Reading Luke 13:31-35

A reading for the second Sunday in Lent: Luke 13:31-35

This is one of those texts that makes following the the Revised Common Lectionary a challenge. Often we people speak of the discipline of the lectionary, they talk about the way it forces you to deal with “hard” texts like divorce and carrying your cross and hating your mother. But it is texts like this one that I find the most challenging.

When I preach, I try to find a way past lecturing about a passage. I don’t want to educate people about the Bible, I want to preach a message that comes out of the Bible but gets as close to the gut and as far from the head as possible.

With texts like this one, I have a hard time doing that. I have a hard time opening up questions that speak to the spiritual state of the congregation. The closest I come feels like missing the heart of the text: Jesus did today’s work today and did not let what was coming down the road intimidate him.

I think of the hymn “Work for the Night is Coming.”

There is a sermon in there somewhere, but this week I think I’ll end up preaching on Philippians.

God in the lectionary gaps

It is fascinating how much the God of Scripture makes us uncomfortable.

This thought came to me as I was working up my summer preaching plans based on the Revised Common Lectionary. I will be preaching through the Old Testament lectionary selections that highlight some of the major points in the story of David.

What I noticed as I was listing the texts was how often they left gaps in the readings. The lectionary often suggests we skip over several verses in the  middle of a long passage. I’ve learned in my brief preaching career that such gaps often indicate “difficult” passages — things that might be tough for a preacher to work with or for a congregation to process. (I generally find the passages much more interesting when the excised portions are put back.)

For instance, on July 8 the lectionary offers us 2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10. This is about David’s taking the throne of Jerusalem. What the reading leaves out, however, is his conquest of the city. Here are the excised verses:

6 The king and his men marched to Jerusalem to attack the Jebusites, who lived there. The Jebusites said to David, “You will not get in here; even the blind and the lame can ward you off.” They thought, “David cannot get in here.” 7 Nevertheless, David captured the fortress of Zion —which is the City of David.

8 On that day David had said, “Anyone who conquers the Jebusites will have to use the water shaft to reach those ‘lame and blind’ who are David’s enemies.[a]” That is why they say, “The ‘blind and lame’ will not enter the palace.”

I do not deny these verses present some challenges to the preacher, but I do not see why they should be skipped over in the pulpit.

Nor do I understand why the reading for July 15 leaves out these verses:

6 When they came to the threshing floor of Nakon, Uzzah reached out and took hold of the ark of God, because the oxen stumbled. 7 The Lord’s anger burned against Uzzah because of his irreverent act; therefore God struck him down, and he died there beside the ark of God.

8 Then David was angry because the Lord’s wrath had broken out against Uzzah, and to this day that place is called Perez Uzzah.[e]

9 David was afraid of the Lord that day and said, “How can the ark of the Lord ever come to me?” 10 He was not willing to take the ark of the Lord to be with him in the City of David. Instead, he took it to the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite. 11 The ark of the Lord remained in the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite for three months, and the Lord blessed him and his entire household.

Or finally, why does the reading for August 12 hide Joab’s complicity in the death of Absalom?

My theory is that these readings make the life of the preacher hard. They are difficult texts because they demand attention. In the case of the death of Uzzah they challenge our comfortable notions about who God is and what God is capable of doing at any moment. We want to keep God in a box, and when he breaks out of that box, we protest.

But these are not just messy texts about God. They are messy texts about us as well. The cut out portions show us places that our human life gets ugly or conflicted. They show us “men of God” doing things we don’t consider all that holy, only this time no prophet comes stomping into the throne room to call them on it.

Many Christians would defend the editing of the lectionary readings by taking account of biblical scholarship that says the Scriptures come to us as human products. They give us an edited God who has been created to advance certain theological and ideological agendas.

I’m sure the arguments are persuasive, but I find them uninspired and uninspiring. Being a people of one book means affirming that the God revealed in Scripture — even the hard texts — is God. He confronts, challenges, and tests us precisely because he is not the God we would choose. Instead, we are the people God chooses and calls.

Lectionary reflections – Mark 1:29-39

They all came to him
The whole city was gathered around the door
He retreated
They hunted him
Let us go …

To me, the clear issue here is that word gets out about Jesus the miracle worker, and he is besieged by people. Broken, hurt, demon haunted people throng around him and the house he is in. It gets to be so much, eventually, that he flees. In the morning when it is still very dark, he heads out to a deserted place to pray.

But they hunt him down.

We can’t blame the people for this. They are sick and need healing. And he is the healer. But we understand Jesus, too.

Even the Son of God needs balance. He needs to pray.

Is there a message here about works of piety and works of mercy? Maybe. The bigger issue appears to be getting bogged down in one place. The needs are so great in Capernaum that he could stay there and never leave. He would not run out of hurt people.

But he came to proclaim the message to all the towns. He came to spread this message as wide as he could, to everyone who would hear it. He did not come to settle in where the people needed his healing power. He came to move about where people needed to hear his message.

On the move.

Being an introvert, I relate to the feeling like you need to get away. I can imagine Jesus sneaking away from Simon Peter’s house in the wee hours of the morning. The moon lighting the street where people lay down outside the door of the house. I can see him picking his way over and around sleeping children and adults. He had to get away, to an empty place, where he could pray.

Demi Moore and the unclean spirit

I don’t often comment on pop culture, but something attributed to Demi Moore caught my eye today. Moore is an actress who is in the news right now after a high-profile divorce and hospitalization for “exhaustion.”

In an interview published last week, she said this:

Demi added: ‘What scares me is that I’m going to ultimately find out at the end of my life that I’m really not lovable, that I’m not worthy of being love. That there’s something fundamentally wrong with me.’

The lectionary this week has me spending a lot of time pondering the man with the unclean spirit. I hear in Moore’s statement above a kindred spirit to the man in the gospel lesson this week.

In defense of the lectionary

The Christian Century has a commentary by United Methodist pastor John Nash extolling the liberating benefits of going off the lectionary.

He starts by recounting a common argument on behalf of the lectionary.

Now I know that one of the arguments for why the lectionary should be used is that it forces us to have to cover texts we otherwise would not preach on. But, since there are always at least four selections, most of the time I could avoid some troublesome texts, and have found that most preachers do as well.

I’ve never liked the “forces you to preach hard texts” argument on behalf of the lectionary. Indeed, the lectionary is pretty good at skipping lots of the really hard texts and verses. Look at the places where the lectionary skips a verse or several. Often it is because the Bible is going places that a preacher might find tough to talk about.

So, I don’t particularly find that argument compelling. It certainly is not why I preach the lectionary.

Nash then touches on a big part of the reason I do preach the lectionary, although not intentionally.

In my newest church, I was told that past ministers have used the lectionary but the preference would be not to be glued to it, and so for the first time in my ministry I have gone “off lectionary.” I have to say it is completely refreshing and reinvigorating for me, and the congregation seems to be liking it as well. I am now into my second sermon series and it’s done a lot to allow me to sort of set down my own theology and thinking at the beginning of my ministry here.

Going off the lectionary has allowed him to set down his “own theology and thinking” at the start of his ministry.

On this point, I am still persuaded by people such as Will Willimon and Walter Brueggemann. The preaching act is not an opportunity for me to expound my theology and thinking. The preaching act is an opportunity for me and the congregation together to turn to the Word in search of God’s voice speaking to us all.

By submitting to the discipline of the lectionary, I am saying that the Word comes first. It speaks before any questions I may have or any agenda I may want to bring to it. What it has to say sets the agenda for what we will do and talk about in church this Sunday.

I don’t think the Revised Common Lectionary is the only way to submit to this discipline. Preaching through books of the Bible has the same discipline about it. There are likely other ways. I like the lectionary because the symbolic unity of the church that is involved in having churches across town and around the world reading the same texts on Sunday morning.

I certainly don’t fault preachers who ditch the lectionary. Two thousand United Methodists are gathered at Adam Hamilton‘s church this week to learn how to be better leaders. Hamilton is a big proponent of non-lectionary preaching and argues that such preaching is crucial to his ministry.

Hamilton argues that the Holy Spirit guides him in the choice of sermon topics. I suppose, in the end, I find the Holy Spirit confirming my submission to the lectionary. In either case, I hope neither of us is trying to expound our own theology, but God’s Word.

Lectionary thots: Exodus 14:19-31

Some have noted that the gospel lectionary reading this week is about forgiveness. They have reflected about what that may say to us on the anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001.

I have been preaching through Exodus, however, and this week we find the Israelites at the edge of the Red Sea. In the dark of the night, the angel in the pillar of fire stands between the fleeing Israelites and the Egyptian army. Pinned against the waters, the former slaves spend the night waiting as the winds blow back the sea and open a dry path to freedom. They spend a night anxiously between fire and water, a hostile army and certain destruction.

In the dark of the night, they set out into the way God had opened for them. With the waters on their right and left, they moved out in faith that God would bring them through. And as the sun climbed over the horizon, the waters crashed in on the Egyptian armies. Horse and rider were swept away. Their bodies were thrown on the shore.

Here is a story of desperation and hope. It is a story of a people trapped and a way opened by the mighty hand of God. It is a story of destuction coming to those who set their hearts against the will of God.

It being a story of passing through the waters, it is also a baptismal story.

When I think of this story being read and told on Sept. 11, I am reminded of those two pillars of light that rose into the night sky over New York as a memorial. I am reminded of the walls of falling waters in the memorial at ground zero. Too bad the sanctuary of the church I serves does not have a projection system. Those images might be powerful this Sunday.

In the footsteps of Moses

This Sunday, I’m picking up the Exodus readings from the Revised Common Lectionary to follow Moses from birth to death from now until late October.

I’m really excited about the prospect of spending this time with the congregation following in the footsteps of Moses. The prospect of preaching on the crossing of the Red Sea and the destruction of Pharaoh’s army on Sept. 11 opens up interesting resonances. I’ll be preaching Passover on a Sunday we celebrate Holy Communion. We’ll get the Ten Commandments and the Golden Calf in back-to-back weeks.

I can’t wait to see where Moses takes us.

God does not play nice: Romans 6

The Revised Common Lectionary is quite sneaky.

Here I am caught up in the news of the day in the United Methodist Church. I am struggling to find the obedient and loving path ahead. All week I’ve been working – with limited success with the Matthew text for this Sunday. I have worked up a rough sermon that I’m not terribly excited by.

Then today, I revisit the lectionary readings for a bit of fresh air and to get some perspective on the other texts the congregation will be hearing. What do we have? Romans 6. The epistle reading just hammers at me:

Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.

I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification.

When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death. But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Dirty pool, God.