Throughout the Advent season, we have been reflecting on the stories of the women who showed up in the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel. These ancestresses of Jesus affected his life and his character in important and profound ways. We reflected on the faith of Tamar, the hope of Rahab, the love of Ruth, and the peace of Bathsheba. And so, on this day when we celebrate the birth of Jesus, I want to continue in the theme and look at the final woman mentioned in Matthew’s genealogy, Mary, whose husband was Joseph, through whose lineage Jesus is connected to David and Abraham. Now, you may think this a bit of an unorthodox choice to not focus on Jesus on Christmas Eve. But if you think about it, the guy gets to be the focus of pretty much every other sermon throughout the whole rest of the year, so on this day of his birth, who better to talk about than the woman who birthed him.
The theme word for today is “joy,” which at first seems like low-hanging fruit after some of the theological gymnastics we’ve had to go through to make some of the previous words fit. Remember the faith of Tamar or the peace of Bathsheba, those weren’t the easiest. But today, on Christmas Eve, on the eve of the birth of Jesus the newborn king, we have joy. What could be more fitting than that?
Except, remember this evening we’re focusing not on Jesus but on Mary. And, don’t get me wrong, I love babies as much as the next person, especially if those babies go home and wake up somebody else, but there are a lot of reasons why the pronouncement of the arrival of a baby did not immediately fill Mary with a sense of joy. Mary is barely more than a baby herself. People married early in those days, she is possibly as young as fourteen. Her engagement to Joseph was probably arranged by her father, as was the custom at that time. Following the announcement of an engagement, the bride-to-be would remain with her parents for up to a year until the groom would come for the marriage celebration. That period of engagement was as legally binding as a wedding, but because they were not yet married, there would have been no question from the community that the child Mary carried was not the child of Joseph.
So when the angel showed up and told Mary, hey, guess what, you’re going to have a baby, her initial response would probably not have been, “oh yay, a baby!” It would have more likely been worry, fear, even shame. Having a child out of wedlock can cause raised eyebrows even today, imagine the judgment this pregnancy would have inflicted on Mary. The Law of Moses is very clear about its stance on adultery. While first century rabbis had begun to back off on the punishment of stoning unwed mothers, society’s ability to throw verbal stones was still in full effect. The looks, the shrugs, the turned away glances and whispers under breath, all this and more, Mary heard foretold in the angel’s words. This unasked for, unanticipated, infant may someday shake the very foundations of the earth, but first it was going to turn Mary’s life upside down.
And fear was Mary’s first response. The translation of verse twenty-nine tames it, calling her response “perplexed,” but the Greek is not so gentle. There is a Hebrew folk tale about a jealous angel who sabotaged a woman’s wedding by killing her bridegroom again and again, what ill will did this unanticipated visitor mean for Mary?
The angel was quick to assuage her fears, “Greetings favored one! The Lord is with you.” And here is the real miracle of this story, maybe more miraculous than the birth itself. Mary believed the angel’s judgment of her. When the angel called Mary the favored one of God, Mary clung to that word, and not the words of all those competing voices, who would cast judgment and hatred and shame. Mary believed the pronouncement of the angel, and responded to him, “Let it be with me according to your word.”
This single-minded ability to drown out all of the competing voices of a judgmental world and focus only on the voice of God is a characteristic that Jesus also had, and that I think he inherited from his mother. Jesus certainly heard judgmental voices throughout his ministry. Voices of religious leaders accosting him for healing on the Sabbath, for eating with the “wrong” sorts of people, for not conforming to their expectation for how a Messiah should act. Voices of Roman authorities, mocking this upstart Galilean who thought he could take on the power of the One Roman Empire. Voices of thieves and soldiers mocking, “he saved others, let him save himself.” Voices of his own followers, questioning his teachings on the purpose of his mission. All these competing voices, yet the only one that seemed to shaped Jesus was the words uttered at his baptism, “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.”
I think part of the reason Jesus was so easily able to shake off the competing judgments and focus only on the judgment of God, was because he was raised by a woman who knew from her own experience that only the voice of God mattered, and who raised her son to know who he was, and whose he was. And that quiet assurance brings joy, not fleeting happiness, but the deep-seated confident joy that who you are is exactly who God wants you to be, that you are God’s beloved, God’s favored, and you, as you are, is enough for God. This is a stabilizing promise that holds fast through terror and happiness, through fear and amazement. The same assurance that got Mary through nine months of judgment and mumbling, was the assurance that when the shepherds burst in shouting of the amazing words of the heavenly host, and all around were amazed, led Mary not to be swept up in the hubbub, but to treasure their words and ponder them in her heart, to hold onto this promise for the days she would really need them, the days when the judgments of the world where not so warm and fuzzy.
May this be the joy that fills you this Christmas season. Joy in the promise that you are the favored one of God, and that to you has been born, this day, in the city of David, a savior who is the Messiah, the Lord. May every other competing voice, every voice of judgment or condemnation, every voice of question or doubt or fear, every voice that says you are not enough, that this is not for you, may all those voices fall silent in the promise made this night. Because the joy of Mary is the promise of this pronouncement, “Greetings, favored one. The Lord is with you.” May you internalize this promise, and may your heart respond in kind, “Let it be with me according to your word.” Amen.
The extraordinary can look so ordinary
Tuesday, December 27, 2016
Thursday, December 22, 2016
Conversation Points for Mary: Luke 1:26-38; 2:1-20
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:
Luke 1:26-38
• The announcement of the birth of Jesus matches the announcement of the birth of John in many ways, so much so that the audience is drawn to notice the differences. For example, John’s birth announcement was an answer to prayer, while Jesus’ was unexpected; John was born to parents past the age of child-bearing, while Jesus was born to a virgin. In each case, the miracle of Jesus’ birth was great, underscoring how Jesus’ role would be greater.
• V. 26 sets the temporal location and provides credibility by linking the story to the story before it. This announcement took place in the sixth month of the pregnancy already announced by Gabriel.
• The angel’s greeting to Mary, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you,” is an echo of the words of Hannah, the mother of Samuel (1 Sam 1:18, “Let your servant find favor in your sight”). It also parallels the promise of power given to the judges of Israel (Judg 6:12, “The Lord is with you”). The writer of Matthew’s Gospel makes a similar point by using the name Emmanuel, “God is with us” (Matt 1:23).
• Though Mary was not yet married, according to ancient customs, an engagement was just as legally binding as a marriage. Marriage was arranged by the bride’s father. The bride would then live at home for a year, before the groom would come to take her to his house.
• Like the announcement of John as the one who would prepare the people (Lk 1:16-17), Jesus’ role is announced, but he is “the Son of the Most High” (v. 32). Jesus, therefore, will be superior to John, even though he comes after John. The prediction also gives weight to the earlier report that Joseph was a descendant of David. There are also echoes of OT promises. 2 Sam 7:9, “I will make for you a great name,” Luke 1:32, “He will be great.” 2 Sam 7:13, through David’s sons, God would “establish the throne of his kingdom forever,” Luke 1:33, Mary’s child would “reign over the house of Jacob forever.” Also in 2 Sam 7:14, “I (God) will be his (David’s) father, and he will be my son.” The promise made to David is now fulfilled in Jesus.
• The Bible doesn’t give a date for the birth of Jesus, so why does the church celebrate it on December 25? Culpepper gives a couple reasons. 1) (the one Pastor Kjersten had heard of) December 25 is a few days after the winter solstice, as the days start growing longer, reminding Christians that Jesus is the true light that came to enlighten the world. 2) Apparently March 25 was traditionally regarded as the first day of creation (Pastor Kjersten did not know this, and does not know why March 25 was regarded as this). Jesus’ conception at the birth of creation highlights Jesus as the beginning of the new creation.
Luke 2:1-20
• Verses 1-5 set the birth narrative in historical context. While it is impossible to link the description to an exact historical time, the theological point is made; this was a real event that took place among real circumstances. Just one baby born in the midst of the counting of many in a census.
• Verses 6-7 tell of the actual birth narrative, in very bare bones terms. Again, the emphasis is on what isn’t said, this is a simple story, one that could be overlooked, except, of course, it is not.
• The word “fear” can also be translated as “respect” or “awe.” So “do not be afraid,” could also be “stop reverencing me, and pay attention to my message about the one you should reverence.”
Works Sourced:
Barfield, Ginger. “Commentary on Luke 2:1-14 [15-20].” Working Preacher.. Accessed: 19 December 2016.
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:
Luke 1:26-38
• The announcement of the birth of Jesus matches the announcement of the birth of John in many ways, so much so that the audience is drawn to notice the differences. For example, John’s birth announcement was an answer to prayer, while Jesus’ was unexpected; John was born to parents past the age of child-bearing, while Jesus was born to a virgin. In each case, the miracle of Jesus’ birth was great, underscoring how Jesus’ role would be greater.
• V. 26 sets the temporal location and provides credibility by linking the story to the story before it. This announcement took place in the sixth month of the pregnancy already announced by Gabriel.
• The angel’s greeting to Mary, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you,” is an echo of the words of Hannah, the mother of Samuel (1 Sam 1:18, “Let your servant find favor in your sight”). It also parallels the promise of power given to the judges of Israel (Judg 6:12, “The Lord is with you”). The writer of Matthew’s Gospel makes a similar point by using the name Emmanuel, “God is with us” (Matt 1:23).
• Though Mary was not yet married, according to ancient customs, an engagement was just as legally binding as a marriage. Marriage was arranged by the bride’s father. The bride would then live at home for a year, before the groom would come to take her to his house.
• Like the announcement of John as the one who would prepare the people (Lk 1:16-17), Jesus’ role is announced, but he is “the Son of the Most High” (v. 32). Jesus, therefore, will be superior to John, even though he comes after John. The prediction also gives weight to the earlier report that Joseph was a descendant of David. There are also echoes of OT promises. 2 Sam 7:9, “I will make for you a great name,” Luke 1:32, “He will be great.” 2 Sam 7:13, through David’s sons, God would “establish the throne of his kingdom forever,” Luke 1:33, Mary’s child would “reign over the house of Jacob forever.” Also in 2 Sam 7:14, “I (God) will be his (David’s) father, and he will be my son.” The promise made to David is now fulfilled in Jesus.
• The Bible doesn’t give a date for the birth of Jesus, so why does the church celebrate it on December 25? Culpepper gives a couple reasons. 1) (the one Pastor Kjersten had heard of) December 25 is a few days after the winter solstice, as the days start growing longer, reminding Christians that Jesus is the true light that came to enlighten the world. 2) Apparently March 25 was traditionally regarded as the first day of creation (Pastor Kjersten did not know this, and does not know why March 25 was regarded as this). Jesus’ conception at the birth of creation highlights Jesus as the beginning of the new creation.
Luke 2:1-20
• Verses 1-5 set the birth narrative in historical context. While it is impossible to link the description to an exact historical time, the theological point is made; this was a real event that took place among real circumstances. Just one baby born in the midst of the counting of many in a census.
• Verses 6-7 tell of the actual birth narrative, in very bare bones terms. Again, the emphasis is on what isn’t said, this is a simple story, one that could be overlooked, except, of course, it is not.
• The word “fear” can also be translated as “respect” or “awe.” So “do not be afraid,” could also be “stop reverencing me, and pay attention to my message about the one you should reverence.”
Works Sourced:
Barfield, Ginger. “Commentary on Luke 2:1-14 [15-20].” Working Preacher.
Culpepper, R. Alan. “The Gospel of Luke.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IX. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
Monday, December 19, 2016
The Peace of Bathsheba: A Sermon on parts of 2 Samuel 11 and 1 Kings 1 and Matthew 1:18-25
The selections of the story of Bathsheba read in worship were 2 Samuel 11:1-5, 14-27 and 1 Kings 1:11-18, 29-31.
So our theme word for this morning is peace. And I have to confess, that when I realized the way this was working out, and that this order meant “peace” would be our word for the day, I thought, well, here is where my brilliant Advent theme breaks down. Up to this point, the words lined up really well with the stories, faith of Tamar, hope of Rahab, love of Ruth, they all sort of fit. But I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to make sense of the peace of Bathsheba. This didn’t seem like all that peaceful of a story, it seemed more like an episode of Game of Thrones. But as I was pondering what to do with this text, I was reading a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer that I have taped up on the frame of my computer screen. Bonhoeffer, if you remember, was a German Lutheran pastor who was killed by the Nazis for participating in a plot to assassinate Adolph Hitler. Here is what Bonhoeffer had to say on the subject of peace. He wrote: “There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared, it is itself the great venture and can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to want to protect oneself. Peace means giving oneself completely to God’s commandment, wanting no security, but in faith and obedience laying the destiny of the nations in the hand of the Almighty god, not trying to direct it for selfish purposes.” And that got me thinking about the line from the prophet Jeremiah, about God’s anger against those “saying, “Peace, peace, when there is no peace.” And those two thoughts, Bonhoeffer’s distinction between peace and security, and Jeremiah’s judgment against those who claim false peace, started me wondering about what is meant by the word peace. Because peace, really like all the words we’ve talked about this advent, sometimes get co-opted to mean less than they are. The most classic example of this actually comes from the time of Jesus. During the first century, Rome brought what they called the “Pax Romana,” the Peace of Rome, to their conquered nations. And while under the Pax Romana, there weren’t violent uprisings, it wasn’t because everyone was getting along, puppies and rainbows. The Pax Romana was peace through force; it was the violent squelching of any opposition. If you were on the right side of that force, then you may have experienced a modicum of calm, but the tension and fear certainly would not have felt peaceful. I supposed one could make the same argument that the beginning of Hitler’s rule of Germany was fairly peaceful, if you were not Jewish or gay or a gypsy or disabled, or any of the other reasons one might have to be judged a threat to the status quo. Allowing such atrocities to go on, resting in the false calm, is crying peace, peace, when, like the prophet Jeremiah announced, there is no peace.
So then I thought about Bathsheba. 2 Samuel 11 marks a turning point in the story of King David. Up to here, David was really the golden boy of the Old Testament. Everything he did was wonderful. Any battle he fought, he won, any challenge he faced, he conquered, he was faithful, obedient to God’s word, a gracious and merciful leader and ruler. But, in chapter eleven, the story shifted as the power seemed to go to David’s head. The problem is noticeable right off the bat. “In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab with his officers and all Israel with him… But David remained at Jerusalem.” The role of a king was to lead the troops into battle. David especially had risen to power by being a great leader of troops. But here it was, the time for going out, and David sent someone else to risk danger in his place. This was peace for David, but certainly not peace for the men he sent.
And this peace that was not peace made David restless. And a restless king with too much power and not enough control is a dangerous combination. When you’re used to having whatever you want, and you have nothing to occupy your time, you run the risk of thinking you deserve whatever you want. Even if the thing you want is in fact another human being. David saw something he wanted, the wife of one of his soldiers, and he took it. What I find interesting, and really a better word is disturbing, about this passage, is that Bathsheba is less of a character than she is a piece of scenery. David saw her, summoned her, sent her back, all without her so much as saying a word. We wouldn’t even know her name, were it not used as a point of identification in verse three. Bathsheba had no part in her own story. This makes Bathsheba a really relatable character, because sometimes things just happen. Sometimes we find ourselves feeling like set pieces in a story happening around us. When tragedy strikes or forces outside our control cause us harm, we might feel like Bathsheba, ordered around by a powerful figure, who crumbled her life for his own pleasure. Peace, peace, some might be tempted to say to her. What did you do lead the David on, to bring this on yourself? Or, look on the bright side; at least you’re now married to the most powerful man in the world. Those questions are silence, they are status quo, but they are not peace. Peace, for Bathsheba, does not come for many years. But it did come. Our reading flashed us forward about forty years, to the time when David was old and ill. A little bit of background. Remember what I said about how David’s life really started to slide with the incident with Bathsheba? As is so often the case with these things, David’s actions didn’t just affect him, they spread to his family. This culture he created about taking what he wanted, regardless of who it hurt, shaped how his children interacted with each other. By this time, David’s oldest sons had already destroyed each other in their quest for power, and Adonijah, the fourth son, was trying to usurp power from his father by simply assuming the role of king while David was still alive.
Enter Bathsheba. No longer content to be a character as life happened around her, Bathsheba took the situation into her own hands and worked the system so David would name her son as his heir. Now, is this some questionable backrooms dealing, pulling the wool over the old king’s eyes when he was too infirm to defend himself, absolutely. I’m certainly not justifying tricking people and seizing power whenever possible. But what Bathsheba does here that I think is important to realize, is Bathsheba reclaimed her own peace. No longer would she allow others to value their peace over her. No, Bathsheba, who had once taken the safe role of doing whatever the king commanded, now threw safety and security to the wind and took the bold risk of shifting the situation to her favor. Sometimes doing what is right does not mean doing what is easy.
This morning we also heard Matthew’s version of the birth of Jesus. It’s a bit different from the one we’ll hear on Christmas Eve, from Luke’s Gospel. For Matthew, it is important to locate Jesus in the lineage of David, and Matthew does that by highlighting the position of Joseph.
The story starts out by giving some background. Mary and Joseph were engaged, which in the first century was as good as being married from a legal standpoint, when it turned out that Mary was pregnant. And “Joseph, being a righteous man…planned to dismiss her quietly.” Seems logical enough, until you really think about the word “righteous.” See righteous means one who lives by the law. And the Law of Moses is pretty clear about what should happen to someone who commits adultery, and let me give you a hint, it is not “dismiss her quietly.” So, Joseph’s decision to dismiss Mary quietly was not actually righteous by the strictest definition of the word. But it was righteous in the sense that it was the right thing to do. Even before Joseph knew the full story of Mary’s miraculous pregnancy, felt in his bones that subjecting her to the judgment of others was not the right thing to do. Like his ancestor Bathsheba, Joseph refused to follow the whim of cultural expectation and be a set piece in his own story. Instead, he sacrificed his own peace by this decision, but in taking this step, he brought about true peace, and peace that would become the Prince of Peace.
These stories, Bathsheba getting Solomon to the throne, and Joseph standing by Mary, are both stories that happened before Jesus was born. But like David’s mistakes affected his children, so I think did these stories of bravery shape Jesus. Because Jesus is the Prince of Peace, the one who comes to judge the world in righteousness. And neither of those roles is easy. It would have been easy for Jesus to go along with the way the Law was being interpreted, giving power to some at the expense of others. He would have made a lot fewer enemies, ruffled a lot fewer feathers, and probably would not have ended up on a cross. But instead Jesus, like his adopted father Joseph had done in claiming Jesus as his own, redeemed the law, bringing it back to the purpose God had intended for it, to bring justice and light and life to the world, rather than hold the world in the false peace of status quo. This is the peace who’s birth we celebrate at Christmas. The birth of the one who refused to be a character in other people’s stories, a pet Messiah who would follow the role assigned to him. Jesus loved the world too much to settle for peace that was not peace. And so Jesus threw safety to the wind, and in doing so brought about true redeeming, life-giving peace. May the power and righteousness and peace of Jesus fill you this season. And may you find the courage to seek true peace, for the God of Peace is seeking you. Amen.
So our theme word for this morning is peace. And I have to confess, that when I realized the way this was working out, and that this order meant “peace” would be our word for the day, I thought, well, here is where my brilliant Advent theme breaks down. Up to this point, the words lined up really well with the stories, faith of Tamar, hope of Rahab, love of Ruth, they all sort of fit. But I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to make sense of the peace of Bathsheba. This didn’t seem like all that peaceful of a story, it seemed more like an episode of Game of Thrones. But as I was pondering what to do with this text, I was reading a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer that I have taped up on the frame of my computer screen. Bonhoeffer, if you remember, was a German Lutheran pastor who was killed by the Nazis for participating in a plot to assassinate Adolph Hitler. Here is what Bonhoeffer had to say on the subject of peace. He wrote: “There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared, it is itself the great venture and can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to want to protect oneself. Peace means giving oneself completely to God’s commandment, wanting no security, but in faith and obedience laying the destiny of the nations in the hand of the Almighty god, not trying to direct it for selfish purposes.” And that got me thinking about the line from the prophet Jeremiah, about God’s anger against those “saying, “Peace, peace, when there is no peace.” And those two thoughts, Bonhoeffer’s distinction between peace and security, and Jeremiah’s judgment against those who claim false peace, started me wondering about what is meant by the word peace. Because peace, really like all the words we’ve talked about this advent, sometimes get co-opted to mean less than they are. The most classic example of this actually comes from the time of Jesus. During the first century, Rome brought what they called the “Pax Romana,” the Peace of Rome, to their conquered nations. And while under the Pax Romana, there weren’t violent uprisings, it wasn’t because everyone was getting along, puppies and rainbows. The Pax Romana was peace through force; it was the violent squelching of any opposition. If you were on the right side of that force, then you may have experienced a modicum of calm, but the tension and fear certainly would not have felt peaceful. I supposed one could make the same argument that the beginning of Hitler’s rule of Germany was fairly peaceful, if you were not Jewish or gay or a gypsy or disabled, or any of the other reasons one might have to be judged a threat to the status quo. Allowing such atrocities to go on, resting in the false calm, is crying peace, peace, when, like the prophet Jeremiah announced, there is no peace.
So then I thought about Bathsheba. 2 Samuel 11 marks a turning point in the story of King David. Up to here, David was really the golden boy of the Old Testament. Everything he did was wonderful. Any battle he fought, he won, any challenge he faced, he conquered, he was faithful, obedient to God’s word, a gracious and merciful leader and ruler. But, in chapter eleven, the story shifted as the power seemed to go to David’s head. The problem is noticeable right off the bat. “In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab with his officers and all Israel with him… But David remained at Jerusalem.” The role of a king was to lead the troops into battle. David especially had risen to power by being a great leader of troops. But here it was, the time for going out, and David sent someone else to risk danger in his place. This was peace for David, but certainly not peace for the men he sent.
And this peace that was not peace made David restless. And a restless king with too much power and not enough control is a dangerous combination. When you’re used to having whatever you want, and you have nothing to occupy your time, you run the risk of thinking you deserve whatever you want. Even if the thing you want is in fact another human being. David saw something he wanted, the wife of one of his soldiers, and he took it. What I find interesting, and really a better word is disturbing, about this passage, is that Bathsheba is less of a character than she is a piece of scenery. David saw her, summoned her, sent her back, all without her so much as saying a word. We wouldn’t even know her name, were it not used as a point of identification in verse three. Bathsheba had no part in her own story. This makes Bathsheba a really relatable character, because sometimes things just happen. Sometimes we find ourselves feeling like set pieces in a story happening around us. When tragedy strikes or forces outside our control cause us harm, we might feel like Bathsheba, ordered around by a powerful figure, who crumbled her life for his own pleasure. Peace, peace, some might be tempted to say to her. What did you do lead the David on, to bring this on yourself? Or, look on the bright side; at least you’re now married to the most powerful man in the world. Those questions are silence, they are status quo, but they are not peace. Peace, for Bathsheba, does not come for many years. But it did come. Our reading flashed us forward about forty years, to the time when David was old and ill. A little bit of background. Remember what I said about how David’s life really started to slide with the incident with Bathsheba? As is so often the case with these things, David’s actions didn’t just affect him, they spread to his family. This culture he created about taking what he wanted, regardless of who it hurt, shaped how his children interacted with each other. By this time, David’s oldest sons had already destroyed each other in their quest for power, and Adonijah, the fourth son, was trying to usurp power from his father by simply assuming the role of king while David was still alive.
Enter Bathsheba. No longer content to be a character as life happened around her, Bathsheba took the situation into her own hands and worked the system so David would name her son as his heir. Now, is this some questionable backrooms dealing, pulling the wool over the old king’s eyes when he was too infirm to defend himself, absolutely. I’m certainly not justifying tricking people and seizing power whenever possible. But what Bathsheba does here that I think is important to realize, is Bathsheba reclaimed her own peace. No longer would she allow others to value their peace over her. No, Bathsheba, who had once taken the safe role of doing whatever the king commanded, now threw safety and security to the wind and took the bold risk of shifting the situation to her favor. Sometimes doing what is right does not mean doing what is easy.
This morning we also heard Matthew’s version of the birth of Jesus. It’s a bit different from the one we’ll hear on Christmas Eve, from Luke’s Gospel. For Matthew, it is important to locate Jesus in the lineage of David, and Matthew does that by highlighting the position of Joseph.
The story starts out by giving some background. Mary and Joseph were engaged, which in the first century was as good as being married from a legal standpoint, when it turned out that Mary was pregnant. And “Joseph, being a righteous man…planned to dismiss her quietly.” Seems logical enough, until you really think about the word “righteous.” See righteous means one who lives by the law. And the Law of Moses is pretty clear about what should happen to someone who commits adultery, and let me give you a hint, it is not “dismiss her quietly.” So, Joseph’s decision to dismiss Mary quietly was not actually righteous by the strictest definition of the word. But it was righteous in the sense that it was the right thing to do. Even before Joseph knew the full story of Mary’s miraculous pregnancy, felt in his bones that subjecting her to the judgment of others was not the right thing to do. Like his ancestor Bathsheba, Joseph refused to follow the whim of cultural expectation and be a set piece in his own story. Instead, he sacrificed his own peace by this decision, but in taking this step, he brought about true peace, and peace that would become the Prince of Peace.
These stories, Bathsheba getting Solomon to the throne, and Joseph standing by Mary, are both stories that happened before Jesus was born. But like David’s mistakes affected his children, so I think did these stories of bravery shape Jesus. Because Jesus is the Prince of Peace, the one who comes to judge the world in righteousness. And neither of those roles is easy. It would have been easy for Jesus to go along with the way the Law was being interpreted, giving power to some at the expense of others. He would have made a lot fewer enemies, ruffled a lot fewer feathers, and probably would not have ended up on a cross. But instead Jesus, like his adopted father Joseph had done in claiming Jesus as his own, redeemed the law, bringing it back to the purpose God had intended for it, to bring justice and light and life to the world, rather than hold the world in the false peace of status quo. This is the peace who’s birth we celebrate at Christmas. The birth of the one who refused to be a character in other people’s stories, a pet Messiah who would follow the role assigned to him. Jesus loved the world too much to settle for peace that was not peace. And so Jesus threw safety to the wind, and in doing so brought about true redeeming, life-giving peace. May the power and righteousness and peace of Jesus fill you this season. And may you find the courage to seek true peace, for the God of Peace is seeking you. Amen.
Tuesday, December 13, 2016
Conversation Points for the story of Bathsheba and Matthew 1:18-25
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:
2 Samuel 11:1-5, 14-27
• 2 Samuel 11 marks a dramatic shift in the story of David. Up to this point, David was portrayed as just, righteous, and in favor with God. Here, due to David’s own actions, the story starts to shift, and the fall of David begins. When David uses royal power to get what he wants (Bathsheba), his life and reign spiral out of control and Israel never again will reach the heights it was under David’s rule.
• The first sign of this downfall is that David did not go with his troops into battle, but remained behind in Jerusalem. When the people had begged for a king to “go out before us and fight our battles” (1 Sam 8:20), the prophet Samuel had warned them of the dangers of kings, who “take” from their people for their own interested (1 Sam 8:11-18), now David, instead of leading troops, is “taking” what he sees and desires (2 Samuel 11:4).
• Was Bathsheba guilty for being seen by the king? Some commentators have argued she was, bathing in a place that was so visible from the king’s palace. Others say she was simply a victim; she was, after all, bathing on a roof out of sight. The narrator himself lays the moral responsibility entirely on David, leaving the issue of Bathsheba’s complicity unaddressed.
• Outside of the introduction in v. 3, Bathsheba is never addressed by name, called only “the wife of Uriah” or “the woman.” Even in Matthew’s Gospel, she is addressed as “the wife of Uriah.” The purpose was to place the emphasis of the story on David’s act of adultery, but the effect is to render Bathsheba as essentially a non-person, no more than a part of the plot. She is not mentioned by name again until 2 Samuel 12:24.
• The affair itself is told very abruptly. David “sent,” “took,” and “lay,” Bathsheba “went” and then “returned.” “Sent” and “took” have a sense of aggression, though “went” and “returned” seem to indicate some level of acquiescence. It is important to remember the power dynamic in effect. The king sent for a subject, the subject obeyed. If Bathsheba “came,” it could indicate passivity rather than consent.
• David dealt with the problem of Bathsheba’s pregnancy by placing Uriah in a position in battle where he was sure to be killed. Uriah died a hero’s death, his honor in death preserving David’s honor in life.
1 Kings 1:11-17, 29-31
• The story of Bathsheba picks back up many years later, when King David was old and infirm. He was no longer able to care for himself or his house, and was in the care of others. Time for power to be transferred from David to his successor. Into this power vacuum stepped David’s fourth son, Adonijah. By this point in the story, Adonijah was heir and the oldest surviving son, the earlier three having died or been killed in various court intrigues (the story of David and his family is high drama, like a Game of Thrones style soap opera). Adonijah held a feast to confirm his new status, inviting all the high court officials, but not his brother Solomon who was born in the new capital city and had the support of the court officials against Adonijah.
• Nathan, the court prophet and a supporter of Solomon, came up with a plan. Solomon’s mother, Bathsheba, who had always been a favorite of King David, would go to the king, inform him of Adonijah’s attempted takeover, and “remind” him of his promise that Solomon would be king. “Remind” is in quotation marks, because there is no reference in scripture to David ever making such a promise. Seow indicates that Nathan and Bathsheba were trying to take advantage of David’s senility and trick him into putting Solomon on the throne.
• The trick worked, David spoke decisively, accepting Bathsheba’s memory of the situation and “confirming” the oath he was alleged to have made. Solomon becomes the next king of Israel. And while, certainly, the story behind his ascent is pretty back hall deal-y, Solomon is regarded as a wise and just ruler, a man of faith and wisdom.
Matthew 1:18-25
• Having finished the genealogy, the author now transitions to the main story, the life of Jesus. The writing starts in the middle of the story, when the author brings the reader in, Mary and Joseph are already engaged (a binding engagement in the first century, dissolvable only by death or divorce, so unfaithfulness would be considered adultery) and Mary is already pregnant.
• Strict interpretation of the Law of Moses required capital punishment in instances of adultery; though rabbinic practice had softened that some, the penalty was still severe and humiliating. Joseph is said to be “righteous,” a key word in Matthew’s Gospel meaning “just,” or “one who lives by the law.” Yet Joseph, contrary to the law, out of consideration for Mary, decided not to turn her over to justice, but rather to divorce her quietly.
• The angel’s revelation in v. 20 starts in the typical way, with the phrase “Do not be afraid.”
• The angel told Joseph he was to name the child, naming the child would indicate Joseph had adopted him as his own, thus claiming him in the Davidic line as a “Son of David.” Joseph’s naming of Jesus was how Jesus, without being a genetic descendant of Joseph, ended up in the Davidic line.
• Jesus is an English transliteration of Iesous, a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew Yesua, a shortened form of Yehosua, all of which are versions of the English name Joshua. Joshua/Yeshua/Jesus was in Matthew’s Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible (what we call the Old Testament), the successor of Moses. Through his name, we see Jesus cast as the heir and successor to Moses, a theme that will be built upon throughout Matthew’s Gospel. The repeated refrain to Joshua, “I [God] will be with you’ (eg. Joshua 1:9), is also a repeated motif in Matthew’s Gospel.
• The name Jesus/Yeshua was also a common first century name (the historian Josephus knew 20 different people named Jesus). The commonality of the name helps to unite Jesus to humanity, he has a common name and thus is of the world rather than separated from it. The name means “Yahweh helps.” The Messiah is not an individualistic concept, not a “great man,” but the promised deliverer of the people of God. As Moses delivered the people of Israel from physical slavery into freedom, so too is Jesus the one who is to deliver God’s people from spiritual slavery into freedom.
• V. 21 does not specify who “his people” are. The reader might assume at first Israel, but throughout Matthew’s Gospel, the category is expanded to include all people.
• V. 23 is a reference to Isaiah 7:4. In its original context, the quote refers to the idea that there was a woman who was already pregnant in Judah, and by the time her child reached the age of moral discernment, Judah would be delivered from the threat of the Syro-Ephraimitic War. The child was to be given the name “God is with us” (Hebrew Immanuel), to connect it to other times the same promise was made in Isaiah. This child is referenced again in Isaiah 8:8, this time as already present. The word translated as “virgin” in Matthew’s Gospel is alma, and is translated a “young woman” in Isaiah. The word can mean either thing. For Isaiah’s time, it was not a long-range prediction, but a promise of the current salvation of Israel from war. Matthew, however, understands Jesus as a fulfillment of the whole of Scripture, and so understand this promise as both true for Isaiah in the way Isaiah intended it AND as a way of affirming Jesus’ place in the whole of salvation history.
• Did Jesus have siblings? The “until” in v. 25 seems to imply that Mary and Joseph had normal marital relations after the birth of Jesus, and the brothers and sisters mentioned in Matthew 13:55-56 were in fact Jesus’ siblings (or, half-siblings). It is also possible to understand v. 25 as a case for the perpetual virginity of Mary, as the Catholic Church has understood it. Personally (this is Pastor Kjersten’s interpretation), I think Jesus probably did have siblings, but I suppose it doesn’t matter much one way or another.
Works Sourced:
Birch, Bruce C. “The First and Second Books of Samuel.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume II. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1998.
Boring, M. Eugene. “The Gospel of Matthew.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VIII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
Seow, Choon-Leong. “The First and Second Books of Kings.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume III. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1999.
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:
2 Samuel 11:1-5, 14-27
• 2 Samuel 11 marks a dramatic shift in the story of David. Up to this point, David was portrayed as just, righteous, and in favor with God. Here, due to David’s own actions, the story starts to shift, and the fall of David begins. When David uses royal power to get what he wants (Bathsheba), his life and reign spiral out of control and Israel never again will reach the heights it was under David’s rule.
• The first sign of this downfall is that David did not go with his troops into battle, but remained behind in Jerusalem. When the people had begged for a king to “go out before us and fight our battles” (1 Sam 8:20), the prophet Samuel had warned them of the dangers of kings, who “take” from their people for their own interested (1 Sam 8:11-18), now David, instead of leading troops, is “taking” what he sees and desires (2 Samuel 11:4).
• Was Bathsheba guilty for being seen by the king? Some commentators have argued she was, bathing in a place that was so visible from the king’s palace. Others say she was simply a victim; she was, after all, bathing on a roof out of sight. The narrator himself lays the moral responsibility entirely on David, leaving the issue of Bathsheba’s complicity unaddressed.
• Outside of the introduction in v. 3, Bathsheba is never addressed by name, called only “the wife of Uriah” or “the woman.” Even in Matthew’s Gospel, she is addressed as “the wife of Uriah.” The purpose was to place the emphasis of the story on David’s act of adultery, but the effect is to render Bathsheba as essentially a non-person, no more than a part of the plot. She is not mentioned by name again until 2 Samuel 12:24.
• The affair itself is told very abruptly. David “sent,” “took,” and “lay,” Bathsheba “went” and then “returned.” “Sent” and “took” have a sense of aggression, though “went” and “returned” seem to indicate some level of acquiescence. It is important to remember the power dynamic in effect. The king sent for a subject, the subject obeyed. If Bathsheba “came,” it could indicate passivity rather than consent.
• David dealt with the problem of Bathsheba’s pregnancy by placing Uriah in a position in battle where he was sure to be killed. Uriah died a hero’s death, his honor in death preserving David’s honor in life.
1 Kings 1:11-17, 29-31
• The story of Bathsheba picks back up many years later, when King David was old and infirm. He was no longer able to care for himself or his house, and was in the care of others. Time for power to be transferred from David to his successor. Into this power vacuum stepped David’s fourth son, Adonijah. By this point in the story, Adonijah was heir and the oldest surviving son, the earlier three having died or been killed in various court intrigues (the story of David and his family is high drama, like a Game of Thrones style soap opera). Adonijah held a feast to confirm his new status, inviting all the high court officials, but not his brother Solomon who was born in the new capital city and had the support of the court officials against Adonijah.
• Nathan, the court prophet and a supporter of Solomon, came up with a plan. Solomon’s mother, Bathsheba, who had always been a favorite of King David, would go to the king, inform him of Adonijah’s attempted takeover, and “remind” him of his promise that Solomon would be king. “Remind” is in quotation marks, because there is no reference in scripture to David ever making such a promise. Seow indicates that Nathan and Bathsheba were trying to take advantage of David’s senility and trick him into putting Solomon on the throne.
• The trick worked, David spoke decisively, accepting Bathsheba’s memory of the situation and “confirming” the oath he was alleged to have made. Solomon becomes the next king of Israel. And while, certainly, the story behind his ascent is pretty back hall deal-y, Solomon is regarded as a wise and just ruler, a man of faith and wisdom.
Matthew 1:18-25
• Having finished the genealogy, the author now transitions to the main story, the life of Jesus. The writing starts in the middle of the story, when the author brings the reader in, Mary and Joseph are already engaged (a binding engagement in the first century, dissolvable only by death or divorce, so unfaithfulness would be considered adultery) and Mary is already pregnant.
• Strict interpretation of the Law of Moses required capital punishment in instances of adultery; though rabbinic practice had softened that some, the penalty was still severe and humiliating. Joseph is said to be “righteous,” a key word in Matthew’s Gospel meaning “just,” or “one who lives by the law.” Yet Joseph, contrary to the law, out of consideration for Mary, decided not to turn her over to justice, but rather to divorce her quietly.
• The angel’s revelation in v. 20 starts in the typical way, with the phrase “Do not be afraid.”
• The angel told Joseph he was to name the child, naming the child would indicate Joseph had adopted him as his own, thus claiming him in the Davidic line as a “Son of David.” Joseph’s naming of Jesus was how Jesus, without being a genetic descendant of Joseph, ended up in the Davidic line.
• Jesus is an English transliteration of Iesous, a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew Yesua, a shortened form of Yehosua, all of which are versions of the English name Joshua. Joshua/Yeshua/Jesus was in Matthew’s Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible (what we call the Old Testament), the successor of Moses. Through his name, we see Jesus cast as the heir and successor to Moses, a theme that will be built upon throughout Matthew’s Gospel. The repeated refrain to Joshua, “I [God] will be with you’ (eg. Joshua 1:9), is also a repeated motif in Matthew’s Gospel.
• The name Jesus/Yeshua was also a common first century name (the historian Josephus knew 20 different people named Jesus). The commonality of the name helps to unite Jesus to humanity, he has a common name and thus is of the world rather than separated from it. The name means “Yahweh helps.” The Messiah is not an individualistic concept, not a “great man,” but the promised deliverer of the people of God. As Moses delivered the people of Israel from physical slavery into freedom, so too is Jesus the one who is to deliver God’s people from spiritual slavery into freedom.
• V. 21 does not specify who “his people” are. The reader might assume at first Israel, but throughout Matthew’s Gospel, the category is expanded to include all people.
• V. 23 is a reference to Isaiah 7:4. In its original context, the quote refers to the idea that there was a woman who was already pregnant in Judah, and by the time her child reached the age of moral discernment, Judah would be delivered from the threat of the Syro-Ephraimitic War. The child was to be given the name “God is with us” (Hebrew Immanuel), to connect it to other times the same promise was made in Isaiah. This child is referenced again in Isaiah 8:8, this time as already present. The word translated as “virgin” in Matthew’s Gospel is alma, and is translated a “young woman” in Isaiah. The word can mean either thing. For Isaiah’s time, it was not a long-range prediction, but a promise of the current salvation of Israel from war. Matthew, however, understands Jesus as a fulfillment of the whole of Scripture, and so understand this promise as both true for Isaiah in the way Isaiah intended it AND as a way of affirming Jesus’ place in the whole of salvation history.
• Did Jesus have siblings? The “until” in v. 25 seems to imply that Mary and Joseph had normal marital relations after the birth of Jesus, and the brothers and sisters mentioned in Matthew 13:55-56 were in fact Jesus’ siblings (or, half-siblings). It is also possible to understand v. 25 as a case for the perpetual virginity of Mary, as the Catholic Church has understood it. Personally (this is Pastor Kjersten’s interpretation), I think Jesus probably did have siblings, but I suppose it doesn’t matter much one way or another.
Works Sourced:
Birch, Bruce C. “The First and Second Books of Samuel.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume II. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1998.
Boring, M. Eugene. “The Gospel of Matthew.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VIII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
Seow, Choon-Leong. “The First and Second Books of Kings.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume III. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1999.
Sunday, December 11, 2016
The Love of Ruth: A Sermon on Parts of the Book of Ruth and Matthew 11:2-11
The section we read in worship this morning was Ruth 1:8-11, 14-18, 22; 2:2-3, 17, 19-20, 23; 3:1-11; 4:13-15, 17. But I encourage you to read the whole book, it is a lovely little story.
Fun fact, if you ask me to officiate your wedding, I will probably try to convince you to work in a reading from Ruth. I managed to get it into two of the three weddings I did this summer, including my brother’s Steinbeck themed wedding. You’ll probably want First Corinthians 13, “love is patient, love is kind” and I will be more than happy to read that and even preach on it, but it will make my day if I can also get you to include Ruth.
Our theme for this third Sunday of Advent is love, which is appropriate because Ruth is a love story. Though maybe not the one you’re thinking about, especially after my wedding reference earlier. While there is a wedding in Ruth, the love that is the focus of the story is not between Ruth and Boaz. They do get married, and maybe they had a romantic and love-filled marriage, we really don’t know. Ancient marriages were not so much about romance as they were about property rights, so what feelings developed between Ruth and Boaz are really tangential to the story. No, the love that is important in this story is the love between Ruth and Naomi.
Bit of background. The story began with Naomi, her husband, and their two sons moving to Moab to escape a famine that was sweeping through Israel. The family was there a long time, long enough for the two boys to become men and marry Moabite women. Eventually all three men died. The Bible doesn’t tell us anything about the cause of death, so we can assume it wasn’t important. They weren’t killed out of some wrongdoing on someone’s part, life was just generally cruel, brutish, and short in ancient times, and the men died because there were a lot of ways to die and no real medical anything, and that’s just what happened. But their death set up the major conflict in the story, the three women were now left alone, without anyone to provide for them. Naomi, having no family in Moab, decided to return to Israel where there may still be someone alive from her family who could provide for her. Before she left, she told her daughter-in-laws to return to their families. The women were probably still young, and as widows, if they were returned to their families by their in-laws, they would be free to marry again, to start a new life. This was a gesture of care on Naomi’s part. She wanted what she thought was best for the women whom she said had dealt kindly with her family. The word translated as “kindly” in verse eight is the Hebrew word hesed, which has a deep meaning. More than just kindness, it is often translated lovingkindness, and it is care, devotion, and loyalty well above the expectations and requirements of the law. It is usually used as an attribute of God. Naomi is basically saying to her daughters-in-law, “return to your homes, for you have been so kind and loyal to our family, that God will do the same to you.” And Orpah, the one daughter-in-law, did as Naomi commanded. She wept and she grieved, but she took Naomi’s offer of a chance to start over, and she went back to her home. But Ruth would not. Ruth, in fact, became indignant when Naomi told her to leave. The English obscures this; we don’t catch the tone of frustration that the Hebrew exhibits. There’s also something else that the English misses. In verses sixteen and seventeen, which, by the way, is the reading I love for weddings, the English reads “where you go, I will go, where you lodge I will lodge, your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” The English uses a future tense, this will happen. But Hebrew is a really succinct language that sometimes drops unnecessary verbs. Which, as an aside, is one of the reasons my Hebrew is terrible, but anyway. So the Hebrew actually reads: “You go, I go. You lodge, I lodge. Your people, my people. Your God, my God. There are no connecting verbs. The translators added the “will” in order to make it easier to understand in English, but it’s not in the original. This then wasn’t a future tense thing for Ruth; this was a current reality. Ruth said to Naomi, in essence, I cannot return to my people, because your people are my people, your God is my God. There is nothing for me but you, but where you are. The hesed, the lovingkindness that connected Ruth to her husband, connected her to his whole family, and she was every bit as connected, as loyal, to Naomi as she was to the original agreement.
See, that’s love. Love is not a feeling; it is an action, a commitment. Ruth was just like, look, I’m in this. Where you go, I go, that’s it. And that love that Ruth had for Naomi was transformative; it was redemptive. It redeemed Naomi. The title of this section of the Bible is The Book of Ruth, but it is really a story about Naomi. Remember, Naomi was the Israelite, and Ruth the outsider. So the story the writer wanted the Israelites to take from this text was not “be like Ruth,” it was “you are Naomi.” You are Naomi, and just as Ruth clung to Naomi, and loved her more than seven sons, and gave her a grandson who restored her connection to the community, so too does God cling to, and love, and restore you. Like Naomi, this restoration is not at all based on who you are, on your ability to earn it, it is simply an attribute of God. God is hesed, God is lovingkindness, and God is your people, your God, where you lodge, where you are. Not in a future tense, but right now, right here, in this moment. God’s love for you is not God’s warm feelings towards you; it is God’s constant, determined action to bring you to new life. That is love, God’s love.
That is love, but it is still oh so easy to forget what love is, to miss love when you see it. That’s what happened to John the Baptist in our Gospel reading this morning. John, if you remember from last week, first showed up in the wilderness of Judea with his crazy clothes and his wild hair and his weird food, shouting “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near!” He called out the Pharisees and the Sadducees, called them broads of vipers, fleeing from the wrath. John told them all about how the one coming after him, would baptize them not with water, but with fire. This one had winnowing fork at the ready to gather up the wheat into the barns, and burn the chaff with unquenchable fire. Not just regular fire, oh no, unquenchable fire. So, flash forward eight chapters, John was now in prison, and Jesus had been on the scene for a while. And John sent a message to Jesus asking, “are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” John was basically like, hey, Jesus, I was pretty sure I knew who you were, but these things that you’re doing, these healings, and teachings, and feeding the hungry and forgiving sinners, um, these things don’t really look like what I was thinking, when proclaimed your coming. I was kind of thinking baptisms of the Holy Spirit and unquenchable fires would have a little more umph to them. Are you really the one?
Jesus responded not with some deep theological insight, or a listing of scriptures that proved his identity, or an explanation of his purpose, he simply listed his actions, “Go and tell John what you hear and see, the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” If you want to know who I am, John, here it is. Here is what baptism by fire looks like, here is what cutting the trees that do not bear good fruit looks like, here is what clearing the chaff from the threshing floor looks like. It looks like feeding the hungry, it looks like healing the sick, it looks like raising the dead, and bringing good news to the poor. Baptism by fire and the Holy Spirit is baptism into the love of God, and this is what God’s love looks like in action.
Jesus is God’s love personified. It is what love looks like, when love slips into skin and comes to dwell among us. Now, before we let ourselves get to swept up in the snuggly, good feelings of the whole thing, let us also remember that love is not about making us feel good, it is about redemption. Which means it was just as much an act of love when Jesus turned over the tables drove the money changers out of the temple with whips as it was when he fed five thousand with five loaves and two fish. And it was just as much an act of love when he rebuked Peter and told him “get behind me Satan,” as it was when he called the children to come to him. Love, God’s love, is sometimes challenging, sometimes comforting, but it is always redeeming, always transforming, always making us new. It is this sort of love that Jesus inherited from his ancestor Ruth, a love that is fierce and strong and determined and active. As we await the coming of our savior, may we be aware of God’s active, transforming, challenging, redeeming, fierce, and unfolding love in our own lives. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Fun fact, if you ask me to officiate your wedding, I will probably try to convince you to work in a reading from Ruth. I managed to get it into two of the three weddings I did this summer, including my brother’s Steinbeck themed wedding. You’ll probably want First Corinthians 13, “love is patient, love is kind” and I will be more than happy to read that and even preach on it, but it will make my day if I can also get you to include Ruth.
Our theme for this third Sunday of Advent is love, which is appropriate because Ruth is a love story. Though maybe not the one you’re thinking about, especially after my wedding reference earlier. While there is a wedding in Ruth, the love that is the focus of the story is not between Ruth and Boaz. They do get married, and maybe they had a romantic and love-filled marriage, we really don’t know. Ancient marriages were not so much about romance as they were about property rights, so what feelings developed between Ruth and Boaz are really tangential to the story. No, the love that is important in this story is the love between Ruth and Naomi.
Bit of background. The story began with Naomi, her husband, and their two sons moving to Moab to escape a famine that was sweeping through Israel. The family was there a long time, long enough for the two boys to become men and marry Moabite women. Eventually all three men died. The Bible doesn’t tell us anything about the cause of death, so we can assume it wasn’t important. They weren’t killed out of some wrongdoing on someone’s part, life was just generally cruel, brutish, and short in ancient times, and the men died because there were a lot of ways to die and no real medical anything, and that’s just what happened. But their death set up the major conflict in the story, the three women were now left alone, without anyone to provide for them. Naomi, having no family in Moab, decided to return to Israel where there may still be someone alive from her family who could provide for her. Before she left, she told her daughter-in-laws to return to their families. The women were probably still young, and as widows, if they were returned to their families by their in-laws, they would be free to marry again, to start a new life. This was a gesture of care on Naomi’s part. She wanted what she thought was best for the women whom she said had dealt kindly with her family. The word translated as “kindly” in verse eight is the Hebrew word hesed, which has a deep meaning. More than just kindness, it is often translated lovingkindness, and it is care, devotion, and loyalty well above the expectations and requirements of the law. It is usually used as an attribute of God. Naomi is basically saying to her daughters-in-law, “return to your homes, for you have been so kind and loyal to our family, that God will do the same to you.” And Orpah, the one daughter-in-law, did as Naomi commanded. She wept and she grieved, but she took Naomi’s offer of a chance to start over, and she went back to her home. But Ruth would not. Ruth, in fact, became indignant when Naomi told her to leave. The English obscures this; we don’t catch the tone of frustration that the Hebrew exhibits. There’s also something else that the English misses. In verses sixteen and seventeen, which, by the way, is the reading I love for weddings, the English reads “where you go, I will go, where you lodge I will lodge, your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” The English uses a future tense, this will happen. But Hebrew is a really succinct language that sometimes drops unnecessary verbs. Which, as an aside, is one of the reasons my Hebrew is terrible, but anyway. So the Hebrew actually reads: “You go, I go. You lodge, I lodge. Your people, my people. Your God, my God. There are no connecting verbs. The translators added the “will” in order to make it easier to understand in English, but it’s not in the original. This then wasn’t a future tense thing for Ruth; this was a current reality. Ruth said to Naomi, in essence, I cannot return to my people, because your people are my people, your God is my God. There is nothing for me but you, but where you are. The hesed, the lovingkindness that connected Ruth to her husband, connected her to his whole family, and she was every bit as connected, as loyal, to Naomi as she was to the original agreement.
See, that’s love. Love is not a feeling; it is an action, a commitment. Ruth was just like, look, I’m in this. Where you go, I go, that’s it. And that love that Ruth had for Naomi was transformative; it was redemptive. It redeemed Naomi. The title of this section of the Bible is The Book of Ruth, but it is really a story about Naomi. Remember, Naomi was the Israelite, and Ruth the outsider. So the story the writer wanted the Israelites to take from this text was not “be like Ruth,” it was “you are Naomi.” You are Naomi, and just as Ruth clung to Naomi, and loved her more than seven sons, and gave her a grandson who restored her connection to the community, so too does God cling to, and love, and restore you. Like Naomi, this restoration is not at all based on who you are, on your ability to earn it, it is simply an attribute of God. God is hesed, God is lovingkindness, and God is your people, your God, where you lodge, where you are. Not in a future tense, but right now, right here, in this moment. God’s love for you is not God’s warm feelings towards you; it is God’s constant, determined action to bring you to new life. That is love, God’s love.
That is love, but it is still oh so easy to forget what love is, to miss love when you see it. That’s what happened to John the Baptist in our Gospel reading this morning. John, if you remember from last week, first showed up in the wilderness of Judea with his crazy clothes and his wild hair and his weird food, shouting “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near!” He called out the Pharisees and the Sadducees, called them broads of vipers, fleeing from the wrath. John told them all about how the one coming after him, would baptize them not with water, but with fire. This one had winnowing fork at the ready to gather up the wheat into the barns, and burn the chaff with unquenchable fire. Not just regular fire, oh no, unquenchable fire. So, flash forward eight chapters, John was now in prison, and Jesus had been on the scene for a while. And John sent a message to Jesus asking, “are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” John was basically like, hey, Jesus, I was pretty sure I knew who you were, but these things that you’re doing, these healings, and teachings, and feeding the hungry and forgiving sinners, um, these things don’t really look like what I was thinking, when proclaimed your coming. I was kind of thinking baptisms of the Holy Spirit and unquenchable fires would have a little more umph to them. Are you really the one?
Jesus responded not with some deep theological insight, or a listing of scriptures that proved his identity, or an explanation of his purpose, he simply listed his actions, “Go and tell John what you hear and see, the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” If you want to know who I am, John, here it is. Here is what baptism by fire looks like, here is what cutting the trees that do not bear good fruit looks like, here is what clearing the chaff from the threshing floor looks like. It looks like feeding the hungry, it looks like healing the sick, it looks like raising the dead, and bringing good news to the poor. Baptism by fire and the Holy Spirit is baptism into the love of God, and this is what God’s love looks like in action.
Jesus is God’s love personified. It is what love looks like, when love slips into skin and comes to dwell among us. Now, before we let ourselves get to swept up in the snuggly, good feelings of the whole thing, let us also remember that love is not about making us feel good, it is about redemption. Which means it was just as much an act of love when Jesus turned over the tables drove the money changers out of the temple with whips as it was when he fed five thousand with five loaves and two fish. And it was just as much an act of love when he rebuked Peter and told him “get behind me Satan,” as it was when he called the children to come to him. Love, God’s love, is sometimes challenging, sometimes comforting, but it is always redeeming, always transforming, always making us new. It is this sort of love that Jesus inherited from his ancestor Ruth, a love that is fierce and strong and determined and active. As we await the coming of our savior, may we be aware of God’s active, transforming, challenging, redeeming, fierce, and unfolding love in our own lives. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Thursday, December 8, 2016
Conversation Points for selections from the Book of Ruth and Matthew 11:2-11
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:
Ruth 1:8-11, 14-18, 22; 2:2-3, 17, 19-20, 23; 3:1-11; 4:13-15, 17
• This reading follows the character of Ruth, but reading further into 4:14, identifies Naomi as the character who is “redeemed.” Farmer writes that the reader is meant to identify with Naomi, and that Ruth is a story of redemption for Israel in that like the effort God made to redeem Naomi through Ruth, so too will God work to redeem Israel. The story is not that we OUGHT to be like Ruth, but that we ARE like Naomi. Farmer writes, “A redemptive reading of Ruth will assume that the story is primarily concerned with the faithfulness of God rather than with the faithfulness of the people of God.
• In 1:8, Naomi encouraged her daughter-in-laws to “go back to [their] mother’s house” in order to find new husbands, since her family could no longer provide for them.
• “Kindly” is the Hebrew word hesed, which is a word rich in theological significance. It is an essential part of the nature of God. Hesed is lovingkindness and loyalty far beyond the requirements of the law. Naomi is indicating that both her daughter-in-laws have been kind and loyal, and Naomi hopes God will do the same.
• There is a tone of indignation in Ruth’s response to Naomi in v. 16-17 that the English doesn’t fully capture. Ruth is indignant that Naomi is asking her to abandon her present loyalties.
• The “will” in v. 16-17 are not in the Hebrew, in fact there are no verbs at all. Hebrew is a much more succinct language than English, it reads simply “your God, my God; your people, my people.” The “will” is intended to make it read clearer in English, but the Hebrew has more of a present tense reality then the future tense translation. Ruth has already committed herself to this family, there’s no turning back for her now.
• “Ruth the Moabite” in v. 22 is meant to emphasize Ruth’s outsider status.
• “Glean” in v. 2 refers to a law in Leviticus that forbade Israelites from fully stripping their fields as they harvested their crops. Instead they were to leave some behind for those who had no land of their own to cultivate. See Leviticus 19:9-10, “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the Lord your God.” Leviticus 23:22, “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest; you shall leave them for the poor and for the alien: I am the Lord your God.” Deuteronomy 24:19, “When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be left for the alien, the orphan, and the widow, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all your undertakings.”
• “Nearest kin” in v. 2:20 is a Hebrew term “kinsman redeemer.” This gets to Israelite inheritance law, like was talked about in the story of Tamar. A kinsman redeemer had the obligation, like the brother of a deceased man, to make sure that property stayed within a family by doing whatever was necessary to regain whatever was lost to family control, be the item lost by death, war, poverty, etc.
Matthew 11:2-11
• The purpose of this section is to identify the identity and role of Jesus within salvation history, who is Jesus in relation to the identity and role of John the Baptist.
• In Matthew 3, John spoke decisively about who Jesus was and what his role would be. Now, in chapter 11, after Jesus had been teaching and healing for a while, and his work was marked with compassion rather than judgment, John began to question whether Jesus really was the Messiah he was expecting.
• Jesus’ response in v. 4-5 references the promises made in Isaiah 35:5-6, “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert;” and Isaiah 42:18, “Listen, you that are deaf; and you that are blind, look up and see!”
• The “reed shaken by the wind” and the “soft robes in royal palaces” are references to the ongoing struggle in Matthew between the kingdoms of the world and the Kingdom of heaven. Herod’s fortress palaces of Herodium, Machaerus, and Masada, full of people wearing soft robes, were all in the wilderness along the Jordan. And some Herodian coins featured the symbol of a reed from the Jordan valley. But people hadn’t gone to the wilderness to see those things, they’d gone to see a prophet. John was the opposite of those things.
Works Sourced:
Boring, M. Eugene. “The Gospel of Matthew.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VIII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
Robertson Farmer, Kathleen A. “The Book of Ruth.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume II. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1998.
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:
Ruth 1:8-11, 14-18, 22; 2:2-3, 17, 19-20, 23; 3:1-11; 4:13-15, 17
• This reading follows the character of Ruth, but reading further into 4:14, identifies Naomi as the character who is “redeemed.” Farmer writes that the reader is meant to identify with Naomi, and that Ruth is a story of redemption for Israel in that like the effort God made to redeem Naomi through Ruth, so too will God work to redeem Israel. The story is not that we OUGHT to be like Ruth, but that we ARE like Naomi. Farmer writes, “A redemptive reading of Ruth will assume that the story is primarily concerned with the faithfulness of God rather than with the faithfulness of the people of God.
• In 1:8, Naomi encouraged her daughter-in-laws to “go back to [their] mother’s house” in order to find new husbands, since her family could no longer provide for them.
• “Kindly” is the Hebrew word hesed, which is a word rich in theological significance. It is an essential part of the nature of God. Hesed is lovingkindness and loyalty far beyond the requirements of the law. Naomi is indicating that both her daughter-in-laws have been kind and loyal, and Naomi hopes God will do the same.
• There is a tone of indignation in Ruth’s response to Naomi in v. 16-17 that the English doesn’t fully capture. Ruth is indignant that Naomi is asking her to abandon her present loyalties.
• The “will” in v. 16-17 are not in the Hebrew, in fact there are no verbs at all. Hebrew is a much more succinct language than English, it reads simply “your God, my God; your people, my people.” The “will” is intended to make it read clearer in English, but the Hebrew has more of a present tense reality then the future tense translation. Ruth has already committed herself to this family, there’s no turning back for her now.
• “Ruth the Moabite” in v. 22 is meant to emphasize Ruth’s outsider status.
• “Glean” in v. 2 refers to a law in Leviticus that forbade Israelites from fully stripping their fields as they harvested their crops. Instead they were to leave some behind for those who had no land of their own to cultivate. See Leviticus 19:9-10, “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the Lord your God.” Leviticus 23:22, “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest; you shall leave them for the poor and for the alien: I am the Lord your God.” Deuteronomy 24:19, “When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be left for the alien, the orphan, and the widow, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all your undertakings.”
• “Nearest kin” in v. 2:20 is a Hebrew term “kinsman redeemer.” This gets to Israelite inheritance law, like was talked about in the story of Tamar. A kinsman redeemer had the obligation, like the brother of a deceased man, to make sure that property stayed within a family by doing whatever was necessary to regain whatever was lost to family control, be the item lost by death, war, poverty, etc.
Matthew 11:2-11
• The purpose of this section is to identify the identity and role of Jesus within salvation history, who is Jesus in relation to the identity and role of John the Baptist.
• In Matthew 3, John spoke decisively about who Jesus was and what his role would be. Now, in chapter 11, after Jesus had been teaching and healing for a while, and his work was marked with compassion rather than judgment, John began to question whether Jesus really was the Messiah he was expecting.
• Jesus’ response in v. 4-5 references the promises made in Isaiah 35:5-6, “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert;” and Isaiah 42:18, “Listen, you that are deaf; and you that are blind, look up and see!”
• The “reed shaken by the wind” and the “soft robes in royal palaces” are references to the ongoing struggle in Matthew between the kingdoms of the world and the Kingdom of heaven. Herod’s fortress palaces of Herodium, Machaerus, and Masada, full of people wearing soft robes, were all in the wilderness along the Jordan. And some Herodian coins featured the symbol of a reed from the Jordan valley. But people hadn’t gone to the wilderness to see those things, they’d gone to see a prophet. John was the opposite of those things.
Works Sourced:
Boring, M. Eugene. “The Gospel of Matthew.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VIII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
Robertson Farmer, Kathleen A. “The Book of Ruth.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume II. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1998.
Monday, December 5, 2016
The Hope of Rahab: A Sermon on Parts of Joshua 2 and 6 and Matthew 3:1-12
The story of Rahab is found in Joshua chapters 2 and 6. In order to make the reading a manageable length for the reader,details of the story not directly pertinent were cut. The reading heard in worship was: Joshua 2:1-9, 12-15, 22-24; 6:1-5, 15-17, 20-23, 25.
Our theme word for this second Sunday in Advent, as you’ll notice on the Advent calendar banner growing on the wall behind me, is hope. Hope is a slippery little word in English, what does it mean to have hope? Sometimes hope gets itself mixed up with unrealistic optimism. For example, “I hope it is sunny today” and “I hope I get an A on the test I did not at all study for,” while technically proper uses of the word in English, do not capture the meaning of hope in a biblical sense. Hoping for weather is out of our control. If I hope for sunny and I live in Arizona, I can be reasonably confidence that the event will turn out in my favor. If, however, I live in Michigan and it’s winter, then if the lake effect turns on, it’s going to snow and there’s nothing I can do to change it. Similarly, hoping for an A on a test for which we haven’t prepared is really to sell hope short. You can hope all you want, but if you haven’t put the work in first, then what you have is not hope but vapid optimism. Hope that leads to passivity or inactivity is not hope at all. Rather hope, true hope, is the force that keeps us going in the face of opposition because of a trust that, despite all evidence to the contrary, something good will come out of it. What does hope look like? It looks like Rahab.
My first read on the Rahab story was a bit of annoyance at the author for introducing her as “a prostitute whose name was Rahab.” After all, Rahab’s profession does not come into play in this story. It makes no difference if she was a prostitute or a Sunday school teacher, this story isn’t about her occupation. I assumed it was an attempt to cast her as morally suspect for some reason. But the commentary I read had a very different take on it. The commentary pointed out that the story is not about Rahab’s home, but her father’s. This is, remember, the ancient near east, it was the responsibility of the men of her household to provide for her. That Rahab lived with a father, a brother, and others, presumably some of whom were men, who belonged to them, and yet this is a story where the central character was Rahab tells us something about the economic situation of the family, they were poor. Casting Rahab as a prostitute does not bring down her moral standing, rather it made her relatable to other debtor families, who would hear in this the desperation that forced Rahab into the central provider role for her family, and would then cheer for her against the king of Jericho who had so poorly provided for his people that families like Rahab’s were forced into destitution.
So Rahab’s poor, poor to the point of needing to support this whole household, most of whom by cultural standards had the obligation of supporting her. She’s an outsider to the Joshua story, as a Caananite and a resident of Jericho, but she’s also an outsider to her own society. In case we missed her outsider status, the author makes the point even more pointedly by literally positioning her home on the outside of the exterior wall of the community. In a time when the only thing standing between a community and conquest was the exterior wall, the most highly valued of society did not make their homes on the edge of it. The location of her residence demonstrated that the king of Jericho, despite his appeal to her to turn over the potential spies, saw Rahab and her family as throwaway goods.
Rahab was stuck between what looks like bad and worse. From her own community she was poor, an outsider, no more than a roadblock for conquest by her own community, and from the side of the invaders she was poor, a outsider, and easy pickings for looting. We can’t really portray Joshua’s troops as the just conquering heroes in this story. Verse twenty-one, “then they devoted to destruction by the edge of the sword all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys.” The army of Joshua was not coming into Jericho to establish utopian democratic rule where everyone’s needs are met and everyone’s voice heard and understood, no, they were coming for conquest. Facing oppression from within and conquest from without, with really neither side at all invested in her well-being, I think we can agree that Rahab had every excuse in the world to give up, to throw in the towel, pull the blanket back over her head, and to just stop trying. Now, you can argue that quitting wasn’t an option for her, as the wall her house was in would certainly be destroyed, but the truth is, we always have the option to quit, to give up, to stop fighting. Oftentimes it’s not as dramatic as the crisis facing Rahab, but we can all certainly think of times when faced with a hard task, we chose quitting. When we’re silent in the face of injustice, or we let a relationship wither away rather than do the hard work of fixing it, or we let ourselves be pushed around rather than stand up for our own value, these are all choices we make.
But Rahab didn’t choose to quit, because Rahab had hope. Hope for a better future, hope that God would somehow make tomorrow different from today. This hope isn’t some sort of passive, pie-in-the-sky optimism, it isn’t blind escapism, it isn’t even built on our ability to be hopeful. Rather hope is something that comes not from within, but from without, it is hope in the God of Abraham, and Joseph, and Jacob, and Judah, hope in the God who worked through Tamar, it is this connection to a larger story that stretches from the prophets through the cross. Rahab could not know about her place in the story, she could not know the future so many centuries in the future, but somehow this gritty, determined hope that she had a place in this unfolding story of God’s redemption moved her to outsmart the oppressive king of Jericho, to barter with the enemy, and to end up a part of the heritage of Jesus.
Hope, the unexpected, unexplainable, gritty determination of hope is the central point of the Christian story. How else can you explain a religion who’s central symbol is the cross, but a faith that clings to the impossible promise that life is born from the midst of death, and that the worst thing that can happen has never been and will never be the last thing that will happen, but God is always at work redeeming God’s people and bringing forth the promise of a new future. This hope is not blind or weak or passive, but this hope in the promise of God’s redemption moves us to action, and if it does not move us, then it is not hope.
Our Gospel reading for this morning features that most odd Christmas figure of John the Baptist. Side note: Why doesn’t this guy get more play in our Christmas cards? I went Christmas card shopping with friends over Thanksgiving, and all the cards were of angels, or manger scenes, or bells. There was not one card featuring a madman in the wilderness hollering about snakes fleeing from forest fires, and I feel like the greeting card market is the poorer for it… But anyway, John the Baptist is a crazy character. His clothing, his diet, his language all served to identify him as an outsider, one who was separate from the religious elites and part of the wilderness out of which he appeared. John preached “repent, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.” Repentance in Greek literally means to “turn around.” It is a call to dramatic change of mind and direction, to turn from the old values and practices of self-service, idolatry, fear, and greed, to turn to the values and practices of God, to hope, to faith, to justice, to love. Repentance is a powerful and hopeful, if challenging call, but from the lips of John the Baptist it comes across, both the message and the messenger, as harsh and more than a little bit terrifying. Yet people from all over Jerusalem and Judea were going to him to be baptized. We don’t hear much about those people, but we do hear his response when the Pharisees and Sadducees showed up. Now, it is worth noting that the Pharisees and Sadducees were arch enemies. They were constantly in conflict with each other as to who was correctly interpreting scripture, which, as an aside, may sound familiar; there really is nothing new under the sun. Scripture seems to indicate the only force strong enough to bring these two warring factions together will eventually become their mutual fear and distrust of Jesus. But here they’re coming to John for baptism. Probably because John was gathering large crowds, and folk like this always want to be seen where the crowds are. The Pharisees and Sadducees were not coming to John because they heard in his message of repentance a promise of hope. They were coming because they wanted to make sure they were in with this potential new power. This wasn’t repentance, a dramatic turning away from the old ways and toward the new life John was proclaiming, this was playing both sides of the coin, waiting to see who to follow based on who was doing the best. The Pharisees and Sadducees have not come to John to be moved into action, and John has no time for hope that is not hope.
The baptism John proclaimed Jesus would bring, a baptism of the Holy Spirit and of fire, is a baptism of hope. It is a promise we can cling to, a force of our identity that can give us the courage to step forward boldly, secure in the promise that God is guiding us. It is a hope that Jesus learned from his ancestor Rahab, a hope that led him all the way to the cross, where hope shined the brightest. This is the world-shattering, life-changing power of hope. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Our theme word for this second Sunday in Advent, as you’ll notice on the Advent calendar banner growing on the wall behind me, is hope. Hope is a slippery little word in English, what does it mean to have hope? Sometimes hope gets itself mixed up with unrealistic optimism. For example, “I hope it is sunny today” and “I hope I get an A on the test I did not at all study for,” while technically proper uses of the word in English, do not capture the meaning of hope in a biblical sense. Hoping for weather is out of our control. If I hope for sunny and I live in Arizona, I can be reasonably confidence that the event will turn out in my favor. If, however, I live in Michigan and it’s winter, then if the lake effect turns on, it’s going to snow and there’s nothing I can do to change it. Similarly, hoping for an A on a test for which we haven’t prepared is really to sell hope short. You can hope all you want, but if you haven’t put the work in first, then what you have is not hope but vapid optimism. Hope that leads to passivity or inactivity is not hope at all. Rather hope, true hope, is the force that keeps us going in the face of opposition because of a trust that, despite all evidence to the contrary, something good will come out of it. What does hope look like? It looks like Rahab.
My first read on the Rahab story was a bit of annoyance at the author for introducing her as “a prostitute whose name was Rahab.” After all, Rahab’s profession does not come into play in this story. It makes no difference if she was a prostitute or a Sunday school teacher, this story isn’t about her occupation. I assumed it was an attempt to cast her as morally suspect for some reason. But the commentary I read had a very different take on it. The commentary pointed out that the story is not about Rahab’s home, but her father’s. This is, remember, the ancient near east, it was the responsibility of the men of her household to provide for her. That Rahab lived with a father, a brother, and others, presumably some of whom were men, who belonged to them, and yet this is a story where the central character was Rahab tells us something about the economic situation of the family, they were poor. Casting Rahab as a prostitute does not bring down her moral standing, rather it made her relatable to other debtor families, who would hear in this the desperation that forced Rahab into the central provider role for her family, and would then cheer for her against the king of Jericho who had so poorly provided for his people that families like Rahab’s were forced into destitution.
So Rahab’s poor, poor to the point of needing to support this whole household, most of whom by cultural standards had the obligation of supporting her. She’s an outsider to the Joshua story, as a Caananite and a resident of Jericho, but she’s also an outsider to her own society. In case we missed her outsider status, the author makes the point even more pointedly by literally positioning her home on the outside of the exterior wall of the community. In a time when the only thing standing between a community and conquest was the exterior wall, the most highly valued of society did not make their homes on the edge of it. The location of her residence demonstrated that the king of Jericho, despite his appeal to her to turn over the potential spies, saw Rahab and her family as throwaway goods.
Rahab was stuck between what looks like bad and worse. From her own community she was poor, an outsider, no more than a roadblock for conquest by her own community, and from the side of the invaders she was poor, a outsider, and easy pickings for looting. We can’t really portray Joshua’s troops as the just conquering heroes in this story. Verse twenty-one, “then they devoted to destruction by the edge of the sword all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys.” The army of Joshua was not coming into Jericho to establish utopian democratic rule where everyone’s needs are met and everyone’s voice heard and understood, no, they were coming for conquest. Facing oppression from within and conquest from without, with really neither side at all invested in her well-being, I think we can agree that Rahab had every excuse in the world to give up, to throw in the towel, pull the blanket back over her head, and to just stop trying. Now, you can argue that quitting wasn’t an option for her, as the wall her house was in would certainly be destroyed, but the truth is, we always have the option to quit, to give up, to stop fighting. Oftentimes it’s not as dramatic as the crisis facing Rahab, but we can all certainly think of times when faced with a hard task, we chose quitting. When we’re silent in the face of injustice, or we let a relationship wither away rather than do the hard work of fixing it, or we let ourselves be pushed around rather than stand up for our own value, these are all choices we make.
But Rahab didn’t choose to quit, because Rahab had hope. Hope for a better future, hope that God would somehow make tomorrow different from today. This hope isn’t some sort of passive, pie-in-the-sky optimism, it isn’t blind escapism, it isn’t even built on our ability to be hopeful. Rather hope is something that comes not from within, but from without, it is hope in the God of Abraham, and Joseph, and Jacob, and Judah, hope in the God who worked through Tamar, it is this connection to a larger story that stretches from the prophets through the cross. Rahab could not know about her place in the story, she could not know the future so many centuries in the future, but somehow this gritty, determined hope that she had a place in this unfolding story of God’s redemption moved her to outsmart the oppressive king of Jericho, to barter with the enemy, and to end up a part of the heritage of Jesus.
Hope, the unexpected, unexplainable, gritty determination of hope is the central point of the Christian story. How else can you explain a religion who’s central symbol is the cross, but a faith that clings to the impossible promise that life is born from the midst of death, and that the worst thing that can happen has never been and will never be the last thing that will happen, but God is always at work redeeming God’s people and bringing forth the promise of a new future. This hope is not blind or weak or passive, but this hope in the promise of God’s redemption moves us to action, and if it does not move us, then it is not hope.
Our Gospel reading for this morning features that most odd Christmas figure of John the Baptist. Side note: Why doesn’t this guy get more play in our Christmas cards? I went Christmas card shopping with friends over Thanksgiving, and all the cards were of angels, or manger scenes, or bells. There was not one card featuring a madman in the wilderness hollering about snakes fleeing from forest fires, and I feel like the greeting card market is the poorer for it… But anyway, John the Baptist is a crazy character. His clothing, his diet, his language all served to identify him as an outsider, one who was separate from the religious elites and part of the wilderness out of which he appeared. John preached “repent, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.” Repentance in Greek literally means to “turn around.” It is a call to dramatic change of mind and direction, to turn from the old values and practices of self-service, idolatry, fear, and greed, to turn to the values and practices of God, to hope, to faith, to justice, to love. Repentance is a powerful and hopeful, if challenging call, but from the lips of John the Baptist it comes across, both the message and the messenger, as harsh and more than a little bit terrifying. Yet people from all over Jerusalem and Judea were going to him to be baptized. We don’t hear much about those people, but we do hear his response when the Pharisees and Sadducees showed up. Now, it is worth noting that the Pharisees and Sadducees were arch enemies. They were constantly in conflict with each other as to who was correctly interpreting scripture, which, as an aside, may sound familiar; there really is nothing new under the sun. Scripture seems to indicate the only force strong enough to bring these two warring factions together will eventually become their mutual fear and distrust of Jesus. But here they’re coming to John for baptism. Probably because John was gathering large crowds, and folk like this always want to be seen where the crowds are. The Pharisees and Sadducees were not coming to John because they heard in his message of repentance a promise of hope. They were coming because they wanted to make sure they were in with this potential new power. This wasn’t repentance, a dramatic turning away from the old ways and toward the new life John was proclaiming, this was playing both sides of the coin, waiting to see who to follow based on who was doing the best. The Pharisees and Sadducees have not come to John to be moved into action, and John has no time for hope that is not hope.
The baptism John proclaimed Jesus would bring, a baptism of the Holy Spirit and of fire, is a baptism of hope. It is a promise we can cling to, a force of our identity that can give us the courage to step forward boldly, secure in the promise that God is guiding us. It is a hope that Jesus learned from his ancestor Rahab, a hope that led him all the way to the cross, where hope shined the brightest. This is the world-shattering, life-changing power of hope. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Thursday, December 1, 2016
Conversation points for the story of Rahab and Matthew 3:1-12
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:
Joshua 2:1-9, 12-15, 22-24; 6:15-17, 20-22
• In 2:12, 18, and 6:23, the story refers to Rahab’s whole family, starting with her father. This, then, is not a story of Rahab’s house, but of her father’s. Placing Rahab’s mother next to her father pokes at the patriarchal norms, but the father is still certainly the head of the household. That Rahab is the central character of the story tells us something about the economic status of the family; her family’s dire need has forced her into the role of supplying for the family.
• Rahab is identified as a prostitute, and by far the most common reason for entering prostitution in the ancient world was poverty. The story is meant to appeal to debtor families who, rather than condemning Rahab for her prostitution, would relate to the economic system that forced her into the role of provider, and cheer for her as she outsmarted the king to whom she was indebted. The story is a traditional folk narrative about poor people against kingly wealth and power.
• Rahab, like Tamar, is a Caananite, and thus an outsider. That is the source of her stigma, not prostitution.
Matthew 3:1-12
• The description of John’s clothing and diet separate him from urban society and identify him with the wilderness from which he comes. Locusts are a ritually clean food (Leviticus 11:22), and are a common protein for poorer people in desert cultures.
• The word “baptize” comes from the Greek verb baptizo, meaning to dip or to immerse. Various water rituals existed in Judean culture at the time and were probably a model for John’s baptism ritual. But John changed it, instead of ritually repeated event like ritual washing in the Jewish faith, John’s baptism is a once-for-all practice with eschatological implications.
• “Brood of vipers” calls to mind both images of snakes running before a fire and an insulting term for the poisonous false teachers who lead people astray. “Brood of vipers” in the Greek is literally “sons of snakes,” in comparison to Jesus as the Son of God.
Works Sourced:
Boring, M. Eugene. “The Gospel of Matthew.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VIII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
Coote, Robert B. “The Book of Joshua.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume II. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1998.
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:
Joshua 2:1-9, 12-15, 22-24; 6:15-17, 20-22
• In 2:12, 18, and 6:23, the story refers to Rahab’s whole family, starting with her father. This, then, is not a story of Rahab’s house, but of her father’s. Placing Rahab’s mother next to her father pokes at the patriarchal norms, but the father is still certainly the head of the household. That Rahab is the central character of the story tells us something about the economic status of the family; her family’s dire need has forced her into the role of supplying for the family.
• Rahab is identified as a prostitute, and by far the most common reason for entering prostitution in the ancient world was poverty. The story is meant to appeal to debtor families who, rather than condemning Rahab for her prostitution, would relate to the economic system that forced her into the role of provider, and cheer for her as she outsmarted the king to whom she was indebted. The story is a traditional folk narrative about poor people against kingly wealth and power.
• Rahab, like Tamar, is a Caananite, and thus an outsider. That is the source of her stigma, not prostitution.
Matthew 3:1-12
• The description of John’s clothing and diet separate him from urban society and identify him with the wilderness from which he comes. Locusts are a ritually clean food (Leviticus 11:22), and are a common protein for poorer people in desert cultures.
• The word “baptize” comes from the Greek verb baptizo, meaning to dip or to immerse. Various water rituals existed in Judean culture at the time and were probably a model for John’s baptism ritual. But John changed it, instead of ritually repeated event like ritual washing in the Jewish faith, John’s baptism is a once-for-all practice with eschatological implications.
• “Brood of vipers” calls to mind both images of snakes running before a fire and an insulting term for the poisonous false teachers who lead people astray. “Brood of vipers” in the Greek is literally “sons of snakes,” in comparison to Jesus as the Son of God.
Works Sourced:
Boring, M. Eugene. “The Gospel of Matthew.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VIII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
Coote, Robert B. “The Book of Joshua.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume II. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1998.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)