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Proper 28C: New

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PeaceableKingdom-John-August-Swanson
Peaceable Kingdom, by John August Swanson

OLD TESTAMENT:  Isaiah 65: 17-25

Read the passage from Isaiah

In this week’s reading, there are three familiar motifs:  the recurring theme of comparing the former and latter things, the glorification of Zion, and the theme of the shalom and peace of God’s holy mountain.  The theme of a new creation, of a new Jerusalem, of joy replacing weeping, of life overcoming death abounds in this reading from near the end of Isaiah. The passage is part of the closing sequence not only of the third major section of Isaiah (Isaiah 56-66, known as Third Isaiah) but of the book of Isaiah itself. Some writers have drawn comparisons between Isaiah 65-66 and Isaiah 1, seeing these chapters as “book-ends” enclosing the whole and bringing it to a conclusion.

Today’s reading echoes the restoration of Jerusalem in other parts of Isaiah.  There is a sense that in Isaiah 65-66 not only do the last 11 chapters draw to a close but that all the themes of the previous 66 chapters–judgment, salvation, and further judgment–have their conclusion here with the promise of a new creation.  The reading also needs to be set in the context of Isaiah 65-66. Verse 17 begins as if it is a development of what has gone before.

The chapter begins in vv. 1-7 (prior to this week’s reading) with a statement by the Lord that the people have rejected the Lord, worshiped idols and participated in all sorts of foreign practices. The Lord’s statement bears all the marks of frustration at the people’s rejection, of anguish over their foolishness, and of suffering their abuse. It ends with words that are both just and angry as God contemplates the punishment of the people. The Lord no longer calls them “my people” but “a people” or “a rebellious people”.   But then a change occurs.  Even if this people do not know what repentance is about, the Lord does and that is their hope. The Lord leaves off executing his punishment for the sake of those servants among the people who do remain faithful. For the sake of the ones the Lord calls “my servants’, “my chosen’, and “my people who have sought me” the prophet says the Lord will delay his just anger and reserve its outworking for those who continue to rebel against him. The central section then ends with the Lord called “the God of faithfulness”.

This faithfulness of God (even sometimes in the face of the faithlessness of God’s people) is what is described in this week’s reading with its emphasis on newness and joy. The Lord will now delight in “my people”. All that destroys life will pass away – weeping, distress, premature death, unfulfilled hopes, injustice, robbery, pillage, even genocide. Some of the imagery comes from the ancient context of a people caught up in the atrocities of war as foreign armies march through their land decimating the countryside, its crops, herds, villages, towns and cities, and slaughtering the population. The prophet is speaking about the most horrible experiences and even these things will be overcome by the faithfulness of the Lord.

Every Sunday of every year Christians recite the Lord’s Prayer. They could say it in their sleep; I often wonder if some do! Rather like the “Gary, Indiana” in Meredith Wilson’s classic musical, The Music Man, that prayer sort of “trips along softly on the tongue this way.” In other words it just comes out without a whole lot of thought. But one of the requests we make in that prayer is fraught with power and rife with implications for us and for our world. It happens early on: “Thy Kingdom come,” we ask. We say we want God to come now and reign over us; we want God to rule in our lives. We want no longer to rely on our own resources to make our own way in the world. I want to be honest with you; sometimes when I say that, I have another voice in the corner of my mind saying, “But not today! I rather like the way I am directing things at the moment, God. Maybe tomorrow, please!”

…The wolf and the lamb shall feed together;  The lion will eat straw like the ox . . .

Well, isn’t that all grand? And just when can we all expect to see this magnificent reign of God? Just exactly when will terrorists stop their destructive hate and sue for peace? Just when will preventable childhood diseases finally be prevented so infants do live full lives? Just when will cancer be eradicated so that old people can live to be 100? When will there be food enough for all, houses enough for all, good and enriching work for all? Just what are we all to learn from this expansive dream of the reign of God?

I think we learn this. When a Christian and a Muslim sit down to eat and talk, it is a sign of the rule of God. When people band together to begin the eradication of malaria in Africa, it is a sign of the reign of God. When prostate cancer deaths are reduced to increasingly smaller fractions, it is a sign of the reign of God. When millions are fed, when Habitat for Humanity builds another 100 houses, these are signs of the reign of God. Isaiah 65:17-25 is a sign and seal of the certainty of the coming reign of God. It is a divine vision that we can never fail to hold before us, reminding us of our part in the dream and reminding us of God’s constant work to make that dream a reality. “Thy kingdom come,” we say, and it will, oh, yes, it will.  (Excerpt from “Thy Kingdom Come:  Reflections on Isaiah 65: 17-25, by John C. Holbert, available at http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/Thy-Kingdom-Come-Reflections-on-Isaiah.html, accessed 10 November, 2010)

This new creation will be the peace that the Lord envisions and for which God works.  It is not “putting things back” the way they were before; it is recreating something new—a new Creation, a new peace unlike any we’ve ever experienced before, a new life.  Death and violence are consumed by harmony and peace and life.  Justice reigns.  Everyone has what they need and those who have always had more than they need are finally satisfied.  All labor will be rich and fulfilling.  The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, without one taking advantage of or consuming the other.  The lion shall eat straw like the ox and both will be satisfied without needing more.  None of us will ever again hurt or destroy another.  All of Creation is resurrected.   You know, we were shown that before.  I wonder when we’ll finally get it.

 

  1. What is your response to this passage?
  2. What is your vision of this “new Creation”?
  3. How willing, really, do you think we are to embrace newness, embrace change?

NEW TESTAMENT:  2 Thessalonians 3: 6-13

Read the text from 2 Thessalonians

As we said last week, this is penned as Paul’s second letter to the church at Thessalonica, but in all likelihood it may have been written by a follower of Paul’s who sought to protect Paul’s foundations that had been so carefully laid before.  The point is that the church at Thessalonica was apparently experiencing some idleness and probably some boredom when it came to faith. (Imagine!)  The practice of the faith had become routine.  Prayer had become a rote monologue.  This is not what we had in mind.

The truth was that things had gone on for a while.  Maybe it was becoming a little too rote, a little too routine.  Maybe it has been a while since the Holy Spirit has been allowed in the heavy front doors.  Perhaps the church was in need of some new creative dynamics to show people the grace of God through Christ.  In fact, some of the members of the faith community are just flat letting others down by refusing to contribute to the community by working.  The writer is not advocating that they be kicked out of the church though, but rather that they be brought back in and nurtured in the faith.  But life in community requires that everyone be enabled and encouraged to work.  Actually, leaving someone out of the work is essentially demeaning.  Finding a way to engage everyone is a sign and means of grace.

There is a little bit of an interpretive question here.  It is possible that the problem addressed is more “disorderliness”, rather than “idleness”; in other words, the problem of one walking “without order” and not as part of the faith community.  Either way, this was not the way to build the Kingdom of God.  There is a “rhetoric of obedience” as Abraham Smith at Perkins put it.  It is not that there is one way to walk or one way to act; just that each one must work within the community to build together this vision of God, this peaceable kingdom.  It is an act of hospitality and an act of inclusion.  It is becoming faithful people in the midst of a faithful community.  It doesn’t mean that we all look the same or think the same.  It just means that we love each other enough to want the best for each other; it means that we love God so much that we can only imagine being who God calls us to be—all of us.  Nothing else makes sense.

Elizabeth Barrington Forney says that “these [very] thoughts bear important implications for much of our congregational life.  The church who participates in a feeding ministry might wonder if the guests who are willing and able are being given ample opportunity to serve alongside church members in preparation and serving of the meals.  Is a disparity being created that makes guests dependent on being served?…There is ample opportunity in this text both for instruction about compassion and for a prophetic call to partnership in ministry.” (From Feasting on the Word, p. 307)

 

  1. What is your response to this passage?
  2. What do you think happens when one or when a whole community experiences “idleness”?
  3. Does it change the meaning if you think of the warning as one against “disorderliness”?
  4. What do you think of the implication of involving those to whom we minister in ministry? What sort of vision does that bring about for you? How would that change our ministry?

 

 

GOSPEL:  Luke 21: 5-19

Read the passage from the Gospel According to Luke

This is, needless to say, a difficult text.  But, despite how we may read it, it is not meant to be a prediction of the future.  It was written to a persecuted and frustrated minority that lived under the thumb of the Roman Empire.  They were feeling as if the veritable end of their world had come.  And some, perhaps at the prodding of the disciples, were looking to the temple, the center of their world and their life, the symbol of God’s very presence in their midst, a shining thing of beauty in an otherwise dark world.  But then they were told not to look there for it, too, would fall away.  Instead, the writer of Luke is telling them to listen to Jesus and trust in Jesus.  We didn’t read the first four verses of this chapter but they portray the account of the widow with two coins.  Jesus is essentially saying:  “Not the temple!  Look at her!  Look what living a life of faith means!”

So the passage that we read begins with that prediction of destruction.  From Luke one senses sadness rather than smugness. Just a few chapters later, we would read the account of Jesus weeping over a city that would not listen and would not change course.   Instead they wanted concrete evidence of exactly when this would happen and some had begun to listen to messianic “fortune-tellers”, if you will, that claimed to have all the answers.  Like today, there were those who were easily swayed with predictions of “doomsday”, with the foretelling of the end at hand.

Remember, Jesus never promised that following this Way would be easy.  And despite what some would claim, there is no known timetable of when something will happen.  But it is a reminder for us of the God who triumphed over chaos over and over again.  Jesus is not calling them to be martyrs or heroes—just faith-filled followers.  All of the other usual symbols will eventually fall by the wayside.  But Jesus promises that he will remain as a holy presence with the wisdom to persevere.

I don’t really think Jesus was telling the future (regardless of the fact that those beautiful stones were indeed soon destroyed).  Perhaps Jesus was just saying, you know…this is not easy.  Life happens.  Bad things happen.  But nothing, absolutely nothing, can take me away from you.  Just hang on!  The Sabbath is coming!

David Livingstone, the legendary missionary to Africa, prayed, “Lord, send me anywhere, only go with me.  Lay any burden on me, only sustain me.”  And he testified, “What has sustained me is the promise, “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world.”  This is the promise that Jesus conveys.

And when the world does shake to an end, whether it’s through natural decay or we humans just blowing the whole thing up, there’s always something more.  The truth is, the temple WAS destroyed.  And the great Roman Empire collapsed into history.  But the story has not diminished.  “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world.”

 

  1. What is your response to this passage?
  2. What things are we tempted to hold onto in our world, hoping for something better?
  3. What does this passage say about the church itself?
  4. What does this passage call us to do?

 

 

Some Quotes for Further Reflection:

True hope isn’t blind…The messianic hope for the new world looks into the future with its eyes wide open.  But it sees more than what can be seen on the horizon of history.  The Indonesian word for hope means “looking through the horizon to what is beyond.”  True hope looks beyond the apocalyptic horizons of our modern world to the new creation of all things in the kingdom of God’s glory.  (Jurgen Moltmann, from The Source of Life:  The Holy Spirit and the Theology of Life)

A dreamer is one who can find [his or her] way in the moonlight, and [whose] punishment is that [he or she] sees the dawn before the rest of the world.  (Oscar Wilde)

 

The marvelous vision of the peaceable Kingdom, in which all violence has been overcome and all men, women, and children live in loving unity with nature, calls for its realization in our day-to-day lives.  Instead of being an escapist dream, it challenges us to anticipate what it promises.  Every time we forgive our neighbor, every time we make a child smile, every time we show compassion to a suffering person, every time we arrange a bouquet of flowers, offer care to tame or wild animals, prevent pollution, create beauty in our homes and gardens, and work for peace and justice among peoples and nations we are making the vision come true. (Henri J.M. Nouwen, Bread for the Journey)

 

 

Closing

 

Give us, O God, the strength to build the city that hath stood too long a dream, whose laws are love, whose crown is servanthood, and where the sun that shineth is God’s grace for human good.  Already in the mind of God that city riseth fair; lo, how its splendor challenges the souls that greatly dare; yea, bids us seize the whole of life and build its glory there.  Amen. (From “O Holy City, Seen of John” (vs. 4-5), by Walter Russell Bowie, The United Methodist Hymnal # 726)

 

All-Saints C: Blessedness Incarnate

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Rainbow_1574OLD TESTAMENT:  Daniel 7: 1-3, 15-18

Read the passage from the Book of Daniel

The Book of Daniel is believed by most scholars to be the most recently authored Old Testament book (probably 167-164 bce).  The dating is pretty reliable because it has so many references to specific historical events.  The time was one of intense suffering for the Jewish people under Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who attempted to eradicate Judaism and replace it with purely Greek practices.  He eventually committed the “Abomination of Desolation” by sacrificing a pig on the altar at the Temple in Jerusalem.  He was eventually driven out of Judea by the Maccabees, a period that is celebrated by the festival of Hanukah.

The Book of Daniel is set during the time of Antiochus IV and the persecution of the Jewish people and the message essentially is one of hope and belief that this time of crisis will pass, the forces of evil will be overthrown, and God’s kingdom will be established once and for all.  When all this occurs, the righteous will triumph.

In Chapter 7, where our reading is, there is a shift from the King’s dream to Daniel’s dream and this is sometimes looked upon as the heart or center of the entire book.  It recounts a dream of deliverance, which are usually associated with situations of negative political rule, such as the rule of Belshazaar.  Dreams are images of what could be, an act of faith that looks past the world around us.  It is interesting to note here that apparently Daniel is not only capable of interpreting others’ dreams but also his own.

Some scholars suggest that this is the first event in the series that follows, implying that the four winds of heaven are actually the catalyst that brings forth the beasts from the deep and that God initiates that action.  There is no indication that the beasts rise at God’s request, but are simply part of the chaos that ensues.

The sea is a symbol of chaos and the four beasts represent the different world empires that have conquered the Jewish people and other nations.  (Perhaps, the Babylonians, the Medes, the Persians, and the Greeks.)  The ten horns on the fourth beast symbolize the rulers of the Greek empire or provinces and the “little horn” (verse 8) is probably Antiochus himself.

Verse 15-18 is actually a summary of the whole vision that is told in more detail throughout Chapter 7.  Daniel is, of course, confused by his own dream and seeks an interpreter, where he gets a summary of the whole vision:  The worldly powers will arise but God will conquer them all and God’s kingdom will be everlasting.  In essence, the “saints of the Most High”, as many translations read, will eventually emerge victorious and the evil forces threatening Israel will be destroyed.  The conflict and its results are certain.  This promise of the victory of the saints is probably the reason the passage was selected as the first reading for this All Saints Day.

The crucial thing to remember when reading apocalyptic literature is that it is not a prediction about the future but an interpretation of present events written in coded language, which, obviously, would have made more sense in the context in which it was written.  You have to remember that studies of eschatology, or “last things”, for Judaism referred to the coming of the Messiah.  Christianity, on the other hand, sees it as something that has begun but has not yet come to completion.

In an essay entitled “Waltzing with the God of Chaos”, Barbara Brown Taylor writes:

 

Where is God in this picture?  God is all over the place.  God is up there, down here, inside my skin and out.  God is the web, the energy, the space, the light—not captured in them, as if any of those concepts were more real than what unites them—but revealed in that singular and vast net of relationship that animates everything that is.  God is the web, the connection, the glue, the air between the molecules…

            As for God’s plan?  You know, whether God has a file I can break into and find out what I should be doing ten years from now?  The more I learn about chaos theory, the more I favor the concept of life with God as a dance instead of a blueprint.  God makes a move, humankind makes a move, then humankind makes a move based on God’s move…

            In a lot of ways, to read science is to be tempted to become a deist—to believe in a clock-maker God who sets things in motion and wishes the creatures luck.  But I’m a Christian, which means I’m schooled in paradox.  I’m schooled in the opposite of any truth being another great truth.  And so I live in the paradox of this God who seems to have set things in motion and yet is still involved.  There’s some evidence that things are random to a point, and yet, I have experience of some spirit that seems to direct my feet at times.  So I’m stuck with both of these, and I’ve somehow got to live into the paradox of that.  They may not fit together, but I’m stuck with the two. (From “Waltzing With the God of Chaos”, by Barbara Brown Taylor, in The Life of Meaning:  Reflections on Faith, Doubt, and Repairing the World, p. 47-50.)

 

  1. So what, then, does this have to do with us?
  2. What does this speak to you about God’s actions?
  3. What image of God does this reading leave for you?

 

           

NEW TESTAMENT:  Ephesians 1: 11-23

Read the passage from Ephesians

Most scholars agree that Ephesians is considered what you could call a “Deutero-Pauline” work, implying that it is “second” or “secondary”.  (This would also refer to 2 Thessalonians and Colossians).  These letters were probably written in the 70’s or 80’s.  Paul more than likely died around 60, sometime around Nero’s reign.  So, rather than being written by Paul himself, Ephesians was more than likely written by a follower of Paul, using the format and even the style that Paul employed in his letters.  This is not plagiarism.  In that society, placing someone else’s name on a work was considered the highest form of compliment.

The main purpose of Ephesians, probably written to a Gentile audience, seems to be to remind the believers of their communal identity in their new status in Christ and to urge them to walk in ways that demonstrate this communal identity and unity.  (When you think of it, this idea of “community” would probably have been more difficult for Gentiles to grasp than for the Jews of that time, who had a sense of community embedded in their very being.)  The church here is understood as a Body of Christ that is exalted, which resonates with our understanding of the community of saints here and forever.

It is important to remember that in the New Testament, “saints” refers to all the people of God, rather than the later understanding of it as specific individuals of invincible faith and heroic nature.  Saints are all believers who have been called and have been sanctified, or made holy, in their new relationship with God.  In verse 11, the term “obtain an inheritance” echoes Israel’s destiny to be God’s “lot” or heritage.  Ephesians makes the risen Christ their basis for obtaining this inheritance.  In verse 18, “the riches of the glorious inheritance of the saints” refers to that inheritance that is extended through Christ who God raised from the dead, caused to sit in “heavenly places”, and gave authority over all things.  The reading closes with a reference to the church as the Body of Christ that is triumphant in all things, the point of eschatological fulfillment.  In other words, the Body of Christ is us.

 

  1. What message does this reading hold for you?
  2. What sense of connection to those that have gone before does this give you?
  3. What does it mean for you to have this “inheritance”?

 

 

GOSPEL:  Luke 6: 20-31

Read the passage from The Gospel According to Luke

Traditionally, the All Saints gospel has been the Beatitudes found in Matthew.  But since we are in Year C of the Lectionary, the Lucan version is the gospel of choice for the year.  There are several differences in the two versions:  In Matthew (the more familiar one), there are nine beatitudes; in Luke, there are four. The Matthean beatitudes are spoken from a mountain, probably since, as one writing to the Jewish community, this would depict that it was something important.  (Reminiscent of Moses on Mt. Sinai.)  The version told by the writer of Luke is spoken from a “level place” (sometimes called the Sermon on the Plain).  For Luke, this seems to identify Jesus with the people.  In essence, it gives the impression and sense of Jesus no longer elevated above us but standing here with us.  Matthew’s beatitudes are spoken to a “crowd”.  When Jesus speaks in the Lucan version, he speaks specifically to his disciples, to those who are professing to follow him.  What follows is the standard for which every disciple should strive.  (“You”)

For me, this is very powerful because he’s showing us exactly what to do.  It leaves us no room to morally judge others.  He really wants us to listen to him.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer said this:  Humanly speaking, we could understand and interpret the Sermon on the Mount in a thousand different ways.  Jesus knows only one possibility:  simple surrender and obedience, not interpreting it or applying it, but doing and obeying it.  That is the only way to hear his word.  He does not mean that it is to be discussed as an ideal; he really means us to get on with it.

Matthew’s beatitudes have no corresponding “woes”.  But in Luke, there are four “woes” that correspond to four “blessings”.  The main focus of both versions is not the individual petitions but, rather, a glimpse of what the Kingdom of God should be like.  Essentially, the Kingdom of God will bring about a reversal of fortunes.

In first century society, poverty was not just a plight, but a social shame.  These people were believed to have done something wrong in the eyes of God and were shunned and depicted as “dirty” and “unacceptable”.  Jesus reverses that social order.  The first beatitude describes a way of life, and we, who are not poor—not really—often run to Matthew for relief.  Because we are not poor, this beatitude either mystifies us or leaves us feeling guilty rather than joy.  I’m not sure that we should get so wrapped up in the specific language.  For me, it’s a matter of humility, of emptying our lives and opening them to God’s vision of what the world should be.

Once again, it’s about paradox.  We read it and we think we have it figured out.  In this world, “blessed” often means having wealth, or security, or ease of life.  It often means that things are going well.  But “blessedness” for Christ has nothing to do with the quality of this life at all.  It is about being one with God and one with others.  Perhaps being Christian, itself, is about being paradox, about looking at the world in a different way and being open to seeing things one has never seen before.

Does it make more sense like this?:

 

“Blessed are the poor for they already know that God is all they need and are open to receive what God offers; blessed are the hungry for they know where to look for sustenance and they are thankful for small but glorious abundance; blessed are those who weep for they know where to look for comfort and they know how to comfort others; and blessed are those who are hated or excluded or shunned for they truly know what it means to be Christian and to reach out in love.”

 

I’m sure you remember all of the accounts and the press coverage of the 2006 shooting in the Amish schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania.  After the community lost five young girls and had five more that were seriously wounded at the hand of a shooter, the world expected the usual—grief, anger, vengeance, and, most of all, justice.  And while the rest of the country, prompted by the press, responded with shock and anger, the Amish community responded with graciousness, patience, and love.  Instead of being consumed with revenge, this community lavished forgiveness on the killer’s widow, her parents, and the killer’s parents.  In subsequent interviews, the Amish community made it clear that it was not a mandate from their church; it was an expression of their faith.  In their understanding, they could only receive what they could give, for that was the only way that they could grasp what they had been given.  In her column in the “National Catholic Reporter”, Sister Joan Chittister suggested that “it was the Christianity we all profess but which the Amish practiced that left us all stunned.”  She concluded that the Nickel Mines Amish surprised our world the same way the earliest Christians astounded the Roman world:  “simply by being Christian”.

“Being Christian”—perhaps that in and of itself is a paradox.  Perhaps rather than being good, we’re meant to be faithful; rather than being godly, we’re meant to show people who God is; and rather than making sure that the world is filled with justice, perhaps we’re meant to fill it with love, and grace, and hope, and forgiveness, and a vision of something that it’s never seen before.

 

  1. What message does this reading hold for you?
  2. Why is this a difficult passage for us?
  3. In these terms, what does it mean to be “Christian”?

 

 

Some Quotes for Further Reflection:

The future belongs to those who give the next generation reason for hope. (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin)

 

The saints are those who, in some partial way, embody—literally incarnate—the challenge of faith in their time and place.  In doing so, they open a path that others might follow.  (Robert Ellsberg)

 

The past takes us forward.  (Diana Butler Bass) 

 

 

Closing

Think about those who we have lost this year and who we would like to remember.  Think about those with whom you journey.  Think about your own journey.

 

For those who walked with us, this is a prayer.

For those who have gone ahead, this is a blessing.

For those who touched and tended us, who lingered with us while they lived, this is a thanksgiving.

For those who journey still with us in the shadows of awareness, in the crevices of memory, in the landscape of our dreams, this is a benediction. (“Feast of All Saints Prayer” from In Wisdom’s Path, by Jan L. Richardson, p. 124)