Proper 22 – October 3, 2010

Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4

It’s not every Sunday we get a Lectionary text from Habakkuk.  In fact, this is pretty much it, though the same text is also an option for Proper 26 here in a month or so.  My first observation is that this is one of those broken-up readings with a big chunk out of the middle, which is always a signal to me: Read the part that’s left out!  It’s probably important – or at least illuminating.

The opening verses tell us there’s serious stuff going on.  “How long shall I cry to you for help, and you will not listen?”  In effect, this prophet is taking God to task for God’s failure to save his people from suffering at the hands of others.  The prophet says he’s cried “Violence!” (as in, “Look!  Right there – did you see that?!”) and God has just stood by.  The result, says the prophet, not beating around the bush, is that God’s law “becomes slack.”  I like that image – like a rope that’s not tied to anything, so that when you pull it nothing happens.  The prophet also complains that God’s judgment is “perverted”—God’s people have for some reason become the target of God’s judgment instead of its beneficiaries.  Habakkuk has thrown down the gauntlet, and this is one reason I love the Old Testament: because God’s people aren’t afraid to tell God when they think God has failed them.  Also, they don’t have this preconception that we American Protestants have so much of the time, that God is just always supposed to be nice.  Habakkuk is not letting God off the hook.

But in verses 5-11 (excluded from the Lectionary reading), we hear God’s comeback: God isn’t going to let the people off either.  God is “rousing the Chaldeans” (the Babylonians) to come and tear Judah down.  Make no mistake, God doesn’t like the Babylonians one bit: “Their justice and dignity proceed only from themselves…their own might is their god!”  They’re like a big tornado that just violently rips apart everything in its path.

In verse 12, Habakkuk responds, and you can see why I say we’re missing something by not reading this section – this is an ongoing dialogue between the prophet and God, and there’s a real pathos to it.  The prophet reflects on God’s nature – eternal, just – so why is God standing idly by?  He says God’s people are like fish just swimming around in the wide, chaotic ocean so any fisherman can indiscriminately net them to feed his own belly.  Habakkuk challenges God again:  “Is he then to keep on emptying his net, and destroying nations without mercy?!”

Now that we have an idea of the kind of back-and-forth that Habakkuk and God have been having here, I think we can appreciate the second part of the Lectionary text a bit more.  Habakkuk, for all his frustration, anger, and near-despair, is not giving up on God.  “I will stand at my watchpost, and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see…what he will answer concerning my complaint.”  And in 2:2-4, God answers.  To our ears (we who want to see something happen, now), God’s answer may be something of a letdown, because God doesn’t say, “OK, Here I am!”  God says, Wait.  Trust.  There is still a vision for God’s people, and it will come about at the right time.  If it seems like it’s not coming, just keep waiting.  Keep trusting in God.  That is the essence of faith – ultimately, we have to hang in like Habakkuk and take God at God’s word.

2 Timothy 1:1-14

            I notice several repeating words in this text: shame, suffering, gospel, and power.  I call attention to them because they’re not words that we necessarily think of as going together, yet for the author of 2 Timothy they are intertwined in important ways. 

The author reminds his younger protégée in ministry, in verse 7, that God has given us a spirit of power, not cowardice.  And how is that power acted out?  In not being ashamed of the testimony about Jesus or of those who suffer for his sake (verse 8).  (The author of 1 & 2 Timothy purports to be Paul in prison; but the vocabulary, style, and concerns of these letters differ in significant ways from Paul's other letters.)  Why would we be ashamed of the testimony about Jesus, or those who suffer for him?  Because the “testimony about Jesus” is essentially that God’s world-changing self-revelation was to be crucified in the person of Jesus – not a show of power, but of weakness.  And having your leader in prison perhaps isn’t the kind of calling-card you want for your fledgling religious movement.  So we might be tempted to cower a bit in the face of the world’s displays of power, the world’s notions of success.

The author says we’re not to be ashamed, though, because we rely on God’s power.  And it was through God’s power that the crucified Jesus became the risen Christ, “who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.” (verse 10)  The deep irony is that we find our power precisely in embracing the weakness at the heart of our story.

Luke 17:5-10

            I’ve always thought this was an odd choice for a Lectionary Gospel reading.  In my NRSV Bible, the heading over the section that includes this text is, “Some Sayings of Jesus.”  (I imagine the Bible translation people saying, “We gotta call it something.”)  Then, too, we don’t get all the sayings, just some of them.  I think it’s helpful to look at what comes right before this text.  Jesus has just told the disciples that they have to keep on forgiving people who hurt them, even seven times a day (verse 4).  So it’s no wonder that the “apostles” (the inner circle of Twelve) then say, “Lord increase our faith!”  As in, we’re going to need a bigger budget to accomplish what you’re asking.  And Jesus says this thing about the mustard seed, that the tiniest bit of faith has limitless power.  I think what Jesus is getting at is that it’s not about quantity but quality – it’s not about how much faith we have, but rather what our faith is in.  I think back to the Habakkuk reading: faith is about hanging in with God, continuing to stay engaged with God in spite of our frustrations and disappointments, waiting for God.  I think again about the 2 Timothy reading: faith is about relying on God’s power which looks so different from our own.

            With that in mind, it kind of makes sense that the next “saying” follows in verses 7-10.  Though these verses have a harsh ring to them ("We are worthless slaves!"), I think what Jesus is getting at is that faith, discipleship, isn’t about us – it’s about God.

Works Consulted

Notes to the readings in the HarperCollins Study Bible

Studying the Old Testament: A Companion, by Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch (good book by a good friend)

Proper 21 - Susan homily

“He who dies with the most toys wins”                                   Proper 21, 9/26/10

You’ve probably seen that bumper sticker – and maybe you’ve even felt the sentiment subconsciously while trolling the isles of Best Buy, or “just checking” on the web for the best price for an i-pad or the latest android phone.  For those of us in the congregation who aren’t sure what those things are, just think of the latest tool you could have in your box or workshop– or the thing that would make the work in the kitchen, or of housekeeping so much easier, or TeVo – or a really great hi-def television.

But probably, before this is over, we’ll also have to admit to toys we’d like to have that are a bit bigger; say -- a really, really nice car, (substitute your own fantasy-mobile here), a well-maintained fantastic home and land, or a tony condo in the nicest section of town (with hired help included of course.)  Maybe what you really want is the ability to provide your family and loved ones with the best possible things or experiences imaginable.  But these are still small potatoes compared to the fellow I met recently who sells, and owns, private jets.

“The toys”- what are they for each of us?  What are they for you?  We can dream of the life of the rich man in the story from Luke, feasting sumptuously every day, at the nicest restaurants around, in whatever town we’d most like to live in – or maybe just settling for the meals prepared at home by our own private chef.  Maybe we really can identify with the bumper sticker philosophy – sometimes it really does at least feel like the one who dies with the most toys – the most earthly enjoyment, really does win.

But here’s where Amos, good ole’ Amos, the general prophet of doom steps in to correct our vision.  He issues a warning for those who are “at ease…secure” in our circumstances – like the rich man - with the best mattresses that money can buy, and the luxury to lounge around. Amos gives a warning for those, who buy the best wines, and go to the nicest spas’s.

And it turns out Amos, a prophet after all, is right.

Did you know, that last weekend was referred to as – “Lehman Weekend?” The moniker commemorated September 14, 2008, two years ago - the weekend that kicked off the current, and lingering, financial crisis.  As reported in the New York Times Business section the weekend culminated (quoting)

“In one of the most dramatic days in Wall Street’s history… Merrill Lynch agreed to sell itself on Sunday…to avert a deepening financial crisis, while another prominent securities firm, Lehman Brothers, filed for bankruptcy protection and hurtled toward liquidation after it failed to find a buyer”

Turns out toys break, and as another truism says “the bigger they are the harder they fall.

Another quote, “once-proud financial institutions have been brought to their knees...”

So toys break, we fall hard sometimes, and like the rich man in Jesus’s parable, no matter what we have – death eventually intervenes.

Where does that leave us – today?  In any of the circumstances we find ourselves in - heading off to work, stretching the monthly checks on fixed incomes, or maybe even a bit more wealthy, a bit more at ease – what about us?

Well, now its Paul, speaking to us,“there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment; for we brought nothing into the world and can take nothing out of it.”  Toys don’t travel.

This letter, from all the way back to the original followers of Christ, resonates forward to us.  He encourages us to “Take hold of the eternal life … of the life that really is life.”  To “pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness”

So how will you do this – this week?  What will pursuing righteousness and goodness, love and endurance mean for you?  When you see Lazarus – how do you respond?  Where will you meet up with the chance to “take hold of eternal life – the life that really is life.” 

Proper 21 – September 26, 2010

Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15


(Note to St. Andrews friends - Sorry, I'd already written this before I realized we're using the alternate OT text from Amos!)

            Hope.  Promise.  Even in the midst of present chaos and destruction, the assurance of future restoration. 

We’re told in verse 2 that the Babylonians are “besieging Jerusalem,” and that Jeremiah himself has been put under house arrest by the king.  Why?  Well, the story is told in chapter 37 that the siege was briefly lifted and Jeremiah tried to leave Jerusalem to go to Anathoth, where his family had some land (more on that below).  When he got to the city gate, the guard accused him of deserting to the Babylonians and arrested him.  But here in chapter 32, in the verses that aren’t included in the Lectionary text, we get some added perspective.  In short, the king couldn’t understand why Jeremiah had been saying such terrible things – foretelling the destruction of Jerusalem and the capture of the king as foregone conclusions.  In other words, the political consequences of Jeremiah’s prophecy are interpreted as treason, betrayal.  (Cue the Hold Steady: “You can’t tell people what they wanna hear/ If you also wanna tell the truth”) 

            Suffice to say things are bad, for Judah and for Jeremiah.  And Jeremiah gets a word from God.  Jeremiah couldn’t really catch a break – he was always having to say and do things that were likely to result in people either being really mad at him or at the very least thinking he was kind of nuts – but that’s life for an Old Testament prophet.  Anyway, the word he gets is that a relative of his is going to come to him and ask him to buy some family land, “for the right of redemption by purchase is yours.”  The right of redemption is a Torah provision explained in Leviticus 25.  The idea is that, if a person falls on hard times and has to sell some of their land, their next of kin should come and buy it to keep the family from losing it altogether.  If the landowner has no relatives who can do this and ends up losing the land, but then later the landowner finds himself in a better situation, he can then buy the land back (though the person who has it gets compensated for their trouble).  Otherwise, in the jubilee year (every 50 years) ownership of the land will revert back to the original landowner anyway.  So ANYWAY, sure enough Jeremiah’s relative comes and asks him to buy some family land in Anathoth, just like God had said.

            So he does – and this is the part of the text that I love, because of the detail.  If you’ve ever bought a house, then you know what’s involved – a crazy amount of money, a loan stretching out for 30 years, signing paper after paper around a long conference table in a lawyer’s office.  It’s a big deal, and we tend to think about the major investment we’ve made.  Here Jeremiah rehearses each detail of his transaction – weighing the silver, signing the deed, sealing the deed, getting witnesses, taking the deed and handing it to his secretary Baruch in front of a bunch of people.  What’s ironic about it is that this is a terrible investment!  Jerusalem is under siege!  Not a great time to be buying real estate.  And that’s what makes this text so powerful:  Jeremiah tells Baruch to bury the deed in basically a time capsule, because God promises that there will be better times for God’s people.  Their life may look like a wasteland, but buried underneath it is a future that God will bring about.  This is real, theologically grounded hope – hope that’s based not on what things look like around us in the world, but on God’s promises.

1 Timothy 6:6-19

I notice two contrasts in this text.  First, there is the contrast between “contentment” and “wanting to be rich.”   This reminds me of something in the book Your Money or Your Life, by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin.  The authors talk about the importance of finding our “enough” point – the state where we are content with what we have, where we neither long for more nor feel crowded or burdened by our stuff.  That was an important concept for me when I first came across it, and it seems relevant here.  Notice, the problem for the author of 1 Timothy in verses 6-10 is not “being rich” but wanting to be rich; the problem is not money itself but the love of money; not what we have but what we’re striving for, where our sights are set.  The author counsels being content if we have food and clothing, the necessities.

The second contrast in the text is between holding onto the riches of the world and “taking hold of the eternal life…the life that really is life.”  The danger of being rich, the author says a little indirectly, is that it can lead to "haughtiness"--literally, "thinking highly" of yourself.  The other danger is that it can cause us to set our hopes on our finances rather than on God who richly provides for us. (I’ve experienced that – when there’s more money coming in, we get used to it and become “dependent” on it.)  The author of 1 Timothy says the antidote is to do good, to be generous, to share with others.  That’s how, in the midst of our life in this world, we take hold of eternal life.

As I see it, one of the difficulties with this text in our culture is that none of us really thinks we’re "rich" – everybody thinks they’re just getting by, because no matter what our income, there’s a lifestyle waiting to soak it up.  There’s a bigger house, a finer car, cooler clothes, less-processed food, that other CD or book I was wanting.  The author calls us back to contentment with what we have, and being “rich in good works.”

Luke 16:19-31

            In this part of Luke’s gospel, Jesus is “letting us have it” on the issue of money and possessions.  And like the parable in last week’s Gospel text, this one co-stars a “rich man.”  After what the 1 Timothy text said about being content with food and clothing, I think it’s funny how Jesus describes him: “dressed in purple and fine linen” (clothing), and “feasting sumptuously every day” (food).  Again, presumably the rich man thought he was just getting by.  Anyway, he is contrasted with Lazarus, lying outside the gate clothed only in his sores and just longing for some crumbs from the rich man’s table.  So then, in death their places are reversed – Lazarus is carried away by angels to the comfort of Abraham's lap, while the rich man goes to eternal torment.  And in verse 24, it’s now the rich man who is longing for some mercy: just as, in life, some crumbs would have made a difference for Lazarus, now just a few drops of water off the tip of Lazarus’s finger would refresh the rich man.  I notice the rich man says, “I am in agony in these flames,” as if he'd had no idea there could be suffering like that—even though the evidence had been right outside his gate all along.  But Abraham has bad news for him: (1) there’s now a chasm between Lazarus and him so that he’s stuck with his unfortunate lot; (2) if he’d paid attention to the Law he might not have ended up like that; and (3) if his family (whom he’s now concerned about) hasn't paid attention to the Law, chances are it won’t make a difference “even if someone rises from the dead.”  Hint, hint, Jesus says.

            Here’s the thing.  While the part of the parable that jolts us is the stark, apocalyptic warning of that chasm with Lazarus chilling on one side and the rich man burning up on the other, I don’t think that’s the point of the parable.  I think what Jesus is warning against is the other chasm in the parable – the earlier one between Lazarus at the gate and the rich man inside, between dire poverty and conspicuous wealth.  It’s really quite poignant – this picture of Lazarus right at the rich man’s doorstep, living a completely different life.  Jesus is saying, that’s not the world that the Torah envisions, and it’s certainly not the kingdom he has in mind.  He reminds us that there’s more than enough teaching in the Bible to guide us in this matter, if we’ll pay attention.  The parable suggests that small acts – crumbs and drops of water – can make a difference, and that such acts have eschatological (i.e., eternal, Kingdom-of-God) significance.

Works Consulted

Leo Perdue's notes to the the Jeremiah text in the HarperCollins Study Bible
Walter Bauer's Greek-English Lexicon of the NT (2nd Edition)
Harper's Bible Dictionary (yes, the same one I bought for Charles Talbert's NT class at WFU)

Proper 20 - September 19, 2010

Why this blog? (Andy)

Most Sundays during my ten years as a United Methodist pastor, I preached and/or taught from the Revised Common Lectionary.  I loved spending time reflecting on the week’s Scriptures.  Now I am a layperson in the Episcopal Church.  I co-lead an adult Sunday School class on the week’s Lectionary texts, and I still love chewing on the texts.  Lately I’ve been getting the feeling maybe I should do something more with the excellent seminary education I received besides just teaching this class.  This blog seemed like a natural fit.  I’m writing this with our class at St. Andrews Episcopal Church in mind, as well as other friends.  This blog is not by any means intended to be a thorough exposition of the texts, but rather me thinking out loud about what I’m hearing and noticing, what strikes me in the week’s texts.  For that reason, I expect I’ll write at least a little something on most of the texts, but probably more on some than others from week to week.  Finally, a note on the format: since I won’t reproduce the readings here, you’ll need to look them up.  I’ll be using NRSV.

Jeremiah 8:18-9:1

This is a good example of why we need Jeremiah – because he gives voice to some of the really unpleasant stuff of our experience – deep grief, feeling utterly abandoned by God (hey, been there).  At this point in the story, Judah’s destruction by the Babylonians is imminent, and the feeling here is one of knowing something terrible is going to happen and that there’s apparently no way to avoid it.  And Jeremiah isn’t afraid to voice the people’s feeling of having been forsaken: “Is the Lord not in Zion?!”  And I think God’s response here sounds like that of an older sibling who has made the younger one cry and is being confronted about it:  “Well they’re the ones who…”  Verse 21 really gets me, though: “For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt.”  Jeremiah is the consummate prophet: standing between God and God’s people, able to pronounce God’s word of judgment but also experiencing the people’s pain as his own.  And then verse 9:1, he feels for God’s people so intensely that he just wishes he could let loose a river of tears to relieve them.

Bonus point: I love that the comforting hymn “There is a balm in Gilead” comes from this passage, which has such the opposite sense: “If there’s any balm in Gilead, then why are we still so sick?”

1 Timothy 2:1-7

            I find the first two verses interesting because they call us to pray especially for political leaders.  It interests me because so often political campaigns talk about the candidate “sharing our values.”  But the context of 1 Timothy was the Roman Empire!  And I’m pretty sure there wasn’t a sense that the emperor shared the values of the Christian community very much.  Rather, I imagine the early Christians found themselves subject to the vicissitudes of the Empire and the whims of the “kings and all who are in high positions.”  So the author of this letter says, Pray for them so that we may live a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.  In other words, it’s about something bigger than those in high places “sharing our values” – it’s about God being active in the midst of whatever they’re doing, or in spite of whatever they’re doing!  (Cue the Matthew Sweet song, “We’re all counting on his/ Divine intervention”)  The text ends with this liturgical bit, with its image of Jesus as Mediator, and it strikes me that prayer is a “mediating” activity, an activity that seeks to mediate between humanity and God.  The image of Jesus as Mediator also reminds me again of Jeremiah standing between God and God’s people… hmm…

Luke 16:1-13

This text is so weird to me – even for a parable, it’s weird.  “Parable” comes from a Greek word that means “to throw alongside,” and if you imagine something being “thrown alongside,” you see it on the periphery, out of the corner of your eye.  Parables are like this – often the “point,” if there even is one, isn’t something you see straight on – instead, it kind of escapes you, you can’t quite put your finger on it.  With this text, I think there are two things that make it hard to deal with: the first is that the parable itself is weird, and the second is that it has like three different explanations tacked onto it.  I read Fred Craddock’s commentary on it, and he notes that it’s hard to tell which words are supposed to be Jesus’ and which are Luke’s. 

            So what about the parable?  First of all, when it says in the first verse that the boss is a “rich man,” my alarm bells go off – as “rich men” don’t tend to come off too well in Jesus’ parables, particularly in this part of the Gospel of Luke (see 16:19-31, for example).  So anyway, the boss hears that his manager has been “squandering” his property – not necessarily so good (see 15:13), but could go either way (see 15:22-24).  Anyway, the boss gives the manager his two weeks notice, just enough time for him to get an account together for his successor.  It’s also just enough time for him to put

together and carry out his own transition plan – which involves going to each of the boss’s loan customers and unilaterally writing down their debts.  The idea, he implies in verse 4, is that while he has the power to do so, he’ll make it so the customers owe him a favor – which will be a good thing once he’s out of a job.  The surprise comes in verse 8, where instead of getting mad, the boss “commends” the manager for his “shrewdness.”  I think it would help if, instead of a comma and some explanation, there was just a period there so we’d just think about the story for a minute.  Why did the boss commend the manager?  Apparently, one interpretation is that the manager took off his commission, so the boss was OK with what he’d done—which to me is one of those lame biblical explanations that tries to make everything smooth and nice.  Another interpretation is that, when the manager wrote down the loans, it made the boss look good and that made him happy – better, but my problem with it is that the manager made clear from the start that his motives were purely selfish; plus it says the boss commended the “dishonest” manager (literally the “manager of wickedness”) for his shrewdness.   It says the boss pats him on the back for his clever thinking, so I don’t think we need to read some other reason into the text.

So then the question becomes, why did the boss commend his shrewdness?  Well remember, the boss is a “rich man,” someone who knows about operating out of self-interest.  So I think the boss is proud of the manager because he finally “gets it” – before he was just an inept squanderer, but now he’s using his head.  The manager’s not only figured out the rules of the boss’s business, he’s figured out how to use them to his advantage – almost brings a tear to the old man’s eye.  That’s what I think, anyway. 
OK, I’ve already written way more on this than I planned, so I’ll get to Jesus’ commentary.  The first thing he says we disciples might learn from the manager is a little shrewdness – that when it comes to playing the world’s games, we don’t just have to accept the world’s rules – we can break them, using the world’s stuff for purposes other than just adding to the bottom line.  And as we work on that, we’re preparing ourselves for our next “gig” (the eternal one).  Jesus then drives the point home in verses 10-13, by saying that being faithful in a little, and in the “unrighteous mammon” - our life in the world – is training for being entrusted with the “true riches” of God’s kingdom.

Works Consulted

Fred Craddock's commentary on the Gospel text in Preaching Through the Christian Year, Year C;

Luke Timothy Johnson's Luke commentary in the Sacra Pagina series.