Preacher’s Study – Year B, Proper 23 (28) 2015

Monday Morning in the Preacher's Study

First thoughts about next Sunday's sermon

(20th Sunday after Pentecost, Oct. 11, 2015)

Frank Logue

Job 23:1-9, 16-17 OR Amos 5:6-7, 10-15

Psalm 22:1-15 OR Psalm 90:12-17

Hebrews 4:12-16

Mark 10:17-31

This week's Gospel brings up the cost of baptism as Jesus looks at a wealthy man and loves him.

The man had asked the Rabbi what he must do to inherit eternal life. After running through the parts of the Ten Commandments that deal with how we treat one another, the man assured Jesus that he had kept all these commandments since his youth.

Then Jesus looked at him and loved him. Jesus asks the man something that he had asked before at least twelve times. Jesus had asked this of Peter and his brother Andrew, and then of their friends John and James. He asked them to drop their nets and walk away from their fishing boats.

Jesus had already asked Matthew to walk away from his tax collectors booth, leaving the mounds of coins on the table for someone else to deal with.

Jesus asked each of his disciples to drop everything and join him on the road.

This rich man is being given a decisive moment, what Karl Barth would call a crisis. Let go of all that you are carrying to join Jesus on The Way.

The man famously turns away grieving, for he had many possessions. Jesus offered the man a prime spot in the history of God’s bringing salvation to the whole world. And the stuff mattered too much to him. He couldn’t leave it behind. The hold his possessions had on him was too strong.

It would seem that every one of us got off easy. None of us has had to face the day where Jesus gives us that big moment of decision, leave everything behind and follow me. But we do know better than that, right? Jesus still comes into each of our lives and asks us to follow him on The Way.

The Way is what the first followers of Jesus called their movement. Judaism had always talked about the life of faith in terms of following "hallakah", which means literally "the way to walk". There is nothing on Jesus’ Path that adds to the way to walk taught by the Jews. In fact, Jesus is teaching a simpler path where loving God and loving your neighbor as yourself are the signs that you are on the right path. 

This week's Gospel can also be heard through a bit of homiletical fiction. There is a much-repeated story that “Eye of a Needle” refers to a gate into Jerusalem. It seems that a preacher in the Middle Ages wrote that there was a gate into Jerusalem called “The eye of the needle” through which camels could pass, but only by hobbling through on their knees. The idea was that it is difficult, but not impossible and it had the added punch line of suggesting that rich folks who wanted into heaven needed to get on their knees. 

It’s a great little story, but it has no basis in archeology or any other known facts. The truth is Jesus was referring to the largest animal in Palestine and the smallest common opening. He meant a real camel and an actual eye of a needle. The idea is that humanly speaking it is impossible to get a camel through the eye of a needle.

As I journey toward Sunday, I am wondering how to convey that following the Way of Jesus still means making difficult decisions about how to live. As Bonhoeffer noted famously, that grace is not cheap, but costly through a well crafted passage in The Cost of Discipleship. Why has baptism come to be seen so cheap, and how might we recover the baptismal life as a life of following Jesus on The Way?

Frank Logue is an Associate member of the APLM Council and has served as its secretary. He worked as a church planter in the Diocese of Georgia, starting King of Peace in Kingsland, before joining the diocesan staff in 2010 as the Canon to the Ordinary.

Preacher's Study - Year B, Proper 22 (27) 2015

Monday Morning in the Preacher's Study

First thoughts about next Sunday's sermon

(19th Sunday after Pentecost, Oct. 4, 2015)

Frank Logue

Job 1:1; 2:1-10 OR Genesis 2:18-24

Psalm 26 OR Psalm 8

Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12

Mark 10:2-16

God's will for humanity will be an ongoing theme for the Gospel readings in October as we spend all four Sundays in the 10th chapter of Mark. The move toward turning everything to an opportunity to teach about discipleship begins this week when some Pharisees test Jesus by asking whether divorce is lawful. Behind this question lies an easy answer of "yes" in http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=310355344%22%3EDeuteronomy%2024:1-4 and in texts in the Torah which assume divorce.

First century marriages were typically arranged by families. The wife became the property of her husband. Divorce then is a very pragmatic concern for the Jewish woman whose husband divorced her just because another woman caught his eye. Rules concerning divorce were primarily to safeguard a woman from the man too easily putting her out.

Beyond this, for Jews only the husband could divorce. Yet this interrogation takes place within the Roman Empire where wives could also divorce their husbands. Jesus treats both cases equally in telling his disciples that the one who gives the divorce commits adultery against their spouse, whether husband or wife. So, a wife who is divorced does not commit adultery in a new marriage, but her husband does when he seeks another woman. For God's ideal is that when the two become one flesh and are joined together by covenant, no human should separate them.

Jesus here is working with the interpretation of scripture in a more nuanced way in which one considers all of scripture to see what God intends. For as one who sums all the law and the prophets in loving God and loving your neighbor as yourself, that self-giving love which is the ideal can not be squared with easy divorce. This does not speak to remaining in abusive relationships. Here the concern is with upholding God's ideal whenever possible rather than looking for the limits of the permissible. Jesus often moves from a question about the loophole in the text to considering the spirit of the law.

The lectionary gives preachers an easy out with Jesus blessing children. Preaching on receiving the kingdom of God as a little child is certainly less controversial. Yet, avoiding that text might seem like unspoken judgment to a divorced person in the pew. So as I journey toward Sunday, I wonder about the life of discipleship that undergirds both of these texts. For preaching gracefully on Jesus' words about divorce might help rather than hurt divorced persons who will hear the sermon.

Jesus, who said we should hold banquets for those who cannot repay us, here blesses children who can offer nothing in return. This upside down view of the world flows from the self giving Agape love which is as foreign to a self-serving consumer culture as it was to a first-century culture concerned with shame and honor.

If I am only concerned about myself, then staying in a committed relationship when it becomes difficult, or when someone else catches my fancy, makes no sense. As baptized Christians, we have renounced all sinful desires that draw us from the love of God and pledged to persevere in resisting evil. Of course we are to seek faithfulness within marriage even as we seek to be faithful to God. Yes, divorce is an option that can be the only good choice in some situations, but as we serve Christ in all persons, we begin with those closest to us and move outward to those who can do nothing for us in return. For when we follow Jesus' method of looking beyond a given passage to God's intention found throughout scripture, we see that God intends a life of discipleship founded in self-giving love. So I am wondering how I might through this text preach living out the love of God through how we treat others.

  

Frank Logue is an Associate member of the APLM Council and has served as its secretary. He worked as a church planter in the Diocese of Georgia, starting King of Peace in Kingsland, before joining the diocesan staff in 2010 as the Canon to the Ordinary.

Preacher’s Study – Year B Proper 21 (26) 2015

Monday Morning in the Preacher’s Study

First thoughts about next Sunday’s sermon

(18th Sunday after Pentecost, Sept. 27, 2015)

Maylanne Maybee, deacon

Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22 OR Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29
Psalm 124 0R 19:7-14

James 15:13-20
Mark 9:38-50

The Boundaries of Baptism?

An initial look at all three readings for the 18^th Sunday after Pentecost brings to mind the theme of boundaries.  

Even the somewhat truncated story from Esther is about the boundary between God’s people, the Jews, and the royal and political powers of Persia.  (Perhaps this story of an independent woman was chosen to offset the “capable wife” reading from last week.) 

I would choose instead the reading from Numbers which is reflected in Mark’s gospel for this Sunday. A young man is indignant that two men outside the tent of meeting were given the same gift of prophetic speaking as the seventy elders gathered within.  Moses replies, “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit upon them!”  In the same way, John complains to Jesus that a non-follower was given the same power as they were to cast out demons “in his name”.  Jesus’ reply echoes that of Moses, “Do not stop him… Whoever is not against us is for us.”

The warning that follows to those who offend or cause any of “these little ones” to stumble is echoed in Matthew and Luke.  Luke’s version bears a close relationship to the final section of the Epistle of James, where it leads to a directive to rebuke the offender but to forgive where there is repentance.   “Whoever brings back a sinner from wandering will save the sinner’s soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.”

For me these stories raise the question about what it means to be baptized, what it means to be reconciled with one another, how this sets Christians apart from the rest of the world.   Communities of the baptized may well work hand in hand with others beyond the church against the forces of evil, but perhaps they are called to uphold a particular integrity, to be unmistakable signs to the rest of the world of the crucified One whom they follow

As a deacon, I would choose to preach from the final section of the Epistle of James where the author writes about healing and reconciliation.  Intercessory prayer in the context of the Eucharist is traditionally led by deacons, whose ministry is in the places of risk and transition in our world and communities, where boundaries intersect and people’s lives are on edge because of suffering, illness, conflict, even the burden of leadership.  Nevertheless, these are places where the Holy is present and the Spirit is at work. 

Rowan Williams points out that how intercessory prayer works is an unanswerable question, but we know that it works through Jesus on the cross.  “When selfishness and greedy manipulation are set aside, and insensitivity and complacency are overcome, then there is empty space for the wind of the Spirit to blow through.  That is all we can know.  If prayer ‘works’, it is because of lives that have been crucified with Christ.”  (Rowan Williams, Open to Judgement: Sermons and Addresses [London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1994], pp. 140-141.) 

Maylanne Maybee, a member of APLM Council, is a deacon serving in the Diocese of Rupert’s Land (Anglican Church of Canada).  She is Principal of the Centre for Christian Studies, a national theological school based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.