The Surprising Character of Grace
Commentary
The texts for this Sunday send a message about the surprising character of grace.
Exodus 20:1-4,7-9,12-20
The First Lesson is drawn from a book which, like all the first five books of the Old Testament, is the product of several distinct literary strands, all originating between the tenth and sixth centuries BC. The book is so named for the Greek term referring to the liberation of the Israelites from Egyptian bondage. Its Hebrew name (Meaning “These are the names”) refers to the first words of the text’s prologue. In this lesson, we read the story of the giving of the ten commandments. This is likely the product of a combination of the J strand (the ninth-tenth century BC oral tradition characterized by its use of the name Jahweh/Yahweh when speaking of God) and the E strand (an eighth century BC oral tradition characterized by its use of the name Elohim when speaking of God). The editor bringing these oral traditions was then possibly the P strand (so named because it was the work of priests dating from the sixth century BC).
The prologue identifying God and what he has done (v.2) summarized the previous chapter. In this sense, the law and the historical narrative are related. We also find this happening in v.11b, as the sabbath observance finds justification in the Lord resting from creation on the seventh day. The name Yahweh used in verse 2 may be significant. It means “I am who I am,” but can also be translated “He lets be” (i.e., creates) or “I will be who I will be.” This is a merciful God, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love (34:6-7). Each commandment is explicated (vv.3,7-9,12-17). People witness thunder and lightning, trumpets and a smoking mountain, so all tremble (v.18). They ask Moses to speak but do not want to hear God, lest they die (v.19). They are seeking a mediator, so they need not hear God’s law directly. Moses gives reassurance, claiming that God has only come to test the people and put fear of him in them that they not sin (v.20).
A 2018 informal poll taken by the television show Family Feud indicated that most Americans believe they have only broken one of the Ten Commandments in the past month! We need sermons refreshing us on the meaning and significance of the commandments. The commandment on murder is a good place to start, though those pertaining to theft, adultery, and bearing false witness against the neighbor are good themes. Choose the one which best addresses the issues getting attention in your congregation or community or in the nation as you see it. Make it clear that the commandments are not fulfilled just when you avoid visible acts of murder, theft, lying, cheating, and the like. Each commandment has a positive dimension (which people who think they are not sinners never seem to recognize). Many denominations teach that we steal when we fail to help neighbors protect or gain income (see Sermon Illustrations for this Sunday for Lutherans; The [Catholic] Baltimore Catechism, p.97; The [Westminster] Shorter Catechism, Q.74). Obviously, as long as there are poor among us, we sin. And likewise, these denominations teach, when we gossip, we are guilty of bearing false witness. Help the flock understand that sinners like us badly need forgiveness, but that Jesus has provided this. (Reference could be made to the Second Lesson [esp. vv.8-9] to make this point.) Even sinners like us are surprisingly loved by God!
Philippians 3:4b-14
The Second Lesson is part of a letter written by Paul while a prisoner to Christians in a province of Macedonia (present-day Greece). There is some debate about whether the epistle in its present form might be a combination of three separate letters (as early theologian Polycarp, spoke of Paul’s letters to this church.) Its immediate occasion was to thank the Philippians for their gifts, by way of the return of Epaphroditus to Philippi (2:25-30) who had brought these gifts to Paul. His main purpose is to urge persistence in faith in face of opposition. This lesson is a warning that righteousness is not by the law and a confession of hope.
Paul first notes that if any Jew has reason to be confident in the things of the flesh it is him — circumcised, a member of the tribe of Benjamin, a Pharisee, righteous under the law, and a persecutor of the church (vv.4b-6). Certainly, Paul was also fluent in Hebrew (Acts 21:40). Whatever gains he had by these standards, they should be regarded as loss in light of Christ (v.7). Indeed, everything is loss in light of the surpassing value of knowing Christ. For his sake, Paul says he now regards all this as rubbish [skubala] so that he can gain Christ, be found in him, not having a righteousness [dikaiosune] of his own from the law [nomos], but only the righteousness of God that comes through the faith of Christ based on faith [epi ta pistei] (vv.8-9; Romans 3:20-27). This way of phrasing his point makes clear that Paul understood the righteousness of faith much as the Reformation traditions and Augustine have, not as our own characteristic, but as a gift of God properly belonging to him since righteousness is about a proper relationship. Paul proceeds to add that he wants to know Christ, the power of his resurrection, and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in death by attaining resurrection from the dead (vv.10-11). The apostle adds that he has not obtained this already, but is pressing on to make it his own, because Christ has made him his own (v.12). He also observes that he does not consider yet to have made the life of faith he describes his own, but he presses on for the prize [brabeion] of the heavenly call of God in Christ (v.14). The prize seems to be to share the glory of God (Romans 5:2).
Life and trying to be a Christian are long treks. To paraphrase Atlanta Student Movement leader of the Civil Rights era Lonnie King, these undertakings “are not sprints, but long-distance runs.” Paul clearly makes this point for us in our text, but he also opens the way to discern the
special resource we Christians have for the trek — righteousness through faith. One possibility for a sermon at this point is to explain the Pauline/Reformation concept of righteousness as described above. Being righteous in faith is not a quality of human beings. They are righteous because God is righteous, and God is only righteous in the sense that he is faithful to the relationship he has with us. In short, God does not abandon us, despite the fact that all that we have ever done amounts to nothing from an eternal point of view. This insight gives us the courage to endure in our walk of faith.
Another possible direction for the sermon would be to focus on how God’s forgiving love, how his making us his own, stimulates us in our walk of faith. Valuable lessons about this matter can be drawn from neurobiology. It seems that spiritual exercises (faith) facilitate the saturation of the front part of our brains with the neuro-chemical dopamine (Dean Hamer, The God Gene, pp.72ff.). And this good-feeling drug in turn is related to feelings of happiness and enhanced energy levels (Daniel Amen, Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, p.81). Seeing
ourselves as clothed in Christ give us the energy and the joy we need to cope with and travel through all the tough times in life. This can be a sermon of hope and joy, as we are taught to appreciate that in tough times in the long walk of life and faith, Christ’s love and the Spirit’s energy surprisingly show up and keep us moving.
Matthew 21:33-46
The Gospel Lesson is drawn from an anonymous work based on oral traditions about Jesus (though traditionally attributed to Matthew, one of Jesus’ disciples [9:9]). This book may well have been written in the last third of the first century in Antioch, for its Bishop Ignatius seems to quote it as early as 110 AD. That it is written in Greek seems to rule out the disciple as its author. This lesson is Jesus’ Parable in the Vineyard, sometimes called the Parable of the Wicked Tenants (which has parallels in the other synoptic gospels [Mark 12:1-12; Luke 20:9-19]). Isaiah 5:1-7 seems to be in the background of this parable.
Jesus first tells of a landowner planting a vineyard putting a fence around it and building a watchtower. He then leased it to tenants (v.33). When harvest came the landowner then sent slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. The tenants seized his slaves, beating one, killing one, and stoning another (vv.34-35). Other slaves sent received the same treatment (v.36). The slaves/servants [doulos] were the lowest social strata in the Roman empire, indentured servants ranking below the tenants. The slaves likely function here in the parable to signify prophets and the tenants the people of Israel. Then the landowner sends his son, feeling he will be respected. But the tenants (presumably representing Jewish leaders) kill him, feeling they can get his inheritance (vv.37-39).
Jesus then asks the chief priests and Pharisees what the owner of the vineyard will do, and they claim that the tenants will be put to death and the produce given to other tenants (vv.40-41). He asks if they had ever read scripture. He quotes Psalm 118:22-23, regarding the stone rejected by the builders has become the cornerstone [kephalen gonias] (v.42). In a passage unique to Matthew, Jesus adds that the kingdom will be taken away from them and given to people who produce fruits. The Jesus of this book adds that the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces (vv.43-44; cf. Isaiah 8:14). The chief priests and Pharisees hearing this are said to have realized the parables were about them. Thus, they wanted to arrest Jesus, but it is reported that they feared the crowds who regarded Jesus as a prophet [prophetes] (vv.45-46; cf. 21:11).
The text is obviously an opportunity to preach on what and why Jesus had to die, as the lesson can readily be read prophetically in this manner. Another or related possibility is to note that there are people in the world we seek to avoid, especially in poor and tough neighborhoods. But in fact, survey data (from a 2023 Pew Research Center poll) indicate that those on the fringes of society (immigrants, people of color, and the poor) attend church more frequently than the white middle and upper classes. Help the flock to recognize that folks on the margins in America are God’s people, and by their condition God may have a message for us, that we are to hear their voice, their cries, and their needs, lest we be like the tenants in Jesus’ parable. These insights might be applied to sermons considering programs and legislation targeting the poor, like welfare, Medicaid, gun control, and reparations. For both the marginalized and establishment type congregations, the word is that the marginalized are “somebodies” — are God’s faithful and called people with a special task, loved by God.
All the lessons remind us that God’s grace is to be found in surprising ways, among those on the margins, among sinners who don’t deserve it, and even in the tiresome rigors of everyday life.
Exodus 20:1-4,7-9,12-20
The First Lesson is drawn from a book which, like all the first five books of the Old Testament, is the product of several distinct literary strands, all originating between the tenth and sixth centuries BC. The book is so named for the Greek term referring to the liberation of the Israelites from Egyptian bondage. Its Hebrew name (Meaning “These are the names”) refers to the first words of the text’s prologue. In this lesson, we read the story of the giving of the ten commandments. This is likely the product of a combination of the J strand (the ninth-tenth century BC oral tradition characterized by its use of the name Jahweh/Yahweh when speaking of God) and the E strand (an eighth century BC oral tradition characterized by its use of the name Elohim when speaking of God). The editor bringing these oral traditions was then possibly the P strand (so named because it was the work of priests dating from the sixth century BC).
The prologue identifying God and what he has done (v.2) summarized the previous chapter. In this sense, the law and the historical narrative are related. We also find this happening in v.11b, as the sabbath observance finds justification in the Lord resting from creation on the seventh day. The name Yahweh used in verse 2 may be significant. It means “I am who I am,” but can also be translated “He lets be” (i.e., creates) or “I will be who I will be.” This is a merciful God, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love (34:6-7). Each commandment is explicated (vv.3,7-9,12-17). People witness thunder and lightning, trumpets and a smoking mountain, so all tremble (v.18). They ask Moses to speak but do not want to hear God, lest they die (v.19). They are seeking a mediator, so they need not hear God’s law directly. Moses gives reassurance, claiming that God has only come to test the people and put fear of him in them that they not sin (v.20).
A 2018 informal poll taken by the television show Family Feud indicated that most Americans believe they have only broken one of the Ten Commandments in the past month! We need sermons refreshing us on the meaning and significance of the commandments. The commandment on murder is a good place to start, though those pertaining to theft, adultery, and bearing false witness against the neighbor are good themes. Choose the one which best addresses the issues getting attention in your congregation or community or in the nation as you see it. Make it clear that the commandments are not fulfilled just when you avoid visible acts of murder, theft, lying, cheating, and the like. Each commandment has a positive dimension (which people who think they are not sinners never seem to recognize). Many denominations teach that we steal when we fail to help neighbors protect or gain income (see Sermon Illustrations for this Sunday for Lutherans; The [Catholic] Baltimore Catechism, p.97; The [Westminster] Shorter Catechism, Q.74). Obviously, as long as there are poor among us, we sin. And likewise, these denominations teach, when we gossip, we are guilty of bearing false witness. Help the flock understand that sinners like us badly need forgiveness, but that Jesus has provided this. (Reference could be made to the Second Lesson [esp. vv.8-9] to make this point.) Even sinners like us are surprisingly loved by God!
Philippians 3:4b-14
The Second Lesson is part of a letter written by Paul while a prisoner to Christians in a province of Macedonia (present-day Greece). There is some debate about whether the epistle in its present form might be a combination of three separate letters (as early theologian Polycarp, spoke of Paul’s letters to this church.) Its immediate occasion was to thank the Philippians for their gifts, by way of the return of Epaphroditus to Philippi (2:25-30) who had brought these gifts to Paul. His main purpose is to urge persistence in faith in face of opposition. This lesson is a warning that righteousness is not by the law and a confession of hope.
Paul first notes that if any Jew has reason to be confident in the things of the flesh it is him — circumcised, a member of the tribe of Benjamin, a Pharisee, righteous under the law, and a persecutor of the church (vv.4b-6). Certainly, Paul was also fluent in Hebrew (Acts 21:40). Whatever gains he had by these standards, they should be regarded as loss in light of Christ (v.7). Indeed, everything is loss in light of the surpassing value of knowing Christ. For his sake, Paul says he now regards all this as rubbish [skubala] so that he can gain Christ, be found in him, not having a righteousness [dikaiosune] of his own from the law [nomos], but only the righteousness of God that comes through the faith of Christ based on faith [epi ta pistei] (vv.8-9; Romans 3:20-27). This way of phrasing his point makes clear that Paul understood the righteousness of faith much as the Reformation traditions and Augustine have, not as our own characteristic, but as a gift of God properly belonging to him since righteousness is about a proper relationship. Paul proceeds to add that he wants to know Christ, the power of his resurrection, and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in death by attaining resurrection from the dead (vv.10-11). The apostle adds that he has not obtained this already, but is pressing on to make it his own, because Christ has made him his own (v.12). He also observes that he does not consider yet to have made the life of faith he describes his own, but he presses on for the prize [brabeion] of the heavenly call of God in Christ (v.14). The prize seems to be to share the glory of God (Romans 5:2).
Life and trying to be a Christian are long treks. To paraphrase Atlanta Student Movement leader of the Civil Rights era Lonnie King, these undertakings “are not sprints, but long-distance runs.” Paul clearly makes this point for us in our text, but he also opens the way to discern the
special resource we Christians have for the trek — righteousness through faith. One possibility for a sermon at this point is to explain the Pauline/Reformation concept of righteousness as described above. Being righteous in faith is not a quality of human beings. They are righteous because God is righteous, and God is only righteous in the sense that he is faithful to the relationship he has with us. In short, God does not abandon us, despite the fact that all that we have ever done amounts to nothing from an eternal point of view. This insight gives us the courage to endure in our walk of faith.
Another possible direction for the sermon would be to focus on how God’s forgiving love, how his making us his own, stimulates us in our walk of faith. Valuable lessons about this matter can be drawn from neurobiology. It seems that spiritual exercises (faith) facilitate the saturation of the front part of our brains with the neuro-chemical dopamine (Dean Hamer, The God Gene, pp.72ff.). And this good-feeling drug in turn is related to feelings of happiness and enhanced energy levels (Daniel Amen, Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, p.81). Seeing
ourselves as clothed in Christ give us the energy and the joy we need to cope with and travel through all the tough times in life. This can be a sermon of hope and joy, as we are taught to appreciate that in tough times in the long walk of life and faith, Christ’s love and the Spirit’s energy surprisingly show up and keep us moving.
Matthew 21:33-46
The Gospel Lesson is drawn from an anonymous work based on oral traditions about Jesus (though traditionally attributed to Matthew, one of Jesus’ disciples [9:9]). This book may well have been written in the last third of the first century in Antioch, for its Bishop Ignatius seems to quote it as early as 110 AD. That it is written in Greek seems to rule out the disciple as its author. This lesson is Jesus’ Parable in the Vineyard, sometimes called the Parable of the Wicked Tenants (which has parallels in the other synoptic gospels [Mark 12:1-12; Luke 20:9-19]). Isaiah 5:1-7 seems to be in the background of this parable.
Jesus first tells of a landowner planting a vineyard putting a fence around it and building a watchtower. He then leased it to tenants (v.33). When harvest came the landowner then sent slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. The tenants seized his slaves, beating one, killing one, and stoning another (vv.34-35). Other slaves sent received the same treatment (v.36). The slaves/servants [doulos] were the lowest social strata in the Roman empire, indentured servants ranking below the tenants. The slaves likely function here in the parable to signify prophets and the tenants the people of Israel. Then the landowner sends his son, feeling he will be respected. But the tenants (presumably representing Jewish leaders) kill him, feeling they can get his inheritance (vv.37-39).
Jesus then asks the chief priests and Pharisees what the owner of the vineyard will do, and they claim that the tenants will be put to death and the produce given to other tenants (vv.40-41). He asks if they had ever read scripture. He quotes Psalm 118:22-23, regarding the stone rejected by the builders has become the cornerstone [kephalen gonias] (v.42). In a passage unique to Matthew, Jesus adds that the kingdom will be taken away from them and given to people who produce fruits. The Jesus of this book adds that the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces (vv.43-44; cf. Isaiah 8:14). The chief priests and Pharisees hearing this are said to have realized the parables were about them. Thus, they wanted to arrest Jesus, but it is reported that they feared the crowds who regarded Jesus as a prophet [prophetes] (vv.45-46; cf. 21:11).
The text is obviously an opportunity to preach on what and why Jesus had to die, as the lesson can readily be read prophetically in this manner. Another or related possibility is to note that there are people in the world we seek to avoid, especially in poor and tough neighborhoods. But in fact, survey data (from a 2023 Pew Research Center poll) indicate that those on the fringes of society (immigrants, people of color, and the poor) attend church more frequently than the white middle and upper classes. Help the flock to recognize that folks on the margins in America are God’s people, and by their condition God may have a message for us, that we are to hear their voice, their cries, and their needs, lest we be like the tenants in Jesus’ parable. These insights might be applied to sermons considering programs and legislation targeting the poor, like welfare, Medicaid, gun control, and reparations. For both the marginalized and establishment type congregations, the word is that the marginalized are “somebodies” — are God’s faithful and called people with a special task, loved by God.
All the lessons remind us that God’s grace is to be found in surprising ways, among those on the margins, among sinners who don’t deserve it, and even in the tiresome rigors of everyday life.
