Since it’s the first Sunday of Advent, I want to take a moment and set up what we’ll be doing for the next few weeks. If you’re following along in one of the devotional books, you’ll notice that while the Gospel text matched, the other reading did not. You’ll also notice that there was only one other reading, instead of the normal three. I’m switching it up this year, because I want us to pay attention to something kind of interesting. Advent marks the start of our year in the Gospel of Matthew. And Matthew starts out with a genealogy. We don’t often read this, because, let’s face it, genealogies are kind of boring, just a list of names we’re not familiar with. But this start sets an idea that Matthew will build on throughout the rest of the gospel, the importance of Jesus as the fulfillment of the prophets. By starting it with a genealogy, Matthew demonstrates how Jesus is not a new thing; he is the completion of the prophetic line, one which started way back with God’s promise to Abraham. Pay attention throughout the rest of the year, because you’ll notice this theme of Jesus fulfilling promises made about Abraham, Moses, David, and other great figures in biblical history.
So that’s the role of the genealogy itself. But as we look closer, we notice something unusual. Genealogies usually trace the lineage through the male line, father to son. Read the genealogies in Leviticus and Chronicles, they do the same thing. But, there are five outliers in Matthew’s list, five names that are not like the other. And when something is out of the ordinary in scripture, it’s important to pay attention, because the author probably included it for a reason. In Matthew’s genealogy, five women appear in the list of Jesus’ ancestors. The questions I want us to consider in these weeks leading up to the birth of Jesus are who are these women? Why does Matthew include them? And what about them shaped Jesus as a leader and teacher? How did these women prepare Jesus for his work as savior of the world? We start this morning with the first woman on the list, Tamar, the mother of Judah’s sons.
A little background. Genesis chapter thirty-eight is an interruption in the middle of the story of Joseph. Joseph has his dreams of greatness, is sold by his brothers to some passing travelers, and ends up in Egypt in the house of Potiphar, and then we jump back to Israel, completely out of the story of Joseph, to hear this weird interjection about the line of Judah. Tamar was the wife of Judah’s oldest son, Er. When Er died childless, it fell to Judah’s next son, Onan, to produce an heir for his bother. Which doesn’t make much sense to us now, but was common practice of the time. If a brother died without an heir, it was the role of the next brother to father a son with his brother’s widow. That child would be considered the son and inheritor of the deceased brother’s property. This was important not only for inheritance rights, but also as a protection for the widow. Unfortunately, Onan was not interested in fathering his brother’s heir, and also died childless. Judah had a third son, to whom the responsibility of fathering an heir for Tamar should have fallen. But instead Judah kept this son from Tamar, which left her stuck. Because she still was under the house of Judah, she could not remarry. But without a husband or a son, she had no standing in society, she was a nobody. The funny thing that’s also going on here is by doing this; Judah had really cut off his nose to spite his face. Because as her father-in-law, he was responsible for Tamar’s well-being until she had a husband or heir. So by ignoring her, he was in violation of his legal and ethical responsibility. Also, in a society where one’s value was dependent on one’s descendents, isolating Tamar also left Judah himself without an heir. So fearful was Judah, that he jeopardized his future in order to protect his present.
And on the situation would have gone like this, with both Tamar and Judah paralyzed by Judah’s fear and failure to act. Until Tamar took matters into her own hands. Seeing the paralysis that Judah was stuck in, Tamar, from a position of seeming powerlessness, found a way to move forward, albeit through a bit of trickery. What strikes me about Tamar is how much faith it must have taken to make such a bold move. Faith is often thought of as a concrete thing, I have faith, I believe, in this. It feels very confident and sure. But Martin Luther King, Jr. defined faith as taking the first step even when you cannot see the whole staircase. That is the kind of faith that I think Tamar had. Tamar had faith in her own God-given value as a member of the chosen line of Judah, and her confidence in her own value gave her the courage to move against society’s expectations and demand her place in the family. The quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. feels apt, because when I think of people who took a stand against the accepted value of society out of their own internal sense of their value as children of God, I think of folk involved in the civil rights movement. I think of the students who sat at the Woolsworth lunch counter, the marchers across Edmund Petis bridge, the freedom riders, who said even though the ethic of the culture says I am less than, the ethic of the culture is wrong. In the eyes of God, I am a person worthy of the same rights and privileges of others, and I am going to stand up for those rights.
And as is always the case when we stand up for justice, Tamar’s bold action not only set her free, but it set Judah free as well. Because Judah, by giving in to his own fear, had cut himself off from the promise of descendents and was living against the law of God to provide for and protect the people of his family. Judah called Tamar righteous when he realized what she had done, because he realized that Tamar basically tricked him into doing the right thing. Because of her boldness, the family line of the Lion of Judah, a line that would eventually lead to Jesus, was able to continue.
I think Jesus inherited his boldness and his self-confidence from Tamar. In our Gospel reading for this morning, Jesus told his disciples about a very scary time. Like the passage we heard two weeks ago from Luke, this time that Jesus is foretelling, a time when one would be taken and one would be left, this time has already happened by the time Matthew recorded it. The temple had already fallen, the people of Israel has already seen the destruction of their city and some people being captured, literally “taken up” by the Roman soldiers, while others were left behind. So what Jesus is saying is really, things feel out of control right now, and you maybe feel forgotten by God in the midst of this destruction you cannot control. But you can trust that the Son of Man is coming for you. You can trust in the promise of your God-given value, that you have not been forgotten, that you have not been overlooked. It is a boost of confidence to weary and frightened people to ground them in who they are and help them to continue to step forward in faith.
It is this sort of confidence that Jesus needed, and demonstrated in spades. Throughout his ministry, Jesus always put the good of others above doing what was right by society’s standards. He ate with sinners and outcasts, he healed on the Sabbath, he healed the sick. And in just a few short chapters from this Gospel reading, Jesus will do the most scandalous thing of all. He will hand himself over to be crucified and to die. He will die the death of a sinner and an outcast in the eyes of many, but in fact, the opposite is true. His courageous act of boundary defying self-sacrifice confirmed his identity as the Son of Man and savior of the world.
Everett, today is your baptism. And I hope in your future, that today is a day you can look back on for that same confidence. My prayer for you is that for the rest of your life, when you feel lost, left behind, undervalued, you will be able to look back at this day and trust in your God-claimed identity as a beloved child of God. And that confidence in who you are and whose you are will give you the courage to step forward in faith to work for justice and peace. These are big words for such a little guy, but buddy, I believe God has big things in store for you. And, like all of us, you stand on the shoulders of the spiritual giants who have gone before you, and you have this community behind you, to support you, to pray for you, and to remind you of your God-given value as children of God. May all of us remind each other. Amen.
The extraordinary can look so ordinary
Monday, November 28, 2016
Wednesday, November 23, 2016
Conversation Points for Genesis 38:11, 13-26 and Matthew 24:36-44
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:
Genesis 38:11, 13-26
• This story forms an interruption to the story of Joseph. In doing this it accomplishes two things. 1) It slows the narrative and thus heightens the tension concerning Joseph’s fate (much like a commercial break in an exciting moment in a TV show). 2) It keeps the rest of Jacob’s family from being forgotten in the story, anticipating Judah’s later role as the primary carrier on of the family lineage.
• Other important themes that mirror the Joseph story include recognition (Joseph hid from his brothers much like how Tamar hid from Judah), reversal (Joseph rose from prison to power, Tamar moved from obscurity to ancestor of the promised line of Judah), and deception through evidence (Joseph hid a cup on his brother Benjamin, Tamar took Judah’s staff, signet, and cord as identification).
• Judah’s line bypassing his sons helps to make sense of how Jacob’s line bypasses Judah’s older brothers and falls to him, God is not beholden to strict genealogical lineage.
• Tamar is a Canaanite, which is important to her role in Jesus’ lineage. Jesus’ message is for all, gentiles as well as Jews, because Jesus himself is from gentile origins.
• In the ancient near east, a woman’s place in society came from her spouse or son. Inheritance also passed from father to son. In order to keep inheritance lines straight and to protect widows, if a man died without fathering an heir, it was the man’s brother’s responsibility to father an heir for his brother. The child would be considered the son of the dead man, not the son of the brother. Because of that, as weird and inappropriate as it seems to us, it was not at all unethical our inappropriate for Judah to father a child with his son’s widow. The child would be considered Judah’s grandson, even though Judah was the biological father.
• Judah called Tamar “more in the right than [him]” (v. 26) because she was willing to go to greater risks on behalf of an heir for her husband/his son.
Matthew 24:36-44
• Like the passage we heard from Luke’s Gospel two weeks ago, this passage foretells destruction that Matthew’s audience had already experienced. Scholars date Matthew’s gospel to sometime after 70 CE, so sometime after the fall of Jerusalem at the hands of the Romans.
• Modern dispensationalism would have us read “one will be taken and one will be left” as favorable to the taken. But when I think about what happens when someone is “taken” by an invading army, I wonder if the emphasis could be on the randomness of warfare and comfort for those who are “left” to pick up the pieces.
• Thief seems like a strange metaphor for Jesus, but the emphasis seems to be on the urgency and the unexpectedness, the importance of vigilance and action.
Works Sourced:
Boring, M. Eugene. “The Gospel of Matthew.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VIII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
Fretheim, Terence. “The Book of Genesis.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume I. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1994.
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:
Genesis 38:11, 13-26
• This story forms an interruption to the story of Joseph. In doing this it accomplishes two things. 1) It slows the narrative and thus heightens the tension concerning Joseph’s fate (much like a commercial break in an exciting moment in a TV show). 2) It keeps the rest of Jacob’s family from being forgotten in the story, anticipating Judah’s later role as the primary carrier on of the family lineage.
• Other important themes that mirror the Joseph story include recognition (Joseph hid from his brothers much like how Tamar hid from Judah), reversal (Joseph rose from prison to power, Tamar moved from obscurity to ancestor of the promised line of Judah), and deception through evidence (Joseph hid a cup on his brother Benjamin, Tamar took Judah’s staff, signet, and cord as identification).
• Judah’s line bypassing his sons helps to make sense of how Jacob’s line bypasses Judah’s older brothers and falls to him, God is not beholden to strict genealogical lineage.
• Tamar is a Canaanite, which is important to her role in Jesus’ lineage. Jesus’ message is for all, gentiles as well as Jews, because Jesus himself is from gentile origins.
• In the ancient near east, a woman’s place in society came from her spouse or son. Inheritance also passed from father to son. In order to keep inheritance lines straight and to protect widows, if a man died without fathering an heir, it was the man’s brother’s responsibility to father an heir for his brother. The child would be considered the son of the dead man, not the son of the brother. Because of that, as weird and inappropriate as it seems to us, it was not at all unethical our inappropriate for Judah to father a child with his son’s widow. The child would be considered Judah’s grandson, even though Judah was the biological father.
• Judah called Tamar “more in the right than [him]” (v. 26) because she was willing to go to greater risks on behalf of an heir for her husband/his son.
Matthew 24:36-44
• Like the passage we heard from Luke’s Gospel two weeks ago, this passage foretells destruction that Matthew’s audience had already experienced. Scholars date Matthew’s gospel to sometime after 70 CE, so sometime after the fall of Jerusalem at the hands of the Romans.
• Modern dispensationalism would have us read “one will be taken and one will be left” as favorable to the taken. But when I think about what happens when someone is “taken” by an invading army, I wonder if the emphasis could be on the randomness of warfare and comfort for those who are “left” to pick up the pieces.
• Thief seems like a strange metaphor for Jesus, but the emphasis seems to be on the urgency and the unexpectedness, the importance of vigilance and action.
Works Sourced:
Boring, M. Eugene. “The Gospel of Matthew.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VIII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
Fretheim, Terence. “The Book of Genesis.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume I. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1994.
Thursday, November 17, 2016
Conversation Points for Luke 23:33-43
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:
• Jesus prayed for forgiveness in verse 34, who was he praying for? 34a seems to make an awkward shift from the chief priests earlier in chapter 23 to the soldiers, was Jesus praying for the Romans or the Jewish leaders, or both? Culpepper suggests both. The soldiers, operating under order, are the easiest to fit under the plea of ignorance. But throughout the gospel, Luke has emphasized the role of the Jewish leaders, and the people in calling for Jesus’ death. And the speeches in Acts continue to maintain that the Jewish leaders acted in ignorance when they called for Jesus’ crucifixion. So it seems Jesus’ call for forgiveness should be for all involved.
• The prayer itself is also true to the pattern of Jesus’ prayer throughout the gospel, a model prayer to precede a model death. One Stephen will follow in his own martyrdom in Acts, a death that eventually led to the conversion of Paul. • The soldiers responded to the prayer by continuing their business of dividing his clothing, as was called for in the Scriptures (Psalm 22:18), thus demonstrating their ignorance of the events transpiring.
• Unlike in Mark, Jesus was taunted not by the crowds, but by the leaders (v. 35), the soldiers (v. 36-37), and the criminal (v. 39). The irony of these taunts helps underscore Jesus’ identity and the true meaning of his death. The one who taught that those who wanted to save their lives must lose them, now loses his own life to save others. If he had saved his life, it would have denied his salvific role. The challenges echo the tempter’s taunts in Luke 4.
• Luke is the only Gospel to record the conversation between Jesus and the men with whom he was crucified. The story contributes to prominent Lukan themes: Jesus as giver of forgiveness, Jesus as one who stands with outsiders (even dies with them in this case).
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:
• Jesus prayed for forgiveness in verse 34, who was he praying for? 34a seems to make an awkward shift from the chief priests earlier in chapter 23 to the soldiers, was Jesus praying for the Romans or the Jewish leaders, or both? Culpepper suggests both. The soldiers, operating under order, are the easiest to fit under the plea of ignorance. But throughout the gospel, Luke has emphasized the role of the Jewish leaders, and the people in calling for Jesus’ death. And the speeches in Acts continue to maintain that the Jewish leaders acted in ignorance when they called for Jesus’ crucifixion. So it seems Jesus’ call for forgiveness should be for all involved.
• The prayer itself is also true to the pattern of Jesus’ prayer throughout the gospel, a model prayer to precede a model death. One Stephen will follow in his own martyrdom in Acts, a death that eventually led to the conversion of Paul. • The soldiers responded to the prayer by continuing their business of dividing his clothing, as was called for in the Scriptures (Psalm 22:18), thus demonstrating their ignorance of the events transpiring.
• Unlike in Mark, Jesus was taunted not by the crowds, but by the leaders (v. 35), the soldiers (v. 36-37), and the criminal (v. 39). The irony of these taunts helps underscore Jesus’ identity and the true meaning of his death. The one who taught that those who wanted to save their lives must lose them, now loses his own life to save others. If he had saved his life, it would have denied his salvific role. The challenges echo the tempter’s taunts in Luke 4.
• Luke is the only Gospel to record the conversation between Jesus and the men with whom he was crucified. The story contributes to prominent Lukan themes: Jesus as giver of forgiveness, Jesus as one who stands with outsiders (even dies with them in this case).
Works Sourced:
Culpepper, R. Alan. “The Gospel of Luke.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
Monday, November 14, 2016
It's Wednesday, Now What?: A Sermon on Luke 21:5-19
This sermon was preached at a joint service of St. Mark CME Church and Trinity Lutheran Church. St. Mark bought Trinity's old building in the 1970s, and the two congregations are working together on mission in the Post neighborhood.
First, and most importantly, what a joy and a treat it is to once again worship together this day. Thank you St. Mark for your wonderful hospitality and thank you Pastor Bell for being my dear friend and brother in the work of justice. It is good, good, good to be worshiping our risen Christ together this day.
Well, we had an election this week. And I have to say; from the president to the Battle Creek school board the only thing that this election told me was that we are a divided nation. From the president to the Battle Creek school board, here in Calhoun County, these were tight races. From the president to the Battle Creek school board, all the candidates know is that we are conflicted. We know something is wrong, but we are split on the best way to fix it.
I went to bed Tuesday night, before any elections were called, feeling pretty confused and upset about the whole thing. I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know how to proceed, in the face of such a divided electorate. I went to bed anxious about what it meant to live in a time where one candidate won the popular vote and the other the electoral vote, and neither party, neither platform, in any campaign, from the president to the Battle Creek school board, had a clear majority. I felt polarized, divided, aware of my privilege as a white American, and afraid.
And then I woke up Wednesday morning, and I made a pot of coffee, and I went to work. I woke up, made coffee, and went to work, because I realized that for every election, from the president to the Battle Creek school board, whoever won didn’t change what my response as a follower of Jesus Christ should be. As a follower of Jesus Christ, my job, however I may feel, is to be God’s hands and feet and heart and mind in the world, bringing forth the kingdom of God. Last Sunday at Trinity we talked about how whether we were delighted or devastated with what happened on Tuesday, there would be a Wednesday, and the work of being the people of God would continue. Well, it’s Wednesday now, and our work continues. This realization made me so, so excited to be here with you this morning, my brothers and sisters in Christ and my partners in the work of bringing the kingdom of God to the Post neighborhood.
Part of what helped me come to this realization was the text I read this morning. In the Lutheran tradition, I don’t choose the texts I preach from. The ELCA is what is known as a lectionary church, which means we read from a series of assigned readings each week. Sometimes I love the assigned text, sometimes I don’t. But the fact that it’s given to me forces me to hear the word the Holy Spirit has for me in it. More often than not, I find that my initial response is wrong, and the Holy Spirit has some great stuff going on to challenge and comfort me. That was the case again this week. At first read through, the assigned Gospel text for this week is terrifying. Jesus said, “not one stone will be left upon another… there will be wars and insurrections, nation will rise up against nation and kingdom against kingdom,” this is scary stuff, Jesus! But I want to step back for a second here, and place this text in its historical context, see what this text might have to say to us.
This text comes from the final days of Jesus’ life. The crucifixion is like four days away at this point. Jesus has already ridden into Jerusalem on a donkey to shouts of Hosanna, the religious and political leaders have already seen how Jesus stirred up the attention of the crowds, and they were already scared by that. It seems to be those religious and political leaders whom Jesus is speaking to in this story. He seems to be saying to them, you who have put your trust in worldly powers, watch out. Even this glorious, gold-plated Temple, the very symbol of power and might, this Temple in which you put so much faith, will crumble in the face of the power of God. Jesus is challenging the status quo, those who use their power and privilege to step on and oppress others in their battle for the top. He is telling those powers in no uncertain terms, you better watch out, for the powers of the earth will crumble.
So that’s the first level of historical context, the text itself. But there’s then a second level, the level of the audience for which the text was written. Because, think about it, Jesus said and did a lot of stuff in his thirty-three years of ministry. There’s no way the Gospel writers could get it all down. If you recorded every moment every day of someone’s life, well, let’s just say our pew bibles wouldn’t fit in our pews. So Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, had to pick and choose what to record. So why this story? Why did Luke choose to record this particular incident when he was setting down the life of Jesus for his community?
Luke’s Gospel was written down around 80 to 90 CE. The Temple was destroyed by Roman invaders in 70 CE. Which means that Luke was writing to an audience who was staring at the ruins of their Temple and trying to make sense of the devastation they had witnessed, trying to understand where God was in the midst of these ruins and their fear. By recounting these words of Jesus, Luke was reminding his audience, its ok folks, God’s got this. The destruction of the Temple does not mean the destruction of our God. Jesus told us this would happen, and now that it’s happened, remember the words of Jesus, do not be afraid.
I think we here in the Post Addition have a lot more in common with Luke’s audience than we do with Jesus’ audience. This is Post Addition. We are not staring up at the glorious gold-plated edifices of our buildings, marveling at their beauty and wealth. We are making it work in crumbling buildings, amidst broken families, broken school systems, broken homes. The glorious promise of cereal plant labor and middle class jobs, these homes built for families and schools built for children, have crumbled and fallen. Post Addition may be the neighborhood that Battle Creek forgot, but what this text promises us is that God has not forgotten, God is still here. This neighborhood has seen the earthquake of job loss, the famine of school closures, the plague of violence, and this text is the unwavering promise of God’s presence and power. Do not be afraid, Jesus said in this text, for the end will not follow immediately. This is not the end. Jesus said it, this is not the end, so do not follow those who tell you it is the end. Do not follow those who tell you there in nothing worth saving in Post Addition. Do not believe those who try to sow fear and discord. Do not be afraid, for this is not the end.
This passage started with a conversation about stones. In reflecting on these beautiful stones, Jesus remarked, not one stone will be left upon another, all will be thrown done. Luke’s Gospel has a lot to say about stones. In the very beginning, John the Baptist told the crowds, the same crowds Jesus was speaking to in this story, that from stones God would raise up children to Abraham. Dear people of God, we are these stones. We are the living stones being raised up by God in this place. I want to say again, as I said in the beginning, I am so grateful to be worshiping with you today, I am so grateful you came to worship with us in September, and I am so grateful for my friendship with your pastor. Because in a world that preaches division and a philosophy of not enough, the friendship between our two churches stands in opposition to that. In our work together I find courage, in our work together I find God’s presence, in our work together, I find hope.
This text is comfort, but it is also challenge. Because this text makes us aware of God’s presence, this text also convicts us that we cannot be held hostage to fear, we have to be about the work of the kingdom. We have to be about claiming the opportunity to testify to God’s grace and God’s goodness. We have to be about letting folk know that God is here in Post Addition, and since God is a God of resurrection glory, a new thing is in the process of being born out of this place. It is slow work, we know it is slow work, but this text also encourages endurance. And as Paul said in Romans we know that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint.
Thank you, St. Mark, for being my partners in ministry, my sisters and brothers in the kingdom of God. Let us go forward together to proclaim the presence of God in this community and in this world. Let us show our elected officials what it looks like to walk united, not divided. This is hard work, it is slow work, it is scary work. But Jesus Christ has promised us that he will give us the words and a wisdom that none can withstand or contradict.
In the Lutheran tradition, we read a psalm together every Sunday. The psalms are the church’s first hymnal and prayer book. And in an act of shared testimony, I would love it if we could end the sermon today by praying aloud, together, the psalm appointed for this morning, which is Psalm 98. I want to end with us all speaking together to remind us that this is not the end, it is a beginning of our shared witness. Let us give voice to the promise that God has the victory, that God is steadfast and powerful, and that God has given us the words to testify to God’s name.
O sing to the Lord a new song,
for he has done marvelous things.
His right hand and his holy arm
have gained him victory.
The Lord has made known his victory;
he has revealed his vindication in the sight of the nations.
He has remembered his steadfast love and faithfulness
to the house of Israel.
All the ends of the earth have seen
the victory of our God.
Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth;
break forth into joyous song and sing praises.
Sing praises to the Lord with the lyre,
with the lyre and the sound of melody.
With trumpets and the sound of the horn
make a joyful noise before the King, the Lord.
Let the sea roar, and all that fills it;
the world and those who live in it.
Let the floods clap their hands;
let the hills sing together for joy
at the presence of the Lord, for he is coming
to judge the earth.
He will judge the world with righteousness,
and the peoples with equity.
Amen.
First, and most importantly, what a joy and a treat it is to once again worship together this day. Thank you St. Mark for your wonderful hospitality and thank you Pastor Bell for being my dear friend and brother in the work of justice. It is good, good, good to be worshiping our risen Christ together this day.
Well, we had an election this week. And I have to say; from the president to the Battle Creek school board the only thing that this election told me was that we are a divided nation. From the president to the Battle Creek school board, here in Calhoun County, these were tight races. From the president to the Battle Creek school board, all the candidates know is that we are conflicted. We know something is wrong, but we are split on the best way to fix it.
I went to bed Tuesday night, before any elections were called, feeling pretty confused and upset about the whole thing. I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know how to proceed, in the face of such a divided electorate. I went to bed anxious about what it meant to live in a time where one candidate won the popular vote and the other the electoral vote, and neither party, neither platform, in any campaign, from the president to the Battle Creek school board, had a clear majority. I felt polarized, divided, aware of my privilege as a white American, and afraid.
And then I woke up Wednesday morning, and I made a pot of coffee, and I went to work. I woke up, made coffee, and went to work, because I realized that for every election, from the president to the Battle Creek school board, whoever won didn’t change what my response as a follower of Jesus Christ should be. As a follower of Jesus Christ, my job, however I may feel, is to be God’s hands and feet and heart and mind in the world, bringing forth the kingdom of God. Last Sunday at Trinity we talked about how whether we were delighted or devastated with what happened on Tuesday, there would be a Wednesday, and the work of being the people of God would continue. Well, it’s Wednesday now, and our work continues. This realization made me so, so excited to be here with you this morning, my brothers and sisters in Christ and my partners in the work of bringing the kingdom of God to the Post neighborhood.
Part of what helped me come to this realization was the text I read this morning. In the Lutheran tradition, I don’t choose the texts I preach from. The ELCA is what is known as a lectionary church, which means we read from a series of assigned readings each week. Sometimes I love the assigned text, sometimes I don’t. But the fact that it’s given to me forces me to hear the word the Holy Spirit has for me in it. More often than not, I find that my initial response is wrong, and the Holy Spirit has some great stuff going on to challenge and comfort me. That was the case again this week. At first read through, the assigned Gospel text for this week is terrifying. Jesus said, “not one stone will be left upon another… there will be wars and insurrections, nation will rise up against nation and kingdom against kingdom,” this is scary stuff, Jesus! But I want to step back for a second here, and place this text in its historical context, see what this text might have to say to us.
This text comes from the final days of Jesus’ life. The crucifixion is like four days away at this point. Jesus has already ridden into Jerusalem on a donkey to shouts of Hosanna, the religious and political leaders have already seen how Jesus stirred up the attention of the crowds, and they were already scared by that. It seems to be those religious and political leaders whom Jesus is speaking to in this story. He seems to be saying to them, you who have put your trust in worldly powers, watch out. Even this glorious, gold-plated Temple, the very symbol of power and might, this Temple in which you put so much faith, will crumble in the face of the power of God. Jesus is challenging the status quo, those who use their power and privilege to step on and oppress others in their battle for the top. He is telling those powers in no uncertain terms, you better watch out, for the powers of the earth will crumble.
So that’s the first level of historical context, the text itself. But there’s then a second level, the level of the audience for which the text was written. Because, think about it, Jesus said and did a lot of stuff in his thirty-three years of ministry. There’s no way the Gospel writers could get it all down. If you recorded every moment every day of someone’s life, well, let’s just say our pew bibles wouldn’t fit in our pews. So Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, had to pick and choose what to record. So why this story? Why did Luke choose to record this particular incident when he was setting down the life of Jesus for his community?
Luke’s Gospel was written down around 80 to 90 CE. The Temple was destroyed by Roman invaders in 70 CE. Which means that Luke was writing to an audience who was staring at the ruins of their Temple and trying to make sense of the devastation they had witnessed, trying to understand where God was in the midst of these ruins and their fear. By recounting these words of Jesus, Luke was reminding his audience, its ok folks, God’s got this. The destruction of the Temple does not mean the destruction of our God. Jesus told us this would happen, and now that it’s happened, remember the words of Jesus, do not be afraid.
I think we here in the Post Addition have a lot more in common with Luke’s audience than we do with Jesus’ audience. This is Post Addition. We are not staring up at the glorious gold-plated edifices of our buildings, marveling at their beauty and wealth. We are making it work in crumbling buildings, amidst broken families, broken school systems, broken homes. The glorious promise of cereal plant labor and middle class jobs, these homes built for families and schools built for children, have crumbled and fallen. Post Addition may be the neighborhood that Battle Creek forgot, but what this text promises us is that God has not forgotten, God is still here. This neighborhood has seen the earthquake of job loss, the famine of school closures, the plague of violence, and this text is the unwavering promise of God’s presence and power. Do not be afraid, Jesus said in this text, for the end will not follow immediately. This is not the end. Jesus said it, this is not the end, so do not follow those who tell you it is the end. Do not follow those who tell you there in nothing worth saving in Post Addition. Do not believe those who try to sow fear and discord. Do not be afraid, for this is not the end.
This passage started with a conversation about stones. In reflecting on these beautiful stones, Jesus remarked, not one stone will be left upon another, all will be thrown done. Luke’s Gospel has a lot to say about stones. In the very beginning, John the Baptist told the crowds, the same crowds Jesus was speaking to in this story, that from stones God would raise up children to Abraham. Dear people of God, we are these stones. We are the living stones being raised up by God in this place. I want to say again, as I said in the beginning, I am so grateful to be worshiping with you today, I am so grateful you came to worship with us in September, and I am so grateful for my friendship with your pastor. Because in a world that preaches division and a philosophy of not enough, the friendship between our two churches stands in opposition to that. In our work together I find courage, in our work together I find God’s presence, in our work together, I find hope.
This text is comfort, but it is also challenge. Because this text makes us aware of God’s presence, this text also convicts us that we cannot be held hostage to fear, we have to be about the work of the kingdom. We have to be about claiming the opportunity to testify to God’s grace and God’s goodness. We have to be about letting folk know that God is here in Post Addition, and since God is a God of resurrection glory, a new thing is in the process of being born out of this place. It is slow work, we know it is slow work, but this text also encourages endurance. And as Paul said in Romans we know that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint.
Thank you, St. Mark, for being my partners in ministry, my sisters and brothers in the kingdom of God. Let us go forward together to proclaim the presence of God in this community and in this world. Let us show our elected officials what it looks like to walk united, not divided. This is hard work, it is slow work, it is scary work. But Jesus Christ has promised us that he will give us the words and a wisdom that none can withstand or contradict.
In the Lutheran tradition, we read a psalm together every Sunday. The psalms are the church’s first hymnal and prayer book. And in an act of shared testimony, I would love it if we could end the sermon today by praying aloud, together, the psalm appointed for this morning, which is Psalm 98. I want to end with us all speaking together to remind us that this is not the end, it is a beginning of our shared witness. Let us give voice to the promise that God has the victory, that God is steadfast and powerful, and that God has given us the words to testify to God’s name.
O sing to the Lord a new song,
for he has done marvelous things.
His right hand and his holy arm
have gained him victory.
The Lord has made known his victory;
he has revealed his vindication in the sight of the nations.
He has remembered his steadfast love and faithfulness
to the house of Israel.
All the ends of the earth have seen
the victory of our God.
Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth;
break forth into joyous song and sing praises.
Sing praises to the Lord with the lyre,
with the lyre and the sound of melody.
With trumpets and the sound of the horn
make a joyful noise before the King, the Lord.
Let the sea roar, and all that fills it;
the world and those who live in it.
Let the floods clap their hands;
let the hills sing together for joy
at the presence of the Lord, for he is coming
to judge the earth.
He will judge the world with righteousness,
and the peoples with equity.
Amen.
Thursday, November 10, 2016
Conversation Points for Luke 21:5-19
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:
• This passage takes place in the Temple in the final days before Jesus’ crucifixion. Tempers, and stakes, are high. After the meandering journey from Galilee to Jerusalem, Jesus entered the city (think Palm Sunday) in 19:28-39. In 19:45-48, Jesus drove the money changers out of the Temple, setting up the conflict between Jesus and the religious powers that would in just a few days lead to his crucifixion.
• This section in particular addresses the destruction of the Temple. The Gospel of Luke was written around 80-90 CE, placing it after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. Having witnessed the mighty Temple falling, the readers of Luke’s Gospel would have heard this passage as comforting, because it was a reminder that even though the Temple was gone, God was still with them.
• We don’t know who the audience is in this passage. In Mark’s Gospel, it is clearly identified as the disciples, but Luke leaves it ambiguous. The hearers addressed Jesus as “teacher,” a term which was never, in its ten previous uses, used by the disciples as a title for Jesus.
• Jesus instructed his followers not to be alarmed when the temple was destroyed and follow false prophets. Wars and uprisings always feel like times of terror, but they do not signal that the end is near.
• The verses about persecutions foretell the descriptions of such in the Acts of the Apostles. Persecution is one of the major motifs of Acts, they become occasions for the apostles to give testimony.
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:
• This passage takes place in the Temple in the final days before Jesus’ crucifixion. Tempers, and stakes, are high. After the meandering journey from Galilee to Jerusalem, Jesus entered the city (think Palm Sunday) in 19:28-39. In 19:45-48, Jesus drove the money changers out of the Temple, setting up the conflict between Jesus and the religious powers that would in just a few days lead to his crucifixion.
• This section in particular addresses the destruction of the Temple. The Gospel of Luke was written around 80-90 CE, placing it after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. Having witnessed the mighty Temple falling, the readers of Luke’s Gospel would have heard this passage as comforting, because it was a reminder that even though the Temple was gone, God was still with them.
• We don’t know who the audience is in this passage. In Mark’s Gospel, it is clearly identified as the disciples, but Luke leaves it ambiguous. The hearers addressed Jesus as “teacher,” a term which was never, in its ten previous uses, used by the disciples as a title for Jesus.
• Jesus instructed his followers not to be alarmed when the temple was destroyed and follow false prophets. Wars and uprisings always feel like times of terror, but they do not signal that the end is near.
• The verses about persecutions foretell the descriptions of such in the Acts of the Apostles. Persecution is one of the major motifs of Acts, they become occasions for the apostles to give testimony.
Works Sourced:
Culpepper, R. Alan. “The Gospel of Luke.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
Monday, November 7, 2016
The Work Begins on Wednesday: A Sermon on Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18 and Luke 6:20-31
I’m cognizant as I preach this morning that there are a lot of factors at play in our worship this morning. First, of course, it is All Saints Sunday, the day in the church year that we set aside to remember all of the saints, both the living and the dead, though we do tend to give special focus on our dearly departed saints. As Lutherans, we celebrate All Saints Day the Sunday after Reformation Day, and our Lutheran heritage reminds us that all of us are both saint and sinner, one hundred percent of both, all of the time. Outside of the church, of course, it is the Sunday before Election Day, a day that has been built up as the time when we vote for the candidate who is the saint and reject the candidate who is the sinner. Of course the most well-known of these races is the Presidential election, where a hearty case for sainthood is being pushed by the two major party candidates, but also the two most well known independent party candidates, and a host of write-in candidates. All willing to tell you why their person is the saint and the other is the absolute worst thing to ever happen to our country in the history of countries. But, as anyone who’s been coming to the local forums on Thursdays knows, the Presidential campaign is not the only race attempting to set up this saint/sinner dichotomy between one side and the other. This is human nature, we like order, we like clarity, we like good and bad, right and wrong, one side or the other, we like clear cut choices. And here’s the thing, the American political system is not the first system to realize and exploit this flaw in our human nature. Exalting one side and demonizing the other is as old as time itself. Remember Adam and Eve in the garden. God called out Adam for eating the forbidden fruit, and Adam said, “the woman made me do it,” and Eve replied, “the serpent tricked me,” as each tried to raise up someone else as the villain instead of recognizing their own cooperation in a broken system. The fact that we have a political system that lifts up some and the expense of others isn’t a modern problem, dear people, it is a fact of our fallen humanity. It is a thing we are going to have to deal with until the coming of the Kingdom of God. We will be divided, as Jesus said in Luke chapter twelve, “father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law” until Christ comes again.
So, there’s the bad news. But, here’s the good news. Just because sin and division is a part of our human condition, does not mean that we have to sit back and let it be so. In fact, the readings on this All Saints day remind us that number one, we as the church have been given the promise that our God is always at work on the part of liberation and freedom for the oppressed and unifying of the divided, and number two, God has give us the tools to be God’s hands and feet and hearts and minds in this process of healing the world. We as followers of the resurrected and ascended Christ live in this beautiful already and not yet. Already Christ has come, already we know Christ to be in the midst of us, already we meet Christ in the world, and hear the promise of Christ’s unfolding work and repairing and redeeming us. And yet, because we also know that the Kingdom Christ is bringing has not yet fully come into completion, we get to also live in the hopeful not yet of the promise that there will be a time that is better than this one, and we get to be a part of bringing that time into fruition, a foretaste in this world of the unfolding feast to come. I don’t know about all of you, but in this fractured and frightening time, that promise that Christ is here, with us, that the Kingdom of God is both at hand and yet to be fulfilled, and I get to be a part of that fulfilling, that feels like pretty good news indeed. So, let’s take a look at our scripture readings for this morning, and see the proof in our history, that while division is a reality, so too is God’s providence.
So our Daniel reading this morning is admittedly weird, with its talk of four beasts emerging from the sea. We might, like Daniel, find our “spirits troubled” by what to do with this frightening imagery. The book of Daniel is what is known as apocalyptic literature, the same style of literature found in the book of Revelation. Apocalyptic literature uses images more vividly portray a situation. Dr. Fred Gaiser notes: “One could say, calmly and rationally, that the world is a bleak and dangerous place, or one could make the point more fully and dramatically through apocalyptic fantasy. The latter genre will more quickly trouble and terrify us (as they did for Daniel), which is the point.” The four beasts in Daniel are widely accepted to be the kingdoms of Babylon, Media, Persia, and Greece, which had dominated and subjugated Israel for five centuries by the time the book of Daniel was written. When Daniel’s audience heard of his dream, they didn’t need it explained to them; they knew what it felt to be terrorized by powerful beasts. So when the interpretation ended with the destruction of the beasts by “the holy ones of the Most High” that felt like hope to Daniel’s audience. What that said to them was yes, you have been terrorized by these four powerful empires, these four beasts, for centuries. But guess what, God’s got this. God is more powerful than the most powerful empire. And the day will come when those four beasts will be destroyed. You don’t have to be afraid; you can stand tall in the midst of all of your terror, because the almighty God is on your side. And the beasts of empire are no match to the glory of God.
We don’t live in the time of Daniel, and the beasts that threaten us are no longer the kingdoms of Babylon, Media, Persia, and Greece. But that doesn’t mean that we aren’t threatened by our own consuming “beasts.” And what the book of Daniel and stories like it remind us is that when our “spirits are troubled,” we, like Daniel, can hold fast to the promise that the Most High God is in control.
That’s good news number one. Yes, the world feels crazy and divided now, but the world’s felt crazy and divided before, and God has always led God’s people through, so there’s no reason to think that this time will be any different. We don’t have to live in fear, because we have a God who’s bigger than fear. So for good news number two, that we get to be a part of this healing of the world, we turn to Luke.
All Saints Sunday in the year we read Matthew and Luke both give us the beatitudes. In Matthew they are spoken in the passive voice and spiritualized, “blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who hunger for justice.” This distances them, allows us some breathing space. Luke does us no such favors. Jesus looked at his disciples and said, “Blessed are you who are poor... Blessed are you who are hungry… But woe to you who are rich.... Woe to you who are full.” These are concrete realities. For Luke the beatitudes are proof of God’s commitment to the poor. In the same way as the parable of the rich man and Lazarus or the wheat and the chaff, Luke’s beatitudes draw a line in the sand for what it means to be favored of God. Imagine the tension this must have created in the crowd listening to Jesus as he spoke, the puffed up pride of the poor, the hungry, the weeping and the persecuted, as they heard the promise of God’s favor for them, and the building anger in the rich, the full, the laughing, and those who others spoke well of, as Jesus knocked them down. How those in the first group must have preened, for the first time in their lives maybe, to be able to look down their noses as those who had so often been above them. But immediately, before the first group could get too built up, or the second group too filled with anger, Jesus knocked them both down by saying, “But I say to you, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you…If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your cloak.” How that must have stung! Jesus was not saying, poor, you now get to lord over the rich, and rich, prepare to be lorded over. Instead, both sides are called to serve the other, to care for the other, to love the other. How is this good news for the poor, you might ask, it seems like Jesus is opening the doors for the poor to get walked over as they have been before? There’s all kinds of really interesting historical reasoning for the subversive nature of what Jesus said here, how this turning of cheeks and giving of coats is really a subtle way of challenging the status quo in a powerful twist of creative non-violent protest. It’s great fodder for sermons, and next time the Beatitudes come around, I’ll probably preach on it. But it wasn’t what caught my attention this week. What caught my attention this week, on this All Saints Sunday, was how impossible it is to draw the rich/poor, hungry/full line at all. Because here’s the thing, like all of Jesus’ parables, the beatitudes seem to be setting up this dichotomy of good and bad, and like all of Jesus’ parables, if we read far enough into them, we find ourselves on both sides of the line. We are, this morning, a mixed group of incomes. Some of us make more, some of us less, so which side are we on? Are we blessed or in woe? I read an article in Living Lutheran this week about refugee camps in South Sudan, compared to the Sudanese, every one of us in this room, regardless of our economic situation, is unthinkably wealthy. I also saw a comparison of the salaries of the richest one percent of Americans, compared to them every one of us in this room is mired in poverty. Are you full now? Maybe, but eventually you will be hungry. Are you laughing? You can think of a time you’ve wept. Are you weeping? At some point you have laughed. Every single one of us is richer than someone and poorer than someone, hungrier than someone, fuller than someone, happier than someone, sadder than someone. We are both, all of us, all the time. The world of the parables forces us to think, so that we can enter the complexities of our own world and be changed, and change it. Jesus modeled for us how we read these parables in the real world when he stood up to the Pharisees, comforted the outsiders, cast out demons, and in the end, in the most powerful contradiction of weakness, turned over his own life in a demonstration of his power over death. We see in the actions of Jesus that the phrase “love your enemies” is not a request for us to be doormats of abuse. Love is both blessing and challenging, so that the lowly can be brought into the Kingdom of God and the high are not able to wander too far from it.
And we, the hearers of Jesus’ blessings and woes, those whom he has challenged to love and pray and bless, we are the ones whom Jesus has chosen to be a part of this great gathering. Because the truth of this election week is that as momentous as Tuesday may feel, there will be a Wednesday. On Wednesday someone will have won and someone will have lost. I know, the Bush/Gore election wasn’t decided for several months, but some races will be over, and anyway, you get the point. There will be a Wednesday, and a Thursday, and a Friday, and days onward from there. And on Wednesday is when the real work begins. Because on Wednesday, we who have been divided, have to find ways to come together again. And we in the church can be the leaders in that effort. Because we have a theology that tells us that just because one won and another lost, doesn’t mean that either was all perfect or all terrible. Regardless of the outcomes, a human was elected to every position. A human who will make good decisions and bad ones, and needs our support and prayers, but also our challenges and holding to accountability so that whoever was elected keeps the raising up of all in mind. And because we know, whoever was elected, that we did not elect a savior, because we already have one, we can reach out to those who think differently than us, who voted differently than us, learn from their differences, hear their concerns, and be about bringing peace and respect and justice.
No matter how out of control things feel, the God of Daniel is in control, dear people of God. And that same God challenges us to look honestly at ourselves and others, our faults and our strengths, with love, so that we can be a part in the great unveiling of the Kingdom of God. On Tuesday and on Wednesday, and on every day to come. Because God possesses the kingdom forever—forever and ever. Amen.
So, there’s the bad news. But, here’s the good news. Just because sin and division is a part of our human condition, does not mean that we have to sit back and let it be so. In fact, the readings on this All Saints day remind us that number one, we as the church have been given the promise that our God is always at work on the part of liberation and freedom for the oppressed and unifying of the divided, and number two, God has give us the tools to be God’s hands and feet and hearts and minds in this process of healing the world. We as followers of the resurrected and ascended Christ live in this beautiful already and not yet. Already Christ has come, already we know Christ to be in the midst of us, already we meet Christ in the world, and hear the promise of Christ’s unfolding work and repairing and redeeming us. And yet, because we also know that the Kingdom Christ is bringing has not yet fully come into completion, we get to also live in the hopeful not yet of the promise that there will be a time that is better than this one, and we get to be a part of bringing that time into fruition, a foretaste in this world of the unfolding feast to come. I don’t know about all of you, but in this fractured and frightening time, that promise that Christ is here, with us, that the Kingdom of God is both at hand and yet to be fulfilled, and I get to be a part of that fulfilling, that feels like pretty good news indeed. So, let’s take a look at our scripture readings for this morning, and see the proof in our history, that while division is a reality, so too is God’s providence.
So our Daniel reading this morning is admittedly weird, with its talk of four beasts emerging from the sea. We might, like Daniel, find our “spirits troubled” by what to do with this frightening imagery. The book of Daniel is what is known as apocalyptic literature, the same style of literature found in the book of Revelation. Apocalyptic literature uses images more vividly portray a situation. Dr. Fred Gaiser notes: “One could say, calmly and rationally, that the world is a bleak and dangerous place, or one could make the point more fully and dramatically through apocalyptic fantasy. The latter genre will more quickly trouble and terrify us (as they did for Daniel), which is the point.” The four beasts in Daniel are widely accepted to be the kingdoms of Babylon, Media, Persia, and Greece, which had dominated and subjugated Israel for five centuries by the time the book of Daniel was written. When Daniel’s audience heard of his dream, they didn’t need it explained to them; they knew what it felt to be terrorized by powerful beasts. So when the interpretation ended with the destruction of the beasts by “the holy ones of the Most High” that felt like hope to Daniel’s audience. What that said to them was yes, you have been terrorized by these four powerful empires, these four beasts, for centuries. But guess what, God’s got this. God is more powerful than the most powerful empire. And the day will come when those four beasts will be destroyed. You don’t have to be afraid; you can stand tall in the midst of all of your terror, because the almighty God is on your side. And the beasts of empire are no match to the glory of God.
We don’t live in the time of Daniel, and the beasts that threaten us are no longer the kingdoms of Babylon, Media, Persia, and Greece. But that doesn’t mean that we aren’t threatened by our own consuming “beasts.” And what the book of Daniel and stories like it remind us is that when our “spirits are troubled,” we, like Daniel, can hold fast to the promise that the Most High God is in control.
That’s good news number one. Yes, the world feels crazy and divided now, but the world’s felt crazy and divided before, and God has always led God’s people through, so there’s no reason to think that this time will be any different. We don’t have to live in fear, because we have a God who’s bigger than fear. So for good news number two, that we get to be a part of this healing of the world, we turn to Luke.
All Saints Sunday in the year we read Matthew and Luke both give us the beatitudes. In Matthew they are spoken in the passive voice and spiritualized, “blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who hunger for justice.” This distances them, allows us some breathing space. Luke does us no such favors. Jesus looked at his disciples and said, “Blessed are you who are poor... Blessed are you who are hungry… But woe to you who are rich.... Woe to you who are full.” These are concrete realities. For Luke the beatitudes are proof of God’s commitment to the poor. In the same way as the parable of the rich man and Lazarus or the wheat and the chaff, Luke’s beatitudes draw a line in the sand for what it means to be favored of God. Imagine the tension this must have created in the crowd listening to Jesus as he spoke, the puffed up pride of the poor, the hungry, the weeping and the persecuted, as they heard the promise of God’s favor for them, and the building anger in the rich, the full, the laughing, and those who others spoke well of, as Jesus knocked them down. How those in the first group must have preened, for the first time in their lives maybe, to be able to look down their noses as those who had so often been above them. But immediately, before the first group could get too built up, or the second group too filled with anger, Jesus knocked them both down by saying, “But I say to you, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you…If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your cloak.” How that must have stung! Jesus was not saying, poor, you now get to lord over the rich, and rich, prepare to be lorded over. Instead, both sides are called to serve the other, to care for the other, to love the other. How is this good news for the poor, you might ask, it seems like Jesus is opening the doors for the poor to get walked over as they have been before? There’s all kinds of really interesting historical reasoning for the subversive nature of what Jesus said here, how this turning of cheeks and giving of coats is really a subtle way of challenging the status quo in a powerful twist of creative non-violent protest. It’s great fodder for sermons, and next time the Beatitudes come around, I’ll probably preach on it. But it wasn’t what caught my attention this week. What caught my attention this week, on this All Saints Sunday, was how impossible it is to draw the rich/poor, hungry/full line at all. Because here’s the thing, like all of Jesus’ parables, the beatitudes seem to be setting up this dichotomy of good and bad, and like all of Jesus’ parables, if we read far enough into them, we find ourselves on both sides of the line. We are, this morning, a mixed group of incomes. Some of us make more, some of us less, so which side are we on? Are we blessed or in woe? I read an article in Living Lutheran this week about refugee camps in South Sudan, compared to the Sudanese, every one of us in this room, regardless of our economic situation, is unthinkably wealthy. I also saw a comparison of the salaries of the richest one percent of Americans, compared to them every one of us in this room is mired in poverty. Are you full now? Maybe, but eventually you will be hungry. Are you laughing? You can think of a time you’ve wept. Are you weeping? At some point you have laughed. Every single one of us is richer than someone and poorer than someone, hungrier than someone, fuller than someone, happier than someone, sadder than someone. We are both, all of us, all the time. The world of the parables forces us to think, so that we can enter the complexities of our own world and be changed, and change it. Jesus modeled for us how we read these parables in the real world when he stood up to the Pharisees, comforted the outsiders, cast out demons, and in the end, in the most powerful contradiction of weakness, turned over his own life in a demonstration of his power over death. We see in the actions of Jesus that the phrase “love your enemies” is not a request for us to be doormats of abuse. Love is both blessing and challenging, so that the lowly can be brought into the Kingdom of God and the high are not able to wander too far from it.
And we, the hearers of Jesus’ blessings and woes, those whom he has challenged to love and pray and bless, we are the ones whom Jesus has chosen to be a part of this great gathering. Because the truth of this election week is that as momentous as Tuesday may feel, there will be a Wednesday. On Wednesday someone will have won and someone will have lost. I know, the Bush/Gore election wasn’t decided for several months, but some races will be over, and anyway, you get the point. There will be a Wednesday, and a Thursday, and a Friday, and days onward from there. And on Wednesday is when the real work begins. Because on Wednesday, we who have been divided, have to find ways to come together again. And we in the church can be the leaders in that effort. Because we have a theology that tells us that just because one won and another lost, doesn’t mean that either was all perfect or all terrible. Regardless of the outcomes, a human was elected to every position. A human who will make good decisions and bad ones, and needs our support and prayers, but also our challenges and holding to accountability so that whoever was elected keeps the raising up of all in mind. And because we know, whoever was elected, that we did not elect a savior, because we already have one, we can reach out to those who think differently than us, who voted differently than us, learn from their differences, hear their concerns, and be about bringing peace and respect and justice.
No matter how out of control things feel, the God of Daniel is in control, dear people of God. And that same God challenges us to look honestly at ourselves and others, our faults and our strengths, with love, so that we can be a part in the great unveiling of the Kingdom of God. On Tuesday and on Wednesday, and on every day to come. Because God possesses the kingdom forever—forever and ever. Amen.
Thursday, November 3, 2016
Conversation Points for Luke 6:20-31
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:
• We’ve jumped back to the beginning of Luke’s Gospel, though with the advantage of having already read through it. This is one of Jesus’ initial teachings to his disciples. How have we seen these beatitudes played out in his ministry?
• Unlike the beatitudes in Matthew, which speak of spiritual conditions or attitudes, the beatitudes in Luke speak of real socioeconomic conditions; they declare God’s commitment to the poor and oppressed, a theme in Luke’s Gospel.
• The first beatitude, “Blessed are the poor…” is the second reference of 32 to “the kingdom of God” in Luke. The reference to the poor is an echo of Jesus’ declaration in his hometown synagogue (4:18) that he is the fulfillment of Isaiah 61, the one who has come to bring good news to the poor. These are neither idealizations or glorifications of poverty. Rather, a theme of Luke’s Gospel is the radical reversal of fortunes (ex. Lazarus in 16:19-31).
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:
• We’ve jumped back to the beginning of Luke’s Gospel, though with the advantage of having already read through it. This is one of Jesus’ initial teachings to his disciples. How have we seen these beatitudes played out in his ministry?
• Unlike the beatitudes in Matthew, which speak of spiritual conditions or attitudes, the beatitudes in Luke speak of real socioeconomic conditions; they declare God’s commitment to the poor and oppressed, a theme in Luke’s Gospel.
• The first beatitude, “Blessed are the poor…” is the second reference of 32 to “the kingdom of God” in Luke. The reference to the poor is an echo of Jesus’ declaration in his hometown synagogue (4:18) that he is the fulfillment of Isaiah 61, the one who has come to bring good news to the poor. These are neither idealizations or glorifications of poverty. Rather, a theme of Luke’s Gospel is the radical reversal of fortunes (ex. Lazarus in 16:19-31).
Works Sourced:
Culpepper, R. Alan. “The Gospel of Luke.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
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