John Shearman's Lectionary

INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURE
Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, Year C
Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
January 31, 2010

JEREMIAH 1:4-10. This is a classic example of the call to a prophet for his special mission. The young Jeremiah is summoned by the direct intervention of God in his life. The divine message revealed that God had intended this role for Jeremiah from before his birth. God not only called, but also equipped the prophet for his vocation by reassuring him and by “touching his mouth” to give him effective powers of speech. The prophet would need all of these gifts because his task was to pronounce God’s judgment in a difficult religious and political situation in Israel at the end of the 7th century BC.

PSALM 71:1-6. The psalmist makes several urgent appeals to God for deliverance from unnamed enemies. Throughout his prayer, he prefaces his appeals by confessing his trust in God as his only refuge and hope.

1 CORINTHIANS 13: 1-13. Paul’s hymn to love remains one of the great pieces of poetry in any language. It has universal application – from marriage and family life to all forms of human relationships. Yet there is a firmness about it that denies all sentimentality. It goes straight to the heart of the problems of human communication and issues that drive us apart.

For those who doubt that this approach to life can be effective, Paul has a special word of counsel. This is how mature people relate to each other. There is no other way to settle disputes such as those he had encountered among the disciples in Corinth.

LUKE 4:21-30. By telling the audience in his home town that they are witnessing the inauguration of the new age of God’s rule in all of life, Jesus challenged his hearers to believe in him. They ran him out of town. Wouldn’t we still do so? Don’t we, though perhaps in more subtle ways?

A MORE COMPLETE ANALYSIS.

JEREMIAH 1:4-10. How does God call someone to be God’s spokesperson? Is it always a direct vocal summons such that heard by as Moses, or Samuel, or Isaiah, or Jeremiah – a mystical experience which comes to very few? Or is there sometimes a less dramatic way: a still, small voice within; or a gentle suggestion from a friend; or an inner desire expressed in a wordless prayer of commitment and a deep, reassuring confirmation that this is what God also desires? God has as many ways of calling as there are those whom God has chosen to lead.

This passage tells of a classic example of the direct call to a prophet for his special mission. As the prophet himself reported the experience, Yahweh intervened in the life of the young Jeremiah with a summons. “The word of the Lord came to me saying, ….” (vs.4) The divine message revealed that Yahweh had intended this role for Jeremiah from before his birth. Although Jeremiah felt predestined, he also felt unsuited for the vocation to which Yahweh had called him. That too is a common reaction to what must have been a very intense experience.

For anyone who has had a similar experience, Jeremiah’s protests have a familiar ring to them. We all can think of every conceivable reason not to accept such a call. He didn’t know how to speak. He was too young. These days, we might say, “I am too old.” Or “I am too busy raising my family.” Or “I am too busy saving for my retirement. Actually, he was afraid. And so are we. That was what Yahweh reassured him about most (vs. 8).

Yahweh not only called, but also equipped Jeremiah for his vocation. He received promises that Yahweh would give him the words to utter and to be with him whenever he was commanded to speak (vss.7-8). He would become “the mouthpiece of the Almighty,” as William Sanday described the prophet’s vocation. Then Yahweh acted to ordain him by “touching his mouth,” thus giving him effective powers of speech. Isaiah had a similar experience (Isa. 6:5-6) Be warned, however, vocation and ordination today do not guarantee effectiveness in preaching.

The prophet would need all of these gifts because his task was to pronounce God’s judgment, not only on Israel but on other nations too. His mission had much wider implications, both negative and positive. It reached beyond Israel to the nations (vs.10). This happened in a time of great disruption when the power of the great Assyrian empire had declined to the point where it was in its death throes. The kingdom of Judah had been ruled by Manasseh (697 ? or 687-642), a vassal of Assyria. He had been the longest reigning and the most reviled monarch, according to the Deuteronomists, because of his love for syncretist religious practices. Idols and worship of foreign gods had been introduced into Judea and Jerusalem rivaling and corrupting the worship of Yahweh. Vassal states like Babylon and Media quickly filled the political vacuum left by the decline of the Assyrian empire.

It is thought that Jeremiah’s ministry began the very year in which Assurbanipal, the last of the Assyrian emperors (669-627 BCE) died. That could well have been the incident which occasioned his call. From this brief discussion of historical events, we may conclude that the details of vs.10 were written after the fact, reflecting what had already taken place.

Jeremiah’s active ministry is thought to have extended over the next 40 years to 586 BCE. In that year Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians and a great many of the leaders of Israel were marched away to exile. Jeremiah was not among them, but was carried away to Egypt by a group of refugees. However, some scholars doubt that his ministry began before 612 or 609 BCE because there is a gap of some 20 years in biographical information. This is so despite the fact that no other prophetic book includes so much biographical data. Some regard the date of 627 BCE as the time of his birth, which gives poignancy to his protest about his youth in vs.6.

PSALM 71:1-6. In some respects, this psalm does not conform to the traditional style of a lament with its sequence of appeal, complaint, petition and vow of thanksgiving, such as we find in Ps. 56. Here we have a sick, fearful and depressed old man (vss. 9, 18) who appears to have reached the end of his resources. He feels that God has all but deserted him. He makes several urgent appeals to God for deliverance from unnamed enemies. Yet, throughout his prayer, he prefaces his appeals by confessing his trust in God as his only refuge and hope (vs. 3).

We must conclude that the psalm was composed at relatively late date. It draws on material found in other parts of the Psalter: vss. 1-3 = 31:1-3a; vs. 6 = 22:10, etc. Be that as it may, the psalm still expresses the intensive search of the lonely and distressed soul for the assurance and hope of a living relationship with God in the utmost extremities of life.

Could this not also be the prayer of those who even now endure unexpected natural disasters such as earthquakes or tsunamis? And what of those many millions who flee for their lives in terror caused by war only to face starvation and death in refugee camps? Are there not also many single parent families or elderly people, ill, alone and threatened with being forced out of their homes because no one cares about them and governments have withdrawn support for the most vulnerable of this richest society ever in human history? The profound sense of justice implicit is so much of Hebrew prophetic literature comes to the fore in this psalmist’s lament.

1 CORINTHIANS 13: 1-13. Paul’s hymn to love remains one of the great pieces of poetry in any language. It has universal application – from marriage and family life to all forms of human relationships, individual and corporate. Yet there is a firmness about it that denies all sentimentality.

This love is more than words or even noble, sacrificial actions (vss.1-3). It goes straight to the heart of the problems of human communication and the fractious habits that drive us apart: impatience, unkindness, envy, boasting, arrogance, rudeness, selfishness, irritability, resentment, deliberate wrongdoing, deceit and dishonesty (vss. 4-7). Paul declares his unequivocal conviction that love can overcome all of these human failings common to us all. This should surely still form an important element of every marriage ceremony and the heart of every pre-marital interview for couples asking the church to bless their union. Conflict resolution programs never had a better means of achieving success than following these few verses.

For those who doubt that this approach to life can be effective, Paul has a special word of counsel: this is how mature people relate to each other. (vss. 8-12) There is no other way to settle disputes such as those he had encountered among the disciples in Corinth. Why not in our homes, our towns, our country and our world too?

Enthralling as this poem may be, Paul wrote explicitly to the Corinthian disciple community – and to us in our context right now. Some may feel that while this may be the ideal formula for life in the Shalom of God, it is not very practical for life in the real world. If we are disciples of Jesus Christ, if we are indeed “his body,” then this is the way we are to live here and now. This is the way he lived in the real world, costly though it was. This is what the cross means: Love that lays down its life for the world through every-day human relationships.

The Greek word translated “love” throughout this passage is agapé. Many treatises have been written comparing this word to other Greek words all translated into English as “love.” The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible has a nine page article on this word entitled “Love in the NT.” It was written by a man I knew well and who more than once tested my love for him as a teacher and colleague in ministry, the late Professor George Johnston, one-time professor of NT at Emmanuel College, Toronto, then later at United Theological College and McGill University, Montreal. He concluded his exhaustive study by saying that this love had taken a human face in Jesus of Nazareth and had spoken by a human voice to and for all the scattered children of God. “Love had reached down from God to man, that man might rise up to enjoy life in God forever.” Acerbic though he was in his criticism of less than adequate scholarship, Prof. Johnson has a genuine pastoral care for his students which exemplified the word love.

LUKE 4:21-30. So what does one say after one has told the audience in one’s home town that they are witnessing the inauguration of the new age of God’s rule in all of life through all the world? The message Deutero-Isaiah had delivered was simple, “Your God reigns.” Jesus had come to implement that reign of God in his home town, among his own people.

The initial reaction to Jesus in Nazareth was quite favourable. Patronizing too. “Fine fellow, that boy. Joseph the carpenter’s son, isn’t he? His widowed mother must be proud of him. He’ll go far.”

That wasn’t good enough for Jesus. He knew they hadn’t really heard him at all. He would have none of it. So he made them listen by challenging his hometown audience to believe in him and his mission to the world. He had not come home to do miracles like they had heard of him performing in Capernaum a few kilometres down the road by the Sea of Galilee. And he wasn’t there to make them think well of him; or to make them feel good as the preferred and privileged people, good Israelites all. Like Elijah and Elisha, he had come to minister to outsiders too.

Here Luke, ever mindful of his Gentile audience, lets his universalism stand out clearly. G.B. Caird wrote in his study of Luke’s Gospel: “The stories of Elijah and Elisha should, indeed, have taught them that with God charity begins wherever there is found human need to call it forth and faith to receive it, irrespective of class or race.” (Caird, G.B. Saint Luke. The Pelican New Testament Commentaries, 1963.) As Luke presents him, Jesus had a much wider vision than the Jewish community in the small mountain village in Galilee from which he had come.

George Santayana once said that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. After a century of the most destructive conflicts ever based on ideological rivalries between competing empires, we have entered a new century with the prospect of ethnic and religious conflicts within many smaller nations. Our 24-hour television news broadcasts feature violence and death occurring wherever the far-ranging eye of a television camera will reach. The problem is that when we see these tragic events, we fail to recognize that our own attitudes toward those who are “not like us” are being deeply challenged. For example, whenever we ask someone who has a skin colour different from ours, “Where do you come from?” we expose our own racial prejudices. Or when we tell a joke that pigeon-holes people because of their particular accent or country of origin, we express the narrowness of our own minds.

That is exactly what happened when Jesus recalled the stories about the widow of Sidon and Naaman the Syrian. Both of them weren’t even Israelites, but had been ministered to by two of Israel’s great prophets. “Open your eyes!” Jesus was saying to his neighbours in Nazareth. “The world is bigger than you imagine. The God you claim to believe in is far too small. God doesn’t just favour Israelites like you and me. God’s love extends to those who are most vulnerable, the most oppressed, the outsiders, the most in need.”

My friend, Jim Taylor, wrote in his Soft Edges column on the Internet: “Canadians have been more subtle about our prejudices. We’re only now coming to realize the second class status accorded to our aboriginal peoples. And our immigrants. Our women. Our elderly…. Racism’s roots lie in one group’s conviction of God-given superiority over another group, simply by belonging to that group. By extension, any member of the dominant group can feel superior to any member of the victim group.”

Whether it was the way he said it or the unspoken implications of what Jesus said, the good citizens of Nazareth were enraged. They ran him out of town. Wouldn’t we still do so? Don’t we, though perhaps in more subtle ways?

A new year begins on the liturgical calendar of Christian worship. This will be the third year, Year C, in the cycle of the Revised Common Lectionary.

Advent is the time when we make our spiritual preparations for the coming of Christ by thinking first about his return in glory as promised throughout the New Testament.

INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURE
1st Sunday of Advent – November 29, 2009

JEREMIAH 33:14-16. Jeremiah lived seven centuries before Christ was born. Yet he spoke with intense hope of a time when an anointed king of David’s line would come to bring righteousness and justice to Israel and so give the nation the security it so desperately needed and earnestly desired.

PSALM 25:1-10. The personal faith of the individual Israelite expressed in a prayer forms the central theme of this instructional psalm. In Hebrew, each verse begins with a different letter of the Hebrew language. This was done for easier memorization. The special covenant relationship between God and Israel also lies behind the prayer as a secondary theme.

1 THESSALONIANS 3:9-13. The two letters of Paul to the Thessalonians were probably the first part of the whole New Testament to have been written, possibly no more that twenty years after the death and resurrection of Christ. Prominent throughout these two short letters is the expectation that Christ would soon return to establish his eternal reign of justice, peace and love. Here Paul urges that continued spiritual growth and warm personal relationships be maintained by these early Christians until that glorious day.

LUKE 21:25-36. The expectation of Christ’s return dominated early Christian thought. Bible scholars debate whether these teachings came from Jesus himself or the early apostolic church. Many of the concepts and images are drawn from typical Jewish apocalyptic writing found in the Hebrew scriptures and similar writings of the period between the two parts of our Bible.

A MORE COMPLETE ANALYSIS.

JEREMIAH 33:14-16. Jeremiah lived seven centuries before Christ was born. His ministry spanned four decades from about 627 to 586 BCE. Two great crises occurred during this time. The break-up of the Assyrian empire and the rise of the Babylonian empire changed the economic and political environment for the kingdom of Judah. The resurgence of religious nationalism during the reign of King Josiah (ca. 640-609 BCE) created a new social, moral and spiritual environment. Jeremiah may well have been greatly involved in that revival as the narrative parts of the book describe.

As the Book of Jeremiah comes to us now, it is a composite work of several different types of literature drawn from several sources and dealing with several themes. But like most pre-exilic prophets, Jeremiah was primarily a preacher, not an author. So the book that bears his name must be regarded as only partially his. The lectionary passage comes from a so-called “Book of Consolation” (chs. 30, 31 and 33) into which is inserted an incident from Jeremiah’s life illustrating this hopeful theme (32). These oracles are probably of varied origin that offer hope beyond national disaster. They also show the influence of the earlier prophet Hosea and close links with Deutero-Isaiah (Isaiah 40-55). Some of the material is undoubtedly that of Jeremiah himself as well as from Baruch, the scribe. (See Robert Davidson’s article “The Book of Jeremiah,” in The Oxford Companion to the Bible, 343ff) Baruch may have been responsible for writing down some of the prophecies attributed to Jeremiah.

This passage speaks with intense hope of a time when an anointed king (Hebrew = masiah) of David’s line would come to bring righteousness and justice to Israel and so give the nation the security it so desperately needed and earnestly desired. It emphasizes the prophetic faith that the nation’s fate will not be not decided by the Babylonians, but by Yahweh. This faith in Yahweh as Lord of history is found throughout the Old Testament, but especially in the oracles of the great prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel. It presents a hopeful faith for difficult times such as our own.

Our problem today is to recognize and accept this biblical faith that God does indeed have a providential purpose to be fulfilled through the actual events of human history. This faith implies an interventionist God who cares what happens to creation, but this is also open to wide misinterpretation found so often in some narrow theological views that claims God is really on our side and against our enemies. Such views have frequently led to civil, international and interfaith warfare. The mediaeval Crusades and the Irish Troubles of the past several decades occurred because of such disastrous religious prejudices. The great danger of the present moment is to see the extremist Islamists’ jihad, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories in a similar light.

It also has to be recognized that such a narrow view is evident in the scriptures themselves. After the global wars of the 20th century, one is tempted to reject all theological interpretations of history. How could we ever conceive of a God in control of such tragic events when millions of innocent civilians died because they belonged to an “enemy” nation or a particular race or ethnic group? It is at this point that the vision of Jeremiah of the Messiah “executing righteousness and justice” becomes relevant to our own time. Without these qualities dominant in human character and practiced in personal, national and international relations, history will continue to be a record of human failure to do as God wills.

PSALM 25:1-10. The special relationship between Yahweh and Israel as well as the personal faith of the individual Israelite form the central theme of this psalm which is both liturgical and instructional. It is a prayer of supplication for Yahweh’s intervention in some unstated personal problem and as such was useful to anyone seeking divine help in distress.

The psalm has the form of an acrostic, however. In Hebrew, each verse begins with a different letter of the Hebrew language. This was done for easier memorization. It also contains similarities to Wisdom literature, e.g. vss. 4-5; 12-14. As such, its superscription “Of David” is an anachronism attached to the psalm to give it liturgical authority. This type of psalm appeared only in the late post-exilic period when the worship of temple was highly structured by the Levitical priesthood. It may have come from a collection of psalms of varying age and authorship attributed to but certainly not composed by David.

While the implications of vss. 1-2 indicate an external human enemy whose treachery the psalmist feared, there is no reason why this could not also refer to an inner, spiritual enemy. The habit of personifying the impersonal can be found quite commonly in Hebrew literature. Mediaeval art and some modern literary images depicting various forms of temptation as evil angels (e.g. C. S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters) followed the same pattern.

The psalmist had found that obedience to the way of Yahweh led to moral uprightness and spiritual strength when confronted by life’s vicissitudes. Dependence on the mercy and steadfast love of Yahweh yielded the power to overcome (vss. 6-10). A note of sincere humility crept into the prayer as the psalmist openly confessed his youthful transgressions and personal guilt (vss. 7 & 11). He also had concern for others, that they would reverently seek to be taught by Yahweh and reap the reward of prosperity through keeping the covenant (vss. 12-15).

Vss. 16-21 return to the original petition. The psalm ends with a brief reference to the need for Israel’s redemption from troubles which are never disclosed. The personal and national distress to which the psalm gave expression can best be understood in the light of the covenant relationship between Yahweh and Israel. Each Israelite, as a “son of the covenant,” (b’nai b’rith) felt a deep sense of personal identification with what happened to the whole community. Today, we can see this in the way our Jewish neighbors feel about and defend Israel whenever they perceive some incident as threatening to that modern state.

1 THESSALONIANS 3:9-13. The two letters of Paul to the Thessalonians were probably the first part of the whole New Testament to have been written, possibly no more that twenty years after the resurrection of Christ and relatively early in Paul’s ministry. Prominent throughout these two short letters is the expectation that Christ would soon return to establish his eternal reign of justice, love and peace. Paul shared this viewpoint with the whole church of the Apostolic Age. It greatly influenced the oral transmission of Jesus’ teachings and the writing of the earlier Gospels.

Paul’s intimate relationship with some of his early European converts comes to the fore in this passage. The immediately preceding verses (3:1-5) describe his considerable anxiety for them as they struggled to live their recently acquired faith in very difficult circumstances. They were probably mainly Gentiles experiencing strong persecution from non-believers of their own community not unlike the opposition confronting Jewish Christians in Judea (2:14). Accordingly, Paul had sent his colleague Timothy to encourage them (3:2). Timothy had returned with good news (3: 6). So Paul was writing this first letter in response to what Timothy had told him.

Thanksgiving and intercessory prayer for the Thessalonians highlight Paul’s very personal concern. He earnestly wanted to return to see them and strengthen their faith. In the meantime, he urged that they continue to grow and maintain warm personal relationships within their fellowship until that glorious day when Christ returns. He did not elaborate on the details of the apostolic expectation of Christ’s second coming.

In general, all NT writers concentrated on the purpose rather than the manner of this anticipated event. It was as if they felt that Jesus’ work of establishing God’s kingdom had been left unfinished by the crucifixion and resurrection. In all honesty, the world still seemed – then and now – as if the reign of God had not yet come. The promise of Christ’s coming again offered hope that what had gone before had not been in vain. The love of God in Christ would triumph in the end and those who refused to believe and follow his way would be rejected
in the final judgment.

The phrase “strengthen your hearts in holiness” in 3:13 offers a very appropriate Advent text. Instead of rushing around in consumer panic, we need these four weeks before Christmas to prepare spiritually for Christ’s coming. Holiness in daily life is best expressed in love for God and neighbour. It is not just happenstance that charities make their strongest appeal for public support during the last few weeks before Christmas. The problem most of us face is how to share our resources, material and well as spiritual, in this particular season when so many demands are placed upon us. Childhood Christmases during the Great Depression of the 1930s showed me personally how it is that while material resources may be limited, spiritual resources for this season can be truly unlimited.

LUKE 21:25-36. The expectation of Christ’s return dominated early Christian thought. Bible scholars debate whether Jesus himself or the early apostolic church taught in such terms. Uniformly, the gospels and Acts attribute this teaching to Jesus, although in John’s Gospel there is some ambiguity whether certain sayings of Jesus referred to his resurrection rather than an eschatological Parousia at the end of historical time. Many of the concepts and images were drawn from standard Jewish apocalyptic writing found in the Hebrew scriptures and similar eschatalogical literature of the intertestamental period.

The prophets much earlier had declared their faith in a future historical event, the Day of the Lord, when God’s rule of righteousness, peace, justice and prosperity would become permanent for Israel. The earliest gospel statement in Mark 1:15 set the ministry of Jesus as the dawning of this new age. Matthew and Luke shared this belief. But the moment had not yet come by the eighth or ninth decade of lst century CE when Luke’s Gospel was composed. Later New Testament writers, notably the author of the Pastoral Epistles to Timothy and Titus, dealt with the delayed expectation of the church.

There may well be actual historical events behind this apocalyptic passage in all three Synoptic Gospels. As can be seen by comparing Matthew 24:4-36 Luke 21 5-38 to Mark 13:5-37, Matthew and Luke were dependent on Mark’s original statement of the early oral tradition. The differences in the three accounts may have been due to an earlier version of Mark which the two other authors had before them, but were altered in what is now a much debated “Secret Gospel of Mark.” (Biblical Archeological Review, , “Secret Mark: A Modern Forgery?” November-December 2009. Vol.35, No. 6. 43ff.)

All four Gospels were written after the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple in 70 CE and reflect that momentous event. Written about 70 CE, Mark’s Gospel was closest to the catastrophe . There is a strong tradition that shortly before that fateful event in Jewish history, the Christian community in Jerusalem fled from the city and settled in Pella, an established flourishing Roman and Greek town on the eastern side of the Jordan River about 16 km (10 mi) south of the Sea of Galilee. Hence the reference in Luke 21:21 “Then those is Judea must flee to the mountains ….” (Cf. Mark 13:14; Matt. 24:15-16). The tradition came from that fact that the Christian community there existed there until the Moslem period in the 7th century CE. Thus, in this passage we may well be reading the leaders of the Christian community cast their counsel and hope for Christ’s return to their endangered community in the eschatological words of Jewish apocalypse taken from the Hebrew scriptures they knew so well.

Nor has that hope in the future return of Christ yet been fulfilled twenty-one centuries later in the traditional manner in which it has been declared. In the meantime, the church’s faith in the Second Coming has been variously interpreted, depending on the approach to scripture taken by the interpreter. Is it specific prediction? Or more general prophecy of God’s intention? Or is the descriptive Second Coming more of a symbol of God’s ultimate triumph? Or are we merely discussing the personal identification of the individual with Christ? Or has it already taken place – at Pentecost? Stephen H. Travis, of St. John’s College, Nottingham, England, writes: “In any case, it is possible to affirm the basic structure of Christian hope, with its emphasis on the second coming as the goal and fulfillment of God’s past work in Christ, without committing oneself to any precise view about its nature or when it will be.” (The Oxford Companion to the Bible, p. 686.)

That may not be a satisfactory approach for some, but it does give us a continuing hope and a commission to carry on the ministry of God’s love for the world so fully expressed in Jesus Christ. How each person fulfills that commission is to be realized in the choices and priorities one makes in the myriad human relationships which engage one’s energies day by day. For some it may mean quiet prayer and contemplation. For others it may mean active participation in ministries that seek justice for all. For still others it may have extensive economic and/or political ramifications. One form or expression of hope does not fit all situations.

To some extent, there was truth in what former US President George H. W. Bush (1988-92) advocated when he said that we all have a responsibility to create “a thousands points of light”. It would be a grave mistake, however, to regard any specific political or military events occurring at this or any other moment in history, no matter who may perpetrate them, as signs that the end times have begun. The Day of the Lord envisioned by the prophets of Israel and the eschatological passages of the NT is always here and now.