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

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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, 5C, May 18, 2022

Quotes That Make Me Think


"This short text from John's gospel is like a glowing candle in the darkness, a command to love one another amid the realities of violence and betrayal as a continuation of Jesus' ministry in the world."
"Easter Erosion, Easter Explosion," Alyce M. McKenzie, Edgy Exegesis, 2013.

"By believing against all odds and loving against all odds, that is how we are to let Jesus show in the world and to transform the world."
"Let Jesus Show," sermon discussion from Frederick Buechner, Frederick Buechner Blog.

"One of the stunning parts of this text is the location. This passage comes on the heels of Judas leaving the other disciples at the last supper to betray Jesus."
Commentary, John 13:31-35, Karyn Wiseman, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2013.

General Resources for Sunday's Lessons

Prayer

Loving god, the promise of the new Jerusalem is your home among us. Already in the new commandment of love you have begun to make all things new. As Jesus loved us, so we would love, that in the love we have for one another a new heaven and a new earth may dawn. 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 13:31-35

Picture is of Poster entitled, "Beloved of God," printed
for 73rd General Convention

Oremus Online NRSV Gospel Text

Resources for Sunday's Gospel

This Sunday we have Jesus’ departure including his last words to his disciples before the trial and final hours of his life.

There are a number of very important theological and missional points to be considered in these last instructions to his disciples.

The first of these phrases is, “God has been glorified.” The glory of God is the primary, the ultimate, work of Jesus Christ. He is modeling for all humanity the work we are to undertake as creatures of God, and making it clear that our disobedience to this work dishonors our creator. “Glory”, according to Raymond Brown, “involves a visible manifestation of God’s majesty in acts of power.” (RB, John, Anchor Bible, vol 2, 606) This scriptural and textual view is important theologically. We, the creatures of God, are to work on God’s behalf. We are, through our lives as disciples of the most high God, are to manifest God’s majesty in the living out of our lives and in our relationships with one another.

The Biblical scholar George B. Caird wrote this about the understanding of this word "glory" and its meaning within the New Testament, and its meaning for theology: “Through Jesus God is held in honor by men.” “God is honored by Jesus,” through his obedience to God’s will. “God has won honor for himself in Jesus.” And, “God has revealed his glory in Jesus.” (Brown, 606)

Brown reminds us that Origen moved this concept towards Gnosticism because he associated it with knowing God. But the more ancient continuum throughout scripture upholds the idea that the purpose of all creation and humans especially, is to glorify God in word, action, and deed.

In verse 33 Jesus remarks to them, calling them children – as in his later greeting on the beach, and says that he will not be with them long. Moreover, that the work and the journey he is about to take is not for them, but for him alone.

Jesus gives this commandment 18 times in the last discourse in John. The statement is clear: Love one another.

We are to love one another as Jesus loves us. And the word chosen here is “must.” We must love as Jesus loved. This is our commandment. This is how we are to be known: as the ones who love one another.

Raymond Brown points out that over time Christian Apologists, all, “would call upon the impact made by Christian love as a standard argument for the superiority of Christianity.” (607) Today we make the case primarily on other grounds as this is not typically what comes to mind when one thinks about Christians in our culture or globally.

Raymond Brown writes the following:

Yet love is more than a commandment; it is a gift, and like the other gifts of the Christian dispensation it comes from the Father through Jesus to those who believe in him. In xv 9 we hear, “As the Father has love me, so have I loved you”; and both xiii 34 and xv 12 the “as I have love you” emphasizes that Jesus is the source of the Christians’ love for one another. (Only secondarily does it refer to Jesus as the standard of Christian love.) The love that Jesus has for his followers is not only affective but also effective; it brings about their salvation. It is expressed in his laying down his life, an act of love that gives life to men. This is well expressed in Rev I 5: “…the one who loves us and has delivered or washed us from our sins.” We should also stress that the “love of one another” of which the Johannine Jesus speaks is love between Christians. In our own times a frequent ideal is the love of all men, enunciated in terms of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. Such a maxim has some biblical basis in the creation of all men by God, but the idea is not Johannine. For John, God is a Father only to those who believe in His Son and who are begotten as God’s children by the Spirit in Baptism. The “one another” that the Christian is to love is correctly defined in I John iii 14 as “our brothers,” that is those within the community.

It seems to me that the Christian community who is not able to primarily engage in the commandment to love one another will be unable to be a missionary community into a world looking and searching for vessels of God’s love. The church that cannot be a sacrament of God’s love for those within first, and those without second, ceases to reflect the glory of God as intended by God for God’s pleasure, and for humanities mutual benefit, and for the salvation of creation.  Loving our neighbor is the primary way in which those who follow Jesus glorify God.

Some Thoughts on Revelation 21:1-5

Oremus Online NRSV Epistle Text

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We continue the longest series of readings from the book of Revelation this week.  In today's passage the vision is of a new heaven and new earth.  The first things have passed away.

As a number of theologians point out the book of Revelation squarely places the kingdom of God's work on earth.  Rather than the heavens consuming the earth as in many other apocalyptic tradition the image and theme of Revelation is that heaven comes to earth; the fulfillment of the incarnation and the work of Jesus.

At the wedding at Cana of Galilee one can imagine the bride and groom and the many attendees gathered around enjoying the company of one another.  The image though of the bride of Christ given in the previous chapter is not a wedding feast where earth is brought into heaven and all rejoice.  It is instead an image of a beautiful and wondrous earthly city.  It is a place of hospitality to the stranger and  a place of rest for the weary pilgrim, and peace for God's people.  Tears are wiped away in this place and the world itself is transformed.

Such a city has been on the hearts and minds of Christians from Augustine to the slave, from the missionary to the persecuted.  It is found in the writings of William Blake and is present in the abolitionist and civil rights leader's voice.

In revelation we are not offered a future hope of heavenly bliss but a transformed earth.  The resurrection happens on earth and so to will the reign of God.  We can all think of the Armageddon images and films which promise some form of escapism from the world.  This is not quite the image we find in Revelation.  The earth is made new.  Not unlike the Christ after resurrection where he is more present, more real, than he was before the same may be said for the new earth.  The reign of God on earth will be more present and more real.  What has been seen only in part will be revealed in an even greater way.

The earth which has been sowed for power and ruled by authorities other than God will be changed.  It isn't so much that the earth or seas will be no more as they will no longer be used and corrupted by powers outside of the reign of God.  The earth that is made new is sustainable and God will provide for his people.  This will be a new world, remade, and reordered such that the power of Rome or Babylon cannot keep the waters of life from those who seek it.  This vision is transformative and promises a different world which will provide all that is needed for its population. The hungry and thirsty will receive good things to eat and drink.  The powers that have ruled the world and corrupted the creation and the creatures will no longer have dominion.

The city which John envisions comes down from heaven to earth is a sight for us all.  It is a revelation of a new earth; and the promise of a creation which supports bounteous life under the reign of a loving and providing God.

Some Thoughts on Acts 11:1-18

Oremus Online NRSV Text

Resources for Sunday's New Testament Text

So when Christians get going and turn from being disciples into apostles, when they stop following the church organization and go out things get dicey. (Disciple means the one who follows, Apostle means the one who goes.) This is exactly what happens in this Acts lesson.

People are going out and doing the work of God, Peter is going out. And, those who were used to having faith a particular way with particular rituals don't like Peter's work. They accuse him of being to easy on these newbies. They accuse him of not offering a true faith. They will do most anything to keep Paul from advancing the mission of the Gospel of Christ.

This reveals that it is always the nature of the internal church, the predecessor church, to have difficulty with the mission evolution of the church within the varying and different contexts.

Here is Peter's defense is 7 part and really a good guide to mission engagement:

1. God directed him to see that things needed to change. In this particular case that it was okay to eat animals that were forbidden by the religion of the day.
2. God then taught Peter that things outside of a person and what they eat do not defile a person. We might remember Jesus' teaching that it is what comes out of the mouths of humans that defiles not what goes in. (Matthew 10:15ff)
3. God makes us clean, not our nature or our own work.
4. God helped me see I was to go with people who I had believed were unclean.
5. I didn't know what to say, but God helped me when the time came.
6. What we truly give one another is God's spirit.
7. I realized God was giving them his Spirit and so how could I get in the way of this.

The best part is that Luke writes, "When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, 'Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.'” The faithful in Jerusalem see that the expansion of the mission is good, that people are sharing a love of Christ, and are being empowered by the Holy Spirit, people are coming to Christ because they did not get in the way and Peter opened the way.

Peter literally fulfills Jesus' own words when he lets it be known that his followers are not to lord it over them. Jesus says in Matthew 23, be  careful not to be like so many religious leaders, "they tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. They do all their deeds to be seen by others..." Peter enters the mission field and does not tie up heavy burdens on those he finds there. Luckily the faithful in the predecessor church also realize that this is not their work. 

Proper 14, Year B, August 11, 2024

Prayer

Guide your church, O God, on the paths of its earthly pilgrimage, and sustain with the food that does not perish so that, perserving int eh faith to which christ has called us, we may come at last to your holy mountain and gaze on the beauty of your face.  We ask this through Christ, with whom you have raised us up in baptism, the Lord who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.

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

Some Thoughts on John 6:35-41

"At some point a human being quits grasping for life and griping at God and begins instead to give herself away with Christ, as a piece of his flesh, for the life of the world (v. 51)."

"Foodstuffs," Jerome Burce, Sabbatheology, The Crossings Community, 2009.

"The good news is that Jesus, rather than our knowledge and understanding, is the source of our calling and the source of our strength."

Commentary, John 6:35, 41-51, Craig A. Satterlee, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2015.

"'Murmur' here and in v.41: Perhaps 'grumble' or 'complain' would be better, but the idea of Jews/Judeans murmuring brings to mind the wilderness stories of the Exodus, when the people of Israel ‘murmured.’ See, e.g. Exodus 16:12, where the people murmur (γογγυσμὸν in LXX) and God, in response, sends Manna, later called the 'bread of heaven' (Psalm 78:24)."

"Murmuring about Bread from Heaven," D Mark Davis, raw translation and exegesis/questions, Left Behind and Loving It, 2012.

Oremus Online NRSV Text

Our gospel today continues with the "Bread of Life" theme that is marching its way through our summer readings in John's gospel.  As I go a little deeper with the bread of life texts I was fascinated by the history of scholarship and theology on this text.  Raymond Brown has a lovely paragraph in the beginning of his exegesis on this passage that is worth repeating for you history buffs.

As Brown begins to unpack the notion that Jesus is either a) speaking prophetically and about himself as the bread of life from heaven and so this is a revelatory passage on the incarnation; or, b) it is about the flesh of Jesus and the Eucharist.  He writes:

"Even in antiquity there was no agreement.  Some of the early Church Fathers, like Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Eusebius, understood the whole discourse (vss. 35-58) spiritually: for them the flesh and blood of 53ff. meant no more than did the bread from heaven - a reference to Christ, but not in a Eucharistic way. For Augustine the flesh referred to Christ's immolaiton for the salvation of men.  In the heart of the patristic period, Chrysostom, Gregory of Nyssa, the Cyrils of Jerusalem and of Alexandria gave a preponderance to the Eucharistic theory. Skipping to the Reformation, we find that many of the reformers did not accepts the Eucharistic interpretation, but then neither did the Catholic champion Cajetan." (John, vol 1, 272)

In the end Brown himself will settle on the notion that Jesus is preaching on a text selected for the seder meal in the Capernaum synagogue at Passover time.  (ibid, 280)

I think this passage gives us the ability to mold and shape a discourse of our own; wherein we meditate upon the nature of Jesus and of the Eucharistic feast.  For Episcopalians this is an important time to speak about our own particular and faithful understanding of the Eucharistic meal.  We believe that the Holy Eucharist is a gospel sacrament that is essential in understanding the revelation of who Jesus is, his life, death, resurrection and our hope of his return.  For Episcopalians you see this passage is a both/and revelation. It speaks to us of who the incarnation is and how we recognize him; and it speaks to us of the sacrament itself.

The incarnation itself, Jesus as manna from heaven, is remembered and we give thanks for God's intervention in the world around us. We understand that the service and Eucharist itself makes Christ's sacrifice present for us in both a physical and spiritual manner. The Eucharist is the place where in the people of God, the Church, gathers for refreshment as it makes its pilgrim journey through the world.  It is part of the narrative of life which stretches from baptism to the passing from this life into the next. 

The narrative life of Jesus and his Church is an important part of this because there is much that is taking place here and much that is at work in the life of the believer: there is in this Eucharist the forgiveness of sins, the strengthening of the union with Christ and with one another, and it also is a foretaste of the kingdom of heaven.  It is a service where people are invited to examine their lives, repent of sin, and seek to be in love and charity with all people. 

So as we turn and look at this passage from John's gospel we see that Jesus' words and teachings profoundly impact and build our narrative. Jesus is the bread of life. His promise is a promise for a world hungry for life and thirsty for salvation.  Those who follow him and partake as family are never lost to him.  Jesus as bread of life, manna from heaven, the incarnation, is part of the reordering and recreating of the cosmic order.  Which is remade in Jesus' incarnation and whose culmination will be the earth's reunion with heaven in the last day.

Ephesians 4:25-5:2

"Even with the transformative effects of the love of God, the writer of Ephesians recognizes that sin does not disappear."

Commentary, Ephesians 4:25-5:2, Susan Hylen, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2009.

"The Spirit wants to bear the fruits of love in you and through you. Fundamental to all of this is forgiveness. It means giving, not holding oneself back and holding something against people. Let it go, embrace them; God embraced us."

"First Thoughts Year B Epistle Passages in the Lectionary," Pentecost 11, William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.

"We must admit that the condemnation ingredient in anger always involves an illusory self-perception. But sometimes illusions are an inevitable part of our human situation and ones that we get around not by eradicating them but by compensating for them."

"Tempering the Spirit of Wrath: Anger and the Christian Life," Robert C. Roberts. The Christian Century, 1997. At Religion OnLine.

Oremus Online NRSV Epistle Text

One commentator on this passage wrote something like, "Paul gives advice you don't often hear in the ancient world." The truth is that Paul's letter to the Ephesians was and is unique advice. As a circular letter meant for more than one community we might remind ourselves that it is good to hear and it might just be meant for us.

Paul says we have to speak the truth to one another. This is key. We must be honest with one another and in doing this work we are then true members together in the community. We should never ask that people hold back their honest selves from us. And, we should work to be honest with others. This is a key quality to the kingdom of God and the vision for Christian community. 

This is not license though to be mean. This truth telling is not license to hurt other people. It is not the freedom to get in another persons face and tell them like it is. It is not freedom to hate or be angered against another person. Hate speech, hate, being ugly, demeaning another person, humor at another's expense or in order to degrade another person, treating people poorly or in an unkind manner because you think you have the truth - is evil, sinful, and of the devil Paul says.

If you are a follower of Jesus you can't talk this way. You can't treat people this way - no matter what they do or did. You are to instead build people up, to speak words of grace, and to make sure they hear you speak of them and to them in this manner. 

God wishes to move and work through you as a witness to God's love and mercy. Hate speech and anger will not be vessels of God's love. Bitterness, wrath, anger, arguing, slander, malice and mean intent cannot be transformative vessels of God's love.

I have actually heard people say that kindness is not a biblical value. Paul would disagree. You are to be kind to one another, tenderhearted, and forgiving. This is the nature of Christ and when you are these to other people you are yourselves images of the Christ and much fruit will be born in the world because of your witness.

This is what it means to be imitators of God. To be a beloved Child of God is to live in love and to give your life for those who would harm you. You are to give your life and give up your mean spirited, hate speech, your ugliness, your anger and hostility, and your demeaning of other people if you are to be a child of God. No matter how just you believe your cause to be - God will not have beloved followers who do not imitate these qualities of Christ himself. In fact to behave in this fashion is to actually frustrate God's own mission and ministry in the world. 

This is not some kind of politically correct way of being - it is God's way of being. If we are to be with God and be imitators of God then we are must be about this work in the world too.


2 Samuel 18:5-33


"If the heart of David was riven between being a father and a king, Joab's actions suggest the unambiguous character of the remorseless king, full of vengeance."
Commentary, 2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33, Robert Hoch, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.


"It all started when David's son Amnon raped his half-sister Tamar. David would not punish Amnon because he was his firstborn, leading Absalom to avenge his half-sister by killing Amnon himself."
Commentary, 2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33, Ralph W. Klein, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2015.

"If David could have done the boy's dying for him, he would have done it. If he could have paid the price for the boy's betrayal of him, he would have paid it. If he could have given his own life to make the boy alive again, he would have given it. But even a king can't do things like that. As later history was to prove, it takes a God."
"Absalom," sermon discussion from Frederick Buechner, Frederick Buechner Blog. Absalom, from Beyond Words.


Oremus NRSV Text


First, if you have not done so I suggest reading or even rereading the text on David and Bathsheba from proper 12B. I will not repeat myself here. As we have pointed out previously the Succession Narritives hold within it several example of René Girard's sacred memetic themes of desire, rivalry, and scapegoating/murder.

In the story of Amnon and Tamar, the triangle consists of Amnon (the subject of desire), Tamar (the object) and Tamar's brother Absalom. Once again desire leads to rivalry and violence. Our passage this week picks up after Amnon took Tamar by force, and after years of built up sibling rivalry between men Absalom then kills Amnon.

Girard offers an explanation that this desire is rooted in the human psyche. It is metaphysical and repeats itself throughout human history. It is present in the succession narrative as it is in literature as it is in history. Bathsheba is only a pretext, an object, something that is a means to an end. We participate in repeating the damage (as we clearly see visible in the #metoo movement) because we fool ourselves into believing it is love, or that the object will satiate the hunger. In this case Tamar does not change Amnon's character. Girard reflects on this theme and writes:

The disappointment is entirely metaphysical...The subject discovers that possession of the object has not changed his being—the expected metamorphosis has not taken place The greater the apparent virtue' of the object, the more terrible is the disappointment (Girard, Deceit, Desire, ρ 88)

What was true for David and Bathsheba is repeated here again. René Girard's theory offers a model in which we can come to see clearly the repetitive, or memetic, nature where in human desire, begets rivalry, begets a crisis that ends in death.

The story of Absalom is greater still though. Absalom not only desires Tamar, he desires the kingship. He sets himself up as a duplicate of David.

Hans H. L. Jensen writes in his journal article entitled Desire, Rivalry, and Collective Violence about the subject in this way:

Absalom's death is a paradigmatic example of the blessings of collective violence, in which general violence is done away with by its transformation into an 'all versus one' scene, that is, by the elimination of one single victim. The death of Absalom is not the only instance in the Succession Narrative where this mechanism is shown at work. Just as in the case of desire, where we found no less than four instances that showed how important this theme was for the text, so we have more examples of the same mechanism of collective violence.

This will be the end of Absalom and Absalom's end is another telling of the faltering house of David.

Because in many ways Absalom himself is set up as a double to king David, it is a personal death.

Quite literally what we see is the memetic violence of Cain and Abel repeated throughout the Davidic succession narrative.

1 Kings 19:1-15

"Does this story teach us that murder is okay when we do it to defend God's honor or to enforce loyalty to God? Does God need this kind of defending?"
"Elijah, Murderer," Nanette Sawyer, The Hardest Question, 2013.

"Our journey with God sometimes calls us to do things and be things that we may not want to do, or didn't ever see ourselves doing. There might be times when things get scary. But what we can learn, through Elijah, that when things happen, and when the road gets hard… that it's ok to be afraid, or worried, or frustrated; its even ok to feel like giving up."
"Get Up And Eat," Linda Fabian Pepe, Theological Stew, 2013.


"This notice and the selection of Elisha are not divine reprimand proper, but they may sting Elijah nevertheless, serving as yet another reminder that one doesn't always get the answer one wants from God in prayer."
Commentary, 1 Kings 19:4-8, Sara Koenig, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.

Oremus NRSV Text

So, here is the passage. We got trouble in the northern kingdom. Elijah is telling them judgment is coming. Jezebel is all over the Canaanite religion and God isn't happy.

We have the great western shoot out style dueling prophets on Mount Carmel. Baal prophets loose. The prophets are murdered. All is fire, like a scene out of a classic rock song. People behave, God has shown his power, Baal followers are out. Then Jezebel is a little upset and exiles Elijah and throws down a few death threats on the way.

After all of this Elijah is a bit sick and tired. He did a lot of work and the people still rejected God, and him. They killed off God's prophets. Elijah is the only faithful one left. Like Job or Moses, he is summoned. God brings him up to the mountain and speaks to him not int he whirlwind but in the quiet still voice.

Walter Brueggeman invites you to consider the following:

"So the question that I want you to think about while I talk is: Who threw the mantle over you, and what did they expect of you, and how are you doing? And if you've been at this faith business for awhile, you are permitted to ask: Over whom have you thrown a mantle of empowerment and expectation? Because the matter of apostolic succession is not just with bishops and priests. The matter of apostolic succession concerns the whole body of believers, and it is an intergenerational thing in which we are always casting the mantle on somebody else." (From a lecture in Newark)

Elisha is a great example of a prophet invited to go and do very difficult work. God speaks to him, through him, and sends him on dangerous errands. Sometimes he is alone, sometimes he has company. He is faithful but as this passage reveals it is a hard life. Even now, in the midst of this text we know that the mantle is about to fall upon Elisha.

Our work on God's behalf wether you be prophet or a member of God's prophetic community is difficult work. In the frustration of the work and its loneliness can you still hear God's voice in the midst of it all. What is God inviting you to do and where to go? Who is God inviting you to place a mantle of call upon?



Sermons Preached on These Texts


Murmuring and Grumbling on the Way to the Kingdom of God., Aug 20, 2015, Preached at All Saints Hitchcock on 14B, 2015

Proper 27A/Ordinary 32A/Pentecost +23 November 8, 2020

Prayer

Drive from our hearts the idols this world worships, money, and power, privilege and prestige, that we may be free to serve you alone, and, by loving our neighbor as ourselves, may make your Son's new commandment of love the law that governs every aspect of our lives. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.

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

Some Thoughts: Matthew 25:1-13

"When all is said and done—when we have scared ourselves silly with the now-or-never urgency of faith and the once-and-always finality of judgment—we need to take a deep breath and let it out with a laugh. Because what we are watching for is a party. (Capon)" "Pity the Fools," D Mark Davis, Left Behind and Loving It, 2017.

"Unpredictability is an important theological category, for the God of the Bible has always chosen to be a God associated with calling people, sending people, encountering people, incarnating as human, and pouring out the Holy Spirit on communities who are on the margins, all of this happening in the fullness of God’s own time." "The Politics of Representation," Raj Bharat Patta, Political Theology Today, 2017.

Oremus Online NRSV Text

Jesus is again teaching a parable about the kingdom of heaven. He then offers ten bridesmaids, lambs, a bridegroom, not enough oil and trouble. The problem with preaching these parables is that we are preaching against the story tide. People have heard them so many times they have already made up their minds about what they say. And, typically what they know, or think they know, is based upon a surface reading at best or a childhood memory. Frederick Buechner, theologian and author, remarks that we “suck” these dry with old stories and thoughts about what we think we know. (Frederick Buechner, excerpt from "The Truth of Stories" was originally published in The Clown in the Belfry and later in Secrets in the Dark.)

The parable itself falls within the last parables of judgment in Robert Farrar Capon’s view (See Kingdom, Grace, Judgment, Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus, 512.) He offers the idea that human beings think in a way that there is always an opportunity for a second chance. The parables of judgment offer a sense of urgency in that God in Christ Jesus is a disruptor, and disruption in history. He is a disruption in our history and there is immediacy to going with the bridegroom when he comes. There is no time for dilly-dallying. There is the now and present Christ. 

God is saving right now and in our moment.

God is, in Capon’s view saving history. And, in a moment that history will have an end and even in that moment faith will come to an end. Yet, God is saving if you will but have a little faith.

Our parable starts out as his parables began when he first taught and his journey to the cross was but in its infancy. Now he nears his work and so the parables have taken on an urgency as does his final days with his followers.

In order to catch Jesus’ joke and understand the parable in its kingdom meaning lets call the maidens with a little bit of oil maidens #1. And, lets call the maidens with a ton of oil maidens #2.

Maidens #1 take just enough oil to make it through the night. The first hearers would say, “Ah, these are wise maidens.” They are prudent, they take just enough. They are following the rules of not wasting anything. They are so wise.” Jesus then makes a joke! He calls them “foolish”. The maidens bring just enough to make it to the feast and no more. Once again the parable seems to be about prudence and preparedness when it is actually about plenty and extravagance.

Then there are maidens #2. By the world’s standards the maidens #2 are foolish. They take WAY too much oil. Jesus then calls these #2 maidens “wise”. You see the party is to go on and on. The Bridegroom is making his way from party to party and we are to go with him…when he arrives. In faith we must be ready and willing to be held up as the Bridegroom makes his way.

The kingdom is not run in a respectable way!

Some Thoughts: 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

"We all long to hear a good word: a word that brings good news, a word that can sustain us, a word that can give us the vision and courage to make it through another day, a word that tells us God is with us."

Commentary, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, Holly Hearon, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2011.

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

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

Oremus Online NRSV Text

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

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

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

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

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

Some Thoughts: Joshua 24:1-25

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

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

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

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

Oremus Online NRSV Text

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Walter Brueggemann writes:

What this God requires is a life-commitment that will impinge upon every dimension of public life — social, political and economic. This God, so says Joshua, is uncompromising. With YHWH it is “all or nothing,” no casual allowance for accommodation. What is at issue is a jealous God who is committed to neighborly justice and the organization of the economy for the sake of the weak and vulnerable (thus the testimony of the book of Deuteronomy that stands behind this narrative chapter). But the other gods, the totems of agricultural self-sufficiency, do not require such neighborly passion. The either/or that Joshua presents has immediate practical social consequences. A decision for YHWH entails socio-economic justice. A decision for the “other gods” leads inevitably to socio-economic exploitation, the accumulation of wealth at the expense of neighbors. Such a “religion” without commitment to social justice will eventuate in communities of economic failure, such as we now witness in Reading. (https://www.huffingtonpost.com/walter-brueggemann/joshua-2413a-1425_b_1070263.html)