrection. It is for those who follow Jesus a fundamental understanding that real bodily resurrection happens for Israel. They are made new people. They pass through the waters of death and are brought to new life. Here is the meaning of our bodily resurrection.

 

This also speaks to genuine Christian work. It is not a spiritual deliverance we are after. We seek a new bodily present community in this world that speaks to the goodness of the next. Bodies matter, life matters, food, water, clothing, and shelter matter. God brought real people out of slavery. God brings a real person of Jesus out of the grave. We, as Christians, translate this into making an actual difference in the world – one that impacts the bodies of others.

 

Jesus read scrolls and preached freedom, the loosening of bonds, the feeding and clothing of those with little, and good things for those with none. He spoke of wiping away tears. He said of doing good work and sharing what we have – as did Paul, the apostles, and the earliest theologians. We, as Christians, are invited to make a difference in the world authentically. We are invited to bring people out of the past into their futures – one that promises a different life.