Ep. 41: We know Kung Fu! or Advent 3A

For Sunday, December 15

Matthew 11:2-11 - Are you the One?
Isaiah 35:1-10 - The Highway in the Wilderness

Click read more for show notes!

SHOW NOTES - 12/15/2013

Opening Music: 12 Days by Straight No Chaser

For Sunday, December 15
Episode 41
Welcome to the Pulpit Fiction Podcast. This is the podcast for those that looked up Ezekiel 25:17, and were sorely disappointed. This is episode 41 for Sunday December 15, Advent 3A. We will be discussing:
Matthew 11:2-11 - Are you the One?
Isaiah 35:1-10 - The Highway in the Wilderness

Check-in

Accapelicious Day of Joy!
- How to address this on the year anniversary of Newtown
- Resources for remembering Newtown (special TY to Karen Ziel)
Textweek
Advent stuff!
- Advent resources
- Advent run to Bethlehem - On to Egypt!

Primary Scripture - Matthew 11:2-11 - Are you the One?

Confusion between Jesus and John the Baptist
- Matthew 16:13-20
- No Newspapers or media
- Proclamation of repentance and new life to all people
- Sadducees, Pharisees, Zealots, Essenes, poor carpenters.
Who is the One we are to follow?
- Powerful - nope
- Strong - nope
- big words- no
- isolating - no
- actions that speak for themselves- yes
- compassionate - yes
- healing - yes
- reconciling - yes
- liberating - yes
Jesus proclaims himself as the one to be waited for
- John is not needed to proclaim anymore- just to follow the One
- Clear allusion to Isaiah 61 (the passage also quoted in Luke 4)
- The blind see, the deaf hear, the poor have good news...but children are still being massacred in their schools- we aren’t there yet
John the Baptist might be happy for the lepers, lame, deaf and blind, but he is still in prison- where is his good news?
- “Pastors, think about these people as Advent comes. You may not be able to bring them tidings of joy, but find ways to bring them tidings of comfort. It is great for the youth group to carol the lonely and then head back to church for hot cider and donuts. How about asking members of the youth group, one by one, to adopt a shut-in, or a person in hospital, or someone in a nursing home? How about inviting the youth to sit and talk for awhile—and even better, to sit and listen for awhile?” - David Bartlett - Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary - Feasting on the Word – Year A, Volume 1: Advent through Transfiguration.
- What comfort it may be to remind people that even John the Baptist-the greatest of all those who were born of women- doubted, questioned, worried.
- - Dietrich Bonhoeffer in prison asking “Who am I?”
  - Jesus’ answer is to look around us - what he has done
  - - What evidence is there that Jesus is real?
    - What have you seen or experienced to show Jesus is real?
    - What would I be without Christ?
    - thank to Mark Yurs for the above thoughts from Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary - Feasting on the Word – Year A, Volume 1: Advent through Transfiguration.
Even the greatest on Earth are less than the Least of Heaven
- Powerful message to celebrity preachers

Secondary scripture - Isaiah 35:1-10 - The Highway in the Wilderness

“Bridge between First and Second Isaiah” (Frank Yamada in Working Preacher).
- Possibly same author as Second Isaiah, but not easy to figure out. Christopher Seitz’s commentary in Interpretation: Isaiah deals almost exclusively with these issues.
- Comes after a string of dire warnings of the nations falling (like Edom in ch 34. Edom lies southeast of Judah and the Dead Sea.)
- Points to the vision in 40:3 “Make level a highway in the wilderness for our God…”
Two Parts
- vv 1-7: “Coming of the God” includes chiasm.
- - Creation - Humanity - God - Humanity - Creation
  - - a (vv 1-2) Transforming the desert and wilderness
    - b (v 3) Transforming weak bodies
    - c (v 4) God comes.
    - b’ (vv 5-6a) Transforming weak bodies
    - c’ (vv 6b-7) Transforming the desert and wilderness (Brueggemann detailed this chiasm, but most interpreters see it as a focal point of this passage. Texts for Preaching, Year A)
  - At the center of the chiasm is “God who saves”
  - - “With a vengeance and divine retribution”
    - - Allow it to be God’s vengeance and Divine retribution, not ours. In other words, we don’t know what that looks like. In our limited, sinful mind, we almost automatically go to violence, but it is not left up to us to decide what this means. What we do know is that the weak and vulnerable are saved.
    - “this text helps us understand what it means to "be saved" in the Bible-not at all something that pertains only to individual souls, but rather a transformation of humanity and creation that enables all to sing together in present and eternal joy.” (Fred Gaiser in Working Preacher)
- vv 8-10 “Return of the People”
- - There is no salvation apart from the community
  - Individual salvation is not a concept that Isaiah understands.
  - Path is safe
  - - Even for fools
    - No predators
  - “The Holy Way”
  - - Early Christians called followers of the Way.
    - Will we walk the Holy Way?
    - Will we notice the great things that are happening in our midst?
    - - Can we see?
      - Can we hear?
      - Can we leap?
      - Can we sing?

Closing -
TY: listeners
Opening Music: 12 Days by Straight No Chaser
Transition Music: “Purple Rain” covered by Dekoor Close Harmony
Theme Music: Dick Dale and the Deltones “Misirlou”
TY: Closing music,Paul and Storm, “Oh No”

Contact us/ Leave comments:
Shout outs: Leanne Finamore, Jenee Woodard, Andrew Karrmonn @andrewkarrmonn
Pulpitfiction.us,@pulpitfpodcast,facebook.com/pulpitfiction, iTunes,
show@pulpitfiction.us.