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Some thoughts on some of the lectionary texts for this Sunday -
Ps 19
+ The Heavens are Telling the Glory of God, or here’s one with nice pictures!
+ two parts to the psalm – vs 1-6 speak of what Thomas Berry (I think – again, I used to know this stuff!) called The Created Word. (In fact, Berry went so far as to say we should put the Bibles on the shelf for a year or two and learn about the Creator from the primary source – the Creation!) And then secondly, vs 7-11, (again, what Berry called) the Revealed Word. How do these two themes play off against each other? Does “the Law of God in all of our thinking about human life” compare to “the sun in all of our experiencing of creation”?
+ the heavens and the firmament are witnessing here – in particular the sun. What do we learn or understand (about the world, about life, about God?) from looking at the sky?
+ and then vs 7-11 rejoice in God’s law under a variety of terms – law, testimony, precepts, etc. Are those all the same, or different aspects of the same thing? And different descriptions – perfect, sure, right, pure, etc. Again, is that just piling up a variety of words to create a sense of completeness or are there really distinctions?
+ and then four aspects of following the law – reviving the soul, making wise the simple, rejoicing the heart, enlightening the eyes – which would you gravitate towards today?
+ vs 11-13 “hidden faults” (and note “nothing is hidden from the sun”!) and “presumptuous sins” are pretty much the extremes. If you can keep yourself from these (and therefore from all the stuff in between!) you’ll do well! Life will be “sweeter than honey”! Would baklava then be a good sacramental image?
Exodus 20.1-17 The 10 Words for life (ok – you can find the whole movie on youtube. I was looking for just the 5 or 10 minuter clip where the lightening comes in and carves the words on the rock, but I couldn’t find one.)
+ note the narrative context – Israel has just arrived at Mt Sinai after being delivered from bondage in Egypt. They haven’t done anything to deserve anything.
+ God starts off by self-introduction. “I am the one who brought you out of Egypt/bondage”. How did you get introduced to God? For me – picture of Jesus with the children (one of them was holding an airplane!); a “someone/something” that we talked/prayed to; nothing as specific and realistic as “being delivered from bondage in Egypt”!
+ why the explanations in vs 4-6 and 8-11? Probably the 10 words were used for preaching and teaching and some of that has worked it’s way into the story here. Note that in the Deut 5 list of the 10 Words, “remember the sabbath” is tied to the Exodus, here it is tied to the Creation.
+ there is one word on who God is, three on how to worship God, and six on how to live as God’s people. So worship is the central channel for encountering God, accessing God’s power, but salvation is not limited to the worship experience but needs to spill over into the rest of life.
+ the 10 Words acknowledge that we always serve someone/something. Freedom is never absolute (for humans – it is for God!) Who/what do we serve today? “Other gods” – the “isms” of our day?
+ the sabbath rest breaks the vicious cycle of consumerism. Or it used to – what about today? Are there other ways we confront consumerism?
+ “Life with God rightly ordered means life in human community is healthy” – I like that.
+ don’t use God’s name in areas that are outside God’s agenda.
+ the joke about the minister whose hat was stolen and decided to preach on the 10 Commandments, coming down hard on #8 (stealing), only when he got to #7 he remembered where he left his hat!
So the Psalm and the Old Testament lesson are usually chosen to harmonize, or maybe even the Psalm is chosen as a response to the Old Testament lesson. In the lectionary the psalm is usually listed second after the Old Testament. Does it make a difference which one we read first? What do you think?
1 Cor 1.18-25 Wisdom and foolishness of the cross
+ “The difficulty in discovering the presence of God is the preconceived expectations of who God is and how God ought to behave.” In other words, our concept of God. God is kind, powerful, wise, etc. Paul says dump all that and start with the cross. “The text urges that our thinking about God begin not with the assured canons of the academic world not with the common sense of the person off the street, (nor with what someone might have put on the internet or in their blog!) but with the word of the cross.”
John 2.13-22 Jesus casting out the money changers!
+ note there are two stories in this chapter which John identifies as “signs” – Jesus turning the water into wine and Jesus casting out the money changers. Some would say these two stories are meant to interpret each other. Think so? In one Jesus turns water into wine as he turns existence into life; in the other Jesus replaces the animal sacrificial system with his death and resurrection.
+ Is his casting out of the money changers and animal sellers a criticism of the whole sacrificial system, or just of how it was being done? Is it appropriate to have a gift shop/coffee shop in the gathering area of the church?
+ this is a Passover story – it was drilled into me that Passover stories in the Gospel of John are always, always, always about the crucifixion.
+ the other gospels also include this story, but towards the end where it begins the passion narrative and is one of the things that leads the religious establishment to call for Jesus’ death. Note that in Jn 2.4, Jesus mentions “his hour” – kind of like a passion prediction, kind of like saying the whole gospel is a “passion narrative.” So it’s different chronologically, but not theologically?
+ note, remember, also the in John nobody takes Jesus’ life, he offers it.
+ a contrast of values between Jesus and the religious establishment over what “Messiah” means. Like Paul says – dump everything you thought you knew and start with the Cross!
+ Jesus speaks “from above” and they hear “from the earth”. “Jesus says what is true and they hear what is apparent.” That’s maybe worth settling into a bit. What do we hear?
+ Those last couple of thoughts are from Fred Craddock, along with this -
“A temple, built as a witness to God and as a means of drawing persons near to God, is now an object of adoration, an end in itself. It is, therefore, ripe for destruction. But in the throes of death and in a move toward self-preservation, the temple keepers will destroy the One in whom God and humankind meet.
“And finally, this is a story directed to the church. John does not relate this event as a dance over the grave of a grand institution or as an attack upon all rites, customs, and special places, but upon their tendency to receive the devotion due to God and God alone. The ancient evil is tenacious, insidious, and slow to die. Who has not known persons who were apparently faithful in attention to all Christian duties but who, when there was a change in the building or minister or pattern of worship, suddenly ended all participation? It is a painful and costly lesson offered by our text; we want to be in charge of our own lives and manage all our relationships with God. Some will even kill if that control is threatened. Why is it so difficult to kneel first before God and listen and then proceed from that perspective to build our altars and frame our liturgies? Those who know that Christ is our sanctuary also know what the church building is, and is not.” Woof!
So like I said, that last bit was from Fred Craddock, who in my humble opinion is/was one of the premier expositors/preachers and teacher of such, of the last century. He championed the idea of inductive, suggestive preaching, moving from stories and examples to thoughts about God and life, rather than “deductive, laying down the law, this is the way it is!” I mention this a bit, because Fred Craddock died on Mar 6, 2015. He always had a story to tell – some moving, some thought-provoking, some humorous – and he suggested that we, especially preachers, write down one thing that happened to us each day. He told how once when he was flying, sitting in one of the back seats in the airplane and the fellow sitting in the other back seat was smoking, even though the sign said “No smoking” and the (attractive, young) stewardess asked him not to. And it seems like there was something else obnoxious that the guy was doing – I can’t remember. Anyway, as the (attractive, young) stewardess was serving coffee, the plane hit an air pocket, and the (attractive, young) stewardess poured coffee into the obnoxious guy’s lap and sat down in Fred’s. “Who says God isn’t just?” he said.
That’s what I got for now….
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