by Kirk Woodward

Reflections on the Lectionary Readings for September 2008

        Preaching from the Old Testament always presents difficulties for the Christian minister.  There is no point pretending that everything the Hebrew Scriptures say carries over directly from one era to another. How then can we most effectively preach from the Hebrew Scriptures?  It can be useful to see them as part of a continuum, and this month’s lectionary readings lend themselves to that approach as the oldest readings (from Exodus) and the latest (from Matthew) bracket a series of increasingly radical pictures of what God demands from us, and what God offers us.  Jesus takes the lessons of the Old Testament and challenges us to take them even further.  When we read the passages in this way we find that they move from historical situations to the most inner and personal concerns of our lives, and whether we look without or within, we find waiting to meet us a God of infinite mercy and help.

September 7, 2008

Exodus 12:1-14; Ezekiel 33:7-11; Romans 13:8-14; Matthew18:15-20

        It is less popular in the church than it used to be to remind people of responsibilities.  In an age when faith is considered an option and the selection of a church a purely utilitarian choice, the idea that the church would actually insist that we do something seems farfetched.  Yet today’s readings are all about responsibilities — not God’s responsibilities, but ours.  The passage from Exodus may serve as a form of touchstone.  It is a series of instructions that sound outmoded to our modern ears, if they are of any interest at all to us, it is simply as anthropological curiosities (“do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted over the fire”).  But the context of the verses is anything but academic — it is a matter of life and death, where doing what God says leads to salvation and ignoring God’s commands leads to death.  If such a vision is not modern, so much the worse for modernity.  It may be useful to remind our congregations that if God says something, perhaps we should consider taking it seriously.  After all, as Ezekiel says, God is not interested in destroying the wicked, but in turning them — and us — around.

        Paul carries on the theme of responsibility with one of those concluding sections in his letters that by its series of instructions appears to side with “works” rather than “faith.”  But where Exodus presents a series of ways of handling things, Paul’s instructions are frankly non-material (“make no provision for the flesh”).  He tells us that to live with love is to obey the other commandments; he tells us to “live honorably;” he tells us to keep Jesus as close to us as we do the clothes we are wearing.  How different is this viewpoint from that of Exodus, and yet how much the same!  If our understanding of what God requires of us has to some extent changed, the fact that God has the right to require particular behavior from us has not.

        And to confirm this point we have in Matthew one of the rare times Jesus talks about discipline in the church.  We need to acknowledge that the historical authenticity of this passage is often disputed because it resembles little else in the Gospels.  It’s references to the “church” are highly unusual, and it does not sound much like Jesus as we tend to think of him.  Perhaps it is an interpolation; or perhaps Jesus is telling us something special.  The issue again is one of behavior, and Jesus holds the church (that is, the “community”) responsible for insisting on standards of behavior within itself.  If those standards are not met, “let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”  Do we now feel justified in our negative feelings toward certain people?  We might ask our congregations what they know of the ways Jesus treated Gentiles and tax collectors.  He ate with them, he saw the potential in them, and he died for them!

September 14, 2008

Exodus 16:2-15; Genesis 50:15-21; Psalm 103 🙁 1-7), 8-13; Matthew 18:21-35

        This week’s readings begin with one of the most dramatic passages in the entire Bible, the parting of the Red Sea for the Israelites and the subsequent drowning of Pharaoh’s army under the returning waters.  Most of the congregation can be counted on to have seen the event as presented in Cecil B.  DeMille’s The Ten Commandments.  Finally, a Bible passage with which people can be assumed to be familiar!  They may also be familiar with discussions about whether “Red Sea” really means “Reed Sea,” whether the wind blew the waters apart, and whether in fact the water was not that deep to begin with.  We may want to remind the congregation that the story is not about Moses, wind, water, or anything else of the sort.  It’s about God’s ability to rescue us.  Exodus tells us that there is no limit to God’s power to save.

        What do we need to be saved from today?  If we could poll our congregations, what would top the lists of requests to God?  We would find petitions for all sorts of rescues, and we should not be afraid to spell out the fact that the Bible says God’s power is unlimited.  The story of Joseph reminds us that God can work within the worst possible situations: “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good.” But this very observation points us in a perhaps unexpected direction: what we need most, our remaining readings say, is not rescue from something external, but from our own sins and shortcomings.  Psalm 107 explicitly makes this link.  It reminds us of the way God appeared to Moses, but it also tells us that “as far as the east is from the west, so far God removes our transgressions from us.”  If the church uses a public prayer of confession as part of its service, that prayer may be useful as a teaching point here, helping us to go past rote recitation of unowned sins to a sense that our deepest need is for God to set us right.

        Jesus confirms the point in one of his astoundingly simple and yet bottomless parables.  It is worthwhile to remind the congregation now and then what a unique storyteller Jesus is.  Challenge the listeners to try to sum up so much vital information in such a short space, and with such clarity!  People of any era and any culture can understand Jesus’ stories.  There is no one like him.  In today’s parable we can see ourselves in both aspects of the slave who owes the ten thousand talents.  We are both the sinner under the heavy weight of our own shortcomings and faults, and the sinner who refuses to forgive others in the same way that we beg to be forgiven.  Who do we identify with more?  Are we more the person aware of our deep need for forgiveness, or the person determined to be “on top” at the expense of others? 

September 21, 2008

Exodus 16:2-15; Jonah 3:10-4:11; Matthew 20:1-16

        “The Israelites said, ‘If only…’”  There will be plenty of people in the congregation — and perhaps in the pulpit — who are saying inwardly the same thing.  As one person remarked recently, “I keep praying, ‘Forgive us our debts,’ but they keep mounting up!”  In these stressful economic times the idea that God can supply our needs is a direct challenge to our ability to believe.  A starting point for today’s reading from Exodus is the fact that Moses’ congregation was probably even more skeptical than we are — and it had seen God’s miracles first-hand!  God meets the challenge of the Israelites head-on.  How willing are we to believe that God will do the same for us?  We can also point out that the way God meets the needs of the people in the desert is unexpected — as it typically is.  God has resources we can not imagine.  Is it so surprising that God can point them in our direction?

        But the selection from Jonah puts the issue of God’s supply in a much larger context.  Was there ever a religious book more skeptical of its own religion?  Jonah is perfectly happy for God to meet his own needs in miraculous ways, but he deeply resents God’s desire to do the same for others — particularly those he considers undeserving.  As the saying goes, hell is where God would send people if He knew as much as we do.  We may want to urge the congregation to think about who we would prefer did not receive God’s blessings.  Who are the people we think — or hope — are out of the reach of God’s mercy and love?  It is the rare saint who does not have a list.  Jonah can only resent God’s concern for the thousands of people in Nineveh — and the animals!  Even worse, he resents the fact that God insists that Jonah be the one to deliver God’s help.  Where have we drawn the boundaries on our own sense of mission?

        And Jesus expands the context of the discussion even further.  He knows us so very, very well.  He looks at our natural tendency to assume that we belong at the front of the line, and that God will make sure that is where we are.  Jesus attacks this impulse to put ourselves first with a story so offensive that it is one of the few parables in my experience that does not automatically set heads nodding when it’s told.  What the landowner does is so obviously unfair!  He ought to pay people according to how much they work.  Instead he insists on sharing his benefits equally — which is to say generously, based on his desire to bless rather than to rank.  Can we challenge the congregation to face the scandal of this parable openly?  It serves as a rough-and-ready test of our love.  If we see things as God does, we will want everyone to be blessed.  “The first will be last” because those closest to God’s way of thinking will be eager for others to receive the greatest possible blessings.  If we do not feel this way, then the Holy Spirit has got a job to do on us.

September 28, 2008

Exodus 17:1-7; Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32; Matthew 21:23-32

        “The wilderness of Sin!”  We know it is only an accident of language that makes the phrase strike us so forcibly, but how evocative it is!  Sin is in fact a wilderness, and we wander in it just as the Hebrews wandered in the desert.  One of our missions is to help the members of our congregations find the way out.  We can start with the negative example in Exodus, reminding the church that although the story initially looks like other incidents in which the Hebrew people complained in the desert, in fact this morning’s reading tells of a pivotal episode, referred to again and again throughout the Bible.  It is a sort of “second fall,” a time where the people went too far.  It is as a result of this incident that Moses is not allowed to enter the Promised Land in his lifetime, and it is not entirely clear what he does to deserve that punishment.  The basic point is clear, though: doubting God does not get us anywhere.  We may think we are shaking our fists at the universe, but in fact we are being petulant and quarrelsome.  It is worth noting that God gives the people water anyway.  God does not break promises.  But we have our own roles to play, and they do not involve complaining.  What do we think our roles are?

        Ezekiel underlines this question with another extremely significant passage.  The congregation may not realize that what Ezekiel says appears to contradict the well-known belief that the sins of the fathers are passed down through the generations.  In a psychological sense this is true, as we have often seen to our sorrow.  But in the spiritual sense, Ezekiel says, each of us is responsible for our own individual lives.  “It is only the person who sins that shall die.”  Our listeners can be reminded how radical this concept is.  It is a clear statement of personal responsibility.  It is also an extraordinary statement of hope.

        Some in the congregation may think of “the Old Testament God” as a gloomy, destructive figure.  Ezekiel rejects this conception utterly.  “‘I have no pleasure in the death of anyone,’ says the Lord.”  Instead, God wants only the best for us.  Can we shed our notions of a retributive, tit-for-tat God and replace them with a vision of a God who sees the best in us?  “Turn, then, and live!”

        Jesus goes further in Matthew.  Our “turning,” he says, must be more than words.  He tells us this in the simple but indelible story of the two sons, one of whom says he will go to work but does not, the other of whom says he will not work but does.  Jesus explicitly connects this second son with the worst kind of sinner, who, he says, is getting into the Kingdom of Heaven ahead of those who only offer lip-service.  The “tax collectors and prostitutes” have one enormous advantage over the “good” people: they know how short they fall of what God wants them to be.  They have enormous motivation to change their lives, because otherwise they have no hope at all.  Quite often we in church are the people whose words say “Yes, yes,” while our lives say “No, no.”  We may even be confident enough in our own innate goodness not to feel too much at risk when facing God.  Jesus tells us that this confidence is an illusion.

        How is Jesus calling this congregation — collectively and individually — to “turn?”  In what directions of forgiveness and service?  Where do we have to match the “yes” of our words with our deeds?