Easter 2C, April 27, 2025

Prayer

On this Lord’s Day, we come together, O God, to proclaim the Living One, the First and the Last, who was dead, but now is forever alive. Open our hearts to the Spirit Jesus breathes on us. Help us, who have not seen, to believe; send us, as you have sent Jesus, to greet the world with the Easter word of peace and to share with all the Spirit’s new life of forgiveness. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.

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

Some Thoughts on John 20:19-31

"Even though he said the greater blessing is for those who can believe without seeing, it's hard to imagine that there's a believer anywhere who wouldn't have traded places with Thomas, given the chance, and seen that face and heard that voice and touched those ruined hands."

"Thomas," Frederick Buechner, Buechner Blog.

"...so now I think it’s not so much that Jesus is rebuking Thomas as he is blessing us."

"The Never-Ending Story," David Lose, Dear Working Preacher, 2013.

Oremus Online NRSV Gospel Text


As we arrive at the text for this week I am mindful of the prayer of St. Chrysostom which may be prayed as part of our daily office:

Almighty God, you have given us grace at this time with one accord to make our common supplication to you; and you have promised through your well-beloved Son that when two or three are gathered together in his Name you will be in the midst of them: Fulfill now, O Lord, our desires and petitions as may be best for us; granting us in this world knowledge of your truth, and in the age to come life everlasting. Amen.

So it is that I cannot begin to think and ponder on John’s Gospel and the appearance of Jesus in the midst of the disciples without also thinking of the risen Christ in the midst of our gatherings and how he is present and what he encourages us, as faithful followers, to undertake on his behalf.

Also, I am mindful that the reality that this appearance and the appearance to Thomas a week later occur on the “first day of the week” suggests the presence of Christ on our day of worship and in the midst of the community gathered for both prayer and a meal, the Eucharist in our current practice. Raymond Brown and other scholars are quick to remind us of Isaiah 3.6: “My people shall know my name; on that day they shall know it is I who speak.”

Brown’s notes follow from page 1019 of vol. 2 of his reflections about John’s Gospel for the Anchor Bible Dictionary. Here he suggests traces of ancient Johannine communal liturgy.

The disciples assemble on the Lord’s Day. The blessing is given: “Peace to you.” The Holy Spirit descends upon the worshippers and the word of absolution is pronounced. Christ himself is present (this may suggest the Eucharist and the spoken Word of God) bearing the marks of his passion; he is confessed as Lord and God. Indeed, this passage in John as been cited as the first evidence that the Christian observance of Sunday arose from an association of that day with the resurrection – an idea that shortly later Ignatius gave voice to: “No longer living for the Sabbath, but for the Lord’s Day on which life dawned for us through in and his death.” (Magnesians, ix 1). (R. Brown, John, vol 2, p 1019).

In the end, Brown believes this is a secondary development, nevertheless one of interest.

So it is with these thoughts that I turn and think more closely upon the Gospel for this Sunday.

We begin with the disciples behind closed doors because of their fear. Perhaps afraid of the authorities or for those who might accuse them of stealing their messiah’s body they are hiding. The doors are locked. Jesus comes and stands in their midst, right in front of them.

Jesus says to them, “Peace be with you.” Shalom. Shalom Alekem. Yes, this is a greeting. It is also an ancient form of saying or cluing the listener or hearer of these words that there is about to be a revelation. They are about to see, hear, or receive a revelation of God. The revelation (as with Gideon in Judges 6.23) is that the Lord is present, the Lord brings peace, and you will not die.

Jesus then shows his disciples his wounds. He shows them their very place of them. While there is some argument between scholars about the different wound sites shown and the different terms and placement between the Gospel of Luke and John’s visitation we nevertheless see that it was a powerful recognition of the Christ crucified. I am mindful that the disciples and those who experience the resurrection had not only a real experience but an understanding that Jesus was himself more fully present than before. The reality of these wounds and the powerful vision they must have created for those whose eyes fell upon them quiets me.

Here then the author and narrator use the resurrection title, “the Lord.” While I have been using it, we notice in the narrative its first use here. Jesus is recognized but recognized as the risen one, the first fruits of those who have died.

Jesus provides a vision of resurrection. He is present. He gives them a mission. Just as God sent me I am sending you. We may reflect upon the previous chapters, his priestly prayer, and his ministry. Jesus was sent by the father to glorify God. Jesus now sends his followers to do the same.

And, Jesus gives them the Holy Spirit. As if from Genesis we have Jesus breathing over the new creation, new breath to the new Adams and the new Eves.

Then the Lord charges them to forgive. Forgive the sins and know that those which you hold will be bound by them. If you release them, you open your hand and they fall away. If you hold them you hold your hand closed and they cannot go. It seems important to reflect on this for a minute. Jesus' words here are very different than the legal words used by him in Matthew’s Gospel. Here we have kerygmatic words. Brown writes, “Thus the forgiveness and holding of sins should be interpreted in the light of Jesus’ own action toward sin…The Gospel is more concerned with the application of forgiveness on earth, and is accomplished in and through the Spirit that Jesus has sent…more general Johannine ideas about the Spirit, relate the forgiveness of sins to the eschatological outpouring of the Spirit that cleanses men and begets them to new life… the power to isolate, repel, and negate evil and sin, a power given to Jesus in his mission by the Father an given in turn by Jesus through the Spirit to those whom he commissions.” (1040-1044) This is the recreation in action.

The disciples are given power by the Holy Spirit to be about the work of freeing people to and into the newly created order.

Thomas, our dear brother Thomas, missed this historic moment. And, as we arrive at this time every year we know he will not believe it no matter what is said. So emphatic is he that he will not believe it unless he “throws” his fingers into the wounds themselves. This is a dramatic call for proof if there ever was one.

The disciples continue their stay in Jerusalem and find themselves with Thomas again in the upper room one week later.

Again, Jesus appears and he calls to Thomas. The Lord invites him to see and feel his wounds to reach out and touch them. Some scholars have spent time wondering how this could be so if Christ was wearing clothes. Was it a loose-fitting garment? These suggestions give rise to one of my favorite Brown quotes which I must admit almost caused me to fall out of my chair when I read it. Raymond Brown writes, “The evangelist scarcely intended to supply information on the haberdashery appropriate for a risen body.” (1026)

Jesus also tells him to stop or quit persisting in his unbelief by these actions. While Thomas was a follower of Jesus was a believer in the risen Christ? He is challenged here to change.

What has always struck me, but few preachers have ever remarked on, is the fact that Thomas doesn’t touch Christ. I have pondered this a great deal. What is it then that changes him? Thomas’ faith is adequate without the proof. That is the point of the story.

We often get so focused on what it takes to convince ourselves in God and then project it upon Thomas that we miss the narrative’s truth. Thomas believes without proof.

Brown writes of all four episodes in chapter 20 of John’s Gospel:

“Whether or not he intended to do so, the evangelist has given us in the four episodes of ch xx four slightly different examples of faith in the risen Jesus. The Beloved Disciple comes to faith after having seen the burial wrappings but without having seen Jesus himself. Magdalene sees Jesus but does not recognize him until he calls her by name. The disciples see him and believe. Thomas also sees him and believes, but only after having been over insistent on the marvelous aspect of the appearance. All four are examples of those who saw and believed; the evangelist will close the Gospel in 29b by turning his attention to those who have believed without seeing.” (1046)

Thomas’ words “My God and my Lord,” are the last words spoken by a disciple in the 4th Gospel. And they are the culminating Gospel proclamation for the faithful follower of Jesus. This statement brings him fully into the covenant relationship with the new creation.

Now that the witness of the disciples is concluded Jesus' words are for us. The last and final Beatitude is given to those who would come after. Blessed are those who do not see but have believed. Here is Jesus, with us to the end, offering the last words in the original Gospel. We have the opportunity to join the new covenant community, to be new Adams and new Eves, to participate in the stewardship of creation recreated, and to take our place in the midst of the discipleship community. We do so through baptism. We do so also by embracing the kerygmatic Word and living a resurrected life. We live by making our confession: My God and my Lord. We live life on the one hand bearing witness to the ever-present past of crucifixion and the ever-present future of the resurrection life.

Some Thoughts on Revelation 1:4-8

"Charis recalls the patronage system of the early Roman world, in which a patron displayed generosity to his clients, and expected loyalty in return. Eirene reminds one of the Hebrew shalom, the notion of wholeness and peace that is often associated with a deep and meaningful relationship to God."
Commentary, Revelation 1:4b-8, Valerie Nicolet-Anderson, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.

"...the violence and greed of our culture in fact do test our faith, sometimes in shocking and unexpected ways. So preaching this text requires us to search out particular, local points of conflict and opposition to the reign of Christ in the immediate realities of our congregations."
Commentary, Revelation 1:4b-8, Susan Eastman, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2009.


"In the beginning: God; in the end: God; in the midst of life: God. These are less statements about time and place as they are statements of hope and trust."
"First Thoughts on Epistle Passages in the Lectionary," Easter 2, William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia

Oremus Online NRSV Epistle Text

Here is what is about to happen: we are about to have a series of lessons from the Book of revelation.  This is it; there is nothing this long or this sequential at any other time in our preaching cycle. I am not yet sure I am brave enough to make it the topic of my preaching for the next couple of weeks but I am beginning to think it is worth it.  

The background is the tradition that this is written by John on Patmos and it is addressed to the "7 churches".  Of course, this means that it is written to all churches (as he is at the time writing to all the churches).  A number of good commentaries will make this and other observations about the context.  

In the introductory verses, we have words quoted from Isaiah 44.6, "who is and who was and who is to come." This God is the Alpha and the Omega.  The seven spirits are from Isaiah 11.2ff.  The author bears witness to the fact that Jesus is the firstborn from the dead and ruler over all the earth.

Then there is the witness that Jesus loves us, that he frees us from sin, that we are made into a new community, and that we are (like priests) to serve him.  We are being, even now, drawn into a worshiping community that eventually will move from the world of time to everlasting glory forever and ever. 

These are the very themes of the whole text.  They make the mission of Jesus upon his return the event which will bring all of this to pass.  Upon his return, all shall be transformed. "Amen.  Amen." 

God is God and he has come, he is coming back, and he intends to bring about the recreation of the world.  

Walter Taylor, of Lutheran Seminary, writes:

"The Revelation lesson gives us an opening to talk about Christology in ways we may not have had on Easter. All or any one of the many titles of verse 5 could be explored. Taken together they outline a full Christology that includes life, death, resurrection, and present lordship. The Christological emphasis continues with the love of Christ and his freeing action by means of his death (verses 5b-6), and in verse 7 we look forward to the coming of Jesus as the final judge."

This is a great opportunity to think about with the congregation who this Christ is that we worship and what he has to do with our living of lives in this particular world.

Some Thoughts on Acts 5:27-41

"Authoritative communities and institutions sometimes allow themselves to be hijacked by their own biases, dogmas, racism, sexism, classism, and prosperity gospels. We stifle God's voice."
Commentary, Acts 5:27-32, Mitzi J. Smith, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2016.

"It is appropriate that in this second Sunday of Easter”the week immediately following the glorious celebration of the resurrected Christ”the New Testament reading contains an amazing story of the apostle's courage and boldness in the face of opposition. Acts 5:27-32 beautifully displays the fearlessness the Holy Spirit bestows upon us when we are living in the resurrection of Christ.'"
Commentary, Acts 5:27-34, Shannon Greene, A Plain Account, 2016.


"Public proclamation of Jesus in obedience to God rather than humans intends not to cut off those who oppose; it intends to serve and even to suffer for doing it, pressing on to witness to God’s renewal of all things."
Commentary, Acts 5:27-32, Kyle Fever, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2013.

Oremus Online NRSV Text

Luke in Acts is clear that he wants to show that the work of the apostles in the first generation was intent on keeping the mission of Jesus underway. They do this through the power of the Holy Spirit. Moreover, Luke is quick to show that they are the true inheritors of the religion of Zion.

So in this passage, Peter and John have been arrested. They were preaching the resurrection. The religious leaders of the day want to keep them quiet. Their plans to punish Peter and John are set aside for a while.

However, in the end, the growth of the message and community dictates that action be taken. So it is that they are imprisoned for a short while until an angel sets them free. They go right back to preaching and teaching.

This preaching is clear that Jesus' mission and now the mission of the Holy Spirit is the same message as of old. This is the most recent work of the God of Israel. Luke adeptly puts words into the religious leader's mouths in order to reveal their culpability in Jesus' own death and to show that any oppression of this new message is more of the same.

I think there are a couple pitfalls here. First, do not scapegoat the Jews. I have a long time ago tried to weed out this from my own teaching and instead talk about the religious leaders of the day. Second, you can easily fall into missiology that says if you are faithful everything will be blessed by the Holy Spirit and your mission will grow. Some faithful missions grow some do not.

What I think is a powerful witness in this passage is that like Jesus the first followers attempt to reject the power and authority of religion and instead focus on helping the poor. Sharing what they have. And, ministering to the community. This has real power in the midst of the community and is very much a part of what was so attractive to the original message of Jesus. Here we see a faithful continuity of a God who freed Egypt, freed Jesus, and brings freedom to the people even today. The Good News of the Gospel is not about something that happens in the life after this one. It is about a God who continues to act in the lives of people - transforming them and the community in which they live.

Lastly, notice that the religious leaders sit in council and people are brought to them. They are out of touch with their community. Notice instead where the apostles are. They are out in the world in relationships with people. They are in conversation and working with them to help serve the poor - the widows and orphans. They are not locked in an upper room, they are not sitting in a religious center of some kind, they are in a relationship with real people, helping real people, and incarnating a community that is nothing less than a society of friends of Jesus.

Sermons Preached on This Sunday's Lessons
Touching and Seeing Jesus Apr 23, 2009 I challenge you to change Thomas Apr 13, 2010 The Lord's Day is Everyday April 3, 2016 Being Lost Apr 21, 2013 Shout out to stories from Radio Lab episode "You are Here" http://www.radiolab.org/2011/jan/25/you-are-here/

Proper 9, Year B, July 7, 2024

Prayer
Remove from before our eyes, O God, the veil that hides your splendor, and flood us with the light of your Holy Spirit, that we may recognize your glory shining in the humiliation of your Christ and experience even in our own human weakness the sufficiency of your grace and the surpassing power of Christ's resurrection.  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 6:1-13

"Would you agree that we are living in a world that is more and more characterized by unbelief? If so, doesn't it feel as if we are living in a Nazareth-world ? a culture that is, at best, disinterested in Jesus?"

Commentary, Mark 6:1-13, Mark G. Vitalis Hoffman, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2009.

"Whether among the travellers or among those who stayed in their community, Jesus called people to be and bear good news for the poor. No wonder the established power structures of family and land and religion saw only madness and did their best to tame him and his followers. The judgement of history is probably that they have at least succeeded with most of his followers to this day."

"First Thoughts on Year B Gospel Passages in the Lectionary," Pentecost 6, William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.

"By attempting over and over to make him ‘the Messiah,’ people were missing the point of his message, which was that the Reign of God was present and that they all were invited to participate in it."

"Mission Grounded in Rejection," D Mark Davis, raw translation and exegesis/questions, Left Behind and Loving It, 2012.

"Is there some area – some regret we can't get over, some grudge we can't let go, some hurt that has come to define us, some addiction that imprisons us, some anger that has taken hold of us – that we are having difficulty entrusting to God?"

"Something to Do," David Lose, Dear Working Preacher, 2012.

Oremus Online NRSV Text

Last week the crowds loved this guy, this week they reject him in his home town.  Those who knew him the best, who saw him growing up, those who he perhaps counted as friends - they reject him. He is not able to do any work there in their midst. He is completely "dumbfounded." (Joel Marcus, Mark, vol 1, 377).

There are several powerful themes. The first is that the gospel is not easily heard by the insiders. This is true in the religious authorities and in his closest relatives.  The second theme is that God is at work here, just like the prophets of old.  The third is Jesus' rejection. He is rejected by the demons. He is rejected by the religious authorities. He is rejected by gentiles. He is rejected now by his own people.

God is patient. God is at work. Even though he is rejected here he is not fully without power to do miraculous things.  God in Jesus continues to make his way to the ultimate rejection and crucifixion. But it will be at the cross that he is victorious. 

The message this week is clear to me. God is at work in the world around us. God is at work wether we see it or do not see it. God is at work outside the walls of our churches and outside of our communities. In point of fact some miraculous things are happening inside, but the great work is being done out in the world.  The whole of creation is marching steadily towards fruition of the kingdom of God and his reign.  It is at work and miracles and works of power are being done by God through the power of the Holy Spirit as we speak.

The question is not unlike the dumbfounded Jesus might have posed to his hometown family: cannot you see what I am doing here? Do you not know me?  Don't you want to come with me?

What would it be like this Sunday to preach the newspaper and illustrate where God is at work in the world? Or in music, art, or film?  Where is the language of grace breaking into the culture?  What would it be like to show and highlight those places where the church is following Jesus and is actually out there and working with his miraculous power to change creation?  Yes, that is the inspiration and call to see again for the first time that we need from the pulpit this week. Inspire us to get out there an stop looking for Jesus to be the tame Jesus of our sanctuary.  Inspire us good lord to follow you out into the world and help us to see you at work and to join your efforts there!

2 Corinthians 12:2-10

"And how long was the whole great circus to last? Paul said, why, until we all become human beings at last, until we all 'come to maturity,' as he put it; and then, since there had been only one really human being since the world began, until we all make it to where we're like him, he said - 'to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ' (Ephesians 4:13). Christ's to each other, Christs to God. All of us. Finally. It was just as easy, and just as hard, as that."

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

"It may be timely for the preacher to focus less on individual experience and more on a congregation's collective experience."

Commentary, 2 Corinthians 12:2-10, Sally A. Brown, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.

"Gratitude and generosity - two virtues that acknowledge we are not all strength and independence, but also (and very basically) weakness and dependency - prepare us for better adjustment in situations of loss."

"Declining with Grace," Robert C. and Elizabeth V. Roberts, (other resources at)"Aging," Christian Reflection, The Center for Christian Ethics at Baylor University, 2003.

Oremus Online NRSV Text

Buried in the reading for this week is a real gem. Paul writes, "'My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.' So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong."

As an Episcopalian this passage from Corinthians reminds us that we are broken and fallen creatures. Our reason is deficient to understand the divine intent its fullness and that we are always powerfully controlled by our ego and selfish desires. In this I know I am weak. I do things I do not wish to do - Paul claims. So my weakness, insults, hardships, persecutions (done to me and inflicted by me) and calamities are so very real. So very real are my weakness that I am saved solely by the grace of God. God's grace is sufficient.

We has Christians struggle though because while we understand that God's grace is sufficient for me - it is rarely sufficient for you.

Today, as we think and ponder the culture all around us we might be challenged to truly accept God's sufficient grace for ourselves and for others.

2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10


"With all the difficulties of this text, it is important that the juxtaposition that the text itself gives us of David's coronation, his conquering of Jerusalem and this oddly prominent prohibition of the blind and the lame from the house (of the LORD) be held together."
Commentary, 2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10, Samuel Giere, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.

"How do we know that God is with us? It all starts with our naming at our baptism."

"David Becomes King," Faith Element Discipleship System, "Setting the Bible Free," 2012.
Commentary, 2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10, Ralph W. Klein, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2009.

"...the lectionary choices this week, following on from last week, result in a picture of the kingdom moving from Saul's death to David's crowning as a relatively smooth transition. The David who graciously laments the deaths of Saul and Jonathan appears this week as the natural heir. The intervening chapters present a much more complicated, interesting, if sanguinary, tale."

2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10, Pentecost 5, 2009, The Old Testament Readings: Weekly Comments on the Revised Common Lectionary, Howard Wallace Audrey Schindler, Morag Logan, Paul Tonson, Lorraine Parkinson, Theological Hall of the Uniting Church, Melbourne, Australia.

Oremus NRSV Text

David is now in Hebron. He is recognized as the leader and publicly anointed by the heads of the tribes of the tribes of Judah. This is important as it reveals the unification of the people...a unity that will not last long as a split will occur after David's reign. Saul tries to mess this up by having Abner create a kind of figurehead leader in Ishbaal. Too bad for him, for as they fighting breaks out it will be Ishbaal who will be one of the casualties. In the end, seeing the future potential, he is murdered by a few of his own folks. David though is quick to act and has the assassins killed for having murdered a "righteous man." David is eventually made king and he sets up a new city as a unifying capital for the province. There is a lot of trash talk and David's army prevails. As the narrative of the king goes this is a key chapter in the building of a unified kingdom and the wooing of powers and supporters.

Then David does a weird thing and prohibits the blind and the lame from worshiping with everyone else. Now we well remember this passage:

For whatsoever man he be that hath a blemish, he shall not approach: a blind man, or a lame, or he that hath a flat nose … –Leviticus 21:17

Now, we know that when David came to take Jerusalem from the Jebusites they taunted him saying that the lame and blind could beat this guy! It is possible that the text is a play on words where by David is mocking the Jebusites themselves, but the Leviticus quote makes this unlikely. The truth is that such people were seen as unclean and so in context his pronouncement is not particularly odd - though it is odd to our modern hearing. But that is because living in the West does weird things to you and we think everyone should be able to go everywhere as free individuals and have largely cast off any sense of holiness codes like this one.

Also, as Christians we remember that Jesus goes to the Temple and undoes this prohibition.  After throwing out those who have made a living on religion we are told:  “Then the blind and the lame came to Him in the temple, and He healed them.” –Matthew 21:14

Ezekiel 2:1-7

"Preachers may "understand" this text too quickly -- as in, Yes, I get it: The preacher is called, like Ezekiel, to proclaim a hard word of God to a recalcitrant people..."
Commentary, Ezekiel 2:1-5, Fred Gaiser, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.

"Passages like this one can lead in two very different directions."
Commentary, Ezekiel 2:1-5, John C. Holbert, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2009.

Oremus NRSV Text

The prophet says that he has received a word from God, to stand up and listen. God has sent the prophet to the people with a message. And, well, it isn't good. The people are rebellious and in need of a prophet. They, like their parents, have transgressed. "When you are done, Ezekiel," God says, "They will know a prophet has been in the midst of them."

God invites Ezekiel to fear not. He isn't very hopeful as he says to Ezekiel, "though briers and thorns surround you and you live among scorpions!" God promises Ezekiel that God will be with him all along the way.

I wonder sometimes if after preaching to our people if they think that a prophet has been among them? Who are the rebellious in our own midst? 

Now, I am not talking about fussing at your people. I have in mind here something more akin to what Walter Brueggeman offers in his book, The Prophetic Imagination (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001).

When I ponder what the ancient prophets in Israel are doing as we have them in the text, I arrive at this judgment that will serve as my guiding thesis: prophetic proclamation is an attempt to imagine the world as though YHWH—the creator of the world, the deliverer of Israel, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ whom we Christians come to name as Father, Son, and Spirit—were a real character and an effective agent in the world. I use the subjunctive “were” because such a claim is not self-evident and remains to be established again and again in every such utterance. 

The key term in my thesis is “imagine,” that is, to utter, entertain, describe, and construe a world other than the one that is manifest in front to us, for that present world is readily and commonly taken without such agency or character for YHWH. Thus the offer of prophetic imagination is one that contradicts the taken-for-granted world around us.

So, to answer what rebellion looks like, is to see clearly what in the world around us is acceptable/unacceptable within our society but is wholly unworthy the kingdom of God. I am thinking here of the separation of families at the boarder of the US. It can be all kind of legal to do so but, does this action represent the kingdom of God - the rule or riegn of God? And, if it doesn't how will you, like Ezekiel approach this.

Again, Brueggeman:

At the outset, it is clear that this way of putting the matter refuses two common assumptions. On the one hand, it rejects the more conservative assumption that the prophets were predictors, those who tell the future, with particular reference to predictions of the coming Christ. On the other hand, this thesis refuses the common liberal assumption that the prophets were social activists who worked to establish social justice. It strikes me that the ancient prophets only rarely took up any concrete social issue. 

More important to them than concrete social issues is the fact that they characteristically spoke in poetic idiom with rich metaphors, so that their language is recurringly teasing, elusive, and evocative, with lesser accent on instruction or didacticism.

This Sunday may not be a Sunday to preach prophecy but to actually preach about what it means to be a prophetic preacher, prophetic listener vs a rebellious one, and the meaning of being a prophetic witnessing church.

Proper 8, Year B, June 30, 2024

Raising of Jarius' Daughter by Gabriel Max, 1878

Prayer

O God, in the paschal mystery of Christ, who became poor for our sake and obedient even unto death on a cross, you have chosen to enrich us with every good gift and to give us a share in Christ's exalted life.  Let us fear neither teh cost of discipleship nor the inevitability of sharing in the cross but gladly announce to all our brothers and sisters the good news of life healed, restored and renewed.  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 5:21-43

"Jesus called a woman unnamed in scripture from the shadows of anonymity. He called her 'daughter,' a designation that signifies kinship, relationship and lineage."

Commentary, Mark 5:25-34, Deborah K. Blanks, The African American Lectionary, 2009.

"Who knows what kind of story Mark is telling here, but the enormously moving part of it, I think, is the part where Jesus takes the little girl's hand and says, 'Talitha cum' - 'Little girl, get up' - and suddenly we ourselves are the little girl."

"Jairus' Daughter," sermon discussion from Frederick Buechner, Frederick Buechner Blog. "Funeral," from Whistling in the Dark.

"Can the Christian community alter the conditions of people's lives? Can it, too, bring healing into troubled circumstances? Must it not also cross boundaries -- whether they are related to ethnicity, gender, race, sexual orientation, politics or any other boundaries that divide our society -- and advocate life-giving meaning and change?"

Commentary, Mark 5:21-43, Emerson Powery, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.

Oremus Online NRSV Text

This week we move from an act of God in Jesus' voice which stills the stormy sea to the work of God in Jesus as his power heals a woman and raises a girl to life.

This passage comes after the exorcism of the Gerasene demoniac.  In our narrative for this Sunday we are on our way; and we might remember we are always in Mark on our Way to the cross.  Jarius, a man who led the local synagogue, approaches Jesus. We cannot help but see that in contrast to other religious leaders and other religious crowds, these are people flocking to Jesus and his teachings.

Jarius tells Jesus that his daughter is urgently in need of saving so that she might live again.  Urgency, resurrection, and living again are all very particular and clear words used in this passage.  We cannot but hear, perhaps as Mark's first readers, the parallel with the urgency by which Jesus makes his way to the cross, the death and resurrection which is to take place, and the opportunity we receive to live again.  If we read the Greek here what we discover, in keeping with many scholars, is that his daughter is not sick but dead!  (Joel Marcus, Mark, vol 1, 366)

As Jesus makes his way he is touched by the hemorrhaging woman.  She is aware of being made well, he is aware of the healing, and he tells her that it is her faith that has made her well.  Jesus looks at her.  We are reminded of his looking upon his followers and calling them his new family.  He looks upon her and he calls her daughter.  She becomes family, a follower, a believer, she is able to live life again; but in a new way.

The woman who is healed from her 12 year hemorrhage is paralleled in the new family by the other daughter of 12 years old who is healed and made to live again as well.  Unlike the pouring out of his spirit that takes place with the woman, Jesus' intervention here with the girl is more like the stilling of the storm or the Gerasene demoniac.  Here we see in the midst of the room, mourners cast out, death in power, a God of creation at work remaking the world.  Death is vanquished with powerful words and she rises.  (Marcus, 372)

This story is about Jesus' power and his authority.  It makes real his teaching that God is at work in the world and the reign of God is at hand. These works of power are creating, perhaps recreating, the family of God. While it is true that in the very next chapter Jesus is going to be rejected because of this work, we the readers and hearers of this Gospel lesson are perhaps set in a mindset of amazement at the power of God to make all things, all people, even myself, new.

As I ponder these things I have in my minds eye the congregation that will sit before me as I preach. I am mindful of my own self presented before these texts.  I am aware that Jarius sits before me.  He sits in the pew and he is hoping God will save his daughter; save her from drugs, or alcohol, perhaps depression.  He is sitting there and he is praying.  The hemorrhaging woman is sitting there praying for deliverance from her physical ailing; her cancer, or her auto immune disorder, her pain.  There will be people there who have lost their children, their parents, their brothers and sisters.  I will be there with my own pains and desires for healing. I will be there with those things I have done which I am sorry for. I will be there with those things which I have not done and am sorry for. I will be there with my failings and my fear.  We will all be there; the wounded and wounding brothers and sisters of Jesus.

It is an opportunity to be reminded that Jesus loves us and is with us in our suffering and in our wounding.  That God is with us and that this story is about a God who loves and whose mercy is sure and steadfast. This is a story about a powerful God - yes. It is also a story of a loving God.  As Dr. Paul Zahl puts it, this is a story about a God with one way love.  Powerful, forgiving, healing, resurrecting love.  This is a story about a God who looks at us as we reach out to him and calls us brother and sister. This is a story about a God who offers himself for the recreation of our lives in this world and the next. 

In a conversation with Canon Kai Ryan we began to play with the ideas of who is part of this unfolding kingdom? We imagine that Jarius' daughter is worthy because of Jarius and that by the world's standards the woman with the hemorrhage is not worthy. Jesus is very much about making both worthy in the kingdom of God. This is true as we hold this passage up and turn it in our minds eye. But what is also true is that we see, we come to this passage from our own world's perspective. In other words we preach it from this view of worthiness. What struck us both is something similar to what Walter Brueggeman says about prophetic imagination...we don't often make the kingdom's story compelling. So, instead of coming at this from a binary perspective what does it look like to come to the text from a non binary unitive kingdom perspective? What does it mean to see that the reign of God is all encompassing and that she was worthy all along. How do we tell the story from a kind of Jesus perspective that sees not judgment for one and not the other, or scapegoats the world's perspective but instead proclaims a kingdom worth living in?

If we think about this regarding our own story in this country, we can see clearly that some people get access to this or that, or Jesus, and some people do not. People of means have power to get Jesus to come to them...think of that for a moment. People without have to hope to touch the hem of his garment. Both have faith but both don't have access. In one situation Jesus comes to you (Jarius and his daughter) in the other situation you come to Jesus. Both get healed but they are not the same thing at all and both have different meanings in the life of the individuals in the story.

After all, these are short time measures. Remember we are on the Way. The narrative tale of Mark's gospel reminds us quickly that the final deliverance from our sin and physical brokenness is in fact to be redeemed upon the cross.  It is there in the midst of resurrection that the new creation of our lives springs forth. This one way loving, forgiving, and merciful God heals the world's wound.  God is present with us in our sorrow and he turns it to joy.

This week I hope I can offer a gospel of God in Christ Jesus that heals the sin sick soul, and binds up the wounds of the heart, mind and body.  I hope I can preach a Gospel that is worthy and filled with worthiness for Jarius and the unnamed woman. May we all preach and teach a gospel that is healing and filled with grace!  That is what the world is longing to hear.  Yes. I think so. They are longing, as my own soul longs, to hear that God loves them and we are being gathered in as his family.  We are being embraced and held and loved.  We are being gathered in, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters. 

From Psalm 42:

You have turned my mourning into dancing;
you have taken off my sackcloth
and clothed me with joy,
so that my soul^* may praise you and not be silent.
O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you for ever.

2 Corinthians 8:1-15

"The answer just might lie in churches that are begging - begging for the privilege of standing with those in need and applying a holistic gospel to the systems that deprive people of their dignity."

Begging to Give," Bill O'Brien, The Christian Century, 2003.

"...for Christians, equality and justice are measured not only monetarily, but also relationally."

"Pressed into Service," Daniel Harrell, The Christian Century, 2006.

"While this text certainly forces us to think about what we do with our resources and, therefore, should inform our stewardship drives, Paul's passion in this text relates first of all to the gospel."

Commentary, 2 Corinthians 8:7-15, Carla Works, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.


Oremus Online NRSV Text


What happens when people chose to fight over issues of great importance and neglect the mission of the church? We get a letter like the correspondence of Paul to the Corinthians.

It is typical for us to be culture-centric and believe that our problems are more severe than problems of the past. It is easy to believe that they really were not complex people in those days or that they didn’t understand what real difference means. When we do this or say these things what we do is create an argument that allows us to release ourselves from the call of unity in the apostolic age.

There are a lot of problems in the first one hundred years of the church’s infancy. People are arguing about a lot of substantive issues that they feel (I imagine as we feel) are key to the orthodoxy of the faith.

I imagine them saying if you believe this then you are redefining what it means to be a Christ follower. I imagine that they are saying if you follow that person or do these things you cannot call yourself a Christian. And, I believe they are desirous (as all human beings are) to have it their way and to go it alone.

Certainly this is the battle of wills that is essentially driving the correspondence between Paul and the Corinthians. Furthermore, Paul is not only trying to get them to come along he is pointing out in this passage that their using disagreements to release themselves from the shared and unified funding of the church’s mission is not faithful.

Paul is blunt, “Now finish doing it.” Finish raising the funds even if you disagree with the church in Jerusalem or disagree with me…

Paul is clear that the purpose of all that they undertake is the spread of the Gospel and that this work takes money and unity. Regardless of the circumstances and feelings about the wider church people in Corinth are to give. They are to give in accordance with their means, they should be eager and committed to the cause of the Gospel, and they should themselves seek a good balance in their own life helping others while not creating a financial crisis of their own.

Paul is very clear that the Christians, those who claim to follow Jesus, are to give such that people have sufficient to live on and that there are no huge disparities between the wealthy and those without.

2 Samuel 1:1-27

"After the death of Saul, David places himself by this lament as being close to Saul, a natural heir and successor, and from this position he offers fulsome praise of Saul?s prowess in battle, and of his conduct in the face of death. This is in part a generous act when the relationship between the two has been so strained. It is also, however, good politics, offering the best chance for reconciliation and the best chance for a unification of power under David."

2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27, Pentecost 4, 2009, The Old Testament Readings: Weekly Comments on the Revised Common Lectionary, Howard Wallace Audrey Schindler, Morag Logan, Paul Tonson, Lorraine Parkinson, Theological Hall of the Uniting Church, Melbourne, Australia.

"We in the church can model the capacity to grieve and speak of people honestly when we are in those situations."

2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27, Pentecost 4, 2009, Commentary, Background, Insights from Literary Structure, Theological Message, Ways to Present the Text. Anna Grant-Henderson, Uniting Church in Australia.

"The Amalekite messenger thinks the news of the deaths of Saul and Jonathan will be good news to David. He is wrong. This psalm tells us that David feels a deep sense of loss and sorrow because of their deaths. David genuinely grieves over the news he receives."

"What an Amalekite is Dying to Tell David (2 Samuel 1:1-27)," by Robert Deffinbaugh at the Biblical Studies Foundation.


Oremus Online NRSV Text

We skip a bit forward again. Samuel has anointed David King of Israel. Saul has been jealous. If we read straight through we would have seen a constant procession of people making their allegiances to David as the power is shifted in the narrative. David is parading around with a small army and building support among friends and enemies alike. Saul gets paranoid and is becoming weaker. Saul even tries to kill David but fails.

In the end Saul in his final battle chooses suicide. Jonathan too is killed. Though they save Israel there is a great loss. The passage we have is a lament by David over the loss of Saul and Jonathan.

Your glory, O Israel, lies slain upon your high places! How the mighty have fallen! Tell it not in Gath, proclaim it not in the streets of Ashkelon; or the daughters of the Philistines will rejoice, the daughters of the uncircumcised will exult.You mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew or rain upon you, nor bounteous fields! For there the shield of the mighty was defiled, the shield of Saul, anointed with oil no more. From the blood of the slain, from the fat of the mighty, the bow of Jonathan did not turn back, nor the sword of Saul return empty. Saul and Jonathan, beloved and lovely! In life and in death they were not divided; they were swifter than eagles, they were stronger than lions. O daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed you with crimson, in luxury, who put ornaments of gold on your apparel. How the mighty have fallen in the midst of the battle! Jonathan lies slain upon your high places. I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; greatly beloved were you to me; your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women. How the mighty have fallen, and the weapons of war perished!

Deep within this text is an important theme of understanding who I am, who you are, who David was, Saul, Jonathan...all of the - all of the - people. Who am I? We often remember Moses' question to the burning bush: who are you?...we forget that his second question is: who am I? (Exodus 3) Once we have some notion of who this God is we reframe the question.  If you are this God...then whom I? Moses of course wants to know who is he that he should go and how can I be victorious? God says of course, "I am," or "I am who I am", and you will be victorious because, "I am with you." But God does not answer the middle question, the reflective question, "who am I?"

Moses answers the question for himself saying he is unworthy. Isaiah says he has unclean lips. Jeremiah says he doesn't know what to say, he cannot speak. Rabbi Sacks writes:

Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik called this a covenant of fate, brit goral. It lies at the heart of Jewish identity to this day. There are Jews who believe and those who don’t. There are Jews who practise and those who don’t. But there are few Jews indeed who, when their people are suffering, can walk away saying, This has nothing to do with me. 

Maimonides, who defines this as “separating yourself from the community” (poresh mi-darkhei ha-tsibbur, Hilkhot Teshuva 3: 11), says that it is one of the sins for which you are denied a share in the world to come. This is what the Hagaddah means when it says of the wicked son that “because he excludes himself from the collective, he denies a fundamental principle of faith.” What fundamental principle of faith? Faith in the collective fate and destiny of the Jewish people. (Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, http://rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation-5772-shemot-who-am-i.) 

In this great moment when David is giving voice to the lament over Israel he is making a proclamation: I am David, I am distressed for you. David in this moment reminds us that we are intimately connected one to another. Even though Saul tried to kill him, he loved him as family. God is who God is, and we are God's. This individual piece is true, but the greater truth in David's lament is that we are forever united to the community around us. We cannot separate ourselves out from the creation or from God's created people.

Here too then we hear the words of echoing through the Gospels about who this Jesus is... And, his own words to his friends, "Who do you say that I am?" The answer is that he is God who is with us. And, that this God who is with us, with our brothers and sisters, with our neighbor and our enemy, is a God whose community we cannot walk away from. We do not separate ourselves from the lowly, the oppressor, the victim, the rich or poor, the community is our concern because we are God's. We lament and prophesy, we feed and free, we live and have our being within the great relationship between God and humanity. There is no isolation.

When Paul writes in Romans 4,  in Galatians and Ephesians that we are Abrahams heirs. In becoming Abraham's heirs then one of the sins that is not given to us it the ability to shirk our responsibility for the wider community. We cannot shake lose who we are, whose we are, and who others are. We cannot walk away from those who suffer.



Wisdom of Solomon 1:13-2:24

Oremus NRSV Text

This is a passage about immortality and the notion that humanity is meant for it. Death comes into the world when Cain kills Abel. It is part of the memetic sibling rivalry that has perpetuated itself throughout the world. God, having not created it, does not delight in this invention. There is indeed death at old age but even this is not meant to be our end. We are designed to be with God in this world and the next.

For those who do not believe, who do not walk with God and are not God fearers, they make a kind of deal - die with the most toys. All is chance and all is fate.

For we were born by mere chance,
and hereafter we shall be as though we had never been,
for the breath in our nostrils is smoke,
and reason is a spark kindled by the beating of our hearts;
when it is extinguished, the body will turn to ashes,
and the spirit will dissolve like empty air.
Our name will be forgotten in time,
and no one will remember our works;
our life will pass away like the traces of a cloud,
and be scattered like mist
that is chased by the rays of the sun
and overcome by its heat. 

This was Sir Isaac Newton's greatest fear - that the science of the universe be an uncaring godless and cold place left to the fates.

For our allotted time is the passing of a shadow,
and there is no return from our death,
because it is sealed up and no one turns back. 

Newton writes, "[God] is omnipresent. In him are all things contained and moved; yet neither affects the other; God suffers nothing from the motion of bodies." He also wrote at the end of Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (London, 1687), "This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of His dominion He is wont to be called Lord God.” For Newton God is constantly watching over his creation though God is not tied down by it.

The author of our passage does not have any such hope for the philosophy of the fatalist and athiest. The one who is not a God fearer sees only emptiness and a non carrying universe. This passage offers an almost epicurean philosophy to such a non believer's life. It is filled with good things but if there is a God it is distant. Moreover, they are not even good to those who share their lot - their neighbor and common human.

‘Come, therefore, let us enjoy the good things that exist,
and make use of the creation to the full as in youth.
Let us take our fill of costly wine and perfumes,
and let no flower of spring pass us by.
Let us crown ourselves with rosebuds before they wither.
Let none of us fail to share in our revelry;
everywhere let us leave signs of enjoyment,
because this is our portion, and this our lot.
Let us oppress the righteous poor man;
let us not spare the widow
or regard the grey hairs of the aged.
But let our might be our law of right,
for what is weak proves itself to be useless. 

We though, who have life and faith, who see that we are meant for more than this life and believe in immortality see unity with God at our life's end.

Lutheran pastor and author Clint Schnekloth writes:

It compares the unrighteous, who summoned death (1:16), to the righteous one who overcomes death (2:12-22). This is a Jesus text before there was a Jesus. It sounds like a Hellenistic version of Isaiah. “He professes to have knowledge of God, and calls himself a child of the Lord” (2:13).

This passage is a great play on the notion that God may desire something else out of those with faith. In other words don't get too stuck on immortality. Yes we are meant for life. But the passage in reverse implies life lived differently for the ones who have accepted this notion of immortality. Here is what I  mean by this.

Because we see life as continuing and filled with joy we understand a purposefulness to life  - not mere chance. We live a life of the Holy Spirit. And, so we not only see ourselves marked for eternity but we see others marked as well. They may not chose to live this way...but we see them as people who have a larger purpose than managing their calendars and diaries in this world. They are called like us and invited like us to an eternal life. We then see life as opportunity and likewise we believe for the non God fearer there is an opportunity too.

Yes, we will enjoy life, but instead of crowning ourselves let us crown one another. Let us share what we have that others may have. Let us leave more than signs of having lived, let us leave signs of having made a difference. Let us leave signs of having changed people's lives. Let us raise up the poor man, let us help the widow, let us care and visit the aged. Let us not use might as the wicked do but instead let us use love. As Christ dies weak upon the cross, let us take up our cross and show that in laying down our lives others may in fact gain life. In serving another, in helping, in not overpowering or killing, we see great purpose. (Wisdom 2:6-11)

Because we have been given life and life eternal, let us wait for the righteous, and let us support them. Let us in fact support those who have not yet come to believe. Instead of accusing the seeker let us come to their aid. Let us help others to see how a life of service transforms one's character. Let us embrace the unclean, as Jesus does. Let us not put God to the test nor the ones who do not yet believe. Instead let us support them. Instead of condemning them to death, let us discover in the unbeliever their own eternal life so that they may come to see it themselves. Let us walk the Way of Jesus and show those who have not yet heard of it how it goes. Let us become pilgrims together instead of seeking out each other's early death. (Wisdom 2:12-20)

I think with a little art this could be a great sermon. Don't simply preach on what the text says, preach on what the text implies for the one who has accepted life in Jesus.

Trinity Sunday Year B, May 26, 2024

Prayer

Nicodemus by Henry Tanner, 1899

O God Most High, in the waters of baptism you made us your sons and daughters in Christ, your only-begotten Son.  Hear deep within us the cry of that Spirit, who calls out to you "Abba, Father,"  and grant that, obedient to your savior's commission, we may become heralds of the salvation you offer to all and go forth to make disciples of all nations. 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 John 3:1-17

"All are included, even God's enemies. God did not come to condemn, but to save. As Martin Niemoller once put it, 'It took me a long time to realize that not only did God not hate my enemies, he didn't even hate his enemies.'"

Lectionary Blogging, Trinity B, John Petty, 2012.

"What is crucial in our proclamation is the reality of God's activity in Jesus, God's only Son, sent and given for the sake of the salvation of the world. Only through the awakening of belief through the Spirit can this be known."

Commentary, John 3:1-17, Ginger Barfield, WorkingPreacher.org, 2015

"When we become too sure of what we know about Jesus (or indeed the Trinity on this particular Sunday), when we believe that we have grasped him at last, that is when we can perhaps expect to be undone like Nicodemus."

Commentary, John 3:1-17, Meda Stamper, WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.

Oremus Online NRSV Text

Let me begin by saying how much I love this story and enjoy Nicodemus.  A pharisee, a righteous liver, he comes to Jesus and sits and has a conversation with him.  The early church thought this was about entrapment.  Maybe it was.  Regardless, there is deep wisdom in this passage and important thoughts for the follower of Jesus today.

First, let us begin in the beginning.  Nicodemus says that he believes that Jesus is from God.  He literally says, "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God."  But this meaning in English is better understood as "you are a teacher approved by God."  Jesus then corrects him saying, "no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above." Often times we immediately go to the importance of this phrase in light of our one understanding of baptism.  (We will get there.)  But this is really a message to Nicodemus that Jesus is not himself just another prophet approved by God, but is directly from God, of God.

 Nicodemus does not understand and thinks Jesus is speaking about people. So he asks about being born of God.  Jesus answers in the language of the first century which held a mix of understanding that God was in you and/or that God adopted you as an individual. This language is very clear in the Pauline letters; and, I should say very important language in the Christian Faith.  Though theological in nature these notions are not applied to Jesus directly as he is one with the Father.  (Raymond Brown, John, vol 1, 138ff)

Raymond Brown argues that there is also enough language of adoption in the OT that Nicodemus as a righteous pharisee would have been able to understand that Jesus was offering a vision that the gathering at the end of times was at work in the world through Jesus' own ministry. (140)   There is a notion here that the Holy Spirit of God is begetting, if you will, new members of God's family.  In a time when birth had significant meaning to your culture, context, and religion, this is a radical all embracing notion.  Just as today for the righteous it is difficult to wrestle with God's all embracing drawing in of sinners.  This is a beautiful and mysterious thing.  We are not as human beings able to understand and fathom the depths of God fully and so this Holy Spirit begetting is strange.  Jesus says, ‘You must be born from above.’8The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” (vs 8, see also Eccles 11.5 "As you do not know how the spirit (wind) comes to the bones in the womb, so you do not know the work of God who does all things.")

This passage also has profound meaning for the Christian community within the context of baptism.  For the first Christians this is about God and the family of God.  It is about being born of water and spirit. It is about the ritual of Christian initiation.  It is important to note that this is completely foreign to the pharisee sitting before Jesus. Nicodemus might have understood baptism as a cleansing or ritual bathing.  Or, he could have understood this baptism or rebirth like the "proselyte" baptism of his own day where a person becoming a Jew went through a ceremony of new birth - literally a rebirthing.  Neither of these are Holy Spirit baptism. (142)  This is a hotly debated topic and can send us off into all kinds of scenarios.  Let me simply say that for the purpose of our reflection, the church has understood this as the necessary form of the sacrament of baptism in order to be reborn and that the stronger pieces of scripture to support this sacrament are found elsewhere and not here.

What is important, what is amazing, is again this notion of grace given by the Holy Spirit.  The idea so very difficult for Nicodemus is that being physically born into the family of Abraham, and following the law as a good pharisee, is not what matters in the end. Rather, the radical notion that the family of Abraham is being increased by the begetting work of the Holy Spirit!  Moreover, that the begetting Holy Spirit is falling on people who do not follow the law like good Nicodemus.  That is trouble for Nicodemus indeed!  For at the end of the day I think Nicodemus like us (when we are honest) is a score keeper. He has a good score.  He is born special and separate, and he has spent a life separating himself even more through his piety.

In the dark night of our souls when we come to Jesus what are we inviting him to bless?  Our score? Our piety? Our actions?  Our work of justice? Our right living?  What are we inviting Jesus to curse?  In the dark night when we sit at Jesus' feet what does he offer us? He offers us freedom from keeping score, keeping score on others; but most importantly keeping score on ourselves. 

Next comes the important part of the passage:  "If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man."  The message here is one of the resurrected Lord.  Jesus will be raised, the Son of Man, will be raised and this will undo the power of the law over us.  Jesus' resurrection and ascension will unify man with God in a new way and in so doing will unplug our score board. He will wipe clean the slate.  In the ascension, in his return to the holy community of God (the Trinity) he does so without any human effort. He does so without having asked our permission. He does so even though he is crucified. He does so purely as a measure of grace for the righteous and the sinner alike.

I believe he offers us grace.  I believe he offers us grace to imagine the family of God as God sees it and to imagine the reality of our personal invitation to participate.  Will we follow this Jesus? This Jesus of grace? This loving Jesus?  Who is raised from the dead and ascends into heaven and unites us into the heavenly community?  Will we follow him when he says:

“God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him."

Romans 8:12-25

"...the preacher will do well to bring up the fact that there is feminine, indeed maternal, imagery for God in the Bible also (Deuteronomy 32:18; Isaiah 42:14; 49:15; 66:13). That imagery is also used to speak of God in an intimate way, not to define God by gender."

Commentary, Romans 8:12-17, Arland J. Hultgren, WorkingPreacher.org, 2015.

"It is interesting that Paul, writing to what was probably a predominantly male audience, would have invoked the imagery of a pain that has never been felt by males."

"Labor Pains," Alyce M McKenzie, Edgy Exegesis, 2014.

"Even self assurance is not based on fetching the certificate of membership or recalling an even of the the past, but a sense of oneness or otherwise with the being of God the Spirit moving within our lives (8:16)."

"First Thoughts on Year A Epistle Passages in the Lectionary," Pentecost 6, William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.

Oremus Online NRSV Text

We continue our reading in Paul's Romans and we continue as he reminds us that our desires are not the desires of God and so we grate against God's pull upon us. We are ego centered creatures. At our worst we have very little room for anyone else.

But the life of the follower of Jesus is not hallmarked by feeding these personal desires and wishes but instead by overcoming our brokenness to work on God's work. We are to press forward dealing with our own sins and thus building up the character of God within us. In other words those things that are in us, which we do but do not wish to do, which are bad for ourselves or others are the very things that build us up into the character of Christ as we work on them. So it is that we groan we suffer we carry our cross - but we are not condemned.

We have hope. We know that while we still labor the final battle is won. We know that while we chose to labor because of God's grace that we do so out of a great sense of wanting to life a life within God's Spirit. Yet we hope. We hope on our good days and we hope on our bad days. 

This hope of God's winning victory is what pulls us forward. Knowing that death and sin have met their match and God has been victorious sealing for us eternal life allows us to continue to live as "children of God." Knowing that we are heirs, that we are given as intimate relationship with God as Jesus had himself - we are able to apply ourselves tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. 

We are freed from hopelessness. We are freed from bondage to sin and death which kept us from hope.

It is here in this reception of grace, forgiveness, and love from God that we discover hope for ourselves, hope for our lives, hope for our relationships, and hope for our church. 

So let us awake! Let us see that God has won the day. Let us see that in the end sin and death are conquered and let us chose to work on ourselves that we might ever more grow into the character of Christ. For we are one with God, we are his children, and his heirs.

Isaiah 6:1-8

"Such spilling of divine secrets amounts to a paradoxical intervention, when straightforward communication has failed, an intervention designed to goad listeners into hearing."

Commentary, Isaiah 6:1-8, Patricia Tull, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2015.

"The Isaiah reading anchors our vision of the Trinity with Isaiah's, set on the Lord of hosts and the throne of vast and awesome might."

Commentary, Isaiah 6:1-8, Melinda Quivik, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.

"We are sent to join God in mission because we have encountered God, because we have been brought face to face with God's holiness and our brokenness, and because we have been made whole by God's grace."

"Worship that Sends," Patrick Johnson, Missional Preaching: Equipping for Witness, 2015.

Oremus Online NRSV Text

John's gospel understands that Isaiah is a witness to the divinity of Christ. Isaiah is the voice crying out in the wilderness (John 1.23). Then again in 53.1 and 6.10, John uses Isaiah again to reveal that Jesus is fulfilling prophesy. (Richard Hays, Echoes of the Scripture in the Gospels, 293.)

This is all very important because what Christian biblical theologians argue is that Isaiah, when he has this vision (the one from today's lesson) he is not simply seeing God on the throne, but he is seeing the incarnation, the Christ, on the throne. Hays argues that this is John's view too and this is why it is so important for him to enlist Isaiah as a witness to God in Christ Jesus. (Hays, 289.) This a witness to the triadic nature of God and the eternal presence of the incarnation. (Hays would say Jesus...but I think that is theologically incorrect.)

This is an important reading of scripture because it is both triune and it begins to reveal how the first evangelists and followers of Jesus understood who Jesus was without a New Testament.

One of the real issues on Trinity Sunday is not so much the Trinity, but our lack of good theological and scriptural underpinning.

What I am saying here is quite important, at least to my theology and understanding of the creation. People often suggest that the Trinity is a mere mystery planted into theology because of early Christian infighting over the idea of who Jesus was and the deep desire to not appear anything other than monotheist. Secondly, we err on the side of believing that the incarnation begins with Jesus' birth - which it decidedly does not...if you are a true Trinitarian that is. And, lastly we make the mistake of believing that the only reason that Jesus comes into the world is because of sin. That is hogwash too. You see most people get a good understanding of Augustine trinitarian doctrine and don't go any further. Without doing so what we get is the heresy of modalism...another words...as Augustine says himself: the trinity is really about describing three somethings. (Augustine, De Trinitate 7.9 (CCSL, 50A:259).

The Trinity's work is part of the very creation of the cosmos. It is present before the birth of Jesus and after. The 1 in 3 and 3 in 1 God is fully active prior to our imagining and will be long after our ingathering. There is one will causing all actions and one substance.

I think that Robert Farrar Capon puts a fun and quite theologically brilliant spin on all of this as he reminds us of the contribution of the early Scotists and Franciscan theologians - good trinitarians all. I offer you this quote from his book The Third Peacock...well worth the read. Enjoy:

In the Christian scheme of things, the ultimate act by which God runs and rescues creation is the Incarnation. Sent by the Father and conceived by the Spirit, the eternal Word is born of the Virgin Mary and, in the mystery of the indwelling, lives, dies, rises, and reigns. Unfortunately, however, we tend to look on the mystery mechanically. We view it as a fairly straight piece of repairwork which became necessary because of sin. Synopsis: The world gets out of whack; perverse and foolish oft it strays until there is none good, no, not one. Enter therefore God with incarnational tool kit. He fixes up a new Adam in Jesus and then proposes, through the mystery of baptism, to pick up all the fallen members of the old Adam and graft them into Christ. Real twister of an ending: As a result of sin, man ends up higher by redemption than he would have by creation alone.

However venerable that interpretation is, though, it is not the only one. As long ago as the Middle Ages, the Scotist school of Franciscan theologians suggested another. They raised the question of whether the Incarnation would have occurred apart from sen; and they answered it, Yes. In other words, they saw the action of God in Christ, not as an incidental patching of the fabric of creation, but as part of its very texture. For our purposes—in this context of a world run by desire for God—that opens up the possibility that the Word in Jesus was not so much doing bits of busy work to jimmy things into line as he was being his own fetching self right there in the midst of creation.
And there you have the bridge from a mechanical to a personal analogy to the divine help. When we say that a friend “helped” us, two meanings are possible. In the case where our need was for a Band-Aid, a gallon of gas or a push on a cold morning, we have in mind mechanical help; help for times when help was at least possible. But when nothing can be helped, when the dead are irretrievably dead and the beloved lost for good, what do we mean by telling Harry how much help he was to us in our need? He did nothing; he rescued no one from the pit, he brought no one back from the ends of the earth. Still, we are glad of him; we protest that without him we would never have made it. Yet we know perfectly well we could have gotten through it just by breathing in and out. That means, therefore, that what we thank him for is precisely personal help. It was his presence, not the things that he did, that made the difference.

So with God, perhaps. Might not Incarnation be his response, not to the incidental irregularity of sin, but to the unhelpable presence of badness in creation? Perhaps in a world where, for admittedly inscrutable reasons, victimization is the reverse of the coin of being, his help consists of his presence in all victims. At any rate, when he finally does show up in Jesus, that is how it seems to work. His much-heralded coming to put all things to rights ends badly. When the invisible hand that holds the stars finally does its triumphant restoring thing, it does nothing at all but hang there and bleed. That may well be help; but it is not the Band-Aid creation expected on the basis of mechanical analogies. The only way it makes any sense is when it is seen as personal: When we are helpless, there he is. He doesn’t start your stalled car for you; he comes and sits with you in the snowbank. You can object that he should have made a world in which cars don’t stall; but you can’t complain he doesn’t stick by his customers.

So, back to Isaiah. Now, did Isaiah catch a glimpse of God in Christ, the Incarnation, sitting upon the thrown? A man with arms and legs? A pre-Jesus. I doubt it but I do not know. But I believe that Isaiah understood clearly that the God who gave him the sight of such a vision was the God who had created the cosmos and would in the end gather us in. It is God, the Lord, who is present at our coming in and our going out. It is this God who, in the wreck of Israel and the end of King Uzziah's rule, is present. Everything can be in the dumps but the Lord sits upon his throne and sits by our side. 

And, it is this certainty of presence that Isaiah bears witness to, that the first disciples experienced both before and after the resurrection, and it is this certainty of presence that John the evangelist records in his Gospel.

Sermons Preached on this Passage

Everyone Needs a Place, May 27, 2018- Trinity Sunday, Trinity, Galveston

The first Sunday after Pentecost, Year BHappy Days #77: The Book of Records

Jun 5, 2012, Sermon preached at St. Stephens and Hope Houston, Trinity Sunday, Year B, 2012; with a shout out to my Mom and her new phone!


Living the Divine Trinity is Living Ministry

Jun 9, 2015, Sermon preached at St. Thomas Houston, Trinity Sunday, 2015

Proper 26A/Ordinary 31A/Pentecost +22 October 25, 2020

Prayer

#growrule     ssje.org/growrule

Reveal to us the beauty of your image in each of our brothers and sisters, so that, respecting every person as our equal in your sight, we may show not only in words but in deeds that we are disciples of one Master, Jesus Christ, your Son.

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

Some Thoughts: Matthew 22:34-46

"To what extent their positions were shaped by the social and economic status of their members, and to what extent those positions stem from particular readings of Torah, we can never know for certain. Suffice it to say that we heirs of Matthew's community soon adopted the culturally more comfortable view that this text is opposing."
Commentary, Matthew 23:1-12, Sharon H. Ringe, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2011.

"...focus on the core issue of waiting and admit, quite frankly, that the kind of waiting Matthew is encouraging through this parable is hard. Waiting for something way over due, waiting for something you're not sure will even come, waiting that involves active preparation when you're not even sure what you should be preparing for. That kind of waiting is challenging."
"Hope and Help for Foolish Bridesmaids," David Lose, ...in the meantime, 2014.

Oremus Online NRSV Text

We continue our "dialogue" with the religious authorities of Jesus' day in this passage.  I pause here again to warn the preacher to be careful to remember our Abrahamic family and our healthy relationship with our Jewish brothers and sisters.  Words can easily be used to create a division between us and can even more easily lead to continued hatred.  Furthermore, historically we need to recognize that while Jesus is speaking to these groups; these groups really are the leaders and religious authorities of Matthew's time - some 40 years later.  

Leaning into the text we tease out Jesus' important teaching.  Honoring the role of the religious teacher he tells the people to clearly hear the words and teachings about God.  One can imagine these teaching are about the importance of life lived in God and how the body itself, animated by the soul, is for encountering God as is all of domestic life.  Teachings that would have been normative in the tradition of the day.  That being said though Jesus then offers a very clear distinction between listening and acting.  

A rule for Christian community is being laid out before us; so don't get hung up on the foil of leadership being used.  The message is clearly for us.  The message is for those who hear Jesus' teaching. The message is for those who wish to follow Jesus and live in a community of disciples. 

Disciples of Jesus are to listen and follow the Gospel imperatives.  We are not to be a people who are more interested in getting others to follow while we remain hypocrites of our own teaching.  It is this very real piece that seems to me to be of the utmost to Matthew as it is certainly repeated in different ways throughout the Gospel.  Transformation begins with the individual in relationship to God in Christ and it is the transformed life lived (not hypocritically avoided) that is the most powerful witness to the Gospel -the Good News of Jesus.

4They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. 5They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long. 6They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, 7and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi. 8But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. 9And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven. 10Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. 11The greatest among you will be your servant. 12All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.

We cannot read this passage without understanding that we are to be transformed by our relationship with God. Our bodily, physical, spiritual, soulful encounter with God. That we are to have as intimate a relationship with God as Jesus did; who called him Father.  That we are to have only one teacher and that is the Messiah - Jesus Christ. And, we are to act out his teaching. We are in the words of C.S. Lewis to become little Christ's in the world - so intimately tied are we to the Godhead. Our wills and our lives are to be shaped and informed by our relationship with God in Christ.

In Lauren F. Winner's book Mudhouse Sabbath she talks about the ancient sabbath rule that a blind man is not to light a candle on the sabbath.  One wonders, she muses, why a blind man would need to light a candle.  She then goes on to relate a story about a rabbi who walking down the street in the evening comes upon a blind man making his way with a torch through the night. He stops and asks him why he is doing this (with the assumption perhaps we all make which is he needs no light).  The blind man says, it is so that others will see me.

It is funny how what you are reading engages a conversation in your heart and mind with the scripture for the week. As I read that I thought of this Sunday's passage and the reality that the light of Christ so burns inside of us that when we are attentive to our own transformation; when we polish the lens of our own spiritually disciplined life the light of God shines more brightly about us. 


Chris Webb of Renovare reminded us at a clergy conference long ago that outreach and service always flows out of our relationship with God and it's health and vitality.  So too does Jesus caution. It will not be the phylacteries and fringes we wear, it will not be where we sit, or our titles of ministry that will reveal the Son of Man to the world. Rather it will be our deep relationship to him which in turn creates in us a servants heart enacting Christ's work in the world around us.

What a brightly burning torch would burn should our episcopal church family take up the challenge for renewed relationship with Jesus. 

Some Thoughts: 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

"We all long to hear a good word: a word that brings good news, a word that can sustain us, a word that can give us the vision and courage to make it through another day, a word that tells us God is with us."
Commentary, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, Holly Hearon, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2011.

"At the same time that Paul offers this extraordinary vision of consolation, he locates the act of consolation within the community as an ongoing (present imperative) expression of hope."

Commentary, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, Karoline Lewis, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2008.

Oremus Online NRSV Text

Paul is clearly in didactic mode! He is trying to convey to his readers that there is a god word here. That there is hope in God's promise to be with them always even to the end of the ages - as Matthew says. And, there is hope in God's promise that he will return. While those who sleep wait, those who live have one another for comfort and to inspire hope in one another.

In a world of strife, injustice, fear, and anxiety about the future, Paul's good word for his readers in the first century can be a good word for us. It can provide for us a sense that we too are not alone. We have one another, the community, and in fact we have God. A God who will not in the end leave things the way they are but is even now working God's purposes out. God will return and we will return into God. 

When I think of this passage I am reminded of this piece from the former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams who said during a lecture at Lincoln Cathedral where he looked at how modern day society looks at understanding, remembering and wanting things, and how the Church can turn this outwards into faith, hope and love.

Hope, when it comes to birth, is not just a confidence that there is a future for us, it's also a confidence that there's a continuity so that the future is related to the same truth and living reality as the past and the present. Hope is again hope in relation; relation to that which does not go away and abandon, relation to a reality which knows and sees and holds who we are. You have an identity because you have a witness of who you are. What you don't understand or see, the bits of yourself you can't pull together in a convincing story are all held in a single gaze of love. You don't have to work out and finalise who you are and who you have been; you don't have to settle the absolute truth of your history or story; because in the eyes of the presence which does not go away, all that you have been and are is still present and real; it is held together in that unifying gaze as if you were to see a pile of apparently disparate, disconnected bits suddenly revealed as being held together by a string, twitched by the divine observer, the divine witness.

That's very abstract but it's put much more vividly and personally in an extraordinary poem written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great German theologian and martyr. It's a poem written when he was in prison for his share in the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Bonhoeffer writes, '... they tell me I step out into the prison yard like a squire going to walk around his estate'. (Bonhoeffer was a man of rather aristocratic background and bearing.) And the poem is about the great gulf between what 'they' see – a confident, adult, rational, prayerful, faithful, courageous person – and what he knows is going on inside; the weakness and the loss and the inner whimpering and dread. 'So which is me?' Bonhoeffer asks. Is it the person that they see or the person that I know when I'm on my own with myself? And his answer is surprising and blunt: 'I haven't got a clue; God has got to settle that. I don't have to decide if I'm really brave or really cowardly, whether I'm really confident or really frightened, or both. Who I am, is in the hands of God.' And that, I would say is the hope that St John of the Cross might be talking about. It goes beyond the assumption that I am only what I see or know. It tells me that I am more than I realize, in the eyes of God, for good or ill. It tells me to hope in 'what is unseen' (a good biblical phrase) and to hope in the one who doesn't need to be told about how human beings work because he knows the human heart (John 2.25). (Williams, Rowan. “Article.” Faith, Hope and Charity in Tomorrow's World, Lambeth Palace, 6 Mar. 2010, rowanwilliams.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/584/faith-hope-and-charity-in-tomorrows-world.)

Some Thoughts: Joshua 24:1-25

"Bondage to a lie, or freedom's integrity."

Commentary, Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18, Anathea Portier-Young, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.

"The verb 'serve' is evocative in these verses. 'Serve' can mean 'worship' or it can mean 'show loyalty toward,' or, as v. 24 notes, it can also mean 'obey.'"

Commentary, Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25, Ralph W. Klein, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2008.

Oremus Online NRSV Text

God, the Holy and undivided Trinity, is at work throughout the sacred history of the old and the New Testaments. This is something that I have learned. The hermeneutical principle of mission combined with the belief that the same God is working through the people of Israel and their story as is working in the life of the disciples and fellowship of Jesus - is the only footing for the Christian preacher.

The Gospel evangelists themselves believe this and in so doing tie the very words of Joshua 24:1-25 into our understanding of the vocation of God and the call of Jesus.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks speaks of this passage as the great transition between Moses and Joshua. Moses has set his eye on the furthest horizon and concludes the Torah with both prophecy and the last commandments. Sacks writes:

It would not be easy. With his prophetic eye turned to the furthermost horizon of the future, Moses had been warning the people throughout Devarim that the real dangers would be the ones they least suspected. They would not be war or famine or poverty or natural disaster. They would be ease and affluence and freedom and prosperity.

That is when a nation is in danger of forgetting its past and its mission. It becomes complacent; it may become corrupt. The rich neglect the poor. Those in power afflict the powerless. The people begin to think that what they have achieved, they achieved for and by themselves. They forget their dependence on G-d. At the very height of its powers, Israelite society would develop fault-lines that would eventually lead to disaster. (Deut. 31: 10-13) (Sacks, Jonathan. “Nitzavim-Vayelich (5770) - Covenantal Politics.” Rabbi Sacks, Office of Rabbi Sacks, 4 Apr. 2016, rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation-5770-nitzavim-vayelich-covenantal-politics/)

Joshua in this moment, in chapter 24, is doing exactly what Moses did and is calling the people to remember both their purpose, their mission, and their commitment. He is reminding them that the God to whom they are yoked in love is a God who freed them. A God who freed them to be a blessing to the whole of creation. They are to be a different kind of people. A people who serve God by being and enacting a different kind of society.

In effect, Joshua is offering them freedom to walk away from God and their covenant with God.

It is the same with the evangelists of the New Testament. They, like Joshua, narrate God's mighty acts in the person of Jesus. They enumerate God's grace. And, like all the history of Israel, the Evangelists remind us who chose to follow this Christ that we are called to remember that we too are to be a blessing of peace - a blessing of shalom to the world. We are called into a particular community that is to remember the poor, to raise up the powerless, to share what they have achieved, and to never forget the God who loves and offers freedom so that all may be united in one living body. It is not so much that the Gospel reflects or copies the speech of Joshua in this chapter, or the speech of Moses before him. No. It is that the speeches of Moses and Joshua are given by the power of the Holy Spirit and they are a living word to be incarnated in the people who have a relationship with God.