Insights with Seitz: Symphony of Scripture

Fifth Sunday in Lent, March 21st, 2021

The fifth Sunday of Lent is the next-to-final Sunday of the season. The last Sunday before the culminating Passion Week, which opens with the reading of the extended passion narrative, this year from Mark. We stay in John’s Gospel for one final time this fifth Sunday, before returning there again in Eastertide.

As we have noted, in John’s Gospel it is the raising of Lazarus that triggers the decision to bring Jesus to trial. The culminating sign—the dead Lazarus come forth alive—creates just too great a draw in its wake. “What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation…So from that day they took counsel how to put him to death.” So the end of chapter 11. 

John has shown Jesus coming up for Passover previously, earlier in his ministry. So in John’s Gospel the plotting against Jesus zeros in on this Passover time and place because the authorities can expect him there and then. And they are right about that.

The crowds come out to see him, because of the fame surrounding the raising of Lazarus, and John says his death, the risen Lazarus, too is under consideration by authorities scandalized by his living testimony. Yet one more time John records that the crowds swarm Jesus because of the testimony of those at Lazarus’ tomb, as he enters the holy city in John’s version of the Palm Sunday hosanna, king of the Jews episode. “The world has gone out to him” is their concerned verdict.

All of this serves as a trigger, or triggers, for John’s narrative unfolding, as the forces against Jesus observe the reality on the ground. The signs are too effective, especially the final one.

But Jesus has his own trigger, his own timing, his own sense of God’s work in him, and we hear him express it clearly in the lesson for today. “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”

As with other things said unwittingly by those who claim to be in power, a truth was prophesied. The whole world has gone out to him means just that. In our lesson for today we hear that the Greeks have come to see Jesus. Gentiles. They go to Greek speaking Philip and Philip gets Andrew and they together go to Jesus. Andrew and Philip were those who were the first communicators of his long-promised arrival, Philip finding Nathanael back in chapter 1.

Understated but unmistakable. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is spilling out beyond the nation and temple—the proximate concern of the authorities—and into all nations. In the temple that is his own body, ironically to be destroyed after all, as feared by the authorities of the temple structure by the Romans. Something is happening, mysteriously, inexorably. The hidden grain which will blossom and grow and bear much fruit. By dying. And already drawing all people to himself in anticipation of his final lifting up from the earth. Those who may not know who they are seeking to see, but who know he is the one they must see all the same. Sir, we would see Jesus. The whole world is going out to him. They have rightly prophesied. The hour has come.

It is perfectly possible that the Greeks—the term used for Gentiles elsewhere at John—were actually gentile proselytes, like the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts. Some hold we cannot know that for sure since pagans also on occasion might bring gifts to the Court of the Gentiles, as the outer region of the temple precincts were known, in tribute, during festivals. But in either case, the import is the same. The Gospel is making inroads which will find their high point at the Cross.

The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.

The Epistle reading from Hebrews comes alongside this scene with its reference to the father’s glorification, and also the prayer of Jesus that the cup might pass by. This is registered only to be set aside in the triumphant manner of Jesus in John. Hebrews speaks of loud cries and anguish such as we find described in the garden scenes of Matthew, Mark and Luke. But as with the one verse “Jesus wept,” Jesus soul is also here troubled, in John’s compact syntax.

Hebrews wants to emphasize the obedience of Jesus, who did not glorify himself but participated fully in suffering submission before God. The judgment of this world, as John calls it, is the confrontation of Jesus with the ruler of the world. Hebrews reminds us that this confrontation was costly in a way that Jesus did not seek to avoid in the days of his flesh. His obedience to death amounted to a kind of perfection, whose purpose was to win eternal salvation for us. This is the unique priesthood of Jesus. A prefect offering for us and our salvation. A priesthood Jesus, the risen and ascended Jesus, continues to exercise for us as Hebrews elsewhere states it.

It is here, then, that the cries of the psalmist and the promise to Jeremiah converge and find their place. The psalmist longs for a pure heart. A right spirit. Deep within. To put his soul at peace with the God against whom he has sinned. A broken and contrite heart is a sacrifice pleasing to God. Jesus in dying has entered into that space and heard us in his saving priesthood. Has heard the psalmist: blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart.

And here the promise of God to Jeremiah embodied in the new covenant. The covenant which God made with Israel when he took them by the hand to lead the out of bondage, they broke it. This was a covenant they needed to teach to each generation. So that they might come to know the LORD. Here Jeremiah and Deuteronomy come close. Teaching is at the heart of relationship. Yet even the final chapters of Deuteronomy envision clearly an Israel that will fail. That will break the covenant and will in consequence experience the judgment Jeremiah announces to his generation, and like Moses before him, will share as well. Deuteronomy promises that God will hear the penitent Israel and renew the covenant even for a wayward people. Jeremiah sees something out beyond that in the promises of God. Ezekiel will come alongside him in describing a new heart, the heart clean and pure that the psalmist longs for. I will write it on their hearts and I will be their God and they will be my people.

And the how of his doing that we see in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Something is happening, is lifting him up and drawing all people to him. By his death new life and new growth new fruit blossoms forth. So the grain dies that the harvest may come. The forces that seek to thwart God and undermine the teaching that makes him known are to be confronted and defeated. When the Gentiles approach the disciples and ask to see Jesus, Jesus announces that the hour has come. The new covenant reality will involve not just the hearts and wills of a disobedient people whom he loves, but will draw all people into its saving life. The again of saving health of the penitent psalmist join the now of the hour that has come for Jesus and for all those he has come to save.     

 

Liturgy of the Palms, March 28th, 2021

We should by now have gotten used to the rapidly moving, briskly paced, ‘and immediately Jesus…’ style of Mark’s Gospel. Chapter One is exhibit A. So that when we arrive at the account of events leading up to Jesus’ death, and the crucifixion itself, overwhelming is just the opposite. Things slow down, enormous detail is provided, and we are present for the entire, careful, distended unfolding of these last events, covering all told but in just a few final days of a man’s life. The effect is to rivet us to our seats, as befits what is being said and its significance for the message of Mark as a total work. Mark has been called a passion narrative with a long introduction, a description which tries to convey just this truth, about how Mark has proportionalized what he gives us when it come to the man Jesus Christ, weighted for his testimony in death.

Because it is Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday together, this protracted aspect of Mark’s Gospel comes to the fore for us in church, giving us potentially 130 verses of text to hear. From the entry into Jerusalem to the death and burial of Jesus, with a stone rolled against the tomb. And even this leaves out scenes equally related to the final days of Jesus life, all of significance in the culminating presentation of Mark. Cleansing of the temple, exchanges with religious leaders, predictions of coming tribulation.

The juxtaposition of the reading concerning the triumphal entry in Mark 12 with the Passion story, beginning with anointing and Last Supper, and extending to flight of disciples, trial and crucifixion, is intended to capture one feature of theological significance, that indeed is there in Mark itself. The crowd that hailed Jesus at his entrance suddenly and genuinely without explanation calls for his death, enrolling itself as blood-thirsty allies against Jesus and leaving Pilate alone as confusedly sympathetic. Demonic possession, such as we see it earlier in the Gospel, appears to overtake the crowd now as Jesus comes to his final significant hour.

The careful listener may also notice the parallel structure of the entry account with the Last Supper account. In both cases Jesus tells his disciples what they are to do for him, and just how they may anticipate the encounters that will befall him in doing what he asks for. “If anyone asks you,” and bystanders do ask. “You will find a certain man, who will lead you to the owner of the house,” and so it happened. Disciples are indeed taking up their part, at least for now, before things darken beyond their strength.

In the first instance, moreover, scripture bears witness and oversees all that is transpiring. The crowds cry out Hosanna, straight from Psalm 118. The cry is addressed to God there and to Jesus here. John’s optional reading makes a bit more of this by explicitly identifying the conveyance on a colt with the prophesy of Zechariah, with rumblings of Genesis 49 in the background, details Mark is content to let speak for themselves at this level. One has a sense from John’s reference to an eventual remembering in time, that certain things in scripture were written about him, and that we are coming in contact with one of the most ground level realities about Jesus. During his life and after his death the scriptures were bearing witness to him even when it took time to read them and see them delivering precisely this further sense.

Though it could appear that Jesus is entirely outgunned and abandoned, at another level the text makes it clear he alone knows what is going on. And God has prepared by his word from scripture the unfolding last days and moments, down to minute details. Vinegar to drink, wagging heads, friends at a distance, parting of garments, failing strength, back to smiters, and even the haunting cry of dereliction itself. The colt and the hosannas are there too. And of course the general and crucial Passover timing. Jesus did not die on groundhog day, but in line with God’s word, in accordance with the scriptures.

So these events are not out of God’s control and here Jesus and God operate on the same secure ground of agreement and strength, in a march into disagreement, weakness, brutality and death. When at the end the Centurian says surely this man was God’s son he has been moved away from human sight and into a different plane of perception, has left the cruel soldiers, demonic crowd, bitter thieves, plotting authorities, hapless but powerful Pilate, and edged to the side of the women and Joseph of Arimethea in acknowledging this man was no ordinary executed criminal enrolled with the thousands who suffered this fate. Like a lot of people in this Gospel he probably says more than he can know, even if in this last testifying he is closer to the truth of the matter than either bellowing crowds or fleeing disciples or those present before this curious life-changing display of divine power.

The absolute control over things unfolding is displayed for Mark in God’s overseeing word of accordance from scripture, and in the resolute strength of the man Jesus who marches forward into the jaws of injustice, brutality, abandonment and refuses to stop the frame. He stays awake; they sleep. He receives the kiss of death and forbids retaliation: let the scriptures be fulfilled. Attacked by false testimony, itself at odds, evokes not a word from him but silence. When pressed, he cites scripture. In the middle distance we see a man broken on the wheel of his own vain promises, his strength exposed as fraudulent. No grief or contrition can slow anything down, just the same. They bound Jesus and led him away, though who is really bound except everyone but this man? Pilate is confounded, even as no one has the right to speak to him, the ruler of the world, as does the condemned man who answers questions with non-answers. The crowds prefer a crook to the one who had healed and taught and defeated sickness and death.

Almost in exact proportion to all going wrong as the world sees it, all is going to plan as God and Jesus agree to it.

Along the way Simon is enrolled. Jesus’ never wavering and pressing on as no man could, would or should, before or since, has taken its toll. His sons’ names are given in an odd moment of memorandum. That they are likely the men mentioned as members of the church in Rome means that at this darkest hour Jesus was winning souls, men not present, but soon to be enrolled as was Simon that day. Taking up a cross alongside in anticipation of the one we now carry a cross behind, in the wake of that saving victory in spent-ness and surrender. The final taunts are of a piece with all that has transpired thus far. What the scriptures are revealing was planned from long ago, and calibrated to this moment. Alone on the human plane, and after he has accomplished all God and he agree to accomplish, the centurion confirms the truth.

Here the lesson from Isaiah chosen for the day summarises what did not get said that day but was being said in its own silent, forward moving, strength-in-death way. The suffering servant, soon to be put to death in Isaiah’s prefiguring rendition, foreshadowing our Good Friday, opens here his mouth on behalf of Christ Jesus.

I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard;

I did not hide my face from insult and spitting.

The Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced;

therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; he who vindicates me is near.

Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together.

Who are my adversaries? Let them confront me.

It is the Lord God who helps me.

 

 

As promised in the opening verses, this strength inside assault is

instruction of the most educational kind imaginable, prepared in

the servant and his testimony long ago for the silent work of the

King of Kings. Sustaining the weary.

 

Isaiah has worked his way into the Epistle Lesson from

Philippians as well. The name above every name is that name by

which God himself swears in Isaiah 45, promising there solemnly

that every knee would bow to him, the LORD God. The name above every name, the divine name, The Lord, grounds the solemn prophetic oath. That name is the name bestowed on Jesus Christ, showing him so united to God that to call him Lord is to call on God himself, having emptied himself and taken the form of a servant, now exalted at God’s right hand in victory.

 

 

 

Easter, April 4th, 2021

We have a rich symphony of lessons to choose from on Easter Sunday. More so than on other Sundays due to the several choices offered. The resurrection account from John or what is often called the shorter version from Mark. Shorter because the manuscript history shows that Mark could end here, at verse 8, with the astonishment of the three women witnesses, having been told by an angel young man that Jesus had risen and would be meeting them in Galilee. And going no further than that.

Then there is the summary of Peter in Acts 10 that ends with Jesus resurrection from the dead and appearance to chosen witnesses.  Either as the first or second lesson. The alternative for the first reading is the more typical OT lesson, here from Isaiah 25. With death swallowed up, and tears wiped away. The Lord for whom they waited-women, disciples, angels, the whole world—has come. “Let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.” Jesus was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, that is, in accordance with Isaiah 25 and other OT texts.

And this is what St Paul writes in his first letter to the Corinthians, which is the first option for the Epistle reading. This is Paul’s turn to tell us what he has received, the good news he proclaims and in which the church now stands. Jesus Christ died and rose in accordance with the scriptures, and appeared to Cephas, he writes, and the others of the twelve, and yet five hundred further, then James and finally to himself, untimely born. 

And the Psalm for the day is a selection from Psalm 118. The “I” voice is that of the risen Christ. “I shall not die but live.” The “we” voice is ours who witness that on this day the Lord has acted. “We will rejoice and be glad in it.” And it is the righteous sufferer speaking of God’s victory in Christ in all ages, in “which we stand,” as Paul would put it.

It is the year of Mark and his resurrection account is unique, as given for this Sunday and as likely existed in this form before the longer ending came into play, given its 8 verse brevity. Christ’s dramatic and terrifying absence that Easter morning is itself the warrant of his risen presence and God’s promised vindication, as Jesus had promised. Was Mark content with that, perhaps consistent with his understated style? Was there a longer ending that got lost? Is the ending we now find attached a compilation based on the other Gospels? Is John 21 Mark’s lost ending?

These are the puzzles that have tantalized faithful interpreters from Eusebius and Jerome down to the present age. That the manuscripts have not eliminated the issue means it is wise to rule out some kind deficiency, or obvious problem on Mark’s part, needing to be corrected. The longer ending is itself a study in disbelief and non-recognition, as if breaking the silence didn’t make that much difference measured against what God had dramatically done all the same.

The shorter ending, whatever else we make of it, is also a reminder that we have the Gospel of Mark in a fourfold Gospel collection, and alongside the resurrection accounts given by Peter in Acts and Paul in Corinthians, and the according word of the scriptures of Israel. It is a wrong account of the character of the Gospel to think of Mark in an isolation: a single book detachable testimony. The present longer ending of his Gospel likewise reflects this wisdom.

At the same time, Mark’s bracing conclusion in verse 8 needs to be, and can be, heard for its own sake and within the context of the 8 verse pericope beginning in verse 1. Three women arrive to anoint the body. Joseph had very little time before the Sabbath and did the bare necessities: got permission (Jesus died quickly), provided a tomb (Jesus had no family), wrapped the body, and had the stone placed.

Now at the end of the long and silent Sabbath, the cohort of women buy the necessary spices, and get up early on the third day. Two of them had noted where the tomb was, Mark tells us, at the end of that day of death. They pose the obvious practical question as they make their way there, and it also anticipates the dramatic sight they encounter when they do arrive. For the stone that worried them has been rolled away already. They enter the tomb and are alarmed to find a live young man there. He tells them that in the niche where they might expect to find him, they will not. He points to the vacant place. He tells them everything is going to plan and just as he had said. They are to tell the disciples—and yes indeed Peter, too—he is going ahead just now and will be seen in Galilee. The Gospel ends with the women in terror and unable to speak.

But of course we know that this silence was broken, broken by God himself. The readings all testify to Jesus being indeed seen in Galilee as the young man had promised and as Mark’s terse but pregnant ending states it. Galilee is where he appears, as Peter tells us in Acts. Of the twelve he appears first, or in some signal fashion, to Peter, as Mark, Luke, John first Corinthians all agree.    

But before the reconciling encounter with the disciples he has chosen, who fled from him, we have the encounter with those who stayed closed by at that fateful hour, and are also the first to attend to the body they had loved and that had cared for them in his day.

The point may need emphasizing. The emotional link joins the practical. Mathew, Mark, and Luke all stress that at the cross, or near enough to watch Jesus passion, final hours and death, were women companions. Named in Matthew and Mark and including Mary Magdelene and at least one other Mary. Mark is probably the clearest in showing this fact enables the two Marys to know where the tomb is, and be aware that more attention to the body is in order than what Joseph was able to undertake. And so they are the first to confront the reality of an empty tomb, whose rolled away stone makes their visit possible, but then not necessary for the loving tasks they had come to do.

John’s longer and different resurrection account, which can be read this Easter Sunday, agrees that women were first to the tomb, again it is Mary Magdalene. She sees the stone rolled away and runs to tell two key figures in John’s presentation: Peter and the Beloved Disciple. They will remain in critical frame from here to the end. In John’s Gospel the beloved disciple was at the cross, with Jesus’ mother, the Magdalene and again another Mary.

The famous footrace is won, surprisingly, not by the ever active Peter but by the other disciple. As he remained with Jesus at the very beginning of the Gospel, at the Last Supper and at the Cross, so he remains at the tomb’s entrance. The runner up, true to form, rushes in. The narrator and the beloved disciple being one and the same, we can assume he is reporting what Peter sees as he also sees it, before he goes in. Jesus has walked out of the wrappings of death. The belief, comprehension, understanding of the beloved disciple comes as he remains and contemplates. As at the cross, the scriptures still veiled for others are sounding forth clearly for him. Perhaps Mark’s shorter account would have suited him just fine!

Now John saves the special, first encounter with the Risen Jesus for Mary Magdalene. It speaks for itself in emotional depth. Jesus is in his resurrection body and in that body is recognized in special ways, as we see.  In this new recreated life Jesus is bringing us we should think of a renewed garden of Eden and so how good that it has a gardener, so Mary supposes upon seeing Jesus. The sound of her name from his mouth brings forth new life. Easter life. What she sees and what the beloved disciple knows by scripture and his posture of remaining , assisted in both by the Spirit poured out at the cross, is then relayed to the others. “I have seen the Lord.” Welcome happy morning. The symphony of scripture pours forth to and from this Easter fulfillment. 

For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ was raised on the third day. In accordance with the scriptures.

God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses. All the scriptures testify about him.

 

Second Sunday of Easter, April 11th, 2021

For the crescendo Sundays of Palm Sunday and Easter, the readings chosen and their relationship to each other are straightforward and clear to the point of overflowing. There is a lot of good material to choose from and work with. The symphony soars.

Let’s take a moment to look ahead a bit now, as Easter is not only a single decisive day, but for churches using a lectionary a season of seven Sundays. Seven Sundays conforming to the seven times seven weeks of the Feast of Weeks, Shavuot in Hebrew or Pentecost in Greek. The wheat harvest festival which in time became a festival associated with the giving of the Torah, a pilgrimage festival – and so we see it in Acts at the Day of Pentecost. Pilgrims present from all the areas of the Mediterranean basin.

The opening chapter of Acts is the one source supplying a forty day time period during which Jesus’ Risen life was experienced by his disciples and others chosen as witnesses, as Peter stated it last Sunday. “appearing to them over a period of 40 days and speaking about the kingdom of God.” Ascension Day is traditionally set as the Thursday in week six, consistent with this 40 day reference and Acts own account of Jesus’ ascension, preceding his promised sending of the spirit, for which they are to pray and wait.

This Sunday we have an opportunity to hear another resurrection account, the continuation from John chapter 20, and next week from Luke. For the remainder of the season we will shift to earlier chapters in John for our Gospel reading, a pattern that holds in the other two years of the 3-year cycle. More on that for Sundays to come.

The Easter season is also a time when we hear from chapters in Acts. Selections, as again Acts also appears in the other two years. Sometimes cued to the Gospel, sometimes to the Epistle, sometimes the Psalm.

The Epistle reading to be followed in Year B comes from the First Letter of John. Next year, Revelation. Last year it was First Peter. It is the second Sunday of Easter that introduces this special Easter Season Epistle. We do not hear it in its entirety, but sequentially and fairly completely just the same.

The opening section of John 1 is our Sunday Epistle reading, concerning the word of life. This isn’t a specific reference to Easter or Resurrection but of course includes it as the culminating confirmation of the loving fellowship of the Father and the Son, which fellowship we now share. We also have the detail in the first verse about Jesus being seen with eyes and touched with hands, often thought to counter the heresy of Gnosticism. In the flesh Jesus was a real man. But it also resonates with accounts of the Risen Christ. Jesus offers to his disciples that he be touched (“handle me and see,” Luke 24; “put your finger here, and see my hands,” from John 20 today).  

More generally, John is speaking here about walking in the light that has broken out among us, and shunning the darkness that marked our former life, and which was defeated by the atoning work of Christ on Good Friday. In the light of that, we have an advocate with the Father. John makes two points on the same theme. To say that we have no sin would be to deceive ourselves and render the work of Christ on the Cross meaningless. Or in the liberal Christian version, a tragic end for a morally heroic good man. No, we are sinners and God’s work in his son has cleansed us. That work has a continual cleansing action as well, John’s second point. If we sin, and acknowledge it and its power, we have an advocate to whom we can turn. An advocate for us individually, whose death on the cross was also for the sins of the whole world.

The reading from Acts, replacing the usual OT reading in Easter, speaks of the fellowship in the light—John’s language—in concrete form. The believers shared what they had and took care of the needy in their midst. They didn’t do this by drawing up action plans and exhorting those to do their part, but rather we hear that great grace was upon them, and that they lived so close to the resurrection light that their testimony was empowered and empowering. This is doxological living, and Acts is proud to declare it as alive in and enlivened by the Spirit of the Risen Lord Jesus.

The psalm is there to capture the mood well, with exclamation point at the ready. How good and pleasant it is when brothers and sisters live together in unity. The oil of anointing, anointing even the body of Christ, runs now down over the believers, like the dew on Hermon. For there, in the Hermon of Christian fellowship in the Risen Lord, God ordains blessing: life forevermore.

John’s account of Jesus appearance to disciples follows on from Easter Sunday and Mary’s announcement to the fellowship, “I have seen the Lord.” Having walked out of linen wrappings he appears to them behind fearfully locked doors. Having breathed on Mary life by calling her name, he now breathes forth the Holy Spirit. Jesus resurrection is a life changing fact with a life changing charge and purpose. The Holy Spirit is a spirit of forgiveness and new life, for the sins of all the world, as the Epistle reading put it.

Being a twin is hard. Thomas, upon hearing that Lazarus had died and that Jesus was going to see him, volunteered. “Let us go too that we might die with him.” Whatever the reason for his absence when Jesus appeared, he is not content with being left out and getting their report only. Back in their company—not to be left out again—a week later Jesus appears as before and repeats word for word the same hello. He turns directly to Thomas and without a sign of knowing addresses him and his week-ago complaint, lavish to the point of extreme. Doubt is to have no place. Jump in. Side and hands are at the ready.

To say this does the trick is an understatement, belied by Thomas “My Lord and my God.”

Now John lifts Jesus eyes to us who are receiving this testimony but not within the privileged circle, but on account of their testimony. As Peter put it in Acts, not to all, but to those chosen to bear witness. If John could step harder on the lavish pedal I believe he would. Fine for Thomas, Jesus stood ready to defeat doubt within the circle of those who would be witnesses. But what is written is fully competent, by the work of the same spirit breathed on the disciples, to make the Risen Lord alive for us. Not second string latecomers, but blessed as those who have not seen yet have been empowered to believe.  

I will let John have the final word. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life, life as rich in blessing as those in the chosen circle in their way, that you may have life in the church, in the fellowship of light, in his name.

 

Third Sunday of Easter, April 18th, 2021

As discussed last week, a pattern can be observed in the selection of readings during the Easter season. Instead of a first, OT reading we have selections from the Acts of the Apostles. The second lesson is a semi-continuous reading: from 1 Peter in Year A, Revelation in Year C, and this year, from First John. This makes for a different kind of symphonic effect than what we have come to expect. Especially the usual OT-Gospel linkages and associations we have come to identify and appreciate, as bringing into focus the Gospel of OT and NT in coordination. In symphonic harmony.

There is a certain irony in this pattern during Easter season given that in the resurrection accounts, which predominate on the first three Sundays, we can see the emphasis on the disclosing role of the scriptures of Israel. We see it today in Luke’s “that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” In view for Luke is not just the way the suffering, death and raising of Jesus are in accordance with the scriptures, the Old Testament, but also the message of repentance and forgiveness of sins he charges the disciples to carry forth. He opens their minds so that this according significance might be grasped and conveyed both. Acts picks up where Luke leaves off. Paul will happily set aside three whole weeks for OT Bible study, seeking to establish from the scriptures the Gospel, Acts 17 tells us. What a lively encounter that will have been.

This is helpful to note because what Luke is referring to here is the global hearing of the Old Testament as this will transpire in the church, from beginning to end, and not a search for proof texts or isolated passages.  In the preceding Emmaus Road story, which we hear in Year A, we are not to imagine a burning within the hearts of the disciples as the scriptures are opened, a roster of favorite proof texts, capable of being reeled off during a 7 mile trip from Jerusalem. Rather, what Luke is getting at with the phrase “and beginning with Moses and the Prophets he interpreted in all the scriptures the things concerning himself’ is the inexhaustible and indispensible role of the scriptures from beginning to end, in conveying the significance of Christ, now to be grasped in the life of the church.

John has his own version of this idea, as we have seen. During Jesus’ life, the scriptures spoke of him, but the disciples failed to grasp this. But later, John tells us, they would yield up their riches. The beloved disciple at the cross is the lone exception and serves as a model for future Christian apprehension. He who saw it has born witness—his testimony is true and he knows that he tells the truth. For these things took place that the scriptures might be fulfilled, “Not a bone of him shall be broken.” And again another scripture says, “They shall look on him whom they have pierced.” And another and another and another.

I say irony because at this very same season the Old Testament is replaced by Acts. But perhaps the significance remains all the same. The truth of the Passion and Resurrection to which the scriptures point, and which they disclose, does not amount to selections of OT passages. Luke is rather pointing to a new kind of mindset about the scriptures, a mindset the church remembers is set in motion by Christ himself. During his life: “If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words” (5:46-47). And especially focused in his Risen Life.

As noted, our Gospel reading for the day is the conclusion of Luke’s resurrection appearances. Luke’s initial visit to the tomb, like that of Mark, has the women see that a tomb is empty and nothing more. It is angelic testimony that he is not dead but risen, a report that is taken to be nonsense by the eleven. The Emmaus Road story which immediately precedes tells of appearances to two unnamed disciples. Yet we need to be careful in describing that character of what we mean by appearance. On later reflection the two speak of their hearts burning when on the road a stranger opened the scriptures earlier that day. The eyes that were kept from seeing earlier are not opened to him due to better lighting, or a decision by Jesus to bring himself into frame in some new bodily risen way. It is in the breaking of the bread that he is recognized, after which he vanishes from human sight. At this moment the scriptures disclosing power is also grasped by them as having burned on the road, now having been themselves grasped. 

It has been a busy Easter day, it is evening, and the day is not over. Back they go to Jerusalem. Here they learn that Peter has been gifted by an appearance, a fact otherwise not narrated. As the two tell of their heady day to eleven and others, Jesus appears in his Risen Body. This risen body, brokered not by bread braking or the retrospective comprehension of a scripture lesson like no other, but standing before them as  a death-defied flesh and bone body terrifies them. As perhaps also with Mary, the voice carries them to a less terrified, less confounded, recognition. The phrase is a Lukan winner. They are in a current, tumbling in waters of disbelieving for joy. The body which is a risen and different one—surely that has been established well enough—is all the same a body of continuation and identity, voice, form, function.

But none of this is for its own sake alone but pours into a second more obvious immersion in scripture, and especially the creation of a new mindset for a new risen reality.

Luke’s concern for repentance and forgiveness as a message bringing the scriptures and Risen Lord into conjunction plays itself out in Acts. And in the first instance the nations to be addressed with this scope of this message are God’s people Israel. 

The tone is sharp. Harsh. Peter rebukes his fellow Israelites for their failure properly to understand the agent of the healing as the Risen Christ. ‘You preferred the murderer to the Author of Life.’ But a better word than harsh or sharp is urgent and concerned. You did not know what you did, as Luke might have put it, imitating Jesus on the Cross. You acted in ignorance. Yet in all this God was unrolling his plan from long ago. The scriptures were fulfilled, the very ones Israel has been graced to carry in her life with God. The oracles of God entrusted to the Jews, as Paul puts it in Romans. Repentance is to be preached by the Lord’s command as consistent with these oracles, not to condemn but to bring new life.

The psalm gives the words. Know that the Lord does wonders for the faithful, when I call upon him he will hear. The call of Israel then, of Israel before Peter, and for the Israel the Church today.

All who have this hope purify themselves, just as he is pure. Sin can break in, but it cannot have an abiding place. For who we are will be revealed in him, and those who abide in him will see themselves in him when we meet him face to face.

 

Fourth Sunday of Easter, April 25th, 2021

The lessons chosen for the 4th Sunday of Easter are taken from Acts, chapter 4; the 23rd Psalm; First John chapter 3; and the Gospel of John chapter 10. The Gospel reading should alert us that we are moving away from resurrection accounts such as we have had them from the end of the synoptic Gospels and John and into new terrain. So first a word about that.

We have been using the word symphony to speak of the way four lessons have been chosen, or orchestrated, so as to bring forth the stunning music of God’s word week-in and week-out. OT, Psalm, Epistle and continuous reading of the Gospels, over a three year period. The challenges are obvious: cover as much of the Bible as is possible (a Bible in which the OT is about 7 times larger than the New). Read through the Gospels in years A (Matthew), B (Mark), and C (Luke) with John spliced into key moments of the year. Since there is a good deal of farewell discourse and kindred material in John’s Gospel, it suits the Easter Season particularly well. As we have seen, the OT selections are usually keyed to the Gospel by way of accordance, typology, figural anticipation and correspondences of various kinds. The call of Nathaniel and the call of Samuel. The waters of baptism and the waters of creation. Elisha and Peter. And so forth.

The Epistles are sometimes chosen to come alongside the OT-Gospel pairings, or they represent a continuous reading through an individual letter. The Catholic Epistles and Revelation appear in Eastertide. So too portions of the Acts of the Apostles, which would otherwise fall to the side. The psalms are chosen Sunday by Sunday to reinforce one or more of the other lessons. This Sunday is a good example. What better psalm for John’s discourse concerning the Good Shepherd than Psalm 23. The Lord is my shepherd. God’s presence and victory through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, the table set in the presence of enemies, the green pastures of a garden with an empty tomb from which new life springs forth.

In Easter the OT-Gospel pairing, so familiar from other times of the year, falls to the side. One might assume that the correspondences between a continuously read Acts and First John and the Gospel of John would be happenstance, depending on just where we happen to be reading as we move along on three different tracks. But some care has been taken to select the portions of Acts over years A, B, and C so they fit as best as is possible with the other readings. One should not be surprised to find correspondences between the Gospel of John and the First letter of John, since they have typically been taken to have the same author, John the Evangelist, “the beloved disciple,” John the Apostle, or one and the same, as has been traditionally held.  Comprehensiveness, proper associations, continuous reading and proper fit with the liturgical season are four goals and they are a challenge to accomplish. But then again, all scripture is God breathed and profitable for instruction, so even where the selections conform to principles other than direct association, the attentive reader can see important reinforcing themes and contours.

In Easter, after three Sundays of Resurrection narratives, passages from John chapters 11-17 are read for the final four Sundays of the season in years A,B, and C: Jesus’ farewell discourses on the Good Shepherd, the True Vine, the Love Commandment, Protection in the Name, and so forth. This Sunday 1 John 3, Psalm 23 and John 10 all speak of the Good Shepherd, the one who lays down his life for the sheep.

Beyond this we can also see minor associations of various kinds. Let me highlight just a few. Note the repetition of the word commandment at the close of the Epistle reading from 1 John. The command of the Lord is that we believe on his name, and that we love one another in that name. In the Gospel Jesus speaks of the commandment he has received from the Father who loves him. In whom he abides and in just the same way we abide in him. The commandment he has received is the power to lay down his life. Jesus goes to death in the power of God, not as a victim, but as the Good Shepherd laying down his life for the sheep that are his own. With the intention to enlarge the flock and bring in all the sheep who are his very own. God’s commandment to Jesus is the power to lay down his life and receive it back again from the Father. Such are the good commandments of a loving Father.

1 John speaks of the commandment we receive in turn from Jesus, to love one another and to believe on his name. Acts picks up with the episode from last week, where a man lame from birth has been healed by Peter. After a night in prison he and John are brought up before the leaders of the community and asked to explain by what power—note the same word—the man born lame has been restored. The power consists in the name of Jesus Christ, the name 1 John speaks of in terms of a commandment given to us, to believe on his name, which enables us to abide in him and do his works by the Spirit. It is that Spirit which speaks in and through Peter. The psalmist speaks of a revived soul, of being guided along right pathways for his name’s sake.

Then there is 1 John’s emphasis on love. Love in action. Not just in speech, but flowing from the active love of the Father for Jesus, which Jesus foregrounds in his Good Shepherd discourse. The Father loves the son, and that love is expressed by the Son in his gift of his life for the sheep he loves, who are his very own. This love has the power to surmount the human heart itself! That heart we believe is the source of love, but which can falter and even condemn us. No, the love of God is the love of God expressed in his son’s giving of himself and it is greater than our hearts, because it is of God himself. Once that surmounting love is granted by the Spirit, it gives us boldness and a receiving spirit, to take on what God has to give to those who abide in his love.

And as we have come to expect, the psalm often builds bridges across more than one text, and how true this is of the 23rd psalm. There is Peter in the midst of imprisonment and public challenge. And there is a table unseen but carefully spread out in the presence of those who seek to trouble him. The cup running over is the Spirit’s empowering. Bringing good health to the man born lame and to all who come within the range of the name of Jesus Christ. The shepherd’s rod and staff are signs of the concrete life-giving and spirit-protecting love of the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ. Who is no hireling doing a job from a distance or for personal profit, but enters into the valley of the shadow of death where the sheep need protecting, lays down his life and by that act of love takes it up again.

So on a Sunday where we hear selections from Acts, 1 John, John’s Gospel and the Psalter, though the pattern and manner of selecting is different, rich are the linkages, correspondences, key themes and contours all the same. Thomas Cranmer was right to understand that it would take five verbs to describe how scripture makes inroads, in the collect he composed for Advent. “Grant us so to hear them,” he said, “read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them.” That we might embrace and hold fast the gift of eternal life. A collect he wrote with an eye to the lesson for the day, taken from the 15th chapter of Romans.

“For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.”

The symphony of scripture has this power, and we witness it in full orchestration again on this 4th Sunday of Easter.  

 

Fifth Sunday of Easter, May 2nd, 2021

In the symphony of scripture for the 5th Sunday of Easter, we continue our selected readings from the Acts of the Apostles, joined by portions of First John. As noted before, because Acts is shared across all three lectionary years, the selections are often made intentionally so as to come alongside the other readings; we saw this last week. Today we jump ahead from the healing of the man born lame, in Acts 3-4, to the marvelous account of the conversion of the Ethiopian high official, in the 8th chapter of Acts. This Sunday there are however no clear associations intended with the First John and Gospel readings. By contrast these two readings are clearly linked by the notion prevalent in John of abiding in Christ, as he abides in the Father. The true vine unites the vinegrower, God the Father, the son, and those who abide in him and in that place bear much fruit.

The reading from Acts is one of the most compelling in the narrative line of that work, as introduced in chapter one. The Gospel is to be preached in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth, Jesus says before his ascension. The Ethiopian official hails from modern Sudan, in the region north of present day Khartoum, known in biblical times as Cush or Ethiopia – men of stature, from Saba, as Isaiah says. A month long journey by wagon if one sits on the accelerator. So the Gospel is moving out from Jerusalem, to Judea, aided by the ministry of the Hellenistic deacons chosen in chapter 6, including our Philip; into Samaria, after the stoning of Stephen; and now to the very ends of the earth. From Jews coming up to Jerusalem at Pentecost, to Jewish citizens in the capital, to Greek-speaking Jews in Judea, to Samaritans, to God-fearers and proselytes, and at last to the Gentiles -- as the same Isaiah had promised in fulfillment of the oath sworn to Abraham, in whom all the families of the earth were to find blessing. 

We need to stay with the details of this rich account in order to catch all the significance of what is being related. Candace is a title and not a proper name. Like Caesar or Pharaoh. The region over which she is queen or queen mother is renowned for minerals and mining riches. Our unnamed official is in charge of her entire treasury. The trip is not an easy one, so he must be sufficiently high-up to be given the months-long time away. We should imagine a sturdy covered vehicle with a driver, a Winebago for its day. Scrolls are very expensive and he has his own private one, from which he reads aloud. He is either a proselyte or a God fearer, who has come to the court of the Gentiles during Pentecost. He is likely literally a eunuch, though the term can be transferred to mean simply court official. If a eunuch he cannot participate fully in the rites of Judaism in accordance with Levitical Law, which would make him a God fearer. That would make his plea to be baptized and incorporated into Jesus Christ all the more urgent and poignant, overcoming his physical impairment. Isaiah chapter 56, just after the passage he is reading, promises just this for the eunuchs and outcasts who fear the Lord and seek to do his commandments. So we have before us someone like the powerful Syrian Namaan, with his high office and grand chariot, but who is on the margins in deep ways all the same, plagued in his case by leprosy until healed by Elisha. Emblematic of the inroads the Gospel is making to the ends of the earth.

People read aloud in antiquity (Ambrose noted the curiosity of someone reading whose lips did not move, that is, to himself). Philip has been dispatched from his very successful ministry in Samaria and whisked off to the road which literally goes down from the heights of Jerusalem to Gaza, and which is literally a desert way where water is scarce. When we see him again in Caesarea it is in a meeting with Paul in chapter 21 later in Acts. His divine appointment appears in the form of a black official, riding in a limosinz, reading aloud from Isaiah, with him running alongside before invited to take a seat. The passage from Isaiah is the one we know from the Greek version of 53:7-8. The suffering servant who bears the sins of others though marred in appearance and treated ignominiously. The question he asks is not an unusual one, as the passage speaks of someone’s suffering and death and not with obvious reference to the prophet Isaiah himself. The passage is a source of longstanding discussion in the sources of the period and also later – the suffering Israel, Hezekiah, Jeremiah, Jewish Israel in persecution in the Middle Ages, and even an unknown prophetic figure in historical Israel’s day. Philip takes this as his point of departure for proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ.

Why this passage – because it is so pregnant, because it speaks of a generation and so points to his un-generative affliction? Coming from Jerusalem had he heard of Jesus the crucified one now being proclaimed, and so was searching his scriptures with the kind of probing mind Luke and John and others commend, by the Lord’s own practice and command? Baptism is an initiatory rite and it may have been familiar, but in this case Philip knows just what kind of baptism is being called for and he complies, getting into the act himself as we read.

Now let’s overlay the psalm. Our unnamed convert goes on his way rejoicing! A new day has broken in on him. His praise is indeed in the great assembly of the church, now stretching to his destination 1600 miles away. His descendants are those who hear the Gospel because of him. “They shall be known as the Lord’s forever.” “All the ends of the earth shall turn to the Lord.” The true King he knows to be the Lord who has suffered and born the sins of many, and “he rules over nations.” And the report of him from Isaiah, from Philip, from the Spirit’s commendation of Christ through scripture and the word of interpretation “will be known to a people yet unborn” as the Gospel sounds forth from Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria into all the corners of the world.

Moving to the Epistle and Gospel reading, which are closely associated, the striking thing about the portion from 1 John is the emphasis on love. Not love as we mean it today—a sentiment rising up in our hearts, thought to validate this or, in its absence, disqualify that. Love is from God. God is love. Love is defined as the giving of the son by God. Love takes up where the love of God is made known first. We love because God first loved us. It is because God so loved us that love is now there to be shown by us in turn. This it is all because we find our abiding place in God, by confessing Jesus is his very Son, itself a gift of the Holy Spirit.

And of course the verb “remain” or “abide” or “lodge/stay” is the theme word of John’s Gospel, literally at beginning and at the end. The beloved disciple and Andrew remain with Jesus upon first meeting him in chapter 1.

They said, “Rabbi” (which means “Teacher”), “where are you staying?”

39 “Come,” he replied, “and you will see.” So they went and saw where he was staying, and they spent that day with him.

The beloved disciple remained alone at the cross. Remained and contemplated at the mouth of the tomb and so came to believe. His remaining after Jesus’ word to Peter that he would die by crucifixion disturbed Peter—did he mean he would not die before Jesus returned--as the very final verses of the Gospel relate it. Remaining is the signature bearing of the beloved disciple, seemingly beyond death itself. “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? Follow me.”

The disciples of Jesus are to remain in him, stay in him, abide in him in the same way branches are organic extensions of the vine. For that is how Jesus is organically connected in love to God the Father. As he bore fruit in dying and bringing new life, so we are to do the same. Our pruning, while at times painful, is just what allows us to bear more fruit. It is the indication that we abide in him and so are and continue to become his disciples.

 

Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 9th, 2021

We’ve come to the penultimate Sunday of the Easter season, the sixth Sunday, the week in which Ascension falls. Forty days after the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Next Sunday is the final Sunday before Pentecost. Our lessons come from, as usual, the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 10 this week, the final section of the story of Cornelius’ conversion. First John the final chapter, and the Gospel of John, from the farewell discourses of Jesus, the fifteenth chapter. And Psalm 98.

As we have been observing, the Acts of the Apostles shows the Holy Spirit moving resolutely, mysteriously, and in ever-widening circles. Beginning with the circle of Jews coming up for Pentecost upon whom the spirit falls, who then return to their homes across the entire known world of the day. And as the narrative line of Acts unfolds, from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria, then to a lone black high-official headed back to Sudan to tell of Jesus Christ, newly baptized, rejoicing as he goes. A God-fearer become Christian.

Today it is Cornelius’s turn. We know a good deal about the specifics of his religious life. So let’s rehearse these as Acts provides them en route to today’s reading. Like the Ethiopian eunuch, Cornelius too is a God fearer. And a high official, a centurion in the Italian Cohort: “a devout man who feared God with all his household, gave alms liberally to the people, and prayed constantly to God.” And we learn, his prayers and his benevolence are noted by the One God of Israel to whom he prays, rising up in memorial. He is to go find Peter, which he does with his servants and a devout soldier. They set out for Joppa from Caesarea.

Next it is Peter in prayer, on the following day, and he receives a vision that perplexes him. Pondering it, the contingent from Cornelius arrives and beckons Peter to come and visit, as they describe him “Cornelius, a centurion, an upright and God-fearing man, who is well spoken of by the whole Jewish nation.” The spirit tells Peter to go and he does. Upon arrival Cornelius kneels before him and does obeisance.  Peter’s vision has prepared him to enter and he bids Cornelius rise, who promptly tells of his own coordinated vision the day before. In less than a 100 words Peter responds with the story of Jesus, for opening his mouth he says, “in every nation anyone who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to him.” The spirit falls on all who hear his report and now we learn there are Jewish believers who have accompanied Peter. It is their turn to be amazed. The same Holy Spirit manifesting himself just as he did with the Jewish Christians prompts Peter to baptize Cornelius and all on whom the spirit fell.

So it is that a devout God fearer, pious almsgiver, well-spoken of by the whole Jewish nation becomes the first Gentile convert, following the man from Cush. This time there are witnesses present, bowled over by the Holy Spirit’s claim on all who hear Peter’s testimony, and Cornelius is not headed off to a distant land but is based in Caesarea itself. He is no garden variety Gentile any more than the official reading Isaiah in his chariot, but he paves the way for just that development as we read on in the coming chapters of Acts. The Council of Jerusalem evaluates what this development, long prophesied, will mean practically-speaking for the Jewish Christians.      

It is striking to hear the portion from the last chapter of First John selected for today. “Everyone who believes Jesus is the Christ is born of God.” Cornelius, those who heard Peter’s report, upon whom the spirit fell, the Ethiopian eunuch, and all those whose numbers are building as the Spirit moves forth from the Jewish Pentecost gathering in chapter one through Samaria and to the ends of the earth, with Paul finally in Rome itself as Luke’s two-part story ends. The life of faithful obedience testified to in Cornelius is front and center in Acts account: “a devout man who feared God with all his household, gave alms liberally to the people, and prayed constantly to God.” As Peter opened his preaching he made it clear “in every nation anyone who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to him.”

First John speaks of the Christian as one who does what Christ commands, whose commands are not burdensome, but belong to a different sphere of life than the commandments of centurions or queens of Cush of this world.

By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For the love of God is this, that we obey his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome, for whatever is born of God conquers the world.

He who believes Jesus is the Christ has overcome the world – much as John chapter 16 put it as well. They are new men and women rejoicing on their way, filled with the Holy Spirit.

This same Jesus Christ fulfilled all righteousness by submitting to the baptism of John. He came by water, in obedience to the commandment of God, and conquered the world. Not by water alone, but by water and the blood that gained his victory and ours. Interpreters through the ages have seen here the sacraments of baptism and eucharist in the church, which is an obvious extensional sense. But the ground meaning is found in the literal beginning (water) and end (blood) of Jesus coming—he came by water and by blood—to save the world. In John’s Gospel the beloved disciple saw blood and water pouring forth from the wounded side at Jesus’ death and proclaimed in this a great significance: the blood which saves and the water of the Spirit’s release, rising up within him to eternal life, as Jesus had promised the Samaritan woman at the well. The order is different as is the emphasis in First John, “not water only, but water and blood” -- still one can see why patristic interpreters wanted to link the sacramental to the literal sense. First John itself goes on to speak in the verse that follows our Epistle portion of the three together: water, blood and spirit. Baptism, death, and Holy Spirit, grounded in and flowing from Christ’s earthly obedience.  

He writes: And the Spirit is the witness, because the Spirit is the truth. There are three witnesses, the Spirit, the water, and the blood; and these three agree.

We have strange and confusing commands issued in Acts, to Philip last week, to Cornelius this week, and to Peter as well. All are obedient and from this obedience flows new life and ever widening fellowship in Christ. Peter commands that water be brought and baptisms follow, in the crowning moment of obedience to the heavenly command. His faith in the heavenly vision overcomes the world, just as the prophets has promised long ago, and the Holy Spirit enters in majesty and renewal. “I have said these things that my joy might be in you and that your joy may be complete,” Jesus says in our Gospel, from the 15th chapter of John.

The faith that overcomes the world shows a world where commandments and joy are able to kiss one another as do truth and mercy in the psalms. In today's psalm it is hard to keep up with the joy and singing and clapping, trumpeting, shouting, noise making, ringing out, harping and rejoicing, as nature breaks forth to respond to the spread of the Gospel to the ends of the earth. A new song befitting the Holy Spirit’s renewing and new-world making work.

And all of this springs forth because the Lord Jesus has laid down his life for his friends. There is no greater love this. And therefore because he obeyed the command of his father, so he commands us: You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I have appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, as we see witnessed in the Ethiopian, in Peter, in Cornelius, and all those in the widening circles of his flock, and those of another flock, he is bringing step by step, by the Spirit’s work, into the kingdom he has come to give us.

 

Seventh Sunday of Easter, May 16th, 2021

We arrive this Sunday at the last set of readings before Pentecost, those chosen for the final, 7th Sunday of the Easter season. In each of the three different lectionary years, portions of John 17 are read on this final Sunday, from what is called Jesus’ High Priestly prayer, as the Gospel reading. A final portion from 1 John is the Epistle and the first psalm is chosen for complementing the other readings.

We have been noting the movement through selections of Acts in the Easter season, and today we reverse direction and find ourselves right at the start in chapter 1. Anticipating Pentecost. In the verse that precedes our reading we are given a precise listing of the apostles who remain praying in Jerusalem, after the ascension, together with Mary and the male relatives of the Lord. Counting, we see of course that eleven is now their number.

Our reading picks up at this point with the decision to elect a replacement for Judas. The point is being made—both in this portion of Acts and in the Gospel reading—that Jesus had chosen twelve and lost not one of them. Jesus underscores this at several points in John’s Gospel. Judas was allotted a place with the others, as Peter stresses, and Jesus did not lose him – he forfeited his place. So that place is to be filled with one who like them all had accompanied him right from the beginning.

This is made even clearer in the psalms Peter refers to, and if the verses were not left out (Acts 1:18-20), we would see the clear references to two psalms – 69 and 109.

For it is written in the book of Psalms,

‘Let his habitation become desolate, and let there be no one to live in it’;

and

‘His office let another take.

Judas had a place, an office. He gave it up by his own choice. So it will be filled with another, and the special number 12—like the twelve tribes of Israel—is to be preserved.

Here is one of the places where the lectionary has decided to omit verses from a reading, presumably because they are too harsh in tone, in this instance. And instead of using these one of these two psalms referred to by Peter as fulfilled scripture as our reading for today, we have instead the opening psalm of the Psalter, Psalm 1. The psalms quoted in the missing verses, Psalms 69 and 109, have traditionally been referred to as two of the imprecatory psalms, in which God is called upon to bring down curses upon the wicked and end their assaults against the righteous.

Both John and Acts seek to make it clear that the threat from Judas and his ultimate fate were fully in God’s hands. What happened to him was consistent with the scriptures. The righteous come under severe assault in this life, are betrayed, are physically attacked, and are mocked for their faith in God. The psalms in particular testify to this, and they give space for the righteous sufferer to speak forth to God a cry for vindication and restoration and to put the betrayer and the evil in God’s capable hands. Judas was not a mistake. He was one of the twelve who God chose alongside all the others. He is never described in any way but as fully one of the twelve, like unto them in being chosen by God. As we heard from John’s Gospel last week, “You did not choose me, but I chose you.” None of the others are morally superior, and all fled Jesus and denied him in various ways; they were not chosen as moral exemplars but as those capable of testifying to Jesus on account of their presence with him from the very beginning. So the allotment given to Judas, which he surrendered, is given to another, who like the 11 were always present with him. As two are capable of fulfilling this role, they pray and put the matter in God’s hands. The lots are not a means of picking Matthias and rejecting the other, but only of confirming the choice God has made in response to their prayers. As the righteous sufferer puts the fate of the wicked in God’s hands, so the apostles put the righteous replacement to be alongside the 11 in God’s hands as well.

On the face of it, it is clear that hearing psalms of imprecation in church requires significant and profound understanding of just what is going on. Very few of us suffer for our faith in the ways being described in the psalms, and rare among us are those who can claim to experience what the psalmist describes.

20 Insults have broken my heart, so that I am in despair. I looked for pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none. 21 They gave me poison for food, and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.

2] For wicked and deceitful mouths are opened against me, speaking against me with lying tongues. [3] They beset me with words of hate, and attack me without cause. [4] In return for my love they accuse me, even as I make prayer for them. [5] So they reward me evil for good, and hatred for my love.

But the savior of the world did experience just these, and in consummate fashion. He is no stranger to what is being described. Our hopes are placed in him, not in a calculus of righteous pay-back as we reflect from afar on the propriety of the cries of the afflicted, which are cries for God’s sake. For a righteousness that has a face, the face of Jesus Christ dying, forgiving and rising again. The place given to Judas he forfeited, and it is not for us to plumb fully how God means eternally to deal with that. But his place as an apostle in this life is given to another, not marked as a tragic void. The scriptures are fulfilled. No balance scales in the sky are brought into comfortable alliance but instead the plans of Jesus for his witnessers in this life are made complete in spite of all attacks on him and on those he is keeping in his name.

Though Psalm 1 may appear to be a more anodyne, less blunt account of what God’s character as just means in confrontation with the conduct and plans of men and women in this life, it is fully consistent with the main contours of both psalms 69 and 109. In the mystery of his sovereign will, the wicked heart delights not in the law of God, the night and day calling to him, the planting of us in his very heart and name, but in shunning these is left to blow away like chaff on the wind. We might hope that that be so for all those parts of us that walk, linger and sit down where God’s name is absent. Were it not for God’s protecting of us in the name, the work undertaken by Jesus himself, the only righteous one, we would have no place to stand.

The Gospel for the day drives that home. Jesus protects us in the name that is God’s personal name, the LORD, “I am who I am,” and as such, we are guarded and kept fully in God himself and at the heart of all he is as righteous and holy. That constitutes our planting in streams of water, the hope of our prospering, as Psalm 1 puts it, and our bearing fruit, as Jesus the True Vine put it last week. Those who do not believe in God are in forfeiture, as 1 John puts it, because not believing in his testimony is absenting the self from the eternal things of God.

While the psalms referred to by Peter may be harsh in tone and may be difficult to have placed on lips which do not know extreme suffering and affliction as Christians, this makes their message no less true. They also warn us by testifying to a fate of being cast away when we lose our place of planting and flourishing in Christ. He has come to protect us in the name God has given him. He does not leave us defenseless but as his final act of love before laying down his life for his own sheep, prays to God and brings us fully within earshot, alongside the gathered apostles. We are like Matthias given a place to stand alongside them, and to receive his promises to protect us in God’s very name.

I will end with the last lines of our Easter Epistle reading:

And this is the testimony: God gave us eternal life, and this is life in his name. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.

 

 

Day of Pentecost, May 23rd, 2021

For every year of the three year lectionary readings for the Day of Pentecost, the Gospel is taken from John, and those sections in chapters 14-16 dealing with the Holy Spirit. The Paraclete, Comforter, Counselor, Advocate, sent by the Father in the Son’s name, who will be present with them as he has been present thus far, but more so. They are not therefore to be sorrowful, now and as they witness his coming death and departure, because his going to the Father means simultaneously his sending of the Holy Spirit, to comfort them and confirm in them his active life. To send them forth in the resurrection power of forgiveness in his name, as we read at the end of John’s Gospel. Or in the language used here, to convict the world which does not know him but can come to know him as they do, through their testimony to all he has done, since they have been with him from the beginning, in accordance with the work of the Holy Spirit.
The other consistent reading is of course the signal account in Acts of the Holy Spirit’s descent on the twelve, those with him from the beginning, including now Matthias, on the day of Pentecost. As noted, Pentecost is the Greek name used by Jews for the Hebrew Shavuoth, the Feast of Weeks, which at the time of Jesus had become a festival commemorating the giving of the Torah, 7 times 7 days, or weeks, plus one, or Pentecost, 50 days, after Passover. It was a great pilgrimage festival. We can well imagine the Ethiopian official there, as one of the proselytes or God-fearers mentioned in our list today, alongside the Jewish inhabitants of all the regions circling the Mediterranean and beyond, each with their own native languages and mother tongues. The dynamic of Acts, its narrative inner nerve, is unleashed, as promised by Jesus before his ascension. Do not depart from Jerusalem. Wait for the promise of the Father. Before many days you will be baptized by the Holy Spirit, and by this power the witnessing will ensue, in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

The other consistent reading, for all three years, is the psalm chosen for the day, 11 verses from Psalm 104. The creating and sustaining and renewing power of God consists of his wisdom, his word, which creates and sustains every single thing in creation he has made. O Lord, how manifold are your works, in wisdom you have made them all. To withdraw this wisdom means a hiding of God’s face. “You send forth your Spirit,” by contrast, “and so you renew the face of the earth.” What the world does not know of the Father and the Son, in the language of John’s Gospel, is a distorting, obscuring, of God’s will in creating and renewing the whole face of the earth, down into the depths of the seas, where that rogue Leviathan lives, who cannot thwart God in spite of his power and seeming independence. God made him for sport, and for his own sheer enjoyment.

We have the option of returning to Old Testament readings on Pentecost Sunday, chosen from Numbers 11 – the marvelous story of the spirit falling on Eldad and Mehdad outside the camp (Year A), Ezekiel’s spirit renewing, death defying in the Valley of bones, (year B), and Genesis 11, the creation of a single language by all nations so as to construct a tower into heaven, rather than looking to, counting on the rainbow placed there to guarantee shalom in a language divided world of God’s good creating. The division into nations, languages and tongues such as we read in the preceding chapter 10, is a good thing, a part of God’s wisdom creating design. Seeking by human technology or craft to rise above it misunderstands how God means to connect us and communicate with us, in the calling of Abraham and the sending of the son, and the blessing of the Holy Spirit. The Tower Story forms the obvious backdrop to our language-divided-but-fully-enlivened-in-that- state-of-affairs work of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. We all hear in our own languages and tongues and national identities the mighty works of God.
It takes a bit of imagination to understand the account as Luke relates it in Acts 2. The 12 are obediently waiting and occupying themselves in the Upper Room prayer and fellowship “in one place” place. The wisdom obedient creation begins churning as the heavens release the mighty wind as at creation itself. As a wildfire noisily releases sparks and flames of fire into the atmosphere, in the shape of tongues, so the Holy Spirit descends and in this distributing form lands on the heads of each one of the twelve. Here we find the source of the otherwise strange haberdashery, the Bishop’s miter: a flame or tongue shaped hat sitting atop the head. Corresponding to this tongue-shaped crown are real tongues or languages, called forth at the Holy Spirit’s bidding, and spoken forth by the twelve so endowed. This odd manifestation is not for its own sake but comes as an act of clear and life-changing communication.
By whatever common language we might expect the pilgrims from all these various regions to speak with one another at the feast, as they went about their common affairs, they had deep inside themselves a mother tongue, the language of their own day-to-day living and loving and toiling and praying. And the amazing feat to which they are treated is hearing the mighty works of God in the language most deeply identifying of who they are. All at the same time and in the same place, not an esperanza language tower they construct to go up, but a loving and life changing language of God come down into their deepest place of communication. A marker as well, as we saw last week in the house of Cornelius, of a unifying work of God, reaching out beyond the differences within the Jewish communities with their different tongues and homes, into the entire world of national, often hostile, pilgrimage-less divisions. They were unified in their pilgrimage worship and hope and now the unity and power of the Holy Spirit spills like wildfire into their lives and futures.

Paul speaks of the work of the Holy Spirit coming to address the groaning and longing of the creation, in labor pains to become all God would have in his fullest wisdom-driven renewing work. Full adoption, full redemption of our bodies, belongs to the world of sure and certain hoping. In that time of our earthly life the Spirit helps us, giving us the words necessary below our words, in the arena of our present sighing and longing, as God searches us out and as the Spirit intercedes for us in his name.

When John speaks of leading into all truth and of those things that are appropriate for our Christian walk after he has departed, he has in view just this kind of scenario. The Spirit interceding and helping as we await the redemption of our bodies. We can also think of the language we find in Acts, when the Holy Spirit goes about the work of bringing in the other sheep, the gentiles and God-fearers of his blessing, the sheep of another flock beyond the pilgrimage makers at Pentecost. “Then I remembered the word of the Lord,” Peter will say of the spirit’s guiding into truth in his decision to baptize Cornelius and his house, as he explains it in chapter 11. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how Jesus had said, John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. In the language of Jesus in John’s Gospel for today. The Spirit takes what is mine and he declares it to you.