Fire… and Water! – 14 August 2016 – 12th Sunday after Pentecost/ Lectionary 20/ Proper 15

What difficult words for today! “Is not my word like fire, says the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?” (Jer. 23:29). . . “I came to bring fire to the earth!” (Luke 12:49). Where are the words of comfort?. . .

God's word is like a hammer. . . Through the mouths of the prophets, it hammered away at the proud, stubborn hearts and stony foreheads of God's own people who, while maintaining the outward pomp of liturgical service, refused to treat their poor sisters and brothers with compassionate justice. . .

Today, the divine hammer continues its eternal work. It levels our pride, destroys our selfishness, and smashes our guilt. God's word, like a hammer, shatters the idols we have made as we have fashioned God into our own image. God's word crashes, smashes, levels, and pulverizes with the truth. Yes, it is often painful, but it necessary for new life and the re-creation of our lives and our world. . .

God's word, like a hammer, builds a new creation, a new family—not built on the idols of our high and haughty ways, but upon love for God and for each other, love that transcends human boundaries of family and friends. – John Paul Salay

Luke 12:49-56

Jesus uses two primary images to describe what he is about: (1) fire is used both for judgment and purification and (2) baptism that signifies Jesus' upcoming death. . .

Jesus makes clear that he has come not to bring status quo peace that the people expected, but to require more. . . This will cause the division of families as each person chooses whom to follow.

Jesus concludes by chastising the people because they are so clever in reading the weather signs. . . but they are blind to the signs of what God is doing in the world through Jesus. . . The people should be as wise before God as they are before the natural order. – Carrie L. Lewis La Plante

Jeremiah 23:23-29

God makes clear that God is near to the people, but bigger than they can imagine, both immanent and transcendent. There is nowhere to hide from God, but God sees all that the people do. – Carrie L. Lewis La Plante

 Hebrews 11:29 – 12:2

Paul’s use of athletic imagery for the life of faith makes the most sense, of course, to those who have actually endured the training to run a marathon. Those of us who have not taken on such a mighty task appreciate it from afar, but we have all known what it means to slog through to the end of a project or even a day. Perseverance is both an attribute of maturity and the path to maturity.

But we do not run alone. Jesus runs with us.

The word of God that came to Jeremiah is harsh. The writer of Hebrews goes through a long and gruesome list of the kinds of ordeals that our ancestors in the faith endured during their religious journeys. The words of Jesus sound downright threatening when he speaks of families and households being divided. Most of us know that believing in God won't make our lives automatically easer. . .  

What we are promised is that we will never be alone. . . And that finally, when we make it to the end of our marathon, we will be able to rest and rejoice, surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, and welcomed by the never-ending love of God, who is carrying a sign that says, “Hurray! I knew you could do it!” – Daphne Burt

John Paul Salay is Loyola University’s Minister of Liturgy and the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA).

Carrie L. Lewis La Plante is pastor of Redeemer Lutheran Church (ELCA) in Indianola, Iowa.

Daphne Burt serves as the pastor at the Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd (ELCA) in Hamden, Connecticut.

Homily Service 40, no. 9 (2007): 32-41.

We, like Sheep – 19 July 2015 – Lectionary 16/ Proper 11

Our nation has experienced in the last three weeks tremendous shifts in our understanding of ourselves. One horrific event showed us the divisions that pull us apart as witnessed in the racial violence that took the lives of nine people studying the Bible together. The other showed a new form of unity among us evidenced by the decisions of the nine Justices on the Supreme Court; we have agreed to abide by their rulings rather than the mere impulses of our habituated vision.

In these stark events, we heard – even from people with differing perspectives – a call for calm and reconciliation, for forgiveness and new pathways to follow toward greater understanding and more enduring peace. These recent crucial moments have made clear both how hard it is to root out old prejudices and how possible it is to take the promise of unity to heart, changing our ways.

Jesus looked at the people who brought him their needs as “sheep without a shepherd.” We, too, are in need of the shepherd who can pull us out of our entrenchments, out of our self-importance, out of our complacencies, because we are unable to heal ourselves without the one who protects us by breaking down dividing walls.

Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

Anticipating the very full treatment the Great Multiplication (vv 35–44) and Jesus' walking on water (vv 45–52) will receive during the next five weeks of lectionary readings from John 6, this week's Gospel lection skips over the telling of these two stories in Mark 6. We do, however, set the stage by hearing what happened immediately before (vv 30–34), and we receive a brief report about how people responded to Jesus' power to heal (vv 53–56…).

As the apostles return from their mission (6:6b–13), Jesus offers to take them to a deserted place for a rest. However, there is one situation from which Jesus, in his compassion, will not withdraw: when he is confronted with people who are “like sheep without a shepherd.” In contrast to the leaders who fail to provide their people with leadership, guidance, and sustenance (cf. Jeremiah 23:1–2), Jesus is the Good Shepherd who never abandons his sheep…. Jesus is presented as the source of wisdom, and this wisdom is so vital and necessary to human life that Jesus was willing to forego his time of rest to provide this wisdom to the directionless people. – Steven H. Fazenbaker

Jeremiah 23:1-6

Following a chapter of oracles against the rulers of Israel, who have failed to execute justice, Jeremiah employs shepherd imagery to foretell the fate that awaits these rulers. Jeremiah accuses the “shepherds who shepherd my people” of “scatter[ing] my flock, and [driving] them away, and … not attend[ing] to them” (v 2). God, through Jeremiah, promises to drive out the “evil” shepherds, gather the scattered sheep and “raise up shepherds over them who will shepherd them” (v 4). – Steven H. Fazenbaker

Ephesians 2:11-22

If we understand this letter as addressed to several different churches, we can see the very Pauline message of “unity in Christ made manifest through a diversity of gifts” (cf. 1 Corinthians 12–14) expressed through this letter. In this week's lection, the author begins by emphasizing two very distinct and mutually exclusive groups: the “uncircumcision” (Gentiles) and the “circumcision” (Jews).

Indeed, before Christ, there was “no hope” that the divided creation of Jews and Gentiles could ever be reconciled. But, in and through Christ, “you who were once far off have been brought near,” and “he has made both groups into one.”

As a circular letter to a number of different churches, the invitation is for each individual faith community to grow beyond thinking of itself as separate from each another, and to realize that each local church is part of one universal act of salvation in Christ Jesus….

Each church is not an individual household of God; there is one universal household in which God dwells, and Christ Jesus himself is the cornerstone of this universal household (v 20). And, in and through Christ Jesus, each local church is “built together spiritually into [one] dwelling place for God” (v 22). – Steven H. Fazenbaker

God’s Word shows us the possibility for healing divisions. It is the great work of the Church to use the power of the Holy Spirit and the hope that we have in Christ Jesus to lead us into the truly green pastures where God has set the table for feasting with all people.

Steven H. Fazenbaker is director of the Wesley Foundation at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Homily Service 42, no. 3 (2009): 79-87.