John Shearman's Lectionary

PENTECOST SUNDAY – MAY 23, 2010

INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURE

ACTS 2:1-21. The Jews celebrated Pentecost long before the Christian Church adopted it as the anniversary of the gift the Holy Spirit. John’s Gospel refers to it by its Jewish name, “the Festival of Weeks.” Originally a harvest festival, it also had a connection with the covenant God made with Noah (Genesis 9:8-17). Later it became linked with the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai. For Christians, this passage tells how the Spirit came unexpectedly upon the apostles giving them a new mandate: to proclaim the sovereignty of God’s love through the resurrection of Jesus, the Messiah/Christ.

 GENESIS 11:1-9. (Alternate) This OT lesson tells the ancient myth of how there came to be so many languages spoken by the human race. It would seem obvious that the writer of the Pentecost story in Acts 2 had this myth in mind in describing the glossolalia of that event.

 PSALM 104:24-35. Someone has said that nature is the language of the Bible. This psalm brings this characteristic to the fore by declaring the dependence of all nature, including humanity, on God.

 ROMANS 8:14-17. Paul points out that the Spirit of God is the power by which Christians live their faith as the children of God. This dependent relationship in no way diminishes our status, but actually gives us a new standing as heirs, in fact, “joint heirs with Christ.” The term “children of God” is the equivalent of Jesus Christ being called “Son of God.” The gift of the Spirit is unconditional, but we must be prepared for its challenges to join Jesus in our holy status.

 JOHN 14:8-17. We do not know how much of this excerpt from Jesus’ farewell discourse to his disciples at the Last Supper contains actual words Jesus uttered. John, or possibly a group of disciples of the apostle John, may have created it from some remembered sayings of Jesus to summarize what he (or they) believed Jesus would have said about his special relationship to God. Here John addresses those who have a problem seeing Jesus as the full revelation of God. This issue which still generates fervent debate in our own denomination.

 A MORE COMPLETE ANALYSIS.

 ACTS 2:1-21. The Jews celebrated Pentecost long before the Christian Church adopted it as the anniversary of the gift the Holy Spirit. John’s Gospel refers to it by its Jewish name, “the Festival of Weeks.” Originally a harvest festival, it also had a connection with the covenant God made with Noah (Genesis 9:8-17). About  200 CE the Jewish rabbinical tradition linked with the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai.

What then was the purpose behind the choice of this day to celebrate the gift of the Spirit to the apostolic church?  Surely this was not the first time the disciples had felt the presence of the Spirit. There are at least two different traditions about the time and circumstances of the gift. John 20:22 reports that this occurred on the evening of the day of Jesus’ resurrection when Jesus breathed on the assembled disciples. In 1 Corinthians 15:6, Paul also describes a resurrection appearance of Jesus to “five hundred brethren at one time.” Could this have been his understanding of the Pentecost experience?

This passage tells how the Spirit came unexpectedly upon the apostles fifty days after the resurrection to give them the mandate for a new mission: to proclaim the sovereignty of God’s love through the resurrection of Jesus, the Messiah/Christ. The difference between the traditions is related to the results of the experience. Luke , the presumed author of Acts, makes it clear that on this occasion the disciples received the spiritual power to carry out their newly assigned mission.

Note also that in the ending of the Luke’s Gospel he does speak of the Spirit as a future gift (24:49). He also wrote of the mission of proclaiming the resurrection  and the forgiveness of sins, and promises to empower them. Then, after blessing them, “he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven” as described in a more complete version of the ascension in Acts 1:1-11.

The results of the infusion of the Spirit can be enumerated as follows: (1) Glossolalia: As described here this may have been more a symbol of the universality of the Christian proclamation than the charismaton of 1 Corinthians 12:4-11. Luke’s identification of the Diaspora communities represented in Jerusalem at that time (vss. 6-11) supports this view. (2) The courage to speak publicly of what they had seen and heard despite the dangers of imminent persecution by the same religious leaders who had arranged Jesus’ crucifixion. (3) The earliest Christian apologia contained in Peter’s sermon. C.H. Dodd called this the basic apostolic kerygma or preaching. (4) The immediate expansion of the disciple community as people responded to the preaching of the gospel (vss. 37-42).

The quotation from Joel places the event within the long-standing eschatological tradition of Israel. In the original Hebrew text of Joel, the prophecy carried a message of doom in which “the day of the Lord” meant “the terrible day” filled with threat and fear. The Greek version in the LXX had translated the Hebrew in such a way as to transform the day of judgment into something “notable” (KJV) or “splendid.” Hence “the Lord’s great and glorious day” (vs. 20 NRSV). In short, the Christian eschaton (end time) of Pentecost had completely transformed the “day of the Lord” into something to be celebrated with great rejoicing rather than feared for its dire threat.

There is another possible interpretation of the Pentecost event held by a minority of scholars. It is the Parousia – the second coming of Christ. In the early decades following the resurrection and ascension, the apostolic church held firmly to the belief that Jesus would return in glory at some later and totally unexpected date. This reflected their adoption of the influential Jewish eschatological texts in prophetic literature. Certain eschatological passages of the NT maintained this view and attributed parables and declarations of this kind to Jesus himself. It is quite probable that Jesus did hold such views of the Messiah. But did he continue to hold this view after he recognized his own messianic character? Careful examination of the teachings of Jesus indicate that these eschatological passages can be fairly interpreted as assurances of God’s purpose being accomplished rather than a descriptions of specific future events.

Toward the end of the lst century CE, however, the apostolic church began to realize that the anticipated second coming had been delayed and might never come as originally expected. It then became more important to describe the purpose of Christ’s coming as the proclamation of the sovereignty of divine love for all of creation. Furthermore, creation is being redeemed within the normal context of history. The promise of a second coming is the hope of the fulfillment of God’s continuing redemptive work. In this light, Pentecost becomes the empowerment of all who believe so that they may participate in the redemptive mission initiated by Christ. In this we too are involved right now as each day passes.

GENESIS 11:1-9. (Alternate) This OT lesson tells the ancient myth of how there came to be so many languages spoken by the human race. It would seem obvious that the writer of the Pentecost story in Acts 2 had this myth in mind in describing the glossolalia of that event.

In and of itself, the story bases the multiplicity of languages on human pride. By attempting to build a tower that reached to the heavens, the people sought to take control of their own destiny. The response of Yahweh blocked their efforts by causing them to speak in a confusion of languages and to spread “over the face of the earth.”

People living in the so-called Fertile Crescent stretching from the valley of the Nile in Egypt to the Tigris-Euphrates delta into the Persian Gulf were familiar with two elements of this story:  a confusing number of languages and the ziggurat,  towering temples that reached toward the heavens in cities like Babylon. As the tides of history moved back and forth along this crescent, many different languages and cultures came into almost constant conflict. Problems in communication had significant effects on the clash of cultures, as they still have in our time too. But this interaction also had permanent influence on the development of the Hebrew language. Like the English language today, ancient Hebrew included many words borrowed from several different cultural sources.

About fifty miles from Baghdad in the Tigris-Euphrates valley of modern Iraq, one can still see the ruins of the city of Babylon, named for this myth. The name of the city and the word Babel formed a play on the Hebrew word balel, which meant “confusion or mixing.” In the 5^th century BCE, the Greek historian Herodotus described a ziggurat or six staged tower crowned with a small chapel which served as the temple of the Babylonian deity, Marduk. Jews would have seen this architectural wonder of the ancient world during their exile in Babylon. Built of sun-dried brick and standing near the Euphrates River, the ziggurat would have been subject to erosion by wind, rain and floods. It would also have been a strategic target for invading armies. It has been suggested that the myth may have been inspired by a time when the tower was being reconstructed after suffering some such catastrophe. Does this story convey some biting sarcasm about the impermanence of the foreign deity whose followers had caused the Israelites such pain?

PSALM 104:24-35. “The universe is rationally transparent and God has written two books, the book of nature and the book of Scripture. We are creatures made in the image of the creation, made up, literally, of bits of carbon from far away stars.” So said Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne, a past president of Queen’s College, Cambridge, former professor of mathematical physics at Cambridge, a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (he’d be Sir John if he weren’t an ordained Anglican priest.) He was speaking at the Discovery Institute, in Seattle, WA where he kicked off a conference called “Cosmos and Creator: God of Physics, God of Astronomy.” Polkinghorn was an avowed enthusiast for the concept of creation by intelligent design.

Someone else has said that nature is the language of the Bible. This psalm brings these two thoughts together by declaring the dependence of all nature on God. The poem shows remarkable similarity of this poem with others in the wider cultural setting of the ancient Middle East. In a recent book, The Pagan Christ: Recovering the Lost Light, Canadian scholar and journalist Tom Harpur, claimed that all Middle Eastern mythology and religious texts, including Israel’s,  should be seen as revisions of the basic religious myths and texts of ancient Egypt.

In The Interpreter’s Bible, (iv. 550) W. Stewart McCullough commented that the psalmist appeared to have been familiar with other creation stories known to Israel. He shares the viewpoint of the P document. However, the theme of creation and control of nature by a supernatural power inspired writers in various cultures, especially the Egyptian “Hymn to the Aton” which dates from the time of Akhenaton (1380-1362 BC), a ruler with distinct monotheistic interests. McCullough believed that the resemblances could be accounted for by a common monotheistic approach to the world of nature. The differences between the poems were notable in that the Egyptian hymn the sun is the creator, whereas in the Hebrew psalm the sun is but a part of the handiwork of the Yahweh.

A parallel to vss. 24-26 may be found in Gen.1:20-23 where Yahweh’s is said to worked on the fifth day of creation. Vss. 27-30 correspond to Gen. 1:29-30. The doxology in vss. 31-35 contains two elements of note. The psalmist called on Yahweh to rejoice in his handiwork while raising his own voice in similar rejoicing. The final verse offers a solution to the problem of evil frequently found in other psalms. This may not satisfy modern minds, but did express the traditional Hebrew faith that good would ultimately triumph. Indeed, it seems so out of character with the rest of the passage that it may have been added by someone with a more intense moralistic intent than that of the original poet.

 ROMANS 8:14-17. One could certainly claim that this is a Spirit-filled passage, perhaps the most Spirit-filled in all of the Pauline corpus. In vss. 1-13 preceding this reading the Spirit is named twelve times and in these four verses, three  more. Paul is saying forcefully as he can that the Spirit of God is the power by which Christians live their faith as the children of God.

The very assertion that we are the children of God is something far beyond anything that Israel’s religious leaders had ever claimed. In the OT the term “sons of God” was limited to supernatural beings. Nonetheless, association of Spirit with the messianic king (Isa. 11:2; 42:1), true prophecy and the expectation of manifestations of the Spirit in the messianic age (Joel 2:28-29) contributed to the intertestamental conviction that the Spirit would be silent until the new age dawned. This was what  Peter said in his sermon at Pentecost, and was evidenced again in the coming of the Spirit to the congregation in the home of the Gentile Cornelius at Caesarea  (Acts 10:44-48).

On the other hand, every male Jew was regarded as a “b’nai b’rith,” a son of the covenant. Israel was “the chosen people” solely by Yahweh’s election. This designated a special relationship, but led to the exclusionary belief in the spiritual superiority of the Jews whether by birth or by choice. In the singular form “the son of God” referred to the royal representative of chosen people.

Paul made no less claim for himself. In this passage, however, he introduced a startling new metaphor – adoption. Christians are the adopted off-spring of God. William Barclay brings forward an even more surprising interpretation of this metaphor. Paul was not only a Jew, but a Roman citizen. He undoubtedly had in the forefront of his mind the Roman practice of legal adoption. In his Daily Bible Study – The Letter to the Romans, Barclay outlines the way in which this took place. (See p.110-111) In summary, a child to be adopted had to pass from the patria potestas (absolute power of the father) of his natural father into that of his adoptive father. The adopted son lost all rights to his former family and gained all the rights of a fully legitimate child of his new family. He could then inherit his adoptive father’s estate, even if other sons were afterwards born as real blood relations. In the eyes of the law, the former life of the adopted person completely disappeared. The adopted person literally and absolutely had a new father.

Barclay adds the ironic twist in citing a very famous adoption: In order that Nero might succeed him on the throne, Emperor Claudius adopted Nero. They had no known blood relationship. Claudius already had a daughter, Octavia. When Nero wished to cement the alliance he chose to marry Octavia. The Roman senate had to pass special legislation to enable Nero to marry her, his sister by adoption.

Nero became emperor in 54 when Paul’s missionary work was at its height. It was during the middle years of Nero’s reign that he wrote The Letter to the Romans. Tradition has it that Paul was executed in Rome 62 when Nero was far advanced in his murderous paranoia. Having already executed his step-brother, Britannicus, whom he displaced as heir of Claudius, and his own mother, Nero divorced and then arranged the execution of Octavia in that same year in which Paul also died.

Is it too far-fetched to imagine that Paul’s execution had some connection with these words in Romans 8? If Paul wrote this in a letter to the Roman Christians before he arrived in Rome, is it not likely that he also preached this same message when he was there, a Roman prisoner? Would this not be evidence used against him when he appeared before Nero? After all, the theme of the passage is the true nature of spiritual inheritance. And Nero believed that he was God, but unlike the implication of moral responsibility that came with the gift of the Spirit of God in Paul’s teaching, Nero’s amoral lifestyle denied everything godlike in his character.

As in legal Roman adoption, the new relationship into which our spiritual adoption brings us in no way diminishes our status. Actually it gives us a new standing as heirs, in fact “joint heirs with Christ.” The term “children of God” is the equivalent of Jesus Christ being called “Son of God.” But in his last sentence of this reading, however, does Paul introduce a conditional qualification?  Not likely, since Paul firmly believed in the unconditional grace of God mediated by Jesus Christ. More probably Paul was saying with these concluding words that as a result of inheriting this holy status, we must also certainly accept its challenges, possibly at times to the point of suffering for it as Christ did.

 JOHN 14:8-17. As much as we love John 13-17 and especially this chapter 14, this excerpt from Jesus’ farewell discourse to his disciples at the Last Supper may contain only a few actual words that Jesus uttered. John, or quite possibly one or more of a group of disciples of the apostle John, created the whole discourse from some of Jesus’ remembered sayings. They gave it this longer form to summarize what he (or they) believed Jesus would have said about on the occasion of his departure.

However we may interpret its origin, this passage has a very theological tone. The issue under discussion is the special relationship of Jesus to God. It addresses those who were having a problem regarding Jesus as the full revelation of God. This issue still generates fervent debate in our own time. So what is John saying in these words attributed to Jesus?

In response to Philip’s longing, “Show us the Father and we will be satisfied,” Jesus gave an indirect, somewhat rhetorical answer designed to elicit Philip’s (and our) faith. Then he unequivocally declared his total identity with God: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” He follows this with a further declaration as to the validity of the words he has spoken and the deeds he has done. Then he makes an absolutely astonishing claim: “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these because I am going to the Father.”

This assertion can only be understood in the light of Pentecost. We must remember too that this passage was written some sixty or more years after that unique event. On that day, that powerless troop of Galileans could no more imagine than we can how God could redeem the world through their witness of words and deeds. It was so at the end of the 1st century when John wrote the Fourth Gospel. It is still so at the beginning  of the 21st century as we sit in our now uncomfortable pews in trembling fear as the cataclysmic upheavals of our own time swirl like  flowing lava around us.

Yet, to change the metaphor, there is a key which will unlock and swing wide the gates of history in every age: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever….He abides with you and will be in you.” (vss. 15-17) With faith in Jesus, the Messiah/Christ, Son of God, comes the gift of the Spirit and the moral responsibility. The Spirit blesses us with the spiritual grace to live in love for God and neighbour as did Jesus himself.

In this passage Pentecost is a promise. In John’s time and in ours, it was and is a reality. As we read our daily newspapers or watch the news reports on our television screens, it may be incredibly difficult to see the hand of God in the turbulent affairs of our time. But as the creed of The United Church of Canada reminds us: “We are not alone. We live in God’s world, who has created and is creating, who has come in Jesus, the Word made flesh, to reconcile and make new, who works in us and others by the Spirit…. In life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us” – Father, Son and Spirit.

 Additional Preaching Points.

(This essay is intended to supplement the comments on the lessons for The Day of Pentecost  above.)

Pentecost raises the question of the nature of spirit in some minds. This is usually discussed in two  ways: the metaphysical and the metaphorical. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit) In recent years, psychologists, neurologists, philosophers, even economic historians as well as religious leaders have been turning their attention to mutli-disciplinary inquiry  into the nature of the much maligned phenomena and human experience of spiritual realities. The Metanexus Institute is an example of the discussions which have taken place with the intention of bringing about a dialogue if not a rapproachement of religious, social, political, economic and scientific thought.

First, a look at the definition of the English word spirit .

The word comes from the Latin spiritus, which means “breath,” a sense that derived from the Latin of Jerome’s Vulgate translation of the Bible. The OED gives the basic definition as “The animating or vital principle in man (and animals); that which gives life too the physical organism, in contrast to its purely material elements.” The almost identical definition of soul in the OED leads to the conclusion that the two words are synonymous: “The principle of life in man or animals; animate existence.” Thus spirit also can mean “soul, courage, vigor.”  The original root of spirit is thought to be Proto-Indo-European, as opposed to Latin anima and Greek psyché, generally translated as soul in languages derived from Germanic origins.

What then are we to make of the Holy Spirit ? Is it just a biblical name best considered as a metaphor for what the writers of scripture perceived as God at work in creation and human history? In asking these questions we are bound to deal with the human experience of reality and truth that is at one and the same time both transcendent and immanent. Usually a discussion of this subject would be limited to theologians and philosophers of religion. Since we cannot yet reduce such reality to mathematical formulae or accurately measure the nature or extent of such experiences, scientists might tend to limit the boundaries of research in this field.

A former head of the department of psychology at McGill University, Montreal, used to begin each year’s lectures to the freshmen class with the statement, “For the purposes of this course, there is no soul.” In making this assertion he avoided any discussion of spiritual and religious issues which he believed should be limited to the stately confines of the department of religious studies at Divinity Hall across the campus.

Kurt Gödel, (1906-1978) a brilliant mathematician and friend of Albert Einstein, showed that there can exist propositions that by insight must be true but that cannot be proven mathematically. This led him to a theist and personal concept of God and belief in the afterlife while appealing to human reason as his witness. He found that even the most exacting scientist places faith in the cognitive processes of the intellect even though arguing  that science and mathematics are outside the realm of faith. Hector Rosario stated in an article on Gödel’s work that “a closer look at the foundations of physics and mathematics, as well as to the history of these subjects, seems to yield a different conclusion. This closer look reveals a delicate membrane that conjoins these experiences: Faith. This is the greatest common denominator of science, mathematics, and theology.” (“Kurt Gödel’s Mathematical and Scientific Perspective of the Divine: A Rational Theology.” The Metanexus Institute. The Global Spiral. February, 2007.)

This also recalls Anselm’s famous dictum that God is “that thing  which nothing greater can be thought.” At the same time psycho-neurological research as well as intuitive insights – in biblical language regarded as revelations – may well “help in the search for common ground—a search that is crucial given the trajectory of present scientific research, particularly into the nature of sentience,” as Kathleen L. Housley put it in her article in The Global Spiral (January 2010), “Seeing the Thunder: Insight and Intuition in Science, Mathematics and Religion.”

Gödel also thought mathematical intuition to be a kind of “knowing” that defied mathematical formulation. It was similar to a physical sense such as hearing or sight. He went so far as to regard it as a sixth sense. In biblical and theological terms, this is metaphorical thinking. The experience of being inspired by the God, as the prophets of Israel believed they were, or of receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit, as the apostles did on the Day of Pentecost, can thus be considered valid forms of knowledge. Housley further reminded us of Gödel’s assertion that something can be known objectively even though its discernment is beyond sensory perception is the equivalent to the insight of Hebrews 11:1,  “Faith is to be certain of what cannot be seen.”

About the same time that Gödel was in his prime, an Anglican professor,  R. H. L. Slater was lecturing in the philosophy of religion at the University of Rangoon, Burma. I had the privilege of studying under him at McGill University, Montreal, from 1948-50. In 1957 he went to Harvard University to found the Center for the Study of World Religions. Slater’s study of human destiny, God of the Living, (Charles Scribner’s, 1939) presented a cogent analysis  of the fundamental Christian belief that God is Love as “the last word of Christian devotion, the climax of Christian faith…. Remove that conviction, and the whole scheme of redemption is lost, the ground of confidence, aye, even the ground of worship, is shaken. Destroy it, and the Christian faith itself is destroyed…. It is the meaning behind the Cross. It is the reason for the Church.” (Slater, 294)

A profoundly Trinitarian, Slater held that humans are neither barbarians or saints. “His (sic) history and his constitution call him to live with his fellows in the bonds of creative charity, not to prey upon them or forsake them…. Man is not a fighting animal. He is spirit in the making. And spirit is love.”

That love is personal and is being experienced every day by ordinary people who seek the reign of God’s love in their own lives and in the unfolding of history. The recent review of economic history by Jeremy Rifkin posits the thesis that the future hope for global peace and security rests in what he called the development of  “empathic civilization.” Reading this study made one immediately think of the  Gospel phrase, “the kingdom of God.” Rifkin’s analysis could be seen as an appeal for the application of the Golden Rule to geopolitics and economics. Are we not  seeing this worked out in the day to day events in Europe in the spring of 2010 as frantic efforts are made to rescue national economies in the face a traumatic and foolhardy fiscal decisions by too compliant governments? Can this not be seen as the Holy Spirit of God at work in much the same way that the inspiration of Moses led to the freeing of the Israelites from the privation of slavery in Egypt?

INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURE

Seventh Sunday of Easter (If Ascension not observed here)
May 16, 2010  

ACTS 16:16-34. With this double miracle story Luke makes the point that in Paul’s ministry, as in that of the other apostles, the divinely empowered ministry of Jesus continued. The miracle of casting out a demon from the girl with the spirit of divination seems to have been a distraction setting up the apostles’ imprisonment. Their release from prison and the conversion of their jailer would serve to convince Luke’s Gentile audience of the authenticity of the Christian message.

PSALM 97. This psalm is one of a group of psalms celebrating the enthronement of God. The others are Pss. 47, 93, 96, 98 and 99.

REVELATION 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21. The passage repeats many earlier references that point beyond the present to the second coming of Christ. That will be a time of judgment (vss. 12, 14-15) when those who are faithful will be admitted to the holy city and those who are impenitent will be excluded. The closing verses have a distinctive liturgical ring to them. They begin with an invitation to communion from Jesus himself (vss. 16-17) and end with a prayer by the expectant church (vss. 20b-21).

JOHN 17:20-26. This prayer almost certainly contains few if any actual words of Jesus. Rather, it is John’s interpretation of what Jesus’ life, death and resurrection meant for the Christian community for which he was writing late in the 1st century. Summarizing the discourse which began in chapter 13, as well as the whole gospel, it attempts to inspire and encourage John’s own community of disciples many years later.

A MORE COMPLETE ANALYSIS

ACTS 16:16-34. With this double miracle story Luke makes the point that in Paul’s ministry, as in that of the other apostles, the divinely empowered ministry of Jesus continued. What we perceive in this story, however, may not always be what the author intended. Some particular points need to be drawn from the details.

First, the miracle of casting out a demon from the girl with the spirit of divination appear to have little or nothing to do with Paul’s mission. From his point of view it seems more like inconvenient distraction than an object of compassion. Then it became the basis for the charge laid against Paul and his companions. Those who perpetrated this gross injustice upon both their innocent victim in the first place and the apostle who freed her from them had only one motive: to avenge their monetary loss. (vs.19).

Paul and Silas were charged as Jews, not as Christians. They were accused of “advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe.” (vs. 21) Cultural differences had little significance in such a cosmopolitan city as Philippi. Obviously the spurious charge bore no relation to their mission. It served only as an excuse to arouse the hostility of the local community against Jews who had recently been expelled from Rome by Emperor Claudius. Anti-Semitism may have been named only in the late 19^th century, but it certainly existed nineteen centuries earlier.

The miraculous liberation of Paul and Silas from prison and the conversion of their jailer would serve to convince Luke’s Gentile audience of the authenticity of the Christian message. Yet there is more to the story than the striking text which has generated so many evangelistic sermons: “What must I do to be saved? …. Believe on the Lord Jesus….”  One might go so far as to say that this exchange was no more than the opening gambit in the jailer’s conversion. Vs. 32 plainly informs us that more instruction followed as Paul and Silas “spoke the word of the Lord to him and all who were in his house.” In spite of the fact that baptism of the whole household followed “that same hour …without delay,” this did not occur without further catechetical instruction. These details leave no room for an anti-intellectual attitude toward conversion.

The story also gives us an opportunity to identify and respond to an important contemporary justice issue. The idea of a mentally sick or intellectually impaired girl being enslaved for profit sounds incredibly abusive to us. But is it so far from what we hear is happening on our own city streets? To save money governments have closed psychiatric wards and permanent care hospitals, then  released patients be cared for or to care for themselves through drug therapy. In allowing this to happen without public protest, are we not also perpetrating no less abuse?

A book by the late renowned urban scholar, Jane Jacobs, The Coming Dark Age, describes the growing number of homeless, helpless mentally ill and addicted people living on Toronto streets as one of the signs of the city’s decline even though the city produces many billions in taxation for federal and provincial governments while having too little to pay for essential public services.

PSALM 97. This psalm is one of a group of psalms celebrating the enthronement of God. The others are Pss. 47, 93, 96, 98 and 99) In many respects, the vocabulary of all these psalms is similar. This enthronement celebration occurred at each Jewish New Year. It acknowledged God’s awesome power, God’s justice and God’s absolute supremacy over all creation.

Jewish theology did not depend on abstractions. Anthropomorphism – defining the nature of God in terms of human characteristics – was featured in much of the Jewish concept of divinity. Perhaps it could not have been otherwise. The human mind abstracts from what it observes in the immediate environment such symbols and metaphors it can use to describe in words what is essentially indescribable.

Does God really reign majestically from a throne enveloped in “clouds and thick darkness?” Of course not, but these images enable this poet to convey the ideas of divine power, sovereignty, righteousness and justice. In fact, vss. 2-5 actually describes a violent thunderstorm raging over the mountains. In vs. 6, the storm has passed and glorious sunlight reflects the divine glory for all to see.

In vss. 7-9, the poet’s vision shifts from nature to religious objects of worship. The Greeks and Romans espoused many religions and absorbed them in a syncretist fashion. Their temples and cities were filled with idols of a wide variety of gods (as Paul saw in Athens in Acts 17). Israel’s prophets fought a continuing battle against such idolatry and false religion, although there is ample evidence that they too did succumb to syncretism. The psalmist shared this prophetic faith. He did not deny the existence of idols, but unequivocally declared their worthlessness (vs. 7) and Yahweh’s sovereignty over all (vs. 9). Hence there could be both hope for deliverance and security for the faithful, righteous believer. (vss.10-12)

REVELATION 22:12-21. The immediately preceding passage (vss. 6-11) indicated clearly that this reading formed part of the epilogue to the book.  This segment breaks into the middle of John’s testimony about his conversation with the angelic messenger whose words John recounted after being warned to worship God and not the messenger, as John had begun to do. That warning brings to the fore a singularly important truth about scripture: It is not the Bible, nor the words of the Bible, nor the one who preaches the Bible message who is to be worshipped; but God alone, for God alone is holy.

The passage repeats many earlier references and points beyond the present to the second coming of Christ. That will be a time of judgment (vss. 12, 14-15) when those who are faithful will be admitted to the holy city and those who are impenitent will be excluded. Professor Caird believed that John expounded a “realized eschatology “in which the final coming of Christ in judgment or reward is constantly anticipated in the crises of individual and corporate life. It exists in the midst of the daily life of Smyrna and Pergamum, Babylon, and the other cities to which John was writing Jerusalem.  So also the eschatological judgment of the Book of Revelation applies in Halifax and Victoria, Ottawa and London, Washington, Canberra and Moscow.

The closing verses have a distinctive liturgical ring to them. They begin with an invitation to communion from Jesus himself (vss.16-17), move on to a hortative warning and end with a prayer by the expectant church (vss. 20b-21). The invitation is open to “whoever hears.” Those who hear will also respond together with the antiphonal voices of the disciple community, “Come!”

The words of warning that nothing should be added or excluded from the book are somewhat curious.  Did John intend that his book should be read in the churches to which it was addressed, then passed on to the next town to be read there? Scrolls like the one for this text were extremely difficult and expensive to compose in those days. At first only a single copy existed. Multiple copies were made only as the decades passed and travelling missionaries moved from place to place created a demand for each church to possess its own copy for closer study.

One of the characteristics of Jewish scripture was that its text should be regarded as inviolate. Everything written must be preserved intact. (Deut. 4:2; 12:32) Few of the New Testament authors, especially those who wrote letters, had such an attitude toward their work. However, they did regard the Hebrew scriptures as authoritative. They had taken over this view from the rabbinic Judaism of the Pharisees. The scriptures had been given by God through revelation to the patriarchs and prophets to be communicated to generations that came after them. 2 Timothy 3:15-17 expressed this view completely.

John did not regard himself as the authority on which his book rested. His testimony was of Jesus, who is coming soon (vs. 20) but who also continually makes himself known to the gathered community in the breaking of bread and prayer. As Caird says, “he is using liturgical language to express what transcends liturgy. No one who has read his book can have any illusions about what the prayer is asking. It is a prayer that Christ will come to win his faithful servant the victory which is both Calvary and Armageddon.”  (G.B. Caird. The Revelation of St. John the Divine. Black’s New Testament Commentary. London: Adam & Charles Black, 1966. p. 288)

JOHN 17:20-26. This prayer almost certainly contains few if any actual words of Jesus. Instead, it consists of John’s interpretation of what Jesus’ life, death and resurrection meant for the Christian community for which he was writing in the last decade of the 1st century CE. It also summarizes the discourse which began in chapter 13 as well as continuing much of same theme found throughout the Gospel as proclaimed from the beginning.

The whole prayer covers familiar themes: Jesus death and resurrection as glorification; eternal life as knowing God through faith in Jesus, the Christ/Messiah; the disciples as those chosen to represent Christ in and to the world; and the disciples’ need to be sustained in their mission through the truth they have received from Jesus and now are to share with the world.

In this excerpt, John attempted to inspire and encourage his own community of disciples as many as 60 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus as revealing the true nature of God as love became  the central message of the apostolic church. Their faithfulness in difficult times would keep them in loving fellowship with each other, with Christ and with God. It would also enable them to accomplish their mission of making the “glory” of Christ, the Son of God, known as well as maintain the elusive spiritual unity the mission requires.

This is still good news for us two thousand years later. Alas, through subsequent generations and probably in John’s own time, the disciple community has never achieved the level of faithfulness to which this prayer summoned us. Yet we must still make it our own prayer for our own community and our own time. For as this prayer bids: We must all be one, so the world may believe.

ADDITIONAL PREACHING POINTS.

ACTS 16:16-34. Do we at times take advantage of those who are disabled? Can this lesson be stretched to be of use for a sermon on the evil of such behaviour?

Some forty or more ago at a county fair in central Pennsylvania, I witnessed and actually filmed the re-enactment of the public execution by hanging of a young woman which had occurred in that community in the late 19^th century. As the narrator of the story told the audience, the young woman was probably “retarded.” (That was the term used then for an intellectually impaired person.) She had given birth to a child out of wedlock. The father of the child had never been identified. But when the child had died soon after birth, the mother had been charged and convicted of murder.

I have not recalled this horrible spectacle in many years. It came to mind as I prepared comment on this passage. The film has long since faded and been destroyed. I was surprised that time has not erased the incident from my memory. Was this any different than the tragic mistreatment of the Philippian girl from whom Paul drove out the demon? Was my filming of the re-enactment any different?

PSALM 97. Even our traditional beliefs and creeds have become idols for many Christians. Escaping from the metaphors of ancient traditions is no less a problem for us in the 21^st century.  Will our Christian traditions survive in the face of popular rejection, universal secularism and rampant atheism?  For a very challenging witness to the necessity of doing so, see such new approaches proposed by Bishop John Shelby Spong in his Eternal Life: A New Vision (HarperOne 2009), Gretta Vosper’s With Or Without God,” (HarperCollins 2009), and Andrew Prior’s “Progressive Christianity” website,

http://churchrewired.org/progressive-christianity.html.

REVELATION 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21. The legacy of the apostolic view of the inviolate character of the Hebrew scriptures hampered interpretation or commentary from the 1^st to the 19^th centuries CE. In the 2^nd century Marcion questioned the authority of the Hebrew texts as did the Alexandrians Clement and Origen in the 3^rd century.  At the same time the traditional view led to restrictive theological attitudes which placed undue sanctity in the inerrant words themselves rather than safeguard the message they communicate. Even Thomas Aquinas in the late Middle Ages and Calvin during the Reformation accepted this view. As late as the turn of the 20^th century, the Methodist Church in Canada charged a theological professor with heresy for adopting and teaching an alternative approach based on the developing theories of historical and literary criticism of NT texts. In some parts of the Christian tradition, the debate still rages unabated as ultra-conservative radio and television preachers reveal every day of the week.

JOHN 17:20-26. In1904, representatives of three Canadian Protestant denominations – the Methodists, the Presbyterians and the Congregationalist – began serious discussions about uniting in a determined effort to meet the challenges of a relatively young country rapidly expanding as immigrants from Central Europe poured into urban areas and across the western prairies. Within a decade, the terms of union had been fully negotiated and agreed upon before being interrupted by the fury of World War I. It took until 1924 for all the needed ecclesiastical and legal ratifications to be completed. On June 10, 1925, the first General Council of the United Church of Canada met in Toronto, Ontario. About one third of the Presbyterians, chiefly in central and eastern Canada, withdrew and formed a continuing Presbyterian Church. The United Church of Canada chose as its defining motto the Latin words of John 17:21a Ut Omnes Unum Sint. (“That all may be one.”)

My own personal experience of church union occurred through an interesting series of events. For at least three generations my family had been members of the Congregational Church. In 1919 my parents and maternal grandparents settled in a Montreal suburb where there was one small Presbyterian church. They were fully accepted and my father served a lay representative to Montreal Presbytery for the three point pastoral charge. He voted in favour of church union that created Montreal Presbytery of The United Church of Canada. He continued as a lay member of Montreal Presbytery until shortly before his death in 1982.   I believe I am one of the first United Church ministers to have been baptized, confirmed and ordained after church union. There are even fewer of us alive today.

A further attempt at union between the United Church of Canada and the Anglican Church in Canada failed in the early 1970s after a twenty-five year search for a mutually acceptable view of the nature of ministry. Before the negotiations reached an impasse, a shared hymn book was published and adopted by both denominations. Today,  a generation later, many Anglican and United Church congregations in outlying regions share facilities and are served by each other’s ordained clergy. A corporate union still remains our hope and the goal toward which we press in a very much more complicated world.

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INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURE

Sixth Sunday of Easter

May 9, 2010

 ACTS 16: 9-15. This important transitions story marks the beginning of what scholars call a series of eyewitness accounts in which the pronouns switch from “they” to “we.” Scholars have assumed that the man who appeared to Paul in the night was Luke himself, the presumed author of Acts.

The passage also marks the beginning of the Christian mission in Europe. Of all the congregations Paul founded, he had warmest feelings for the Philippians, as his letter to that community shows.  

 PSALM 67. This simple hymn of praise may well have been a thanksgiving prayer after a successful harvest had brought relief from a severe famine. The psalm may have been sung antiphonally during the Feast of Tabernacles, the Jewish thanksgiving festival. The untranslatable word, Selah, may have indicated a place for cymbals to sound.    

 REVELATION 21:10, 22-22:5. In John’s closing vision, he saw God’s holy city of the redeemed, for which God and Christ provide eternal light and life. A vision by the prophet Ezekiel and the Garden of Eden provided Old Testament models for the New Jerusalem. All believers may share this beatific vision made possible by the visible presence of God and Christ. Note that the whole scene takes place on earth, there is not temple or church, and God’s dwelling is among us, not “in the distant heavens” or outer space.

 JOHN 14:23-29. In these words attributed to Jesus John summed up the essential meaning of the Christ coming among us. His promise to send his Holy Spirit to dwell in, guide and strengthen his disciples is still valid. He is the ever present Lord available to everyone in all of life’s daily experiences.

JOHN 5:1-9. (Alternate)   This alternate reading presents us with the narrative of another miracle that leads to an expository discourse about Jesus’ authority deriving from God rather than from the legal restrictions of the Jewish Sabbath.

A MORE COMPLETE ANALYSIS

 ACTS 16:9-15. This is one of the important transitions in the story Luke is telling in Acts. It is the beginning of what scholars call a series of eyewitness accounts in which the pronouns switch from “they” to “we.” It has often been questioned whether Luke himself was the man who appeared to Paul in the night. But debate about the source of the “We” passages has generally concluded with Ramsay’s thesis of 1896 that these came from the author of the two volumes, the Gospel of Luke and Acts traditionally attributed to Luke.

It is significant that all the eyewitness passages (this one, together with 20:5-19, 21:1-18 and 27:1-28:16) include extensive sea voyages. This has prompted some analysts to suggest that Luke had access to a travel diary, perhaps his own or that of some other companion of Paul. Secondly, the effect of the “we” passages, according to Brevard Childs, “is to bring a broader confirmation of the apostolic witness and ground the material in a communal experience.” This literary device is distinct from other literary techniques Luke uses, but serves the same theological purpose of witnessing to the common faith proclaimed by all the apostles. It “render(s) the testimony in a particular fashion which serves to bridge the gap between the original author and the subsequent reader.” (Childs, Brevard S. The New Testament As Canon – An Introduction. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985.)

Of all the congregations with which Paul was associated, he had warmest feelings for the Philippians, as his letter to that community showed. Yet unlike his visits to the Jewish Diaspora in Galatia, he did not find a synagogue in Philippi. Was there no Jewish community in that important Roman city? Or were they too few in number, since only ten male Jews were required to form a synagogue? Lydia appears to have been a Gentile “worshipper of God” (vs. 14) in whose home Paul made his headquarters?

The Greek word thus translated, sebomenos (Eng. = devout), appears several times elsewhere in Acts along with phoboumenos (Eng. = God-fearing) describing Gentiles who demonstrated sincere spiritual concerns. (cf. 10:2; 13:43, 50; 17:4, 17; 18:7). It is also possible that “a certain woman named Lydia” actually means “a woman from Lydia,” an ancient kingdom which under Rome became part of the province of Asia in which the prosperous city of Thyatira was located. If so, she may be identified with either Euodia or Syntyche of Phil. 4:2.

It also appears that she was a business woman or a widow who had taken over her former husband’s trade, as identified by being “a seller of purple.” Purple was the most valuable of ancient dyes, the source of which was a mollusk, each shade created by using different species of mollusk. The Hebrews valued the colour highly as a symbol of distinction, wealth and royalty. However we hypothesize about such minutiae, one thing is certain: in this instance, Paul’s testimony in Philippi marks the beginning of the Christian mission in Europe of which we too are the heirs.

 PSALM 67. This simple hymn of praise may well have been a thanksgiving prayer after a successful harvest had brought relief from a severe famine. (vs. 6)  It most likely found an appropriate place in the feast of Tabernacles (Succoth) prominently observed after the Exile. As a time for singing and dancing, this festival featured many liturgical compositions which may also have included such Psalms as 113-119 and 136.

The untranslatable word, Selah, which occurs twice in the text, may have indicated a place for cymbals to sound. The superscription indicates that stringed instruments were also used as accompaniment. Human voices in chorus, however, made the main music of worship in the temple. The psalm would have been sung antiphonally.

Another notable quality of this psalm is its missionary character drawn from such sources as Deutero-Isaiah and Jonah. God’s goodness to Israel, so visible in the abundant harvest, should be a revelation to all the world of God’s righteous ways in dealing with those who trust God. Accordingly, all nations should join Israel in reverence and praise.

REVELATION 21:10, 22-22:5. In John’s closing vision, he sees the New Jerusalem, God’s holy city of the redeemed, for which God and Christ provide eternal light and life. New Testament authors generally used Old Testament references to tell of how God’s redemptive purpose would be fulfilled through Christ. The models for the New Jerusalem were a vision by the prophet Ezekiel (47:1-12) Ezekiel and the Garden of Eden (Gen. 2:9-10). This beatific vision is made possible for all believers by the visible presence of God and Christ.

Quite rightly, the reading excludes the dimensions and description of the holy city, for these are symbolic. In fact, there is a double symbolism in that the city is also a bride bejewelled for her wedding.  So conservative an interpreter as Dr. Billy Graham has said that this passage does no more than describe heaven as a beautiful place where the faithful will live eternally with and should not be taken literally. But this is not heaven which John envisions.

Note especially where 21:10 places this eternal city of the redeemed. Most conceptions of the future life of the redeemed relocate earthbound creation and humanity to heaven. John does the very opposite: the heavenly city comes down to earth. There but one meaning for this statement. As Professor George Caird has pointed out: “To the crack of doom Jersualem can never appear otherwise than coming down out of heaven, for it owes its very existence to the condescension of God and not to the building up of men.”

The absence of the temple also has considerable significance. It symbolizes two essential aspects of Jewish thought and religion. One the one hand, it clarified the distinction between the holy and the common, the clean and the unclean. The temple was holy in that it had been set aside for the special service of God, separated from everyday, common use. On the other hand, the temple also represented the presence of God in the midst of God’s people, and God’s claim on the whole of the secular world. The fact that there is now no temple in the holy city means that the divine presence is no longer confined to a sanctuary set apart, but pervades the whole city and the world it represents.

Still more must be said about John’s vision of the holy city. The disappearance of the old and the condescension of the new conveys a dynamic redemptive message. Into the holy city come the nations and kings of the earth. Those who once trampled the holy city under foot have now come with willing tribute to adorn it. As Caird wrote: “Nothing from the old order which has value in the sight of God is debarred from entry into the new…. The treasure that men find laid up in heaven turns out to be the treasures and the wealth of the nations, the best they have known and loved redeemed of all imperfections and transfigured by the radiance of God….Nowhere in the New Testament do we find a more eloquent statement than this of the all-embracing scope of Christ’s redemptive work.”  (G.B. Caird. The Revelation of St. John the Divine. Black’s New Testament Commentary. London: Adam & Charles Black, 1966. p. 278-280.)

 JOHN 14:23-29. We cannot tell if any of these words attributed to Jesus were part of the remembered tradition of what he actually said.  John appears to have cobbled together several disjointed themes within this much loved chapter of his Gospel. The way in which the editors of the lectionary have separated the various readings only serves to make the problem worse. There seems to no reason to separate Judas’ question (vs. 22) from the answer Jesus gave (vs. 23-24), nor to isolate that question and answer from the preceding segment about keeping the commandments to receiving the Father’s love. There is, however, some justification for the separation of the next segment (vs. 25ff) which the NRSV designates by a new paragraph. The Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 8 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1952,  p. 707-715) seems to have done better by placing vss. 18-31 in three distinct sections: vss. 18-24, “the threefold union;” vss. 25-26, “the second Paraclete saying;” (the first Paraclete saying is in vss. 15-17) and vss. 27-31, “peace, joy and security.” In many respects, all such distinctions are speculative, for the original Greek text had no paragraphing or punctuation whatsoever and was written in capital letters.

In this particular reading, John was dealing with the issue of the church living in a hostile world at the end of the 1^st century CE without the visible presence of Christ. He told his community through these words attributed to Jesus that obedience and love are the conditions ruling the life of the church and therefore guaranteeing the sense of Christ’s living presence as God’s representative. He then went on to make an additional promise that the Holy Spirit would teach them and bring to their remembrance all that Christ had said to them. Was John here speaking about the Jesus’ story he was then actually writing down for his community? And did he also refer to what Calvin many centuries later would describe as “the inner testimony of the Spirit” enabling us to interpret holy scripture?

The final parting words John had Jesus speak have brought peace and security to countless distressed Christians. John obviously regarded the trials his community might be facing as similar to that which Jesus himself faced the night he was betrayed. The closer he came to the cross, the greater was Jesus’ sense that his ultimate of security lay in loving obedience to God’s will, not in his own desire for a longer life. This did not in any way remove him from the consequences of what others like Judas Iscariot, Caiaphas or Pilate would do. This was no facile counsel like “love God and do what you will,” as Augustine said five centuries later. Rather, this was the ultimate act of faith. For the disciples, for John’s community and for us, this is still so, as vs. 29 assures us.

JOHN 5: 1-9. (Alternate)   The reason for this alternate reading is not immediately obvious. It presents us with the narrative of another miracle that leads to an expository discourse about Jesus’ authority deriving from God rather than from the legal restrictions of the Jewish Sabbath.

John is very specific about the location of the pool called Bethzatha, but modern archeology has never satisfactorily discovered it. His description of the porticoes gives some background details about that fill out the where many invalids sheltered awaiting for the moment when an eruption of the water would provide a magical cure.

At first glance, Jesus’ challenge to the paralytic seems uncaring. Why else would he have laid there for thirty-eight years? Or is this just an extended period of time that John used to make the miracle seem all the more astonishing? The paralytic’s response seems pathetic, but still emphasized his credulity in the legend that the pool had magical powers.

Jesus’ initiative in selecting this man among many at the pool focused attention on his authority what God desires for every invalid: health of body, mind and spirit. Performing this miracle on the Sabbath set up the issue John wished to discuss at greater length: Jesus’ conflict with the Jews about his authority over all of life.

Additional Preaching Points:

• ACTS 16: 9-15.  Despite Lydia’s appearance only in this passage, creating a fictional background story about her could be a useful means of introducing the significant role women played in the ministry of Paul. Paul’s letters often referred to specific women who became leaders in the church or whose quarrels mitigated the appeal of the gospel and the mission of the church. This would counter the negative references to women often raised in some circles today against the role of women in leadership positions in the church or business.

• PSALM 67. Having recently witnessed from afar the 60th    anniversary of the refounding of Israel, we can easily imagine the unrestrained celebrations of the Feast of Tabernacles during which this psalm may have had a significant part.

Bruce Chilton hypothesized that Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and angry driving of the moneychangers from the temple actually occurred on the Feast of Tabernacles. The triumphal into Jerusalem entry was a parade celebrating that feast, not a political statement at Passover as the synoptic gospel narrative depicts. The upsetting of the money changer’s tables was Jesus’ protest against the lucrative commercialization of sacrifices which he believed every Jew had the right to present from his own means, however meager. (Chilton, Bruce. Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography. Doubleday, 2000.)

• REVELATION 21-22.  For those who may have missed it, Rev. Ron McCreary, of Gray Memorial United Methodist Church, Tallahassee, FL, commented that John’s vision of the New Jerusalem coming down out of  heaven from God and the assertion that God will tabernacle (NRSV “dwell”) with humankind, is a vision of the answer to the phrase from the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as in heaven.”

This important insight is in keeping with such positive attitude toward history described in the new work of Jeremy Rifkin, The Empathic Civilization. Rifkin presents the view that, in the age of global electronic communication, following the empathic directive traditionally expressed in the Golden Rule is the best way to avoid total disaster through global conflict or environmental neglect.    (See more in Additional Preaching Points accompanying the lessons Fourth Sunday of Easter, April 25, 2010.)

• JOHN 14:23-29. It may seem inviting to link this gospel excerpt with a similar English words “dwelling” and “dwell” used in Revelation 21:3.  But be careful because the Greek words used in each instance were notably different. In John 14, the Greek verb was meno (English = remain; abide in KJV); “make our home” in NRSV); whereas in Revelation, the Greek verb was skéno (English = tabernacle). There was not only a different emphasis, but a significantly different meaning.

 Meno implied an enduring state of being present in the here and now, with a expectancy permanence in the future. Skéno referred to the tent or tabernacle where Yahweh was believed to reside temporarily as a symbol of protection and communion during Israel’s wandering in the wilderness. But in Revelation 21:1 & 22, there was no temple in the New Jerusalem, for it had vanished with the first earth, and God and the Lamb were its temple. Therefore, linking the two passages implies that it is the Spirit that makes the presence of God and Jesus Christ a permanent reality to the Church in every age, not the magnificent temples that we erect “to the glory of God.”

•  JOHN 5: 1-9. (Alternate).  Several sites in ancient Jerusalem have been considered as possible locations for the Pool of Bethesda (Beth-Zatha). A discovery made in 1888 by a German archaeologist best meets the biblical description.  In Jesus’ times it lay on the north side of the Old City walls at the foot of what was then known as Mount Bethzetha. Today it lies within the grounds of property owned by the “White Fathers,” near the Church of St. Anne. This is also close to the Arch of Ecce Home where the Via Dolorosa begins. This site suits well with descriptions by Origen and Eusebius in the 3^rd and 4^th centuries CE. Today tourists are shown this site as the best verified.  

Vs. 4 in the KJV regarding angels disturbing the waters does not exist in the best manuscripts. Scholars regard it as a 2^nd century CE interpolation. It was included in a footnote in the RSV and NRSV. The legend is believed to have risen to explain the phenomenon of a spring occasionally erupting in a ruddy stream of water.

There is doubt as to the pool’s use for the purpose named, the Sheep-Pool in vs. 2. It is believed to come from the practice of sheep being washed in a liturgical ceremony to prove their unblemished quality for sacrifice at the Passover. If so, a nearby gate, no longer visible beneath the massive north walls of the temple precincts, would have given access to the temple for the actual sacrifice.

For more information see here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Fathers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pool_of_Bethesda

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INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURE

Fifth Sunday of Easter

May 2, 2010

 ACTS 11:1-18. In response to the challenge of the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem Peter testified about his participation in the Gentile mission. Issues such as  circumcision prior to baptism and eating unholy foods were obviously very difficult for Jews who had come to believe that Jesus was the true Messiah. The crucial moment for Peter came when the Holy Spirit fell on the assembled household in the home of Cornelius, the Roman army officer in Ceasarea as already told in Acts 10.

 PSALM 148. All creation is summoned to praise the Lord in this third of five Hallel psalms which end the whole Psalter with a resounding “Hallelujah!”

REVELATION 21:1-6. Many Old Testament references colour this vision – the creation, the city, the bride - in John’s vision of the whole of creation redeemed and renewed. Perhaps the most important insight of the passage is that “now God’s dwelling is among mortals.” (vs. 3) This reaffirms God’s coming into the world in Jesus Christ for the single purpose of redeeming the world and reconciling humanity and all creation to God’s original purpose.

JOHN 13:31-35. John’s narrative of the Last Supper was ending.  Judas had left on his nefarious errand to betray Jesus. So Jesus told his remaining disciples about his glorification, by which he meant his forthcoming death on the cross. This was a theme John had emphasized from the very beginning of his gospel. To John, Jesus’ death was a sacrificial offering to God worthy of God’s holiness and love reflected in the love of the disciples for each other.

 A  MORE COMPLETE ANALYSIS.

 ACTS 11:1-18. In response to the challenge of the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem Peter testified about his conversion to the Gentile mission. Because of strict rules concerned circumcision and eating unholy foods, this mission was obviously a very difficult issue for Jewish Christians who had come to believe that Jesus was the true Messiah. Several important aspects of the Jewish-Gentile controversy stand out in Peter’s report to the church in Jerusalem.

As the late Professor George Caird noted in his study of the Apostolic Church that Jewish orthodoxy was more a matter of practice rather than belief. They did not condemn the Christians for any beliefs they held about the Messiah, the Resurrection, or the Age to Come. That would not incur any charge of religious disloyalty as long their beliefs did not affect their obedience to the Law. Judaism was regarded as more than a religion; it was a nationality. The Torah was religious precept, social custom, and civil law all rolled into one. Even though the religious centre of life had shifted from the Torah to Christ, Jewish Christians could not abandon the Torah as a national way of life without becoming denationalized. (Caird, G.B. “The Apostolic Age.” Studies in Theology. London: Duckworth & Co., 1955. p.83-84.) All this is eminently true in this passage from Acts 11.

 The crucial moment for Peter came when the Holy Spirit fell on the assembled household in the home of Cornelius, the Roman army officer in Ceasarea. That story had been already told in Acts 10. In commenting on last week’s reading, we noted that the Spirit is the true hero of the whole story Luke tells in Acts. This is no less true in this instance. In vss. 12-18 in particular, the Spirit rather than Peter was the driving force behind the change of mind in the Jerusalem community; and in the Apostolic Church’s subsequent change of strategy in the succeeding vss. 19-30.

In vs. 16, Peter recalls words Luke earlier reported that Jesus had spoken (1:5). In all four Gospels these words are attributed to John the Baptist. As we have seen in Luke’s Gospel, he was fully acquainted with Mark’s Gospel where this statement first appeared (Mark 1:8). This does not mean that he is quoting a variant tradition. It served Luke’s purpose in Acts for these words to come directly from Jesus who had promised to send the Spirit as his living presence with the apostles as tare a direct reference to Luke 24:45-50. They carried on his ministry. In fact, these words and the community’s response to them in vs. 18 are a direct reference to Luke 24:45-50.

The history of the Christian Church from the very beginning is the story of how the Spirit continually challenges the faithful to carry the Gospel to the world. We are still being challenged to live and witness in that historical environment.

 PSALM 148. All creation and all people are summoned to praise the Lord in this third of five Hallel psalms which end the whole collection with a resounding “Hallelujah!” (or “Praise God!”)

On the Sunday I retired from my last pastorate, two young boys and their mother waited for me after the service. Shyly the boys presented me with a small gift in appreciation for help I had given the family during an eleven year pastorate. My most recent ministry to them had been to conduct the baptism of the two boys, an ordinance long delayed due to a particularly difficult family situation.

Everyone knew of my concern for the environment from occasional references I had made in sermons and prayers. I had once told the children of the congregation that two of my grandsons had presented me with a certificate stating that an acre of Costa Rican rain forest had been preserved in my name. The boys’ present was unique. With their mother’s help, they had created a one-of-a-kind T-shirt, brilliant yellow in colour and hand-painted with trees of the rain forest watered by plastic raindrops and surrounded by flags of many nations. The trees had unhappy faces on them with beady eyes that roll with movement. The shirt bore the logo drawn from my chat with the children: “Rain forests need love too!”

I treasured this memento of that pastoral experience every time I wore it. In this glorious spring weather who can argue that God also loves the rain forest and the whole of our natural environment? God has given its care into our hands so that as the ancient psalmist sang, the whole of creation may raise Hallelujahs of praise to God.

REVELATION 21:1-6. John envisioned the whole of creation redeemed and renewed. This once again affirmed what awaited those who remained faithful through all their trials and thus makes those bitter experiences endurable. From examination earlier chapters in Revelation we know the circumstances faced by the Christians fits best into the period of the Flavian emperors, Vespesian and his sons, Titus and  Domitian. This was a time when the imperial cult flourished. Christians did not hold back from such patriotic enthusiasm. Though there was as yet no compulsion to participate in these quasi-religious rituals, anyone who got involved with the law courts or was required to take an oath, would be bound to do so. As John Sweet, University Lecturer in Divinity at Cambridge, England, stated in The Oxford Companion to the Bible, (London: Oxford University Press, 1993): “The chief threat to the church was not physical danger … but social, economic, and religious temptation.” How much like our own times!

Many Old Testament references coloured John’s vision – the creation, the city, the bride. The passage also recalls some of John’s previous visions, notably the marriage supper of the Lamb (19:6-9). Perhaps the most important insight of the passage was that “the home of God is among mortals.” (v.3) This reaffirms what God has done in coming into the world in Jesus Christ for the single purpose of redeeming the world and reconciling humanity and all creation to God’s original purpose. That purpose is a joyful, creative relationship in which all suffering and death have been overcome.

Professor George Caird gave an extended exegesis of the word “dwelling” in his translation of vs.3: The word skéné (dwelling) was regularly used in the Septuagint for the Hebrew mishkan (tent), as the symbol of God’s abiding presence during the wilderness wanderings. John had selected this term to imply that the promise of God’s presence had already been fulfilled in the past whenever Israel has been true to her calling. Caird linked this word to the derivative word shekinah and its Aramaic counterpart shekinta, regularly used in Hebrew theology “as reverential insulators to prevent the sacred name of God from too close verbal contact with men.”

Professor Caird also noted references, among many others, to Lev. 26:11; Ezek. 37:27; Jer. 7:23; Hosea 1:23; and Zech. 8:8. He recognized, however, that John clearly had the Incarnation in mind as the means above all which establishes God’s presence in the world. Finally, he was unequivocal that in making all things new, this was a process of re-creation by which the old was transformed into the new. While many saw the world growing old in its depravity and doomed to vanish before the presence of holiness, faith can see the hand of God at work refashioning the whole. “The agonies of earth are but the birth-pangs of a new creation.” (G.B. Caird. The Revelation of St. John the Divine. Black’s New Testament Commentary. London: Adam & Charles Black, 1966. p. 263-266.)

 JOHN 13:31-35. At the end of the Last Supper after Judas had left, Jesus spoke to the remaining disciples about his glorification. This meant that in his death, which Judas was about to initiate by his betrayal, Jesus would glorify God. John had emphasized this theme from the very beginning of his gospel. (1:14) To him, Jesus’ death on the cross no tragedy, but a sacrificial offering to God worthy of God’s holiness and love, and of the disciples responsive love for each other.

There is an unmistakable link between the shekinah (shining, glory) of God in the OT and John’s concept of the glorification of Jesus. But this passage and all John’s references to “glorification” make the special emphasis that the incarnation, the crucifixion and the resurrection can never be separated. The whole story must be told as a single expression of God’s ultimate purpose. The same clarity of vision appears in Paul’s words to the Corinthians, “God was in Christ reconciling the world….” (2 Cor. 5:19)

Another linkage claims our attention too: the new commandment to love one another as Christ has loved us. John utters this as a challenge to his own community, in all probability consisting of Jews and Gentiles from many lands. It sounds across the centuries to us. Christians not only demonstrate their discipleship in the world where they remain after the resurrection; they also reveal Christ to the world. But the revelation is conditional: “if you love one another.” Because of this condition, Christian history has often hidden Christ from the world. As a result the world has every right to reject us and him, no matter how much we speak his name. As a wise man once said, “The only gospel some people will ever read is the way we live.”

Additional Preaching Points. 

• Acts 11:1-18. Today, Christians must always ask themselves how best to carry out the Christian mission to the world. A crucial issue is whether the aggressive missionary efforts of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries were motivated by the Spirit or by church imperialism following the nationalist imperialism of that same period. On the other hand, are our motives ever as pure as we perceive them to be?

Many nations no longer permit the kind of evangelism that leads to conversion from one religious tradition to another. This has required Christian denominations – mainly those  regarded as “mainline” – to adopt missionary practices only in partnership with churches in the formerly so-called “mission fields” abroad.

Considering the loyalty of so many modern Jews to the state of Israel today, one has  to wonder to what extent Jewish attitudes and practices – as in the Zionist movement,   for example – are more an exercise in nationalism than a religious tradition.

• Psalm 148. Recent environmental concerns appear to have become the new religious tradition for the younger generation. The challenge they face is whether or not to engage in the political and economic actions that will lead to real change in the wasteful environmental practices their preceding generations have engaged in with impunity.  

 For instance, a single cup of coffee requires 140 gallons of water to reach the eight ounce cup into which we pour it. Most of that water is used in the developing nations that grow and produce the required ingredients.

• Revelation 21:1-6. In his new work, The Empathic Civilization, Jeremy Rifkin states that the quest for universal intimacy is the very essence of what we mean by transcendence. Each new reorientation of consciousness toward concern for our environment and for other human beings who are different from ourselves moves us toward new heights of empathy. Was this not also the vision Jesus gave us of the kingdom of God and John reiterated in his vision of a new creation? 

• JOHN 13:31-35. A perceptive layman remarked that he found many illustrations used in sermons in one way or another simply repeated the same theme as the parable of the Good Samaritan: We are to love one another as we love ourselves. Perhaps that is not a bad thing.  

Yet we may be able to move beyond that by realizing that for Jesus, love involved a total sacrifice of himself in order to express the fullness of God’s love for the world.

How are we who have so much to lose to do that effectively, each one of us in his or her own situation? Where are our “lesser calvaries?”

INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURE

Third Sunday of Easter

April 18, 2010

 ACTS 9:1-6. The conversion of Saul of Tarsus marked the crucial turning point for the early church. As a multilingual, scholarly Jewish rabbi of the Diaspora (Jews who lived outside Israel), his controversy with the Jewish apostolic community in Jerusalem carried the Gospel beyond its Jewish boundaries. His many letters to congregations he founded began the process of creating the uniquely Christian scripture now forming our New Testament.

PSALM 30. This psalm of thanksgiving for recovery from a near-fatal illness came into liturgical use celebrating the re-dedication of the temple after the Maccabean Revolt of 165 BC. Its references to deliverance from death make it appropriate for use during the Easter season.

REVELATION 5:11-14. In John’s vision, the Lamb had been given the authority to open the scroll revealing God’s purpose of redeeming all of creation. The Lamb symbolized the crucified Christ whose victory over death began God’s final redemption. The twenty-four elders represent the task of the church to make God’s redemptive purpose known to the whole world.

JOHN 21:1-19. Scholarly consensus regards this chapter as an appendix to the Gospel. Jesus appeared in Galilee to several disciples who had returned to fishing. He showed that he had been raised from the dead by eating with the disciples. He also restored Peter’s leadership in the apostolic church in the light of Peter’s earlier denial.

A MORE COMPLETE ANALYSIS

 ACTS 9:1-6. (Alternate reading includes vss. 7-20.) The conversion of Saul of Tarsus on his way to Damascus to persecute those who believed in Jesus’ resurrection marked the crucial turning point for the Apostolic Church. Some scholars go so far as to say that it was the beginning of the church. They argue that without Paul and his mission to the Gentiles, the church would have remained a Jewish sect and would have vanished with the Jerusalem Christian community in the disastrous Roman-Jewish War of 69-70 CE. The only other sect of Judaism to survive was the Pharisees. Over the next two or three centuries, they evolved into rabbinic Judaism.

What exactly do we know about Paul? As a multilingual, scholarly Jewish rabbi of the Diaspora, he was uniquely equipped to carry the Gospel beyond its Jewish boundaries. He was born a Hellenistic Jew in Tarsus, Cilicia and hence a Roman citizen. More than likely he was named both Saul and Paul from birth, his Jewish and Roman names. Tarsus was a seaport on the Mediterranean coast of Cilicia, now southern Turkey.  Paul’s family were engaged in commercial trade, for at times Paul made his living as a “tentmaker” or “leatherworker.” (Acts 18:3) It was then necessary for a rabbi to have a trade to live by. In some respects, however, that was an unusual trade for a Pharisee to follow. The Talmud of later rabbinic Judaism regarded tanning as a disreputable occupation for the devout. Because of the odours caused by their work, tanners were forced to live outside the city walls. Simon the tanner in whose house Peter had a vision of many unclean animals being declared clean lived by the seaside in Joppa. (Acts 9:43)

Paul called himself a strict Pharisee. (Phil. 3:5). A rising party within Judaism in the first half of the lst century CE, they assumed the leadership of the Jewish community after the destruction of the temple. The synagogues of the Diaspora became the main centres for their teaching ministry, as for Paul himself. According to Acts 22:3, Paul’s mentor was Gamaliel, the leading Pharisee of the day. Gamaliel (aka “the Elder”) was a member of the Sanhedrin, and the grandson of the famous Rabbi Hillel (ca. 60 BCE – 20 CE). His leadership prior to the Roman-Jewish War contributed largely to the influence of the Pharisees after the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 70 CE. His grandson, Gamaliel II, led the Palestinian Jewish community in the last two decades of the 1^st century CE and the first two of the 2^nd century. His determined opposition to the Christian community resulted in their banishment from the synagogues after the assembly at Jabneh (Jamnia) ca. 85 CE.

It is unlikely that as a council of elite Jews with limited administrative and policing powers, the Sanhedrin had yet become the rabbinical court which later created the codification and commentary of rabbinic law in the Talmud and Mishnah after 200 CE. More probably, in Paul’s time, it had a role of administering the temple tax system and restraining the religious fervour of the recalcitrant Jewish population on behalf of their Roman overlords.

Following his conversion, Paul appears to have had a falling out with the Pharisees while at the same time making use of his earlier loyalties in his defense as an apostle. (Acts 15:5 cf. 26:5; Gal. 1:13-14.) Before then, with a mandate from the high priest to the Jewish synagogues in Damascus, he set out to bring all the members of the Christian sect he could identify back to Jerusalem as prisoners for trial before the Sanhedrin. One commentator has suggested that Paul’s mission to Damascus was “an under-cover operation” in which the prisoners would have been kidnapped and brought back to Jerusalem secretly. (Quoted from Hanson, R.P. C. The Acts, [Oxford, 1965] in A.N. Wilson’s Paul: The Mind of the Apostle. New York: Norton, 1997.) This possibility argues strongly for Paul having a responsible position in the temple police under the authority of the high priest and very closely aligned with the Roman administration.

En route to Damascus, Paul had an epiphany which he subsequently interpreted as being met by the risen Christ. (1 Cor. 15:8) There are major discrepancies between Luke’s version of this experience in Acts 9 and Paul’s own description of it in Galatians 1:11-17. The two make one point in common: The Jesus-story was never the same after this “conversion.” A.N. Wilson claimed, “The historicity of Jesus became unimportant the moment Paul had his apocalypse.”  According to Wilson, Paul’s genius shaped the Apostolic Church because he had a much wider experience of life in the Mediterranean world. He had also witnessed the religious experience of people other than Jews and their conversion to Christianity. This gave him a richer language-store and a different myth-experience, than some of the other NT writers whose “mythologies were limited to Jewish liturgy and folk-tale.”  (Wilson, 72-73) Thus he was chiefly responsible for transforming the Church into a Gentile institution.

 PSALM 30. This is a psalm of thanksgiving by a single individual for recovery from a near-fatal illness. Vss. 1-5 reflect this life-restoring experience. The illness had brought him so near to death that his healing was like redemption from the underworld (vs. 3). Thus his experience had given him a very personal sense of God’s favour as he offered his thanksgiving.

The next segment of the psalm (vss. 6-10) draws a picture of the psalmist’s former prosperity and false confidence: “I shall never be moved.” Devout though he may have been, he had been stricken with near fatal illness. He interpreted this as having overlooked the possibility that he might fall from God’s favour for no explicable reason other than that God might frown on him. In his distress, he cried out for help. His lament went so far as to employ the ancient belief that a deity with no one to praise him was extinct (vs. 9). In the end, it was God’s gracious initiative that saved him and gave him a new opportunity to sing God’s praise. (vss. 10-11)

W.R. Taylor, the exegete of this psalm in The Interpreter’s Bible (iv, 158), points to the superscription of the psalm as proof that the psalm came into liturgical use on the anniversaries of the dedication of the temple after the Maccabean Revolt of 165 BC. By then it was no longer a personal hymn of thanksgiving, but had become an expression of national faith that their survival was God’s doing and due solely to God’s grace and power. Such references to deliverance from death also make it relevant during the Christian celebration of Easter.

 REVELATION 5:11-14. This excerpt from John’s vision of the scroll (vss. 1-14) has lent itself to several interpretations. According to the late Professor George Caird, the scroll contains “God’s redemptive plan, foreshadowed by the OT, by which he means to assert his sovereignty over the sinful world and so achieves the purpose of creation….The redemptive plan, initiated by the archetypal victory of Christ, awaits further fulfilment in the victory of the Conquerors, which will contribute to the final victory of God.” (G.B. Caird. The Revelation of St. John the Divine. Black’s New Testament Commentary. London: Adam & Charles Black, 1966. p. 72.)

In John’s vision, the Lamb had been given the authority to open the scroll revealing God’s purpose of redeeming all of creation. The Lamb, of course, is the symbol for the crucified Christ whose victory over death is the beginning of God’s final redemption. To make God’s redemptive purpose known to the whole world is the task of the church, “the royal house of priests” drawn “from every tribe, tongue, people and nation” (vs.10) and here represented by twenty-four elders (vs. 8), twelve for the tribes of the Older Covenant and twelve for the New Israel, the Church.

Caird noted that John does not think of Christ has withdrawn from the scene of his earthly victory to return only at the Parousia. Rather, his faithful followers continue to exercise his royal and priestly functions.

(cf.. 1 Peter 2:9-10) Further, Caird identified the similarity between John’s and Paul’s thinking about the cross: God had already reconciled the whole universe to himself (Col. 1:20). To make this act of amnesty and reconciliation known to the world is the task of the church. Yet the success of God’s holy purpose in already being celebrated in the heavenly court.

 JOHN 21:1-19. By scholarly consensus, this chapter is now regarded as an appendix to the Gospel. Jesus’ final post-resurrection appearance took place in Galilee where several of the disciples had returned to fishing. William Barclay clarified the quadruple intent of the chapter: to prove that Jesus had indeed been raised from the dead; to proclaim the universality of the church; to re-establish the leadership of Peter in the apostolic church; and to point to John as the last of the apostolic witnesses. Each of these purposes is substantiated in the details of the story.

Who but someone who knew the Sea of Galilee would have been able to tell the fishermen where to cast their nets? Barclay described how two modern travelers in the Holy Land, W.M Thomson in The Land and the Book and H.V. Morton, saw something very similar to this happen. Who but a close friend would have prepared a seaside breakfast for the weary fishermen?

As in the pericope about the empty tomb, it was John who first recognized the reality of the situation: that Jesus was calling to them from the beach. But it was Peter who took action by jumping into the water and wading ashore to greet him. The fire, the fish and the bread are not merely symbolic details with which John so dearly liked to embellish his stories. They were real evidence for John’s community that Jesus was alive.

The 153 fish have something more to tell us. Barclay recounts three of the many ingenious suggestions as to their meaning. He concludes, however, that the net is a symbol of the universal church which is large enough and strong enough to embrace people of all nations. Inclusiveness and diversity are its chief characteristics.

That Peter drew the net to the shore led to his later conversation with Jesus. This exchange with its thrice repeated question and command, “Do you love me?… Feed my sheep” is the way John told how Peter was reinstated as the pastoral leader of the church. This must have had special meaning for John’s community for whom the Apostle John was the dominant personality among the disciples. We know that some sense of rivalry as to who was the greatest did exist. This was John’s way of saying that each had his special gifts to bring to the young church, gifts which Christ himself had fully recognized and acknowledged.

Finally, John’s contribution was not overlooked. Whereas Peter was named the pastoral leader of the church, John was the longest surviving witness to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Quite possibly, John had just died, or was still alive, but no longer capable of any activity. The Parousia which had been expected within the lifetime of the apostles had still not occurred. The author of the Fourth Gospel used this exchange between Peter and Jesus about John to deal with this concern in his own community. Christ will come according to his own and God’s timing, unhastened by our anxiety in waiting or desire to see the end.

PREACHING POINTS. 

• These readings all contribute to the theological truth of what German scholars call heilegeschicte – faith history. This concept developed from the Jewish conviction that God’s ultimate purpose was being worked out in the history of Israel. The Apostolic Church with its base in Hebrew scriptures and theology also adopted this approach to its destiny. The Book of Revelation expressed this faith through the mystical visions of John.

• Well into the 20^th century two British historians Arnold Toynbee (1889 -1975) and Herbert Butterfield (1900 – 1979) similarly believed that instances of the hand of divine providence could be discerned in human history. Toynbee saw it in the rise and fall of civilizations. Butterfield saw it in the hard won victory of the two World Wars of the 20^th century and the hope for more peaceful, cooperative times in the future.

• The fundamentalist belief that the Rapture will happen any day now and can be discerned in the events reported in the media tries to convey a similar point of view. But this is not a conviction expressed in the Christian scriptures. Its roots are found instead in the late 19^th century “premillinarian dispensationalism” of English evangelical preacher John Darby. (The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation. By Barbara R. Rossing Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, 2004, Hardback, 212pp., $24.00).

• A small chapel at Tabgha on the Sea of Galilee not far from Capernaum marks the site where the incident recorded in John 21 is traditionally believed to have occurred. (http://www.sacred-destinations.com/israel/tabgha-church-of-primacy-of-peter.htm) Nearby are a spot where seven springs provide a flow of fresh water to the lake. Fish still gather there to feed on algae near the springs. Tabgha is an Arabic translation of the Greek word heptapegai which means “seven springs.” Thus, the great draught of fish drawn in by the fisherman may not have been so miraculous. Some scholars believe that the catch of 153 fish represents all the known nations of that time.

• A mosaic from a 4^th century CE chapel in the floor of the present chapel at Tabgha reveals nearby the traditional site of the feeding of the five thousand.

INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURE

Second Sunday of Easter  – April 11, 2010

ACTS 5:27-32. This incident must have taken place relatively soon after the resurrection. It illustrates the opposition to the preaching of the Gospel by the same religious authorities who had opposed Jesus and arranged his execution at the hands of the Romans.  In disobeying the orders of the Sanhedrin, the high council of Israel’s religious establishment, the apostles claimed to have a higher, divine authority for what they did. Christians have always faced such challenges to their loyalties and are forced to choose.

PSALM 150. In six short verses this liturgical psalm summons praise to God eleven times. It also presents us with answers to four questions: where, why, how and who is to offer this praise. A shout of praise, “Hallelujah!” (in English, “Praise the Lord!”) frames these exhortations so appropriate for the Easter season.

REVELATION 1:4-8. John addresses seven brief letters in 1:9-3:22 to the churches in the province of Asia (now western Turkey). The sacred number seven, the symbol for wholeness, represents the fullness of God’s activity and power. The passage also celebrates the crucifixion, resurrection and return of Jesus to the messianic community, the Church. As such it was intended as a capsule summary of the whole gospel proclaimed by the apostles.

JOHN 20:19-31. The story of Thomas’ doubt about Jesus’ resurrection has a very relevant message for us who still wrestle with our faith. The passage probably ended the original Gospel of John. Chapter 21 was added at a later date to deal with questions arising from the death of the Apostle John whose oral witness may lie behind the gospel.

A MORE COMPLETE ANALYSIS.

ACTS 5:27-32. This incident must have taken place relatively soon after the resurrection. It illustrates the opposition to the preaching of the Gospel by the same religious authorities who had opposed Jesus and arranged his execution at the hands of the Romans. Christians have always faced such challenges to their loyalties and are forced to choose.

At first, the apostolic community regarded itself as a Jewish sect presenting a new interpretation of the messianic tradition. They used Solomon’s Portico, an open, columned area completely surrounding the temple precincts as their centre of activity. There they proclaimed the resurrection of Jesus. This gave them maximum exposure to the general public who came to the temple to worship and offer their sacrifices. This made the party of the Sadducees extremely jealous. Not only was the high priest chosen from this party to represent the authority of God in Israel, they also rejected all belief in resurrection of the dead.

So the apostles were thrown into prison from which they were miraculously delivered. (5:17-21.) This incident became part of the tradition reported by word of mouth for a generation or more before being written down by Luke, the presumed author of this book. It illustrates the opposition to the preaching of the Gospel by the same people who had been so hostile to Jesus. Furthermore, In Luke’s day, perhaps as long as fifty or more years after this incident, the hostility between the Jewish authorities and the Christian community had become even stronger. The Pharisees had replaced the Sadducees as the religious establishment among the Diaspora after the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple in 70. Soon afterward, the Sadducees disappeared from Jewish religious history. By the time Acts was written in the 80s CE, Christians had taken their place in the enmity between the rival sects of Judaism. This would have been well-known to Luke’s Gentile audience because of Paul’s ministry among them.

In disobeying the orders of the Sanhedrin, the high council of Israel’s religious establishment, the apostles claimed to have a higher, divine authority for what they did. Christians have always faced such a challenge to their loyalties and are forced to choose. Today, with the negligible influence of the church in society, a similar situation pertains.

PSALM 150. As a fitting conclusion to the Psalter, in the short space of six verses, this liturgical psalm summons us to praise God eleven times. It also presents us with answers to four questions about this praise: Where is it to be offered? Vs.1b “in his sanctuary” – i.e. the temple. Why?  Vs. 2 “For his mighty deeds.” God’s activity is always located in a historical context. How? Vss. 3-5 With musical instruments of all kinds. One can hear the symphony of celebration as the instruments are named.  Who? Vs. 6 “Everything that breathes.”  Every living creature in its own way joins in the paean of praise for the Creator.

A shout of praise, “Hallelujah!” (in English, “Praise the Lord!”) frames these exhortations. Even more intriguing is the ever increasing crescendo conveyed by the hymn until the final verse. There the root word in Hebrew is neshamah which refers to a powerful blast of wind. Only under divine control could this become the “breath” of living creatures and the source of human inspiration. Perhaps Handel was onto something with his Hallelujah Chorus.

REVELATION 1:4-8. This passage forms the address of the whole book, but more particularly to the seven brief letters to the churches in the province of Asia (now western Turkey) which follow in chs. 2-3. In one sense it is also a summary of the teaching of the apostolic church at the end of the 1st century CE.

Seven, the symbol for wholeness, was regarded as a sacred number representing the Spirit of God in the fullness of God’s activity and power. John may also have had in mind the sevenfold spirit with which Isaiah 11:2 had said the Messiah was to be endowed. Also, in Zechariah 4:2 the prophet sees a candelabra with seven lamps representing the eyes of Yahweh “which range through the whole earth.” The traditional Jewish menorah is similarly designed to hold seven candles. Throughout Revelation, John makes extensive use of the OT images which, according the late Professor George Caird, of McGill and Oxford Universities, are the keys to his visions.

The passage also celebrates the crucifixion, resurrection and return of Jesus to the messianic community, the Church. Vs. 5 clarifies this in no uncertain terms. The greeting of grace and peace comes not only from the Eternal God “who is and was and is to come,” but from the whole church created by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and here represented by the seven spirits. Jesus is called “the faithful witness” (cf. 1 Timothy 6:13) and “the first born of the dead,” two striking Pauline phrases. He is also called “the ruler of the kings of the earth,” an adaptation of the messianic phrase of Psalm 89:27.

Once again reference to the crucifixion arises in vs. 5b in the loving sacrifice of the cross which gives freedom to the faithful and creates a royal priesthood serving God as Israel was intended to be in the covenant established on Mount Sinai. (Exodus 19:6 cf. 1 Peter 2:9-10.)

The expectation of the Parousia comes to the fore on vss. 7-8. Many interpreters assume that when the crucified Jesus returns triumphantly, those who did not first believe will lament their prospective doom (vs. 7b). Professor Caird believed that the lament will not be for themselves, but for him because they caused his wounds. His coming will be the coming of God, the familiar “I am” of both the OT and John’s Gospel. The omnipotence he will demonstrate will not be “the unlimited power of coercion but the power of invincible love.”  (Caird, George B. A Commentary on The Revelation of St. John the Divine.” London: Adam and Charles Black, 1966.)

JOHN 20:19-31. The story of Thomas’ doubt about Jesus’ resurrection has a very relevant message for us still. As vss. 30-31 suggest, it probably ended the original Gospel of John. Chapter 21 was added later to deal with questions arising from the death of the Apostle John whose oral witness may lie behind the gospel.

The appearance of Jesus in the room though the doors of the house were locked and the showing of the wounds in his hands and side has been used – perhaps too much – as evidence of the unusual nature of Jesus’ resurrection body. We must remember, however, that John was telling this story to a Gentile community some sixty years after the actual event. Like all people of the Hellenistic culture, they believed in the miraculous and in permeable boundaries between the spiritual realm and the real world. The whole point of the story for John’s community is in vs. 29.

In vss. 21-23, Jesus endows the apostolic community with the Holy Spirit and appears to give them the authority to forgive sins. But then, how and when did Thomas receive the Holy Spirit?  Some commentaries regard this incident as a variant of Matthew 18:18 added at a later date. Others regard it as the church’s mandate ordained by Christ and exercised through the priesthood. William Barclay adopts a genuinely Reformed view: “This sentence lays down the duty of the Church to convey forgiveness to the penitent in heart, and to warn the impenitent that they are forfeiting the mercy of God.”

For many modern church members, Thomas is the great hero of the resurrection appearances. He wanted facts, undeniable proof, not the word of other witnesses. Such incredulity misses the real point of this pericope. When presented with the opportunity, Thomas does not need the evidence. Jesus lives for him as Lord and God as a matter of faith without observing the pierced hand or thrusting his hand into Jesus’ wounded side. John drives the point home by assuring the members of his own community at the end of the 1st century CE that those who have not seen, yet believe, are the truly blessed.

The final words of the original Gospel acknowledge the existence of other events which he had not reported. “Other signs,” John called them, continuing his basic theme of signs. Throughout his gospel John used these signs – actually words and deed of Jesus – to point to Jesus as Israel’s true Messiah and the Son of God. He concludes with one last reference to a fundamental motif of the whole Gospel: faith in Jesus as the Messiah/Christ gives life to the believer.

Preaching Points:

• The Jewish prayer against heretics, known as the Twelfth Benediction used as part of the daily service in 1st century synagogues, was originally directed against the Sadducees. Under the leadership of Rabbi Gamaliel II (ca. 85-115 CE), it was revised and directed against Christians. Paul was a Pharisee and Jesus has been described as one too, although he often sparred with them as they followed his Galilean ministry. (A History of the Jews, 146. Paul Johnson. London:1987.)

• Many liturgists strongly recommend omitting Hallelujahs from worship during Lent. The multiplicity of them in Psalm 130 compensates for their absence.

• There is much that we do not know about Thomas and a great deal that has been assumed from later traditions of both Eastern and Western Churches. The name by which we know him is the Aramaic word for “twin.” His actual name is believed to have been Judas. Some commentators even regard him as the twin brother of Jesus, but with little proof. Most of the apocryphal works attributed to him have been dismissed as pseudographical and heretical. See these two sources for more details:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14658b.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_the_Apostle.

• In John 20:30 does the phrase “many other signs” also acknowledge the author’s awareness of other gospels which by that time were beginning to circulate through the Christian communities, as were the letters of Paul?

-30-

INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURE
Fifth Sunday after Epiphany
Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
February 7, 2010

ISAIAH 6:1-13. Here we have another classic example of a prophet called to a special ministry. As the smoke of the morning sacrifice wafted through the temple, Isaiah had a vision and heard an angelic voice praising the holiness of God. He then realized his own and his fellow Israelites’ unworthiness before God. One of the angelic beings touched his lips with a live coal, thus cleansing him to speak. Isaiah heard the voice of God calling for a messenger and he responded. But the message God gave him to deliver was one of unmitigated judgment.

PSALM 138. Unlike most of the psalms, this hymn of thanksgiving by an individual is thought to be from a small “Davidic collection.” (Psalms 138-145.) This meant that it was ascribed to King David rather than being composed by him. It expresses gratitude for God’s blessing as well as trust in God’s love and purpose.

1 CORINTHIANS 15:1-11. In this passage beginning his great confession of the resurrection, Paul states as simply as possible what he had learned from the apostles. He had met some of them – notably Peter (Cephas) and James – in Jerusalem when he returned there some time after his conversion. First, he concentrated on the facts he had been told. Could this summary have been what the apostles in the earliest Christian community were teaching in the first years after the resurrection? Then he too makes his claim as “the least of the apostles” and reiterates his dependence on God’s grace for that.

LUKE 5:1-11. Behind the gospels as we now have them, there was a long tradition of stories about Jesus’ teaching and miracles repeated by word of mouth before being put into written form. Toward the end of the 1st century CE Luke gave a much more elaborate story than either Mark or Matthew. He connects this story of a miraculous catch of fish with the calling of the first disciples. John tells it as one of Jesus’ resurrection appearances (John 21). Taken together, the tradition represents a promise of the ultimate success of the apostolic mission.

A MORE COMPLETE ANALYSIS.

ISAIAH 6:1-13. Here we have another classic example of a prophet called to a special ministry. My OT professor, the late Rev. Dr. R.B.Y Scott, made this passage the starting point for his lectures on prophecy. He had written a highly regarded book, The Relevance of the Prophets, and at the time he was lecturing to us at McGill in 1948, he was writing the introduction and exegesis of Isaiah 1-39 for The Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 5. His analysis of this passage in this latter volume is a valuable contribution to the understanding of prophetic visions and oracles.

The ancient temple in Jerusalem faced east. The daily sacrifice was offered as the sun rose over the horizon formed by the Mount of Olives. Rays from the rising sun flooded into the temple through its great doors causing its burnished gold and copper accouterments to shine gloriously. As the smoke of the morning sacrifice wafted through the temple, Isaiah, saw a vision and heard angelic voices praising the holiness of God.

Isaiah was possibly a cousin and certainly a courtier of King Uzziah, who had just died. Uzziah’s reign was one of the longest of the kings of Judah, 783-742 BCE. In his last years he suffered from leprosy and was replaced by his son Jotham as regent. This was also the time when Assyrian power was on the rise throughout ancient Mesopotamia and the wider Middle East. Uzziah’s reign included an expansion into both Philistine territory to the west that controlled trade routes to Egypt and Edom, to the south where there were valuable trade routes to Arabia. As the prophecies of Amos and Micah also reveal, this was a very prosperous period in the nation’s history.

In this passage Isaiah was in mourning and went into the temple, as was his wont, to offer a lament. As he worshiped in the familiar surroundings, he sensed the divine presence in a dramatic new way. God, of course, is invisible; yet Isaiah did have such a vision. Or was it just the hem of God’s robe and the attending seraphim, which represented the divine presence to him? Quickly afterward, Isaiah recognized his own unworthiness before God and that of his fellow Judeans. The experience overwhelmed him. That he should become the prophet to proclaim God’s judgment on his nation’s moral and spiritual decay was furthest from his imagination. Great revelations come to faithful men and women in the midst of the mundane experiences of life.

In Isaiah’s vision, one of the angelic beings touched his lips with a live coal from the altar, thus cleansing him to speak for God. He heard the voice of God calling for a messenger and he responded, “Here am I, send me.” But the message God gave him to deliver was one of unmitigated judgment. It must have been a fear-filled experience. To be called to speak God’s judgment against his own people would have frightened the most courageous of men or women in that day of woeful events as is in ours. One only has to hear or see to the attack ads created for contemporary political campaigns to realize how much the prophet exposes him or herself to community ridicule.

Yet there are men and women willing to present the divine alternatives to our petty human machinations of history. The people are the ground-breakers for new advances in faith and witness to the purposes of God in the world. It was so for Isaiah, who with Amos and Micah in the late 8th century BCE set forth a vision of divine justice and righteousness which remains as convincing for us as it was for them. These elements of Israelite prophecy had close affinity to the actual events of that time when the great empires of Assyria and Egypt were in conflict. Israel, the northern kingdom, and Judea itself was constantly threatened with invasion and the imposition of foreign religious practices.

PSALM 138. Unlike most of the psalms, this hymn of thanksgiving by an individual is thought to be from a small “Davidic collection.” (Psalms 138-145.) This meant that it was ascribed to King David rather than being composed by him.

There are some twenty such hymns of thanksgiving by individuals preserved in the religious literature of Israel. Isaiah 38:10-20 and Jonah 2:2-9 are examples found in the OT. The apocryphal books of Ecclessiasticus (Sirach), the Psalms of Solomon and the Odes of Solomon contain others.

Like most others, this psalm is from a post-exilic date. The absence of any thanksgiving sacrifice points to an unusual level of spiritual development rarely found except in some of the prophetic literature which condemned the temple sacrifices. Or it may date from a time before the reconstruction of the temple when the normal sacrifices could not be celebrated. It also reflects a universalism echoing that of Second Isaiah (vss. 4-6) for earthly kings are said to worship God as do the humble; and God does not despise their praise. The psalm ends with an declaration of trust in God’s love and purpose. Vs. 8 certainly provides a very preachable text.

1 CORINTHIANS 15:1-11. Paul states as simply as possible what he had learned from the apostles whom he met in Jerusalem when he returned there some time after his conversion. This probably occurred less than a decade after the resurrection. Some scholars believe it may have been no more than a year or two. Could this have been an early Christian creed? It summarizes what the apostles were teaching in those first years after that momentous event when the apostolic church was feeling the full flush of its new faith.

One point stands out in Paul’s repetition of this statement of faith. To him, the resurrection was something experienced by those few who had seen and spoken with the risen Christ. It was also Paul’s firm conviction that the same risen Lord had appeared to him on the Damascus Road. The ambiguity between faith and fact remains with the Christian community to this day. Faith does not attempt to be factual. Rather it expresses a spiritual interpretation of deep and often inexplicable psychic experiences. It uses the language of image, symbol and metaphor to describe what persons of faith have experienced amid the ebb and flow of ordinary events which a reporter or historian might well record differently as observed facts or strange myths.

The resurrection experience symbolized for Paul and the other apostles that Jesus Christ, who had been executed as a criminal, was very much alive. Death had not conquered him; he had conquered death and was now with them in spirit. There were still many living in Paul’s time who could testify to this experience. The reference to the risen Christ’s appearance to five hundred people may be an alternate reminiscence of Pentecost as that event had been told to Paul by the apostolic community.

Quite possibly Paul was the first to connect the death of Christ to the ancient Israelite tradition that sin could be forgiven by the shedding of blood. This belief had its roots in the ancient practices of offering sacrifices to the deity common to all ancient religious traditions. In some traditions human sacrifice had also been quite commonly practiced. Even in Israel as late as the 7th century BCE reign of Manasseh (ca. 687-642 BCE) there had been evidence of this. Among the Jews, animal sacrifice in lieu of human sacrifice was related closely to the celebration of the both Passover and Yom Kippur. In this context Paul interpreted the crucifixion of Jesus as a self-offering which had a similar effect of dealing with the human problem of sin and alienation from God.

Note too that Paul adds himself as “the least of the apostles.” One view of the narrative in Acts presents Paul and Peter as rivals for leadership of the Gentile mission. In Galatians and here, Paul gives some basis for this hypothesis. He numbers himself among the apostles, though with self-deprecating diminution. He goes on to reiterate his total dependence on God’s grace for his status and gives his fellow apostles credit where credit is due. They all share the resurrection faith which is the heart of the gospel for us as well.

LUKE 5:1-11. (Author’s note: This passage is also covered in a new blog posted here: http://studiesinluke.blogspot.com. Look on the list to the left for #7 – Calling The First Disciples. The content of this blog introduced a Bible study with a group of seniors at Glen Abbey United Church, Oakville,ON, Canada.)

Luke tells this story of a miraculous catch of fish in connection with the calling of the first disciples. His version is much more elaborate than the brief accounts of Mark and Matthew. John tells it as one of Jesus’ resurrection appearances (John 21). Behind the gospels as we now have them, there was a long tradition of stories about Jesus’ teaching and miracles repeated by word of mouth before being put into written form. Assuming that all versions referred to the same event, which some commentators doubt, they speak to the future mission of the apostolic church. It appears to be a promise of ultimate success though not without long and difficult toil on the part of the disciple community.

At first, the ekklesia (i.e. the apostolic church) meant simply a group of Jews of humble origins, many of them unlettered and poverty stricken, who had responded to the preaching of Jesus and believed in his resurrection. Then as now, fishing was not always a lucrative occupation, but one which required much skill and patience, hard work and long hours. These men were partners in a small business in which they had invested their whole lives. Catching and marketing of fresh fish, a major food in Galilee at the time, was not always a profitable trade. In that climate, the fish would have to be caught during the night and sold in the marketplace within a few hours. Often the results were disappointing. However, this story is told for its metaphorical significance rather than as a factual vignette of the harsh life of the Galilean fisherman.

Luke has a way of weaving the whole tradition into his story as he tells it. His audience was two generations removed from the events he narrates and unfamiliar with the places in which those events occurred. So he did not have to be concerned about chronological order. His intent was primarily evangelical. For instance, he has Peter call Jesus first “Master,” then “Lord.” Those are titles which Luke reserves for disciples. Non-disciples used the term, “Teacher.” The title “Lord” appears in Luke twenty-one times; twelve of them in pericopes peculiar to Luke. It can be argued that here Luke was thinking in post-resurrection terms when the apostles had fully realized that Jesus was the Messiah for whom such a title was appropriate. As has been pointed out many times, the original creed of the apostolic church was the simple statement, “Jesus is Lord.”

So also Peter’s confession of sinfulness in his plea that Jesus depart from him is appropriate to a post-resurrection attitude. It reiterates the gospel call to repentance as the antecedent to Christian discipleship. Luke had emphasized this as the message John the Baptist had preached (3:1-20) and which Peter had also proclaimed in his Pentecost sermon in Acts 2:38. It may also have some reference to Peter’s denial of Jesus in the court of the house of Caiaphas (22:54-60).

The late Professor G. B. Caird pointed to Jesus’ choice of these “hard-working but intensely loyal men, ever aware of their own shortcomings, as those whom he needed to carry the gospel into the world.” Does not the present evangelistic environment call for a disciple community of similarly dedicated, loyal and hard-working persons? Certainly not those who may lay claim to moral perfection or spiritual greatness would not fit the requirements. Caird’s analysis of this passage is a valuable contribution to the understanding of how prophetic visions and oracles affect us: “On Simon at least the impact he made was a profoundly moral one, resulting in a sense of sin. It was not the miracle that brought him to his knees but the grandeur of sheer goodness.” (Caird, G.B. Saint Luke. The Pelican New Testament Commentary, 1965.)

INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURE
First Sunday After Epiphany
The Baptism of Jesus

January 10, 2010

 ISAIAH 43:1-7. The passage is the concluding part of a longer poem beginning in 42:5. The unknown prophet of Israel’s Babylonian exile authored this poetic promise of the return of the exiles to their homeland. Like all prophets, he speaks for God, assuring those dwelling in foreign lands that, in spite of their great difficulties, they would be brought home. The basis for this beautifully expressed faith is God’s ancient covenant with Israel as God’s chosen people.

PSALM 29. This psalm begins with evidence of God’s omnipotence in a thunderstorm, which it describes very vividly. It goes on to point out that the God who can work such wonders can guarantee the people of God strength and peace, for the God of the nature is also the God of history.

ACTS 8:14-17. The Philip of the passage immediately preceding this story (8:4-12) is not one of the apostles, but a deacon and evangelist. He was one of several Greek-speaking Christians appointed to help the apostles. (Acts 6:1-6) He had been forced to flee from Jerusalem after the death of his fellow evangelist, Stephen. This brief note points to a subtle development in the early church’s understanding of baptism and the special role of the apostles. For some reason, baptism by Philip “in the name of Jesus” had not been sufficient to bring upon some new converts the blessing of the Spirit.

LUKE 3:15-17, 21-22. Luke gives a much briefer account of Jesus’ baptism than the other gospels. It seems little more than an ending to his narrative about the ministry of John the Baptist. The essential details are the same, however. Luke records the actual baptism, the descent of the Spirit as a dove, and the divine blessing.

A MORE COMPLETE ANALYSIS

(NOTE: Understood from the Christian point of view, the theme of all these lessons for the First Sunday after Epiphany can be interpreted as the activities of God who is Spirit as the Creator and Redeemer of Israel, God’s people, and who has come again to recreate the world in Jesus Christ through the action of the Holy Spirit in ordinary men and women.)

ISAIAH 43:1-7. This passage forms the concluding part of a longer poem beginning in 42:5. The unknown prophet of Israel’s Babylonian exile, called Deutero – or Second Isaiah, authored this poetic promise of the return of the exiles to their homeland in Judea. Like all prophets, he spoke for Yahweh, assuring those dwelling in foreign lands that, despite of their great difficulties, they would be brought home. The basis for this beautifully expressed faith was Yahweh’s ancient covenant with Israel as Yahweh’s chosen people. No other theme so dominated the Hebrew understanding of the countless events of their long experience as a much oppressed people.

This part of the poem emphasized the intervention of Yahweh so that Israel could fulfill its divinely ordained redemptive purpose. Revelation, creation and redemption formed the triple intent of Yahweh’s activity in Israel’s history, the one closely following on the other. Redemption was costly, however. Vs. 4 expressed the true measure of Israel’s value. Other nations and peoples would be given in return for Israel, i.e. Yahweh’s people would be ransomed.

The element of ransom had always been present in the Hebrew concept of redemption. In vss. 3-4, Egypt, Ethiopia and Sheba were the price paid for Israel’s freedom. This may well reflect the volatile period during which many Jews did return from exile in Babylon. The dominant Babylonian empire had fallen to Cyrus, king of Persia, in 539 BCE. After the death of Cyrus (c. 530 BCE) his son and successor, Cambyses, invaded Egypt, never to return home. It is now believed that skeleton’s of his army, 30,000 strong, have been re-discovered recently in a sand-swept wasteland in western Egypt where they perished in a sandstorm.

Rival usurpers vied for control of the empire until Darius emerged triumphant is 522 BCE. During this period, the returning Jews lived a very perilous existence as they struggled to reclaim independence and rebuild their temple under the governor, Zerubbabel, a sion of the house of David. The prophet may well have expected such turbulent times as inevitable or the passage may have been adapted after the fact to include these references.

The repeated imperative, “Do not fear,” (vss. 1 & 5) provided encouragement for Israel. In both instances, a reassuring proclamation followed the command. In vss. 1-2, Yahweh claimed Israel as a sacred possession and promised to accompany them through deep waters and consuming fires. These images may be reminiscent of dangers encountered in the Exodus although the long journey from Babylon to Judea did involved crossing great rivers, passing through burning-hot desert, and possibly also settled areas where they would have to fight their way onward. In vss. 5-7, Yahweh promised to be present with them as the exiles made their way home to Judea.

The 18th century hymn, “How firm a foundation,” drew extensively on these same images. The unknown author of that hymn, however, made reference to the grace of God in Jesus Christ as the source of reassurance rather the covenant of Yahweh with Israel as this prophecy had done.

PSALM 29. This psalm begins with evidence of God’s omnipotence in a thunderstorm, which it describes very vividly. Before that, however, there is a description of angelic beings in a heavenly temple robed as ministering priests in a sacred procession summoned to praise Yahweh (vss 1-2). Then the psalmist hears the voice of Yahweh as the roll of approaching thunder.

Such thunderstorms are not common in Palestine. During the autumn and spring, cold fronts do sweep in from the northwest to break over the mountains of Lebanon and bring much needed rain to the whole of Israel, especially Galilee and the coastal plain. With no knowledge of modern meteorology, the psalmist could only see the storm’s effects as lightning flashed and thunder crashed overhead. His vivid description in vss. 5-9 conveys an unsurpassed realism for anyone who has ever been out in a violent storm such as this.

Vs. 10 refers to the traditional cosmology of the Bible where rain came from the heavenly ocean or flood above the clouds (cf. Gen. 7:11; Ps. 104:3). Yahweh’s throne was situated above the ocean from which Yahweh could command the loosing or restraining of its waters.

This vision of Yahweh in command of a mighty storm reminds the psalmist that the One who can work such natural wonders can guarantee Israel strength and peace, for the Yahweh who controls nature is also the One who controls history.

ACTS 8:14-17. The Philip of the passage immediately preceding this story is not one of the apostles, but a deacon and evangelist with particular gifts. He was one of several Greek-speaking Christians appointed to help the apostles. (Acts 6:1-6) He had been forced to flee from Jerusalem after the death of his fellow deacon, Stephen. Like Stephen, he appears to have preached and baptized first in Samaria with some startling results. Despite having received the apostolic laying on of hands, the apostolic community in Jerusalem do not seem to have been so sure of his effectiveness. So they sent Peter and John to investigate and improve upon the baptism Philip had offered those who believed.

There is much that is troubling about this pericope. Why was Philip’s ministry insufficient? Was Philip regarded as little more than a magician, by both the Samaritans and the apostles? Did his miracles (vss. 6-7) attract so much attention that the gospel message did not get through to the Samaritans? Did the conversion of Simon the magician detract too much from Philip’s preaching? If Philip, Stephen and the other deacons had been chosen because they were “full of faith and the Holy Spirit,” how could the Spirit be under the control of the apostles alone? Were these questions about what we call “apostolic succession?”

Does this not reflect an ecclesiology of a later period when apostolic confirmation had become the prerogative of the episcopacy? Some scholars argue that Acts – or portions of it – date from the early 2nd century and that this passage may be one of those excerpts. This reading, along with 9:32-11:18 and 12:1-23, presents Peter as having the same kind of mission to the Gentiles as did Paul. Does this point to a certain rivalry within the community for which Acts was written or redacted from earlier documents?

This brief note points to a subtle development in the early church’s understanding of baptism and the special role of the apostles. In many respects the lectionary misleads the reader from the intent of the whole narrative of Philip’s ministry and the apostle’s confrontation with Simon (8:4-25). “Simony” was known to have been a problem within the church at certain times. Isn’t it still?

The action by the apostles extends the practice of baptism to include the laying on of hands. It may be that this was a unique development by the apostolic church. After all, John the Baptist had practiced baptism for the repentant as had Judaism for proselytes converted from other traditions. But these were acts of moral purification. The unique aspect of Christian baptism was that by this sacramental act the gift of the Holy Spirit came upon the believers; they were en-Christ-ed, i.e. christened. On the other hand, Paul makes no mention at all of the laying on of hands as part of baptism. The practice may well be a later development, although laying on of hands was common in OT blessings and certain sacrificial rites. It was also used for healing in many gospel pericopes.

However, several OT references do relate purification by water to the gift of a new spirit (e.g. Ezek. 36:25-26; Ps. 51). It was not any power inherent in the water, but the action of God’s Spirit which initiated new life. Baptism not only symbolized a new way of life, but admission to a new community, as it did in the Essenes who probably composed the Dead Sea Scrolls. In Acts, the apostolic church acknowledged that by baptism God added new members to its fellowship. But on some occasions the gift of the Spirit preceded the act of baptism (e.g. Acts 2:4, 41; 10:44-48). The only satisfactory conclusion is that the apostolic church learned through practice what baptism is and what it meant. 1 Peter 3:18-22 appears to present a summary of what baptism ultimately came to mean to the early church and how this related to history, worship and mission of Israel.

LUKE 3:15-17, 21-22. Luke gives a much briefer account of Jesus’ baptism than the other gospels. It seems little more than an ending to his narrative about the ministry of John the Baptist. The essential details are the same, however, if perfunctory. Luke records the actual baptism, the descent of the Spirit as a dove, and the divine blessing. There are, however, some significant aspects to this brief narrative.

As noted previously, baptism was common in the Jewish tradition; but not for all people. Ritual bathing had great symbolic meaning for priests, Levites and Pharisees. Considering the shortage of water in Palestine, ritual bathing by the common people must have been regarded as a significantly holy act. However, this was not regarded in the same light as proselytes receiving baptism marking the cleansing of their pagan ways and acceptance into the covenant community. John did preach repentance of sins and baptized those who responded, thereby acknowledging their sinfulness and being immersed in water as a sign of their cleansing. Did Jesus also feel the need to be cleansed, he whom the whole NT testifies as having no sin or ever being alienated from God?

Another possibility exists: Jesus had reached the point in his own spiritual growth where he was acutely aware of his filial relationship to God and of his divinely appointed mission. Consequently, he felt the need to identify himself with all the people whom he intended to bring into a similar intimate fellowship with God. His messianic role had become that of a mediator. Luke captured these filial and mediatorial elements of Jesus’ baptism in the tightly worded sentences of vss. 21-22. Behind this profound experience lay long years of personal development, of growing insight into the scriptures of his Jewish tradition and their application to his own life (cf. Luke 2:41-52).

The moment had come for him commit himself, to move out into a wider community than his carpenter shop in the small village of Nazareth. Henceforth he would make known to whomsoever would listen what was involved in a life lived totally within the reign of God’s love. He would live in such a way that people would see that Israel’s messianic promise could only be fulfilled in such a totally committed life. Jesus’ baptizing kinsman provided the opportunity for taking action to fulfill this commitment. The vision of the dove symbolized the gift of the Holy Spirit, something he alone experienced in Luke’s account.

Did Luke describe it this way to identify Jesus’ absolute divinity in a manner corresponding to the narrative of his conception? The words from heaven gave final, divine approval to the course he had chosen as a human. Was he also aware at this time what the cost would be? Had he yet come to grips with the implications of being the Servant of Yahweh in the mold of Isaiah 53?