Tag: Wes Howard-Brook

Sinners & Lost Sheep

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sheepBy 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” →

Jesus of Nazareth, Arsonist

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FireBy Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson

Jesus, erstwhile proclaimer of peace and love, hopes for fire and anticipates division within households. Was the Lord having a bad day on the Way to Jerusalem in this Sunday’s Gospel? How can we reconcile his word in this week’s lectionary text (Luke 12.49-56) with what we hear in the rest of Luke’s Gospel? Continue reading “Jesus of Nazareth, Arsonist” →

Staying Awake in the Summer

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

St LukeBy Wes Howard-Brook & Sue Ferguson Johnson

In the soporific summertime, it is easy enough to lie back, close one’s eyes, and fall into a tranquil sleep. Indeed, many of us could use more sleep, driven as we often are by the exigencies of empire into never-ending task mode. Perhaps ironically, getting more sleep could help prepare us for Jesus’ word to us this Sunday: stay awake (12.32-40)!

The church cycle offers us Lent and Advent as seasonal opportunities to practice anti-imperial wakefulness. With school out, though, the church year seems to take a break from the call to faithful vigilance. But the lectionary surprises us this week, just as Jesus’ message within the text from Luke gives us images of surprising arrivals. Perhaps equally surprisingly, a close listen to our Gospel text invites us to hear precisely what we are called to stay awake against: the lure of the exploitative, anxiety-ridden, imperial economy. At the same time, we are called to stay awake for the opportunity to be servants to one another and all creation. Continue reading “Staying Awake in the Summer” →

Imploring God: Black Lives Matter!

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race, Theological Animation1 Comment

Black Lives Matter

By Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson

A fascinating narrative sequence sets up Luke’s version of “the Lord’s prayer” (11.1-4). Chapter 10 began with the commissioning of the Seventy as laborers in the harvest, seeing cities and houses of “peace” that will provide them hospitality. It continues with Jesus’ powerful condemnation of cities that refuse hospitality. After this, when the Seventy return joyously celebrating their power over demons, Jesus responds with an apocalyptic image of Satan’s fall from heaven and his own rejoicing over the revealing of God’s Way to the “simple” (Gk, nepioi) while it remains hidden from the intellectual elite. Next we hear the parable of the Good Samaritan in response to a lawyer’s attempt to justify himself. Finally, we have the story of Mary and Martha, from which the Lord’s prayer follows immediately. Continue reading “Imploring God: Black Lives Matter!” →

Embracing the Personalist Approach

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

By Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson JohnsonMartha

“Some people are Marys, and some are Marthas.”

Uh, no.

The little story of Mary and Martha in Luke’s Gospel is one that we regularly hear interpreted as a choice between two lifestyles, the “active” and the “contemplative.” Read in context, though, Luke’s message is not that at all. Let’s try to listen to this familiar story with fresh ears. Continue reading “Embracing the Personalist Approach” →

Hospitality and The People of God

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Emma LazarusBy Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson

For Jesus followers in the US, this week’s Gospel offers a powerful counter-narrative to the flag-waving patriotism of the 4th of July. Nearly every detail challenges those of us who live and thrive at the heart of empire to reconsider which “sacred story” binds us together as a people. Continue reading “Hospitality and The People of God” →

All In

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Jesus JerusalemBy Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson

“When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.”

This week’s Gospel offers some of the most challenging, urgently needed by us today messages found in Luke’s Gospel. It is a companion with next week’s Gospel, which directly follows this week’s passage. We will address them as a two-part unit in this and our next commentary. Continue reading “All In” →

The Scandal of the Compassionate Way

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

widow's sonBy Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson

Luke pairs last week’s shocking Gospel passage (7.1-10)about loving enemies with an equally shocking one this week about the resurrection of a widow’s son (7.11-17). Part of the shock this week is in how matter-of-factly Luke narrates Jesus doing the seemingly impossible.

Consider how different this brief passage is from the elaborate Johannine story of the raising of Lazarus. There, the narrator and Jesus together walk us through the various characters’ attitudes toward death. The dead man’s two sisters are portrayed as caught between anger and frustration over Jesus’ failure to show up in time to save Lazarus from death on the one hand, and a seemingly impossible hope that “even now” Jesus can do something for their dead brother (John 11.21-22). Luke, however, presents the restoration of life to a widow’s only son as an almost routine element of his messianic ministry, echoing a similar action by the prophet Elijah (1 Kg 17.8-24). Continue reading “The Scandal of the Compassionate Way” →

A Scandalous Shock to the System

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Feminist/Womanist/Queer Liberation and Theology, Theological Animation2 Comments

CenturionBy Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson

All the dynamics of this week’s passage from Luke’s Gospel are “wrong.” For instance, how are we to imagine Jewish elders in Capernaum speaking on behalf of a Roman centurion? Further, they paint him as the primary patron of their synagogue. And not only this, but the centurion sends the elders to Jesus, at this point in Luke’s narrative, an itinerant preacher and healer with no official authority at all. Finally, Jesus praises the centurion for having a faith that Jesus has not found among the people of Israel. What could be going on here? Continue reading “A Scandalous Shock to the System” →

The Male/Female Image of God Made Flesh

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SophiaBy Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson, commentary on the lectionary for May 22

In this ongoing season of Pentecost, we celebrate the Holy Spirit, not simply as “a spirit,” but as Spirit-infused-flesh in human bodies. This week’s reading from Proverbs 8 connects with the recent sequence of selections from the Johannine Last Supper Discourse (John 13-17) to present us with the perhaps surprising portrait of Jesus as the male-female God-made-flesh. Continue reading “The Male/Female Image of God Made Flesh” →