By Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson
Many vivid images are squeezed into this week’s Gospel passage from Luke (17.5-10), including one of the oddest in all the gospels: a tree being “planted” in the sea. Understanding this puzzling passage is even more challenging because the lectionary cuts it out of context. We need to start by taking a step back to listen to what’s going on at this point in Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem. Continue reading “Beyond Christian Duty Into the Way of Jesus”
By Ched Myers, on Luke 16:19-31 (19th Sunday after Pentecost)
Note: This post is part of a series of weekly comments on the Lukan gospel readings from the Revised Common Lectionary during Year C, 2016. As was the case last week, this is a longer post, because of the importance of Luke 16 to those of us suffering from “Affluenza.” For a recording of a recent webinar Ched did on this gospel text, go here. [Right: Fyodor Bronnikov, “Lazarus at the rich man’s gate,” 1886.]
This Sunday’s gospel completes our journey through Luke 16. How rare it is that the lectionary allows a sustained look at Luke’s narrative argument! Last week’s text was Jesus’ subversive tale of the “defect-ive” discipleship of the beleaguered middle manager of a “filthy rotten system” (16:1-13). I read it as a poignant fable for those who would try to monkey-wrench the dominant economic system to provide a modicum of Jubilee justice for themselves and others. The “paired” story of Lazarus and the Rich Man represents, in turn, a warning tale about the dark consequences of failing to deconstruct the systems of vast social and economic disparity that hold our world hostage. Continue reading “The Rich Man and Lazarus: Warning Tale and Interpretive Key to Luke”
If anyone boasts, “I love God,” and goes right on hating his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, he is a liar. If he won’t love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can’t see? The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You’ve got to love both.
I John 4:20-21 (The Message Version)
A wedding homily preached by Tommy Airey for Eliisa & Peter Croce-Bojanic (right, September 18, 2016, on Belle Isle, Detroit, MI).
———————
God and people: you’ve got to love both. Sounds so simple. But the author of these sacred words from First John knew what an extreme challenge that this real, gritty, self-donating love presented. In fact, in the Gospel of John and all three letters that bear John’s name, there is only one ethical command provided for readers: to love. And because love is such a contested concept, because there are so many ideas floating around about what local and organic ingredients actually constitute love’s recipe, John holds up the cross of Jesus as the ultimate symbol: Continue reading “Love Must Win Out”
Written by Salal and Cedar
May God be with you
And also with you
Lift up your hearts
We lift them up
Let us give thanks to God our Creator
It is right to give our thanks and praise
It is right in all times and in all places to thank and praise you Creator of all. We praise you here where the Fraser River meets the Salish Sea, where city and farm, wilderness and industry are side by side. We praise you at a time when the body of earth is broken again and again. Continue reading “Eucharistic Prayer”
By Ched Myers, on Luke 16:1-13
Note: This post is part of a series of weekly comments on the Lukan gospel readings from the Revised Common Lectionary during Year C, 2016. This week Ched offers a longer study because of his conviction that this is a crucial text for middle class Christians. A more detailed version of the reflections below can be found here; a webinar exploring these themes can be found here. [Right: “The Wicked Servant,” Ian Pollock, 1972.]
Summary: This Sunday’s gospel can be read as a poignant fable for all who realize that they have been disenfranchised by the dominant economic system, and who would try to “monkeywrench” whatever status they have in it to provide a modicum of Jubilee justice for themselves and others. This parable illustrates the contemporary strategy of navigating what Wendell Berry calls the “Two Economies” by using capital to build social relations, rather than sacrificing social relations to build capital. Continue reading “Discipleship as Defection from the Mammon System: Jesus’ Parable about a “Manager of Injustice””
During our current lectionary cycle, we’ve been downright spoiled with the scholarship that Ched Myers, Wes Howard-Brook (right) and Sue Ferguson Johnson bring every Thursday with their weekly comments on the Gospel passage. When Wes is not busy teaching at Seattle University, serving at the local soup kitchen, leading the weekly Bible Study in his home, participating in liturgical direct action, hiking up Tiger Mountain or making Sue a latte, he spends his free time researching church history for his next publication. Last week, his Empire Baptized: How The Church Embraced What Jesus Rejected (Orbis) was released for public consumption. We sat down for a long-distance dialogue about what to expect next.
RD.net: What were the circumstances in your own life that led to writing Empire Baptized?
WHB: Two major realities led to this book. First, in doing Come Out, My People!, the contrast between the New Testament’s clear message of embodied resistance to empire and historical Christianity’s embrace of empire jumped out at me. Second, in teaching undergrads who are often deeply and rightly suspicious of “Christianity” as well as older and often lifelong church people, I regularly experienced the shock people express when they discover that, for instance, Jesus not only wasn’t concerned with “how does my soul go to heaven,” but wouldn’t even have understood the question!
I had inherited the Yoderian narrative [Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder] of “it was great for three centuries, but then along came Constantine,” but several things led me to question that story. For instance, that Constantine embraced “Christianity” did not explain such things as many churches’ obsessive focus on right “doctrine,” sexual ethics, and lack of regard for social injustice. I wanted to find out, at least for myself, what “really happened.”
By Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson
This Sunday’s passage from Luke (15.1-10) seems straightforward: like a man seeking a lost sheep and a woman a lost coin, Jesus seeks and finds people who are “lost.” But like so much of the Bible in general and Luke in particular, a close reading reveals there is more than what meets the eye at first glance.
Our first task is to show how Luke subtly but clearly suggests that the Pharisees’ resistance to Jesus’ message is the primary topic of our passage. Next, we’ll look at the passage itself, and how the first two parts of the parable (sheep/coin) are parallel to the two sons in the final section (15.11-32). Finally, we’ll consider how this speaks to our call to discipleship today. Continue reading “Sinners & Lost Sheep”
By Ched Myers, 15th Sunday after Pentecost, Aug 28, 2016 (Luke 14:1-14)
Note: This is part of a series of weekly comments on the Lukan gospel readings from the Revised Common Lectionary during year C, 2016. This week’s gospel text is related to last week’s; see the background comments for last week here. Much of the post below is adapted from a sermon given at Downers Grove (IL) First United Methodist Church on 10/10/10.
Luke 14:2-6 is unaccountably skipped over in the lectionary. Yet it is profoundly germane to last week’s reading, and moreover introduces the theme of the whole sequence through 14:24: namely, the issue of how social power and privilege is mirrored in meals, and what to do about it. So I strongly advocate re-instating this beginning episode as part of this Sunday’s gospel. Continue reading “Too Big—and Failing! Jesus’ Cure for Affluenza”
From Dorothee Soelle in her book The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance (2001):
At best, what Protestant theology and preaching articulate in what they designate as “gospel” can be summed up as follows: God loves, protects, renews, and saves us. One rarely hears that this process can be truly experienced only when such love, like every genuine love, is mutual. That humans love, protect, renew, and save God sounds to most people like megalomania or even madness. But the madness of this love is exactly what mystics live on.
What drew me to mysticism was the dream of finding a form of spirituality that I was missing in German Protestantism. What I was seeking had to be less dogmatic, less cerebral and encased in words, and less centered on men…
The title of this book [The Silent Cry] is an address to God that is taken from an anonymous letter from the late Middle Ages, presumably from a pastor to a penitent in difficulties and distress. “My child, be patient and leave off because God will not be torn from the ground of your heart. O deep treasure, how whilt thou be unearthed?” This is followed by a series of addresses to God that, as often happens in the language of German mysticism, do not use the traditional personal metaphors like Father, King, Most High, but new, nonpersonal ones like treasure, fountain, radiance, or “security that is hidden” in order to name the deity. In that sequence of metaphors is found the paradoxical expression “the silent cry” that has fixed itself in my mind for years now. It is a mystical name for God, whose divine power is not grounded in domination and commandment. It is a name that everyone can use, everyone who misses the “silent cry” that has often become inaudible among us. May the one who also cries in us help us all to learn to hear the cry in the foundations of the world.
Radical Discipleship 