Proper 25A (OT 30)
Picture: “Love!” by Babak Fakhamzadeh (Flickr)
Musician: Nathan Drake, Reawakenhymns.com, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” from Reawakened Hymns vol. 4
Psalm 90, Richard Bruxvoort Colligan, Psalmimmersion.com, @pomopsalmist, Patreon
Tasty Wafer: TNS 5.2 - Colby Martin, Unclobber: Rethinking Our Misuse of the Bible on Homosexuality
Musician - Dan Holmes, "My Brother's Keeper" byfrom his album Have a Little Faith. danholmesmusic.com, Facebook
Matthew 22:34-46
Initial Thoughts
This is the core of the gospel - a favorite passage for many, especially the first half.
Bible Study
Literary Context
“One of the legal experts saw the disputes and saw how well Jesus answered them.” What were the nature of the disputes:
Jesus’ parable of the tenant farmers who beat up his managers, and then kill his son.” Legal experts see that this is a story against them, so they “wanted to arrest Jesus.”
Traps:
Should we pay taxes to Caesar?
Who is the woman going to be married to in the resurrection?
Then this legal expert seems to ask a genuine question, and has a conversation.
Third Challenge and then Jesus’ counter
Taxes (last week, Proper 24A, Mt. 22:12-22)- Pharisees and Herodians
Resurrection (skipped here, Mt 22:23-33) - Sadducees
Law (this week, Mt 22:34-40) - Pharisees and Lawyers
Jesus responds to each quickly and concisely
Last section is Jesus’ counter, which they fail. Final score: Jesus 4, others 0.
The Bible Project
Two greatest commandments
Condensing of the 10 Commandments:
1-4 = Love/honor God
5-10 = Love/honor neighbor
Not radically different from other Rabbis
Rabbi Hillel (Died 6 years before Jesus was born) said,(when challenged by a Gentile to repeat the entire Torah on one foot) "What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow: this is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn"
Leviticus 19:9-17 - the culmination of a list of prohibitions to keep Israel from exploiting the weak and poor, including:
Leaving food for the hungry in the field-gleaning (vv.9)
Don’t steal, lie or profane God (vv.11)
Don’t oppress your neighbor, exploit employees, or discriminate against the disabled (vv.13)
Do no injustice or show partiality in judgment, slander or witness against your neighbor (vv.15)
Beyond orthodoxy (Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man)
The question, “What is the first commandment?” is not a new question, but would have been a central question that scribes would have debated.
What is the most important amendment to the constitution?
What is the greatest good? (Socrates)
Jesus quoting the Shema is not out of the ordinary - Jesus linking Deuteronomy 6:4-5 with Leviticus 19:18 is very out of the ordinary -
Jesus adds the mind
Not necessarily out of the ordinary
Jesus’ central ideological and theological point: There is no love of God except through love of neighbor.
“This combination is found as well in earlier Jewish sources (e.g. T. Iss. 7.6 “I loved the Lord and every man with whole heart”; see also the later T. Dan 5:3.)” Aaron Gale. “Matthew”, Jewish Annotated New Testament, p. 52
What kind of Jesus is this? Not the cuddly, sweet, sterilized Jesus, but a Loving radical
Lance Pape (workingpreacher.com) "According to Matthew’s testimony, none of the things Jesus is caught doing in this context -- from physically trashing the display booths of the money changers (21:12), to trash-talking the biblical literacy of colleagues (22:29), to dropping the mic at the end of a scintillating piece of rhetorical and exegetical gamesmanship (verse 46) -- none of it violates the law of love."
Love is not the thing that allows all things, but confronts injustice and rejoices in the truth.
“It’s all too easy to remake Jesus in our own image, picking and choosing from the biblical testimony in order to depict him as a friendly, harmless mainline parson with boundary issues -- the same kind of “quivering mass of availability” that too many progressive pastors have become.1 But if we take Matthew’s testimony seriously, we confront the possibility that our Lord discovered that sometimes in this life there are things worth getting worked up about, things worth arguing about, things that call for those who are able to be both loving and formidable in the cause of righteousness” (Lance Pape, Working Preacher)
David Challenge
“Jesus’ response is that the messiah must be greater than David. Jesus challenges the prevalent ideology of his day.” Michael Joseph Brown, “Matthew” True to Our Native Land. p. 113.
Jesus questions the Pharisees and ends the “battle.”
He ends the line of trap questions with one of his own - one from which they cannot escape.
Jesus uses their literal understanding of the Scripture against them. They are stuck between their cultural understanding of the relationship of a Father and Son and their understanding of the relationship between David and the Messiah.
The next scene (next week) is Jesus turning away from the Pharisees, and speaking to the crowds and calling them out.
Thoughts and Questions
Is love what pushes us to prophetically demand justice and gives us the courage to counter dangerous theology? Or is love the shield and blanket we use to hide from the difficult issues and avoid conflict?
In this passage, we have connected the Law and the Prophets. The Law is about commandments, and the Prophets is about the Messiah. The connecting piece of all of this is love.
The question the Pharisees cannot answer? How is it that David can call his son Lord? Because the Kingdom is about love, and love is about turning everything around. Lordship, into Jesus, is not about holding power over another, but about love. So the Messiah is not about traditional power structures, family structures, or cultural expectations. The Messiah is about the Great Commandment - Love.
Jesus does not present any new teaching here. He does add the part about loving your neighbor as yourself, but even this is from Leviticus 19:18. He is not giving them anything that they didn’t know. The passage he quotes would have been one of the most well known passages of their Bible. So much so, that the Scribes’ response is the other part of the Scripture.
Faith in God is equated with Love of God. Love of God is equated with loving neighbor. In order to show your faith in God, it is necessary to love your neighbor.
Deuteronomy 34:1-12
Initial Thoughts
Bible Study
The end of the Torah- these 12 verses compose the whole chapter
Moses is 120
Talks with all the 12 Tribes
Reminds them of their past and the promise of the future
God’s promise
God reiterates God’s promise to Abraham (one which Moses has had to remind God about in the past)
Presumable God will not need Moses to remind God of God’s promises in the future
The boundaries of the divine promise have been changed (Gen. 15:8- the Nile to the Euphrates, Deut. 34:1-3 - Gilead region as far as Dan’s territory, Judah, the Southern Plain, Jericho Valley and Manasseh and Ephraim.)- much of modern day Israel-Palestine West of the Jordan River
Sight - what Moses can see
V. 1 “the Lord showed”
V. 4 ”shown it to you with your own eyes”
V. 7 “his eyesight wasn’t impaired”
V. 12 “before Israel’s own eyes”
What is God showing us? God is revealing the future to us and to the community
let those with eyes see - cf. Jeremiah 5:21; Isaiah 6:10; Matthew 13:15-16; Mark 8:18
Moses is not allowed to enter the promised land
Moses begs God to allow him to enter- so much so that God finally tells Moses to knock it off- “Enough! Speak no more to me about this matter!” (Deuteronomy 3:26)
Moses is not allowed to enter due to the sin of the people
Deuteronomy 1 - the litany of distrust and complaints made by the Israelites
V. 26, “you rebelled; v. 27 “You grumbled”, v. 32 “you have not trust in the LORD”
1:37 - “Even with me the Lord was angry on your account, saying, "You also shall not enter there.”
How often do we want to set ourselves apart from a sinful community and ignore our complicity? How many pastors complain about their churches (or vice versa) without acknowledging their own sins
Mourning of Israel
Instead of plunging into the Promised Land- they take 30 days of mourning and lamentation.
Are we willing to make time for lament?
Americans didn’t take 30 days of lamentation after the deadliest mass shooting in modern history
We get a couple days off of work for the death of a family member
Today (2020) we record on National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day.
The lost gift of lamentation
The story ends incomplete
So unsatisfactory
Harry Potter hasn’t graduated
The Ring of power hasn’t been destroyed
Jim and Pam never get married
The Empire doesn’t fall
Perhaps this is the point- the transformative journey to being the people of God
Not slaves in Egypt
Not wanderers in the desert
Not the followers of Moses
Followers of God- following where God has led them
Or does it?- great Jewish commentary on G-dcast Videos from BimBam
Death is part of life- even for Moses
Begins with creation, doesn’t end with destruction- but promise
This is not really the end- we know what will happen
Gertrude Baines 1894-2015 - was given the right to vote and voted for a black man for president, “you don’t need to be a prophet to see a lot in 120 years and you don’t need to be Moses to have an ending worthy of a life”
Thoughts and Questions
Did Moses succeed or fail? Moses brought the people out of Egypt but did not make it to the promised land- he “moved the football” but didn’t make the touchdown. Many would consider this a failure, but God and scripture does not. Is success the destination or the transformation along the way?
Can we see the vision, the mission or the “Promised Land” beyond our own tenure? Have we as a church “seen the promised land”, but perhaps may not make it there?
Does the church need to die on Pisgah because we lost faith and acquiesced to cultural norms and the way of prosperity and survival instead of the way of Jesus Christ?
1 Thessalonians 2:1-8
Initial Thoughts
Thessalonians
Great resource: Enter the Bible
Letters are written with understood context and issues- think of your church newsletter - the underlying issues must be reconstructed from what we know of the context and what is implied in the letters
Thessalonica was on Paul’s journey from Galatia (modern Turkey) and Asia (Also in modern Turkey) through Macedonia (Philippi) down to Corinth
Thessalonica
founded in 316 BCE, named for Alexander the Great’s sister, Thessalonikki.
Cultic and commercial center (not on a scale of Athens or Alexandria, but still important) - was on the major highway across Macedonia linking Rome with Eastern provinces
Benefited from the “Pax Romana”- erected a statue to Augustus and welcomed in an “Augustan Era”
Tension between the pax Romana and Augustus as the supreme benefactor and Jesus as the true way, peace and savior
Apocalyptic
Theme within many of Paul’s letters
Culminating “now, but not yet” eschatology - now: what God has done in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection; not yet: parousia and the coming Kingdom of God
Apocalyptic theology is a challenge to the existing order and status quo
1 Thessalonians
“Written in Corinth around 50 CE, 1 Thessalonians is Paul’s earliest letter, and thus our oldest extant Christian document. The letter is addressed to believers in Thessalonica (in the north of modern Greece), a bustling commercial center on a major Roman highway where Paul and his co-writer Silas (Silvanus in Acts) had recently established a new Christian community (Acts 7:1-9). The Thessalonian Chirstians were of both Jewish and Gentile origin.” (Abraham Smith, NIB, p.682)
Paul formed the Church in Thessalonica shortly after Philippi where is was “shamefully treated”
Gentile congregation - While Acts 17 says Paul stopped at the synagogue-there is no archeological or historical evidence that there was a synagogue on Thessalonians (Abraham Smith, NIB, p.682)
Opposition to the countercultural apocalypticism and glorification of Christ
Stability of congregation - not built on an established faith community
Bible Study
In context of the church of Thessalonica, this is a much more powerful letter in general, and passage in particular.
“While it strikes many modern readers as benign religious encouragement, 1 Thessalonians affirms the Christian faith not merely as an alternative religion among many, but as a singular alternative to the assumptions, motivations, values, and social and political order of empire… Paul’s argument challenges us to think critically and faithfully about the church’s complicity in systems of domination that many of us take for granted.” (Stanley Saunders from the Discipleship Study Bible, introduction to 1 Thessalonians, p. 2010).
Paul’s message of the gospel is unique.
Not interested in flattery, which is an important part of the Roman patronage system.
The Gospel is difficult to sell to people who are comfortable.
When the system is working for you, it is difficult to see that the system is broken.
Reference to “might have made demands” or “thrown our weight around,” is direct attack at patronage system where “throwing weight around” was the only way to get things done. Those in power exercised that power by offering services, than making demands.
Thoughts and Questions
What does it mean to be “entrusted with the gospel”?
What is the responsibility we bear? With what are we entrusted?
“Trustees” of the gospel, or of the building, denomination, institution?
The pastor/church/denomination must serve the gospel, offer the love, grace, peace, and justice of Christ. Not the other way around. The Church has failed when it has created the institution to serve it.
“Share with you not only the gospel, but our own selves.”
Is it possible to share the gospel, and not our own self?
Can you share the love of Christ without also being willing to love?
How often do people share the gospel of love without living a life of love. Is “Do as I say, not as I do?” an epidemic in many churches?
THANK YOU FOR LISTENING AND GET IN TOUCH:
Thanks to our Psalms correspondent, Richard Bruxvoort Colligan (psalmimmersion.com,@pomopsalmist). Thank you to Scott Fletcher for our voice bumpers, Dick Dale and the Del Tones for our Theme music (“Misirlou”), Nicolai Heidlas (“Sunday Morning”,"Real Ride"and“Summertime”) and Paul and Storm for our closing music (“Oh No”).