Advent 3, Year A December 11, 2022

Prayer

Give us strength for witnessing, that we may go and tell others what we see and hear. Give us patience for waiting, until the precious harvest of your kingdom, when the return of your Son will make your saving work complete. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever. Amen.

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

Some Thoughts on Matthew 11:2-11

"The undercurrent of the entire text is the difference between people's expectations, even John's, and the reality of who Jesus was and the actual character of his ministry."

Commentary, Matthew 11:2-11, Advent 3A, Ben Witherington, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2010.

"The challenge for us in Advent is to allow Jesus to restore our senses, to have him open our eyes and ears so that we can go and tell others what we hear and see."

"Hear and See," Blogging Toward Sunday, Erin Martin, Theolog: The Blog of The Christian Century, 2007.

"...tell John about change and transformation in people?s lives. That is what we are here for and that is what excites us. Spiritualities excited by anything else (like the magic of miracles, like overcoming the enemies of God by judgment, like getting all the rules right) miss the point."

"First Thoughts on Year A Gospel Passages in the Lectionary: Advent 3," William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.

Oremus Online NRSV Gospel Text

We have skipped to the end of the second major section of the Gospel of Matthew in order to continue with the theme of John the Baptist and his relationship with Jesus. While our reading for today does not include the whole pericope it is important to note that Jesus has been offering his missiology, his missionary vision for the reign of God. The framework of Jesus’ teaching was to go to the “lost sheep of Israel.”(10:6) Jesus is giving instruction and continuing the overarching Gospel message that the Word and its proclamation include action. As we saw in last week’s reading the action was repentance: change of heart, mind, and place. Now in the preaching of the reign of God we see action as proclamation of the reign of God, healing, raising, cleansing, and casting out. Jesus has finished giving his orders and he has sent the disciples out to teach and preach – to act out the mission.

It is in this important framework of mission, the word is spreading from city to city, that we arrive at the first verse of today’s Gospel reading. John is in prison. He hears of the work being done. John the Baptist sends his disciples to ask: “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we wait for another?” Most every scholar I read this week showed an interest in how out of sync this question seems to be with the proclamation made by John the Baptist. The pre-modern scholars too ask similar questions. The themes of doubt, disappointment, and disillusionment are present throughout the scholarly wrestling with the text. Perhaps it is a crisis of faith. Maybe it is the narrator’s desire to distance John from Jesus’ ministry. It seems to me though to go too far down this road of inquiry (while biblically fascinating) can lead us to miss Jesus’ answer: “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”

Jesus then continues teaching them and reminds them of the image of the prophet and the message of transformation. He says:

“What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces. What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is the one about whom it is written, ‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.’ Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

Our translation does something interesting here in verse 11. Perhaps you are using a bible that translates it differently too. In the translation by Daniel J. Harrington (Luke, Sacra Pagina, 157) he believes Jesus is saying, “Amen.”  John the Baptist is the greatest prophet of the past, but he remains in the past.

Harrington also writes:

The assessment of John is prefaced by “Amen” – an indicator of special solemnity on Jesus’ part. His saying assumes that John does not participate in the kingdom of heaven, that is, he belongs to a different stage in the history of salvation (see Luke 16:16 [The Law and the Prophets were proclaimed until the time of John] for a similar schema). John may be the greatest figure of the past. But from Jesus’ perspective he belonged to another age.

As I meditated on this passage this week I wondered what age has passed for our church. I too think it is the age of prophecy. We have for many recent years spent our time prophetically calling the world to change. This era of prophecy was captured best when one political leader remarked the world had changed from the time when the Presiding Bishop was sitting in the Oval Office to a time when the Presiding Bishop was across on the lawn picketing the actions of the Oval Office. To everything, there is a season. John’s question and Jesus’ answer tell us of a season of proclamation and prophetic work that prepared the way for the incarnation. Jesus is saying that season is over, this is the season of incarnation, of the reign of God. Perhaps the challenging message for our congregations today is the message that as communities that have received the prophetic Word, we are to be at work in the world.

You and I are to be in the world and at work in the world incarnating Christ’s love, community, and transformation. It is time for action on behalf of God’s people. It is a time when the church must enter a new age, an age where it is known not for what it says but for what it does.

Some Thoughts on James 5:7-10

"In the light of the story of Job, we return to the passage of James with perhaps a bit more wisdom. Using a language that might sound distant and removed, James asks his addressees to consider God as in charge, as paying attention."
Commentary, James 5:7-10, Advent 3A, Valerie Nicolet-Anderson, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2013.

"So to wait for Christ to come in his fullness is not just a passive thing, a pious, prayerful, churchly thing. On the contrary, to wait for Christ to come in his fullness is above all else to act in Christ's stead as fully as we know how. To wait for Christ is as best we can to be Christ to those who need us to be Christ to them most and to bring them the most we have of Christ's healing and hope because unless we bring it, it may never be brought at all."
"Be Patient," sermon discussion from Frederick Buechner, Frederick Buechner Blog.

"None of what James proposes here is possible through human strength, will or power. The patience and the hope are both grounded in faith, that gift of the Holy Spirit."
Commentary, James 5:7-10, Advent 3A, Dirk G. Lange, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2010.

"...patience is essential to the process of becoming a peacemaker. The premature resolution of conflict usually inflicts some kind of violence on one of the parties involved, by silencing them. The patience to listen, to withhold judgment, to attend to each person's or group's or country's concerns, is a major part of diplomacy..."
Commentary, James 5:7-10, Susan Eastman, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2007.

Oremus Online NRSV Epistle Text

So...what is missing?  In James 5:4-5, just before this we are told that God opposes the arrogant, the oppressive rich, and is interested in the cries of the laborer.  What a great passage! Wow! One has to wonder why we don't read that part on Sunday morning.  

Yet it is important because we don't arrive at our passage today without knowing who it is addressed to and why.  The author is telling those who are poor and oppressed to be patient and faithful.  God is very much the judge - and this is not an abstract judge either.  James believes that God will return as judge and this is out of a deep sense of hope and desire for justice.  God will oppose the wicked and reward the good.  

James says, not unlike the farmer who is patient so the poor and oppressed need to be patient.  He writes, "Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord, is near. Beloved, do not grumble against one another, so that you may not be judged. See, the Judge is standing at the doors! As an example of suffering and patience, beloved, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord."  

Depend upon those who have come before you and their stories to understand the present age of oppression is where our text ends. So...what is missing?  Here at the end of the passage, we are missing the last verse which helps to interpret vs 10.   Specifically, Luke Timothy Johnson and others, believe that this last little bit is a reference to Job from vs 11. (James, LTJ, 1995, p 324)  

Which prophet, which story? Specifically: Job.  Look to his endurance, his faithfulness, and his waiting.  "God rewarded the one who, despite his suffering, stayed loyal to God."  (IBID) So too you must wait and be faithful.



Some Thoughts on Isaiah 35:1-10

"Czech dissident and first post-communist president Václav Havel said it so well: "Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it will turn out.""
Commentary, Isaiah 35:4-7a, Patricia Tull, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2015.

"Isaiah dares to speak a word out of place. A word that refused to wait until things improved."

Commentary, Isaiah 35:1-10, Barbara Lundblad, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2013.

"To preach this passage, then, you will need to exegete not only text but also context. The oracle gives no sure clues as to its own originating context. The contexts it calls you to interpret are your own and those of the people who have called you to preach."

Commentary, Isaiah 35:4-7a, Anathea Portier-Young, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.

"God in Isaiah 35 now promises a new and fresh wilderness, filled with lovely blossoms, rather than jackals and ostriches, ringing with the sounds of joy and singing rather than the hoots and screeches of owls and buzzards."
"The Hope of New Vision," John C. Holbert, Patheos, 2010.

NRSV Old Testament Text

God's garden social imaginary is a creation abundant. In it, there is community and relationship. It rejects sibling rivalry, mimetic desire, and violence as tools to deal with scarcity. In fact, God's narrative rejects scarcity.

In our Isaiah passage, we hear a prophecy that the world will be made new. The people living in the land and in relationship with others. Desert flowers blossoming, alive with creatures, all reflecting the abundance of God.

God is an interested party and will free the people. He will not withhold his hand from the accountability that comes when responsibility is shirked by authorities and those in power.

The passage we are given is the passage that Jesus likely reads in the synagogue. It is a key image of a renewed social imaginary that is proclaimed in word and deed by God in Christ Jesus.

Isaiah cries to the people on God's behalf: "Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp, the grass shall become reeds and rushes. A highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Holy Way."

Truly a way is made in the desert. We know this way because we have been reading about it in Mark's Gospel. This is the way that John the Baptist says is coming, this is the path that Jesus follows, it is the road upon which the disciples are invited to walk. Jesus, in fact, opens the eyes of the blind. The people who can not hear justice hear again as if for the first time. The lame walk. Jesus feeds the people and brings living water to the woman at the well.

Isaiah is, of course, speaking of the imminent return of the people of Israel from the wilderness of Babylon back to their home. He is showing that God has heard their cry and they have suffered long enough. Isaiah, as he will do in chapter 40, is literally bringing comfort to the people.

It is true that we cannot remove the context of violence from the passage. Isaiah and his prophetic school cannot help but suggest that God will bring a violent end to the people's persecutors. This is not the full revelation that Jesus brings as peacemaker. Isaiah can only imagine a world where the lion is no longer there. Instead, we have in Jesus an image of lion and lambs together.

Isaiah does offer something beautiful. The rejection of violence and scapegoating will end - he suggests. The lion and ravenous beast will not be anymore, instead, there will be a people who are redeemed. Rejecting violence, they will sing, and be glad and sorrow will be no more.

As always, we read the text backward with the first and second commandments and Jesus as our hermeneutical lens. This helps us to understand the eagerness of vengeance placed in the mouth of God as merely a human's desire for repetitive violence - a continuation of scapegoating. When we see clearly the greater vision of Isaiah, we not only see revealed in the passage the revelation of Jesus himself who will come and preach the message of peace and healing. We also see the great potential for a society built upon peace and healing that brings joy and gladness into the world.

This is a passage filled with good news for those who need it. It is also a passage filled with vision for those who have lost theirs. Prophetic leadership always points to our participation in God's narrative. The prophet invites us to find our place within it.

Sometimes I think preaching is described as finding the context that you are in and preaching into it. But this fractures the narrative and reorients it. I think preaching may more be the work of the prophet to invite people into God's narrative, to invite them to hear God's words of freedom and hope for others like them. The scripture is not a medicine kit with salve for this or that issue. Instead, the scripture is a pool in which to wade, swim and dive. It is living and abundant water in which we are invited so we may root ourselves and be like the blossoms in the midst of the desert.

Advent 2, Year A, December 4, 2022

Prayer
With righteousness, you judge the poor, O steadfast and faithful God, and with justice, you decide aright for the meek and lowly of the earth. Shatter the silence of Advent’s wilderness with the voice of the one who cries out to prepare your way and to make straight your paths that we may bear fruit worthy of repentance, lie in harmony with one another, and be gathered at last into the peaceable kingdom of your Christ who was, who is and who is to come.  We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever. Amen.

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

Some Thoughts on Matthew 3:1-12

The Kingdom was coming all right, he said, but if you thought it was going to be a pink tea, you'd better think again. I f you didn't shape up, God would give you the ax like an elm with the blight or toss you into the incinerator like chaff. He said being a Jew wouldn't get you any more points than being a Hottentot, and one of his favorite ways of addressing his congregation was as a snake pit. Your only hope, he said, was to clean up your life as if your life depended on it, which it did, and get baptized in a hurry as a sign that you had.

"John the Baptist," Frederick Buechner, Peculiar Treasures.

"Repentance, or metanoia, to use the Greek word, refers to far more than a simple being or saying one is sorry for past sins, far more than mere regret or remorse for such sins. It refers to a turning away from the past way of life and the inauguration of a new one, in this case, initialized by an act of baptism."

Commentary, Matthew 3:1-12, Ben Witherington, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2010.

"Repentance is a correlate of freedom. The tearing away that takes place in detachment is only possible because a deeper, more powerful and superior attachment has come: the attachment of faith, the grip of the kingdom."
The Matthean Advent Gospels, James Arne Nestingen, Word & World: Theology for Christian Ministry, Luther Northwestern Theological School, 1992.

Oremus Online NRSV Gospel Text

It is clear that in this passage set for today we have two pieces of important and foundational messages which add to our Advent work of preparation and are also signals of what the Gospel of Matthew is all about. On the one hand, we have the expected “Brood of vipers” speech of John the Baptist to begin our season and call us into repentance. However, and I believe more importantly, as we begin a reading cycle of Matthew we have an inauguration underway.

We begin with words that tell us that times are changing. The simple statement of “now in those days” is deeply rooted in the ancient psyche of storytelling within our scripture as an indicator that we are moving into a new time.

We are in a new play, we are in the desert, in the wilderness - an apt setting for an Advent message. More importantly, we imagine the parallels with the ancient Abrahamic ancestors and their dessert/wilderness wanderings.

The message from this man is clear: repent.

Here we begin to see something important and uncomfortable emerge in the Gospel. Repentance is tied to the eschatological, our actions of changed mind (which is the literal Greek translation in this case) is very much a partnership with the coming reign of God. The kingdom of heaven is near and this act of repentance is a component of preparation.

We then receive the quotation from Isaiah. The voice and the wilderness here would have been powerful images in the minds of the listeners to John, and to the first readers of Matthew’s Gospel. This is a new time, we are in a new place with ancient meaning, we must act in accordance with the drawing near of the reign of God, AND it is a particular kind of reign. Our deliverance which is coming is the fulfillment of God’s prophetic words to the captives in Babylon. God’s promise is coming true in a new and revelatory manner which shows a link to God’s Word of the past with the incarnation which is at hand. The listeners could not but help hear the powerful words of the prophet Isaiah that are linked with John the Baptist’s quote:

Isaiah 40:2-5
2Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.
3A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. 4Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. 5Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

 These are words of great comfort and wisdom from a new Elijah. The clothes that he is wearing are clearly the clothes mentioned in the text from Malachi 3:1. This is not only a prophet with powerful words calling people to repentance, but he is also and must be promising great deliverance and hope for all those who feel trapped and consumed by their sin and brokenness.

Then our author, our narrator tells us that ALL were going out to him. This was powerful and a new time was coming to a new emerging message and revelation. It was a time of renewal for the people and they wanted to be a part of this ritual. These first images of baptism are rooted in this hope for something new and for change. And it is clear in the text that this model of baptism is clear: the word is proclaimed, the individual is moved to change their way of being, they are baptized to mark this repentance and confession.

This was a powerful movement and the Gospel’s witness to the fact that John was a powerful actor and player in the politics and religious life surrounding Jesus’ own emergence.

We then add a second scene to our already meaty story of proclamation and repentance. It is here that we begin to see the architecture of Matthew’s storytelling for we see that the narrator moves us quickly from the idea and the Word to action and then into community and community action.

John sees that some of the people (Pharisees and Sadducees) are coming for baptism are arriving and that perhaps they are seeking something other than true amendment of thinking and being that will lead to transformative action.

John and the Gospel are clear: your heritage does not save you, your fruit will reveal who you are. The scholar Daniel J. Harrington, S.J. writes: “The Pharisees and Sadducees are warned not to imagine that the mere ritual of baptism will preserve them from God’s wrath. Rather they must do the good deeds that are appropriate to genuine repentance in view of the coming kingdom…Belonging to the children of Abraham will not protect those who refuse to repent and do good works. There may be an allusion here to the rabbinic idea of the “merits of the fathers” according to which the righteousness of the patriarchs is charged to the account of Israel.” (Matthew, Sacra Pagina, 56)

Now I want to be very careful here by identifying too much the Pharisees and Sadducees and to name and recognize the all too easy way Christian preachers scapegoat them and the anti-Semitism that is all too prevalent in our culture. When we make too much of them we miss the powerful message of the Gospel.

You and I are the ones to hear John the Baptist charge. We are the ones who must hear that perhaps we are about our religious life in a manner that must change. We are the ones who must look at the fruit of our faith and what it is or is not bringing about in our community. The question is not for someone else, but for us: Have we for too long stood on the shoulders of our ancient traditions and ancestry as Anglicans and Episcopalians? Are we bearing the fruit of the kingdom of God?

Are we as we sit in our pews on Sunday morning able to bring to the altar labors this week which were not simply prayers and offerings of our hearts but the glorious work of changing people’s lives?

You and I as we sit and ponder the words of John the Baptist can see that this Gospel of Matthew holds for us a clear message that we are to be at work in the world around us bearing fruit fitting our loving God’s reign. The proclamation of the word leads to transformation and repentance, which leads to real works of faith. Bearing fruit for the reign of God is not an ancillary to the life of faith but an essential component to healthy spirituality in the family of God. “Repentance and return to the Lord,” those words from our Baptismal Covenant are essential keystones in a life well lived with a God who reveals himself incarnationally. We must make real in our world – outside of ourselves - our hearts transformation.

Some Thoughts on Romans 15:4-13

"Just as Scripture's purposes for humanity are inextricable from the very nature of God, the inclusion of the Gentiles is not a back-up plan nor a course-correction: this has been God's intention all along."
Commentary, Romans 15:4-13 | Kara Lyons-Pardue | Assistant Professor of New Testament, Point Loma Nazarene University | A Plain Account

"Unity according to Christ also means that differences are not erased. Members do not have to conform to one particular pattern of behavior, but they do have to realize that the essential and defining character of their identity is now Christ."
Commentary, Romans 15:4-13, Valerie Nicolet-Anderson, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2013.

"Paul is not making vague and pious statements about scripture but drawing attention to a particular orientation of scripture towards inclusivity and compassion which even enables one to say yes and no in scripture itself or to forego one's freedom for the sake of unity at some points."
First Thoughts on Year A Epistle Passages in the Lectionary," Advent 2, William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.

Oremus Online NRSV Epistle Text

Paul begins this passage in verse one.  I think that is important because without it the words he writes are without context.  Paul is writing to the strong in faith and he is clear that not everyone is faithful, not everyone is in the same place. He says some people are in fact weak in their faith.  Regardless of what New Testament scholar you read you will quickly become aware that whole households (servants and family) were baptized when the leader of the household became baptized. This means that the early church was used to churches existing with many different kinds of people. They were all on a journey and many were at different places on that journey.  What Paul makes clear is that those who are strong in faith are to be hospitable and kind. The individual is to work for the greater cause in their neighbor and work for their success.  They are to be patient with those around them.  Even Christ, Paul reminds us, was accepting of others and well...put up with a lot.  These are the important words that come before our passage.

Just as we are to be strong for others and leaders, we are to remember that we too were given instruction.  We are upheld by the writings of the Old Testament and we are given in them a vision of hope. Just as God was faithful for our Abrahamic faith ancestors - God will be faithful to us.

The God we believe in is the same God.  God is faithful and steadfast, God encourages us, and gives us life. The life we are given by God is one meant to embrace neighbors and live in harmony with them.  We are to share the hope that is in us and share God's promises with them so that together we may become an ever new community.

We the faithful are to welcome others as Christ welcomed us.  Not by expecting perfection first but by truly opening ourselves up to be helpful to them in the journey.  God in Christ Jesus did not do this but instead welcomed us and served us and even died on the cross for us.  Christ was faithful and loving to us to prove not only the truth of God's love but also in order to convince us of his grace.  We too are to do the same for others.  We confess, sing, and tell of God. We are to walk with our neighbors and help them as they grow to know this God. We like the first disciples who reached out to the Gentiles are to also find the other God-fearers and spiritual pilgrims of our day and walk with them.  

Paul concludes this part of the passage with a prayer that we will be filled with hope and joy in this work; for surely any other sentiments fail to glorify God and fail to attract others to his cause.  We shall surely fail if we do not have hope about our future and the future of our faith.  For who wishes to be attracted to hopelessness.


Some Thoughts on Isaiah 11:1-10


"What if we believe this fragile sign is God's beginning? Perhaps then we will tend the seedling in our hearts, the place where faith longs to break through the hardness of our disbelief."
Commentary, Isaiah 11:1-10, Barbara Lundblad, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2013.

"This is the mountain of God's holiness. This is the promise, the glorious, abundant resting place where the root of Jesse stands. This is the vision of security. The shoot will grow tall and become a visible sign for the nations. Not a battle standard, but a standard of peace."
Commentary, Isaiah 11:1-10, Anathea Portier-Young, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2010.

"The kaleidoscopic portrait of God's power in the prophets both comforts and confuses us. Yet within the biblical text, there is a compelling vision of power that can transform the whole of creation, if only we have eyes to see and minds to engage it."
"I Am About To Do a New Thing," Carol J. Dempsey, O.P., "Prophetic Ethics," Christian Reflection, 2003.

Oremus Online NRSV Text

What is delightful about this passage is the many potential meanings.  The new womanist perspective helps us understand that it is possible that this is about the future prophet, a prophet's son. The message is clear: God is doing a new thing. Let us read the words of the Message as it brings this poetry to life:

A green Shoot will sprout from Jesse’s stump,
from his roots a budding Branch.
The life-giving Spirit of God will hover over him,
the Spirit that brings wisdom and understanding,
The Spirit that gives direction and builds strength,
the Spirit that instills knowledge and Fear-of-God.
Fear-of-God
will be all his joy and delight.
He won’t judge by appearances,
won’t decide on the basis of hearsay.
He’ll judge the needy by what is right,
render decisions on earth’s poor with justice.
His words will bring everyone to awed attention.
A mere breath from his lips will topple the wicked.
Each morning he’ll pull on sturdy work clothes and boots,
and build righteousness and faithfulness in the land.
The wolf will romp with the lamb,
the leopard sleep with the kid.
Calf and lion will eat from the same trough,
and a little child will tend them.
Cow and bear will graze the same pasture,
their calves and cubs grow up together,
and the lion eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child will crawl over rattlesnake dens,
the toddler stick his hand down the hole of a serpent.
Neither animal nor human will hurt or kill
on my holy mountain.
The whole earth will be brimming with knowing God-Alive,
a living knowledge of God ocean-deep, ocean-wide.
On that day, Jesse’s Root will be raised high, posted as a rallying banner for the peoples. The nations will all come to him.

I like the NRSV version for study but I always keep a couple of different texts nearby. The Message translation does a couple of things for us. First, it helps to see the prophecy in a more poetic form. Secondly, I think it captures the Hebrew imagery a bit better. You really get a sense that the new green shoot is going to grow out of this very old (previously thought of as dead) tree stump. 

It is clear to me that the prophecy is clearly about future prophets. In fact, because we know the rest of the story, this message of hope will indeed come to be. The prophetic school shall raise up a continuing message of hope for God's people in exile. In the midst of their own belief that nothing can change, everything is as it is, and there is no hope, there will rise up among them prophets' sons who will continue to bring the good news of God to the people. 

Why is this important? It is important to remember its context and original hopeful meaning because it is important to remember that God has continually brought hope to the downtrodden and to those who are almost dead. God has since the very beginning been doing a new thing. Regardless of who utters the words of God's message (a prophet, a prophet's son, and member of the prophetic school, a disciple, an ancestor or descendant).

The gospel author Mark will merge this prophetic hope with the vision of eschatology - that all the people's hope will culminate in God in Christ Jesus and his ultimate hope. It is here that the Gospeller Luke will turn in bringing forth the news that God is doing a new thing. It is here that John will turn when understanding how God will judge - with mercy and with heart. the first Christians, captured in their writing, will understand this prophetic message as speaking about Jesus himself. (Note the work of Richard B. Hays in Echoes of the Scripture in the Gospels; 34ff, 231, 298.)

In one act of reading the past, they bring forth a positive theological vision of who Jesus is - he is one that has come with the words of God. He has come with the prophetic hope. He has come to judge with mercy and heart. He has come to vindicate God's people - the poor, the hopeless, the least and the lost.

Moreover, this passage then invites us to consider who brings this message of hope today? How do we as disciples who follow, and apostles who are sent, go out and speak this prophetic message to a world that believes nothing has changed?

We can look at the church as the dead tree stump, or our own hearts, our political and social predicaments that are all around, or even our families. Let us be curious about the word of hope that is required in just such a time as this and ask who will go for God?


Sermons Preached


The Best Sermon EVER for Sinners
Dec 10, 2013
Sermon preached Advent 2A St Albans Waco 2013

Advent I, Year A , November 27, 2022

Prayer

Unknown the day and unexpected the hour when Christ will come at last: O God, whose word even now goes forth and whose house welcomes all the nations home, rouse our household of faith from its sleep. Strengthen us to beat our swords of war into plows that work in peace. Then nation will not lift up sword against nation and all your children will be ready to welcome your promised day of peace. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever. Amen.

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

Some Thoughts on Matthew 24:36-44

"The extraordinary thing that is about to happen is matched only by the extraordinary moment just before it happens. Advent is the name of that moment."
"Advent," sermon discussion from Frederick Buechner, Frederick Buechner Blog.

"...God reveals enough about the future to give us hope, but not so much that we do not have to live and walk by faith day after day."

Commentary, Ben Witherington, Matthew 24:36-44, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2010.

"Thank you for proclaiming the wild grace of this frighteningly merciful God, Working Preacher. Because sometimes I need to be startled out of the comfortable daydream in which I have unintentionally trapped the biblical God."

"The Undomesticated God," David Lose, Dear Working Preacher, 2010.

Oremus Online NRSV Gospel Text

We begin our new year and a new cycle of readings of Matthew’s Gospel at the end.  We are in a section wherein Jesus is telling his followers to be watchful.  And, he is giving them parables that challenge them. 

We begin simple enough: we will not know when God is coming.  Then we are reminded of Noah’s flood. And, we are told people will be taken up and some left behind. Then we have the parable of the householder and the thief.  This is normally where we get in the weeds with Jesus’ teaching. We typically want to spend all our time trying to either decipher how and when this is going to take place, or we spend our time attempting to understand how we get to be the ones taken away with the Son of Man.  However, no sooner have we taken steps down this road and we have missed Jesus’ message to his disciples: be watchful.  Be watchful and be ready.

It is actually just how well we are prepared for the coming of the Son of Man which will determine our being gathered.  This major shift in eschatological thinking and argument provides for the Christian today a particularly sharp message on this first Sunday of Advent: if you are not ready you must be ready.  Moreover, it is a rather big change from the Lukan readings of the past months.

In this one series of parables where Jesus calls those who follow to prepare and be ready, he unifies theology of the end times with theology of behavior.  Eschatology and ethics may no longer be separated. 

How we are in this world has an impact on our life in the world to come.

It will be easy to slip this first Sunday of Advent sermon into a discussion about preparing our home for Christmas, or preparing for the incarnation of God, and even preparing for a season of watchfulness.  The message from Jesus and this Gospel author are clear, we are to be ready through our actions.

As we seek to understand what is expected of us in regards to the message of Jesus herein Matthew’s Gospel we might be reminded of the theologian Origen’s comment: Just as Jesus is offering this grace he fulfills and embodies his own words and thereby becomes the model to be imitated.  If we look back we discover the unique qualities of Jesus that fulfill not only the prophetic message of Isaiah but also are the basics of Christian discipleship in the world.

Jesus was meek (11.29; 21.5)

Jesus mourned (26.36-46)

Jesus was righteous and fulfilled all righteousness (3.15; 27.4, 19)

Jesus showed mercy (9.27; 15.22; 17.15; 20.30-1)

Jesus was persecuted and reproached (26-7)

These qualities are clearly defined in the beatitudes and serve as a basic road map throughout the Gospel of Matthew.

As you and I begin again a time of reading a new cycle we must endeavor to understand clearly how our actions are part of our faithful following of Jesus.  We must now listen and read the Gospels together as we begin a year of discerning the message and proclamation of Jesus as given in the Matthean account.

Some Thoughts on Romans 13:8-14

"The future is not a choice between keeping your head down and quietly paying your taxes and other obligations on the one hand, and carousing and quarreling on the other. For those clothed with Christ, the future is characterized by seeing the "other" as neighbor and seeking the neighbor's best."
Commentary, Romans 13:8-14 (Pentecost 17A), Mary Hinkle Shore, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2011.

"Just imagine despite what the messages on television and Web advertising tell us we don't need to worship the gods and goddesses of financial security, the perfect body image, or even our limited ideas of personal honor and respectability!"
Commentary, Romans 13:8-14 (Pentecost 17A), Mark Reasoner, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2008.

"Our passage should be understood as directly and closely connected to the entire exhortative section of the letter. In that manner, it is impossible to simply understand the section as an invitation to focus on one's personal salvation to the neglect of those around us or to construct the world in terms of 'us' versus 'them.'"
Commentary, Romans 13:11-14, Valerie Nicolet-Anderson, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2013.

Oremus Online NRSV Epistle Text

Our Advent theme of preparation is sounded again in Romans.  In this passage, Paul is focused upon love.  Followers of Jesus love others, in so doing they mimic the ministry of Jesus and the work of God.  In loving others they also fulfill God's law.

Paul offers a very clear view that not loving another will, in fact, lead to adultery, murder, theft, and covetousness.

Love others - this is the highest rule and the highest goal.

Adeptly he has moved from a discussion on what is owed to the authorities to what is owed to one another - which is love. (Joseph Fitzmeyer, Romans, 677)  Deeds are the way that a Pauline faith is lived.  Love lived creates the framework for all other questions about the law and quickly moves Paul from legality to grace in future discussions (Fitzmeyer, 677; Gal 5:6)

To understand Paul's full treatment of love you must go to 1 Corinthians 13.  In Paul's economic discourse of love, we discover the following.  All other gifts are worthless without love.  Love is: patient and kind, not jealous, not arrogant, not rude, it does not seek its own interest, is not irritated, does not reckon things wrong, does not delight in wrongdoing, rejoices in truth, puts up with all things, believes all things, and never fails.  Love lasts and is superior to all other things.  All of which is summed up in vs 13:  Faith, hope, and love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Paul then ends concludes his reflection on love in Romans with urgency.  Now that you have become believers you can see that this is true.  There is urgency and we need to be about this work now and immediately.  Let us live in the light, and love in the light putting away the behaviors that will cloud and deform this love: drunkenness, debauchery, licentiousness, quarreling, and jealousy.

Let us instead do what Jesus Christ does and love.

Some Thoughts on Isaiah 2:1-5

"Isaiah isn't naïve. He is not a Pollyanna prophet. This vision of weapons of war turned into agricultural tools, images of death-dealing turned into food-producing is a promise for 'the days to come.' But biblical visions in both testaments come to us from the future, longing to shape the days in which we are living."
Commentary, Isaiah 2:1-5, Barbara Lundblad, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2013.


"What a simple summons then, to walk in the Lord's light, in divine glory, in the path of God's instruction. But it is not easy. What trust does it demand of God's people, to be led by teaching and walking on the path revealed by truth?"
Commentary, Isaiah 2:1-5, Anathea Portier-Young, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2010.

"One of the important aspects of looking forward to something better is to look at ourselves. The good news is that the light of God, God's gracious presence, means we can choose to be the kind of people who are essentially living light, living out of a spirit of kindness and generosity and compassion."
"Living Light," Alan Brehm, The Waking Dreamer.

"We all see dark places we long to see light invade. We turn on the news, talk to our coworkers, and look at our family. We do not have to look far to find the dark corners of our life in desperate need of light. This first Sunday of Advent, the season of faithful preparation, we might ask the question, will we allow our cry for the light turn into demands on how and when the light will come?"
Commentary, Isaiah 2:1-5 | Ben Cremer | Pastor, Euclid Ave. Church of the Nazarene | A Plain Account, 2016


Oremus Online NRSV Old Testament Text

As we begin our new year we start out with Isaiah who wrote some 760 or so years before the birth of Christ. Isaiah is writing prior to the crushing fall of Jerusalem to Babylon. You may remember that God has chosen not to save Jerusalem because the people and their leaders had forgotten God and so God will not save the nation from the invasion. People doubt God's power to do so anyway, and others are sure God is on their side. Many thought their nation would last forever and never fall - certainly not to another army.

Scholars have settled on the notion that what we see here in chapter 2 is evidence that we have multiple documents combined in the text. We see too some reflection of other prophets like Micah. 

What strikes me as the most important is the prophet's commitment to the future and God's power and might to gather God's people. (Remember we just heard Isaiah 65 where God indeed promises this.) God, Isaiah speaks, will gather a new Zion on a holy hill and many will make a journey to the great mountain - they shall go up it says. Here God will place a holy people who will be examples of God's love and justice. They will accept God's message and be good leaders and depend upon the Torah to guide them in all things. God will be the judge, not the people. This righteous living and Godly judging will, in fact, bring about a new age of peace.

This age of peace will come when the people are faithful says the prophet. When it comes it will be a time of great harvests and people will be in the need of plowshares and pruning hooks as farmers return to the work of the land and give up the study of war. 

He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. 5O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!

The passage ends with an invitation. For Christians, we see a prefigured Jesus here, a revelation of the incarnation. That God will bring about a time when peace is the highest good and people will follow a lord of peace, who feeds where there is scarcity and catches fish where there is none. Jesus is the one who brings about the new age and his work of feeding and catching overthrows old economies where people are owned by the king and work towards the betterment of the ruling class. They are nothing more than armies of workers like they were in Egypt. God comes then and frees them into a new life and new age.



Sermons Preached On These Texts:

The Tide, Advent One, and God's 2nd Coming
Dec 3, 2013
Preached at St. John the Divine, 2013



Regarding Romans passage here is an excerpt from my book entitled Citizen: Faithful Discipleship in a Partisan World

We see the first generation of Christian citizenship captured in Romans 13. Paul writes that the Christian citizen is a dual citizen. We are subject to governing authorities. Paul says that the authorities are given power by the way God has given freedom to the world. Similar to Jesus’s reminder to Pilate that he has no power but what is given, Paul says the powers are part of the creation. They can be used for good or ill. (Romans 13:1) In his 1939 essay The Church and State, Karl Barth argues that Paul is advocating an approach to common government that respects Jesus Christ in order to make the state better.[i] We breathe life into the image of the garden through our work of shared governance. We often use elections as proxies for God’s will--at least when our chosen candidate has proven victorious. But Paul did not think of the emperor as God’s hand-picked appointee. Paul is merely pointing out what the scripture said: power is part of a free creation.

In the next verse, Paul suggests that our work is not to resist authority. When we do, we incur judgment. Paul then says that if the authorities act justly, then we should act within the good; but if we act against injustice, we will ensure the state’s wrath. Ultimately, we hope that the state will do more good than bad. But, whatever the state does, it uses the sword. “Be afraid, very afraid,” Paul warns. (Romans 13:2-5)

Repeating Jesus’ sayings about taxes, Paul places our duty within the state to do what the state asks. If revenue is due, then we are to honor our social agreement and pay it. We are not to build up debt with the state or others. (Romans 13:6-7) Then Paul reminds his readers that they are part of God’s social imaginary. He tells them they are to love and follow the commandment to love. They are to live out the Ten Commandments from Sinai. They may live in Rome, but as Christians, they are a dual citizen. Their Christian citizenship is first because they are part of God’s reign. (Romans 13:6-10)

As Christian citizens, we are to be awake because we have accepted our place in God’s story. We must see things differently. We have to put away the works of darkness, powers, and principalities and take on the work of light. We are to live honorably and live virtuously. (Romans 13:11-13) We are to live our citizenship by creating a just society within our smaller communities, and we are to make society just through our prophetic engagement with the authorities.

Many Christians have read this passage and come up with a completely different understanding of Romans 13. For them, Romans 13 mandates that we follow the law and obey the God-chosen powers of this world. Across history, people have used Romans 13 to support their political bias.[ii] In 1933, on the eve of the rise of Nazi Germany, Joachim Hessenfelder preached a sermon at Berlin’s Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church,. He used the words of Romans 13 to suggest that the German citizen should obey the authority of the state. This text was used repeatedly to create support among Christians for the Third Reich. The church’s authority to read scripture was morphed into using the church to support politics, law, and the domination of humanity by a governing power.[iii] We must remember that it wasn’t that the government itself used the passage to justify their power; it was the Church that used Romans 13 to justify its support of the government and its rule of law. It is all too easy to suggest that the use of the passage was a Nazi ploy. That is far from true. Good German Protestants used Romans to justify their support for the unjust rule of the Nazis.[iv]

There are two important ways in which Christians have used Romans 13 in American history. During the American Revolution, loyalists in the new colonies (including Samuel Seabury of my own tradition) used Romans 13 to suggest that the rule of England should prevail and that the revolutionary fervor of the patriots was immoral. Romans 13 was trotted out again to counter the arguments of the abolitionists. American Christians used Romans 13 to justify the ownership of people.

Romans 13 has justified all manner of human domination and violence by the empire and state all in the name of God. This text shows up so reliably as a defense for a bad government that demeans humanity and supports dominion and violence, that it can almost be seen as a canary in a coal mine. If it is being used--and especially when Christians are doing so--it is likely being deployed to excuse a nation’s vices.

Karl Barth opposed any reading of Romans 13 that gave a blank slate to the state. For him, such a reading was unmoored from Christian theology. It favored natural theology to such an extent that its proponents had lost the mind of Christ. If Romans 13 is disconnected from the garden social imaginary and the cross of Christ, it has no purpose in the great narrative arc of God’s community. Barth believed the Church had a responsibility to hold the state accountable to the rule of love, and that this responsibility became more urgent as the state moved away from the mind of Christ.[v] Barth did not advocate indiscriminate support of the state. The state was subject to the same narrative framework held within the Christian narrative.[vi] Contemporary theologian Stanley Hauerwas likes to remind us that we need to read Romans 13 only after reading Romans 12, where Paul says that if we are to be Christian citizens, we are to be siblings first. We are to place our whole selves into this work as beings in relationship to God and to each other. If we choose to worship God, then our work of citizenship in the world is to be formed as worship itself. (Romans 12:1-2). We are not to be “conformed” to the world and its powers and principalities. In other words, the narrative of these institutions neither dictates nor takes precedence over the urgency of God’s garden narrative. Our minds and our wills are to be conformed to God’s garden social imaginary. In the garden, we find the grace that makes us one in relationship to God and neighbor. We live in a new garden that is birthed from the dung heap of Golgotha. God in Christ Jesus is buried in the ground as the first seed of the new garden, re-planted in the world. This is what Paul means when he is given grace by God. (Romans 12:3a)

Paul calls us to see that we are one body made up of many members. We are different and we have different work. God in Christ makes us one through the work of the Cross, just as God the creator formed us as one in the garden. God raised Christ after raising Israel, and will raise us on the last day. Yes, we are different, but all our gifts work together for one garden society. These gifts are given to everyone regardless of their knowledge of God. Everyone is a member of the garden society by virtue of their creation. Christ’s mission to redeem the whole world. In this way, the body is proportional. The more we live within the narrative of God, the more our gifts are used for the garden social imaginary. Paul writes, “We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.” (Romans 12:6)

Paul says, “We are to love one another. We are to hate what is evil. We are to hold to what is good. We are to love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord.” (Romans 12:7-12) He continues by saying that we are to support those close to us, the poor, those who are strangers. We are to be patient when our actions bring about suffering or when we are suffering with others. We are to, “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.” (Romans 12:13-14)

We express our Christian citizenship by living in harmony. We are to live the life of Christian virtue: temperance, prudence, courage, and justice. Moreover, we are to not repay evil for evil. We are to live a life of shalom--of peace. We are to live within creation and with our neighbors in a peaceable kingdom. This is the garden social imagery brought into the frame of Christ’s gospel.

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[i] Karl Barth, The Church and State, trans. Ronald Howe (Toronto: Macmillan Company, 1939), 35.

[ii] See Jeff Session's statement: “I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained the government for his purposes…Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves. Consistent and fair application of the law is in itself a good and moral thing, and that protects the weak and protects the lawful.” Further comments by Jeff Sessions can be found in, "Attorney General Sessions Addresses Recent Criticisms of Zero Tolerance By Church Leaders" (speech, Fort Wayne Rotary Club: Rotarians, Religious Leaders, Lawyers, and Law Enforcement Gathering, Fort Wayne, Indiana, June 14, 2018).

[iii] See Time magazine article from June 12, 1933. “Berlin's vast Sportpalast rumbled one-night last week with a great gathering of the ‘German Christians,’ Nazi Wing of the Evangelical Church (TIME. June 12, et seq.). Joachim Hessenfelder was on deck to demand the super-Nazification of the Church. Their presiding officer was brisk, sleek, pomaded young Rev. Joachim Hossenfelder, Bishop of Berlin and Brandenburg. Their prime hot-head was one Dr. Reinhold Krause. Meeting a few days after the 450th birthday of their Church's founder, Martin Luther, they proceeded to juggle ecclesiastical dynamite. According to Nazi Pastor Krause, German Protestantism needed a ‘second Reformation.’ "Germany: New Heathenism," Time, November 27, 1933, accessed August 15, 2018, http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,746354,00.html.

[iv] See interview with Doris Bergen, a professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Toronto. She believes there was never a need “to exhort Germans to be obedient to the regime because it never occurred to most of them to do otherwise.” She reminds us that German Protestantism at the time was enmeshed with the idea that the nation’s rule was supreme. Bergen, author of “Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich,” explains “The whole Nazi system rested on approval of the Christian population, which was 98 percent of the population… The idea some Americans have that there was a faction of Christians opposing Nazis – it was not like that,” Bergen notes. “Most Christians were Nazis and Nazis were Christians, and that’s just the way it was.” See Dina Kraft, "The Real Story behind the Nazi Establishment's Use of 'Romans 13'," Haaretz.com, June 20, 2018, https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-the-real-story-behind-the-nazi-establishment-s-use-of-romans-13-1.6194455.

[v] Barth, The Church and State, 35.

[vi] Ibid, 66.