Occasional thoughts of an Anglican Episcopal priest

Category: Philippians (Page 1 of 4)

Of Comparison and Contrast – Sermon for RCL Proper 23A

“The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king . . . .”

This is an ugly parable that Matthew reports in today’s gospel. It is similar to a parable that is related in Luke’s gospel, but Matthew adds details that challenge us deeply, even to the core of our faith, to the center of our being as Christians. When Luke tells the story, the host inviting his neighbors to dinner is not a king; he’s just “someone.”[1] When Luke’s host sends his servant to tell the intended guests that all is ready, they offer only excuses; no one “makes light” of the occasion and no one seizes, mistreats, or kills the slaves as happens in the Matthean version.[2] Luke’s host gets angry, but only Matthew’s king sends an army “destroy the murderers and burn their city.”[3] Both hosts send the slaves back out to invite others from the streets and highways; Luke’s dinner host adds an instruction specifically to invite “the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.”[4] In both stories the banquet hall is filled, but only in Matthew’s story is there the judgment, not mentioned in Luke’s, that the substitute guests include “both good and bad.”[5] And, finally, Matthew’s Jesus adds the detail about the man present without the proper wedding garment who is thrown into the “outer darkness” and that final warning, “Many are called, but few are chosen.”[6]

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Of Persistent Love – Sermon for RCL Proper 22A

This is the second of three Sundays during which our lessons from the Gospel according to Matthew tell the story of an encounter between Jesus and the temple authorities. Jesus has come into Jerusalem, entered the Temple and had a somewhat violent confrontation with “the money changers and … those who sold doves,”[1] gone back to Bethany, and then returned to the Temple the next day. In last week’s lesson, “the chief priests and the elders of the people” demanded that he explain himself, asking, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?”[2] In good rabbinic fashion, Jesus answers their question with a question and, when they cannot answer his question, he declines to answer theirs.

But, Jesus being Jesus, he doesn’t leave it at that: he goes on to tell three parables. First, a story about two sons, one of whom refuses to do as his father instructs but later changes his mind and obeys, the other of whom agrees to do as he is told but then fails to do so. The second, today’s story about a vineyard. And the third, a story about a wedding feast where the invited guests decline attendance so passers-by are dragged in off the streets, but one man (who fails to wear an appropriate wedding garment) is tossed back out into a place of perdition. We heard the first last week; we’ll hear the third next week. Today, we have heard “the Parable of the Wicked Tenants.”

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Of Power and Authority – Sermon for RCL Proper 21A

Power and authority. These are the subjects of our lessons from Scripture this morning. Later this month they will figure as key concepts in a trial scheduled to begin in Fulton County, Georgia. That trial will focus on an alleged attempt to disrupt, even to stop, what we have come to call “the peaceful transfer of power.” Historian Maureen MacDonald wrote a few years ago:

The swearing-in ceremony allows for the peaceful transfer of power from one President to another. It formally gives the “power of the people” to the person who has been chosen to lead the United States. This oath makes an ordinary citizen a President.[1]

In Paul’s letter to the Philippians, part of which we heard this morning, the apostle writes about the power of Jesus Christ by quoting a liturgical hymn sung in early Christian communities:

At the name of Jesus?every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord.[2]

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Not Getting It Right: Sermon for Advent 3A (December 15, 2019)

When I was a kid growing up first in southern Nevada and then in southern California, the weeks leading up to Christmas (we weren’t church members so we didn’t call them “Advent”) were always the same. They followed a pattern set by my mother. We bought a tree and decorated it; we set up a model electric train around it. We bought and wrapped packages and put them under the tree, making tunnels for that toy train. We went to the Christmas light shows in nearby parks and drove through the neighborhoods that went all out for cooperative, or sometimes competitive, outdoor displays. My mother would make several batches of bourbon balls (those confections made of crushed vanilla wafers and booze) and give them to friends and co-workers. Christmas Eve we would watch one or more Christmas movies on TV, and early Christmas morning we would open our packages . . .  carefully so that my mother could save the wrapping paper. Then all day would be spent cooking and watching TV and playing bridge. After the big Christmas dinner, my step-father and I would do the clean up, my brother and my uncle would watch TV . . . and my mother would sneak off to her room and cry. You see . . . no matter how carefully we prepared, no matter how strictly we adhered to Mom’s pattern, something always went wrong. We never got it right; Christmas never turned out the way my mother wanted it to be.

Some years later, I read the work of the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai and I understood what our family problem was.

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Lenten Journal 2019 (9 April)

Lenten Journal, Day 34

My intention when I started this exercise in Lenten discipline was to write for an hour each morning with no preconceptions about what I would be writing. Just sit down, put a figurative piece of paper in my imaginary typewriter, and start pounding the keys. It hasn’t quite worked out that way, but I have made the attempt (most days) to at least write something sometime during each 24 hour period.

Similarly, it was my intention to return to the gym (the Medina Recreation Center) this morning and do another half-hour of aerobic exercise on the recumbent crosstrainer and the indoor track. And similarly it’s not going to work out that way.

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Changing Clothes: If I Were Preaching, Advent 2 (9 December 2018)

“Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction, O Jerusalem, and put on forever the beauty of the glory from God.”[1]

If I were preaching on the Second Sunday of Advent this year, I think I would select the first of the two options for the reading from the Hebrew Scriptures, which is actually from the Jewish apocrypha.

Years ago (many years ago) when I was 18 years old, I worked in a small 100-bed community hospital in Southern California. Initially, I was a janitor (“housekeeper” in the hospital jargon of the time) but within a few months I was able to take the job of orderly.

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Wisdom & the Structure of Bread: Sermon for Pentecost 13, Proper 15B, August 19, 2018

We have come to week four of our five week exploration of the metaphor of bread, the flesh of Jesus, the bread of life, the bread from heaven, the bread that gives life to the world. “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh,” says Jesus. “Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.”[1]

So as I continued my own meditations about bread this week I was influenced by the Old Testament lesson from the Book of Proverbs in which Lady Wisdom is shown engaged in a construction project, building a house and putting together a menu for a feast. One word that I know from my experience as a baker of bread and that one runs across time and again in lessons about baking is “structure.” Structure is a very important aspect of bread; in yeast-risen wheat breads, it is created by kneading.

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Train Tracks & Ties: Perspective – Sermon for Pentecost 5, Proper 7B (June 24, 2018)

Our Old Testament lesson this morning is a very small bit of the Book of Job, that really sort odd bit of Biblical literature that tells the story of a wager between God and Satan. Some scholars believe that it may find its origins in an earlier Babylonian work known as the Poem of the Righteous Sufferer, that the Jews in Exile became familiar with the older Babylonian story and adapted it to their own theology.

Job begins with a scene in the heavenly court where God is in conversation with character called, in Hebrew, ha-satan which is translated into English as Satan. However, this is not the Devil of later Christian mythology, the ruler of Hell portrayed by Milton or Dante or even Walt Disney (in the Night on Bald Mountain sequence in the movie Fantasia). Rather, ha-satan is a sort of heavenly district attorney or prosecutor who goes “to and fro on the earth, and … walking up and down on it,”[1] scoping out sin and iniquity and bringing it to God’s attention for judgment.

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Triumphal Entry – Sermon for Palm Sunday, RCL Year B, March 25, 2018

Today we are commemorating Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem at the beginning of the week that would culminate in his death on the cross of Calvary. Somewhat contrary to common sense, this has come to be called the “triumphal entry.” I don’t know who first applied this term to Jesus making his way from Bethany and Bethphage, through the Kidron Valley, also known as the valley of Jehosophat or the valley of decision, into the holy city. I’ve often thought that whoever it was must surely have been a master of irony, or perhaps of sarcasm, for the procession was anything but a triumph!

Two scholars, Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, have suggested that much more than a fulfillment of the Zecharian prophecy that the messiah, the king would come gently bringing salvation, riding on a donkey’s colt,[1] Jesus’ parade was a mockery of the Roman tradition of military parades, particularly the sort Pontius Pilate might have used to enforce imperial domination.[2]

To appreciate their suggestion, it’s necessary for us to understand the nature of these parades. We have a word in English, triumph, the adjectival form of which we apply to Jesus’ parade, which we use and understand as a synonym to the word victory. But it derives from the name of a particular sort of military parade practiced by the Romans, the triumphus. In Roman tradition, the triumph happened after a victory was won, but only in Rome, only after certain victories and only for certain victors. It has been said that the triumph was “one of the most dazzling examples of the theme of spectacle in Roman culture,” imbued with “theatricality” and designed primarily to persuade its audience of the greatness of the conquering general and of Rome itself.[3]

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May Be Compared – Sermon for Proper 23A (Pentecost 19), October 15, 2017

“The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king . . . .”

This is an ugly parable that Matthew reports in today’s gospel. It is similar to a parable that is related in Luke’s gospel, but Matthew adds details that challenge us deeply, even to the core of our faith, to the center of our being as Christians. When Luke tells the story the host inviting his neighbors to dinner is not a king; he’s just “someone.” (Lk 14:15) When Luke’s host sends his servant to tell the intended guests that all is ready, they offer only excuses; no one “makes light” of the occasion and no one seizes, mistreats, or kills the slaves. (Mt 22:5-6) Luke’s host gets angry, but only Matthew’s king sends an army “destroy the murderers and burn their city.” (Mt 22:7) Both hosts send the slaves back out to invite others from the streets and highways; Luke’s dinner host adds an instruction specifically to invite “the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.” (Lk 14:21) In both stories the banquet hall is filled, but only in Matthew’s story is there the judgment, not mentioned in Luke’s, that the substitute guests include “both good and bad.” (Mt 22:10) And, finally, Matthew’s Jesus adds the detail about the man present without the proper wedding garment who is thrown into the “outer darkness” (Mt 22:13) and that final warning, “Many are called, but few are chosen.” (Mt 22:14)

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