Mercy for Exiles – 3 January 2016 – Second Sunday after Christmas

As Ephesians explains our faith: “In Christ we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of God’s grace lavished on us.” We are to know the great blessings of the incarnation.

Yet we are called to answer questions asked by this world: Who is Jesus? Really. A memory? A miracle? A metaphor? Is his role in our lives defined by history or philosophy, art or another kind of experienced feeling?

This Sunday gives us Christ in images of light. We are preparing for Epiphany. And somehow the light is described by the bringing together of exiles. Is Christ about mercy toward the stranger? Could this be a word from God specifically for our time?

John 1:1-18

Eugene Peterson in his The Message translation renders John 1:10 this way: “He was in the world, and the world was there through him, and yet the world didn't even notice.” And yet the world didn't even notice. It's an odd note to sound in the wake of a month-long celebration of the birth of Christ, but the reality is the world has noticed Christmas, while there is serious doubt as to whether it has noticed Christ.

Of course, that's what the church's witness has been about, ever since the day John the Baptist came out of the wilderness, especially since the day he pointed to Jesus as the Christ: “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me'” (v 15). Not many people got it then, and not many people get it now.

The problem is, because it is so difficult to get people to see Jesus as the Christ of the scriptures, we in the church are tempted to make it easier for them by presenting a more visible and palatable savior. This is not a fault simply of liberals or conservatives, liturgicals or evangelicals, mainliners or megachurches; we are all guilty. We all try to present Christ in a way that is attractive to our niche of the culture. Though somewhat necessary, we must be careful not to bend Jesus out of shape, not to turn the Gospel into something it isn't. This text is a reminder to us of the unlikeliness of the story of Jesus and of our call to tell it as it is, trusting God to use our telling to open eyes and change lives.

Let us endeavor only to be faithful to the vision set before us. Nothing that outstrips Jesus of the hard edges of his witness will feed us in the end. We must listen to John who tells us that believing in the Word is life, even though the words about the Word can be misconstrued.

Jeremiah 31:7-14

How are people of faith to find our way in this world guided by the Word?

Consistent with the deepest values of the covenant, God will include those in the community who are most vulnerable (the blind, the lame, and those in labor). God guides the people through the desert by brooks of water and along straight paths on which they will not stumble. To a people in a semiarid land, the reference to brooks signifies that God provides all that they need even in the face of threat. God becomes a parent to Israel. The community is no longer orphaned (as in the exile) but is a part of God's family: they have a place and a protector.

. . . . The people will be radiant in the presence of overflowing produce, “life shall become like a watered garden” (a new Eden), young women and young men will be dancing and exchanging mourning for gladness, and “satisfied with [God's] bounty.”

Ephesians 1:3-14

Today's reading is a berakah, a traditional Jewish form of prayer that blesses God. . . . God is acting through Christ to adopt the Ephesians into God's family in the coming new world (the realm of God). Indeed, God had planned this adoption from the beginning of history and is now bringing it about. . . . God has given the Ephesians the Holy Spirit as a seal of the divine promise.

We await the redemption of this world, freedom for those who suffer under tyrants, peace for those whose villages are assaulted by the ruthless, food enough and shelter for those who wander without a home. But we know, as well, that where the Word resides, compassion has found its home for the infinitude of the Alpha and Omega has come to dwell with us in our finitude. Alleluia!

Contributing to this commentary:

Ronald J. Allen, professor of preaching and New Testament at Christian Theological Seminary, Indianapolis, Indiana. Delmer L. Chilton, assistant to the bishop of the Southeastern Synod of the ELCA in Atlanta. Aaron J. Couch, co-pastor of First Immanuel Lutheran Church, Portland, Oregon. Virginia S. Wendel, Health Care Coodinator for the Cenacle Sisters, Chicago, Illinois.  

Homily Service 43, no. 1 (2009): 74-81.

The Plumb Line and Herod – 12 July 2015 – Lectionary 15/ Proper 10

Of all the mysteries of early Christian witness, surely John the Baptizer is one of the most beguiling. Even Herod feared him. This is “fear,” we might presume, that takes the form of intrigue, awe, awareness of a power greater than appears, and perhaps even respect. King Herod “deeply grieved” the death of John, but like a figure whose top priority is to maintain his own power, he chooses to bear sorrow over his failing rather than lose stature in the eyes of others.

Who among us is not more like Herod than like John? What do we protect in order to hold onto temporal – and possibly corrupting – desires? Who among us does not grieve the results of our failings?

What plumb lines in our own time do we ignore in favor of another goal? 

Both Amos and John the Baptist held up visions of truth that confounded their hearers – except for the people for whom God’s justice meant life rather than death, forgiveness rather than shame.

Mark 6:14-29

Today's Gospel reading narrates in flashback style the story of an Amos-come-lately of more than 800 years later (equivalent in years to the time from the days of St. Francis of Assisi to today!) who also dared to speak God's plumb line truth to those in power and was made to suffer for it. Some, it seems, were beginning to think of Jesus of Nazareth as a kind of John the Baptizer redidivus, for the same “powers” were perceived to be “at work in him,” leading some to see Jesus as a latter-day Elijah or another of “the prophets of old.” For conventional religionists of the day, prophets were thought to be a phenomenon of the past—and the farther in the past the better. King Herod (with what we can assume was a guilty conscience) led the way in jumping to the conclusion on hearing reports of Jesus that it could only mean, “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.”  – John Rollefson

Amos 7:7–15

The eighth-century prophet Amos saw a vision of God standing beside a wall, plumb line in hand. This vision presents a vivid picture of God's sense of righteousness (also known as “justice” or simple “rightness”) by which Israel's actions are to be measured and thus judged. The history of God's chosen people, Israel, is one rife with acts of crookedness, that is, decisions and behaviors that “fall out of plumb” with God's expectation of justice.

Prophets of the ilk of Amos, an alien farm worker with no prophetic pedigree, found wielding God's plumb line an onerous, unrewarding task. In the case of Amos, it meant having called down upon himself the priestly judgment of Israel's religious establishment: that he was at the heart of a conspiracy against the very king of Israel. Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, spoke more truthfully than he knew, like countless spokespersons for establishment religion after him, including a certain high priest named Caiphas, when he announced of Amos, “the land is not able to bear all his words.” – John Rollefson

Ephesians 1:3-14

The real conspiracy in all this (“conspiracy” meaning literally a “breathing together”), our reading from the first chapter of the Letter to the Ephesians reveals, is God's: that “in him (Jesus Christ) we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us” (v 7). That is, the blood and gore of the story of Israel's rebellion against God's Word and God's Word-bearing prophets, exemplified most brazenly in Israel's political, economic, and religious elites' [failure] to live… in conformity to God's plumb line of justice, is transfigured through Jesus' blood and righteousness into the story of all humankind's redemption. – John Rollefson

The stories of Herod and John and Amos, tell us that God’s way is not about who has the power or prestige. God’s way is that of Christ, the final plumb line, refusing to play the game, blessing those in need.

Thank God for that plumb line. Without it, we could do anything we wanted and call it truth, just as though we didn't know any better; and it would mean that God had abandoned us to the consequences of our own devices, and we would be lost. – John E. Smith

John Rollefson is a former pastor of Lutheran Church of the Master in Los Angeles, California.

John E. Smith has served as a United Methodist pastor for many years.

Homily Service 42, no. 3 (2009): 70-78.

Word of Light – 4 January 2015 – Second Sunday of Christmas

Words have tremendous power, for good or for harm. I’ve seen a child on the playground reduced to a sobbing puddle of tears by the taunts and teasing of classmates, volunteers energized by inspiring words from a leader. Words have the power to create reality, which I suppose is why scripture pictures the whole of creation as the work of God’s word.

            – Aaron J. Couch

In Pastor Couch’s words from a 2010 Homily Service essay, I hear the whispers of a question that has haunted me: What is the origin of the imagery of Jesus as the Word? Is it God-inspired brilliant truth or hubris on the part of humans who like to write and had visions? Who chose the image? Word, logos, light, grace, glory––all filled with expanses of mystery.

Connecting Jesus with spoken language that creates universes is almost too gigantic to entertain. Surely this is one reason we can count on it being true.

John 1:[1-9] 10-18

In The Message, Eugene Peterson’s translation of the Bible, John 1:10 reads like this: ‘‘He was in the world, and the world was there through him, and yet the world didn’t even notice.’’

And yet the world didn’t even notice. It’s an odd note to sound in the wake of a month-long celebration of the birth of Christ, but the reality is the world has noticed Christmas, while there is serious doubt as to whether it has noticed Christ.

Of course, that’s what the church’s witness has been about, ever since the day John the Baptist . . . pointed to Jesus as the Christ . . . Not many people got it then, and not many people get it now.

. . . [B]ecause it is so difficult to get people to see Jesus as the Christ of the scriptures, we in the church are tempted to make it easier for them by presenting a more visible and palatable savior. This is not a fault simply of liberals or conservatives, liturgicals or evangelicals, mainliners or megachurches; we are all guilty. We all try to present Christ in a way that is attractive to our niche of the culture. Though somewhat necessary, we must be careful not to bend Jesus out of shape, not to turn the Gospel into something it isn’t. This text is a reminder to us of the unlikeliness of the story of Jesus and of our call to tell it as it is, trusting God to use our telling to open eyes and change lives.

            – Delmer L. Chilton

Jeremiah 31:7-14

Telling the story “as it is” can take many forms. For the prophet Jeremiah the story is about God’s promise in the future to gather the people who have been estranged from one another in exile. When this gathering comes, the people “shall become like a watered garden, and they shall never languish again.”

Ephesians 1:3-14

Likewise, the epistle to the church identifies us, along with the church of Ephesus, as people who are alone and estranged and in need of adoption. We will be gathered up, God’s word says, along with “all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth.

In these readings a spectacular consistency abounds: The word of God brings to all creation the joy of living according to a purpose that is beyond ourselves, beyond our ability to solve all ambiguities.

God is word and creator, savior and companion in the flesh.

Often, the word comes to us in words—the words of scripture that tell about Jesus’ teaching, and his command that we love each other. They picture for us his example of forgiveness and compassion, the stories of his ministry, healing the sick and feeding the hungry, how he suffered and died, and how God raised him to life on the third day. And the word still comes to us in the lives of believers who have an impact on us.

. . . Bill was a sponsor for the youth group; Ray, a professor who gave of himself, whether to usher or to paint the Sunday School rooms; Cole, the track coach at a rival high school, always had time to be interested in what I was doing. These adults, and others, gave me a glimpse of what a life of integrity looks like, what a Christ-like life looks like. Through them, the light of God’s love shone. It wasn’t that they were perfect people, . . . [b]ut their lives gave voice to God’s word, in the flesh.

            – Aaron J. Couch

Aaron J. Couch is co-pastor of First Immanuel Lutheran Church in Portland, Oregon.

Delmer L. Chilton is assistant to the bishop of the Southeastern Synod of the ELCA in Atlanta, Georgia.

Homily Service 43, no. 1 (2010): 74-81.