Whoever laughs last
Commentary
The Scriptures convey such powerful testimony about nothing less than life and death and eternity that we sometimes lose sight of the laughter and humor in which the testimony is couched. Humor, irony, understatement and overstatement, even downright comedy permeate many of the stories and much of the witness.
Our lessons for this day, particularly the two from the New Testament, challenge us to appreciate the humor and the laughter, even unstated, that is so much a part of the promise God gives for eternity. The epistle lesson can lead to the giggles, and the gospel leaves us smiling at its conclusion. Together they challenge us to consider that the more serious the issue at hand, the greater the need for an appropriate humor.
Hosea 5:15--6:6
The relationship between 5:15 and 6:1 reminds us of some of the dysfunctional relationships we know all too well. The problem, to put it simply, is whether the two verses are to be connected at all. The RSV connects the two quite intentionally by adding to the text the word "saying"; thus the impression is given that the Lord will not relent of divine anger until the people come to God in their distress uttering the first three verses of chapter 6. The NRSV does not add the word "saying" at the end of 5:15 but makes the same connection by concluding the verse with a colon, indicating the speech of 6:1-3 is what God wants to hear.
The logic of that interpretation becomes strained when after hearing the speech, the Lord cries out, "What am I going to do with you?" and then goes on to accuse the people of being fickle in their love for him. The connection is not clear.
In all likelihood, 5:15 should end with a period (or not be read at all in connection with this pericope). 6:1-3 represents a view that has best been called "cheap grace," and represents the kind of imagery one would expect for the fertility god Baal, who, of course, is the problem god in the Book of Hosea. When the people speak so easily of the Lord's graciousness that it is compared to the coming of day after night or the rainfall that the people of the land had come to expect every March, then they are not taking seriously that the Lord desires their faithfulness to himself and indeed the intimate knowledge that comes with such faithfulness.
When the people of Israel are as flippant as their words in 6:1-3, they will not find God to be laughing or even to be wearing a smile. Indeed, the heartbreak in God's words and the Lord's heartfelt desire for constant love and intimacy leave us all looking for some news that is pleasing to God and worthy of a good laugh.
Romans 4:13-25
Speaking of laughing, remember Abraham? Paul certainly did, and so he used the old patriarch again to illustrate the distinction between faith and works of law. The apostle wastes no time in driving home the point: Abraham inherited the world through the righteousness of faith. Citing the promises God made regarding Abraham's future relationships to the world, Paul demonstrates by quoting at verse 17 Genesis 17:5 that this blessing that came to Abraham makes him the father of Gentiles as well as Jews, that is, "the father of many nations" and thus "the father of us all." He carries the point even further by quoting Genesis 15:5 where God used the stars in the night sky as the visual demonstration of the number of descendants Abraham could expect.
Throughout his letters Paul wrote of Abraham as the father of Christians and of Christians as the children of Abraham. Above all, at Galatians 3 the apostle identified Christ as the offspring of Abraham (v. 16) and comes to the conclusion that if we Christians "belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise" (v. 29). That Abraham and Sarah had any children at all is due, of course, only to the grace and faithfulness of God. Recalling the incident that brought down the house in laughter, Paul indelicately writes, "He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb" (v. 19). There God had the last laugh, and so the son born to the aged couple was named "he laughs," Isaac.
Abraham's trust in the promise of God against all the odds "was reckoned to him as righteousness" (Genesis 15:6). That same reckoning is offered to all who believe in the God who raised Jesus from the dead to join the eschatological laughter of God.
Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26
In the preceding verses Jesus had healed the paralytic, and as a result the crowds glorified God (9:1-8). Now Matthew reports two instances in which the newness of Jesus' coming is experienced in his eating habits. The first of these, the beginning of our pericope, teaches the new association of diners at the banquet, and that lesson is a direct response to the Pharisees. The second, skipped in our pericope, indicates the joy of banqueting in the new time of Jesus' presence, thus the answer to the question from John's disciples concerning fasting. Still in the context of explaining the response to the disciples of John, the second part of our pericope occurs.
The call to discipleship of Matthew is almost incidental to what follows, except, of course, for the fact that he was a tax collector and the following dining story includes tax collectors. In any case, Jesus speaks the same words he had used to call Peter and Andrew at 4:19 and presumably the same words to call James and John (4:21) -- all of them fishermen. By the call to Matthew, a tax collector, Jesus is reaching out beyond the approved occupation of catching fish to include one who by his profession has cut himself off from his people. Tax collectors worked for the taxing authorities, and they were the Romans who occupied the land. That fact alone would, of course, make them most unpopular with the Jewish people from whose ranks the tax collector came. Besides the problem of foreign occupation, however, tax collectors are generally not the most beloved people in a community simply because they collect our taxes.
As for dining issue number one, the Pharisees challenged Jesus for the first time in Matthew's Gospel. Prior to this occasion they are mentioned only at 3:7 as the object of rebuke by John the Baptizer and as the models of righteousness who must be surpassed by the kingdom people (5:20). Now they begin their frequent appearances in the Gospel, usually in attempts to trap Jesus or complain about Jesus or his disciples (see 12:2, 14, 24, 38; 15:1, 12; 16:1, 6, 11-12; 19:3; 21:45; 22:15, 34, 41; 23:2; 27:62). For their unwelcome advances the Pharisees become part of Jesus' tirade as the recipients of "woe" sayings (23:13, 15, 23, 25, 27, 29). In other words, their notoriety in Matthew's Gospel is just beginning in our pericope.
Here the Pharisees, righteous that they are, express their discontent at Jesus when they saw that he reclined with "tax collectors and sinners." While they asked the disciples to explain this strange behavior, it was Jesus himself who answered. Jesus indicated that it was precisely for the likes of tax collectors and sinners that he came. The religious and righteous Pharisees have no need of him, just as the healthy do not require the services of a physician.
The response points us in several directions at the same time. First, Jesus clearly indicates the intentionality of his selection of friends. It was not an accident that he reclined for meals with the likes of the outcasts in town. The very purpose of his coming was to identify with them in their struggles and to bring comfort, hope, and fellowship to those who were excluded by the communities in which they lived. Bringing people together in himself was part of the reason for calling disciples, and they, along with the outcasts, would make up the community promised for the eschaton (see Micah 4:6-7). This emphasis on community is one that badly needs addressing in our day and in our country, as books such as Robert Bellah's Habits of the Heart (Harper, 1985) have demonstrated. (A more recent study by Robert Putnam, "Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital" [Journal of Democracy VI, 1995] has gathered the statistics to demonstrate Americans have been withdrawing from community-oriented groups.)
Second, Jesus' response to the Pharisees points to himself as a physician -- not one with an M.D., of course, but a healer. The context of the pericope focuses our attention on his healing miracles: the leper (8:1-4), the centurion's paralyzed servant (8:5-13), Peter's mother-in-law (8:14-17), the two demoniacs (8:28-34), the paralyzed man (9:1-8); and the second part of our pericope is the twofold healing of the woman with the hemorrhage and the raising of the ruler's daughter, only to be followed by sight restored to two blind men (9:27-31) and the twofold healing of the speechless demoniac (9:32-34). Jesus came to "those who are sick." The ones who do indeed need a physician.
Third, Jesus quotes Hosea 6:6 to the Pharisees in order to demonstrate what God really wants -- not formal religious observances but mercy. Jesus' use of this verse from our first lesson is not designed to render unimportant for all time the rites and rituals by which human beings form our worship and praise of God. Rather the prophetic words serve the incident at hand, namely, to cite against the religious folks their own scripture which supports his claim that "I have come to call not the righteous but sinners." Moreover, that point is made precisely because of Jesus' concern that his own dinner companions have been excluded by the religious elite and thus cut off from the opportunity to worship God in the Temple. Jesus' affiliation with the outcasts of the day is a deliberate announcement of the purpose for his divine mission.
Skipping over the new audience that arrives on the scene, the disciples of John, who ask the question about the non-fasting habits of Jesus' own disciples, our pericope moves to an intruder into that discussion. A leader of the local synagogue pleaded with Jesus to come to his house to bring back to life his daughter who had just died. Rising to accompany the bereaved father, Jesus felt the touch of a hand at the fringe of his cloak. It was a woman, described for the reader as one "who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years." Turning to see her and apparently knowing her thoughts that touching his clothes would make her well, Jesus said to her, "Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well." Literally, the words are "your faith has saved you." Apart from the parallels to this passage at Mark 5:34 and Luke 8:48, the same words occur in connection with Jesus' healing of the blind man (Mark 10:52; Luke 18:42), as well as in the announcement to the "sinner" who washed Jesus' feet (Luke 7:50) and to the one leper out of ten who returned to Jesus to give thanks (Luke 17:19). The announcement seems to indicate that salvation is the restoration of the whole person to God through Jesus himself. The result of his announcement here is that the woman became well.
That healing still left the little girl dead in the house of the leader of the synagogue. As he approached the dwelling, the mourning rites were in full swing. Jesus told the flute payers and the rest of the crowd to leave, because "the girl is not dead but sleeping." Clearly Jesus was not resorting to the old euphemism to avoid the "d" word. Confident of his ability to bring her back to life, Jesus pushed his way toward the crowd. The people "laughed at him," as anyone with a sense of reason would. Nevertheless they moved outside so that Jesus could approach the little girl. He simply took her hand, "and the girl got up." The final word can be used for the simple act of waking from sleep, as Matthew himself used it at 1:24 and 2:13, 14. However, the same Greek word means resurrection from the dead, as Matthew will put it in the mouth of the angel at the empty tomb at 28:6,7. The double meaning is clear enough. At the same time the crowds who laughed now become the messengers of the deed throughout that district.
Whoever laughs last, laughs best. Of course, Matthew does not tell us that Jesus laughed at them or even smiled when he departed. But laughing must have been on Jesus' mind. He knew the message at Psalm 37:13 about the Lord laughing at the wicked who tried to oppress the righteous. He knew, too, about the laughter of God at those kings of the surrounding countries who plotted to overthrow the Lord's anointed at his accession to Jerusalem's throne (Psalm 2:4). And Jesus must surely have recalled the words he spoke on the plain when he promised that those who weep now will laugh in the kingdom to come (Luke 6:21).
Jesus knew who would have the last laugh. It would be all those who "arose" to eternal life.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Genesis 12:1-9
This text in Genesis 12 is one of the most important passages in the Bible, for it lays the foundation for all that follows after. It records the beginning of God's salvation history that finally finds its fulfillment in Jesus Christ.
The passage cannot be understood apart from the preface to it in Genesis 1-11, however. Certainly it portrays God breaking into human history about 1750 B.C., to call a man named Abraham out of his home in Haran in upper Mesopotamia. But the question is: Why? Why was it necessary for God to speak his word into time and to give a promise to a nomadic Semite?
The answer is found in what precedes this text. Genesis 1-11 tells the story of how all of us have walked in relation to our God. "Adam" is the Hebrew word for humankind, and so Genesis 1-11 is our story. It says that God created us and all things good. But in our attempt to run our own lives and to be our own gods and goddesses, we have rebelled against God's lordship (Genesis 3). The result is that we corrupted all of God's good gifts. We have distorted our intimate communion of love and fellowship with God (Genesis 3:8-10), corrupted the mutual communion of wife with husband (Genesis 3:7, 16), turned brother against brother (Genesis 4:1-16), and peoples against peoples (Genesis 4:23-24), until the earth is now full of wickedness that grieves God to his heart (Genesis 6:5-6). We destroy the loveliness and fecundity of nature (Genesis 3:17-19; 4:12), and in our proud search for power and security, make it impossible for nations to understand and get along with one another (Genesis 11:1-9). The result is that we live under God's sentence of death, for "the wages of sin is death."
But God has no pleasure in the death of anyone, and so with Abraham, he begins an actual history of salvation that will overcome all of the effects of our cursed rebellion against him, and that will restore his creation to the goodness he intended for it from the beginning.
To Abraham, God gives a threefold promise: "I will make of you a great nation," that is, God will make a new community of Abraham's many descendants, to replace the community that humankind has destroyed, "To your descendants I will give this land" that will flow with milk and honey, to replace the paradise that all of us have lost, "By you all the families of the earth shall be blessed," to turn the curse upon sin into the blessing and fullness of life that comes from God. And in Genesis 17:7, God adds one more promise: "I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants" to restore the relationship that we, in our rebellion against the Lord, have broken. The call of Abraham is the answer to human sin and the beginning of God's work of saving us all.
In the immediate context of our text, humankind wanted to make a name for itself (Genesis 11:4), but God will make Abraham's name great (12:2). Sarai was barren (11:30), but God will give her many descendants (12:2).
Genesis 12:1-9 records God's great reversal -- the reversal of the history of sin, to replace it with the history of his salvation. God promises, and he always keeps his promise. And his saving work finally finds its consummation in our Lord Christ, who overcomes our sentence of death, restores us to communion with the Father, begins a universal community called the Christian Church, and is the source of blessing for all the families of the earth.
Lutheran Option -- Hosea 5:15--6:6
Unfortunately, Hosea 5:15 should not be connected with 6:1-
6. The word "saying" is missing in the Hebrew, and has only been added from the Septuagint. Originally the passages were not joined. If they do fit together, then what follows in 6:1-3 is a confession of guilt. But obviously, 6:1-3 is no such thing, as is evident from God's reply to the people's words in 6:4-6. Rather, 6:1-3 records Israel's phony repentance and belief that God will forgive her, no matter what she has done.
There is no doubt that Israel is in a jam. She is being engulfed by the Assyrian Empire (cf. 5:8-14), and so she has been summoned to a fast of repentance, in which she will plead for God to deliver her. She still has enough faith to know that Assyria is the "rod" of God's anger (cf. Isaiah 10:5), and that God is the only one who can rescue her.
And she is quite confident that God will do so. Israel in this eighth century B.C. time is very much like all of us. God has "torn" her, she believes (5:14), and so he will "heal" her (6:1). God has wounded her (5:13), and so he will bandage her up (6:2). God has become for Israel, as he often has become for us, simply a servant to take care of her needs -- always forgiving, always loving, never judgmental, overlooking any defiance of his will. Indeed, he is just like one of those nature gods that the Canaanites -- and often we -- worship, Israel thinks -- treating her gently like the spring rains that water the earth, demanding nothing in return. It is indicative of the Israelites' hollow repentance that their words in this passage are spoken not to God in prayer, but only to one another. Let's go find good ole god, is the tone, and he will deliver us from our difficulties.
But God has withdrawn from Israel to his place (5:15), and he cannot so easily be summoned to our aid. That is a sobering thought that we need to keep in mind. To be sure, God does not answer Israel's nonchalant devotion in wrath. Rather, he searches his mind and love for some way to save his unfaithful people, as he always searches for some way to save us. "What shall I do with you, O Ephraim?" (6:4) -- the question of a loving Father to his disobedient child (cf. 11:1). Israel thinks she loves God, but her love is so ephemeral, disappearing at a moment's notice like dew dried up by the sun, as our love for God so easily dries up and disappears.
God has tried to correct his people, as he always tries to correct us. He has sent them prophets to issue his judgments upon Israel, just as the Word of God, if we study it carefully, always speaks God's judgments upon our disobedient lives. For what is the cross of Christ but the clear indication that sin, our sin, leads to death?
God does not disdain our offerings to him, our money given to his church, our service rendered in his name, our worship carried out every Sunday morning. But the question from our text is: Are our hearts involved in those offerings? Are we giving and serving and worshiping in sincere and heartfelt commitment to our Lord? For our text makes it very clear: Above all else, God desires covenant love that cleaves to him like a faithful wife to her husband, or like an adoring son to his father. He wants our true knowledge of him, gained through Bible study and constant prayer every day, so we know the Lord we are worshiping. He wants us -- heart, soul, mind, and strength, responding in love to his love, and committing ourselves to his lordship, above all other loyalties. Then, though we often fail, good Christians, we can truly say in all our difficulties, "Come, let us return to the Lord," and the Lord will reply to us, "Come!"
Our lessons for this day, particularly the two from the New Testament, challenge us to appreciate the humor and the laughter, even unstated, that is so much a part of the promise God gives for eternity. The epistle lesson can lead to the giggles, and the gospel leaves us smiling at its conclusion. Together they challenge us to consider that the more serious the issue at hand, the greater the need for an appropriate humor.
Hosea 5:15--6:6
The relationship between 5:15 and 6:1 reminds us of some of the dysfunctional relationships we know all too well. The problem, to put it simply, is whether the two verses are to be connected at all. The RSV connects the two quite intentionally by adding to the text the word "saying"; thus the impression is given that the Lord will not relent of divine anger until the people come to God in their distress uttering the first three verses of chapter 6. The NRSV does not add the word "saying" at the end of 5:15 but makes the same connection by concluding the verse with a colon, indicating the speech of 6:1-3 is what God wants to hear.
The logic of that interpretation becomes strained when after hearing the speech, the Lord cries out, "What am I going to do with you?" and then goes on to accuse the people of being fickle in their love for him. The connection is not clear.
In all likelihood, 5:15 should end with a period (or not be read at all in connection with this pericope). 6:1-3 represents a view that has best been called "cheap grace," and represents the kind of imagery one would expect for the fertility god Baal, who, of course, is the problem god in the Book of Hosea. When the people speak so easily of the Lord's graciousness that it is compared to the coming of day after night or the rainfall that the people of the land had come to expect every March, then they are not taking seriously that the Lord desires their faithfulness to himself and indeed the intimate knowledge that comes with such faithfulness.
When the people of Israel are as flippant as their words in 6:1-3, they will not find God to be laughing or even to be wearing a smile. Indeed, the heartbreak in God's words and the Lord's heartfelt desire for constant love and intimacy leave us all looking for some news that is pleasing to God and worthy of a good laugh.
Romans 4:13-25
Speaking of laughing, remember Abraham? Paul certainly did, and so he used the old patriarch again to illustrate the distinction between faith and works of law. The apostle wastes no time in driving home the point: Abraham inherited the world through the righteousness of faith. Citing the promises God made regarding Abraham's future relationships to the world, Paul demonstrates by quoting at verse 17 Genesis 17:5 that this blessing that came to Abraham makes him the father of Gentiles as well as Jews, that is, "the father of many nations" and thus "the father of us all." He carries the point even further by quoting Genesis 15:5 where God used the stars in the night sky as the visual demonstration of the number of descendants Abraham could expect.
Throughout his letters Paul wrote of Abraham as the father of Christians and of Christians as the children of Abraham. Above all, at Galatians 3 the apostle identified Christ as the offspring of Abraham (v. 16) and comes to the conclusion that if we Christians "belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise" (v. 29). That Abraham and Sarah had any children at all is due, of course, only to the grace and faithfulness of God. Recalling the incident that brought down the house in laughter, Paul indelicately writes, "He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb" (v. 19). There God had the last laugh, and so the son born to the aged couple was named "he laughs," Isaac.
Abraham's trust in the promise of God against all the odds "was reckoned to him as righteousness" (Genesis 15:6). That same reckoning is offered to all who believe in the God who raised Jesus from the dead to join the eschatological laughter of God.
Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26
In the preceding verses Jesus had healed the paralytic, and as a result the crowds glorified God (9:1-8). Now Matthew reports two instances in which the newness of Jesus' coming is experienced in his eating habits. The first of these, the beginning of our pericope, teaches the new association of diners at the banquet, and that lesson is a direct response to the Pharisees. The second, skipped in our pericope, indicates the joy of banqueting in the new time of Jesus' presence, thus the answer to the question from John's disciples concerning fasting. Still in the context of explaining the response to the disciples of John, the second part of our pericope occurs.
The call to discipleship of Matthew is almost incidental to what follows, except, of course, for the fact that he was a tax collector and the following dining story includes tax collectors. In any case, Jesus speaks the same words he had used to call Peter and Andrew at 4:19 and presumably the same words to call James and John (4:21) -- all of them fishermen. By the call to Matthew, a tax collector, Jesus is reaching out beyond the approved occupation of catching fish to include one who by his profession has cut himself off from his people. Tax collectors worked for the taxing authorities, and they were the Romans who occupied the land. That fact alone would, of course, make them most unpopular with the Jewish people from whose ranks the tax collector came. Besides the problem of foreign occupation, however, tax collectors are generally not the most beloved people in a community simply because they collect our taxes.
As for dining issue number one, the Pharisees challenged Jesus for the first time in Matthew's Gospel. Prior to this occasion they are mentioned only at 3:7 as the object of rebuke by John the Baptizer and as the models of righteousness who must be surpassed by the kingdom people (5:20). Now they begin their frequent appearances in the Gospel, usually in attempts to trap Jesus or complain about Jesus or his disciples (see 12:2, 14, 24, 38; 15:1, 12; 16:1, 6, 11-12; 19:3; 21:45; 22:15, 34, 41; 23:2; 27:62). For their unwelcome advances the Pharisees become part of Jesus' tirade as the recipients of "woe" sayings (23:13, 15, 23, 25, 27, 29). In other words, their notoriety in Matthew's Gospel is just beginning in our pericope.
Here the Pharisees, righteous that they are, express their discontent at Jesus when they saw that he reclined with "tax collectors and sinners." While they asked the disciples to explain this strange behavior, it was Jesus himself who answered. Jesus indicated that it was precisely for the likes of tax collectors and sinners that he came. The religious and righteous Pharisees have no need of him, just as the healthy do not require the services of a physician.
The response points us in several directions at the same time. First, Jesus clearly indicates the intentionality of his selection of friends. It was not an accident that he reclined for meals with the likes of the outcasts in town. The very purpose of his coming was to identify with them in their struggles and to bring comfort, hope, and fellowship to those who were excluded by the communities in which they lived. Bringing people together in himself was part of the reason for calling disciples, and they, along with the outcasts, would make up the community promised for the eschaton (see Micah 4:6-7). This emphasis on community is one that badly needs addressing in our day and in our country, as books such as Robert Bellah's Habits of the Heart (Harper, 1985) have demonstrated. (A more recent study by Robert Putnam, "Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital" [Journal of Democracy VI, 1995] has gathered the statistics to demonstrate Americans have been withdrawing from community-oriented groups.)
Second, Jesus' response to the Pharisees points to himself as a physician -- not one with an M.D., of course, but a healer. The context of the pericope focuses our attention on his healing miracles: the leper (8:1-4), the centurion's paralyzed servant (8:5-13), Peter's mother-in-law (8:14-17), the two demoniacs (8:28-34), the paralyzed man (9:1-8); and the second part of our pericope is the twofold healing of the woman with the hemorrhage and the raising of the ruler's daughter, only to be followed by sight restored to two blind men (9:27-31) and the twofold healing of the speechless demoniac (9:32-34). Jesus came to "those who are sick." The ones who do indeed need a physician.
Third, Jesus quotes Hosea 6:6 to the Pharisees in order to demonstrate what God really wants -- not formal religious observances but mercy. Jesus' use of this verse from our first lesson is not designed to render unimportant for all time the rites and rituals by which human beings form our worship and praise of God. Rather the prophetic words serve the incident at hand, namely, to cite against the religious folks their own scripture which supports his claim that "I have come to call not the righteous but sinners." Moreover, that point is made precisely because of Jesus' concern that his own dinner companions have been excluded by the religious elite and thus cut off from the opportunity to worship God in the Temple. Jesus' affiliation with the outcasts of the day is a deliberate announcement of the purpose for his divine mission.
Skipping over the new audience that arrives on the scene, the disciples of John, who ask the question about the non-fasting habits of Jesus' own disciples, our pericope moves to an intruder into that discussion. A leader of the local synagogue pleaded with Jesus to come to his house to bring back to life his daughter who had just died. Rising to accompany the bereaved father, Jesus felt the touch of a hand at the fringe of his cloak. It was a woman, described for the reader as one "who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years." Turning to see her and apparently knowing her thoughts that touching his clothes would make her well, Jesus said to her, "Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well." Literally, the words are "your faith has saved you." Apart from the parallels to this passage at Mark 5:34 and Luke 8:48, the same words occur in connection with Jesus' healing of the blind man (Mark 10:52; Luke 18:42), as well as in the announcement to the "sinner" who washed Jesus' feet (Luke 7:50) and to the one leper out of ten who returned to Jesus to give thanks (Luke 17:19). The announcement seems to indicate that salvation is the restoration of the whole person to God through Jesus himself. The result of his announcement here is that the woman became well.
That healing still left the little girl dead in the house of the leader of the synagogue. As he approached the dwelling, the mourning rites were in full swing. Jesus told the flute payers and the rest of the crowd to leave, because "the girl is not dead but sleeping." Clearly Jesus was not resorting to the old euphemism to avoid the "d" word. Confident of his ability to bring her back to life, Jesus pushed his way toward the crowd. The people "laughed at him," as anyone with a sense of reason would. Nevertheless they moved outside so that Jesus could approach the little girl. He simply took her hand, "and the girl got up." The final word can be used for the simple act of waking from sleep, as Matthew himself used it at 1:24 and 2:13, 14. However, the same Greek word means resurrection from the dead, as Matthew will put it in the mouth of the angel at the empty tomb at 28:6,7. The double meaning is clear enough. At the same time the crowds who laughed now become the messengers of the deed throughout that district.
Whoever laughs last, laughs best. Of course, Matthew does not tell us that Jesus laughed at them or even smiled when he departed. But laughing must have been on Jesus' mind. He knew the message at Psalm 37:13 about the Lord laughing at the wicked who tried to oppress the righteous. He knew, too, about the laughter of God at those kings of the surrounding countries who plotted to overthrow the Lord's anointed at his accession to Jerusalem's throne (Psalm 2:4). And Jesus must surely have recalled the words he spoke on the plain when he promised that those who weep now will laugh in the kingdom to come (Luke 6:21).
Jesus knew who would have the last laugh. It would be all those who "arose" to eternal life.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Genesis 12:1-9
This text in Genesis 12 is one of the most important passages in the Bible, for it lays the foundation for all that follows after. It records the beginning of God's salvation history that finally finds its fulfillment in Jesus Christ.
The passage cannot be understood apart from the preface to it in Genesis 1-11, however. Certainly it portrays God breaking into human history about 1750 B.C., to call a man named Abraham out of his home in Haran in upper Mesopotamia. But the question is: Why? Why was it necessary for God to speak his word into time and to give a promise to a nomadic Semite?
The answer is found in what precedes this text. Genesis 1-11 tells the story of how all of us have walked in relation to our God. "Adam" is the Hebrew word for humankind, and so Genesis 1-11 is our story. It says that God created us and all things good. But in our attempt to run our own lives and to be our own gods and goddesses, we have rebelled against God's lordship (Genesis 3). The result is that we corrupted all of God's good gifts. We have distorted our intimate communion of love and fellowship with God (Genesis 3:8-10), corrupted the mutual communion of wife with husband (Genesis 3:7, 16), turned brother against brother (Genesis 4:1-16), and peoples against peoples (Genesis 4:23-24), until the earth is now full of wickedness that grieves God to his heart (Genesis 6:5-6). We destroy the loveliness and fecundity of nature (Genesis 3:17-19; 4:12), and in our proud search for power and security, make it impossible for nations to understand and get along with one another (Genesis 11:1-9). The result is that we live under God's sentence of death, for "the wages of sin is death."
But God has no pleasure in the death of anyone, and so with Abraham, he begins an actual history of salvation that will overcome all of the effects of our cursed rebellion against him, and that will restore his creation to the goodness he intended for it from the beginning.
To Abraham, God gives a threefold promise: "I will make of you a great nation," that is, God will make a new community of Abraham's many descendants, to replace the community that humankind has destroyed, "To your descendants I will give this land" that will flow with milk and honey, to replace the paradise that all of us have lost, "By you all the families of the earth shall be blessed," to turn the curse upon sin into the blessing and fullness of life that comes from God. And in Genesis 17:7, God adds one more promise: "I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants" to restore the relationship that we, in our rebellion against the Lord, have broken. The call of Abraham is the answer to human sin and the beginning of God's work of saving us all.
In the immediate context of our text, humankind wanted to make a name for itself (Genesis 11:4), but God will make Abraham's name great (12:2). Sarai was barren (11:30), but God will give her many descendants (12:2).
Genesis 12:1-9 records God's great reversal -- the reversal of the history of sin, to replace it with the history of his salvation. God promises, and he always keeps his promise. And his saving work finally finds its consummation in our Lord Christ, who overcomes our sentence of death, restores us to communion with the Father, begins a universal community called the Christian Church, and is the source of blessing for all the families of the earth.
Lutheran Option -- Hosea 5:15--6:6
Unfortunately, Hosea 5:15 should not be connected with 6:1-
6. The word "saying" is missing in the Hebrew, and has only been added from the Septuagint. Originally the passages were not joined. If they do fit together, then what follows in 6:1-3 is a confession of guilt. But obviously, 6:1-3 is no such thing, as is evident from God's reply to the people's words in 6:4-6. Rather, 6:1-3 records Israel's phony repentance and belief that God will forgive her, no matter what she has done.
There is no doubt that Israel is in a jam. She is being engulfed by the Assyrian Empire (cf. 5:8-14), and so she has been summoned to a fast of repentance, in which she will plead for God to deliver her. She still has enough faith to know that Assyria is the "rod" of God's anger (cf. Isaiah 10:5), and that God is the only one who can rescue her.
And she is quite confident that God will do so. Israel in this eighth century B.C. time is very much like all of us. God has "torn" her, she believes (5:14), and so he will "heal" her (6:1). God has wounded her (5:13), and so he will bandage her up (6:2). God has become for Israel, as he often has become for us, simply a servant to take care of her needs -- always forgiving, always loving, never judgmental, overlooking any defiance of his will. Indeed, he is just like one of those nature gods that the Canaanites -- and often we -- worship, Israel thinks -- treating her gently like the spring rains that water the earth, demanding nothing in return. It is indicative of the Israelites' hollow repentance that their words in this passage are spoken not to God in prayer, but only to one another. Let's go find good ole god, is the tone, and he will deliver us from our difficulties.
But God has withdrawn from Israel to his place (5:15), and he cannot so easily be summoned to our aid. That is a sobering thought that we need to keep in mind. To be sure, God does not answer Israel's nonchalant devotion in wrath. Rather, he searches his mind and love for some way to save his unfaithful people, as he always searches for some way to save us. "What shall I do with you, O Ephraim?" (6:4) -- the question of a loving Father to his disobedient child (cf. 11:1). Israel thinks she loves God, but her love is so ephemeral, disappearing at a moment's notice like dew dried up by the sun, as our love for God so easily dries up and disappears.
God has tried to correct his people, as he always tries to correct us. He has sent them prophets to issue his judgments upon Israel, just as the Word of God, if we study it carefully, always speaks God's judgments upon our disobedient lives. For what is the cross of Christ but the clear indication that sin, our sin, leads to death?
God does not disdain our offerings to him, our money given to his church, our service rendered in his name, our worship carried out every Sunday morning. But the question from our text is: Are our hearts involved in those offerings? Are we giving and serving and worshiping in sincere and heartfelt commitment to our Lord? For our text makes it very clear: Above all else, God desires covenant love that cleaves to him like a faithful wife to her husband, or like an adoring son to his father. He wants our true knowledge of him, gained through Bible study and constant prayer every day, so we know the Lord we are worshiping. He wants us -- heart, soul, mind, and strength, responding in love to his love, and committing ourselves to his lordship, above all other loyalties. Then, though we often fail, good Christians, we can truly say in all our difficulties, "Come, let us return to the Lord," and the Lord will reply to us, "Come!"
