Proper 22, Year B, October 6, 2024

Prayer
Beyond all human boundaries, O God, your deeds of power take place, and your healing mercy is at work. Ours is not to restrict the wonders of your saving grace but to give joyful thanks for your compassion wherever we may find it. Teach us to use well the riches of nature and grace to care generously for those in need and to look carefully to our own conduct. We ask this through Christ, with whom you have raised us up in baptism, the Lord who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.

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

Some Thoughts on Mark 10:2-16

No longer running interference for Jesus--or creating interference for ourselves--we, like Abraham, know ourselves to be blessed in order to be a blessing to others, embraced by our Lord so that we may embrace others.


"Tuned Out, Tuned In," Chris Repp, Sabbatheology, The Crossings Community, 2009.

The anecdote on divorce may well derive from an historical encounter between Jesus and Pharisees busied with the issue of divorce, wanting his view. If this was anything like the earlier forms which most of Mark’s anecdotes took, it probably had as its punch line a typical two-liner quip on the part of Jesus: ‘What God has yoked let no human being separate.’ We have already found such quips in 2:9; 2:17; 2:27; 3:4; and 7:15. It is clever: of course it is outrageous for human beings to undo what God has done up, to un-join what God has joined. The effect was to shift the focus from what might justify divorce to the more fundamental issue: breaking apart what God has joined must be seen as departure from God’s intention.
"First Thoughts on Year B Gospel Passages in the Lectionary," Pentecost 18, William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.


"A text like this already has taken, and will continue to take on, a life of its own given the current circumstances surrounding and challenges to definitions of marriage. A sermon, whether explicitly or implicitly, needs to acknowledge these assumptions."
Commentary, Mark 10:2-16, Karoline Lewis, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.

Oremus Online NRSV Text

We begin our lesson today with a conflict between the religious leaders of Jesus day and himself.  Perhaps they are hoping to catch him in debate; perhaps to make him look foolish. They are engaging in a discussion on marriage and divorce.

Jesus switches the conversation which begins focused upon human beings and reorients it towards a focus upon the nature of God to bring people together and build up communities.  Jesus is clear that God draws us together and that we often defile this drawing together. 

We could spend quite a bit of time on the nature of marriage as offered in the Gospels.  I think Joel Marcus on Mark, vol 2, does a good job of taking a part Jesus and Paul's teaching on marriage.  I want to focus on the broader theme which appears when we attach the second part of the lesson. 

If we take a step back what we see is that God is constantly drawing people together.  Mark's Gospel is a gospel of the new creation a recreation of drawing people together.  God is drawing people who are different together and Jesus is clear that we are the ones who defile these relationships. We defile marriage relationships and we defile communal relationships. We do this by turning away from the "other".  We are drawn away from the "other" into relationships that boost our power, our voice, and our authority.  We engage in relationships that diminish the "other" with whom we are bound. 

God is remaking a new community. God in Christ Jesus as bridegroom is recreating the world and his bride the community of "little ones" (the term Mark uses for the first followers of Jesus).  So as we look and we read we must remember that the defilement of this wedding garment will take place with Peter at the cock's crow. It will be the crowd who shouts "crucify him." 

Jesus knows all too well perhaps the fickle nature of God's people. Perhaps he is already aware of how easily they will be drawn to save themselves while he makes his way to the cross.  Regardless what we see as he offers this message is that God is working in the world. God is bring and joining and knitting the fabric of creation and disparate lives together in Christ.  God is joining many together and how easily we will chose another spouse and let loose the one who troubles us.

So it is that Jesus then offers an icon of this joining together.  Jesus chooses the weakest, the poorest, the most powerless as an example of God's faithfulness.  While the crowds and even followers will chose another lover of convenience, God will be faithful and will reach out and continue to love and embrace God's friends the poor and those in need.

Jesus embraces a child and in so doing he is offering us a view that God embraces the lowly. The children have no voice, no cultural value, an no political or religious worth.  As Jesus embraces them he offers a vision of the kingdom of God that exists for those who are outside of the world's systems of power and authority. Just as Jesus is continuously clear with his followers that he has come for the sinner and not the righteous, so too here at the end of our reading he shows us through this physical embrace, through access to himself, that God is present in the world for just such as these.  He blesses, he touches, and he embraces those wholly other.

God is faithful. God will not chose a marriage of convenience with the righteous, but the God we believe in will chose a marriage of trial with the very ones most in need.

As I reflect on both of these pieces, here combined into one reading, I realize that I am blessed by God. I am the other. I am one who is loved and upon whom God's grace falls.  For my sins, for those things done and left undone, and so I am sure that God loves me and God embraces me. I am beloved of God and I trust that God will be faithful no matter how often I stray into convenience and ego satisfaction.

And, at the same time I am keenly aware that in my powerful, loud voice of authority, and influence I must be challenged to look around me and see those to whom Jesus is embracing.  I must own my own unfaithfulness.  I think this lesson always reminds me that our lord will always be about embracing those who live and move and have their being in my blind spots.  God have mercy on my soul for not seeing my own infidelity to the join the wedding feast of our Lord - the kingdom of God, the dominion and mission of God.

Some Thoughts on Hebrews 1:1 - 2:12

"In the city of Macon, Georgia, the Harriet Tubman African-American Museum honors the memory of the 'Black Moses,' the best-known conductor on the Underground Railroad..."

Commentary, Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12, Pentecost 18, Bryan J. Whitfield, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2009.

"...Hebrews holds together a profound image of Jesus as God's very reflection with a very earthy and human figure just like us. That reinforces also our understanding of God and of the spiritual life not as something from or in another world, but as something which fully enters the here and now of flesh and blood."

"First Thoughts on Passages on Year B Epistle Passages in the Lectionary,"Pentecost 18, William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.

"The concept of incarnation is an affirmation that Jesus really and truly does show us what God is like. When we look at Jesus, we see him embracing the ones nobody else would embrace. We see him confronting the religious people with the falseness of their self-righteousness. We see him forgiving sinners and restoring people to their right mind. And we see him freely and joyfully playing with children!"

"We See Jesus," Alan Brehm, The Waking Dreamer, 2009.

Oremus Online NRSV Text

In seminary we were taught that there is no such thing as a God of the Old Testament and a God of the New Testament. Yet, Christians have struggled to always put into context the reality of violence throughout the scripture including in the New Testament. Somehow we have never really quite figured out how to deal with the various rules, covenants, demands, and variety of things God wants or doesn't want for us. Even Walter Brueggeman when asked about such things says something like, "I like to think God is getting over his use of violence."

The author of Hebrews is certainly trying to figure out how to speak of these things and to parse clearly the trajectory of a God who is both alpha and omega while at the same time exhibiting different behaviors and desires.

God communicates to Israel and God communicates to us. We believe as theologian Ben Johnson once remarked, a God who raised Jesus out of death and raised Israel out of Egypt.

What is clear for the author of Hebrews and for Christians there is a clarity that all is to be defined now through the words and actions of God through Christ Jesus. It is his work and words that are to define and radically focus our attention across the great expanse of God's communication with his creatures.

The Incarnation of God in Christ Jesus is a particular vision of God - revealing to us God's intent to be with us and to bridge the chasm between heaven and earth.  Sin and death will not be victorious over this divide. Moreover, that this person of Jesus is a forerunner of our humanity.

We are in some miraculous and mysterious way to become like Jesus in this world making here heaven on earth - just like we pray in the Lord's Prayer. We are to make here God's neighborhood.

What is an interesting part of this passage is the unique and important reality that the author offers a special place for humanity within the cosmos. Using the words of the psalmist (Psalm 8:4-6), the author reminds us, "What are human beings that you are mindful of them, or mortals, that you care for them? You have made them for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned them with glory and honor..." I once mentioned that the angels are jealous of humanity for what we have in Jesus and in the holy communion and how special this is for us in the order of things. We are blessed as humans to experience God in and through Jesus in this world and through the inbreaking of God in the incarnation and in the bread and wine. I really got skewered online when I said this. People thought it was heresy. I am of course in good company with the psalmist, the author of Hebrews
and the polish Roman Catholic St. Maximilian Kolbe who once said, "If Angels could be jealous of men, they would be so for one reason: Holy Communion."

We are to see who God is and how God is moving in the world through Christ Jesus as is present in scripture and in the communion itself. And what do we see? We see a God who lowers God's self and breaks God's self open for the sake of those other than God or even godlike. God becomes one with the other and so raises the other up into community. Here is the Gospel.


Some Thoughts on Job 1:1; 2:1-10 

Job and his friends by William Blake

"The first two chapters of Job are the curtain raiser of the drama, the opening act of the play, designed to present to us the old God, the God whom Israel so often claimed to know and worship. A new God is set to emerge later in the play."
"Just Who Is God, Anyway?" John Holbert, Patheos, 2015.


"Perhaps the biggest question for people of faith is this: How can a God whom we believe to be good and just allow or even instigate what we see and experience as evil?"
Commentary, Job 1:1, 2:1-10, Karla Suomala, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.

"We enter this week into one of the most difficult and theologically sophisticated books of the Old Testament: the book of Job."
Commentary, Job 1:1, 2:1-10, Kathryn Schifferdecker, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.

"The idea that God blesses the faithful, rewarding the righteous with what they deserve, and that the opposite, trials and tribulation, are signs of being out of sync with God?apparently the prosperity gospel is nothing new under the sun?is rejected outright by Job."
Commentary, Job 1:1; 2:1-10, Karl Jacobson, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2009.

Oremus Online NRSV Text

So let us talk about Job the devil and me. 

We have a precious few weeks to talk about Job as it is rare that the book comes up in our reading. This is a very important biblical text, almost always misunderstood, and avoided because of its odd nature. Job is God's suffering servant. Quotes about Job fill our cultural vocabulary like "suffering like Job" or the "patience of Job". 

The text is a really a tale, a story, a narrative with characters of virtue. It is one meant to be told and listened to. I find it loses a bit when it is read. There is some biblical criticism that seems to prefer the unity of the soliloquies of Job to his friend's speeches. Moreover, there is some critical argument about the integrity of the text. There is a popular theological view that winds its way from the discourse that invites us to think that Job is God's suffering, patient, and faithful servant. 

We in church have a kind of popular sentimentality towards Job's cause. We recognize his complaining in our own complaints. We make Job into a modern man with modern sensibilities and philosophies. His internal angst is appealing and his speaking out against God gives voice to our own hostility towards transcendence. In Job we project all of our post modern anxiety. Out of his mouth we hear our own frustration with our adopted therapeutic moral deism. In Job we see our frustration with God's distance and our fractured narratives.

We enjoy the friends' taunts and their holding him accountable. We allow him to be our psychological scapegoat for our feelings of theological discomfort with a God who allows evil in the world. Job is a book that allows us to in a sense put God, the Bible, theology, and religion on trial for the horrors we find in the world around us.

When we do this, and this is how we so often read and talk about job, we engage, as René Girard the religious philosopher explains, 

"a naive theodicy that would serve as a paradoxical pretext to its contrary, the questioning of this theodicy, and from there the shaking up of religion, which modern interpreters consider the necessary goal of all sincere reflection on the misfortune of human beings... So concerning what is essential in the book of Job, there are two responses. The first is the patience of Job, his obedience to the will of God. The second, the modern response, is Job the rebel, Job the protester en route toward the virulent atheism of the contemporary Western world."

There is a second reading here as well. Perhaps it is a subtext to the first. This reading proposes that Job is actually poorly treated by God. This may appear like the same argument. It is but from a slightly different angle. But the angle is important. The first reading allows us to focus on God and God's seeming injustice. This second subtext is about how evil and bad things are completely exterior to human control. In other words, evil in the world is divorced from humanity. It is independent. Such a reading verges on the ancient heresy of dualism where God and the Devil have equal power and humanity is caught in the middle. You can read about dualism here or here.

[Before we go much further, I want to be transparent and say that the most influential writing that has both enlivened a rereading of Job and challenged me is the work of René Girard. If you are not new to the blog you know that I like his writing a great deal. As we parse out this passage I am going to lean heavily on Girard here - shall we say exclusively? I am going to paraphrase Girard's argument in part to continue to deepen my own understanding and in part to connect it to our present day work. I am writing with with the following in mind: Chapter 12 - Job as a Failed Scapegoat, by René Girard found in Excerpt from The Voice from the Whirlwind: Interpreting the Book of Job, edited by Leo G. Perdue and W. Clark Gilpin, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1992, pages 185-207. You can read this chapter here.]

The problem as Girard points out is that both readings don't actually go with the book/story. Satan is not equal to God and must get God's approval to act. This leads us down the road that God takes our parents and our children from us. "God needs them in heaven" we suggest poorly. Or, "God is punishing us", we tell ourselves. This of course is hogwash theology and really bad pastoral and self care!

There is another problem as well. We are tempted to put Job in the part of a character in a Greek tragedy. He was happy, now he suffers. Job was a good and faithful man. Job had friends, family, and wealth. He was looked to as a leader and a man of honor. All of this is lost. In his lostness he must be being punished. The friends who taunt, cajole, and practically celebrate his demise are those who appear to speak for God. What is interesting though...is that in the Greek tragedy the hero who falls quickly understands his place in the drama. He agrees with the voices of the God's. Girard exegetes Oedipus as an example of a Greek character who "quickly agrees with his persecutors."

Job on the other hand does not do this. Job takes the role of living out the psalmist's cries to God. In this way the place of Job and his suffering in the world rejects the notion that God is the one who is making the suffering happen. The psalmist, like Job, defends himself against the "collective" voices and ideas of those who surround him like dogs surround carrion.

What do we have left? Who is this Job? How are we to interpret the texts over the next few weeks? How do we do so with integrity to the tale as a whole steering clear of poor dualistic theology and even worse pastoral approaches to evil?

What the friends mimic an perpetuate is the misinformed notion that religious violence is acceptable. In this way the friends see Job as the scapegoat. He protests his innocence, which is not a lie. Yet his friends offer a theology of violence where God punishes the deserving. But this is not at all what is happening in the story! Not at all.

What the friends do is what people do when they perpetuate mimetic violence in religion, they side with and justify the idea of a violent God. They have a false piety that places them with the lesser mythological gods of violence that demand sacrifice. Girard writes, "

"...The theology of the four friends is nothing but an expression, a little more refined and evolved, of the theology of violence and the sacred. Any sufferer could not suffer except for a good reason in a universe governed by divine justice. He is therefore punished by God, and pious conduct for those surrounding him consists in their conformity with the divine judgment, treating him as guilty and so multiplying further his sufferings. This is indeed the theology of the hidden scapegoat. Every sufferer must finally be guilty because every guilty person ends up by falling into misfortune, and if God delays a little too long in executing his justice, human beings will take it upon themselves to speed up the process. Everything is thus for the best in the best of worlds."

The poor, the migrant, the homeless, the hungry, and the abused (sexually, violently, and psychologically) must in the end deserve what they get. This is how pervasive violence is in the subtext of our religion and how it misinforms the subtext of politics and societal norms. Again, Girard,

"The evil one is cursed by God, and the worst disasters will certainly befall him. And when the friends of Job speak to him, they evoke plague, the sword, fire, flood, famine, and poison (see 20:22-29)."

Why is Job so difficult? Because we in our own time perpetuate mimetic desire, that leads to violence, and scapegoating. In this way our society and culture informs the narrative of Job instead of the other way around. 

But the theology is clear once the enmeshed culture of violence and its hermeneutical lens is removed. In this way we cannot preach this first passage without first removing the lens of religious and cultural violence; and secondly, without reading the whole passage. 

As you do so you will no doubt see at the climax Job is surrounded by his frenemies and begins to echo their own words. Here is the high point of the false God proclaimed, here is the climax of religious violence sanctioned, and here is the worst of prehistoric violent religion. See 19 when Job himself echoes the words of his friends: "Pity me, pity me, you, my friends,for the hand of God has struck me.Why do you hound me down like God, will you never have enough of my flesh?" (19:21-22)

Yet this is when things change radically. As if waking from a dream Job realizes that this theology, his religious understanding of suffering and who God is, is quite different. Here then is the God of the Bible. Here is the God of peace. Here is the God of love. Here what was hidden by our human blindness, our own self orientation, is now seen clearly. Job, as if having his eyes open, rejects the hermeneutic lens of religious violence that his friends have suggested. Job instead sees the situation that he is in as that which is perpetrated by humanity. He sees that his suffering is not condemnation by God but instead a deep theology of shalom. Job sees clearly he has been a pawn all along in the game of religious violence. Here then he takes up this theology over and against those that surround him. Job reveals, what Jesus reveals, and that is that God and God's ways are stumbling block for humanity.

Job says that the people have made him a dung heap, a burning pitch, a burnt offering. (17:6) Job has become, he suggests, their scapegoat. he has become their example. Societal violence, political violence, justifies itself by suggesting the guilt of the innocent. Here is an important precursor to Jesus...is it not? 

Job has been the sacrificial offering to help purify his community, he has been the exemplar of what happens when you do not behave, for surely this man is guilty say his friends. This is of course the opposite of the servant girl's words at the thought of Jesus unjust death, where at the same moment Peter (Jesus' friend) denies him, and should these not be the words of the reader of Job, surely this man was innocent!

Girard picks up Aristotle here and points out that we need, like his friends, for Job to be guilty. There is a lesser god mythology played out in our religious violence when we read the text. That is one of greek katharsis. This of course is not at all what is going on. Yet, so pervasive is our own civil myth and cultural religious and societal violence that we must read see Job as God's victim so that we might live just lives. Job himself points out the truth of his friends' theology, and the truth of our own when he says,

As for you, you are only charlatans,
physicians in your own estimation. (13:4)
And in a passage of closely related meaning he says:
You would even cast lots over the fatherless,
and bargain over your friend. (6:27)

The friends themselves are the ones who perpetuate the myth. Read now again, as for the first time, their words:

Think now, who that was innocent ever perished?
Or where were the upright cut off?
As I have seen, those who plow iniquity
and sow trouble reap the same.
By the breath of God they perish,
and by the blast of his anger they are consumed. (4:7-9)

In this theology, as we have said above, only the wicked suffer. God punishes the wicked and Job must be wicked for he is suffering. This is the lie that unravels the Gospel paradox: in death one gains life, in suffering one is Christ like, in being lost one is found. What becomes ever more clear then as we read our passage for this week and over the next few Sundays, is that Job sees clearly that humanity relishes violent religion. Moreover, the lesser violent gods of society, politics, and religions are not the God he worships. In this way Job suggests (13:7-8) that humans are taking the role of the satan - of the accuser.

Girard is brilliant in framing what happens next. He writes,

"Unable to find a defender among human beings, Job has no choice but to address himself to God. It is there that the Judaic religious genius shows through so brilliantly: Job addresses God against every probability, so it seems, for everyone agrees in saying that God himself punishes him, that God himself puts him on trial. Very often he bends before it, and the appeal that he launches is so contrary to good sense (even he himself thinks) that it sounds almost ridiculous:

Even now, in fact, my witness is in heaven,
and he that vouches for me is on high.
My friends scorn me;
my eye pours out tears to God,
that he would maintain the right of a mortal with God,
as one does for a neighbor. (16:19-21)

Here is what is so beautiful. The God that Job begins to speak about is the God of the victims. This is a God who takes up for the victims. This is the God who heard people crying out in slavery. This is a God who looks for the lost. This is a God who cares about the widow and the orphan. This is a God who is interested, very interested, in the victims of political, social, and religious violence. This is a God who weeps at the religious sacrifice of Abel by Cain who is jealous. It is the same God who rejects the religious sacrifice of Isaac.

Ahhhh...and here enters the Incarnation. Here enters the Christ! Job suggests that if God could be go'el (19:25), the redeemer, the defender of the oppressed, the advocate, then this god would be truly the messianic God.

I, like Girard, recognize conflicting material here. It is the same in the story of Isaac and elsewhere. Girard generously says, "the text hesitates." It is, Girard, suggests the Holy Spirit, that supports Job in this moment over and against his friends who so clearly want to see this as religious violence. It is the living word I believe that bolsters Job in this moment.

Girard points out that the traditional read deals with theodicy where in bad things happen to good people and the problem of evil in the world. But this is nothing more than repeated the ancient theology of the victimizing religion of Job's friends. Evil that is done by humanity is very present and to project that into the divine is to repeat the victimization and scapegoating of that old time religion. Girard puts it this way, "The evils due to human agency are the most terrible and must engage our attention more than the evils produced by nature." This becomes ever clearer when we put the hermeneutic of the gospel over this story. Think of Jesus speaking about the accidental collapse of the tower and how this is not divine action at all. (Luke's Gospel chapter 13) Jesus clarifies and puts an end to the theology that perpetuates that the good things and bad things that happen out of circumstance and context, by weather, by storm, by accident are some how divinely ordained. Here then is the affirmation of the Gospel lens attached to Job.

No, the true evils suffered by Job are those that come from his fellow brothers and sisters.

Girard has a great metaphor for the theology of the friends: tourist theology. They inhabit a metaphysics of those who think life is a deluxe voyage. Girard writes:

"To pose the question of evil as though evil were in every case a matter of one problem, that is, anything that affects my own precious self, making it suffer, or simply irritating me, is not to pose the question of Job. This self-concern is rather what I would call the metaphysics of the tourist, who conceives that his or her presence in this world is essentially like a deluxe voyage. He or she happily admires the lovely terrains and sunsets, is moved by the monuments left by past civilizations. He or she deplores modern ugliness and complains of the general insipidness, because now everything resembles everything else and there are no more differences. He or she becomes noisily indignant about the poverty encountered, is perpetually engaged in head-shaking, like Job's friends. But above all this tourist complains about the organization of the voyage and is going to transmit a complaint to the management. He or she is always ready to return his or her ticket, and the expression "return one's ticket" is typical of those who travel for their own pleasure or who go to a spectacle. This mentality of the frustrated tourist produces vehement curses concerning what is called the problem of evil. If God exists, how can he tolerate the evil present in the world? If God exists, he can be only the supercop, and in his mode of being as supercop he could at least protect us against the many disagreeable incidents of our passage through the world."

There is one response to this which says, "Yes, but what about death. No one escapes the grave." But the Gospel again comes to the Job's of this world with help. Christ is the conqueror of this death. Christ put the end to human sacrifice. Christ put an end to needing to adhere to religious scapegoating. Christ put an end to the violence of humankind (in word and deed) that works on behalf of powers and authorities. When we go down to the grave, making our claim, "hallelujah, hallelujah, death meets there not our fallen selves but the Christ of the cross, death, and resurrection.

Not even our sibling rivalry of mimetic desire can possibly keep us from an eternity spent in the grave.

What I am saying here, and I find myself in deep agreement with Girard, is that we must read the book of Job not as a text that in itself is self referential. To do so is just another humanism that pulls from the text the Gospel and incarnation that is present within the story. No, we are to read with the eyes of the Gospel of Resurrection and Jesus.  Girard concludes his essay/chapter on Job with these words, "In the world where the vicious cycle that imprisoned Job is opened up, everything becomes allusion to the Resurrection!"

Turning to Job's Text this week

In today's passage we have the story's context set up for us. Job is from the land of Uz. He was blameless and upright. He was faithful and turned away evil.

Where is evil from? Evil is from humanity and has been dwelling in the midst of humanity. It is not an equal power God or even a creature of God. 

We then see in our passage that old time religion where God punishes humanity. That religion tells people that God allows Satan to test people through natural illness, plague, collapsing towers, and even human towers. This God becomes a sinister being and the preacher who undertakes this preaching must lean on the above and proclaim the Gospel that redacts this teaching. 

This is a difficult passage for you must redact the words of Job. Our lectionary does you no favors. And, to let Job's words echo in the ears of our people is to do perpetual religious damage. God does not give some evil and some bad; and, certainly not to test people. 

What you can do is speak to the fact that Job denies the idea that God should be cursed for the evil in this world - the corrupted human desire that uses violence for the gaining of powers. God is not to be cursed for human perpetuated evil and religious sacrifice. God is not to be cursed for our human love to devour each other, or enact the great sacrifice of Isaac. No, that is humanity's work. God is not to be cursed at all but instead praised for not allowing evil, violence, victimization, scapegoating, and even death to have the last word. 

No God in Christ Jesus becomes a fellow victim of human evil. The Christ becomes a scapegoat. Christ even joins us in the grave. Moreover, Christ suffers all at the hands of humanity's search for stable power and religion. Christ suffers all by the hand of human violence that seeks to quiet the truth of God's love. 

We might end by saying that only the foolish perpetuate the old old religion of mimetic desire and violent scapegoating!

Sermons Preached on these Passages

Proper 21, Year B, September 29, 2024

Prayer

O God, whose hand shelters the just and righteous, and whose favor rests on the lowly, banish hypocrisy from our hearts and purify us of all selfish ambition.  Let your word sown among us bring forth a harvest of peace.  We ask this through Christ, with whom you have raised us up in baptism, the Lord who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.

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



Some Thoughts on Mark 9:30-37

"In our own time, no one wants to look uninformed, confused, or clueless. We withhold our toughest questions, often within our own churches and within Christian fellowship. We pretend we don't have hard questions."

Commentary, Mark 9:30-37, Amy Oden, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.

"...once again Jesus is challenging us to reverse long-standing, ingrained, human habits. To set aside our common human understanding of how to win fame and glory, and instead learn from Jesus God's deep hospitality and honouring."


Holy Textures, Understanding the Bible in its own time and in ours, Mark 9:30-37, David Ewart, 2012.

Oremus Online NRSV Text

Jesus is teaching and teaching and teaching.  The opening verses tell us that this one not a one off kind of teaching but regular occurrence. So the disciples have been listening to him teach over and over again and for days.

What is he teaching?  He is telling the disciples, and anyone who will listen, that he has to be turned over to suffer and die.  Prophets of God do this regularly of course, but Jesus is saying something different. Jesus is saying this is the way of the kingdom. I am going to be turned over to authority and I am going to suffer and die. But there will also be resurrection.  It is a "reversal of the way it ought to be." (Joel Marcus, Mark, vol 2, 669)  And, no matter how you look at this first part of the text it is clear that there is "apostolic silence" and a complete disengagement with the message. (Ibid, 670).

It just isn't the way it is supposed to be.  The disciples with clarity continue to manifest an understanding of Messiahship that will bring them power and authority.  They are seeing through their lenses of the Temple and government structures of the day. Leaning heavily on the terms and images from Daniel, they often cast Jesus as a military leader and king of a worldly empire. It is an empire that Jesus already rejected in the desert. This discontinuity between what the disciples hear and Jesus' own vision is shown with clarity as he confronts them about their discussion on who gets to sit where in the new kingdom. 

I found it interesting that Jesus' engagement with Peter, and likewise his engagement with the disciples does not include shame them. Nor does Jesus belittle them for not getting it right. Sometimes there is a tendency to play the disciples off as dunces and in so doing we actually build up a straw man to knock down. In so doing we inadvertently shame our listeners...when it is highly likely they too do not understand what we are talking about.

Instead, Jesus continues teaching.  Jesus seems unfazed or at least disinterested in convincing his most intimate followers. He is teaching and teaching and teaching.  He offers instead of a rebuke and an image. 

Jesus picks up a child (though the word may also mean slave) and puts the child in the middle of the circle and embraces the child.  (Marcus, 681)  The image is certainly about receiving others (the child/slave) means receiving Jesus, and receiving Jesus is about receiving God. 

Now here is what is most fascinating.  How many sermons have you heard where the topic is about receiving Jesus like a child?  Thousands, millions, billions?  That is right...BUT that is not what the text says.  Jesus is saying receive the child/slave receive me.

The text says that when one receives another human being, embraces that human being, one welcomes and embraces Jesus and thereby the Father who sends him.  Moreover, that those in their midst who have no standing, no wealth, no voice, no value (the child/slave) are the ones we are to embrace.

How quickly we, like the disciples, skip to our place next to Jesus.  In the Gospel of Mark it is clear that if we are to come to God in Christ Jesus we must do so by embracing the child/slave and the outsider.
 

Some Thoughts on James 3:13-4:8

"Envy is the consuming desire to have everybody else as unsuccessful as you are."

"Envy," sermon discussion from Frederick Buechner, Frederick Buechner Blog.

"After several chapters of warnings and vivid illustrations of the consequences of living contrary to the plan of God, James moves in this passage to describe the good life and give some positive guidance for pursuing it."

Commentary, James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a, Sandra Hack Polaski, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.

"The kind of wisdom the Scriptures envision is a way of life that is born of walking humbly with God. It is a way of life that is inspired by the presence of God’s Spirit. When you live in such a way that you are consciously aware of God’s presence, it tends to create a sense of inner strength; but it is always a strength that manifests itself in gentleness, in humility, in self-sacrifice, and in kindness."

"Gentle Wisdom," Alan Brehm, The Waking Dreamer, 2009.

Oremus Online NRSV Text

The author of James begins to pull and tug at a sin he believes is found in all Christian community: boasting in one's self.  

Christians can be very proud people. We can be proud in our traditionalism, our conservatism, our biblicism, our purity, our liberality, our generosity, our correctness, and even our justice making. 

We Christians are good at boasting about ourselves and shaking our fist at the others. Why, I even have known Christians who have proudly proclaimed their suffering. 

The author writes:

But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth. 15Such wisdom does not come down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish. 16For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind.

Christians and their communities are instead to be known for something quite different. The author writes:

But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. 18And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.

Here is a key to understanding the work of reconciliation. We are to be at work healing history, celebrating and honoring our difference, and we are to create a peaceful commons. Only in peace may we find righteousness. 

We as Christians and as Christian communities are to be known not for our violence against others or the world, but for our peacemaking.

It is clear to the author, but I say it is clear to the world and to God, that when we are not peace makers we are not of Christ who is our peace maker. We are showing the world an marred vision of the reign of God. We are in fact not fooling anyone. The author says it is clear:

4Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? 2You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts.

What is so very true is that we cannot be in love with ourselves or our stuff, we cannot be in love with what we have and fear what we might lose. We are not as Christians to worry or hold tightly to the things of this world because we are to be people of a different place, a peaceful place, a place where God's love reigns. This is not courtly or Victorian idea of love either - this is a sacrificial love. This is a love which brings peace (not because another makes the sacrificial offering) because we make the sacrificial offering of ourselves, our security, our truthiness, our rightness. 

It is no wonder that most Christians don't want to spend much time on James. The author holds up a mirror to our Christian way of life and reveals a very earthly and sordid affair that is in much need of a house cleaning.

Some Thoughts on Jeremiah 11:18-20

"Jeremiah has good reason to complain. In this passage, he begins by declaring the disturbing news, which the Lord had revealed to him, of the plot to assassinate him because of his apparent lack of patriotism (see also 18:18)."
Commentary, Jeremiah 11:18-20, Amy Merrill Willis, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2015.

"These laments of Jeremiah reveal that the prophet is stuck between a rock and a hard place. Jeremiah lives in a pressure cooker."
Commentary, Jeremiah 11:18-20, Terence E. Fretheim, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.

"How are the faithful to respond in times of pressing difficulty?"Commentary, Jeremiah 11:18-20, Frank M. Yamada, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2009.

Oremus Online NRSV Text

The prophet Jeremiah gives word to his suffering spirit as he sees how the people are neglected. (Jeremiah 4:19; 9:1; 10:19-20; 23:9) For it to be well, the people must remember the past and how their faith ancestors created a just and righteous society wherein the defense and cause of the poor and needy were taken into account. (Jeremiah 22:15-17) Jeremiah locates our responsibility within God’s creative imaginary. (Jeremiah 10:12-16; 51:15-19) He sees God not only as the God of Israel but of all nations. His is a universal call to serve the poor. Jeremiah understands that this national responsibility for the poor is met by the individual too. The problem is not something that exists at the monarchial level alone - the whole society from individual to the government is responsible for the poor. 

It is out of this deep prophetic tradition that Jeremiah reacts to those who find his politics lacking. They are out to kill him. Like the prophets of God in every age the powers and dominions of this world seek their demise and the quiet of their voice. 

Jeremiah, in our passage today, begins by reminding the hearer that God invites him to prophecy. Like many who have faced the backlash of inviting a different kind of thinking about God, God's people, and their work in community...Jeremiah finds the backlash troubling. He is so upset he himself wants God to take action.

The passage itself does not have a parallel in the New Testament gospels. However, we know these words. They are the words of Jesus when he longs to gather the people. He had the prophets on his mind as he did his own work. How long have I wanted to gather you in? How long have you killed the prophets? He muses, well knowing that the prophetic message to remember the poor and be responsible for the least, the long and stranger in the midst is a message that is never welcomed by the patriots, the nationalists, nor the powers of this world. Freedom from such Godly accountability is much more a welcomed message. It is always difficult for the reigning powers in every age to hear the prophetic voice reminding them of their responsibility.





Sermons Previously Preached

Travis Elementary School Cakewalk Championship 1975

Sep 26, 2012; Sermon preached at Grace Episcopal Church, Houston Sept 2012; Mark 9:30ff


Jesus Loves a Flash Mob

Oct 8, 2009; Jesus Loves a Flash Mob, sermon given at St. Mark's, Bay City, September 20, 2009, Proper 20, Mark 9.30ff.

A passage from my upcoming book entitled Citizen: Prophet in a Strange Land

Jesus engages once more reinventing social norms in concert with God’s narrative in Mark 9:36, Matthew 19:13, and Luke 18:15. People began to bring children to Jesus - even babies. The inner circle around Jesus said, “Not so fast.” This scene is memorialized in church windows all over as a sweet “let the little children come to me” spirituality. Now, I am quite sure that Jesus did actually want the children to come to him regardless of their parents’ place in the wider social system. But Jesus was suggesting a community where all strata are connected and in relationship. So his invitation is one that runs parallel with the previous conversation. Meanwhile, it is evident in this story that the social imaginary even of the teacher/disciple remains hierarchical. Jesus though took the children and put them at the center of the community. (Mark 9:36) He also explained that he was in relationship with them. In a culture where most of the family’s value was placed upon what you did for the family, to consider a child a person, to put one of the least of the members of community at the center, to recognize an unproductive (indeed vulnerable) person there, once again reorders the social structures to be garden-like.

This then is part of the orienting of the Christian citizen’s responsibility: that the structures of state should be oriented at the well-being of children. Children are oftentimes the most vulnerable in power systems of honor/shame or sacred/degregation. They are the first to go hungry and without food and nutrition, brains don’t form well in the first three years of life, perpetuating poverty into the next generation. They are seen as the property of the parents or the ward of the state. They are seen as assets for our future: future church members, future workers, future soldiers, and future consumers. Jesus changed this orientation. Children are no longer appendages to the social imaginary of a tribe, city, state, or nation until they are productive members. In this act, Jesus turns the tables upside down. Literally making the least the first, Jesus orients every member of the society as part of God’s narrative.

Jesus in his relationship with the crowd, with the two women and children, reveals how God’s narrative offers a different social imaginary that is necessary to keep our natural ways of shaming/honoring under check. It isn’t enough that a transcendent God far away is in relationship with us. Jesus is revealing that in fact our relationships are intertwined, as is our story. Our futures are tied together and so our politics, economics, and health are tied together.

One of the values of American civil religion is individualism. It is a value that is strong, and is tied to freedom and self-determination. It is reinforced by our national birth story, our mythic characters, speeches by our leaders, and our civil liturgies. Think of those mythic tall tales of George Washington, Molly Pitcher, Daniel Boone, "Davy" Crockett, John Henry, the unsinkable Molly Brown, Buffalo Bill Cody, Annie Oakley, and Calamity Jane. We have Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill as two mythical stories. It is as if individualism has become our dominant language as well as our frame.[i] However, “individualism” is not a strong enough shared value to help this country deal and manage the conflict and challenges that face us in our next age. In fact it may undermine our future as a country if it is the sole arbiter of truth.

In God’s social imaginary, we have described community in terms of relationship and responsibility. What we see in the stories of Jesus is something more. What we see is a value close to interconnectedness.

---

[i] Robert N. Bellah, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 2.

Proper 20, Year B, September 22, 2024

Prayer
Beyond all human boundaries, O God, your deeds of power take place, and your healing mercy is at work.  Ours is not to restrict the wonders of your saving grace but to give joyful thanks for your compassion wherever we may find it.  Teach us to use well the riches of nature and grace to care generously for those in need and to look carefully to our own conduct.  We ask this through Christ, with whom you have raised us up in baptism, the Lord who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.

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

Some Thoughts on Mark 9:30-37

"As a sermon preparation strategy, use your social media platform this week to ask 'What stumbling blocks do you put in the way of others?' or 'What stumbling blocks do Christians put up that hurt the cause of the gospel in the world?'"

Commentary, Mark 9:38-50, Amy Oden, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.

"It is not so much that salt ceases to be salt but it becomes contaminated by additions over time, dirt, stones, etc, so that it becomes useless. He links salt with peace. In the context salt is an image of integrity and wholeness."

"First Thoughts on Year B Gospel Passages in the Lectionary," Pentecost 17, William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.

Oremus Online NRSV Text

In the first section of the narrative we are reminded by Jesus that just as creation is working God's purposes out, so too are our actions; along with the actions of others. We are involved in minor and major ways in building up the kingdom of God.  Notice that the statement from Jesus is not, "You are either with us or against us." But rather, Jesus offers a positive statement that if someone is working with us this is good.  Here we have the key positive message that frames the rest of our reading today.  Jesus is saying that we are to be working with one another and that we are to see that when others work with us (regardless of their place in or outside our community) they are working towards a positive end.  They are working towards and in concert with the laborers in the vineyard who are building God's dominion.

I think this is a very difficult piece of Gospel wisdom. Perhaps it is difficult because we are so rooted in our ancient reformation war, I don't know.  The reality is that we are being called to spend time focusing on building up the basileia - the dominion of God.  And, we are to not spend time talking about how they (over there) do it wrong.  Even though as humans we would rather, by our nature, spend most days pointing towards other Christians in our own denomination and outside, take their inventory, and help them see that they are doing it wrong.  Moreover, we are sure they are appreciative of this help.

It is as if Jesus is lifting up our eyes and saying, "Now stay with me.  Stay with me.  Stay focused on our work."

As soon as he does this we receive from him some more teaching. Remember, as in last week's lesson, Jesus is teaching, and teaching, and teaching. So, in the next verses we see Jesus taking up this notion of focused attention on the kingdom of God, and like a jeweler reviewing a stone, he turns his subject in the light and offers us a vision of our work.

These special sayings are in Jesus' time not meant literally but allegorically. (Joel Marcus, Mark, vol 2, 690)  Even Philo, the Jewish philosopher and biblical scholar living circa Jesus, understood these sayings as images or symbols and necessary for teaching.  Key to this understanding seems also to be the underlying notion that those who are lame in life are made whole in the afterlife. I don't particularly want to go down this road of discussing the afterlife. My intention though is to point out that Jesus is proposing that it is better to live life wholly supportive of the Gospel.

First we have the person who offers the cup of water.  This person's tiny action, Jesus points out, will have a momentous impact on the kingdom of God.  Jesus' words about the "little ones" is a reference not to children but the emerging Christian community.  It is a reminder, as in the passage before, that we are to work together and towards the kingdom in our small and big actions.  We are not to get in the way of people. Certainly, Jesus is clear that those who get in the way of the kingdom will suffer for it.  Like the cup of water, getting in the way of the kingdom in small and big ways will also manifest itself in the future. 

Then Jesus turns to the Christian community.  He says to the "little ones" themselves: life is better with all your parts and a lot less sinning.  Like in Matthew's gospel (18:6-35) he first offers a vision of a kingdom in this world with all the parts of the body of Christ working in concert.  Don't be looking at how others are doing it; Christian communal discord itself is not helpful in the kingdom of God. 

Furthermore, Jesus asks his followers, while paying less attention to others, pay more attention to themselves.  Jesus is saying if your own hand offends you don't commit sin, if your foot offends you don't put it anywhere you may commit sin, if your eye offends you don't think about committing sin.

And, like in Matthew's gospel we see some metaphorical connections with sexual sin being one of Jesus' concerns.  I'll let you read Joel Marcus for a more in depth study of the metaphors.  (Marcus, 697)

Just as we are dissuaded in the beginning of the passage from a notion that the kingdom of God will only be for a particular sect of Jesus followers doing it right, in this passage we are not left believing that simple communal division or sin is the goal of his teaching.  Then, Jesus continues by speaking about salt.

Jesus says we will be salted with fire.  In my opinion (choosing one of the scholastic sides in this debate) Jesus is saying that fire will refine in a positive way.  Furthermore, that we are to be careful and keep our salt flavorful. Finally, Jesus says that this flavorful salt is a metaphor or sign of our inner harmony with God and God's kingdom and our eternal harmony with our neighbor.  Salt, a metaphor for wisdom, is part of living life with Jesus.  Jesus says, "Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”    Be wise, and live in harmony with one another.  Be wise and work together.  Be wise, and build the kingdom together.

So we end where we left off.  Selfish behavior, sectarianism, disunity, intolerance, creating conflict, and the rest of basic human behavior will lead us away from the kingdom of God.  We find ourselves creating community that is out of sync with God's Garden Social Imaginary. Such action, Jesus is clear, will derail the work of the community that even now is seeking to build up the kingdom of God through God's mission.

Yet, Jesus invites us to share, be one with our brothers and sisters, to stop and step away from the things that draw us from the love of God, and to be filled with God's wisdom.  God in Jesus Christ is offering us a communal love instead of a religion which is focused on individual loneliness.  We are being shown the wisdom of God in living together and for one another; as opposed to living for ourselves alone.

So this week as you and I take the pulpit perhaps we might all think about offering a message of communal tolerance, sharing, virtue, and peace.  After all, everyone already knows how millstones work and what if feels like to have one around your neck.


Some Thoughts On James 5:13-20

"The words about faith and works are dotted with examples about how others are to be treated. The plight of the sick, then, is not that they simply pray by themselves and have an individual faith. The community is to gather; this seems to be a central dynamic of the understanding of the healing."

Commentary, James 5:13-20, Micah D. Kiel, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.

"Not only are the prayers of the righteous powerful, James reminds us that the prayers of the righteous are effective. Prayer still changes things and it changes people."

Commentary, James 5:13-16, Christopher Michael Jones, The African American Lectionary, 2008.

Oremus Online NRSV Text

We continue to make our troubling way through James.  Some scholars think that this last bit of James is actually a sermon, regardless we come to the conclusion with an eye to the work of prayer. We have already been speaking about our response to God's grace and the work we must be about if we are to immolate the Christ we claim to follow. Now we are to bathe that work in prayer.

Pray in and out of season, whether we are happy or sad, in good health  or bad. We are to call upon God and make our petitions known.

Using the image of anointing oil for healing we are to anoint all that ails us with prayer.

We are to pray for the leaders of the church, for each other, pray for the righteous and pray for the sinner. Confess your sins and I will confess mine.

When praying we might be mindful of Luke 18:9-14: “He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

The truth is that we are all sinners and we have all fallen short. We are saved by grace alone to be sure. We should always be wary of praying for others and what we might pray for them. We might be wise to take James' prayers and pray them fervently always eager to confess our sins rather than to pray for the others' sinfulness.

Prayer is a powerful tool. We know it helps with healing, it helps with community, it enables us to come into the nearer presence of God. If we pray for our enemies we will learn to love them. If we pray for brokenness we may find a way of peace. If we pray for healing we may obtain it.

Typically the prayer of the religious leader mentioned by Jesus doesn't go very far except to make the person praying more distant and separate from God.

So with humility, gentleness, and honesty approach the altar of God and pray to him asking for mercy, forgiveness, healing, reconciliation, grace, and love.


Some Thoughts On Esther 4:1-17; 7:1-10; 9:20-22

"If you haven't ever read the book of Esther, read it now. It's not long, and you will need the whole story to preach this text. You will immediately notice that the book of Esther reads almost as a stand-alone text within the biblical canon. "
Commentary, Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22, Amy Oden, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.

"Not content with having saved their people and taken care of Haman, Esther and Mordecai used their new power to orchestrate the slaughter of seventy five thousand of their old enemies. The whole unpleasant account is contained in The Book of Esther, which has the distinction of being the only book in the Bible where the name of God isn't even mentioned. There seems every reason to believe that he considered himself well out of it."
"Xerxes, Esther, Haman, and Mordecai," sermon discussion from Frederick Buechner, Frederick Buechner Blog.

"The Book of Esther understands well the challenges of living in a world where one might have to juggle and negotiate different, even conflicting, identities and loyalties– one political, one ethnic and religious."
"Esther and the Politics of Identity," Amy Merrill Willis, Political Theology, 2012.

The humor of the book of Esther is reflected in Purim celebrations (the annual Jewish festival that commemorates the story of Esther). At Purim, participants dress up in costumes, put on Purim shpiels (humorous plays), and generally have a raucous celebration. When the name of Haman comes up in the reading of the scroll of Esther, it is drowned out by booing and noisemakers. When the names of Esther or Mordecai are read, they are cheered. There is even an ancient tradition from the Talmud instructing Purim celebrants to drink until they are “unable to differentiate between the phrases ‘bless Mordecai’ and ‘curse Haman’” (Megillah 7a).2

... Here, then, is one place where this humorous, raucous story of Esther might lead us: to the understanding that in the ordinary events of life, and sometimes in the not-so-ordinary events, in the coincidences and chance encounters of our days, we are called and claimed by God. And we may even, like Esther, find the courage to answer that call.

Commentary, Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22, Kathryn M. Schifferdecker, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2015.

Oremus Online NRSV Text

After being persuaded by God through Mordecai, Esther goes to king Ahasuerus. When he asks what her request is, she replies that she wishes him to save her people from death. Part of the bloodshed of this parable like story is the continued violence that is rooted in desire and played out scapegoating all in its path.

While a fun story of evil, deception, and heroes played out at Purim, it is nothing less than the same age old tale of jealousy, hate, revenge.

Yet the story is about call and vocation too. It is about the ordinary person of God who seeks to live within God's narrative. We are found. We are invited. We are part of God's saving act. Moreover, this saving act is happening in our daily lives. 

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks writes:

This, for me, is the ultimate statement of hashgacha pratit, that wherever we are, sometimes Hashem is asking us to realize why He put us here, with these gifts, at this time, with these dangers, in this place. Hashgacha pratit is our fundamental belief that God never abandons us, the He puts us here with something to do. Even in the worst hiding of God, if you listen hard enough, you can hear Him calling to us as individuals, saying U’mi yodeia im l’et kazot higa’at lamalchut? “Was is not for this very challenge that you are here in this place at this time?”

You don’t have to change the world to change the world. Let me explain. If we really believe, as the Mishna in Sandedrin, says Nefesh achat k’olam malei, that “A life is like a universe” then if you change one life, you can begin to change the universe the only way any of us can, one life at a time, one day at a time, one act at a time. 

We must always ask ourselves, what does Hashem want of me in this place, at this time? Because there is always something Hashem wants of us, and we don’t have to be anyone special to have a sacred task. We can just be a Jewish woman called Esther, or a Jewish man called Eddie, and yet, somehow or another, our acts might have consequences that we cannot even begin to imagine. Even though you may feel sometimes that this is a world and an age in which there is hester panim, where you look for Hashem and you can’t find him, He is still saying to us U’mi yodeia im l’et kazot higa’at lamalchut?, “Was it not for this moment that I placed you here on Earth?”

The reality is that we often think our biblical story of call and vocation begins with the disciples. Then we mix it all up in a big blender of church history, and the growth of professionalism and what we end up with is a discourse about vocation that leads to priesthood. This is not at all what our sacred texts tell us. They tell us instead that we are part of God's narrative and we are invited in our daily lives to work for good and to transformation of life for others - to the good. In this we are recreating a world that more closely resembles the garden narrative of God. 

We are in our daily lives making a difference, in a very real way, one person at a time. 

We are unaware of where our actions will lead or what they will bring. We have so created an understanding of vocation that it is about our job and money. The ancient notion was that our vocation themselves would bring about good and goods in and of themselves.

Wendell Berry in his book of essays Our Only World takes on this a bit. In his essay towards the end of the book a book “Our Deserted Country,” Berry reflects about how machines have transformed the rural landscape. This in connection with corporate farming has played a role in both capitalism and professions. The mass migration to cities is tied here clearly. Here is what Berry writes about when he reflects on work and vocation:

The idea of vocation attaches to work a cluster of other ideas, including devotion, skill, pride, pleasure, the good stewardship of means and materials. Here we have returned to intangibles of economic value. When they are subtracted, what remains is ‘a job,’ always implying that work is something good only to escape.

From an essay The Loss of the Future published in Manas, volume 21, 1968, Berry writes about how this idea of vocation and livelihood and work is connected deeply into the life of a community. He writes:

 A community is not merely a condition of physical proximity, no matter how admirable the layout of the shopping center and the streets, no matter if we demolish the horizontal slums and replace them with vertical ones.  A community is the mental and spiritual condition of knowing that the place is shared, and that the people who share the place define and limit the possibilities of each other’s lives. It is the knowledge that people have of each other, their concern for each other, their trust in each other, the freedom with which they come and go among themselves.

Berry also wrote in a bit contributed to the UTNE reader in 2010 On Work the following:

The old and honorable idea of 'vocation' is simply that we each are called, by God, or by our gifts, or by our preference, to a kind of good work for which we are particularly fitted.

These thoughts resonate as we ponder the vocation of Esther. Her work of courage saves many lives and while perhaps the king has some sense of economic value in it...God does not. It is the living of life itself that has value. Her prophetic work is deeply part of the mental and spiritual condition of sharing life and space with others. It is Esther's vocation that she understands the connectedness of her own life with those of Mordecai and others. She knows that she and they have each other. And, that in her relationship to those of the court (the king included) that they are woven together too. She embodies a concern for others. She is called, she has a vocation, she is invited to a good work, it is hers to do, it is her moment. She is called for just such a time as this. Finally, it is this particularity that we share with her. We are called in our lives, in each of our lives, for just such a time as this.




Sermons Previously Preached on This Week's Texts

The Audacity of God Oct 2, 2015 Sermon preached at baptism and confirmation service at St. Mark's Bay City, Texas; Proper 21B, 2015



Thoughts on Esther and vocation from my book: Vocātiō: Imaging a Visible Church. You can order your copy here.

Esther, the queen of Persia, was called by God and given work to do. In a departure from how God dealt with Moses and Abraham, God did not come to Esther directly, but spoke to her through others. While the means may be different, God’s invitation was the same. Haman had a plan for King Xerxes to annihilate all of the Jews in the kingdom, and Esther was the agent of protection for God’s people. It was Mordecai, Esther’s cousin, who first spoke to Esther about the plight of her people in Esther 2:7, and she was immediately brought into the conflict.

Through Mordecai, God invited Esther to “go” and plead with Xerxes not to carry out Haman’s plan (Esther 4:8). Esther resisted God’s invitation delivered through Mordecai. Mordecai then said, “For if you keep silence at such a time as this, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another quarter, but you and your father’s family will perish. Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this” (Esther 4:14). Mordecai reframed Esther’s royal standing as an opportunity, an invitation into the greater story of God and God’s people. Despite her fearful preoccupations about safety, God invited Esther to enter the plight of her people. She was to be a blessing to the world by stopping the king’s violence and saving her people.

In connection with Isaiah's call...In the midst of this sea change, Isaiah was called. Abraham heard God’s voice, Moses heard God speak from a bush, and Esther heard God speak through Mordecai. Isaiah’s calling was inaugurated by a great vision.

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said:
“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory.” 

The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. (Isa. 6:1–4)

Esther was afraid to honor God’s call because it put her at risk. Moses had other plans and believed he could not speak well enough to accomplish what God wished. Isaiah suffered no such ambivalence. He humbly accepted God’s invitation, believing that he was not worthy to go for God because he was unclean. God sent one of the creatures down and touched Isaiah’s lips with a burning coal taken from the altar. Then God asked, “Whom shall I send? Who will be my messenger?” God invited Isaiah to respond. Isaiah answered, “I will go! Send me!” (Isa. 6:6–8). Again, it was an invitation to go—an invitation that overwhelmed misgivings about worthiness, personal plans for the future, or bodily safety.

...We are part of this history. We are part of God’s call to Moses. We bear witness to a God who raised Jesus Christ after first raising the people of Israel out of Egypt. We are to be “a sign that God has not abandoned the world.”  God’s “work”—God’s “vocation”—is outside of the world’s powers, and different from the way these powers work. Moreover, God’s shalom can only be enacted in person, in community between human beings. Our society stands against this notion of God’s “sending” work—this community of shalom. We reject God’s invitation and refuse to go. We prefer to articulate God’s shalom as a form of sanctified political activism instead. The invitation to Moses, as with Esther, Isaiah, and Jonah, was no mere political activism. God invites us into a real community where political modes of speech have no purchase. There are political implications to shalom, but for those who accept God’s invitation, the journey quickly becomes about a community and a narrative that resonate far more deeply than any political tribalism. God’s typology, God’s paradigmatic way of inviting and sending, cannot be about clericalism alone, nor can it be about any singular social theory.

...God invites and God sends all of God’s people. This is not a professional or clerical invitation. God’s call to ordinary people undergirds all other work done in God’s name. The core of everything else the Church does is peaceful human interconnectivity. Decisions about who will do what are marginal. The most important thing the Church does is hear God’s voice of shalom. This calling finds its first home in ordinary people living ordinary lives. After all, Moses and Esther were not trained to speak to the rulers of their world. Creating the community of shalom is not a professional exercise. There is no financial or economic benefit to any of those whom God calls. God calls the ordinary, unprepared, and often tentative to be God’s voice and to create a new world in God’s name. There is certainly no safety guaranteed in this work. We must take care not to read back into these call stories the credentialed authority of the modern professional, or the erratic genius of the postmodern technological revolutionary. Heeding God’s call is not an economic exchange. There is no room for the prosperity gospel here. Looking back into these stories and making them into a legitimization of the priesthood or a defense of clericalism perverts these texts by reading them through the lens of modern religious systems. Such systems are not implicit in these narratives. The God of Sinai invites the Church to share the burden of this new shalom society equally amongst all her members (Exod. 18:13–27). Everyone has a share in the peaceable kingdom.

The powers and authorities of this world are “alien” to God’s desired kingdom of shalom.  We are invited to risk the walk with God, and to relate to each other in ways that transform the present moments we experience. The faithful who say yes to God’s invitation set aside their plans and die to self so God can undertake mighty works through our relationships. The words to Isaiah echo for us, “Whom will I send? Who will go on my behalf? Who will be my messenger?” It is a not a call to professionals or specialists. God calls all brothers and sisters into new relationships, and a new kingdom of shalom. Who will answer the invitation to go? Who will be willing to be the one sent?