Maundy Thursday, Holy Week, Year ABC

Quotes That Make Me Think

"Infinite, intimate God; this night you kneel before your friends and wash our feet. Bound together in your love, trembling, we drink your cup and watch."

New Zealand Prayer Book

"Oneness in love is the language of intimacy. It applies to our relation with God and Christ (and to their relationship). It is to apply also to our relationships with each other in community."

"First Thoughts on Year C Gospel Passages in the Lectionary: Easter 5," William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.

"Fortunately, this passage actually has TWO new commandments: 1) Love one another as I have loved you. And, 2) Forgive one another as I have forgiven you. Christ-like-love is the goal. Forgiveness is the salve that heals brokenness and makes love possible once again."

Holy Textures, Understanding the Bible in its own time and in ours, John 13:31-35, David Ewart, 2012.

General Resources for Sunday's Lessons


Prayer

With joy, O God of salvation, the assembly of your holy people begins the three day pasch, in which Christ manifests the gospel in his own flesh and blood.  Stir our hearts by the example of this Savior, who welcomed to his table even those who would betray, deny and desert him, the Lord who knew their weaknesses yet bend down to wash their feet. 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 13:1-35

Oremus Online NRSV Gospel Text

Resources for Sunday's Gospel

Much like the place of Maundy Thursday as the beginning of Christian Passover or the doorway into the Triduum, our passage is the beginning through which the disciple walks into the important teachings in following chapters which then lead directly into the crucifixion.  This passage is a doorway in John's Gospel for the disciple to follow Jesus to the cross, through the grave and to Easter.

Meister des Hausbuches,

Jesus Washes the Feet of the Apostles 

Most scholars including Raymond Browne see that our passage falls into three distinct sections.  The action in 1-5, the interpretation to the disciples, and the further interpretation to those who read the Gospel and believe.

Section One: The Action
13Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. 2The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper 3Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, 4got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. 5Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him.

We see a clear Johanine understanding that Jesus is returning to the Father. We might remember the earlier teachings on John wherein I talked about how Jesus clearly is the incarnate word come to dwell in the world.  Furthermore, we see the very deep roots of our orthodox faith which understands that it is Jesus' loving of the disciples that brings them into the family of God.  Despite the work of those that would destroy the community and creatures of God, Jesus will be victorious. He washes their feet. This may be a sign of baptism. What is clear is that Jesus serves the disciples and loves them as if they were his own to care for and tend.  This is the first and essential piece of the Gospel; and it is radical.  Jesus serves his followers.

The Second Section: First Interpretation
We shall remember that this is "Commandment day", this is the meaning of Maundy. Here we have the essential ingredient to all of Christian teachings about discipleship.  While avoiding words that are liturgically connected with baptism Jesus offers this very basic exercise of cleaning and washing.  Jesus is enacting a sign of hospitality. It is a welcoming into the company of God's family, formally in baptism, here signified with the tenderness of a mother or father.  Jesus is uniting all of creation and all of humanity with God. We are being adopted into Christ's household as a person might be brought into one's own home (Genesis 18:4  1 Samuel 25:41; Luke 7:44; 22:27).  This is the way our community is to be like. Within the covenant community which claims Christ we are to accept the freely given grace of our Lord and share it with others by repeating the act of loving embrace to others.

We know that the outward washing of the body does not cleanse the soul, but it is clear that this love and care is to be a hallmark of the inward grace.  It is the hallmark of Jesus' ministry and it is to be the hallmark of our own lives lived in the wake of Jesus' ministry. The hospitality of God is to be echoed by all who come after him. 1 Peter 2:21, the author writes: “For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps”.

The Third Section: The Second Interpretation Here it is as if Jesus stops focusing upon his disciples and steps out of the Gospel in order to focus on the reader.  When we welcome, when we open ourselves up to those who have been sent by Christ into the world we too become part of the family.  While certainly Jesus is to be betrayed, nevertheless we are to act in accordance to the witness we have been given. We are to “love one another”.  This is the basic sign of ones salvation and knowledge of God and his Son Jesus.  We witness in this text the breaking of bread and sharing of wine, the emblems of a self-giving God.  We are to love and keep his commandments.  While we often will spend our time in the pulpit on this Holy night speaking of love, it is important to recognize the reality that forgiveness is also part and parcel of the life lived in Christ.

And in a miraculous way, beyond all that pulls at our church, all that works to destroy and condemn us, all that we do to one another in word and action, in our most broken and most divided, it is tonight, this holy night that we pause, and remember to love and forgive. We pause and put down our destruction and remind ourselves of the service and hospitality of our God. We remind ourselves that it is his grace and love which unites us one to another and into the family of God. It is his love which binds us forever. And so, it is on this night that we are challenged to be a better people, a loving people, a hospitable people, a kind people. This is our work should we choose to follow.

"O Lord Jesus Christ, though didst not come to the world to be served, but also surely not to be admired or in that sense to be worshiped. Thou was the way and the truth - and it was followers only thou dist demand.  Arouse us therefore if we have dozed away into the delusion, save us from the error of wishing to admire thee instead of being wiling to follow thee and to resemble thee." Soren Kierkegaard

Some Thoughts on I Corinthians 11:23-26

Oremus Online NRSV Epistle Text

Resources for Sunday's Epistle

This section of the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians is dealing with accusations by fellow members of the community that others are abusing the Lord's Supper.  Our theologians have pulled out of the text for us to read on this Holy Thursday the passages that deal with the tradition of the "supper" itself; and Paul's interpretation of Jesus' actions at the Last Supper.

The first followers of Jesus have already formed a tradition and this tradition is given to the Corinthians from Paul.  He provides the words that have been given to him and the meaning that these remembrances are to remind the follower of the first supper and the grace they receive by continuing the tradition.  The elements are offered with the same words we use in our liturgy today.  Thanks is offered, blessings made and the gives are shared.  The bread is broken, literally, and shared.  This is a very different tradition than the Aramaic formula in the Passover tradition. (Joseph Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, Yale Press, 438).  Like the washing of feet in tonight's Gospel from John, it is very clear that these things are done, broken, and given to those gathered - the faithful.

Fitzmyer reminds us (443) that the "new covenant" that is mentions is a reference to Jeremiah 31:31-34.

31 The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 32It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. 33But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

It is Paul's, and the new Christian movement's, understanding that Jesus and this meal is fulfillment of this ancient prophecy and promise.  For Paul the rehearsal of these things by those who follow Jesus - was essential.

In the last verse we have Pauline material which makes clear his understanding.  Fitzmyer says it well:

The active sharing of the bread and the cup is a way not only of expressing one's belief in the presence of Christ in the Eucharist and of commemorating the Last Supper, but also of announcing to others what the death of Jesus has achieved for all Christian believers.  The act of sharing is not only memory and recollection, but above all, proclamation, based on the Passover event of old...this double aspect of the Eucharist, remembrance and proclamation, is not to be neglected....there is no worship without remembering, and there is no liturgical remembering without proclamatory narrative. (444)

Therefore, the remembering and rehearsing of this ancient meal is not simply something God is doing but it is essentially something the one who follows this God does in order to remind themselves of the Gospel narrative.

Chosen on this night of Holy Thursday as our reading, it is has special meaning.  The congregation rehearses and retells our sacred story.  For the preacher it is an opportunity to make the connection between our weekly remembrances and the first supper of passion week.

Some Thoughts on Exodus 12:1-14

Oremus Online NRSV Old Testament Text 

Resources for Sunday's Old Testament Lesson

Moses has attempted to convince the Egyptian Pharaoh to let God’s people go. The Pharaoh’s heart hardened, he has refused. Again and again, God has sent signs, portents, and plagues to reveal that God intends to raise God’s people from Egypt.

The passage that is appointed for the Maundy Thursday liturgy is about the Passover of course. That moment when the people of Israel consume a goat and mark their doors in order to be spared from the last and terrible slaughter of Egyptians. Stanley Hauerwas once told me, “God is getting over God’s tendency to violence.” Regardless of how you read this horrific story, it is of paramount importance for following this last of the plagues the Egyptians allow the people of God to go free. By the blood of the sacrifice, painted upon their door mantle, they are freed…they are delivered…they are passed over by death and have life, they pass over from slavery into freedom. The story which is the “Passover” has another meaning too: God’s compassion spares.

Now, there are two very important arguments here. The Gospel narratives place Jesus’ last supper and death near the time of Passover. The first argument that is made (and I fear has won out in our present time) is that Jesus’ last meal was the remembrance meal of the Passover called the Seder. This is celebrated by many religious Jews today. J. Jeremias in his text The Eucharistic Words of Jesus, 1966, has influenced a generation of people that this is in fact the case. The argument is based upon a “conjecture” found in the text that there was an older Palestinian calendar for Passover that is now lost. Though this cannot be found anywhere or referenced specifically.

It is clear that the authors of the New Testament saw Jesus’ death and resurrection as a metaphor for the Passover. The Passover, if you will, prefigured the resurrection of Jesus. This can be seen emerging theologically in the middle of the second century in the work of Irenaeus of Lyons.

However, there is a second case made for a different root for the liturgy we now recognize as the Eucharist, and that in fact Jesus’ last supper was not the Seder but the Chabûrah or Feast of Friends. C. Kucharek on the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, L. Mitchell in his book The Meaning of Ritual both track the Chabûrah as a major link in the tradition. Their research taps into the ancient texts of The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles and The Didache - two early Christian texts. The biggest proponent of this tradition in the Episcopal Church is our very own Gregory Dix, who in The Shape of Liturgy, places Jesus’ death before Passover. And, that the Chabûrah was a feast kept between rabbis and their followers. (I take all of this from my longtime friendship with Richard Fabian and his work on liturgy and the Eucharist at St. Gregory of Nyssa.)

I say all of this because people will be quick to draw a direct lineage between the Seder, Jesus’ last supper with his disciples, and the modern-day Eucharist. What seems important is that rather than appropriating a perfectly good liturgy of our religious ancestors we might ought to see that what Jesus was doing in his feast with friends was an essential breaking of the specialized meal for the religious to a meal for all people. Friends here being redefined not by those who are given any particular religion by virtue of birth or by nurture of family. Friends instead are those whom God loves in Christ Jesus. Friends are those bound by love and for whom new families are structured out of their participation in a table meant for all people and not a few. This is accentuated when we take into account the nature of customary seating. Jesus was most definitely killed for eating with sinners. At the final supper, he sits with John on one side and Judas on the other – my friend John Peterson is quick to point out. Jesus places his greatest follower – the one whom he loved and his greatest detractor on both his left and right.

If we keep this in mind and return to the text and how it is used in the New Testament we see something very interesting. While there is reference to the looming Passover, there is no direct reference to this passage. This passage, the Passover passage, is used differently.

Luke uses the text, refers to the text, as a charge to Jesus’ followers to be ready. In Luke 12 Jesus tells them to be ready. His time is approaching when he will no longer be with them and they must be ready and be on the move. (Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels, 203) Again, Luke seems to nod in the direction of our passage from Exodus when in Acts the tradition of Jesus as being key and not passages of laws including but not limited to keeping the Passover. (Hays, 220) Finally, in John’s Gospel, often called the “book of signs” the idea that Jesus’ legs were not broken so like the pure lamb was seen as a sign of the sacrifice.

We can spend a lot of time on the kind of food served at the meal or the meaning of the meal itself. When we do so we miss, most often the fact, that it is not the meal nor the lamb that was slain in Egypt that is our deliverance. Rather that all of those stories prefigure the unique person of Jesus who will be our final deliverance. God in Christ Jesus shall bring all of us to the table of friends (where both the good and the bad shall be seated), and from the table we shall all go united in Love with haste into the world to proclaim a story of deliverance. We are delivered. We know the work of Jesus because we know the old old story of God’s deliverance of a people from death into life, from slavery into freedom.

Previous Sermons For This Sunday

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Bread Is For Re-membering

Sermon Maundy Thursday Year B, March 29, 2018, St. Mark's, Bellaire

The Passover of God

Maundy Thursday sermon preached at Trinity Church, Galveston 2011.

Easter Sunday C, April 20, 2025

Quotes That Make Me Think


Are you God's friend and lover?
rejoice in this glorious feast of feasts!

Are you God's servant, knowing God's wishes?
be glad with your Master, share his rejoicing!
Are you worn down with the labor of fasting?
now is your payday!

Have you been working since early morning?
you will be paid fair and square.
Have you been here since the third hour?
you can be thankful, you will be pleased.
If you came at the sixth hour,
come up without fear, you will lose nothing.
Did you linger till the ninth hour?
come forward without hesitation.
Even if you came at the eleventh hour?
have no fear; it is not too late.

God is a generous employer,
treating the last to come as he treats the first arrival.
God gives to the one and gives to the other:
honours the deed and praises the intention.

Join, then, all of you, join in our Master's rejoicing.
You who were the first to come, you who came after,
come now and collect your wages.
Rich and poor, sing and dance together.
You that are hard on yourselves, you that are easy,
celebrate this day.
You that have fasted and you that have not,
make merry today.

 The meal is ready: come and enjoy it.

The calf is a fat one: you will not go away hungry.

There's hospitality for all, and to spare. No more

apologizing for your poverty:

the kingdom belongs to us all.

No more bewailing your failings:

forgiveness has come from the grave.

No more fears of your dying:

the death of our Savior has freed us from fear.

Death played the Master: but he has mastered death

Isaiah knew this would happen, and he cried:

"Death was angered when it met you in the pit."

It was angered, for it was defeated.

It was angered, for it was mocked.

It was angered, for it was abolished.

It was angered, for it was overthrown.

It was angered, for it was bound in chains.

Death swallowed a body, and met God face to face.

It took earth and encountered heaven.

It took what is seen and fell upon the unseen.

O Death, where is your sting?

O Grave, where is your victory?

Christ is risen and you are overthrown.



Christ is risen and evil has fallen.

Christ is risen and the angels rejoice.

Christ is risen and life reigns.

Christ is risen and not one dead remains in the tomb.

Christ is risen indeed from the dead,

the first of all who had fallen asleep.

Glory and power to him for ever and ever!

St. Chrysostom

The death of Jesus is for us nothing if we have not died with him; the resurrection of our Lord is for us nothing if we have not been raised with him.

Emil Brunner

"The doctrine is clear. To the children of God, lost Christ is their Christ when all is done."

The Weeping Mary at the Sepulchre, Samuel Rutherford, 1640.

General Resources for Sunday's Lessons

Prayer

This is the day, Lord God, that you have made!  Raising Christ from the dead, and raising us with Christ, you have fashioned for yourself a new people, washed in the flood of baptism, sealed with gift of the Spirit, invited to the banquet of the Lamb!  In the beauty of this Easter morning, set our minds on the new life to which you have called us; place on our lips the words of witness for which you have anointed us; and ready our hearts to celebrate the festival, with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. 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 20:1-18

Oremus Online NRSV Gospel Text

Resources for Sunday's Gospel

We begin with  Mary discovering that the body is not there and reporting it to the disciples.  There is the famous disciple race.  The beloved disciple loves Jesus more and so he arrives at the tomb first before Peter; this is the intent of the story teller at least.  When he arrives he sees the burial clothes and he believes. He sees, he experiences, the resurrection and he believes.

Mary Magdalene then experiences the risen Jesus.  She has been searching for him; she sees him but does not immediately know him.  In fact she does not know him until her name is called.  Raymond Brown points out a number of reasons for this in John, vol 2, 1008ff.  Playing out the reality of Jesus' own words in John 10.3:  "The sheep hear his voice as he calls by name those that belong to him."  "I know my sheep and my sheep know me."  Her response is to announce to the disciples that she has "seen the Lord."

Two different experiences of the risen Christ from two loving followers are what we have to preach on this Easter.  They give us a sense that the risen Lord is known in many ways and experienced in many ways.  While true belief will come with the Holy Spirit, we are given here in John's resurrection account the beginning of the new creation story. 

The Victory has been won on the cross. The chasm that separated the earth and the heaven is no breached.  The disciples begin to experience a new order and a new creation. They begin to understand the things which have been told them. 

In these resurrection accounts we have the beginning of faith which comes from experiencing the risen Lord.  Their faith will grow even as Jesus continues to make his journey to the father. He remarks that we are not to cling to tightly to these experiences for the unity if fulfilled in the ascension which is soon to come.  Jesus is even now, as he stands before Mary, making his way to the Father.  Then, and only then, will the comforter and Holy Spirit be unleashed in the world.  Then, and only then, will the disciples come to a fullness of belief.

John's Gospel tells us clearly that resurrection is not simply a bodily, this world, experience but it is a resurrection into unity with God.  Only when Jesus is resurrected and unified will the new creation truly spring forth.  So now...on Easter Sunday...as we read John's Gospel we prepare and raise our heads for the coming of the Holy Spirit and the salvation of creation which is even now upon us.

"The first ones ever, oh, ever to know of the rising of Jesus, his glory to be, were Mary, Joanna, and Magdalene, and blessed are they are they who see.  Oh blessed are they who see the Lord, oh, blessed are they who see." (Hymnal 1982, 673)

Some Thoughts on Luke 24:1-12

Oremus Online NRSV Gospel Text

Resources for Sunday's Gospel

What becomes clear in comparing the two options for preaching on Easter Sunday is that Luke's version and intent is somewhat different than John's.  However, what they have in common is worth a brief note.

In all the accounts (different from the other Hellenistic accounts of the day) Jesus is VERY present. He is not a ghost. He is not an apparition. Jesus is very real and very present. (Luke Timothy Johnson, Luke, 389)  The second detail is that the resurrection accounts do something.  They make real the covenant community of the disciples.  They are about to be sent; they are about to become apostles through the power of the Holy Spirit.  The disciple community is formed.  One might even say is birthed and bound together by the experience of this very real present Jesus. (390)

In Luke's Gospel we have an empty tomb account; which is the reading appointed.  However, this is always in context with the Road to Emmaeus, the appearance to the disciples, the ascension and Luke's nod to the many other resurrection accounts. 

In our Gospel lesson Jesus is very real and very present.  He is clear that we are to remain attentive to the work that is about to happen in Jerusalem (note he has changed Mark's "Galilee").  We are clear that the death and resurrection of the prophet king has now fulfilled the prophecies.  The prophetic tale of suffering and death has come true.  The whole of the scriptural witness (in that time the Old Testament - and specifically the Torah) is towards this moment of a new covenant and a new thing.  It is now the time of an apostolic age; wherein the first followers are sent out to do the work that Jesus has given them to do. 

Most of all we see in this moment a community being formed and being empowered to make their own prophetic witness.  (391) 

The last very important motif which Luke' carefully crafts as he tells the story of the resurrection is the crowd.  Jesus' resurrection involves many people.  Many people will experience his resurrection.  They are to tell many people.  It is important in Luke to remember the story of the prophet king Jesus, and how all that he said came true, and how he suffered, died, and was resurrected.  More importantly though is that "remembering" is for the sole purpose of telling. 

This is the evangelist's resurrection account.  God and tell...go and tell....go and tell.

Some Thoughts on 1 Corinthians 15:19-26

Oremus Online NRSV Epistle Text

Resources for Sunday's Epistle

The passage chosen for Easter from Corinthians does and interesting thing by combining two pieces of a whole section.  In the much larger piece of chapter 15 Paul is speaking to the church at Corinth about the reality that the key belief in the resurrection of the dead for the the saints is to be found in the sacred story of Jesus' own resurrection. 

Not unlike many non church goers, Paul faced a wide community of belief in a marginal kind of afterlife.  He is sure that there is more to life than what we experience here on this earth and he truly believed that for the Christian who believed there would be the inheritance of eternal life with God.  We share with Jesus the nature of life in this world and so we will share with Jesus in his resurrection.

Jesus is the first fruits of the holy community of saints who will be raised.  He then makes his case that humanity is doomed to death if left to their own devices.  Only Christ and Christ's resurrection will bring resurrected life to those who believe.  Christ is, even now, bringing about the ultimate victory of death and will (as promised in John's Gospel) draw all things to himself.  In the end death and all shall be conquered.

This passage so linked places before the reader and the preacher the witness of the first Christian community: 

A)  Those who follow Jesus and believe in his resurrection will be united with God and the saints in light.
B)  Jesus is the only one who can triumph over the permanence of death itself; only the new Adam brings deliverance.
C)  Not only is  a way into full life with God made possible and the kingdoms of heaven and earth forever linked; but this work of Christ's resurrection will be the death of death.
D)  Finally, this is part of the ultimate embrace of God for his creation.  What has begun in God will end in God for God is the Alpha and the Omega.

For the reader in Corinth and for the reader in the 21st century, we are given a vision of hope that all that we experience in this world is not all that it seems; and that God in fact intends so much more.  For us who remain along the pilgrim way we are given an opportunity to see that even now all things are being drawn towards him who loves us and desires to gather us beneath his wings.

Lent 3C, March 23, 2025

Rubble near the pool of Saloa

Prayer

God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, you revealed your name to Moses in the burning bush and your mercy to every generation in the teaching of Jesus. Tend us patiently as the tree you have planted, and do not let us perish. Cultivate us with compassion, and nurture us with forbearance, until, by your grace, we bear at last the abundant fruit of conversion. 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 Luke 13:1-9

"The word translated as 'repent' is, at its root, about thinking and perception. It refers to a wholesale change in how a person understands something. It implies an utter reconfiguration of your perspective on reality and meaning, including (in the New Testament) a reorientation of yourself toward God."

"How to Survive the Sequester, Syria, and Other Threatening Headlines,"Matthew L. Skinner, ON Scripture, Odyssey Networks, 2013.

"Faith understood as an ongoing relation on engagement in God and with God in the world can never sit back in distraction or religious self-preoccupation or self indulgence, because the God we know in Jesus keeps opening our eyes to both joy and pain, to wonder and to need, and inviting us to see them and not withdraw from them, which is the wont of religion."

"First Thoughts on Passages on Year C Epistle Passages in the Lectionary," Lent 3, William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.

Oremus Online NRSV Gospel Text



When last we dealt with this passage it came to us after a series of natural disasters and in the midst of war.  Today, we can look around us and see that much is unchanged. People remain concerned about the economy, jobs, natural disasters, and intentional gun violence.  Death is a perennial companion with life but in recent months we have discovered the pain of death that seems to victimize us.  Whether it is the Sandy Hook shooting, the monsoon floods in Malawi, or the meteor strike we are left wondering as did the ancients do these deaths mean anything about the faithfulness of those who lost their lives. Trying to figure out the meaning of these things often comes after considering the feeling of being blessed by being granted life in the midst of such tragedy. Chris Haslam, a Canadian priest and blogger, reminds us in his commentary for this reading that both Jews and the Hellenists of Jesus time believed that pain and premature death were signs of God’s “adverse judgment.” We see this not only in Luke’s Gospel but Jesus addresses this idea in John’s Gospel 9:2-3.

It is important, essential, to point out that Jesus rejects the idea that a man was born blind because of his or his parents’ sinful ways. 

This then is the context in which we pick up our first verse of today’s passage where a few who had gathered around  Jesus talk about how Pilate mingled the blood of Galileans with the blood of the sacrifices they were making in the Temple. While we do not have a historical account of such events, the story does match in theme and tone other accounts of Pilate’s cruelty to the Jews. It is an awful and tragic notion.

Jesus responds by asking, “Do you think that they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? This response is what I like to think of as a Jesus twist. Here we have a group who thinks that there is a hierarchy of sin and punishment dealt out accordingly, Jesus points out to them that they think this in all likelihood because they are safe and therefore more holy. 

He seems to recognize that they are arguing that the violence of one’s death relates to the darkness of one’s sins – an idea that is misused and popular throughout the Christendom of the middle ages and continues even today in some circles of believers. Jesus goes right to the point and is unwilling for his listeners to believe they are greater than or that they sin less or that their sins are lesser so he says: “Everyone must repent. Everyone is called to repent, repent early, repent often, repent now, and repent.” He tells them they are going to die too and suddenly and unprepared.

Jesus tells us of the story of the tower in Siloam, a city tower connected with the wall. Perhaps Jesus is speaking about one of the towers near the pool mentioned in John 9:7. Josephus mentions such a wall near the pool (LTJ, Luke, 211). And, Jesus drives his point home asking, were these people more in debt to God than others?

Next, Jesus moves into teaching mode and offers a parable about the fig tree planted in a vineyard. Notice that while Mark in 11:12ff and Matthew in 21:18ff both offer a story about Jesus and a fig tree, here we are told about how Jesus uses the fig tree image as part of a parable for the explanation of his words regarding the Galileans and those washing in the pool of Siloam. (LTJ, Luke, 211)

Jesus is drawing on very powerful images from Micah 4:4 and Joel 2:22 where it is used as a sign of God’s blessing.

So we have a man who is coming regularly to his fig tree. He was a blessed man, but he comes out one day to find that there was no fruit on it. So, he says “cut it down now.” The vine dresser, the garden helper, says “please don’t. Let’s see if it will bear next year. It needs for the soil to be aerated and it needs fertilizer. Then we can see, then we can cut it down.”

So, we see hear that Jesus is teaching those who will listen that they must repent. They must repent because they do not know what may happen and death may come at any moment. They must all repent. No one has more or less sin than someone else. Repentance is the daily work of the follower of Jesus. It is important and key as a daily exercise not because it prepares you for death but because it aerates the soil and provides fertilizer like the fig tree. A daily diet of repentance provides room in one’s life for the following of Jesus and eventually bears fruit in the work with Jesus bringing forth the reign of God.

How is repentance something that bears fruit? Repentance is the act of bring the ego into alignment with the soul and the Holy Spirit of God. Repentance is the taking of a fearless inventory that helps one to understand what the individual’s role is in brokenness and dysfunction. Repentance helps us understand the individual acts we take or do not take that have affects on the wider community. How do my habits of consumption affect others? How do my wants and desires get bruised when I don’t get my way? How do I lash out and blame others when I am at fault? How do I seek to have others give me esteem so I feel good about myself instead of understanding that God esteems me and loves me?

When we as Christians seek to get things in a healthy frame of living we discover that we are bringing in the reign of God. When we change our habits we change the world in which we live.

Luke Timothy Johnson’s words resonate with me as I read and ponder the meaning of this passage. He writes in his commentary on this passage, “…Jesus respond[s] to these reports of death in the city in classic prophetic style: they are turned to warning examples for his listeners. The people who died were not more deserving of death than others. One cannot argue from sudden and violent death to the enormity of sin. Indeed, Jesus himself will suffer a death that appears to be as much a punishment for sin. But the prophet’s point is that death itself, with the judgment of God, are always so close. It can happen when engaged in ritual. It can happen standing under a wall. And when it happens so suddenly, there is no time to repent…The repentance called for by the prophet Jesus, of course, is not simply a turning from sin but an acceptance of the visitation of God in the proclamation of God’s kingdom.”

Luke Timothy Johnson continues regarding the fig tree parable: “…it is a parable that clearly has the function of interpreting this section of his narrative. The fig tree is not summarily cut down. It is allowed to have time; indeed, it has already had time to bear fruit. The comfort to Jesus’ listeners is that the Prophet is still on his way to the city; there is still time to respond.”

This is an important week to be preaching. This is an opportunity to tell about Jesus’ teaching on tragedy and death brought on by disaster. It is an opportunity to speak about the importance and ritual of repentance which is an ancient and essential practice of Christianity. And, it is also an opportunity to speak about how repentance bears fruit.

Some Thoughts on I Corinthians 10:1-17

"Verse 7 holds the key: it is behavior, faux spiritual and otherwise, which is idolatry."Commentary, 1 Corinthians 10:1-13, (Lent 3C), Susan Hedahl, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2010.


"Faith understood as an ongoing relation on engagement in God and with God in the world can never sit back in distraction or religious self-preoccupation or self indulgence, because the God we know in Jesus keeps opening our eyes to both joy and pain, to wonder and to need, and inviting us to see them and not withdraw from them, which is the wont of religion."
"First Thoughts on Passages on Year C Epistle Passages in the Lectionary," Lent 3, William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.

"In 1 Corinthians 10:1-13 Paul includes a rather bizarre retelling of Israel's exodus to illustrate for the Corinthians their own precarious position as a church living in a wilderness time -- a limbo of sorts between their newfound freedom in Christ and the waited fruition of God's kingdom."
Commentary, 1 Corinthians 10:1-13, (Lent 3C), Carla Works, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2013.

Oremus Online NRSV Epistle Text

So this week I have been trying to comprehend the intentions of Paul in this part of his first letter to the Corinthians.  Let us simply begin by saying that Paul is using the well known Exodus story as a instructive tale. He is saying that some of these people were idolaters and some were immoral. 

Paul is inviting the readers to compare themselves with these people, who were their ancestors. 

You cannot read this passage without the whole intention of the Corinthian problem in front of you.  One of the biggest issues is can you eat meat that was given as a sacrifice to idols.  Paul says it in a much more stark manner and warns that transgressions against God will end up with an avenging angel taking you to task.

The New Testament scholar J. Paul Sampley (Emeritus Professor at Boston University) writes:

"The gist of the account is clear: God's people - being chosen by God, being baptized, eating special food and drink - are accountable for their behavior.  Neither baptism nor special edibles and potables ensure against God's judgment if the chosen ones stray or fall.  And, there can be no mistake about it: God cannot be blamed for any falling because God never tests believers by one what they can bear; God always graciously provides a way out, an exodus."

Paul writes: "judge for yourselves what I say. The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread."  We are all the same. We are all in need of saving.  We are all in need of reflection and repentance.  We can chose to live life as one of the faithful Exodus ancestor.  We can live differently and can be different.  This is God's expectation and it is our gift.

Some Thoughts on Isaiah 55:1-13

"Lent is an invitation and a reminder that this surprising work of God is open to us all -- wicked and unrighteous alike -- if we will return to the God who abundantly pardons..."
Commentary, Isaiah 55:1-9, W. Dennis Tucker, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2016.


To return to YHWH is to depart the Babylonian calculus and reengage the covenantal values of a neighborly kind....The ground for such a radical reengagement with faith is the elemental contrast between the anxious assumption of deported Jews who thought they were on their own in Babylon and the intention of YHWH who has indeed left God’s people on their own for time (see Isaiah 54:7-8), but who will now provide what they need. The poem makes a vigorous and emphatic contrast between “your ways and thoughts” and God’s “ways and thoughts.”
"A Covenant of Neighborly Justice: Break the Chains of Quid Pro Quo," Walter Brueggemann, ON Scripture, 2016.


"Nothing in life is free. Particularly if one has grown accustomed to the harsh policies of the empire that is set to exploit the peasants by means of heavy taxation."
Commentary, Isaiah 55:1-5 (Pentecost 12), Juliana Claassens, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2008.

"Think of it, Antonio--this thing I've been dreaming about come true at last. I threw out the life-line, and the one caught it was Herman Redpath in all his wealth and power. And now the lock-up. But my ways are not thy ways, saith the Lord. Antonio, you take a man's been in prison a couple years, and he's ready for Jesus like he's never been ready any place else."
"My Ways Are Not Thy Ways," sermon discussion from Frederick Buechner, Frederick Buechner Blog.

Oremus Online NRSV Text

This text comes around in year 10A, and in Epiphany 8C (though that is rare indeed), and on the Easter Vigil. In case you have not preached on the text it is a good opportunity as it is new in our Episcopal rota. 

The text is part of a section often called the second book of Isaiah. It is part of the prophetic school that rose up during the exile in Babylon. It comes after the great passage where the prophet and God call out, "Comfort, comfort my people." God is giving hope to the people in exile. Our passage recalls all the other times that God did not forget God's suffering people and suggests this time will not be any different. 

The prophet then gives a vision of God living word and covenant. The prophet reminds them of God's eternal commitment to be with them, to dwell with them, and to provide for them. He proclaims, 

I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David. 4See, I made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples. 5See, you shall call nations that you do not know, and nations that do not know you shall run to you, because of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you.

I love the next passages. They make up the Second Song of Isaiah we sing or pray in the daily office.

Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. 

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

Then we are reminded:

For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. 13Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle; and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.

God in Christ Jesus pulls these themes forward in John's Gospel chapter 6. Here is the feeding of the five thousand. This alone is the promise of Isaiah's banquet. But there is more. Jesus continues:

6:63 The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. 64But among you there are some who do not believe.’ For Jesus knew from the first who were the ones that did not believe, and who was the one that would betray him.65And he said, ‘For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father.’

Jesus is here playing directly upon the Isaiah prophecy. God does not speak, nor does God act, nor does God deliver upon God's promises in the way of humans. We might think well of the fulfillment of Abraham in the mission to the Gentiles. All this is to say that Jesus himself is playing on the images of Isaiah. He sees a people without a shepherd and lost who are exiles in their own land. To them he brings a living word and food to eat. In the end he will deliver them out of exile but not in they way they hope.

Seventh Sunday after Epiphany - February 23, 2025

Prayer

Lord, help me not to be too quick to assume my enemy is a savage just because he is my enemy. Perhaps he is your enemy because he thinks I am a savage. Or perhaps he is afraid of me because he feels that I are afraid of him. And perhaps if he believed I were capable of loving him he would no longer be my enemy. Lord, help me not to be too quick to assume my enemy is a savage just because he is my enemy.

Lord, help me not to be too quick to assume that my enemy is an enemy of God just because he is my enemy. Perhaps he is my enemy precisely because he can find nothing in me that gives glory to God. Perhaps he fears me because he can find nothing in me of God's love and God's kindness and God's patience and mercy and understanding of the weaknesses of men. Lord, help me not to be too quick to assume that my enemy is an enemy of God just because he is my enemy.

Lord, help me not to be too quick to condemn the man who no longer believes in God, for it is perhaps my own coldness and avarice, my mediocrity and materialism, my sensuality and selfishness that have killed his faith. Lord, help me not to be too quick to condemn the man who no longer believes in God. Amen

Prayer adapted from Thomas Merton, from  New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1961).


Luke 6:27-38

"Jesus? life is the best exposition of his teaching: self giving love even in utmost adversity generates life for oneself and for others. It is participation in God?s life."
"First Thoughts on Year C Gospel Passages in the Lectionary: Epiphany 7,"William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia, 2001.

"The word used here for love, agape in Greek, does NOT mean romantic love, liking, or even friendship. What it does mean is whole-hearted, unreserved, unconditional desire for the well-being of the other. Expecting nothing in return."
Holy Textures, Understanding the Bible in its own time and in ours, Luke 6:27-38, David Ewart, 2013.


"Jensen (Preaching Luke's Gospel) offers this possible conclusion to a sermon on this text: Jesus' word for us today is: "I call you to live your lives out of an alternative vision of reality. I call you to live your lives as lives that reverse the values of this culture. I call you to love your enemy; turn the other cheek; give your possessions to those in need and judge not the lives of others. Be merciful even as I am merciful. I have come to nourish your entire life with my mercy. I have come to empower you with mercy in order that you may, indeed, live a new kind of life in this world." [p. 82]"
Exegetical Notes by Brian Stoffregen at CrossMarks Christian Resources.

Do not think that you can show your love for Christ by hating those who seem to be his enemies on earth... Suppose they really do hate him: nevertheless he loves them, and you cannot be united with him unless you love them too.

If you hate the enemies of the Church instead of loving them, you too will run the risk of becoming an enemy of the Church, and of Christ; for he said: Love your enemies, and he also said: He that is not with me is against me. Therefore if you do not side with Christ by loving those that he loves, you are against him.

But Christ loves all people. Christ died for all people. And Christ said there was no greater love than that a man should lay down his life for his friend.

Thomas Merton, from  New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1961).

Oremus Online NRSV Text

We have just read the sermon on the mount, the admonitions that followed, the calling of the disciples to be about the work of bringing justice to the world by serving the poor, hungry, sorrow filled, and those who are hated.

It is as if he turns to the crowd now, and makes a larger pronouncement. He suggests that justice will not be brought about in the world's terms. In other words, justice will not be brought by a revolution of the poor who violently overthrow those in authority and in power. This is not a worldly tale of a new kingdom stomping out a worldly one and then taking its place in the seats of power. (The disciples will talk about this often.) No. This is a wholly other kind of revolution.

It is one where violence is met by peace. He calls people to bless and pray for those who hate, despise, or persecute. He invites people to give their shirt and their coat to those who ask or take from them.

He reminds them that even the sinners are merciful to those whom they like. So, the Gospel is going to be different. It is about loving those who are enemies, forgiving those who persecute us and cause us harm, and caring for those who do us evil.

This is not a "doing good" or "being good" word from Jesus as an economic exchange. It is not about being nice so others will in turn be nice to you.

Walter Wink in his book Engaging the Powers does an excellent job of pulling apart the social context of this passage. He explains that turning the other cheek requires a second blow with a soiled hand. There is a particular shame code at work here and by so doing the person who strikes the second blow is revealed as having defiled the other. Likewise, to give away all your clothing is to be naked. It was forbidden to do this and Jesus is revealing that it is an unjust demand that bring's shame upon the person who takes your clothing. Wink and others talk a bit more about Matthew's version as Jesus is specific about the cheek and adds an invitation to walk an extra mile. This by the way requires just payment for inscription and puts the soldier who requires it in the debtor's seat. Much is written about these non violent invitations to resist. Furthermore, there is a good bit of debate as to Jesus' intended audience and outcome. Is this about communal/village life? Or, is this revolutionary engagement with the powers and authorities. It may indeed be both.

We need though to remember. This is not a bold new code being ascribed by Jesus to those who follow God or who follow him. No, in fact he is inviting the people to remember the conditions prescribed in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. (See Leviticus 18-20) These are attitudes and requirements of love and mercy and forgiveness that reveal God's Holy people to be God's people. This is part of what differentiates them from others they will come to meet in the promised land. In fact the call to care for a stranger or sojourner in their land is an opportunity to reveal how different God's people are. See Leviticus 19 or Proverbs 25:21-22 to understand that God's people are a particular kind of people who are known for their hospitality, their kindness, and care - even to their enemies. What Jesus does is to continue God's teachings and to call people back into covenant with God.

Moreover, Jesus expands this beyond the communal life of first century religious life. Here is where I think it gets interesting. Jesus not only calls the religious to follow these prescriptions but to do so with those who are different, who do not believe, who have many gods, who are unclean, and who are outside of the religious theological sphere that breathes a rarified air of insulation. Jesus is inviting the whole of the world to be reshaped by this invitation. God's people, in Jesus' imagination, are all of the people...not just the faithful religious who can trace their ancestry back.

Furthermore, this is a key Gospel paradox and no mere peaceful protest, or communal ethic. Think for a moment with me. Jesus will in his punishment, trial, way of the cross, and death upon the cross live out all of these invitations. In so doing, then the cross adheres to itself, with Jesus firmly planted upon it, the sin and shame of the world. He is stricken, his clothes are taken, he is required to walk, he persecuted. And, in the end he gathers in the shame by saying, "Father forgive them." Upon the cross the shame of the world and society (which operates contrary to God's garden imaginary where love of enemies is standard) is taken up with Jesus on the cross, and buried down in the grave with Jesus.

To believe that this is merely a code of ethics or a way of following Jesus is to miss the deep theology that is essential in this secular age - God is acting here. God will do these things in the person of Jesus. And, God acts through us when we do these things. 

1 Corinthians 15:35-40

"Does it make any sense at all to speak of future hope if it is not embodied and social? Paul would be very uncomfortable with the popular Christian tendency to reduce future hope to the belief that our souls (whatever they are) go to heaven and that is all there is to it."
"First Thoughts on Passages on Year C Epistle Passages in the Lectionary: Epiphany 6," William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.


"There is a vast gap between a proclamation and an experience. This difference is not notable for the one doing the proclaiming, but is for the one being proclaimed to."
Kairos CoMotion Lectionary Discussion, 1 Corinthians 15:12-22, Wesley White. "A place of conversation regarding Progressive Christianity."

Oremus Online NRSV Text

We continue reading from Paul's letter to the Corinthians. In our passage today we have some deep theology. Paul says, "Christ has been raised from the dead ... so all will be made alive in Christ" (15:20-23) when he comes again. Paul explores this theme with a series of analogies from nature (15:36-38):

• seeds need to die in order to have life;
• they change their state following burial:
• plants have different bodies from seeds;
• God chooses the body of a plant;
• seeds look alike but are changed into a variety of plants.

This of course does not meet the basic understanding of horticulture today. But, nevertheless Paul is trying to make a point.

Paul then concludes with this analysis: "Not all flesh is alike, but there is one flesh for human beings, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one thing, and that of the earthly is another."(39-40)

In Stanley Hauerwas' booke Sanctify Them in the Truth, he introduces us to the work of Dale Martin. Martin has a great book work a read: The Corinthian Body, (Yale Press, 1995). Martin's contribution to the understanding of Paul is that he reminds us that the Corinthians and Paul had a very different understanding of the body. Today we have a kind of dualist understanding (Cartisian in nature). Descartes helped us moderns separate the soul from the body. That would not be Paul's understanding.

For Paul and the Corinthians the soul and body were mixed up and porous. This has a particular meaning in our context of Paul's discussion in this chapter about the resurrection. Paul understood, and was trying to explain to his readers, that Christ's resurrection means that Christians will be resurrected. Baptism, for Paul, has inextricably connected the body of the Christian with the body of Christ. What is at stake is not simply the pollution of the body...but about hierarchy.

Remember, in Corinth there is a whole issue about eating together and the hierarchical norms of the society in which the Corinthian Christians are living. Christ undoes this hierarchy. And, for Paul, to attempt to add a hierarchy into the body of Christ and its relationship with all other Christians is particularly dangerous. (Martin, Corinthian, 131.)

So, we must be careful here as Paul begins to speak about the body as a seed. We cannot read, or transfer, what Paul is doing here into a sphere of metaphor. There is a very real and physical connection of bodies within Christian community....and between the baptized and the Christ. All worldly, secular, and societal hierarchies are destroyed by Paul in his argument about the body. Martin helps us understand that Paul's writing seeks to undermine the class aesthetics of Corinth.

To introduce class hierarchy into the body is not a mere aesthetic invasion for Paul. Instead it is an actual illness. It pollutes the body of Christ. Paul is speaking in Corinthians as if the body is being invaded by a disease. Stanley Hauerwas reminds us that we must get physical when we read Paul. He believed that much was at stake here.

Hauerwas in his sermon "On Not Holding On or Witnessing the Resurrection" writes:

....like the disciples, we would like to think that resurrection does not mean our world has been turned upside down. We would like to celebrate Jesus' "resurrection" and go on living within the presupposition and habits that sustain our lives. That is why we are tempted to try to "explain" the resurrection. Our explanations are the way we...try to "hold on" to Jesus.

He then reminds us that the resurrection cannot be explained. He writes, "That Jesus is the one raised form the dead does not require explanation. Rather Jesus raised requires witnesses." (Hauerwas, Sanctify, 274.)

This all seems a bit important as we lean into Paul's discussion of seeds. Why? Because Paul is NOT saying resurrection is like a seed...or, resurrection and seeds have a lot in common. Paul is actually saying we cannot understand the resurrection...bodies are different. God raises Jesus and in so doing raises us. Paul offers a witness here. He is really saying...Jesus died. God raised Jesus. You will die. God will raise you because you are baptized in Jesus. Seeds and stuff work in a lot of different ways. The resurrection of the body works because God raised Jesus.

Moreover, because all of this is within the framework of the eucharistic meal...when we eat and drink together we are doing so with the resurrected Lord. And, at this table the baptized eat and drink together and all manner of hierarchy and worlds are broken down. This is a peaceable table and the social forms don't have a place here. In fact, to do so, means that we pollute the whole body of the faithful.

Genesis 45:1-15

It is one of the great questions we naturally ask each time we read the story of Joseph. Why did he not, at some time during their twenty-two year separation, send word to his father that he was alive? 
Vayigash - 5779 , Genesis 45:1-15, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. "Does My Father Love Me?"

The episode is moving in itself, but it also resolves one of the central questions of the book of Genesis – sibling rivalry: Cain and Abel, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers. Can brothers live peaceably with one another? This question is fundamental to the biblical drama of redemption, for if brothers cannot live together, how can nations? And if nations cannot live together, how can the human world survive?

Vayechi - 5779, Genesis 45:5, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. "The Future of the Past"

Oremus Online NRSV Text

Now, hopefully you remember the story of Joseph and the technicolor dream coat. Here in our passage today is the great reunion of brothers.

In our Christian tradition, as with our faith ancestors – the people of Israel, words have more than meaning - words have power.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote when reflecting on our passage from Genesis,

“Judaism is a religion of holy words, and one of the themes of Genesis as a whole is the power of speech to create, mislead, harm or heal. From Cain and Abel to Joseph and his brothers [remember the story from the beginning? The brothers “They hated him Joseph and could not speak peaceably to him”] Sacks continues, “we are shown how, when words fail, violence begins.”[i]

Words have power to create, mislead, harm or heal.

The words of the brothers have harmed Joseph and his relationship with his father. The words of the brothers have harmed their own relationship with their father. The words that Joseph speaks to himself harm his relationship with his father.

There are many things that have happened between all parties involved in this sordid brotherly competition for a father’s love. This sibling rivalry between the brothers and Joseph has a lineage that raises its ugly head in the relationship between Jacob and Esau all of which perpetuate the relationship of Cain and Abel.

So it is that the book of Genesis ends as it began – in sibling rivalry.

A notorious highway robber turned celebrated third-century sage, Rabbi Resh Lakish, suggests there are two concepts of the past at work here. The first is what happened – the history, the events, and in the case of Joseph and his brothers…the violence. This would be the throwing Joseph in the pit, the selling of him into slavery, the lying to Jacob about his death. That is something we cannot change suggests Lakish.

The second concept of the past is significance, the meaning, of what happened. That is something we can change.[ii]

Here we might see in our passage the forgiveness of Joseph towards his brothers.

It is on this second concept that the power of words makes a transformative difference.

Joseph has just heard that his father is alive and that he loves Joseph and mourns his loss… something that Joseph did not think was true. These words are the words that turn Joseph’s heart. And, he then reveals himself.

It is out of Joseph’s mouth that we hear how God has changed the violence of his brother’s actions into a means of their family’s salvation.

He then encourages them to let go of their guilt, to claim their deliverance, to hear his forgiveness, and to come and be reconciled and live with him in Egypt in the land of Goshen. Joseph’s words have power, and they transform the actions of the past. Just as God’s Word has power to heal and mend, forgive and give mercy…so too Joseph’s words.

Our modern societal narrative, not unlike Greek and Roman myths, encourage brothers and sisters to consume one another. They make no improvement upon Cain and Abel but instead reward the victor for his violent sacrifice of the other.

Instead, our scripture reveals that human words do in fact, as God’s, have the power to mend and restore. Joseph’s final words at the end of Genesis redeem all that has transpired.

The narrative of God’s work in the life of Joseph and his brothers, in reversing the legacy sibling rivalry, reveals nothing less than the power of the living word present from the time of creation.

In Joseph’s actions we see the one who loves his enemies, the one who loves those who hate, who blesses the ones who curses, who gives abundantly of his own to those who took everything from him. He does not condemn but instead forgives. He does not judge and exclude but instead uplifts and restores into community and relationship that which was broken.

We see then that Jesus’ own invitation to love our enemies is nothing less than the continued work of restoration of God’s garden social imaginary (God’s kingdom); which from the foundation of the world wore the scar of brother against brother, and sister against sister.

Moreover, that as Rabbi Lakish says, what we see in the end of Genesis is not merely the power of words but the power of the living God’s words and actions in those of Joseph, his brothers, and his father – Jacob. Here Lakish suggests, we see the history of events transformed into the story of God and God’s people.

The scripture here then is not merely a story about brothers, nor a history of a people, nor a moral example of how to live in community. Instead it is all these things and more.

It reveals the very nature of God, not by (as George Lindbeck suggests) creating an epistemological tale about God’s nature but by showing God’s interaction with the characters of God’s narrative.[iii]

If we see this story as merely a story about a people, or an Old Testament pericope to be examined in context, we miss the fact that it is an essential part of reveling the very nature of God’s reconciling action… A reconciling action which seeks the restoration of what was lost in a field when one brother killed another out of jealousy, desire, perceived slight and shame…

Here in Jacob’s love for Joseph and the brothers, Joseph for Benjamin, and the brothers for each other…we see the revelation of God who wishes us to know of his love…and his invitation to embrace the power of words to create, mend, and heal.

With this in mind we receive Jesus’ invitation to be a different kind of person not as moral imperative but as an invitation to participate in God’s very story. To allow God’s being to be the power in the words and actions of our own lives. In Luke’s Gospel chapter 6, we are literally being invited to take our part as characters in God’s narrative unfolding.

And, to speak and act as Joseph did – with love, forgiveness, mercy, and generosity upon our lips.

This too is at the core of community, and God’s social imaginary, that in the face of scarcity (as in the lean years of Egypt) we like Joseph discover our need for another. And that in receiving the other we in turn participate in the very nature of the “gratuitus God”. (Something John Milbank points out in his reading of Paul’s letter to the Romans.) We are not a moral community who just happen to be Christian. No. We are more.[iv]

The power of the living word working in the story of Joseph transforms his dependence upon the state power he has earned and places him firmly rooted in confidence of God’s love – specifically familial and brotherly love – in this case.

The living word has power to mend and heal and create. It has power to reconcile. It has power to change history and to create new meaning. The living word has power, even in our time to overcome the sibling rivalry promulgated by powers, authorities, and political allegiances. The living word in our time has power to change the history of the past and present, and to create a wholly different future.

---

[i] Rabvbi Sacks http://rabbisacks.org/father-love-vayigash-5779/

[ii] Rabbi Jonathan Sacks Sacks http://rabbisacks.org/father-love-vayigash-5779/

[iii] George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine, 121.

[iv] John Milbank, The Word Made Strange, 231.

Excerpt from my new book in January 2020: Citizen

Jesus expresses his alternative narrative in works of healing and through engagement with the community and its leaders. He also creates a new community with different types of citizens. As if to live into what theologian and priest Sam Wells called “The Nazareth Manifesto,” Jesus cast a vision for this community. Jesus did not merely say nice things about the poor and feed them, he lived as a poor itinerant preacher dependent upon the hospitality of those who saw him as a homeless stranger.[i] The new community was imagined as one that was to be present in the lives of people. The Gospel was not simply an idea to be preached, but a life to be lived in and amongst people. The manifesto of Jesus offered a vision of life lived with the hungry, with the imprisoned, and with the lost and least. Christ as the incarnate one of God is himself living out this manifesto even as he offers it as kind of new Sinai revelation. Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount articulates such a vision (Luke 6; Matt. 5). Jesus’ teaching from the mount is a rehearsal of God’s visit with God’s people in the wilderness.

Also...

Rabbi Sacks in the Ebor Lectures, delivered in 2011, reminds us that these ten words are a principled foundation for healthy society. He writes that there is a difference between a social and political contract and a covenant. The ten commandments are covenant words, not social and political contract words. Contracts outline the boundaries of “advantage” while these words establish a relationship of loyalty and precedence. The contract becomes a higher authority to which I am bound to settle any future disputes. The covenant rests upon the relationship of a higher authority that transforms all other relationships in my life. The nation state and its citizens are governed by a social contract. The covenant established in the ten commandments orients people to each other and to God at a deeper level than that.[ii]

The Christian citizen is a member of a higher society than their nation state. The commandments remind us that we are not mere Americans. We cannot simply be patriots. We are citizens of a higher kingdom. We relate to God in such a way that we are marked and the way we live in our particular society is transformed. I can be a dual citizen as long as I remember and return often to the character of my relationship rooted in God.

We are to be virtuous citizens of God’s kingdom not only on Sundays, not only within the walls of our homes; but also in the political and social spaces of our community. Global and national society only works if we have character enough to care for one another across the boundaries of states or beyond the scope of our individual rights. I may have the legal right to leave you out in the cold, but as a person in a covenant with God, I have a different responsibility. Society is judged by a people who live according to a higher rule, who live differently within its midst.

God, at Mount Sinai, with neighboring tribal powers and monarchial principalities all around, created a wilderness society that forms and reforms as it makes its way in the world. However, the creation of that first new wilderness society got off to a rocky start. After the revelation of the commandments in Exodus, God invited Moses back up the mountain. (Exodus 32:14) Moses was delayed in coming back down because he got lost with God for a while. He was gone for a very long time. In fact, some translations imply it was an excruciatingly long time. In the absence of leadership and their conduit to God, they made an idol. God got upset at their idolatry. Moses got angry and smashed the tablets with the Ten Commandments. Aaron offered a lame excuse and blamed the people, scapegoating them for his failure of judgment. I have always assumed that this story is about totems for idol worship, maybe because I was so affected by the Cecil B. DeMille movie The Ten Commandments. I assumed that the Israelites chose another god - the golden calf. After all, Aaron does say, “Here is your god!”

The eleventh-century Rabbi Abraham Ben Meir Ibn Ezra anticipated my confusion. He taught that the idol was not made to take God’s place, but Moses’. The idol was to be the means by which people could commune with God, in the absence of a leader. What we know is that everyone has access to God with or without a leader. Sometimes we get into trouble because we think very highly of ourselves. But in the case of the Israelites, their idolatry sprung from feeling very small in the shadow of Sinai.[iii] Rabbi Sacks puts it eloquently, “Every Jew is an equal citizen of the republic of faith because every Jew has access to its constitutional document, the Torah.[iv] In this moment, the golden calf moment, the people did not understand that God was personally in relationship with them. God brought them out of Egypt in order that they might be free and continue to be a blessed people and a blessing to the world around them. God did not need any go-betweens, not Moses and not golden calves. They were to be this kind of society together.

The story of the golden calf is about the human tendency to believe that human-made items can mediate our fear, anxiety, sense of lost-ness, despair, and hopelessness by settling our disputes and bring about right judgments. We hope golden calves will bring about right government and care for the poor and needy. Humans put their trust in just about every kind of political golden calf you can think of. The golden calf is a way of ditching our responsibility. We create institutions and governments to be our go-betweens. This moves our responsibility to the golden calf organization(s) and removes our responsibility for the outcomes. This is how we are able to say the government did this or that – as if we are not our government.

The laws and politics of America and of any nation are a golden calf. Humanity’s understanding of truth by means of reason, our best attempts to create just law, political parties, presidents, and even nations come and go. There will always be golden calves to believe in and put our trust in. The Christian citizen is called to a different kind of relational politics that suggest very different outcomes. While we are obligated to obey the laws of our society, Christian citizenship is really the only means to a different sort of world. Reliance on golden calves will not be enough.

Golden calf organizations always function by means of a social contract,[v] which serve as the foundation for a network of formal and informal laws, statutes, constitutions, and treaties. These forms of social contracts help to protect, build commerce, enable travel, and order life when large groups of people live together. Most people talk about the need for social virtues in each of these types of contracted nation-states in order to bring about the very best societies possible.[vi] When we discuss Christian citizenship within the sphere of the nation, we are speaking primarily about a different  posture towards the social contractual relationships of the wider community. I want to be clear here. Our Christian belief and practice should have a real impact on how we conduct ourselves as Americans. Our covenanted relationship as Christian citizens impacts our contractual relationship(s) with the state and the informal relationships with our fellow citizens and neighbors.

The difference between Christian and nonchristian ways of being American ought to come down to compassion. Compassion is a fundamental virtue,  rooted throughout the scripture and especially in the Old Testament as hesed.[vii] As Christian citizens in a covenant relationship with God, we receive compassion from God, and we are to have compassion and live compassionate lives with kin, strangers, and neighbors alike. This is not a contract. For the Christian citizen compassion is a governing virtue of life lived by citizens in God’s reign.[viii] All relationships are read through a cruciform lens. The passion of Christ is compassion incarnated and enacted for all people.

Our work of covenanted compassion is entangled with another word with this other word emunah or faithfulness. For the Christian citizen the work of governing is about living out a commitment to relationships with others. Our faithfulness or emunah propels compassion forward, and gives all of our public relations a quality of familial faithfulness. Familial faithfulness is the second governing virtue of Christian citizenship. Rabbi Sacks describes it as an “internalized sense of identity, kinship, loyalty, obligation, responsibility, and reciprocity.”[ix] The sole purpose of government is to make us into a society that works. The Christian citizen has a greater vocation. The Christian citizen understands this tradition of familial faithfulness as a unity and relational obligation between kin, neighbor, and stranger. It has a universal quality to it. The Christian citizen is drawn into compassionate relationships outside of the natural and even governed boundaries because the compassion of Christ unites all people family, friends, neighbors and strangers into one faithful familial relationship.  

We as Christians are baptized into the reign of God, and we are made citizens by Christ’s work. Christ is really doing what God has been doing all along, making us God’s people. We are unified by a God who desires relationship with us, and we are people who believe God makes a covenant with us. The scripture is filled with these covenants. All of them are really of one kind in which God invites us to be a community of blessing to the world rooted in both hesed and emunah – in both compassion and faithfulness.

To fully grasp the meaning of the commandments given to Moses in order to actualize God’s garden social imaginary we must hold together the active words of compassion and faithfulness as we engage the other ten words. As we speak about Christian citizenship in the reign of God, we are speaking about covenant, compassion, and faithfulness to our kin, the neighbor, and the stranger.  

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[i] The Rev. Sam Wells is the first person I know of who used the term “Nazareth Manifesto” in his essay by the same name. Wells offers that Jesus did not simply offer a word of release for the captives and food for the poor, Jesus seeks to be with the people in their hunger and imprisonment. Sam Wells, “Nazareth Manifesto,” Vagt Lecture: The Nazareth Manifesto, April 27, 2008, https://web.duke.edu/kenanethics/NazarethManifesto_SamWells.pdf.

[ii] Sacks wrote, “A contract is about advantage, a covenant is about loyalty… A contract is about interests, a covenant is about identity, about belonging to something bigger than me. From a contract, I gain, but from a covenant, I am transformed. I am no longer the person I once was, but am part of something larger than I once was. Thus, a social contract creates a State, but a covenant creates society." Jonathan Sacks, "Biblical Insights into the Good Society (Ebor Lecture 2011)," Rabbi Sacks, October 02, 2013, accessed July 29, 2018, http://rabbisacks.org/biblical-insights-into-the-good-society-ebor-lecture-2012/.

[iii] I discovered this interpretation in an article by Rabbi Josh Gerstein, who also quoted Rabbi J. B. Soloveitchik, one of the great twentieth-century Jewish thinkers, who wrote:

They felt that they themselves did not have access to the Almighty. Only somebody of great charisma and ability could have access to him. The people sinned because they were perplexed. Moses has been gone for a long time. . . . They did not understand that, while Moses was the greatest of all prophets and the greatest of all men, every Jew has access to God. . . . Sometimes it is a sense of one’s greatness that causes sin; sometimes it is a sense of one’s smallness. It is possible that the story of the golden calf actually is a reference to a dispute between the later northern and southern kingdoms. See 1 Kings 12:28–30. More than revealing that Israel has one God, the story might reveal that Israel has one place of worship and one kingdom vs a divided one. The theology here is good even if it is a historic controversy in narrative form. See Josh Gerstein, “Revisiting the Sin of the Golden Calf,” Algemeiner.com, March 16, 2017, https://www.algemeiner.com/2017/03/16/revisiting-the-sin-of-the-golden-calf/. See also Joseph B. Soltoveitchik’s Vision and Leadership (Brooklyn, NY: KTAV Publishing House, 2012) 131.

[iv] Jonathan Sacks, Radical Then, Radical Now: On Being Jewish (Bloomsbury, 2013) 129.

[v] Drawing on the work of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in his book The Politics of Hope, we understand that there are always two ideas floating around when we speak about citizenship in the wider community (town, city, nation, globally).

[vi] Jonathan Sacks, The Politics of Hope (London: Vintage, 2000), 64.

[vii] Sacks, Hope, 63.

[viii] Daniel Elazar, a leading political scientist and specialist in the study of federalism, political culture, and the Jewish political tradition, writes that such a life “expresses the idea that people can freely create communities and polities, peoples and publics, and civil society itself through such morally grounded and sustained compacts (whether religious or otherwise in impetus), establishing thereby enduring partnerships.” Daniel Judah. Elazar, People and Polity: The Organizational Dynamics of World Jewry (Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1989), 19.

[ix] Sacks, Hope, 63-64.