by Rev. Dr. David Neil Mosser

Reflections on the Lectionary Readings for August 2008

        Perhaps there is a good reason to identify August by the name “dog days” as people have over the years.  I heard a speaker suggest that the pejorative name “dog days” for August derives in part from the “Dog Star” Sirius which is most perceptible time to the human eye at this time of year.  It would seem there is a long tradition of thinking of the “dog days” — even Aristotle mentions “dog days” in his Physics.   Depending on one’s habitat in North America August is mostly hot and humid — and miserable.  For children August signals an “eleventh hour” prior to the return to the ordinary school days.

        August seems to be a month without much distinction.  Even in the church’s reckoning of time, we call this part of the Christian year “ordinary time.”  Yet despite all adverse sentiment against the month of August and its reputed dullness, the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) offers preachers some reliable preaching texts, and this is welcome news for those in the pulpit.  Of course, the Gospel staple for RCL Year A is Matthew.  Many preachers will choose to use the Gospel texts for good theological and liturgical reasons.  While we will identify weekly texts from Matthew, we have focused much of our attention on the interesting passages from Genesis or Romans.  Naturally, all texts in our Bible are important, and perhaps some of the passages other than the Gospel readings might have been unjustly neglected in some congregations.

        The overall theme that runs through these RCL lessons for August from Genesis for the first three weeks and then Romans for the final two weeks might be: “Things are not as they seem.”  This is in part due to the truth that human perception sometimes sees things imperfectly on first blush.  Second, theme also alludes to the poem of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, A Psalm of Life, which states:

   Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

   Life is but an empty dream!

   For the soul is dead that slumbers,

  
And things are not what they seem.

        In the enigmatic and baffling world of the Bible, characters who appear to be conquerors like Ahab are soon revealed to be failures.  (1 Kings 22:37-40)  Similarly, some of those who appear to be commoners soon emerge heroic, like the poor widow who put two copper coins in the treasury. (Mk 12:41-44)  The stories in both Genesis and Romans have this much in common — that any human success enjoyed by people must be both surprising as well as predicated on the marvelous grace and mercy of God.  This August is a good time to remember all that God has done and continues to do for God’s people.

August 3, 2008

Genesis 32:22-31; Romans 9:1-5; Matthew 14:13-21

        On this Sunday the Gospel lesson from Matthew concerns the story of feeding the five thousand (see also Mk 6:30-44 and Lk 9:10-17).  The context of Matthew’s narration this “feeding story” occurs between two powerful stories.  First Matthew relates John the Baptist’s death.  Second, Jesus not only walks on the water but also calms the seas — all to the absolute amazement of the disciples.

        The lesson, however, that we will explore for preaching on this Sunday is the text from Genesis — Jacob wrestling at the Jabbok.  A guiding principle as we look at our August texts is simply that “Things are not as they seem.”  In the story, we perceive that Jacob is at the end of his proverbial rope.  Much that is good has happened to him, hence Jacob’s ability to send “his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children,” across a ford of the Jabbok.  This kind of responsibility implies Jacob’s wealth.  Yet we also remember that years before, Jacob tricked Esau out of both his blessing and birthright.  Jacob deceived his father Isaac and then Jacob’s own father-in-law Laban dupes him. In fact, so estranged is Jacob’s nuclear family that his own wives, Leah and Rachel, talk Jacob into fleeing their father.  They run back to Jacob’s people.

        Of course, we remember who is waiting at home for Jacob.  Jacob’s hairy and manly brother: Esau.  Esau has been waiting back at the old home place for many years.  Esau is now much wiser and more mature.  Esau, as we might well imagine, has a serious score to settle with his slightly younger, but obviously more conniving, brother Jacob.

        We look at our Genesis story from the Bible’s point of view: “Things are not as they seem.”  For although Jacob fears for his life and seemingly wrestles to the death, after God puts his hip out of joint and renames him, a certain kind of peace follows Jacob for a time — at least until his own children grow old enough to bedevil him later.

        We all know what it is to wrestle with our own demons, or at least, the demons of someone we love.  Demons come in all shapes, sizes, and forms.  There are the familiar demons of failure, fear, alcoholism, lust, cancer, birth defects, poverty, anxiety, and the like.  That we seem to know so much more about demons than we know about God makes this story itself scary.  Yet, the storyteller of Jacob and his wrestling match is careful not to suggest that the wrestling adversary was a demon.  What the wrestling foe is we may not be sure, but the text makes certain that we know what the partner is not: it is not a demon.  Rather, this story is about blessing, but a blessing that comes with the price of a night-long struggle with a mysterious force that may be a person or a stranger or even Yahweh.  Although the text never mentions an angel’s presence, Hosea 12:2-4 takes this interpretive ploy, when we read the prophet’s words:

        The LORD has an indictment against Judah, and will punish Jacob according to his ways, and repay him according to his deeds.  In the womb he tried to supplant his brother, and in his manhood he strove with God.   He strove with the angel and prevailed, he wept and sought his favor; he met him at Bethel, and there he spoke with him.   (Hos 12:2 4)

        The wrestling partner, our text suggests, is none other than Jacob’s God who has blessed and made promises to Jacob.  On his way home, Jacob is alone with his past and alone with his present.  Jacob faces his future, but the path to this future — across the Jabbok — is blocked only by his relationship with God.  And it is with this God that he struggles valiantly.  In the process of the struggle, this God not only cripples Jacob, but this God gives Jacob a new name.  Perhaps more importantly, Jacob’s clan will get a new name as well.  It is the name of Israel — “he who strives with God.”

        The church has many names, but one with great significance for us today is this name: the New Israel.  It is a name full of ambiguity, full of vagueness.  It is also a name full of promises that can only be fulfilled by God.  Perhaps this wrestling reminds us that: “Things are not as they seem.” 

August 10, 2008

Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28; Romans 10:5-15; Matthew 14:22-33

        Although we will explore Genesis text it is well to note that the lesson from Matthew is the story of Jesus walking on the sea and Peter’s attempt to do likewise.  Jesus then utters an important question of Peter: “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” (Mt14:31)

        After a preacher finished reading Genesis 37 he asked the congregation: “Have you ever felt down in the pits?”  The preacher then proceeded to preach a sermon about depression and mental health issues.  He addressed an important topic and we do need to help folks who suffer from depression.  In fact, I know of a church judicatory that offers assistance to people through what they call the “Depression Network Team.”

        However, my objection to an otherwise fine sermon was simply that this Genesis text has nothing to do with being depressed or “being down in the pits.”  Perhaps a more appropriate text to address a mental health issue of might be 1 Samuel 16:14: “Now the spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him.”  The Genesis text instead has to do with an odd and large family that has difficulty with jealousy and status within a patriarchal family.  Perhaps more than anything else our Genesis lesson for today reminds us that “Things are not as they seem.”

        Next week’s Genesis lesson addresses the much later reconciliation of Joseph and his brothers.  For now we merely suggest why there was such enmity between the brothers that they would plan to murder Joseph, and then fortuitously decide to sell Joseph instead into slavery.

        From the beginning, Joseph had the reputation as something of a dreamer.  In fact, Genesis 37 tells us that the young Joseph had two dreams — dreams that he recklessly shared with his family.  The first dream related to binding sheaves in the field.  The many sheaves bowed down to the one sheaf.  Joseph let his brothers know that he was the sheaf before whom they bowed.  The second dream is like the first, only this time it reveals that “the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me.”  Joseph would have done well to keep his dreams to himself.  He no doubt contributed to the wrath of his brothers.

        But Joseph was not alone in bringing his brothers’ fury down on himself.  Today’s text also reminds us that “Now Israel [Jacob] loved Joseph more than any other of his children, because he was the son of his old age; and he had made him a long robe with sleeves. But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably to him.” (Gen 37:3-4)  Thus, not only did Joseph create the bad blood between himself and his brothers but Jacob did his part as well.

        We all have trouble in our human relationships.  Sometimes our difficulty is because we communicate poorly with other people — or they have difficulty communicating with us.  Sometimes we have problems in our human relationships, especially ones within our own families.  This can be particularly troublesome when a third party enters in and muddies the already turbulent waters of family life.  Counselors call this circumstance “triangulation.”  Triangulation occurs when a person, one who is not part of the conflict at hand, becomes privy to the disagreement.  He or she exacerbates the disagreement by either trying to help or intentionally goading the combatants into further and escalating disagreement.  This triangulation scenario plays itself out in places as diverse as the playground and the corporate boardrooms of big business.

        Yet, at the end of our story and despite the brothers’ complete and well-documented hatred of Joseph, there does appear an element of grace.  This element of grace is another instance of the Bible’s tendency to remind us that: “Things are not as they seem.”  The benevolence may be small, but nonetheless, grace is indeed there.  The brothers decide to sell Joseph rather than to kill him.  (As I said, it may not be much).  But it is enough to keep the story of Joseph moving.  Near the end of Joseph’s story, eventually Genesis reminds all of us of one of the greatest truths of Scripture (that I paraphrase from Genesis 50:20): “Although you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today.”

        I like that part best—as God continues to do for us today!  When things look bleak remember that a God who can resurrect Jesus from the dead is a God who can make a world in which “Things are not as they seem.”

August 17, 2008

Genesis 45:1-15; Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32; Matthew 15: (10-20), 21-28

        After laying a great deal of groundwork on the theme “Things are not as they seem” we will address the remaining text in much more compact fashion.  The lesson from Matthew for the day addresses the overarching theme of defilement.  The actual suggested preaching text from Matthew’s Gospel has to do with casting out a demon from a Canaanite woman on Jesus’ pathway to Tyre and Sidon.

        Moving to our main focus this week, Genesis 45:1-15 reminds me of something the noted short story writer Flannery O’Connor once wrote: “A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way . . . You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate.”  A trusty preacher might choose on this day to simply tell the vivid story of Joseph in Egypt.  In doing so the preaching would trust the story and the congregation to derive essential theological implications.

        For preachers who are so inclined to deep reading on textual themes, I recommend the four book novel that Thomas Mann wrote based on the Joseph story.  In addition, Abingdon Press’ The Storyteller’s Companion to the Bible: Genesis is a particularly excellent Genesis resource.  A wise preacher knows when a story is so compelling that but to tell it is enough.

        The high points of the story, from the selling of Joseph to his revelation of his identity to his brothers in Egypt, occupy about six chapters in Genesis.  The story begins in resentment but it ends in the preservation of God’s people.  There is a hand at work here that is far greater than the actors.  God’s promise lives on despite the players.  Joseph tells his brothers, “Fear not!  What you meant for evil, God meant for good.”  Could this be yet another case of our theme: “Things are not as they seem?”

August 24, 2008

Romans 12:1-8; Matthew 16:13-20

        In this week’s Gospel, Matthew portrays Simon Peter’s legendary confession of faith at Caesarea Philippi: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”  Clearly this goes well with the theme “Things are not as they seem.”  Matthew tells his audience of a peasant carpenter, born in a manger in a backwater region, who ends up being the savior of the world.  But for our purposes, we will continue to concentrate these final two Sundays on Paul’s Epistle to Rome, chapter 12.

        As most of us know, Pauline scholars for years have argued that the first eleven chapters of Romans were pure theology.  These eleven chapters outlined how Christians could understand their place in salvation — as well as that of the Jews and of God.  Some theologians suggest that beginning at chapter twelve Paul’s writing is no longer strictly theology.  This, of course, is because chapter twelve begins an ethical (or technically a “paranetic”) section of the Epistle.  This term comes from paranesis (see Michael Monshau’s article in this issue for more about paranesis) which is an ethical, moral, or practical teaching that derives from doctrine.  This section presents the practical outcome of the theological reasoning that preceded it.  In a sense all paranesis is an answer to the crowd’s query in Acts 2:37: “What should we do?”

        As Paul begins Romans 12:1 “I appeal to you therefore” this becomes a phrase which introduces a large section that exhorts believers to pursue what is good.  This verse ties the whole of the letter together.  The “therefore” suggests that everything Paul is to write from now on is based on the theological principles and affirmations that Paul wrote about in the first eleven chapters.  Paul’s appeal identifies who God calls believers to be, how they should value themselves and their place in the larger social order, and what believers are called to do.  Remembering the theme, “Things are not as they seem” here is a characteristic story about Dorothy Day.  This story illustrates what it means to “not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned,” as Paul suggests.

        In his book, Dorothy Day: A Radical Devotion, Robert Coles tells an anecdote from his time as a college student in New York City.  He went to see Dorothy Day at the Catholic Worker soup kitchen. When he arrived, he was directed to a room where Dorothy Day was sitting at a table with another woman.  Coles waited impatiently for Day and describes the scene:

        I found myself increasingly confused by what seemed to be an interminable, essentially absurd exchange taking place between the two middle-aged women.  When would it end — the alcoholic ranting and the silent nodding, occasionally interrupted by a brief question, which only served, maddeningly, to wind up the already over-talkative one rather than to wind her down?  Finally, silence fell upon the room.  Dorothy Day asked the woman if she would mind an interruption.  She got up and came over to me.  She said, “Are you waiting to talk to one of us?”  One of us: with those three words she had cut through layers of self-importance, a lifetime of bourgeois privilege, and . . . told me . . . what she herself was like.

        Robert Coles certainly learned that “Things are not as they seem.”

August 31, 2008

Romans 12:9-21; Matthew 16:21-28

        In our final Sunday of August, Matthew recounts Jesus teaching the disciples of what discipleship consists.  Naturally, Peter rebukes Jesus and the Messiah’s severe terms.  Jesus naturally — not gently — puts the impulsive Peter in his place. 

        But as we turn to Paul and Romans 12:9-21 we note the previous “therefore” of verse 1 that serves to remind the believers that all that Paul appeals to them about comes from the previous gift of grace that God provides in Jesus Christ.  It is simply by the “mercies of God” that anyone could do these “almost superhuman feats” that Paul appeals to them to do.  As one reads the whole text, what is urged on believers is truly remarkable.  These feats that Paul appeals to the believers in Rome to accept as styles of life obviously include letting love be genuine.  Yet, this letting love be genuine differs from how many people understand and practice love — something for our own gain as we manipulate our relationship with others.  In addition to “hating the evil and holding fast to good,” the ability of believers to do such things requires more that mere native courage and skill.  It requires the mercies of God.

        The point of preaching the gospel of God is simply to appeal to human beings to become more than the sum of their base instincts.  Jesus came to give abundant life and in this final part of chapter 12 Paul tries to inspire the community of faith to be different from those who have been fashioned by the world.  In order to become the people of God, believers themselves are free to embody the theme that “things are not as they seem.”  It is unnatural for people who subscribe to the theory of the “survival of the fittest” to “bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.”  By living in God’s grace and mercy, believers with God’s help can truly, “overcome evil with good.”

        Rev. Dr. David Neil Mosser is the senior pastor of First United Methodist Church of Arlington, Texas.  In addition to a Master of Divinity degree, he holds an undergraduate degree in political science and a Ph.D. in rhetoric.  He is an Adjunct Professor of Homiletics at Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University.  Dr. Mosser is the author of First Fruits: Fourteen Sermons on Stewardship and Just in Time.  He is also the editor of the popular Abingdon Preaching Annual series (since 2003). His most recent work, published by Westminster/John Knox, is Stewardship Companion, a commentary on the Revised Common Lectionary with an emphasis on stewardship.