Lent 2C, March 16, 2025

Prayer

O God of salvation, the people in whom you delight hasten with joy to the wedding feast. Forsaken no more, we bear a new name; desolate no longer, we taste your new wine. Make us your faithful stewards ready to do whatever Jesus tells us and eager to share with others the wine he provides. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.

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

Some Thoughts on Luke 13:31-35

"Part of the way in which Jesus spreads his wings over us is that in our work we, too, find our courage to stay and face ugly dangers, to let life bite deeply into our flesh and shelter those in our care even while Herod is menacing."
"That Fox," Nancy Rockwell, Bite in the Apple, 2013.

"The image we are give is of God/Jesus as a hen gathering a whole bunch of chickens under her wings. What might that imply about our relationship with those other chickens?"
Exegetical Notes by Brian Stoffregen at CrossMarks Christian Resources.

"Jesus, let us note, employs a feminine image for himself and, to the degree that we confess Jesus reveals the essential character and disposition of the One who sent him, also for God."
"Re-Imagining God," David Lose, Dear Working Preacher, 2013.

Oremus Online NRSV Gospel Text


The passage today contains unique verses that are found only here in the Gospel of Luke.  The pericope or whole passage begins actually in verse 22 and while I don’t think that one should necessarily elongate the Gospel reading in the service, I do think that for the purposes of bible study and for sermon preparation it is important to read the whole section as one unit.

The passage begins with Jesus traveling. He is making his way to Jerusalem.  These passages are wonderful bits of narration by our author and show a skilled writer imparting and telling a story.  More than simply literary style the passage reminds us that our great prophet Jesus is making an exodus journey, prophetically teaching along the way, leading God’s people to ultimate deliverance from the bondage of sin.  This is part of the mosaic theme of this particular Gospel.

“How many will be saved?” a companion asks.  Interesting is Jesus’ response. He does not give a number but rather turns the question offering discipline instead of answers.  Jesus says to them that as followers we are to “act in such a way as to be one who is saved.” (LTJ, Luke, 216)

Notice if you put your finger in your bible and turn to Matthew 7:13, Matthew compares and contrasts a wide and a narrow door.  (LTJ, Luke, 216)  Luke’s emphasis is on the difficulty of being a disciple; he is focused on the hard work of following Jesus and a life lived in discipleship.

Luke has a strong sense of grace, but it is tempered always with service and discipleship.

Once you know the truth, you may not live your life as if you did not have grace.  You cannot in some way live life hoping in the last hour for grace at the doorstep of the master’s house.  In fact your entrance into the reign of God will be because you believed and because you worked with Jesus on behalf of the poor and those in need. 

In other words once one believes the second step is to serve others; because as Jesus welcomes the poor through the door you may by the grace of those who remember your service walk with them into the reign of God?  We are disciples (those who follow) but following is never the goal. The goal is always to formed into an apostle (one who is sent).  Christians are not followers only; they are those who go out as well.

Certainly this is present in the thoughts of St. Chrysostom as he writes the following words:

If you ever wish to associate with someone make sure that you do not give your attention to those who enjoy health and wealth and fame as the world sees it, but take care of those in affliction, in critical circumstances, who are utterly deserted and enjoy no consolation.  Put a high value on associating with these, for from them you shall receive much profit, and you will do all for the glory of God.  God himself has said: I am the father of orphans and the protector of widows.[1]

This short quote does the work of N. T. Wright (a contemporary theologian) some injustice but I think it is important to mention here.  For a longer argument on this matter of balancing faith and works I encourage you to read Wright’s book entitled: Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision, 2009.  In this text Wright argues that the work of discipleship is essential within the framework of faith.   He writes the following as if to echo Jesus’ own essential teaching about the reign of God and the work of discipleship:

The linguistic point about Romans 5-8 (the absence of pistis [faith]) thus points to an underlying theological point of enormous significance for our whole topic.  Loose talk about “salvation by faith” (a phrase Paul never uses; the closest he gets, as we have seen is Ephesians 2:8, “by grace you have been saved through faith”) can seriously mislead people into supposing that you can construct an entire Pauline soteriology out of the sole elements of “faith” and “works” of any sort always being ruled out as damaging or compromising the purity of faith. (p. 239)

All that is to say that one must work hard, and that the primary focus is not simply about following Jesus, but that discipleship means acting like Jesus and helping God to restore the world.  It is within this context that we come to the passage for today; and without which our passage today makes little sense.

In our passage today some religious leaders come up to Jesus.  They are consistently throughout Luke recognized and described as opponents of the prophets.  So, here they come, and one must wonder if they have Jesus’ best interest at heart.  One might even go so far as to think that perhaps what they are saying is to stop this preaching, stop this teaching, get out of here and there won’t be trouble.  Jesus is heading to Jerusalem and I do not have the sense they want him to continue on his journey. This is certainly the way most scholars read this warning, not as a warning at all but rather a threat veiled in kindness.

They tell Jesus that Herod wants to kill him. (This is a very different word than the message being articulated to the reader by the narrator in Luke 9.9 and 23.8.  Herod simply wants to see Jesus and it isn't even Herod who puts him to death.  Herod sends him back to Pilate.)  This passage seems to amplify the desire by these individuals to have Jesus stop teaching about discipleship and the reign of God.

Jesus says to the messengers go back and tell that crafty person, that sly king, that fox that I continue on to my goal which is resurrection (the image here of the third day).  Chris Haslam points out that we may not wish to take this literally.  He writes, “Jesus did not mean “third” literally; rather, he means a short and limited time. The NRSV translates the Greek literally, but BlkLk translates it as day by day, and one day soon. He says that there is an Aramaic idiom behind the Greek which does not refer to two actual days but to an indefinite short period followed by a still indefinite, but certain, event. This idiom is also at work in Hosea 6:2: “After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him”. 
Sometimes we can miss the point if we get stuck here. I believe the subject of Jesus’ words is the determination to go on to Jerusalem and that there he intends to die.  So it is that Jesus continues on to Jerusalem and the pharisees depart.

It is then that Jesus teaches about the prophets and how they have suffered under the stoning nature of God’s rulers and people.  Jesus’ message is clear; God wants to gather his persons like a hen gathers her brood. God wishes to offer care and protection, security and health.

Jesus says your “house” will not be untouched. Some scholars believe this has to do with the sacking and destruction of the Temple.  It is more likely that Jesus is referring to God’s people being left, as it were, like sheep without a shepherd, chicks without a mother hen. (LTJ, Luke, 219)  Haslam also points out the following, “Verse 35: “your house”: The Old Testament background seems to be Jeremiah 22:1-9 where house means the king’s household of leaders. [NJBC]  I like both ideas very much.  And we might be wise to remember Jesus in his own family’s synagogue and how he was received. 

There are in these thoughts the continuing theme of each Gospel proclamation that Jesus and God are calling people out of their comfortable religion into a discipleship of faith along the way and always proclaiming the reign of God and its bounty.

We conclude this passage with “Blessed is the one who is coming in the name of the Lord.”  This looks forward to Jesus’ own triumphal entry into Jerusalem. It also is a prophecy regarding Jesus’ return.  The parallels are found in Matthew 21:9, Psalm 117:26.  It is important I think to note that the psalm is referring to “the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.”  Christians have always understood this to mean Jesus.

So we end with the understanding, I think, that one of the chief reasons that Jesus is crucified is because of his teachings about the reign of God and discipleship.  Jesus also understands clearly that his death in Jerusalem is only part of reaching the third day and resurrection which is a primary goal of his ministry.  I believe truly that Jesus understood his death as essential to the working out of salvation history and that he was following a long line of prophetic witnesses.  He could not be stopped in his work and his drive to enter Jerusalem, which meant for him certain death on the one hand, but also the salvific event needed to gather God’s people under his wing.  Indeed, blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!

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[1]Psalm 67:6, John Chrysostom, Baptismal Instructions, 6.12 (Paulist Press, 1963)  I chose this quote after hearing Diana Butler Bass giver her plenary as I thought it was a nice tie-in. I did have the following quote from Giovanni Battista Franzoni the former abbot of San Paolo Fuori le Mura, “In the sixth century, Saint Benedict abandoned the worldly city and took refuge in the mountains so as to be able to find a favorable environment in which to seek God and live the Gospel.  This led him to create a community of men who lived the same life as the “poor of the earth.”  Today, perhaps, St. Benedict would abandon the countryside and the mountains, now covered with gracious and comfortable villas.  Perhaps he would abandon all those places where the rich and powerful have chosen to live and would go live among the dependent and exploited masses of the city in search of the “right place” to reread the Gospel. From The Earth is Gods, 1978, Italian News Agency.

Some Thoughts on Philippians 3:14-4:1

"In this short passage from Paul's letter to the Philippians, these verses begin and end with something between an exhortation and a plea."
Commentary, Philippians 3:17-4:1, Sarah Henrich, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2016.

"As an African American biblical scholar, I would tend to see what the Bible has to say about borders, foreigners, and receiving and welcoming all. What I have found at the intersection of immigration, African Americans, and the Bible is that people have a desire to belong."
We'll Walk Hand in Hand?" Rev. Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder, PhD, ON Scripture, Odyssey Networks, 2013.

"Faith enables us to move out of the essential hopelessness of our world and to step into the 'glorious liberty' that God is bringing to the whole creation through Jesus. It is a different path, a whole new way of life that sees the possibility of new life in every death, sees the light shining in the deepest darkness, and sees hope in the midst of despair."
"Crossing Over," Alan Brehm, The Waking Dreamer, 2013.

Oremus Online NRSV Epistle Text

Paul offers in this passage the notion that the little laws of this world (by which we abide or chafe against) do not bring about the kingdom.  We obey and foolishly we think in our obedience we are like God.  Paul reminds the Philippians that Jesus Christ calls us to faith and not to law.

Paul is not saying don't follow the laws of this world.  His statements are not contrarian.  Paul is saying that there is a higher standard though.  That standard is the standard of faith which is given in Christ's suffering and resurrection.  In this work of God the world is claimed by God, he claims the church, and he claims you and me.

Therefore, this historical event brings about a higher principle.  These principles are lived out as individuals and among the community that follows Christ.

Faith for the Christian, in Paul's way of thinking, is not a passport - a ticket - into the kingdom of God.  Faith is the indwelling of Christ's spirit in the heart of the believer.  Faith is the growing principle and quality that believers have.  It affects us.  And, it is the faith which grows in us as we continually try and lead a life worthy of Christ's gift.

When we hold fast to what has been given by Christ we are formed.  Between our faith and our human will there is a rub and that rub itself is forming.  For the Christian it is the work of living this faith that creates our return again and again to God.  It is as if like a pot being formed by the potter we push against his hands.  It is in this friction that the Christian lives - between human life lived in a world of human law and the a life lived in the hands of a loving God.

It is furthermore this work of living faithfully that binds us into community with others trying to do the same thing.  We are joined together trying to imitate the apostles and Christ.  Our citizenship is in a heavenly bond of faith, bound by the saving Grace of God.

This life is not always easy. It is hard in community and it is even harder in a life lived alone.  So, Paul encourages us to be bound together.  Christ in his love binds us together already and we all recognize that we all fall short in the face of such love.  In our citizenship is the constant work of living in community (despite our variation in personal narrative and sin).

All the while God is forming us and conforming us into his body.

In the end if the clay being formed into a pot has its way it will naturally rebel against the potters hand simply by force and dessolve into a wet mound which is formless.  This is true of Christian life as well.  It is easier to call oneself a Christian, to claim the kingdom by our own proclamation of faith, and then to live outside of community and the higher principles of faith.  It is. It is our nature.  Paul has hope though.  Paul ends by reminding the Philippians that it is easier to live apart, to be divided, and to shrink from the higher formation. Yet this is not God's mind.  Instead God intends a unified community being formed into a mature faith by the Christ's spirit.  So, Paul encourages his little community at Philippi to not give up and to continue to stand firm in their faith.  He says, you are the ones "whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved."

Some Thoughts on Genesis 15:1-18


"Our lesson bears the markings of a prophetic mindset that wants to take the ancient covenant traditions seriously, and aims to grasp what those traditions might mean for a later generation."
Commentary, Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18 (Lent 2C), Williaam Yarchin, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2016.

"The brevity of this text belies its theological weight: in just six verses, we have messages about the reliability and timing of God's promises, lessons about prayer, and a verse so packed with import that it is quoted in two New Testament passages as a lynchpin for understanding the relationship between faith and works."
Commentary, Genesis 15:1-6, Sara Koenig, Pentecost 12C Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2013.

"We explore the story of Abraham in several traditions and why he might be important for people in our time. The hour also includes readings from the Bible and the Qur'an as well as music from the likes of Bob Dylan and Benjamin Britten on the figure of Abraham."

Children of Abraham, excellent links and interviews (including an interview with Bruce Feiler, Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths) at On Being with Krista Tippet.

"Why would Abram possibly be afraid? He had just won a great victory over Chedorlaomer and the three other eastern kings (Genesis 14:14-15). Because of this, he had, no doubt, received considerable recognition, even from the pagan king of Sodom (14:17, 21-24). What fear could haunt Abram's faith at such a time of victory?"
"The Focal Point of Abram's Faith," from the Biblical Studies Foundation.

Oremus Online NRSV Text

So, we pick up Abram's story as he has left Ur of the Chaldeans and now is making his way with God. As he goes he has victories over kings. He sets up altars in the wilderness. He talks to God a lot!

He has gone on to Egypt during a time of famine (foreshadowing the journey his ancestors will make). In our reading today we have two separate tales. The first is the promise of descendents from God. God is making a covenant (one of many) with Abram and God's people. Abram undertakes a conversation wherein he requires God to give him a sign. Abram then makes a blood sacrifice to solemnize the oath between God and himself. The sign deep within the ancient tradition is that Abram, if he breaks his oath, will be broken and divided. In his day this ceremony had literal meaning. But the lostness, brokenness, and division should not be lost on us. When God's people do not follow God's ways they become lost, broken and divided.

The second part of the story is the vision: sleep, darkness, terrible signs, and fire - a torch and a fire pot. Each symbolize the power of God. The pact is solemnized. Here then God makes an oath. God passes through the sacrifice and promises to Abram that his descendants will inherit land, grow in number, and thrive.

God will continue to make promises of children, and God will change Abram's name. These are stories that come later. The scribes of course are weaving a tale here from several traditions. Nevertheless the arc of the story is clear. God is with people - Abram in specific. God is interested in walking with Abram. He is to be a blessing to the world around him. He and Sarai are to multiply this blessing both as they make their way in the world, as they come into contact with others, and as they bear children.

The Abram story is of course a creation story, a story of origins, and it is the story of a people. There are two important additions to reading this beyond merely a story of how a people came to be.

My favorite rabbi to read Jonathan Sacks reminds us of Nikolai Berdyaev, a Russian historian and philosopher, who wrote in his book The Meaning of History (1936), 86–87 the following -

I remember how the materialist interpretation of history, when I attempted in my youth to verify it by applying it to the destinies of peoples, broke down in the case of the Jews, where destiny seemed absolutely inexplicable from the materialistic standpoint…Its survival is a mysterious and wonderful phenomenon demonstrating that the life of this people is governed by a special predetermination, transcending the processes of adaptation expounded by the materialistic interpretation of history. The survival of the Jews, their resistance to destruction, their endurance under absolutely peculiar conditions and the fateful role played by them in history: all these point to the particular and mysterious foundations of their destiny.

In other words the origin story of God and Abram is not simply something that speaks of the past. It is something that speaks of the future. When Abram answers the call to leave Ur and journey with God he is doing so as a participant in God's story. So, when God reveals God's self to Moses as the Lord - Hashem (Exodus 9:16) it is a link that is not a momentary epiphany but one rooted deep in the whole story of God and God's people. Moreover, the whole story of Abram is one that underpins the stories that come after; including the story of Jesus. 

In John's gospel chapter 8:31 Jesus is arguing with the religious leaders of the day. Here in this argument Jesus makes an explicit tie into the Abrahamic tradition through Moses. By reminding them that God appeared to Abraham as Lord. We read Jesus argument as follows:

They answered him, ‘Abraham is our father.’ Jesus said to them, ‘If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing* what Abraham did, but now you are trying to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. You are indeed doing what your father does.’ They said to him, ‘We are not illegitimate children; we have one father, God himself.’ Jesus said to them, ‘If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now I am here. I did not come on my own, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot accept my word. 

Not unlike Paul after him, Jesus is explaining the slavery of sin and God's intent to redeem God's people. God is the lord of Abram who freed Abram out of Egypt and sat with him under the oak at Mamre. God did the same for Moses and God's people. God in Christ Jesus is doing the same thing through Jesus for all humankind. God is breaking open the promises to Abram as a new covenant with all people.

The invitation for the followers of Jesus is to come along as did Abram and Moses. To trust and see that God is even now walking among them and to come away with him into the world. To go and be a blessing, to multiply, to live and feast on God's presence and lively word.

As Rabbi Sacks often reminds his readers, the story is about choice, freedom and responsibility and regardless of if it is the story of Abram, Moses, or Jesus and the religious leaders. The scripture invites all humankind to "freedom and creativity on the one hand, and on the other, to responsibility and restraint – becoming G-d’s partner in the work of creation." (Rabbi Sacks, "A living book.") 

Here then in the final analysis Jesus does nothing different than what God has been doing all along...God is weaving God's narrative and we are invited to participate in it. Through the tearing of the temple veil, to the tearing of the body of Jesus, the division of his clothes, to the breaking open and harrowing of hell - God passes through death and sin itself. We see the echoes of a covenant made on the plains with Abram.  

Lent 1C, Sunday March 9, 2025

Prayer

Through all their desert wanderings, O Lord our God, you led our ancestors from toil and oppression to a land of milk and honey.  Through forty days in the wilderness, the Spirit led your Son from the devil’s testing to victory as your servant.  Lead us through these forty days of Lent and make that victory of Christ’s our own, till at the font of living water the elect find new birth, the penitent find pardon, and all rejoice to serve you alone. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.

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

Some Thoughts on Luke 4:1-3

"I don’t think that a sermon on temptation needs to be either titillating or boring to be helpful. Rather, I think it needs to be both honest and realistic. In fact, I think that kind of sermon on temptation might be just the thing a lot of our people need and want to hear."

"Trust and Temptation," David Lose, Dear Working Preacher, 2013.

"Wilderness was the wild place, the waiting place, the place of preparation. It also connected then, as it does now, to very basic spirituality: a place to grapple with God, a place to learn dependence on nature and its provisions, a place of extremes or contrasts, of wild beasts and desert. It is the Lenten space par excellence."

"First Thoughts on Year C Gospel Passages in the Lectionary," Lent 1, William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.

Oremus Online NRSV Gospel Text

First Sunday in Lent: Led by the Spirit into the Desert
The inaugural Sunday of Lent marks our return to the biblical passages earlier in Luke's account. The Holy Spirit prompts Jesus to wander into the wilderness immediately following his baptism. The lectionary pattern enables us to view our Lenten walk through the lens of Jesus' desert journey which sometimes seems to disrupt the narrative flow.

Luke is clear: From his baptism onward until the culmination of his ministry, the Holy Spirit guided Jesus. Luke Timothy Johnson points out that according to Luke chapter 72, Jesus' divine sonship operates through the Holy Spirit. The Spirit actively pushes Jesus forward into his time of testing. He follows a purposeful path into the desert, where the Spirit leads him to confront the Adversary.

The Counter-Kingdom of the Tempter
Luke's Gospel depicts Satan's testing of Jesus with variations from the other biblical narratives. This adversary, who appears as if we were reading Job, is a tester who presents an alternative rule and regime instead of just opposing Jesus. The devil's temptations extend beyond the individual level to structural systems that promote a world governed by scarcity and domination while serving selfish interests.

For generations, people have considered the wilderness a location for trials. Many ancient people believed that demons occupied these wild areas. This area represents a deficiency in which people experience actual hunger while food availability remains unpredictable. The devil wants to transform the wilderness into his personal kingdom instead of taking Jesus away from it. The devil offers Jesus salvation and governance in this place - a metaphor for the world of men.

Jesus’ forty days recall Moses on Mount Sinai (Exodus 34: Jesus' forty days in the wilderness reflect Moses' experience on Mount Sinai (Exodus 34:28), Elijah's trip to Mount Horeb (1 Kings 19:8), and Jonah's proclamation to Nineveh (Jonah 3:4). The biblical narrative uses this period to demonstrate profound preparation while marking significant transformation and covenant renewal. The period of forty days transcends mere chronology as it represents the formation of a community.

Jesus' forty-day wilderness experience provides a powerful model for discipleship. Our existence unfolds within the temptations and promises of an alternative kingdom. Every day, we encounter shortages that extend beyond food to include justice and truth as well as love. By moving beyond God’s dominion, we experience hunger in its sharpest form. Our longing for profound meaning persists, but we frequently accept the hollow assurances of power, self-reliance, and a comfortable existence.

Temptations of the Counter-Kingdom
Jesus’ initial test involves transforming stones into bread by exercising his divine power to maintain his survival during his time in the wilderness. The words of John the Baptist echo: From these stones, God can produce children of Abraham. (Luke 3:8). In biblical imagination, stones possess an active nature that enables them to testify, produce water, and transform into something greater.

But Jesus refuses. The notion that surviving in the counter-kingdom represents an ultimate purpose for Jesus (and our own life) fails to gain his acceptance. He returns to Deuteronomy 8: The principle that bread alone cannot sustain life guides our understanding. Lent shows how the teachings about dependence have roots that reach beyond this time since Abraham, Moses, and the prophets trod this same path. People naturally believe that their lives would improve with certain things in their possession. The voices of the counter-kingdom tell us that hunger demonstrates God’s absence. Jesus teaches that God’s abundant presence becomes most evident during times of scarcity. This is the kingdom vision.

The second temptation is power. The devil exposes the entire world as his kingdom. The one condition is that Jesus must be worshiped to receive them. This is a move from God's mission kingdom to the kingdom of humanity. Within Luke’s account, this goes beyond simple respect because it signifies loyalty and support for the world's opposing order. This, Jesus will not have. 

My mind recalls the daily false promises of effortless riches and technological utopias alongside the prosperity gospel, which just demands more and more. The devil presents his proposal as an appealing path because it provides quick access to justice while establishing power. Jesus refuses. He recalls the Sh’ma: The Lord your God deserves your worship and exclusive service, according to Deuteronomy 6:13. True worship goes beyond physical gestures to reflect the entity or principle that commands our total allegiance in life to God and God's kingdom, not the counter-kingdom.

The last temptation brings Jesus to Jerusalem’s Temple. The devil starts to cite Scripture to convince him to throw himself down and see if God will save him. But Jesus refuses to manipulate the relationship. He refuses to use faith as a manipulative instrument. He reveals that the temptation represents a quest for surety alongside a rejection of trust in the counter-kingdom - certainty over faith.

The tester steps back from his role but keeps his leave temporary. The struggle continues beyond this moment. Luke demonstrates that the counter-kingdom resists complete defeat because these forces will return through systems and betrayals to use power structures against Jesus, leading to his death. The adversary is not absent—only waiting.

Driven into Lent
Lent represents a period dedicated to personal devotion and fasting, along with introspection - confession, and forgiveness. But this passage invites us to see it differently: This liturgical season offers opportunities for self-reflection and active participation in God's kingdom. This is a season of good works as well.

Lent transforms into a Spirit-guided expedition that brings both testing and revelation. Jesus purposefully enters the desert according to divine guidance. He is led there with a purpose. Entering this season should be about seeking God's closeness and welcoming the refinement of our faith through testing. What if we used Lent as an opportunity to embrace both fasting and a courageous advancement into our mission?

The fundamental question becomes not merely what you will deny yourself during this period? but what will you discover? Are we willing to let the Holy Spirit move us into a wilderness where our dependence will be revealed and our worship will be redirected so we can prepare for the journey to Jerusalem?

Lent is not just a season. It is a confrontation with the counter-kingdom - a time to see its posessive power in our lives. Through the Spirit, we advance further into God's dominion.

Some Thoughts on Romans 10:8-13

"Few congregations today face the precise questions that challenged Paul's churches. Even so, there remain significant issues that divide believers from one another." Commentary, Romans 10:5-15, Audrey West, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2016.                                                                                       

"Resurrection itself is an overcoming of shame -- the shame of crucifixion in particular, but also overcoming the more general shame that God did not act to save God's faithful servant from death."
Commentary, Romans 10:5-15, J.R. Daniel Kirtk, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2014.

"God's salvation is available to all. This is a bold statement. We err if we hear it as anthropology, as a claim that all people are about the same, or as a maxim that "a person's a person, no matter how small" (that's not Paul, but Horton Hears a Who!). Rather, Paul makes a statement about God: God has made salvation near to all."
Commentary, Romans 10:5-15, Matt Skinner, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2011.

Oremus Online NRSV Epistle Text

Paul

In this lesson, Paul substitutes the word for Torah with the word Christ.  Therefore what we are presented with is the transformation of living the law transformed into the Gospel of living out the Christ like heart.

We have a unique proclamation of Good News about Salvation and of Christ and his resurrection.  We cannot underestimate the reality that Paul's view that God's grace, mercy, and salvation preceded virtue was a radical notion.  The reversal of the economic nature of faith was powerful to the first century ears.  Today, most of us still live within a predominately exchange based faith practice; though a more subtle one.  We trade on "right belief" today or "right worship."  Paul's message is very important for us to hear.

Paul tells us that the Holy Spirit is working God's purpose out in the world.  God as Holy Spirit is a spirit of love and grace which is breathing life into people.  They are receiving grace and this grace brings with it a deliverance from the old ways.  Shame is not God's way, though it was the way of the law.  We are freed now into a new life which makes all things and all people new.

This God is a generous God, and Christ sees no distinction in the human family when he looks upon us with the eyes of grace.  Paul says it is no longer about marking the boxes and checking off your list of achievements.  Instead, God has saved us.   Paul writes:

For, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”

This is good news indeed and having heard it, we proclaim it, and we choose to live and be differently. We choose then to live out of our freedom and liberty a grace filled and virtuous life.  This is the new economy of faith, traded on grace and forgiveness from God to us and to all others.  Moreover, an opportunity to live life empowered by the Holy Spirit to give thanks for this salvation and to offer it to others; all the wile attempting a virtuous life of love.

Some Thoughts on Deuteronomy 26:1-11

"The book of Deuteronomy records the orations Moses declared to the Israelites on the last day of his

Offering of the First Fruits (בִּכּוּרִים, bikkurim)
(illustration from a Bible card published
between 1896 and 1913 by the
Providence Lithograph Company)
Thanks Wiki!

life."

Commentary, Deuteronomy 26:1-11, William Yarchin, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2016.

"It is the will of God, that we should be chearful not only in our attendance upon his holy ordinances, but in our enjoyment of the gifts of his providence. Whatever good thing God gives us, we should make the most comfortable use of it we can, still tracing the streams to the fountain of all consolation."
From John Wesley's Notes.

"Signifying that God does not give us goods for ourselves only, but to be used also by those who are committed to our charge."
From the John Calvin's Geneva Notes.

Clearly, not all identities are the same. Characteristic of Jewish identities and others inspired by the Hebrew Bible are what Dan McAdams calls “the redemptive self.” (Yuval Harari, 1 Lessons for the 21st Century (London, Jonathan Cape, 2018) People with this kind of identity, he says, “shape their lives into a narrative about how a gifted hero encounters the suffering of others as a child, develops strong moral convictions as an adolescent, and moves steadily upward and onward in the adult years, confident that negative experiences will ultimately be redeemed.” More than other kinds of life story, the redemptive self embodies the “belief that bad things can be overcome and affirms the narrator’s commitment to building a better world.”

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks from The Story We Tell (Ki Tavo 5778) 

Oremus Online NRSV Text

We are at the edge of the promised land. Here in this book we have God's teaching about what it will mean to be a people who dwell with God.

God has provided Moses, the greatest of prophets, with words of instruction on the liturgies, life, and community that is to be formed in the new land in which they are to dwell.

The passage is about first fruits. We most likely have an actual liturgy presented in the text. The prayers may be some of the oldest in the whole of the testament. And, it is a description of a national festival. Both the people of Israel and their pagan neighbors are to do this as a thanksgiving. The liturgy follows:

1. You take first fruits as an offering to God
2. put it in a basket
3. Go to the sacred place where God dwells
4. go to the priest who is serving at the time
5. say the following opening words, “Today I declare to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our ancestors to give us.”
6. Then the priest will take the basket from you and set it at the altar
7. Then you will say, “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. 6When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me.”
8. Then you will "set down" and "bow" before God

This is an amazing piece of scripture. It actually is a passage that gives us liturgy - words and actions. It tells us of an actual thing that happened....people who lived in proximity to Jerusalem would bring fresh fruit...others dried fruit. This was a great ingathering for Jerusalem. Rabbi Sacks tells us:

Those who lived near Jerusalem would bring fresh figs and grapes. Those who lived far away would bring dried figs and raisins. An ox would walk ahead of them, its horns plated with gold and its head decorated with an olive wreath. Someone would play a flute. When they came close to Jerusalem they would send a messenger ahead to announce their arrival and they would start to adorn their first-fruits. Governors and officials of the city would come out to greet them and the artisans would stop their work and call out, “Our brothers from such-and-such a place: come in peace!” 

The flute would continue playing until the procession reached the Temple Mount. There, they would each place their basket of fruit on their shoulder – the Mishnah says that even King Agrippa would do so – and carry it to the Temple forecourt. There the Levites would sing (Psalm 30:2), “I will praise you, God, for you have raised me up and not let my enemies rejoice over me.” 

The scene, as groups converged on the Temple from all parts of Israel, must have been vivid and unforgettable. However, the most important part of the ceremony lay in what happened next. With the baskets still on their shoulders the arrivals would say, “I declare today to the Lord your God that I have come to the land that the Lord swore to our ancestors to give us.” Each would then hold their basket by the rim, the Cohen would place his hand under it and ceremoniously wave it, and the bringer of the fruit would say the following passage, whose text is set out in our parsha... Rabbi Jonathan Sacks from The Story We Tell (Ki Tavo 5778)

The passage talks about liturgy, stewardship, and the nature of the relationship between God and God's people. It was Murray Newman's, my Old Testament professor, favorite text.

I imagine that many people will jump the gun and talk about stewardship if they preach on this text. And, it is about that. It is truly about giving thanks to God who is provider and a deliverer. However, I believe there is more here than that.

But I think the foundation of the passage may not be in the liturgy and stewardship of the narrative. Instead, the deep meaning of the passage is actually found in the words of the prayer that is to be said at the time of the offering - the parsha. (Deut. 26:5-10) That is, "“A wandering Aramean was my ancestor....etc, etc. Here I turn to Rabbi Sacks to help us to pull from the text 5 essential themes.

First, the people of Israel are the first to experience and tell the  story of God. In particular that this God is a God beyond and in the midst of history - and in particularly in the midst of a particular people. Moreover, the people of Israel in their experience, and through the text, reveal to us that the story of history is an overarching theme of God's making. In particular this theme is one of redemption: beginning with suffering; freedom of the people by God's delivering hand; the drama of a people trying to live with god; and finally a homecoming. This story is to be one that moves in this very passage from an account to internal memory. It is to be internalized. He writes, "Those who stood in the Temple saying those words were declaring: this is my story. In bringing these fruits from this land, I and my family are part of it." (Ibid.)

Finally, this is all about identity. More than history, more than narrative, and memory...this is ultimately about being and becoming. Sacks suggests, "History is an answer to the question, “What happened?” Memory is an answer to the question, “Who am I?” (Ibid.)

He gives this example, "In Alzheimer’s Disease, when you lose your memory, you lose your identity. The same is true of a nation as a whole. (David Andress, Cultural Dementia, subtitled How the West Has Lost its History and Risks Losing Everything Else (London, Head of Zeus, 2018) When we tell the story of our people’s past, we renew our identity. We have a context in which we can understand who we are in the present and what we must do to hand on our identity to the future." (Sacks, Ibid.)

As we bring all of this forward into our Christian context we understand then that what we do liturgically, like this prayer, reminds us of God in Christ' Jesus work of redemption. And, that this was the high water mark of what God has done all along. We understand that we are not participating in something that we are disconnected from. We are not merely receiving something. What we do in the liturgy is something more. We are actually claiming ourselves as a particular people, with a particular God, in whose particular narrative we participate. We are internalizing God's story.

What we do each week (not unlike what the people are instructed to do and have done for millennia) is of "immense consequence". We are telling a "collective story" of who God is and how we participate in God's story. It in fact rejects all forms of principalities and powers...it rejects all the "normal bases of identity: political power, shared territory or a shared language of everyday speech." (Ibid.)

All characteristics, all identities, all nations are not the same thing. The American narrative is as Dan McAdams explains it above in the quotation section. Christianity moves beyond the hero and demigod's triumph over evil or circumstance. We instead understand that God has acted and is acting in the midst of our lives today. God in Christ Jesus is not simply a symbolic hero of such triumphs as the wandering Aramean and God. Christ is the God, the alpha and omega of history, who makes us God's people and redeems us (not merely from the authorities and powers of this world) from the sibling rivalry that infects all human relationships - the sin of the world. The Gospel is rooted here in this story of the first fruits for it is a historic memory of God's action that is raised to a greater enterprise in Jesus. For through God in Christ all of creation is redeemed, not just a people. In God in Christ Jesus we become the first fruits of God's salvific act upon the cross. Christ is the one who offers the sacrifice and raises us to God making all of us an offering to the most high God. This is our story, this is our God, and we are the people of his hand - the sheep of his fold.

Last Epiphany, Feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord, March 2, 2025

Prayer

O god, whose Son, your Beloved, was transfigured in dazzling light, with reverent awe we enter your holy presence.  Your presence cannot be contained in tents our hands have made but must be sought in your creatures and all that your hands have fashioned.  Lead us from the high mountain to seek you in the lowly of the earth, serving them, after Christ’s example, in peace and sacrificial love.  We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.

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

Some Thoughts on Luke 9:28-36(37-43)

"God promises us that through Scripture we will meet God, and our identities as individuals and a community of faith will be formed and transformed."

"Transforming Transfiguation," Alyce McKenzie, Edgy Exegesis, 2013.

"The Transfiguration is an apt Preface to Lent and Jesus' journey to Jerusalem, because what lies ahead is both a confrontation between the non-violent justice of the Kingdom of God and the violent injustice of the Roman Empire; as well as the non-violent way of the Beloved versus the hoped-for victory by the Messiah."


Holy Textures, Understanding the Bible in its own time and in ours, Luke 9:28-36, (37-43), David Ewart, 2013.


Oremus Online NRSV Gospel Text

Transfiguration and the Vision of the Other: Seeing and Being Seen in Christ

We conclude Epiphany with the Transfiguration and from time to time the Feast of the Transfiguration falls on a Sunday.  As Luke Timothy Johnson calls the passage “Recognizing Jesus,” we are not surprised that this season of revelation and light ends on the mountaintop.

 
If you are interested in how the other texts tell the story of the transfiguration, you can find the parallels for today’s Gospel reading here:

Luke	Matthew	Mark
vv. 28-36	17:1-8	9:2-8
vv. 37-43a	17:14-21	9:14-29

One of the things I want to draw our attention to as we begin to survey this Gospel reading is that the lectionary has divided it in an odd place. I very much prefer the passage to be read as Luke 9:18-36. Here we have an ongoing disagreement between the New Testament scholar and the liturgist—one concerned with textual integrity, the other with the rhythm of worship. Overlooking that, we see plainly as we open our Bibles that Luke intends for this moment to transition us from the miracle of loaves and fishes into a private time of prayer between the teacher and his disciples.

In the previous passage, the miracle of multiplication and abundance concludes as the ochlos—the crowd—becomes something new, transformed into the laos, the people of God. The inbreaking of the reign of God into the world is immediately followed by Jesus drawing apart for prayer. And in that moment of solitude, Jesus turns to his disciples and asks the question upon which the entire Gospel hinges: Who am I? Peter responds with a revelation: You are the Messiah of God. This is no ordinary confession; it is an unveiling, an eschatological vision breaking into the present moment. But the confession comes with a charge: If you would follow me, deny yourselves, take up your cross, and die daily. To see the Messiah is to be drawn into his way of being in the world—to live, suffer, and serve as he does.

From Revelation to Transfiguration

This brings us to the mountaintop. How have the disciples done with their charge? Have they understood? Are they ready?

Luke tells us, as he was praying, the transfiguration occurs. That phrase is significant. The change in Christ’s appearance, his dazzling raiment, the descent of Moses and Elijah—all of it unfolds in the midst of prayer. The vision does not come as an event external to Christ but as something that arises from within his communion with the Father. This is not the first time Luke ties divine revelation to prayer. Jesus’ baptism, his calling of the disciples, his moment of recognition as God’s beloved—all of these happen in prayer. Here, again, prayer is not merely preparation for revelation; prayer is the means by which one sees.

And what is seen? Jesus, radiant in the uncreated light of God, is revealed in the company of Moses and Elijah. The lawgiver, the prophet, and the Messiah stand together, speaking of his departure—his exodus. The imagery is unmistakable: Jesus is leading his people into a new deliverance, a new crossing over, a new transformation of their very being.

The Vision-Act of the Other

The disciples are overwhelmed. In their drowsiness, their disorientation, Peter fumbles for something familiar: Let us build three tents! This, of course, echoes the Feast of Booths, the memory of Israel’s sojourning in the wilderness. But Peter is mistaken. He sees Jesus as one among three, as if Moses, Elijah, and Christ stand on equal footing. He fails to perceive that Jesus is not simply another prophet, another voice among many. The vision must be clarified.

A cloud descends—the same cloud that led Israel through the desert, the same cloud that filled the Temple, the same cloud in which God speaks at Sinai. And then the voice: This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him.

Here, the transfiguration reaches its climax. Jesus alone stands at the center, and the Father makes clear: To see him is to see the fullness of God’s glory. But more than that, to see him is to be seen. The disciples do not merely witness transfiguration—they are themselves drawn into it. This is the vision-act of the Other: in beholding Christ, they themselves are changed. We, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed from one degree of glory to another (2 Cor. 3:18). To see Christ truly is to become like him.

This is the heart of Christian transformation. Transfiguration is not about mere perception, about understanding Christ more fully—it is about being conformed to him, about being seen by God and in that seeing, being changed. It is not merely an event upon the mountaintop; it is the pattern of Christian life.

The Church as the Place of Transfiguration

And here, perhaps, we must ask an uncomfortable question: If the disciples beheld Christ and were changed, do we expect the same in our churches? Do people who come into our worship leave transfigured? Do they, like those on the mountain, see Christ and go forth reflecting his glory? Or have we, like Peter, simply built booths—structures that keep God contained, manageable, institutionalized?

These are not liturgical questions, these are preaching questions.

The danger of Peter’s impulse is not only that he equates Jesus with Moses and Elijah—it is that he attempts to hold on to the moment rather than allowing it to shape him. How often do we do the same? How often do we mistake the form of worship for the substance of transformation? We argue over style—traditional, contemporary, charismatic, postmodern—but we rarely ask the real question: Do we expect to encounter the transfigured Christ? Do we believe, truly, that God is at work in the midst of our worship? Or have we grown tired, going through the motions, content with booths when we are called to bear the weight of glory?

As leaders of worship, we must ask: Are we attuned to the sacred things unfolding in our midst? Or are we simply moving through another Sunday, another liturgy, another sermon, another Eucharist? Are we facilitating an encounter with the Living God, or are we making church palatable, convenient, tame?

If the transfiguration teaches us anything, it is that true worship—true seeing—requires risk. It requires vulnerability. It demands that we, like the disciples, be willing to step into the cloud, to tremble at the voice of God, to descend the mountain forever changed. The church is not called to be a museum of past revelations, nor a fortress of rigid tradition, nor a spiritual marketplace offering religious goods. It is called to be the place of transfiguration. A place where Christ is seen, where the Other is encountered, where we are drawn into the ongoing, unfolding glory of God.

This is the hope of transfiguration: that as we behold Christ, we are changed. That as we see him, we are seen. That as we enter into prayer, we are drawn ever more deeply into the life of God.

And so we must ask: Are we prepared for such a vision? Or, like Peter, will we fumble for the familiar, trying to keep God within our grasp? The invitation stands before us: Come up the mountain. Behold the glory. And be transfigured.

Some Thoughts on 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2

In 2 Corinthians 3:18 Paul pictures the church as a community of faces gazing at one another lost in a hall of mirrors in a dizzying transfiguration into the image of Jesus, the Christ, the one who is to come, always deferred.

Commentary, Exodus 34:29-35, David E. Fredrickson, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2016.

The epistle reading for today reminds us that the revelation of Jesus’ glory is so spectacular that it initiates the transfiguration of all who are in Christ.

"Commentary, Exodus 34:29-35, Carla Works, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2013."

Paul pits his transforming gospel against the one espoused by those who appeal to the biblical authority of laws and commandments and who see Jesus as primarily promoting a new version of Moses.

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

When Jesus enters our heart, he brings the renewing image of God. We are reclothed with what Adam and Eve lost. We are reclothed in righteousness and now we understand and love the truth. We can once again judge rightly between the good and the bad when before we were slaves of sin.

"Made in the Image of God," Bill Green, in Kerux: The Online Journal of Biblical Theology (Reformed).

Oremus Online NRSV Epistle Text 

In Second Corinthians, Paul weaves a vision of unveiled glory, where the Spirit liberates humanity from veiled understanding into the radiant image of Christ. The veil—symbolic of separation, obscurity, and the limitations of the old covenant—is lifted in Christ, revealing not only the fullness of divine presence but the path of transformation by which humanity is drawn deeper into God’s likeness.

This passage is a deeply embodied articulation of Christian anthropology and eschatology. Paul is not simply speaking of a conceptual enlightenment but of a real, ontological change—one that unfolds in the dynamic relationship between the human person and the Spirit of God. This transformation is neither passive nor instantaneous but occurs from one degree of glory to another, suggesting a participatory movement, an ongoing transfiguration that occurs within the body of Christ. It is the Spirit, the Lord, who enacts this process, calling forth human agency in response.

This unveiling also carries an ethical charge: we do not lose heart. To be conformed to Christ is not merely to behold the truth but to enact it—to renounce deception, to refuse manipulation, and to stand before the world in a posture of integrity. Paul’s contrast between cunning and open truth-telling aligns with a sacramental understanding of reality: just as the veil is removed in Christ, so must we live as those who do not obscure, distort, or commodify the word of God.

Transformed by the Spirit, the church needs to manifest God's revealed glory. The church should not hide the gospel message. The church serves as a reflective surface that displays Christ's light because of divine grace rather than holding it as its own property.

Where the Spirit is, there is freedom. This is not a disembodied, individualistic liberty but a liberation into the fullness of human vocation acted out amid the community of the world: to see and be seen, to behold and be transformed, to be conformed to Christ from one degree of glory to another. It is a vision that is at once deeply eschatological and profoundly present, calling us to live as those whose faces have been unveiled, who see the world anew in the light of the resurrection.

Some Thoughts on Exodus 34:29-35

"Today's Gospel reading dramatizes the ultimate instance of divine-human mediation, as Jesus radiated divine presence while praying, and then as he engaged with the two preeminent Old Testament agents of divine mediation at the Mount of Transfiguration."
Commentary, Exodus 34:29-35, William Yarchin, Preaching This Week, WorkingPreacher.org, 2016.

"How would our ministry change if we removed the veil between ourselves and God?"
"A Veiled Question," Ruth Everhart, The Hardest Question, 2013.

"The Lukan reading picks up the story of the transfiguration story of Jesus and as Moses was the mediator in the past, it is now Jesus who brings the revelation of God. Both Moses and Elijah are present and speak with him as his face becomes radiant from being in the presence of God."
Exodus 34:29-35, Commentary, Background, Insights from Literary Structure, Theological Message, Ways to Present the Text. Anna Grant-Henderson, Uniting Church in Australia.

"Our lives are full with commitments and activities and pleasurable leisure opportunities. This passage reminds us, however, that life's real thrills for which our souls truly long have their one true source in the spiritual sun of God's glory."
Last Sunday of Epiphany, Year C: Exodus 34:29-35, Biblische Ausbildung, Dr. Stephen L. Cook, Virginia Theological Seminary.

Oremus Online NRSV Text

We have already had the episode of the Golden calf and the people's fear that Moses would not return. Moses after having dealt with their fear and anxiety returned to the mountain. He returns and his face shines because of having stood and taken in God's glory. (An interesting side note from my art history days...the translation for the word "shine" can also mean horns. This why is some depictions of Moses we see him with horns.

What happens in the transfiguration of Moses' face and the conversation between God, Moses and the people is this - God comes close. God is present and close to God's people. There is an intimacy, a relationship, a connection between God and God's people. It is not a relationship that is built upon the freedom from slavery or the people's faithfulness. It is one of actual distance. God has come close.

This idea of closeness plays with the ideas around the transfiguration...in other words...God is not ever been far away. God has always been close. From walking among his creation with his creatures, to traveling with Abraham, to this moment in the reading... and on through the story until we get the transfiguration of Jesus...God's nature is not merely transcendence (though it is that as well). God's nature is also nearness with people and creation.

God is present at the heart of creation. We see that part of what happens in the transfiguration story is not merely a seeing that the past comes forward in Moses and Elijah to bless Jesus in some form or fashion. But that the disciples are actually recognizing in Jesus, at the transfiguring moment, that he is connected with the God who has been close to God's people all along. Jesus, in the transfiguration does not merely shine like Moses. These are not literary motifs. No. Instead what we see here is that the first followers of Jesus along with the gospel authors, see that Jesus himself is the God who has been close to his people, and walked in the garden, this whole time. It is a revelation not of a new something but that Jesus, in his perfect image of the incarnation, is the same as the one God the people knew all along.

Seventh Sunday after Epiphany - February 23, 2025

Prayer

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

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

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

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


Luke 6:27-38

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

Oremus Online NRSV Text

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1 Corinthians 15:35-40

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


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

Oremus Online NRSV Text

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Genesis 45:1-15

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

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

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

Oremus Online NRSV Text

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Excerpt from my new book in January 2020: Citizen

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

Also...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[vii] Sacks, Hope, 63.

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

[ix] Sacks, Hope, 63-64.