John Shearman's Lectionary

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
Ash Wednesday, February 17, 2010

JOEL 2:1-2, 12-17. With the warning sound of trumpets, the prophet sounds the alarm that the fearsome Day of the Lord is at hand. There is still time to repent, though there may still be uncertainty that all the fasting a sacrifices will be sufficient to dissuade Yahweh from punishing wayward Israel.

ISAIAH 58:1-12 . (Alternate) Countering the popular displays of repentance by fasting, the prophet pleads that Israel’s returned exiles make justice their true form of repentance. Only then will the Lord restore their prosperity and rebuild their ruined cities.

PSALM 51:1-17. As the sub-title indicates, this classic psalm of repentance has traditionally been connected with David’s adultery with Bathsheba. Many scholars doubt this reference. It could just as well be read as the sincere expression of penitence by any sinner at any time.

2 CORINTHIANS 5:20b – 6:10. Paul quite rightly linked the Christian message of reconciliation with God to the ministry of every Christian. He cited plainly the many difficulties he had experienced in carrying out this ministry and the plethora of spiritual gifts he had been given to do it.

MATTHEW 6:1-6, 16-21. From the collection of sayings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount comes this insightful observation: The essence of true penitential prayer is to be found in its secretive quality. On the other hand, making a public display for self-centred reasons is the essence of hypocrisy.

A MORE COMPLETE ANALYSIS.

Liturgical and popular practices related to Shrove Tuesday, Ash Wednesday and Lent developed relatively late in the history of the Christian Church. Even in the Roman Catholic tradition, these special days of penitence and spiritual renewal have been widely celebrated only since the year 1000. In recent years, many churches of the Protestant tradition, which rejected them almost totally at the time of the Reformation, have taken them up again. Liturgical practices of penitence, however, have a sound biblical background as the lessons assigned for Ash Wednesday clearly reveal.

JOEL 2:1-2, 12-17. Joel is one of the unknown prophets of the OT. Scholars have noted a close resemblance of his writings with those of the better known 8th century BCE prophet, Amos. Unlike Amos, he was concerned with worship of the temple, most likely the Second Temple of the post-exilic period. Many
scholars believe that his work dates from a relatively peaceful time during the late Persian period, ca. 400 BCE, when the leadership of Israel had, to a considerable extent, fallen to the high priesthood. Joel’s great hope lay in the restoration of the nation to its previously privileged role as the divinely chosen people. He couched this hope in strong apocalyptic terms recalling the declarations of earlier prophets.

With the warning sound of trumpets, the prophet sounds the alarm that the fearsome Day of the Lord is at hand. There is still time to repent, though there May still be uncertainty that all the fasting a sacrifices will be sufficient to dissuade Yahweh from punishing wayward Israel.

The emphasis on liturgical practices in vss. 12, 14 and 15-17 shows how deeply committed Joel was to the traditional ways of showing that penitence was real. On the other hand, vs. 13 contains the classic expression of the Israel’s faith in the divine qualities of grace, mercy, slowness to anger and abounding steadfast love.

ISAIAH 58:1-12. (Alternate) Countering the popular displays of repentance by fasting, the prophet pleads that Israel’s returned exiles make justice for the oppressed their true form of repentance. Only then will the Lord restore their prosperity and rebuild their ruined cities.

In vss. 1-5, after sounding a trumpet (shofar – a ram’s horn) to get the people’s attention, the prophet condemns in the most adamant terms the proffered symbols of repentance. Fasting in particular receives his vituperative censure. Coupled with this, he warns the people that this will not get Yahweh’s attention.

Beginning with vs. 6, he then goes on to delineate the kind of repentance Yahweh seeks: social justice for the oppressed, the homeless and the poor. Only this will receive Yahweh’s blessing and result in Yahweh’s gifts of prosperity thus enabling them to rebuild their ruined cities.

The historical allusions in this passage point to the decades immediately following the return of the exiles from Babylon. Impoverished and dispirited, they failed to recognize that true repentance had to be implemented by a sharing of limited resources. This could be read as a powerful message for our own time when globalization has created a still wider gap between rich and poor. Times like these call for an even greater commitment to social justice, not only within one nation but throughout the global village. Would it not be an appropriate measure of our repentance to increase our gifts to those less fortunate than ourselves – the Haitian disaster relief, for instance – than to “give up” anything else for Lent.

PSALM 51:1-17. As the sub-title indicates, this classic psalm of repentance has traditionally been connected with David’s adultery with Bathsheba. Many scholars doubt this reference, yet it finds persistent expression in many pulpits. The actual historical incident behind the psalm, if any, remains unknown. The final two verses omitted from this reading suggest a post-exilic date when ritual sacrifices would have been offered in the restored temple in Jerusalem. The earlier verses could just as well be read as the sincere expression of penitence by any sinner at any time. Indeed, many a despondent soul has found them helpful in saying what one’s own words cannot say. They open the penitent heart to God.

Many have found the words of vs. 5 very troublesome. The KJV appear to shift blame for one’s evil behaviour on to one’s parents, grandparents and beyond. This may be in keeping with the OT tradition voiced in Exodus 20:5 where “the iniquity of the fathers (is visited) upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate (Yahweh).” (See also Exodus 34:6-8; Number 14:17-19; Deuteronomy 5:8-10) While modern psychology may recognize that behaviour often has roots in family systems of long standing, that is not the import of more recent translations of the text. The NRSV wording, “I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me,” presents a paraphrase of the Hebrew, which definitely implies parental iniquity. Another view holds that the literal translation anticipates a later Jewish concept of evil inclination. We are all sinners alienated from God and never were anything else.

Many sins remain quite unknown to the sinner. It takes a deep examination of the soul to recognize that some things we do can never be sanctioned by God, although sinners are never beyond sanctification. “A clean heart and a right spirit” do come from an examination of one’s actual relationship with God and the acceptance of divine forgiveness. It results from the work of the Holy Spirit within us (vss. 10-11) and brings more than joy to the forgiven sinner. One remains a sinner, but now as a forgiven sinner one gains a mission. Not only do the sinner’s ways change, but one becomes a messenger of God’s grace for others.

Perhaps more than any other institution in the past century, Alcoholics Anonymous has fulfilled this mission in North American society through its twelve step program. Anyone who has shared in this mission even to a minor extent knows how sacrificial it can be. Vs.17 truly expresses the reward of the acceptable sacrifice. Was this not also what voiced in Romans 12:1-2 and again in the next passage assigned for Ash Wednesday?

2 CORINTHIANS 5:20b – 6:10. Paul quite rightly linked the Christian message of reconciliation with God to the ministry of every Christian. He cited plainly the many difficulties he had experienced in carrying out this ministry and the plethora of spiritual gifts he had been given to do it. Paul’s ministry began when he met the risen Christ on the Damascus Road. We do not know the exact nature of the psychic experience of the encounter, but we do know what followed: a life totally dedicated to bringing the gospel to Jews and Gentiles alike. Wherever he went, he became the perfect example of an ambassador for Christ.

This passage deals with the challenges of such a positive ministry in direct contrast to the negative aspects of Lent that we so often emphasize. The first step is to be reconciled to God oneself. That took a considerable length of time for Paul. It is not possible to discover his exact movements in those early years because the narrative of Acts 9:26-30 do not completely correspond to his own account in Galatians 1:17. In his Corinthians letters, Paul did make a strong case for the severity of his trials as an apostle. In 2 Cor. 6:4-5 he quickly summarizes some of these, but vss. 6-10 balances them with an even longer list of the gifts he had been given to overcome them.

One thinks immediately of 20th century heroes of faith such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela whose lives similarly exemplified what Paul saw as being an ambassador for Christ. It is not the worthiness of character or the depths of one’s penitence, but the spiritual gifts provided by the Holy Spirit that gives such men and women the power to be who they are. Moral authority springs from encountering Christ in what was for Paul and countless others since a life-changing experience that enabled them to change the history of the their own and subsequent times.

MATTHEW 6:1-6, 16-21. From the collection of sayings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount comes this insightful observation: The essence of true penitential prayer is to be found in its secretive quality. On the other hand, making a public display for self-centred reasons is the essence of hypocrisy.

Few of us have a memorable skill in prayer. Even those who practice silent, contemplative prayer often have difficulty concentrating for any length of time. The human mind is so easily distracted by what is happening around us. For this reason, the counsel Jesus gave in this excerpt could be useful to everyone who sincerely desires to experience the presence of God in prayer. He himself took time apart for personal spiritual renewal in prayer in quiet places apart from the crowds that constantly pressed around him.

Jesus was also saying that ostentatious piety, expressed either in the mellifluous words of prayer or the giving of substantial gifts to the poor, only affect one’s spiritual health in negative ways. Those who seek to do this for personal aggrandizement receive just that kind of reward. In the Hebrew language there was no word for what we call “alms.” In that tradition, however, generosity to the poor was both required and praised (e.g. Deut. 15:11; Job 29:11-16). In the Sermon on the Mount, piety and almsgiving are synonymous. Paul urged his communities to make special efforts to remember the poor. Without question, this must be one aspect of a sincere response to God, not the chief means of obtaining such a relationship.

In the second part of this reading, Jesus similarly discredited ostentatious fasting, although that too had been an ancient tradition in Israel. The great liturgical fast occurred on the Day of Atonement. It could be undertaken on other occasions too: in personal mourning, intercession or petition for Yahweh’s aid, or as a national act in the face of some calamity. Total abstinence from food indicated absolute dependence on and submission to Yahweh. As we saw in the reading from Isaiah 58 above, the prophetic view held that whatever moral value fasting might have should be enhanced by compassion for the poor and continual social justice.

It would appear that in Jesus time, despite there being a strong connection between fasting and prayer, the practice had become something of a fetish for the publicly pious. Is our use of ashes spotting the forehead a similar ostentation? Did Jesus direct the main thrust of this passage at the Pharisees in particular? Their meticulous attention to details of the law would have made them a prime target for his sarcasm. He directed his followers to do their fasting in private and with certain aspects of rejoicing. Unlike John the Baptist and the Pharisees, he did not urge them to be too strict about it. Primarily, he recognized it as a spiritual discipline.

Perhaps it was for this reason that the early church adopted the practice, especially in preparation for baptism. By the late 4th century, Cyril of Jerusalem was counseling a forty day pre-baptismal fast prior to Easter, the traditional time for baptizing new catechumens. By the 5th century it had become the subject of discussion as having an apostolic origin. Rightly or wrongly, this was the probable origin of the later Lenten fast. It is not impossible that the general practice of a Lenten fast made a spiritual virtue of a real necessity. During the Early Middle Ages (aka Dark Ages) food production had fallen to such a low level as to force the reduction of food consumption during the late winter and early spring. Our English word Lent itself is no more than a Germanic word for spring when the hours of daylight lengthen.