Looking at Leadership and the Law
The central unifying theme of the lectionary texts this month comes from the narrative arc of the Hebrew Scriptures, as Moses leads the Jewish people from Mt. Sinai on to his final glimpse into the Promised Land. In four sections of this epic Biblical narrative, we find stories that challenge us as pastors and preachers to interpret these stories in meaningful ways for our congregations. Coming during the final month of the campaign for the American presidency, these passages offer us a uniquely timely opportunity to contrast the challenging and multi-faceted Biblical sense of leadership with the concepts of leadership coming from the presidential candidates and the pundits. Leadership was, is, and will always be of vital importance in the public arena as well as in the realm of faith. As the nation prepares to go to the polls to select new leadership for what is surely a particularly difficult period for our nation and the entire global community, the complex relationship between God, chosen leader, and community are on everyone’s mind.
It is not too difficult this month to see a unifying thread running through many of the readings. In exploring the concepts of leadership and the law both the Psalms and the Epistles speak to aspects of these themes. The gospel readings from Matthew also strongly support preaching that examines some of the most profound aspects of leadership including justice, generosity for all, and perseverance in the face of opposition.
October 5, 2008
Ex 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20; Ps 19; Phil 3:4b-14; Mt 21:33-46
This week’s texts center on divine law. It begins in the story of Moses receiving the Decalogue, and then in the psalm, where the writer intones, “the law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.” It concludes with a prayer for righteousness, asking, “Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” This pursuit of a life lived within the bounds of God’s commandments is central to the Jewish understanding of righteousness and provides the basis for Paul’s reinterpretation of it in the epistle reading.
In Philippians, the apostle Paul lays claim to having been “blameless” under the law, not as a means of self-aggrandizement, but as a way of pointing to the grace given to him through Christ, with the clear understanding that this grace is not for him, alone, but that it is also available to all who would believe.
For the modern Christian, there are tensions in Paul’s juxtaposition of law and grace. As Christians, we no longer understand ourselves to be bound by the Jewish legal codes: we do not keep kosher, immerse ourselves in the mikvah, or concern ourselves about the fiber content of our clothing. We see these rules as being historically and culturally important for the Jewish people, but not religiously binding for us. Even so, we find that certain of these codes still find expression in more conservative settings of the church, where women occupy a secondary position in the church or where gay and lesbian people are excluded from the fellowship of the church. This week may be an opportunity for more progressive clergy to preach about the changing understandings of the Holiness Codes, while others may prefer to take a more traditional approach by focusing on the final verse’s image of pressing on “toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Jesus Christ.”
In light of the national political debate with both candidates vying to wear the mantle of change, the week also invites an examination of what is enduring and what is subject to change when we look at Scripture and tradition.
October 12, 2008
Ex 32:1-14; Ps 106:1-6, 19-23; Phil 4:1-9; Mt 22:1-14
The Exodus text presents the story of the golden calf as the classic example of how quickly God’s people can turn away into sin. It is only Moses’ intercession on behalf of the Israelites that convinces God not to destroy all of the people, though the continuation of the pericope through verse 29 includes the destruction of the two tablets of the law and the slaughter of three thousand of the errant Hebrews. The Psalm echoes this story, with a recounting of the wilderness wandering and of God’s punishments in the omitted verses.
In Philippians, Paul urges the church to remain steadfast to what they have been taught, a clear contrast to the fickleness of the Hebrews who grew tired of waiting during Moses’ time on Mt. Sinai.
Matthew’s Gospel has similar themes, with Jesus comparing the divine realm to a king who gave a wedding banquet. Those who were invited refused to come, ridiculing the servants who bore the king’s message and even killing them, so the king executed vengeance on the murderers and then opened the doors to the banquet hall so that people could come in from the streets. Verses 11-14, with the guest being thrown out because he isn’t properly dressed, are the remains a separate parable that Matthew appended to the first wedding parable, and are best ignored in preaching this text in conjunction with the rest of the lectionary.
In the midst of the worsening economic crisis much of the discussion centers on the worship of profits that based on sound principles. That the First Testament passage deals with how readily people will worship an idol of gold, even though they know in their hearts that it is a false idol, invites some thoughtful probing and preaching with “with the Bible in one hand and The New York Times in the other.”
October 19, 2008
Ex 33:12-23; Ps 99; 1 Thes 1:1-10; Mt 22:15-22
In the aftermath of the Golden Calf debacle, Moses prepares to lead the people into the wilderness, but seeks a sign from God. God agrees to allow Moses to see God’s back, but not face, saying, “You cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.” In the Gospel, Jesus is asked whether it is lawful for Jews to pay taxes to Caesar and holds up a denarius, showing the face of Caesar and telling his hearers to “give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to Go the things that are God’s.”
The contrast between God’s refusal to show God’s face and the graven image of Caesar’s face on the coin are in stark contrast to one another and point to the worship of Caesar as a god in Roman society, in contrast to the worship of Yahweh by the Jews.
Again, we find tension with this text in our American context, particularly given the furor in recent years regarding the placement of “In God We Trust” on our money, and the inclusion of “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance to the nation’s flag. It is easy for us to conflate the ineffability of God with the quasi-religious power of the nation-state, yet Jesus shows us that our loyalty is not to Caesar, or to any other created image, but to the God who created heaven and earth.
Several recent books and surveys have focused on the fact that many young people say that they do not want to be affiliated with any organized Christian church because the church has become too closely identified with high profile politicians and clergy espousing a very narrow and very specific political agenda. How do we speak to this notion? How do we differentiate the role of the church to be prophetic and to “speak truth unto power” from the role of explicitly secular political organizations?
October 26, 2008
Deut 34:1-12; Ps 90:1-6, 13-17; 1 Thes 2:1-8; Mt 22:34-46
Martin Luther King, Jr., famously preached from this passage of Deuteronomy in his “I’ve been to the mountaintop” sermon on the eve of his assassination. It is all but impossible to read this text without remembering images of the pastor and community organizer whose work did so much to reshape our nation, though he never lived to see the results of his work.
Those of us who have children or grandchildren can envision the future to which they will be heirs; even through we know that we cannot join them in that future. This combination of vision and mortality leads us to a sense of purpose and of hope that helps us to understand that the legacy of our leadership lives on in others, even after our death.
The teachings of Moses and the other prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures are echoed in Jesus’ boiled-down summary of the commandments, “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind,” and “love your neighbor as yourself.” Here we see the continuity of teaching that has been handed down from generation to generation, but reinterpreted for every age.
In many churches, this Sunday is celebrated as Reformation Sunday, which offers the chance to reflect on the spiritual leaders of past ages who were able to look out from the mountaintop and see a glimpse of where Christ’s church is headed, but who were not able to make the journey with us. These texts work well with such an historical celebration, but they also remind us that the journey is never finished and that we are to be, in the words of the Protestant reformers, ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda.
Again, with the national election dominating people’s thoughts, the readings invite thoughtful preaching on the twin themes of leadership and change, especially in the larger context of taking the long view of things rather than focusing on the immediate.
