Non-Hollywood love
Commentary
In June the American Film Institute released its list of the top 100 romance movies of all time. It is an interesting and surprising list. It goes all the way from such expected ones as Dr. Zhivago (no. 7) to such unexpected ones as King Kong, (no. 24). They include the light and playful ones, like When Harry Met Sally (no. 25); the heavy and serious ones, such as The English Patient (no. 54); and even the animated, such as Lady and the Tramp (no. 95). Number 1 was Casablanca (no surprise there) and number 100 was Jerry McGuire (I had to think: was that a romance?). And of course, as with all such lists, it starts off the popular parlor game of disagreeing with it.
But what you can't disagree with is that these movies show a particular kind of love, Hollywood love. Hollywood love is romantic love. Love of any other kind -- platonic love, love for all humanity, self-giving love -- doesn't seem to exist in Hollywood. Hollywood love is an ethereal thing, an abstract concept, a state that people find themselves in suddenly. It is characterized by dreamy looks and long walks on the beach. It is primarily a feeling as opposed to a choice. Rarely do people have any control over it; on the contrary, it grabs hold of them and takes control, bending people to its inexorable will, forcing them to do strange and possibly destructive things that they wouldn't normally do.
And even though, as in some of the movies such as Vertigo (no. 18), one of the lovers might die in the end, and even though love may remain unrequited, and even though it may end unhappily, still that view of love predominates in the movies.
Certainly there is some truth in the view of love promulgated by Hollywood, but there is vastly more to this little four-letter word than Hollywood can even touch, and vastly more to the relationships that the word describes.
Because there is another idea of love -- not so dreamy and not so abstract -- that is practical and basic, dealing with how real people get along in the real world. It's about a choice, an act of the will, the will for the good of another human being and the good of the community. In fact, the kind of love we're talking about, non-Hollywood love, is about the very presence of Christ right there in the midst of people.
Exodus 12:1-14
When it comes right down to it, this is a very troubling passage.
On the one hand, it is one of several passages that are utterly foundational for Judaism, alongside the crossing of the Red Sea and the conquest of the land. The Passover meal has survived for 3,000 years as a singular ritual in the life of the Jewish people. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the nation of Israel -- the historical, theological nation of Israel, not the modern state -- owes its identity to this very meal. It has enormous meaning for observant Jews, as it stands at the center of the Jewish self-understanding.
On the other hand, modern sensibilities are justifiably troubled by this account. A God who would kill the firstborn -- the presumably innocent firstborn -- is hard to jibe not only with our New Testament theology, but also with modern Jewish understandings of ethics and justice.
So what are we to make of such an important, defining event that so offends us?
To begin with, it is important that we understand the historical-critical matters in this passage. Scholars are agreed that several traditions come together in Exodus 12. Those stories are the death of the firstborn, the celebration of the Passover meal and the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which really enters the narrative only in verse 14 and following. They are seen as originally three different strands that have found meaning for the Israelites -- for later Israelites -- as a part of the account of the liberation of Israel from slavery, just as Christians find the meaning of events in light of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
In other words, the things that happened, the death of children, are terrible, yes, but they are also seen as one of the means of liberation. Indeed, perhaps the underlying terrible event that actually happened, shrouded as it is in the mists of time, is redeemed in some slight way by the understanding that God used it for the freedom of slaves.
We also see in the account of the institution of the Passover, in the detail provided, a later instruction for a liturgical event. The meal is re-enacted by later generations of Jews, and in the process they re-enact and remember God's salvation of Israel. If anything in Judaism is a sacrament, which is a Christian term, it would be this Passover meal.
And that gives us a clue about how to understand and interpret the passage. It comes down to three words: salvation, declaration, participation. In painting blood on the door, the Hebrews made a declaration of their participation in God's salvation. It was a way of becoming a part of it, in the same way that the later observance of the Passover would become a means of declaring and claiming, God's salvation, and God, as your salvation and your God.
Romans 13:8-14
Most authorities and interpreters separate this reading into verses 8-10 and 11-14. In fact the Common Lectionary, the predecessor of the Revised Common Lectionary, puts verses 1-10 together and verses 11-14 later, in Advent. But there is a flow to the whole reading and a unifying interpretation.
With chapter 12 of the Letter to the Romans, Paul leaves the more theoretical, theological material, and embarks on the more practical issues, specifically the subject of Christian ethics. The beginning of chapter 13 speaks of how the Christian is to relate to the state, which brings us to this lesson.
Paul has the unique ability to jump to a new topic without the slightest provocation. There is a strange sort of stream of consciousness to his writing, in which he moves immediately to the very next thing that enters his mind. So it is that in the course of a discussion of owing and paying taxes that are properly due the state, Paul makes a leap to owing anybody anything, for which his advice is: Don't. Don't owe anybody anything, with one exception. Love. That is the one obligation that human beings -- and specifically Christians -- have for each other.
And while we're on the subject of love, Paul says with another quantum leap, bear in mind that love is the fulfillment of the law. And he proceeds to list the commandments that are summed up by the injunction to love your neighbor as yourself.
And with yet another leap, he moves to eschatology as a reason for the behavior of love. The night is far gone, says Paul, and the day is drawing near. That is the reason that we must change who we are and how we do things. We must work the work of love and live the life of love, putting on Jesus Christ.
There is a strange mixture in this passage of the practical and the theoretical, the mundane and the ideal. It points out how transcendent love only has meaning as it is lived out in practical circumstances of life, and it also points out that our idealized and theological view of love arises out of everyday, practical considerations of how to treat people.
Our God, this says, is a God of transcendent love, but it is a transcendent love that finds its highest expression in something as mundane and ordinary and down to earth as human interactions.
Matthew 18:15-20
How should we in the church behave in our interactions with each other? That's the topic of chapter 18 of Matthew, which contains the fourth of the five great discourses in Matthew's Gospel. This lesson follows the brief parable of the lost sheep, and it gives further instruction about how to deal with the one sheep of one hundred that has gone astray (verse 12).
The early church is certainly an underlying presence in Matthew, although it becomes explicit at only a few points in the gospel. This is one of them: the setting of the reading is not so much the story of Jesus as it is the early church for whom Matthew was writing his gospel. And it follows on Jesus' promise in 16:18 that Peter will be the foundation of the church.
The word "church," ecclesia, occurs only three times in Matthew, once in 16:18 and twice in this reading, both in verse 17. The New Revised Standard translation makes an interpretive move earlier in the passage when it renders "your brother" in verse 15 as "another member of the church." This raises a continuing issue in New Testament interpretation, an issue that is notable also in John's Gospel: specifically that the original teaching was for the early church, while we moderns understand it as referring to all people. In other words, verse 15, "If your brother sins against you ..." properly refers to a member of the church, but we can also understand it as the proper way to treat all people.
What's remarkable about the teaching of this passage is how practical and down to earth it is. It has the big and lofty end of reclaiming, in love, a lost sheep, yet it happens through the common, ordinary business of going to talk to somebody about a problem. The excommunication of the unrepentant church member in verse 17 sounds unduly harsh, especially when you consider how, in other contexts, Jesus dealt with Gentiles and tax collectors. It seems doubly harsh if we understand verses 18-19 in the sense that traditional Roman Catholic theology has understood it, to wit, that an excommunication wrought by the church has the same effect in heaven.
It is troubling, but the best way to understand it is that in verses 18-20 we see, above all, an affirmation that the church has the authority of God. And how does the church come to have God's authority? Because, we find in verse 20, Christ is present in the church, uniquely, even when as few as two are gathered. It is a verse that has been lifted out of context countless times. But properly so. The church partakes of Christ: of Christ's authority, but more, of Christ's love.
Application
"Love makes the world go around," goes the old song. No question about it. It is the subject of more books and poems and writings than just about any other human experience. It is the thing that has created the unique phenomena of the soap opera and People magazine and gossip columns. The simple fact is: love sells. It sells magazines and movie tickets. It sells because it goes deep within us: We all have in us the primal urge to connect with others, and to mate and to reproduce. We have within us, in other words, the capacity for romantic love.
The entertainment industry has capitalized on that, witness the AFI's list of the top 100 romantic movies. But the love that sells so well, the idealized, romantic version of love, Hollywood love, is only one kind of love.
And the problem is that we in our culture, with our 20-screen multiplexes and cable television with hundreds of channels showing love stories, have come to accept Hollywood love as the true nature of love.
There are other kinds of love. Unfortunately, we English speakers have a single word for what is a multilayered, complex set of phenomena. Greek might be a bit easier, since you can distinguish between eros, agape, and philia.
We have come to believe that love is something that we either have or don't have, something that invades us and wrests control over all our processes. It's not something that we can produce or work toward. It's an almost mythological view of love that we have arrived at, in which a random Cupid is taking aim and if you get hit by his arrow, then you fall in love.
So it is, then, that countless marriages end every year, as the divorce rate in the United States passes 50 percent simply because people fall out of love. The spark is no longer there, the flame has gone out, and couples seem to think that nothing can be done to rekindle it. The popular idea of love creates dramatic expectations about how it will be for people in love.
But the testimony of the Bible is that love is practical and doable, it lies within the purview of human choice and human will. It involves behavior, hard and fast behavior, choosing to do specific things that are the actions of love.
Paul speaks of it in Romans, when he instructs the church at Rome not to owe anyone anything, except for love. And how is that to be done? How do you render love toward people? Through the commandments, the law, the individual behaviors that the law calls for. To that extent, then, says Paul, love is the ultimate fulfillment of the law. It is the thing that sums up all the totality of what the law requires.
Jesus speaks of it in Matthew, as he instructs the church how to be a part of a community and how to deal with problems within the community. It involves basic, down-to-earth, reasonable actions. Talking to a person about problems, talking with a group of people about problems, meeting together.
The accusation has been made about Christianity that it is a cerebral religion with silent prayer, singing celestial songs, and praying in dark, empty churches, quaint and charming, perhaps, but probably anachronistic and certainly impractical, rarely dealing with real life matters. Nothing could be further from the truth. The message of Paul and of Jesus -- in fact, the call of God -- is to put love into action, practical action.
Paul Tillich, in Love, Power, and Justice, says of love, "It is the moving power of life, the drive toward the unity of the separated." In the Jewish and Christian traditions, the call to love God and neighbor and self makes up the greatest commandments of all. Those are things we can actually do.
The culture holds up Hollywood love, but we in the church hold up the other kind -- deep love, active love, producible love, the love that builds a community and a kingdom.
Alternative Applications
1) Exodus: On Participation and Aloofness. One of the marks of the modern age is aloofness, a sense of detachment on the part of people, who stand back and watch what's going on -- in the world, in church, wherever -- keeping a careful distance, without plunging in and being a part of it. But the Passover was about participation, about being fully a part of the event. Indeed, the blood on the door was a mark of a willingness to plunge in and be involved in the whole salvation enterprise. Twenty-first century Americans would do well to make a similar mark of blood on their doors, indicating that they want to be a full partner in the work of salvation.
2) Matthew: The New Incarnation. We affirm that God was incarnate uniquely in Jesus Christ. Yet when we read Matthew 18:20, we understand that the incarnation happens over and over again, whenever we gather with fellow believers. The implications of that can blow you away. Is Christ present in a church meeting? Surely. Over lunch at MacDonald's? That too. Lord, help us, surely not when we are having a church fight? Yes, even then. Jesus' pledge that he would be wherever two or more are gathered in his name was a statement of the authority of the church. But it is also a fundamental reassurance that wherever we are and whatever we do, Christ is present with us.
First Lesson Focus
Exodus 12:1-14
We have been following the history of salvation as it is presented to us in the book of Exodus. We have heard of the multiplication of the Hebrews' population, which caused the fearful Pharaohs, Seti I and then Rameses II (cf. 2:23), to oppress them in slavery in Egypt. We learned of Moses, of the appearance of God to him in the burning bush, and of his call to lead his people out of bondage. Now we are introduced to the preparation for that exodus.
Preceding our text, the Lord has afflicted the Egyptians with nine devastating plagues, in order to persuade them to let the Hebrews go. But Rameses has stubbornly refused to free the slaves. Therefore now God is about to visit on the Egyptians the tenth plague, the death of all of their firstborn, as the final blow that will convince Pharaoh to rid himself of Moses and his troubling Semites.
The Hebrews, however, must be ready to flee. In our text, Moses therefore commands each family or group of families on the tenth day of the month of Abib (= March-April) to secure for themselves a year old, unblemished sheep or goat. On the evening of the fourteenth of Abib, they are to kill the animal and to smear some of its blood on their doorposts and lintels. At the same time, they are to roast the animal over an open fire, using no utensils or boiling water, and they are to eat it, along with unleavened bread and with bitter herbs pulled straight out of the ground. They are to leave over no portion, and they are to wait expectantly at their doors, with their loins girded, their sandals on their feet, and their walking sticks in their hands.
The whole scene is one of haste. No cooking utensils are to be used, no bread will have time to rise, no tasty herbs will be prepared. Long robes are to be gathered up into the girdles around the persons' waists so they can walk or run rapidly. And then the people are to wait -- to wait for the action of the Lord -- for his "destroyer" (12:23) will pass through the land of Egypt, slaying the firstborn of man and beast. But when the Lord sees the blood on the Hebrews' doors, he will "pass over" their houses and do them no harm. The false gods of the Egyptians will be powerless to turn aside this work of the God of gods (12:12), and the Pharaoh will finally realize that he is dealing with the King of kings and that earthly power is helpless against him. He will let the Hebrew slaves go free, to be delivered from suffering and oppression (12:29-36).
Further, Moses tells his people, they are to remember their deliverance from bondage by celebrating the Passover feast in their families on the fourteenth of Abib (or Nisan in the Babylonian calendar) every year, and that date is to mark the beginning of the New Year. Originally, the Hebrew year began in the fall, with the harvest, but during the time of the monarchy, it was switched to the spring (vv. 1-2), reflecting the view of the priestly authors of our passage. Thus still today, every religious Jew celebrates the Feast of the Passover as the memorial of God's deliverance of them out of the house of bondage in Egypt.
Passover, therefore, consists in remembrance of God's mighty act of power and redemption on behalf of an enslaved and afflicted people, who had no other helper. And it marks the deliverance of those to whose forbears God made a promise that he would make them a great nation and give them a land to call their own. God could not keep that promise if his chosen people were enslaved and dying in the mud-pits of Egypt. He therefore set about, against the power of a Pharaoh and a mighty empire, to set his people free. His power was unmatchable, his lordship over nature and nations incontestable. And of course that is the same God of gods and King of kings whose mighty power we remember in our parallel to the Passover, our Lord's Supper. Every time we eat the bread and drink the cup, we remember the death of our Lord, our Passover Lamb (1 Corinthians 5:7) -- the one who set us free from our slavery to sin and death -- until he comes again.
Lutheran Option -- Ezekiel 33:7-11
The words in this passage are spoken by God to the prophet Ezekiel shortly before the fall of the city of Jerusalem to the armies of Babylonia in 587 B.C. (cf. 33:21). Ezekiel was carried into Babylonian exile with the first wave of deportees in 597 B.C. He received his call to be a prophet there in 593 B.C., and he carried on his prophetic preaching among his fellow captives. At the time of his call, he was designated by the Lord to be a "watchman" for the people of Israel, and our text is paralleled in Ezekiel 3:16-19. Verse 7 of our text, however, is once again a commission to be his people's watchman.
Before the ministry of Ezekiel, Jeremiah too was called by the Lord to be Israel's "watchman" (Jeremiah 6:16-21). The figure of speech refers of course to the practice of stationing a watchman on the walls of a city to warn the populace of the approach of an enemy (cf. 2 Samuel 18:24-27; 2 Kings 9:17-20). But in such prophetic texts, the enemy who approaches the Israelites is God, who is coming to bring his judgment upon his sinful people.
The responsibility laid upon the prophetic watchman is fearful. If the prophet does not warn a wicked person to turn from his evil way, the prophet's own life will be forfeited. But if the prophet gives the warning, even though a wicked person does not repent and turn, the prophet saves his own life. And the fact that this commissioning of Ezekiel is repeated shortly before the fall of Jerusalem is significant. Jerusalem is about to be captured and destroyed, but the watchman Ezekiel is to warn the people that even further judgment will come upon them if they do not amend their ways.
Strangely, however, the text shows no interest in whether the people heed the prophet's warning or not. Rather, the whole emphasis is on what will happen to the prophet. By faithfully proclaiming the word of the Lord, he may save his own life, whether the people repent and turn or not. The passage reflects the fact that there probably is no healing possible for the people, but it does assure the prophet himself that if he is a faithful servant of his Lord, he will have his reward.
I wonder if that is not reassurance for every Christian who faces the stubbornness and heedlessness of our faithless society. All of us, in many ways large and small, try to be faithful Christians who attempt to witness to the person and work of Jesus Christ. And so often, our Christian message seems to fall on deaf ears and indifferent hearts. The Christian gospel is not gladly received by our secular world, and we in the church can get the feeling sometimes that we are making no progress at all in spreading the Christian message and in drawing all persons to our Lord. But our text from Ezekiel reassures us that our labors are not in vain, that God values his faithful servants and uses them in his purpose. After all, God preserved the words of Ezekiel through all the centuries and still speaks to us through that prophet's words. Perhaps he will also use our seemingly futile efforts in his salvation of his world.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 149
In the scheme devised by the Revised Common Lectionary committee, the weekly psalm is viewed less as a reading in its own right and more as a meditation in support of the First Lesson. But to consider Psalm 149 a mediation on the Passover story is a troubling thought. If verses 6-8 of the psalm, and especially verse 7, are to be taken as a comment on the meaning of the death of the Egypt's firstborns, then those deaths have to be defined as Divinely approved "vengeance" and "punishment." Furthermore, the psalm appears to be hymn in support of holy war, and in this day with "jihad" having been forced into the national vocabulary, using Psalm 149 too enthusiastically seems objectionable.
But if you choose to go with the psalm this week, look at its second sentence: "Sing to the Lord a new song." This is not the only psalm that calls for a new song, but here the summons is especially appropriate. The new song in this psalm seems to the hymn to holy war, but in our day, holy war is now an old song, and one that does not serve us very well any more, if it ever did. So a sermon could be built on the question, "What new song should we sing to God today?"
Back in the 1970s, Barry Manilow had a hit with a song called "I Write the Songs." The opening line was, "I write the songs that make the whole world sing." It was a happy melody. The singer expressed the joy he felt from giving others the words to sing, to express their songs.
For David, the "sweet psalmist of Israel" (2 Samuel 23:1 RSV -- or see TEV, "the composer of beautiful songs for Israel") there must have been a similar pleasure. Sure, as a successful ruler, he was sometimes the object of Israel's praise, but his songs expressed joy at being able to point to God as the only one really worthy of praise. As David puts it in 2 Samuel 23:2, "The spirit of the LORD speaks through me, his word is upon my tongue." There must have been a delight that came from composing the psalms that helped the people of Israel praise their Maker.
What we need to do is to be reporters of God's deeds, songsters singing songs of God's glory.
But what you can't disagree with is that these movies show a particular kind of love, Hollywood love. Hollywood love is romantic love. Love of any other kind -- platonic love, love for all humanity, self-giving love -- doesn't seem to exist in Hollywood. Hollywood love is an ethereal thing, an abstract concept, a state that people find themselves in suddenly. It is characterized by dreamy looks and long walks on the beach. It is primarily a feeling as opposed to a choice. Rarely do people have any control over it; on the contrary, it grabs hold of them and takes control, bending people to its inexorable will, forcing them to do strange and possibly destructive things that they wouldn't normally do.
And even though, as in some of the movies such as Vertigo (no. 18), one of the lovers might die in the end, and even though love may remain unrequited, and even though it may end unhappily, still that view of love predominates in the movies.
Certainly there is some truth in the view of love promulgated by Hollywood, but there is vastly more to this little four-letter word than Hollywood can even touch, and vastly more to the relationships that the word describes.
Because there is another idea of love -- not so dreamy and not so abstract -- that is practical and basic, dealing with how real people get along in the real world. It's about a choice, an act of the will, the will for the good of another human being and the good of the community. In fact, the kind of love we're talking about, non-Hollywood love, is about the very presence of Christ right there in the midst of people.
Exodus 12:1-14
When it comes right down to it, this is a very troubling passage.
On the one hand, it is one of several passages that are utterly foundational for Judaism, alongside the crossing of the Red Sea and the conquest of the land. The Passover meal has survived for 3,000 years as a singular ritual in the life of the Jewish people. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the nation of Israel -- the historical, theological nation of Israel, not the modern state -- owes its identity to this very meal. It has enormous meaning for observant Jews, as it stands at the center of the Jewish self-understanding.
On the other hand, modern sensibilities are justifiably troubled by this account. A God who would kill the firstborn -- the presumably innocent firstborn -- is hard to jibe not only with our New Testament theology, but also with modern Jewish understandings of ethics and justice.
So what are we to make of such an important, defining event that so offends us?
To begin with, it is important that we understand the historical-critical matters in this passage. Scholars are agreed that several traditions come together in Exodus 12. Those stories are the death of the firstborn, the celebration of the Passover meal and the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which really enters the narrative only in verse 14 and following. They are seen as originally three different strands that have found meaning for the Israelites -- for later Israelites -- as a part of the account of the liberation of Israel from slavery, just as Christians find the meaning of events in light of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
In other words, the things that happened, the death of children, are terrible, yes, but they are also seen as one of the means of liberation. Indeed, perhaps the underlying terrible event that actually happened, shrouded as it is in the mists of time, is redeemed in some slight way by the understanding that God used it for the freedom of slaves.
We also see in the account of the institution of the Passover, in the detail provided, a later instruction for a liturgical event. The meal is re-enacted by later generations of Jews, and in the process they re-enact and remember God's salvation of Israel. If anything in Judaism is a sacrament, which is a Christian term, it would be this Passover meal.
And that gives us a clue about how to understand and interpret the passage. It comes down to three words: salvation, declaration, participation. In painting blood on the door, the Hebrews made a declaration of their participation in God's salvation. It was a way of becoming a part of it, in the same way that the later observance of the Passover would become a means of declaring and claiming, God's salvation, and God, as your salvation and your God.
Romans 13:8-14
Most authorities and interpreters separate this reading into verses 8-10 and 11-14. In fact the Common Lectionary, the predecessor of the Revised Common Lectionary, puts verses 1-10 together and verses 11-14 later, in Advent. But there is a flow to the whole reading and a unifying interpretation.
With chapter 12 of the Letter to the Romans, Paul leaves the more theoretical, theological material, and embarks on the more practical issues, specifically the subject of Christian ethics. The beginning of chapter 13 speaks of how the Christian is to relate to the state, which brings us to this lesson.
Paul has the unique ability to jump to a new topic without the slightest provocation. There is a strange sort of stream of consciousness to his writing, in which he moves immediately to the very next thing that enters his mind. So it is that in the course of a discussion of owing and paying taxes that are properly due the state, Paul makes a leap to owing anybody anything, for which his advice is: Don't. Don't owe anybody anything, with one exception. Love. That is the one obligation that human beings -- and specifically Christians -- have for each other.
And while we're on the subject of love, Paul says with another quantum leap, bear in mind that love is the fulfillment of the law. And he proceeds to list the commandments that are summed up by the injunction to love your neighbor as yourself.
And with yet another leap, he moves to eschatology as a reason for the behavior of love. The night is far gone, says Paul, and the day is drawing near. That is the reason that we must change who we are and how we do things. We must work the work of love and live the life of love, putting on Jesus Christ.
There is a strange mixture in this passage of the practical and the theoretical, the mundane and the ideal. It points out how transcendent love only has meaning as it is lived out in practical circumstances of life, and it also points out that our idealized and theological view of love arises out of everyday, practical considerations of how to treat people.
Our God, this says, is a God of transcendent love, but it is a transcendent love that finds its highest expression in something as mundane and ordinary and down to earth as human interactions.
Matthew 18:15-20
How should we in the church behave in our interactions with each other? That's the topic of chapter 18 of Matthew, which contains the fourth of the five great discourses in Matthew's Gospel. This lesson follows the brief parable of the lost sheep, and it gives further instruction about how to deal with the one sheep of one hundred that has gone astray (verse 12).
The early church is certainly an underlying presence in Matthew, although it becomes explicit at only a few points in the gospel. This is one of them: the setting of the reading is not so much the story of Jesus as it is the early church for whom Matthew was writing his gospel. And it follows on Jesus' promise in 16:18 that Peter will be the foundation of the church.
The word "church," ecclesia, occurs only three times in Matthew, once in 16:18 and twice in this reading, both in verse 17. The New Revised Standard translation makes an interpretive move earlier in the passage when it renders "your brother" in verse 15 as "another member of the church." This raises a continuing issue in New Testament interpretation, an issue that is notable also in John's Gospel: specifically that the original teaching was for the early church, while we moderns understand it as referring to all people. In other words, verse 15, "If your brother sins against you ..." properly refers to a member of the church, but we can also understand it as the proper way to treat all people.
What's remarkable about the teaching of this passage is how practical and down to earth it is. It has the big and lofty end of reclaiming, in love, a lost sheep, yet it happens through the common, ordinary business of going to talk to somebody about a problem. The excommunication of the unrepentant church member in verse 17 sounds unduly harsh, especially when you consider how, in other contexts, Jesus dealt with Gentiles and tax collectors. It seems doubly harsh if we understand verses 18-19 in the sense that traditional Roman Catholic theology has understood it, to wit, that an excommunication wrought by the church has the same effect in heaven.
It is troubling, but the best way to understand it is that in verses 18-20 we see, above all, an affirmation that the church has the authority of God. And how does the church come to have God's authority? Because, we find in verse 20, Christ is present in the church, uniquely, even when as few as two are gathered. It is a verse that has been lifted out of context countless times. But properly so. The church partakes of Christ: of Christ's authority, but more, of Christ's love.
Application
"Love makes the world go around," goes the old song. No question about it. It is the subject of more books and poems and writings than just about any other human experience. It is the thing that has created the unique phenomena of the soap opera and People magazine and gossip columns. The simple fact is: love sells. It sells magazines and movie tickets. It sells because it goes deep within us: We all have in us the primal urge to connect with others, and to mate and to reproduce. We have within us, in other words, the capacity for romantic love.
The entertainment industry has capitalized on that, witness the AFI's list of the top 100 romantic movies. But the love that sells so well, the idealized, romantic version of love, Hollywood love, is only one kind of love.
And the problem is that we in our culture, with our 20-screen multiplexes and cable television with hundreds of channels showing love stories, have come to accept Hollywood love as the true nature of love.
There are other kinds of love. Unfortunately, we English speakers have a single word for what is a multilayered, complex set of phenomena. Greek might be a bit easier, since you can distinguish between eros, agape, and philia.
We have come to believe that love is something that we either have or don't have, something that invades us and wrests control over all our processes. It's not something that we can produce or work toward. It's an almost mythological view of love that we have arrived at, in which a random Cupid is taking aim and if you get hit by his arrow, then you fall in love.
So it is, then, that countless marriages end every year, as the divorce rate in the United States passes 50 percent simply because people fall out of love. The spark is no longer there, the flame has gone out, and couples seem to think that nothing can be done to rekindle it. The popular idea of love creates dramatic expectations about how it will be for people in love.
But the testimony of the Bible is that love is practical and doable, it lies within the purview of human choice and human will. It involves behavior, hard and fast behavior, choosing to do specific things that are the actions of love.
Paul speaks of it in Romans, when he instructs the church at Rome not to owe anyone anything, except for love. And how is that to be done? How do you render love toward people? Through the commandments, the law, the individual behaviors that the law calls for. To that extent, then, says Paul, love is the ultimate fulfillment of the law. It is the thing that sums up all the totality of what the law requires.
Jesus speaks of it in Matthew, as he instructs the church how to be a part of a community and how to deal with problems within the community. It involves basic, down-to-earth, reasonable actions. Talking to a person about problems, talking with a group of people about problems, meeting together.
The accusation has been made about Christianity that it is a cerebral religion with silent prayer, singing celestial songs, and praying in dark, empty churches, quaint and charming, perhaps, but probably anachronistic and certainly impractical, rarely dealing with real life matters. Nothing could be further from the truth. The message of Paul and of Jesus -- in fact, the call of God -- is to put love into action, practical action.
Paul Tillich, in Love, Power, and Justice, says of love, "It is the moving power of life, the drive toward the unity of the separated." In the Jewish and Christian traditions, the call to love God and neighbor and self makes up the greatest commandments of all. Those are things we can actually do.
The culture holds up Hollywood love, but we in the church hold up the other kind -- deep love, active love, producible love, the love that builds a community and a kingdom.
Alternative Applications
1) Exodus: On Participation and Aloofness. One of the marks of the modern age is aloofness, a sense of detachment on the part of people, who stand back and watch what's going on -- in the world, in church, wherever -- keeping a careful distance, without plunging in and being a part of it. But the Passover was about participation, about being fully a part of the event. Indeed, the blood on the door was a mark of a willingness to plunge in and be involved in the whole salvation enterprise. Twenty-first century Americans would do well to make a similar mark of blood on their doors, indicating that they want to be a full partner in the work of salvation.
2) Matthew: The New Incarnation. We affirm that God was incarnate uniquely in Jesus Christ. Yet when we read Matthew 18:20, we understand that the incarnation happens over and over again, whenever we gather with fellow believers. The implications of that can blow you away. Is Christ present in a church meeting? Surely. Over lunch at MacDonald's? That too. Lord, help us, surely not when we are having a church fight? Yes, even then. Jesus' pledge that he would be wherever two or more are gathered in his name was a statement of the authority of the church. But it is also a fundamental reassurance that wherever we are and whatever we do, Christ is present with us.
First Lesson Focus
Exodus 12:1-14
We have been following the history of salvation as it is presented to us in the book of Exodus. We have heard of the multiplication of the Hebrews' population, which caused the fearful Pharaohs, Seti I and then Rameses II (cf. 2:23), to oppress them in slavery in Egypt. We learned of Moses, of the appearance of God to him in the burning bush, and of his call to lead his people out of bondage. Now we are introduced to the preparation for that exodus.
Preceding our text, the Lord has afflicted the Egyptians with nine devastating plagues, in order to persuade them to let the Hebrews go. But Rameses has stubbornly refused to free the slaves. Therefore now God is about to visit on the Egyptians the tenth plague, the death of all of their firstborn, as the final blow that will convince Pharaoh to rid himself of Moses and his troubling Semites.
The Hebrews, however, must be ready to flee. In our text, Moses therefore commands each family or group of families on the tenth day of the month of Abib (= March-April) to secure for themselves a year old, unblemished sheep or goat. On the evening of the fourteenth of Abib, they are to kill the animal and to smear some of its blood on their doorposts and lintels. At the same time, they are to roast the animal over an open fire, using no utensils or boiling water, and they are to eat it, along with unleavened bread and with bitter herbs pulled straight out of the ground. They are to leave over no portion, and they are to wait expectantly at their doors, with their loins girded, their sandals on their feet, and their walking sticks in their hands.
The whole scene is one of haste. No cooking utensils are to be used, no bread will have time to rise, no tasty herbs will be prepared. Long robes are to be gathered up into the girdles around the persons' waists so they can walk or run rapidly. And then the people are to wait -- to wait for the action of the Lord -- for his "destroyer" (12:23) will pass through the land of Egypt, slaying the firstborn of man and beast. But when the Lord sees the blood on the Hebrews' doors, he will "pass over" their houses and do them no harm. The false gods of the Egyptians will be powerless to turn aside this work of the God of gods (12:12), and the Pharaoh will finally realize that he is dealing with the King of kings and that earthly power is helpless against him. He will let the Hebrew slaves go free, to be delivered from suffering and oppression (12:29-36).
Further, Moses tells his people, they are to remember their deliverance from bondage by celebrating the Passover feast in their families on the fourteenth of Abib (or Nisan in the Babylonian calendar) every year, and that date is to mark the beginning of the New Year. Originally, the Hebrew year began in the fall, with the harvest, but during the time of the monarchy, it was switched to the spring (vv. 1-2), reflecting the view of the priestly authors of our passage. Thus still today, every religious Jew celebrates the Feast of the Passover as the memorial of God's deliverance of them out of the house of bondage in Egypt.
Passover, therefore, consists in remembrance of God's mighty act of power and redemption on behalf of an enslaved and afflicted people, who had no other helper. And it marks the deliverance of those to whose forbears God made a promise that he would make them a great nation and give them a land to call their own. God could not keep that promise if his chosen people were enslaved and dying in the mud-pits of Egypt. He therefore set about, against the power of a Pharaoh and a mighty empire, to set his people free. His power was unmatchable, his lordship over nature and nations incontestable. And of course that is the same God of gods and King of kings whose mighty power we remember in our parallel to the Passover, our Lord's Supper. Every time we eat the bread and drink the cup, we remember the death of our Lord, our Passover Lamb (1 Corinthians 5:7) -- the one who set us free from our slavery to sin and death -- until he comes again.
Lutheran Option -- Ezekiel 33:7-11
The words in this passage are spoken by God to the prophet Ezekiel shortly before the fall of the city of Jerusalem to the armies of Babylonia in 587 B.C. (cf. 33:21). Ezekiel was carried into Babylonian exile with the first wave of deportees in 597 B.C. He received his call to be a prophet there in 593 B.C., and he carried on his prophetic preaching among his fellow captives. At the time of his call, he was designated by the Lord to be a "watchman" for the people of Israel, and our text is paralleled in Ezekiel 3:16-19. Verse 7 of our text, however, is once again a commission to be his people's watchman.
Before the ministry of Ezekiel, Jeremiah too was called by the Lord to be Israel's "watchman" (Jeremiah 6:16-21). The figure of speech refers of course to the practice of stationing a watchman on the walls of a city to warn the populace of the approach of an enemy (cf. 2 Samuel 18:24-27; 2 Kings 9:17-20). But in such prophetic texts, the enemy who approaches the Israelites is God, who is coming to bring his judgment upon his sinful people.
The responsibility laid upon the prophetic watchman is fearful. If the prophet does not warn a wicked person to turn from his evil way, the prophet's own life will be forfeited. But if the prophet gives the warning, even though a wicked person does not repent and turn, the prophet saves his own life. And the fact that this commissioning of Ezekiel is repeated shortly before the fall of Jerusalem is significant. Jerusalem is about to be captured and destroyed, but the watchman Ezekiel is to warn the people that even further judgment will come upon them if they do not amend their ways.
Strangely, however, the text shows no interest in whether the people heed the prophet's warning or not. Rather, the whole emphasis is on what will happen to the prophet. By faithfully proclaiming the word of the Lord, he may save his own life, whether the people repent and turn or not. The passage reflects the fact that there probably is no healing possible for the people, but it does assure the prophet himself that if he is a faithful servant of his Lord, he will have his reward.
I wonder if that is not reassurance for every Christian who faces the stubbornness and heedlessness of our faithless society. All of us, in many ways large and small, try to be faithful Christians who attempt to witness to the person and work of Jesus Christ. And so often, our Christian message seems to fall on deaf ears and indifferent hearts. The Christian gospel is not gladly received by our secular world, and we in the church can get the feeling sometimes that we are making no progress at all in spreading the Christian message and in drawing all persons to our Lord. But our text from Ezekiel reassures us that our labors are not in vain, that God values his faithful servants and uses them in his purpose. After all, God preserved the words of Ezekiel through all the centuries and still speaks to us through that prophet's words. Perhaps he will also use our seemingly futile efforts in his salvation of his world.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 149
In the scheme devised by the Revised Common Lectionary committee, the weekly psalm is viewed less as a reading in its own right and more as a meditation in support of the First Lesson. But to consider Psalm 149 a mediation on the Passover story is a troubling thought. If verses 6-8 of the psalm, and especially verse 7, are to be taken as a comment on the meaning of the death of the Egypt's firstborns, then those deaths have to be defined as Divinely approved "vengeance" and "punishment." Furthermore, the psalm appears to be hymn in support of holy war, and in this day with "jihad" having been forced into the national vocabulary, using Psalm 149 too enthusiastically seems objectionable.
But if you choose to go with the psalm this week, look at its second sentence: "Sing to the Lord a new song." This is not the only psalm that calls for a new song, but here the summons is especially appropriate. The new song in this psalm seems to the hymn to holy war, but in our day, holy war is now an old song, and one that does not serve us very well any more, if it ever did. So a sermon could be built on the question, "What new song should we sing to God today?"
Back in the 1970s, Barry Manilow had a hit with a song called "I Write the Songs." The opening line was, "I write the songs that make the whole world sing." It was a happy melody. The singer expressed the joy he felt from giving others the words to sing, to express their songs.
For David, the "sweet psalmist of Israel" (2 Samuel 23:1 RSV -- or see TEV, "the composer of beautiful songs for Israel") there must have been a similar pleasure. Sure, as a successful ruler, he was sometimes the object of Israel's praise, but his songs expressed joy at being able to point to God as the only one really worthy of praise. As David puts it in 2 Samuel 23:2, "The spirit of the LORD speaks through me, his word is upon my tongue." There must have been a delight that came from composing the psalms that helped the people of Israel praise their Maker.
What we need to do is to be reporters of God's deeds, songsters singing songs of God's glory.
