First Sunday of Christmas - Sunday December 26, 2021

Quotes That Make Me Think


"If we struggle with Jesus? being 'fully human and fully God,' it should not be surprising if the child Jesus wrestled with his identity too."

"Stirrings of Divinity,"Peter Storey, The Christian Century, 2000.Religion Online.


"Children find their true home despite us."

"Learning from Our Children," Peter Woods, I Am Listening, 2009.


General Resources for Sunday's Lessons


Prayer
What love you have bestowed upon us, O good and gracious God, in letting us be called your children, and in giving us your Son, Jesus, to live as a child among us in the family of Mary and Joseph.  Let all who seek the face of Christ find him, not only here, in this house of prayer, but in the households, large and small, where your love is revealed in our love for each other.  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 C, Peter J. Scagnelli, LTP, 1992.

Some Thoughts on Luke  2:41-52
Oremus Online NRSV Gospel Text

Resources for Sunday's Gospel

There are no other stories like this in the Gospels.  This is unique to Luke and it remains one of the only stories of Jesus' young life that we know. 

Certainly, scholars will recognize similar stories in the writings of the age.  These are stories of great men who in their youth portray their giftedness; giving a glimpse of their future life and vocation. 
The reader can easily see that without this story there is a 30-year gap in the life of Jesus.  It is perhaps for this reason that people try to mine this for all that can be discovered.

Yet the story is a simple story.  It is a beautiful story about a lost child, parents desperately looking for him, a frantic search,  and a bit of domestic drama between confused parents and adolescent piety.

What do we know? Jesus grew up in a pious family. They tended to their faithful duties including a Passover pilgrimage. 

There are definitely two tensions in the story.  The first is created by a family who is simply doing the normal though pietistic thing.  They are making their way to Jerusalem. They expect Jesus to be in the group, he is found to be lost.  The second tension is in the reality that Jesus is found in the Temple teaching. This is certainly a nod to future events but it is also a tension between Jesus and his family.  While they had all kinds of signs that their son was Lord and God with us; they seemed surprised to find him.  Indeed, he seems surprised that they are surprised.  Jesus himself from this point on will begin to distance himself from his family of origin and begin to spend time with the newly emerging family of God.

At the end of the story, we have a very clear theme emerging in Luke's gospel. Being lost is like being dead and being found is like being alive (Luke Timothy Johnson, Luke, 60).  The theme is a portent where Jesus is lost, he is found, and he is teaching in Jerusalem.  After his death, he will be lost, they will search for him, he will be found in Jerusalem to teach.  Again in the Emmaus story, we have a similar theme. 

I think on this the first Sunday after Christmas we must be careful to not move into mere sentimentality.  The text is present to link the Christ of the nativity with the Christ of mission and proclamation.  The text reminds us that the one in the manger is the one who shall teach us our roles as helpers in the kingdom of God.  The story helps us to remember that it is Christ that we look to for wisdom and for direction.  And, perhaps that this God who is unlikely to be found in human form is also unlikely to be found in all kinds of places; and there, when you find him shall you receive revelation.


Some Thoughts on Colossians 3:12-17

Oremus Online NRSV Epistle Text

Resources for Sunday's Epistle

This passage from Colossians speaks of the life lived in a community of Christ.  It is about the virtuous characteristics of Christians. 

Not surprisingly the passage follows teaching on morality.  We are to put to death impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness all of which is about us getting what we want.  All of these things are idolatry. Therefore, if we are not to be idolatrous and we wish to follow Jesus and to serve  him a life of virtue will consist of: "compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience."

We are as a community and as individuals to "bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other."  Wow, what would the church be like if we did this?  Christians are to remember that "just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive."

All of this can only be done with love, peace, and gratitude.  We are to dwell on the word of Christ and try to learn from one another.  And in the last part of the reading we are reminded that the essential key is for the individual (regardless of sex or age) to give themselves completely to God and to the other; whether it be family, friend or neighbor.

I wonder after all the time spent with folks over the holidays how well we did on this?  How well do we do it within our church? 

I was recently asked why people love God and are losing their faith in denominations. I believe that people are losing their faith in most kinds of organized religion because we don't do this.  People are genuinely looking for love, peace, and gratitude.  People are looking for compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.  If the church, which the scripture tells us is to look exactly like the virtuous community described in Colossians, doesn't look like it then why bother with it. 

The church should be the one place for Jesus' friends - the sinners.  This is true, but it is not permitted to be ugly and tread people with disrespect.  It just isn't.  I want to invest my life in helping our Episcopal church be about these things. I want to work with people who are compassionate, kind, humble, and patient. I want to work with people who support one another and forgive one another. I want to work with people who are invested in love, peace, and gratitude.

I would like nothing more than to spend a lifetime trying to be the church Paul imagines in today's lessons.  Instead of looking back to a community that may or may not have been like what Paul describes, I want to be at work creating the community of the future which reflects the virtues described in today's lesson.

 

Liturgy of the Palms B, March 28, 2021

The Way of the Cross, Via Dolorosa, Jerusalem

Prayer

O God, for whom all things are possible, you have highly exalted your suffering Servant, who did not hide from insult but humbled himself even to death on a cross.  As we begin the journey of Holy Week, take our sin away by Christ's glorious passion and confirm our worship and witness, so that when we proclaim the name of Jesus, every knee shall bend and  every tongue proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord. 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.


Now, let me say here that I am not in favor of preaching the passion on Palm Sunday. I am well aware that the pilgrim Egeria c380 participated in a palm procession to the Holy Sepulchre in the same day. However, our tradition is a Holy Week and I encourage you to invite people to make it so. I would be in favor of removing the passion reading to an evening service. You will have to read my thoughts on the passion narratives in the Good Friday postings.


Some Thoughts on Mark 11:1-11

"This Palm Sunday can we get beyond a scrap of palm we never know what to do with, & a feel- good procession that leads to nowhere?"
Marginally Mark, by Brian McGowan, Anglican priest in Western Australia.

"The use of palm branches in Maccabees was related to military victories. Is that what the people were expecting from Jesus?"

Exegetical Notes by Brian Stoffregen

"Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan suggest there was not only a procession from the Mount of Olives on the east that day, but also a Roman procession entering from the west, which would have had as a focal point the Roman governor named Pontius Pilate. The juxtaposition of these two processions would have set up quite a contrast."

Join the Feast, Mark 11:1-11, Kirby Lawrence Hill, Union PSCE, 2009.

"Jesus Enters Jerusalem as Messiah," Michael A. Turton's Historical Commentary on the Gospel of Mark, "a complete verse-by-verse commentary on the Gospel of Mark, focusing on the historicity of people, places, events, and sayings in the world of the Gospel of Mark."

Online NRSV Text

"Let us remember, by turning our hearts and minds to the actions of God’s dearest Son, who went not up to joy but first suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified. May God bless us in these days, that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace."

How will you bear witness to Jesus' passion and resurrection?  How will you walk the way with Jesus this week?

One of the first things I want to encourage you to do this Sunday is to really pay attention to the triumphal entry and its narrative offering.  All too often we rush to the foot of the cross! While we certainly have a long tradition of reading the passion this Sunday, we also have a long tradition of bypassing the triumphal entry.

Encourage your people to attend the pilgrim journey through Holy Week.  Dare to preach the passion narrative as it comes. Resist the "cliff notes" version of preaching Good Friday's message Sunday.  Invite people back and invite them into the life journey of Jesus as experienced in our liturgy this week.

So then, what to do with our passage from Mark 11?  This carefully constructed passage parallels 14:12-16; and provides for an understanding that what is taking place is of central importance to Jesus ministry.

He has been very clear from the beginning of his ministry (in Mark's Gospel) that to walk the Way (the reoccurring theme of this Gospel) is to walk towards the cross.  This is true for Jesus' own ministry. It is true in the life and ministry of all those who would follow him.  Here in this passage the pilgrim way of walking leads directly to Jerusalem and to the Temple.  Therefore the way is tied inextricably to the faithful traditions of our Abrahamic ancestors and will in the end unleash God's presence in the world, God's embrace of the world.  The triumphal entry is the point at which walking the way TO the cross arrives on the doorstep of Jerusalem to become the the way OF the cross.

The entrance rite is royal (see Genesis 49:10-11 and Zechariah 9:9).  This is an eschatological and messianic reign that is being unfurled into time.  The stage and the plan are underway and the unfurling of a new creation and new order of living is at hand.

From Psalm 118 comes the imagery of a new Davidic reign.  The gates are open and the people fervently receive their king; yet as the reader know this crown will be laid upon the king not in victorious triumph but complete and utter powerlessness.  The worlds undoing and recreation will come from an explicit rejection of power as this world deals it out and an embrace of forgiveness and grace of which the world had yet to behold.

This is all in juxtaposition though to the victory parade of Pilate who is entering the city on a stallion with the might of an army behind him. By the end of their conflict it will be the one who rides in on a donkey, suffers, and dies...who has no army...and who gives over all the power of God to completely enter the death of the least and the lost that will be victorious.

Note in this Gospel there is no cleansing of the Temple but only an embrace.  Jesus enters, and retires to rest. Why? Because in Mark he has been on The Way to the Cross since chapter 1. The way is a way of suffering where by weakness he will deliver us all unto God. Robert Farrar Capon, Episcopal priest and scholar wrote that while the people are thinking of an interventionist king Jesus has only one thing on his mind and that is his "left-handed" and "implausible" death by which he will become the sacrament of abundant life. ( Kingdom, Grace, Judgment, 433.)

And, so we begin. We make our journey. We choose to follow Jesus along the way of the cross. We pledge fidelity not to power which overcomes, but a power which will yield unto death.  Unlike those who met Jesus at the gate, we greet him this Sunday knowing that only complete submission and not a powerful revolution brings about the creative cataclysm.  And, we rehearse, remind, and remake our way to the foot of the cross as a reminder that our Christian way is clearly marked by grace, mercy, and forgiveness - and not by authority, power, and abuse.

So, I charge you to remember, Walk with determination turning your hearts and minds to the actions of God.  A God who went suffered pain, and entered was crucified. By walking in the way of the cross, may you find a blessing, and a way of life, and a way of and peace.

Previous Sermons For This Sunday

The Irony of Palm Sunday 

Grace, Galveston, March 26, 2018 , Palm Sunday

The School of Rock - I mean the School of Atonement

Sermon on the Atonement and an invitation to experience Holy Week again for the first time. Palm Sunday - Trinity, Galveston. Year B.

Everyone Loves the Other Parade

Sermon for Palm Sunday at Trinity Galveston, 2014. Year A.

We Hope In Jesus: Reflections on the Parade

Sermon preached Palm Sunday, Trinity, Galveston 2013. Year C.

The Man in the Arena

Sermon Preached at St Cyprian's Lufkin Palm Sunday Year B.

This is Jesus - The Triumphal Entry Into Jerusalem

Palm Sunday Sermon preached at St. Cuthberts, Houston, Texas 2011. Year B.

Debes soportar Sufrimientos por el Evangelio

This sermon is in Spanish and was given at San Mateo, Houston, Texas on Palm Sunday, 2009. Year B.

Special Resources for the Reading of the Passion

Epiphany 5 B February 7, 2021

Prayer

With a father's care and a mother's compassion, you embrace as your own, O good and loving god, the sufferings borne by the whole human race, and you join these to all that your Son endured in his Passover from death's bitter pain to risen life. In all our time of trial and testing, purify our hearts and fortify us deep within so that, bearing the light of unfailing trust in your power to heal and save, we may hasten to the support of our brothers and sisters as they face the mystery of illness and pain. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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

Some Thoughts on Mark 1:29-39

"The healings and exorcisms reveal the effects of Jesus identity and divine power, but the good news is not reducible to them."

"The Secrets We Keep," Alyce McKenzie, Faith Forward, 2012.

"This passage is loaded with wonderful possibilities for the preacher."

Commentary, Mark 1:29-39, Sarah Henrich, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.

"You could surmise that Mark is making a point here by having the kingdom start at home. That may not be in Mark?s intention, but its truth stands nevertheless."

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

Oremus Online NRSV Gospel Text


After reading and studying this passage I have these two questions for us preachers: Are we bringing people a glass of cold water on the battlefield of life? Or are we delivering them off the battlefield?

Jesus is here to teach (vs 38) and specifically to offer Good News. Joel Marcus points out that this is decidedly the most important message of the verses which follow the healing of Peter's mother-in-law.  (Marcus, Mark, vol 1, 201ff)

Jesus is invited to come and heal Simon Peter's mother-in-law. He touches her hand and she is healed and is so revived that she begins to serve them. Jesus does many works of healing and casting out demons and these are important to show his power and his might over and against the strong man of this world. He is a doer of great deeds. Yet this is not the purpose of his coming (vs38).

Jesus does not come to heal us. He does not come to cast out the demons. He does do these things but they are specifically acts that show his strength and his power. And, in so doing draw us to his teaching and preaching. He has come to proclaim a gospel of Good News. As one scholar put it, to give us the good news from the battlefield. (M. E. Boring, Beginning, 56; see also Marcus, Mark, 146) This ties into Isaiah's prophetic voice of offering good news for the captives.

He has come to tell us the good news. And, that good news is accompanied with mighty acts that free people from their lives. Lives are changed, the world is different.

I wonder what battlefields will be brought into our churches this Sunday morning? What battlefields will you be bringing in with you? How easy it is to stay on the battlefield and to remain captive to our fear and anxiety. How easy it is to be imprisoned by our anger at someone. How immobilizing it is to be so angry that we might avoid our real work.

What about the battlefield where people are hungry, naked, and in prison? What about the battlefield of raising kids alone? Yes...there will be many battlefields carried laboriously into the church sanctuary this week. Can we let the mighty Jesus heal us as he heals Simon Peter's mother-in-law, so that we may hear the good news of deliverance, and serve him in mission?

Some Thoughts on 1 Corinthians 9:16-23

"His evangelism is not a numbers game, but one of drawing people into a relationship with this God who loves, and produces in people the fruit of the Spirit, which is love."

"First Thoughts on Passages on Year B Epistle Passages in the Lectionary,"Epiphany 5, William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.

"Preach, or be damned - what would you choose?"

Commentary, 1 Corinthians 9:16-23, Karl Jacobson, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2009.

Oremus Online NRSV Epistle Text 

Paul believed that he was called to be an apostle. He was called to be one who is sent - that is what apostle means. He believes that he was given a ministry. Yes he has a family and yes he needs the support of the church to do this work. But his family and receiving funds are not about him being an apostle. It is not why he does it.

He has done good work - he believes. People have been drawn to the living and loving God through him. Yet he will not count the numbers. He will not notch his belt for each person saved. Again, being an apostle is not about the numbers. It is not why he does it.

Being an apostle, a preacher, a teacher of the Good News of Salvation and God's love is about being authentically himself. God has given Paul a work to do. He is to carry out God in Christ Jesus' mission. 

This is who he is - an apostle of God. He is sent to people who do not know the living God and his work is to introduce that God to them.

Moreover, Paul says he will chose to do certain things and to not do certain things based upon the sharing of the Gospel. If he does things that keep others from hearing the Gospel he will refrain. For instance, he will not eat meat. Paul is a man who is clear about his ministry and the fact that God has given it to him - just as God called the others along the shore of Galilee and appointed them to share the Gospel to the ends of the earth. Paul believes this is his nature and at the core of his very being.

What is amazing is that Paul offers a vision of ministry which is so God centered. It is about God, what God is doing, how God is using him, and what God is doing through him. Sometimes I feel as though I am the one who has to do it, it is my burden to carry, I have to accomplish it, and if I don't then I am not worthy. The truth is that like Paul I am worthy. God loves me. I am worthy of that love because I am a creature of God's. I am also invited to stop hustling for God's love - as Brene Brown puts it. I am instead, through Paul's example, invited to do the work God is doing through me. I am invited to be a vessel of his grace and mercy and kindness to others. I am invited to share the God of love with other people who do not yet know this God. I am called to remove those obstacles that keep others from coming to this God. 

Finally, I am invited to remember it God doing the work not me...I am only a faithful apostle. I am sent. So... I go.

Some Thoughts on Isaiah 40:21-31 

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

"Sometimes, no matter how much we long to soar like an eagle, all we can do is barely manage to put one foot in front of the other, over and over and over again. Maybe that is the pinnacle..."

"To be able to walk," Melissa Bane Sevier, Contemplative Viewfinder, 2015.

"When the calculations comparing our smallness with God’s greatness are finished, we can react to our position in the universe in several ways. We can slink away in despair and denial or we can crawl back into God’s big saving hands. Isaiah proclaimed, and the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus confirmed, that this God who knows all, creates all, controls all and plans all also loves all. God has no inconsequential creatures or untended corners of the universe. God tells us how precious we are in God’s sight."

40:21-31 - Isaiah is a master at putting God and humankind in perspective. by Mary W. Anderson January 26, 2000

Oremus Online NRSV Text

The first part of the book of Isaiah, as you may well know, is about Israel's grief. Here in this second part of the book we switch. Walter Brueggeman is famous for reminding us that what we learn from the Israelite experience is that we cannot get to comfort until we deal with the grief that is truly within us.

The God that the prophet is speaking for is a God that is greater than the lesser gods of the Babylonians, greater than their might and army, greater than the ties that are binding them and keeping them from their homeland. This is the God of history and the God of their ancestors - yes...but the God of all.

Moreover, this is a God who while incomparable to the lesser powers and principalities with their totems which attempt to rule this world, is also a God who cares for the least and the enslaved. This is a God who hears the cry of human beings. This is a God who is mighty to save.

This God is also a God who in incomparably merciful and gracious. This is a forgiving God and a God who is to free them.

It is this incomprehensibility of grace and mercy that is true about the revelation of this God's character from the very beginning of scripture and is truth throughout the arc of the New Testament.

This is played out as the author of the gospel of Luke weaves the past to the present and sends it off into the future. As prophet himself, almost mimicing the prophet who wrote these words in Isaiah, he reminds us that this God is the one who saves through the work and mission of Jesus Christ.

Richard Hays, scholar, writes:

The most significant observation here is that in Luke 3:1-6, Luke has taken the keynote passage from Isaiah 40 that declares the salvific coming of Israel's God and worked it narratively into an announcement of the imminent coming of Jesus as the one who would bring "the salvation of God" (Luke 3:6; citing Isaiah 40:5). Considering the full content of Isaiah 40, this identification of Jesus as the one in whom "all flesh will see the salvation of God" is hermeneutically momentous, for it is precisely in Isaiah 40 that we find one of the most radical declarations in all of Scripture of the incomparability of God: To whom, then, will you compare me, or who is my equal? Says the Holy One. (Isaiah 40:25). It is precisely because God alone possesses all sovereign power that the nations are "like a drop from a bucket" before him Isaiah 40:15). (Richard Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels, 248.)

Gods incarnation enters the world, the second person is birthed, and comes into being. All power of the God of Israel is contained in the person of Jesus. No nations will be victorious.

Not unlike the people who feared the gods, powers, wealth and armies of Babylon, so Luke reminds his readers that God in Christ Jesus is greater than the gods, powers, wealth, and armies of Rome. In this way the passage today is a reminder that the least, lost, oppressed and forgotten today must remember that they are chosen by God and that this God and this God's community shall be about the work of undoing the world's powerful enslavement.

Previous Sermons For This Set of Lessons

Healed to Serve

Sermon Preached at St. Christophers, Houston, Episphany 5.b. 2018.

Sermon preached at Christ the King Atascocita, Epiphany 5b, 2015, healing of Simon Peter's mother in law.

Superheroes: understanding the power of Jesus' message 

Sermon delivered at Epiphany Houston Texas 2012

First Sunday after Christmas B, December 27, 2020

Quotes That Make Me Think


 

(Simeon nimmt Christus in seine Arme, Quelle: www.heiligenlexikon.de)  

Prayer

God of the covenant, looking graciously upon their faith, you brought Abraham joy and Sarah laughter in the birth of their child and in the beginning s of a family countless as the stars of heaven. With Simeon and Anna, with Mary and Joseph, our eyes have seen your salvation, and we hold it in our hands.  Fill us with wisdom to trust your promises, and let your gracious favor rest on this family you have gathered.

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

Some Thoughts on Luke 2:22-40

"Notice, Simeon wasn't looking 'in the church' for the Savior; he was looking 'on the street.' Where am I looking for the face of my Savior today? Do I look with expectation upon the crowd outside the church; examining every face for the Christ within? Am I poised like Simeon caught up in doing acts of kindness and justice? If I am, the face of Salvation is still among the nameless crowd who shuffles past our churches in every city in the world. He is still there; am I poised to find him?"
"The Consolation of Israel," Jerry Goebel, One Family Outreach. "Focus on scripture from a justice perspective." Exegesis, study, and teen study and activities.

"Jesus will be the cause of many rising and falling in Israel -- he will be both the stone upon which some stumble and the stone of salvation (Romans 9:33; 1 Peter 2:6-8). In any case, Luke's account certainly gives credence to Paul's claim. The dedication of Jesus to God at the temple sets Jesus on the way to his work of redemption."

Commentary, Luke 2:22-40, Stephen Hultgren, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2014.

Oremus Online NRSV Gospel Text



This day brings our holiday season to an end. The bravest of all will come out on Sunday, January 1st, to celebrate the new year in church. Perhaps this will be a double low church whammy. It is both the Sunday after Christmas and it is also New Years Day.

In contrast to Mary in the Gospel written by Luke, we have Simeon who is a faithful, righteous, and patient man. A pious man he had been promised by the Holy Spirit that he would see the Messiah before he died.

Mary and Joseph bring their son to the Temple for circumcision as per their custom.

It is in the midst of this familial tradition that we see another revelation of who Jesus is and is to be.

At this moment Jesus is the Messiah for Simeon. He proclaims him so. Going on to reveal that he is the one he has been waiting for, but that he is also the savior of Israel and of all the peoples of the earth.

In the back of our minds, we must be aware of how Luke tells the story. At once we know he is to be rejected in this first volume; while accepted in Acts. Likewise, within the Gospel narrative, we see that some people will accept and welcome him others will reject him. (Luke Timothy Johnson, Luke, 57)

Simeon and Anna are people who welcome the savior.

One week has passed. A season is over and a new one is beginning. As we make our way through the Christmas lessons and then the Epiphany lessons I believe that we have an opportunity to refocus ourselves on living out the Gospel.

On this day perhaps it would be good for us to consider how we are welcoming God into our midst. How are we welcoming God into the midst of our lives? Are we making room for him? How are we welcoming others into our communities? Are we making room to see the face of Christ in others? Are we doing this in the church and on the streets? I love Goebel's quote above; a very good internalization of this morning's Gospel:

"Notice, Simeon wasn't looking 'in the church' for the Savior; he was looking 'on the street.' Where am I looking for the face of my Savior today? Do I look with expectation upon the crowd outside the church; examining every face for the Christ within? Am I poised like Simeon caught up in doing acts of kindness and justice? If I am, the face of Salvation is still among the nameless crowd who shuffles past our churches in every city in the world. He is still there; am I poised to find him?"

On a day when we begin our New Year's resolution, it is a good time for us to rethink our work as individuals who make room for Jesus Christ in our lives and in our communities. What would happen if we as clergy made a resolution for our selves. What would happen if we encouraged others to do so? What if our church's made resolutions? What would they be? To be more like Simeon, Anna, the faithful family? To write a rule of life? To launch an intentional ministry of welcoming? To redouble our study and engagement with the bible?

In such rules of life, and resolutions, perhaps we will in the end find some liberation - some freedom. In living a life that proclaims and lives out the promise of Jesus as Messiah perhaps in fact the whole world might experience what it means to come within the reach of his saving embrace. Just maybe if we were to keep our resolutions, just maybe, people around us might have the same experience as Simeon.

Some Thoughts on Galatians 4:4-7

"So insidious is Sin that even the good gifts of God, like the Law (Galatians 3:21) or even the gospel, can be easily misused."
Commentary, Galatians 4:4-7, Erik Heen, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2014.

"The Spirit that God pours into all our hearts is a Spirit of compassion. It is a Spirit that embraces us and makes us a part of a family defined by God's love. It is that compassion that gives us our meaning and purpose in this life."

"Love Came Down," Alan Brehm, The Waking Dreamer.

Oremus Online NRSV Epistle Text 

The theologian Robert Farrar Capon in his book on parables (Kingdom, Grace, Judgement, 2002) offers that God in Christ comes to us in the incarnation as both our savior and judge. But his act of redemption and reconciliation is one of grace, forgiveness, and mercy. He judges with love and so we are presented to God through the eyes of our beloved Jesus. It is the eyes of his heart that redeem us.  

Capon though also says that it is our renunciation and rejection of this coming which judges us guilty. It is our rejection of the spirit of God in our hearts, it is our rejection of our forgiveness, and the rejection of Jesus AND our focus upon the law which in the end finds us guilty. 

Paul in Galatians is offering a vision of God who comes and blesses and redeems us. Jesus undoes the power of the law over us. Jesus enables us to be God's children. We are no longer slaves to the law. This is our new reality.

However, the truth is the longer we live focusing upon the law and our own failure and the failure of others - the longer we struggle outside the family. Our message is clear God loves. God forgives. God invites us. In this season of incarnation may we offer a message that does the same and enables us to live in the grace which has come into the world. 

Our deliverance is real. May we live it.

Some Thoughts on Isaiah 61:10-62:3

"The mission given to the prophet of Isaiah 61:10-62:3 is still needed today, so long as the world is populated by those who are brokenhearted, mourning and in captivity."
Commentary, Isaiah 61:10 - 62:3, Michael J. Chan, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2014.

"In other words, the people as a whole will be entrusted with the former monarchical function of administering God's justice and righteousness in the world."
Commentary, Isaiah 61:10 - 62:3, J. Clinton McCann, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2008.

"The messages from both Isaiah and Luke have some points in common. As well as the overwhelming joy in the coming of the lord to his people, both have an ethical note to them."
The Old Testament Readings: Isaiah 61:10 - 62:3. Weekly Comments on the Revised Common Lectionary, Howard Wallace Audrey Schindler, Morag Logan, Paul Tonson, Lorraine Parkinson, Theological Hall of the Uniting Church, Melbourne, Australia.


"This "righteousness" stands, likewise, in parallel position to the "salvation" of the previous clause. There, again, the salvation to be achieved by the Messiah is metaphorically portrayed as "garments" (bigdhey-yesha^Ñ [BDB, 447]) with which He has simply "clothed" us [BDB, 527). The hiphil perfect of lbshis, here likewise, employed with the force of a present perfect explaining the basis of the future joy of the church."
"Christmas 1b - Exegetical Notes on Isaiah 61:10 - 62:3," Douglas MacCallum Lindsay Judisch, Concordia Theological Seminary (LCMS - Indiana).

Oremus Online NRSV Text 

"I will greatly rejoice in the Lord..." sings out the prophet. The people are to be delivered and have been changed through their estrangement, captivity, and enslavement in Babylon. The prophet sings out in joy in receiving the God who abhors injustice. The mixed images of wedding garments and the continued eschatological imagination of Isaiah play on the joy and heighten the joy. The prophet "is completely absorbed in his intense expectancy, and it is clear that he will continue to speak until the dawn of the day of salvation." (See the comments by Australian exegetes on this passage here.) The passage is about the present and future joy of the people at God's deliverance. 

I suggest the passage is a character of prophetic joy. 

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks reminds us that the Greeks and the Romans believed in fate. He gives this example:

This was a major difference between ancient Israel and ancient Greece. The Greeks believed in fate, moira, even blind fate, ananke. When the Delphic oracle told Laius that he would have a son who would kill him, he took every precaution to make sure it did not happen. When the child was born, Laius nailed him by his feet to a rock and left him to die. A passing shepherd found and saved him, and he was eventually raised by the king and queen of Corinth. Because his feet were permanently misshapen, he came to be known as Oedipus (the “swollen-footed”).

The rest of the story is well known. Everything the oracle foresaw happened, and every act designed to avoid it actually helped bring it about. Once the oracle has been spoken and fate has been sealed, all attempts to avoid it are in vain. This cluster of ideas lies at the heart of one of the great Greek contributions to civilization: tragedy. (See Sack's article on prognosticating the future here.) 

There is a present fatalism in our society too. Superhero movies and comics promise a Greek ethic of fate.

Against such fate, I suggest prophetic joy stands out. Sacks speaks about how joy is such an "unexpected" word used by the prophet Moses and I would add Isaiah. Not unlike the Israelites escape from Egypt and their wandering in the desert, the Babylonian captivity and the feelings of God's silence have been anything but categorically joyous. I offer that Isaiah like Moses reminds us that prophetic joy is what "the life of faith in the land of promise is about." No less than a return and commitment to an old Israel is Isaiah imagining. (See Sacks' article on Moses and collective joy here.) Rabbi Sacks reminds us of the ancient Deuteronomic instance of the idea of collective joy.

The central Sanctuary, initially Shilo: “There in the presence of the Lord your God you and your families shall eat and rejoice in everything you have put your hand to, because the Lord your God has blessed you” (Deut. 12:7).

Jerusalem and the Temple: “And there you shall rejoice before the Lord your God, you, your sons and daughters, your menservants and maidservants, and the Levites from your towns” (Deut. 12:12).

Sacred food that may be eaten only in Jerusalem: “Eat them in the presence of the Lord your God at the place the Lord your God will choose – you, your sons and daughters, your menservants and maidservants, and the Levites from your towns – and you are to rejoice before the Lord your God in everything you put your hand to” (Deut. 12:18).

The second tithe: “Use the silver to buy whatever you like: cattle, sheep, wine, or other fermented drink, or anything you wish. Then you and your household shall eat there in the presence of the Lord your God and rejoice” (Deut. 14:26).

The festival of Shavuot: “And rejoice before the Lord your God at the place He will choose as a dwelling for His name – you, your sons and daughters, your menservants and maidservants, the Levites in your towns, and the strangers, the fatherless, and the widows living among you” (Deut. 16:11).

The festival of Succot: “Be joyful at your feast – you, your sons and daughters, your menservants and maidservants, and the Levites, the strangers, the fatherless, and the widows who live in your towns” (Deut. 16:14).

Succot, again. “For seven days, celebrate the feast to the Lord your God at the place the Lord your God will bless you in all your harvest and in all the work of your hands, and your joy will be complete [vehayita ach same’ach]” (Deut. 16:15).

Sacks suggests that even given the journey that has been made by the people Moses emphasizes joy because he has a vision of the whole course of Jewish history unfolds before him. Sacks paraphrases this moment "It is easy to speak to God in tears. It is hard to serve God in joy. It is the warning he delivered as the people came within sight of their destination: the Promised Land. Once there, they were in danger of forgetting that the land was theirs only because of God’s promise to them, and only for as long as they remembered their promise to God." The point being made is that left to any one of us the promise and joy will be forgotten. This is then a collective act of joy. again Sacks writes, "What Moses is articulating for the first time is the idea of simcha as communal, social, and national rejoicing. The nation was to be brought together not just by crisis, catastrophe, or impending war, but by collective celebration in the presence of God. "

I want to pull from Sacks' work the idea of collective joy. Isaiah is offering a prophetic joy in that he is inviting the people to look up and see the horizon before them, and like Moses before he is suggesting that the work of joy is collective. I propose then that far from being a joy experienced by individuals, scriptural joy is prophetic and collective. 

Then prophetic joy is collective. It is about what God has done and what God will do. Christ adds a new dimension to this collective prophetic joy by making it present in the world through the incarnation. It is true that the Old Testament (Indeed Moses and Isaiah, but we might add Hosea and Malachi too) offer a vision that the collectivity of joy means a sharing with the poor and hungry. Prophetic joy is a collective act not simply because the tribe comes together but because the family shares the goodness of the joyful table with others. “Be joyful at your feast – you, your sons and daughters, your menservants and maidservants, and the Levites, the strangers, the fatherless, and the widows who live in your towns” (Deut. 16:14). See also Hosea 9:4 and Malachi 2:3. 

The prophetic joy of Christ and the incarnation is not a mere congregational event but one intended from the earliest days to not be mere individual deliverance or religious corporate observance. The prophetic joy of Christ is meant to look behind and look forward. But from the perspective of Scripture (old and new) it is to be collective in the moment of its reading. A prophetic joy that is transformed into a collective joy that includes the strangers, fatherless, motherless, widows, lost, and lonely. 

Proper 28A/Ordinary 33A/Pentecost +24 November15, 2020

Quotes That Make Me Think

"The parable of the talents is among the most abused texts in the New Testament."

Commentary, Matthew 25:14-30, Carla Works, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2011.

General Resources for Sunday's Lessons from Textweek.com

Prayer

Into the hands of each of us, O God, you have entrusted all the blessings of nature and grace.  Give us the will and wisdom to multiply the gifts your providence has bestowed, and make us industrious and vigilant as we await your Son's return, so that we may rejoice to hear him call us "good and faithful servants" and be blest to enter into the joy of your kingdom.

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

Some Thoughts on Matthew 25:14-30

Oremus Online NRSV Gospel Text

Resources for Sunday's Gospel

We are so fixated on money that we are always sure there is about to be a global financial crisis from which we cannot recover. In this anxious time comes Matthew and Jesus with a parable about who God is and the value of investing.

A master goes away, leaves funds to be managed, and returns to find one steward who has not been a steward at all but has buried the master's treasure.  The scene is ugly but the message is clear: risking for the kingdom of God and being prepared for the master's return is a task to be embarked upon at this very moment.

In this passage, Jesus is teaching about the end times. Are we waiting for the Kingdom of God? If so when is it coming?  Jesus' intent appears to be to say the Kingdom of God is now.  Yes, there will come a time of judgment but now is our of work.

The goal is to be clear that those who follow Jesus are to see life as the place in which they are to be tillers in the garden, soil tenders for God, and harvesters.  Those who recognize their value in God and choose the Way of Jesus are choosing to work now and not to wait.

According to scholars Allison and Davies, there could be many reasons for the importance of the story for Matthew's community. Perhaps because rabbis at the time taught people to insure confession just before their death, or maybe it is important because there is some waning enthusiasm in the community as years pass between Jesus' ascension and his return.  We do not know.

If we take this whole section of teaching between 24:36 and 25:30 there is a stark contrast that emerges between the work of everyday life and the end time.  We have people feasting, and marrying, we have people working and serving.  It is contrasted with images of fire and earthquakes, famine, and disaster. (Allison & Davies, Matthew, 412)

N. T. Wright (author and theologian) in his inaugural address recently at St. Mary's College wrote this:

It was, as Acts 17 (already quoted) indicates, the royal announcement, right under Caesar’s nose, that there was ‘another king, namely Jesus’. And Paul believed that this royal announcement, like that of Caesar, was not a take-it-or-leave-it affair. It was a powerful summons through which the living God worked by his Spirit in hearts and minds, to transform human character and motivation, producing the tell-tale signs of faith, hope and love which Paul regarded as the biblically prophesied marks of God’s true people.[1]

N. T. Wright's lecture has been sticking with me recently and as I think of it and in connection with the everyday life Jesus speaks about in this section I am struck by the importance to Paul, to the early Gospel writers, to the first followers of Jesus, indeed to Jesus himself this notion that our work as creatures of God and followers of Jesus is to be about our master's work; and to do so with a sense of urgency.

When we fear the end and are paralyzed into inaction or conversely when we place the end so far in front of us we need not pay attention to it, we are likely to be burying the possibility of living now in the reign of God - the Kingdom of God.

When however we choose God as our master, and Jesus as our Lord, we bring accountability close at hand and in so doing may in fact be encouraged to risk for the sake of the Gospel.  If we overturn the cry at the pretorium "We have no king but Caesar" and claim instead that Jesus is the ruler of our lives we may indeed begin to (through the power of the Holy Spirit) live out our lives in faith, hope, and love.

What greater investment can there be?  What better time to invest than now?

Some Thoughts on 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11

Oremus Online NRSV Epistle Text 

Resources for Sunday's Epistle

"These days the idols have major corporate sponsorship and represent powerful vested interests, but from much of Christianity, there is little about which they need to be warned. Paul believes Christians should not be so drowsy and drunk, but by asserting the radical new way of faith and love and hope. His world needed it and so does ours."

"First Thoughts on Year A Epistle Passages in the Lectionary," Pentecost 23, William Loader, Murdoch University

"Paul's letter to the Thessalonians suggests that as much as faith, love, and hope are observable characteristics of a Christian community, so is encouragement."

Commentary, 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11, Karoline Lewis, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2008.

Again we return to a conversation with Paul about the end time and when we might expect the coming of the Lord.  Paul is clear - we do not know when.  We might remember Matthew's teaching that we won't know when it will happen. We do not know when the thief will come when the householder returns, or upon the hour of the bridegroom's arrival.  Paul then says that if we are working our God's purposes in our life and trying to live a goodly and Godly life we will not be surprised but we will always be ready. We may not know but when we are living as followers of God in Christ Jesus then we are always ready for the master's return.

Why is that? Because we know that we are saved by God and not by our own attempts at trying to work the kingdom of God into some kind of economic relationship that always benefits us. No, failure, sin, and brownness are always and everywhere overcome by the grace of God. 

But living a willful and intentionally sinful life isn't good for me - so I respond to God's grace by trying to do my best. Paul encourages me to do my best. Be attentive he says, rest in God, don't get drunk, live a sober and loving life. Have hope he says. And, encourage one another and build each other up - because when we do that we build up the kingdom of God.

How often do we get encouragement mixed up with "helpful criticism" which is never really helpful. There is a significant difference between encouraging us to be the people that God intends and discouraging one another with criticism and being in one another's business. These are two significantly different things. 

We are encouraged by Paul - live hopefully, live lovingly, live faithfully, and live soberly. This should and must be our message to our neighbors too. So we might offer to them: Have hope for God is a forgiving, loving, and graceful God who wants to be in relationship with you. You can do nothing to separate you from God. In response to this grace live a life of thanksgiving which is a life of hope, love, and faith. Let us do that together. That is a Gospel worth extending into the world around us.

Some Thoughts on Zephaniah 1:7-18

"Zephaniah's text is much like the judgment language we hear from Jesus in the gospels."
Commentary, Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18, Mark S. Gignilliat, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2011.

"The poetic response to the elimination of God as a real player in the world is that God will have “a day.” God will have a time of intrusive self-assertion."
Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18, Walter Brueggemann, ON Scripture, 2011.

"If we can move beyond our initial anxiety at Zephaniah's rhetoric of judgment, this passage offers marvelous opportunities for pedagogical, liturgical, and pastoral engagement."
Commentary, Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18, Carolyn J. Sharp, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2008.

Oremus Online NRSV First Reading Text 

I do not know this passage well. We only read it a few times in the three year cycle. So, I will  lean on Walter Brueggeman's excellent essay. 

Zephaniah's prophesy is one of doom and despair! It is, in the words of Walter Brueggeman "extravagant" and "hyperbolic." (See his Day1 essay here.) Brueggeman points out that the gift of the prophets was the foresight of seeing the road being taken by the people. Meanwhile, the people live either with their eyes below the horizon or in denial - seeking to avoid the unavoidable accountability of how their actions are impacting their very own future. Like other prophets, Zephaniah's prophecy attempts to bring this future judgment to the attention of the people. 

Brueggeman points out that the seeking response by the people. Zephaniah is not predicting the future but rather using extreme language to get the people's attention. Zephaniah's desires are to return to the "holy purposes of God." 

Countries get into trouble, Zephaniah points out, when the people forget God and forget the least among them. The least and lost are never far from God's heart. Societies reflect where their true heart lies, suggests Zephaniah when one follows how the people seek wealth and forget the widows, orphans, and strangers in the land. When the society forgets God's beloved, who are given special attention in the Torah, then that society is doomed.

Brueggeman writes, 

"Rather they have decided, in quite practical ways, that God is no real agent in the life of the world. The old superstitions about God have been rejected and God, while worshipped, is seen as an irrelevant. God cannot do good and cannot do evil, does not punish and does not reward, and so can be safely disregarded. 

In our time we, like those ancients, have found God to be an irrelevance to the life of the world. The so-called "new atheists" only bring to speech what is commonly unspoken but tacitly accepted. In a world of Enlightenment rationality where human knowledge is transposed into ultimate control, God is surely an irrelevance."

The prophet answers this by suggesting that God will eventually have "a day of intrusive assertion."

We are generally uncomfortable with such prophecies. We don't like the idea of accountability or particular kinds of responsibility. We like to believe we are free of the responsibility of actions by others or consequences we could not have imagined. But Zephaniah reminds us God watches over the poor, the widow, and the orphan. God intends to be part of the world. God is a part of the world. God does not withhold destruction - especially when people's own sinfulness and self-absorption rules. There are very real-world consequences to a society like Zephaniah's when people forget to serve the good and the one who is good.

The scripture is not about the people of Israel. the scripture is about God, it is God's narrative, and how people have responded or not responded to God's invitation to walk with God. Zephaniah is pointing this out, calling our attention to the work that is in front of us. 

Zephaniah is hoping to move our hearts so as to remind us and call us to action. Zephaniah is desiring that people see that we don't control the future at all - such control is merely a fiction. Instead, what lies before us is the accountability of lives led. 

Again Brueggeman:

"The Mystery will--soon or late--envelop our self-confident control that has been greedy and self-serving. And comes then the uneasy, unsettling awareness that our tools for control are futile in the big picture, no help from money, no help from knowledge, and no help from arms...no help! No help at all!

Of course such hyperbolic rhetoric might be wrong. Maybe our control will prevail. Maybe our mastery will continue to perpetuity. Maybe all will be well and all manner of things will be well. Maybe we will dwell in perpetual shalom. Maybe. But we may doubt that as the poet doubts that. And you, dear reader, may doubt with the poet. We do not know the day or the hour; of course not. We only know that we are called to sober awareness. The hidden mystery of life is well beyond our little systems and will not be mocked."

I am curious what it means for preachers to preach in such a way as to manifest the poetic imagination and to use the story of Zephaniah as an awakening. Sometimes we think we must be the prophet when the reality is telling the prophet's story and the history that follows may be a well into the prophetic imagination such that people awaken to the reality of their own situations. Zephaniah's time then becomes linked, attached, to our own. In so doing, the preacher makes the past present. It becomes possible for people to see and hear that God will not, has never, and will never abandon creation. Instead, we may gain insight into the holy ways of God and God's purpose for us in our context - which it turns out, is not that much different from Zephaniah's.

Some Thoughts on Judges 4:1-7

Oremus Online NRSV First Reading Text 

"One of the slogans floating about our churches these days is 'God's work, our hands.' These stories remind us that those hands carrying out the work of a mighty and merciful God are women's hands, too." Commentary, Judges 4:1-7, James Limburg, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2011.

"The gospel lesson for today is the parable of the talents, in Matthew, where Jesus warns against burying a gift that God has given. Deborah is an example of someone who seems to put her gifts to work in surprising, creative, and inspiring ways." Commentary, Judges 4:1-7, Sara Koenig, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2014.

Deborah clearly speaks for God, as is indicated by the direct quote in verses 6-7. She is one of the seven great female prophets of Israel, and one of the great 23 women of Israel. Her words on living a life worthy of the blessed community of shalom would influence Torah scholars even to this day. She is seen as a model of faithfulness and part of her influence is upon her call to worship regularly. (Tamar Kadari at https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/deborah-2-midrash-and-aggadah) Like other great prophets before her (including Moses) one midrashic tradition (probably written by men!) says she was guilty of the sin of pride and her gifts were removed from her. (Midrash Tadshe, Ozar ha-Midrashim [ed. Eisenstein], 474).

Deborah was a gift to Israel who God had not saved but allowed them into the hands of Sisera because of their worship of idols. The story is also entwined with the story of Ruth and the famine. (See Jud. 4:3; The Tanhuma [ed. Buber], Behar 7; and Ruth Rabbah 1:1; from Kadari article cited above.)

The Jewish tradition is that Deborah sat under a Palm tree and taught the Torah. She is responsible for uniting Israel in faith and turning them from idols through her teaching. (see Seder Eliyahu Rabbah, Chap. 10, 50; Kadari.)

Our passage reveals the story in pretty blunt terms unlike the poetry of chapter 5. Note that the working of God comes through Deborah, Barak, and Jael. It takes a group to deliver God’s people out of their trial.

What stands out is how Deborah, the main character, puts her gifts to work. Sara Koenig writes, “Deborah is the only female judge, and she is also a prophet. She hears and speaks for God…Deborah is an example of someone who seems to put her gifts to work in surprising, creative, and inspiring ways.”(from Preaching This Week, see above link)

Deborah as a woman stands out as part of the community of leadership. She shares in an equal way as men in her time. With others, she gives shape to life with God. She is a guardian of Israel’s highest values and offers them over and against corrupt living oriented around idols.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks of this type of leadership writes:

“The essential lesson of the Torah is that leadership can never be confined to one class or role. It must always be distributed and divided. In ancient Israel, kings dealt with power, priests with holiness, and prophets with the integrity and faithfulness of society as a whole. In Judaism, leadership is less a function than a field of tensions between different roles, each with its own perspective and voice…Leadership in Judaism is counterpoint, a musical form defined as ‘the technique of combining two or more melodic lines in such a way that they establish a harmonic relationship while retaining their linear individuality.’ It is this internal complexity that gives Jewish leadership its vigour, saving it from entropy, the loss of energy over time.”

The Song of Deborah is one of ten songs: the song of Israel in Egypt, the Song at the Sea, the song at the well, the song of Moses, the song of Joshua, the Song of Deborah, the Song of David, the Song of Solomon, the song of Jehoshaphat, and a new song for the future (Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Masekhta de-Shirah, Beshalah 1. This list varies in different sources; see J. L. Kugel, “Is There But One Song,” Biblica 63 [1982], 329–350).

I will leave you with Frederick Buechner’s take, which I find a bit cheeky. It is worth a read though and reminds of both the power of Deborah’s witness and the reality that God calls real people…

"It is a wonderful song, full of blood and thunder with a lot of hair-raisingly bitter jibes at the end of it about how Sisera's old mother sits waiting at the window for her son to come home, not knowing that Jael has already made mincemeat of him. Deborah composed it, but she got Barak to sing it with her. Barak looked like Moshe Dayan, and it must have been quite a duet. The song brushes by Barak's role rather hastily, but it describes Jael's in lavish detail and must have gotten her all the glory a girl could possibly want. Yahweh himself gets a plug at the end"So perish all thine enemies, O Lord!" (Judges 5:31)but by and large the real hero of Deborah's song is herself. 

Everything was going to pot, the lyrics say, "until you arose, Deborah, arose as a mother in Israel" (5:7), and you can't help feeling that Deborah's basic message was that Mother was the one who really saved the day. And of course, with Yahweh's help, she was.

It's hard not to bridle a little at the idea of her standing under the palm tree belting out her own praises like that, but after all, she had a country to run and a war to fight, and she knew that without good press she was licked from the start. Besides maybe the more self-congratulatory parts of her song were the ones that she assigned to Barak. (Frederick Buechner, originally published in Peculiar Treasures and later in Beyond Words http://www.frederickbuechner.com/quote-of-the-day/2016/11/6/deborah?rq=deborah)

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[1] The Right Reverend Professor N. T. Wright ‘Imagining the Kingdom: Mission and Theology in Early Christianity’ St Mary’s College October 26 2011.