Join The Feast

Join the Feast is Taking a Break

2009-11-05T23:21:00.000-05:00

We appreciate your readership for Join the Feast in the past year. After November 15, 2009, we will cease publication for a while. However, please check back in the future. Look for us to resume publication and hope you will join the feast.

November 15, 2009 - Mark 13:1-8 - Charlie Summers

2009-11-05T23:18:00.001-05:00

Gleanings from the Text
Mark 13:1-8

When it comes to apocalyptic Scriptures, there seem to be two kinds of people. There are those who love to dig around in the symbols in order to find the “secret messages,” and those who skip over these texts as quickly as possible. But surely there is something useful here, some word we need to hear other than “hidden secrets.”

You know the setting. Jesus and his disciples (who are mostly small town guys) come into Jerusalem. The disciples are very impressed with the temple, its grand architecture and its seeming permanence. (Though this is the second temple, it has already been destroyed once in its history. This one was rebuilt by Herod the Great in 19 BC. Matthew says this same Herod killed the children of Bethlehem.) Mark routinely shows that the disciples do not quite get the point of this Jesus. They are still impressed with the “big things” – temples, crowds, and important people. While Jesus talks to them about an upside down kingdom of mustards seeds, children, and crosses. The theology of the cross is presented in this chapter in a different key.

In this apocalyptic passage in Mark, Jesus offers two warnings to his easily impressed disciples. “Take heed that no one lead you astray.” “Take heed…when they bring you to trial.” There is suffering ahead for the community and for the disciples. They are warned not to let the suffering be an excuse to chase off after phony solutions and false messiahs (we might say quick fixes).

They are warned not to lose heart. There will be wars and rumors of wars. There will be stacked courtrooms, rigged trials, persecution for the church as there will be for the Messiah. The reader is warned that trouble comes to the world, and to those who follow the Way of Jesus.

But there is also a promise. “Do not be anxious beforehand what you are to say (when you are before the rulers), but say whatever is given you in that hour, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit.” This rare promise of the Spirit in Mark’s gospel is given to those who suffer for their faith; who testify to their Lord. “The one who endures to the end will be saved.” There is a promise of help in our time of distress.

Food for Thought

What happens when our “great buildings” come tumbling down? There is an opportunity in this passage to think about our catastrophes: Hurricane Katrina; September 9/11; the collapse of the stock market; the collapse of a marriage. When we enter into an apocalyptic time, what do we hear God saying to us? How do we trust in the Holy Spirit when things are falling apart all around us?

There is also the opportunity to ask when is it that we are willing to suffer for the sake of this Jesus. What do we know about a witness to the faith that leads to our persecution? What do we learn from the voices of the persecuted church in other parts of the world or in other ages?

I usually connect Mark 13 with the first Sunday of Advent. What difference does it make when we read it during the “Thanksgiving Season” in November? Or during our Stewardship season in the congregation? Where are we placing our trust? What rock are we building upon? What cost of discipleship are we willing to bear?

Sink Your Teeth into This

Elie Wiesel in his book Memoirs: All Rivers Lead to the Sea talks about his childhood in Eastern Europe and the suffering of the Jews even before the Nazis came. His rabbi used to say, “Abraham, the first of the patriarchs, was a better Jew than you. He was a thousand times better than all of us, but the Midrash tells us that he was cast into a burning furnace. So how do you expect to breeze through life without a scratch? Daniel was wiser than you and more pious, yet he was condemned to die in a lion’s den. And you dream of living your life without suffering?” (p.19)

Biographical Information

Charlie Summers is pastor of First Presbyterian Church, Richmond, Virginia.

October 25, 2009 – Mark 10:46-52 - J. Richard Short

2009-11-05T23:15:00.001-05:00

Gleanings from the Text
Mark 10:46-52

Blind beggar. By the side of the road. Scolded by crowd for asking Jesus for mercy.

Jesus stops. “What do you want me to do for you?”

Interesting question. Bartimaus has already told Jesus what he wants. Twice. He wants Jesus to have mercy on him. To show him some pity.

But Jesus senses that there is more that Bartimaus wants. Or needs. So Jesus asks him, “What do you want me to do for you?” Can you be more specific?

Food for Thought

One way to do church renewal is to ask the community, as the body of Christ, ”What do you want us to do for you?” It’s called identifying the community’s felt needs.

The critics of this approach say that if your congregational strategy stops at meeting felt needs, you end up with self centered Christians who are in church only for what the church can do for them, rather than what they can do for Christ. Maybe identifying and meeting felt needs is only the first step of a multiple step process.

The text suggests that the second step is following Jesus. That’s what Bartimaus did. He went from being by the side of the road, to being on the road, following Jesus. If we stop here, this is a story about making a new disciple. Identifying and meeting felt needs, and the person, having his or her needs met, decides to follow Jesus.

Let me tell you about Steve, an Episcopal priest in a small county seat town in Louisiana. Steve was all about having his church met felt needs in the 1980’s and 90’s. They started with a LOGOS ministry on Wednesday afternoons, and that grew so much that they decided to start an elementary school, and that grew so much they decided to start a high school.

But something happened to Steve in the midst of his “success” as a minister. One day, in his prayers, he heard Jesus say to him, “Steve, what do you want me to do for you?” The question startled him. He was not ready for it. So he responded, “Lord, I don’t need anything from you. I just want to something for you.” But Jesus ignored his protestations, and replied, “Steve, what do you want me to do for you?”

Since that encounter, Steve turned his ministry around. The outward success of that parish continued, but not because of what Steve was doing. He shifted to working on people’s spiritual growth, on their relationship with the living Lord.

So maybe there is a third step in this process. The first step is to meet people where they are and to help them with their presenting issues. To meet their felt needs.

The second step is to help them see the joy of being a disciple and in following Jesus.
The third step is a revisiting of the first step but at a deeper level, when the fully devoted disciples of Christ get into giving so much that they lose sight of the source of the giving.

Sink Your Teeth Into This

A pastor went to his mentor crestfallen. After two rough pastorates, he had just been asked to leave his third church. In tears he blurted out, “All I ever wanted was to be used by God.” His mentor replied, “My friend, don’t you understand that Jesus doesn’t want to use you. Jesus just wants to love you.”

Jesus says to Bartimaus, and to my friend Steve, and to the recently fired pastor, and I suggest, to us, “What do you want me to do for you?”

What really, deep down, do you want Jesus to do for you? Get you a Cadillac? Help you in my marriage or child raising or money management? Is that what you really want? Or do you want a closer walk with the living Lord? Think about it.

Biographical Information

J. Richard Short is General Presbyter of The Presbytery of Eastern Virginia.

October 25, 2009 - Hebrews 7:23-28 - Mairi Renwick

2009-10-25T12:00:00.001-04:00

Gleanings from the Text
Hebrews 7:23-28

Hebrews. Who exactly are the “Hebrews?” Is the book of Hebrews written to a group of Hebrew people? While the exact identity of this group is still uncertain, there are some conclusions that we can draw with relative certainty. For instance, Hebrews, though often referred to as an epistle, is more like a sermon written in a Rabbinic style and written between 60-100 AD. One can also draw the conclusion that the writer of Hebrews is writing to a group who is in need of some type of description of who Jesus is and why one should hold on to Christianity. In Hebrews 5:1-10 Jesus is described as a high priest.

After reading the pericope a few questions pop to mind about the Scripture. For me the first one is who in the world is Melchizedek? Melchizedek is only mentioned a couple of times in the Old Testament. Then he is mentioned again in Hebrews 7. Melchizedek’s appearance seems somewhat random, but the author is clearly trying to use the priest Melchizedek as a person who anticipated Christ as a high priest. I do not think though, he is a crucial part of understanding this pericope. A high priest, which is clear from the reading, is an intermediary between God and humans. By using a chiastic form, the author of Hebrews wants to show listeners and today’s readers that Jesus is not just a regular high priest, but THE high priest who has all the qualifications plus more!

Food for Thought

As I look at this short pericope, Jesus’ humanity sticks out like a sore thumb. Jesus is being compared to a human with human emotions! However, one cannot ignore that Jesus does more than the normal priest. Jesus can feel our pain and can sympathize with us since he was human, but he, unlike mortal priests, was not a sinner. He does not have to repeatedly give sacrifices to God for our sins but is the last sacrifice for our sins. No longer do we need a person to be a ‘go between’ for us and God, because Jesus changed the relationship between us and God when he died.

Since we can go directly to God, we, like Jesus, can cry out to God when we are in pain. But what do we do when our pain does not go away and God does not grant what we wish? Jesus’ cries were heard, but God did not take away death from him. Ultimately, as Christians we must remember that God is in control and while we are in pain, we can cry out as much as we want. If God is able to raise Jesus from the dead, God can undoubtedly take care of us now—though it may not be in the manner we want.

God is hearing and listening to our cries and has a plan for us all. For, just as Jesus and the priests were chosen by God, we are chosen in some way to serve.

I am guessing that many readers of JTF are connected to Union-PSCE and have decided to serve the Lord through ministry. However, what do we do when we become uncertain about what God has chosen us to do? When we are certain about what we should do, it can be a comfort to know God has a plan. Yet, when we feel confused, do we feel comforted when we are reminded that God has a plan? Do we cry out and think we are heard?

Sink your teeth into this!

As I have been in seminary, I have constantly wondered is this where God wants me? What am I supposed to be doing? I have literally cried to God, asking him to guide me and to answer me straightly about what I am to do with my life. I still do not know what to do. However, I do know God has heard me cry and cares for me. God has chosen a path for me and has chosen me, Mairi, one person in the whole creation, to serve the Creator. God has also chosen you, one person in the whole creation to serve, too.

Biographical Information

Mairi Renwick is in her second year at Union-PSCE. She grew up in Lexington, Kentucky, but also claims Spartanburg, South Carolina as home. She is the daughter of a preacher and never thought that God’s plans for her would have her writing a devotion for a seminary, let alone attending seminary.

October 4, 2009 - Job 1:1, 2:1-10 - Catherine Devins

2009-10-04T12:00:00.000-04:00

Gleanings from the Text
Job 1:1, 2:1-10

The book of Job challenges the social justice system promoted in the preceding book of Proverbs. Job is a folktale that speaks an alternative reality. The setting is far from the familiar context of Israel, in “the land of Uz.” This distance helps to transport us to a place where a new perspective and reality may be possible—away from the moral certitudes, the absolutes and predictable God of Proverbs or our own time and place.

The main character is Job, a man who is “blameless and upright” (v.1). Job epitomizes a life of integrity and piety and has been blessed accordingly. A heavenly courtroom debate is about to change all that and discredit conventional ethical explanations. We are introduced to God and satan—more appropriately understood as “accuser” or “adversary.” God praises Job’s loyalty and respect as “the greatest of all the people” (v.3). The accuser challenges God by questioning the motive for Job’s behavior. Is Job’s piety only a consequence of all his blessings? Satan suggests a test: Take everything away from Job and see if that doesn’t make him curse God to God’s face!

Job denies the accuser satisfaction. In his grief for all that he has lost, Job utters that famous phrase: “the Lord gave; and the Lord has taken away” (v.21) and then he blesses God. Not satisfied, the accuser reasons that a man will give all he has, but there are limits when it comes to his own life. This time the test is to inflict loathsome sores over Job’s entire body. Surely then he will curse God. In misery, Job settles into the ashes and scrapes his wounds. Mrs. Job suddenly appears and decries the injustice of the situation: “Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God and die” (2:9). Job chastises his wife, but the thought lingers and later, Job expresses the same anguished perspective with his friends and with God.

Food for Thought

• In ancient culture, Mrs. Job belongs in the category of Job’s property and yet she survives the first test. Her role in the story is to incite Job to challenge old complacencies and perceptions of God. Mrs. Job is often maligned as being satan’s foil, but she is the first to identify the ambiguity of Job’s “integrity.” Integrity (tummah) denotes the characteristic of complete honesty in accordance with righteous living. If God blesses righteous living, then God has unjustly punished the “blameless” Job. Or, if Job is honest, then he is obliged to confront God with the injustice of innocent suffering. Either way, Job’s experience is inconsistent with his image of God.

• Job’s abundant life as patriarch and wealthy landowner contributed to his perspective of blessings as reward for proper moral conduct. People got what they deserved. But Job discovers that in suffering we can most clearly see the inconsistencies and limits of this worldview. Liberation theology recognizes this. Surely there was injustice around Job all along, but his awakening to it only came through his personal experience with suffering. Tough way to learn!

Sink you teeth into this!

I wonder if health care was part of Job’s abundant life—deservedly so because he worked hard for it through righteous and honest living. Did health care disappear along with all his other belongings and property—through no fault of his own? And now, with loathsome sores, he has a pre-existing condition.

In the health care debate, followers of Christ have an opportunity to advocate for justice in calling for a national medical plan that will ensure access to equitable, affordable, high-quality health coverage for all persons residing in our country. In its call for health care reform, the Peacemaking program of the General Assembly Mission Council of the PC(USA) church, states: “Jesus came so that we may have life, and have it abundantly. The gift of abundant life includes the promise of shalom – health and wholeness – for all children of God.”

For more information on the PC(USA) call for health care reform: http://presbyterian.typepad.com/peacemaking/2009/08/presbyterian-church-usa-calls-for-just-health-care-reform.html

Mays, James L., ed. HarperCollins Bible Commentary. New York: HarperCollins, 2000.

Newsom, Carol A., “The Book of Job.” New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. 4. Leander Keck, et. al. editors. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994.

Biographical Information
Catherine Devins has recently completed requirements for her M.A.C.E. degree. She looks forward to graduating in May 2010 with fellow ECP classmates. Catherine is an elder of the Kirk of Kildaire in Cary, NC and lives with her husband and two dogs. Her daughter, Kaitlyn, is serving in the Peace Corps in Ecuador. Son, Curtis, is a senior at UNC Chapel Hill.

September 27, 2009 - Mark 9:38-50 - Mary Charlotte Elia

2009-08-07T14:05:00.002-04:00

Gleanings from the Text
Mark 9:38-50

Demons and hell and self-mutilation! Oh, my! While the violence of this language is particularly striking after the immediately preceding portrait of Jesus gently taking a child into his arms, the harshness of these sayings affirms the absolute seriousness of Jesus’ message. The pericope as a whole instructs the disciples to remove whatever barriers stand before the Kingdom of God, but the surprising news is that it is often the disciples themselves who are the ones in the way.

The problem with the unauthorized exorcist is not that he has failed to show himself as a follower of Jesus but that he is not following “us.” Once again, the disciples grapple with the issues of identity and authority, but Jesus’ response is clear: “Do not stop him.”

This command and the following instruction call the disciples to respond to believers outside of their community in a way that does not hinder them. By recognizing the legitimacy of the exorcist’s work, the disciples are forced to acknowledge that Jesus’ transformative power extends beyond their own inner circle. The knowledge that others are effectively engaging in ministry invites the disciples to consider the existence of a broad Christian fellowship marked only by belief in Jesus.

This revelation in turn alerts the disciples to the nature of their own ability to pursue ministry. Clearly the source of the disciples’ capacity to accomplish any work is found in Jesus alone rather than either in the disciples themselves or in their status in any particular group.

Verse 42 reinforces the injunction against interfering with the mission of those outside of the disciples’ inner circle and initiates a block of text warning the disciples against placing similar stumbling blocks before themselves. The metaphors of hand, foot, and eye invite the disciples to evaluate the totality of their existence to discern any behavior, self-conception, or world view that hinders the attainment of a fuller relationship with God. The issue here does not seem to be one of actions in this life that lead to eternal reward or punishment in a life to come. Instead, the kingdom is so presently accessible that the disciples need only remove any stumbling blocks of their own making that obstruct an otherwise open path. By identifying and eliminating any self-destructive resistance, the disciples are drawn into the life of the Kingdom of God and are released from the hell that is separation from God.

The closing sayings about salt instruct the disciples to purify themselves by removing whatever contaminant hinders the effectiveness of their mission. This metaphor of purification complements the metaphor of cutting away that which causes one to stumble. Again the disciples are commanded to adopt a rigorous self-discipline that leads to greater effectiveness in ministry.
Food for Thought

This text invites communities to identify the self-constructed stumbling blocks that prevent flourishing. In other words, are there subtle ways in which the church sabotages its own ministries? Are the goals of committees in conflict with each other? Is the ministry of the church controlled by a select few whose needs and interests do not represent the larger body? Is the church clinging to a self-identity that no longer reflects its membership or a vision that no longer holds relevance? What’s keeping the church from discerning the will of God and pursuing Christ’s ministry? How can the church become Spirit-led rather than ego-driven?

Sink Your Teeth into This!

I once served a mid-sized PCUSA congregation whose members loved to loathe the non-denominational church across the street. Although we never bothered to visit this congregation, we considered their community to be everything that ours was not. We prided ourselves on our high liturgy and lofty intellectualism, and we condemned them for worshipping in a manner we considered insubstantial and for attracting a membership we deemed infantile. We even complained about the increased traffic resulting from heavy attendance at their services!

Instead of responding to the success of the neighboring church with a reevaluation of our own programs, we clung to our old habits. We increased only in bitterness and self-righteousness rather than in membership and ministry. One wonders what opportunities were missed because we, like the disciples, considered those Christians outside our community to be competition rather than partners in Christ's service.

Biographical Information

Mary Charlotte Elia is a 2009 graduate of Union-PSCE (MDiv). She is from Virginia Beach.

September 20, 2009 - Mark 9:30-37 - Grant Holbrook

2009-08-07T14:02:00.000-04:00

Gleanings from the Text
Mark 9:30-37

Acknowledging the worthiness and depth of studying the content of Jesus’ teachings in Mark 9:30-37, let us consider instead the manner of communication as our object of study, so that we can glean meaning from the interaction as well as the instruction of Jesus. For the sake of seeing the story from this altered angle, film critic Roger Ebert's aptly named "Ebert's Law of Movies" will serve as a rough interpretative guide: “A movie is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about it" (270). Of course the "what" is important, but a focus on the "how" can prove helpful in shedding new light.

At issue here is the responsiveness and dialogue between Jesus and his disciples. From the perspective of the followers, Mark 9:30-37 is especially unflattering, but it is Jesus' own behavior and presence that typify the approach he seeks from his students. Communication breakdown colors much of the disciples’ interaction with Jesus throughout Mark’s Gospel, but, significantly, the Gospel author does not allow their failure to understand Jesus here to disappear into the ether of destined events. Rather, we readers are provided an internal motivation for the muttering and the silence.

Verse 32 is an explicit two-step move within the thoughts of the disciples’ reaction to Jesus’ passion prediction of the previous verses: first, they didn’t understand and then they were afraid to ask Jesus about it. Is the author implying that they, the disciples, should have been straightforward in communicating their question about Jesus' second foretelling of his own death? Were they right to be afraid of the question? It is probably sound for us to empathize with the disciples’ actions and their difficulty in understanding, even if we are not happy with our inadvertent imitations of apostolic failures. The disciples at their lowest points tend to be the disciples at their most relatable.

In verses 33-37, the unasked question of 30-32 gives way to Jesus’ own didactic interrogation. Jesus senses a hushed conversation, and he initiates with a question. He asks simply what his students were discussing. In the context of a passage about children, it is easy to imagine their silence not unlike that of children who fail to respond having been asked the question that begs a self-incriminating response, What are you doing? They hold their tongues out of a clearly implied shame. Again, communication has been severed by the disciples either by holding on to their silence or by their lack of understanding.

Jesus takes initiative here at this point of apostolic thick-headedness. His startling and affectionate object lesson about humility reopens and broadens the communication that has been stifled by the disciples' unwillingness to ask Jesus' his meaning or to admit to their personal aspirations to greatness. Jesus returns to some fundamental sense of communication, be it human or divine, in this instance through the concept of welcoming. The content of the teaching is humility, but the vehicle for its expression is receiving children, being in communicative relationship with the small or marginalized.

Expanding on this idea of the various forms of powerful communication employed by Jesus, immediately preceding in verse 29, Jesus has established the interaction with God through prayer as a powerful means to effect change. The disciples have failed in healing the epileptic boy through a blockage in communication: "This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer." Prayer and hospitality thus present two forms of right communication in the reign of God (Mk. 1:15), and we see the "how" in inseparable tension with the "what," the means of expression undivided from the content of doctrine.

Food for Thought

It is an axiom of 21st century American thought that more conversation is better. We understand implicitly that rational people hash out their problems at length, and the airing of grievances becomes the critical move toward reconciliation. Consequently, there is also a minor backlash against "feelings" language in church when such talk becomes sentimental and conveys weakness, and so a stiff upper lip Christian stoicism can rush in to fill the vacuum. It is at the impasse between these two tactics that Jesus' approach to communication and his disciples' notable failures can provide insight as much as the content of the instruction. If we set aside proof texts and vitriol (if only temporarily), how does Jesus actually converse with others, and how does he treat the disciples in terms of encouragement and correction? The end of Mark 9 provides at least two jumping off points, rooted in the conveyance of unanticipated hospitality and a direct reliance on prayer, on God.

Sink Your Teeth into This

A few years ago, I heard a pastor speak briefly about the “What Would Jesus Do” phenomenon. Crass over-commercializing aside, he thought the idea had real merit as an approach to Christian life. This phrase has the added benefit of redirecting focus back on the Christ, subjugating the potential selfishness of “what do I believe” to the active example of Jesus. His means and the disciples’ responses provide insight into every facet of Christian existence. “How would Jesus do it” can be debated and constructed upon the varied human and divine interactions of the Gospels, and Christ-like methods can find fuller expression alongside such a flawed cloud of witnesses.

Works Referenced

Roger Ebert, Questions for the Movie Answer Man. Kansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing,
1997.

Biographical Information

Grant Holbrook, a longtime Richmond resident (but a Midwesterner at heart), lives on the North Side with his wife Erin and is in his final year of the MATS program at Union Presbyterian Seminary.

September 13, 2009 – Mark 8:27-38 – Marvin Lindsay

2009-08-07T14:01:00.003-04:00

Gleanings from the Text
Mark 8:27-38

This gospel lesson is composed of three distinct scenes that, combined, present a unified vision of Jesus’ identity, mission, and call to discipleship. Scene one, verses 27-30, revolves around Jesus’ penetrating question, “But who do you say that I am?” and Peter’s confessional answer “Thou art the Christ.” In scene two, verses 31-33, Jesus warns his disciples that his ministry will culminate in death and resurrection, not in royal coronation, a teaching that provokes mutual rebukes between him and Peter. In the last scene, verses 34-38, Jesus heightens the tension considerably when he announces that self-denial and cross-bearing are vocations “for any who want to be [his] disciples.” The preacher must choose between focusing on one scene in particular, or on the gospel lesson as a whole.

There are many answers to the question, Who is Jesus? Some are better than others. The crowds understand Jesus primarily in terms of the past, a prophet returned from the dead. Peter, on the other hand, sees Jesus as an instrument of the future, the one God has anointed (Hebrew-Messiah; Greek-Christos) to vindicate Israel. But no sooner does Peter pipe up than Jesus shuts him up. Mark’s Jesus is loathe to draw attention to himself as an instrument of raw, divine power; thus he silences the demons when he casts them out, swears to secrecy those whom he cures, and cuts off coronation talk. But when it comes to the necessity for suffering, Jesus holds nothing back.

It is not only necessary for Jesus to suffer; it is necessary for him to rise again. The word “must” (Greek-dei) governs all the subsequent verbs in verse 31. There is no hard-core doctrine of penal substitution here. Instead, as The Son of Man, literally “The Human One,” Jesus knows that living humanely in an inhumane world will inevitably provoke massive resistance. Yet because the glory of God is a human being fully alive (Irenaeus), it is unthinkable that sin and death would have the last word on a life like Jesus’. Jesus “must” be resurrected. Peter would spare Jesus suffering, but at the cost of Jesus trimming the sails of his true humanity.

If dying and rising is good enough for the master, it is more than good enough for the pupil. Self-denial and cross-bearing were politically charged words, the cross being the Roman state’s favorite means of executing threats to the social order. Persecuted Christians had to choose between affirming loyalty to Jesus, and thus denying their own lives and freedom, or not. It is no less that case today. The word “any” presumably covers the modern reader as well as the crowds in the villages around Caesarea Philippi. Following Jesus will in some way or another bring the disciple into conflict with the powers-that-be, and to a kind of grief that only resurrection power can heal.

Food for Thought

Mark 8:27-38 presents an embarrassment of riches for the preacher. Given that Jesus poses the question “Who do you say that I am?” within earshot of the pagan city of Caesarea Philippi, home to a shrine to the Greek god Pan, a sermon on the identity of Jesus in a pluralistic society would certainly be in order.

Most commentators rush to assure us that self-denial does not mean denying oneself certain pleasures. No doubt they’re right, but in a world brought to the edge of economic collapse by highly leveraged over-consumption, crazed self-indulgence, not morbid self-denial, seems to be the greater danger. That this text turns up in Ordinary Time as well as Lent is entirely appropriate. Perhaps self-denial is an idea whose time has come again, a lifestyle for all disciples in all seasons.

Sink Your Teeth into This!

Sermon illustrations can illumine a scriptural truth, but can also overshadow the scripture itself. Here, the preacher should take special care with stories of suffering or martyrdom, lest they distance the hearer from Jesus’ call to bear the cross. Suffering is not just for those Christians “back then” or “over there.” It is for all Christians. So is the resurrection power that vindicates our suffering.

Works Consulted

M. Eugene Boring, Mark: A Commentary. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006.

Marvin Meyer, “Taking up the cross and following Jesus: Discipleship in the gospel of Mark.” Calvin Theological Journal 37:2. November 2002. p. 230-8.

Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus. Maryknoll NY: Orbis, 1988.

Biographical Information

Marvin Lindsay is a Presbyterian minister and a Ph.D. student in Church History at Union-PSCE. He served congregations in Missouri and North Carolina for 14 years before enrolling in Union-PSCE in the fall of 2008. Marvin is married and is the father of two red-headed boys. He blogs at http://marvinlindsay.typepad.com/avdat

September 6, 2009 - James 2:1-13 - Frances Taylor Gench

2009-08-07T14:00:00.003-04:00

Gleanings from the Text
James 2:1-13

Here, James tackles head-on the problem of discrimination in the Christian community, maintaining that faith in Jesus Christ bears directly upon our treatment of persons. Thus, signs of snobbery and partiality in the Christian community prompt an incredulous question: "My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ?" The fact that James refers to "acts of favoritism" in the plural form suggests that discrimination can manifest itself in the Christian community in a variety of ways. But by using a flagrant example, the author leaves no doubt as to the kind of attitude and behavior deemed incompatible with Christian faith.

Two visitors are depicted as entering the Christian assembly -- one bejeweled and one bedraggled – and are given correspondingly contrasting receptions. The bejeweled visitor is treated with extreme courtesy, while the bedraggled guest is brusquely shuffled aside. When Christians "make distinctions" among themselves in any such manner, haven't they "become judges with evil thoughts"? (See Lev. 19:15.) Are they not manifesting that internal dividedness that belies integrity of faith? By kowtowing to the counterfeit glory of the splendidly attired, have not they betrayed the truly glorious one who alone is to be exalted in the Christian community and before whom all are equal: "our glorious Lord Jesus Christ" (2:1)?

To James' way of thinking, this kind of snobbery is far from a trivial matter. In fact, the author proceeds to establish three grounds on which acts of favoritism constitute a serious denial of faith. First, he reminds his readers of God's special care and concern for the poor (v.5) -- a concern that is writ large throughout the Scriptures (see Lk 6:20). It should be clear, then, that when members of the Christian community ignore the poor, they are not reflecting God's compassion. When they slight the poor, they dishonor those whom God has honored -- whom God has "chosen" to be "rich in faith" and "heirs of the kingdom." How is it that the prejudices of the world rather than the preferences of God come to be manifested in a community of God's people?

Second, the author appeals to his readers' own experience. He suggests that acts of favoritism make little sense in light of the way they themselves are treated at the hands of the rich. James' letter reflects a time when persons of wealth were not yet often found in the church -- at least not in the communities with which the author is most closely associated.

Members of the Christian community may very well have been taken to court by the rich over such issues as debts, rents and wages (see 5:4-6) -- disparaged as bad citizens or unreliable debtors. James regards any such treatment as blasphemy, for Christians bear the name of Jesus from the moment they are baptized in the name of Christ (see Acts 2:38). In James' view, abuse of those who bear the name of Christ is abuse of Christ himself. Thus it is bewildering that members of the Christian community should grovel before those who exploit the poor, harass Christians, and dishonor Christ.

Third, the author insists that partiality toward the rich is also a transgression of the biblical principle of love. Readers are reminded of the familiar commandment to love the neighbor as the self (Lev. 19:18). This commandment is referred to as the "royal law," because it is the law of the kingdom into which God has called them (see Mk 12:29-31).

Those whom James addresses may very well have argued, as do we, that in attending to the rich they are showing love to their neighbors. And if this is really the case, then they "do well." But this is no excuse for partiality. If in attending to the rich, readers discriminate against the poor, then they "commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors" (v.9). They have not understood that the poor person whom they dishonor is also a neighbor and that "acts of favoritism" place them in violation of the biblical commandment to love.

Moreover, "acts of favoritism" are not to be dismissed as minor infractions of God's command -- as misdemeanors rather than felonies. In order to underline the seriousness of the crime of partiality, James draws on the ancient Jewish doctrine of the complete unity of the law and contends that to violate the law at this one point is to break the law as a whole (v.10; compare Gal. 5:3). To illustrate this point, James links partiality with the heinous sins of adultery and murder -- sins readers would not fail to consider serious. Adulterers will not suppose that they should be excused of adultery because they have not committed murder (v.11).

James's point is that the adulterer stands guilty before the law, as does the murderer -- and as does the one who discriminates. God who forbids adultery and murder also forbids discrimination. God stands behind every commandment. Thus, all three -- the adulterer, the murderer, and the one who commits "acts of favoritism" -- are transgressors of the law and are subject to God's judgment.

In closing, James reminds us all that we are accountable to God for our words and deeds (v.12). At the last day, every individual will stand before the judgment seat of God. What will be determined at that point is not whether we are to be "saved"; we have already been saved by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ. What the judgment will reveal is whether or not we have misused the grace that is ours -- whether or not we have embodied in our lives the possibilities the gospel offers. Our practice of indiscriminate love toward all people will reveal whether we have allowed the grace and power of God to produce a transformation in our lives. Impartiality in all our doings is in no small part a sign of the integrity of faith.

Food for Thought

Clearly, James has much to contribute to our thinking about acts and experiences of discrimination. Indeed, Cain Hope Felder observes that James 2:1-13 provides what is perhaps the strongest castigation of class discrimination in the New Testament -- or for that matter, any discrimination based on outward appearance -- and that these words have particular pertinence for African-Americans who still experience such discrimination daily. The fact that James speaks of "acts of favoritism" (plural!) should prompt us to ponder all those experiences in which we have made snap judgments about others on the basis of outward appearance -- perhaps on the basis of disability, or dress, or race, or class, or gender, or age. From James's perspective, discrimination of any kind is simply inconsistent with Christian faith.

Sink Your Teeth Into This

Here, as elsewhere in the letter, we find that James’ ethical exhortation is decidedly theocentric or God-centered. To be sure, James is short on Christology (explicit reflection on Jesus Christ), but it is rich in theology (reflection upon God). James points to God, for example, as the very ground of Christian existence (1:18, 21; 3:17; 4:5) and maintains that God is a gracious presence in our lives (1:5, 17; 4:8). Indeed, every aspect of Christian life of which James speaks is related to God (2:5-6; see also 3:9; 4:13-17).

James assists us in discerning how we might order and maintain every aspect of our lives in the context of God's sovereignty - how we as Christians are to live in light of the rule of God, or kingdom, which is now present among us in the earthly and risen Jesus. It is important to recognize the decidedly God-centered nature of James's ethical exhortation, because the Christian life that James describes is demanding and could not be pursued on our own strength. This is the good news: it is God's own gracious presence and power and wisdom that makes it possible for Christians to live as James describes.

Biographical Information

Frances Taylor Gench is Professor of New Testament at Union-PSCE.

Works Referenced

Cain Hope Felder. Troubling Biblical Waters: Race, Class and Family. Maryknoll: Orbis, 1989.

This piece excerpted from:
Frances Taylor Gench. Hebrews and James. Westminster Bible Companion. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996.

August 30, 2009 - James 1:17-27 - Jenny McDevitt

2009-07-15T14:10:00.000-04:00

Gleanings From the Text
James 1:17-27

Talk to two different people about the letter of James, and you’ll likely hear at least three different opinions. This brief book tucked towards the back of our bibles has a reputation for being rather neglected -- or for stirring up strong emotion and memorable rhetoric. Comparing it to several other New Testament books, Martin Luther famously referred to it as “an epistle of straw,” with “nothing of the nature of the gospel about it.”

Admittedly short on that which is Christological, this (probably) pseudonymous letter is long on that which is practical and tangible. It is important to realize, however, that James wrote to a community of believers, people entirely aware of Jesus and his story. The letter was written not to bring its readers to faith, then, but to advise its readers on how to live out the faith they already had.

These eleven verses contain a helpful progression. Verses 17-18 offer an important grounding of all that follows, stating unambiguously that all that is good comes from God, “the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” Here, James poetically acknowledges God’s creative works and God’s consistent faithfulness, and then reminds us of our call to be the “first fruits.”

The verses that follow offer concrete advice on how we are to be those first fruits. Verses 19-21 provide instruction for receiving and internalizing the “implanted word that has the power to save your souls” as a first step, before the letter unleashes its forceful call to action in verses 22-27. This call to be “doers” of that word, rather than only “hearers” of it, leaves little room for compromise. Specific mention of “orphans and widows” is not to lift up these two populations above all others; this phrase is often used to represent all oppressed peoples as those about whom God is particularly concerned (see also Isaiah 1:16-17) -- and therefore as those for whom we are challenged to show particular concern, as well.

Food For Thought

James’ emphasis on being “doers” in this text, particularly regarding oppressed peoples, is part of what creates a big message within a short book. It’s a message that can make some of us a bit uncomfortable, precisely because it has the ability to reignite (or feed the continued flames of) a Christian commitment to social justice.

As Peter Rhea Jones has noted, this letter “could actually bring off a renewing of the Christian life. There will be a recurring temptation to tame the powerful social message of this flaming letter, to domesticate it and calm its biting, all too relevant message into palatable terms. If this message of James is allowed to go out unmuffled, it will rattle the stained glass windows.”

Rattling windows can have both positive and negative connotations. What about that idea makes you nervous? What about it do you find exciting or promising? A life of discipleship is not always comfortable. What can we learn here, about ourselves, the world, and God’s work in the world?

Sink Your Teeth Into This

One of the sermons I remember best is a sermon I didn’t actually hear. During the expected sermon time, the preacher offered only a few introductory comments - and then sent the congregation out of the sanctuary and into the community, to be “doers” of all that we proclaim in church each Sunday. One church member said afterwards, “Every week, we hear the sermon. This week, we lived it.”

Though many members of my church are involved in similar activities - preparing food at homeless shelters, building homes with Habitat for Humanity, and more - there was something poignant about those activities occurring during the time generally reserved for sitting in church, worshipping, listening, and discussing. One Sunday in Williamsburg, we were reminded that hearing the word and doing the word are one and the same.

Suggested Resources

Cain Hope Felder. Troubling Biblical Waters: Race, Class and Family. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1989.

Frances Taylor Gench. Hebrews and James. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996.

Patrick J. Hartin. A Spirituality of Perfection: Faith in Action in the Letter of James. Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1999.

Peter Rhea Jones. “Approaches to the Study of James.” Review and Expositor 66 (1969).

Elsa Tamez. The Scandalous Message of James: Faith Without Works Is Dead. New York: Crossroad, 1990.

Biographical Information

Jenny McDevitt (MDiv, Union-PSCE, 2009) can't get enough of Richmond! She has deferred admission to a doctoral program in biblical studies and will spend the next year completing advanced coursework in Union-PSCE's Th.M. program and working as the seminary's Union Fellow in Institutional Advancement. She is excited to work with Join the Feast as co-editor and invites you to pull a chair up to the table as a contributing writer.

You can contact Jenny at jenny.mcdevitt@union-psce.edu.

August 23, 2009 - Ephesians 6:10-20 - David Cameron

2009-07-15T14:05:00.000-04:00

Gleanings from the Text
Ephesians 6:10-20

There were many threats against the fledgling church in Asia Minor. Gnostics, Judaizers, Libertines, Roman bullies - each got in their licks. Because this epistle was likely an encyclical letter meant to be read in a number of communities in the region, not just Ephesus, we can’t say with confidence what precisely the author had in mind when he warned his audience to stand against the “wiles of the devil” and the “present darkness.” Some say it wasn't anything in particular, but more an apocalyptic consortium of cosmic powers that had the author spooked.

The epistle begins with a gentle swell of praise for God, whose covenant of grace has been revealed in Christ to be not just for the Jews but for the Gentiles as well. God will unite them into one body – very comforting.

Halfway through chapter four, however, the author changes gears and takes on a more practical tone, advising that this new unity in Christ must be reflected in a transformed life, and that transformed life will run counter to the prevailing culture. The author anticipates excuses from his readers, protests of helplessness in the face of all the forces arrayed against them. The author will brook no excuse. The strength of God’s power is theirs to claim. What more do they need?

In Ephesians 6:10, the author begins a summation of the letter designed to punch home his main themes. He resorts to a common militaristic image of body armor that his audience would see on Roman soldiers daily, but in a nose-tweaking twist, he reinvents the image in a most non-militaristic way. He appropriates the common parts of armor – belt, breastplate, shield – but he assigns them uncommon values: truth, righteousness, faith. Consequently, the armor, usually a symbol of self-reliance, is transformed into a symbol of utter dependence on God.

Food for Thought

One could make this passage last an entire season, preaching each Sunday on another piece of armor. Or, one could pick apart the skeleton of armor, bone by bone, in a single sermon. A meatier course might be to skip the tedious piece-by-piece analysis and explore in general what it means for a congregation to imagine radical dependence on God and to consider living a transformed life in Christ. The implication of Ephesians 6:10 is clear: God's grace has enemies; God's justice has a bounty on its head; God's peace is marked for attempted demolition. We are known by our associations, and when we hobnob with known forgivers and peace-mongers we must expect a strong reaction from those who traffic in accusations and innuendo.

It is, in the end, all about power. Human distortions of power thrive in secrecy, in dissembling, in violence, and in the capacity to drive a wedge between groups by promoting fear and suspicion. But the strength of the Lord, the non-armor armor that ensures our victory, is transparency, mercy, peace and an absolute trust in the dynamic interplay of Spirit and Word.

Sink Your Teeth Into This

The shoes of the gospel of peace interest me. My son has autism and doesn't speak, so much of the communication in our house is non-verbal. When my wife and I come down each morning the first thing my son does is check our shoes. He's learned that the shoes we have on speak volumes about the kind of day we have planned. Dress shoes mean work. Scuffed slip-ons mean a casual, more relaxed day around the house.

In Wishful Thinking, Frederick Buechner writes, "If you want to know who you really are as distinct from who you like to think you are, keep an eye on where your feet take you." Peace is the goal. Our feet, not our words, will get us there. The author of Ephesians doesn't commit to any one style of shoe as THE most appropriate for spreading the gospel of peace. I suppose wing-tips or high heeled pumps will do, even Crocs or flip-flops. But my experience is that spreading peace is hard work. My money would be on work boots as the best, probably a pair with steel toes.

Works Consulted

Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC, New York: Harper & Row, 1973, p. 27.

Perkins, Pheme, Ephesians, Abingdon New Testament Commentaries, Victor Paul Furnish, General Editor. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1967.

Witherington, Ben III, The Letters to Philemon, the Colossians, and the Ephesians: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on the Captivity Epistle. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Erdmans Publishing Co., 2007.

Biographical Information

David Cameron is the pastor of Rockfish Presbyterian Church in Nellysford, VA. He was birthed into ordained ministry by Columbia Seminary but adopted into the Union-PSCE fold first through a semester of study at PSCE and more recently as a supervisor of three summer interns from Union from whom he has learned much. He is married to Kathryn Johnson Cameron, also an ordained PC(USA) minister and graduate of PSCE. They have two children.

August 16, 2009 - John 6:51-58 - Martha Rollins

2009-07-15T14:04:00.003-04:00

Gleanings from the Text
John 6:51-58

Sandwiched in a pivotal way between the two foods of paradise—the forbidden food of Genesis and the food awarded to “overcomers” in Revelation 2:7, Jesus’ invitation to eat his flesh/blood as bread gives a key to our movement from fallen Adam to overcomer in Christ. To eat or not to eat was the question before Adam and is before us in this “do-over” offered by Jesus. This time God not only provides the food, God is the food and God gives power to choose it. This new food nourishes us in a way that (Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him) invites us to a new level of intimacy with Jesus giving power to "do the works that I do."

The text calls us beyond being casual receivers of God’s bounty John 6:1-16) and connected recognizers of God’s presence (John 6:17-26) to a new committed relationship with Christ, the bread of heaven. Eating the real flesh and real blood requires entering a new upside down reality. “Feed on me.” In feeding we are taking into our selves the very nature of Christ.

Eating is right up there with breathing—both are necessary for life. However, we choose what kinds of foods we pick up, put in our mouths, chew, swallow. Our choices allow us to participate or not in creation. From birth we develop an intimate relationship with food. Jesus is asking us to enter into this radical plane of intimacy by eating his flesh. It’s one thing to develop an intimate relationship with chocolate, but eating/loving/being addicted to Jesus—that’s risky. Furthermore, eating his flesh is not a one-time act that “saves us.” By comparing his flesh with manna Jesus reminds us of the daily necessity of feeding on him.

Food for Thought

So what of those who “ate the body and blood”? We know the story—those who answer the call, eat the bread, join the feast are alive with the word. For the church and for us today it is an ever-present calling to partake of the bread of life not just for ourselves but to be empowered “for the life of the world.” So what? It means that I can’t go home and watch my brother hungry, lonely, afraid—the bread of heaven given for the life of the world calls us to the life of the world—to feed, cloth, visit, preach. Why be committed? Why eat this fleshly new reality bread? Jesus answers this twice (John 6:33, 51): “for the life of the world.”

Such a movement models urban ministry goal from handout to empowerment, as I have personally witnessed. Casual folks come to Boaz & Ruth wanting a job or wanting to be fed with a paycheck. Connected folks stay at B&R because they discover comfort of family relationships. Our job at B&R is to call folks beyond being receivers to becoming doers: folks who are committed (those who chose to eat radical new real food) to their personal transformation enough to give back “for the life of others.”

Sink Your Teeth Into This

In 2002, on an early visit to Highland Park before Boaz & Ruth was open, Rosa Jiggetts, then a casual acquaintance and now my committed friend, jumped out of her car, stood in my space and said, “We need you in Highland Park.” Don’t just come do a service—be committed enough to stay in the hard times. Don’t leave like the others. She reminds me often of that commitment especially in the dark times. Rosa calls me beyond the casual and connected to glimpse, to taste, to experience him in me and me in him if only ever so fleetingly. When I am with Rosa, I taste the bread of heaven. I experience the body of Christ. I witness the power of God bringing life to the world.

Biographical Information

Martha Rollins is the founder and CEO of Boaz and Ruth (www.boazandruth.com), a non-profit assisting formerly incarcerated men and women through a transitional jobs and training program. She writes:

"Renewing my faith in 1973, the call I heard was not the call to seminary (as I had thought) but to stay an antiques dealer. It was as though God assured me that opportunities for ministry would be provided outside the pulpit. And of course this assurance proved to be true: people call an antiques dealer at many of the same points of need that they call a minister - there is a death, a downsizing, a financial crisis, or a divorce. The difference is that many of my callers were unchurched; God provided ministry opportunities beyond what I could ask or think. And then God topped it off with another surprise by allowing me to participate in the birth of Boaz & Ruth."

"Working in Highland Park is like living in the middle of the Old Testament and the book of Acts. We repeatedly experience spiritual opposition to our presence and we experience Red Sea miracles. We daily find the need to 'eat the bread of heaven' so that we can become reconcilers in Christ, become providers, and become calming presence. Without the possibility and the occasional reality of a relationship of intimacy beyond casual and connected, we would all fall away. Nurtured by my husband, Randy Rollins, my parents Carolyn and Bill Franck in Martinsville, an awesome pastor, Charlie Summers, an empowering church, First Presbyterian, and a great staff at Boaz & Ruth, I rejoice even in darkness thanks to these - and other - participants in the feast."

August 9, 2009 - 1 Kings 19:4-8 - E. Carson Brisson

2009-07-15T14:01:00.002-04:00

Gleanings from the Text
1 Kings 19:4-8

Understanding the text from Kings for this week's Feast is served first by placing it in its wider contexts. Specifically, these five verses are lodged within the much larger story (as it now stands from the perspective of its last editor) of how Yahweh's chosen people managed to forfeit the benefits of their covenant with the God who had chosen them, and as a result land in bitter exile. Within that larger saga, fascinating and often colorful episodes that address the question of what roles Yahweh's prophets played in this divine-human drama abound. These verses present one of those episodes.

Elijah's calling and the providential interventions that have sustained him in it (See 1 Kings 17-18) have, by early chapter 19, run him thoroughly afoul of the Omride dynasty and its current infamous representatives, Ahab and Jezebel. In one of the most memorable scenes in scripture, Elijah (whose name means, "My God is God") has on Mount Carmel ("God's vineyard") demonstrated beyond any doubt, and to the acclamation of the witnesses gathered there, that Yahweh is the one God of Israel. Afterward, in the valley below that mountain, he dispatched 450 of Baal's (false) prophets to underscore this important point.

This upsets King Ahab, who, true to his nature, initiates vengeance that turns out to be as incompetent as his governance: Elijah outruns Ahab's chariots, and escapes. When Ahab reports the need for 450 funerals to Jezebel, she vows a more competent response. She has a messenger (mal'ACH) tell Elijah, in effect, "By this time tomorrow, at the very latest, I promise you a 451st funeral: yours."

Elijah takes her threat seriously, and in a superhuman feat inspired by his fear "for his life" runs the considerable distance from Jezreel ("God sows.") to Beer-sheba ("Seven wells") in the south! (Two chapters later, Naboth, owner of an attractive but small vineyard right around the corner from Ahab and Jezebel's palace, will choose to fight rather than take flight when he finds himself at odds with this royal couple, and will not live to tell his grandchildren about it.)

With this life and death conflict as their frame, these five verses then draw an exquisite portrait of Elijah – who has been faithful in his commission from Yahweh and triumphant in his encounter with the evil of nationalized Baalism – not relishing his faithfulness and Yahweh's victory, but utterly despairing. In successive verses Elijah is painted as increasingly forlorn: First, his servant falls away. Then the prophet alone moves beyond even the border town of Beer-sheba and takes a day's full journey into the wilderness, somewhat reminiscent of Hagar the Egyptian's lonely wandering in that same dramatic landscape.

In the wilderness he comes upon a sole broom tree. There, like Jonah, he asks that his life (nephesh) be taken from him. Unlike Jonah, he cites as his reason the searing conviction that he is a failure in a long line of failures. Exhausted, physically and in spirit, he finally collapses into sleep beneath the only tree (the only shade) he has managed to find. Many commentaries point out that his flight reverses in some respects Israel's journey to the Promised Land.

It is at this juncture, at the point of honestly confessed despair and exhausted sleep, that the narrative takes a turn. A messenger arrives. The term used to denote "messenger" here is identical (mal'ACH) to the one used in v. 4 to describe the messenger who delivered Jezebel's threat. But, the message in this case is quite the opposite. It is not an announcement of imminent death, but a call to life and renewed purpose. This heaven-sent messenger bears food, drink, and a refreshing of Elijah's commission quite beyond what the prophet could naturally do: "Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will too much for you." Elijah obeys, rests again, and even enjoys seconds. Rising from such rest and feast, he is then able "in the strength of that food" to go "forty days and forty nights" (Recall the forty-year wilderness wanderings of the Hebrew tribes) until he comes, as once had his ancestors so very long before him, "to Horeb, the mountain of God."

Food for Thought

The juxtaposition of Elijah's vindication on Mount Carmel and his subsequent flight for his life is stark. One might have expected at least an interlude, perhaps an episode or two, describing how it felt finally to come out on top when opposing a monarchy and a system that bore so much responsibility for the devastating path toward national ruin and eventual exile. If it is too much to ask for a moment to savor his theological triumph over the prophets of Baal, where at the very least now that Elijah is running for his very life are the crowds that only verses earlier "fell on their faces" and cried out "The Lord indeed is God; the Lord indeed is God" (1 Kings 18:39), and who participated fully and repeatedly in the prescribed penalty for false prophets (Deut. 13:1-5)?

The text is, apparently, completely uninterested in such questions. What we are given, rather, between Elijah's fiery (and bloody) triumph and his forlorn flight, is a weather report. To be specific, we are told it rains. It rains a lot. The heavens, which had so recently sent down fire (1 Kings 18:38) and which had before that for three terrifying years closed their bronze will against all moisture to send down only drought and its fierce twin famine, now grow black with rain.

Elijah's success, or his failure for that matter, it turns out, is not the point. The point rather is the restoration of Yahweh's covenant relationship with the people of Yahweh, and the renewed future that yearns to burst forth from that in the return of rain, therefore the return of sowing, therefore the return of growth, therefore the return of harvest, therefore the return of sharing the harvest between haves and have-nots (Lev. 19:9; Lev. 23:22; Deut. 24:19; Ruth 2), and therefore the return of God's gift of life.

Elijah, and I do not know who could blame him, will later famously but mistakenly express his belief that God's good purposes, which do include his life and his actions and decisions, have become no bigger than his life and his actions and decisions (1 Kings 19:10). The good news is that in this belief, prophetic gifts notwithstanding, he is 99.9857 percent wrong (1 Kings 19:18).

Sink Your Teeth into This

Authority is a lifetime member of the human condition; there are trains and all of us, at some level whether we like to admit it or not, need them to run. Therefore, there will be a Rome to see that they do. But, things "go south", as did Elijah, when Rome – as is too often the case – behaves badly by sending its trains not only to run but to run over anyone in their way.

The gift of faith, the Feast section this week from Ephesians rather audaciously claims (Eph. 4:25-5:2), produces its own social and personal structures of authority as it nurtures persons who and communities that are being made new in the image of Christ. Insofar as such individuals and communities are, in Ephesians' bold and rare (for the New Testament) image, "imitators of God" (Eph. 5:1), they will rise and stand, not to lift up sword as in our 1 Kings passage, but to "speak the truth in love" (Eph 4:15) wherever and whenever a system of power forgets or ignores the good news that the covenant-making God of Elijah's faith always intends life.

The issues may be complex, the particular steps to be taken subject to considerable debate lodged in high feelings and compelling arguments among persons of equally good intentions. The outcomes most certainly are not guaranteed, nor are the efforts at times without substantial risk, if not to life then perhaps to limb. The path is more often through the wilderness than up any ephemeral "crystal staircase" as the African-American writer Langston Hughes, who knew about exile, wrote.

But the direction of God's purposes, out of drought into harvest – for all – has been reliably declared, from a distance on Mount Horeb, with horrific and unacceptable violence in the valley below Carmel, as well as in a thousand other times and places, and finally with unspeakable vulnerability, preeminence, and grace on Calvary. Deeply amidst – not around – flame, flood, flight, fight, fear, and even forlorn hope, there is taking shape yet another and different and life-giving journey: "[Beloved] . . . live in love, as Christ loved us, and gave himself for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God" (Eph 5:2).

Biographical Information

E. Carson Brisson is Associate Professor of Biblical Languages and Associate Dean for Academic Programs at Union-PSCE in Richmond.

Works Consulted

Patrick Coats

S. Dean McBride, Introduction to I Kings

Langston Hughes, Mother to Son

New Jerome Biblical Commentary

I and II Kings: A Commentary (Old Testament Library)

I Kings (The Anchor Yale Bible Commentaries)

HarperCollins Bible Dictionary

August 2, 2009 - Psalm 51 - Andrew Taylor-Troutman

2009-07-15T14:00:00.000-04:00

Gleanings from the Text
Psalm 51

A cursory reading of this Psalm would surely convince any reader of the paramount importance of penitential themes. Contained with the first few verses are enough words for sin as to constitute a Hebrew grammar lesson: “transgression” (vv. 1, 3), “iniquity” (vv. 2, 5, 9), “sin” (vv. 2, 3, 5, 9), and “doing evil” (v. 4). Correspondingly, notice the plethora of forgiveness verbs: “having mercy” (v. 1), “blotting out” (v. 1, 9), “washing” (v. 2, 7), “cleansing” (v. 2, 7), “purging” (v. 7), and “restoring” (v. 12). Compare and contrast how these words are used in other texts – Brown, Driver, and Briggs are our friends! Such word study will flesh out and deepen their meanings in this specific Psalm.

Personally, I am intrigued by three other words that directly describe God:

In verse 1, the word translated as “mercy” (NRSV, RSV), “compassion” (TNK), or the poetically rendered “tender mercies” (KJV – of course!) is actually a cognate of the word for “womb.” What do you think is the significance of this feminine imagery?

Secondly, the verb in verse 6 most often rendered as “desire” carries with it the connotation of “delighting in.” Is there a notable difference between desiring verses delighting in truth?

Finally, in perhaps the most famous verse of the Psalm, God is begged “to create” a clean heart. The same verb, which is also used in the Genesis Creation accounts (for example, 1: 1 and 1:27), only takes the Divine as its subject; grammatically (as well as theologically) speaking, only God can grant the psalmist’s request.

For me, the alternative nuances of these words invite rich contemplation of the Divine in new and powerful ways. I would love to hear a sermon or lesson exploring and unpacking a womb-y God, who delights in the truth of doing what only this God can do!

Food for Thought

The Psalm itself directly links with a specific account in the Hebrew narrative: the rape of Bathsheba by King David and the subsequent condemnation by the prophet Nathan (2 Samuel 11:2–17, 26–27; 12:1–7). In recent years, scholars have investigated this pericope from liberationist and feminist points of view in an effort to view the story from “the underside” or in solidarity with historically oppressed peoples. As Psalm 51 purports to give David’s perspective, these types of critical readings would present a balanced view, if not a helpful corrective. Jo Ann Hackett and Alice Ogden Bellis have each written an accessible critique, both of which are wonderfully illustrative of feminist hermeneutics. For a more extensive treatment of the entire pericope from a liberation perspective, see Robert McAfee Brown. Finally, Union-PSCE’s own James L. Mays has written a brilliant sermon on Psalm 51 – a must read for its interplay between ancient text and modern context with Mays’ trademark lucidity.

Sink Your Teeth Into This!

My mother-in-law, who runs her own business coaching company, recently informed me about a book by Reginald Johnson that applied the Myers-Briggs personality categories to important figures in the Bible. David is an extrovert, sensing, feeling, perceiver (ESFP); this happens to be the exact same type as my wife, Ginny! Due to David’s sordid history of rape, lying, betrayal, and murder referenced in Psalm 51, Ginny is admittedly not thrilled to be in the same company. However, I have witnessed her praying in a Psalm 51-like way: expressive, self-aware, passionate, and devoted. These are qualities that seem to fit what I know about an ESFP personality type.

My point, though, is that this type of prayer style is inspiring. While I have a different personality (INFJ for those keeping score at home), Ginny’s prayers and the way she lives her life cause me to think deeper about myself in relation to God and challenge me to share these insights with others. It seems to me that such inspiration for personal and communal piety is the essence of Psalm 51 – available to all personalities.

Resources:

Bellis, Alice Ogden. Helpmates, Harlots, and Heroes: Women’s Stories in the Hebrew Bible. See pages 149 – 151

Brown, Robert McAfee. Unexpected News: Reading the Bible with Third World Eyes. See pages 49 – 62

Hackett, Jo Ann. Women’s Bible Commentary: Expanded Edition with Apocrypha. See pages 91 – 95; 97 – 99

Johnson, Reginald. Your Personality and the Spiritual Life.

Mays, James L. Preaching and Teaching the Psalms. See “Getting a New Heart: Psalm 51” pages 171 – 174

A personal note from first-year editor
Andrew Taylor-Troutman (MDiv, Union-PSCE 2009)

I have thoroughly enjoyed the “Join the Feast” from its nascent beginning as a twinkle in Gayle Haglund’s eye to its fruition into a living entity on the web. To all our writers, I have a deep sense of gratitude for your profound contributions, communicated creatively and in a uniquely personal sense. In particular, I want to publicly thank Josh Andrzejewski for his invaluable work as co-editor and web manager. To all of our readers, I cannot thank you enough for your support.

Beginning in September, I am continuing graduate work in biblical studies at the University of Virginia Charlottesville and will no longer serve JTF as editor. In my stead, I welcome the extremely competent and committed Jenny McDevitt (MDiv, Union-PSCE 2009). Under Jenny’s leadership, the future is bright … or better yet, the table is set!

July 26, 2009 - John 6:1-21 - Luke Schlimme

2009-06-16T17:05:00.001-04:00

Gleanings From Text
John 6:1–21

These stories in John of Jesus feeding the multitude and walking on water are also accounts that take place in all of the Synoptic Gospels. Each Gospel captures the events in the same order, with the feeding first and then the walking on water.

In the literary framework of John, we find the author splitting the book into two repeating sections. The first section starts in Chp. 2 with the Miracle at Cana (2:1-11). The second section begins at the start of Chp. 6 with the feeding and walking on water. In Chp. 2 Jesus transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary by turning water to wine, thus showing his glory, and at the same time reveals who he is to his disciples. We find similar happenings in Chp. 6. Jesus turns an ordinary meal into something extraordinary by feeding so many with only 5 loaves and 2 fish (1-15). When Jesus walks out on the water to comfort the disciples he shows his glory and reveals who he is to his disciples (16-21).

Food For Thought

In this text we see an interplay taking place between Jesus’ grace and his glory. Jesus shows grace to the crowd by providing for their physical need and personally handing out the blessed food. This gift of grace becomes the vehicle for the revelation of Jesus’ glory. At this moment, Jesus is not trying to display his glory, and so when the crowd tries to twist the situation to serve their own purposes and make him king, Jesus retreats into the hills alone. In the next section the reverse happens. This time the revelation of Jesus’ glory becomes the vehicle for his gift of grace. His glory is not revealed for power alone, but for grace-filled pastoral care. Although Jesus will not allow his grace to be controlled by those seeking his power, he also will not hold back his glory from those in need. It is very important that grace and glory be held in balance.

Sink Your Teeth Into This

During occasions when I have been fortunate enough to serve on a mission team, I have noticed a common occurrence. Most of the trips have taken place in third world countries or poorer parts of the United States. As our team arrives to bring aid to those in need, either through work teams, VBS, or other service projects, we begin to be looked at as the healers and saviors of the people we have come to minister to. Although we come in the name of Christ to serve others in love, I sometimes get the sense that we are seen as Christ, instead of Christ’s disciples.

As we are given glory and praise for the grace we bring, it is easy to begin to think that we have done something original and marvelous on our own, ignoring the fact that we are simply doing what Christ has called us to do. Throughout the trip I have to constantly remind myself that the purpose is not to make me feel better about myself. I do not think it is wrong for me to realize that I have done something good, but if the only reason I am on the trip is to lift myself up, then my heart is in the wrong place. I relate with Jesus in this text and feel the need to get away when grace turns into unwanted glory. The difference is I must step aside because I am not worthy to receive the glory. In fact, it is by Christ’s grace that we are given the privilege to serve.

Biographical Information

Luke Schlimme has completed his first year of the dual degree MACE/MSW program in Richmond, VA. Originally from Raleigh, NC, he has also enjoyed the transition to Richmond. He enjoyed his first year at Union-PSCE and is looking forward to starting the MSW program at VCU in the fall.

July 19, 2009 - Ephesians 2:11-22 - Rachel Butler

2009-06-16T17:04:00.001-04:00

Gleanings from the Text
Ephesians 2:11-22

A preliminary reading of this familiar text leaves one thinking of words often seen in the New Testament: words like “circumcision”, “Gentiles”, and “peace”. In fact, “peace” is seen four times in this passage. As an overriding theme, “peace” applies not only to the Jews and Gentiles of the biblical world, but to the Christians and non-Christians of today.

The author of Ephesians (whom most scholars agree was not Paul) uses the past issues of circumcision to remind the audience of Gentiles how far they have come. “Remember” is used twice as the author urges the audience back to that time in their minds. With the words of Paul from Galatians (2:1-14) and Luke in Acts ((15:1-11) echoing in our own minds as we read the text, the idea of circumcision is not new to us. Circumcision has been a way to tell God’s elect from the un-clean.

Colossians 2 mentions circumcisions “not of human hands”, perhaps referring to a sort of spiritual circumcision. By noting this circumcision is a physical one, made in the flesh by human hands, scholar Pheme Perkins offers that the author of Ephesians has dissociated himself from those Jews who used the derogatory term “uncircumcised” for Gentiles (396). This in itself is a testament to the author’s desire to promote peace among the people.

Food for Thought

This text is often titled “One in Christ” or “Unity in Christ”, but I’d like to go a step further and say “One in Peace”. The author seems to be making a claim to it, urging the readers to remember what they went through in their own tumultuous past and how they simply longed for peace; for unity among their fellow believers. The imagery used in verse 14 regarding the “wall of hostility” is powerful. The notion of Christ uniting the two groups in peace tears down that wall.

Also, by using the common memory of the circumcision, the audience is hopefully reminded of how painful it was, being “aliens” and “strangers ... without hope.” Have they forgotten that the blood of Christ united them? Have they forgotten the walls of hostility were torn down? The peace that Christ proclaimed to them, near and far, is at hand and the author is reminding them to take hold of it.

Sink Your Teeth into This!

The “wall of hostility” reminds me of the wall I saw in the Middle East, dividing Israel and Palestine. An actual physical wall of hostility stands on this earth today. It also reminds me of the guarded concrete slab I saw in Korea, dividing the country, North and South. Armed guards are at the ready 24 hours a day to protect their side of the line.

How painful it must be for people on both sides of the dividing line. Maybe they aren’t arguing over being circumcised or uncircumcised but the result is the same: divisiveness. Each side thinks they are right, and maybe, by some stretch of the imagination, they both are in their own way. I don’t know. However, I am certain that God never intended us to be divided in this way. Whether politically, economically, or religiously motivated, walls of hostility are all around us, not just in the obviously places like the Middle East and Korea. I urge you to take the peace of Christ to your own walls and break them down. This peace is extended not only to us, but to all peoples of all places and times.

May the peace of Christ be with you.

Biographical Information

Rachel Butler is a third year MDiv. student from Georgia who has no idea what she will do after seminary. Hopefully this last year will shed some insight! Currently she is immersed in the 10 week summer program of CPE with VCU at MCV and loving every second of it.

Works Referenced

Pheme Perkins. New Interpreter’s Bible: Ephesians Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2000.

July 12, 2009 - Ephesians 1:3-14 - Elizabeth Smith

2009-06-16T17:03:00.000-04:00

Gleanings From The Text
Ephesians 1:3-14

Like 2 Corinthians 1:3-11 and 1 Peter 1:3-9, Ephesians’ introduction begins with a blessing (berakah), a liturgical formula used to praise God for creation and redemption, as well as to describe God’s character as the giver of blessings to the people. But where 2 Corinthians and 1 Peter then shift to the current situations of their communities, Ephesians does not follow suit until chapters 4 and 5. Pheme Perkins notes that this extended blessing is “combined with the rhetorical understanding of ‘eulogy’ as eloquence or fine speaking in praise of someone.” In this sense, our text is not a theological treatise, but a poetic affirmation of faith meant to sustain and encourage the Ephesians in their worshiping life together.

It is also important to note that in the letters in which Paul’s authorship is undisputed, the expected return of Christ is conveyed in the near future, while Ephesians places significant emphasis on the cosmic nature of the church—the universal church conveys God’s wisdom as part of God’s eternal purpose (3:9-11)—with Christ as its head (1:22). We catch glimpses of this theme in our text’s blessing—God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, God has made known the mystery of divine will to us, and God’s plan for the fullness of time is to gather up all things in heaven and earth in Christ, through whom we have obtained an inheritance. Our response is to live for the praise of God’s glory in Christ.

Food For Thought

Although the author of Ephesians does not use the term “election” directly, the language of choice, adoption, redemption, forgiveness, grace and divine plan within this passage all point to this theological doctrine. Election is a source of great comfort to some and great distress to others, and preaching and/or teaching this text will most likely reveal both ends of this spectrum.

George W. Stroup offers five key insights on election pertaining to this passage in Ephesians. First, election is “a statement about the wonder of God’s grace in Jesus Christ…It is above all else an affirmation that the God Christians know in Jesus Christ is gracious beyond the wildest reaches of their imaginations.” Second, election is about God’s sovereign will, not our actions—our text notes in verses 5, 9, and 11 that “God’s choosing or election is rooted in the good pleasure and mystery of God’s counsel and will.” Third, Christ is to be the “looking glass” in which Christians should consider their election, as God’s election is always through Christ. Stroup points to Calvin and Barth, who claimed that by looking at the life of Christ and seeing the grace and mercy of God, we should be assured that we are included in God’s promises. Fourth, election “reminds Christians that they are adopted children of God;” this adoption is a gift, not a right. Fifth, we must be mindful that God’s election “does not make Christians ‘special’ in relation to other people, but calls them to specific tasks of serving God and neighbor.”

Sink Your Teeth Into This!

Terms like election, redemption, and adoption have become part of my theological vocabulary while at seminary, and while I believe that there is a plan for the fullness of time, my eyes do not always see it in the world around me. In a world full of injustice, pain and division, these words of adoption, grace and gathering all things up are sometimes hard to hear. Indeed, there is tension between what God has already done in Christ and what is left to be done in the world.

When I took Hebrew, our professor, Dr. Carson Brisson, would end class with the same benediction every day. One line of this benediction comes to mind as I reflect on Ephesians 1:3-14 — “May you be blessed and a blessing.” God has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, and our right response to these blessings is to live for the praise of Christ’s glory. As the church, we are to live lives of service, working for peace and reconciliation among our brothers and sisters all over the world through the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Works Consulted

Martin, Ralph P., Ephesians, Colossians, and Philemon, Interpretation series (Atlanta: John Knox, 1991).

Perkins, Pheme, “The Letter to the Ephesians,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. 11, (Nashville: Abingdon, 2000).

Stroup, George W., “Theological Perspective: Ephesians 1:3-14,” in David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, eds., Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 3, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2009), 230-234.

Biographical Information

Elizabeth Smith (M.Div) is a 2009 graduate of Union-PSCE. Originally from Texas, she is moving to Connecticut and starting a 9-month Chaplain Residency at Yale-New Haven Hospital at the end of August. Gently-used coats and snow tires are welcome!

July 5, 2009 - Mark 6:1-13 - Mark Zaineddin

2009-06-16T17:01:00.001-04:00

Gleanings from the Text
Mark 6: 1-13

Like much scripture, this passage is full of richness and this for contemplation, interpretation, and discovery. As many have previously commented, this passage asks us to consider the humanity of Jesus as well as, perhaps, examine our own human nature.

Structurally, the passage is very similar to Mark 3:7-35, but only in reverse. Could this be to reinforce an important point that the writer is trying to make? Both pericopes are ultimately about Jesus being accepted by outsiders and rejected by those who intimately know him. It is strangers who believe and have faith in Jesus and are drawn to his capacity to heal the ill and exorcise demons; it is kinfolk (Mark 3) and hometown neighbors (Mark 6) that chide and admonish him, who cannot believe that a carpenter and the “son of Mary” could be a prophet with extraordinary powers. The pericopes also feature the naming or commissioning of his twelve apostles.

Today’s Gospel reading can be neatly divided into two parts. In Mark 6:1-6, Jesus returns home (presumably to Nazareth) only to be shunned and snubbed by those who have known him since his youth. Not only do they not have faith in him, but they also take offense at (were scandalized by/stumbled over [from the Greek εσκανδαλιξαντο]) what he is presumably doing (Mark 6:3). In Mark 6:7-13, Jesus departs to the villages and commissions his disciples, sending them out in pairs. It is interesting here that the author Mark is more concerned with the practicalities of their mission (what they are to take and how they are to behave) than with the mission itself (Myers et. al., 72).

A few additional points are worth mentioning. First, we see the real humanity of Jesus highlighted in this pericope. Jesus is described in terms of his trained profession (τέκτων, which can be translated craftsman, workman, worker in wood, and possibly even stonemason although the tradition suggests that Jesus was a carpenter). Furthermore, he is known to be a son with siblings. The fact that he is referred to as Mary’s son, rather than that of Joseph could be interpreted in many ways. Has Joseph died? Is this a denunciation on behalf of the villagers who see him perhaps as an illegitimate child? Could it be the writer’s way of referring to the virgin birth? Different authors have offered varying explanations (see Hare, 69). Finally, here Jesus exhibits human emotional qualities. Jesus is amazed at his hometown residents’ unbelief (Mark 6:6).

A second point is that Jesus’ powers (Mark 6:5) seem to be dependent upon the faith that others have in him. We see this regularly in Mark (e.g. 2:5 and 5:34). But, here, it is unbelief or disbelief that seems to inhibit Jesus (Mark 6:5). What does this suggest?

Food for Thought

Unlike the prodigal son in Luke (Luke 15:11-32) who, after months or years away, is welcomed back with open arms by his father, Jesus’ neighbors upon his return home reject him simply for who he is or whom they believe him to be. They cannot understand where or how Mary’s “kid”, the carpenter, received wisdom and ability for power “done by his hands.” Do we too often make assumptions about individuals whom we believe we know well but have not seen in years? Have we lost faith in them as children and believe, now decades later, they will act the same? This is a striking passage that warns us not to make such crass assumptions.

Furthermore, how does our faith, or lack there of, in God and humanity affect outcomes in concrete situations? Although we may not have the prophetic powers of Jesus, whether or not we believe or have faith in a person may have a stunning effect on a particular state of affairs. Situations often require trust and reciprocal responses of faith. As Douglas Hare puts it, “God’s power is unlimited, but its expression is correlated with the response of faith. An imperfect but helpful analogy is provided by human relationships; love, to be fully experienced, must be returned” (Hare, 70). Just as Jesus’ neighbors, with their unbelief, seemed to affect his ability to perform wondrous acts, our negativities and disbeliefs often hinder the hopeful outcomes we seek to attain.

Sink Your Teeth Into This!

In 1973, the New York Mets found themselves in last place at the end of the month of August. Baseball fans were writing off the team. Once again, a reputation preceded them: there were a group of young talent players and a few veterans that always seemed to fall short. Then Tug McGraw, an able relief pitcher, rallied his teammates and their fans behind the slogan, “You Gotta Believe”. And they did, winning 21 of their last 29 games and going from worst to first. The pennant was won because the team had faith, the fans had faith; all heard the rallying call and responded. None would heed to their supposed reputation.

In Northern New Mexico, reputation is often tied family origin. Just like Jesus was Mary’s “boy”, here Virgil might be known as Floyd’s son. Furthermore, last names carry a lot of weight for better or worse. While not denying the importance of family connections, sometimes it seems that the individual can get lost in the family; that is, the reputation of the family can cloud how we might understand the individual and his or her own worth and ability.

Yet, when we begin to believe in the individual worth of each and every person, might it just be that miracles -- real or perceived -- can happen? Miracles from a shoddy 1973 baseball team; miracles from the Martinez kid in Espanola; miracles from Mary’s boy, the carpenter, who has just returned home to Nazareth.

Works Cited or Referenced

Hare, D. R. A. Westminster Bible Companion: Mark. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1996.

Myers, C., Dennis. M., Nangke, J., Moe-Lobeda, C., and S. Taylor. “Say To This Mountain”: Mark's Story of Discipleship. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books,1997.

Perkins, P. “Mark” in The New Interpreter’s Bible. Vol. VIII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.

Williamson, L. Interpretation, a Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching: Mark. Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1983.

Biographical Information

Mark Zaineddin is a 2008 Union-PSCE graduate. A native Northeasterner, he know finds his home and work in the Southwest at Ghost Ranch, a PC(USA) national education and retreat center in Abiquiu, NM. He encourages all to come and visit, whether it is your first time or fortieth.

June 28, 2009 - 2 Corinthians 8:7-15 - Fred Westbrook

2009-05-17T21:10:00.001-04:00

Gleanings from the Text
2 Corinthians 8:7-15

In this passage, Paul appeals for funding for the community of Jesus followers in Jerusalem led by James, called the "Poor Ones," just as Jesus had said, "blessed are the poor." The church in Jerusalem had taken seriously sharing in common all they had as one Christian community. In this offering he's taking up, Paul is trying to bring together Jewish Christians in Jerusalem and pagan Christians from throughout the rest of the world; many he had evangelized. This appeal was for the cause of Unity for the early church, because of the terrible schism between these two groups reported in Galatians.

Paul felt this collection, if acceptable to the "saints" in Jerusalem, would bring to them a great gift for the wealth of the larger church, a true sharing of the wealth. Notice he's saying something here repeatedly about "equality," "he gathering much, he had nothing left over, and he gathering little had no less." Paul is repeating the story of the gathering of manna during the Exodus. The people in Corinth knew that the people of the Church in Jerusalem were sharing everything in common. Now Paul's appealing to the Corinthians, "you said you would support this cause, now follow through." You don't have to give what you don't have, but each should give according to
his ability or capacity.

Food For Thought

One of the things I find fascinating about this whole passage is that the words "gift" and "grace" are used interchangeably by Paul. I think the parallel of these two words is a key for understanding this passage, and even understanding something fundamentally about Paul's life.

While there was a great difference in practice between Jewish Christians in Jerusalem (who still looked to purity rituals, with a traditional Jewish understanding of the law) and pagan Christians to whom Paul had delivered the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Paul proclaimed that everyone who believed was in Christ. He did not believe the pagan group had to follow the Jewish group's mandates regarding ritualistic law and purity.

When Paul finally takes the collection to Jerusalem, he's put in an awkward position. No one will see him or talk to him to accept the money, until he goes through the ritual baths and is purified. He goes to the ritual baths in the cause of peace and STILL ends up getting arrested. The arrest is aided by Jewish Christians. Under arrest again! This begins his long trip back to Rome and his eventual death.

Here in our passage is what Paul is giving his life for: he's appealing to each of us reading in the Christian community of faith to put aside those temptations that divide us one from another and be one in Christ.

Sink Your Teeth Into This

Look at the battles in the church today over amendments to the constitution of the Presbyterian Church and other battles in other Protestant denominations.

One group feels like if you behave one way, you're affecting the purity of the church, of if you behave another way, the believer is too constrained by the law, and isn't able to honor God's gifts to all people. Folks considered unrepentant with practices in relationships and sexuality considered ungodly, even an abomination by others, are excluded from the community of faith. There's this big tension in the church today not unlike what it was in the time of Paul. Paul is
trying to heal the rift - this big division between followers of Christ. At first, the Church in Jerusalem wouldn't even accept the collection when Paul delivered it!

The Jerusalem collection represents a major bargain by Paul, to give his own life up to join the church together in the cause of the Gospel. He chooses to give the church an opportunity, to re-find if you will, a unified vision, what he believes is a continuation of the vision of Jesus Christ found in the "open table," and which includes the notion that all of the earth is "one world under divine justice" rather than under Imperial rule from Rome [Crossan, In Search of Paul]. Paul seeks to follow Jesus in this divine cause and invites us to as well.

We could understand this passage in terms of one's "annual giving to the church," but I think there is something deeper here about how one gives his or her life to Christ. Paul has something to say about how you might encounter God's grace in Jesus as both grace and gift to share and give back to God, by giving back to the larger vision and the wider community of God's people, even to give ourselves back to continue God's creative work of redemption here and now.

Biographical Information

Fred Westbrook, D.Min. graduated from Union in May 1983. An artist and poet living in Durham NC, Fred is a Minister Member at Large in New Hope Presbytery of the PCUSA. He preaches monthly at Northgate Presbyterian Church in Durham, and other area churches, while overseeing Duke Chapel's Media Ministry. President and CEO of C'Access Inc., Fred manages multiple projects regarding online medical education or instructional technology at Duke University.

June 21, 2009 - Mark 4:35-41 – Berry French and Clark Scalera

2009-05-17T21:09:00.000-04:00

Gleanings From the Text
Mark 4:35-41

The location of this text within the Gospel of Mark is of primary importance. Jesus has been preaching to the home crowd throughout Galilee and has gathered quite a following. Mark 3:9 indicates that the crowds of people are growing so numerous that Jesus has his disciples prepare a boat so that he will not be crushed. For the majority of chapter 4, Mark then stations Jesus in this boat, preaching from it like a pulpit to the congregation which is safely held at a distance on the shore (Mark 4:1).

When evening comes Jesus and the disciples leave the shore in this same boat and set out to, of all places, Gentile lands. There, Jesus will surprisingly heal an unclean, unreligious, demon-possessed foreigner and send him to proclaim the Gospel to even more Gentiles (Mark 5:19-20). The movement of Jesus and his message across major geographic, cultural, and religious boundaries is the location of this pericope.

Can the mighty wind and waves that the disciples encounter on this voyage be understood as representative of challenges the church faces when it is called to expand the scope of its ministry?

An additional focal point of this text is Jesus’ authority over the created world. This miracle story echoes the story of Jonah where Jonah is aroused and called upon to pray that his ship might be saved (Jonah 1:6). The parallel between the two stories is then sharply broken in order to present Jesus as greater than a prophet (and also as one who follows God instead of fleeing). Instead of praying, Jesus himself rebukes the storm and commands the wind and the waves to be silent and muzzled. A calm then emerges that demonstrates Jesus’ control over the chaotic elements which threaten the disciples. Both Jesus’ authority and willingness to take action raise questions about who Jesus is and how we are to put our trust in him.

Food for Thought

Written initially for a church enduring stress, tribulation, and even persecution, this text provided a comforting reminder that Jesus is Lord over the Church and over all creation. In a similar manner, this story from Mark can provide comfort to our church today. Often, we can feel overwhelmed by the pressure, demands, and conflicts within our church and society. We may feel as though our small boat will be torn apart as we try to live out the Gospel of Jesus Christ in ways that cross divides of geography, culture, and religion. We can find assurance in our faith that Jesus does indeed “care that we are perishing” and that Jesus does go with us even in our small and scarcely seaworthy boats.

Sink Your Teeth Into This

Last year, I had the joy and privilege of traveling to the Holy Land with Union-PSCE’s Middle East Travel Seminar. Among the most lasting impressions from the trip was the time that we spent on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. It was a powerful thing to see the hillsides that Jesus and the disciples walked upon. It was both beautiful and profound to look out across this large lake and see the far shore.

As we stood there in modern day Israel looking over to the shores of the Kingdom of Jordan, professor Sam Balentine remarked, “That is all that separated the ancient Israelites from the Gentile nations.” Recognizing in this experiential way that the Sea of Galilee is only a mile or two wide in places had a profound impact on me. It helped me understand in a new way just how close the religiously “clean” and “unclean” lived.

The Israelites and Gentiles would have been neighbors, would have had to trade and interact with one another. In some ways, Jesus’ crossing over to their shores in a boat would have been utterly unremarkable. Yet, the gesture of him going to heal people across the lake, going to proclaim the gospel and share in life and ministry, was enough to cause great storms and waves in the early church.

The storms, coupled with the Gospel’s eventual spread into socially and religiously unclean lands, give me perspective on how we are called to have faith and share faith across boundaries – boundaries that may challenge or even offend our religious institutions.

Biographical Information

Clark Scalera and Berry French are Pastoral Residents at White Memorial Presbyterian Church in Raleigh, NC. Clark graduated from Union-PSCE in 2007, and Berry in 2008.

Works Referenced

Hare, Douglas R. A., Westminster Bible Companion: Mark (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville, KY, 1996.

Williamson, Lamar, Interpretation, a Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching: Mark (John Knox Press: Atlanta, GA, 1983.

June 14, 2009 - 2 Corinthians 5:6-17 - Fairfax F. Fair

2009-05-17T21:03:00.001-04:00

Gleanings From the Text
2 Corinthians 5:6-17

This brief passage raises a number of intriguing questions. What does it mean to be “at home in the body?” Is the author (Paul) wishing his life away when he writes, “We would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord?” What must we do to please the Lord?

The gist of this text is the effect of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That act of God has changed everything for all times, and God’s act has changed us. We are no longer the same. Our perspective on others is different. The one we knew as flesh and blood – Jesus Christ – has broken through the finitude of human existence and done something wholly new. Our experience with the Christ has irrevocably altered our raison d’etre.

Several points should be made in the exposition of this text. Take a careful look at verse 14: “For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all ...” Notice that this does not restrict the salvific effects of Christ’s death to the circumcised, to believers, or to any other group or classification of people. The statement is unequivocal: Christ has died for all.

“If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (v17). This verse is worthy of careful attention. Consider the verb, gegonen. It is perfect tense, which denotes the continuance of completed action. What is its subject? It makes a difference! J. Paul Sampley lays out various possibilities in the New Interpreter’s Bible, volume XI, pages 93-94.

Food for Thought

Throughout human history the inclination has been to erect barriers, to self-select for privilege, to build dividing walls of hostility. The radical nature of sin infects our relationships. We may want to impose feelings of superiority on others. The truth of Jesus Christ is absolute. As Peter testifies in the Acts of the Apostles, “God shows no partiality” (Acts 10:34-43). The death of Jesus Christ is for all people.

Convicted of this truth, we can no longer regard anyone “from a human point of view.” What is a human point of view? We see disabilities where God sees possibilities. We see differences as flaws; God sees our individuality as beauty.

Sink Your Teeth into This!

From time to time one sees a child’s T-shirt with wisdom hidden beneath a grammatical veil. The shirt proclaims, “God don’t make no junk.” No one – child or adult, privileged or bereft, accomplished or dependent – is without earth-changing value. Jesus Christ voluntarily gave up his life for each of us. If we have that kind of value to God, blinders should fall off for the rest of us. We are to treat one another, regardless of personal feelings, as beloved children of God, human beings for whom Christ died.

In the pressures of everyday living, when we struggle to provide for our families, to find a sure path through economic minefields, to fend off the slings and arrows leveled at us, our tendency may be to strike out at another. This text requires us to pause. No one is beyond the circle of Jesus’ love. If we are in Christ – a part of his family, a beneficiary of his death and resurrection, a guest at his table – we must treat all others as valued fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. We can no longer regard them from a human point of view.

A powerful sermon can be developed on this text, calling all of us to a re-evaluation of how we treat one another and to the theological basis for that treatment. We must be consistently gracious, merciful, and forgiving. We stand to be convicted of our sins. We deserve condemnation. Instead, the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting. We are forgiven and made new, again and again. Let us see one another not from a human point of view but with the eyes of Christ. Then let us live in an abundance of love.

Biographical Information

Fairfax F. Fair is Pastor of Highland Presbyterian Church, Louisville, KY

May 31 - Ezekiel 37:1-14 - Joshua T. Andrzejewski

2009-04-03T09:07:00.001-04:00

Gleanings From the Text
Ezekiel 37:1-14

The Hebrew word ruah (spirit, breath) appears eight times in the first ten verses of the pericope, and once in its conclusion. The NRSV translation fails to make evident the connection between God’s “spirit” and the animating “breath” that gives life to the bodies in verse 10. The spirit of God is a unifying force that leads to life.

The verb hayah (to live) occurs six times in the pericope, usually appearing alongside ruah. The counterpoint to hayah in this pericope is ’etsem (bones), a word that occurs ten times and symbolizes the state of Israel: hopeless, cut off, dead.

Food for Thought
Ezekiel’s report of the valley of dry bones comes up often in discussions of resurrection imagery in the Old Testament; however, this vision has more to do with restoration than resurrection. Kevin Madigan and Jon Levenson put it this way: “The question it answers is not the familiar, self-interested one, ‘Will I have life after death?’ but rather a more profound and encompassing one, ‘Will God honor [the] promises to [the] people?’” (155). Madigan and Levenson’s book is an accessible introduction to the afterlife concept as it develops from the prophets to the time of Jesus.

Ezekiel began his prophetic work around 591 BCE, was taken into exile in Babylon in 597 BCE, lived through the destruction of Jerusalem ten years later, and continued his work until at least 571 BCE (Petersen, 139). He was designated a sopeh, a sentinal, and commanded to warn people of the coming destruction. In this week’s pericope, the exile has occurred and Ezekiel’s work is now to give his listeners the hope of restoration – “I will place you on your own soil” (verse 14).
Be sure to check out Job 10:8-9, 11 and Genesis 2:4-9 for intertextual connections.

Sink Your Teeth Into This
God’s promises have been impossible from the very start. There is the call of Abraham and Sarah, two impossibly old folks who were charged with giving birth to a nation as plentiful as the stars in the sky. The nation did grow up, but before too long it had been enslaved. When God liberated the people, they continually fell away – even when they had been given their own land, even when they had judges, kings, and prophets to try and keep them in line.

Ezekiel was faced with a situation in which a promise made thousands of years ago, a promise that seemed too good to be true, was turning out to be exactly that. The exile was one of the most traumatic events in Jewish history, and there’s a whole book of the Bible – Lamentations – dedicated to the words of despair and hopelessness God’s people felt at that time. The land was supposed to remind them of God’s promise; the king was supposed to remind them of God’s promise; the Temple was supposed to remind them of God’s promise. Now all those things were gone and the people were left despondent – utterly alone. We can hear their anguish in the words of Psalm 137.

Despite the 2,500 years that separate us from Ezekiel, I think each of us must have some idea how he felt, how his people felt. I suspect that there are things many of us treasure as reminders of God’s promise: a passage of scripture; words spoken by a dear friend at just the right moment; the memory of a particular star in the sky one night. They are meaningless to anyone else, but to us they are touchstones to which we cling when everything else falls away. Now imagine that you’ve lost even those, and I think you begin to grasp the magnitude of the exile.
So we return to that painful conversation between Ezekiel and God. Painful because Ezekiel knew. “Mortal, can these bones live?” And the prophet knew the answer; he knew it was impossible.

And yet, that’s precisely what happens in the vision that follows. In essence, God says, “You think it’s impossible for me to restore my people from exile? I’m going to show you that I could do something infinitely more impossible than that. Not only am I going to restore the bones and sinew and flesh, but I am going to return my breath to these bodies, and they are going to live again.

“I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act.” God keeps promises, even though they have been impossible from the very start.

Biographical Information
Joshua T. Andrzejewski is a second-level student at Union-PSCE in Richmond within the Masters of Divinity and Christian Education programs. He grew up in Levittown, Pennsylvania – the birthplace of suburbia – and found his way to Richmond through Project Burning Bush. This summer, he will serve as a resident teacher for the program. Next year, he will be doing a year-in-ministry as a chaplain at a level-1 trauma center in Richmond. He can be reached at josh.andrzejewski@gmail.com.

Works Referenced
Kevin J. Madigan & Jon D. Levenson, Resurrection: The Power of God for Christians and Jews (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 146-155.
David L. Petersen, The Prophetic Literature (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), 137-168.

May 24, 2009 - Psalm 1 - J.P. Kang

2009-04-03T09:06:00.000-04:00

Gleanings From the Text
Psalm 1

Psalm 1 (along with Psalm 2 in some early collections) invites and welcomes the reader and hearer, not only to the Psalter proper, but beyond to a comprehensive vision of life. As such, special consideration may be paid to its anticipatory function and paradigmatic significance.

The somewhat irregular literary structure of Psalm 1 may be summarized by this pair of telescoping statements: “Happy the one . . . whose way is known by the LORD,” and perhaps parenthetically, “Not so the wicked . . . whose way will perish.” (vv. 1, 4, 6). This “didactic poetry” (so Krauss, p. 114) thus presents two ways and their corresponding destinies (see Mays, Psalms, pp. 43–44), thereby exhorting readers and hearers to choose the abundant life (a theme to which the Johannine lections for this Sunday also relate).

Food for Thought

v. 1: The opening word, Heb. ʾašrê (Gk. makarios), is translated as “happy” (e.g., NRSV and JPS) or “blessed” (e.g., KJV and NIV). How does the choice affect the understanding of the identity or character of “the righteous”?

v. 2: “the law” (JPS: “the teaching”) is “the Torah of YHWH” (Gk. nomos kuriou). What is Torah and what is the Christian’s relationship to it? For the semantic range of tôrâ (and much more!), see S. Dean McBride, Jr., “Perspective and Context in the Study of Pentateuchal Legislation” [read at Google Books].

Are life’s possibilities really as starkly opposed as the psalmist concludes? If the profile of the “righteous” strikes one as idealistic and/or hypocritical, it might be instructive to consider the exhortations to perpetual joy, prayer, and thanksgiving in 1 Thess 5:16–18. Many of us may even find it easier to identify, for various reasons, with the “wicked”! How, then, can we preach Psalm 1 without simply moralizing?

Sink Your Teeth into This!

Mays comments that “Psalm 1 teaches that life is a journey through time; living chooses a particular route of existence” (Psalms, p. 43; emphasis mine). Heschel observed that “The Bible is more concerned with time than space” (The Sabbath, pp. 6–7) and that our goal is to “become attuned to holiness in time” (p. 10).

The vital and temporal rhythms of sowing and reaping give root to the Psalm’s contrast of fecundity (“fruit in its season,” v. 3) and barrenness (“chaff that the wind drives away,” v. 4). If the sacred journey is yet one of perpetual struggle with the two ways, then it should come as no surprise that we should experience disproportionate yields in various seasons.

By God’s grace may we all hear this word, accept it, and bear fruit!

For further reading and reflection

John Calvin, Commentary on The Book of Psalms [read at CCEL].

Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man (Farrar, Straus and Young, 1951).

Hans-Joachim Kraus, Psalms 1–59: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1988), 112–22.

James L. Mays, Psalms (Interpretation; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994), 40–43.

James L. Mays, Preaching and Teaching the Psalms (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), 161–63.

Eugene H. Peterson, The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language (Colorado Springs: NavPress Publishing Group, 2002). [read at BibleGateway]

S. Dean McBride, Jr., “Perspective and Context in the Study of Pentateuchal Legislation,” pp. 47–60 in Old Testament Interpretation: Past, Present, and Future (edited by James L. Mays, David L. Petersen, Kent Harold Richards; Nashville: Abingdon, 1995). [read at Google Books].

Biographical Information

J. P. Kang is a recent graduate of Union–PSCE (Ph.D., Bible, 2007), and currently calls Seattle home. He was born in Wheeling, WV, to Presbyterian minister Edwin Kang (UTS B.D., 1966) and Mae Kang, and grew up as a missionary kid in Zaïre and Japan. He can be reached at jpkang@alum.mit.edu and via his blog at http://mymachero.com/.

May 17, 2009 - John 15:9-17 - Barry Chance

2009-04-03T09:03:00.000-04:00

Gleanings from the Text
John 15:9-17

This text is part of Jesus’ farewell discourse in John. This discourse focuses mainly on preparing the disciples for life and ministry post-Easter and thus the topics include the coming of the Holy Spirit, persecution, and the nature of the continuing community of faith. This particular pericope is the second half of a section that began at 15:1 and focuses on the image of the vine as a symbol of the interconnectedness of Jesus and his disciples.

A few words of particular interest in the Greek:
Agape – One of three Greek words for love, John favors this word when speaking about a self-giving love as best illustrated by the love of God as revealed in Jesus Christ.
Philos – Most often translated “friend” it is more literally “loved one.”

In this pericope, Jesus effectively says “I love (agape) you, so I call you loved ones (philos).” The theological implication is that the identity of the disciples is tied up in the fact that they are loved—they are Friends of Jesus—Friends of God.

Food for Thought
What does it mean to be a Friend of God? When Jesus says “Love one another as I have loved you” he gives us a clue as to where we might begin to reorder our relationships with God and one another.
1. “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” To be a friend is to give generously of yourself to your friends.
2. “I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.” Friends do not hold back from one another; rather, the basis of friendship is trust and openness.
3. “I appointed you to go and bear fruit.” Friends take each other seriously; they recognize the gifts and purposes of the other and seek to help the other live a meaningful life.

Some might hear the commandment to love and wonder if it is still love if it is commanded. There is no good way to resolve that; however, I wonder how it might change the debate if we think of love as an action instead of a sentiment. If love is more about what I do to my neighbor than what I feel about my neighbor, does that change the dynamic? Perhaps sometimes we need to practice being loving until we learn how to love.

Sink Your Teeth Into This:
“You’re my friend ain’t you mamma? I mean daddy. I mean, Mr. Barry?” I hear those words at least once a week. Sometimes it is while I am shaking hands as people file out of the sanctuary, but usually it is at Bible study on Wednesday night. My answer is always “Yes, Mae,* and you’re my friend.”
Mae is one of the students in my congregation’s Friendship Bible Study, a weekly study for adults with intellectual disabilities. The class is called Friendship because the curriculum we use comes from Friendship Ministries, but I can think of no better name because it reminds me and all of the other mentors that our role is to be a friend.
Friendship has not always come easily to all of my friends. Some of them have been mocked, excluded, and abused because they are different. Some have difficulty expressing themselves and people aren’t patient with them as they try. Some are just hard to befriend. Still, they are my friends and Jesus teaches us what that means.
Friends give generously, trust and are open with each other, and help each other live meaningful lives. Friends tell the legislature when the laws aren’t working, say enough when someone is overmedicated, log many miles in the car getting people to church, share the details of their lives, let others pray for them, and help each other discover and use the gifts that God has given them.

* I have changed the name to protect my friend’s privacy.

For Further Reading & Reflection
Nouwen, Henri J. M. Adam, God’s Beloved. (Orbis Books: Maryknoll, NY, 2004)
Hauerwas, Stanley and Jean Vanier. Living Gently in a Violent World. (IVP Books: Downers Grove, IL, 2008)

www.friendship.org

Biographical Information
Barry Chance (M.Div., ’05) lives in Shreveport, LA, with his wife Katie. He is the pastor of St. Andrew Presbyterian Church where he teaches a weekly Bible study for adults with intellectual disabilities. He also serves on the board of two ministries that serve the needs of people with intellectual disabilities - Evergreen Presbyterian Ministries and Friendship Ministries - and would love to speak with anyone looking for ways to include people with disabilities into the full life of the church.

May 10, 2009 - 1 John 4:7-21 - Carol Clarke

2009-04-03T09:02:00.004-04:00

Gleanings from the Text
1 John 4:7-21

By now, the Easter lilies have withered along with the enthusiasm of some for preaching more of “John,” either Gospel or epistles. In addition to the recurrent Johannine themes, however, this pericope offers an eloquent and theologically rich treatment of divine love.
Biblical scholar Raymond Brown attributed these writings to the “community of the Beloved Disciple.” The Johannine community experienced conflict and some left, but the perspective of the writer(s) is less that of an outsider telling them how they got it wrong than an insider imploring them to get it right. Here the prophetic word is spoken as reasoned exhortation (first person plural and third person references).

Words worth noting --
Love -- agape love; some form of which (noun, verb, or vocative of address) appears 27 times in 15 verses.
God is love (verses 8 and 16). We teach our children these words almost as soon as they can talk. Not only by implication and example, but by divine essence, God is love. John Wesley commented: “[God] is said to be love; intimating that this is his darling, his reigning attribute, the attribute that sheds an amiable glory on all his other perfections.”
Love perfected -- It has realized its full potential; its purpose is fulfilled and so it is mature, full-grown.
Boldness -- Not bodacious audacity but confidence which stands in awe of what God has done for us in Christ. We can live without fear of judgment because Christ is our “atoning sacrifice” (NRSV).
Abiding -- When we love, we are living at home (abiding) in God, because God (Father, Son, and Spirit) is the source and substance of divine love and our love for one another.

Food for Thought
A song we love to sing from the 60’s is “If I Had a Hammer” by Hays and Seeger. The first stanza contains the line: “I’d hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters all over this land.” Relationships sometimes have to be hammered out before we can sing and celebrate them.
How far do we have to go to hate someone? Does personal preference or intolerance count? Is indifference toward others equivalent to hatred?
About the Johannine community conflict -- Did the very strength of the arguments made within the community contribute to its undoing? Did these people seem a little too sure of themselves for others? Were there significant socioeconomic differences (see 3:23)? Was the conflict really theological? (We humanoids are good at putting a theological face on interpersonal conflicts or outright prejudice.) Are our “brothers and sisters” only believers who believe as we do?
What can we learn from this passage about mentoring or counseling in times of conflict?

Sink Your Teeth into This
God has given us a tremendous gift in one another. As we love those we can see, we learn to love God whom we can’t see.
The first faces that many of us can remember seeing are those of our mothers and fathers. The flawed humanity that we are and that they were is somehow used by God to teach us to love. Now that’s miraculous!
One of my earliest memories is playing too close to an embankment, dancing and swinging my doll in the air. Somehow she flew out of my hands and fell 20 feet to the creek bank below. My mom rescued me and my doll. Now that I think on it, today would be a good day to say thanks to her and to God for love.

References
Raymond Brown. The Community of the Beloved Disciple (Paulist Press, 1979).

Judith Lieu. I, II, and III John: A Commentary (Westminster John Knox, 2008).
John Wesley’s Notes on the Bible, Christian Classics Ethereal Library (http://www.ccel.org/)

Biographical Information
Carol Clarke (MDiv. 1999, ThM. 2001) who has worked in the Louisville Presbyterian Center and pastored in Virginia and Pennsylvania, has just moved to Marble Falls, Texas.

May 3, 2009 - All Texts - Various Contributors

2009-04-03T09:00:00.002-04:00

A Special Invitation!
Today we invite you to participate in blogging about the lectionary passages assigned for May 3, 2009. Give us a brief though, anecdote, or insight that occurs to you as you sink your teeth into the texts. We want to create the opportunity for genuine online interaction, so get typing!

Lectionary Texts for the Fourth Sunday of Easter
Acts 4:5-12
Psalm 23:1-6
1 John 3:16-24
John 10:11-18

Feel free to answer any or all of the following questions in the comments section below:

What is your first response to the pericopes for this week?

What do you find most challenging in these texts?

What is one thing you would choose to say about these passages?

Do you have a particular insight to share?

Do any of these passages bring a memory to mind?

How have these texts impacted your life?

What should a congregation come away knowing after having heard a sermon based on one of these passages?

April 26, 2009 - I John 3:1 – 7 - Andrew Taylor-Troutman

2009-03-06T09:07:00.004-05:00

Gleanings from the Text
1 John 3:1-7

From antiquity, readers have noticed the similarities between the epistles ascribed to John and the Gospel that bears the same name. So, it is quite natural for us to note the parallels found with our lectionary text. When our pericope begins, “You know what kind of love the Father has given to us (3:1),” one could easily invoke John 3:16 as the faith confession that the community “knows.” In addition, the language of “children of God (3:1, 2)” can be read as an echo of John 1:12. In both texts, incorporation into the Divine family includes an understanding of the community of believers.

Despite such similarities, many scholars believe that the Epistles reflect the mindset of a community that existed several decades after the original audience of the Johannine Gospel. In I John, tense changes support this hypothesis. For example, the present tense sense that, “we are children of God” made in 3:1 and 3:2, is paired with a future understanding: “what we will be (3:2b, c).” Such looking ahead does suggest that, as generations passed, the believers continued to anticipate “when the Messiah would be revealed” (3:2), but with a newfound priority of sustaining community with hope in the present age.

Therefore, one way of reading the First Epistle is as a development of theological claims initiated in the Gospel. For instance, what it means to have “hope” in the Messiah is explicated throughout the Johannine Gospel, but here it is specifically nuanced with a call to piety: the notion that each would “purify” the self “just as the Messiah is pure (3:3).” The author further ups the ante by advancing a quid pro quo argument: since the Messiah was revealed “in order to take away sin” and “sin is not in him,” then “all who are remaining in him” are not sinning either (3:5 – 6). The Gospel does contain beautiful phrases about “remaining” in Jesus (6:56; 8:31; 15:4, 7), but the Epistle alone makes this direct connection to sinlessness. In case there is any doubt, the pericope concludes with an exhortation: “Let no one deceive you (3:7)!” As the Messiah is righteous, so is the “one who is doing righteousness.” Such exhortations to high ethical standards of living represent one possible theological claim by a community striving to discern the meaning of the Word made flesh.

Food for Thought

I have read, albeit briefly, this Epistle as representing one vein of the theological reasoning put into practice in a faith community. Certainly, this text provides important ideas for living out faith on the ground; personally, I am inspired by the certainty of the pronouncement, “we are children of God” combined with the humble acknowledgement that “what we will be” is not yet revealed (3:2). This does offer hope in uncertain and even painful times. But (and one can attribute this to my Calvinist leanings), I admit that I am suspicious of any absolute claim that appears to set unequivocal distinctions between the righteous and the sinners (3:6. 7). Such stringent categorization may very well inspire some to noble acts of piety, but I am concerned about the possibility of denigration into finger-pointing and even outright nastiness: I John 3:8 libels ones committing sin as from the Devil!

Sink Your Teeth into This!

In the summer of 2007, I had the opportunity to attend an interfaith conference with Religions for Peace. While engaging in dialogue with fellow Muslim and Jewish theological students, I was acutely sensitive to Christianity’s infamous role in propagating worldwide imperialism. In light of this tragic history, I found myself limiting my theological statements to what I thought were universal (and therefore non-offensive!) statements about the Divine. Finally, after I had made one too many of these bland comments, an Orthodox Jewish woman threw up her hands: “You are a Christian! You cannot just leave Jesus at the door!”

How do we, as Christians, reconcile our absolutist claims in Scripture that have undeniably caused death and destruction with our firm convictions that God has revealed God’s own self in the flesh for the good of the world? Even attempting an answer is beyond the scope of my assignment here, but as the reader wrestles with this question in an increasingly pluralistic society, I commend the notion of “we are” held in tension with “what we will be” as a fruitful starting point…one that does not require us to leave Jesus at the door!

About the Author

Andrew Taylor-Troutman has completed his coursework for the Masters of Divinity degree and will officially graduate from Union-PSCE in May, 2009. He and his wife, Ginny, plan to move to Charlottesville, where Andrew has accepted admission to the University of Virginia in a biblical studies program that places New Testament exegesis in conversation with Muslim and Jewish scholars and the sacred texts of these traditions. Andrew is also one of the founders and editors of Join the Feast and can be reached at andrew.taylortroutman@union-psce.edu.

April 19, 2009 - Acts 4:32-35 - Greg Bolt

2009-03-06T09:04:00.002-05:00

Gleanings From The Text
Acts 4:32-35

In this brief passage, Luke uses the ancient rhetorical device known as “chiasmus”, which is used to order the details of a story into an inverted parallelism. It usually follows the pattern of ABCB`A` with C as the vertex in the middle as a focal point.

A. Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, an no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. (4:32)

B. With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. (4:33a)

C. And great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them. (4:33b-34a)

B`. For as many as owned land or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the feet of the apostles. (4:34b-35a)

A`. And it was distributed to each as any had need. (4:35b)

In this case, the renunciation of private ownership and sharing of goods is A (4:32), the redistribution of goods according to need is A` (4:35b), the great power of the apostles is B (4:33a), and apostles’ authority as seen by the laying of proceeds of what was sold at their feet is B` (4:34b-35a). The focal point (C) in this chiasmus is Luke’s emphasis on the need for God’s grace when we seek to be in community and share the gifts of God with one another.

Food For Thought

At first glance this passage appears to advance an impossible standard. How many of us would willingly give all of our possessions for the common good? When reading this passage recently with my youth group, some heard a call to communism. But, based on further reflection on this passage, it is more about grace than a vow of poverty. Luke places the grace of God at the center of this passage. This grace implores those in this group to act with one heart and soul; it drives them to respond to the needs of others before tending to their own wants and desires. If we focus only on the actions of the group without understanding its motivations, we miss Luke’s point that all needs are met in responding to grace granted to us by God through Jesus Christ. If the group did not act with one heart and soul, the sharing of goods would be an empty gesture and one destined to failure. Since this group acts with one heart and soul, it is uplifted and held as an example to the growing community of believers.

Sink Your Teeth Into This!

When reading this pericope, I was reminded of my childhood. When I was in elementary school, I had a group of friends that in some ways acted with one heart and soul. I hesitate to claim that the grace of God was overtly upon a group of young, energetic, and sometimes rambunctious boys, but I think the similarity holds. We could be found together at all hours of the day and night and in all parts of the neighborhood. We would spend hours at each other’s houses for sleepovers, video games, and whatever else we could dream up.

Different people had different things to offer: one had a video game system, one had a big back yard, one had a basketball goal, and one had the best action figures. But the beauty of this group was that we all treated them as if they were held in common. When the group was at my house, we ate the food provided there; if we were at another’s house, we ate there. We shared everything, from clothes and toys to meals and games, so it was like we were all living in abundance. We shared, not out of duty or a sense of rule, but out of a sense of community and grace. It is that type of community that can only come when the members are acting with one heart and soul. Maybe in the long run we should listen to the call from Christ that we should have faith like a child.

Works Consulted

The New Interpreter’s Bible: Acts, Introduction to Epistolary Literature, Romans, 1 Corinthians Volume X, Abingdon Press Nashville, TN 1995.

April 12, 2009 - Mark 16:1-8 - John Carroll

2009-03-06T09:02:00.003-05:00

Gleanings From the Text
Mark 16:1-8

Only once do I recall hearing an Easter sermon based on the Easter narrative of the Gospel of Mark (chapter 16). That’s not really surprising, as Mark’s ending has often been regarded as incomplete and unsatisfying. Consider the way both Matthew and Luke fill out the story in their own gospels (Matthew 28; Luke 24), or the way Mark’s own story grew longer and longer in the history of its textual transmission. (The earliest reliable ending, at verse 8, received a variety of extensions.) But the unit for proclamation today is 16:1-8. Let the story end where it does!—which of course means the narrative ends in a way that only begins to open up possibilities, closes in a fashion so true to form for this gospel. Mark leaves us, at the end of the story, with hope, to be sure (along with fear and confusion), but also face to face with profound mystery. The God of Mark’s ending works in our world in ways that defy expectation and elude our every attempt at control.

Food for Thought

Mark’s readers observe as Mary Magdalene, Mary [mother?] of James, and Salome bring spices to the tomb on Easter morning to honor Jesus. (Do they know that an anonymous woman has already anointed him for burial, at least in his interpretation of her gesture [14:3–9]?) Like other “minor” characters in Mark who exemplify insight and faithfulness missing in the inner circle of disciples, these women step forward to extend devoted care to Jesus after his death. Thus they become the first to hear the good news of Jesus’ resurrection; they, not the twelve who fled in panic at the scene of Jesus’ arrest, are the faithful followers who must - beyond the narrative - have been the first to proclaim the Easter message.

Mark, though, withholds that report from the reader, leaving as a last impression not attentiveness to the word but fearful silence. But who are we to find fault with these women, whom fear reduces to silence as the gospel ends? Faced with God’s disruption of things as they are in this world, overcoming even death’s imperious final word to human life, their path — and ours — to joyful hope, to living faith, is neither swift nor easy. If there is hope for the future, it rests not on disciples’ insight and obedience but on Jesus’ fidelity to his promise (“He is going ahead of you to Galilee; you will see him there, as he told you” [v. 7]), and on God’s mighty reign, which continues, right to the end of the story, to transform and re-create in yeast-like, mustard-seed ways, full of mystery.

And that means Mark’s narrative ending does what this whole gospel does: it invites and evokes faith, openness to seeing God’s work in the world when our eyes can’t show it to us.

Sink Your Teeth into This!

Mark’s Easter story speaks powerfully to our time and culture. To be sure, Easter worship is festive and joyous, as it should be. Yet on this Easter with Mark’s gospel, may the proclamation of the gospel not be too easy and confident, lest we fail to notice the real obstacles to authentic faith in this narrative, and in our world. God is God, and that means despair yields to hope, life emerges from death.

And through our own encounters with the Risen Lord, our experiences of divine presence, we do come to know good news, but it is sometimes difficult to believe. So the last image of Mark’s gospel — fearful silence — gives us a crucial role to play. The message is now entrusted to us to proclaim, in our time. The burden, and delight, of witness now falls to us.

For further reading and reflection

Donald H. Juel, A Master of Surprise: Mark Interpreted (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), 107–21.
Biographical Information

John Carroll is Harriet Robertson Fitts Memorial Professor of New Testament at Union-PSCE, where he has taught since 1992 and served as academic dean for nearly ten years. He is perhaps best known for his unique blend of music (trombone), sports (baseball) and humor (puns), although he hopes that his commentary-in-process on the Gospel of Luke (New Testament Library) will eventually compete with those identity markers.

April 5, 2009 - Mark 11:1-11 - Kirby Lawrence Hill

2009-03-06T09:00:00.001-05:00

Gleanings from the Text
Mark 11:1-11

There are interesting juxtapositions that we find in this section of Mark. Immediately before our text is an account of the healing of Bartimaeus, a blind man in Jericho. When he hears that Jesus is passing through, more than once this man shouts, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” He throws off his cloak in coming to Jesus to regain his sight. As Jesus comes down the Mount of Olives, there is more shouting. This time a crowd shouts, “Hosanna,” which in addition to being an expression of praise, is also a call for mercy – ‘Save, now, we pray.’ There is mention once again of their ancestor, David, along with quotes from the Psalm 118. Cloaks are once again mentioned, this time as being placed on the colt Jesus is riding or on the road before him. The pilgrims coming to Jerusalem were gathering for Passover, a celebration of deliverance. Bartimaeus is delivered from his blindness and he follows Jesus on the way; would that we could clearly see what is happening as Jesus enters Jerusalem, so we can follow him faithfully.

Prior to Jesus’ entrance, there are details about obtaining what he would ride into town. Zechariah 9:9 calls upon Zion to rejoice upon the entrance of her king, who triumphantly but humbly rides on a colt, the foal of a donkey. Surprisingly, the account is more descriptive about details of the donkey and the donkey detail sent to obtain it than it is about the entrance into the city. Jesus is very purposeful in how he will enter. “The one who comes in the name of the Lord” stays in Jerusalem just long enough to go into the temple to look around before heading back to Bethany, where he had started earlier in the day. More focus on the temple is yet to come.

Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan suggest there was not only a procession from the Mount of Olives on the east that day, but also a Roman procession entering from the west, which would have had as a focal point the Roman governor named Pontius Pilate. The juxtaposition of these two processions would have set up quite a contrast. One came as an expression of empire and military occupation whose goal was to make sure oppressed people did not find deliverance. It approached the city using horses, brandishing weapons, proclaiming the power of empire. The other procession was quite a contrast, using a donkey and laying down cloaks and branches along the road. The one who was coming in the name of the Lord quietly, but profoundly, proclaimed the peaceful reign of God.

Food for Thought

There are not only challenging juxtapositions in the text, but also in our church observances of Holy Week. If we move directly from a Palm Sunday procession to an Easter parade, we will have missed the story and experience of the passion that is more than a part of the deliverance offered by the One who comes in the name of the Lord. How then can we proclaim our praises with palms and psalms, yet move beyond a focus solely on the procession? Mark emphasizes the mode and the manner of the entrance over the procession itself. How Jesus enters Jerusalem is the focus. Will the way we celebrate that entrance be a further proclamation of the peaceful reign of God?

Sink Your Teeth Into This

My wife went into labor with our first-born right after the worship service on a Palm Sunday thirteen years ago. She was in the bell choir that played that day and we wonder about the vibrations that might have led to the time of a significant entrance into our world. It was a painful, joyous time – an entrance with ramifications we did not fully understand, but that offered great hope. Another interesting juxtaposition – Palm Sunday and new life! What was the baby’s name? Grace!

Works Referenced

Borg, Marcus and Crossan, John Dominic, The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’ Final Days in Jerusalem, HarperOne, 2007.

Biographical Information

Kirby Lawrence Hill is Pastor of Warner Memorial Presbyterian Church in Kensington, Maryland. He graduated from Union Theological Seminary in 1984 and has previously served churches in Memphis and Atlanta.

March 29, 2009 - Jeremiah 31:31-34 - Cathy L. Smith

2009-02-06T09:05:00.001-05:00

Gleanings From the Text

The prophet Jeremiah speaks to dejected people of Israel and Judah. By force they have become semi-free subjects of a Persian King, and they have lost their land. God speaks to these people through a vision that Jeremiah relays to them.

• Covenant - People are reminded of the Old Mosaic Covenant God engineered between them. Due to their ancestors’ inequities of disobeying God, a new covenant will be employed. God realizes the shortcomings of passing a covenant from generation to generation. God says he will establish a covenant that cannot be misinterpreted or forgotten, because it shall be written on everyone’s heart and mind. Jeremiah enacts a future covenant that speaks of God’s mercy. The
catastrophic punishment for disobeying God will no longer exist. God
promises to for iniquity and remember their sins no more.

• Husband - God wishes to remain in an intimate relationship with the people. In Biblical times, the husband was appropriated with overseeing the good welfare and health of the family. Old covenants were broken, and a disappointed God only says “I was their husband”.

• Teach – Torah is the Hebrew word for teachings. The style of teaching God’s covenant to children by their parents has past. God intends to write this covenant so that all will know him.

Food for Thought

Powerful visions enable Jeremiah to become a restoration oracle. Why?
He had broached a new beginning. God’s people are not to think that they have been left abandoned. God sends a message through Jeremiah that was filled with hope when wounded people need it the most. It was a Hebrew belief that suffering was caused by some past transgression.

Jeremiah’s words caused people to lift themselves back up and again. Instilled with a new hope, people began rebuilding, and looking for prosperity.

This is a reminder to all people that everything is from God. God often leads people through disaster, only to bring them out of it. God is going to enable people to remember how to live as God’s people. God is going to empower people to recognize their Lord and Master, the one who secures their lives and provides for them.

It is very easy when reading this pericope, to interpret the hint of Messianic promise as disemboweling the people of Israel and Judah as God’s chosen people. Jeremiah’s prophecy of a New Covenant does not represent a radical disjunction with the Jewish people. Rather, it is a representation of a renewed relationship between God and the people of Israel. It is to be a relationship that will be stronger than those of the past. The New Covenant will embrace everyone in the community of faith. God, not the community will create love and fidelity so that everyone “from the least to the greatest” will know God.

Sink Your Teeth Into This

This passage reminds me of expectations I held, and actual events that transpired. I was offered a position at a church that seemed full of opportunity for a Christian Educator.

Prior to accepting the position I dreamed three times of the Pastor teaching me as a mentor. With my vision for Christian Education firmly in place, I deducted that I was truly called to this position. I was sure that this person undoubtedly had a great deal to teach me!

Nothing is ever as it seems. Teach me, he did! It was not a lesson I wished to learn. There was great mental anguish associated with the lesson. I was not in control, God was. God was using the situation as a means to an end. My “vision” was something other than I expected. Perhaps those people of Judah and Israel were never able to look back upon the New Covenant and have an “ah ha” moment. Yet, with complete faith in God, did they ever wonder who God intended to become chosen?

Works Referenced

Mays, Jarvis L. (et al). (2001) The New Interpreter's Bible: A Commentary in Twelve Volumes (vol. VI). (Nashville: Abingdon Press). P.812

Meeks, Wayne A. (ed) (1993). The Harper Collins Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version with Apocryphal/ Deutercanononical Books. (New Your: Harper Collins Publishers). p.p 1173-1174

Biographical Information

Cathy L. Smith graduated Union-PSCE in May of 2008 with a Masters in Christian Education. She was honored to do a directed study with Professor Henry Simmons in the area of Spirituality and Gerontology. Her FBL topic dealt with Christian Education among Older Adults. Currently, she is gaining her Certification as a Presbyterian Educator.

March 22, 2009 - John 3:14-21 - Jenny McDevitt

2009-02-06T09:04:00.005-05:00

Gleanings From the Text

These oft-quoted verses are part of Jesus’ monologue that flows directly from a dialogue with Nicodemus, a Jewish leader who comes to Jesus by night. The Fourth Gospel sends a mixed message about Nicodemus, a figure many readers identify with through his struggle to understand Jesus’ words. Though the lectionary includes only a section of this narrative, those preaching, teaching or reading this text may find greater insight by considering it as a whole.

“Lifted up” (v. 14) In Greek, the verb encompasses two meanings – “to lift up” and “to exalt” – and John uses both meanings simultaneously. The evangelist refers to Moses “lifting up” the bronze serpent in the wilderness, an act that had healing, life-giving power (see Numbers 21.8-9), then uses the same verb in relation to Jesus. In the Fourth Gospel, glory and exaltation come not only with Jesus’ resurrection, but also with the crucifixion itself – another act filled with healing, life-giving power.

“Eternal life” (v. 15-16) For John, eternal life is a present-tense reality. It is not something we wait for or hope for our future, but something we experience now as a result of faith in Jesus. As Gail O’Day writes, “To have eternal life is to live life no longer defined by blood or by the will of the flesh or by human will, but by God. Eternal does not mean mere endless duration of human existence, but is a way of describing life as lived in the unending presence of God. To have eternal life is to be given life as a child of God.” (See also John 10.10.)

Food For Thought

We run the risk of not hearing what this text has to say to us precisely because we’ve heard it (at least in part) so many times. As Frances Taylor Gench points out, John 3.16 permeates everything from Vacation Bible School to billboards and bumper stickers to Monday Night Football.

The tendency of some Christians to use this verse as evidence only of the urgent need to ‘accept Jesus’ can have an unfortunate consequence of overlooking a central claim. Before we are given any rhetoric about belief or unbelief, we are again reminded of God’s immense love for the entire created order (see also 1.1-18). We are given the choice between light and darkness, between belief and unbelief – but that choice of whether to love God, or not, is ours only because first, “God so loved the world.”

Other potential stumbling blocks exist. Verses 18-20 contain language of condemnation, judgment, darkness, and evil, intimidating concepts at best. But verse 17 assures us: “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” Gench helpfully points out, “God and Jesus do not judge; self-judgment is in view. To John’s way of thinking, we judge ourselves by our response to God’s love in Jesus Christ. Those who receive it receive new life; but those who reject it cut themselves off from ‘eternal life.’”

Sink Your Teeth Into This

Before seminary, I served as the program director of a summer camp. Campers learned a memory verse each morning that they would recite, in cabin groups, prior to entering the dining hall for lunch. One morning, I approached a particularly bouncy child and asked if he knew the verse. “Yes!” he exclaimed. “ForGodsolovedtheworldhesenthisonly . . .” He continued at top speed, each word running into the next. I asked him if he knew what it meant. “Of course,” he said. “It means I get to have lunch!”

We are all invited by God – it is an open invitation, meant “to enlighten every human being” (1.9). Among other claims, this text reassures us that through our faith, we, too, “get to have lunch.” We are given a seat at the heavenly banquet – which begins here and now, in the unending presence of our God.

Works Referenced

Frances Taylor Gench, Encounters with Jesus (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007).
Gail O’Day, “John” in The New Interpreters Bible Commentary Volume IX (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995).

Sandra Schneiders, Written That You May Believe (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2003).

Biographical Information

Jenny McDevitt is a final-level Masters of Divinity student at Union-PSCE. Originally from Michigan, she graduated from Kenyon College with a degree in English (creative writing). Prior to attending seminary, McDevitt worked within camp and conference ministries of the PCUSA. She assures any concerned readers that all campers received three meals per day, whether they remembered bible verses or not.

March 15, 2009 - John 2:13-22 - Esta Jarrett

2009-02-06T09:02:00.001-05:00

Gleanings from Text

Part 1 (vv. 18-22): Unlike much of the monologue-heavy Fourth Gospel, the narrator packs many verbs and objects into a few tight, complex verses (v. 15 especially). We are given the impression of a dramatically chaotic and confused scene, with many people and animals tumbling over each other.

This pericope directly follows the wedding at Cana and sharply contrasts Jesus’ dangerous public activities with his private life. Narrative arrangement is very important; the Fourth Gospel is the only one that places this story at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry.

Part 2 (vv. 18-22 or -25, depending on where you choose to end the pericope): Jesus’ words in the second part play on several interpretative levels. The literal understanding, with the Temple seen as a physical building, is put in the mouths of “the Jews.” The narrator, however, reminds the readers of the truth of the resurrection. As per usual in the Gospel of John, misunderstanding accompanies Jesus’ words.

This story is read in the context of Judaic worship history and the Temple cult, in which animals are brought for sacrifice during Passover. In Jesus’ day, since many people traveled long distances to the Temple, they had to buy their animals in Jerusalem, and were required to exchange their money for the Temple tax into currency of Tyre (since all Roman currency bore the image of Caesar) (Lev. 1, 3).

As opposed to the synoptic versions, Jesus doesn’t call the activities in the Temple a “den of robbers” (Isa. 56.7, Jer. 7.11), instead alluding to Zech. 14.21 with a play on “house” (oikos): his Father’s house has become “a house of trade” or “market-place.” This charge is much more radical an accusation and condemnation than calling it a “den of robbers,” hitting at the very foundation of the cultic tradition, and not just its abuses.

Food for Thought

In this story (read together with 1:51), we learn that God’s locus on earth has moved from the Temple to Jesus’ body. As the entire Fourth Gospel is written from a post-resurrection perspective, this understanding of Jesus’ body and personhood as the Word is a key interpretative lens.

The disciples later remembered Jesus’ words about the Temple being rebuilt. In the Fourth Gospel, “remembering” is an active aspect of discipleship, aided by the Spirit, which leads to faith and deepened understanding (see 12.16). In the confrontation between Jesus and the authoritative figures of the Temple cult, we see that the early church already equated Jesus’ words with the authority of Scripture.

As always in the Fourth Gospel, we must tread cautiously around the text’s history of anti-Semitic interpretation. Most scholars believe that this text was written by Jews, exiled from the synagogue, who believed that Jesus was the Messiah. This is insider language, borne of grief, distance and change.

Sink Your Teeth Into This

This story has been illustrated many times. I’ve seen some paintings that show Jesus poised like a boxer with clenched fists; some that show Jesus enraged, seemingly berserk, swinging a whip above his head; and some that focus instead on the confusion of the money lenders and terrified beasts. All of these scenes are set in the beauty and glory of the Temple architecture, so reminiscent of some of today’s finest churches.

Just as varied are the scholarly interpretations. Is this a demonstration against corruption? A cleansing? A purging? A personal affront? Would we be relieved, confused, or embarrassed by Jesus’ display today, if it happened in our places of worship?

There is a lot of pain in this text, as there is in the PC(USA) and our state and national governments as we undergo times of discernment.

Works Referenced

Dodd, C.H., The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel, Cambridge at the University Press, Cambridge, 1965.

“Jesus Drives out the Money-Changers.” Jacopo Bassano, 16th Century.

“Jesus Purges the Temple at Jerusalem.” Alexandre Bida, 19th Century.

The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol IX: Luke, John; Leander E. Keck (Senior New Testament Editor), Abingdon Press, Nashville, 1995. Pp. 541-545.

The New Oxford Annotated Bible, NRSV with the Apocrypha, Michael D. Coogan (editor), Oxford University Press, 2001.

O’Day, Gail, “John: Introduction,” The Women’s Bible Commentary, Carol A. Newsom and Sharon H. Ringe (editors), Westminster/John Knox Press, Louisville, KY, 1992.

Biographical Information

Esta Jarrett (M.Div., M.A.C.E., and Th.M.), originally from Newport News, VA, is a 2007 and 2008 graduate of Union PSCE. She is currently enrolled in CPE at St. Francis hospital.

March 8, 2009 - Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16 - Becky Purcell

2009-02-06T09:01:00.001-05:00

Gleanings From the Text

Ernest Hemingway once bet he could write a complete short story in six words. He reportedly thought this his best work: “For Sale: Baby Shoes. Never Worn.” The author of Genesis 17 distilled the essence of the entire chapter into the preamble of vv. 1-3a which may be reduced even further into: “God: ‘You LIVE; I GIVE.’ Abraham did.” Not six words, but a biblically complete seven!

When Abram was 99 and could have been thought to have already lived a life, God appeared to him using a special name--El Shaddai. He gives Abram and Sarai new names--Abraham and Sarah. God summons Abraham, and through Abraham his entire family throughout the generations, to live completely. God promises to give to this elderly couple greatly, without measure. El Shaddai means God (El) of the, perhaps, “mountain,” “field,” “guardian spirit,” or even “mother’s breast,” depending upon which biblical scholar you choose to follow. It is a name that in Genesis is always associated with the promise of future generations. The names Abraham and Sarah mean “father of many people” and “princess of many.” God is making a covenant; this covenant is balanced--and reciprocal.

Food for Thought

In verse 1, God commands Abraham to do much more than the NRSV translation conveys with the word “walk.” The Hebrew verb in question in its simplest form does mean “walk” but in Gen. 17:1 the verb is found in its iterative form--it is a hitpael verb. The hitpael describes a repeating action, a back and forth, back and forth, or an ebb and flow, ebb and flow or a continuous, steady repetition. Walk--hallek--here is hithallek, and it means the living of a “life before God in such a way that every single step is made with reference to God and every day experiences [God] close at hand” (Westermann, 259).

Abraham is also to be what the NRSV translates “blameless”--the Hebrew word tamim carries the broader meaning “complete, whole, entire.” God expects Abraham, Sarah and their generations to capital letter LIVE which means live everyday to their full potential in a wholesome relationship with God.

This relationship will allow God to give. The baby shoes Sarah stitched in anticipation of God’s earlier promise (chapter 15) will be worn and maybe even handed down. God will bless this couple with continuing life in a covenantal relationship, and verses 3b-7 detail God’s gifts of abundance (“you shall be the ancestor of a multitude”), honor (“kings shall come from you”), partnership (“my covenant between me and you”) and security (“I will give to you...land”).

This is the deal, the covenant, and Abraham in faith accepts it as we learn in verse 3a--the circumcision detailed in later verses is only a “seal,” as Paul tells us, “of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised” (Romans 4:11). Circumcision is a “religious act,” to use a phrase of Bonhoeffer’s, and, as he writes in one of his letters from prison, “the ‘religious act’ is always something partial; faith is something whole, involving the whole of one’s life. Jesus calls men [and women], not to a new religion, but to life.” God capital letter GIVES a covenant of not rules and rituals that circumscribe but an everlasting relationship continuously, steadily--with a lot of back and forth and many ebbs and flows--calling into existence new life.

Sink Your Teeth Into This

As my youngest babies reached speaking age they each, in turn, gave our eldest a name change that in some way or another spread to others in the family. Jacob was first nicknamed “Jay-bob”; my husband and I became “Dad-bob” and “Mom-bob.” Later, he and his brother were “Bubba” to their baby sister, but the name stuck to the eldest and is still used by our family today. Each of these name changes was a delight to me: they symbolized the promise and potential of a new relationship; they were the birth of a covenant. Each time our oldest son graciously--or uncomprehendingly--accepted the claim.

The Lord our God, in the words of Isaiah 43, redeems us, calls us by name, is with us through the waters, through the fire, honors us, loves us and promises to “do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” God claims us whether or not we comprehend the claim. But, God intends for us the fullness of the covenant. God summons us to live with God in a way that is, as one of our seminary professors daily reminded us, “joy and nothing less.”

Works Referenced

Brown, Driver, Briggs, Hebrew and English Lexicon, Hendrickson Publishers, 2005, pp 236 & 1071.

Lambdin, Thomas O., Introduction to Biblical Hebrew, Prentice Hall, 1971, p. 250.

Ellison, Jesse, Newsweek, February 2, 2009, Vol. CLIII, No. 5, p. 10.

Towner, W. Sibley, Genesis, Westminster John Knox, 2001, p. 164.

Westermann, Claus, Genesis 12-36, Augsburg, 1985, p. 259.

Biographical Information

Becky Purcell is a MACE student in the Extended Campus Program. She lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas where she is an elder in her church, a university professor’s wife, a mother of three and a member of the local school board.

March 1, 2009 - Mark 1:9-15 - Jessica Tate

2009-02-06T09:00:00.002-05:00

Gleanings from the Text

Mark’s first picture of Jesus is baptism, when Jesus joins the ranks of the people the baptized. During this baptism, the heavens are schizo “torn apart.” (Worth doing a word study on!) According to Brian Blount, “In [Mark’s] rendering, this isn’t a comforting metaphorical moment that initiates diplomatic relations between God and humankind; it is a foreboding image of the eschatological schizophrenia human history has now become. … In what on the surface appears to be an historical delusion, in which future hope and present reality can exist together at the same moment, Mark’s baptism story narrates his gospel truth: in Jesus’ life and ministry God’s future is on the move in the human present” (Blount, 20).

Right on the heels of being baptized and named as God’s Son, Jesus is cast out into the wilderness. Immediately, the text says. “Do not pass go, do not collect $200.” Blount writes, “You want to know what happens when you get … touched by the power of God’s Spirit? You don’t sit still and enjoy the view, you don’t lay down and take a nap, you don’t bask in the glory of what great thing just happened to you. You go immediately to wild work. To work for God is to be thrown directly into the path of those who would oppose God” (Blount, 31). So it is for Jesus, for while in the wilderness, he is tempted by Satan.

The final verses of this pericope suggest that the good news that Jesus preaches is the Kingdom of God. The way we live into that kingdom? Repent and believe the good news.

“Repent” (metanoiete) means “to turn around,” to turn away from sin and toward God (McReynolds, 123; Hare, 22). The form of “repent” suggests recurring urgency, something always in the right time and in the pregnant moment (Charles, 37).

“Believe” (pistueo) implies trust and commitment. It is a relational term, not intellectual assent (McReynolds, 123; Hare, 22). In Jesus, the kingdom has come near; in his preaching we are confronted by the kingdom of God itself. The appropriate response is to repent and believe (Williamson, 43).

Each verse in this pericope could be a sermon in itself:
- v. 9: importance of Jesus joining the people in baptism,
- vv. 10-11: significance of baptism as the place where identity is known and claimed,
- v. 11: Jesus as God’s Son…and all the many implications of that statement
- vv. 12-13: being claimed by God results in a time of struggle and test in the seeming absence of God,
- vv. 14-15: proclamation of the good news that the kingdom of God is only a hair’s breadth away,
- vv. 14-15: the calling of us, as the hearers of this proclamation, to repent and believe.

Food for Thought

In the first week of Lent, I think you take a larger view than any of these individual themes. Our 40 days in the wilderness will be the 40 days we spend on the journey to Holy Week. They begin with the announcement that this man who has been baptized (just like the rest of us) is the Son of God. In him, God has literally torn down the barriers between God and us. In him, God comes near to us in the waters of baptism and in that act comes to know us completely. At the same time that we experience this closeness, we know what is to come before these 40 days are up.

We know that we will turn away from God and crucify Jesus, only then to recognize with the Roman centurion that this was God’s Son, in him the kingdom was so close we could touch it.
Despite our turning away, despite our refusal to accept God’s invitation to closeness, God still pursues us. On the day of the crucifixion the curtain in the Temple will schizo; God is again ripping down the barrier between us. Our 40 days in the wilderness is our “test” to accept God’s offer of closeness. It is our chance to say we want the barrier down too.

Sink Your Teeth Into This!

One of the first baptisms I performed was for an infant who wailed the entire time…as I recited the words of grace, as we made promises to her, as we prayed over the water, as the water touched her head… Finally, unable to let the crying continue any further without doing something, and out of my own sense of helplessness for her distress, I said to the child, “this is supposed to be good news!”

God’s action to become close to us, to claim us, to bring God’s kingdom into the present, to call us to participate in that kingdom—good news, to be sure, and yet we’re going to turn away, to be tested. We will hide, ignore, go the other way to the point of crucifixion. With all that in view, wailing may be a very appropriate response. And yet that day around the font, the child’s parents made promises, the congregation made promises, together we remembered God’s promises. Maybe that is our first step in again saying that despite all our failing and all our wailing, we want that barrier down too.

Works Referenced

Brian K. Blount and Gary W. Charles. Preaching Mark in Two Voices. Louisville: WKJP, 2002.

Paul R. McReynolds (ed.) Word Study: Greek-English New Testament. Wheaton: Tyndale House, 1999.

Douglas R. Hare. Mark. Louisville: WJK, 1996.

Lamar Williamson. Mark. Interpretation Bible Commentary. Louisville: WJK, 1983

Biographical Information

Jessica Tate is the Associate Pastor for Christian Formation at Fairfax Presbyterian Church in Northern Virginia.

Feb. 22, 2009 - Psalm 50:1-6 - Brenda Barrows

2009-01-02T15:05:00.000-05:00

Gleanings From the Text
Psalm 50:1-6

The Larger Picture:

This six-verse pericope introduces a prophetic psalm of judgment (see Mays), whose later verses lay out specific charges against God’s chosen people. Psalm 50 goes beyond rebuke and the threat of punishment, directing the faithful to reject mechanical worship and corrupt behavior and to offer sincere thanksgiving and praise for their creator. In this context, it has been pointed out that Psalm 51’s prayer for cleansing and pardon serves as an appropriate confession of sin and commitment to reform along the lines mapped out in Psalm 50 (see Schaefer).

Some Details:

Ecological setting: God calls the entire natural world to witness in the case. The scope of creation’s witness extends from sunrise to sunset (v.1) and from the height of the heavens down to the earth (v.4). Later in the psalm (vv. 10-12), it is pointed out that God owns all of creation, and does not need human sacrifice.

God is not an outsider: It is from within this natural context that God’s glory shines forth in Zion (v. 2) (see “God’s Grandeur,” Gerard Manley Hopkins, http://www.bartleby.com/122/7.html). God uses the forces of nature (devouring fire, whirling tempest) not only to demonstrate power but also to communicate (does not keep silent) (v.3). It even appears that God requires this natural context “that he may judge” God’s people (v.4). It is the heavens that “declare [God’s] righteousness” – witnessing to God’s appropriate role as judge (v.6)

God’s judgment is intimate: The verb translated as “summons” in v.1 of the NRSV accurately reflects the psalm’s legal setting, but that same verb is more commonly translated simply as “calls to,” as in v.4. The God-that-summons calls out personally, “Gather to me my faithful ones, who made a covenant with me…” (v. 5) Further, the verb translated “judge” in v. 4 may carry the connotation of “pleading a case” in behalf of someone (see BDB). If a courtroom scene is depicted by Psalm 50, it is a family council where the judge knows everyone and prefers reformed behavior to vengeful punishment.

Food for Thought

Lectionary readings consistently snip out the hard words of the psalms, leaving only words of praise. There is nothing wrong with praise! However, Psalm 50 demonstrates that God requires worshipers to struggle with the significance of their worship and to move away from mechanically tossed-off prayer, praise, and thanksgiving. By expurgating the hard facts laid out in later verses of Psalm 50, could the lectionary actually contribute to the very type of behavior against which we are being warned?

Sink Your Teeth Into This

Years ago, a new second-career student came to my office to discuss plans for life at seminary. The student remarked that he had already completed a successful career, and was now able to “give something back to God.” At the time, I thought of the parable of the rich young ruler, and wondered if the student knew exactly how much he might need to give up. Today’s work with Psalm 50 brings that past conversation to mind yet again. We have many high achievers at Union-PSCE, and it is a delight to see their varied gifts being polished to serve the church. At the same time, Psalm 50 offers a strong and helpful reminder that each of us owes everything – property, family, personal attributes, the very ground we stand on – to God. We have nothing of our own to give to God – except our gratitude. The astonishing good news is that gratitude is exactly what God has always wanted.

Works Referenced

Brown, Driver, Briggs, Gesenius, The New Hebrew and English Lexicon, 1979. p. 192a.

Mays, James L., Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching: Psalms, John Knox Press, 1994. p. 194

Schaefer, Konrad, Berit Olam Studies in Hebrew Narrative & Poetry: Psalms, The Liturgical Press, 2001. p. 128.

Biographical Information

The registrar of Union-PSCE, Barrows earned her Masters of Divinity degree from the Richmond campus. She works closely with the student body, helping individual students to select their classes and also participating in a wide range of activities including leading chapel worship. Barrows is originally from Salem, Oregon.

Feb. 15, 2009 - 2 Kings 5:1-14 - Catherine Devins

2009-01-02T15:03:00.000-05:00

Gleanings from the Text
2 Kings 5:1-14

2 Kings 2-8 offers a series of folktales that describe miracles of nurture and restoration that provide evidence of Elisha’s reputation and authority as prophet of God, successor to Elijah. Chapter 5 reports two miracle stories that work together as a unit. The first story (2 Kings 5:1-14) describes the healing of a foreigner from leprosy. The sequel or second miracle story (vv.15-27) has a twist on the first story with a greedy Israelite who is given leprosy.

1. Introduction (vv.1-5)

• Naaman is a foreigner, chief military commander of the Aramean army and conqueror of the Israelite army. Tradition suggests that Naaman is the “certain man” who shot the arrow that killed Israel’s King Ahab (2 Chronicles 18:33-34) (see Seow).

• Leprosy described a broad range of skin diseases. Naaman did not likely have the leprosy we refer to as Hansen’s disease, but undoubtedly it was painful, disfiguring or had negative social stigma.

• Hope for salvation comes from a captured, Israelite servant girl who suggests that Naaman could be cured of disease by the prophet from her homeland.

• Naaman prepares an enormously ostentatious gift of persuasion for the healer prophet.

2. First Obstacle (vv.6-8)

• The hapless King of Israel misunderstands the diplomatic letter thinking that he, the King, must perform the miracle of healing: only God has power over life and death.

• Elisha responds: Send Naaman to me that he might know there is a prophet in Israel (vv.7-8).

3. Second Obstacle (vv.9-12)

• Namaan takes his entourage to Elisha. Expecting personalized attention, Naaman is indignant when Elisha dispatches a messenger to tell Naaman to wash seven times in the Jordan.

• Elisha’s instructions are for ritual cleansing (Lev. 13-14)—not healing. Naaman expects more ceremony or challenge. Naaman’s ego is wounded (see Seow).

• National pride is also at stake. He could just as easily have jumped into a clean river in Damascus.

4. Resolution (vv.13-14)

• Naaman’s servants have a different interpretation of Elisha’s command to “wash and be clean.” To Namman’s credit he again listens to the advice of servants.

• Without really understanding, Namaan submits to a simple routine task and washes seven times in the Jordan. Miraculously his flesh is restored to that of a young boy!

Food for Thought

• This miracle story demonstrates the healing power and universality of the Sovereign God of all. Naaman was victorious in battle against Israel (1 Kings 22:29-36) which the Israelites explain as the will of the Lord (see Seow). God’s offer of salvation extends outside the chosen people. Jesus uses this story to highlight the inclusiveness of his ministry to Gentiles (Luke 4:27).

• Elisha’s command and promise require Naaman’s obedience for his salvation to occur. In complying, Naaman learns that God’s salvation comes through the unexpected when we submit to God’s plan, not ours. It was not the Jordan’s miracle properties, but Naaman’s obedience to the prophet’s command and promise that leads to cure (see Fretheim).

• God mediates salvation in unexpected ways—through lowly servants and simple acts, and is symbolized in a baptism.

Sink Your Teeth Into This

This story contains all the elements of good movie entertainment: vivid characters, complex plot, comedy, tension, resolution and message. As I envisioned how the script might be written for the big screen, a colorful cast of characters for the various roles came to mind:

First, cast in the role of Naaman the mighty warrior, is Kelsey Grammar from TV’s “Fraser.” His Dr. Crane character has the right blend of arrogance, pomp and yet humility when his vast ego is inevitably deflated. The goofy, hapless king of Israel, running around ranting and tearing his clothes must be played by the spastic over the top characterization of Jim Carey. Keeping the emphasis on the Word and not the messenger, Elisha the prophet is an authoritative voice-over telling the King to send Naaman to him. In his best, booming, “This is CNN” voice, my pick is James Earl Jones. Finally, we need Radar O’Reilly of "M*A*S*H" fame in the role of Naaman’s servant who points out the simple, obvious truth and anticipates what his master cannot.

Works Referenced

The HarperCollins Bible Commentary. James L. Mays, et al. editors, (HarperCollins Publishers, 1988) p. 296.

Terrance Fretheim, First and Second Kings, (Louisville, Westminster John Knox Press, 1999) p. 153.

Choon-Leong Seow, “1 and 2 Kings.” The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. III. Leander Keck, et al. editors. (Nashville, Abingdon Press, 1998) p. 193.

Feb. 8, 2009 - 1 Corinthians 9:16-23 - Chris Burton

2009-01-02T15:02:00.000-05:00

Gleanings From The Text
1 Corinthians 9:16-23

In this passage, Paul emphasizes responsibility over prestige. He performs a tightrope act with his rhetoric; blending sacrifice with reward and freedom with constraint, in order to optimize his ability to share the gospel. Throughout the text, he is obliged to proclaim the gospel without giving in to boasting. In verse seventeen, Paul brings the notion of “calling” into direct conflict with his volition (see Conzelmann). He notes the ability to receive a reward through one’s volition, yet verse sixteen shows that it is a calling (obligation) that motivates him to proclaim the gospel rather than himself. Paul does not take this fork in the road as an opportunity to condemn rewards; rather he offers a working definition.

“What then is my reward? Just this: that in my proclamation I may make the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my rights in the gospel.” (1 Cor. 9:18) Through this I invite you to consider Paul’s notion that the reward and the call are not mutually exclusive. A reward is found in proclaiming the gospel and this reward is the ability to…proclaim the gospel!

There is a freedom in Paul’s notion of becoming “all things to all people,” (1 Cor. 9:22) that is fostered through the compassion this stance connotes. It promotes versatility within the “called” individual and can generate the necessary amount of empathy that strengthens community.

Food For Thought

These qualities—which may get you labeled a populist in political circles—empower us to meet people where they are. Too often we do not help people with their own problems but offer advice that is too specific to our own plights. Perhaps you know someone who has great potential but is reluctant to follow opportunities because they feel unprepared or unworthy. Or people have developed an impervious image of you and consequently confessed that they “could never do what you do.” What if we were to operate under a duality that allows us to share our experiences in a manner that leads people into their strengths? My struggles with fear may lead you to overcome your anger but I cannot solely focus on fear when you are oppressed by anger. This empathy and understanding is possible when we are operating through obligation and not a personal search for reward. If I am concerned with showing you how good I am and the pursuit of my reward, how can I meet you in your circumstance? Won’t the gospel be impeded by my one-man show?

Sink Your Teeth Into This

Confessedly, my argument is founded upon a belief that proclaiming the gospel manifests itself in the physical realm through empowering people. Simply put, I believe acts of kindness are a suitable conduit for gospel proclamation. It saddens me that our world consistently generates mistrust amongst people. When an act of kindness is performed, people feel obliged to “pay you back” rather than “pay it forward.” Or when asked to perform an act of kindness, people often ask, “What’s in it for me?” This climate has led agents of social gospels to meet individualism halfway and link pursuits of happiness to greater causes. An example of this is a campaign encouraging consumers to buy particular items in order to support the fight against HIV/AIDS. For a while I admired this effort and considered it an ingenious way of forming a symbiotic relationship between the consumer and the cause. (Feel good and do good!) On World Aids Day, I came across a website that blasted this effort and proclaimed, “Shopping is not a solution. Buy (less). Give More.” (see www.buylesscrap.org) Does goodwill lose its merit if one receives something in return? If we are led to feel convicted about feeling good while doing good; should the act of spreading the gospel be purely sacrificial?

I suppose this amalgamation of social gospel and consumerism can lead people to follow their will and give fodder for boasting. I can feel good about myself if my restaurant meal helps fight childhood cancer. My nose may turn up as other coffee drinkers fail to share my passion for “fair-trade” java. Still, I am persuaded that Paul’s message should challenge the saturation of individualistic striving (both the callous and the self-righteous blends). Our challenge to proclaim the gospel equips us with a cohesive force that says, “I am because we are.” (see Blount) I believe it is through a commitment to community that we receive our reward of further opportunities to give.

Works Referenced

Brian K. Blount, ed., True To Our Native Land An African American New Testament Commentary (Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 2007), 291.

Hans Conzelmann, A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, ed. George W. MacRae, S.J. (Philadelphia, Fortress Press, 1975), 158.

Judith L. Kovacs, ed., 1 Corinthians Interpreted by Early Christian Commentators (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2005), 155.

Biographical Information

After graduating from Davidson College, Burton was offered a scholarship to attend Union-PSCE and is already active on campus as a first year student. Before coming to Richmond, he taught in Brooklyn, New York. Burton hails from East Orange, New Jersey.

Feb. 1, 2009 - Mark 1:21-28 - Beverly Zink-Sawyer

2009-01-02T15:00:00.000-05:00

Gleanings From the Text
Mark 1:21-28

Jesus had barely just begun. He had been baptized by John, tempted by Satan, and joined by the first disciples. He had hardly said or done anything at this point in Mark’s Gospel before he found himself in the midst of conflict. And what an unexpected place for that first conflict to occur: in the synagogue on the Sabbath Day.

Jesus had arrived in Capernaum and entered the synagogue to worship and teach—an agenda no different from that of any faithful Jewish scholar. But as becomes obvious very quickly in the Gospels, Jesus did not have to say or do much to find himself in the middle of a confrontation.

This opening confrontation in Mark’s Gospel was prompted by what the NRSV translates as an “unclean spirit.” The unclean spirit, sometimes referred to as a demon, inhabited a worshipper in the synagogue, making the juxtaposition of an unclean spirit with the holiest of places even more startling and offensive. The demon speaks through the man to confront Jesus, in the process not only questioning Jesus (“What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?”) but also identifying him (“I know who you are, the Holy One of God”). When Jesus “rebukes” the demon, the demon is expelled from the man with convulsions and cries.

The final scene is one of amazement on the part of the bystanders, the man’s fellow worshippers in the synagogue. They, too, then recognize Jesus’ uniqueness: that he teaches something new imbued with authority. At that point, Jesus’ ministry becomes public and the object of speculation and testing that would persist to his death.

This text is sometimes regarded as a miracle story, but the real subject of the text, as Lamar Williamson notes, is not the miracle but “Jesus’ authority in word and deed” (Mark—Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching, 49). The “new teaching” of Jesus is evident from the opening of the pericope (v. 22) to its close (v. 27). The exorcism is a demonstration of Jesus’ power, but that power issues from his word.

Food for Thought

Several dimensions of this text offer rich homiletical “food for thought.” The opening verse indicates the primacy of Sabbath practice for Jesus. The Gospels of Mark, Luke, and John all include a synagogue event early in Jesus’ life and ministry. According to this text, the synagogue on the Sabbath is the place where Jesus reveals his radical new teaching and his authority from God. This should remind us of the primacy and the efficacy of worship for us as those who seek to know and follow Jesus.

Another dimension of the text is the uniqueness of Jesus’ teaching. The preacher might explore more precisely what that unique teaching looked like for those who heard that teaching first-hand and what that teaching looks like for us today. How does Jesus’ unique teaching shape our faith and work in our present world?

Jesus’ unique teaching as portrayed in this text issues from the authority of his word, or, more precisely, the word of God proclaimed through him, authority that stands in contrast to the authority of the scribes, the biblical authorities of the day. There is a word of caution here even for the church today, lest we put too much faith in the human teachings of the church and its leaders. “God alone is Lord of the conscience,” as one of our Presbyterian principles declares. God’s message to us as individuals, while perhaps confirmed or interpreted by the church, is ultimately a word from God to our own minds and hearts.

Of course, there are a couple of challenges for the contemporary preacher of this text. One is the demon possession that prompts the incident. While such a literal understanding of the work of evil spirits may seem anachronistic to modern listeners, we all can attest to the presence and persistence of evil in our world in various guises. The good news in this text, however, is that Jesus demonstrated his power to overcome the forces of evil wherever we may encounter them.

Sink Your Teeth Into This

One does not have to look far to find examples of the power of Jesus’ word set loose in our fearful and powerless world. Naming places, people, and situations that have been healed by the power of Jesus’ word would clearly convey the message of this text. I think of the wonderful words of Martin Luther’s great hymn, “A Mighty Fortress,” in conjunction with this text: “one little word” shall “fell” all the evil that threatens “to undo us.” That “word” is the Word of God in Jesus Christ, the identified Holy One, who speaks with the power and authority of God. Who else, then do we need on our side?

Biographical Information

Zink-Sawyer, the Samuel W. Newell, Jr. Professor of Preaching and Worship at Union-PSCE Richmond, focuses on the interaction of homiletics and American religious history with particular attention to women’s preaching. An ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), she served churches in Pennsylvania and Tennessee for 15 years and has served on committees at the presbytery and synod levels. She is editor of the Abingdon Women’s Preaching Annual and author of From Preachers to Suffragists: Women’s Rights and Religious Conviction in the Lives of Three Nineteenth-Century American Clergywomen. She was a Lilly Faculty Fellow of the Association of Theological Schools for 2000–2001.

Jan. 25, 2009 - Jonah 3:1-5, 10 - Thomas W. Currie

2008-12-05T11:15:00.009-05:00

Gleanings from the Text
Jonah 3:1-5, 10

Jonah is a deeply comedic story. It has not always been read that way. Often its interpreters have been preoccupied with discussing the relative plausibility of its “fish story” or, worse, reducing its message to the virtues of inclusiveness and tolerance. According to Matthew, Jesus heard in this story a word of judgment on those who were pestering him for a sign (Mt.12:38 ff.). He claimed that “the people of Nineveh” were, in their day, both more theologically acute and penitentially stricken than “the scribes and Pharisees,” even though “something greater than Jonah is here!” (Mt.12:41)

So what is so funny about Jonah?

Perhaps it is God’s persistence, a divine trait that makes for outlandish humor in a world that thinks it is in control of things. But here it is “the word of the Lord” that comes to Jonah, even “a second time.” (3:1) And as this passage makes clear, it is God who initiates the action, who speaks to both Jonah and the whale (!), as if they were both equally suitable instruments for God’s purpose. And the comedy is not just that God speaks to whales and recalcitrant prophets, or even that God will go to absurd lengths for this purpose, but that it is God’s mercy, not God’s judgment, that represents the most lethal threat to the serious plans and principles we contrive to keep the world in its place.

Food for Thought

The problem is that our serious plans and principles (as well as our cowardly betrayals) keep being interrupted by “the word of the Lord.” We would prefer that God were more silent, reclusive, distant. But God keeps intruding, calling us again and again to speak an impossible word. And the sea is large; the city vast; the corruption well-known. What is the use of such a pointless errand? It takes three days simply to traverse the city, just as it took three days of being hidden in the belly of the beast. Three days. So, each day, Jonah dutifully prophesies, preaching a word of judgment that he has no expectation the Ninevites will heed. In truth, Jonah is not worried about the Ninevites. He expects little from them, as his “sermon” indicates. What he is fearful of is what he should fear, and that is that God’s mercy might well prove greater than the Ninevites’ sin. That is the joker in the deck, the great intrusion that Jonah knows he cannot control.

Sink Your Teeth into This

So Jonah preaches for three days. And of course, the Ninevites repent, and worse, God changes his mind and decides not to destroy them. So? So what is this comedy about? In part the comedy is about the absurdity of trying to run away from God’s grace, but that is only part of the laughter this story invites. It is also rubs our faces in the ridiculous means of God’s grace. If God wanted to forgive the Ninevites, why send this prophet on a fool’s errand; why the burlesque of the whale; why this utterly uninspiring “preaching” (“Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”). Later in this story, Jonah is full of that resentment that knows it has been made a fool of, a begrudging of God’s generosity equal to anything the laborers in the vineyard are capable of. And of course, he is right. God does not play fair. Never has. Which is why Jesus offers Jonah’s sign to the Pharisees in Matthew 12, and finally offers himself as that fool, who is swallowed up for three days, only to be raised to save a world, which God, unaccountably, has chosen to love. The gospel, Flannery O’Connor says in one of her stories, burns away our virtues, which is why it is so shockingly funny and why it takes the divine comedy to save Jonah and the Pharisees and the rest of us from our terrible seriousness.

Biographical Info

Thomas W. Currie is Dean and professor of theology at Union-PSCE Charlotte

An ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Currie served as a pastor from 1976–2001. He has taught courses in theology and homiletics at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary and in extension programs in Houston and Midland, TX. He has a particular interest in the theology of Karl Barth and in the short stories of Flannery O’Connor. He is the author of several articles and four books, including The Joy of Ministry (2008).

Jan. 18, 2009 - John 1:43-51 - Jarrett and Meg Peery McLaughlin

2008-12-05T11:10:00.005-05:00

Gleaning From The Text
John 1:43-51

John 1:43-51, much like the entire first chapter of John, seeks to establish the true identity of Jesus. By the end of the first chapter, the Fourth Evangelist piles on Jesus no less than six messianic titles, including the Word, the Lamb of God, the Son of God, the Messiah, him about whom Moses and the prophets wrote, and the King of Israel. In case anyone was wondering, the Johannine community believes Jesus to be the Messiah (Kysar, 37).

Another striking feature of John’s Gospel is the advanced time-table by which his disciples recognize Jesus as the Messiah. While the Synoptic Gospels show Jesus chronically misunderstood by the disciples, receiving only fleeting glimpses of his true identity, John’s characters see things with crystal clarity. With little narrative explaining why, save for Nathanael, the first disciples of Jesus immediately declare Jesus’ identity with the above-mentioned titles (Brown, 26; Malina, 56). The Gospel of John ends its 20th chapter with a postscript indicating that the entire Gospel was written so that the reader might come to believe the same, that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God.

In this text, the disciples immediately see him as the fulfillment of all that has been promised, and yet Jesus pushes them even further. He goes on to say that he is much more than the Messiah. At the end of the first chapter, after Jesus has been given the name of every Messianic figure imaginable, he uses yet a different title to describe himself – Son of Man. Differing again from the Synoptics, John uses the term Son of Man to speak of Jesus as the bridge between heaven and earth, between divinity and humanity. He blends it with the image of Jacob’s ladder from Genesis 28:12 and identifies Jesus as the “locus of God’s activity on earth” (Keck, 532). This only enhances the powerful claims made by the incarnational hymn of verses 1-14, which claims that the “Word became flesh and lived among us.”

Food For Thought

The clarity with which John’s cast of disciples understands Jesus is a unique gift of this Gospel. Being a disciple is not simply being in the company of Jesus, it is an active recognition of Jesus’ identity. What is similarly astonishing is that they all use different voices, a variety of languages. To John the Baptist he is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world; to Andrew he is both Rabbi and the Messiah, to Philip he is the one of whom Moses and the prophets wrote; to Nathanael he is the Son of God and King of Israel. Not one disciple articulates Jesus’ identity in the same way. Discipleship through John’s eyes entails a clear understanding of who Jesus is to you. And yet, at the same time, Jesus is always enhancing, always adding onto our limited conceptions of him, always revealing himself to us in new ways.

Sink Your Teeth Into This

It seems to us that this text highlights a tension in the practice of discipleship. On the one hand, as followers of Christ, we are called to articulate our Christology (the failure to do so could be named the mainline protestant epidemic). Mark Douglas, Professor of Ethics at our rival seminary, tells about a church that had a thriving ministry to the homeless that was supported by a wide range of individuals and civic organizations. Many of the people who attended the church came because of its social commitments but were fairly uninterested in the Christian faith. As a way of welcoming these people, the ministers and members downplayed the peculiar beliefs and activities of the faith. Over time, the church withered while the shelter they ran maintained its strength. The shelter still exists; the church closed its doors several years ago.

On the other hand, as followers of Christ, we are to be open to where the living Christ continues to reveal himself to us in new ways. When or where has your understanding of Christology been stretched and expanded?

Works Consulted

Raymond E. Brown. The Community of the Beloved Disciple. New York: Paulist
Press, 1979.

Mark Douglas. Unpublished Manuscript, 2008. (Might be called Believing Aloud)

Leander Keck, et al. New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 9: Luke/John. Nashville: Abingdon
Press, 1995.

Robert Kysar. John: The Maverick Gospel. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press,
1976.

Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh. Social-Science Commentary on the Gospel of John. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998.

Biographical Information

Meg Peery McLaughlin graduated from Union-PSCE with a Dual Degree (MDiv/MACE) in 2005. She is currently serving as Associate Pastor of Pastoral Care at Village Presbyterian Church in Kansas City.

Jarrett McLaughlin graduated from Union-PSCE with a MDiv in 2005 and a MACE in 2006. He is currently serving as Associate Pastor of Mission and Young Adult Ministry in Kansas City.

Jan. 11, 2009 - Mark 1:4-11 - Lindy Vogado

2008-12-05T11:02:00.000-05:00

Gleanings from the Text
Mark 1:4-11

–The entrance of John the Baptist in the gospel of Mark occurs right after a recitation of Isaiah, indicating that this messenger’s proclamation of Jesus is the fulfillment of scripture. Indeed, the allusion includes not only Isaiah but also Exodus and Malachi as they describe the coming of a messenger who will prepare the way of the Lord (see Isaiah 40:3, Exodus 23:20, and Malachi 3:1).

–Although the other gospels begin at earlier points in the life of Jesus, an account of Jesus’s baptism by John the Baptist is the first glimpse of Jesus that Mark provides. The scene establishes Jesus’s identity as the Son of God, a theme which is repeated throughout the gospel. While Matthew provides an explanation for why the sinless Jesus would undergo a ritual for the forgiveness of sins (see Matthew 3:14-15), Mark does not address the issue.

–The Greek word, schizō, used to describe the heavens being “torn apart” at Jesus’s baptism is the same word used to describe the tearing of the temple curtain at Jesus’s crucifixion in Mark 15:38. In both places, the word indicates God’s dramatic activity in the world.

–Although this episode alerts readers to Jesus’s identity, the gospel writer gives no indication that anyone but Jesus in the story actually heard the heavenly declaration. The passage identifies Jesus as the one who sees the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending, and unlike the description in Matthew and John, the voice from heaven uses the second person in Mark, indicating that the affirmation is intended for Jesus: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased” (NRSV).

Food for Thought

Salvation in the Wilderness: The theme of wilderness found in both the Isaiah reference and the appearance of John the Baptist reminds believers that God is often at work in times of desolation. Just as God led Moses and the people in the wilderness, so God will lead the people once again through the ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Waters of Baptism: It is in the waters of baptism that the heavens are torn apart and a voice from heaven claims Jesus as God’s son. Although we rarely think of it as having such a dramatic flourish, baptism today still serves as a time when we recognize our being claimed as children of God.

Sink Your Teeth into This

As a former participant and now leader of campus ministry programming, I think a lot about the baptism of Jesus in the gospel of Mark. Although the event is a means of public disclosure in both Matthew and John, only Jesus knows that he has been claimed by God in Mark’s version of the story. For those of us who worship in familiar faith communities, this Markan scenario might seem hard to imagine; after all, we are surrounded by people who have boldly promised to care and nurture one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. For a college freshman who is far from home and in the midst of strangers, however, the thought of being an unknown child of God is often a more familiar reality.

Therefore, I am always humbled as I observe the power of baptism at work in the life of the church’s campus ministries. Just as Jesus’s baptism identifies him as the Son of God, so does baptism still claim God’s children wherever their lives may take them. College students show up at the doors of unfamiliar churches, with confidence because they know a church back home had cared for them before. Congregations give their time and resources to nurture students in their midst, even though they’ve never met the students’ families or perhaps heard of their hometowns. Even without the help of a dramatic voice from heaven, both students and congregations trust that God has claimed the people in their midst, and they work to fulfill the baptismal vows that they trust the church has made. Just as John the Baptist prepares for Christ’s coming in his ministry at the river Jordan, so too do believers as they live out the promises of baptism.

Work Consulted

Douglas R.A. Hare, Mark. Westminster Bible Companion. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996.

Lamar Williamson, Mark. Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. Louisville: John Knox Press, 1983.

Biographical Info

Lindy Vogado is a Third Level Final Masters of Divinity student on the Richmond Campus of Union-PSCE

Vogado began her career at Union-PSCE in the summer of 2005 after attending Presbyterian College in Clinton, South Carolina. She was a 2005 Ministry Fellow with the Fund for Theological Education and spent the academic year of 2007 - 2008 as a student intern in Clemson, South Carolina. Vogado currently serves the Richmond student body as Moderator of the Richmond Student Government Assembly.

Jan. 4, 2009 - John 1:(1-9) 10-18 - Brian Blount

2008-12-05T11:00:00.007-05:00

Gleanings from the Text
John 1:(1-9) 10-18
Literary Context

This material sets the tone for everything that follows. The identification of Jesus as the one who comes from God gives an unparalleled authority to all that he does and says. One expects that someone this special would be immediately identifiable. Clearly, to his followers he was. They declare that they saw in him the glory of God (v. 14). Amazingly, though, the majority who encounter him miss this connection to God. They do, however, acknowledge a special quality. They interpret this quality as something sinister, however, and therefore press toward a destruction that leads to the cross. It is important to note in all of this that though the language is very cosmic, the focus is very earthly. The focus is on how we are to understand God’s engagement with us in our world.

Key Words

Kosmos (world). God’s engagement is in the world, which demonstrates a strong value for the world. God values our human historical existence so greatly that God sends God’s Son to intervene in and save it. This is a crucial counterpoint to those who would see salvation as escape or rapture from the world. Frances Taylor Gench is right to point out that we can therefore not treat the world as evil, by either nature or origin, since the world comes into being through God’s Son and the world is the locus of activity for God’s Son (Encounters With Jesus, 2).

Sarx (flesh). As the locus of the Son’s work, flesh is not to be identified exclusively with carnality and sensuality. As in Hebrew thought, so here, it operates as physical personality. It is neutral earthly existence and not inherently negative.

Logos (Word). In the Hebrew scriptures, Word is the personification of God’s Wisdom (cf. Proverbs 8:25-30; Wisdom of Solomon 7:24-26). It is both God and yet other than God. Wisdom is with God as creation unfolds and it is through Wisdom that creation unfolds. It is this Wisdom, as Word, that takes flesh and engages humans in the world. God’s creative and saving power is put to voice, personified, and given concrete, fleshly expression. As God’s Word, he expresses God, just as our words express our thoughts, our identity, and our intent. He, however, not only speaks for God; he speaks God. He is the language of God lived out in historical expression.

skēnoō (dwell, tabernacle, pitch a tent). This Word engages us in our own realm. God moves to us, temporarily. Yet, the presence is powerful, just as God was a powerful presence when God’s Spirit tabernacled with Israel in the desert (Num 35:35; Jos 22:19).

idion (one’s own). The implication is that humankind belongs to God. God’s Word is therefore meant for them. They are called to be of the same character as the Word, to emulate the Word, to be at work in their world for the same saving purpose as the Word. Unfortunately, God’s own reject the Word instead.

Food For Thought

A picture is worth a thousand words. Here, one Word is worth a thousand words. God’s Word is the fulcrum on which God’s people (God’s own) are pressed into saving action. We “words” are called to emulate and represent God’s Word in how we speak and live.

Sink Your Teeth Into This

This section reminds me of the phrase “Lost in Translation”. God’s Word translates the truth and reality of God’s intention for humankind. We, as God’s own, translate that same intention. I wonder sometimes, however, whether God’s intention is lost as it is conveyed – translated – through our words and work.

Works Consulted

Frances Taylor Gench, Encounters with Jesus: Studies in the Gospel of John. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007.

Biographical Information

Brian K. Blount is President and professor of New Testament in the Walter W. Moore and Charles E.S. Kraemer Presidential Chairs.

Blount assumed the presidency of Union-PSCE in 2007, after 15 years as professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary. Earlier, he served as pastor of the Carver Memorial Presbyterian Church in Newport News, Virginia (1982-88). Blount’s research has focused on the Gospel of Mark, cultural studies and hermeneutics, and the Book of Revelation.

We Go Live on Dec. 5!

2008-11-21T09:49:00.002-05:00

Friends, we are just two weeks away from launching our exciting new enterprise! Come back to this site on Friday, Dec. 5, when we will be posting lectionary musings for all four Sundays in January. As you begin to think about how you will engage the texts for the first month of 2009 – either preaching, teaching, or studying – please drop by and peruse the reflections gathered here. You’ll also be an integral part of the discussion, so feel free to respond with insights and questions of your own – and send a link to your friends and colleagues, so we can have as many voices as possible.

Would you like to be a writer? Give us your feedback.

As of now, we have secured writers almost all the way through March 2009 and we are very interested in finding more. If you would like to schedule a week to write for the blog, please contact Andrew Taylor-Troutman at Andrew.TaylorTroutman@union-psce.edu. We’d also be interested in hearing how you think you might use the site. Would you like to see entries posted weekly? Monthly? We want this to be a resource for the church, so please give us some insight on how we can best serve you in the comments section.

Thanks for your interest – we hope you’re as excited as we are to get underway!

Welcome!

2008-10-13T18:00:00.000-04:00

Greetings, visitors, and welcome to the home of what will soon be the Union-PSCE online resource for lectionary readings. Please check back with us in December when we begin posting content. In the meantime, we are looking for contributors. If you think you could add to the conversation, get in touch with Andrew at andrew.taylortroutman@union-psce.edu