What can we say November 5? All Saints Day

    I will sometimes in this blog refer you to the previous time in the lectionary cycle the texts for the day / season came around (click here!), as I’ve not accrued much more wisdom! I'll assure you there is much good stuff there! – although I will add a bit that will be more timely (I hope). Peace and courage to you as you preach All Saints (I assume that’s your choice) on November 5.

   I have, while working on a new book (tentatively titled Everywhere is Jerusalem), been pondering places that hallow death – but not in a heroic sense. The American cemetery at Normandy has plenty of grief, but suggests heroic sacrifice. So what places simply speak into tragic death with no implied heroism? The National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Alabama, Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, and the Genocide Memorial in Yerevan, Armenia. All have a sacred quality – the word “sacred” being key, not implying suffering’s over and all is well, which is what Christians do way too quickly with death, All Saints, and Good Friday. God hallows death. Jesus makes such places and moments sacred, not by the glory that’s around the corner, but by simply being in it with us, by living and dying into the horrific, evil, unjust suffering. Yes, we have hope – but we dare not trivialize death, loss, the consequent loneliness and pain. Especially on All Saints, which can rush a bit, can’t it? Not to depress, but to embrace, and to be honest in the face of all that crushes the human spirit in death. It's only when we've done so that we can speak of the hope. I think...

   So the hope is still there. Let me refer you to my Festival of Homiletics lecture, "Hope as Arsenic," on when we offer to much, or not enough, or the wrong kind of hope. Very important for us who preach!!

What can we say December 3? Advent 1

    Advent comes around every time this year! I keep reposting my fairly widely read and hopefully helpful post, God Became Small: Preaching Advent – with loads of illustrations, and reflections on how preaching is peculiar during this season.

   I have frequently groused about the Advent lections themselves, as if some theologically prissiness has overwhelmed wise choices? Determined not to be Christmasy – which is fine – we extend the apocalyptic, and give John the Baptist a wide swath, even as our people are longing for Mary, Joseph, the pregnancy, the longing… which I get, and which matter to me spiritually.

   So prior blogs on my grumblings over Advent 1, and my ruminations on the texts for this year’s Advent 1.

   I am thinking to go off lectionary and do a mini-series (just 4 weeks…) on the Isaiah 9 bit (put to marvelous music) of the messianic titles: “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” People hum this text in their heads - from Handel's Messiah! I love the ramp up to these words, especially "and his name shall be CALL--ED" - as if making "called" into 2 syllables reminds us something big, unusual, hifalutin is coming!

   Endless questions intrigue me. What is his counsel exactly? Is God’s “mighty-ness” what we in our world think of as might? The titles seem to be applied to Christ – but it’s “everlasting Father,” not Son. What do you do with that? And it’s the “prince,” not the “king” of peace. Why? All these, in my view, get subsumed under Isaiah’s ultimate kid name, which gets applied to Jesus in Matthew – that fabulous, theologically hopeful nickname Emmanuel.

   More later…

What can we say November 26? Christ the King

    On these marvelous texts, I’d push you toward not one but two prior blogs on them, as they differ in interesting ways (as I look back on them now!). Here’s one, here’s the other. Lots of interesting stuff. I am moved, today, but Ezekiel 34:16: “I will feed them with justice.” Wow. What an image. Feeding – not with bread, or cool foodie items, but justice, which might be what we really are hungry for? And then in Ephesians 1: Hope is something you’re called to, not something you just have. I’ll ponder that, and preach about it somehow this Sunday!

   I do blush when I think of the sermons I've heard suggesting how Christ reigns powerfully over history, the nations, etc. Christ's reign is only powerful by its lack of power, its gentle compassion, its subversive humility. His palace is a lowly manger, his crowd one of thorns, his retinue a bunch of clueless dudes fleeing for the exits, his armies the poor and pitiful of the world. As Marilynne Robinson puts it in her soon-to-come reading of Genesis, if human beings “are to be granted individuality, agency, freedom, meaningful existence as human beings, then God must practice almost limitless restraint. To refrain, to put side power, is godlike.”

   I also suspect it's a false lead to ask Are we saved by grace? or by works? If you stick very close to Jesus, you will find yourself near those he cared about - and you can't help caring about them as well. We may well say that Jesus comes to each of us as the one who is "hungry, imprisoned, thirsty..." - and it is to! When we recognize his immense grace in this, we can't help but stick very close to him, and so involved in his care for those the world despises or would simply neglect, faulting or pitying them.

What can we say November 19? 25th after Pentecost

   The question about “talents,” the thief in the night, and the spectacular site of Hazor, visitable, so moving in the north of Israel! I am struck, on that text, once more, about the technological advance coming out of the Bronze Age and into the Iron Age: not mere time markers, but wartime complications. You have your bronze shields and weapons – but then come the Philistines, who swing their big swords, not of bronze but of iron – and your shield splinters into silly pieces. No wonder the Philistines were so dreaded. And we might ask what technological innovations imperil the people of God today (a wide swath of answers suggest themselves!!).

   Sometimes, for fun, I’ll do a little quick romp through the lectionary texts, teasing folks with “I thought on Monday I’d talk with you about text #1… but by Tuesday I was pondering text #2…” (with little hints, a few details from each one as I go), “but then I settled on text #3.” This week is perfect for this – and the very method draws people’s attention to the variety and wonder of Scripture, and that Christians do what you’re doing in front of them, pondering, digging around for something.

   Judges 4:1-7 is the kind of text that could well induce people to read more Bible – although how would you squeeze a sermon out of it. Jabin rules in Hazor (which is a fabulous archaeological site!), illustrating that Israel clearly had not conquered all of the land. Back in the Bronze Age, Palestine was segmented, not a nation at all, with tribal chieftains defending and occasionally expanding their turf.

   The mighty Deborah – how we wish we knew more about her! Antiquity features the occasional woman of valor and fame – although each is the exception that proves the rule we still live with in much of the world. What a lovely detail: “She used to sit under ‘the palm of Deborah’ to judge.” This must have been a memorable visitable tree long after Deborah was no more.

   Here’s the vivid, movie-worthy moment: in v. 7 she says “I will draw out Sisera and give him into your hand.” In short order, he was not only drawn out, but wound up with a tent peg hammered into the temple of his head – only slightly less graphic than in the previous chapter when Ehud, pretending to bear a secret message, plunges a sword into the obese King Eglon’s belly – and the sword disappeared into the folds of flesh.

   Such stories might help people understand how the Bible isn’t a collection of sweet spiritual platitudes, but exposes real life at its most grim – and that somehow God is there too.

   1 Thessalonians 5:1-11 is similarly titillating, so I’ll touch quickly on the bizarre simile that the Lord will come “like a thief.” But not only are you not ready (unless you have some guns? - who would dare to preach "If you're armed to protect your home, you might kill Jesus coming to visit"?), but the thief comes to rip you off. “Keep awake, don’t get drowsy” is fair counsel to your people while you’re preaching (I love the old joke about the preacher who dreamed he was preaching, and when he woke up, he was). Paul speaks of a couple of armor items here, clearly not as fully developed as Ephesians 6. “Encourage one another” truly could stand as a 3 word sermon. I’ll tease them and say “I thought I’d preach this 3 word sermon and just sit down, for this could keep y’all busy all this week and the rest of your life.”

   Matthew 25:14-30. However, we will delve a bit more fully into the Gospel reading, so vapidly treated in so many sermons. I’m groaning or snoring already, hearing the grinning preacher ask “What talents has God given you? Use them for the Lord, don’t hide ‘this little light of mine’ but ‘let it shine.’” Gerhard Lohfink quite rightly points out that shortly after these words, they arrested Jesus and crucified him: “Nobody is executed for teaching nothing more than bourgeois morality.” I’d add that, while we think the kingdom will dawn if we get out people to fill out spiritual gifts inventories, those religious strengths-finders, the larger truth is that in Scripture God doesn’t seem to use people’s abilities so much as their frailties, their brokenness, their avail-ability. Moses can’t speak, Jeremiah is too young, Isaiah isn’t holy, Jonah bolts in the opposite direction, Gideon has too many soldiers. What are your weaknesses? Where are you broken? That’s where the Spirit will use you.

   Lohfink notices something I’d not noticed: the businessman is not just wealthy, but a “boaster.” To him, these huge sums are “a few things, or “a little.” His business practices are exploitative: “I reap where I did not sow.” Slaves 1 and 2 are worthy of him, matching his finagling, lightning-fast action, risk taking strategies. Lohfink muses: “What a bold move, to make a statement about the reign of God in terms of immoral material.”

   Here’s the other thing about these “talents.” The Greek talanta isn’t an ability. We should translate talanta as “a huge bucket full of solid gold” or “a bank CEO megabonus” or “winning the Ohio lottery.” Only the muscular could even pick up a talanton, as one might weigh fifty or seventy five pounds. Each would be worth around 6,000 denarii, which today (by some scholars’ reckoning) would be much more than I have earned in my twenty five years in the ministry, or twenty of those flasks of pure nard Mary wasted on the feet of Jesus that so mortified the disciples. Jesus’ stories always do this: outlandish hyperbole, mind-boggling, absurd in scope, to make his point about the unfathomable marvel of the kingdom. The kingdom is that valuable.

   Imagine the listeners, poor laborers: no one listening would have the slightest clue about how to invest a single talanton, much less 5, any more than you or I would know what to do with $74 million. You just let your jaw drop, lost in wonder, love and praise. What a far cry from the little The Kingdom Assignment book churches were snapping up a few years back. Pastor Denny Bellesi doled out $10,000 in $100 increments to church members, declaring that 1. The $100 belongs to God, 2. You must invest it in God’s work, and 3. Report your results in 90 days. Those reports were startling: people made money hand over fist to contribute to the Church, creative ministries were hatched, lives were transformed, people wept for joy – all covered by NBC’s Dateline.  So American. Why on earth would I give somebody $100 and say “This belongs to God,” implying that the other half million in his investment portfolio is his? Or to suggest God is the best “deal” ever?

   What about the dumb, wicked servant? In Jesus’ day, burying money was regarded as prudent, and he no doubt expects to be commended. But he gets a verbal thrashing from the master. If this parable is Jesus’ intimation that an astonishingly ravishing gift has been unloaded upon an unsuspecting Church that has not the faintest notion how to handle, then might it be that the parable solicits from us not the offering up of our individual abilities, but rather the frank, embarrassing admission of our corporate inability? We populate Church committees with the best people for the task at hand, and in meetings they confidently offer insights from their education and professional experience.

   But maybe what God needs is people who will huddle up, shake their heads and confess, “We just have no idea; the Treasure is too big, too heavy.” Maybe then, and only then, we can dare something for God. God gives the Gospel not to me so my ability can be put to good use, but to us so our inability might be exposed, and God thereby glorified.

   If it’s stewardship season, you have to ask if this thinking would ruin or prosper your campaign. But is your current campaign approach fruitful, or just numbingly dull and ineffective. I wheedle and cajole, we print and mail catchy material, I plead from the pulpit. How pathetic. Isn’t that the equivalent of the burial of the one talanton, and isn’t it the harbinger of the burial of the Church? The Gospel isn’t being unleashed if some percentage of Church members start to think of an extra $100 or so as belonging to God, or even if the most clever stewardship campaign in history magically seduced a majority of mainline Protestants into actually tithing. The Gospel is too big for such trifles. Surely it is only to the dumbfounded, to the clueless, to the overwhelmed, to those who are under no illusion they have ever known quite what to do because of Jesus and don’t pretend it could ever be otherwise – to those alone this crafter of Trojan horses says “Well-done, good and faithful servant.”  

What can we say November 12? 24th after Pentecost

   On these 3 texts, I’ve commented in the past as wisely as I know how – except that now I would add these thoughts on Joshua and Thessalonians:

   Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25. I found myself commenting on this moment in not one but two places in my new book coming out next year, Everywhere is Jerusalem.

Here’s excerpt #1.

   Near Jacob’s well, where Jesus stood with the Samaritan woman (John 4) is the small village known in Bible times as Shechem. Roughly twelve hundred years before Jesus befriended that Samaritan woman there, Joshua (Moses’ successor) gathered all the tribes of Israel, forty years removed from Egyptian slavery, and made one of the Bible’s great speeches. A challenge. An invitation – to them, and to us.

   As a kid, I was given the impression that the Israelites rolled into the Promised Land and, like a German Blitzkrieg, conquered the whole region. We didn’t need fancy scholarship to show us otherwise. Mark the conquered places on a map. They didn’t win much ground at all, and what territory they captured was not the most fertile. There were Canaanites all over the place, wealthier, with more power – and a religion that lured Israelites repeatedly into idolatry.

   Knowing the challenges to come, Joshua (in the book named for him, in chapter 24) rattles off a profound history lesson of how they got there, going back to Abraham, into days of cruel slavery in Egypt, through decades of wilderness wanderings, God sticking with them despite their foolishness. Noting a veritable mall of other gods that would be peddled on them, he urges them, “Fear the Lord. Serve him faithfully. Put away the other gods. Choose this day whom you will serve. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

   I’ve stood in that field where he uttered such words. Wherever you stand or sit, right now, you have to make a decision, and a hard, serious one. It’s not some vague spirituality or sliding into a pew now and then. Choose your God or your gods! Take a stand; make this journey – and live it, with courage, grit, patience, maybe making that definitive decision again. And again.

   And here’s excerpt #2:

   How often does the Bible itself urge keeping some distance from our beloved ancestors and their cherished but flawed beliefs? Joshua, thirty seconds before his glorious declaration that “as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15) invites the Israelites to “put away the gods which your fathers served beyond the river” (Joshua 24:14). Could it be our journey involves finding a new space, different from, and closer to the truth than the spirituality of our parents, even the most beloved? They may have instilled in us the very faith we have to ask such a question! Or perhaps, as Jonathan Sacks suggested (in his last book, Studies in Spirituality), our parents may have been on their own journey to a new space that was truer than that of their parents. God called Abraham away from the idols of Ur; but his father Terah went with him, at least halfway to Haran (Gen. 11:31).

   1 Thessalonians 4:13-18. Paul speaks eloquently here of “hope” – a topic over which I have obsessed. What is it – really? Do we give people enough? Too much? Let me commend to you my lecture on this from this year’s Festival of Homiletics, which (after Kate Bowler!) I entitled “Hope as Arsenic.”

 

What can we say October 29? 22nd after Pentecost

 If you’re attending to Reformation Sunday, we have great texts!

   Deuteronomy 34:1-12. I preached on this last go round… One of many texts that reveals how Scripture isn’t some fabricated account to persuade the unconverted. Moses, the hero, God’s chosen one above all others, dies literally on the brink of achieving his life’s dream. After 80 years together, Moses and God have something of a private moment.

   A breathtaking panorama (on a clear day, that is; I’ve taken tour groups to Mt. Nebo only to be met with thick clouds!): like a surveyor sizing it all up. Moses’ eyes zigzag south to north (Gilead to Dan), zigging back down Jordan valley, zagging west, back through the southern Negeb up to Jericho, crazily zagging back south to Zoar. His heart must have soared; surely he gasped at this wide-lens view of his life’s purpose.

   But then, the gut punch: Moses’ time is up. Did he have to die for the sins of people (Deut 1:37, 4:21)? For striking the rock (Num 20:12)? Wouldn’t God, the one who answered murmuring with manna, have turned suddenly petty? How are we privy to this private moment anyhow? Franz Kafka, of all people, may have been right: “Moses fails to enter Canaan, not because his life is too short, but because it is a human life.” 

   This dying without enjoying the fruit of a life’s work: isn’t it often or even always this way? We’re part of something bigger than ourselves – or at least we hope we are. Reformation won’t happen this weekend. Reinhold Niebuhr’s pithy wisdom comes to mind: “Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love.”

   Who can picture Moses’ final day without recalling Martin Luther King, Jr.’s final hours? In Memphis, campaigning on behalf of garbage workers, he spoke eerily of his possible impending death (and it's well worth watching/listening to again and again): “We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop… And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight… Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.” 

   Worth pondering also is that the Torah, the primal Scripture in Judaism, ends now, here, just short of the climax! Is the point that each generation has the same choice – to live into the promises, the land? Is this a Reformation theme? The church that feels it has arrived in Canaan is the corrupted church; the one outside looking in, pledging fresh commitment and passion, is the living church.

   We have the mummies of Pharaoh’s, and Aaron’s tomb is visitable. So what’s this tease with Moses? Rabbis taught he didn’t die but was translated right up into heaven. He does materialize at the Transfiguration. Hebrew is fun here: the NRSV translates “He was buried” – but by whom? The Hebrew quite straightforwardly says “He buried him.” He who? The Lord? The Pseudepigrapha includes the Testament of Moses in which Joshua, bidding Moses farewell, declares “All the world is your sepulcher.”

   1 Thessalonians 2:1-8 is promising. I did a little preaching commentary on this for Christian Century a few years back (entitling it “Childish Behavior,” based on a quirky Greek translation!) – if you’re interested.

    Matthew 22:34-40. What would the Reformation of the Church imply if not the recovery of love for God and neighbor? Love loses its mind and needs reforming too. Is God like Tevye (in Fiddler on the Roof) asking Golda, “Do you love me?” She explains all her labors over 25 years, but he still wants to know. Or is God like Bonnie Raitt crooning “I can’t make you love me”? God wants our love – but not society’s mushed down, trivialized, moody, sentimental thing that is kin to but far from the love Jesus spoke of, embodied, and died in consummation of. Jesus’ zeroing in on 2 Old Testament verses (well-chosen!) only makes sense in the light of creation, the Fall, Abraham’s call, the deliverance from Egypt, Mt. Sinai, the prophets, Jesus’ incarnation, his teaching and healing, and then his crucifixion. All of that is what love is. We absorb this as best we’re able, and then try to love God and neighbor. 

   How wise of Jesus to give his dual reply. Know how pivotal Deuteronomy 6 is in Judaism! Call a rabbi friend – or make one by asking about this text. When Jesus said the main thing is to love God with heart, soul, and strength, he wasn’t making it up out of thin air. He was a Jew, raised by Jewish parents, the descendant of generations of Jews, all of whom began and ended every day with those very words: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength.

   The “Shema” of course begins with “Hear!” Listen!  The beginning of love is always listening, something uncommon these days. I love the line in Abraham Verghese’s The Covenant of Water where a wise man is described at having 2 ears and 1 mouth, and he used them in precisely that proportion.

   For our very occasional Christians, who read a quickie devotional most but not all days, we may dwell on “Talk of these words when you sit in your house, when you’re walking around, when you lie down and when you wake up. Bind them on your hand, and as frontlets between your eyes. Write them on the doorposts of your house.” On the door jamb of Jewish homes you’ll find a mezuzah, a little container with a tiny scroll of Scripture, looking something like a doorbell. (Christians too, can have them! I have one at home, and one on my office door, just one more little reminder...).

   You may have seen pious Jews with a little black box on the forehead, or straps on the wrists. They are taking literally what Moses intended – and what I find I need to stand any chance of being godly. I stick little cards and hang tags all over my world, in the shower, in my desk drawer, on the dashboard, to remind me to love and think about and ponder God throughout my day. My book, Worshipful: Living Sunday Morning All Week, is an attempt to help us Christians think about how to think about our love for the Lord all the time. A challenge for me: I should attach something to my head, I think. If I hear myself thinking You shall love the Lord over and over, I actually shall love the Lord.

   Our church did an entire series called “You Shall Love.” A sermon series, and email series, and little cards we printed up for people to carry in their pockets and stick in their desk drawers and by the bedside. I even shot a video of me trying to explore how everything we do in church life – and that’s not just worship but also a finance meeting, what trustees do, personnel decision, etc., must revolve around Jesus’ dual directive that we love God and neighbor. I’d commend it to you – but more importantly, I would commend you having this conversation with your church leaders.  Can we make our budgeting, mowing the lawn, how we think about policies, all intimately linked to this touchstone of love?

   Thomas Merton, always helpful, prayed, “Let this be my consolation, that wherever I am, you are loved.” And speaking of prayer – which is love! – Madeleine L’Engle, over a long weekend waiting on biopsy results for her husband, kept praying “Don’t let it be cancer.” Some friend told her, “You can’t pray that, it already is or isn’t cancer.” Her thoughts on this? “I can’t live with that. I think the heart overrides the intellect and insists on praying. If we don’t pray according to the needs of the heart, we repress our deepest longings. And so I pray as my heart needs to pray.” Later, after the cancer was pronounced terminal, she wondered if her prayers had been wasted. But she concluded, rightly: “Prayer is love, and love is never wasted. Surely the prayers have sustained me, are sustaining me. Perhaps there will be unexpected answers to these prayers, answers I may not even be aware of for years. But they are not wasted. They are not lost. I do not know where they have gone, but I believe that God holds them, hands outstretched to receive them, like precious pearls.”

What can we say October 22? 21st after Pentecost

    Hard to select among such texts. 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10 has the intriguing offer for readers to look into “what kind of people we are,” and to take Paul and company as “examples to be followed.” Daring, I think. Do I see myself as an example to my people? I should, certainly more than I do! – and do I reply to their need for me to frame being a “kind of person” with “Hey, I’m just a guy”? If the Gospel is real, to me as a guy, don’t I dare to expect myself to be a guy who is somehow exemplary, or at least someone in whom God’s Spirit is actually effecting something cool?

   “Our message came to you not in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit.” Easy to mutter some pietistic platitude about this. But the best we can do is talk as well and faithfully as possible. If hearts are changed, if the world tilts on its axis, it’s God’s work, not ours. Luther famously said it was God who reformed the church while he (Luther) was in the pub with his pal Philip drinking Wittenberg beer.

   Matthew 22:15-22 is a hugely important text. Terribly misinterpreted – as if Jesus were outlining the separation of church and state for modern people who would find such an arrangement to be very convenient for themselves and their political ideologies. They come to “entrap” him. Jesus’ strong suit was discerning hidden motives – and knowing theirs, and his downright Lincoln-esque ability to reply to tough questions with something clever to stump the questioners, they had no chance.

   They open with flattery. Aristotle pointed out that the opposite of a friend is a flatterer. They indeed are what Jesus calls them: hypocrites, the Greek meaning play actors. They think they have the perfect question, unanswerable. If he says Yes, he appears sympathetic to the hated tax collectors, thus alienating all nationalists. If he says No, he’s risking a charge of sedition. Not surprisingly, Jesus serves up neither. 

   Let’s check out one of these coins, he says. Surveying it, he asks an easy question: who is this guy? Caesar. Archaeologists have found these coins, with an image of Caesar, and the inscription including the blasphemous (to Jews) word DIVI: he’s divine. On the flip side, the coin dubbed Caesar as PONTIF MAXIM, the “high priest.” Here is God’s divine son, our great high priest, studying this very coin.

   Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. The Greek apodote means “give back,” as in return it to him. Must be his. Let him have it. Then the clincher line: and Render, “give back” to God what is God’s. And that would be… well, everything. Your life, these boats, the water, the fish, maybe even the minted coin with the blasphemous image. Heck, the emperor himself.

   Jesus’ wisdom was met with stunned silence; I wish my sermons were met with the same! There’s the sermon, with a clear imperative, an all-encompassing takeaway: Render unto God what is God’s, who is God’s. You can spend the rest of the day and your life working on that one. Grab a few examples here and there. Your lunch break at work. Your shopping this afternoon. Your conversation with a neighbor. The stuff in your closet. Your anxieties in the night. Your portfolio, or your debt, or your fantasies. Your time, your energy, your brokenness. It’s all God’s. Render it to God.

   So, my choice for Sunday: Exodus 33:12-23. Talk about a “thin place,” or a “liminal space.” Moses, on the (not a, but the) mountain with God. Wryly he chides God for telling him they’re going but hasn’t revealed whom the guide will be. The Lord says I’ll go. Then, with considerable cheek, or derring-do, taking his life in his hands, he asks to see God’s “glory.” The Lord responds to this bold ask by sneakily substituting “goodness” for “glory.” Want to see my glory? Here is some of my goodness. Maybe that’s how we see God’s glory, not head-on, which would overwhelm us, sort of like trying to look at the sun from 25 feet away. God’s goodness is a manifestation, an accurate shadow of God’s glory, an accommodated glimpse.

   The meaning of the name Yahweh is perhaps best explained in v. 19: “I shall be gracious to whom I shall be gracious, I shall have compassion on whom I shall have compassion.” No predestination here. Rather, it is in God’s nature to be gracious and compassionate. It’s God’s choice, not our earning, not our goodness.

   Tenderly, God offers a viewing spot for Moses: in the cleft of the rock. “Rock of Ages, cleft for Moses.” How good of God to provide, in the tectonic shifts and geological upheavals that made mountains, to provide little caves and crevices for creatures to hide and rest. St. Francis of Assisi believed, as did many medieval people, that clefts and crevices in rocks, all the way in Italy, were created at that moment on Good Friday when, just as Jesus died, earthquakes rocked the land. Medieval theologians and artists also saw Jesus’ wounds as clefts in the rock in which we hide ourselves. So lovely.

   I’m reminded of St. Francis, who went day after day into a cave to pray. When he came out each day, Brother Leo would ask him, Did God say anything? Francis said No. Day by day he poured out his soul, and day by day he always answered No. Finally, one day Leo asked, and Francis surprised him:  Yes, God did say one word to me. Leo: What was it? Francis: More. I love that. God wanted more - of St. Francis.

   God shows Moses God’s “backside.” Fascinating to play around with, isn’t it. You see the backside as it moves. God isn’t a still life, but one who moves. Yahweh clearly is a verbal form, an action verb in Hebrew. And where are you if you see the backside? You’re behind. Jesus said “Follow me.” That is, keep behind me, watch my backside closely.

   Moses’ request to see God’s glory might remind us of John 14 where Philip asks Jesus, “Show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.”   Jesus then did show all of them God’s glory – by being crucified. Martin Luther (worth dragging in, as the 500th anniversary of the Wittenberg door is looming!) suggested that in the cross, God showed us all the glory of God we could bear – calling it “God’s hidden backside.”  

   With all this Moses/mountain stuff, I plan to use the great benediction of the late archbishop Oscar Romero: “When we leave Mass, we ought to go out the way Moses descended Mt. Sinai: with his face shining, with his heart brave and strong to face the world’s difficulties.”

***

   Rendering unto God is worship, which is both liturgy and life. Check out my book, Worshipful: Living Sunday Morning All Week, on the real life continuations of what we do in worship. A resource for clergy and a good group study for laity!

What can we say August 20? 12th after Pentecost

    Genesis 45:1-15. Who would relinquish the chance to preach on the OT here? I have not found a way to improve upon what I wrote on Genesis 45, which I regard as the theological high water mark in all of Scripture, not just the Old Testament, the last time the lectionary favored us with this riveting, emotional drama. So I refer you there… where I ponder this story with illustrations from Rivendell (Lord of the Rings!), Good Will Hunting, J.D. Vance, and Andrew Lloyd Webber! I neglected there to touch on Psalm 133: Genesis 45 illustrates how we flail and brothers don’t love or dwell in unity; and the exceedingly high cost ad the labor of reconciliation required for unity.

   Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32. I was floored recently when I reviewed a video featuring Tim Keller – whom I've admired, but now he's gone – saying he had high hopes for Christianity abroad, and some for evangelicals here, but he’d pretty much given up on mainline Protestantism in America. So very human, such giving up. Paul hasn’t given up, even on the Jews who’ve not just been a different version of Christianity from the one he’d prefer; they’ve flat out rejected Christ! It’s not Paul’s hope, of course. It’s what he knows about God.

   “God has not rejected his people he foreknew.” There it is. God made Israel, called them, destined them – so they cannot be lost. God’s claim on Israel is (after the lectionary skips right over 25 crucial verses!) “irrevocable.” Romans 9-11 is a rich text rife with possibilities for an in-class Bible study – but to preach it? It’s so complex, there’s so much ambiguity (and not just in the commentaries!).

   Matthew 15:21-28. Oh my, that peculiar episode where the woman won’t take No for an answer, upbraiding Jesus himself. She asks for mercy – for her daughter, of course, but then any parent who’s watched a child suffer needs mercy too. What to do with this blunt repartee? Floyd Filson, in his 1960 commentary on Matthew, suggested that he winked at her when he spoke these words, implying insider status for this one. Or was it a clever ploy on Jesus’ part to evoke deeper faith in her, or those watching?

   Jesus did come to Israel – not for them alone but so they might be spurred on to their mission to be the light to the world. Morna Hooker, noting how Jesus confined his attention to the Jews, suggested that “the Gentile woman requests a cure outside the context of Jesus’ call to Israel; she seems to be asking for a cure which is detached from the in-breaking of God’s kingdom, merely taking advantage of the opportunity provided by the presence of a miracle worker. This is perhaps the reason for Jesus’ stern answer; his healings are part of something greater and cannot be torn out of that context.”

   Joel Marcus is mindful of the history of bad blood between Tyrians and Galileans – and how the farm produce of Galilee so often wound up in Tyre, while the peasants in Galilee went hungry. So Jesus’ words make a bit of compassionate sense. Or should we suggest, as many have, that Jesus had a growing moment, a learning experience, a maturation in himself? Mistakenly, he turned her away – and her persistence cracked open a bit of hardness in Jesus’ Jewishness to leave space for a desperate Gentile? Depending on the height of your view of Jesus’ humanity, this may or may not work.

   Luke tells us "Jesus grew in wisdom" (chapter 2) - so I'm okay with Jesus growing in his openness to Gentiles. It's her faith that moves him - and so WHY are we appalled he's so slow to come around when we can be very content with ourselves when confronted with the deep faith of an immigrant, a gay person, a black person, and yet we're reticent to view them as one with us??

   Martin Luther examined this text and thought of the ways Christians are to persist in trusting God, even when God seems to turn his back on them. They must learn to see the ‘yes’ hidden in his ‘no.’  Much wisdom here – although the preacher dare not resort to trifling ideas such as those articulated in Garth Brooks’s crooning “Unanswered Prayers.”

   The woman’s persistence has recently been likened to the persistence of women right insisting on their place in the church. “Nevertheless, She Persisted” became a popular slogan, t-shirt and hashtag this year. Persistence of all kinds is a biblical thing, falsifying the absurd notion of God’s will being associated with “the door was open.” Many open doors we most surely should not walk through. And many closed and bolted doors should be knocked down.

   I am fond of Sheila Nelson-McJilton’s probing sermon, “Crumbs” – cited in Leonora Tubbs Tisdale’s great book, Prophetic Preaching. “Crumbs. That’s all they are looking for. Crumbs. Not the whole life. Not even a slice. Just crumbs. You and I want the whole loaf…” – and then she speaks of our wealth, access, all the poor lack. But then she presses further: “Crumbs. They want more than crumbs because deep in their souls, they know they deserve more. And yet they often do not know who to ask or how to ask…”

   And how often have we said (by our lives if not our words) "It isn't fair to give the bread of the children to the dogs?" We care for ourselves first, the fine wine, the grand destinations, the nice house - but then if we have a few crumbs leftover we'll share with the poor. Or when we do something like make sandwiches for the poor, we buy the cheapest bread and the deli meat that's off-brand and on sale. Crumbs...

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   Let me refer you to my Festival of Homiletics lecture, "Hope as Arsenic," on when we offer to much, or not enough, or the wrong kind of hope. Very important for us who preach!!