Insights with Seitz: Symphony of Scripture

Baptism of the Lord, January 10th, 2021

We begin our series with the lessons chosen for the second Sunday of the New Year, January the 10th, traditionally associated with the start of the season of Epiphany. The season that shows the earthly Jesus in his ministry as teacher, healer, prophetic presence, son of God in power and in works of mercy.

What I think is helpful is first go wide. Get an overview of the lessons. The scripture readings for Sunday are from Genesis, Psalm 29, Acts 19 and the opening chapter of Mark’s Gospel.

I’ll start with an exploration into why these are the readings and not others, or something of the logic of a lectionary presentation. Mark is the center around which the other three radiate, so why these three?

As we get our bearings we can drill down, and speak to the special notes that are sounded on this Sunday.

My goal is to queue up and stir up your own scriptural reflections. And join up with your own weekly pastoral thoughts and concerns. 

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It is useful to think of the main Gospel reading as setting the other readings up. We will see exceptions to this over the course of the year, but some clear principles can still be appreciated. Genesis and Psalm 29 and Acts 19 are read because of their relationship to Jesus baptism.

Over the coming weeks we are going to see the main outlines of Jesus, ministry prior to his turning to Jerusalem, as the Gospel of Mark sets these out. So we begin at the start of his narrative. In that 16 chapter long narrative the announcement of the decision to go to Jerusalem and there be crucified forms a pivot around which the two halves of the book turn.

Mark omits—or presupposes—the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke and gets right down to adult business right at the opening verses of chapter one.

The baptism of Jesus is an inaugural moment in all the Gospels, and significant in a way all four wish to emphasize. For Mark, this significance is enhanced by having the baptism as the very first thing he wishes to say.

Note that cleansing water and cleansing spirit are central to his account. In John’s Gospel one can say that the reason Jesus is baptized is entirely to do with recognition, with God wanting him to be recognized as his son by us. It is for this reason, John the Baptist says, that he baptized with water. So that of the scores who came to him in response to a cry for repentance, one who needed no repentance might be identified by the voice from heaven.

With the baptism of Jesus as the centerpiece for this Sunday, we might imagine a number of supporting passages from the Old Testament. The prophet Nathan’s promise of a Davidic line under the eternal protection of God. Psalm 2’s exalted language to David and that divinely chosen line, “You are my son, today I have begotten you.” It is this language of course that appears verbatim, again on God’s own lips, identifying this Jesus son of Joseph as the Son of his own loving, begetting, and choosing. Combined with language from the prophet Isaiah, for Israel, servant.

 

Here is my servant, whom I uphold,my chosen, in whom my soul delights;

I have put my spirit upon him;he will bring forth justice to the nations.

 

And in years other than this one, these OT passages will indeed appear on this first Epiphany Sunday.

So we note with interest the selection from the Old Testament that serves to illuminate the Baptism of Jesus: the opening verses of Genesis. Why Genesis 1?

 

In Genesis 1 we have, like the waters of the Jordan, the primordial waters divided to fashion a good creation pleasing to God. The waters of chaos and a formless void are made beautiful and good. The Spirit of God is present with God as creation takes form.

But another important feature must be seen in its full significance. The “beginning” of Genesis 1 is not simply a temporal marker. The ‘in the beginning’ is also ‘in the agency of beginning.’ The word is grasped most fully in the light of Christ incarnate, and the meaning was always deeply imbedded in the creation account itself. Through the agency of beginning (arche), an agency eternally begotten in God’s self, God created the heavens and the earth. In the beginning, in reshith, in arche, was the word, as John’s prologue states it. The Jewish metaphysics of Philo saw in beginning the agency of God’s word as well, which was understood to be God’s torah. Proverbs speaks of this beginning within God’s self as a wisdom partner through whom the good creation is brought into being. Colossians speaks of Christ as the arche of creation.

22 The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways, the first of his acts of long ago. 23 Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. 24 When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. 25 Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth— 26 when he had not yet made earth and fields,[d] or the world’s first bits of soil. 27 When he established the heavens, I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, 28 when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, 29 when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, 30 then I was beside him, like a master worker;

 

By him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He himself is before all things, he is the beginning,

Mark’s Gospel begins with his own special nuance on this theme, “the arche of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” That which was at the beginning with God is now the good news of Jesus Christ in the flesh. At his baptism, Jesus cleaves the waters, just as at the first creation, and what emerges is new life, new creation, the very good of God’s only son. The spirit of God that brooded over the waters, in the company of God and the word, here comes down in full majesty to crown the arche of God in the flesh. The beginning of the gospel of new creation is set in motion.   

One point of clarification. The NRSV renders the opening verse of Genesis 1 in the form of a subordinate clause: “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void” instead of as a finite clause: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (so RSV, NIV and most translations). This translational difference can open on to a theological disagreement about whether creation is made out of nothing, or out of a chaotic mass, which takes us afield of our task. It is doubtful whether one can made the determination of the matter turn on Genesis 1 alone, for this is not the only place in the OT or NT where the topic is discussed.

Hebrews 11:3—"By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible" and Revelation 4:11, "For you [God] created all things, and by your will they existed and were created."

"I beseech thee, my son, look upon the heaven and the earth, and all that is therein, and consider that God made them of things that were not; and so was mankind made likewise." (2 Maccabees 7:28)

What is to be emphasized is the creation of light, which pierced the darkness for the very first time. This is followed by the division of the waters, so that a stable heaven and a stable pooling of seas makes room for the earth to appear in its own stable form. Again we hear echoes of this when the NT refers to the logos at the beginning as being life and the light of humanity, in John’s prologue. The light shone in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it but gave way to it -- its out-of-nothing but the eternal word of God’s power and piercing truth.

It is this light and life that breaks forth again as the waters of the Jordan are divided and Jesus Christ the light of the world emerges. The voice from heaven tells us that this is the beloved Son on whom the Spirit rests. 

Let’s move now to Acts chapter 19. As we shall see in the weeks to come, the NT reading, usually from the Letters of Paul or the Acts of the Apostles, moves consecutively through the epistle and so has not been specially chosen to come alongside the OT and Gospel pairing. Instead we hear portions of the letters as they appear sequentially. This Sunday, however, we see a different principle, where a single text from the 19th chapter of Acts has been chosen because of the Gospel account of the baptism of Jesus. The Christian disciples at Ephesus, Paul learns, had been baptized “into John’s baptism.”

Paul rightly tells them that the baptism into Jesus Christ was in fact not John’s baptism, but a new kind of baptism that followed in the wake of Jesus’s own baptism and that it was John himself who pointed to him as bringing about a new order. The gift of the Holy Spirit is inaugurated for the Christian because of the Spirit’s bodily presence upon the Christ emerging from the waters. What John promised—a baptism in the Holy Spirit, made possible by him whose sandals John would dare not even touch—Mark tells us Jesus experienced. “As he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending upon him like a dove.” It is this inaugural gifting of the Spirit upon Jesus that in turns transmits the Holy Spirit to those baptized in his name. To be baptized in Jesus name is to have released in real form the selfsame Holy Spirit. Not the heavens are torn this time, but rather the otherwise stable and predictable patterns of speech, which give way to ecstatic tongues and prophecy so as to confirm that this new baptism is indeed not the baptism of John but baptism in the dead, risen and exalted Lord Jesus Christ.

And finally our psalm for today, Psalm 29. With its perfect seven plus one refrain ‘the voice of the Lord’ the psalm offers something like the bass notes supporting the main themes for today. The voice of the Lord is indeed a powerful voice, a voice from heaven, a voice above the waters, the waters of the Jordan, the waters of creation, a voice of splendor, and above all a voice of authority and power, shaking the creation just as once it brought creation into being. At the psalm’s end it is not the voice of the LORD but the Lord himself enthroned above the flood, seated as king, giving strength and giving blessing. No wonder John reckoned with a baptism of the Holy Spirit far greater than his own, for which his own was but a human prelude and pointer. The Lord Jesus and the voice of the Lord are one and the same Lord, through the power of the Holy Spirit.

We can imagine several images or metaphors to capture the way the Bible reinforces itself across its various parts, which the collection of lessons for today seeks to underscore. The church father Irenaeus spoke of pieces of a mosaic, when rightly assembled, bringing to our eyes the King Jesus in splendor. If you are musical, you might think of a beautiful chord, where all the various notes combine to produce harmony and a piercing music. Or a symphony orchestra, whose conductor is the Holy Spirit, bringing what is old and what is new into perfect coordination, brass and woodwinds and strings and even the little triangle attuned to God’s purposes in his Son. Each Sunday will offer its special notes. For this Sunday we catch the majesty of the baptism of Jesus refracted through Genesis 1, Psalm 29, Acts 19 and Mark 1, as individual witnesses and in combination in support of one another.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Second Sunday after the Epiphany, January 17th, 2021

The lessons for the second Sunday in Epiphany come from 1 Samuel, Psalm 139, the 6th chapter of First Corinthians, and John 1:43-51, the calling of Nathanael. This belongs to the theme of Jesus earthly ministry. Following his baptism, he called the disciples.

Two things we should note. The NT reading from 1 Corinthians introduces the sequential walking through this letter we encounter in the Sundays to come. It has not been chosen—like Acts 19 last week--to illuminate the Gospel reading in a specific sense. And as for the Gospel, it is not from Mark but John.

Nothing would prevent there being a four year cycle with each year devoted to one of the four Gospels. But instead we have a three year cycle. John is spliced into significant moments in each of the three years, especially in Easter and Lent. This matches the character of the 4th Gospel, which offers a more penetrating commentary on the narrative line we find in the 3 synoptic Gospels.  The beloved disciple remains close to Jesus from first to last and in this posture he sees and reports things he feels need greater attention.

I want to start then with John and the OT passage chosen to introduce his narrative, and then turn to the psalm which has been chosen to illuminate them both.

One effect of hearing any two accounts from scripture set side by side is that the similarities and distinctive features are drawn out through attending to the details of each. You can see this in the case of pairing 1 Sam 3 with John 1, the calling of Samuel and the calling of Nathanael.

In both cases we have the obvious detail of confusion. Samuel cannot tell who is calling him. He keeps getting up to respond to Eli, ‘here I am for you called me.’ Nathanael is not sure how Jesus knew him before having laid eyes on him.

But there are also obvious differences. The boy Samuel obediently waits to hear the LORD’s own voice, as directly instructed by Eli, once he knows what’s going on. Nathanael counters the enthusiast testimony of his friend Philip with a dismissive ‘can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ Samuel is everywhere depicted as good and true. The elder Eli and his sons stand under judgment. Philip and Andrew are agents of spreading the good news. Eli is too, once he catches on to the young boy’s confusion and properly interprets it as a sign of God’s ways. Eli is of course a complicated figure, in contrast to his wicked sons. In the end, he intuits that the silence of Samuel has to do with him and the judgment of God, and he demands that Samuel not hide the truth but speak plainly. And when the verdict is delivered by the obedient Samuel, he obediently receives it as true. ‘It is the LORD. Let him do what seems good to him.” Nathanael’s conversion to the truth follows a different, shorter and more humorous or ironic path.

One place where the stories do seem to converge is over the sovereign timing of God. Jesus identified Nathanael before any human exchange from Philip. “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.” This matches the calling of the LORD to Samuel before he could comprehend what he was experiencing. Samuel did not know the LORD, the narrator tells us. He thought Eli was calling him. Nathanael thought Philip was calling him – and he mocked the testimony. But it was in reality the Lord Jesus himself who saw him and would enlist him with the other followers, overcoming his doubts. And giving rise to the bold confession, “You are the Son of God, you are the king of Israel.”

The calling of the disciples is one of the main themes of Epiphany lessons, coming as it does amidst the manifestation of Jesus to the world, as teacher, healer, wonder worker. He does what he does in the midst of friends and co-workers—who must be trained to understand him and his mission.

John handles this theme a bit differently than the other three gospels. Jesus gradually manifests himself, not only to the world, but to those who will work closely with him, individually, one at a time. First there is the unnamed disciple who along with Andrew stays with Jesus. Then Andrew tells his brother Peter. Then Jesus moves to Galilee and finds and calls Philip in Bethsaida, the city of the brothers Andrew and Peter. Philip finds his fellow Galilean Nathanael and speaks of a conviction shared by the three altogether: ‘we three agree we have found him about whom Moses wrote in the Law and the Prophets.’ Jesus, son of Joseph from Nazareth.

Here, John’s and Jesus’ irony merge. It is the northerner Nathanael who questions the northern home town of Joseph and Jesus as suitable for the one they are testifying to in such grand terms. The one he himself will shortly call Son of God and King of Israel. Philip says only, come and see.

Jesus addresses him and though Nathanael said what he said out of earshot, it is clear Jesus knows what was said. And so he responds in a way that hints at just that. You are an Israelite—you are a Jacob—in whom there is no Jacob, no subtlety and craft, as one would expect from that ancient trickster. You said your mind. Nathanael therefore responds “where did you get to know me?” How did you know what I said and who I am? Jesus says he knew him before he uttered a word. Before Philip called him, just like the boy Samuel, who did not yet know the LORD.

Jesus now refers to an otherwise obscure detail: he saw Nathanael when he was under the fig tree. What fig tree and when, other than sometime prior to Philip’s calling. John has told us nothing about this. Jesus alone knows the time and the place he refers to.  He doesn’t infer it, as did Eli with Samuel, but speaks of a very clear place.

Here is where the scriptures open and close both. Is the fig tree a place for studying the scriptures and for prayer, as the rabbis sometimes infer? Was Nathanael reading the law and the prophets and seeking for the one about whom Moses wrote there? Is the fig tree a sign of the coming age of God’s reign as foretold by Micah 4:4, when nations would stream to Zion and swords would become ploughshares and every one would sit under his own vine and fig tree? and so the age to come Nathanael was longing for and awaiting, before Philip greeted him? Is it a place only Christ and Nathanael know and so important for that reason alone, a place that Jesus wants Nathanael to know that he knows, and so he knows him as he is in the privacy that has his name written on it? So he can come to us in the same way, and does. Opening and closing are both ways God can communicate through his word, law and prophet and Gospel account, with its mysterious reference to the fig tree.

But N’s response is all in without any deceit or mystery, by contrast. And Jesus responds even more boldly. There will be a ladder like Jacob’s, and our Israelite without guile will see angels ascending and descending on it. Jacob’s ladder become now Nathanael’s, in the Son of Man standing before him as he upon whom the angels will come and go from heaven.

After hearing the stories of the calling of Samuel and of Nathanael, the psalm for the day really comes alive.

Lord, you have searched me out and known me; *you know my sitting down and my rising up;you discern my thoughts from afar.

Yes, under my fig tree

Indeed, there is not a word on my lips, *

but you, O Lord, know it altogether.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; *it is so high that I cannot attain to it.

Your eyes behold my limbsall of them are written in your book; *

The psalm does not just capture the themes. It does not just give us a front row seat on the action. It casts us in the main roles alongside David and Samuel and Nathanael. It gives us voice and participation in the acts of God. We are written in the book. I sometimes wonder if we would do better on a Sunday like this to just read the psalm in unison after the readings and after the sermon for the day.

I mentioned at the beginning that the Epistle reading is part of a continuous reading through the letter—in this case 1 Cor—that we will resume next week and the weeks to come. It wasn’t chosen in the same way as Acts 19 last Sunday. But of course, that isn’t really decisive since all scripture has a word to speak and to come alongside other readings.

Paul is describing the place of fornication and the damage it inflicts. We may believe it is a secret place, but this is exactly why it is so destructive and why Paul sternly cautions us. Our bodies our temples of God’s Spirit. Our bodies are not our own, in fact, but are seen and known and created by God for God. Our under the fig tree life is a life under God and his word, seen by him from afar, lovingly knowing us better than we do ourselves, whether Samuel or Nathanael or the psalmist or you and me.

 

Third Sunday after the Epiphany, January 24th, 2021

Our three main readings for the third Sunday of Epiphany are all very short. Six verses from Jonah, 3 verses from 1 Corinthians, and 7 from the Gospel for the day, Mark 1:14-20, the calling of the Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John.

The brevity suits the message. Punchy, direct, get down to business. The time is short, St Paul says. One thinks of the Nike ad, ‘Just do it.’

And of course the Gospel of Mark takes this kind of tone not just today but throughout. This is the Gospel in which greek adverb euthus: immediately, straightaway appears over forty times. Immediately upon coming out of the water Jesus saw the heavens opened, immediately they left their nets, immediately he called James and John, and in the passage preceding ours today, immediately the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness. This text we will encounter at the first Sunday of Lent. In just this first chapter of Mark alone, as if to set the tone for what follows, the word immediately is repeated ten times in 45 verses, slowing down only for the scene in which Jesus stops to pray, early in the morning, by himself, in a lonely place toward the chapter’s close.

I was privileged thirty years ago to hear the British stage actor Alec McCowen perform his celebrated rendition of the Gospel of Mark for which he had received a Tony nomination. He had memorized the entire Gospel and appeared in the church sanctuary with only a stool as a prop. Hearing again and again the word immediately underscored the drive, the electricity, the economy, the urgency of this Gospel. No time to waste.

It is as if, once the heavens are opened at Jesus’ baptism a kind of forcefield is unleashed. Drawing disciples, healing the sick, teaching with authority, raising demonic hackles, driving ever forward.

The more formal listing of the twelve apostles will come later in chapter 3. Jesus climbs the mountain and of those he calls he appoints twelve to preach and have authority over demons – as he has demonstrated this before them.

Here in the midst of the unstoppable forward movement of Jesus he catches four men in the midst of their daily routines, casting nets and mending them, by the sea and in the boat, brother and brother, side by said, father Zebedee and hired workers there too. Doing what they do and have done over generations. They will fish now for men, Jesus tells the first pair. Immediately they drop their nets and follow. Immediately, going a bit further, he calls James and John, and they leave their father and follow.

Our collect captures the theme. “Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ,” it reads. The four answer readily. Immediately. Without any reflection. They stop doing what they had done always. And they continue what they were doing now with a new purpose and goal. And above all with a new reason to do that: Jesus Christ.

Our prayer is so right to speak of the gift of grace as what we pray for. Only this can get us out of ourselves. Only this has the capacity to teach us to see Jesus as the way ahead, in ways we cannot understand but find overwhelming, compelling, reorienting, life changing. Immediately and urgently.

The prophet Jonah began by famously heading in an opposite direction. After some time out-in the whale or big fish, he got reoriented himself. Today he has accepted his call and sets out to deliver the message God has given him. Straightaway, in the language of Mark. Nineveh is a big city. Notorious for its evil. Jonah prepares himself for a three day journey. Yet the reaction to his 5 word sermon is immediate. Fasting. Repentance. Belief in God Everyone. Like the forcefield unleashed around Jesus, the entire three-day-journey wide Nineveh believed and acted on that conviction. King included, and beasts in sackcloth for good measure. God’s reaction is likewise immediate. He forgives.

Jesus announces that the kingdom has come. Repent. Believe in the good news. Allow this kingdom and its grace to fall upon you. Its transforming power is witnessed to in Nineveh and on the banks of the Sea of Galilee in four men who dropped what they were doing and followed.         

We who hear the 3rd chapter of Jonah know as well the opening chapters and especially the one to follow this one. Here we have the famous Jonah. First disobedient and unwilling to expose himself to the dodgy business of preaching to the wicked Ninevites. What if God forgave them? Then the Jonah who sits down after this miraculous repentance, just outside the city, to see if it would stick. Forty-days is a long time.

But God does not engage in this conduct. He tries to get Jonah to see sense. It is tough work! Even the trick with the shade tree doesn’t get through to him entirely.

Yet the message of Jonah does not turn on Jonah’s getting it. Heck, in chapter one he is prophetic even as he hides and sleeps. The sailors figure it out and know his God is God alone precisely because he isn’t doing his job. And in the end, the Ninevites are precious to God no matter how much Jonah can’t get his head around that.

God’s intention in Jesus Christ is to bring Good News. To set up a kingdom of grace and truth. With immediate force. In him. The older son can object to the father’s lavish forgiveness of the younger prodigal, just as Jonah questions God. But the Kingdom and the Good news aren’t about keeping score but about a new chance, a new kingdom, new, good news, made possible because of Jesus and his word. The time is now here. Turn around. Leave your old nets behind. Believe in the Good news. Follow me.

The Psalm positions itself within this solid kingdom of hope and trust and new life. For God alone my soul in silence waits, truly my hope is in him; He alone is my rock and my salvation, my stronghold so that I shall not be shaken.

In some ways the Psalm tracks nicely with the Epistle reading for today, as much as for the OT and Gospel reading. Paul is speaking of holding things of this world loosely. The nets of our boat that preoccupy us and rightly mean our daily bread. They can be set down when we are sure where our final trust is. The four men saw in Jesus a way ahead, a new and compelling way. And then he became the only way. For God alone my soul in silence waits. The four men will continue to be fishermen, but different kinds of fishermen, with a different captain now to direct them where to throw their nets. Let those who deal with the world be as those they had no dealings, Paul writes. There is something of genuine substance in being able to say and to pray: For God alone my soul in silence waits. This isn’t an add-on to make we judge important go well. It is the heart of our disposition as we follow our Lord. A solid rock, a sure refuge.

It is possible to think of the psalmist as behind us. It may be even a reflexive instinct. But time and time again we learn he is ahead of us. That the prayers being uttered are advanced in faith. God has spoken once, and it echoed twice in me: power belongs to God. For God alone my soul in silence waits is the language of someone there to teach us. To fit us out with words we need.

St Athanasius wrote with enthusiasm about the special book the Psalter is in his Letter to Marcellinus. He said many wise things there and I commend the entire letter. But this bit captures the sense of the Psalter to which I am referring.

…the marvel with the Psalter is that…the reader takes all its words upon his lips as though they were his own, and each one sings the Psalms as though they had been written for his special benefit, and takes them and recites them, not as though someone else were speaking or another person's feelings being described, but as himself speaking of himself, offering the words to God as his own heart's utterance, just as though he himself had made them up…everyone is bound to find his very self in them and, be he faithful soul or be he sinner, each reads in them descriptions of himself.

In this case, descriptions of himself and herself we need for the road ahead, when we drop the nets of our daily patterns and ask to be reformed to a new purpose, following him, and waiting for him both. For the present form of this world is passing away, and that includes the things we release so that we can say with conviction, For God alone my soul in silence waits.

Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany, January 31st, 2021

The spirit immediately descends bodily upon Jesus coming out of the water. Immediately sends him, like the mighty Elijah at Sinai, forty days in the wilderness. To be road tested, and to show Satan in no uncertain terms his full authority now disclosed on earth. Immediately he calls others in the same Spirit, to walk and learn alongside him. And immediately he teaches and in so doing finds he has beckoned and so confronts head on the kingdom of Satan. In the form of a man swallowed of all identity by a demon. The demon addresses him as the Holy One of God, Holiness is the domain of priests. Set apart for service. Aaron is the Holy One of the Lord (Ps 106:16). Of the prophets, Elisha with the double spirit of Elijah upon him, is declared by the Shunamite woman “holy man of God.” As Elisha is to Elijah, so Jesus is to John the Baptist, and yet now finally and decisively. The spirit does not just come upon him but settles and remains. Then in the authority of that spirit the king of demons is put on notice that his time has come.

The man in the synagogue is literally in an unclean spirit. So much so that when he speaks it is the demon alone speaking. Two questions are rapidly posed, and that the answers are known is revealed in the third statement. Yes Jesus has something to do with them and yes their destruction is the point. Some think that the naming of Jesus is an effort at control and counter-attack. That the entire realm of Satan is here at stake is revealed by the individual demon’s first person plural us. It is the individual demon who is then addressed, rebuked, silenced, and driven out.

That this more dramatic exorcism is preceded by Jesus’ synagogue teaching is of a piece with the kind of authority Jesus is manifesting. No invitation by officials is mentioned or intimated. He enters and teaches.

The character of his teaching is not one of explication of scriptural authority, but is an authority like unto it. The source for it. In a word: Prophetic. The same direct authority that is what makes law and prophecy what they are. Just as there is no mediation separating Jesus and his kingdom from the direct encounter with the kingdom of Satan, so his teaching is unmediated and incarnated. It comes out of himself with authority. Here we have the explanation for why the final response of the observers that day has collated both displays of authority under the single rubric ‘a new teaching’ including an exorcism as part of its classroom manifestation. He commands and he is obeyed.

The selection from the Old Testament – the raising up of a prophet like Moses – helps bring the Gospel in Old and New Testaments into coordination. The chapter from Deuteronomy begins with reference to the tribe of Levi. Holy. Set apart. Different than the other tribes and called to a specific purpose with reference to them all. Deuteronomy is situated on the banks of the Jordan, a last speech of Moses to a new generation. From this vantage point life in the land—its challenges and its institutional rapid response teams—are envisaged. Priesthood, prophecy, kingship.

Life in the land is life in the midst a different kingdom – described as full of abominable and death dealing practices. Soothsaying, divination, augury, sorcery, offering in death daughters and sons, necromancy, wizardry, consulting mediums – all of this is anticipated and an alternative kingdom and an alternative form of revelation proposed. Just as Moses spoke from the mountain for God, so God will raise up a prophet like unto Moses. The request from the people that Moses speak for them, at the time borne of fear, is here taken as fully appropriate to God’s plans then and now and into the future. God will put his own words in mouth of the prophet.

Here the subsequent history of prophecy is being anticipated, as we will see it from Joshua to Malachi. The notion of a generation to generation lineage of prophets—Elijah passing his mantle to Elisha—is not developed here in any specific way. The subsequent history is content to use the catchall phrase ‘I warned them by all my servants the prophets.’ And we know that the formal collection of prophetic writings counts 3 major and twelve minor prophets with books bearing their names.

From the standpoint of the last words of Moses on the other side of the Jordan, all this lies in the future. At some point in time this prophetic legacy does not so much end as it lives on in the writings the prophets names bear. Their words live on and remain alive speech in that form. In that form the reference to a prophet with authority promised by God to Moses remains live speech, and for one final moment in time the prophet like Moses takes the form of John the Baptist and even Jesus himself, in his Elisha-like healing and teaching ministry in Mark’s Gospel. We can see the outlines of this theme in Mark’s gospel. Jesus prophet mighty in word and deed. The kingdom of the Spirit in bodily form.

The epistle reading returns us to Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. You may have noticed that  this isn’t exactly a non-stop continuous reading; the letter is too long for that. So selections can be made with an eye toward their appropriateness alongside the OT and Gospel reading. That may be the case today.

First a note about modern translations and their use of quotation marks in this eighth chapter. In verse 1 Paul is referring to the claim being made by the Corinthians, or some of them: they say “all of us possess knowledge” and they mean that in a positive sense. That is, they know that food sacrificed to idols oughtn’t to be a problem because such gods as are claimed to be sacrificed to don’t in fact exist. No big deal.

This is confirmed at verse 4 where again quotation marks appear. “An idol has no existence” is what these Corinthians know. “There is no God but one” – this is something one can know by reading Deuteronomy 6, for example.

Paul’s response is in part confirming. As a faithful Israelite he knows that the Lord God is Lord alone. He also knows that though Israel may confess this to be the truth, they live in a world where other deities are not just vying for attention but are succeeding. “You shall have other gods before me” is an acknowledgment of this reality on the ground, and of Israel’s rejection of it. The OT confesses God to be one because of the knowledge they have been privileged to receive from God. Yet the on-the-ground reality is omnipresent and threatening. Aaron makes gods when Moses is gone, as he has it, for too long.

Knowledge isn’t the same thing as reality.

And this is of course his point of departure. Knowledge puffs up, but loves edifies, builds up. Better than to know is to be known by God, and to love him in return. To think that knowledge functions otherwise is the best indicator that the wrong kind of knowledge—without charity—is in play.

Having made these two key points, Paul speaks of the actual situation on the ground in Corinth. In antiquity meat was sacrificed to idols, and it was eaten in that context, taken home, of given to the priests who could in turn sell it. So what of Corinthian Christians who knew the meat came to their table in this way, or weren’t sure, or were eating in the context of others, at non-Christian meals. Paul makes it clear that some of these new Christians once did indeed know well that the meat had been sacrificed to gods, and because of that their conscience is objecting. No knowledge will lift them up and out of that.

So Paul counsels that their liberty can be a stumbling block and so to major in love and forbearance, following his example.   

The word for liberty in this case is the same word usually translated as authority, force, the freedom to do as one please due to power. The Centurian is one in authority, who tells those under him to do what he wishes. The liberty of the Christian is grounded in the true authority, that which Jesus exercises in today’s Gospel. There is no freedom or liberty for the Christian that isn’t a participation in his freedom, which is love in saving authority.

The choice of the psalm for today takes some reflection. It doesn’t seem to marry up to the usual OT-Gospel pairing, except in the most general way. It is an acrostic poem, the beginning of each line starting with the letters of the alphabet. A skilled production. It’s theme is wisdom. Not knowledge. Wisdom which finds its alphabetic beginning and ending, its comprehensive life, grounded in the fear of the LORD.  This fear enables those in the synagogue to acknowledge the giver of life and truth, in astonishment. It leads to wisdom that builds up in obedient praise and daily living, and not puffed up knowledge or cowered conscience. In that sense love’s cousin is wisdom, found in the fear of the LORD, which builds up and strengthens.

In the language of Miles Coverdale, which has stayed in my head: the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, a good understanding hath all they that do thereafter, the praise of it endureth forever.

 

Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany, February 7th, 2021

We have come to the fifth Sunday after Epiphany and the sixth and final Sunday is next week. So too the direction of our readings will change. So a brief word about that.

In the Christian Year Easter is of course the fixed moment, the GM line.

And it found its place in time with reference to Passover and Jesus’ Last Supper. In time Easter was fixed as the Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox, at least in the West. So the date of Easter can move forward and backward in our calendar time by 4 weeks.

The Lenten season leading up to Good Friday and Easter is a fixed period, replicating the forty days of Jesus in the wilderness and OT counterparts, as a season of Christian fasting and waiting. It always consists of five Sundays and Passion Week.

This means that the Epiphany ordinary time leading up to it also expands and contracts, given the movement of the Easter date.   

The final Sunday of Epiphany-tide always commemorates the Transfiguration. There could be as many as eight Sundays prior to it or as few as four. This year there are five.

I’ll have more to say about Transfiguration and its place before Lent next week. It’s really a Sunday for preparing for the coming Sundays when Jesus walks to Jerusalem to his passion for us. It is less a last Sunday of Epiphany and more an entry window on Lent.

It also marks the next to last Sunday we see of the Gospel of Mark until after Easter. Then the continuous reading in Mark will resume.

So this is the final Sunday of our slow walk through the first chapter of Mark. Lent begins with the short account of Jesus in the wilderness. We return in Pentecost time to Mark chapter 2.

The Gospel of John replaces Mark for the Sundays after Transfiguration and Wilderness in Lent and Easter. We see the same general pattern in Matthew and Luke years. It gives us the opportunity to hear John’s clear baritone voice.

As we look at the passage from Mark for today I want to say a little bit about the last section of chapter one which follows it, so as to get a good sense of the direction of the chapter as a whole before we leave it.

One important phrase sits quietly there in verse 38. It could sum up the force of Mark’s opening chapter. Translated variously:

for that is why I came out (RSV)

for that is what I came out to do (NRSV)

That is why I have come (NIV)

for to this end came I forth (ASV)

for therefore came I forth (KJV)

Because the greek verb implies a place Jesus was that he has left, the Fathers typically thought of that place along the lines of the Gospel of John. Jesus has come forth from his life with the Father. Mark does not develop this idea though in some ways he is consistent with it.

In Mark’s opening chapter we could infer that, if Jesus had a place, its location is far from clear. Nazareth, Capernaum, even the wilderness are contenders. Mark has no birth narrative. John appears in the wilderness. People go out to him, including an adult Jesus, from a Nazareth we hear nothing more about. In Galilee the action shifts to Capernaum, the synagogue there and the home next door that as the next chapters of Mark imply, seems to be his base of operations. It is he house of Peter where his mother in law lives. Leaving the synagogue he heals her and she serves him there. The whole town gathers around the door for healing. It will have been a busy day. After the sundown marking the formal end of the sabbath the people begin streaming to him for healing.

With little sleep, Jesus gets up long before day break to go pray in a wilderness place. Perhaps the wilderness is his real home: the place where he prays is home. Or maybe the point is that for Jesus no place and all places are the place of his activity, his life such as it is, with us. He has come forth and is forth and must be so.

We also get a clear sense that his healing ministry has briskly taken off, but equally could be all he does.  Yet he has come forth, and will be forth. He silences the demons and insists at the end of the chapter that a man he has healed out of compassion not blaze it abroad. But he does. Yet Jesus cannot be constrained and must continue on through the neighboring towns, likely on the west side of the Sea of Galilee, moving from synagogue to synagogue. That is why he has come forth.

The chapter ends with Jesus again returning to the desert, given the fame spreading due to his healing and man warned not to speak ignoring him. People come out to him there in the desert all the same, much as they had done for other reasons to John in the wilderness, as chapter one opened. Even in the wilderness Jesus is forth. The demon last Sunday was right to note that Jesus had come out against him. In the spirit of God Jesus is always forth and must be so. His ministry is who he is.

So while Mark does not have any developed thought about Jesus’ preexistence, in the same way as John does, Jesus has come forth into this world and is tirelessly in his very self manifesting the kingdom of God.

Our lesson relates that immediately after teaching and driving out a demon in the synagogue Jesus steps straight into the house of Peter. # 2 Main Street, Capernaum. Before he can sit down for a meal, the one who will attend him must first be attended to. Lifted up, healed. The verb to lift up is redolent of resurrection and was likely heard in that way in time.

One cannot miss the emphasis on just how pressed and crowded about Jesus is. His coming forth strikes the world like lightening, and he is overwhelmed but up to it fully. With little sleep, like the prophets of old running before a chariot, he is off to the next stop, taking only precious time to pray.

Listen then to Paul’s account of his ministry. In the wake of Jesus, himself like an urgent prophet, he cannot be constrained. This comes in a section where Paul is defending his apostleship and how he goes about it. He demands no wages. Yet he must of course live. Though he maintains his rights, he is prepared to forego them. If he works freely, his only ground of boasting is that he has the privilege of sharing the gospel without cost. Preaching is not something he wills, but something that has been laid upon him. A commission. Here we find interesting parallels with Mark’s account of Jesus, working tirelessly, immediately, urgently, for this I have come forth. Paul’s reward, such as it is, is the joy of sharing the Gospel as he proclaims it and brings others within its saving orbit.

Our OT passage comes from the comfort, comfort section of Isaiah. Israel in exile has received double for all her sins. Her debt is paid. Yet she is sluggish and worn down, like those Jesus confronts in Peter’s mother in law, and those thronging his door. God speaks here as Jesus acts. God remains fully in charge and fully able to create anew. Kings and rulers are at their best agents in his hand, doing his bidding. They come and go, but God remains king forever. He is tireless in giving power to the faint and the weary. He lifts them up as Jesus lifts up and serves. They not only arise but run without wearying. They are made like unto him who lifts them up, and made ready for service like Peter’s mother in law or the man with leprosy in Mark’s conclusion. Jesus is moved with compassion as God speaks the double word of comfort to Israel.

The Psalm for the day doubles down on Isaiah and Mark. The Lord has pleasure in those who fear him, who wait for him, as Isaiah says. The wicked who come to destroy men and women are brought down and driven out. God gathers the exiles, he lifts up the lowly from their sick beds. He delights in rebuilding and remaking and is forth for that purpose 24/7. To which the only response is, then and now, Halleluia.        

 

Transfiguration Sunday, February 14th, 2021

As we noted last week, the final Sunday in Epiphany is either the fifth Sunday of the season or the ninth, depending on the date of Easter. The lesson chosen for it is always the Transfiguration. This year we have the account from Mark, chapter nine.

Because of the significance, registered annually, of the Transfiguration, preparing us for the Lenten season to follow, all of the lessons have been selected in coordination for this Sunday. So the roughly continuous reading from Paul moves away from 1 Corinthians to a brief excerpt from his second letter to Corinth. The light that shines out of darkness is the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, he writes. The selection has been made in order to link the knowledge in our hearts, granted by the Holy Spirit, with Jesus Christ transfigured, who appeared before three of his disciples on the mountaintop to grant them this vision of his dazzling eternity.

We are at that point in all of the synoptic Gospels where Jesus is turning from his epiphany earthly ministry and heading to Jerusalem and his passion and death. In the account provided by Luke this is actually the topic under discussion when the transfigured Jesus is conversing with Moses and Elijah, concerning his NT exodus.

The Gospel of Mark provides three statements from Jesus to his disciples about this exodus, each with a slightly different reaction, from Peter’s rejection and rebuttal in chap 8, to misunderstanding and fear in chap 9, to silent following in chap. 10. In Mark the Transfiguration comes just after the first of his declarations, and his charge that all who follow will take up a cross as he is to do ahead of and for us all. That is our Lenten walk in 2018 of course, and our daily walk in this life following him.

So it is significant that after this difficult charge we are made privy, as readers of Mark’s Gospel, to the encounter three of his followers, chosen by him, including the brash Peter, privately experienced. On a high mountain apart, as Mark compactly puts it.

Before we look more closely as this our signal reading for the day, the Old Testament passage is important to consider, since it provides some key information concerning the prophet Elijah, whose conversation with Moses and Jesus is at the heart of the Transfiguration event. So let’s go there.

Earlier in Epiphany Deuteronomy 18 spoke of a prophet like Moses who would arise. Though the text appears to refer to the prophets who appear in the wake of Moses, prophets like Elijah and Elisha, in time, after the twilight era of prophecy, it was understandably taken to refer to a resumption of prophecy, in one final appearance. Prophecy in totality focused in Jesus incarnate.

In these two mighty prophets we see today a passing of the torch, from one generation to the next. The references in the chapters concerning the affairs of Elijah and Elijah—fully 16 in total—point us to prophecy in a distinctive mode. We hear of bands/sons of prophets (NRSV = company), characteristic dress—Elijah’s famous mantle—feats of healing, rain-making, fire from heaven, fasting and great strength, an abbot or father and even a possible tonsure – Elisha is referred to as baldy in 2 Kgs 2 and not very wisely. One thinks of powerful monastic figures, like Bernard of Clairvaux, founding monasteries, counseling popes, defending the faith.

Elijah’s abbot ministry is coming to a close and he knows it, as do his sons, his prophetic followers.  Elisha knows too. Elijah tries to move out of sight, to Bethel, then to Jericho, and at last to the Jordan, and though he asks Elisha to stay put, he refuses. With his mantle he parts the Jordan as Joshua, Moses’ follower, did once long ago. At last he confronts Elisha and asks what he would have him do. He wants a double portion of his spirit – and given what we have seen of it at work in him, we can understand Elijah’s statement that this is a hard thing. He does not so much give what Elisha asks as provide for the conditions under which it could happen: if he sees him going up into heaven, much in the same way, though for the last time, he has persistently accompanied Elijah in these his last days.

And the narrator shows us the prophet Elisha, keeping on watching, until he could see Elijah no further, and only then tearing his clothes in two, as the two prophetic men—son and father—are torn in two from one another. His last words are curious, “father” is clear enough, given the monastic like fellowship. But what of “the chariots of Israel and its horsemen”? The identical phrase is used just before Elisha himself is about to die, by Joash, the king of Israel, as he accepts this unwanted fate (2 Kgs 13).  Most agree “chariots and horsemen” refer to the greatest in the human military arsenal – of Pharaoh, the Syrian commander of Elisha’s day, later empires of Assyria and Babylonia. The air, sea, and land assault weapons mighty nations today wield. Elijah and Elisha are that arsenal for Israel, more powerful than any force.  The prophetic chariot is now separating and a whirlwind carries Elijah bodily into heaven.

Having gone bodily into heaven, the return of Elijah remained a feature of reflection. So he appears, mentioned before Moses here. Moses was of course the preeminent OT figure and so in time ideas related to his assumption into the heavenlies would emerge. Whether the pairing Moses and Elijah suggests “the Law and the Prophets” as the totality of scriptural testimony is plausible enough though not underscored. Both Elijah and Moses had significant revelatory experiences at Sinai. The “after six days” reminds us of Moses ascent after six days at Exod 24:16 though Origen also saw this pointing to the sabbath seventh day of paradisial time. The dazzling clothes also suggest the glorious garments traditionally held to be Adam’s eternal clothing in God’s unmediated presence in the Garden of Eden, before garments of skin, of corporality, were taken up after his disobedience. Mark does not refer to a shining face, but clothes with an intensity of whiteness unlike anything humanity could make or imagine. We should take it that this signaled already the different status of Jesus compared with the two heros with which he was conversing. In the Old Testament the eternal Word spoke to Moses and the Prophets. Now that fact is disclosed for what it in truth it was and is, and shown to the three privileged witnesses.

Peter did not know what to say so he proposed a building project. He was afraid. This is never the best time to make concrete proposals. Notice the difference here. Peter and Jesus. Elisha and Elijah. Elisha wanted to go wherever Elijah went and he refused to leave him. He did not seek to make him stay, but wanted only the means to move forward, with his spirit, in double strength. A model disciple. Taking up his cross and following.

The voice from heaven says just what was said at the Baptism of Jesus, with which our Epiphany reflections began. Here is however added the important words: “listen to him!” “He has just told you what he will do and where he is going. This prophet mightier than Elisha will walk to his death and he bids us follow. Listen to him. Not build anything or try to freeze the frame.” The path to new life, to eternal life, to dazzling fellowship, to victory over death goes through Calvary. The three cannot know the details of the path or of following, but they see before him the end point Jesus is tracking and that he will gain for us all.

The dazzling clothes are the clothes of his eternal life with God. He will put them on in the end in his resurrection body. They can count on that. They are given to see who this Jesus is, in his life with God, that he has come to give us.

He will not be whisked into heaven. By his act of love in dying for us he will claim for himself the bodies Moses and Elijah; of and all of the Old Testament saints; the halting three and the twelve and us now in our building proposals, our fears, our rebuttals. And he will make us like unto his eternal self. Robed in his glorious Body.  In and by the Spirit, Paul says, he has “shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

As our psalm summarizes it.

Out of Zion—in the eternal Son—perfect in beauty, God reveals himself in glory.

 

First Sunday in Lent, February 21st, 2021

The Gospel of Mark is notable for its brisk, compressed style, as we have seen. Especially in chapter one. The first Sunday of Lent is always the account of Jesus in the wilderness. Matthew and Luke give us 11 and 13 verse renditions. Mark has but two. The forty days, the three temptations back-and-forth between Jesus and Satan, is here a simple narrative summary. He was tempted, was with the wild beasts, and angels ministered to him.

The enmity between man and animal, in consequence of the fall, is here gone. The prophecy of Isaiah 11—wolf lying down with lamb and a little child in safe company—is likely part of the background of Mark’s terse account. The snake tempter of Eden is here without effect. “Jesus was with the wild beasts and the angels ministered to him.”

Notable is that the Holy Spirit descending upon Jesus at his baptism is the same Spirit who immediately drives him, tosses him in the Greek, into the wilderness. Matthew and Luke say the same thing but the link with Jesus’ baptism is not present in the same way because of their more amplified presentations. In Mark’s case, less is sometimes more. The Holy Spirit of baptism and filial declaration—you are my son--drives Jesus into a confrontation with the king of demons, Satan. In and by that same Spirit Jesus heals and drives out demons as chapter one unrolls. We have been witnesses of that.

Here is one of the places where the symphony of scripture can produce such compelling full-chord music. Coming alongside Mark’s compressed account of baptism and wilderness authority is the pairing of Noah and some very challenging lines from 1 Peter. Chosen because of the reference to baptism, and its pre-figurement in the ark, riding safe and high above the flood waters. The seas of destruction bearing upon them the eight saved, baptized, members of Noah’s family. The cycle of adamic sin and evil, stretching from the garden to Cain and Abel, to the spread of wickedness in the wake of angelic encroachment in the sphere of mortals, as rendered in Genesis 6. The wickedness of man on the earth, and the continual evil plotting of mortals reaches its limit for God in Genesis 6 and the decision is made to start again, and to save Noah and his family to do that.

1 Peter understands this period as one in which God waited patiently, but it does not say exactly for what, and it does not clarify the period of waiting. From Adam to Noah? Presumably for others to repent and join the 8.  But only 8 were saved. Here 1 Peter and Genesis are in full agreement. Baptism is like the ark because the salvation is out of chaos and death. Peter calls it an appeal to God for a good conscience, the conscience of the suffering but righteous Christian he has just commended. Christ suffered and died for all, and so the anti-type is greater and more final than the noah type prefiguring it.

The baptism of Jesus brought with it the descent of the Holy Spirit in fullest measure, which in turn drove Jesus to confront Satan and drive out and put on notice the demonic realm at work on earth. We are baptized into that baptism and empowered by the Holy Spirit given by his life and death for us. His life and his death were a confrontation with evil and death, beginning in the wilderness and extending to the Cross and empty tomb. The cosmic dimension is underscored in places like Ephesians 4, and Colossians 2, Romans 10 and Revelation, in the scenes of earthquake and broken tombs and the rising of the saints at his death, in Matthew’s crucifixion account.

What is being described in 1 Peter 2:19 has been the subject of enormous discussion over the history of interpretation, with greats like Augustine changing their minds, Luther admitting the text is just not open to convincing single interpretation, Calvin disagreeing with Aquinas. Further opening onto notions of the afterlife and purgatory, the descent clause in our Creed, Holy Saturday liturgies of captivity taking captive, leading even to the ambitious musings of von Balthazar over Christ’s work on Holy Saturday, dropped into utter deathly godforsakeness so as to redeem all things. These latter topics of course do not trade on 1 Peter alone and it is important to keep this in view but on a wider grasp of what the time between Cross and tomb and Easter morning entails in God’s purposes in Christ Jesus, and the scriptures point to this.

The listener can breath easy. Our job does not entail giving the final word on this matter, but rather in trying to understand 1 Peter in relation to the main themes of Mark and Genesis. Baptism, spiritual authority, salvation, waters of chaos returning in Noah’s day for a work of judgment, and the waters of the Jordan releasing into our lives the spiritual authority of Jesus Christ the savior. 1 Peter describes a movement from death to resurrection to ascension and exaltation over angels and authorities and powers. What began at the Jordan, was prefigured in Noah and in the sacramental work of Christ in Israel in former days, is completed through cross, tomb, resurrection and exaltation.

Our baptism is a baptism into that full journey of triumph. It is an appeal to God himself, in and by Christ’s triumph, for a conscience worthy of our present life and calling. A conscience he has forged for us. The resurrection has forged this. The exaltation has put paid to it.

If Jude 6 and 2 Peter 2:4 and our text are speaking of similar things, and I believe they are, the interpretation closest to hand is that the spirits in prison are the fallen angels of Genesis 6, responsible in part for the wickedness unleashed and judged in the days of Noah. Between death and resurrection, the quickened spirit of Christ made proclamation to them, as part of the defeat of and exaltation over powers and authorities and angels with which our reading concludes. There is an arc of Christ’s saving work, from Noah to Jordan to Cross to tomb and back again, in final proclamation.  The Spirit at work in Christ is not quelled even in death but continues at work, until raising our Lord to his new spiritual body amongst us on Easter, and lifting him into the heavenlies to sit at God’s right hand in authority.

The crucial thing to note is how the symphony of scripture, when properly conducted, helps clarify what are the main and reinforcing themes across passages. There will not again be a flood to eliminate the evil that persists on earth and in our hearts. Instead God sends his only Son to contend and win. Destroying death and sin reaching all the way back to Adam and Noah and putting Satan and the powers on notice in his life and death and rising and ascending, all four, that this is so. Mark’s linking of baptism and wilderness has to do with his terse style but it also speaks of his conviction about what the Spirit’s descent upon Jesus was truly about. 1 Peter extends that to the Spirit of Christ at work in death.

A variation on this interpretation is that “in that state” in Greek refers to his being made alive, not to his spirit preaching after death, and so to his resurrected state. The proclamation is then himself before the angels and spiritual powers opposed to him. I prefer the interpretation given but like Luther will admit the passage is difficult if taken in its own. We need the wider symphony of scripture to illumine those parts that at times are harder to understand. Christ’s life, death, resurrection and ascension are his saving victory for us over death and the powers of death, and we have been baptized and noah’s arc-ed into that new creation life with him.

The Psalmist entrusts his enemies to God, that they not triumph over him. Christ is our victor. Our own sins against him, as we remember them from days gone by, he asks that God look at through his love and compassion. And see us in that light. The covenant with Noah has in Christ been extended to all the children of Abraham, including us far off who have been brought near. The compassion and mercy of the LORD are from everlasting and forever, for those who lift up their soul to him.   

 

Second Sunday in Lent, February 28th, 2021

The second Sunday of Lent in our Symphony of Scripture series. Our lessons are…

The covenant with Abraham and Sarah in Genesis 17

Paul’s reflections on Abraham in Romans 4

9 verses of Psalm 22

The open announcement of Jesus in Mark 8 of his intention to go to Jerusalem

The metaphor of a symphony commends itself because it describes so well the character of scripture in its parts and as a whole. The Holy Spirit’s conductors baton signalling this instrument, dampening that, calling for more from the seemingly incidental oboe or French horn. Bringing into concert. The waters of creation and the waters of the Jordan. The resolute watching and following of Elisha and the Lord’s seeking to make Peter into the same. The ark and baptism. The immediately of Nineveh and of Galilee. John the Baptist and Elijah. Wilderness tempting at Sinai and at the Jordan. Promised wolf lying down with lamb, Jesus with the beasts.

Old and New. Former and Latter. Elder and younger. The lessons move like a weaver’s shuttle. Not a single direction but, as in a symphony, mutually reinforcing, coordinating, the providential disclosing of God’s purposes through time.

In Mark’s Gospel the announcement by Jesus that he will go up to Jerusalem and there be crucified, and rise again, is stated three times. Peter can only hear the former—persecution and execution--and does not like the full scenario in any case. He rebuts Jesus, and is himself rebutted, sternly corrected, and put in his place publicly before colleagues, and fellow risk-taking followers. In the next two instances, and by his simple moving forward toward this divine goal, we find the twelve quieter in response, and moving along with him. There is some mysterious pedagogy at work, set in motion by Jesus’ firm handling of Peter today. And perhaps the mountaintop scene of final glory he and James and John share, who knows? John has his own version of this, where it is Peter who concedes, “to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

Our readings from Romans—like last Sunday, a special selection—and from Genesis obviously set before us the man Abraham, and his wife Sarah. There is nothing intrinsic in Mark’s Gospel that we might observe that links the text to Abraham, in something of the way we often observe that, as with Elijah last week, or Samuel or Jonah, in weeks preceding. The tightest link, orchestration, weaver’s shuttle, is from Romans to Genesis, via the figure of ancestor Abraham, and Sarah.

Paul’s point is that Abraham’s faith in God preceded the giving of the law, and before the command to circumcise. It came when he was old and had no reason to ground his faith in what God was promising—land, children, home—in anything in the human realm. Only in God’s word to him. Here Paul, in Romans 4, is referring to the faith of Abraham in chapter 15 of Genesis, where the author says that his trust in God was accounted to him as righteousness – a righteousness apart from the law. But Paul wants to build on a further point, out beyond the initial promise and the initial response in faith in chapter 12 and its reiteration in chapter 15. Abraham will be a father of many nations, not just one. His progeny will be as the sands of the sea and will also constitute many nations and not one bursting at the seams. His changed name underscores it.  Hence the choice of Genesis 17 as our first reading, which builds upon the first and second encounters. Paul has conflated three episodes so as to stress that the promised Abraham’s progeny will be the multitude of nations who can call him their father, and not just those who in time were given the law.

This makes the reference to never wavering in faith a touch ironic, for the careful reader of the Genesis chapters. Both he and his wife take the promise after three declarations, and the birth of Ishmael as an option B, as worth a laugh. But Paul’s point is likely that they kept receiving and holding to God’s promises in spite of all and even with a laugh to relieve the couple now in their nineties. The three solemn encounters with God compounded their need for patient waiting, but also enlarged the promise in a way Paul’s sees as anticipating each and every one of us in Christ.

Now the words, “it was reckoned to him,” were written not for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.

The psalm captures the force of what Paul is seeing retrospectively, and what Abraham might well have said prospectively from Paul’s vantage point.

26 All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, *and all the families of the nations shall bow before him.

27 For kingship belongs to the Lord; *

29 My soul shall live for him;my descendants shall serve him; *they shall be known as the Lord'S for ever.

In the Gospel reading for today we wrap up our 6 Sunday walk through the early chapters of Mark with a selection appropriate for Lent from chapter 8. Next week we turn to John.

Mark says that Jesus is speaking openly. Let there be no doubt. That this plain speaking comes as a strong force is evident from the response. Whatever the disciples might have intimated of his ultimate mission in their time with Jesus until now we may assume was minimal, now halfway through Mark’s narrative line. Whatever else they knew about Jesus, they have come to know him as a relentless, powerful, triumphant, indefatigable and unstoppable life force. A man among men, unlike men. Suddenly he speaks of a stopping – in death, and an unspeakable death, and so taken by Peter to be a death that should not be part of what they have witnessed thus far. Should not be and need not be. His private rebuke is met in turn with public rebuke, stern and unwavering. At least this much is clear. Whatever Jesus is bringing to his relentless public ministry in this life he is bringing to his final confrontation in death. Not just bringing it – here we have no martyr – but seeing to its accomplishment. Describing it in details. This must be why the final part of the design—rise on the third day--doesn’t seem to be heard, given the route to it, and so offers no mitigation. Jesus is neither a martyr nor a superman meriting our awe either. That Peter rebukes and is rebuked is part of the very real drama unfolding, stripped of myth or tragedy. Jesus looked at each one of them the text says when he delivered the rebuke. This will be neither myth nor tragedy but God’s way of confronting Satan and defeating him in all his guises, even ones coopting his disciples in their fear and in their alternative plans. Jesus will show himself fully able to walk this road. He requires for assistance nothing from men and women except their presence and their testifying, to a death that will lead to life.

Abraham stepped out onto a road whose direction and purpose he could not know in details, guided only by the God who would tell him three times, formally, that he was good to his word. Alternative schemes and doubt and detours and stifled laughs came on the road he and Sarah were following in faith. The sheer implausibility did not involve their dying – most of their life was behind them now – but it did involve dying to what was familiar and what could have made worldly sense for the balance of their days. Instead, they heard God’s voice and they left familiar ways to head onto the king’s highway.

Jesus asks his disciples to follow. To listen to God’s son. The cross they take up is the one he has made for them and for us, and which is a yoke lifting off life’s burdens in exchange for the profit of new and eternal life.

 

Third Sunday in Lent, March 7th, 2021

Upon leaving Mark’s Gospel for John, we enter a terrain with its own special features. Chief among them is Jesus’ confrontation with Jewish religious leaders at an earlier point than the synoptics. Whether the synoptics knew of things like earlier visits by Jesus for Passover, but preferred to let the emphasis fall on the final Passover encounter, with Last Supper, Trial and Crucifixion, we cannot know.

But what this does allow is for John’s use at the Lenten season, where our attention is on Jesus’ decision to go to Jerusalem for a final time, by giving us additional insight into the character of his confrontation with religious authorities there. So today we are in the temple during Passover, and witness Jesus driving out those who changed money so that animals could be bought for sacrifice, by pilgrims coming from regions of the Jewish diaspora. Matthew, Mark and Luke report that at the final Passover of his life he entered the temple and “drove out those who sold” as Luke has it in his laconic version of just two verses, whereupon he began his teaching there—so Luke--and healing—so Matthew. Jeremiah is the OT text quoted by Jesus, a house of prayer has become a den of robbers.

It has been convincingly argued that John has been written for its own sake but also for readers who know Mark. At a number of points, parenthetical comments he makes presuppose a reader with knowledge of the narrative line in Mark, to which he is making additions.

So he splices in things in order to augment, supplement, emphasize. This early encounter in the temple during Passover culminates in what is taken to be a prediction of the temple’s destruction, which is consistent with the charges brought against him at his trial, which the synoptics all report. In John’s gospel, moreover, the culminating incentive for hostility and death seeking comes in the wake of the raising of Lazarus, and the fear that “everyone will now believe in him.” The end of Chapter 11 is crystal clear on this point, and for John, it is here that Jesus turns to Jerusalem for a final time, being anointed by Mary before entering the city. So the encounter at Passover is but the first in a series, which we learn was retrospectively understood in its full significance as a prediction of his own death and not so much the temple’s destruction.

“But he was speaking of the temple of his body.”

Our readings for today are less straightforward in the way they work together. Or more subtle. I take that to be a good thing, asking us to probe, stop and ponder and pray and meditate. Hear, read, mark, learn, inwardly digest – as Thomas Cranmer wrote about how scripture gets into, finds it path into us, as God’s word.

Let’s identify the links and then tease them out.

Jesus action in the temple brings to mind, to the scripture-marinated disciples, Psalm 69:9 – a psalm which otherwise is important elsewhere as prefiguring Jesus’ suffering. “They gave me poison for food and for my thirst vinegar to drink.” The verse that rises up in them as they witness Jesus’s actions in the temple is “zeal for thy house will consume me.” 

In the ten commandments God is a jealous God, a God who is to be first and God alone. Worshipped in this spirit. Unlike all he has made and above all other claimants to be God, holy in making his commandments known. The same word in Hebrew for jealous is here as in Psalm 69. In John’s gospel it is the zeal of Jesus Christ, jealous for the temple and for the right worship of the Holy God of Mt Sinai there, in the here and now of the temple, God’s holy sanctuary. In the psalm, the righteous one is zealous to such a degree that he is all-consumed in his efforts. Like the all-consuming fire of God’s holiness. Yet the psalm also makes it clear that this zeal of the righteous one provokes attack. The insults of those that insult thee fall upon me, the verse continues. Perhaps this is what is meant in the final line from John for today. The further confirmation of the scriptures and Jesus word together is remembered by the disciples who witnessed the encounter, and it is just this: Jesus would not just be all consuming in his zeal, like God himself, in putting right what false worshippers have distorted. In addition, because of his zeal in this cause, the insults against God which he condemns and overturns would fall on him to his death. The temple where God dwells, which the temple on earth was to be by God’s holy design, is embodied in his son. “After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this.”

In 1st Corinthians Paul speaks of the power of this same cross in leveling and reconfiguring what humanity means by wisdom. Jews demand signs, he says, and Greeks desire wisdom. When Jesus acts with righteous authority in overturning the exchange tables, Jews who were present asked what sign he might give for doing this. They apparently do not dispute the action for its own sake, but instead ask for some sign for why he is the one sent by God for this kind of action.  

Now this is a statement rife with possible meaning. Jesus does signs in John’s Gospel. He has just done one, his first, the turning of water into wine. Like Moses’ producing frogs, hail, grasshoppers, the death of the first born, or the birth of Immanuel, the sign given to Ahaz by Isaiah, the sign demanded of Jesus would be something concrete and present. Following the turning of the water into wine he will heal the official’s son on death’s door. And the man born blind. And call Lazarus from the tomb. Concrete signs and wonders.

Here there is a sign which he gives in response, but it is enigmatic. Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up. Enignmatic and having to do with the future yet to unfold. Not unlike the sign God gives to Moses at the burning bush, which is the eventual worship of God at the mountain where he now is, yet after the ordeal of the confrontation with Pharaoh yet to come. Jesus is speaking of himself as a sign, indeed the ultimate sign, his body as the temple of God’s holiness, which will be destroyed but which will be raised up again, after three days.  For those demanding signs as proof when they do not see the actions for what they are, the sign given by Jesus is himself. As Paul puts it, Christ crucified is the sign proclaimed by God himself, whose weakness is stronger than human strength. Whose wisdom is the prefect law of the LORD, reviving the soul, giving wisdom to the innocent.

The symphonic links across the readings may be subtle but they are profound. Wisdom is to be found in God’s law, which is embodied in the jealous obedience of Jesus, whose life is the sign given by God for new life, upsetting what we demand but showing us him for whom we long. The scriptures bear witness to him. Some things we can only understand over time, as we hear, read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them, just as did his first disciples. Even present with him, their vision was at best partial. But after he had risen from the dead the scriptures would come alongside the words he spoke as remembered and shown them both redolent of life giving truth and the wisdom for which the psalmist longs.

 

Fourth Sunday in Lent, March 14th, 2021

Our lessons for the fourth Sunday of Lent are taken from Numbers 21, Psalm 107, Ephesians 2 and John 3. During Lent we continue with selections from the 4th Gospel instead of Mark, and the epistle reading has been chosen specifically to come alongside the familiar OT reading—Gospel link. Unlike last Sunday we have no subtle associations but manifest and clear ones. Jesus himself makes the association. “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” The great conductor of the symphony of scripture himself lifts the baton.

I want to begin the scriptural reflections for Lent 4 with the verses chosen from Psalm 107. I believe they help us understand what Jesus is doing when he reaches into the collective memory of Israel and likens himself to the serpent which Moses raised as a means of healing and salvation.

Israel cultivated recollection. Memory is a key faculty in her life with God. She was regularly commanded to tell about the past and present to future generations – see Psalm 78 or the book of Deuteronomy or the opening chapter of Joel. Just to the degree that her life with God gave her life and gave her identity, she cherished the past. It told her who she was and who she is. It is the arena of God’s election life with her and defines her life. But the real surprise is the cultivation of the past which involves her weaknesses, rebellion, and unfaithfulness. For that part of her life was precious just because it was her life with God, because God is Holy, and also because it included the memory of God’s patience, forbearance and love.

In Books Four and Five of the psalms especially, we find reflections on the past, and more specifically the past in the wilderness. Israel remembers with gratitude God’s power and mercy in bringing her out of bondage and suffering, through mighty acts, that are recited as though still fresh in her memory. Or just to be sure they are and remain fresh. But she also recalls episodes of failure. Embarrassing moments we would prefer to forget. They are also recited as if yesterday. Because they remind her of God’s patience through it all, manifest in her present ongoing life in him. They are part of the role of the book that is the album of life with God. They are precious for being exposures of her weakness and sin and in just those moments, the discovery that God was more than tit for tat. That he had a love whose purpose was furthering his life with Israel and teaching her through forgiveness more and more about himself.

This morning in Psalm 107 we see a striking further reality. The psalms preceding this one clearly rehearse the past and the scenes of God’s authority in the wilderness, in power and in forbearance. But reading the psalm in its entirety for today we see that the distant past is not in view, but a more recent rendition of it. The psalmist speaks of God’s gathering the dispersed of Israel from north, south, east and west, whose experience of hardship and threat, on land and on sea, are present examples of God’s care, like unto his care in the past but shown to be fully contemporaneous in like manner as well.

When Jesus then speaks of the serpent Moses raised in the wilderness he is speaking in like manner. Of a past that remains real. And of a present in him that takes a form like unto it, and now with the final stamp of his purposes forever.   

In the recital psalms where Israel’s punishment in the wilderness is recalled, the past become an occasion for the present reciters to acknowledge the failures of previous generation and in so doing to seek forgiveness and present help. In the case of the serpent of Moses, the generation of Moses cried out for help and for forgiveness. We are at that place in Numbers after the most serious moment of rebellion in the wilderness – the spy story of Numbers 13-14. Israel is ready to enter the land. There was no need for a forty-year wandering. Yet they squandered it out of fear and failure to trust in the manifest power of God, already made so clear to them with Pharaoh and at the Sea. Only those under twenty would enter the land, and the generation who had witnessed God’s acts of mercy would die in the wilderness, save Joshua and Caleb, who had brought a good report. So even with this dire verdict over them, God acts in mercy to save them, in spite of an ongoing rebellious spirit, exceeding even the tenfold description on the occasion of that earlier rebellion. Bitten by snakes and dying they cry out. They acknowledge their guilt. “We have sinned against the Lord and against you.” And the Moses who will die in the wilderness, having bought through intercession the lives of those under twenty, prays for the people here. The LORD provides a remedy. The very means of their punishment and dying becomes the means of their salvation and life.

As Paul writes in his letter to the Ephesians. We are all like the Israel of the wilderness. We are dead in our trespasses. In the DNA of rebellion. Even after reprieves we followed the course of this world. In his stark language we are children of wrath. But matching this stark verdict is the serpent of Moses set up high for us to see. In the starkness of death and poison in our veins. To show the power of God’s love. God did not send the son into the world to condemn the world. But to give us access to an entirely new, cycle breaking Son of Man lifted up that whoever believes in him may have not just life but life eternal. Those over twenty, those under twenty, those who believe, who in believing will not perish but have eternal life.

Again Paul puts it well. In looking at the Son raised up. In believing in the power of God at work in him. We are made alive by grace. Seated with him. This is the unearned gift of God, an undeserved serpent on a pole, given in the midst of death and trespasses, with the poison of death in our veins, that a person may look, believe, live and be seated with the one lifted up and bruised that we might have eternal life.

We see of course—or used to see—the words of John 3:18 raised up on a pole, like the bronze serpent, at sports events. The odd looking man with the sign board. In a funny way, one could take this as a sentimental account of the amazing grace of God in sending his son. When in reading John further beyond this single verse we see that the amazing act of grace is not universally received for being so, anymore than the basketball game stops as all kneel down in homage.

Not believing is for John a kind of self-condemnation. It is an unwillingness to accept the potion necessary for life, because this would mean crying out in need, acknowledging as did Israel that our predicament isn’t just environmental but inside of us. The laser beam of God’s light worked with special force with those he chose and loved, the people of Israel, much to their joy and their punishment both.

In crying out for God’s mercy the link to God’s love is made available. One looks on the only son given in love and is saved. The deeds done in God are those which flow from our relationship of salvation in him. Not of boasting. It is not our own doing, as Paul says. Not the result of works. But a gift that enables giving in that light.

And that is why John does not sentimentalize God’s gift of the Son. Jesus was raised high on the cross because of the evil men prefer in their hearts, an evil that has bitten us all. But that same cross is also the means of, the place of, the permanent pole star of, our forgiveness. There is no untangling of the darkness and the light on our side. God’s triumph to win us is into and through darkness, bringing us forth into his life where deeds can now be done in him, which flow from him and his saving embrace of us. In that light the unbearable weight of sin is transformed, conquered and set to a new purpose in Jesus Christ.