Commentary on Lectionary for May 1, 2011

Easter 2

Acts 2:14a-22-32; Psalm 16; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31

The week after Easter the developers of the lectionary put these readings before the Christian community. One or more of them will be proclaimed in hundreds or probably thousands of churches around the world.

Most will hear Peter’s sermon that he delivered after the great commotion in Jerusalem when the mighty wind threatened to blow apart the upper room and the Apostles who saw tongues of fire on the heads of their colleagues now began to speak and act with such exuberance that people thought they had been drinking.

Other churches will choose the Resurrection story that contains the story of doubting Thomas. A few might hear Peter’s letter exhorting new followers of Jesus to have hope and confidence in their salvation, and to follow in Jesus’s way. Finally the Psalm, when it is sung, will usually be used as a bridge between readings. And this psalm is full of joy because of God’s protection.

All of the readings seem focused on cementing our faith and hope in the risen Jesus, even if we are initially doubters, like Thomas.

Although Peter seems to be quoting the prophet Joel to explain the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, which was obvious to those anywhere near that upper room, Peter can’t resist continuing with Joel’s apocalyptic language that would probably scare everyone to death and make them WANT to call upon the name of Jesus (and repent, of course), if that would save them.

These portents in Joel become more imminent when we read of two eminent scientists who just last month predicted the end of the earth as we know it, citing over-population, environmental degradation, and the statistical probability of getting hit by an asteroid. It doesn’t really matter, does it, since physical death is already inescapable. But the belief that Jesus has overcome that final end and beckons us through its tunnel to life and joy on the other side is what makes the celebration of Easter so essential. The Resurrection allows us to sing Psalm 16 in our own time with this added meaning.

But we might want to pause a minute at the Thomas story. Thomas epitomizes those of us who are struggling with belief, are mesmerized by inconsistencies in Scripture and in the interpretation of it, and are rendered catatonic by the clash of post-modern times with the ancient holy words. Some people who have thought deeply about it are consoled that it wasn’t enough for Thomas to hear testimonies from his closest friends and fellow Apostles. He had to touch the suffering, the wounds.

The promises of salvation and eternal life might only get clarified when we have experienced suffering, even the internal suffering of doubt and confusion or the dark night of disbelief. In the agony of physical and mental pain, the words of Psalm 16 take on a new meaning: “Protect me, O God, for in you I take refuge…I have no good apart from you.”

Commentary on Lectionary for April 24, 2011

Easter Sunday

Acts 10:34-43; Psalm 118: 1-2, 14-24; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-18

Sermons like Peter’s in Acts 10 may be responsible for the image of Jesus as judge, spending his newly risen life keeping track of all of our sins. In our culture, we would translate this into wearing a wire or using video cameras and then transferring the data to gigantic spreadsheets, with huge red numbers summing up the extent of our failures. After all, Peter said in his sermon: “42: He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead.”

If it is any consolation, Peter followed this up in his very next sentence with this assurance: “43: All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”

Brian McLaren (A New Kind of Christianity), however, suggests a different definition of the word “judgment,” one that no one who likes to threaten others with hell, could ever agree to. The usual definition of divine judgment is built around the sorting of sheep and goats in Matthew’s last judgment scene. The goats go into everlasting torment.

But what if we define judgment as: “putting wrong things right;” as meaning “reconciling and restoring, not merely punishing; healing, not merely diagnosing; transforming, not merely exposing; revaluing (or redeeming),not merely evaluating” (McLaren, 203). This definition gives new meaning to Peter’s words that “everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins…” The reason is that believing in him will involve being sensitive to the needs of the poor and disadvantaged; sharing your wealth; loving your enemies and telling everyone there is good news: the world can be changed; there is a force afoot that overcomes death and evil. That force has a name, and it’s the Spirit of Jesus.

Looking at judgment in this way makes it okay to offer your services to God. He will help you make things right. Together, who knows what may be transformed: relationships? Institutions? All of a sudden, we are collaborators in creating the kingdom of God. Our freedom is still intact, as Paul warns in Colossians. We can still do very bad things, even AFTER we have decided for God.

But in this risky life, in which the chances are great we will still be lured to make many mistakes and do downright selfish things, how consoling, heartening, enlivening it is to know that Jesus lives, that he has ascended to his Father and to OUR Father.

We have new cause to sing with the Psalmist: 14The Lord is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation… 17: I shall not die, but I shall live, and recount the deeds of the Lord. “

Commentary on Lectionary for April 17, 2011

Palm Sunday

Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 31: 9-16; Philippians 2:5-11; Matthew 26:14-27:66

It’s the little images, the short phrases in these readings that are intriguing. For example, those first lines of the Isaiah reading: 4The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens— wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught. 5The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious…

The idea that a teacher can sustain a weary person with a word! What would that word be? Would it be a word of understanding or the kind of praise that sees something deep inside of you that you yourself are only vaguely aware of?

And then Isaiah puts before us this image of having your ear awakened. As we get bombarded with commercials, phone calls, texts, emails and everyone shouting, cajoling, seducing us for our money, we have to put our hands over our ears. I doubt they had such over-stimulation in prophetic times. But they may have needed to have their ears awakened so they could take in a really important message.

And then there’s the Psalmist, who sounds like a depressed paranoid schizophrenic: “I hear the whispering of many— terror all around!— as they scheme together against me, as they plot to take my life. But then he says there’s one person he trusts: the Lord! He pleads for what he imagines—that the Lord’s face may shine upon him. Think about what it means to have someone you trust greet you with a shining face. Would any words be necessary?

Paul says his joy will be complete if we could only be of the same mind and realize that God is at work in all of us. Instead of posturing, needing recognition, needing control, think of Jesus, who gave everything up and took the form of a servant.

Not only that, as Matthew makes clear in the story of his execution, he took the form of one who was deserted by his friends, betrayed by his own disciple. He took the form of a criminal, of one whom the government thought deserved the death penalty. He took the form of bread and wine.

If our own world starts to crumble, what word would sustain us? What face would shine upon us? Can we awaken an ear to hear it? Can we put our ear to the ground to hear the good news that a faith community provides? Can our spirits be like a huge vacuum sucking up enough light and peace to become beacons ourselves?

What if the word is “TRUST” and what if the face is GOD’s?

Commentary on Lectionary for April 10, 2011

Lent 5A

Ezekiel 37:1-14; Psalm 130; Romans 8:6-11; John 11:1-45

The old saw has it that “in this world nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes.” I looked in my Oxford Dictionary of Quotations to find out who said that, and , I might have known, it was Ben Franklin. Right under it in the book was his epitaph for himself, which reads: “The body of Benjamin Franklin, printer (Like the cover of an old book, its contents worn out, and stript of its lettering and gilding) lies here, food for worms! Yet the work itself shall not be lost, for it will, as he believed, appear once more in a new and more beautiful edition, corrected and amended by its Author!”

These are appropriate quotes, this close to tax day, and this close to Good Friday. Death abounds in the readings and can be oppressive as we get closer and closer to the execution of the Son of Man. I used to hate Holy Week, with its many readings of the Passion, its somber mood, purple everywhere, silence or hushed whispers, guilt hanging from the rafters of my memory. Like a child whose parent has tragically died, I am sure I killed him.

As we age, things get stripped from us just as Ben Franklin said. Our careers, our memories, our other faculties, friends and relatives, our stamina and health. It takes great act of faith to believe that none of these things are the “real me.” Eckhard Tolle and other contemplatives insist that we can “practice dying,” by letting these little losses go, but also letting them increase our understanding that they were just “gilding and lettering.” Taxes may be a good way to practice dying. In one of his meditations from Everything Belongs, Rev. Richard Rohr writes: “Please don’t get caught in just ‘my’ story, my hurts, my agenda. It’s too small. It’s not the whole You, the Great You.”

And so the message to Ezekiel. What a terrible vision he was given—all of those bones! I wonder if he was so sick he could barely stand. And yet God made him understand they weren’t the whole story. They stood for Israel—seemingly dead, but not forgotten by a God who could put flesh back on them quicker than Ezekiel could make a prophecy.

A similar thing must be said of that strange Lazarus story in John’s Gospel. Jesus is told his friend is ill, yet he delays. He knows Lazarus is going to die and then DOES die. He knows he is going to call him forth from that grave, and yet Jesus weeps when he gets there. He keeps talking about faith, just as Paul does in Romans.

And it’s always troubled me that Lazarus doesn’t STAY raised from the dead. Eventually, he dies again and stays dead this time!

The conclusion has to be that none of this is about death; it’s about life. Faith is the way through—to believe that none of the gilding and lettering is really you; and the wearing out and dying of your body and its melting down to bones and eventually dust have nothing to do with your true essence and destiny. You, I, we, they have been touched by God. We are, as Paul notes, “not in the flesh. We are in the Spirit.” The Spirit cannot die.

Cry out from the scary depths when death and taxes approach, but wait. Bring your guilt down from the rafters, because forgiveness is here and steadfast love and great power to redeem (Ps. 50). We wait because we can’t earn this forgiveness and this love. We wait because we can’t make it happen on our own. We wait in prayer and openness. But we wait with confidence and hope because we know Someone has this foolhardy, undeserved, over-the-top LOVE for us!