Broken chains
Commentary
The readings for today are not a neat match for each other. The story in which Abraham is commanded to sacrifice his son Isaac belongs in the "test of faith" sequence. What strikes me most about the other two readings is the notion of substitution, surrogacy, or deceiving appearances.
In the case of Romans 6, the believer is given a choice of identities. Because both the new person and the old are the same body, with the same members, and the two look the same, Paul says that each must determine to whom or to what to yield the members. Not how we appear but to whom and to what we are attracted and attached: that is what is at stake here. It is possible to give one's members over to sin and evil. But the price of that is slavery: one might as well be wearing chains. And to allow one's members to be given over to God? The symbol for that is broken chains. The reality of that is broken chains. Freedom. Liberation.
The Gospel of Matthew reading also poses an issue of identity. Who is it that comes to my door and needs a welcome? If it is Jesus, beloved of so many on the other side of the door, he would surely be welcomed. But it is not Jesus: it is one of the disciples, sent out on a mission for the kingdom. I don't know her or him. I can keep the door closed. But appearances deceive: this situation will pose a different identity in front of me. For the welcomed one who looks like a disciple is really Jesus, who sent him. Even tiny gestures to the least of them count: a cup of cold water does not sound like much. To deny it when one is parched is as cruel as any activity one can picture. But to reach out with the word of welcome and the cup of water that costs nothing -- that is the test of whether discernment and love have entered the picture.
Grist For The Mill
Genesis 22:1-14
Now we have the match for last week's Hagar story, in which jealous Sarah and thoughtless Abraham did not look good. Now Abraham or the Lord or Abraham and the Lord do not look good; they look bad. The Lord, for commanding that Abraham sacrifices his son. Abraham, for being ready to do so. Abraham becomes a hero of faith. In our own not very enlightened age we would put him in prison.
A couple of years ago Micah Marty and I were reading a book of my meditations and his photographs (Places Along The Way). He came back from Israel with a picture from the ground up, past the trunk to the branches of a tree. I asked what biblical story it matched. This, he said, was what Isaac would have seen, looking past his father's knife. If you get that close to things, the raw violence in the potential of the story comes close to home. Yet there it is, connected with a hero of faith, the father of us all.
The story has been subjected to feminist, abuse-victim, Freudian, Kierkegaardian, and almost every known interpretation. What in it is left from the influence of child-sacrificing religions in the world surrounding Israel? What does this telling do to understandings of fathers killing sons and vice versa? For Kierkegaard: "Is there a theological suspension of the ethical?" For Jews: is this "our" crucifixion story, the decisive one? Midrash: picture Abraham coming home and explaining to Sarah that he had had a chat with God and God told him to kill their son, and he would.
"The Lord will provide." Sometimes we need happy endings, even ironically. "Now I know that you fear God." At what a price! One stands in judgment with a story like this. But also, under judgment.
Romans 6:12-23
There are good reasons to like these Romans chapters. The Old Testament and Gospel readings this season are bold, dramatic, violent, demanding. The Pauline readings, on the other hand, describe the new situation of the new person in Christ. She or he remains a sinner, tempted sin that grace may abound. The new people seldom remember to live up to their newness. But the grace remains.
This time there is a strong attraction in Paul's words about leaving behind the dominion of sin in our mortal bodies. That sounds easy, given the alternative. But we each know enough about the limits of our self-reform; the good intentions never lived up to; the intransigence with which we live; the nonmalleability of our characters. But God is active, bidding us to "present ourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life." I picture that in any 12-step, co-dependency, support group or therapeutic company, such a lure should provide many incentives.
We try to picture the day that news of the Emancipation Proclamation reached slaves. The day that news of prisoners' release reached political prisoners. We do picture the day news reaches us that we are no longer slaves, but free. There is a great deal here about self-representation, a good concept. We have represented ourselves and can represent ourselves as slaves to sin: now we get to present "our members" as slaves to righteousness.
Many know from memory the words about "the wages of sin is death." That line carries high drama. But set the other half to music or stitch it on samplers: "but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." That's where the real drama lies.
Matthew 10:40-42
At last, the Matthew texts in this sequence leave an opening -- I won't call it "show softness" for those who would follow Jesus, Matthew style, but find some of the implications forbidding. We never took to that hating father or mother-in-law business, for instance. Now comes something apparently sweeter, more alluring: the notion that we can find Christ in the face and form, the need and outstretched hand of the homeless, those left behind.
The Gospels on several occasions talk about the disguises Jesus says he wears. Fiction writers of reasonable art and considerable piety have drawn on these to write stories of the way someone reached out to another, only to read the face of Christ in the face of that other. One of the best known was that of Saint Christopher -- now demythologized -- who helped a child cross a river only to find the child on his back grew heavier, and be revealed as Christ. Matthew 25 has a similar passage about recognizing Christ in the prisoner, the hungry, the otherwise unvisited.
The words are indeed inviting. We get to be instruments of God in such interactions. But there is a tinge of institutionalization, bureaucracy, and clericalism creeping in here. (Many critics think Matthew reflects the life of the developing church.) People welcome "a prophet in the name of a prophet," which means: people respect the vocation or profession of the prophet; a new twist. They used to kill prophets. And the "little ones" mentioned here are not tykes but disciples, on occasion called "little ones." So this is not a generic do-good passage. But it establishes the principle so soon and so easily extended beyond the circles of disciples. Practice on disciples and soon you will find yourself welcoming Christ in non-disciples, too.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By James A. Nestingen
Jeremiah 20:7-13 (Lutheran text)
Comparing him to Isaiah, Luther once described Jeremiah as something of a griper or a nag. Perhaps in Isaiah's league, almost anyone would take a distant second. But this lesson could easily support Luther's estimate. For here we meet Jeremiah at full whine.
A prophet's call is credibility. Up to his ears in trouble, Jeremiah sees it in an additional perspective. Whether God enticed or overwhelmed, possibly both, Jeremiah has been put in a situation beyond his control. Faithfully relaying what he has heard, he has become a joke (v. 7).
Now it is entirely possible that, carried away with zeal for the message, Jeremiah contributed a little something to his plight. Using rotten underwear as an audiovisual is hardly the kind of behavior calculated to preserve dignity, even if it was God's idea (Jeremiah 13:1-11).
Either way, Jeremiah goes after the good Lord, specifically here for the content of the message. It is no good news, but catastrophic warning, making him a constant target as a henny-penny (v. 8). There are grounds for sympathy. An old Montana pastor argued that Moses felt the same way coming down from Mount Sinai; that he put on the veil to hide his shame in having gone up for the gospel and coming down with just some commandments!
But Jeremiah will brush such cordialities aside. He's got a list of complaints and he's intent on them: people are whispering about him; his friends, having heard it all at every opportunity, are looking for him to fail; in fact, they have become vengeful and are looking for their opportunity (v. 10).
This sudden insight into his friends' true intentions throws Jeremiah into an alarm which he meets with an absolute swoon of piety: "God will get 'em, so bad that they will not only fail and be ashamed -- they will be dishonored forever" (v. 11). And with this inspiring thought, Jeremiah reaches out like a pursued schoolboy grasping his mother's hand, "I'm your prophet, remember, and we've been working on these things together, so take care of these nasty brutes," this being followed by the even more pious chorus of verse 13.
Any suggestion that this should be read in a more edifying, less sarcastic way has to contend with the stomped foot that immediately follows in verse 14: Jeremiah is in a full-blown temper tantrum.
There's nothing particularly attractive about whining. But look who stood and took it, full in the face: the one who called Jeremiah, placed his words on Jeremiah's lips and even still, turns our groans -- even our griping -- to prayers (Romans 8:26).
In the case of Romans 6, the believer is given a choice of identities. Because both the new person and the old are the same body, with the same members, and the two look the same, Paul says that each must determine to whom or to what to yield the members. Not how we appear but to whom and to what we are attracted and attached: that is what is at stake here. It is possible to give one's members over to sin and evil. But the price of that is slavery: one might as well be wearing chains. And to allow one's members to be given over to God? The symbol for that is broken chains. The reality of that is broken chains. Freedom. Liberation.
The Gospel of Matthew reading also poses an issue of identity. Who is it that comes to my door and needs a welcome? If it is Jesus, beloved of so many on the other side of the door, he would surely be welcomed. But it is not Jesus: it is one of the disciples, sent out on a mission for the kingdom. I don't know her or him. I can keep the door closed. But appearances deceive: this situation will pose a different identity in front of me. For the welcomed one who looks like a disciple is really Jesus, who sent him. Even tiny gestures to the least of them count: a cup of cold water does not sound like much. To deny it when one is parched is as cruel as any activity one can picture. But to reach out with the word of welcome and the cup of water that costs nothing -- that is the test of whether discernment and love have entered the picture.
Grist For The Mill
Genesis 22:1-14
Now we have the match for last week's Hagar story, in which jealous Sarah and thoughtless Abraham did not look good. Now Abraham or the Lord or Abraham and the Lord do not look good; they look bad. The Lord, for commanding that Abraham sacrifices his son. Abraham, for being ready to do so. Abraham becomes a hero of faith. In our own not very enlightened age we would put him in prison.
A couple of years ago Micah Marty and I were reading a book of my meditations and his photographs (Places Along The Way). He came back from Israel with a picture from the ground up, past the trunk to the branches of a tree. I asked what biblical story it matched. This, he said, was what Isaac would have seen, looking past his father's knife. If you get that close to things, the raw violence in the potential of the story comes close to home. Yet there it is, connected with a hero of faith, the father of us all.
The story has been subjected to feminist, abuse-victim, Freudian, Kierkegaardian, and almost every known interpretation. What in it is left from the influence of child-sacrificing religions in the world surrounding Israel? What does this telling do to understandings of fathers killing sons and vice versa? For Kierkegaard: "Is there a theological suspension of the ethical?" For Jews: is this "our" crucifixion story, the decisive one? Midrash: picture Abraham coming home and explaining to Sarah that he had had a chat with God and God told him to kill their son, and he would.
"The Lord will provide." Sometimes we need happy endings, even ironically. "Now I know that you fear God." At what a price! One stands in judgment with a story like this. But also, under judgment.
Romans 6:12-23
There are good reasons to like these Romans chapters. The Old Testament and Gospel readings this season are bold, dramatic, violent, demanding. The Pauline readings, on the other hand, describe the new situation of the new person in Christ. She or he remains a sinner, tempted sin that grace may abound. The new people seldom remember to live up to their newness. But the grace remains.
This time there is a strong attraction in Paul's words about leaving behind the dominion of sin in our mortal bodies. That sounds easy, given the alternative. But we each know enough about the limits of our self-reform; the good intentions never lived up to; the intransigence with which we live; the nonmalleability of our characters. But God is active, bidding us to "present ourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life." I picture that in any 12-step, co-dependency, support group or therapeutic company, such a lure should provide many incentives.
We try to picture the day that news of the Emancipation Proclamation reached slaves. The day that news of prisoners' release reached political prisoners. We do picture the day news reaches us that we are no longer slaves, but free. There is a great deal here about self-representation, a good concept. We have represented ourselves and can represent ourselves as slaves to sin: now we get to present "our members" as slaves to righteousness.
Many know from memory the words about "the wages of sin is death." That line carries high drama. But set the other half to music or stitch it on samplers: "but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." That's where the real drama lies.
Matthew 10:40-42
At last, the Matthew texts in this sequence leave an opening -- I won't call it "show softness" for those who would follow Jesus, Matthew style, but find some of the implications forbidding. We never took to that hating father or mother-in-law business, for instance. Now comes something apparently sweeter, more alluring: the notion that we can find Christ in the face and form, the need and outstretched hand of the homeless, those left behind.
The Gospels on several occasions talk about the disguises Jesus says he wears. Fiction writers of reasonable art and considerable piety have drawn on these to write stories of the way someone reached out to another, only to read the face of Christ in the face of that other. One of the best known was that of Saint Christopher -- now demythologized -- who helped a child cross a river only to find the child on his back grew heavier, and be revealed as Christ. Matthew 25 has a similar passage about recognizing Christ in the prisoner, the hungry, the otherwise unvisited.
The words are indeed inviting. We get to be instruments of God in such interactions. But there is a tinge of institutionalization, bureaucracy, and clericalism creeping in here. (Many critics think Matthew reflects the life of the developing church.) People welcome "a prophet in the name of a prophet," which means: people respect the vocation or profession of the prophet; a new twist. They used to kill prophets. And the "little ones" mentioned here are not tykes but disciples, on occasion called "little ones." So this is not a generic do-good passage. But it establishes the principle so soon and so easily extended beyond the circles of disciples. Practice on disciples and soon you will find yourself welcoming Christ in non-disciples, too.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By James A. Nestingen
Jeremiah 20:7-13 (Lutheran text)
Comparing him to Isaiah, Luther once described Jeremiah as something of a griper or a nag. Perhaps in Isaiah's league, almost anyone would take a distant second. But this lesson could easily support Luther's estimate. For here we meet Jeremiah at full whine.
A prophet's call is credibility. Up to his ears in trouble, Jeremiah sees it in an additional perspective. Whether God enticed or overwhelmed, possibly both, Jeremiah has been put in a situation beyond his control. Faithfully relaying what he has heard, he has become a joke (v. 7).
Now it is entirely possible that, carried away with zeal for the message, Jeremiah contributed a little something to his plight. Using rotten underwear as an audiovisual is hardly the kind of behavior calculated to preserve dignity, even if it was God's idea (Jeremiah 13:1-11).
Either way, Jeremiah goes after the good Lord, specifically here for the content of the message. It is no good news, but catastrophic warning, making him a constant target as a henny-penny (v. 8). There are grounds for sympathy. An old Montana pastor argued that Moses felt the same way coming down from Mount Sinai; that he put on the veil to hide his shame in having gone up for the gospel and coming down with just some commandments!
But Jeremiah will brush such cordialities aside. He's got a list of complaints and he's intent on them: people are whispering about him; his friends, having heard it all at every opportunity, are looking for him to fail; in fact, they have become vengeful and are looking for their opportunity (v. 10).
This sudden insight into his friends' true intentions throws Jeremiah into an alarm which he meets with an absolute swoon of piety: "God will get 'em, so bad that they will not only fail and be ashamed -- they will be dishonored forever" (v. 11). And with this inspiring thought, Jeremiah reaches out like a pursued schoolboy grasping his mother's hand, "I'm your prophet, remember, and we've been working on these things together, so take care of these nasty brutes," this being followed by the even more pious chorus of verse 13.
Any suggestion that this should be read in a more edifying, less sarcastic way has to contend with the stomped foot that immediately follows in verse 14: Jeremiah is in a full-blown temper tantrum.
There's nothing particularly attractive about whining. But look who stood and took it, full in the face: the one who called Jeremiah, placed his words on Jeremiah's lips and even still, turns our groans -- even our griping -- to prayers (Romans 8:26).
