Year C
\u00a0Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
\u00a0Psalm 19
\u00a01 Corinthians 12:12-31a
\u00a0Luke 4:14-21<\/p>\n\n\n\n
May the words of my mouth O God\u2026 speak your truth\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It’s almost as if this set of lectionary readings were chosen for us\u2026 it’s almost as though somehow\u2026 Providence knew\u2026 that today\u2026 we’d be having our annual meeting\u2026 and thought these readings would be great reminders for us\u2026 ] and why is that\u2026 because these lessons talk about God’s Law\u2026 about being the body of Christ\u2026 and about the launch of\u2026 and Jesus’ ongoing ministry\u2026 and isn’t that what we’re all about\u2026 here\u2026 today and every day\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our passage from Nehemiah… is believed to have been written in about 445 BCE\u2026 the first Temple has been destroyed\u2026 and the Babylonian Exile is over\u2026 ] now Nehemiah was not a prophet\u2026 though he served the king of Persia during the exile\u2026 and later led a group of Jews to Jerusalem\u2026 his heart set on rebuilding and fortifying the city’s foundation and its walls\u2026 Ezra on the other hand was a priest\u2026 and in today’s reading\u2026 on the first day of the seventh month\u2026 the day which later becomes Rosh Hashanah\u2026 the Jewish New Year\u2026 Ezra stands elevated on a wooden platform\u2026 and reenacts the Sinai event\u2026 and the people stood when they heard God’s Word\u2026 and like their ancestors\u2026 they make a public proclamation to accept the law\u2026 and while Moses recorded at Sinai what God revealed\u2026 Ezra now reads what Moses had written\u2026 and Nehemiah’s hope\u2026 revealed in v. 10\u2026 is that this reenacted revelation will be characterized by joy\u2026 and not with mourning\u2026 and in today’s final verse\u2026 affirms\u2026 for your rejoicing in the Lord is the source of your strength<\/em>\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n Melanie Howard\u2026 Assistant Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies at Fresno Pacific University\u2026 points out that in v. 21 of today’s reading from 1 Corinthians\u2026 Paul imagines a scenario in which certain body parts claim no need of the others\u2026 and while this imaginary scenario may at first seem absurd\u2026 it illustrates a real tendency towards radical individualism\u2026 and is not merely the result of an active imagination\u2026 indeed\u2026 the conflict between a spirit of radical individualism\u2026 and the recognition of our interconnected interdependence\u2026 continues to be evident in the world today\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n For Paul\u2019s purposes\u2026 individual rights are secondary to the good of the whole\u2026 for example\u2026 in 1 Corinthians 8: Paul counsels those who would eat food sacrificed to idols\u2026 because while he agrees with them in theory\u2026 that it shouldn’t matter\u2026 since no idol in the world actually exists<\/em>\u2026 Paul recognizes that the issue is a sensitive one for many others in the congregation\u2026 and he advises those who would eat to put these others first\u2026 and avoid eating it for their sakes\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n In today\u2019s Gospel\u2026 after his river baptism\u2026 and his long wilderness fast\u2026 and the temptations set before him\u2026 Jesus returns home\u2026 and inaugurates his public ministry\u2026 sets its tone by reading Isaiah’s prophetic words\u2026 and he makes the seemingly audacious claim\u2026 that the prophet’s words have been fulfilled\u2026 even as the people heard him speaking them\u2026 even though they still had these marginalized people among them\u2026 though fulfilled doesn’t mean fully accomplished<\/em> \u2026 but it does mean that we’ve been put on notice\u2026 that we are to participate in it\u2026 to live into it\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n In his book The Gospel of Luke (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997, pp. 210-211)\u2026 Joel Green writes that while the word translated as “poor” from the Greek\u2026 does have to do with economic status\u2026 it also has to do with other factors which lowered one\u2019s status in the first-century world\u2026 factors such as gender\u2026 genealogy\u2026 education\u2026 occupation\u2026 sickness\u2026 disability\u2026 and one’s degree of religious purity\u2026 and so Jesus\u2019 mission is directed in a holistic sense\u2026 to those who\u2026 for various reasons\u2026 are relegated to the margins of society\u2026 he refuses to recognize these socially determined boundaries\u2026 insisting that these very “outsiders” are the special recipients of God\u2019s grace and mercy\u2026 and Jesus may also have taken Isaiah’s words to refer to a deeper kind of poverty\u2026 a deeper kind of captivity\u2026 a deeper kind of blindness\u2026 and a deeper kind of oppression\u2026 and so this fulfillment to which Jesus refers\u2026 may be a precursor to the Beatitudes\u2026 about those who are blessed in spite of being marginalized\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some years ago\u2026 a Buddhist monk was invited to speak at a senior high class on religion\u2026 and as he entered the room\u2026 he didn’t say a word\u2026 he simply walked to the board and wrote\u2026 everyone wants to help save the world\u2026 but no one wants to help mom do the dishes\u2026 but then he went on to tell the students\u2026 statistically\u2026 it’s highly unlikely that any of you will ever have the opportunity to run into a burning orphanage and rescue an infant\u2026 but in the smallest gesture of kindness\u2026 a warm smile\u2026 holding the door open for the person behind you\u2026 shoveling the driveway of the elderly person next door\u2026 you have committed an act of immeasurable profundity\u2026 because to each of us\u2026 our life is<\/u> our universe\u2026 and my hope for you\u2026 is that by your smallest act of kindness\u2026 you will save another’s world<\/em>\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n And this Buddhist’s words make me wonder\u2026 are there members of the body of Christ\u2026 who are not Christians\u2026 can a Buddhist practice Zen meditation\u2026 and still develop the Mind of Christ\u2026 after all\u2026 in Mark 9:38\u2026 John complains to Jesus that the disciples saw someone casting out demons in his name\u2026 and they tried to stop him\u2026 because he wasn’t following them\u2026 but Jesus said\u2026 don’t stop him\u2026 because no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me<\/em>\u2026 and if God is a verb more than God is a noun\u2026 are we not Christians more by what we do\u2026 than by what we are\u2026 or by the adjective we use to describe ourselves\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n As we prepare this morning to vote on a new Constitution and set of By Laws\u2026 documents which will allow Ascension and Holy Cross to create one unified leadership body\u2026 documents which will offer a more seamless access to membership\u2026 documents which I believe are in concert with what Lutheran Pastor Walter Bouman would have had in mind when he wrote\u2026 that we are called to increasingly make One what has previously been divided\u2026 because our denominations are not simply brand names competing for a share of the Christian market<\/em>\u2026 and perhaps too\u2026 there is some significance\u2026 that we take this vote\u2026 during this year’s Week of Prayer for Christian Unity\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Law\u2026 the body of Christ\u2026 and the ministry of Jesus\u2026 one inseparable and unified whole\u2026 by whatever name we call it\u2026 and trying to claim that it applied only to Jesus’ contemporaries\u2026 trying to claim\u2026 to any degree\u2026 that this Gospel applied 2,000 years ago but doesn’t to us now\u2026 or that crazy love-your-neighbor-as-yourself idea… applies only to Christians and not to absolutely everyone else\u2026 is like trying to argue that the laws of physics work in Brooklyn, NY\u2026 but can gain no traction in Boise, ID\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n And while living as fully as we’re able\u2026 into the Gospel’s principles\u2026 may be challenging\u2026 while it may be easier to just go with the flow\u2026 while it may be difficult to be the salmon which swim upstream\u2026 it is what we are called to do\u2026 now watch out\u2026 I’m going to make a sports analogy<\/em>\u2026 we cannot simply go to major league baseball games\u2026 and root and cheer from the bleachers for those who hit home runs and grand slams\u2026 to the degree that we are truly able\u2026 we need to go to spring training\u2026 and throw the ball\u2026 and run the bases\u2026 we need to be out on the fields practicing\u2026 not so that we can win the World Series\u2026 because Jesus has already done that for us a thousand and one times over\u2026 but so that we can write more of God’s law on our hearts\u2026 participate fully in the body of Christ\u2026 and join Jesus in his ongoing ministry\u2026 by welcoming and loving our neighbor as ourselves\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Year C\u00a0Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10\u00a0Psalm 19\u00a01 Corinthians 12:12-31a\u00a0Luke 4:14-21 May the words of my mouth O God\u2026 speak your truth\u2026 It’s almost as if this set of lectionary readings were chosen for us\u2026 it’s almost as though somehow\u2026 Providence knew\u2026 that today\u2026 we’d be having our annual meeting\u2026 and thought these readings would be great reminders for us\u2026 ] and why is that\u2026 because these lessons talk about God’s Law\u2026 about being the body of Christ\u2026 and about the launch of\u2026 and Jesus’ ongoing ministry\u2026 and isn’t that what we’re all about\u2026 here\u2026 today and every day\u2026 Our passage from Nehemiah… is believed to have been written in about 445 BCE\u2026 the first Temple has been destroyed\u2026 and the Babylonian Exile is over\u2026 ] now Nehemiah was not a prophet\u2026 though he served the king of Persia during the exile\u2026 and later led a group of Jews to Jerusalem\u2026 his heart set on rebuilding and fortifying the city’s foundation and its walls\u2026 Ezra on the other hand was a priest\u2026 and in today’s reading\u2026 on the first day of the seventh month\u2026 the day which later becomes Rosh Hashanah\u2026 the Jewish New Year\u2026 Ezra stands elevated on a wooden platform\u2026 and reenacts the Sinai event\u2026 and the people stood when they heard God’s Word\u2026 and like their ancestors\u2026 they make a public proclamation to accept the law\u2026 and while Moses recorded at Sinai what God revealed\u2026 Ezra now reads what Moses had written\u2026 and Nehemiah’s hope\u2026 revealed in v. 10\u2026 is that this reenacted revelation will be characterized by joy\u2026 and not with mourning\u2026 and in today’s final verse\u2026 affirms\u2026 for your rejoicing in the Lord is the source of your strength\u2026 Melanie Howard\u2026 Assistant Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies at Fresno Pacific University\u2026 points out that in v. 21 of today’s reading from 1 Corinthians\u2026 Paul imagines a scenario in which certain body parts claim no need of the others\u2026 and while this imaginary scenario may at first seem absurd\u2026 it illustrates a real tendency towards radical individualism\u2026 and is not merely the result of an active imagination\u2026 indeed\u2026 the conflict between a spirit of radical individualism\u2026 and the recognition of our interconnected interdependence\u2026 continues to be evident in the world today\u2026 For Paul\u2019s purposes\u2026 individual rights are secondary to the good of the whole\u2026 for example\u2026 in 1 Corinthians 8: Paul counsels those who would eat food sacrificed to idols\u2026 because while he agrees with them in theory\u2026 that it shouldn’t matter\u2026 since no idol in the world actually exists\u2026 Paul recognizes that the issue is a sensitive one for many others in the congregation\u2026 and he advises those who would eat to put these others first\u2026 and avoid eating it for their sakes\u2026 In today\u2019s Gospel\u2026 after his river baptism\u2026 and his long wilderness fast\u2026 and the temptations set before him\u2026 Jesus returns home\u2026 and inaugurates his public ministry\u2026 sets its tone by reading Isaiah’s prophetic words\u2026 and he makes the seemingly audacious claim\u2026 that the prophet’s words have been fulfilled\u2026 even as the people heard him speaking them\u2026 even though they still had these marginalized people among them\u2026 though fulfilled doesn’t mean fully accomplished \u2026 but it does mean that we’ve been put on notice\u2026 that we are to participate in it\u2026 to live into it\u2026 In his book The Gospel of Luke (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997, pp. 210-211)\u2026 Joel Green writes that while the word translated as “poor” from the Greek\u2026 does have to do with economic status\u2026 it also has to do with other factors which lowered one\u2019s status in the first-century world\u2026 factors such as gender\u2026 genealogy\u2026 education\u2026 occupation\u2026 sickness\u2026 disability\u2026 and one’s degree of religious purity\u2026 and so Jesus\u2019 mission is directed in a holistic sense\u2026 to those who\u2026 for various reasons\u2026 are relegated to the margins of society\u2026 he refuses to recognize these socially determined boundaries\u2026 insisting that these very “outsiders” are the special recipients of God\u2019s grace and mercy\u2026 and Jesus may also have taken Isaiah’s words to refer to a deeper kind of poverty\u2026 a deeper kind of captivity\u2026 a deeper kind of blindness\u2026 and a deeper kind of oppression\u2026 and so this fulfillment to which Jesus refers\u2026 may be a precursor to the Beatitudes\u2026 about those who are blessed in spite of being marginalized\u2026 Some years ago\u2026 a Buddhist monk was invited to speak at a senior high class on religion\u2026 and as he entered the room\u2026 he didn’t say a word\u2026 he simply walked to the board and wrote\u2026 everyone wants to help save the world\u2026 but no one wants to help mom do the dishes\u2026 but then he went on to tell the students\u2026 statistically\u2026 it’s highly unlikely that any of you will ever have the opportunity to run into a burning orphanage and rescue an infant\u2026 but in the smallest gesture of kindness\u2026 a warm smile\u2026 holding the door open for the person behind you\u2026 shoveling the driveway of the elderly person next door\u2026 you have committed an act of immeasurable profundity\u2026 because to each of us\u2026 our life is our universe\u2026 and my hope for you\u2026 is that by your smallest act of kindness\u2026 you will save another’s world\u2026 And this Buddhist’s words make me wonder\u2026 are there members of the body of Christ\u2026 who are not Christians\u2026 can a Buddhist practice Zen meditation\u2026 and still develop the Mind of Christ\u2026 after all\u2026 in Mark 9:38\u2026 John complains to Jesus that the disciples saw someone casting out demons in his name\u2026 and they tried to stop him\u2026 because he wasn’t following them\u2026 but Jesus said\u2026 don’t stop him\u2026 because no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me\u2026 and if God is a verb more than God is a noun\u2026 are we not Christians more by what we do\u2026 than by what we are\u2026 or by the adjective we use to describe ourselves\u2026 As we prepare this morning to vote on 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