The Last will be First – 21 September 2014 – Lectionary 25

The story of Jonah finds its way into the Revised Common Lectionary only on this day and on the Third Sunday after Epiphany (Year B). It is too good a story to hear so seldom, and today, preachers, is your chance!

Jonah’s resentment of Nineveh’s repentance, coupled with the aggravation of those in the Matthew story who are angry about the pay they’ve been given, offer plenty of latitude for the preacher to consider vocation, calling, work, envy, and God’s never-failing love for those who come last and those who “do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals…” (probably one of my favorite phrases in all scripture). 

Those animals! We forget them easily. But God does not forget them. Today could be a time to talk about creatures other than humans! If that is your choice, consider not a law-oriented diatribe on what we all ought to be doing to save the planet (important as is that concern), but tell us, rather, how much this entire creation is beloved by its creator and how grieved God is to groan with its plants, elements, and animals when they struggle for life. Help us to care and to turn toward nourishing all our neighbors. 

Matthew 20:1-16

Might we see in the readings for this day a pattern for living that extends love to all “others”––not just our families and friends or even human neighbors, but to all.

In the middle of these stories of being first or last, the parable of the workers in the vineyard stands adjacent to Jesus' third passion prediction. The whole sequence of stories seeks to undermine ordinary human aspirations of being first. Because God in Christ has given believers everything that matters, striving to be first in status or wealth profoundly misses the point of living. The only “first” that matters is to be first in serving, which finally means taking one's eyes off of self so as to tend to the needs of another. 

            – Aaron J. Couch

Jonah 3:10––4:11

The book of Jonah tells a tale of divine generosity and human stinginess. That God would extend mercy to a nation renowned for its cruelty and brutality strikes the prophet as scandalous, causing him to feel betrayed and angry. Telling God “I told you so,” Jonah appears much more like a cartoon character than a real person. God prepares a living parable for Jonah: a bush that grows to provide shade, then withers and dies after being attacked by a worm. Absurdly, Jonah feels such great loss at the death of the plant that he wishes himself dead. God invites Jonah to imagine how God might feel about the living creatures of Nineveh, both people and animals. Those living creatures have been, in a sense, invisible to Jonah. Dismissing the people of Nineveh as the enemy, he had not seen them as possessing any value. The story ends without revealing whether Jonah was surprised to discover God was concerned for the fate of the city, and its people, and even its animals. By remaining open-ended, the story invites the listener to consider whether there are people he or she may have dismissed as strangers or enemies, who may yet be precious to their Creator.

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

Philippians 1:21-30

Paul’s admonitions echo these same themes of last being first: “Live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ…” The vision Paul calls us to follow is one in which Christ Jesus is foremost, and that is the vision this day needs explicated.

What does extravagant over-abundance look like in our lives? We see it on the cross and in the empty tomb. Where do we see it in our own communities, families, friendships, state, and nation?

Some questions to ponder:

In what ways do we currently live our lives in a manner worthy of the Gospel of Jesus Christ? What does this life look like?

How is Christ exalted by our living?

What tools do we have for living in the present—in the world but not of the world?

            – Beth Herrinton-Hodge, Presbyterian minister

Homily Service 41, no. 4 (21 July 2008): 26-36.

“Christ in the Sea Monster”

Images of the biblical narratives often show us the gospel by linking one image to another, thereby helping us to see a character or an event in new light. Gail Ramshaw has spent many years unveiling these images in order to help us see our faith through lenses both verbal and visual. 

Sometime before the thirteenth century, some unknown Christian invented an elaborate forty-page biblical instruction, now called the Biblia Pauperum; each page depicted an episode from the life of Christ, which was flanked by pictures of stories from the Old Testament that were considered to be in some way parallel. Christians transported this Bible study program all over Europe, painting it on church walls, translating its text into their own language, and printing it in block-books. On the page dedicated to the resurrection, Christ is holding a standard of the cross as he rises up out of the tomb, and in an adjacent picture Jonah is grabbing onto a tree on the land as he rises up out of the mouth of the sea monster.

These Christian artists and sculptors presented to the viewers not some large fish or whale, so as to prompt learned and literalist discussion about the size of the animal's stomach and the likelihood of Jonah's surviving his ordeal. Rather, the tradition was to depict a grand mythical sea monster with a long and sinuous dragon tail, thus connecting the story of Jonah more with our imagination of evil than with the water creatures at the local aquarium. Jonah was kept alive and well in Christian imagination as a picture of Christ rising from the grave and of Christians given new life after their baptism.

The images are the wallpaper in the room of the Christian assembly . . .

Many Christian churches have used biblical imagery all along in painted ceilings and walls, leaded glass, icons, and other artworks.

The Gospel writers lifted up images from the Hebrew scriptures to open the minds of those to whom they wrote a new interpretation of already familiar religious terms. Such is the trajectory of insight: on the foundation of what we already know, we are given a slant, a twist, even a radical new shape for seeing.

Sometimes such pictorial imagery is masterful and religiously helpful, but often it is too ill-informed and too tame, so that the picture does little except render the biblical story small.  

. . . Because we humans can construct these mental images, store them, and access them at will, believers steeped in the Bible have in themselves a gallery of pictures of how God acts, who Christ is, and what is the life of the baptized community. For this lifelong project of assembling a picture gallery of salvation, the more biblical readings proclaimed at worship, the better.

  

I concur with my church body that it is better for the first reading to correspond in some way with the Gospel reading than for it to progress week by week on its own. When the first reading, and during the Christmas and Easter cycles also the second reading, cohere with the Gospel, the varied complementary biblical selections assist preachers and worshipers to probe the depths of the Gospel narrative. And so I urge also those who read consecutively through the Hebrew scriptures to note especially the images in the readings and to concentrate on their importance for Christian meaning.

As readers of this journal are aware, the Old Testament is not “history” as our culture knows it, factual and even certifiable accounts of the past. Christians read the Old Testament not to know what happened in the past, but rather mostly to understand what the New Testament is saying about Christ.
 

Ramshaw’s essay ranges through numerous specific instances in which knowledge of the linkage between Old Testament and New Testament imagery changes how we read a passage.

Preachers will find fresh impetus for preaching and personal nourishment reading Ramshaw’s thoughts on lectionary and image.

Gail Ramshaw, “Christ in the Sea Monster: Biblical Imagery and the Proclamation of the Gospel,” Liturgy 29, no. 4 (10 July 2014): 38-44.

Gail Ramshaw studies and crafts liturgical language from her home outside Washington DC.