I have written a couple of articles this week for my Participatory Bible Study Blog that relate to the week’s lectionary passages.
1) Translating Philippians 1:9-11 comparing three translations of the passage and discussing the difficulties of getting a clear English rendering
and
2) The Mosaic Bible and the Lectionary – Update discussing the use of The Mosaic Bible (NLT) from Tyndale House in connection with the lectionary.
Reversal is a common theme in the teachings of Jesus. The poor are blessed? The persecuted are blessed? How silly is that?
And today we have another reversal in our gospel passage (Mark 12:38-44). The widow who puts in two little coins that might, optimistically, add up to a penny, is the one who put in more than everyone else. Again, from the human point of view, this is rather silly. Even the most math challenged amongst us can figure out that all those rich people were putting in much more money than did the widow. But God sees things differently.
I prefer a different label for this, not “reversal” but “seeing things differently.” God simply has a different way of looking at everything involved. The scribes could count too, and they knew they were important, and that the widow mattered very little.
This difference in the way God sees things reverberates through all the lectionary passages today. In Ruth, we see the despised Moabite woman, who could not become a member of the congregation even 10 generations later (Deuteronomy 23:3), becoming the ancester of King David, only four generations down the road. In Psalm 127 we see the possibility of having a house that looks great, has solid engineering, and is located in a prestigious neighborhood, but if it wasn’t built by God, it is vain.
Finally in Hebrews we see the eternal nature of the heavenly sanctuary as opposed to all earthly ones, even divinely ordained sanctuaries. You could say, in a way, that those earthly sanctuaries must be built by God and incorporate just a bit of the divine in them or they too would be vain, just like the house in Psalm 127.
What exactly does a God-built house look like? What makes the difference? Can you tell by looking? Is there a way to measure it?
I don’t think so. The real way to measure this success is to allow God to show you that heavenly perspective. You can’t get all of it, but you can get a little bit. Ask for that vision, and I believe you will receive it.
Believe it or not, I do regularly read the weekly lectionary passages. Finding time to write about them is another matter. This week I’m going to start by providng some links to previous discussions of lectionary passages.
First, I have a write-up on Isaiah 26 which discusses the structure of the entire chapter. I think it’s worthwhile to look at passages in context, especially here. In this case, John the Revelator uses material from the Isaiah passage in our New Testament epistle reading, Revelation 21:1-6a. I use a series of scenes to illuminate the structure of Revelation in my study guide, and you can find an outline of these combined with my draft translation. Reading the two side by side, and then expanding the context of the Isaiah passage by reading the whole chapter will give you some insight into the use of the Old Testament in the New.
Later in the week I hope to post some audio of my previous teaching on the gospel of John.
Two of the lectionary passages today, at least if you go with the United Methodist selections, involve romance and sexual attraction. One, of course, is Song of Songs 2:8-13 and the other is Psalm 45, which has a foreign princess marrying the king of Israel. The second involves romance at least as far as an arranged political marriage, probably into a harem, can do so.
I think there are two major pitfalls in interpreting these passages, and these apply especially to Song of Songs. The first is that we will miss the spiritual lessons because we are enjoying the story and the poetry. Literature that involves sex is both popular and controversial. I’m guessing that after some time on the internet, when I check the stats for this article, there will be a correlation between the number of times I mention “sex” in it, and its popularity. So one can read these passages as simple, physical attraction.
The other pitfall, however, is that we will quickly spiritualize the passage and miss out on the physical connection. In my view sexual attraction and romantic love provides us with the best metaphor we’re going to get for God’s love and passion for us, and how diligently God seeks to provide his grace. At the same time, it provides us with a pattern for our own behavior with respect to God.
One common view of Song of Songs is allegorical. Now I won’t deny that some good things have come out of reading this book allegorically. But I do believe that reading it as allegory and denying its value as a simple and passionate love story diminishes the book. It is not written as allegory. It is written as love poetry. It is not necessarily to be understood, but to be lived.
And there is where we can also tie James 1:17-27. Perhaps we don’t really understand something unless we have lived it. Notice God’s own example in Jesus Christ. God came and lived among us in human form in Jesus Christ. God obviously knew, but in Jesus he shared the experience of human beings living in an imperfect world and day by day facing the challenges of being very, very finite.
Despite our unfortunate tendency to regard anything sexual as dirty, and requiring that it be separated from spirituality, human attraction relates very closely to God’s longing for us, and our search for God. In romantic love, no amount of factual knowledge of a partner would suffice, if learned apart from personal experience of that partner.
So it is with God. I cannot study theology for years and expect that this alone will let me truly know God. I need to experience God, to be sought passionately by God, and in my turn to seek God passionately.
Scripture: 1 Kings 8:10-11 (Proper 16B)
I like to say that God is present everywhere, and that the difference between one time and another is much more with our awareness of God’s presence than it is with any action on God’s part. But if we believe scripture, there are times when God’s presence is especially visible, and this passage narrates one of them. You can get a better picture by reading all of chapter 8, rather than just the snippets that are included in the lectionary passage.
The question I want to present is this: Can we experience God’s presence in a special way today, and if so, how? Further, how similar would that experience be to what is described in this text?
Make sure that you don’t discount the text before you start. It appears to me, at least, that we’re talking about an impact that is visible to all.
Here are some links to blog posts or essays in which I discuss God’s glory:
Ezekiel 1 – a Glimpse of the Glory of Yahweh (Energion: Religion, Philosophy, and Politics)
This is my starting point. It’s a college paper I wrote my senior year in college. I’d largely stand by what I said now. The glory of God and its movement is a substantial theme in Ezekiel, and the positioning of the various elements is no accident.
Eternity in Liturgy (Participatory Bible Study Blog)
How does glory fit into liturgy? This is one of the key questions that tie into those I asked above.
Lectionary Texts for the Transfiguration – Cycle A (Participatory Bible Study Blog)
The transfiguration gives insights into the nature of God’s glory and the purpose of its appearance.
The gospel for this week comes again from John 6:56-69. We have five of these in a row. John 6 is an interesting chapter because in it Jesus drives to the heart of his message in speaking especially to his disciples, and many of them can’t handle it. They leave.
I have discussed the gritty, earthy metaphors Jesus is using. Certainly the way he expresses these truths will get under the skin of many people. But it’s not just the gritty metaphors that are getting on peoples’ nerves. It’s what those metaphors point to as well.
“You are what you eat,” is a common saying. Many of us are very careful what we eat, and even what we put in our mouths. We’re touchy about it. Why? Well, some of us are aware of health issues. Some just have certain very specific tastes. But in general, sending something inside your body just sounds a bit dangerous, so most of us are pretty careful about it.
When Jesus uses eating metaphors to discuss our relationship to him, he is making it clear that this isn’t something that we take up part of the time. It isn’t something that we pay attention to occasionally. It is something that becomes a permanent part of us. It is something that changes us and makes us something different.
We frequently talk about the presence of Jesus at the Eucharist. But an important point to remember is that when we eat that bread and drink from the cup, we are also symbolically living John 6. If Jesus is present, and I believe he is, then we take Jesus into ourselves. We shouldn’t do that casually or without fully intending to put it into practice, by surrender.
John 6 gives us the confrontation, and then the reaction of each group. The question of total commitment is the real dividing point in Christianity.
References: 1 Kings 2:10-12, 3:3-15; Psalm 111; Ephesians 5:15-20; John 6:51-58
For three of these passages it is quite easy to find a common theme – wisdom. If you go a step further, all of those passages talk about wisdom in action. For the remaining passage, the gospel, one may be tempted to preach a sermon on communion, which is not a bad idea. But don’t give up on truly connecting that sermon with the other three passages.
In John 6:51-58, Jesus gets down in the mud and the blood and the dirt and works with us. The idea of eating his flesh and drinking his blood is a shocking one designed to emphsize to us taking in Jesus. This grittiness is the ultimate expression of grace in action. In communion we not only experience grace (in Wesleyan theology, as a means of grace), but we see it in action, and are reminded of it.
We have a great deal of trouble comprehending grace. There are two opposing reasons for most of our difficulty with the concept of grace. On the one hand, we have a hard time receiving something for nothing, something which we know we have not earned. Note here also that this receiving is not one for the lazy; grace is demanding at the same time as it is free. In opposition to this is our pride that makes us want to find something, somewhere, that gives us a bargaining position.
But if we go back to the very fundamental doctrine of creation, it is God who is at the foundation of everything. We really don’t want to admit it, but God didn’t have to create us. He didn’t have to grant us any dignity at all even when he did. He could have created us as anything he wanted. He could have made us as lowly or as great as he desired. But no matter what he did, we would owe it all to him, no exceptions, no mitigating hook on which to hang our pride. In this sense grace is blazingly obvious and yet very difficult to accept. We don’t want to be contingent; we want to be self-made. But if we believe the concept of creation we should believe the concept of grace. Even where i believe in choice, that choice is simply God’s gift to me.
So how does this grace and this communion expressed in John relate to the other passages? Well, as the Psalm tells us explicitly, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. I’ve written a couple of times recently about the fear of the Lord. There is reverence, there is awe, yes. But there is also a godly variety of honest fear. But it is this fear that brings us to grace. Realizing who God is will frighten the human soul and make us fear losing our sense of independence, our sense of self-worth apart from that given us by God. So when Psalm 111 reminds us that wisdom is all about God, he’s reminding us of God’s grace. God gives wisdom because he is willing to get dirty with us in Jesus Christ. In 1 Kings 3, when Solomon prays for wisdom, he recognizes that there is only one place to get it.
In Ephesians, the story becomes more explicit. Do you ever read the rest of the chapter or a couple of chapters that contain the lectionary passages? In Ephesians 5:1-2 Paul connects what he has said before to the practical results he will discuss in chapters 5 & 6. What is it about? Be imitators of God. What do we imitate? God’s giving, God’s grace! So when Paul tells us to live wisely he’s talking about the way in which grace works itself out in our lives.
Now many seem to think that Paul is all about cheap grace and no works. We balance things off by playing James against Paul. But Paul has no problem with works, as long as they are placed where they belong. You cannot begin to live a Christian life until you recognize God’s grace at the foundation of it all. The fear of the Lord results in understanding his grace (perfect love casts out fear-1 John 4:18), and God’s grace works in your life. The result looks a great deal like wisdom, because it is. It’s God’s wisdom working in your life.
Our problem in reading Paul is that we don’t read all his letters, and we don’t read all of each one. Paul is all about grace, but he doesn’t regard grace merely as a get out of hell free card. Grace is powerful. Grace works in your life. Grace changes you. God’s grace of course, as the Holy Spirit lives in you.
Communion, you see, can be the beginning of wisdom, provided that we clearly hear the challenging language Jesus uses in John 6:51-58.
Ref: Psalm 111:10 – Proper 15B
The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord.
Those who practice it have good inteligence.
We’ve all heard that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, as stated in this passage and many others. It’s a pretty basic Christian concept.
A few days ago, I wrote about the fear of the Lord and how I believe it is not only reverence and awe, but includes an element of fear. There is a good reason to be concerned with the concept of being afraid of God. There is definitely an ungdoly fear. But it’s quite easy to dismiss a very real, justified and salutory fear at the same time as we dismiss what is ungodly.
Let me use an example from baseball. A couple of years back my wife and I were attending a game with our local Pensacola Pelicans, an unaffiliated minor league team. It was during a minor league umpire strike and the replacements were not so good. The umpire behind the plate that night had grave difficulties telling a ball from a strike.
Now let me make clear that this wasn’t the normal complaint of the umpire ruling against the home team. There was no bias. He didn’t make it any easier on the visitors than on the visiting team. The problem was that he was horribly inconsistent, and his inconsistency drove both teams nuts.
Normally there are several types of fear a pitcher might feel during a game. He might be afraid of failing to control the ball. He might be afraid of getting taken out of the game early. But the only fear he should have of the umpire is a fear of doing things that are out of bounds–intentionally hitting a batter, or arguing inappropriately with the umpire.
In the game I observed, there was a fear with each pitch–that the umpire might call an obvious ball a strike or a perfect pitch right down the center might be called a ball. It was a confusing sort of fear and both teams reacted badly to it. You know there’s trouble when half of each team is standing outside the dugout and they’re all yelling at the umpire–over the same call.
There is a quality of fear of the Lord that is quite appropriate. It’s the realization that God is powerful beyond our comprehension (who can comprehend omnipotence?) and that if we go out of bounds there will be consequences. It is much unlike the fear I just described, or the fear of a crazed wild animal. In those cases it’s a terror that leaves us unable to choose a course of action.
“There is no fear in love,” John tells us (1 John 4:18). He tells us this in the context of judgment. When must you fear judgment? When you are guilty and are likely to be convicted. It goes past the topic of this post, but this is a simple statement of grace. Perfect love is that which Jesus showed when he died for us. Perfect love, love perfected in us, is the realization that we need not fear the judgment because of God’s grace.
I think the distinction is also made in our verse today. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. How do we tell what is a proper fear of the Lord? Well, the fact that it is the beginning of wisdom! Though I don’t recall the specific reference, Paul Tillich says in his Systematic Theology that both the divine and the demonic shatter us mortals. The difference is that the divine puts us back together again better than before, whereas the demonic leaves us shattered.
The fear of God may be overwhelming, but it leads to order and wisdom. The fear that is cast out by love is a terror of what is wrong, and that which does not build up.
I have just added the RefTagger module to this site. It seems like a valuable adjunct to a site that has as many Bible references as this one.
I have set the default version to TNIV. I may change that from time to time just to keep people thinking!
See 1 Kings 3:3-14 (Proper 15B)
Why does God choose to give Solomon riches and make him great after Solomon asks for wisdom?
God is pleased with Solomon’s request and grants it, yet he also grants him everything else he might desire. The result, as we read further into the story, is that Solomon turns away from God and really becomes a not-so-good ruler.
Would Solomon have also turned from God if he had been given very little? We really don’t know. What we do know is that he did not use his wealth and the power he was given as wisely as he might have, given all that wisdom.
I don’t have any certain answer to this question. Scripture simply doesn’t tell us. But by thinking about the question and this story, I think we can get some idea about God’s gifts. Many in the church today are returning to the view tha many in Israel had, that rices indicates God’s blessing and approval while poverty indicates God’s disapproval. (Prosperity theology implies this, I believe.)
But in Solomon’s case, while he is blessed with riches, he remains rich as he turns further and further from God. God’s gifts carry with them a responsibility. One could say the same thing about the gift of wisdom. Solomon clearly had both knowledge and wisdom, but in the end he did not rule wisely, as events showed.