God Will Use Our Changes
Commentary
This is a difficult Sunday for many in our congregations. The Gospel Lesson, if read aloud in its entirety can wear out our congregations. So, some thought needs to be given to how we will use this huge block of writing. Back in the days of my youth, the ceremonies and scriptures were broken into four pieces, to be read and preached about on four separate days. But in the last forty years, many churches have had to give up having Good Friday services because most of our parishioners are employed, and the custom of closing businesses and entertainments for at least the three hours traditionally believed to be the time frame for the crucifixion. That left the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem and perhaps the anointing in Bethany to be the scriptures of the day. The Passover celebration, the institution of the Lord’s Supper, and the betrayal and arrest of Jesus were read, with communion (the Lord’s Supper) in between. That left the betrayal and trials of Jesus to be discussed along with the crucifixion on Good Friday.
I don’t know what is common in your community, but whatever has been really cannot be this year. We need to accommodate the elders in our congregations, which means spacing out those who come to worship and insisting on the use of masks to keep Covid-19 and its variants from sending most of our congregation to heaven this year. Several of my colleagues have sent for communion packets – a piece of bread and a sealed small plastic cup of grape juice or wine, depending on their denominational practices. These can be blessed while in their plastic wrap, handed out so that each recipient can open them for themselves, and the leftovers can be dropped into containers at the end of the pew or communion rail. Yes, it’s a little sterile compared to the way I used to receive communion in my younger days, but hopefully we won’t be sharing a deadly virus in God’s name.
It may be that God will use this impoverished celebration to re-ignite in us the realization that we need to share our love with one another, that we need to touch and be touched, to hug and to be hugged, that we need to be with others, to uphold each other and to worship God in the Body of Christ. We can hope.
One thing I have learned over my long lifetime: God can use everything we go through for good. Divorce. Death. A serious accident. Our homes destroyed by flame, wind, water. All these disasters are still disasters. God does not will the death of a child, or to leave any of us orphaned, but God can use these inevitable happenings to bless us and those around us. This pandemic has changed our lives and our nation, and the outcomes are yet unknown. But it is certain that this pandemic, like the Black Death and Spanish Influenza, will leave us changed as a society and as individuals. How it will change us is mostly up to us, how we adapt and what we are willing to do in the face of such devastation. But rest assured, God will use our changes and our suffering and what we learn from all this for the furtherance of the family of God.
Isaiah 50:4-9a
It’s easy to see, as we read the gospels, that Jesus was most impressed by the writing of Isaiah the prophet. He quotes him on a regular basis. Example from today’s lesson: verse 9, “All of them will wear out like a garment; the moth will eat them up.” In Matthew 6:19-20, Jesus says we should not store up treasures for ourselves that can be stolen by thieves, or where rust or moths can destroy them. Our treasure must be saved up beyond these concerns. This is not the only place where we can see Jesus trying to point them (and, by extension, us) toward concentration on what is permanent – things that are beyond this life, this earth.
In this passage, however, Isaiah is saying this of the adversaries of the Christ, those who would judge him, and call him a disgrace (v. 7). This is literally what happened to Jesus as he was brought before the Sanhedrin. False witnesses accused him of saying things he did not say, misquoting him as well as simply making up things to hold against him. And these were the men who were supposed to be the rulers of the nation of Judea.
Isaiah says that he was beaten, spit upon and insulted; also, he was subjected to an ancient ritual – the literal pulling out of a man’s beard, hair by hair, rendering him, in the end, like those who cannot grow a beard – women and children – who were universally considered by men to be less than any man.1 This last humiliation was not visited on Jesus, according to the gospel writers, though all the rest was.
The gospels all say that Jesus bore all that happened to him at the hands of the authorities with dignity, which is a high compliment. The most any of us can hope for in the face of torture is that we may retain some semblance of dignity, though this is nearly impossible, considering what can be done to the human body. But Jesus managed, apparently, to reply to the charges without whining or shouting. His answers to both the Sanhedrin and Pilate demanded some respect. And like Isaiah, those writers say, Jesus relied on God in the face of his adversaries.
Philippians 2:5-11
Now we come to the lesson for us – we who have accepted Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ, of God: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus…” A mind of humility. A mind that does not take on airs, does not pride itself on having the blessings of God. A mind that does not insist on our own way. A humble mind, that does not complain about the difficulties of life (yes, even if you, like me, have been self-quarantined for six months or more, and never go out of the house without a mask, so as to protect others as well as ourselves). A mind that is not unwilling to be obedient to the law that we should love our neighbors as we love ourselves. (Hence the necessity to wear a mask, even if it is hot, stuffy and causes our skin to erupt with pimples where it rubs constantly and steams up our glasses if we don’t wear it high enough.)
And what was Jesus’ reward for his humility? He was executed in the lowest possible way – he was nailed to a cross, like those who waylay people traveling on the roads, or those who have committed treason. And he was a traitor, at least in the eyes of the authorities of his day. He did not show them the proper respect; he talked about himself in terms that indicated that he had a special relationship with God and could pass this status on to his followers.2
This teaching was considered to be blasphemy. And blasphemy, in Judaism, was traitorous language. This charge had obviously been passed on to Pilate, for he asked Jesus if he did think he was the Son of God; and Jesus did not deny it. Yet, to the disciples, Jesus was humbling himself, because he did not take the power of God to strike down his accusers and judges, and because he “became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.” This was despite his status with God.
And what is the result of all this? “God highly exalted him.”
Do we, also, exalt Jesus the way that God did? Do we feel the holiness that Jesus represents – so that “at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” What a statement that is! Not that we should kneel in his presence. Not even that “every knee on earth” should bend in his presence.
What a sight it would be to see those who claim to have ultimate power over their nation, or church, or company get down on their knees to worship God! Imagine seeing those who have made themselves absolute rulers, like Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin, or Xi Jinping, bow and kneel before Jesus, God’s son. Or imagine the billionaires of the world, such as Elon Musk or David H. Koch kneeling too (who, when asked about the money he was “investing” in people running for public office, said, “What good is it to have so much money, if I can’t buy myself a Senator or two?”)?
On the other hand, we can also hope to be kneeling alongside people like Mother Teresa, E. Stanley Jones, Billy Graham or Peter Cartwright, who worked diligently, both in action and in prayer, for the salvation of the world to become known to everyone. Or we might be in a throng of staunch believers, philanthropists, and common workers for the good of the world, whose names are as yet unknown to us. Foster parents, child welfare workers, counselors to those whose will to go on is failing. All unknown to us, but known to God, and welcomed into the realm that Jesus came to proclaim even as he invited us all to participate in and to benefit from.
One thing we must remember from this text is – that Jesus Christ (Messiah) is Adonai (Lord), but only to glorify God the Creator (Father). Too many of our parishioners are still afraid of God, and feel their only hope is to worship Jesus. And while we may say the latter is true, the former – fear -- is not appropriate in our relationship with God. That is the meaning of the doctrine of the Trinity, that God so loved the world that he willingly took on human flesh so that we would come to love the God who is the very embodiment of love of every kind. If we lift up no other idea this Easter, we must, for the welfare of our people in troubling times, remind them that it is God who was in that flesh that was nailed to the cross.
Mark 14:1--15:47
If you must cover most of the crucifixion event in one or two services, please feel free to pick and choose to delete parts of the story that are, as the motion picture industry puts it, ‘secondary stories.’ The core of the narrative is 14:1-2; 10-11; 22-65; and 15:1-47. There are details that could be left out; of course, different people may say you left out their favorite bit from the story, but no one will tell you the readings were too short.
Mark includes all these details because his is the first gospel to be written down. And the Greek he uses is koine, or ‘street’ Greek, not the language used by the educated writers of his day. And one can turn these verses into a chancel drama if you want, or have different people read the parts of the various characters in the story. Even if the actual number of minutes is as long as ever, the time will seem shorter in either of these scenarios. If you are using Zoom, it will be a matter of making sure each person participating has a full script that is marked with highlighter in lieu of a prompter. A run-through will help to get participants to read smoothly.
The story of the end of Jesus’ life is the core story to the gospels. It is believed by some scholars that this was all there was to the Jesus story altogether, and one can see in Mark especially that this narrative tells us all we need to know about Jesus. He has told his disciples to expect that he will be arrested in Jerusalem, and here we see the fulfillment of that prophecy. He sets up a ceremony (the Lord’s Supper) within a ceremonial meal (the Passover Feast), and points to it as the way to commemorate his ministry for future generations. His passion (suffering for love of humankind) shows his love for all of us, that he is willing to lay down his life for his friends.3
One might also insert hymns that tell the story of the end of Jesus’ life, and use those in place of parts of the gospel reading.
There are a few notes to know about what Mark tells us. In 15:6-15, the name Barabbas is Hebrew for “Son of the Father.” In other words, Pilate pits freeing the King of the Jews and crucifying The Son of the Father in his place. Since Mark placed a good amount of weight on Jesus’ claim to that title, it provides a bit of irony on the events in Pilate’s palace.
I think that the passages about Peter could be removed from the Passion and used on Easter or the Sunday after Easter, as background for Jesus’ confrontation with Peter on the beach after the apostles have gone out fishing all night without any fish to show for their work. Placing those two parts of the story on the same Sunday can more easily form the basis for a sermon on the topic, with emphasis on the grace Jesus shows to Peter, and the contrast between Judas, who went out and hung himself for betraying Jesus, and Peter, who lived to see his Lord and receive forgiveness for his weakness.
Likewise, the burial of Jesus could be omitted if you’re doing all of this in one service. It would lend a setting to the Easter discovery that the body of Jesus is missing from the tomb and tie the Marys to both the burial and the resurrection. After all, they alone, according to Mark, knew where Jesus was buried. And they alone saw him in the garden after they saw him buried.
May you have a blessed Easter.
_____
1 In the law, women could not testify in court, for example, unless there was a man to back up their testimony. They were considered to be children, whose testimony could not be trusted. In addition, a man could divorce his wife for not knowing how to cook, for having a loud voice, for disobedience to her husband. Of course, most girls were married as soon as they were able to bear children, which could mean as young as ten or twelve, and their husbands had to be able to earn a living, which meant they would be about 20 to 25, so the age discrepancy was real and the balance of power obvious. However, no Jewish woman could be married to the man her father selected without her consent (See Genesis 24).
2 See John 14-17
3 If you have fans of the Harry Potter saga in your congregation, you might draw some parallels between the gospel story and the Potter story. E.g. in the 3rd book, The Prisoner of Azkaban,” Sirius Black (Harry’s godfather) and Remus Lupin (one of James Potter’s clique when they were schoolboys together at Hogwarts) confront Peter Pettigrew, who betrayed Harry’s parents’ location to Voldemort (the ultimate bad guy). Peter whines that they had no idea how powerful Voldemort was. “He was going to kill me! What could I do?” Sirius Black says, “You could have died! I would rather die than betray my best friends!”
I don’t know what is common in your community, but whatever has been really cannot be this year. We need to accommodate the elders in our congregations, which means spacing out those who come to worship and insisting on the use of masks to keep Covid-19 and its variants from sending most of our congregation to heaven this year. Several of my colleagues have sent for communion packets – a piece of bread and a sealed small plastic cup of grape juice or wine, depending on their denominational practices. These can be blessed while in their plastic wrap, handed out so that each recipient can open them for themselves, and the leftovers can be dropped into containers at the end of the pew or communion rail. Yes, it’s a little sterile compared to the way I used to receive communion in my younger days, but hopefully we won’t be sharing a deadly virus in God’s name.
It may be that God will use this impoverished celebration to re-ignite in us the realization that we need to share our love with one another, that we need to touch and be touched, to hug and to be hugged, that we need to be with others, to uphold each other and to worship God in the Body of Christ. We can hope.
One thing I have learned over my long lifetime: God can use everything we go through for good. Divorce. Death. A serious accident. Our homes destroyed by flame, wind, water. All these disasters are still disasters. God does not will the death of a child, or to leave any of us orphaned, but God can use these inevitable happenings to bless us and those around us. This pandemic has changed our lives and our nation, and the outcomes are yet unknown. But it is certain that this pandemic, like the Black Death and Spanish Influenza, will leave us changed as a society and as individuals. How it will change us is mostly up to us, how we adapt and what we are willing to do in the face of such devastation. But rest assured, God will use our changes and our suffering and what we learn from all this for the furtherance of the family of God.
Isaiah 50:4-9a
It’s easy to see, as we read the gospels, that Jesus was most impressed by the writing of Isaiah the prophet. He quotes him on a regular basis. Example from today’s lesson: verse 9, “All of them will wear out like a garment; the moth will eat them up.” In Matthew 6:19-20, Jesus says we should not store up treasures for ourselves that can be stolen by thieves, or where rust or moths can destroy them. Our treasure must be saved up beyond these concerns. This is not the only place where we can see Jesus trying to point them (and, by extension, us) toward concentration on what is permanent – things that are beyond this life, this earth.
In this passage, however, Isaiah is saying this of the adversaries of the Christ, those who would judge him, and call him a disgrace (v. 7). This is literally what happened to Jesus as he was brought before the Sanhedrin. False witnesses accused him of saying things he did not say, misquoting him as well as simply making up things to hold against him. And these were the men who were supposed to be the rulers of the nation of Judea.
Isaiah says that he was beaten, spit upon and insulted; also, he was subjected to an ancient ritual – the literal pulling out of a man’s beard, hair by hair, rendering him, in the end, like those who cannot grow a beard – women and children – who were universally considered by men to be less than any man.1 This last humiliation was not visited on Jesus, according to the gospel writers, though all the rest was.
The gospels all say that Jesus bore all that happened to him at the hands of the authorities with dignity, which is a high compliment. The most any of us can hope for in the face of torture is that we may retain some semblance of dignity, though this is nearly impossible, considering what can be done to the human body. But Jesus managed, apparently, to reply to the charges without whining or shouting. His answers to both the Sanhedrin and Pilate demanded some respect. And like Isaiah, those writers say, Jesus relied on God in the face of his adversaries.
Philippians 2:5-11
Now we come to the lesson for us – we who have accepted Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ, of God: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus…” A mind of humility. A mind that does not take on airs, does not pride itself on having the blessings of God. A mind that does not insist on our own way. A humble mind, that does not complain about the difficulties of life (yes, even if you, like me, have been self-quarantined for six months or more, and never go out of the house without a mask, so as to protect others as well as ourselves). A mind that is not unwilling to be obedient to the law that we should love our neighbors as we love ourselves. (Hence the necessity to wear a mask, even if it is hot, stuffy and causes our skin to erupt with pimples where it rubs constantly and steams up our glasses if we don’t wear it high enough.)
And what was Jesus’ reward for his humility? He was executed in the lowest possible way – he was nailed to a cross, like those who waylay people traveling on the roads, or those who have committed treason. And he was a traitor, at least in the eyes of the authorities of his day. He did not show them the proper respect; he talked about himself in terms that indicated that he had a special relationship with God and could pass this status on to his followers.2
This teaching was considered to be blasphemy. And blasphemy, in Judaism, was traitorous language. This charge had obviously been passed on to Pilate, for he asked Jesus if he did think he was the Son of God; and Jesus did not deny it. Yet, to the disciples, Jesus was humbling himself, because he did not take the power of God to strike down his accusers and judges, and because he “became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.” This was despite his status with God.
And what is the result of all this? “God highly exalted him.”
Do we, also, exalt Jesus the way that God did? Do we feel the holiness that Jesus represents – so that “at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” What a statement that is! Not that we should kneel in his presence. Not even that “every knee on earth” should bend in his presence.
What a sight it would be to see those who claim to have ultimate power over their nation, or church, or company get down on their knees to worship God! Imagine seeing those who have made themselves absolute rulers, like Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin, or Xi Jinping, bow and kneel before Jesus, God’s son. Or imagine the billionaires of the world, such as Elon Musk or David H. Koch kneeling too (who, when asked about the money he was “investing” in people running for public office, said, “What good is it to have so much money, if I can’t buy myself a Senator or two?”)?
On the other hand, we can also hope to be kneeling alongside people like Mother Teresa, E. Stanley Jones, Billy Graham or Peter Cartwright, who worked diligently, both in action and in prayer, for the salvation of the world to become known to everyone. Or we might be in a throng of staunch believers, philanthropists, and common workers for the good of the world, whose names are as yet unknown to us. Foster parents, child welfare workers, counselors to those whose will to go on is failing. All unknown to us, but known to God, and welcomed into the realm that Jesus came to proclaim even as he invited us all to participate in and to benefit from.
One thing we must remember from this text is – that Jesus Christ (Messiah) is Adonai (Lord), but only to glorify God the Creator (Father). Too many of our parishioners are still afraid of God, and feel their only hope is to worship Jesus. And while we may say the latter is true, the former – fear -- is not appropriate in our relationship with God. That is the meaning of the doctrine of the Trinity, that God so loved the world that he willingly took on human flesh so that we would come to love the God who is the very embodiment of love of every kind. If we lift up no other idea this Easter, we must, for the welfare of our people in troubling times, remind them that it is God who was in that flesh that was nailed to the cross.
Mark 14:1--15:47
If you must cover most of the crucifixion event in one or two services, please feel free to pick and choose to delete parts of the story that are, as the motion picture industry puts it, ‘secondary stories.’ The core of the narrative is 14:1-2; 10-11; 22-65; and 15:1-47. There are details that could be left out; of course, different people may say you left out their favorite bit from the story, but no one will tell you the readings were too short.
Mark includes all these details because his is the first gospel to be written down. And the Greek he uses is koine, or ‘street’ Greek, not the language used by the educated writers of his day. And one can turn these verses into a chancel drama if you want, or have different people read the parts of the various characters in the story. Even if the actual number of minutes is as long as ever, the time will seem shorter in either of these scenarios. If you are using Zoom, it will be a matter of making sure each person participating has a full script that is marked with highlighter in lieu of a prompter. A run-through will help to get participants to read smoothly.
The story of the end of Jesus’ life is the core story to the gospels. It is believed by some scholars that this was all there was to the Jesus story altogether, and one can see in Mark especially that this narrative tells us all we need to know about Jesus. He has told his disciples to expect that he will be arrested in Jerusalem, and here we see the fulfillment of that prophecy. He sets up a ceremony (the Lord’s Supper) within a ceremonial meal (the Passover Feast), and points to it as the way to commemorate his ministry for future generations. His passion (suffering for love of humankind) shows his love for all of us, that he is willing to lay down his life for his friends.3
One might also insert hymns that tell the story of the end of Jesus’ life, and use those in place of parts of the gospel reading.
There are a few notes to know about what Mark tells us. In 15:6-15, the name Barabbas is Hebrew for “Son of the Father.” In other words, Pilate pits freeing the King of the Jews and crucifying The Son of the Father in his place. Since Mark placed a good amount of weight on Jesus’ claim to that title, it provides a bit of irony on the events in Pilate’s palace.
I think that the passages about Peter could be removed from the Passion and used on Easter or the Sunday after Easter, as background for Jesus’ confrontation with Peter on the beach after the apostles have gone out fishing all night without any fish to show for their work. Placing those two parts of the story on the same Sunday can more easily form the basis for a sermon on the topic, with emphasis on the grace Jesus shows to Peter, and the contrast between Judas, who went out and hung himself for betraying Jesus, and Peter, who lived to see his Lord and receive forgiveness for his weakness.
Likewise, the burial of Jesus could be omitted if you’re doing all of this in one service. It would lend a setting to the Easter discovery that the body of Jesus is missing from the tomb and tie the Marys to both the burial and the resurrection. After all, they alone, according to Mark, knew where Jesus was buried. And they alone saw him in the garden after they saw him buried.
May you have a blessed Easter.
_____
1 In the law, women could not testify in court, for example, unless there was a man to back up their testimony. They were considered to be children, whose testimony could not be trusted. In addition, a man could divorce his wife for not knowing how to cook, for having a loud voice, for disobedience to her husband. Of course, most girls were married as soon as they were able to bear children, which could mean as young as ten or twelve, and their husbands had to be able to earn a living, which meant they would be about 20 to 25, so the age discrepancy was real and the balance of power obvious. However, no Jewish woman could be married to the man her father selected without her consent (See Genesis 24).
2 See John 14-17
3 If you have fans of the Harry Potter saga in your congregation, you might draw some parallels between the gospel story and the Potter story. E.g. in the 3rd book, The Prisoner of Azkaban,” Sirius Black (Harry’s godfather) and Remus Lupin (one of James Potter’s clique when they were schoolboys together at Hogwarts) confront Peter Pettigrew, who betrayed Harry’s parents’ location to Voldemort (the ultimate bad guy). Peter whines that they had no idea how powerful Voldemort was. “He was going to kill me! What could I do?” Sirius Black says, “You could have died! I would rather die than betray my best friends!”