John Shearman's Lectionary

INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURE

 Proper 19   Ordinary 24

Sixteenth Sunday After Pentecost

September 12, 2010

JEREMIAH 4:11-12, 22-28. The threat of invasion by both Egypt and Babylon continued throughout the last 40 years of the nation’s independence until Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians first in 598 BCE and then was destroyed in 587 BCE. Few of the prophet’s many oracles express this threat more vividly than this one. His metaphors describing the defeat and desolation in this passage would strike with brutal force at the false security of the people in their sacred fortress city. Jeremiah saw all this as God’s doing, not the happenstance of history.

 PSALM 14. The psalmist who composed this poem at a time of atheism and depravity sought to draw the people back to their religious roots in the midst of accentuated foreign influences. This also followed the prophetic tradition of condemning the ungodly and defending the righteous and the poor.

EXODUS 32:7-14. (Alternate) In fury at the apostasy of the Israelites for worshipping a golden calf, God sends Moses down from Mount Sinai vowing to punish them for their sin. Moses pleads for the people asking God to remember the promises made to the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And God changed his mind.

PSALM 51:1-10. (Alternate) The superscript to this classic psalm of penitence is misleading. It really was not from King David, but was added much later to the original text. Nor does it have anything to do with original sin. Yet it remains one of the most sincere prayers of repentance seeking God’s forgiveness.

1 TIMOTHY 1:12-17. While this letter as a whole or in part may not be from the apostle Paul, this passage speaks of Paul’s persecution of the early church and his supreme gratitude for the grace of forgiveness and new life extended to him through Jesus Christ. It certainly reads like a very personal confession. It also expressed the deep experiential and theological truth that God’s grace, repentantly received, motivates the believer to thank and praise God.

 LUKE 15:1-10. These two vignettes from the daily life of a Palestinian peasant are often overlooked. They tell the story of God’s love for the lost and the wholly undeserved grace that offers full and free forgiveness to all who seek it. Both parables emphasize the joyful celebration when the lost is found. To God, everyone is important and graciously loved. No one is excluded, not even those who do not want to be found.

  A MORE COMPLETE ANALYSIS.

JEREMIAH 4:11-12, 22-28. By Jeremiah’s time in the last quarter of 7^th century BCE, only the Southern Kingdom – Judah – remained of the once great kingdom of David. The threat of invasion from Babylon to the east and Egypt to the west was real and almost constant during Jeremiah’s ministry. This threat continued over the last 40 years of the nation’s independence until the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians first in 598 BCE and finally with the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple in 587 BCE. Few of the prophet’s many oracles express this threat more vividly. His metaphors of destruction and desolation in this passage would have struck with brutal force at the false security of the people in their sacred fortress city. In the intervening verses excluded from the reading, anyone could easily identify from whence the threat came.

In vss. 11-12, the sirocco or khasmin, a blistering east wind from the Arabian desert, symbolizes the ominous threat. This suffocating, dry wind still frequently sweeps in across the Jordan valley and the Dead Sea carrying clouds of stinging sand with it. When it comes, everyone must retreat into whatever shelter to be found. Hence the reference that no winnowing of grain or cleansing of garments hung out to dry. The reference to the “bare heights” calls to mind the high cliffs on either side of the Jordan valley which cuts a deep trench between Israel and its eastern neighbours.

Vs. 22 explains the meaning of the metaphor: Yahweh’s judgment upon Israel for its lack of faithfulness to Yahweh’s covenant with them. Given the opportunity for spiritual growth, they had acted like children being silly at play as children so frequently do. Morally underdeveloped because of their apostasy, they were far more skilled at doing evil than good.

Vss. 23-26 may be from a different oracle. Some scholars doubt that it was from Jeremiah at all because it contains eschatological references which are rare in the prophet’s other oracles. In vs. 23, the vision of the earth “waste and void” recalls Genesis 1:2 and, in fact, the Hebrew words are the same in that context. This whole segment elicits the chaotic pre-creation scene.

Vs. 27 is similarly controversial to many scholars who follow Peake’s Commentary in calling it “an unmitigated gloss” influenced by 5:10 and 18, which also promise that “a full end” is not Yahweh’s intention. This is immediately contradicted by vs. 28 promising a desolation imposed unsparingly by Yahweh’s command. However this segment may have been included, it gives the passage a vision of the desolation of the land resulting from the apostasy of the people. There is also the possibility that this segment of the passage could have been written after the destruction of Jerusalem when the disaster was still fresh in memory.

PSALM 14. This same psalm reappears slightly modified as Psalm 53, probably owing to its inclusion in two originally independent collections. Comparing the two psalms, especially 14:5-6 and 53:5 reveals something of the difficulties in the transmission of a particular text. Using the Greek Septuagint and other translations, scholars debate what the original behind both versions might have been.

But does this really affect the interpretation of the psalm, as some have suggested? Is there not some reference to the Wisdom period in such contrasts as “the fool” in vs.1 and “the wise” in vs.2? That the psalmist composed the poem at a time of atheism and depravity suggests the Greek period when the authors of Israel’s Wisdom literature sought to draw the people back to their religious roots in the midst of extreme foreign influences. This also followed the prophetic tradition evidenced in the vehemence of the psalmist’s condemnation of the ungodly and the defense of the righteous and the poor (vss.5-6).

The condemnation in vss. 3-4 includes the whole of society, presumably the priesthood too. An alternate reading of vs. 4b might be: “who eat up my people; they eat the bread of Yahweh, but call not on him.” Provision of food for the priesthood actually was one of the functions of the sacrificial system in the temple. A portion of every sacrifice was reserved for the use of the priests. Indeed, the poem has elements of biting sarcasm against the priests as conveyed in vs. 7.

While emphasizing the doom that awaits the faithless when Yahweh intervenes on behalf of the faithful, the psalm ends with a hopeful prayer. This points toward an eschatological conclusion, further indicating that the psalm comes from the transitional Greek period of Israel’s religious history after Alexander the Great captured Jerusalem in 333 BCE. With spiritual leadership at low ebb and deliverance not imminent, hope of salvation had been pushed into the far future.

 EXODUS 32:7-14. (Alternate) It is a pity that this brief excerpt from a great story of the Israelites worshipping a golden calf is all that we are given here. The whole story is worth setting aside all else in the Revised Common Lectionary for this week and giving it sound interpretation.

The golden calf, of course, was the kind of totem found in many early Middle Eastern and numerous other religious traditions.  It symbolized the fertility of nature and the flocks of pastoral peoples. Cecil B. DeMilles’ movie Exodus graphically displayed the sexual promiscuity associated with these religious rites.  In effect, the Israelites were returning to a familiar, but more primitive religious system than the moral monotheism to which Moses was leading them under Yahweh’s direction.

In this excerpt Yahweh shows a fury reminiscent of any human potentate frustrated by the misbehaviour of wayward subjects. In response to the apostasy of the Israelites for worshiping a golden calf instead of their deity revealed in the Decalogue, Yahweh sent Moses down from Mount Sinai vowing to avenge his injured pride. Moses pleads for the people asking Yahweh to remember the promises made long before to the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Indeed, Moses’ plea sounds more like a rebuke. Convinced by Moses’ argument Yahweh changed his mind.

That in itself is a revelatory moment. Yahweh does indeed change, becoming one who forgives, if only relenting from punishing the Israelites for a time and giving them an opportunity to repent.

 PSALM 51:1-10. (Alternate) The superscript to this classic psalm of penitence is misleading. It was added much later to the original text. It really was not from King David, nor had it anything to do with his adulterous relationship with Bathsheba. Contrary to later Christian interpretation of vs. 5, it does it have anything to do with original sin. Yet it remains one of the most sincere prayers of repentance seeking God’s forgiveness.

Very much aware of his sinful nature, however, (vs. 3) the psalmist accepts God’s judgment as completely justified (vs. 4). He pleads for cleansing, especially from those hidden iniquities of which a sensitive conscience is all to aware. In the depths of contrition, he acknowledges his true character.

He also acknowledges the kind of person whom the Lord desires him to be – truthful, wise in the ways of God and purged of all his self-deceiving tendencies. He longs to rejoice in righteous living springing from a clean heart and a renewed spiritual integrity (vss. 8-10).

How many conscience stricken souls have turned to this psalm as the antidote to a burden of guilt of which we long to be relieved? Despite unfortunate misinterpretations, it still rings true as the faithful expression of the penitent soul.

 1 TIMOTHY 1:12-17. Bible scholars still debate whether the Letters to Timothy and Titus were from the apostle Paul or from another Christian leader of a later generation who knew the apostle’s earlier correspondence very well. Since the middle of the 18^th century they have been generally referred to as the Pastoral Letters. They were certainly composed as pastoral letters to churches at a time of transition when faithful discipleship is called for – just like today!

Arguments against original Pauline authorship include a distinctive vocabulary and style, theological concepts, church order, credal tradition, and the problem of fitting their composition into a chronology of Paul’s ministry. Another theory argues for Pauline authorship on hypotheses that elicit even more difficulties such as the presumed release of the apostle from prison in Rome and a journey to Spain prior to a second imprisonment and execution. Or, as yet another theory contends, the letters are the work of a secretary to whom Paul gave almost total freedom of composition.

One popular theory proposes that the unknown author had before him fragments of authentic letters from Paul which he used to deal with issues in a different context at a later period. Yet a fifth hypothesis points to a composition as a literary artefact similar to others known from the late 1st century Roman literature to which personal references were added to create verisimilitude and to present Paul as an apostolic example to be followed. As yet, there is no final proof for any of these theories, and perhaps there never will be. Consensus appears to have settled on a non-Pauline author who had access to some original letters by Paul, but the date of their composition varies from 85 to 120 CE or even later.

This passage speaks of Paul’s persecution of the early church and his supreme gratitude for the grace of forgiveness and change extended to him by Jesus Christ. It certainly reads like a personal confession. Yet it also expressed a deep experiential and theological truth: the efficacy of grace repentantly received for which the believer can only thank and praise God.

As William Barclay stated in his extended analysis of the passage, Paul gave thanks that he had been saved in order that he might serve Christ. His conversion came about because of the sheer mercy of Christ, not through any initiative of his own. Remembering his former life was at once a source of great shame and also of great inspiration. He did not brood over his sin in an unhealthily depression. Rather, he remembered it as the means God had used to awaken him to rejoice in the greatness of God’s grace in Jesus Christ. Hence the doxology with which the passage ends. (See Barclay, William. Daily Bible Readings: The Epistles to Timothy and Titus. Edinburgh: Church of Scotland, 1956.)

Trust and acceptance play a considerable role in “Paul’s” thinking at this point. He had been trusted with the task of bringing the gospel to the Gentiles. Accepted by God for the man he was, he had accepted this heavy responsibility in the face of strong opposition by the Jerusalem apostles as well as his fellow Jews. Now he wanted nothing more than to have his hearers accept his message: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” In vs. 18, he urges Timothy to make this his mandate too.

LUKE 15:1-10. These two vignettes from the daily life of a Palestinian peasant are often overlooked because of their proximity to the much more familiar parable that follows. They tell the story of God’s love for the lost and God’s wholly undeserved grace that offers full and free forgiveness. Note that both parables emphasize the joyful celebration when the lost article is found. The allusion is to God’s joy over a sinner who repents. To God, everyone is important – and loved with an indiscriminate love. No one is excluded. This crucially significant truth speaks to our time when doubt and disbelief often overwhelm faith and guilt causes some to separate from the Christian community. In each of these two parables, we have profound theology spoken with great simplicity.

But think of how these stories may have occurred to Jesus? His home in Nazareth was on the northern slope of a low range of rugged hills overlooking the rich agricultural region, the Plain of Esraeldon. The hills were too rocky only for anything but herding sheep. How many times has he seen or had helped his shepherd neighbours searching those hills long hours into the night for a single lost sheep. Then, having found it, celebrating with them when they had brought the wandering beast safely home to the sheepfold where the rest of the flock were securely enclosed. Perhaps he had often been included in just such a celebration in a neighbour’s home in Nazareth.

Was one sheep so valuable? To a poor shepherd, a single lamb would have been precious. His whole livelihood depended on maximizing the number of lambs his herd produced and brought to marketable size. Is it any wonder that the incident sprang into Jesus’ mind as he sought to show how much God loves even the most foolish and undeserving of sinners?

As for the woman who had lost a coin, could she not be Jesus’ own mother, Mary, whose anxiety and joy he recalled so vividly? How often had he come into their humble home from his carpenter shop to find Mary happily celebrating with her closest friends over a refreshing cup of diluted vinegar-wine, a popular beverage among the poor. They made it by pouring water over the skins and stalks left over from the crushing of grapes for wine, then allowing it to ferment.

A single coin among ten would have been of great value to the struggling family, perhaps now left fatherless by the death of Joseph as legend tells it. In his Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography, Bruce Chilton infers that Jesus did not have very happy relationships with his family after Joseph died. Even a mamzer (an outcast because his birth had been suspicious), would have retained such memories of home as he wandered far and wide during his “hidden” years. As a wandering rabbi, however, he knew that memories such as these would connect directly with his audience who presumably were peasant folk too for the most part.

SOME ADDITIONAL PREACHING NOTES.

 JEREMIAH 4:11-12, 22-28. A quick scanning of Middle Eastern history will reveal that this part of the globe has been a cockpit of violent history since time immemorial. In many ways it still is. Archaeologists believe that human civilization began here when wandering hunter-gathering tribes turned to agriculture as they learned to plant wild grains and domesticated wild animals for staple foods. The rich lands of the Fertile Crescent that sweeps westward from the Persian Gulf up the Tigris-Euphrates River valleys across to the Mediterranean Sea and south to the Nile River valley were the basic land resource for growing populations searching for more dependable food supplies. For millennia the city states and great empires of this region sought security through armed conflicts and invasions that crossed and re-crossed this rich territory.

The region was also the birthplace of the three living monotheist religious traditions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam. From the anthropological point of view, all of these traditions have been rooted in the human desire and search for peace and security. On the other hand, their religious and political institutions have also had serious problems with violent conflict as the means of self-defense or aggressive hostility toward perceived enemies that were often each other. This tragedy still defeats their highest aims that there may true peace, freedom, security and plentiful resources for abundant life. In a global society such as we now have, this is a grave danger for all humanity.

Jeremiah’s insight that this is fundamentally a religious and moral problem is succinctly expressed in vs. 22 of this passage. The inevitable end of these brutal conflicts is devastatingly portrayed in the concluding vss. 23-28 unless we change our ways.

 1 TIMOTHY 1:12-17. How important is it to encumber a sermon, as some preachers protest, with details about varying exegetical? One of the failures of the mainline churches has been to keep such complexities from congregations except in intimate bible study groups with few members. The result has been the proliferation of biblical literalism so common in the many highly publicized radio and television preachers to say nothing of journalists who often misquote scripture. Even a brief sentence or paragraph saying that there have been serious debates about the origins of several letters attributed to Paul, chief among them the Pastoral Letters, in surely enough to raise the level of understanding in a congregation.

LUKE 15:1-10. Is it ever wise to use one’s imagination in portraying the homely situation that may well have been the background for some of Jesus’ parables and teaching? At times such background narrative may well create helpful connections in the minds of those who hear. Dramatic presentations and dialogues of such passages can be very useful if well done. People remember stories much better than sound counsel delivered in carefully constructed paragraphs. Such narratives or dramas help people relate the gospel message to their own lives.

A former colleague of mine, now deceased, grew up and was a candidate for ordered ministry from St. James United Church, Montreal, Canada in the late 1930s. He told of listening with rapt attention to the preaching of Rev. Dr. Lloyd C. Douglas, noted fiction writer of Magnificent Obsession, Forgive Us Our Trespasses, and The Big Fisherman. It was Douglas’ flair for imaginative narrative preaching that drew large congregations to that great downtown church even on Sunday evenings. His ability to create imaginative scenarios for the scripture lessons was the gift that many so greatly admired. Like his preaching, his novels often sprang from questions members of his congregation asked him about the background of a single biblical incident or story. The story may be apocryphal true that a woman once approached him after a service and asked, “Whatever became of the robe that the soldiers gambled for when Jesus’ was crucified?” The result of his imaginative ruminating on that question produced what may have been Douglas’ greatest work, The Robe.

INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURE

Proper 18 Ordinary 23
Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost

September 5, 2010

JEREMIAH 18:1-11. The metaphor of God as the potter and humanity as clay became the theme of a popular gospel hymn in the evangelical tradition. As a prophetic oracle, however, it referred to God’s judgment against Israel for forsaking their moral covenant with God that assured their safety. This was the prophetic interpretation of events at a time when the Babylonians threatened to destroy them.

PSALM 139:1-6, 13-18. This is not only one of the great treasures of the Psalter but of all devotional literature in every religious tradition. Though it resonates with such theological concepts as the omniscience and omnipresence of God, it is essentially a prayer of intense personal devotion “in a stillness in which the soul and God are alone.”

DEUTERONOMY 30:15-20. (Alternate) We have here the Deuteronomic formula which became the motif for so much of the final rendition of the Old Testament documents in the centuries following the return of the exiles from Babylon. God’s covenant with Israel required absolute obedience to the Torah as supposedly defined by the commandments given to Moses at Mount Sinai. Life, prosperity and the inheritance of the Promised Land depended on this obedience.

PSALM 1. (Alternate) Probably composed as an introduction to the Psalter, this psalm clearly presents the implications of the Deuteronomic formula.

PHILEMON 1-21. This brief letter has an intensely personal and practical touch. It tells of a slave who came in contact with Paul and how the apostle wrote to Philemon Onesimus’ slave-master, asking for the safe return of his runaway slave. There was a bishop with the same name in Ephesus at the end of the 1^st century. Could this be his story?

LUKE 14:25-33. Think twice before you decide to follow Jesus. Be prepared to sacrifice everything. This passage states that followers of Jesus were required to let go of all they own possessions and attachments to focus their attention on their call from God. Are they really ready for what will certainly be involved? Are we?

In contrast, two brief parables appear to recommend a very practical approach to one’s commitment. Both stories reinforce the message with which Jesus confronted his disciples as they moved inexorably toward Jerusalem and the cross.

A MORE COMPLETE ANALYSIS.

JEREMIAH 18:1-11. This is one of the best known passages of the Book of Jeremiah because the vivid metaphor of the potter and the clay offers an exceptional homiletical opportunity. Yet it is not without its difficulties. The problem created by the composite nature of the whole book is reflected in this passage.

For the greater part of the 20^th century, scholars have recognized that several sources lie behind the Book of Jeremiah. One of those sources in the school of editors known as the Deuteronomists, some of whom may have lived in Egypt after the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 586 BCE. They are said to have produced an edition of the prophecies of Jeremiah circa 550 BCE. This parable (vss.1-4) and its interpretation (vss.5-12) form one passage with distinctive marks of Deuteronomic influence. The extension of the threat of destruction from Israel (vs .6) to all nations (vss. 7-10) has the same characteristics. Scholars debate how much of the present passage originated with Jeremiah.

The fundamental Deuteronomic concept of Yahweh as Lord of history certainly lies at the heart of this passage. As the potter shapes and reshapes the clay so Yahweh determined the history of Israel and all nations. Whether the original oracle was more optimistic than the pending doom it appears to express can only be the subject of speculation. Vs.11 appears to suggest that Jeremiah uttered it as a threat in hope of a positive response. Vs.12 records what actually happened.

The familiar figure of a potter working with clay is not original to Jeremiah. Isaiah had used it before him (Isaiah 29:16). Others followed, viz. Isaiah 45:9; 64:8;  Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) 33:13; Romans 9:20-21. Such frequent references would not have been unusual. Every village and town in the ancient world would have had potters to supply necessary household vessels. In archeological research, scientists would be lost without the recovered shards of pottery with which the careful observer can date the various levels of each site.

In Jeremiah 19:1-15 we find another passage with marked Deuternomic influence which identifies the location of a potters’ community near the “Potsherd Gate” to the Valley of Ben-hinnom. It was there because of its proximity to an abundant source of water in the Pool of Shiloam nearby and a stream which ran through the valley in winter. But as the passage describes so vividly, this place had a very dubious notoriety in Israel’s faith traditions. Many numerous sacrificial altars to foreign idols were  located there, including the fearful fiery furnaces of Molech used for child sacrifices. It may have been this last reference which elicited the condemnation of 19:4-6 regarding blood sacrifices of the innocent and burnt offerings of Judean infant sons.

PSALM 139:1-6, 13-18. This is not only one of the great treasures of the Psalter but of all devotional literature in every religious tradition. Though it resonates with such theological concepts as the omniscience and omnipresence of God, it is essentially a prayer of intense personal devotion “in a stillness in which the soul and God are alone.” (From Schmidt, “Die Psalmen” quoted in The Interpreter’s Bible iv, 712.)

This excerpt has a very special reference to the experience of a deeply spiritual person seeking the presence of God. All facade of human sophistication melts away as wax before a flame. The whole person lies open before God. The slightest thought or utterance is already known (vs. 4). There is no escape (vs.5). The very thought of being in such close proximity to the Most High God is awesome, in the most terrifying sense of that word.

The Hebrew word generally translated as “wonderful” (pâlîy) in vs. 6 conveys the sense of remarkable, secret or miraculous. In the second occurrence of the word in vs.14, (pâlâh) referring to humanity as part of God’s work of creation, there is a sense of uniqueness, distinction, even mystery. As such, the searching eye of God knows the devotee thoroughly (vss.13-16). There is no other way to respond than to praise God for the marvels of God’s creation and of our humanity. And yet, as geneticists have so recently discovered, there is relatively little difference between the genome of our human selves and the ordinary fruit fly buzzing around the over-ripe tomatoes in the kitchen.

For those who have experienced it, intimate contact with God is almost beyond words. In fact, those who attempt to express their experience are often regarded as slightly, if not significantly, abnormal. The mystical tradition in Protestantism has never been strong; but Roman Catholicism has a rich heritage of this form of prayer. Only recently with the opening of wider ecumenical doors has this form of spirituality begun to penetrate mainline Protestant churches. One witness to this movement is the design of labyrinths for meditative prayer while walking in church halls or gardens. Another is the increasing number of participants in contemplative prayer through such agencies as the World Community for Christian Meditation (www.wccm.org).

DEUTERONOMY 30:15-20. (Alternate) We have here the Deuteronomic formula which became the motif for so much of the final rendition of the Old Testament documents in the centuries following the return of the exiles from Babylon. God’s covenant with Israel required absolute obedience to the Torah as supposedly defined by the commandments given to Moses at Mount Sinai. Life, prosperity and the inheritance of the Promised Land depended on this obedience.

The challenge of this passage remains with us today whether we are faithful Jews or Christians. Being human, we shall always face the temptation to water down our commitment to “doing our best.” All religious traditions have their absolutes.  For Jews to live according to these high standards means to live Torah, regarded not so much as Law as the way of life. In his collection of essays, *The Dead Sea Scrolls and the First Christians,* Robert Eisenman cites examples in the Qumran *Community Rule* of Torah being “the Way” for both Jews and early Christians. If this usage was common in Judaism at the time, Jesus would also have been familiar with the term.

This passage states for everyone the path in which God desires all committed believers to walk. The alternative, as vs. 19 makes clear, is the way of death. When we fail, as we all do, we can only throw ourselves on the mercy of God, accept forgiveness and renew our relationship with God and God’s Way. That is how we may live with a clear conscience in this life. Worth noting in particular, the words of vs. 20 assure us that obedience does not supersede love in our relationship with God.

PSALM 1. (Alternate) Probably composed as an introduction to the Psalter, this psalm clearly presents the implications of the Deuteronomic formula.

Internal evidence suggests a late date belonging to the era of Ezra or later when Israel was regarded as a religious community and the study of Torah was the mark of a religious person. It also recalls the age when Wisdom equated Torah, especially in the circle of those teachers of Wisdom of the late OT and inter-testamental period. A reference from Sirach (Eccleasiaticus) 24:23-27 dating from ca. 190 BCE expressed similar views.

One can visualize the scene depicted in the psalm. The teacher of wisdom gathered his students in a small circle under the shade of a tree. The students spend hours concentrating on Torah, as many extreme orthodox Israeli men, exempt from military service, still do in their yeshivas today. Less devoted young men scoff at such a time wasting pursuit. The attitudes of both groups clash, often noisily.

The image in vs. 4 of trees growing fruitfully when well irrigated also recalls productive plantations of fig palms I saw growing in the rich soil within a few hundred metres of the Dead Sea. They were irrigated from streams plunging down deep wadis from the wilderness of Judea. Archeologists conclude that the Qumran community, the epitome of the righteous life spent studying Torah even during the time of Jesus, obtained its water supply in a like manner. The reference in Sirach 24:23-27 also draws on the same image of plentiful water as the benefit yielded by the pursuit of wisdom, i.e. Torah.

True to the character of Deuteronomic and Wisdom literature, the psalm ends with the moral that God reckons our human ways and grants the rewards or punishments we deserve.

PHILEMON 1-21. With this reading the lectionary switches from the intensely devotional to the intensely practical.  There was a bishop in Ephesus at the end of the 1^st Christian century whose name was Onesimus. William Barclay makes the winsome argument that this letter was written by Paul to Philemon to persuade the master of the escaped slave, Onesimus, to return this “useless” fellow to him because, having been converted, he now was of great value to the apostle. Barclay also asks whether “this little slip of a letter, this single sheet of papyrus … half-personal, half-official … with no great doctrine” survived because the good bishop “insisted that this letter must be included in the collection (of Pauline epistles) in order that all might know what the grace of God had done for him.” (Barclay, William. Daily Bible Readings: Philippians, Colossians and Philemon. Edinburgh: The Church of Scotland, 1957.) Others have suggested that it was sent to Colossae and the neighboring communities with other letters of more doctrinal significance conveyed by Tychicus (Ephesians,  Colossians and ‘the lost letter’ to Laodicea as described in Col. 4:7, 16).

If this analysis is acceptable, it not only tells a touching story, but illustrates how a great theological concept Paul had expounded so well had an obviously personal and practical application. Here is the doctrine reconciliation making a remarkable difference to a very ordinary situation in NT times. It makes the doctrine live; it puts flesh and blood on what Paul had written in Galatians 3:27-29 about the inclusivity of the apostolic church.

In those days as now, slaves had only one goal: freedom. They often escaped their bondage by stealing whatever would assist them in their flight. By some happenstance, Onesimus had come into contact with Paul imprisoned in Rome or possibly Ephesus. Paul and his ministry for Christ had made all the difference in this slave’s life. If the play on the man’s name, Onesimus, is to be believed, (onesimus = useful) the slave who had been useless in Philemon’s household had now proved of great service to Paul. He seems to have been converted to the Christian faith by Paul (vs. 10).

Not only the Roman law, but Paul’s own convictions about the relationship between masters and slaves (see Ephesians 6:5-9 and Colossians 3:33-4:1) required that Onesimus be sent back to his master. Onesimus was going, however, not as a slave in chains and at great personal risk, but as a free man in Christ and Paul’s personal messenger. This letter he carried to Philemon contained the plea that the slave be freed in law and returned to Paul as the apostle’s personal aid and companion.

Whatever the true story behind the letter may have been, the letter does give us a glimpse into the life of the apostolic church. It also identified some of Paul’s fellow workers who were in Rome (or Ephesus) at this same time (vs. 23), probably in the early 60s CE. Tradition did not record very much about most of these other than what is in the NT. Mark and Luke are well-known, but not the others.

The presence of these fellow workers in the Gentile mission has caused scholarly questioning as to the exact location from which the Letter to Philemon was written. It is entirely possible that Paul wrote it during an imprisonment in Ephesus to which 2 Cor. 1:8-9 alludes. Nor can we be sure exactly who the slave-master was. The letter was addressed to Philemon, Apphia and Archippus as well as “the church in your house.” Were those named all of the same family? It would appear that Paul was laying the issue he addressed before the whole community. Such uncertainties do not in any way detract from the essential message of the letter: Paul pleads that Onesimus be set free to engage in ministry with him.

LUKE 14:25-33. Asked by a newly designated candidate for ministry what she might expect as she pursued this goal, a long-experienced pastor replied, “Don’t go into it, if you can stay out.” Puzzled by that apparently negative warning, the candidate requested a further explanation.  “Think twice before you decide to follow Jesus,” she was told. “Be prepared to sacrifice everything you may wish to gain or achieve in answering your call.”

This passage agrees with those sentiments. It states unequivocally that followers of Jesus will be required to let go of all they own and focus their attention on their call. Are they really ready for what will certainly be involved? That forthright challenge still stands. Faithful ministry in this day and age is no sinecure. It may have been so in the heyday of Christendom; but no longer. Nor was it so in the Apostolic Age as this reading makes clear. Two brief parables reinforce the message.

The apocryphal Gospel of Thomas includes two separate sayings very similar to vs. 26-27. A parallel reading also appears in Matthew 10:37-39. This most likely indicates that these are actually words spoken by Jesus and retained in the collective memory of the Apostolic Church. The parables too have an authentic ring to them as the kind of homely examples Jesus would have given to help his audience remember what he had said.

Was Jesus just being cautious and giving fair warning to those wishing to follow him as he approached the crucial event of his ministry?  Vs. 25 notes that “large crowds were traveling with him.” The moment was at hand for everyone to decide whether to go with him to Jerusalem or remain relatively secure in Galilee. John 7:66-71 records another element of this same tradition. Even without omniscience that John attributes to him, Jesus certainly would have known of the dangers that lay ahead. The parables reveal that he was making mental and spiritual preparations for any eventuality. He wanted his disciples – not necessarily the twelve alone – to be similarly prepared.

In telling this part of the story, Luke had the perspective of both the crucifixion and resurrection as well as half a century of reflection by the Christian community.  But would Jesus have included crucifixion in his calculations? He would have known that this was the preferred form of capital punishment to the Romans. It was designed to maintain public order by creating a paralyzing fear in the general populace. Apparently Pilate used it liberally. We may thus conclude that Jesus would have been fully aware of the possibility should he fall into the hands of the Roman authorities. It was the measure of his concern for those who had rallied to his cause that they too be made fully aware of the dangers they would face if their enthusiasm and loyalty carried them further in his company. Hence the ominous note of unfinished business in both the parables.

SOME ADDITIONAL PREACHING POINTS.

JEREMIAH 18:1-11. The Hebrew name of the notorious Valley of Ben-Hinnom, Gehenna, gave rise to the mediaeval concept of Hell as a place of never ending fires. In later biblical times it became the garbage dump for Jerusalem where fires burned constantly to keep the vermin under control. During the past 60 years events wrought by the history of the Middle East transformed this hated site into a place of beauty. As one walks or drives through this beautifully landscaped section in southwest Jerusalem one would never imagine that this was the site of such atrocities. And yet, one can easily imagine the fear that gripped Jerusalem every hour of every day during the Intefada. As recently as this decade armed soldiers patrol the streets nearby as crowds of tourists visit the holy sites. Is there not a strange link with Jeremiah’s prophetic words? What idol motivates the murders that have bloodied the streets of the Holy City in our time? Are not the sons and daughters of Israel and Palestine being sacrificed to strange gods once again? Does Israel’s Yahweh not ask today’s prophets to cry out, “Turn back, every one of you, from his evil course; mend your ways and your doings” (18:11).

DEUTERONOMY 30:15-20 and PSALM 1. (Alternate)  Karen Armstrong has a helpful insight in her book The Case for God (A. A. Knopf, 2009; 91-93). The rabbis who interpreted the Torah orally in their synagogues and schools, later recorded in the Misnah and the Talmud in the 2^nd to 6^th centuries CE,  did not regard the Sinai revelation as “God’s last word to humanity but just the beginning…. Revelation was an ongoing process that continued from one generation to another.” They even made emendations to the text, “by submitting a single letter that changed the original meaning. This was especially true in the “House of Studies” created late in the 1^st century by the Pharisees at Yavney. Midrash was the common method of scripture interpretation.

“The study of the Talmud is democractic and open-ended, “Armstrong writes. “Because students are taught to follow the rabbinic method of study, they engage in the same discussions and must make their own contributions to this never ending conversation. In some versions of the Talmud, there was space on each page for the student to add his own commentary. He learned that nobody had the last word, that truth was constantly changing, and while tradition was of immense importance, it must not compromise his own judgment. If he did not add his own remarks to the sacred page, the line of tradition would come to an end. Religious discourse should not be cast in stone; the ancient teachings required constant revision. “What is Torah?” asked the Bavli. “It is the interpretation of Torah.”

PHILEMON 1-21. Slavery was outlawed and ultimately banished from most of the world due to the engagement and action of devout Christians. In 1793, a convinced abolitionist, John Graves Simcoe, governor of the province of Upper Canada (now known as Ontario) persuaded the legislature to abolish slavery. This was the first jurisdiction in the world to do so. In subsequent decades until the American Civil War (aka War Between the States) and the Emancipation Proclamation, Ontario became the end destination of American blacks fleeing their enslavement via the underground railway. A significant number of the black people of the province still trace their ancestry back to those fugitives.

Fifteen years ago, two bothers, Craig and Marc Keilburger, from the suburbs of Toronto, Ontario, themselves only children, became concerned about the near slavery conditions that children in India were forced to work in weaving carpets for the European and North American consumer market. Starting by alerting their schoolmates to this issue, they went on to found a charity, Free The Children. That charity has since grown into a movement of more than one million young people in 45 countries. The concern of these youth has extended from the working conditions of child labourers in many countries to the suffering of earthquake victims in Haiti. Now university graduates, they engage schoolchildren of the world through positive peer pressure that generates empathy and action oriented programs. They have also won the support of such celebrities as the Jonas Brothers, Zac Efron and Hayden Panettiere.  

LUKE 14:25-33. The dangers of being Christian in a violent world have not passed. In recent weeks a group serving as medical aid workers in Afghanistan were executed by the Taliban supposedly for having proselytizing materials in their possession. The Scottish newspaper Sunday Herald printed this account of the massacre:

“All of the dead were associated with the International Assistance Mission (IAM), a Christian organization which has provided humanitarian relief and medical aid in Afghanistan for decades. The Taliban claimed they were killed as western spies who were preaching Christianity. However, security forces in Afghanistan say robbery was the probable motive.

“The victims included British medic Dr Karen Woo, 36, from London, who worked with aid organization Bridge Afghanistan. IAM director Dirk Frans said Woo – along with one German, six Americans and two Afghans – was coming back from a two-week humanitarian trip to Nuristan province.

“The team had driven to the province, left their vehicles and hiked for hours over mountainous terrain to reach the Parun valley in the province’s northwest. Their bodies were found next to three bullet-riddled four-wheel drive vehicles in the Kuran Wa Munjan district in the north-eastern province of Badakhshan.

“Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid in Pakistan said that his fighters killed the foreigners because they were “spying for the Americans” and “preaching Christianity”.

“Frans said that the IAM is registered as a non-profit Christian organization but does not proselytize.”

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INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURE

Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost

Proper 17  Ordinary 22

August 29, 2010

JEREMIAH 2:4-13. Jeremiah addressed a spiritual crisis in Israel in the late 7th century BC.  After a long period of apostasy, the covenanted people had had very little contact with God.  Successful living in a productive new homeland had corrupted them. Worship of false gods had alienated them. Even the priests and the interpreters of the law had little knowledge of how to relate to God. Prophets were more familiar with Baal, the Canaanite fertility god. The rulers had done nothing but transgress. The nation had lost its moral compass and sense of commitment because it had exchanged its covenant relationship with God for a deity symbolized by idols.

PSALM 81:1, 10-16. This psalm begins in a joyful celebration which may have belonged in a festival liturgy celebrating the Israelites’ deliverance from Egypt. It may also have been used at the thanksgiving Feast of Tabernacles. The latter part, however, sounds more like a prophetic oracle similar to Jeremiah’s complaint that Israel had forsaken its religious roots in the worship of God.

SIRACH 10:12-18. (Alternate OT reading.) Also known as Ecclesiasticus, Sirach is in the Apocrypha of most Protestant Bibles because it was not included in the Jewish canon. Although originally written in Hebrew, Jerome did include it in his Latin Vulgate translated from the Greek version; hence its appearance in the Roman Catholic canon. This excerpt contains a strong critique of human pride and how God deals with those who are proud.

PSALM 112. (Alternate.) This didactic psalm resonates with both the Deuteronomist tradition with emphasis on the just rewards of the righteous combined with the prophetic tradition of social justice.

HEBREWS 13:1-8, 15-16. For Christians, ethical behavior is always rooted in faith. The dietary rules omitted from this reading make obvious reference to the strict Levitical Code, ostensibly given to Moses during the Israelites’ forty years in the wilderness. The community to which this “Letter” was written may well have been predominantly Jewish struggling with the freedom of their new faith is Jesus of Nazareth, the true Messiah.

LUKE 14:1, 7-14. Jesus had been invited to the home of a leading Pharisee for the sabbath meal. He turned out to be an unwelcome guest. First, he nearly broke up the party by healing a man afflicted with dropsy (edema, excessive retention of fluids). To add to that offence, he gave the other guests a scolding that certainly must have shamed some if not all of them. Then he turned on his host to give him a further lecture about whom he ought to have invited to dinner.

A MORE COMPLETE ANALYSIS.

 JEREMIAH 2:4-13. Jeremiah addressed a spiritual crisis in Israel in the late 7^th century BCE.  After a long period of apostasy, many of the covenanted people had very little contact with Yahweh. The intimacy of their religious experience in the wilderness had vanished amid successful living in a plentiful, productive new homeland (vss. 6-7). Even the priests and the interpreters of the law had no longer an adequate knowledge of how to relate to Yahweh. The false prophets were more familiar with Baal, the ancient Canaanite fertility god, and the rulers had done nothing but transgress (vs. 8). In short, the nation had lost its moral compass and sense of commitment because it had changed its faith tradition for vapid fantasies without power to save or provide for the needs of Yahweh’s chosen people (vss. 9-11).

Against this calamitous situation Jeremiah cried out on Yahweh’s behalf (vs. 12). He charged the people with two great evils which he summed up in a striking metaphor. They have forsaken the fountain of living water for cracked and leaking cisterns of their own invention.

In Jeremiah’s time (ca. 600 BCE) cisterns meant the difference between life and death if the springs went dry. This is the image that Jeremiah used to portray his people’s spiritual crisis. It would have been difficult for us in a land of such plentiful water to imagine just how challenging this metaphor would have been. Yet within the past few years, Canadians have been made aware of how valuable our water resources by two serious development. In 2007 scientists, UN agency representatives and professionals from more than 130 countries met in Sweden to discuss the world’s water needs and resources. More than 2,000 participants from 150 different business, government, water management and intergovernmental organizations gathered as the annual World Water Week launched in Stockholm. The purpose of the meeting is to create strategies and partnerships to help combat water shortages around the world.

A second issue has arisen as a result of excessive use and abuse of water in parts of the United States, and the prolonged heat wave and drought there. Canada’s abundant water resources are suddenly in demand as a commercially profitable bulk commodity rather than a public resource for the use of all at reasonable cost. At present the export of water in bulk is still illegal.

Other countries also view Canada’s fresh water with similar envy. It has been estimated that 15-20% of all the fresh water resources in the world lie within Canadian boundaries. To whom do these resources belong? What does God require of us in the near future regarding their use? How are they to be made available to those in need?

Is this not a moral and spiritual crisis for us? Are there not remarkable similarities between the spiritual crises in Jeremiah’s time and now?

PSALM 81:1, 10-16. It is thought that this psalm may have belonged in a festival liturgy celebrating the Israelites’ deliverance from Egypt. The rabbinical Mishnah  of the 2^nd century CE cited it as the psalm for the fifth day of the week. It may also have been used at the feast of Tabernacles, one of the three major “pilgrim festivals” (vs. 3).

There is no obvious reason to omit vss. 2-9.  Certainly it begins in a joyful celebration (vss.1-5) followed by a recitation of Yahweh’s past blessings to Israel especially during the Exodus, the journey through the wilderness and settlement in Canaan (vss. 6-9). The latter part (vss. 11-16), however, sounds more like a prophetic oracle similar to Jeremiah’s complaint.  Yahweh longs for the people’s faithfulness, but they follow their own devices. Vs. 10 could be associated with either the preceding or following segment.

The moon figured largely in the religious traditions of most Semitic peoples and was the basis for their calendars. The Jews were no exception. The reference to blowing the trumpet to signal the new moon may reflect an ancient superstition that evil spirits were rampant during the dark of the moon. The sounding of the ram’s horn announced the autumn festival of in-gathering which was later celebrated by the building of booths recalling the tabernacle of the Israelites’ wilderness years. In later Judaism, the new moon of the seventh month, Tishri, became Ro’sh ha-Shanah, the beginning of a new year.

Vs. 6 actually belongs with the second segment of the psalm rather than the opening praise. The “load” (“burden” – NRSV) and the “basket” refer to the tools used by the Israelites spent during their later years in Egypt as slaves conscripted to build the temple of Pharaoh Ramses II. The NEB transposes vs. 16 to follow vs. 7 on the premise that it fits the context better. It makes yet another reference to divine providence that supplied the Israelites with sustenance during their trek to the Promised Land.

The psalm contains distinct undertones of the challenge of the two ways of life and death, the blessing and the curse, Yahweh set before Israel according to the farewell address of Moses in Deut. 29-30. This was the Deuteronomic tradition that so influenced the reconstruction period of post-exilic times.

SIRACH 10:12-18. (Alternate OT reading.) Also known as Ecclesiasticus, Sirach is in the Apocrypha of most Protestant Bibles. Nor was it included in the Jewish canon. It was originally composed from notes in Hebrew by a famed teacher of Wisdom in the years just prior to the Maccabean Revolt in 168 BCE. A Greek translation appeared in 132 BCE by the grandson of Jesus ben Sirach. Jerome included it in his Latin Vulgate translated from the Greek. Hence its appearance in the Roman Catholic canon following another apocryphal Book of Wisdom and placed between the Song of Songs and Isaiah.

Maintaining a traditional Deuternomic attitude toward covenant theology and retributional morality, Sirach has many of the characteristics of Proverbs with aphorisms and acrostic poetry teaching practical wisdom to students of Sirach’s ‘academy.’

This excerpt contains a strong critique of human pride and how God deals with those who are proud. Sirach’s traditional style and ethics find full expression in these few verses. The vivid images of vss. 10-11 reveal a bold realism about death. This moves quickly to an exhortation about the source and folly of human pride. Alienation from God inevitably results in the pain and sorrow of human afflictions.

The fall of rulers from their prestigious thrones may well reflect the disturbed era in which Sirach lived. In 171 BCE, Antiochus Epiphanes, the Seleucid inheritor of Alexander the Great’s empire, deposed the last legitimate high priest of Zadokite decent, and appointed a Benjaminite in his stead. Since the Maccabean Revolt occurred shortly after this act of treachery, the poem has a prophetic note to it. One also hears the cry for social justice in Mary’s song, the Magnificat, in the words of Sirach.

PSALM 112. (Alternate.) This didactic psalm resonates with both the Deuteronomist tradition with emphasis on the just rewards of the righteous and the prophetic tradition of social justice. Due to their acrostic style and several common terms, scholars hypothesize that it comes from the same hand as Psalm 111. It also resembles some aspects of Psalm 1, especially in vs. 1.

The generosity of the rich toward the more vulnerable of society reiterates the righteousness and reward motif that has motivated much Jewish and Christian philanthropy through the ages. All too easily, one can slip into the reverse attitude that because one is rich, one may consider oneself righteous.

HEBREWS 13:1-8, 15-16. As in so many other NT letters, this concluding chapter of this letter contains a number of admonitions to the assembly to whom it was written. These words of advice set before this congregation the high moral standards expected of them in their particular setting. The most singular preaching text of the passage is surely vs. 8.      However, can it be interpreted in today’s environment as it was intended at that time?

The dietary rules of vss. 9-14 make obvious reference to the strict Levitical code ostensibly given by Yahweh to Moses in the tent of meeting during the Israelites’ forty years in the wilderness. The community to which the letter was written may well have been predominantly Jewish struggling with the freedom of their new faith in Jesus of Nazareth, the true Messiah. Certainly an extended struggle between the Jerusalem apostolate led by James, the brother of Jesus, and the Pauline Gentile apostolate occurred within many nascent Christian communities of the lst century CE.

A contrarian view of this struggle has been extensively discussed in relation to the Qumran Community and James, in Robert Eisenman’s The Dead Sea Scrolls and the First Christians. (Castle Books, 1996). Eisenman believes that some of the Scrolls, especially the Community Rule, the Damscus Document and the Habakkuk Pesher,  were products, not of the Essenes, but of “Zaddokite” successors to the Macabbees within the Christian fellowship. They espoused a traditional messianic and apocalyptic view of Hebrew scripture during the under the leadership of James. Prior to the Jewish War (68-70 CE), these traditionalists were driven out of Jerusalem by establishment Sadducees and Pharisees and the Pauline faction of the early Christian community who favoured Paul’s Gentile mission while also supporting the Herodian monarchy and the Romans.

It is clear that for Christians then and now ethical behavior is rooted in faith. Our relationship with Christ helps us to behave as we should toward one another. The moral counsel of vss. 1-5 springs from the faith summed up in vss. 6-8. Because we believe in the unchangeable Christ, we behave in certain disciplined ways that others may not share. We do so confidently with the help of God and following the example of those who shared this faith with us. Such a life may involve sacrifice, but we may think of such sacrifice as an act of worship offered to God.

As is so often the case in Hebrews, the whole passage expressed the prophetic spirit that continually recalled Israel to its covenantal relationship as the true form of liturgy. Yet it does justice also to the liturgical traditions which shaped the Jewish identity and culture in the post-exilic period when the reconstructed Second Temple became the focal point of national life and historical events. The Letter to the Hebrews tried to identify for Hebrew Christians the moral and spiritual reality they had both continuity and discontinuity with their ancient traditions.

LUKE 14:1, 7-14. Party time! Jesus had been invited to the home of a leading Pharisee for the sabbath meal. Then he nearly broke up the party by healing a man afflicted with dropsy (edema or excessive retention of fluids). To add to that offence, he put the other guests on the spot and gave them a scolding that certainly must have shamed some if not all of them. After all, it was their silence which provoked his rebuke. Then he recalled how they had been vying for the places of honor, presumably closest to the host or guest of honor. Luke does not tell us if Jesus was that honored guest. One can imagine some of the guests trying to win his favor by sitting close to him so they could engage him in a more intimate conversation. As the parable he told them indicates, his scorned their obsequious behavior (vss. 8-11).

Then he turned on his host and gave him a further lecture about whom he ought to have invited to dinner. Some party! Some guest! How embarrassed – or how angry – everyone must have felt when that dinner ended. Think of the many disgruntled conversations as they made their way home.

Did it really happen that way? Or is Luke just putting these teachings about honor, pride, prestige and caring for people who are marginalized in a dramatic context which still strikes home in our own hypocritical society? Isn’t Jesus portrayed here as being someone a little beyond an annoying radical who liked to ridicule the Pharisees at every turn? Isn’t this revolutionary talk?

SOME ADDITIONAL PREACHING POINTS

JEREMIAH 2:4-13. In Israel to this day, water is the most precious resource. Water from the Sea of Galilee and the River Jordan is pumped throughout the country as far south as Beersheba in the Negev desert so that adequate food can be grown. Even in the Palestinian communities of the Gaza Strip, the Israelis dominate the water supply to provide fertile fields and water for few thousand Israelis settlers who lived there until recently under the guardianship of the Israelis military.

It has been said, perhaps too simplistically, that Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians could be resolved if the water supply could be fairly shared. In Israel itself, it is against the law to use electricity generated by imported oil to heat water for bathing. Every home and apartment has a black tank on its roof to supply water heated by the sun for this purpose. Cisterns still preserve the often sparse winter rainfall for use during the long dry summers. Yet Israeli consumption of the limited water supply is several times that of the Palestinians.

PSALM 81:1, 10-16. In his excellent paraphrase of the Psalms in the language and images of today, Jim Taylor sets this one as a parent celebrating a child’s graduation day, then asking some difficult questions: “In your celebration, where is there room for me? In your joy, what credit do you give to me? I am the one who sustained you through the tough times.” The modern metaphor transforms the psalm into a spiritual challenge as powerful as Jeremiah’s in the previous reading. Taylor’s small but helpful book gives a refreshing new slant to these old hymns.  (Taylor, James. Everyday Psalms. Wood Lake Press, 1994)

HEBREWS 13:1-8, 15-16. A brief summary of this lesson in Gathering published on the United Church of Canada’s website, said with tongue in cheek perhaps, “the lectionary has edited out the admonitions about avoiding dietary dogma. (These could be useful for those who are less than politically correct on diet.)” That appears to be a misreading of the omitted segment (vss. 9-14) of the concluding chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews. Rather, the dietary constraints seem more like the author’s warning against an ascetic heresy or the efforts of the Judaizers which was confusing the community to which he/she is writing. More details of this heresy, which some scholars believe to have been an early form of Gnosticism and others regard as more Jewish in origin, can be found in commentaries on the Letter to the Colossians.

In her book, The Case for God, (A. A . Knopf, 2009; 102) Karen Armstrong  states that  in the Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions faith is not belief in a creed or set of doctrinal propositions, but “a matter of practical insight and active commitment; it has little to do with abstract belief or theological conjectures.” This remains so, she strongly asserts, in Judaism and Islam, but has not existed in the Christian tradition since the 4th century CE. That was when Christians ” developed a preoccupation with doctrinal correctness that would  become its Achilles heel.”

LUKE 14:1, 7-14. At the present time in the Province of Ontario, Canada, we are just beginning to get used to what has been euphemistically called “a harmonized sales tax” (HST). It was designed to bring into a single tax that our federal and provincial governments collect on most consumer goods. Prior to July 1, 2010 separate provincial and federal sales taxes were charged on different consumer items. Businesses have generally approved the HST because it reduces the amount of bookkeeping and forwarding of the tax revenues involved to the respective governments. However, many consumers and consumer advocates have protested vociferously as a way to increase consumer taxes surreptitiously. To deal the anticipated protests, the provincial government will issue cheques in varying amounts up to $1,000 to each household depending on their reported taxable income. A portion of these payments went out before the new tax was imposed. The publicity by the government stated that the HST will save everyone money, especially lower income families, despite there being some consumer items which will now be taxed which were previously tax free.

This is the way we package public policy so as to deceive ourselves and everyone else that we do indeed care for “the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind.” We mask our demands for extensive tax reductions as necessary for the good of the new global economy and the future of our grandchildren, but also mandate the reduction of the social safety net so necessary for the less advantaged.

Do we really have the kind of free, just and caring society won by bloody sacrifice which the war memorials in every church, city, town and village are intended to honor? How much are we willing to do to lift the barriers that prohibit the poor of our communities and of the world from sharing all the benefits we want for ourselves? How will our congregations go home from this sabbath’s banquet if such words were to be uttered from our pulpits?

INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURE

Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost

Proper 16 – Ordinary 21

August 22, 2010

JEREMIAH 1:4-10. Like many who experience such a meeting with God, Jeremiah at first demurred because of his youth. That brought forth both reaffirmation and reassurances from God. Such confirmation comes as an intense inner confidence of being chosen. Like so many similar calls to Israel’s great prophets, Jeremiah’s prophecies reveal a firm grasp of the election motif founded on the Mosaic covenant.

PSALM 71:1-6. This psalm appears as a traditional lament, but does not repeat parts of the classical lament form of an appeal, a complaint, a petition and a vow of thanksgiving in regular sequence. It connection with the previous lesson about Jeremiah’s call is in vs. 3.

ISAIAH 58:9b-14. (Alternate) This is one of four strophes of a poem that extends through the whole of ch. 58 dealing with the kind service that pleases Yahweh. The prophet seeks to inspire the exiles returning from Babylon to a deeper faithfulness to the covenant tradition.

PSALM 103:1-8. (Alternate)   This psalm, or at least this selection of it, has been committed to memory by and brought comfort to countless generations. It captures the breadth and depth of human experience, but places utter dependence of the believer on the grace and mercy of God.

 HEBREWS 12:18-29. By alluding to well-known parts of the Torah, the Jewish scriptures, this passage stresses the distinction between the covenant of God with Israel at Mount Sinai and that of Calvary, where  Jesus Christ was crucified. While Sinai stressed the majesty, unapproachability and sheer terror of God, Calvary stressed the glory that awaits the Christian believer in the assembly of the saints in the heavenly Jerusalem. This festive gathering is not only with the angels and the martyred saints, but brings the believer into the very presence of God and Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant.

LUKE 13:10-17. As he often did, Luke placed a woman at the centre of the story. The lay leader of a synagogue challenged Jesus indignantly. Was he more concerned about protecting his turf and buffering against anticipated criticism from more orthodox fellow Jews? Jesus condemned his hypocrisy while the audience rejoiced at what they saw Jesus doing.

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 A MORE COMPLETE ANALYSIS.

 JEREMIAH1:4-10. We know who Jeremiah was and approximately when he lived from the brief introductory note which precedes this passage. As a member of a priestly family, possibly a descendant of Abiathar whom Solomon had exiled to Anathoth. (1 Kings 2:26-27), he had a cause to defend. The exact date of his call as a prophet is still disputed among scholars, but certainly it was during the last quarter of the 7^th century BCE. According to narrative details later in the book, he was still alive in Egypt after Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians in 586 BCE (40:1- 44:30).

Vss. 4-5 suggest that the traditions of his ancestors had a great influence on him. This prepared him to be open to such a life-changing spiritual experience as a call to be a prophet, i.e. a spokesperson for Yahweh, rather than a predictor of events to come.

Like many who experience such a meeting with Yahweh, Jeremiah at first demurred because of his youth (vs.6). That brought forth both a reaffirmation and reassurances from Yahweh (vss.7-8). Such confirmation comes as an intense inner confidence of being chosen. Like Hosea a century earlier, Jeremiah’s prophecies reveal a firm grasp of the election motif founded on the Mosaic covenant.

Jeremiah’s experience of election included a vision similar to that of Isaiah. In this instance, however, the hand of Yahweh, not a live coal carried by a seraph, touched Jeremiah’s mouth giving him the power to speak in Yahweh’s name (vss. 9-10). Visual or auditory spiritual experiences may be interpreted by some as hallucinations of an overly imaginative religious mind. Yet a vast company of deeply committed persons have testified that their vocational experiences come from a deepening faith, not infrequently after a very traumatic experience in everyday life.

Julian of Norwich, a female mystic of the 14^th century, had mystical visions which are just one example of such “holy hallucinations.” Her “Showings” or “Revelations” have attracted a good deal of attention in recent years because of their unusually graphic descriptions of Jesus’ sufferings on the cross and the assurance she received from these that “all will be well.” These experiences came to her as she recovered from a nearly fatal illness, possibly a physical or mental illness related to the Black Death in which she appears to have lost most of her family.

This story of Jeremiah’s call tells us that faith interprets whatever happens as having spiritual significance. Are there prophets like Jeremiah or Julian of Norwich who will help us to interpret the signs of our traumatic times with equal assurance that the Lord of History has not abandoned the universe to a destructive fate?

PSALM 71:1-6. W. Stewart McCullough, the exegete in The Interpreter’s Bible (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1955, vol. 4, 372) assigns this psalm a unique title, “The tired refuge of an aged saint.” There are references to old age in vss. 9 and 18. Though the psalm appears to be a lament, it does not adopt the typical classical form of such a psalm with an appeal, a complaint, a petition and a vow of thanksgiving in regular sequence. Instead, it repeats some aspects of this formula more than once.

In this introductory excerpt vss. 1-3 almost exactly repeat the words of Psalm 31:1-3 with a second appeal immediately following (vss. 4-6). One can speculate that a copyist added the opening lines to the original beginning. If vs.4 is the opening line, it throws us right into the psalmist’s reason for calling out for divine intervention. He is beset by enemies, a theme continued throughout the rest of the lament. Lifelong experience drives the petitioner to seek refuge from God while at the same time offering God due praise (vss. 5-6). Seeking closer contact with God in troubled times is the natural response for anyone who lives a life of faith.

ISAIAH 58:9b-14. (Alternate) Scholars tell us that not all the poetry of Isaiah 40-66 can be attributed to the unnamed prophet of the Exile. Those poems in chs. 56-66 may actually be from a later school, sometimes called Third Isaiah. They modelled their poems after his style. This is one of four strophes of a poem that extends through the whole of ch. 58 dealing with the kind service that pleased Yahweh. The prophet sought to inspire the exiles returning from Babylon to a deeper faithfulness to the covenant tradition.

While dating the poem may have its difficulties, at least one commentator believes that it stands somewhere between the prophecies of Deutero-Isaiah and Zechariah. Vss. 11-12 give fairly clear clues that reflect the actual circumstances in Jerusalem and Judah when the exiles returned home. No prophet stands alone and this is particularly noticeable in this poem. Vss. 9-10 show the definitive influence of the earlier prophets of social justice. Echoes of the Deuteronomic Code in admonitions about keeping the Sabbath also resound through vs. 13.

Vs. 14 wraps the whole poem in the traditional promise made long before to Jacob that the land of Palestine would belong his descendants. However mythical and unhistorical that event may have been, it inspired the national dream of the Zionist movement in the late 19^th century. It also motivated the Balfour Declaration of 1917 adopted by the British government in 1917: “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.” In 1948, the United Nations created the modern state of Israel base on this declaration. In the more than half century since, the struggle between Israelis and Palestinians has had its roots in this biblical promise and its political implications.

PSALM 103:1-8. (Alternate)   This psalm, or at least this selection of it, has been committed to memory and by and brought comfort to countless generations. It captures the breadth and depth of human experience, but places utter dependence of the believer on the grace and mercy of God.

As one commentator put it, “Scarcely any other part of the OT lets us perceive the truth that God is love so intimately.” One wonders if Paul had this psalm in mind as he wrote to the Ephesians: “I pray that you may have the power to comprehend what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Eph. 3: 18-19.)

“The Pit” referred to in vs. 3 stood as a synonym for Sheol, the shadowy existence beyond death from which there could be no hope for return. The vivid image in vs. 4 of “youth being renewed like the eagle’s” brings to mind the longevity, strength and size of that majestic bird, but it may also refer to either the annual molting of every bird during which they cannot fly well. Or it may recall the legend of the phoenix rising out of the ashes. The poet of Job also spoke of that legend (Job 29:18). Deutero-Isaiah also used a similar image (Isa. 40:31).

The prophetic tradition of justice and Yahweh’s covenant with Moses  also stood out in the poet’s mind. Rooted in grace and mercy these remained the hallmarks of Israelite theology and could never be hidden in the liturgical hymnody of Israel. While no date can ever be proved and there is no sign of an acrostic, the existence of 22 verses in the psalm corresponds to the number of letters of the Hebrew alphabet. This may point to a relatively late origin when liturgists and the teachers of Wisdom sought to bring the ancient traditions to view for fresh consideration by each new generation.

HEBREWS 12:18-29. The author of the so-called “Letter to the Hebrews” knew the Torah thoroughly and may have had a copy of the Greek Septuagint (LXX) close at hand while composing this extended theological essay. In this passage there are several references to the covenanting of Israel at Mount Sinai. We can detect allusions to Exodus 19:12-13, Deuteronomy 4:11, 5:23-27 and 9:19. The real focus of these allusions, however, is the contrast between the covenant of Sinai and that of Calvary, between Moses and Jesus Christ.

The very first words of this passage tell us where the author comes down. Here too Mount Zion and Jerusalem stand as symbols for the heavenly city and the presence of God. (Note: Our English word “Calvary” derives from the Latin word calvaria meaning “skull” translated from the Aramaic Golgotha.)

While Sinai stressed the majesty, unapproachability and sheer terror of being confronted by Yahweh (vss.18-21), Calvary stressed the glory that awaits the Christian believer in the assembly of the saints in the heavenly Jerusalem (vss. 21-24). This festive gathering is not only with the angels and the martyred saints, but brings believers into the very presence of God and Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant.

These contrasting scenes lead to a warning which is in itself a further contrast (vss. 25-29). The voices of Moses and of Jesus uttered distinctive messages, but they spoke with totally different authority. According to the author of this letter, Jesus delivered the perfect message of the Gospel, not the imperfect message of the Torah. By recalling several references to various psalms (Pss. 114:7; 68:8; 77:18), the writer drives home his point that we are obligated to worship and serve God with due reverence so that we may indeed find ourselves embraced by the sovereignty of divine love which shall not pass away.

While the multiple references to Israel’s history and the covenant of Sinai may be entirely scriptural, it is also probable that the author intended them to be read against the background of the actual events of the last two or three decades of the first century of the Christian era. Jerusalem and its temple had been destroyed by the Romans in 69-70 CE. The surviving Jews and Jewish Christians alike had been widely dispersed throughout the empire. Both struggled to survive and maintain their traditions in a social and political environment increasingly inhospitable to moral monotheism, let alone a new eschatological messianism. The final shaping of the Hebrew canon progressed rapidly at this time, reaching its culmination at the rabbinical Synod of Jamnia ca. 85-90 CE. It is generally agreed that this distinctive Christian apologia was composed about this same time. It would be accepted as part of the uniquely Christian canon in the next century.

Is it not entirely feasible that the whole motive behind the composition of The Letter to the Hebrews was the appearance of the Hebrew canon as the authoritative scriptures of the Jewish people? Would not this hypothesis be strongly reinforced by the extensive quotations from the Hebrew canon, especially if the purpose of the document was, as the classical view of the book held, to prevent Jewish Christians from turning back to Judaism?

LUKE 13:10-17. The old issue of how to mark the sabbath surfaces once again in this pericope. And again as he often does, Luke places a woman at the centre of the story. One has to wonder if “Luke” was, in fact, a well-educated woman like Lydia or Priscilla who concealed her identity behind an obviously male name and that of an obscure fellow traveler of Paul.

The healing of the woman crippled for eighteen years caused yet another confrontation between Jesus and the religious authorities. In this case the leader of the synagogue, a layman, challenged Jesus indignantly. Was his a genuine religious concern rooted in the Torah or was he just protecting his turf and attempting to buffer anticipated criticism he would face from his more orthodox fellow Jews?

Jesus lashed out in condemnation of such hypocrisy. He drew a parallel between the compassion he had just shown for the woman and the perfectly normal care the man would give his beasts of burden, sabbath day or not. One senses the bitter sarcasm in Jesus’ voice, designed to silence the man’s protest and show him up as a fool in front of the assembled community, his dominant male peers in particular. The cutting edge of Jesus’ rebuke put him to shame. Gathered around the three, the whole crowd rejoiced. One can almost hear them clapping with glee, especially the women.

Point, set and match to Jesus of Nazareth. The woman left triumphantly to celebrate her new freedom from pain and disability with a coterie of her friends. Jesus smiled with pleasure as he watched them go.

How do we decide what to do on our sabbath day? Isn’t the best way to determine whether our plans are caring and compassionate; or selfishly focused?

SOME ADDITIONAL PREACHING NOTES.

JEREMIAH 1:4-10. That Jeremiah was a priest as well as a prophet should not be surprising. Watching his forebears trying to remain faithful to Israel’s covenant with Yahweh as they conducted the liturgies and sing the praises of Israel could well have inspired a religious experience in the young boy. That commitment to ministry runs in families is still a common phenomenon.

In my own ancestry, we can identify almost every generation from the beginning of the 17^th century with one or more members of the ordained clergy or prominent lay leaders of the church. I recall vividly standing beside my parents, singing hymns in a congregation where 20 worshipers was a crowd. Both parents were active lay leaders in the congregation and the children of lay leaders in other congregations. Several of my siblings also took leadership roles in their congregations. The family often sang similar hymns at home on Sunday evenings as my mother played an old pump organ. At any point on the branches of the genealogical tree, the commitment could cease. Only God knows where or when.

The message Jeremiah received had historical characteristics, indicative of the turbulent times in which he lived. Like ourselves, Jeremiah ministered during a period often described as “fin de siècle” (in English: “end of the century”). That French phrase describes the two decades spanning the turn of a century or a millennium. During this period some have seen contemporary events taking on a more intense and critical significance as society moves toward unknown and uncharted changes resulting from technological, social and political upheavals.

We have just lived through two decades that could well be seen from that perspective. This “fin de siècle” anxiety may be more of a psychological phenomenon than a historical fact. Human relationships, even on a personal level quite apart from national and international events, always have causative antecedents which bring about subsequent results. Events occur in every period to create the impression of trauma and disaster with resulting angst.

PSALM 71:1-6. Vs. 6 presents an excellent opportunity to address one of the critical moral issues of our time, the debate on scientific research into and cloning of embyronic cells. Of course, the psalmist was totally ignorant of such sophisticated scientific issues that confront us today. Life in his mother’s womb was about as much as the psalmist knew. How he got there had some relation to sexuality and human reproduction, but apart from that, the process of conception and embryonic development was a mystery. It is most likely that the Hebrews shared the general view of most ancient cultures that the male sperm was the vessel, frequently called “the seed” as in plants, in which life was transmitted from generation to generation. The female womb, though important, was no more than the receptacle in which life of the child grew before birth.

On the other hand, the life of a child in the womb, whether the child was male or female, was also considered as a sacred gift of Yahweh to the Israelites. Israel’s covenant with Yahweh as a specially chosen people added a further element of holiness to sexuality, conception and childbirth. Religious controls over sexual practices and marriage also sprang from this sense that human sexuality is holy. It is this element of holiness which religious traditions have added to the debate about embryonic research and cloning.

This is an issue with which all religious people must struggle: When does “human” life begin in the spiritual as well as the physical sense? A further issue is whether a clump of cells less than a week old with the potential for growing into a child in a mother’s womb has eternal as well as temporal value. To some extent the debate can be avoided by the harvesting of stem cells from the umbilical blood of a newborn infant. This issue has to be set over against the value of the medical benefits scientific research may derive for other living humans with a deficient genetic structure or diseases which may be healed through the introduction of new embryonic or umbilical stem cells.

We may well have something to contribute to the debate among puzzled members of our congregations. After all, we proclaim the gospel of eternal divine love incarnate in a child born in a mother’s womb. Put it this way: When did Jesus become a living, human being?

LUKE 13:10-17. While Israel generally is regarded as a modern secular state, it still must give appropriate recognition to the more fundamentalist religious elements of its Jewish population. In the past weeks an open debate between ultra-orthodox rabbis who control the powerful rabbinical council have been in open conflict with Reformed and Conservative rabbis, many from the USA, who want the rules for who is an acceptable Jew in modern Israel relaxed so that their liturgies, marriages and other practices will be treated as valid.

Debates about the traditional Law of Moses still disturb the body politic to a considerable extent. Such arguments have serious political implications for the current government. The Likud party depends on the ultra-orthodox parties for sustaining a majority in the Knesset.

In recent years on any Sabbath day in Jerusalem, cars driven through parts of the city inhabited by ultra-orthodox Jews have been pelted with rocks and other debris for doing what is forbidden by the local residents.

“Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.”  Did Jesus turn this fourth commandment on its head? Well, he went to the synagogue, didn’t he? Didn’t that give him the freedom to spend the rest of the day freely, doing whatever he liked? Or did he just give us permission to do only what was good and loving and helpful for others?

That was a common view when I was a child in a small community in Quebec, Canada, that was 95% French Roman Catholic. The general rule in our town was that if you attended mass on Sunday morning, it was quite acceptable to go visiting, attend baseball or ice hockey games, the horse races or a political meeting in the afternoon. This was also the general practice for the few Protestant village and farm families when the morning chores were done. Was this local culture the reason why many of my generation in the Protestant families married Roman Catholics and raised their children in that religious tradition? Was it the family culture of two of the families most regularly at worship subsequently there were two members of the order of ministry and several lay leaders in that and later in other congregations?

Many years later I read a book, “The Revenge of the Methodist Bicycle Company,” describing the struggle for a more open Sunday in Toronto in the 1890s. For several years the city council had struggled to keep the street railway system out of bankruptcy. Finally, it was decided against the stern opposition of some of the leading Protestant churches, the council voted to let the street railway operate on Sundays.

The argument mounted against it was that the labouring folk who were the greater users of the system would go off to the beaches or skating rinks on Sundays. They would then be too late or tired to attend the Sunday evening services. In those days, those were always the best attended services. There was no better form of Sunday evening entertainment than the lively singing and a rousing sermon. That was the time and place when young people did their courting in an acceptable milieu.

However, a group of Methodist businessmen organized a new company that manufactured the newly invented bicycle. All summer long, the folk who wanted to go to Toronto’s famous lakefront beaches could do as they pleased by getting themselves bicycles and riding away while the street cars passed by empty and losing even more money by operating on Sundays.

It was another 40 years before professional baseball or hockey games were allowed in Toronto. And another 30 years before stores and shopping centres were permitted to open for business.

So how do we spend our Sundays in 2010 when only a small minority of the people anywhere ever go near a church to worship? Does it matter any more in this secular age? How is faith expressed most effectively on the Sabbath day?

INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURE

TENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

PROPER 13  ORDINARY 18

AUGUST 1, 2010

HOSEA 11:1-11. The image of God behind this dramatic appeal to Israel is that of a loving, compassionate parent. Indeed, here God is described as the Mother of Israel. Just discipline is also the parent’s role toward her children; and God does this too.

Hosea was one of that elite company of prophets who from the middle of the 8th century cried out against the abandonment of Israel’s special covenant relationship with the only true God. The imminent threat from both Egypt and Assyria as the dominant powers of the period vying for supremacy is lifted up in vss.5-7 as the judgment of God against apostasy. This emphasizes how the divine purpose is worked out in historical events of every age.

PSALM 107:1-9, 43. This selection forms the first two antiphons of a litany of thanksgiving most likely created as a hymn for community worship at a relatively late date, no more than four or five centuries BCE. Its antiphon chorus (vss. 8, 15, 21, 31) celebrates God’s enduring love on which all Israel’s history depended.

ECCLESIASTES 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23. (Alternate) In some respects Ecclesiastes is the most irreligious book in the Bible. Nowhere is this assessment clearer than in these selected passages that seems full of disheartening despair about life and faith. But take a deeper look. Perhaps there is something worthwhile in the setting the author creates for what follows in chapter 3 that everything has it time in God’s ordering of creation.

PSALM 49:1-12. (Alternate) Like Ecclesiastes, this psalm is the product of the Wisdom school of poets who sought to create a religious environment in a difficult age after Israel’s return from exile in Babylon. There is a sense of fatalism about life and death in these verses. Yet there is both hope and faith underlying the pessimism this psalmist expressed.

COLOSSIANS 3:1-11. Paul’s letters follow a usual pattern of first stating what Christians believe, then declaring the ethical implications of those beliefs. Here he states what it means to live out one’s baptism which symbolizes the death and resurrection of Christ. He emphasizes not only the way the Christians at Colossae were to use their bodies, but also the tense relationships which may well have existed between Jews and

Gentiles.

LUKE 12:13-21. According to Luke’s Gospel, Jesus always seemed to look for a teaching moment thrust at him by someone in his audience. Here a man having a quarrel with his brother asked him to be a judge between them about a family inheritance. Instead of doing what he was asked, Jesus told the parable of the farmer so satisfied with his wealth that he forgot how brief life can be. The point of the story is that God sees life from a totally different perspective. Do we share God’s point of view?

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HOSEA 11:1-11. The image of God behind this dramatic appeal to Israel is that of a loving, compassionate parent, the “Our Father” of the Gospels and the forgiving father of the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Better still, because child rearing has always been and still is for many predominately a mother’s role in most cultures, we can see here “the Mother of Israel.” This is the Mary we meet in Luke 2:41-52.

Vs. 2 recalls the Baal-worship and other forms of idolatry which so corrupted the worship of the Israelites following their settlement in Canaan, especially during the 9th and 8th centuries BCE. Hosea was one of that elite company of prophets who from the middle of the 8th century cried out against this abandonment of Israel’s special covenant relationship with the only true God. Vss.5-7 lift up the imminent threat from both Egypt and Assyria as the dominant powers of the period vying for supremacy as the judgment of Yahweh against this apostasy. Squeezed as it was between the two superpowers of that time, the prophet could see the hand of God in Israel’s situation.

The compassion of Yahweh exceeds the severity of this judgment, however, as vss. 9-11 assert. Because Yahweh is one who is merciful and loving as well as just, the anger of Yahweh, like the frightening roar of the lion, (or an angry father who only exercises authoritarian discipline?) brings Yahweh’s children to their senses and sends them home trembling like birds (vss.10-11). There could not be a more colourful prophetic image.

The promise of Israel’s return from exile has caused some scholars to hypothesize that this is a post-exilic addition to the original text of Hosea. The issue is ultimately unsolvable because no pre-exilic or other early texts exist. Furthermore, there is a vagueness and lack of specificity about the details of the promise and no mention whatsoever about the pre-eminence of Jerusalem and the temple which characterizes so much post-exilic writing. The passage really tells us more about Hosea’s concept of Yahweh’s true nature as a God of mercy and enduring love than about the events of those dangerous times.

PSALM 107:1-9, 43. This lection forms the first two antiphons of a liturgical psalm of thanksgiving, one of the true gems of the Psalter. The addition of the last verse of the psalm (vs.43) creates an exegetical problem no one has conclusively resolved: Are vss.1-32 the original thanksgiving hymn and vv.33-43 another psalm celebrating the providence of Yahweh and, in the prophetic tradition, the care of Yahweh for the needy?

Vss. 42-43 contain a wisdom saying comparable to those found in Proverbs and Job (cf. Job 22:19), but only once elsewhere in the Psalter (49:10). If this is a valid analysis, one may reasonably conjecture that it was an editor during the late post-exilic period who forged the unified psalm as it now appears. Wisdom and prophetic influences, especially those of Second Isaiah and Job, can be identified in many other phrases of the text.

The antiphonal refrain repeated throughout the first part (vss.8, 15, 21, 31), each with its own extension (vss.9, 16, 22, 32), emphasize the liturgical character of the psalm. Note especially how four distinct groups of worshippers and their particular reasons for thanksgiving have been identified in vss. 4-7, 10-14, 17-20 and 23-30. One wonders if these are descriptions of the many different groups of the Diaspora scattered abroad in various conditions after the disastrous fall of Samaria (722 BCE) or of Jerusalem (586 BCE). If so, then the psalm could have been composed for one or other of the great festivals after the exile when the Jewish Diaspora were required to return to the temple.

It has been speculated that vss. 22 and 32 give evidence of its use with the offering of the thanksgiving sacrifices. They still ring true in the praises of modern congregational worship for the universal and steadfast loving kindness of our God.

ECCLESIASTES 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23. (Alternate)  Qoheleth, the teacher of Wisdom, known more by the Latin name of the book, Ecclesiastes, was the classical cynic of scripture. These selections from the beginning of his collection of wise sayings express that characterization very well. Purporting to be Solomon, the son of David, he used this pseudonym to conceal his identity as a 4^th century observer of Israel’s moral and spiritual decline during the later par of the Persian period (539-333 BCE).

According to the late Prof.  R.  B. Y. Scott, he was not an atheist, but he did take a position “diametrically opposed to the doctrine that Yahweh (is) a personal God, had chosen Israel to be a people peculiar to himself and had made known to her his will.”  (The Way of Wisdom. Macmillan, 1971; 170) At the same time, Qoheleth was agnostic and fatalistic, which fit well with his affirmation of the existence and power of Yahweh. This found expression in his oft repeated statement that “all is vanity and chasing after wind.” In this he seemed almost ahead of his time in the direction that the Prophet Mohammed would take more than a millennium later (7^th century CE).

Qoheleth came to the conclusion that life did not have much meaning at all. As he said in 2:18-21, he despaired of his labours yielding anything from which he might benefit. Only others gained from what he had wrought. All one’s efforts yield only pain and vexation. As a result, he eschewed all but pleasure and felt that this too was the will of God (vss. 24-25 not in this reading). He must have suffered from a prolonged depression or his times must have been exceedingly oppressive.

PSALM 49:1-12. (Alternate)  In a mood not dissimilar from that of Qoheleth, this psalmist’s style can only be classified as poems of wisdom. Several other psalms also adopted a like position. (See Psss. 1; 37; 73; 91; 112; 128) They sought to instruct and exhort their audience to be faithful in trying times. Death and Sheol seem perilously close to this particular poet.

In the first couplets, the psalmist addresses a wide audience. His real target, however, may have been the wealthy living pompously and extravagantly in sumptuous homes. He appears to be reading or uttering an oracle which he describes as “a proverb” (vs. 4). Some of his contemporaries obviously benefited greatly from adopting the ways their Persian overlords from 539-333 BCE, the period during which it likely was composed.  Was it their ill gotten gain that so distressed this psalmist? He wanted people to take life as it came, especially with regard to riches.

Echoing the strong social justice of the prophets, he wanted nothing of the self-centred life. He shared Qoheleth’s view that the pursuit of wealth held nothing but vanity. Only others would reap its benefits (vs. 9). Wisdom itself held no attraction because it too would perish like all flesh.

Some scholars see this psalm as a defence of divine providence in the face of much evil. That does not appear to be more than superficial. In fact the word “YHWH” occurs only twice in the whole psalm. More pessimistic fatalism than sincere faith stands out in this excerpt. Perhaps too, this is the meaning of the unusual reference in vs. 15 to redemption from Sheol, although the reading does not include this. Was this in the same vein as Job’s claim in Job 19:25 “I know that my redeemer lives”?

COLOSSIANS 3:1-11. Where does one begin to comment about this highly theological and yet very practical ethical passage? The theology comes in vss. 1-4; the ethics in vss.5-11. As might be expected, the latter is based on the former. The resurrection of Christ which we now share, symbolically through baptism, spiritually and psychologically through faith, is the source of the power to live the Christian life. This life of sacrificial love that fulfills God’s will and purpose for us is now available to all who believe. So also is the promise to share the life and the eternal glory of Christ with God beyond death. For many of the people to whom Paul (or one of his associates) wrote this letter, the implications of this counsel meant radical change in their customary behaviour. It may still do so for us.

Paul envisions the risen and ascended Christ “seated at the right hand of God,” and therefore exercises all divine power. The image of deity as an all-powerful oriental potentate on a magnificent throne is found in most ancient religious traditions as well as in children’s fairy tales. One is reminded of the immense tapestry of the Risen Christ towering over the altar in the magnificent Coventry Cathedral rebuilt of etched and coloured glass and stainless steel beside the ruins of the old cathedral destroyed in the World War II blitz. Standing at the glorified Christ’s feet is a life-size figure a man, his head reaching no higher than the Christ’s ankles. Effortlessly, one’s eyes are lifted upward and upward to the full height of the Christ whose head reaches almost to the vaulted roof. The memory of a visit to Coventry Cathedral or looking again at a photograph of it brings vss.2-4 fully alive. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/deano/384485426/ )

So what? When the cathedral was built in the 1950s it stood in the midst of an urban community serving as the parish church for a neighbourhood that was predominately Christian. Today the cathedral’s community includes people of all races and faith traditions, most of whom are not Christian. It is a microcosm of the world as it is now. How then is the church to serve such a setting anywhere in our present world? That too was Paul’s problem in the Gentile cities like Colossae, one of the few he had not actually visited in person.

Paul found the impetus for his ethical challenge in vss. 5-8 in similar conditions. He focused on the negative aspects of this “earthly” life. It would appear that the Colossians had found a great many sexual diversions to undercut their new life in Christ. But were they so different from our own situation? Just pick up today’s newspaper or watch the latest television news or sitcoms for a contemporary view of what he meant.

The contrast with what the risen Christ empowers us to be is startling, as startling as stripping oneself of all one’s old clothes and donning new ones “according to the image of its creator” (vss.9-10) In fact, this is exactly what happened when new converts were baptized. They were stripped naked and re-clothed in new white garments to symbolize their rebirth to a totally new life. This is where we get our tradition of dressing infants in a white dress for baptism.

In vs.11 Paul clarifies just how utterly new this life is to be. All the old barriers that divide people from one another are swept away and we all become one in Christ. Scholars have pointed out the similarity of this passage with Galatians 3:28-29. Others have noted the many parallels with the Letter to the Ephesians, particularly Paul’s conception of the unity of believers in the Christian fellowship as the Body of Christ. Such is the missional reality of the great Coventry Cathedral in its English urban setting. (See their website  http://www.coventrycathedral.org.uk/). This mission also calls the church universal in a world longing to see the living Christ stand among us.

The latest published data from Christianity Today magazine lists 38,000 separate Christian groups and denominations in the world. At the turn of the 21^st century, Christians made up 33% of the world’s population with approximately 2 billion adherents. Other main religious groupings were as follows in order of numerical adherents: Moslems: 19.6 % – 1 billion;  Hindus : 13.4% – 800 million; Buddhists: 5.9% – 360 million; Sikhs: 0.4% – 23 million;  Jews : 0.2% – 14 million.

Sadly, the data appears to reveal a decidedly Christian bias. Does not the behaviour of so many in our supposedly “Christian” society compare more closely to the death-dealing description of Colossae’s new converts in vs. 5?

LUKE 12:13-21. Many a farmer or business entrepreneur has been troubled by this parable. Jesus appears to say that making a good living and increasing one’s wealth is totally wrong. Not so. That isn’t the issue Jesus is dealing with in this family quarrel. The wrong lies in the greed, envy and lack of sharing which Jesus challenged as a result of someone’s demand for the division of a family inheritance. It does sound very familiar, doesn’t it?

That is an issue whether one thinks of it on a purely personal scale or on the wide spectrum of international affairs where the gap between the rich and poor nations is growing greater year by year. A similar gap exists within nations. It has just been reported in July 2010 that in India where more than one billion people live, there are more poor people than in all the continent of Africa.

Within the past two years ago, the whole world was stunned by bank failures and hasty amalgamations, and a worldwide recession of unprecedented proportions. Many families lost their homes to bankruptcy as well as their employment. Others found that the homes they were able to keep had larger mortgages than their homes were now worth. This brought about accusations that decisively countered the widely hailed myth as the ultimate success of capitalism. Some eminent economists predicted that there will yet be a depression like that of the 1930s. Few of even the wealthiest nations in Europe and the Americas are only beginning to recover.

The cause of this bitter recession has been traced to human greed in the selling and re-selling of unsecured mortgages and other financial instruments no one fully understood. Every blip in the stock market indices increased the anxieties of those who had invested their savings in widely held stocks, mutual funds or trusts. An article in the financial section of the newspaper told us that major banks and investment houses with all their expertise had suffered as significantly as the modest investor. Some financial institutions were allowed to sink into bankruptcy or have been taken over by other institutions.

That may not bring much comfort to the baby boom generation of the 1950s and 60s looking forward to a comfortable retirement. It is disturbing to see their investment portfolios dwindle by 20% or more in a few months. As with so much in the NT, here is the modern version of Jesus’ parable writ large and broadcast so that the whole world may see it happening day by day. “Guard against greed in all its forms….That’s the way it is with those who save up for themselves, but aren’t rich where God is concerned.” (Luke 12: 15, 21. The Complete Gospels. Edited by Robert J. Miller, Poleridge Press, 1991.)

SOME ADDITIONAL PREACHING POINTS.

HOSEA 11:1-11. For Israel, history was not a recitation of events, but heilegeschichte – a holy story. The reference to Israel Yahweh’s use of the historical events of Israel’s past to call this holy people to obedience also comes through very forcefully. Prominent in this passage are two important references to the religious tradition of Israel. In vs. 1, reference to Israel as a child being called out of Egypt relates to the Exodus, the formative event in the nation’s history and religious tradition. Extra-biblical evidence of that event has been extremely difficult for modern historians and archaeologists to discover. Whether factual or not, the Hebrew scriptures were created around this formative tradition.

The image of the Exodus is expressed in the very first words of the passage and again in vss. 3, 4 and 8. In vss. 5-7, however, mention of Israel being returned to Egypt sounds a note of judgment against the apostasy of Yahweh’s chosen people. The Gospel of Matthew makes another use of vs.1 in Matthew 2:15 in reference to the flight of the Holy Family to Egypt. The authors of the NT read the Hebrew scriptures from a literalist standpoint and applied what they read to their convictions about Christ without regard to the historical context.

Another reference is the use of the name Ephraim as a synonym for Israel. This has a more reliable historical background. The judgment expressed in the passage limits the judgment of Yahweh to the Northern Kingdom created as a result of the civil war with Judah after the death of Solomon. In The Interpreter’s Bible Dictionary, (vol. 2, 120) W. L. Reed, formerly Professor of Old Testament at the College of the Bible in Lexington, Kentucky, gave some of the background of this terminology.

Ephraim (aka as Samaria its capital city) along with his older brother Manasseh were the sons of Joseph but adopted by Jacob. (Gen. 48:5). These tribes were among the last to settle in the hill country of Canaan to the north of Jerusalem and Judea and later captured the northern plain of Jezreel. Their distinction as separate and pre-eminent tribes in the Books of Joshua and Judges may indicate that they had different ancestral blood lines. If modern reconstructions of maps of their territory can be accepted, they also had possession of considerable territory on the east side of the Jordan River.

During the lifetime of Hosea and Isaiah, a disastrous war was fought between Syria and Ephraim (734-732 BCE). The outcome of this war was to reduce the peripheral territories of the tribe to the central mountain area. Ten years later, the whole of the Northern Kingdom of which Ephraim and Manasseh were the major parts, was subjugated to Assyrian with the fall of Samaria. These wars provided the historical setting for the prophecies of Hosea.

COLOSSIANS 3:1-11. Surprisingly the name of Jesus occurs only four times in this letter. Three of these read ‘Christ Jesus’; (1:1, 4; 2:6) the other reads ‘Jesus Christ’ (1:4). All other references to his person are in theological terminology as “Christ.” Is this significant?

John Shelby Spong thought it is. In his monograph This Rabbi Lord (HarperSanFrancisco, 1993) he wrote: “The key to this book, I believe, is our ability to distinguish between Jesus and Christ. They are not the same. Jesus was a person; Christ is a title, a theological principle. Jesus was of history; Christ is beyond history. Jesus was human, finite, limited; Christ is power that is divine, infinite, unlimited. Jesus had a mother and a father, an ancestry, a human heritage. He was born. He died. Christ is a principle beyond the capacity of the mind to embrace or human origins to explain. The name of our Lord was not Jesus Christ, as so many of us suppose. He was Jesus of Nazareth, about whom people made the startling and revolutionary claim: ‘You are the Christ.’”

Spong went on to explain: “The simplistic suggestion that Jesus is God is nowhere made in the biblical story. Nowhere! But time after time in historic episode after historic episode, the claim has been made that through Jesus, God was revealed – fully, completely, totally. …

“In Jesus of Nazareth, men and women saw the fullness of life being lived, the depth of love being shared, the courage to be being revealed. To them Jesus made known the full meaning of life, and love and being. He revealed God, and whenever God was seen in human life, that power is called Christ. ‘You are the Christ, Jesus’ – that was the claim. ‘You are the Christ, for in your life, we have seen the meaning of all life. In your love we have seen the source of all love. In your being we have seen the ground of all being.’”

As I reported in an earlier commentary a few weeks ago, I challenged Bishop Spong after he made a similar statement in a sermon in a local Anglican church. I stated that he replaced the Holy Trinity with a new triad of God as the source of life, the source of love, and the ground of being.” He agreed then added quickly, “But I would never call it the Holy Trinity.”

On the previous evening, he had stated that he felt This Rabbi Lord was one his two best books. It certainly has guided much of his thinking and writing for the intervening years.

In a somewhat lighter vein, Rev. Bill Wall, a colleague in the United Church of Canada from Regina, Saskatchewan, responded to an article published in The United Church Observer, “What makes Christians distinct?” (April 2010) He wrote in his letter to the editor (July/August 2010): “One word: Jesus. … But that answer is just the start of the debate. A friend told me recently, ‘My Jesus and my sister’s Jesus aren’t even distant cousins.’”

Wall explained, “On the one side are those for whom Jesus is the divine Son of God and the one and only saviour. On the other are those who see him as a mystic, teacher, healer, prophet or perhaps as an archetypal human, but in any case, as a human we are expected to follow, rather than a divine being we are meant to worship. It seems to me that the second option allows Christians to claim our distinctiveness without needing to exalt ourselves above people of other faiths.”

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INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURE

Proper 11 Ordinary 16

8th Sunday After Pentecost

July 18, 2010

AMOS 8:1-12. In another vituperative outburst against social injustices of his time in the 8th century BC, Amos vividly describes the fate that is about to befall his people. In an amazing series of images beginning with a basket of over-ripe summer fruit and ending with a famine, he depicts God=s unrelenting judgment against the economic,  political and religious chicanery of the rich toward the poor.

PSALM 52. Again echoing the words of Amos, this psalm reiterates God=s judgment for social injustice and false piety. The reference to Zion in vs. 6 indicates that these charges may have been directed against the religious leaders.

GENESIS 18:1-10A. (Alternate) This odd little story tells of God appearing to Abraham in the guise of three travellers to promise that they would have a son in their later years. However incredible, its intent was to lead Abraham and his descendants to an ever deeper trust.

PSALM 15. (Alternate) The similarity of this psalm with the teachings of Deuteronomy and Leviticus points to a time after Israel=s return from exile when religious leader sought to instruct the populace in the ancient tradition of the covenant law.

COLOSSIANS 1:15-28. Modern versions of this passage divide it into three paragraphs. The first speaks of the pre-existent, human, crucified and resurrected Christ. The second speaks of the reconciliation God effected through Christ. The third presents the vision of what God is doing in creating this new humanity and the cosmic universe in which we live and serve as did Paul. Few statements of the whole gospel Paul proclaimed have the sweep of this one.

The most puzzling part of the passage is Paul=s claim to be “completing what is lacking in Christ=s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.” Does he really mean that the suffering of Christ on the cross was lacking some way? More likely, the phrase emphasizes that the Passion of Christ was the central focus of Paul’s faith and the church’s reason for being.

LUKE 10:38-42. The lovely story of Jesus visiting Mary and Martha never ceases to raise romantic views of their relationship now featured in a modern novel. Jesus felt welcome in their home in Bethany and made his headquarters there when in Jerusalem. It lay only a short two kilometres east of the city on the Mount of Olives.

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A MORE COMPLETE ANALYSIS.

AMOS 8:1-12. Amos in his most vituperative outcry condemns the injustice of his society. The passage contains some vivid metaphors. The basket of summer fruit catches the eye immediately. In Canada, summer fruit is soft because its water content is very high, so it spoils very quickly. Most summer fruit seasons are very short, a couple of weeks at most. In the heat of a summer in Israel, that would take no more than a few hours. Scholars suspect, however, that the metaphor is more of a play on words as footnotes in the NSRV indicate. The Hebrew for a summer fruit is aqayits; but in vs.2 “the end” is aqets.

If that is not enough to attract attention, the image in vs. 3 of the songs of the temple turned into wailing and dead bodies … cast out in every place leaves nothing to the imagination. The most secure place in Jerusalem or any other city was the temple, the site of sanctuary. It usually was the last place of resistance against an invader. In my home town, an armed rebellion by French Canadians against the British colonial government in1837 was fought to its bloody end in the local parish church. Marks of the cannon balls used to flush out les Patriotes are still visible in the church’s stone walls. The end of the battle brought a merciless search of the village by the victorious troops for any would-be escapees. The legend of the rebel patriots heroic defense has grown with time. I clearly recall how it was portrayed in the colorful floats a great parade on the 100^th anniversary of the battle. Histories written for subsequent anniversaries are replete with legends as well as facts.

Amos prophesies an inevitable and immediate catastrophe in response to the corruption he sees everywhere about him. His oracle makes explicit the reasons for this catastrophe in vss. 4-6. It depicts the economic injustices of Amos’ own time and place. Now, his words have become universal as the globalization of business and industry has seized economic advantages everywhere. The wealthy people and the developed industrial nations reap profits and expand their power at the expense of the poor in rest of the world. Many of the most vulnerable people in our own communities are sinking rapidly into poverty as they are forced to the margins of a money-driven society.

A threat of earthquakes, floods, darkness in broad daylight, and public mourning like that for an only son draw a devastating picture of how great the coming catastrophe would be (vss. 7-10). This is followed by a searing description of famine throughout the land (vss. 11-14).  Famine was not uncommon in Israel because water sources are so scarce and rainfall relatively light. If the fall and spring rains did not come as expected, crop failure was all but inevitable. One of the core issues in the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the availability of water.

The prophesy rises to its climax in a brilliant clarification of what has really gone wrong. As severe as they are, it is not the natural disasters which will cause such an incredible catastrophe, but the spiritual vacuum throughout the nation. The real famine is Anot a famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but of a hearing of the words of the Lord@ (vs. 11b).

How elegantly contemporary is this word of the Lord of History. Are there any prophets like Amos willing to speak such words to our world?

PSALM 52. Echoing the words of Amos, this psalm reiterates God=s judgment against social injustice and false piety. The reference to Zion in vs. 6 indicates that these charges may have been directed against the religious leaders. It also points to a later period than that of King David.

The righteous are like a spreading olive tree, says the psalmist at the end of a most vengeful condemnation of the rich and powerful. A note of self-righteousness has crept into the self-awareness of vss.6-8. But does the grateful devotion of vss.9-10 overcome the viciousness of vss.1-5?

One aspect of the work by the editors of the Psalter was their search for a time in ancient stories of David’s life when such an attitude could be attributed to the hero-king. This editorial practice dates from the post-exilic period long after David=s time (ca. 1000 BCE) when the praises of Israel’s religious tradition were being collected and new psalms written to create a composite set of scrolls for use in the reconstructed temple in Jerusalem, possibly in 5^th century BCE.

In The Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 4, p.273, W. Stewart McCullough wrote that like Ps. 58 this psalm recalled invectives of the great prophets (cf. Isa.22:15-19). Yet the psalmist also wished to express trust and confidence in a time when men were debating the problem of the comparative values of good and evil from a utilitarian standpoint of what was profitable for life in their own time (Cf. Pss. 1; 37; 49)

While having the form of a lament, the psalm denounced wickedness and assured the righteous of vindication. Like other psalms and writings in which the relation of piety to success, happiness, and long life is vehemently discussed, this was an attitude of the reconstruction era. We can find this ideology prevalent in much of the Old Testament, based in large part on the theological concept of Israel as Yahweh=s chosen and covenanted people. The books of Job and Ecclesiastes show that this attitude was not universally accepted. Righteousness and wealth do not necessarily follow each other in human behavior.

GENESIS 18:1-10A. (Alternate) This odd little story tells of God appearing to Abraham in the guise of three travellers to promise that they would have a son in their later years. Since this anecdote came from J, the earliest of the four documents which compose the Pentateuch, it presents a relatively primitive description of a theophany. The motif of deity appearing in the guise of three men has much in common with other ancient religious literature. The legend could well have existed in the pre-Israelite settlement in the region of Hebron.   Abraham=s hospitality also follows the traditional custom of tribal societies. Such hospitality usually resulted in a blessing. For this reason alone, the story would have been remembered with great favour in the long oral tradition preceding its documentation.

Specific clues imbedded in the narrative define the incident as a theophany. It occurred Aby the oaks of Mamre, very near modern Hebron, Israel. Regarded to this day as a holy place, with the Arabic name of Ramet el-Khalil (the height of the friend of the merciful One), it lies not far from the tomb of Abraham and Sarah, sacred for both Moslems and Jews. Archeologists have found a 9^th century BCE pavement marking the spot where once the oak of Mamre may have stood. It also marked the place where Jews captured during the revolt of Bar Kocheba  (135 CE) were sold as slaves. Byzantine Christians partially rebuilt a basilica there after its destruction by Moslems in 614 CE.

Other clues to the sanctity of the location also exist in the narrative: the length of Abraham=s speech and the generosity of the feast he prepared for the guests. Three measures of meal amount to about four pecks, a dry measure equal to 2 imperial gallons, 9.9 litres or 8 US quarts. This would have been used to bake flat breads. A young calf would provide an ample meal for four men with plenty left over for the women, children and servants. Vineyards in the region still yield plentiful grapes, so most likely wine would also have quenched the thirst of the three guests.

However incredible, the intent of the story was to lead Abraham and his descendants to an ever deeper trust in Yahweh.

PSALM 15. (Alternate) The similarity of this didactic psalm with the teachings of Deuteronomy and Leviticus points to a time after Israel’s return from exile when religious leader sought to instruct the populace in the ancient tradition of the covenant law.

Behind it may lie a more ancient tradition: the practice of approaching a place of worship to obtain an oracle from a priest. This would guide the supplicant in making a decision or throw light on the meaning of some calamity. Or the supplicant might ask for an interpretation of a sacred law as to his/her duty in a new situation. It cannot be considered a liturgical psalm, but one used in preparation for worship. Psalm 24 contains a liturgical rendition of a similar religious attitude.

The phrase “your holy hill represents the reality of all ancient Israel’s sacred sites. More than likely it stands as a generic term for the specific name Zion. Not only Israelites, but all ancient people built their simplest sanctuaries and greatest temples on heights so that they could be seen from afar. Archeologists still see the evidence of such Aholy hills@ on every tell or mound they investigate.

The ethical measure of the prospective worshiper leaves little to the imagination. Even in recent times, some Protestant denominations of the Calvinist and Presbyterian tradition, held preparation services during the week before a quarterly celebration of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. The purpose of these services was for the assembled congregation to examine their moral conduct and seek forgiveness in much the same way that the Roman Catholic Church practices the sacrament of Confession, now called Reconciliation.

Of special note too, this moral process banned such financial transactions as lending money at interest and taking bribes. False oaths also had no place in the strict discipline invoked by this psalmist. Steadfast ethical behaviour alone mattered to this understanding of Yahweh=s will.

COLOSSIANS 1:15-28. Christ is the image of the invisible God (vs.15) is only one of many preachable texts in this passage. Perhaps nowhere else in the whole of the Pauline corpus do we find a clearer description of what Paul meant by his metaphor of “the new creation” in 2 Corinthians 5:16-21.

By dividing the passage into three paragraphs as does the NRSV, we can see that the first speaks of the pre-existent, human, crucified and resurrected Christ. The second speaks of the reconciliation God effected through Christ. The third presents the vision of what God is doing in creating this new humanity and the cosmic universe in which we live and serve as did Paul.

If there is a tendency in our preaching to limit reconciliation to the human part of the created universe, this passage should dispel that less than complete understanding of God=s purpose. Just as creation came into being through Christ, Paul claims in vs.16, so also all creation and not just the human race will be recreated through being reconciled to God through Christ=s life, death and resurrection. (vs. 20) That includes all of us who like the Colossians were once estranged from God. (vss. 21-22)

Yet the promise comes with the responsibility of maintaining this new relationship of faith (vs.23). Prevenient grace takes effect when it meets faithful response. The grace that reconciles us to God does not change. Its effectiveness in our lives and through us in the world is inhibited when we no longer respond in faith, hope and love. So Paul goes on to show what this has meant in his own life as an apostle proclaiming this good news (vss. 24-26). He could do no other than link his ministry as an apostle to his experience of conversion and reconciliation.

The most puzzling part of this passage is Paul’s claim to be “completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that, is the church. Does he really mean that the suffering of Christ on the cross was lacking some way? William Barclay says that this is no more than another way of building up and extending the church. “Anyone who serves the Church by widening her borders, establishing her faith, saving her from errors, is doing the work of Christ. And if such service involves suffering and pain and sacrifice, that affliction is filling up and sharing the very suffering of Christ Himself.”  (Daily Bible Readings: Philippians, Colossians and Philemon. Edinburgh: The Church of Scotland, 1957.)

F.W. Beare gives a more extensive exegesis in The Interpreter’s Bible. ( Vol. 11, p.177. Nashville: Abingdon, 1955.). He states that this was the basis for the doctrine of a treasury of merits (formally called supererogation) first authorized in the papal bull by Clement VI in 1343. This doctrine made the sale of indulgences possible and ultimately led to the strong reaction of Protestant theologians and exegetes two centuries later.

Beare points out, however, that Paul in no way suggests that his sufferings he create a store of merits which are available for the account of the church at large. He never regarded his sufferings as an atonement for the sins of other Christians. The issues of atonement for sin did not enter into Paul=s consideration. His sufferings may have been vicarious, but not punishment for sin. He endured them in the interest of others. They were not in any sense a recompense for the sins of others. Paul was saying simply that suffering is part of the Christian vocation. As Jesus had said, “the servant is not greater than his Lord.” The world will treat Christians with hostility as it treated Christ. Nor does the phrase “the deficiencies of Christ’s afflictions” imply that the sufferings of Christ were insufficient in some way to accomplish their purpose of redemption. Paul was not putting the economy of redemption under review. His underlying belief was that the afflictions of the church are also Christ’s afflictions. Thus the sufferings of Christians as Christians would continually supplement the sufferings of their Master. The experience of suffering would become an experience common to Master and servants.

Eduard Schweizer believes that Colossians is a heavily edited, but authentic Pauline letter. He also asserts that Paul or his editor was exaggerating in this statement. It goes further than anything we can find elsewhere in Paul. It would have been alien to him to say anything about suffering being endured for the sake of the church. (The Letter to The Colossians: A Commentary. Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1976., p.99ff.) Schweizer concludes that the expression “Christ’s afflictions” is never used in the New Testament for the Passion, nor for Jesus’ experience of suffering in general. Nor does the church take on and continue the sufferings of Christ which in themselves effected redemption of the world.

The death of Christ brought about the redemptive reconciliation with God once and for all. The apostle’s affliction’ or being afflicted can be regarded as that which comes from participating in the anticipating proclaiming the gospel, thus making it effective in such a way as to let faith attain its fullness among the Colossians and among other communities throughout the world. The sufferings of which Paul speaks are those endured in the community for the sake of Christ, or in Christ. What the community experiences, Paul also experiences and vice versa. This allows his message to become more credible. He and they, and we too, represent Christ in the world. We are to live to bring Christ’s work as the redeemer of the Christian community and the whole cosmos to its fulfillment. Our place of ministry is right where we are now, wherever that may be. And that may well involve us in a discomforting degree of suffering.

LUKE 10:38-42. Martha frets; Mary listens. Or is that an over-simplification of the story? Jesus does seem to rebuke Martha for her task-driven anxiety and to praise Mary for sitting as his feet listening to what he said. This has been the traditional interpretation which some people have pushed to the extreme by claiming that faith and contemplative spirituality are better than works and active service. It is unlikely that Jesus meant to draw such a distinction. Life for Jesus had a much greater balance of both prayer and action, worship and work. He spent his days teaching and healing, but also frequently withdrew to a quiet place for prayer and contemplation of the presence of God in stillness and silence.

Contemplative spirituality is certainly an important facet of the Christian life. The modern Protestant tradition has left it mostly to Catholicism – Anglican, Roman and Orthodox – where it is practiced as a significant means of spiritual formation and daily devotion. Wesley eschewed it, especially in its monastic form, though he urged his converts to follow his own daily practice of the presence of God and the reading of devotional classics such as Thomas à Kempis. Wesley also adopted the love feast and established the class meeting as a means of spiritual support for their continued development. In recent years, some Protestants have turned to Roman Catholic spiritual directors in search of a more effective spiritual life.

In this decade the Internet offers open access to a wide variety of contemplative practices in both Western Christian and Oriental traditions of Buddhist, Hindu and other origins. An unusual combination of several of these traditions can also be seen in some of these web sites. Our Protestant tradition has been rightly criticized for being too activist and task-oriented. Yet this does not obviate the need for action as a vital expression of faith and commitment. Spreading the Good News of God’s redeeming love in Christ does require effective action.

The actual text of what Jesus said to Martha may have come down to us in somewhat garbled form, since various readings of vss. 41-42 survive. Whatever may have been Jesus’ original words, it would appear that he may well have urged Martha to seek first the Reign of God and let other things assume their proper place within that spiritual context, as Matthew 6:33 states. That leaves plenty of room for exegetical and homiletical interpretation.

Some Additional Preaching Notes.

COLOSSIANS 1:15-28. Last Sunday at our local church I was surprised to meet one of the policemen who had been on duty all week during the G8/G20 crisis in Toronto. I asked him if he had been on duty that week. I was surprised because that trying challenge for our police forces occurred only hours after the funeral of his wife of more than 30 years. She had died following an eighteen year battle with cancer.

“Oh, yes,” he replied, then added, “It was only a very small minority of really bad guys in the midst of a lot of very peaceful people wanting to be heard.”

I had seen him once before in fully uniform weighed down by his protective vest and armament. He and a partner were patrolling the stands at a major league baseball game. Seeing him at worship made me realize that by doing his duty under what must have been the most difficult circumstances exemplified very clearly what Paul told the Colossians. We are to live in Christ amid the pain and tribulations of this world as it is.

A brief essay: Liturgy happens in many ways and everywhere.

Scholars have long noted the liturgical style of the Letter to the Colossians. There is a distinct sense of poetry and praise in 1:15-20. Conzelmann regards it as a hymn taken from an earlier source for use in this setting. He claims that there are similar concepts in this hymn to be found in the Greek Pythagorean philosophers of the lst century BCE and in Philo, the Alexandrian Jews of the 1^st century CE. Others, like G. B. Caird for instance, believed that its origin is irrelevant and could be Paul’s own composition.

The latest issue of ARC: The Journal of the Faculty of Religious Study (Montreal: McGill University, 2009.) contains several important essays on ritual and ritual practice. The lead article by Steven Engler dealt with the theory derived from some unusual practices of exorcism in a powerful mixture of Christian Catholicism, neo-Pentecostalism and African animism among descendants of former Brazilian slaves. (“Brazilian Spirit Possession and the Theory of Ritual.” 1-28.) Quoting an earlier source by Maurice Bloch (“Ritual and Deference,” 2006) Engler pointed out that in liturgical matters one relies on “the authority of others to guarantee the value of what is said or done.” Hence the use of prayer books, traditional hymns, liturgical clothing, seasonal candles and paraments. In studying the Bible too we often appeal to authorities (as I have done above) in a ritualistic way so as to strengthen our discussion with their superior knowledge.

Many years ago when still a bachelor, I was invited to supper by an Anglican colleague. He wife left his wife in the kitchen to care for two very young children and prepare the meal for the unexpected guest. I was directed to join him at evensong in the small white church next to the rectory. Proudly my host displayed for me the accoutrements of this exquisite little chapel. “We have better paraments than even the cathedral,” he told me with great pride. I wondered how and why such a small parish could spend such large sums of money of what my denomination regarded as superfluous decorations.

Since I was the only other person present I reminded him that his wife would have supper ready and suggested that it wasn’t necessary for him to conduct the service just for me. “It isn’t for you,” he snapped back. “It’s for God. Even if no one is here, we must always have evensong at six o’clock.” He then proceeded to ring the bell in the steeple to call whoever heard to attention that he was doing so. For the next twenty to thirty minutes he conducted the traditional evensong while his wife waited for us to arrive late for supper.

Just a few years ago in Montreal I dropped into the Anglican Cathedral to see some of the stone work put in place by my paternal great-grandfather, a master stonemason, during the building of that historic church 150 years ago. I was again just in time for evensong and again I was the only person present except for the curate who conducted the liturgy.

In contrast, as these paragraphs were being composed, Canada’s Queen Elizabeth was been given a last farewell at the end of a nine day royal visit to three provinces. Everywhere she went in several stops along the tour she was greeted by rousing cheers from large crowds eager to see their Queen. There was also the traditional honour guard in dress uniform to be inspected by their commander in chief with an artillery unit of four guns sounding the royal salute in the background.

In Halifax, Nova Scotia she formally reviewed an international fleet gathered in Halifax harbour. In Winnipeg, Manitoba, she was invited to lay the cornerstone of new National Museum of Human Rights. In Ottawa, she addressed the Canada Day celebrations on Parliament Hill. In Toronto, Ontario, she unveiled a plaque commemorating the 150th anniversary of the dedication of Queen’s Park by her great-grandfather, before he was crowned King Edward VII. Queen’s Park is the site of the Ontario Legislature. She also visited the Research In Motion factory in Waterloo, Ontario, where Blackberries are manufactured. She was formally presented with the new model of that communications instrument.

At each stop of the tour she was greeted by brief addresses by the Prime Minister or  other official dignitary to which she was invited to reply. On the eve of her departure she was honoured at a state dinner and given several gifts on behalf of the Canadian people marking this occasion of her 22^nd visit to this country. In her brief response she expressed her thanks for the warm welcome given to her and her husband once again. She also referred to the fact that when she spoke at the United Nations on the following afternoon, she would do so as Queen of Canada. She is the formal head of state of this country. The Governor General is the Queen’s representative and acts in her stead when she is not in the country.

These ceremonies can only be regarded as political and secular liturgies. All societies and cultures perform similar secular liturgies on specific national or cultural occasions such as the inauguration of a president or the presentation of a sports championship trophy like the World Cup of Football or the World Series of Baseball. In the introductory Propedia volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica’s 15^th edition, the late Wilfred Cantwell Smith noted the similarity of liturgy and symbolism in Sunday afternoon football games in the United States to the church liturgies of Sunday mornings in American churches.

LUKE 10:38-42. There is another surprising aspect to this pericope. Seen from Luke’s perspective, Martha was criticized for doing exactly what her traditional culture dictated. She was getting the meal for her guest, expending considerable energy in doing so. She is then portrayed as whining because her sister was not helping her. On the other hand, Mary was praised for just sitting at Jesus’ feet listening to him. But was Mary not also quietly criticized too. Unlike the other disciples in other instances or even the lawyer in the previous pericope, she didn’t interact with Jesus. Was she just mooning there in enthralled silence? She was given no commission to act, just her presence acknowledged. Sharon H. Ringe comments in her exposition of this passage: “Whatever may have been Jesus’ relationship with women followers, Luke allots them carefully circumscribed roles. For them, the life of discipleship – at least in Luke’s church – promises few real changes.” (“Luke.” Westminster Bible Companion Series. Westminster John Knox Press, 1994.)

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INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURE
Proper 10  Ordinary 15
7th Sunday After Pentecost
July 11, 2010

AMOS 7:7-17. Amos, one of the twelve “Minor Prophets,” was no small man, spiritually. His sense of divine justice speaks across the millennia as loudly as ever. With fear or favour for no prince or priest, this farmer from the sticks, spoke for God in symbolic actions as clearly as in dynamic words. In this passage he predicts that God’s displeasure with Israel will result in a national disaster, an event which occurred in 721 BCE with conquest of the Northern Kingdom of Israel by Assyria.

PSALM 82. Many of the psalms show the influence of the outspoken utterances of the prophets. One hears echoes of Amos in this psalm which may have served as a liturgical hymn in the temple in Jerusalem at the New Year to celebrate the absolute sovereignty of God.

DEUTERONOMY 30:9-14. (Alternate) This excerpt comes from what the editors of Deuteronomy presented the final message of Moses to the Israelites (chs. 29-30). It promised complete prosperity for those who obeyed the covenant law. This assumption has been much abused by those who used it as if it was the last word received directly from God. Such an attitude fails to take into account that the ethic of righteous behaviour by individuals inherent in the Mosaic code is also balanced by a profound sense of social justice.

PSALM 25:1-1. (Alternate) In the original language each stanza of this psalm begins with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The author may have done this to create a form of prayer not only for himself, but for the use of anyone else at a time of great distress. It appealed to God for guidance at a time of moral uncertainty and found it in the covenant law of love and righteous behaviour. This theology reflects the Wisdom literature of the late Persian and Greek period of Jewish history, about four centuries before the birth of Jesus.

COLOSSIANS 1:1-14. In these opening words of greeting and thanksgiving, Paul applauds the Colossians’ faithfulness to the gospel as his colleague, Epaphras, had instructed them. The dominant feature of their faithfulness is love. Paul’s prayer that they continue their spiritual growth in the face of a severe challenge from “the power of darkness” from which they have been rescued. These words point to a time of conflict scholars believe to have been caused by a serious heresy.

LUKE 10:25-37. One of the most familiar parables answers two universal questions:  who is our neighbour and how we are to relate to others with whom we have little in common, or even a deep sense of mistrust and hostility.
Jews and Samaritans were as hostile to one another in Jesus’ time as are Israelis and Palestinians today. Yet, like their modern counterparts, they shared the same territory. In those days, however, they also spoke the same language and held many common beliefs in the same God. But the Samaritans had intermarried with foreign tribes imported by the Assyrians after the conquest of which Amos had spoken.

A  MORE COMPLETE ANALYSIS.

AMOS 7:7-17. It is a pity that the RCL only uses two passages from Amos and these only from the narrative segment of the book (ch.7-9). Amos deserves more than the sharing of his vision of doom with the chief priest of the royal sanctuary at Bethel.

This passage, one of series of five visions (7:1-9:8), tells us something about this earliest of the great prophets (despite his canonical characterization as one of the twelve “Minor Prophets”). Amos is believed to have lived in the period of Assyrian ascendency prior the fall of the Northern Kingdom of Israel to the Assyrians in721 BCE. In his own words, he was not a professional prophet or priest, but a farmer (vs.14). What is more, he was a Judean from Tekoa, a village about 5 mi. south of Bethlehem, in the Southern Kingdom of Judah. Bethel was not very much farther north of Jerusalem, but in the hill country of Ephraim, and thus in the Northern Kingdom known as Israel.

By raising his voice against the moral and social corruption of Israel (i.e. the Northern Kingdom), he encountered the opposition of the royal priesthood of that nation. At this time there were still many authorized royal sanctuaries. The centralizing of worship at the temple in Jerusalem occurred during the reign of Josiah, king of Judah (ca. 640-605 BCE) at least a century or more later.

Like most rural people, he was something of a jack-of-all-trades, for in addition to having flocks and a fig orchard, he also knew something about building and the tools of that trade. His metaphor of the plumb-line vividly expressed his total condemnation of the moral and spiritual leadership of the nation (vss.7-9). In ancient times, the plumb-line was essential to constructing a small house, a temple or a city wall. Builders depended on this simple tool, a weight suspended from a string, to make walls or columns perfectly vertical. It presented an obvious symbol of righteous behavior.

The sanctuary of Bethel had been an ancient Canaanite holy place set on a high hill. In Israelite religious traditions it had been associated with the patriarch Jacob. It had been fought over many times during the period of the Judges (12th to 11th centuries BCE) and during the reigns of both David and Solomon (10th century). When the kingdoms were divided by Solomon’s heirs, Jeroboam I (ca. 922-901 BCE) made Bethel the chief sanctuary of the Northern Kingdom (Israel). It became the centre of the cult based on the traditions of the ten northern tribes. After the exile of the northern tribes by the Assyrians in 721 BCE, it became an accursed site of restored Canaanite worship by the addition of a cult object of Asherah to the cultus of Yahweh. A century later, Josiah, king of Judah, razed the sanctuary as part of his centralizing of worship in the temple in Jerusalem, but spared the city of Bethel itself.

Amos delivered his prophetic oracles in the decades immediately preceding the fall of Samaria, Israel’s capital, to the Assyrians. Due to his impressive sense of Yahweh’s justice and righteousness, Amos foresaw the moral decline of the nation and the destruction that awaited Israel (vss.8-9, 17). The king during this period was Jereboam II (788-747 BCE). Assyria had reduced Damascus to poverty and powerlessness, but under a series of weak rulers did not threaten the Palestinian states. This allowed the Northern Kingdom of Israel to prosper and a rich merchant class to develop, but not to the benefit of the common people like Amos. This explains the vehement outrage of the prophet’s message. It also makes him a very contemporary voice for our own time of global capitalism and corruption in government and commerce alike have amok in immoral, money-mad enterprises.

PSALM 82. This particular psalm contains a whole set of interesting puzzles for the interpreter. The crucial question to be determined is: Who are the gods vss. 1 and 6? Several proposals have been offered. These are (1) heavenly beings or angels meeting in heavenly council over which Yahweh presides as in Job 1:6-12 and 2:1-6 and Daniel 7:9-10; (2) the national gods of the non-Israelites; (3) kings and others vested with political power who have been deified as was common in ancient times; (4) the judges of Israel.  The idea that monarchs or judges were intended is reinforced by the reference to vs.6 in John 10:34 and in the Targums. The latter were rabbinical interpretations of Hebrew scriptures in the Aramaic dialect given in the synagogues from the 1st century BCE until the 6th century CE.

The issue emphasized in vss.2-4 is a justiciable occasion: the overwhelming of the poor by being turned over to unscrupulous judges or slave masters. An assembly of gods had many parallels in ancient Near Eastern mythology. The indictment of this judicial council is clear nonetheless. Yahweh requires that justice be done for all without regard to political, economic or social status.

With the evolution of moral monotheism in Hebrew theology, the concept of lesser gods was eventually abandoned, yet not completely. It remained the stock in trade of apocalyptic writings through the late OT and inter-testamental times which greatly influenced Christian apocalyptic and eschatological writings such some of the parables attributed to Jesus and the Book of Revelation.

According to the orally transmitted laws, the Mishnah, collected by Rabbi Judah in the 2nd century CE, the psalm became a hymn sung in the temple by the Levites on the third day of the week. It may also have been sung at the New Year’s festival to celebrate Yahweh’s moral supremacy. Vs. 8 may be a liturgical addition pointing to either God’s periodic judgments of history or the eschatological judgment at the end of the age when divine sovereignty will be universally acknowledged.

DEUTERONOMY 30:9-14. (Alternate) This excerpt comes from what the editors of Deuteronomy presented as the final message of Moses to the Israelites (chs. 29-30). It has had a remarkably wide influence in subsequent religious and secular history.

The Deuteronomists promised absolute prosperity for those who obeyed the covenant law. This assumption has been much abused by those who used it as if it was the last word received directly from God. Such an attitude fails to take into account that the ethic of righteous behaviour by individuals inherent in the Mosaic code was also balanced by a profound sense of social justice.

Writing no earlier than the 6th century BCE, it should not surprise us the authors of Deuteronomy show the influence of the great prophets of justice from the 8th and 7th century BCE. The whole passage, and especially vs. 14, sound very much like Jeremiah’s oracle of the new covenant (Jer. 31:31-34). It also recalls the Shema and summative commandment in Deut. 6:4-9. For Jews, the essence of obedience to the law was a single-minded love for God and God alone.

As we know, this also became the heart of Jesus’ message. Our Gospel lesson reveals how much he understood wherein right living and communal justice had their roots. The influence of this passage spread even farther through the apostolic mission of Paul evidenced by his quoting from Deut. 30:13-14 in his letter to the Romans as he appealed to his fellow Jews to trust in the righteousness derived by faith in Jesus Christ rather than that of the law (Rom. 10:5-8).

PSALM 25:1-10. (Alternate) In its Hebrew original, this psalm has an unusual acrostic structure. Each of its 22 verse begins with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet. In this excerpt, we have only half of its full text.

Because of this form and the inclusion of several characteristics of wisdom literature, scholars attribute it to a late post-exilic period and not to David as the superscript indicates. One commentator suspected that the author was creating a form of prayer not only for himself, but for the use of anyone else at a time of great distress.

The psalm begins with a statement of trust and petition for divine help as enemies attempt to shame him without justification (vss. 1-3). He then pleads to know the ways of the Lord and to be taught to walk in Yahweh’s way (vss. 4-5). This exhibits a common theme of wisdom poetry. His next plea is for mercy dependent on Yahweh’s steadfast love (vss. 6-8). The excerpt ends in a praiseworthy acknowledgment of Yahweh’s goodness, righteousness, love and faithfulness (vss. 9-10). Many humble but faithful people have found the words of this poem not only comforting but encouraging when life serves up its inevitable trials.

COLOSSIANS 1:1-14. The debate about the authorship of this letter as one of Paul’s remains inconclusive after 150 years. William Barclay expresses the view which most cogently supports Pauline authorship. But he wonders why this letter containing the highest reach of his thought should have been addressed to so unimportant a town as Colossae then was. In doing so Paul checked a tendency which could have wrecked Asian Christianity, and which might have done irreparable damage to the faith of the whole Church.  (Daily Bible Study: Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon. Edinburgh: Church of Scotland, 1954.)

Paul did not evangelize the Colossian community or those other towns, Laodicea and Hierapolis, in the Lycus valley east of Ephesus. That had been the work of Epaphras, who had probably become a Christian as a result of meeting Paul in Ephesus. These new Christians may have been mainly Gentiles, but also appear to have been exposed to, if not actual followers of, some Jewish cult with a background similar to the asceticism and mystical piety of the Qumran community or later Gnostics. Writing in the 1950s, Barclay believed these esoteric elements were characteristic of the heresy later given the general title of Gnosticism. This is reinforced by Paul’s reference to the Colossians’ need to “be filled with the knowledge of God’s will and spiritual wisdom and understanding” (vs.9). This might not be Barlcay’s view today in the light of much greater acquaintance with the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1990s.

In these opening words of greeting and thanksgiving Paul applauds the Colossians’ faithfulness to the gospel as Epaphras had instructed them. The dominant feature of their faithfulness is love (vss. 4, 8). Paul’s prayer that they continue “bearing fruit” (vss.6, 10) and “be made strong” in the face of a severe challenge from “the power of darkness” (vs.13) from which they have been rescued points to a time of stress, if not persecution. In the words “love, joy, patience,” we may find allusion to the “fruits of the Spirit” Paul had elucidated in Galatians 5:22-23. Such words also lend emphasis to the Christian ethic of loving one’s enemies which Paul so eloquently expressed in Romans 12. This would further undergird the conviction that this letter is one of several Paul dictated from Rome during his imprisonment in 60-61 CE perhaps a decade or more after the conversion of the Colossians.

Eduard Schweizer’s study of Colossians (The Letter to the Colossians. Augsburg Press, 1982) showed how closely the structure of Colossians resembles Romans. There is a dogmatic section and a section dealing with practical ethical issues in the local community. This introductory segment (1:1-8) and the personal notes at the end (4:7-18) form opening and closing brackets around the main message of the letter.  Schweizer believed that the remaining vss. 9-14 of this passage may come from a baptismal liturgy and are followed by a hymn (vss. 15-20). The emphasis of these verses is spiritual knowledge, but a knowledge entirely different from that of Gnostic thought. Paul was writing of a knowledge of the will of God which had ethical implications rather than mystical secrets. The strength to live this way and “to share the inheritance of the saints in light” (vs. 12) comes from God who has given the believer a new beginning and new meaning to life through the forgiveness of sins. Such a message has deep significance for Christians in any age.

LUKE 10:25-37. The parable of neighbourliness, the Good Samaritan, came at a teaching moment when Jesus summarized the Torah in two linked quotations from Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18.  We have no way of knowing what motivated the man to ask Jesus the crucial question “wanting to justify himself,” as Luke tells us (vs. 29). One might well suspect, however, that Luke had had some hurtful experience with a crafty lawyer at some time in the past. He used the term “lawyer” six times in his gospel, almost always in a derogatory sense. It occurs twice in Titus, only once in Matthew and nowhere else in the NT. Furthermore, Luke did not use it in passages drawn from Mark or Q, the source some believe he shared with Matthew. Nor did Luke use it where the other gospels speak of scribes. For one steeped in the Jewish law as this man apparently was, no story could have struck a more devastating blow to his pride as a rigidly orthodox Jew.

The ancient road from Jerusalem to Jericho winds along a deep wadi flanked one either side by soaring cliffs. A modern walking trail follows its route, no more than a track on the cliffside. It is vastly easier to go down than to go up. The road descends over 3000 feet in less than ten miles. A modern autobus climbing the new highway on the heights opposite and above the ancient route must go in low gear most of the way. The trek for pedestrians must have been dangerous at any time, but particularly so in inclement weather when flash floods could have threatened to wash away the narrow track or a landslide cast a boulder on the unsuspecting traveler at any moment. In fine weather, the great danger was from robbers for whom there were ample hideouts in secluded natural caves.

The parable itself may have been fictitious, told to illustrate the point it so manifestly makes. Much loved and as important as it is in understanding Jesus’ inclusive attitude and his ethical mandate for all human relationships, it also exhibits some lively rhetoric and considerable unreality.  No knowledgeable priest or Levite, fully aware the dangers, would likely have traveled the road alone. Jesus himself appears to have walked this route in the company of his disciples on his way up from Jericho to Bethany and Jerusalem.

There would have been room on the trail, but scarcely more, for a man to lead a donkey. If the Samaritan was on his way home, he was taking a very indirect route. His journey would more likely have taken him straight north from Jerusalem via Bethel, Shiloh and Sycar. He would have gone this way only if he had business in Jericho or east across the Jordan. Again one wonders if the rescuer, his route and his ministry to the wounded victim were so identified to emphasize Jesus’ point about neighborliness. No Jew would have allowed a Samaritan to assist or comfort him in this way unless he was in extremely helpless circumstances.

According to Jewish tradition, the enmity of Jews and Samaritans dated from the 8th century BCE. The Assyrian Shalmaneser and his invading army had taken the leading citizens of Israel into exile in 721 BCE never to return. Subsequently the remaining people of the Northern Kingdom had intermarried with immigrants forced to replace the exiles. The Samaritans rejected this view as a vile Jewish canard. They identified Eli, the priest of the sanctuary of Shiloh who mentored Samuel, as the culprit who had establishing a sanctuary at Shiloh to rival the one established by Moses on Mount Gerazim.

W.M. Thomson, a missionary in Palestine, traveled the ancient road to Jericho in 1857 and described the traditional site of the inn where the Samaritan took the victim he had rescued as a caravansary. Today a small Orthodox Christian monastery stands there. It still welcomes pilgrims who dare to follow the ancient route along the footpath this parable fixed forever in human memory. Its unforgetable lesson of the inclusive love of God in Christ remains for every generation to carry to a world desperate for a way out of suicidal conflicts between tribes, nations and cultures.

SOME ADDITIONAL PREACHING POINTS .

AMOS 7:7-17. The prophesy condemning Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, the royal sanctuary and King Jeroboam should give pause to our contemporary church and national leaders. No human institution is free of the seeds of its own destruction. The powerlessness of church leaders and the decline of all religious institutions is surely ample evidence of this as the second decade 21st century begins. Presidents and political administrations are similarly powerless in the face of daunting natural and industrial disasters, and rampant economic recession. Is God our refuge? The prophets and psalmists seem to suggest that God is. But as Micah, a younger contemporary of Amos, said, “What does the Lord require of us?” (Micah 6:8)

PSALM 82. The message of justice conveyed in the psalm may be a little heavy for a summertime sermon, but it does lend substantial credibility to such a prophetic attitude in our contemporary environment. Those who take such a stance cannot expect to be heard with approbation in many congregations. The usual complaint is that preaching and politics should not be mixed. On the other hand, the biblical mandate of social justice for all is clear as this psalm attests, despite the often brutal attempts which have been made to suppress prophetic voices by the rich and powerful.

As this comment is being written, the leaders of the G-8 and G20 and hordes of their supporters are gathering in Huntsville, in Ontario’s holiday hinterland and in downtown Toronto to deal with the economic and geopolitical ailments of the world. Journalists from all over the world are here too to report and comment on whatever they can glean from these solemn deliberations. Also present under the watchful eyes of innumerable police and military detachments are thousands of protesters with countervailing viewpoints and not a few anarchists seeking only to disrupt what all the others are doing. One despairs that anything helpful, let alone social justice, for the world’s suffering millions will come from such expenditures of vast national and international resources. The cost of security alone is said to be $1.1 billion US. Could not that much money have been spent more beneficially in merciful justice?

(This paragraph was composed on Monday, 28.6.2010) In the aftermath of the meetings of the G20, there is a sharply divided edge to the media and public commentary on what was actually accomplished. The well designed spin of political spokespersons claim the unparalleled success of the consensus reached by those attending from around the globe. The final communique had been written long before the delegates arrived to discuss its verbalized issues and approve its final draft. The media focus was on the largely peaceful demonstrations by concerned citizens. This was countered by reports of  violence by a small minority of professional anarchists who used the shelter of these demonstrations to cause considerable violent confrontation with the massive police forces and destruction of private property. The combined police forces have also been strongly criticized for overreaction to what was perceived by many as excessive. Approximately 900 individuals were arrested, only some 400 of which will be formally charged. Those attending the actual G20 meetings were probably unaware of what was happening outside their well protected cocoon.

DEUTERONOMY 30:9-14. (Alternative) A narrow approach to prosperity based on the absolutist interpretation of vss. 9-10 of this passage found wide acceptance in the early stages of capitalism some authorities believe was driven by a harsh interpretation of Calvinism. This fostered the rise of great commercial and political empires which advanced science, technology and the global economy to a remarkable extent through the 17th to 19th centuries CE. It also resulted in brutally destructive imperial conflicts that lasted throughout the 20th century. How to adapt economic, political and technological development at a time when globalization is bringing about confrontation between vastly different religious, social and political cultures has become the challenge of the first decades of the 21st century.

A new published economic history presents a different view of how the inequalities of wealth were created in Great Britain during the Enlightenment Age. (The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain, 1700-1850. by Joel Mokyr. Yale University Press, 2010.) The author believes that there was no single cause among the many that other historians have identified. He does allow that effective property rights that encouraged investment did have a major influence. So did the growth of “human capital—the skills and talents—of eighteenth-century Britain, which were created, as much by practical experience and commercial culture as through formal education.”  (From a review in Harper’s Magazine by Edward Glaeser, Glimp Professor of Economics at Harvard University.)  Yet many of those practical men who learned from their experiences and made themselves rich did have some contact with the intellectual men of letters of their time.

COLOSSIANS 1:1-14. A genuine concern for the Colossians suffering hardship and injustice stands out in Paul’s address to their spiritual needs (vs.10-11). Giving joyful thanks is not the normal human response to such trials. Does that have a special message for any of us at a time when many are indeed buffered if not exactly suffering from the trials of economic recession or natural disaster? Paul did offer hope of “sharing in the heritage of God’s people in the realm of light.” (Vs.12) He was probably speaking of life beyond death and the travails of this life. He also spoke forcefully of standing firm in one’s convictions in this life “with fortitude, patience and joy.” (NEB) A faith that meets today’s problems is something we all both need and may find whatever our tradition.

LUKE 10:25-37. Biblical Hebrew used two words – chesed and racham which we translate into English variously as mercy, compassion or kindness. The prophets used the latter word more commonly, especially Isaiah, Jeremiah and Hosea. All of whom revealed divine mercy most vividly. The Hebrew noun meaning womb also had the sense of compassion. He writes in his new work, The Way of Jesus: To Repair and Renew The World.  (Abingdon, 2010), that the term reflects “that deep, visceral connection between mother and child, which a father, at least a good father, can also feel.” He adds that the Aramaic form of the word surviving from Jesus’ time “expressed a powerful principle in its translation of Leviticus 22:28 (in the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan), ‘My people, children of Israel, since I am merciful in heaven, so should you be merciful upon earth.’  The expansion in the Targum is unquestionably innovative because the Hebrew text speaks simply of not killing an animal and her young on the same day.”

Corresponding to the Hebrew racham is the Greek word eleos. In Luke 10:37 the KJV translators used “mercy” to convey the same meaning where most modern translators have used “compassion.” The Beatitude in Matthew 5:7 used the verbal form of eleos. It is also noteworthy that in Buddhism the word anukampa is often rendered as “mercy.”

There is a classic Buddhist poem answering the question, “What should the person skilled in profitable practice do when he becomes aware of the peaceful state?” The poem begins, “ One should cultivate an unlimited mind toward all beings, the way a mother protects her only son with her life.” The words are evocative of Michelangelo’s famous statue, La Pieta, of Mary cradling the body of Jesus taken down from the cross.

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INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURE

Proper 9 Ordinary 14

6th Sunday After Pentecost

July 4, 2010

2 KINGS 5:1- 14. The story of Naaman, commander of the Aramean army, being cured of leprosy through Elisha, the prophet, is one of those graphic Bible stories often told to children with the added moral about the virtues of obedience. There is surely more to it than that despite of considerable ambiguity in the details. Naaman’s cure is an example of God’s gracious concern for non-Israelites.

PSALM 30. This psalm of thanksgiving for recovery from a nearly fatal illness apparently became a hymn of congregational praise in the temple liturgy. It appears to have been used on anniversaries of the rededication of the temple by Judas Maccabeus in 164 BC when it was interpreted as expressing the national experience of survival from grave oppression by Antiochus Epiphanes. It may still be used in this way at the Feast of Hanukkah.

ISAIAH 66:10-14. (Alternate) This winsome poetry bids the exiles  in Babylon to rejoice with Jerusalem. It also casts Yahweh as the mother of Israel who nurses her beloved child back to flourishing health.

PSALM 66:1-9. (Alternate) The psalmist speaks both as an individual and as a representative of the nation. He rejoices in recalling Yahweh’s mighty deeds and calls all people to join the celebration.

GALATIANS 6: (1- 6), 7- 16. Freedom does not give license for immoral behaviour. Each one has to be personally responsible for one’s own conduct, but also “bear one another’s burdens.” Those who choose to live according to the shifting values of the secular world will find themselves isolated from the effective moral and spiritual life. This life exemplifies love incarnate and is fulfilled in the life beyond death. It is the quality of life expected of individual Christians in the world and especially in the Christian fellowship.

LUKE 10:1-11, 16- 20. The theme of this passage is “the harvest,” but it is not clear whether this implies an imminent end of the age or a longer period of missionary work. The latter seems probable in the light of Luke’s general attitude of a delayed Second Coming of Christ in contrast to Matthew’s more imminent expectation. Yet the passage also has an element of warning that calls for a clear decision about discipleship which cannot be overlooked.

A MORE COMPLETE ANALYSIS

2 KINGS 5:1-14. The story of Naaman, commander of the Aramean army, being cured of leprosy through Elisha, the prophet, is one of those graphic Old Testament stories told to children, perhaps with the added moral of the virtues of obedience. There is surely more to it than that in spite of considerable ambiguity in the details as they now appear in the text.

The Arameans lived in southern Syria in the area around Damascus and anti-Lebanon mountains along the northern borders of Israel. David had defeated the Arameans, but their city-state of Damascus won its freedom from Solomon. They then became persistent opponents of Israel until the late 8^th century BCE when they were overrun by the invading Assyrians.

While the king of Israel whose ire was raised to such extremes by the letter from the king of Aram is not identified (vs.7), the mutual fear of one for the other had never been overcome.  He is believed to have been Jehoram (ca. 849-842 BCE) who during his short reign was engaged in frequent wars with neighboring countries of Aram to the north, Moab to the east, and Edom to the south. He may well have had reason to be suspicious of this stranger, general of an enemy army moreover, who came bearing gifts and making such a strange request (vs.7). The present hostility of modern Syria and Israel, based on mutual threat to each other’s existence, has a long, biblically-sanctioned history, especially for the fundamentalists of both Judaism and Islam.

Some serious moral issues about disease and punishment complicate this story, especially as it develops in that part not covered by this passage. As it stands in the present limited segment, no moral interpretation is given to Naaman’s affliction with leprosy. It was the compassion of an Israelite slave-girl for her captor which ultimately brought him face to face with Elisha. A note in the NRSV points out that “leprosy” was “a term used for several skin diseases: the precise meaning (of the Hebrew word is) uncertain.” Even household mold or mildew could be described by this word.

For his part, Elisha seemed only concerned to show his power as a prophet of Yahweh (vs. 8). He appears to have been somewhat dismissive of the king’s helplessness. However, this may have been a reflection of the editor who included the story in the Elisha cycle. Naaman only sought to acknowledge the power of Yahweh as a last resort, even if he had to take some soil from Israel back to Aram with him to do so. (vss.15-17) This, of course, is typical henotheism, the concept of a god having power only within the territory of a specific tribe or nation state.

The reply of the Israelite king to Naaman’s request (vs. 7) oversimplifies the current belief that the king had divine powers. This was not unknown in those cultures where monarchs had priestly as well as political roles to fulfill. On the other hand, the subsequent action of Elisha exemplifies an editorial correction that the power to heal was not the possession of either king or prophet, though the latter were often attributed with greater powers than the former, as in this case. For us who turn to the New Testament to understand the Old, we find that in Luke 4:27 Jesus referred to Naaman’s cure as an example of God’s gracious concern for non-Israelites. Is this not the true moral emphasis behind the story as we have it in 2 Kings 5?

PSALM 30. This individual psalm of thanksgiving for recovery from a nearly fatal illness apparently became a hymn of congregational praise in the temple liturgy. If the superscription is to be believed, it appears to have been used on anniversaries of the rededication of the temple by Judas Maccabeus in 164 BCE. Later Judaism interpreted it as expressing the national experience of survival from imminent disaster. It may still be used in this way at the Feast of Hanukkah. Another possible way to look at it is in terms of the individual Jew as representative of the whole nation in much the same way that the Suffering Servant of Deutero-Isaiah represents the whole community of exiles in Babylon.

Despite the psalmist’s rejoicing for divine help in time of dire need, he is also conscious of Yahweh’s anger at his false overconfidence before he fell sick (vss.6-7).  Such an attitude comes naturally to anyone who enjoys great success. We see it exemplified in persons of wealth and power. It has been said that one must have a very large ego to become the political leader or the chief executive officer of a large corporation. A former Canadian prime minister who governed well after winning three minority elections, once said that a majority made a prime minister a virtual dictator. As we have seen in Canada, Great Britain and the USA, democratic elections often reveal great folly in those elected with a very large majority.

A sense of bargaining with Yahweh enters into the supplication in vss.8-9. The questions are not merely rhetorical. Such a challenge to Yahweh depended on the ancient belief that a god with no one to praise him/her was an extinct deity. That did not occur because the worshiper was saved from death when his repentance brought forth Yahweh’s forgiveness and his lament became a song of joyous thanksgiving (vss.10-11).

ISAIAH 66:10-14. (Alternate) The winsome poetry of this oracle bids the exiles  in Babylon rejoice with Jerusalem. The prophet pictured that holy city, to which the exiles would soon return, as an infant seeking comfort by nursing at its mother’s breast (vs. 11). The prophet also casts Yahweh as the mother who nurses her beloved child back to flourishing health (vss. 12-13). Not only that, but Israel’s prosperity would return so that other people would see that Yahweh was with his servants, Israel.

The great insight of Deutero-Isaiah and his school of prophets was to see his people as the servants of Yahweh. At this time of year usually marked by national celebrations in both Canada and the US, the people of our nations may be in the early stages of mourning and needing reassurance about the failures of our governments. It might be well to recall that much of our power, prosperity and international reputation depend on the ways in which our countries can be servants to one another and to other peoples rather than lording it over other people in arrogant superiority. In her 1984 work, The March of Folly: From Troy to Viet Nam, historian Barbara Tuchman pointed out that blindly overestimating a nation’s privilege, power and influence had been the cause of numerous military defeats and the fall of great empires. This failure of purpose came about through what Tuchman called “destructive stupidity.” She also included the Crusades of the 12^th and 13^th centuries and six successive Papacies of the 15^th and 16^th centuries as examples of the Christian Church suffering from this same destructive folly.

PSALM 66:1-9. (Alternate) One interpretation of this psalm describes it as a liturgy of thanksgiving by a person of wealth and national prominence. As a liturgical psalm, that person may be speaking both as an individual and also as a representative of the nation. He rejoices in recalling Yahweh’s mighty deeds and calls on all people to join the celebration. It is also possible that the latter part of the psalm not included in this reading (vss. 13-20) may be from a separate work.

After an initial outburst calling on others to join his praise (vss.1-4), the psalmist recalls some of the mighty acts of Yahweh. Most significant of all in Israel’s religious memory is the Exodus and trek through hostile territory to the Promised Land (vss. 6-7). The selection ends with a summons to all people to praise Yahweh for keeping Israel alive during such turbulent times. This could well be prayer of every nation as they celebrate their national festivals.

GALATIANS 6:(1-6), 7-16. Freedom does not give license for immoral behavior, Paul wrote at the end of his Letter to the Galatians. Each one has to be personally responsible for one’s own conduct, but also each one is charged to “bear one another’s burdens” (vss.1-5). Paul also issued a strong warning about moral overconfidence.

There are serious implications, he goes on to say, in all we do. Those who choose to live according to the shifting values of the secular world will certainly find themselves isolated from the effective moral and spiritual life exemplifying love incarnate fulfilled in the life beyond death (vss. 7-9) This is the quality of life expected of individual Christians in the world and especially within the Christian fellowship (vs.10). In other words, as said elsewhere in the gospels and epistles of the NT, we have to live in the world, but also remember that we are not exclusively citizens of this world.

If this appears to be a somewhat ambiguous stance to take, one only needs to look at the ministries of both Jesus and Paul. This issue lies behind the narratives of the gospels. Paul incited great opposition from the religious authorities of the day. The Letter to the Galatians was written to counter this official stance among the Jewish Diaspora of the time.

The Apostle Paul may have suffered from poor eyesight and needed someone to help him put his letters into manuscript form. In vs.11 he takes up the pen himself to reiterate his concern that the “circumcised” do not compel the Galatians to return to the covenant of Judaism requiring total obedience to the Law of Moses. By concentrating on the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ on the cross, Jews and Gentiles alike will be part of the new creation God intends for all (vss.11-15).

Yet Paul still had a soft spot in his heart for his fellow Jews. He prayed for them to have peace, and for mercy on all “Israel of God” (vs.16). It is a touching personal note from someone who had suffered such hostility from his fellow Jews.

LUKE 10:1-11, 16-20. Note that this is a second “missionary journey” on which Jesus sends some of his followers. In Like 9:1-6, he sent out “the twelve;” here it is “seventy others,” implying that “the twelve” stayed with him this time at some central base. If this occurred during the final journey (cf. 9:51), it was an interruption in what B. H. Streeter once called “a slow progress towards Jerusalem.” On the other hand, Hans Conzelmann has argued that it “introduces into the scheme material which itself does not belong there, as shown by 10:17.” (The Theology of Luke. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1961, p.67) Conzelmann also notes that there is a clear distinction between the apostolic character of “the twelve” and the role of “the seventy” as agents or messengers. The difference lies in the “power and authority” given to “the twelve” (9:1) and the message given to “the seventy.”

The theme of the passage is “the harvest” but it is not clear whether this implies an imminent end of the age in eschatological terms or a longer period of missionary work. The latter seems probable in the light of Luke’s general attitude of a delayed Parousia in contrast to Matthew’s more imminent eschatology. Yet there is an element of warning that calls for a clear decision about discipleship which cannot be overlooked. (vss.11-12).

John Dominic Crossan has presented an interesting approach to this passage as exemplifying the contrasting methods of the post-apostolic church in proclaiming the gospel by word of mouth and communal behavior. His hypothesis is that there were two distinctive approaches, one by resident householders who developed a type of “domesticated gospel of the kingdom” and one by a more radical itinerant and necessarily smaller group who developed an apocalyptic gospel. This established a dialectic which enabled the gospel to spread more effectively, especially in the late 1^st and early 2^nd centuries CE and could do so for our time as well. Crossan believes that this is both a clarifying and a helpful view at this stage in our understanding of the NT. His excellent article “Jesus And The Kingdom” in Jesus At 2000, edited by Marcus J. Borg discusses this view with considerable force.

It appears too that Luke had in mind two OT passages as he composed this pericope: Exodus 24:1, 9-16; and Numbers 11:16-25. The former passage was the precedent Luke followed for the appointment of the seventy other disciples for their mission. The latter passage identified Yahweh’s response to the Israelites complaints about the scarcity of traveling in the wilderness compared with their plentiful supply of food and drink during their captivity in Egypt. It also served as the precedent for the part of Luke’s narrative when Jesus assured the seventy that their needs would all be met while they carried out their mission.

The woeful rebuke of Choraizin, Bethsaida and Capernaum (vss.13-15) have a parallel in Matthew 11:20-23. Many scholars believe that most these commonalities likely come from Q (Quelle), the unknown source on which both Luke and Matthew drew some of their material. Others discount the existence of Q. There is a significant difference in Luke’s version, where the “deeds of power” are not repeated three times as in Matthew. In Luke 24:49 the apostolic community is not to be “clothed with power” until Pentecost. This appears to counter the observation above, however, that for their first mission, the apostles were given “power and authority.” (Cf. Num. 11:25) The intent of the curse on the three towns, nonetheless, was to urge their repentance (vs.13).

When the seventy returned to excitedly report their success, Luke had Jesus assure them that despite their meaningful rejoicing they had not yet seen all that lay ahead as his mission moved forward. This was meant to encourage Luke’s own community in difficult times that the all the powers of evil would be subject to the reign of God’s love.

SOME ADDITIONAL PREACHING NOTES:

2 KINGS 5:1- 14. A modern version of henotheism occurs in the belief that a specific nation such a Great Britain, Canada or the United States, or a specific political system such as socialism or capitalism, exhibits the highest Christian values. It also motivated the South African theory of apartheid, or racial separation which for nearly fifty years denied political rights to all but the five per cent Caucasian members of the population. Many white South African Christians truly believed that they were doing God’s will by maintaining their strict regime by totally oppressing their black and ‘coloured’ mixed race neighbours.

The current FIFA World Cup of Football is evidence of how far South Africa has come since 1993 when Nelson Mandela was released after 27 years from Robbin Island prison. A year later he was elected as that nation’s first black African president.

A brief comment on nationalism, patriotism and religious establishment.

This week marks the national holiday of both Canada (July 1) and the United States (July 4). Can we detect a note of nationalism running through all the OT passage in this week’s readings? Is it ever right to preach nationalism or patriotism from the pulpit? A well-known American religious television program broadcast around the world has such a feeling to many non-Americans. Should national flags be flown in church sanctuaries? Try to install or remove such a flag and see what happens!

Is belief in God essential to any nation’s existence? It is worth noting that while the proclamation, “In God we trust,” became popular during the American Civil War, it did not become the official national motto until 1956. It is also the national motto of Nicaragua. The phrase “under God” was not added to the American Pledge of Allegiance until 1954. Did the  rapid church growth after World War II, the threat of the Cold War and a concurrent rise of patriotism have anything to do with this?

The Canadian Constitution was not adopted until 1982. Part I of that Constitution is called “The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom” and begins with these words, “Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law: …”

Is a constitutional document essential in the modern world? Unlike many other countries, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (its formal name) does not have a written constitution. On the other hand, in Great Britain, only England has an established church, The Church of England. In Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, the church has been disestablished for many years. In the United States, the First Amendment of the Constitution forbids the federal government from making any laws respecting religious establishment.

GALATIANS 6:(1-6), 7-16. Contemporary events illustrate how the best intended actions can be seen in different lights from different viewpoints.

On June 22, 2001 Pope John Paul II visited Ukraine and held masses there which were attended by smaller crowds that expected. This papal visit attempted to heal the one thousand year old rift between the Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Churches. The visit was well received by two branches of the Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Church, but it was boycotted and severely criticized by the leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church, the largest church in Ukraine.

This could be understood when one realizes that the papal visit began on the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Mary, a Roman Catholic feast inaugurated by Pope Pius XII in 1945 and dedicated to the conversion of Russia. On the other hand, the Orthodox Churches were just beginning to recover from 75 years of suppression by Communist dictatorship.

In the Middle East and even within different branches of Islam, there are differing public attitudes and official policies toward the existence of Israel. There is also great suspicion toward those nations regarded as western, democratic and Christian. The opposite attitudes toward Islam is also true within those nations.

In religious and theological circles in our time, even a radical progressive like John Shelby Spong states unequivocally his belief in life beyond death, although he does not articulate this conviction in any way. ( Eternal Life: A New Vision. HarperOne, 2009. 212.)

LUKE 10:1-11, 16-20. The three towns of Choraizin, Bethsaida and Capernaum were situated on the northern end of the Sea of Galilee. Choraiszin and Bethsaida  were on opposite sides of the Jordan River where it flowed into the Sea of Galilee. Capernaum, where Jesus made his Galilean headquarters, was a fishing town a few miles further south along the western shore toward Tiberias. They lay on the main trade and military route, the Via Maritima, from Damascus, Syria, to the Meditarranean. It is likely that all three towns had a very mixed population of both Jews and Gentiles.

Tiberias had been built by Herod Antipas  ca. 25 CE to serve as the capital of his tetrarchy of Galilee and Perea.  Though it had been chiefly a Gentile city, it became a place of refuge for Jews from Jerusalem after the destruction of the temple in 70 CE and was named as one of the four sacred cities in Palestine. About 150 CE, the Sanhedrin was moved to Tiberias from Sepphoris, another Graeco-Roman city about 15 miles up in the western hills of Galilee north of Nazareth. Subsequently influential schools of rabbinic studies were established in Tiberias.

In Luke’s time, however, (ca. 85-90 CE) the rivalry between Jews and Gentiles, and between Jews and Christians, in this area may have been very intense. It would appear that Luke’s intent in this passage was to urge the Christian mission everywhere in the Gentile world to continue unabated in the face of mounting opposition because it had been instituted by Jesus himself during the latter stages of his Galilean ministry. This remains the dominical mandate for evangelism motivated by the Spirit.

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INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURE
Proper 8 Ordinary 13
5th Sunday After Pentecost
June 27, 2010

2 KINGS 2: 1- 2, 6-14. This story tells how the spiritual leadership of Israel changed in the last half of the 9th century BC. Traveling with his mentor from one holy site to another, Elisha saw Elijah taken up in a chariot of fire and picked up the older prophet’s fallen mantle symbolizing that he had become Israel’s leading prophet.

PSALM 77: 1-2, 11-20. This complex psalm has two quite separate parts. The reading includes only the introduction to a personal lament, then skips to the second part which sounds more like a hymn alluding to the mighty acts of God throughout Israel’s history and in the violence of nature. This suggests that the psalmist was more troubled by some unnamed community calamity than by a personal disaster.

1 KINGS 19: 15-16, 19-21. (Alternate)  New orders from God for Elijah directed him to return to Israel to anoint a new king for Israel and for their northern neighbours, the Arameans (aka Syrians) and to anoint a new prophet, Elisha, to take his own place. Having done as directed, he found Elisha ploughing with a yoke of oxen. Slaughtering the oxen, Elisha used their equipment to prepare a sacrificial feast before leaving his family to follow Elijah as his disciple.

PSALM 16. (Alternate) This prayer expresses a simple trust in God. After criticizing the worthless gods of other nations, the psalmist meditates on the benefits of worshiping Israel’s Lord.

GALATIANS 5: 1, 13-25. Here the Christian ethic is writ large so that he/she who runs may read it. It is God the Spirit who gives us the basis for our ethical intentions and actual performance as Christians in the local contexts in which we live and move. Paul describes how this happens according to the choices we make about our everyday behaviour.

LUKE 9:51-62. Already bound for Jerusalem and the cross, Jesus decided to take the mountain route through Samaria rather than usual route to the east down the Jordan valley. As with many political and ethnic rivalries still, this enmity took on religious overtones. By Jesus’ time, this hostility had lasted more than 700 years since Israel’s ten northern tribes had been conquered by the Assyrians. Good Jews that they were, two of Jesus’ more hot-tempered disciples immediately gave full expression to the traditional attitude toward the Samaritans who refused them entrance to their village. James and John wanted to call down punishment on these people who rejected their beloved Master. Does this not sound familiar in our day?

A MORE COMPLETE ANALYSIS.

2 KINGS 2:1-2, 6-14. What happens when the spiritual leadership of a religious community or a nation changes? That issue rises out of this lesson. Before dealing with it, some other points need to be considered first.

In his introduction to I and II Kings in The Interpreter’s Bible (vol. 3, p.13) Norman Snaith noted the many similarities between the Elijah cycle of stories in I Kings and the Elisha cycle in II Kings. He also noted that the latter group may have been written by a less competent author as an imitation of the Elijah cycle. They lack the same dramatic power in spite of the similarities. Nonetheless, Elisha did play a decisive part in the shaping of the events of his time, and in some respects was more outstanding than Elijah. Perhaps the author had knowledge of Elisha’s political importance and this led his biographer to write up the traditions which had gathered around him. The claim that he was the true successor of Elijah certainly was on the mark.

This insight comes very much to the fore in the determination of Elisha to travel with Elijah from one holy site to another until they crossed the Jordan by a miraculous dividing of the waters. The scene is reminiscent of the crossing of the Red Sea and of Joshua leading the Israelites across the Jordan into the Promised Land of Canaan. It was intended as a symbol of the renewal of Israel’s religious heritage. When finally Elisha saw Elijah taken up in a chariot of fire and retrieved the older prophet’s fallen mantle, he knew that he had come into the spiritual inheritance he had so earnestly sought.

The existence of sizable “companies of prophets” at the various holy sites of Bethel and Jericho (vss. 3, 5, 7) indicated that the prophetic tradition did not rest on haphazard, ecstatic inspiration of certain great individuals. A consistent system for maintaining “the word of the Lord” existed during the period of the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah. In his seminal book, The Relevance of the Prophets (Toronto: The Macmillan Company, 1947)  Professor R. B. Y. Scott described these “prophetic guilds” as “recognized bodies of prophets who appear to be acting in concert at various times in the history of the twin kingdoms…. As a rule they spoke with one voice. But exceptional men among them (in addition to the ‘Master’) acted independently, and it was they and not the ‘madmen of the spirit,’ (i.e. ecstatic prophets) who stood in the line of Moses and were the ancestors of the great prophets of the classical period.” (p. 48) An obvious reference to this Mosaic tradition of prophecy stood out in the dividing of the waters of the Jordan by both Elijah and Elisha.

All of this points to the conclusion that the succession of spiritual leadership can be governed in an orderly fashion in which both human and divine influences can be fully exercised.

PSALM  77:1-2, 11-20. This complex psalm appears to have two quite separate parts. This has caused some scholars to suggest that it originally existed as two separate compositions woven together by a later editor. The reading includes only the introduction to a personal lament, then skips to the second part which sounds more like a hymn alluding to the mighty acts of God throughout Israel’s history. This suggests that the psalmist (or the final editor) was more troubled by some unnamed community calamity than by a personal disaster.

A profound spiritual lesson can be learned from this interpretation. In times of crisis and the fragmentation of communal ethics and social upheaval, a review of our religious history can be a helpful antidote to the fear and despair that tend to overwhelm us. This does not assume that all forms of religious response to social crisis should be regarded as beneficial. In this century as in most previous ages, religious leaders have frequently served those who would preserve the status quo rather than voice the need for radical change in the tradition of the great prophets.

When we call to God for help through our fear and despair, God leads us through mighty floods, though not necessarily into green pastures and quiet pools of fresh water. The double images of vss. 16-20 are of violent thunderstorms and Israel’s experience of crossing of the Red Sea. A cursory reading of the Exodus story reveals how turbulent and distressing was that period of Israel’s religious history, if indeed it was a historical event at all.

1 KINGS 19:15-16, 19-21. (Alternate)  Soundly rebuked by Yahweh for deserting his post under the strain of persecution, Elijah received new orders for his ministry as Israel’s leading prophet. Yahweh directed him to return to Israel to anoint a new king for Israel and for their northern neighbours, the Arameans, (inhabiting modern Syria with its capital at Damascus). As if to underline his failure, Elijah also received orders to anoint a new prophet, Elisha, to take his own place as spiritual leader of the nation.

Unless one regards vss. 17-18 as an interpolation into the narrative, there seems little reason to omit them from the reading. In fact, they provide a reasonable assurance that Israel has not been completely apostate as Elijah had complained in his own pathetic defense (vs. 14).

Having done as directed, Elijah threw his mantle over Elisha who immediately ran after the prophet signifying his acceptance of his new role. Elijah hesitated about what he had done, but then relented when Elisha wished to return to say farewell to his parents. Slaughtering the oxen, Elisha used their equipment to prepare a sacrificial feast before leaving his family to follow as Elijah’s servant.

The story gives us insight into ancient prophetic succession. An oddity in this narrative is the anointing of Elisha when the normal practice was to anoint only monarchs. The cycle of stories about Elijah does not end here as might be expected, but there is an unmistakable break in the narrative between this episode and the next. Scholars believe that the two cycles probably come from different sources at different periods in the 8th century BCE as well as being adapted by the post-exilic Deuteronomist editors ca. 550 BCE.

PSALM 16. (Alternate)  This  prayer expresses a profound trust in God very similar to Ps. 23 and other psalms (e.g. Pss. 4, 11, 62, 131)  The psalmist meditates on the spiritual benefits of fellowship with God whose favour has yielded many blessings. He rejoices in his favoured status and is reassured that his righteousness will be rewarded. He will be received into Yahweh’s presence rather than being cast away into the shadowy existence of Sheol as the Jews regarded life beyond death (vss. 10-11.)

The mood of the psalm reflects the attitudes of the post-exilic period when strict obedience to the covenant law was linked directly to personal well-being.

GALATIANS 5:1, 13-25. Few passages in Paul Letter to the Galatians carries as much weight for the individual Christian and the faith communities to which we belong. Here the Christian ethics is writ large so that he/she who runs may read it. Douglas John Hall and other theologians have called attention to the ontological and intentional realities which must undergird ethical Christian behavior in the world now so confused as it is by secular and competing, but relativist, ethics. It is God the Spirit who gives us the ontological basis for our ethical intentions and actual performance as Christians in the local contexts in which we live and move. Nothing else more effectively defines who we are.  In this passage Paul describes how this happens.

By the grace of God in Jesus Christ, we have been freed from all that prevents us from doing as God desires. In the words of Jesus, (vs.14) “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” We are loved by God, therefore we can love others and ourselves. Any other ethic brings the catastrophic result of destructive conflict (vs.15).

“The works of the flesh” which Paul enumerates in vss. 19-21 are nothing more than the inevitable indulgences of selfish living. Because the reign of God is exclusively the reign of love, none of these acts can ever lead us, individually or communally, to experience, love and serve God in the mundane lives we all live.

Paul then enumerates the gracious gifts which come when the Spirit bears fruit in our lives. Acting from this premise, no law can regulate or deter us from holy living. Indeed, this is the life expected of those who would be followers of the Way. All this comes about because of Jesus Christ has pioneered the way for us. We belong to him; we can do no other than be enlivened by his Spirit whether in moments of spiritual contemplation or in the feverish activities of a busy day.

LUKE 9:51-62. Already bound for Jerusalem and the cross, Jesus decided to take the mountain route through Samaria rather than usual route down the Jordan valley. The hostility between the Samaritans and the Jews had lasted for more than eight centuries since the remnant of Israel’s Northern Kingdom had intermarried with the foreign population the Assyrians had imported into Israel following the fall of Samaria in 722 BCE. (2 Kings 15:13-31; 17) As with many political and ethnic rivalries still, this enmity took on religious overtones which John summarizes in Jesus’ conversation with the woman of Sychar (John 4:1-42.) Good Jews that they were, two of Jesus’ more hot-tempered disciples immediately expressed the traditionally hostility toward the Samaritans who refused them entrance to their village. James and John wanted to call down punishment on these people who rejected their beloved Master.

There is reason to believe that the text is corrupt at this point. Several ancient textual sources including those used in translating the KJV followed a reference first found in Marcion (c. 150 CE) adding the words, “as Elijah did.” (See 2 Kings 1:9-16) Most modern translations include this in a marginal note as they also do with a greater extension of vs. 55: “and he said, “You do not know what manner of spirit you are of; for the son of man came not to destroy men’s lives but to save them.”

In her study of Luke in the Westminster Bible Companion Series, Sharon H. Ringe (Westminster John Knox Press.1995) makes the point that the reference to Elijah is reminiscent of actions taken by that (2 Kings 1:1-12). Whereas in a previous situation, (Lk. 4:25-27) Jesus referred to Elijah in a positive way, here he rejected “the prophet’s fiercer side.” In both instances, however, Luke used the allusions to introduce major new sections of his narrative. Here had Jesus make clear that “old animosities cannot define life in the new community gathered around Jesus.”

However the actual text may have existed in the original, Luke saw this as a teaching moment for Jesus. When an enthusiastic follower gushed about his loyalty, Jesus rebuked him with a promise of homelessness. This was not the kind of Messiah that prospective disciple was seeking. Jesus called another person to follow him, but the man offered the excuse of having to bury his recently deceased father. And yet another wished to say farewell to his family. Jesus responded to both with challenges that still seem harsh to our ears. Were these Jewish or Samaritans whose discipleship he refused? In either case, does this not contradict the previous reference that Jesus had ruled out “old animosities?”

In an “intimate biography” of Jesus, Rabbi Jesus, (Doubleday, 2000) Bruce Chilton inferred that Jesus himself had been forced to leave his home in Nazareth because of the hostility of the community and of some of his own family. Because of his status as a memzer (literally, “a bastard”) due to his suspect paternity, he had not even been permitted to attend the funeral of his father Joseph. If valid – and that is impossible to prove – such experiences may well have affected his attitudes expressed here.

However we may interpret this apparent harshness, Jesus was saying that the demands of God’s reign of love presents us with a higher loyalty than that of filial duty or family responsibility. He concludes with a metaphor that has little meaning for most people today. He likens this challenge of discipleship to that of a farmer plowing a field behind a single beast or a small team. One can only drive a straight furrow by looking forward to the distant goal, a point at the end of the field. In many respects, this kind of loyalty is characteristic of the eschatological age. As John Knox (the modern American biblical scholar, not the giant of the Scottish Reformation) commented in his expository note in The Interpreter’s Bible, (vol. 8, p. 183): “Only in a miraculously new order where men do not live on bread, and where they neither marry nor are given in marriage, can the Kingdom of God fully come. Whether we agree with such a view or not, a passage like this is bound to disclose the grounds for it.”

SOME ADDITIONAL PREACHING POINTS.

2 KINGS 2: 1- 2, 6-14. In recent years several appointments to the Senate of Canada, such as a Roman Catholic nun and the former Moderator of The United Church of Canada, Very Rev. Lois Wilson, (both now retired) gave a prominent public role to prophetic voices on the Canadian and global scene. However political such appointments may be, a true prophet will not necessarily be co-opted by the political system if she or he maintains her moral and spiritual independence, as did Elijah and Elisha in ancient Israel. The Very Rev. Dr. Wilson only accepted the appointment to the Senate on condition that she would sit as an independent.

On the other hand, the alliance of very conservative religious voices with conservative political parties in both Canada and the United States has introduced a negative element of political opportunism which has serious implications for social cohesion. As time passes, however, this disruptive influence may recede as conservative policies lead both nations away from their heritage as liberal democracies and into generally unpopular wars in Asia. It remains to be seen what long term impact these trends will have on the social fabric of both nations and the future policies of their respective governments.

PSALM  77:1-2, 11-20. Within the next week, both Canada and the United States will celebrate their national holidays. However comfortable many of us whoa re citizens of these two most blessed nations of the world may feel, we can readily see that beneath the surface there is a great deal of social unrest which breaks into the open from time to time. Current crises in the handling of public revenues, education and health services, energy and water supplies, the declining quality of the air we breathe and the imminent threat of climate change are symptoms of how distressed our society may be.

In this year 2010, there is the growing international dilemma of how to address the devastating oil well explosion, the death of thirteen oil rig workers and subsequent spillage of millions of barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The future of traditional ways of life for many people living along the shoreline of the gulf is in grave doubt. So too is the effect this disaster will have on the worldwide production of petroleum products. Will there be political fallout for President Obama and the US Congress in the forthcoming midterm elections? Are not all these issues are occasions for lament, not self-satisfied congratulations about the wealth and security of our two nations?

1 KINGS 19: 15-16, 19-21. (Alternate) Elijah found his successor ploughing with twelve yoke of oxen. That is an extremely large team to draw a relatively small agricultural instrument. It must have some symbolic meaning beyond the narrative. Could it refer to the twelve tribes of Israel now deeply divided between the Northern and South  Kingdoms? If so, it may have expressed the hope, possibly of a later editor, that the kingdoms would once more be united under a Davidic heir.

GALATIANS 5:1, 13-25. Father Thomas Keating, a spiritual companion to many from diverse denominational backgrounds, once described how the Spirit effects change in our ethical behaviour when we engage in meditative prayer : “We are sitting on the cross of Christ….thus, in a receptive mode of being,….consenting to God’s grace. In emptying, we open ourselves to redemption.”

The late Professor James S. Thomson, then Dean of the Faculty of Religious Studies at McGill University, Montreal, in the middle of the last century, interpreted to his senior class what the person and work of Christ as Saviour and Redeemer implied. He said that we had gone about as far as we can in understanding what this meant for the behavior of individual Christians. That had been achieved through the evangelical movements from the mid-18th to mid-20th century, from the Wesleys to Bonhoeffer and Tillich. What Christians in the next century or two would be required to achieve was the application of this same ethic to social and global issues of all kinds.

Fully sixty years after that prophetic observation was made, we are now in the midst of doing trying to do what that eminent teacher foresaw. What better guide to the missionary enterprise where each one of us lives can we find than what Paul cites in this letter to the Galatians?

A retired military officer joined a Bible study group after retirement from a long military career. As the group worked through the implications of “the fruits of the Spirit” in Galatians 5:22-23, this officer spoke of his wide experience as  commandant of several military bases. Moral issues had confronted him almost daily. In retirement he accepted a role as a pastoral counselor in his local congregation giving whatever help he could to other men struggling with complex moral issues. Even clergy of his acquaintance turned to him to share their moral dilemmas. The Spirit was working through him in many different ways.

LUKE 9:51-62. Many a modern minister’s family has been greatly distressed when The challenge involving a serious conflict of loyalties and responsibilities has been literally interpreted. Professor Knox put the whole series of challenging incidents in this chapter in a different context. We do not know the concrete situation in which Jesus spoke these words. This series of incidents has the single purpose of setting forth the paramount importance of the reign of God and the supreme loyalty it demands of us. Everything else is irrelevant to that purpose. We must interpret many of the stories and parables of Jesus with this same characteristic economy.

In recent months there has been much discussion among Roman Catholic people as to whether married priests would have prevented much of the child abuse that has done great damage to that church in recent years. One of the arguments offered by the Vatican for a celibate priesthood is that the priest is able to offer himself totally to his ministry without the encumbrance of marital and familial duties. At the same time, numerous married clergy from other churches have been accepted and indeed invited to seek admission as Roman Catholic clergy while still maintaining their marital status.

A Roman Catholic member of the administrative staff of a United Church congregation in my community told me recently in glowing terms of how excellent a pastor her priest had been. “And he is married with children too!” she exclaimed. She was speaking about a former minister of The United Church of Canada. At one time he and I had both been members of the same Presbytery.

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INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURE
Proper 7  Ordinary 12
Fourth Sunday After Pentecost – June 20, 2010.

1 KINGS 19:1-15a. Elijah the prophet was on the run from Queen Jezebel whose foreign priests he had defeated in a contest of spiritual power.  He was still in God’s care, however, and after being provided with food and drink in the desert, he came at last to the mountain where God had given the covenant law to Moses. But he could never escape responsibility as God’s prophet. After a windstorm, an earthquake and a raging fire, God spoke to him with a still, small voice within to give him a new commission.

ISAIAH 65:1-9. (Alternate)   In this eschatological song God offers both judgment and hope for Israel after the return of the exiles from Babylon, ca. 539 BCE. Judgment came because of a series of unholy religious practices (vss. 3-5) possibly related to a  nature cult. Yet God promised not to destroy the whole people and to restore them to their traditional land.

PSALM 42 AND 43. These two psalms were originally one. The first part laments a deep sense of absence from God. Yet the psalmist hopes that he will eventually have reason to praise God. The second part prays that his faith will be vindicated as he goes to the temple to worship.

PSALM 22:19-28. (Alternate)  Like all laments, this excerpt pleads with God for rescue, acknowledges God’s sovereignty and promises to be faithful. It envisions a hopeful future in which posterity will serve the Lord.

GALATIANS 3:23-29. One of Paul’s most decisive statements declares that faith in Jesus Christ has removed all barriers to a relationship with God for all who believe. He claims that the law given to Moses was like a schoolteacher disciplining us until Jesus came to make us all God’s children and heirs with Christ. Now, we are all children of Abraham and heirs of all God’s promises to Israel.

LUKE 8:26-39. This story appears to set Jesus’ compassion for the man chained among the tombs against compassion for the Gentile people of this community east of the Sea of Galilee. Is it a garbled story of a person with severe mental illness being healed after his frantic outcries had panicked the pigs? Or did Jesus fail to convince the unbelieving Gadarenes who had lost their pigs of God’s compassionate love?  Even for the most sane among us, the struggle to believe can be tormenting.

A MORE COMPLETE ANALYSIS.

1 KINGS 19:1-18. Most Westerners read a story from beginning to end. The various pericopes that present Elijah as one of Israel’s greatest prophets do not follow this orderly pattern. Scholarly opinion views some of the stories in which Elijah appears as coming from two different sets, the Elijah and the Ahab cycles. The editors of the Deuteronomic history of Israel, created after the return from exile in Babylon, wove these two sets of stories obtained from different sources into their overall narrative of the Davidic monarchy.

Only 1 Kings 17-19; 2 Kings 1:1-18; 1 Kings 21 and 2 Kings 9:1-10:31 appear to come from the Elijah cycle. The Ahab cycle includes 1 Kings 20:1-43; 22:1-38; 2 Kings 3:4-27; 6:8-23 and 6:24-7:20. The main theme of the Elijah cycle from which this week’s reading is taken is the preservation of the monotheist tradition against the Baal-worship imported by Ahab’s queen, Jezebel, daughter of the priest-king of Tyre. It has been suggested by some scholars that Psalm 45 bears evidence of being a love song in which Ahab and Jezebel appear as the two participants.

In this part of the narrative Elijah was on the run from Queen Jezebel whose foreign priests he had defeated in a contest of spiritual power on Mount Carmel.  He was still in God’s care, however. After being provided with food and drink in the desert, he came at last to the mountain where God had given the covenant law to Moses.

Elijah’s forty day journey to Horeb, the mount of God (aka Mount Sinai), appears to have been more symbolic than real. It compares with Moses sojourn at Mount Sinai without food or drink as recorded in Exodus 34:28. There may be other reflections of the Sinai narrative in the Elijah story: the cleft of the rock and the mouth of the cave (Ex. 32:22 cf. 1 Kgs. 19:9, 13), the covering of the face (Ex. 32:22 cf.1 Kgs. 19:13; thousands remaining faithful (Ex. 34:7 cf. 1 Kgs. 19:18). The symbolism points to a recalling of the faithful to the ancient tradition established by Yahweh in the covenant at Mount Sinai. The particular aspect of the covenant relationship emphasized here is the first commandment: “You shall have no other gods.”

Whatever Elijah’s actual experience may have been, he could never escape responsibility as God’s prophet. After a windstorm, an earthquake and a raging fire, God spoke to him with a still, small voice within and gave him a new commission. Such theophanies and their accompanying natural phenomena were common in Israel’s tradition, especially in the patriarchal narratives in Genesis. They were not peculiar to the Israelites, however, and can be found in traditions of other ancient peoples. In the Psalms and some of the prophets, the warrior image of Yahweh is often accompanied by similar violent natural phenomena (Pss. 18:7-15 & 46:1-7; Nahum 1:2-6; Habakkuk 3:8-15; Jeremiah 10:13.) These are instances where Yahweh is identified as having a special relationship with Israel alone.

Numerous homilies on the still, small voice have concentrated on the inner voice of conscience. That often tends to be guilt-laden. So it may have been for Elijah and called forth some self-justification (vss. 13-14). True as that may be, emphasis needs to be placed more heavily on continuing reflection on the divine mission to which Israel was originally called and is now summoned to return (vss. 15-18).

ISAIAH 65:1-9. (Alternate)    Scholars have had considerable difficulty dating this passage.  It appears to be the work of the school of prophet-poets sometimes referred to as Third Isaiah (Isa. 56-66). Like the poem that follows it in ch. 66, it expresses the eschatological vision of “a new heaven and a new earth” (vs. 17) as well as uttering judgment against Israel’s past aberrant religious practices.  It would appear that God offers both judgment and hope for Israel after the return of some of the exiles from Babylon, ca. 539 BCE. By no means did all those who had been transported return to their homeland.

The poem consists of ten strophes, although only the first four make up this extract, and not all of the fourth is included (vs. 10). The first strophe (vss. 1-2) presents the accessible nature of Yahweh and voices the complaint against Israel for not heeding the divine call. The second strophe (vss. 3-5) describes the corruption of Israel’s covenant tradition. Exactly what the heretical worship practices were cannot be determined. They seem to have had something to do with a nature cult (vss. 3-5). But that had been a continual temptation for Israel since the time of the earliest settlement in Canaan where some of them had adopted the traditional fertility religious practices of Baal worship of the Canaanites.

While in exile, had some Israelites been seduced by the religious rituals of Babylonian tradition too? It would have been surprising if that was not so. The naming of several aspects of such rituals – sacrificing in gardens, burning incense “on the bricks,” (or “on the roof tops,”) sitting in tombs, and eating swine’s flesh, all point to a bizarre cultus. In Babylon, there was a cult of the god Ninurta for which the pig was either sacred to the god or a totem. Swine’s flesh, anathema to all Semitic cultures, could be eaten under special ritualistic occasions.

Whatever the unholy religious practices may have been and however much these were abhorrent to Yahweh (third strophe, vss. 6-7), Yahweh was not yet willing to cast them on to the scrap heap of history. Yahweh promised not only to preserve a remnant of the people but to bless and restore them to their traditional homeland (fourth strophe, vss. 8–10).

The naming of Sharon and the Valley of Achor (vs. 10) intentionally redirected the Israelites’ imagination homeward. The Plain of Sharon is still the rich agricultural plain along the Mediterranean coast north from Jaffa to the foothills of Mount Carmel. The Valley of Achor was a small wadi which once formed the boundary between the tribal lands Judah and Benjamin, south of Jericho along the northwestern edge of the Dead Sea. It is very dry but also very fruitful when well irrigated. That practice had been extensively used in the Judean and Negev deserts by the Idumeans. Not far from the Valley of Achor, the Essenes created their eschatological community of Qumran. The providential image inspired by these names conveyed just such a vision for the faithful remnant.

PSALM 42 AND 43. These two psalms were originally one, but possibly for some unknown liturgical reason became separated. Some Hebrew manuscripts still have them as one, so the separation could have occurred during transmission from one manuscript to another. There is also some indication of dependence of the second on the first in 42:9 and 43:2. Then there is the refrain repeated in 42:5, 11 and 43:5. These elements sustain the argument for unity. The lectionary editors agree.

In the first part of the psalm, the poet laments a deep spiritual depression caused by his sense of absence from Yahweh’s presence (vs. 2). It could have been an actual absence from Jerusalem and the homeland of Israel where participation in temple festivals was once possible. Vs. 6 appears to suggest that the exact location was near the sources of the Jordan on Mount Hermon, possibly in enemy hands at the time. Wherever the psalmist was, he expresses distress at conflict in his community (vss. 42:3, 10). Scoffers took the present circumstances as evidence that Yahweh had deserted Israel or that there really was no god at all.

The psalmist’s memories of joining the throng of worshipers processing to the temple elicited great pain (vs. 4). Yet the psalmist hoped that he will eventually have reason to praise Yahweh once again within the temple. The idea that he could worship anywhere else had occurred to him (42:8; 43:2), but like many modern folk, it just didn’t seem to the same. We all like to worship in familiar sanctuaries. The second part of the psalm picks up this hopeful theme as the poet prays that his faith will be vindicated and that he will once again go to the temple to worship and to offer sacrifices as before (43:3-4).

PSALM 22:19-28. (Alternate)   Like all laments, this excerpt pleads with God for rescue, acknowledges God’s sovereignty, expresses the worshipper’s thanksgiving and vows to be faithful. It envisions a hopeful future in which posterity will serve the Lord.

With the exception of vss. 19-21, the remainder of this passage does not fit well with the preceding segment (vss. 1-18). Indeed, the repetition of vs. 11 in vs. 19 suggests a deliberate transition. This has caused scholars to suspect that the first segment was an individual lament to which the song of hopeful thanksgiving was added so that the whole might serve in the liturgical setting of the temple when anyone might come to offer thanks for deliverance from some affliction.

In vs. 21 two images of grave danger indicate how critical the situation had been for the psalmist. Lions of the Mesopotamian type still roamed the Jordan Valley and into the rich pasture lands and agricultural villages of Palestine well into the Christian era. The wild ox was the bos primigenius, called the aurochs in Europe, had been domesticated to some extent, although many still existed in the wild. Domesticated, the ox served in many capacities from ancient times. Sometimes it was used as a sacrificial beast of great value. The original wild ox still roamed the foothills of the Syrian mountains in biblical times frightening the populace with its long horns and fierce nature.

The psalmist, however, expressed the conviction that Yahweh was to be feared more than any wild beast. Therefore, he urged that Yahweh be praised (vs. 22-23). He had an even more significant reason for praise and thanksgiving: Yahweh had not despised or rejected the afflicted, but had heard his cry (vss. 24-26). This brought forth the prophetic assurance that once their realized Yahweh’s sovereignty, all nations would join Israel in the worship of Yahweh (vss. 27-31).  Even the unborn would know and worship the Lord when they heard of Yahweh’s deliverance of the oppressed.

GALATIANS 3:23-29. Coming from the gentile city of Tarsus, Paul knew well what a struggle it was to survive as a Jew in such a foreign cultural milieu. When Paul lived there, the site of Tarsus had been occupied for some 3000 years. Its founding by noted heroes of Greek mythology was the subject of many legends. A Hellenistic Greek city, in Roman times it became the capital of the province of Cilicia, prosperous as a seaport and for industries such linen weaving and sail and tent-making. It also achieved fame as a centre of learning from which had come several noted Stoic philosophers. It well deserved its Pauline designation as “no mean city.” (Acts 21:39) The exact size of the Jewish element of the population is unknown, but it is unlikely to have been more than a small minority.

Minority groups seek many means to survive. Jews adopted their religious traditions as their way of confirming their identity. We do not know whether Paul became an ardent Pharisee in Tarsus or later in Jerusalem. In either case, however, he would have been considered an outsider, first in Tarsus as an ardent Jew meticulous about keeping the law of Moses and then as a Hellenist in Jerusalem with an accent and an attitude. When he met the Christian community wherever he went after his conversion, he found at a safe haven. This reality shines through this high point in his letter to the Greek-speaking Christians of Galatia.

This passage contains Paul’s most decisive statement that faith in Jesus Christ has removed all barriers to a relationship with God and with one another for all who believe. He claims that the law given to Moses was like a schoolteacher disciplining us until Jesus came to make us all God’s children and heirs with Christ of all God’s gifts.

Paul himself had been a life-long learner. He did not come easily or quickly to the conclusion he so briefly summarizes in these few sentences. According to his own words in 1:18 and 2:1, it had taken him at least 17 years before he was well known to the apostolic community in Jerusalem. Even then, he was considered an outsider rather than a leading apostle (2:6-10). So when he wrote in 3:23-24 about being imprisoned and disciplined until Christ came, he was speaking out of his own learning experience and recognizing it as something everyone could experience. As a Pharisee, the law had been his schoolteacher, then it became a prison and Christ had been his liberator.

Paul gives us several other experiential images in this passage. By their new faith relationship to God, he and the Galatians too had become children of God and joint heirs with Christ. They had been dressed in new Christ-garments through baptism. New converts in the early church were baptized naked and re-clothed in a new, white garment. One can presume that Paul had also been baptized in this manner. He certainly knew what it meant to be delivered from slavery to the law and free to proclaim his faith with the considerable gifts of communication he possessed. His facility with languages – Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic, in all probability – gave him additional freedom to roam far and wide among the Hellenistic Jewish Diaspora and Gentile cities he had visited throughout Galatia. and other Roman provinces of Asia Minor (modern Turkey).

However Paul may be perceived in our day as being prejudiced toward women in general and their role in society, he also appears to have had remarkably good relationships with a considerable number of individual women. His letters and the records of his travels in Acts identify numerous women with whom he worked and in whose homes he stayed. He considered them as co-workers. He expressed friendship for both men and women equally, seeing them as united with him in the body of Christ.

All this was exceptional for a 1st century Jew from such a strong Pharisaic tradition. Today, Moslems, Jews and Christians rightfully claim their spiritual descent from the patriarch Abraham to a large extent because of Paul’s creative genius in making the gospel known throughout the ancient Middle East. This passage from his letter to the Galatians expresses that unique vision exceptionally well.

LUKE 8:26-39. This unusual story appears to set Jesus’ compassion for the man chained among the tombs against compassion for the Gentile people of this community southeast of the Sea of Galilee. Gerasa (apparently mistaken by Matt. 8:28 as Gadara and by other ancient authorities as Gergesa) was foreign territory in what was then the Roman tetrarchy of Philip, another son of Herod the Great and half-brother of Herod Antipas who executed John the Baptist. Today it is recognized as an archeological site at Um Qeis in northwestern Jordan near its border with Syria, but has never been excavated. We know that it was a Gentile city because the people who lived there herded pigs. Archaeologists distinguish between Jewish and Gentile sites by the presence of pig bones.

Jesus’ exorcism of the demons afflicting this man who lived among the tombs seems at once both puzzling and bizarre. We can only speculate how to identify the man’s specific illness. As was the case with many serious medical conditions in those times, his family and neighbors would have interpreted it as common demon possession. Their solution was to run him out town. That forced him to survive in the local cemetery. There he could do no harm except to himself and be gossiped about in the marketplace of Gerasa as “Crazy Jack.” But as reported in this pericope, the incident reveals obvious marks of grave impurity for any Jew: a demon-possessed maniac living in a cemetery near a place where a herd of pigs wandered freely.

In any case, when Jesus confronted whatever the demons were, the reaction created a panic in the pigs. Jesus’ conversation with the demons about their name, “Legion” and their desire not to be sent back “to the abyss” reads like a fictional embellishment in the oral tradition which lay behind the gospel source. The abyss was the prison where Satan and his demons were believed to dwell for eternity (cf. Rev. 20:3). Popular belief also held that while waiting for their ultimate banishment demons wandered the earth in search of a dwelling place. They especially favored tombs and deserted places as well as those people we would call seriously ill.

It is difficult to understand how Jesus could send the man home to tell his neighbors that their pigs had been drowned. One explanation may that this is a garbled story of the demoniac being healed after his frantic outcries had panicked the pigs. Another view frankly admits that the story suggests that although Jesus healed the man, he failed to convince the unbelieving Gerasenes of God’s compassionate love for all victims of dreaded illness. After all, they had lost their pigs.

How loving could that be? Wasn’t this a failure on Jesus’ part despite having exorcized the demon? After this, Jesus did not extend his ministry further east of the Jordan, but returned to Galilee. There was one happy Gerasene, however. The man who had been healed could not keep this miracle to himself and went about telling everyone he met what Jesus had done for him. Perhaps that – and only that – is the whole point of the story.

SOME ADDITIONAL PREACHING NOTES.

1 KINGS 19:1-15a. Is this another “Elijah time” for the Christian church? Experiencing significantly decline in membership, ordained clergy and social influence, the church today appears to be suffering  much as Elijah did. Following World War II in North America, there was a great growth spurt for about the next quarter of the 20th century. The beginning of decline in my own denomination can be traced to 1967. That was about the end of what population sociologists ad economists call “the Baby Boom.”

The children and grandchildren of that generation no longer flock to the church and build new religious and educational facilities as their parents and grandparents did. Secularism driven by wealth greater than that enjoyed by any previous generation seems to have captured former church people en mass. In the past decade or two in what could be called a turn of the century debacle many studies and consultants’ programs have  offered more and better ideas to restore congregational growth in every denomination, all to no avail.

The decline continues, even among those massive congregations on the verge of metropolitan areas that number in the tens of thousands. They seem to offer little more than a fearful security in traditional fundamentalism in return for allegiance and financial support.

Perhaps this is the time to reflect on what God’s mission really is at this time. That could be the theme of each member’s individual reflection during the summer down-time. What is the true meaning of this regression? What spiritual insights can come out of the truth that may be waiting for us to discover? It is not as if this has not happened before in the history of the church, as Kenneth Scott Latourette’s well-known history of Christian missions since the beginning of the church,  so clearly shown in The Unquenchable Light (1940).

GALATIANS 3:23-29. Paul’s family trade would appear to have been that of leather working (Acts. 18:3). It has also been speculated that his family was fairly wealthy. Due to extensive use of leather products in those times, that  would have quite likely. But tanners were not highly regarded among Jews. It was customary for them to live outside the towns and cities due to the smell and refuse accumulated by their work. In a Gentile centre like Tarsus, pig leather would have been widely used and valuable, but anathema to Jews.

Did Paul’s ardent Pharisaism result from his rejection of his family’ trade? Was that why he made his way to Jerusalem to learn at the feet of the great Gamaliel I, a leader among the Pharisees in the Sanhedrin? Was another aspect of his conversion his willingness to return to his trade to maintain  opportunities for preaching the gospel in Gentile centres like Tarsus, Corinth and elsewhere? (1 Cor. 9:6-7) Not only all types of people, but all types of work do yield such opportunities for any Christian. Is there a sermon there?

LUKE 8:26-39. Is there a possible link between this pericope of Jesus’ extending his ministry into hostile Gentile territory east of the Jordan and Isaiah 65:3-6? The theory has been proposed that prior to the writing of the earliest NT gospels many of the stories about Jesus’ ministry were reinterpretations of lectionary passages read sabbath by sabbath in the synagogues of the 1st century. In Luke’s case, these would have been synagogues of the Jewish Diaspora in Gentile cities in the last decades of the century. This occurred during the period of oral transmission of the apostolic experience of Jesus. (Gulder, Spong et al.) It is quite feasible to read this pericope in that light.

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