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.

The Future is. . . What?! – 7 August 2016 – 11th Sunday after Pentecost/ Lectionary 19/ Proper 14

How often we look around us and long for a path toward faith and hope in the midst of much anxiety! Our world is replete with seemingly intractable violence in many lands and uncertainties about who shall lead us. Today is no exception.

In the face of impossible hopes, as with Abram, God takes us by the hand and shows us the stars – a heaven filled with mysterious and distant lights that cannot be counted. They reveal the limitlessness of God’s promises which hold out hope for peace in the way Julian of Norwich insisted, writing: “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

How are we to grasp this?

Luke 12:32-40

The Gospel story shows us a stance to take, an approach to the things of this world, a measurement for what we value, and a caution about the dangers.

Today's gospel reading. . . collects a number of Jesus' teachings regarding how his followers are to ready themselves for God's impending future, that is, what living faithfully is to look like in terms of our behavior. First he underlines the gift-character of salvation with the encouragement: “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (v 32, emphasis added).

Secondly, he recommends a series of actions consistent with last week's readings' emphasis on not investing oneself in the pursuit of transient earthly wealth, culminating in the assurance that “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (See the commentary on last week's texts.)

And thirdly, with a greatly abbreviated reference to the much more elaborate end-time parable of the ten virgins we find in Matthew 25, he recommends an active and alert stance toward the impending future, a stance of ready waiting “for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” One might call this attitude of urgent anticipation “faith-filled hope.” – John Rollefson

Genesis 15:1-6

While the Gospel gives us the prospect of readiness to hope, the Genesis story gives us companionship with God in the night, even at the moment of despair.

In the poignant image of God pointing Abram to the stars (I picture a clear, cold, windless midnight hour with the lights of the heavens twinkling, thick and sharp) we see with Abram the abundance of God’s promised future. We are incredulous, because when we look around us at the world’s disappointments in our individual lives and that of the nations, a future of such brightness and vastness seems impossible. The moment for Abraham appears to be like ours: Where is the least inkling that hope is not futile? Where is Abram’s first heir?

[T]here is as . . . yet no sign of the offspring needed to get the promise started toward fulfillment, and the clock is ticking. It's not until the next chapter that Sarai will try to jump-start the promise by offering her slave-girl Hagar as a surrogate. As soon will become evident, this only complicates matters, and such human improvisation in trying to help the promise along isn't what Yahweh has in mind.

But most significant for today's theme is the story's conclusion: “And he (Abram) believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.”

From St. Paul in his Letter to the Romans, chapter 4, through the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification officially ratified by the 1999 Vatican and the Lutheran World Federation, this passage has been key in the church's efforts to understand the mystery of how it is that God justifies (reckons righteous), by grace through faith, us fallen descendants of Adam and Eve. – John Rollefson

Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16

Finally, we receive a summation of the truth about faith: It is not logical. What we hope for is not visible.

The author's succinct definition of faith as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (v 1) is borne out in the conclusion drawn from the history of the faithful, all of whom “died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them” (v 13a). This throws faith into its appropriate attitude of leaning into the future to which a promise always leads where its fulfillment is awaited in what both Paul (Romans 8:24–25, e.g.) and the Psalmist (33:22) call “hope.”

. . . The author's description of the faithful as “strangers and foreigners (sojourners) on the earth…seeking a homeland” is an apt description of the pilgrim character of the church, bringing us full circle back to father Abraham whose first recorded act of faith was to respond to God's call to “Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you” in trusting obedience, “not knowing where he was going” (v 8b). . .

We cannot prove that we are justified to have faith and hope. Rather, faith and hope feed each other and we come by them most possibly with our eyes (see the stars!) and ears (hear the word of God!) open to what is impossible… and yet true.

John Rollefson is a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. He has served congregations in Los Angeles, Ann Arbor, Milwaukee, and San Francisco.

Homily Service 40, no. 9 (2007): 13-22.

Chasing after Wind – 31 July 2016 – 11th Sunday after Pentecost/ Lectionary 18/ Proper 13

Jesus said, “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”

We can chase after the winds of ephemeral, temporal pleasures. Or we can let the winds of the Holy Spirit push us toward the treasures that do not rust, disappear, burn down, or disappoint.

Luke 12:13-21

To understand the laws of inheritance found in the Torah, often an heir would come to a religious leader or teacher, like Jesus, when a question about how to divide an inheritance came up. Jewish law allowed for the religious leader to be the arbiter and demand that an inheritance be distributed equitably. However, Jesus would not allow himself to be triangulated in this family argument, but took the opportunity to warn this man and those who were listening about the danger of greed. . . .

Jesus then tells the parable of the rich fool. This man, having produced more than his barns could hold, finds himself in a dilemma: what to do with this abundance? Rather than sharing it with others, he decides to tear down his existing barn to build a bigger one and then rest on his laurels, never having to worry about the future. However, God had other plans—the man would die that night. Just as the Teacher in Ecclesiastes concluded, the man died before enjoying his bounty. . . . [C]an we find hope in the promise of life when our riches are toward God rather than toward the things of this earth? – Carrie L. Lewis La Plante

Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18–23

Building bigger and bigger barns is a common human undertaking. Even when Ecclesiastes was written (ca. 250-167 BCE), life’s toil could seem meaningless. “All is vanity and a chasing after wind,” sums up the view.

Everything that humans do is like chasing the wind. It never lasts and it can never fulfill us. We spend our time seeking out wisdom, but the quest is unhappy, because gaining all knowledge and skill is simply not attainable in this life. Pleasure is also put to the test, looking for self-fulfillment in many things but with no satisfaction. . . . To top it all off, the Teacher realizes that ultimately, his toil will be turned over to another at his death (who may be undeserving and foolish with it), and he will not be able to reap the good that he sows. What is the point of straining at my work everyday? For what does my labor, and by extension, my life, count? We are left to wonder. – Carrie L. Lewis La Plante

Colossians 3:1-11

[B]aptism has significance for our lives and should affect the way in which we behave. We have died to the life that worships the things of this earth and that indulges in idolatrous vices (vv 5–8). Rather we have been raised with Christ and are “hidden in Christ with God” (v 3). Therefore, we have been given a new life that is Christ-centered, and are to be clothed with the virtues of compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness, love and peace. When we have allowed the vices to die and concentrate on the virtues of our life in Christ, we are then able to live with one another in the image of the creator, as a family where race, ritual, culture and social divisions no longer matter. As Christians, we are not immune to the trials and temptations of this earthly life. However, this advice reminds us that we have been given defenses to face those snares. Serious spiritual formation heeds this advice. – Carrie L. Lewis La Plante

Carrie L. Lewis La Plante, pastor at Redeemer Lutheran Church (ELCA) in Indianola, Iowa, has written for Currents in Theology and Mission as well as for Homily Service.

Homily Service 40, no. 9 (2007): 3-12.