The tools of the blessing trade
Commentary
I used to work with a guy named Jack. We shared a common interest in woodworking and tools - he was an accomplished woodworker, while I was an accomplished armchair woodworker. One day I was in a woodworking store and saw a beautiful tool, a marking gauge, used to scribe a line parallel to the edge of a board. It was made in England of rosewood and brass, it was without doubt the most beautiful tool I had even seen, and it was expensive. I wanted it badly, but couldn't justify buying it. Later that day I told Jack about it.
About a week later out of the blue Jack handed me a bag. I opened it, and there in the bag was the rosewood-and-brass marking gauge. A present, simply because we both appreciated well-made, beautiful tools.
A well-made tool is a wonder to behold. It does its job well, it is perfectly suited to its task, whether that is scribing a line or sawing a board or cutting a piece of meat in the kitchen. Most professions - and most human endeavors - have their own tools, the tools of the trade, things that are unique to that job, sort of like the English marking gauge. Plumbers have their specialized tools, chefs have expensive German-made knives. How about our line of work, what are the tools of ministry? Let's call it the blessing trade? What are the tools of the blessing trade?
We might look first around our offices and see the computer and the desk. Tools? Yes, certainly, but essential tools? Hardly. We lift our eyes from the desk and see the books on the shelves; ministers are notorious for liking to have lots of books. And yes, those are tools too, but certainly not the unique tools of the trade. How about our education? Well, do we really want to say that is essential to ministry? How about the Bible? Certainly without the Bible there would be no preaching. But let's look further.
As we look around what becomes clear is that the most valuable tool for doing ministry with people is ... people. The lectionary readings make that point soundly. Our tools of the trade are the very people God has given us to work with.
Genesis 12:1-9
With chapter 12 of Genesis, the story told in the Bible takes a different turn. Up to this point, in chapters 1-11, known as the primeval history, we have heard about the very beginnings, things that are lost in the deep recesses of time, never to be fully recovered. Perhaps more than any other portion of the Bible, the first 11 chapters of Genesis warrant the term "myth," defined in one dictionary as "a traditional story originating in a preliterate society...." Now, in chapter 12, we come to the ancestral history, the story of the patriarchs.
But even though there is a switch in purpose and in viewpoint, the ancestral history is connected with chapters 1-11. The episode immediately preceding this passage is the tower of Babel, which ends with human beings scattered and their language confused, so the story of Abraham takes place against the background of a divided, apparently irretrievably alienated, humanity.
Into that context comes the call of Abraham (a dialectical variant of Abram, Abraham will become official in 17:5), and with the call we can begin to see God's purpose. God summons Abram to leave his country and family and home and embark on a long journey. Accompanying the call is a promise, a reiterated promise, and one that would be reiterated yet again in succeeding generations and with successive patriarchs. It is in the promise that we can begin to see glimmers of God's purpose.
And what is the content of the promise that God makes to Abraham? There are several pieces to it:
*I will make of you a great nation,
*I will bless you,
*I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing,
*I will bless those who bless you,
*the one who curses you I will curse,
*in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed, and
*to your offspring I will give this land.
Clearly, the concept of "blessing" is a large part of the promise, so let's take a look at that word. The Hebrew word rendered "bless" is barak. The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible points out that the primary meaning of barak is "to bend the knees," but it is often used in the sense of worship or praise. In that sense it is appropriately applied only to God. But by extension the same word is also used of God's "blessing" toward human beings by showing favor and goodness toward them. Implied in it is a general sense of well-being, although what the well-being consists of might vary. It could be material prosperity, but this is by no means automatically included.
Verses 4-12 are really about faithfulness, how Abraham obeyed the call and went where God led. Even though the promise of the land was made initially, in verse 7 the promise is reiterated when Abraham is actually in the land, perhaps a reward for his faithfulness.
But the rewards for Abraham's faithfulness are not only for him. They are for his offspring, and beyond his offspring, they are for all families on the earth, who, through Abraham, will also be blessed. There is an expansiveness and inclusiveness and universalism in God's promise to Abraham that is often neglected. The simple truth of the passage is that Abraham becomes the source of blessing on earth, at least until another source of blessing comes along later.
Romans 4:13-25
Chapter 4 of Romans is about Abraham, because he was the example, for Paul, of a truly faithful person in the Old Testament. The question being addressed in the letter is salvation by faith, as opposed to salvation through the works of the law. But Abraham presented a problem for Jewish legalists: if the law and Torah are everything, the only source of God's blessing and God's favor, what then do we do with someone who lived before the law, like, say, Abraham?
Paul's solution to the problem is to point out that what was essential between God and Abraham, what really mattered, was not obedience to the law, but the faith that Abraham had. He believed God and that belief was counted as righteousness under the law.
Verses 17-21 of our passage speak to the quality of Abraham's faith. It was a faith in a God who could create from nothing. It was a faith that stood up against the test of what might seem impossible - for Abraham to father children with his wife who was beyond the age of child-bearing. And even beyond simply believing he would have children, Abraham trusted that he would indeed be the "father of many nations."
So Abraham had a strong faith. But even more, Paul seems to be suggesting, Abraham had a faith that was efficacious for his offspring. It is a radical teaching, that in some way Abraham's faith could have an effect on his heirs, and thence on all of us. The point is made in 4:11 and it is repeated here in verses 16-17, that because of Abraham's faith, all who have faith are therefore included as Abraham's heirs and so are a part of the covenant of faith.
There is more to it, in other words, than simply Abraham being a model of faith, an example for others. Instead, he becomes our spiritual ancestor in the faith. There is a strange spiritual bond created between Abraham and whoever thereafter has faith. Perhaps a parallel would be the way the sin of Adam and Eve is passed along to other human beings in the doctrine of original sin. In the same way, the righteousness of faith is passed along to all who put their trust, as did Abraham, in the unseen God.
Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26
At first glance, it seems like this week's Gospel reading offers two independent stories that have little relationship. There are a couple of possible explanations for their being together. This is the time of year when the lectionary contains semi-continuous readings, as opposed to thematic readings. But verses 14-17 are intrusive, and so it may be that the lectionary committee wanted simply to excise a jarring and discordant piece of a continuous reading. Or it has been suggested that the committee saw in the healings of the second part a sort of application, a case in point, of Jesus' teaching about who really needs a physician.
Be that as it may, these two episodes are sufficiently different that the preacher would do well to choose one or the other for preaching, and so we will cover them individually.
Verses 9-13: Jesus calls Matthew the tax collector in the midst of his work. We need to remember a couple of points about tax collectors. First, their job was to collect money for an occupying overlord, Rome, and they earned their money by taking in as much as they could. Anything more than what they had to pay to the Romans was gravy, pure profit for them. Second, tax collectors, along with other money handlers, were considered ritually unclean according to the law. So tax collectors had two strikes against them; even those who were scrupulously honest would be looked down upon.
So in speaking to Matthew, and inviting him to follow, and then having dinner with him and other sinners, Jesus would elicit not only the condemnation of the people who paid taxes, but also that of the religious leaders.
But it becomes an occasion for the teaching about who needs a physician, and about what God desires. At no point in the exchange with the Pharisees does Jesus deny that Matthew and the others are sinners; it is precisely to such sinners, and for them, that he has come.
Verses 18-26: This healing story within a healing story is also to be found in Mark 5:21-43 and Luke 8:40-56. It is instructive in matters of redaction criticism to consider the other accounts. Matthew's version is the shortest of the three, omitting various details. Why does Matthew cut it short? One theory proposes that Matthew intended it for catechetical use, and therefore left out extraneous details. Another commentator suggests that Matthew wanted to rearrange material from Mark and locate it elsewhere, which would be a sound reason for leaving out many of the details. So, for example, where Mark and Luke identify the man in verse 18 as Jairus, Matthew only calls him a ruler (RSV).
The point of miracle stories, as a general rule, is to establish the identity of Jesus as the Messiah. That's why this miracle story concludes with "And the report of this spread throughout the district." But with these stories and the third in this section, verses 27-31, the point is also specifically faith, and the power of faith for healing.
Each of the stories includes a profession of confidence in Jesus' ability to heal. In verse 18, the ruler knew that a touch of Jesus' hand would heal his daughter. In verse 21, the woman with the hemorrhage knew that a simple touch of Jesus' cloak would be enough to heal her. In the latter case, however, she isn't healed until Jesus speaks to her.
There are other features of the two stories that might bear investigation for preaching. For example, the woman's particular malady, bleeding, rendered her ritually unclean under Leviticus 15:25, and if she touched Jesus he would be unclean as well. Was the child only sleeping, as he said? If so, then where is the miracle? These could be considered, but the real message of the healings lies in the power of faith.
Application
There is a phenomenon, described by mountain climbing experts, called the Fiddle Factor. It is "the endless, almost neurotic fooling around with gear while on the trail or a climb. Like taking off your gloves so you can change your sunglasses. Then one glove falls off in the snow. Then another cloudbank comes in so you take off your sunglasses. Then you decide to take a drink. Then you get cold from standing around, so you decide to take off your pack and put on more clothing. Then ..." (Philip Goldberg, The Babinski Reflex, and 70 other useful and amusing metaphors from science, psychology, business, sports, and everyday life [Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc., 1990], 90). And it goes on and on. It can happen in any arena of human endeavor. It happens when inexperienced people are dealing with, and learning about, the tools of a new trade. It is an occupational hazard in any line of work in which there are tools to be used.
Too often in the ministry, the Fiddle Factor is operating, as we tinker around with the tools of the trade. Computers, for example, are a tinkerer's delight, as there are always new versions of software, new graphics you can download, new and faster processors. Maybe it is new church programs, which hold so much hope of bringing new people in. Or perhaps it is in our library where we fiddle, since there are always more books to buy for the study.
But the message for today is that there is only one essential tool of the blessing trade, and that is ... people. The means of passing along God's blessing and favor is ... the people themselves. And the means by which that happens is faith.
Abraham heard the call of God to leave everything and set out on a long journey through unknown territory to a land that was dimly promised by some mysterious, invisible God. On God's side of the deal was the promise of land and family and blessing for himself and his children. And the blessing part of the deal went further, because God told Abraham that through him all the families of the earth would be blessed. Against all common sense, Abraham believed it. The promise included the fact that Abraham would be the means by which others came to have God's blessing.
In Romans, Paul takes that idea and refines it a bit. The important part was Abraham's belief that it could and would happen. It is, says Paul, specifically through Abraham's faith that God's blessing is conveyed. Abraham was the forerunner of the faith of all of us.
What it comes down to is this: Abraham - a deeply faithful Abraham - was the tool by which God would impart to the world his blessing and favor. And we, with our faith, as Abraham's spiritual heirs, have the same call and are likewise God's tools.
Now the idea of being a tool doesn't appeal to modern day sensibilities. You don't use people. To speak of people as tools for some higher cause is anathema to most of us. Being "used," by anybody, feels demeaning and dehumanizing. Besides which, we want to be independent. Rugged individualism says, "No, I'm on my own." Just as many of us don't want to depend on anybody, likewise few of us want to be depended upon.
But one of the remarkable things about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as well as the religion of the Old Testament, is that it calls us not to be isolated and alone in our faith, but to spread it and share it and to let others rely on it. Because the simple fact is that faith breeds faith. Faith inspires faith. Deep belief and trust lead to more deep belief and trust.
So Abraham's faith had implications for that of his children, and for that of all Israel. And that in turn has implications for our faith. And our faith has implications for those who come after us. And those implications are the bestowal of God's blessing.
The tools of the blessing trade - in which we are all engaged, clergy or lay, of whatever denomination - are the people of faith, those who went before and those who are with us now, and those who will come later.
A well-made tool is a wonder to behold. We in the church need to stop fiddling around with superficial tools. Set aside the Fiddle Factor. Use the real tools of blessing, use people's faith. And also we need to be tools of blessing. Let ourselves be used, for others, for their well-being and for their faith. And the blessings of Abraham's faith will continue to spread to the ends of the earth.
Alternative Applications
1) Matthew: A Healing Faith. Two healing stories, and in each of them, it is the faith of the person that makes the real difference and produces the healing. Or is it? Jesus says so to the woman who has the hemorrhage: "Your faith has made you well." But we have to be careful not to say that the woman magically brought about her own healing. We need to affirm that it is still God that does the healing. The faith part of it is about relationship with God, which is a fundamentally "healthy" relationship. In fact, in this case the King James rendering of verse 22 might be better: "thy faith hath made thee whole." Faith leads to wholeness, and therefore health.
2) Genesis and Matthew: On God's Call. It comes into the midst of our lives, when we least expect it. It intrudes into an otherwise pleasant, comfortable existence. It is insistent and compelling. So what's a person to do in the face of it, when you finally realize that it is a call? Answer it. And what does answering the call mean? For Abraham answering it meant traveling a thousand miles and believing some pretty outrageous things. For Matthew the call meant that he, as a sinner, would be healed and changed. God's call to different people is never the same. As Aslan says in The Chronicles of Narnia, the only story that he tells a person is that person's own story. Are we listening? And are we responding?
First Lesson Focus
Genesis 12:1-9
Genesis 1-11 serves as a preface to this text, mirroring the state of the world and of human life in every generation. God, it says, created the world good, but our human attempts to rule our own lives corrupt God's good creation. Consequently, all humankind knows broken relationships between husbands and wives, brothers and brothers, nations and nations. God's good gift of work has been turned into drudgery, the beauty and fertility of the earth have been spoiled, paradise has been lost, and over all things and persons hangs the curse of death, because finally only God is the source of life and good, and the relation with God has been destroyed.
The miraculous fact is that God does not leave his creation to its sinful, deadly devices. Instead, proclaims our text, God sets out in the life of one Semitic man and woman to reverse the death-dealing effects of our sin and to restore his creation to its original goodness by beginning a history of salvation. The ongoing course of that history will be recorded through all the pages of the Bible that follow. But it begins here with God's call to Abraham.
The Semite Abram is living with his wife and relatives in Haran in northern Mesopotamia in about 1750 B.C. (The variation in the spelling of the patriarch's name anticipates the name change in Genesis 17:5.) But God interrupts Abram's settled life with a commanding word. Abram is to leave behind his home, most of his relatives, his clan, his familiar environment and set out on a journey southward toward an unknown land to which God will direct him. Thus begins the narrative of God's saving work in human history that presses always forward toward God's good completion.
It is noteworthy that our Christian faith is based on a narrative. We do not become Christians because we believe certain doctrines or religious propositions. The doctrines that the church holds all spring out of the narrative. And we do not become Christian by living according to particular ethical rules. If that were the case, not one of us would be worthy of the title of Christian. No. We enter into the Christian faith by participating in its narrative, by learning the story of what God has said and done through the 2,500 years of history recorded for us in the Bible. In that story are revealed the nature and purpose and goal of God, and on the basis of that revelation, we find ourselves confessing, "My Lord and my God!" Indeed, we come to see that we are participants in God's ongoing story, because the God revealed to us through the Bible's narratives is the same God who is continuing to work in our lives, to save you and me and the whole of his creation.
So God begins his saving work with Abram by commanding him, and Abram obeys. Why? Because God gives him a fourfold promise. God promises the patriarch that he will make Abram the progenitor of many descendants who will become a great nation - even though Genesis 11:30 tells us that Abram's wife Sarai is barren. God vows that he will make Abram's name great, in contrast to all of those human beings in Genesis 11:4 who wish to make great names for themselves. God declares that he will give to Abram and his descendants a land to call their own, although during Abram's lifetime, the land belongs to the Canaanites (Genesis 12:6). And most important of all, God promises that through Abram and his descendants, he will bring blessing on all the families of the earth. That is, God will reverse the deadly curse of human sin and replace it with his blessing. He will make his creation new and whole again. He will work his salvation on behalf of all the earth. It is no wonder, therefore, that in our text, Abram worships the Lord who gives him such a purpose for his life and sets before him such a future.
We should note carefully, however, that God's call to our father Abram in this narrative is not for Abram's sake alone. It is for the sake of all people, including you and me. God wishes to bless and to make whole this entire sin-weary planet with its entire population. He wishes to shower his blessing on every single one of us sitting here this morning. And he will do it, will he not, if we like Abram worship him and call on his name through our Lord Jesus Christ? God wishes to bless us and all people. The narrative of salvation here in our text begins with the love of God for all. And his church and you and I are the recipients of that love. Thanks be to God for his incredible mercy!
Lutheran Option - Hosea 5:15-6:6
This passage from Hosea comes to us from the eighth century B.C., during the reigns of Jeroboam II (786-746 B.C.) and his successors, up until about 723 B.C., in the northern kingdom of Israel. It is a time of great prosperity, but it is also a time of widespread idolatry, when the people are worshiping the fertility gods and goddesses of Baal, when there is great immorality throughout the land, when the law courts are corrupted by injustice and bribery, and when the rich prosper while the poor are ignored or unjustly imprisoned or enslaved. It is also a time when northern Israel is threatened by the armies of the Assyrian Empire, which Hosea proclaims will soon defeat and exile the Israelites.
In our text, the prosperous people begin to realize that their lives are threatened. Indeed, in Hosea 5:13, we have the mention of the fact that a successor of Jeroboam, King Hoshea, has been forced to send a large tribute to the ruler of Assyria, in order to keep Israel from being swallowed up (cf. 2 Kings 17:3), as so much of northern Israel's territory had already been swallowed (cf. 2 Kings 15:29-30). The reaction of the priests and leaders of Israel, therefore, is to call a fast of repentance, imploring God for help. That is the gist of Hosea 6:1-3. The Israelites believe, even after all of their idolatry and injustice and indifference toward the Lord, that they can easily re-establish their relationship with God and that he will help them out of their jam. Their attitude is not too different from that of many of us, who largely pay no attention to the Lord until we get into difficulty. Then we are down on our knees, aren't we, pleading to God for help?
But as 5:15 states, God declares that he will withdraw from Israel, until the people come with sincere repentance and return in heartfelt worship and obedience to their Lord. (The word "saying," at the end of 5:15 in the RSV is not in the original Hebrew and should be omitted; likewise, the colon used there by the NRSV is not faithful to the Hebrew either.) As a result, the Lord mourns in 6:4-6 that Israel's ritual of repentance is totally insincere and of no consequence. Her professed love for God is merely lip-service, phony devotion that will disappear as soon as the threat of Assyria is past, just as a morning cloud or the dew on the grass disappear when the sun comes out.
God desires steadfast love (hesed). That is, he wants from Israel and from us continual, faithful loyalty to his covenant relation with us, a covenant that he has sealed with us in the Lord's Supper. And the Lord desires that we know him, that we have knowledge of him. In the Bible and in the writings of Hosea especially, that has nothing to do simply with intellectual knowledge or with saying all the right pious words. As Jesus teaches, "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven" (Matthew 7:21). Rather, if we have knowledge of God, we know his character and will for us because we live in daily, heartfelt communion with him. "To know God," according to Hosea, is to love and trust him as a faithful wife loves and trusts her husband or as an adoring son obeys and loves his father. Israel, however, in the time of Hosea has no such love, trust and obedience of her Lord.
God's judgment of Israel therefore is set, proclaims Hosea. God has already issued his words of judgment upon a faithless Israel through the mouths of Hosea and other prophets. Now those words will be fulfilled. God's word does not return to him void. So it is that the northern kingdom of Israel falls to the Assyrians and her population is carried into exile in that Mesopotamian land in 721 B.C., where they disappear forever from the pages of history.
In love, God offers us the opportunity to return to him, through the sacrifice of his Son Jesus Christ. Let those who have ears to hear, hear.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 33:1-12
Psalm 33 praises the God in whom the righteous trust. It was perhaps sung on the occasion of some national deliverance. Verses 1-3 are a call to praise and verses 4-5 provide the basis for the praise. The rest of the psalm details reasons for praising God and expresses confidence and trust in God.
The psalm contains the same number of poetic lines as there are letters in the Hebrew alphabet - 22 - probably signifying comprehensiveness of praise.
For preaching from this psalm, you might select individual verses:
1) Verse 1 asserts that praise befits the upright. Befits is an acceptable word, but you might want to consider the KJV for this verse: "Praise is comely for the upright." Though "comely" covers the meaning of "befits," it adds the sense of "beauty" and "attractiveness" that surely are qualities of praise. Isn't it true that there is something beautiful about the personality that points away from itself to praise another? And by the way, praise is comely not only for the upright, but also for the reprobate and scoundrel, especially when it is part of an expression of repentance.
2) Verse 3 touts the value of singing a new song to God. Newness is not a virtue in and of itself, but old testimonies, repeated over and over, often lose their effectiveness as a witness to the goodness of God. Updated songs grow naturally out of thriving religious experiences.
3) Verses 7 and 9 both celebrate God as Creator. One of the first creative acts was bringing organization to the primeval sea, forcing it into boundaries (Genesis 1:6-7). Verse 9 says that God spoke the world into creation. Again and again, Genesis 1 describes creation happening because "God said." This verse connects also with John 1:1. What new things do we need to allow God to say in our lives to recreate us?
About a week later out of the blue Jack handed me a bag. I opened it, and there in the bag was the rosewood-and-brass marking gauge. A present, simply because we both appreciated well-made, beautiful tools.
A well-made tool is a wonder to behold. It does its job well, it is perfectly suited to its task, whether that is scribing a line or sawing a board or cutting a piece of meat in the kitchen. Most professions - and most human endeavors - have their own tools, the tools of the trade, things that are unique to that job, sort of like the English marking gauge. Plumbers have their specialized tools, chefs have expensive German-made knives. How about our line of work, what are the tools of ministry? Let's call it the blessing trade? What are the tools of the blessing trade?
We might look first around our offices and see the computer and the desk. Tools? Yes, certainly, but essential tools? Hardly. We lift our eyes from the desk and see the books on the shelves; ministers are notorious for liking to have lots of books. And yes, those are tools too, but certainly not the unique tools of the trade. How about our education? Well, do we really want to say that is essential to ministry? How about the Bible? Certainly without the Bible there would be no preaching. But let's look further.
As we look around what becomes clear is that the most valuable tool for doing ministry with people is ... people. The lectionary readings make that point soundly. Our tools of the trade are the very people God has given us to work with.
Genesis 12:1-9
With chapter 12 of Genesis, the story told in the Bible takes a different turn. Up to this point, in chapters 1-11, known as the primeval history, we have heard about the very beginnings, things that are lost in the deep recesses of time, never to be fully recovered. Perhaps more than any other portion of the Bible, the first 11 chapters of Genesis warrant the term "myth," defined in one dictionary as "a traditional story originating in a preliterate society...." Now, in chapter 12, we come to the ancestral history, the story of the patriarchs.
But even though there is a switch in purpose and in viewpoint, the ancestral history is connected with chapters 1-11. The episode immediately preceding this passage is the tower of Babel, which ends with human beings scattered and their language confused, so the story of Abraham takes place against the background of a divided, apparently irretrievably alienated, humanity.
Into that context comes the call of Abraham (a dialectical variant of Abram, Abraham will become official in 17:5), and with the call we can begin to see God's purpose. God summons Abram to leave his country and family and home and embark on a long journey. Accompanying the call is a promise, a reiterated promise, and one that would be reiterated yet again in succeeding generations and with successive patriarchs. It is in the promise that we can begin to see glimmers of God's purpose.
And what is the content of the promise that God makes to Abraham? There are several pieces to it:
*I will make of you a great nation,
*I will bless you,
*I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing,
*I will bless those who bless you,
*the one who curses you I will curse,
*in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed, and
*to your offspring I will give this land.
Clearly, the concept of "blessing" is a large part of the promise, so let's take a look at that word. The Hebrew word rendered "bless" is barak. The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible points out that the primary meaning of barak is "to bend the knees," but it is often used in the sense of worship or praise. In that sense it is appropriately applied only to God. But by extension the same word is also used of God's "blessing" toward human beings by showing favor and goodness toward them. Implied in it is a general sense of well-being, although what the well-being consists of might vary. It could be material prosperity, but this is by no means automatically included.
Verses 4-12 are really about faithfulness, how Abraham obeyed the call and went where God led. Even though the promise of the land was made initially, in verse 7 the promise is reiterated when Abraham is actually in the land, perhaps a reward for his faithfulness.
But the rewards for Abraham's faithfulness are not only for him. They are for his offspring, and beyond his offspring, they are for all families on the earth, who, through Abraham, will also be blessed. There is an expansiveness and inclusiveness and universalism in God's promise to Abraham that is often neglected. The simple truth of the passage is that Abraham becomes the source of blessing on earth, at least until another source of blessing comes along later.
Romans 4:13-25
Chapter 4 of Romans is about Abraham, because he was the example, for Paul, of a truly faithful person in the Old Testament. The question being addressed in the letter is salvation by faith, as opposed to salvation through the works of the law. But Abraham presented a problem for Jewish legalists: if the law and Torah are everything, the only source of God's blessing and God's favor, what then do we do with someone who lived before the law, like, say, Abraham?
Paul's solution to the problem is to point out that what was essential between God and Abraham, what really mattered, was not obedience to the law, but the faith that Abraham had. He believed God and that belief was counted as righteousness under the law.
Verses 17-21 of our passage speak to the quality of Abraham's faith. It was a faith in a God who could create from nothing. It was a faith that stood up against the test of what might seem impossible - for Abraham to father children with his wife who was beyond the age of child-bearing. And even beyond simply believing he would have children, Abraham trusted that he would indeed be the "father of many nations."
So Abraham had a strong faith. But even more, Paul seems to be suggesting, Abraham had a faith that was efficacious for his offspring. It is a radical teaching, that in some way Abraham's faith could have an effect on his heirs, and thence on all of us. The point is made in 4:11 and it is repeated here in verses 16-17, that because of Abraham's faith, all who have faith are therefore included as Abraham's heirs and so are a part of the covenant of faith.
There is more to it, in other words, than simply Abraham being a model of faith, an example for others. Instead, he becomes our spiritual ancestor in the faith. There is a strange spiritual bond created between Abraham and whoever thereafter has faith. Perhaps a parallel would be the way the sin of Adam and Eve is passed along to other human beings in the doctrine of original sin. In the same way, the righteousness of faith is passed along to all who put their trust, as did Abraham, in the unseen God.
Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26
At first glance, it seems like this week's Gospel reading offers two independent stories that have little relationship. There are a couple of possible explanations for their being together. This is the time of year when the lectionary contains semi-continuous readings, as opposed to thematic readings. But verses 14-17 are intrusive, and so it may be that the lectionary committee wanted simply to excise a jarring and discordant piece of a continuous reading. Or it has been suggested that the committee saw in the healings of the second part a sort of application, a case in point, of Jesus' teaching about who really needs a physician.
Be that as it may, these two episodes are sufficiently different that the preacher would do well to choose one or the other for preaching, and so we will cover them individually.
Verses 9-13: Jesus calls Matthew the tax collector in the midst of his work. We need to remember a couple of points about tax collectors. First, their job was to collect money for an occupying overlord, Rome, and they earned their money by taking in as much as they could. Anything more than what they had to pay to the Romans was gravy, pure profit for them. Second, tax collectors, along with other money handlers, were considered ritually unclean according to the law. So tax collectors had two strikes against them; even those who were scrupulously honest would be looked down upon.
So in speaking to Matthew, and inviting him to follow, and then having dinner with him and other sinners, Jesus would elicit not only the condemnation of the people who paid taxes, but also that of the religious leaders.
But it becomes an occasion for the teaching about who needs a physician, and about what God desires. At no point in the exchange with the Pharisees does Jesus deny that Matthew and the others are sinners; it is precisely to such sinners, and for them, that he has come.
Verses 18-26: This healing story within a healing story is also to be found in Mark 5:21-43 and Luke 8:40-56. It is instructive in matters of redaction criticism to consider the other accounts. Matthew's version is the shortest of the three, omitting various details. Why does Matthew cut it short? One theory proposes that Matthew intended it for catechetical use, and therefore left out extraneous details. Another commentator suggests that Matthew wanted to rearrange material from Mark and locate it elsewhere, which would be a sound reason for leaving out many of the details. So, for example, where Mark and Luke identify the man in verse 18 as Jairus, Matthew only calls him a ruler (RSV).
The point of miracle stories, as a general rule, is to establish the identity of Jesus as the Messiah. That's why this miracle story concludes with "And the report of this spread throughout the district." But with these stories and the third in this section, verses 27-31, the point is also specifically faith, and the power of faith for healing.
Each of the stories includes a profession of confidence in Jesus' ability to heal. In verse 18, the ruler knew that a touch of Jesus' hand would heal his daughter. In verse 21, the woman with the hemorrhage knew that a simple touch of Jesus' cloak would be enough to heal her. In the latter case, however, she isn't healed until Jesus speaks to her.
There are other features of the two stories that might bear investigation for preaching. For example, the woman's particular malady, bleeding, rendered her ritually unclean under Leviticus 15:25, and if she touched Jesus he would be unclean as well. Was the child only sleeping, as he said? If so, then where is the miracle? These could be considered, but the real message of the healings lies in the power of faith.
Application
There is a phenomenon, described by mountain climbing experts, called the Fiddle Factor. It is "the endless, almost neurotic fooling around with gear while on the trail or a climb. Like taking off your gloves so you can change your sunglasses. Then one glove falls off in the snow. Then another cloudbank comes in so you take off your sunglasses. Then you decide to take a drink. Then you get cold from standing around, so you decide to take off your pack and put on more clothing. Then ..." (Philip Goldberg, The Babinski Reflex, and 70 other useful and amusing metaphors from science, psychology, business, sports, and everyday life [Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc., 1990], 90). And it goes on and on. It can happen in any arena of human endeavor. It happens when inexperienced people are dealing with, and learning about, the tools of a new trade. It is an occupational hazard in any line of work in which there are tools to be used.
Too often in the ministry, the Fiddle Factor is operating, as we tinker around with the tools of the trade. Computers, for example, are a tinkerer's delight, as there are always new versions of software, new graphics you can download, new and faster processors. Maybe it is new church programs, which hold so much hope of bringing new people in. Or perhaps it is in our library where we fiddle, since there are always more books to buy for the study.
But the message for today is that there is only one essential tool of the blessing trade, and that is ... people. The means of passing along God's blessing and favor is ... the people themselves. And the means by which that happens is faith.
Abraham heard the call of God to leave everything and set out on a long journey through unknown territory to a land that was dimly promised by some mysterious, invisible God. On God's side of the deal was the promise of land and family and blessing for himself and his children. And the blessing part of the deal went further, because God told Abraham that through him all the families of the earth would be blessed. Against all common sense, Abraham believed it. The promise included the fact that Abraham would be the means by which others came to have God's blessing.
In Romans, Paul takes that idea and refines it a bit. The important part was Abraham's belief that it could and would happen. It is, says Paul, specifically through Abraham's faith that God's blessing is conveyed. Abraham was the forerunner of the faith of all of us.
What it comes down to is this: Abraham - a deeply faithful Abraham - was the tool by which God would impart to the world his blessing and favor. And we, with our faith, as Abraham's spiritual heirs, have the same call and are likewise God's tools.
Now the idea of being a tool doesn't appeal to modern day sensibilities. You don't use people. To speak of people as tools for some higher cause is anathema to most of us. Being "used," by anybody, feels demeaning and dehumanizing. Besides which, we want to be independent. Rugged individualism says, "No, I'm on my own." Just as many of us don't want to depend on anybody, likewise few of us want to be depended upon.
But one of the remarkable things about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as well as the religion of the Old Testament, is that it calls us not to be isolated and alone in our faith, but to spread it and share it and to let others rely on it. Because the simple fact is that faith breeds faith. Faith inspires faith. Deep belief and trust lead to more deep belief and trust.
So Abraham's faith had implications for that of his children, and for that of all Israel. And that in turn has implications for our faith. And our faith has implications for those who come after us. And those implications are the bestowal of God's blessing.
The tools of the blessing trade - in which we are all engaged, clergy or lay, of whatever denomination - are the people of faith, those who went before and those who are with us now, and those who will come later.
A well-made tool is a wonder to behold. We in the church need to stop fiddling around with superficial tools. Set aside the Fiddle Factor. Use the real tools of blessing, use people's faith. And also we need to be tools of blessing. Let ourselves be used, for others, for their well-being and for their faith. And the blessings of Abraham's faith will continue to spread to the ends of the earth.
Alternative Applications
1) Matthew: A Healing Faith. Two healing stories, and in each of them, it is the faith of the person that makes the real difference and produces the healing. Or is it? Jesus says so to the woman who has the hemorrhage: "Your faith has made you well." But we have to be careful not to say that the woman magically brought about her own healing. We need to affirm that it is still God that does the healing. The faith part of it is about relationship with God, which is a fundamentally "healthy" relationship. In fact, in this case the King James rendering of verse 22 might be better: "thy faith hath made thee whole." Faith leads to wholeness, and therefore health.
2) Genesis and Matthew: On God's Call. It comes into the midst of our lives, when we least expect it. It intrudes into an otherwise pleasant, comfortable existence. It is insistent and compelling. So what's a person to do in the face of it, when you finally realize that it is a call? Answer it. And what does answering the call mean? For Abraham answering it meant traveling a thousand miles and believing some pretty outrageous things. For Matthew the call meant that he, as a sinner, would be healed and changed. God's call to different people is never the same. As Aslan says in The Chronicles of Narnia, the only story that he tells a person is that person's own story. Are we listening? And are we responding?
First Lesson Focus
Genesis 12:1-9
Genesis 1-11 serves as a preface to this text, mirroring the state of the world and of human life in every generation. God, it says, created the world good, but our human attempts to rule our own lives corrupt God's good creation. Consequently, all humankind knows broken relationships between husbands and wives, brothers and brothers, nations and nations. God's good gift of work has been turned into drudgery, the beauty and fertility of the earth have been spoiled, paradise has been lost, and over all things and persons hangs the curse of death, because finally only God is the source of life and good, and the relation with God has been destroyed.
The miraculous fact is that God does not leave his creation to its sinful, deadly devices. Instead, proclaims our text, God sets out in the life of one Semitic man and woman to reverse the death-dealing effects of our sin and to restore his creation to its original goodness by beginning a history of salvation. The ongoing course of that history will be recorded through all the pages of the Bible that follow. But it begins here with God's call to Abraham.
The Semite Abram is living with his wife and relatives in Haran in northern Mesopotamia in about 1750 B.C. (The variation in the spelling of the patriarch's name anticipates the name change in Genesis 17:5.) But God interrupts Abram's settled life with a commanding word. Abram is to leave behind his home, most of his relatives, his clan, his familiar environment and set out on a journey southward toward an unknown land to which God will direct him. Thus begins the narrative of God's saving work in human history that presses always forward toward God's good completion.
It is noteworthy that our Christian faith is based on a narrative. We do not become Christians because we believe certain doctrines or religious propositions. The doctrines that the church holds all spring out of the narrative. And we do not become Christian by living according to particular ethical rules. If that were the case, not one of us would be worthy of the title of Christian. No. We enter into the Christian faith by participating in its narrative, by learning the story of what God has said and done through the 2,500 years of history recorded for us in the Bible. In that story are revealed the nature and purpose and goal of God, and on the basis of that revelation, we find ourselves confessing, "My Lord and my God!" Indeed, we come to see that we are participants in God's ongoing story, because the God revealed to us through the Bible's narratives is the same God who is continuing to work in our lives, to save you and me and the whole of his creation.
So God begins his saving work with Abram by commanding him, and Abram obeys. Why? Because God gives him a fourfold promise. God promises the patriarch that he will make Abram the progenitor of many descendants who will become a great nation - even though Genesis 11:30 tells us that Abram's wife Sarai is barren. God vows that he will make Abram's name great, in contrast to all of those human beings in Genesis 11:4 who wish to make great names for themselves. God declares that he will give to Abram and his descendants a land to call their own, although during Abram's lifetime, the land belongs to the Canaanites (Genesis 12:6). And most important of all, God promises that through Abram and his descendants, he will bring blessing on all the families of the earth. That is, God will reverse the deadly curse of human sin and replace it with his blessing. He will make his creation new and whole again. He will work his salvation on behalf of all the earth. It is no wonder, therefore, that in our text, Abram worships the Lord who gives him such a purpose for his life and sets before him such a future.
We should note carefully, however, that God's call to our father Abram in this narrative is not for Abram's sake alone. It is for the sake of all people, including you and me. God wishes to bless and to make whole this entire sin-weary planet with its entire population. He wishes to shower his blessing on every single one of us sitting here this morning. And he will do it, will he not, if we like Abram worship him and call on his name through our Lord Jesus Christ? God wishes to bless us and all people. The narrative of salvation here in our text begins with the love of God for all. And his church and you and I are the recipients of that love. Thanks be to God for his incredible mercy!
Lutheran Option - Hosea 5:15-6:6
This passage from Hosea comes to us from the eighth century B.C., during the reigns of Jeroboam II (786-746 B.C.) and his successors, up until about 723 B.C., in the northern kingdom of Israel. It is a time of great prosperity, but it is also a time of widespread idolatry, when the people are worshiping the fertility gods and goddesses of Baal, when there is great immorality throughout the land, when the law courts are corrupted by injustice and bribery, and when the rich prosper while the poor are ignored or unjustly imprisoned or enslaved. It is also a time when northern Israel is threatened by the armies of the Assyrian Empire, which Hosea proclaims will soon defeat and exile the Israelites.
In our text, the prosperous people begin to realize that their lives are threatened. Indeed, in Hosea 5:13, we have the mention of the fact that a successor of Jeroboam, King Hoshea, has been forced to send a large tribute to the ruler of Assyria, in order to keep Israel from being swallowed up (cf. 2 Kings 17:3), as so much of northern Israel's territory had already been swallowed (cf. 2 Kings 15:29-30). The reaction of the priests and leaders of Israel, therefore, is to call a fast of repentance, imploring God for help. That is the gist of Hosea 6:1-3. The Israelites believe, even after all of their idolatry and injustice and indifference toward the Lord, that they can easily re-establish their relationship with God and that he will help them out of their jam. Their attitude is not too different from that of many of us, who largely pay no attention to the Lord until we get into difficulty. Then we are down on our knees, aren't we, pleading to God for help?
But as 5:15 states, God declares that he will withdraw from Israel, until the people come with sincere repentance and return in heartfelt worship and obedience to their Lord. (The word "saying," at the end of 5:15 in the RSV is not in the original Hebrew and should be omitted; likewise, the colon used there by the NRSV is not faithful to the Hebrew either.) As a result, the Lord mourns in 6:4-6 that Israel's ritual of repentance is totally insincere and of no consequence. Her professed love for God is merely lip-service, phony devotion that will disappear as soon as the threat of Assyria is past, just as a morning cloud or the dew on the grass disappear when the sun comes out.
God desires steadfast love (hesed). That is, he wants from Israel and from us continual, faithful loyalty to his covenant relation with us, a covenant that he has sealed with us in the Lord's Supper. And the Lord desires that we know him, that we have knowledge of him. In the Bible and in the writings of Hosea especially, that has nothing to do simply with intellectual knowledge or with saying all the right pious words. As Jesus teaches, "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven" (Matthew 7:21). Rather, if we have knowledge of God, we know his character and will for us because we live in daily, heartfelt communion with him. "To know God," according to Hosea, is to love and trust him as a faithful wife loves and trusts her husband or as an adoring son obeys and loves his father. Israel, however, in the time of Hosea has no such love, trust and obedience of her Lord.
God's judgment of Israel therefore is set, proclaims Hosea. God has already issued his words of judgment upon a faithless Israel through the mouths of Hosea and other prophets. Now those words will be fulfilled. God's word does not return to him void. So it is that the northern kingdom of Israel falls to the Assyrians and her population is carried into exile in that Mesopotamian land in 721 B.C., where they disappear forever from the pages of history.
In love, God offers us the opportunity to return to him, through the sacrifice of his Son Jesus Christ. Let those who have ears to hear, hear.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 33:1-12
Psalm 33 praises the God in whom the righteous trust. It was perhaps sung on the occasion of some national deliverance. Verses 1-3 are a call to praise and verses 4-5 provide the basis for the praise. The rest of the psalm details reasons for praising God and expresses confidence and trust in God.
The psalm contains the same number of poetic lines as there are letters in the Hebrew alphabet - 22 - probably signifying comprehensiveness of praise.
For preaching from this psalm, you might select individual verses:
1) Verse 1 asserts that praise befits the upright. Befits is an acceptable word, but you might want to consider the KJV for this verse: "Praise is comely for the upright." Though "comely" covers the meaning of "befits," it adds the sense of "beauty" and "attractiveness" that surely are qualities of praise. Isn't it true that there is something beautiful about the personality that points away from itself to praise another? And by the way, praise is comely not only for the upright, but also for the reprobate and scoundrel, especially when it is part of an expression of repentance.
2) Verse 3 touts the value of singing a new song to God. Newness is not a virtue in and of itself, but old testimonies, repeated over and over, often lose their effectiveness as a witness to the goodness of God. Updated songs grow naturally out of thriving religious experiences.
3) Verses 7 and 9 both celebrate God as Creator. One of the first creative acts was bringing organization to the primeval sea, forcing it into boundaries (Genesis 1:6-7). Verse 9 says that God spoke the world into creation. Again and again, Genesis 1 describes creation happening because "God said." This verse connects also with John 1:1. What new things do we need to allow God to say in our lives to recreate us?
