4th Sunday in Lent — March 14, 2010 February 28, 2010
Posted by robert_creech in : Lent, Year C , comments closedJoshua 5:9-12
Eventually things have to change. A child leaves home to go to school. A young man and woman marry and begin a home of their own. Families move from one city to another. Nests become empty. People retire and walk away from long, fulfilling careers or, perhaps, from tedious jobs. Each of these transitions may be a time of scrambled feelings — joy and sorrow, celebration and grief, pride and worry, anticipation and fear. But in these times of transition God’s presence may be experienced. He who provided for his people in the past may be trusted to walk with them through the door that leads to the future.
When Israel camped at Gilgal, they were walking through the door the LORD was holding open. They would transition from a generation of nomadic life to one of war and conquest, and ultimately to one of a settled existence in the land God had promised to Abraham. They marked that passage appropriately by celebrating the passover, the memory of their last major transition. Deliverance from the angel of death and delivery through the sea had segued Israel from Pharaohs’ slaves to Yahweh’s people. The event had taken them from life as a settled, but oppressed people to life as a free, but wandering one. So they celebrated the reality that God who had taken them through one stage of their journey would be with them as the moved now in to the next. They savored their last bite of manna. The future would taste more like milk and honey.
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
Sometimes the changes we face are more internal than external. These transitions come along with struggles and birth pangs all their own. Commitment of life to follow Jesus brings about such changes. So much of what we have thought, known, and valued is relinquished as we learn to live the life we are given as Jesus would live it if he were us. On our own we are scarcely capable of such changes. But God has promised to do a work of new creation in us when we say “yes” to him. Old things — guilt, practices, behaviors, patterns of thinking — pass away. God creates new things in us. The blandness of forty years of manna yields to milk and honey. The new land we enter has flavors and textures all its own. The reality of living reconciled to our Father rather than estranged from him, means that all the fare of his table is ours as well. We taste and see that the LORD is good and long for more. The sin of our past is exchanged for a righteousness that extends into an unending future.
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
A steady diet of food fit for a pig, brings the young son of a wealthy man to his senses. Being “free” was not all it was cracked up to be. In fact, his freedom had come to feel a lot more like slavery. And as he reflected he recognized that the bonds of the relationship with his father he had sought to escape were not such horrible bonds at all. The problem was that he had so alienated himself from home. Nevertheless, he developed a plan, wrote a speech, and marched home, prepared to offer himself to those bonds again. Before he could deliver the speech, however, he had to cross a deep and powerful river of grace. As it turned out, he was unable to do so. Grace flooded his life. Paternal arms embraced him, and the only bonds he received came in the form of rings, robes, and sandals. Then there was the feast that followed. No longer would he be eating the food from the wilderness he had wandered in. He would now dine at his father’s table in the land of promise. Too bad about the older brother, who was living in the same land, but still snacking on wilderness manna.
Prayer
Almighty God, you delivered Israel from Pharaoh and through the wilderness, bringing them fully into your purposes with your good provisions. Help us, now, to fully make the transition into the life you have for us as we walk through this Lenten season. Teach us to celebrate our reconciliation with you and help us acquire a taste for all that you have for us. Be with those of us who are walking through changes in our lives during these days, whether internal or external, and provide for our needs. Amen
3rd Sunday in Lent — March 7, 2010 February 22, 2010
Posted by robert_creech in : Lent , comments closedIsaiah 55:1-9
God’s invitation to his people overflows with grace. He summons us to seek him while there is opportunity, while he may be found. The LORD is near, so call on him! The prophet assures us that there is in God something that corresponds to the deepest longing of our hearts, as water corresponds to thirst or food to hunger. In order to partake of that provision we abandon all efforts to satisfy those thirsts and hungers on our own. We cease spending our money on that which does not feed our soul. We stop giving our labor to that which does not satisfy. We forsake our crooked ways and surrender our evil thoughts and turn to the LORD. His ways are not like our ways. His thoughts are not like our thoughts. No comparison is even possible. He invites us to leave our ineffectual human efforts to satisfy our hearts behind and to come to the LORD, to sit at his table, and to leave deeply satisfied.
Repentance looks like leaving behind that which only insanity would urge us to hold on to – a sack lunch of sawdust, a cup full of salt water. Repentance looks like coming to the LORD’s table, dining on the richest of fare, and finding life for our soul. Repentance looks like abandoning those thoughts and practices that lead us in destructive ways and deceive us with selfishly distorted perspectives. Repentance looks like adopting the ways and thoughts that have their origins in the merciful God.
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
The lessons of the wilderness included a few about eating and drinking. God provided for his people both manna and water in the desert that would have claimed their lives. Paul calls the provision “spiritual drink” and “spiritual food.” But those spiritual ancestors of ours turned away from God’s gifts and cried out for something else. Consequently the bodies and bones of those idolaters littered the wilderness. The Apostles reminds us that their story is a warning. We must learn from them not to set our hearts on idols, the food and drink that does not (because it cannot) satisfy the human heart. Like the prophet Isaiah, Paul urges us to receive our spiritual sustenance from God alone. He warns us, too, that the wilderness in which we live is filled with temptations to choose an idol of one sort or another over Christ. Although we should learn from our ancestors, we must not stand in judgment over them, because we are susceptible to the same sin. Only by looking for God’s way out can we hope to survive when we ourselves are tempted to depend on something other than God to sustain us.
Repentance looks like surrendering our own appetites and demands and learning to draw life from the Rock, Jesus Christ, who follows us through the desert to quench our thirsts. Repentance looks like refusing to judge others, knowing that we also stand on a narrow ledge and could easily fall as well.
Luke 13:1-9
Passing judgment on others rather than taking responsibility for our own lives is a favorite posture for Christians. We find it so much easier to look though another’s windows rather into our own mirror. When we see the axe of justice fall where we think it belongs, we feel a sense of self-righteousness and self-satisfaction. Jesus warns that we have no business judging others and their standing before God. We ourselves must learn to repent lest we perish. We are in a dangerous place who think we stand on our own righteousness. We must attend to our own tendency to drink from broken cisterns rather than to quench our soul thirst at the fountain of living waters. We must recognize our own inclination to spend our money on that which is not bread and to expend our labors on those things that bring no soul satisfaction.
Repentance looks like taking responsibility for our own behavior. Repentance looks like responding to God’s mercy and grace that extend to us in patience another day, another week, another month, or another year to respond faithfully. Repentance recognizes that the opportunity does not remain open indefinitely. Repentance knows the urgency of responding now.
Prayer
Almighty God, you created us with a hunger and a thirst for something that cannot be found in all of creation, as lovely and rich as it is. Help us to recognize the folly of our attempts to drink from the broken cisterns we have dug ourselves, and to turn to you to slake the thirst of our sin-parched souls with your mercy and your presence. Amen.
2nd Sunday of Lent — February 28, 2010 February 15, 2010
Posted by robert_creech in : Lent, Year C , comments closedGenesis 15:1-12, 17-18
Abraham struggled with living in the tension between promise and fulfillment. He was promised a son, but had only an adopted servant. He was promised a land, but was still living as a “wandering Aramaen.” He took his complaint to the LORD: When will I get what I am promised?
The LORD’s response is clear (although Abraham will still have difficulty with the fine print). God affirms that Abraham will have a child, one of his very own issue (v. 4). Abraham will require another conversation before he is clear that the child’s mother will be Sarah, not Hagar. God pointed him to the heavens and assured him that his descendants would one day be as numerous as the stars in that clear, dark Palestinian sky. Abraham believed that and God took that faith as a righteous act.
The real estate question was difficult as well. Abraham would not live to see the promise fulfilled. It would be those starry descendants who, four hundred years later, would eventually take the promise to the bank and cash it in. Abraham would have to live in the land as a wanderer, carrying a promissory note in his pocket that he could not yet redeem.
Abraham was called to live a life of hope that looked forward to a future. He became a seeker after what the writer of Hebrews would later call a city whose architect and builder is God (11:10). This is the life braved in the faith-filled, sometimes doubt-ridden, tension between promise and fulfillment. It is the time between Easter and Good Friday. It is the wilderness between Egypt and Canaan. It is the life we are called to as well.
Philippians 3:17-4:1
Paul saw the value of a good example. In this life as apprentices of Jesus Christ we are blessed to be among some who live it very well. They demonstrate the life of faith and hope, living in this world at this time, but responding more and more to a kingdom not of this world. Others, however, exhibit the exact opposite – a life dedicated to this present world and its values. They are blind to the kingdom. They are deaf to the call of the age to come. They give themselves to this world and what it offers. They are the enemies of the cross that Christ charged his followers to bear. But they pursue a life that is destined to end. Nothing in their desires is eternal.
On the other hand, Jesus’ followers are invited, like Father Abraham, to pursue a different kind of kingdom, one whose builder and maker is God. Our citizenship is ultimately in the heavenly realm. We are citizens of the kingdom of the heavens. It is not fully visible yet, but we await Jesus’ coming. The light and glory of that kingdom, when it appears, will drive away the darkness of the present one. We ourselves will be transformed. So we must choose to be firm and steadfast as we live in the tension between promise and fulfillment, the Cross and the Empty Tomb, the First and the Second Advent.
Luke 13:31-35
Jesus lived in the same tension. The political powers-that-be did not frighten him. They could threaten his death, but neither Herod the Great nor his vixen son, Antipas, could bring it about. Jesus’ faith assured him that in this in-between-time he was in his Father’s hands. Kingdom work remained to be done. He would to that work “today and tomorrow.” On the day after that, Jesus’ work would indeed include a destination in Jerusalem where he would be rejected and murdered – but not by Herod. The kingdom work would not end on Good Friday, however. It would be followed by Easter Sunday. And Pentecost. And Parousia.
If we want to learn to live in the tension between God’s promises and their fulfillment, we could do worse than to attend to Father Abraham, Brother Paul, and the Lord Jesus himself. To choose despair in such times is to sin against the God of Exodus and the Empty Tomb. To presume and take things into our own hands, like Abraham or like the Zealots, is to sin against the God of Providence. Both despair and presumption, Jurgen Moltmann reminds us, are sins against hope.
In the wilderness of Lent, we stand in just that place of tension. We live between the poles of promise and fulfillment, preparing ourselves for the cross. We face the suffering that is life in this world and we are tempted to forget the promises of God that offer us a future not made with human hands. We struggle to accept the cup and drink it, knowing that there is yet more for us beyond its bitterness. But hope calls us to God’s future.
Prayer
Almighty God, you encouraged Abraham to continue walking the path of faith and hope, holding on to your promises, and you regarded his trusting you as a righteous act. Help us to follow the examples of those who, clinging to your promises, have made their way through the wilderness and into the future you create. Amen.
1st Sunday in Lent — February 21, 2010 February 8, 2010
Posted by robert_creech in : Lent, Year C , comments closedDeuteronomy 26:1-11
Allowing our stories to intersect with the story of God is the essence of Christian life. Ancient Israelites came to worship bearing offerings of fruit and grain they gathered from the land that had become theirs. As they made their offering they were instructed to confess their faith, which, in their case, meant telling the story of what God had done in the lives of their ancestors and what he was doing in their own lives. They reached back to the time of Abraham and confessed that he was their ancestor, that he was a wandering Aramean, and that God had blessed him. They admitted that they were descendents of a slave people in Egypt. They told the story of their crying out to God in that affliction and seeing his mighty hand and outstretched arm deliver them all. The remembered the signs and wonders that God had performed as he set them free. They rehearsed how he had brought them through the wilderness to this rich land and, then, to bring the story right up to date, how he had provided this season’s harvest. And there in their hands was the evidence, which was now an offering of gratitude.
One thing was clear to these ancient worshipers as they held grain and fruit in their hands. Their story did not begin with the planting of this year’s crop. This basket of fruit had a long history to it. It was part of God’s story he is writing in history. Their own lives were part of that story as well.
Romans 10:8b-13
Christian life involves that same kind of intersection between our stories and God’s. The confession we make is similar: “I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again.” It is not so much a confession of doctrine, for none of the key teachings of Christian theology are unpacked in that affirmation. It is the confession of a narrative. By saying “I believe” we are affirming that our story intersects this amazing story of God’s signs and wonders unleashed in Jesus to rescue us from slavery. Jew or Greek, it does not matter. Like our Hebrew ancestors, we cried out in our affliction, called on the name of the Lord, and he rescued us with his mighty hand and his outstretched arm. And, as Paul makes clear in his allusion to Deuteronomy 30:11-14, this confession is not something we strive for. God has brought this story to us in Christ.
Luke 4:1-13
Jesus entered into the wilderness for forty days to face off with the Evil One. One way of reading this story is to notice the ways in which Jesus sees his own life intersecting with the story of what God is doing in the world. As Luke tells the story (inserting Jesus’ genealogy between the accounts of Jesus’ baptism and temptation – a genealogy that traces Jesus’ ancestry back to Adam “who was the son of God”), it is the story of the Second Adam, entering a desert wilderness rather than a garden paradise, facing Satan on his own turf. Unlike his predecessor, Jesus emerges victorious, choosing obedience to the Father over his own will. Jesus engages the specific temptations offered here (the temptations to be relevant, to be spectacular, to be powerful – see Nouwen’s In the Name of Jesus) with quotations from the book of Deuteronomy. It is as if Jesus is confessing his faith, intersecting his life with the story of God that has been unfolding these many millennia. He identifies with Israel in the wilderness, who failed to value God’s Word as more important than bread, who bowed and worshipped a golden calf rather than remain faithful to the LORD, who cried out for more signs and wonders to reinforce their belief. Jesus rewrites both the story of Adam and Eve, creating a new chapter in humanity’s story, and of Israel, creating a new chapter in the story of the people of God.
As we enter our forty day period of Lent, we might well spend it reflecting on the ways in which our obedience to God allows our lives to intersect with his story. We might consider how our confession of faith in Jesus who died and rose again is a way of opening our lives to participation in what God is doing and has been doing in his world.
Prayer
Almighty God, you called Abraham and blessed him and redeemed your people Israel from Egyptian bondage by parting the seas. You led them through the wilderness and brought them to the land you promised. In that land and through your people you sent Jesus into our world. He was crucified, died, and was buried. You raised him on the third day. Hear us now as we confess our desire to have our stories intertwined with yours. Lead us through these forty days in such a way that we emerge more enmeshed in that beautiful narrative than ever before. Amen.
Transfiguration Sunday — February 14, 2010 January 30, 2010
Posted by robert_creech in : Epiphany, Transfiguration, Year C , comments closedExodus 34:29-35
What do you do when being with God starts to rub off on you? Apparently Moses’ encounter with God permeated his very being. The glory of the Holy One left Moses with a residual glow that the people of Israel found understandably disturbing. He possessed an undeniable physical evidence of having been with God.
Two oddities mark this story. One is that Moses’ face shone after being on the mountain with God. That is unusual. The other oddity is the detail that “Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because of his speaking with Him” (v. 29). Is that a mark of the man’s humility, his lack of self-consciousness in all of this? It is difficult to imagine contemporary religious figures refusing to use their glow to enforce their authority. Moses was unaware. As the KJV puts it, “Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone.”
The eerie light emanating from Moses’ face surely added weight to his message as he passed on the commandments he had received. Most of us would find it difficult to argue with a glowing person who had just spent forty days on the mountain in a spiritual retreat.
Moses adapted to the fears of the people of Israel. He put on a veil to contain the glow. The veil was removed in his private encounters with Yahweh, but he replaced it before speaking to Israel. This accommodation is another mark of humility. He does not use this transfiguration for his own purposes. He hides it from view. (Although the image of a masked preacher, leaking light from the edges of his veil is still a little creepy!)
The story raises the question of the ways in which religious people sometime use God to justify our own authority. We often claim to have heard from God, but lack the glow to back it up. What does being with the God of this universe in an intimate way actually do to us? How does transfiguration really look? What changes in us so that people begin to notice, whether we do or not?
2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2
Paul plays with the story in Exodus. It was not humility that covered Moses’ face. Moses, he argues, covered his face so that the people of Israel could not see the glory fade (v. 13). He did not want them to know that his shining face was not permanent.
That same veil remains in place, Paul says. The fading glory of the old covenant has not been perceived by Israel, because whenever Moses is read, a veil covers the listener’s hearts. Even as Moses removed the veil from his face when he turned to the LORD, so those who turn to the Lord (Jesus) in faith find the veil removed from their hearts. They can then see that the old covenant no longer obtains and that in Jesus a new covenant has been offered.
Now what happened to Moses happens to us. With the veil removed from our hearts, we look into the face of the Lord Jesus and the Holy Spirit does a transforming work in our lives. The work of spiritual formation occurs as a believer focuses attention on Christ and in so doing becomes more and more like him (“transformed into the same image from glory to glory,” v. 18).
It is not an unearthly glow, but a transformed life that followers of Jesus take with us as we encounter the world in ministry. Living transparently, speaking truthfully, refusing to manipulate others, we present this unveiled glory to the people we serve. Being with God can rub off on you.
Luke 9:28-36
Luke’s story of the Transfiguration, even more than that of Matthew or Mark, encourages the reader to recall Moses’ experience. Only Luke tells that Jesus went up on the mountain “to pray,” that is, to be with God. (A reader with any biblical knowledge, however, would know that if someone goes up on a mountain in a biblical story, that person is going to meet God. That’s just what happens.) Luke, who often focuses on Jesus’ life of prayer, underscores this a second time. It was “while He was praying” that Jesus’ transfiguration occurred. Being with the Father was rubbing off on Jesus, as it had on Moses.
Luke, like Matthew and Mark, attempts to describe the change that came over Jesus. His face became “different” and his clothing began to glow with a dazzling whiteness. Moses and Elijah, two experienced biblical “mountain men,” representatives of the Law and the Prophets, appeared with Jesus in a glorified form. Only Luke adds that they spoke with Jesus about his “departure” (lit. “exodus”) that he was about to face in Jerusalem.
Peter attempts to hold on to the experience for as long as possible. He suggests the celebration of the upcoming Feast of Tabernacles right there on the mountain with these spiritual figureheads. That’s when the cloud engulfed them and the Voice overwhelmed them: “This is my Son, my Chosen One; listen to him!” Jesus had been speaking to his disciples about the cross that awaited him in Jerusalem, but they were having a hard time coming to terms with a Messiah who suffered. God tells them to listen. They wanted a glorified Messiah and were blessed by a glimpse of that glory. But it was time to return to the valley and to the call of God on Jesus’ life that would take him to Golgotha before it would seat him at the right hand of the Father.
The story raises the question of what it is that ultimately rubs off on us when we commune with God. Perhaps it is not “glory,” but obedience that freely embraces the Father’s will for our lives, even if that means a cross.
Prayer
Almighty God, you infused your servant Moses with your glory until your people feared to look on him. As we learn to commune with you, infuse us with the glory of your Son, who endured the cross, despising the shame, and who is now seated at your right hand. We ask this in his Name. Amen.
Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany — February 7, 2010 January 18, 2010
Posted by robert_creech in : Epiphany, Year C , add a commentIsaiah 6:1-13
What is it about standing in the presence of God’s holiness that casts one into the tension of wanting to dissolve, on the one hand, and on the other, feeling compelled to surrender life to God’s service? It happens repeatedly in the Story. Moses stands before the flaming desert bush and hears the voice of God: “Do not come any closer!” How odd that the one who so frequently promises to be nearer than the air we breathe would warn Moses to keep his distance. Moses was in the presence of the Holy One and his holy purposes of redemption. To get too close to that fire is to be consumed by it.
So it was with Isaiah. Suddenly in the presence of the Holy One, he wanted simply to have the earth open up and swallow him. He seemed to fear that such would actually happen. His sinful eyes had seen the Holy King, the Lord of heaven’s hosts, and he was undone.
That same redemptive fire was burning, however, and coals from it touch Isaiah’s lips, cleansing them. Coals from that eternal wildfire also kindled in his heart a willingness to serve, and he volunteered: “Here I am! Send me!” And God sent him with a message of judgment and a heart strengthened for the difficult task that lay ahead.
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Paul experienced that same encounter, finding it on a long road between Jerusalem and Damascus. The Risen Messiah confronted him and he would have been glad to turn to stone in that moment. But he fell to his face before that same redemptive fire and felt its heat. He was a chosen instrument to be sent to the nations, and he would endure great difficulty in the process. But he was certain as he rose to his feet, blind as a bat, that the Messiah had come, and his name was Jesus. He had been crucified. And he was clearly risen from the dead. And since he himself was still breathing, this Messiah was making forgiveness available. As difficult as all that was to comprehend, it was true. And if was true, then it was the best news anyone had ever heard.
It was a matter of days before his eyes were opened and so was his mouth. He was preaching this good news in Damascus synagogues. Sent on a mission to bring Christians back to Jerusalem in bonds, he was capturing hearts of his fellow Jews with the gospel of the Kingdom. Like Moses and Isaiah, Paul found in the Holy Presence both grace and apostleship.
Luke 5:1-11
For Simon Peter and his friends, the fire was only gradually revealed. Its warmth was felt when Jesus requested to borrow his old fishing boat to use as a pulpit, to separate him a bit from the press of the crowd so that they didn’t push him backward into the Sea of Galilee as he taught. The heat increased as Peter continued to work on his torn nets while listening in on Jesus’ teaching about the kingdom. He was not certain about why it seemed so warm that morning.
A second request from this itinerant rabbi, a request for a fishing trip, was met with a realistic response from the fisherman. “Teacher, Andrew and I are professionals. We have fished all night and caught nothing. The moon is not in the right phase or something. The fish have gone deep. There’s nothing to be caught today. But, since you are asking, we’ll go out for a while and give it a try.”
When the net was cast over the side, it grew suddenly taut. The recently repaired net was so full of fish that it was tearing from the weight. His partners brought out their boat and the four of them carefully retrieved the catch.
What the net hauled up was not just fish. It hauled up holy fire. Peter sensed the source of the growing warmth that morning. He recognized the holiness that stood before him. Peter asked for Jesus to leave his sinful presence, but instead he was met with grace and apostleship. Like Moses. Like Isaiah. Like Paul. He was told that the redemptive fire of God wanted him for fuel. He would follow Jesus and catch people from this day forward. So they left everything and followed Jesus.
Prayer
Almighty God, whose heart burns hot with passion and compassion for us frail, human creatures in our bondage, brokenness, and sin, you have come to stand before us in your holiness. Allow us, we pray, to know both grace and apostleship, forgiveness and obedience. “Make us thy fuel, Flame of God.” Amen.
Fourth Sunday After the Epiphany — January 31, 2010 January 11, 2010
Posted by robert_creech in : Epiphany, Year C , add a commentJeremiah 1:4-10
I’m not surprised that the divine call is so often met with human reluctance. What a presumptuous thing, to assume that one is up to the task of speaking for God! Moses had a pocket full of excuses and he laid them out on the desert floor one after another: “I’m not qualified, I don’t know Who You are, I can’t speak, the Israelites won’t believe me.” When God trumped each card Moses played, he finally announced, “Please, just send someone else!” (Exod 3:1-4:17).
For Isaiah, only one obstacle stood in the way – his own sinfulness in the presence of Holy God. God dispatches that one with hot coals of mercy and forgiveness, leaving Isaiah ready to do anything God asked (Isa. 6:1-8).
Jeremiah heard the call to prophesy as well, but protested his youthfulness, his inexperience. God’s affirmed that He’d had his eye on that boy since he was conceived. He was now at a perfect age for the task before him. Turns out God needed a young man, because Jeremiah would be required to spend many decades pleading on God’s behalf to a stubborn nation.
God’s promise to these prophets, and to many other servants in both testaments, is the simple, “I will be with you.” That the Ancient of Days would be with this young man added sufficient confidence to his preaching. The message might be met by rejection, but God promised to deliver him. The message might often be one of judgment and doom (plucking up, pulling down, destroying, and overthrowing), but it would also be a message of hope (planting and building). Regardless, Jeremiah’s responsibility was faithful obedience, obedient faith: “Go to whomever I send you. Say whatever I tell you.”
Young Jeremiah could not possibly have imagined the perils and difficulties his “yes” to God that day would entail. He could not foresee the dark hours and the loneliness. But the call was clear and his excuse was answered, and he signed on for the duration.
While presumption is inappropriate when it comes to taking on a prophetic call or a divine task, reluctance is not so helpful either. Apparently the better response is trust. If God calls me to this task, then by God’s wisdom and power I can do it.
1 Cor 13:1-13
Jesus made it clear that the call on our live is essentially relational. No greater commandments exist than these two: Love God wholeheartedly and love your neighbor unselfishly. This is the very essence of human life as God intended it. It is life redeemed and restored in Christ. It really is that simple. We are called to love God and love people.
The 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians, often quoted, frequently framed, widely known, is seldom lived. These words describe behavior, not feeling. In the Western world, love is a feeling state. In this passage, love is a condition of the will. One loves not because of a feeling, but because of a great commandment. The condition of the beloved is not at issue here either. We are not called to be patient or kind with people because of who they are, but because of who we are. Is there a clearer description of spiritual maturity anywhere in Scripture?
These few sentences describe so well the life of Jesus. Love is a choice to act on behalf of the good of another person. So kindness, patience, gentleness, and all the qualities of love are the fruit of the redeemed will.
Here is the call of God to us: Pursue love! Love wholeheartedly! Love unselfishly! We hear the command and we hesitate. How presumptuous of us to think that we could love like Jesus! We protest our inadequacy before the fiery bush summoning us to a new life. God’s response is the same to us: “I will be with you. I who am love will teach you how to love. Follow me. It is not up to you. Go and love whomever I send you to. I will be with you.” Once more the best response is not presumption or reluctance, but obedient faith.
Luke 4:21-30
Jesus was one of those prophets who had heard and responded to the divine call. Without a single excuse, he had responded in faith to the call received at baptism: You are my Son, the beloved (you are the Liberating King, the Messiah – Psalm 2:7); with you I am well-pleased (you are the promised suffering servant of the Lord –Isa. 42:1).” He went to the wilderness to work out the meaning of that call and repeatedly, although tempted to do otherwise, spoke an obedient “yes” to the summons. And, like Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and others, he faced unbelieving people and their rejection knowing that the Father was with him.
If speaking as a prophet is challenging, so is listening to one. The people of Nazareth were filled with assumptions about life, assumptions that kept them from hearing the voice of the Liberating King, Jesus, when he preached in their church. They thought they knew enough theology to discern the presence of the Messiah when he arrived. They did not. They assumed they knew how God would work out his plan. They did not. They presumed that they knew blasphemy when they heard it. They did not.
All of their assumptions about God worked about as well as ours do. God is not to be presumed upon. He is the Living God, the Sovereign God, whose ways are not our ways and whose thoughts are not our thoughts. Our assumptions only serve to blind us to his reality. They are the expectations we place upon our own idolatrous (humanly constructed) view of God.
So when the Messiah actually showed up in church one day, no one was ready to recognize him. They never expected that he’d be so familiar looking. They did not foresee his arising from among the people of their own village. They did not anticipate God acting so locally. So despite Jesus’ reputation and amazing words that day, they rejected him.
They, too, were presented with a call from God to step into his dawning kingdom, to place their faith in the Liberating King. But once more, the divine call met with human presumption and excuses. As always, the better response would have been, “Yes!” Faithful obedience, obedient faithfulness is the response to the divine invitation.
Prayer
God who invites the inexperienced and unqualified, the sinful and broken, the unloving and unloveable to follow you into a Kingdom where love reigns in all things, please see past our reluctance and fear, trump our excuses with your promises, sear our inadequacies with the hot coals of your love, and assure us that you will be with us, so that we may learn to love as you commanded.
Third Sunday After the Epiphany — January 24, 2010 January 7, 2010
Posted by robert_creech in : Epiphany, Year C , add a commentNehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
I find it difficult to imagine illiteracy. I cannot fathom what it would mean to my life to be separated from words, from books, from webpages, from newspapers and magazines. I cannot conjure up how it would be to stare at meaningless symbols all of the time, wondering what mystery they hold, what useful information they contain, and what difference it might make to my life if only I understood. I have traveled to places where the language was like that. Street signs, businesses, billboards, and books were all inaccessible except for the pictures that hinted at the meaning of the words. But what if that were life all of the time?
Imagining complete separation from Holy Scripture is even more difficult. My mind and heart have been shaped by the biblical stories and wisdom in such a way that I simply cannot easily consider what it would like to no longer have access. Then what would it be like suddenly to have the floodgates open and to have the Word of God rushing through them back into life? No wonder the people wept. No wonder the Lord’s joy sustained them.
Nehemiah’s story reminds me of how much I have that I take for granted: writing these words, being able to read, having dozens of copies of the Bible available to me in such a variety of language and translation, having an education that has taken me deeper into these words and stories and their meaning. This the season of life lived in light of the Epiphany. The light has come. The Word has become flesh. The floodgates have opened. The joy of Christ is our strength.
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a
Paul’s metaphor of the body is meant to be organic, I think. He wants us to recognize how all the parts work together, how each is necessary, how none are to be despised. I get that. But I am struck by the claim that this body of which we are part is none other than Christ’s body: “Now you are Christ’s body, and individually members of it” ( v. 27, NASB). It is not simply that we are part of an organic group to which each person contributes functions and service. We are part of Christ’s body. Christ’s body, not Jesus’ body. The body of the Christ, the body of the Messiah. We, the church, are part of the messianic people of God. The Messiah has appeared in human history and we, his followers, take up his mission, each contributing our gifts and abilities humbly and obediently. All are necessary for none of us individually is the Messiah. But the Spirit works through God’s people to continue the work Jesus the Messiah began. Jesus promised we would do the works he did and even greater ones (John 14:12-13). Acts begins by reminding Theophilus of the stories in the gospel of Luke of all that “Jesus began to do and teach” (Acts 1:1), implying perhaps that this volume will be reporting what the Messiah continues to do and teach through his body, the Church. Perhaps when we live in community and love, share our gifts, and engage his mission, we participate in the Epiphany in ways we have not recognized.
Luke 4:14-21
Luke’s story brings the two other passages to focus. The people of Nazareth ought to have been as joy-full as were those in Nehemiah’s congregation. They were hearing the most significant passages of Holy Scripture fulfilled in their presence (Isaiah 61:1-2). The Messiah himself was in their midst, reading the word of God and explaining it. The passage he read and explained outlined the agenda of his mission: a Spirit-anointed proclamation of the Kingdom of God that will result in liberty, sight, justice, and hope. This is the mission that continues through his people, the church, the body of the Messiah.
Prayer
Lord, you graciously appeared in our world to set things right and have called us to be your people. Keep our hearts thirsting for justice and our minds hungry for the truth of your word. Help us live as good stewards of our training, our skills, our gifts, our eyes, our ears, and the texts that are ours, never taking for granted that the Word of God is among us. In the Name of the Messiah Jesus. Amen.
