Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• Manuscripts are evenly divided between the sending of seventy and the sending of seventy-two. That there is this split, probably relates the number to the list of nations in Genesis 10 (the Hebrew text lists 70 nations, the Septuagint 72). So the significance seems to be on the mission of the church to spread through all nations.
• Being sent in pairs relates to the Mosaic Law that two witnesses are required for a testimony to be credible (Deut 19:15). There is also safety in pairs, necessary for the challenges of travel in the first century.
• Harvest metaphors like v. 3 were commonly used by Old Testament prophets as a metaphor for judgment and the gathering of Israel that would take place at the end of time. Harvest season is a time of great urgency in agrarian cultures, those who had labored in a field at harvest time would understand the pleading for more hands on deck to bring in the harvest as quickly as possible.
• Both in the commissioning of the twelve in chapter nine and here in the commissioning of the seventy (two), is the injunction to travel lightly. The added instruction not to greet anyone adds to the need for urgency in the travel.
• The disciples are to receive hospitality by 1) say, “Peace to this house,” and 2) remain in the house they are received. “Peace” has long been a common greeting. With the resurrection of Jesus, “Peace” takes on an additional meaning. The one at who’s birth peace was promised (Luke 1:79), will greet the disciples after his resurrection with the words, “Peace be with you.” That greeting will then become a mark of what the work of the apostles is to be, “preaching peace by Jesus Christ” (Acts 10:36).
• The requirement to remain in one house could be to keep the disciples from seeking better accommodations in another home.
• While it was universally accepted that “the laborer deserves to be paid” (10:7, see also 1 Timothy 5:18), there is an added level of acceptance on the part of the laborer to transcend social barriers and eat whatever is offered, even if it goes against dietary laws.
• Verses 8 and 9 offer a snapshot on how to do mission. 1) “Eat what is set before you” (create community by accepting hospitality and letting the community serve you), 2) “cure the sick” (care for the needs of the community), and 3) “say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you’” (proclaim the kingdom of God).
• Shaking the dust off one’s feet (10:11) was the traditional act of severance. There is a contradiction here, as verse 11 goes on, even with the severance made, “the kingdom of God has [still] come near.” Rejecting the messengers does not affect the truth of the message.
• The disciples’ response to the success of their mission is joy. The joy of ministry is a foreshadowing of the joy of the resurrection, and the joy of the arrival of the Spirit.
• The power of the disciples to cast out demons is a sign of the promised end times arrival, signaling the coming of the kingdom of God already in the midst of the followers of Jesus.
• Scorpions and snakes were frequent metaphorical images for the power of evil, so it seems Jesus’ words here were probably metaphorical rather than literal. By casting out demons, the disciples have demonstrated their ability to tread on snakes and scorpions.
• The disciples are cautioned not to rejoice at their newfound powers, but to rejoice that their names are written in the book of life, a common image for salvation. The proper response to the kingdom of god is not only the defeat of evil, but more importantly joy in the experience of a life aligned with God.
Works Sourced:
Culpepper, R. Alan. “The Gospel of Luke.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
The extraordinary can look so ordinary
Thursday, June 30, 2016
Monday, June 27, 2016
Plowing Forward in Faith: A Sermon on Luke 9:51-62
What are James and John thinking? I mean, seriously, has there been anything at any point in Jesus’ ministry that would lead them to believe that when they asked, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” his response would be, “yeah, ok, that sounds like a good plan.” I mean, come on now guys. This is the end of chapter nine. You’ve been following this man for a while now. This is the man whom at his birth the angels sang, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors.” This is the man who when rejected by the people of his hometown, calmly “passed through the midst of them and went on his way.” This is the man who cleansed lepers, healed a centurion’s sick servant, and raised a widow’s dead son. This is a man who forgave a sinful woman, calmed a storm at sea, and even showed mercy to demons. Now, granted, that still didn’t end well for the demons, but that was the demons fault, not Jesus’. What about this man possibly made you think, James and John, that sending down fire from heaven to consume a town would be his go-to response to being not received?
And then there’s the whole question of what makes James and John think they have the power to command fire to come down from heaven in the first place. I like the way they ask Jesus if he would like them to do this for him, as if the power to command fire from heaven was something they could actually do on their own. Not so much, team, not so much. If, and that’s a big if, because nowhere in the mission of the twelve at the start of chapter nine, or the mission of the seventy that we’ll read next week, does it say anything about commanding consuming fire. Power over demons, curing diseases, and proclaiming the kingdom of God, yes. Consuming random villages with fire, oddly enough, never mentioned. But, if James and John do in fact have this power, the only reason they have it is because Jesus gave it to them. This really isn’t a thing they can do for him. This is like, hey, can I take you out to dinner? But I’m going to need you to drive. And also pay.
So this question of James and John is pretty ridiculous. It is yet another example of just how much the disciples do not get who Jesus is and what Jesus is about. And I will mock the disciples for this. I will call them out for their inability to understand the love and the grace and the mercy of Jesus, even as they are standing in his very presence. I will mock them, because it allows me to ignore the fact that my response is all too often exactly the same as the one James and John are proposing.
OK, not the commanding down fire to consume part, I do not have that much confidence in my own abilities. But certainly the desire to divide, to judge, to blame others for what I see to be wrong with the world. I am so quick to say that what I think is right and what they think is wrong, and if only they could be convinced to see the world the way I see it, then they would know the wrongness of their ways, and everything would be a whole lot better. If only they would think or vote or pray or preach or post on social media the way I do, then everything would be all right.
This is the first, but not the last, time Samaritans show up in Luke’s Gospel. So let’s take a quick commercial break here for a second and get some backstory on the conflict. Way back in history, Samaritans and Judeans were all Israelites. They all descended from Abraham, they all went to Egypt with Joseph and returned from exile with Moses. They all united under King David and were conquered by the Babylonians during the time of Isaiah. This is where the break happened. The story of the Babylonian exile is that the entire population of Israel was uprooted and shipped off to Babylon. But, of course, that was not really the case. It wouldn’t make military or economic sense to uproot an entire population. To conquer a people you only need to conquer their power players. It was only the elites who were shipped off to exile, the rulers, the politicians, the wealthy merchants, the priests, the scholars. Left behind were the farmers, the laborers, the rural villagers, the lower merchants, and the like. Over the time of the Babylonian exile, the two groups drifted apart from each other. When they were reconnected, they no longer saw each other as part of the same community. The Judeans considered themselves the true Israelites because they had kept the faith alive through exile in a foreign land. They had stayed true to Jerusalem, even when Jerusalem had been conquered. The Samaritans, on the other hand, had created a new temple on a new mountain, and had worshiped the one God there. As the ones who had never left, who had continued to worship God in Israel, just on a different mountain, they saw themselves as the true Israelites. By the time of Jesus, this conflict had been going on for centuries. Interestingly enough, it is still going on. There are still just under 800 Samaritans living in Israel and while they are legally considered a branch of Judaism and are drafted into the Israel Defense Force just like any other resident of Israel, in order to be recognized as a Jew, they are still required to go through a formal conversion process. And in deference to the truth that there’s nothing new under the sun, let us also acknowledge that we Christians also have a history of battling with other Christians about who is really a Christian. This wasn’t unique to first century Palestinians, it isn’t unique to Judaism. This is like, a thing we do as people.
Moral of the story, James and John really think they have some justification for getting rid of this village of Samaritans. After all, they reasoned, the message of Jesus wasn’t for the Samaritans; it was for the true Israelites. If the Samaritans weren’t going to help them in spreading the message of Jesus, then better to just get them out of the way, for the good of the movement.
But what Jesus knew, and James and John didn’t understand yet, was that the Jesus movement was way bigger than the political freedom of the Judeans from Rome. The Jesus movement was about changing the way the world, the whole world, related not to Rome but to God. It was about toppling the structure of sin and death itself and leading to a new path of life and hope and freedom. A message of grace that was to be spread, as we will hear in Acts, not just in Jerusalem, but in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. The Samaritans couldn’t be destroyed because the Samaritans were a crucial part of what God was about to accomplish in the redemption of the world. Samaria was a link on the chain of freedom that started in Jerusalem and spread outward, like ripples in a pond when a stone is dropped in. This village may not have received Jesus now, but they would. They just weren’t ready yet. And that was OK. Jesus could wait. What’s a few more months, or years, or even centuries, to the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the One who Is, and who Was and who Is to Come.
But waiting isn’t passive. Jesus walking away and letting the Samaritans not receive him was not Jesus letting the Samaritans or John and James and the rest of the disciples off the hook. Agreeing to disagree is not passive ignoring; it is actively being called into relationship with one another to learn from each other’s differences and from those differences to grow in one’s own understanding. Agreeing to disagree is about remaining in relationship with the person with whom we disagree, continuing to ask questions, seeking to understand their position, and allowing our own minds to be changed. We may never come to agree, but we may find that the truth is neither our opinion nor theirs, but somewhere in the middle.
This is hard, this is super hard. The second half of our Gospel lesson for today talks about just how hard it is to be a disciple of Jesus. It is not all puppies and sunshine and rainbows. The Bible, as much as we might wish it would be, is not a magic answer book of everything we need to know. In this section Jesus seems to be telling these would-be followers that even having him right in front of them, in the flesh, telling them what to do still doesn’t make it clear how to be a disciple. But what I think this passage does say, is that even knowing we’re not going to get it right all the time. Even knowing we’re going to make mistakes, even knowing we’re going to fail and fall short and hurt people’s feelings and mess up the mission. Even knowing all of that should not cause us to be afraid to go forward. Perfectionism, thinking we have to have everything perfectly figured out before we step forward, is not ministry, it is paralysis.
Our Gospel reading for today ends with this final saying from Jesus, “No one who puts hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” At first reading, this seems so harsh. But it’s an agricultural metaphor, as Jesus frequently made in the very agrarian setting he was teaching in. And so here’s a thing I learned this week about plowing that I didn’t know before, having never in my life operated a plow. The only way to plow a straight line is to have your attention focused totally in front of you. If you look back while running a plow to check your work, you will lose sight of the direction and your furrow will end up crooked. I read this not to say that we don’t have to look back and deal with the past, but that we cannot let our concern with getting things right paralyze our future. I see this command by Jesus as a command to step forward in faith, knowing that we will not get it right, that we will make mistakes, that our furrows may crook, but trusting that somehow in our imperfections, God will make crops grow in the crooked furrows of our lives, if only we have the power to keep on stepping. It won’t happen all at once. But throughout the rest of Luke and Acts, James and John and the rest of the disciples found their understanding of the Samaritans changed from unwelcome outsiders to essential partners in the spreading of grace, and the Samaritans too found themselves moved from rejecting Jesus to embracing God’s message. God’s time is not our time, but as the Psalmist wrote in our Psalm this morning, “You show me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy; in your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” Thanks be to God. Amen.
And then there’s the whole question of what makes James and John think they have the power to command fire to come down from heaven in the first place. I like the way they ask Jesus if he would like them to do this for him, as if the power to command fire from heaven was something they could actually do on their own. Not so much, team, not so much. If, and that’s a big if, because nowhere in the mission of the twelve at the start of chapter nine, or the mission of the seventy that we’ll read next week, does it say anything about commanding consuming fire. Power over demons, curing diseases, and proclaiming the kingdom of God, yes. Consuming random villages with fire, oddly enough, never mentioned. But, if James and John do in fact have this power, the only reason they have it is because Jesus gave it to them. This really isn’t a thing they can do for him. This is like, hey, can I take you out to dinner? But I’m going to need you to drive. And also pay.
So this question of James and John is pretty ridiculous. It is yet another example of just how much the disciples do not get who Jesus is and what Jesus is about. And I will mock the disciples for this. I will call them out for their inability to understand the love and the grace and the mercy of Jesus, even as they are standing in his very presence. I will mock them, because it allows me to ignore the fact that my response is all too often exactly the same as the one James and John are proposing.
OK, not the commanding down fire to consume part, I do not have that much confidence in my own abilities. But certainly the desire to divide, to judge, to blame others for what I see to be wrong with the world. I am so quick to say that what I think is right and what they think is wrong, and if only they could be convinced to see the world the way I see it, then they would know the wrongness of their ways, and everything would be a whole lot better. If only they would think or vote or pray or preach or post on social media the way I do, then everything would be all right.
This is the first, but not the last, time Samaritans show up in Luke’s Gospel. So let’s take a quick commercial break here for a second and get some backstory on the conflict. Way back in history, Samaritans and Judeans were all Israelites. They all descended from Abraham, they all went to Egypt with Joseph and returned from exile with Moses. They all united under King David and were conquered by the Babylonians during the time of Isaiah. This is where the break happened. The story of the Babylonian exile is that the entire population of Israel was uprooted and shipped off to Babylon. But, of course, that was not really the case. It wouldn’t make military or economic sense to uproot an entire population. To conquer a people you only need to conquer their power players. It was only the elites who were shipped off to exile, the rulers, the politicians, the wealthy merchants, the priests, the scholars. Left behind were the farmers, the laborers, the rural villagers, the lower merchants, and the like. Over the time of the Babylonian exile, the two groups drifted apart from each other. When they were reconnected, they no longer saw each other as part of the same community. The Judeans considered themselves the true Israelites because they had kept the faith alive through exile in a foreign land. They had stayed true to Jerusalem, even when Jerusalem had been conquered. The Samaritans, on the other hand, had created a new temple on a new mountain, and had worshiped the one God there. As the ones who had never left, who had continued to worship God in Israel, just on a different mountain, they saw themselves as the true Israelites. By the time of Jesus, this conflict had been going on for centuries. Interestingly enough, it is still going on. There are still just under 800 Samaritans living in Israel and while they are legally considered a branch of Judaism and are drafted into the Israel Defense Force just like any other resident of Israel, in order to be recognized as a Jew, they are still required to go through a formal conversion process. And in deference to the truth that there’s nothing new under the sun, let us also acknowledge that we Christians also have a history of battling with other Christians about who is really a Christian. This wasn’t unique to first century Palestinians, it isn’t unique to Judaism. This is like, a thing we do as people.
Moral of the story, James and John really think they have some justification for getting rid of this village of Samaritans. After all, they reasoned, the message of Jesus wasn’t for the Samaritans; it was for the true Israelites. If the Samaritans weren’t going to help them in spreading the message of Jesus, then better to just get them out of the way, for the good of the movement.
But what Jesus knew, and James and John didn’t understand yet, was that the Jesus movement was way bigger than the political freedom of the Judeans from Rome. The Jesus movement was about changing the way the world, the whole world, related not to Rome but to God. It was about toppling the structure of sin and death itself and leading to a new path of life and hope and freedom. A message of grace that was to be spread, as we will hear in Acts, not just in Jerusalem, but in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. The Samaritans couldn’t be destroyed because the Samaritans were a crucial part of what God was about to accomplish in the redemption of the world. Samaria was a link on the chain of freedom that started in Jerusalem and spread outward, like ripples in a pond when a stone is dropped in. This village may not have received Jesus now, but they would. They just weren’t ready yet. And that was OK. Jesus could wait. What’s a few more months, or years, or even centuries, to the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the One who Is, and who Was and who Is to Come.
But waiting isn’t passive. Jesus walking away and letting the Samaritans not receive him was not Jesus letting the Samaritans or John and James and the rest of the disciples off the hook. Agreeing to disagree is not passive ignoring; it is actively being called into relationship with one another to learn from each other’s differences and from those differences to grow in one’s own understanding. Agreeing to disagree is about remaining in relationship with the person with whom we disagree, continuing to ask questions, seeking to understand their position, and allowing our own minds to be changed. We may never come to agree, but we may find that the truth is neither our opinion nor theirs, but somewhere in the middle.
This is hard, this is super hard. The second half of our Gospel lesson for today talks about just how hard it is to be a disciple of Jesus. It is not all puppies and sunshine and rainbows. The Bible, as much as we might wish it would be, is not a magic answer book of everything we need to know. In this section Jesus seems to be telling these would-be followers that even having him right in front of them, in the flesh, telling them what to do still doesn’t make it clear how to be a disciple. But what I think this passage does say, is that even knowing we’re not going to get it right all the time. Even knowing we’re going to make mistakes, even knowing we’re going to fail and fall short and hurt people’s feelings and mess up the mission. Even knowing all of that should not cause us to be afraid to go forward. Perfectionism, thinking we have to have everything perfectly figured out before we step forward, is not ministry, it is paralysis.
Our Gospel reading for today ends with this final saying from Jesus, “No one who puts hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” At first reading, this seems so harsh. But it’s an agricultural metaphor, as Jesus frequently made in the very agrarian setting he was teaching in. And so here’s a thing I learned this week about plowing that I didn’t know before, having never in my life operated a plow. The only way to plow a straight line is to have your attention focused totally in front of you. If you look back while running a plow to check your work, you will lose sight of the direction and your furrow will end up crooked. I read this not to say that we don’t have to look back and deal with the past, but that we cannot let our concern with getting things right paralyze our future. I see this command by Jesus as a command to step forward in faith, knowing that we will not get it right, that we will make mistakes, that our furrows may crook, but trusting that somehow in our imperfections, God will make crops grow in the crooked furrows of our lives, if only we have the power to keep on stepping. It won’t happen all at once. But throughout the rest of Luke and Acts, James and John and the rest of the disciples found their understanding of the Samaritans changed from unwelcome outsiders to essential partners in the spreading of grace, and the Samaritans too found themselves moved from rejecting Jesus to embracing God’s message. God’s time is not our time, but as the Psalmist wrote in our Psalm this morning, “You show me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy; in your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” Thanks be to God. Amen.
Monday, June 20, 2016
My Encounter with a Demon: A Sermon on Luke 8:26-39
I had an encounter with a demon this week. I didn’t recognize it as such at the time, but our text this week gave me the opportunity to reflect on the experience and realize that what I had experienced was, in fact, a demon. I’ll tell you that story, the demon and how it was cast into the abyss, later in the sermon, but before we get there, I want to talk a little bit about what a demon might be, and what we can learn from this text about demons.
Demons are a tricky subject in modern time, especially in mainline, science-embracing denominations like our own. Because what actually is a demon? What is wrong with the man in this text? Are demons really external supernatural forces that cause us to do things beyond our control? Is “the devil made me do it” a legitimate excuse for evil behavior? Are they undiagnosed mental illness, something we’ve now done away with, with medications and a deeper understanding of human brain function? Are they a literary device or a social construct of a pre-modern era?
One of my favorite sermons of all time is on this text. I’ll post a link to it on the Trinity Facebook page. The sermon is by Pastor Nadia Bolz Weber. She talked about how she struggled with how to think about demons, until she remembered a time when her depression felt so much like a character in her life that it seemed appropriate to give it a name. She called it Francis.
It doesn’t as much matter what a demon is, Bolz Weber reasoned, as what a demon does. Demons are things that isolate us, that separate us, that cause us pain, that make us feel vulnerable and powerless and weak. Be they depression, addiction, stereotypes, or corrupt and fixed systems, demons are the things that keep us from living the kinds of lives of connection and richness and freedom that God wants for us.
So with that as our working definition, let’s take a look at this story of the Gerasene Demoniac. Jesus traveled across the Sea of Galilee to the country of the Gerasenes. When they reach the shore, they are met by a man who had demons. He lived in the tombs, which for the original hearers of this story would have been an immediate clue to this man’s isolation. In the first century, tombs were considered unclean. In fact, in first century Jewish culture, tombs were painted white so people would know to stay away from them. The text tells us this man was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles. If our working definition of demons is something that keeps us isolated, vulnerable, powerless, and in pain, an affliction that kept a man shackled to tombs away from everyone else certainly fits that description.
The man with the demons approached Jesus and shouted, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God.” Which is fascinating because the central question in this section of Luke is who is Jesus? In fact, the verse immediately preceding this story, Jesus and the disciples were out on the boat, Jesus had just calmed the storm, and the disciples asked each other, “Who then is this, that he commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him?” The disciples, who’ve been traveling with Jesus, learning from Jesus, following Jesus, the disciples didn’t know who Jesus was, but the demons immediately identified him.
There’s also something else going on here, with the demons naming Jesus. In first century culture, the name, the identity of something, was believed to have great power. If you could name something, you could control it. So the demons are making a power play on Jesus. They are naming him for what he is, in an attempt to gain mastery over him, to control him. They’re saying to him, you cannot hide from us, we know exactly who you are.
But Jesus flipped the script on the demons, demanding of them, “What is your name?” “Legion,” they told him. A legion was a unit of the Roman army of four to six thousand men. So a lot of demons. But it doesn’t matter, because Jesus has forced them to identify themselves. By naming them, he’d forced them to come out of the shadows and into the light. They could not hide and play their sneaky games anymore, they had been identified for what they really were, and now, no matter what they try, they could be seen and named and controlled.
Jesus named the demons, and the demons knew they were defeated. And so, in order to avoid destruction, they begged Jesus to let them enter a herd of pigs. Jesus gave them permission, but this legion of demons were too much for the pigs to handle, so the pigs rushed down the banks and into the lake and were drowned. Thus, one can assume, sending the demons into the abyss anyway. Theologian Alan Culpepper writes: “When it gets its way, evil is always destructive, and ultimately self-destructive.”
And the man? When the people from the city rush to the tombs to find what has happened, they found the man clothed, sane, and seated at the feet of Jesus. The man wanted to journey on with Jesus, but Jesus instead told him to return to his home and declare how much God had done for him. Because that is another feature that is always true of any healing Jesus does, the final step of healing is to end their isolation, to restore the person to their community. If the effect of a demon is isolation, the cure is connectivity. Demons are not kept at bay alone, but in the midst of a community.
So we’ve been talking about demons on a micro level. But this same definition, things that isolate us, that make us feel alone, and vulnerable, and powerless, that same definition works for demons on a macro level. I’m talking about demons like homophobia, religious extremism, racism, and Islamophobia. Let me tell you about the demon I encountered last Sunday. And I have to be honest with you; this is a confession as much as it is an illustration.
After the council retreat on Sunday, I went to the gym. I was tired, my heart was heavy, from the news of the shooting in Orlando, and I needed to just work it out of my system. Some of you may have picked up by now, I don’t actually enjoy running all that much, it is a spiritual discipline for me. There is something about the oxygen deprivation that helps quiet the chaos in my mind and lets me hear the still, small, voice of God. Sometimes I talk to God while I run, sometimes I listen. And sometimes I just rest in the peace of being too exhausted to think. The peace of exhaustion was what I was seeking on Sunday. So I went to the gym, cranked the treadmill up to a speed just on the edge of uncomfortable, and I let the world disappear.
Pretty soon, a woman came and got on the treadmill next to me. This was fine; though the treadmills are close enough that we could touch each other, the unspoken etiquette of the gym is that it is perfectly acceptable to totally ignore the person next to you. We might as well have been in separate rooms.
I was watching the soccer game, but a few TVs down, CNN was playing its unending mass shooting news script. I’ve seen enough of these now to know you can never trust the reports in the first 24 hours of a tragedy, so I was deliberately ignoring it. But the person riding the bike was not, and pretty soon, that person got up and struck up a conversation with the woman on the treadmill next to mine. And as much as I did not want to be bothered, as much as I wanted to sink into my own head, I could not help but hear their conversation. It started out innocently enough, shock at the horror of the events, sadness for the victims, wonderings at the motives of someone who could commit such violence. And then slowly the conversation started to shift away toward refugees, toward homosexuality in general, toward what scripture might or might not say about homosexuality and Islam and what the message might be. The woman on the treadmill next to me immediately recognized the demon of homophobia and Islamophobia begin to rear its ugly head and she struggled to name what she was hearing and bring light and identity to it.
So this is the confession part. I did not immediately speak up. I ran on my treadmill wishing to God, I won’t say praying, but wishing, that this conversation would end, that she would be able to wrap it up, and that I could ignore it. I was, after all, “off-duty,” on the treadmill at the gym, and I was out of breath, and just as baffled as she was at how to respond. Me, an ELCA pastor, a trained Bible scholar, an ally and partner with people who work for inclusivity. But the demon of fear took power in my fear and my silence and it fed and grew in the midst of the three of us. Friends, let me tell you what you already know, it is scary to speak up in these sorts of situations. But I did eventually speak out. And let me tell you why. Because it wasn’t my own courage that got me to enter into the conversation. It was the courage of the woman on the treadmill next to me. It was the fact that I had spent the morning in worship with all of you, and I knew I owed it to you to be the kind of pastor who speaks up. It was my dear friends and colleagues from seminary and beyond who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered and are some of the best, and brightest, and most faithful pastors I know. Her, and you, and them, it was this community of believers who finally cast out the demon of fear and silence that had possession of my own heart and freed me to turn to the people next to me and say, “you know, I can’t help but overhear your conversation. Can I tell you what my faith has taught me?” And you know what happened when I said that? That demon? The demon of fear and homophobia and religious extremism? That demon went away. And the three of us. The three of us, because let me be very clear, none of us, not even the person who started the conversation, none of us were the demon, the demon was the fear and the ignorance, the three of us were then able to have a beautiful and grace-filled conversation about love and acceptance and what it means to be made in the image of God. That demon went away because we named it. Because we named it, we brought it to the light, we called it for what it was, and it could not stand up to the truth of its own name.
So what are demons? Honestly, I don’t think it matters and I don’t think that is the point of the story. I think the point of the story is that demons can be defeated. We do not have to be held captive by that which seeks to keep us isolated, vulnerable, alone, powerless, and in pain. Isolated, vulnerable, powerless and in pain is not what Jesus wants for us. We know that because anytime Jesus saw a demon, he sent the sucker packing. And what’s more, I think the point of this story is we have the power to cast out demons. It is a power Jesus gave to the in Luke chapter nine, and it is a power that we also inherit through our baptism in Christ Jesus. The man with a demon was found clothed and in his right mind, our Galatians reading for today said that “As many of you as were baptized with Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.” And what’s more, this casting out demons is not a thing we do alone. Jesus always ended by connecting the person back to their community. The good news in this text is that we have this power together. Further on in the Galatians reading, “there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. So stand up, be brave, call a thing a thing, and send those demons packing. We have this authority through Jesus Christ, Son of the Most High God, the one whom demons fear. Amen.
Here is a link to the amazing sermon Pastor Nadia Bolz Weber preached on this text. The title of her sermon is "Demon Possession and Why I Named My Depression Francis."
Demons are a tricky subject in modern time, especially in mainline, science-embracing denominations like our own. Because what actually is a demon? What is wrong with the man in this text? Are demons really external supernatural forces that cause us to do things beyond our control? Is “the devil made me do it” a legitimate excuse for evil behavior? Are they undiagnosed mental illness, something we’ve now done away with, with medications and a deeper understanding of human brain function? Are they a literary device or a social construct of a pre-modern era?
One of my favorite sermons of all time is on this text. I’ll post a link to it on the Trinity Facebook page. The sermon is by Pastor Nadia Bolz Weber. She talked about how she struggled with how to think about demons, until she remembered a time when her depression felt so much like a character in her life that it seemed appropriate to give it a name. She called it Francis.
It doesn’t as much matter what a demon is, Bolz Weber reasoned, as what a demon does. Demons are things that isolate us, that separate us, that cause us pain, that make us feel vulnerable and powerless and weak. Be they depression, addiction, stereotypes, or corrupt and fixed systems, demons are the things that keep us from living the kinds of lives of connection and richness and freedom that God wants for us.
So with that as our working definition, let’s take a look at this story of the Gerasene Demoniac. Jesus traveled across the Sea of Galilee to the country of the Gerasenes. When they reach the shore, they are met by a man who had demons. He lived in the tombs, which for the original hearers of this story would have been an immediate clue to this man’s isolation. In the first century, tombs were considered unclean. In fact, in first century Jewish culture, tombs were painted white so people would know to stay away from them. The text tells us this man was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles. If our working definition of demons is something that keeps us isolated, vulnerable, powerless, and in pain, an affliction that kept a man shackled to tombs away from everyone else certainly fits that description.
The man with the demons approached Jesus and shouted, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God.” Which is fascinating because the central question in this section of Luke is who is Jesus? In fact, the verse immediately preceding this story, Jesus and the disciples were out on the boat, Jesus had just calmed the storm, and the disciples asked each other, “Who then is this, that he commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him?” The disciples, who’ve been traveling with Jesus, learning from Jesus, following Jesus, the disciples didn’t know who Jesus was, but the demons immediately identified him.
There’s also something else going on here, with the demons naming Jesus. In first century culture, the name, the identity of something, was believed to have great power. If you could name something, you could control it. So the demons are making a power play on Jesus. They are naming him for what he is, in an attempt to gain mastery over him, to control him. They’re saying to him, you cannot hide from us, we know exactly who you are.
But Jesus flipped the script on the demons, demanding of them, “What is your name?” “Legion,” they told him. A legion was a unit of the Roman army of four to six thousand men. So a lot of demons. But it doesn’t matter, because Jesus has forced them to identify themselves. By naming them, he’d forced them to come out of the shadows and into the light. They could not hide and play their sneaky games anymore, they had been identified for what they really were, and now, no matter what they try, they could be seen and named and controlled.
Jesus named the demons, and the demons knew they were defeated. And so, in order to avoid destruction, they begged Jesus to let them enter a herd of pigs. Jesus gave them permission, but this legion of demons were too much for the pigs to handle, so the pigs rushed down the banks and into the lake and were drowned. Thus, one can assume, sending the demons into the abyss anyway. Theologian Alan Culpepper writes: “When it gets its way, evil is always destructive, and ultimately self-destructive.”
And the man? When the people from the city rush to the tombs to find what has happened, they found the man clothed, sane, and seated at the feet of Jesus. The man wanted to journey on with Jesus, but Jesus instead told him to return to his home and declare how much God had done for him. Because that is another feature that is always true of any healing Jesus does, the final step of healing is to end their isolation, to restore the person to their community. If the effect of a demon is isolation, the cure is connectivity. Demons are not kept at bay alone, but in the midst of a community.
So we’ve been talking about demons on a micro level. But this same definition, things that isolate us, that make us feel alone, and vulnerable, and powerless, that same definition works for demons on a macro level. I’m talking about demons like homophobia, religious extremism, racism, and Islamophobia. Let me tell you about the demon I encountered last Sunday. And I have to be honest with you; this is a confession as much as it is an illustration.
After the council retreat on Sunday, I went to the gym. I was tired, my heart was heavy, from the news of the shooting in Orlando, and I needed to just work it out of my system. Some of you may have picked up by now, I don’t actually enjoy running all that much, it is a spiritual discipline for me. There is something about the oxygen deprivation that helps quiet the chaos in my mind and lets me hear the still, small, voice of God. Sometimes I talk to God while I run, sometimes I listen. And sometimes I just rest in the peace of being too exhausted to think. The peace of exhaustion was what I was seeking on Sunday. So I went to the gym, cranked the treadmill up to a speed just on the edge of uncomfortable, and I let the world disappear.
Pretty soon, a woman came and got on the treadmill next to me. This was fine; though the treadmills are close enough that we could touch each other, the unspoken etiquette of the gym is that it is perfectly acceptable to totally ignore the person next to you. We might as well have been in separate rooms.
I was watching the soccer game, but a few TVs down, CNN was playing its unending mass shooting news script. I’ve seen enough of these now to know you can never trust the reports in the first 24 hours of a tragedy, so I was deliberately ignoring it. But the person riding the bike was not, and pretty soon, that person got up and struck up a conversation with the woman on the treadmill next to mine. And as much as I did not want to be bothered, as much as I wanted to sink into my own head, I could not help but hear their conversation. It started out innocently enough, shock at the horror of the events, sadness for the victims, wonderings at the motives of someone who could commit such violence. And then slowly the conversation started to shift away toward refugees, toward homosexuality in general, toward what scripture might or might not say about homosexuality and Islam and what the message might be. The woman on the treadmill next to me immediately recognized the demon of homophobia and Islamophobia begin to rear its ugly head and she struggled to name what she was hearing and bring light and identity to it.
So this is the confession part. I did not immediately speak up. I ran on my treadmill wishing to God, I won’t say praying, but wishing, that this conversation would end, that she would be able to wrap it up, and that I could ignore it. I was, after all, “off-duty,” on the treadmill at the gym, and I was out of breath, and just as baffled as she was at how to respond. Me, an ELCA pastor, a trained Bible scholar, an ally and partner with people who work for inclusivity. But the demon of fear took power in my fear and my silence and it fed and grew in the midst of the three of us. Friends, let me tell you what you already know, it is scary to speak up in these sorts of situations. But I did eventually speak out. And let me tell you why. Because it wasn’t my own courage that got me to enter into the conversation. It was the courage of the woman on the treadmill next to me. It was the fact that I had spent the morning in worship with all of you, and I knew I owed it to you to be the kind of pastor who speaks up. It was my dear friends and colleagues from seminary and beyond who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered and are some of the best, and brightest, and most faithful pastors I know. Her, and you, and them, it was this community of believers who finally cast out the demon of fear and silence that had possession of my own heart and freed me to turn to the people next to me and say, “you know, I can’t help but overhear your conversation. Can I tell you what my faith has taught me?” And you know what happened when I said that? That demon? The demon of fear and homophobia and religious extremism? That demon went away. And the three of us. The three of us, because let me be very clear, none of us, not even the person who started the conversation, none of us were the demon, the demon was the fear and the ignorance, the three of us were then able to have a beautiful and grace-filled conversation about love and acceptance and what it means to be made in the image of God. That demon went away because we named it. Because we named it, we brought it to the light, we called it for what it was, and it could not stand up to the truth of its own name.
So what are demons? Honestly, I don’t think it matters and I don’t think that is the point of the story. I think the point of the story is that demons can be defeated. We do not have to be held captive by that which seeks to keep us isolated, vulnerable, alone, powerless, and in pain. Isolated, vulnerable, powerless and in pain is not what Jesus wants for us. We know that because anytime Jesus saw a demon, he sent the sucker packing. And what’s more, I think the point of this story is we have the power to cast out demons. It is a power Jesus gave to the in Luke chapter nine, and it is a power that we also inherit through our baptism in Christ Jesus. The man with a demon was found clothed and in his right mind, our Galatians reading for today said that “As many of you as were baptized with Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.” And what’s more, this casting out demons is not a thing we do alone. Jesus always ended by connecting the person back to their community. The good news in this text is that we have this power together. Further on in the Galatians reading, “there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. So stand up, be brave, call a thing a thing, and send those demons packing. We have this authority through Jesus Christ, Son of the Most High God, the one whom demons fear. Amen.
Here is a link to the amazing sermon Pastor Nadia Bolz Weber preached on this text. The title of her sermon is "Demon Possession and Why I Named My Depression Francis."
Monday, June 13, 2016
A Pastoral Confession on the Orlando Nightclub Shooting
A shooting at a nightclub leaves fifty dead, another fifty plus wounded. As a person of faith, I struggle to make sense of such tragedy. Where was God, where is God in the face of such pain? I pray for Orlando, for the injured, the grieving. I pray for our nation, our leaders, and our world.
I am also painfully aware that prayer is not enough. This violent hate crime was committed in the name of religion. And so, as a religious leader, I must claim culpability for the ways that my silence has contributed to creating a culture of violence that is so far from the God of love whom I worship.
To my LGBTQIA siblings: There is a tragic history of violence against LGBTQIA people committed in the name of religious extremism. As a religious leader and a person of faith, I apologize to you for the times the church has been silent, or worse, has condoned such violence. I commit myself to work for the day that you do not have to be afraid to be seen. I am grateful for the hard work and the bravery of BC Pride. It takes courage and strength and commitment to do the work that you do. Thank you for making Battle Creek a better place for us all.
To my Muslim siblings: This was not an act of religion, yours or mine. This was an act of sick violence. And yet, the rhetoric taking hold in our world will try to use this to justify discrimination and retaliatory attacks against Muslims. As a religious leader and a fellow person of faith, I commit myself to stand against religious bigotry and scapegoating. I am grateful for the model of Muslim religious leaders who have helped me find the words to condemn this act, and all acts of religious extremism, as a violation of what it means to be a person of faith. I join my voice with them and with you in condemning violence in any form and in condemning that religious extremism that breeds it.
Homophobia, Islamophobia, they both have a similar root. Phobia, fear. And so…
To my siblings (myself included) who live in fear: This is a scary time we live in. But time and time again in Scripture, the message God sends to God’s people is “Do not be afraid.” 1 John 4:18 reads, “there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” I ask forgiveness for the times that fear has silenced me. And I commit myself to acting in love, in the model of God who is love. My faith has taught me the power of resurrection hope. That God is always at work in the world bringing life out of death, hope out of despair, and love out of fear. May it be so.
I am also painfully aware that prayer is not enough. This violent hate crime was committed in the name of religion. And so, as a religious leader, I must claim culpability for the ways that my silence has contributed to creating a culture of violence that is so far from the God of love whom I worship.
To my LGBTQIA siblings: There is a tragic history of violence against LGBTQIA people committed in the name of religious extremism. As a religious leader and a person of faith, I apologize to you for the times the church has been silent, or worse, has condoned such violence. I commit myself to work for the day that you do not have to be afraid to be seen. I am grateful for the hard work and the bravery of BC Pride. It takes courage and strength and commitment to do the work that you do. Thank you for making Battle Creek a better place for us all.
To my Muslim siblings: This was not an act of religion, yours or mine. This was an act of sick violence. And yet, the rhetoric taking hold in our world will try to use this to justify discrimination and retaliatory attacks against Muslims. As a religious leader and a fellow person of faith, I commit myself to stand against religious bigotry and scapegoating. I am grateful for the model of Muslim religious leaders who have helped me find the words to condemn this act, and all acts of religious extremism, as a violation of what it means to be a person of faith. I join my voice with them and with you in condemning violence in any form and in condemning that religious extremism that breeds it.
Homophobia, Islamophobia, they both have a similar root. Phobia, fear. And so…
To my siblings (myself included) who live in fear: This is a scary time we live in. But time and time again in Scripture, the message God sends to God’s people is “Do not be afraid.” 1 John 4:18 reads, “there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” I ask forgiveness for the times that fear has silenced me. And I commit myself to acting in love, in the model of God who is love. My faith has taught me the power of resurrection hope. That God is always at work in the world bringing life out of death, hope out of despair, and love out of fear. May it be so.
Thursday, June 9, 2016
Conversation Points on Luke 7:36-8:3
Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• The theme of the section of Luke we will read this week and throughout the month of June centers around the idea of Jesus as the one who continues the work of the prophets and fulfills their words, and yet is greater than all the prophets. This story addresses the “more than a prophet” statement directly. Simon the Pharisee questioned that if Jesus was really a prophet, he would have known the sort of woman who was touching him. Jesus responded by proving not only did he know who the woman was, but he forgave her sins, thus he was greater than a prophet. This story then completes the period of Jesus being more than a prophet, and leads in to the next question the Gospel of Luke addresses, if Jesus is not a prophet, who is he?
• This question of who is Jesus was already asked in the text immediately preceding this one. John the Baptist sent disciples to Jesus to ask if he was the one John had been waiting for (remember at the announcement of John’s birth, it was foretold that John was to turn many to prepare for Jesus, since Jesus is doing things that are so unexpected for a Messiah, John is confirming that Jesus is in fact the correct one). In v. 33-34, there is also a lean toward the table fellowship and the condemnation by the Pharisees that is the hallmark of much of the rest of Luke. John did not eat or drink, and was accused of having a demon. Jesus will eat and drink; and that too will be condemned. The problem then is not Jesus but the Pharisees, since no action is correct.
• A dinner at the home of a public figure like a Pharisee would be a much more public occasion than we think of a dinner party today. More like a block party then a party at your home. So it would not have been a surprise that an uninvited guest like the woman was there, the surprise would have been her actions.
• What the woman's "many sins" were is never mentioned in the story, though history, and some translations, have called her a prostitute and/or insinuated the sins to have been of a sexual nature. It is possible this assumption comes from the woman’s actions, touching Jesus feet, letting down her hair, which would have violated social conventions. Both acts had sexual undertones. But there is nothing in the story to allow us to assume what the woman's sins were.
• Verse 47 is the crux of the story. Since the statement of her sins being forgiven comes after, the English rendering can leave the question of where her sins forgiven because she showed great love, or did she show great love because her sins where forgiven. But the parallel between the first and second sections of verse 47 clear that question. The woman’s gratitude is in response to her forgiveness, not in order to obtain forgiveness. It is Luther’s “freedom of a Christian” doctrine, that Christians act out of love in the world as a response to the love they have already received from God. The public declaration of the woman’s forgiveness by Jesus is more for the sake of the hearers than the woman herself. Her preparedness in bringing of the jar demonstrates her already having experienced Jesus’ acceptance and forgiveness.
• In 8:1, “it came to pass,” translated “soon afterwards” is a phrase that indicates a transition in Luke’s Gospel.
• The list of named women in 8:2-3 functions as an important corrective to the idea that all the followers of Jesus were men. These women (and by extension, other women) were part of the followers of Jesus.
• 8:3, “provided for them out of their resources.” Proper use of resources is an important mark of discipleship in Luke/Acts. This also serves to validate these women’s place as proper followers.
Works Sourced:
Culpepper, R. Alan. “The Gospel of Luke.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• The theme of the section of Luke we will read this week and throughout the month of June centers around the idea of Jesus as the one who continues the work of the prophets and fulfills their words, and yet is greater than all the prophets. This story addresses the “more than a prophet” statement directly. Simon the Pharisee questioned that if Jesus was really a prophet, he would have known the sort of woman who was touching him. Jesus responded by proving not only did he know who the woman was, but he forgave her sins, thus he was greater than a prophet. This story then completes the period of Jesus being more than a prophet, and leads in to the next question the Gospel of Luke addresses, if Jesus is not a prophet, who is he?
• This question of who is Jesus was already asked in the text immediately preceding this one. John the Baptist sent disciples to Jesus to ask if he was the one John had been waiting for (remember at the announcement of John’s birth, it was foretold that John was to turn many to prepare for Jesus, since Jesus is doing things that are so unexpected for a Messiah, John is confirming that Jesus is in fact the correct one). In v. 33-34, there is also a lean toward the table fellowship and the condemnation by the Pharisees that is the hallmark of much of the rest of Luke. John did not eat or drink, and was accused of having a demon. Jesus will eat and drink; and that too will be condemned. The problem then is not Jesus but the Pharisees, since no action is correct.
• A dinner at the home of a public figure like a Pharisee would be a much more public occasion than we think of a dinner party today. More like a block party then a party at your home. So it would not have been a surprise that an uninvited guest like the woman was there, the surprise would have been her actions.
• What the woman's "many sins" were is never mentioned in the story, though history, and some translations, have called her a prostitute and/or insinuated the sins to have been of a sexual nature. It is possible this assumption comes from the woman’s actions, touching Jesus feet, letting down her hair, which would have violated social conventions. Both acts had sexual undertones. But there is nothing in the story to allow us to assume what the woman's sins were.
• Verse 47 is the crux of the story. Since the statement of her sins being forgiven comes after, the English rendering can leave the question of where her sins forgiven because she showed great love, or did she show great love because her sins where forgiven. But the parallel between the first and second sections of verse 47 clear that question. The woman’s gratitude is in response to her forgiveness, not in order to obtain forgiveness. It is Luther’s “freedom of a Christian” doctrine, that Christians act out of love in the world as a response to the love they have already received from God. The public declaration of the woman’s forgiveness by Jesus is more for the sake of the hearers than the woman herself. Her preparedness in bringing of the jar demonstrates her already having experienced Jesus’ acceptance and forgiveness.
• In 8:1, “it came to pass,” translated “soon afterwards” is a phrase that indicates a transition in Luke’s Gospel.
• The list of named women in 8:2-3 functions as an important corrective to the idea that all the followers of Jesus were men. These women (and by extension, other women) were part of the followers of Jesus.
• 8:3, “provided for them out of their resources.” Proper use of resources is an important mark of discipleship in Luke/Acts. This also serves to validate these women’s place as proper followers.
Works Sourced:
Culpepper, R. Alan. “The Gospel of Luke.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
Monday, June 6, 2016
Splagchnizomai: A Sermon on Luke 7:11-17
In the bishop’s video message this week, he talked about how he was excited for the Gospel text for this morning, because it was the text he assigned to all his preaching students. As an aside, this was not the text he assigned to my class, we preached on Zacchaeus, but anyway. He liked the text because, he explained, “If you’re going to be true to the text, the preacher cannot tell the hearers to go and do anything. The widow doesn’t do anything to get Jesus to raise her son… The young man certainly doesn’t do anything to get Jesus to raise him from the dead, he is dead. And the crowds certainly don’t do anything to get Jesus to raise the widow’s son. The grieving crowd is grieving and the crowd with Jesus is rejoicing over what happened last Sunday with the Centurion’s slave.” The widow’s son, the bishop pointed out, was brought to new life solely from the compassion of Jesus. There was nothing anyone did, nothing we can do, because Jesus is moved not by our actions, but by his own deep sense of compassion.
And this word compassion is an interesting one. Because compassion is really too light of a word in English for what it is in the Greek. The Greek word is a great one, it is splagchnizomai. I’ll say that again, splagchnizomai. It literally means a churning in ones guts. Derived from the Greek word splanxna, or internal organs, it reflects the belief of Greek culture that the guts, rather than the heart or the brain, were the seat of emotions. Which, if you think about way your stomach feels when you are hurting for someone else; that twisted, knotted up feeling, it makes sense to think of your gut as being the place of compassion. This word compassion shows up two other times in Luke’s Gospel. The Good Samaritan, a story we’ll hear later in the summer, was moved by compassion to help the injured man. And the father of the prodigal son was so filled with compassion when he saw his son coming that he ran down the road to greet him. Compassion in scripture is an action word. It is not something we feel, but a feeling that leads us to action.
It’s a powerful image we are met with in this Gospel reading. Jesus followed by a large crowd of people approached the gate of the village of Nain. The crowd is like a parade moving down the road. Meanwhile, approaching the gate from the other side moved another parade of people. This second parade was like the mirror opposite of the Jesus parade. While the parade of those following Jesus was boisterous and joyful, shouting and singing praises to God for the miracle they had just witnessed of the healing of the Centurion’s servant; the parade of those following the man who had died was downtrodden and grief-stricken.
As these two parades collided together, the parade of life and the parade of death, something in the approaching crowd moved Jesus with compassion. Was it the widow’s wails of grief, at the death of her only son, echoing the death of her husband, and in many ways the death of herself. A woman whose husband and only son had died would be without any power or representation in the world. Any support she would have had would have passed from her husband to her son and now was gone. She would for the rest of her life be dependent on the community. The calamity which would have enfolded her is why the author of the book of James wrote so strongly about the faith community’s responsibilities towards widows and orphans. Or were the woman and crowd still silenced with shock, the death to recent to be real. By Jewish custom, the burial would take place on the same day as the death, so maybe the grief was too raw even for wailing.
Whatever it was, something in that crowd filled Jesus with compassion. As the two parades collided, they became one parade, a parade of death, grieving the loss of this young man and the mother he’d left behind. And then Jesus did a surprising thing. He reached out his hand to touch the bier where the young man was laid. Remember last week, when I talked about the Centurion’s concern over Jesus’ ritual cleanliness seemed suspect, because Jesus himself seemed to show no concern for ritual cleanliness himself. This is a classic example of that. A dead body, especially one you had no relation to, would render you ritually unclean for seven days, after which you had to wash and show yourself to a priest before you could once again be admitted into the community. The modern Jewish tradition of sitting shiva, of the family of the dead staying in their home to pray and wait for seven days following a death comes from this tradition. Today it is no longer about cleanliness, but about an understanding of the need for time to grieve, but this is where it gets its roots. As is true with so much of the Law, if we only take the time to dig into it, there is so much richness in this law that is deeper than the “ritual uncleanness” that we humans seem to take as the primary focus. What if instead, God’s primary focus for this restriction was this beautiful gift for those who are grieving, to intentionally be given time and space where all they are asked to do is grieve? What if, instead of the rushed sterility of modern funerals, we embraced this reality that grief is slow and messy, and allowed ourselves and our loved ones space and time and freedom to grieve?
But all of this is sort of an aside in this story, because as these two parades become one, Jesus reached his hand and touched the bier, and spoke the words, “Young man, I say to you, rise!” And all at once, the dead man sat up, and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother.
And here is where the text becomes hard to preach. Because precious few of us can relate to the experience of the widow and her son. I won’t say none, but precious few of us have experienced someone who has physically returned from death into life. And no one, and this I think I can say with some certainty, no one has experienced such a miracle hours or days after the moment of death, during the funeral procession itself. There is some comfort as a preacher in pointing out to you that since the woman, the son, the crowd, did nothing to prompt this miracle, so that when we do not ourselves experience the raising from the dead our loved ones, we do not need to blame ourselves that some prayer or promise or action on our part might have made the difference, might have induced God to save them. Life, after all, has a one hundred percent mortality rate. No one, not even the people Jesus raised from the dead, live forever. Not everything can be cured.
And that, I think, is the dangerous misconception of this and so many of the healing miracles. That this single event by Jesus totally returned the person’s life to exactly the same place it had been before, and nothing was ever wrong again. Because the raising of the widow’s son still left her a widow. And, given the short life-span of people in the first century, we can assume there were others in the crowd of mourners who were drawn not by the widow’s grief, but by their own, and their loved ones were not also raised. In fact, this was probably also true of the crowd following Jesus from the healing of the Centurion’s slave. There were probably revelers in that crowd who had their own illnesses to contend with, their own sick loved ones. When Jesus was moved with compassion to raise the widow’s son, he was not fixing every single thing that every person found wrong with the world. The question of how a good God can allow bad things to happen is what is known in theological terms as the question of theodicy, and quite frankly, it is a harder question then I have ever been able to explain or understand. My faith has always been one that is comfortable in the not knowing, so the question of how great tragedies can occur, and why God does not step in to prevent them, is one that I don’t spend a lot of time dwelling on. Because here’s what I do take from the story of the raising of the widow’s son in Nain. That in the middle of the deepest grief, God is always working to bring about healing. In the middle of the darkest moments, Jesus reaches across the barriers to touch the biers of our broken hearts to heal us. Not because of what we’ve done, not from some properly worded prayer or acceptable level of obedience, but because Jesus is moved with compassion in the presence of our suffering. Compassion always leads to healing. Not cure, there is a difference between healing and cure, but healing. Sometimes, like the widow, we experience the compassion of Jesus directly, but sometimes, like the man helped by the Samaritan, like the prodigal son, we experience the compassion of Jesus through others. It is the outstretched arms when we are grieving, the unexpected gift that gets us through, the kind word or comforting prayer. And sometimes we get to be the sign of Jesus compassion, and that in itself is healing for us and for those for whom we care.
Jesus is moved with compassion for us. So deeply does Jesus love us, that his insides ache out of his deep care for us. The promise of that love, more so even than the way in which that love is demonstrated, is the sort of good news that we can hold on to. Thanks be to God, who loves us with such deep compassion. Amen.
And this word compassion is an interesting one. Because compassion is really too light of a word in English for what it is in the Greek. The Greek word is a great one, it is splagchnizomai. I’ll say that again, splagchnizomai. It literally means a churning in ones guts. Derived from the Greek word splanxna, or internal organs, it reflects the belief of Greek culture that the guts, rather than the heart or the brain, were the seat of emotions. Which, if you think about way your stomach feels when you are hurting for someone else; that twisted, knotted up feeling, it makes sense to think of your gut as being the place of compassion. This word compassion shows up two other times in Luke’s Gospel. The Good Samaritan, a story we’ll hear later in the summer, was moved by compassion to help the injured man. And the father of the prodigal son was so filled with compassion when he saw his son coming that he ran down the road to greet him. Compassion in scripture is an action word. It is not something we feel, but a feeling that leads us to action.
It’s a powerful image we are met with in this Gospel reading. Jesus followed by a large crowd of people approached the gate of the village of Nain. The crowd is like a parade moving down the road. Meanwhile, approaching the gate from the other side moved another parade of people. This second parade was like the mirror opposite of the Jesus parade. While the parade of those following Jesus was boisterous and joyful, shouting and singing praises to God for the miracle they had just witnessed of the healing of the Centurion’s servant; the parade of those following the man who had died was downtrodden and grief-stricken.
As these two parades collided together, the parade of life and the parade of death, something in the approaching crowd moved Jesus with compassion. Was it the widow’s wails of grief, at the death of her only son, echoing the death of her husband, and in many ways the death of herself. A woman whose husband and only son had died would be without any power or representation in the world. Any support she would have had would have passed from her husband to her son and now was gone. She would for the rest of her life be dependent on the community. The calamity which would have enfolded her is why the author of the book of James wrote so strongly about the faith community’s responsibilities towards widows and orphans. Or were the woman and crowd still silenced with shock, the death to recent to be real. By Jewish custom, the burial would take place on the same day as the death, so maybe the grief was too raw even for wailing.
Whatever it was, something in that crowd filled Jesus with compassion. As the two parades collided, they became one parade, a parade of death, grieving the loss of this young man and the mother he’d left behind. And then Jesus did a surprising thing. He reached out his hand to touch the bier where the young man was laid. Remember last week, when I talked about the Centurion’s concern over Jesus’ ritual cleanliness seemed suspect, because Jesus himself seemed to show no concern for ritual cleanliness himself. This is a classic example of that. A dead body, especially one you had no relation to, would render you ritually unclean for seven days, after which you had to wash and show yourself to a priest before you could once again be admitted into the community. The modern Jewish tradition of sitting shiva, of the family of the dead staying in their home to pray and wait for seven days following a death comes from this tradition. Today it is no longer about cleanliness, but about an understanding of the need for time to grieve, but this is where it gets its roots. As is true with so much of the Law, if we only take the time to dig into it, there is so much richness in this law that is deeper than the “ritual uncleanness” that we humans seem to take as the primary focus. What if instead, God’s primary focus for this restriction was this beautiful gift for those who are grieving, to intentionally be given time and space where all they are asked to do is grieve? What if, instead of the rushed sterility of modern funerals, we embraced this reality that grief is slow and messy, and allowed ourselves and our loved ones space and time and freedom to grieve?
But all of this is sort of an aside in this story, because as these two parades become one, Jesus reached his hand and touched the bier, and spoke the words, “Young man, I say to you, rise!” And all at once, the dead man sat up, and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother.
And here is where the text becomes hard to preach. Because precious few of us can relate to the experience of the widow and her son. I won’t say none, but precious few of us have experienced someone who has physically returned from death into life. And no one, and this I think I can say with some certainty, no one has experienced such a miracle hours or days after the moment of death, during the funeral procession itself. There is some comfort as a preacher in pointing out to you that since the woman, the son, the crowd, did nothing to prompt this miracle, so that when we do not ourselves experience the raising from the dead our loved ones, we do not need to blame ourselves that some prayer or promise or action on our part might have made the difference, might have induced God to save them. Life, after all, has a one hundred percent mortality rate. No one, not even the people Jesus raised from the dead, live forever. Not everything can be cured.
And that, I think, is the dangerous misconception of this and so many of the healing miracles. That this single event by Jesus totally returned the person’s life to exactly the same place it had been before, and nothing was ever wrong again. Because the raising of the widow’s son still left her a widow. And, given the short life-span of people in the first century, we can assume there were others in the crowd of mourners who were drawn not by the widow’s grief, but by their own, and their loved ones were not also raised. In fact, this was probably also true of the crowd following Jesus from the healing of the Centurion’s slave. There were probably revelers in that crowd who had their own illnesses to contend with, their own sick loved ones. When Jesus was moved with compassion to raise the widow’s son, he was not fixing every single thing that every person found wrong with the world. The question of how a good God can allow bad things to happen is what is known in theological terms as the question of theodicy, and quite frankly, it is a harder question then I have ever been able to explain or understand. My faith has always been one that is comfortable in the not knowing, so the question of how great tragedies can occur, and why God does not step in to prevent them, is one that I don’t spend a lot of time dwelling on. Because here’s what I do take from the story of the raising of the widow’s son in Nain. That in the middle of the deepest grief, God is always working to bring about healing. In the middle of the darkest moments, Jesus reaches across the barriers to touch the biers of our broken hearts to heal us. Not because of what we’ve done, not from some properly worded prayer or acceptable level of obedience, but because Jesus is moved with compassion in the presence of our suffering. Compassion always leads to healing. Not cure, there is a difference between healing and cure, but healing. Sometimes, like the widow, we experience the compassion of Jesus directly, but sometimes, like the man helped by the Samaritan, like the prodigal son, we experience the compassion of Jesus through others. It is the outstretched arms when we are grieving, the unexpected gift that gets us through, the kind word or comforting prayer. And sometimes we get to be the sign of Jesus compassion, and that in itself is healing for us and for those for whom we care.
Jesus is moved with compassion for us. So deeply does Jesus love us, that his insides ache out of his deep care for us. The promise of that love, more so even than the way in which that love is demonstrated, is the sort of good news that we can hold on to. Thanks be to God, who loves us with such deep compassion. Amen.
Wednesday, June 1, 2016
Conversation Points for Luke 7:11-17
Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• The theme of the section of Luke we will read this week and throughout the month of June centers around the idea of Jesus as the one who continues the work of the prophets and fulfills their words, and yet is greater than all the prophets. This story is a clear parallel to 1 Kings 17:17-24, where Elijah raised the widow’s son. In the 1 Kings story, Elijah stretched himself over the boy three times and cried out to God, Jesus had only to speak the words, and the boy was made alive.
• By Jewish custom, the burial has to take place within 24 hours of the death. So the widow’s grief over her son is still very raw.
• Having the healing of a widow’s son follow immediately after the healing of the centurion’s servant shows Jesus’ disregard for human status, as he offered care to both a high-status man and a low-status woman. The death of an only son would have been catastrophic to a widow. Without a son she would have been denied legal inheritance and would be dependent upon charity.
• Nain is a small village about five miles southwest of Nazareth and twenty-five miles from Capernaum. Verse 16, “God has looked favorably upon his people” is a nod to the song of Zechariah in Luke 1:68. Later God’s favor will expand throughout “Judea, Samaria, and all the world.” Right now we are in the “Judea” part.
• The word for “compassion” in verse 13 is splagchnizomai and means a deep visceral gut reaction.
Works Sourced:
Attridge, Harold W. ed. The HarperCollins Study Bible. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006.
Culpepper, R. Alan. “The Gospel of Luke.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
Hogan, Lucy Lind. “Commentary on Luke 7:11-17.” Working Preacher.. Accessed 31 May 2016.
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• The theme of the section of Luke we will read this week and throughout the month of June centers around the idea of Jesus as the one who continues the work of the prophets and fulfills their words, and yet is greater than all the prophets. This story is a clear parallel to 1 Kings 17:17-24, where Elijah raised the widow’s son. In the 1 Kings story, Elijah stretched himself over the boy three times and cried out to God, Jesus had only to speak the words, and the boy was made alive.
• By Jewish custom, the burial has to take place within 24 hours of the death. So the widow’s grief over her son is still very raw.
• Having the healing of a widow’s son follow immediately after the healing of the centurion’s servant shows Jesus’ disregard for human status, as he offered care to both a high-status man and a low-status woman. The death of an only son would have been catastrophic to a widow. Without a son she would have been denied legal inheritance and would be dependent upon charity.
• Nain is a small village about five miles southwest of Nazareth and twenty-five miles from Capernaum. Verse 16, “God has looked favorably upon his people” is a nod to the song of Zechariah in Luke 1:68. Later God’s favor will expand throughout “Judea, Samaria, and all the world.” Right now we are in the “Judea” part.
• The word for “compassion” in verse 13 is splagchnizomai and means a deep visceral gut reaction.
Works Sourced:
Attridge, Harold W. ed. The HarperCollins Study Bible. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006.
Culpepper, R. Alan. “The Gospel of Luke.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
Hogan, Lucy Lind. “Commentary on Luke 7:11-17.” Working Preacher.
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