Second Sunday of Advent
Isaiah 11:1-10; Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19; Romans 15:4-13; Matthew 3:1-12
The first two readings have to do with the ideal king. We in the U.S. have a hard time imagining what it would be like to have a king, especially one whose main concern is the poor. It is difficult to find a single king in all of history who made the poor his chief concern—unless you are talking about Jesus, of course, and recognize Him as a “king.”
Besides the incredible biblical assumption that someone in power would care about the poor, the other issue that defies belief is the peaceable kingdom that the painter Edward Hicks illustrated from these words of Isaiah. If the wolf and the lion lie down with the lambs and the calves, they will starve to death. We speak of them being “hard wired” to kill and eat. They are predators. Some say we humans are hard wired, too, to protect our families and property, to expand our reach through war.
In her book Prodigal Summer, Barbara Kingsolver makes a strong case that predators such as the coyote must be allowed to survive or the world will be overrun by rodents. We have all learned that the accidental or purposeful introduction of species where they are not found naturally has often led to disastrous consequences for the environment.
Amid this talk of kings and predators, Matthew’s gospel portrays John the Baptist talking about Jesus as a powerful figure, someone who will thrash about with his pitchfork and send people into “unquenchable fire.” Ever after, preachers can use that quote to try to scare people into righteousness. Unfortunately, righteousness often meant a public confession followed by hefty contributions to the preacher’s organization.
However, when Jesus begins his ministry, He gives very little evidence of a winnowing fork, and instead He associates and appears to LOVE the people that the righteous condemned. And so He shows Himself the kind of king that Isaiah and the Psalm were talking about. The people He befriended, lifted up, cured and healed, were most often people who were poor. They were lacking in the eyes of the elite.
And so we come to the big questions: Is Jesus someone who would relate to you? Would He understand you? Would He LIKE you? Would you like Him or even love Him? If yes, is that because you are blameless and have perfectly observed all the commandments from your youth?
No worries. Jesus gave a clue right from the beginning that he was separating himself from the establishment. He went to the river Jordan to be baptized by John, this upstart who eventually was executed by the current King. Then He begins showing a shocking favoritism to those whom Isaiah calls “the meek of the earth” (Is. 11: 4).
And so this is the way Jesus demonstrated for us what He meant by a “spirit of Wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord” (Is. 11:2). And we are still hoping, in the waning weeks of 2010, to walk in His way and so bring to our world those gifts of His Spirit.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Commentary on Lectionary for November 28, 2010
Isaiah 2:1-5; Psalm 122; Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:36-44
Advent begins, a period of making room for the Presence of God in our lives. There is a stillness, a joyful anticipation about this liturgical season. In the Christian tradition, Advent has been likened to a journey, a trip to Bethlehem, as if we were wise men and, having had some star, some illumination that convinced us that something stupendous has happened on this earth, we set out to follow that light wherever it leads.
No wonder Psalm 122, one of the “ascent psalms,” speaks about the joy of going up to Jerusalem along with all the tribes of the Lord, and hearing proclaimed from that holy city the word “Shalom”—“Peace be within you!” Isaiah (2:1-5) and Micah (4:1-3) proclaim the same thing: the wonderful invitation to climb the Lord’s mountain to get instruction in God’s ways. And what do they hear? --That there will be an end to war and amid all the violence of clashing armies and rival kings, the one God will stand secure, bring peace, and be worthy of our praise.
At this time of year, our Islamic brethren have just made the haaj to Mecca. More than two million people, dressed simply, obliterating external signs of wealth or class, are fulfilling one of Islam’s pillars, the visit to this holy place, a purifying journey, a chance to commune with God.
Advent also begins the frantic rush toward Christmas. Instead of a peaceful pilgrimage to the holy places, many of us in this country fight each other for merchandise at Black Friday prices. People get trampled; violence erupts; politeness is discarded; incivility reigns. For those in-store guards watching for theft on monitors, it must be a terrible scene that unfolds before them and a sorry commentary on what we humans can become. And the saddest part is that our economy needs to be fed with a huge amount of purchasing each year, and so merchants try to extend black Friday backwards from the day after Thanksgiving, even trying to rename that traditional day of giving thanks, ‘gray Thursday.’
Can you imagine Paul of Tarsus standing at the doors of a mall or a Wal-Mart saying, as he does in Romans 13:13-14: “Let us live honorably…not in quarreling and jealousy…make no provision for the desires of the flesh!” --Certainly ignored; probably trampled.
So what’s the point? Is it wrong to want to give gifts, to seek bargains, to make Christmas lists? I don’t know. We are caught up in a culture and an economic system that says: of course not. We are caught up in a crowd heading in one direction and are pushed along whether we dig in our heels or not. Maybe the best we can do is to heed Jesus’ words that we don’t know when God will come, will try to reach us, will take us to Himself. “Stay awake, therefore! You cannot know the day your Lord is coming” (Mt. 24:42). The experience of His Presence is the most precious gift we will ever receive.
Maybe in the midst of the frenetic activity before Christmas, we can carve out a little bit of time each day to read Psalm 122 and hear its message of peace. Shalom!
Advent begins, a period of making room for the Presence of God in our lives. There is a stillness, a joyful anticipation about this liturgical season. In the Christian tradition, Advent has been likened to a journey, a trip to Bethlehem, as if we were wise men and, having had some star, some illumination that convinced us that something stupendous has happened on this earth, we set out to follow that light wherever it leads.
No wonder Psalm 122, one of the “ascent psalms,” speaks about the joy of going up to Jerusalem along with all the tribes of the Lord, and hearing proclaimed from that holy city the word “Shalom”—“Peace be within you!” Isaiah (2:1-5) and Micah (4:1-3) proclaim the same thing: the wonderful invitation to climb the Lord’s mountain to get instruction in God’s ways. And what do they hear? --That there will be an end to war and amid all the violence of clashing armies and rival kings, the one God will stand secure, bring peace, and be worthy of our praise.
At this time of year, our Islamic brethren have just made the haaj to Mecca. More than two million people, dressed simply, obliterating external signs of wealth or class, are fulfilling one of Islam’s pillars, the visit to this holy place, a purifying journey, a chance to commune with God.
Advent also begins the frantic rush toward Christmas. Instead of a peaceful pilgrimage to the holy places, many of us in this country fight each other for merchandise at Black Friday prices. People get trampled; violence erupts; politeness is discarded; incivility reigns. For those in-store guards watching for theft on monitors, it must be a terrible scene that unfolds before them and a sorry commentary on what we humans can become. And the saddest part is that our economy needs to be fed with a huge amount of purchasing each year, and so merchants try to extend black Friday backwards from the day after Thanksgiving, even trying to rename that traditional day of giving thanks, ‘gray Thursday.’
Can you imagine Paul of Tarsus standing at the doors of a mall or a Wal-Mart saying, as he does in Romans 13:13-14: “Let us live honorably…not in quarreling and jealousy…make no provision for the desires of the flesh!” --Certainly ignored; probably trampled.
So what’s the point? Is it wrong to want to give gifts, to seek bargains, to make Christmas lists? I don’t know. We are caught up in a culture and an economic system that says: of course not. We are caught up in a crowd heading in one direction and are pushed along whether we dig in our heels or not. Maybe the best we can do is to heed Jesus’ words that we don’t know when God will come, will try to reach us, will take us to Himself. “Stay awake, therefore! You cannot know the day your Lord is coming” (Mt. 24:42). The experience of His Presence is the most precious gift we will ever receive.
Maybe in the midst of the frenetic activity before Christmas, we can carve out a little bit of time each day to read Psalm 122 and hear its message of peace. Shalom!
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Commentary on Lectionary for November 21, 2010
Jeremiah 23:1-6; Psalm 46; Colossians 1:11-20; Luke 23:33-43
If you have lived through any type of natural disaster—for example, a volcanic eruption with fiery lava raining down on you as you flee, or a serious earthquake, or a tsunami with a 30 foot wave coming toward you or a war—apocalyptic writing must have a special meaning for you. When your body gives out or the earth shakes, it must seem as if nothing is stable. –And ultimately, nothing is stable.
Scriptural readings such as those last week can fill a person with great fear. So today’s readings are a welcome turn, as if we have awakened the morning after a storm and the sun is shining, making everything look fresh and beautiful. In last week’s readings, God is seen as a terrible avenger of all the evil mankind continues to do.
Today the prophet Jeremiah speaks harshly to the kings of Israel, whom he blames for scattering God’s people. But then He has God promising to bring them back, to gather them together, acting as a good shepherd after his flock has been frightened into flight by a pack of wolves.
Psalm 46 continues this portrait. God is a refuge, not a cause of fear. God is the place where we go when our knees are shaking and our faces pale, “even though mountains slip into the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam.” No earthquake can shatter this confidence because “God is in the midst of her…The Lord of hosts is with us.” What a wonderful juxtaposition of verse 8 with verse 9! God is pictured as one who “has wrought desolations in the earth,” but then the very next line makes it seem as if his “desolations” are breaking apart weapons and causing war to cease.
We can almost see the Psalm writer putting his finger to his lips and saying to us who are cowering and frantic: “Sh-h-h! Be still and know that I am God.” Or as one translation has it: “Cease striving and know that I am God.” It is a wonderful contemplative moment when you can get your mind to stop and your body to relax, and you follow your breath in and out as you grow still and let all your tasks, all your fears, and all that is happening get sucked into the stillness and peace of God.
It is almost jarring, this close to Advent, to read the Gospel passage from Luke that has Jesus on the cross talking to the man crucified next to him. Here is a thief, someone who has broken the law of God, probably not just once, and here is Jesus offering him forgiveness. It reminds me of the story of a psychiatrist who worked with a criminal on his deathbed and the man said just before dying: “Thank you for giving me life.”
Paul explicitly makes Jesus the person who fulfills God’s promise way back in Jeremiah’s time and the Psalmist’s time: He is God with us. He “rescued us from the domain of darkness” (Col. 1:13). Not only that, but he reconciled all things in himself. He didn’t meet violence with violence. He met it with forgiveness. What followed was peace and new life. And those are the gifts held out to us again and again as we read the scriptures. Cease striving, relax in his presence, carry this connection into your dealing with the world and with others, and then the earthquakes will come, but they won’t matter.
If you have lived through any type of natural disaster—for example, a volcanic eruption with fiery lava raining down on you as you flee, or a serious earthquake, or a tsunami with a 30 foot wave coming toward you or a war—apocalyptic writing must have a special meaning for you. When your body gives out or the earth shakes, it must seem as if nothing is stable. –And ultimately, nothing is stable.
Scriptural readings such as those last week can fill a person with great fear. So today’s readings are a welcome turn, as if we have awakened the morning after a storm and the sun is shining, making everything look fresh and beautiful. In last week’s readings, God is seen as a terrible avenger of all the evil mankind continues to do.
Today the prophet Jeremiah speaks harshly to the kings of Israel, whom he blames for scattering God’s people. But then He has God promising to bring them back, to gather them together, acting as a good shepherd after his flock has been frightened into flight by a pack of wolves.
Psalm 46 continues this portrait. God is a refuge, not a cause of fear. God is the place where we go when our knees are shaking and our faces pale, “even though mountains slip into the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam.” No earthquake can shatter this confidence because “God is in the midst of her…The Lord of hosts is with us.” What a wonderful juxtaposition of verse 8 with verse 9! God is pictured as one who “has wrought desolations in the earth,” but then the very next line makes it seem as if his “desolations” are breaking apart weapons and causing war to cease.
We can almost see the Psalm writer putting his finger to his lips and saying to us who are cowering and frantic: “Sh-h-h! Be still and know that I am God.” Or as one translation has it: “Cease striving and know that I am God.” It is a wonderful contemplative moment when you can get your mind to stop and your body to relax, and you follow your breath in and out as you grow still and let all your tasks, all your fears, and all that is happening get sucked into the stillness and peace of God.
It is almost jarring, this close to Advent, to read the Gospel passage from Luke that has Jesus on the cross talking to the man crucified next to him. Here is a thief, someone who has broken the law of God, probably not just once, and here is Jesus offering him forgiveness. It reminds me of the story of a psychiatrist who worked with a criminal on his deathbed and the man said just before dying: “Thank you for giving me life.”
Paul explicitly makes Jesus the person who fulfills God’s promise way back in Jeremiah’s time and the Psalmist’s time: He is God with us. He “rescued us from the domain of darkness” (Col. 1:13). Not only that, but he reconciled all things in himself. He didn’t meet violence with violence. He met it with forgiveness. What followed was peace and new life. And those are the gifts held out to us again and again as we read the scriptures. Cease striving, relax in his presence, carry this connection into your dealing with the world and with others, and then the earthquakes will come, but they won’t matter.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Commentary on Lectionary for November 14, 2010
Mal 4:1-2a; Psalm 98; 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13; Luke 21:5-19
We often use Scripture to find out who God is. In these last readings of the Church year, it’s almost as if God returns the favor, and shows us who WE are. Visit any historical museum, and you will see evidence of countless years of war, weapons development, bigger and better, science, knowledge, huge sums of money used to promote killing in the name of freedom, peace, and righteousness. One war sows the seeds for the next.
And so we can understand the apocalypse and apocalyptic writing. God is telling us what we sometimes refuse to believe, even after all of the violence: nothing in this universe is permanent, and something in us wants to destroy it all. The U.S. and Russia are even now in negotiations about how many mass destructive devices they will keep to destroy each other. And some of our politicians want to derail these negotiations so that we can build MORE bombs than other superpowers. In this, they say, is our security. Any other approach, they imply, is naïve.
Into all this conflict and tribulation, a Prince of Peace has come, with a whole different view of what power is and in what direction to go if we are looking for peace. God first sent prophets like Malachi (whose name means “my messenger”). Prophesying in the 5th century BCE, Malachi might have said: Yes, you have rebuilt the Temple, but your rules for worship harm and manipulate people; your leaders are corrupt, and you continue to oppress the widows and the poor as well as reject aliens. How can you be freed from all of this without some kind of purification? It will not be pleasant, but it will be healing, like an astringent salve on a wound. It is so difficult to take up the cause of the poor and oppressed, and to fight for justice because we know we will be persecuted.
God sends his son, Jesus, the embodiment of the divine. He doesn’t come with guns blazing, flame throwers clearing the way like some Schwarzenegger action film. We’re talking a manger here, and fishermen, lepers, donkeys to ride on, a crown of thorns, and a painful and shameful death.
And now, even after Jesus’ coming, says the author of 2 Thessalonians, we need a second coming because we didn’t get His message the first time. Or we’ve gotten weary trying to do what is right. Or we’ve become distracted by the budget, and have forgotten to pull together and work to help one another and those outside our circles who are in need.
Jesus’ words in Luke remind us what our world is like and what we can expect of corruptible forms. Natural disasters have and will come. We don’t know how to live without violence. The message here, I think, before we can seriously look at where Jesus needs to come again and how we can help make this second coming happen, is that we need to treat these tribulations as a purifying process. He will be with us, urging us to hang in there with faith and to wait to feel his presence, a presence so all-consumingly wonderful that we will consider the pain of getting to it trivial.
Like the Psalmist, even while we are being purified, we will only think praise, of making a joyful noise, of using all of the instruments we know how to play and then calling upon all creation to join us: “Let the sea roar…let the rivers clap their hands…let the mountains sing” (Ps. 98:7-8).
We often use Scripture to find out who God is. In these last readings of the Church year, it’s almost as if God returns the favor, and shows us who WE are. Visit any historical museum, and you will see evidence of countless years of war, weapons development, bigger and better, science, knowledge, huge sums of money used to promote killing in the name of freedom, peace, and righteousness. One war sows the seeds for the next.
And so we can understand the apocalypse and apocalyptic writing. God is telling us what we sometimes refuse to believe, even after all of the violence: nothing in this universe is permanent, and something in us wants to destroy it all. The U.S. and Russia are even now in negotiations about how many mass destructive devices they will keep to destroy each other. And some of our politicians want to derail these negotiations so that we can build MORE bombs than other superpowers. In this, they say, is our security. Any other approach, they imply, is naïve.
Into all this conflict and tribulation, a Prince of Peace has come, with a whole different view of what power is and in what direction to go if we are looking for peace. God first sent prophets like Malachi (whose name means “my messenger”). Prophesying in the 5th century BCE, Malachi might have said: Yes, you have rebuilt the Temple, but your rules for worship harm and manipulate people; your leaders are corrupt, and you continue to oppress the widows and the poor as well as reject aliens. How can you be freed from all of this without some kind of purification? It will not be pleasant, but it will be healing, like an astringent salve on a wound. It is so difficult to take up the cause of the poor and oppressed, and to fight for justice because we know we will be persecuted.
God sends his son, Jesus, the embodiment of the divine. He doesn’t come with guns blazing, flame throwers clearing the way like some Schwarzenegger action film. We’re talking a manger here, and fishermen, lepers, donkeys to ride on, a crown of thorns, and a painful and shameful death.
And now, even after Jesus’ coming, says the author of 2 Thessalonians, we need a second coming because we didn’t get His message the first time. Or we’ve gotten weary trying to do what is right. Or we’ve become distracted by the budget, and have forgotten to pull together and work to help one another and those outside our circles who are in need.
Jesus’ words in Luke remind us what our world is like and what we can expect of corruptible forms. Natural disasters have and will come. We don’t know how to live without violence. The message here, I think, before we can seriously look at where Jesus needs to come again and how we can help make this second coming happen, is that we need to treat these tribulations as a purifying process. He will be with us, urging us to hang in there with faith and to wait to feel his presence, a presence so all-consumingly wonderful that we will consider the pain of getting to it trivial.
Like the Psalmist, even while we are being purified, we will only think praise, of making a joyful noise, of using all of the instruments we know how to play and then calling upon all creation to join us: “Let the sea roar…let the rivers clap their hands…let the mountains sing” (Ps. 98:7-8).
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Commentary on Lectionary for November 7, 2010
Job 19:23-27a; Psalm 17:1-9; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17; Luke 20:27-38
The worldwide news is always full of disasters, which is certainly not surprising, since nothing in this universe is permanent. Still, you can’t help but wonder about how God can love and care for an individual, since so many people live and die each day. I read that the tsunami in Indonesia last year killed over 200,000 people! Thanks to the internet, we can access a world population clock. Here’s what it showed on October 31:
U.S.: 310,606,330
World: 6,878,635,170
21:29 UTC (EST+5) Oct 31, 2010
If we are all brothers and sisters, how can God love ME, when I have nearly 7 billion siblings? Such thinking is a bit humbling to our egos.
In the reading from 2 Thessalonians, Paul was dealing with a community really upset by the rumor that the second coming of the Lord had already occurred and that they had been left behind! In a way, they are like Job, as if saying: “Here I am, sitting out here scratching my diseased body, and the favor of the Lord is somewhere else!” Job finds within himself the faith to say: No. “I know that my Redeemer lives and that at last…after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God…” (Job 19:25-26).
If you believe that the world will end in 2012, you can smile at the prediction that your health care benefits will run out in 2014.
To the Thessalonians, Paul not only condemns the rumors as false, he says, in effect: “How could the Lord leave you behind, when you are His beloved ones? You are special to Him, ‘first fruits’ of His Resurrection!” “But,” they might ask as we do today, “what about the Second Coming? Don’t I get to laugh at all those predictions of calamity after 2012 because that will be AFTER the Second Coming.”
Dare we interpret what Paul and Job are implying? “Forget about the Second Coming, because you are beloved of God!” Rest in His love. Laugh at calamity. Find the deep peace that can be within you when your skin may be abscessed but your heart sees the reality of God’s presence. This is a coming of God to you, only He’s always been there, but it is so surprising to become aware of His presence that it may appear to you that He has just arrived.
The Psalmist has such faith. He does not hesitate to address the Lord, and expects an answer. He also expects that God looks upon him as a precious individual: “Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings from the wicked…” (Ps.17: 8-9).
And so we come back to Jesus’ words in Luke’s Gospel: “God is not the God of the dead but of the living. All are alive for him” (Luke 20:38).
I asked my wife the other day: “How many galaxies do you think there are?” [She has to put up with such questions from me now and then, now that our children are grown]. I looked up the answer on the NASA site. It reported that the Hubble Space Telescope estimated in 1999 that there were 125 billion of them. Astronomers estimate that small galaxies have between a million and a billion stars in them. Big ones have billions of stars. Such thinking usually leads us to Psalm 8 (“What is man that you should be mindful of him?”), but it can also lead us to be completely in awe of our own belief that the creator of all this didn’t pass us by, does not ignore us, is as close to us as life itself. As in last week’s story about Zaccheus, we hear him pause by whatever tree we are up in and invite us to dinner.
The worldwide news is always full of disasters, which is certainly not surprising, since nothing in this universe is permanent. Still, you can’t help but wonder about how God can love and care for an individual, since so many people live and die each day. I read that the tsunami in Indonesia last year killed over 200,000 people! Thanks to the internet, we can access a world population clock. Here’s what it showed on October 31:
U.S.: 310,606,330
World: 6,878,635,170
21:29 UTC (EST+5) Oct 31, 2010
If we are all brothers and sisters, how can God love ME, when I have nearly 7 billion siblings? Such thinking is a bit humbling to our egos.
In the reading from 2 Thessalonians, Paul was dealing with a community really upset by the rumor that the second coming of the Lord had already occurred and that they had been left behind! In a way, they are like Job, as if saying: “Here I am, sitting out here scratching my diseased body, and the favor of the Lord is somewhere else!” Job finds within himself the faith to say: No. “I know that my Redeemer lives and that at last…after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God…” (Job 19:25-26).
If you believe that the world will end in 2012, you can smile at the prediction that your health care benefits will run out in 2014.
To the Thessalonians, Paul not only condemns the rumors as false, he says, in effect: “How could the Lord leave you behind, when you are His beloved ones? You are special to Him, ‘first fruits’ of His Resurrection!” “But,” they might ask as we do today, “what about the Second Coming? Don’t I get to laugh at all those predictions of calamity after 2012 because that will be AFTER the Second Coming.”
Dare we interpret what Paul and Job are implying? “Forget about the Second Coming, because you are beloved of God!” Rest in His love. Laugh at calamity. Find the deep peace that can be within you when your skin may be abscessed but your heart sees the reality of God’s presence. This is a coming of God to you, only He’s always been there, but it is so surprising to become aware of His presence that it may appear to you that He has just arrived.
The Psalmist has such faith. He does not hesitate to address the Lord, and expects an answer. He also expects that God looks upon him as a precious individual: “Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings from the wicked…” (Ps.17: 8-9).
And so we come back to Jesus’ words in Luke’s Gospel: “God is not the God of the dead but of the living. All are alive for him” (Luke 20:38).
I asked my wife the other day: “How many galaxies do you think there are?” [She has to put up with such questions from me now and then, now that our children are grown]. I looked up the answer on the NASA site. It reported that the Hubble Space Telescope estimated in 1999 that there were 125 billion of them. Astronomers estimate that small galaxies have between a million and a billion stars in them. Big ones have billions of stars. Such thinking usually leads us to Psalm 8 (“What is man that you should be mindful of him?”), but it can also lead us to be completely in awe of our own belief that the creator of all this didn’t pass us by, does not ignore us, is as close to us as life itself. As in last week’s story about Zaccheus, we hear him pause by whatever tree we are up in and invite us to dinner.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Commentary on Lectionary for October 31, 2010
Isaiah 1:10-18; Psalm 32:1-7; 2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12; Luke 19:1-10
At our moving Taize service this month, a reading from James 5:16 counseled us to “confess [our] sins to one another so that [we] may be healed.” We have to load this advice up with complications, because we have issues of trust and confidentiality; people may gossip (“Do you know what Joe DID when he was younger?”); and some relationships will not survive confessions of infidelity and betrayal. But if you do find someone who knows all your sins and still accepts and loves you, it is a marvelous thing, and you can almost feel the healing.
Only once in my life was I in the exactly the right place in front of a grove of pine trees and the cones were at just the right state of ripeness so that when the sun came out, I could hear them popping open…That’s what I imagine the healing is like.
In the reading from Isaiah today, the prophet is brutal in detailing God’s disgust at Judah’s hypocrisy at observing rituals and festivals while acting unjustly, especially toward the wronged, the widows, and the orphans. Yet after telling the Israelites “Though you pray the more, I will not listen,” God promises through His prophet: “Let us set things right…Though your sins be like scarlet, they may become white as snow…” --Interesting choice of words. Not: “IF you set things right, THEN I’ll forgive your sins…” More like a collaborative effort: You’ll need my help to set things right; or I’ll help you set things right.
In 2 Thessalonians 1:11, Paul may be expressing this same promise of help from God when he prays that “our God may make you worthy of his call.”
The Psalmist sings the joy of acknowledging one’s sins and experiencing the great serenity of God’s forgiveness. God is portrayed as One Who reaches into our stress, our floods of distress, and shows us how to get out of it and to find shelter in Him.
Even in next week’s selection from Luke, where the Sadducees present Jesus with a far-fetched problem involving seven brothers marrying the same woman and then dying, Jesus speaks of a different reality, of a realm to which prayer can take us, of a shelter that has no weak walls, and of a life that knows no end. And that life, by implication, is where Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob reside and where our departed dear ones are, too.
At our moving Taize service this month, a reading from James 5:16 counseled us to “confess [our] sins to one another so that [we] may be healed.” We have to load this advice up with complications, because we have issues of trust and confidentiality; people may gossip (“Do you know what Joe DID when he was younger?”); and some relationships will not survive confessions of infidelity and betrayal. But if you do find someone who knows all your sins and still accepts and loves you, it is a marvelous thing, and you can almost feel the healing.
Only once in my life was I in the exactly the right place in front of a grove of pine trees and the cones were at just the right state of ripeness so that when the sun came out, I could hear them popping open…That’s what I imagine the healing is like.
In the reading from Isaiah today, the prophet is brutal in detailing God’s disgust at Judah’s hypocrisy at observing rituals and festivals while acting unjustly, especially toward the wronged, the widows, and the orphans. Yet after telling the Israelites “Though you pray the more, I will not listen,” God promises through His prophet: “Let us set things right…Though your sins be like scarlet, they may become white as snow…” --Interesting choice of words. Not: “IF you set things right, THEN I’ll forgive your sins…” More like a collaborative effort: You’ll need my help to set things right; or I’ll help you set things right.
In 2 Thessalonians 1:11, Paul may be expressing this same promise of help from God when he prays that “our God may make you worthy of his call.”
The Psalmist sings the joy of acknowledging one’s sins and experiencing the great serenity of God’s forgiveness. God is portrayed as One Who reaches into our stress, our floods of distress, and shows us how to get out of it and to find shelter in Him.
Even in next week’s selection from Luke, where the Sadducees present Jesus with a far-fetched problem involving seven brothers marrying the same woman and then dying, Jesus speaks of a different reality, of a realm to which prayer can take us, of a shelter that has no weak walls, and of a life that knows no end. And that life, by implication, is where Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob reside and where our departed dear ones are, too.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Commentary on Lectionary for October 24, 2010
Jeremiah 14:7-10, 19 – 22; Psalm 84:1-7; 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18; Luke 18:9-14
Two women came to my door this week, wanting to talk about God and the Bible. I told them I probably wouldn’t read their literature, but they left it anyway. As I was about to throw it away, I noticed that one of the ladies had included a hand-written letter with the literature. This I read, admiring the deep-seated beliefs that prompted them to approach strangers and put up with so much rejection in the hope that someday someone would listen to their interpretation of the Scriptures and be saved.
The letter directed me to Matthew 6:9-13, which is the Our Father, and then went on-in the spirit of the Book of Revelation—to describe what a paradise there will be on earth for those who, I assume, are among the chosen saved ones.
Our reading from the gospel for today is not in Matthew, but in Luke. There are two people in the story, both men, both at the Temple to pray. They are not praying the Our Father. Jesus says the one is a Pharisee and he is grateful for his rigorous observance of the Law. He is thankful he is not like the rest of men. Then there’s a tax collector. He knows where he stands in terms of Temple worship and observance of the law. He doesn’t have the “points,” the good works, the evidence of largess, that could possibly gain God’s or his religion's favor. And so he beats his chest and asks for mercy. And something happens to him. He goes home “exalted.” Wouldn’t a synonym for that be “exhilarated,” “touched by God?”
As David Lose from Luther Seminary in Minnesota writes, this parable is ultimately not about a Pharisee and a Tax Collector, or about self-righteousness and humility—it’s about God and how He breaks down class distinctions and religious distinctions and how he usually comes down on the side of those who ARE down. The very next passage in Luke is about children—to such, Jesus says, the kingdom of God belongs.
There has been a lot written about the Kingdom of God, this place where God dwells and to which our earthly journey leads. Where is it? When Jesus tells us it is “not of this world,” and lets us conclude that neither the Pharisee nor the tax collector needed to go to the Temple to find God, we can now understand today’s Psalm in non-localized terms: “How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts?” We can sing it using Braham’s haunting melody in his Requiem, and feel a full measure of His Peace. Truly “a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere.” It keeps us going back to try prayer again and again, even during the desert times of our lives.
I can’t thank God for not attracting me or causing me to be born into a religion that goes door to door. But I can know that He loves those who are on BOTH sides of those doors. The way I read this parable, the point is NOT that the Pharisee is going to hell. The point is that the way to pray, to get in touch with God, is simply to throw out all you think you’ve done to deserve His Presence, and to just make room for Him. And if you want to use words, those of both the Our Father or the prayer of the tax collector will suffice. You can even complain loudly as the widow did before the unjust judge, or the people in Jeremiah’s time who did not at all like how God was dealing with them, but concluded by admitting, much like the tax collector’s prayer implied: “We set our hope on you.”
Two women came to my door this week, wanting to talk about God and the Bible. I told them I probably wouldn’t read their literature, but they left it anyway. As I was about to throw it away, I noticed that one of the ladies had included a hand-written letter with the literature. This I read, admiring the deep-seated beliefs that prompted them to approach strangers and put up with so much rejection in the hope that someday someone would listen to their interpretation of the Scriptures and be saved.
The letter directed me to Matthew 6:9-13, which is the Our Father, and then went on-in the spirit of the Book of Revelation—to describe what a paradise there will be on earth for those who, I assume, are among the chosen saved ones.
Our reading from the gospel for today is not in Matthew, but in Luke. There are two people in the story, both men, both at the Temple to pray. They are not praying the Our Father. Jesus says the one is a Pharisee and he is grateful for his rigorous observance of the Law. He is thankful he is not like the rest of men. Then there’s a tax collector. He knows where he stands in terms of Temple worship and observance of the law. He doesn’t have the “points,” the good works, the evidence of largess, that could possibly gain God’s or his religion's favor. And so he beats his chest and asks for mercy. And something happens to him. He goes home “exalted.” Wouldn’t a synonym for that be “exhilarated,” “touched by God?”
As David Lose from Luther Seminary in Minnesota writes, this parable is ultimately not about a Pharisee and a Tax Collector, or about self-righteousness and humility—it’s about God and how He breaks down class distinctions and religious distinctions and how he usually comes down on the side of those who ARE down. The very next passage in Luke is about children—to such, Jesus says, the kingdom of God belongs.
There has been a lot written about the Kingdom of God, this place where God dwells and to which our earthly journey leads. Where is it? When Jesus tells us it is “not of this world,” and lets us conclude that neither the Pharisee nor the tax collector needed to go to the Temple to find God, we can now understand today’s Psalm in non-localized terms: “How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts?” We can sing it using Braham’s haunting melody in his Requiem, and feel a full measure of His Peace. Truly “a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere.” It keeps us going back to try prayer again and again, even during the desert times of our lives.
I can’t thank God for not attracting me or causing me to be born into a religion that goes door to door. But I can know that He loves those who are on BOTH sides of those doors. The way I read this parable, the point is NOT that the Pharisee is going to hell. The point is that the way to pray, to get in touch with God, is simply to throw out all you think you’ve done to deserve His Presence, and to just make room for Him. And if you want to use words, those of both the Our Father or the prayer of the tax collector will suffice. You can even complain loudly as the widow did before the unjust judge, or the people in Jeremiah’s time who did not at all like how God was dealing with them, but concluded by admitting, much like the tax collector’s prayer implied: “We set our hope on you.”
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