Endurance Produces Hope – 18 June 2017 – Second Sunday after Pentecost

We enter Ordinary Time with Jesus’ call to proclaim the reign of God. The preacher’s challenge today is to wed that proclamation to the healing Jesus’ gives his messengers authority to bring about. Where is the healing happening in your community?

Matthew 9:35––­10:8[9-23]

By joining together these verses, the lectionary shows Matthew's intention that the disciples should do what Jesus did. Jesus proclaimed the “good news of the kingdom of heaven” (9:35); the disciples are to proclaim the good news that “the kingdom of heaven has come near” (10:7). Jesus cures every disease and sickness (9:35) and gives the disciples authority “to cure every disease and every sickness” (10:1). Jesus views the crowds “like sheep without a shepherd” (9:36) and sends the disciples to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (10:6).

The mission of the Twelve is not just to preach about the kingdom but also to actualize it through deeds of spiritual power: driving out demons and curing diseases (manifestations in human life and evil and brokenness). . .

The descriptions attached to the names [of the apostles] show what a motley crew this was: Simon was called “Rock” (Peter); Matthew was a tax collector; the other Simon was a Canaanite, a zealot for the law (from the Aramaic kanana, enthusiast, not a resident of the land of Canaan), and Judas Iscariot was a traitor. Those who are gathered by Jesus and commissioned for leadership roles in the church are a diverse and imperfect group, and this was apparently the Master's intention. – Frank C. Senn

Exodus 19:2-8a

This pericope affirms God's call to his people to be “holy,” that is, to belong to God. Holiness or sanctification means that the people have been set apart like priests in order to offer a sacrifice that is pleasing to the Lord. Holiness in the biblical tradition implied that the people should be like God, who is distinct from the creation. Therefore, the people of God are to be distinct from all the peoples and cultures around them, both morally and ritually. –– Frank C. Senn

Romans 5:1-8

Peace is here understood as reconciliation (making peace), which is referred to explicitly in verses 10–11. The condition of reconciliation through Christ gives us access to the grace of God. This access gives us the right to boast not only of glory but also of suffering. We highly regard suffering because it leads to endurance, which produces character, which produces a hope that does not disappoint because it resides in hearts into which God's love has been poured through the gift of the Holy Spirit. A homily might unpack each of these concepts, showing how one builds on the other.

God has overcome his own wrath against sin. . . by the sacrifice of his Son. This is an expression of God's love for his weak and fallen human creatures. Paul never speaks of God being reconciled with us but of us being reconciled with God, since we were the estranged party. Christ's blood is the condition of our restoration to divine favor. This has consequences for both the present and the future. Christ's sacrificial death reconciles us now in our present life before God and also saves us in the final judgment. – Frank C. Senn

Frank C. Senn, an ELCA pastor who served Immanuel Lutheran Church in Evanston, Illinois, from 1990-2013, has also taught liturgy courses at a number of seminaries and divinity schools and published thirteen books mostly on the history of the liturgy.

Homily Service 41, no. 3 (2008): 54-62.

Water is Life –– 3rd Sunday in Lent, Year A –– 19 March 2017

John 4:5-42

It is most unlikely that the Jesus of history ever went into Samaria during his earthly ministry. This story is most likely rooted in the Johannine community's successful Samaritan mission recast into the life of Jesus. It also suggests that the initial evangelist to Samaria was a woman. This story is theologically charged with the idea that Jesus is the true bridegroom of a New Israel; it is a Christian application of the old prophetic images of Israel as God's bride and idolatry as sexual impropriety. The conclusion in which the Samaritan townspersons tell the woman that they now have a personal experience of Jesus and no longer need her testimony to foster their belief does not suggest her proclamation defective; it indicates that faith for all Christians is sustained by personal connections with Christ. –– Regina Boisclair

Rather than assuming the woman at the well at noon is there during the day to avoid others because she has shame in the community, recent scholars have surmised that this story sets her in contrast to Nicodemus, the one who stealthily approached Jesus in the darkness. Unlike Nicodemus, this woman comes in daylight and ends up transforming her community because of Jesus’ relationship with her.

Setting this event at Jacob's well recapitulates the stories in Genesis in which the patriarchs encountered brides at wells. While Jacob's well was the most significant well in ancient Israel, it was located in Samaritan territory. John's Jesus has already challenged the temple authorities; he is now positioned to challenge Samaritan schismatics. . . .

More recently feminist scholars and others have noted that the five husbands likely refers to the gods of the tribes resettled in that area by the Assyrians (2 Kings 17:13–34), and that Samaria's current devotion to Yahweh was defective in that it was not wholly aligned with the covenant of the Jews. While Jesus asserts that salvation will be derived through the Jews, he also asserts that neither Jerusalem nor Gerizim will set authoritative understandings for those who worship God in Spirit and truth. –– Regina Boisclair

Sandra Schneiders suggests in The Revelatory Text (Liturgical Press, 1999, pgs 186-194) that this reading might inspire Christians during Lent to really think about our own idolatries and be challenged to speak of our relationship with Jesus.

Exodus 17:1-7

This week's story from Exodus (wilderness complaining) helps to illuminate our penchant for individualism. In the end it seems to come down to a question of self-worth or, perhaps more accurately, self-doubt. The Israelites are running from the most powerful empire in the world. . . .

Thirst, however, is a powerful stimulant and it awakens the demons of self-doubt. Now that God has figured out we are nobody, God will leave us with nothing. Better make our way as best we can, assessing the means for survival in a world that offers no free lunch. . . . We fall back on our own resources, pitiful though they may be, and try to imagine that we are worth something after all. Meanwhile, God waits patiently with buckets of water ready to rain down upon our heads as soon as we remember that we matter. –– Jennifer Copeland

Romans 5:1-11

Paul has some interesting comments to make about suffering that might lead one to believe that suffering is essential to Christianity. Clearly, however, we do not suffer because we are Christians in the same way that we train because we are athletes or practice because we are musicians. Christians face adversity because our way of being in the world often runs contrary to the ways of the world. Sometimes this adversity achieves the status of suffering. . . We do not suffer in order to be saved. Paul would never make such claim! –– Jennifer Copeland

Jennifer Copeland, a United Methodist ordained minister, served for 16 years as chaplain at Duke University and as director of the Duke Wesley Fellowship. She is currently executive director at North Carolina Council of Churches in Raleigh-Durham.

Regina Boisclair, a Roman Catholic biblical scholar, teaches at Alaska Pacific University, Anchorage, Alaska.

Homily Service 41, no. 2 (2007): 42-53.